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Biden’s legacy is genocide, war, and nuclear brinkmanship. That’s all anyone should talk about when this psychopath finally dies. Anything positive he may have accomplished in his political career is a drop in the ocean compared to the significance of these mass-scale abuses.

Biden spent his entire career promoting war and militarism at every opportunity, and then spent the twilight years of his time in Washington choosing to continue supplying an active genocide that is fully dependent on US-supplied arms.

He refused off-ramp after off-ramp to the horrific war in Ukraine that has burned through a generation of men in that country, which he knowingly provoked by amassing a military proxy threat on Russia’s border in ways the US would never tolerate being amassed on its own border. In the early weeks of the conflict Biden and his fellow empire managers sabotaged peace talks to keep the war going for as long as possible with the goal of bleeding Moscow, and at one point his own intelligence agencies reportedly assessed that the probability of a nuclear war erupting on this front was as high as 50–50.

Coin toss odds on nuclear war. To call this a crime against humanity would be a massive understatement.

Biden has been facilitating Israeli atrocities in the middle east with US military expansionism in the region and bombing operations in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. He will spend his lame duck months backing Israel’s scorched earth demolition of southern Lebanon.

This is who Biden is. It is who he has always been. It is true that his brain has begun to rot away like just like his conscience has rotted, but in his lucid moments he adamantly defends his administration’s decisions as the only correct course of action, and it aligns perfectly with his past. To know this, one need only to look at the pivotal role he played in pushing the Iraq invasion, or his extremist rhetoric about how “If there were not an Israel we’d have to invent one.”

This is the legacy that Democrats were forced to spend the last election cycle pretending is great and awesome. It’s no wonder they lost. So now, as a parting gift from Joe Biden, Americans and the world get another four years of Donald Trump.

That’s the story of Joe Biden. That’s the whole entire thing. Anything on top of that is irrelevant narrative fluff.

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The post Biden’s Legacy Is Genocide, War, and Nuclear Brinkmanship appeared first on LewRockwell.

Donald Trump appears to have been the first Republican in 20 years to win the popular vote.

Scouring the internet, the only Democrat figure who seems to be smiling is President Joe Biden. For the others it seems to be a time of mourning. A look at the results, their implications, and the machinations of the federal bureaucracy is in order.

The very best wrapup is by Victor Davis Hanson.

Harris-Walz were not the only losers: There were the media which gave him 95% negative coverage and the pollsters:

The polls — with the exception once again of AltasIntel, Trafalgar, and Rasmussen — were off, and way off in the Senate races. The pollsters’ reputation is again in full reverse and now back to their nadir of 2020 and 2016. Many shamelessly warped their data in the last two weeks to gin up Kamala Harris momentum, fundraising, and voter turnout. And to no avail.

There were plenty of indications long ago in key states of a Donald Trump thunderstorm: defections of minorities, anger among both the Jewish and Muslim voters, alienated union members, massive increases in Republican registrations, and non-Election Day balloting. And all were deliberately ignored by the corrupt media and pollsters.

The worst of cable news was MSNBC, which Comcast is trying to unload. I don’t see any takers.

The issues Harris-Walz chose to run on were wildly unpopular, says Hanson:

Open borders, hyperinflation, abortion deification, the transgendered mania, the crime wave, and the “green” obsessions all did their bit to repel voters. The “racist” Trump won more minority support than any Dole, McCain, or Romney figure of the past.

Their lawfare efforts proved unavailing, and this week Jack Smith moved to end those cases against him. New York Judge Juan Merchan is reportedly considering dropping the meritless “hush money” case against Trump.

Trump won, of course, but he wasn’t the only winner. (And he hasn’t eschewed trolling the losers. Noting that the greatly outfunded Harris blew through her $1 billion war chest and still has a $20 million campaign debt, he offered to help her out with the surplus remaining in his campaign chest. Interestingly, it turns out she gave Oprah $1 million dollars to interview her. Heck, Joe Rogan wasn’t going to charge her anything. He has about 50 million viewers, and yet Harris in effect turned him down by demanding concessions that were unreasonable. She also spent millions on staging the celebrity endorsers she cajoled into appearing at her late rallies to drum up apparent support — apparent because it was obvious that people were drawn to free concerts, not Harris.) There were those who joined him in this fight — Hanson names Elon Musk, RFK Jr., Joe Rogan, and Tulsi Gabbard. (Friday, it turned out even Bill Gates is interested in joining up, not that I think Trump should welcome the offer.)

The Left is now blaming a lot of people and things for this loss, including Biden for not getting out earlier and, alternatively, for allowing himself to be a victim of the Pelosi coup.  Like Hanson, though, I think they need to blame themselves for having sought

“to drive down the American people’s throat the most radical and absurd agenda of the last two centuries that ruined the economy, exploded our border, made moonscapes of our big cities, destroyed women’s sports, set the world abroad afire, weaponized the courts and the bureaucracies, and sought to tear the country in two.”

Around the world, even before he’s sworn into office, the Trump win is having significant impact. Liz Wheeler lists the first consequential results:

Trump is President-elect for two days:

• Stock market hits record high
• Migrant caravan at our border dissolves
• Hamas calls for end to war
• Bitcoin hits record high
• Putin ready to end Ukraine war
• Qatar kicks out Hamas leaders
• EU will buy U.S. gas not Russian gas
• Putin will sell oil in U.S. dollars
• Zelenskyy phones Trump & Elon
• NYC Mayor ends vouchers for illegals
• Mexico to stop migrants at U.S. border
• China wants to work peacefully with us
• Big U.S. company to move out of China

“I repeat: Trump has been President-elect for two days.”

Others have reported that even the Taliban wants to talk to the newly-reelected president.

For many, the demographics of his voters may come as a shock. If, for example, if you get your news from Tik Tok you’d see young women sobbing, shaving their heads, and disowning family members who voted for Trump and might think the entire tranche of young women is psychotic, but not only did he win young men under 30, young women under thirty shifted 11 points toward him.

Read the Whole Article

The post How Badly Harris Lost and Why appeared first on LewRockwell.

You must admit, it’s a little spooky how quickly and rigorously Mr. Trump intends to deconstruct those parts of the government at war with the people: clean out “rogue bureaucrats,” firehose the malignant agencies, release and expose their document trails on spying, censorship, lawfare, and abuse-of-power. The consequence would be the return of consequence in our national life. It’s been absent for so long you can hardly imagine its power to get people’s minds right.

There are already reports of frenzy among the culpable DOJ lawyers, and FBI Director Wray is set to resign before Mr. Trump can fire him. Attorney General Merrick Garland has gone radio-silent for his own good since Election Day. Expect many abiding mysteries to get unraveled, such as exactly how many federal agents did work the crowd around the Capitol on J-6, 2021 — which Mr. Wray has pretended to not be able to discuss “due to ongoing investigations.” Expect to learn more about the pipe-bomb caper at the DNC HQ a few blocks away that same day. Prepare to be amazed at how deeply criminal these schemes were. You must wonder if the document-shredding party is already underway, despite calls to preserve all the emails, memos, and texts.

Then there are the poisoned realms of the intel blob located at CIA, DHS, State, DOD, and elsewhere being subject to inquiry and overhaul. Think: John Brennan, James Clapper, Bill Barr, Michael Atkinson, Mayorkas, Judge Boasberg, Mary McCord, Col. Vindman, Senator Warner, Avril Haines, Victoria Nuland, Samantha Power, Gina Haspel, Marie Yovanovitch, Jen Easterly, all their deputies, and many more unknown to the public. Some of these names may yet seem obscure to you. They were all neck-deep in what looks a lot like sedition, treason, real conspiracies, not theories. Even state officials such as New York AG Letitia James, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, and Fulton County, GA, DA Fani Willis, would be subject to federal charges under 18USC Section 242: willful deprivation of constitutional rights acting under color of law. That is exactly what the Trump lawfare cases amounted to.

And then, of course, there are the long-running rumors of pedophilia and human trafficking networks among the elite, the Jeffrey Epstein list and the P. Diddy list. If these things exist, and they are released, history would shudder. Think: the Clinton Foundation.

These people are looking ahead 70 days with visions of shoes dropping and hammers falling. If the mysteries are revealed, it’s hard to imagine that criminal proceedings would not be far behind. You can also imagine that the motivation across a broad and powerful elite class runs white-hot to stop Mr. Trump from entering the Oval Office. So, these days ahead will be fraught with threats, schemes, plots, ploys, and deceptions. The paranoia must be out of this world among people who still have the resources and hold the levers-of-power needed to undertake nefarious deeds.

There is chatter about “a coup” being considered among as-yet-unnamed parties in the Pentagon to prevent Mr. Trump from rising back into power. It’s unclear how that would work among our high command of transsexual generals and admirals and their hapless DEI adjutants. The strata of colonels benath them might have different ideas. But it could be the starting gun for actual civil war. We would find out what the Second Amendment is all about. “Joe Biden” likes to say that the citizenry can’t go up against his F-16 war-planes, but he evidently does not understand how much mischief can be made with small arms — rifles, grenades, rockets, drones — despite examples of it all over the world lately. That is hypothetical for now, of course.

In short, these are dangerous times. Mr. Trump would be advised to stay out of airplanes until inauguration day and to be extra-careful who he puts himself around, especially in public. You also must expect more lawfare of the most extreme sort going forward to January, every possible stone unturned to find procedural tricks to prevent certification of the election. Do you think Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, and Andrew Weissmann just laid back and watched football this weekend? They are probably quarterbacking efforts to finagle ballots for the remaining contested seats in Congress, in order to game-out Rep. Jamie Raskin’s well-publicized block-Trump play this coming Jan. 6.

These are the darkest and most explosive parts of Mr. Trump’s admirably deep to-do list for fixing the many things that have stopped working in American life. The simplest picture of our current predicament, and why people voted as they did, is of “things going in the wrong direction,” Well, what direction is that, exactly? The tyranny of giant forces over our little lives and communities. It’s a leviathan government seeking to invade and dominate everything — and to do it with maximum malice when resisted. It has left American men and women mentally disordered, demoralized, stolen their sense of purpose, deprived them of roles in society that provide meaning, alienated them from each other, and from their history. And it has left them, as Robert Kennedy points out, catastrophically unhealthy.

All of which is to say, we have more to clean up and reorganize than just our government. We’re going to get it done, you may be sure, even if the zeitgeist has to drag us kicking and screaming out of the malaise we’re stuck in. All of this points to some very different new arrangements to be made in our everyday life, beginning with the realization that the era of getting something-for-nothing is over.

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

The post Mysteries Revealed appeared first on LewRockwell.

The West doesn’t have the financial clout to pursue global primacy – if it ever did.

The election has occurred; Trump will take office in January; many of the existing Party Nomenklatura will be replaced; different policies will be announced – but actually taking power (rather than just sitting in the White House) will be more complex. The U.S. has devolved into many disparate fiefdoms – almost princedoms – from the CIA to the Justice Department. And regulatory ‘agencies’ too, have been implanted to preserve Nomenklatura hold on the System’s lifeblood.

Pulling these ideological adversaries into new thinking will not proceed entirely smoothly.

However, the U.S. election also, has been a referendum on the prevalent western intellectual mainstream. And that likely will be more decisive than the U.S. domestic vote – important though that is. The U.S. has shifted strategically away from the managerial techno-oligarchy that took its grip in the 1970s. Today’s shift is reflected across the U.S.

Back in 1970, Zbig Brzezinski (who was to become National Security Adviser to President Carter) wrote a book foreseeing the new era: What he then called ‘The Technetronic Era’,

“involved the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society … dominated by an élite, unrestrained by traditional values … [and practicing] continuous surveillance over every citizen … [together with] manipulation of the behaviour and intellectual functioning of all people … [would become the new norm].”

Elsewhere, Brzezinski argued that “the nation-state … has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state”.

Brzezinski was plain wrong about the benefits of tech cosmopolitan governance. And he was decisively, and disastrously, wrong in the policy prescriptions that he adduced from the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 – that no country or group of countries would ever dare to stand up to U.S. power. Brzezinski argued in The Grand Chessboard that Russia would have no choice but to submit to the expansion of NATO, and to the geopolitical dictates of the U.S.

But Russia did not succumb. And as a result of the élites’ 1991 ‘End of History’ euphoria, the West launched war in Ukraine to prove its point – that no single country could hope to stand against the combined weight of all NATO. They said that because they believed it. They believed in the western Manifest Destiny. They did not understand the other options Russia had.

Today, the Ukraine war is lost. Hundreds of thousands have died unnecessarily – for a conceit. The ‘other war’ in the Middle East fares no differently. The Israeli-U.S. war on Iran will be lost, and tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese will have died pointlessly.

And the ‘forever wars’ too, that were expected by the Supreme Commander of NATO in the wake of 9/11 to topple an array of states (first Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran), not only did they not result in consolidating U.S. hegemony, but they have led instead to Kazan and to BRICS, with its long tail of aspirant members, ready to face down foreign colonialism.

The Kazan summit was cautious. It didn’t project a flush of solutions; some BRICS states were hesitant (the U.S. election was scheduled for the following week). Putin’s comments to these latter states were carefully calibrated: Look at what the U.S. can do to you, should you fall foul of it, at any point. Protect yourselves.

All that the BRICS President (Putin) could say, at this juncture, was: Here are the problems that [we have to solve]. It is premature to set up a full alternative Bretton Woods structure at this time. But we can set up the core to a prudent alternative for working in the dollar sphere: a settlement and clearing system, BRICS Clear; a reference unit of account; a re-insurance structure and the BRICS Card – a retail payment card system similar to AliPay.

Perhaps a Reserve Currency and the full Bretton Woods paraphernalia will prove unnecessary. Financial technology is evolving fast – and providing that the BRICS clearance system is functional, a multitude of fin-tech separate trade channels may ultimately be what results.

But a ‘week is a long time in politics’. And one week later, the western intellectual paradigm was upended. The Shibboleths of the last fifty years were rejected across the board in the U.S. by voters. The ideology of ‘undoing’ the cultural past; the casting aside the lessons of history (for, it is claimed, ‘wrongful’ perspectives) and the rejection of systems of ethics reflected in the myths and stories of a community, have themselves been rejected!

It is ok again to be a ‘civilisational state”. The radical doubting and cynicism of the Anglo-sphere is reduced to one perspective amongst many. And no longer can be the universal narrative.

Well, post the U.S. election, BRICS sentiment must be turbo-charged. Notions that were not thinkable last week, just became possible and thinkable a week later. Historians may look back, and observe that the future architecture of modern global finance, modern global economy may have struggled to be born at Kazan, but is now a healthy infant.

Will it all happen smoothly? Of course not. Differences between BRICS member and ‘partner’ states will remain, but this week a window has opened, fresh air has entered, and many will breathe more easily. If there is one thing that should be clear, a second Trump Administration is unlikely to feel the need to launch a ‘war on the world’ to maintain its global hegemony (as the 2022 National Defence Strategy insist it should).

For the U.S. today faces its own internal structural contradictions to which Trump regularly alluded when he talked about the evaporated American real economy owing to the off-shored manufacturing base. A recent report by the RAND Organisation states starkly however, that the U.S. defence industrial base is unable to meet the equipment, technology, and munitions needs of the U.S. and its allies and partners. A protracted conflict, especially in multiple theatres, would require much greater capacity [– and a radically increased defence budget].

Trump’s industrial recuperation plan, however, of painfully high tariffs ringing American manufacturing; an end to Federal profligacy and lower taxes suggests however, a reversal into fiscal rectitude – after decades of fiscal laxity and uncontrolled borrowing. Not big military spending! (Defence spending, by the way, during the Cold War relied on top marginal income tax rates above 70 percent and corporate tax rates averaging 50 percent – which does not seem to accord with what Trump has in mind).

Professor Richard Wolff comments in a recent interview that the West as a whole is in deep trouble financially, precisely as a result of such unrestrained government expenditures:

“For the first time, a couple of years ago, bondholders were unwilling to continue to fund the deficits of Great Britain, and [the UK government was thrown out]. Mr. Macron is now heading right down that same path. Bondholders have told the French that they are not going to continue to fund their national debt.

Here’s how it works. Bondholders are telling the French, you have to rein in spending … The bondholders are saying, you have to stop running deficits. And, as every undergraduate knows, the way you would rein in deficits could be to cut spending. But there is an alternative: It’s called taxing. And it’s called taxing corporations and the rich because the others don’t have any more for you to tax – you’ve done all you can [do with taxes on ordinary French citizens].

[However] taxing corporations and the rich … somehow, is not only ‘not doable’, but not debatable. It can’t be put on the table: Nothing. (or, something so minuscule that will never deal with the deficit). We now have too much debt. And it turns out that the government, like the American government, is facing the next few years where it will have to spend as much on servicing its debt as it is on defence. And that doesn’t leave very much for everybody else. And everybody else is saying: no, no, no, no, no, no.

And now the bondholder gets worried, because one way to resolve this would be to stop paying the bond holders and that, of course, must never be. So you’ve got two absurdities. You can’t stop paying the bondholders (when, of course, you can, but with dire consequences). And you can’t tax corporations and the rich. And, of course you can. I think we are reaching a point in which these contradictions have accumulated. You don’t have to be a Hegelian or a Marxist to understand that these accumulating contradictions are very profound, very large, and very fundamental”.

They tell us that on the one hand that the world does not accept the western vision as being of universal application – and on the other hand, the West doesn’t have the financial clout to pursue global primacy – if it ever did: Zugzwang.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

The post The West’s Very Fundamental Accumulating Contradictions appeared first on LewRockwell.

“If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti-Mask. Vax vs. Anti-vax. Rich vs. poor. Man vs. woman. Cop vs. citizen. [Etc.] The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar… and why?”

The above observation by Shera Starr cannot be improved upon.

And yet, the answer to the question is fairly simple.

But let’s first take a look at this anomaly. It’s natural to identify with some individuals more than others. That tendency occurred before Homo sapiens came into being. In addition, the tendency for animals to group into families or packs also predates humans.

We tend to want to be around those who behave the way we do and have the same perceptions as we do. That only makes sense. We wish to surround ourselves with those who are unlikely to surprise and possibly even endanger us by behaving in a fashion that we would not ourselves choose.

This is the basis of trust – an essential in group or herd mentality. And being a part of a group or herd brings to us increased safety.

So, what then, of those who are not within our group or herd? How do we relate to them?

Well, any nature programme that covers animals gathered around a water hole can provide that answer.

We see a small group of wild pigs drinking alongside a group of wildebeests. Neither species is predatory, so they learn to recognise that, even though one group is made up of savannah-living grazers and the other are forest-living foragers, they can easily co-exist, which will increase the ability of both species to use the water hole at the same time.

We might also see a group of hyenas using the water hole, but we notice that the prey animals all seek to keep a distance between themselves and the predatory hyenas. Everyone understands that they are all at the water hole for the same reason and it makes sense to share, even if, in another situation, they are natural enemies.

In fact, in most of nature, we see that species adapt to a condition of mutual tolerance in order to be able to coexist.

No surprise, then, that Homo sapiens got on the mutual tolerance bandwagon in its formative stages and, for the most part, has remained that way.

But it is also true that predators develop dual habits. They may exercise tolerance at the water hole, but at some point, they mean to make a meal of their water hole neighbours.

And when doing so, many species create associations with others of their kind to hunt.

This, too, is true of humans. Most of humanity seeks to live in a spirit of cooperation with others.

In the countryside, people erect walls and fences to establish boundaries, then find it expedient to respect such divisions in order to live in peace. Even in cities, people who live cheek by jowl in the same building respect each other’s privacy for the most part. Even if they do not become friends, they either remain polite or ignore each other.

Although there are always exceptions, for the most part, mankind behaves in a manner that is based upon “getting along.” He might argue with others, but for the most part, he understands that cooperation generally should be the objective, as it’s in his best interests.

But why, then, are we seeing in so many of the countries of the First World, a rapidly increasing polarity amongst people. Ms. Starr is exactly correct. Those who would be most inclined toward mutual tolerance have, in recent years, become so polarised that they cannot so much as get together with their own families for the holidays without getting into heated arguments.

Why are people of today so solidly in one of two camps?

Can this be blamed on the rise of the internet? Well, no, the internet has become the source of a plethora of opinions and perceptions. And more than closing people off to polarised “A” and “B” choices, the internet has served to broaden public discourse.

Of course, most people express distrust for the media, particularly those networks that purportedly deal in “news.” What passes for news today is far from objective information that the viewer can then assess at his leisure.

On one network, we view unceasing diatribes against one political party. Then we turn the channel and view unceasing diatribes against the opposing party.

In turning on the News, we arrive at Indoctrination Central.

But if we really pay attention objectively, we discover that the same programmes are dictating to us that it is either our humanitarian duty to vax, or that vaxxing will enslave us to globalists who will inject us with microchips.

They are also our source for the opposing beliefs that warfare is essential to protect us against those who seek to destroy us, or that it will be the wars themselves that will destroy us.

In fact, all of Ms. Starr’s concerns find their source in the media. When we ask the question, “Who is shaking the jar… and why?” we find that those who control the media are at the source of the polarisation of people, especially in the First World.

As to the “Why?” the answer is so simple that it’s often overlooked. Like the ants, the more a people can be made to fight each other, the easier it is to subjugate them.

And since the effort to polarise people has become so massive, we can only conclude that the ultimate objective will be to implement a far greater level of subjugation, in an abnormally short period of time.

Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. white. Man vs. woman. Divide and conquer.

In such a socio-political climate, the challenge will be to keep your wits about you. As the jar is shaken on a daily basis, it will be vital to recognise that those who control the media are creating a war between the pigs and the wildebeests. This is something that is not desired by either species, but as Hermann Goering stated, “Why, of course the people don’t want war.” They must be goaded into it if those who are pulling the stings are to achieve greater subjugation.

In the coming years, this trend can be expected to become far worse than at present. The challenge will be to escape the jar if you can. Find a location where the state of warfare is less pronounced, or if this is not possible, seek a location within the jar that’s away from the fray.

Those who fall for the bait – who buy into rabidly supporting one political party or another, or who allow themselves to be angered at an entire race, or who are conned into hatred of an entire gender – will prove to be the greatest casualties of subjugation.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Learning From Ants appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ricordo a tutti i lettori che su Amazon potete acquistare il mio nuovo libro, “Il Grande Default”: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0DJK1J4K9 

Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato "fuori controllo" negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa è una storia di cartelli, a livello sovrastatale e sovranazionale, la cui pianificazione centrale ha raggiunto un punto in cui deve essere riformata radicalmente e questa riforma radicale non può avvenire senza una dose di dolore economico che potrebbe mettere a repentaglio la loro autorità. Da qui la risposta al Grande Default attraverso il Grande Reset. Questa è la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso è accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

____________________________________________________________________________________

di Lipton Matthews

La rinomata economista Mariana Mazzucato ha ottenuto ampi consensi per il suo lavoro sul concetto di “stato-imprenditore”, in cui sostiene che lo stato svolge un ruolo fondamentale nel guidare l'innovazione. I suoi saggi e libri sottolineano la capacità dello stato di guidare progressi rivoluzionari. Mentre la Mazzucato è abile nell'esaltare le virtù delle iniziative guidate dal governo, la sua argomentazione trascura un difetto cruciale: la suscettibilità dello stato agli incentivi politici.

A differenza degli imprenditori di mercato, che sono spinti dalla ricerca del profitto, lo stato opera in base a motivazioni politiche. Di conseguenza i funzionari governativi potrebbero continuare a sostenere progetti fallimentari per il bene del prestigio nazionale piuttosto che per la fattibilità economica e per servire il consumatore.

Sul mercato i prodotti e i servizi poco performanti vengono migliorati o abbandonati in favore di alternative più efficaci. Al contrario, la visione della Mazzucato dello stato-imprenditore è quella che dà priorità alle iniziative politicamente attraenti, indipendentemente dalla redditività. I programmi di energia verde, ad esempio, rimangono importanti nei circoli politici, nonostante i ripetuti fallimenti. Il modello della Mazzucato, in sostanza, sostiene uno stato interventista che dà priorità all'hype rispetto alla sostenibilità e alla redditività.

Mentre il lavoro della Mazzucato ha scatenato un dibattito feroce, molti dei suoi critici non sono riusciti a riconoscere fino a che punto gli incentivi politici ostacolano il potenziale imprenditoriale dello stato. Un'eccezione degna di nota è l'economista Randall Holcombe, il quale sostiene che il raggiungimento di traguardi tecnologici non dovrebbe essere confuso con il successo imprenditoriale. Al contrario, tali risultati riflettono imprese ingegneristiche piuttosto che imprenditorialità generatrice di valore. Gli stati spesso finanziano progetti su larga scala per promuovere l'orgoglio nazionale, ma Holcombe sostiene che questa attenzione al simbolismo piuttosto che alla fattibilità economica indebolisce l'essenza stessa dell'imprenditorialità. Uno stato più interessato a costruire prestigio nazionale che a creare valore spreca inevitabilmente risorse ignorando le forze di mercato.

Il caso di Singapore è spesso citato come esempio di stato-imprenditore, ma i ricercatori suggeriscono che l'imprenditorialità guidata dallo stato abbia soffocato l'innovazione interna. Incanalando risorse in iniziative statali, esso ha inavvertitamente soppresso l'imprenditorialità indipendente e reindirizzato il capitale lontano da settori tradizionalmente più redditizi. Inoltre l'economia singaporegna fa molto affidamento sulle multinazionali per l'innovazione, sfatando l'idea che uno stato-imprenditore possa coltivare una società veramente imprenditoriale.

L'esperienza di Singapore pone una sfida diretta alla tesi della Mazzucato, ma anche altri esempi mettono in dubbio la sua visione. Negli Stati Uniti la ricerca ha dimostrato che i programmi pubblici di R&S per le piccole imprese hanno estromesso i finanziamenti privati ​​senza produrre risultati positivi. Le aziende che ne beneficiano sono meno produttive, soprattutto perché quelle meno efficienti dipendono maggiormente dagli aiuti statali.

Le carenze dello stato-imprenditore diventano ancora più evidenti quando si esaminano più in dettaglio le prestazioni delle iniziative legate all'energia verde. In Cina gli investimenti statali nell'energia eolica hanno portato a un lento progresso tecnologico e a numerosi fallimenti. Gli analisti sostengono che il coinvolgimento dello stato ha portato a un disprezzo per i principi economici a favore di obiettivi politici. Analogamente, in Europa, le aziende legate all'energia verde sostenute dallo stato sono diventate dipendenti dai sussidi senza dimostrare una crescita significativa nella produttività.

Questi esempi sono in linea con le recenti scoperte di Martin Livermore secondo cui il coinvolgimento dello stato nelle attività commerciali tende a causare più fallimenti che successi. Questo risultato non sorprende affatto, poiché lo stato opera con incentivi diversi rispetto agli imprenditori. I politici possono dichiarare un programma un successo anche se fallisce sul mercato, purché serva i loro interessi politici. Al contrario, gli imprenditori di mercato devono soddisfare le richieste dei consumatori o rischiare di chiudere baracca e burattini. Le realtà del processo decisionale politico rivelano che lo stato-imprenditore è più un costrutto teorico che pratico.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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In questa pagina del blog trovate i vari titoli che ho pubblicato e che ho tradotto nel corso del tempo, sia le versioni cartacee che le versioni digitali.

Il Grande Default  {versione cartacea | versione digitale}

L'economia è un gioco da ragazzi  {versione cartacea | versione digitale}

L'economia cristiana in una lezione  {versione cartacea | versione digitale}

L'avanzamento e il declino della società  {versione cartacea | versione digitale}

La radice di tutti i mali economici  {versione cartacea | versione digitale}

La fine delle fallacie economiche  {versione cartacea/versione digitale}

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“Everybody knows the boat is leaking/Everybody knows the captain lied”
– Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows”

When the polls closed on Tuesday, November 5th, I was sound asleep, like a baby rocking gently in his cradle, lost to the frenzied rants or joyful shouting of the different political claques.  Even though I missed the results of what the mass media had been telling us was the most important election in our lifetimes, I was happily oblivious to their cant.  I remember hearing that nonsense many times before.

I gave up on my country’s electoral system more than fifty years ago.  Every presidential election is a contest between two sides of the ruling monied elite, chosen to represent their interests.  It is corrupt beyond repair and was so even then.  Do most people have a clue that their country is owned and run by a small group of the super-rich and ten or so financial institutions, such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, etc., the big banks and financial interests that in 1947 formed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to spearhead the U.S. warfare state around the world in support of its economy that is reliant on endless war?

The electorate continually puts its hope in the performers that the spectacle’s producers put up to front for their interests, failing to grasp that the rulers’ interests are not theirs.  Arguing and anguishing over certain policy differences between Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, they fail to see that both exist to serve global capital, not regular people, that exchanging presidents is a counterfeiter’s con-game with the voters the scammers’ marks.

Trump’s current victory is an example of that, as was Biden’s in 2020.  If Harris had won, it would have proven the same.  They are two sides of one coin.  That the system is rigged by the oligarchs should be obvious but isn’t.  Or maybe it is obvious but people secretly harbor a perverse liking for it.  Stranger things are true, as on personal levels people embrace the symptoms of their neuroses because the symptoms are their disguised solutions, their ways of staying stuck because change is hard and frightening and requires admitting repressed realities.

The cliché that all politics is local has a certain appeal and a trace of veracity, but 99 + % of the truth lies elsewhere.  Apprimately 145 + million Americans just lined up to vote like puppies looking for a bone to be thrown their way by the people who own the country.  They do get a bone here and there, which keeps them looking for the meat, but that is reserved for the fat cats, as always.

I understand why people prefer upbeat words, but very often the upbeat is really the downbeat of hopelessness in disguise.  A coverup.  And seemingly hopeless words, such as that our presidents are the public personae of the rapacious oligarchy, are actually far more hopeful, even though they reveal long-held assumptions to be delusional.

Imagine what might happen if a great portion of people refused to vote for the charlatans chosen to run for president.

The fear that there was even a slight chance that this might happen lies behind all the pep talks and moralizing about doing your civic duty, which is such “a privilege.”  Vote, even if it’s for the “lesser of two evils.”

But please, let us not mention the great evil that lies behind these lessers.  Vote and we’ll give you a sticker. A sticker that signifies your gullibility.

There is a “system,” as young radicals referred to the U.S.’s political-economic structure back in the 1960s.  I was one of them, a conscientious objector from the Marine Corps and a graduate student studying sociology, deeply influenced by the work and moral voice of C. Wright Mills and his powerful books, The Power Elite, The Causes of World War III, and Listen, Yankee, and William Domhoff’s Who Rules America, a work that has gone through seven updated editions.

There were (and are) many other books that told the story truly, but even reading them won’t help unless you are willing to dispense with the obvious illusions and face the bleakness of a corrupt system.  Willing to take it personally.  Willing to recognize the systemic evil that under-girds the System.  Willing to accept the void that the Trappist monk Thomas Merton termed the Unspeakable:

It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss.

This void is the fact that the U.S. political economy is controlled by a small group of the wealthiest nihilists and is maintained through lies, a military-industrial economy, and perpetual wars around the world to maintain and increase their wealth.  It is a death cult that people worship by their participation.

Although in subsequent years it became fashionable to decry the use of the term “the system,” there was a system then and there is one now, run by the upper class elite whose wealth has increased exponentially over the years throughout Democratic and Republican administrations.  This system is tightly entwined throughout the social structure of the country, part of the everyday fabric of American life.  It is fueled by the corporate mass media of all political persuasions.  Understanding it helps to explain most of what is going on today, including the farcical election just concluded.  A battle between two candidates who represent the forces that oppress the common people, support the genocide of the Palestinians, and are figureheads for the warfare state.

The system has evolved its methods of control since the 1950s but is essentially unchanged.  It is now monopoly global capitalism joined with the steroidal injection of digital technology and the Internet to create a seamless marriage of economic exploitation and non-stop propaganda that has coopted and controlled the working classes and leftist intellectuals alike. Those middle to upper middle classes who like to consider themselves liberal or progressive accept the status quo because it rewards them at the expense of struggling peoples at home and abroad.  They can afford to play along and look away, being typical Babbitts.  And the right-wing was always in the pocket of the power elites.

Elections are said to be about pocket-book issues, which is largely true, but the oligarchic control of the nation’s pocketbook is not the focus.  Small stuff is.

Listen to Peter Philips, a sociologist in Mills’s tradition, who tells the truth that most can’t bear to hear and will never accept. His latest book is, Titans of Capital.  Here he is being interviewed by Robert Scheer, These Ten Companies Run Our “Democracy.”

It’s nothing new, but to accept it would require an American revolution, which isn’t coming.  No, it’s not coming when so many people “do their civic duty” and vote for presidential candidates fronting for the upper class’s interests.

As I am finishing writing these words, a headline appears at The New York Times Corporation to make me laugh and give me that all-over happy tingle.  It reads: “Popularist Revolt Against Elite’s Vision of the U.S.”   Subheaded with these introductory words: “In the end, Donald Trump is not the historical aberration some thought he was, but a force reshaping the modern U.S., writes Peter Baker in an analysis.”

Not an historical aberration!  Then he must not be a deviation from the normal type of American president.  Trump is a good old normal American president, claims the Times.  Is this a Freudian slip?

The “elite’s vision?”  So the Times is also admitting that there is an elite and they have a vision for the common people?  I wondered what kind of confession was to follow?  So I followed.

The article by Baker has a strangely punctuated title with an ambiguous meaning that its text contradicts: ‘Trump’s America’: Comeback Victory Signals a Different Kind of Country.”  It opens with the introductory words I quoted above, as if to reinforce the point.  Not an historical aberration, which for anyone who understands the English language means he is normal.  But then Baker mixes his illogical word salad with dressing.

He writes, as if there were some logical connection between his sentences:

Populist disenchantment with the nation’s direction and resentment against elites proved to be deeper and more profound than many in both parties had recognized. Mr. Trump’s testosterone-driven campaign capitalized on resistance to electing the first woman president.

Is he not saying that there is an elite that the common people are rebelling against by voting for Trump and that Harris has been chosen by these same elites and as a woman she is the focus of the fat, seventy-eight year-old Trump’s massive testosterone drive because she is a woman?

But if Trump is not an historical aberration and therefore has also been chosen by the elites, then the “popularist revolt” is no revolt at all but a con job played out by the billionaire elite who support Trump.  Baker and all the “experts” he quotes are loathe to admit openly that the ruling oligarchy is split; that both Harris and Trump are candidates of the elite who war among themselves but who in the end reap the spoils of the system.  That they are allied in an overall goal.

Baker tells us about Kamala Harris, who was not chosen by the people but by the elite who control the Democratic party, that “Once she took the torch from Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris initially emphasized a positive, joy-filled mission to the future, consolidating excited Democrats behind her, but it was not enough to win over uncommitted voters.”

Joy didn’t work.  Well what the heck!

Baker also tells us that trashing Trump and emphasizing unity didn’t either because the American people want a strongman.

What? a non-aberrational strong man?

But Baker goes on to castigate Trump as a criminal, a liar, a fraud, a conspiracy theorist, etc. while the joyful Harris just miscalculated and underestimated popular discontent.  This is the usual Times’ schtick.  Turn to the New York Post for the obverse and have a chuckle at the absurd game the media play on the public.

Baker’s headline tells us that Trump’s win signals that the U.S. is now a different kind of country because so many people are fed up with how it’s being run.  Different from 2016 when Trump won?

If only it were a different country, but it isn’t.  The same elite money forces run the show.  Elections don’t change that.  People continue to be suckers.

Baker lets it slip again with these words:

The assumption that Mr. Trump represented an anomaly who would at last be consigned to the ash heap of history was washed away on Tuesday night by a red current that swept through battleground states – and swept away the understanding of America long nurtured by its ruling elite of both parties.

Yes, the “ruling elite.”  One elite.  Both parties.  And nothing was swept away.  This ruling elite is just laughing and no doubt secretly applauding the stenographers who serve their interests, such as Peter Baker, who portrays them in typically deceptive Times’ gobbledygook fashion as “perplexed.”  Have a laugh!

“Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich stay rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows”

Do they?

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post Everybody Knows: Do They? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The hagiography of Donald Trump has started. The one below by the very evil Stephen Miller should be a wake-up call as to what lies immediately ahead. This dude is among the nastiest of the immigrant-howlers and border “invasion” propagandists, and he is heading straight for a high berth in the Donald’s government in waiting.

Needless to say, if he succeeds in duping Trump into launching a massive multi-million person deportation drive—complete with nation-wide midnight raids and swelling internment camps—right out of the gate on January 20th, the second Trump Administration will be stillborn.

On the one hand, such a misguided action would hammer tens of thousands of small businesses which employ 8.5 million illegal aliens in labor intensive industries across the length and breadth of the land, and which workers currently pay upwards of $100 billion per year in taxes. At the same time, a sweeping outbreak of litigation and Congressional intervention would also ensue, fostering bitter political polarization and legislative and judicial combat far more intense than what has already materialized to date.

Yes, there are undoubtedly a few thousand criminals who have been released into the interior under Washington’s absurd “parole” system, but those can be targeted as a matter of prioritized regular law enforcement. What is not remotely needed, however, is the arrest and deportation of millions of economic migrants who are filling the yawning gaps in America’s worker-hungry economy.

These hard-working folks at construction sites, warehouses, chicken-slaughtering plants, fast food joints, landscaping operations etc. are “illegal” only because Federal law requires them to violate an ancient Federal statute in order to get arrested, scheduled for an asylum hearing and paroled into the economy, waiting months and years for their hearings and adjudication.

This is Big Government statism run wild. In fact, if there were a decent sized immigration quota of say 500,000 per year for unskilled workers versus the current ludicrous cap of 10,000, none of these 8.5 million workers would be “illegal” or standing in the path of the Donald’s impending raids. To the contrary, they would have gotten a green card long ago and many of them would have already earned their citizenship in the regular way.

Yet here is Miller’s over-the-top valorization of Donald Trump, implying that the very gods of history have chosen him to thwart a foreign “invasion” that is nothing of the kind; and which actually represents the free market trying to balance labor supply and demand by working around the idiotic obstacles posed by the Washington politicians.

The electoral landslide achieved by @realDonaldTrump is not only the single greatest win in American Political history but in the modern history of civilization. Nothing else even comes close.

This is unparalleled, unmatched and unrivaled. He defeated the Bush Dynasty, Clinton Dynasty, Cheney Dynasty, Obama Dynasty, Biden Dynasty and the entire corrupt machine behind Kamala Harris.

He defeated every sinister Marxist prosecutor, every vile hoax, every DOJ witch hunt, every communist persecution, every illegal act of censorship and surveillance, and the ruthlessly politicized and weaponized justice system.

He defeated the corrupt legacy media, the political class, the donor class, the pundit class. He defeated not one but TWO Democrat nominees and their rigged primary. He defeated the corrupt Democrat Congress. He defied death itself and survived multiple assassination attempts. Trump did the impossible over and over and over again. THE BIGGEST VICTORY EVER SEEN. No comparison.

To be sure, much of the above describes the consequences of Tuesday’s election. The Cheney’s, Bush’s, Biden’s, Obama’s and the insufferable shills of the mainstream media all got their comeuppance, and a much deserved opportunity to pout and lick their wounds.

But for crying out loud. It wasn’t Donald Trump the super-politician, savior of the American Way and Horatio-at-the-Bridge who single-handedly and by force of will brought about Tuesday’s sweeping repudiation of UniParty rule. It was, instead, soaring gas and grocery prices which caused them to pull the GOP lever—a punishing, 40-year high inflation surge that was, ironically, caused by the Donald’s own lockdowns and spend, borrow and print madness of 2020, as we demonstrated yesterday.

So the question recurs. If Biden’s “bad” economy was largely the aftermath of the Donald’s bacchanalia of spending and stimmies was the Donald’s purported “good” economy all that it’s cracked-up to be?

In a word, no. Real economic growth during Obama’s second term averaged 2.43% per annum, while the growth rate was 2.31% per annum during Trump’s first 3.25 years before the Lockdowns hit in Q2 2020. What these figures convey, therefore, is not a break-away boom under the Donald, but a sub-par but continuous expansion of the post-Financial Crisis business cycle that reflected the resilience of America’s market economy, not the policy palaver and machinations emanating from either incumbent of the Oval Office.

In fact, we do not propose to supply a magnifying glass to examine the graph below, but even then its damn evident that there is no way to tell when the Obama Administration ended and the Trump pre-lockdown years began. There flat out was no semblance of a boom on the Donald’s watch, and, actually, a growth rate even before the madness of the Lockdowns and stimmies that was just 75% of the 3.0% average for all Presidents between 1954 and 2016.

Real Final Sales Of Domestic Product, Q4 2012 to Q1 2020

Moreover, if the Greatest Economy Ever is a figment of the Donald’s reckless imagination, the question then becomes what might be expected under the far more challenging and fraught conditions which will prevail in January 2025 and beyond?

Stated differently, what is likely to happen when the next Trump Administration slams the already faltering, debt-ridden US economy with the double-whammy of a suddenly shrunken labor supply due to mass deportations, coupled with a massive increase in demand?

The latter, in turn, is owing to the already towering public debt increases that are baked into the cake under existing UniParty policy, which would then be drastically compounded by the Donald’s sweeping tax cuts and the massive spending increases for defense and border control which he has also promised.

Needless to say, Trump spent the campaign slicing and dicing the Federal income tax nearly as fast as he served up fries at the McDonald’s drive-thru window in late October. So doing, he proposed to extend the lower rates, family tax credits and investment incentives of the 2017 Tax Act after they expire in 2025 and to also exempt tips, social security benefits and overtime wages from the Federal income tax.

As it happens, however, those items alone would generate a revenue loss of $9 trillion over the next decade, but in the final weeks of the campaign he also proposed to exempt firefighters, police officers, military personnel and veterans from the Federal income tax, as well. This was self-evidently an appeal to the “first responders” constituencies.

Like in the case of most attempts to buy votes, however, the fiscal cost is not inconsiderable. To wit, we estimate that relieving first responders from the Federal income tax would cost another $2.5 trillion in revenue loss over 10 years.

That’s because there are 370,000 firemen, 708,000 policemen, 2.86 million uniformed military personnel and 18.0 million veterans in the US. These 22 million citizens have an estimated average income of $82,000 per year, which translates to about $60,000 each of AGI (adjusted gross income). At an average income tax rate of 14.7% these exclusions would generate $250 billion per year of reduced income tax payments.

In all, candidate Trump thus tossed out promises to cut income taxes by $11.5 trillion over the next 10-year budget window. And yet his hagiographers claim that he is not a regular politician!

In any event, these sweeping reductions which would amount to upwards of 34% of CBO’s estimated baseline income tax revenue of $33.7 trillion over the next 10-year period. Alas, even in the halcyon days of Reagan supply-side tax cutting no one really dreamed of eliminating fully one-third of the so-called crime of 1913 (16th Amendment which enabled the income tax).

10-Year Revenue Loss:

• Extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts: $5.350 trillion.
• Exempt overtime income: $2.000 trillion.
• End Taxation of Social Security benefits: $1.300 trillion.
• Exempt Tip income: $300 billion.
• Exempt Income of Firemen, Policemen, Military and Veterans: $2.500 trillion.
• Trump Total Revenue Loss: $11.500 trillion.
• CBO Income Tax Baseline Revenue: $33.700 trillion.
• Trump Revenue Loss As % of Baseline: 34%

Then again, the Donald did tender an off-the-spectrum idea to at least partially fund the even greater fiscal madness than he accomplished the first time around. To wit, scrapping the income tax entirely in favor of taxing consumption via stiff levies on imported goods and merchandise.

“In the old days when we were smart, when we were a smart country, in the 1890s and all, this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was. It had all tariffs. It didn’t have an income tax,” Trump said at a sit-down with voters in New York on Friday for “Fox & Friends.” “Now we have income taxes, and we have people that are dying.”

Actually, however, 19th century America was even smarter than the Donald realizes. In 1900 total Federal spending amounted to just 3.5% of GDP because back then America was still a peaceful republic and had no Warfare State or even significant standing army at all. And save for the most advanced precincts of Europe, the Welfare State hadn’t yet been invented, either.

So, yes, the so-called “revenue tariffs” of the 19th century did meet the income needs of the Federal government to the point of actually balancing the budget year-after-year between 1870 and 1900. Indeed, the actual annual surpluses were large enough to pay down most of the Civil War debt, to boot.

Today, of course, the Warfare State, Welfare State and the Washington pork barrels account for 25% of GDP. So the Donald may be directionally correct in wanting to tax consumption rather than income, but, as usual, he was off by about seven orders of magnitude when it comes to the size of the Federal budget that needs be financed.

Pursuant to his 21st century version of the revenue tariff, Trump has pledged to impose a 20% universal tariff on all imports from all countries with a specific 60% rate for Chinese imports. Based on current US import levels of $3.5 trillion per year from worldwide sources and $450 billion from China, the Donald’s tariffs would generate about $900 billion of receipts per annum.

To be sure, Trump’s claim that these giant tariffs would be paid for by Chinamen, Mexicans and European socialists is just more of his standard baloney. Tariffs are paid for by consumers, but that’s actually the hidden virtue of the Tariff Man’s favorite word.

The truth is, government should be paid for via taxation on current citizens, not fobbed off in the form of giant debts on future citizens, born and unborn. So if we are going to have Big Government at 25% of GDP rather than 19th century government at 3.5% of GDP, and the Donald is a Big Government Man if there ever was one, better that the burden be placed on consumption—not production, work, income and investment.

After all, today the “makers” get hit good and hard by the current exceedingly lopsided income tax system. Thus, the top 1% pays 46% of income taxes, while the top 5% pay 66% and the top 10% pay 76% of all income taxes. On the other end, by contrast, the bottom 50% pay just 2.3% of individual income taxes, while 40% of all families pay no income tax at all.

In any event, the math works out such that the proposed Trumpian revenue tariffs would generate about $9 trillion over the next decade or nearly 80% of the $11.5 trillion revenue loss from drastically shrinking the income tax coverage and collection rate. So that’s a seeming step in the direction of fiscal solvency rather than more UniParty free lunches.

To be sure, the proper redirection of Federal tax policy would be a national sales taxes or VAT levy, which could be applied to both goods and services and to domestically produced output as well as to imports. Thus, a 5% VAT on the current $20 trillion per year of total PCE (personal consumption expenditures) would generate the equivalent of Trump’s revenue tariff, while a 15% levy on total PCE could replace both the Trump tariff and the remainder of the income tax entirely.

Still, this sweeping change in the composition and incidence of tax policy doesn’t really put the impending fiscal disaster to bed. Not by a long shot.

If you assume the Donald’s big revenue tariffs and sweeping income tax cuts and that the other Federal payroll, corporate and excise taxes remain the same, 10-year revenues compute to just $60 trillion versus built in spending of $85 trillion per the CBO baseline. In short, even with a giant Trumpified version of the historical revenue tariff, the Donald’s budget plan would still generate $25 trillion of red ink over the next decade.

10-Year Budget Outlook with Trump Tax Cuts and Tariffs, 2025 to 2034:

• Individual income taxes with Trump cuts: $22.0 trillion.
• Trump Revenue Tariffs: $9.0 trillion.
• Existing Payroll Taxes: $20.9 trillion.
• Existing Corporate Tax Ex-Trump Cut to 15% on Manufacturers: $4.6 trillion.
• Other Existing Federal Receipts: $3.5 trillion.
• Total Federal Revenue Under Trump Policy: $60.0 trillion.
• CBO Baseline Federal Outlays: $85.0 trillion.
• 10-Year Trump Deficit: $25.0 trillion.

To be sure, the Donald has promised to turn Elon Musk lose on a crusade against government waste and inefficiency, and we say more power to him. If anyone has the courage and smarts to take on the Swamp, surely Elon Musk is at the top of the list.

Then again, the Donald has promised to shield 82% of the budget from any cuts at all. That’s right. Elon could huff and puff and shrink the non-exempt programs and agencies by one-third and still leave deficits in excess of $20 trillion over the next decade.

10-year Cost Of Programs Trump Has Championed, Promised Not To Cut or Can’t Cut:

• Social Security: $20.0 trillion.
• Medicare: $16.0 trillion.
• Federal Military and Civilian Retirement Pensions: $2.5 trillion.
• Veterans’ programs: $3.0 trillion.
• National Security Budget: $15.5 trillion.
• Interest On the Public Debt: $13.0 trillion.
• Total Exempt Programs: $70.0 trillion.
• Exempt Programs As % of $85 trillion CBO Baseline: 82%.

In short, even with the Donald’s full revenue tariffs and assuming Elon could actually slash 33% of the non-exempt budget without closing the Washington Monument, the bottom-line math leaves little to the imagination. Spending at $80 trillion would amount to 22.7% of GDP, while the Donald’s tariff-heavy revenue package would generate $60 trillion of Federal receipts over the next decade, amounting to about 17.0% of GDP.

In turn, that would leave a structural deficit of nearly 6% of GDP as far as the eye can see. And that projection assumes no recession ever again and that interest on a public debt approaching $60 trillion by 2034 would average just 3.3% across the maturity spectrum.

We will take the unders on that proposition any day of the week and twice on Sunday. That is to say, CBO’s projection of $1.7 trillion of annual interest expense by 2034 is likely understated by several trillions. Per year.

In any event, the challenge of financing these giant deficits along with $900 billion per year of Trump tariffs would be considerable. The latter alone would amount to nearly 10% of annual US consumption of consumer goods and fixed investment goods.

So if the Fed were to “accommodate” these massive Trump tariffs by running the printing presses red hot in an attempt to compensate for lost household purchasing power, it could well trigger a burst of inflation even more virulent than that of 2021-2024. On the other hand, were it to adhere to the correct sound money solution and refuse to “accommodate” both the massive Trump deficits and the giant Trump tariffs, bond yields and interest rates would soar, even as the main street economy contracted sharply in response to a one-time 10% increase in the general price level.

Needless to say, financing massive budget deficits honestly in the bond pits rather than at the Fed’s printing presses would also unleash the mother of all meltdowns in today’s insanely inflated financial markets. The Donald would therefore get his tariff and some substantial re-shoring of industrial production, but also a hair-curling recession on main street and a Bronx Cheer from the canyons of Wall Street.

As to the inflation-battered constituencies who tendered an economic protest vote for Trump on Tuesday, not so much. Under the Donald’s impending plan to massively shrink the labor supply and massively increase consumer demand at the same time, what lies ahead is punishing interest rates and a deep and prolonged period of stagflation that even the wizards at the Fed will be powerless to counteract.

So there is every reason to believe that by 2028 the marginal constituencies who re-elected the Donald this time will be ready for still another “student body left” pivot next time. That’s because in the interim the myth of the Greatest Economy Ever will have been destroyed in daily living color by the colossal failure of the Donald’s half-assed theory of economics.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post On the Donald’s Half-Assed Economics and the Payback Ahead appeared first on LewRockwell.

An excessive desire for liberty at the expense of everything else is what undermines democracy and leads to the demand for tyranny.

      —Plato

In a lecture at Notre Dame a few years ago, Alasdair MacIntyre argued that the claims and conceptions of universal and inalienable human dignity as reflected in documents such as the 1948 United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in various post-war European constitutions are puzzling, since this dignity requires a duty of respect to everyone just for being human, no matter their behavior or character, so Stalin the mass murderer has as much dignity and deserves as much respect as Mother Teresa. Aquinas’ view of dignitas as interpreted by Charles De Koninick is a challenge to this view, for it assigns human dignity, not to the mere fact of being human, but to end to which we are called, which is supernatural, union with God, which might not be attained due to one’s choices on earth against those common goods which enable our attainment of the supernatural end, and so human dignitas could be lost. According to this view, which is founded on the end to which humans are called and the virtue of justice, not the mere fact of being human and an ambiguous and philosophically ungrounded human dignity, the 20th-century concept of human dignity is much too individualistic, and because it is not based in justice and the common good, only can provide negative prescriptions against the undignified treatment of humans. It is unable to provide positive prescriptions that enable persons to obtain the common goods and the virtues they need to attain their supernatural end. For MacIntyre, we need to speak of human dignity in terms of justice, what we owe to each other for the sake of enabling persons to attain their personal and common goods and final end, which is the knowledge and love of God in this life and the next.

I would like to use MacIntyre’s lecture as a springboard to talk about the current situation of the world. Since March of 2020, we have suffered an all-out, deliberate, and planned assault on both human dignity and justice. To see this, I cite the Catechism of Catholic Church’s section on “Respect for the Dignity of Human Persons” which is a kind of synthesis of the Thomistic justice and common good-oriented and the modern rights and dignity-oriented views, presenting a set of both negative proscriptions and positive prescriptions for what this respect requires. It will be shown that every one of these has been violated to the core under the pretext of public health.  I think the reason for the success of this assault, waged by billionaire globalist elites with the complicity and cooperation of national governments, is the lack of popular resistance to it, indeed, the popular acceptance and even celebration of it. And I think the reason for this malignant effect upon souls is the ideology of secular liberalism.

David Walsh in his 2016 book Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being argues that the secular liberalism that produced the 1948 United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various post-war European constitutions, although not founded on any particular theology or metaphysics or anthropology, indeed, not founded on anything other than a consensus and commitment to the rights and dignity of the human person, is worth preserving and celebrating for its wonderful achievements. He writes:

Liberal constitutions have emerged from the competition of modern political forms to outlast and surpass all rivals. Not only did they supersede monarchical and aristocratic forms to establish commercial republics, but they have overcome the far more formidable challenges posed by collectivist and authoritarian rivals in the last and present centuries. Despite their weakness and unpreparedness, liberal democracies found within themselves the resources necessary to defeat fascism and persevere through the long confrontation with communism. Now they stand as the exemplars not only of economic and political success but as the model of moral legitimacy the world over, even as they are challenged by the lingering assertion of authoritarian models. No higher aspiration prevails in the contemporary world than to create a political order that is derived from and ordered toward the preservation of individual dignity and respect. The moral and political authority of liberal democratic forms may be ironic, given their own inner self-doubt, but it can hardly be denied as a global reality.

Well, the irony, I am afraid, is much deeper than mere “inner self-doubt.” In the section on the Fifth Commandment, under the heading of “Respect for the Dignity of Persons,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church presents five norms that must be obeyed and upheld by persons and societies. Far from fulfilling these norms, virtually all the governments of liberal democracies in the world, those with “no higher aspiration . . . than to create a political order that is derived from and ordered to the preservation of individual dignity and respect,” have attacked the dignity of persons on a scale never before seen in human history. The Catechism states:

Respect for the souls of others: scandal

Therefore, they are guilty of scandal who establish laws or social structures leading to the decline of morals and the corruption of religious practice, or to “social conditions that, intentionally or not, make Christian conduct and obedience to the Commandments difficult and practically impossible.” This is also true of business leaders who make rules encouraging fraud, teachers who provoke their children to anger, or manipulators of public opinion who turn it away from moral values.

Respect for health

Concern for the health of its citizens requires that society help in the attainment of living-conditions that allow them to grow and reach maturity: food and clothing, housing, health care, basic education, employment, and social assistance.

If morality requires respect for the life of the body, it does not make it an absolute value. It rejects a neo-pagan notion that tends to promote the cult of the body, to sacrifice everything for its sake, to idolize physical perfection and success at sports.

Respect for the person and scientific research

Research or experimentation on the human being cannot legitimate acts that are in themselves contrary to the dignity of persons and to the moral law. The subjects’ potential consent does not justify such acts. Experimentation on human beings is not morally legitimate if it exposes the subject’s life or physical and psychological integrity to disproportionate or avoidable risks. Experimentation on human beings does not conform to the dignity of the person if it takes place without the informed consent of the subject or those who legitimately speak for him.

Respect for bodily integrity

Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.91 [what is this number?]

Respect for the dead

The dying should be given attention and care to help them live their last moments in dignity and peace. They will be helped by the prayer of their relatives, who must see to it that the sick receive at the proper time the sacraments that prepare them to meet the living God.

How have the “models of moral legitimacy” called liberal democracies lived up to these five norms? Since March of 2020, we have witnessed the emergence of a global totalitarianism the scope and gravity of which has no precedent in history, replete with monstrous scandals (laws allowing abortion mills and liquor stores to stay open while schools and churches are shut down), domestic terrorism ( fear-porn propaganda and state-sanctioned violence against peaceful protesters), horrific medical experimentation with no informed consent, and a wanton disrespect for health (outlawing effective life-saving medicine, mandating immune-system destroying injections), bodily integrity (mandatory masks, and vaccinations known to cause sterilization and death), and the dead (forcing the dying to die alone in nursing homes and hospitals).

Reiner Fuellmich and the late Vladimir Zelenko, just to name two of the most prominent and heroic truth-tellers and activists, have made a powerful case that what should be called the plandemic is the greatest crime against humanity ever committed, essentially a global medical experiment ordered to genocidal depopulation and sterilization, Big Pharma profits, and elite, totalitarian, economic and political control. We must add to this the psychological devastation of billions of brainwashed, abused, degraded, and dehumanized persons through what has been diagnosed by competent psychologists as mass-formation psychosis. What we have witnessed in the very liberal democracies that according to Walsh are “the exemplars not only of economic and political success but as the model of moral legitimacy the world over” is a global mass-terror campaign of fear and torture in which millions consented to, or at least did not widely and forcefully resist, a global economic shutdown leading to millions of deaths, the devastation of national economies, and the destruction of the property-owning middle class. This shutdown included deprivation of fundamental human rights, including the setting up of literal concentration camps for the unvaccinated, the physically and psychologically damaging and medically useless masking of whole populations, including young children, and the coercive program of injecting every living human being with an untested, gene-altering serum known to kill more than it saves, all for a disease that according to the actual numbers was and is for the vast majority of people no more fatal than the flu.

Read the Whole Article

The post From Liberal Democracy to Global Totalitarianism appeared first on LewRockwell.

With the conclusion of the US election, the thrill has set in for half the country: that we have a chance to re-secure our nation and its ideals. The other half of the nation, however, is in shock and even in a state of mourning.

Meanwhile, in only two days, the drumbeats of “resistance” from that half of the country have begun to sound: Rep Eric Swalwell encouraged his allies on X not to “Go[…] quietly”. This is dangerously inflammatory language, and it warns of a potential Democratic resistance to a peaceful transfer of power.

Insta-marches have begun — as I warned, warned, warned you for months would be the case — in Chicago and then, tick-tock, Philadelphia. Expect more. The tell-tale identically printed signs and instantly-amassed crowds don’t mean that these protests do not present a threat to the newly elected transition team. There will be more eruptions across the country, more instability, more threats to a peaceful transition of power. These will accompany of course power outages, national security crises or “crises”, legal challenges, and other messes, November and December and right up into January.

My point is that these are not just tactical eruptions targeted at actually unseating President Trump and his new team. That is unlikely to be directly successful.

What these are, as President Trump and his advisors should quickly understand, are efforts by my former colleagues in the media and the political establishments to change the subject so as to undermine or derail President Trump’s mandate and to dilute his political capital.

In other words, there is an urgent lesson that the last Trump administration never fully grasped: successful politics is not just transactional. It is also narrative, and mythological, and iconic.

In that wisdom lies the secret power of great kings and Queens, and great Presidents.

President Trump is a businessman, and so thinks, reasonably enough given his field, that applause should follow actual achievements. This is a misleading expectation, however, in Presidential messaging. What audiences applaud is what they have been led to understand has happened to them that is positive, via their having been told a powerful, proactive story.

While President Trump has been in media forever, he and his advisors have not mastered the art of telling a proactive symbolic and iconic political story. They tend to be highly reactive to adverse news coverage and to criticism, which is one of their most concerning vulnerabilities, as this continually misleads them into reactive media strategies.

President Trump’s engagement with the media, and even with live crowds, has insulated him to an extent, and that is a risk at this critical moment in his pre-Presidency. President Trump is used to dealing with “fake media” that continually lie about him no matter what — so in his calculus, he does not need to win them over at all. He is also used to speaking live to adoring crowds. So he is not used to speaking live to people who are unsure of him, or to people who actively hate and fear him.

But his task right now is to make it impossible for the “fake media” to disregard the positive points of his policy initiatives and the great news of his transition’s personnel decisions.

President Trump also urgently needs to lay to rest the active, traumatized fears of the half of the country that did not vote for him and especially of the millions who have been so propagandized by legacy media that they are in active states of apprehension and of grief.

Unfortunately this kind of messaging requires a whole different set of skills and talking points, than did campaigning. President Trump does not, respectfully, understand how to reach past the hostile media to craft a political and mythological narrative that reaches directly to audiences, including what are now — we hope temporarily — hostile audiences.

Why is this such an urgent problem to fix, like this week, like today?

Because this should be a moment in which from the Trump camp issue powerful visual scenes of triumph and blessing and unity for all Americans — even for the ones who hate and fear him.

I appreciate that the Trump and RFK Jr teams are working hard making hires and crafting policies. But in the media vacuum since President Trump was last onstage, enemies of the new American Alignment, including China, are hard at work — churning out, often with the amplification assistance of AI and Chinese-owned TikTok, those insta-protests, as well as “white supremacy” messaging, end-of-democracy messaging, online threats, and video after video of young women’s grief and distress.

The goal of President Trump’s enemies, foreign and domestic, via propaganda and protests, is to whip half the country up into a state of such amygdala-driven fear and rage that they can no longer reason; and so they will accept any crackdown on the peaceful transition to power.

So President Trump and his team need to pre-empt this messaging by getting a powerful message out front that derails it.

Here are my bullet points about how to do that.

1/ Surrogates, shut up and stop your online gloating. The Trump Campaign belatedly got their MAGA surrogates online and in independent media, to stick to disciplined messaging and talking points. The need for this discipline has not ended just because Trump won.

Just because MAGA had a Presidential win, it does not mean that this is the time to let the right’s impulsive, less-mature beasts out of their cages; to the contrary. The time to stick to strict message discipline is today, tomorrow, and for the next four years.

Victory does not mean license — it means even greater discipline, unless you want it all to go to hell.

The opposition wants MAGA surrogates and influencers to sound crude, uneducated, aggressive, misogynist, racist and lacking in empathy. Don’t take the bait.

So: stop making fun of liberal women crying in videos online.

I know, in the conservative media bubble, that you all think these videos and “over-reactions” are ridiculous. But never waste time mocking your opponents, especially in defeat. Learn from their fears and then respect and address their fears.

Women are really scared. Young women are really scared. They have been told they may die in botched back alley abortions now. This is not a trivial fear — it is existential. Others demographic groups fear a racist or Christian Nationalist tyranny.

You all may think those fears are nonsensical, but that would be a mistake.

President Trump and his primary allies —- RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, Nicole Shanahan — the women on his team especially — need to be out front every single day with speeches that repeat talking points that allay these fears. Every day they need to give speeches that repeat talking points about peace, equality, unity, inclusiveness, and respect for women. The Unity Movement. The Big Tent. All Americans are welcome and valued in this new golden age about to emerge. All Americans’ rights are to be respected.

Freedom of conscience.

Religious freedom.

Freedom to worship.

President Trump especially needs to give a speech that addresses those voters who feared him most, and who fear and hate him now. He needs to speak compassionately and empathically to them and to their families, saying that he intends to be a President for all Americans, whether they voted for him or not, and whether they agree with him or not.

He must say that he intends to raise the incomes and boost the safety of the families of all Americans, whether they fear and hate him right now or not, whether they voted for him or not.

He must say that he intends to protect the Constitutional rights and liberties of all Americans, whether they fear and hate him now or not, whether they voted for him etc. (Repetition is key to getting talking points to break through to voters and bypass media filters).

He and his team need to say openly and often that they intend to love and welcome and cherish all Americans, of whatever race, creed or color, whatever religion, whatever their families look like (yes please) and whatever their political beliefs. He needs to take back from the Left their buzzwords of “respect” “rights” and even “inclusion.” He needs to talk about “equality” so people forget the false appeal of the Communist term “equity.”

President Trump needs to reclaim for himself the Left’s attack terms. So he should pepper his speeches with restating his “empathy” for all Americans and his “compassion” for all Americans, agree with him or not, etc.

It has never been more important to lay to rest the cheap shots and the straw man caricatures of the opposition.

2/ Appointments have to be accompanied by PR releases and talking points and a round of interviews, and still photos and video clips. Tell the story.

The calls I am getting from liberal friends and family members center, as I warned they would, on abortion rights and on the environment.

President Trump and RFK Jr made an incredibly important appointment: sustainable farmer Joel Salatin, who is a darling of liberal media as well as a hero to many, in a USDA position.

Let us use this case as an example of what to quickly fix.

This appointment is huge, but when you google “Joel Salatin” without “Trump administration”, nothing comes up about this major news. Successful Presidential leadership is not just about achievements, as noted above, but also about telling America about the achievement and, even more importantly, about what it means. Without my liberal mom in Oregon (always my touchpoint for an informed, thoughtful liberal) being told by a Trump or RFK Jr speech about this appointment and farm policy, without a round of interviews with Salatin (on message, with talking points), and without a clear press release sent to media in advance of the interviews so that coverage stays on message, my mom is not going to know that this action represents a huge win for America’s environment.

Without any document — on the website, sent to reporters, presented by the transition’s or campaign’s press person (who is that?) explaining that this is not an isolated hire but part of a well-thought-out MAGA/MAHA environmental agenda, the hire comes and goes, and is lost to the media flooding that would rather cover protests against “white supremacy” in city streets, and videos of crying young women.

Now take that example and multiply it for every task the Trump team is undertaking. The teams need to message about a White House that supports racial and ethnic respect and unity. They need to message about respecting and boosting the lives of women — a slate of policies aimed at making women’s lives easier can do this: policies making sure parents can stay home with kids more easily; policies to showcase women entrepreneurs and small business owners and women in the military; speeches that showcase support for girls’ sports and that shine a light on teen girls’ achievements in science, tech and so on.

A set of events and policies aimed at young people needs to take place.

A set of events that welcomes rabbis, Jewish leaders, Imams, Muslim leaders, etc, to Mar a Lago, have to take place, even if these are brief photo ops. You get it.

All this positive messaging of a thematic agenda — rather than piecemeal announcements — will drown out the drumbeat of fears of a dead environment; a closed democracy; a racist regime; a Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale level of misogyny; as are all being forecast in a Trump presidency.

Read the Whole Article

The post What Team Trump Must Do Now appeared first on LewRockwell.

If you thought Kamala Harris was a sure win in 2024, then you haven’t been paying attention to the epic shift in the cultural zeitgeist over the past few years. The thing that bothers me most about political and social analysis is dealing with people who foolishly assume nothing ever changes. Things change all the time. People can and do learn from the past. Nothing is hopeless, and nihilists are lazy and incompetent.

For example, since 2020 within liberty movement circles there has been a contingent of naysayers claiming that red states were being subversively “turned blue” by leftists relocating during the pandemic. My argument was that this was an idiotic take.

Yes, there were mass relocations across the US but all the data showed the vast majority of these people were conservatives seeking to escape blue state tyranny. I can’t tell you how many “experts” tried to argue with me that Texas, Florida, Idaho, and even my state of Montana were all going to be overrun by progressives. In the aftermath of the election I was once again proven right and they were utterly wrong.

Florida was an absolute landslide for conservatives. It wasn’t even close and I doubt that state will ever come close to being blue again. The same happened with Texas, Idaho, Montana, etc. There was no blue wave. It didn’t exist. It was actually a red wave.

As I noted in my recent article ‘Losing Power? The Elites And The Leftist Mob Would Rather Burn It All To the Ground’, a Trump victory was inevitable along with a conservative mandate. The sea change in American society was evident. That’s why leftists and globalists will continue to use mob actions, economic disaster and geopolitical crisis to burn America to the ground. They know their time is quickly running out and if they can’t control the country, they’ll try to torch it.

Regardless of what you might think of the candidates or the election in general, the fact of the matter is this election was a RESOUNDING rejection by Americans of the woke ideology and the political left. Trump won in a landslide, not just in the electoral college but also the popular vote, and Trump ran on an anti-woke and anti-globalist platform. The public has spoken.

The Democrats embraced woke cultism, they embraced globalist authoritarianism and now they’ve paid the price. Kamala Harris’ embarrassing defeat is the ultimate expression of “Get woke, go broke”. It’s undeniable – No one likes the progressive left. No one likes their race grifting, no one likes their gay and trans grifting, no one likes their targeting of children for indoctrination, no one likes their censorship agenda, no one likes their open borders, no one likes their lying and no one likes their elitism.

Their movement is dead in the water and a lot of them are bewildered as to what happened.  I’m here to explain some of the biggest reasons why they are universally despised…

The Covid Coup

Americans are pissed about the Democrat/globalist attempt to establish a medical tyranny and they aren’t going to forget what happened. Only a couple years ago Democrats and leftist governments around the world were talking about vaccine passports designed to force conservatives to take the experimental vaccine (and the boosters forever).

They were trying to legislate the creation of covid camps for people who refused to comply. They wanted to fine people, lock them up, keep them under house arrest and even take their children away. They shut down the economy, ordered people to wear useless masks, told people to stay six feet apart and they closed down outdoor recreation. They violated every fundamental of viral science in an insane effort to dominate the world.

To this day there are still leftists that wear the masks as a symbol of their fealty to the covid dictatorship. The problem was, they greatly underestimated public resistance to their agenda and it failed. Now, they face a reckoning for their power mongering.

January 6th Propaganda And The Rewriting Of History

Mass conservative protests are pretty rare. We tend to endure quietly and wait for reason to win the day. Violence is not usually in the cards until we are pushed to the brink. This is exactly what happened on January 6th.

Video evidence shows capitol police fired rubber bullets and tear gas grenades into a peaceful and unarmed crowd of protesters. This attack led directly to the crowd fighting back and eventually raiding the building itself. Then, the police ultimately opened the doors to the building and let people wander in. Those protesters walked around for a couple hours and then left on their own. That’s not what an “insurrection” looks like.

Afterwards, Democrats cherry picked limited footage from the event and claimed it was an “attack on democracy” akin to treason. They lied incessantly and staged the narrative that conservatives were domestic terrorists bent on installing Trump as a totalitarian leader. Americans have seen through this nonsense and the election shows it.

Economic Denial

The Biden Admin spent the better part of the last four years trying to deny the reality of stagflation. They have also denied that the economy continues to decline, asserting that the country is in “recovery”, that the jobs market is improving and that inflation is going down.

None of this was true. Inflation is cumulative and just because CPI goes down does not mean prices are going down. Americans are still paying 30% to 50% more on most necessities compared to 2019. On top of that, nation debt and consumer debt have skyrocketed to dangerous levels. One could debate who is ultimately to blame for this (the central banks and establishment elites are to blame), but this doesn’t change the fact that the Democrats tried to hide the threat from the public.

Sexualization And “Transing” Of Children

Leave the kids alone. It was a simple warning from conservatives and leftists refused to listen. Now, they’re going to pay dearly. The woke movement to push trans ideology in public schools is perhaps the most evil scheme our civilization has ever encountered. Gender fluidity is a non-science, a fantasy with no basis in fact. There are only two genders. Period. Pushing confusing gender identity politics on vulnerable kids, often without parent’s knowledge, is monstrous.

The end game of this plan is the chemical sterilization and even physical castration of America’s youth and the majority of Democrats support it. For this alone they should be booted from the country for the rest of their lives.

Beyond the politics, there is also the issue of child sexualization. Democrat politicians have consistently pushed for more degeneracy in public education environments, with sexually explicit content made available even in elementary schools. This is child grooming, plain and simple, and most Americans know exactly where it leads.

Mass Censorship And Government Collusion With Big Tech

The Biden/Harris Administration has been thoroughly busted, first by the exposure of the Twitter Files and then by Big Tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg. It is a fact – The federal government worked directly with legacy media and social media conglomerates to silence public dissent.

They censored contrary data on covid, on the vaccines, on the lockdowns, on the masks, on the mandates. They censored political stories that were harmful to the Democrats like the Hunter Biden Laptop story. They shut down entire YouTube channels and Twitter accounts, destroying people’s access to public discourse as well as their livelihoods. All of this was in absolute violation of the Bill of Rights and the 1st Amendment.

They need to be punished for this, and that’s why so many Americans voted to give Trump a mandate. They want him to deal out retribution on the matter so that it never happens again.

Race Grifting And Calling Latinos “Latinx”

Democrats and woke activists treat minorities as if they are property of the political party. They try to keep minorities firmly chained to the progressive plantation by telling them they are “victims” that need the help of the DNC in order to get “justice.” Clearly, minorities are getting tired of being treated like they’re stupid.

One big factor that I think really crippled Democrats in the election is the woke attempt to “de-gender” the Spanish language by calling Latinos “Latinx”. The Dems went full retard here and it really hurt them. Hispanics voted in record numbers for Donald Trump, and he also doubled his votes among blacks.

I have a message to white liberal women in particular: Minorities don’t need your help, your protection or your pity. Please shut your mouths, shut your legs, go back to your cats and your pointless office jobs and leave them be.

Open Borders And The Great Replacement

The Great Replacement has been falsely portrayed by the corporate media as a “racist” theory, but race has nothing to do with it. The replacement issue is about culture, not skin color.

There is an obvious effort on the part of the progressive establishment to flood the US with third world migrants, thereby erasing the cultural heritage of the west and diluting it with people that have no understanding of individual liberties or responsibilities.

They have offered illegal migrants a host of subsidies and incentives to get them to come to America and they intend to offer these same people amnesty, using American tax dollars to buy off a permanent block of Democrat voters. This would give the leftists a voting majority for generations to come.

It’s not just white Americans that see what’s happening; legal citizens who are Hispanic understand the game as well. Black communities in the US also always suffer when mass immigration takes place and they can read the writing on the wall. No one wants this, which is why the border issue was the top voter concern in every election survey, right next to the economy.

Leftist Arrogance

Progressives have long operated on the fallacy that they are “more educated” than conservatives and are thus smarter and more qualified to dictate the terms of our society. The reality is, most leftists are dumb as stumps.

They live in their own echo chambers on social media. They live in the masturbatory halls of woke academia. They live in dwindling cities controlled by Democrat governments and rarely leave the comfort of their apartments, their dog parks and their coffee shops. They think they are worldly but they know nothing of the world because they never go outside of their ideological bubble. They don’t have the courage to do that.

The reality is, a college degree is a wooden spoon (an award for last place) rather than a legitimate accomplishment these days. Unless a student enters a STEM field they are unlikely to come out of a university with anything of value. These places are indoctrination centers, not pillars of higher learning.

The Inability To Accept Responsibility

Leftists are inherent losers and mentally weak. They were the kids that were babied most of their lives. They were the kids that struggled most with meritocracy in school. They’re the kids that participation trophies were invented for. They have long relied on emotional outbursts rather than effort to get what they want. Instead of improving themselves and striving for something better, they cry victim when they can’t compete.

I never met a leftist in my life that was good at taking responsibility for their own failures. Their narcissism and obsession with personal identity has been exposed. Their fake concern for victim status groups no longer convinces anyone. They desperately want to be the main character in some grand heroic drama that the rest of us applaud, but this is not going to happen.

The best the woke mob can hope for is to return to a life of obscurity where they belong. The more they try to become the center of attention the worse things get for them. Their best bet is to stop trying to rule the world and thank their lucky stars they get to continue living in this country.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post Woke Bloodbath: Leftist Movements Are Paying the Price for Their Arrogance appeared first on LewRockwell.

The 2024 election is over, and in some states, big majorities voted for the winner Donald Trump. In Wyoming, Trump won 72 percent of the vote. In fact, more than 60 percent of the voting population went for Trump in 13 states.

Fortunately for the majorities in those states, they’ll get the president they voted for.

However, the outcome would have been different if fewer than a million people—in a nation of 330 million—had changed their votes in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan. Then, Kamala Harris would now be the president-elect.

She would have won even though the voters of more than a dozen states had lopsided majorities in favor of Trump.

Moreover, Kamala could have won even though there was far less enthusiasm on her side. That is, only a single state, Massachusetts, had a voting majority of more than 60 percent for Kamala Harris.

Even If You Win, You Lose

We could come up with many similar examples in the past 24 years. In 2012, for example, Mitt Romney won 60 percent or more of the vote in nine states. 72 percent of the voters went for Romney in Utah. But, in the end, those supermajorities meant nothing, and the people of Utah, Oklahoma, Alabama, and several others—who had voted nearly 2 to 1 for Romney—got Barack Obama as president. In 2020, by the way, more than 60 percent of the voters in ten states voted against Joe Biden.

These facts should be remembered the next time that some pundit or politician tries to tell us that democracy is “the voice of the people” or “the will of the majority.” The question that has to be asked is “which majority?” and “which people?”

Indeed, for the people of Utah in 2012 or Massachusetts in 2024, the president that rules over those states was chosen by people who don’t live in those states. Even if 100 percent of the voters in a state vote against a certain candidate, they could still end up with that candidate as president based on the votes of people living somewhere else. Moreover, given that many states don’t have voter ID, it stands to reason that even if a large majority of your state votes for a certain candidate, foreign nationals in some other state may ultimately make the decision for you.

It’s difficult to see how such a method expresses “the will of the majority” when a tiny majority or plurality nationwide so often nullifies overwhelming majorities in a multitude of US states.

On a legalistic level, of course, the courts tell us this is all how it is supposed to be. In presidential elections, it simply doesn’t matter what your local majority says. The only majority that matters is the national majority. This is true even if we take into account the electoral college, which is nothing more than a formula for weighting the national majority vote.

It bears noticing, however, that these national majorities are often not even majorities. In 1992 and 1996, for example, Bill Clinton won the race with 43 percent and 49 percent, respectively. And, when a candidate does manage to win a majority, it is usually very slim. Not since 1988 has any presidential candidate managed to get even 53 percent of the popular vote. The closest anyone got was Obama in 2008. Most presidential races since 1948 have been decided by a majority of 51 percent or less.

The Rules Are Broken in the Age of the Modern Unlimited Presidency

In spite of all this, those who can’t think beyond the status quo—both leftists and conservatives—will simply say “rules are rules.” They’ll go on to insist that we must blindly follow the rules no matter what.

In truth, however, these “rules” were not ratified by any living person, and they were created in an age when the US president exercised very few domestic powers. In the early nineteenth century, presidents could do virtually nothing domestically without Congressional approval, and even those powers were few. Nowadays, however, presidents exercise vast power within the borders of every single US state.

Yet, the current system is based on the idea that even if whole regions of the country vote overwhelmingly against a president, they are still forced to submit to four years of that president’s rule-by-decree, which is what every presidency now is in our post-legislative age of Rule by Executive Order.

Yes, this system is based on “the rules,” but in the world of politics, rules only work until they don’t. Ask the British in 1776 or the Soviets in 1989.

You’re Never Allowed to Leave

The absurdity and injustice of this system is further illustrated by the fact that no matter how much your state’s majority might object to the federal president or his policies, no state or part of a state is allowed to exit the system. Ever.

If a two-thirds majority in your state votes against the federal administration again and again, well, that’s too bad, you’re never allowed to leave. You’ll just have to sit back and take whatever the executive branch decides to dish out. But, hey, you always have your small handful of members of Congress to make little speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives. None of this will ever do anything to protect your state’s population from federal policies—no matter how contrary these might be to your local economic interests and institutions. But, “rules are rules.”

No private non-state organization would ever function in such a fashion. Imagine telling the owners of a public company that no matter how much the management behaves contrary to various investors’ wishes, those investors are never allowed to sell their shares and leave the organization. Imagine telling members of any dues-paying organization that no matter how much the leaders screw over the members, they are never allowed to stop paying dues.

Yet, this is how the “rules” work in America. No matter how much the central government might ignore, abuse, and generally govern against the majority of the voters in your state, you are never allowed to leave. You are never allowed to stop paying taxes to support the very people who couldn’t care less about what you think.

The only way out requires that we stop caring what the rules say. The answer lies in decentralization, secession, and the dismantling of the political system that allowed Obama and Joe Biden to shove their policies down the throats of supermajorities that voted against these presidents again and again. The re-election of Donald Trump does not fundamentally change any of this. Even if Trump were to turn out to be some kind of anti-establishment dream candidate in his second term, the 2028 election is just a few years away.

On the other hand, to accept the status quo is to continue allowing federal technocrats a thousand miles away to literally dictate federal policies to your community.

Unfortunately, like prisoners suffering from Stockholm syndrome, many will elect to continue supporting the central regime because the “rules-are-rules” propaganda has worked very well.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The post National Elections Expose the Sham That Is Centralized “Democracy” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Well, we finally have an American back in the White House. The night after Trump was declared the winner,  I had a fantasy dream about his first day in office.

Trump pardoned Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, and appointed Assange to head the FCC and Snowden to head the NSA.  

Derek Chauvin and the police officers who were falsely indicted and falsely convicted by a corrupt judge and prosecutor who withheld from the trial and jury evidence proving their innocence were pardoned and awarded $25 million each in compensation for their wrongful conviction in one of the worst failures of justice in history.  See:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ffv4IUxkDU  and  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFPi3EigjFA 

The media monopolies were broken up for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and for violating the fairness doctrine and weaponizing the air waves for political purposes. The NSA was cleaned up and stopped from warrantless spying on US citizens and violation of their privacy by storing their emails, credit card and internet activities.

All the attorneys who were falsely accused and some convicted of interfering with an election by reporting documented instances of Democrat election fraud were pardoned.  All victims of the corrupt and politicized Biden Justice (sic) department, such as the Americans who were sent to prison by the corrupt Merrick Garland for exercising their First Amendment rights, were pardoned and awarded $10 million each in compensation. The entire Biden Justice (sic) Department was arrested and indicted for violating their oath of office to protect the Constitution of the United States.  The corrupt Democrat judges and Democrat prosecutors were sanctioned and removed from office for weaponizing law to serve their political party.

Former CIA director John Brennon was arrested and indicted, along with FBI director Christopher Wray for high treason for trying to frame the President of the United States.  

Trump’s FDA director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cleared Big Pharma’s operatives out of the FDA, CDC, and NIH and had criminal investigations launched of Big Pharma and Big Food’s poisoning of the American population and influence over university medical and nutritional curriculums.

At the Office of Management and Budget Elon Musk cut $2.5 trillion out of the annual US budget.  Hundreds of US overseas bases were closed, and entire federal agencies and departments disappeared.  

Tariffs were imposed on the offshored production of US corporations, forcing them to return American jobs to America.

At the Pentagon recruitment and promotion were again merit-based.  All race- and gender-based promotions ceased.

The new Justice Department ruled that all “affirmative action” programs, all race and gender privileges are banned for being illegal under the 1964 Civil Rights Act and in violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. 

State and local Democrat officials were compelled to stop their practice of imperiling public safety in the interest of preventing the stigmatization of non-white criminals.

A ban was put on the ability of interest groups to purchase government with campaign contributions.  A war was declared on lobbying in an effort to move public policies toward service to the public’s interest in place of profits to interest groups.

The Department of Education and all federal aid to education was terminated. 

As I began my second cup of coffee, an unsettling realization displaced remembrance of my delightful dream that truth and justice would be restored to America. Long before such a restoration project could get underway Trump and his effective appointees would be assassinated. The evil Democrats and ruling elite and their government and private institutions are still in place.  So are their politicized federal judges who regard the Constitution as a barrier to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  The school boards overseeing the teaching of white kids that they and their parents are racists are still there. The feminists are still in place turning white women against white men. The lie machine posing as a media is still in place. The corrupt and power-crazed federal agencies remain in place.  A demoralized military officered by DEI incompetents is there to be called out against insurrectionist Trump.  

The election of Trump is just the beginning of an insurrection against the anti-American forces that have been successfully assaulting our country for years.  Trump without an army in place is confronted by evil with its army in place.  As determined as Trump is, his chances are far from certain.  If MAGA Americans think that the war is over with Trump’s election, they will be defeated by the institutionalized existing powers that be.  Everything depends on Trump’s appointments.  All it takes is a bad appointment of a weak man as Attorney General and the Trump insurrection is finished.

The insurrection that Trump is leading is an existential threat to the existing evil order. The ruling establishment will most certainly not fold up its tents.  Already we can see the ruling elite moving to gain Trump’s confidence in George W. Bush’s congratulations to Trump on his victory.  Many will be congratulatory and Trump carried away by his success can get the knife in the back.  Trump actually thinks that Dick Cheney was for him but obliged his insane daughter by supporting Kamala. Other Trump opponents will start offensives against Trump on non-negotiable issues.  The media will try to define the pressing problems and in that way derail Trump’s agenda.

Trump is old in years but not in spirit and stressed by eight years of persecution.  That stress is about to intensify.

The post Trump’s First Day in Office appeared first on LewRockwell.

As I’ve said many times, when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, I stopped making any more political predictions. I would have bet every penny of my modest net worth that the Queen of the Swamp would be rewarded for her years of loyal criminal service. A lifetime achievement if ever there was one.

This photo reveals a smiling Melania Trump. We’ve been told that she is unhappy with her energetic but elderly husband. Persistent rumors of divorce. Maybe she misses being First Lady, even with all the unfairly negative press. Barron Trump is shown towering over his 6 foot 3 inch father. He is almost certainly taller than his last reported height of 6 foot 7. Maybe he can play in the NBA. If LeBron James can force the league to play his eminently unqualified son, why not Trump? Barron’s a lot taller than Bronny James, and may well be a better basketball player. But he is White. Trump is possibly the first U.S. president who actually looks better eight years after he first took office. The office is known to rapidly age its occupants. But not Trumpenstein. He’s lost weight, and still has that orange glow. His hair has changed in some indeterminate way, but seems to look a little more natural. He looks fit for the job.

I expected a close race. Nip and tuck. Down to the wire. Fantastic finish. And lots of controversy. I thought that, regardless of what happened, millions of Americans would be outraged and distrust the results. There were many early indications that 2024 would just as openly rigged as 2020 was. I saw lots of videos of citizens reporting on the shenanigans they’d witnessed. One guy said they made him vote from his car, brought the machine out to him, and pushed the buttons for him. Democracy in action. There were inexplicable power outages, including at least one scheduled power outage. At a polling place. On Election Day. As always, the marvelous electronic voting machines were breaking down. The clowns in charge of the polling places somehow ran out of basic supplies. One judge-never identified, and certain never to be reprimanded- didn’t show up as scheduled to one polling place, and because of this untold numbers of people were forced to wait hours before rocking the vote.

With all the hints from the likes of The New York Times, which informed us that taking days or even weeks to count the votes was not an indication of fraud, I expected it to be days before we found out which candidate had been installed. I waited for the counting to stop, as it did in 2020, for no logical reason. As a certified oldster, I’ve been around for a lot of elections. Except for 2000, where the delay involved a dispute in one Florida county, Americans have always known who the next president will be either late on election night, or by the next morning at worst. So they really fooled me. Trump dominated the vote almost everywhere. Even where he lost, his totals were higher than they were in 2020 (and 2016). And he even won the popular vote, the first Republican to do so since 1988. I didn’t think it was possible for any Republican to win the popular vote in the diverse and crumbling America 2.0.

So I prepared for some must see TV. I figured that there would be lots of screaming, weeping and gnashing of teeth. Perhaps an on-air suicide or homicide. Rachel Maddow? Joy Reid? The lovely ladies on The View? There had to be a lot of entertainment there. But instead, the response was shockingly muted. I think the breadth of Trump’s genuine landslide just knocked the wind out of them. They all appeared to be in shock, as if they’d received definitive proof that they would one day be judged by the Almighty they don’t believe in. I didn’t want somber. I wanted insane outrage. Pussy hat/transgender level madness. But I just haven’t seen it. Sunny Hostin tried her best, attributing the results to White America, and now Black and Hispanic men, not wanting a Woman of Color to lead them. But it wasn’t convincing. Her heart wasn’t in it. She’s played the race card louder and more irrationally many times before.

On Tik Tok, things were far more entertaining. A prevailing theme from young deranged White women was that Trump’s victory somehow triggered a general sex strike. No copulation for you! A few bitterly claimed that if men thought this meant that they would now want to get married and have babies, they were sorely mistaken. We’ll show you, Trump! Just try to make us have children! I’m sure this sex strike doesn’t apply to all the other invented “genders.” Just “transition” and you can have some kind of sex. With someone. It just won’t result in any pregnancy. Somehow, I don’t see all this resulting in a new day for Incels. I think you’ll be seeing more and more young men “going their own way.” Too many young women have lost their minds. Even if they’re not overweight, tattooed, or green haired, they can be dangerous. Remember, tigers are beautiful creatures. Just don’t sleep with them.

Since all the indications were there that the same chicanery we saw in 2020 was being planned again, only for Trump instead to win a resounding victory, what does this mean? Did Lara Trump really make that big a difference? Republicans claimed that a lot of money was spent on preventing the same kinds of fraud which took place in 2020. I’m never one to accept pat, mainstream explanations, but perhaps there is something to that. Alex Jones claimed that they stopped potential fraud in many places. This assumes, of course, that the elite wanted to stop Trump. And failed. If the elite failed, this was the first time in history that they have. Trump still goes on trial again very soon. Or sentencing. Or something. I just don’t pay much attention to the ridiculous lawfare against him. So it’s still possible that my facetious prediction about him serving as president from Ryker’s Island could come true. Live from Cell Block D!

However you look at it, the math on the number of votes just doesn’t add up. They had us going early on, when counties in Michigan and Pennsylvania featured more votes cast than registered voters. This particular mathematical impossibility was first born during the wonderful Obama years. We are told that both Harris and Trump received fewer votes than Biden and Trump did in 2020. So you had a “record” turnout, but fewer voters. Common Core math. Population increase. Untold numbers of illegals voting. And yet the number of votes went down. It’s a “democracy” thing, you wouldn’t understand. As a mere community college dropout, it’s all beyond my pay grade. I’ll leave it to the “experts” and “fact checkers” to explain. Not that they ever will. Just click your heels three times and display your “I Voted” sticker.

There have been a few reluctant admissions from some on the Left that perhaps pushing the “Woke” envelope so hard wasn’t such a brilliant political strategy. No matter how many vapid celebrities endorse it, you’re never going to get millions of Americans to accept the LGBTQ+ agenda. They know men can’t have babies, and that biological women should have babies. Propaganda otherwise is contrary to human nature. So the millions of unhappy “Woke” fanatics, stricken with severe TDS, are bound to become even unhappier. More committed to “reproductive rights,” which essentially means the right to abortion as birth control. This is the most important issue to unknown numbers of women who are too old to have another chance at abortion. This issue may finish off sexual relations between young male and female cisgenders, if the response from Tik Tok is any indication. At least for Whites.

When Trump was shot at in Butler, Pennsylvania, if was shot at, and then allegedly the victim of yet another aborted assassination attempt, it looked as if perhaps they were setting the stage for Trumpenstein Part 2. But then they threw us a curve ball, by having him supposedly fall in their unreliable polls. The iconic Iwo Jima photo didn’t increase his support? The media droned on incessantly about how his campaign was in disarray. He was supposedly entering the Biden dementia zone. He talked about Arnold Palmer’s penis for no discernable reason. And then, in a video clip taken out of context, appeared to simulate oral sex onstage. He was actually complaining about his microphone, if you haven’t seen the uncut video. Still a ridiculous gesture, and probably meant as a jab at Countess Cackula’s rise from obscurity. And Harris, of course, was undeniably one of the worst political candidates of all time.

So what are we to think of all this? This totally unanticipated Trump landslide? Did he really make so much progress in attracting Black male and Hispanic male voters? Sure, some of them might have related to his famous mug shot, but was it the sanitation worker outfit that put him over? However you look at Trump, that was a brilliant political move. Joe Biden calls his supporters “garbage,” and Trumpenstein rides in a trash truck, and then wears their uniform on stage at a rally. I’m sure that alone caused at least some sanitation workers to vote for him. Back in the day, when I was a lowly Senior Material Handler at a hospital, I might have considered voting for a candidate that donned the blue uniform of the Material Handling department. And say what you want, but Trump displayed extraordinary energy and stamina for a 78 year old. By contrast, Countess Cackula was listless and comparatively inactive.

Read the Whole Article

The post Mr. Trumpenstein Returns to Washington appeared first on LewRockwell.

Mark lives in modest accommodations. He has a modest job. In his spare time he prepares for his next studio album. He is an accomplished musician.

The building he lives in is on an alley. It is the only building with its front entrance on that alley. Mark cares for the alley as he cares for his own space.

Mark lives in a rough part of downtown San Francisco, in the worst of the worst neighborhoods one could want to exist in. But his humble home, the adjacent alley, and a little bit of the space around is notably watched over by a grown man with a sense of responsibility over the territory in which he lives.

Mark’s presence can be felt. The presence of a responsible man can be felt. There is little that can replace that willingness of a person to just be responsible, even responsible for that which he did not cause.

In the month or two before a public announcement was made by the White House — as it slowly became known in political circles that Kamala Harris would likely be at the top of the Democrat ticket — more effort began to go into making sure San Francisco looked like it was on the mend.

The considerable homeless problem, crime problem, and drug problem that has been allowed to take place in the open, directly in front of police officers suddenly started to be dealt with. The shift could be felt. Until approximately November 15, 2024, until a week or two after the November 5 election, I expect that there will be a mighty continuation of that shift.

In the run-up to the last election in 2022, there was a small shift. This one is more noticeable. During the November 2023 visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, there was a major and sudden shift — all the homeless were cleared out of the downtown area, making the city look as if it were a model example of what a city should look like.

Within a few weeks following the departure of Xi Jinping, the city looked just as rough and tumble as it normally had over the past decade.

It was all for show.

This current show is partly meant to make sure that no one can look at Kamala, the top cop from San Francisco and California, and say “Look at San Francisco, this is where her broke policies lead.” Well, the truth is, this is where their broke policies lead.

In 2000, a corrupt Texas politician and his team were allowed into the White House. He brought his garbage ideas with him. Sure he spoke a good conservative and Christian game, but he gave America two plus decades of forever wars. The most awful terrorist attack on American soil took place on his watch, and that attack has to date never been properly investigated or explained. He was neither conservative nor did he govern by the Bible. He ushered in a police state unlike anything Americans have known since the internecine conflicts of the 1860s, only so much more total in scope. In 2008, a corrupt Chicago politician entered the White House. He ushered in all-out warfare on the American people in a way that has never existed. In late 2019, he and many others were so bold as to orchestrate a coup on the elected president, that resulted in the elected president’s ouster from office. The 2020 election was stolen and much of the establishment apparatus of all political stripes cooperated or remained silent in the face of that stolen election and coup. They ushered in a puppet regime, which proved a near-immediate failure to the American people. In all but the most gentle of ways, the establishment apparatus of all parties remained silent. Many remained silent, even those who were not part of the establishment. In their immediate circles of influence, no matter how large or how humble those circles were, many Americans said nothing.

We each have circles of influence — big and small.

It has been a pretty special two decades to be alive. It has been a pretty special two decades to watch. Many who know what is happening in their midst only watch. They do not do. They only watch. Shame on you. Who exactly did you think would pull your home, your family, your community, and ultimately your nation out of this mess if not you? You already know you are the most politically and socially aware person of many hundreds or even thousands around you. You already know you see things that many others miss.

Do we not already know that to whom much is given, much is expected?

Stop sitting around and asking yourself “Why don’t the others get it?” The others just don’t get it. Accept that. Move on. Quit spinning your wheels on such a nonsensical question as “Why?”

Move beyond that.

“Why?” truly can be the most self-debilitating question that exists. There are circumstances in which “Why?” is appropriate and there are circumstances in which “Why?” is one of your greatest enemies. The latter is more common.

Just like any tool, the question “Why?” can be used for its proper purposes, or it can be abused. To use the beautiful gift of “Why?” as a stumbling block that leaves you stultified for some two decades, is, dare I say, a terrible abuse of the English language. It is also terrible self-abuse. And it is abrogation of duty.

Were these not such desperate times, I might not be troubled by your abrogation of duty.

But, my friend, these are desperate times, and though we may never have talked before, I know you all too well. You are part of “the silent majority.” You are part of the do-nothing group who sees much. You are one of the mockers who laugh at the stupidity of a home, a family, a community, even a nation who he was called to lead.

Yet, I know exactly what your daily schedule looks like: 16-18 hours of self-abuse and abrogation of duty followed by some sleep, repeated every day for some decades.

You are one who possesses discernment in an era in which so many are blind and in which so many lead everything astray. Why do they lead everything astray? Because they are blind. Can the blind not walk? Yes, they can if they know the way. All they need is someone to show them.

Who would that person be? Who is the one who could show the blind the way?

It is the one who spends 16-18 hours a day on self-abuse and abrogation of duty, followed by some sleep, too busy, too disinterested in developing his voice, too disinterested in making his voice matter, and too disinterested in showing them the way.

Shame on you.

Shame on you for the ways that you have let your home, your family, your community, even your nation get to where it is today.

Shame on you.

Have you really done all you can?

That is a question between you and your Maker. It is not a question between you and me.

Have you done all that you can?

If you have not done all that you can, perhaps some repentance is in order this very day.  Repentance is the act of turning away from a bad way you have travelled, and turning onto a right path. That sincere acknowledgment, that turning away from ways that you have missed the mark, that sincere acknowledgment can echo through one’s life and can produce much good fruit.

Mark, who lives in the very worst, most abject community west of the Mississippi River, tends his alley. He does not own it. He does not get paid for it. No one will ever thank him for his efforts. In fact, people are more likely to get after him for trying than they are to thank him.

The latest orders of Governor Gavin Newsom and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and other political insiders are to superficially clean the streets of San Francisco for the next few months until the November election is settled in favor of the hometown girl, who will then bring the unlimited budget of the Federal Reserve Bank into the coffers of the most connected in San Francisco.

Well, that is happening, and Mark’s alley is one of the places where the displaced homeless and drug addicts are being pushed to. What does Mark do in response? He pushes back. Every single day and in every single way, he wants his little alley, his little corner of the world in which he lives, his little building, his humble accommodations to be just right. He pays attention. He helps. He knows what is going on around him. He knows who is coming and going. He wants his few blocks of community to be watched over.

Do you know why?

Because Mark has a sense of responsibility. That means taking on extra work for things you did not do. That means taking on extra burden for things that you did not do. That means taking on extra accountability for things that you did not do.

The wrong-doing of others, wrong-doing that they will not fix, for all intents and purposes becomes your wrongdoing, so that you can fix it. You become the fixer of that which you did not break. You take responsibility. Things will not remain broken on your watch. Every time there is graffiti, it will get immediately covered up. If you know you are in that kind of neighborhood you always have the paint ready. Every time the new homeless encampment shows up in your alley, you go and ask them to move, and if they do not, you are on the phone with every police officer you know until something is done. If you live in that kind of place, you have the business cards of lots of police officers ready for a moment like that. You vow to take responsibility, and you vow to be as ready as you can, always willing to grow and to do the uncomfortable in order to make things right.

Dear reader, I do not know exactly how you live or where you live. But I know where Mark lives, and I know what the rest of America is like, because I have travelled it well. In the midst of the worst America has to offer, Mark maintains his alley well. That is partly because Mark has eyes to see the difference between right and wrong. Many do. But Mark does not then engage in 16-18 hours of self-abuse and abrogation of duty each day followed by some sleep. Mark instead takes responsibility, even over that which he did not do, and over that which he did not cause, and yes, even over that which is not his own.

Do you?

Or are you a silent partner to what is happening? Cooperating with the downfall that you claim to be so opposed to?

Your self-righteousness in such a moment is unearned. Just because you see what is wrong does not give you any moral high ground. Absent your willingness to take responsibility for that which you did not do, and for that which is not yours, absent that, absent your willingness to constantly expand the territory and improve the territory over which you take responsibility, absent that, you have little business feeling good about yourself in a time like this. You have little business sitting back and saying what a bad job everyone else is doing, what a bad job A, B, or C group has done driving X, Y, or Z into the ground.

The people with eyes to see but who choose to sit and watch, who grab a bowl of popcorn and watch, who perhaps even laugh, or gawk, or mock, at the destruction of something beautiful — they are no friend of mine.

They are also no friend of humanity.

Part of maturity is taking responsibility for that which you did not cause, and having no complaints about the fact that you were the one who had to stand up and do so. That is just who you need to be if you are to be a mature adult. Your responsibility is needed. Your mocking is not needed. Your laughing is not needed. Your complaining that it was you who had to stand up is not needed.

You’re many ways of doing nothing while saying “Why doesn’t somebody do something?” are not needed. The moment you start to speak that or even to count your contributions and to say that you have done enough — the moment you do that, you are no friend of humanity, but a petty and poorly raised child keeping score in life rather than winning in life.

Be a man. Not just a male.

Be a woman. Not just a female.

Maturity is now required of you, even if childhood used to be what was largely demanded of you — no matter your age.

Be the one who is mature enough to take responsibility over the territory around him, without complaint. Totally without complaint — instead of complaint,with gratitude that you were made for a moment such as this, with gratitude that you get to be the adult in the room. With gratitude that you get to be the one that no one will ever thank, certainly that no one will ever apologize to. The the one who doesn’t concern himself with such things. Instead, you are just grateful that you get to be the one who was capable enough in the moment, wise enough in the moment, willing enough to act in the moment.

Imagine that, being one who walks through life grateful for challenges and responsibilities, rather than doing that which has become the norm among American adults — complaining, avoiding, and mocking.

To he who lives in this upright way, he knows that it is a reward all its own. Accepting responsibility and carrying its burden gratefully through life is a reward all its own. You are not thinking about keeping score when you do so. You are not thinking about what is owed to you, who has done what, settling accounts — all of that petty way of thinking is the farthest thing from your mind.

In fact, you eagerly take on more.

You know the greater your burden, the greater the growth of your muscles. Do you understand what an ingrate you sound like to the rest of us when you complain that your burden is too heavy? Do you understand what an ingrate you sound like to the rest of us when you complain that your life contains too much of that which grows you into someone more mighty and more formidable? Do you understand what you sound like to the rest of us when, even worse, when you refuse the challenge and just sit back and mock?

Get as far away from that way of thinking as possible. This time needs more of you. Or you can just be another of the many nearly-useless adult children that have become the norm of American society.

Do you know why America looks like crap? It is not because there are crappy people. It is because the ones who have the vision to see the problem and to see what must be done, those people have better things to do.

Such are no friend to me.

Such are no friend to humanity.

Such cannot be called a man.

Embrace those burdens. Embrace that responsibility. The way out of this mess begins in your life, and it begins with you doing exactly that.

Godspeed dear friend.

The post The One Man in San Francisco Who Cares appeared first on LewRockwell.

Not since the heady days of George McGovern, whose capture of the Democratic Party in 1972 ended in utter ignominy with the Nixon landslide, have two political parties been as deeply and bitterly divided as they were in this latest election, which ended on a clear if unexpected note of triumph for Donald J. Trump. Breaching the Blue Wall by the early hours of November 6 and then smashing his way to a complete conquest of the popular vote, a free and fair election has thus catapulted him to become the next president of the United States.

What an astonishment it proved to be. My wife and I went to bed the night before glumly aware that only bad news would greet us the following day. But like the little boy in that magical movie who, thanks to a father’s sacrificial love, gets to take the tank home, we nearly died laughing for all the joy we felt on hearing the news.

But even with a clean sweep of the White House, including both Houses of Congress and a Supreme Court firmly committed to the rule of law, will a Trump victory make any real difference in the end if the Democrats refuse to go along with the results?

Won’t it instead confirm their worst fears regarding this most hateful man, who from the very beginning they have assiduously sought to vilify and destroy? Yes, they will certainly have to agree to a peaceful transfer of power, to which end both Kamala and her boss, Joe Biden, have already sent their brief congratulatory messages. But it is one thing to concede the outcome of a contest you failed to win—which Kamala managed, belatedly, to do—and something else again to lay down the weapons with which you have been waging an ongoing war. “I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” she added defiantly.

So, to actually hand over the keys to the Executive Office, to authorize the exercise of real power and authority to someone you’d been regularly referring to as another Hitler, how exactly is that going to work? Especially after having referred to millions of his supporters as no better than garbage.

Oh, yes, and let’s not forget the two failed assassination attempts, not to mention any number of lawfare attempts to lock him up for the rest of his life. “If Democrats and other zealous anti-Trumpers are sincere in their proclaimed conceit that Trump is a fierce, unprecedented threat to American democracy,” wrote Andrew McCarthy on the eve of the election, “then they are going to use every potential legal means at their disposal to deny him the presidency.” Including, he suggested, using the January 6 case alleging a conspiracy to cause an insurrection as grounds for the Congress to disqualify him from ever serving.

Even supposing Trump, fresh from his victory, were feeling magnanimous enough to offer Joe Biden a pardon for his own son, would such a gesture endear him to people determined to put him in a maximum-security prison cell?

The idea seems positively surreal.

So, what exactly can we expect in the wake of Trump’s winning the election? Would the current commander in chief, Joe Biden, be prepared to call out federal troops to ensure an orderly and peaceful transfer of power amid riots and protests aimed at preventing an alleged neo-Nazi from becoming the next president and leader of the Free World? Will that be the profile in courage we’ll be looking for in the weeks following a majority of voters having delivered their verdict declaring Donald Trump the next president? That thanks to Joe Biden’s resolute leadership in a time of national crisis, there will be peace in the land to allow his duly-elected replacement to occupy the office he will thereupon vacate?

Does anyone believe that will actually happen?

Such a long way we have come since 1972! The left wing of the Democratic Party may have gone completely bonkers back then, but at least enough of the rank and file remained sufficiently loyal to the Roosevelt-Kennedy legacy they grew up with and prospered under to prevent the McGovernites from running the entire show, much less the rest of the country, which delivered a 60 percent-plus popular vote majority to the Republicans.

My father, a diehard Democrat for years and years, did not hesitate for a moment to jump ship and cast his lot with Nixon, later becoming one of those numberless Reagan Democrats who never looked back. And to think that despite passage of the 26th amendment allowing 18-to-20-year-old Americans the right to vote, a measure McGovern himself helped midwife, it was simply not enough to get him elected.

Of course, what finally did poor George McGovern in, leaving aside the obvious advantage of Nixon being a successful incumbent, was the fact that, thanks to efforts led by his chief Democratic rival in the primary fight, Hubert Humphrey, he’d been tainted with the charge of being squishy on three hot-button issues most Americans were still very much opposed to: amnesty for draft dodgers; acid for all the dropouts and the druggies; and abortion for anyone who didn’t want to be pregnant.

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The Vatican’s decision to adopt cartoonish, trivialized symbols, such as the blue-haired ‘Luce’ mascot, is a symptom of a disturbing shift within the Church.  The current trend moving the Church away from Her treasury of glorious art to commercialized trinkets is a mere triviality to many, but the history of this move is darker than most realize.

The age-old question of whether life imitates art, or art imitates life essentially asks whether it is the art which impacts society and shapes the culture – and therefore the artist is an agent of change – or whether the artist is merely an agent of expression, reflecting what is already present within the culture.  The partial answer is that it’s a little of both, but what is missing from the equation is that the underlying philosophy of the artist is what drives it all.

The earliest traces of what is today referred to as modern art are firmly rooted in the French Revolution and the so-called Enlightenment, but it didn’t really take off until the late 1800s. Goya’s Romanticism led to Manet’s Impressionism. Van Gogh’s Post-Impressionism led to the avant-garde experimentation of Les Nabis, French painters who transformed the medium and laid the foundation for the abstract symbolism of modern art.

Most of art history is focused on the development of technique or style, but what is often ignored is the actual philosophy of the artists themselves.  One of the early progenitors of modern art, a Romantic artist named Eugene Delacroix, said: “Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.”  As a philosophy of art, it excuses imperfection and imprecision, but as a philosophy of life, it suggests something worse: that one need not seek to express truth and beauty with precision because the impression is good enough, and error is not to be avoided.  While this may seem like a stretch, this notion bears out with each succeeding generation of artists.

James Whistler, the American painter who is best known for painting his mother in a rocking chair, once said “Art happens – no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.”  What he is saying is that art is some kind of spontaneous energy that supersedes intelligence which – in a manner of speaking – possesses the artist and simply creates.  This notion of art not only discourages the intelligibility of an artistic rendering but eliminates the objectivity of the art itself, which should be directed toward Truth.

Paul Cezanne – an avant-garde, post-impressionist painter – was called, “the father of us all” by the Communist Cubist, Pablo Picasso.  Henri Matisse called him “a kind of dear god of painting.”  In speaking of the origin of an artistic piece, Cezanne said, “A work of art which did not begin in emotion, is not art.”  This was a revolutionary idea and a radical shift in the nature of art itself.  No longer an expression of the good, the true, and the beautiful, an artistic rendering must now be found in the expression of an emotion.

This radical shift in art from beauty and truth to emotive experience did not happen in a vacuum.  The heresy of Modernism rose to prominence at the same time.  Pope Pius IX warned about some of its errors, and Pope St. Pius X condemned them.  And after a close and careful examination of these two movements, one discovers that the medium of modern art is nothing more than a carefully crafted expression of the Modernist heresy.  The underlying ideology of Modernism is the notion that religion is something that wells up from within as an experience or a feeling, while the reformed nature of art – as defined by the modern artists – is that art is the expression of an emotion or an experience that wells up from within the artist.

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di Robert Bradley

L'elettricità è uno dei settori più regolamentati dell'economia statunitense. Un secolo di barriere all'ingresso e tariffe dei servizi pubblici non ha fatto altro che far soccombere il settore a tutta una serie di nuovi interventi governativi. L'elettricità all'ingrosso è pianificata centralmente nella maggior parte degli stati, creando un mercato al dettaglio artificiale. Allo stesso tempo le politiche governative hanno sempre più sostituito la generazione termica (gas naturale, petrolio, carbone e nucleare) con energia eolica e solare intermittente, cosa che richiede costosi accumulatori di energia sotto forma di batterie.

Oggi un numero crescente di regioni è soggetto a tariffe elettriche in aumento, appelli per la conservazione e interruzioni del servizio. Il grande blackout del Texas del febbraio 2021 ha causato centinaia di morti per mancanza di riscaldamento e altri servizi, per non parlare di cento miliardi di dollari di danni. La California, che nel 2000-2001 ha subito carenze che hanno portato alla chiusura di aziende e scuole, sopporta tariffe “verdi” che sono il doppio rispetto alla media nazionale. Altri stati e regioni stanno perseguendo linee di politica che preannunciano risultati simili.

La discoordinazione economica può creare disagi, interrompere il servizio e persino uccidere, ma questa minaccia all'elettricità affidabile e conveniente non è il risultato di un fallimento del mercato, bensì di un fallimento dello stato, alimentato anche dagli errori dei cosiddetti esperti fuorviati dal problema della conoscenza e dalla politicizzazione.

Elettricità regolamentata

Per più di un secolo, l'elettricità è stata regolamentata come un “monopolio naturale”. Negli ultimi decenni la rete interconnessa per la distribuzione dell'elettricità (“la rete”) è stata regolamentata come un “bene comune”.[1] Una transizione forzata all'eolico e al solare, guidata da Big Green, ha creato una tempesta perfetta di aumenti dei costi e instabilità del servizio. Questo tsunami statalista implora un'alternativa non governativa.

La teoria del monopolio naturale postula situazioni in cui un'azienda porta all'esaurimento le economie di scala, acquistando concorrenti e raggiungere una posizione dominante al minor costo. La progressione naturale verso il controllo del singolo permette a un'azienda di “sfruttare” i consumatori.

“È riconosciuto che la moltiplicazione dei cavi aerei è un male e un pericolo impellente", scrisse un riformatore nel 1889. “Si può dubitare che sia il colmo della follia continuare lungo questa strada, e che davvero l'unico modo razionale di affidare il servizio elettrico a società costituite sia consentire a una sola società di operare in un distretto e controllare i prezzi con mezzi diversi dalla concorrenza?”[2]

Circa 80 anni dopo l'economista Alfred Kahn descrisse la “prestazione accettabile” per il “monopolio regolamentato” come una situazione in cui c'è bisogno di “barriere all'ingresso, impostazione dei prezzi, prescrizione della qualità e delle condizioni del servizio, e l'imposizione di un obbligo di servire tutti i richiedenti a condizioni ragionevoli”.[3] Il quid pro quo della protezione del franchising per l'azienda in cambio di tariffe massime autorizzate da un'autorità centrale divenne noto come patto di regolamentazione.

La regolamentazione dell'elettricità da parte dei servizi pubblici è stata affiancata negli ultimi decenni da un regime normativo più completo: un mercato energetico all'ingrosso pianificato centralmente e basato sull'accesso aperto obbligatorio (AAO) nella trasmissione, da cui può emergere la “concorrenza” sia nella generazione che nella distribuzione. Per portare l'energia alle case e alle aziende, la regolamentazione interstatale da parte della Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) a metà degli anni '90 è stata affiancata dall'AAO intrastatale a partire dalla California (1996) e dal Texas (1999).[4]

Sotto il cosiddetto retail wheeling, l'utility in franchising ha mantenuto il suo monopolio di trasmissione con tariffe “disaggregate” limitate più un ragionevole ritorno (secondo la regolamentazione dei servizi pubblici). Ma l'utility ha dovuto consentire ai generatori e ai rivenditori esterni di accedere ai suoi cavi, creando rivalità con l'utility in franchising.

Questo sistema non è né una deregolamentazione né una stazione di passaggio verso la deregolamentazione. L'accesso aperto obbligatorio viola i diritti di proprietà privata sottraendo il controllo ai proprietari (dei servizi). “Quello che è tuo è mio”, hanno scritto due critici di questo “socialismo infrastrutturale”.[5]

In secondo luogo, il collegamento vitale della trasmissione è rimasto sotto una rigida regolamentazione in fatto di servizi pubblici.

In terzo luogo, un'entità governativa è tenuta a pianificare e coordinare la rete socializzata di fatto. Ciò che veniva fatto prima dall'azienda, ovvero acquistare, trasportare e vendere energia in base “all'obbligo di servire”, adesso è coordinato dai dipendenti dell'Independent System Operator (ISO) o del Regional Transmission Organization (RTO). Entrambe le agenzie governative si spingono ben oltre il controllo ingegneristico delle operazioni di rete: determinano i prelievi, i prezzi e il rilascio.[6]

Le sette agenzie centrali sono mostrate nella Figura 1, con la regolamentazione tradizionale che governa il Nordovest, il Sudovest e il Sudest (tutti o parte di 17 stati).

Fonte: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

La decantata “concorrenza” in base all'AAO è artificiale, forzata, sollevando il problema dell'eccesso di entrate e dello spreco di risorse rispetto a ciò che emergerebbe in un vero processo di scoperta di libero mercato.

“Ma niente è così permanente come un programma governativo temporaneo”, scrissero Milton e Rose Friedman nel 1983.[7] La spinta alimentata dallo stato per l'energia eolica e solare dimostra questo punto.

Operativamente collaudati a New York fin dal 1880, le turbine eoliche e i pannelli solari non sono industrie nascenti. Essendo diluite e intermittenti (il sole non splende sempre, né il vento soffia perennemente), entrambe le fonti di energia erano antieconomiche e indesiderate per generare elettricità, soprattutto se confrontate con l'elettricità più affidabile e distribuibile generata prima col carbone e l'idroelettrico, poi con il petrolio e il gas naturale.

L'attuale boom dell'energia eolica può essere ricondotto all'Energy Policy Act del 1992, il quale ha introdotto un considerevole credito d'imposta per ogni kilowattora generato. Destinato a scadere nel 1999, il credito è stato prorogato 14 volte. Il beneficio fiscale ha persino consentito ai produttori di energia eolica di offrire prezzi negativi, pagando le persone per usare l'elettricità. Tale situazione paradossale ha causato il ritiro prematuro di mezzi affidabili di produzione di energia e l'assenza di nuovi ingressi nel settore, esponendo la rete a problemi di affidabilità in periodi di picco della domanda o eventi imprevisti.

I sussidi federali per l'energia solare risalgono al 1978 e sono stati prorogati 15 volte. Il boom risale all'EPAct del 1992, il quale ha triplicato l'Investment Tax Credit (ITC) per coprire il 30% dei costi di installazione dell'energia solare.

La duplicazione della rete con una generazione più costosa e inaffidabile è una storia di lobbying spiegata dal fenomeno dei benefici concentrati, dei costi diffusi e dalla politica dei battisti (ambientalisti) e dei contrabbandieri (aziende eoliche e solari). La linea di politica governativa in questi casi ha creato grandi industrie che avrebbero avuto solo applicazioni di nicchia, come l'energia solare fuori dalla rete.

Il controllo della rete da parte di ISO/RTO ha semplificato l'ingresso dell'energia eolica e solare in grandi regioni. Le preferenze fiscali sproporzionate, le disposizioni federali obbligatorie e il basso costo marginale hanno garantito un rapido ingresso dell'elettricità più costosa e meno affidabile. La politica climatica della decarbonizzazione è evidente nelle sette regioni di controllo.

Normativa di libero mercato

Un libero mercato dell'elettricità è definito come l'assenza di proprietà, controllo o regolamentazione governativa. Elettricità e stato sono separati, a parte la protezione legale contro la forza o la frode. Lo stato sostiene in modo neutrale l'applicabilità dei contratti privati e di altre norme di mercato in base allo stato di diritto.

La proprietà e il controllo privati dirigono ogni fase del settore, dalla generazione alla trasmissione fino alla consegna e all'utilizzo finali. Entrata, uscita, prezzi e altri termini di servizio non sono prescritti dallo stato in un contesto di libero mercato. L'organizzazione industriale (come l'integrazione verticale o orizzontale) non è limitata; il coordinamento dei gruppi commerciali e la cooperazione tra aziende sono esenti da controllo antitrust. Oltre a ciò, un processo di scoperta del mercato determinerebbe i particolari del settore.

Il liberalismo classico mette in guardia contro la direzione e il controllo dello stato, dal socialismo assoluto (proprietà municipale) alla protezione del franchising e ai massimali tariffari basati sui costi (regolamentazione dei servizi pubblici), all'accesso aperto obbligatorio per le parti esterne (un'acquisizione non compensata), ai requisiti dell'energia rinnovabile (la sostituzione forzata dell'energia eolica e solare).[8]

La storia offre forti prove a favore dei mercati liberi rispetto al controllo statale dell'elettricità. I problemi di regolamentazione e pianificazione in un contesto politico hanno portato a un secolo di interventi in espansione, da locali a statali fino a quelli federali (si veda la Figura 2).

L'era dell'elettricità di libero mercato, frutto dell'azione umana ma non della progettazione umana, risale all'inizio del settore fino all'avvento della regolamentazione dei servizi pubblici. La “regolamentazione tramite concorrenza” è durata decenni: a New York dal 1882 al 1905; in Illinois dal 1881 al 1914; in California dal 1879 al 1911.[9]

L'era del mercato fu caratterizzata da tariffe in calo, utilizzo in espansione e servizio affidabile.[10] “Vendi il tuo prodotto a un prezzo [che] ti consentirà di ottenere un monopolio”, disse il padre del moderno servizio elettrico integrato (e protetto di Thomas Edison), Samuel Insull, prima della regolamentazione dei servizi pubblici nel suo stato.[11]

La politica tariffaria “taglia e vinci” e “ridicolmente bassa” di Insull consolidò ed espanse il mercato di Chicago, un modello che poi portò nei sobborghi e nelle campagne.[12] Con il suo territorio assicurato, questo cosiddetto monopolista naturale cercò di “fare di tutto per abbassare i costi di produzione [...] in modo da servire il pubblico e ottenere/conservarne la buona volontà”.[13]

Il processo di mercato non veniva mai terminato dopo che un'azienda aveva consolidato un'area sostituendo piccole e inefficienti “dinamo” con grandi generatori in stazioni centrali e installando una trasmissione a valle per raggiungere utenti distanti. La competizione per il mercato era un processo, non un punto di arrivo.

Insull sfruttò le economie di scala, dalla “produzione di massa” al “vangelo del consumo”. Il fattore di carico fondamentale, ovvero l'utilizzo medio delle apparecchiature di generazione e trasmissione, richiedeva di riempire le valli di utilizzo tra i picchi. La redditività della stazione centrale, per non parlare dell'affidabilità, era guidata da una tariffazione in due parti, in base alla quale gli utenti pagavano un sovrapprezzo speciale per i macchinari in modo che fossero pronti per il loro picco di domanda. Le utility interconnettevano le loro reti (la “superutility”) per migliorare i fattori di carico con meno investimenti.[14] Tutto questo come se fosse guidato da una “mano invisibile”.

La fisica dell'elettricità guidava gli imprenditori di mercato. L'integrazione verticale e orizzontale rifletteva economie di scala con una merce che doveva essere consumata nel momento in cui veniva generata. L'affidabilità doveva essere infallibile, le case elettrificate e gli uffici cablati non potevano rimanere al buio, gli ascensori e i tram non potevano essere bloccati. L'accumulo in batterie di emergenza entrò in scena a metà del decennio del 1890, per quanto costoso serviva a evitare i costi umani e finanziari dei blackout.[15]

Le operazioni integrate e dirette dal mercato determinarono un'accessibilità economica senza precedenti e un servizio continuo e coordinato. La responsabilità era sotto lo stesso tetto del capitale di quella (grande) azienda a rischio di blackout. È vero, pochi o nessun indipendente nella generazione, trasmissione o distribuzione potevano competere con il “monopolio naturale”, tuttavia l'unicità dell'elettricità richiedeva un funzionamento multifase altamente coordinato, evidente nel petrolio e nel gas naturale (in un libero mercato). La protezione governativa del franchising non era necessaria.

L'elettricità non è mai stata considerata una risorsa comune in contrasto con i diritti di proprietà privata definibili e un funzionamento efficiente. La teoria dei “beni comuni” è nata solo con la trasmissione ad accesso aperto imposta dallo stato, di per sé una chiara violazione dei diritti di proprietà privata. Durante l'era di mercato dell'elettricità, ampie aree di controllo o bilanciamento (economie di scala) erano all'interno dell'azienda, non all'esterno.

Regolamentazione guidata dalle utility: monopolio innaturale

Le economie di scala riducono notevolmente la rivalità tra aziende, ma lo “sfruttamento”, in cui un monopolista naturale trattiene l'offerta o aumenta i prezzi per i suoi clienti prigionieri, non è pervenuto. “La teoria economica del monopolio naturale è estremamente breve ed [...] estremamente poco chiara”, ha osservato l'economista Harold Demsetz. “Non riesce a dimostrare i passaggi logici che la portano dalle economie di scala nella produzione al prezzo di monopolio sul mercato”.[16]

Infatti i “monopolisti naturali” si sono rivolti al monopolio innaturale tramite la regolamentazione dei servizi pubblici a livello statale. In un discorso storico del 1898 davanti alla National Electric Light Association (ora Edison Electric Institute), Samuel Insull della Chicago Edison Company chiese una via di mezzo tra “socialismo municipale” e “concorrenza”.

Il franchising competitivo, si lamentava, “spaventa l'investitore e costringe le aziende a pagare un prezzo molto alto per il capitale”. Un consolidamento “inevitabile” pone fine allo spreco economico di strutture duplicate. La soluzione era il quid pro quo di franchigie esclusive per la regolamentazione delle tariffe.

Il miglior servizio al prezzo più basso possibile può essere ottenuto solo [tramite] franchigie esclusive [...] unite alla condizione del controllo pubblico che richiede che tutti i prezzi per i servizi stabiliti dagli enti pubblici siano basati sul costo, più un profitto ragionevole [...]. Più certa è la protezione [del franchising], più basso sarà il tasso d'interesse e più basso sarà il costo totale di esercizio e, di conseguenza, più basso sarà il prezzo del servizio per gli utenti pubblici e privati.[17]

Le tariffe scesero e il servizio si espanse rapidamente senza tale regolamentazione. Non c'era alcun “fallimento del mercato”, tanto meno un notevole malcontento dei contribuenti. I leader del settore dovevano creare la domanda di regolamentazione con campagne di pubbliche relazioni e sforzi di lobbying.[18]

Insull e altri leader del settore desideravano bloccare nuovi entranti e assicurarsi un profitto migliore con la regolamentazione del costo del servizio, ma una preoccupazione primaria era quella di evitare una regolamentazione locale potenzialmente punitiva e la minaccia della municipalizzazione.[19] L'economia politica della regolamentazione, che come una valanga avrebbe portato a una serie di nuove norme, era evidente.

Fallimento ed espansione della regolamentazione

Le commissioni statali che regolamentavano l'elettricità come servizio pubblico iniziarono nel Massachusetts (1887), New York (1905) e Wisconsin (1907). Il fervore intellettuale e industriale per tale controllo portò all'adesione di altri 35 stati all'inizio degli anni '20 del Novecento.[20]

Adottati come ideale progressista, esperti imparziali si misero a implementare una regolamentazione “scientifica” basata su dati determinabili, ma la soggettività intervenne e i monopolisti legali “impararono a regolamentare la regolamentazione”.[21] Le utility giocarono con la regolamentazione del costo del servizio massimizzando (gonfiando) la base tariffaria e sfuggirono alla giurisdizione delle commissioni statali tramite transazioni interaziendali o interstatali.

“I primi sostenitori della regolamentazione statale”, osservò l'economista John Bauer, “pensavano di aver trovato il modo di sfruttare il monopolio privato a vantaggio pubblico”. Invece

la regolamentazione è stata inefficace. Non ha fornito l'estensione e la regolarità della protezione dei consumatori come previsto [...]. Peggio ancora, ha permesso le perversioni di organizzazione e gestione nel settore dell'energia elettrica durante gli anni '20, le quali hanno creato ulteriori barriere a una regolamentazione soddisfacente.[22]

Un crollo della regolamentazione portò a un intervento sempre più ampio.[23] Due importanti leggi del New Deal vennero promulgate nel 1935: il Federal Power Act estese la regolamentazione dei servizi pubblici al commercio interstatale, conferendo poteri alla Federal Power Commission (ora Federal Energy Regulatory Commission); il Public Utility Holding Company Act impedì alle società di holding elettriche (e del gas) di possedere proprietà separate in stati diversi. L'integrazione orizzontale era limitata a una proprietà contigua. Seguirono importanti disinvestimenti di società di gas ed elettricità.[24]

Colmare le lacune normative con un intervento sempre più ampio (da locale a statale a federale) era all'ordine del giorno (vedere Figura 2). L'affidamento alla “regolamentazione tramite la concorrenza” venne politicamente dimenticato.[25]

Fonte: Immagine dell'autore

Replica liberale classica

La regolamentazione dei servizi di pubblica utilità venne poco contestata fino agli anni '60, quando gli economisti di libero mercato riesaminarono il caso del fallimento del mercato e dell'intervento statale “correttivo”.

In Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman sosteneva il “monopolio privato non regolamentato ovunque questo fosse tollerabile”.[26] George Stigler si schierò dalla parte dei mercati imperfetti, confrontando la teoria con la pratica: “I meriti del laissez-faire si basano meno sui suoi fondamenti teorici e più sui suoi vantaggi nei confronti delle prestazioni effettive di forme rivali di organizzazione economica”.[27]

Harvey Averch e Leland Johnson spiegarono il gold-plating, un processo mediante il quale le aziende soggette a regolamentazione dei servizi di pubblica utilità sono incentivate ad ampliare artificialmente (e in modo antieconomico) la base tariffaria su cui viene calcolato il loro tasso di rendimento regolamentato.[28] Più investimenti di capitale, maggiori profitti. Con una base tariffaria deprezzabile su cui applicare il tasso di rendimento consentito, si incoraggiava un investimento eccessivo per mantenere la redditività. Mantenere le apparecchiature obsolete nei libri contabili era una strategia; stipulare contratti per centrali nucleari nonostante il rischio di ritardi nella costruzione e costi gonfiati era un'altra.

“Why Regulate Utilities?” (1968) di Harold Demsetz fornì un'indicazione per la libera concorrenza di mercato. Sosteneva che la rivalità per un franchising forniva concorrenza per il settore. In altre parole, più aziende potevano fare offerte per vincere i diritti di monopolio dove i vantaggi delle economie di scala si sarebbero riflessi nelle tariffe e in altri termini di servizio.

Gli acquirenti, seguendo questa linea di ragionamento, potevano organizzarsi come un monopsonio per stipulare contratti contro un'unica azienda già operativa. Senza regolamentazione, gli imprenditori terzi potevano sottoscrivere blocchi di contribuenti per contrastare un'azienda di servizi di pubblica utilità con un unico venditore ed evitare lo “sfruttamento”. Avvocati e consulenti avrebbero avuto una nicchia di libero mercato per realizzare l'autoregolamentazione e lo stato sarebbe stato messo da parte.

Scrisse Demsetz: “[L]a rivalità del mercato aperto disciplina in modo più efficace rispetto ai processi normativi delle commissioni. Se i dirigenti delle aziende di servizi di pubblica utilità dubitano di questa convinzione, suggerisco loro di riesaminare la storia del loro settore per scoprire chi ha fornito la maggior parte della forza dietro il movimento normativo”.[29] Infatti non sono stati i consumatori, ma coloro che dovevano essere regolamentati, con gli esperti al seguito, a fare pressioni per ottenere il patto normativo.

Non furono solo gli economisti della Scuola di Chicago a mettere in discussione il monopolio naturale come pretesto per la regolamentazione dei servizi di pubblica utilità.[30] L'economista aziendale Walter Primeaux Jr. ha documentato la rivalità tra aziende, definita come “situazione in cui due aziende elettriche servono la stessa città e i consumatori hanno la possibilità di essere serviti da un'azienda o dall'altra”.[31] Furono identificate quasi 50 città in una situazione di monopolio non così naturale. Altrimenti esisteva una competizione tra combustibili per diversi servizi energetici, tra cui gas naturale, propano, elettricità e petrolio.

Anche la Scuola Austriaca era in disaccordo con il fallimento del mercato e la regolamentazione dei servizi di pubblica utilità. “Un settore di 'servizi pubblici' non differisce concettualmente da nessun altro, e non esiste un metodo non arbitrario con cui possiamo designare alcuni settori come 'vestiti di interesse pubblico', mentre altri no”, scrisse Murray Rothbard nel 1962.[32] La concorrenza in sé non riguardava il numero di aziende (anche se ce n'era solo una), ma le condizioni di entrata/uscita e di funzionamento senza barriere.

Una visione liberale classica spiegava il processo di mercato intrinsecamente competitivo. La concorrenza poteva comportare una rivalità diretta con strutture duplicate, oppure poteva essere un'unica azienda a mantenere un mercato contro potenziali rivali. In entrambi i casi, i costi privati e pubblici dell'intervento statale potevano essere aggirati e i segnali di mercato ripristinati.

Questa tradizione venne resa popolare da un libro curato da Robert Poole Jr., Unnatural Monopolies: The Case for Deregulating Public Utilities (1985). L'eccesso di capitale e il ritardo normativo erano solo due problemi che impedivano “la modernizzazione e un servizio più responsabile”, spiegava l'introduzione.[33]

Socialismo infrastrutturale: accesso aperto obbligatorio

Gli incentivi perversi basati sulle tariffe (maggiori profitti derivanti dalla sovracapitalizzazione) raggiunsero il loro apice con gli sforamenti di costo associati alle centrali nucleari, di per sé un'industria alimentata dallo stato.[34] I grandi impegni per il nucleare da parte delle utility negli anni '60 provocarono problemi senza precedenti negli anni '70, persino cancellazioni in fase di costruzione. Nel frattempo il rapido miglioramento della generazione a gas naturale creò una grande disparità tra il costo marginale dell'energia generata dai nuovi impianti rispetto al costo medio dell'energia gonfiato dalle utility.

Con la legislazione federale del Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act del 1978 (PURPA), che sovvenzionava i produttori di energia indipendenti, in particolare la cogenerazione a gas, i gruppi di clienti fecero pressioni per un'elettricità più economica che potesse essere trasportata a tariffe con tetto massimo dei costi. Ciò suscitò entusiasmo tra economisti e regolatori a favore dell'accesso aperto obbligatorio, in base al quale le utility erano obbligate ad aprire i loro cavi (regolati dalle tariffe) a terze parti tra l'impianto di generazione e il consumatore. L'Energy Policy Act del 1992 prescriveva tale “wheeling” interstatale, così come le successive iniziative a livello statale per l'accesso all'ultimo miglio (al dettaglio).[35]

L'AAO ha declassato la pianificazione e il servizio di pubblica utilità all'autorità dello stato per quanto riguarda chi, cosa, dove e quanta energia, e su più aree di pubblica utilità. I bacini di energia centralizzati ISO/RTO hanno consentito alle nuove aziende di acquistare e vendere la merce. La continua regolamentazione della trasmissione-distribuzione da parte dei servizi pubblici (“mettere in quarantena il monopolio”) ha consolidato la protezione del franchising, eliminando al contempo l'incentivo del profitto per il miglioramento.

Il calcolo economico ha tormentato le ISO/RTO: per le aziende la determinazione dei prezzi in due parti (tariffa di domanda e tariffa volumetrica) ha consentito di soddisfare la domanda di picco in modo redditizio, ma per i pianificatori centrali incaricati dell'affidabilità dell'intero sistema le diverse opzioni si sono rivelate difficili e persino distruttive. Alcune regioni hanno implementato “tariffe di capacità” per premiare i generatori per la capacità di riserva. Altre hanno puntato su prezzi “solo energia”, scommettendo che un'ampia capacità sarebbe stata incitata da periodici cali di prezzo. La “taglia unica” ha sostituito una tariffa personalizzata e meno centralizzata per il cliente.

Il benessere dei consumatori e “l'obbligo di servire” sono andati perduti nella transizione alla pianificazione centralizzata, così come nella ricerca governativa di decarbonizzazione. Peggio ancora, gli errori delle agenzie governative (come l'aumento in preda al panico dei prezzi della sola energia in Texas nel febbraio 2021) sono stati protetti dall'immunità sovrana.

Riforma di libero mercato

Un libero mercato dell'elettricità porrebbe fine alle attuali disposizioni di statuti federali come il Power Act del 1935, il Public Utility Holding Company Act del 1935, il Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act del 1978, l'Energy Policy Act del 1992, l'Energy Policy Act del 1995 e l'Inflation Reduction Act del 2022. L'abrogazione della regolamentazione dei servizi pubblici sarebbe richiesta a livello statale, tra cui il Public Utility Regulatory Act del 1975 del Texas, il Public Utility Regulatory Act del 1995 e l'Electric Restructuring Act del 1999.

Le riforme di cui sopra eliminerebbero le funzioni elettriche della Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (nata Federal Power Commission) e della Securities and Exchange Commission, nonché, in Texas, della Public Utility Commission e dell'Electric Reliability Council. Organismi semi-governativi come la North American Electric Reliability Corporation e la National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners verrebbero riorganizzati secondo linee private, o chiusi.

In altre parole, un programma di riforma di libero mercato eliminerebbe:

• Protezione delle franchigie, regolamentazione delle tariffe e regole di entrata/uscita

• Decreti di trasmissione a livello federale e statale

• Limitazioni della struttura del settore

• Sussidi fiscali e altre preferenze per nucleare, eolico, solare, batterie, ecc.

• Restrizioni sugli accordi volontari tra aziende (legge antitrust)

Un vero libero mercato basato sui diritti di proprietà privata mette gli imprenditori in cerca di profitto, non i regolatori e i pianificatori, a capo della produzione, trasmissione e distribuzione dell'elettricità. Le aziende sarebbero contrattualmente soggette ai consumatori o ai loro rappresentanti. Cesserebbero gli incentivi malevoli che aumentano le tariffe, così come le spese associate a terze parti.

Dell'esercito di esperti e pianificatori nel mondo dell'elettricità politicizzata, alcuni diventerebbero dipendenti o consulenti per le aziende con potere di mercato o rappresenterebbero blocchi di consumatori che negoziano con queste aziende. Con la pianificazione centralizzata e i dettagli normativi declassati, le risorse liberate e l'imprenditorialità ampliata spingerebbero il processo di distruzione creativa alla ricerca di tariffe migliori e altri termini di servizio.

Conclusione

Il libero mercato non ha fallito nell'offrire i suoi benefici nei decenni iniziali dell'elettricità commerciale. Gli imprenditori, sebbene ostacolati dallo stato, hanno servito con successo case, aziende e industrie. Il risultato complessivo è stato un ordine non progettato che ha premiato sia i fornitori che i consumatori.

La svolta verso la regolamentazione dei servizi pubblici era politica, non economica. Una fede ingenua nel controllo capillare ha conferito nuovi poteri allo stato, ma le soluzioni si sono rivelate illusorie poiché tale interventismo ha creato nuovi problemi. I regolatori non erano imparziali e le questioni complicate sui costi “prudenti” e sui profitti “ragionevoli” sono diventate punti critici.

Le basi tariffarie gonfiate dei servizi hanno creato una grande discrepanza nei costi che l'accesso aperto obbligatorio pretendeva di fornire ai consumatori. Ma la pianificazione centrale, unita all'integrazione della generazione eolica e solare alimentate dallo stato, ha lasciato i contribuenti e l'economia con il peggiore dei mondi possibili.

L'elettricità di libero mercato si basa su fondamenta teoriche ed evidenti consolidate nel tempo. Purtroppo l'alternativa liberale classica alla regolamentazione pesante è stata ignorata (non confutata) per più di un secolo. Un ripensamento radicale e una successiva riforma politica promettono di abbassare le tariffe, garantire l'affidabilità e liberare risorse per il resto dell'economia: una vittoria quasi per tutti, tranne che per una parte della popolazione politica che, giustamente, dovrebbe essere smantellata.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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Note

[1] La tesi delle risorse comuni organizzate dallo stato è stata avanzata da L. Lynne Kiesling, Deregulation, Innovation and Market Liberalization: Electricity Regulation in a Continually Evolving Environment (New York: Routledge, 2009), capitolo 8.

[2] Charles Whiting Baker, Monopolies and the People (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889), pp. 66–67. Nel 1920 la questione principale era come regolare al meglio il mercato. Si veda, per esempio, Charles Stillman Morgan, Regulation and the Management of Public Utilities (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1923).

[3] Alfred Kahn, The Economics of Regulation: Principles and Institutions (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1970, 1995), vol. 1, pp. 3, 11.

[4] Questo intervento fu preceduto dalle leggi del diciannovesimo secolo sugli acquirenti comuni e sui trasportatori comuni emanate grazie alla forza politica dei produttori di petrolio greggio a spese degli oleodotti. Robert L. Bradley Jr., Oil, Gas, and Government: The U.S. Experience (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. 118–119, 609–18. Ha sfruttato la cosa anche l'AAO a spese degli oleodotti di gas naturale. Robert L. Bradley Jr., “The Distortions and Dynamics of Gas Regulation” in New Horizons in Natural Gas Deregulation, ed. Jerry Ellig and Joseph Kalt (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), pp. 16–19.

[5] Adam D. Thierer and Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., What’s Yours Is Mine: Open Access and the Rise of Infrastructure Socialism (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2003).

[6] In termini di economia politica queste agenzie svolgono una “pianificazione non esaustiva”, in contrapposizione alla piena proprietà e al controllo delo stato. Don Lavoie, National Economic Planning: What Is Left? (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing, 1985), pp. 3–4.

[7] Milton and Rose Friedman, Tyranny of the Status Quo (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), p. 115.

[8] I mandati di utilizzo finale e la regolamentazione della conservazione sarebbero un'altra intrusione al di fuori delle azioni di mercato nel settore elettrico. La domanda sarebbe regolata da prezzi e contratti, non da politiche governative.

[9] Prima della regolamentazione statale i comuni emettevano franchigie e spesso prescrivevano tariffe massime. Ma non tutti lo facevano e le utility avevano generalmente margine di manovra entro i vincoli tariffari. Anche sfide legali e lasca applicazione delle norme hanno caratterizzato l'era del libero mercato dell'elettricità.

[10] Robert Bradley, Jr. “The Origins of Political Electricity: Market Failure or Political Opportunism?” Energy Law Journal 17, no. 1 (1996), pp. 60–61, 70.

[11] Samuel Insull, “Sell Your Product at a Price Which Will Enable You to Get a Monopoly,” in Central-Station Electric Service: Selected Speeches, 1897–1914 (Chicago, IL: Privately Printed, 1915), p. 116.

[12] Un biografo di Insull ha descritto la strategia come “una parte di servizio di qualità, due parti di vendita aggressiva e tre parti di tagli alle tariffe”. Forrest McDonald, Insull (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 104. Si veda Robert L. Bradley Jr., Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons; and Salem, MA: Scrivener Publishing, 2011), pp. 71–72.

[13] Samuel Insull, “The Obligations of Monopoly Must Be Accepted”, in Central-Station Electric Service, p. 122.

[14] Bradley, Edison to Enron, pp. 71–77.

[15] Bradley, Edison to Enron, p. 90.

[16] Harold Demsetz, “Why Regulate Utilities?” The Journal of Law and Economics 11, no. 1 (April 1968), p. 56.

[17] Insull, “Standardization, Cost System of Rates, and Public Control”, June 7, 1898. Ristampato in Insull, Central-Station Electric Service, p. 45.

[18] Lo sforzo di Insull (e di Theodore Vail) per influenzare l'opinione pubblica verso la regolamentazione implicava “servizi editoriali standard, l'invio di manager a diventare leader di gruppi comunitari, la produzione di articoli scritti da ghostwriter e la modifica dei libri di testo scolastici”. Si veda Marvin N. Olasky, Corporate Public Relations: A New Historical Perspective (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987), capitolo 4.

[19] Bradley, Edison to Enron, pp. 86–88.

[20] Robert L. Bradley Jr. “The Origins of Political Electricity”, pp. 65–66.

[21] William E. Mosher et al., Electrical Utilities: The Crisis in Public Control, ed. Mosher (New York: Harper & Bros., 1929), p. 1.

[22] John Bauer and Peter Costello, Public Organization of Electric Power: Conditions, Policies, and Programs (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), pp. 37–38.

[23] Si veda Bradley, “The Origins of Political Electricity”, pp. 81–82.

[24] Douglas W. Hawes, Utility Holding Companies: A Modern View of the Business, Financial, SEC, Corporate Law, Tax, and Accounting Aspects of Their Establishment, Operation, Regulation, and Role in Diversification (New York: Clark Boardman Co., 1987), at 2-18.

[25] Bradley, “The Origins of Political Electricity”, pp. 75–76, 77–78, 78–82.

[26] Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 155.

[27] George J. Stigler, “Monopoly”, in The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics, ed.David R. Henderson (New York: Warner Books, 1993), p. 409.

[28] Harvey Averch and Leland L. Johnson, “Behavior of the Firm Under Regulatory Constraint”, American Economic Review 52, no. 5 (1962): 1052–69.

[29] Demsetz, “Why Regulate Utilities?”, p. 65.

[30] Demsetz, “Why Regulate Utilities?”, p. 55. Richard A. Posner, Natural Monopoly and Its Regulation (Preface of the 30th Anniversary Edition. Washington, DC: Cato Institute, [1969], 1999), p. vi.

[31] Walter J. Primeaux Jr., Direct Electric Utility Competition: The Natural Monopoly Myth (New York: Praeger, 1986), p. ix.

[32] Murray Rothbard, Man, Economy and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles (Los Angeles, CA: Nash Publishing, 1962), pp. 619–20.

[33] Robert W. Poole Jr.,Unnatural Monopolies: The Case for Deregulating Public Utilities (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1985). Un capitolo era di Primeaux, presentato a Poole da Gordon Tullock, uno dei fondatori della scuola Public Choice.

[34] Negli anni '50 le centrali nucleari richiedevano limiti di responsabilità (il Price Anderson Act del 1957), cinque anni di uranio arricchito gratuito dalla Atomic Energy Commission e un'azione di pressione da parte dei funzionari statali e federali affinché le aziende di servizi pubblici stipulassero contratti nucleari sotto la protezione della regolamentazione dei servizi pubblici (per il trasferimento dei costi e un profitto).

[35] Si veda Paul L. Joskow, “The Difficult Transition to Competitive Electricity Markets in the United States,” in Electricity Deregulation: Choices and Challenges, ed. James M. Griffin and Steven L. Puller (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 31–97. Si veda qui per la versione originale del 2003.

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