“EU lawmakers voted on Wednesday to challenge the European Union’s contentious free trade agreement with South America in the bloc’s top court, a move that could delay the deal by two years and potentially derail it. The European Union signed its largest-ever trade pact with Mercosur members Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay on Saturday. The agreement still requires approval before it can take effect. Opponents, led by France, the EU’s largest agricultural producer, say the deal will sharply increase imports of cheap beef, sugar and poultry, undercutting domestic farmers who have staged repeated protests.” (01/21/26)
“F. A. Hayek is perhaps best known as the author of The Road to Serfdom (1944), a prophetic work issuing a warning about the totalitarian tendencies of socialist economic planning. Socialism, Hayek argued, was both incompatible with liberal democracy and material progress and well-being. A critical step in his argument was that socialism could not replace the market economy not only in its efficient use of resources, but in stimulating creative innovation and technological change that enhanced the human condition. To economists, however, Hayek is most appreciated for his article further explaining the argument in the critical step published a year later – ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society.'” (01/21/26)
“Imagine you inherit a thriving department store chain. Rather than listen to experts on consumer trends, supply-chain logistics, human resources, etc., you instead opt to go with your gut. Rather than follow market research or anything like that, you prefer to just hire your friends and do business with vendors who flatter you or sell stuff you think is cool. Under such a ‘system’ you might make some good business decisions, but odds are very strong that you’ll more often make bad ones. The rep from the Pet Rock supplier who gives you a ‘World’s Greatest Businessman’ award gets his products in the store window. I chose a department store for this analogy because that’s precisely how President Donald Trump thinks about international trade, and the American economy in general.” (01/21/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Katherine Trendacosta
“At its core, copyright is a monopoly right on creative output and expression. It’s intended to allow people who make things to make a living through those things, to incentivize creativity. To square the circle that is ‘exclusive control over expression’ and ‘free speech,’ we have fair use. However, we aren’t just seeing artists having a time-limited ability to make money off of their creations. We are also seeing large corporations turn into megacorporations and consolidating huge stores of copyrights under one umbrella. When the monopoly right granted by copyright is compounded by the speed and scale of media company mergers, we end up with a crisis in creativity.” (01/21/26)
“Discussions about children’s online experiences and the dangers they might face are nothing new. But in recent months, officialdom seems to have become increasingly concerned about protecting children’s ‘wellbeing,’ rather than protecting them from ‘harm.’ So instead of concerns about children seeing extreme content or writing nasty things about each other, the current focus is on the amount of time kids spend on social media. … This focus on the duration of kids’ social-media use is revealing. It shows the extent to which calls for a ban are rooted in a lack of confidence in parental authority – a lack of confidence, that is, in parents’ capacity to control their kids’ behaviour and limit the amount of time they spend on social media.” (01/21/26)
“Jeff Bezos’[s] space venture Blue Origin announced Wednesday it plans to deploy 5,408 satellites into space for a communications network that will take on SpaceX and Amazon. The network, called TeraWave, is targeted for enterprise, data center and government users. The company said it will provide data speeds of ‘up to 6 terabits per second’ from satellites positioned in low Earth orbit and medium Earth orbit, regions of space that are between 100 miles and 21,000 miles from the Earth’s surface. Blue Origin said it expects to begin deploying its constellation in the fourth quarter of 2027.” (01/21/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Wendy McElroy
“C. Hartley Grattan (1902–1980) was a journalist, author, and polymath who many view as the foremost American scholar on Australia and the Pacific Southwest. To libertarians, however, Grattan should be important as a revisionist historian who was respected by decades of antiwar activists from H.L. Mencken to Murray N. Rothbard. Although Grattan is still occasionally discussed by anti-interventionists, such as the historian Justus D. Doenecke, Grattan has become largely a footnote. Indeed, I learned of him through three intriguing footnotes in Rothbard’s book The Betrayal of the American Right.” (01/21/26)
“The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared deeply skeptical of President Donald Trump’s claim that he can abruptly fire Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook for alleged misconduct without giving her a forum to contest the allegations. Several justices underscored the historical significance of the Fed’s independence from presidential control and pressed Trump’s Solicitor General D. John Sauer about his claim that removing Cook from her position required urgent action, rather than a review of unproven mortgage fraud allegations leveled by Trump and his housing czar. Citing those fraud allegations, Trump purported to fire Cook last year. But Cook has remained in her position, winning legal battles at both the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The justices agreed to allow those rulings to remain in effect until they had a chance to weigh the Trump administration’s emergency appeal.” (01/21/26)
