War, that most vain and venerated instrument of national pride, does not merely nudge the price of petrol upward, it rends asunder the delicate machinery of trade itself.
Ships are halted, roads reduced to rubble, and the humble materials upon which industry depends are spirited away, so that fewer goods are fashioned while the public, ever ravenous, clamors for more! Thus prices rise, as if by some cruel and insidious arithmetic.
Yet the jest deepens: to fund this ever noble destruction, governments borrow and print with reckless enthusiasm, swelling their debts and, with equal vigor, conjuring new money to sustain the spectacle. And so we arrive at the grand design: less to buy, more with which to buy it…
It is a scheme so elegantly absurd that it ensures the citizen pays dearly, both in coin and also in ever so dire consequence.
