So, I don’t really write here any more. I write at drafts.interfluidity.com instead. Please follow that feed or subscribe by e-mail.

I do still offer periodic roundups here of what I’ve been up to! And it’s been a busy few months. Without further ado.

Unless it is remedied soon, the Supreme Court has rendered an end to liberal democracy in the United States nearly inevitable by their decision in Trump v. United States.

It’s not about Trump. Donald Trump, if he loses the election, very likely will face criminal liability for things he did while President. The Supreme Court’s decision is not a “get out of jail free” card.

What it is, however, is a road map. The decision lays down a clear path by which a President could shield almost any unlawful thing he proposed to do behind an impenetrable armor made of “official acts” and the “conclusive and preclusive” pardon power. Rule of law in the United States is now entirely at the option of the President. The vandalism to our Constitutional order that the Supreme Court did on July 1 is far greater, and far more difficult to reverse, than anything Donald Trump has (thus far) done. Benedict Arnold deserves to be numbered among American patriots, when set beside John Roberts. John Roberts is not an institutionalist or an honorable man, but a traitor and a villain. One does not speak John Roberts’ name. One spits it.

See…

• No longer a liberal democracy
• If the issue was the lawfare
• Trump v. United States: Greatest Hits

But who is really the authoritarian? After all, I propose that we in the collective West should embrace and adapt China’s model. To be very clear, I favor embracing China’s economic model, and adapting it to our liberal-democratic political order. China has improvised the most successful economic model in world history, a set of practices distinct from that of predecessor Asian tigers like Japan and Korea, and from Alexander Hamilton’s United States.

I think Western economists are kind of in denial of China’s obvious success. We’ve predicted doom and crisis for decades, as we do even today. For Westerners, the international side effects of China’s model are, understandably, very salient, so we tend to mistake a zero-sum, “beggar-thy-neighbor” dynamic as the core of the model. But I think that’s wrong. In the past, China did require “advanced” export markets — not so much as a source of demand, but to discipline its own industries, to ensure that the quality and efficiency of its industries were world-class. That battles has been won. Now the role of exports in China’s economy is just to offset the fiscal cost of the subsidies that are the beating heart of China’s industrial development.

China, of course, really does want to export. The Chinese state prefers to sell more and subsidize less, and perceives a strategic interest in encouraging other countries’ dependency on its products. But even if (when, for strategic industries) borders close to its products, China’s model will remain worth the larger fiscal cost. China’s model is worth understanding and pursuing even though the United States and Europe will not have partners willing to accept the large trade surpluses China has enjoyed.

For my writing on this, see…

• Industrial policy and ecosystems (from May)
• China as a model
• Competition and the form of the subsidy
• Income driven repayment of fixed capital

That last piece sounds very boring, but I think it is my most important work in a while. The way China subsidizes and disciplines its industries — the “form of the subsidy” — is not well suited to more open and rule-bound liberal democracies. “Income driven repayment of fixed capital” is my attempt to find a form of industrial subsidy that would serve the same purpose as China’s subsidy without the book-cooking and discretionary, politically-imposed, discipline that China relies upon to endow its tremendously competitive industries.

Since the last roundup, I’ve also written two election pieces, and a tax policy suggestion that tries to make the best of a bad campaign pledge by both Presidential candidates (“no tax on tips”).

Also, if you consider yourself Hayekian (which I do! though also Keynesian!), you should obviously be skeptical of “innovation” in the direction of first-degree price discrimination. Hayek has a right-leaning valence, and right-leaning people are in the habit of deferring to business interests as though business interests and “the market” were not in tension (oh my god they are in tension!). But if you genuinely favor the price system as a massive, radically decentralized information system, innovating away from single-price markets is just destroying what you claim to love. “Murdering Hayek” is my piece.

Thank you always for reading a word of this. Please offer thoughts on any or all of these pieces in the comments here. This summary has grown long, so I’m not doing excerpts. Do you miss them? Let me know that in the comments too please!