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Saturday, July 18, 2026

18: Messi

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Tuesday, July 14, 2026

14: Messi

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14: Hormuz

The stock market is on the verge of doing something that's never been observed in 155 years -- and it has worrisome ramifications for Wall Street

Suddenly, Hormuz is Less Crucial Than It Was Why? Because the real energy crunch is coming from the Russia/Ukraine war ........ And of course the overarching moral of this story is the immense folly and criminality of a war that has left America and the world in a much worse place than they would have been if Trump and his enablers had just left things alone — or, better yet, had preserved the pretty good deal Iran and Barack Obama had agreed to in 2015.

Trump says the US will take out Pickaxe Mountain in Iran "We're going to hit them very hard tonight and we're going to hit them hard tomorrow. And there's not a damn thing they can do about it," he said on the Hugh Hewitt Show.

Christian Bale explains why he daily drives a 2003 Toyota Tacoma despite being worth over $120M
Jeff Bezos' ex-wife MacKenzie Scott donated $26.3B in 5 years — yet she's richer now. The 'giving' math most people get wrong Beyond the numbers, Scott’s method is unusual. She operates through Yield Giving (5), the philanthropic platform she founded in 2022, and uses what’s known as trust-based philanthropy, a model the Chronicle of Philanthropy describes as providing unrestricted funding that nonprofits can spend as they see fit, with minimal application and reporting requirements (6).

Zelensky says the war’s next battlefield makes territory almost irrelevant — ‘It matters far less whose territory is larger’ “Russia is pummeling Ukraine with salvo after deadly salvo of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles; Ukraine is using ever more sophisticated and longer-range drones to drive Russia’s fleet away from Ukraine in the Black Sea, starve Russian-occupied Crimea and, most effectively, strike oil facilities and military installations deep inside Russia,” Schmemann writes............ “Long lines for gas in Moscow and black smoke billowing from a refinery in distant Omsk, and images of victims being pulled out of demolished apartment blocks in Kyiv tell the rest of the story.” ....... “If you stop the enemy on the battlefield, if you stop the war on land, and if you deny him dominance at sea … then the next battlefield becomes the sky,” the president said. “And frankly, in that contest it matters far less whose territory is larger.” ........ the Ukrainian president said that Ukraine needs 300 Patriot missiles for the winter, including 100 per month. ........ “Interceptors, and specifically Patriots, have replaced artillery shells as the indispensable weapon for Ukraine in what may well be the endgame of this war. ........... a “robot army” is changing ground warfare in the conflict. .............. “Battalions of ground robots — tracked and wheeled machines that deliver supplies, haul ammunition, evacuate the wounded, lay mines and, increasingly, hold land — now conduct thousands of missions every month........... That has made them an indispensable tool for Ukrainian infantrymen who spend monthslong rotations in buried bunkers hiding from flying drones,” the report said.

Newt Gingrich likens Iran strategy to Lincoln's 'Anaconda strategy' Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker, likens President Trump's Iran strategy to Abraham Lincoln's Civil War 'Anaconda strategy.' He details how the U.S. is methodically applying pressure on Iran, noting that allies are increasingly frustrated with Iran's actions, not America's. This measured approach aims to achieve long-term foreign policy objectives.

WSJ exposes Trump’s 'unprecedented' state capitalism According to the Wall Street Journal, President Donald Trump has sought to fuse government with business and create a “state capitalism” that is “unprecedented” in recent history. Many commenters have suggested, however, that “this is not state capitalism” but “another ism MAGA is always yelling about.” ............ As the Journal explains, Trump played an instrumental role in Apple CEO Tim Cook’s decision to go into business with the microchip producer Intel, which was struggling after sitting out the early AI boom. Trump pushed Cook to hire Intel to manufacture some of Apple’s new device chips, and Intel has since shown a dramatic turnaround — a financial windfall that has benefited Trump personally, as he bought a “significant share” of Intel stock before its value shot up after the deal with Apple was announced last month. .................. “I think we found the communists,” posted HuffPost White House correspondent S.V. Date. “Something something communism,” posted Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson. “Seems kind of socialist,” noted journalist Brahm Resnik. “State ownership,” came another response. “And he calls Mamdani a commie.” ........... A year ago, the CATO Institute wrote that Trump’s policies mirror the “populist authoritarian movement” spoken of by libertarian thinker Roy A Childs Jr. when in 1982 he warned that the New American Right was working to build a country that would be “hostile to free markets and committed to some form of managed economy. Forty-three years later, Donald Trump is president, and the Wall Street Journal’s chief economics commentator describes his policies as ‘state capitalism,’ a ‘hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises.’” The Journal takes things even further, arguing that

Trump is “imitating the Chinese Communist Party by extending political control ever deeper into the economy.”

.............. Another example came last week, when Trump announced the launch of his “Freedom Fuel Network,” which imposed price controls on a series of Philadelphia gas stations, prompting a slew of comparisons to the “ism” so vocally reviled by Trump. As one commenter said of the news, “I thought we were fighting against communism?”

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Tuesday, July 07, 2026

7: Indonesia

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7: World Cup

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Monday, July 06, 2026

6: Bryant Chou

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Thursday, July 02, 2026

2: Pakistan

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Wednesday, July 01, 2026

1: Melat Kiros

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Wednesday, June 24, 2026

AI and Robotics: The Ultimate Path to Radical Government Shrinkage

The AOC Moment: Four Megatrends Reshaping America



AI and Robotics: The Ultimate Path to Radical Government Shrinkage
AI and robotics are not partisan. They are tools of abundance, governed by physics, code, and incentives rather than ideology. When pursued to their logical extremes—general intelligence, dexterous robots capable of most physical labor, and integrated automation across sectors—they point toward a society with dramatically smaller government and far lower taxes than even the most ambitious small-government advocates have typically proposed. This outcome emerges not from political preference but from technological necessity and economic reality.From Scarcity to Post-ScarcityToday's economies rely on massive government apparatus partly because of scarcity: limited resources, imperfect information, and the high transaction costs of coordinating human labor. Welfare states, regulatory bureaucracies, education systems, healthcare administration, and large militaries exist to manage trade-offs, redistribute resources, insure against risks, and enforce rules amid human limitations.
Advanced AI and robotics erode these foundations. Robots and AI systems can perform physical and cognitive work at scales and efficiencies humans cannot match. A mature robotics economy could produce goods and services in such volume that basic material needs—food, housing, energy, transportation, and healthcare—approach zero marginal cost for large populations. Historical productivity gains from mechanization, electricity, and computing already transformed societies; AI multiplies this by orders of magnitude through continuous self-improvement, 24/7 operation, and precision without fatigue or error.
In such a world, the rationale for expansive redistribution shrinks. If productive capacity is effectively unlimited and distributed through markets, voluntary mechanisms, or new ownership models (such as widespread equity in AI/robotics capital), the need for complex tax-and-transfer systems diminishes. Poverty becomes primarily a distribution or motivation issue rather than a production one. Programs designed for 20th-century industrial economies become relics.Automating Government ItselfGovernment is labor-intensive. Consider the scale:
  • Tax collection, compliance, auditing, and entitlement administration employ vast workforces and require enormous oversight.
  • Regulatory agencies monitor industries, enforce rules, and adjudicate disputes—tasks ripe for AI-driven monitoring, predictive enforcement, and smart contracts.
  • Education and healthcare delivery involve huge administrative layers that personalized AI tutors, diagnostic systems, and robotic care could streamline or bypass.
  • Even core functions like defense and policing could see radical efficiency gains from autonomous systems, reducing personnel needs while potentially increasing capability.
A logical endpoint is a government that acts more as a minimalist referee and coordinator than a comprehensive provider or manager. Many services could migrate to decentralized, AI-mediated markets or community systems. Dispute resolution might leverage AI arbitrators with perfect recall of law and precedent. Infrastructure planning could optimize via simulation rather than political logrolling. The residual state focuses on irreducible roles: defining property rights in new domains (data, AI models, orbital resources), preventing force and fraud, and handling genuine externalities that markets struggle with.
No major political platform in recent decades has proposed shrinking the federal apparatus to anything approaching this vision. Even limited-government proposals typically aim for marginal cuts or efficiency reforms within the existing framework. Technology enables going further—dramatically so—by making the framework itself less necessary.Taxes in an Age of Radical ProductivityTaxes exist to fund government and influence behavior. In a high-productivity AI/robotics economy, required revenue plummets. If GDP multiplies while core government functions automate, the tax burden as a share of output could fall to levels that would make historical low-tax eras seem burdensome. Dynamic scoring of growth effects would be extreme: each percentage point of automation-driven expansion compounds.
Revenue models could also evolve. Land value taxes, congestion fees, or voluntary mechanisms in a wealthy society might suffice. Wealth from AI capital ownership, if broadly distributed through pensions, sovereign funds, or market mechanisms, reduces political pressure for punitive redistribution. The Laffer Curve's peak shifts dramatically upward with growth, but the needed revenue baseline drops.
Critics might argue this ignores inequality or displacement. Yet the same technologies that automate jobs also create new opportunities and cheapen life’s necessities. Historical parallels—agricultural mechanization freeing labor for industry, computing creating unforeseen professions—suggest adaptation, especially with tools that amplify human creativity. The policy challenge is transition management, not permanent large government.Beyond PartisanshipThis vision aligns with neither traditional left nor right platforms. It exceeds conventional conservative small-government rhetoric by rendering much of the state optional through abundance rather than austerity. It undermines progressive instincts for ever-expanding administration by making centralized control less competent and less necessary than decentralized intelligence.
Implementation requires clear property rights, open innovation, and avoidance of regulatory capture that entrenches incumbents or slows progress. Misuse—surveillance states, AI monopolies enforced by government, or weaponized regulation—could lead elsewhere. The direction depends on choices, but the technological gradient pulls toward efficiency and smaller coercive institutions.
AI and robotics expose a deeper truth: many political battles assume fixed scarcity and human limitations. Technology dissolves those assumptions. The resulting society could feature unprecedented individual autonomy, voluntary cooperation, and focus on higher pursuits—exploration, science, art—precisely because the machinery of compulsion and redistribution atrophies.

The logical conclusion is not a prescription for any party but a forecast: pursue capable, safe AI and robotics aggressively, govern the transition wisely, and prepare for a world where government is small because abundance makes it so. No ideology owns this future; reality delivers it.


 

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