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Running Out of Other Peoples’ Money
I suppose that, on the day before Chancellor Bismarck proposed that Germany should do social programs, all sensible people understood that government couldn’t do anything right.
But anyway, he did, enacting health insurance and pension programs in the late 19th century, in a tactical play against the Social Democrats. And here we are, 150 years later, and as the daughter of a grocer once said:
Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them.
There’s no mystery about this. It is coded in Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s definition of politics being about friends and enemies. What do you do to your enemies? You tax them. What do you do to your friends? You gift them.
And the trouble about gifting your supporters is that they strongly object if you ever stop the money coming to them. Indeed they might even vote against you, despite all the favors you did for them over the years. Experts agree that the shortest measurable time difference is the time between getting a government benefit and deciding you deserve it.
On top of that, when you create pension and healthcare programs you have to do a lot of fearless forecasting. Niall Ferguson notes that that includes the number of children that people beget.
Unfortunately, because of the science of measurable time intervals discussed above, it is impossible to cut government programs if, despite all the agreements among the experts, it turns out that people don’t have 2.5 children but only 1.5.
In other words, government has no business in running pension and healthcare programs — or anything where prediction is involved — because it doesn’t have a clue what the future may bring. And then when things turn South the government doesn’t cut spending, it increases taxes.
Here in the United States and in Europe, governments are running up against the limit of spending, as their national debts are all cresting about 100 percent GDP. Here in the US we are up to 130 percent GDP. The French are at 119 percent GDP. The Brits are just under 100 percent GDP.
And what are the governments doing? Nothing. In our state and local governments they are increasing taxes. Because? Because that’s what the unionized government employees demand. And don’t you dare cut my Social Security or Medicare. Fraud uncovered by Nick Shirley? That’s OK.
But I tell you what I am disappointed about. I am disappointed in our philosophers and economists and social scientists and experts. How come they haven’t all combined in a wise and serious movement to advise the governments and the peoples of the Earth to change their ways? What’s the point of philosophers and experts if they don’t advise us to do the right thing?
Actually, the grocer’s daughter was wrong. It’s not just socialist governments that run out of other peoples’ money. It’s all governments.
And everyone is in on the government lark. The upper class, the educated class, has jobs in government and grants from government. The middle class has its Social Security and its Medicare and Fannie/Freddie mortgages. The lower class has its vast acreage of various benefits and access to fraud. And nobody is willing to face a reduction in benefits.
So nothing will happen until after we run out of other peoples’ money. And I have a feeling that it won’t be pretty.
| Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:23:46 GMT |
Marco and Thumos and the Future
I don’t know if an American federal official has ever given a speech like Secretary Rubio’s recent speech in the face of the setting sun standing in front of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.
What was he doing? He was describing how we Americans got here, what has gone wrong in recent years, and he was creating a vision for the way forward for us here in the greatest nation on Earth.
What shocked me was his use of the Greek word “thumos.” Said he:
The thumos, as the ancient Greeks called it – the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride – is the heart of great civilization. And without it? Without it, nations lose their will to fight, the will to strive, the will to survive.
As opposed to the culture of our liberal friends, under whose influence
We design our standards to ensure no one will lose; we preoccupy ourselves more with the comfort of the worst than the potential of the best. We hold the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre.
Why should I be shocked by thumos — θυμός to you? Because it is very close to Nietzsche and his “self-overcoming.” And you know that Nietzsche was “the Nazis favorite intellectual” according to North London luvvie Helen Lewis. All of which means that Trump and Nietzsche and Rubio are all Literally Hitler!
OK, so I cheated and asked Grok to “discuss nietzsche’s will to power with greek thumos”. You should read the whole thing. But here is the summary at the end.
Thumos wants to be seen as worthy and is injured by contempt.
Will to power wants to become more and is injured by stagnation.
Plato’s project is to yoke spirit to reason for the sake of justice.
Nietzsche’s project is to free spiritedness from the moral interpretation that calls it evil, without returning to mere brutality.
I like it. And I say Go Fritzi and Go Marco!
And Go Elon! Because if you ask me Elon Musk is the model of thumos that we want for the world that is aborning. When he was 18 in South Africa he ordered up immigration papers for Canada, with the intention of ending up in the US. And all his projects are pure Nietzschean self-overcoming, and not the distortion of the Will to Power with which our lefty friends try to misdirect us.
But I want to connect thumos with the AI revolution that is now aborning. Our Democratic friends, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), are trying to bury AI in government regulation. In response, President Trump has just launched AMERICA.GOV, which is an AI portal to the US government and everything about it.
And wouldn’t you know, just today there’s a piece in the NY Post by Fifth Wave chappie and The Revolt of the Public author Martin Gurri.
Gurri’s idea is that the internet has completely changed the world. Up to now, the world was run by bureaucracy. President? Congress? A vast army of bureaucrats and regulators calls the shots. Not any more. Because of the internet web of the Fifth Wave.
The web connects us all. AI connects all human knowledge. The combination is explosive and threatens to blow away the old hierarchies that benefited from parochialism and information monopolies.
The laptop class — the experts and the bureaucrats — can see the edge of the abyss from where they stand, and are in a panic.
They hate the untamed internet and have tried to domesticate it through censorship and the criminalization of speech.
We are reaching the end of the era of bureaucracy and freeing ourselves from what Gurri calls the “monster at the center of a dark and unwholesome labyrinth”. And so:
AI turns on the lights.
The light of AI liberates every young person’s thumos so they can go out into the world and discover their own individual “fire of passion, strength, courage, pride” and create something new in the world. Not as a pompous idiot like Barack Obama, or a political dictator, or a numbskull DSA lookalike, or a devoted activist reciting someone else’s slogans, or as a neo-serf in the neo-feudal welfare state.
And what better place to announce the New Age than right in front of the Parthenon in Athens as the sun sets on the old Age of Bureaucracy.
| Fri, 09 Oct 2026 21:35:20 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Rules of Engagement: The enemy must be destroyed — William Hall
Activists are actors, play-acting revolution.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: Against Government Education
