Thank you to those who have already responded to our drive for paying subscribers. The link to pay is here. For those who haven't yet joined up, here are eleven more possible reasons in addition to yesterday's ten:

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The Manhattan Institute's City Journal has a well done review by Coleman Hughes of Ibram X. Kendi's book How to Be an Antiracist.

The book is weakest in its chapter devoted to capitalism. "Capitalism is essentially racist," Kendi proclaims, and "racism is essentially capitalist." To test this claim, a careful thinker might compare racism in capitalist countries with racism in socialist/Communist ones; or he might compare racism in the private sector with racism in the public sector. Kendi does neither. Instead, he presents the link between capitalism and racism as self-evidently true: "Since the dawn of racial capitalism, when were markets level playing fields? . . . . When could Black people compete equally with White people?" Kendi asks, implying that the answer is "never."

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and his team of lawyers from Quinn Emanuel—and several other lawyers and appellees—deserve congratulations. They have achieved, before Judges Cory Ciklin, Robert Gross, and Melanie May of the Fourth District Court of Appeal for the State of Florida, a big win.

It is a victory more significant and better than any that Kraft, his head coach Bill Belichick, or their longtime quarterback Tom Brady (the "Goat," as he is known, for greatest of all time) have achieved on the football field. That includes all six Superbowl wins of Kraft's Patriots. For while football games are win-lose—if the Patriots win, the other team on the football field loses—the legal victory in State of Florida v. Robert Kraft is a win-win. Kraft wins—but so do all Americans, and particularly the residents of Florida. Our Fourth Amendment rights to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures were protected by Kraft. The only losers were overreaching police and prosecutors.

With one breath, the Democrats speaking at the virtual Democratic National Convention constantly assure us that Biden is a unifying figure.

"Joe will bring us together," the vice presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, said Wednesday night.

"Honest leadership to bring us back together," is the way Jill Biden put it Tuesday night.

"Unite not divide," is how Bill Clinton framed it Tuesday night.

Yet with the very next breath, the Democrats themselves divide America, by economic class. "It's wrong that the wealthiest Americans got $400 billion richer during the pandemic while 40 million people lost their jobs," Hillary Clinton said Wednesday night.

"Our economic system has been rigged to give bailouts to billionaires and kick dirt in the face of everyone else," Senator Elizabeth Warren said Wednesday night.

Our quarterly drive for paying readers is going on this week. Many thanks to those who have already joined or renewed existing subscriptions; we will try to make it worth your while. Here are ten reasons to become a paying member or subscriber.

1. You need to reallocate all the money you saved by canceling your New York Times subscription.

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The Ford Foundation is the topic of my column this week. Please check out the full column at the New Boston Post ("Obama, Kamala Harris Share Family Ties to Ford Foundation") and the New York Sun ("No Wonder Harris Exclaimed, 'Thank You, Ford Foundation'").

From an article in the New York Times by a news and features reporter for that paper: "the phrase cancel culture is too vague — a distraction from a deeper examination of power in society. For this reason, I ...don't plan to use it anymore. And I really mean it this time."

This is pretty comical, in an ironic way, that the term "cancel culture" would itself get canceled by the Times. President Trump himself used the term in his Mount Rushmore speech, when he said, "One of their political weapons is 'Cancel Culture' — driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America."

It's been nearly two years since we've run a formal campaign for paying subscribers here at FutureOfCapitalism.com, which means that those of you who are customers have gotten an unannounced two-years-for-the-price-of-one special. Please keep an eye out for a renewal email. Without paying subscribers, this site could not exist. If you are already a paying subscriber, thank you — you should get an email notice asking you to renew. If you aren't, please do consider helping out to support this site and its independent voice. We'll have more reasons and reminders over the coming days. If you want to get ahead of the curve, we are open for business at the link here. Thanks in advance.

The increasingly common claim that President Trump is dismantling the U.S. Postal Service as a way of undermining mail-in voting and thus stealing the upcoming election is an example of one line of attack against President Trump, that he is so effective he can bend the government apparatus to his personal political will.

Yet that claim is in tension with another main line of attack by the Democrats against President Trump, the claim of incompetence. That is the claim made by Michelle Obama in her convention speech last night, "He is clearly in over his head."

Read the New York Times carefully enough and coronavirus clues emerge that contradict the scarier narrative that dominates the front-page headlines.

Here is a passage from an article that appeared today on page D5:

Many student health centers have seen patients with the coronavirus all spring and summer, thanks to students who remained on campus. At this point, they've become adept at treating the kind of mild Covid-19 infections common in young adults, Dr. Malani said. If they are in a dormitory, the school may send them to a separate building to isolate while they are ill. If they are in an apartment or a house, a friend should bring them food so they can isolate in their room. "For most of them, they are sick for three or four days, then they start to feel better," she said.

The "Dr. Malani" is Dr. Preeti Malani, the chief health officer at the University of Michigan, who is board certified in infectious disease.

The Wall Street Journal has published a letter to the editor I wrote responding to the latest Holman Jenkins Jr. column about Tesla.

The Toronto Blue Jays have been starting an infield of entirely the sons of professional baseball players. This has public policy implications, I write in my column this week: "Congress can impose a 100% tax on inherited wealth and seize the endowment of any college that offers the slightest admissions preference to children of alumni. But unless the government is going to take children away from parents at birth or outlaw father-son back yard batting practice or after-dinner games of catch, preventing what the levelers decry as a 'hereditary elite' is impossible." Please read the full column at the New Boston Post ("Blue Jays Infield Makes Case Against Inheritance Tax"), Reason ("What the Toronto Blue Jays' Infielders Can Teach Us About the Inheritance Tax"), Newsmax ("Blue Jays Infield Makes Best Case Against Inheritance Tax"), and the New York Sun ("How Legacy Players Are Changing Lineup in Big League Ball").

Senator Elizabeth Warren is claiming that "Donald Trump has undermined and corrupted our most popular government agency—the Postal Service."

Video gaming chairs, which were the topic of a blog post here—"Video Gaming Chairs"—back on September 2, 2018, have now broken through into the New York Times Sunday Style section: "This Is Not a Desk Chair...The gaming chair is ascendant." Count on FutureOfCapitalism.com to keep you up on home furnishing trends two years ahead of the New York Times.

And on another front, our July 21, 2020, blog post, "Trumpism May Outlast Trump," linking to my column from that week, nicely presaged David Brooks' August 7 New York Times column. Brooks reported:

if Trump gets crushed in the election...something will remain: Trumpism.

Suspend the price mechanism, put the government in charge, and, sure enough, lo and behold, shortages and quality problems result.

The New York Times reports: "Congress enacted new rules to make the tests a rare oasis within the American health care system — the price had to be public; and co-payments, deductibles or other charges weren't allowed." I've got no objection to public pricing, but in the case of testing, the price to the consumer is, by act of Congress, always supposed to be zero. No wonder it's not working well: "the demand for testing has soared, surpassing capacity...a shortage of certain supplies, backlogs at laboratories that process the tests."