Last November, New York City voters chose — from a uniformly awful candidate menu — “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani for mayor. They’re already starting to experience, and may even learn from, the consequences of that choice.

“Democracy,” HL Mencken wrote, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Unfortunately, everyone else gets it good and hard, too.

The coalition that elected Mamdani consisted mainly of middle- and upper-income voters.

You know, the people who hail an Uber instead of taking the subway, and order their restaurant food via DoorDash instead of rubbing elbows with the hoi polloi at local delis, pizzerias, and Chinese take-out joints.

Mamdani lagged his main opponent, Andrew Cuomo, among lower-income voters.

You know, the folks who build those sandwiches, bake those pizzas, and stir-fry those veggies. The people who stand in line to save a buck rather than pay delivery fees atop food costs. And, of course, the people who drive for Uber and deliver for DoorDash.

In other words, the “workers” Mamdani and his ilk claim to “support.”

That “support” takes the form of all-out war on the “gig economy.”

The premise of socialism is “worker control of the means of production,” and the gig economy is far and away the most successful experiment in human history when it comes to achieving that.

Gig workers own their tools. Gig workers set their own hours. Gig workers choose who they work for, where they work, and what kind of work they do. Gig workers even set their own salaries by accepting the individual tasks that meet their pay requirements and rejecting those that don’t.

Mamdani and friends hate that worker control with a passion. To them, worker happiness and welfare only matter to the extent that they can claim credit for, and gain power from, that happiness and welfare.

It drives them crazy to see workers not punching campaign donors’ time clocks, not paying dues to politically connected “organized labor” groups, working for amounts they consider acceptable instead of for government-set “minimum wages,” and maybe even lightening their own tax burdens by working for cash or engaging in some creative accounting.

For the Zohran Mamdanis of the world, “democratic socialism” is really just a nicer-sounding term for socialism’s Mussolinist — that is, fascist — variant: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

So the new NYC regime is hell-bent on making it harder for gig workers to get work, get paid, get tipped … get BY, with everything from “minimum wage” enforcement to controlling how apps treat tipping. Because if anyone, anywhere, somehow manages to make a living without Mamdani’s permission, why, that’s “exploitation.”

No wonder they didn’t vote for him!

Mamdani’s “middle and upper class” supporters are getting it good and hard, too.

It turns out that his “democratic socialist” antics drive up prices for on-call transportation and food/grocery delivery.

Who, other than anyone with a basic grasp of economics, could have predicted THAT?

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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You probably use a computer — in fact, you’re probably reading this column on a computer.

For 72% of you, that computer is  the ubiquitous “standard” Windows PC or laptop. For 20% of you, it’s a Mac. The other 8% of you oddballs mostly use Linux or (Linux-based) ChromeOS.

I know the 92% of you who use Windows or macOS get tired of the cool kids telling you this, but it should be the other way around. Almost everyone should be using Linux almost all the time.

Instead of leading off with the technical reasons why, though, I want to hit you with the political, and personal financial, reasons for making the switch.

I’m going to start from the assumption that, like most people most of the time, you’ve had your “daily driver” computer — the one you use at home to browse the web, check email, stream YouTube videos, and maybe take a Zoom meeting every now and then — for at least a couple of years and you’re starting to feel like it’s a little slow and you might need a new one (if you just unboxed that brand new PC and got it set up, feel free to bookmark this article and come back to it in two years).

You may have noticed that new computers are suddenly getting more expensive every day. Not just top-of-the-line machines, either. I bought the “cheap” Raspberry Pi 5 kit I’m writing this column on less than a month ago. I paid $229 for it. As of this morning, the going price is $299.

There are “market” reasons for this sudden price rise trend — cryptocurrency miners have been buying up graphics cards as fast as they can be made for years, and now artificial intelligence companies are doing the same thing with RAM and storage devices.

There are also political reasons. The US regime’s desire to engage in “trade wars” with China and other countries has mucked up the supply chain connecting US consumers to cheap electronics, including computers and computer chips. It’s getting harder to get that stuff, and Donald Trump’s bizarre tariff fetish hits American consumers right in their wallets.

Which is where Linux comes in.

You probably DON’T need a new computer. Your current machine will almost certainly run faster and perform better, while doing all the things you normally do, if you’re willing to spend $0.00 and half an hour switching from Windows to Linux (or, if you have one of the old Intel-based Macs, from macOS to Linux).

Yes, $0.00. Not the $139 Microsoft wants for a Windows 11 license. Most versions (“distributions”) of Linux cost $0.00, and I don’t mean “preview” or “lite” versions.

Yes, half an hour, tops.

The dirty little secret Microsoft doesn’t want you to know: For years now, Linux has been easier to install, easier to set up, at least as easy to use, and MUCH easier to deal with updates on, than Windows.

You don’t have to buy Apple’s over-priced hardware to get the “look and feel” you associate with macOS, either. A number of Linux distributions copy that “look and feel.”

Here are two sites where you can answer a few questions and get recommendations for which flavor of Linux best fits your current machine and your personal preferences:

https://distrochooser.de/
https://www.distrowiz.com/

If you’re a normal computer user doing normal things — pretty much everyone except uber-gamers and tech people who require bespoke software — you can stick it to the cronies whose bottom lines the US regime is “protecting” with its tariff and trade war nonsense, and avoid the market bottleneck pricing on GPUs, CPUs, RAM, and storage.

Linux is good politics AND a wise financial decision.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections,” US president Donald Trump declared in a February 13 Truth Social rant,  “whether approved by Congress or not!”

While I oppose government ID mandates for any purpose — as did “conservatives,” at least as late as the 1990s,  when it came to national requirements of the sort — I don’t consider voting a special case for which my objections need be stronger or weaker.

Voting in America is a ritual through which we flatter ourselves that we’re engaging in “democracy,” even “self-government,” when 99% of participants periodically choose between two convergent (and nearly identical) wings of the single state-approved political party.

As for the other 1%, which includes me (I’m a partisan Libertarian), we enjoy the freedom to cough during communion, to whisper “I rather prefer freedom” as the crowd yells “Hail Caesar,” but it’s not like our votes are going to bring down the Church of American Government.

It makes about as much difference to how we’re governed from DC as the selection of local Communist Party delegates in Norilsk made to how the Soviet Union was governed from Moscow.

Since voting is purely ceremonial affirmation of our masters’ authority over us, I don’t see that adding a card-flashing element to the liturgy makes much difference.

I am, however, glad to see Trump once again reaffirming Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought’s 2022 observation that “we are in a post constitutional moment in our country.”

Vought says that like it’s a bad thing, calling on his audience to become “radical constitutionalists.”

His version of “radical constitutionalism,” though, can’t be found anywhere in the actual Constitution. Instead of the mere functionary described in the Constitution, whose job is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” Vought envisions the president as Kim Jong Un on the Potomac.

Which brings me back to voter ID.

According to Article I of the Constitution, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

And the Constitution leaves the selection of presidential electors to the states.

Here’s the constitutional role of the president in American elections:

THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

So, constitutionally, Trump is not acting — and cannot be acting — as president when he bellows “whether approved by Congress or not!”

Post constitutional much?

But that’s just saying the quiet part out loud. In reality, we’ve been in “post constitutional” mode for most of the country’s history. As early as 1867, Lysander Spooner noted that “whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

Now that even supposed constitutionalists are openly admitting it, the rest of us should start acting on it.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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