Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Orange County Register
by Connor O’Keeffe

“[T]he causes and cures of the so-called affordability crisis are not a mystery. To truly fix this problem, the inflationist monetary regime that is deliberately destroying the value of our money needs to be abolished and replaced by some form of market-determined sound money. And the myriad laws and regulations that artificially constrain supply in important sectors like housing and healthcare need to be repealed—along with the many price-amplifying, demand-side subsidies that have been building up in the wake of the artificial shortages. The Trump administration has shown no real interest in pursuing either of these solutions, which is bad enough. But Trump is also actively pursuing policies that, from an affordability standpoint, are worse than doing nothing.” (02/03/26)

https://archive.is/0wvgw

Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman

“Fifty or sixty years ago, when the risks of overpopulation played the same role in public discourse that the risks of global warming play today, a future of declining populations would have been considered good news. The predicted crisis did not happen; the populations of poor countries continued to grow but instead of getting poorer and hungrier as predicted they got richer and less hungry. The orthodoxy has reversed, declining population is now widely regarded as bad news, a threat to, among other things, there being enough young people to support an aging population.” (02/03/26)

https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/how-to-increase-the-total-fertility

Source: Foreign Policy
by Casey Michael

“The days of laughing off Trump’s threats of turning Canada into the 51st U.S. state are long past. A new reality has suddenly rippled across Canada: that the United States under Trump is, as strange as it may be to stomach, suddenly Canada’s largest national security threat. It is a reality that Canadians are finally beginning to adapt to. But it is also a reality that taps into a far longer, far deeper vein of U.S. peril facing Canada. Indeed, the past 80 or so years of U.S.-Canada comity — in which the world’s longest border was largely peaceable and in which Washington and Ottawa became perhaps the closest allies in the entire world — may increasingly seem like an anachronism, an anomaly in which the United States simply paused on its far broader history of expansion in North America.” (02/03/26)

https://archive.is/GL27X

Source: Mother Jones
by Dan Friedman & Amanda Moore

“As America’s 250th anniversary approaches, the president wants to control the country’s future by bulldozing its past.” (02/03/26)

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/02/america-freedom-task-force-250-trump-anniversary-history-smithsonian-kennedy-center/

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Mark Thornton

“Labor divided into the production of different goods or even into various tasks involved in the production of a single good is one of the earliest observations on the nature of human civilization. From a scientific point of view, civilization or society is the division of labor. Unfortunately, opinion down through time mistakenly considers it a mixed blessing, indicating that it is a great force for both good and evil. This common opinion falters largely on the basis of observation, measurement, and personal bias, absent economic law. The prevailing fallacies can only be eradicated with the theoretical perspective provided by the Austrian School of economics and its predecessors. Unfortunately, Adam Smith’s central importance on this topic and his basic mistakes continue to have an unhealthy impact on the economics profession and social ideology more generally.” (02/03/26)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/adam-smith-misunderstood-origins-division-labor