Congress Passed 133 Broadband Programs. Its Big Idea Is A 134th

Notes from the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man) June 15, 2026

There are things that a free market will never do, and it’s usually for very good reasons.  Running fiber-optic cable down a twelve-mile dirt road costs a fortune, and the handful of households scattered along that road will never pay enough in monthly bills to justify the cost of laying the cable.

That’s why private companies don't bother laying fiber in rural areas: the math doesn't work.

Social Security Is Officially Six Years Away From Running Out Of Money

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man  June 11, 2026

Every spring, the US government performs one of its rare acts of radical honesty: the Social Security Board of Trustees publishes an annual report stating, in plain language, exactly when the program will run out of money.

It arrives without a press conference and with barely any news coverage — just a few hundred pages of actuarial tables quietly uploaded to a government website.

When Leaving Your Home State Becomes a Duty

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  June 9, 2026

In the year 1863, at the height of the Civil War in the United States that must have seemed at the time like an irrecoverable national death, a former bookkeeper turned entrepreneur built an oil refinery in Cleveland’s up-and-coming industrial area in order to capitalize on the market for kerosene.

His name was John Rockefeller. And within twenty years he would control close to 90% of the oil in America. And his Standard Oil would become the largest and most powerful company ever seen.

It Was a Win/Win Deal So of Course They Rejected It

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  June 8, 2026

On November 6, 1906, an American entrepreneur named Augustus E. Staley incorporated his cornstarch manufacturing business in Decatur, Illinois— the first city that Abraham Lincoln came to when he first moved to Illinois at the young age of 21.   Staley’s A.E. Staley Manufacturing Company made cornstarch... which is hardly sexy by modern business standards. But over time his company was a huge success and grew it into a major Midwest food processor.

The Funky Math Behind How The US Economy Could Double In Size. Overnight

Notes From the Field B James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  June 2, 2026

It was September 2006— roughly two years before the 2008 financial crisis annihilated much of the global economy. But Greece was already in deep trouble.  Unemployment was hovering around 9%. Youth unemployment was a staggering 25%. And government finances were in the toilet, with official debt-to-GDP at 100% and annual budget deficits at nearly 8% of GDP.

The deficit issue was especially troubling; as part of the Eurozone, Greece was legally obliged to keep its annual budget deficit below 3% of GDP. But the government was simply incapable of doing so.

US Treasury Pays 3.7%, Violates Every AML Regulation On The Books

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man) May 28, 2026

Opening a bank account in the Land of the Free today feels like applying for a top secret security clearance.  Banks often require multiple forms of ID, proof of address, proof of employment, plus detailed explanations of where your money came from, what you plan to do with it, and who you plan to send it to.

And that's just to get the account open. Once you've actually been deemed worthy of handing over your money to them, the surveillance really kicks in.

Treasury Yields Are At 20-Year Highs. And Almost Nobody Wants Them

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  May 26, 2026

There are pools of capital in the world so large that they cannot be parked just anywhere.  Pension funds, foreign governments and central banks, giant commercial banks— they are collectively sitting on tens of trillions of dollars worth of capital that they have to invest in a safe, stable asset.

The stock market doesn’t really work— it’s far too volatile. Real estate doesn’t really work either— it’s not liquid.

The BBC wants to Make the Taliban Great Again

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man) May 22, 2026

This week the British Broadcasting Corporation flew halfway around the world to find a sad story that it could blame on (1) America and (2) climate change.  Their drama opens in Afghanistan’s Ghor province, where fathers line up before dawn at a dusty square hoping to find a day’s work. One man weeps that he is preparing to sell his seven-year-old daughter to feed the rest of his children.

The reporter then explains how nearly five million Afghans are food deprived; she goes on to describe graveyards of dead infants, and then tells the story of another man who already sold his five-year-old daughter for about $3,200.

How To Lose Billions Of Dollars: Trust The US Government

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man) May 19, 2026

America was at the top of the world in 1955.  World War II had been over for ten years. Soldiers had come home to GI Bill mortgages in brand-new suburbs. Detroit was building cars faster than anywhere else on the planet.

And the economy was booming— in fact that year a milkshake-machine salesman named Ray Kroc had just franchised his first McDonald's on a roadside in Illinois.