America is Surprisingly Strong

But is it strong enough to stand up to bad government?

Every now and again I go on a rant about how free association and voluntary transactions make us all richer and how millions of tiny value-adding transactions a day creates a massive market of goods and services that makes all of our lives easier —but government can (and does) wrench this up with bad policies and incentives. Sorry to tell you, but today is another one of those days.

The basics of the free market economy (voluntary trade) are resilient and form the backbone of the nation’s actual economy. (Sometimes we try to measure this using stats such as GDP — which tries to answer the question “How much stuff can you make?”) If a new paper mill pops up in a small town, you can bet it won’t be long before there’s also new housing, new grocery stores, and new restaurants to fill the needs of the new paper mill workforce and their families. At some point, a town’s economy can get so large that it can survive even when the original reason for its existence (in this case, the paper mill) disappears.

This type of growth is common because people working together is the most tremendous force on the planet. Some people have problems, other people (or the same people) solve those problems.

In America, government is supposed to be small (focused on protecting rights) and allow the American people to generate value more or less unrestrained. And it’s not like a small government is necessarily a more effective one, but a small government can screw up much much less than a large government can — as we’ve unfortunately seen recently.

“Education is too important to be left to the market” — then education suffers.

“Health care is too important to be left to the market” — then health care suffers.

Now they are saying “Food is too important to be left to the market” — and you can bet that results in predictable consequences.

(Don’t even get me started on elections.)

The truth is that political entities untethered to market forces don’t care as much about efficiency as much as politics. And every decision made for political reasons — no matter if that’s hiring the nephew of the boss or filling racial quotas — damages the function of the agency in question. We see this basically everywhere these days because government is involved everywhere.

Government employees use their offices like kingdoms, to pay off the ones closest to them — and ignore their actual duties in the process.

At least somebody other than the taxpayer is getting screwed here. I mean… somebody in addition to the taxpayer.

The post office loses money every year — yet keeps truckin’ along — because it is a political organization. Public transportation is unreliable and disgusting because the systems are run by government. The education system don’t care about actually educating kids, because school districts cater to teachers unions and the bloated middle management class. Government has simultaneously demanded to ‘handle’ more and more of everyday life, but spectacularly fails just when we need them most.

"We tried to be prepared for that, but the avalanche of reports was tremendous."

So when the CDC was completely overwhelmed by reports of people being injured by the covid 19 vaccines, they just threw up their hands and repeated “safe and effective” over and over like trained parrots — but at least the parrots are trained. These people just bask in their power, ignoring the actual JOB they are supposed to be doing — and when the shit hits the fan, government shits the bed right along with it because the current ‘ruling class’ no longer has the ability to actually get the job done. (No matter what that job is, it seems.)

The CDC was buried under nearly 350,000 reports of adverse effects during the first six months of rollout (including almost 5000 deaths), yet three months later Biden mandated the shots for everybody he could get away with mandating them for.

Are we supposed to believe that Biden simply didn’t know the CDC was struggling to keep up with the adverse reports that were coming in? What’s worse — if he didn’t know about these reports, or if he did and mandated the shots anyway?

Of course, during the covid years we also saw government-enforced lockdowns, as well as government-dictated business closures (and on the flip side, which businesses could stay open). Obviously forcing a sizeable number of people stay home creates problems, because those people still have bills to pay. Predictably, the government’s solution was to use a fraction of the trillions in new printing to pay those people (generously) to stay home.

This (also predictably) leads to inflation as the money printer goes brrrr. (Although stimulus checks and unemployment cash certainly contributed to inflation, the bigger factor was the trillions being handed out to the public health complex.)

Now as struggling customers cut back because of inflation, small businesses falter and shut down. And as these effects spiral up the chain, the real economy of goods and services is shrinking just as the fake economy of government printing and spending expands — with the eventual result being binary: either you’re getting money from government or you’re broke.

The silver lining here may be that when everybody is broke, we’ll go back to the basics of adding value in real ways once again — even if that just means helping your friends build a barn.

---

This is one of the ways I know I’m in a simulation:

That’s right — the exact same people who have been bleating about January 6th and overturning an election are now talking about overturning an election. As I’ve said over and over, nobody’s worried about Trump taking power if he LOSES the election — they’re all talking about preventing him from taking power IF HE WINS. To save democracy, of course.

To his credit, Adam Schiff is quoted as saying he thinks this would be a terrible idea — but since Adam Schiff is a notorious liar, he can’t really trust that, can we?

Besides, Democrats still have their plan A of throwing Trump off the ballot entirely. And if throwing Trump off the ballot results in violence? Well, that’s just the way things go…….

………….that is terrifying.

Not looking for a long-term thing? Tip me on Ko-fi — no subscription required!