Beautiful Anarchy

The Economics of Life Itself : Beautiful Anarchy is the writing platform of Jeffrey Tucker, in which he covers economics, art, popular culture, and politics from a pro-liberty, anti-state point of view.
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  • Jeffrey Tucker

Why Does Trump Fear Merging Media Dinosaurs? Oct 18, 2018

In a strange blast from the past, the Trump administration has rejected an uncontroversial vertical merger proposed by AT&T and Time Warner. Oh sure, it’s petty. It’s arbitrary and capricious. It’s economically unjustified. The principal players are right to object. Still, it’s nothing new. Antitrust has always been this way, from Standard Oil to Microsoft. It’s always been about power, not economics. Vertical mergers haven’t been controversial in a long time. But this one is different, so far as the Trump administration is concerned. It’s a reminder of the old days when Washington was in freak-out mode about Hollywood’s “studio...

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The Frozen Sisters Grapple with Tradition Anxiety Oct 18, 2018

It’s beyond me why the Disney short showing before the new movie Coco (which itself is fantastic) is getting such terrible reviews. It might have something to do with an aspect of Internet culture. Tradition anxiety is prompted by the depth of the history associated with the winter holiday. You can make a bigger splash on social media by brutally criticizing something than by praising it. Then the tipping point arrives and everyone somehow has to agree something is terrible even when it is not (the paradigmatic case of Rebecca Black’s “Friday” comes to mind). In any case, I found...

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History Is Malleable in the Land of the Dead Oct 18, 2018

We tend to think of the past as settled. There is nothing we can do to change it. But this is not entirely true. How we think about the past – the good guys and bad guys, the justice and injustice, the causes and effects – has a profound effect on our perceptions of the present. Our understanding comes to be revised based on new information as it comes to light. In this sense, the past is not settled. It is a living reality. Big thoughts, right? They come to me courtesy of an animated film now rocking the theaters. I’ve...

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Fed Official Decries Bitcoin as “Not Backed” Oct 18, 2018

Randal K. Quarles, a Trump administration appointee to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and Vice Chair for bank supervision, has given a lengthy speech (“Thoughts on Prudent Innovation in the Payment System”) that directly targets Bitcoin as a danger to the monetary and financial system. To reiterate, an official speaking for the nation's central bank that manages the global reserve currency – the institution that has long bragged about its power to bail out the entire world with the magic powers of the alchemist – has put down Bitcoin for being untrustworthy, unbacked, and unsound. Discrediting Crypto The timing...

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The Obamacare Mandate Is a Tax, So the Senate Bill Is Correct Oct 18, 2018

The Washington Post is outraged. The New York Times even more so. Commentators are going nuts. “Using a tax bill to abolish the individual mandate amounts to a backdoor way of sabotaging Obamacare,” writes John Cassidy. “Republicans, and Donald Trump, have counted on that (as well as your limited outrage bandwidth) in slipping an Affordable Care Act mandate repeal inside their insidious tax bill,” writes Bridget Read. Obamacare’s much-despised individual mandate is, in fact, a tax. It is properly dealt with in a tax bill. All this howling is due to how the GOP-controlled Senate used a tax bill to...

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The Genius of the “Dilly Dilly” Commercial Oct 18, 2018

Sometimes a commercial appears that both shatters a paradigm and creates a popular meme that truly sticks. The genius is undeniable but extremely hard to manufacture from a formula. It just works. Think of “I’d like to teach the world to sing,” “Where’s the beef?”, “Mikey likes it!”, and “Do you have any Grey Poupon?” All these were huge cultural moments that managed to achieve what advertising is supposed to achieve: brand recognition, pride in consumption, affirmation of cultural identity. We had another one come to us in 2017. It’s Bud Light’s Dilly Dilly commercial that first ran during an...

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In Defense of Bitcoin Hoarding Oct 18, 2018

In Internet slang, they are called the HODLers, the people who are clinging to their Bitcoin and refusing to spend it. Instead, they just refresh their wallet apps, feeling richer by day while deferring consumption. Many of these burgeoning millionaires live like paupers. I’ve met many of them: all over the U.S., in Israel, in Brazil. They believe that every dollar they spend today is two dollars they won’t make in a few months. Probably they are right. There is nothing selfish, strange, or weird about holding an asset that is rising in value. Bitcoin is undergoing a historic deflation,...

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What Really Matters about Bitcoin Oct 18, 2018

After Bitcoin hit $10,000, it, at last, seemed to dawn on the mainstream financial press that this thing matters. There has been a panic rush to catch up on the meaning of it all. Some have doubled down on the claim that the whole thing is a hoax. Others dismiss it as a bubble (indeed, all financial models would suggest that a correction is needed). Some bigshots have called for it to be banned as if it is even possible to ban a mathematical protocol. So much confusion out there! Having followed this technology from 2010, here are the ten...

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Be Desperately Grateful for Life Itself Oct 18, 2018

This year has been one of the greatest of my life, full of amazing changes that point to a bright future for all the things I care about. This year has also made me most grateful for life itself. Two dear friends have recently announced potentially life-threatening diseases, and I suffer to think of their turmoil and pain, and pray for their recovery. Both have been enormously valuable people in my life, and their suffering is my suffering. Also this year, a man who had a profound influence on me – so quiet, so cautious, so tender – passed away,...

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How to Live Like a Bitcoin Millionaire Oct 18, 2018

The opportunity is to live every dream you have ever had. Now. The problem is that for every dream you realize, you have to relinquish some of your property. And every bit of that property is hard to come by, extraordinarily lucrative, and the single most in-demand thing on the planet earth. Among the crypto rich, it’s hip to be poor. You must be tight. Stingy. No signs of wealth.  So, yes, you could be living it up. Instead, you have become addicted to seeing your net worth rise and rise...oh, and rise further, and further, and rise again. And...

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