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Thought

Doris Lessing

This word ‘fascist’ is one of the great words at the moment that stops everyone from thinking. You have only to say that so-and-so’s a fascist and that’s the end of any reason; you can’t think after that. I wish there could be a ban put on the use of the word. It’s an extraordinary psychological thing that if you say there is a possibility of war, the reaction is to lynch you.

Doris Lessing, in Lesley Hazelton, “Doris Lessing on Feminism, Communism and ‘Space Fiction,’” New York Times (July 25, 1982).

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Today

Templars Suppressed

On November 22, 1307, Pope Clement V issued the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.

This was a little over a month after France’s King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The liquidation of the order of the Templars was a major event of the late Middle Ages.

Categories
international affairs political economy regulation

Rents After the Chainsaw

Javier Milei, Argentina, free markets, regulations, housing

Argentina’s Ministry of Deregulation — yes, it now has one — reports that by June 2024, little more than half a year after chainsaw-wielding libertarian candidate Javier Milei won the presidential election, the housing market boomed . . . into a magnificent recovery.

Back in March, Reason magazine observed that listings on the Argentinian real-estate platform Zonaprop had increased from 5,500 before Milei’s deregulation “to 15,300 today, a staggering 180 percent rise.”

Why the big jump?

Strict national rent controls had been imposed in 2020, by the previous administration. When Milei lifted them, replacing them “with nothing,” tenants and landlords could then make whatever arrangements they could agree upon.

One method of evading the punishing controls had been switching to an Airbnb model of renting, with contracts renewable every three months. Such expedients were almost mandatory . . . given Argentina’s galloping inflation. But they introduced their own kinds of uncertainty.

Owners also took units off the market.

Annual rentals plummeted under this anti-market regime. In late 2023, Valentina Morales saw maybe “12 apartments advertised in the entire Palermo neighborhood,” a region with a population of almost 250,000.

Rents on the few apartments available with annual contracts skyrocketed. Tenancies were required by regulation to last for three years, with arbitrary and unrealistic caps on rent increases. And rent had to be paid only in pesos. But since inflation did not pause under the pre-Milei regime, owners were forced to guess how high inflation would go over the three years . . . and they charged accordingly.

Now? All such nonsense is gone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

David Graeber

“Policy” is the negation of politics; policy is by definition something concocted by some form of elite, which presumes it knows better than others how their affairs are to be conducted. By participating in policy debates the very best one can achieve is to limit the damage, since the very premise is inimical to the idea of people managing their own affairs.

David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (2004).
Categories
Today

Mayflower Compact

On what we would now render as November 21, 1620, Plymouth Colony settlers signed the Mayflower Compact. In the Old Style calendar, the date was November Eleventh.

Categories
ideological culture international affairs national politics & policies too much government

This Is What Businessman Rule Looks Like

Donald Trump

President Trump is doing something many of his supporters said they wanted him to do: act not like a normal politician but like a businessman, for Americans, as if we were stockholders in a for-profit company.

Bring in the dough. Efficiently.

“Saudi Crown Prince Pledges $1 Trillion Investment in US During Meeting with Trump,” an article at The Epoch Times tells us. The Saudi potentate is boosting, the story runs, an “investment partnership with the United States from $600 billion,” and the prince in question, Mohammed bin Salman — his reputation previously sullied by the part he played in the gruesome assassination of a journalist —  explains that the “investments will focus on what he described as ‘real opportunities’ in areas such as artificial intelligence and magnets.”

The article notes that the “Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a Nov. 17 post on X that the crown prince, widely known as MBS, would meet Trump ‘to discuss bilateral relations, ways to strengthen them across various fields, and issues of mutual interest.’”

Now, that latter discussion of diplomatic issues appears normal. That is, what we expect two heads of state to do when conferring.

But all this talk of extra investment? Micromanaging foreign investment within the United States?

That’s never been the recipe for republican governance and can so easily and quickly devolve into plutocratic socialism-for-the-rich. There’s no shouting “limited government” about what Trump boasts of regarding “the deals” he makes for the U.S. 

For “us.”

But it does fit what many had hoped he would be: a businessman taking charge of the corporation that is the unitary “United States.” A fix-it man for the federal Leviathan.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Doris Lessing

What the feminists want of me is something they haven’t examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, ‘Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle toward the golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more.’ Do they really want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do. I’ve come with great regret to this conclusion.

Doris Lessing, in Lesley Hazelton, “Doris Lessing on Feminism, Communism and ‘Space Fiction,’” New York Times (July 25, 1982).

Categories
Today

A New Jersey First

On November 20, 1789, the state of New Jersey led the way to establishing the Bill of Rights by being the first U.S. state to ratify the document.

Actually, the state ratified on that date Article One of the original twelve, which has yet to be fully ratified as a constitutional amendment, and Articles Three through Twelve, which became the ten articles of the Bill of Rights. On May 7, 1992, the state ratified Article Two, which became the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the Constitution.

Categories
defense & war international affairs Internet controversy

Decapitation Diplomacy

China, Japan, Taiwan, war, foreign policy

The Chinese Communist Party has presided — is presiding — over the largest peacetime military buildup in history. 

And China’s “wolf warrior” diplomats constantly reflect this fact.

Earlier this month, during a parliamentary session, Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was pressed by an opposition lawmaker on scenarios that could trigger the clause in Japan’s constitution concerning “survival-threatening situations,” thus allowing collective self-defense. Takaichi explicitly stated that Chinese military action against Taiwan — such as a naval blockade, invasion, or interference with U.S. forces — could qualify. 

No “strategic ambiguity” there!

But as scandalous as Takaichi’s answers were to the Communist Party in China, it was the response of Xue Jian, consul general of the People’s Republic of China, in Osaka, Japan, that raised more than eyebrows: “I have no choice but to cut off that filthy head that barged in without hesitation — are you ready?” This was followed by a red emoji, an angry icon.

It has since been deleted.

Last Friday, lawmakers from both Takaichi’s party and Komeito (a centrist, socially conservative party) demanded Xue’s immediate recall; a petition with more than 50,000 signatures circulated online. 

But Takaichi herself is under pressure to apologize.

I agree with the Scribbler’s take over at StopTheCCP.org: “It would be disappointing if instead of ‘muddling through,’ the Japanese government as led by its new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, submitted to China’s malicious demands and formally retracted her very reasonable statement about Taiwan.”

The only apologies should come from the CCP’s Osaka Decapitator.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Doris Lessing

We live in a world of incredible suffering. This brief paradise in the West since the end of the last war, which is about to end, has educated two generations into thinking we live in some sort of Shangri-La. As usual we — that is, the human race — are in for a hard time. But that is our history. When have we not had a hard time?

Doris Lessing, in Lesley Hazelton, “Doris Lessing on Feminism, Communism and ‘Space Fiction,’” New York Times (July 25, 1982).