Aug
8
2026

And Don't Forget: They Expect Your Gratitude and Admiration For It

And of course, it's not enough. Never is, never will be. The latest tactic is the pretense of fighting wealth inequality. At Cato, Paul Meany notes the actual motive: Redistributing Wealth Means Redistributing Power to the State.

Once redistribution is institutionalized, it does not merely move money from the rich to the poor. It transfers authority from individuals and civil society to the state, which increasingly assumes control over income, savings, work, family incentives, and social initiative. What is truly redistributed is authority from individuals and voluntary associations to a centralized administrative state.

This transfer of authority cannot operate as a single act. Redistribution requires a permanent political machinery of extraction, distribution, and revision. Once taxation is regarded not merely as a means of raising revenue but as an instrument for producing a preferred social pattern, political power is invited permanently into the questions of who has too much, who has too little, who deserves assistance, and who must surrender resources to provide it.

The concern is not moral hard-heartedness. It is the danger of political power without intelligible limits. The more the state attempts to equalize outcomes through political management rather than voluntary aid, family support, mutual assistance, charity, and civil society, the more it must centralize command.

I've been trotting out this quote ever since I reread Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty:

That a majority, merely because it is a majority, should be entitled to apply to a minority a rule which does not apply to itself is an infringement of a principle much more fundamental than democracy itself, a principle on which the justification of democracy rests.

David R. Henderson chimes in from the Hoover Institution: The Deadly Focus On Income And Wealth Inequality.

Unfortunately, a single-minded focus on reducing inequality will lead to bad outcomes, even death. That conclusion follows from standard economic reasoning about the causes of economic growth. Reducing inequality by lopping off wealth from the wealthiest would lead to less economic growth; lower economic growth makes death rates higher than otherwise.

For DSA types, that's a secondary issue to plundering rich people, and ensuring that government has the power to expropriate anyone's wealth if the 'democratic socialists' find them unsatisfactory for some reason.

Also of note:

  • Harsh. But fair and accurate. George Will lets loose: DSA socialism is Peter Pan politics for sandbox revolutionaries. (WaPo gifted link)

    Zohran Mamdani’s election helped to ignite 21st-century interest in socialism, a 19th-century doctrine that had a deflating 20th century. Socialism, New York’s mayor says, prioritizes the “working class.” But what is that? “I think,” he told the New York Times, “if you have to work to pay your bills, I think that that is one definition of being a part of the working class.” But if everyone with bills to pay — essentially, everyone — is socialism’s priority, what is not socialism?

    The Democratic Socialists of America, a political party, sort of, recently issued its “program,” which begins by urging readers to imagine “a future without capitalism.” You “control your own labor and see it going to good use. It’s not just a job to pay the bills”:

    “Speaking of bills: you don’t really have them anymore. You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right. Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities … what if you were free to spend your time how you like without worrying about cost or dreading going back to work? What if you didn’t have to think about paying rent or loans at the end of the month, or saving for college, or affording groceries?”

    It's how they're selling it, but (honestly) if it were really about that, then they could do it without government: just set up a super-kibbutz, as they had in Israel's early days. A socialist Eden! And leave the rest of us be.

    That won't happen, of course. And not just because of their virulent anti-semitism.

  • Maybe we just need a better label? James Freeman excerpts an anonymous reader's mail: ‘Abolish Capitalism. Viva Free Enterprise!’. (WSJ gifted link)

    In Reagan’s autobiography, he uses the word capitalism exactly zero times. Milton Friedman talked and wrote for decades about free enterprise. Meanwhile, in 2026, “freedom” polls exceptionally well across the political spectrum.

    When Louis Blanc used le capitalisme in 1850, it was to describe “the appropriation of capital by some to the exclusion of others.” When Karl Marx later railed against capitalists in Das Kapital, it was the label he gave to those he derided as corrupt and exploitative. Marxists have never meant this label as a neutral descriptor, let alone as a compliment.

    Free enterprise, in contrast, is plainly descriptive. With its French cognate entrepreneur, it connotes not a system but individual initiative. Those who would defend capitalism ought to be talking about “free enterprise” instead.

    I'm not convinced, but hey, maybe.

  • And on the LFOD watch. It rang for the Detroit News report: Foo Fighters draw on 31 years of history for 35,000 fans at Ford Field. But stealing the show for us Granite Staters was…

    Queens of the Stone Age opened with an hour-long set of boogie metal, and frontman Josh Homme was in a mood. He alluded to someone backstage telling him he wasn't allowed to smoke in the building, which led him to rail against the tyranny of $60 parking and $45 beers throughout the band's set. (There was definitely $60 parking outside the stadium, but no signs of $45 beers.)

    "Don't let these corporate a--holes tell you what to do. Do whatever the f--- you want," Homme spat. "This is your f---ing night. Live free or die, motherf---ers." He then played a raging version of "Song for the Dead," the darkest, meanest and most beautiful song in the band's catalog. It was a perfect scene-setter for the night.

    I would not recommend editing your license plate to Josh's version. But (on the other hand) the Supreme Court long ago recognized the free speech issue for the motto.

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