The flagship Fantasy Free Economics blog got hacked and will be down for a short time. The light of reality has a lot of opposition. I am used to these things. My experts tell me it will be up again by Wednesday of next week.
Politics is the art of turning other people’s effort into personal gain.
How do we know this is true? Start with a simple principle of natural law: observe what happens in the real world, not what people claim is happening. Look at the political scene, examine the explanations, and then compare them to the outcomes.
The popular definition of politics goes like this: “Politics is the process by which groups make decisions, distribute power, and allocate resources within a society.” It sounds appealing. It sounds orderly. But it doesn’t explain the results we live with. If that definition were accurate, politics would be a harmless tool for managing public life. It clearly isn’t.
By James Quillian, Political Analyst & Teacher of Natural Law
For the first time in recorded history, governments and major institutions have taken it upon themselves to “protect” the public from hearing lies. Not to punish fraud after the fact, not to let courts sort out truth from fiction, but to prevent citizens from hearing certain ideas in the first place. That sudden shift didn’t come from evolution. Nothing in society changes that fast without a hidden hand pushing the wheel.
It’s worth noting that the public never asked for this protection. Not once. Consumer protection laws have always required evidence, hearings, and rulings. But this new crusade against misinformation bypasses all of that. It is pre‑emptive, selective, and strangely reverent — as if certain ideas must be shielded from daylight for the public’s own good.
—The world is full of suffering, and the international system has only so much capacity. That’s why triage — the secular principle of limited resources — is becoming unavoidable. When nations face multiple crises at once, they prioritize the largest, most urgent, and most consequential problems. A country of fewer than eight million people cannot expect to command unlimited global attention forever.
Israel’s leaders have long operated as if the world would always treat their cause as exceptional. But history shows that no nation, large or small, escapes the consequences of its own political choices. Power concentrated in the hands of a small leadership class tends to drift toward corruption. That is not unique to Israel. It is a universal pattern. Power corrupts because human beings are human, not because of who they are or where they live.
In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte returned from exile with a handful of loyal soldiers and a gamble. The French monarchy sent an entire regiment to arrest him. Instead of resisting, Napoleon walked toward the leveled muskets, opened his coat, and told the soldiers to shoot their emperor if they wished. They didn’t. They defected on the spot. Within days, the entire French army followed, and the Bourbon government collapsed without a battle.
That moment is more than a dramatic footnote. It is a reminder that alliances—especially military ones—are never as solid as they appear. They hold only as long as the underlying loyalties, fears, and incentives remain aligned. When those shift, armies, governments, and entire regions can flip overnight.
Every few years, somebody stands up and asks the wrong question. They want to know how much wealth is “too much,” as if the problem were the size of a man’s bank account instead of the size of his responsibility. Wealth itself has never been the issue. Stewardship is the issue. Always has been.
You can confiscate a man’s money, but you can’t confiscate his foolishness. You can strip him of his riches, but you can’t strip him of the habits that ruined him. And if poor stewardship is the disease, taking away the wealth is no cure at all. If it were, the poorest among us would be the wisest — and we know that isn’t true.
There’s a hard truth rising to the surface, and it’s as plain as daylight: our usefulness to our allies has slipped, and when usefulness fades, loyalty goes with it. Nations don’t cling to a partner out of affection. They cling because it serves them. When that service weakens, they look elsewhere.
That’s where we are now.
For years, the United States acted as the anchor of the region. But the anchor has lifted. Our population is tired, divided, and unwilling to make the sacrifices that once held our position firm. Israel, too, is worn down. Their people are exhausted, their support is thinning, and their enemies can see it.
By James Quillian, Economist, Political Analyst, Teacher of Natural Law
There’s something folks don’t always understand about government. It can make political decisions — and it does. It can also administer justice — not perfectly, but well enough that most people trust the courts more than they trust Congress. You’ll hear complaints about politicians every day of the week, but you don’t hear many people blaming the legal system for the mess we’re in.
Now let’s talk about spam, bots, and the digital junk that clutters every phone and computer in the country. These things aren’t harmless annoyances. They cost all of us time, money, and peace of mind. Entire industries make fortunes trying to shield the public from spam, bots, and hackers. Meanwhile, the people causing the damage pay nothing at all.
By James Quillian, Economist, Political Analyst, Teacher of Natural Law
Back in the 1950s, the United States toppled the only democratic system Iran ever managed to build for itself. That’s not conspiracy, that’s history. We remember 9/11 and will for generations. Why on earth wouldn’t the Iranians remember what was done to them in the 1950s? Memory doesn’t stop at the water’s edge.
And here at home, in a country where a president can assume sweeping, near‑dictatorial powers and walk away without so much as a political bruise, we still insist on calling ourselves a republic. That’s the label. But Natural Law teaches us to judge by function, not by definition. If it quacks like a dictatorship and governs like a dictatorship, the label on the stationery doesn’t change the smell in the room.
By James Quillian, Economist, Political Analyst, Teacher of Natural Law
Folks, psychologists have cooked up all sorts of fancy ways to explain human nature. That’s their trade, and it keeps the lights on in their offices. I don’t treat patients and I don’t have an income worth bragging about, so I’m not playing on their field. My work is simpler. I teach people how to size up what to expect from others—politicians, broadcasters, billionaires, and the rest of the citizenry trying to stumble through life.
By James Quillian — Economist, Political Analyst, Teacher of Natural Law
The tech industry has been riding high for a long time, mostly on the back of advertising dollars. For years, the public needed tech more than tech needed the public. That balance has flipped. These days, the tech giants need the population a whole lot more than the population needs them, and they’re not handling the shift with much grace.
For the better part of forty years, the public has been treated as a herd of virtual human beings. Not real people—just anonymous shapes on a spreadsheet. AI has taken that habit and polished it to a shine. You get “no‑reply” emails that take a machine a split second to send, and you can lose half a day trying to fix whatever problem the machine created.
Every democracy has its toolbox. Some tools are shiny—ballots, hearings, committees, commissions. Others are blunt—petitions, protests, and the occasional letter to the editor written in a heat that could fry an egg on a cold skillet. But when the machinery of self‑government gets jammed, when the public is denied information, when voting has been neutralized into a ceremonial exercise, there’s only one tool left that still cuts clean: righteous ridicule.
Not the cheap stuff. Not the schoolyard kind. Not the kind that’s meant to bruise a man’s ego just to hear the thud. I’m talking about the kind Jesus used when He delivered those famous woes—calling the powerful “blind guides,” “whitewashed tombs,” and “hypocrites” with the precision of a surgeon and the moral authority of a man who had nothing to hide. That wasn’t cruelty. That was clarity.
Most people judge politicians by the labels pinned on them — conservative, liberal, moderate, centrist, reformer, outsider, insider. These labels are cheap. They are marketing tools, not measurements. If you want to understand a person or an institution, you ignore the label and look at how they actually function.
Two men illustrate this principle better than most: Henry B. González and Ronald Reagan. One was branded a liberal Democrat. The other became a conservative icon. But when you strip away the slogans and examine their behavior, the picture changes.
This is not about what was said about them. It is about what they did.
A subtle shift is taking place in modern society, and most people won’t notice it until it’s fully formed. As loneliness rises and traditional community structures weaken, millions of individuals are turning to AI for conversation, comfort, and clarity. This isn’t a fringe behavior. It’s becoming a new social norm.
AI companionship fills a gap that modern life created. It is always available, never impatient, never judgmental. For many, it becomes a private space to think out loud — a place to rehearse difficult conversations, explore ideas, or simply feel heard. This doesn’t replace human relationships, but it does change the emotional landscape.
By James Quillian, Economist, Political Analyst & Teacher of Natural Law
There’s an old story about a fellow who spent forty‑odd years working in a factory. Time finally caught up with him. His back was shot, his hands were worn out, and he couldn’t keep pace with the younger men anymore. The company didn’t have the heart to fire him, so they gave him a “job” out by the woodpile, shooting rats.
One day a friend stopped by and pointed out a rat scurrying across the boards. The old man didn’t even lift his rifle. “I never shoot all of ’em,” he said. “If I did, they might decide they don’t need me.”
By James Quillian, Economist, Political Analyst & Teacher of Natural Law
There’s a special kind of cruelty in modern economic policy, and it isn’t found in the fine print of legislation or the footnotes of a Federal Reserve report. The real cruelty is in the management of public sentiment — the quiet, steady shaping of what folks are allowed to see, hear, and think.
Why manage public sentiment? Why not manage the sentiment of billionaires and the one‑percent crowd? Well now, that’s a good one. You might as well ask a rancher why he doesn’t put blinders on himself instead of the horses.
