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BUILD THE SWITCH Ok. I see the “just flip the switch” thing a lot now from the right. But while I’m sympathetic to the desire for law and order, and agree that is a direction worth pursuing, there’s an illusion that should be addressed. Leftists think you can get money without working for it. Just flip the switch on the money printer. Just flip the switch to tax the rich. But in reality, resources are scarce. Rightists often similarly think you can get political power without working for it. Just flip the switch to throw the criminals in jail. But in reality, votes (or political supporters in general) are scarce just like resources are. So the hard part is the invisible part of building that political base. Why were those criminal gangs on the streets of El Salvador? Because they had a drug dealer business model, and because Western leftists were paid by NGOs to support them. They were actually politically powerful. Thus, what was needed to disrupt them? A better political business model, one that actually generated more political support than the legacy model. The Internet was critical for this, as it allowed Bukele to build an audience with social media, align with Western centrists, conservatives, and libertarians via Bitcoin, recruit tech companies to El Salvador, and directly rebut anarchy-spreading Western leftist NGOs through a channel they couldn’t censor. There’s way more to it than that, but the point is: there was no switch that Bukele inherited to flip, anymore than Elon inherited the switch to launch a SpaceX rocket. Bukele essentially had to build a new state from scratch, via the Internet. A new state that was loyal to the people of El Salvador rather than the criminal gangs. This was nontrivial. He had to build the switch.