Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“An Objectivist government, as Rand imagined it, provides some services, such as national defense, which cannot be funded on the usual market basis that an individual who does not pay for it does not get it. How are such activities to be paid for? Collecting taxes would be an initiation of force and so, as Rand recognized, inconsistent with Objectivist ethics. One solution she proposed was to charge for the service of enforcing contracts. Pay to register your contract with the court system and the government will enforce it and use the profits on that to fund national defense. Using force against someone who refuses to pay back a loan or to deliver the goods he has been paid for is retaliatory force, not initiation of force, so permitted by Objectivist ethics. The problem with this is not ethical but economic.” (02/26/25)
“Nullification is THE rightful remedy for all unconstitutional acts — usurpations of power. Understanding the five core principles that make up its foundation is essential to getting back on the path to the Constitution and liberty.” (02/26/25)
“Three mainstream political parties in Austria said on Thursday that they had reached an agreement to form a new government that excludes the far right, ending five months of roller coaster negotiations after an election last fall. The coalition is set to announce ministerial posts on Friday, but the new chancellor is likely to be Christian Stocker, the head of the People’s Party, the biggest coalition partner. The new government is set to include left- and right-of-center parties but not the far-right Freedom Party, which finished first in the September vote.” (02/27/25)
“President Donald Trump doesn’t have fond feelings for whistleblowers. During his first term, Trump’s Justice Department carried out a clandestine spying operation to try to catch leakers. On the campaign trail, Trump on multiple occasions threatened to arrest journalists who don’t reveal their sources — and suggested they should be raped in prison until they give up names. For those who want to speak out against wrongdoing within the U.S. government, it has never been more critical to take steps to keep themselves safe. So we compiled these best practices for leaking information in public interest under the Trump administration.” (02/26/25)
“The first six weeks of this administration have felt like a year. Every day brings a firehose of brazen corruption, mad power grabs and jaw-dropping idiocy. And that of course is the point. Trump aides and allies like Russ Vought, Stephen Miller, and Steve Bannon have said for months that their plan is to overwhelm the press, public, and critics with so much activity that no one can possibly keep up. This roundup is a snapshot of what we saw over just a single five-day period — February 21 – 25. Incredibly, includes a weekend! Not long ago, more than half of these bullet points would have been enough to bring down an administration. Instead, many weren’t news for more than a couple hours.” (02/27/25)
“During the last two legislative sessions, the Teamsters and other labor groups convinced the California legislature to pass bills effectively banning driverless trucks from the state’s highways. Both times the bills were vetoed by California governor Gavin Newsom. But even if Newsom had signed that legislation, it wouldn’t have kept Aurora out of business-friendly states like Texas. So labor unions have also tried to stop driverless trucks at the federal level. One surprising front in this battle: the reflective triangles truckers place on the road to warn other drivers when their rigs are stopped at the side of the highway.” (02/26/25)
“A child in West Texas has died of measles, state health officials said on Wednesday, the first reported U.S. death from the highly contagious disease in a decade, as a Texas outbreak has grown from a handful of cases to more than 130 across two states. The child, who was not vaccinated against the disease, died overnight in a children’s hospital, the Texas health department said in a statement. … Lara Anton, a Texas health department spokesperson, told a local ABC affiliate that the ongoing outbreak has hit mostly small children and teenagers, and that the cases were originally concentrated in a ‘close-knit, under-vaccinated’ rural Mennonite community in Gaines County, where children are largely home-schooled.” (02/27/25)
Source: Independent Institute
by Randall G Holcombe
“When President Trump was running for election in 2024, he said he’d end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office. That hasn’t happened. Lately, he’s called Ukraine President Zelensky a dictator and even blamed him for starting the war with Russia. It seems he’s tilting toward Russia in his attempt to negotiate an end to the war. President Trump wants a personal victory in that dispute, and for him, a victory would be the end of the war. It matters little to him whether the war ends with Russia pulling out and leaving Ukraine with its old boundaries, or with Russia taking full control of Ukraine, or something in between. He isn’t taking Russia’s side, or Ukraine’s side. He wants a win for himself.” (02/26/25)
