Paradocracy

Detroit was once a symbol of extraordinary prosperity. With nearly two million people, ranking as the fifth-largest city in the United States, Detroit had the highest per-capita economic output among U. S. cities during the 1950s, at a time when the United States boasted the highest per-capita GDP in the entire world. Flash forward to 2025, and Detroit has consistently been among the most violent and impoverished major cities in America: in fact, Detroit has consistently ranked at or near the top of major U. S. cities in terms of poverty rates, unemployment rates, and murder rates. The decline of Detroit has been swift: from the beacon of prosperity to one of the 'murder capitals' of America. What was built in the course of decades was essentially destroyed in the course of years as race riots hastened ‘white flight’: the movement of middle-class (mostly ‘white’) Detroiters to the relative safety of the recently-developed and rapidly-expanding suburbs outside of the city. This ...

In early November of this year, silver was officially designated a U. S. critical mineral. The Secretary of the Interior made this announcement through the U. S. Geological Survey’s Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals in the Federal Register. The Secretary of the Interior justified silver’s inclusion on the following bases: (1) silver is essential to U. S. economic and national security, (2) silver has a supply chain vulnerable to disruption, including foreign dependence and geopolitical risk, and (3) silver serves an essential function in manufacturing and defense-related, energy, and electronic technologies, the absence of which would have significant national consequences, as defined under the Energy Act of 2020.  This comes at a time when the silver supply has been squeezed through rising industrial, consumer, and investment demand, and after the silver price has surpassed its key 45-year technical (cup-and-handle) level around the $50/oz mark. At the time of publishing, the s...

The other day, just for fun, I called and spoke to somebody who lives on one of the Aleutian Islands — the beautiful archipelago stretching westward from the southwestern mainland of Alaska toward Russia. I was studying a world map with my daughters when I figured, Hey, we can actually try to call somebody who lives on one of those remote islands!  So I did, and I made contact with a worker at a local bar. As it turned out, the bar wasn’t particularly busy, so she was thrilled to chat, and so we spoke for quite a while.  She got quite a kick out of the fact that I had just pointed to a place on the map and told my daughters that we’d try to call somebody there. As for me, I get a kick out of the fact that we have so much amazing technology at our fingertips — the kinds of technology that would mystify our ancestors — yet we hardly ever take full advantage of it. I said, It’s amazing that I can just pick up my phone, look up a place in one of the remotest parts of America, and ...

In the aftermath of the highly-anticipated meeting between the outspoken political commentator Candace Owens and Erika Kirk, the widow of the late Charlie Kirk, many find themselves trying to decide (or having already decided) where they stand on the issues. After all, in the age of social media and artificial intelligence, people are, more than ever, inclined to express themselves publicly, to pick a side, or to hasten to adopt a set of beliefs concocted for them — all generally in order to avoid appearing uninformed or stupid. In the course of doing this, however, many seem to accomplish just that — revealing just how uninformed and foolish they are.  There is also another method which allows individuals to insert themselves into the conversation purely for the sake of letting others know just how little they care. These are the types who won’t be troubled to form an opinion (short of ‘not caring’) or to risk sounding foolish (which they manage to do anyway); on the contrary, the...

You know what’s a rip-off? The fact that such “laws” as property taxes essentially mandate participation in commerce or the labor force — both tightly regulated by the government.  In earlier times, people could live off the land, trade, or produce for themselves without having to sell their labor or report their every activity. Today, that’s nearly impossible.  If you want to keep a roof over your head, you must earn money — and to earn money, you must enter the taxed economy. Whether by labor or capital, your participation isn’t optional. It’s enforced.  More of personal productivity is now measurable in monetary terms. And because it’s measurable, it’s taxable.  Governments tax human activity wherever currency is involved — through income taxes, capital gains taxes, sales taxes, and more. As more of life gets mediated through money, more of it gets taxed. Meanwhile, all this economic activity — forced or voluntary — bids up the nominal price of assets.  This ...