Government is "sticky". War taxes stick around long after the end of the war, and city bureaucracies stick around long after a city declines. Nobody wants to

Government is "sticky". War taxes stick around long after the end of the war, and city bureaucracies stick around long after a city declines. Nobody wants to accept that maybe a town of 5-20k people don't need 20-100 man police forces, and a far lower level of public services in general. Nobody wants to admit they have to lower their standards of living in the face of adversity; instead we double-down on reproducing (or improving on) the standard of living of our forebears and thereby immiserate ourselves with the debts (or oppression in this case) needed to square that circle. Even the most economically irrelevant areas of rural america have paved roads these days when they could simply have stuck with gravel, etc. In many ways we are trying to exceed the prior standard of living (progress!) all the while forgetting that the economic base of most of these places has either not improved or significantly worsened. We all increase our standards of living at our own peril; one must save and capitalize first (which is actively punished by low interest rate policy). Taking this as a given, should we have expected any other outcome?