Does it seem to you that a substantial swath of life consists of scams and that this is increasing? Maybe I'm just now noticing it. Maybe it has always been this way. Or maybe we are entering into the late-Soviet stage of collapse in which no one cares about truth and decency.

I don't know who is running @AppleMusic curation but it is weak. If you want 1930s Big Band, one does not expect Hank Williams to appear on the playlist. Similarly I'm listening to 1920s pop, I don't need to hear some scratchy recording of burned-out blues from the Bayou.

Unless I'm missing something, I don't see many people observing the obvious: the Covid policy response was an extension of Russiagate, same goal, same means, same people, different tactics. The difference was that this one worked at least temporarily.

Years ago I saw a beautiful home that was stunning and magisterial in curb appeal, on a big piece of property in a great location. Life was good for the family that lived there. It was for sale, very expensive. The inspection revealed a cracked foundation. The price collapsed. No one wanted it. Finally the lot sold for less than the market value of the land because removing the house would be expensive. The administrative state right now is in a similar situation. It still looks fine, and it functions, but the foundation is cracked. It's just a matter of time before it is demolished entirely, maybe later, maybe sooner, but it will happen.

Well, well.

"When governments do not think it necessary to accommodate their expenditure to their revenue and arrogate to themselves the right of making up the deficit by issuing notes, their ideology is merely a disguised absolutism." ~ Ludwig Von Mises (1912)

OMG you have to look at this report on the "progress" of California's high-speed rail system. I actually feel bad for the people who had to put this together.

Covid wiped out an entire generation of intellectuals, not in mortality but in reputation. Supposedly fearless scholars succumbed to the transparently absurd propaganda and became regime apologists. Now they all look ridiculous, with book sales dead and followers dispersed.

If you are deeply in debt, and paying high interest to the point that you have no money left at the end of the month, who or what is at fault? You for living beyond your means or the Federal Reserve? I'm all for attacks on the Fed but they should be intelligent ones.

I'm ever more convinced that the reality of Soviet economic life has been mischaracterized, including by the regime itself, as "communism/socialism" – to make it seem vaguely intelligent, experimental, and foreign – when it was more like a county entirely managed by a administrative state in partnership with industry, something not entirely unknown in the US. Have a look at the high-speed rail development in California. Thirty years of planning and work, $38B spent, and only 119 miles more-or-less completed (a 2.5 hour drive) but already falling apart before a single ticket has been purchased. It's Soviet-like in every way because that is what happens in any society – forget socialism – that is burdened by a parasitic ruling class under any ideological slogan. The same forces dominate US pharmaceuticals at some level, elements of big tech and big media too, and the military. It's all just the same old scam regardless of its philosophical veneer.