The Great Divide

Krugman boards the Trump Tariff Train, World Cup mania, the transatlantic divergence and more...

“If one rejects laissez-faire on account of man’s fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.”

~ Ludwig von Mises, from Planning for Freedom (1952)

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!!!

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.

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!

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