If there’s such a thing as rolling in one’s grave, the seismographs around Santa Ana, California’s Fairhaven Memorial Park must be going nuts.  A Tesla motor couldn’t possibly top Raymond C. Hoiles’s revolutions per minute — at least if readership of the Orange County Register, the newspaper he bought in 1935 and gifted one of America’s most libertarian-leaning editorial bents, extends into the afterlife.

“There’s nothing wrong with requiring prisoners to work,” the Register‘s editorial board wrote on September 24, endorsing a “no” vote on Proposition 6.

Proposition 6, per California’s official voter guide, “Amends the California Constitution to remove current provision that allows jails and prisons to impose involuntary servitude to punish crime (i.e., forcing incarcerated persons to work).”

“[W]hat the proponents of Prop. 6 are calling involuntary servitude,” the board writes, “is really far more a matter of this: Not allowing prisoners who have been convicted of felonies that were injurious to real people, say, in effect, that they can’t be bothered to hold down a job while they are behind bars for their crimes.”

The question is not whether a prisoner should be “bothered to hold down a job.”

The question is not whether, as the Register notes, prison work benefits prisoners by equipping them with occupational skills, a work ethic, and some pocket change to buy snacks at the commissary.

The questions are:

First, is involuntary servitude — requiring someone to work on threat of punishment, and denying their right to quit — slavery?

The answer to that question is “yes.”

Second, should slavery be legal in cases where the plantation is a prison and the state is (at least temporarily) the slave owner?

The answer to that question is “no.”

Those answers do not seem like they’d be negotiable to Hoiles, who stood nearly alone among American newspapermen in opposing the internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, and who late in life told the New York Times “government should exist only to try to protect the rights of every individual, not to redistribute the property, manipulate the economy, or establish a pattern of society.”

Mandatory prison work is redistribution, to the state, of the prisoner-slaves’ property rights in their labor. It is economically manipulative insofar as wages, if paid, are set by the state rather than by the market. And it’s an attempt to establish a pattern of society which treats people as property of the state.

If the government of California incarcerates people, it is the affirmative responsibility of the government of California to see to their basic material needs, not treat them as chattel.

Unfortunately, it can only do that through its partial enslavement, through taxation, of everyone else in California.

With mercy and charity in our hearts, we should pardon the Register‘s lapse of morality in this instance. But instead of buying into the editorial board’s odious and repugnant endorsement, we should encourage them to do better, and to get to work on the problem of ending the taxpayers’ partial enslavement, rather than supporting prisoners’ total enslavement.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) 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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“Donald Trump’s proposal to impose tariffs as high as 60 percent on imports from China, and a global tariff of 10 to 20 percent,” Oren Cass argues at The Atlantic, “takes the right approach to addressing globalization’s failures — but it has drawn resounding mockery from economists, and, in turn, from the mainstream media.”

While Cass, usually described as an “economic nationalist” or “national conservative,” cheerfully concedes that tariffs harm consumers in terms of their spending power, he claims that the economists who point out those costs fail to see commensurate benefits.

“The basic premise,” he writes, “is that domestic production has value beyond what markets reflect.”

The consumer who prefers paying $1 for a widget made in China to paying $2 for a widget made in the US, he correctly argues, “will probably not consider the broader importance of making things in America.”

Question: Why SHOULD that consumer consider that “broader importance?”

Well, says Cass, not doing so creates negative externalities — indirect costs to uninvolved third parties.

Which is where his argument falls apart, because the supposed externalities he describes either don’t exist or are net positive externalities to any version of “America” where broad freedom and prosperity are considered more valuable than the warm feeling one gets from indulging the authoritarian fantasies of Oren Cass.

Cass’s claimed externalities fall into three main, interrelated categories: “National security,” innovation, and supply chain resilience.

The solution to all three of these supposed “problems,” if they actually exist, is … freer trade.

Protectionism increases the likelihood of war, while freer trade decreases that likelihood. As Otto Mallery put it, “if soldiers are not to cross international boundaries on missions of war, goods must cross them on missions of peace.”

Innovation is no respecter of national borders. If someone has a good idea, that idea will make its way around the world and enjoy adoption everywhere. Yes, even in countries where people and governments fall for Cass’s siren song of economic insanity — just more slowly and less profitably, because Cass-style “protection” is itself a massive negative externality.

Tariffs fray supply chains, while free trade — and freer trade’s “peace dividend,” a reduced need for military spending in the name of “national security” — incentivizes building the most robust and efficient supply chains possible.

Cass’s real argument for protectionism is that freer trade thwarts his fantasy of a “national greatness”  powered by his terrible economics and our obedience. That argument is indeed correct.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) 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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If there’s a single global through line to  the politics of the last decade, that through line is the continuing fight over something called, by both its supporters and opponents, “populism.”

Donald Trump (the US). Narendra Modi (India). Viktor Orban (Hungary). Giorgia Meloni (Italy). Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil). Boris Johnson (the United Kingdom). A cast of thousands, a few still enjoying their 15 minutes and then some, many others at least temporarily out of the limelight.

The negative reactions, usually postured as defenses of “liberalism and democracy” against “illiberalism and authoritarianism,” are just as plentiful and, in places, at least marginally as successful … but not quite so big on cults of personality.

Rather odd, don’t you think? The “populists” pose as “the voice of the people” but center their efforts on backing individual leader figures, while their supposedly “elitist” opponents emphasize “the people” over particular representatives of same.

In reality, both sides are fake versions of “populism.”

The core underlying claim of populism is this: There are two classes of people, the “exploitative elites” and the “righteous masses.”

That claim is true as far as it goes. The falsehood — or, being generous, error — is in identification of those two classes.

Today’s self-described populists identify the exploitative elites as those who either belong to, or pretend to support, particular easily scapegoated “out-groups” like racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual minorities. They identify the righteous masses as whoever falls for the scapegoating and flocks to Dear Leader’s banner.

Today’s self-described anti-populists identify the exploitative elites as the populists, whom they also identify with easily scapegoated “out-groups,” especially anyone who has more money than you. They identify the righteous masses as whoever falls for the scapegoating and flocks to the Leader Party’s banner.

In reality the two classes — as identified in Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer’s “libertarian class theory” in the 19th century — are the productive class (everyone who earns a living by producing and exchanging valuable goods and services — the righteous masses) and the political class (the exploitative elite who use government to exercise power and parasitically rake off a portion of the wealth the righteous masses produce).

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, as members of the US political class, have a lot more in common with each other than either has in common with the average American.

Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, as members of India’s political class, have a lot more in common with each other than either has in common with the average Indian.

And so on, and so forth.

So why the fake “populist” versus fake populist “anti-populist” posturing?

Because it WORKS.  Any given political class faction may be on top or in waiting to get back on top at any given time, but those factions cooperate to ensure that the productive class remains in thrall to their various schemes and scams.

Politics is about power.

Realpolitik is about acting to maintain power, moral and ethical considerations be damned.

Real populism — libertarianism — rejects political power, not just one political class faction.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) 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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