139: The Great Labour Shortage of 2025
Nebraska is FAFO
Big thanks to David L for upgrading to a paid subscription. This newsletter will remain free in so far as Canada remains free, so to speak. Upgrading to a paid subscription does allow us to prepare for potential conflict. Relatedly our issue yesterday was the first installment of a kind of choose your own adventure which we’ll publish along with our usual mix of current affairs, commentary, and exploration of ideological trends. Thanks to those who posted comments. Please interact with our publication and share our work to influence future topics and manifestos.
A Shortage of InfoSec Common Sense
What happens when encrypted messaging becomes a vector for state embarrassment?
Today’s political scandal doesn’t come from a whistleblower or leaked document—it comes from a Signal group chat. In a surreal twist, senior members of the Trump administration—including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and VP J.D. Vance—used an encrypted Signal thread to coordinate secret military strikes in Yemen. The only problem? They accidentally added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
This isn’t just a gaffe. It’s a breach of national security, an indictment of their digital hygiene, and a powerful reminder that the tools of secrecy are only as effective as the people using them. The thread—chillingly named “Houthi PC Small Group”—included sensitive plans involving weapons, timing, and specific targets. Goldberg, to his credit, chose not to publish the details, likely preventing a diplomatic or military escalation.
This episode reveals something deeper about authority in the digital age: the line between power and performance is razor thin. Encrypted apps like Signal are meant to offer security and trust, but when used recklessly, they amplify risk rather than reduce it. It’s not the tool that failed—it’s the people in charge.
And while we’re on the subject of Signal—used responsibly, it's one of the best tools for organizing, collaborating, and resisting. That’s why we’re inviting you to join the Metaviews Signal group, via our concierge. It’s a space for readers of this newsletter to discuss stories like this one, explore power in the digital age, and build community around shared curiosity and critique.
A Shortage of Labour and Funds in Nebraska
Sometimes the cracks in a system show up first where we least expect them. Nebraska, long a symbol of stoic Americana and agricultural strength, is now revealing the fragile underpinnings of a broader national crisis.
The state is facing a nearly half-billion-dollar budget shortfall. Simultaneously, it’s dealing with acute labor shortages that are choking core sectors of its economy. Agriculture. Meatpacking. Construction. Health care. All industries that depend on the very migrant labor that national policy has systematically pushed out or kept from entering.
It’s a textbook case of FAFO—fuck around and find out. For decades, politicians have demonized migrants while quietly benefiting from their labor. Now Nebraska, like many other red states, is discovering what happens when that labor disappears. Food production slows. Housing projects stall. Tax revenue drops. Costs rise. Services falter. And suddenly, the state’s books don’t balance.
Nebraska is not unique. It’s just early.
Across the U.S., labor markets are tightening. Immigrant labor is drying up. Birth rates are falling. And the workforce participation rate, while recovering from the pandemic, is still too low to meet the economy’s demands. Meanwhile, governors like Nebraska’s Jim Pillen scramble to fill budget holes while avoiding the obvious solution: restoring migrant labor pipelines and rethinking immigration not as a threat, but as infrastructure.
In Nebraska, over 50,000 jobs are currently vacant. That’s not a hiccup. That’s a structural problem. And it’s a preview. Other states—Texas, Florida, Georgia, California—are already feeling it too. And yet, the dominant narrative remains stuck in nativist delusions, imagining that mass deportations or wall-building will somehow yield economic growth.
Let’s be blunt: this is a political crisis disguised as an economic one. The refusal to acknowledge the role of migrant labor, the weaponization of immigration policy, and the ideological war on diversity are not just morally bankrupt—they’re fiscally reckless.
The irony is hard to miss. Nebraska, a state built on waves of immigration and reliant on global trade, now finds itself in a self-inflicted crunch. And its leaders still can’t say the quiet part out loud: that they need immigrants. That without them, the economy stalls. That without them, the budget breaks.
Other states are next. FAFO is not just a Nebraska story. It’s the story of a nation caught between ideological fantasy and economic reality. And the longer this denial persists, the sharper the consequences will be.
What’s happening in Nebraska isn’t failure. It’s feedback. Will anyone listen?
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Metaviews subscriber Bill Fox joined us on the Red-Tory podcast: