A Lawless Political Assassination
A Lawless Political Assassination
“America … goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”
– President John Quincy Adams (1767–1848)
Last week, President Donald Trump ordered the US military to invade a then friendly country without the knowledge or consent of its government and assassinate a visiting foreign government official. The victim was the head of Iran’s military and intelligence. The formerly friendly country is Iraq. The killing of the general and his companions was carried out by the use of an unmanned drone. The general was not engaged in an act of violence at the time he was killed, nor were any of his companions. They were driving on a public highway in a van.
The president’s supporters have argued that the general’s death was revenge for Americans and others killed by the general’s troops and surrogates. Trump has argued, more importantly, that he ordered the general’s death because of what evil the general might order his own troops and surrogates to carry out in the future.
Can the president legally kill a person not engaged in an act of violence because of what the person might do in the future? In a word: no.
Here is the backstory.
The president has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution. The Constitution provides only two means for the federal government to kill a human being. The first is pursuant to a declaration of war, which only Congress can make. That permits the president to use the military to kill the troops of the government of the country against which war has been declared. Congress has not declared war on Iran.
The second way that the Constitution permits federal government killings is pursuant to due process. That means that the person to be killed is lawfully in custody, has been properly charged, lawfully tried and fairly convicted of a capital crime, and that the conviction has been upheld on appeal.
Can the president kill foreign military personnel and claim the justification of self-defense? The laws of war permit him to do that, but self-defense — actually, defense of the country — only comes into play when the foreign military personnel are physically engaged in killing Americans or are certainly about to do so. That justification only applies — the law here is six hundred years old and has been consistently applied — when force is imminent and certain.
Were imminence and certainty not the requirement, then nothing would prevent a president from slaying any monster he chose simply based on a fear that the monster might someday strike. Such a state of affairs is contrary to two presidential executive orders, one issued by President Gerald R. Ford and the other by President Ronald Reagan, and neither negated by Trump. Such a territorial invasion and killing also violate the United Nations Charter — a treaty that prohibits unlawful invasions of member nations’ territories and killings of their officials outside of a lawful and UN approved declaration of war.
Roaming the world looking for monsters to slay not only violates long-standing principles of American domestic and international law, but also it violates basic Judeo-Christian moral principles, which teach that the end does not justify the means and that might does not make right.
Think about it. If the American president can kill an Iranian government official in Iraq because of fear of what he might do — without a declaration of war or any legal process — can the Chinese president kill a Mexican government official visiting in Texas or an American intelligence agent encouraging revolution in Venezuela for fear of what they might do?
This is not a fanciful or academic argument. It not only goes to the fidelity to the rule of law that we require of our leaders in order to maintain personal liberty and limited government, it also goes to our safety. We have laws to prevent wanton killings, lest killers turn on us.
In Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons,” Sir Thomas More argues with his son-in-law, William Roper, about the extent of the law’s protections of those universally recognized as evil. Roper says that he would cut down all the laws in England to get rid of the Devil.
More counters that even the Devil is entitled to the benefits of the law. Then he hurls this zinger:
And, when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you? — ?where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast? — ?man’s laws, not God’s? — ?and, if you cut them down? — ?and you’re just the man to do it? — ?d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
More crystalized the dangers of those who — like Trump — take the law into their own hands for the sake of expedience or to rid the world of a monster. Without law, how does one decide what monsters should go and what monsters may stay?
When President Obama used drones to kill peaceful uncharged Americans in Yemen, candidate Donald Trump condemned that behavior. He offered that as president, he would bring the troops home, stop the nation building, quit being the world’s police force, and end the endless wars. Instead, his act of state terrorism has succeeded in doing what the general he killed could never do while alive. Trump has united the Iranian people behind their fanatical government, and he has caused the Iraqi government to kick out all American troops — troops that had no lawful or moral basis for being there in the first place and whose numbers have only increased.
Trump cut down the laws to get to the Devil. Whom will he kill next?
QJAE: Étatisme as the Root of Development Economics
Abstract: Development economics has invested substantial effort in formulating policies aimed at initiating development in underdeveloped countries, with a notable emphasis on the role of government. This article focuses on the transition from early intellectual forerunners such as John Locke, David Hume, and Adam Smith to the subsequent theories of development. Previous examinations, notably by Lewis (1988) and Sen (1983), have argued that if growth is taken as the definition of development, then Petty, Hume, and Smith are predecessors of development economics. However, a gap exists between this observation and the subsequent trajectory of development economics. This article investigates the prevalent role of the state in shaping development strategies, exploring the maturation of state duties based on modern political concepts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and investigating the transformation in the twentieth century of government’s responsibilities, specifically in the context of the United States’ progressive movement. By tracing the historical evolution of state involvement, this article shows that the concept of “étatisme,” advocating robust state engagement in economic affairs, emerges as a pivotal but often overlooked factor in the emergence of development economics. This finding illustrates why development economists’ policies historically place such significant emphasis on government intervention in the market in underdeveloped countries.
Read the full article in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.
JLS: Toward a Free Market Approach for Describing and Measuring Literary Archetypes and Tropes
ABSTRACT: This research proposes a free market approach to describing and measuring popular culture archetypes and stereotypes that result from the contemporary political culture of digital communications and an economic system of transmedia narratives. First, an historic overview of libertarian literary theory is given. Three existing systems of measuring archetypes and tropes are then described: crowd-sourced wiki projects (e.g., TV Tropes), academic classification systems (e.g., Aarne-Thompson index), and corporate marketing research (e.g., Neilsen PRIZM). Each system is evaluated based on (1) division of labor, (2) voluntary exchange, (3) gains from trade, and (4) openness to spontaneous order.
Read the full article at the Journal of Libertarian Studies.
Fred Glahe, R.I.P
Unfortunately, I'm only finding out about this now:
Fred Glahe, who was an economics professor at the University of Colorado for many years, passed away on April 19, 2022. Fred was a longtime member of the editorial board of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and was the author (among many other things) of some very useful texts on business cycles and the Hayek-Keynes debate. Specifically, he co-authored with John Cochran (also, R.I.P.) The Hayek-Keynes Debate: Lessons for Current Business Cycle Research, (reviewed in QJAE here). He edited Keynes's "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money", A Concordance, and also authored economics textbooks including Macroeconomics: Theory and Policy.
His obituary, posted by the family, reads in part:
Fred graduated from Purdue University in 1957 with a BA in Aeronautical Engineering and worked briefly at the Allison Engines division of General Motors on jet engine design and testing. Fred went on to receive his masters and PHD in Economics at Purdue in 1964 and became a Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado in 1965. At CU Fred founded The Economic Institute for Research and Education (EIRE) as well as authoring multiple textbooks and articles. Fred retired from CU in 2006. ... Some of Fred’s interests included anything mechanical especially cars and airplanes. He loved British television, classic movies, model cars, and was active in his church. Fred was a fixture at the Village Coffee Shop, eating breakfast and reading the Wall Street Journal.
When I was at CU in the late 1990s, Fred taught intermediate macroeconomics and ECON 4999 known as "Economics and Film," which required us to apply economic theory to analyses of various films. Naturally, the course drew on his extensive knowledge of film. I took both of these classes, and Fred became something of an academic advisor to me. He is the reason I attended Mises University in 1998—based on his recommendation. For most economics students at the University of Colorado, Fred was surely the only exposure most of us would have to the Austrian School at the University. For some of us, it stuck!
Fortunately, his family has also posted some photos online, including one with a guy named Murray Rothbard some readers will recognize:
His campus office contained lots of good Austrian materials. Note the images of Mises and Hayek (and Menger) on the wall:
Like Lew Rockwell, he owned some New Deal propaganda artifacts, such as this NRA poster. Those who spent any time in his office will recognize the image below the poster as a map of the Gulag archipelago:
Visiting the home of Adam Smith:
Fred was a fellow practicing Catholic. Requiescat in pace!
EU-China Leadership Summit: Protectionism on the Agenda
On December 7, the European Union and China are having their first in-person summit in four years, with the presidents of the European Commission and European Council, Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel respectively, flying to China for the event. Playing the role of trapped-in-the-middle in the US-China trade war, EU rhetoric has these gallant diplomats riding off to Beijing to restructure the bilateral trade relationship. However, their statements have made it clear that they don't care about European prosperity at all and that Europe's biggest threat is far from China's "unfair trade practices," but the protectionism pushed by EU officials themselves.
Protectionism and Mercantilism from Brussels
Von der Leyen and Michel are going to China with a heap of demands utterly at odds with good economic policy, not to mention the free-trade spirit and philosophy of the European Union. Here are some of the demands:
· Ending Chinese "Overcapacity"
Aggregate domestic demand has decreased in China in the last few years, but Chinese factories haven't decreased production accordingly, instead exporting to Europe at prices that EU firms can't compete with. If China does not stop overproducing, the EU will be forced to institute tariffs to preserve "a level playing field."
This point is horrific for two reasons. Not only do European officials want to deprive their citizenry of more affordable products in order to support non-competitive firms, but apparently, they're willing to take advantage of China's command economy to control global production. The EU presumes to have a "market economy," but evidently that only applies within European borders. Getting a foreign government to control the production of goods based on bureaucratic whims rather than market demand is no problem.
· Reducing the Trade Deficit
EU diplomats are going to go to Beijing and demand that Xi Jinping himself decrease the European trade deficit with China, specifically by increasing the purchase of European exports. Here we see that despite several centuries of evidence against it, EU officials are still pushing mercantilism.
· Raising Electric Vehicle Prices
In an utterly baffling move, von der Leyen and Michel plan to propose "price undertaking" to Xi Jinping and Li Qiang. In other words, they'll ask that Chinese firms raise the prices of electric vehicles exported to Europe to bring them in line with domestic prices. This is in the same summit during which the very same diplomats will be pressuring China for more participation in "multilateral efforts against climate change."
The top three nations for EV purchase subsidies are all in the EU: France with 5,000€, Germany with 4,500€ and the Netherlands with 2,950€. [5] In other words, the EU massively distorts the prices for EVs under market value yet will now simultaneously distort it in the other direction by statutorily increasing EV imports by 20 percent.
And again, this is European indirect price control. EU politicians mostly avoid controlling prices within the EU, but they apparently have no problem getting a communist dictatorship to do it for them by setting prices on exports.
Motivation for These Demands
Of course, you can guess the official reason for this protectionism: jobs. The diplomats in question have been pretty candid, too. They need to save jobs in the face of Chinese competition in the EU market ahead of the June 2024 European Parliament election.
Economists know this reasoning rings hollow. There isn't a finite number of jobs. If a Chinese firm outcompetes a European EV manufacturer, a handful of jobs are lost. For example, let's say that lower prices on Chinese EVs managed to drive Volkswagen, the EU's largest manufacturer of EVs, completely out of business, laying off its roughly 500,000 European workers. That would still be less than 0.2 percent of the entire EU working population.
Meanwhile, Chinese firms, state-run or not, cannot sell EVs to Europe for free. They will trade for something, and new industries will form providing new jobs.
The numbers tell the whole story. According to economist Thomas Sowell, all the EU's protectionism saves the bloc around 200,000 jobs at a cost of $43 billion per year, or some $250,000 per job. [6] Considering the average EU job barely pays a 10th of that, the consequences of protectionism are quite palpable.
It's clear that von der Leyen and Michel aren't trying to save jobs, they're trying to save companies. In other words, they're trying to prop up wealthy businessmen who have failed on the market.
What About Market Fairness?
Europeans are generally well enough educated to know that free trade benefits them and the jobs argument is bogus. Therefore, modern politicians like von der Leyen and Michel must tack on the myth that trade must be "fair." Presumably, Chinese firms do not provide goods at lower prices because they have any kind of comparative or absolute advantage but rather because the Chinese government conducts "unfair trade practices," such as:
- Subsidizing Chinese firms;
- Failing to protect European intellectual property;
- Purposefully weakening the Yuan to promote exports;
- Providing barriers to foreign investment, leading to a trade surplus.
The Chinese government does do all of these things, but they are only "unfair" to the Chinese people—and a handful of European business owners. In some cases, a Chinese firm may outcompete a domestic European firm not due to a real advantage, and that is unfortunate for the owners. However, they still represent a very small constituency compared to the hundreds of millions of Europeans who benefit from lower prices paid for by Chinese citizens whose taxes go to subsidization and who cannot use their weak currency to buy superior imports.
In the end, this justification falls as flat as "jobs." In reality, EU diplomats are transparently working at the behest of European corporations, not European consumers.
Results of These Initiatives
What will happen if von der Leyen and Michel get their demands? In short, Europe will become slightly more impoverished. Prices will rise and prices will be distorted, leading to a misallocation of resources. The real purchasing power of every European will drop.
If that sounds severe, it only goes to show that it isn't China's so-called unfair trade practices that are harming Europeans. It's our government.
The Real Problem With Our Foreign Policy
Over the weekend Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explained to the American people what’s really wrong with US foreign policy. Some might find his conclusions surprising.
The US standing in the world is damaged not because we spent 20 years fighting an Afghan government that had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11. The problem has nothing to do with neocon lies about Iraq’s WMDs that led untold civilian deaths in another failed “democratization” mission. It’s not because over the past nearly two years Washington has taken more than $150 billion from the American people to fight a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine.
It’s not the military-industrial complex or its massive lobbying power that extends throughout Congress, the think tanks, and the media.
Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California’s Simi Valley, Austin finally explained the real danger to the US global military empire.
It’s us.
According to Secretary Austin, non-interventionists who advocate “an American retreat from responsibility” are the ones destabilizing the world, not endless neocon wars.
Austin said the US must continue to play the role of global military hegemon – policeman of the world – because “the world will only become more dangerous if tyrants and terrorists believe that they can get away with wholesale aggression and mass slaughter.”
How’s that for reason and logic? Austin and the interventionist elites have fact-checked 30 years of foreign policy failures and concluded, “well it would have been far worse if the non-interventionists were in charge.”
This is one of the biggest problems with the neocons. They are incapable of self-reflection. Each time the US government follows their advice into another catastrophe, it’s always someone else’s fault. In this case, as Austin tells us, those at fault for US foreign policy misadventures are the people who say, “don’t do it.”
What would have happened if the people who said “don’t do it” were in charge of President Obama’s decision to prop-up al-Qaeda to overthrow Syria’s secular leader Assad? How about if the “don’t do it” people were in charge when the neocons manufactured a “human rights” justification to destroy Libya? What if the “don’t do it” people were in charge when Obama’s neocons thought it would be a great idea to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically-elected government?
Would tyrants and terrorists have gained power if Washington did NOT get involved? No. Tyrants and terrorists got the upper hand BECAUSE Washington intervened in these crises.
As Austin further explained, part of the problem with the US is democracy itself. “Our competitors don’t have to operate under continuing resolutions,” he complained. What a burden it is for him that the people, through their representatives, are in charge of war spending.
In Congress, “America first” foreign policy sentiment is on the rise among conservatives and that infuriates Austin and his ilk. He wants more billions for wars in Ukraine and Israel and he wants it now!
And our economic problems? That is our fault too. Those who “try to pull up the drawbridge,” Austin said, undermine the security that has led to decades of prosperity. Prosperity? Has he looked at the national debt? Inflation? Destruction of the dollar?
There is a silver lining here. The fact that Austin and the neocons are attacking us non-interventionists means that we are gaining ground. They are worried about us. This is our chance to really raise our voices!
Abraham Lincoln—War Criminal
We frequently read today about war crimes, such as bombing hospitals. In World War II Britain bombed civilians in Dresden and the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In war, we are told, “anything goes.” Abraham Lincoln followed this barbaric policy, and those who treat him as a “hero” have much to answer for.
In his definitive book War Crimes Against Southern Civilians (Pelican 2007), the historian Walter Brian Cisco blames Lincoln for a brutal campaign of Terror against the South:
“A Review of War Crimes Against Southern Civilians by Walter Brian Cisco (Pelican, 2007).
Walter Brian Cisco is a lifelong scholar of American Civil War history, a professional writer, and researcher with many respected publications on the subject including States Rights Gist: A South Carolina General of the Civil War, Taking a Stand: Portraits from the Southern Secession Movement, Henry Timrod: A Biography, and Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior, Conservative Statesman. In his latest book War Crimes Against Southern Civilians, Cisco writes on a subject that many historians have avoided, war crimes committed by the Union forces on the civilian population of the South beginning in the early years of the Civil War.
In his book, Cisco does a commendable job of uncovering historical records from the time period in citing from sources that include accounts from enlisted Union soldiers that were involved in the events, official reports, letters, diaries, and various other testimonials from civilians that tell of the monstrosities committed against Southern population throughout the Civil War. Early in his book, Cisco clearly states Lincoln had adopted the “black flag” policy and this policy was executed by several Union commanders in dates far preceding the better known Sherman’s March to the Sea. “Warring against noncombatants came to be the stated policy and deliberate practice in its subjugation of the Confederacy. Abraham Lincoln, the commander in chief with a reputation as a micromanager, well knew what was going on and approved” (pg. 16). Several pieces cited support this claim and are presented throughout the book.
The evidence offered supporting the “black flag” policy adopted by the Lincoln administration is done in numerous ways. A few examples presented are incidents such as the 1861 St. Louis massacre in which twenty-eight civilians lay dead in the streets of St. Louis and seventy-five others were wounded by the hands of a force of between six and seven thousand Union regulars and German volunteers commanded by Capt. Nathanial Lyon (pg. 22 and 23). The 1862 occupation of New Orleans in which Maj. General Benjamin Butler, establishes martial law whose “decrees were worthy of a czar” and in one infamous order, commanding Union soldiers to treat the ladies of the town as prostitutes which could be “construed as a license for rape” (pg. 65). Other accounts are crimes committed against non-combatants were the attacks on Southern pacifist religious refugees, in which Sheridan’s army robbed, plundered, poisoned wells with dead animal carcasses, and burned their houses to the ground during the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1864 (pg. 124). Cisco cites several instances in which slaves and free blacks were robbed, raped, and killed by the hands of Union soldiers. Cisco’s book is filled with damning evidence of the war crimes committed by the Union forces on the South. Any reader of this book has to question how a soldier in the U.S. military could justify the inhumane actions that were taken against a civilian population which included the elderly, women, children and slaves. The accounts of Union aggression stated seems surreal and brings forth a question of fallacy that has been planted in the minds of generations of Americans far from what the Union cause truly was about.
War Crimes Against Southern Civilians chapters are organized by engagements recorded from 1861-1865 and follows the timeline very closely. The organization of the chapters is done in a manner that it is easy for a reader to follow and creates a clear account of how these events progressed throughout the war. The author also does a good job citing sources in the book and those that are used are accurate, but the format used in citing the information are not very user friendly. The pages within the text are void of footnotes and somewhat of a nuisance for readers who want quick access to citations presented on the page they are reading. Cisco does not include any footnotes in the book or endnotes at the end of each chapter, but instead lists all notes at the end of the book. Even though the book is well written, improvements could be made through the way notes are arranged and should do so if an updated version of the book is ever released.
Without question, the author writes from a Southern perspective in presenting the atrocities Southern citizens were subjected to by Union forces. Many historians might discount Cisco’s work for representing only the Southern viewpoint of the war in this book. However, through writing in a Southern viewpoint, Cisco has brought forth a piece of history that is unknown to many readers of Civil War history. The majority of books written about the Civil War give a very limited account of the events that took place with the intent of glorifying the actions of the Lincoln administration and the Union army. Cisco’s contribution of the historical accounts of the Civil War is commendable and he meets a difficult subject matter head-on that other authors have purposely neglected. The facts Cisco presents, instills his readers with facts that contribute a more complete understanding of events that forever changed the course of a nation.
Can Libertarians Win in Georgia? (The Country, Not the State)
While much of the attention is now focused on Argentina and Javier Milei's electoral triumph, we can also discover some success stories in other parts of the world, most notably in the republic of Georgia, where a libertarian party called "Girchi" has been fighting for freedom since 2015.
Georgia has harsh drug laws, and in many situations, the penalties are harsher than those for crimes like theft, rape, and robbery. Girchi, as a party pushing for individual autonomy and personal freedom, has been lobbying for more liberal drug laws. This campaign culminated in a civil disobedience act on New Year's Eve in 2016, when Girchi leaders and supporters openly planted the cannabis seed at the Girchi office premises.
Their efforts in 2017 ended in the Georgian Constitutional Court ruling in Girchi's favor, stating that the criminal punishment for cannabis use is unconstitutional, essentially decriminalizing cannabis use in Georgia. Later, on the same grounds and in favor of Girchi, the Constitutional Court abolished all administrative fines for personal consumption of marijuana, making Georgia the first country in Europe and the ex-Soviet area to achieve such an expansion of personal freedoms.
Girchi is opposed to most private-sector regulations and has spoken out against them on numerous occasions. In 2019 Girchi established Shmaxi, a ride-sharing firm, as an act of civil disobedience in response to enacted regulations for taxicabs to be exclusively painted white. Up to 500 people joined the campaign and registered to drive their cars through Shmaxi. Despite the fact that the company was registered as an academic institution on wheels, teaching passengers libertarian ideology, numerous drivers still got fined for breaking the taxi regulations.
Georgia still maintains mandatory military service, which limits thousands of people's autonomy and forces them to serve the government against their will. However, Georgian legislation exempts clergy from mandatory military duty. To utilize this loophole, Girchi's church, the Christian Evangelical Protestant Church - 'Biblical Freedom', was officially registered in 2017. The loophole was employed by 'Biblical Freedom' to assist young men who did not want to serve in the army.
Those who do not intend to join the army are given certificates indicating that they are “priests” of the Church. It effectively exempts individuals from compelled military service, allowing them to spend their lives according to their own free will. Ordination takes only a few minutes and costs $17; after that, individuals are exempt from the draft until the following year, when they can be ordinated again. The government also offers the 1-year postponement, but it is for $675 and now to be increased to $1685. Since its inception, the church has managed to rescue around 50,000 people from this sort of modern slavery.
Girchi won four seats in the parliament in the 2020 parliamentary elections, and while four deputies may not seem like much, they have managed to expose hundreds of wicked regulations to the public while the media's attention was drawn to other nonsense and absurd mainstream narratives. Three unjustly imprisoned inmates were also liberated because of Girchi's involvement and activity in parliament.
Libertarian MPs have also been embroiled in heated parliamentary debates over an immoral conscription law that aimed to eliminate Biblical Freedom. After many hours of filibuster attempts and even brawls with government MPs, the legislation was only passed after 9 months (ordinarily, the government passes laws in a matter of weeks).
And even then, it proved ineffective because Biblical Freedom continued to exempt individuals from the army, as priests are allowed to demand alternative non-military service. Since there were no vacant positions for hundreds of people who now demanded alternative service, the government was left helpless, and they are now once again planning to amend the law to close this loophole.
Girchi, like Milei, calls for the abolition of the central bank and the adoption of a multi-currency system that allows people to use the currency that they deem to be the best. Girchi also believes in free banking and the gold standard. Girchi's politicians openly declare that taxation is robbery and inflation is theft, so they intend to implement a single tax system and reduce plundering to the biblical 10 percent.
Georgia, as a post-Soviet country, has yet to transform into a Western capitalist-style country in terms of property. As much as 80 percent of all land and resources remain in public property and thus are kept outside of all economic activities. Girchi is in favor of privatizing and restituting all state assets, including public companies, public lands, forests, and natural resources.
Girchi's Internet platform is unique in that it promotes self-nominated political candidates interested in becoming politicians and spreading libertarian values. Candidates compete on the site, and users vote and rank them to create the final party list for the elections, which will be arranged with Girchi's digital currency, the Georgian Dollar (GED). Members can also use the platform to finance the party, its candidates, and its projects for which they receive GED.
Girchi's current funding comes from its projects and voluntary contributions from members via the platform, making it unique among Georgian political parties. Girchi prefers a meritocracy system over democracy, so the party's structure and ruling are based on the merit each user has brought to the party, which is indicated by the number of GED they own.
Girchi is a fiscally conservative party that consistently supports spending cuts and tax cuts. It advocates for the abolition of all income and corporate taxes, as well as import duties. Girchi is a vocal critic of budget deficits and national debt. The party also advocates for complete deregulation of private education and parental freedom to homeschool their children. Girchi also supports the legalization of gun ownership, describing it as "the acknowledgment that all people are free and have the complete right to protect themselves and their property."
The party is also a vocal opponent of the present woke agenda and gender identity politics. Girchi even sought a Constitutional Court ruling against gender-based election quotas and introduced a bill to replace all references to "gender" in all legislation with "male and female".
Girchi also argues that government bureaucracy is not only financially costly, but it also imposes economically harmful policies. As a result, Girchi has promised to make the transition of 250,000 individuals employed in the public sector to the market economy as fast as possible by firing government officials on the condition that they preserve their pay for three years.
Georgia will hold pivotal parliamentary elections next year, and Girchi's approval rating is rising month by month. Following Milei's success, we hope to achieve similar results and expand libertarian representation in parliament and the government.
Grade Inflation at Harvard and Yale: 80% of Students Get As
Reports from Harvard and Yale reveal that about 80% of students at both institutions receive As, with mean GPAs reaching 3.7 at Yale and 3.8 at Harvard.
This is a trend that has stretched across decades and across higher education in general. While there was a large jump in the proportion of A grades in 2020, grade inflation has been occurring for a long time. In the 1960s, average GPAs were around 2.5 and most students earned Cs. The incentives of the military draft for the Vietnam War led to dramatic increases in GPA in the 1970s, but the trend has continued since then.
Figure 1: Average GPA in U.S. four-year schools
Source: Rojstaczer and Healy (2010), “Grading in American Colleges and Universities,” Teachers College Record, figure 1.
While the above data ends in 2010, The Yale Daily News article contains a chart of the proportion of letter grades at Yale since then.
Figure 2: Letter grade distribution at Yale, 2010-2023
Source: Ray Fair, “Grade Report Update: 2022-2023,” table 1. Retrieved from Gorelick, “Faculty report reveals average Yale College GPA, grade distributions by subject,” Yale Daily News, November 30, 2023.
Grade inflation makes it difficult for employers to hire based on academic performance. Students are learning this and so are using other methods to stand out among job market competitors. Straight As at institutions like Harvard and Yale aren’t enough to signal productivity to prospective employers.
However, there are big disparities across fields. The Yale report shows that subjects like “Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies” (92.06 percent As) and “Ethnicity, Race, & Migration” (85.43 percent As) are giving top grades to a much greater extent than subjects like economics (52.39 percent) and math (55.18 percent As).
Read the Yale Daily News article here and the Harvard Crimson article here.
Chinese Nationals Own a Mere 0.03% of American Agricultural Land
American protectionists have yet again come up with some new reasons to push more government regulations and more government control of private property. This time, the new regulations come in the form of restriction as to whom Americans can sell their own property. Specifically, a number of US states have passed—or are seriously considering passing—new laws prohibiting foreign nationals and foreign entities from owning land within the states in question.
At least 16 states have done so this year: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Virginia. Not all of these new regulations are equally robust. Some restrict the sale only of farmland, some restrict sales on all real property. Some of these restrict sales to nationals of certain disfavored countries, while at least one state—i.e., Oklahoma—bans sales of all non-citizens except under certain circumstances.
The rationale behind nearly all of this is a moral panic over Chinese ownership of land. The meme has gone about among many conservative nationalists that the Chinese regime is buying up American land and so both states and the federal government must create new regulations and prohibition to protect "freedom." An example of this can be found in a recent post on Twitter by South Dakota governor Kristi Noem which states that "China's holdings"—by which she presumably means holdings of Chinese nationals—increased 5,300%. That's a lot of growth, but one wonders why she didn't mention any actual numbers of acreage. (It is reminiscent of how the Soviets used to report crime statistics only as percentage changes. The USSR data workers kept "forgetting" to publish any totals of actual crime incidents.)
So, just how much land do Chinese nationals (and other foreigners) own? It turns out the Federal government already keeps track of this thanks to the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA). The act requires "foreign investors who acquire, transfer, or hold an interest in U.S. agricultural land to report such holdings and transactions to the Secretary of Agriculture on an AFIDA Report Form FSA-153." Prior to that, the Federal government did not systematically track foreign ownership of land. The act itself, of course, is not constitutional. One will look in vain for anything among the enumerated federal powers in the US constitution authorizing such activities. Nevertheless, since the report exists, we'll have a look.
According to the most recent AFIDA report, China holds a little under 1 percent of all foreign-owned ag land. But that just foreign-owned ag land. If we look at all privately held ag land overall, China owns 0.03 percent.
In contrast, the country with the most citizens who hold US ag land is Canada. Canadian investors hold 12.8 million acres, which is 31 percent of all foreign-held land. Canadian nationals hold 0.97 percent of ag land overall.
It is Europeans, however, who dominate among foreign holders of US ag land. After Canada, the next-largest group of foreign nationals holding ag land is the Dutch, followed by Italians, and then the British. China isn't even in the top ten, however, and comes in behind Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Switzerland, and others.
All taken together, foreigners own approximately 40.8 million acres. 383,935 of that is held by Chinese nationals.
Some advocates for more laws against foreign ownership contend that the AFIDA report is missing data, yet critics of the report only offer conjecture about what the "real" numbers are. If AFIDA is wrong, well, people like Kristi Noem don't actually have any better numbers. In any case it's a safe bet that Chinese nationals don't control even 5 percent of ag land in America. Moreover, it's rather odd that some Americans wring their hands over the role of Chinese nationals in land ownership when there is no demonstrated threat, whatsoever.
Rather, if Americans are looking for a large, distant corporate entity that it immensely wealthy and unresponsive to the wishes and needs of Americans, we might be better off looking at the United States government and its immense land holdings. Compared to Chinese nationals' paltry 384,000 acres, the US government owns 640 million acres of non-seabed land—or 16 times more land than the land of all foreign nationals combined. For perspective, the total number of acres in all farmland in America totals 895 million acres. Federal lands comprise 28 percent of all land in America—agricultural or otherwise.
These federal lands are off-limits to any private ownership—essentially forever. Federal lands have been used for nuclear experiments that have poisoned nearby populations. Federal workers on federal lands have caused a variety of environmental disasters such as the Gold King Mine spill in 2015. The Feds are looking to lock down these lands even more from the general public with initiatives like "wilderness" areas and roadless areas. These lands are controlled primarily by interest groups with influential lobbies in Washington. Yet, it is Chinese ownership we are supposed to be deeply concerned about.
To get perspective on how much of a threat is Beijing's power versus American federal power we might ask: how much do Americans pay to Beijing in taxes? How much does Beijing regulate American businesses or pollute American waterways and lands? How many Americans has Beijing imprisoned or fined for violating Beijing's rules? The answers to these questions highlight how fears are generally misplaced about which government does the most damage on a daily basis to Americans private property, American freedom, and American well-being in general.
Of course, many Americans—thanks to relentless propaganda and gaslighting from the media and public schools—will insist that the US government only has the peoples' best interests at heart. Many have convinced themselves that a few hundred millionaires in Congress somehow represent the interests of 330 million Americans. So, it's not the feds we must fear, with their IRS agents, ATF goons, and FBI secret police—all armed to the teeth. Rather, it's a distant foreign government with virtually no power over us that we should really be worrying about. So, that 640 million acres of federal land is all for the "public good," you see, while a few million acres of foreign-held land is a grave threat.
Jesús Huerta de Soto on Milei
Professor Jesús Huerta de Soto responds to one of his students about Javier Milei. He talks about him as an economist, as an academic, as a person, as a politician and as a media effect as a propagandist of anarcho-capitalism. He also analyzes the first steps that he should take as president of Argentina.