“Thousands of people collaborated to build and defend a global monetary network with no CEO, no president, and no master,” Max Borders says of Bitcoin. “Nobody gave them permission, because nobody could. It was developed peacefully in freedom.”

Borders uses Bitcoin as an example of what he calls “subversive innovation” — finding ways to lower your transaction costs for the things you want to do, raise the costs of those who might want to interfere with your plans,  and reduce the costs of walking away from systems that don’t deliver what you want from them.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. No, really, I couldn’t. Which is why I recommend Borders’s “Underthrow” Substack. I don’t always agree with him, but he’s always interesting … and he reminds me of a late friend who doesn’t get talked about enough these days.

In 1973 — more than 20 years before he ran for president as a Libertarian, twice — Harry Browne wrote and published How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. The book describes various “traps” — social and political constraints that bully us into roles we might not prefer to play  — and how to escape those traps so as to maximize one’s own freedom.

I highly recommend the book, and was privileged to have known its author who, unfortunately, died in 2006. The highest compliment I can think of to offer Mr. Borders is that his “subversive innovation” concept widens the (already broad) horizons one joyfully carries away from How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World.

Borders’s formula offers a path toward disarming and eliminating, rather than merely avoiding or escaping, the traps Browne describes. That’s the “subversive” part.

To subvert, according to the 193 edition of Webster’s dictionary, is “to overturn from the foundation.”

Subversive innovation isn’t about tearing down the existing system. It’s about building your own, stronger foundation and letting the old one fall apart without its ruins falling on you.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are the obvious current example — sound money that can be created and exchanged without the old system’s cooperation makes fiat currency passe — but they’re just one. Anything that improves your life without the state’s involvement or permission makes your situation better and the state’s worse.

People like Browne and Borders have a gift for dragging me away from my usual political pessimism and pointing me toward the promise of a better future. I hope you’ll come there with us!

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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On July 20, citing “discriminatory treatment of American products” by the Canadian regime, US president Donald Trump signed three proclamations raising Americans’ taxes.

Again.

Trump’s latest tax hike comes in the form of a 50% tariff on Americans’ purchases of Canadian imports “ranging from wine to hockey sticks to cement.”

Tariff supporters try to sell their desired tax increases on American consumers as “retaliation” against other regimes for “unfair” treatment of goods made by American workers and exported by American companies.

Odd form of retaliation, that — “you’re hurting YOUR people … fine, we’ll hurt OUR people — that’ll show YOU!”

And for for the most part, those other regimes aren’t the manufacturers of or buyers of those exports/imports, any more than the US regime is the manufacturer or buyer of whatever the company you work for happens to export or the imported goods you choose to buy.

So no, tariffs aren’t “retaliation” for “unfairness.”

What are they, then?

They’re a way of protecting politicians’ domestic business cronies from competition, at the expense of domestic consumers.

Suppose you want a particular widget, and — all other things being equal, which isn’t necessarily so — the Canadian version of that widget sells for $1.00 while the American version sells for $1.49.

If Trump slaps a 50% tariff on the Canadian version, it suddenly costs $1.50 … meaning the US manufacturer magically becomes price-competitive with the Canadian manufacturer with the added expense coming out of your pocket rather than the US manufacturer’s bottom line.

In the past, a supposed positive feature of tariffs involved “job creation” in domestic industry, but that was always an iffy proposition and advances in automation have pretty much eliminated the “if” part.

Few if any “new jobs” get created — and the same people filling those positions are, like everyone else, paying more  for the goods they want and need, while reducing the workforce available to produce goods and services that don’t need “protection” to sell at reasonable prices.

To put a finer point on it, tariff proponents and perpetrators urinate on your back and try to convince you it’s raining.

The proper “retaliation” for foreign tariffs on US goods — the response that benefits everyone except politically connected business owners and the politicians they connive with — is unilateral “free trade.”

In free markets, producers and customers drive the best deal they can … and that deal is only made if both parties see themselves as better off for having made 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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The term “gerontocracy” (rule by the elderly) isn’t new — it’s been in use since the 1830s — but according to Google Trends it’s come into more frequent usage since 2018.

And no wonder. The two most recent US presidents have been the oldest ever, senior citizens who frequently lapse into dementia-driven rants in public.

A number of US Senators and Representatives likewise have to be led around by the hand, shushed when their babbling gets too weird, and told by staff how to vote on bills.

To be clear: Not just which votes to cast on which bills, but sometimes literally how to operate the voting machinery they’ve been operating for decades. And that’s when they’re not collapsing and dying, or disappearing into hospitals, due to age-related maladies.

Solutions to the problem cover a narrow range: Age limits to stop people over a certain age from seeking election, term limits to get them out of office before their hundredth birthdays.

Really, though, our aging political establishment is just an end-stage symptom of an even worse disease: Archomania.

You won’t find archomania listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but you should.

While it often manifests in the same ways as other manias (kleptomania, an irresistible urge to steal; oniomani, a compulsion to shop; etc.), archomania is a distinct disorder.

Its symptoms include a compulsive urge to rule others, distress at the prospect of not being allowed to rule others, and a narcissistic belief in one’s unique qualifications to exercise such power.

The colloquial term for an archomaniac is: Politician.

Gerontocracy is just the result of coddling and empowering archomaniacs. Their hair grays, their gaits slow, their minds wander … but the compulsion remains, as does the grip on power seized back when muscles were stronger and  hands less arthritic.

Age limits and term limits would treat a symptom, but not the disease itself, and certainly not the effects of the disease on those who don’t suffer from it. Younger archomaniacs would just file in to fill the seats of the forcibly retired ones.

I’m not sure there’s a treatment for archomania.

Early exposure to the works of, say, Frédéric Bastiat and Lysander Spooner might have a sort of vaccine effect, but that’s questionable.

It seems more likely that the only thing to be done with archomaniacs is to try to keep them away from political power, just like — and for the same reasons — we try to keep pedophiles away from school playgrounds and alcoholics away from liquor cabinets.

And really, the only way to keep archomaniacs away from political power is to keep as little of that power as possible on hand and available to anyone. It’s bad stuff anyway.

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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