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People cling to delusions because life can be extremely complicated and delusions can be a source of comfort. Since Empire of Debt came out, I’ve done a lot more thinking about why people do what they do. People prefer delusions because the truth itself is just too complicated. That’s true when you’re talking about economic truth; for example, if you ask why the price of gold is going up or down, the answer is infinitely complicated.
You can’t reduce it to a formula or a simple logical expression. All of life is that way. When you have a political campaign, for example, the most complex issues get reduced to a single phrase, like “Protect freedom.”People need those kinds of things in order to be able to operate. Otherwise, it’s just much, much too complicated to try to figure out how things actually work. And so they end up believing what they want to believe, but what they believe is so far removed from the facts that it’s a delusion.
