The ignorant vote based on popularity (“My friends like him.”) and personality (“He seems nice!”).

The informed vote based on policy.

Trump lists some of his policies on his website whereas Biden doesn’t even bother…

As much as this highlights the well-documented low political information of Democrats (Republicans aren’t much better) the main reason to vote for either candidate is based on policies (particularly when they’re so polarized) so let’s compare both to see who’s more right on the big stuff…

Cut spending.

Biden wants to raise spending a lot.

Since 2021 the federal government has spent about $25T or $75,000 per American ($118,000 if you include state & local spending). Biden’s proposed 2025 budget is $7.3T, which would be a 12.3% increase from the previous year!

Question: do you think doubling down on the same statist agenda will improve your life long-term?

Trump however wants to cut large chunks of federal agencies’ budgets.

Cut taxes.

Biden says he doesn’t want to raise taxes on those making under $400K a year, but he supports raising the corporate tax from 21% to 28% (most companies have fewer than 5 employees at an average revenue of $387,000 so obviously this would be a tax increase on those making under $400K) and the personal tax for high-income workers from 37% to 39.6%. He also supports introducing new taxes such as a stock buyback tax, corporate alternative minimum tax, and a wealth tax.

Trump wants to cut taxes. First and foremost he wants to extend his 2017 tax cuts, but beyond that he has said he wants another “big tax cut,” which he’d need to pass to offset his proposed tariff increase.

The biggest tax increase we’re looking at though is inflation. They both support the Fed lowering interest rates since it’s good for the stock market as it subtly transfers wealth from workers to owners. They’ve also run up a huge debt, which is largely paid for with inflation, but at least Trump wants to cut spending (main driver of long-term inflation/debt) and put us on a more solid monetary foundation by opposing a digital dollar and at least theoretically supporting hard money. Biden has also fueled inflation by weaponizing the dollar against Russia therefore prompting more nations to abandon it as their reserve currency.

Cut bureaucracy, bureaucrats, laws, and regulations.

Biden wants to increase them all. To this day, Democrats think the 08 crash was due to deregulation or that the problem with the pandemic is the government didn’t lock us down enough or that the problem with single-parenthood is that Uncle Sam doesn’t interject himself enough into the family. Every problem is met with a new program and regulation. In a microscope they may sound good, but collectively they drain our country of its entrepreneurial moral spirit as force begets force.

Trump wants to cut them all a lot. By cutting regulations it’ll free up healthcare, education, housing, energy, etc. The Left focuses on first-order effects, but the second-order effects of deregulation would be a massive growth in the supply of goods and services.

Cutting red tape also makes our country politically freer because the powers-that-be couldn’t as easily selectively enforce the law against their opposition by throwing the book at them.

Improve the Constitution, bureaucracy, bureaucrats, laws, and regulations.

Biden wants to dilute the meaning of the Constitution by appointing justices who’ll take certain clauses and stretch them to such an extent that effectively the federal government can do whatever it wants with power increasingly concentrated in an unelected administrative state. Progressives like this “progressive” approach when 5 justices come down on their side of an issue, but it sets a dangerous precedent where all limits on government power become a matter of open interpretation. Race? What is that? Can I now identify as a 12-year-old black disabled girl simply because I feel I am one? Free speech? You mean malinformation?! States? You mean federal administrative units?!

Trump wants to continue to appoint justices who will restore the meaning of the Constitution. He also supports useful amendments such as congressional term limits (Biden supports for the Supreme Court so a compromise could be made) and a balanced budget requirement.

Trump also wants to make our bureaucracy more meritocratic by making it easier to fire incompetent federal employees again so that they actually have to answer to their elected bosses.

More housing.

Biden wants to give tax credits to home buyers, which will “bid up the price of housing that is already in short supply.”

Over the last 80 years, the federal government has had 42 housing programs where Biden’s solution is to throw more money at air-conditioned bureaucrats. It’s as if his proposals are perfectly calibrated to sound like he wants to increase affordable housing, but to effectively do little so as to not spook the stock market.

Trump wants to build ten “Freedom Cities.” Idk how politically & economically feasible these cities are, e.g. if too few businesses move there they might turn into ghost towns, but at least he’s aiming in the right direction by wanting to build more housing (it’d be more constitutionally sound to pass a new Homestead Act for veterans).

Smart immigration.

Biden supports worse than open borders.

He supports open borders only for those willing to break the law. If however you want to come in legally then get in line and pay up! You can also tell how anti-American he and his team are because they know they can enforce the border without any new law, but they think you’re so stupid that you’ll believe his Trojan horse border bill was needed. In the swamp, optics come before country.

Trump supports a strong border and mass deportation, which is obviously what’s needed if we want a strong republic that lifts workers’ wages and reduces housing costs.

Reduce the threat of WMDs (nuclear, biological, chemical, and AI).

Biden’s pathetic handling of China, Afghanistan, and Russia has pushed much of the world into Iran’s hands who is advancing toward a nuclear weapon that they could then leak to one of their many terrorist organizations who could then use it against Israel or us. If Tel Aviv was nuked by Hezbollah what should we do?

If China unleashes another virus will Democrats suppress those of us again who called them out?

If AI improves enough where the first-mover effect becomes an all-or-nothing game of global supremacy will Biden have the courage to act first?

Trump is more than willing to ignore our military-industrial complex in favor of making deals that make himself look good, which could cause him to concede too much, but at least he’d be sentient enough at the negotiation table where he could save millions of lives & livelihoods by making Ukrainian aid contingent upon negotiations, lifting North Korean sanctions contingent upon denuclearization, and reducing Chinese tariffs contingent upon reciprocity, etc.

On each of these key areas Trump gets the W.

How successful he’ll be in following through is up for debate, but at least he’s aiming in the Right direction.

What’s holding back many of my liberal friends from acknowledging the truth is fear (after all, our oligarchy is leftwing), which they try to mollify by overemphasizing personal faults (for every personal fault you see in Trump I can raise you 2 on “the big guy”) or catastrophizing secondary-issues (“OMG the climate crisis,” says the guy flying around in a private jet who just bought more beachfront property because the market expects it to be worth more in 20 years), but I’m here to say that loving your country is directly proportional to how much courage you’re willing to demonstrate in defense of it and now more than ever America is calling out for you to stand atop that mountain MLK Jr. spoke of and proudly proclaim, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN… AGAIN!!!!”

Bullets fly overhead.

“Take cover!”

Up ahead you see your drunk friend Fred throw a grenade, “To whom it may concern!”

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

He collapses to the ground and looks at you, “Tell my family I love them.”

You kneel beside him and say, “I wish I could buddy, but we killed them too.”

How did we get to this?

There’s no one path to Civil War II, but here’s what I think would be the two most likely scenarios…

Scenario 1: Theft

The opposition promises to throw the incumbent in prison if they win.

Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up!

The incumbent believes them.

He then plays to the public’s fears by saying that if he peacefully transfers power to the opposition he doesn’t think they’ll transfer it back when they lose so to preempt this he not so subtly “rigs the election.”

According to a survey, 69% of the “political obsessed elite” think it’s okay to steal an election if they knew they would’t be caught (this result is so explosive it should be verified by additional surveys but nonetheless we can apply it to this hypothetical scenario).

After all, if you believed your opponents were fascists would you give them the keys to a nuclear AI surveillance state?

Protests then break out with the help of foreign funding.

The incumbent kills some protestors.

In some states, the police and politicians turn a blind eye to the increasingly violent protests, which then form militias, which then form a coalition to try to inaugurate the “legitimate” winner.

When people lose faith in the ballot they turn to the bullet.

I put “legitimate” in quotes because if everyone agreed he won there’d be no need for war.

Many of the foreign funders hope the war becomes a stalemate resulting in a disunited states of America.

Scenario 2: Tyranny

Gridlock for the people; “progress” for the elite.

The middle class hallows out.

A populist rises up promising, “All for all!”

After winning, he reforms the deep state, cracks down on crime, and redistributes wealth enough to give the average American a higher quality of life.

He loves the way power makes him feel.

And the people love him!

4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!

An emergency breaks out (pandemic, war, natural disaster, depression, etc.) that he uses as a pretext to repeal the 22nd Amendment.

Viva la democracy!

After his umpteenth term, he dies in office.

RIP.

He’s succeeded by a much harsher guy.

This incumbent doubles down on suppressing his opposition by weakening human & property rights, which causes evermore people & businesses to flee so he triples down on force to try to stop the brain drain.

After his umpteenth term, he dies in office.

Yeah!

He’s succeeded by a moderate.

He tries to increase economic growth again by restrengthening human & property rights, but there’s so much bad blood between the people and the government that once we feel sufficiently empowered we’d move to overthrow it.

Sic Semper Tyrannis!

How to Prevent Civil War?

Strong voter ID laws, but our oligarchy likes to poo-poo them because they want to lower the barriers to voting as much as possible to maximize the low-information vote.

Simplify the law. It’s estimated the average person breaks 3 laws a day so imagine how many laws a president “breaks” whereby his opposition could throw the book at him.

Reduce the overall size of government, but not so much that it’s unable to check large globalist corporations.

Widespread self-sufficient property ownership because such owners are far more willing to speak the truth to power because if they don’t get a corporate, academic, or government gig they could always return to their farm whereas indebted “experts” are one pronoun away from not even being able to bag groceries because their degree has made them “overqualified.”

Keep the foreign-born population under 15%, especially those that are poor because they’re the most susceptible to scamming politicos.

Patriotic civics education to serve as a solid unifying base.

Appoint genuine justices who enforce what the Constitution actually means rather than what they wish it to mean.

In the end, there’s been 200+ civil wars since 1800 so given the multitude of ways they can arise we must stay vigilant for the sake of global freedom by taking an all-of-the-above approach because if we fall then we could pull the whole world down with us, which at the end of the day, the single most important characteristic for maintaining a strong unified republic is a broad informed middle class.

The Left argues for more government.

The Right argues for less.

This has been the predominant political debate of the 20th-century and what has been the end result?

More. More. More.

The Right has lost.

The question now is… what should we do about it?

Debate the same thing over and over again and expect a different result?

I’m here to say that although decreasing political power should remain a top priority our #1 priority should be to increase personal power.

Every Man a Philosopher-King!

I am as happy as a king — to use a Republican simile. — Theodore Roosevelt

We need to make America a nation of freethinkers and freeholders.

Freethinkers

To make Americans more knowledgeable the federal government should abolish the Department of Education; and state government(s) should implement DEESA (Degree-by-Examination + Education Savings Accounts).

Once you pass an exam you’d get a badge, unlock the next level, and get more money added to your ESA.

Higher level tests could be held in-person and consist of VR, AR, and simulators.

Your credentials could then be shared across platforms where others (including employers) would get a good sense of what you actually know.

This would aid our political discourse where level-1ers couldn’t mask their ignorance behind a veneer of condescension, moral outrage, and appeals to authority.

Freeholders

After 5 years of federal service, you’d earn a 5-acre self-sufficient farm.

According to the Sustainable Living Report, it’d cost about $100,000 to build such a farm…

We could get the cost lower because the federal government could buy in bulk.

It could then contract out the development of 3 unique self-sufficient communities with 10,000 farms each.

(Free-range animals in the park & lake to diversify food supply; optional windmill or next-gen nuclear powerplant in park or town to diversify energy supply)

The total cost would come to around $3B or 0.5% of the VA’s annual $400B budget.

Toward the end of your service, you’d get some training on how to manage your self-sufficient farm, which over time the physical labor could increasingly be done by robot slaves.

Once you’re on your self-sufficient farm your cost of living would be extremely low.

You could then earn supplemental income a multitude of ways such as from a pension, selling goods & services, freelancing, private-sector jobs, state-based job guarantee, inheritance, and then what would over time become the largest source of supplemental income: investments.

The American Dream should be guaranteed to anyone willing to put in the work.

Once these communities have been up and running for 4 years the federal government should assess their quality based on various metrics such as self-sufficiency, vacancy, and surveys. The results will determine what contractors receive a bonus and are rehired to build the next round of self-sufficient communities.

Tax-free

I don’t think Americans should have to pay taxes in order to live.

The only thing certain in life should be death and liberty.

No taxation on the foundation!

We should only tax the chalice’s overflow.

In other words, no taxing necessities.

“The many” contribute enough to the state by consenting to “the few.” The few will ideally act in everyone’s best interest, but they’ll inevitably disproportionally act in their own interest. By only taxing non-necessities and the upper echelon of society the powers-that-be will still be able to leverage their market power to trickle-down some of their tax liability onto the rest of us, but we need not supplement their leverage out of some warped sense of “fairness.”

Here’s how I’d tax in practice…

Tax imports 10% with an additional 5% - 10% tyranny tariff.

Tax our monetary public option 3%.

Tax corporations 3% gross.

Tax the top 30% of the population’s earned and unearned income at the same gross graduated rate with no deductions from 1% to at most 30%.

Tax sales, except on necessities like basic food, water, and healthcare where it could then be higher on things with high negative externalities.

Tax land, except on small self-sufficient primary residencies.

Conclusion

If 25%+ of Americans were well-educated debt-free tax-free capitalist yeoman then such unprecedented personal freedom would naturally increase political freedom.

What I put forth here is thee greatest political proposal of the 21st-century because it’s steeped in ancient wisdom cemented by American tradition and augmented with modern technology where over time it’d shift the Right to Outright.

The Republican Party shouldn’t just be about cuts, but first and foremost it must once again be the party of the American Dream.

I can be Jewish if the price is right, but I really don’t think we should have a dreidel in this Israel-Palestine fight.

In other words, we shouldn’t give aid to any country (except if related to interstate war).

But since we do give them aid then I have no choice but to come down from my cross and humbly tell the Jews what to do…

This isn’t controversial... 

Israelis should lay down their arms and convert to Islam because not only is it their surest path to peace in this life — assuming they practice the right sect in the right way — but to also get 72 white virgins in the next one.

Mother Mary run!

Okay, maybe peace isn’t the be-all-end-all, especially to our friendly neighborhood Prophet Mohammed.

So then what should be done?

I think rather than debate who has the most legitimate claim to stolen land (all land is stolen) I simply come at it from the American perspective: What will increase life, liberty, and happiness?

A N N E X  I T  A L L .

Let me spell out the obvious…

If Israel annexed Gaza and the West Bank then this would MASSIVELY increase the quality of life for Jews due to the curious idea of not providing space from which to launch rockets at themselves and Palestinians who’d undeniably see an increase in their life, liberty, and happiness.

After all, Israeli Muslims enjoy a lot more rights than Muslims in Muslim countries hence the latter’s desire to flee to countries where they have little political influence.

Does anyone disagree?

And don’t pretend like you care about Palestinian culture when 1 language dies every 14 days and your only solution is more globalization, e.g. oppose any tax on goods, services, people, and obscenity entering a country and young people’s minds. 

If in 20 years the Palestinian youth are virtually identical to American youth in their interests and values then what exactly are they fighting to preserve besides the grievances of their deceased ancestors?

It also amuses me that if you went around these pro-Palestinian rallies and asked people, “Who attacked us on 9/11,” many of them wouldn’t know yet I’m supposed to believe they care about pre-1948 land claims from a region of the world they probably couldn’t point to on a map and wherein learning that someone inherited beach front property would say it should be taxed 90%, i.e. you only have a legitimate claim to 10% of what your father owned let alone what your great great grandfather owned.

So rather than adopt the ethnic-based grievances that keep these regions poor I recommend we actually propose useful solutions…

Here’s my final solution for Israel to #FreePalestine…

1. Annex under a temporary territory status.

2. Gaza and the West Bank should each get an appointed governor to shepherd reconstruction for the next 10 years similar in concept to Postwar Japan.

3. Buy real estate. Turn rubble into self-sufficient communities and give them to veterans.

4. Buy a one-way plane ticket with a stipend to anyone who wants to go. The stipend should be high enough that several countries such as Palestine (aka Jordan) would be happy to take them. After all, it’d be cheaper for Israel to send Omar than follow him around with a baton. 

5. Import a lot of Asians who do sucky sucky long time.

6. With increased home ownership a baby boom would commence.

7. Offer a lot of well-paid public-sector jobs in Gaza and the West Bank. This would be better than perpetuating the cycle of dependency that the Palestinian oligarchs have created as it’d replace condemnation with contribution.

8. Educate people to love their shared country. It starts in the schools, but it extends into the public square. Run loud & proud public campaigns highlighting how virtually every objective measure would be improving for Palestinians once they’re freed from Hamas. Hold giant love fests where Muslims and Jews can come together to persecute Christians.

9. After the first 10 years let them elect their own governor and then 10 years later hold a referendum for full admission.

10. Adopt a formal written constitution with strong separation of powers, federalism, bill of rights, and term limits.

For the record, I’m not trying to make light of the deaths themselves. Every life is precious; or as my Grandma mutters at Rastafarian cookouts, “All lives matter.” What I’ve proposed here is far more honest and humane than what the Israeli government is currently doing and proposing. They’re clearly trying to price out Palestinians by demolishing an unnecessary amount of buildings and so whereas they’re doing it with the stick I think it should be done with the carrot (Palestinians voluntarily selling & emigrating wouldn’t constitute “ethnic cleansing”) and whereas Bibi is saying that after the conflict Israel should only maintain security control I’m saying it should maintain full control in order to more effectively bombard the population with facts and love.

This would obviously bring that area of the world unprecedented peace and prosperity, wherever that area is, but people twist themselves into knots to placate and pander. 

Can I get a “you go gurrrl” from my #QueersforPalestine sistas? Who needs two-states when you can have infinite genders?

A two-state solution may temporarily produce good feelings, but it’s likely the most radical Muslim-majority population in the world would reelect a theocratic terrorist organization that would again enrich itself at the expense of Palestinians by blaming its ineptitude on the big bad Jew.

Mama, is that a firework? No, honey.

RFK Jr. seems like a decent, honest, intelligent person, but as a 70-year-old who comes from the most political family in American history and is running for the most powerful political position in the world I find it off-putting that not only does he have 0 elective experience, but he doesn’t even seem particularly well-informed where on issue after issue he says he needs to “do more research:” how to balance the budget, how to tax the rich, gender reassignment surgery for kids, school choice, Russiagate, Section 230, psychedelic legalization, UBI, federal job guarantee, etc.

He only has about a 3.4% chance of winning so the fact he’s even running further highlights his naiveté.

Anyway, RFK Jr.’s campaign boils down to… the federal government is so corrupt and incompetent that we need to… {checks notes}… make it bigger? 

He wants more yet better regulations and spending.

With that said, given his popularity I think there’s still a lot of value in dissecting some of his more interesting policy positions, which as a starting point of agreement he says…

I want you to vote for me or against me not based upon the labels people have affixed to me, but rather based on my position on the various issues.

1. He supports harder money.

I don't propose that all transactions in bitcoin be untaxed, but that there be a cap to up to a certain amount. If you allow big holders like BlackRock to escape taxation on the increases in the value for bitcoin you'd give a windfall of trillions of dollars to the richest people in our country, which they don't need. Small transactions like buying gasoline would be untaxed. We want to encourage people to use hard currency in the marketplace. My other proposal is very very modest, which is that we use a basket of hard currencies including platinum, including gold, and including perhaps bitcoin as a basis for maybe 1% of certain classes of T-bills and see what happens. See if that has any capacity to inject discipline into inflationary policies” — RFK Jr.

I think this is his best position, but he doesn’t mention it on his platform nor does he go far enough.

Perhaps, he’s simply articulating what he thinks is the most realistic monetary policy changes he expects to be able to make, but I think trying to nibble at the beast would be less effective than going straight for the heart of it by making gold and silver legal tender again. Once there’s monetary competition it’d dramatically constrain the Fed’s ability to print.

2. He wants to make trade deals with developing countries contingent upon them increasing their labor standards.

Neoliberal free trade policies set American workers into competition with workers in low-wage countries that have few labor protections where, in some cases, unions are non-existent. Mr. Kennedy will make labor protections the centerpiece of any future trade agreements. — RFK Jr. platform

Negotiate trade deals that prevent low-wage countries from competing with American workers in a “race to the bottom. — RFK Jr. platform

According to the World Bank, most developing countries’ daily median income is below $15 so if he forced them to increase it enough where it wouldn’t substantially undercut our $65 then that would cause them mass unemployment.

Rather than neocolonialistically tell other countries how to run their labor union (countries in themselves are labor unions) we should take care of our own by increasing barriers to entry (stop illegal immigration; 10% tariff).

3. He supports reducing illegal immigration and streamlining asylum claims.

• Tighten border security to regain control over the border. We will use technology that was installed at the border then dismantled by the Biden administration, such as cameras, lights, and motion detectors, coupled with physical barriers in key areas (there is no need to build a wall across the entire 2,000-mile border). We have the technology to prevent people from getting through undetected. We can control the border. We have the technology. We can deploy the personnel. All we need is the will.

• Get on top of asylum claims. We have to fully fund courts, services, and border agencies to allow lawful immigration in accordance with U.S. law and deny non-compliant access, and appoint more judges to handle asylum cases. There are woefully few asylum judges to process even the legitimate claims of political refugees. If claimants of political asylum knew their case would be heard swiftly, and that specious claims would be met with swift deportation, the cartels’ business model would fail. — RFK Jr. platform

He’s better on immigration than self-hating plutocrats, but here’s the bottom line…

America is an “A” nation. The prettiest girl can’t dance with everyone. If you’re from an “F” nation then she could out of the kindness of her heart help you get to a “D” or “C” nation, but a sob story shouldn’t give you permission to jump in front of people with high skills and thick wallets. 

4. He wants to make it easier to get loans.

Make student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy and cut interest rates on student loans to zero. — RFK Jr. platform

Tax-free 3% government-backed mortgage bonds, to bring the mortgage interest rate back to 2019 levels and even lower. — RFK Jr. platform.

Lowering the interest rates on student and housing loans will have the same unintended consequence it has had for the past 50 years: drive up the cost of tuition and housing!

The influence-industrial complex has indoctrinated us to believe that debt is good and I suppose it is if you want to force cogs to work harder on quarterly gains, but freeing people up to work on their own long-term goals is how we build wonders.

5. He wants to expand Americorps.

The existing Americorps is just a one-year program open only to college grads. The transformed Americorps will be open to all people 18 and older who want to make a four year commitment to service, in areas such as: urban renewal, ecological restoration, care for the disabled, sick, and elderly, infrastructure repair, addiction recovery centers, organic agriculture. — RFK Jr. platform

Where does it say in Section 8 of the US Constitution that the federal government can do any of these things? And does the 10th Amendment also mean nothing to him?

Rather than add federal jobs we could make most federal jobs 4-year commitments.

6. He wants to increase grants.

Targeted Community Repair will be available to devastated communities across the country, not just Black. The criteria will be around need, not skin color. However, because there are so many Black communities in need, this program will channel significant resources toward the rebuilding of these most devastated of communities. — RFK Jr. platform

Institute Black Business Development Agency to build and support African-American companies. Web courses taught by respected Black entrepreneurs on starting a business as qualifiers for small business grants. — RFK Jr. platform

Again, this demonstrates such little respect for the US Constitution’s separation of powers and federalism + the 14th Amendment.

And how will he determine what businesses can qualify for free money based on “need”?

The Black Business Development Agency is going to want to increase its budget every year and a way they can do this is by giving money to those who will then donate to politicians who’d support increasing their budget.

7. He wants to get money out of politics.

I’m going to get corporate influence out of the government once and for all. — RFK Jr.

In order to be a statist you need to believe it’s possible to get money out of politics.

He believes he can do so by…

Replacing corporate-friendly agency leaders with reformers and whistleblowers dedicated to the national interest. — RFK Jr. platform

But what existing agency leaders wouldn’t already consider themselves “reformers”?

His grandfather was the first SEC chairman precisely because he was a successful insider trader. 

With AI, RFK Jr. says he’d consult with industry leaders to figure out how to regulate it, which is the same rationale he’s condemning.

He also proposes to…

Shut the revolving door by executive order with a five year ban on administration officials lobbying their former government agency. — RFK Jr. platform

But what constitutes “lobbying”? 

I suppose he could ban “lobbying” in the same way legislators are banned from “insider trading.” Lol.

Would there be an exception for family members, e.g. one’s wife still works for the FDA?

And what if a former administrator lobby’s (aka influence’s) his former agency by critiquing it, e.g. a former Attorney General running for office promising to improve his former department?

He also offers other campaign finance reforms, which I’m sympathetic to some, but they often just push political influence into the shadows and create more ambiguity for those in power to enforce against their opposition. 

RFK Jr. was smart enough to realize from his time as an environmental lawyer that much of our big bureaucracy was captured by big business, but rather than come to the logical conclusion we should reduce the bureaucratic hurdles big businesses put in place he wants to selectively enforce the law against them… 

Support small businesses by redirecting regulatory scrutiny onto large corporations. — RFK Jr. platform

The answer isn’t to selectively enforce the law, but to reduce its number & abstraction so that we can once again be a nation of laws rather than a nation where we need to have a friend in high places even if that “friend” purports to be our own.

8. He’d reduce fracking and nuclear energy.

I will ban fracking, which provides the feedstock for most of the plastics produced in the U.S. — RFK Jr.

To his credit, after he received a lot of backlash his campaign softened his rhetoric…

Mr. Kennedy recognizes that an immediate and total ban on fracking would devastate the US economy, and is therefore unrealistic. He favors a gradual phase-out of the practice, starting with the removal of subsidies and a moratorium on new exploration. He believes that fracking, at least in most locations, will no longer be viable when the practice does not receive direct or indirect subsidies, and instead is exposed to the free market. — RFK Jr. campaign statement

But he also poo-poos nuclear energy…

Nuclear power, I’m all for it if they can ever make it safe or that they ever make it economical. And it’s not me saying it’s not safe. It’s the insurance industry. They can’t get an insurance policy. If they can’t get an insurance policy then I would say I don’t want it. — RFK Jr.

Both natural gas and nuclear energy are safer and cleaner than other forms of energy…

To a lawyer, everything is a lawsuit. 

He thinks suing fracking, nuclear, and medical companies would force many of them to internalize their externalities and therefore they couldn’t afford to stay open.

But there’s a subjective nature to how much any given externality costs where as a prosecutor RFK Jr. naturally erred on the side of overestimating them to get back as much damages for his clients as possible, which it’s this sort of philosophy that has justified evermore regulations…

So I’d suggest to RFK Jr. that if France can get 70% of its energy from nuclear by not regulating it out of existence nor increasing its liability to such a degree that insurance companies couldn’t afford to cover them then the most innovative country on Earth should be able to build a bunch of nuclear power plants in the countryside. 

Conclusion

In the end, I think he’s an honest, intelligent person, but if elected his expansion of government force would over time lead to fewer honest and intelligent people because as the state grows it’d increasingly reward conformity and penalize competence. Nice guy < good incentives.

An earmark is “congressional funding for a specific local project.” 

The way earmarks work is a legislator adds text to an appropriations bill like…

Hey, of this $90 billion going to the Department of Transportation I want $1M to go to a parade in my district.

People defend earmarks by saying…

1. They’re tradition…

I have been a fan of earmarks since I got here the first day. Keep in mind, that’s what the country has done for more than 200 years, except for the brief period of time in recent years that we haven’t done these. — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D), 2014 

But what they are is unconstitutional. 

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; — Article I, Section 8

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. — James Madison

If the general welfare clause, the commerce clause, and the 10th amendment are going to mean anything then Congress shouldn’t be able to fund “narrow interests” like a small intrastate project.

Just as we’d consider it unconstitutional to only pass a tax on Jim it shouldn’t be able to do the inverse on the spending side by only passing a subsidy for him or his “non-profit.”

And earmarks really didn’t take off until the 1980’s.

This week the Congress sent me a highway construction bill that was loaded with pork-barrel projects. I haven’t seen so much lard since I handed out blue ribbons at the Iowa State Fair. — Ronald Reagan (R), 1987

Congressional Republicans then banned them in 2011, which helped them succeed at their larger goal of reducing discretionary spending as a percentage of GDP.

But Congressional Democrats brought them back in 2021.

2. They grease the legislative gears to make it easier to pass bills.

Our system lends itself to not getting things done, and I hear so much about earmarks — the old earmark system — how there was a great friendliness when you had earmarks. But of course, they had other problems with earmarks. But maybe all of you should start thinking about going back to a form of earmarks. [Lindsey Graham: Yeah!] — Donald Trump (R), 2018

Maybe this is not a popular opinion but if you're using earmarks to buy off people like Joe Manchin so that they'll actually support decent policy I’m totally fine with it. — Commentator Krystal Ball, 2021

Look, it’s easy to hate on earmarks. Members stuffing pet projects into legislation isn’t exactly the way we all envisioned government working in civics class in high school. But without them, government simply doesn’t work at all. — CNN Commentator Chris Cillizza, 2021

Earmarks may marginally help big unread bills pass, but isn’t it a bad thing to streamline such corrupt incompetent consolidation?

Rather than try to make crap go down smoother, I’d prefer to go back to the pre-earmark era when budgets were smaller, read, and passed on time.

After all, don’t you think asking Senator Joe Schmoe to agree to a $3T bill by giving him $10M is how we end up with worse bills because legislators would be basing less of their vote on the core substance of them?

3. The money is being spent anyway.

Cut all the earmarks in the world tomorrow and it would not reduce the budget by one cent. — Bernie Sanders (D), 2010

Technically, earmarks don’t spend new money as much as they’re more clearly defining how money that’s already been allocated should be spent.

But federal bureaucrats aren’t so dumb that they won’t realize earmarks are cutting into their budgets so they’ll just anticipate how much earmarks will be and then ask over and above that amount because if they don’t then the implication would be that they never needed the money to begin with.

Earmarks also add a new layer of inefficiency where citizens are incentivized to lobby their representatives, representatives have to listen to more lobbying, and bureaucrats have to divert attention/appropriations from their traditional merit-based process to say figuring out how to install a new traffic light on some local road a mile from a congressperson’s house. Long-term, this additional appropriations “process” will undeniably increase costs.

4. Legislature > Executive

It’s the responsibility of Congress to earmark. That's our job. We're supposed to tell the people how we're spending the money, not to deliver it in a lump sum to the executive branch and let them deal with it. — Ron Paul (R), 2009

My belief is that members of Congress elected from 435 districts around the country know, frankly, better than those who may be in Washington what their districts need. — House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D), 2020

This is more of a philosophical difference I have with earmark defenders, which I’ll refute by asking you a simple question…

Who’s your congressperson?

If you don’t care enough to know who your congressperson is then you can’t responsibly argue for giving him more power.

As a conservative, I believe in a small federal government with a big president. Presidents are more accountable because they win by smaller margins and care more about their legacy than holding onto power indefinitely. The market also demonstrates that strong executives tend to be more effective than “workplace democracies.”

5. They make a bill less bad

I’ve never voted for an earmark, but I do argue the case for the people I represent to try to get their money back if at all possible. — Ron Paul (R), 2011 

Some legislators add earmarks to get back as much money for their district as possible, but then vote against the bill anyway. Earmark defenders call this, “vote no and take the dough”…

Many of the Republicans who are criticizing earmarks have earmarks in the bill! That is the height of hypocrisy. — Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D), 2010

Accusing the other side of hypocrisy is always an easy way to feel morally superior while deflecting from core policy concerns. In other words, the “you also fallacy” is like a rhetorical earmark.

It isn’t hypocritical though if you partake in something while wishing to abolish it, e.g. electoral college, filibuster, student loans. It’s only hypocritical if you partake in it yet condemn other individuals who do too.

X = X (hypocrisy), X ≠ XYZ (similar).

But to Ron Paul’s discredit, he put in all earmark requests.

I have a responsibility to represent my people. If they say, ‘Hey, put in a highway for the district.’ I put it in. I put in all their [earmark] requests because I'm their representative. — Ron Paul (R), 2012

In other words, he shifted discretion to the congressional leadership’s staff whereas if he genuinely believed the legislature should earmark then he should’ve led by example via demonstrating it intelligently.

Earmarks can ultimately make a bill less bad, but they make our political system worse for all the aforementioned reasons as well as they help corrupt moderate incumbents beat principled primary challengers while increasing their ability to pressure freshmen to also abandon their principles for pork. Drain the swamp! Don’t dam it!

How to ban earmarks again?

1. Ban earmarks more effectively by making it “out of order” to consider legislation containing them and prohibiting the Rules Committee from being able to waive the ban.

2. Pass Rand Paul’s Read the Bills Act, which would require every legislator to sign an affidavit swearing to have read the bill they’re about to vote on. If this was enacted it’d highlight the absurdity of earmarks as legislators like his father who didn’t even want to read his own earmarks wouldn’t want to read thousands of pages of other legislators’ earmarks.

3. The law should more clearly define what “general welfare,” “interstate commerce,” and the 10th amendment mean because there’s some legitimate gray area that shouldn’t be left to the courts to determine by staring off into the distance and weighing what they feel is “general” enough so I recommend we enact into law something more concrete such as setting the minimum legislative line-item to $1B (or 5% of a bill) and/or banning federal spending on any entity where 30%+ of its owners/employees/contributors/users are from one state and/or banning federal spending on the non-federal public sector and/or private sector, except in payment for goods & services (competitive bidding for purchases over $100,000).

4. Improve the executive branch so that we’d have less issue with giving it discretion such as by setting clear deadlines/incentives (e.g. the Department of Transportation must complete X highway by Z date or else its Secretary shall lose 25% of his salary), transparency laws (build a user-friendly website that graphically tracks all federal spending down to the $100,000th dollar), term limits for federal bureaucrats, making it easier for the president to fire federal bureaucrats again, and electing more constitutionalist presidents.

5. Ultimately, to make the earmark ban the most effective we should cut the overall size of government so there’d be greater scrutiny per line-item and since there’d be fewer funds, there’d be fewer lobbyists, which means big interests would naturally outgun small ones. Earmarks for none!

Essays & Speeches

Our Land & Land Policy (1871)

Henry George was still developing his ideas at this point and would soon abandon these exemptions, which reinforces the point that he only supported a Single Tax because it’s one thing to have never considered something it’s another to have supported it only to then conclude it’s wrong…

“Of Some Exemptions, and Some Additions: For the purpose of making it still more sure that taxation should not bear heavily upon anyone; for the purpose of still further counteracting the tendency to the concentration of wealth, and for the purpose of securing as far as possible to every citizen an interest in the soil, there should be a uniform exemption to a small amount made to each land holder—perhaps a smaller amount in the cities, where land is only used for residences and business purposes, than in the country, where labor is directly applied to the land. Those whose land did not exceed in value this minimum would have no taxes to pay; those whose land did, would pay upon the surplus. This would reverse the present effect of our revenue system, and tend to make the holding of land in large bodies less profitable than the holding of it in small bodies. And while, perhaps, it might not be wise to attempt to limit the accumulations of any individual during his lifetime, or at any rate, it is not yet necessary to try the experiment, there should be a very heavy duty, amounting to a considerable part of the whole levied upon the estates of deceased persons, and in the case of intestates the whole should escheat to the State, where there were no heirs of the first or second degree. There is still another source from which a large revenue might be harmlessly drawn—license taxes upon such businesses as it is public policy to restrict and discourage, such as liquor selling, the keeping of gambling houses (where this cannot be prevented), etc. All other taxes of whatever kind or nature, whether National, State, County, or Municipal, might then be swept away.”

“The more the matter is considered, the more, I think, it will appear that all our taxation, or at least the largest part of it, should be placed upon land values.”

“Imagine this country with all taxes removed from production and exchange!”

The Crime of Poverty

“It is not necessary to divide up the land. All that is necessary is to divide up the income that comes from the land. In that way we can secure absolute equality; nor could the adoption of this principle involve any rude shock or violent change. It can be brought about gradually and easily by abolishing taxes that now rest upon capital, labour and improvements, and raising all our public revenues by the taxation of land values; and the longer you think of it the clearer you will see that in every possible way will it he a benefit. Now, supposing we should abolish all other taxes direct and indirect, substituting for them a tax upon land values, what would be the effect? In the first place it would be to kill speculative values. It would be to remove from the newer parts of the country the bulk of the taxation and put it on the richer parts. It would be to exempt the pioneer from taxation and make the larger cities pay more of it. It would be to relieve energy and enterprise, capital and labour, from all those burdens that now bear upon them. What a start that would give to production! In the second place we could, from the value of the land, not merely pay all the present expenses of the government, but we could do infinitely more.”

Justice the Object - Taxation the Means

“We call ourselves today Single Tax men. It is only recently, within a few years, that we have adopted that title. It is not a new title; over a hundred years ago there arose in France a school of philosophers and patriots—Quesnay, Turgot, Condorcet, Dupont—most illustrious men of their time, who advocated, as the cure for all social ills, the impôt unique, the Single Tax. We here, on this western continent, as the nineteenth century draws to a close, have revived the same name, and we find enormous advantages in it. We used to he confronted constantly by the question: Well, after you have divided the land up, how do you propose to keep it divided? We don't meet that question now. The Single Tax has, at least, this great merit: it suggests our method; it shows the way we would travel—the simple way of abolishing all taxes, save one tax upon land values. Now, mark: One tax upon land values. Tax land values all you please up to the point of taking the full annual value—up to the point of making mere ownership in land utterly unprofitable, so that no one will want merely to own land—what will be the result? Simply that land will be the easier had by the user. Simply that the land will become valueless to the mere speculator.”

“Substitute the tax on land values for all the many taxes that we now impose. See the gain in morals; see the gain in economy! With what a horde of tax-gathering and tax assessing officials could we dispense; what swearing and examination and nosing around to find out what men have or what they are worth!”

“Take this city, this State or the whole country; abolish all taxes on the production of wealth; let every man be free to plough, to sow, to build, in any way add to the common stock without being fined one penny.”

Thou Shalt Not Steal

“We have but to throw off our taxes upon things of human production; to cease to fine a person who puts up a house or makes anything that adds to the wealth of the community; to cease collecting taxes from people who bring goods from abroad or make goods at home; and—in substitution for all these taxes—to collect that enormous revenue due to the growth of the community for the benefit of the community that produced it.”

“We only need to remit taxes on all improvements, on all forms of wealth, and put the tax on the value of the land, exclusive of the improvements, so that the dog-in-the-manger who is holding a piece of vacant land will have to pay the same amount of tax for it as land of similar value with a building or other improvements upon it. In that way we would treat the whole land of such a community as being the common estate of the whole people of the community.”

“Tax land up to its full value, and how long can such dogs-inthe-manger afford to hold that coal land away from these men?”

The Land for the People

“That is what we propose by what we call the single tax. We propose to abolish all taxes for revenue. In place of all the taxes that are now levied, to impose one single tax, and that a tax upon the value of land. Mark me, upon the value of land alone—not upon the value of improvements, not upon the value of what the exercise of labour has done to make land valuable, that belongs to the individual; but upon the value of the land itself, irrespective of the improvements, so that an acre of land that has not been improved will pay as much tax as an acre of like land that has been improved.”

“That is the Single Tax—the abolition of all taxes on the employment and products of labour and the taking of economic or ground rent for the use of the community by taxes levied on the value of land, irrespective of improvement.”

“Tax up land to its full value and that power would be gone; the richest landowners could not afford to hold valuable land idle. Everywhere that simple plan would compel the landowner either to use his land or to sell out to some one who would; and the rent of land would then fall to its true economic rate—the value of the special privilege it gave would go not to individuals, but to the general community, to be used for the benefit of the whole community.”

“These are the plain, simple principles for which we contend, and our practical measure for restoring to all men of any country their equal rights in the land of that country is simply to abolish other taxes, to put a tax upon the value of land, irrespective of the improvements, to carry that tax up as fast as we can, until we absorb the full value of the land, and we say that that would utterly destroy the monopoly of land and create a fund for the benefit of the entire community.”

The Single Tax

“I shall briefly state the fundamental principles of what we who advocate it call the Single Tax. We propose to abolish all taxes save one single tax levied on the value of land, irrespective of the value of the improvements in or on it.”

“When we tax houses, crops, money, furniture, capital or wealth in any of its forms, we take from individuals what rightfully belongs to them. We violate the right of property, and in the name of the State commit robbery. But when we tax ground values, we take from individuals what does not belong to them, but belongs to the community, and which cannot be left to individuals without the robbery of other individuals.”

“To carry it out we have only to abolish all taxes save the tax on real estate, and to abolish all of that which now falls on buildings or improvements, leaving only that part of it which now falls on the value of the bare land, increasing that so as to take as nearly as may be the whole of economic rent, or what is sometimes styled the »unearned increment of land values.«”

Why the Landowner cannot Shift the Tax on Land Values

“A VERY common objection to the proposition to concentrate all taxes on Land Values is that the landowner would add the increased tax on the value of his land to the rent that must he paid by his tenants.”

“To tax Land Values up to anything like their full amount would be to utterly destroy speculative values, and to diminish all rents into which this speculative element enters.“

“If a tax on Land Values could be imposed with such theoretical perfection that the whole rental value would be taken by the community, the owner would lose both his income from its present value and any expectation of profit from its future increase in value. While it would be still worth as much as before to the user, it would be worth nothing at all to the mere owner. Instead of having a selling value of $250,000, it would not sell for anything, since what the user paid for the privilege of using it would go in full to the community. Under a tax of this kind, even though it could not be imposed with theoretical nicety, the mere owner of land would disappear. No one would care to own land unless he wanted to improve or use it.”

Scotland and Scotsmen

“There is but one remedy, and that is what is now known as the single-tax -- the abolition of all taxes upon labor and capital, and of all taxes upon their processes and products, and the taking of economic rent, the unearned increment which now goes to the mere appropriator, for the payment of public expenses.”

What we stand for

“We propose to establish equality between men with relation to the element on which and from which they must live; not by dividing the land up into equal pieces; not by taking land as the formal property of the state and renting it out; not by taking from anybody any land that he now has, but simply so changing our system of taxation as to abolish all taxes now levied upon labor and the products of labor and take by taxation for public purposes that value which attaches to land by reason of the growth of the community.”

“Abolish our present taxes and lay a single tax upon the value of land irrespective of improvements, increasing it as far and as fast as we can until it shall take as nearly as may be the whole value of the land.”

“Land can't run away; it can't be hidden; it lies out of doors; its value can be estimated with more certainty than any other value. And in putting taxes upon that single item we shall get rid of a horde of officials; we shall get rid of all these oaths that people in every direction are now required to take, of all the temptations to perjury that our present laws give, and shall raise our revenue without imposing any restriction upon production or diminishing it in the least.”

Books

Progress & Poverty (1879)

“It is difficult for small farmers and homestead owners to get over the idea that to put all taxes on the value of land would be unduly to tax them.”

“When it is first proposed to put all taxes upon the value of land, and thus confiscate rent, all land holders are likely to take the alarm, and there will not be wanting appeals to the fears of small farm and homestead owners, who will be told that this is a proposition to rob them of their hard-earned property. But a moment's reflection will show that this proposition should commend itself to all whose interests as land holders do not largely exceed their interests as laborers or capitalists, or both.”

“Take, now, the case of the homestead owner—the mechanic, storekeeper, or professional man who has secured himself a house and lot, where he lives, and which he contemplates with satisfaction as a place from which his family cannot be ejected in case of his death. He will not be injured; on the contrary, he will be the gainer. The selling value of his lot will diminish— theoretically it will entirely disappear. But its usefulnes to him will not disappear. It will serve his purpose as well as ever. While, as the value of all other lots will diminish or disappear in the same ratio, he retains the same security of always having a lot that he had before. “That is to say, he is a loser only as the man who has bought himself a pair of boots may be said to be a loser by a subsequent fall in the price of boots. His boots will be just as useful to him, and the next pair of boots he can get cheaper. So, to the homestead owner, his lot will be as useful, and should he look forward to getting a larger lot, or having his children, as they grow up, get homesteads of their own, he will, even in the matter of lots, be the gainer. And in the present, other things considered, he will be much the gainer. For though he will have more taxes to pay upon his land, he will be released from taxes upon his house and improvements, upon his furniture and personal property, upon all that he and his family eat, drink, and wear, while his earnings will be largely increased by the rise of wages, the constant employment, and the increased briskness of trade.”

“There need not have been a customs duty, an excise, license, or income tax, yet all the present expenditures could be met, and a large surplus remain to be devoted to any purpose which would conduce to the comfort or well-being of the whole people.”

“All peoples have recognized the common ownership in land, and that private property is an usurpation, a creation of force and fraud.”

“We already take some rent in taxation. We have only to make some changes in our modes of taxation to take it all.”

“We may put the proposition into practical form by proposing— to abolish all taxation save that upon land values.”

“But this is so natural and easy a matter, that it may be considered as involved, or at least understood, in the proposition to put all taxes on the value of land.”

“There are the temporary monopolies created by the patent and copyright laws. These it would be extremely unjust and unwise to tax, inasmuch as they are but recognitions of the right of labor to its intangible productions, and constitute a reward held out to invention and authorship… It is much better that these monopolies should be abolished.”

“Businesses which are in their nature monopolies are properly part of the functions of the State, and should be assumed by the State. There is the same reason why Government should carry telegraphic messages as that it should carry letters; that railroads should belong to the public as that common roads should.”

“Tax manufactures, and the effect is to check manufacturing; tax improvements, and the effect is to lessen improvement; tax commerce, and the effect is to prevent exchange; tax capital, and the effect is to drive it away. But the whole value of land may be taken in taxation, and the only effect will be to stimulate industry, to open new opportunities to capital, and to increase the production of wealth.”

“the cost of collecting the revenue now obtained by other taxes might be entirely saved by substituting the tax on land values for all other taxes. What an enormous saving might thus be made can be inferred from the horde of officials now engaged in collecting these taxes. “This saving would largely reduce the difference between what taxation now costs the people and what it yields, but the substitution of a tax on land values for all other taxes would operate to reduce this difference in an even more important way.”

“Manila cigars cost, when bought of the importer in San Francisco, $70 a thousand, of which $14 is the cost of the cigars laid down in this port and $56 is the customs duty. But the dealer who purchases these cigars to sell again must charge a profit, not on $14, the real cost of the cigars, but on $70, the cost of the cigars plus the duty. In this way all taxes which add to prices are shifted from hand to hand, increasing as they go, until they ultimately rest upon consumers, who thus pay much more than is received by the government.”

“The gross corruptions and fraud occasioned in the United States by the whisky and tobacco taxes are well known; the constant undervaluations of the Custom House, the ridiculous untruthfulness of income tax returns, and the absolute impossibility of getting anything like a just valuation of personal property, are matters of notoriety.”

“So uncertain and so demoralizing are these modes of taxation that the New York Commission, composed of David A. Wells, Edwin Dodge and George W. Cuyler, who investigated the subject of taxation in that State, proposed to substitute for most of the taxes now levied, other than that on real estate, an arbitrary tax on each individual, estimated on the rental value of the premises he occupied.”

“But there is no necessity of resorting to any arbitrary assessment. The tax on land values, which is the least arbitrary of taxes, possesses in the highest degree the element of certainty. It may be assessed and collected with a definiteness that partakes of the immovable and unconcealable character of the land itself. Taxes levied on land may be collected to the last cent… Were all taxes placed upon land values, irrespective of improvements, the scheme of taxation would be so simple and clear, and public attention would be so directed to it, that the valuation of taxation could and would be made with the same certainty that a real estate agent can determine the price a seller can get for a lot.”

“When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by nature be attained. No citizen will have an advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his industry, skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly earns. Then, but not till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital its natural return.”

“That these principles [support for LVT] have not been pushed to their necessary conclusions, as I have pushed them, evidently arises from the indisposition to endanger or offend the enormous interest involved in private ownership in land, and from the false theories in regard to wages and the cause of poverty which have dominated economic thought.”

“The French Economists of the last century, headed by Quesnay and Turgot, proposed just what I have proposed, that all taxation should be abolished save a tax upon the value of land.”

“In countries like the United States there is much valuable land that has never been improved; and in many of the States the value of the land and the value of improvements are habitually estimated separately by the assessors, though afterward reunited under the term real estate.”

“The effect of substituting for the manifold taxes now imposed a single tax on the value of land would hardly lessen the number of conscious taxpayers, for the division of land now held on speculation would much increase the number of land holders.”

“License taxes are generally favored by those on whom they are imposed, as they tend to keep others from entering the business; imposts upon manufactures are frequently grateful to large manufacturers for similar reasons, as was seen in the opposition of the distillers to the reduction of the whisky tax; duties on imports not only tend to give certain producers special advantages, but accrue to the benefit of importers or dealers who have large stocks on hand; and so, in the case of all such taxes, there are particular interests, capable of ready organization and concerted action, which favor the imposition of the tax, while, in the case of a tax upon the value of land, there is a solid and sensitive interest steadily and bitterly to oppose it.”

“The elder Mirabeau, we are told, ranked the proposition of Quesnay, to substitute one single tax on rent (the impôt unique) for all other taxes, as a discovery equal in utility to the invention of writing or the substitution of the use of money for barter.”

“The advantages which would be gained by substituting for the numerous taxes by which the public revenues are now raised, a single tax levied upon the value of land, will appear more and more important the more they are considered. This is the secret which would transform the little village into the great city. With all the burdens removed which now oppress industry and hamper exchange, the production of wealth would go on with a rapidity now undreamed of. This, in its turn, would lead to an increase in the value of land—a new surplus which society might take for general purposes. And released from the difficulties which attend the collection of revenue in a way that begets corruption and renders legislation the tool of special interests, society could assume functions which the increasing complexity of life makes it desirable to assume, but which the prospect of political demoralization under the present system now leads thoughtful men to shrink from.”

“The needle of the seamstress and the great manufactory; the cart-horse and the locomotive; the fishing boat and the steamship; the farmer's plow and the merchant's stock, would be alike untaxed. All would be free to make or to save, to buy or to sell, unfined by taxes, unannoyed by the tax-gatherer. ”

“For this simple device of placing all taxes on the value of land would be in effect putting up the land at auction to whomsoever would pay the highest rent to the state. The demand for land fixes its value, and hence, if taxes were placed so as very nearly to consume that value, the man who wished to hold land without using it would have to pay very nearly what it would be worth to any one who wanted to use it.”

“With natural opportunities thus free to labor; with capital and improvements exempt from tax, and exchange released from restrictions, the spectacle of willing men unable to turn their labor into the things they are suffering for would become impossible; the recurring parox ysms which paralyze industry would cease; every wheel of production would be set in motion; demand would keep pace with supply, and supply with demand; trade would increase in every direction, and wealth augment on every hand.”

“But great as they thus appear, the advantages of a transference of all public burdens to a tax upon the value of land cannot be fully appreciated until we consider the effect upon the distribution of wealth. “Tracing out the cause of the unequal distribution of wealth which appears in all civilized countries, with a constant tendency to greater and greater inequality as material progress goes on, we have found it in the fact that, as civilization advances, the ownership of land, now in private hands, gives a greater and greater power of appropriating the wealth produced by labor and capital.”

“Thus, to relieve labor and capital from all taxation, direct and indirect, and to throw the burden upon rent, would be, as far as it went, to counteract this tendency to inequality, and, if it went so far as to take in taxation the whole of rent, the cause of inequality would be totally destroyed. Rent, instead of causing inequality, as now, would then promote equality. Labor and capital would then receive the whole produce, minus that portion taken by the state in the taxation of land values, which, being applied to public purposes, would be equally distributed in public benefits.”

“Now, it is evident that to take rent in taxation for public purposes, which virtually abolishes private ownership in land, would be to destroy the tendency to an absolute decrease in wages and interest, by destroying the speculative monopolization of land and the speculative increase in rent. It would be very largely to increase wages and interest, by throwing open natural opportunities now monopolized and reducing the price of land. Labor and capital would thus not merely gain what is now taken from them in taxation, but would gain by the positive decline in rent caused by the decrease in speculative land values. A new equilibrium would be established, at which the common rate of wages and interest would be much higher than now.”

“The farmer would be a great gainer by the substitution of a single tax upon the value of land for all these taxes, for the taxation of land values would fall with greatest weight, not upon the agricultural districts, where land values are comparatively small, but upon the towns and cities where land values are high; whereas taxes upon personal property and improvements fall as heavily in the country as in the city. And in sparsely settled districts there would be hardly any taxes at all for the farmer to pay. For taxes, being levied upon the value of the bare land, would fall as heavily upon unimproved as upon improved land.”

“the effect of putting all taxation upon the value of land would be to relieve the harder working farmers of all taxation.”

“Thus to put all taxes on the value of land, while it would be largely to reduce all great fortunes, would in no case leave the rich man penniless.”

“But all other monopolies are trivial in extent as compared with the monopoly of land. And the value of land expressing a monopoly, pure and simple, is in every respect fitted for taxation. That is to say, while the value of a railroad or telegraph line, the price of gas or of a patent medicine, may express the price of monopoly, it also expresses the exertion of labor and capital; but the value of land, or economic rent, as we have seen, is in no part made up from these factors, and expresses nothing but the advantage of appropriation. Taxes levied upon the value of land cannot check production in the slightest degree, until they exceed rent, or the value of land taken annually, for unlike taxes upon commodities, or exchange, or capital, or any of the tools or processes of production, they do not bear upon production. The value of land does not express the reward of production, as does the value of crops, of cattle, of buildings, or any of the things which are styled personal property and improvements. It expresses the exchange value of monopoly. It is not in any case the creation of the individual who owns the land; it is created by the growth of the community. Hence the community can take it all without in any way lessening the incentive to improvement or in the slightest degree lessening the production of wealth. Taxes may be imposed upon the value of land until all rent is taken by the State, without reducing the wages of labor or the reward of capital one iota; without increasing the price of a single commodity, or making production in any way more difficult. But more than this. Taxes on the value of land not only do not check production as do most other taxes, but they tend to increase production, by destroying speculative rent. How speculative rent checks production may be seen not only in the valuable land withheld from use, but in the paroxysms of industrial depression which, originating in the speculative advance in land values, propagate themselves over the whole civilized world, everywhere paralyzing industry, and causing more waste and probably more suffering than would a general war. Taxation which would take rent for public uses would prevent all this; while if land were taxed to anything near its rental value, no one could afford to hold land that he was not using, and, consequently, land not in use would be thrown open to those who would use it. Settlement would be closer, and, consequently, labor and capital would be enabled to produce much more with the same exertion. The dog in the manger who, in this country especially, so wastes productive power, would be choked off.”

Social Problems (1883)

“Indirect taxation, the other device by which the people are bled without feeling it, and those who could make the most effective resistance to extravagance and corruption are bribed into acquiescence, is an invention whereby taxes are so levied that those who directly pay are enabled to collect them again from others, and generally to collect them with a profit, in higher prices. Those who directly pay the taxes and, still more important, those who desire high prices, are thus interested in the imposition and maintenance of taxation, while those on whom the burden ultimately falls do not realize it. The corrupting effects of indirect taxation are obvious wherever it has been resorted to, but nowhere more obvious than in the United States.”

“While every citizen may properly be called upon to bear his fair share in all proper expenses of government, it is manifestly an infringement of natural rights to use the taxing power so as to give one citizen an advantage over another, to take from some the proceeds of their labor in order to swell the profit of others, and to punish as crimes actions which in themselves are not injurious.”

“In point of fact, if land were treated as the common property of the whole people, it would be far more readily improved than now, for then the improver would get the whole benefit of his improvements. Under the present system, the price that must be paid for land operates as a powerful deterrent to improvement. And when the improver has secured land either by purchase or by lease, he is taxed upon his improvements, and heavily taxed in various ways upon all that he uses. Were land treated as the property of the whole people, the ground-rent accruing to the community would suffice for public purposes, and all other taxation might be dispensed with.”

“All it is necessary to do is to abolish all other forms of taxation until the weight of taxation rests upon the value of land irrespective of improvements, and take the ground-rent for the public benefit.”

“And in doing this we could abolish all other taxation, and still have a great and steadily increasing surplus.”

“Practically, then, the greatest, the most fundamental of all reforms, the reform which will make all other reforms easier, and without which no other reform will avail, is to be reached by concentrating all taxation into a tax upon the value of land, and making that heavy enough to take as near as may be the whole ground-rent for common purposes.”

“To appropriate ground-rent to public uses by means of taxation would permit the abolition of all the taxation which now presses so heavily upon labor and capital.”

“It would utterly destroy land monopoly by making the holding of land unprofitable to any but the user. There would be no temptation to anyone to hold land in expectation of future increase in its value when that increase was certain to be demanded in taxes.”

“To abolish all taxes save a tax upon the value of land would at the same time greatly simplify the machinery and expenses of government, and greatly reduce government expenses. An army of Custom-House officers, and internal revenue officials, and license collectors and assessors, clerks, accountants, spies, detectives, and government employees of every description, could be dispensed with. The corrupting effect of indirect taxation would be taken out of our politics.”

“[T]hose who own their own farms— form, as I shall hereafter show, but a decreasing minority of the agricultural vote, and a small and even more rapidly decreasing minority of the aggregate vote; but the change would be so manifestly to the advantage of the smaller farmers who constitute the great body, that when they come to understand it they will favor instead of opposing it. The farmer who cultivates his own small farm with his own hands is a landowner, it is true, but he is in greater degree a laborer, and in his ownership of stock, improvements, tools, etc., a capitalist. It is from his labor, aided by this capital, rather than from any advantage represented by the value of his land, that he derives his living. His main interest is that of a producer, not that of a landowner.”

“Now let the working farmer consider what would become of himself and family if he and his boys were to go to bed and stay there, and he will realize how much his interests as a laborer exceed his interests as a landowner.”

“It requires no grasp of abstractions for the working farmer to see that to abolish all taxation, save upon the value of land, would be really to his interest, no matter how it might affect larger landholders. Let the working farmer consider how the weight of indirect taxation falls upon him without his having power to shift it off upon any one else; how it adds to the price of nearly everything he has to buy, without adding to the price of what he has to sell; how it compels him to contribute to the support of government in far greater proportion to what he possesses than it does those who are much richer, and he will see that by the substitution of direct for indirect taxation, he would be largely the gainer. Let him consider further, and he will see that he would be still more largely the gainer if direct taxation were confined to the value of land. The land of the working farmer is improved land, and usually the value of the improvements and of the stock used in cultivating it bears a very high proportion to the value of the bare land.”

“Manifestly to put all taxes on the value of land would be to lessen relatively and absolutely the taxes the working farmer has to pay.”

“The truth is, that the working farmer would be an immense gainer by the change. Where he would have to pay more taxes on the value of his land, he would be released from the taxes now levied on his stock and improvements, and from all the indirect taxes that now weigh so heavily upon him. And as the effect of taxing unimproved land as heavily as though it were improved would be to compel mere holders to sell, and to destroy mere speculative values, the farmer in sparsely settled districts would have little or no taxes to pay. It would not be until equally good land all about him was in use, and he had all the advantages of a well-settled neighborhood, that his taxes would be more than nominal.”

His 1886 Platform for NYC Mayor

“We aim at the abolition of the system which compels men to pay their fellow creatures for the use of God’s gifts to all.” 

“The enormous value which the presence of a million and a half of people gives to the land of this city belongs properly to the whole community,” and that it “should be taken in taxation and applied to the improvement and beautifying of the city, to the promotion of health, comfort, education, and recreation of its people.”

The Science of Political Economy  (1898)

“The first one to use the term is said to have been Antoine de Montchretien in his “Treatise on Political Economy” (“Traite' de l’e'conomie politique”), published in Rouen, France, 1615. But if not invented by them, it was given currency, some 130 or 140 years after, by those French exponents of natural right, or the natural order, who may to-day be best described as the first single-tax men.”

“That Quesnay and his associates saw the enormous significance of this “net product” or “unearned increment” for which our economic term is “rent,” is clear from their practical proposition, the impot unique, or single tax. By this they meant just what its modern advocates now mean by it—the abolition of all taxes whatever on the making, the exchanging or the possession of wealth in any form, and the recourse for public revenues to economic rent; the net or surplus product; the (to the individual) unearned increment which attaches to land wherever in the progress of society any particular piece of land comes to afford to the user superior opportunities to those obtainable on land that any one is free to use.”

“[T]he benefit which would result from the perfect freedom given to industry and trade by a substitution of a tax on rent for all the impositions which hamper and distort the application of labor, was doubtless as clearly seen by them as it is by me.”

“Afterwards, with the great idea of the natural order in my head, I printed a little book, “Our Land and Land Policy,” in which I urged that all taxes should be laid on the value of land, irrespective of improvements. Casually meeting on a San Francisco street a scholarly lawyer, A. B. Douthitt, we stopped to chat, and he told me that what I had in my little book proposed was what the French “Economists” a hundred years before had proposed.”

“Even if Adam Smith had seen the place of the single tax in the natural order, as the natural means for the supply of the natural needs of civilized societies, prudence might well have suggested that his inquiry should not he carried so far. I mean, not merely that prudence of the individual which impelled Copernicus to withhold until after his death any publication of his discovery of the movement of the earth about the sun; but that prudence of the philosopher which, from a desire to do the utmost that he can for Truth and Justice in his own time, may prevent him from advancing a larger measure of truth than his own time can receive.”

“Thus H. M. Hyndman has dug up from the British Museum a lecture by Thomas Spence, delivered before the Philosophical Society of Newcastle, on November 8, 1775, a year prior to the publication of the “Wealth of Nations,’ and for which the Society, as Spence puts it, did him “the honor” to expel him. In this lecture Spence declares that all men “have as equal and just a property in land as they have in liberty, air, or the light and heat of the sun,” and he proposes what now would be again called “the single tax”—that the value of land should be taken for all public expenses, and all other taxes of what ever kind and nature should be abolished. ”

“William Ogilvie, Professor of Humanities in King’s College, Aberdeen, entitled “ An Essay on the Right of Property in Land, with Respect to its Foundation in the Law of Nature, its Present Establishment by the Municipal Laws of Europe, and the Regulations by which it might be Rendered More Beneficial to the Lower Ranks of Mankind.” Professor Ogilvie, though he makes no reference to any other authority than that of Moses, had evidently some knowledge of the Physiocrats, and most unquestionably declares that land is a birthright which every citizen still retains. He advocates the taxation of land, with the entire abolition of all other taxes, though, as if despairing of so radical a reform, he proposes some palliatives such as allotments to actual settlers, leases, etc. He doubtless saw the utter hopelessness of making the fight under existing conditions, for it seems probable that his book was never published, only a few copies being printed for private circulation by the author.”

“Dr. Chalmers, who was a divinity professor in the University of Edinburgh, and a strong Malthusian, contended that the owners of land ultimately paid all taxes levied on labor, and contended that titles (which he regarded as so much retained by the state for beneficial purposes) should be maintained. All others he would have ultimately abolished, and the revenues of the state ultimately raised from the value of land. This, he thought, would be simpler and better, and avoid much dispute, “relieving government from the odium of taxes which so endanger the cause of order and authority.”

“[T]he greatest difficulty which the single tax propaganda meets in the United States is the wide-spread idea, sedulously fostered by those who should know better, that non-agricultural workers have no interest in the land question and that concentrating taxes on land values means increasing the taxes of farmers. To fostering this fallacy all the efforts of the accredited organs of education are directed.”

Other References

“George’s solution was to tax all rent in land at a rate of 100 percent, and to abolish all other taxes and tariffs, thus liberating capitalists and laborers alike.” — City Journal

“Private ownership of land 'means increasing wealth for the few and increasing poverty for the masses.” — Clarence Darrow, 1917

“All taxes are a curse excepting the land value tax. That is a positive blessing, because the more you tax land the more it increases. It is the only thing that grows by taxation.” — Clarence Darrow, 1917

“From that day I was a convert to the Henry George contention that in moral principle the earth is common property, and that the best way to make it so in fact is to take over its annual values annually for public use by means of taxation… measured by the market value of their land holdings respectively.” — Louis F. Post

“The single tax defined: The practical form in which Henry George puts the idea of appropriating economic rent to common use is "To abolish all taxation save that upon land values." 1.  This is now generally known as "The Single Tax." 2. Under its operation all classes of workers, whether manufacturers, merchants, bankers, professional men, clerks, mechanics, farmers, farm-hands, or other working classes, would, as such, be wholly exempt. It is only as men own land that they would be taxed, the tax of each being in proportion, not to the area, but to value of his land. And no one would be compelled to pay a higher tax than others if his land were improved or used while theirs was not, nor if his were better improved or better used than theirs. 3 The value of its improvements would not be considered in estimating the value of a holding; site value alone would govern. 4 If a site rose in the market the tax would proportionately increase; if that fell, the tax would proportionately diminish.” — Louis F. Post

Here’s some common critiques I received on my previous essay…

Georgism is just a land value tax, bro.

No, land value taxes were advocated for (Adam Smith, Thomas Spence, David Ricardo, Mill, Mrs. Fawcett, Francois Quesnay, Anne Turgot, etc.) and existed long before Henry George. And today some countries have LVT, but no one considers them Georgist (Denmark, Singapore, Taiwan).

Georgism can be more than one tax so long as it’s a tax on negative externalities and/or rent-seeking!

No, Henry George wasn’t a Neanderthal. He existed during the 2nd Industrial Revolution when we had all sorts of taxes in part to disincentivize their usage like on whale oil, coal gas, horse-drawn carriages, sugar, alcohol, tobacco, etc. yet Henry George and the “single tax movement” advocated for repealing them all in favor of a single tax.

The most fundamental of all reforms, the reform which will make all other reforms easier, and without which no other reform will avail, is to be reached by concentrating all taxation into a tax upon the value of land, and making that heavy enough to take as near as may be the whole ground-rent for common purposes. — Henry George, Social Problems (1883)

Land can't run away; it can't be hidden; it lies out of doors; its value can be estimated with more certainty than any other value. And in putting taxes upon that single item we shall get rid of a horde of officials; we shall get rid of all these oaths that people in every direction are now required to take, of all the temptations to perjury that our present laws give, and shall raise our revenue without imposing any restriction upon production or diminishing it in the least. — Henry George, What We Stand For (1887)

We propose to abolish all taxes save one single tax levied on the value of land, irrespective of the value of the improvements in or on it. — Henry George, The Single Tax (1890)

Georgism can be a low-rate LVT! 

No, Henry George said the full value should be taken…

Taxes may be imposed upon the value of land until all rent is taken by the State, without reducing the wages of labor or the reward of capital one iota; without increasing the price of a single commodity, or making production in any way more difficult. — Henry George, Progress & Poverty (1879)

These are the plain, simple principles for which we contend, and our practical measure for restoring to all men of any country their equal rights in the land of that country is simply to abolish other taxes, to put a tax upon the value of land, irrespective of the improvements, to carry that tax up as fast as we can, until we absorb the full value of the land, and we say that that would utterly destroy the monopoly of land and create a fund for the benefit of the entire community. — Henry George, The Land for the People (1889)

Tax land values all you please up to the point of taking the full annual value—up to the point of making mere ownership in land utterly unprofitable, so that no one will want merely to own land—what will be the result? Simply that land will be the easier had by the user. Simply that the land will become valueless to the mere speculator. — Henry George, Justice the Object - Taxation the Means (1890)

More quotes in the comments.

Georgism is “an economic philosophy holding that the economic value derived from land, including natural resources and natural opportunities, should belong equally to all residents of a community, but that people own the value that they create themselves.”

This definition is similar to the 2nd paragraph of the Georgist platform (written by Henry George), but ignores 1 & 3+.

We assert as our fundamental principle the self-evident truth enunciated In the Declaration of American Independence, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain Inalienable rights.

We hold that all men are equally entitled to the use and enjoyment of what God has created and of what is gained by the general growth and improvement of the community of which they are a part. Therefore, no one should be permitted to hold natural opportunities without a fair return to all for any special privilege thus accorded to him, and that value which the growth and improvement of the community attach to land should be taken for the use of the community.

We hold that each man is entitled to all that his labor produces. Therefore no tax should be levied on the products of labor.

To carry out these principles we are in favor of raising all public revenues for national, state, county and municipal purposes by a single tax upon land values, irrespective of Improvements, and of the abolition of all forms of direct and Indirect taxation.

I get not defining Georgism by paragraph 1 because it’s too abstract and broad.

But so is just defining Georgism by paragraph 2 because its definition can be stretched to such an extent as to justify whatever is one’s own concrete policies, e.g. “meat is natural so we should put a high sales tax on it, UBI is the only legitimate Georgist position because it’s the only way to redistribute equally, businesses can be taxed directly because they aren’t people, licensing fees for fishing/farming/construction, etc.”

Fortunately for our qualitative purposes, Georgism makes very clear for even the most dense person it’s about a single high land value tax where from the 3rd paragraph on, the platform explains how it’d work and what it believes the positive implications would be.

LVT is a tax on rent price (aka capitalization rate), not sale price! 

According to the Georgist platform, LVT can be based on “purchase money or rent:”

Paragraphs 7 & 8:

It is a tax, not on land, but on the value of land. Thus it would not fall on all land, but only on valuable land and on that not in proportion to the use made of it, but in proportion to its value—the premium which the user of land must pay to the owner, either in purchase money or rent, for permission to use valuable land. It would thus be a tax, not on the use or improvement of land, but on the ownership of land, taking what would otherwise go to the owner as owner, and not as user. 

In assessments under the single tax all values created by individual use or improvement would be excluded and the only value taken into consideration would be the value attaching to the bare land by reason of neighborhood, etc., to be determined by impartial periodical assessments. Thus the farmer would have no more taxes to pay than the speculator who held a similar piece of land idle, and the man who on a city lot erected a valuable building would be taxed no more than the man who held a similar lot vacant.

And out of the two, basing LVT on the “purchase money” is more common and I’d argue better…

More common:

Virtually every mainstream source you can find talks about LVT as a tax on the average sale price of land that is either arrived at by looking at the literal sale of a raw plot of land and/or looking at the sale price of a home and then simply deducting the improvement costs. 

Even the Georgist School of Social Science cites according to the sale price:

And when Henry George or modern Georgists point to governments that had or have LVT they commonly point to governments that have assessed based on the sale price.

Better: 

The average person doesn’t even know what the capitalization rate means, which is a modern term: 

Capitalization Rate = Net Operating Income / Sale Price

This added variable creates more complexity and subjectivity, which can lead to more abuse.

If it’s apparently so complex that I and the Georgist School of Science don’t understand it then don’t you think as a matter of principle we the rulers shouldn’t implement rules we don’t understand?

And what is “net” income?

If a landlord made $10,000 a year under the status quo and then we implemented a 100% tax on it then the landlord could claim the $10,000 as “expenses,” e.g. energy, maintenance, depreciation, repairs, security, office hours, entertainment, etc. so that just as with Fortunate 500 companies that have huge revenues and pay virtually no corporate income tax a landlord could also claim to have no profits.

If landlords’ profits also became the sole barometer for our tax system then for one homeowners who vastly outnumber landlords’ would vote to implement rent control or ban it altogether to keep down their own tax liability while landlords’ would also form organizations to try to lobby the government to allow for as much expensing as possible.

And then finally, the idea of Georgism is to massively increase housing so that effectively no one would want to be tenants anymore because why would you choose to pay extra to someone who literally does nothing (if he does something then by definition this doesn’t count toward LVT since it’s supposed to only tax land)?

So then how could we base a single tax on the “capitalization rate” when there would theoretically be no more capitalization?!

In the end, Georgists would be forced to move away from basing such a land value tax on a non-existent income so you might as well not argue for it from the start. 

All Taxes Come Out of Rent (ATCOR)!

No. Let’s just run through a simple mental experiment…

Scenario A:

Adam plants apple trees.

He sells his apples for a large profit.

His land’s value goes up.

Scenario B:

But what if Adam is Apple?

It sells its iPhones for a large profit.

Apple’s land’s value goes up.

But then Apple moves its manufacturing overseas to where there is no LVT and because Georgism opposes tariffs it’d make offshoring even more profitable.

Scenario C:

Adam plants apple trees.

He sells his apples for a large profit.

His land’s value goes up.

But because we’re in the metaverse the land is virtual!

People are buying virtual apples with real money so that when Adam stems out of the metaverse he has more money in his bank account, but the physical land beneath his condo doesn’t increase. 

Shut up! ATCOR is a theory supported by real economists so how dare art thou question thy authority!

If you’re the type of person who’s easily persuaded by ad hominem attacks then “NO YOU’RE THE POOPY FACE!”  or if you’re easily persuaded by appeals to authority then logically you can’t be a Georgist because for every 1 Georgist economist there are 999 who aren’t. 

For example, I think the greatest economist of the 20th century was Milton Friedman and although like me he supported a low-rate LVT, he never considered himself a Georgist. 

If we all support LVT then why fight each other? Unity over division! It’s the best way to advance the cause! 

I agree that on the net we should strive to find common ground, but the greatest political achievements weren’t advanced by suppressing dissent in the name of politeness or expediency.

Debate is the bedrock of democracy.

We air out our differences in a rational way so that we may persuade where we can and compromise where we must.

So as to my motives for attacking Georgism it’s because…

One, I’m an originalist. I believe words have meaning based on what they were commonly understood at the time of their adoption and shouldn’t slowly lose their meaning because later “experts” are too cowardly & opportunistic to openly disagree with them so they try to redefine them to advance their own agenda.

Second, and counterintuitively, I respect Mr. George enough to say that thou shalt not co-opt his name to dismiss his central proposition. If you think he’s wrong then have the decency to say so rather than pretend like if only he knew what you know he’d abandon his cause for yours. After a single word in the 11th paragraph of the above platform was changed, Henry George stopped attending their conferences so what makes you think he’d be any less headstrong today?

The third reason and perhaps a big reason why you’ve read this far is it’s fun to battle it out in the arena of ideas and explore policies to then delineate where our own thoughts lie so that over time we as individuals can form our own strong coherent worldview.

Fourth, I wish to prevent radicalization because if you identify as something then those who identify as the purest version of it will have the intellectual upper hand so that after you enter the door as a moderate you can quickly find yourself pressured using the internal logic of said philosophy to eventually accept its wholesale prescription.

Fifth, and the main reason I’ve attacked Georgism is because it’s homosexual. 

Jk, the main reason is because it’s a diversion from the main solution to our housing crisis. Home prices aren’t exorbitant so much because of a lack of housing supply (16 million vacant US homes) as much as because of too much money supply. In other words, because the government has prohibited money from retaining its value people are forced to find something else that will serve this role: real estate. I support a low-rate LVT, housing deregulation, and a new Homestead Act to increase home ownership, but ultimately if we believe in the concept of ownership then fundamentally that means we shouldn’t print nor tax it away.

Fine! You’re right, I’m technically not a Georgist, but then under what banner can those of us who support LVT unite under?

If you google Georgism you’ll see that just about every definition includes the qualifier “also called Geoism” so I think for those of us who support a low-rate LVT as one tax among many then we could go with something as straightforward as “LVT supporter,” but if we’re looking for something more pretentious then we could call ourselves Geoists (prefix means “land”).

We could also tack geo- onto whatever else we are, e.g. geoliberal, geoconservative, geosexual. 

I like this geo- approach because it’s more flexible and doesn’t put any one LVT supporter on a pedestal nor are you put in the odd position of calling yourself a Georgist while never having read one of his books.

But nonetheless, if you really want to unite around a personality then I recommend Gallist because I suppose I have one advantage Henry George doesn’t. 

I pay tax for the land I use.

RIP.

Imagine a virus worse than the Black Death ripping through Europe and slowly finding its way into the US.

What should we do?

If something good is going to come from our last pandemic it’d be that we’re better prepared for a much worse one in the future.

But in fact, we’re even worse off because it increased political polarization.

With that said, I think there’s still a broad middle we can agree on before the four horsemen ravage our land…

Preparation:

First, it starts with prevention. Let’s ban “gain-of-function research,” aka developing biological weapons of mass destruction. It’s already banned in the US, but we shouldn’t give funding to foreign institutions we suspect of doing it and just as we have an international agency to stop nuclear weapons (IAEA) and chemical weapons (OMCW) we need one for stopping biological weapons.

Second, we need to better test people/goods coming into the US, especially from countries we suspect of carrying out gain-of-function research (cough, cough, China). And similarly, we should implement a 5% — 10% censorship sanction on nations that prohibit free speech to disincentivize the suppression of whistle-blowers.1

Third, let’s have a healthier, debt-free, more self-sufficient population so that more of us can afford to hunker down for a prolonged period.

Fourth, let’s massively increase our medical innovation/supply via deregulation as well as restructuring our military to dedicate less of its resources to offense and more to defense, such as by having a large well-trained army of medical staff.

Fifth, federal buildings should be outfitted to be more germ-resistant, which can then serve as a role model for the private sector. This is particularly important for properties we consider “essential.”

One U.S. report estimates that bringing ventilation up to scratch could be as effective in stemming airborne diseases as vaccinating half the building’s population. — Thomas Wintle

Sixth, let’s build up our Strategic National Stockpiles (SNS) so that there is, for example, enough PPE for every American (e.g. masks, PEP, nonperishable goods, etc.). Our distribution centers should also regularly do drills with state and local governments to improve overall coordination.

Seventh, we should pass a Balanced Budget Amendment that contains a robust rainy day fund (RDF) — capped at 30% of federal revenue — so the government can access these funds in the event of a war, depression, natural disaster, or pandemic.2

Pandemic Emergency Response:

But then what should be the process for which we tap into these reserves to escalate a powerful response?

As it stands, the president can unilaterally increase border testing, quarantine travelers, stop travel from a country, and tell the responsible federal and state authorities to get ready to launch a full-scale response.

But to escalate further I think a new virus should have to be projected to kill at least 0.001% of the US population in a year (roughly 3,000 people)34 for the president to then be able to call an emergency session of Congress to enact Stage 1…

If passed by 2/3rd, the president could stop 10% of travel from abroad, designate 10% of the US a hot spot, use 10% of the SNS, spend 10% of the RDF,5 fast-track vaccine/drug development, and require on federal property: PPE, testing, and social distancing.

The percentages are less important than the principle that there should be a clear objective escalation process.

If it’s projected to kill 0.01% of the US population in a year (roughly 30,000 people) then the president could call an emergency session of Congress to enact Stage 2…

If passed by 2/3rd, the president could stop 70% of travel, designate 70% of the US a hot spot, use 70% of the SNS, spend 70% of the RDF, pause tax collection, and close non-essential federal services as well as require a vaccine to enter federal property or work as a federal employee.

If it’s projected to kill 0.1% of the US population in a year (roughly 300,000 people) then the president could call an emergency session of Congress to enact Stage 3…

If passed by 2/3rd, the president could stop 100% of travel, designate 100% of the US a hot spot, use 100% of the SNS, spend 100% of the RDF, and abolish medical licensing requirements for all federal positions & funding.

Expiration

Every month Congress would have to vote to maintain the emergency response. If it fails to get a majority then PER would sunset in a week, therefore, restoring the federal government to a state of normalcy (unless supplemental legislation suggested otherwise).

This bill should also contain a… Pandemic Bill of Rights.

The federal government shouldn’t be able to force private businesses nor individuals to lockdown, social distance, wear PPE, or be vaccinated.

The only exceptions should be if…

#1 they’re traveling into the US then they can be quarantined so long as it respects the 5th and 14th Amendment’s rights of Due Process and Equal Protection to not be “arbitrary, oppressive, and unreasonable” and where individuals must be notified of their right to counsel, independent third-party medical review, access to necessities/internet/outdoors/stipend, and be able “to ask a federal court to review their federal quarantine, including any rights to habeas review.”

#2 they’re traveling from a hot spot so that if hypothetically a virus broke out on skid row then the federal government with permission from the state government could help quarantine that section of the city or the whole city or state or region. Businesses and individuals who exist within a hot spot could continue to stay open and move about (so long as their state government within reason doesn’t say otherwise),6 but if they want to leave then the government could put them in a short-term holding facility (maximum 60 days) and/or give them stay-at-home orders.

#3 they test positive for the virus, which the federal government can have checkpoints for on federal highways and work in conjunction with the states to have checkpoints on state/local roads at which point those who tested positive could be isolated.

Even libertarians can get behind this exception because they believe in the do not harm principle and so just as it’s illegal to punch me it should and already is illegal to knowingly infect me and in the event of a pandemic I think it’s fair to consider knowingly carrying a highly contagious deadly virus even if you have no intent to do harm as similar in principle to reckless endangerment and/or gross negligence.

Conclusion

I sought to balance a multitude of principles to maximize the long-term quantity and quality of life.

I balanced a quick broad unilateral response with objective thresholds so that the president could do his utmost to stop the spread, but he wouldn’t be able to effectively and indefinitely abolish checks-and-balances under the guise of public safety concerns.

I balanced safety with liberty so that if authoritarians wanted to “not let a crisis go to waste” to increase the state’s power they’d be confronted with the reality of having to give up some power in other areas.

I balanced saving lives in the short-term with saving lives in the long-term so that the government can spend a huge amount of money — a 30% RDF would be the largest in the world — but not so much that we’d make life afterwards several degrees worse therefore causing a net decrease in life years.

In the end, I welcome constructive criticism, but then what’s your plan? The more you believe in democracy the less you can abdicate responsibility to an elite few to figure out what to do, which is especially true the more you also believe in liberty because if your plan is that the government should do nothing then in practice you’re saying it should do everything.

Don’t let the allure of feeling ideologically pure cause you to not make concessions where we must in order to get stronger protections than exist so that on the net America can be even more of the land of the free and the home of the brave for centuries to come.

Democrats frequently say that red states are the biggest “takers”…

7 of the top 10 dependent states, dare I say ‘taker’ states, are red states. — Gavin Newsom

If you really believe that Americans with higher incomes shouldn’t pay for benefits provided to those with lower incomes, you should be calling on “donor” states like New Jersey and New York to cut off places like Kentucky and let their economies collapse. — Paul Krugman, The Moochers of Middle America

But first, let me appeal to the Left by asking… where’s your empathy, bro?

As the leftist American Prospect says,

When Democrats talk about ‘moocher’ red states receiving more federal benefits than they give in federal taxes, they reveal their elitism and reinforce ‘welfare queen’ rhetoric.

Second, let’s acknowledge there’s a subjective nature to being a “taker.”

I think someone who makes a lot of money rent-seeking on Wall Street or in DC is more of a “taker” than a small farmer, stay-at-home mom, or soldier.

After all, some of these states they consider “takers” have a large military presence such as Alaska so are Americans who are willing to put their lives on the line in defense of our country… “takers”?

Third, bearing that in mind, I think the evidence shows that conservatives disproportionally work in fields that lay much more of the foundation of civilization — farming, plumbing, construction, engineering, etc. — whereas liberals work in cushier jobs, which isn’t to say they’re unhelpful, but I think even when we look at the most profitable institutions those who do most of the real work are more likely to be either immigrants/centrists/conservatives — about 71% of tech employees in Silicon Valley are foreign-born — such as in the case with Twitter where after Elon Musk fired 80% of its staff the site now runs better.

In other words, if conservatives stopped working we’d all starve to death in our poop whereas if liberals stopped working we’d ummmm, wait, they work?

Fourth, but in all seriousness, those society tends to think of as the worst “takers” are Democrats, i.e. welfare recipients in the form of food stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid, and TANF…

Democrats are about twice as likely as Republicans to have received food stamps at some point in their lives. — Pew Research

Fifth, why is it that when Democrats talk about political solutions it’s almost always in terms of what they think the federal government should do yet only when they want to score political points do they bring up state differences? It’s because they would prefer to talk about individual differences, but they can’t because as it turns out Republicans have a higher median income, pay more in taxes, and give more to charity.

Sixth, their talking point basically boils down to wealthier states pay more taxes and receive fewer benefits, which right-wingers are usually the ones to highlight the progressiveness of our tax system in order to argue for making it flatter. But nevertheless, I don’t think it’s true because such a point doesn’t take into account inflation (regressive hidden tax) nor second-order effects in who ultimately bears the costs and receives the benefits, e.g. Apple’s HQ is in California, but since some of their taxation is embedded into their price then when Joe in Alabama buys a Mac he’s paying some of it; or how Walmart lobbies for a higher minimum wage because it’ll make it harder for their small business competition to stay open, therefore, the amount they’d lose in paying a higher wage is offset by their ability to raise prices on poor ol’ Joe.

Seventh, the study ultimately concluded “that states with higher per capita GDP are less dependent on the federal government,” but it should’ve looked at the per capita GDP growth over the time period it deemed those states to be red or blue because states like NY and CA achieved most of their economic growth when they were red and when they had such a libertarian-esque government it’d make your modern conservative blush where then only as these states grew in power did they become more leftist/statist, but looking at the end result and giving credit to nanny state policies is like looking at an 85-year old millionaire sleeping on a beach and assuming that’s what it takes to get rich. You’d be a fool at best, but more likely you know better, but you’re just telling people what they want to hear to get their support.

Eighth, since the study includes Social Security & Medicare are Democrats saying that the elderly are “takers” for collecting what they were told are insurances they paid for?

Finally, and perhaps most controversially, when Democrats are lampooning red states whether it be in regards to “federal dependency” or other frequently cited differences related to the murder rate, poverty, life expectancy, etc. they’re using a racist dog whistle (to borrow the vernacular of the Left).

Because despite voting 90%+ Democrat, black Americans disproportionally reside in red states, specifically the former Confederacy.

So after Democrats drove the region into the ground don’t you think it’s a bit unfair to blame Republicans for not pulling it up faster?

Red states also tend to be more decentralized therefore empowering Democrat town/city/county governments to run themselves… so are Democrats suggesting Republican governors should override the will of black communities?

In the end, I think the critique here isn’t that red states have been too conservative, but that they’ve been insufficiently so.

There isn’t enough daylight between red and blue states!

Blue states go ahead and pass “universal” healthcare, housing, college, etc. while increasing welfare, regulations, and taxes and then watch how much faster ya’ll leave for red states.

And red states should pick up their game by abolishing taxes on improved land values (aka land value tax), increasing school choice, cutting regulations/welfare/laws, and enforcing existing laws more in high-crime blue counties.

Overall, if Democrats genuinely think their policies are so much better then let’s decentralize power away from DC so we can really see the differences play out, but then again, by agreeing to this proposition would you even be a Democrat because Democrats will shut the federal government down if you so much as suggest not increasing federal spending by at least 3% a year, which from a political standpoint I can see why the DNC is all about centralizing control because when given the choice people flock to freedom.

Virtually no one understands how our financial system works.

Money In

First, it starts with understanding this…

The dollar is a socialist monetary monopoly.

In other words, it’s created by the government and it’s our only legal tender.

Gold, silver, crypto, foreign currencies, etc. are considered assets and are therefore taxable if they increase in value.

So with a socialist monetary monopoly lying at the heart of our financial system how does it distort “capitalism”?

The government prints them and then gives them to the big banks for virtually free.

The big banks are little more than government subsidiaries who then lend their cheap money at a slightly higher interest rate to virtually anyone who wants it in order to generate a profit.

The richer you are the freer this money is to you!

When the government forces interest rates down it’s basically forcing the rich to borrow a $1 because if it costs them 2% — 5% to borrow and the stock market gives them a 10% return then what choice do “capitalists” have but to become money mules?

In other words, Democrats and Republicans compromised by building an economic system where the government gets to spend a lot more so long as it washes its money through “private” institutions and individuals.

This money-washing fuels massive inequality!

On the fiscal side, Congress spends a lot of money too, which overwhelmingly goes toward making institutions and individuals even more dependent upon the state where total government spending is about $28,000 per person (more than virtually any country on Earth) with over $100,000 of national debt per person.

Money Through

The government then assumes the primary functions of the banks.

Banks primarily store and lend money, but the government is really the one effectively storing the money because even though a tiny fraction of it may be in a bank’s vault, the money is actually stored so-to-speak in the government’s promise (Federal Deposit Insurance Commission) where up to a minimum of $250,000 the federal government will reimburse a depositor, therefore, you as a depositor aren’t so much putting your trust in Chase bank as much as you’re putting it in the full faith and credit of the United States government.

The government also forces the big banks to lend to people who can’t afford it (e.g. caused the 2008 crash) because again if a bank can borrow $300,000 from the government at 1% and then give a homebuyer that money at 5% interest then what choice does a bank have but to make money?

After all, they’re bigger now than ever before.

Their borrowers may default, but about 30% of all mortgages in the US are government-backed, which means if the borrower defaults then the government will partially reimburse the lender, and then overall the bank gets the property and then can resell it on the private market or to the government, such as in the lead-up to the 2008 crash Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac owned about half of all outstanding mortgage debt in the United States (and still do).

And then if despite all this government protection, the banks still overextend themselves then the government could bail them out.

Academia naturally downplays their financier’s culpability (the government) and instead argues that the 08 crash was due to “greed” as if Wall Street all of a sudden got greedy; or 1980’s “deregulation” even though since then regulations have increased a lot.

Here’s some regulatory examples:

1. Financial: Large firms report that the average cost of maintaining regulatory compliance is about $10,000 per employee.

2. Manufacturing: According to the National Association of Manufacturers, the regulatory cost is about $30,000 per employee.

3. Healthcare is heavily regulated where it costs over $1 billion to bring a new drug to market and where over 65% of healthcare spending is government, which gives the government a lot of leverage in dictating to medical providers what they can or can’t do.

4. Occupational licensing is rampant in many industries even though there is little-to-no evidence they increase quality or quantity. It’s never consumers who lobby for occupational licensing, but those in the profession who wish to limit their competition.

5. Housing: Zoning laws however wise constrain supply.

6. Education isn’t so much about education, which you can get for free nowadays, but the little piece of paper at the end. The government constrains the number of accredited diplomas and then ramps up their price by guaranteeing students can afford it.

7. Energy: America could 100X its energy production if the government didn’t constrain drilling nor regulate away nuclear energy.

The influence-industrial complex’s solution to virtually every problem is to give the government even greater control over the economy, which in the name of reducing bubbles have made them bigger…

And in the name of reducing inequality has made it worse…

Money Out

The money is then taken out via taxation, which is not only massive in quantity…

But how it’s taken out also distorts “capitalism.”

There’s 97+ taxes.

Inflation is arguably the biggest one and it’s a regressive hidden tax, which to avoid wealthy people hoard necessities like housing and energy, therefore, driving up their cost especially.

The personal income and payroll tax disproportionally taxes earned income.

The corporate income tax is lower than the personal income tax, therefore, disproportionally penalizing small businesses since they pay at the personal income tax level.

Businesses are also taxed on their “profits,” but since there’s a subjective nature to what constitutes a “legitimate” expense large corporations can afford the best tax accountants to avoid taxes.

One of the many ways they’re able to do this is via borrowing so that we end up with a situation where the highest revenue-generating companies in the world are in the most debt, which overtime hallows them out as they get passed around from one parent company to the next who are themselves increasingly owned by the big three — Black Rock, State Street, and Vanguard (their the largest shareholder of each other and nearly every major public company where they then pressure them to become more socialistic/progressive).

All of this is to say that our tax system favors hoarding over working; paperwork over real work; no(n)-profit over profit; borrowing over saving; big over small.

Imagine how much richer society would be if we massively cut printing, spending, regulations, and taxes so that America’s economic growth could once again average above 3%.

In conclusion, the next time you hear someone say America is a capitalist free-market you can correct them with this essay so that for the first time in their life they’ll learn that the gold is plastic.

I believe one of the great battle lines of the future will be between artificialists who’d support improving AI and sapienists who won’t.

The two will largely divide along our existing ideological lines where leftist technocrats leveraging the poor will start with a competitive advantage over the American middle class, but as AI improves it could lift more Americans into the middle class, therefore, strengthening our ability and will to stop it or it could be used to exacerbate inequality so that artificialists can continue to hold the door open to oblivion.

Artificialists will want to keep the door open to a self-generating monster even as the risks of AI increasingly outweigh the rewards for a variety of reasons: curiosity, hedonism, learned helplessness, misanthropism, thanatophobia, AI worship, etc.

But I think before AI could destroy us, a foreign power would dominate us.

You see, during the Cold War, the US and the USSR both had enough nukes to destroy the other, but they didn’t do so because the other would’ve had enough time to launch a retaliatory attack, i.e. mutually assured destruction.

With AI, however, WW3 could be won with the flip of a switch.

AI advisor: “Hi Mr. President, if we hack China we have a 99% chance of taking it over whereas if China hack’s first they have a 96% chance of taking us over. Would you like to preemptively hack or put your faith in the Chinese Communist Party that they won’t do so either?”

AI will tip the offense-defense balance in favor of offense or at least because of its black box fast-improving potentially all-powerful nature no nation could be sure it hasn’t already been tipped, therefore, they’ll be forced to act as if it has.

I hope, believe, and will fight for America to win the AI arms race so that we can stop AI on our terms.

And then rather than taking over the world with it, I recommend we “encourage” our peers to sign a non-development treaty similar to what we did with nuclear weapons, except here, we’d be much more effective at enforcing compliance because this AI would be the ultimate surveillance/sabotage tool.

What should this treaty look like?

I’m flexible on the particulars, but just like with John Adam’s essay, Thoughts on Government, I hope this rough outline can inspire a new world opportunity.

The treaty should create an Artificial Intelligence Agency (AIA) whose mission should be to enforce limits on artificial intelligence, which would entail parameter caps, safety regulations, and providing temporary exceptions in some areas such as healthcare.

In order for a country to be able to join this agency it must meet some basic requirements such as: free speech, term limits, and be in the top 100 of literacy, numeracy, 2-parent households, and homeownership.

The more powerful a group is the more imperative its members be responsible.

Some of the overall provisions of the treaty should consist of a balanced budget requirement, annual % change in the budget capped at 2%, auto declassification at 50 years, no sabotaging an entity for more than 3 years in a row, no nation-building, laws sunset after 30 years, and “the eye” can only inform about AI breaches, e.g. not about WMDs, terrorist attack plans, politicians’ indiscretions, etc.

The AIA should consist of 3 branches: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.

The executive council should have 5 members who serve a 4-year term (maximum 2) where 3 are appointed by the US president and confirmed by the US Senate and 2 are appointed by the legislative council.

The legislative council should have a maximum of 50 members who serve a 6-year term (maximum 2) where if the total number of qualified countries exceeds 50 then they’d rotate seat order based on their admission date.

The judicial council should have 9 members who serve for a single 18-year term (every 2 years one is replaced) where 5 are appointed by the US president and confirmed by the US Senate and 4 by the legislative council.

Finally, AIA employees should be highly compartmentalized where they have to take a recurring lie detector test and serve a maximum of 12 years.

A general overview of operations is the executive and legislative branches would vote for a budget. The executive would grant licenses, assess the world for regulatory compliance, and upon discovering a breach carry out a full investigation, which could involve ever less subtly sabotaging a facility in part to slow down their research and to gather more evidence of intentional wrongdoing, and then to arrest the rule-breakers. They’d then be tried by the judicial branch at which point they could have their licenses revoked, be fined, and/or imprisoned.

If a nation refuses to hand over the rule-breakers or is behind it then the executive and legislative councils could pass ever greater penalties starting with revoking all or some of the country’s AI licensing, then sanctions, then deposing of their head of government, and then finally dissolving their government. The AIA would have a small elite military force to carry out these steps if it ever came to it and could request additional troops to form a multilateral coalition.

I tried to strike a balance between American unilateralism and qualified multilateralism. Some on the Left will feel I’ve given the US too much power, but realistically the US will be the one who creates this eye so we aren’t going to give up complete control over it unless we retain disproportionate power and some on the Right will feel we shouldn’t give up any control, but unless we’re willing to force the world to bend to our will, therefore, becoming the imperialist colonizer we pride ourselves on not being then we have no choice but to entice nations to voluntarily sign on to our non-development treaty by offering them some control.

Plus, it’s untenable for a nation to put humanity’s interest over its own where, for example, Americans will legitimately ask, “Why is it our sole responsibility to stop AI from destroying humanity?!” since many of us have an aversion to being “the world police,” but whether you like it or not we will continue to have world policing to stop world-destroying technologies so then the only question that remains is, “Should we support a niche well-checked international organization to stop AI in our interest or abdicate responsibility to a secret global elite to stop AI in their interest?”

I also tried to strike a balance between avoiding replication and corruption. The AIA should be opaque and capable enough that it’d be difficult to replicate its AI yet transparent and constrained enough that it’d be difficult to corrupt its members. I think it makes more sense to err on the side of preventing replication because if a foreign entity or secret elite can surpass the eye then it’s more likely to tyrannize than for an amalgamation of the most qualified nations beholden to a limited mission and powers.

In the end, maybe AI development will dramatically slow down due to unforeseen technological hurdles and/or because AI research could get less funding due to diminishing returns, but either way, our #1 foreign policy objective should be to win the AI arms race so that like with nuclear energy, we don’t use it to summon death, but bring about a better life.

We should better regulate AI with increased standards on transparency, explainability, privacy, safety, and accountability.

More regulation will slow AI down.

But I’d go two steps further…

Outside of healthcare, we should stop and then reverse the development of artificial intelligence.

After all, what could an ever-improving AI give us?

“E v e r y t h i n g…”

Okay, fair enough, but on the road to developing this genie lamp I believe we’d succumb to entropy, enslavement, evolution, and/or extinction.

After a certain point, the risks will outweigh the rewards, and the longer the time horizon you concern yourself with, perhaps, because you love your descendants or because we’ll live longer then the more weight you’ll give to the risks.

When should we ban it?

We can’t ban it until the US wins the AI arms race by unlocking an AI capable of global surveillance and sabotage.

Once we have this ultimate eye then we’ll “encourage” the world to sign a non-development treaty like we did with varying levels of success with nuclear weapons, except here we’d have the insight and power to enforce 100% compliance.

At this point, it’d then become a matter of where we with the international community draw the line?

At first, we may draw it at whatever happens to be the status quo, but we need not let happenstance dictate our indefinite reality.

In accordance with improving a variety of key metrics — obesity, literacy, suicide, longevity, wealth — we should slowly begin downgrading AI (outside of the eye).

This could involve capping AI’s parameters so that if the most advanced had 30 trillion we’d drop it to 20 trillion (ChatGPT 4 reportedly has 1.76 trillion parameters) and then over the next several years track the aforementioned key metrics relative to the global population to see if we should degrade further.

I’m not saying we degrade to Amish, but they do seem happy all things considered.

Ultimately, in order to preserve humanity, AI should at least be detectable, inferior, and non-sentient.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I’m unapologetically pro-human!

AI should be detectable to a trained human eye or at least to AI.

AI should be inferior to the best human thinkers, strategists, writers, speakers, artists, etc.

The more critical a skill is to self-governance the more imperative it is we prioritize downgrading AI in that area. I’d argue one of the most critical is writing, which brought about the dawn of human civilization so let’s not let it be our downfall.

The pen is mightier than the sword. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space. — Abraham Lincoln

There are only two powers in the world, saber and mind; at the end, saber is always defeated by mind. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Another critical area is strategy where we could use a game like chess as a proxy, therefore, it might make sense to ban AI capable of beating the top human players so that it doesn’t serve as a springboard to a more advanced AI strategist capable of replacing military generals whereby war becomes little more than AI vs. AI with humans downgraded to an afterthought in our global power dynamics.

AI should be non-sentient, e.g. fail the Turing Test. If we perceive it as sentient then this in itself would dramatically reduce the development of artificial intelligence because we wouldn’t want to torture them therefore more regulations would need to be put in place to protect them, but I’d prefer we never have to face this moral dilemma of whether and when to apply the Hippocratic Oath by simply stopping and degrading AI before then.

With the AI arms race won, criteria met, and quality of life metrics constant, I’d be content to leave the line wherever that may be in order to best ensure humanity can continue to spread our light of consciousness for centuries to come.

Part 2: How to Stop AI

Imagine running for president where basically your only credential is you got rich off of convincing a lot of people to invest in failed drugs.

Imagine running for president where you largely kept your mouth shut about politics because you didn’t want to upset the powers-that-be only to start speaking out once you saw a way to personally gain from it.

It’s one thing if such a person said, “Yeah, I profited from failure and cowardice, therefore, I know how to fix our socio-economic system so these shortcomings aren’t as profitable in the future!” But instead, Vivek acts like he got rich from good ol’ fashion honest hard work.

But I don’t want to focus on how he’s spent his career prioritizing self-preservation over the national interest as much as I want to focus on his policy positions because on the macro I like that he’s against raising overall taxes (signed the taxpayer protection pledge) and spending (opposed the debt deal), but let’s focus on some of his more heterodox policies that have garnered him so much of his notoriety…

He says he supports more child care, “I’m unapologetically pro-life, but I believe we need to walk the walk when it comes to being pro-life… by helping women get to ‘yes’ through child care, including some ability to draw from Social Security earlier on in life when you actually need it in order to provide for child care. And then also foster, even through the law, greater responsibility for men. Now that we have paternity tests I think there should be greater responsibility of confirmed fathers.”

But why is child care a federal responsibility?

And there’s nothing in Social Security to “draw from.” Social Security is a redistribution of wealth from those who are currently working to those who are currently retired or disabled. The rest is just rhetorical smoke and mirrors.

And then he talks about using the law to force confirmed fathers to take greater responsibility, but clearly, Uncle Sam is in no position to tell fathers how they should parent. I believe fathers should be equal to mothers — equal rights, what a concept!? — so both should automatically get 50/50 custody and then only if a parent is found guilty of a crime such as physical abuse should the state be able to force him or her to pay restitution.

He says he supports sending the US military into Mexico to fight the cartels, “I’ll use our military to annihilate the cartels. If we can do it to ISIS, we can do it to the Chinese-subsidized narco-terrorists south of our own border.”

First, we should build more wall, increase border security, reimplement the Remain in Mexico policy, reduce drug demand, and offer security assistance to the Mexican government and then we’d see a huge drop in illegal immigration and drugs.

Trump threatened to designate the cartels ‘terrorist organizations,’ which would’ve legally allowed the US to attack them, in order to get the Mexican president to agree to Remain in Mexico.

But we should only send troops as a last resort because once we go down this path then who knows how long we’d have to fight them and how far south we’d have to go in order to destroy them.

I’m also uncomfortable with a president broadening a designation that’s historically been used for those who wish to terrorize for ideology to those who wish to kill for profit in order to avoid congressional oversight. In the end, a president should seek to leave office having simplified our laws and strengthened our checks and balances.

Interestingly though for a guy who literally wants to start a war on drugs, he says he’s not a fan of the War on Drugs, “You don’t hear me talk about the War on Drugs. I’m not a War on Drugs person.”

The biggest problem with marijuana is the psychoactive ingredient THC so it might make sense to have a federal law that limits its concentration so that as marijuana becomes more commercialized we’d at least know that its biggest corporate sellers would comply with this regulation.

And I’m open to decriminalizing some of the other drugs he’s mentioned like ayahuasca, but the leftwing narrative that the War on Drugs has been a wholesale failure is empirically false. Yes, we should push for more rehabilitation for drug users, but we should also have steep fines and incarceration for dealers and manufacturers. We should also have state-based safety campaigns to highlight drugs’ dangers like during the 1980’s “Just Say No” campaign. I get that the Left likes to pretend like marketing campaigns against moral degradation don’t work, but clearly the Left believes they do since they’ll spend millions on 60-second Super Bowl ads. The human mind is malleable. The more difficult and stigmatizing we make it to take hard drugs then the fewer people will do them. Duh, dude.

He says he wants to raise the voting age to 25 years old, except for those who pass a civics test or serve as first responders and/or military personnel.

But the “civics” test could evolve into regurgitating a bunch of doublethink loyalty-test jargon, i.e. “Does white privilege exist?” We have gerrymandering with political borders, but this would invite gerrymandering with political biases where whoever has power after each election will try to rewrite the test to disenfranchise as much of their opposition as possible.

This constitutional amendment would also have to define what constitutes a “first responder” and “military personnel,” therefore overcomplicating our supreme law, which will become a litigation nightmare as whole neighborhoods could claim their youth is part of a first responder community watch program where a judge would then have to determine whether say 1 “emergency” call per year is sufficient grounds to call oneself a “first responder.”

But let’s say his civics test only achieved its intended aim of disenfranchising some of the uninformed, I’d still say that better than kicking citizens out of the ballot booth is lifting them up via increasing school choice so that we don’t just have a smarter electorate, but a smarter society.

And then if we raised the voting age and implemented a test for the ballot then how long would it be before we did so for the bullet, Mr. Second Amendment Absolutist?

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Vivek supports a flat tax, “I do favor a simple, flat 12% flat tax across the board.”

But rather than trying to raise taxes on the poor in the name of “fairness” we should seek to abolish the payroll tax altogether and abolish the personal income tax for at least the bottom 70% of the population and then tax unearned income and earned income on the same gross graduated rate from 1% to 30%.

Vivek supports a “basket of commodities standard” as well as reducing the Fed’s double-mandate from including “reducing unemployment” to just “stabilizing the US dollar as a unit of measurement.”

I strongly agree with establishing more sound money.

But a “basket of commodities” is worse than a gold standard because the powers-that-be could easily manipulate how much weight each commodity is given as a percentage of the basket similar to what they currently do with the CPI by undervaluing real inflation in order to justify more money printing.

I believe better than letting a “basket of goods” determine how much money we print we simply pass a law where we end the Fed and print 3% new dollars every year that goes straight into the Treasury. No more. No less. We should also make literal gold and silver legal tender to compete with our monetary public option (aka the dollar).

With that said, I agree with his more intermediary solution, which is to replace the double mandate with a single mandate of stabilizing the currency. After all, reducing unemployment should be the prerogative of our elected officials and not unelected bankers.

He supports firing many federal bureaucrats, shutting down many federal agencies, and an “8-year limit for all federal bureaucrats.”

I also agree with radically downsizing our federal bureaucracy, but an 8-year term limit is too short for federal bureaucrats, especially if he counts it consecutively, i.e. if you move from federal job A to B then are you still term-limited by your original start date because then federal employees like Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Douglas McArthur would’ve been term-limited out well before their generalship and then if he doesn’t count it by their original start date then I’m afraid this could invite more complexity as bureaucrats would seek the creation of endless new job titles in which to exercise their power from.

I think we should have term limits for all 4 branches of government as so: 8 years President, 16 years Congresspeople, 16 years Senators, 36 years Supreme Court Justices, and 18 years federal employees.

18 years may sound long, but many of our most powerful politicians have already exceeded this and we’re living longer and longer so I think this is a solid amount of time that’s also more likely to pass as a constitutional amendment.

His foreign policy role model is Tricky Dick, “When it comes to foreign policy, the president I most admire is Richard Nixon.

Richard Nixon’s foreign policy can be summed up as telling the American people one thing while doing the opposite behind the scenes, e.g. he talked tough on China while he worked behind the scenes to open up relations with them and he talked peace on Vietnam while he tried to bomb them into coming to the negotiation table so he could boost his poll numbers in time for his reelection even though he knew that these negotiations would at best prolong the inevitable reunification of Vietnam under communist rule.

In other words, he used American blood like it was a political contribution.

Nixon’s foreign policy wasn’t just driven by electoral concerns, but also a childlike embrace of the “balancing of power” as if real life is an amoral game of Risk.

How Vivek Ramaswamy's embrace of Nixonian foreign policy translates into specific policies is that with, for example, Taiwan he says, “Xi Jinping should not mess with Taiwan until we have achieved semiconductor independence… After that, our commitments to Taiwan — our commitments to be willing to go to military conflict — will change.”

I agree with increasing our semiconductors by massively increasing our semiconductor engineers, but how much progress a president feels we’ve made on this front shouldn’t have any bearing on our relationship to Taiwan’s sovereignty.

We should work with the Taiwanese government to sell them whatever weapons they want while making it clear to them that if conflict comes we may give them some aid, but we wouldn’t send American troops.

Overall, I like that Vivek supports cutting overall taxes and spending as well as I agree with some of his more heterodox positions, but when I look more specifically at his past and policies I see a Nixonian who cares more about looking like he’s speaking the truth rather than actually fighting for it.

A value-added tax is a tax on each step of the supply chain.

For example, if America had a 20% VAT then if you bought iron ore for $60 then how much would you have paid in VAT?

$10.

And then if you turned your iron ore into a bicycle and sold it to a bicycle shop for $120 then how much would you have collected in VAT?

$20.

Once you send your $20 to the government you’d then get back the $10 you paid in VAT so that in the end the final consumer would pay the full 20% VAT ($40) since they don’t get reimbursed.

I simplified the concept as best I could, but even still the VAT is quite complex, especially when you consider that some countries only reimburse part of it on some goods on some steps of the supply chain.

The value-added tax’s complexity is one of the reasons why I prefer a sales tax.

A sales tax just taxes the last step directly!

With a sales tax, only businesses that sell directly to customers are required to collect it, which amounts to an average of 33 hours of paperwork whereas with VAT virtually every business is required to not only collect the tax, but then ask the government for reimbursement, which then amounts to an average of 68 hours of paperwork.

I also prefer a sales tax because it tends to be lower where estimates put the average sales tax at 6.5% and VAT at 21%.

Sales taxes tend to be lower because it’s more transparent since customers see it on their receipts whereas the VAT “blindfolds the people” in some countries as it’s embedded into the price.

Sales taxes are also lower because they’re more avoidable, which means if the goal is to maximize sales tax revenue then its rate can’t be too high since people will buy elsewhere. In other words, avoidability is a feature, not a bug, especially when dealing with regressive taxation.

Another consumer tax that has been gaining popularity is the gross receipts tax.

There are two types of a GRT: sale-side and income-side.

The problem with taxing on the sale-side is it incentivizes vertical integration…

Given the structure of Hawaii’s [GRT] tax, you’re paying roughly a 5% tax at every step of that process… now there’s a very simple solution to that problem [for businesses]. If you integrate the three companies, now there’s only one transaction, so they only pay the 5% tax once. [The tax] encourages the bread company to own its own farm and its own flour mill whereas ordinarily those would be independent companies. — David Friedman

This is why I prefer it on the income-side.

More specifically, I support it on the income-side of corporations (C-I-GRT) aka a gross corporate income tax.

A corporation is basically just a business with a public liability insurance option.

When some of my fellow right-wingers argue for abolishing the corporate income tax what they’re effectively arguing for is passing the cost of reviewing, investigating, approving, and litigating corporations from their owners onto the general taxpayer.

What happened to personal responsibility?!

Now, when I asked some accountants for their thoughts on my gross corporate income tax idea they scoffed…

But what if a business operates at a loss?!

To which I say to these paper pushers…

If business owners don’t want to pay for their government-provided limited liability insurance at say 3% of their gross revenue then they can just unincorporate and buy more liability insurance on the private market.

If more businesses unincorporated then there’d be more political pressure to make the courts more rational again toward actual persons (instead of “legal persons”) so that penalties wouldn’t be as steep therefore reducing the price of privately-provided liability insurance.

Fourth, everything is an expense! Let’s not make the IRS the ultimate arbitrator of what’s a “legitimate” business expense. Trip to Mexico where you spend 15 minutes asking a business owner for advice? Deductible. Trip to Puerto Rico where you walk the beach brainstorming about how to improve your business, which ends up giving you some of the biggest breakthroughs of your career? Not deductible.

Reducing tax arbitrariness is one of the reasons why libertarians like Murray Rothbard supported a head tax, which I oppose, but at least he understood that gross taxation is counterintuitively more anti-tax.

Fifth, a gross corporate income tax makes things stupid simple therefore making it easier for voters to understand the system they’re responsible for holding accountable and it makes it easier for entrepreneurs to compete since they aren’t forced to hire as many paper pushers who have a financial interest in expanding tax complexity.

Finally, my response to tax accountants’ disbelief is, “Yes, we tax losses like the status quo!”

Virtually every tax taxes gross revenue by being completely indifferent to one’s claimed losses.

It doesn’t matter if you have no tenants, you have to pay your property tax. It doesn’t matter if you sell your goods at a loss, you have to pay sales and import taxes (and comply with all sorts of costly regulations like having to pay for your employees’ health insurance). It doesn’t matter if you can’t feed yourself, you have to pay payroll tax. Just to name some of the 97 taxes we pay.

Ultimately, I don’t foresee my gross corporate income tax happening anytime soon, but when I see some accountants clutching their pencils at the thought of losing power I find it even more imperative for us to move in the direction of tearing down their origami walls.

In conclusion, when it comes to taxing consumers let us never do so with VAT, which Republicans considered implementing in 2017 via the Trojan horse that is BAT, and instead tax consumers at an overall lower amount via a sales tax, gross corporate income tax, and as I addressed in a previous essay: a uniform import tax.

Thank you, come again!

I support a Land Value Tax.

After all, I’ve created one of the most popular videos on the subject, but I’m not a Georgist because unlike Henry George I don’t believe in a single 100% LVT.

Why not 1 tax?

The advantages which would be gained by substituting for the numerous taxes by which the public revenues are now raised, a single tax levied upon the value of land, will appear more and more important the more they are considered. This is the secret which would transform the little village into the great city. — Henry George

Georgists support LVT because it discourages land speculation, but then why not also support taxes on other rent-seeking behaviors like dollar speculation? After all, inflation is a tax. If we removed all inflation (i.e. fixed the supply of money) then people would hoard money much like land.

Georgists support LVT because it disproportionally taxes the rich, but then why not have a progressive income tax on the top 10% of earners because otherwise they could avoid all taxation by opting out of owning American land for storing their wealth in art, commodities, stocks, patents, foreign land, etc.?

Georgists support LVT because it incentivizes a more efficient use of land, but then why not also tax things to incentivize a more efficient use of our natural and artificial resources such as by disproportionally taxing things with high negative externalities like smoking, alcohol, sugar, waste, and pollution?

Georgists support LVT because it incentivizes economic development, but then why not also support an import tax to disincentivize companies from offshoring it?

Georgists support LVT because they feel it’s only fair people pay for using a public good, which they consider land to be, but what about public transportation, public utilities, and corporations (a corporation is basically just a business with a public liability insurance option so why shouldn’t its owners pay for its costs)?

I support lower overall taxes (max 30% of GDP), but to rely on one tax for all levels of government is too simplistic for even Simple Anthony. It’d not only undermine our federalist system, but if all our problems were so simple then we would’ve solved them long ago.

Why not 100% tax?

Tax manufactures, and the effect is to check manufacturing; tax improvements, and the effect is to lessen improvement; tax commerce, and the effect is to prevent exchange; tax capital, and the effect is to drive it away. But the whole value of land may be taken in taxation, and the only effect will be to stimulate industry, to open new opportunities to capital, and to increase the production of wealth.  — Henry George

The total value of US land is about $26 trillion.

The total income of the US is also about $26 trillion.

Americans spend about 37% of their income on housing (land, mortgage, rent, utilities, property taxes) so if we were to pay the same amount under a 100% LVT then that would mean US land values would have to drop by 63% to $9 trillion.

But of course, land values would drop by much more… as Georgists want… because real estate would go from the largest financial investment to the largest tax liability.

The rich would dump over 16 million vacant homes (about 9% of US homes).

The middle class would also dump many of their single-family homes because the median home value is about $400,000 and the median household income is about $70,000 so this means for the median home value to equal 37% of the median household’s income it’d have to fall to $25,900, which if this 93% drop in the median home value occurred nationally then that would mean a 100% LVT would only collect about $1 trillion.

But land values would drop even further because today much of the 37% that the middle class spends goes toward their mortgage in order to build up their own equity whereas few people who could afford to move abroad or above would choose to pay 37% in rent to Landlord Sam.

And then land values would drop even more because after much of the middle class’s wealth is eviscerated due to having had so much of it stored in the value of their homes, there’d be many more poor people whose plight would also be exacerbated by the fact that in 2022 total government revenue was about $10 trillion so for it to fall to less than $1 trillion would mean we’d have to abolish or at least radically cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc.

To be a Georgist means you have to be an odd mix of a communist who believes all the land should effectively be confiscated by the government and a libertarian who wants to radically downsize the government.

This massive drop in home values would also cause an unprecedented deflation where the Fed would have to print a lot of money to give to the big banks, therefore massively increasing inequality, who will then use some of that money to build skyscrapers.

A 100% LVT would basically turn America into a giant game of “the floor is lava.”

Those who buy on high would then have the same financial incentive to constrain the housing supply as when people bought more wide.

A land value tax isn’t a living space tax!

There isn’t a 1-to-1 ratio between the land value and condo value. The latter can rise faster!

Once enough of the electorate owns condos they’ll vote to increase zoning and parkanization™ (turn vacant properties into public parks) ostensibly on the basis of the environment, congestion, safety, beautification, historical preservation, etc. while doing so just so happens to disproportionally increase their condo’s value.

Once all the residentially zoned areas have skyscrapers then it’d be extremely difficult to develop them further because the cost would be tremendous to buy an entire condominium (only individual condos tend to get resold), knock it down, and then rebuild higher… all the while paying a 100% LVT.

But let’s say there was still an empty lot next to it…

The land value could be super low because no one wants to buy it due to a super high regulatory cost that effectively prohibits profit, e.g. a structure must have at least (or at most) 10 eco-friendly tornado-resistant voodoo-dispelled floors constructed by a diverse cast of unionized workers with 126 parking spots.

And then once virtually none of the underlying land in any given jurisdiction is being resold due to overdevelopment and overregulation it’d be more difficult to determine the land’s market value, which with increased tax assessment subjectivity, residents who are one of the most powerful voting blocs could lobby the government to err on the side of undervaluing the land.

Overall a single 100% LVT would massively decrease government revenue and the middle class’s wealth while making those who can afford to live above live more dependently on a heavily monitored artificial structure while those who live further down in smaller buildings would pay the bulk of taxation and then those who live the furthest down would be the homeless roaming around the great vastness of our ever-expanding public parks.

Make America Native Again?

In the end, if you aren’t persuaded by my logic then I hope you’re humble enough to realize that since Henry George proposed his 100% LVT over 100 years ago not a single government at any level anywhere in the world has implemented it so instead of imposing it on the most successful economy in human history we should as a matter of principle err on the side of caution by initially only implementing a single-digit LVT on the state-level via abolishing taxes on improved land values. And then if we coupled this property tax cut with ending the Fed (BlackStateVanguard™ would no longer have as much funds to buy up single-family homes) and implementing a Neo-Homestead Act then rather than becoming a peoples of the Earth we’d be a nation of owners again.

Biden’s handlers recently posted…

For one, let me acknowledge that US GDP growth, inflation, and inequality have been terrible under both Republicans and Democrats for decades yet I find it particularly disturbing that the Biden administration has confiscated such an unprecedented amount of money only to then turn around and lie about the results.

Out of the G7, we had the most GDP growth in 2018, 2019, and 2020, but since Biden took office in 2021 we’ve fallen to the middle of the pack.

Democrats have shared variations of the below chart, but can you see why it’s so misleading?

They normalized on 2017 so that it looks like we had a “strong rebound” when in reality we just had less to rebound from.

In effect, Democrats are trying to take credit for the fact that Republicans didn’t lockdown nearly as much as they tried to fearmonger us into.

When I first came upon Biden’s post, I actually thought it could be true that since the pandemic the US has had the most growth out of the G7 because of so many factors such as:

• We’re the most powerful country in the world so during times of uncertainty it’s natural for people and businesses to flock toward strength.

• The Russo-Ukrainian War more negatively affected many of the other G7 countries because they’re more dependent upon Russian energy.

• We’ve had massive breakthroughs in AI over the last few years.

• And then finally I wouldn’t have been surprised if we were ahead of the pack because deficit spending creates a sugar high.

During the first 2 years of any presidential administration, I’m more forgiving of its economic performance, but Biden made such huge promises in order to justify a huge amount of spending so it’s only ethical we hold him accountable to his promises and policies.

Biden has spent about $20,000 per American so ask yourself how much has this money benefited you?

I bet if you took out a $20,000 loan you could increase your own personal GDP this year, but then the question becomes would you generate enough money to be able to pay it back plus interest?

I also bet that not only have you gotten little from Biden’s massive spending bills, but it has done you more harm than good because much of it has been given to the DNC’s top donors in order to further consolidate power around them, therefore, increasing the long-term trend toward economic stagnation and wealth inequality.

So despite all these factors, for the US to have fallen to the middle of the pack just goes to show how poor of a return Bidenomics has been.

This also isn’t to say that we can’t outperform the G7 again, especially now that we have a Republican House to keep Democrats in check, but at the time of his post what he said was simply untrue about growth and also inequality…

He says that Bidenomics is about building the economy from the middle out and bottom up, but it’s more like doubling down on more of the same statist agenda the Left has been pushing since the Great Society where since 2021 wealth inequality has increased.

It’s like a doctor who prescribes his patient more and more drugs the more sick he gets all the while the reason he’s sick is because he’s on so many drugs. If only the patient said, “Enough!”, but now he’s too addicted and messed up in the head to fight back.

And then Biden points to having less inflation than the the other G7 countries, but after his Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act we’ve continued to see more inflation…

Democrats are arguing that going from an 8.5% increase in inflation in July 2022 to a 3.2% increase in July 2023 is a reduction even though cumulatively this is a massive increase.

It’s like bragging that you’ve gotten your act together by going from drinking 2 beers a day to 10.5 beers a day to 13.7 beers a day, bro.

Leftwing economists told us that inflation was mostly caused by Putin driving up gas prices and the pandemic bottlenecking the supply chain, but if this was true then as gas prices have decreased and the supply chain has smoothed out then we’d at least see some return to previous pricing, but the truth is that inflation is primarily caused by money printing where over 80% of all US dollars in existence have been printed over the last 4 years so naturally this reduces the value of all existing dollars.

Part of the reason we’ve had less inflation than some of the other G7 countries (not the “lowest” as Biden claimed) is because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, which means when we inflate the dollar we inflate everyone else’s currency too who uses the dollar to help back their own currency’s value.

Other countries are willing to put up with us inflating away some of their wealth for the convenience of holding a more stable monetary unit, but as we inflate too much they’ll move more quickly away from the dollar for something that better retains its value, which means Biden’s massive spending projects have damaged the dollar’s long-term position for not even much of a short-term gain.

In the end, Biden and Trump, Democrats and Republicans are both to blame for our slow growth, rising inequality, and high inflation, but Democrats are disproportionally more so since they hold more power and influence, supported more draconian lockdowns, and pushed for more government spending to be paid for by the regressive hidden tax that is inflation.

Bidenomics is badnomics.

My answer is no.

The Sassy Trucker is a TikTok influencer who talks about what it’s like to be a woman in the trucking business.

She had recently traveled to Dubai where she got in a car accident in her rental car.

Apparently, she breaks glass ceilings and windshields.

While returning the car she got into an argument with one of the employees who then called the police.

The police arrested the Sassy Trucker because it’s illegal there to shout, curse, and be too sassy.

She was reportedly facing up to a 2-year prison sentence for shouting?!

Insane!

The US State Department and her representatives — Senator Cruz [R] & Congresswoman Lee [D] —  did some talky-talk to help her get out, but what our federal government should’ve done decades ago is enact a Censorship Sanction (aka a tyranny tariff) where we tax nations 5% to 10% that prohibit free speech.

I much prefer my upfront systematic approach to foreign policy where we hold every nation to the same minimal standard rather than our ongoing reactive approach where we hold every nation to differing standards based upon monied interests. 

If we coupled my sanction with MASSIVE energy production then this would pressure authoritarian regimes to lighten up.

After being barred from leaving the country for three months, she was then allowed to leave after paying a $1361 fine.

Some people think the US government shouldn’t have spent resources trying to get her out, but the fact is they aren’t just doing it for her, but for every American tourist thereafter because when any country in the world thinks about pressing frivolous charges against us they should have to think twice. 

I think it’s disgraceful that the world runs so much on American dollars, defense, and digitalization yet there’s about 20 countries that have more powerful passports than us, which ironically, the UAE’s passport is considered to be the best.

Some people are also quick to assume Ms. Sassy Trucker was in the wrong, but we don’t know the full story because the UAE doesn’t have a free press so in such a situation I think the morally responsible thing to do is to err on the side of believing the victim of an authoritarian regime, which in this case she and her lawyers said the car rental place tried to scam her out of thousands of dollars by refusing to give her back her passport and credit cards, which if this is true then she did the right thing by standing up for herself no matter how sassy she might have been.

My fellow conservative Matt Walsh thinks she shouldn’t have gone there because they don’t offer the same “privileges,” but as Americans we shouldn’t ban ourselves from more than half of the world or even from more than half of our own country. Why is Mr. Walsh promoting cowardice? If anything we should say to our people to go forth and explore! Beware the dangers. Take precautions. Be respectful, but also don’t let people take advantage of you. And worst case, if sheik goes south then in between trying to protect the rest of the world America will within reason step forth to your rescue. 

With that said, not all censorship is bad.

Political censorship is bad, i.e. the government makes it illegal to criticize itself, ideologies, groups, political parties, and individuals.

The freedom to critique power is essential to all other freedoms.

Cultural censorship on the other hand can be good. 

The government has a role to play in shaping our culture to bring out “the better angels of our nature.”

This can be done via ADDITION where the government educates and entertains the population via public schools, publicly-funded media, libraries, museums, community events, parks, etc.

This can also be done via SUBTRACTION where the government bans obscenity. The Supreme Court established the Miller test [1973] to determine when speech can be labeled as obscene and therefore be limited…

1. “The average person” would find the work to appeal to the “prurient interest.”

2. The work depicts, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions.

3. The work lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

We all support obscenity laws, including the founding fathers. It’s just a matter of to what degree…

• Public intercourse? Illegal.

• Public defecation? Illegal.

• Public nudity? Illegal.

• Highly revealing clothing? Mixed.

• Drunk and disorderly content? Mixed.

• Curse words? Legal.

• Personal insults? Legal. 

• Shouting? Legal.

Obviously, we shouldn’t be as strict as Muslim-majority countries, but as conservatives we’ve become too tolerant of moral degradation, especially as it pertains to letting kids be exposed to it.

Every red state should use its Department of Cultural Affairs more aggressively to protect them…

• Tax: Raise sales taxes on M/R/X-rated video games, movies, songs, social media, and online retailers in order to lower sales taxes on sporting goods, brick-and-mortar stores, and necessities. If you’re okay with disproportionally taxing alcohol, cigarettes, and sugar then you should also support disproportionally taxing “digital sugar.”

• ID age-verification for offline (already exists) and online content that is M/R/X-rated.

• Better regulate social media: If a company regularly fails to take down obscene and pornographic content for the under-18 crowd then they should be fined. In other words, if you support your state banning certain businesses or effectively banning them via regulating away their existence — gambling, prostitution, compensated surrogacy, payday loans, cannabis, fracking, fireworks, automakers selling direct-to-customers, ride-sharing, etc. — then you should at least be open to the idea of the state… not banning… but simply better regulating “digital slot machines” for kids.

• Jiggle test: If it jiggles then it must be covered. Police officers could test civilians by making them walk a straight line and/or do 25 slow-motion jumping jacks.

Okay, I’m kidding about the last one, but otherwise what I laid out here allows for a lot of wiggle room since I’m only suggesting these policies be implemented by some states, which all of them already use taxes, IDs, regulations, and penalties to discourage a whole host of behaviors, but perhaps you don’t like the idea of the state increasingly encroaching upon the digital domain.

To which I say… WAKE UP!

Digitalty will become evermore indistinguishable from reality.

If you support limiting obscenity in one then you must support it in the other.

Sitting on your hands and yelling, “Turn!” isn’t going to stop postmodernists from driving us into a wall. We must grab the wheel! Yes, this involves force, but if you aren’t willing to use force to protect our kids in the backseat then don’t be surprised when we all go brain first through the windshield.

America wasn’t so much built by slaves, corporations, or bureaucrats as much as it was built by yeomen.

In the 1800s, 90% of the population lived on farms whereas today it’s about 1%.

I know of no pursuit in which more zeal & important service can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture. — George Washington

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds. As long, therefore, as they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or anything else. — Thomas Jefferson

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness. — Thomas Jefferson

The GOP was primarily built for yeomen.

Yes, it was created to stop the extension of slavery, but people vote more out of self-interest than compassion so I’d argue the primary motivation for stopping it was to give western land to free men.

After all, one of the first major pieces of legislation the new Republican Party passed in Congress was the Homestead Act, which would give “a free farm to any man who wanted to put a plow into unbroken sod,” but President James Buchanan [D] vetoed it because it would dilute Democrats’ power and wealth.

It’d dilute their power by increasing the number of Republican-voting yeomen and it’d dilute their wealth because they had so much of it stored in land. Democrats preferred if the federal government slowly sold its land so the increased revenue could be used to reduce tariffs.

The offer of free farms would probably have a powerful effect in encouraging emigration, especially from States like Illinois, Tennessee, and Kentucky, to the west of the Mississippi, and could not fail to reduce the price of property within their limits. An individual in States thus situated would not pay its fair value for land when by crossing the Mississippi he could go upon the public lands and obtain a farm almost without money and without price. — James Buchanan’s veto message of the 1860 Homestead Act

Eastern industrialists also opposed the Homestead Act because it’d dilute their cheap labor source, which just goes to show that industrialists weren’t as central to the GOP as yeomen.

In fact, the only legislation the 1860 GOP platform explicitly cited as need of passage was the Homestead Act, which included a provision that a homesteader couldn’t own slaves, but notice how the bill wasn’t called The Slavery Reduction Act because the populist appeal of free homesteads was inherently more popular with the electorate.

Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 slogan couldn’t have made the party’s intent any more clear: “Vote yourself a farm.”

And then after Honest Abe was elected he fulfilled his promise by signing the bill, which ended up being the most consequential piece of legislation enacted during his presidency (the Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t legislation and the 13th Amendment wouldn’t be enacted until after his death).

Here’s how the Homestead Act worked…

1. Go find yourself 160 acres.

2. File a homestead claim (pay fees equal to $18 or $550 in today’s dollars).

3. Get help from your neighbors and mutual aid societies.

4. Build a shelter and maintain the land for at least 5 years.

5. File for your deed. Congratulations, homeowner!

In the end, the Homestead Act had problems with speculation and supply shortages, but nonetheless, it was extremely popular with over 270 million acres of public land, or 10% of the total area of the U.S., given to over 1.6 million people.

The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land. — Abraham Lincoln

The wild lands of the country should be distributed so that every man should have the means and opportunity of benefitting his condition. — Abraham Lincoln

Theodore Roosevelt who I’d argue was the greatest American president concluded over a semi-century later that the yeoman was still the ideal American…

There is no body of our people whose interests are more inextricably interwoven with the interests of all the people than is the case with the farmers. — Theodore Roosevelt

TR hung the below cartoon above his fireplace where he described its significance to him…

There was one cartoon made while I was President that was always a great favorite of mine. It pictured an old fellow with chin whiskers, a farmer, in his shirt-sleeves, with his boots off, sitting before the fire, reading the President’s Message. On his feet were stockings of the kind I have seen hung up by the dozen in Joe Ferris’s store at Medora, in the days when I used to come in to town and sleep in one of the rooms over the store. The title of the picture was “His Favorite Author.” This was the old fellow whom I always used to keep in mind. He had probably been in the Civil War in his youth; he had worked hard ever since he left the army; he had been a good husband and father; he had brought up his boys and girls to work; he did not wish to do injustice to any one else, but he wanted justice done to himself and to others like him; and I was bound to secure that justice for him if it lay in my power to do so.

But during the 20th century as the number of yeomen shrank so did their political influence within the GOP and America at large.

Some attribute the yeomen’s decline to innovation where they think that large monoculture farms are inherently more efficient than small family-run farms.

Get big or get out. — Earl Butz, Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture

They think Hamilton’s vision of industrial America naturally won out over Jefferson’s vision and this would be true if large farms were more efficient than small ones since Hamilton valued efficiency over independence, but I don’t think they are.

Did capitalism kill the yeoman?

What destroyed family farms wasn’t that they couldn’t compete on a level playing field, but that our big government gave big corporations so many more competitive advantages.

Small farmers don’t have an army of accountants to navigate our ever-growing regulations and taxes nor do they have an army of lobbyists to optimize tariffs and subsidies nor do they have an army of lawyers to enforce the law against illegal immigration nor do they have an army of marketers to offset government institutions downplaying factory farming’s ecological and health risks nor do they have an army of bankers who can secure super low-interest loans as a way to avoid taxation and hedge against inflation.

If we reduced all these artificial competitive advantages by cutting regulations, taxes, subsidies, dumping, illegal immigration, propaganda, negative externalities, and inflation then at the very least we’d have a much more robust yeomen culture again.

And then to really undo “systemic agrophobia” (to borrow the vernacular of the Left ;) we need a new and improved Homestead Act!

Here’s a general framework…

The government could buy 3 large tracks of land in 3 different parts of the country (i.e. don’t privatize public lands nor use eminent domain) to then contract out the construction of 3 different self-sufficient communities.

Each self-sufficient community should have at least 10,000 5-acre self-sufficient farms.

After they’re built the government could sell 20% of them on the open market while the other 80% would be earned by those who completed 2–4 years of a national service.

In other words, my Homestead Act isn’t as leftwing as the original since you’d have to earn it.

With that said, a lot of the original Homestead Act’s success was based on the fact many Civil War veterans used their government pensions to get their homesteads off the ground.

Prior to arriving at your farm, you’d get free training (there are already too many federal programs that provide agricultural training).

Once you move in, your community would also help you and I’m sure private schools, tools, online courses, and mutual aid societies would pop up to further educate people in the way of the farmer.

After all, if 100 years ago an illiterate tenement dweller could gallop onto an empty lot and start a farm with rudimentary tools then you can succeed in our modern age because as technology improves then maintaining your farm will get easier and easier.

After working your farm for 5 years you’d get your deed.

Congratulations yeoman!

In order to help sustain you during these years and beyond you could also earn supplemental income from the private sector through your labor and investments or at least from the public sector (state-based/community-based job guarantee > welfare).

The worst-case scenario is the 3 self-sufficient communities would flop, but at least we would’ve tried to save humanity from becoming evermore dependent upon large bureaucracies where then hopefully the private sector could learn from our experiment to try in its own way to meet the goal of increasing self-sufficient farming (we spend billions on much less useful experiments, such as determining cocaine’s effects on the sexual habits of quail).

The best-case scenario would be that demand is so high that the 3 self-sufficient communities quickly fill up before they’re even done being built with over a 90% retention/satisfaction rate 5 years later. The government would then contract out the building of more and more self-sufficient communities in order to meet demand so that over time the American farmer would increase from 1% of the population to 5% to 10% to 30%+!

This best-case scenario would mean numerous positives for society…

The economic benefit would be that fewer Americans would need to go into the labor force so it’ll raise wages for everyone.

The political benefit is more Americans would have the freedom to say, “Go f*rm yourself!” to anti-human croynists! Republics work best when no one group has too much power so a large independent population (farmers) would check the more interdependent population (entrepreneurs, corporatists) that would check the more dependent population (welfare recipients, bureaucrats).

The psychological benefit is that by becoming more independent we’d have more pride & joy in being able to stand on our own two feet while also having a greater sense of meaning by belonging to a more close-knit community.

What I’ve put forth here is so common sense that you must ask yourself why hasn’t anyone else proposed this?

It’s because the Left tends to criticize private ownership and the Right tends to criticize government action so We the People stay divided while the powers-that-be continue to amass unprecedented power.

I’ve long believed that one of the mainsprings of our own liberty has been the widespread ownership of property among our people and the expectation that anyone’s child, even from the humblest of families, could grow up to own a business or a corporation. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of a land of small farmers, of shopowners, and merchants. Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act that ensured that the great western prairies of America would be the realm of independent, property-owning citizens — a mightier guarantee of freedom is difficult to imagine. — Ronald Reagan

The American Dream can be had again. All it takes is rolling up our sleeves and plowing ahead.

It’s easier to persuade my side to be better than to persuade the other side to cross over so one key area I’d like to help us be better on is the Russo-Ukrainian War.

The Great Ben Shapiro (peace be upon him) recently wrote…

Ukraine is becoming a litmus test for Republican candidates because of the bad-faith argument that if you think we must fund Ukraine in its war against Russia, you don't care about American poverty. This is wrong. The two issues are not connected.

First off, pouring money into poverty-ridden areas does not result in prosperity. That has nothing to do with Ukraine. "Government spending means prosperity" is a lie. Half the people now promoting that lie know it and have spoken out openly against it in the past. You can be skeptical of Ukrainian military aid while STILL being in favor of entitlement reform.

Ben Shapiro (peace be upon him) wants to spend more money on Ukraine and less money on the American poor.

He justifies cutting money to the poor by seemingly only considering the downsides of our large welfare state, which he’s correct in highlighting that giving evermore money to people on the condition that they stay poor isn’t a recipe for prosperity, but this isn’t the only way to spend money on them.

We’ve spent money on the poor via public education, infrastructure projects, Homestead Acts, Social Security, and providing employment opportunities in a variety of national services (army, navy, coast guard, peace corps, etc).

We can also spend money on the poor so-to-speak by taking less of their money such as by abolishing the payroll tax, sales taxes on necessities, and improved land value taxes.

Now, this isn’t to say that I think Ben doesn’t care about the poor, but I just wanted to highlight that there’s many ways in which we can use the money we’re currently sending to Ukraine to help our poor that doesn’t involve increasing welfare and entitlements.

Second off, the notion that America has no interests in Ukraine is untrue. We have an interest in the Russian military being defanged so they do not invade surrounding nations, thus threatening global supply chains and strengthening American opponents. We have an interest in deterring China from invading Taiwan.

It isn’t possible to “defang” Russia without going into Russia, which Ben is the first person to say we shouldn’t do.

In other words, you can’t defang a wolf without touching it.

The Russian military is bigger today than it was at the start of the war.

And even if we succeeded in degrading their military how long would it take for them to rebuild it? A decade?

Only by obliterating their economy can we hope to obliterate their military, but Russia’s GDP is also bigger than it was at the start of the war.

Ask yourself… is potentially degrading the Russian military for a decade worth a century of increased bad blood between America and Russia?

I strongly believe the answer is no!

He argues “defanging” Russia will deter them and China from invading their neighbors.

But the line between deterrence and provocation is thin.

I agree with deterrence, which is why I think America should have a strong enough military to defend our own borders and serve as an example to the rest of the world to do the same for themselves, but even after Crimea was invaded they still spent less on their military as a percentage of GDP than Russia because I suppose they expected the American taxpayer to foot the bill?

Taiwan is currently spending little on its military too. In order to increase deterrence we should make it clear that the less a nation is willing to build its own muscles then the less we’re willing to use our own for their benefit.

I also agree with deterrence in that Europe should step up to protect its own backyard. With America assuming evermore responsibility as the world police this has caused nations to neglect their own defense, which means they have fewer weapons that they could’ve otherwise sent to Ukraine.

Finally, I believe in a systematic approach to foreign policy rather than one where we arbitrarily pick-and-choose who are the “good” dictators and who are the bad ones based ostensibly on moral principle, but more so on “our” interests.

I think we should implement a tyranny tariff (aka a censorship sanction) where we tax nations 5% - 10% that prohibit free speech and a Get the Force Out Act where any nation that unjustly invades another nation would automatically get hit with a 30% tariff/sanction + the invaded would get aid equal to 30% of their GDP and then to multiply the effects of this legislation we should pressure our allies to adopt versions of them too so that the economic cost of censorship and invasion would be so high that only the tiniest tyrants would choose to make their economy tinier.

But we are now stuck in this weird binary strawman situation in which we are told that either we must fund Ukraine "until they win, as long as it takes," without defining winning or "as long as it takes"; or "we must stop the war in Ukraine" without defining what "stopping" looks like (does it mean withdrawing all aid, thus leading Russia to take Kyiv?).

What about the position that we have interests in Ukraine, that they do not match the Ukrainian interests entirely, and that we should fund Ukraine so as to prevent their takeover while pushing for a peace agreement that cedes certain territory to the Russians while granting security guarantees to the Ukrainians?

Shapiro ends with a middle-ground approach of giving aid while also pushing for peace, but my point is that we’ll get peace faster if we stop giving endless aid.

All the US president has to do is push Zelensky and pull Putin to the negotiation table.

The hardest part will be getting Zelensky to agree to give up some land and the only way he’d agree to do so is if he can go to his voters and blame America for pushing him into a corner by refusing to give him any more military destruction aid while dangling over his head reconstruction aid.

All nuance is lost in politics pretty quickly. It's always much easier to malign your opponents as uncaring about their fellow Americans. But demagoguery comes at a pretty high societal cost.

If Ben genuinely believes that “all nuance is lost in politics” then surely he should see how spending more money on defense is making it easier to spend more money on non-defense since both parties claim to want to cut the other only to then compromise by raising both.

Given the choice between no cuts in the name of “national security” or across-the-board cuts, I choose the latter.

In other words, I support the federal government spending more money on the poor and middle class so long as it’s part of a larger spending cut whereas Ben Shapiro supports the federal government spending more money on the military regardless.

In the end, demagoguery does come at a high cost, but not high enough at home or abroad so let’s trim and tax it.