The End of History
Regulation on top of regulation begets bad outcomes.
Why doesn’t government work in the US?
Fukuyama has theories.
The irony that the government became a negative force that was corrupt, captured, or simply incompetent in implementing regulations meant to address the perceived corruption, capture, and incompetence of an earlier incarnation of government is … something.
Beginning in the 1960s, however, activists on both the right and left increasingly saw the government as a negative force that was corrupt, captured or simply incompetent, one that had to be constrained by multiple layers of rules and procedures.‘
Trump Championed Rulings That Are Now Being Used to Check His Power
If this were a 90s comedy, you’d say that he “Trumped” himself.
‘During the Biden administration, conservative challengers won Supreme Court victories that limited the president’s power to craft policy in matters from student-debt relief to air pollution. Now, those precedents are returning to haunt one of their greatest champions: President Trump.
‘On Wednesday, a specialized federal court in New York invalidated the worldwide tariffs Trump imposed to address a range of issues on his agenda, from international trade imbalances to cross-border trafficking of fentanyl.‘
Activist Judges, Bureaucracy Are Fighting a Losing Battle
Will the Supreme Court contain the ability of activist District Court judges to impose nationwide injunctions?
Will the Supreme Court decide in Humphreys that the Fed is not sacrosanct?
‘Yet these activist judges, who have interfered with so many Trumpian policies to drain the swamp, are now robbing him — and the American people — of important leverage to even the playing field and promote American prosperity, especially the working class coalition that backed him.
‘So, on the one hand, we’ve got a bunch of monetary judges at the Fed standing in Mr. Trump’s way — and a bunch of all-around activist judges standing in Mr. Trump’s way on trade and just about everything else.
‘He is the chief executive.’
Men and Women Behaving Badly in Trump-CBS Case
Gross.
‘Maybe if George Soros hadn’t already donated most of his billions to his personal foundation, but let’s be happy with the cast of characters we’ve got. All are missing a chance to behave better. Start with Brendan Carr, the Donald Trump-appointed chairman of the supposedly independent Federal Communications Commission.
‘His is the last say-so needed for a sale of CBS-Paramount to privately held Skydance. The FCC’s aspirational 180-day shot clock for reviewing deals has long since expired. Mr. Carr publicly denies dragging out the review to encourage CBS to pay off a Trump lawsuit over how the news network edited a Kamala Harris interview. He says the holdup concerns questions about the DEI practices of the over-the-air broadcasters.’
Ending a Tax Break for Lawsuits
The US may be subsidizing our enemies who fund litigation designed to chip away at US institutions.
Come on, man. You’re better than that.
‘Third-party financing arrangements with law firms are typically not required to be disclosed, so foreign investors could be funding lawsuits with the goal of harming U.S. businesses that may be competitors. Bloomberg Law last year detailed how Russian oligarchs had dodged sanctions by funding lawsuits in the U.S.
‘Here’s the kicker: Foreign investors in U.S. litigation don’t have to pay tax on lawsuit proceeds because the tax code exempts foreigners from paying U.S. capital-gains tax, and their legal payouts are treated as capital gains. American litigation funders pay tax at the capital gains rate (23.8%), while the actual plaintiffs in lawsuits pay at the ordinary income rate.’
Lodestar Multipliers in Delaware and Federal Attorney Fee Awards
When an attorney in certain types of litigation wins his case, say in a class-action suit, lawyers may ask the court to award them fees. If it agrees to do so, then the next question is how much to award? The lawyer may have done this work on contingency, taking significant amounts of risk. Should he be compensated for the risk? Some think so.
The Court, in determining fees, follows a two-step process:
1. Calculate the lodestar amount: how many hours the attorney reasonably spent on the case multiplied by his reasonable hourly rate
2. Apply a multiple to this lodestar amount to reflect the risk and other intangibles
Let’s say the lodestar amount was $1 million. A multiple of ten means that the Court would award the plaintiff attorney $10 million.
Why do we need such multiples if regulation is doing its job?
These kinds of juicy fees, which translate to hourly fees in the tens of thousands of dollars by the way, attract litigation. They might just attract excessive litigation. These kinds of multiples make these suits nothing more than lottery tickets.
Litigation as extra-administrative regulation has a role to play, but what does it say when we have to suffer as a society an insane amount of regulation and a crazy amount of litigation?
No wonder Big Law donates so much to at least one political party.
‘Measured over all time periods, Delaware’s maximum awarded multiplier of 66 almost quadruples (3.86x) the federal maximum awarded multiplier of 17.1. Delaware’s maximum hourly septuple rate, unadjusted for inflation, is $35,000, triple (3.04) the federal maximum of $11,507. Adjusting for inflation, and weighting by the dollar value of fee awards, the average Delaware septuple award compensates plaintiff attorneys at a rate of $25,731/hour, or 3.80 times the comparable federal average of $6,777/hour. For decuples, the adjusted Delaware average award compensates plaintiff attorneys at a rate of $26,094/hour, or 3.85 times the comparable federal rate of $6,785/hour. Two members of the Delaware Court of Chancery generated 12 of Delaware’s 21 septuples, more than half (57.1%) that population, and 9 of its 14 decuples, almost two-thirds (64.3%) of that population. Over the most recent five years, these two members generated 8 of Delaware’s 13 septuples (61.5%), and 6 of 8 decuples (75.0%). We draw no inferences from these data. Readers can reach their own conclusions.’
This Idea Explains a Lot About What Has Happened in Trump 2.0
The deracination of the managerial class is the revolutionary imperative of the Right.
This ain’t your Daddy’s Oldsmobile.
The Beautiful People celebrating the Trump-Musk fight don’t get it.
The Right isn’t going away. They’re going to keep coming. And the oppressed working class has figured it out. The cat’s out of the bag.
‘The New Right has concluded that to have any hope of forcing real change in the system, it must aim, as JD Vance once put it, to “genuinely overthrow the modern ruling class” by seizing the institutions from them. Only by delivering a decisive blow to the unity and control of the bureaucratic “deep state” through evicting swaths of the managerial class could the left’s structural power be successfully undermined.’