Violating the NAP, Libertarian Planet, & Democracy and Minorities (19m) – Editor’s Break 098

Editor’s Break 098 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: whether one should violate the non-aggression principle to save somebody’s life, and what that says about the non-aggression principle; how a newcomer can come to own property in a place where all property is already owned; the effect of democratic government for minority groups; and more.

The US Makes One Too Many Parties to the Spratly Spat

No fewer than six states — China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Phillipines, Malaysia, and Brunei — assert territorial claims over all or part of the (largely uninhabited) Spratly archipelago.  To which, if any, of those states do the Spratlys “belong?” That’s for them to work out between themselves, through arbitration and mediation or maybe even war. The US government, neither numbering itself among those claimants nor having any plausible basis upon which to do so if it wished to, needs to butt out.

What Do Judges Maximize?

Public choice analysts did not develop a standard way of analyzing the actions of judges. For the most part, judges were simply ignored. Of course, if the judges were elected, they could be analyzed in the same way as any other elected officials, but in regard to appointed judges, especially those appointed for life terms, as the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are, public choice had little to say.

Sleep Research Shows How Homework is Harmful

“More than 70% of high school students average less than 8 hours of sleep,” according to an October 1 research letter in JAMA Pediatrics (“Dose-Dependent Associations Between Sleep Duration and Unsafe Behaviors Among US High School Students”), “falling short of the 8 to 10 hours that adolescents need for optimal health. Insufficient sleep negatively affects learning and development and acutely alters judgment, particularly among youths.”