Famed investor Ray Dalio makes the case in How Countries Go Broke that the United States government is too heavily indebted and that significant changes to spending, taxes, and interest rates all need to be made, and soon, to save us from looming fiscal catastrophe.

This position is mostly uncontroversial outside of the halls of Congress, and practically the conventional wisdom in most economic policy circles today. Yet Dalio’s approach to making this argument is prefaced by almost 400 pages of intellectual empire-building and chart-making. This approach turns what could have been a tightly argued Substack essay into a quasi-memoir/manifesto.  

Dalio’s business thought-leader status is currently quite secure. He has written multiple books on similar themes over the last several years, including Principles: Life & Work (2017), Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises (2018), and Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail (2021). He also maintains a website, principles.com, which collects his various writings, a recording of his 2017 TED talk, a series of 30-minute animated videos based on his writings, and the Dalio Market Principles self-study course, among other materials. He clearly considers himself to be a principled guru of sorts, and he has the stats to prove it – his books have been bestsellers, translated into multiple languages, and widely reviewed and discussed. His testimonials page overflows with praise from former cabinet secretaries, CEOs, and fellow celebrity authors.  

His body of work is based on the principles that guide the management and business practices at his investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, as well as his own related theories about world history, culture, and economics. This is an unusual blend in the world of business publishing. Most successful CEOs who write books tend to stick to self-help advice for young professionals and aspiring entrepreneurs rather than branching out into master theories covering thousands of years of world historical dynamics, but Dalio is nothing if not an ambitious thinker.  

His status as the enlightened despot of Bridgewater has generated its own share of myths and legends over the years, with many journalists, investigators, and former employees using terms like “cult,” “cult-like,” and “cult leader” to describe Dalio’s management style. He has extremely specific ideas about how things should be done and has an almost unlimited ability to impose conformity with those ideas within the firm that he founded.  Bridgewater reportedly has highly specific and aggressively enforced standards for workplace conduct and subjects its employees to idiosyncratic surveillance and accountability practices. 

Dalio and Bridgewater have plenty of defenders, of course, and the firm has been extremely successful. Forbes estimates Dalio’s net worth to be over $14 billion. Dalio’s much-remarked-upon internal management theories inform an understanding about his systematic thinking on public affairs in How Countries Go Broke. 

The tone of his latest book takes some getting used to. It ricochets between the absolute certainty of a messiah figure who has discovered the innermost secrets of the universe to the shrugging dismissal of a guy who is just asking questions. Dalio emphasizes his long study of historical cycles in economic affairs. He claims to have identified certain patterns that can help us understand our current times and even predict the future. His certainty is sufficient for him to refer, several times, to his theories with phrases like “timeless and universal truths” and “timeless and universal mechanics and principles.” Dalio is, in general, very confident that he has identified important patterns in human affairs that have eluded lesser observers and that readers would be foolish to ignore.  

At other times, however, he yields his status as knower of timeless and universal truths, with statements like “…what I don’t know is much greater than what I do know.” He offers a detailed analysis, for example, of the global power dynamics between the United States, the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan, only to sum it up with the statement “Keep in mind that while that is what I think about the world’s geopolitical order, I’m not sure of anything.” That may be an admission of admirable modesty, but it rather undermines the urgency of some of his claims.  

While Dalio holds forth on a broad range of topics relating to history, government, economics, and culture, How Countries Go Broke is primarily about government debt, and students of monetary policy will no doubt be very interested in the analysis presented. He points out that in many previous cases of rising government debt, central governments and finance ministries around the world have had recourse to the same tools for debt management. Total indebtedness has frequently risen over multiple decades, until a crisis emerges and the existing regime for issuing, valuing, and monetizing debt breaks down. Post-crisis, a new system emerges.  

Governments tend to shortsightedly load up on debt until they eventually default. Dalio presents many data points and charts showing parallel examples through the last few hundred years that suggest a more predictable cycle than most observers might initially imagine. Because the cycle of debt and default (and the attendant financial pain that comes with that process) is reasonably predictable, the book’s warning comes at a particularly timely moment. According to the Dalio timeline, we’re dangerously close to the moment we should be expecting a US debt-overload meltdown. 

As with many public intellectuals outside government, the real purpose of Dalio’s book seems to be to persuade those with power – the Federal Reserve chairman, the president, and members of Congress – to adopt a wise course of policy action before the looming disaster strikes. He advises higher taxes, lower spending, and lower interest rates. There are many books with such a formula. The odd angle with How Countries Go Broke, though, is that Dalio’s own eccentric theory of human civilization might make his entire book moot. 

The reader is repeatedly reminded that cycles of government debt, which Dalio calls the Big Debt Cycle, as well as the grand civilizational cycle by which empires rise and fall, which he terms the Overall Big Cycle, are something akin to iron laws. They are detectable and predictable precisely because they do not vary once they have begun. By the end of the book, Dalio reveals that he actually believes in a highly deterministic universe in which relatively little responds to the will of individual human beings.  

He considers the forces that govern human society to be a kind of “perpetual motion machine” that functions the same across the centuries and around the globe. By the final chapter, he pushes this view even further, saying that “everything (other than the quantum world) is predestined” and that the only thing stopping human beings from essentially knowing the future is an insufficiently detailed model of causes and effects – something he expects to “get much closer to achieving” using the tools of artificial intelligence.    

Dalio believes that economic affairs are basically “mechanical” – moving forward in a fixed way, like a set of interlocking machine parts. But if the Big Debt Cycle is literally inevitable (as discovered by Dalio’s own scholarship), then why write a book about how the US needs to avoid public debt in the first place? When giving his specific policy recommendations about taxes, spending, and interest rates, he seems to suggest, like most policy advocates, that his preferred policies can make the difference between prosperity and disaster. But that seems to be at odds with his fatalistic assumptions about how the boom-and-bust rollercoaster of government debt actually works.    

Presumably, Dalio’s theory of free will extends to his own smart investing choices that have made him, and many of his clients, rich. But a world that actually worked in the way he describes it would seem to leave little room for guiding major world historical events like currency collapses and global recessions. One also wonders how often Dalio’s galaxy-brain theorizing is challenged by those closest to him, since his most frequent collaborators are his own employees, whose professional futures are subject entirely to his managerial discretion as Bridgewater’s founder.  

No commentary on How Countries Go Broke would be complete without mentioning the book’s unusual layout. In a strategy that seems inspired by modern productivity-maximizing tools, the book’s text is sometimes presented as normal, sometimes in blocks of bold, and sometimes (for the most important insights) in passages that are bolded, italicized, and preceded by a red dot. Unlike most authors who restrict their formatting emphasis to a single bolded or italicized phrase, Dalio’s text often runs to entire paragraphs in bold, sometimes with multiple pages almost entirely set off with emphatic formatting. Each chapter also comes with specific advice for engaging with it, with readers alternately advised to skip, browse, or attend closely, depending on their expectations and education levels. While obviously meant to be helpful, this overload of visual and narrative cues is ultimately a distracting gimmick that retards, rather than enhances, the reader’s focus.  

Then again, it’s possible that effect was simply part of the inevitable mechanism of history at work.

Joseph Schumpeter famously said that creative destruction is the “essential fact about capitalism.”  Entrepreneurs are the moving force in Schumpeter’s drama, but they are victims as often as heroes. The reason is that having an idea is not enough; you have to make it work in the marketplace. The invention of ideas, and the fast borrowing of those ideas, reflect both the destruction and the creation of Schumpeter’s insight. Or, as Milton Friedman often said, capitalism is a system of profit and loss; the “and loss” part is important.

This truth is put in sharp relief by the story of the McDonald’s “Happy Meal,” a tale of innovation, theft, and Count Fangburger.  In America, there are few childhood icons more deeply felt than the cheerful red box, branded toys, and child-sized portions, especially the (let’s be honest) French fries. But behind that cheerful cardboard is a real tale of creation, and destruction: RIP, Count Fangburger.

There are three narratives that one might deploy to explain the origins of the Happy Meal, and I’m going to present all three. The first begins in Guatemala in the mid-1970s; for some reason, this one has become dominant, perhaps because it smacks of the “colonial oppression” stories so popular in faculty lounges and hipster coffee shops. 

The second, and more historically tenable, account begins with a rival fast-food chain called Burger Chef, which claimed (correctly) that McDonald’s had mimicked their packaging idea. The third, and even more correct, view holds that this kind of creative borrowing is a normal, even essential, part of capitalist creation, and destruction. 

All three narratives are in some sense true, of course. But the real story of the Happy Meal is one of convergence, competition, and creative imitation — a tale as much about economics as about hamburgers.

Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño and the “Menú Ronald”

In 1974, Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño and her husband José María Cofiño acquired the first McDonald’s franchise in Guatemala, located in Zone 1 of Guatemala City. The Cofiños quickly noticed a problem: families visiting their restaurant often found that the standard McDonald’s portions were too large for their young children. Rather than simply shrink existing meals, Yolanda had a more creative solution.

“She created what she called the ‘Menú Ronald’ — a kid-sized meal with a small burger, fries, drink, a sundae, and a toy,” writes Katarina Hall in Reason magazine’s 2025 summer issue. Rather than wait for corporate approval, Fernández de Cofiño took matters into her own hands. She purchased small toys from local Guatemalan markets and packaged them in a child-friendly meal designed specifically for young customers. The innovation was not simply a smaller portion, but a tailored experience: food, fun, and a sense of being important.

This localized creation was an immediate success in Guatemala. But its influence would soon go much further. As Hall notes, the Menú Ronald “was not the product of a structured research team or marketing department, but of observation, care, and resourcefulness.” In time, word of its success made its way to McDonald’s corporate headquarters in the United States.

By the mid-1970s, McDonald’s was actively looking for ways to capture the attention of younger customers. Company executives had taken note of how breakfast cereal brands were marketing to kids through toys, mascots, and collectible items. When the seed of Fernández de Cofiño’s idea reached headquarters in Chicago, it landed in fertile ground, and sprouted into a corporate initiative in 1977, opening in a limited market (Kansas City), and then quickly spreading nationwide.

At least, that is the story McDonald’s tells the world. There is (record scratch!) another story.

Burger Chef: Creation, then Destruction

Burger Chef had been founded as a burger and fries restaurant, a rival of McDonald’s, in 1954. Headquartered in Indianapolis, founders Frank and Donald Thomas (no relation to Wendy’s Dave Thomas, though it’s a good story) had grown the Burger Chef franchise to more than 1,200 locations — second only to McDonald’s in the US. Burger Chef and McDonald’s were very aware of each other, and they were watching each other.

A big part of the reason for that watchfulness was that Burger Chef had always been an innovator. Years before McDonald’s introduced the Big Mac, Burger Chef had launched the Big Shef, a double-decker burger that one could describe as “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, and cheese on a sesame seed bun.” It also developed an imaginative cast of cartoon mascots — including Burger Chef & Jeff, Count Fangburger, Burgerini the magician, Burgerilla the talking ape, and Cackleburger the witch — decades before the Ronald McDonald’s cartoon universe was developed into the McDonaldland characters.

But the biggest and most important marketing idea came in 1973: the Fun Meal, the first prepackaged meal specifically designed for children. The idea evolved from a 1972 offering called the “Funburger,” a child-sized portion, which featured a burger in puzzle-covered packaging and a small toy — two full years before Ms. Fernández had the same idea in Guatemala. The full Fun Meal launched a year later and included a hamburger, fries, drink, cookie, and a toy — all packaged in a colorful, game-filled box featuring Burger Chef’s cartoon characters.

This was not merely a meal; it was a branded, immersive experience. As The Indianapolis Star reported, the Fun Meal “transformed dinnertime into entertainment for children.” It became a defining feature of Burger Chef’s brand.

(Full disclosure: I was a night manager at a Burger Chef for two years, and I would estimate that I unboxed and folded more than 10,000 Fun Meal boxes during those evenings.  I can personally attest that by the summer of 1977 Fun Meals were fully distributed at thousands of Burger Chefs nationwide, and were very popular for children, long before McDonald’s had Happy Meals. Furthermore, the “Works Bar,” a place where you could add lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles and other things to your burger, was a work of innovative genius.)

Of course, here comes McDonald’s:  “Something something food for kids, something Guatemala….” Look, regardless of what Ms. Fernández de Cofiño did or didn’t do, the similarities between the Fun Meal and the “new” Happy Meal were impossible to ignore: a burger, fries, drink, toy, and a box decorated with puzzles, games, and cartoon characters. Sure, they were different cartoon characters, but this was clearly just corporate theft.

Burger Chef responded by filing a federal lawsuit, accusing McDonald’s of trademark infringement and unfair competition. The company argued that McDonald’s had copied not only the idea of a bundled kids’ meal, but its exact format, marketing structure, and even its packaging concept, with slightly different cartoons.

The late ‘70s were a time when consumer advocates, right or wrong, were looking for a chance to strike a blow against corporate power. Legal experts viewed the case as a rare and important challenge by a smaller innovator against a corporate giant. But….wait. Burger Chef had failed to formally trademark or patent key elements of the Fun Meal. The court ultimately dismissed the case, ruling that the concept of bundling food with toys in child-oriented packaging was too broad to be protected as intellectual property.  (Besides, Cracker Jack wants a word…)

As Elpack.co.uk reports: “The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed… The idea of bundling food with toys and child-themed packaging was deemed too generic to merit legal protection.” The courts found no legal wrongdoing. But the ruling was a devastating blow for Burger Chef.

Already struggling with corporate mismanagement, over-expansion, and competition from McDonald’s selling Happy Meals, Burger Chef never recovered. In 1982, General Foods sold the brand to Imasco, the Canadian parent of Hardee’s. Most Burger Chef locations were converted to Hardee’s stores or shuttered entirely. By 1996, the last Burger Chef closed its doors.

The Nature of Capitalist Innovation — Imitation and Improvement

So, who invented the Happy Meal? And does it matter?

Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño really did have a good idea, adapting a children’s menu for Guatemalan families. More people bought meals as a result, a lot more. But Burger Chef really did conceive and produce a whimsical, folded box Fun Meal with cartoons and puzzles printed on the box, and with child-sized portions, and it was fully in operation across the US years earlier.  On the other hand, McDonald’s marketing executive Bob Bernstein really did gather together the pieces, and took a huge gamble on marketing the Happy Meal, going all in on the concept, the packaging, and the (new) cartoon characters, combining the parts into a nationally scalable product.

The answer is that it doesn’t really matter now, though of course it mattered to the participants at the time. The complexity of innovation, and the ability to adopt and adapt innovations we see around us, is the real essence of creative destruction. McDonald’s did not destroy Burger Chef; that was the logic of profit and loss. But the innovations Burger Chef brought to the market changed the business in ways that now seem essential: all of us younger than about 60 remember Happy Meals at McDonald’s as a rite of childhood.

Rather than undermining the validity of the Happy Meal’s story, this multiplicity highlights something crucial about how capitalist innovation works. In a market system, ideas are rarely born perfect and complete. Rather, parts are borrowed, copied, improved, and scaled. Success does not always go to the first inventor, but often to the best replicator and popularizer. James Watt didn’t invent the steam engine, but he produced steam engines that were commercially viable.

As Katarina Hall rightly notes, Fernández de Cofiño’s contribution “is a testament to Guatemala’s deep entrepreneurial energy — an informal, voluntary spirit that thrives even in the face of bureaucracy and poverty.” Her story shows how powerful innovation can emerge from ground-level observation, not corporate strategy.

Likewise, Burger Chef’s experience reveals the fragility of innovation when not legally protected or effectively promoted by competent management. Frankly, it’s not clear that Burger Chef should have been able to patent the concepts it innovated, and McDonald’s did not directly infringe on any trademarks, since they used new and different cartoon characters.

So the conclusion should not be colonialism, or cynicism; creative destruction requires realism. Capitalist economies work because good ideas move, spreading quickly. Innovations get copied, improved, and recombined in unexpected ways. The Happy Meal wasn’t “stolen” so much as refined. It emerged from a decentralized ecosystem of franchise owners, regional ad firms, and small competitors.

In the end, the Happy Meal is not just a fast-food product — it’s a case study in how markets generate progress. Imperfectly. Inequitably. But effectively.

Burger Chef is long bankrupt, the end point of the “destruction” of capitalism. Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño is also gone; she passed away in 2021. Yet their ideas are still served millions of times each day — in red boxes, with golden arches. And with a toy.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is expected to release the details of the Fed’s framework review at this week’s annual Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium. The Fed’s framework specifies the objective of monetary policy — that is, how the Fed intends to respond to changes in inflation, unemployment, and production. In other words, it determines how the Fed will conduct monetary policy.

The Fed reviews its framework every four to five years. The current review began in January 2025. In addition to discussions at Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings, the review included Fed Listens events and the Thomas Laubach Research Conference. Back in January, Powell said Fed officials will “be open to new ideas and critical feedback and we will take on board lessons of the last five years in determining our findings.”

Most Fed watchers anticipate significant revisions to the Fed’s Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy (henceforth, “Consensus Statement”). At the January FOMC meeting, “participants assessed that it was important to consider potential revisions to the statement, with particular attention to some of the elements introduced in 2020.” Specifically, they identified the “focus on the risks to the economy posed by the [effective lower bound], the approach of mitigating shortfalls from maximum employment, and the approach of aiming to achieve inflation moderately above 2 percent following periods of persistently below-target inflation” as areas of the Consensus Statement potentially in need of revision. That was welcome news to economists like me, since those 2020 changes arguably contributed to the Fed’s slow response to rising inflation in late 2021 and early 2022.

Prior Changes

The Fed made two important changes to its Consensus Statement during its last review, which concluded in August 2020. First, it replaced its Flexible Inflation Target (FIT) with an asymmetric Flexible Average Inflation Target (FAIT). Second, it replaced its symmetric approach to delivering maximum employment with an asymmetric approach aimed at preventing shortfalls from maximum employment. Why did the Fed make those changes then?

The move from FIT to FAIT was intended to address problems with the conduct of monetary policy that emerged in the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession. The Fed formally adopted a 2-percent inflation target in January 2012. Although the Fed’s FIT was intended to deliver inflation at 2 percent, the Fed generally failed to hit its target in the years that followed. The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, which is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, grew at a mere 0.9 percent on average from January 2012 to January 2016. As I wrote back in 2015, it was “widely believed that the Fed’s stated 2 percent target is, in fact, a 2 percent ceiling.”

In 2016, the Fed revised its Consensus Statement to clarify that its 2-percent FIT was symmetric: it would be just as likely to overshoot its inflation target as to undershoot it. By clearly stating that its FIT was symmetric, the Fed hoped to anchor inflation expectations at 2 percent and, in doing so, make it easier to conduct monetary policy to deliver 2-percent inflation. As written in the 2016 Consensus Statement: 

Communicating this symmetric inflation goal clearly to the public helps keep longer-term inflation expectations firmly anchored, thereby fostering price stability and moderate long-term interest rates and enhancing the Committee’s ability to promote maximum employment in the face of significant economic disturbances.

Alas, that proved easier said than done. Inflation (as measured by PCEPI) averaged just 1.7 percent from January 2016 to January 2020, just prior to the pandemic.

Having persistently undershot its inflation target under FIT for the better part of a decade, the Fed adopted its FAIT framework in August 2020. Whereas FIT was designed to deliver 2 percent inflation on a go-forward basis, regardless of any past mistakes, FAIT included a make-up policy that was intended to deliver 2-percent inflation on average. The Fed was explicit in noting that, “following periods when inflation has been running persistently below 2 percent, appropriate monetary policy will likely aim to achieve inflation moderately above 2 percent for some time.” It did not explicitly state how it would conduct policy following periods when inflation has been running persistently above 2 percent, but the assumption I (and many other economists) had at the outset was that it would engage in FAIT symmetrically — i.e., that it would similarly make up for periods when inflation had been too high. The A in FAIT stood for average, after all; and inflation would not average 2 percent if the Fed only made up for periods of below-target inflation.

Despite the name, we soon learned that the Fed did not intend to make up for periods of above-target inflation. Inflation (as measured by PCEPI) has averaged 3.9 percent since August 2020. And, although the Fed has worked to bring inflation back down to 2 percent from a high of 11.3 percent in June 2022, it does not intend to deliver below-target inflation for a period, as would be required for inflation to average 2 percent. FAIT was not symmetric: the Fed would only engage in make-up policy if it undershot its target.

The reason for the move from a symmetric approach to delivering maximum employment to an asymmetric approach is somewhat harder to pin down. Three possible reasons come to mind.

1. Fed officials wanted to reinforce the Fed’s asymmetric approach to targeting inflation.
2. Fed officials came to accept a plucking model of business cycles.
3. Fed officials became concerned about employment gaps between races, and thought the best way to prevent such gaps was to ensure the economy was always at or above full employment.

One might make a strong case for any of these reasons, and perhaps all three played a role. In any event, the consequences of such an approach soon became clear: the Fed was slow to tighten monetary policy when inflation picked up in 2021, out of concern that doing so might cause employment to fall below potential.

Expected Changes

Although the Fed has not yet released its revised Consensus Statement, the minutes from FOMC meetings held earlier this year offer a good sense of what changes will be made. 

At the March 2025 meeting, participants “discussed the implications of pursuing a strategy that seeks to mitigate shortfalls of employment from its maximum level, as described in the statement, and the ways the public has interpreted that approach since it was introduced into the statement” and “indicated that they thought it would be appropriate to reconsider the shortfalls language.” In other words, the Fed is likely to replace its focus on shortfalls from maximum employment with deviations from maximum employment, which would result in a more symmetric approach to achieving maximum employment.

At the May 2025 meeting, participants “indicated that they thought it would be appropriate to reconsider the average inflation-targeting language in the Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy.” They “noted that an effective monetary policy strategy must be robust to a wide variety of economic environments” and “viewed flexible inflation targeting as a more robust policy strategy capable of correcting persistent deviations of inflation from either side of the Committee’s 2 percent longer-run objective.” In sum, the Fed is likely to replace its asymmetric FAIT with a symmetric FIT.

Taken together, the FOMC meeting minutes from March and May of this year suggest the Fed intends to undo the changes made to the Consensus Statement back in August 2020. That’s understandable, given the experience of the last five years. Focusing on shortfalls rather than deviations from maximum employment and failing to commit to offset periods of above-target inflation enabled the Fed to delay tightening monetary policy in late 2021 and early 2022. As a consequence, inflation rose higher than it otherwise would — and the level of prices will remain permanently elevated above its pre-2020 trend path. In other words: the Fed’s framework did not serve the American people well during this period.

Tell Me Why

Somewhat surprisingly, Chair Powell maintains that the existing framework did not prevent the Fed from conducting policy appropriately over the last five years:

There was nothing moderate about the overshoot. It was an exogenous event. It was the pandemic and it happened and, you know, our framework permitted us to act quite vigorously. And we did, once we decided that that’s what we should do. The framework had really nothing to do with the decision to — we looked at the inflation as — as transitory and — right up to the point where the data turned against that. [W]hen the data turned against that in late ‘21, we changed our — our view and we raised rates a lot. And here we are at 4.1 percent unemployment and inflation way down. But the framework was more irrelevant than anything else — that part of it was irrelevant. The rest of the framework worked just fine as — as we used it — as it supported what we did to bring inflation down.

The existing framework, according to Powell, is not broken and, hence, does not need to be fixed.

Powell’s statement is somewhat surprising for at least three reasons, as my colleague Bryan Cutsinger has explained. First, the emerging consensus is that much of the inflation experienced between 2021 and 2024 was due to excessive demand, which monetary policy could have and should have offset. Second, the Fed clearly delayed tightening monetary policy, just as one would expect it to do given its existing framework. Third, the Fed’s asymmetric FAIT framework prevented it from bringing prices back down to where they would have been had it not allowed demand to surge; the lack of make-up policy following an overshoot meant prices would remain permanently elevated.

Powell’s remarks also seem incongruent with the facts that (1) the Fed is revising its framework and (2) as he himself has stated, Fed officials “will take on board lessons of the last five years” in making revisions. If the framework “worked just fine” and permitted the Fed to “act quite vigorously” over the last five years, as Powell maintains, then surely the lesson is that the Fed should leave its well-functioning framework as is. As my grandpa used to say: don’t fix what’s not broken.

It seems more likely that Powell and others at the Fed recognize the problems with the existing framework and are making changes to improve it, but do not want to acknowledge their errors: adopting a faulty framework in August 2020 and then sticking with it in late 2021 and early 2022, as inflation climbed. The reluctance for Fed officials to admit they made a mistake — and, in this case, two mistakes — is not at all surprising. The Fed’s mea culpa for the Great Depression was seventy years in the making.

A troubling new piece of legislation continues to make its way through the British parliament. Dubbed the “Banter Bill,” the Employment Rights Bill would criminalize any speech that might be considered offensive by any passerby. 

As Dominic Green reports for The Free Press, under this proposed law, “Britons can be prosecuted for a remark that a worker in a public space overhears and finds insulting.” Under this standard, whether a certain sentiment (for instance, that Britain should reduce immigration) is legal will now depend on whether someone in the vicinity takes offense.

Unfortunately, this new subjective standard for what types of speech are allowed isn’t restricted to Great Britain. In the United States, more and more states are experimenting with a similar system. The Washington Free Beacon reports that eight states have set up “bias-response hotlines” which citizens are encouraged to call if they hear a comment — from a neighbor, coworker, or even passersby on the street — that they consider to be offensive. As Oregon says of their hotline, if you see or hear someone “creating racist images/drawings; mocking someone with a disability; or telling or sharing offensive ‘jokes’ about someone’s identity” they want to hear about it.

For examples of how absurd this can all get, in the United Kingdom, one man was arrested for praying silently in his apartment because a passerby found his praying offensive. In Oregon, a bias response incident was logged when a reporter from the Free Beacon, seeking to test how far this new Orwellian system would go, called to complain that after a dispute with their neighbor about the situation in Gaza, their neighbor had started flying an Israeli flag.

To be clear, the system in the United States, while bad, isn’t nearly as draconian as the system in Europe. In the United States, offensive jokes and racist memes are still legal, and it’s not clear what (if anything) the state has the power to do to people accused of making biased statements. Nonetheless, both systems represent a kind of snitch network: a state-based system that encourages citizens to run to the authorities any time they hear someone say something that they find offensive or disagreeable.

One of the biggest problems with these types of snitch networks is that they threaten to make us worse people.

For one thing, these networks encourage us to act like schoolchildren running to tattle on a classmate. “If you see something, say something” is awful advice when what you see is simply people praying silently or hanging flags with which you may disagree. Over time, networks like these threaten to change our culture from a “dignity culture” into what sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning call a “victimhood culture.” 

Here’s how Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff describe dignity culture in their book The Coddling of the American Mind:

In an optimally functioning dignity culture, people are assumed to have dignity and worth regardless of what others think of them, so they are not expected to react too strongly to minor slights…People are expected to have enough self-control to shrug off irritations, slights, and minor conflicts as they pursue their own projects. For larger conflicts or violations of one’s rights, there are reliable legal or administrative remedies, but it would be undignified to call for such help for small matters, which one should be able to resolve on one’s own.

By contrast, Campbell and Manning describe “victimhood culture” as one in which people “display high sensitivity to slights,” “have a tendency to handle conflicts through complaints to third parties,” and “seek to cultivate an image of being victims who deserve assistance.”

Dignity cultures cultivate emotionally healthy responses and encourage people to develop the emotional resilience necessary to cope with life. Victimhood cultures encourage us to see oppression everywhere, to become paranoid, and to see our fellow citizens as possible threats to be reported.

Snitch networks encourage the callers to see themselves as victims. When the reporter from the Free Beacon called to complain about the Israeli flag, the operator suggested that he could “apply for taxpayer-funded therapy through the state’s Crime Victims Compensation Program, which covers counseling costs for bias incidents as well as crimes.” Just to reiterate how insane that is: this is a state government, telling a citizen that he might want to seek therapy because his neighbor was flying an Israeli flag.

This has the potential to do profound psychological damage. The truth is that, as humans, we more or less rise or fall to the standard to which others hold us. If people around us (especially people we endow with authority and trust, such as the operator of a government-sponsored hotline that we’re calling) tell us that we’re so fragile that we might need to seek therapy after seeing a flag, then we’re liable to believe them. We might even go to therapy, which can further reify our thin-skinnedness and reactivity. That, in turn, can make us feel even more vulnerable the next time that we hear or see something that we find uncomfortable, which can encourage us to start the vicious cycle all over again.

As the old saying goes: whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re right. To put a psychological spin on it: whether you believe you are strong and capable enough to see an Israeli flag (or a man silently praying) and then go on with your day, or you believe that you’re so fragile that said sight necessitates a call to a government agency and possibly therapy, you’re right. 

These snitch networks can also encourage catastrophizing in the kinds of people who use them. When the Free Beacon reporter called to report that their neighbor had begun flying an Israeli flag, the operator called it a “warning sign” and suggested that the caller consider installing security cameras in case the situation “escalates.” When the Free Beacon called again, this time posing as a Jewish man whose neighbor had hung a sign that said “From the River to the Sea,” the operator responded by offering to “talk about a safety plan” if the caller didn’t “feel safe.” “We have a small pot of money that can be used to purchase security cameras, locks, and other types of security measures,” the operator said.

But when people we trust encourage us to catastrophize, we can start to see threats all around us. When state operatives tell us that we should install security cameras in case our neighbors take hostile action, we start to see those neighbors as a threat — even if they’re actually completely benign. The whole system is a path to anxiety and paranoia.

These snitch networks threaten to make us more fragile. Instead of calling the authorities every time we see someone say something that we consider to be offensive, perhaps a healthier approach would be to remind ourselves of that old adage about sticks and stones.

These snitch networks are also a good reminder of what happens when our government is no longer limited. 

Limited government encourages its citizens to act like adults, because there’s not always an authority figure hovering nearby to resolve any conflict. By contrast, one of the bigger psychological dangers of a totalitarian government is that it encourages its citizens to act like children.

Even though the COVID-era inflation surge is in the past, Americans are right to remain concerned about the state of our money. Contention over America’s monetary policy is nothing new, however, and sound money advocates can find inspiration in revisiting the prominent money debate, which enraptured much of American politics at the end of the nineteenth century. This period, known as the Gilded Age, was in many ways a captivating and busy time. In the years following the American Civil War, there was remarkable economic growth and productivity, but also a litany of issues facing the country, not the least of which revolved around monetary policy.  

By the final decade of the nineteenth century, amid the Panic of 1893 and political factionalism, the debate over America’s money reached a climactic showdown. As this uneasy situation was unfolding, agrarians and Western miners wanted an inflationary “free silver” policy to relieve their debts and benefit their economic interests. In contrast, many classical liberals and conservatives favored a firm adherence to the gold standard on the grounds of prudence, stability, and connection with international trade. These diverging perspectives were personified in the rhetorical battle between William Jennings Bryan and Carl Schurz during the 1896 presidential campaign. The resulting war of words offers meaningful insights for those who support sound money and markets in our own time. 

In 1896, the chief spokesman for inflation was the young Nebraskan William Jennings Bryan. At just 36 years old, Bryan was the presidential candidate for both the Democratic and People’s (Populist) parties. While he did not invent the concept of free silver, he was by this time its most potent advocate after delivering his captivating “Cross of Gold” speech at that summer’s Democratic National Convention. This famous speech reflected the inflationist position as Bryan referred to the gold standard as a “crown of thorns” upon the “brow of labor,” and concluded with the declaration, “you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Once nominated, Bryan toured the country in support of his inflationist and interventionist platform, which proclaimed that “the money question is paramount to all others at this time.” Bryan utilized a variety of tactics in his campaign, such as invoking class and regional rivalries, as well as frequent references to his Christian faith. Despite his oratorical energy and outward allegiance to the “plain people” of the country, not all Americans were sold on Bryan and free silver, however, as classical liberals were quick to demonstrate. 

One outspoken Bryan critic was Carl Schurz, a German immigrant, Civil War veteran, Senator, political commentator, and determined classical liberal. Schurz was involved with several classical liberal causes in the Gilded Age, one of which was his firm advocacy of sound money. In direct response to Bryan, Schurz delivered a speech of his own in September 1896 in Chicago, the same city where Bryan had made history with the “Cross of Gold” in July. Schurz’s response was entitled “Honest Money and Honesty,” and it was a detailed rebuttal to multiple arguments Bryan employed in his campaign. Schurz’s speech served as a powerful case for sound money, the importance of which carried beyond the nineteenth century and into ours. 

One of the concerns Schurz sought to address was the perceived instability that many sound money advocates thought a Bryan victory would have meant for the economy. Americans were already dealing with the continuing economic debacle stemming from the Panic of 1893, and it was unclear whether free silver would cause a resolution of these issues or more of the same, if not worse. Although Bryan pitched his free silver campaign as a method to relieve the suffering of many Americans, others saw it as a sign of impending inflation, instability, and national dishonor. There is even evidence to suggest that Bryan’s pro-inflation campaigning itself further fueled economic uncertainty as the future of the American economy seemed unclear. In this atmosphere Schurz took aim at the economic risk posed by Bryan and his calls for free silver inflation. 

The issue, as Schurz saw it, was that Bryan’s calls for inflationary policy were addressed primarily to lower-income Americans such as farmers, miners, and urban laborers. Schurz called these “deceptive appeals” to wage-earners “the most heartless and damnable” of Bryan’s tactics because he recognized that these were also the people who stood to be most negatively impacted by an increase in the money supply and the attendant rise in prices. Schurz aptly recounted the momentous increase in prosperity which characterized the nineteenth century, a situation which has been borne out by economic studies of the period, despite the efforts of some academics to maintain the image of the Gilded Age as one simply of inequality and cartoonish Robber Barons. Rather, Schurz understood that only through the preservation of sound money, and not the freewheeling inflation of free silver, could the American economy continue the growth which had improved people’s lives throughout the nineteenth century.  

Additionally, Carl Schurz countered Bryan’s argument on moral grounds, further demonstrating that the “money question” was as much an ethical disagreement as an economic one. He offered a religious metaphor of his own in a direct response to Bryan’s frequent invocation of Christian imagery on the campaign trail. Schurz likened Bryan and free silver to a “temptation” presented to the American people and noted: “Mr. Bryan has a taste for Scriptural illustration. He will remember how Christ was taken up on a high mountain, and promised all the glories of the world if he would fall down and worship the devil. He will also remember what Christ answered. So the tempter now takes the American people up the mountain and says, ‘I will take from you half of your debts if you will worship me.’” Yet, despite Schurz’s allusion to Bryan as a dangerous “tempter” akin to the devil, he was confident that the American people would see through his scheme and that “the Stars and Stripes will continue to wave undefiled, honorable, and honored among the banners of mankind.”  

While William Jennings Bryan ultimately lost the 1896 election and the pro-gold McKinley became the president, the arguments employed in the debate over monetary policy reach beyond the confines of the late-nineteenth century and into our present day. It is true that the question no longer revolves around disputes over silver and gold, but the principles of sound money advanced by classical liberals like Carl Schurz are worthy of consideration because of their timeless insight into the nature of inflation and the moral and economic hazards it invites. As Americans in our own era have experienced the harmful effects of inflation in the wake of COVID, perhaps we can stand to benefit from learning from previous generations of sound money advocates. 

In a recent column, Paul Krugman marvels at Brazil’s Pix system, a government-run digital payment network that has rapidly overtaken other non-cash methods in the country. He uses Pix to mock opponents of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and to scorn the supposed failure of cryptocurrency to deliver on its promises. But in doing so, Krugman misses nearly everything that matters about crypto — and about liberty itself.

Let’s start with the core of Krugman’s argument: Brazil built a fast, cheap, and accessible public payment system, so the US should do the same. He frames Pix as a superior version of Zelle, made better by the fact that it’s run by the central bank. And since 93 percent of Brazilians have used Pix, he takes that as proof that public systems outperform private ones and that government-run digital money is the future.

But then comes a misleading comparison. Krugman contrasts Brazil’s 93 percent Pix usage with the two percent of Americans who used crypto for payments in 2024, using that gap to declare crypto a failure. This is a textbook apples-to-oranges fallacy, and it betrays a deeper misunderstanding of what crypto is even trying to do.

Bitcoin was never designed to replace fiat in a world where fiat is propped up by legal tender laws, enforced monopolies, and taxpayer-subsidized infrastructure. Of course people in Brazil use Pix more than Bitcoin — just like they use Brazilian Reais (R$) more than gold. Popularity under state compulsion is not the same as voluntary preference. Adoption tells us little about legitimacy when one option is legally mandatory and the others are actively discouraged or shut out.

Krugman also blurs the lines between stablecoins, CBDCs, and cryptocurrencies as if they’re all interchangeable. But this conflation is lazy at best. A stablecoin like USDC, backed by private institutions and used voluntarily, is not the same as a state-issued CBDC that can be surveilled, censored, or politically weaponized. And none of these is equivalent to Pix, a government-owned retail payment system built on top of an existing fiat monopoly. Comparing Bitcoin to Pix is like comparing gold to Venmo. They solve completely different problems and are not competing on the same terms.

Krugman seems to think that because Pix is easy to use, it has solved the very problem crypto was meant to address. That’s like saying the DMV solved the transportation problem because it issues driver’s licenses quickly. What crypto offers is something fundamentally different: the ability to opt out of systems controlled by the state. That means privacy. That means financial sovereignty. That means not needing a government.

In fact, the very success of Pix reveals the danger Krugman refuses to acknowledge. When a government controls not only the money supply but also the rails for all digital payments, you have a monopoly in both the asset and its transmission. That’s absolute power — and it’s incompatible with individual liberty.

Brazil is already showing what this can look like. 

In 2020, WhatsApp — used by virtually everyone in the country — attempted to launch its own payment system. It was blocked by the central bank. Not because it posed a risk to consumers, but because it competed with Pix. This is not innovation. It’s protectionism dressed in state robes. How can a private company possibly compete with a system the government both operates and regulates?

Krugman waves off fears of surveillance by assuring readers: “If we ever do create a CBDC, it will surely involve comparable privacy protection. Either you trust in rule of law or you don’t.” But history and economics tell us that power tends to expand until something stops it. Giving the state even more centralized control over money, payments, and financial infrastructure is not progress. It’s regression into a system where every transaction can potentially be tracked, every dissenter can be punished, and every private alternative can be crushed.

And let’s be clear: this isn’t a partisan concern. It’s a structural one. Once the infrastructure is in place, it doesn’t matter which party is in charge, what matters is that the government can now monitor, freeze, or block your financial life at the flip of a switch.

Ironically, Krugman’s celebration of Pix and dismissal of crypto will likely do the opposite of what he intends. As more people realize the extent of government control over fiat rails, the demand for alternatives will only grow. Pix doesn’t kill crypto — it vindicates it. Despite much less developed capital markets, Brazil got its first bitcoin ETF before the US, and it also has access to an altcoin ETF, which the SEC has blocked twice.

Krugman seems stuck in a worldview where all money must be politically managed, where value comes from government authority, and where freedom is something granted, not assumed. But the core idea behind crypto — especially Bitcoin — is not low transaction fees or financial inclusion, as Krugman narrowly defines it. The real innovation is the creation of a monetary system that no one controls, and no one can shut down.

Bitcoin’s strength lies in its incorruptibility. Its rules are enforced not by men but by math — by cryptographic guarantees, not political compromise. It offers what no CBDC ever will: monetary and financial freedom backed not by laws, but by code.

And yes, maybe only two percent of Americans used crypto for payments in 2024. But that’s beside the point. Bitcoin thrives where it’s needed most: among Venezuelans escaping hyperinflation, Ukrainians fleeing invasion, and Nigerians bypassing capital controls. It gains value where the system fails, and that is precisely what makes it valuable.

Paul Krugman sees Pix as the future of money. But what he’s really celebrating is the future of state control. For those of us who value liberty, privacy, and competition, that’s no future at all.

From tariffs to student debt “forgiveness,” from corporate welfare to border chaos, America’s political class — right and left — has lost its economic compass. What’s missing? Econ 101.

Progressives promise government programs to create “equity.” Conservatives now support tariffs and special favors for certain businesses. Both are forms of economic socialism — central planning that shifts control from the people to politicians. That’s why the US economy feels stuck: a $37 trillion national debt, a bloated Federal Reserve balance sheet, and growing doubts about the American Dream.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We need a return to the basics of economic freedom. That’s why I launched an Econ 101 series — to explain simple, timeless principles about how people make choices, work together, and meet their needs in a world with limited resources.

If every policymaker — and voter — understood these 20 simple ideas, the whole nation could be freed to be its best self.

1. People act with purpose
   
   Whether it’s a parent budgeting for groceries or a business hiring workers, people make choices based on incentives, constraints, and values. Policies that ignore this, like assuming people won’t adjust their behavior when welfare expands, always backfire.
   
   
2. Trade always benefits both sides
   
   Trade isn’t about countries — it’s about people. When Americans buy clothes from Bangladesh or semiconductors from Taiwan, both sides benefit. Blocking trade with tariffs is like trying to grow prosperity by taxing yourself.
   
   
3. People dislike uncertainty
   
   Small business owners delay hiring. Families delay big purchases. Entrepreneurs sit on the sidelines. And why? Because Washington keeps creating policy chaos — from Biden’s inflationary spending to Trump’s tariffs. Clarity is key.
   
   
4. Entrepreneurship drives growth
   
   It’s not government spending or stimulus checks that create jobs — it’s innovation. From Henry Ford to Elon Musk, it’s entrepreneurs who take risks to solve problems. Washington should stop crowding them out with red tape and cronyism.
   
   
5. Nothing is free
   
   From “free” college to “free” COVID tests, the truth remains: every dollar must come from somewhere. Usually, it’s from taxpayers — or worse, borrowed from future generations. Opportunity costs are real, and they’re often ignored in DC.
   
   
6. Free markets create prosperity
   
   Look around the world. Free economies prosper. Controlled ones collapse. See Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea versus Singapore, Switzerland, and Texas. Markets deliver what bureaucracies only promise.
   
   
7. Voluntary exchange works best
   
   When people can freely trade, they innovate, cooperate, and thrive. When politicians impose price controls — like on credit card interchange fees or energy — they distort behavior and punish both consumers and producers.
   
   
8. Price signals matter
   
   Prices aren’t arbitrary — they communicate supply and demand. When the government distorts them, like through drug price controls or green energy subsidies, it creates shortages, surpluses, and dysfunction.
   
   
9. Every choice has opportunity costs
   
   Every decision has a tradeoff. A dollar spent on bureaucratic boosterism is a dollar not spent on defense, or — better yet — not taxed in the first place. 
   
   
10. Government power reduces liberty
    
    Each regulation, each subsidy, and each tax is a restriction on what people can do with their own lives. As Ronald Reagan said, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”
    
    
11. Inflation comes from money creation
    
    Deficits fuel it, and the Federal Reserve enables it. As Milton Friedman reminded us, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” CPI rose 2.7 percent in July over the last year, and the 3.1 percent core inflation remains above target. Until spending is restrained and the Fed shrinks its balance sheet, inflation will persist.
    
12. Destruction is not growth
    
    The economy doesn’t improve when a riot breaks a window or the government rebuilds after a hurricane or war. That’s not growth — it’s replacement and lost resources for other things. Destruction does not drive prosperity.
    
    
13. Trade fosters peace
    
    Sanctions, embargoes, and trade wars escalate tensions. Trade fosters peace. China’s rise comes with real challenges — but the answer is not less economic freedom, but more. Tariffs harm Americans more than Beijing.
    
    
14. Institutions make markets work
    
    From strong property rights to a reliable legal system, good institutions enable markets to function effectively. That’s why we must resist the weaponization of agencies or the rewriting of laws to favor one group over another.
    
    
15. Socialism always fails
    
    Because it tries to make us care about everyone else’s welfare as much as our own, socialism always ends in tyranny and poverty. Today’s policymakers want to rebrand it as “equity” or “industrial planning,” but it’s the same road that led to Venezuela’s collapse, the Berlin Wall, and Cambodia’s killing fields.
    
    
16. Profits and losses guide progress
    
    Profits signal value creation. Losses signal failure, freeing up resources for the next experiment. Government bailouts and subsidies break this feedback loop, rewarding inefficiency. Investing in progress should always pay better than buying political favors.
    
    
17. Prosperity comes from freedom
    
    When the government steps back, families, workers, and entrepreneurs build thriving communities. School choice and right-to-work laws show how freedom creates opportunity. “Let people prosper” is not just a slogan — it’s a strategy for conquering poverty by unleashing humanity.
    
    
18. Markets solve problems
    
    One-size-fits-all systems, like those the US government created in healthcare and education, become costly debacles that serve special interests but leave ordinary people out. Problems are solved and inventions emerge when lots of individuals make their own choices, and share information about what works (prices).
    
    
19. People deserve dignity
    
    People aren’t widgets in a spreadsheet. They have hopes, beliefs, and talents. Trusting them to make their own decisions, based on the real circumstances of their own lives, creates better outcomes than distant ‘experts’ making decisions for them.
    
    
20. Government spending can’t add to the economy
    
    Government spending only redistributes existing resources. Printing money and handing out checks doesn’t “stimulate” the economy (Keynesian Multiplier), it just makes goods expensive and harder to get.

America didn’t become the most prosperous nation in the world through central planning. What distinguished the American model was offering choices to individuals, protecting their private property, making free enterprise appealing and profitable, encouraging personal responsibility, and respecting people’s rights to cooperate on whatever voluntary projects they chose.

That model still works — if we have the courage to return to it.

Advocates of free markets must do more than critique failed ideas. We must lay out practical, principled alternatives — and push those in power to adopt them, even when it’s politically inconvenient.

Politicians often do what benefits them, not what benefits us. The solution isn’t found in Washington. It’s found in communities, in businesses, in homes, and hearts and minds. If we want Americans to prosper, we must return to the basics of economics.

In December 1934, The American Family Robinson came to the radio airwaves. The new show, like many of its competitors, featured a combination of mystery, family life, romance, drama, adventure, comedy, and intrigue. But it also had something unique to offer. Unlike other radio soap operas, The American Family Robinson openly celebrated free markets, private property, and self-reliance. 

The American Family Robinson was part of a strategy by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) to sway public opinion against the New Deal. Acting through a front group, the National Industrial Council, industry interests created a radio soap opera weaving together entertainment, promotion of entrepreneurship, and opposition to big government.

But the big networks showed no interest. NBC executives were typical in fearing that the series, though potentially profitable for the bottom line, might flout the mandate of the Federal Communications Commission to promote the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.” Network executives even banned local affiliates from carrying the show. “You would probably not find in the entire series any specific sentence that could be censored,” summarized a scriptwriter for NBC, “but the definite intention and implication of each episode is to conduct certain propaganda against the New Deal and all its work.” 

The producers responded with a strategy to bypass the networks through syndication to local stations, a practice that was still quite rare. The National Industrial Council recruited local employers to fund transcription of the program onto 16-inch phonograph discs and mailed them to stations weekly or bi-weekly. 

The American Family Robinson is set in the fictional town of Centerville. The main characters are Luke Robinson, who edits and publishes the town’s newspaper, the Centerville Herald; his wife Myra, who hosts her radio show, their daughter Betty, and Betty’s husband, star reporter Dick Collins. In nearly every episode, Luke good-naturedly and patiently explains (in a manner anticipating the sagacious Judge Hardy in the later hit movie series) the importance of thrift, low taxes, property rights, self-reliance, and limited government. 

The production was helmed by professionals including Martha Atwell (a rare example of a female director) and the script-writing husband-and-wife team of Douglas Silver and Marjorie Bartlett Silver. The actors had extensive stage and radio experience. On the strength of the writing and characterizations, the show developed a significant fan base. Many tuned in for the intricate plots, including cliffhangers about murder and kidnapping, as much as for the ideas. 

A particular favorite among listeners was William “Windy Bill” Winkle (played with aplomb by Shakespearean actor Joe Latham), Luke Robinson’s mooching brother-in-law and self-invited house guest. Originally intended to be an incidental character, he proved so popular that he became a cast regular. Windy often sparks humorous exchanges to underscore the show’s themes. He combines zealousness for socialism with an equal certainty in the brilliance of his get-rich-quick schemes. He also courts the wealthy (at least in his mind) Spinster Leticia Timmons, an entrepreneurial dress shop owner. “Look what happened to me,” Windy complains, “I’ve spent the best years of my life, trying to be an honest business man and what do I get for it? Nothing. That’s what! Take my patented Little Wonder adjustable hair cutting bowl for home use…but the barber trust and big business kept it off the market!” Brushing aside this theory of a big business conspiracy, Luke asks “Who are the big fellows anyway? They’re little fellows who worked hard enough under the same rules that apply to you and me, to become big fellows.”

Luke opines to Windy that “for a man who claims to oppose capitalism as much as you do, you’re going to an awful lot of trouble to be a capitalist yourself.”

He gets a quick response: “Quite simple my dear fellow. I advocate socialism for the good of all the people but for me personally, well, a fellow has to do the best he can for himself…If socialism ever comes to this benighted country I’ll be only too glad to share my property in return for a share in everybody else’s property”

Luke points out that under an equal division of wealth, this would amount to only forty-three dollars per person but Windy does not think this is a fatal flaw. At least, he points out, profit-centered businesspeople would no longer be calling the shots. Luke responds, “After a fairly long life of observation, I have failed to discover that politicians are more to be trusted than businessmen.”

To get rid of his annoying houseguest, Luke persuades his friend, Henry Jason, to hire Windy as a glorified office boy in his new factory, helping him become self-supporting. Jason agrees to humor Windy’s vanity by designating him as “Contact Manager.” 

“That’s fine, it doesn’t mean a thing and it sounds important,” Jason observes, “but I don’t know whether one could ask a contact manager to go and get some stamps, for instance.”

“Oh, easy, just ask him to uh… contact the post office and bring some.” 

Windy visits the factory construction site and proceeds to lecture the foreman about his job. After listening to his advice, the foreman vents: “That’s just the trouble. We got contact managers thinking they can build factories and professors running business and…smart-aleck lawyers trying to run the whole government. There’s only one thing those people can do to help business recovery and that’s the same thing a blacksmith would do if you took your watch to him to be repaired: he’d leave it alone.” 

But Windy’s confidence in his worldview never flags. In answer to the charge that he is a “utopia chaser,” Windy emphasizes that he only wants to “devote my ingenuity to the betterment of my fellow men through careful research into the possibilities of a planned economic solution.” To this, Dick Collins answers, quite overoptimistically, that “by the time you get around to it you’ll be completely out of fashion. The passing of the theorist plague is already well underway. Where’s the technocracy of yesteryear, the EPIC [End Poverty in California] plan, the public pension plan, and all the other crackpot plans? They’re all wilted under the cold light of reason.” 

Other memorable characters include the charmingly uncouth but down-to-earth ex-boxer Gus Olson. Gus knows all the “big shots” in town and is a rival with Windy Bill for Leticia’s affections. He works as little as possible and is proud of it. But Luke, impressed by his intelligence, bluntness, and resourcefulness, sees greater potential. As a kind of experiment, he hires him as a janitor with the title of “boondoggler.” Much later, Gus finds out that a distant Irish relative has willed him two million dollars. 

 The show’s defense of the “possessive instinct” anticipates the views of Ayn Rand.

Luke: I’ve just been thinking in here away from that maddening crowd that the possessive instinct is the most valuable one owned by man.

  Myra: My, that sounds greedy.

  Luke: No, far from it. The instinct to acquire possessions 

  to save them build on them is the greatest contributing 

  factor in the growth of civilization.

Myra: Well then, it’s lucky we’ve got a possessive instinct.

Luke: What I don’t understand is why our radical friends are intent on destroying that instinct. They seem to think the ideal existence would be to crush it to make way for a scheme of things that only includes the mass of dumb sheep accepting what the political overlords feel like handing down to them. 

The central role of women in the writing and production was evident in several storylines. Myra Robinson, who hosts her own radio show in Centerville, and Betty Robinson Collins are instrumental in a campaign to save the Centerville Herald from almost inevitable bankruptcy. Gus does his best to help, volunteering that the dubious Butch Scarlotti, a “pal of mine…could loan us anything up to 100 grand and not even feel it.” Dick gently rejects the offer because any association with the likes of Scarlotti would damage the paper’s reputation. Finally, the group decides to approach Robinson’s factory-owning friend Dave Markham, but only after launching a successful campaign to increase circulation and sell ads.

It is Betty who comes up with the winning strategy. She notes that people are more likely to buy a paper, and purchase ads, if it includes stories about “their worst enemy or their best friend or, better yet, has their name in it.” Anticipating social media and user-generated media, the group supports creation of a “reader column” in which three readers per day air their views.

Dick Collins observes readers would not only subscribe to see themselves in print, but “then they’ll subscribe to compare their column with those written by their friends.” With Myra’s broadcasts spreading the word, he adds that “we could keep it going we would never run out of contributors or subscribers either, while we could go right through the town directory and then go back and start over.”

The success of the fundraising campaign leaves Windy unimpressed, however: “this one case of mutual aid doesn’t make a summer. Your precious businessmen are still storing away the profits. Why, it wasn’t Private Industry that pulled us through the depression. Everybody knows that it was federal funds that kept us going.”

To this, Dick notes that these “stored away” profits provided the necessary wherewithal for rescue efforts, such as the effort that saved the Herald. “The whole country,” he adds, “has been living on Capital accumulated during the good years.”

Changes in broader political and regulatory context shaped the eventual fate of The American Family Robinson. By the late 1930s, programs deemed too “controversial” (especially those questioning the New Deal consensus) were increasingly under attack. 

The American Family Robinson was one program that suffered pressures from both the FCC and the “voluntary code” of the National Association of Broadcasters. The code prohibited stations from accepting “free offers” if the purpose was to recruit members for an organization or to foster a point of view.

“Unless the station presents the other side of the picture,” it warned, “it might be accused of bias.” In June 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters specified that both The American Family Robinson and the ACLU, which regularly sent out scripts to stations providing commentary from a civil liberties perspective, were on its list of potential offenders. It urged stations to “write to Headquarters for information about these.” 

In response to accusations that The American Family Robinson was anti–New Deal, the National Industrial Council replied defensively that it was “not ‘anti-’ anything or anybody.” Rather the goal of the program was to “present openly, and as effectively and attractively as radio will permit, the fundamental principle that freedom of speech and of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of enterprise are inseparable and must continue to be if the system of democratic government under which this country has flourished is to be preserved.” 

By 1940, when the National Industrial Council produced a new run of shows, the content became ever more innocuous and often indistinguishable from a typical substandard soap opera. The previous eagerness of characters to question, or even discuss, the New Deal welfare and regulatory states gradually faded away. To the extent that the later episodes expressed ideas or broader social goals, they took the form of simplistic bromides on such topics as the importance of marital understanding and the need for concerted cooperation for national defense mobilization. Windy Bill, later played by a WC Fields wannabe who lacked Latham’s deft touch, became typical comedy relief, and nothing more. 

Several factors contributed to these changes, including a shift in national priorities on the eve of war and pressures from the National Association of Broadcasters which made stations more averse to politically charged topics. The National Association of Manufacturers also had an ambiguous influence. To many in that organization, a defense of the parochial interests of big business (it had supported the extremely statist National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933) took precedence over promoting the free market as such. When the final episode signed off in September 1941, the show was only a shell of its former self.

The American Family Robinson was mostly forgotten in later years. Most historians of radio mention it only as a sidelight and, despite much ideological overlap, nobody has connected it to libertarian thinkers of the period such as Ayn Rand, Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, or people who in turn influenced a later generation of thinkers like Milton Friedman and Murray Rothbard. 

Probably the most intriguing historical link was between African-American novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston (who had great affinity for libertarian ideas) and the two script writers, Douglas Silver and Marjorie Bartlett Silver. The Silvers (Douglas founded and was president of the main radio station in Fort Pierce, Florida) befriended Hurston during the 1950s. After Hurston had a stroke, Marjorie was instrumental in salvaging a copy of her biography of King Herod, which had narrowly escaped a bonfire.

During its heyday, The American Family Robinson registered an often creative, intelligent, and entertaining dissent from the New Deal consensus. The show’s exposition of the benefits of markets, self-reliance, voluntarism, and thrift, as well as the follies of bureaucracy, anticipated the later popularization of these ideas. But The American Family Robinson was also fighting against the current during a period when these ideas were on the defensive, and the welfare and warfare states were ascendant. 

Rare is the day that passes during which I don’t, at least once (and usually more than once), say to myself, “Omigosh, I do wish that HL Mencken were still alive and active; he’d have a field day commenting on this particular politician or that tempest du jour.” There’s no question that if I could bring one American back to life for an evening of good food, stiff drink, and sterling conversation, that person would unquestionably be Mencken (1880-1956).

Mencken was a Baltimore newspaper reporter, magazine editor, literary critic and expert on what he called “the American language.” But he was and remains, in my view, above all, this country’s unmatched observer and recorder of politics. So sit back and feast on this small sampling of intellectually nutritious and tasty tidbits of Mencken’s political wisdom.

As Mencken observed him, the typical politician is a “merchant of delusions,” a “pumper-up of popular fears and rages.”

The politician is seldom to be trusted:

What is a political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better? The former assumption, I believe, is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false. For if experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. His very existence, indeed, is a standing subversion of the public good in every rational sense. He is not one who serves the common weal; he is simply one who preys upon the commonwealth. It is to the interest of all the rest of us to hold down his powers to an irreducible minimum and to reduce his compensation to nothing; it is to his interest to augment his powers at all hazards, and to make his compensation all the traffic will bear.

But ours is a democratic republic where We the People choose our leaders freely in fair elections. Doesn’t the need to secure a majority of votes ensure the victory of candidates, most of whom are honorable?

No:

The only way to success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the mob. A candidate for office, even the highest, must either adopt its current manias en bloc or convince it hypocritically that he has done so while cherishing reservations in petto. The result is that only two sorts of men stand any chance whatever of getting into actual control of affairs – first, glorified mob-men who genuinely believe what the mob believes, and secondly, shrewd fellows who are willing to make any sacrifice of conviction and self-respect in order to hold their jobs.

But some politicians are reformers or “change agents.” And many others are professional policy wonks, devoted to the dull yet important detailed chore of steering the ship of state. Surely these office-seekers are more nobly motivated than is the run-of-the-mill office-seeker.

Nope, says Mencken:

Reformers and professionals are alike politicians in search of jobs; both are trying to bilk the taxpayers. Neither ever has any other motive. If any genuinely honest and altruistic politician had come to the surface in America in my time I’d have heard of him, for I have always frequented newspaper offices, and in a newspaper office the news of such a marvel would cause a dreadful tumult. I can recall no such tumult.

We must come to grips with the fact that “politics, as hopeful men practice it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance.”

Alas, though, we continue — despite mountains of evidence that should scare us off – to entrust ever more of our lives and riches to politicians.

Mencken blamed this excessive trust in government for:

the survival into our enlightened age of a concept hatched in the black days of absolutism – the concept, to wit, that government is something that is superior to and quite distinct from all other human institutions – that it is, in essence, not a mere organization of ordinary men, like the Ku Klux Klan, the United States Steel Corporation or Columbia University, but a transcendental organism composed of aloof and impersonal powers, devoid wholly of self-interest and not to be measured by merely human standards.

Even my late, great Nobel-laureate colleague, James Buchanan — a pioneering public-choice scholar — never said it as well.

Mencken recognized that, from time to time, truly honorable people manage to rise to the pinnacle of politics. These individuals, however, are rare:

After damning politicians up hill and down dale for many years, as rogues and vagabonds, frauds and scoundrels, I sometimes suspect that, like everyone else, I often expect too much of them. Though faith and confidence are surely more or less foreign to my nature, I not infrequently find myself looking to them to be able, diligent, candid and even honest. Plainly enough, that is too large an order, as anyone must realize who reflects upon the manner in which they reach public office. They seldom if ever get there by merit alone, at least in democratic states. Sometimes, to be sure, it happens, but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged. It is a talent like any other, and when it is exercised by a radio crooner, a movie actor or a bishop, it even takes on a certain austere and sorry respectability. But it is obviously not identical with a capacity for the intricate problems of statecraft.

Among the few honorable politicians, in Mencken’s view, was Grover Cleveland, who he described as “a good man in a bad trade.” A bad trade, of course, attracts a disproportionately large number of bad people. I can think of a tiny handful of successful politicians today for whom Mencken would likely have the same respect he had for Cleveland. But not many.

Mencken’s suspicion of politicians wasn’t superficial; it was rooted deeply in his liberalism – a natural-rights liberalism that was closely akin to that which motivated the American founders. As Mencken said: “Every right that anyone has today is based on the doctrine that government is a creature of limited powers, and that the men constituting it become criminals if they venture to exceed those powers.” Although he was no anarchist, he well understood that government’s proper function is strictly limited:

Is government, then, useful and necessary? So is a doctor. But suppose that the dear fellow claimed the right, every time he was called in to prescribe for a bellyache or a ringing in the ears, to raid the family silver, use the family toothbrushes, and execute the droit de seigneur upon the housemaid?

Unsurprisingly for a man who seemed incapable of allowing hope to cloud his view of reality, he did not overflow with optimism:

For people in the mass soon grow used to anything, including even being swindled. There comes a time when the patter of the quack becomes as natural and as indubitable to their ears as the texts of Holy Writ, and when that time comes it is a dreadful job debamboozling them.

I close with this insight – one that, were it more widely seen, would save humankind from all manner of mischief:

When we say that it [government] has decided to do this or that, that it proposes or aspires to do this or that – usually to the great cost and inconvenience of nine-tenths of us – we simply say that a definite man or group of men has decided to do it, or proposes or aspires to do it; and when we examine this group of men realistically we almost invariably find that it is composed of individuals who are not only not superior to the general, but plainly and depressingly inferior, both in common sense and in common decency.

Would that today we Americans possessed even a quarter-measure of such clarity of vision.

Self care might sound like a purely individual concern, but healthy lifestyle choices serve a vital social function. Poor consumption patterns can lower productivity, reduce life expectancy, and inflate healthcare costs, especially those related to metabolism, heart disease, and mental health. The World Health Organization (WHO) claims Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) like “are collectively responsible for 74 percent of all deaths worldwide” and a large percentage of those are preventable.

In 2013, the WHO issued a Global Action Plan, making policy recommendations “for the prevention and control” of NCDs. This plan was later updated with nine global targets set for 2025. Goals included a 30 percent reduction in our global salt intake and tobacco use, along with an increase in screenings and interventions for obesity. In 2019, the plan was updated again and extended to 2030. 

Not to be left out, the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — humbly titled “Transforming our World” — also featured NCDs as a global challenge to be addressed. Implementing action steps for self-care, however, is a finicky matter: it really depends on the individual, his unique situation, the resources available, and personal preferences. 

Self-care is defined by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) as “taking the time to do things that help you live well and improve both your physical health and mental health.” Exercising, eating healthy, and getting plenty of rest are core aspects of self-care. The NIMH also recommends relaxing activities like “listening to music, reading, spending time in nature, and engaging in low-stress hobbies.” 

If this all sounds a bit obvious or squishy, think of the impact of a lack of self care. It can be hard to find a quiet moment to enjoy a good book, and access to affordable, healthy foods can be a real challenge for many households. For those with the luxury of time, awareness, and extra income, investing in forest bathing or improving gut health are appealing endeavors. 

Self-care and wellness strategies online are often reduced to sales initiative. TikTok posts boast products for #cozymaxxing, and viral marketing of products from skin care to sound machines to massage oils may actually make us feel worse about ourselves. 

Options for super green powders are plentiful and despite my love for good old-fashioned black coffee, mushroom based brews have piqued my interest. I now regularly purchase edamame snacks that pack a protein punch, and I prioritize foods that allow me to “eat the rainbow” at meal time – a far cry from my younger years when I didn’t think twice about having Cookie Crisp for breakfast. 

Now that I know better, I am doing better. The WHO would likely approve most of the healthy lifestyle changes I’ve made (and have the income, education, and interest to make), but still be disgusted by my overall salt intake (I salt just about everything). The NIMH asserts that “self-care looks different for everyone,” and that’s okay. Certainly what self-care means to me is likely very different from what it means to the members of the WHO. 

Beyond quick fixes and bath bomb fizzes, genuine business opportunities exist for those who discover new ways to make their fellow citizens more comfortable. We better understand our bodies, and entrepreneurs develop new tools to manage our health and even our emotions. 

Weighted plushies have become a trendy toy for kids, and the brand Hugimals World is leaning into the self-care craze with its product line of “meaningful self-care gifts.” I recently got a weighted turtle for my daughter, and while my main interest was in satisfying my daughter’s obsession with turtles, many customers are likely more interested in the benefits of weighted pressure for reducing anxiety.

Commercial markets test things through experience and experimentation, and that means a significant error rate. Take, for example, my grandfather’s smoking, which he began before cigarettes’ health risks were well known. Doctors actually endorsed, and even prescribed the use of cigarettes until the 1960s. Health “standards” derived from top-down planning should be taken with a grain of salt. I remember memorizing the food pyramid in grade school, only to learn as an adult that the framework was not only poor nutritional advice but the result of political corruption.

When it comes to encouraging us to care for ourselves, mandates and policies pale in comparison to our own desires and understanding. Self-care is about being informed, being self-aware, and the ability to be self-directed.

While the action plans derived by the WHO and the UN may have laudable goals, the imposition of any practices or prohibition of any products should not go unchallenged, and one-size-fits-all standards should be scrutinized. Junk food bans tend not to change people’s choices much, warning labels and calorie lists are of mixed utility, and even outright prohibitions on harmful substances don’t work. Black markets and the Iron Law of Prohibition mean attempts to curb harm can even make bad choices more dangerous.

In short, self-determination is key to motivating healthy lifestyle choices. Ludwig von Mises could easily have predicted that, writing, in Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis: “All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.”

As for my self-care strategies, I will continue to be open to new products and practices that will improve my wellbeing while abiding by the classic rule of ‘All things in moderation’ – except for salt of course.