Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“George Orwell got some things right; unlike most political partisans, he saw the problems with the position he supported. He also got quite a lot of things wrong. … The problem is that Orwell, like many of his contemporaries (and ours), did not understand economics and thought he did. Since he wrote we have had extensive experience with free competition, if not as free as Hayek would have wanted, and the result has not been the nightmare that Orwell expected.” (01/04/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Karthik Sankaran
“Within hours of U.S. military strikes on Venezuela and the capture of its leader, Nicolas Maduro, President Trump proclaimed that ‘very large United States oil companies would go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, and start making money for the country.’ Indeed, at no point during this exercise has there been any attempt to deny that control of Venezuela’s oil (or ‘our oil’ as Trump once described it) is a major force motivating administration actions. One irony here is that even as the White House is proudly embracing fossil-fuel imperialism in global oil, the markets are vastly different.” (01/04/26)
“Agorism is a political philosophy developed by a little-known libertarian burn-out named Samuel Edward Konkin III that advocates destroying the government by engaging in modes of counter-economics that essentially make every market a black market by replacing state facilitated capitalism with an unregulated ecosystem of barter, subsistence production and mutual aid which simultaneously make communities like mine more autonomous and virtually untaxable. Panarchy is a system of governance proposing an infinite constellation of diverse, co-existing, and largely non-territorial governments that individuals can chose to join or leave at will the same way they would a church or a cellphone provider, creating a network of overlapping tribal nations not unlike those once indigenous to the pre-Christian world. With those philosophies in mind, I have developed a loose long-term goal to liberate my people, the rural Queer subaltern betrayed by Pride inc., that builds on the baby steps I have begun taking this year.” (01/04/26)
“There has been a huge amount of groupthink on the part of critics of Trump’s smash-and-grab operation to capture and prosecute Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro. The critics make the obvious point that the incursion violated Venezuela’s sovereignty and international law; that Trump’s reversion to 19th-century colonialism and spheres of influence is an invitation for Putin and Xi to do likewise in their spheres; and that America’s adventures in nation building, long disparaged by Trump himself, have seldom worked out well. There is also near-universal commentary to the effect that Trump has no clear plans for the morning after. … But reading slightly between the lines, it’s evident that there is the concept of a plan, to use Trump’s idiom.” (01/05/25)
“A revolutionary in both spirit and action, Jesus not only died challenging the police state of his day — the Roman Empire and its lesser governments — but left behind a blueprint for resisting tyranny that has guided countless reformers and freedom fighters ever since.” (01/04/26)
“The very best possible outcome of the attack is that the Venezuelan people rise up, overthrow the current regime, and replace it with something more to their liking — but probably not to the Washington, DC regime’s liking. Which they could have done at any time, without Trump’s help, had they chosen to. The more likely outcome is that US forces will install a puppet/quisling regime to rule Venezuela to Trump’s (and Big Oil’s) liking, then spend years bleeding American blood and treasure into the place before an ignominious departure (with or without formal surrender). What’s NOT likely is that Trump and his accomplices will be removed from office/power, charged under US law, or extradited for trial under international law. That’s a shame.” (01/03/26)
“So regime change is back? Having for years mocked the wasteful, lethal Clinton-Bush-Obama crusades against states they hated, now President Trump has carried out a regime decapitation of his own. Having installed as his director of national intelligence one of the most stinging critics of regime-change wars – Tulsi Gabbard – now Trump launches not quite a regime-change war but certainly a regime-change strike. Having said MAGA would end these ruinous excursions and prioritise the needs of the American working class, now Trump goes south and does what so many administrations before his did: topples a Latin American dictator.” (01/03/25)
“President Trump signaled the Monroe Doctrine’s return from the start of his second term. A volatile mix of geopolitical, hemispheric and local politics was in play. The world’s largest reserves of ‘Texas Tea’ turned the wandering Eye of Sauron in Washington on the birthplace of the Bolivarian Revolution. The Trump Administration intends to juice US and global economic growth by reducing energy costs, as we saw in the 1980s and 1990s when oil prices dropped. Fossil fuels are the Trump Administration’s preferred choice of dirty energy to fuel the AI boom, which the US intends to lead. Oil-laden tankers departing from Venezuela en route to China are not part of the program. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration treats the American public like turnip truck rubes.” (01/03/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“We’ve seen this movie before, and it usually ends with a ‘To Be Continued’ screen that no one actually wants to watch. This isn’t a victory for freedom; it’s a dangerous expansion of the ‘World Policeman’ doctrine that has consistently failed us for decades.” (01/04/26)
“Maduro is a brutal dictator who is getting what he deserves. But Trump’s actions are still illegal, because lacking proper congressional authorization. Whether they result in a beneficial regime change in Venezuela remains to be seen.” (01/03/26)
