Author Archive
More evidence of a green bubble
Monday, April 22nd, 2013In 2009 I predicted that the Obama administration and Congress would create two bubbles to replace the recently burst housing bubble: a green bubble and an automotive bubble. A report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that "green" jobs were produced four times as fast as all other types ...
Patton Oswalt on humanity
Tuesday, April 16th, 2013Comedian Patton Oswalt echoes my feelings about humanity, and expresses them better than I probably would have, in response to the bombings at the Boston Marathon: Boston. Fucking horrible. I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity." But I was wrong. I don't know what's ...
Fox has no legitimate claim over Jayne Cobb hats
Thursday, April 11th, 2013Blastr and ThinkGeek report that 20th Century Fox Television has sent cease & desist letters to Etsy users to ban them from producing homemade versions of the hat that Jayne Cobb received from his mother on the short-lived Fox show Firefly. This might be the most absurd example of intellectual property ...
Quote of the day
Friday, April 5th, 2013"I want to state, as forcefully as possible, that the War on Drugs is deeply, irredeemably immoral; that it corrodes the minds and souls of those who prosecute it, and creates incentives for bad behavior that those living under its contours have always and will always find too powerful to ...
How dare corporations make money by giving people what they want!
Monday, April 1st, 2013Michael Moss, author of Salt Sugar Fat, recently gave an interview on the Daily Show about the scientific precision with which junk food manufacturers design the flavors and textures of foods and drinks, and how it all smacks of a nefarious ploy to make money off of Americans by destroying ...
How is anyone surprised by the Democrats?
Saturday, March 9th, 2013Liberal commentators all around the internet, both professional and amateur, were fuming earlier this week in response to Sen. Rand Paul's filibuster to block the confirmation of John Brennan for CIA director. But interestingly, many of them weren't going after Paul but rather were expressing disappointment and shame at liberal ...
The Saturday Night Live solution to high medical bills
Wednesday, February 27th, 2013I have an audio file of a 1992 Saturday Night Live skit in which Dana Carvey plays Ross Perot discussing some of his proposals to save the United States from financial ruin. One of the many funny passages goes: Let's take the issue of waste. You know, I find it fascinating ...
On emergency contraceptives, pharmacists, and individual rights
Tuesday, January 29th, 2013A lot of people seem to be confused about what rights a pharmacist has to refuse to fill certain prescriptions, particularly the morning-after pill or other emergency contraceptives, and what things a customer can force a pharmacist to do, so I'll explain it here. Any consideration of rights or justice must ...
Oh, but in a libertarian society private courts would convict and imprison innocent people for profit, unchecked by any higher authority
Monday, December 24th, 2012A Justice Department review of FBI forensics cases has revealed widespread and prolonged malfeasance that resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of many innocent defendants. Thousands of criminal cases at the state and local level may have relied on exaggerated testimony or false forensic evidence to convict defendants of murder, rape ...
Blatant, misleading propaganda about Obamacare
Wednesday, December 19th, 2012Via my Facebook feed (where else?), I came across this inane guide from Health Care For American Now called How to talk about Obamacare during the holidays. Almost every point it makes is either false or interpreted in an inaccurate, pro-government way. Health care is too expensive. Everyone agrees with that. ...
The coming ban on semi-automatic rifles
Monday, December 17th, 2012I expect Congress and President Obama to pass some form of ban or stricter federal law against semi-automatic weapons and/or "assault rifles" in the next few months. I'm sure many Americans strongly support such a ban now, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School murders, if they didn't before. It's easy ...
Tyrants overthrown vs. innocents killed
Sunday, December 16th, 2012This Tom Toles political cartoon from 2010 is making the rounds in the Twittersphere in support of strict gun-control laws in the wake of the Newtown, CT elementary school murders. The content and the message of this comic are so misdirected and disingenuous that they could not have been unintentional. ...
Disarm the President
Saturday, December 15th, 2012According to this incredibly depressing and disturbing infographic, 62 pieces of human excrement have committed mass shootings in the United States since 1982, killing and injuring a total of 978 people. That's over 32 a year. Most of the guns used were semi-automatic, and 75% were purchased legally. All of ...
Adam Gopnik is complicit in the genocides of the 20th century
Friday, December 14th, 2012Adam Gopnik, writing in the New Yorker, makes an eloquent while still outraged and despairing plea for the United States to enact much stricter gun control laws to prevent massacres like that in Newtown, Connecticut. I think he makes a major logical and philosophical error, though, when he makes gun-rights ...
Liberal hypocrisy on the economy
Friday, December 14th, 2012We’ve been hearing for four years how the poor economy and slow recovery under Barack Obama are not his fault because George W. Bush screwed it up so badly for eight years before him. I don’t doubt that’s true, just as I don’t doubt Obama’s and the Democrats’ policies are ...
Arianna Huffington on short-term solutions to long-term problems
Thursday, December 13th, 2012I liked this column by Arianna Huffington about the fiscal cliff face-off and the irrelevance it has to our deeper, long-term problems of employment and growth: 'Slightly Above Zero': A Slogan for Our Age of Diminished Expectations. I never thought of her as an astute political commentator, but this is ...
Right-to-work laws are un-libertarian
Wednesday, December 12th, 2012A local (Michigan) radio show was recently discussing the right-to-work law being debated in the state legislature. One pro-union caller said (paraphrasing), “It’s simple math. When a union represents the employees of a company or of an industry, the employees earn higher wages because the union has major bargaining power ...
NCAA admits its student-athlete "promotion" clause is not required and not backed by law
Tuesday, December 11th, 2012According to an email that Sports By Brooks obtained, the clause in the NCAA student-athlete eligibility form that authorizes the NCAA to use the student-athlete's name or picture in promotional materials is not required for the student-athlete's eligibility, and it would not be legal for the NCAA to make it ...
David Brin on freedom, governments, and the internet
Sunday, December 9th, 2012In his post A Threat to the Internet as We Know It, science-fiction author, scientist, and futurist David Brin writes about the recent United Nations summit and the threats to internet freedom that it portended: A United Nations summit has adopted confidential recommendations proposed by China that will help network providers ...
Greenwald on the deification of Democrats and villification of Republicans
Monday, December 3rd, 2012Glenn Greenwald's column Obama: a GOP president should have rules limiting the kill list must be my favorite political writing that I've read in years. It expresses why I'm so frustrated and fed up with liberals and their Democratic politicians better than I ever could have, so I'll just quote ...
“Insider trading” is not wrong and shouldn’t be illegal
Sunday, December 2nd, 2012Federal prosecutors in New York recently charged hedge fund manager Mathew Martoma with using illegal "inside tips" to help his hedge fund make $276 million in illegal profits or avoided losses. He received some unpublished data about the ineffectiveness of an Alzheimer's disease drug, so he sold all possible stock ...
Man, my Facebook feed is fucking infuriating
Saturday, November 10th, 2012That's only partly because I have an anger management problem. My main problem with Republocrats is that they selectively ignore the bad aspects of their policies and politicians just so they can defend their side against the other side at all costs and get their side elected at all costs. By ...
Greenwald on free speech restrictions
Thursday, October 18th, 2012Throughout history, it has often been the case that today's "hate speech" becomes tomorrow's enlightenment. Today's "incitement" becomes tomorrow's righteous subversion of unjust authority and flawed orthodoxies. Add to all that the ignoble tendency to object to—or even recognize the existence of—repression only when it affects one directly...and it's clear that ...
Quote of the day
Saturday, October 13th, 2012Chris Floyd on Obama's beloved Pakistan drone program: [W]hen you vote for one of the factions in the imperial power bloc—Democrat or Republican—this is what you are supporting. You are empowering, enabling and associating yourself with an extremist regime that visits bin Laden-like terror on innocent people, day after day, night ...
As Chicago teachers strike, parents turn to agorism to educate their children
Tuesday, September 18th, 2012The Chicago public school teachers' union strike is still ongoing, so I can only assume the agorism and community cooperation described in this article remain accurate or have even expanded: In the wee hours Sunday, she [Sarah Liebman] worked the phones to figure out somewhere her 4-year-old son could spend the ...
On the duty to buy health insurance
Saturday, July 14th, 2012Tina Rulli, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, and David Wendler published a column in the Journal of the American Medical Association titled The Moral Duty to Buy Health Insurance. Inspired by the recent Supreme Court Approval of (most of) the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA; "Obamacare"), its thesis is that ...
Good for the Southeastern Conference!
Tuesday, June 12th, 2012In college athletics, the Southeastern Conference has been lenient in penalizing student-athletes who fail a marijuana test. The SEC might not punish a player at all for one failed test, and it might be a third, fourth, or even fifth failed test before a player is suspended or banned from ...
The social function of price rationing
Monday, May 21st, 2012I liked this article about marginal pairs and the price system by Daniel J. Sanchez, especially the last section, "The Social Function of Price Rationing": Why is it important that markets clear? Why is the market-price system, characterized as it is by competitive bidding, important? Of all the possible standards for ...
As expected, CISPA will pass and violate our online privacy
Friday, April 20th, 2012It's sad but not surprising to see that the successor to SOPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA, H.R. 3523), is gaining support in the House of Representatives and seems likely to pass there. I had little doubt this would happen, but the quickness with which Congress has ...
Peter Gray’s worldwide “unschooling” survey
Thursday, April 12th, 2012Peter Gray has written an absolutely fascinating series of articles about the alternative form of home-based education called "unschooling" and the families who practice it. Gray is a professor of psychology who runs the blag "Freedom to Learn" at Psychology Today, in which he often writes about education from an ...
Bob Murphy interview on the Peter Schiff Show
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012I liked several things Bob Murphy had to say in his recent appearance on the Peter Schiff Show podcast, which was guest-hosted by Tom Woods. The two main topics they discussed were the contradictions between Keynesians and Austrians even though they have the same empirical data and the justice of ...
The Hunger Games and other dystopias
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012Because I want to see the movie soon but want to read the book first, I'm finally getting around to reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It's set in a dystopian North America several hundred years in the future, as explained in this spoiler-free passage from the first chapter: He ...
Adam Davidson on Standard Motor Products
Tuesday, March 27th, 2012I loved this EconTalk podcast with guest Adam Davidson, who co-founded NPR's Planet Money and writes the It's the Economy column for the New York Times Magazine. The subject of the podcast was Davidson's recent article in The Atlantic, Making It in America, about the Greenville, SC factory of Standard ...
How much good have Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns done?
Wednesday, March 7th, 2012I honestly don't know. I wish it were a lot, but I think it's optimistic to say they've even done a moderate amount of good for the cause of liberty in this country as a whole. I voted for him in my state's primary just to try to help out ...
Paul Butler: Jurors need to know that they can say ‘No’
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012I loved this column in the New York Times by Paul Butler: Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No: If you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote “not guilty” — even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold ...
The problem with science funding is that it comes from the government
Sunday, February 19th, 2012Much writing about science funding and policy reveals how a consistent libertarian morality and an understanding of basic economics could add valuable insight into otherwise vacuous writing. It also shows how handicapped scientists and science writers are by being stuck in the mindset that government should fund science research and ...
Red Hat’s open-source, democratic work culture
Saturday, February 11th, 2012I was really intrigued by this article about the culture that Red Hat, a Linux-based open-source software company, fosters in its work environment. Because Red Hat is a pure open source company, its culture is something between a democracy and a commune. This comes from the nature of open source, where ...
Michael F. Cannon on Susan G. Komen and Planned Parenthood
Sunday, February 5th, 2012I liked Cato's Michael F. Cannon's take on the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation's decision to suspend its partnership with and funding of Planned Parenthood: First, this controversy provides a delightful contrast to the Obama administration’s decision to force all Americans to purchase contraceptives and subsidize abortions. The Susan G. ...
Quote of the day
Saturday, February 4th, 2012The very same faction that pretended for years to be so distraught by Bush’s mere eavesdropping on and detention of accused Terrorists without due process is now perfectly content to have their own President kill accused Terrorists without due process, even when those targeted are their fellow citizens. —Glenn Greenwald, on ...
Maybe free speech is less popular than I thought
Friday, February 3rd, 2012I had a bizarre experience yesterday: I encountered two people who were wrong on the internet who asserted that words can harm people and so their (mis)use should be punishable by law. I don't mean using libel or slander to harm someone's reputation, which should not be considered crimes anyway. ...
PCIPA: another internet-censoring, privacy-violating bill that goes overboard
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012I was impressed by this article in The Atlantic by Conor Friedersdorf about the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (PCIPA), The Legislation That Could Kill Internet Privacy for Good. This article was written on August 1, 2011, and apparently the bill, H.R. 1981, is almost a year ...
How long will the SOPA protests be successful?
Sunday, January 29th, 2012In my more cynical moods, I think that Westerners' complacency in political and economic matters and their comfort levels with life in general will make their recent victories against internet censorship mere footnotes to the history of State encroachment into our online lives. In other words, lawmakers, lobbyists, and other ...
Two recent political sports stories
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012Boston Bruins' goaltender and last year's Conn Smythe Trophy winner (Stanley Cup Playoffs MVP) Tim Thomas declined to visit the White House to celebrate his team's Stanley Cup championship last season. His reasons were basically political, as he detailed in a Facebook message: I believe the Federal government has grown out ...
Quote of the day
Sunday, January 22nd, 2012"People don’t want ‘a better clothes dryer’, they want to be able to spend less time washing clothes and thus more time writing novels or playing with their children or fishing or what have you." —Z. Caceres on the benefits and desirability of economic growth
Links for an ending week
Friday, January 20th, 2012President Obama deserves praise for opposing the SOPA/PIPA bills in the House and Senate, respectively, but, of course, in true Republocrat fashion, deserves further criticism for qualifying that with, "That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors ...
Union-negotiated protections are apparently only okay when people agree with the outcomes
Friday, January 6th, 2012Libertarians and anarchists who don't add the "left-" moniker or some other adjective advertising how pro-union or pro-"worker" they are often get accused of opposing unions or unionization in general. Few misrepresentations of libertarians are farther from the truth. I have found myself to be quite pro-union, especially when looking ...
Hypocrites silent as Obama authorizes military detention of American citizens
Monday, January 2nd, 2012One of the most unfortunate aspects of America's democratic process and its current state here at the beginning of 2012 is the nearly compete absence of discussion of some central issues by most people, along with their failure to acknowledge that those issues even exist and their complete hypocrisy regarding ...
Quote of the day
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011How do politicians who arrive in Washington, D.C. as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires? How do they miraculously accumulate wealth at a rate faster than the rest of us? How do politicians' stock portfolios outperform even the best hedge-fund managers'? I answered the question in that ...
More of Obama’s green bubble: subsidizing Wall Street to buy Chinese solar panels
Saturday, December 10th, 2011I liked this column by T.J. Rodgers in the Wall Street Journal, Subsidizing Wall Street to Buy Chinese Solar Panels. It explains how American consumers are not the ones who benefit from the Obama administration's subsidies on the purchase of household solar panels. It's a nice, short economics lesson on ...
Stop the Stop Online Piracy Act!
Saturday, November 12th, 2011The latest attempt from the parasites in Washington to limit the freedom of the internet and all of the benefits that stem from it is called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Its more official, full name is Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation ...