The Limits of Government

The limits of governmental power to solve the problems created by expanding governmental power are rising globally.

I composed this essay before the election, as the limits of government apply regardless of who takes the reins of leadership.

Elections are the opportunity to transfer the powers of government to a new set of leaders. As fascinating as this process may be, I'm more interested in the shadow cast by elections, the limits of government's powers. Elections focus our attention on the powers of government to change society, the economy, foreign policy and the cultural zeitgeist. The limits of government receive little attention, for obvious reasons: elections are the sizzle, and state power is the steak.

I know this sounds cynical, but much of what passes for government's power to transform society and the economy boils down to the power to print or borrow money on a truly immense scale. Yes, there are all kinds of legal powers: Congress can pass new statutes, the President can issue Executive Orders and the judiciary can change society with a new interpretation of the Constitution. But beyond changing the laws, the real power of government is to collect taxes, print money and borrow money.

Since paying taxes is painful, leaders prefer to print or borrow money, as the pain--the interest that must be paid in perpetuity--falls on future taxpayers, while the benefits of spending the new cash are felt immediately.

Printing and borrowing lots of money is the solution to all problems, until the Printing and borrowing become the problem. At that point, the government's power to solve problems by printing and borrowing lots of money vanishes, as the problems are now caused by printing and borrowing lots of money.

This is a limit of government's power that has been dodged for decades, but is now rumbling over the horizon. When the "solution" to every problem--throw money at it--becomes the problem, then what's the solution? Should the government stop printing and borrowing money in nearly limitless quantities, the pain felt by those no longer receiving the tax breaks, subsidies, entitlements, state contracts, paychecks, etc., quickly ramp up to somewhere between excruciating and unbearable.

Put another way, the government's power to maintain the purchasing power of its currency is not infinite. Printing and borrowing lots of money erodes the purchasing power of all that money if the real-world economy isn't generating equivalent increases in goods and services. We call this inflation, and history offers a variety of examples of this destruction of the purchasing power of money bringing down the state and nation.

If the government's ability to print and borrow vast sums to distribute is severely limited, what happens to its power? Its power is also severely limited, because changing regulations is not the same as passing around money. And without enough funding, all those legal requirements cannot be uniformly enforced.

So when the government orders everyone to wear their underwear on the outside of their clothing, where's the money to enforce this new statute going to come from?

Another limit emerges when the government's solution to every problem is to expand its reach and control. In my book Resistance, Revolution, Liberation, I describe this as the state's ontological imperative, a fancy way of saying that this innate drive to expand its powers is embedded in the very nature of the government, regardless of its form or ideology.

I addressed some of the problems created by this ceaseless expansion of state power in my essay Central Planning: China's Miracle--and Malaise.

Once again, the "solution"--expand the powers of the government--become the problem. And if the "solution" is to expand the powers of the government, then what happens when the solution is the devolution / reduction of state power? The idea of reducing the reach and power of the state doesn't compute to the leadership and functionaries, whose mindset is locked on increasing the powers of the government to solve every problem.

The centralization of state power and the expansion of state power is now the problem that government cannot possibly solve. Nobody in the governance structure ever thinks that shrinking government's reach, control, budget and power could possibly be the solution to the nation's most pressing challenges. Yet that reality is also rumbling over the horizon.

The limits of governmental power to solve the problems created by expanding governmental power are rising globally. Governments don't relinquish power voluntarily. If history is any guide, their power erodes as the forces they cannot control consume their power in an inverse power law: the more government tries to increase its power, the faster the entire system unravels.

Some readers insist that central planning / expansion of state power funded by debt works splendidly. Let's see how things play out globally over the next four years. 2029 may well be more interesting than anticipated.



To further the discussion of the opportunities and limits of state power, I'm making my 2018 book Pathfinding Our Destiny free (Kindle ebook) from November 7 to November 9. Yes, the book is now in the "free box" out on the sidewalk until Saturday, 11/9/24.

I was invited to discuss the upsides and downsides of central planning on two recent podcasts:

Charles Hugh Smith on the China Real Estate Bubble (29:28 min) Host Richard B. of the Financial Repression Authority

Charles Hugh Smith on The failure(s) of central planning across the globe (42:56 min) Host Rob S. of the Contrarian Capitalist (Substack)

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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Thank you, Joseph E. ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

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Central Planning: China's Miracle--and Malaise

The illusion created by the initial success of central planning is that it can continue indefinitely, when the reality is it's unavoidably self-liquidating as the distortions unravel the entire economy.

China offers a real-time case study of the upsides and downsides of central planning, broadly defined as the central state establishing the goals, financing, incentives and regulatory structure for various sectors of the nation's economy.

In the U.S., examples include the transformation of the American economy to wartime production in World War II, and the razing of inner city neighborhoods to build freeways in the 1960s. A swath wasn't just bulldozed in one or two cities; it happened everywhere because the federal government established the funding and incentives.

Turning to China: those of us who were fortunate enough to visit China just before the "China miracle" took off recall the decrepit state of China's housing stock, much of which was unchanged from the 19th century except for electrical wires strung haphazardly through dimly lit common areas.

Starting in the 1990s, China's central government began selling land leases to households, retaining ownership but granting lessor ownership rights to those living in the homes, in effect transferring ownership from the state to households. The idea wasn't to create an asset that households could sell, and so after-market sales were non-existent. The idea was to shift the cost of housing from the state to the private sector, freeing up state funding for industrialization and infrastructure.

As China's economy shifted from rural agriculture to urban industrialization, the need for urban housing became a priority. As tens of millions of people left rural villages for factory jobs in cities, a new centrally planned model emerged that from the perspective of the central government was a win-win-win:

1. Local governments were given the right to sell land to housing developers, and the revenue from these sales eventually made up between a third and half of local governments' budgets. In effect, a third or more of the costs of local government were shifted from Beijing to the private sector.

2. Construction of housing--much of it in high-rises--created millions of jobs, so roughly 10% of the workforce was employed in construction. This employment boosted the nation's economy, a key goal of central planners in Beijing.

3. As China's economy boomed, central planners prioritized bank lending for housing, enabling households to deploy their accumulated savings to buy a home (or later, an investment flat), a culturally favored "safe" asset to invest in.

Note that housing was funded by private capital in this model: developers pre-sold homes to households, who used their savings as the down payment and borrowed the rest from banks (often closely tied to the government). The buyers paid for the home in full, so developers had all the money upfront, and the temptation to use these funds to buy more land leases for future development and pre-sell more to-be-built-later homes was Irresistible.

Since the sale of existing units would compete with new construction, there was no resale housing market as in the West. The value of existing units was set by new housing being sold/built in the area. So if a household bought a unit for $100,000, and the new development next door was selling for $150,000, then the existing homeowners reckoned their home was now worth $150,000 as well.

This artificial valuation generated a wealth effect--our homes are rising in value--that was entirely illusory, an illusion that has burst as the actual resale value of homes was never tested in an open, transparent marketplace.

As a result, this artificial wealth effect has flipped into a reverse wealth effect: households are awakening to the grim reality that their real estate-based wealth has evaporated, and given the extreme oversupply of housing and the declining population, it's never coming back.

With few other investment opportunities available, households poured their savings into investment homes, usually leaving them empty, as homes that had been rented to tenants were considered of lower value.

As a result of this model, housing now comprises 70%+ of all household wealth, a percentage more than double that in the U.S. (30%):



But central planning's initial successes generate a blindness to its fatal flaws, a reality now playing out in China's housing sector. The model described above created "winners"--banks, developers and local governments--who have every incentive to continue building more developments, whether they fill a real need or not, and no incentives to recognize the diminishing returns and soaring risks generated by the model.

Without an unfettered, open resale market for homes, the actual value of existing housing is unknown. Since the model only wants buyers of new (and as yet unbuilt) homes, the resale of older homes is suppressed. As a result, there is no feedback as to whether more developments actually fill a need for housing, or if they are nothing more than stupendous mal-investments, black holes sucking in capital, resources and labor that could have been productively deployed elsewhere in the economy.

Two recent reports outline the malaise once the central planning "miracle" becomes a blind machine enriching entrenched interests, grinding on even as the vast asset bubble the "miracle" created is popping:

China's Paradox Under Xi: A Sea /xi:/ of Macro Imbalances - a Story Told Through the Lens of its Bust Property Bubble. Episode 1: The Chinese Housing Market

China's Paradox Under Xi - Episode 2

Since there were no feedback mechanisms allowed in the model, it continued expanding regardless of actual conditions. The net result is a massive debt bubble and an equally massive oversupply of housing: thought official statistics are not published (for the obvious reason that they reflect poorly on central planning), it's estimated that there are 94 million empty homes in China and an astounding 120 million paid-in-full homes that are unfinished or not yet started. That's an oversupply / overproduction of 214 million homes.

Whether the actual number is 160 million, 180 million or 220 million doesn't really matter at this point: the oversupply, losses and distortions are so vast that there are no pain-free policy tweaks that will fix what's broken or reverse the catastrophic losses.

Since the developers used the buyers' funds to buy more land leases, they no longer have the means to complete the 100+ million units promised / under construction. The central government is now on the hook to fund the completion of these millions of homes--many of which were investments, not intended for sheltering a family--and to clear up the enormous debts left by insolvent developers.

Who suffers the most is obvious: the hapless home buyers who are paying mortgages for half-finished homes that may never be completed. The net result is some of the homeowners are living in their half-completed high-rise homes, as shown in the video from BBC News, in which the filming was cut off by local police, as this tragic reality doesn't reflect well on central planners:

China's homeowners living in unfinished apartments BBC News (3:21 min)

Given the enormous over-supply and collapsing demand, what's known as a bidless market, the actual market value of older homes may well be near-zero in Tier 2 and 3 cities, as the costs of ownership exceed the return on the investment. Without paying renters or appreciation generated by scarcity, the value of an existing home is a negative number.

What lessons can we extract from the success and failure of this model?

1. When an economy has untapped productive capacity and is starved for credit, central planning can open the floodgates of credit and direct the productive capacity into specific sectors, creating rapid growth and "winners": in China's real estate boom, the "winners" were banks, developers and local governments, as well as the central government freed of the immense burdens of funding the construction of hundreds of millions of new homes.

2. The "winners" quickly become entrenched in the system, rewarding each other with kickbacks, insider trading, etc., and as their wealth grew, so did their political muscle, which they used to protect their sector from oversight or feedback from the real world.

3. China's central planners reckoned they'd discovered the financial equivalent of the perpetual motion machine, that housing would continue to provide 10% of the nation's jobs, fill the coffers of local government and enrich insiders indefinitely, all paid for with private capital saved up by households.

4. There were no effective safeguards in the system to protect homeowners from paying in full for a never-built or half-finished home. Central planning incentivizes insiders and entrenched interests to play fast and loose to maximize their private gains, without regard for the distortions and systemic risks their wheeling and dealing generates.

5. Since market mechanisms were eliminated or restricted, there are no structural mechanisms in either the private sector or the central government to fix the machine once it implodes. The immense losses piling up under the surface eventually must be paid by someone, and so central planners, faced with insiders' outsized influence, end up distributing the losses to the powerless, i.e. households, workers, children, retirees, etc.

This eventually generates social malaise, and the decay of the consent of the governed (a.k.a. Mandate of Heaven).

The inherent weaknesses of central planning are on display in every economy. It's tempting to use central planning to kickstart a sector or industrialize / re-industrialize, but there are no mechanisms in central planning to recognize or respond to the fact that you can only funnel private capital into a blind machine of entrenched interests for so long before the machine consumes not only all the gains of central planning but the entire economy, as the distortions become so profound that there are no fixes other than the extreme pain of absorbing catastrophic losses.

The illusion created by the initial success of central planning is that it can continue indefinitely, when the reality is it's unavoidably self-liquidating as the distortions unravel the entire economy. As I explained in my weekend post for subscribers, TINS and the Global Economy's Cliff Dive: There Is No Substitute, once the central planning model reaches its inevitable point of failure, there is no substitute available, as the economy has been optimized to reward the "winners", effectively hollowing out other sectors of the economy.

I was invited to discuss the upsides and downsides of central planning on two recent podcasts: there is quite a lot of ground covered in each discussion, please give them a listen:

Charles Hugh Smith on the China Real Estate Bubble (29:28 min)
Host Richard B. of the Financial Repression Authority

Charles Hugh Smith on The failure(s) of central planning across the globe (42:56 min)
Host Rob S. of the Contrarian Capitalist (Substack)

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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Friday, November 01, 2024

The Extremely Profitable Inner Workings of Digital Addiction

Turn the crank of social media / search (SM/S) and you get highly profitable Digital Addiction and social destabilization leading to disorder and breakdown.

The extremely profitable inner workings of digital addiction are complex, but the business model is simple: collect user data and sell it to advertisers. The more users you addict, oops I mean attract, and the more time they spend on your platform, the more money you make.

The raison d'etre of social media / search (SM/S) is to collect user data to sell to the highest bidder. To maximize profits, the SM/S platforms stimulate users to post more content and spend more time "engaging" (i.e. creating user data) on their platform.

There are three mechanisms to accomplish this goal:

1. Financial incentives. By offering users a tiny share of the third of the trillion dollars in revenue (of just the top three platforms), users are incentivized to post more content, and optimize that content o attract more views / engagement by other users.

The share earned by the few who attract an audience of millions is substantial, but the modest revenues shared with users posting content follows a power law distribution: a handful make millions, a few make $100,000 or more annually, a small circle make a middle class living ($60,000 annually), and the vast "long tail" earn a pittance at best.

Your song received hundreds of thousands of downloads? Thank you for the content and engagement. Here is your share of the revenues generated: $17. Your content attracted thousands of views, here's your share of advert revenue: $73.

The share is a pittance, but it's enough to drive a Darwinian frenzy that optimizes extremism and clickbait. This extremism can be measured, and as a result of the frenzied competition for attention, extremism is off the charts, with predictably destabilizing social consequences.

2. Self-worth incentives. Given the structure of everyday life, the vast majority of us have little influence or power in the status quo. (For many of us, our power lies not in the status quo but in opting out of the status quo.) Given the zeitgeist of our market-driven global economy, we observe others gaining visibility and income within the digital realm of social media. Since anyone with a phone or laptop / tablet can get online, this digital road to fame and fortune is open to all. This is in marked contrast with the real world, which is characterized by few pathways to fame and fortune, or even being noticed.

I'm worthy of attention is a powerful manifestation of selfhood: if I attract attention / engagement, I'm somebody. Without attention / engagement, I'm nobody.

This self-worth incentive is amplified by glorifying the few winners in the free-for-all competition for attention. No wonder it's called the Attention Economy: attention = user data = trillions in revenue.



3. Optimizing addiction. The mechanisms of addiction are fairly well understood, and these mechanisms function with profitable precision in endless scrolls of feeds and posts and algorithms that amplify clickbait and extremism, for these arouse base emotions that then increase "engagement," i.e. collecting more user data.

The net result is Digital Addiction and social destabilization. Turn the crank of social media / search (SM/S) and you get highly profitable Digital Addiction and social destabilization leading to disorder and breakdown.

Digital Addiction has many destructive consequences. Here is one with profound effects stretching across the entire landscape and far into the future: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024, Jonathon Haidt).

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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Is Social Media Actually "Media," Or Is It Something Else?

By placing search/social media in the bucket of newspapers, radio and TV networks, perhaps we've obscured their true nature as "Digital Marketing Mechanisms."

Language is a funny thing. If we don't have a word for something, in some way it doesn't exist. When we find a word in another language that describes this something, we borrow the word, for example schadenfreude from German and tsunami from Japanese.

If we use an existing word to describe something novel, we may mis-categorize it, in effect obscuring its true nature. For example, calling a whale a "fish" makes a certain kind of sense (an animal that lives in the sea), but it doesn't capture the fact that the whale is a mammal, not a fish.

Which brings us to social media, and the possibility that it isn't actually "media" at all, and we've obscured its true nature by mis-categorizing it as "media." This distinction isn't merely academic; it has significant real-world consequences.

Let's begin with the "media" that existed when the the US Constitution was drafted and ratified. "Media" wasn't a word in usage at the time, and what we understand today as "media" was understood as "the printed word" in newspapers, flyers, posters, periodicals and books. This is the origin of the Constitution's focus on "free speech" and the "free press": Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

The two concepts are intimately bound. Free speech includes public gatherings and oratory as well as all printed words, but the printed word attracts most of the legal wrangling around the meaning and limits of "free speech," a topic I explored in A Contrarian Clarification of "Free Speech".

The point of my post was that the constitutional definition focused on the government's restriction of free speech, not the private suppression or censorship of "free speech." As I explained, a private enterprise such as a newspaper is not obligated to provide a platform for everyone who wishes to exercise their "right to free speech." The newspaper can print whatever "letters to the editor" or "commentary" its owners / managers choose.

Now we have many other forms of media: radio, films, television and now the Internet, with its vast array of "printed" word, audio and video content.

In what we might call traditional media, the owners / managers publish / post content generated by their staff or other professional content creators: journalists, talk-show hosts, filmmakers, etc.

Social media is something different: all its content is created by its users. Yes, social media platforms have news feeds from traditional media, but this is a sideline to their core model, which is in effect a global message board that is open to any registered user. Unlike a Web1.0 message board / forum, whose audience was limited to the membership of the board / forum, social media platforms offer each user who posts content a potentially global audience.

The potential to build an audience of hundreds, thousands or even millions is addictively attractive, and so social media platforms (and their cousin, search) have billions of users.

This is novel. Is it "media" or is it something else? As I noted in my previous post, "free speech" is muddied when it comes to search and social media, as the government is limited by the Constitution in its capacity to restrict what's posted on social media, but there are few (if any) Constitutional restrictions on what private enterprises can restrict on their media outlets / platforms / search results.

Next, let's consider the revenues and data collection of traditional media and social media. Traditional media was limited to display ads in print, and the equivalent broadcast ads on radio and TV. These forms of media did not have the capacity/tools to collect reams of data on every user, and then use this data to sell adverts that target specific audiences--for example, surfers who have traveled to Southeast Asia to surf.

The resort on the beach in Indonesia will have far better results from adverts targeting surfers who have already demonstrated a willingness and ability to travel to Southeast Asia to surf compared to a broadcast advert that may theoretically reach a million people, of whom only a tiny percentage will be a target audience for the resort. The resort's marketing will pay a hefty premium for this data-rich targeted advert capability.

Search is also novel. Is it "media" or something else? Search engines purport to crawl the entire Web and present the most relevant answers / results to one's query. But this too is a data-collection revenue-creation mechanism, for the auctioning of search results--pay the search company money, and your product / service will be placed at the top of the search results--is lucrative.

This ability to target the audience based on detailed data collected on their web activity increases the value of the resulting advertising greatly. Consider the scale of digital adverts: the top three US corporations (Alphabet/Google, Meta/Facebook and Amazon) collect $320 billion in digital advertising revenues:



Compare this to traditional-media newspaper revenues: circulation revenue is about $11 billion and newspaper adverts, print and digital, total around $5 billion, for a total of $16 billion, roughly 5% of search/social media advert revenue.

Search/social media is free to users, but this "free access" is in effect a trade for the user data that generates a third of a trillion dollars in revenue. This "trade" also seems novel, both in form and in scale.

Would it be more accurate to describe search/social media platforms as Marketing Mechanisms that solicit user-created search/content to generate revenues rather than as "media" platforms?

The distinction is critical, for "free speech" is not a blanket carte blanche for marketing. If we remove search/social media from the category of "media" and create a new category Digital Marketing Mechanisms (DMM), then this new category necessarily requires a new regulatory structure and very different legal interpretations and protections of "free speech."

As we all know, it's very tempting for governments to "request" (or require) private-sector search/social media platforms restrict what's visible to the public to "approved" information. If a private-sector company restricts what it publishes at the "request" of the state, where are the Constitutional limits on state censorship? It seems they've been skirted by this "cooperation" of public / private power.

By placing search/social media in the bucket of newspapers, radio and TV networks, perhaps we've obscured their true nature as Digital Marketing Mechanisms, novel, complex devices more like a digital Antikythera Mechanism than an inert printed page protected as "free press."

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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Welcome to the Circular Firing Squad

If you find my scribblings upsetting, there's an easy solution: stop reading it. We'll both benefit.

I'm never more than one inch away from converting my site from essays to photos of kittens and puppies as the only means to gain respite from being hammered for my many failings as a human being. But alas, were I to do so, some readers would detect an insufferable air of elitist superiority in my selection of kitten photos, others would trash me for my worthless posts, and should I post a photo of a sad puppy, I'd promptly be denounced as a bitter old man.

Welcome to the circular firing squad. As a culture, we seem to have reached a permanently high plateau of extreme touchiness, a sensitivity to slight coupled with an urgent need to lash out not just at opinions but at those who present them, a touchiness which manifests as an irrepressible flood tide of righteous indignation: how dare you!

I've been bitterly denounced as an elitist for spending two days preparing a homemade Thanksgiving dinner for a few dozen guests, as only elites could possibly afford a home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner. How dare you prepare a home-cooked meal!

In what ward of the insane asylum is a guy who's spent his entire life on the tattered margins of the economy and society, a guy with absolutely no status, inheritance, family connections, elite credentials or position in the power structure--all the traits that characterize elite membership--be denounced for preparing a home-cooked meal to be shared with others? A guy who scraped by in genteel poverty on the crumbling edge of free-lancing. a guy who's only corporate gig was picking pineapple one summer for Dole Pineapple at 16, a guy who never worked for any government agency or anything remotely connected to the Power Elite, a guy with 50 years experience behind a worm-drive Skilsaw?

Back when I started my blog, I never expected to have an audience. Dummy that I am, I used my real name and called my blog Of Two Minds, expressing my willingness to change my mind and my general view that there was capacious open ground to explore between any two polar-opposite positions.

I should have hidden behind something like Insufferable Elitist, Worthless Writer or Bitter Old Man, or cut to the chase and called it How Dare You!

My critics overlook one of my deepest flaws: I'm overly civil. I was taught that saying horrid things about people you didn't know, and people you did know, was, well, horrid. Yes, I know: how dare you because only elites with an air of superiority are civil.

As for my air of superiority, I can't help it: I'm half Irish, with the rest being Scots and Norse / Norman. My sense of superiority is genetically hard-wired, along with my obstreperous, cantankerous, cocky nature. How dare you be half-Irish! Yes, well, please accept my apologies on behalf of my DNA.

All of which leads to an unsolvable mystery: how did this Insufferable Elitist, Worthless Writer and Bitter Old Man get 150 million page views on his own sites and a couple hundred million more page views on sites with large audiences such as Lew Rockwell, Daily Reckoning, Seeking Alpha and Zero Hedge (all terribly elitist sites, slithering with insufferable elites)? If you figure out how this Insufferable Elitist, Worthless Writer and Bitter Old Man got a third of a billion page views, please let me know. I agree, it makes no sense.

Clearly, somebody else far more deserving should have gotten the third of a billion page views. Or, horror of horrors, for unfathomable reasons, people want to read stuff composed by an Insufferable Elitist, Worthless Writer and Bitter Old Man. Believe me, I'm as mystified as you are. But go ahead and say it: How Dare You!

If you find my scribblings upsetting, there's an easy solution: stop reading it. We'll both benefit. I implore you to ignore my scribblings, for both our sakes: it will relieve my sense of guilt at upsetting anyone, and you'll be spared the tribulations of becoming upset.

I looked around for some photos of kittens and puppies, but rather than risk a copyright violation, I'm going with this from Hannah Arendt:



And because I'm an Insufferable Elitist enveloped by a vortex of Superiority, I'm adding this bit. Yes, I know: How Dare You!



Welcome to the circular firing squad. Civility is being shredded, but never mind, because civility is elitist.

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The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

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The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
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The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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