When a politician declares a “war on X” for any X, deceit has already been the first and most celebrated recruit. It is the superpower of politicians.
Author: Papa Libertarian
Malthusian Misery versus Abundance
Much of our political debate can be described as a battle between two competing ideas. Must my gain always come at your expense, or is it possible for both of us to benefit from the same voluntary exchange?
Shan Gao, Huangdi Yuan
Some folks believe that we can’t possibly have liberty unless we somehow push a button and make all governments vanish. But why limit our imagination to those stifled and over-governed experiences which most of us in “developed” countries have inured ourselves?
Change Change Change
Today, we are again in the midst of a sea of change. It appears to this old geezer that the “generation gap” is stronger than ever, as younger and older folks have rather different mindsets on many issues.
News Fakery
With all the attention paid to “fake news,” it is well to remember that an astonishingly large amount of news is, if not outright fakery, of very low quality. Michael Chrichton lamented this in his Why Speculate? speech.
Disaster By Design
Much research of human beings tends to focus on aggregates and averages. But humans come in various shapes and sizes; they have various skills and weaknesses; they do not all travel the same road at the same pace at the same age. One would not issue the same size of clothing to every first-grader; it could come up short on some, and sag on others. Why, then, must they read from the same page of the same primers? Why do the same single-digit addition, from the same page of the same textbook?
Handwriting On The Wall
This famous phrase refers to a story told in Daniel 5:1-30. The actual phrase was “mene, mene, tekel, parsin” – all three of those words referring to units of currency.
A Country is Not a House
Any time we have a discussion of borders, and who should be able to cross these lines, somebody will say something like “You advocate open borders? I will break your locks, enter your home, and sleep with your daughter.”
Sealed Borders Are Not Gated Communities
“A sealed border is like a gated community” if and only if that gated community were a fortress owned by an autocratic tyrant.
Firearms and Peace
Personal violence has declined substantially in Europe from 1200-2010. The conventional wisdom is that the state’s monopoly on violence is the cause of this happy result. I find some evidence that does not support this hypothesis.