The World Has Gone in Circles (feat. Paul Harvey)

About 290 years after Christ a Roman Emperor Named Diocletian took over He really grabbed the bull by the horns He took over in a period of turmoil and severe depression The first thing Diocletian did was call in the gold And closed the banks and raised the taxes He reduced the power of the Senate Delegated its power to a lot of little government burеaus Do you know they even had a Transportation Act back thеre? Prescribing the fee required to rent one laden ass per mile And at today's rate of exchange It would have amounted to about 1/8th cent per mile? Which meant that in order to make a profit A jack ass would have to carry five passengers That was simply beyond the capacity of the jack ass Diocletian put millions of people on the public payroll But when this failed to do the job, the country was still in trouble He asked more personal powers for himself For a brief while, incidentally, they were standby powers But then he used them, all at once He froze wages, he froze prices, he froze jobs He stopped profits, he dictated to the farmer what he should plant When and how he should sell it and for how much And he rationed food and what happened? The labor market closed down, incentive was gone Farm life became dependent on bureaucratic red tape Exorbitant taxes cost the farmer his land He kept for himself only a small plot on which He might grow turnips for his family He lost the rest of it to the state And without food and with incentive gone City life stagnated and declined And Rome past into what history has recorded as the "Dark Ages Lasting a thousand years Lasting a thousand years Just by turning to the left, the world has gone in circles The world has gone in circles The world has gone in circles Just by turning to the left, the world has gone in circles The world has gone in circles The world has gone in circles A nation would evolve from a monarchy Into an oligarchy, from oligarchy to dictatorship From dictatorship to bureaucracy From bureaucracy to pure democracy where Finally, the people would cry out from the chaos And confusion of the streets "Oh! Please God give us a king!" And God would give 'em a king and they'd have a monarchy again And start the whole silly cycle anew Now either we will profit from the errors of their ways Or it follows as the night the day, Our children are going to have to relive the dark ages, All over again, all over again Just by turning to the left, the world has gone in circles The world has gone in circles The world has gone in circles Just by turning to the left, the world has gone in circles The world has gone in circles The world has gone in circles All over again, all over again The world, the world has gone in circles All over again, all over again The world, the world has gone in circles