The culture war has been front and center for over a decade. Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was as much a reaction to it as it was about any of his policies. And the Biden administration’s war on MAGA is much more a war on its culture than against any credible threat posed by “white supremacists.”
Please.
There is no sense in fighting a war if one doesn’t know what one is fighting for and against. The right and left have different motivations and goals. At least the thought leaders on either side do. For much of the rank and file, it is purely a tribal conflict, with each side defending its banners and shibboleths.
It is important to understand that the left’s war on traditional culture is economically motivated. Breaking down cultural norms is a means, not an end. The entire school of critical theory was founded based on the realization there was not going to be a proletariat revolution due to economic conditions.
There was a very simple reason for this: the industrial revolution had made the proletariat much better off. Their real wages had risen and standard of living skyrocketed. It’s hard to generate the kind of anger necessary for a revolution among people who are doing better than they or any of their ancestors had ever done.
The founders of the Frankfurt School did not admit this to themselves. They were convinced socialism was a superior socio-economic philosophy and since empirical economic data contradicted this view, there needed to be a “more accurate” lens through which to view societal conditions.
Thus, critical theory was born as history’s most elaborate rationalization for denying reality. Objective reality was necessarily one of the prime targets of critical theory because it could tell only one story: capitalism was a vastly superior economic system not only to socialism but to any other economic system yet discovered. So, objective reality had to be challenged.
This eventually led the critical theorists to focus on minority victim groups and how capitalism was oppressing them, even if it was yielding vastly better economic results in the aggregate.
Of course, this was no truer than Marx’s economic theories about capitalism. What has vastly improved the lives of “people of color,” women, and other “marginalized groups” in poor countries over the past several decades has been less socialism and more capitalism.
China and India did not go from destitution to explosive economic growth because of diversity or democracy. Their transformation is due entirely to becoming more capitalist. Are they laissez faire? No, but they’re far more capitalist and far less socialist than they used to be. The same can be said for dozens of other countries.
A billion people were lifted out of extreme poverty over the past three decades and all the gains came in countries that became more capitalist and less socialist. There are zero outliers.
One can see why objective reality is such a problem for Marxists. This is why they fight on the cultural front, using all means possible to distort objective reality and persuade their target victim groups that capitalism is oppressing them. To achieve their ends, history must be erased, established customs declared racist, misogynist, or homophobic, and even the meaning of words changed to, in many cases, their antithesis.
But the end goal is economic. Every assault on societal norms must be viewed as a strategy to achieve socialism – because it is. No, the shrieking, purple-haired, nose-ringed, “trans man” may not realize this him/herself, but the people who created that unfortunate soul do.
It is not an exaggeration to say Americans were terrorized by their federal, state, and municipal governments during the Covid pandemic. Never before had society been locked down so brutally and for so long as during 2020-21. Not during the Spanish flu, where business closures in my hometown lasted three weeks. Not during the 1968 flu pandemic, which killed a significantly larger percentage of the population of the time.
Every step of the way, from “two weeks to flatten the curve” to “you better hold off on Christmas” to “maybe a small gathering on July 4 (2021), if you’re vaccinated,” the media stood in lockstep with the totalitarian state, uncritically repeating its lies and endorsing its edicts.
The media lied about every aspect of the Covid pandemic, including the virus itself, the government’s mitigation measures, and the vaccines. They continue to lie every day for as long as each lie can maintain the faintest plausibility, after which it is quietly surrendered, waiting for resurrection after the amnesiac public forgets.
Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear has seen the transition from “Covid emergency” to “climate emergency” coming from a mile and two years away. And unlike Covid, the climate emergency won’t end.
This carries far graver implications than merely which septuagenarian Boomer occupies the White House. These lies are being used to manufacture acquiescence to an attack on civilization itself. Anyone who participates in such a scheme to subjugate the people en masse can only be described with one word: “enemy.” Touché, Donald Trump. You were right about that.
Thus, it is understandable to want to alert people to the fact the media is not their friend. Many, even “good libertarians,” have taken to calling the media “the corporate press.” This isn’t just unhelpful to the public. It’s counterproductive to freedom.
First, let’s consider what information is conveyed to the public when the word “corporate” is added to “press.” Regardless of intention, the overwhelming majority of people hear: “privately owned and operating for profit.” The problem with the media is they are for profit enterprises that are not owned or at least more heavily regulated by the government.
This is an anti-capitalist message the public is unfortunately too ready to embrace. But it’s neither true nor particularly helpful to encourage their belief that seeking profits is fundamentally at odds with the good of society. It’s just one more confirmation to those already so inclined that seeking profits in any undertaking is fundamentally problematic.
Libertarians may say that is not their intention, but what exactly is their intention? Do they really know? When asked, many will reply that “corporations are creatures of the state.” True enough. But they’re not referring to the guy who fixes their sink as “the corporate plumber” or the place they buy their groceries the “corporate grocer.” Yet both are almost certainly incorporated in the states wherein they operate.
Businesses aren’t incorporated for the same reasons they were hundreds of years ago. At one time, corporate status and its privileges – often a government-enforced monopoly – was granted because of a supposed “public benefit” derived from allowing the company to incorporate.
Today, companies incorporate mainly to limit liability and protect the owners from runaway juries in government-run courts. Creditors of today’s corporations enter relationships with the firms in full knowledge the shareholders’ personal assets are protected from liability. And while it is true third parties who never agreed to such release can be harmed and may have a natural right to seek compensation from the shareholders, they would never get the awards from corporations they get in government courts in any conceivable private court system.
Regardless, the media’s corporate status is no more relevant to their malfeasance over the past several years than malfeasance in any other business.
Another common excuse for the “corporate press” moniker is to point to the business relationships between the media and other corporations and call them “bought off” or words to that effect. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, spends billions on national TV advertising. Critics point to this and say it affected the way media reported on the Covid vaccines. “That’s why I call them the corporate press,” they say.
This is just another argument for why the free market doesn’t work. Certainly, in an anarcho-capitalist society, there would be no restrictions at all on this type of relationship and there wouldn’t be much more, if any, in a laissez faire minarchist society. This has nothing to do with the media being “corporate” and the antidote is not them being something else. The antidote is competition.
If the problem is a lack of competition, that also has nothing to do with the press being “corporate” and everything to do with the New Deal regulatory state, which decides which media is allowed to broadcast and which isn’t. Calling the media “the corporate press” distracts the public’s attention away from the government and misdirects the blame towards the private sector.
But honestly, there is plenty of competition, all the establishment’s attempts at “deplatforming” notwithstanding. The public holds the ultimate power here in simply refusing to consume – or fund – the establishment media. Everyone who objects to the content offered on cable television is free to cancel their cable subscription. Likewise their newspaper or other media subscriptions. Imposing this market discipline in lieu of complaining will do far more to change behavior.
In case you haven’t noticed, the one, common characteristic of the enviro-nazi, medical totalitarianism, and anti-western culture movements is their anti-capitalism. By some strange “coincidence,” the only solution to the supposed problems each of these seeks to solve is less capitalism. And regardless of any pedantic arguments to justify the expression, when people hear “corporate press” they hear “capitalist press,” period.
Referring to the media as “the corporate press” encourages all the bad instincts in the public that inspire them to go along with every incursion into our freedom. Let’s come up with a better pejorative.
German police yesterday arrested demonstrators protesting their country’s energy policies. No, they weren’t protesting the German government’s support for sanctions on Russia that have resulted in the latter cutting off natural gas supplies Germany depends upon to maintain modern civilization. They were protesting the German government’s decision to deregulate (viz. “allow”) the use of coal as an energy source in a desperate attempt to replace the natural gas imports no longer forthcoming from Russia.
Who can blame the protestors? Most likely have believed the fairy tale told by green energy proponents for at least a decade that wind power and other “renewables” are cheaper than natural gas. By 2018, U.S. Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman had declared there were no longer any technological or economic obstacles to total decarbonization of the U.S. economy. All that was needed was the political will.
It is curious that Germany is falling back on coal in particular because as late as 2019, we were told that, “This April, for the first time ever, renewable energy supplied more power to America’s grid than coal—the clearest sign yet that solar and wind can now go head-to-head with fossil fuels.” The point of that Bloomberg article was that not only were solar and wind a viable alternative to coal, but that they were outcompeting coal in the free market without government intervention.
So, why can’t Germany at least use renewables for that portion of the lost Russian energy they plan to replace with coal? Wouldn’t it be cheaper?
We all know the answer to that question. The story politicians and the media told the public about renewables was a fairy tale. No, the factoids above weren’t technically false; they’re just cherry picked information with misleading parameters.
For example, the U.S. Energy Information Administration always picks April to compare the percentage of electricity provided by renewables to coal because “overall electricity consumption is often lowest in the spring and fall months because temperatures are more moderate and electricity demand for heating and air conditioning is relatively low.” The information they provide also indicates the total electricity from renewables and coal combined has fallen from 2005-2019 from about 210 million megawatthours (MWh) to about 130 million MWh.
So, either the larger population in 2019 was consuming far less electricity or some other source besides renewables and coal was making up the difference. That other source would be “not renewables.”
Indeed, a study by industry group Renewables Now indicated that between 2009 and 2019, the percentage of total energy consumption supplied by fossil fuels “barely changed,” going from 80.3% to 80.2%.
There has been no significant increase in renewables share of the energy market in the past decade. None. Politicians and media who have said there has are either lying or engaging in willful ignorance. But politicians lying isn’t dangerous in and of itself. It only becomes dangerous when the public believes them and allows them to act upon the assumption their lies are the truth. Germany has done so and it is going to cost lives, potentially a disastrous number of them.
Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 based on his “America First” platform. It’s three main planks were cracking down on illegal immigration, ceasing “endless wars” overseas, and economic nationalism. That last plank posited that “terrible trade deals” like NAFTA (1994) and allowing China into the WTO (2000) had hollowed out America’s manufacturing base, outsourcing the output and the high-paying manufacturing jobs to China and other lower-cost labor markets.
This assertion has no basis in reality, as the two charts below clearly show, but it was a big part of his appeal to Middle Americans. Trump promised to withdraw from the trade deals and use tariffs to bring manufacturing and manufacturing jobs back within American shores.
Industrial Production – 100 Year Historical Chart
The most curious aspect of this now-hoary populist canard was that it was sold as being pro-American worker. Tariffs weren’t going to simply make America as a whole more autarkic, or benefit business owners who otherwise could not compete with foreign manufacturers. They were going to benefit the so-called “working class” by bringing back higher paying jobs.
This is ironic because tariffs have historically been considered a transfer of wealth from the working class to big business. The original argument for an income tax was precisely to remove the burden of higher prices for consumer goods from the working class and shift some of the tax burden to big business. This was the case for the first peacetime federal income tax passed (and later found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court), the Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act.
** FILE ** In this Sept. 18, 2001 file photo, a red crane looms over the smoldering wreckage of World Trade Center Building 7 in New York. Federal investigators said Thursday they have solved one of the undying mysteries of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks: the collapse of World Trade Center building 7, a source of long-running conspiracy theories.(AP Photo/Roberto Borea, File) ORG XMIT: WX104
There are two camps in the 9/11 war. Both are wrong. As a result, almost no one learns anything from the tragedy that occurred on and after September 11, 2001.
One camp is the “never forget” crowd. These are the proponents of Washington, D.C.s’ imperial, worldwide standing army. They insist people never forget the terrorist attacks because…well, it’s not entirely clear why we shouldn’t forget. Something about being vigilant, because “freedom isn’t free.” Or something.
It’s just a lot of fuzzy baloney used to justify massive military spending, the empire’s war or intervention du jour, and convince the gullible who join the military they are defending freedom, as if Americans would be less free if the empire didn’t invade Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Syria, or…
The other camp is the “truther” camp, convinced that because the government lied about a lot of things regarding 9/11, that those lies prove the attack was “an inside job,” perpetrated by the Bush administration and/or the Deep State to justify the decades of aggressive war abroad and totalitarianism at home that followed it.
Both camps conjure up villains people can blame for ills they ultimately brought upon themselves, at least in the aggregate.
First, the “never forgetters.” Are there any who aren’t somehow connected to the bloated, $800 billion/year and growing cancer called the U.S. military? Or at least believe the myth perpetuated in this nauseating Lee Greenwood song:
“And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free
And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me
And I’d gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land! God bless the U.S.A.”
It’s hard to get more wrong about “America” than those lyrics. First, the American principle is that freedom is a natural right, “endowed by our Creator.” It is not given by anyone, least of all soldiers consuming taxes in an unnecessary war. Not only was the freedom of Americans not in jeopardy during any war in my lifetime (born 1965), none were even “defensive” wars.
Goebbels couldn’t have penned better propaganda nor a bigger lie than this million-selling drivel.
Americans would have been far better off if the entire Cold War national security state were dismantled in 1991, including the global standing army – as Americans were promised it would be – and no wars fought in the past thirty years.
They would have been better off still staying out of WWII and letting the Nazis and Soviets destroy each other, instead of handing one evil empire half of Europe in its zeal to destroy the other.
Instead, the Cold War apparatus was redirected towards terrorism, its military and economic interventions in the Middle East provoking the 9/11 attack.
That brings us to camp #2, the “truthers.” A lot of these people are well-intentioned and have what the never forgetter crowd lacks: a healthy skepticism of their government and of government in general. But their zeal to prove government is evil (which it is) leads them to make improbable conclusions and ignore other explanations that fit the available facts much better.
Anyone inclined to question their federal and state governments, the national media, and corporate America – aka, “the establishment” – wonders how much longer the American public can possibly go on believing what they’re told. The long-suspected “liberal bias” of the media has morphed into outright falsehoods told the public about Covid-19, Ukraine, “climate change,” and a host of other issues.
One after another, previous narratives enforced by de-platforming dissenters has crumbled, although the establishment seeks to cling to as much of the previous narrative as minimally plausible.
For example, natural immunity to Covid was at first ignored as if it didn’t exist at all. Then, it was reported as waning faster than vaccine immunity. Once it was undeniable that natural immunity was broader, more robust, and more durable than vaccine immunity, the focus was shifted to the superiority of vaccine immunity and natural immunity together over merely natural immunity.
Why at that point were people with only natural immunity excluded from participating in large swaths of civil society while those with only the inferior vaccine immunity not excluded? A few people screamed about it; most did not. The dissenters were censored or simply drowned out by establishment information.
A particularly egregious lie perpetrated throughout 2020 and 2021 was that immunity to previous infection no longer existed after antibodies were no longer detected in the blood. Forty years after my last biology course, I knew this had to be wrong. Doesn’t the body remember previous infection even after antibodies disappear from the blood?
Of course it does. It’s called T-cell and B-cell immunity. B-cells produce new antibodies upon new exposure to the same virus and T-cells kill infected cells directly. This is not new or controversial information. But even now, people seem to operate on the assumption that immunity from previous infection ends once antibodies are no longer detected in the blood. The establishment does everything it can to encourage this false belief.
Then, there are the “safe and effective” vaccines themselves. Americans were told by no less than the president himself, in addition to presumably more reliable sources, that the vaccines would keep them from getting infected with and spreading Covid. When that untruth was no longer defensible, the establishment tried to tell us they had never said any such thing, that the vaccines would only prevent serious illness from infection.
This begged the question of why, if they did not prevent infection and transmission, the vaccines would be mandated for employment and/or admission into publicly accessible spaces. If the risk to others is the same with or without the vaccines, what is the justification for the mandates?
Again, a few people asked; most did not.
Now, evidence is mounting that the vaccine is not only ineffective, but not as safe as previously advertised. Certainly, it is important to question all claims about the vaccines, positive and negative. The theory that Covid vaccines are a plot to depopulate the earth don’t seem to jibe with reality. But neither does the claim they are completely safe.
Alex Berenson was recently reinstated on Twitter following settlement of his lawsuit for de-platforming based on his reporting on all the lies of the Covid Regime, including the exaggerated danger of the disease itself, the ineffectiveness of the nonpharmaceutical interventions (lockdowns, mask mandates, etc.), and the ineffectiveness and danger of the Covid vaccines. Had the company been able to definitively disprove any of his reporting, no settlement would have been made.
“Promoter of misinformation” Steve Kirsch is willing to pay any “doctor, professor of medicine, epidemiologist, or public health official anywhere in the world” $50,000 to demonstrate on camera where his information on vaccine deaths is incorrect. There have been no takers.
Kirsch recently presented evidence from multiple sources of massive spikes in daily deaths five months after significant vaccine rollouts.
President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan has inspired criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. The right decries the unfairness to those who either paid off their student loans or worked their way through college without them. The left says the $10,000 ($20,000 for those who received Pell grants) is not enough to make a significant difference for most people struggling with paying back the loans.
But the one-time, lump sum forgiveness is only the tip of the iceberg on what Biden’s plan will do. The changes to the income-based loan repayment policies are much more significant and will create far more perverse incentives. Peter Schiff did an excellent analysis of this on a recent podcast.
The Obama era reorganization of student loans under government control set limits to the percentage of discretionary income one would have to pay. Borrowers were capped at a payment of 10 percent of all income over 150 percent of the poverty level. Any remaining principle after 20 years of those payments was forgiven.
Biden’s plan makes the following changes:
Discretionary income is redefined at income over 225 percent of poverty level
The percentage cap over this level is reduced from 10 percent to 5 percent
The maximum repayment term is reduced from 20 years to 10 years.
An example given on the White House’s fact sheet says, “A typical single public school teacher with an undergraduate degree (making $44,000 a year) would pay only $56 a month on their loans.” That translates to just $6,720 over the entire ten years the schoolteacher would be liable to make payments.
$6,720 is a mere 11 percent of the maximum total loan ($57,500) allowed to obtain a bachelor’s degree. The schoolteacher would be forgiven 89 percent of the principle and all of the interest under those circumstances.
For those who choose to pursue a graduate degree, the total loan amount allowed rises to $138,500. While it’s unlikely a graduate with a master’s or doctorate would earn that little, it is certainly not unheard of these days. In that case, the borrower would end up paying a mere 4.8 percent of the principle and none of the interest over the ten years.
The White House fact sheet provides a more likely scenario for those with advanced degrees. “A typical nurse (making $77,000 a year) who is married with two kids would pay only $61 a month on their undergraduate loans.” $77,000 is also a decent estimate for the average assistant professor or education administrator during the first ten years after graduation. That graduate would pay back just $7,320 or 5.2 percent of the principle and none of the interest over ten years.
As Schiff points out, not only does this incentivize people to max out the amount they borrow to go to college, it actually incentivizes people to pursue degrees with lower returns on investment (ROI) since that is where the maximum loan forgiveness occurs. Those who obtain STEM degrees equipping them to earn much higher incomes will pay a much larger percentage of the debt they incur.
Schiff’s analysis concentrates on the atrocious economics of the plan. But there is also a political element no one is talking about.
In another especially interesting podcast, Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop discussed the “awakening” of the right to the fact the state is not necessarily their friend, not even those institutions within the state (law enforcement, intelligence, the military) they have typically revered.
To paraphrase part of their discussion, the 20th century myth that elections are a time when all Americans “come together” to make important decisions is giving way to what they described as the more realistic, 19th century perception: that politics and elections are about seizing power and using that power to help one’s friends and hurt one’s enemies. The Biden student loan plan couldn’t fit this framework better.
Obviously, no one who has the desire and ability to get into medical or engineering school will opt to pursue a degree with lower ROI simply because they will have to pay less of their loan principle. But the reverse is definitely true. Someone who might otherwise forego an advanced degree in sociology, education, or the much-maligned gender studies will now have a virtually irresistible incentive to enroll.
Guaranteed student loans themselves have grossly expanded academia and inflated the cost of higher education, even before the government took over and removed what little market discipline remained. The ratio of administrators to teachers and students has also exploded, providing jobs for the otherwise useless advanced degrees in education administration.
Biden’s plan will allow tuitions to make another leg up in price, underwriting another explosion in professors, administrators, and students who otherwise might be forced to do something more productive. And the political views and loyalties of that combined population is close to uniformly leftist. Economics departments were once exceptions to the rule. Increasingly, that is no longer true.
While it is virtually impossible to complete a university degree in any major without being exposed to a certain amount of leftist indoctrination, it is most intense in precisely the fields of study most likely to grow the fastest under Biden’s new plan. It will not only reward his friends but grow their ranks exponentially.
The Republican Party remains viable in American politics solely because of the federal system. Were decisions made based purely on a simple national majority, all decisions would be made by the Democratic Party. President Biden’s student loan plan has the potential to produce enough left-leaning voters to overcome those federal constraints. If Republicans want to remain politically relevant, they need to dismantle this monster at their earliest opportunity.
In an interview with Joe Rogan that dropped August 25, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that not only did Facebook suppress the 2020 New York Post story concerning Hunter Biden’s laptop, but that it was done in response to a request from the FBI. It was the latest in a long line of official confirmations of facts previously excoriated as “conspiracy theories.”
Conservatives consider this a giant smoking gun to point to in their quest to treat social media companies as something other than purely private companies. Some libertarians are making the case Facebook and other social media companies were “coerced” into censoring information helpful to Republicans, including in 2020.
I don’t believe the officers at social media companies feel coerced, even after having been hauled in front of Congress. It’s more likely they took away from those hearings that they have to do better at something they believe is a legitimate duty: to prevent “misinformation.”
Either way, Zuckerberg’s comments provide both groups with proof that something must be done. What must be done is a thornier question.
First, it’s worthwhile to unpack Zuckerberg’s statements. There is much nuance there.
Rogan followed up Zuckerberg’s statement to ask whether the FBI requested Facebook censor the Hunter Biden story in particular. Zuckerberg replied, “No, I don’t remember if it was that specifically, but it was, it basically fit the pattern.”
Fit what pattern? The pattern of supposed Russian propaganda that damaged Donald Trump’s Democratic opponent in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton and which again would damage Trump’s opponent in 2020. Because, you know, Putin puppet.
Zuckerberg goes on to say, “We just kind of thought, hey look, if the FBI, which I still view as a legitimate institution in this country, it’s a very professional law enforcement, they come to us and tell us we need to be on guard about something, then I want to take that seriously.”
Zuckerberg’s use of the word “still” is significant here, as the interview was recorded after the controversial FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. It was obviously either a message to or at least an acknowledgement of the many people who no longer view the FBI as a legitimate institution, both because of the raid and its role in Russiagate fiasco over the first two years of Trump’s presidency.
It would be easy to point at some of Zuckerberg’s statements and conclude them as proof he is colluding with the government specifically to prevent Trump or anyone like him from getting elected again. I didn’t hear that. It sounded more like someone who firmly believes in the civic religion and wants to think about himself as doing the civic duty every “captain of industry” has. Or something.
That begs the question whether Zuckerberg would have suppressed a story damaging to Donald Trump under similar circumstances. It’s hard to imagine he would, but it’s possible. From his perspective, he might view it as a defending Nazis marching in Skokie sort of thing. But I wouldn’t bet my own money on it.
I walked away from the interview with the impression Zuckerberg is a typical business owner. He sounded like the vast majority of them when it comes to politics: trying his best to be as conventional and uncontroversial as possible. And like it or not, uncontroversial has meant a left-leaning centrism for at least the past one hundred years.
Blandly conventional is also the safest way to be when you’re looking to maximize revenue from sources across the political spectrum. Don’t forget Facebook also takes a lot of heat from the left for not censoring enough. That Zuckerberg’s and other Facebook officers’ personal biases are with the left make it even more likely that they would be able to view MAGA Republicans as “extremist” but Bernie Bros. as merely pushing the envelope a little.
Like all businessmen, Zuckerberg has to navigate through our grossly overregulated economy, with the threat of more regulation hanging over his head at all times. He has to consider a workforce that skews much younger and more liberal than that of the typical industry. And a majority of his customers lean left. The USA may be a federated republic, but Facebook’s customer base is not.
I am not even suggesting all of this is conscious on his part. When you spend 23 hours per day eating, drinking, and sleeping running a large company, you don’t have the bandwidth to develop complex political ideas, nor do you have the motivation to do so. When asked their political opinions, most business leaders want to sound smart and offend as few potential customers as possible.
Running a successful business means constantly overcoming distractions and stops. It’s a little like running a gauntlet. Someone complains about misinformation? Hire fact checkers. Others complain about equity issues? Make your employees go through equity training. Another group says you’re polluting the environment? Adopt ESG protocols.
Rather than part of a focused political agenda, these are all obstacles to be batted aside – or clubs to avoid being brained by – as you try to keep your head down and make it through the gauntlet to another profitable quarter.
You’re trying to make widgets and these distractions knock you off course. How do I make them go away as cheaply and quickly as possible? This is how business owners think. Take my word for it.
President Biden today announced he would forgive up to $20,000 in student loans for people making less than $125,000 per year, with several other qualifications determining the amount each applicant is eligible for.
Biden’s political opponents have raised very reasonable objections to this politically motivated favoritism just over two months before the mid-term elections. What about people who paid off their loans? Why only student loans and not others arguably taken to underwrite more productive efforts than women’s studies or French poetry?
Why does someone who borrowed money to start a profitable business that employs people have to pay back its loans when someone who works a tax-subsidized job does not?
While calling out such blatant vote-purchasing for its violation of equal justice under the law and other statist dogma is perfectly valid, let’s not forget the economic law demonstrated by this bailout: the government cannot “invest.”
Politicians love to use that word for its wealth transfer schemes. “Invest in infrastructure,” “invest in working families” (which families don’t work?), and, in this case, “invest in education.”
Merriam-Webster dictionary provides two relevant definitions for the word “invest.” Government-guaranteed student loans doesn’t meet either of them:
1: to commit (money) in order to earn a financial return
2: to make use of for future benefits or advantages
Had the government’s “investments” in student loans met the definition of the word, there would be no need for a bailout. The money spent on tuition would be paid back out of the additional earnings students realized over and above what they would have earned without going to college.
That they not only aren’t in the black based on additional earnings to what they would have earned with a high school diploma, but can’t pay the loans back at all, should end once and for all the ability for politicians to claim they are “investing” in anything.
This excludes all the student loan borrowers who can pay back their loans but now will shift some of that burden onto others. Doctors, lawyers, university professors, and other affluent debtors will force plumbers, taxicab drivers, and construction workers – not to mention other doctors, lawyers, etc. who worked their way through school without student loans or who already paid them back – to pay their debts.
The grand experiment with government “investing” in higher education has produced two returns: people who can’t earn enough to pay back the loans and people who can but choose to force somebody else to do so.
All the same arguments against student loan bailouts can be made against public education in general. Why are homeowners forced to pay for public schools whether they use them or not, while wealthy renters pay nothing? Why is the service called “education” Sovietized in the first place? Is there something special about education that makes the government owning its means of production successful?
Of course not. Just look at the results. The more the government has “invested” in education, the less literate and numerate graduating students have become. Like every government-provided service, the cost keeps going up and the quality keeps going down.
Education, healthcare, infrastructure, transportation, the military – they are all the focus of massive government “investment.” And those investments all continue to produce the same returns: skyrocketing prices and plummeting quality.
Everything the government does is Afghanistan.
Investors in the private sector aren’t better people. They merely work under different incentives. When private sector actors invest, they stand to lose their own money. This powerful incentive doesn’t produce perfect results, but it produces infinitely better results than government spending. And when private sector investments go bad, no one else is forced to pay for their mistakes.
That is, unless one is on the Christmas list of the ultimate government investor, the Federal Reserve System. Its “investments” in stimulating the economy are the most damaging of all, producing steadily rising prices, artificial booms, disastrous busts, and more and bigger bailouts over time.
We have no choice but to pay for Biden’s latest vote buy. But let’s not let him or any other politician continue to call their loot distribution “investment.” Doing so should be tried in The Hague as a crime against veracity.
I had the opportunity last night to watch the sixth and final episode of the HBO documentary, The Anarchists. Director and executive producer Todd Schramke accomplished the primary mission of any good documentary filmmaker: he made an interesting miniseries about interesting people. He also managed to weave the events filmed over the course of three to four years into a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
While this made the series entertaining, it did fail one basic requirement of a good documentary: it failed to inform. After six approximately 50-minute episodes, I was left with more questions than answers. It’s worthwhile to review what the series got right and what it either got wrong or omitted.
The philosophy
It starts out on a positive note, clearly delineating what most people associate with the term, “anarchy,” from what the series’ protagonists are advocating. Because so many political philosophers over the centuries have operated from the assumption that chaos and disorder would result in the absence of government, most people believe the word itself means chaos and disorder.
It’s analogous to most people believing the word “inflation” means rising consumer prices, rather than the expansion of money and credit by the banking system. They confuse the effect with its cause.
Schramke clarifies that the definition these anarchists are working from is, “the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation without political institutions or government.”
While accurate, that definition on its own is incomplete. The reason anarcho-capitalists (the type of anarchists presented in the series) do not believe chaos and disorder would result from the absence of government is they have a plan to secure life, liberty, and justly acquired possessions (hereafter “property”) without government.
Anarcho-capitalists do not believe in a world with no rules. They merely believe in a world with no rulers. The natural law that no one may violate the property rights of another would still be in play in an anarcho-capitalist society. But instead of a monopolist institution like government, the defense of those property rights would be provided by the free market.
By leaving this crucial aspect of anarcho-capitalist thought out of the definition, the viewer is left to assume anarcho-capitalists believe their society would depend upon everyone “doing the right thing,” with no recourse when they don’t. This is completely inaccurate.
Anarcho-capitalists (for the most part) recognize force must be used at times to defend property. They simply don’t believe a monopoly will provide that security as efficiently as would competing firms in a free market.
The other, more egregious flaw occurs just after the 28-minute mark of Episode One, Schramke says:
“If you want to trace the origins of this philosophy, all roads will take you back to one of the most polarizing writers of the 20th century.”
He is talking about 20th century novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand (the episode cuts to a Mike Wallace interview with Rand), who obviously had an influence on several of the people in the series. Two are named “John Galton” and “Juan Galt,” respectively, and there are other references to Rand and her work throughout.
But Rand not only wasn’t an anarchist; she was openly hostile towards both anarchists and libertarians in general. In her own words,
“More specifically, I disapprove of, disagree with and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called “hippies of the right,” who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs.”
The truth is the origins of anarcho-capitalism are much older than Rand, who had an inflated view of the originality of her ideas. I haven’t found a single tenet of her philosophy that cannot be found in the writings of John Locke, particularly the Essay on Human Understanding and the Second Treatise of Government.
As far as I am concerned, Rand’s chief contribution was to translate these ideas into mid-20th century psychoanalytic jargon. No anarcho-capitalist I know of would point to Rand as the definitive authority on the philosophy. Many admire her valuable work but also recognize she made a lot of errors.
Anarcho-capitalism, or non-communist anarchism, traces back at least as far as Lysander Spooner and through 20th-century thinkers like Murray Rothbard, who was kicked out of Rand’s “court” precisely because of his anarchist ideas.
While we see links to Rothbard’s For a New Liberty as Schramke films his web searches on anarchism, we are told nothing about this more rigorous presentation of the anarcho-capitalist society. We are left with the simplistic notion that anarcho-capitalism simply means “nobody telling me what to do” or “as long as I don’t harm anyone, I can do what I want.”
In Schramke’s defense, he simply may be making the best of what he has to work with. In one scene, the likable but tragic figure, Nathan Freeman, after having been dismissed from his role as event organizer of Anarchapulco, attempts to set up a vendor booth on the conference grounds. When the new organizer tells him he is not allowed to do this, Freeman protests that this violates anarchist principles, saying words to the effect of, “I thought if I’m not harming anyone, I can do what I want.”
But Freeman was harming someone. He was violating the property rights of the event’s owners, who had every right to decide who can sell products on their property and who could not, and also had the prerogative to charge a fee for such privilege at their discretion. Were it a true anarcho-capitalist society, the owners could not only exclude Freeman, but use force to remove him if he refused to comply.
Indeed, this foundational pillar of anarcho-capitalism is found nowhere in the series. The viewer is left with the idea anarchism is simply a license to party, use and sell drugs, and enjoy the beautiful Acapulco climate.
The “community”
In fairness, most of this is due to the extensive footage of the annual Anarchapulco conference, which like most conferences here in Statistland is a combination of informative presentations and partying one would never do in one’s hometown. Fair enough. But little is shown the viewer about the “community” constantly referenced in the series and how it purported to be an anarchist one.
To begin with, it is unclear how many people comprise this community. We are shown a half dozen or so adults – the Freemans and their children, Lily Forrester and John Galton, Erika Harris, Juan Galt, Paul Propert, Jason Henza, and the guy who steals Jason Henza’s wife (his name escapes me). Were there more? How many more? Five? Five hundred? We don’t know.
More importantly, we are not told how this group of people represents or purports to represent an anarchist community. All we know of them is they have all moved to a major city in an even more authoritarian and socialist country than the one they left, although it is presented in the first episode as being inviting to anarchists because it is a “failed state.”
We are not told how most of the members of this community support themselves financially. Lily and John are somehow involved in selling drugs, although Lily maintains they were not competing with the Mexican cartels in the opioid trade. There are several references to Nathan Freeman continuing to work after the family moves to Acapulco, presumably still running his software company, Red Pill. But we don’t know for sure and are not told whether he is still complying with U.S. tax laws on the income he generates.
Beyond that, we know nothing about how the other members of the community support themselves. Neither do they seem to have attempted to replace the government’s property protection functions with any organized private institution. Some have not even armed themselves, judging by what we are told of the tragic cartel hit on Lily and John, resulting in the latter’s death and serious wounding of housemate Jason Henza.
Schramke provides no other insight into the nature of the community in Acapulco. As far as the viewer knows, they are simply people sharing the same political beliefs who moved to Acapulco and either took jobs within the local community or started businesses, all under the authority of the several layers of municipal, state, and federal government as they exist in Mexico today.
So, where is the anarchism?
Schramke forms his series into a cautionary tale about the dangers of anarchy, articulated by Lily Forester in a speech to the Anarchapulco conference in the last episode. But we don’t see any evidence of an even partially-anarchist society. Instead, we are presented with a group of people who seem to embody the hippieish strawmen in Ayn Rand’s condemnation.
The final episode closes with a quote from founder Jeff Berwick: “There’s quite a few people who came here who were just damaged, you know, just because they didn’t fit in in society. But they kinda felt like they had a bit of a, a bit of a community. I don’t know why that makes me emotional.”
The anarchist society proposed by anarcho-capitalists wouldn’t be a community of “misfits.” It would be comprised of the same people we see every day – farmers, doctors, plumbers, CEOs, cashiers, auto mechanics, etc. – pursing the same, mundane lifestyle they do in our present, statist world, simply with better security of their property than currently provided by the government.
Due to the choices or ignorance of either the director, his subjects, or both, viewers new to the concept of anarcho-capitalism will have no idea it would look nothing like what was presented in the documentary. Worse, they will take away from the series that anarchism was attempted and failed in Acapulco 2017-2020. Based on what is shown in the series, nothing of the sort occurred.
