How to Destroy One's Economy

I really don't know where to put this, so I'm very sorry.

Ok, the question is how you make the economy of a country IN a closed, tight free trade bloc collapse, or at least becomes less dominating than before?
No outside influence is allowed, just from the trade bloc and the country itself.

Since I haven't got any examples of this kind of alliance (except Greece in EU), I'll give you the ASB one: the United States in the Alliance for Democracy in the Draka series.

But the goal itself isn't ASB.
Thanks in advance!
 
Do you mean if I controlled the government, or if I was just some kind of industrial leader?

How much are we allowed to do? I mean, if I completely dominated a government, could I just set the military loose on banks and centers of industry?

Or slightly less control? Could I nationalize industry and the banks as some sort of socialist revolutionary, and then just ensure that incompetent functionaries take control and will ruin said industry and banks?

If I wanted something reasonably realistic, I'd drastically drop government spending (under the guise of giving more free choice to the people) but increase taxes. Preferably subtle increases, so that people are having the same percentage (or less!) taken out of their income tax, but ending subsidies, ramping up taxes on goods (if I can bump up the price of gasoline a few dollars through taxes, great!), sin taxes, a VAT that makes sales taxes seem smaller while still taking the same amount of money out of the system, and so forth. The massive money that the government makes through this will be spent on major futile public works (reforestation of the Mojave Desert) and propaganda.
 
Do you mean if I controlled the government, or if I was just some kind of industrial leader?

How much are we allowed to do? I mean, if I completely dominated a government, could I just set the military loose on banks and centers of industry?

Or slightly less control? Could I nationalize industry and the banks as some sort of socialist revolutionary, and then just ensure that incompetent functionaries take control and will ruin said industry and banks?

If I wanted something reasonably realistic, I'd drastically drop government spending (under the guise of giving more free choice to the people) but increase taxes. Preferably subtle increases, so that people are having the same percentage (or less!) taken out of their income tax, but ending subsidies, ramping up taxes on goods (if I can bump up the price of gasoline a few dollars through taxes, great!), sin taxes, a VAT that makes sales taxes seem smaller while still taking the same amount of money out of the system, and so forth. The massive money that the government makes through this will be spent on major futile public works (reforestation of the Mojave Desert) and propaganda.

The collapse must be unintentional, so the government believe what they do is really to improve the economy, but some part of the plan doesn't work. Military actions are allowed but only when civil unrest is increasing.

One more thing, which sector will be the key to the economic downfall? Is it military, financial, or governmental or anything else?

Thanks!:)
 
Easy, don't be the reserve currency of the world, and then consistently spend a lot more than you tax. Somewhere around National Debt = GDP your interest rates will start spiraling upwards and the death cycle is on. If you're the reserve currency of the world you can get away with a lot more, but you can't postpone the reckoning inevitably.
 
One more thing, which sector will be the key to the economic downfall? Is it military, financial, or governmental or anything else?

A combination of government and financial. The industrial sector can be destroyed pretty easily through government and banking screwups. If a company has $10 billion stored in a bank, and that bank fails, suddenly that $10 billion doesn't exist anymore. It's not quite that simple, of course, but you can still take out a LOT of the industrial sector by destroying the banks. Military isn't too important, either. It only gains an artificial importance because of mass spending. If the US stopped all military funding right now, it'd wreck the economy. If it did it over the long term, dropping the budget bit by bit, the economy wouldn't notice it.

Government regulations/deregulations are what allow the financial sector to bomb. And once the banks fucked, you ruin pretty much every other aspect of the economy.
 
What are the government regulation I need to, well, sucker punch the financial sector.

I need something specific because I'm completely blind on economy.
Hehe
 
What are the government regulation I need to, well, sucker punch the financial sector.

I need something specific because I'm completely blind on economy.
Hehe

If you want to do a "sucker punch" to the financial sector, taxes are the best way. Huge capital gains taxes that'll make investing not worth the risk, things like that. Ending fractional-reserve banking would cripple the banks (who would now be able to do ZERO loans until they manage to get TONS of extra cash), but is kind of unrealistic to pull off.
 
All To Familiar

1 - Pass laws requiring Businesses to act as unpaid Accountants for Labor Unions.
2- Pass laws requiring Businesses to act as unpaid Accountants for the Government.
3- Turn your primary education over to Union Officials and Bureaucrats who are more interested in Job Security than in Educating the Children.
4- Turn your higher Education over to Ideologues who are more interested in Promoting their Agenda than in Facts and Reality.
5- Turn your legal system over to Bureaucratic Regulators, who write thousand of pages of conflicting regulations, promoting Political Correctness over Economic Sanity.
6- Pass laws requiring Financial Institutions to ignore long term indicators of Creditworthiness in favor of Political Correct Loan Giving.
7- Blame the Financial Institutions when the Loan Bubble Bursts.
8- Continue raising the minimiun Wage despite studies that show this pushes thousand of low skill workers out of the Job Market.
9- Continue funding extensions of unemployment dispute studies that show People only get serious about Job searches when Unemployment is about to expire.
10- Ignore any idea that a large part of your economic problem is due too new Structural Changes/Realities, due to 1-9, and continue pushing the old standby solutions.
 
1 - Pass laws requiring Businesses to act as unpaid Accountants for Labor Unions.
2- Pass laws requiring Businesses to act as unpaid Accountants for the Government.
3- Turn your primary education over to Union Officials and Bureaucrats who are more interested in Job Security than in Educating the Children.
4- Turn your higher Education over to Ideologues who are more interested in Promoting their Agenda than in Facts and Reality.
5- Turn your legal system over to Bureaucratic Regulators, who write thousand of pages of conflicting regulations, promoting Political Correctness over Economic Sanity.
6- Pass laws requiring Financial Institutions to ignore long term indicators of Creditworthiness in favor of Political Correct Loan Giving.
7- Blame the Financial Institutions when the Loan Bubble Bursts.
8- Continue raising the minimiun Wage despite studies that show this pushes thousand of low skill workers out of the Job Market.
9- Continue funding extensions of unemployment dispute studies that show People only get serious about Job searches when Unemployment is about to expire.
10- Ignore any idea that a large part of your economic problem is due too new Structural Changes/Realities, due to 1-9, and continue pushing the old standby solutions.

1) What about defunding the basic Education system to nothing?
2) Spend 80 percent of your GDP on the military , while hiking taxes to as high as you could possibly go.
3) Gut all institutions except the military . Defund all other branches of the Civil Service.
4) Do what ever it takes to make Corruption Entrenched in your country.
5) Try to provoke ethnic cleansing or at the very least , ethnic/religious Civil Wars in your country , if your country is multi-ethnic .
6) Do whatever it takes to have your country embargoed by everyone , even China and Russia.
7) Eliminate any trace of public health care.
8) Over regulate to the point that most of the economy is pushed to the black market .
9) Destroy your Judiciary and legal enforcement systems .
10) Eliminate all traces of democracy from your country.
11) Go Pol Pot on your country.
12) Sponsor terrorism . Especially Islamic Terrorism . Do so blatantly.
13) If you have nukes , and ICBM , lob one nuke at any other nuclear power.
14) Privatize your whole country. Preferably by selling all of it to foreigners in exchange for a Fat Swiss Bank account . Create a new East India Trade Company , with your country as collateral.


All of the above are infinitely far more effective than what you have proposed , and much quicker. The goal is to reduce your country to a Failed State ASAP.
 

loughery111

Banned
The goal is to reduce your country to a Failed State ASAP.

Actually, my reading of the OP is that the goal is to think you're doing the right thing and actually be failing. No one is stupid enough to think that what you just posted is a good idea; they might be dumb enough to try what he did, though.

And before we take the political undertones too far, let me point out that if we gave either the hard-left or the hard-right total control of the economic policy of the country, they'd destroy it in about three weeks. Either of them.
 
Start a bunch of really expensive wars that your rules of engagement basically make impossible to ever win and which even if 'won' won't return a profit anyway. I seem to recall Athens going this route against Sicily.
 
We have a good example of this from history: the Great Leap Forward. Not only was the plan itself unworkable, but local leaders lied about their results. So, the national leaders thought steel and grain production were increasing, and promoted ever more extreme policies.

You don't even need a Communist or otherwise Totalitarian government for this to work. Just have local officials, or even businesses, lie about their production figures to the government. By the time people figure out that the new regulations/taxation/what have you are actually harmful, vast damage has already been done. I would suggest some regulation on banks, either leading to vast over-lending to unprofitable enterprises, or the opposite, leading to no credit for business expansion and crushing burdens on the indebted. Keep this up for too long--because the regulators are blind to it--and there will be vast damage to the real economy.
 
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