I’ve been critical of Thomas Piketty for some time (see here), and now I’m finding Gabriel Zucman equally annoying. Both are economists who are successful writers, but they’re much better at explaining their theories than translating them into successful public policy.

California’s proposed billionaire tax is a really great example of lofty ideas with really bad implementation and rationale. Cliff Asness recently raised an obvious question about the supposedly one-time nature of the tax. Does Zucman intend to campaign for making it permanent? And does he seriously expect people to believe that California’s appetite for taxing accumulated wealth will end with a single collection?

Read my latest rant on California at the Washington Examiner

Meta's decision to create an entirely new class of nonvoting shares, partly to allow Mark Zuckerberg to pay California's proposed billionaire tax without sacrificing control of his own company, shows exactly what I consider a failure of economic policy. One of the world's most valuable companies restructured its cap table to address a tax that hasn't even passed. Zuckerberg was considering leaving California, and no doubt this was the final nail in the coffin, but Meta's board spent months negotiating a solution. Whatever your views, surely we should question a tax proposal that has already prompted this level of corporate financial engineering before collecting a single dollar.

Then there’s Olivier Blanchard, who is astonished that billionaires would oppose a 5% wealth tax when they’re wealthy enough to pay it without materially changing their lifestyles. This is an extraordinary argument coming from an esteemed economist. Of course they can afford it. But when did someone’s ability to pay a tax establish that the tax was sensible, productive or even beneficial to the government collecting it?

Have a look at this recent NBER working paper by Stanford economists Benjamin Jaros and Joshua Rauh. Their analysis of California’s proposed billionaire tax estimates that the state could ultimately lose nearly $39 billion in net present value, once the consequences of wealthy residents departing and the resulting loss of future income tax revenue are considered:

“The present value of permanently lost income tax collections from departures more than offsets the one-time wealth tax revenue.”

That’s a modeled estimate, of course. It depends on assumptions. But it raises a huge question that seems totally absent from much of the enthusiasm surrounding these proposals: What happens when the people you’re taxing decide they no longer want to live, invest or establish their businesses in your state?

I also take issue with the fashionable assumption that private wealth is somehow inherently damaging to the economy. First off, most of the wealth we’re discussing here exists in the form of equity ownership, mostly in businesses whose valuations have increased enormously over time. If a founder’s shares appreciate by another $20 billion, that doesn’t mean $20 billion has somehow been taken from everyone else. Nor does it represent $20 billion in available cash. Why do I have to say even this? There is a massive difference between creating wealth, realizing income and extracting economic value at someone else’s expense. Surely these economists understand that. Surely???

I would expect economists advocating major changes to tax policy to give considerably more attention to capital formation, investment, mobility and the long-term consequences for public revenue.

And this brings me back to Piketty and Zucman. I have no doubt that both have made substantial contributions to the discussion of wealth and inequality. But the purpose of economic policy isn’t to validate an academic theory or secure its author’s place in intellectual history. It’s to produce outcomes that actually work. If the result of a policy is less investment, destroyed tax base and ultimately less money available for the public services it was supposed to support, what has been accomplished?

Perhaps the real problem isn’t that billionaires don’t understand what they owe society. Perhaps it’s that some economists have become too comfortable telling everyone else what their wealth should be worth.

Decent WSJ article on the subject

“A judiciary that is lenient toward criminals but unrelenting toward decent citizens. The incomprehensible privilege of these far-left militias, who destroy, set fires, and kill with impunity. An uncontrolled immigration, in which a portion of the immigrants rebels against the country that took them in.

A political class, the various strains of socialism that have governed us for fifteen years, that must be accused of frivolity, blindness, if not even a benevolent tolerance.

Emmanuel Macron's admonishments to a police force that, in his view, does not show enough ‘empathy’ toward those who attack it with screws, cobblestones, or fireworks mortars, will remain an indelible stain in memory.

If the far left, criminals, and looters can turn France completely upside down within a few hours, it is above all because a self-intoxicated technocratic monarchy has systematically leveled all the moral, security-related, cultural, and economic safeguards that hold a society together. Jean-Luc Mélenchon's useful idiots do not just wear the kufiya, but also the necktie.”

FVincent Trémolet de Villers addresses the unrest in his Le Figaro editorial, “Crise des lycées, autodestruction ou redressement ?” published online October 6.

As El Niño intensifies and the Tropical Storm Rachel batters Southern California, coastal communities are once again confronting flooding, erosion and damaged property. Homes all along the coast have been destroyed. But much of the state’s vulnerability is the product of something far older than the latest storm.
*Source: Los Angeles Times, October 12, 2026: The Worst of Storm Rachel Has Passed, but Threats to Coast Remain

California has a peculiar habit of destroying its natural defenses, building over what remains, and then treating the consequences as an environmental emergency for which everyone else must pay. A recent study of the state’s coastal dunes tells that story rather well.

In July, researchers at UC Santa Barbara found that California has lost roughly 60% of its coastal dune area since 1850. Around Los Angeles and San Francisco, the loss exceeds 95%. Roads, housing, commercial development and other changes to the landscape account for much of it. These are not dunes that simply vanished in a storm. For the most part, California removed them.
*Source: UC Santa Barbara, June 22, 2026: California Has Lost More Than Half of Its Coastal Sand Dunes

Coastal dunes absorb wave energy, hold sediment, provide habitat and protect the land behind them. Yet California spent generations treating them as obstacles to development, then built expensive communities where those natural protections once stood.

Just look at the Southern California coast. Wide, groomed beaches run straight into promenades, highways, car parks, hotels and coastal property. It is an extraordinary tourist economy, and much of the natural coastline has been scraped away to accommodate it. What remains is an expensive and increasingly artificial landscape whose natural defenses have been sacrificed for “vibes.”

And when the damage becomes impossible to ignore, we know what will happen. There will be headlines about climate change, demands for another public spending program and lectures about our collective responsibility. Climate change may intensify coastal hazards, but it did not pour the concrete, approve the subdivisions or erase the dunes over the past century. Those were decisions made by people, usually in pursuit of the next property boom.

This is the larger California problem. The state has operated for more than a century on a boom-and-bust mentality, exploiting a landscape and improvising when its natural limits become expensive. Southern California has taken this to an almost absurd extreme. Tourism, property speculation and the entertainment industry helped create an enormous economic machine selling sunshine, glamour and the promise of a better life.

What much of it has produced is a sprawling collection of subdivisions, shopping centers and highways. Miles of suburban sprawl, surrounded by dry hills and dependent on imported water, populated by dead-eyed dreamers searching for something they will never find. The place is sold as paradise, but its a paer thin version of paradise. Perhaps its only paradise to the untraveled American.

There is an important distinction within California. The Bay Area, for all its faults and considerable dysfunction, remains one of the great centers of technological innovation in the world. Its universities, research institutions and businesses produce things of genuine consequence. Southern California has substantial industries of its own, but much of its identity and economy has been built around entertainment, tourism, real estate and the promise of a particular lifestyle.

Eventually, California will have to confront the difference between the wealth it has created and the liabilities it has accumulated.

Just look at wildfire. Fire is a natural part of California’s ecology, and no amount of forestry work can eliminate the danger of fires driven by extreme winds. But decades of inadequate fuel treatment in some areas and relentless building into fire-prone country have made an already difficult problem harder. Prescribed burns, sensible thinning, defensible space and better decisions about where to build are ordinary management tasks. They require competence and sustained attention, which seem to receive far less enthusiasm than another grand environmental announcement.

Water is another case. Southern California grew into a vast metropolitan economy in a dry region by importing water. Wetlands have been filled, watersheds altered and groundwater resources placed under pressure. The engineering required to sustain these cities is impressive at the time, but there is something fundamentally ridiculous about allowing development to expand while neglecting the natural systems that support it.

And then there is the rain. Southern California spends much of the year worrying about the absence of water, yet parts of it seem remarkably ill-prepared when substantial rain finally arrives.

In January 2024, San Diego received 2.73 inches of rain in 24 hours. Severe flooding followed, damaging neighborhoods and requiring more than 200 water rescues. It was an exceptional storm, but inadequate drainage and development in vulnerable areas contributed to the damage. After a century of urban expansion, one might expect a fairly large American city to have developed a more serious relationship with stormwater. Or how about this: can an American city even be considered a real city if they cannot handle 3 inches of rain in 24 hours?
*Source: City of San Diego, January 21, 2025: One Year Since Record-Breaking Storm

The problem is not a lack of money, expertise or technology. California has resources and plenty of scientific institutions. It can restore dunes and wetlands, improve drainage, manage forests, invest in water recycling and evaluate desalination where it makes economic sense. It can also stop rebuilding in locations that repeatedly demand public rescue and reconstruction. None of this requires a revolutionary environmental philosophy. It requires responsible planning, sustained investment and the willingness to tell developers no.

There is a conservative argument here. Protecting valuable natural assets, exercising restraint in public expenditure and refusing to socialize the costs of reckless development are basic principles of responsible government. A functioning dune system, watershed or wetland has economic value. Removing it to facilitate another development, only to demand taxpayer funding for expensive artificial defenses later, is dreadful economics.

California’s environmental reputation becomes particularly difficult to take seriously in this context. The state has spent decades congratulating itself on its environmental consciousness while permitting an extraordinary transformation of its own landscape. Conservation has too often become a matter of political identity rather than competent stewardship.

I have no objection to serious public investment in environmental restoration. I object to the recurring absence of adult supervision before the crisis, followed by the insistence that everyone else must help pay for the consequences.

The UCSB study gives us a particularly damning measure of what a century of this mentality has produced. California has eliminated most of a natural coastal defense that took thousands of years to develop. Much of what replaced it now requires costly protection from the very ocean that made the property valuable in the first place.

California has spent a century selling the world an image of paradise. As the economic realities of maintaining that image become harder to ignore, the state will eventually be judged not by its marketing or environmental rhetoric, but by the condition of the place itself. Before another disaster is blamed on climate change, Washington or the public’s unwillingness to sacrifice more, perhaps we ought to ask a simpler question: Where were the adults when all of this was being built?

If you want to read about California’s endless issues, check out my book: The Myth of California. The Amazon Kindle version was released in 2025, and spent a number of months as an Amazon bestseller (even #1 in a few categories).

Endorsements for “The Myth of California”

“California was once America’s “Promised Land” where people flocked to find gold, good weather, and opportunities in everything from movies to manufacturing. It was the agricultural epicenter of the world, known as the “salad bowl” of the planet. But decades of leftist leadership has destroyed everything but the weather. It’s become “Paradise Lost” with homelessness, unanswered crime, and choking tax rates and regulations causing people to flee in stunning numbers to get to places where their families can live without the boot of big government on their necks and cultural cuckoos setting the atmosphere of the lifestyle. Chad Hagan details what happened in his riveting book, “The Myth of California: How Big Government Destroyed the Golden State.” It’s the tragic story of how the irrational left destroys everything it touches and how one state exchanged its gold for garbage.
- Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas, Bestselling Author, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel

“My father was a car salesman in a town of 800 people in Northern Minnesota. He had one vacation in his working life, and we took a trip to California. He had a friend who had settled in Carlsbad years earlier and wanted to visit. I was 10. My brother was 11, and our sister was 7. We were in awe. It was a modest home, beautifully maintained, with a yard full of fruit trees. We picked oranges and ate them in the yard. We had grapefruit off the trees for breakfast. I dreamed of moving to California for years. No longer! Chad Hagan’s book, The Myth of California, will make you disappointed, infuriated, and then just plain sad. It is a cautionary tale about how politicians can destroy a paradise in one lifetime. Ultimately, unchecked political power serves only itself. The citizens are included only to pay the bills. It is also a testament to how the crazies run the world. Most of us just want to go to work, come home and relax, and build a family and life. The crazies don’t think that way. They are loud, and they vote. Ultimately, politicians whose only interest is in power, cave in to them. (A government permit needed to wear heels taller than 2 inches in Carmel? Spare me!) As Californians now flee in droves, the stories they tell disabuse us of any notion of paradise. This book does that in spades. Read it!”
- John Linder, Former U.S. Congressman (GA-7)

For now, I see this as political momentum, perhaps even a paper tiger. If the same trend were taking hold in places like Jacksonville, Palm Beach, Birmingham, or the affluent northern suburbs of Atlanta, I would be quite concerned.

Notably absent from much of the Democratic Socialists of America’s recent messaging was any sustained emphasis on conservation or the natural environment. Instead, the focus has centered on housing affordability, rent control, Medicare for All, stronger labor unions, wealth redistribution, tuition free college, criminal justice reform, immigration, and anti-Israel activism. Let’s not forget the virtue signaling, including New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani publicly stating he would have Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if he visited the city. It was a ridiculous and childish stunt that said far more about political theatre than serious governance.

To be fair, the DSA supports the Green New Deal and has environmental policies in its platform. But there is a meaningful distinction between climate policy and a broader philosophy of conservation. I was surprised by the relative lack of emphasis on biodiversity, habitat restoration, wildlife recovery, and the protection of nature for its own sake. Given the movement’s broader worldview, I expected those issues to feature far more prominently.

So what does this mean? It may simply reflect concentrated pockets of ideological activists rather than a broad national realignment. It may also be driven by younger, highly mobile urban voters who are at a particular stage of life and may not remain in those cities over the long term. Neighborhoods like Brooklyn, or parts of Los Angeles and San Francisco, have very large transient populations whose political preferences are hardly representative of the country as a whole. If you're curious about this, you should follow. Rob Henderson.

One aspect I do find interesting is the movement’s historical lineage. In 1982, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee merged with the New American Movement, a New Left organization that emerged from the student activism of the 1960s. That merger created today’s Democratic Socialists of America, giving it a direct institutional connection to earlier generations of the American left. In a country with a comparatively short political history, that continuity is notable, even if I disagree with much of the ideology.

Why am I not especially worried? Because I do not believe these politics reflect the views of America as a whole. Their strongest support remains concentrated in a handful of large, heavily urbanized, left leaning cities such as New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Beyond those places, the political picture looks much different.

I also think many voters are becoming more deliberate in how they cast their ballots. Turnout remains relatively low in many elections, and local political dynamics often matter far more than national narratives. I’m not a political scientist, but I follow these debates closely enough to distinguish between genuine systemic risks and social media hysteria.

Also... New York City’s municipal grocery store proposal is a joke. Just have a look at this breakdown from Nick Kokonas:

For now, I remain unconvinced that this any sort of durable political movement.

To end, I also found this Associated Press piece interesting:

A new media ecosystem is taking root on the left, reshaping Democratic politics | The Associated Press

https://share.google/D0QSXWGUzUyeOtNuI

In many ways, it reminds me of the Tea Party movement that paved the way for Donald Trump’s rise. At the same time, I also see a clear thread running from Occupy Wall Street through to today’s Democratic Socialists of America. But I will bet against the DSA rising to anything powerful nationwide.

Perhaps the most telling development, however, is the reaction from establishment Democrats themselves. The centrist Democratic group Third Way has openly stated that Democrats should stop appeasing the DSA and confront it directly. They think its politically toxic outside deep blue districts. I totally agree.

So does the DSA, and dare I mention the looming talk of a new party from Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, really mean anything? I don’t think so. To me, it’s just more political grift and less problem solving. Thanks for nothing!

Here we go again. Another round of triumphalism about California as the model for the future.

In a recent column, Matthew A. Winkler praises Gavin Newsom as an economic maestro, pointing to California’s scale and output as proof of success. That argument shows up every few years. It sounds convincing until you look at how the system actually works.

By Matthew A. Winkler, Bloomberg: Who Knew ‘Slick’ Gavin Newsom Was Such an Economic Maestro

Start with the basic mistake. California does not exist on its own. It is a product of the American system. Its capital flows, labor markets, federal backing, and institutional advantages all sit inside a national structure built over generations. Treating it as a standalone model is not analysis. It is ignoring the system that made it possible.

Back east, that system is obvious. The economy is layered and distributed. New York finance, Washington governance, Boston education, mid-Atlantic logistics, Southeast growth, all tied together over two centuries. No single state carries the narrative because the strength is in the network.

Go west, and people start pretending one state is the system. California and Texas are large enough to project themselves as complete models. They dominate west of the Mississippi, with Chicago as the exception. That is where the distortion begins. Their maximalists take a regional success and try to universalize it.

California still produces. No one serious disputes that. The issue is how it produces, what it costs to keep producing, and how long that can continue. The trajectory is becoming clear. California is absorbing more constraint, while Texas is positioned for continued expansion.

The signals are not subtle. The most “productive” state in the country carries some of the most visible strain. It has the largest homeless population in the United States. It runs one of the largest welfare systems. It has the largest foreign-born population, which reflects both its pull and the pressure that comes with scale.

It still cannot build housing at scale. Infrastructure drags. Costs rise across everything that matters. The middle gets squeezed out of its own economy. That is not a side issue. That is the system under strain.

And yet the defense never changes. Look at the size. Look at the GDP. Look at the innovation. Fine. Now look at the friction.

The state is led by political leadership that consistently fails upward, insulated from the consequences of its own decisions. Public sector activity accounts for a meaningful share of the economy, but its influence extends far beyond that. Policy decisions shape outcomes at every level.

Regulation, permitting, and political priorities set the conditions the private economy is forced to operate within. Add the influence of public sector unions and entrenched interests, and you get a system that sustains itself well but corrects itself poorly. That is the part California’s maximalists refuse to confront. They point to what exists and call it proof of design. They do not ask how much of that output is happening in spite of the system wrapped around it.

They also ignore the regional reality. California carries the western economy to a degree that distorts perception. Outside a few pockets, there is not the same depth or diversification you see in the East. When California slows, there is less around it to absorb the impact.

This is not a collapse story. It is a limits story.

California works. It just works with increasing drag, rising cost, and a shrinking margin for error.

And the louder its maximalists get, the more they reveal the problem. They are not defending a model. They are defending an outcome that was built under very different conditions.

California did not become what it is because its current system is perfect. It became what it is because of accumulated advantages inside a broader American framework. This is what happens when a system shifts from expansion to constraint. The boom does not disappear overnight, but it is almost certainly a boom / bust scenario.

And with that, the balance of western US momentum changes. California absorbs more pressure. Texas absorbs more growth. The rest of the east coast just continues on, like it has for 200 plus years.

If you want to read about California’s endless issues, check out my book: The Myth of California. The Amazon Kindle version was released in 2025, and spent a number of months as an Amazon bestseller (even #1 in a few categories). The paperback and audiobook will be released later this year.

Endorsements for “The Myth of California”

“California was once America’s “Promised Land” where people flocked to find gold, good weather, and opportunities in everything from movies to manufacturing. It was the agricultural epicenter of the world, known as the “salad bowl” of the planet. But decades of leftist leadership has destroyed everything but the weather. It’s become “Paradise Lost” with homelessness, unanswered crime, and choking tax rates and regulations causing people to flee in stunning numbers to get to places where their families can live without the boot of big government on their necks and cultural cuckoos setting the atmosphere of the lifestyle. Chad Hagan details what happened in his riveting book, “The Myth of California: How Big Government Destroyed the Golden State.” It’s the tragic story of how the irrational left destroys everything it touches and how one state exchanged its gold for garbage.
- Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas, Bestselling Author, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel

“My father was a car salesman in a town of 800 people in Northern Minnesota. He had one vacation in his working life, and we took a trip to California. He had a friend who had settled in Carlsbad years earlier and wanted to visit. I was 10. My brother was 11, and our sister was 7. We were in awe. It was a modest home, beautifully maintained, with a yard full of fruit trees. We picked oranges and ate them in the yard. We had grapefruit off the trees for breakfast. I dreamed of moving to California for years. No longer! Chad Hagan’s book, The Myth of California, will make you disappointed, infuriated, and then just plain sad. It is a cautionary tale about how politicians can destroy a paradise in one lifetime. Ultimately, unchecked political power serves only itself. The citizens are included only to pay the bills. It is also a testament to how the crazies run the world. Most of us just want to go to work, come home and relax, and build a family and life. The crazies don’t think that way. They are loud, and they vote. Ultimately, politicians whose only interest is in power, cave in to them. (A government permit needed to wear heels taller than 2 inches in Carmel? Spare me!) As Californians now flee in droves, the stories they tell disabuse us of any notion of paradise. This book does that in spades. Read it!”
- John Linder, Former U.S. Congressman (GA-7)

There are substantial environmental considerations as well. Responsible mining requires companies that are well governed and properly capitalized so they can restore landscapes, protect water sources, and rehabilitate land after extraction.

Washington has begun to grasp a strategic reality that much of the world has long understood: Critical minerals are the foundation of modern power. From advanced weapons systems to electric vehicles and consumer electronics, the metals that underpin these technologies now carry the same geopolitical weight that oil did in the 20th century.

The U.S. effort to establish a Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve is a welcome development. Project Vault is a public-private supply chain security initiative that establishes the reserve. Financed through a $10 billion lending commitment from the Export-Import Bank and $2 billion from private partners, the project will seek to source and store critical minerals in facilities nationwide. This strategy will provide America with some insulation against supply shocks and geopolitical pressure, especially in an era of intensifying competition with China and instability across global supply chains.

Building a strategic reserve will require more than expanding domestic mining, because domestic production is only part of the solution. The government understands this, which is why it has moved to accelerate permitting and unlock the country’s significant untapped mineral resources. Initiatives such as the government’s FAST-41 transparency process are steps in the right direction. By streamlining regulatory reviews and improving coordination among federal agencies, the process can help move long-stalled projects toward construction and operation.

To read the rest of my view, and the counterview from Brig. Gen. (Ret.) John Adams, arguing for expanded domestic production, check out the article at DC Journal.

Today marks 250 years since the publication of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. That’s a long time, but the influence of this book is hard to overstate. Few works of political economy have had consequences on the scale of this one. And while political economy itself seems to be less and less understood in today’s world, often replaced by mathematical economics designed to support existing policy, Smith did not simply write a book about commerce. He explained the mechanics of a new kind of society that was beginning to take shape across the Atlantic world.

In the eighteenth century most European governments still operated within the framework of mercantilism. Often, this is what we’ve poked fun at President Trump for appearing to support. Regardless, before Smith wealth was widely assumed to come from accumulation. States tried to hoard precious metals, restrict imports, and control trade through monopolies and chartered companies. Commerce existed, but it was tightly managed and often distorted by political privilege.

Smith argued that this understanding of wealth was fundamentally wrong. The prosperity of nations did not come from stockpiles of gold or from carefully managed trade balances. It came from productivity. It came from the capacity of ordinary people to produce more goods through specialization and exchange.

His discussion of the pin factory became the most famous example in the book. A single worker trying to make pins from start to finish could produce only a handful each day. Divide the process into specialized tasks and production multiplies. Workers gain skill in a narrow function. Time is saved moving between tasks. Tools improve. The result is an enormous increase in output.

This was not a minor observation about manufacturing. Smith was identifying the central mechanism behind modern economic growth. Specialization allows knowledge and efficiency to compound. As productivity increases, goods become cheaper, markets expand, and further specialization becomes possible.

Another insight in The Wealth of Nations was Smith’s explanation of how economic coordination occurs without central direction. Individuals pursuing their own interests still produce patterns of order through exchange. Supply adjusts to demand without the need for a central authority directing production. Smith described this process with the metaphor of an “invisible hand.”

This was a direct challenge to the economic thinking of the time. Mercantilist systems assumed that governments needed to orchestrate trade in order to secure prosperity. Smith believed the opposite. Governments that attempted to micromanage commerce usually produced monopolies, corruption, and inefficiency.

Much of the book is devoted to dismantling those arrangements. Smith had no patience for guild restrictions, chartered trading companies, or industries protected by political influence. These systems benefited small groups while limiting the productive potential of society as a whole.

It is sometimes forgotten how much of The Wealth of Nations is a critique of regulation and economic privilege.

The book also appeared at a moment when the structure of the Atlantic world was changing. It was published in 1776, the same year Britain’s American colonies declared independence in the American Declaration of Independence. The imperial trading system that had defined the previous century was under strain. New commercial relationships were emerging between Europe, North America, and the wider world.

Smith’s work helped explain the economic logic behind this transformation. Open exchange, expanding markets, and rising productivity offered a more durable foundation for prosperity than the old imperial system of restrictions and monopolies.

It is also important to remember that Smith did not see markets as operating in isolation from society. Before writing The Wealth of Nations, he published The Theory of Moral Sentiments, a study of ethics and human behavior. Smith believed economic life depended on trust, law, and shared moral expectations. Commercial societies function only when individuals believe agreements will be honored and institutions will enforce rules fairly.

In closing, another remarkable thing about Adam Smith is that he lived during one of the most intellectually fertile periods in Western history. The world he inhabited, and the people he associated with, were themselves extraordinary. Smith moved in circles that included figures such as Joshua Reynolds and Samuel Johnson, part of the remarkable intellectual life of the eighteenth century. He was widely noted in his own time for his intellect and his ability to explain complex ideas clearly. Two and a half centuries later his work remains part of the foundation of modern economic thought.

If you have not read this book before, clearly I am a fan. Here is a link to Project Gutenberg’s edition: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota have launched one of the largest Medicaid fraud crackdowns in American history. Raids. Indictments. Billions of dollars. A system designed to help the poor became a loot bag for criminals and grifters. California saw those headlines and said, “They should have consulted us!”

Sacramento’s progressive class has spent years perfecting a cleaner version of the same scam — one that stays inside the lines, collects federal dollars on paper, and sends the bill to taxpayers everywhere else. Call it “legal.” Call it “approved.” Call it “routine.” None of those words makes it legitimate.

In 2004, the Government Accountability Office warned Congress that states were gaming Medicaid through intergovernmental transfers. States would shuffle public money through a circular process to make spending look real, inflate federal matching payments, then cycle the funds back to themselves. The GAO described “round-trip” arrangements that generated federal dollars without exposing states to true financial risk and that undermined the balance Congress intended.

Read the full article here.

If you want to read about California’s grift, check out my book: The Myth of California. The Amazon Kindle version was released in 2025, and spent a number of months as an Amazon bestseller (even #1 in a few categories). The paperback and audiobook will be released later this year.

Endorsements for “The Myth of California”

“California was once America’s “Promised Land” where people flocked to find gold, good weather, and opportunities in everything from movies to manufacturing. It was the agricultural epicenter of the world, known as the “salad bowl” of the planet. But decades of leftist leadership has destroyed everything but the weather. It’s become “Paradise Lost” with homelessness, unanswered crime, and choking tax rates and regulations causing people to flee in stunning numbers to get to places where their families can live without the boot of big government on their necks and cultural cuckoos setting the atmosphere of the lifestyle. Chad Hagan details what happened in his riveting book, “The Myth of California: How Big Government Destroyed the Golden State.” It’s the tragic story of how the irrational left destroys everything it touches and how one state exchanged its gold for garbage.
- Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas, Bestselling Author, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel

“My father was a car salesman in a town of 800 people in Northern Minnesota. He had one vacation in his working life, and we took a trip to California. He had a friend who had settled in Carlsbad years earlier and wanted to visit. I was 10. My brother was 11, and our sister was 7. We were in awe. It was a modest home, beautifully maintained, with a yard full of fruit trees. We picked oranges and ate them in the yard. We had grapefruit off the trees for breakfast. I dreamed of moving to California for years. No longer! Chad Hagan’s book, The Myth of California, will make you disappointed, infuriated, and then just plain sad. It is a cautionary tale about how politicians can destroy a paradise in one lifetime. Ultimately, unchecked political power serves only itself. The citizens are included only to pay the bills. It is also a testament to how the crazies run the world. Most of us just want to go to work, come home and relax, and build a family and life. The crazies don’t think that way. They are loud, and they vote. Ultimately, politicians whose only interest is in power, cave in to them. (A government permit needed to wear heels taller than 2 inches in Carmel? Spare me!) As Californians now flee in droves, the stories they tell disabuse us of any notion of paradise. This book does that in spades. Read it!”
- John Linder, Former U.S. Congressman (GA-7)

I forgot about the Democratic socialist victory in New York City. That is not a rhetorical flourish. I genuinely forgot.

In early December I was back in Manhattan, moving through the city as one does during the holidays. Jewish delis for lunch. Upper East Side dinners. Central Park South walks. Shopping. Buying books and smoking cigars. Visiting a few newly opened businesses. The city was functioning. Everything felt orderly. Civilized.

At no point did it occur to me that New York had just handed political power to a self described democratic socialist.

New York’s socialist turn exists almost entirely at the level of ideology and narrative, not lived reality. The city itself, meaning its incentives, capital flows, habits, and culture of ambition, remains largely indifferent to the slogans now attached to City Hall. That contradiction will not resolve gently.

Which is why this moment is less dangerous than it looks, and more useful.

Everyone surrounding Zohran Mamdani appears fully captured by ideology. Not pragmatism. Not institutional realism. Ideology. That matters because ideological administrations do not course correct early. They accelerate. They overreach. They confuse moral certainty with competence.

This ideological posture is already visible in staffing choices. Cea Weaver, a recent appointee to the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, has publicly compared homeownership to a weapon of white supremacy.

That is how failure is taught.

Socialism rarely works. Communism never does. This is not controversial outside academic environments insulated from consequence. Some European systems combine welfare states with market discipline, and where work, productivity, and social trust still matter, those systems function tolerably. That is not what is being proposed here. And New York is not Denmark. It is a global capital hub with no margin for amateurism.

What comes instead is predictable. Announcements. Symbolic policy. Administrative overreach. A growing gap between rhetoric and results. When failure appears, the response will not be reassessment. It will be the familiar claim that the effort was incomplete.

This is the historical loop socialists do not escape. Failure is attributed not to the system, but to insufficient purity.

What Has Actually Been Promised

Strip away the language and the platform reduces to a few familiar moves.

Housing sits at the center. Rent freezes. Expanded tenant protections. Pressure on landlords. Gestures toward public or social housing. New York already operates one of the most aggressive rent regulation regimes in the developed world. The results have been consistent for decades. Reduced supply. Deferred maintenance. Distorted incentives. Capital moving elsewhere. A mayor cannot compel private builders to build at a loss. He can, however, worsen shortages. That authority is real.

Public safety follows the same pattern. Rhetoric about reducing policing, reallocating funds, and substituting enforcement with community based alternatives. The NYPD budget is largely constrained by labor contracts, state law, and federal oversight. What is discretionary is posture. Enforcement slows. Morale erodes. Response times lengthen. The effects of defunding appear without a formal vote.

Then there is taxation. The language is national. The authority is municipal. New York City does not control income tax rates independently. Property taxes are already capped, distorted, and politically volatile. The city’s tax base is narrow and unstable, dependent on high earners and commercial real estate. Pressing harder does not broaden it. It makes it more fragile.

Finally, expanded services. Free programs. New guarantees. Each recurring obligation competes with the three items the mayor cannot alter. Pensions. Debt service. Medicaid costs. These are not ideological abstractions. They are binding constraints.

What He Can Actually Do

This is where the romantic idea of power collapses.

The mayor of New York cannot print money. He cannot override state law. He cannot rewrite union contracts. He cannot nationalize assets. He cannot compel capital to stay. He cannot meaningfully restructure policing. He cannot create new revenue at scale.

What he can do is set tone. He can erode confidence. He can slow approvals. He can politicize permitting. He can pressure agencies into compliance. He can make procurement adversarial. He can signal to investors, builders, and employers that they are tolerated at best and suspect at worst.

These are negative powers. They degrade systems faster than they build anything.

How This Fails

This will not fail spectacularly. It will fail quietly.

Fewer cranes. Slower permits. Capital leaving without announcement. Costs rising under subsidy. Service quality declining alongside louder language. Increased reliance on state and federal support reframed as solidarity.

Supporters will rationalize. Critics will be dismissed. Little will be absorbed in real time.

A rising generation will encounter socialism not as identity or theory, but as administration. Through rent controls that restrict supply. Through regulatory delay that suppresses opportunity. Through capital leaving under moral cover. Through services deteriorating as obligations expand.

New York will not become socialist. What it will become is impatient. Impatient with incompetence. Impatient with performance masked by language.

The city has not survived ideological experiments so much as it has recovered from them, usually slowly and at significant cost.

The 1970s fiscal crisis was not a morality tale. It was the result of a city that promised more than it could fund, protected insiders at the expense of solvency, and treated capital as something to be coerced rather than persuaded. By 1975, New York was effectively bankrupt. Services collapsed. Crime rose. Neighborhoods emptied. The city was stabilized by external control and a reassertion of fiscal limits.

The pattern reappeared later in softer form as regulatory layers accumulated in the name of participation and fairness. The result was not justice, but paralysis. Housing supply contracted. Costs rose. Informal veto power displaced accountability. The city became less functional.

There was, briefly, a corrective. Before his long public unraveling, Rudy Giuliani was an effective mayor. Not because he offered a new ideology, but because he imposed order, restored baseline competence, and accepted tradeoffs. That period did not last. It rarely does. But it mattered while it held.

Even in the 2010s, when the city appeared flush, the constraints were visible. A narrow tax base. A real estate market dependent on confidence. Pension obligations compounding quietly. Rhetoric expanding as the margin for error narrowed.

What the city does not tolerate for long is stagnation.

And stagnation is what ideological governance produces. Not transformation. Drift. Delay. Declining performance masked by improved language until the bill arrives.

That is the risk now. Not permanent socialism, but stasis. Less dynamism. Less honesty about tradeoffs.

Which is why this moment is clarifying.

Bad ideas persist longest in theory. They unravel faster in practice.

There is also a structural issue with the social base behind this politics. Downwardly mobile upper middle class voters, often young adults from affluent backgrounds who are not themselves affluent, played a disproportionate role in enabling this outcome. Not exclusively, but noticeably. For many, this was a New York moment. A way to signal distance from the rest of the country and from the norms they associate with it. The motivation was less material deprivation than status anxiety, which is a weak foundation for governance. It mobilizes quickly and dissipates just as fast.

Symbolism played an outsized role. Representation matters to many voters, and Mamdani’s election carries clear symbolic weight as the first Muslim, the first South Asian, and the youngest mayor of New York City in over a century. That symbolism helped energize turnout. It does not substitute for institutional capacity or fiscal authority.

What remains, then, is the experiment itself. An attempt to govern a capital dependent city through moral language rather than institutional constraint.

That experiment will not end in transformation.

This piece lands against a backdrop that already tells us a great deal about where the year is heading. Venezuela continues drifting into managed collapse. Maduro in custody, renewed pressure on Colombia. Iran potentially pressing outward, with the ayatollah reportedly exploring an exit to Moscow. And then there’s New York: a leftist political celebrity mayoral figure, Mamdani, calling all sorts of shots without holding the institutional power to back them up, reinforcing a pattern we’ve seen repeatedly: institutional weakness masked by narrative control.

The common thread isn’t chaos. It’s pricing power → who has it, who loses it, and what happens when long-protected structures finally face competition or constraint. That’s true in geopolitics, and it’s true in business. Venezuela is about far more than oil, but oil still matters (along with the oil supermajors, and Gulf Coast refining capacity in Texas). Colombia is about more than commodities, but commodities still anchor intensely. What we are watching is not just political change, but symbolic collapse: the dismantling of Chavez’s legacy in Latin America, and pressure building across the broader Islamic-Marxist axis. Iran, too, is half ideological and half material, tied to uranium, energy, and enforcement power.

This is why free markets and market-based economics remain so endlessly important to our lives, our society, and the things we actually care about preserving.

So, as a brief lead-in to my latest piece: this article looks at one narrow case (weight-loss drugs) but the message tracks. Prices didn’t fall because of a moral awakening or bureaucratic wisdom. They fell because the underlying power dynamics shifted. When competition appears, excuses evaporate.

Why weight-loss drug prices finally fell — and who deserves credit
https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/why-weight-loss-drug-prices-finally-fell-and-who-deserves-credit

Recently, Bannon told The Economist that Donald Trump “will have a third term.” On its face, the claim sounds absurd. The Twenty-Second Amendment clearly bars any president from seeking a third term; they cannot appear on the ballot as a candidate for the presidency. And let’s face it: any effort to rewrite those rules would only arm the other side, since sweeping constitutional changes almost always end up benefiting whichever faction comes next.

Some partisans are now floating the notion that Trump might appear on the ticket in 2028 not as president but as vice president, a technical workaround meant to test the letter of the law rather than its spirit. The idea is that a loyal surrogate could run for president, win, and then step aside, allowing Trump to assume office through the line of succession. It sounds more like political fan fiction than constitutional design, but in the present climate of permanent campaigning and institutional fatigue, even fantasy can become strategy.

The constitutional barriers are formidable. The Twenty-Second Amendment declares, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” The Twelfth Amendment adds, “No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” The relationship between those clauses leaves little room for interpretation. If Trump is ineligible to serve as president, he is equally ineligible to serve as vice president. Legal scholars from across the ideological spectrum have said as much. The so-called “VP loophole” would almost certainly collapse under judicial scrutiny, and any attempt to use it would trigger a constitutional crisis of the first order.

But legality is almost beside the point. The value of such a notion lies not in its feasibility but in its symbolism. It reflects a worldview in which rules are obstacles to be navigated rather than principles to be honored. The “third-term” talk functions less as a plan than as a demonstration of will, a message to supporters that Trump’s movement cannot be constrained by the normal limits of law or time. It is the rhetoric of permanence disguised as procedural cleverness.

For my purposes, what matters is not the scheme itself but what it reveals: the refusal of power to yield to succession. The American system, like all systems, depends on the acceptance of loss: the idea that leadership is temporary and legitimacy comes from turnover. When a political generation no longer believes that, when it begins to treat institutions as extensions of personal destiny, democracy enters its decadent phase. Bannon’s prophecy of a “third term” is not only about Trump. It is about a class of leaders who cannot imagine a world after themselves.

As Reuters noted in May 2025, “Trump is barred from running for vice president because he is not eligible to be president. The Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, ‘No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.’” The law, in other words, has already rendered its verdict, but the myth of permanence continues to build momentum.

This myth of permanence lies at the heart of Boomer politics. The generation that once promised renewal has come to equate continuity with survival. In the mid-twentieth century, the Boomers inherited institutions designed for rotation and reform; over time, they transformed those systems into extensions of their own identity. Their genius was not for creating new structures but for endlessly extending the life of old ones. The political class that came of age under Reagan and Clinton learned to preserve itself through procedural cunning and narrative control. Now, even as the limits of biology and legitimacy close in, the instinct remains the same: to prolong, to rebrand, to outlast. The Trump movement, though framed as insurgent, draws its energy from that same generational impulse, which is the refusal to step aside. The “third-term” fantasy is simply the final expression of a political culture that cannot imagine succession, only continuation. And in the end, it does real damage to the system by eroding trust in constitutional limits while empowering its adversaries.

At best any and all talk of a “third-term” would have to be ideological. And that’s fine. Anything else if damaging.

Every few years, a certain kind of progressive essayist rediscovers the idea of “soft secession.” The fantasy goes like this: the prosperous blue states link arms, wall themselves off from the brutish red hinterlands, and re-create the Union in their own image. The latest entry, published by Mother Jones, insists that “responsible” America should start cutting economic and political ties with its less enlightened cousins.

It is a delicious delusion for the graduate-seminar class, but it collapses instantly under real-world scrutiny.

1. A Union of Interdependence

The United States is not a patchwork of self-contained fiefdoms. It is a single market. Supply chains, logistics networks, and federal systems in aviation, energy, and finance cross every red-blue border a hundred times a day. A gallon of California milk relies on Iowa feed, Texas fuel, and Tennessee trucking. Try “decoupling” that and you collapse half the economy before lunch.

The romance of a self-sufficient coastal confederacy is geopolitically naïve. California cannot power itself without Western grids, and New York depends on Midwestern manufacturing.

2. Blue-State Prosperity Is Actually Federal Prosperity

The essay sells the idea that blue states could thrive on their own wealth. But blue wealth is a federal product. Silicon Valley, the NIH corridor, and Wall Street all depend on federal research grants, defense contracts, and monetary stability. The so-called “blue economy” floats on the American system it now pretends to transcend.

A real secession, even a “soft” one, would rupture those veins of capital and credit. Markets would price it as national fragmentation, and every pension fund from Palo Alto to Providence would feel it.

3. The Myth of Red-State Backwardness

Then comes the condescension: red states as economic freeloaders. It is numerically lazy and obtuse.

Yes, blue states post higher median incomes because they are urban, dense, and expensive (i.e., NYC, LA and Chicago are the largest cities in America). Adjust for cost of living and net domestic migration, and growth tilts red. The Sunbelt’s population boom, energy exports, and manufacturing reshoring are not flukes. They are the predictable results of lower taxes, cheaper land, and pro-enterprise governance.

If the Mother Jones worldview were correct, people would be fleeing Texas for California, not the other way around.

4. The Federal-Transfer Sleight of Hand

Critics love to note that red states “take more” in federal aid. But much of that money funds national defense, agriculture, and energy that keep blue economies running. Federal spending is not charity. It is the cost of keeping the republic stitched together.

Taxpayers in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Georgia are no longer beggars at the blue-state table. They are building the very industries—energy, logistics, semiconductors, ports—that will anchor the next American century.

5. Lessons from the Red-State Laboratories

Not every red-state experiment succeeds. Kansas tried to sprint on tax cuts and stumbled. But the laboratories of low-cost governance are learning faster than Washington. While Illinois and California flirt with fiscal insolvency, Florida and Tennessee run surpluses, draw migration, and lead in small-business formation.

People vote with their U-Hauls.

6. The Moral Error of Exitism

More than bad economics, “soft secession” is bad citizenship. It treats millions of Americans as disposable for the comfort of a few elites who imagine they can purchase moral purity through isolation.

A republic cannot survive if its wealthiest regions behave like gated communities. Blue America needs red America’s energy, food, and discipline. Red America needs blue America’s capital, research, and culture. The bargain is imperfect, but it is irreplaceable.

7. A Better Ambition

The answer to national dysfunction is not retreat but renewal. Rebuild federal competence, modernize energy grids, decentralize regulation, and reward productivity instead of grievance. There is grandeur in fixing the machine rather than fleeing it.

“Soft secession” is a soft-minded substitute for statesmanship.

A Rough Quantitative Thought Experiment

Cal can’t secede, but for sake of the argument, if they were to secede, it is clear that California loses something like 15 percent of its GDP in the first few years from trade disruption, capital flight, and loss of federal support, that is roughly $600 billion off a $4 trillion base. Over time, compounding effects could push the loss to 20 or 30 percent, meaning $800 billion to $1 trillion below baseline.

Even in conservative scenarios, a $300 to $600 billion loss is plausible. California would also face a massive fiscal hole, having to replace federal revenues for defense, healthcare, and the social safety net. That means higher taxes or reduced services, both of which would choke growth further.

The U.S. economy, far more diversified, would absorb the loss. Losing 14 percent of GDP is painful, but the other 86 percent would adapt, reallocate industries, and move on. The rest of the country can survive without California. California cannot survive without the country.

And beyond that, California cannot legally or functionally secede. Even “soft” versions collapse under the Constitution, economic interdependence, and political reality.

And if the rest of the blue states followed California down that road? They’d lose another $300 to $600 billion annually in trade, finance, and research spillovers. Remove California, and you strip a quarter of blue-state GDP and a third of its innovation base.

So the “soft secession” fantasy isn’t red America’s problem — it’s blue America’s suicide note.

The union is not a marriage of convenience. It is the greatest economic engine in human history. Those who dream of divorce should remember who pays the mortgage.

If you wish to read more about the issues with Leftist California Nationalism, which is a coastal-upper-middle-class-thought-combo-from-hell, check out my book The Myth of California.

Endorsements for “The Myth of California”

“California was once America’s “Promised Land” where people flocked to find gold, good weather, and opportunities in everything from movies to manufacturing. It was the agricultural epicenter of the world, known as the “salad bowl” of the planet. But decades of leftist leadership has destroyed everything but the weather. It’s become “Paradise Lost” with homelessness, unanswered crime, and choking tax rates and regulations causing people to flee in stunning numbers to get to places where their families can live without the boot of big government on their necks and cultural cuckoos setting the atmosphere of the lifestyle. Chad Hagan details what happened in his riveting book, “The Myth of California: How Big Government Destroyed the Golden State.” It’s the tragic story of how the irrational left destroys everything it touches and how one state exchanged its gold for garbage. - Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas, Bestselling Author, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel

“My father was a car salesman in a town of 800 people in Northern Minnesota. He had one vacation in his working life, and we took a trip to California. He had a friend who had settled in Carlsbad years earlier and wanted to visit. I was 10. My brother was 11, and our sister was 7. We were in awe. It was a modest home, beautifully maintained, with a yard full of fruit trees. We picked oranges and ate them in the yard. We had grapefruit off the trees for breakfast. I dreamed of moving to California for years. No longer! Chad Hagan’s book, The Myth of California, will make you disappointed, infuriated, and then just plain sad. It is a cautionary tale about how politicians can destroy a paradise in one lifetime. Ultimately, unchecked political power serves only itself. The citizens are included only to pay the bills. It is also a testament to how the crazies run the world. Most of us just want to go to work, come home and relax, and build a family and life. The crazies don’t think that way. They are loud, and they vote. Ultimately, politicians whose only interest is in power, cave in to them. (A government permit needed to wear heels taller than 2 inches in Carmel? Spare me!) As Californians now flee in droves, the stories they tell disabuse us of any notion of paradise. This book does that in spades. Read it!” - John Linder, Former U.S. Congressman (GA-7)

A New Balance-Sheet for a New Age

For half a century the United States has treated its official gold reserves—261 million ounces held at Fort Knox, West Point, and Denver—as a ceremonial relic. Booked at $42.22 per ounce under an accounting rule from the early 1970s, that stockpile sits on the Treasury’s books at just $11 billion—less than one-half of one percent of GDP.

In reality, at modern prices it’s worth over $1.3 trillion. A revaluation—legally possible under 31 U.S.C. §5117—would allow Treasury to issue new gold certificates to the Federal Reserve at a higher reference price (say, $5 000/oz). The Fed, bound by law to credit Treasury’s account, would inject new dollars in exchange.

This isn’t conventional “money printing.” It’s the conversion of dormant reserve faith into liquid national capital.

The Objective: Controlled Monetary Detonation

Rather than a crisis, the move would be framed as a controlled explosion—a balance-sheet shock designed to reset the foundations of American power.

The new liquidity would not finance social programs or deficits; it would capitalize a sovereign investment engine devoted to:

Re-industrialization: advanced manufacturing, chip foundries, critical-mineral refining, energy infrastructure.

Breakthrough R&D: AGI, quantum computing, biomanufacturing, fusion, next-generation defense systems.

Strategic resilience: domestic supply chains, rare-earth independence, and hardened cyber-physical grids.

Symbolic assets: a modest Bitcoin reserve and technology endowments that anchor the next-generation dollar.

The aim: convert reserve myth into productive reality.

The Economic Logic

1. Treasury asset-reprice → +$1 trillion+ equity infusion.

2. Fed credit → Treasury General Account surge without new debt.

3. Targeted investment funds → long-horizon, productivity-enhancing outlays (not consumption).

4. Growth flywheel → industrial orders, wages, taxable output, restored fiscal confidence.

5. Global signal → America re-anchors the dollar in tangible capability, not promise.

Handled prudently—through capital-budget rules and Fed sterilization tools—the inflation risk is minimal compared with the output gain.

Geopolitical and Ideological Reboot

The United States would reassert itself as the technological sovereign, replacing the twentieth-century petrodollar with a twenty-first-century technodollar.

Allies gain privileged access to U.S. technology stacks (AI, energy, defense) in exchange for continued support of the dollar system.

China’s export-led model is undercut not by tariffs alone but by an American monopoly on the next layer of civilization’s operating system.

This is monetary policy as grand strategy.

Cultural and Mythic Payoff

Every superpower needs a founding story. The post-1971 dollar rested on faith in financial ingenuity; the rebooted system would rest on faith in technological supremacy.

The gold revaluation becomes the ritual: converting the symbolic metal of the old world into the creative energy of the new. It says, in effect, “Our reserves are not buried—they are alive.”

Risks and Realities

Requires Congressional authorization and coordination with the Fed.

Potential global reserve shock and repricing of gold, FX, and bonds.

Success hinges on disciplined allocation—without that, it’s inflationary theater.

Politically, it must be sold as renewal, not desperation.

The Takeaway

A gold revaluation is more than accounting…it’s narrative engineering.

Handled boldly, it could provide the capital, confidence, and myth America needs for its next industrial age.

Handled poorly, it becomes another illusion.

Either way, the fuse is lit.

But step back. Is the UN really that bad?

The critique is not baseless. The U.S. contributes about 22 percent of the UN’s core budget and 25 percent of its peacekeeping budget. That is billions of dollars every year. In return, Washington does not get much credit. Autocracies sit on human rights panels. The Security Council is stuck in 1945, with Russia and China blocking anything meaningful. The bureaucracy is thick, reform is slow, and scandals are real. It is not hard to see why American taxpayers ask: why are we underwriting this?

Still, does anyone really want a world without the UN? For all its flaws, it remains the only global convening table. Peacekeeping operations help stabilize fragile regions at a fraction of what it would cost the U.S. military alone. Specialized agencies like WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO, and the FAO do work that would otherwise fall through the cracks.

The UN also plays a quiet but essential role on the environment. Climate reports, biodiversity conventions, and global frameworks on emissions all flow through UN platforms. Strip that away and you do not get nothing, you get chaos. Fragmented regimes and weaker standards.

Trump frames UN spending as a shakedown. And, as we all know, a large portion of Americans love attacking federal and supranational platforms. The realpolitik is different. The U.S. spends far more to maintain military bases in Germany, Japan, or Qatar than it does to keep the UN lights on. And unlike those bases, UN spending actually buys legitimacy, soft power influence, and a stage where Washington can shape global norms. The UN amplifies U.S. leverage.

The UN is not efficient. But it is not the enemy. It has flaws, but abandoning it would cost America more than keeping it. Maybe try to reform it. Walking away is not a strategy.

Read the full article here.

Symbolism is not strategy. This kind of ruling risks slowing climate action by dragging it into years of litigation.

First, there is no universally accepted legal definition of “climate obligations.” The Paris Agreement is important, but it is voluntary and non-binding. That is frustrating. Why not engage in legally binding 30x30 targets, with real rules and regulations? What is the point of installing non-binding agreements to agree? That kind of structure collapses under serious legal pressure. Trying to enforce it through international courts creates confusion, not restoration. Legal fights don’t protect nature. They build case files.

Second, the idea of “climate reparations” is politically explosive and operationally vague. Who decides the damage? Who pays? Who is historically responsible? This opens the door to endless disputes and finger-pointing, especially between developed and developing countries. It is not a formula for cooperation. It is a recipe for gridlock. And that gridlock is exactly what helped get us into this mess.

Third, litigation is not restoration. It does not plant trees, defend coastlines, or repair broken water systems. The climate crisis demands engineering, land reform, capital investment, and cultural change. Not a decade of courtrooms, lawyers, and press releases.

Supporters of the ruling say it brings moral clarity. “What the court has done has come in and made it crystal clear that affected frontline nations and communities that have been devastated by climate harm — harm that can be traced to the conduct of specific countries and corporations — those communities, those nations, they absolutely have the right to redress and reparations,” said Joie Chowdhury, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, in Grist.

That may be true in principle. But in practice, assigning legal responsibility for climate damage is slow, complex, and politically toxic. And no courtroom, no matter how well-intentioned, can do the work of ecological recovery.

Island nations like Vanuatu are right to demand accountability. They are facing rising seas and increasing instability. But is Vanuatu without emissions? No. No country is. And no decision from The Hague will change that. Real solutions require real action. That means investment in resilience, targeted debt relief, and international support for ecological renewal.

This brings me to the Chagos Islands, a place where the idea of justice collides directly with environmental reality. After years of legal battles, the push to return the islands to former inhabitants has been framed as a moral and legal necessity. But what happens to the ecosystem that has existed there, largely untouched for decades? What happens to coral reefs, protected species, and undisturbed marine zones if repopulation proceeds without environmental oversight? Will justice for displaced people come at the cost of biodiversity? No one seems to have an answer. Justice is also becoming removed from logic and increasingly politically motivated.

This is where the climate justice conversation gets slippery. It's being lumped in with every historical grievance, every fight over land, territory, and restitution. But not all justice claims are aligned. Some run straight into conflict. The right of return is not always the right of regeneration. Justice without ecological awareness can easily become a wrecking ball, not a path forward.

This is not a rejection of law. It is a call to stay focused. Climate is not a legal debate. It is a rebuilding project. With rare exception, every country still has land, water, and ecosystems worth restoring.

If we want justice, give nature rights. Fund Indigenous stewards. Rebuild what has been lost. Climate solutions are built on the ground, not won in court.

Some of that sounds fine on the surface. Longevity, computing power, medical breakthroughs. I understand the appeal. But the real problem is not the technology itself. It is the radical social transformation that comes with it. Then again, radical social change is not new. We have been talking about it since the beginning of civilization.

A recent article in The Spectator finally said the quiet part out loud (and mentioned a few key culprits). It suggested that what we are seeing in modern gender ideology may be linked to a broader transhumanist project. For many of us, this was not a surprise. It was confirmation.

I also know that a small but powerful group within the gender movement is attempting to steer society in a direction that aligns with transhumanist goals. They might not say it that way. But the political lobby is well funded and very obvious. So is the pattern. If you can convince people that the body is to be redesigned at will, you can lay the foundation for a world where nothing about the human experience is fixed.

Some people are excited about that. They see it as freedom. I see it as an anti-human 007 villain crashing into ethical boundaries, to put it lightly.

Certain tools coming out of this space will improve life. But there is a difference between healing the body and rejecting the human form altogether. There is a difference between using technology to help people and using it to erase what we are.

Everyone says power corrupts. Maybe that is completely true. For centuries, people have blamed the wealthy for controlling the world. There are entire movements and conspiracy theories built around the idea that those with money secretly pull the strings behind governments or central banks. And while that is more paranoia than truth, we should be asking a different question.

What about technological power? What happens when a handful of people are first to market with tools that can rewrite the human experience?

That is real power. And in my opinion, it means it should be dealt with politically—and fast. Just like AI. (Even though AI regulation is already taking far too long.)

Maybe this entire project of human redesign should not even be happening on Earth. Maybe it belongs on another planet. Somewhere it can be studied and contained. Because just like we try to protect forests and oceans and the atmosphere, we should also be protecting what it means to be human.

Would you genetically alter a grizzly bear so it would not kill humans? Would you modify birds so they stop defecating on cars? Should we edit their instincts so they never fly into windows? And while we do alter plants for food and medicine, no one celebrates the arrival of invasive species. As we prolong human life, do we also implant fangs with venom to defend ourselves?

Yes, every reason you give against these ideas will be met with a counter. There is always a workaround. But that is the point. Progress cannot just be about what is possible. It also has to be about what is worthwhile.

We do not need to pretend that the future of humanity depends on becoming hybrids of organic matter and semiconductors. We do not need to follow a handful of activists into a future that looks more like an experiment than a civilization.

“Democracy provokes expectations which are very difficult, in some cases impossible, for the state to satisfy.” - New Statesman, 2025

"Law is not a substitute for politics. When the courts become the main forum for political controversy, the results are likely to be both bad law and bad politics." - Reith Lectures, 2019

"The law should be the last resort, not the first, when dealing with social and moral questions." - Law in a Time of Crisis (2021)

"Judges are not the conscience of the nation. They are not there to deliver social justice. They are there to apply the law." - Reith Lectures, 2019

"We are living through the greatest invasion of personal liberty in our history." - The Times, 2020, on COVID-era government powers

"Democracy is not just about majority rule. It is about the institutional constraints that prevent majorities from becoming tyrannical." - The Spectator, 2021

"We cannot rely on governments to relinquish powers once the emergency that justified them has passed." - Reith Lectures, 2019

"The appetite for being told what to do is one of the most dismal features of modern British life." - The Spectator, 2020

Lectures, Interviews & Articles

Unherd
Jonathan Sumption on Gaza, lockdown and the ECHR Will humanity ever escape the shadow of war?

New Statesman
Democracy is impossible for the state to satisfy

The Times
Jonathan Sumption: ‘I’m not optimistic about the future of our democracy.”

The New York Times
Why Cultural Decline in the U.S. Is a Threat to Democracy

The Tablet
Why voters have lost faith in democracy

BBC Sounds
The Reith Lectures

If it were up to me, I’d advocate for a limited population strategy and a form of eco-nationalism that actually protects the land. If the state were made more exclusive, there’s a chance the sentiment of the population might even improve (and yes, I’m treading lightly here). In a rational world, the California coast would be treated as a national park. But of course, that’s where the population lives because it’s the only sliver of the state, and arguably the country, with consistently moderate weather. The development of that narrow strip was a mistake. So we’re stuck with this absurd, weather-driven population clustering, stacked along cliffs, fault lines, and a 20-to-50-mile-wide band of overpopulated livability hugging the coast. It’s ridiculous. California is, after all, a uniquely rich and fragile environment. But any serious attempt to curb overpopulation or rein in reckless urban expansion would be dismissed out of hand. So here I am, just talking, just wishful thinking.

And let’s dispense with the “this used to be Mexico” talking point while we’re at it. That argument is paper-thin and historically incoherent. Before it was Mexico, it was Spain. Before that, it was a patchwork of indigenous tribal lands (Tongva, Chumash, Cahuilla) none of which bore political borders as we understand them today. So what exactly are we proposing? A return based on empathy and a broken chain of title? Should we divvy up Los Angeles by tribal affiliation and start over? The idea collapses under the weight of its own absurdity. The only reasonable path forward is not a revisionist land claim, but a serious effort to integrate indigenous principles—particularly those tied to environmental stewardship—into public life. That’s worth preserving. But the notion that modern California somehow "belongs" to Mexico is not only historically false → it’s breathtakingly lazy.

Regardless, the recent anti-ICE protests have now spiraled into full-scale urban riots, by professional agitators. What started as political outrage quickly devolved into unrestrained chaos: concrete chunks, fireworks, and other objects hurled at police and the National Guard; reports of federal troops and Marines being deployed; fires and vandalism consuming city blocks; and the deliberate destruction of both public and private property. This isn’t protest—it’s a breakdown of civic order. And it’s what the California dominated Democratic party and the professional agitators want.

What’s more disturbing than the unrest itself is the response from the media-political class. The Left’s unified narrative is as rehearsed as it is detached from reality. Within hours, major media outlets across the Western world framed the riots not as civic collapse or criminality, but as a noble uprising. Under the now-standard banner of “social justice,” the messaging fell into place: label the violence a moral reckoning, reframe destruction as speech, and elevate certain key-points as the defining spirit of the movement. This is very clear orchestration.

Left-wing activist groups like CHIRLA and the openly radical Party for Socialism and Liberation are playing leading roles in organizing and amplifying the protests. This is nothing new—it fits neatly into a century-long pattern of left-wing agitation and political violence across the Western world. Their goal is not public dialogue or resolution. Their goal is the professional orchestration of chaos and the control of narrative through media dominance. In the process, truth is drowned out by emotion, and complexity is replaced with weaponized slogans. As with every major crisis in the West over the last decade, moderate or dissenting voices were instantly cast as villains. Express concern about looting? You’re a bigot. Call for law enforcement? You’re a fascist. Even the phrase “law and order” is now treated as dangerous code. The center isn’t just ignored, it’s being erased. And that’s no accident. The left-wing political machine treats ambiguity as betrayal. There is no room for compromise. You are either fully onboard with their interpretation of justice, or you are the problem.

What makes this moment especially revealing is how uniform and uncritical the coverage has become. From L.A. to London, from Toronto to Berlin, the same talking points echo across platforms. The same images are pushed. The same conclusions are reached—without challenge, without nuance, and without regard for the consequences. Honest debate is unwelcome. The machine offers narrative shelter to destructive movements, cultural immunity from accountability, and a global media bias disguised as consensus. And if you push back, you’re dangerous by default.

These aren’t isolated riots. They’re a stress test for what remains of institutional integrity in the West. The grievances may be real, but they are quickly weaponized by a professional political-media complex that turns anger into spectacle and destruction into virtue. What vanishes in this environment is everything that makes democracy functional: moderation, complexity, and the possibility of common ground.

The Left no longer has to win arguments. It controls the frame. And until that changes—until dissent is tolerated again and the political center is allowed to exist—the “middle ground” will continue to burn right alongside the buildings. It’s undeniable now: there is a coordinated, global, left-wing media system, not merely shaping opinion but actively working to undermine capitalism, law and order, and even the very idea of balance.

One more thing: as Hollywood and Southern California’s cultural propaganda machine collapses under its own weight, it can no longer sell the illusion of this region as a promised land. That myth has expired. And without it, the reality is unavoidable—Southern California is no longer a dream. It’s the biggest mess in the United States. And now, the rest of the world can finally see it.

If you want to read more about California’s endless government overreach, read my new book: The Myth of California. The Amazon Kindle version is available now. The full book, paperback and audiobook will be released this summer.

Endorsements for "The Myth of California" -

"California was once America’s “Promised Land” where people flocked to find gold, good weather, and opportunities in everything from movies to manufacturing. It was the agricultural epicenter of the world, known as the “salad bowl” of the planet. But decades of leftist leadership has destroyed everything but the weather. It’s become “Paradise Lost” with homelessness, unanswered crime, and choking tax rates and regulations causing people to flee in stunning numbers to get to places where their families can live without the boot of big government on their necks and cultural cuckoos setting the atmosphere of the lifestyle. Chad Hagan details what happened in his riveting book, “The Myth of California: How Big Government Destroyed the Golden State.” It’s the tragic story of how the irrational left destroys everything it touches and how one state exchanged its gold for garbage. - Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas, Bestselling Author, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel

"My father was a car salesman in a town of 800 people in Northern Minnesota. He had one vacation in his working life, and we took a trip to California. He had a friend who had settled in Carlsbad years earlier and wanted to visit. I was 10. My brother was 11, and our sister was 7. We were in awe. It was a modest home, beautifully maintained, with a yard full of fruit trees. We picked oranges and ate them in the yard. We had grapefruit off the trees for breakfast. I dreamed of moving to California for years. No longer! Chad Hagan’s book, The Myth of California, will make you disappointed, infuriated, and then just plain sad. It is a cautionary tale about how politicians can destroy a paradise in one lifetime. Ultimately, unchecked political power serves only itself. The citizens are included only to pay the bills. It is also a testament to how the crazies run the world. Most of us just want to go to work, come home and relax, and build a family and life. The crazies don’t think that way. They are loud, and they vote. Ultimately, politicians whose only interest is in power, cave in to them. (A government permit needed to wear heels taller than 2 inches in Carmel? Spare me!) As Californians now flee in droves, the stories they tell disabuse us of any notion of paradise. This book does that in spades. Read it!" - John Linder, Former U.S. Congressman (GA-7)

The Golden State’s overreach extends to the garbage, but these policies ignore the real trash. California regulates everything. Gas stoves, pronouns, lawn equipment, cow farts — if there’s a way to insert bureaucratic red tape into daily life, Sacramento will find it.

In the Golden State, taking out the garbage has become an environmental chess match. The latest battleground? Landfills. California’s newest proposed landfill regulations read like something drafted by a Berkeley philosophy department on edibles — abstract, vague, and completely detached from physical reality.

Ignoring the Problem

In 2015, I led the group pursuing the American Apparel buyout. While the media fixated on the company’s branding and social controversies, California’s regulatory messaging conveniently ignored textiles — one of the most pollutive industries on the planet. This was one example of how the state tends to focus on performative issues while disregarding meaningful, industrial oversight. This is useful if you are constructing a wildlife highway crossing, but counterproductive when avoiding industrial oversight. That’s the California model: overlook real problems; obsess over symbolic ones.

California Landfill Management Mandates

The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) is mandating sweeping new standards for landfill management, emissions monitoring, and methane capture, despite no clear evidence that existing systems are failing. The new mandates are so convoluted that even seasoned waste management firms — already complying with state audits and clean-air rules — are struggling to interpret them.

In Los Angeles County, one landfill had to close in part because of state rules that extend beyond federal standards. Local politicians’ preferences for grandstanding instead of serving constitutions impeded the landfill’s ability to regulate an extremely rare chemical reaction.

The result? Nobody’s using less trash, but now more taxpayer money funds the removal of trash farther away. Local politicians do nothing but make wild, unsubstantiated claims about both public infrastructure and the landfill’s environmental impact and promise to investigate alleged price gouging.

Read the full article here.

If you want to read more about California’s endless government overreach, read my new book: The Myth of California. The Amazon Kindle version is available now. The full book, paperback and audiobook will be released this summer.

Endorsements for "The Myth of California"

"California was once America’s “Promised Land” where people flocked to find gold, good weather, and opportunities in everything from movies to manufacturing. It was the agricultural epicenter of the world, known as the “salad bowl” of the planet. But decades of leftist leadership has destroyed everything but the weather. It’s become “Paradise Lost” with homelessness, unanswered crime, and choking tax rates and regulations causing people to flee in stunning numbers to get to places where their families can live without the boot of big government on their necks and cultural cuckoos setting the atmosphere of the lifestyle. Chad Hagan details what happened in his riveting book, “The Myth of California: How Big Government Destroyed the Golden State.” It’s the tragic story of how the irrational left destroys everything it touches and how one state exchanged its gold for garbage. - Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas, Bestselling Author, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel

"My father was a car salesman in a town of 800 people in Northern Minnesota. He had one vacation in his working life, and we took a trip to California. He had a friend who had settled in Carlsbad years earlier and wanted to visit. I was 10. My brother was 11, and our sister was 7. We were in awe. It was a modest home, beautifully maintained, with a yard full of fruit trees. We picked oranges and ate them in the yard. We had grapefruit off the trees for breakfast. I dreamed of moving to California for years. No longer! Chad Hagan’s book, The Myth of California, will make you disappointed, infuriated, and then just plain sad. It is a cautionary tale about how politicians can destroy a paradise in one lifetime. Ultimately, unchecked political power serves only itself. The citizens are included only to pay the bills. It is also a testament to how the crazies run the world. Most of us just want to go to work, come home and relax, and build a family and life. The crazies don’t think that way. They are loud, and they vote. Ultimately, politicians whose only interest is in power, cave in to them. (A government permit needed to wear heels taller than 2 inches in Carmel? Spare me!) As Californians now flee in droves, the stories they tell disabuse us of any notion of paradise. This book does that in spades. Read it!" - John Linder, Former U.S. Congressman (GA-7)