There are few movies or miniseries that depict day-to-day business as a central part of the story. Most screenwriters likely find it dull and uninteresting, believing audiences have no interest in watching how other people perform the duties that put food on their table. Moviemakers are loath to tell stories involving small-time entrepreneurs: the struggles, the long hours, the satisfaction of success, and possibly the unraveling. It’s not easily done. However, it turns out that the TV-watching public is interested in watching truck drivers haul mining equipment on Alaska’s icy roads, fisherman catching crabs in the icy ocean, roughnecks working drill rigs, chefs cooking all sorts of dishes, and pawnshop dealers valuing esoteric items all the while wondering who they can sell the items to and for how much. The fact is, when strangers meet, the typical question is “what do you do for a living?” That is virtually everyone’s common ground. And most times an insider’s knowledge about a profession or business is fascinating.

Still, there is little doubt that some day will turn out to be the real Day of Reckoning, when the Treasury will have to stiff someone. If it fails to pay interest on some debt, that will be an event of default. If it instead fails to write government paychecks or fails to pay contractors’ bills, that will be a shame. The least frightening consequence, however, is the potential for a downgrade of Treasury debt by the major credit-rating “agencies.” As the passive records of Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch should demonstrate, they will never reveal anything that the world does not already know. Indeed, the world already knows that the U.S. government has liabilities looming that are not included in the $14.2 trillion debt subject to the statutory limit. Bond traders are quite familiar with the government’s implausible promises to the Baby Boom generation, to investors, depositors and homeowners, to the jobless, the homeless and the clueless and to anyone with pain that a politician can feel. What they don’t know is when Americans will come to the end of their illusions.

In Dade County Florida the average time to foreclose is up to 738 and counting, with the average in most of the country ranging from 220 to 585 days, even including nonjudicial states. With millions not paying on their mortgages while still having a roof over their head, one can only guess to what extent this is propping up retail sales and the like. Until the malinvestment in housing is cleared there can be no real recovery. When will that be? Somewhere between 2 and 62 years.

All of this is to say if you’re going to stop illegal immigrants from doing a job you should be prepared for the job, and perhaps even the business itself, to go away. You may think this is worth it, but you should at least be acknowledging the risks and weigh them against what, if anything, you think is being gained.

The truth is that the lessons of history have been conveniently forgotten or ignored, as illustrated by Carmen Reinhardt and Kenneth Rogoff in their epic work “Growth in a Time of Debt”. Those lessons are simple: credit crises are followed by years of sub-par growth and sovereign defaults.

In banking, traditional legal principles of deposit contracts are not respected.[9] It is not clear if bank customers actually lend money to banks or if they make genuine deposits. Genuine deposits require the full availability of the money to the depositor. In fact, full availability may be the reason why most people hold demand deposits. Yet banks have been granted the legal privilege to use the money deposited to them. As such, property rights in the deposited money are unclear. Banks that make use of their legal privilege and the unclear definition of private-property rights in deposits can make very large profits. They can create deposits out of nothing and grant loans to earn interest. The temptation to expand credit is almost irresistible. Moreover, banks will try to expand credit and issue fiduciary media as much and as fast as they can.

Munger suggests that if my best alternative to doing business with you is a really lousy alternative, then many people would deny that my decision to do the deal is voluntary. That explains why people are revolted by sweatshops. The economist says that working in a sweatshop beats the alternative of working in another grueling job for less money, but the non-economist is not satisfied with that analysis. The non-economist is troubled by the fact that the worker faces such a lousy alternative to taking the job in the sweatshop. When people rant that health care is a right, not a commodity, they play on this intuition. If you don’t get health care, you’ll die! So make sure that nobody has to sacrifice a lot to get health care! The thing is, though, the vast majority of medical procedures do not make a life-or-death difference. Maybe that colonoscopy screening reduces my risk of dying if colon cancer by a small amount. But I would not pound my fist on the table and insist that I have a right to that colonoscopy.