A fresh start under good house rules would reboot the American Revolution.

Right now, the unconstitutional deep state’s slavemasters are the legislators. Legislators pervasively use unenumerated powers or grab executive power.

Grabbing executive power, legislators organize departments, create agencies, charter organizations (creating government-controlled offsite operations), control key hiring, control laying off and firing, delegate rulemaking powers, allocate line-item budgets, conduct supervisory oversight, and more.

To bring this to an end, we must put an end to legislators’ tyrannical current actions and statutes.

Repeal!

Legislators’ actions must be kept within good boundaries.

This will remove legislators’ current incentives to make bad choices. Also, this will stop legislators from helping others make bad choices. When one person or group’s actions are limited by good boundaries, this frees the persons or groups who are outside those boundaries to make their own choices.

The overall good boundaries that are needed are simple. Legislators must pass bills for laws, executives must enforce laws, and judges must opine on cases.

The good boundaries that are needed on legislators passing bills are simple. Constitutional laws must consist of constitutional rules and sanctions.

Current unconstitutional statutes instead are largely used to grab unenumerated powers, legislatively grab executive power, and delegate legislative power. Legislators’ actions are today’s tyranny.

Legislators should start ending their tyranny, by repealing all existing statutes all at once, right away.

Immediate, complete repeal would be exactly what’s needed in nearly all cases. In the remaining cases, immediate, complete repeal would transform the incentives on legislators and executives. Legislators and executives would immediately be strongly incentivized to start taking the next steps needed to make things right and keep things right.

• Most current statutes are fully unconstitutional and unwarranted.

  Repeal would eliminate statutory support for executing these statutes.

• On elderly healthcare spending and retirement income, current statutes are unconstitutional, but also have been used to unconstitutionally deprive people of property.

  In such cases when private property has been taken for public use, it is constitutionally required that the deprived people must be paid just compensation. Payments should continue until these grandfathered obligations are discharged.

  The current executive has the duty to interpret the constitutionality of the repeals and to take the actions that he interprets properly are constitutional. Immediately, the executive should stop taking the applicable paycheck deductions and the applicable portions of estimated tax payments. He should start selling off assets. He should keep paying off the obligations due to past takings.

  As soon as possible, legislators should pass new constitutional, minimal rules formally establishing what compensation payments should be made to grandfather-out these unconstitutionally-created obligations.

• A few current statutes include rules and sanctions that are constitutional.

  Immediately, the current executive should interpret the constitutionality of these repeals and keep executing only those few rules and sanctions that are constitutional.

  As soon as possible while taking all due care, legislators should replace these repealed rules and sanctions by passing constitutional, wise, minimal rules and sanctions.

Ratify Legislative-House Constitutions

The Constitution provides the best-available foundation. Still, its developers left serious unsolved problems:

1. Alexander Hamilton’s (or James Madison’s) alleged legislative line-item “power over the purse” would grab executive power. But the more fundamental requirement is that powers must be separated per the reserved powers of the people and the states and the article I, II, and III USA legislative, executive, and judicial vesting clauses. Powers must be separated so that then, the various powers can and will offset the other powers. This is the bedrock structure and process by which the Constitution makes governments self-limiting, securing freedom. To get the fundamentals right on budgets, legislators must only set the total budget and leave it to executives to allocate line-item budgets.
2. At least one major party must be internally limited, so that this party selects candidates who will use their constitutional powers against others in governments. Activists and media must develop at least one party that has a party constitution.
3. Legislative houses must also be internally limited by having constitutions. This legislative solution is outlined in Table 1 and Table 2.

The previous section called for clearing away the current statutes. The present section calls for clearing away the current committee structures. These actions, taken together, would eliminate the current unconstitutional statutes and anti-constitutional rules and committees.

This would eliminate the current leaders’ and committee members’ excessive power. Instead, ultimate power would be responsibly retained by each individual legislator and used by each individual legislator.

Current legislative committees’ scopes are anti-constitutionally open-ended. These would be replaced by working-group scopes that would be limited:

• The legislative houses’ constitutions would each have a rule that each working group’s scope would be limited to that of at most one individual clause in the Constitution.

  Apart from that limitation, the structure of the various groups would be determined by each individual legislator’s initiative. Legislators could form, move to, or dissolve groups at will, subject to a second rule that each legislator would be required to belong to one and only one group at a time.

  Legislators would remain free to draft, sponsor, or cosponsor bills on other clauses in the Constitution. But now, each legislator finally would also have specific, narrow accountability to lead in supporting the constitutional clause of the group he chooses to belong to.

  One possible configuration of such working groups is illustrated by Table 2.

• Each group would be held to its limits by other groups, whose members would each guard their own turf.

  Each group, then, would be a separated power, and would to some extent offset the other powers. This structure and process would create, on a functional, small scale, another variation of the bedrock separating and offsetting that’s the Constitution’s fundamental process.

The above changes to current statutes and current house rules are essentials.

Currently, legislators gain power by defying the Constitution. Under Constitution-promoting legislative rules, legislative would have to instead gain power by supporting the Constitution—in their roles, in their processes, and in their legislative products.

Pass Limited Bills

Bills must be limited to being constitutional.

The six-part test of constitutionality included in Table 1 should be applied rigorously to every still-used statute and to every new bill.

People must not be unduly deprived of liberty or property:

• All revenue should be raised solely by taxes on labor income, at a single rate, with no deductibles or deductions.
• Progressive-government debt other than to USA retirees should be repudiated.

Bills should further be limited to what’s wise. Legislators shouldn’t apply government force wherever voluntary cooperation can readily develop:

• As mentioned above, in the section on Repeal!, legislators should grandfather-out the unconstitutional takings and support for elder healthcare and retirement income.
• Legislators should allow private defenses of all kinds. The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Civil, criminal, and military defenses have already in past times been partly or fully private. At times when military-capable technologies have been most needed, they have long been developed fastest and best with substantial private-sector leadership or inputs.
• Legislators not only shouldn’t use government force unconstitutionally to “harmonize” healthcare or any other products, legislators also shouldn’t use government force unwisely to coin (or to print) money, to control weights and measures, to limit counterfeiting (since state governments already limit fraud), or to deliver mail.
• Legislators should consider turning to private roads, using proven toll technology as a starting point.
• Legislators should balance grants of monopoly to inventors and authors against these people’s use of the people’s legacy knowledge and of the people’s money for enforcement. Legislators should limit these grants to 3, 5, or 10 years while requiring continuous disclosure of all data on all covered products, or legislators should abolish these grants.
• Legislators should require that other jurisdictions’ governments provide the guaranteed republican form of government. Each jurisdiction should have a constitution that controls structures, processes, and rights protections in the same ways the Constitution does, including by enumerating genuinely limited powers and by not creating unrepublican administrative states.

Legislators should not only make future statutes considerably cleaner, legislators should also make future statutes work to enforce the Constitution considerably better. When they set this as their mission, they will compete to find ways to innovate to limit governments and secure freedom.

Legislators should start by seizing the many opportunities detailed in Table 2.

Legislators are the people who are delegated the most power to set things right, and who have the duty to do that. But legislators pervasively have not done their jobs, and have done others’ jobs. Currently, legislators act as if regulators, executives, and judges are in charge. Legislators act as if they themselves are on the outside, commenting. Legislators constantly executively allocate line-item budgets, executively supervise, and executively order actions.

Now, legislators have this overall roadmap of how they can best fully support the Constitution.

The best time for legislators to start doing their real jobs is as soon as possible. It’s high time that we demand that legislators fully empty their current inboxes, and fully incentivize themselves to compete to limit governments.

Freedom is itself fundamentally just. Freedom also lets people fully use their knowledge and creativity to increase prosperity.

People are being blocked by tyrants. The biggest tyrants are legislators.

Repeal!

The post Repeal! Ratify Legislative-House Constitutions. Pass Limited Bills. appeared first on Free the People.

President Trump can start reversing inflation, but only if constitutionalist candidates step up and voters make Trump step up.

The parties look set to offer USA voters only two options in 2026: Democrat politicians who are Progressive socialists always, or Republican politicians who follow President Trump always.

Following Trump always is mistaken. Trump signs lots of executive orders that say how he will constitutionally exert executive power, but he then always obeys unconstitutional judicial opinions. Further, he unconstitutionally advances Progressive spending and regulation.

None of the above are what majorities of the USA people want: reversing inflation.

Inflation is driven by spending, which is mostly unconstitutional, and by regulations, which are fully unconstitutional.

Trump isn’t stopping the unconstitutional spending, and doesn’t even consider not enforcing regulations. He isn’t even recommending to congressmen that they slash spending or formally repeal statutes.

Republican majorities aren’t sponsoring bills and forcing votes to slash spending or repeal statutes.

Democrats never will.

Current Republican governance is more of the same spending, lawmaking, and regulating by Progressive congressional majorities and presidents.

Republicans hope to get voters to excuse the spending by offering tax breaks to certain blocs of voters.

This is déjà vu all over again: it’s just like the Covid stimulus checks. Progressives used Covid as a rationalization for massive borrowing and spending. On the first Covid stimulus, Thomas Massie pointed out that each family would on average owe another $60,000 but would receive checks for less than $3,000.

Almost no one currently in office is worth keeping.

Almost every Republican currently in office is supporting most all of Trump’s Progressive spending and tariffs. By their actions and their cheerleading, these Republicans are showing that in practice they are Progressives.

Voters need real alternatives. Democrats aren’t alternatives. Voters need Republican constitutionalists.

Voters need the Republican primaries to feature challenges by constitutionalists of essentially every Republican official who’s up for election—local, state, and national.

In 2026, time will be on constitutionalists’ side. Years of massive money inflation will keep trickling their way into product-price inflation. Voters will need a way out.

In 2028, time won’t be on constitutionalists’ side, if constitutionalists wait until then to run for offices they could run for in 2026. Waiting would give Republican Progressives time to lose in 2026 and then in 2028 use fresh infusions of crony money to fake that they’re constitutionalists.

Below are key actions for constitutionalists to campaign on in 2026 and to then get underway.

Genuine Half-Reciprocal Tariffs

Repeal delegation of tariff-setting power to presidents. Repeal Trump’s tariffs. Debate replacing all current tariffs with tariffs set product-by-product at half the tariffs charged by each other nation’s government on our people’s products.

Substantial Cuts in Total Spending

Pass a single overall-total appropriation that’s 20% lower than the current-year overall-total appropriation. Make the executive use his executive power to allocate line-item budgets. Each year do these same things again.

Repeals of Statutes, Which Also Repeal Regulations

Mostly, repeal each statute that doesn’t pass all of the following six simple pass/fail tests: (1) No misleading parts. (2) Only uses powers enumerated for the national government. (3) No delegation of legislative power. (4) No grabs of executive power. (5) No grabs of judicial power. (6) Not noncritical, complex, or long, and not helping make the total corpus of law incomprehensibly complex or long.

Election/Apportionment Process Upgrades

Require that election results must be readily auditable in real time, and that pools of votes must be untainted:

• Voting must be in person on a single day, except by people who are traveling or disabled. Each voter’s identity must be proven. Each ballot record must include proof of the voter’s identity. Each count record must include the complete ballot record of each vote included in the count.
• Each certifiable sum of count records must only include count records that are complete. Each jurisdiction whose count record is tainted must be excluded from certifiable sums for the balance of that election.

Reapportion immediately based on the best-available current estimates of the population of citizens. The current apportionment is depriving citizens of representation.

Judicial Process Upgrades

Require the following judicial process upgrades: (1) Original work. (2) Separate opinions. (3) Basis for each opinion. (4) Draft opinions published before hearing next case. (5) Outside reviews. (6) Revised opinions finalized before hearing additional case. (7) A single three-judge panel in each court. (8) No chief judge except on presidential impeachment trials. (9) Independent interpretation by every official. (10) Enjoining at most within jurisdictions. (11) Current understandings on all controversies when nominating. (12) Summary impeachments.

Good Moneys

Require the Fed’s people to make the money quantity constant. Or, set the value of the dollar equivalent to a fixed weight of gold at the market price when this goes into effect. Or in states, offer gold warehousing and transaction processing, and also make private companies free to offer either service or both. Also repeal legal tender laws, tax laws, and all other laws that interfere with using 100%-reserve moneys that prevent boom-bust cycles.

Limiting China’s Government People

Unilaterally spell out rules prohibiting each of China government people’s unconventional-warfare actions that are currently recognized. Give these rules force with one sanction: whenever any rule is being broken, all trade with China people—which would strengthen China government people—is prohibited.

Inflation really can be reversed, and quickly.

Once entrepreneurs see that voters are in the process of changing the USA from a Progressive socialist regime to a constitutionalist regime, entrepreneurs will get a head start on building the future.

How much Trump’s future actions will benefit the USA people will depend on how well constitutionalists rise to the occasion to support the Constitution, if they do at all; and then on how well Trump rises to the occasion to protect the Constitution, if he does at all.

Trump can have a fantastic legacy—if constitutionalist candidates step up, and if Trump gets on board.

The post Reversing Inflation with Republican Constitutionalists, Starting in 2026 appeared first on Free the People.

Smaller governments, plus strong civil institutions, have proven far better for protecting life, liberty, and property.

Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can fully share its joy.
—Proverbs 14:10 (NLT)

My grandfather told us that he lived to see men go from never having flown to flying to the moon.

But even though each person has some experiences in common with other people, each person has a different combination of inheritance, religion, family, society, legal environment, places, and times.

Each individual lives in a different world.

Smaller Governments (1607–1894) (287 years)

For white settlers, at first the American Colonies were hazardous to life. Soon, life stabilized. The colonists surpassed the Old World’s people in liberty. Over time, the colonists surpassed the Old World’s people in earning property.

For black slaves too, at first the American Colonies were hazardous to life. The first generation started out in Africa with life and mostly with liberty, but on a continent of rival hunter-gatherer tribes, where warring, diseases, and starvation controlled the population by taking many lives. Some slaves died in transit and some still died young. More were born, and more were able to live, but at the next-worst costs: throughout most of this long period, almost none could gain liberty or earn property.

For white men, bigger governments started emerging late in this period. This, plus increased affluence, created the newly industrial-scale Civil War (1861–1865). New transportation and communications technologies helped facilitate taking many lives.

Black slaves ended up gaining liberty. But in the aftermath of the destruction, the former slaves gained little ability to earn above subsistence level and save up property.

Meanwhile, across this lengthy period the printing press spread Christianity. The newly re-understood Christianity turned out to significantly limit people’s previously-ubiquitous deprivations against other people, which were (and still are) fueled by envy. Besides developing new transportation and communications technologies, people also significantly developed trade, and business organizations.

As the figure shows, the people in the American Colonies and then the USA added value exponentially. The people throughout the world added value exponentially too, lagging by 150 years.

The people in each group raised their living standards by an order of magnitude.

Figure. The USA’s people have added value exponentially. The world’s people started out lagging by 150 years and now lag by only 70 years.

Bigger Governments (1894–2024) (130 years)

For all men, World War I (1917–1918), World War II (1941–1944), the Korean War (1950–1953), and the Vietnam War (1956–1975) took many lives. For people with Spanish Flu, the new aspirin treatment (1918–1919) took many lives. New abortion sanctions and technologies (1973–2024) have been taking many lives. Covid responses including mRNA poisons (2020–2024) also have been taking many lives.

For people with serious mental illnesses, the new frontal lobotomy technology (1936–1967) permanently reduced liberty. New incentives to depend on governments were created, and these notably accelerated the corrosion of religious faith, families, and other voluntary cooperation, reducing liberty. New language norms, seemingly about environment and race and gender, but really about creating critical transitions to socialism, have reduced expression, thought, and liberty. For young girls and for people with autistic characteristics, new gender-transition technologies have been savaging the core identity that’s rooted in these people’s biological sex, reducing liberty.

For people in minorities, including the descendants of the slaves who had gained liberty only in the ruinous wake of the industrial-scale Civil War, desegregation finally freed up new potential to earn and save property.

Meanwhile, people developed electricity, internal-combustion engines, chemicals, telecommunications, widespread technologies, and information technology. The new computing and communications technologies can be anticipated to bring immense systemic improvements, as were seen with spoken language, writing, and the printing press.

The people in the USA kept adding value exponentially. The people throughout the world kept adding value exponentially too, starting this period lagging by 140 years and catching up to now lag by only 70 years.

The people in each group raised their living standards by another order of magnitude.

Inequality has long been demonized, but this record shows that inequality should instead be given the full credit that it’s due, and heartily celebrated. Inequality has made available proven knowledge and inputs, which more and more people have used to earn and save more property, the equivalent liberty, and ultimately lives.

New Hope

We each are born into specific communities, places, and times, and we each learn as we go. Our learning paths make it less than intuitive for us to connect the most-crucial bedrock causes and effects: that Christianity reduced people’s envy, and that constitutional governance freed people to voluntarily cooperate. Christianity and constitutional governance both underpin our complex modern world’s greater freedom.

Now, in both Christianity and constitutional governance there is great new hope:

• Christian teaching on the core principle of grace is more accessible nowadays than ever in history.

  In large part this is thanks to decentralized, Bible-following churches, together with clear Bible translations which are available with helpful study notes.

  Also, the streaming TV series The Chosen offers an authentic feel for Christian history and belief, in a form neatly matched to our built-in abilities to learn through vicarious experience, including through vividly acted-out stories. And it’s bingeable.

• Constitutional practice is poised to be advanced. We have now identified that in order to have a complete, functioning solution that constitutionally limits governments, we need to develop the single missing component. At least one political party must itself be limited, by a party constitution.

  Already, in freedom caucuses, legislators are taking the single most-essential action: they are using their constitutional powers to limit others in government. They’re even using their constitutional powers independently—limiting others who are in their own party. Such correct actions, and such multiple independent limiting actions, are the keys to robustly producing high-reliability limiting.

  Also, executives are beginning to limit others in governments. Historically-unprecedented actions have been taken by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and by attorney generals in Missouri and Louisiana. An executive, by himself, has extraordinary power to protect the Constitution.

We are living in most interesting times.

The post The Worst of Times, the Best of Times appeared first on Free the People.

Executives and legislators are required by their oaths to interpret the Constitution independently and use their powers accordingly.

Both national and state education departments are unconstitutional in at least three ways.

First, few if any constitutional laws exist regarding education; and no critical mass of constitutional laws anywhere justifies having an education department.

Constitutional laws must be passed under republican constitutions, and such constitutions must enumerate limited powers. Constitutional laws must use enumerated powers. They must be passed by legislators. They must not be attempts to grab either the executive power to determine enforcement or the judicial power to opine on cases. Constitutional laws merely define certain constitutionally-allowable rules and sanctions that apply to everyone.

If any constitutional laws do exist regarding education, they do not require a dedicated, specialized department to enforce them. And in any case, the choices of whether to create, organize, staff, allocate funds to, and oversee such a department, and the choices of how to perform these tasks, would be solely the choices of executives. Constitutionally, these choices would not be controlled by any so-called laws through which legislators try to grab executive power.

Second, “No person… shall be deprived of… property without due process of law…”

Due process of law is the result of following constitutional processes. In the national government, constitutional processes are limited to controlling war, regularization of cross-jurisdiction commerce, justice, and supporting government operations. Taxes that support this scope are constitutional, but taxes that support other scope aren’t. Inflation is unconstitutional.

Third, “… nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.”

Property is not only real estate, property is a fundamental entity. Public uses that support constitutional scope provide just compensation, but public uses that don’t support constitutional scope don’t.

In the national government and in each state government, each executive swears an oath, either to protect the Constitution or to support it. He can only uphold his oath if he interprets constitutionality himself and only enforces law that he interprets is constitutional. So then, every president since Jimmy Carter has had the duty to close the Department of Education.

Each legislator swears an oath to support the Constitution. He can only uphold his oath if he interprets constitutionality himself and passes new law or repeals existing law in the ways that he interprets are required by the Constitution. So then, every congressman since Carter’s term in office has had the duty to formally repeal the statutes and appropriations through which congressmen try to grab the power to create, continue, and fund the Department of Education.

Rigorously upholding the Constitution on schooling will soon enough bring the practical benefit of greatly freeing people to innovate to help young people rapidly build considerable general-purpose expertise in reading, writing, and problem-solving.

Donald Trump’s actions in his second term have been giving us tantalizing glimpses of the strong power of a constitutionalist executive to uphold the Constitution. But as we see these actions unfold, we need to keep in mind that all executives and legislators have the duty to uphold the Constitution much more strongly than any of them are doing, even now.

So far, little or nothing has resiliently changed in the national government’s legislative, executive, or judicial branches, in the state governments, or in any party’s processes. We still are very far from being vigilantly protected against Progressives retaking the citadel.

And we can count on being stuck with Progressives who are eager to work for governments, and being stuck with Progressive cronies, forever. Progressives will certainly still be around, in large numbers, and dangerous, after DOGE disbands on July 4, 2026 and also after Trump’s term ends on January 20, 2029.

We need much more than encouraging headlines and cleaning out Progressive bureaus and personnel: we need to robustly bring into operation the ratifying generation’s vision and design. We need to replace the processes of Progressives, who defy the Constitution, with the processes of the Constitution and of at least one supporting party, which will limit governments.

Government people must use their constitutional powers against other government people to severely limit them.

The post Education Departments Constitutionally Must Be Closed and Repealed appeared first on Free the People.

Judges are making the wrong interpretations. President Trump should stand by his right interpretations, full speed ahead. 1,461 days go by very quickly, so make every day count.

President Trump or delegees have:

• allegedly worked without constitutional senate appointment and congressional authority
• accessed treasury, labor, and personnel data
• broken up USAID; fired a Federal Labor Relations Authority board member, a special counsel, and inspector generals; and offered buyouts for resigning
• ended citizenship grants to children born here to illegals, interrupted refugee programs, and required states to inform ICE about illegals who ask for information
• interrupted federal funding, and limited NIH grant indirect reimbursements
• banned sterilization and mutilation, housed biological male prisoners in prisons for men, removed gender identity webpages, and required using biological sex on passports.

In each case, plaintiffs have sued. Trump recently said, “I always abide by the courts, always abide by them, and will appeal.”

Trump initially had the right constitutional interpretations, and the plaintiffs and judges had the wrong constitutional interpretations. Trump’s response was the wrong constitutional interpretation.

To know what’s the right constitutional interpretation, it will help to go back to America’s precursors to understand what really makes America great.

Selection by Customers

In the Dutch Republic, people benefited from printed Bibles in common languages, individuated churches, and individual faith. People gained Salamancan theologians’ understanding that profit isn’t evil, picked up some of the Sephardi Jewish refugees’ skills in commerce, and practiced value-adding cooperation and competition.

In England, people got further practice in commerce and law. Also, people became further repulsed by a government church, absolute government power, and restrictions on property rights.

In the American Colonies, people earned freedom. Under the world’s lowest total taxes of just 1% to 2% of GDP, Americans’ purchasing power per person rose steeply to surpass the English people’s by 68%.

People’s general welfare proved to be best promoted by freedom. Producers competed for customers, customers selected for the best value, and producers delivered.

Selection by Voters

Americans appreciated that similar competition and selection could also limit governments. Government people could compete for voters, voters could select for people who would severely limit governments, and some people could deliver.

Some producers get outclassed by others, so some government people could similarly get outclassed by others. Although they wouldn’t fail immediately, just like producers don’t, they could fail soon enough; and peacefully, without revolution or war.
Government people’s competition would certainly extend to interpretation of the supreme law, the Constitution.

On every question of constitutional interpretation, one interpretation would prove to be right:

• Government officials whose interpretation wouldn’t limit governments enough would get the upper hand for a while, but people’s general welfare would then weaken. Voters would give such officials the boot soon enough.
• Government officials whose interpretation would limit governments more would gain the upper hand, and people’s general welfare would then strengthen. Voters would keep electing such officials.

Exhausting All Alternatives

From the start, even the people who developed this constitutional approach and sold it to the general public then turned around and did everything but make it work. From George Washington’s first presidency onward, government people nearly always didn’t use their powers against others to limit them.

Voters did do their jobs, though. Each party that offered smaller governments got voted into majority control. Once there, its people didn’t limit others or limited others only very infrequently, but its people did limit themselves for a time, until they soon enough broke bad. The USA still had at least one smaller-government major party all the way up to 1894.

Since then, voters haven’t been able to choose enough constitutionalist candidates to avoid being stuck with Progressive supermajorities, election after election.

For the right constitutional interpretations to emerge and get selected for by voters requires satisfying two conditions: government people must make changes, and some of the changes must be for the better.

Since 1894, very few candidates have run who would limit governments. When there’s little difference between candidates, the general welfare doesn’t improve much differently under one nominal party than under the other. Voters just seesaw one party into the majority, then the other. Nothing significant changes.

Doing the Right Thing

We’re now in a rare time when an executive has initially been making the right interpretations.

Trump could follow through to make big changes now. State-government people could make bigger changes, now or in the future. Other executives could make bigger changes in the future.

A judge’s position doesn’t give him any formal force or will, so it might look as if a judge would always be overpowered by the political branches unless they would always defer to him. But in practice, people behave differently than that. Swing politicians, in particular, don’t commit early. Judges, in contrast, do lead with their opinions; so judges naturally marshal considerable political power. A judge’s opinion can shape public opinion, persuading swing voters over to his side, in turn pushing politicians to get onboard.

Government people, in all jurisdictions and branches, are people. People make errors, some of them deadly serious.

It would be tyrannical to give any officials the final word.

Change favors freedom. And as illustrated earlier, freedom always works out for the best, soon enough. If a change is for the better from the start, it creates new winners who make the change stay around for a while. If a change is for the worse initially, it causes pushback that brings change for the better.

The right constitutional interpretation is always the one that most-severely limits governments. For the right interpretation to emerge, someone must make this interpretation, and he must stand firm.

Presidents have strong powers to protect the Constitution by not taking any action that they themselves interpret to be unconstitutional. Every president can make America freer, and Americans will take it from there and make America great.

Trump can make America freer, right now. He only needs to go big and stand firm.

The post The Right Interpretations Win—When People Stand Firm appeared first on Free the People.

Residents need strong offsetting powers to secure their property from the grabbing hands of unconstitutional national Progressives.

In 1835–1836, the USA had no national debt. In 1894, the first year when both major parties had turned Progressive, the national debt (in 2025 dollars) was $0.059 trillion. Now the national debt, at a destructive 123% of GDP, is over $36.358 trillion. In all, 99.8% of the national debt dates from the Progressives’ century plus.

A small portion of that debt is held by USA retirees. USA governments forced current retirees to pay for their predecessors’ retirements, made their later years of employment less certain and lower paying, and did favors for finance cronies who in turn advised the current retirees that USA government debt was safe beyond question. If USA governments would fail to honor their debts to USA retirees, this would be a final taking, which these people couldn’t recover from.

But apart from the small national debt owed to USA retirees or incurred before Progressive control, the remaining lion’s share of the national debt was incurred in aid of rebellion against the USA’s people and Constitution.

Progressivism Is Rebellion

The Constitution establishes republican governments, which must exercise only limited, enumerated powers. The Constitution’s rules are given force by the Constitution’s sanctions, which come in several independent varieties.

There are checks on work in progress. Vice presidents are to preside over senators. Presidents veto. Congressmen override. Presidents are to block treaties. Senators advise and consent on appointments. Congressmen are to regulate supreme courts and create and redesign inferior national courts.

There is explicit loss-limiting, deputized by everyone’s oaths or affirmations to support the Constitution or to protect it.

Where needed to prevent further losses, there is summary impeachment.

But, as I put it in The Constitution Needs a Good Party: Good Government Comes from Good Boundaries on page 7, “the Progressive philosophy, at its core, is to simply ignore the controls that the Constitution places on government people …”

Progressives refuse to use the Constitution’s sanctions against people in governments to limit them. By systematically depriving the Constitution of any limiting force, Progressives institutionalize open rebellion.

Both Parties are Progressive

Progressives hold their power by running in packs that they push into place using Progressive-passed election laws, together with Progressive party rules and practices:

• Party funding of Progressives
• Party platforms that don’t promise specific actions, helping Progressives conceal their unpopular plans
• Renomination of Progressive incumbents despite their records
• Debates hosted by Progressives
• Primaries, not caucuses, so voters don’t inform one another and instead voters are misinformed by Progressive crony ad buys and media
• Primary schedules that favor Republican Progressives by not starting where the party is strongest and proceeding state by state to where it’s weakest
• Super Tuesdays that help decide races in favor of Progressive crony-funded candidates prematurely, before voters can learn more
• Winner-take-all and winner-take-most primaries that help decide races prematurely
• Open primaries that let voters who aren’t in the Republican Party swing races to Progressives
• Awarding delegates from areas where a party hasn’t been winning, so such Republican Progressive delegates override the purest, most-successful Republican voters

Most candidates are Progressive enough to lock in the Progressives’ rebellion against the people and the Constitution.

Other than in a small minority of general-election races, voters don’t get enough major-party candidates to choose among who aren’t Progressive.

Democrats end up almost fully Progressive. Republicans end up falling on an extremely-wide spectrum, on average being about half Progressive. The swing votes in legislatures and the executives both end up markedly Progressive.

Repudiation Is Constitutionally Required

As I mentioned upfront, a portion of the national debt is owed to USA retirees, who, per Amendment 5, shall not be unduly deprived of property, and another 0.02% of the debt predated Progressive control.

On the remaining lion’s share of the national debt, the rule that governs was explicitly laid down after the Civil War in Amendment 14 section 4, and applies to the financing of any rebellions: “[N]either the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States … [A]ll such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”

This rule requires that the people shall not be called on by the national government or by their state governments to assume the obligation of the remaining debt, and the people shall not pay the remaining debt.

In short, the Constitution requires that this remaining national debt must be repudiated.

Repudiation, like all change, is best when it’s fast and extensive. No interest should have been paid so far on the illegal and void portion of the national debt, and no further interest should be paid, nor principal repaid. We should end this deprivation already and start recovering.

National governments haven’t been helping.

States Should Separate Financially

State-government people have the strongest offsetting powers to protect state residents’ lives, liberty, and property from the rebellious national-government people.

State politicians, of course, are selected by the same Progressive party processes that national politicians are selected by. But in state parties and elections, activists and voters have far more leverage to start tipping the balance locally here and there towards making things right. And a little bit of daylight anywhere can get others to start opening up change in many other places.

Constitutionalist politicians can use the Republican Party for ballot access and get elected in majorities in state governments, or as executives deputized by their oaths to support the Constitution. County-region representatives can secede from state governments by ratifying county-region constitutions. Multiple solutions can be advanced at the same time.

Given constitutionalist representation locally, the local solution on the national debt will be for state governments, or for substitute state governments in broad county regions within states, to protect their residents from the Progressives’ national rebellion:

• Take no block grants, since block grants fund actions that unduly deprive persons of property and further advance the Progressives’ rebellion.
• Block all national taxation of residents that funds the unconstitutional lion’s share of the national debt or that funds any other unconstitutional national-government spending.

The Constitution isn’t an anything-goes contract. When its rules are broken, the people’s rights must be secured by using offsetting powers.

Use offsetting powers early and always.

The post Progressives’ Rebellion Should Be Repudiated, Starting in States or County Regions appeared first on Free the People.

The Constitution requires state-government people to protect residents from national-government people’s tyranny. It’s high time that state-government people step up.

Total USA national, state, and local government spending consumes 38% of GDP. Regulations consume another 7% of GDP.

The USA national debt exceeds 123% of GDP. Total USA national-government promises exceed 753% of GDP.

If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. The faster, the better.

Limiting Themselves

The current congressmen and president should enact a limited overall appropriation—a continuing resolution consisting of just a single total amount—to cover up to the start of the next congress.

As vice president and therefore president of his upcoming senates, J.D. Vance’s oath will make it his power and duty to interpret the filibuster cloture rule as unconstitutional and to enforce simple-majority voting. The incoming congressmen and president should pass a new limited overall appropriation consisting of just a single total amount that’s declining, to cover the first calendar year.

As president, Donald Trump’s oath will make it his power and duty to close every department, agency, chartered organization, subdivision, and scope area that he independently interprets is unconstitutional.

State and local officials should provide their jurisdictions with a republican form of government—the only indisputable example of which is the national government under the Constitution. These officials, under their oaths to support the Constitution, likewise have in their own jurisdictions the power and duty to enforce simple-majority voting, pass limited overall appropriations consisting of just a single total amount that’s declining, and close every unconstitutional operation.

Human nature and all experience have shown, though, that enough of these people won’t limit themselves fully. This is incentivized by quid pro quo arrangements by politicians to help each other to our stuff, arrangements sanitized by pretending they demonstrate admirable party loyalty.

Limiting Others

Fortunately, it’s central to the Constitution’s design to instead depend on people to limit others. Such a use of constitutional power has lately been called constitutional hardball.

To the founding generation, though—to people who declared independence and fought a war to protect our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and secure property—such a civil rather than military use of constitutional power would have clearly been constitutional softball.

Constitutional softball is of first importance. As I point out in The Constitution Needs a Good Party, from 1774 to 1860 the fraction of total personal income in all thirteen colonies or states that was earned in the slavery-is-legal region declined from a controlling 57% to a superminority-weak 31%. The Fifth Amendment’s rule that protects all persons’ liberty (the so-called the Due Process Clause) should have been civilly enforced by the small-government Democrats, as constitutional softball.

Instead, secession was not responded to by simply letting slavery ebb away across an unenforceable porous border and otherwise die off from abhorrence and wastefulness. Instead, the big-government Republicans escalated to industrial-scale Civil War, as unrelenting hardball.

From there, government people kept ratcheting up USA governments in scale and tyranny.

To shut down the national-government people’s tyranny, we need enough state-government people to step up to protect their state residents.

Escrow of national-government taxes by state governments has been introduced in bills as a way to protect state residents from having massive taxes taken and used for unconstitutional current spending, including spending on servicing unconstitutional national debt.

State gold depositories, which will offer modern digital savings and checking accounts that are fully backed not by paper dollars but instead by gold, are being developed in Texas, Tennessee, Idaho, Florida, and Kentucky. These and other states continue to clear the way to bypassing the inflationary Fed.

These are good developments, but they are limited and slow. We need stronger protections, and now.

Fortunately, stronger help is emerging. Freedom caucuses, for instance, are developing alternative norms of behavior. The politicians in freedom caucuses limit themselves and, crucially, also collaborate to limit others.

And appropriately, local, county, and state law-enforcement officers already outnumber national law-enforcement officers 5.3 to 1:

(Sources: 2018 state and local census, 2020 federal census)

Such powers must get used to secure our unalienable rights.

Constitution-Enforcement Laws

Through their oaths to support the Constitution, the state-government people have the power and the duty to protect state residents from national-government tyranny.

State legislators and governors need to protect state residents comprehensively, by enacting state statutes that define necessary, fundamental rules and sanctions:

• The rules need to flow directly from the Constitution’s fundamental structure, and be actionable. Each national-government statute must pass the following six pass/fail tests: (1) No misleading parts. (2) Only uses powers enumerated for the national government. (3) No delegation of legislative power. (4) No grabs of executive power. (5) No grabs of judicial power. (6) Not noncritical, complex, or long, and not helping make the total corpus of law incomprehensibly complex or long.For the very-few statutes that will pass the first five tests, the sixth test will be surprisingly easy to apply acceptably well. Even though some people’s interpretations of exactly what content is noncritical or incomprehensible will likely differ somewhat, especially at first.

  For any statute that fails any one of these tests, the statute and any resulting rules of any kind (regulations, guidance, etc.) are plainly unconstitutional and must not be forced on any state residents.

• The sanctions associated with these rules need to counter violations with overwhelmingly-powerful penalties. State executives need to enforce these state statutes on all violators.Like with every law, legislators are vested only with the power to pass rules and sanctions; executives are vested with all power to develop processes and execute the law.

  State executives will be fully accountable for: • interpreting which national-government statutes are and aren’t constitutional, • calculating what fraction of national-government spending is constitutional, • collecting only this constitutional fraction of state residents’ national-government taxes and paying it to the national government, and • prosecuting and punishing any national-government people or cronies who violate these state statutes that enforce the Constitution.

Congressmen and presidents in turn need to limit the state-government people constitutionally:

• They need to require by law, and need to enforce, that each state, county, city, and community must have a constitution that’s indisputably of republican form, modeled exactly on the Constitution.
• In each jurisdiction constitution, powers must be specifically enumerated and must be limited to an extent that clearly shall not unduly deprive persons of life, liberty, or property.

Politics attracts government people who have been loath to confront their colleagues across the aisle.

Politicians have been more willing to confront their colleagues in other jurisdictions. Activists can greatly help make this happen, and should.

Politicians most of all fear being directly confronted by the people.

The post Constitution-Enforcement Laws appeared first on Free the People.

Our rights are secured when power limits power.

The American Colonies had total taxes of just 1% to 2% of GDP. This freed the colonies’ voluntary economy to leap way up from subsistence level to per-capita purchasing power that exceeded that in Great Britain by 68%.

The founders designed the Constitution to further this freedom.

Running on Forward Momentum

To keep life, liberty, and property secure from governments, governments were to be self-limited. State-government people, representatives, senators, executives, and judges would each have limited powers. Each would have powers to defend their boundaries against the others.

The new governments still were small. Through 1913, apart from during major wars, total national, state, and local spending was just 3% to 8% of GDP.

With governments small, the voluntary economy thrived. Property rights were the world’s best. Invested savings compounded, growing exponentially. Because this investment grew, productivity and wealth grew.

Incomes were lower, and charity went far, as always. When people in the voluntary economy are coerced to pay taxes, they have to pay additional associated costs, and they also end up forgoing additional value-adding work. The net result is that when people pay and forgo a total of $1.00, the government nets $0.61, and the government leaves recipients just $0.20.

In contrast, when people in the voluntary economy donate $1.00, the median collection costs leave recipients a full $0.91. Recipients also get role models, life skills, and work skills.

The founders were leaders, and they counted on most leaders to limit their own actions in government. That was a major error. Even the founders didn’t limit their own actions to what was constitutional.

The Federalist Party under George Washington soon violated the Constitution’s enumerated power to coin money and the Constitution’s lack of an enumerated power to print fractional-reserve paper money. In the process, the Federalists also violated the Constitution’s protection of property rights. They did all this by enacting a single statute that chartered a national bank and empowered the bank to create money.

This let crony bankers not do the work of collecting deposits and paying deposit interest, and still receive loan interest the bankers hadn’t earned. The resulting money creation and debt creation caused inflation losses. Also, the resulting money creation and debt creation caused debt-driven government money error-cycle losses.

Further, the founders generally looked down on using constitutional powers against other government people. This was, and is, the most-tyrannical error.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison started out leading the Federalists’ slavery-continuing but otherwise radical-libertarian caucus. Jefferson and Madison each advised President Washington that the national bank would be unconstitutional.

Soon afterward, Jefferson and Madison started the first Republican Party and gained power, and suddenly changed to governing as so-called moderates. These Republicans didn’t repeal the national bank after all.

Jefferson also never vetoed anything. The founders created a tradition of almost never vetoing because of policy. (To their credit, at least they did veto if in their own judgment they considered a bill unconstitutional.)

Andrew Jackson, a Revolutionary War veteran but not a founding leader, finally used the veto power more generally. Jackson famously ignored longstanding precedents of past congresses, presidents, and a supreme court and instead, based on his own judgment that a later national-bank bill was unconstitutional, vetoed the bill. And Jackson didn’t veto the bill in the same way that James Madison had vetoed an earlier national-bank bill, on narrow grounds that Congress could then quickly reverse. Jackson vetoed this later national-bank bill on broad grounds that long endured. Jackson and his successor Martin Van Buren ushered in a sustained plateau of smaller government.

The plateau started under these slavery-continuing but otherwise-libertarian initial Democrats. The plateau continued under the slave-freeing but war-escalating big-government Republicans. The plateau continued after the war under the continuing influence of the small-government Democrats. The plateau finally ended when the Democrats fundamentally transformed internally, leaving no small-government major party remaining, in 1894.

Ratcheting Up the Takings and Control

From 1894 forward, with only brief interruptions, Progressives who defy the Constitution have had an iron grip on Congress and the presidency. Total national, state, and local government spending has been ratcheted up by wars and by peacetime spending on government cronies such as on health-payment providers, and now is 43% of GDP.

This largely-unconstitutional direct spending, and the fully-unconstitutional concomitant regulations with their substantial indirect compliance costs, both have been available to be grabbed in the first place only because of the voluntary economy’s opulence. Invested savings, despite being held down to well below their full potential, have continued to compound over time, which has helped drive productivity further up. The voluntary economy has been a rich nutrient source that has left next to no limit on the size of our governments throughout the Progressives’ century.

Progressives’ positioning permeates our historical understanding and our politics.

Progressives’ Constitution-defiance is marketed to us as cooperative behavior just like the positive behaviors we benefit from in our own lives: customers’ and businessmen’s voluntary cooperation, and family members’ prosocial behavior.

The only government behavior that actually is prosocial—that is, that secures people’s rights, leaving people free to voluntarily cooperate—is when government people limit government people. Self-limiting governance that’s truly prosocial is resisted near-religiously by the Progressive majorities of our current government people from both parties.

Progressives endlessly promote Constitution-defiance by hiding it in plain sight using language that sounds positive: regulating, security, care, government oversight, curbing executive overreach, not do-nothing government, starting a conversation, coming together, keeping the government running, making investments, stimulating the economy, making good deals, getting things done, working together, bipartisanship, protecting invented “rights” (which are disguised favors to crony voting blocs at everyone else’s expense).

Needed: Limiting Actions

Progressives aren’t going away. Inevitably, people’s genuine rights to life, liberty, and property must be secured through conflict.

The way to make political change produce good results, as shown by early America and by today’s former Soviet-bloc nations, is to make political change fast and extensive.

When fast and extensive change is for the better, this builds the support needed to overcome government cronies.

When fast and extensive change is for the worse, it’s best that it’s fast and extensive because that makes it plainly noxious, which ensures pushback. This pushback ends up producing helpful change for the better.

The good changes we need must come partly from government people staying within their boundaries, limiting themselves; and mostly from government people defending their boundaries, limiting other government people:

1. Executives must not execute unconstitutional statutes and opinions. Executives must wait for legislators to pass constitutional laws, and meanwhile must not empower unconstitutional regulators by leading regulators and by going along with regulators. Presidents must wait for congressmen to advise on treaties, write rules-of-engagement cards, and declare war.
2. Executives must use the executive power to provide unitary accountability for organizing governments under the Constitution, nominating and laying off, setting priorities, determining line-item budgets, and setting implementation schedules.
3. Vice presidents must enforce constitutionally-required simple-majority voting in senates.
4. Executives must veto bills that are unconstitutional. Currently, nearly all bills are unconstitutional.
5. Congressmen must repeal unconstitutional statutes. Currently, nearly all statutes are unconstitutional. This action is needed to provide the adequate defensive resistance and maximum strength that prevent war.
6. Congressmen must write rules-of-engagement cards, and must declare war when war is needed to secure our rights and when we’re prepared to destroy the aggressors’ governments. This will further help to prevent war.
7. Congressmen must unilaterally end trade restrictions except restrictions that limit war by not helping to build up directly-offensive enemy governments like China’s.

Our rights are secured and our potential can be achieved only when our governments are limited. The only adequately-limited governments are self-limited governments.

The post Self-Limited Governments appeared first on Free the People.

Senators should consent to nominees who would use their constitutional powers to limit governments.

Robert F. Kennedy, the nominee announced to head Health and Human Services, wrote three books exposing harmful government actions on Covid.

Pete Hegseth, the nominee announced to head Defense, has said that “any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI, woke s–t has got to go.”

Lee Zeldin, the nominee announced to head the Environmental Protection Agency, voted against national environmental regulations 86% of the time.

In these important ways, these nominees have indicated that they would use their constitutional powers against others in governments and cronies to limit them.

That’s how you support the Constitution.

Supporting Accidentally

Media and politicians typically just play to audiences.

Media are running stories about whether Trump’s announced nominees are moral and about whether they have tenures in bureaucracies that make them qualified. Trump has been nominating people who are popular or whose money can buy popularity. Swing senators are prepping to platform salacious storytelling and to posture about their duty to advise and consent.

Even so, despite these people’s every inclination, this time we might actually get something from them that’s valuable, if we hold them to it. Or more likely, if we hold Trump to it, or if we hold ourselves to it.

The key in governing seasons, like in election seasons, is to hold out for what we want—to never settle for less.

Supporting by Limiting Others

The Constitution is designed to make our life, liberty, and property secure by having government people limit others in governments.

Officials can be personally quite moral, and distressingly often this doesn’t help us. Instead, superficially-good officials avoid conflicts with their colleagues in governments. The only people we could reasonably count on to protect us, then, leave us unprotected. These officials’ public actions are not moral.

Officials can be experienced and impressive in managerial roles, and this won’t help us, this will hurt us. An unconstitutional organization that’s more efficient is more despotic.

What matters is whether an official will make our unalienable rights secure.

Trump’s current nominees, to a far-greater extent than his first-term nominees, promise to take significant actions to constitutionally limit others.

Starting as Well as They’re Ready To

Even though in these qualifying rounds some things are looking up, we still can already see that things are not the best. Not one of the nominees has advocated executively closing his fully or significantly unconstitutional organization. Not one has even recommended repealing his organization.

As this long season starts, the best that initially could be on tap would be if Trump would strongly support each nominee the exact way we need him to, starting now and continuing all the way through on-the-record confirmation votes:

• Each nominee, Trump, and each constitutionalist senator should start his job in earnest now, by fleshing out answers and questions that will show how the nominee and Trump will use their constitutional powers to limit others in governments and cronies.
• Outside each confirmation hearing, Trump should make this case for each nominee directly to the people.
• Inside each confirmation hearing, each nominee should make this case directly to the people. Constitutionalist senators’ questions should help open the way.
• Trump and allies should force all senators to vote on the record.

Senators’ votes need to highlight which senators need to be challenged in primaries—one long season that has already started.

Long Seasons Ahead

Senators have amply shown that they’re poised to fail this test.

The Republicans, especially, have long supported the unconstitutional filibuster cloture rule. Under this rule, senate leaders unconstitutionally count minority senators’ votes as more equal than majority senators’ votes, and everyone agrees to unconstitutionally deprive vice presidents of tie-breaking votes that would determine whether bills will pass.

Even our most-valuable activist media and politicians have been conditioned into accepting that senators only do their actual jobs of passing bills by simple-majority votes a few days a year—and even then, only when a few legitimate, narrow, pressing bills are tacked on to monstrosity bills.

The worst monstrosities are the bills that unconstitutionally grab the executive’s power to allocate budgets by line item, stripping him of control over enforcing constitutional laws, and stripping him of accountability for results.

J.D. Vance, when he is sworn in as the next senate’s president, should preside and should require constitutionally-required simple-majority voting on all bills.

Republican voters, for their part, repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot, election after election.

Most Republican voters have been always voting against the perceived greater evil by voting for the perceived lesser evil of Republican Progressives. These voters have been unwilling to purge the Republican Progressives, live with Democratic instead of Republican Progressives for one more term in office, temporarily call on other offsetting powers like in the state governments to limit our losses, and by doing so, finally elect constitutionalists in the next election.

Trump, backed by Elon Musk, may break this paradigm. Voters, too, can always break this paradigm on their own.

Legislative season opens soon. People, get ready.

At the same time, Trump will have the power and duty to executively close every organization that he independently interprets correctly is unconstitutional. The Project 2025 people wouldn’t have helped. Trump’s announced nominees aren’t helping right out of the gate. Vivek Ramaswamy is closing in on helping, and Elon Musk is a fast learner. Lew Rockwell stands ready to explain how changes can work out. Javier Milei is showing that changes are politically possible and that extensive changes that are for the best work out for the best very quickly. The best results take hold when you change extensively, and do it quickly.

Executive season opens soon too and continues every day. Fair game abounds everywhere, and Trump’s quota is the whole lot of them.

Accept nothing less.

The post Trump’s Nominees Would Support the Constitution More than Senators Have appeared first on Free the People.

It’s interesting how products that are suboptimal for users are able to predominate. This is glaring with search engines.

Search Engines

Google Search provides users many results that are significantly different than the results the users prefer.

Further, search results that are biased in any direction nudge a user to form an opinion that’s biased in the same direction. When someone tries to control them, most people resist.

The reason a search engine that’s suboptimal for users is able to predominate is that for users, this search engine is free. Users aren’t the real customers. The real customers are the advertisers.

Inside the advertisers’ organizations, the major deciders are corporate Progressives.

This means that government people don’t need to put their thumb on the scales in the search market directly. Government people can just create privileges for schools that churn out Progressives.

Health-Payment Systems

A whole product class that’s suboptimal for users but that’s also able to predominate is health-payment systems.
Such systems are commonly called health insurance, but that’s misleading.

A health-payment system doesn’t chiefly insure against rare, significant losses by sharing risks. Rather, a health-payment system chiefly uses contracts to ensure that all health payments—especially the payments for routine preventive care and diagnostics—are forced through the health-payment system. A health-payment system is forced onto everyone in the neighborhood, much like an organized-crime protection racket.

Such rackets take away a substantial cut of the action for their own people. If the racket wasn’t there, the neighborhood people wouldn’t pay that cut at all.

Health-payment systems’ cuts are disguised. Health-product producers charge hefty list prices to everyone who doesn’t pay for protection, and offer heavily-discounted prices to everyone who pays for protection. Many patients have their costs paid by governments, so they don’t control, pay attention to, or even see much of the pricing. Many other patients have payroll deductions they stop paying attention to and have copays that are small, so it feels to them like their health products are nearly free.

Like with search engines, the problem with health-payment systems is that the users—here, the patients—aren’t the real customers. The real customers are, in many cases, government payers. The real customers in the remaining cases are, again, corporate Progressives.

So then in the health-payment market, government people do put their thumb on the scales directly. They take our property and use it to give others payments for a large fraction of health products. When they do, they direct the payments to health-payment systems, not to us patients ourselves.

Government people also put their thumb on the scales indirectly. They do this the same as in the case of search engines, by just creating privileges for schools that churn out Progressives.

The Middlemen

The best-proven way to enable users to weed out suboptimal products is to cut out the middlemen.

On search engines, competing search-engine producers could charge users subscription fees.

On health-payment systems, government people shouldn’t be taking our property, charging administrative costs, and handing out health payments in the first place. Government people should appropriately repeal tax deductions, entitlements, and all other rules that favor their health-payment system cronies.

We patients should be free to just shop for ourselves for catastrophic-care insurance, routine preventive care, and routine diagnostic care, guided by product-review producers and consultants. Health products are products, after all.

As an alternative, it might be feasible to keep the middlemen but neutralize them.

Government people could repeal all privileges for schools that churn out Progressives. In time, the mix of corporate managers who place ads on search engines could become more balanced, so then the ads and incentives would become more balanced.

The mix of government people who decide on health products and payments might conceivably become more balanced. Government people might direct their health payments to us patients themselves.

But in every possible case, getting government people to take different actions will require electing different politicians.

Parties and Entrepreneurs

Currently, selection and election of Progressives is heavily favored by both major parties’ rules and practices. Such rules and practices will need to be reversed by at least one good party.

The party will need to stay good, so it will need to have limited enumerated powers, and separated, offsetting powers. A good party could be started by freedom caucuses, by an independent presidential candidate, or by county-region governments within individual states, which secede from the legacy state governments in their states.

Entrepreneurs will also be needed, who offer better search engines, and who offer health products unbundled from the health-payment systems that have been.

No products are free. Products that are presented as free to use may be the costliest to freedom and health.

When you think about it, this shouldn’t be surprising. Governments themselves are first experienced by people as free to use, starting when people are in school. Taxes continue to be concealed by withholding them from paychecks, so people soon numb to this fine print and stop seeing this as their own money (which it is, but which they as individuals can’t claw back from governments’ grabbing hands). Governments, in fact, are the costliest products we pay for.

When you yourself choose and pay for a product, you get what you pay for.

When you instead use “free” products, they’re way costlier than the price you would pay for them outright. Because you end up with far less freedom.

The post Search Engines, Health-Payment Systems—Free Products Are the Costliest appeared first on Free the People.