In a sense, Scott Sumner is completely right. If you measure overreaction using the ratio of the reaction to the actual harm, then the Covid response probably doesn’t even make the U.S. “top 100.” After all, many government crusades target “problems” that cause zero harm. Or, like immigration, negative harm. In another sense, however, Scott is completely wrong.
Category: Blogs
The official Everything-Voluntary.com blog.
If You Want More of Something, Subsidize It
I’m agnostic on the relationship between population and climate change, but I can’t help notice a contradiction when prominent progressives who claim to believe that overpopulation is a problem simultaneously support paying Americans to have more kids.
Best to Let People Make Own Choices
I love people. I also know that humans are deeply flawed. This combination explains why I’m a libertarian.
How Freedom Is Lost
The cycle is repeated from age to age with each new generation.
Is It Corruption?
Is the mafia corrupt? You might wish it served to protect your property, widows, and orphans– after all, that’s what the mafia would claim it does– but in reality, it steals your money, threatens you with violence, violates your rights, and murders people.
No, President Biden, We’re Not Your “Customers”
Portraying government as a business and you as its “customer” ranks right up there with “the consent of the governed” on the list of fictions contrived to confer “legitimacy” on an institution that does its best to run every aspect of your life, at your expense, whether you consent or not.
Privatize Archaeology!
When I was touring Mexico last year, my family stayed at a virtually vacant hotel on a vast estate. The hospitable staff, with little to do thanks to Covid, gave us a grand tour of the grounds. Along the way, they pointed out a bunch of minor Mayan artifacts. And in hushed tones, they asked […]
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Cryptocurrency and the Shocking Revelation That White Supremacists Like Money
“White supremacists embraced cryptocurrency early in its development, ” Michael Edison Hayden and Megan Squire report at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog, “and in some cases produced million-dollar profits through the technology, reshaping the racist right in radical ways.” I have no doubt the claim is true. What’s also true is a note several paragraphs into the piece: “Nothing is inherently criminal or extreme about it, and most of its users have no connections to the extreme far right. ”
New York City’s Bryant Park Was a Hot Mess. Then It Was Privatized.
When government does things, most everything costs more and is lower quality.
Joe Biden, Let’s Not Go to War
Here’s a good idea: let’s not go to war against Russia. Let’s not even rattle a saber at Russia (or China, for that matter) because even wars that no one really wants can be blundered into. Many losers would be left in the aftermath, even if nuclear weapons were kept out of sight, but no one would win. So as that smart Defense Department computer says in the 1983 movie WarGames, “The only winning move is not to play.”