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Socialism always sells itself on empathy. New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s agenda—“free” public transit, frozen rents, and government-mandated equality—sounds merciful on the surface. But it rests on a fatal delusion: that force can manufacture fairness and that wealth can be ordered into existence.
Months ago, I wrote an article “The Portuguese Estado Novo Was Socialist” outlining the socialist characteristics of the Portuguese Estado Novo (New State), that existed from 1933-1974. It was almost unprecedented, and today I return to elaborate on points I previously built.
Salazar, according to Jaime Nogueira Pinto, stressed,
There’s an argument running through the commentariat that goes something like this: AI (artificial intelligence) has already rendered some jobs obsolete and will continue this trend until the human race is unemployed. Even now it surpasses the ability of most people to write an effective opinion essay because it can create logic-driven, elegant compositions in seconds. Since government schools turn out illiterates, people will depend on AI commentaries for intellectual expression.
The Two percent inflation target—monetary policy’s sacred commandment for three decades—has become structurally impossible to achieve. Not because central bankers lack skill, but because every attempt to hit the target destroys the financial architecture that previous monetary expansion built. This is the endgame of central planning: a system that cannot tolerate its own success criteria without collapsing.
The historian Richard Hofstadter was one of the most influential historians of his time, and The American Political Tradition—which first appeared in 1948—is still read today. He was early in his life sympathetic to Marxism and a “Progressive,” but he was disillusioned by the utopian mindset of these two ideologies after the Second World War, and he became a sharp critic of the “heroes” of this tradition.
When I was a junior at a high school in the suburbs of Los Angeles in late 1978, rather uncharacteristically, I took a big risk. The teacher of my American Government class, Mr. Knapp, gave us an assignment to write a serious paper about government economic policy. Instead of doing that, I decided to submit a paper with a satirical theme, estimating what it would cost to become Santa Claus. Not only was I not following instructions, I had no idea how Mr. Knapp would react to my brand of humor.
