Perhaps consider that you are currently being punished. Perhaps consider that you are currently living in the rack and ruin left in the aftermath of your own civilization's unfathomable hubris

Roosevelt was, in fact, with the help of what he considered the best expert advice, although always making final decision himself, trying experiments, and occasionally he frankly said so. In these experiments he has been motivated by two objects — one the overcoming of the depression, and the other the making over of the economic organization of the nation, the latter being what he called in his campaign speeches “the New Deal.” It is this which appears — it is too soon to speak positively — his chief objective, and it is difficult as yet to judge what his conception of the new society may be. In his first year he has shown enormous courage but has, apparently, not seldom changed his point of view, as well as his advisers.

As the latter loomed large in the administration, to a considerable extent displacing the regular Cabinet in public sight, the so-called “brain trust” requires some comment. Of recent years college professors have been more and more frequently called into consultation as “experts.” Hoover made frequent application to them when President; Roosevelt did the same as Governor of New York; and foreign governments have done likewise. However, they have never been so in the forefront of affairs as since Roosevelt entered the White House, and this, together with the vagueness of what the “New Deal” might signify, helped to hinder the restoration of confidence. The lack of ability to foresee the future, to say nothing in too many cases of the absence of personal integrity, had indeed thrown the “big business men,” the bankers and captains of industry, into the discard, but on the other hand the American has never had much belief in the practical ability of a professor, and the “experts” have disagreed among themselves as notably as doctors are said to do.

Moreover, Roosevelt chose many of his advisers from the distinct radical or left-wing group, the names of most of them being utterly new to the public. At first among the chief of these appear to have been Professor Raymond Moley, Doctor R. G. Tugwell, and A. A. Berle, Jr., all of Columbia University, New York. In the summer of 1933 there were added to these and many others Professor G. F. Warren of Cornell, a leading advocate of the “commodity dollar,” and Professor J. H. Rogers of Yale. At least twenty or thirty others could be mentioned. It is to the “brain trust” that we owe the carrying out of the vague “New Deal,” or as a great admirer of the President prefers to call it, “the Roosevelt Revolution.” What the final result may be, no one can yet say, but as we shall see at the end of the chapter, they have presented a staggering bill for the American citizen to pay.

Flushed with pride from an election win—alas, probably still just another cheap hit of publicity crack, huge in the moment and historically ephemeral; but who knows, eh?—the two halves of the so-called New Right, rationalists and traditionalists, have started our new era off in fine American style by squabbling in public over Indian visas. Cool.

To traditionalists, it seems that Musk and his fellow open-borders billionaires want to drive America like a rented car.

The GDP mindset makes almost zero sense from the standpoint of nation as firm. In fact, the more luxuries you produce for your “citizens,” the softer, weaker, and less productive they get. And they do not just suffer economically—but also, spiritually. The spiritual benefits of challenging, and especially meaningful, work are well known.

Hunter-gatherers rarely feel like they are working. Everything is meaningful and everything is challenging. Is hunting work? Is fishing work? People sell real estate so they can hunt and fish. Who would hunt and fish so they could sell real estate?

When we look at (a) the common good, (b) appreciation/depreciation of human capital, and (c) net production of utility, we are struck immediately by the fact that (a) and (b) are clearly aligned, whereas (c)—the criterion that all modern thinkers agree on, the GDP metric beloved by libertarians and socialists alike—is the misaligned metric.

Analytically, America is being driven like a rented car. If not a rented mule. And when we cast our intuitive eyes across the state of the nation, we see that it is being driven like a rented car. If not a rented mule.

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Let’s quantify the poisonous effect of importing goods and/or labor into an economy.... [The] toxic impact is as clear as day. If the labor demand (elastic) in the economy does not supply quality work to the labor supply (inelastic), we will see clear depreciation in the human capital. We may not be able to measure this effect (eg, by selling random subjects on some imaginary global slave market), but we can define it in quantitative terms.

If there are not enough good jobs for all the Americans, some of the Americans will become useless bums. Or they will have to take shitty bullshit jobs, which will cause them to fall short of their human potential. It will leave them less valuable as human beings—as human capital—as government slaves....

If it seems paradoxical that accepting the principle that “government slavery” is the key to human freedom and flourishing, it seems no less paradoxical that socialism is the way to ruin and impoverish a society. But it always seems to work out that way. Everything rots when it has no owner—human beings included.

Once we realize that, in a 21st-century economy, the goal of matching labor demand to labor supply is much more significant than the goal of maximizing the supply of comforts and pleasures to the population—either because, according to my super- spergy analysis, we are all “government slaves”; or because, in terms Hillary Clinton would be quite happy with, purpose, skill and meaning are more important to human existence than pixel count on your flat screen TV —we get to turn liberal economics upside down and make it make sense again.

For instance, if we have a lot of professional programmers who can’t find jobs as such, but have to be Walmart greeters, we are racking up fat losses on these human assets. From a depreciation standpoint, it would be economically ideal to give them fake jobs. But ideally, they would not even know the jobs were fake… Instead, we are pumping all the appreciation energy into these H1Bs, who are human assets of another government, while our own human capital rots on the couch.

The difference between migrant labor and free trade is clearly a difference of degree. In both cases, we are using foreign labor to fulfill domestic labor demand. Therefore, the appreciation is being foregone. And human assets depreciate if they are not used. They appreciate when used to the limit of potential. Again, we are driving America like a rented car. It is efficient to change the oil in a car you own, but not one you rent. We own this car, I’m afraid. We should act like it.

But Mr. Poor, didn't you just recently say that you were in favor of Indian immigration?