The Illusion of the Sugar Hit

We’re getting used to being rescued.

Something goes wrong, and the question isn’t what now?—it’s who’s stepping in?

Another bailout. Another round of support. Another sugar hit.

And like any sugar hit, the first one works. It stabilises things. Calms people down. Stops the bleeding.

But over time, something changes.

We need more of it.

There was a time when risk actually meant something. You made a decision, it didn’t work, and you wore it. That wasn’t harsh—it was the mechanism that kept behaviour in check. It forced discipline. It made people think twice before stretching too far.

Now that line is blurred.

Markets drop and people don’t panic—they wait. Not for recovery, but for intervention. You saw it during COVID. Markets fell, stimulus flooded in, and within months the mindset had shifted. People weren’t asking if support would come—they were asking how much.

That shift matters more than the stimulus itself.

Because once people believe the downside will be softened, they start taking risks they wouldn’t otherwise take. Not recklessly. Not all at once. Just a little more than they should.

And when millions of people all lean slightly further at the same time, the system itself starts to change.

That’s where the sugar hit becomes a problem.

The first intervention stabilises. The second becomes expected. By the third or fourth, it’s baked in. And each time, it works a little less—so the response has to be bigger, faster, more aggressive.

That’s not stability.

That’s dependency.

Over time, this doesn’t just “help”—it distorts. Risk stops being priced properly. Bad decisions don’t fully play out. Good decisions don’t get properly rewarded. Everything gets smoothed over.

And when everything is smoothed over, you don’t remove risk—you just hide it.

Until you can’t.

What we’re really doing is trading short-term comfort for long-term fragility. Every intervention makes the next one more necessary. Every layer of protection makes the system less capable of standing on its own.

And eventually, you reach a point where if support doesn’t come, things don’t just dip—

they break.

That’s the part people don’t like saying out loud.

Because the real danger isn’t the bailout itself. Sometimes intervention makes sense.

The real danger is the expectation that it will always be there.

Because once that belief takes hold, the system stops learning. People stop adjusting. Risk stops being respected.

It doesn’t become resilient.

It becomes dependent.