There already is a free market - and those who currently dominate human civilization used that freedom to accrue for themselves unwarranted power and influence at the cost of the majority.

We must understand that while the "state" is a human construct, it is backed up by very real physical force, economic monopolies, financial domination, and industrial might. The only way to secure our own place within the existing free market, is to diminish these advantages through establishing an incremental balance of power between blocs, states, within states, and eventually between individuals.

Do this by creating alternatives to the current monopolies of money and industry, redistributing the current concentration of power, wealth, and influence through localized entrepreneurship.

The cost in the free market for organized individuals to impose their will upon others is not only minimal, it is profitable. Remove the profit and increase the cost, and this involuntary imposition of will becomes nearly impossible.

If you don’t pay them more, then you as the business owner or middle manager have broken the employment contract. (Remember the part about performance and raise and bonus?) Many middle managers and business owners get amnesia when raise and bonus time comes. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

The beauty of daylighting is it goes back to a meritocracy in its purest form. I serve clients, I smash deadlines, and other people, either customers, or other clients, pay me money. There is no office politics. There are no broken employment contracts. For my side business, every hour I side hustle at my day job translates directly into more money. And the amount of money my side hustle gains me is more than any paltry raise or bonus you middle managers will ever produce.

Daylighting is the natural byproduct of middle managers abandoning the meritocracy due to laziness or greed. I bet middle managers are out there right now saying, “Why should I give a programmer a 20% raise? It’s too much money! No matter how much they pump out.” But these same middle managers never do a dollarization measure of what the extra output gains their company.

The state has impoverished its subjects through its ruinous burdens and meddling, and it has used democratic demagoguery to shift the blame and pit its victims against each other. It has divided America up into rival ravenous tribes, and the crowds we see facing off in the streets of Berkeley are the vanguards of those hungry hordes.

I did not have an initial number at the start of the quarter other than “I’ll take the under, way under” in response to initial estimates from GDPNow.

I expect I will be saying the same thing again.

The only things holding up the economy are housing and aircraft orders. I believe the latter has skewed many of the soft data regional Fed reports.

Hard data is starting to look ugly. Autos have rolled over, bank lending has rolled over, retail sales have been weak, and credit card defaults are up sharply.