Michael Lind on billionaires funding NGOs; Allison Schrager on people hating billionaires; Bill Galston on a multi-party configuration; Frannie Block on the evil teachers' unions
“The median voter on the left is probably moderate, and the median voter on the right is probably MAGA, which is the inverse of libertarian.”
Sorry, but this is simply untrue.
It is one of Arnold’s worst takes ever.
Yes, the furthest fringe MAGA right is ~80% the reverse of libertarian, just as the hard woke left is ~95% the opposite of libertarian. That part is true enough.
Majorities on the left have more favorable views of China and Iran than of Israel.
Near majorities choose Hamas over Israel, as Arnold well knows. They no longer support capitalism, and “neoliberalism” is a dirty word among majorities on the left.
Colin Wright’s several year old cartoon was correct then, and even more correct now.
So the claim of moderate on the left is wrong, and dangerously so.
But his claim is also wrong on the right.
And I have no issue with the claim that “MAGA” is now the median on the right.
But policy by policy - regression on tariffs notwithstanding - the median position on the right is closer to libertarian than the median on the left. And it’s not even close.
In fact, I claim that the median on the right is closer to libertarian than even that relatively small group on the left that call themselves “Abundance liberals.” Please see the discussion section of the last 4 DavId Friedman posts, which have all been on this subject. Go through “Abundance Liberalism” by policy and objective - links available in those comment sections - and you will see for yourself.
But even if we conceded that Abundance Liberals were closer to libertarian than the median (MAGA) on the right, it *still* wouldn’t make AK’s claim that the median on the left is moderate in the classical liberal sense. Because the tiny center-left (which *is* close to libertarian, I concur) and the small “Abundance Liberal” group are still dwarfed by old school very progressive Bernie-leaning types plus new school hard woke oppressor-oppressed types.
So while the median on the right is unquestionably less libertarian than it was 10 years ago, even if he believes that Abundance Liberals are closer to libertarians, AK is focusing on the second derivative while ignoring the first derivative overall direction on the left on the one hand, and confusing the first derivative direction on the right with the magnitude on the other.
TL/DR: AK’s claim here is based on vibes, not reality of policies supported.
I attended my first National Review event to see what the old school was up to. It was done in a first-class way and it was nice to share pride in the outlier that is America. However, there was limited discussion of the debt, no analysis of the grievances that it was claimed underlie "populism," and no discussion of the evil Chinese Communist Party.
'Where is the median voter theorem in all of this? The median voter on the left is probably moderate, and the median voter on the right is probably MAGA, which is the inverse of libertarian. So in the long run the Democrats could be moderate and the Republicans could throw the libertarians and libertarian-leaning conservatives under the bus.'
General elections are decided by the median voter but primaries are not. Arguably primaries are not even decided by the median within the particular party. If all you do in an election is cast your vote, your opinion doesn't matter for much.
But AK’s claim that the median on the left is not backed by the polling evidence.
It is likely true amongst his age 65+ Democrat-voting friends. But that does not make it true of the Dem Party.
His claim of the median on the right being the inverse of libertarian is also incorrect (even if we concede it is largely correct about the right fringe). Policy by policy, the median on the right is MUCH closer to classical liberalism than the median on the left. And it ain’t even close.
AK is just spouting vibes in this case, not facts.
“The Republicans have been able to throw libertarians under the bus”
This often recited refrain on this Substack is in need of some references.
No Republican ever threw a libertarian under the bus. It’s just that the libertarians became irrelevant in a post fusionist world where culture and social order took precedence over a legalize everything mindset. If anything, the libertarian decline on the right is self-inflicted as the core differentiators seem hopelessly unpopular with everyone except for the progressive left.
Billionaires funding socialist/ communists, whether from white guilt or rich guilt, or for whatever reason, has long been a problem. The govt needs to be stricter on NGOs.
Especially tax exempt colleges which are supposed to be non-partisan, but are liars. [30% quota still best proposal].
Schrager seems pretty good against a wealth tax, but the democracy reality is that when 51%+ voters want higher taxes on the rich, that pressure to increase taxes will increase. Note that few of those favoring more taxes on the rich seem very bothered by fraud, mostly ignoring it.
Long before raising taxes, there should be more anti-fraud.
Having an aigent like "Junior" watch & record every govt transaction would be a good start at increasing transparency, and accountability, reducing fraud & usually waste. A lot more IRS audits of NGOs would be welcome. Especially the commie friendly teachers' union.
Most EU countries have more parties that attain democratic power thru a stronger party voting system. When I was a Libertarian in the US, I thought such "parliamentary" systems would be better. But then the govt becomes a coalition, and the dissidents & those trying to be more moral are often in a coalition when then falls apart, requiring new elections. See Italy & Israel for how many since WW II.
There already are multiple, but impotent, "third" parties in the US, including the Libertarian & Green Parties. They haven't and likely won't win either the Presidency or even a block of 10 or more US Congressional seats (of 435+6 delegates). Instead, the Dems & Reps are both already coalitions. Far more stability; and US political stability as compared to uncertain European schedules of elections, means more economic stability as well. Seldom discussed as a US advantage.
Re the median within the parties, a useful metric would be political parties “center of mass” taking into account both where voters lie but also how intensely they care /feel.
Might reading the links today give one reason to doubt Madison’s claims in Federalist #10 that large polities with virtual representation, facade-of-democracy, style governance, in which benevolent representatives work against narrow, local parochial interests in favor of the collective interest, are superior to smaller governments in which citizens have a substantive stake and a say?
One might be reminded of Hermann Heller’s notion of “liberal authoritarianism.” The browser LLM explains:
“Hermann Heller coined the term authoritarian liberalism in 1933 to critique the political strategy of late Weimar Germany, where the ruling elite combined economic liberalism with political authoritarianism to neutralize democratic threats from the working class. Heller argued that this approach utilized a ‘strong state’ to enforce market rationality and fiscal discipline while systematically depoliticizing the economy and dismantling social welfare programs, effectively subordinating popular sovereignty to capitalist interests.
The concept describes a regime that abandons parliamentary democracy in favor of executive rule by decree (such as under Article 48), claiming that economic necessity requires technocratic governance immune to popular will. Heller identified this as a betrayal of liberal principles, noting that while the state claimed neutrality, it actively intervened to protect bourgeois property rights and large industries while suppressing social claims. This dynamic laid the ideological groundwork for the eventual rise of fascism, as the erosion of democratic institutions left society vulnerable to totalitarian solutions.“
And indeed one might rationally attribute a fair portion of the blame for the reason why the US is circling the drain today to the anti-populist exercise of unaccountable authority by bureaucratic and NGO entities.
Looking to history, one might see the same dynamic in Poland, albeit set forth in much more straightforward language:
“Careerism, like acne and halitosis, is one of these perennial plagues of the human condition which are almost too banal to bear mention. There is not a country in the world which does not have its ‘careerists’, ‘sycophants’, and ‘opportunists’, not a language which lacks its own special idiom for ‘the gravy train’, ‘jobs for the boys’, protezione, protekcja. Polish vocabulary is rich in this field. Yet surely it would be adding insult to injury to suggest that poor suffering Poland has been more susceptible to this plague than other more fortunate lands. At least one can confirm that Poland has no monopoly. Certainly, particular disorders of the body politick are aggravated by the particular conditions of an unhygienic political habitat. Careerism is encouraged by economic regression, where the ruling élite controls the distribution of shrinking rewards ever more effectively; by despotic regimes which thrive on flattery and a monopoly patronage,...
“In Poland, the rift between the careerist Establishment and the public is a running sore, a national scandal which constantly decries the inability of ‘Poles to talk with Poles’. As a result, the guilt-laden Polish careerists are constantly urged to temper the severity of their regime, to fudge, and delay and deliberately forget, to interpret their orders in the mildest form possible. In a word, they are born procrastinators, often of a very sophisticated sort. What is more, they can rationalize their procrastination with the excellent argument that they are protecting their compatriots from people much worse than themselves. If it were not for them, Poland would be left at the mercy of those frightful Russian barbarians (or German ruffians) who, as everyone knows, would use the knout, the firing-squad, the psychiatric ward, or the mass deportation order with no compunction at all. In fact, if only the blockheaded public would realize it, they, the much maligned Polish servants of St Petersburg or Moscow (or Berlin), are Poland’s real patriots…”
- Heart of Europe: The Past in Poland’s Present by Norman Davies (1984)
In contrast, we might look to the example of the Holy Roman Empire:
“... the social role of political authority was to legitimate and regulate access to and control of resources as well as the interaction between individuals and groups. As we shall see, how this was done changed considerably during the Empire’s existence. The key difference between the Empire and European countries was that the former emerged as multicentred, not just politically, but also socially, economically and culturally. This left a lasting legacy, especially in the German lands, where these developments reached their fullest extent with imperial reform and its consequences at the local and territorial level. The result was the idea that a proper social order was composed of distinct groups and communities, each with local and specific rights. The role of authorities was to protect and nurture this society and to resolve its difficulties.”
- Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter H, Wilson (2016)
The Holy Roman Empire lasted approximately 1,000 years, extending from 800 to 1806. One suspects the US might have a better chance of lasting along if it decentralized and shifted a large measure of autonomy and authority exercised at the international, national, state, and county level down to the census block. (https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-maps/2020/geo/2020-census-block-maps.html ) with explicit authority for the formation of inter-block compacts. The great strength of this approach is the democratic power of exit. Administering democracy is difficult, but the power to vote with your feet needs no corrupting bureaucracy or administration.
NGOs of the Left, once set up, have been successful in gaining government grants, thus getting the taxpayer to support their partisan purposes, which include support of politicians. And whatever the original donors' intentions, in time NGOs become controlled by their staffs, invariably on the Left. For example, the founders of the Ford and MacArthur foundations would be appalled at the direction their foundations have taken.
"MAGA supporters, traditional conservatives, the moderate left, socialists and a market-oriented, socially liberal party of the center."
"The median voter on the left is probably moderate, and the median voter on the right is probably MAGA,"
I would not group as Galston has and I have difficulty with your left median.
For Galston, I would argue there is a large group on the left that is not moderate and probably isn't socialist.
Similarly, the median voter on the left is not moderate, unless you count the large and growing group in the middle that doesn't want to identify with either party. If the left is half the population, is more than 25% moderate? What if less than half is left (which I would sympathize with)?
I realize it gets tricky depending on whether we use left-right, conservative-liberal, or Democrat-Republican, and maybe you can argue different using a different dichotomy. Even if you can defend what Galston and you write, I still think these points are important.
1. I too look forward to the demise of the Cato Institute, George Mason, Believe in People, the Open Society Foundations, American Stewards for Liberty, etc.
I think a challenge here is "non-profit' is a big tent when it expanded beyond an IRS tax definition and like all "big tents", people use the word but mean different things like people who hate "government welfare / single payer heath care" but forget that means the entire VA, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, military members, insane asylums, prisons, and your blind deaf mute uncle dying from ALS.
I think what you basically have is 4 categories in that "big tent" and generally people seem to hate a sampling of them, often a different sampling than the guy you are arguing with, even though you both use the same word. You got special interest political groups (i.e. CATO, ALCU, etc), businesses in all but name (hospitals, schools, homeless shelters, etc), churches (which have their share of haters around tax exemptions), and church adjacent functions (which I separate because the politics of your local priest paying income tax or on tithes is different than the politics Hezbollah ran drug rehab programs or the Salvation Army storefronts). People that hate Planned Parenthood don't tend to also hate Salvation Army bell ringers nor homeless shelters even even though they are all in the same "non-profit" tent. Basically in the US "NGO" and "lobbyists" got rolled into "non-profit" and caused this entire mess.
I am convinced that NGOs are worse than profit-seeking businesses."
This is the wrong comparison.
I'd agree non-profits are somewhere in between for-profits and government but I'd argue they are more akin to government. Are they worse than government tax and spend? At least the donors get to decide how much to contribute, to what entity, and often the specific expenditure. Can't say any of that about government.
Either way, for-profits, non-profits, and government all have benefits and flaws. Each serves a purpose and each its excesses but it'd be for the worse if one were gone.
It's a weird comparison to make in a lot of ways. Government sets the rules within which the other two operate. Now the government has chosen some rules that incentivize industrial-scale online casino apps, and now we have for-profit entities ruining people's lives with online gambling. I'm sure some non-profits were involved in the change to the laws. Which sector is responsible for the resultant harm? Seems like it's a mix.
I feel like many things are like this, and it's hard to make blanket statements. A few things I'm pretty certain of, though:
-Basically all production of material wealth, and services aimed at non-destitute consumers, should be run by for-profits.
-The military and police should be run by the government.
-Services targeted at the foreign poor should be run by non-profits.
'Services targeted at the foreign poor should be run by non-profits.' Did you read that NYT article with the sob stories of former employees in the DC area who lost their jobs as a result the shutdown of USAID? One of them had been a VP at some non-profit who had been making an annual salary of around $272,000. In comparison, the highest annual salary for a federal employee in DC (GS-15, Step 10) is only about $164,000. In the meantime, long time recipients of assistance from NGOs formerly funded by USAID (Haiti is the classic example) remain poor as ever.
Back in the 1990s, I worked with a very knowledgeable former USAID official who had been the USAID mission chief in a geographically remote country. People working for USAID-funded NGOs and other beltway bandits had to get 'country clearance' before they could travel to a country. I remember this former USAID official telling me with great pride that he always refused to give country clearance to NGOs. It was clear he viewed part of his job as protecting the locals from evil USAID contractors, and that included the NGOs.
I'm not committed to USAID being good, but I am convinced that EA charities do enough good to outweigh any negatives of international poverty charity as a whole.
I think I agree on placement of the things you are pretty certain. Even if everyone else agreed with us, and I'm by no means certain of that, it still leaves A LOT that is less certain.
Re wealth taxes: this and proposed taxes on unrealized gains are the only things that can rescue the Republican party from its own self destructive impulses.
I do however think the current position is unstable because modern American wealth occupies an unprecedented position. Earlier aristocracies, industrialists, and other elites were visibly tied to the organization of production and the day-to-day sustenance of large populations. Today immense fortunes can compound almost autonomously through financial assets while exercising comparatively little paternal, managerial, or civic responsibility toward the society beneath the wealth-holders. That weakens the traditional moral and political defenses of wealth concentration. AI and automation intensify this problem. A “dark factory” producing advanced ceramics with almost no workforce does not socially justify itself the way a labor-intensive factory once did.
Publicly traded stocks have allowed large swaths of the middle class to amass assets.
It may not be quite a majority (or it may be, I haven’t checked recently), but the fact that 40%-65% of the country can get rich slowly invested in public equities - especially when they do it through low cost index funds - is a wonderful force for good.
Whether one care about inequality per se or not.
Jack Bogle did a tremendous service to tens and tens of millions of Americans.
I'm not sure I know what you think saves the Republican party but it seems this might be something for you to read, not that I'm advocating for or against tax increases.
As for the rest of your piece, I'd argue the primary/beneficial/noble purpose that leads to wealth is offering a product that consumers want, not employment. Your complaint smacks of Luddism. Would you also like to go back to the days when most of the labor force worked just to grow and tend our food supply? I hope not.
That NYT article is good advice for democrats, but I’m not sure that the politicians proposing the wealth taxes actually care if it would be fiscally useful, or if the proposals are constitutional. The proposals are useful for the GOP, though, because it scares away wealthy democrats like Sergei Brin.
I didn’t say that everyone should go back to hand embroidery. What I said is that we have an unprecedented situation that creates a lot of political challenges. Throughout most of history, to maintain and generate wealth, the rich were personally and visibly involved in directly managing the economic lives of the masses. Managing the transition from mass barely-above-subsistence agriculture to industrialization was not easy and involved a lot of social turmoil.
In our current situation there is a dominant school of thought that says we just need to provide cheap consumer goods and to redistribute income to the masses, that this is enough. That approach is more fragile than it seems. A society that relies so heavily on redistribution will struggle to organize popular energies in response to urgent threats, because that sort of organization requires leadership muscles that atrophy without use.
Increasing redistribution comes from some combination of a tendency of government to grow in scope and power until a crisis curtails it and from our increasing wealth which both leads to more growth in redistribution and reduces the likelihood of a crisis. This happens regardless of how products are produced and how much the rich are involved in managing the economic lives of the masses.
“The median voter on the left is probably moderate, and the median voter on the right is probably MAGA, which is the inverse of libertarian.”
Sorry, but this is simply untrue.
It is one of Arnold’s worst takes ever.
Yes, the furthest fringe MAGA right is ~80% the reverse of libertarian, just as the hard woke left is ~95% the opposite of libertarian. That part is true enough.
Majorities on the left have more favorable views of China and Iran than of Israel.
Near majorities choose Hamas over Israel, as Arnold well knows. They no longer support capitalism, and “neoliberalism” is a dirty word among majorities on the left.
Colin Wright’s several year old cartoon was correct then, and even more correct now.
So the claim of moderate on the left is wrong, and dangerously so.
But his claim is also wrong on the right.
And I have no issue with the claim that “MAGA” is now the median on the right.
But policy by policy - regression on tariffs notwithstanding - the median position on the right is closer to libertarian than the median on the left. And it’s not even close.
In fact, I claim that the median on the right is closer to libertarian than even that relatively small group on the left that call themselves “Abundance liberals.” Please see the discussion section of the last 4 DavId Friedman posts, which have all been on this subject. Go through “Abundance Liberalism” by policy and objective - links available in those comment sections - and you will see for yourself.
But even if we conceded that Abundance Liberals were closer to libertarian than the median (MAGA) on the right, it *still* wouldn’t make AK’s claim that the median on the left is moderate in the classical liberal sense. Because the tiny center-left (which *is* close to libertarian, I concur) and the small “Abundance Liberal” group are still dwarfed by old school very progressive Bernie-leaning types plus new school hard woke oppressor-oppressed types.
So while the median on the right is unquestionably less libertarian than it was 10 years ago, even if he believes that Abundance Liberals are closer to libertarians, AK is focusing on the second derivative while ignoring the first derivative overall direction on the left on the one hand, and confusing the first derivative direction on the right with the magnitude on the other.
TL/DR: AK’s claim here is based on vibes, not reality of policies supported.
I attended my first National Review event to see what the old school was up to. It was done in a first-class way and it was nice to share pride in the outlier that is America. However, there was limited discussion of the debt, no analysis of the grievances that it was claimed underlie "populism," and no discussion of the evil Chinese Communist Party.
'Where is the median voter theorem in all of this? The median voter on the left is probably moderate, and the median voter on the right is probably MAGA, which is the inverse of libertarian. So in the long run the Democrats could be moderate and the Republicans could throw the libertarians and libertarian-leaning conservatives under the bus.'
General elections are decided by the median voter but primaries are not. Arguably primaries are not even decided by the median within the particular party. If all you do in an election is cast your vote, your opinion doesn't matter for much.
You are correct.
But AK’s claim that the median on the left is not backed by the polling evidence.
It is likely true amongst his age 65+ Democrat-voting friends. But that does not make it true of the Dem Party.
His claim of the median on the right being the inverse of libertarian is also incorrect (even if we concede it is largely correct about the right fringe). Policy by policy, the median on the right is MUCH closer to classical liberalism than the median on the left. And it ain’t even close.
AK is just spouting vibes in this case, not facts.
Can I call baloney sandwich on this one?
“The Republicans have been able to throw libertarians under the bus”
This often recited refrain on this Substack is in need of some references.
No Republican ever threw a libertarian under the bus. It’s just that the libertarians became irrelevant in a post fusionist world where culture and social order took precedence over a legalize everything mindset. If anything, the libertarian decline on the right is self-inflicted as the core differentiators seem hopelessly unpopular with everyone except for the progressive left.
Billionaires funding socialist/ communists, whether from white guilt or rich guilt, or for whatever reason, has long been a problem. The govt needs to be stricter on NGOs.
Especially tax exempt colleges which are supposed to be non-partisan, but are liars. [30% quota still best proposal].
Schrager seems pretty good against a wealth tax, but the democracy reality is that when 51%+ voters want higher taxes on the rich, that pressure to increase taxes will increase. Note that few of those favoring more taxes on the rich seem very bothered by fraud, mostly ignoring it.
Long before raising taxes, there should be more anti-fraud.
Having an aigent like "Junior" watch & record every govt transaction would be a good start at increasing transparency, and accountability, reducing fraud & usually waste. A lot more IRS audits of NGOs would be welcome. Especially the commie friendly teachers' union.
Most EU countries have more parties that attain democratic power thru a stronger party voting system. When I was a Libertarian in the US, I thought such "parliamentary" systems would be better. But then the govt becomes a coalition, and the dissidents & those trying to be more moral are often in a coalition when then falls apart, requiring new elections. See Italy & Israel for how many since WW II.
There already are multiple, but impotent, "third" parties in the US, including the Libertarian & Green Parties. They haven't and likely won't win either the Presidency or even a block of 10 or more US Congressional seats (of 435+6 delegates). Instead, the Dems & Reps are both already coalitions. Far more stability; and US political stability as compared to uncertain European schedules of elections, means more economic stability as well. Seldom discussed as a US advantage.
"libertarian-leaning conservative"
There can be no such thing. Libertarianism is anti-thesis of any conservatism worth its name.
There was a temporary alliance of convenience in the face of communist subversion that cost American conservatism dearly.
Re the median within the parties, a useful metric would be political parties “center of mass” taking into account both where voters lie but also how intensely they care /feel.
Might reading the links today give one reason to doubt Madison’s claims in Federalist #10 that large polities with virtual representation, facade-of-democracy, style governance, in which benevolent representatives work against narrow, local parochial interests in favor of the collective interest, are superior to smaller governments in which citizens have a substantive stake and a say?
One might be reminded of Hermann Heller’s notion of “liberal authoritarianism.” The browser LLM explains:
“Hermann Heller coined the term authoritarian liberalism in 1933 to critique the political strategy of late Weimar Germany, where the ruling elite combined economic liberalism with political authoritarianism to neutralize democratic threats from the working class. Heller argued that this approach utilized a ‘strong state’ to enforce market rationality and fiscal discipline while systematically depoliticizing the economy and dismantling social welfare programs, effectively subordinating popular sovereignty to capitalist interests.
The concept describes a regime that abandons parliamentary democracy in favor of executive rule by decree (such as under Article 48), claiming that economic necessity requires technocratic governance immune to popular will. Heller identified this as a betrayal of liberal principles, noting that while the state claimed neutrality, it actively intervened to protect bourgeois property rights and large industries while suppressing social claims. This dynamic laid the ideological groundwork for the eventual rise of fascism, as the erosion of democratic institutions left society vulnerable to totalitarian solutions.“
And indeed one might rationally attribute a fair portion of the blame for the reason why the US is circling the drain today to the anti-populist exercise of unaccountable authority by bureaucratic and NGO entities.
Looking to history, one might see the same dynamic in Poland, albeit set forth in much more straightforward language:
“Careerism, like acne and halitosis, is one of these perennial plagues of the human condition which are almost too banal to bear mention. There is not a country in the world which does not have its ‘careerists’, ‘sycophants’, and ‘opportunists’, not a language which lacks its own special idiom for ‘the gravy train’, ‘jobs for the boys’, protezione, protekcja. Polish vocabulary is rich in this field. Yet surely it would be adding insult to injury to suggest that poor suffering Poland has been more susceptible to this plague than other more fortunate lands. At least one can confirm that Poland has no monopoly. Certainly, particular disorders of the body politick are aggravated by the particular conditions of an unhygienic political habitat. Careerism is encouraged by economic regression, where the ruling élite controls the distribution of shrinking rewards ever more effectively; by despotic regimes which thrive on flattery and a monopoly patronage,...
“In Poland, the rift between the careerist Establishment and the public is a running sore, a national scandal which constantly decries the inability of ‘Poles to talk with Poles’. As a result, the guilt-laden Polish careerists are constantly urged to temper the severity of their regime, to fudge, and delay and deliberately forget, to interpret their orders in the mildest form possible. In a word, they are born procrastinators, often of a very sophisticated sort. What is more, they can rationalize their procrastination with the excellent argument that they are protecting their compatriots from people much worse than themselves. If it were not for them, Poland would be left at the mercy of those frightful Russian barbarians (or German ruffians) who, as everyone knows, would use the knout, the firing-squad, the psychiatric ward, or the mass deportation order with no compunction at all. In fact, if only the blockheaded public would realize it, they, the much maligned Polish servants of St Petersburg or Moscow (or Berlin), are Poland’s real patriots…”
- Heart of Europe: The Past in Poland’s Present by Norman Davies (1984)
In contrast, we might look to the example of the Holy Roman Empire:
“... the social role of political authority was to legitimate and regulate access to and control of resources as well as the interaction between individuals and groups. As we shall see, how this was done changed considerably during the Empire’s existence. The key difference between the Empire and European countries was that the former emerged as multicentred, not just politically, but also socially, economically and culturally. This left a lasting legacy, especially in the German lands, where these developments reached their fullest extent with imperial reform and its consequences at the local and territorial level. The result was the idea that a proper social order was composed of distinct groups and communities, each with local and specific rights. The role of authorities was to protect and nurture this society and to resolve its difficulties.”
- Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter H, Wilson (2016)
The Holy Roman Empire lasted approximately 1,000 years, extending from 800 to 1806. One suspects the US might have a better chance of lasting along if it decentralized and shifted a large measure of autonomy and authority exercised at the international, national, state, and county level down to the census block. (https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-maps/2020/geo/2020-census-block-maps.html ) with explicit authority for the formation of inter-block compacts. The great strength of this approach is the democratic power of exit. Administering democracy is difficult, but the power to vote with your feet needs no corrupting bureaucracy or administration.
NGOs of the Left, once set up, have been successful in gaining government grants, thus getting the taxpayer to support their partisan purposes, which include support of politicians. And whatever the original donors' intentions, in time NGOs become controlled by their staffs, invariably on the Left. For example, the founders of the Ford and MacArthur foundations would be appalled at the direction their foundations have taken.
Maybe even the teachers are getting tired of the teachers unions. https://thelastward.substack.com/p/chicago-teachers-reject-unions-85m?r=2jx0x&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
Unfortunate that the widely-unread Unchecked and Unbalanced is $50 on Kindle
AI has it for free. Go "vibe read" it, otherwise check LibGen, which currently has it listed as in stock and free for e-readers.
It's also available as a eBook for free from your local library.
I have a copy. It has outperformed a lot of digital assets, apparently.
"MAGA supporters, traditional conservatives, the moderate left, socialists and a market-oriented, socially liberal party of the center."
"The median voter on the left is probably moderate, and the median voter on the right is probably MAGA,"
I would not group as Galston has and I have difficulty with your left median.
For Galston, I would argue there is a large group on the left that is not moderate and probably isn't socialist.
Similarly, the median voter on the left is not moderate, unless you count the large and growing group in the middle that doesn't want to identify with either party. If the left is half the population, is more than 25% moderate? What if less than half is left (which I would sympathize with)?
I realize it gets tricky depending on whether we use left-right, conservative-liberal, or Democrat-Republican, and maybe you can argue different using a different dichotomy. Even if you can defend what Galston and you write, I still think these points are important.
1. I too look forward to the demise of the Cato Institute, George Mason, Believe in People, the Open Society Foundations, American Stewards for Liberty, etc.
Good call.
I think a challenge here is "non-profit' is a big tent when it expanded beyond an IRS tax definition and like all "big tents", people use the word but mean different things like people who hate "government welfare / single payer heath care" but forget that means the entire VA, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, military members, insane asylums, prisons, and your blind deaf mute uncle dying from ALS.
I think what you basically have is 4 categories in that "big tent" and generally people seem to hate a sampling of them, often a different sampling than the guy you are arguing with, even though you both use the same word. You got special interest political groups (i.e. CATO, ALCU, etc), businesses in all but name (hospitals, schools, homeless shelters, etc), churches (which have their share of haters around tax exemptions), and church adjacent functions (which I separate because the politics of your local priest paying income tax or on tithes is different than the politics Hezbollah ran drug rehab programs or the Salvation Army storefronts). People that hate Planned Parenthood don't tend to also hate Salvation Army bell ringers nor homeless shelters even even though they are all in the same "non-profit" tent. Basically in the US "NGO" and "lobbyists" got rolled into "non-profit" and caused this entire mess.
I'm not sure I agree with your specific groupings but I definitely agree with your broader point(s) and I'm glad you brought them up.
Yeah I'm not sold on my groupings either, was more just trying to take a five minute broad stab. There is probably a better way to split those.
Not sure if you meant that as sarcasm or not.
Either way, George Mason isn't a non-profit.
Oh, sorry - meant the Mercatus Center.
And either way George Mason is not for-profit lol. And donations are tax-deductible.
Really?
GMU is a public university.
I am convinced that NGOs are worse than profit-seeking businesses."
This is the wrong comparison.
I'd agree non-profits are somewhere in between for-profits and government but I'd argue they are more akin to government. Are they worse than government tax and spend? At least the donors get to decide how much to contribute, to what entity, and often the specific expenditure. Can't say any of that about government.
Either way, for-profits, non-profits, and government all have benefits and flaws. Each serves a purpose and each its excesses but it'd be for the worse if one were gone.
It's a weird comparison to make in a lot of ways. Government sets the rules within which the other two operate. Now the government has chosen some rules that incentivize industrial-scale online casino apps, and now we have for-profit entities ruining people's lives with online gambling. I'm sure some non-profits were involved in the change to the laws. Which sector is responsible for the resultant harm? Seems like it's a mix.
I feel like many things are like this, and it's hard to make blanket statements. A few things I'm pretty certain of, though:
-Basically all production of material wealth, and services aimed at non-destitute consumers, should be run by for-profits.
-The military and police should be run by the government.
-Services targeted at the foreign poor should be run by non-profits.
'Services targeted at the foreign poor should be run by non-profits.' Did you read that NYT article with the sob stories of former employees in the DC area who lost their jobs as a result the shutdown of USAID? One of them had been a VP at some non-profit who had been making an annual salary of around $272,000. In comparison, the highest annual salary for a federal employee in DC (GS-15, Step 10) is only about $164,000. In the meantime, long time recipients of assistance from NGOs formerly funded by USAID (Haiti is the classic example) remain poor as ever.
Back in the 1990s, I worked with a very knowledgeable former USAID official who had been the USAID mission chief in a geographically remote country. People working for USAID-funded NGOs and other beltway bandits had to get 'country clearance' before they could travel to a country. I remember this former USAID official telling me with great pride that he always refused to give country clearance to NGOs. It was clear he viewed part of his job as protecting the locals from evil USAID contractors, and that included the NGOs.
I'm not committed to USAID being good, but I am convinced that EA charities do enough good to outweigh any negatives of international poverty charity as a whole.
I think I agree on placement of the things you are pretty certain. Even if everyone else agreed with us, and I'm by no means certain of that, it still leaves A LOT that is less certain.
Re wealth taxes: this and proposed taxes on unrealized gains are the only things that can rescue the Republican party from its own self destructive impulses.
I do however think the current position is unstable because modern American wealth occupies an unprecedented position. Earlier aristocracies, industrialists, and other elites were visibly tied to the organization of production and the day-to-day sustenance of large populations. Today immense fortunes can compound almost autonomously through financial assets while exercising comparatively little paternal, managerial, or civic responsibility toward the society beneath the wealth-holders. That weakens the traditional moral and political defenses of wealth concentration. AI and automation intensify this problem. A “dark factory” producing advanced ceramics with almost no workforce does not socially justify itself the way a labor-intensive factory once did.
Publicly traded stocks have allowed large swaths of the middle class to amass assets.
It may not be quite a majority (or it may be, I haven’t checked recently), but the fact that 40%-65% of the country can get rich slowly invested in public equities - especially when they do it through low cost index funds - is a wonderful force for good.
Whether one care about inequality per se or not.
Jack Bogle did a tremendous service to tens and tens of millions of Americans.
I'm not sure I know what you think saves the Republican party but it seems this might be something for you to read, not that I'm advocating for or against tax increases.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/opinion/wealth-tax-millionaires-policy.html?unlocked_article_code=1.k1A.8c1v.KiXdniKfNS6l&smid=nytcore-android-share
As for the rest of your piece, I'd argue the primary/beneficial/noble purpose that leads to wealth is offering a product that consumers want, not employment. Your complaint smacks of Luddism. Would you also like to go back to the days when most of the labor force worked just to grow and tend our food supply? I hope not.
That NYT article is good advice for democrats, but I’m not sure that the politicians proposing the wealth taxes actually care if it would be fiscally useful, or if the proposals are constitutional. The proposals are useful for the GOP, though, because it scares away wealthy democrats like Sergei Brin.
I didn’t say that everyone should go back to hand embroidery. What I said is that we have an unprecedented situation that creates a lot of political challenges. Throughout most of history, to maintain and generate wealth, the rich were personally and visibly involved in directly managing the economic lives of the masses. Managing the transition from mass barely-above-subsistence agriculture to industrialization was not easy and involved a lot of social turmoil.
In our current situation there is a dominant school of thought that says we just need to provide cheap consumer goods and to redistribute income to the masses, that this is enough. That approach is more fragile than it seems. A society that relies so heavily on redistribution will struggle to organize popular energies in response to urgent threats, because that sort of organization requires leadership muscles that atrophy without use.
I think you are mixing apples and oranges.
Increasing redistribution comes from some combination of a tendency of government to grow in scope and power until a crisis curtails it and from our increasing wealth which both leads to more growth in redistribution and reduces the likelihood of a crisis. This happens regardless of how products are produced and how much the rich are involved in managing the economic lives of the masses.