Samuel Cohn

Technosocialism won’t work, because the problem with central planning was never about computing power.

Taxation is theft—not metaphorically, but literally. The state takes your property under threat of violence without your consent. And the fact that they call it "social contract" doesn't magically transform robbery into virtue. Private property precedes government.

Si pudiera eliminar algo de esta civilización, eliminaría la Universidad moderna. Veo la institución y solo veo la limitación del individuo, veo parasitismo, incompetencia, manipulación, burocracia e hipocresía; veo un sistema diseñado para convertir al alumno en un ser disfuncional, irresponsable y adicto a culpar a los demás por sus carencias y problemas.

Peter Berger complained sociology had taken a turn toward methodological fetishism—the application of ever more sophisticated statistical techniques to ever more trivial topics. I think he was correct, and that the observation extends beyond sociology. One optimistic, somewhat counterintuitive AI speculation is that as statistical wizardry is offloaded to the machines, that skill set will lose its scarcity and marketability. As a result, people who want to make real contributions to social science will need to learn to think more theoretically—dare I say, philosophically?—and ask more interesting questions about how the social world works. Academic training will thus start selecting for and developing that skill set. The machines and the humanists can triumph together!

Ayn Rand understood something that most economists refuse to acknowledge: the moral case for capitalism isn't about efficiency or outcomes, but about human nature and individual rights. While Chicago School types fumbled around with utilitarian arguments and Keynes pushed his theft-based economics, Rand cut straight to the philosophical core. Her genius wasn't in economic theory per se, but in recognizing that economics flows from ethics. You cannot have sound economics built on the premise that some humans exist to serve others. The collectivist mindset that birthed central banking, progressive taxation, and the welfare state stems from the same moral rot: the idea that individual achievement is somehow a debt owed to society. Rand's critics—mostly government-funded academics and their useful idiots—love to attack her fictional characters while ignoring her central insight. Every economic intervention, from price controls to antitrust laws, rests on the premise that productive individuals have no right to the fruits of their labor. Every regulatory agency assumes bureaucrats know better than market participants how to allocate resources. But here's what drives the statists insane about Rand: she refused to apologize for success. While modern libertarians often accept the Left's moral framework and argue that free markets coincidentally help the poor, Rand said the quiet part out loud. Capitalism is moral because it rewards virtue—rationality, productivity, trade—and punishes vice. The Austrian School provides the economic framework, but Rand provided the moral foundation that makes resistance to state power philosophically coherent. Without that moral clarity, you end up with compromise, pragmatism, and eventually the acceptance of "necessary" government interventions that metastasize into the bloated surveillance states we inhabit today.

When Trump leaves office: The Department of War will go back to being the Defense Department. The Trump Kennedy Center will go back to being the Kennedy Center. The Gulf of America will once again be the Gulf of Mexico. The unfinished East Wing (it won't be finished by the end of Trump's term) will be rebuilt by the next president, and it will not be a ballroom. Federal agencies packed with unqualified loyalists will fire those people and rehire the career experts Trump fired. The Department of Justice will go back to enforcing the law instead of protecting the president. Scientific agencies like NOAA, the EPA, and the CDC will go back to publishing research without political interference. The U.S. will re-align with its allies and not with its enemies. The presidential pardon power will stop being used as a rewards program for loyalists. Inspectors General will go back to investigating corruption instead of getting fired for it. The White House press room will go back to having briefings, with real journalists and not podcasters. U.S. foreign policy will stop revolving around flattering dictators. And the world will progress as though Donald Trump never existed.

Communism is a religion created by bitter members of the bourgeoisie who feel life owes them more than they can earn.

John Maynard Keynes convinced politicians they could spend their way to prosperity by stealing from savers through inflation. His "genius" was telling power-hungry bureaucrats exactly what they wanted to hear—that fiscal restraint is unnecessary.

Every teacher I know personally is leaving the profession because students have become unteachable. They don’t read, they don’t talk to each other, they have no curiosity, no passion, no interest in learning. Giving kids unfettered access to screens has ruined a generation.

Milton Friedman: “There are two sets of effects of any action: the immediately visible effects and the widespread invisible effects.” “The invisible effects are often much more important than the visible ones, but people don’t see them.”

The West has never truly understood the East. Not because the East is complicated to understand, simply because the West keeps trying to read 5000 years old civilisations through a 2000 year old framework. So the entire western worldview, its philosophy, its science, its understanding of reality, its frameworks for meaning, all of it is built on foundations that are at most 2000 years old. And here lies the fallacy.

They say capitalism makes the rich richer. Capitalism also lifted 2 billion people out of poverty in 30 years. Socialism has never done that. Not once. Not anywhere.

"Those who obtain or inherit predatory wealth and privilege realize the ultimate means of imposing austerity and demolishing the power of democracies is deception and junk economics" -Michael Hudson