Featured
Reply
Featured
Cuba’s Reforms and the Real Forces Shaping Its Future
Cuba’s Reforms and the Real Forces Shaping Its Future
James Quillian, Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
These reforms are an improvement, but people need to understand the deeper structure behind them. Cuba isn’t suddenly embracing free markets out of ideological awakening. It’s reacting to pressure. And if the goal is to appease the United States or avoid some form of intervention, it won’t work the way they might imagine. If Washington truly wanted a free market in Cuba, sanctions never would have been imposed in the first place. The pattern is older than either government: weaken a country, open it up, and then let outside interests move in.
Allowing foreign investors to buy stakes in Cuban companies and opening the door to private banking are exactly the kinds of openings U.S. interests have pushed for. Cuba is no military threat. The issue has always been access and influence. A weakened Cuba is easier to reshape, and the end result usually looks like a command economy where a small elite captures the benefits. That’s the American model now. We call it a free market, but political power has replaced price as the mechanism that decides who gets what. A thing is what it does, not what it calls itself.
That’s the point I made in my earlier article, “The Salvation of Cuba.” The United States is defined as a republic, but it hasn’t functioned like one in a long time. Citizens get surface‑level information while anything meaningful is tucked out of sight. People trade freedom for comfort, and once comfort settles in, the appetite for reform disappears. That’s how a republic drifts into a political marketplace.
Cuba sits on the opposite end of the same problem. Its economy is failing because command systems always fail. Nothing improves until free markets appear, and free markets cannot exist without at least a few democratic principles standing guard. Democracy and free markets can be corrupted—as we see in the United States—but in Cuba they are simply absent.
The irony is that Cuba could be better off almost overnight if even a sliver of free‑market behavior were allowed. The demand is there. The supply is not. Cuba is in a perfect position to satisfy consumer needs that go unmet everywhere else. They could build basic cars designed to be repaired instead of discarded. They could build simple smartphones that aren’t loaded with corporate clutter. Linux is free. A Cuban‑built phone that does the essentials well would sell faster than they could make them.
In short, Cuba could manufacture the very items of high utility that are intentionally kept off the American market. The world is hungry for practical goods. Cuba could feed that hunger if it chose to.
But corruption is the wall they keep hitting. All governments are corrupt to some degree—power does that—but Cuba’s leadership holds nearly total power over its citizens. When power approaches 100%, corruption follows right behind it. Absolute power still behaves the
Trump’s Ego Projects and the Problem of Self‑Made Legacy
Trump’s Ego Projects and the Problem of Self‑Made Legacy
James Quillian, Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
People keep calling these things “ego projects,” but the comparison to earlier presidents shows why they stand out. Washington, Lincoln, and the others never built monuments to themselves. They didn’t name buildings after themselves, and they didn’t stage big personal displays. Whatever honor they received came later, from people who appreciated them after they were gone. That’s how respect usually works.
The Declining Economics of Surveillance in a Bored‑Tech World
The Declining Economics of Surveillance in a Bored‑Tech World
James Quillian,Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
Surveillance was once the economic engine of the tech industry. The model was simple: collect the data, predict the behavior, and sell the attention. For a time, it worked extraordinarily well. But the world has changed. The public is bored with tech, immune to ads, and increasingly distrustful of government. Surveillance still exists, but its economic value is collapsing, and that collapse is the real story the industry avoids discussing.
The Unseen Force Behind Power
The Unseen Force Behind Power: When Behavior at the Top Stops Making SenseThe Unseen Force Behind Power|
James Quillian,Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
Every era leaves clues about what is really happening at the top of the system. Not the official explanations, not the press releases — the behavior. And lately, the behavior of the upper tiers of government, finance, and media has taken on a strange, contradictory quality. Leaders take positions that make no sense. Long‑standing allies turn on one another. Congress drifts into paralysis. Markets float above reality as if gravity has been suspended. Agencies behave as if they answer to no one. The public is not just uninformed — it is non‑attached, as if watching a show that no longer concerns them.
Frederick Douglass and the Discipline of Freedom
Frederick Douglass and the Discipline of Freedom
James Quillian,Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
I was born on Emancipation Day. Maybe that explains my interest in Black history, though the truth is simpler. It came from my father, Roy Quillian Jr. He was a brilliant engineer and a twenty‑five‑year vice president at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. He held a security clearance and testified before congressional committees, and I knew none of this when I was young. To me, he was just Dad, the man who could fix anything. We weren’t wealthy. Engineers in those days were modestly paid. But he carried a level of competence that didn’t need to be advertised.
Why Marijuana Laws Fail
Why Marijuana Laws Fail: A Natural‑Law Look at Behavior, Enforcement, and Public Tolerance
By James Quillian,Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
For a law to function, a large share of the population must be genuinely offended by the behavior the law is supposed to prevent. Without that, the law becomes a symbol rather than a tool. Marijuana prohibition has lived in that symbolic category for decades. Half the country already supports legalization. The half that opposes it is not actually disturbed by the behavior itself. That is the fatal weakness.
The asset‑enhancement state
he asset‑enhancement state: how America turned its stock market into a weapon
By James Quillian,Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
We are told the country is rich because the people are productive, because innovation is relentless, because the “free market” keeps allocating capital to its highest use. We are told the stock market is a barometer of national health, a living scoreboard of American dynamism. We are told that when the indices rise, the country rises with them.
That story is cover.
What Palantir Really Represents
What Palantir Really Represents
By James Quillian,Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
Palantir is not a mystery. It is the logical outcome of a system that replaced free markets with managed perception and replaced public consent with data‑driven governance. The company’s ambition is not hidden. It wants to be the default data‑infrastructure layer for institutional power across the Western world. When you build the pipes, you don’t need to control governments. You only need governments to depend on you.
How Trump Explains Victory Over Iran
The Roy Cohn Method and the Scoreboard of Reality
By James Quillian,Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
In 1955 the Yankees put on the better show. They hit the long ball, piled up the runs, and carried themselves like the rightful champions. Anyone watching the Series inning by inning would have said the same thing: the Yankees looked like the superior club. But the Dodgers reached four wins first, and that settled the matter. The Series belonged to Brooklyn, no matter how impressive the Yankees appeared along the way.
Democracy Only Works When It Hurts
Democracy Only Works When It Hurts
By James Quillian,Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
These ideas often sound anti‑social when spoken out loud. They aren’t. They are simply the parts of democratic life that polite society prefers to hide under the rug. But whether acknowledged or ignored, they remain the backbone of any functioning democracy
Peace Without Resolution Always Ends in War
Peace Without Resolution Always Ends in War
By James Quillian,Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
Every century teaches the same lesson, and every generation refuses to learn it. What the world calls peace is nothing more than the temporary absence of gunfire. It is not healing. It is not settlement. It is not closure. It is a pause in a conflict that continues beneath the surface. The world keeps mistaking peace for resolution, and the cost of that mistake is always the same: another war, bigger than the last. After WWI, the world declared “peace,” but there was no resolution.
The Natural Law Franklin Saw Without Naming It
The Natural Law Franklin Saw Without Naming It
By James Quillian, Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
Benjamin Franklin noticed something about human nature that modern psychology later turned into theories, experiments, and jargon. He didn’t call it a natural law — but that’s exactly what it is. Continue reading
YouTube Stock Market Indicator
YouTube Stock Market Indicator
By James Quillian,Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
Whenever YouTube is flooded with doom, crash calls, and end‑of‑the‑world thumbnails, the market soon rockets straight up. That’s not magic. It’s manufactured sentiment designed to pull in shorts and then vaporize them.
Quick War Deal or Treaty Won’t Do
Quick War Deal or Treaty Won’t Do
By James Quillian,Economist, Political Analyst, Natural Law
A quick deal or treaty only kicks the can down the road. Every Iranian and every Arab government—friend or foe—knows this. The U.S. will not support Israel through an extended ground war, and the moment Washington begins to back away, Israel’s enemies will move in. A new front will open. The source of the insurgence may be hard to identify at first, but the outcome won’t be. Israel will be overrun
Why I Write Without Facts
Do I need facts? Of course. Everyone does. But here is the problem: when we make our most critical life decisions, even if facts exist, we don’t have them. We don’t have them in time, we don’t have them in full, and we don’t have them in any form that can be trusted. That is why the only dependable guide is natural law—the things that are obvious, universal, and immune to spin.