The Democratic Party debate in Las Vegas was not for me.

I don’t mean that I didn’t enjoy the debate. I did. It was surprisingly entertaining as far as such things go, even if our esteemed Editor-in-Chief received far too little time and attention (#LetRalstonAskAnotherQuestion!). What I mean is that, as someone that does not participate in Democratic Party caucuses, the debate was literally not for me specifically. I was not the target audience. I was not the person the candidates were speaking to, nor were the moderators asking the candidates questions on my behalf.

That’s fine. Mine was last weekend in California.

I think it’s important to point that out because, after debates like the one last Wednesday, there’s always a certain kind of reliably published punditry from the out-group that whines about how, gee whiz, they don’t like their in-group’s favorite candidate(s), but, gosh darn it, the out-group’s candidate(s) just don’t speak to them so they’re going to have to support the in-group’s candidate(s) after all. These days, it’s usually Never Trumpers or Trump skeptics opining about the Democratic Party’s debates, but, if the tables turn, I have no doubt there will be no shortage of Democrats writing op-eds about how, man, they can’t stand President Sanders but how can anyone even support Gary Herbert or Brian Sandoval? 

I do not wish to add to that pile.

Instead, I watched the Democratic Party debate with the knowledge that it, like all such debates, was an exercise in mood affiliation. In other words, it was an exercise in watching each candidate communicate that they would help the right people for some definition of “right people” and that their policies would not only be the most helpful to those people, they would also be the most likely to be implemented. Watched this way, the interesting part isn’t what policy prescriptions are being proposed by each candidate - both Warren’s and Sanders’ wealth taxes, for example, would struggle to get through a majority Democratic Senate, much less the majority Republican one we are likely to have after 2020, for the simple reason that senators rarely raise taxes on themselves. Much more interesting is watching who each candidate identifies as the “right people” and who each candidate identifies as the people hurting the “right people.” 

One thing I learned from the debate is that Democrats and I both agree that Michael Bloomberg is not included in either of our definitions of the “right people.” He’s an authortarian, bigoted misogynist (or a misogynistic bigot, perhaps - you pick) that set the cause of civil rights in New York City back by several decades. He ran surveillance operations against Muslim Americans, proudly taxed the poor because he thinks they don't spend their money as well as he can, and justified Stop and Frisk in 2015 using language that would be too on the nose for one of Ron Paul’s old racist newsletters from the 1990s. 

Should Michael Bloomberg exist? Absolutely, unequivocally not. Not as a Democrat, not as a Republican, not as a carbon-based lifeform.

On the other hand, should someone as rich as Michael Bloomberg exist? That’s actually a very good question, and I’m glad Democrats were asked that question in the debate. 

The short answer is there’s nothing wrong with someone such as Michael Bloomberg existing if he earned his wealth through merit. The longer answer is that this has always been a very big if. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s oft-misunderstood and frustratingly didactic novel, spent quite a bit of time highlighting the difference between Dagny Taggart justly profiting from competently running the family railroad and her brother James’ immoral profiting from political pull. It was published in 1957. Much more recently, the Foundation for Economic Education, a conservative-leaning libertarian think tank (or a libertarian-leaning conservative think tank, depending on your point of view), correctly observed that, though President Trump’s cabinet might be full of people who claim to be fans of Ayn Rand’s work, they’d be the villains in her novels, not the heroes.

Point being, you don’t have to be a socialist, nor even liberal, to recognize that something has been fundamentally wrong with our system for a while now.

The United States has, like the Soviet Union had, a set of theories and stories that justifies the operation of our political and market economies. When theory doesn’t describe reality, when theory doesn’t deliver upon its promises in the here and now, discontent builds. If enough discontent builds, a different system with different theories justifying its function will ultimately replace it. This, of course, already happened to the Soviet Union when it was demonstrated over the course of nearly a century that the theories of Marxism-Leninism didn’t and couldn’t bring prosperity and equality. Instead, they brought poverty and repression.

One of the theories the United States has historically attempted to operate upon, at least on paper, is the idea that profit and individual wealth are a function of merit. This doesn’t necessarily correspond to hard work; most wealth produced this way has actually been produced by making hard work less hard, or easier to do at larger scales, through automation and incremental improvements to efficiency. This method of wealth creation, in fact, makes life easier for the rest of us, which makes each of us wealthier in turn. Instead of spending our days feeding chickens and churning butter, we can instead spend our days luxuriating in professionally constructed, climate controlled habitations reading op-eds on the internet.

That has not, however, ever been the only way to personally profit in the United States, nor frankly even the most effective. Just ask Sheldon Adelson, the Oakland Raiders, or Elon Musk.

The truth in the United States, much like the truth in the Soviet Union, has always been far more complicated than we like to admit to ourselves. Slavery, for example, only made slaveowners more prosperous; as Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South points out, the state and local governments that protected slavery did so by intentionally keeping all non-slaveowners, regardless of race, illiterate, impoverished, and completely dependent upon the slaveowning class. Lest anyone think things were better north of the Mason-Dixon Line, the Dutch introduced feudalism (actual honest-to-goodness “there’s a feudal lord and peasants” feudalism, not “I’m using the worst argument in the world to describe the gig economy” feudalism) into New York’s Hudson River Valley in the 17th century. A successful peasant revolt overthrew it in 1839.

As for the land you’re reading this op-ed on, it probably wasn’t uninhabited nor untouched by human hands before European colonization worked its way to wherever you’re reading this from today. The Stewart Indian School stands as a monument to a time when Native Americans in Nevada could count on their children being forcibly abducted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for reeducation. More recently, the Dann Sisters spent decades bringing attention to our government's unwillingness to negotiate with Nevada's original inhabitants as equals.

Even the legend of Johnny Appleseed, who supposedly introduced apples into the Ohio River Valley, may have actually been about a guy finding apple trees planted by Native Americans and picking their apples himself.

This truth, however, is not necessarily fatal. Both Lenin and Stalin were inexcusably brutal tyrants, yet the Soviet system carried on for decades after Stalin’s death. This was possible in no small part because Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced Stalin and promised to make Soviet reality more closely resemble the theories and stories Soviet leadership told its people to justify their reign. Deng Xiaoping adopted a similar strategy after Mao’s death to maintain Communist Party rule in China, which still continues today.

People are actually remarkably tolerant of hypocrisy from those who claim they govern us — provided things get better with time. 

Trouble is, despite official numbers claiming we’re more prosperous and less unemployed than ever, things haven’t felt like they’ve been improving for a while for a lot of Americans. There’s a reason for that. As Oren Cass, American Compass’ Executive Director and former Senior Fellow for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research points out, the official numbers only tell us that it would be easier to buy a minivan today than it was during the Reagan administration. Housing, medical care, and education - major expenses for any family - are all far more expensive than they used to be and those costs aren’t reflected in official wage and inflation numbers. There might have been a time when a single worker could cover his or her family’s health care premium, buy a three bedroom house, and pay for college for two children. If so, we are undeniably moving farther from that day.

Oren Cass is not the first to point this out. Kevin Carson, Senior Fellow for the Center for a Stateless Society, made a similar observation in 2016. As he points out, yes, the little stuff is getting cheaper. Electronics are certainly far cheaper and far more varied than they used to be. The fundamental building blocks of middle class life, however, are getting increasingly expensive and out of reach for most Americans and this is by design. Our government imposes barriers to entry against the creation of more affordable homes and medicines and uses state-issued and state-protected debt to inflate the costs of college tuitions, all to make the rich that control access to each of these fundamental portions of the American life ever richer and the rest of us ever poorer. 

In the 1960s, the Soviet system could claim that it was trying to make the lives of its people better than they were. Compared to where the Soviet people were under the Tsar, Lenin and Stalin, that wasn’t a high bar to clear. By the 1980s, however, Chernobyl, life under a relentless surveillance state, the naked excesses of the nomenklatura, and falling living standards all demonstrated that the hypocrisy and brutality at the foundation of the Soviet Union was too great for the theories of Marxism to hide. Soviet leadership had long since given up on trying to provide a better life for the Soviet people, either out of malice or incompetence. Whatever the reason, it ultimately made no difference and they were replaced.

Similarly, the theories of capitalism promise freedom and prosperity for all, albeit some more than others. Despite the hypocrisy and brutality of European feudalism, colonialism and chattel slavery that led to modern capitalism, it’s largely delivered, in no small part because capitalists have chosen to embrace freedom, free trade and free markets just often enough to make most everyone’s lives better more often than not. Those days, however, are getting fewer and fewer while the rich keep getting richer and richer with explicit help from our government. 

Personally, I don’t think Elizabeth Warren’s approach of managerial bureaucratization of our existing system will solve our problems. Bureaucracies are seldom legible enough to be governed by the people during the best of times. During the worst of times, the Iron Law of Bureaucracy always reigns supreme — sooner or later, bureaucracies exist to sustain the bureaucracies, not to serve the missions or people they were designed and built to serve. I also don’t think that socialism is the answer, though I admire Bernie Sanders for being honest and earnest with his positions instead of focus grouping or obfuscating them into incoherence. 

Instead, I think the solution is to disempower the very governments that cut checks for stadiums, grant special privileges for companies like Tesla, and provide novel new “property rights” for pharmaceutical, medical and entertainment companies. If we want political connections to be less profitable, we need fewer political connections. The so-called “People’s Republics” of the 20th century demonstrate that Mikhail Bakunin was absolutely correct — no matter what anyone’s stated intentions might be, the power of governments is inherently exploitative. You can’t whip a slave into freedom.

However, if we can’t get with that program and if the lives of the average American don’t noticeably improve soon, Americans will start choosing different systems to make their lives better. 

I just hope one of them works.

David Colborne has been active in the Libertarian Party for two decades. During that time, he has blogged intermittently on his personal blog, as well as the Libertarian Party of Nevada blog, and ran for office twice as a Libertarian candidate. He serves on the Executive Committee for both his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is the father of two sons and an IT professional. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidColborne or email him at [email protected].