“Everything old is new again.” – The Lonely Realist “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” – George Santayana

The term “Luddite” owes its origin to 19^th Century textile workers who opposed the Industrial Revolution because of its impact on skilled weavers – it reduced their pay and employment opportunities. Things haven’t changed for 21^st Century American Luddites. They too cherish “the good old days,” which they remember as an idealistic 1950s when America’s post-WWII advantages propelled manufacturing supremacy. They are taking actions to restore the America they knew, rejecting the integration of technological progress into their version of reality. As a consequence, America is not planning for the foreseeable future. Take manufacturing. Luddites want blue-collar industry to return to America. That can’t happen. Trump 2.0 nevertheless is incorporating it into his Everything, Everywhere, All at Once policy-making. But America no longer is living through the Age of Industrialization. The 21^st Century is the Age of Innovation and Technological Revolution. Quality of life is being propelled by creatively combining the fruits of ongoing revolutions in agriculture, manufacturing, technology, robotics, energy and biotechnology, all of which require less human labor. That’s a good thing! The jobs of the present future will not be found by “onshoring” labor-intensive industries. Americans’ standard of living cannot support the increased costs of human-driven manufacturing. American zoning, employment, construction, and energy overhead are higher than those found anywhere else in China, India, Vietnam, Africa, etc. America’s laws, rules and regulations add significantly to those costs…, while providing desirable safety for American workers. American technology has consistently focused on innovation while leaving manufacturing efficiency to offshore workers. For that reason, American industry has not built the supply chains necessary to support a manufacturing economy. Onshoring them would take many unprofitable years. It also would require retraining America’s workforce. Why do it? The American education system is not geared towards such an economy…, even if that’s what Americans desired. After all, how much demand is there by Americans to work in factories which, in order to be efficient, must be located near resources, transportation and energy production and not where the majority of America’s unemployed currently reside? The return of manufacturing jobs therefore is a Luddite fantasy. White-collar jobs also are under technological stress. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, predicts that AI is likely to wipe-out 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, spiking unemployment to 10 to 20% within the next 1 to 5 years. Amodei warned that America should prepare for mass disruptions in tech, law, accounting and finance. “Most [workers] are unaware that this is about to happen…. We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming.” AI will impact both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Instead of addressing this rapid change, today’s Luddites are preaching a return to an outdated past. Yearning for “the good old days” is not a policy. It will not encourage the skills necessary to flourish in the coming AI automated world. America excels at innovation, invention and education. Those are proven keys to wealth creation. Their pursuit has made America a magnet for innovators, investors and educators. While it is true that workers in other countries have been getting less unequal wealthier on the backs of American consumption, that too is a good thing. It also has made Americans wealthier. No one can doubt that America today remains the greatest country on Earth. It has an incredibly high standard-of-living because it offers its citizens the greatest innovations, the greatest quality and quantity of consumer goods, and the greatest opportunities. An increased focus on maximizing these advantages will ensure that Americans continue to gain wealth by the physical labor of others while capitalizing on the benefits of innovation, AI and education. Today’s renewed Ludditism also has ushered in the return of Ponzi schemes. The 21^st Century indeed is bringing back “the good old days” when con artists like Charles Ponzi offered investors the promise of high returns with little or no risk. That is an offer that should resonate with crypto and meme stock gamblers investors. As Matt Levine has cautioned, 21^st Century finance has discovered new methods for reliably creating billions of Dollars of value out of thin air. American foreign policy has similarly been seeking the “good old days.” Today’s America is relying for safety on the two vast oceans that separate America from Europe and Asia. In exalting the relative isolation that protected America in the 19^th Century, America has renounced active involvement in global conflicts, the Ukraine war, the Middle East, and with China and North Korea. Although voicing the Reagan-era mantra of “Peace through Strength,” American practices for past 15 years have been reminiscent of the “peace at any price” policy that led to WWII. That didn’t work. Neither will American isolationism. In fact, isolationism, together with tariffs and export controls, were the reason why America became embroiled in WWII. With today’s evolving high-tech weaponry, American vulnerability cannot be eliminated, even by the Trump Administration’s Golden Dome missile defense system. A return to the failed foreign policies of the 20^th Century is another example of recycled Ludditism. Yearnings for a return to “the good old days” can be found virtually everywhere – for example, in increased tariff barriers, in the re-criminalization of abortion, in increased political corruption, in the desire for a weaker Dollar, in resurgent antisemitism, in rising income inequality, and in cyclical sloganeering and populist rhetoric. Returning to the past, however, is a recipe for repeating the mistakes of the past. Finally (from a good friend)