“Once you admit the notable prevalence and grave danger of crypto-Communist politicians during a particular era, there is a clear-cut contemporary implication: A notable share of current and would-be leaders who say they aren’t Communists are probably lying. If you’re living through this era, this raises a thorny question: ‘How do we identify the crypto-Communists before it’s too late?’ Needless to say, you can’t just publicly ask them, because they’ll lie. You could do a thorough background check, but the people who know the most are usually fellow Communists eager to protect their own. So you’re usually left with three admittedly imperfect heuristics.” (03/30/26)
“Unfortunately, not everyone today thinks that natural property rights are obvious. Especially in the faculty lounges of law schools and political science departments, it is now taken for granted that rights are products of sovereign power alone. Property rights in particular are assumed to be entirely conventional. Without positive laws, there is no property. And without politics, there are no positive laws. This simplistic creed has motivated a corrosive skepticism of natural property rights, which scholars and teachers have expressed in books, articles, and classrooms for more than a century.” (03/30/26)
“The congressional fight over funding the Department of Homeland Security has caused massive security lines at many large airports around the country. Privatizing airport security could avoid this problem in the future, but a more radical reform — abolishing the Transportation Security Administration and its monopoly on security procedures — would be a better solution.” (03/30/26)
“A weather person who told us to bundle up for the cold weather, but also be sure to drink plenty of fluids to protect against the heat, would not be taken very seriously. That is roughly the state of economics when it comes to basic demographic questions. On alternate days the economy seems to be suffering from too many people and too few people. Yet people somehow still take economists seriously on this issue.” (03/30/26)
“Republicans are considering reductions in federal health spending to help pay for a budget bill containing as much as $200 billion to fund the Iran war and immigration enforcement. New efforts to rein in health programs are sure to be controversial and open the GOP up to election-year attacks that they’re cutting health care to pay for an unpopular war. … House Budget Committee chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) is reviving an idea that was considered last year to fund Affordable Care Act payments known as cost-sharing reductions. The Congressional Budget Office previously found the move would lower overall benchmark ACA premiums by 11% but result in 300,000 more uninsured people. It would cut the subsidy amount that some enrollees receive, thereby increasing out-of-pocket premium costs, while saving the government over $30 billion.” (03/30/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith
“Nock was persuaded by Franz Oppenheimer’s theory that people acquire wealth in one of two ways: either through work and exchange or theft. The first, Oppenheimer called the economic means, the second, the political means. States are the manifestation of the political means, the embodiment of a predatory class that coercively feeds off and controls its productive captives. Within the American state the occupants change periodically, and many people believe the troubles we’re experiencing are due to voting the wrong people into office. Better people would produce better government. There are several shortcomings to this idea.” (03/30/26)
“Bluesky has launched an AI assistant called Attie that allows users to design their own social media algorithms and create custom feeds within the company’s AT Protocol ecosystem. And let’s just say the response has been heated. Attie debuted this weekend at the ATmosphere conference, which Bluesky sponsors. But Bluesky’s userbase did not embrace the new product. Instead, about 125,000 users have already blocked Attie’s Bluesky account, making it the second most blocked account on the network, according to open source data. Attie only has 1,500 followers, meaning that about 83 times more users have blocked the account than followed it. The only account with more blocks than Bluesky’s AI agent is Vice President J.D. Vance, with about 180,000 blocks — Attie even surpassed the White House account (122,000 blocks) and the ICE account (112,460 blocks).” (03/30/26)
