“If you’re looking for the most elegant way to wrap up our ‘little excursion’ in Iran, it’s this: President Trump should follow what might politely be called the ‘declare victory and head for the airport’ strategy. You know the drill: Announce that we’ve set back Iran’s nuclear programs a decade, pounded their navy into submission, and turned the ayatollah into a fine mist. Mission accomplished! … Trump will have signaled to the world he (we) can’t endure any insurgent resistance, empowered the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to run the country and likely angered Israel in the process. But his domestic political base will believe he won, and fan service has always been his top political priority. Besides, once you’ve entered a war without a coherent justification, clearly defined goals or a credible exit strategy, you’re lucky to get out at all.” (03/13/26)
“Accelerated by Trump’s tariffs, the EU has signed or updated trade deals with Mercosur, Indonesia, India, and Mexico. Other countries across the Anglosphere like Canada and New Zealand are inking new free trade agreements in an effort to diversify beyond the U.S. In other words, as America raises its trade barriers, the rest of the world is lowering theirs, further undermining its standing as the global economic powerhouse. Meanwhile, the US dollar — America’s enduring monetary advantage — is losing its luster as the world’s reserve currency. … While Pax Americana fades in the rearview mirror, that doesn’t mean the US can’t find its way back to the top of the world’s rules-based economic system. But it will require more than a Supreme Court ruling.” (03/13/26)
“There is a long tradition in political philosophy holding that public policy should reflect certain moral principles. Not everyone agrees, of course. Friedrich Nietzsche and Thomas Hobbes, for example, came close to saying that ‘might makes right.’ But the political thinkers who shaped the American form of government believed that legitimate government exists for moral purposes. How does that idea apply to taxation? The Biblical commandment is clear enough: ‘Thou shall not steal.’ Since taxation is clearly a ‘taking’ under threat of coercion, we can ask, where does it cross the line from ‘legitimacy’ to ‘theft?’ That there is such a line is implicit in almost all modern political discourse.” (03/14/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Thiago VS Coelho
“The argumentum ad baculum — appeal to force — is, in plain terms, an attempt to secure assent not by evidence but by threat. As one line of analysis puts it even more starkly, ad baculum often isn’t really an argument at all; it’s a tactic offered instead of argument to shut the exchange down. That is not an occasional vice of the state. It is the state’s operating system. … when the state ‘argues,’ its syllogism is always lurking in the background: Do X (pay, register, comply, cease, confess, submit), or else.” (03/13/26)
“As one might expect, waging war in a critical chokepoint in the world’s supply of petroleum — and many other goods — has been disruptive, with oil prices spiking and consumer gasoline and diesel prices following. President Donald Trump had at first resisted calls to tap oil reserves in the United States and the other 31 members of the International Energy Agency, but then came TACO Wednesday, which follows TACO Tuesday and precedes TACO Thursday — if it is a day of the week ending in the letter ‘y,’ then you can count on it: Trump Always Chickens Out. His resolve to hold the line on oil reserves lasted about as long as his relationship with Stormy Daniels. … The way the graph lines are moving right now, Trump’s approval ratings are poised to dip below his BMI more or less presently. So, the oil taps will be opened.” (03/13/26)
“I’m no economist — but I understand that the market for petroleum products is a worldwide one, and if supply collapses on the other side of the world, it’s going to affect prices over here. We may not buy from Iran, but folks elsewhere do, and when they cannot get what they need, they’ll go to competitors, and world prices will be bid up. … The first casualty of a price hike is common sense.” (03/13/26)
“It is well known, and even taught in government-run, tax-funded schools, that European nobility and royalty made and maintained their wealth by stealing. Land, labor, the products of the land, and more. But those in government-ruined, theft-funded schools are told that today, governments no longer do that. After all, they are ‘of the people, for the people, and by the people.’ We worship democracy. But all governments, at least those which are mandatory and instituted by fallible men, are kleptocracies to some (generally large) degree. Taxes, licenses and fees, and regulatory demands are just a part of it. Stealing land is perhaps far bigger.” (03/13/26)
“Talia Rose can see the FedEx planes. ‘They’re directly across the tarmac from me,’ they told me. Rose works the overnight shift at the UPS air hub. Most days, they clock in before dawn, when much of Oakland is asleep. Metal containers — ULDs — are rolled off the aircraft and pulled into the building. Rose unloads them, sending boxes down conveyor belts to be sorted and routed. Sometimes they’re on the other side, throwing freight toward outbound trucks. It’s physical work, repetitive and precise. Around six months ago, during a weekly organizing meeting at the Oakland Liberation Center, they learned that military cargo bound for Israel had been moving through the airport. Activists had just released research documenting hundreds of such shipments passing through OAK.” (03/12/26)
