The Politics of a Crisis
Milton Friedman drew on economist James Schlesinger's observation that politics is "the art of calculated cheating."
There's an art to distributing visible benefits while burying costs. This explains a recurring pattern: politicians benefit from crises because a crisis creates something to visibly fix.
Without a crisis, there's nothing to distribute, no benefit to claim credit for.
Friedman's point is about the structural incentive behind why declared crises are so persistent, and why greater public understanding of that incentive is the only real check on it.