The Cold, Dark, Night Sky Part 5: Bureaucracy Is the Ruinous Ruling Class of Big-Government Socialism; Driven especially by Marxism. Hence the Need to Teach Capitalism to Every Generation.

Bureaucracies morph into a ruling class when they control enough technical information and social organization, but caveat Power's corruptions and info's short half-life: Icebergs to the Titanic

Recap: Part one in this series explains how our expanding Universe produces the cold, dark night sky. Part two explains how and why the cold, dark night sky acts as a “heat sink.” This means it drains off thermodynamic entropy (disorder), averts “heat death,” allows entropy to decrease, and allows information (order) to rise on Earth. Part three shows that rising information means that, in capitalism, profits (“surplus value”) can continue to be invested in new products and jobs; all of which invalidates Marxism and the raging hate and violence it engenders in "the oppressed” against “oppressors.” Part four connects the cold, dark night sky to capitalism and then to what I lyrically call “the undying drive for the best that is in us.”

Overview

The nature of bureaucracy, capitalism, fascism and Marxism connect to the cold, dark night sky because it’s all about the nature of information.

A. When “principals” such as owners, shareholders, philanthropists, and voters create organizations and delegate authority to managerial agents, those agents acquire power via their control of the organization and the technical information it holds. Thus, fairly quickly and easily, bureaucracies are formed and grow. If principals don’t closely watch and correct them when necessary, bureaucracies can run amok by increasingly serving themselves rather than the principals that hired them.

The sad fact is that voters, shareholders, and rank-and-file union members are too divided and unsure of themselves to be effective checks on their managerial agents (ditto even for some owners and philanthropists) because they lack the information that bureaucracies possess and keep to themselves; often, kept secret from other bureaucracies too.

Consequently, even in formal democracies, bureaucracy as a class finds ways to “work around” company shareholders or voters, via such things as independent departments, bureaus, commissions, and agencies (DOJ, FBI, FCC, EEOC, FTC, CDC, EPA, FDA, the Fed, etc.).

These bureaucrats think of themselves as a superior class, using such words as “permanent government” in the U.S. and “vanguard of the working class” in communism. In the U.S. currently, critics call them “Deep State” or “the Swamp.” For Britain, MP Ellen Wilkinson described it well in her 1932 book The Division Bell Mystery.

In self interest, bureaucrats never cease trying to crush individual liberty, because they hate—and fear—the power that free people possess, especially skilled people (as merit has an authority all its own).

B. Only capitalism can prevent bureaucracies from becoming cancers that consume all of society (including the bureaucrats’ own qualities of life).

Capitalism cuts out the middlemen—bureaucracies—as consumers pick for themselves among products in free consumer markets; private wealth shifts investments to more successful companies in free investment markets; and government is strong but limited to such roles as protecting life, limb, freedom, private property, and contract rights. This limits the justification for, and involvement of, bureaucracy, and limits its size and power,

In other words, bearing in mind that “organization,” “information,” and “order” are synonymous in thermodynamics, all the rules (“red tape”) that bureaucrats write and enforce create new thermodynamic information without regard to the consequences, BUT capitalism selects for new and useful information.

This is timeless. Bureaucracies will always grow where authority is delegated to agents and the principals do not closely watch and correct the agents. Hence the need to teach capitalism to every generation (for some examples, see below).

Bureaucracy Is the Ruling Class of Big Government And Inherently Produces Ruin

Big Government is Inherently, Generically Socialist

Inevitably, big government cannot “manage” each and every person, so it lumps people into social groups it can “manage;” i.e., manipulate, control, and deny the primacy of individual liberty*. Religious dictators, thuggish dictators, environmental dictators, medical dictators, etc. need big bureaucracies for the same reasons and thus constitute types of socialism in addition to fascism, Marxism, and progressivism*. This is a broader, much more clarifying and useful definition of “socialism.”

• * The original meaning of “liberal” meant defending individual liberty against big-government power—originally, against the power vested in the King of England. “Liberal” today means big-government suppression of individual liberty.“Progressives” in the early 1900s ushered in big government with the federal income tax and creation of the Federal Reserve Bank system. Worse, they pursued “humane genocide”—birth prevention—for black people and poorer whites, from which emerged Planned Parenthood. Today, self-described “progressives” push social Marxism (aka “woke”).

Bureaucracies as a class thus can function in any form of socialism. They do so at the expense, and to the detriment, of individual freedom, free markets, and prosperity, because:

• They do not trust that individuals can make worthy choices for themselves in free markets.

• They rebel at losing power and wealth when freedom strengthens individuals.

• They fear what free people will do.

Bureaucracy can be a ruling class (contrary to original Marxist and Leninist thought) because it controls existing information, which is a dominant means of production.

This realization hit me in 1971 when I worked as a computer programmer for New York (Bell) Telephone Company. As I was entering a program on an IBM 360/30 DOS computer, via typing on an IBM “selectric” typewriter, a computer operator told me I had to step away because he had “production”—a computer program—to run on the machine. It could have been for payroll, inventory, accounts receivable, accounts payable, or some other application. Suddenly I saw that information was a growing and increasingly dominant means of production, even in 1971.

Of course, bureaucracies usually control existing technical information—all those scientific-technological institutions and military-industrial complexes that President Eisenhower warned could come to make us their captives. Moreover, bureaucracies control social organization, the most important form of information, such as in political parties, corporations, “nonprofits,” medical systems, government agencies, and religious hierarchies. (Bear in mind that “organization” is synonymous with “information,” as both signify “order,” whether useful or not.)

“Woke” culture—social Marxism (aka “cultural” Marxism)—and the celebration of government over individual freedom came to dominate in the U.S. via bureaucracies’ control of schooling. Socialists took over schooling step by step via both teachers unions and big-government edicts and pressures. Up to now, they have controlled, via their graduates, large parts of corporations, non-profits, government bureaucracies, media, etc.

• I first sensed this huge push for socialism, and was first moved to write to champion capitalism, when Pope John Paul II came out forcefully in 1997 against capitalism. Recall, that was in a year of “irrational exuberance” for the stock market (proxy for capitalism).

  • He had lived for over 30 years in communist Poland, had been Cardinal of Krakow, and certainly well knew the evils of communism. What did he think would replace capitalism? Such a man’s condemnation of capitalism as Pope signaled to me a very powerful, deeply entrenched force, which I concluded would have to be some ruinous form of socialism.

As bureaucracy is based primarily on social organization and technical information,

• the latter of which includes

  • selective use of government-approved “expert opinion,” and

  • enforcement by government agencies, courts, armed force (police), and government/media-shaped “public opinion,”

it follows that:

Bureaucratic rule is inherently destructive over time, because the “means of production” it controls—information—rapidly loses useful value. It can decay into toxicity through:

• lies,

• errors,

• misconstruing truths by taking them out of context,

• carelessness, sloppiness, and laziness—failing to respect both types of GIGO; ie. “Garbage In, Garbage Out” signifying faulty data, and “Garbage Inside, Garbage Out” signifying faulty thinking,

• technological obsolescence,

• physical damage of media, be they electronic, paper, film, etc.

• forgetfulness and other forms of loss,

• corruptions by power, and

• succumbing to:

  • saying what people want to hear or will approve (sometimes referred to, in obfuscating jargon, as the “Overton Window”),

  • faddish, specious ideas of the moment,

  • mob rule, and

  • mass delusions (especially via greed, panic, desire, and trust in government “experts”).

Putting it in a conventional aphorism: Power Corrupts.

Power corrupts because it allows the powerful to deviate from productive reality without suffering real-world consequences, until wreckage becomes inescapable.

The absolute power over people that bureaucracies seek corrupts everything and everyone they touch, including themselves, until great ruin results.

Capitalism

To build consistently over time, one must consistently create new net useful information, and capitalism is the only system that keeps building society-wide.

To see why, start by seeing what capital and capitalism really are:

Capital

• is private wealth that has already been invested—fixed in physical form such as factories, offices, human skills, mortgages, etc.—for the purpose of creating new net wealth. In practice, since the invested wealth is no longer spendable, it can be restored, and rewarded for being put at risk, by profiting from creating new/better/cheaper products that people can afford and want to buy,

• where both producers and consumers operate in free markets, which filter for useful information,

• and life, limb, and property rights are protected by strong but limited government. (Astonishingly, most people in much of the world are denied property rights, dooming them to much lower qualities of life, according to Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto.)

Note some consequences:

1. Private invested wealth is put at risk—can be lost via costs exceeding sales—in free markets.

2. Therefore private owners of that invested wealth are personally motivated to get good results and apply hard work and thoughtful attention, unlike government, which takes and spends other people’s money and is practically unaccountable.

3. Free markets police results via stock and bond prices, flows of people and money, legal and other procedural actions, etc.

4. This removes theft—to the extent it is caught and punished—from the system.

5. Capitalist investment creates jobs and incomes so people can buy the goods and services they produce.

6. Notably, employees get paid much earlier than operating profits both repay the initial capital investments and deliver sufficient profits to compensate for the loss of current spending power and the risk of operating losses and bankruptcy, which do happen.

7. The whole of this capital-investing and prosperity-creating system is called capitalism.

You can see for yourself, if you look for it: Capital has been producing so much valuable information for the past few hundred years, by organizing production, that living standards have skyrocketed and can continue well into the future as new useful information is created.

Besides private investors and consumers looking out assiduously for their own interests, to select—filter—for useful information, another reason capitalism creates prosperity is that the closer information is to its source and to its use, the higher quality and value it is likely to be (greater knowledge, shorter time to use, shorter time for feedback and improvement; repeat).

When governments, however, act as collectors, distributors, and users of information, many bureaucracies intervene and introduce tardiness, errors, sclerosis, self interest, and various corruptions to the process, ultimately destroying net useful information. That is, even if big government does something valuable, much more is destroyed.

The way that capitalism actually works makes it:

• the peace and prosperity economy, for much more can be gotten by building and cooperating than by fighting, breaking, and taking;

• the great emancipator, for capital seeks to invest in the greatest talent it can find, regardless of arbitrary restrictions;

• the great life-equalizer, because the greatest improvement in life comes at the stage when people get sufficient and secure food, clothing, shelter, opportunities, and protection from predators. Capitalism has provided such life riches to vast numbers of people worldwide. And

• the virtuous economy. Capitalism fosters development of those human behaviors called virtues, and “virtue” in general, because hard work, discipline, thoughtful attention, honesty, strong friendships, courage of one’s convictions, and remaining true to reality are necessary to build and keep building.

For deeper and broader discussions, see

• Capitalism Makes Life Better, Big-government Socialisms Make Life Worse, and

• Big-Government Socialisms, NOT Capitalism, Caused Economic Disasters in the 1930s, 2000-2002, 2008, and the 2020s.

The U.S. Political Economy: Mixtures of Capitalism, Fascism, Marxism, and other Socialisms

In teaching capitalism, one must be clear what it is not.

Capitalism shouldn’t be confused with other things that happen in society, especially theft and the intertwining of big business and big government—as is done when people use such terms as “stakeholder capitalism,” “crony capitalism,” “state capitalism,” “surveillance capitalism,” and “woke capitalism.”

Fascism

When big businesses become closely linked with big government, and operate in a semblance of a market economy, that is a hallmark of the economic aspects of classic fascism, not capitalism. Examples include “health care,” banking, autos, electricity generation and distribution, and social media— as revealed by the “Twitter files” and Mark Zuckerberg’s confessionary revelations.

Fascism is fundamentally destructive because the wealth-destroying imperatives of big government (such as corruption, ignorance, misconceptions, self-aggrandizement, and error), exceed whatever wealth is produced by whatever free-market activities big businesses conduct. And those markets are only partially free. They are distorted by big-government “regulations” and heavy-handed political/social demands.

• Notably, recently, some people on the “new right” have set sights on ending abuses of big companies and seem to propose breaking up or heavily regulating them. The problem with this approach of course is that big-government actions foster those abuses, via bankruptcy guarantees, liability protection, government subsidies, protection when those companies follow government “regulators,” and specific pressures (such as to censor). There are also unintended, and usually uncorrected, consequences of good intentions. The solution is to rely more on free markets and smaller government, not foster new forms of big government. Then companies will be much more cautions lest they be found guilty for causing avoidable harm. (More on this in a later post)

Marxism

Recap:

• Marxism posits that because companies make a profit (aka “surplus value”) by charging more for their products than they pay workers, workers can’t buy all that is produced, so unsold goods pile up, and companies either shut down, causing economic collapse, or countries fight wars to secure export markets for their companies’ “overproduction.” Such logic fails to see that new information can be created, profits can be invested in new or better or cheaper products, and workers can get jobs and money to buy those better products.

• Thinking that capitalism is the great evil, Marxism sets out to break down or, where possible, destroy capitalism and destroy everything on which capitalism is based. This means breaking down—or, worse—destroying nuclear families, private property, freedom of personal choice, personal identity (replaced by social group identities), individual merit, individual achievement, and religion (which acts as a decentralized social force independent of central government).

“Woke” politics such as DEI, “social justice,” and “equity” have been Marxism’s current most powerful battering rams; especially, the notion that all societies are divided between oppressors and the oppressed (literally the opening premise of The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels).

From this flows the idea that anyone who lives well is guilty of having stolen from the oppressed and has to “give back” to them. As I read the meaning of “Woke,” it tells “oppressors” (people indoctrinated to be ashamed of being American, ashamed of being “white,” ashamed of being prosperous, ashamed of being men, guilty of being shameful oppressors of LGBT+, and so on) that they can absolve themselves of guilt and ennoble themselves by siding with the most “oppressed,” especially people who have suffered the consequences of their own very bad behavior, such as thieves, violent criminals (including the man charged with murdering the CEO of UnitedHealthcare), and Hamas’s rapists, torturers, and mass murderers.

• It was only in writing Part 3 that I came to see that all that highly destructive, seemingly crazy “woke” stuff is really straight out of Marxism; the part that I call “social Marxism,” to distinguish it from the political and economic aspects of Marxism. Others use the term “cultural Marxism,” which I find to be a label lacking in enlightenment. It conjures up in my mind images of such things as Soviet and Maoist architecture, music, drama, paintings, etc.

It is simply not true that “fortunes are stolen, not made,” or “all societies are divided between oppressors and the oppressed” where “oppressors” steal from the “oppressed.” Following this logic, it’s as if Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak actually stole the Apple computer from some impoverished person or persons unknown.

• The story that I heard late in the 1970s was that Xerox originally developed the laptop computer system, called “Alto,” at its PARC center (Palo Alto Research Center), but Xerox didn’t develop it further.

Marxism Melding with Fascism

You may well ask: How can Marxism and fascism coexist? Aren’t they inimical to each other? They were, in the 1930s-1940s, when Hitler wiped out German communists and labor-party-type socialists. Then Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, after having cooperated with Stalin in 1939 to divide up Poland and kill a lot of Polish people. Similarly, in the latter 1930s, communists, socialists, and others fought and lost to the fascists in the Spanish Civil War.

Today, however, less-militant Marxists learned that they didn’t need to take over all economic activity; they could “regulate” it via big government; besides taking over what they could.

Government increasingly dominates banking, telecommunications, energy production and distribution, and transportation.

Not by coincidence, funding and economic crises have hit these sectors

Government has also directly taken over large parts of several financial markets, consistent with Marxist ideas of “expropriating the means of production,” such as mortgages (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, FHA), student loans, and money itself via the U.S. Federal Reserve System.

In “health care” (actually, medical treatment), big business is already heavily intertwined with big government (FDA, CDC, HHS, NIH), and health care is being pushed ever closer to being taken over by Marxist or other bureaucracies. (Even DJT + RFK Jr. are, for now, heavily constrained here). In the U.S.:

• Medicare, Medicaid, and the “Affordable Care Act” are already big government.

• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) limits medical educational funding and thus effectively limits the number of doctors getting residencies and licenses to practice medicine.

• Governments took over completely with Covid19 shutdowns, vaccination mandates, and suppression of cheap anti-viral treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine plus zinc. Astonishingly, people knew by 2010 that zinc ions can stop corona viruses (including SARS, and therefore Covid19), polio, and influenza. And other reports say that HCQ is a “zinc ionophore” that carries zinc ions into human cells.

• Already, due to heavy paperwork requirements imposed by “Obamacare,” many doctors have sold their practices to hospitals or doctors’ groups and draw a salary from them. These doctors work for big-government-regulated big business, not for you (Death by paperwork, Betsy McCaughey).

• State medical boards, which police medical doctors’ licenses and practices, heavily punished doctors who, before Covid19 vaccines were developed, had found promising treatments for Covid19.

• Various politicians periodically call for“Medicare for All” or “single-payer” health care. Both proposals mean, in practice, that government takes over the industry and directly determines what health care you will get—doctors work directly or indirectly for the government, not for you. Senator Bernie Sanders is a foremost advocate for this approach. Britain and other countries already have this, with many shortcomings, such as very long waits for service, or very expensive alternatives in private-sector services. Their citizens who can afford the cost come to the U.S. for advanced treatments (even Canadians).

• Provisions for involuntary isolation or quarantine are already in place in various places, such as in Washington State and New York State. Ostensibly, these were for the “public good” fighting Covid19, but most of what the government did proved to be wrong:

  • Face masks didn’t work.

  • “6 feet” had no scientific basis.

  • As noted above, promising treatments were prohibited (ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine plus zinc, etc.).

  • “Vaccines” didn’t protect.

  • Ventilators did more harm than good (by injuring lungs). Anti-inflammatories and more oxygen worked better.

  • Children ran little risk but were harmed immeasurably by wearing face masks (speech, social interaction) and being kept out of school, not to mention harms being done by the sheer fear and panic being promulgated. And these were obviously wrong from the start.

One of the U.S.’s major political parties nominated and supported a Presidential candidate in the 2024 election who espoused many profoundly Marxist policies. Only time will tell how, or if, the Democratic Party corrects after the drubbing it got.

And, of course, social/cultural Marxism is rampant globally via “woke” takeovers of bureaucracies.

All this has led to a political form of genetic recombination leading to coexistence in flux: Fascists and Marxists will differ in modes of operation and jockey for positions among themselves, but both require and cooperate in creating big-government (dictatorial) bureaucracies to control people, as they do not trust—or they fear—what individuals will do when they make choices for themselves in free markets.

Other “Social Engineers” and Socialists also Exist

Such people implicitly or explicitly invoke the notion of rising disorder (relentlessly rising entropy) to justify suppression and crushing of freedom, prosperity, and growth. They include:

• Thomas Malthus and others who have said for over 200 years that the Earth couldn’t support population growth. More recently, they have included Paul R. Ehrlich and Henry Kissinger, climate-change alarmists and grifters (Solyndra, $7.5 billion for 8 EV charging stations), etc.;

• power-hungry control-freak politicians and bureaucrats;

• grifters who want to pocket some of the huge wealth that big government extracts from people;

• all sorts of thuggish dictators (including religious totalitarians); and

• rich and powerful people who want to keep the Earth solely for themselves (World Economic Forum).

While not necessarily being Marxists themselves, these would-be social dictators find Marxism to be useful in expanding big-government bureaucracies by vesting power in “independent” agencies and departments that are structured in reality to be independent of voters and independent of people whom voters elect (when democratic elections take place at all). And, of course, elected officials often function as bureaucrats themselves.

Teach Capitalism to Every Generation, Win Better Futures

Despite capitalism’s superiority, its inner workings are not obvious. They are easily slandered even by those working in the inside, such as by “Wall Street” brokers.

Even more important, children in well-off families really do begin life experiencing Marx’s “from each according to his [or her] ability, to each according his [or her] needs.” From this arises an inherent desire for socialism.

This inbred desire must be weaned, with care and hard work and occasional tough love, into self-sufficiency and independent initiative in order for a child to grow into a well adjusted, emotionally strong adult.

Otherwise, no matter how much prosperity capitalism has already created and how well it has proven to work, Marxism and other big-government socialisms are well entrenched in various bureaucracies and political parties.

They are well positioned to rise and take power via elections at the first crisis, which they themselves may initiate (“a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”). Paradoxically, they are also well positioned to take power as people come to take prosperity for granted (sometimes called “affluenza”). In so doing, they are a constant threat to ruin everything we hold dear in life.

In fact, socialists have kept popping up to take power in many places in the past after capitalism created prosperity. For examples:

New York City: From 1993 to 2013, Rudy Giuliani (R) and then Michael Bloomberg (R, I) reduced murders and crimes by up to 85%. This resulted in capital investments that led to great prosperity. (Prior to that: bankruptcy in the 1970s, “rusting” infrastructure, everyday use of the word “mugged,” and murders soaring to over 2,000 deaths annually in the early 1990s.)

• Then, in very light turnout (typical of one-party rule; Democrat, in this case), the city elected a mayor, Bill de Blasio, who denigrated NYC police and openly admired the murderous, ruinous, communist Sandinistas of Nicaragua.

  • He set up ThriveNYC with nearly a billion dollars, ostensibly to help people with mental or drug-abuse issues, and he put wife Charlene McCray in charge of it, but little good happened and $850 million was unaccounted for.

  • Quality of life declined, and rioters in 2020 trashed many stores, burned police cars, and injured many police officers, all of which was labeled “largely peaceful” by much of news media. The “demonstrators” and rioters were allowed to assemble and march in large dense crowds, yell loudly, and not have to wear face masks. Few if any rioters were arrested, much less held in jail; this, while law-abiding citizens were being told to “socially distance“ and wear face masks due to Covid19.

• New York voters (“one-party” state; Democrat) also elected a governor (Andrew Cuomo), state legislature, NYC city council, court judges, and Manhattan District Attorney who let all sorts of criminals run free, presumably in the name of “social justice,” while spending huge sums of money to protect and subsidize many tens of thousands of illegal aliens (“sanctuary” city and state), all the while ignoring pressing needs of, or even displacing, native New Yorkers.

  • For example, in initial legislation, later slightly modified, items stolen from a store is considered a misdemeanor if the total is worth less than $1,000 for each theft.

  • As a result of “bail reform,” if someone is arrested for a misdemeanor or “non-violent” felony (which may include such things as stalking, non-serious injury, and burglary), he or she can be released immediately without posting cash bail, a practice called “no cash bail“ and “no bail, no jail” by critics.

  • Reports keep emerging of people who have been arrested for a serious violent crime, such as stabbings or murder, who had been arrested and immediately released many times before. Here here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

  • NYC officials report low levels of crime, BUT police are effectively discouraged from arresting people who would be immediately let out onto the streets again, and police would fear being deemed guilty if accused—by criminals—of any “police brutality.”

  • Meanwhile, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg reportedly marks many felonies down to misdemeanors, which, along with shoplifting misdemeanors, do not register in lists of felonies and other major crimes—even though lots of shoplifting can bankrupt a business, drive other businesses to flee or avoid the city, and inflate store prices to compensate for losses caused by shoplifting.

  • Nevertheless, DA Bragg charged bodega worker Jose Alba with murder for killing a younger, bigger, stronger man who had attacked Alba in the bodega. Following a public outcry, the DA and the judge dismissed the charges against Alba. Daniel Penny was charged with manslaughter for incapacitating a man in a subway car who was terrifying other passengers. A jury trial in Manhattan acquitted him; many people think Penny is a genuine hero. The message? Don’t defend yourself; terrifying.

  • This is all consistent with the Marxist idea that criminals are “oppressed” people and successful people are “oppressors.” In the words of Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, as quoted in the New York Post, “The DA himself is surrounded by people who think, ‘Behind every profitable business is a crime.'”

• New York city and state politicians have also raised taxes so high on the “rich”—aka, prosperity producing investors—that many such people reportedly have left and continue to leave the city and state. Half a million left the state in 2022. In a 2024 survey, seven million planned to leave within the subsequent five years. Reasons: crime, high cost, poor public services.

  • This further erodes the tax base and portends future collapses in city services, like NYC’s bankruptcy in the 1970s; BUT, New York State was in much better financial shape then, when Governor Hugh Carey (R) worked to set up the Financial Control Board and Municipal Assistance Corporation, in order to bail out NYC and govern its finances.

USA: President Ronald Reagan (1981-89) restored American prosperity by limiting non-productive regulations and cutting tax rates. This increased tax payments collected, due to increased jobs and business profits, as predicted by Arthur Laffer’s famous curve.

• Federal bureaucrats, such as the “bipartisan” Congressional Budget Office, haven’t accepted to this day that cutting tax rates raised tax revenues, despite successes by President John F. Kennedy (D), Reagan (R), Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) and President Bill Clinton (D), and Presidents George W. Bush (R), and Donald Trump 45 (R).

Thereafter, the administrations of Clinton and both Bushes gradually built up big-government programs until they culminated in many aspects of full-throated socialism and Marxism under President Barack Obama.

• President George H.W. Bush (41) cleared out Reagan’s free-market people, raised taxes, and signed a wetlands bill that allowed the EPA to run roughshod over land owners. For example, look at the 15-year ordeal suffered by the Sacketts. (Sackett v. EPA)

• President Clinton’s administration (including Andrew Cuomo as HUD Secretary) greatly lowered mortgage lending standards in the name of “affordable housing.” This set the basis for the 2008 financial meltdown and subsequent, massive, big-government “regulations” such as the Dodd-Frank Act.

• President George W. Bush’s administration allowed mortgage standards to fall still more. For example, the SEC allowed packages of subprime mortgages to get Triple A credit ratings (the highest). Also Bush dumped on the private sector in 2002 and 2008 when government actions were the problem.

  • The worst of the worst: In 2002, holdover prosecutors from the Clinton administration “murdered” the accounting firm Arthur Anderson for failing to price Enron assets accurately. Several years later, that conviction was overturned due to misconduct by the prosecutors. Nevertheless, other accounting firms lobbied successfully to avoid pricing company assets, a requirement built into law in the 1930s. Instead, “regulators” were to use mark-to-market accounting to price a company’s assets. This was adopted in late-Summer 2007. This quite literally treated capital as if it were a commodity priced every moment—ie, liquid money, not capital value (which can only be ascertained over years of use). This literally liquidated capital.

    • The stock market started declining from that point and kept falling into a devastating decline and economic collapse. On March 9, 2009, however, after the market was still falling as of 2:55 PM, Ray Hoffman of BusinessWeek on WCBS radio reported at 3:25 PM that Barney Frank, the powerful House Democrat, had just said that mark-to-market had to end. By 3:55 PM, the market was higher than its values at 3:25 and 2:55 PM and began a very long new bull market.

• President Obama and his Democratic-controlled Congress (60 Senators) restarted welfare without job requirements; i.e., paying people not to work. They

  • pushed social Marxism, especially DEI in schools and corporate boardrooms, via “dear colleague” letters,

  • extensively expanded regulatory controls over some major businesses (autos, banks, fossil fuels, and electricity generation),

  • and effectively took over

    • health care (the [Un]Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare”),

    • mortgages, and

    • student loans.

  • State governments got into the act; prominent Republicans, too.

• President Trump45 started a recovery with large tax-rate cuts and reduced regulations, all of which raised incomes the most for low-income people (according to semiannual testimony to Congress by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell in 2019, and numerous WSJ editorials citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics).

  • Trump also got snookered into closing down the economy “briefly” to “flatten the curve.” This originally meant alleviating overcrowding in hospitals by delaying infections; it did not mean reducing the total number of infections. Then, of course, Dr. Fauci, most Democrat governors and mayors, and some Republicans seized on this opening to greatly enlarge the shutdowns.

  • The very big-government Operation Warp Speed also did not produce truly safe and effective vaccines. “Vaccinated” people still got “Covid19.” Many people were injured—see, for example, Brianne Dressen, React19, and Senator Ron Johnson’s special hearings.

• President Joe Biden went big into fascism and Marxism. Just about everything he did weakened America, hurt children and families, and imported hoards of illegal aliens to replace American workers and take over communities The results include high inflation, open borders, many billions of dollars to terror-sponsoring Iran, catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, DEI, Trans in women’s sports, soaring national debt, Covid19 mandates, and lawfare attacks on DJT and his supporters.

• President Trump47’s early executive actions seem to be hitting powerfully at the worst excesses of big government, BUT

  • He needs Congress to pass laws to make his executive orders permanent and pass his legislative agenda on tax-rate cuts, energy, defense, borders, and spending. That’s the first rub.

  • Secondly, will big-government Democrats win back the House and/or the Senate in 2026?

  • Third, he is term-limited to only four years, while I estimate that at least 12 years is needed.

  • Fourth, he does seem to be susceptible to big-government actions, which may be “OK” only as long as he is President.

  • Fifth, he doesn’t teach capitalism, so subsequent Congresses and Presidents could revert to big government in ways such as I list in this section.

  • Sixth, more generally, President Eisenhower clearly warned that only an alert, well informed, and active populace could keep government adequately honest and effective. People who support what Trump47 is doing will have to do a lot more organizing and build a lot more grass roots support than relying so much on him to solve the problem.

  • Let’s just hope that Trump47’s going big into Artificial Intelligence results in AI that highly values human “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” that doesn’t protect to the point of imprisoning us (see novella With Folded Hands, 1947, Jack Williamson); and that protects people against hostile AIs. That’s rather doubtful at the moment, as wokesters still inhabit much of big American tech companies.

Other reversions to ruinous socialism after capitalism proved itself superior include:

Republic of Columbia: Alvaro Uribe restored civilization in Columbia as President from 2002 to 2010. Previously, Columbia was synonymous with drug cartels, other very violent criminals, and terrorist insurgents. Do you remember what “Cartagena” and “Medellin” used to mean? No? Look at Romancing the Stone for a sense of the menace of the place. BUT recently a a former terrorist and Marxist was elected President and Uribe is being unfairly prosecuted (Feb., 2025). It’s the same kind of lawfare that targeted DJT. Meanwhile, Cocaine Funded Gangs Shake Columbia (WSJ, 1-27-25 online) with Surging Drug Violence (WSJ, 1-22-25 online).

Republic of Chile: Salvadore Allende became President in 1970 with 37% of the vote. Three years later, people in once-prosperous Chile were struggling to get enough food and other essentials to survive as his Marxist expropriations and nationalizations wrecked the economy, according to several news items I read in the NYT and WSJ. It was so extreme that Chairman Mao’s foreign minister Zhou Enlai felt the need to tell Allende to slow down because one can’t go that fast in a democracy, according to a New York Times article I read years ago.

Other elected elements of government were powerless to stop Allende and called on the military to depose him. General Augusto Pinochet did so, reportedly killing thousands of Allende’s supporters who had put all Chileans’ lives at risk, presided over a military dictatorship but not a totalitarian one, fostered capitalist prosperity, and stepped aside in 1990 (The Allende Myth, Mary Anastasia O’Graady, WSJ, 9-10-23 online), leaving Chile with a prosperous capitalist economy, free elections, and rule of law.

Then socialists returned to power and prosecuted Pinochet, age 89, for “human rights violations,” which included charges of internment of up to 80,000 people and of torturing tens of thousands of leftists. I wasn’t there, but the whole prosecution looks like it sides with Allende, which destroys its credibility, and minimizes or ignores that Allende and his many thousands of enforcers among his 37% of the vote had made war on Chileans. Pinochet had returned fire in that war. That’s war, not civil niceties, and Chileans were much better off because of what Pinochet did.

Post-WWII West Germany: Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard, under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, ignored experts’ socialist advice, opted instead for a capitalist economy, and produced West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle). Gradually, however, first West Germany, then united Germany, became ever-more socialist and is now suffering what used to be called Eurosclerosis—economic malaise—especially because of its government-driven severe reduction in use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

In Europe generally, bureaucracies have seized so much ruinous, overbearing power that political revolts have erupted in the UK (Farage), Germany (AfD), Romania (Georgescu) and France (Le Pen), with victories already in Italy (Meloni), and Hungary (Orban); and, in South America, Argentina (Milei) too.

Communist China: Yes, Communist China. Deng Xiaoping turned China towards a free-market economy (subject to Communist Party control, however) after seeing how one village increased its food production enormously after it secretly ditched its agricultural collective (where no one owned any land) and switched to private ownership of land. (See Capitalism Makes Life Better.)

• This is virtually identical to how the Plymouth Plantation switched from collective to private ownership in 1623, “made all hands very industrious,” and everybody ate plentifully; whereas previously, they couldn’t feed themselves and needed large shipments of food from England. (See William Bradford’s History of the Plymouth Plantation and my above-listed post.)

Now, Chairman Xi Jinping has been moving to reverse all that. The Wall Street Journal ran a long story explaining how Xi felt his father was mistreated by Deng, hated Deng, and wanted to undo all that Deng did. Xi has publicly identified with Chairman Mao Zedong (who killed upwards of 70 million Chinese via famine), has smothered freedom in Hong Kong, has increasingly smothered domestic Chinese business, and employs slave labor, especially among Uyghurs and Tibetans. This has led foreign and domestic businesses and investors (capital) to increasingly look elsewhere. China still retains large, vibrant, and advanced industries, with fiercely competitive businesses, but also has some serious financial holes in government-sponsored activities, especially in its real estate bust (huge “cities” of unoccupied apartment buildings). Even such as George Soros sees Xi’s actions as harming China greatly over time.

These and many other reversions to life-destroying socialism have occurred after capitalism had created great prosperity.

Therefore, capitalism must be taught well in everyday language with everyday examples, some of which I suggest in this post. Capitalism must also be taught to every generation, because everyone enters the world as babies totally ignorant of human relations and very susceptible to manipulation by dreadful influences. For more and deeper points, see Capitalism Makes Life Better.

Otherwise, witness how socialists have come to so dominate “education” in the U.S. that too many children and even some parents believe what they are being told forcefully by doctors and teachers without good evidence; for example, that the children will commit suicide if they don’t mutilate their body with “transgender” hormones and surgeries..

Fortunately, instincts for freedom of action and freedom of choice are very strong too. They provide a sound basis for fending off socialists, other would-be dictators, and people who trust in “experts,” “fearless leaders,” and/or “Mr. Big” over themselves.

Teach Capitalism to Every Generation in Language the General Public Can Readily Grasp. Win And Secure Better Futures.

Good Health to You!