3 Things 2-9-26

Thing One

Why Starting an Exercise Plan Might Help You Understand How to Think About the Economy 

I was recently browsing health and fitness websites for exercise “secrets” when I came across an article that made me think about the similarities between an individual trying to get in shape and the political class trying to “get the economy in shape.”

The article was called Why Crunches and Sit Ups Do Not Get You Six Pack Abs. The opening paragraphs hit me like a ton of bricks:

“Doing countless crunches and sit ups are by far the most common exercise mistake for anyone who wants to slim down their midsection. The thought is that doing hundreds of crunches and sit ups will work the abs so hard that the fat covering them will disappear. If this were true, you would see people walking around with toned and defined abs and a soft and flabby body everywhere else.

Here’s something to think about: we’re always focusing on the abs but have you ever noticed that the people who have the best abs also have a great body everywhere else? This is by design – not by coincidence. The idea that doing lots of crunches is going to get you six pack abs is a myth that is known as “spot reduction”. Fat burning is not a local phenomenon.

When you do bicep curls your biceps do not pull fat from your arm for energy, so why would crunches reduce the fat around your waistline? … It all comes down to the basics of losing body fat, calories in versus calories out…”

Makes all the sense in the world.

Now think about the economy—and the way it often gets “trained” in the public arena.

If we mandate higher pay for all low-wage workers, our economic woes disappear. If we tax “the rich” more, everything balances out. If we subsidize this group, penalize that group, and fine-tune a few targeted levers, the whole system suddenly gets healthy.

Right?

Of course not.

Those are the economic version of doing endless crunches and expecting abs to pop. They’re spot-reduction policies—moving money from one pocket to another while acting like the overall body has gotten stronger. But just shuffling dollars around doesn’t automatically increase production, expand skills, raise efficiency, or create more value. It doesn’t increase the total number of dollars in the economy’s pants—it just redistributes what’s already there.

And by the way: the wage debate is still very real today. The federal minimum wage remains $7.25/hour while many states and cities have pushed their wage floors well above that (with some jurisdictions now near the high teens). The point isn’t the specific number—it’s the recurring belief that a single targeted lever can do the work of a whole-body plan.

The Whole Economy Has to Get More Fit

If the goal is to have the “midsection” of the economy (the middle class, or lower-income workers) more fit, then the whole system has to become more productive—just like the body does. There really is no secret:

• eat right

• exert yourself

• do it consistently

• and let time do what time does

In economic terms, “eating right” looks like spending public resources prudently and reducing policies that encourage waste and dependency. “Exerting ourselves” looks like improving productivity: better skills, better tools, better systems, more innovation, more output per hour.

And that part isn’t theoretical—productivity is measurable. For example, the U.S. nonfarm business sector posted a strong productivity gain in Q3 2025 (up 4.9% at an annual rate), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When productivity rises, it becomes much easier for wages to rise without breaking everything else—because there’s more value being produced to support higher pay.

My Clarification

Crunches are fine if you like burning calories but avoiding the hard work of a full plan.

Targeted economic “spot reduction” policies are fine if votes matter more than results.

But neither is fine if you’re actually serious about getting in shape. 

Thing Two  

Atlas Shrugged: From Fiction to Fact (Still Counting)

More than a decade ago, an article titled “Atlas Shrugged: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years” noted how uncomfortably prophetic Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel had become. To give some context for readers unfamiliar with the book, the author summarized its central warning this way:

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simple: government actors respond to crises—many of which they helped create—by introducing new programs, laws, and regulations. These interventions generate additional distortions, shortages, and inefficiencies, which then justify still more interventions. The cycle repeats until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the cumulative weight of controls imposed in the name of fairness, equality, and compassion.

In Atlas Shrugged, Rand gave these policies benevolent-sounding names: the Anti-Greed Act, the Equalization of Opportunity Act, and my personal favorite, the Anti–Dog-Eat-Dog Act, designed to restrain competition so fewer firms would fail.They were meant to sound farcical. Unfortunately, they no longer do. Rand’s deeper warning wasn’t really about ideology; it was about incentives. When productivity, innovation, and profit are treated as moral failures rather than economic necessities, they don’t vanish overnight—they erode quietly. And when they do, everyone is poorer.

Having read the book myself, I’ve always admired how the idea of enacting an Anti–Dog-Eat-Dog Act law captured both the arrogance and ignorance of centralized economic thinking: the belief that competition itself is the problem rather than the engine.

That’s why a recent wave of housing and zoning policy immediately brought Rand’s fictional laws to mind. Across large portions of the country—especially in high-demand metropolitan areas—local zoning rules strictly limit what can be built and where. Entire neighborhoods are reserved exclusively for single-family homes. Height restrictions, minimum lot sizes, parking requirements, and years-long approval processes make it illegal or economically irrational to build denser or more affordable housing, even when demand is obvious and severe.

These rules are typically justified as planning, community protection, or neighborhood preservation. In practice, they function as legally enforced barriers to competition in housing supply. When prices inevitably rise, the response is rarely to loosen the restrictions that caused the shortage. Instead, additional policies follow: rent controls, affordability mandates, subsidies, and penalties—all efforts to manage scarcity without allowing more supply.

So anyone who looks closely enough will discover that absurd and counterproductive laws like the fictional Anti–Dog-Eat-Dog Act, the Anti-Greed Act, and the Equalization of Opportunity Act live on today—just rebranded. What makes this especially revealing though is the near-unanimity with which such rules are often adopted. This is not a left-versus-right phenomenon. It is an up-versus-down problem—protecting incumbents from competition turns out to be one of the few ideas capable of uniting nearly everyone in power.

The outcome is predictable. Restrict supply and prices rise. Rising prices provoke outrage. Outrage produces more regulation. More regulation further restricts supply. Each step is justified as compassionate, necessary, and overdue.

Rand understood this pattern decades ago. She also understood something that remains deeply unfashionable: production must precede distribution. You cannot allocate what does not exist. You cannot regulate your way to abundance. And you cannot punish competition into producing more of anything people actually need.

Atlas Shrugged wasn’t prophetic because Rand was clairvoyant. It was prophetic because she understood incentives—and human nature.

The real tragedy isn’t that the Anti–Dog-Eat-Dog Act turned out to be realistic. It’s that we keep passing it—one zoning code at a time.

Thing Three

Just A Thought  

“I am, therefore I'll think.” ― Ayn Rand