Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

Free trade? Voluntary exchange? Comparative advantage?

Oh dear reader! Haven’t you heard? Such antiquated concepts, unwieldy anachronisms wandering blindly through our enlightened age, are tres passé.

Besides, everyone who is anyone is in firm agreement. Repubs and Dems... protectionists and interventionists... rednecks and libtards alike... all nodding in unison. And as democracy clearly demonstrates, truth itself derives directly from consensus. When has the mobjority ever been wrong?

Ahem...

On the subject of trade tariffs, for example, no less unlikely bedfellows than Paul Krugman and Donald J. Trump are of one mind (even if they do have to share it).

Now, most common sense people don’t need to hear Mr. Krugman voice support for boneheaded policy to know it’s likely a terrible idea, but here’s the former Enron advisor anyway, opening his mouth to remove all doubt.

“Conditional tariffs on Chinese cars are probably going to be necessary. I don’t think that the Europeans can allow their auto industry to be totally hollowed out [...] A much more interventionist position has become hard to avoid.”

That Krugman would board the Trump Tariff Train should tell you everything you need to know about the underlying policy. Put simply, protectionism does not work. If it did, Argentina’s economy would have spent the past 75 years as the envy of the world, not a cautionary tale.

And yet, here we are...

By a Thousand Cuts

In the Year of our Overlords, 2026, it’s not up to mere buyers and sellers to arrive at mutually satisfactory exchange. Nor is it the domain of lowly producers and consumers to figure out what goods and services find their way to market.

That hallowed discovery process, naturally guided by the unknowable hopes, fears and aspirations of billions of individual human beings, from Detroit to Delhi, Stuttgart to Shanghai, Munich to Mumbai, is henceforth in the charge of the world’s unimpeachable improvers... elected and unelected officials... public boards and policy committees... think tank wonks and academic prattlers.

After all, how could We, The People possibly know what our faint little hearts desire, absent the guidance of our better angels in government? As to their predictable answers to our imagined problems (prices too high... prices too low... production too fast... production too slow... etc.)?

Why, more and evermore state intervention, of course!

More taxes... minimum/maximum wages... subsidies... price controls... import/export quotas... licensing... sanctions... capital controls... state ownership... tariffs... government grocery stores... free buses... loan guarantees.... central banking... bailouts... union privileges... sales taxes... hiring quotes... carbon taxes... food stamps... debt moratoria... DEI... ESG... VAT... GST...

With so much sand in the gears, it’s a wonder the market machine still functions at all.

And yet, as Milton Friedman was known to jest, “If you put the government in charge of the Sahara Desert, you’d soon have a shortage of sand!”

Such is life when viewed through the central planner’s mirror, mirror on the wall: an endless hall of vanities and conceits, with shortages here... redundancies there... and swift penalties for anyone who disobeys the rulers.

Prices too high? Price gouging!

Prices too low? Predatory pricing!!

Prices in line with the competition? Collusion!!!

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Mind the Gap

Meanwhile, from our distant perch down here at the End of the World, we watch with delight the shock and awe on the faces of all those brave Europeans who journeyed Stateside to watch this year’s World Cup.

“My, oh my!” they are heard to swoon, “How big your houses are... how spacious your giant SUVs... how cool your ranch dressing!”

It wasn’t so long ago, dear reader, when Europeans and Americans stood shoulder to shoulder in terms of economic might. Up until around 2007-08, the EU actually boasted a higher GDP than did the US, an unimaginable situation not even two decades later. If France were to somehow find itself the 51st member of the United States tomorrow, it would have the lowest GDP per capita in the entire union, right behind Mississippi.

At $9.4 trillion, the current gap in GDP between the US and the EU is roughly equal to the entire economic output of Germany and Japan, the world’s 3rd and 4th largest economies respectively… combined.

Of course, it takes access to cheap, reliable energy to power a Supersized American economy, with all its gizmos and gadgets and cornucopia of salad dressings, and that’s a luxury many middle-class Europeans either can’t afford... or aren’t permitted to have.

Even at $3.85/gallon, American gas is “cheap as chips” for European visitors. In France, it’s $8.80... in Germany, $9.20... and in Denmark, it’s well over $10/gallon. Across the 27-nation EU, the average price is $7.65/gallon, roughly double what it costs to fill your tank in the US.

Is it any wonder the European mind cannot comprehend something as ubiquitous as American climate control?

Consider that, in Britain, government officials are fining citizens for daring to cool their own cars while parked. From Yahoo News!

Britain Will Now Fine You $145 For Running The AC In Your Own Car During A 104-Degree Heatwave

Over in Germany, meanwhile, the state is bringing out the big guns to endure the season commonly known as summer. From Euronews:

Hottest day: Berlin police deploy water cannons to fight extreme heat

Thanks to the German government’s costly and regulation-soaked “energy transition” (Energiewende), only 1 in 6 homes feature the Jetson’s-like opulence that is air conditioning. In the US, 9 in 10 families don’t think twice about it.

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Eco Maniacs

And that’s just the problem... at least according to the petits fonctionnaires who, like termites in the hull of an old ship, make the French Bureaucracy their home. Here’s Paris’s second in charge, typifying the socialist mindset. From MoneyWise:

Paris deputy mayor blames the US for a heatwave that’s killed over 1,000 people. Her target? American air conditioning

From her tut-tutting citation…

“As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, you bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing. Your cities '90% air-conditioned' are not unrelated to this. In Paris, we take responsibility…”

“If every American city made the same ecological transition efforts as Paris and many European cities, believe me, the whole world would be better off. So please, enough with the lecture. Just start doing your part.”

It’s not that her government has made it prohibitively expensive and onerous to cool one’s Parisian pied-à-terre, you see... it’s that someone, somewhere is enjoying their privileged existence on planet earth without this insufferable bore’s permission.

In the words of the original euro doom goblin, “How DARE they!”

When it comes to ruining an entire economy in a single generation, smug Eurocrats are proving themselves every bit as competent as their South American colleagues.

Will European citizens’ voyage over The Pond awaken them from their collectivist slumber. Will Americans allow themselves to be shamed into the same nightmare?

Or will honest, hard-working individuals turn against the real threat to their life and liberty and finally take back what’s theirs?

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. We are grateful here at Notes for the generous support of our members, who value independent writing and are happy to be part of the pushback against the media’s sycophantic mono-messaging.

If you are not already a member, but would like to join our growing community of radical libertarians, skeptical independents and fundamentalist own-business-minders, please consider becoming a Notes member, here… for less than 20 cents per day!

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The more members we have, the higher we rank on the Substack leaderboards. And the higher we rank, the better our visibility across the Substack network.

By supporting our work, you help us reach more readers, delivering the message of liberty far and wide. Thanks in advance! ~ JB

What is it, we wonder, that stirs the crowd? That swells the chest and moves the masses?

From wild stock market manias… to the sound of trumpets on the battlefield… to belting out national anthems, hands on hearts, before sports matches…

Is it the sense of wanting to belong to “something bigger”?

Is it a case of mass psychology permeating our vastly interconnected world?

Or is it, as some folk have suggested, a replacement for religion in an increasingly secularized (Western) world?

Among English-speaking peoples, from Europe to Australia, Canada to South Africa, fewer people identify with organized religion than they did a generation ago. Even in the United States of America, “One country, under God,” church attendance has declined significantly during our lifetime.

According to Pew Research, the share of Americans identifying as Christian fell from roughly 85–90% in the early 1990s to 62% as of the 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study. Meanwhile, the so-called “religiously unaffiliated” more than tripled, from about 8% to 29%.

So what do people pour into this “gap of the gods”?

Hmm…

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Pride and Punishment

For many a wandering soul, staring into the digital vortex of their own palms has become a kind of worship unto oneself. As one dear reader wrote in response to our Human Years Note this past week…

Our reader’s observation recalled to mind the myth of Narcissus. A fatally handsome young man, he arrogantly scorned all those who courted him, including the poor nymph, Echo, who suffered his rejection until she wasted away to nothing… save the sound of her voice in the woods.

As punishment for his pride, the god Nemesis led Narcissus to a drinking pool, where he left the conceited mortal to fall under the spell of his own reflection. Unable to differentiate reflection from reality, Narcissus soon became hopelessly enamored with himself.

Whenever he would reach for his beloved reflection, the waters would ripple and the image would disappear. Then, in his sullen melancholy, the beautiful face would return, luring his attention back to the pool anew.

Marooned between desire and impossibility, the helpless youth remained beside the pool, unable to eat, sleep, or turn away. Too late he realized, writes the great Roman poet, Ovid:

“I am he.”

Even when Narcissus understood that the object of his love was himself, the realization brought no relief. Unable to possess what he desired, he wasted away and died beside the water. And where his body had lain, goes the story, a flower appeared, the narcissus, which bears his name today.

It’s interesting to note that it is not the image itself that proves fatal for our young Narcissus, but his inability to draw his attention away from it, to involve himself in the world, to make real connections with those around him.

In this week’s Notes, we re-examine human connectivity, ruminate on an alternative measure of time and reflect on what it means to be alive in a world with infinite potential for good and evil both. Please enjoy…

And now for your Notes From the End of the Week…

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Final Notes…

If the sum really is greater than the parts, and each new addition to the network a wealth of potential value, well… all the more reason to celebrate our growing Notes community!

Herewith, a selection of our favorite member comments from last week’s Notes. First up, from our meditations on a new measurement of time: Human Years…

And these thoughtful remarks, in response to A Sum Without Limit…

Thanks again to all our Notes members who bring their thoughts and comments to bear on our humble scribbles. We don’t always have time to respond individually, but we do read each and every comment.

If you’re not a member yet, but would like to join our garden party of cheerful skeptics, independent thinkers and irreverent head scratchers, you can have your say on the issues of the day by joining our Notes community right here…

Upgrade to Notes Member Here

We’ll see you in the comments section next week. Until then, enjoy your weekend…

…and stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

Joel Bowman with today’s Notes From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

Once upon a time, in another world, a magical world, the future still felt like it was a long way away.

Now, it seems like it can’t come quickly enough!

One has only to pick up the paper to read stories of breathtaking ambition and profound stupidity.

Why, just in today’s New York Times...

One headline asks whether “Canada is about to enter the Eurovision song contest?” Another wonders if it’s “time for a new sexual revolution?”

One inquires “what’s behind those tarps at the Kennedy Center?” Another fearless mind probes “where has all the cottage cheese gone?”

Behold, dear reader, the pressing concerns of our day!

And lo! What’s this?

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Rockets and Riches

No sooner had the world minted its very first trillionaire, in Mr. Elon Musk, when his “13-figure club card” was unceremoniously revoked. Naturally, the green-eyed papers are delighted by the demotion:

Elon Musk’s Net Worth Drops $350 Billion In Massive SpaceX Selloff ~ gloats Forbes

Elon Musk loses trillionaire status as global tech rout hits SpaceX ~ crows the BBC

Musk loses trillionaire status as SpaceX shares ‘come down to earth with a bump’ ~ gushes The Guardian

And just for good measure, via a report from the kind of people who study such things, we learn that xAI is “leaning into explicit content.” Here’s Forbes, “psst, passing is on”:

Grok’s Traffic Is Mostly Driven By Adult Content, Report Says

The report claims xAI is actively doubling down on its explicit video and image-generation tools and that adult-content dominance extends into Grok’s coding model, which The Information reports frequently receives requests for pornographic material.

So the man is into big rockets, cyber trucks and nudie pics? A man’s gotta have a hobby, doesn’t he? (Your editor enjoys slow train rides, comfy old sweaters and dusty books. Ahem...)

Leaving the Freudian psychoanalysts to their own diagnoses, we pause only to marvel at the kind of civilization that would make such a fellow the richest person – by a wide margin – in its long and sordid history?

Oh, the times we live in!

Speaking of...

Political Animals

In Wednesday’s Note, we left you with a humble suggestion for a new measurement of time: Human Years.

Instead of measuring time by days, months, years and so forth, we mused, perhaps we might think of it in terms of “aggregate human experience.” Or calendar time multiplied by the number of human beings living it.

And why not?

Geologists have deep time. Astronomers have cosmic time. Physicists have space time.

What about us? We wide-eyed observers of the passing parade?

A 12-hour clock is useful for making sure you arrive at the train station on time. A monthly planner is helpful when booking a vacation. A calendar year is practical for organizing your Christmas cards and counting the candles on your daughter’s birthday cake.

But what about the collective, human experience? What about considering the broad sweep of civilization itself?

How does a day planner... or a news cycle... or a sun dial... help us understand the rise and fall of empires, the decay of their currencies, the great cycles of history itself?

They can help us pinpoint a moment in relative time... but what if, as the population grows, history literally speeds up?

When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, back in 49 BC, the world population stood at about 170 million, hardly more people than voted in the last US presidential election.

That we have 8.2 billion men, women and children roaming the planet today... about 48x the population alive during Caesar’s day... is only part of the story.

Human beings, as Aristotle so keenly observed, are by nature “political animals.”

By that he did not mean that we are all Republicans or Democrats, Tories or Whigs, RINOs or libtards, but rather that we are essentially creatures of the polis... the broader civic community that helps shape our lives. That includes our institutions, our laws and customs, our liberties and obligations, our cultures and habits, as well as our public deliberations, general elections and other such popular, mass delusions.

In this way, civilization is less like a stack of building blocks and more like a vast network of interconnected individuals, exchanging information across time and space, through billions of interactions, from one End of the World to another.

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Laws and Large Numbers

Which brings us to another piece of the puzzle: Metcalf’s Law, or what armchair economists sometimes refer to as the “network effect.” Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, distilled his proposition as following:

The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its users.

The basic idea here rests on the concept of non-linearity. You throw a Fourth of July cocktail party. One sympathetic friend arrives. Early. They’ve created one possible two-way line of conversation. Then the second guest arrives. Now you have three possible pairings. After the fourth, you have six. The fifth, ten. And so on...

By the time fifty of your closest mates are gathered on your back lawn, you’ve got over a thousand (1,225) possible duos.

Thus, under Metcalf’s Law, value is said to grow quadratically, so that:

Guest #10 adds 9 new potential connections
Guest #100 adds 99 new potential connections
Guest #1,000 adds 999 new possible connections

And if we keep counting to include all possible connections – pairs, trios, small groups, large groups, whole teams, etcetera... right up to all 50 guests shouting at one another simultaneously – the possible combinations increase to...

...several trillion (1.126 quadrillion, or 1,125,899,906,842,572).

The same mind-boggling math is true across various other kinds of networks, too... whether it be communications, operating systems, social media, dynamic marketplaces, payment systems and even the vast network called civilization itself. Not only does each additional participant bring their own individual value, but they increase the potential value of every preceding person in the entire community.

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Across the Rubicon

In Caesar’s day, that community fanned across the “known world.” Today, with nearly fifty times as many people and a density of connections unimaginable to the ancients, civilization has grown into the largest and most intricate information network ever assembled.

During the five minutes it takes you to scan today’s pithy Note, for example, the world’s population will grow by approximately 650 people. Using Metcalf’s Law, and factoring in our existing population, that’s 5.33 trillion new potential human pairs created just while you finish your cup of coffee/glass of wine.

Every minute... of every hour... of every day... unfathomable waves of budding partnerships, lurking rivalries, nascent collaborations, and looming conflicts are building on humanity’s horizon.

And if we expand our counting as we did for your hypothetical garden party, to include every new possible grouping of three, four, five, etc. ... all the way up to an 8.2 billion person (plus 650 newbies) collaboration?

The number of new possible human connections created by these new earthly arrivals grows to hundreds of orders of magnitude greater than the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe. No kidding.

Surely one of ‘em can figure out where all the cottage cheese went, no?

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. As always, a huge THANKS to our growing community of Notes members. Your support keeps our midnight oil burning and our sweater elbows patched.

If you’re not yet a member but would like to show your appreciation, kindly consider joining our growing rolls today. Every new member adds immeasurable value to our humble enterprise. Cheers ~ JB

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Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

The War with Iran... the world’s first trillionaire... SpaceX stock “to the moon” (and back?)... and always, the rise and rise of the AI machines...

We’re not even half way through the year, Dear Reader, and already the memories of six... nine... twelve months ago feel like relics from a quaint and distant past.

Remember the Epstein Files... saber-rattling over Greenland... the abduction of Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro?

Recall the Gulf of America brouhaha... shots fired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner... and “penisgate” at the Winter Olympics?

(Readers unfamiliar with that last item are invited not to Google it... or at least not in a public space.)

Like all the news that’s unfit to print, these stories – and plenty more besides – are now yesterday’s fish ‘n’ chip paper. In this, the Age of Information Abundance, where attenuated attention spans reign supreme and history is that thing each generation ignores so as to repeat the mistakes of the past, we’re already onto “the next thing”... whatever that is.

One has to wonder, with a ceaseless cascade of events pouring over our digital, hand-held horizons, is time really speeding up? Or are we humble observers merely slowing down? (Perhaps it’s a bit of both?)

Man as the Measure

Not so long ago, our literate ancestors used to gaze in wonder at the distant future, visions of the impossible dancing in their heads. We recall a television show from our own childhood, Beyond 2000, which featured flying cars, sidewalk travelators and other seemingly improbable predictions.

What next?

Will our vocation-free children treat us to vacations on Mars, where we’ll enjoy an “earth-downer” cocktail while watching our home planet dip behind the brave new red horizon?

Will the human race have minted its first quadrillionaire, with a near 80-year old Elon Musk having slipped back into the pack of mere trillionaires, the way Harold Hamm (oil), John Malone (cable television), Lex Werner (shopping malls), and other forgotten titans of “old industry” now populate the lower rungs of the world’s richest lists?

What documents will our meddlesome political overlords deem sufficiently benign to declassify by then, once all the crooks and rogues are expired, and will anyone bother to read them, anyway? Or will reading, that antiquated pastime, have gone the way of the dodo?

Perhaps the State itself will have been domesticated by then, relegated to an historical curiosity, one our progeny will study in virtual museums, like they do the pyramids and the pharaohs, wondering how their ancestors ever tolerated such abject abuses of power?

Will the US empire still stand... will its currency hold sway... will the ideas of the west, so hard won, survive to fight another day?

Or will the tides have turned?

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A New Suggestion of Time

Outside our window, here in the capital city of an empire that never was, we hear the steady hum of traffic and the honking of horns below. Neighbors and strangers pass one another by; some offer greetings, others are lost in their own thoughts.

Strolling these broad streets earlier today, alone amongst the crowd, we began to reckon on the concept of time itself... that sleepless, eternal trickster.

Perhaps one novel way to think about it, given the apparent acceleration of world events around us, is to measure our experience by human years lived. Think of it as adding together every human life being lived in a given moment. We might call this “civilizational time,” for instance, or “aggregate human years.”

For example...

At the turn of the first millennium, New Year’s Eve of the year 1,000 AD, there were roughly ~300 million human beings living on our pale blue dot.

Put another way, we might say that, during that calendar year, our species experienced ~300 million “aggregate human years,” or that ~300 million years passed in “civilizational time.”

That’s how much we lived, collectively, as a species, during the year 1,000 AD. All the births and deaths... the breakthroughs and bruised egos... the grandest campaign to the humblest action... from first kisses to last rights... the sum total of all fears, dreams, desires, of the entire human race: ~300 million human years.

Now, fast-forward to the present. This year, 2026, roughly ~8.2 billion human beings will make the same journey around the sun, and will experience the passage of time, both in their own way and as part of a greater whole. In that way, this calendar year will yield ~8.2 billion aggregate human years, or about 27x more than did a single calendar year just one millennium ago.

And this is all happening every day... every hour... every single minute.

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Human Years

Here’s the basic math. Assuming a global population of roughly ~8.2 billion people, humanity is generating approximately:

• 8.2 billion human-years per calendar year

• about 22.5 million human-days every day

• roughly 940,000 human-hours every hour

Consider one last figure for just a moment: Every second that passes on Earth, humanity collectively experiences about 260 years of conscious lifetime.

With such a flood of accumulating human experience... this vast multitude of lives unfolding in real time... is it any wonder that civilizational time feels like it’s accelerating at an exponential rate?

Since time immemorial, man has measured time in calendar years because astronomy was the best game in town… or indeed, the universe. Throughout the ages, we have developed other ideas too. Physics has space time… geology has deep time… evolution has genetic time… etc.

But civilization doesn't run on astronomy any more than a tuna keeps time by the opening hours at the local sushi joint. Rather, it runs on human minds. And if that's true, perhaps the relevant measure of time is not so much the orbit of planets overhead or the age of rocks beneath our feet, but the accumulation of human experience itself.

That means more brain surgeons… and more congressmen. More poets… and more prison guards. More genius inventors… and more airhead influencers.

As to where all this leads, to paradise… or purgatory? We’ll look at that next time.

Stay tuned for more Note From the End of the World…

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. Thanks to all our Notes Members, who’s generous support makes these pages possible. Here’s what a few kind readers have to say about their subscriptions…

Thanks again to ALL our generous members. If you have the time, please consider supporting Free Markets, Free Minds, and Free People, by becoming a Notes Member today…

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“A coffeehouse is a place for people who wish to be alone, but need company for it.”

~ Attributed to Joseph Roth (1884–1939)

Joel Bowman with your Notes From the End of the Week: Buenos Aires, Argentina…

We learned a new word this week…

Feuilleton (noun), from the French fuh-yuh-TON, refers to a genre of journalism popular in Central Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in Vienna and Berlin.

Not quite objective reporting… less concerned with precise numbers, facts and statistics (which are, after all, subject to torture by those with an interest in producing them)… though still less interested in pure fictionalizing or editorializing…

The feuilletonist sought not to present the story as, say, a newswire would (or should), but rather as a person immersed in the situation itself, someone interested in capturing the atmosphere or spirit of the moment in a city, where Capital-H History is unfolding, one episode, one character, one scene at a time.

What was it “like” to be in Vienna on the eve of the Great War, for example? Here’s one of our favorite feuilletonists, Stephan Zweig, conveying more than mere dates and names in his marvelous work, The World of Yesterday:

To be perfectly honest, I must confess that there was something fine, inspiring, even seductive in that first mass of outburst of feeling. It was difficult to resist. And in spite of my hatred and abhorrence of war, I would not like to be without the memory of those first days. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of people felt, as never before, what they would have been better advised to feel in peace—that they belonged together. A city of two million, a country of almost fifty million, felt at this moment that they were witnessing history being made, experiencing a moment that would never return, and that everyone was called upon to fling his tiny self into this ardent fire to be cleansed there of all egotism. Differences in social station, language, class and religion were submerged at this one moment in a torrential stream of fraternal feeling. Strangers spoke to one another in the street; people who had avoided each other for years shook hands. Every singe individual felt his own ego enhanced; he was no longer the isolated human being he had been before, he was a part of the whole, one of the people, and his person, formerly ignored, had acquired significance.

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Human, Oh So Human

Zweig, along with his fellow feuilletonists Joseph Roth, Alfred Polgar, Karl Kraus and even Walter Benjamin, invited readers into a more intimate, human-centric setting than could be conveyed by the hard-hitting news articles of the day, which paraded themselves, then as now, in the conceit of objectivity. Rather than claim a purchase on a truth too complex for any one observer to grasp, they presented tiles in a mosaic that, when pieced together in the readers’ mind, brought him the impression that he, too, was part of something strange and powerful, yet ultimately inexplicable.

“We are all observers,” the feuilletonist seemed to say, “and here is my version of events, as they are unfolding and as best I can describe them to you.”

No coincidence, then, that the feuilletonist found his place of work in the great kaffeehäuser in Vienna and Berlin, where the most dramatic events of the century were unfolding.

Pulling on this thread earlier in the week, in an amateur nod to the feuilleton, we wondered at the grand events of our own time, and how they are conveyed in the Age of Informational Abundance. With Artificial Intelligence at his fingertips, any man on the street has access to a wealth of data such as never before available, even to his richest, most powerful ancestors. And all in real time.

What does he do with all this data… these statistics… this deluge of numbers and lines of code? Is he any wiser as to the ways of the world? Is he a happier man, a gentler father, a finer thinker? Or is he merely hardened in his ways, ossified in his opinions, more closed than ever, now that he has “the facts” at his fingertips.

We’ll dive into that, and plenty more, in next week’s espresso-powered Notes. For now, please enjoy our last two weeks worth of scribbles, in which we talk trillionaires, market-friendly futures, innovation vs. confiscation and plenty more. Please enjoy, below…

And now for your Notes From the End of the Week…

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Final Notes…

It is often said that “the sum is greater than the parts,” and certainly these Notes would be all the less were it not for the growing community of members whose thoughts and insights enliven our comments section.

Herewith, a selection of our favorite member comments from last week’s Notes. First, from our column, The Amsterdam of AI:

And this, from Who Wants to be a Trillionaire:

And finally, from our musing on the apparently controversial topic of Artificial Reparations:

Thanks again to all our Notes members who bring their thoughts and comments to bear on our humble scribbles. We don’t always have time to respond individually, but we do read each and every comment.

If you’re not a member yet, but would like to join our band of cheerful skeptics, independent thinkers and irreverent head scratchers, you can correct that cosmic injustice and have your say on the issues of the day by joining our Notes community right here…

Upgrade to Notes Member Here

We’ll see you in the comments section next week. Until then, enjoy your weekend…

…and stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

“Cafés are the windows to a city’s soul.”

Perhaps that sounds like a line from an unread, pre-award-winning novel, the kind penned in quaint little coffeehouses around grand old capital cities.

But it’s true...

Here in our little barrio, we have a dozen or so cafés and espresso bars within a short stroll of the apartment. Birkin... Coco... Rotondo... Malcolm... Volito... Borja... Lharmonie... Lattente... Doxa... Matok... Ivo... Kopi... and many more that do not immediately spring to a well-caffeinated mind.

It is in these salons and brew lounges, these neighborhood haunts, that the local porteños gather to discuss the pressing matters of the day.

Everything from the dollar-peso exchange rate to the temperature in Miami... the price of a cortado (coffee “cut” with milk) to celebrity scandals... the World Cup to the Torah... the children’s piano lessons to the neighbor’s coveted wife... Borges to pastafrola recipes to Milei’s economy... and, of course, all the news that is not fit to print.

What She’s Having!

One of the advantages of not being a native Spanish speaker is that eavesdropping is not so much an annoyance as it is an option. That is, in a second language, one has to actively pay attention if one wants to hear which way the proverbial wind is blowing.

And if we are hearing correctly, there’s plenty to be happy about these days down at this End of the World...

“Three goals in the opening match,” remarks one young man at a table across from us, referring to Lionel Messi’s hat-trick in Argentina’s opening match of this year’s World Cup. “Can you believe it? The man’s a genius. The G.O.A.T. for sure.”

“The only left that works,” his amigo echoes Milei’s well-known quip as the two share a hearty laugh.

Across the aisle, we overhear a pair of pretty ladies in workout clothes, perhaps in their mid-40s, saying something about social club memberships and a certain handsome tennis coach...

“Ay, por Dios... era un bombón.”

“Totalmente. ¿Le viste el físico? Escuché que...”

Sparing our gentle readers the lurid details, to which we naturally paid no heed, we move on...

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Copper in La Vicuña

Over by the window, meanwhile, an elderly gentleman in a cardigan vest and well-polished shoes reads from the country’s broadsheet, La Nacion. The headline, as translated, bares more good news:

The Government approved the entry into the RIGI of the country’s main mining project, with an investment of US$9.7 billion

We fill in the details with a little help from Luis Caputo, the nation’s Minister of Economy, via his social media account (from X):

The Evaluation Committee approved today the entry into the RIGI of the Vicuña copper project, in San Juan, developed by BHP and Lundin. With an initial investment of USD 9.7 billion—which could reach USD 18 billion according to company estimates—this is the largest mining project in our history and one of the five largest copper projects in the world.

This project will generate exports of more than USD 2.6 billion per year and more than 30,000 direct and indirect jobs.

More productive investment, more jobs, and more growth for Argentines.

Adding some context, we discover that Argentina’s mining exports grew a massive 84.3% in the first four months of the year compared to the same period in 2025, an historical record. Continued the minister, again from X:

Likewise, they were 161.8% above the average level of 2010-2025 for the first 4 months of the year.

Lithium exports grew 137.8% in value, while those of metallic minerals increased 77.6%

Breakfast at Birkin

Within a wistful half hour or so, we learn that inflation is slowing again, but not fast enough (last month’s 2.1% print was the lowest in 8 months)...

...that “everybody” is going to Brazil this year, mostly Florianopolis and Buzios (while Argentina has become expensive in dollar terms, Brazil remains relatively cheap measured in pesos)...

...and that Queridísimo Truman (or Dearest Truman), a musical biography about America’s famous literary figure, is the “must see” production of the season...

Also more about that heartthrob tennis coach, which propriety obliges us to leave to the reader’s unblemished imagination.

And so, listening to the hubbub of the café and satisfying hiss of the espresso machine, we muse on how the times are changing... so too the characters on its pages.

We’ve been coming to this particular coffeehouse to work for over a decade now. When we first moved into the neighborhood, it was just a little hole in the wall. Then, a few years ago, it expanded to take over the adjacent shoe store. And within the past year or so, the owners opened a takeaway window, or espresso bar, for those on the go.

From our perch here by the window, we’ve watched the neighborhood change and its children grow, including our own! (Dear Daughter was just a babe in arms when we first arrived. Now she brings her own reading material to the table...)

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Future Uncertain

For how long we will be writing here, in this café, we have no idea. “For he knoweth not that which shall be...”

A decade ago, there was nary a whisper of AI... no such thing as an “anarcho-capitalist president”... and not a trillionaire in sight (save for those poor Zimbabweans).

What will the next ten years bring?

You can read for yourself the monthly inflation figures from one End of the World to the other... similarly, you can discover the quarterly change in GDP in your own country... the annual rainfall on the Savannah... and the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow (The correct answer, of course, being a superior question: African or European?)

But though crude numbers and tawdry statistics may grasp at the outer perimeters of our lives, they cannot capture yet a fraction of what makes them worth living. Nor can AI, for all its speed and breadth of “collective human knowledge,” comprehend our essential essence.

That in mind, we kindly invite you to stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. On the off chance you prefer human-produced editorial over machine-generated “content” you might wish to consider supporting these humble Notes (that is, if you do not already… in which case, huge thanks!)

Here’s what a few of our happy human members have to say about their subscriptions…

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Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

When J.D. Rockefeller became America’s first billionaire, in 1916, his net worth was equal to roughly 2.5% of the nation’s entire GDP.

When Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire just last week, his pile stood equivalent to about 3.4% of the world’s largest economy. And it’s since rocketed higher, if you’ll pardon the pun, to about $1.4 trillion as of this writing, closer to 4.2% of America’s GDP.

Of course, times were different back in Rockefeller’s day...

For one thing, the days were fewer. The average life expectancy for men was just 49 years. Women were still expected to outlive their husbands, but only until they turned 54. Penicillin, generally considered the very first antibiotic, was still a decade away from discovery. And modern comforts like air conditioning, dishwashers and commercial flight still seemed like futuristic, pie-in-the-sky dreams.

As for color television... sushi trains... and Artificial Intelligence... they remained augmentations of a reality beyond the wildest imagination of mere human intelligence.

They were simpler times. And yet, then as now, the politics of envy was alive and well.

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Trust Busting

Long before the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warrens of the world promised to “eat the rich,” there was Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. The so-called “trust buster,” Roosevelt was deeply suspicious of what he saw as “bad trust monopolies,” viewing Rockefeller’s businesses as abusive and predatory, and the man himself as the archetypal robber baron.

“No man should have such power as Rockefeller has,” he once decreed, “without being held accountable to the people.”

Indeed, it was Roosevelt’s administration that laid much of the ideological and legal groundwork for vigorously enforcing antitrust laws which, in 1911, under President William Taft, eventually resulted in Rockefeller’s Standard Oil being broken into smaller, state-sized pieces…

Standard Oil of New Jersey later became Exxon… Standard Oil of New York became Mobil (then the two became ExxonMobil)…Standard Oil of California became Chevron…Standard Oil of Indiana became Amoco… The Ohio Oil Company became Marathon Oil…Continental Oil Company became ConocoPhillips…

… and so on.

That most of the Standard Oil companies have since merged and coagulated into the Big Oil blob we see today is one irony. The larger irony, however, is that as Rockefeller’s shares in the various spin-off companies increased in value over time, the original Standard Oilman grew ever richer.

Indeed, when Rockefeller became America’s very first billionaire, prefiguring Bernie’s worst nightmare decades before the sleeper Soviet was even born, he proved that the unwieldily federal government is an expert in one thing above all others: creating unintended consequences.

One may be grateful Rockefeller’s enterprise was “only” broken into smaller parts and not seized outright, turned over to the feds to administer “in the public’s interest,” lest it be turned into the Amtrak of oil companies. (Consider that, at current deficit levels, Washington burns through the equivalent of an entire SpaceX every 17 months. Hardly the prudent stewards of capital you’d want commanding your spaceship into the great beyond.)

The Path to Prosperity

And yet, among the socialists and green-eyed collectivists of the day, there were calls for nationalization, all in the name of “public good,” of course. Eugene V. Debs was one such voice of unreason. A prominent labor organizer, socialist politician, and five-time presidential candidate, Debs argued that, along with railroads, telegraphs, utilities and “natural monopolies,” oil was simply “too important” to be left to private hands. Only the government, by multiplying individual ignorance into collective wisdom, could be trusted with such a critical industry.

Thankfully Debs never got his way... although he typified much of the anti-intellectual claptrap of today’s expert expropriators, political parasites and managerial moochers.

By many measures, we’ve come a long way from the days of the so-called “robber barons,” who laid the groundwork for what would become the American Century.

Thanks largely to America’s leading role in global industrialization, a baby born in the US this year can reasonably expect to live for 80 years and longer. Moreover, his parents can plan his first birthday with a fair degree of confidence he’ll actually get there. In Rockefeller’s day, roughly one in every ten babies were “gone with the wind,” even before blowing out their first candle. Today, 199 in every 200 infants reach that happy milestone... many of whom go on to build and create astonishing things the rest of us take for granted.

In Rockefeller’s America, most homes lacked electricity and only a small minority enjoyed indoor plumbing, both essentially universal amenities today. In fact, the average family home in 1916 stood at a “cozy” 1,000-1,200sq/ft, less than half of today’s spacious (and climate controlled) 2,500sq/ft average build.

The same goes for advancements in practically every area of modern life. From MRI scans, to GPS navigation, modern dentistry, airbags, organ transplants, satellite internet and so on down the line. Automobiles, considered a luxury item for “early adopters” in Rockefeller’s time, are now a common consumer good, with on demand chauffeurs (ride sharing apps) for those who live in cities, couldn’t be bothered driving or simply had a little too much vino at lunch.

Over the past century, the US population grew by about 3.3x (from 102M to roughly 340M)… while the broader economy, even after adjusting for inflation, exploded by a massive 20x (from $1.7T in today’s dollars in 1916 to a mind-boggling $33T presently). In other words, the average American today produces and consumes about six times as much economic output as the average American in Rockefeller’s day.

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Milk, Honey & Big Macs

Even with his considerable wealth and power, Rockefeller himself could not have afforded modern refrigeration... a commercial flight to Europe... blueberries in January... a pocket calculator... or even a Big Mac. Not because he didn’t have the dough, mind you, but because inventors, visionaries and entrepreneurs like him had not yet brought these products, and a wave of other gizmos and gadgets, to market. They simply didn’t exist yet.

In other words, the men and women who said, “We’re probably gonna fail... but heck, let’s give it a try anyway!” had not yet brought their ideas to fruition.

Today, there are an estimated 26 million millionaires in the United States of America, far more than in any other country on the planet (with quadruple the population, China comes in second, with just 6 million.) There are also between 2.5 and 3 million decamillionaires ($10M+), more than 100,000+ centimillionaires ($100M+) and, much to Bernie’s grumbling consternation, over 1,000 billionaires... about 30% of the total global supply, despite the US having only 4% of the world’s population.

All that didn’t happen because politicians like Elizabeth Warren tsk tsked the nation into prosperity with her “If you have a company, you didn’t build that” blabbering. It didn’t happen because Zohran Mamdani taxed the rich out of the greatest city in the world or because Bernie thinks “billionaires should not exist.”

It happened thanks to visionaries like Messrs. Vanderbilt and Carnegie and Rockefeller... because of Henry Ford and Walt Disney and Sam Walton... because of the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, who left the backwater of European empire and moved to the center of electrical innovation and market dynamism.

The conditions that enabled these and other entrepreneurs to create and to flourish delivered us the Age of Abundance we so blithely enjoy today. That is, robust private property rights, rule of law and political stability, and the advent of limited liability companies and scalable capital formation.

What marvels will mankind experience a hundred years from now, we wonder, when they’re standing on the shoulders of this century’s giants? And who will safeguard the conditions that will help empower them?

In other words, in the not-too-distant year of 2126, will our space-faring progeny be minting the world’s first quadrillionaire... or squabbling in the dirt and the muck, bickering over whether such people should be “allowed” to exist in the first place?

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. We are grateful here at Notes for the generous support of our members, who value independent writing and are happy to be part of the pushback against the encroaching trend of corporate-crony capitalism.

If you are not already a member, but would like to join our growing community of radical libertarians, skeptical independents and fundamentalist own-business-minders, please consider becoming a Notes member, here… for less than 20 cents per day!

The more members we have, the higher we rank on the Substack leaderboards. And the higher we rank, the better our visibility across the Substack network and beyond.

By supporting our work, you help us reach more readers, delivering the message of liberty far and wide. Thanks in advance! ~ JB

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

Whoa! What’s this?

President Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders... as unlikely bedfellows!

We apologize to readers for the mental image... and pause so that they may scrub and banish it from their otherwise unadulterated minds...

Alas, sometimes what is seen cannot be unseen.

Faithful readers of this column will recall from our last Note that Bernard Sanders, the Democratic Socialist from Vermont, will soon introduce a bill to fleece American AI companies of half their worth. From Wednesday’s Note:

Earlier this month, Senator Sanders announced he will soon introduce a bill to “give” the public a 50% ownership stake in the largest AI companies in America. Ordinarily known as “fencing stolen goods,” this would be achieved through a one time tax/seizure not on profit... but on stock in the companies themselves. Expropriation, by any other name...

In other words, about what you’d expect from a card-carrying kleptocrat, who still believes, after all these years, that the best way to multiply wealth is to divide it.

But what about the Artist of the Deal, the King of Debt himself, Donald J.?

Not the kind of man who likes to be outdone, it appears Mr. Trump is now out to out-Bernie Bernie!

The Government’s Stake

No sooner had our pithy Note landed in your inbox when the president (having obviously just skimmed it himself) told reporters he was considering a similar shakedown. As usual, the newswires were on hand to bullhorn his latest brainwave:

WASHINGTON, June 10 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on ​Wednesday that he expects top artificial intelligence companies to agree to “giving ‌back” to the public, an apparent reference to a possible government stake in the firms.

“I’m going to have meetings with the top 12 or 15 executives very ​shortly, and we’re talking about giving back something to the ​public, and if we do that, the public will become ⁠very rich,” Trump told reporters in the White House’s Oval Office. “I ​think they’ll do that, and I think it’ll make it very popular.”

And there you have it, dear reader, the quiet part said out loud. Modern politics is not about doing what’s just... it’s about doing what’s popular.

And what’s more popular today than hating on billionaires? Especially tech billionaires. For one thing, they have more money than the rest of us. Therefore, the logic goes, they must be greedy. And evil. Mustn’t forget evil. For another thing, they’re creepy. And weird. And... techy.

Nevermind that we all use their products... that one in five Americans (according to Gallup polls) actively engages A.I. daily... a number that rockets to 50% who use it “occasionally” in their jobs... and a whopping 90% when accounting for AI-powered apps on their phones... (features like recommendation algorithms, voice assistants, spam filtering, navigation, and camera enhancements for the influencer class, etc.)

Point is, we didn’t think of A.I. first. And we feel icky while using it! (And even ickier when we discover we’re being used by it.)

Hmm... maybe some of that sweet, sweet A.I. loot will help soothe the self-loathing?

As for Mr. Trump’s Big Beautiful Promise, that “the public will become very rich,” we expect that to age like one of Bernie’s campaign slogans.

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Other People’s Money

Setting aside the blatant violation of private property rights for a second... and the dangerous precedent it would surely set... and the fact that other countries (notably Argentina) are presently offering market friendly jurisdictions in which to build the future...

Let us instead indulge in a round of Bernie’s favorite pastime... spending other people’s money.

Per the Reuters article, OpenAI is targeting a $1 trillion valuation when it goes public sometime later this year (although the company’s most recent private financing valued it at roughly $852 billion in April 2026).

Even supposing the state were to confiscate 100% of OpenAI, effectively killing the golden goose before it had the chance to lay a single shiny egg, the most aggressive estimate of its potential valuation would be gobbled up within months, if not weeks.

Using the Congressional Budget Office’s 2026 projection of $7.4 trillion in federal outlays (spending) for fiscal year 2026, a one time, $1 trillion windfall would fund the current administration for... wait for it...

... about 1.62 months (or 49 days, to be precise).

And that’s if all Bernie’s wishes came true and the State finally went Full Soviet, nationalizing the entire enterprise... before inevitably mismanaging it back into the dirt whence it came.

But just while we’re having fun with other people’s stuff, let’s imagine a scenario where voters were bribed directly with some of the ill-gotten gains, say in the form of a “public wealth fund,” in which they were gifted a slice of a pie they did not bake in the first place.

(Recall H.L. Mencken’s definition of democracy as “a kind of advanced auction on stolen goods.”)

AI Pies in the Sky

Let’s say OpenAI goes public at the magic 13 figure mark. An Initial Public Offering (IPO) aims to sell a partial stake in the company, typically about 10-20%. (Google offered 19% in its IPO back in 2004...Meta Platforms sold 16% when it went public in 2012... Snowflake Inc., the cloud computing giant, offered 10% in 2020.)

Setting aside the myriad complexities of such financial operations, like shares issued by the company to raise cash for the business, stock sold by existing members and employees (insiders), hefty underwriting fees, piles of legal, accounting and compliance costs, share dilution, and the bazillion associated taxes in which Uncle Sam gets his again and again, etc. ...

Were OpenAI to IPO at a clean $1 trillion valuation, a 10% float translates to $100 billion raised.

Say every last cent of that goes into “the fund” to buy votes from the green-eyed public, what political scientists call “clientism,” and what cynical newsletter writers call “modern democracy.”

Divided among a US population of 340 million people... that giant bonanza translates to a stake of about $294 per man, woman and child in the nation. (A generous 20% float would raise up to $200 billion, or about $588 per person.)

At $15/hour, $294 not even one part-time week’s wage (before taxes!) for the average worker. Barely enough for him to purchase a fortnight of groceries... or one week of rent... or a cheap, secondhand smartphone, loaded up with all those juicy AI-powered apps, so he can whither away his hours in quiet and dazed confusion, wondering what the heck happened.

And while he’s scrolling away and whispering sweet nothings to his kinky AI girlfriend, the National Debt will crest $40 trillion over the coming months. That’s about $235-250,000 per taxpayer… or 1,000x his slice of the AI pie.

A few hundred bucks is hardly enough to make the workaday voter “very rich,” in other words, but it may be enough to distract him while his government sells his future to the highest bidder.

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. We are grateful here at Notes for the generous support of our members, who value independent writing and are happy to be part of the pushback against the encroaching trend of corporate-crony capitalism.

If you are not already a member, but would like to join our growing community of radical libertarians, skeptical independents and fundamentalist own-business-minders, please consider becoming a Notes member, here… for less than 20 cents per day!

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The more members we have, the higher we rank on the Substack leaderboards. And the higher we rank, the better our visibility across the Substack network.

By supporting our work, you help us reach more readers, delivering the message of liberty far and wide. Thanks in advance! ~ JB

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

Last week we dared speak a harsh word against communism, a political theory so naturally appealing it must be forced upon people... under threat of mortal violence.

“Political power,” as Mao Zedong famously, unambiguously observed, “grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Mao’s own namesake version of Trickle Up Poverty was terrifically successful in the Middle Kingdom, with something in the order of 70 million human beings perishing during his iron-fisted reign.

In Mao: The Unknown Story (2005), Jung Chang and Jon Halliday argue that some 38 million men, women and children died during the famine of the Great Leap Forward alone... or about ten million every year between 1958–1962.

An aggressive progressive if ever there was one, Mao was naturally concerned first and foremost with equality of outcomes... so long as that outcome was impoverishment, misery and universal, state sponsored terror.

But why bring any of this up? What does the end of those poor souls’ world have to do with these Notes From the End of Our World?

Ah, dear reader... you know already that there is nothing new under the sun.

Whether in the Middle Kingdom or the Middle East... Americas North or South... civilizations east and west... the story is as old as Father Time himself.

One group makes... the other takes. One prefers cooperation... another resorts to raw coercion. One man tries reason, persuasion, and calm, rational discussion... the next shows him the barrel of a gun.

And so, deaf and blind to the lessons of history, man plods along... repeating the same old follies and conceits that set his ancestors one against the other.

Colonel Confiscator

Which brings us to Bernard Sanders, a man who has made a political career out of a preternatural gift for promising to share with others what doesn’t belong to him in the first place.

Earlier this month, the Senator from Vermont announced he will soon introduce a bill to “give” the public a 50% ownership stake in the largest AI companies in America. Ordinarily known as “fencing stolen goods,” this would be achieved through a one time tax/seizure not on profit... but on stock in the companies themselves. Expropriation, by any other name...

Waffled Sanders:

“This would guarantee that the trillions created by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — and block oligarch decisions that harm the American people.”

Bernie’s comrades-in-arms will recognize this as good ol’ nationalization of private property for the “common good,” much like the Chairman above presupposed collective ownership of everything from the dirt under his peasants’ feet to the boundless cerulean above. (All to be managed, administered, overseen and apportioned by him and his cronies, of course.)

Bernie’s key claim here is that, because AI was built on the nebulous concept of “our collective human intelligence” – a pool of knowledge to which the senator himself has contributed little, if any, original content – every (American) human is therefore entitled to his or her “fair share” of the profit.

What constitutes a “fair share?” you ask. When does “collective intelligence” suddenly morph into “public ownership”? What kind of precedent would such an act set? And what about that other life form here on planet earth, the “non-American human”?

Or, to boil it down to a single question: what manner of mid-wit intelligence is this, artificial or otherwise?

Alas, the politics of envy is as old as the origins of property itself...

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On the Origins of Property

It was John Locke who first articulated the idea that mixing labor and capital with preexisting resources gives rise to property rights. Here’s the famous quote, from Chapter V of his Treatise of Two Governments (Of Property):

“Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”

The mere fact that ideas, languages, mathematics, music, science, art, etc. already exist “in the ether” is hardly sufficient to suppose a public ownership claim on any given enterprise that subsequently seeks to turn such an amorphous blob into a commercially viable product through application of its labor and capital.

Following on from Bernie’s “logic,” should Google find itself liable for mandatory state expropriation for having ordered and archived the billions of discrete pages and sites scattered across cyberspace?

How about the Yellow Pages? Encyclopedia Britannica? The Oxford English Dictionary? These humble Notes?

Are these enterprises forbidden from accessing public data and ordering it – through mixing its own labor and capital – such that “We, The Consumers,” might find in this vehicle a new value, one that had not existed when the information was strewn disparately across the vast and extra-jurisdictional realm of our “collective human intelligence”?

In other words, can preexisting information not be rearranged, reimagined, reengineered… archived, ordered, catalogued, etc. … without incurring the wrath of the courts which, armed with Bernie’s Act, might claim ownership over the newly formed property?

Whether the resource is uncultivated land or publicly available knowledge (code, data, etc.), the act of productive transformation affirms rather than diminishes the principle of private property... without which everything and nothing belongs to everyone and nobody.

And yet, it is exactly this kind of nonsensical collectivist gibberish that befuddles college students and animates senatorial calls to arms alike.

Doubtless the promise of an unearned AI windfall will appeal to Bernie’s perma-jilted followers, especially as it would come out of the hides of “evil billionaires,” but it is unlikely to spur innovation of the kind that flourishes in markets that respect foundational liberties, like property rights.

But while the covetous cast their gaze over their neighbors’ fences, others extend invitations instead of threatening confiscations.

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The Amsterdam of AI

In a recent op-ed in the Financial Times, Argentine President Javier Milei invited AI entrepreneurs and developers to pursue their innovation on these fair shores, where a favorable legal framework awaits. From the FT:

Companies run by new technologies such as AI agents require the same legal framework that has underpinned capitalism for over four centuries, one suitable for development and experimentation.

At the beginning of the industrial revolution, Adam Smith illustrated the potential of technology and economies of scale in his celebrated recollection of the pin factory. And, as much as the industrial revolution freed us from the constraints of the human muscle, AI will free us from the constraints of the human brain, pushing productivity beyond our wildest dreams.

[...]

We are open for business. In the spirit of the Dutch merchants who made Amsterdam the financial capital of the 17th century, we intend to offer the most attractive legal and fiscal environment for the AI companies that will define the 21st. Let Buenos Aires become for AI what Amsterdam was for the age of sail — the place where the legal imagination caught up with the technological moment, and the world was changed.

Not for the first time in history, the path once more diverges. In which direction is one to proceed?

Toward wealth creation… or wealth redistribution? Private property… or government expropriation? Market innovation… or State control?

Freedom… or the barrel of a gun?

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. Enjoying these Notes? Feel free to help us spread the world of Free Markets, Free Minds and Free People…

We are grateful here at Notes for the generous support of our members, who value independent writing and are happy to be part of the pushback against the mainstream media’s mono-messaging.

If you are not already a member, but would like to join our growing community of radical libertarians, skeptical independents and fundamentalist own-business-minders, please consider becoming a Notes member, here… for less than 20 cents per day!

Embrace the Uncertain ~ Join Notes here

The more members we have, the higher we rank on the Substack leaderboards. And the higher we rank, the better our visibility across the Substack network.

By supporting our work, you help us reach more readers, delivering the message of liberty far and wide. Thanks in advance! ~ JB

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By the time Alfredo Stroessner gave up the ghost in 1989, his compatriots must have been ready for something new…

Paraguay had wallowed under one form of dictatorship or another for most of the 20th Century, including a third of it under Stroessner’s iron fist. For comparison, his reign (of ~34 years) lasted more than twice as long as Augusto Pinochet’s rule in Chile, and considerably longer than the military regimes in neighboring Brazil (21 years) and Argentina (23 years, total).

And lo, since the end of an oppressive one party state, the land-locked country has enjoyed a peace and prosperity that has handily outpaced its peers. From 2000 to today, Paraguay has averaged growth (measured by real GDP) of an impressive ~4–4.2% per year. That’s a cumulative total of between 160-180% since the turn of the century.

That leaves Uruguay (~3.0–3.5%), Brazil (~2.1–2.4%) and Argentina (~1–2%) in the dust. Here’s how it looks over the first quarter of this century, cumulative:

A stroll down the downtown area reveals hints of a glorious past… but with the scars and dilapidation so common to nations long fallen to the hubris and folly of man as political animal. (See the short clip, above.)

And yet, with Paraguay’s new found stability, another market is burgeoning just down the road. We stayed in the up and coming Villa Morra barrio, about 20 minutes drive from the historic center… where boutique hotels, trendy stores, and gourmet restaurants and cafes line the streets.

More on that story, and what a difference even a little liberty can make to a nascent economy, in coming Notes…

In the meantime, please enjoy our musings from the past week, in which we offered a humble and pithy rejoinder to Marx’s loathsome manifesto and looked ahead, with the guidance of guest columnist MN Gordon, to the future of money as we know it. Please enjoy…

And now for your Notes From the End of the Week…

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Final Notes…

They say “the sum is greater than the parts,” and certainly these Notes would be all the less were it not for the growing community of members whose thoughts and insights enliven our comments section.

Herewith, a selection of our favorite member comments from last week’s Notes. First, from our Capitalist Manifesto column…

And these, from MN Gordon’s excellent write up on the CLARITY Act, and what it could mean for your money, your privacy and your financial security…

Thanks again to all our Notes members who bring their thoughts and comments to bear on our humble scribbles. We don’t always have time to respond individually, but we do read each and every comment.

If you’re not a member yet, but would like to join our band of cheerful skeptics, independent thinkers and irreverent head scratchers, you can correct that cosmic injustice and have your say on the issues of the day by joining our Notes community right here…

Upgrade to Notes Member Here

We’ll see you in the comments section next week. Until then, enjoy your weekend…

…and stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Asunción, Paraguay...

Your antipodean editor has gone walkabout this week, dear reader. But fear not! We do not intend to leave you in the lurch.

In fact, we have a timely column from our guest contributor, MN Gordon, that directly pertains to your money, your privacy and your financial security. It’s a little longer than our usual Notes, but we think it’s important enough to publish in its entirety and not behind a paywall.

You’ll see why as you read on...

Remember, too, that you can see more of Mr. Gordon’s work at his fantastic Economic Prism website. As a rule, we have no financial arrangement with our guest authors... we simply think their work is relevant and reckon you might, too.

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

How Washington is Silently Tokenizing Your Bank Account
by MN Gordon, founder of Economic Prism

Have You Heard of the CLARITY Act?

If you missed it, you’re one among many. Reporting on the subject has been slim. No one wants to talk about it. Certainly, we don’t. But we will. Because it’s important.

We’re referring to the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, or the CLARITY Act for short, which recently advanced out of the Senate Banking Committee via a 15 to 9 vote. The bill has already passed the House of Representatives and is getting queued up for a Senate vote.

Currently, Senate committee staff are merging the CLARITY Act framework with the companion Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act. The combined bill requires a full Senate floor vote and must survive conference reconciliation before heading to the President’s desk.

Congress has about two months of session time left before the August recess to get the bill to President Trump’s desk for signature. After August, very little gets done through the midterm elections in November. With a little luck, the Act will stall out.

One of the points of contention leading up to the Senate Banking Committee vote had to do with the stablecoin yield provisions. What you need to know, as you’re herded into stablecoins, is that you, as a stablecoin holder, will receive no interest from the underlying Treasuries the stablecoins are backed by.

The interest, as stated in the GENIUS Act, goes to stablecoin issuers. You, as a holder of stablecoins, get absolutely diddly-squat. This is the new money regime that’s being put in place. If successful, you’ll have to live with it. Your kids will too.

We are currently 55 years into America’s grand experiment with pure fiat money. If you recall, this cycle kicked off in 1971 when President Nixon slammed the Bretton Woods gold window shut.

Today, U.S. government finances are buckling under the weight of unprecedented debt. But instead of letting the system face its inevitable economic reckoning, central planners are working overtime to pull off another historic monetary switcheroo.

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Genesis

Nixon’s action in 1971 wasn’t the first time the terms and conditions of the dollar were changed. Other instances include the issuance of Greenbacks during the Civil War or FDR’s gold confiscation in 1933.

Once again, the state is radically re-engineering the form and feel of the U.S. dollar. The goal is to mask an outright sovereign debt crisis by forcing the global economy onto a digitally native, stablecoin-anchored dollar.

This isn’t some far-fetched proposal for the distant future. In fact, the legal trap doors are already shutting. It began with the GENIUS Act in 2025, and now, the forthcoming CLARITY Act is arriving to finish the job.

Will it work? Your guess is as good as ours. But if you’re trying to build and preserve wealth, you cannot afford to ignore this.

The architecture of this new financial order was codified when the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act was signed into law on July 18, 2025.

For the uninitiated, stablecoins are cryptocurrencies pegged to a steady asset, usually the U.S. dollar. Their primary purpose had been for parking funds or moving liquidity across digital assets. For example, if you were speculating on the price of bitcoin and thought it was due for a price correction, you would sell bitcoin and hold stablecoins with the hope of buying back bitcoin at a lower price in the future.

The GENIUS Act changed the game by legally mandating that any Permitted Payment Stablecoin Issuer (PPSI) must back their tokens 100 percent, one-for-one, with high-quality, liquid assets – specifically cash and short-term U.S. Treasuries.

This framework ties the burgeoning global digital asset economy directly to Uncle Sam’s liabilities. Every single time an issuer mints a digital dollar, they are legally compelled to buy a piece of U.S. debt. As global trade, tokenized assets, and instant 24/7 settlements scale up, the structural demand for these regulated stablecoins will become massive.

If successful in its intent, this would translate to a virtually bottomless, non-taxpayer-funded credit pool for the U.S. Treasury. It would also artificially preserve the dollar’s status as the world reserve currency while keeping the government’s deficit machine running at full tilt. In other words, the mega U.S. government debt bubble could blow out orders of magnitude greater from its already lofty level.

Make no mistake, this is the birth of the new digital dollar. It is not a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) issued directly by the Federal Reserve. Instead, the government outsourced the infrastructure to private-sector issuers. Over time, legacy paper cash will be systematically relegated to a niche, ceremonial relic.

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Closing the Loophole

While the GENIUS Act established the foundational plumbing for stablecoins, it left open a major capital battlefield. Enter the CLARITY Act, which serves as the second half of this legislative dollar switcheroo.

Its primary purpose is to draw definitive lines between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), build a maturity framework for decentralized networks (from early, centralized stage to true decentralization), and fully optimize the flow of capital running through the stablecoins. The most critical, heavily lobbied aspect of the CLARITY Act centered on Section 404: the strict prohibition of interest and passive rewards on stablecoin holdings.

The GENIUS Act explicitly banned stablecoin issuers (like Circle) from paying interest or yield directly to token holders. However, a major regulatory loophole quickly emerged. Massive crypto exchanges and brokerages set up business-to-business revenue-sharing deals with issuers. The exchange would take a cut of the Treasury yields generated by the reserves and pass them down to retail users as a marketing incentive – calling them holding rewards or passive yields. Users could park their stablecoins on an exchange and passively collect a 4 to 5 percent yield without taking on active trading risks.

The CLARITY Act’s Section 404 closes this yield sharing loophole. It outlaws any third-party program that offers consideration or rewards that are “economically or functionally equivalent” to interest on a bank deposit just for holding the token.

If passive rewards are banned, the multi-billion-dollar question is: Who gets to keep the interest generated by those trillions of dollars in Treasury reserves?

The answer tells you everything you need to know about who this legislation was truly written to protect. Namely, stablecoin issuers and traditional commercial banks.

When you exchange your hard-earned cash for a compliant digital dollar like USDC, you hand over your capital for free. The issuer takes your fiat, buys yield-bearing U.S. Treasuries, and pockets the interest as pure corporate profit. Under the GNEIUS Act and further reinforced by the CLARITY Act, you don’t get a cut of the action.

This is the core of the legislative design. During the drafting of these bills, traditional banking lobbies, like the American Bankers Association, were on edge. Commercial banks historically pay rock-bottom interest rates on traditional checking accounts. If everyday citizens could seamlessly shift their cash deposits out of traditional banks and into digital stablecoins to passively clip a 5 percent yield, it would trigger a catastrophic flight of capital.

By legally banning passive rewards, the CLARITY Act eliminates the economic incentive for the masses to drain their traditional bank accounts. It ensures stablecoins behave exactly like physical cash in a wallet. This artificial restriction protects the lifeblood of commercial banks, ensuring they retain the cheap deposit capital necessary to fuel their fractional-reserve lending practices, mortgages, and consumer loans.

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Death of Financial Privacy

The transition to this tokenized regime is being actively fast-tracked under the guise of national security. On April 8, 2026, the U.S. Treasury, alongside the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), issued a joint proposed rule to formally integrate stablecoins into the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).

At the time, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed this as a way to “protect the financial system from national security threats.” In the realm of central planning, integration is merely a polite code word for total, unmitigated surveillance.

By legally defining stablecoin issuers as financial institutions under the BSA, the government has transformed every compliant digital dollar into a binding tracking device. Issuers are now required to enforce Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols on every single wallet holder. They must file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) on atypical peer-to-peer transfers and maintain direct, real-time data feeds straight to federal regulators.

Furthermore, a trap has been laid at the state level. Over 15 states, led by Florida’s SB 314, have set up tiered oversight models. If an issuer stays under $10 billion in circulation, they operate under relaxed state rules. But the moment they scale past that threshold, they are automatically handed over to the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The states lure the capital in with a hands-off approach, and the federal government shuts the corral gate once the herd is inside.

When money shifts from paper ledgers into blockchain-native tokens governed by smart contracts, it ceases to be a passive asset. It becomes programmable software. While the elite market this as the pinnacle of financial efficiency – enabling instant, cross-border payments and 24/7 trading – it hands extreme control to centralized authorities. Because these tokens operate on code, rules, conditions, and restrictions can be attached directly to the money in your pocket.

As assets are tokenized, and fall under the surveillance of the Bank Secrecy Act and the GENIUS / CLARITY framework, personal autonomy disappears. For example, central planners could program your digital dollars to expire or lose value if they aren’t spent within 30 days, forcing artificial velocity into a failing economy.

So, too, your digital wallet could be directly integrated with your carbon footprint or health metrics. Should you exceed your monthly carbon allowance, the smart contract will automatically reject your transaction at the gas pump.

Your digital tokens could also be programmed to only function within a 15-minute radius of your registered residence, effectively controlling your ability to move about freely. And should you express dissent online or refuse a mandated vaccine, a single line of code updated on a centralized ledger could instantly freeze your entire net worth or restrict your purchases exclusively to essential items.

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Automated Tyranny

In the legacy financial world, freezing someone out required manual coordination across fragmented banking networks. In the GENIUS and CLARITY Act era, tyranny is entirely automated.

To be clear, this legislative framework is no longer a fringe theory or a future proposal. It is rapidly becoming the law of the land.

But getting the legislation in place is just the beginning. There also needs to be a way to force a wary public into adoption. Thus, a trigger will be needed.

This will likely be in the form of a shock event such as a banking crisis, a severe economic recession, or a geopolitical event, which will compel full stablecoin implementation. Perhaps the forthcoming energy shock and food crisis prompted by the Strait of Hormuz closure will do the trick. The transition to tokenized bank accounts will be heavily marketed as a necessary upgrade for your safety, speed, and convenience.

We don’t like it. But we can’t deny it. The era of anonymous fiat money is drawing to a close.

As an investor looking to preserve your financial freedom, you must learn to navigate this digital transition without becoming enslaved by it. This will take some planning and an understanding of what’s possible and practical. As far as we can tell, this means using the digital compliant systems for day-to-day commerce, while simultaneously maintaining a subset of wealth entirely off grid.

Now, more than ever, physical gold and silver, held in private, which requires no power outlet, no internet connection, and no government-approved ledger, is essential.

Regards,

MN Gordon, founder of Economic Prism

Joel’s Note: What do you make of the latest encroachment into your financial privacy/security, dear reader?

Is there anyway to hold back the tide… or is this inevitable, given the nature of the political system as it is?

And what else – besides holding physical wealth in precious metals – can you do to protect what’s yours from prying eyes… and greedy hands?

Have your say in the comments section, below…

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Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

A specter is haunting the world – The specter of Capitalism.

All the powers of the Old West have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcize this specter: Pope and King, Presidents and Prime Ministers, legacy media and learning academies, cultural radicals and government spies, dis/misinformation snoops and self-appointed “fact checkers.”

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as “Capitalistic” by its opponents in power?

It is high time that Capitalists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Capitalism with a Manifesto of the movement itself.

To this end, one capitalist has assembled at the End of the World, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and sketched the following Manifesto, to be published in a fringey Substack newsletter, available to a renegade readership of free thinkers, outsiders, preppers, paranoiacs, weirdos, fringe-dwellers and assorted other “deplorables.” (The kind of people you want around your dinner table, in other words.)

Our philosophy, such as it is, below. But first...

An Unholy Alliance

Students of history and casual noticers alike will recognize the preceding passage as a loose riff on the (in)famous opening of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ irksome little pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto (1848). Weighing in at just under 51 pages, it may fairly be argued that, page for page, no other text has packed such a devastating civilizational gut punch, at least not in our modern times.

Though at times whimsical, even poetic in its prose, its fundamental read of history - that is, through the warped and narrow prism of dialectical materialism - is at once shocking and shockingly virulent. Apparently deaf to the lessons of history, Marxist apologists mobilize their Dear Comrade’s theories to open fresh wounds in our societies to this very day. (See our ongoing Notes about New York City’s card-carrying collectivist mayor for reference.)

One and three-quarter centuries after Marx (an impecunious academic) hitched his wagon to Engels (son of a wealthy industrialist), in order that the pair might more fully and effectively rage against the capitalist machine (the very same that was funding their publications), the world is once again wrestling with this threat to liberty and human flourishing, to self-determinism and genuine cooperation, to free markets and – by extension – free people.

A survey by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation a few years back found that four in ten (40%) Americans held a “favorable” view of socialism, communism’s half-wit cousin. Perhaps unsurprisingly, youngsters were even more enamored by collectivist ideology. Almost half (49%) of Gen Z found socialism to be to their liking, up from 40% the previous year. As for fully-formed Marxism, millions yearn for a future as gray as Stalin’s socks. From the survey:

• 18% of Gen Z and 13% of Millennials think communism is a fairer system than capitalism and deserves more consideration in America

• 30% of Gen Z has a favorable view of Marxism, up 6% from the previous year, compared to 27% of Millennials

• Over a quarter of Americans (26%) support the gradual elimination of the capitalist system in favor of a more socialist system with a surge in support among younger generations (31% of Gen Z and 35% of Millennials)

Incredibly, more than a third (37%) of Gen Z and Millennials reckon The Communist Manifesto better guarantees freedom and equality than does that alternative, unfashionably American document... you know, the one that waxes, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

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Class Backwards

One wonders how many of communism’s dreary devotees have bothered to even browse the 51-page primer, much less spend any time in, say, Cuba or Transnistria or Venezuela, where Groundhog Day is not just another classic Bill Murray movie, but a bleak, inescapable reality, where quality, universal social services are so free nobody can actually afford them.

Nor is the Manifesto an obscure, hard to find text... or altogether unavailable... or under threat of being censored, canceled or “selectively rewritten,” Ministry of Truth style, in some windowless, brutalist structure by g-men drones. (We have on our desk the Little Black Classics version, readily available on Amazon and published by Penguin...for a profit, we assume.)

Nor does the twitchy Tik Toking youth even need to advance beyond the 140-character limit of his/her/zir Twitter-stunted attention span to get the gist of the document. Apparently in something of a rush the day he wrote it, Marx waited until the very first line to get everything wrong.

“The history of all hitherto society is the history of class struggles,” declared he, going on to notice that there are both freemen and slaves, patricians and plebeians, lords and masters, guild-masters and journeymen in the world.

Like the “anti-racist” who sees nothing but skin color... or the jealous lover who sees naught but furtive glances... or the chain smoking Freudian psychoanalyst who espies nothing but cigars, cigars and more cigars, everywhere Herr Marx looks he sees class warfare. Upper and lower. Bourgeoisie and proletariat. Oppressor and oppressed. For the whiny denizen of Struggle Street, everything comes down to power, property and profit. He who has the power gains the property, and he who has the property, profits. The problem, as Marx sees it, lies in the “struggle” between these opposing forces.

Never does it occur to the man that, absent the aggression of a state, human beings might enter into mutually beneficial arrangements all of their own accord. (Like, say, two men sitting down to publish a political pamphlet together...) That consensual exchange is, ipso facto, a necessarily value-adding undertaking. That cooperation, not compulsion... voluntarism, not violence... commerce, not coercion... is the path toward human flourishing, what the wise old Greeks called eudaimonia.

And yet, the “struggle” Marx imagines everywhere is motivated by the zero-sum nature of his own constrained thinking. To Marx’s eye, the oppressor only has the big house, the fast car, the pretty blonde wife, because he has denied these things to his oppressed (and no doubt covetous) neighbor. Or worse still, it is stolen from him through the exploitation of his labor.

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Injustice for All

Never is there any allowance for an individual’s own preferences, his unique goals, aspirations, proclivities. Suppose someone prefers to rent than own... to walk than drive... and brunette’s over blondes! Imagine a world where not everyone wants to be CEO, to work weekends, shoulder risk, front capital, lease land, plan businesses, make payroll, stock merchandise, figure distribution, carry costs, etc. What of the fellow who prefers to sit on the dock of the bay, wastin’ time? Should he be guaranteed the same outcome as the man who builds his enterprise from scratch?

Furthermore, because of Marx’s zero-sum mentality, everything must be taken by force...including, and especially, real estate on the class totem pole. As a man who never, as far as we can tell, wrapped his chubby, uncalloused palms around a single hammer or sickle, Marx foresees a utopia in which the “workers of the world” have nothing to lose but the chains he has imagined for them. If only they will take up the tools he himself eschews.

“The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims,” he writes in the “call to action” section of his copy. “They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”

It is true, the world is rife with inequality, but correlation does not equal causation, as the saying goes. Yes, there are owners and renters... buyers and sellers... bosses and workers, just as there are Olympians and lounge lizards, morons and geniuses, fatties and anorexics.

How then to “equalize” for the myriad physical/emotional/psychological/intellectual/material etc. differences in the world, besides cutting everyone down to the same diminutive size?

Marx’s “remedy” calls for a coercive state bureaucracy filled with know-it-all busybodies just like himself, charged with guiding each and every invisible hand in the land... until they wind up choking civilization itself.

But back to our own Capitalist Manifesto, as promised above. We’ll keep it to a pithy two-liner:

The history of all hitherto society is... complex. That in mind, do as you will and compel no other.

And as always, stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

“Argentina is a poem, a fervor, a chant, a dirge—and sometimes all these forms at once.”

— Jorge Luis Borges

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina…

“I’m heading to Argentina for a week… a fortnight… a month. What should I do?”

We often receive some version of the above message, asking our advice on what to see and do in this marvelous city and wonderful country.

Being somewhat averse to advice – especially in the giving – we’re always tepid in our response.

“It depends…” we begin, already in over our head…

But after sixteen years here, we have developed a “to see” list of sorts. For the past month, we’ve been hosting a childhood mate from the Old Country (Australia). Here’s a non-exhaustive list of what we’ve shown him. (Feel free to take Notes…)

1. Strolling Avenida Libertador, including coffee at Caffe Tabac

2. Marveling at the nearby Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo with a sundowner at Croque Madame cafe

3. Flâneuring Parque el Rosedale with lunch at Tomate Estación de Sabores

4. Juicy steaks and fat-bottomed Malbecs at Cabaña Las Lilas in Puerto Madero

5. Contemplating life at the iconic Cementerio de la Recoleta

6. Cocktails in our favorite lobby bar at Alvear Palace

7. More steaks at Jose el Carnicero in Palermo

8. Dinner and a show at the unforgettable Tango Porteño downtown

9. A walking tour of a few Bares Notables, including London City, Cafe Tortoni, Palacio Barolo, and Cafè de los Angelitos

10. A side trip to Patagonia to cruise the lakes district along the famous Ruta 40

11. Hiking the Bosques Arrayanes near Villa la Angostura for views of Bahía Brava and Bahía Mansa

12. Stay at Puerto Manzano and enjoy the local fare (lamb, trout and incredible empanadas) at Del Campo, El Muelle and Ponienti Patagonia

13. An unforgettable night at Teatro Colón with champagne at Petit Colón beforehand and a curry at Delhi Mahal afterward

14. After dinner cocktails at the “secret” bar Florería Atlantico in Recoleta

15. Flat whites and medialunas at our local cafes, Birkin, Rotondo, L’harmonie

16. More coffee and facturas at the iconic Confitería La Ideal

17. Rembrandt, Rubens, Manet, Van Gogh and more at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

18. People watching along Florida Street and the magnificent Galerias Pacifico

19. Underground cabaret show at Albur followed by drinks at the classic Los Galgos bar

20. Suits night with the lads at Gardiner Restaurant on the Costanera Norte followed by after party at Moby Dick and after after party at Tequila Club

21. Parrillas “del barrio” at La Dorita for bife de chorizos and papas a la provençal

22. Frida Kahlo, Diego Riveira, and Botero at the MALBA followed by an unhurried lunch the newly refurbished Casa Palanti

23. Antiquing the San Telmo markets with lunch at La Bridaga (where they cut your bife de lomo with a spoon… just because they can)

24. Blackboard menus at our favorite little “hole in the wall” bistro, Las Pizarras

And now for your Notes From the End of the Week…

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Final Notes…

Oh.. and 25. Sunday lunch at “The Church,” also known as Lo de Jesus, in Palermo Soho for bone in ribeye steaks and a wine list we’re still working through, sixteen years on.

Whatever you’re up to this weekend, we hope to have whetted your appetite.

As always, stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. If the above list appears a little “meat heavy” for you… consider that our visiting friend had been a vegetarian for 25 years before this trip. No longer.

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

Everyday low and lower prices. That’s the free market’s promise to you. And if the free market were allowed to operate properly, that is to say, if it were allowed to function as the name suggests, freely, lower prices are precisely what you would expect to see.

Lower prices at the grocery store... at retail outlets and restaurants... at the gas pump and online.

And yet, as inquiring minds fairly recognize, that’s simply not the case. Rather than enjoying a cornucopia of hyper-abundance, brought about by the turbo-charged purchasing power of the dollar, the average working stiff has witnessed his greenbacks plummet in value during his lifetime.

In real terms - that is, adjusted for inflation - household net income has gone virtually nowhere in the U.S. over the past half a century. This despite the fact that most households now send two warm bodies off to the daily production line. The same is true in most of the developed world.

How could this be?

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Free Market Dividends

With all that extra input... with a growing population... mechanized machinery... Moore’s Law... the ubiquitous wonders of the digital age... cryptos... EVs... NFTs... ChatGPTs... and all the rest... shouldn’t we expect the price of production and, therefore, the cost of associated goods and services, to fall... or, dare we utter the word... “deflate”?

Price deflation is progress, after all. Lower prices - ceterus paribus - are a surefire sign we’re getting better at “making stuff.” It means we’re becoming more efficient. This happy outcome is the result of increased competition and scale in the marketplace. It’s the glowing, cherub-cheeked lovechild of Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” and the compounding effect of “learned processes.” Standing on the shoulders of giants, and all that...

In this way, lower prices ought to serve as a “kind of dividend for the working man,” as Jim Grant, editor of the venerable Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, once (ahem) observed.

“Not so fast!” cry the know-it-all federales.

Coming off the back of multi-decade high inflation during The Covid, American consumers have understandably grown weary of watching the price of their favorite goods ticking up every time they visit the store. Cumulative inflation in the US since the beginning of 2020 runs somewhere between 25-30%. And that’s just the official numbers, likely well shy of the real world.

Bumbling from one crisis to the next, as late stage empires tend to do, the current energy debacle is likewise exacerbating an already precarious situation. From NPR:

Inflation jumps to its highest level since 2023

The U.S. war with Iran has pushed inflation to its highest level in almost three years.

Consumer prices in April were up 3.8% from a year ago, according to a report Tuesday from the Labor Department. That was the biggest annual increase since May 2023.

Whether or not the US and Iran reach a deal today... or tomorrow... or next month... (The Donald is in the Situation Room as we type)... the lingering effects of critical supply chain disruptions are unlikely to abate anytime soon.

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Daylight Robbery

And yet, conventional wisdom (such as it is), tells us that a little inflation here and there is actually a “good thing.” Indeed, the Fed claims 2% as its “optimum” rate of inflation. That is, it aims to steal exactly 2% of the purchasing power of your savings each and every year, give or take. They don’t always get it right, of course. Sometimes it’s more.

But what’s so deadly about discounts anyway? Do producers really suffer under a deflationary episode, as we’re constantly assured they do? After all, aren’t producers also consumers? Do they not, therefore, also stand to benefit from lower input costs?

In a now classic interview with Steve Forbes, Jim Grant provided an illuminating walk down memory lane...

“We’ve seen this before,” Grant told Mr. Forbes, “in many different ages of American economic history. The late 19th century was a time of persistently dwindling prices. Some people resented it, of course, and there was a progressive movement - so called - that mobilized itself in opposition. But, on the whole, Americans rather enjoyed a great generation of progress. In the 1920s, prices were stable or dwindled. In the early 1960s, the same.

“As recently as 1954,” continued Grant, “there were 12 consecutive months of falling prices, as registered by the CPI. If you go back and look at the newspapers, you will search in vain for expressions of hysterical concern about that as we certainly see today.”

What, if anything, has changed during this past half century or so? When did “high and higher prices everyday” become part of the Fed’s stated agenda?

“I think what has changed is not so much the behavior of prices,” concluded Grant, “but rather the attitude of our central bankers towards prices. They feel they must control them and they must raise them up. The Fed has moved to substitute price administration for price discovery.”

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Fiat Fetish

And just how does the Fed achieve this dubious end, you may be wondering? Henry Hazlitt explained the process back in 1946 in his artfully titled column, “The Fetish of Low Interest Rates.”

When interest rates are kept arbitrarily low by government policy, the effect must be inflationary...The natural rate of interest is the rate that would be established if the supply and demand for real capital were in equilibrium. The actual money interest rate can only be kept below the natural rate by pumping new money and new credit into the economic system. This new money and new credit add to the apparent supply of new capital, just as the judicious addition of water may increase the apparent supply of real milk.

Through “watering down the milk,” to borrow Hazlitt’s metaphor, the Fed claims to spare us the immeasurable inconvenience of low and lower everyday prices. In other words, the Fed is diluting the value of the currency in which our favorite knickknacks and gizmos are denominated, thus offsetting the gains made through productive efficiency and the market’s natural downward pressure on prices.

Hazlitt’s musings might well have been written this morning. And yet, more than half a century later, his words have still not touched a central banker’s ear. Until they do, it’s high and higher prices, as far as the eye can see.

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. A special thanks to all our generous Notes Members, whose subscriptions help keep these scribbles flowing all the way to your inbox. Here’s what a few of them had to say about their reasons for signing up…

If you enjoy and/or value our work and would like to join these happy readers, feel free to become a Notes member today, right here…

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Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

For every silver lining... a thundercloud. For every bouquet of flowers... an open casket. For every abolished tax... a jilted congressman, crying into his gilded teacup.

Sheesh! It must be exhausting being a pessimist!

And yet, the glass-half-empty crowd is nothing if not committed to the cause (whatever Great Cause Du Jour that may be). So long as they’re in charge, naturally.

We refer, of course, to the so-called elites... the self-appointed panjandrums of taste and culture... the managerial class that insists no progress can be made without their say so, no trade executed absent a huff and a puff on their little their gym whistles, no freedom celebrated without their compulsory supervision.

Each and every day these canker-blossoms get up on the wrong side of their miserable beds, drag their razors across their wretched faces, and gaze out upon the world... with scorn in their eyes and hatred in their hearts.

Needless to say, liberty-averse control freaks have had a tough time of late here in Argentina, where a raft of free market reforms have led to economic growth, renewed commercial dynamism and another particularly rare bird in these parts: optimism.

25 Months and Counting…

Just picture the slack-jawed gloom brigade, if you will, waking to discover the following data points this week (courtesy of those sanguine specimens over in Argentina’s Ministry of Finance, via X):

• In March, the Monthly Economic Activity Estimator (EMAE) recorded a 3.5% monthly growth in the seasonally adjusted series and 5.5% in the comparison with the same month of 2025

• With this record, the seasonally adjusted EMAE accumulated a 0.5% growth in relation to December 2025 and reached a new historical maximum

• 14 of the 15 EMAE sectors recorded growth in the year-over-year comparison. In terms of their impact on the overall level, the increases in Agriculture, Livestock, Hunting and Forestry (+17.9% y.o.y.), Manufacturing Industry (+4.6% y.o.y.), Mining and Quarrying (+16.3% y.o.y.), and Transportation and Communications (+4.7% y.o.y.) stood out

• The trend-cycle indicator, which allows analyzing the long-term dynamics of the series, grew 0.4% m/m and accumulated 25 consecutive months of growth

Growth! Prosperity! Opportunity!

Woe to the perennial pessimist!

But his pain and anguish doesn’t stop there, dear reader. Consider the very real possibility that Argentina may be on track to develop into a real energy powerhouse in the next few years.

Power to the People

Thanks in no small part to the RIGI program – a market friendly initiative that aims to attract large-scale foreign investors to the nation’s lucrative energy and mining sectors with favorable tax, customs and currency-exchange incentives – Argentina is finally beginning to tap its long-ignored resource wealth.

The results are nothing short of phenomenal. Here’s the projected increase in oil and gas production, thanks to bolstered investment in unconventional (shale) fields. From global consultancy giant, Deloitte:

To the wincing chagrin of naysaying collectivists, whining academics and carping mainstream presstitutes, who never met someone else’s freedom they didn’t find personally oppressive, the charts are decidedly “up and to the right,” as our old friend Rick Rule likes to say.

As you can see, oil production is set to rise from 0.7MMbpd in the early 2020s... to 1.2MMbpd by 2030. That increase – +70% within ten years – would represent one of the fastest production expansions outside the Permian Basin in recent decades, essentially bringing Argentina in line with mid-tier oil producers like Oman, Ecuador and Qatar.

Natural gas projections are also substantial, with Deloitte’s figures estimating an increase from ~130MMcfd to ~185MMcfd by 2030, or roughly +40–45% growth in the next few years.

Rock and Roll

Oh, and here’s the mining projections, thanks again to record inflows of foreign investment owing to the market friendly RIGI program. Again, from Deloitte:

For those keeping score at home, that’s ~US$5–6 billion in the mid-2020s to over US$14 billion by 2030... more than double the industry’s entire current export value.

Nor is that the worst of it for our card-carrying crepehangers. To the injury of economic growth... and the insult of political liberation... he must also suffer the indignity of other people’s joy!

Imagine how his blood must have run cold upon learning that Argentines are – gulp! – enjoying their vacations. From La Derecha Diario:

Tourism during the first 5 long weekends of 2026 recorded a record level of travelers across the country, reaching nearly 9.4 million people who spent more than 2.6 billion pesos —45.9% higher compared to last year— thanks to the economic stability achieved by the Milei Government.

Extended vacations... family road trips... long holiday weekends traversing their stunning countryside...

As we know, there is nothing that strikes grief and suffering into the hearts of the collectivist-pessimist quite like other people enjoying themselves.

¡Pobrecitos!

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A New Plan B

Aside from mainlining mainstream media and populating public propaganda mills (universities), professional grumbletonians enjoy little respite from this onslaught of chipper optimism.

Long a friendly destination for wet blankets and gnashgabs of every stripe, Argentina is no longer the Mecca for down-and-outters that it once was. And lo, even mainstream outlets are beginning to catch on. Forbes:

Why Argentina Could Become Americans’ New Plan B

[O]ne country is increasingly standing out as an overlooked alternative: Argentina.

And at the center of the attraction is Buenos Aires, often called the “Paris of South America.”

With elegant European-style architecture, café-lined boulevards, vibrant nightlife, comparatively low living costs, and a pathway to citizenship that can begin after just two years of legal residence, Argentina is quietly becoming one of the most interesting immigration destinations in the Western Hemisphere.

Looks like the political neurotics and govern-me-harder masochists will have to find someplace else to scratch their Stockholm syndrome itches.

Woe to the pessimists, indeed!

And as always, stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. Thanks to all those readers who wrote in with “get well” messages over the long weekend. A few days of fresh country air (and a few glasses of vitamin M around the campfire) and we’re well and truly on the mend.

Welcome, also, to our new Notes Members, who joined us over the past few days. We’ve got lots in store for you over the coming months, including our next virtual summit… which we’re working on behind the scenes right now. Think Plan B as a loose theme… and watch this space for more…

If you’re not already a Notes Member, but would like to join our growing community of cautious optimists and cheerful skeptics, feel free to jump on board here:

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“There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.”

~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850)

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Exaltación de la Cruz, Argentina…

Fallen soldiers… flags and flowers… malbec and locro. A tale of two commemorations this weekend, dear reader…

While our friends to the nor…

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Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina…

We’ve no patience for the sicknes…

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Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

“I had a dream – no, a nightmare! – that we voted the Peronists back into power. And it wasn’t their return that was the worst part... but that we had done it to ourselves.”

Our dear friend, a porteño who has endured his unfair share of that dismal political regime, appeared genuinely rattled by the thought... as though, like Shakespeare’s tragic lead, his vision might turn to portent.

Is it possible that the free-market experiment here in Argentina is already feeling the dagger plunge into its heart?

Is it conceivable that misty-eyed voters have begun longing for the good ol’ days of rampant deficits, nosebleed hyperinflation, empty shelves, and a basket-case economy closed off from the world?

¡Sí, señor! ¡Por qué no!

Indeed, if any country is capable of “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory,” as our old friend Rick Rule puts it, it’s Argentina. For generation upon generation, citizens have watched their political caste feast on the national bounty, while they, the voters, starve in the streets.

And what might be the fallout of such a daft “own goal”?

Kuka Risk

Here’s Kirchnerist mouthpiece Javier Timerman acknowledging the “Kuka Risk” by admitting that, if Javier Milei loses the elections in 2027, Argentine financial assets would plummet as foreign investors exit en masse.

“There’s no Plan B. Wall Street doesn’t believe there’s a reasonable opposition. Even if it’s Macri, investors will want to leave Argentina... If Peronism wins, the assets will surely drop by 70%.”

Just imagine… warning listeners about what might happen if your own political team were to be elected! Welcome to Argentina…

Still, elections are a long way off down here on the Pampas (not until October 2027, or about a year and a half away), but already nervous voters are beginning to doubt the miracle on Pampas.

Indeed, major polls show the president’s approval ratings slipping noticeably, from the mid-50s a year or so ago to the mid-30s today.

Smelling blood in the water, Milei’s political opponents begin to circle, including former president Mauricio Macri, whose center-right PRO party has begun distancing itself from some of Milei’s policies, prompting rumours the ex-leader might stand as part of a greater, anti-Milei coalition in next year’s general elections.

Naturally, the popular press have piled on, ever eager to see The Establishment for which they live and breathe and peddle their putrid lies returned to its rightful position atop the political hierarchy.

Their hoary charges of corruption, economic calamity and social injustice may have little basis in observable reality, but that is hardly reason to abandon the narrative. After all, politics is less a measurement of reality than of perception.

But what about that fundamental tension, between the “real” and the “feel”? A quick look under the hood...

Realz vs Feelz

Inflation, which is down roughly 90% under President Javier Milei’s administration, remains at an uncomfortable ~32% per year. Better than the ~300% bestowed on the country by the ousted Peronists, to be sure, but in need of another 90% drop to resemble the OECD average (of roughly ~4%.)

Even so, the latest data, from the National Institute of Statistics (INDEC), shows inflation for April coming in at 2.6%, the lowest read since November. It’s also the lowest April read (excluding the pandemic lockdown of 2020) since 2017... and a long way from the monthly high of 25.5% – almost 1% per day – when Milei took office.

Importantly, though less reported by the bloviating presstitutes, real wages are actually outpacing inflation. In March, Argentine salaries grew by 3.4% month-over-month and 36.4% year-over-year. Other metrics, from tax revenue to consumer spending to general economic growth, especially for the nation’s surging exports, point to a stronger economy overall.

On the export side, the latest data shows that revenue for March reached the highest monthly level in the country’s history, while total exports for the first quarter of this year also notched a record of USD$24.1 billion. That’s up around 16% year on year, driven by massive growth in the key sectors of agriculture, energy and mining.

Still, it’s not easy for the man on the street, who responds not to what he reads while sifting through the economic data... but to what he hears in the taxicab... what he reads in the news... and what he feels in his bones.

Inflation, as mentioned, is still too high. (Today’s wholesale inflation figures came in hotter than expected, largely due to increases in global energy costs – see Strait of Hormuz putting upward pressure on prices from one End of the World to the other).

Meanwhile, at 7.5%, official unemployment remains elevated. And barely a day goes by when one dumbstruck newswire or another doesn’t lead with a tear-jerking “human interest” story about a local business forced to shutter, all thanks to Milei’s “ruthless” free market policies.

Oh look, here’s one, from the perennial misery mongers over at Reuters:

Argentina’s auto parts industry feels the pain from Milei’s shock therapy

BUENOS AIRES, May 5 (Reuters) - Inside a small, family-run auto parts plant on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, production lines sit quiet.

The factory is running below capacity as the firm, Suspenmec, ​struggles to compete with an influx of cheaper imported parts, many from China, after Argentina sharply eased trade restrictions.

President Javier Milei’s aggressive economic reforms - including slashing import barriers and presiding over a stronger peso - have helped stabilize the economy. But for many small and mid-sized manufacturers long shielded from foreign competition, the adjustment has been sudden and painful.

Coddled ≠ Protected

While it is certainly true that local manufacturing is struggling, particularly in areas in which this market enjoys no comparative advantage... and that many domestic businesses are coming under pressure from international competitors as Milei slashes import/export controls and reintroduces the country to the 21st Century... stories like the one above tell only part of the story.

It is, after all, local consumers – including small and medium businesses – that now enjoy access to a world of cheaper products and higher quality goods. Those same local businesses are now able to use capital they would have had to outlay on more expensive, unreliable parts, expanding their own operations, hiring more staff, paying down debt, etc.

As Milei himself noted during his keynote speech at an event hosted by Banco de Valores (Valo) at the Malba museum this past week:

“We’re making trade agreements with as many places as we can. In that way, we expand the size of the market, boost the division of labor, and that will generate greater productivity, more jobs, and greater well-being.”

If higher prices and lower-quality goods – such as result from coddled, “protected” markets – were the path to success, Argentina’s decades of economic isolationism would have yielded a dynamic economy and a veritable cornucopia of wealth.

Instead, it was precisely this hermitism that left the country economically ossified, politically corrupted, and fostered the kinds of outcomes that haunt the dreams of honest porteños working for a better future.

More to come in future Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. We are grateful here at Notes for the generous support of our members, who value independent writing and are happy to be part of the pushback against the mainstream media’s mono-messaging.

If you are not already a member, but would like to join our growing community of radical libertarians, skeptical independents and fundamentalist own-business-minders, please consider becoming a Notes member, here… for less than 20 cents per day!

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The more members we have, the higher we rank on the Substack leaderboards. And the higher we rank, the better our visibility across the Substack network. By supporting our work, you help us reach more readers, delivering the message of Free Markets, Free Minds and Free People. Thanks in advance! ~ JB

Is the world still there, dear reader?

Politicians still bloviating… pundits still mud raking… the Deep State still puppeteering?

Actually, don’t answer. Your wandering editor has been offline for a few days… and the ignorance has been blissful, as promised.

Far from the madding crowd, we’re down here in Patagonia, touring the iconic Ruta 40, which stretches from the very north of the country, on the Bolivian border, and winds along the majestic Andes Mountains all the way down south, to Río Gallegos in Santa Cruz Province.

The little slice we’re enjoying, between San Carlos de Bariloche and San Martin de los Andes, is sometimes called the Seven Lakes Tour. As you can see from the snappy video above, the region is rather Germanic in architecture and style. The small towns are dotted with ski chalets and petit hotels and fondue restaurants, and every turn in the road yields to magnificent vistas of pristine glacial lakes.

The man you see astride his bronze horse in the clip is Alejo Julio Argentino Roca Paz. Something of a controversial historical figure, Roca was an Argentine army general and statesman who twice served as President of Argentina, once from 1880 to 1886, and then again from 1898 to 1904. Here he is, inaugurating the 1886 legislative session…

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See to Shining Sea

Aside from presiding over the era known to monetary historians as the “period of great indebtedness,” during which the country maintained staggeringly high fiscal deficits and foreign borrowing (and experienced the attendant economic crises and currency defaults), Roca’s main contribution to the state of Argentina was the vast expansion of its territory. During his presidencies, he added something in the order of 30-35% of the nation’s total territory, including most of Patagonia.

Indeed, it was Roca who signed the Boundary Treaty with Chile in 1881, the document which established that “the boundary line shall run in that extent along the highest summits of the said Cordillera that divide the waters, and shall pass between the slopes that descend on one side and the other...”

Naturally, as a white European, Roca’s expansionist policies brought him into conflict with many of the local indigenous tribes, with whom he was often at war. And yet his statue stands, unmolested, undesecrated, looking out from the peaks of the Andes Mountains to the distant shores of the Atlantic, at the country he helped found and build. It’s almost as though history happened anyway, whether one likes it or not.

As for what the future holds, we wait to see…

Meanwhile, last week we brought you Part I in what will be an ongoing series titled The Rapper and the Rolling Stone, in which we compare and contrast the leadership stylings and philosophical underpinnings of Argentine President Javier Milei and New York City Ayatollah Zohran Mamdani.

Readers who take offense to our characterization of the Big Apple’s Communist in Chief are especially invited to tune in. (If you know anyone who fits that bill, do feel free to share our Notes with them…)

We also heard from guest columnist and friend of these pages, Mr. MN Gordon, who brought us up to speed on the latest goings on from the frontlines of digital currency, financial privacy and personal liberty. See his work on The Digital Noose, plus last week’s flâneur video around Puerto Madero, back in Buenos Aires, below…

And now for your Notes From the End of the Week…

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Final Notes…

We’re off to enjoy some of the famed Patagonian lamb at a local parrilla just out of town. Whatever you’re up to this weekend, don’t forget to take some time to disconnect…

As usual, we’ll be back with more Notes From the End of the World next week…

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. Writes a dear reader, Susan Blais:

“Thank you Joel for your work. I so appreciate your clear voice for freedom and human dignity. It is a privilege and an honor to be alive at this time to participate in the inversion of the pyramid.”

Thank YOU, Susan… and thanks to ALL our Notes Members, whose generous support keeps our laptop charged and our glass half full.

We’re working hard to spread the message of Free Markets, Free Minds and Free People… and with your support, we’re reading an ever expanding audience.

If you have a moment, join our growing community below and be part of the pushback against The Narrative by supporting independent voices. Cheers ~ JB

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Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Villa la Angostura, Argentina…

Programmable citizens... artificial intelligence... and ubiquitous, 24/7 Big Gov oversight…

Gee, what on earth could go wrong?

One doesn’t need to be a bonafide paranoiac to imagine governments around the world using (or even creating) any number of crises to herd “We, The Sheeple” into ever smaller corrals.

Indeed, if The Covid taught us anything, it was that people are only too willing to surrender their essential liberties for “the promise of a little temporary safety,” to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin.

And yet, from fifteen-minute cities to ration cards to social credit scores and beyond, programmable money makes it easier than ever to control the population.

In today’s guest column, below, MN Gordon gives us an update on the end of financial privacy as we know it… and the beginning of programmable citizens. Please read on for more…

Oh, and by the way, if you’d like to see more of Mr. Gordon’s fine work, do be sure to check out his Economic Prism website, right here. We have no financial arrangement with our long time contributor and do not benefit from featuring his writing... other than that we simply enjoy what he has to say and hope you do, too.

Cheers,

Joel

The Digital Noose Tightens
by MN Gordon, founder of Economic Prism

In January, as part of our 2026 outlook, we detailed how the GENIUS Act, which was signed into law by President Trump on July 18, 2025, would bring about the next shift in American money. The GENIUS Act, if you recall, requires stablecoins to be backed one-for-one by U.S. dollars or short-term U.S. Treasuries.

This is a topic we don’t like writing about. In fact, we’d rather ignore it. But by doing so we’d be in dereliction of duty. So, today, begrudgingly, we offer an update on the latest efforts to tokenize the U.S. dollar – including the dollars in your bank account.

Just last month, while most people were distracted by the war with Iran, the U.S. Treasury, its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a joint proposed rule to implement provisions of the GENIUS Act. This rule formally integrates stablecoins into the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).

According to Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent:

“This proposal will protect the U.S. financial system from national security threats without hindering American companies’ ability to forge ahead in the payment stablecoin ecosystem.”

What you must understand about this proposal is that integration is code for surveillance. By forcing every digital dollar into a rigid, trackable framework under the cover of “national security,” the government is effectively eliminating financial privacy.

This, in essence, establishes a permanent digital leash that can be used to control your behavior. As these regulations tighten, the wall between your private wealth and federal oversight disappears. Every transaction you make will be visible to a centralized authority.

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Death of Financial Privacy

As a refresher, a stablecoin is a digital token designed to stay pegged one-for-one to the U.S. dollar. Unlike Bitcoin, which can be volatile, a stablecoin is supposed to be boring.

Under the GENIUS Act, a legal stablecoin must be backed 100 percent by cash or short-term U.S. Treasuries. In practice, the issuer (like Circle or a big bank) holds the Treasuries and pockets the interest. The user (you) gets the convenience of digital speed but receives no interest. Most importantly, the Government gets a brand-new buyer for its never-ending debt.

The headline from the April 8 joint rule proposal was simple enough: Permitted Payment Stablecoin Issuers (PPSIs) are now legally defined as financial institutions under the BSA.

On the surface, it sounds like common sense. A way to make sure terrorists and drug cartels aren’t using digital dollars to finance illicit business operations. But in practice, this integration means that every compliant stablecoin, like USDC, is now a tracking device.

Under the new FinCEN rules, issuers must perform full Know Your Customer (KYC) on every wallet holder. Issuers must also file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) on any peer-to-peer transfer that looks atypical. They must also maintain a direct data feed to federal regulators for real-time reserve monitoring.

At the same time, a series of state-level regulations, led by Florida’s SB 314 and similar bills in 14 other states, have created a tiered oversight model. If a stablecoin issuer stays small – under $10 billion in circulation – they can hide under state rules. But the moment they exceed that threshold, they are handed over to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) of the U.S. Treasury Department.

This arrangement functions as a trap. The states lure people in with a hands-off oversight approach. All the while, the federal government’s standing by, ready to close the corral gate after the sheep have unknowingly wandered in.

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Programmable Money

By moving the dollar onto blockchains, money becomes programmable. You can set conditions for payments (smart contracts) that traditional banks can’t handle.

While this makes payments faster and 24/7, it shifts the dollar away from being a physical or purely ledger-based asset into a digital software-based asset. Once the infrastructure exists for all dollars to be tokens, there is little reason for the old physical dollar to exist in its current form.

This is where we move from financial efficiency to dystopian control. Because these tokens operate via smart contracts, the money itself can have rules attached to it. If all assets are tokenized and integrated into the Bank Secrecy Act / GENIUS Act framework, personal autonomy becomes a relic of the 20th century.

Imagine a world where your paycheck expires if you don’t spend it within 30 days to stimulate the economy. Or where carbon caps are enforced by your wallet. Try to buy gas after hitting your limit, and the smart contract simply rejects the transaction.

There’s also the prospect that your ability to go where you want, when you want may be taken away. If the central authority wants you to always remain within 15 minutes of your residence, it will merely have your car shut off automatically if you traverse outside of its digital fence.

You’ll also need to always remain silent, even in the face of imposed wrongs. Programmable money allows for social credit integration. If you refuse to take a faux vaccine or wear a facial mask, your civic score drops. As a result, your tokenized assets could be frozen or restricted to essential purchases only.

In the old world of physical cash and fragmented bank ledgers, the government had to work hard to freeze you out. In the GENIUS Act era, they just have to update a line of code on the centralized general ledger.

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The Digital Noose Tightens

The GENIUS Act doesn’t just regulate stablecoins. It integrates them into the U.S. monetary plumbing. By mandating Treasury backing and providing a federal charter for issuers, it effectively converts the U.S. dollar into a token-first currency, where the physical dollar is merely a reserve asset for the digital tokens we actually spend.

Yet the April guidelines don’t stop at stablecoins. They opened the door for the tokenization era. The FDIC’s new proposal specifically addresses tokenized deposits. Far more than just establishing a digital dollar, the goal is to turn your personal bank account into a series of tokens on a blockchain.

When Larry Fink said every stock and bond would eventually be on one general ledger, he forgot to mention your checking account. In this new world, your cash becomes a tokenized deposit, your home becomes a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) on a county-run ledger, and your car, stocks, and gold are all converted into digital chips.

Why?

Because when an asset is tokenized, it can be moved instantly. It can be used as collateral in the blink of an eye. But more importantly for the powers that be, it can be programmed.

We don’t like this. We don’t like the deceitful way the government is using stablecoins to hide a debt crisis, and we certainly don’t like the loss of privacy and personal autonomy. But as we said in January, you can’t ignore it.

The legislative framework is no longer a proposal. It’s not some farfetched idea. It is becoming the law of the land. Through the midwife of a shock event, be it a recession or a war in the Middle East, the transition to tokenized bank accounts will be marketed as being for your safety and convenience.

By all accounts, the GENIUS Act is the most significant financial overhaul in 50 years. But most people are asleep at the wheel.

Nonetheless, the digital noose is tightening. The era of anonymous money is ending. The era of the programmable citizen is beginning.

As a little guy investor and wealth builder there are some things you can do to prepare. You can maintain a subset of wealth – like confidentially held physical gold and silver – that doesn’t require a power outlet or a government-approved ledger.

Preparing for this shift requires a proactive strategy that balances modern digital utility with the timeless security of off-ledger wealth. Straddling both sides of the ledger is imperative.

Regards,

MN Gordon, founder of Economic Prism

Joel’s Note: What do you reckon, dear reader? Is the dawn of the digital dollar upon us, whether we like it or not?

What “crisis” might the government use to require/mandate their use?

Are you seeing any “tightening of the digital noose” in your (ahem…) neck of the woods?

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