New Thomas Sowell content at the WSJ! I can't imagine I'll still be cranking it out when I'm 94.
He considers the implications of a simple fact: The World’s Biggest Landlord Is Washington.
There is much to be said for the new administration’s plan to have a nongovernmental organization investigate how well, or how badly, government agencies are currently handling the taxpayers’ money. But there is a limit to how much money can be recovered by simply cutting back on “waste, fraud and abuse” in federal spending.
There are, however, additional billions of dollars that could be tapped, from a source that not many people think about. That is the vast—almost unbelievable—amount of land owned by the federal government. Some of that land—such as military bases—is used to house the government’s own operations. But the great majority of that land is not.
The rest of this government-owned land is so vast that there is little to compare it with—except whole countries. And not small countries like Belgium or Portugal. The amount of land owned by the National Park Service alone is larger than Italy. The land owned by the Fish and Wildlife Service is larger than Germany. The land owned by the Forest Service is larger than Britain and Spain combined. The land owned by the Bureau of Land Management is larger than Japan, North Korea, South Korea and the Philippines combined.
Yeah, do that. And be sure the proceeds are used for debt reduction, not new spending.
To go along with this wonderful idea. Veronique de Rugy suggests: Privatize the Postal Service, Amtrak, airports, and more.
When it comes to deliveries, Santa's sleigh reigns supreme. The U.S. Postal Service, on the other hand, is more like a lopsided toboggan pulled by one reindeer threatening to go on strike. Despite its monopoly on letters and mailboxes, it's running a tab bigger than a Black Friday shopping spree. In 2024 alone, the Postal Service lost $9.5 billion. Without changes, it's on track to lose another $80 billion in the coming decade. Even the Grinch would be shocked by that.
How did we get here? The government post office has some advantages—like sweetheart loans from the Department of Treasury—but this one still can't turn a profit. It's bogged down by inefficiencies and prohibitive union contracts that have eaten up around 75 percent of past budgets. That leaves little room for modernization or improvements. But it still had room for a multibillion-dollar taxpayer-funded program that was supposed to deliver 3,000 electric mail vehicles by now. Only 93 have rolled out.
Privatization could be the gift that saves the Postal Service. Under private ownership, we'd see competition drive down costs and spur innovation. Just look at Germany's Deutsche Post (aka DHL), a largely private entity delivering top-notch service. Or consider the United Kingdom's Royal Mail, privatized a decade ago and now operating with greater efficiency and customer satisfaction. Imagine a Postal Service that works as efficiently as Santa's elves on Christmas Eve. That's the magic of privatization.
And click over for the rest. Hope Elon and Vivek are reading.
Also of note:
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A serious question from a funny guy. Jeff Maurer wonders: What if We Restricted Athletes Like We Do Tech Workers?
My Christmas gift this year was watching the tech right and the MAGA right get into a good ol’ fashioned Twitter brawl. It started when Trump appointed Sriram Krishnan to be a senior advisor on Artificial Intelligence. The pick surprised me because Krishnan is: 1) Qualified, and 2) Not accused of paying teenagers for sex — Trump is really mixing it up with this choice! But MAGA Twitter was surprised because Krishnan has called for removing the country-specific caps on H1b visas, which are often used by tech workers, especially Indian tech workers. This led to anti-Indian invective bubbling up on social media, which has the potential to sully MAGA Twitter’s reputation as an egalitarian safe space for the tolerant and open-minded.
Trump allies Elon Musk and David Sacks stuck up for Krishnan, and for the concept of hiring foreign workers, generally. In response, MAGA heads lost what’s left of their minds. I side with Musk and Sacks — even a clock that fried its brain on acid is right twice a day, right? To my mind, much of MAGA Twitter is making the same mistake that many leftists make when arguing against merit-based hiring: They fail to realize that these are companies, not jobs programs, and the number of jobs grows or shrinks depending on how those companies do. Also like the left, they imagine that that you can restrict the pool of workers without any drop off in quality, and that’s the part of the argument that I want to address.
Just two snide comments about that "clock right twice a day thing": (1) It only applies to those clocks with analog hands. And who has those any more? Your grandma, maybe.
And (2): Under Daylight Saving Time, it's theoretically possible for a stopped clock to be right three times a day. On that cursed 25-hour day when you "fall back", assuming it's stopped between 1:00 and 2:00.
I'll be happy with DOGE if the only thing it does is to get rid of Daylight Saving Time.
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It starts with "P", and that stands for… Deirdre McClosky discovers The Fourth Ism.
Three big political isms came to mind and language 1776 to 1848, and have had enormous influence right down to the present— liberalism, nationalism, and socialism. I’ve said this before. When put into action, especially in the 20th century, liberalism pursued vigorously had wonderful results. The other two pursued vigorously, by using the power of the big modern state, had terrible results. Liberalism resulted in human enrichment, from art and science to health and housing. Nationalism led to the Paraguayan War, and socialism led to Venezuelan impoverishment.
Recently I’ve realized that there’s another big 19th-century -ism with 20th-century consequences, protectionism. It uses the power of the state to protect these Brazilian capitalists from foreign competition by blocking entry to Brazil, or it protects these American plumbers from domestic competition by blocking entry to plumbing. Another ism-word for it would be syndicalism, from Greek súndikos, advocate,” itself from “with justice.” Ha, ha. Its claim, absurd on its face but very popular, is that if we make this capitalist and this plumber richer by letting them combine in a syndicate against society, preventing the liberty of contract to buy where you wish, then all of us—the non-capitalists and the non-plumbers—will also be protected and indeed enriched. Ha, ha, ha.
We can only hope that this folly is quickly realized, repealed, and forgotten.
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But protectionism isn't Trump's wackiest idea. Jim Geraghty takes a look at President-Elect Trump's Greenland New Deal.
On Christmas Day, President-elect Trump shared on Truth Social his wishes for a merry Christmas “to the people of Greenland, which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes and, who want the U.S. to be there, and we will! . . .”
On December 22, Trump announced Ken Howery as his choice for U.S. ambassador to Denmark; Howery was the co-founder of PayPal and the Founders Fund, and he served as Trump’s ambassador to Sweden in his first term. Trump added, “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
Good luck, Ken!
If you click through, you'll find yourself learning more about Greenland than you ever thought possible. Fun facts: (1) Greenland "is the location of the Pentagon’s northernmost installation, Pituffik Space Base (pronounced “bee-doo-FEEK”), formerly known as Thule Air Base." (2) "Greenland’s population is roughly 56,000, which means every last citizen of Greenland could sit in any NFL stadium with seats to spare." And (3) "About 88 percent are Greenlandic Inuit, indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of North America". And (finally, 4) “the majority of the people speak the Inuit language, Kalaallisut, which is the official language, while the second language of the country is Danish.”
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