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The Mirage of the New American Expansionism
No. 51, Jan.-Feb. 2025 Donald Trump has spent the last weeks before the start of his new term as US President throwing populist proposals left and right related to renaming landforms, annexing Canada, America’s ownership of the Panama Canal, and annexing Greenland. I would add to this populist trend the unrealistic proposal for NATO members to allocate 5% of GDP to defense, which serves as a bargaining chip for an acceptable level. This article aims to analyze the proposal for Panama and Greenland and to emphasize that, regardless of how realistic the non-violent and unforced annexation of these territories is, Americans have a complex strategic and historical perspective on these regions. This is not another Trump idiosyncrasy, but another case of Trump saying out loud what a faction of the American elites is thinking. The annexation of Canada does not seem credible to me in terms of the costs it would entail and the impact on American politics, and therefore represents only an attempt to bully former Prime Minister Trudeau in order to promote an ascendant pro-American right compatible with Trump. Only Alberta, among the regions with secessionist movements, would fit culturally with the United States and would have a chance of being a state compatible with Republicans and Trump’s conservative populism in the context of the political calculations that have always accompanied the debates about accepting new states. More
Immediate and Ultimate Foreign Direct Investment
No. 51, Jan.-Feb. 2025 In 2023, for the 11 EU Member States that reported inward Ultimate Investing Economy (UIE) in Foreign Direct Investment positions, the top UIE was Germany, (12.1% of total value of UIE FDI positions of the 11 reporting countries), followed by the United States (11.9%). Romania is included in the reporting EU Member States, alongside Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, Greece, Italy and Portugal, which reported inward UIE FDI positions to Eurostat. More
Sovereigntists, Europeanists, and the Forgotten
No. 51, Jan.-Feb. 2025 In Romanian politics, where party lines blur as frequently as electoral promises, the stage for the upcoming elections presents an all-too-familiar tableau. Sovereigntists and Europeanists jostle for dominance, their rhetoric bold but their substance often lacking. Beneath their self-ascribed labels lies a muddled political landscape—a reflection of a society oscillating between the pull of transformation and the weight of inertia. More
Revolt of the Disdained: America’s 2016 Presidential Election
No. 51, Jan.-Feb. 2025 The 2016 presidential election hinged on the return of overlooked or marginalized middle-class and working-class Democrats and independents – many of whom had earlier supported Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan – to reinvigorate traditional patriotism and help form a new “populist-conservative fusion in rural and industrial areas” within the Republican party. Eight years later, following his successful reelection, Donald Trump’s political fortunes still rest to a considerable degree on his ability to secure broad public support while maintaining the loyalty of his original coalition of the disdained.This article is drawn from “Revolt of the Disdained: America’s 2016 Presidential Election,” The Western Australian Jurist, 9 (2018). https://walta.net.au/wajurist/vol9/revolt-of-the-disdained-americas-2016-presidential-election/.An 2020 update of the original conclusion was published as “Revolt of the Disdained: Sovereignty or Submission,” The Market for Ideas, 23 (May-June 2020). https://www.themarketforideas.com/revolt-of-the-disdained-sovereignty-or-submission-a589/. More
The Anatomy of a Media Lynching
No. 51, Jan.-Feb. 2025 This article analyses organizational aspects of media/cyber lynching, especially when performed in the yellow (sensationalist) press and passionate parts of the Internet community. Media and cyber lynching can be defined as extremely aggressive, unjustified, untrue verbal attacks, insults and discrediting in the media. One good book says: “You shall not follow a crowd to do evil. You shall not testify in court to side with a multitude to pervert justice”. However, we often do, maybe because we scroll brainrot media more than we read books. I try to add a drop in the ocean of medicines that our sick societies desperately need, so we might cure them without the accompanying evils of revolution. More
The Most Serene DOGE
No. 51, Jan.-Feb. 2025 The President-Elect of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has begotten an inquisitorially-minded anti-waste institution dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The bicephalous institution (an initial red flag when it comes to institutions everywhere) is jointly run by noted tech giant Elon Musk (worth 330 billion dollars or thereabouts) and the pharma entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (a mere 330 times “poorer”). The department will not be an actual government body, which presumably would require Congressional complicity in downsizing the leviathan it helped create. DOGE will be a sort of outside consultant specializing in “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies” (Trump dixit). Presented as a veritable “Manhattan project for our times”, the nascent body is born under a feeble star sign (since the President relies on bipartisan support from Congress, not just a pen, no matter what Obama claimed back in the day), while also being coupled with unrealistic and exaggerated claims of two trillion dollars in yearly savings, which is a third of all federal expenditures outside those of interest on debt. More
Trump’s Cabinet Is Taking Shape
No. 50, Nov.-Dec. 2024 The transition process to the next Trump Administration will be a determining factor in its success, especially in the first hundred days, which is taken by Americans as an indicator of the future success of the Administration. Donald Trump has placed particular emphasis on preparing for a smooth transfer of power, trying to avoid the situation of 2016, when the Administration’s organizational problems and sabotage from the party he had taken over by force largely wasted the first two years of his term until he reached a compromise with the Republican nomenclature. At that time, thousands of positions in the Trump Administration remained vacant, with many potential employees fearing for their careers if they worked for the “danger to the republic”. Trump was forced to keep people from the Obama era on the roll, other key positions remained vacant for a very long time, and Trump appointed unsuitable people (we are not just talking about his family) due to a lack of options, affecting the ability to implement his agenda. This time, the Heritage Foundation, the first major think tank to side with Trump in 2016, trying to gain influence over him in this way, began two years ago to recruit thousands of people for a future Trump Administration. The “2025 Project” has sparked strong reactions, due to the very conservative ideological filters (of an American type) applied by the Heritage group to develop a Trump team. Even though Trump has disavowed any influence of this initiative on him personally, the stakes of those who implemented the project are that Trump’s need to secure thousands of employees in the Administration to implement the Trumpist agenda will push him to accept the Heritage package. Americans say that “personnel is policy”, because the President decides the broad lines and makes major specific decisions, but thousands of discretionary, administrative and regulatory decisions are made by the lower echelons, where a political inclination can be decisive. This very problem with Obama-era personnel and Republicans who were not loyal to the Trump agenda has tainted, dragged out, and sabotaged the first two years of the 2016-2020 term, if not the entire term. Because it is very difficult for us to observe personnel politics at the micro level, those who analyse the handover of the White House look at the proposals for the leadership of major departments and state agencies, trying to anticipate political disputes, policy preferences, and guidelines of the Administration. Trump’s choices have stirred controversy, especially for their radicalism, and anti-Trump observers hope that defectors from the Republican party, such as Rand Paul, will bridge the gap with Democrats to block certain figures, given Trump’s weak majority in the Senate, where the hearings will take place. For the rest of the world, the spectacle of the transition process to Trump represents an opportunity for an American “Kremlinology”, especially in relation to major international issues such as Ukraine, Israel or Taiwan. More
The Open Society and Its Current Enemies
No. 50, Nov.-Dec. 2024 Published in 1945, the book “The Open Society and Its Enemies” is the major work of the philosopher Karl Popper. This work was an important source of inspiration for the political orientation defined by Winston Churchill in his 1946 speeches in Fulton (Missouri) and Zurich: the formation of a group of Western states, based on the principle of freedom and human rights, to confront the Soviet empire. Consequently, the Iron Curtain became not only a physical but also an ideological border: the free world against the expansion of communist totalitarianism. This orientation constituted the framework within which political activity in the West took place after the Second World War: regardless of interests and political programs, the liberal constitutional state, based on fundamental human rights, in opposition to communist totalitarianism, was accepted by all major social groups and political parties. This framework shaped Western politics and society for over four decades. In 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the continuation of this orientation seemed normal: freedom and the rule of law had won. The American sociologist and political scientist Francis Fukuyama even spoke of the end of history! More
About Those Candidates
No. 50, Nov.-Dec. 2024 Let me tell you about the presidential candidate that was closest to my ideal: Ron Paul. He is a classical liberal, monarchist (small government supporter), advocate of total freedom of markets, advocate of institutional respect for the individual and his property, opposed to inflationism and to subsidies, opposed to corporate privilege, opposed to the military industrial complex, eager to end America’s warlike adventures, isolationist in this respect, but an enemy of tariffs or protectionism and an advocate of international free trade, yet a foe of state-sponsored immigration, a Christian and cultural conservative but open to freedom of association among people of all kinds, a gynecologist opposed to abortion but understanding the difficulty of the issue and offering the solution of delegating the problem by way of subsidiarity to smaller states or communities, in short, a man of the establishment, a Libertarian and then Republican Party politician, a congressman, a member of various committees and commissions. More
Hang It Wherever You Want! A Bananartistic Oddity
No. 50, Nov.-Dec. 2024 It is being said that Ponce de Leon brought bananas to Florida in the early 1500s, so Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) was most probably well acquainted with the long curved fruit. Which, thinking further, the American economist has most probably also eaten. Yet, even for Veblen, bananas would not have been the sought after good to discuss the value of leisure class in economic modernity. More
Causes, Correlations, and Liberal-Conservative Thinking Ahead of Romania’s (Cancelled in the Meantime) Presidential Elections
No. 50, Nov.-Dec. 2024 Over the years, I have flirted with the idea of economic discussion with many people around me, both in my immediate circle and others. The libertarian utopian (advocating privatization, free trade and sound money) often sparred with the lukewarm liberal realist (generally advocating “what can you do, nothing you can do, the state is good, as it is, lesser evil, let’s vote” etc.). Ten years ago, the lesser evil brought us – in the meantime – a greater evil. Apparently, things don’t make sense, but somehow, some people say, we still have to put the stamp on the ballot. More
AI on Rye, Hold the Mayo!
No. 50, Nov.-Dec. 2024 The tech evangelists would have us believe that AI will be part of „our daily bread” (in biblical and practical terms) in the Industry 4.0 era. Some will put anything on their sandwich and are quick to try out new technologies and mainstream them if they bring in the profits; others are shaking and shivering simply hearing about it. The providence and peril of new technologies, among which AI is the “queen”, are, how else, unequally distributed. The fatcats and the working stiff, to turn to class depictions, are not equally represented in the spoils of AI. Between organizations and businesses, the ones with visionary and versatile leaders in terms of incorporating AI in production processes will win out against those who are more reticent or rigid. Within the organizations and businesses, AI helps less qualified or productive workers make up some of the gap in productivity compared to the high performers. Until we get to the point where AI will replace either the former (“the useless class”, apud Yuval Noah Harari), or the latter (the underappreciated in “Gresham’s Law”), who knows where we are going?! The researchers are working day and night on the predictions and the explanations. More
