The Only Man Who Can Save America

Is a dead one

Hello, it’s me, David Ricardo. Yes, THAT David Ricardo. You’re probably wondering where I’ve been. Before we get into that story, we need to get back to where this whole thing started...

*record scratch*

It was September 11th, 1823. I was dying of an ear infection. Terrible way to go. My wife was by the bedside, crying on my shoulder. I was trying to summon some Voltairean final witticism, something about the corn laws. I then died. But in 2026, I woke up once again. A bald man appeared, saying “Hey, my name’s Scott Alexander. Don’t be afraid, I’m a trained psychiatrist. A Thiel-backed intellectual revival firm has brought you back to life.” He paused, trying to muster some emotion to persuade me, but failing, as his rationalist community had since purged any from his soul.

After a brief two-century narrative to catch me up, he said, “David, we need you. The economy is going down the toilet because of his economic illiteracy. A year ago, he set a 100% tariff on foreign films. (Short digression to explain what a film is.) Just last week, he set a 1000% tariff on cubist paintings. (Another digression) “But that’s all besides the point anyway. If we keep going down this path, China is going to beat us in the race for super-intelligent AI.”

“The situation had degraded to a point where established talent pools offered no path to remediate the escalating series of policy blunders.” Thiel said solemnly. “He’s ousted Elon, Rubio, he’s deaf to the stock market, and all the while his American wormtongue, Peter Navarro, stands in the shadows, giving him poisonous counsel.”

“David, you’re the best free trade messenger we have,” Scott exclaimed. “We need you. If the AI industry is in shambles, so is the human race. So the survival of our species depends entirely on your ability to convince economic illiterates of seemingly non-intuitive economic facts.” He paused for a moment. “The corn laws were eventually repealed. Can you do this for us, David?”

I decided, why not?

Thiel arranged the meeting.

Curiously, a man was taking pictures of license plates as I walked down Pennsylvania Avenue. I struck up a conversation with this “civilian hero,” who wished me good fortune on my quest. Perhaps his name was Matt Yglesias, I can’t remember for certain.

After walking up the steps of the White House, I knocked on the front door. But no answer.

I opened the creaky door to a dark hall. Gold paint, cheap and peeling, clung to cracked plaster. I heard something fall in the room next to me. “Hello?” I said. Someone, wild-eyed, peeked around the corner, and before I could speak scampered off into the darkness.

I walked up the steps, flattening half-eaten Big Macs and empty boxes of fries under my feet. The doors to the Oval Office had a sign that read “no fat chicks” and stapled on top of that was “GO AWAY”, and on top of that was “NAVARRO ONLY”. I gently opened the door, cobwebs breaking as I pushed on it. “Arghh, the light” an old, weak man with a toupee half-hanging off his head said, his hand covering his eyes. The windows had been boarded up, the curtains shut. In the corner lay the skeleton of a dead ghostwriter, chained to a desk with a laptop that read “Peter Navarro’s Substack.”

I next saw a man who had to have been Peter, kneeling beside Trump, shooting me a venomous look. He wore dark robes and had long, greasy hair. Trump’s eyes were milky and his skin lifeless, his body sunken into his seat. He stared at the ceiling while Navarro whispered into his ear. He gestured at me. “He is not accepting any visitors at this time.” Trump’s desk had an EO half written, titled “Imported products bearing such words as “colour,” “flavour,” “metre,” and “labour” are hereby subject to a 250% tariff. Effective immediately.”

I walked up to the desk, and slapped Navarro in the face. He screamed and fell on his back.

I put my hand on Trump’s cheeks and looked into his sunken eyes. His skin was cold and withered, like orange peels left out too long. “Donald, please, listen to reason.” “He’s mine!” Navarro yelled, and pounced on me. He grabbed me by the neck, his eyes crazed, “You think you’re smarter than me? All you mainstream economists think you’re better than me. You always have. And now look where I am. I’m more powerful than any of you!”

I cried out for help, not because my life was in danger, but because I hadn’t been this close to low human capital since my advisor forced me to campaign in the low-income neighborhoods of north-western Ireland.

Navarro then tightened his grip. "Don’t give me your comparative advantage bullshit. Losers compare. Winners compete. Real nations don’t have trade deficits."

"Mutual... gains..."

"Gains? We gained a trade deficit the size of the moon because of you. We had 50 years of the hollowing out of American steel and car manufacturing because of you.”

“Remember… the, ack!… consumers”

“You’re responsible for the death of American industry David. It all goes back to you. Everytime someone says comparative advantage, a steel mill dies, and one more Democrat voter becomes a Republican one.

You are a curse on the field of economics. If it weren’t for your trade theories, everyone would understand that trade deficits are bad, and my peers at UC Irvine would’ve sat with me at lunch, and my wife’s divorce lawyer wouldn’t have taken me to the cleaners. You think I wanted to become like this? You think every young boy dreams of becoming as ridiculed as me, for speaking the truth no less, a black sheep in a herd of orthodox trade theorists!

"...you... you sound... like, like, a,” spitting it out like it was the worst insult he could think of “mercantilist!”

Navarro screamed with rage, and just as I was about to leave this world again, the doors to the Oval Office swung open, and in stormed a man I would later be told was J.D. Vance. He had the hair of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and living away from the cameras for so long had caused him to regress back to his true form: John Deer cap, a red checkered button-up shirt, and blue jeans.

He sprinted at Navarro, “If I can’t have him, no one can!” And he tackled him, crashing through the glass and pulling the curtains down to the White House gardens. All at once, blinding light enveloped the room.

Donald moaned and scurried under his desk. “See the light Donald, face it!”

“Never, he is mine!” Navarro’s voice oddly came out of Trump’s mouth. I shouted “Be gone, you phony economist, you imposter, you villain!” “never, free trade is a venomous lie!”

“For too long you have sat in the shadows while your country sickens. I release you from his grasp!”

I took hold and dragged him out from beneath his desk. I hurled him out to the edge of the window, where he dangled over the gardens. The sun hit his face, and his eyes opened blue and wide. His cheeks took on a robust orange glow. He fell on his knees, panting. After a few minutes, he arose, strong and full of vitality. He turned to me. “David, thank you for saving me. I’m in your debt. How can I repay you?”

“Donald, spare me just a minute of your time. I have a few meagre suggestions. The problem is that idiot Biden was against all of the following proposals. Why, I don’t know. But you are too smart and courageous to agree with that low IQ communist crook. Anyhoo, here’s the things he loved that you must change:

• Remove antitrust exemptions, including for unions, insurance companies, and other price-fixers. Enforce antitrust against colleges and other routine violators.

• Remove all coverage requirements for health insurance.

• Eliminate corporate taxes. Tax people when they spend corporate profits.

• Prioritize economic immigration. If you want to come to the US, have a clean record, $10,000 in the bank, foreswear social services for a few years, come on in. Want to “lower costs” for health care, child care, elder care? Let them come. Legalize the 10 million who are here, working, paying taxes, staying out of trouble.

• Eliminate tariffs, buy-American requirements, and other import protections.

• Eliminate mandates for paid leave, health insurance, time off; eliminate hours, straight time vs. overtime laws, employee vs. contractor laws, minimum wages, comparable worth, and any other restriction on the right of workers and employers to contract. Employers will hire more people if they can more easily fire them. (This is also an “opportunity” move.)

• You’re free to join a union, but the union may not force all workers at a plant or company to join.

• Eliminate “prevailing wage,” minority contracting, Davis-Bacon, and other cost-increasers for federal contracts and businesses receiving subsidies (IRA, Chips, electric vehicle chargers.

• Eliminate restrictive zoning and building codes. Build what you want on your property. (Subsidies for home buyers without expanded supply just drive prices up more. Government built housing just substitutes for cheaper privately built housing.) Remove bans on factory-built housing.

• Remove rent controls and eviction controls. The ability to get rid of non-paying renters is key to getting landlords to rent and developers to invest in rental housing in the first place. See Argentina, where eliminating rent controls led to a quick supply of rental housing and lower rents, even before construction kicked in.

• Shot clock on all federal regulatory actions. One year from filing, if you haven’t heard an answer, your project is approved. Priorities include nuclear power, drug regulation, real estate development and redevelopment, and energy infrastructure. FDA especially. If it’s legal in Europe, it’s legal here. At least allow foreign clinical trials to count.

• Remove all “energy efficiency” mandates, starting with auto fuel economy standards and electric vehicle mandates. End ethanol in gas mandate. Bring back washing machines and dishwashers that wash. Let us buy whatever lightbulbs we want. Let the price of energy determine optimal efficiency.

• End the “whole of government” war on fossil fuels, especially natural gas. We forbid pipelines and US exports, and then tell the Ukrainians not to bomb Russian fossil fuel facilities in order to keep supply up and prices down? If you must, impose a uniform carbon tax and no other energy regulation. If it’s true that renewables are now so cheap, you won’t have to.

• Voucherize all health care and insurance subsidies, and let the free market rip to provide cheaper and better care.

• Repeal the Jones Act. This is the act that requires all shipping between US ports be on US made ships and manned by US merchant marine. It has destroyed shipping and ship building in the US, and sent lots of goods by (much more polluting) rail and truck instead.

• End all farm subsidies and price supports. How did I forget the oldest and most long-standing government effort to raise costs?

• End government monopolies and entry restrictions. For example, end the ban on private bus companies in cities.

• Universal school vouchers. No more teachers’ unions. (No more government employee unions, as Franklin Roosevelt understood.)

• Occupational license reform.

• Stop subsidizing pointless college majors.

Trump folded his hands over his lap as he sat down, gently sipping on a can of Diet Coke he had taken out of his pocket. He said, “I’ll think about it.” “And Navarro?” “I’m sick of these lickspittles, David.” He sighed. “But I’ve alienated everyone. Who is left that would pick up the phone besides, what, Marjorie Taylor Greene?”

I shuddered.

“Here, take this”. I handed him a piece of paper with an address. He read it out loud. “Buchanan Hall, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. What the hell do I do with this? It’s not even Ivy League.”

“You know nothing of economic wisdom!” I let my temper get the better of me. “You have committed grave economic sins, Donald. It’s there, at that sacred place of learning, where you must make your pilgrimage.”

Donald, in a surprising moment of vulnerability, whispered, “No, don’t leave David, I need you.”

“No. I have finished my part in this world. But you have not. You must atone for your sins by seeking out the wise sages of GMU.”

“Will they teach me how to make better trade deals? The best trade deals?”

“Of course.”

He started to cry.

“And we’ll start winning again? America will be great again, right?”

“Yes, Donald.”

“And I’ll be on Mount Rushmore?”

“If you follow my policy proposals, highly likely.”

“I wish you didn’t have to go” He whispered.

“Farewell, Donald”

After that, I decided to take a long stroll through the city to calm my nerves. I found an English pub serving chicken and leek pies. While I was eating, I saw a man on what I was told was a television going on about something Trump posted on an “app” called X. There was a picture that looked like: “A certain DAVID RICKARDU has come to me with marvellous, stupendous ideas. The Jones Act has been the worst act in the history of this nation. My newest, bestest advisor, Dave Rickardo tells me it was passed by crooked Joe Biden. Luckily for our great country, it will be repealed IMMEDIATELY. Shot clocks on permits and regulatory actions, the END OF ZONING, and ALL TAXES, INCLUDING FOREIGN GOODS. NO TAXES IN THIS ADMIN!

Do not worry MAGA, we will keep tariffs and boy will they be big! Sam Altman has gifted me a personal ChatGPT, they’re calling it TRUMP-o5.7 mini high deepmind-preview. It the best, I tell you, the best and most beautiful, amazing AI. But only I can use it. And it has informed me that 99% of all goods are shipped through a country to the west, somewhere in the Pacific, called “Undying Lands, home of the Valar”. A lame, lame name, for a lame very, well, I won’t use that word, the libs don’t like it! Let me just say, well, what the hell, it is a very, very gay, extremely gay, government. Sue me!

It is a shame these “valar” are being governed by such terrible leaders. Truly SAD! Their government has been ripping us off with currency manipulation FOR YEARS. Terrible! They must stop, or they will face the wrath of NATO and friends. So TRUMP-o5.7 mini high deepmind preview has advised me to lift all tariffs, except for this Valar country. Effective immediately!”

Alexander suddenly sat down at the table. “Things worked out.” He said. “He is remarkably suggestible,” I replied.

Alexander ordered the halloumi fish and chips. “What happens to me now?” I asked. But he didn’t answer, he was clearly distracted by something. “I was hoping the rationalist community could set me up with a blog,” I volunteered, only half jokingly.

No answer. He ate a little of his meal, and walked away.

He did leave something behind, however. I noticed a small figurine on his chair. I picked up a small Eliezer Yudkowsky bobblehead, and in an electronic voice, it suddenly said:

“Mr. Ricardo, your next mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate the Chinese Communist Party under the guise of a visiting celebrity economist. Technically, you’ll be speaking at the ‘Conference on Harmonious Historical Perspectives in Trade Theory,’ hosted by the Ministry of State Security. In reality, you’ll be infiltrating the Standing Committee to neutralize Xi Jinping and install a rotating politburo of liberal sympathizers.

Should China reach super-intelligent AI first, the human race is likely to be annihilated. The democratization of China is thus absolutely necessary. You must neutralize Xi Jinping, and connect with the underground network of pro-market Chinese liberals. The words ‘Tiananmen Faire” will open some doors for you, and close others.

Good luck, Mr. Ricardo. The world rests in your hands.”

Surely this is a mistake, I thought.

“Do you accept?” The bobble head asked.

“Yes,” I blurted out.

I looked out the window. A Waymo taxi pulled up beside me, the back door automatically opening.

“This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds.”

I dropped it in my pint and jumped into the car.

Cue