“Social Security is the biggest Ponzi Scheme of all time,” Elon Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan on the latter’s podcast. “If you look at the future obligations of Social Security, it far exceeds the tax revenue.”

Cue outrage.

“Billionaires like you to pay the same amount into Social Security as a truck driver,” US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) whined, failing to mention that billionaires like Elon Musk also receive the same maximum monthly Social Security check as that truck driver.

“He’s going after the elderly, the disabled, and orphaned children so he can pocket it in tax cuts for himself,” said US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “It’s disgusting.” AOC apparently thinks people won’t notice that Congress has “borrowed” nearly $3 trillion from the Social Security Trust fund, and that she’s voted for much of that “borrowing.”

For the most part, Musk is correct to refer to Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. It pays out benefits from newer revenues, not by investing Social Security taxes in profitable ventures.

There’s one respect in which it differs from the traditional Ponzi scheme, though.

In the “private sector,” Ponzi scammers try to hide what they’re up to. Investors are led to BELIEVE their money is being used profitably, when in reality their “dividends” come from luring in new investors until the con collapses and the perpetrator either flees with his ill-gotten gains or goes to prison.

Social Security, on the other hand, has transparently operated in a facially Ponzi-like manner for decades — and the US Supreme Court publicly declared, 65 years ago, in its ruling on Flemming v. Nestor, that no one is “entitled to” any payout at all: “The noncontractual interest of an employee covered by the Act cannot be soundly analogized to that of the holder of an annuity, whose right to benefits are based on his contractual premium payments.”

Politicians still pretend that Social Security is retirement “insurance,” but it’s neither actuarially based nor guaranteed to provide any “return” at all.

Nor is it an “investment.” It’s just a tax you and your employer have to pay, loosely linked to the possibility of getting a check in the future … if Congress doesn’t change its mind.

Social Security was a Depression-era welfare program that its primary backer, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, said in 1935 “ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.”

The distinguishing feature of a Ponzi scheme is that it defrauds presumably unsuspecting victims.

The sad truth that Musk didn’t bring up is that the victims have known — or at least should have known — they were being scammed since at least as early as 1960.

Apparently most Americans would rather remain scammed, and hope for the best, than admit the truth to themselves.

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 February 26, ABC News reports, Europol announced the arrest of 25 individuals it accuses of being “part of a criminal group engaging in the distribution of images of minors fully generated by artificial intelligence.”

Again, for emphasis: “Fully generated by artificial intelligence.”

Yes, sexual abuse of children is a horrific crime. Yes, those who engage in it are criminals. But can imaginary characters be “minors?” And are fictional depictions of those characters being victimized really “crimes?”

Over the years, politicians and law enforcement agencies have increasingly exploited such claims to groom the public into moral panic at the expense of REAL children suffering REAL sexual abuse in REAL life.

It’s a pretty simple con. Most people rightly find the sexual molestation of children horrifying. They want it stopped. They want the perpetrators brought to justice.

But investigating and proving real crimes is hard work.

Police departments would rather run sting operations with fake victims — cops posing online as minors available for sex — for easy arrests and good publicity, than put their officers to the more difficult (and expensive) task of conducting real investigations and tracking down real criminals.

Prosecutors would rather try those cases, which require no  evidence of an actual victim or an actual crime, than have to present a real victim, a real perpetrator, and real proof to a jury.

Politicians live in perpetual need of gut-wrenching topics to virtue signal to voters about, and since real child molestation and real child porn are already illegal, they make do with promoting new laws against fake child molestation, fake child porn, “child-like” sex dolls, etc. … and, as noted above, entirely fictional material “fully generated by artificial intelligence.”

None of this makes our children any safer — the real problems aren’t going away and for all we know might even be getting worse — but it’s great for law enforcement budgets and helps politicians herd panicked voters to the polls.

Your tax dollars at work, folks. And here’s the thing:

While the legal availability of AI-generated child pornography, “child-like” sex dolls, etc., wouldn’t eliminate real child sexual abuse, it would probably reduce the incidence.

Put another way, at least SOME pedophiles are probably prone to settle for fantasy, especially if the difference between fantasy and reality is the difference between freedom and imprisonment. If they face prison either way, more of them will opt to really molest real children instead of fantasize that they’re molesting fake children.

And to put it a third way: Those who support laws against “fully generated by artificial intelligence” child porn objectively support more real child porn, and more of the crimes that go into its creation.

That’s reality, not a story “fully generated by artificial intelligence.”

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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On February 26, Jeff Bezos —  founder of e-commerce giant Amazon and space travel company Blue Origin — dropped a note to staff at his 2013 acquisition, the Washington Post,  “to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.” He also tweeted the note to the public:

“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

A single-word summary of those “pillars”: Libertarianism.

Does Bezos really plan to put the Post  in the “L” column — if not in terms of political partisan affiliation, at least where editorial ideology is concerned?

If so, huzzah and kudos.

While the American newspaper community finds itself blessed by a libertarian paper here and there, most of them are smaller community publications.

From the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to USA Today (and, until now anyway), the big players are 100% “establishment,” though sometimes leaning ever so slightly “left” or “right” within a narrow spectrum of acceptable opinion.

Apart from an occasional novelty column, libertarian ideas mostly find themselves excluded. The largest overtly libertarian-leaning newspaper outfit (and a fine one at that)  is the Orange County, California Register and its affiliated southern California chain. I love the Register, and not just because it occasionally publishes my own columns.

I’d love nothing more than seeing the movement I belong to get the Post as jewel in its media crown.

But as always, the devil is in the details. If I had a nickel for every time the word “libertarian” — or even phrases like “personal liberties and free markets” — got used incorrectly or dishonestly, I could spend my time racing my Ferrari between a Manhattan apartment and a gated-community LA McMansion instead of submitting libertarian op-eds to newspapers.

Does Bezos really support “free markets?” If so, how does that square with the billions of tax dollars the federal government spends with his companies — for example, the $10 billion contract Amazon has with the Pentagon for its “Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure” project, or Blue Origin’s billions of dollars in launch contracts with DoD and NASA?

Does Bezos really support “personal liberties?” If so, why does Amazon provide its Rekognition surveillance software to, among other government entities, US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement?

Color me skeptical. It seems more likely that Jeff Bezos’s version of “personal liberties and free markets” is just version 2.0 of Elon Musk’s whiny “free speech for me but not for thee” guff and corporate welfare queenery combo.

But please, Mr. Bezos, prove me wrong. And let me know if you’re looking for libertarian op-ed writers.

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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