territorial pissings

I figure that any economy has booms and crashes. The old Soviet Union had a centralized economy and of course business was always booming, even when the citizens had to stand in line and jeans were luxury items that travellers smuggled into the country. The USA has capitalism and therefore redundancy - but then we keep saying things are always great, always booming. Very Soviet like of us. I figure that it's the role of the government to protect its citizenry when the inevitable crash occurs, and in that sense I feel betrayed.

I worry that healthy versus unhealthy citizens is an academic thing. I see my country basically being run by these people so alien to me and my background, and I see people from unhealthy backgrounds like my own just playing along. What good are a few blue states or the prospect of sane resource allocation like Scandinavia, if our destiny as a country is forever dominated by the same tired bullshit which I grew up with, which made me such a happy go lucky guy?