During the last couple of years of the Weekend at Bernie's or Joe Biden administration, this reporter issued several warnings about how U.S. policies were moving us perilously close to nuclear war with Russia. All over which particular dictator rules Ukraine. Despite elections, Putin rules as a dictator. His political opponents seem to have fatal accidents or otherwise get sidelined. Zelenskyy, having dispensed with elections also rules as a dictator.
From The Fields
Back in 1998 I was outside the venue for a debate between the Republican and Democratic candidates for Governor of California along with Steve Kubby and others. We were protesting the exclusion of Kubby, the LP gubernatorial candidate from the debates. Some wise guy Democratic Party operative (who would later become a judge) made a smart remark wondering why Libertarians should care about running for office since they clearly didn't believe in government. Much to his surprise, I responded by saying the reason we run for office is to protect ourselves from thieving jerks like him.
Hi, this is Richard Fields with this week's Report From the Fields. A couple of weeks ago I was able to board an airplane without taking off my shoes. And, no it wasn't because I'm old. Nobody had to take off their shoes. Seems the TSA has quietly removed the requirement that people have to take off their shoes to get through airport security. Bryan Caolan writing on Econolib captures my reaction exactly; first amazement that the government has reversed a silly regulation, second gratitude that I don't have to deal with it any more and then indignation that the policy was ever instituted in the first place. And that the government didn't apologise for inconveniencing me and millions of other travelers for over 13 years.
Some background: The regulation to remove shoes while going through airport security was instituted a few months after the attempted shoe bomber, Richard Reid tried and failed to explode a bomb concealed in his shoes on an airline flight. His efforts were stopped by flight attendants who noticed him repeatedly lighting matches. He got a life sentence with no chance of parole for his effort. Reacting in fear and exercising the precautionary principle, the TSA decided everyone had to take their shoes off to be run through the screener. As a result countless lives were saved by preventing future shoe bombers. Well, not really. No shoe bombs were ever found and no lives were saved. But the costs were very real.
The problem is the government never ran a cost benefit analysis. Everything has a tradeoff. In this case the tradeoff was between preventing a hypothetical shoe bomb terrorist attack and the cost involved in that preventive effort. Assuming it takes one minute to remove your shoes and then put them back on, Caplan ran the numbers and this is what he came up with: "The average number of air travelers in the US over this period is about 700M per year, implying the destruction of roughly 15 billion minutes of time in the U.S. alone. That’s almost 30,000 years of life. If you figure the average American has about 30 more years to live, that’s 1000 lives destroyed."
One of my favorite aphorisms is "Time is Life". I'm glad this particular waste of my time being alive is gone. But I'm still waiting for the government to apologise for wasting my time on all the flights I've taken over the last 13 years. And I'm waiting for them to see the light on wasting my time taking off my belt, emptying my pockets...well maybe the whole kabuki theater of going through TSA altogether.
That's this week's Report From the Fields. I'm Richard Fields. See you again next week.
The dictionary definition of socialism is an economic and political system where the means of production, distribution and exchange are owned or regulated collectively by the government, aiming for equitable wealth distribution and social welfare.
The dictionary definition of fascism is a far-right, authoritarian political system characterized by ultranationalism, suppression of dissent, centralized control of society and economy, and curtailment of individual freedoms, often led by a dictatorial leader.
Did you notice that both systems entail control of the economy by the government? If the government is making all the economic decisions, by definition, individuals are largely not making the economic decisions that affect their lives. Many, if not most, individuals might have a bad attitude about government bureaucrats telling them what they can buy or sell and at what price. They might also be annoyed by being told who they can or cannot hang out with. They might even be tempted to flout those government dictats on economic and social behavior. Enter authoritarianism, suppression of dissent and curtailment of individual freedoms. The fascists are up front about it. The socialists might not talk about it but they will be just as authoritarian as the fascists. See the Soviet Union or Maoist China.
The Obama and Biden administrations were socialist in everything but name. They moved in the direction of ever increasing government control of health care, education, energy production and usage and increased environmental regulatory burdens exponentially. During the Biden administration, censorship of social media increased dramatically. It was not censorship by legislative means or even regulation. Instead it was censorship through extortion. Squelch political opinion sharing we disapprove of or you could face profit extermination levels of federal regulation. So we ended up with soft socialism enforced with fascist style authoritarian suppression of dissent.
Fast forward to the Trump administration which delights in calling Zohran Mamdani, the Social Democrat on the cusp of being mayor of New York a communist. . Trump's stupid and cruel deportation of immigrants and tariff by whim have already established his fascist bona fides. Meanwhile he's adopting textbook socialist economic policy. The Pentagon has just purchased a 25% ownership position in MP Materials. MP is the only significant producer of rare earth metals headquartered and owning mineral resources in the United States. Why would the Pentagon be interested in rare earth mining and refining? Because without rare earths, many of the Pentagon's whiz bang weapons systems would be impossible to manufacture. Where were we getting those rare earths previously? Well, that would be China. They are cutting off exports of rare earths to the U.S. Why would that be? Oh yes, it would be in retaliation to Trump's whimsical tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S.
We're seeing the horseshoe theory of government play out in real time right in front of us. That's where the far left, socialism/communism, is one end of the horseshoe and the other end is right wing fascism. In practice, there is no discernable difference between the two systems. In each, the government owns or controls most economic assets and transactions. In both dissent is squashed by censorship and an authoritarian government. And in both economies decline resulting in the impoverishment or outright elimination of the middle class accompanied by the enrichment of the elites controlling the government and expansion and eventual destitution for the lower class.
Hi, this is Richard Fields with this week's Report From the Fields. For the last 50 plus years, establishment Democratic and Republican politicians have been systematically using massive deficit spending financed by Fed creation of new money to transfer wealth away from the working class and to themselves. It's called the Cantillon effect, where newly created money goes first to the politically connected who invest it in assets which increase in value due to monetary inflation. A snapshot of how this works is the amazing investing proficiency of Congress Critters compared to the rest of us. Helped along by exempting themselves from insider trading laws.
The working class and what's left of the middle class are getting pissed. And that's what's fueling populist movements on both the left and right. Trump's MAGA and Build the Wall are simplified slogans implying that he will "drain the swamp" and fight the elites on behalf of ordinary Americans who have been stiffed. Similarly, Zohran Mamdani's promises of rent freezes, free bus rides and city owned grocery stores resonate with financially squeezed New York working class voters and have propelled him to be the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for New York mayor.
The Stealers Wheel 1973 lyric "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you" is eerily prophetic. The clowns are the leftist populists who claim they can solve our problems by using socialism to steal from the rich to give to the poor and solve all working class problems. The jokers to the right are the right wing populists who promise they can solve our problems by raising the cost of living by kicking out low wage immigrant workers and charging tariff taxes to countries who want to sell us cheap stuff. History has proven innumerable times that the nostrums prescribed by both the clowns and the jokers always fail. Always.
That doesn't mean populist messaging and campaign techniques are inherently bad. Javier Millea in Argentina has used populist messaging and campaign techniques to put him and his libertarian compadres in charge of the country leading it to a resurgence of wealth and prosperity for everyone, working class to capitalist class.
My question is where is the United States' populist libertarian in our time of need? I'm Richard Fields and that's this week's Report From the Fields. See you again next week.