I decided to wait until Tuesday to post my newsletter this week. I suspected that, with about 60% of my readers being American, I'd get lost in the holiday shuffle. We will return to Saturday night (U.S. time) next week.
My
ultimate business model will have a limited amount of open content with the majority of the content being 'fee for service'. Right
now, I am distributing my newsletter to everyone at no cost in order to build my
contacts list, but that is temporary. Eventually, only first level paid
subscriptions will receive my weekly newsletters and will also receive periodic 'white
papers' covering more complex issues. I will also publish e-books at an
additional (though nominal) charge. There is also a 'Founder' level. They will have access to my books at no cost and periodic open web based discussions which will make them true insiders.
Our newsletter continues to
grow at a non-trivial rate (about 17% per week). Our history is still
too short to draw any definitive conclusions about our growth, specifically as to whether it is,
in fact, exponential or linear. Last week, 38% of my views were from
subscribers, 38% were direct, 11% were from Substack, itself, 10% were
from Facebook and 2% were from Linked In. The key is the 38% with a
source of 'direct'. These, according to Substack are people who entered
MichaelWFerguson.Substack.com directly into their browser but, in truth, they are visitors whose source is not known. One very interesting statistic is that past issues are gaining readers, suggesting that 'word of mouth' is a major contributor. If this is correct, we will have around 660K readers by this time next
year. That will give us the power to meaningfully interfere with the severely biased Leftish and Rightish narratives. Of course, the growth will be sigmoidal, so there will be a point
of inflection and an asymptote, so our enthusiasm should be tempered.
I
believe strongly in the reverence for and pursuit of intellectual
sophistication. That means I strongly argue for lifelong learning and
an assiduous pursuit of objectivity. Intellectual sophistication, if
pursued aggressively throughout one's life, will result in an
objectively supportable world view. This leads to a world view that
does not conform to the world views of either the Right Silo or the Left
Silo. I will be publishing a white paper entitled 'Summa Caye' in
which I describe in detail a community that adheres to the cultural
perspectives that flow from an objectively supportable world view. Its
purpose is hypothetical, essentially describing what society will look
like when all the mistakes are fixed, but that does not make it less
valuable.
Substack as Your Main Social Media Platform
I am beginning to think that Substack, though designed to enable professional writers, represents a very credible general purpose social media platform. So, I am going to advocate that all of you who are less than enamored of Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. consider creating your own substack account. While you can charge for subscriptions, it is not necessary. By using Substack, in addition to not worrying about censorship or shadow banning, your content is yours as is your 'contacts' list. You can also operate a mostly free account that does have some premium material. It is pretty flexible.
One of the things I like most about Substack is that when I post something, I can choose to notify all my subscribers or only paid subscribers. And, unlike Locals, it works even on a free account. Since you can, at your discretion, give free subscribers the benefits of "paid subscribers", it really can be used to set up levels of distribution. Since there is a third 'founders' level, you really have even more flexibility. I would like to see Substack increase flexibility over time.
Another feature I like about Substack's system is that if you abuse the privilege that subscribers have granted to e-mail notify them, they will unsubscribe. I publish one newsletter per week that takes between 10 minutes and 15 minutes to read. If an e-mail notification one time per week is too much for some, then it is reasonable for that person to unsubscribe. Between 50% and 60% of my subscribers open their e-mail notification every week. And, so far, I have had no unsubscribers.
The podcast functionality is there, but is still rudimentary, but some of the larger Substack creators are using it, so I expect that it will improve. I want 'call in' functionality and video as well. In a way, it might function like the now defunct Google Hangouts. Also, though, for the most part Substack is all about 'fee for service', the video functionality should accommodate ad support.
So, Substack is not yet everything that we would like it to be. I would like to see more format choices, such as font type and size, color, etc. It is better than Facebook but not as good as the blog platforms, like Blogger.com or WordPress.
We, intellectually sophisticated people, can be very influential. We tend to be persuasive (Simonton Gap) and accumulate around us people who are inclined to believe, or at least give substantial weight to, what we say. It is one explanation for my Substack growing quickly and primarily through 'Direct' sources. One of my subscribers may repeat something I say. Someone asks, 'Where did you get that?' They answer from MichaelWFerguson.Substack.com and, voila, I have a new view. I suspect that is a contributor to my growth, but if my regular readers have their own substack account, that can be supercharged.
It will also make us a more efficient and a faster growing intellectually sophisticated community.
Guns & Abortion
Every time a major decision comes down from SCOTUS, my social media blows up with posts and threads that are mostly repeating the points of the Left and Right New Media. It reminds me of just how ignorant people are about the underlying principles of Enlightened nations. The Federalism underlying to U.S. Constitution seems to be particularly elusive for most people. This last week, there were two major rulings and three more that seem to have escaped the attention of the mainstream.
SCOTUS decided that New York cannot strictly limit concealed weapons. In this case, SCOTUS decided that the Constitution, specifically the 2nd amendment, does not allow States to unduly restrict the 'bear arms' portion of that 2nd Amendment Right. This is good constitutional law, but it is not very sensible. Bearing arms in a small town in Wyoming is very different than doing so in South Chicago. The former population will likely regularly bear arms as they hunt for venison and fowl. Also, bear, moose, mountain lions, etc. don't listen to reason and may need to be dissuaded. These are serious and legitimate reasons to bear firearms. While there are very strong, some would say compelling, reasons for different carry laws in different locales, SCOTUS is stating that, in order to enable the very sensible restrictions that a densely populated urban community may wish to place on bearing arms, the Constitution will need to be amended. It is beyond the authority of SCOTUS to do so.
This notion of gun restrictions is far from new. If you have watched any movies about the U.S., 19th Century 'Wild West', you are likely familiar with the practice of, when entering a saloon, leaving your sidearm at the door. With people drinking and gambling, this is just sensible. An obvious problem with applying that logic to cities is that, while law abiding citizens are likely to obey restrictions on bearing arms, criminals likely will not. In other words, when gang members in South Chicago are shooting each other, and random passers by, they are clearly bearing concealed handguns that they usually have not obtained legally and likely cannot legally own. There are difficulties with disarming the law abiding people when criminals are armed. Law abiding citizens, living in or traveling through high crime districts may carry firearms out of fear but end up shooting innocents, themselves. This is a knotty issue that local communities need to resolve. But they need to do so in a Constitutional way.
It is not clear that the framers of the Constitution would have stated the right to bear arms so unambiguously if they were faced with the realities of today. Rifling, though invented in the 15th Century, was not introduced commercially until the 19th Century. This technological advancement made guns much more lethal. Semi-automatic firearms, which obviously allows more shots in the same amount of time, enables more injuries and deaths. Those are very significantly different threats than those faced when the 2nd amendment was originally framed and ratified.
It is true that most European countries have more strict gun laws, although often not by much. It is true that there is a correlation between gun ownership and gun violence, however, the causal arrow is never really considered. In other words, do more people buy guns because there is a lot of gun violence and they want to protect themselves, or is the high gun ownership the primary driver of higher rates of gun violence. Or, as I suspect, is it a bit of both?
The real issue is whether the extremely high death rate from guns in the U.S. (nearly four times higher than any other EUNA nation) is due primarily to guns, or is it primarily that the U.S. has an extremely violent culture? If AR-15s were not allowed in the hands of young people, while mass school shootings might drop, would it simply be replaced by bombings? That certainly is implied by the 'troubles' of Northern Ireland where gun control was strict, but bombings were never really controlled.
Sadly, this distinction between murders being caused by the availability of guns and murders being caused by a violent society is not discussed. It needs to be and the discussion needs to be bifurcated. The 2nd amendment is clearly not sufficiently nuanced and needs to be revised. However, it is not at all clear that violence will decrease to anything similar to Western Europe. I have often suspected that the reason the Left focuses on gun control is because if they admitted that the problem is primarily cultural, they have no idea how to solve it.
While there is a cultural discussion that needs to take place in the aftermath of the SCOTUS gun control decision, that is not the case with the Dobbs v Jackson decision. Though it is being framed as a moral issue, this is strictly a Constitutional issue over Federalism. In other words, is abortion properly regulated at the Federal level or the State level? From the beginning, on the surface, there is something strange with the notion that terminating the life of an adult is restricted by State statute, but terminating the life of a fetus is restricted by Constitutional issues. This was accomplished in Roe v Wade by attempting to cobble together a Constitutional right to privacy that, oddly, didn't seem to apply to anything other than abortion. Roe v Wade was bad law and even if Dobbs v Jackson wasn't the proper resolution, at least, the 'established law' is gone. We can speak of a more enlightened legal position from here.
Nearly everyone is talking as if Dobbs v Jackson outlaws abortion, which, of course, it doesn't. When called on that, some of the more partisan commentators will claim that the GOP, if they take over Congress, will pass a national ban on abortion. There are several things wrong with this appeal to fear. First, even if the Republicans take both the House and the Senate in November of 2022, they don't have sufficient support among their own caucus to pass an absolute ban on abortion. This should be clear from the recent Florida law, which was passed by Republicans that allows abortion on demand to 15 weeks. So, it is reasonable to assume that if a bill was put forth that set an absolute, national ban on abortion, many Republicans would vote against it. The Senate won't have a fillibuster proof Republican majority, so, even if it did pass the House, it wouldn't pass the Senate. Even if that happened, there is still a Democrat President who would veto it. The same is true for the other scare tactics such as claiming that birth control pills would be banned as well.
In truth, State legislatures will pass their individual laws. We already know that South Dakota, Texas, Louisiana and likely a few more will ban abortions completely. On the other hand, nearly all of the West Coast and some of the Northeast will have laws that will allow on-demand abortions right up to birth. There is even talk of post birth abortions, which, in addition to making no sense as a term (that isn't an abortion), would not pass Constitutional muster.
On the other hand, Democrats are talking about passing a national abortion rights law. Dobbs doesn't preclude that, but if it happened, like a GOP national abortion ban, would likely not be judged as constitutional by this court.
The SCOTUS Dobbs v Jackson majority opinion found no Constitutional right to an abortion. That is reasonable. Essentially, none of the founders were in favor of legal abortions, so if there was a right in the Constitution, it was put there inadvertently. The Washington Post stated that through the 18th and 19th Century, there were no laws making abortion illegal. That is true, but disingenuous. It wasn't necessary. The Hippocratic Oath specifically forbids a Physician from performing one. SCOTUS also did not find a limitation at viability. In this, I believe they were wrong.
Imagine a woman, 24 weeks pregnant, is diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. The doctors need to begin treatment immediately, but it will cause a miscarriage. Because her Physicians assess the fetus to be viable, the decision is made to take the fetus out and place it in a neonatal ICU where it does survive. Now suppose a woman comes to a Physician, 24 weeks pregnant, and asks for an abortion. The Physician judges that the fetus is viable. Now the question becomes, 'Does the first fetus enjoy Constitutional protection but the second does not?' If so, that would appear to violate the equal protection clause of Amendment 14 of the U.S. Constitution. So, either the first fetus/baby will not enjoy constitutional protections until it reaches 40 weeks from conception or the second fetus/baby will enjoy them.
Also, if a fetus is viable, performing an abortion would appear to violate medical ethics, as the Hypocrataic Oath states, 'Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.' It also implies that under no circumstances will the Physician do harm. This phrase, though not actually in the Oath, is well known, 'First, do no harm'. While Physicians are not, strictly speaking, bound by the Hypocratic Oath, they are fully bound by a responsibility to practice medicine in an ethical way. One could interpret this to mean that a Physician is required to remove a viable fetus in such a way as to maximize its probability of surviving, irrespective of a mother's wishes.
It should be pointed out that, as leaders in Europe roundly condemn the Dobbs decision, its net result will likely be to make the U.S. more similar to Europe with regard to abortion. Europe has a few countries, like Poland and Malta that have very restrictive abortion laws similar to some states in the U.S. Most, however, have laws that allow on-demand abortion up to between 10 weeks and 14 weeks. A couple, Sweden and U.K. allow later abortion with U.K. setting the limit at 24 weeks or approximately viability. There are only four countries worldwide where abortions have no gestational limits. They are China, North Korea, Vietnam and (in some states) the U.S. In other words, only the most brutal governments condone late term abortion. So, that is not company that one should wish to keep.
The Administrative State
SCOTUS, last week, severely limited the power of the EPA and, perhaps by extension, all regulatory agencies. Essentially, they decided that the EPA's regulatory authority was limited to specific powers expressly delegated to them by Congress. The hue and din that followed was primarily limited to members of the administrative state and their allies. They understand that this is a threat to their unrestrained power over the populace.
Simply put, EUNA has been infected with an unelected, administrative state that has been empowered to create and enforce volumes of government regulations. They are, in no way, subject to recall nor can they be taken to task by the population that they are regulating. Thee is absolutely nothing democratic about them. Some
people call it 'the deep state' and are routinely ridiculed. President Trump
called it 'the swamp'. Again, the term is probably more of a public relations ploy, that, though clever is a detriment to the cause. Steven K. Bannon, pushes back on these two
terms and refers to it as 'the administrative state'. I, and most careful observers, agree. The term is
less partisan and more accurate. While not well illuminated by the press, the administrative state is one of the greatest threats to Western
civilization and spectacularly illiberal.
History gives us a precautionary tale. Rome
fell and more than 1,500 years later the why of it is still be argued.
It was, as is the case with nearly all great empires, a complex issue.
As I repeat again and again, everything is multivariate. However,
according to many, one of the major reasons was that it simply collapsed under the weight of its own bureaucracy. The lesson is very relevant today. Neither the Left Silo nor the Right Silo talks about it, so, of course, I will.
There are two problems with the administrative state. The first is the
obvious problem that these people are hired with unlimited terms of employment, and are not elected. They are not subject to recall and absent egregious misconduct cannot be removed.
The problem started when Congress began delegating the specifics of legislation to the appropriate Executive Agency. In other words, Congress may pass a law on automotive emissions but authorize the EPA to promulgate the regulations necessary to implement the law. They are allowed to do so, partially because the Congress had insufficient staff and, likely, no expert qualified to do itt was the wrong solution.
Today, the Executive Branch has about two million civilian employees and an unknown number of people operating on its behalf on a contract basis or through a corporate contractor. They both formulate and enforce regulations. There are many proper duties for the agencies of the Executive Branch, however, they should be executive and formulating regulations is a legislative power. They should not be making laws. Rather than allowing the current Congressional practice of writing laws and delegating the details to departments in the Executive branch, the personnel should be transferred to the proper committee and committee members where the specifics of the law will be fleshed out.
We really have no idea what percent of the two million executive branch bureaucrats are engaged in setting policies and regulations and how many are legitimately executing and enforcing those policies and regulations. If we assume that 25% are doing the former, that is 500K bureaucrats. That is likely an underestimation, but for the sake of conservatism, we will use it. These bureaucrats should be transferred to the 44 committees of the Senate and House. There, instead of having lifelong career security, many and perhaps most, will have a job at the pleasure of a Representative or Senator and should the member of Congress be defeated or retire, they will be terminated.
While some of the transferred bureaucrats would work for the majority and minority members of the committee and would be administered by the chairman and ranking member of the committee. However, most would report to a specific committee member and would provide the expertise and time required to create and further complete the bills. Therefore, the law, if passed, would not need the Executive to promulgate more detailed rules.
For example, a given House member who sits on three committees may have 750 additional staff members, compared to the current staffing of about 21. Committee staffers might increase from the current level of 6,000 to 100,000. This quite likely would be more than enough and, in fact, totally staffing might be reduced, perhaps substantially.
One of the critical control tricks currently being exercised by the Federal government is the elaboration of laws administratively where political processes don't apply. In other words, Congress can pass a vague law that will garner sufficient support and then, when fleshed out by the Executive Branch, turns into something that could never get past a Conference Committee. In other words, this simple proposed reorganization that brings the issuance of regulations under the legislative branch would almost certainly result in much less intrusive laws.
Because laws would be much less intrusive, there would be fewer bureaucrats needed to enforce the laws, likely shrinking the assumed legion of 1.5 million bureaucrats assigned to enforcement.
My argument would be that in EUNA, the sense many people have that their lives are being run out of D.C. would slowly dissipate.
Additionally, the President should use Executive Orders in the manner for which they are intended. They should provide for the efficient operation of the Executive Branch. They should not be used to promulgate policies that would not pass muster in Congress. Essentially, all recent Presidents have violated this principle; they have been legislating from the Executive Branch, both through the Administrative State and themselves. This is a gross violation of separation of powers.
The rules throughout Europe, India, Brazil, Japan and South Korea differ, but nearly all of them are suffering the same growth in Administrative States. In an objective sense, this means that most of the liberal democracies are becoming less democratic and less liberal. This is happening, in essence, because people are being told, 'Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain'. It is well past the time that we should.
Please Register and Share
The growth in readers is very gratifying. However, we are still small and we need to grow. If you support intellectual sophistication, just a simple share can change the dynamic in a way that will improve our future. If either the Left or Right tries to sell partisan misinformation and the 660,000 readers, which is what we will have if we keep growing at 17% per week, receive a convincing and well supported refutation, both the Right and the Left will have their narratives disrupted. That can vastly improve the public discourse and by extension improve the state of EUNA. And all it takes is your regular sharing of the newsletters that you receive.
