Why Biden’s Just Wrong: NO ONE ‘Knows How to Make Government Work.’

President Joe Biden says, “I know how to make government work!” You’d think he’d know. He’s worked in government for 51 years. But the truth is, no one can make government work. Biden hasn’t. Look at the chaos at the border, our military’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the rising cost of living, our unsustainable record-high debt ... In my new video, economist Ed Stringham argues that no government can ever work well, because “even the best person can’t implement change. ... The massive bureaucracy gets bigger and slower.” I learned that as a consumer reporter watching bureaucrats regulate business. Their rules usually made life worse for consumers. Yet politicians want government to do more! Remember the unveiling of Obamacare’s website? Millions tried to sign up. The first day, only six got it to work. Vice President Joe Biden made excuses: “Neither (Obama) and I are technology geeks.” Stringham points out, “If they can’t design a basic simple website, how are they going to manage half the economy?” While bureaucrats struggled with the Obamacare site, the private sector successfully created Uber and Lyft, platforms like iCloud, apps like Waze, smartwatches, etc. The private sector creates things that work because it has to. If businesses don’t serve customers well, they go out of business. But government is a monopoly. It never goes out of business. With no competition, there’s less pressure to improve. Often good people join government. Some work as hard as workers in the private sector. But not for long. Because the bureaucracy’s incentives kill initiative. If a government worker works hard, he might get a small raise. But he sits near others who earn the same pay and, thanks to archaic civil service rules, are unlikely to get fired even if they’re late, lazy or stupid. Over time, that’s demoralizing. Eventually government workers conclude, “Why try?” In the private sector, workers must strive to make things better. If they don’t, competitors will, and you might lose your job. Governments never go out of business. “Companies can only stay in business if they always keep their customer happy,” Stringham points out. “Competition pushes us to be better. Government has no competition.” I push back. “Politicians say, ‘Voters can vote us out.’” “With a free market,” Stringham replies, “The consumer votes every single day with the dollar. Under politics, we have to wait four years.” It’s another reason why, over time, government never works as well as the private sector. Year after year, the Pentagon fails audits. If a private company repeatedly does that, they get shut down. But government never gets shut down. A Pentagon spokeswoman makes excuses: “We’re working on improving our process. We certainly are learning each time.” They don’t learn much. They still fail audits. “It’s like we’re living in Groundhog Day,” Stringham jokes. When Covid hit, politicians handed out almost $2 trillion in “rescue” funds. The Government Accountability Office says more than $100 billion were stolen. “One woman bought a Bentley,” laughs Stringham. “A father and son bought a luxury home.” At least Biden noticed the fraud. He announced, “We’re going to make you pay back what you stole! No. They will not. Biden’s Fraud Enforcement Task Force has recovered only 1% of what was stolen. Even without fraud, government makes money vanish. I’ve reported on my town’s $2 million toilet in a park. When I confronted the parks commissioner, he said, “$2 million was a bargain! Today it would cost $3 million.” That’s government work. More recently, Biden proudly announced that government would create “500,000 (EV) charging stations.” After two years, they’ve built ... seven. Not 7,000. Just seven. Over the same time, greedy, profit-seeking Amazon built 17,000. “Privatize!” says Stringham. “Whenever we think something’s important, question whether government should do it.” In Britain, government-owned Jaguar lost money year after year. Only when Britain sold the company to private investors did Jaguar start turning a profit selling cars people actually like. When Sweden sold Absolut Vodka, the company increased its profits sixfold. It’s ridiculous for Biden to say, “I know how to make government work.” No one does. Next week, this column takes on Donald Trump’s promise: “We’ll drain the Washington swamp!”

Norberg: Sweden’s ‘Socialism,’ the Loneliness ‘Epidemic,’ Degrowth, & Other Myths

Capitalism and racism go together? I hear it all the time. “Racism is intricately linked to capitalism,” says famous Marxist Angela Davis. “It’s a mistake to assume that we can combat racism by leaving capitalism in place.” “Anti-racist” activist Ibram X. Kendi says, “In order to truly be anti-racist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist.” This is just silly. In my new video, Swedish historian Johan Norberg explains how free markets discourage racism. Capitalists make a profit by serving their customers. The more customers they please, the more money they might make. It hurts the bottom line to exclude any groups. “Look around the world,” says Norberg, “The least racist societies with the fewest expressions of racist attitudes are the most capitalist countries.” Norberg’s new book, “The Capitalist Manifesto,” highlights a Journal of Institutional Economics study that found a correlation between economic freedom and “tolerance of ethnic groups.” “Capitalism,” he says, “Is the first economic system where you only get rich by opening up opportunities for others. It pays to be colorblind. It pays to be open to willing customers and workers who could enrich your company no matter what religion or race. ... It doesn’t mean that every person will be colorblind. There will always be idiots. But in capitalism, it’s costly to be an idiot.” He reminds us that in the Jim Crow South, businesses fought racism, because the rules denied them customers. “It’s often forgotten that owners of buses, railways, streetcars in the American South didn’t really segregate systematically until the late 19th century,” says Norberg. “It was probably not because they were less racist than others in the South, but they were capitalists. They wanted money, they wanted clients, and they didn’t want to engage in some sort of costly and brutal policing business in segregating buses.” Even when segregation was mandated, some streetcar companies refused to comply. For several years after Jim Crow laws passed, Black customers sat wherever they wanted. Norberg adds, “Those owners of public transport, they fought those discriminatory laws because they imposed a terrible cost. ... They tried to bypass them secretly and fight them in courts. They were often fined. Some were threatened with imprisonment.” The streetcar company in Mobile, Alabama, only obeyed Jim Crow laws after their conductors began to get arrested and fined. Those business owners may have been racist -- I can’t know -- but they fought segregation. “We got Jim Crow laws,” says Norberg, “Because free markets weren’t willing to discriminate.” Capitalists cared about green -- not black or white. Free markets all over the world coordinate and cooperate. Many don’t know of each other’s existence, and if they did meet, they might not get along. But they work together in search of profit. It’s odd that socialists now call capitalism racist, when the opposite is more often true. The Soviet Union invited African students to study science in major cities. But “Soviet citizens often treated the Africans in their midst with disdain and hostility,” New Lines Magazine describes. Russian children’s books portrayed Blacks in animalistic ways. Name-calling was common. Today, China and Cuba claim to have “zero-tolerance” for racism, but during the Covid pandemic, authorities forcibly tested Blacks and ordered strict isolation. Landlords evicted African tenants. Businesses often refused to serve them. In Cuba, Castro insisted he would eliminate racism. But “Racism persists,” reports France 24, saying it’s “banned by law,” but “alive on the streets ... In local jargon, a white woman with a black boyfriend is ... ‘holding back the race.’” Cuba’s government is still instituting programs to “combat racism.” It’s capitalism that makes people less racist.

Biden’s Kill Switch: The Growing Threat of Government Control of Your Car

Soon the government might shut down your car. President Joe Biden’s new infrastructure gives bureaucrats that power. You probably didn’t hear about that because when media covered it, few mentioned the requirement that by 2026, every American car must “monitor” the driver, determine if he is impaired and, if so, “limit vehicle operation.” Rep. Thomas Massie objected, complaining that the law makes government “judge, jury and executioner on such a fundamental right!” Congress approved the law anyway. A USA Today “fact check” told readers, don’t worry, “There’s no kill switch in Biden’s bill.” “They didn’t read it, because it’s there!” says automotive engineer and former vintage race car driver Lauren Fix in my new video. The clause is buried under Section 24220 of the law. USA Today’s “fact” check didn’t lie, exactly. It acknowledged that the law requires “new cars to have technology that identifies if a driver is impaired and prevents operation.” Apparently, they just didn’t like the term “kill switch.” But it is a kill switch. Mothers Against Drunk Driving wants that. I say to Fix, “It would save lives.” “Are you willing to give up every bit of control of your life?” she asks. “Once you give that up, you have no more freedom. This computer decides you can’t drive your vehicle. Great. Unless someone’s having a heart attack and trying to get to the hospital.” The kill switch is just one of several ways the government proposes to control how we drive. California lawmakers want new cars to have a speed governor that prevents you from going more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. That would reduce speeding. But not being able to speed is dangerous, too, says Fix. If “something’s coming at you, you have to make an adjustment.” New cars will have a special button on the dash. If you suddenly need to speed and manage to find the button when trying to drive out of some bad situation, and it lets you speed for 15 seconds. For all these new safety devices to work, cars need to spy on drivers. Before I researched this, I didn’t realize that they already do. The Mozilla Foundation reports that car makers “Collect things like your age, gender, ethnicity, driver’s license number, your purchase history and tendencies.” Nissan and Kia “collect information about your sex life.” How? Cars aim video cameras at passengers. Other devices listen to conversations and intercept text messages. Then, says Mozilla, 76% of the car companies “sell your data.” “I just bought a new car,” I say to Fix. “Nobody told me about this.” “Oh, it’s there,” she replies. “Buy a new car, you get that really long document. ... The small print says, ‘We’re collecting your data. We know everything you’re doing in your car, and we own (the data). There’s nothing you can do about it.’” Finally, Biden’s infrastructure bill also includes a pilot program to tax you based on how far we drive. “A mileage charge seems fair,” I say to Fix. “You pay for your damage to the road.” “Correct,” she replies. “But when you start allowing them to do this, they could say, ‘We don’t want you to buy a firearm.’ ... ‘We don’t want you to go to that destination. So we’re not going to let you start your car.’ It’s about control.” I push back. “They’re not controlling me.” “They can,” she replies. “Wait until you get a bill for your carbon footprint. ‘You’re at your maximum for carbon credits. We’re not going to let you drive today! Take the train. Take the electric bus.’” “This is paranoia,” I suggest. “Maybe,” says Fix. “But so far, everything that I’ve said about these things, each step keeps coming through.”