2024 is about to end, and I figured I should post something this year. So, I’ll just share a few thoughts that have accumulated.

First of all, my health seems to have stabilized since the surgery last year. I’m very happy about that. I am starting to feel old, but getting old seems much better than the alternative!

The October 7th attack by Hamas last year and the reactions by many people around the world to Israel’s response have been very depressing. I’m not sure if antisemitism is actually growing, or if people have just felt freer to express it publicly. Either way, it’s horrible. But it does make it easier to identify the people among us who have very bad moral frameworks. I hope, as always, that Israel gets through this safer than before.

Donald Trump will be the president again. I still think he’s an unqualified buffoon, and listening to him talk about foreigners and trade is painfully depressing, but I wasn’t sure whether this outcome would be worse than the major alternative. Harris would have been awful. And it’s good that she and the many others who conspired to deceive the American public about Biden’s health will suffer a loss of power and reputation. It’s also good that the targeted criminal prosecutions against Trump didn’t succeed.

I do see a glimmer of hope in the coming Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. I’m skeptical that they’ll roll back most of the wasteful spending and harmful regulations, but at least they might shift the conversation so that these will have to be justified a bit in the future, rather than the only question being the rate of their increase. Both men are very smart and competent, and I wish them the best. I just don’t think they’ll be able to overcome the inertia of vast government agencies without very broad public support.

I’m also heartened by the successes of Javier Milei in Argentina and his explicitly libertarian agenda. He seems to have been very successful at reducing inflation, cutting spending, improving housing, etc. Many of the reforms will take time to show their full positive effects. Hopefully he will remain popular enough for long enough for that to be allowed to happen!

Happy New Year, everyone!