I support the view of Thiel, who believes that the issue of recession is true. His analysis of the post-9/11 is quite enlightened rather than taking such a window of opportunity to cause significant change the society has gone back to consumerism. This will demonstrate how much the search of immediate comfort is rooted into our culture.

The thing is you are also quite right that financial freedom is what makes people conservative. i bet that what can help to avoid this trap is to establish such a culture that teaches people to take risks and fail. In other words, in case we create such systems which would make the failure endurable (such as social protection) and encourage creativity, we would probably be able to eliminate recessions. Tough, to do that we would have had structural change.

The quote given by Geddes seems very interesting to me too, as well, which the hydrogen user mentioned. Recessions are like a normal stage in the lives of the societies that are too comfortable. In order to beat them, we must be challenged at all times i.e. through competition, major threats (such as climate change), or demanding objectives (such as space travel). All we need to be wary of is that all these challenges do not translate to chaos.