Any organised society that combines a certain degree of individual freedom with a functioning state ultimately begins to converge towards some form of communism.
I do not mean that every society inevitably becomes the Soviet Union. I mean something more basic: there is a persistent tendency within free societies to redistribute, equalise and socialise ever larger parts of life. And I suspect that tendency cannot ultimately be eliminated, because it is rooted in human nature.
Unfortunately, so is the tendency to be fools.
People like the idea of being rich without having to earn it. They like status that has never been deserved. Everyone wants to be important. Everyone wants influence. Everyone dreams, at least occasionally, of discovering the pot of gold, meeting the white knight, or finding the magical solution that removes every unpleasant problem from life.
It is a natural instinct.
Our culture has been documenting it for centuries.
The sheer number of books, films, plays and other stories built around the same basic narrative is difficult to ignore: the poor, downtrodden but virtuous outsider rises from the gutter, overcomes the established order, acquires power and wealth, and ultimately humiliates those who had everything to begin with.
We love this story because we want it to be true.
And because we want it to be true, we become remarkably susceptible to narratives designed to exploit precisely that desire.
This is where the machinery begins.
Those on the receiving end of these schemes hope for the big slammer—the one deal, investment, subsidy, government programme or technological miracle that finally sets them up for life. They are waiting for their white knight.
Those on the giving end frequently do not even realise what is happening to them. They are persuaded that their money is being directed towards some noble purpose, some historic transformation, some future in which everything will be cleaner, fairer, richer and better.
Meanwhile, they are being milked.
And because the extraction happens gradually, it is remarkably easy not to notice.
This is one of the great tricks of redistributionist politics. Nobody has to announce that they are taking your money. They merely construct an elaborate moral narrative around the transfer. You are not being charged. You are investing in the future. You are not being taxed. You are saving the planet. You are not subsidising somebody else’s fantasy. You are participating in a historic transformation.
The mechanism remains the same.
Eventually, however, all such systems encounter the same inconvenient arithmetic.
As Margaret Thatcher put it, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.
The uncomfortable part is that we ran out some time ago.
What we are dealing with now is the aftermath.
It has a name.
Inflation.
Prices rising faster than people can adjust their lives. Purchasing power being quietly confiscated. The accumulated cost of years of promises, subsidies, interventions and politically convenient spending finally appearing on the bill.
This is not an accident.
It is the price of believing that resources can be redistributed indefinitely, that wealth can be created by decree, that somebody else can always pay, and that every desirable outcome can be purchased without somebody first producing the wealth required to pay for it.
We have spent a long time pretending otherwise.
Now the invoice has arrived.
Call it whatever you like.
I call it the price of Green Communism.
Enjoy.
https://climaterealism.com/2026/08/the-green-climate-fund-ran-short-of-other-peoples-money/