The World Health Organization (WHO) recently admitted that lockdowns cause more harm than good. Following this announcement, one would have expected American politicians to immediately end the lockdowns. After all, the WHO ‘s pronouncements are considered infallible, so much so that social media sites silence anyone who dares challenge the great and powerful WHO. Yet, governors, mayors, and other government officials across the country are ignoring the WHO’s anti-lockdown position.
Instead of admitting that the lockdowns were a mistake, many in the political class, which includes a disturbing number of medical professionals whose positions and prestige depend on government, claim that we cannot return to normalcy until a coronavirus vaccine is in wide use. This suggests that people among the majority of Americans who do not wish to be vaccinated will remain under lockdown or be forced to be vaccinated against their will.
The assault on our liberty will not end with deployment and use of a vaccine. Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, a “public-private partnership” in charge of producing and delivering a coronavirus vaccine, has said that those who receive a vaccine will be monitored by “incredibly precise … tracking systems.” Slaoui has also indicated that tech giants Google and Oracle will help the government keep tabs on the vaccinated individuals. So, the vaccine program will lead to an increase in government surveillance!
Slaoui is just the latest “expert” to endorse forcing the American people to relinquish their few remaining scraps of privacy to stop coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates have urged development of a digital certificate for those vaccinated for coronavirus. People without the certificate would find their liberty severely restricted.
Those who think that the new surveillance system will be limited to coronavirus should remember that Social Security numbers were only supposed to be used to administer the Social Security program. They should also consider that the PATRIOT Act’s expansion of warrantless wiretapping was supposed to be limited to stopping terrorists. However, these powers have been used for a wide variety of purposes. Whenever government is given power to abuse our rights for one reason it will inevitably use that power to abuse our rights for other reasons as well.
Fauci and Gates’ digital certificate could, and likely will, be expanded to include proof individuals have received a variety of other vaccines and medical treatments. The digital certificate could even extend to monitoring a person’s lifestyle choices on the grounds that unhealthy habits make one more susceptible to diseases.
The digital certificate could also be tied to the REAL ID program to deny individuals who have not been vaccinated the right to travel. It could also be combined with a future mandatory E-Verify system to deny unvaccinated individuals the right to hold a job. Those who consider this “paranoia” should consider Britain is already developing a covid passport.
Liberty lost in the “war on covid” will not be voluntarily returned when the coronavirus threat ends — assuming the government ever stop moving the goal posts and declares the coronavirus threat is over. Instead, the people must be prepared to take back their liberty from the politicians. Fortunately, we still have the ability to do so by the peaceful means of educating our fellow citizens and pressuring our elected officials to reverse course. We must all do what we can to use these peaceful tools before we are in a “dark winter” of authoritarianism.
I have had a love affair with this country for nearly 70 years. It began on a cold misty morning in 1951 as I stood alone at the railing of a U. S. Navy military transport ship ferrying displaced persons from refugee camps in post-war Europe.
Having known only the miasma rampant in decimated cites, refugee camps, and orphanages, I began to sense an aura of confidence, optimism, and can-do spirit as the ship made its way through New York’s Upper Bay and past the Statue of Liberty. As I was perhaps seven years old, I did not know that I had been welcomed to the nation that had rescued me and untold millions from the shackles of Nazism. I knew nothing about this nation’s founding, its people, or its governing philosophy, but I instinctively knew that the United States was a special place.
After being adopted and learning English, I immersed myself in this nation’s history and creation. With the backdrop of my life’s experiences, I was profoundly moved by the philosophical underpinning of America’s founding as expressed in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.
The Constitution, which gave structure and meaning to those words, is, as William Gladstone described in 1878, “[t]he most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” It was and remains mankind’s most powerful testament and governmental blueprint for individual liberty and freedom while being a guide to peacefully correct the inevitable imperfections of society.
experienced this firsthand in late August 1963 while waiting for classes to begin at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. I attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which featured Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech,” delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Later, as I participated in various marches and voter registration drives to once and for all undue the ravages of institutionalized racism, I was never more proud to be a citizen of the United States and watch as, one by one, barriers fell, and equality became a reality for all Americans.
I also realized that while the nation’s founding documents provided the framework for these changes it was the people of this country, of all races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds, who were determined to right a century-old wrong that made this a truly unique country. Regardless of ancestry or country of origin, we were, first and foremost, a people bound by a common philosophy and love of liberty and freedom.
Over the years, as this nation experienced unprecedented peace and prosperity, a faction imbued with the mindset of societal dominance and an unbridled determination to overthrow the Constitution and control in perpetuity the halls of power began their inexorable march with little or no opposition from the political class. Their foundational belief that the American citizenry are mere chattel to be manipulated and deceived as well as their ultimate goals and ambitions mirror their despotic counterparts who perpetrated incomprehensible death and destruction in the continent from whence I came.
This cabal is now on the cusp of achieving its goal of permanent dominance. Using the vehicle of the Democratic Party and a senescent and compromised presidential candidate, the American left is about to achieve what seventy years ago would have been unthinkable. Confident that they have succeeded in manipulating the American people, leftists are openly declaring their intentions and their strategy to achieve their ends, such as packing the Supreme Court and eliminating the Electoral College.
This election is a defining moment for this country. Have the American people been so duped and propagandized that they will succumb to the siren call of those determined to sail this nation onto the rocks? Or will the citizenry rally behind Donald Trump, as he is now the modern-day Horatius at the Bridge, single-handedly thwarting the barbarians at the gate?
As I am approaching fourscore years on earth and thus am in twilight of my life, I hope I do not live to see the downfall and dissolution of the most influential and benevolent nation in the history of mankind. If so, then as long as the human race exists on this planet, there will never be another United States of America.
During an appearance on Sunday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) weighed in on Big Tech’s interference in the 2020 presidential election campaign.
The Missouri Republican told host Tucker Carlson how Big Tech was handling the flow of information was reminiscent of the “robber barons” of the 1900s.
“Well, for one, it is because they control the information,” he said. “I mean, think about this, you now have the perfect censors in Big Tech. Not only do they get to decide what we can and cannot say to each other on social media, they actually control the news that we read. So you know, it’s like the robber barons from a century ago, Tucker. If they don’t like a news story, if they don’t want something written badly about them, they just kill the story. We saw that with The New York Post. And I think that one of the reasons reporters aren’t saying very much about tech investing in Joe Biden is because they know they’ll get punished by tech. They know that their stories won’t get distributed — all the more reason for Congress to take action. We’ve got to attack this monopoly. We’ve got to break it up.
Roosevelt understood a century ago that you have to confront the trust because it’s about democracy,” Hawley added. “Look, it’s either the people, everyday normal Americans, either they run the country, or the corporations and the monopolies run the country. And that’s the choice we have today. Is Big Tech going to run this country, or is it going to be the voters of America? And we see Big Tech has been brazen about this in the last few weeks. They want to run the country. They want to buy the presidency. They want to control the news. They want to control what we say. They want to run this country, and we cannot let them.”
Lockdowns are back. Great Britain has imposed a totalitarian shutdown for at least a month. “Blue” states in the U.S. like New Jersey are already threatening to reimpose lockdowns. The events of 2020 tell us that 21st Century tyrants keep their word on their threats. Sure, the presidential election in the U.S. has something to do with it all. But tyranny is here to stay, so long as we keep permitting it, and no presidential election will change that. Note that Britain’s prime minister is the Conservative party leader who won in a landslide. It doesn’t matter. Putting a time limit on the lockdown, which will almost certainly be extended, is probably his idea of being “moderate” on the subject.
Lockdowns are like Communism, in that they extend total government control over every last detail of human activity in daily life. If lockdowns were necessary, and effective, then the lockdowns of last spring and early summer should have killed the virus. Or at least kept it from coming back in full force. Of course, that didn’t happen. Now we’re told the virus is stronger than ever, and more dangerous than ever. No, death rates are NOT going up. But we’re still supposed to believe it’s mortally dangerous. Yet if that’s true, then how effective have lockdowns been? And what reason is there to believe the next lockdown will be any better?
Under Communist regimes, the more the government intervenes and controls economic activity, the poorer people become. Eventually people starve, because a strangled economy cannot deliver the goods. It’s the rational miracle of CAPITALISM, private property and profits that deliver us the Amazon goods — not the Department of Health & Human Services in D.C. The government’s answer, when its policies of command and control fail? Does the government change its way? Or relinquish power? Of course not. Instead, the government says we need MORE control, and more time for the controls to take effect. And things get worse. In Soviet Russia, this went on for 75 years until the system finally imploded. In Venezuela and Cuba, it’s still going on. THOSE are the economic models of lockdowns. Lockdowns are Communism and Marxism — just for a different reason. The virus scares people into accepting a Marxist system they never otherwise would have accepted. It’s fear, not a virus, that will bring us down, on our current course.
The virus is not life-threatening for the vast majority of people who get it. But even if it were, it wouldn’t make sense to shut down all human activity for the entire population. Yet that’s where we’re going. Politicians are stopping the motor of the world. If Joe Biden and the Democrats win on Tuesday, massive lockdowns will be nationwide and international — for a long, long time to come. Masks and locked up restaurants and health clubs will be the least of it. “Look at the bright side,” they’ll say. “At least now there won’t be any climate change.” How can you have climate change if virtually all human activity stops? Of course, we’ll all be dead, too. Not from a virus. But from the massive and destructive consequences of shutting down a world economy upon which billions depend for survival.
Life was pretty great before all this started. COVID hysteria was an international act of suicide. When you hear of a seemingly happy person’s suicide, that’s how it is with America and the rest of the civilized world. Future generations will say, “America was doing so well. The world had come so far. Why did they kill themselves?”
We are, indeed, at a crossroads in America. Next Tuesday, we’ll learn the choice of direction. Will voters stick with President Trump, who, in saner times, would be a slam-dunk for reelection — or do they embrace Joe Biden and his grim vision of a dark winter? We have to believe that most Americans haven’t cast off common sense, along with their used masks and empty hand sanitizer bottles. But for voters on the fence — as inexplicable as that is — let’s evaluate what the Democratic Party is showing us about itself.
Biden’s claim in the last debate that the U.S. is moving toward a dark winter, thanks to COVID, was revealing. It exposed more than Biden’s cynicism in trying to manipulate people’s fear of the virus, it exposed an irony.
The dark winter tag speaks to the Democratic Party’s condition, not America’s. Democrats are ominous. Their worldview is antithetical to the American experience, and it’s rotted. Worse is that they’re destructive. We see it in their language and actions. 2020 is showcasing the Democrats accelerating descent into a mean-spirited, grudge-filled aggression toward traditional America — the America of the Revolution and the founding. They despise that immense swath of red, white, and blue between the Northeast and West Coast. And anywhere patriots live.
Perhaps 2020 is providential, in that the Good Lord chose an election year to lay bare the Democrats’ grim plots? Maybe this is a chance for the broader electorate to get a strong read on the party that’s dumped Happy Days are Here Again for its rendition of Eve of Destruction?
The Democratic Party is a cancer making systemic attacks on the nation. The attacks are political, cultural, and moral. The left, which is ascendent in the party, has over many years, infiltrated major institutions: education, the media, arts and entertainment, corporate executive suites, government bureaucracies. The fight to restore traditional America won’t end after the president’s hoped for reelection. With Trump, though, our chances of winning the fight increase dramatically. https://lockerdome.com/lad/9371484590420070?pubid=ld-8832-1542&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanthinker.com&rid=www.americanthinker.com&width=692
Let’s focus on two big, foreboding developments that are transpiring this year. They’re pincers in the Democrats ambition to impose tyranny — a tyranny that leftists and globalists plan to fully unfold should the corrupted and compromised Joe Biden win.
COVID and the Shutdowns
In March, the COVID crisis struck, but for Democrats, it had little to do with public health. It was an opportunity to impose and exercise raw political power. 15-day state closures to assess and formulate approaches to grappling with the infection turned into open-ended blue state shutdowns. New York, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Oregon, Wisconsin, Washington State — blue states all – are still closed to varying degrees. Businesses have been erased and millions are unemployed. The rights to worship, to assemble (except for protests and riots), and to function as free citizens, have been curtailed.
Democrats are previewing their preferred model of governance — and it should chill patriots. Theirs isn’t bigger government as an expediency to deal with a temporary crisis. How Andrew Cuomo, Tom Wolf, Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, et al, are governing sets precedents. Democrats are demonstrating top-down, strongman government as their choice. It has the stink of Xi Jinping and the PRC.
Conventional wisdom claims that the lockdowns may ease when the elections end. After all, shuttering blue state economies was meant to hurt Trump. Collateral damage to Democrat leaders’ own constituents? A necessary price to defeat the president.
But will the shutdowns end? Why, when they’re so useful to undermining rights and allowing governments’ grips to tighten? Biden has declared for more shutdowns until the virus is beaten. Of course, viruses are never beaten. Biden’s handlers are trying to be clever.
Biden in the White House means a national shutdown. The U.S. economy has taken a multitrillion-dollar hit this year. More blows in 2021 would send the nation careening into a depression that would surpass the 1930s.
But a depression would accomplish much for power-hungry Democrats and globalists. The Great Reset initiative, advanced by the World Economic Forum, is poorly disguised fascism. “Manmade climate change” failed to trigger a “reset.” The COVID crisis is the globalists’ new lodestar.
Race and Mob Violence
In late May came George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. There, cringing leftist mayor Jacob Frey was joined by the leftist city council in withdrawing police protection, thereby handing over their city to mobs, though gaslighting that peaceful protests are a right. Mobs acted as mobs act: with violence — ransacking, smashing, and burning Minneapolis. Leftist BLM and Antifa provocateurs did their parts, inciting rioters to even more mayhem.
Minnesota governor Tim Waltz, in Nero fashion, decided to stand down as Minneapolis burned — though he had the cheekiness to seek federal aid to recoup millions of dollars in clean-up costs, smartly denied by the Trump administration.
Not to be outdone, Seattle and Portland followed Minneapolis’ lead. It was all rinse and reap as mobs ran loose. Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan’s impotence and endless rationalizations for her city being destroyed were surpassed finally by her embrace of something called the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).” It was a haven for lawlessness in a broader jurisdiction of lawlessness. Washington State’s chief eunuch, Jay Inslee, jabbered about protests and rights from the comfort and safety of the governor’s mansion in Olympia.
South of Seattle, Portland ignited. Mobs took the streets. Mayor Ted Wheeler wasn’t to be out-soyboyed by Jacob Frey. Whereas Frey, like a conquered potentate, groveled before a BLM mob in Minneapolis to show contrition, Wheeler went into the streets seeking dialogue with the barbarians, only to suffer a tear gassing before retreating. Oregon’s progressive governor Kate Brown jabbered about protests and rights from the comfort and safety of the governor’s mansion in Salem.
Do you see the pattern? Blue states and blue cities alone have sunk into dystopia. We can attribute some of this to Democrats’ gutlessness and moral desolation, but there’s more here.
One way of interpreting what’s occurring in blue cities is that anarchy creates vacuums, and power — goes the saying — abhors vacuums. So, it’s a twofer. Democrats have exploited COVID to push tyranny and have opened the doors to chaos to create the conditions for yet more tyranny. Their Brave New World is comprised of zombie apocalypses as a precondition for Orwell’s Big Brother.
George Floyd’s killing sparked yet other opportunities to spew venom and lambast decent Americans as racists. Only blacks (except defiant Larry Elders) and “woke” affluent progressive whites are exempt from the vitriol and coming recriminations — if the haters prevail.
Robert Reich has floated the idea of a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” should Biden win. That would be a redo of Soviet show trials and Mao’s shaming of Chinese during his Cultural Revolution.
In race matters, America itself doesn’t get a pass. No, America was racist from its inception, that being 1619, not 1776. The founders were nothing more than well-heeled white overlords. Say Democrats and leftists, Americans must pay for the sins of racism. Critical Race Theory is indoctrination through shaming and bare-knuckled intimidation. It was being introduced in federal agencies and the military before the president took steps to halt it.
A Biden presidency dooms this nation to tyranny — or, more likely, protracted conflict. How could patriots ever meekly surrender their God-given rights and the noble — and ennobling — ideals of our Revolution and founding? Ronald Reagan made the case powerfully: patriots will not surrender. Donald Trump is the only man standing between us and tyranny and conflict.
J. Robert Smith can be found on Twitter @JRobertSmith1 and Parler @JRobertSmith. He also blogs at Flyover.
The United States is a screwed-up country. It this regard, the US has few rivals.
The legal voting age in the US is 18 years of age, which is also the age of female sexual consent and military enlistment. So at 18 years of age youth can affect the governance of the country, get legally laid, kill and die in combat, but are considered too irresponsible to imbibe alcohol and purchase a pistol from a licensed dealer until three years later at age 21.
An 18 year old can be sent off to war armed to the teeth, but cannot legally purchase a pistol in a gun store. He or she can influence how we are governed but cannot purchase a drink at a bar or restaurant.
What does an 18-year old know about politics, life, anything? Except in very rare circumstances, nothing at all.Dumbing Us Down -25th …John Taylor GattoBest Price: $4.94Buy New $7.69(as of 09:20 EST – Details)
The anti-American, anti-Western civilization (dead white men), anti-white indoctrination (systemic racism) that is the main function of an American university education is filtering down into the high schools and elementary schools. The United States is perhaps the first country to use education to destroy its own future. Most certainly, the US is the first country to make multicultural existence impossible. The Identity Politics of the liberal-progressive-left splits the country into hostile Identity Groups, some of whom have successfully cultivated victim status, which they use to oppress those without it, primarily heterosexual white males.
The anti-American, anti-white liberal-progressive-left has succeeded in brainwashing large swaths of American youth. In America the best students for the country are no longer the A students. The best students are the C students who are turned off by the indoctrination and just want to get on with their lives.
It is the A students who are receptive to the demonization of their country and themselves. These students have been targeted by the Democrats for massive voter registration. They have been refocused on overthrowing the “orange-haired racist/misogynist” in the White House.
Weapons of Mass Instru…Gatto, John TaylorBest Price: $4.94Buy New $2.99(as of 03:50 EST – Details)It is unfortunate that the future of the United States depends on brainwashed, ignorant youth full of self-assertion and confidence that they know best.
But it does. Therefore, the United States is doomed.
The Russians and Chinese are likely the future rulers, if they can free their minds from the propaganda that the United States is the Hegemonic and Indispensable Nation empowered to rule by the End of History.
Fortunately for the rest of us, both Russia and China have gone through despotic eras that, apparently, the ruling elites themselves are tired of and want no more of.
Liberation often comes, not from those who speak its langauage, but from those who have suffered its absence.
Graduates of American schools need a decade to recover from the indoctrination. I propose that the legal voting age in the US be legislated at 30 years of age. Perhaps it would be best if the voting age was 40 years of age or even 50. By then at least some people have learned lessons from life. At 18 no lessons have been learned.
To allow people judged too irresponsible to order a drink or to purchase a pistol to influence, even determine, the governance of a country is mindless.
Since I’m a crystal ball mother trucker, my fans have asked my prediction how this will all play out. Trump will win on election night by electoral landslide. But…
@RealWayneRoot
2) Between mail in ballots, no Voter ID. dead voters, illegal alien voters, criminal ballot harvesting, late deadline, massive cheating by dirty Democrats, scores of lawsuits by slimy lawyers…no winner official for 30 to 45 days…
@RealWayneRoot
3) Then Supremes led by courageous Amy Coney Barrett officially declare Trump winner. In meantime, massive rioting, looting, burning, murder in big cities across USA. Worst unrest in US history. @realDonaldTrump will order National Guard to cities to restore peace.
@RealWayneRoot
4) But happy ending! @realDonaldTrump will be sworn in on Jan 20, 2021 in DC w/ @RealWayneRoot proudly watching in audience. Ushering in 4 years of unbridled capitalism, low taxes & record prosperity. God bless America. The end.
At first glance, a lot of the social problems and resource waste emerging from government intervention seem pretty easy to fix: the government should just stop doing whatever it is doing that is creating the problems and the waste. The stubborn persistence of institutions and organizations that keep societies poor is a vexing problem for social scientists. In Political Capitalism, the economist Randall Holcombe takes on this problem by analyzing “political capitalism” as a distinct economic system with its own logic and features rather than as some kind of midpoint between capitalism and socialism.
As he points out, people do not generally demand “big government” in general. Rather, they demand intervention to solve specific problems when people believe using government is either cheaper or more than just relying on the market. The reader might be reminded of Milton Friedman’s observation that every businessperson believes in unregulated, free competition in every industry but their own–which, of course, must be protected and subsidized as a matter of “national security” or something like that.
If you surf the web a bit you might come across a picture of a protest sign with a slogan like “The system didn’t fail; it was designed this way.” Holcombe argues that it is a mistake to think Political Capitalism–he gets the term from the historian Gabriel Kolko, who in turn got it from Max Weber–was designed by sinister interests in a smoke-filled room. His goal is to understand “the system and its pathologies,” and, importantly, to show that “(p)olitical capitalism was not designed by the elite, it evolved as a result of human action but not of human design” (p. 269).
He makes an obvious point that a lot of economists are too quick to forget: “Economic policy is not made by economists, it is made by politicians” (p. 141). We are not, as too many scholars seem to think, disinterested technocrats whispering wisdom into the ears of benevolent and omnipotent autocrats. We should dispense with this presumption if we are going to make serious and meaningful progress toward actually understanding the world we inhabit, to say nothing of improving it.
The pathologies of political capitalism emerge too frequently and regularly to be a coincidence, but they emerge too haphazardly to be a conspiracy. Holcombe works to build a theory of political capitalism on a multidisciplinary foundation. He mixes the theory of economic and political elites as it has been developed by political scientists and sociologists with Good Old Fashioned, Methodologically Individualistic Public Choice Theory to help us understand what Ayn Rand called “the aristocracy of pull” in Atlas Shrugged.
One of the striking facts about the zeitgeist, Holcombe points out, is the many areas of agreement between the left and the right with respect to the characteristics of political capitalism. Using a series of quotes from David Stockman (on the right) and the Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz on the left, he shows that both believe the political system is captured and dominated by political and economic elites who, to the best of their ability, run “the system” for themselves. If virtually everyone agrees that “the system” is controlled by elites for their benefit and at the expense of everyone else, why is it this way and why don’t we replace it with something better?
Holcombe builds a theory of political capitalism that might remind readers of the framework Douglass North, Barry Weingast, and John Wallis develop in their 2009 book Violence and Social Orders. North, Wallis, and Weingast distinguish between natural states, which “use the political system to regulate economic competition and create economic rents; the rents order social relations, control violence, and establish social cooperation,” and open access societies, where “entry and competition order social relations.”
Political Capitalism is a complement to North, Wallis, and Weingast because it helps us better understand the stability of elite coalitions and their ability to create rents by restricting entry. Readers might also be reminded of Gregory Clark’s 2015 book The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility. Clark shows how even very different societies exhibit similar social mobility patterns. To Clark, “social competence” is the secret sauce that helps people move into (or out of) elite circles. While Holcombe does not discuss “social competence” explicitly, his analysis complements Clark’s by marrying public choice theory to elite theory and explaining the bargains (sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit) that explain the stability of the political and economic elite.
Holcombe’s theory of the elite has three steps (p. 67): “Individuals sometimes act as members of groups rather than as individuals,” “Individuals sort into groups in which they have common interests,” and “Groups use any power at their disposal to provide institutional advantages to their group over others.” That one can be a beneficiary of these steps helps us understand why competition to get into the elite groups–by attending an elite college or university, for example–is so fierce.
Here is where Clark’s “social competence” is especially relevant. Holcombe explains that there are a lot of unwritten rules in the rent-seeking society that is political capitalism. Lobbyists understand, for example, that if they are invited to a reception hosted by a legislator, they had better show up. What’s more, they had better show up with a check. The opportunities to buy and sell influence–”pull”–are practically infinite, and they are often opaque. Holcombe offers the example of the Clinton Foundation, analyzed in a 2015 book by Peter Schweizer. Here is Holcombe (p. 268):
“In his 2013 book Extortion, [Schweizer] gives examples of the payments legislators extort from business interests in exchange for favorable legislation. In his 2015 book Clinton Cash, he describes how foreign governments and businesses made contributions to the Clinton Foundation when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, rapidly followed by State Department policies and decisions that benefitted (sic) those donors. Did foreign governments and businesses receive favorable treatment from the State Department in exchange for their contributions to the Clinton Foundation? Schweizer presents evidence that they did, but Clinton says they did not.”
Holcombe offers this example to illustrate “the ambiguities inherent in regulation.” The system–which no one designed–encourages and reinforces activities that blur the lines between respectable rent-seeking and contemptible corruption.
Consider, for example, the problem of transitional gains and transitional losses. Institutional changes are capitalized into the value of assets that then receive no more than normal market returns. Holcombe points to taxi medallions in New York City, where the transitional gains–the present value of the rents accruing to taxi privileges–accrued to those who got the medallions first. Unsurprisingly, people who hold the medallions fight hard to avoid the transitional losses (reflected in falling values for taxi medallions) that come with the erosion or elimination of privileges.
This helps us understand the persistence of institutions that are unambiguously evil (like chattel slavery) and those that are merely inefficient (like the mortgage interest deduction). As an economist, I think we should get rid of the mortgage interest deduction. As someone who, as of this writing, is preparing to sign a thirty-year mortgage, I balk just a bit at the idea because eliminating that deduction would reduce the value of our home. Even if it were “offset” by a reduction in tax rates, it’s not clear that we would be better off. My narrow material interest makes it hard to say, “Let’s get rid of this special privilege that clearly benefits me.” It’s easier to push legislators and regulators to gore other people’s oxen and leave ours alone.
Herein lies the logic of Political Capitalism. As Holcombe explains, “The elite implement institutional changes, after all, and if changes could not assure benefits to those who have the power to change them institutional improvement is unlikely to occur” (p. 222). We cannot, in short, expect the elite to go to the barricades in the pursuit of policies that will make them poorer. Hence, resource-wasting, gains-from-trade-reducing policies persist in all their inefficient glory.
What, then, is to be done? In various places, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman emphasize the importance of public opinion. Deirdre McCloskey argues that the Great Enrichment emerged in response to changes in how people think and talk about trucking and bartering. Holcombe seems to concur: “As the ideology of democracy has replaced the ideology of liberty, the force of government has encroached upon the voluntary exchange of markets” (p. 197).
If public opinion continues this drift, political capitalism will become harder and harder to uproot. Political capitalism grows as a hardy weed in the soil of ideas that might choke out the delicate flower of liberty; however, changing the intellectual soil and moving it in the direction of support for an open access society has the potential to fight back at least some of this encroachment.
People who teach principles of economics courses know the frustration. We spend a lot of time talking about how free markets work and how different government interventions like price controls and tariffs make things worse for the people their advocates claim to be trying to help.
We gloss over some of the important and real complications of transition between institutions if we limit ourselves to just saying, “The government should stop doing that.” Political Capitalism helps us understand why they don’t and, importantly, helps us plot a way forward by marrying elite theory to public choice.
The reader of Political Capitalism will be pulled away from blackboard models of perfect worlds we can imagine, but they will come away with a better understanding of the world we actually inhabit.
We are witnessing in every Western country a rapid transformation of what were formerly free countries into police states. Governments violate their constitutions, issue edicts in place of legislation, treat citizens arbitrarily, and pursue agendas on the basis of justifications that are contrary to the facts. The digital revolution has given governments powers far beyond those of Big Brother in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984.
I can remember when the year 1984 seemed to be the far distant future, and I can remember the free country in which I was born and grew up. That country is no more.
The youth of today have never experienced a free country and do not know what has been lost. Indeed, they are absorbed in the digital revolution that they think is freedom.
The “War on Terror” launched by 9/11 and the war on Covid launched in order to learn techniques of mass population control have together terminated free societies. Today privacy is a non-existent right, as are free speech, free inquiry, open pubic debate, and the right to operate a business.
In place of debate, people who disagree with official explanations enforced by the presstitutes and social media are “cancelled.” Your every email, phone call, purchase and web search is captured and used to build a profile of you for marketing purposes and for future arrest should you prove troublesome for the regime.
Whistleblowers are prosecuted despite legislation defending them from prosecution. Thought control and behavior control are imposed by firing people and destroying their careers for using unapproved words and taking unapproved positions.
The collapse of liberty has been rapid in the 21st century. But it has been creeping upon us for some time. Few Americans alive today remember when a wife could not testify against her husband or a husband against his wife. Such testimony was considered a violation of marriage that had formed one out of two. It was self-incrimination, which is prohibited by the US Constitution in those days when the Constitution was respected and had authority.
Few who are alive remember that the marriage contract was in part a sexual contract and there was no such thing as “wife rape.”
There was no such thing as Child Protective Services with the power to intervene in the family, seize children from parents, and have parents prosecuted on charges of child neglect or abuse whether real or fabricated.
You could yell at and spank your child without being arrested. You didn’t live in fear that bruises from sports activity or falling off a bike would be noticed by a school teacher, doctor, or neighbor and result in an intrusion into the family by Child Protective Services determined to prosecute parents in order to justify the budget.
Kids of my generation were free to be wherever they chose to be without adult supervision on week-ends, holidays from school, and summers as long as they were home by dinner time. Our bikes made us mobile, and we could be anywhere in range of a bike and a pair of legs, and our parents weren’t arrested for child neglect. It was mass third world immigration, integration of formerly stable homogeneous neighborhoods, and the rise of the pedophile sex trade that made children no longer safe. Multicultural society failed to protect children and began persecuting parents instead.
A person could start a car without, if it had a manual transmission, having to push the clutch petal to the floor. A person could drive away without having to put on a seat belt or endure endless beeping. Soon, if not already, you must be strapped in or the car will not move. The range of free judgment has been greatly narrowed. Even the appliances we use bully us.
I could go on at great length, but it is too depressing.
If Donald Trump wins the election and is permitted to be inaugurated, perhaps he will make it a part of “making America great again” to get the intrusive government out of our lives. I was born a free person, and I would like to die a free person.
