Western sticks are broken

Governments have two types of policies they can use: carrots and sticks. Carrots include things such as handouts, subsidies and other preferential incentives. Sticks are things like taxes, tariffs, regulation, benefit reductions and restrictions.

The challenge for Western politicians is that carrots get them elected and sticks get them unemployed. It's basically impossible for them to fix market distortions because the companies that benefit from those distortions buy their loyalty with cash. And it's impossible for them to reduce handouts even when they're bankrupting their countries because voters vote for the person giving them the most free money.

Effective governments need to be able to implement politically unpopular policies when these policies in a better long-term outcome for the nation and this is impossible in the present day West.