Category: Blogs

The official Everything-Voluntary.com blog.

E-Cigarettes: Media Bury the Lede, We Get to Bury the Bodies

Thomas L. Knapp

Nearly every national headline on the story emphasizes “vaping-related” illnesses and deaths.  Nearly every first paragraph associates Walmart’s decision with those illnesses and deaths. “Burying the lede” is the journalistic malpractice of failing to mention the most important facts of a story in the first (“lead” or “lede”) paragraph. That’s what’s going on here.

The Fault Is Not in Our Stuff But in Ourselves

Bryan Caplan

Bruce Sacerdote‘s NBER Working Paper, “Fifty Years of Growth in American Consumption, Income, and Wages” provides a nice update on the measurement of CPI Bias.  The punchline should be obvious, but it’s great to hear such an eminent economist say it: “Meaningful growth in consumption for below median income families has occurred even in a prolonged period of increasing income inequality, increasing consumption inequality and a decreasing share of national income accruing to labor.”

The US Navy’s Attitude About Releasing UFO Videos is More Disturbing Than the UFO Videos

Thomas L. Knapp

I don’t know, and am not going to claim to know, whether we’re being visited by extraterrestrials and if so what they’re up to while they’re here. I don’t have strong opinions on which sighting and abduction stories are true and which aren’t.  I’m just exactly smart enough to understand that I don’t have the information I’d need to reach such conclusions. What I do know is that it shouldn’t be the government’s prerogative to conceal such information from the rest of us indefinitely, tell us tall tales about weather balloons and swamp gas, and offer lame “national security” excuses when caught out.

Don’t Need Law to Dislike Something

Kent McManigal

We all have our own likes and dislikes. This means everyone likes some things other people dislike; sometimes the likes and dislikes are passionate and the disagreements get rather heated. There’s a secret trick I discovered, which seems to be unseen by most people; one which seems nearly impossible for them to even consider. Here it is, presented for (maybe) the first time you’ve ever heard it: It’s OK to dislike something without wanting a law to ban or control it.

Malevolence and Misunderstanding

Bryan Caplan

I am glad to report that I have lost few friends in my life.  But as far as I can tell, all of the rare exceptions were driven by misunderstandings.  Someone spoke rashly, which hurt someone’s feelings, which led to retaliation, which led to more hurt feelings, and so on.  Or, someone acted as they thought proper, but someone else perceived otherwise, which led to offense, which led to counter-offense.  The same goes for all the people I know well.  They’ve lost many friends, but years later they flounder to explain the casus belli.