When cronies of government work to limit economic freedom — mostly by creating “public-private partnerships” — so that they can capture unearned profits, then debt levels rise:
When big government is in collusion with big business (because crooked elites amass power), then our financial future becomes endangered. The solution is to restore economic freedom.
A good place to start is to break-up or dissolve all “public-private partnerships” — even those involving defense contractors who presumably act so as to protect national security — but as Ludwig von Mises would say, the 4 main ways to restore broad prosperity are:
Sound money
Low government spending
Low government regulation
“Free and fair” trade policies
After the sum of all nonfinancial debt passes 300% of GDP (e.g., the second quarter of 2020), then the marginal productivity of debt — e.g., the dollars of new GDP created by $100 of new debt — dwindles down to zero, so that no amount of borrowing “works” anymore (i.e., where extra borrowing actually decreases total output).
You do not want to fall into that “black hole of debt,” but the chance of falling into it increases greatly as total nonfinancial debt approaches 300% of GDP. It is this type of intentional mismanagement which forces government leaders to initiate wars as a back-stop, in order to try to reset things.
But wars lead to death, and so should be avoided. It is better to restore economic freedom so that wars are no longer attractive “stop-gap measures” to government leaders.
Reference
[nonfinancial debt-to-GDP] — Debt of Nonfinancial Sectors, 1952 - 2023. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/z1/nonfinancial_debt/chart/