Any substantive conversation on the topic inevitably invokes the template of “exiting the crisis.” We all use these words without recognizing how they construct a picture of reality that, it seems, doesn’t correspond to reality itself. This picture assumes that crisis is an external situation in which we find ourselves. It has an entrance, and now we need to find an exit.
This kind of exit is always imagined as the work of officials—that is, of the state. Discussions unfold around various state plans and end with lamentations that our state, they say, is incapable of anything.
In reality, the crisis is not an external situation but an internal state, which, naturally, is caused by various reasons, including external ones. The “exit from the crisis” does exist, and it is called crisis. The crisis must be lived through, but naturally not by sitting still. And the necessary activity for this “exit” lies with economic actors—private individuals and enterprises, not the state. No, of course, the state can improve conditions so that processes occur less painfully. It, for example, can increase market flexibility by removing the restrictions it invented itself. The same applies to tax and fiscal policy. The best thing for it to do is to go somewhere else so as not to get underfoot. But where have you seen such a state…