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.

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.”

Gun Policy Costs, Equality and Property Rights, & Minarchism (26m) – Editor’s Break 094

Editor’s Break 094 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: whether homicides, suicides, et cetera, are a valid consideration for the costs of liberal gun policy; the achievement of wealth inequality in a society where property rights are secure; the status of minarchism, or minimal statism, as a libertarian political philosophy; and more.

We Need More, Not Less, Separation of State and Journalism

The rise of free content and ease of entry into the field has us getting more “journalism” … but less real information.  Opinion writers (like me) are a dime a dozen. Amateur stringers and glorified copy editors cover five-point-lede “hard news” on the cheap. But the shock troops of news, full-time investigative journalists, have to learn the ropes and they have to be paid. That’s not happening. The result: Many important things get missed and many things that aren’t missed get only insufficient,  inaccurate — or worst, sponsor viewpoint biased — coverage.