In his classic "Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices," Publick Benefits (1724), Bernard Mandeville, the Dutch-born British philosopher and satirist, described — in verse — a prosperous society (of bees) that suddenly chose to make a virtue of austerity, dropping all excess expenditure and extravagant consumption. What then happened?
"The Price of Land and Houses falls;
Mirac'lous Palaces, whose Walls,