Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Andrzej Strojny
“To American observers, Poland can appear to be an example of successful political transformation. A country that threw off the yoke of communism in 1989, shifted towards a market system, and this year ranked 20th among the world’s largest economies. However, more than 30 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the demons of state tyranny are reawakening on the Vistula River. This time, the threat to freedom does not come from Moscow, but from local town halls. In selected cities, bans on the sale of alcohol by shops at night are being introduced. Under the guise of health concerns, regulations are being introduced that, in fact, restrict consumer freedom and harm small businesses.” (12/11/25)
“The confluence of two seemingly unrelated news events in recent days — the first one roiling Hollywood and media from coast to coast, the other playing out before the Supreme Court — was nothing short of uncanny. And disturbing. The first news was the one-two punch of Friday’s bombshell that Netflix planned to swallow up Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming business to create an entertainment industry behemoth, and then Monday’s competing hostile bid from jilted suitor Paramount Skydance for all of Warner. And in between, on Sunday, President Trump — tuxedoed and speaking on a red carpet, appropriately enough — proclaimed matter-of-factly ‘I’ll be involved’ in deciding the winner.” (12/11/25)
“The US Navy has submitted its recommendations on potential punishments, if any, for Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly over his participation in a video that reminded US troops they have a duty to refuse illegal orders, a Pentagon official told CNN on Thursday. Those recommendations have been submitted to the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel ‘where they are providing a legal review and input,’ the official said. It was not immediately clear what recommendations were included in the report. … The Trump administration has argued that by emphasizing service members’ legal duty to disobey unlawful orders, Kelly and the other Democratic lawmakers were inciting troops to disobey lawful orders.” (12/11/25)
“Austria’s lower house of parliament has passed a ban on Muslim headscarves in schools after a previous ban was overturned on the grounds that it was discriminatory. Lawmakers passed the new legislation on Thursday by a large majority, meaning that girls younger than 14 will not be permitted to wear headscarves that ‘cover the head in accordance with Islamic traditions’ in all schools, with non-compliance fines ranging from 150 to 800 euros ($175-930). In 2019, the country introduced a ban on headscarves for under-10s in primary schools, but the Constitutional Court struck it down the following year, ruling that it was illegal because it discriminated against Muslims, going against the state’s duty to be religiously neutral.” (12/11/25)
“The ‘calculation problem’ is not a computational problem. It’s an epistemic problem. It isn’t that it was too hard to gather the necessary data and do the required calculations in 1920 (when Ludwig von Mises published ‘Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth’) or 1945 (when F.A. Hayek wrote ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’) or 1985 (when Don Lavoie published Rivalry and Central Planning: The socialist calculation debate reconsidered). … The problem is that the data don’t exist unless the means of production are bought and sold in free markets – which means that modern technosocialists enamored with generative AI as the technology that will finally solve the calculation problem are missing the point.” (12/11/25)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Nick Cleveland-Stout
“On November 15, as Russian forces were advancing on the outskirts of the town of Myrnohrad in eastern Ukraine, retail investors placed risky bets in real time on the battle using Polymarket …. If Russia took the city by nightfall — an event that seemed exceedingly unlikely to most observers — a handful of retail investors stood to earn a profit of as much as 33,000% on the battle from the comfort of their homes. When nightfall came, these longshot gamblers miraculously won big, though not because Russia took the town (as of writing, Ukraine is still fighting for Myrnohrad). Instead, it was because of an apparent intervention by a staffer at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a D.C.-based think tank that produces daily interactive maps of the conflict in Ukraine that Polymarket often relies on to determine the outcome of bets placed on the war.” (12/11/25)
“Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, recently said that he was refusing to make a contribution to Trump’s ballroom monstrosity because he was concerned how a post-Trump Justice Department might view it. This comment should be taken very seriously. JP Morgan is by far the largest bank in the country, which Dimon has run for two decades. Also, Mr. Dimon is an astute businessman who clearly puts business above politics. Early in 2024 he gave Trump a pseudo-endorsement when he famously said that he thought the economy would do fine regardless of whether Trump or Biden won. That he is now thinking of a world with a normal Justice Department is huge. It’s not just Dimon who is thinking about a world beyond Trump. A near record number of Republican members of Congress have announced their retirement.” (12/11/25)
