Reason Roundtable, 03/23/23
Source: Reason
“A Thursday Bonus Reason Roundtable! Live From Reason Weekend in California.” (03/23/23)
Source: Reason
“A Thursday Bonus Reason Roundtable! Live From Reason Weekend in California.” (03/23/23)
Source: JimBovard.com
by James Bovard
“The Iraq War was spawned by a deadly combination of political depravity and media complicity. Unfortunately, on the twentieth anniversary of the war, both elements of that conspiracy are being whitewashed. Instead, politicians and their pundit accomplices are prattling as if the Iraq war was a well-intentioned mistake, not a crime against humanity.” (03/23/23)
https://jimbovard.com/blog/2023/03/23/was-the-iraq-war-the-biggest-con-of-the-21st-century/
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Tara Raddle
“The entire world has now had a taste of the Love Canal experience. Schools and businesses were shuttered. Livelihoods were lost. The threads that make up a happy, healthy life were torn apart; book clubs and happy hours and birthday parties all abandoned in favor of sanitizing groceries and worrying about how to stop an invisible killer. Worried mothers once again took to the streets with their children; masked preschoolers holding up signs about how they (or their parents) worried that death was imminent. Mental health services took a backseat. Preventative screenings at the doctor’s office took a backseat. Around the world, an invisible threat took salience over the thousand known threats.” (03/23/23)
https://brownstone.org/articles/covid-disaster-foreshadowed-with-love-canal/
Source: Search Engine Journal
“Mozilla announced the founding of an open source initiative for developing AI that puts transparency, accountability and trustworthiness at the forefront of the open source AI products they will build to challenge Microsoft, OpenAI and Google. Many of the most important software products that make modern life possible, like Android, WordPress, PHP, Nginx and Apache are all open source. … Mozilla pledged $30 million dollars for developing an alternative to the closed systems developed by big technology companies that put profits first. … Mozilla is a non-profit organization that builds browsers, email clients, a VPN, email privacy apps, and other products that are free, open-source, and privacy-first.” (03/23/23)
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mozilla-open-source-ai/482981/
Source: The Hill
“Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave discuss journalist Seymour Hersh’s latest reporting on the Nord Stream pipelines attack.” (03/23/23)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/3914221-rising-march-23-2023/
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Olivia Rondeau
“The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has followed through on their plan to turn millions of lawful gun owners into felons in the name of ‘public safety’ by reclassifying pistols with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, effectively expanding the unconstitutional national gun registry. Stabilizing braces are devices that can be attached to pistols to aid the user in balancing their arm. Originally created to help people with disabilities, the accessory is now more popular amongst mainstream shooters who use them to adapt pistols into guns that can be shot from the shoulder, which has been legal to do in the past. Now, there’s a big hoop to jump through if you don’t want to be hit with fines and/or jail time.” (03/23/23)
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Kaan Goktas
“In the early morning hours of February 6, 2023, Turkey and northern Syria were shaken by two major earthquakes in quick succession. … Tens of thousands of buildings collapsed at the time of the earthquake and many more in the hours that followed in aftershocks. Countless people lost their lives in the most critical first 48 hours after the earthquake due to the delay in the response of the Turkish state authorities; the failure to deliver aid and rescue teams in time; the lack of coordination between existing teams; the collapse of the mobile phone infrastructure; and the ban on military participation in search and rescue operations – despite the presence of two large military units in the earthquake zone. The last of these was largely due to political Islamist dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s paranoia about a military coup.” (03/23/23)
Source: American Institute for Economic Research
“Peter C. Earle On The Death of Silicon Valley Bank.” (03/23/23)
https://www.aier.org/article/words-numbers-peter-c-earle-on-the-death-of-silicon-valley-bank/
Source: Orange County Register
by Veronique de Rugy
“The controversy over proposed state and federal bans of Chinese-produced apps has sparked debate about the wisdom of country-of-origin bans in general. On the surface, banning TikTok and other controversial products coming from China appears reasonable. But the deeper you dig, the less these ideas make sense. This is especially true when bans are based on national security concerns and talked about in the context of ‘decoupling’ our economy from China’s. National security is important, of course, but abusing this argument to blindly close off America to Chinese imports may isolate us in ways that could weaken our security. This is true even if one agrees that China engages in forced technology transfer, forced labor and other terrible behaviors.” (03/23/23)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“In the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, U.S. officials decided to cover all the uninsured deposits in both banks — that is, deposits that exceeded the $250,000 insurance coverage of the FDIC. The belief was that failing to cover those uninsured deposits ran the risk that bank runs could spread to more banks. Covering those uninsured deposits was intended to calm depositors in other banks, which would thereby make more bank runs less likely. … The dark irony here is that by covering uninsured deposits at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, officials might actually be encouraging bank runs on an industry-wide basis in the future. That’s because everyone knows that the federal government does not have anywhere near the money to cover all the money on deposit in U.S. banks.” (03/23/23)
https://www.fff.org/2023/03/23/bailing-out-uninsured-deposits-encourages-bank-runs/