The Big Lie

Welcome to This Week’s Leyendecker View

Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.
– Aristophanes

FAVORITE READ OF THE WEEK

The smart phone is dismantling civilization
By creating a whole lot of dumb people.

TAKE A LITTLE MINDCATION

The great value of caterpillars
The brilliance of nature.

THINKING OUT LOUD

The Big Lie
Socialism sucks you in then stomps on you

The election of Zohran Mamdani as NYC’s mayor has a lot of people extremely happy but also a lot of people extremely worried. The No Kings crowd is ecstatic. The resistance is working! There are also many New Yorkers who are very worried about the city’s future. Will Mamdani’s mayorship drive NYC back to the 1970s, when crime exploded and the city went bankrupt?

Mamdani’s pitch to voters is classic socialism—soak the rich and give all kinds of free stuff to the working and non-working class. It’s a great pitch since the cost of living in NYC is somewhere between 74% and 152% higher than the country’s average.

History is littered with evidence that socialism doesn’t work. Yet, right here on our shores, more and more Americans are finding it appealing. It’s safe to say that most of these people do not understand what socialism is. They just want more free stuff.

There’s just one problem with this socialist approach to governing: It doesn’t work. The more you tax the rich, the more of them who will leave. And the more free stuff you provide, the more freeloaders will show up. Tax revenues decline as social safety net costs grow, creating a widening crevasse between money to fund “free” services and the “free” services needing funding.

No problem for the socialists. Voters elected them to fix things, right? So they do what good socialists do—they double down on more taxes, which now must extend to include the less rich to fund more free stuff. Rinse, wash, repeat. More taxes, more government control, more economic control, more “free” money to the “deserving” class.

This playbook unleashes a downward economic spiral, which triggers a downward social spiral. At some point, the socialists will have extorted so much money to fund services for an ever-poorer populace that the private sector cannot grow. Meaningful private industry jobs dry up. Government jobs replace a share of them, but without the job and wage growth potential of private-sector jobs, and the economy drifts at best. More people need “free services,” which become overwhelmed and increasingly scarce, and the downward spiral picks up speed. This, from the people elected to “fix” things, to make life “better.”

Socialist thinkers and followers know nothing about creating value and operations that can sustain. They’ve never managed a P&L. Their P&L is just taxing and spending. Their operations are just taxing and spending. Their “operating win” is extracting more money from the private sector to spend. What qualifications do they have to lead a thriving economy with a healthy populace?

At lunch a few days ago, a friend from Eastern Europe suggested that in years past, Russians had become accustomed to living off potatoes. Since the Ukraine war siphoned yet more capital from the people, they have become accustomed to living off gruel.

This is how socialism works. First comes the promise to take care of everyone. Then comes reality. As Margaret Thatcher famously said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” As this happens, the government must exert more control, which leads to lower economic output, which then leads to more government control, which leads to so much government control that citizens can no longer criticize the government. Doing so could be life threatening. Power, especially absolute power, does not take kindly to dissidents.

To the uninformed, their desire for more free stuff, their desire for the government to take care of them and solve their problems sounds great when they feel persistently financially insecure.

But socialism is a lie. It sucks you in before it stomps you down and destroys your spirit.

What those who buy the “more free stuff” socialist lie don’t realize is that trusting and depending on the government to provide for their every need will always and eventually lead to less and less. Inevitably, people in socialist systems become wards of the state, having ceded their agency for “free” stuff, the amount of which will slowly and constantly decline. Then who’s left to save them when they can’t even protest?

THE RANDOMS

Should we be thinking about AI like it’s the new Y2K?

Why are US voters so susceptible to Pied Piper candidates with no real-world experience and whose only discernible talent is talking? Modern minds must be little different from the minds that fell for the snake oil salesmen from centuries ago.

Last weekend, I rewatched the original Blade Runner, which was released in 1982. It’s still a great film. It hasn’t aged. It was quite surprising to be reminded it was set in 2019. Man, oh man, that was almost seven years ago. Where’s my flying car? Where are the human clones?

The reason buying a home has grown so out of reach for many is because of the government. When the government injected all that “free” Covid money into the economy, the value of all financial assets, including homes, skyrocketed. Many might say, “But if the government hadn’t showered us with free money, many businesses would have failed, and people would have lost their jobs.” Correct. But remember: The government had to shower us with free money because the government was funding Covid virus testing.

If you had been avoiding news media for the last 20 or more years and picked up a “newspaper” today, you would probably think the news business has become one giant soap opera, with Donald Trump as the evil overlord. Is this the best they can do?

We’re always making mistakes. This is the nature of humanity. So what mistakes are we making today?

ECONOMIC NEWS

Economy

Small business sentiment dips
Household debt keeps rising
While delinquencies surge
Capitalism isn’t working for the young

Labor

We desperately need more manual labor
The jobs AI can’t eliminate
The hottest new job: forward-deployed AI engineers

Health Care

New cholesterol drugs on the way
Has Obamacare screwed us?
Ultrasound, the new cancer killer

The Lone Star

Sleepy San Antonio getting attention
Another big factory comes to Texas
Tesla building new factory near Houston

BUSINESS

Finance

PE using AI and cutting staff
Wall Street going all in on AI
Is the crypto hype over?
Goldman earns record M&A fee
Do we need new rating agencies?

Real Estate

What’s with the 50-year mortgage gimmick?
Lower rates not helping home sales
Blackstone had a $1.8B real estate flop

Tech

SoftBank sells its entire Nvidia position
UK cyber insurance claims triple
The first “powered footwear system” for walking

AI

Chinese hackers are using Anthropic
Microsoft building AI super factory
Microsoft to make their own AI chip
AI may not be that transformative
AI sends our power bills through the roof

Energy Transition

EV economics are getting worse
NY finally approves a new gas pipeline
US natural gas is almost unlimited
Mega battery storage centers grow

THE NATION

The Washing-Tone

Spending bill soap opera is over
Trump concerned with soaring healthcare costs
He has an Obamacare replacement idea
More narco boats knocked out
Trump working on Central Asia rare earths deal
Cambodia back in the US-influence fold

Trade

Food tariff reductions coming
Will we miss Italian pasta?
Switzerland is cutting a deal
Trump suggests sending “most” Americans $2K

Social Trends

Hollywood can’t buy a hit
Seattle wants to be socialist, too
Why America’s trains suck
Transgender women may be banned from Olympics
Christian music is everywhere and growing

GEOPOLITICS

Global

Australia and Indonesia get chummy
Milei wants to unlock Argentina’s minerals
Foreign capital’s influence
The richest country in the world

Europe

UK to increase taxes…again
As their economy contracts
France imprisons then releases former pres
Is the BBC toast?
EU to water down AI regulation

Ukraine

Russian drones target Kyiv
Putin training 8th graders to be soldiers
Ukraine is a drone-making behemoth
Russia targets Ukraine drone operators
Ukraine still has a corruption problem
Russia is desperate for workers

Middle East

Is a Gaza peace impossible?
Houthis decide to back down
US may build military base at Gaza border
US and Syria cozy up
IDF strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon
Hamas fighters not giving up
Israel says “no” to Turkish troops in Gaza

China

China’s economy keeps slumping
China is winning the cheap energy race
China plays by its own rules
China assembles a shadow fleet for Russian oil
China looking for US chip workarounds

War Creep

New US shipyard coming together
The 20-somethings in the war business
Denmark pumps up defense spending

MAKING A BETTER YOU

Mind
Get more quiet time.

Using chatbots to make you smarter
Courage is learning to fear well

How to enjoy your problems

Body
Get more outside time.

Longer walks are better
Get your “movement snacks”
Heart healthy with a Nordic twist

FUN STUFF

Let your hair down, baby! Even if you’re all alone.

The Extraordinary

El Salvador’s annual fireball festival
She’s 101 and NOT retiring
The best cinnamon rolls in the USA

Music That Found Us

Ben Harper’s “Winter Is for Lovers.”
Vintage blues in a room full of ghosts.
Let’s get a few songs from The Byrds
Find your song on The Nostalgia Machine.

Worth a Watch

The wonderful Left-Handed Girl.
One thrilling thriller, Die My Love.
The epic of all epics, Baahubali.
Happiness is a state of mind in Pluribus.
Predator: Badlands, oh me, oh my!

The Yum Yums

Some Insta Pot recipes.
Butter chicken
Basic chicken thighs
Chipotle chili
Chicken and dumplings
Black-eyed peas
Short ribs
Pot roast and potatoes

PARTING THOUGHTS

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone. 
– Blaise Pascal

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

The Real Climate Change Disaster
November 7, 2025

The Grand Experiment
October 31, 2025

Headhunter’s Secrets: The Dynamic Change Leader
October 29, 205