Over the past few years I have developed a framework for understanding the purpose of the modern state which I believe explains a lot of the current state of affairs.
The framework is very simple: "The state is a tool to transfer wealth from the taxpayer to the desired recipient"
Looking through this lens helps me come to grip with most of the crises that are generated to accomplish this task. The climate scam, the covid scam, now the 5% expenditure for defense, all exist just to perpetuate this grift.
The only thing the state and the modern politician is good at is to make sure that the wealth will be transferred to the desired recipient. Modern state can't accomplish anything, it is stuck in perpetual beaurocracy when it needs to do useful things: "it might hurt the turtles, it might hurt the 0.0001% of the population, it is unfair to 99 year olds, etc...", but as soon as they get a glimpse of a crisis that can be exploited for a wealth extraction and transfer, suddenly, it can be done in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately this problem goes much deeper than just money as the state is not much concerned with such trivialities since they can raise more debt, inflate the currency and tax the citizens. This is, in all essence, a mechanism of transfering power and life force of the taxpayers to those shareholders who align with the current interest of the state.
Nothing outside of this framework is allowed to be accomplished. If it's to the benefit of taxpayer, but not the shareholders, it is not allowed. Nuclear energy, tariffs on products, but no tariffs on labor; are some of the examples. This has brought a terrible stagnation that is not nearly felt in the economy, as it is felt in our culture, the optimism of younger generations and the degradation of our politics.
I leave these thoughts with words of one much greater than me:
Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.