Laying Down the Law
The founders of the US government were well acquainted with the ‘mistakes’ made by Roman emperors. By coincidence, Gibbon’s great opus recounting them first appeared in 1776.
Monday, October 20th, 2025
Bill Bonner, from Baltimore, Maryland
Fox:
Farmageddon: Trump’s trade war and shutdown are crushing the heartland
Across the Midwest, combines sit idle and bins overflow with unsold grain. Corn prices are down nearly 50% since 2022. Soybeans have dropped 40%. Fertilizer and equipment costs are up double digits. And 8 in 10 farmers now say they believe the U.S. is on the brink of another farm crisis reminiscent of the 1980s. They’ve even given it a name: Farmageddon.
This time, the crisis isn’t a result of macroeconomic conditions – it’s a direct result of decisions made by the White House. President Donald Trump’s reckless tariff war is crushing America’s farmers.
Today, we return to last week’s subject. Some public policies — wars of choice, trade wars, communism, debt, inflation, policy creep and paper money — are so obviously harmful,why do we have them? And what can we expect from them in the future?
G.K. Chesterton reminds us that things you don’t understand are usually there for a reason. Why do people go to war? Maybe they spur ‘development’ of new technologies. Maybe they are ways for people with bad ideas — world conquest! — to extinguish themselves. At least one historian, whose name we don’t recall, claims they are one of the few ways to ‘shake things up’…and dislodge a parasitic elite. Without war, elites use their control of government to get a larger and larger share of national output. The rich get richer, in other words, until something stops them.
But we leave that sort of speculation to others. Our guess is that wars are simply — like slavery — relics of an earlier age. Before the advent of civilized commerce — when you could produce more than you needed for your own consumption, and trade the surplus for others’ goods and services — war made sense. It was progress. You could kill or enslave competitors…and take their land, their women and children. Thus, would you get ‘ahead of the game.’
In modern times, you can’t do that. Today, wars of choice (those you don’t have to fight to protect yourself) are a ‘mistake.’ Because wealth comes from peaceful cooperation, not the use of force. Yes, today, you could still conquer territory. But territory does you no good. Russia has a vast territory while Monaco, Switzerland and Singapore are small. Which is richer? Which people live better? And imagine trying to run Nvidia or even Starbucks with slave labor!
Using force for anything but defense is a waste of money. It’s voluntary work, innovation, production and trade that make people better off. And with their wealth they are able to buy the latest military hardware to protect themselves.
The founders of the US government were well acquainted with the ‘mistakes’ made by Roman emperors. By coincidence, Gibbon’s great opus recounting them first appeared in 1776 — the year the US announced its independence.
Adams, Jefferson, Madison, et. al. tried to prevent the nation from repeating those classic errors by laying down the law. America was meant to be a republic, not a democracy. And they put forth strict guidelines and limits on what its government could do.
Even a casual reading of the Constitution and the Amendments suggest that the feds today are way out of line. POTUS has no authority to unleash the dogs of war…to punish farmers…to kill people on his own say-so…to impose tariff taxes…to tell universities how they could conduct themselves…or to tell the states and cities how they should handle crime…and so forth. Even the use of paper money appears to be out-of-bounds.
Most remarkable, POTUS does these things with the support of Congress. Only one member consistently votes ‘no’ to this executive over-reach. The latest news on Rep. Tom Massie from The Hill:
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has made good on his promise to ensure President Trump’s threats to unseat him will “backfire” as his campaign fundraising numbers reach personal record heights.
Massie has touted more than $2 million in cash on hand for his reelection bid after managing to pull in nearly $768,000 in contributions from July to September, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. That three-month sum is reportedly a record for Massie’s political career.
Trump:
“Thomas Massie, the worst Republican Congressman, and an almost guaranteed NO VOTE each and every time, is an Embarrassment to Kentucky,” Trump wrote in one post on Truth Social in July. “He’s lazy, slow moving, and totally disingenuous — A real loser!”
Fox continues:
Massie voted against the administration’s summer spending bill that wiped out Medicaid funds for states and has pushed for the Justice Department to release files tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Amid an uptick in politically motivated shootings, Massie urged Trump to cool down his rhetoric surrounding party divisions in the wake of the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Most recently, Massie voted no to the Republican-led stopgap measure to end the government shutdown.
Massie’s ‘no’ is a yes for the Constitution and limited government. But what we’re trying to figure out is why so many people give up on the principles of the Republic. War may be a special case; it may be in our DNA. But rent control? Debt? Inflation? Why are so many people so ready to rehearse the mistakes of the past?
Tune in tomorrow…
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Hi Bill, as usual, well written and compelling but with all this talk of war you forgot to mention that Trump has ended more wars than Obama and Biden wasted our money on.
Nicely said. I would add one reason for war: Leaders who are in peril may start a war to diffuse their impending political demise.