I differ without begging to. I'm quite pleased with what President Trump is doing so far.
Our government, in my opinion, is corrupt and rotten. Frankly I see our many esteemed and appointed leaders as a far greater threat to freedom and the American people than Putin's Russia, China, etc.
Why yes President Trump is a wrecking ball & that's why I voted for him.
I also know what answers I want. I really don't expect I'll get them. None the less any disruption of the corruption is a move in the right direction.
& yes, excellent essay, I quite enjoyed the read, the queries will be interesting look backs throughout the next four years, -or perhaps the next twelve if such pans out.
Are you assuming that the previous admin's policies somehow failed to give a devastating hit to my pocketbook? Because my expenses appear to say differently.
Go read John Cochrane (The Grumpy Economist) and learn that tariffs can cause a one-time increase in the price level, but do not on their own fuel inflation.
"Don’t confuse the price level with the inflation rate. Don’t confuse relative prices with the price level. These ought to be the first lessons of macroeconomics. But many economists, and most politicians and commenters get them wrong."
Tariffs increase prices. They do not cause inflation. Someone famous said inflation is always and everywhere an expansion of the money supply. Tariffs do not increase the money supply, they decrease how many units of goods people can buy for the same amount of money.
Imagine you gave every $10,000, or as Trump did, $1400. People would want to buy more, but there wouldn't be any more physical products available (I'm ignoring digital downloads along with a lot of other complications). Prices would rise to soak up the extra money people are trying to spend.
Inflation puts more money into circulation too, with the same end result.
Imagine tariffs were raised on just washing machines. People would buy fewer and repair old ones instead.
Imagine tariffs were raised on just your favorite apples. If you bought just as many, you'd have less money for other goods. Or you'd buy another variety of apples, or bananas or oranges or something else, or save it and hope the tariffs went away.
Inflation doesn't work like that. Inflation ends up causing higher prices but only because people have more money to spend on the same amount of goods.
If I were American, my biggest worry would be something like this scenario (speaking of internal politics only):
1. The chainsaw approach only succeeds in creating chaos, doesn't save much money and makes bureaucracy worse, not better (because unless you simplify the laws as well, the bureaucracy stays, you just have fewer bureaucrats to process it all, so things grind to a halt)
2. This and the stupid tariffs lead to worse living conditions - higher prices, possibly a recession
3. This leads to Republicans losing the next election badly
4. Democrats will keep going back to this as a "proof" that you cannot simplify and scale back the government, "modern society is too complex and needs all this bureaucracy" etc.
5. Nobody attempts any serious reforms again, because their opponents will liken them to the second Trump administration. Things return to the slow cancerous growth of government involvement and they are cemented even more.
In a sense, to keep with David's metaphor, Trump ends up being a sort of a bad chemotherapy. It damages the body and while it damages the cancer temporarily, the more resistant bits of it actually spring back and spread all the faster because the body is now weak.
And of course, international politics is another can of worms ...
Even if you were correct re: this being the single most likely outcome of many (I profoundly disagree), it is hardly the most likely outcome in the sense that most people use that term, as it is *far* less likely than 50-50.
It's funny because I think I agree with you on most things, yet I find myself giddy much of the time at the things Trump is doing. They seem like things libertarians and conservatives have long claimed they wanted to do but never had the nerve to do even when they had the power to do so.
I never did really accept the libertarian logic on immigration, so there's that. Economics are one thing, but culture matters too, even if immigrants on balance increased GDP. The fact that cities are sagging under the weight of illegal immigrants also says that either the economic analysis is wrong, or it applies only on long time scales. I'm also annoyed at the approach of having laws and not enforcing them, as opposed to having the debate an implementing policy accordingly. Merit based immigration and elimination of birthright citizenship (if possible) seem like no-brainers.
On tariffs I mostly agree. I wish Trump wasn't so obsessed with them. I hope he is using them as foreign policy tools and not because he thinks they make sense economically. Having said that, I'm open to arguments related to maintaining our manufacturing base, and while at that maintaining a work outlet for the blue collar workforce. That may lead to fewer people on welfare and with drug problems, which we have to pay for anyway.
> Economics are one thing, but culture matters too
Can you elaborate on the culture argument as I often fail to understand this argument. cities like NYC or SF certainly have a better cultural scene despite being home to lot of immigrants. I would even argue that immigrants tend to improve the culture of a region pretty significantly.
On other hand rural areas where same 100 families have inhabited the town for last 100 years tend to be cultural dead zones.
I might be wrong but when people say culture matters, they probably mean status quo of what they think as their very narrow way of life. But even that without immigrants has changed pretty drastically decade over decade.
I think he means "culture" not in the sense of orchestras and art museums but of things people from a specific place and time have in common with other people from that place and time, language, norms, customs.
The more superficial one is that with extremely high immigration, you could find yourself as a minority in speaking English and such. More relevant is that there is a deeply American culture based on freedom, free markets, free speech, individualism, hard work, social trust, respect for rule of law and all of that. People who come here are escaping places that don't have these values and are suffering the consequences. But they are still from those cultures and probably don't appreciate the causal relationship. Too many of them can dilute what makes America great, plus they will vote accordingly.
It's like the problem of Californians fleeing California and then voting to make their new place the same, except much more significant.
We had mass immigration in the years before and after WWI, about 1% of the population every year. Did that erode the American culture? Good or bad effect?
While I am mostly on your side of this particular issue, the one mega difference is that assimilation was the explicit goal of both American citizens and immigrants, and public policy at that time.
Now, however, the proudly loud goal of some immigrants and one political party is explicitly not assimilation. Which among other things is decried as "cultural appropriation".
But were the originating countries for most of that time similar to those today and recently and likely in the near future? They certainly differed in Europe which has been taking in far more Muslims (although my native UK took in a lot of Pakistanis in the 1960s or thereabout).
> you could find yourself as a minority in speaking English and such
I understand why an English speaker wont like that but I do not see that as a problem in itself. Languages in themselves aren't important but become important because of what they produce. I would rather let the market do the job of people using one language over another.
> More relevant is that there is a deeply American culture based on freedom, free markets, free speech, individualism, hard work, social trust, respect for rule of law and all of that. People who come here are escaping places that don't have these values and are suffering the consequences.
This argument sounds one of the most convincing to me and yet, there seems to very little evidence to support that immigration in general has that effect other than anecdotal examples and policies that the the government itself enacts to encourage such behaviour.
For example, making it harder for legal and illegal immigrants to get driving license will needlessly create people who end up breaking the law.
Government is downstream of culture, potentially with a long time delay. Everyone wants to come to America, but why? In the end it's the culture. All the things I listed - they lead to the prosperity everyone comes for. If America is way better than the rest of the world, it's because of the culture, and it stands to reason that if all borders removed and the world became a monoculture, those of us in this great place would be worse off. Even if the government wanted to maintain the things that historically made us great (which they won't as the culture changes) they could not if nobody had those values anymore.
Of course 100 families will have less culture than a city of millions, but so do the 100 families living in a big city apartment building, who my experience says know less about each other than do the small town residents. This is not the middle ages, where travel was limited to walking. It's not even the 1800s with its railroads. Small town residents are not isolated from any culture they choose to visit.
Well, culture is more than just who knows whom, and to me, it's not really a matter of how many different flavors you can taste in the restaurant district. It gets fed by who sings the same songs, wears the same kinds of clothing, and generally, who shares the same mindset about things. Cities don't have a lot of culture; they have a lot of culture*s*.
One of my reservations about the standard libertarian story about immigration has to do with trust. If you need to leave the house, can you trust your neighbors to not try to break in? To call you or stand watch if they see the front door ajar? Would you loan each other your lawn mower? A few hundred dollars? Forgive a late shipment from your supplier when he says he'll give a discount next month? Stuff like this can depend on whether you think you have a lot in common.
Immigrants can often fail this test - illegal or not. So can fellow Americans, for that matter. If I move to a small town of a few hundred, I won't expect to feel welcome until I make the usual friendly overtures for a while! Largescale immigration makes cultural exchange much harder than one family dropping in every few years, and illegal immigration typically means some part of the country getting a largescale wave. Or lots of enclaves, which persist for generations. Meanwhile, a hundred families in the countryside might risk their lives for each other.
Some places intermingle, even homogenize. It's harder over large areas than small - England was once seven nations, now one (with enclaves, granted); the US will be noticeably and broadly multicultural for centuries. A corn farmer from Nebraska and a yuppie from Asheville NC will have a hard time trusting each other at first, but they'll probably at least speak the same language, and agree that the government shouldn't punish them for saying what they think or try them twice for the same crime.
"I never did really accept the libertarian logic on immigration, so there's that. Economics are one thing, but culture matters too, even if immigrants on balance increased GDP. "
I am between you and DF. I'll leave it to you to decide where based on the following.
High-skill [high-income/wealth] immigration is unabashedly good for America. Full stop.
*Illegal* immigration is bad for America, even if on average it added to GDP or even GDP per capital. Not just - or even primarily, imo - for the culture reason you cite, but because of how it erodes the rule of law. I find it shocking that "libertarians" refuse to consistently acknowledge this. Pure anarcho-libertarians, well ok; but DF has made clear (thankfully) that he is not one of those.
How much legal lower-skill immigration is good is open for debate. Once we truly addressed the illegal immigration problem, then I'm actually on the side of those who would favor more - especially when coupled with clearer rules that non-citizen immigrants cannot get welfare benefits - in particular, free K-12 education and "emergency" medical care [actual emergency medical care I'm fine with, it's the stuff in quotes that I'm not].
But reasonable people can legitimately disagree on my 3rd point.
Where my first two points are perilously close to being facts/axioms.
Despite the sad reality that perhaps 50% and 75% of Dem voters (and between 70% and 90% of elected Dem politicians) and somewhere between 25% and 50% of GOP voters disagree with one or the other of them.
How do you feel about people driving 70 in a 60mph zone? In my experience that is very common. Does it erode the rule of law? Do you yourself never do it?
You are correct, a moderate amount of it does not (in any significant way) erode the rule of law.
So I more properly should have written "High levels of illegal immigration are bad...". Point taken.
The level of illegal immigration we had prior to 2008 I would agree did not *meaningfully* erode the rule of law. Though I would argue that the federal EMATALA law requiring emergency medical coverage for illegal immigrants and simultaneously not allowing the gathering of identity information or turning such information over to federal authorities did. As did the 1982 judicial ruling that K-12 education requirements for illegal immigrants, however well-intended both of those ideas are/were.
Likely reasonable people could differ whether the levels of illegal immigration under Obama did or did not erode the rule of law. I would fall in the former camp.
The level of illegal immigration we had under Biden absolutely did erode the rule of law. Can you *really* disagree with that?
The only piffle I have is what someone famous once said "you can have free immigration or you can have a welfare state. You can't have both."
For me the cost and risk imposed by Trump's tariff policy is worth the astounding benefit of the end of wokeness. I am also quite sanguine about his policies vis-à-vis Europe, Ukraine, and Russia, essentially because I don't see Russia as much of a threat to Europe, with or without the United States.
To add some levity to the conversation, I find all this hugely entertaining and productive. Trump is causing chaos wherever he is, but he can't be everywhere. There is no way to tame the bureaucracy or the administrative state other than by torturing it. Make Executive Orders, half will be deemed illegal, we just don't know which half. Randomness is necessary here. There is no other way of taming the bureaucracy.
There is the "sabotage theory of bureaucracy", which claims that any cuts left to the bureaucrats will be made such as to hurt the public as much as possible, so as to provoke an outcry. "Across the board cuts" have evolved as one way of dealing with this dysfunctional phenomenon. Trump's "madman strategy" [randomization] is equally effective and much more entertaining.
I quibble only about the unalloyed good of immigration, legal or not, when it is induced by welfare, or especially when it includes refugees who seem to know nothing of our country and did not really choose coming here. The "Queers for Palestine" idiocy, even though not directly related to immigration, pretty much sums up my disgust with politically-induced immigration. I wouldn't care if cities and states want to tax themselves to lure in immigrants, except that the feds, and thus all taxpayers, keep bailing them out.
Ukraine raises many thoughts, but foremost is that wars are started by "leaders" and fought by what can only be termed slaves. Even with a voluntary US military, they are not free to quit, or to choose which wars they will support, and that makes them some kind of slave in my mind.
Putin is a dictator, regardless of how many 90% elections he wins, and a threat to his neighbors. The parallels with Hitler, Czechoslovakia, and Poland are too striking for me to ignore, and he has nuclear weapons. But Ukraine is as corrupt, and Zelensky has canceled elections, shut down newspapers and TV stations, and behaved like a dictator in many ways. His apologists say the Ukraine constitution allows canceling elections; I say so what — Hitler won his election, although by a plurality and not a majority, was appointed legally, and the 1933 Enabling Act which treated his decrees as legally enacted legislation was also legal per their constitution. I don't put Lincoln on a pedestal, yet he didn't cancel the 1864 elections even though 1/3 of the country was in rebellion and he stood a real chance of losing the election.
If Ukraine were not nearly so corrupt, and did not have such an undemocratic government, and my own government were not stealing my taxes to forward to Ukraine without any kind of democratic vote, I would probably send money to help them. Ifff.....
But that brings up the problem of leaders starting wars and slaves fighting them. Borders in that area have been fluid since the inhabitants were living in mud huts. An earlier version of my Chartertopia allowed anyone owning a parcel on a political district border to move his political allegiance to the other side; to move the district border. Where would the Russia Ukraine border be if those people had that choice? The USSR shifted Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, I think; Ukraine gave its nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for the promise to respect the existing border. Putin broke that promise in 2014, but how many Crimeans thought that was the right thing to do? Russia infiltrated Ukraine's border districts to foment rebellion, but those provinces apparently had a lot of sentiment to being under Russian control. Who knows what the actual people in question think is right? Both Russia and the EU+US meddled in Ukraine elections, to the point that no one knows what the electorate actually wants. What did the Mexican inhabitants think when the Gadsden purchase made them Americans overnight? Did anyone ask them?
I am not worried about Russian steamrolling its way into Europe proper; Putin's original invasion of Ukraine from Belarus to the north was stopped by the Ukrainians themselves before any foreign aid arrived, and Russia hasn't gotten any stronger in the meantime. The Biden and EU support for Ukraine so far has been miserly and stingy because they don't want Russia to lose and feel it might as well use its nuclear weapons, which is a really hypocritical policy towards the millions of Ukrainians and Russians caught up in their leaders' meat grinder. I get the strong impression that China's policy of helping Russia has exactly the same purpose: keep Russia from either winning or losing. A humane policy would have ended this war long ago, even if it meant Russia winning, just as a humane 1914 policy would have let Germany conquer France a second time, which wouldn't have been any worse an outcome than the first time in 1870.
So no, I am not in favor of saving the Ukraine leader's skin, even if it means chalking up a "win" for Putin. I'm really sympathetic to the people directly affected, and the world would be a more peaceful prosperous world if Russia had come out of 1991 as an actual stable democracy, but the only influence I have on any of this is a vote every four years, and whatever Trump's motivations have been, the only sane choice available right now seems to me to stop them fighting, or at the very least, stop stealing my taxes to prop up one undemocratic "leader" against another.
So did the Weimar constitution which allowed Hitler's Enabling Act. I haven't heard anyone say the constitution required suspending elections; that was his choice. But maybe he had no choice.
"Ukrainian law prohibits holding elections in wartime (unlike the US Constitution, which requires it).
Ukraine's Constitution prevents the Ukrainian government from holding elections or amending the constitution in times of martial law.[6]
Russia triggered Ukraine's martial law provisions when it launched its illegal invasion of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government cannot constitutionally suspend martial law while Russia continues to attack Ukraine.
Ukrainian opposition politicians, including those who have historically run against Zelensky, have stated that holding elections under martial law would be both illegal and immoral.[7]"
The problem with this approach is that allowing Putin to take Ukraine will whet his appetite. Even if you don't care about Ukraine, doubt whether Ukrainians even care* about staying independent, just letting Putin win (or letting Germans just win in 1914) leads to more trouble ahead. You mention Czechoslovakia. Hitler actually massively increased his weapons stockpiles by de facto annexing it. A third of all tanks attacking France in 1939 were Czech-made. Ukraine is a poor contry but it also has a substantial industrial potential and at least used to have some impresssive capabilites (their Mrja airplane was one of a kind and no mean feat of engineering, then Azovstal etc) and you'd be giving that to Putin.
If you default to capitulating to a bully, you will keep getting bullied (this is why Canada and Mexico are introducing their own tariffs now, incidentally). Russia doesn't have the capacity to literally conquer Europe but it is still a significant security threat and if you let them take more, it will be a bigger threat. Russia is most dangerous and capable in its hybrid warfare initiatives - spying, manipulation, creating unrest and confusion ... ultimately making the west weaker and divided. Also, imagine they manage to take over Ukraine, then they take Moldova (with your logic it is not worth the trouble either). Then they push Hungary over to their side completely (Hungary leaving the EU, joining their bloc, all nominally democratic so no reason to do anything). Then they sow even more discontent so that even the European NATO alliance breaks apart, then ...
I don't think this scenario is likely, it is the worst case scenario mostly. But it is not impossible and something a little less serious is even plausible if we just let Russia continue the way it does.
Now it is true that Europe should be able to respond to this alone, should not have to depend on US capabilities. And finally it seems that our leaders are moving in that direction, I even see a very clear shift in European media (I read media from multiple countries) where weapons and armies are no longer treated as somehow "evil by default", not even in Germany which is the most susceptible to this. But this shift will take time. You cannot build and scale up massive industrial capacities needed by large modern armies overnight.
Then again, I would argue that NATO ultimately brought the US more benefits than costs regardless and the European part of the alliance is not a rounding error in funding (and even less so in the number of soldiers and equipment), not even today. So abandoning it to save a few billion USD is probably short-sighted from the US perspective, especially if more support would get rid you of one regional enemy (Russia). Russia is not a great power any more but in a hypothetical war of the US and China it would surely be a lot better to have US+Europe on one side and just China on the other side (with Russia being irrelevant or perhaps even disintegrated into smaller states) than US on one side and China+Russia on the other.
*I mostly disagree with your view, other than Ukraine being a corrupt country which it is, but also it is improving and it is less corrupt now than Russia ... but that would be a longer discussion
Ukraine as the modern independent country is only 30 years old. Czechoslovakia as an independent country was only 20 years old, and ill-defined at that by politicians, not the residents. Poland existed on and off, and was most recently recreated with new borders to punish Germany and reward Stalin. Almost all European borders have been flexible since they depended on kings.
I understand appeasement. That's why I mentioned Czechoslovakia. But Biden and the EU didn't fight Russia, or warn Putin to knock it off, and Xi/China don't want Putin to win or lose either. All they have done is keep the pot boiling enough to prevent either side from winning. That doesn't deter Putin, it just makes him more stubborn and more interested in outwaiting Biden, the EU, and Xi.
And frankly, both Hitler and Putin are European problems which they have been loath to solve, and I am tired of my taxes protecting the world from itself when they don't have much interest in helping themselves. Ukrainians seem to be willing to put up with corruption, fine, but not with my money. A simple reading of EU history in the 1920s and 1930s shows both France and Britain stabbing each other in the back and shirking their Versailles Treaty duties. They have been just as duplicitous with Russian gas and oil and Ukrainian military supplies.
I don't think it is a European problem only. The US benefits greatly from the current status quo and is its mason architect. Even if the likes of Vance would very much like that, the US cannot isolate itself without risking the status quo and if it changes, the US will likely become much poorer. This might actually be an ok trade-off for Vance for ideological reasons but if you state money as your concern it shouldn't be ok for you.
Supporting Ukraine is actually a cheap way to achieve the strategic goal of making Russia wreak and irrelevant as a rival (and Russian will always see the US and the west as a rival ... Unless there is a massive ideological shift in Russian leadership). Regardless of what you think of Ukraine. Also, if you sum the total support provided, not just military support then it is actually the Europeans who support Ukraine more than the US (although just barely). I'm really annoyed whenever Americans act as though they are paying the entire bill or even most of it. Yes, in military support this is true (although a lot of what was sent was old stuff that was going to be replaced but evaluated at prices of new stuff), but a dollar is a dollar and the fact is Europe paid more (as it should, I agree this is a bigger problem for Europe than for the US, bit it still is a problem/opportunity the US as well).
This is equivalent to saying everybody's problems are my problems. No, they are not. I care more about my family than my neighbors or co-workers, more about them than the people in the next city over, and so on.
I don't think it is equivalent. If you don't care about your neighbours and don't help them, this probably won't cost you much. If the current state of international relationships breaks down, the US will be hit hard (Europe too).
So far, Trump has been trying very hard to bring the current international order down (his tariffs and insulting allies do just as much damage here). Russia is really the only winner here. They are isolated already, they have an anti-globalist ideology (the government does anyway) and they don't really care much about material prosperity of their own citizens anyway. A new world order full of tariffs, restrictions and state anarchy (each country on its own) is ideal for them and almost noone else, especially not USA, Europe and actually not even China.
But Vance seems to prefer poorer and less powerful US if it means there are more industry jobs in the Midwest and Trump probably doesn't really care much about anything but looking like a big boss at any given moment. I really see Vance as the real threat and possibly the Cardinal Richelieu type behind Trump. Unlike Trump he is intelligent, calculating and young. But his worldview seems to be something like left-conservatism. He is a worker's union gangster turned VP. I very muc hope he doesn't ever become a US president himself.
I can't think of anything useful to say about such fantasies, not just about the unpredictable future, but about politicians you so evidently hate more than the usual run of the mill ones.
All you are really saying is you have some fantastical view of a possible future, and it scares you so much that you think I have to care about everybody that you care about, and nobody else.
Should I not care about a billion Africans living in poverty with unreliable power and lack of refrigeration for food and medicines? How about a billion Chinese living under a worse dictator, or a billion Indians in worse poverty than Ukrainians but better than Africans? How should I spread my concern over 8 billion people?
My whole problem with analysis of Trump and his policies (either implemented or suggested) is that no President comes to the office inheriting a blank slate. He gets all the bad (and good) effects of just about every previous administration. In the current case I'd argue back to Woodrow Wilson.
So there will be no pristine policies.
So there is fix, repair, renew, build policy all going on at once, and every rent-seeker will fight for their particular slice of the pie as long as they can.
Perhaps the chainsaw approach is appropriate, given the actual, non-theoretical situation. Do we have time for using a scalpel when the opposition will be using an ax in response?
What I find interesting in all of this is that the man has been in office for 43 days. There has been no complete session of Congress, no complete SCOTUS term, and no budget. Despite this, there are those who predict unrivaled success, and unmitigated catastrophe. All of this under the watch of an enslaved media that is a universe away from being considered 'objective'.
Americans were, at one time, an extremely malleable society. We could adapt to the vagaries of one admistration to another with only a minimum of fuss. I believe that resiliency is still within us. Trump will do some very, very good things (energy alone puts him head and shoulders above Clueless Joe). Other things, probably not so much. But I do believe that at the end of the term, I will be better off than I am now.
I believe that at the end of the term, the country will be better off than if Harris had won. I would rather a clueless idiot with clear goals than word salads which drift like flotsam.
My only real worry with Trump is his economic illiteracy, his infatuation with tariffs, and his apparent lust for autarky. Maybe all he wants to do is scare other countries into loosening trade barriers, but I don't think so; he wants to lower the trade deficit and increase foreign investment, and his tariff shenanigans make planning a nightmare. Will that encourage other countries to negotiate lower mutual tariffs or trade barriers? I have my doubts, but I don't think even Trump himself knows what he really wants.
The people who hate Trump take him literally but not seriously.
The people who love Trump take him seriously but not literally.
Salena Zito wrote this almost 9 years ago.
It is both astounding and a crying same that most of the chattering classes, and especially the so-called elites, refuse to understand this most brilliant point.
Comprehension of this seems to be (roughly) inversely related to intelligence.
DF is in fact better on the margin than most, because he at least usually puts qualifiers when he talks about the dangers/incorrectness of the words Trump utters, but he still often falls prey to the same cardinal sin.
Trump just imposed a bunch of tariffs, with no plausible explanation. It's possible that he has a benign concealed objective but there is little reason to assume it. What is the "seriously but not literally" explanation?
"Trump just imposed a bunch of tariffs, with no plausible explanation."
There may be no "plausible explanation" that would cause you to be in favor of the tariffs he just imposed, but surely there are multiple plausible explanations that are at least reasonable.
In your piece, you provided one yourself (which is IMO the most likely): "to use the threat of tariffs to get other countries to do things he wants, hopefully including dropping their tariffs".
Tariffs as tactics are different from tariffs as end goal. Other than with China, more of Trump's words - if we are going to weigh words rather than actions or track record - on tariffs have been about them as tactic not end goal.
The real problem with tariffs as weapons is that once unsheathed, the wielder becomes reluctant to lose face and resheath them once his bluff is called.
I am also highly conflicted although I ended up being fairly sure that Trump would be better than Harris. It's good to see someone discussing this without falling into "100% bad/good" thinking. The thing I am most encouraged about is the taking of a chainsaw to government spending and bureaucracy. However, it will have little long term effect unless entire agencies are abolished.
By the way, on your 1964 poem: Why is Arizona where your dreams will die? I rather like it here! And it is far from the most statist state. Barry Goldwater was AZ senator in 1964? Could that have something to do with it?
To me, the only foreign policy that makes sense for preserving freedom is a collective defence treaty like NATO – ideally every country would be a member and no country would dare break the peace. Non-interventionism seems likely to just lead to a few governments taking over the whole planet, and I don't see any reason to believe that those governments would end up promoting freedom (whereas with hundreds of different governments to choose from, competition should provide at least a few decent options). One might think that the tragedy of the commons would prevent such a collective defence treaty from working, but it appears that NATO has been rather successful in deterring attacks on its members.
And what is the enforcement action? Does the flood of immigrants and drugs from Mexico into the US count as an invasion? Does the counter-flood of money and guns count?
I made a joke in one of my books about the ridiculous certification tags on laptops, and added one for "Not made by slave labor", the reason being that most countries require prisoners to work. But all countries have different laws about crimes, so all countries have some prisoners who other countries consider slaves for being locked up and made to work. Then there was a separate certification for "Not made by child slave labor" because countries have different ages separating children and adults as far as being sent to prison.
The UN didn't do squat about Russia occupying Crimea or fomenting rebellion in eastern Ukraine or even invading Ukraine. They also didn't do anything about those same eastern Ukraine regions which might well rather be part of Russia.
Then there's other factors, not just tariffs and not just Trump's, which some politicians consider trade barriers requiring retaliation -- employment laws, environmental laws, product safety laws, subsidies, and whatever politicians want to latch on to to get more votes.
Better to just forget the useless unenforceable treaties and leave other countries alone. I would gladly have donated to Ukraine if they were less corrupt and if my own government were not stealing my taxes to give to them. Governments pretend they speak for all their people, and that fallacy has caused more problems than you can shake a stick at.
Like I said, NATO appears to have been rather successful in deterring attacks, so I don't think one needs to come up with some perfect definition of what constitutes an attack (article 5 of the NATO charter simply says "an armed attack"), as long as there is a credible threat of retaliation. There have been some hybrid attacks by Russia against NATO members, but nothing like its actual invasions of non-members.
I have a squeaky toy which deters elephants. I haven't see once since I bought it. Perhaps you'd like one too.
Whatever NATO's rationale was in the 1940s through 1991, it has long since ceased to be anything other than a way for American taxpayers to prop up EU politicians. If they don't want to defend themselves -- if they intentionally decommission working power plants in favor of unreliables, and then depend on NATO's supposed enemy for natural gas -- if they fine American companies billions of dollars because they've started running out of their own money -- then NATO has lost any value to me.
Perhaps there is a more gloomy scenario, one where anarchy is the desired outcome (by Trump and/or his strategists). This permits martial law, restrictions of civil liberties, justification of these actions and then consolidating power by claiming to prevent a return to chaos... I'm not claiming this course of action is likely, but possible.
If Trump goes on the way he’s going, government may cease to function, and you could have a case study in anarchy. But more likely the state governments of the Disunited States of America will go on functioning.
I think a new security arrangement between Europe and USA might arise that is more beneficial to all. I wouldn't have imagined such a change (I was born shortly before the dissolution of the USSR), I wouldn't have voted for such a change due to the risk, and I don't think it was done correctly, trampling over Ukraine, or overall with the right motivations. To be frank, I feel offended, and I'm not alone, including at some libertarians I used to look up to. But I understand on a rational level that the US has some of the smartest and most morally upright people in the world, and hope that our peoples can go back to being cooperative and friendly.
David, hello. I am from Russia, and I am very interested in asking you why the issue of the Russia-Ukraine war is significant to you. Because, according to libertarian logic, the state is always the aggressor, and we can only discuss which state represses its citizens less and which one more. And Ukraine isn’t far ahead of Russia in this regard—many Ukrainian libertarians support a swift peace and dislike Zelensky. Among Russian libertarians, there are no supporters of Ukraine at all. I’m curious about what your perspective is based on, why you believe Ukraine is a country with values you need to defend. What are your arguments built on?
Part of it is irrational emotion but not all. If Russia wins the war that will imply that conquering nearby neighbors works. That would be a reason to try again. The obvious targets, the Baltics, are more attractive, less oppressive, than Russia, as is Poland. And war kills people, destroys stuff. So it is better that the lesson of this war is that it doesn't work.
An interesting perspective, and indeed, this is one of the most striking classic wars where one country seeks to seize another in the 21st century. It’s hardly surprising that it involves two former Soviet republics—we remember the Yugoslavia example. But do you really think Russia would attack a NATO country with Article 5, triggering a world war, a real world war? This isn’t even like Hitler’s invasion of Poland, where only Britain and France stepped in to defend; the entire NATO alliance would come to the Baltics’ defense. Plus, in the 21st century, there’s the nuclear threat, which is another critical factor. Don’t you think the costs are too high for Russia to actually attack a NATO country?
I don't know. Presumably they would try to make it as less obvious a case as possible, probably use the Russian speaking population of the Baltics rather as they used the Russian speakers in Ukraine to create an excuse for intervention.
And I am not sure how stable NATO will be over the next decade or two.
I understand your position, but I’m not convinced that even stopping Russia would make the idea of seizing foreign territories irrelevant for dictators and authoritarian rulers. Take Taiwan, for instance—it’s likely to face a conflict with China in this century.
Regarding your point about using the Russian-speaking population, I think you’re overly optimistic. The conflict in Ukraine in 2014 was predictable (a poor country with an oligarchic system). Ukraine has been a hotspot of political instability since the first revolution in 2004. The Baltics, on the other hand, are stable, boasting some of the most successful economies of the former USSR—there’s no basis for instability there. The notion that the Kremlin could snap its fingers and spark unrest seems utopian to me. Russians aren’t demiurges; for instability to emerge, there needs to be an internal conflict within the country itself.
As for NATO—I think Ukraine was a safe target, a country without nuclear capabilities, after all. The Baltics present a far riskier scenario.
I can't answer for David, and I don't support Ukraine monetarily, but Russia is clearly the aggressor, first in 2014 seizing Crimea, then fomenting rebellion in eastern Ukraine until they invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Anyone who supports Russia in this stupid war is not a libertarian for that reason alone.
In my view, the optics of who is the aggressor and who isn’t aren’t particularly important, because for libertarianism, what matters are the values underpinning a specific jurisdiction. I’m not deeply familiar with U.S. history, but as far as I can judge their imperialism, they’ve consistently fought against tyrannical regimes. Even if they were the aggressors at times, they brought far more progressive values, and that’s a key point. Putin offers nothing constructive in terms of institutions, but Zelensky isn’t any better. I don’t know how the information space portrays his regime, but for me, as someone from a similar linguistic and cultural group, it’s easy to read and see what local libertarians in Ukraine are writing about it. They’re not singing praises, and Vance’s positions pretty accurately reflect what I see and hear from them. This is a war between two ugly regimes that have nothing to do with libertarianism or the ideas of freedom. I understand why Ukrainians want to defend their sovereignty; what I don’t get is why some American libertarians want to get involved.
Because Russia is the aggressor. They took over Crimea; they fomented trouble in the east; and they finally invaded directly. The NAP cares very much about who the aggressor is, and the optics are incredibly important.
I understand you, but I disagree. You're talking about NAP in relation to countries. The state, as defined by Mancur Olson, is a bandit, and a bandit cannot be a victim—by definition, it is an aggressor.
Fine, the bandits controlling the region known as "Russia" are the aggressors. The head bandit's name is Putin.
Your stance here seems in conflict with your prior stance: "the optics of who is the aggressor and who isn’t aren’t particularly important" and that is what I was responding to.
If you want to get all quibbly about who is aggressing, go ahead. But if you want a practical answer, I gave you one.
It actually doesn't contradict, because both of these states are authoritarian countries. Applying the NAP to a situation where one bandit attacks another is, in my opinion, a somewhat debatable approach. The victim is not Ukraine, not the state, but rather the Ukrainian citizens—if one can even identify a victim in this case. However, states themselves are criminal entities by nature and exist outside the framework of law; their very genesis is criminal—they are criminal organizations. There's no need to look for a victim among criminals; the victims should be sought among the people. This seems to me very much in the spirit of libertarian reasoning. Attempting to perceive countries as subjects within a legal framework strikes me as highly disingenuous.
I differ without begging to. I'm quite pleased with what President Trump is doing so far.
Our government, in my opinion, is corrupt and rotten. Frankly I see our many esteemed and appointed leaders as a far greater threat to freedom and the American people than Putin's Russia, China, etc.
Why yes President Trump is a wrecking ball & that's why I voted for him.
I also know what answers I want. I really don't expect I'll get them. None the less any disruption of the corruption is a move in the right direction.
& yes, excellent essay, I quite enjoyed the read, the queries will be interesting look backs throughout the next four years, -or perhaps the next twelve if such pans out.
I agree with one quibble. "any disruption of the corruption is a move in the right direction."
I would draw the line at civil war. That brings horror.
Yep, & I see Trump as an alternative to civil war.
Yes, before Trump I was beginning to think the only way we'd get change would be civil war adn that would probably be worse than no change.
The wrecking ball quickly becomes a lot less fun once it hit your pocketbook, which his tariffs are about to do.
Are you assuming that the previous admin's policies somehow failed to give a devastating hit to my pocketbook? Because my expenses appear to say differently.
> Are you assuming that the previous admin's policies somehow failed to give a devastating hit to my pocketbook?
Yes, and Trump won by promising to address that problem, not make it worse.
I guess I just imagined all that inflation fro 2021-2025, huh?
Since taking the oath inflation under Trump has increased a whole 1/10 of one percent, and is still more than half lower than Biden's peak.
Since inflation is a lagging indicator, it might be wise to wait a bit longer to see what effect, if any, Trump's policies have had.
> Since taking the oath inflation under Trump has increased a whole 1/10 of one percent, and is still more than half lower than Biden's peak.
That was before his tariffs.
Go read John Cochrane (The Grumpy Economist) and learn that tariffs can cause a one-time increase in the price level, but do not on their own fuel inflation.
https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/inflation-vs-prices
"Don’t confuse the price level with the inflation rate. Don’t confuse relative prices with the price level. These ought to be the first lessons of macroeconomics. But many economists, and most politicians and commenters get them wrong."
Tariffs increase prices. They do not cause inflation. Someone famous said inflation is always and everywhere an expansion of the money supply. Tariffs do not increase the money supply, they decrease how many units of goods people can buy for the same amount of money.
Imagine you gave every $10,000, or as Trump did, $1400. People would want to buy more, but there wouldn't be any more physical products available (I'm ignoring digital downloads along with a lot of other complications). Prices would rise to soak up the extra money people are trying to spend.
Inflation puts more money into circulation too, with the same end result.
Imagine tariffs were raised on just washing machines. People would buy fewer and repair old ones instead.
Imagine tariffs were raised on just your favorite apples. If you bought just as many, you'd have less money for other goods. Or you'd buy another variety of apples, or bananas or oranges or something else, or save it and hope the tariffs went away.
Inflation doesn't work like that. Inflation ends up causing higher prices but only because people have more money to spend on the same amount of goods.
"The wrecking ball quickly becomes a lot less fun..."
In fact you have zero evidence - and little logic - that Trump's tariffs will be a "wrecking ball".
Even as I grant that if they stay in place for any meaningful period they will make most of us a little worse off.
Your words here are those of a histrionic leftist; not at all like I've usually seen from you.
> Even as I grant that if they stay in place for any meaningful period they will make most of us a little worse off.
Ah yes, "Paying more for things is patriotic", I'm sure that will be a winning slogan in 2028.
What a complete non-sequitur.
Not only did I not suggest anything of the sort, I didn't even suggest the tariffs were a good thing.
In fact I specifically said they would make us a little worse off.
Yours is the burden of demonstrating that they will be a "wrecking ball".
Falsely putting words in my mouth does not demonstrate the correctness of your position, only its weakness.
TDS is a terrible mental disease.
You have the opposite problem. A need to Trumpsplain anything he does.
I praise Trump when he does good things, and criticize him when he does bad things.
If I were American, my biggest worry would be something like this scenario (speaking of internal politics only):
1. The chainsaw approach only succeeds in creating chaos, doesn't save much money and makes bureaucracy worse, not better (because unless you simplify the laws as well, the bureaucracy stays, you just have fewer bureaucrats to process it all, so things grind to a halt)
2. This and the stupid tariffs lead to worse living conditions - higher prices, possibly a recession
3. This leads to Republicans losing the next election badly
4. Democrats will keep going back to this as a "proof" that you cannot simplify and scale back the government, "modern society is too complex and needs all this bureaucracy" etc.
5. Nobody attempts any serious reforms again, because their opponents will liken them to the second Trump administration. Things return to the slow cancerous growth of government involvement and they are cemented even more.
In a sense, to keep with David's metaphor, Trump ends up being a sort of a bad chemotherapy. It damages the body and while it damages the cancer temporarily, the more resistant bits of it actually spring back and spread all the faster because the body is now weak.
And of course, international politics is another can of worms ...
Sadly, this appears to be the most likely outcome.
Even if you were correct re: this being the single most likely outcome of many (I profoundly disagree), it is hardly the most likely outcome in the sense that most people use that term, as it is *far* less likely than 50-50.
Let's revisit this comment in a year.
I mean, I'd love to be wrong.
Thanks Tibor. I'm sure I'll be highly engaged by that nightmare tonight.
It's funny because I think I agree with you on most things, yet I find myself giddy much of the time at the things Trump is doing. They seem like things libertarians and conservatives have long claimed they wanted to do but never had the nerve to do even when they had the power to do so.
I never did really accept the libertarian logic on immigration, so there's that. Economics are one thing, but culture matters too, even if immigrants on balance increased GDP. The fact that cities are sagging under the weight of illegal immigrants also says that either the economic analysis is wrong, or it applies only on long time scales. I'm also annoyed at the approach of having laws and not enforcing them, as opposed to having the debate an implementing policy accordingly. Merit based immigration and elimination of birthright citizenship (if possible) seem like no-brainers.
On tariffs I mostly agree. I wish Trump wasn't so obsessed with them. I hope he is using them as foreign policy tools and not because he thinks they make sense economically. Having said that, I'm open to arguments related to maintaining our manufacturing base, and while at that maintaining a work outlet for the blue collar workforce. That may lead to fewer people on welfare and with drug problems, which we have to pay for anyway.
The giddy part is the rose colored version I feel. The problem is that I don't trust him.
I'm happy with what we are moving away from, not so happy with what we are moving towards, which was the point of my subtitle.
> Economics are one thing, but culture matters too
Can you elaborate on the culture argument as I often fail to understand this argument. cities like NYC or SF certainly have a better cultural scene despite being home to lot of immigrants. I would even argue that immigrants tend to improve the culture of a region pretty significantly.
On other hand rural areas where same 100 families have inhabited the town for last 100 years tend to be cultural dead zones.
I might be wrong but when people say culture matters, they probably mean status quo of what they think as their very narrow way of life. But even that without immigrants has changed pretty drastically decade over decade.
I think he means "culture" not in the sense of orchestras and art museums but of things people from a specific place and time have in common with other people from that place and time, language, norms, customs.
The more superficial one is that with extremely high immigration, you could find yourself as a minority in speaking English and such. More relevant is that there is a deeply American culture based on freedom, free markets, free speech, individualism, hard work, social trust, respect for rule of law and all of that. People who come here are escaping places that don't have these values and are suffering the consequences. But they are still from those cultures and probably don't appreciate the causal relationship. Too many of them can dilute what makes America great, plus they will vote accordingly.
It's like the problem of Californians fleeing California and then voting to make their new place the same, except much more significant.
We had mass immigration in the years before and after WWI, about 1% of the population every year. Did that erode the American culture? Good or bad effect?
While I am mostly on your side of this particular issue, the one mega difference is that assimilation was the explicit goal of both American citizens and immigrants, and public policy at that time.
Now, however, the proudly loud goal of some immigrants and one political party is explicitly not assimilation. Which among other things is decried as "cultural appropriation".
But were the originating countries for most of that time similar to those today and recently and likely in the near future? They certainly differed in Europe which has been taking in far more Muslims (although my native UK took in a lot of Pakistanis in the 1960s or thereabout).
> you could find yourself as a minority in speaking English and such
I understand why an English speaker wont like that but I do not see that as a problem in itself. Languages in themselves aren't important but become important because of what they produce. I would rather let the market do the job of people using one language over another.
> More relevant is that there is a deeply American culture based on freedom, free markets, free speech, individualism, hard work, social trust, respect for rule of law and all of that. People who come here are escaping places that don't have these values and are suffering the consequences.
This argument sounds one of the most convincing to me and yet, there seems to very little evidence to support that immigration in general has that effect other than anecdotal examples and policies that the the government itself enacts to encourage such behaviour.
For example, making it harder for legal and illegal immigrants to get driving license will needlessly create people who end up breaking the law.
Government is downstream of culture, potentially with a long time delay. Everyone wants to come to America, but why? In the end it's the culture. All the things I listed - they lead to the prosperity everyone comes for. If America is way better than the rest of the world, it's because of the culture, and it stands to reason that if all borders removed and the world became a monoculture, those of us in this great place would be worse off. Even if the government wanted to maintain the things that historically made us great (which they won't as the culture changes) they could not if nobody had those values anymore.
Of course 100 families will have less culture than a city of millions, but so do the 100 families living in a big city apartment building, who my experience says know less about each other than do the small town residents. This is not the middle ages, where travel was limited to walking. It's not even the 1800s with its railroads. Small town residents are not isolated from any culture they choose to visit.
Well, culture is more than just who knows whom, and to me, it's not really a matter of how many different flavors you can taste in the restaurant district. It gets fed by who sings the same songs, wears the same kinds of clothing, and generally, who shares the same mindset about things. Cities don't have a lot of culture; they have a lot of culture*s*.
One of my reservations about the standard libertarian story about immigration has to do with trust. If you need to leave the house, can you trust your neighbors to not try to break in? To call you or stand watch if they see the front door ajar? Would you loan each other your lawn mower? A few hundred dollars? Forgive a late shipment from your supplier when he says he'll give a discount next month? Stuff like this can depend on whether you think you have a lot in common.
Immigrants can often fail this test - illegal or not. So can fellow Americans, for that matter. If I move to a small town of a few hundred, I won't expect to feel welcome until I make the usual friendly overtures for a while! Largescale immigration makes cultural exchange much harder than one family dropping in every few years, and illegal immigration typically means some part of the country getting a largescale wave. Or lots of enclaves, which persist for generations. Meanwhile, a hundred families in the countryside might risk their lives for each other.
Some places intermingle, even homogenize. It's harder over large areas than small - England was once seven nations, now one (with enclaves, granted); the US will be noticeably and broadly multicultural for centuries. A corn farmer from Nebraska and a yuppie from Asheville NC will have a hard time trusting each other at first, but they'll probably at least speak the same language, and agree that the government shouldn't punish them for saying what they think or try them twice for the same crime.
That commonality is culture.
Good point. I wonder if a different word would help, but nothing obvious strikes me.
"I never did really accept the libertarian logic on immigration, so there's that. Economics are one thing, but culture matters too, even if immigrants on balance increased GDP. "
I am between you and DF. I'll leave it to you to decide where based on the following.
High-skill [high-income/wealth] immigration is unabashedly good for America. Full stop.
*Illegal* immigration is bad for America, even if on average it added to GDP or even GDP per capital. Not just - or even primarily, imo - for the culture reason you cite, but because of how it erodes the rule of law. I find it shocking that "libertarians" refuse to consistently acknowledge this. Pure anarcho-libertarians, well ok; but DF has made clear (thankfully) that he is not one of those.
How much legal lower-skill immigration is good is open for debate. Once we truly addressed the illegal immigration problem, then I'm actually on the side of those who would favor more - especially when coupled with clearer rules that non-citizen immigrants cannot get welfare benefits - in particular, free K-12 education and "emergency" medical care [actual emergency medical care I'm fine with, it's the stuff in quotes that I'm not].
But reasonable people can legitimately disagree on my 3rd point.
Where my first two points are perilously close to being facts/axioms.
Despite the sad reality that perhaps 50% and 75% of Dem voters (and between 70% and 90% of elected Dem politicians) and somewhere between 25% and 50% of GOP voters disagree with one or the other of them.
How do you feel about people driving 70 in a 60mph zone? In my experience that is very common. Does it erode the rule of law? Do you yourself never do it?
I do it all the time.
You are correct, a moderate amount of it does not (in any significant way) erode the rule of law.
So I more properly should have written "High levels of illegal immigration are bad...". Point taken.
The level of illegal immigration we had prior to 2008 I would agree did not *meaningfully* erode the rule of law. Though I would argue that the federal EMATALA law requiring emergency medical coverage for illegal immigrants and simultaneously not allowing the gathering of identity information or turning such information over to federal authorities did. As did the 1982 judicial ruling that K-12 education requirements for illegal immigrants, however well-intended both of those ideas are/were.
Likely reasonable people could differ whether the levels of illegal immigration under Obama did or did not erode the rule of law. I would fall in the former camp.
The level of illegal immigration we had under Biden absolutely did erode the rule of law. Can you *really* disagree with that?
Wonderful analysis, and I largely agree.
The only piffle I have is what someone famous once said "you can have free immigration or you can have a welfare state. You can't have both."
For me the cost and risk imposed by Trump's tariff policy is worth the astounding benefit of the end of wokeness. I am also quite sanguine about his policies vis-à-vis Europe, Ukraine, and Russia, essentially because I don't see Russia as much of a threat to Europe, with or without the United States.
We could have free immigration and a welfare state restricted to citizens. That doesn't fit the dominent ideology but if we are abandoning that ...
To add some levity to the conversation, I find all this hugely entertaining and productive. Trump is causing chaos wherever he is, but he can't be everywhere. There is no way to tame the bureaucracy or the administrative state other than by torturing it. Make Executive Orders, half will be deemed illegal, we just don't know which half. Randomness is necessary here. There is no other way of taming the bureaucracy.
There is the "sabotage theory of bureaucracy", which claims that any cuts left to the bureaucrats will be made such as to hurt the public as much as possible, so as to provoke an outcry. "Across the board cuts" have evolved as one way of dealing with this dysfunctional phenomenon. Trump's "madman strategy" [randomization] is equally effective and much more entertaining.
I quibble only about the unalloyed good of immigration, legal or not, when it is induced by welfare, or especially when it includes refugees who seem to know nothing of our country and did not really choose coming here. The "Queers for Palestine" idiocy, even though not directly related to immigration, pretty much sums up my disgust with politically-induced immigration. I wouldn't care if cities and states want to tax themselves to lure in immigrants, except that the feds, and thus all taxpayers, keep bailing them out.
Ukraine raises many thoughts, but foremost is that wars are started by "leaders" and fought by what can only be termed slaves. Even with a voluntary US military, they are not free to quit, or to choose which wars they will support, and that makes them some kind of slave in my mind.
Putin is a dictator, regardless of how many 90% elections he wins, and a threat to his neighbors. The parallels with Hitler, Czechoslovakia, and Poland are too striking for me to ignore, and he has nuclear weapons. But Ukraine is as corrupt, and Zelensky has canceled elections, shut down newspapers and TV stations, and behaved like a dictator in many ways. His apologists say the Ukraine constitution allows canceling elections; I say so what — Hitler won his election, although by a plurality and not a majority, was appointed legally, and the 1933 Enabling Act which treated his decrees as legally enacted legislation was also legal per their constitution. I don't put Lincoln on a pedestal, yet he didn't cancel the 1864 elections even though 1/3 of the country was in rebellion and he stood a real chance of losing the election.
If Ukraine were not nearly so corrupt, and did not have such an undemocratic government, and my own government were not stealing my taxes to forward to Ukraine without any kind of democratic vote, I would probably send money to help them. Ifff.....
But that brings up the problem of leaders starting wars and slaves fighting them. Borders in that area have been fluid since the inhabitants were living in mud huts. An earlier version of my Chartertopia allowed anyone owning a parcel on a political district border to move his political allegiance to the other side; to move the district border. Where would the Russia Ukraine border be if those people had that choice? The USSR shifted Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, I think; Ukraine gave its nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for the promise to respect the existing border. Putin broke that promise in 2014, but how many Crimeans thought that was the right thing to do? Russia infiltrated Ukraine's border districts to foment rebellion, but those provinces apparently had a lot of sentiment to being under Russian control. Who knows what the actual people in question think is right? Both Russia and the EU+US meddled in Ukraine elections, to the point that no one knows what the electorate actually wants. What did the Mexican inhabitants think when the Gadsden purchase made them Americans overnight? Did anyone ask them?
I am not worried about Russian steamrolling its way into Europe proper; Putin's original invasion of Ukraine from Belarus to the north was stopped by the Ukrainians themselves before any foreign aid arrived, and Russia hasn't gotten any stronger in the meantime. The Biden and EU support for Ukraine so far has been miserly and stingy because they don't want Russia to lose and feel it might as well use its nuclear weapons, which is a really hypocritical policy towards the millions of Ukrainians and Russians caught up in their leaders' meat grinder. I get the strong impression that China's policy of helping Russia has exactly the same purpose: keep Russia from either winning or losing. A humane policy would have ended this war long ago, even if it meant Russia winning, just as a humane 1914 policy would have let Germany conquer France a second time, which wouldn't have been any worse an outcome than the first time in 1870.
So no, I am not in favor of saving the Ukraine leader's skin, even if it means chalking up a "win" for Putin. I'm really sympathetic to the people directly affected, and the world would be a more peaceful prosperous world if Russia had come out of 1991 as an actual stable democracy, but the only influence I have on any of this is a vote every four years, and whatever Trump's motivations have been, the only sane choice available right now seems to me to stop them fighting, or at the very least, stop stealing my taxes to prop up one undemocratic "leader" against another.
I believe the legal rule suspending elections during a war predates Zelensky.
So did the Weimar constitution which allowed Hitler's Enabling Act. I haven't heard anyone say the constitution required suspending elections; that was his choice. But maybe he had no choice.
ETA: See below. Zelensky did not have a choice.
My understanding is that elections were automatically suspended in wartime.
You are right. I was wrong to blame Zelensky for this. At least, according to this site ...
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-fact-sheet-february-21-2025
"Ukrainian law prohibits holding elections in wartime (unlike the US Constitution, which requires it).
Ukraine's Constitution prevents the Ukrainian government from holding elections or amending the constitution in times of martial law.[6]
Russia triggered Ukraine's martial law provisions when it launched its illegal invasion of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government cannot constitutionally suspend martial law while Russia continues to attack Ukraine.
Ukrainian opposition politicians, including those who have historically run against Zelensky, have stated that holding elections under martial law would be both illegal and immoral.[7]"
Nice little scheme. All Zelensky has to do is keep Ukraine in a perpetual state of war, and he's in for life!
The problem with this approach is that allowing Putin to take Ukraine will whet his appetite. Even if you don't care about Ukraine, doubt whether Ukrainians even care* about staying independent, just letting Putin win (or letting Germans just win in 1914) leads to more trouble ahead. You mention Czechoslovakia. Hitler actually massively increased his weapons stockpiles by de facto annexing it. A third of all tanks attacking France in 1939 were Czech-made. Ukraine is a poor contry but it also has a substantial industrial potential and at least used to have some impresssive capabilites (their Mrja airplane was one of a kind and no mean feat of engineering, then Azovstal etc) and you'd be giving that to Putin.
If you default to capitulating to a bully, you will keep getting bullied (this is why Canada and Mexico are introducing their own tariffs now, incidentally). Russia doesn't have the capacity to literally conquer Europe but it is still a significant security threat and if you let them take more, it will be a bigger threat. Russia is most dangerous and capable in its hybrid warfare initiatives - spying, manipulation, creating unrest and confusion ... ultimately making the west weaker and divided. Also, imagine they manage to take over Ukraine, then they take Moldova (with your logic it is not worth the trouble either). Then they push Hungary over to their side completely (Hungary leaving the EU, joining their bloc, all nominally democratic so no reason to do anything). Then they sow even more discontent so that even the European NATO alliance breaks apart, then ...
I don't think this scenario is likely, it is the worst case scenario mostly. But it is not impossible and something a little less serious is even plausible if we just let Russia continue the way it does.
Now it is true that Europe should be able to respond to this alone, should not have to depend on US capabilities. And finally it seems that our leaders are moving in that direction, I even see a very clear shift in European media (I read media from multiple countries) where weapons and armies are no longer treated as somehow "evil by default", not even in Germany which is the most susceptible to this. But this shift will take time. You cannot build and scale up massive industrial capacities needed by large modern armies overnight.
Then again, I would argue that NATO ultimately brought the US more benefits than costs regardless and the European part of the alliance is not a rounding error in funding (and even less so in the number of soldiers and equipment), not even today. So abandoning it to save a few billion USD is probably short-sighted from the US perspective, especially if more support would get rid you of one regional enemy (Russia). Russia is not a great power any more but in a hypothetical war of the US and China it would surely be a lot better to have US+Europe on one side and just China on the other side (with Russia being irrelevant or perhaps even disintegrated into smaller states) than US on one side and China+Russia on the other.
*I mostly disagree with your view, other than Ukraine being a corrupt country which it is, but also it is improving and it is less corrupt now than Russia ... but that would be a longer discussion
Ukraine as the modern independent country is only 30 years old. Czechoslovakia as an independent country was only 20 years old, and ill-defined at that by politicians, not the residents. Poland existed on and off, and was most recently recreated with new borders to punish Germany and reward Stalin. Almost all European borders have been flexible since they depended on kings.
I understand appeasement. That's why I mentioned Czechoslovakia. But Biden and the EU didn't fight Russia, or warn Putin to knock it off, and Xi/China don't want Putin to win or lose either. All they have done is keep the pot boiling enough to prevent either side from winning. That doesn't deter Putin, it just makes him more stubborn and more interested in outwaiting Biden, the EU, and Xi.
And frankly, both Hitler and Putin are European problems which they have been loath to solve, and I am tired of my taxes protecting the world from itself when they don't have much interest in helping themselves. Ukrainians seem to be willing to put up with corruption, fine, but not with my money. A simple reading of EU history in the 1920s and 1930s shows both France and Britain stabbing each other in the back and shirking their Versailles Treaty duties. They have been just as duplicitous with Russian gas and oil and Ukrainian military supplies.
I don't think it is a European problem only. The US benefits greatly from the current status quo and is its mason architect. Even if the likes of Vance would very much like that, the US cannot isolate itself without risking the status quo and if it changes, the US will likely become much poorer. This might actually be an ok trade-off for Vance for ideological reasons but if you state money as your concern it shouldn't be ok for you.
Supporting Ukraine is actually a cheap way to achieve the strategic goal of making Russia wreak and irrelevant as a rival (and Russian will always see the US and the west as a rival ... Unless there is a massive ideological shift in Russian leadership). Regardless of what you think of Ukraine. Also, if you sum the total support provided, not just military support then it is actually the Europeans who support Ukraine more than the US (although just barely). I'm really annoyed whenever Americans act as though they are paying the entire bill or even most of it. Yes, in military support this is true (although a lot of what was sent was old stuff that was going to be replaced but evaluated at prices of new stuff), but a dollar is a dollar and the fact is Europe paid more (as it should, I agree this is a bigger problem for Europe than for the US, bit it still is a problem/opportunity the US as well).
This is equivalent to saying everybody's problems are my problems. No, they are not. I care more about my family than my neighbors or co-workers, more about them than the people in the next city over, and so on.
I don't think it is equivalent. If you don't care about your neighbours and don't help them, this probably won't cost you much. If the current state of international relationships breaks down, the US will be hit hard (Europe too).
So far, Trump has been trying very hard to bring the current international order down (his tariffs and insulting allies do just as much damage here). Russia is really the only winner here. They are isolated already, they have an anti-globalist ideology (the government does anyway) and they don't really care much about material prosperity of their own citizens anyway. A new world order full of tariffs, restrictions and state anarchy (each country on its own) is ideal for them and almost noone else, especially not USA, Europe and actually not even China.
But Vance seems to prefer poorer and less powerful US if it means there are more industry jobs in the Midwest and Trump probably doesn't really care much about anything but looking like a big boss at any given moment. I really see Vance as the real threat and possibly the Cardinal Richelieu type behind Trump. Unlike Trump he is intelligent, calculating and young. But his worldview seems to be something like left-conservatism. He is a worker's union gangster turned VP. I very muc hope he doesn't ever become a US president himself.
I can't think of anything useful to say about such fantasies, not just about the unpredictable future, but about politicians you so evidently hate more than the usual run of the mill ones.
All you are really saying is you have some fantastical view of a possible future, and it scares you so much that you think I have to care about everybody that you care about, and nobody else.
Should I not care about a billion Africans living in poverty with unreliable power and lack of refrigeration for food and medicines? How about a billion Chinese living under a worse dictator, or a billion Indians in worse poverty than Ukrainians but better than Africans? How should I spread my concern over 8 billion people?
Your priorities are not mine.
My whole problem with analysis of Trump and his policies (either implemented or suggested) is that no President comes to the office inheriting a blank slate. He gets all the bad (and good) effects of just about every previous administration. In the current case I'd argue back to Woodrow Wilson.
So there will be no pristine policies.
So there is fix, repair, renew, build policy all going on at once, and every rent-seeker will fight for their particular slice of the pie as long as they can.
Perhaps the chainsaw approach is appropriate, given the actual, non-theoretical situation. Do we have time for using a scalpel when the opposition will be using an ax in response?
What I find interesting in all of this is that the man has been in office for 43 days. There has been no complete session of Congress, no complete SCOTUS term, and no budget. Despite this, there are those who predict unrivaled success, and unmitigated catastrophe. All of this under the watch of an enslaved media that is a universe away from being considered 'objective'.
Americans were, at one time, an extremely malleable society. We could adapt to the vagaries of one admistration to another with only a minimum of fuss. I believe that resiliency is still within us. Trump will do some very, very good things (energy alone puts him head and shoulders above Clueless Joe). Other things, probably not so much. But I do believe that at the end of the term, I will be better off than I am now.
I believe that at the end of the term, the country will be better off than if Harris had won. I would rather a clueless idiot with clear goals than word salads which drift like flotsam.
My only real worry with Trump is his economic illiteracy, his infatuation with tariffs, and his apparent lust for autarky. Maybe all he wants to do is scare other countries into loosening trade barriers, but I don't think so; he wants to lower the trade deficit and increase foreign investment, and his tariff shenanigans make planning a nightmare. Will that encourage other countries to negotiate lower mutual tariffs or trade barriers? I have my doubts, but I don't think even Trump himself knows what he really wants.
Agree. I think the most accurate statement in your response was, "I don't think even Trump knows what he really wants."
We will be much better off in four years, if for no other reason than our energy supplies will be more reliable and more secure.
thank you for your response.
I agree with you on almost everything here, although I have more optimism about which side of the line things will land.
Trump seems to do a lot of things I like while saying a lot of things I don't. I hope that trend continues.
The people who hate Trump take him literally but not seriously.
The people who love Trump take him seriously but not literally.
Salena Zito wrote this almost 9 years ago.
It is both astounding and a crying same that most of the chattering classes, and especially the so-called elites, refuse to understand this most brilliant point.
Comprehension of this seems to be (roughly) inversely related to intelligence.
DF is in fact better on the margin than most, because he at least usually puts qualifiers when he talks about the dangers/incorrectness of the words Trump utters, but he still often falls prey to the same cardinal sin.
Trump just imposed a bunch of tariffs, with no plausible explanation. It's possible that he has a benign concealed objective but there is little reason to assume it. What is the "seriously but not literally" explanation?
"Trump just imposed a bunch of tariffs, with no plausible explanation."
There may be no "plausible explanation" that would cause you to be in favor of the tariffs he just imposed, but surely there are multiple plausible explanations that are at least reasonable.
In your piece, you provided one yourself (which is IMO the most likely): "to use the threat of tariffs to get other countries to do things he wants, hopefully including dropping their tariffs".
Tariffs as tactics are different from tariffs as end goal. Other than with China, more of Trump's words - if we are going to weigh words rather than actions or track record - on tariffs have been about them as tactic not end goal.
The real problem with tariffs as weapons is that once unsheathed, the wielder becomes reluctant to lose face and resheath them once his bluff is called.
I am also highly conflicted although I ended up being fairly sure that Trump would be better than Harris. It's good to see someone discussing this without falling into "100% bad/good" thinking. The thing I am most encouraged about is the taking of a chainsaw to government spending and bureaucracy. However, it will have little long term effect unless entire agencies are abolished.
By the way, on your 1964 poem: Why is Arizona where your dreams will die? I rather like it here! And it is far from the most statist state. Barry Goldwater was AZ senator in 1964? Could that have something to do with it?
The title of the poem is Ten A.M., November Fourth, 1964. That was the day Goldwater lost the election.
To me, the only foreign policy that makes sense for preserving freedom is a collective defence treaty like NATO – ideally every country would be a member and no country would dare break the peace. Non-interventionism seems likely to just lead to a few governments taking over the whole planet, and I don't see any reason to believe that those governments would end up promoting freedom (whereas with hundreds of different governments to choose from, competition should provide at least a few decent options). One might think that the tragedy of the commons would prevent such a collective defence treaty from working, but it appears that NATO has been rather successful in deterring attacks on its members.
And what is the enforcement action? Does the flood of immigrants and drugs from Mexico into the US count as an invasion? Does the counter-flood of money and guns count?
I made a joke in one of my books about the ridiculous certification tags on laptops, and added one for "Not made by slave labor", the reason being that most countries require prisoners to work. But all countries have different laws about crimes, so all countries have some prisoners who other countries consider slaves for being locked up and made to work. Then there was a separate certification for "Not made by child slave labor" because countries have different ages separating children and adults as far as being sent to prison.
The UN didn't do squat about Russia occupying Crimea or fomenting rebellion in eastern Ukraine or even invading Ukraine. They also didn't do anything about those same eastern Ukraine regions which might well rather be part of Russia.
Then there's other factors, not just tariffs and not just Trump's, which some politicians consider trade barriers requiring retaliation -- employment laws, environmental laws, product safety laws, subsidies, and whatever politicians want to latch on to to get more votes.
Better to just forget the useless unenforceable treaties and leave other countries alone. I would gladly have donated to Ukraine if they were less corrupt and if my own government were not stealing my taxes to give to them. Governments pretend they speak for all their people, and that fallacy has caused more problems than you can shake a stick at.
I in fact did donate to Ukraine, very likely will again.
Like I said, NATO appears to have been rather successful in deterring attacks, so I don't think one needs to come up with some perfect definition of what constitutes an attack (article 5 of the NATO charter simply says "an armed attack"), as long as there is a credible threat of retaliation. There have been some hybrid attacks by Russia against NATO members, but nothing like its actual invasions of non-members.
I have a squeaky toy which deters elephants. I haven't see once since I bought it. Perhaps you'd like one too.
Whatever NATO's rationale was in the 1940s through 1991, it has long since ceased to be anything other than a way for American taxpayers to prop up EU politicians. If they don't want to defend themselves -- if they intentionally decommission working power plants in favor of unreliables, and then depend on NATO's supposed enemy for natural gas -- if they fine American companies billions of dollars because they've started running out of their own money -- then NATO has lost any value to me.
Perhaps there is a more gloomy scenario, one where anarchy is the desired outcome (by Trump and/or his strategists). This permits martial law, restrictions of civil liberties, justification of these actions and then consolidating power by claiming to prevent a return to chaos... I'm not claiming this course of action is likely, but possible.
If Trump goes on the way he’s going, government may cease to function, and you could have a case study in anarchy. But more likely the state governments of the Disunited States of America will go on functioning.
I think a new security arrangement between Europe and USA might arise that is more beneficial to all. I wouldn't have imagined such a change (I was born shortly before the dissolution of the USSR), I wouldn't have voted for such a change due to the risk, and I don't think it was done correctly, trampling over Ukraine, or overall with the right motivations. To be frank, I feel offended, and I'm not alone, including at some libertarians I used to look up to. But I understand on a rational level that the US has some of the smartest and most morally upright people in the world, and hope that our peoples can go back to being cooperative and friendly.
What of your father's quip that illegal immigration is good as long as it is illegal, Because illegal immigrants don't collect welfare?
If only that were true.
David, hello. I am from Russia, and I am very interested in asking you why the issue of the Russia-Ukraine war is significant to you. Because, according to libertarian logic, the state is always the aggressor, and we can only discuss which state represses its citizens less and which one more. And Ukraine isn’t far ahead of Russia in this regard—many Ukrainian libertarians support a swift peace and dislike Zelensky. Among Russian libertarians, there are no supporters of Ukraine at all. I’m curious about what your perspective is based on, why you believe Ukraine is a country with values you need to defend. What are your arguments built on?
Thank you!
A fair question.
Part of it is irrational emotion but not all. If Russia wins the war that will imply that conquering nearby neighbors works. That would be a reason to try again. The obvious targets, the Baltics, are more attractive, less oppressive, than Russia, as is Poland. And war kills people, destroys stuff. So it is better that the lesson of this war is that it doesn't work.
An interesting perspective, and indeed, this is one of the most striking classic wars where one country seeks to seize another in the 21st century. It’s hardly surprising that it involves two former Soviet republics—we remember the Yugoslavia example. But do you really think Russia would attack a NATO country with Article 5, triggering a world war, a real world war? This isn’t even like Hitler’s invasion of Poland, where only Britain and France stepped in to defend; the entire NATO alliance would come to the Baltics’ defense. Plus, in the 21st century, there’s the nuclear threat, which is another critical factor. Don’t you think the costs are too high for Russia to actually attack a NATO country?
I don't know. Presumably they would try to make it as less obvious a case as possible, probably use the Russian speaking population of the Baltics rather as they used the Russian speakers in Ukraine to create an excuse for intervention.
And I am not sure how stable NATO will be over the next decade or two.
I understand your position, but I’m not convinced that even stopping Russia would make the idea of seizing foreign territories irrelevant for dictators and authoritarian rulers. Take Taiwan, for instance—it’s likely to face a conflict with China in this century.
Regarding your point about using the Russian-speaking population, I think you’re overly optimistic. The conflict in Ukraine in 2014 was predictable (a poor country with an oligarchic system). Ukraine has been a hotspot of political instability since the first revolution in 2004. The Baltics, on the other hand, are stable, boasting some of the most successful economies of the former USSR—there’s no basis for instability there. The notion that the Kremlin could snap its fingers and spark unrest seems utopian to me. Russians aren’t demiurges; for instability to emerge, there needs to be an internal conflict within the country itself.
As for NATO—I think Ukraine was a safe target, a country without nuclear capabilities, after all. The Baltics present a far riskier scenario.
I can't answer for David, and I don't support Ukraine monetarily, but Russia is clearly the aggressor, first in 2014 seizing Crimea, then fomenting rebellion in eastern Ukraine until they invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Anyone who supports Russia in this stupid war is not a libertarian for that reason alone.
In my view, the optics of who is the aggressor and who isn’t aren’t particularly important, because for libertarianism, what matters are the values underpinning a specific jurisdiction. I’m not deeply familiar with U.S. history, but as far as I can judge their imperialism, they’ve consistently fought against tyrannical regimes. Even if they were the aggressors at times, they brought far more progressive values, and that’s a key point. Putin offers nothing constructive in terms of institutions, but Zelensky isn’t any better. I don’t know how the information space portrays his regime, but for me, as someone from a similar linguistic and cultural group, it’s easy to read and see what local libertarians in Ukraine are writing about it. They’re not singing praises, and Vance’s positions pretty accurately reflect what I see and hear from them. This is a war between two ugly regimes that have nothing to do with libertarianism or the ideas of freedom. I understand why Ukrainians want to defend their sovereignty; what I don’t get is why some American libertarians want to get involved.
Because Russia is the aggressor. They took over Crimea; they fomented trouble in the east; and they finally invaded directly. The NAP cares very much about who the aggressor is, and the optics are incredibly important.
I understand you, but I disagree. You're talking about NAP in relation to countries. The state, as defined by Mancur Olson, is a bandit, and a bandit cannot be a victim—by definition, it is an aggressor.
Fine, the bandits controlling the region known as "Russia" are the aggressors. The head bandit's name is Putin.
Your stance here seems in conflict with your prior stance: "the optics of who is the aggressor and who isn’t aren’t particularly important" and that is what I was responding to.
If you want to get all quibbly about who is aggressing, go ahead. But if you want a practical answer, I gave you one.
It actually doesn't contradict, because both of these states are authoritarian countries. Applying the NAP to a situation where one bandit attacks another is, in my opinion, a somewhat debatable approach. The victim is not Ukraine, not the state, but rather the Ukrainian citizens—if one can even identify a victim in this case. However, states themselves are criminal entities by nature and exist outside the framework of law; their very genesis is criminal—they are criminal organizations. There's no need to look for a victim among criminals; the victims should be sought among the people. This seems to me very much in the spirit of libertarian reasoning. Attempting to perceive countries as subjects within a legal framework strikes me as highly disingenuous.