The simple rules roughly follow this narrative/progression ...
1. As an industry (or an individual company within an industry) develops, its productivity improves dramatically.
2. Eventually, the capacity of the company or industry to produce something exceeds the ability of its market to consume what it produces.
3. This imbalance between supply and demand puts tremendous downward pressure on prices, and -- by extension -- wages.
4. Eventually, the industries and their workers (the voters in the democratic form of governance) come together to resolve this imbalance through one or more of three ways:
-- (A) The government regulates the industry so heavily that competitors can't enter the market. This enables the existing players to charge excessive prices with little or no competition.
-- (B) The government forces people to buy (directly or indirectly) things through regulation and taxation -- at inflated, non-competitive prices -- that they would never willingly buy on their own. These things range from COVID vaccines to electric vehicles to aircraft carriers.
-- (C) The government subsidizes and regulates the industry so heavily that the number of people employed in government as bureaucrats to regulate/fund the industry exceeds the number of people employed in the industry itself. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is a classic example of this natural progression.
It's easy to see where this all ends. Eventually the nation collapses because it costs too much to keep this charade going indefinitely.
Great post!