re: #140 Belafon

Even worse: it’s the only thing from Atlas Shrugged I agree with, that businesses being propped up against market forces is going to lead to more failure. At least socialism has the workers in mind.

I was tweeting today about how this meddling in industry reminded me of what the Third Reich did during the 1930s, as Hitler prepared Germany for a two-front war. Basically, the government seized control of the industries needed for warfare and removed all free-market influence. The result was a national war machine and the impoverishment of the civilian economy. Germany was in a zero-sum game then. Largely isolated from the world economy and with no raw materials of its own, Germany had to “make do” with what it had. That required invading the USSR (for raw materials) and gearing up the relevant industries to make the invasion possible — a feedback loop that ultimately failed catastrophically for Germany.

Trump is playing by a similar rule book: isolating the USA from the world economy with his “deals” and co-opting industries to suit his political agenda, but without any apparent goal in mind. IOW, it doesn’t appear that he’s gearing up for a war or an invasion, because every move so far would hinder any such plans.