Daily Archives: April 25, 2023

Transportation leaders have complained for years that the states highway system is woefully underfunded

Traffic on South Camino del Rio at 5 p.m. April 20, 2018, in Durango. The Colorado Department of Transportation hopes to eventually expand U.S. Highway 160 from Durango to Bayfield as well as U.S. Highway 550 from Durango to the New Mexico line. (Jerry McBride/Durango Herald file)

Colorado does not fare well in the Reason Foundations most recent ranking of each states highway system.

The libertarian think tank measures cost-effectiveness, pavement conditions, safety record and other metrics. Colorado fell from 37th to 43rd overall in this years report.

Colorado ranks 47th for rural interstate pavement condition and 40th in urban interstate pavement condition. Its rankings for pavement conditions on rural and urban arterial roads is better, but still middling: 26th and 31st, respectively. Its fatality rates and traffic congestion rates are in the 20s and 30s.

Theres nothing Colorado does extremely well, said Baruch Feigenbaum, Reasons senior managing director of transportation policy.

Colorados transportation leaders complained for years that the states highway system was woefully underfunded. In 2021, the Colorado Legislature approved a massive bill that will raise billions of dollars for transportation in the state.

Thanks to this sustained state funding in infrastructure, we are addressing critical stretches of interstate that need upgrades this year, with more to come in the next several construction seasons, Colorado Department of Transportation spokesman Matt Inzeo wrote in an email.

That new money and the projects it funds arent reflected in this report, which relies on data from 2020. That was the most recent data available, Feigenbaum said.

If theyre doing what they say theyre doing and spending those resources on pavement quality, I would expect that in future reports were going to see some better numbers, he said.

But the report also faults Colorado for the relatively high amount of money it spends on maintenance when compared to the number of lane-miles addressed, suggesting it should be getting more for its money.

Theres a lot of room for improvement, Feigenbaum said.

Colorados topography and climate both contribute to significant maintenance needs, Inzeo said. The agency, for example, will spend an extra $45 million this year on snow removal and road repairs after a particularly brutal winter. (And, Inzeo added, another big storm is coming later this week.)

CDOT's mission is to operate the state's transportation system to ensure every traveler can get where they are going safely, and we will maintain our system to meet that mission, he wrote in an email.

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit http://www.cpr.org.

See the article here:

Colorado falls to 43rd in national highway ranking - The Durango Herald

Sarah Dajani 26

Staff Writer

Formal organizations is a peculiar name for a unique minor that is offered at Trinity. What does it study and what makes it so unique? Trinitys website states that formal organizations is the arrangement of people into a social unit for the explicit purpose of achieving certain goals. The minor aims to explore and analyze the organizations in which people learn, work, socialize, and serve their communities. The formal organizations minor at Trinity is fully funded by the Shelby Cullom Davis Endowment and was directed by Professor Gerald Gunderson from 1982-2020. One of the qualities that make it unique is that it is totally independent from the colleges administration and other departments, as Gunderson himself stated in an Association for Private Enterprise Education Conference in 2016. He proudly stated that hisdonor insisted on not being a member of the Economics department. But why would Shelby Cullom Davis invest in Trinity yet ensure that his endowment remains separate from the College?

Higher education has been an integral part in shaping American ideals and public opinion. Actions like the formation of the National Americanization Committee in 1915, which aimed to bring American citizens, foreign-born and native-born alike, together, highlight the significance of higher education in the making of American society. So if you were to alter the countrys ethos, higher education is the place to start. Doing this, however, requires an effective strategy that is able to maneuver the norms around academic freedom, peer review and faculty governance. This piece examines the Shelby Davis Endowment as an attempt to enforce a single ideological view on Trinitys campus and is inspired by a rich literature that demonstrates the effort wealthy free-market fundamentalists place in higher education to construct a society in line with their ideological beliefs.

The Association for Private Enterprise Education is a self-described organization of teachers and scholars from colleges and universities, public policy institutes, and industry with a common interest in studying and supporting the system of private enterprise. In that same APEE conference in 2016, Gunderson shamelessly presented formal organizations at Trinity College as an example of successful models of programs in private enterprise. So, in the eyes of the plutocratic libertarian generous donor class, your education is their way of influencing American societies and imposing their libertarian fantasy. These attempts to privatize education and limit it to a single libertarian view defy what education is about and shatter its goals in the development of critical and rational thinking, and they are becoming increasingly popular throughout the campuses of the United States. Some of the wealthy donors at APEEs 2016 conference communicated an alarming vision of how they want education to look. Charlie Ruger of the Koch Foundationwhich is a part of a large network that funds the student groups that bring controversial speakers to college campuses, media outlets that amplify and inflame those controversies, and even careers for those controversial speakerscommunicated his desire to have college campuses apply these great ideas of the APEE network the way we think about it at least and to include arranging state legislative testimony to make sure that, you know, these kinds of ideas have a seat on the table in public policy.

The story of the Davis Endowment at Trinity is commemorated at APEE and other libertarian organizations because Gundersonthe Davis Endowed Chair for almost 40 yearslaunched, as he names it, a war at Trinity to get the full funds of the endowment and distribute them to other individuals and professors with his same ideology. Those individuals were, or ended up being, a part of the same libertarian donor network that aims to control and alter public opinion about free-market enterprise and eventually, enact laws that contribute to their increasingly growing wealth and power. So, why is this important and how does it affect you?

This donor integrated strategy aims to limit education and academia to what is seen fit to the donors political and ideological interests. It contributes to the increasing disparities of our world. The hostility and intolerance which guide this strategy send a message to everyone with different political and intellectual ideologies that they are unwelcome in this donor-privatized world. So, if you have different ideological beliefs to those networks you are, at best, unwelcome in their spaces and, much worse, attacked for your academic and scholarly criticism of their foundation.

Continued here:

Are We Stuck In a Plutocratic Formal Organization? An Analysis of ... - Trincoll.edu

Fox News shook the very foundations of the Earth on Monday when the conservative cable giant announced that its top talent, Tucker Carlson, was finished.

"FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways," said the network in a statement. "We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor."

This is an unexpected development, to say the least. Carlson is the biggest star in conservative media. He's one of the most influential voices in Republican Party politics. And most importantly, he was Fox's most popular host, drawing in over 3 million viewers for his 8 p.m. show each night. A rational person might have expected the network to approach a theoretical Carlson exit with extreme trepidation.

And yet, Fox is giving every indication that the decision to part ways was sudden and dramatic. Last Friday's installment will serve as the final hour of Tucker Carlson Tonight; much like former host Bill O'Reilly, who was pushed out over sexual misconduct allegations, Carlson was not given the opportunity to produce a goodbye episode. As of Monday morning, Fox was still promoting a forthcoming interview between Carlson and GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. This certainly looks like an unanticipated end.

The departure comes, of course, in the immediate aftermath of Fox's settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, which obligated the network to pay $787 million to avoid a defamation trial. It wasn't immediately clear whether the two things are related; Carlson privately expressed doubts about the stolen election claims and eventually denounced Sidney Powell on air for failing to produce any evidence to support her wild theories. If Fox is punishing its hosts for how they covered President Donald Trump's election conspiracy theories, Carlson is not the obvious place to start.

The Los Angeles Times,however, reported that Rupert Murdochhead of the Fox empirepersonally made the call to fire Carlson, in part because of his dissatisfaction with Carlson's coverage of January 6. There is little doubt that this decision would have to come from the very top; The Washington Postcontends that private messages uncovered during the Dominion discovery processin which Carlson disparaged his bossesupset network executives.

Some media reporters have pointed to a different potential source of trouble: Fox faces a lawsuit from Abby Grossberg, a former booker for Carlson's show, who has alleged sexual harassment. Perhaps, given all of the above, Murdoch abruptly decided now was the time.

For Carlson, there's little doubt that he can remain extremely relevant in conservative media circles if he so chooses. He has received an outpouring of support since the news brokeRep. Thomas Massie (RKy.) described Carlson's exit as a "huge loss" for Foxas well as a wave of offers to collaborate: Glenn Beck invited him to joinThe Blaze,and Jeremy Boreing asked him to come toThe Daily Wire. Carlson has reinvented himself many times before, from his Crossfire days to a gig at MSNBC to launchingThe Daily Caller. (Disclaimer: I worked for Carlson atThe Daily Callerbefore joiningReasonin 2014; I have also appeared regularly on Fox News, including on Carlson's show.)

Assuming that Murdoch is the one who pulled the trigger, it would appear Fox is confident that, ultimately, they can replace Carlson. Undoubtedly, they have many other stars waiting in the wings; Greg Gutfeld, who hosts the late-night show Gutfeld!, has pulled in killer ratings as well, and Fox's 5 p.m. panel show The Five (which also includes Gutfeld) is a juggernaut that actually beat Carlson's numbers last year. Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity, who host the prime-time shows before and after Carlson's, are both highly rated. When compared with its rivals at MSNBC and CNN, Fox's overall performance is absolutely dominating, and this will be the case even if Carlson is no longer in the mix.

Replacing his idiosyncratic perspective is another matter.

There are several Fox News personalities with libertarian sensibilities: Gutfeld, Kat Timpf, and of course, Fox Business host Lisa Kennedy, who regularly features Reasonwriters on her show. Once upon a time, Carlson had called himself a libertarianhe was formerly a senior fellow at the Cato Institutebut by the age of Trump, he had decisively turned against libertarians on a host of social and economic issues: immigration, trade, tech, and so on. It was only on foreign policy where viewers could see traces of his former libertarianism: He remained a vocal opponent of neoconservatism, agreed with President Joe Biden on pulling out of Afghanistan, and bucked the bipartisan consensus on unending U.S. military support for Ukraine. (He remained somewhat hawkish on China, however.)

Carlson's exit was not the only high-profile media departure on Monday: CNN let go of Don Lemon, a long-time personality, in a move that apparently surprised the morning show host while feeling inevitable to anyone covering his recent string of controversies.

Continued here:

Why Is Tucker Carlson Leaving Fox News? - Reason

After a bruising defeat at the Supreme Court, the Biden administration is back to crafting regulatory limits on power plant emissions. A forthcoming rule from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would require that carbon-producing coal and gas power plants slash their greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, reports The New York Times.

These emissions limits would be so strict that coal plants likely have to adopt carbon capture technology to meet them while gas plants would have to switch to burning carbon-free hydrogen gas, say administration officials to the Times.

The yet-to-be-made-public rule is currently being finalized by the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

Since coming into office, President Joe Biden has been working on a rule to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. This has been a liberal priority going back to the Obama administration, which tried and failed to get Congress to enact an emissions cap-and-trade scheme in 2009.

Undeterred, in 2015, Obama's EPA implemented very similar regulations to those that were found in the 2009 legislation, claiming that the Clean Air Act had given it the power to regulate carbon emissions all along.

Those regulations would have required coal power plants to cut their own production of electricity or subsidize renewable energy production to offset their emissions.

That executive-ordered "Clean Power Plan" was met with immediate legal opposition. In 2016, the Supreme Court froze the implementation of these rules until those legal challenges worked themselves out. The Trump administration tried to gut the Obama-era rules but was stopped in 2021 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That ruling said the EPA not only had the power, but the duty, to regulate carbon emissions.

This was all the prelude to the Supreme Court decision in West Virginia v. EPA from last June, in which the court sided with coal companies and Republican state attorneys general, who argued against the EPA's broad authority to regulate climate emissions.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the EPA did not already have the power to cap "carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity." Any plan to do that would have to be clearly authorized by Congress.

The Biden administration has been continually pushing back its release of new emissions regulations while the West Virginia case is pending. Whether the forthcoming rule meets this standard remains to be seen. Yet more lawsuits seem inevitable.

"We are eager to review the E.P.A.'s new proposed rule on power plants, and we'll be ready once again to lead the charge in the fight against federal overreach," said West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey to the Times in a statement.

In addition to power plants, the Biden administration has also proposed regulations that would mandate more electric vehicle sales and end the use of gas furnaces in the home.

On Monday, the Biden administration also unveiled an executive order authorizing a "whole-of-government effort to confront longstanding environmental injustices and inequities."

"Biden's new move again goes beyond normalcy and well beyond even [former President Barack] Obama's 'pen and phone' regulating in terms of executive overreach, all in service of aggressive, far-left economic social and societal interventions," said Clyde Wayne Crews and Daren Bakst of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

More details about Tucker Carlson's ouster at Fox News keep rolling in. The reasons for the primetime populist host's departure are still murky at best. NPR reporter David Folkenflik, citing three anonymous sources, said that Carlson's effective firing was related to an ongoing sex discrimination case being brought against him by his former producer. During the discovery process in the separate, now-settled lawsuit brought against it by voting machine company Dominion, Fox is said to have uncovered communications that speak to those allegations, reports Folkenflik.

Fox agreed to pay Dominion for a reported $787.5 million last week as part of a settlement agreement.

Folkenflik's reporting seemingly contradicts a Los Angeles Times report saying that the order came from Rupert Murdoch himself, over the network owner's discomfort with Carlson's January 6 coverage.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Carlson's disparagement of his bosses at the networkalso uncovered in the Dominion lawsuitwas what got him axed.

Fox News, in a brief statement released yesterday, claimed their parting with Carlson was mutual. No one seems to believe that.

While the details of his departure from Fox are still emerging, pundits are already waxing poetic about Carlson's legacy.

"He provided one of the purest forms of extremism on Fox News, bigotry and racism alleged, and conspiracy theories corrosive to the body [politick]," was Folkenflik's assessment.

"A tribune for populist opponents of endless war and Big Tech-enabled censorship and surveillance, at his best ripping into the GOP's plutocracy caucus as well as mainstream Democrats," was The American Conservative Contributing Editor Sohrab Ahmari's rosier spin.

As Reason's Robby Soave noted yesterday, Carlson was once a libertarian fellow traveler. He took a hard tack to the right leading up to and during the Trump years on issues like crime, tech regulation, and, particularly, immigration.

He remained a hardcore, bipartisan skeptic of American foreign interventionism, from Ukraine to Syria. He'd occasionally come to libertarian policy positions on more niche issues, like when he opposed menthol cigarette bans.

Even on these issues, Carlson rarely justified his libertarian policy positions on a general belief in people's freedom to do as they please without state interference. Politics was not a battle between the individual and the state, but rather between a woke elite and the real Americans they hated and exploited. The exercise of state power could therefore be good or bad, in his eyes, depending on who it was being wielded against.

That's how Carlson could end up being a harsh critic of menthol cigarette bans and marijuana legalization. "Why do they hate nicotine? Because nicotine frees your mind, and THC makes you compliant and passive," he said during one monologue.

If something liberates you from the thought control of woke elites, it's got to be legal. If it makes you a compliant minion of those elites, your choices have to be legally constrained and controlled.

This kind of unvarnished populism is admittedly a lot more interesting to watch than whatever former CNN anchor Don Lemon (who was also fired Monday) was talking about on a given night. But that hardly makes Carlson a hero.

Aubrey Plaza is the latest soldier in the ongoing labeling wars over alt milks. The actress stars in a new satirical ad campaign in which she encourages people to buy disgusting (fictional) "wood milk" instead of the standard dairy variety. At least, that is, until she tastes it.

"Is wood milk real? Absolutely not. Only real milk is real," she says.

The ad, funded by milk processors, is a clear swipe at milks made from almonds, soy, and oats. While funny, it's also part of a broader regulatory campaign by the dairy industry to prevent alternative milk makers from using the word milk on their packaging. The Food and Drug Administration issued new rules in February allowing these non-dairy milk producers to use the word milk while also encouraging them to include nutritional comparisons between their products and the dairy variety.

Original post:

Despite SCOTUS Ruling Limiting Its Authority, EPA Tries To ... - Reason

In the final days of the 1964 presidential campaign, a profesional pitch man and public speaker named Ronald Reagan recorded a video on behalf of the Republican nominee for president of the United States, Barry Goldwater. In the pitch, conventionally known as the A Time for Choosing speech, Reagan fixated on one word and theme above all else.

Freedom.

The Cold War, in his telling, was about whether we lose this way of freedom of ours. He wondered if Americans still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers. For Reagan, America was apparently the only place with liberty on the entire surface of the Earth: If we lose freedom here, theres no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth. Maybe he hadnt traveled much. He extolled individual freedom consistent with law and order and bemoaned the assault on freedom and worried that freedom has never been so fragile. He derided those who would trade our freedom for security.

The pitch for Goldwater didnt work, but the pitch man outperformed his own product. A decade and a half later, Reagan would be elected president on a similar rhetorical platform of freedom, freedom, freedom, and freedom. And the frame of freedom that he insisted on would become the mantle of the right. Every strand of the rights project from deregulating the economy to busting unions to lowering taxes on the rich and corporations to imperially adventuring in foreign countries all of it could be justified by the freedom pose.

And in those years, the left committed a blunder, largely accepting the rights dubious claim to ownership of the concept of freedom. The left pursued other themes. It pursued justice, equality, solidarity, coming together, hope, change, the future. But it somewhat accepted, often unconsciously, that freedom was the rights thing.

So it was significant that on January 20, 2017, as Donald Trump, in many ways an heir to the Reagan Revolution and in other ways a departure from it, delivered the darkest inaugural address in American history, he used the word freedom once. Even that was boilerplate, not substantive: We all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same, great American flag.

That was it.

If Reagan had conjured the image of thriving, effervescent Americans bursting to do things, build things, raise families, chase dreams, but for the threat of government encroachment, Trump told a different story. Americans in this new story were victims of entropy: "trapped in poverty in our inner cities, surrounded by rusted out factories, scattered like tombstones across the across the landscape of our nation, deprived of all knowledge by a broken education system, threatened by the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives.

The kind of freedom the right had traditionally emphasized negative freedom, the freedom to be left alone wasnt really the solution if this was the problem. If Reagan had emphasized the moral imperative of leaving free and vigorous people alone, Trump spoke of people who needed a powerful protector a.k.a. him.

Of course, many of the actual, underlying policies Trump proposed would be quite similar to those proposed by Reagan, but the departure of the 2017 pitch from the long-reining orthodoxy of the 1964 pitch was revealing: the party that once saw people as full of agency, threatened by government constraint, now saw people as naturally weak and vulnerable, threatened by forces beyond their control which only strong leaders could defeat. The libertarian Republican Party was now the authoritarian one.

The Republican retreat from the frame of freedom is a tectonic, under-appreciated shift in American politics. And it may be the start of a profound political realignment. For the first time in a generation, the idea of freedom is not an especially important animating principle for the right. They use the word still, but they are fundamentally about something else now, fundamentally about protecting people from supposedly menacing forces like demographic change and changes to M&Ms and childrens books and woke corporations. This is the pitch not of freedom but of the strongman.

To quote Miley Cyrus, the libertarian right of previous generations conceived of citizens as having the attitude We run things, things dont run we. Todays Republicans tell their adherents that they live in a world of forces that do run them, and only a powerful ruler can interrupt that.

Share

The rights desertion of freedom creates a historic opportunity for the left to reclaim what should never have been conceded. In reporting my book The Persuaders, I saw research showing that freedom is the most highly ranked value by people on the far right, far left, center right, and center left. There arent a lot of values like that left.

And its not just rhetoric: the actual program of the diverse camps of the political left is consonant with a freedom-centered pitch. What is the fight for reproductive rights but a fight for the freedom to control ones body and to have sex without fear that you are making a lifelong commitment some Friday night? What is the fight against book bans but a fight for the freedom to read and think? What is the effort to pursue justice for the January 6, 2021, insurrection but a fight to enshrine and defend the freedom to vote? What is the fight against climate change but a fight for the freedom of our children and grandchildren (and us) to drink clean water and breathe clean air and live in the mental peace of not constantly dreading floods and fires? What is the fight for truly universal healthcare but a fight for the freedom from illness and for the freedom to pursue your business ideas and not have to cling to your awful job? What is the quest for free daycare and college but a fight for the freedom to learn and pursue your dreams regardless of whether you happened to be born into wealth?

Today, as President Biden announced his re-election campaign, his choice of approach struck me as a sign that this great political realignment may be upon us. As Politico summed up the campaigns opening pitch: Biden's 2024 choice: More freedom or less freedom. In the campaigns three-minute opening ad, Biden uses the word freedom six times. That is approximately five times the frequency of Reagans 11 uses of the word in his 27-minute speech in 1964. The ad frames all kinds of present-day issues as battles for freedom: protecting Social Security, beating back insurrection, defending democracy, safeguarding the vote, preserving abortion rights, preserving marriage equality, resisting book bans, shoring up civil rights, and more.

As Anat Shenker-Osorio, the progressive messaging guru whom I write about in The Persuaders says, the thing about freedom is that you can feel it. Its corporeal. Its not abstract. People know what it feels like to be free. And not to be free. This is a theme, a concept, a frame, a word that the left can no longer afford to hand to the right, and the good news is it seems like it no longer is.

The Ink is funded by readers. If you enjoy the work we do, will you step and subscribe today?

View post:

Biden's "freedom" pitch and the coming political realignment - The.Ink

In a rough session for local finance, the informal dollar has jumped by 7% during the day, and the currency exchange gap (brecha) exceeded 120%.

The informal dollar exchange rate, known as the blue dollar, peaked at AR$497 before receding slightly following statements from Economy Minister Sergio Massa.

The exchange gap is the difference between the official dollar exchange rate and the financial or informal (blue) dollars. The gap is important because many economic agents use the value of financial dollars as parameters to set their costs and prices.

The run on the parallel rates comes as the country faces acute dollar scarcity: after a drought cut billions of dollars from Argentinas export income and international reserves, Massa announced a third edition of the special exchange rate for agricultural exporters earlier this month with a view to bolstering reserves.

However, amid rumors of an official currency devaluation, exporters have significantly slowed their sales despite the preferential exchange rate last week, and did not liquidate any of their income in the official exchange market last Wednesday, putting pressure on the rate.

The rise also follows weeks of great political and economic uncertainty, sparked by factors such as President Alberto Fernndez announcing he would not run for re-election, the rise of debates around the dollarization of the Argentine economy sparked by libertarian candidate Javier Milei, a 7.7% monthly inflation rate in March and the government missing the fiscal deficit target agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In a press conference following a meeting with his Romanian counterpart this morning, President Alberto Fernndez accused the Argentine right of installing rumors that are affecting the exchange markets, harming Argentines savings.

Its not news, theyve always done this, said Fernndez, who later wrote a Twitter thread to reflect his statements. Weve lived through this already and well overcome it again. [] Sergio Massa and I are working together to face this scenario.

Asistimos a una prctica permanente de la derecha argentina.

Primero instalan rumores a la maana, luego operan durante todo el da y cuando termina la tarde, retiran su rentabilidad del mercado cambiario y lastiman el ahorro de las argentinas y argentinos.

Massa published a thread about the rise of the informal dollar, saying that an atypical situation involving rumors, versions, fake reports had an impact on financial instruments related to the US dollar.

We will use all of the States tools to get this situation together, weve notified the IMF of the restrictions that affected Argentina, and which we will change in the re-negotiation of our agreement,

We will maintain our agreements with multilateral organisms, keep working with exporters by transforming exports into [Chinese] yuan, and the IMF disbursement agreement to strengthen bank reserves that were hindered by the impact of the drought, he ended.

Hace varios dias que vivimos una situacion atpica de rumores, versiones, falsos informes y su consecuente impacto en los instrumentos financieros vinculados al dlar.

Go here to see the original:

Informal dollar reaches AR$497, Fernndez and Massa blame ... - Buenos Aires Herald

Book of the day

This timely and important study of investment zones exposes the limitations of the experiments favoured by free-market fanatics

Tue 25 Apr 2023 02.00 EDT

Remember Liz Trusss plan last summer to carpet-bomb Britain with investment zones? These were not just freeports these would be zones modelled on the most anarchic capitalist zones in the world. There would be no tiresome planning laws, no irksome regulations, minimal labour laws, little taxation and only the lightest veneer of democracy. For Truss and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, these would be the ultra-libertarian battering rams to ignite the capitalism flame covering almost every city and town in the country.

The idea did not survive their passing: Truss wanted an uncapped number, while even Kwarteng accepted the Treasury argument that the loss of tax revenue estimated to be 12bn if the government went full Truss was unacceptable. There had to be some limit, otherwise there would simply be a mass diversion of economic activity into the investment zones and little extra investment. It was a fools mission. The present chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, laid the whole plan quietly to rest, while persevering with a softer and mildly less mad version of the same idea freeports.

But as Crack-Up Capitalism explains, there is nothing original in any of this. Anarcho-capitalist investment zones, along with a range of less extreme ideas, have been marketed on the wilder shores of the right as the pure milk of capitalism for some decades. And increasingly, in this eye-opening account, made real. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, free marketeers extolling the Hong Kong model have been trying to create jurisdictions within jurisdictions that maximise economic freedom as they characterise it and downplay all the adjuncts of political freedom, which include trade unions, obligations to the poor, opposition parties and regulation to promote the public good.

As arch-free marketeer Milton Friedman believed, capitalism flourished best where there was as much economic freedom as possible. Political freedom could even get in the way of economic freedom because democracies, giving vent to popular demands, dared to place burdens on free business. The best form of government is therefore a territory run on the same principles as a corporation. Political constitutions, which set out citizens entitlements and rights as part of the process of government, should be dispensed with in these new and widening cracks of economic freedom in the global economy. Instead, the corporation should govern through a network of commercial contracts, even with citizens, in which the only rule is whether the contractual relationship throws up a profit. Within the zone, it is everyone for themselves in an economic jungle in which you formally renounce any rights as the price of entry.

If it began with Hong Kong and Singapore, Londons Canary Wharf is a tribute to the same idea and Quinn Slobodian, professor of the history of ideas at Massachusettss Wellesley College, takes the reader through the panoply of areas around the world that are exponents of crack-up capitalism. Sometimes, its a story of ventures that do not get off the ground, as in Honduras, when a planned charter city was vetoed by a change of government determined to reassert democratic control, but sometimes, as in Dubai, the scale of what is going on in these free economic zones is breathtaking. But then some states, as in authoritarian Singapore and Hong Kong, already have some of the necessary political culture that makes dispensing with political freedoms comparatively easy.

The open question is whether crack-up capitalism has a track record of success, notwithstanding all the claims made on its behalf. As Slobodian observes, for example, it is not obvious that Singapore is quite the poster child for economic freedom that its free market fans portray. The state looms large, taking tactical stakes in companies, offering public housing and its authorities having a strategic plan that sits at odds with the notion that this is an Adam Smith heaven. Friedman was less enamoured of Singapore than he was with Hong Kong for those very reasons, although how much even Hong Kongs success will survive the ice-cold grip of the Chinese Communist partys political control hangs in the balance. The signs are that it is faltering.

And if Dubai boasts the worlds highest buildings and vast amusement parks, along with being governed exactly like a company, its success is more a tribute to oil wealth than anarcho-capitalism. It is true that there is no western concept of citizenship, that the country is a patchwork quilt of varying legal jurisdictions to appease the preferences of inward investors and that it has grown explosively. But for whose benefit? Almost 90% of its inhabitants are foreigners hardly a model for the rest of the world. The worlds population cannot all live in free zones. Without oil revenues and de facto tribal government, Dubai would have been much more like Honduras.

Slobodian has done us a great service, identifying a phenomenon that needs unmasking. But how many great companies have their roots in anarcho-capitalism, free zones and charter cities? None that I can think of. The truth about capitalism is that some risks need socialising, workforces need to be housed, educated and trained and great companies have a purpose beyond avarice, a reality Friedman and his acolytes never took on board. Companies need political and social soil in which to grow; the stronger the society, the stronger the company. Equally, as Singapore demonstrates, success also needs the state and states themselves need accountability processes and the constitutions that go with them. It will irritate Truss, Kwarteng and their followers, along with the rest of the anarcho-capitalist right, but economic and political freedom are handmaidens. Crack-up capitalism, for all its spread and the enthusiasm of its advocates, is ultimately a blind alley.

Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy by Quinn Slobodian is published by Allen Lane (25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

{{topLeft}}

{{bottomLeft}}

{{topRight}}

{{bottomRight}}

{{.}}

See more here:

Crack-Up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian review the economic anarchy of Liz Trusss dreams - The Guardian