Paul Harvey
The World Has Gone In Circles
About 290 years after Christ a Roman Emperor named Diocletian took over
He really grabbed the bull by the horns. He took over in a period of turmoil and severe depression
The first thing Diocletian did was call in the gold and closed the banks and raised the taxes
He reduced the power of the Senate delegated its power to a lot of little government burеaus
Do you know they even had a Transportation Act back thеre?
Prescribing the fee required to rent one laden ass per mile and at today’s rate of exchange it would have amounted to about 1/8th cent per mile?
Which meant that in order to make a profit a jack ass would have to carry five passengers
That was simply beyond the capacity of the jack ass
Diocletian put millions of people on the public payroll, but when this failed to do the job, the country was still in trouble, he asked more personal powers for himself
For a brief while, incidentally, they were standby powers, but then he used them, all at once
He froze wages, he froze prices, he froze jobs, he stopped profits, he dictated to the farmer what he should plant, when and how he should sell it and for how much and he rationed food and what happened?
The labor market closed down, incentive was gone
Farm life became dependent on bureaucratic red tape
Exorbitant taxes cost the farmer his land
He kept for himself only a small plot on which he might grow turnips for his family
He lost the rest of it to the state
And without food and with incentive gone city life stagnated and declined
And Rome past into what history has recorded as the “Dark Ages
Lasting a thousand years
Lasting a thousand years
[Chorus]
Just by turning to the left, the world has gone in circles
The world has gone in circles
The world has gone in circles
Just by turning to the left, the world has gone in circles
The world has gone in circles
The world has gone in circles
A nation would evolve from a monarchy, into an oligarchy, from oligarchy to dictatorship, from dictatorship
To bureaucracy, from bureaucracy to pure democracy where, finally, the people would cry out from the chaos and confusion of the streets “Oh! Please God give us a king!”
And God would give ’em a king and they’d have a monarchy again and start the whole silly cycle anew
Now either we will profit from the errors of their ways, or it follows as the night the day, our children are going to have to relive the dark ages, all over again, all over again
[Chorus]
Just by turning to the left, the world has gone in circles
The world has gone in circles
The world has gone in circles
Just by turning to the left, the world has gone in circles
The world has gone in circles
The world has gone in circles
All over again, all over again
The world, the world has gone in circles
All over again, all over again
The world, the world has gone in circles