New York and California Are Destroying Trust

The miracle of the free market and its unparalleled ability to generate wealth relies on trust. To the maximum degree possible, trust allows the exchange of goods to be defined only by the willingness of buyers and sellers coming together to make the best deal the parties can agree to. When trust is absent, the skids are greased for a slide into what used to be called a panic, then later, a depression — credit dries up, no one trusts that the wealth one offers in for exchange will be paid as agreed and as trust requires.

Doubters have always held that free markets will tend towards exploitation and the success of the most devious. They see always the panic, the depression, or the rogue player who despoils those gullible enough to buy in. (READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: Biden’s State of the Union: A Druggie Living in an Alternate Reality)

It is true that there always lurks the possibility of exploitation or failure in free markets, just as the possibility for injustice lurks in a free judicial system. There have been murderers who have been wrongly acquitted and they are now untouchable under the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy prohibition. Only utopian dreams are perfect; but utopian expectations forcibly imposed on others look like the Gulag Archipelago more than Utopia. The author of the book that coined the name was slyly hinting at an uncomfortable truth — utopia comes from the Greek ou topos — no place. 

The modern utopian dreamers are busy destroying the trust that has brought about the greatest and most widely distributed prosperity the world has ever known. Readers of The American Spectator are not unread and know of the multi-pronged woke assault, debasing the dollar, concentrating economic power in a disengaged central bureaucracy instead of in the distributed and coordinated multi-processor intelligence of the marketplace, and in the medievalism of compelling the market to serve political ends that have nothing to do with the agreement to exchange goods, services, and wealth in the way that best suits market participants. 

The history of American business shows the growth of trust. While economic freedom has sometimes been exploited by bad actors, freedom has allowed the market to find a way to earn an uncompelled trust. 

A great example comes from the 19th century. After the Civil War there was an explosion of retail business in department stores and catalog stores and at all levels of retailing. At the same time retailers voluntarily adopted “money-back guarantees.” Part of the success of great commercial empires such as Montgomery Ward, Sears Roebuck, Gimbel’s, Macy’s, and others was the satisfaction-guaranteed-or-your-money-back promise that was suddenly everywhere. Trust of the merchant led to increased sales volume. By replacing the grim dog-eat-dog attitude of caveat emptor with faith in the store and its brand, business thrived. Increased satisfaction resulted in increased purchasing.

But there are those who do not believe in such virtues as trust and who put their faith in their own utopian dreams and the power they can concentrate in their own hands. Their track record does not show the sustained growth of satisfaction and prosperity. Ask restaurant owners driven from the business by utopian woke legislators jacking up the wages restaurant employees must be paid beyond their ability to stay in business. Ask the people whose restaurant choices are shrinking; ask the young folks who can’t find the starter jobs that train them to the discipline of working for others that so many use as their first step in their life as an economic provider. (READ MORE: Britain Again Has a Choice: Civilization or Savagery)

Ask the owner of Panera and his good friend Gavin Newsom, whose campaign the Panera owner contributed. As a result, unlike every other restaurant, Panera was exempted from the mandatory $20 minimum wage for labor that is driving small owners down and out. No trust in the process and its participants leads to no trust in the ability to make a living, leads to no trust in the ability to find a job, and no trust in a locale as being the kind of pleasant place people would like to live in.

As Woody Guthrie used to sing:

California’s a Garden of Eden

A paradise to live in or to see.

But believe it or not, 

You won’t find it so hot,

If you ain’t got the do-re-mi.

Then as now — except for the well-connected, who trust no one but themselves.

New York is going even deeper, though, in destroying trust, particularly in the judiciary and the laws together with the business climate. Letitia James is the poster child of this violent, theater-wide attack on trust, having run for her elected job of the state’s chief law enforcement officer on the pledge of taking down Donald Trump. Yes, yes, we know exactly who the criminal is and don’t worry, we will find the crime.

And she did, subverting centuries of business law as she did so. For the main thrust of trustworthy business law is to uphold freely arranged agreements adhered to by willing participants, and providing recompense for those hurting through violation of those agreements.

This summary of business law goes far back and precedes English Common Law by many centuries. Rules governing Jewish commerce and ethics in business is well-developed, and there are centuries of case law on the books that turn on the principle of informed consent to binding deals, invalidating deals made by withholding information or otherwise rendering meaningless the informed consent that lies at the core of any deal. So important is this idea that one of the great rabbis of the Talmud taught that the first question a soul will be asked on coming to heavenly judgment was not “did you adhere to the rituals?” but “did you conduct your business dealings in good faith?”

Jewish law goes so far as to say that the specifics of the Talmudic system are not as important as the customs of local businesspeople, for that is what is expected and understood and that is what fosters trust. The key is the good faith and trust that people stick to agreements made with full knowledge and judged by both sides to be in their best interest. (READ MORE: Mr. Biden, Why Do You Hide Your True Self?)

But trust has mattered little to Ms. James. Strikingly, she prosecuted Trump for defrauding people who suffered no loss by the exchange, who testified that they had done their own due diligence and were satisfied with the valuations Trump submitted to them in his loan application. They did not want to press any charges. As far as Deutsche Bank is concerned, they were not defrauded and only profited by the business they did with Trump. They trusted their own experts at the highly specialized field of evaluating high-end properties, and never complained, even after the fact — and testified as much. The terms of the loan were met, interest and principle were paid timely and in full. Where was the breach of trust?

On the part of Attorney General James, who sent the message that the customs of business mean nothing, that trust means less, and that prosperity and a free marketplace are sacrificed now to achieve a political aim through using laws in an unprecedented way, against all the great traditions that have made trust the keystone of an abundant society.

Ms. James is not confining things to using law to demolish a political enemy. Just this week, she took on a meat company, JBS USA, the world’s largest beef distributor. James claims that JBS is hurting New York’s consumers because: 

the beef comes from cows, 

and cows emit gasses, 

and our politics are built on the myth of the Imminent Climate Catastrophe

which is caused by things such as cow gas 

as well as gas-oline. 

Ms. James is an advocate of this woke form of Adventism, whose true believers advocate a millennium achieved by forcing everyone — except the elect few — to give up all modern amenities to propitiate the fierce and ever-changing god Climate. 

Ms. James doesn’t trust you to eat right. She doesn’t trust you to do anything right. She trusts herself, for which she will likely reward herself with exemptions from any discomfort that results from her policies, as do her political allies such as Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Newsom. (READ MORE: Gavin Newsom’s Surplus of Bad Ideas)

Broken trust results in many other broken things. Unless James’ lawfare is resoundingly rejected by the courts and by the people, ugly consequences are in the works for her state and all states following that path.

We are the people. Our American forbears, our civilizational forbears, trusted us to carry on this heritage of trust, freedom, and abundance that we have so enjoyed. Our children and our children’s children are looking at us in trusting expectation to be worthy of this moment. 

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