Bureaucracy and Regulation

Sponsored by Nicholas Maier.

While the US Constitution made the US a large free trade zone, prohibiting states from erecting trade barriers against each other, it also empowered the central government to erect tariffs on goods imported from outside the country. 

The Harris-Walz campaign has adopted “freedom” as its watchword slogan, but it is a version of freedom that is more fitting for something from one of Orwell‘s works than freedom in the classical sense.

While some economists are lauding the idea of the “entrepreneurial state,” the reality is that such a term turns the very concept of entrepreneurship on its head. By nature, the state cannot act as an entrepreneur.

Remember when progressive governments outlawed church gatherings but sanctioned sex orgies? Yes, it really happened. 

Government education is a self-perpetuating monster and has been for a long time. While parents and organizations seek accountability, the dynamics driving government education point to a powerful and unaccountable bureaucracy that serves its own interests.

FEMA’s very existence and response mechanisms are fundamentally flawed.

Storms like Helene and Milton ought to drive us to recommit to and expand the very institutions that have made natural disasters more survivable for so many, not to abandon them out of some false hope that bad weather can be eliminated. 

America is always on the verge of finally having "honest government." Of course, what passes for “honest government” is a government that efficiently takes wealth from productive people and transfers it to those who are politically-connected.

In the spirit of a new Cold War, Matthew Kroenig and Dan Negrea have written a new book, We Win, They Lose: Republican Foreign Policy and the New Cold War, which tries to fuse the foreign policies of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. The result is a foreign policy Frankenstein.