Nobody's watching the store

It’s not just the election of Mamdani & Co. If we are to believe Axios, socialism is the “new big thing” for both our political parties. Under the title “Why both left and right have rejected free markets,” they wrote the following in their telegraphic parlance:

“Why it matters: The result is one of the biggest shifts in U.S. economic policy since the Reagan revolution, overturning decades of orthodoxy on trade, manufacturing, housing, health care and corporate power.

AMERICAN REFUGEES: THE ROGER SIMON/SHERYL LONGIN SUBSTACK is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The shared skepticism of the old economic consensus masks vastly different visions for what comes next.

It’s evident in everything from the Trump administration taking government stakes in dozens of private companies to socialist candidates winning Democratic primaries promising a more active government role in the economy.”

They go on to say that the GOP has deserted Milton Friedman for Alexander Hamilton-style interventionism.

Maybe. But meanwhile, a young man named Nick Shirley has become a national hero, doing pretty much the opposite, going about the country, unmasking fraud in these same government interventionist programs on a scale that could only be called massive.

This, from poster @jayplemons, appeared on X July 10, just one day before Axios trumpeted something resembling uniparty socialism.

“Nick Shirley uncovers an adult care in Flushing, Queens with 7,000 phantom members.

“Nick: ‘This public document says you have 7,899 members.’

“Employee: ‘No, we don’t have 7,000 members.’

“Nick: ‘So you’re overbilling then? You’re getting $1,600 per patient—that’s how you got $12.9 million in 2024.”

“Employee: ‘Please leave.’

Amplifying @jayplemons, Shirley himself wrote (same day) of some $44 million being siphoned off from American taxpayers by the Korean Mafia.

The young man’s confrontations with fraudsters have been going on for some time now. It almost seems as if half the Somalis (legal and illegal) are driving around in Mercedes Benzes on a whole lot of our dimes. Most of that is in Minnesota, where, thanks to Shirley opening the door, prosecutors have estimated the fraud in government programs, non-existent child care facilities, health care, and so forth, at more than $9 billion. Shirley has estimated the number in California to be more like $24 billion, which, not surprisingly, got Gavin Newsom’s nose out of joint.

How could this all be?

Unfortunately, the answer is too obvious: No one’s responsible, or really wants to be. No one is watching the store.

Well, supposedly elected officials and their minions, but are they really? For the most part, they are only held to the flame at election time, when they often have the most reason to placate the very communities where the fraud is rampant. They want their votes. In some cases, when it gets too extreme (e.g., Tim Walz), the politician pays the price. But for the most part, their malfeasance is ignored or forgotten by the time the next election rolls around.

In tawdry old capitalism, the entrepreneur and/or owner is usually directly responsible, not only to themselves but to their investors. They have skin in the game. Yes, there’s fraud, but arguably less of it. The risk is greater. If you get caught, you pay. And lots of people, including your customers, are watching.

The more socialistic, the more controlled from above, the economy, the greater the potential for corruption. It’s time to amend and extend Lady Thatcher’s famous aphorism, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,” to encompass the added possibility, likely the inevitability, that it creates fertile ground for even more stratospheric fraud than it has in our country (e. g. what happened in Venezuela).

This is similar to the problem many associate with public service unions, where there really isn’t anyone other than politicians negotiating with them. Citizens have little voice. We see this writ large in our quasi-socialistic public education system, where the various teachers’ unions’ negotiations have resulted in our country spending among the most per student globally, with some of the worst results.

Socialism, in most respects, is an inefficient system. The Chinese, of all people, understood this and largely abandoned socialism in practice during Deng Xiaoping's ascendancy (1980s). Deng engineered the evolution of that giant country from brutal communist penury to state-managed capitalism (oligarchy). Maintaining socialism as propagandistic rhetoric, China has been successful in lifting millions out of poverty through market economics, even creating billionaires, in a system that remains totalitarian.

And forget about Democratic Socialism. There’s no such thing, even though most left-wing despots began by asserting their democratic roots. Mao himself claimed to be democratic in his early writings. After that came the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, with its estimates of over 50 million dying. Nothing is comparable in human history.

Mamdani’s followers, even the NYC mayor himself, should take note of that, but they are likely to ignore or deliberately disregard it. The siren song of “equal outcomes” is too strong, today’s naive version of Jacobinism too prevalent.

We are at a turning point in our society. The President exclaims we will never be communist. That’s fine, but not nearly enough. Our youth need an education in what this really means in actual history. It is rarely taught. Or when it is the truth is scrubbed.

Pointing out that socialism is such fertile ground for fraud because such fraud is obviously contemporary, very real, and, in some cases, quite personal, is one way to reach the many who have otherwise been blinded. It won’t do it all, but it's something to counter the myriad social media posts brainwashing our youth.

Thank you, Nick Shirley, for bringing this to the fore. Don't stop now, please. You deserve a Pulitzer, if that award were still worth the engraved certificate (from Columbia University, no less) it is written on. I have, with AI’s help, proposed a better one above.

ENVOI

Sheyrl and I are grateful to those of you who have supported us by signing up as paid subscribers. And I am grateful for those of you who purchased EMET and then reviewed it on Amazon, where there are now 116 reviews, averaging 4.5. That gives me great encouragement to keep going. Thanks so much.

AMERICAN REFUGEES: THE ROGER SIMON/SHERYL LONGIN SUBSTACK is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.