Category Archives: Current events

Honey I Shrunk the Seat!

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recently introduced an amendment to an FAA reauthorization bill that would have required the FAA to set minimum values for how narrow and close commercial airline seats may be. Fortunately, this amendment was rejected last week.  While those of us who have flown in recent years (and experienced firsthand the “Honey I Shrunk the Airplane Seat” phenomena) can all certainly sympathize with the goals of such legislation, it would nevertheless be a gross violation of the rights of the airlines to dictate how they may or may not utilize equipment THAT THEY OWN. Of course there already exists an ever-expanding regulatory framework that strangles other businesses similarly. So how is this any different? It’s not. And that’s what is so scary – it was rejected not on principal but rather because it was visible. Visible government intrusions send the wrong vibe to a supposedly freedom loving populace. But invisible intrusions go on every day and are of course perfectly fine. If the death penalty were required to take place in public it would be ended immediately; but when done behind closed doors the public in general couldn’t care less.

Such reflexive urges to regulate by those “in charge” of our lives are a predictable outcome of their glaring ignorance of basic economics. It is the usual story: government engages in Practice A which stealthily causes Harm B and so our great benefactors must now step in to save us from the very harm they caused in the first place. For example, the federal government, through its puppet the Federal Reserve, is constantly inflating the US dollar. This steadily erodes the value of said dollar until after many years the drips of annual inflation have carved a canyon of lost value. There are two ways to respond to this declining value: raise prices, or, maintain prices while reducing quantity/quality. For example, boxes of cereal now contain 15% less than they did only a few years ago but are marketed at the same price point. It is a surreptitious form of inflation that consumers don’t immediately recognize but is just as injurious to their buying power as is rising prices.

Competition has become so fierce that a game of chicken has ensued where no one wants to be the first to raise nominal prices. This has occurred with airlines as well. Although ticket prices may have risen or fluctuated with fuel prices, such prices are, all things equal, less than they otherwise would have been had seat sizes not shrunk. Getting 10-15% more seats on a plane means lower average cost for each flyer. It is simply a natural response to the incentives created by government interference in the economy (Fed money printing). Eventually seat sizes will decline to a level where ridership will drop off. At that point the industry will know they can go no lower. But that is how the market works; the feedback of profit and loss tells businesses if they are doing good or doing poorly. Top down regulations subvert that process and prevent the voice of the consumer from being heard.

Actually, progressives like Schumer should appreciate the spectrum of market prices engendered by this seating freedom. It incentivizes those who value comfort over money to pay ever-increasing prices for the larger seats. These higher prices can be used to subsidize other ticket classes thereby expanding fare access through lower prices or halting the size decline. By allowing consumers to vote with their dollars the market delivers what consumers, in aggregate, are willing to accept. While any single consumer may disagree with where that point is, it should no more be the right of a minority of consumers to dictate to all what they should be able to buy any more than a minority of busybody senators should be able to dictate to a nation how they may live their lives.

Policy by Prediction

Science is supposed to be the domain of testable (and thus falsifiable) claims the evidence for which is a body of empirical studies that have stood the scrutiny of reproducibility. With the advent of computers that method of science seems to be growing increasingly passé. Why, we don’t need to bother actually doing the grunt work of experimentation, we can just sit back, press a button and let a computer model tell us the results. Of course the fault lies not in our machines but in ourselves (with apologies to the Bard). Computers are but tools that make some of that grunt work easier. But computer models are not so infallible that their output should solely be relied upon. They are imperfect not due to some failing of the technology but rather because they can only do what we tell them, and we humans are far from perfect or omniscient.

The flaw in computer models is two-fold: assumptions and unknowns. Assumptions are made about the contributions of certain factors and those assumptions are often wrong or even if close to being right can still introduces tremendous variability in outcomes from small differences in input. Unknown unknowns are an even greater contributor to the phenomenon known as “garbage in – garbage out” of modeling. We can’t account for the contribution of something we don’t even know exists.

Models are supposed to be part of an iterative process where you do the actual experiment, compare the results to your model’s output and then modify your model. To test the model you then change some of the variables and see how well it holds up in comparison to “real world” results. But, as soon as a new variable is introduced or a new unknown comes into play, then the model’s usefulness must be called into question.

Now by this point you might think I’m going to delve into an indictment of the climate models poor record of prediction but actually I’d actually like to talk about nuts. Or rather how we should all expect the price of nuts along with a host of other crops (pistachios, almonds, soybeans, tobacco, peanuts, cotton, lettuce, alfalfa, tomatoes, watermelon and bell peppers) to increase in price in the coming years due to the EPA banning a pesticide known as flubendiamide.  EPA determined that flubendiamide could break down in the environment and potentially cause harm to a few aquatic species. Ok, sounds like some dangerous stuff, fair enough. But, it turns out this alleged harm is not based on empirical studies but is rather based on computer models that attempt to predict toxicology – “predictive toxicology” they call it. BayerCropScience, the manufacturer of flubendiamide, went on record stating that such models “exaggerate environmental risk.”  Well imagine that, a computer model overstates the likelihood of a deleterious outcome in order to justify governmental intrusion into the market. Although science cannot be manipulated to service political interests, models surely can – click, click, here comes the desired result.

This ultimately is the true danger of such models. It is one thing if scientists want to put all their faith in such models, the worst that can happen is that eventually someone is made to look the fool when actual empirical studies prove them wrong. However it is far more dangerous if the cart is pushing the public policy horse by having bureaucrats and our supposed intellectual superiors run our lives and then justify their actions by pointing at selectively funded model-based “research” that can be tweaked to magically provide an outcome that conforms with the policy prescriptions desired. All that is needed to shut down debate is to claim “it’s science” and that it is “settled.”

Trade Balance

Last week’s article touched on seen benefits and unseen harms wrought by political intervention into people’s lives. This week we pivot to a somewhat new corollary of that principle, that of imagined harm. This is harm that can’t exist but because of a fundamental ignorance one has an expectation that it will occur. Ignorance of economics leads to a broad range of bad predictions and decisions and even businessmen (e.g. Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, etc) are not immune to such ignorance. Despite Trump’s repeated protestations that “we” (America) are “losing” because of the presence of trade deficits with some countries (notably Mexico and China) there is simply no cause for concern. The current trade deficit between the US and Mexico is $58 billion. That means that Americans purchased $294 billion in goods from Mexico but Mexicans purchased “only” 236 billion in US goods.  In Trump’s mind (and many others) this constitutes a loss. Well if that is so I guess I had better stop buying my groceries from Publix – my family’s trade deficit with Publix is thousands of dollars every year! Yes, I would be much better off if I grew all my own food, than my trade deficit with Publix would be zero. Do you see how ridiculous this sounds now? So to solve a trade deficit Americans should pay even more for the goods they want? This is supposed to somehow compel the Mexican government to coerce its citizens into buying more US goods? How can any government make its people buy more from a particular country? Countries are not monolithic entities; they are composed of individuals.

Trade is not a zero sum game where one side “wins” and the other side “loses”. Both sides gain or profit from any trade in the sense that if either party did not value the thing they got more than the thing they gave up they would not have engaged in the trade. Trump and his ilk view trade like a game of Monopoly because they fall for the fallacy of anthropomorphizing countries into single actors and then distill all trade down to a single good: money. So in his mind the US gave Mexico $294 and Mexico gave the US $236 – as though they were just swapping currency and nothing else. Yes, that would be a loss, but that is not at all what is going on. It is an absurd distillation of the transactions of millions of individual actors into a meaningless aggregate. To get a clearer picture of what is going we need to disaggregate these numbers. Let’s imagine that Joseph buys $10 worth of goods from José. Joseph now has a $10 item and José has a $10 bill. Who lost here? No one. Trump would view this as a $10 trade deficit. But a deficit implies some sort of debt obligation, that something is owed, but nothing is owed, both sides swapped value for value. Now imagine that José buys $7 worth of goods from Joseph. Joseph now has $3 in goods and $7 cash, or $10 of value. José now has $3 in cash and $7 in goods, again, $10 in value.

Indeed all trade follows the rules of double entry accounting. Mexico’s cash account goes up while their goods account goes down: in balance. The US’s goods account goes up while their cash account goes down: in balance. Claiming a trade deficit exists is the equivalent of looking at only one side of a standard accounting balance sheet and claiming it is not balanced because one refuses to look at the other side of the sheet.

To the extent that jobs and industry are moving out of the US and that this harms in the short term those that lose their jobs perhaps it would be more appropriate to not lay blame at the feet of those business moving away but rather ask the origin of the incentives they are responding to (regulations, unionization, taxes anyone?)

Trading Places

A basic economic principle is the necessity of accounting for both the seen and the unseen (first elucidated by the great French economist Frédéric Bastiat). It provides a basis for understanding how politicians perennially cast themselves in the role of Santa Claus whilst picking our pockets. We are a willing audience to the magician who dazzles us with (for example) public works project (the seen benefit) while remaining unaware of the unseen harms unfolding (those things not done, created, or attempted due to diversion of resources into the political projects). The principal works for any intervention into people’s lives. For example, sanctions or trade embargos are often put in place in order to influence the actions of the leaders of another country. Although there is not a single historical precedent for this ever working, it remains the most popular passive-aggressive tool in the arsenal of the state. The language used to speak of such embargos employs the ruse of anthropomorphization (“America” cuts off trade to “Iran”) in order to hide the underlying reality that rather than the target country being harmed it is the individuals that constitute that country that are harmed. See, it’s not millions of people being made to suffer; it’s just a nebulous non-human “country”. Those who engage in these practices of course understand the reality of weighing human suffering and misery against the greater good of their desired ends. Indeed it was Madeline Albright’s admission that the deaths of approximately half a million Iraqi children during the 1990s sanctions against Iraq were “worth it” in order to achieve their goals (this remark was specifically cited by Osama Bin Laden as one of the many reasons behind the 9/11 attacks).

But that is just the seen harm. There is also an unseen harm levied against US citizens and businesses who are barred from trading with the country embargoed (for example, Iran). Iranians want to buy US made goods. US businesses want to sell those goods. We have a willing buyer and a willing seller being prevented from engaging in trade because of a belligerent busy-body-bully in the middle. Those lost sales for US businesses will not be made up somewhere else – they are simply gone. These missed opportunities lead to more unseen harms – lost jobs, or rather jobs that would have been created but never were.

To the extent US businesses have foreign competitors in countries lacking an embargo against Iran then it is our own government that is pushing sales into the arms of their competitors. Brilliant. Some might say that this loss in sales to US companies is “worth it”, that it is their patriotic duty to suffer through such lost sales in order to help our country battle the existential threat we face from a country… that has never threatened us nor attacked any other country in over two-hundred years. Well that is certainly easy to say when you’re not the one cruising past potential income you are barred from touching. Ask yourself, would you willingly skip annual bonuses if your government told you it would help influence Iran? Yeah, I didn’t think so. And apparently Boeing doesn’t think so either   – this politically well-connected company managed to get itself on a short list of companies exempt from the current trade embargo with Iran. How convenient. Apparently the expediency of pleasing big donors trumps the so-called “national interest” that applies to everyone else. Justice for all indeed.

Fighting against 1984

The State is getting nervous. Technology has a way of disrupting institutional power. The Guttenberg printing press liberated the flow of knowledge from the former stranglehold of the Church and its scribes. Today the digital realm of the Internet is effecting a similar change with self-publishing upon the old-world monopoly of the print-publishing house. Travel agents are virtually a thing of the past. Bitcoin is beginning to threaten the monopoly the banks and the government have over the flow of money. Encryption of our digital lives (personal electronic devices) is now threatening the power and relevance of the State. Encryption means we can manage our own security; we don’t need some nebulous State apparatus to keep us safe and secure. Nearly everything that is important to us (photos, messages, financials, medical info, etc.) is locked away securely in our digital treasure chest.

But the State will have none of that. They demand the key to that treasure chest. Both New York and California legislatures have introduced bills banning the sale of smartphones that do not offer some sort of encryption “back door”. How dare these companies make a product that is impervious to the prying eyes of the State! This is a direct threat to their unlimited power to intrude into our lives.

Not to be outdone, the Federal government is getting in on the back-door game. A federal judge recently ordered Apple to assist the FBI in unlocking the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple is openly defying this order. The primary problem is that were Apple to comply with the order there is nothing to prevent the technique used from falling into the hands of truly “bad guys” who could then threaten the privacy and security of every iPhone user. It’s like the government asking scientists to build the atomic bomb “just this once, to stop the bad guys”. Once knowledge is out there it cannot be contained.

But even worse, the government’s use of an act from 1789 (the All Writ Act) to compel Apple to help them sets a dangerous precedent. It is not the case that Apple has in its possession information that it is being asked to hand over (which it has always done in the past when presented with a warrant). Instead Apple is being forced to help the FBI, drafted as it were, unlock this device. Insert picture of government agent holding loaded gun to Tim Cook’s head and saying “help us, please” and you’ll get the picture.

Yes, but you say the FBI is trying to stop future terror events, so anything to prevent a loss of life is worth it. Ok, well that cuts both ways. If Apple helps the FBI on what grounds could it refuse to help the government of China, Russia or perhaps even a threatening mob boss? After all, they know that since Apple helped the FBI then it is indeed possible to unlock these things. Is the standard of behavior to be: Apple helps any “legitimate” state actor, except when they are bad, because of course everyone knows who the goods guys and bad guys are.

To be clear, this is not Apple’s property. They are a third party being asked to do the government’s bidding. If they complied it would set the awful precedent that the companies we do business with can be secretly dragooned into the employ of the State in order to spy on and monitor us without our knowledge. Don’t think that can happen? Well, the government already has a terrible track record of abusing its surveillance power. It took Edward Snowden blowing the whistle to show us how the NSA was spying on everyone in contravention of the Patriot Act. In fact Samsung just recently warned its customers that its voice recognition could be used by third party vendors to listen to conversations so they advised caution about what you say in front of it. Now imagine Samsung receives a request from the FBI to “help” them monitor everyone so they can ensure “our safety”. Nah… I’m sure that would never happen. Thank you Apple for fighting for us. Your actions today may well ensure that our future “won’t be like 1984.”

Lost in Translation

Politicians are by and large disingenuous peddlers of envy, fear, and blame. Once having convinced their customer (the voter) to swallow that message they then proceed to sell them the cure: hope. And naturally they are the only ones that can turn that hope into a reality. The formula is simple: You: Things are not as I would like them to be in my life or I’m afraid of what the future will bring, Politician: This is not your fault, it is caused by [insert despised group du jour], you are not in control of your life, they are. You: Wow, I feel so much better now knowing that I’m actually a victim and bear no responsibility for my life, finally someone has given me hope that things will improve. The Politician: Yes they will improve, but I need you to help me make that happen for you, only I can save you from those that are keeping you down. If you grant me unlimited authority over your life not only will I fix your problems but I will presume such a grant of authority entitles me to force others who happen to live near you to succumb to our will.
The most successful candidate is the one who effectively deliver that formulaic message. To be clear, one can be elected without following this approach. But as soon as someone sets up this model, they are virtually guaranteed to come out on top. Witness both Trump and Sanders, two politicians who are deftly employing this message. Trump peddles fear of “aliens” coming here to steal our jobs lower our wages and put people out of work. His message is rooted in the idea that basically anyone who is not American is causing America to not be “great” anymore but he’ll fix that and make American great again. Yes, because tariffs, price controls, embargoes and all manner of trade protectionism have worked so well in the past at improving the American economy (Smoot-Hawley Tariff anyone?) Price controls do nothing but enrich the few at the expense of the many.
And Sanders – he lays the blame for every societal ill at the doorstep of the evil 1%, or 5%, or 10% who are of course causing everyone else to be poor by hoarding all the money. Even though the math doesn’t work, he continues to insist that if only we raise taxes and make them pay “their fair share” that will fix everything. He decries high tuition rates and insists “free” tuition will fix that problem – ignoring the fact that tuition rates have increased at a rate 5x the rate of inflation over a time frame exactly mirroring when the federal government increased its support of higher education through grants and loans. Colleges increased tuition in the wake of a wave of “free” government money. What do you imagine will happen to tuition when a tidal wave of money enters the system? No, I’m sure no one will raise tuition if Bernie’s plan went into effect.
In the final analysis Trump and Sanders and everyone else are all the same. Their messages may differ in substance on a few minor points, but the structure of the message is uniform. They all propose to initiate violence against those that disagree with them (since if they agreed they would of course willingly do what was asked) in order to force them to comply with their ideas. Both sides obfuscate the violence behind a curtain of euphemisms. When you see words like “should”, “impose”, “must”, and “ask” uttered by a politician simply substitute those words for the phrase “send men with guns to threaten them until [they do as we desire]”.
So here’s a Bernie quote, “We’re going to impose a tax on Wall Street speculation” becomes “We’re going to send men with guns to threaten traders to hand over money if they engage in Wall Street speculation.” And Trump “[For] every car … that comes across the border, we’re going to charge you a 35-percent tax” becomes “[For] every car… that comes across the border, we’re going to send men with guns to force you to hand over money otherwise other men with guns won’t allow the cars to cross this imaginary line in the dirt.”
They are all the same. Anyone who supports the State as a means to improving their position in society vis-a-vis politicians supports the idea that violence or the threat of violence against peaceful people who disagree with us is a legitimate way to accomplish social or political goals. Oh wait, that’s also the definition of terrorism.

Constructive comments are welcomed to this paper or at gregmorin.com. Follow me at @gregtmorin

Called to serve?

Top military leaders this past week called for expanding the Selective Service System (the registration wing of the currently idle, but easily re-activated, draft) to include women. Their narrative is that it is simply a matter of fairness. Women currently serve in all branches of the military just as capably as men, so at face value there really is no practical reason to continue excluding them from registration. The fact that this is being brought up now may be entirely innocuous; it was bound to happen sooner or later. Or, it could be an omen that signals this country is setting down a path of expanding, not contracting, its role of interfering in the affairs of foreign nations. An expanding global empire after all requires an expanding police force to maintain order. After more than ten long years of endless warfare our currently all volunteer armed forces is thinning out as they are stretched like an ever expanding net around a globe that refuses to be tamed by American hegemony.

The principled position regarding the SSS and the draft for which it stands is that it is an abhorrent violation of the rights of the individual. It treats our sons and (soon) daughters as mere chattel to be deployed by the state for whatever capricious whim those in power decide will benefit them and their cronies – all the while cloaking such moves under the flag of “patriotism”. Some try to claim it is one’s “civic duty” to serve if called upon by their country but that is but a smokescreen; all civic duties are forms of slavery, differing only in degree but not kind from the more familiar chattel slavery (lack of consent is at the heart of the evilness of slavery). Attempts to legitimizing slavery by calling it something noble is a ploy worthy of the Devil but not honest men. We may recoil in horror at stories of armed guerrillas in some far off country kidnapping young men and boys in order to dragoon them into service for their cause – but, in substance, it is no different than a draft into the armed forces of a modern state. A young person, against their will, is forced to take up arms and murder other human beings (or assist in that murder), and if they do not then they are put to death or imprisoned for decades by their own supposed “countrymen.”

Currently the draft is “inactive”, however the law is still on the books and it can be re-activated at a moment’s notice. For those without children between the ages of 18-26 this may not register on your political radar, but believe me, for those of us with children in this age group (like myself) it is cold comfort that it is inactive when we see that our next President will likely be one of the warmongers Trump, Cruz, or Clinton.

Some have argued it is actually beneficial to have an active draft in place, as it makes politicians more cautious about sending the sons (or daughters) of their constituents off to die. However I think Vietnam put the lie to that argument. President Johnson was all to happy to send 58,000 young men to their death in an utterly pointless conflict that had zero bearing on US security. Now consider that conflicts in Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq also have had zero relevance to US security and we see that politicians will never tire of wasting American lives and treasure in fruitless endeavors. All the more reason to completely end the draft and the SSS once and for all. Women should not welcome this kind of equality.

If the US mainland were actually threatened or attacked the problem would not be getting recruits, it would be organizing the overwhelming number trying to join the fight. By and large most feel the instinct to defend what is theirs; after 9/11 recruitment levels sored. Declining numbers in the volunteer armed forces is not an indication of declining patriotism. Rather it is voting by deed, and this vote loudly proclaims the American population does not view with much seriousness the shrill warnings from the ruling class that danger threatens us on every front. Particularly when those fronts are 8,000 miles away.

Waterworld

By now many of you are likely aware of the contaminated water fiasco in Flint, Michigan that has apparently resulted in 77 cases of Legionnaire’s disease (and 10 deaths). It is indeed a tragedy of shattered trust. It is also darkly humorous to witness the acolytes of Statism (i.e. the faith that The State can protect us from all harms and correct all wrongs) are apoplectically flummoxed as to how such a thing could happen: “But, but, the state is supposed to protect us from the depredations of cost cutting profiteers!” The state is supposedly there to protect the weakest among us – so how ironic that those most harmed by this incident is the predominantly poor population of Flint. How could such a thing have happened? The problem is structural. Private ownership weeds out failure; public ownership protects it.

Now one might argue that since there are thousands of municipal water systems across the country that operate without any problems this is simply a fluke, an outlier and is not indicative of any sort of problem with government run water systems. That is a dangerous premise. It’s like arguing that one doesn’t need a seat belt because they’ve never been in an accident. The problem is not that random groups of people do not know how to provide clean water. The problem is that humans are imperfect and eventually a perfect storm of errors will accumulate until a calamity results. This can happen in both public and private entities. It is the response to the calamitous event that distinguishes public from private entities.

First, private entities already have a natural incentive to prevent such events from occurring because the owners and the insurers are financially on the hook for problems. Problems are costly to fix and often results in expensive lawsuits, so prevention is the best medicine. Public entities have no such negative feedback. No one is financially liable. Everybody plays a part in creating the mess, but no one is actually responsible. Worst case someone might lose their job or the town is fined by the EPA (that is, ironically the taxpayers – the customers so harmed – end up being financially on the hook!) Oh well. Losing your job is not nearly the disincentive to preventing harm as would be losing hundreds of thousands if not millions of your own dollars.

Secondly, if something does still occur despite best efforts to prevent it, private entities have a natural incentive to fix it quickly as possible in order to contain the potential financial damage. It is the very greed that so many on the left decry that actually aligns the incentives of the owners with those of the customer. Keeping your customers happy, safe, and healthy is beneficial to the bottom line – otherwise you get sued or lose customers. But as we have seen in the Flint case, the response of the ruling class is more akin to a Three Stooges skit, with each part of that system poking the other one in the blame game – all too busy fighting with each other in order to avoid responsibility than focused on actually fixing the problem.

Lastly, no matter what happens, the public system remains in place. The public can’t “fire” them, they can’t choose another provider. They have no choice but to continue buying a product from a provider that has proven to be unreliable. No is allowed to come in and compete with them (that would be illegal). In many cases you can’t even legally dig your own well – you are obligated to buy from the local utility. With a private system one has options. You can put in your own well. A competitor could come in and “steal” customers – or perhaps the old company is sued into bankruptcy and completely new ownership takes over.

In closing I would ask you to imagine the following: Imagine that the standard in this country was that all water was provided by private entities. Now imagine that the same thing that happened in Flint happened but with a private provider. Would there not be an instant outcry and demand that the government take these systems over, or that they must be regulated for safety? Now realize that the reality today is the exact opposite. And what do we hear? Cries to “privatize” our water systems in order to allow market forces to naturally regulate the delivery safe water? No, instead we get self-righteous politicians (Clinton et.al.) trying to frame this event as some sort of partisan one-ups-man ship that endeavors to prove that the only reason this happened is evil Republicans hate “poor black people”. Well I guess they must hate themselves since it was their own city council (composed of Democrats) who signed off on the plan that ultimately led to the problem.

The closing irony here is that despite long being accused of selfishness and greed, it is the private market that has come (quickly) to the rescue in Flint. Walmart, Coca-Cola, and others have provided (for free) bottled water to the residents.  Why are they doing this? Perhaps they genuinely want to help. Or perhaps they see it as a grand PR opportunity to earn some loyal customers. Even if the latter it doesn’t matter – if “greed” compels people to help their fellow man, then I say bring on the greed!

Market Justice

The standoff between ranchers and the federal government at a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service building in Harney County, Oregon can be distilled down to one core issue: property rights. The Hammond’s land abuts Federal lands and due to their past less than neighborly management practices (setting containment fires that got out of hand) their neighbors (the Feds) believed they had the right to throw their neighbor (the Hammonds) in a cage for one year. Which they did. Then they decided to give it a different name (terrorism) and throw them in a cage for another 4 years. That’s when the Hammonds objected and said enough is enough. Just imagine if your next-door neighbor could lock you up in a cage at their whim for any perceived transgression. That would surely be quite frustrating and dare I say terrorizing? To know that any minor misstep could result in your freedom and liberties being ripped away from you is indeed terror inducing. Welcome to the world of the American Indian.

The federal government has been terrorizing the American Indian for the past 200 years. They’ve had a lot of practice. They’ve become quite adept at it. The modern western rancher is simply the latest recipient of this unilateral wielding of overwhelming violent force.  So to the ranchers I say this: your ownership and the related benefits of your land and abutting federal lands is the result of prior violence by the Federal government on behalf of your ancestors or predecessors. The Feds stole it from the Indians and made it available at a fraction of its value to millions of homesteaders. That is not homesteading, that is theft and redistribution.

While it is true that the Federal government has wrought numerous distortions into the fabric of society and the economy and some have benefited while others have been harmed, these past transgressions are so complex, intertwined and convoluted as to make it impossible to untie such a Gordian knot and make amends. But, presently the Federal government owns approximately 28% of the land in the United States – the vast majority of having belonged to one Indian tribe or another.  There is no chain of a multitude of prior owners; there is a direct link of ownership of Indians->Federal Government. In virtually all cases the transfer was illegitimately obtained through acts of violence. If the current presidential administration is so concerned with righting past wrongs and the redistribution of wealth then it should immediately hand over all property rights in federally owned lands to those tribes (still in existence) with the strongest past territorial claim.

Such a transfer would instantly transform many of the impoverished Indian reservations, who rely on a constant influx of Federal money to maintain their citizenry, into powerhouses of wealth. A $1 billion lotto jackpot pales in comparison to a $1 trillion jackpot! In other words the land would be taken from “public” use to “private” use. The new private owners could do with the land as they see fit relative to all economically demanded uses coming from the market. That is, those uses that people most want to see would have the most money behind them and enable the highest bid to prevail. People vote for what they want with their dollars and those with the most votes wins. Some tribes might maintain their land as a natural preserve. Some might sell portions to farmers, ranchers or those wishing to develop them commercially. Some might buy the land and build high rises, new factories, or wind farms. Others (like the Sierra Club) might buy land and create their own “private” nature reserve, where they, and not the federal government, is in control of its (seeing as how the Feds often allow mining or logging in “protected” regions).

In short, in one fell swoop a big chunk of the past wrongs against the American Indian could be rectified (nothing of course could ever undo all the damage) while simultaneously releasing nearly 1/3 of the land mass of this country into the most efficient system the world has ever known for optimizing the use of scarce and rivalrous resources: the market.

In a mirror dimly

For all that is wrong with the Trump candidacy (xenophobic neo-fascist tendencies) the silver lining is that it is forcing us to face the ugly truth about democracy: mob rule is a frightful thing to behold. Trump is one of “us” and his popularity is a reflection of what the “mob” wants. Everyone loves democracy when it is their ideas that are popular but when the mob turns stupid it doesn’t seem like such a good idea anymore. Trump may be the first true “people’s candidate” for president that has an actual chance of winning. His financial independence all but guarantees he is not beholden to any individual, special interest, or political party elite. To the extent any candidate receives some measure of public or private funding, their words and deeds are held to account by the one doling out the money. Trump is accountable to no one but himself and the voters.

Since the advent of political parties we have been led to believe elections are about a democratic process, that we are making a choice and a difference – but – that is a lie, or rather, an illusion. A very apt line from the Matrix movies provides some context, “Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.” Those who already have power: the party bosses, the monolithic media outlets, the oligarchical dynasties (Roosevelt’s, Kennedy’s, Bush’s, Clinton’s) – they all understand and work the system to their advantage. That is, they present the illusion of choice so as to keep the masses pacified into believing they are in control of their destinies. But like choosing a white paint chip from an ocean of slightly variable gradations of white, the final choice is still just that: white. But Trump, Trump is lime green. He is a starkly different choice. He, unlike any of us, has the money to buy a seat at the table where they are doling out cards in the high stakes game of poker that is a run for the presidency. Perhaps Trump has touched a populist nerve because deep down we all know there is no choice. His candidacy is not so much support for Trump the man but rather support for NOTA (none of the above).

Trump may be spouting idiotic things, but Trump is no idiot. He is a masterful salesman and knows how to work a room. He, like any good conman or salesman, understands his audience/mark. Give them what they want and they’ll return the favor. Trump reflects America, but dimly. (1 Corinthians 13:12) Is his persona the true man, or merely a reflection of his environment? If elected we shall know fully. Most candidates appeal to the voter’s intellect, Trump appeals to their emotions (and not the good ones, i.e. fear, anxiety). This visceral appeal is a dim reflection of the American psyche. It is also a dangerous one. Emotion acts mindlessly without consideration of the consequences. History repeatedly tells a dark tale about leaders that preyed on the emotions of their subjects.

But Trump is not a solution to the moneyed concentration of power, he is merely a symptom, an immune response if you will – that cough you just can’t get rid of. Although the leftist progressives bleat incessantly on the need for government to hold the evil capitalists at bay lest they gain control of society, they miss the central irony here that their greatest fear (control of society by moneyed interests) has already come to pass not in spite of, but because of, government. Government is not a divine institution that has been corrupted by man. It is a human institution that exudes the very human nature from whence it is derived.

Think of it like this: government is simply another business. The key difference, though, is that what it sells is the ability to legally exert aggression against those that do not do its bidding. Its competitive advantage is that it is a self-declared monopoly within its arbitrarily defined geographical region. So what person, group, or other business would NOT want to tap into exerting some influence over how such a business operates? Is it really such a mystery as to why so many work so hard for so long to access that power and divert it to their advantage?

Some say the answer is to remove money from politics, but given that politics is just another economic transaction, that option is about as doable as converting to a barter economy. No, the solution is not less government, but more. That is, it is time to break up the monopoly and decentralize power to the point where our choices are not constrained but manifold. Power is kept in check when the individual is not compelled as a matter of law to acquiesce to the demands of others but may choose with whom they shall associate by voting with their wallet or, if necessary, with their feet.