Today: What does financial repression in autocracies have to do with financial freedom in democracies? Justin Callais on human flourishing in the modern world.

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Connections

“Financial freedom,” on the other hand, has some currency. Which is usually about having opportunities, making decisions, or taking actions that can enable us and our families to flourish—to do more of what we want in life, with fewer obligations to unwelcome labor and a lower risk of financial setbacks becoming sustained adversity. It seems intuitive that there’d be a connection between the phenomenon of financial repression in dictatorships and financial freedom in democracies. But what is it?

Justin Callais is the chief economist at the Archbridge Institute and the editor at large for The Signal. Callais says the clue is right there in Maradiaga’s description of financial repression as he experienced it: The purpose of the “systematic destruction of the things that give people dignity and independence in their lives” isn’t just to crush dissidents specifically; it’s to incapacitate people generally. It’s to prevent them from cultivating a systemic threat to dictatorship—what their everyday counterparts in democratic life mean by financial freedom: the capacity to flourish …

• Russia meets its ‘Pearl Harbor.’ Ukraine’s Security Service destroyed more than 40 Russian strategic bombers across five airfields deep inside Russia on Sunday, using drones hidden in trucks. Pro-Russian bloggers, military journalists, and propagandists are describing the US$7 billion “Spiderweb” operation—personally overseen by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy—“Russia’s Pearl Harbor.” Sequoia Capital’s Shaun McGuire calls it “a turning point in the history of warfare.”
• Right turn in Warsaw. The conservative historian Karol Nawrocki—backed by U.S. President Donald Trump and Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party—narrowly defeated the liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski 50.89% to 49.11% in the Polish presidential runoff election on Sunday. Nawrocki’s victory complicates Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist—and pro-European—government agenda, as the new president has pledged to use his veto powers to block democratic reforms and liberalization efforts. … See Ivan Krastev, “The end of Law and Justice.”
• More Hong Kong democrats walk free. Chinese officials released four pro-democracy figures on Friday—including the prominent LGBT activist Jimmy Sham—after imprisoning them for more than four years on the crime of “conspiring to commit subversion” under Hong Kong’s National Security Law. This is the second group released in a month from the landmark “47 democrats” trial—with such “staggered releases” helping keep the enclave’s democracy movement fragmented and prevent any coordinated resurgence of opposition activities.
• Meanwhile. Russia-Ukraine peace talks end swiftly. … MIT researchers develop a sodium-air fuel cell that could replace lithium-ion batteries. … Unusual wildfires are burning across Canada. … A major solar storm hits Earth. … & A major retrospective of Diane Arbus’s photography opens in Los Angeles.

See you Thursday at noon …

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