Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: The Daily Economy
by Donald J Boudreaux

“Are President Trump’s tariffs proving that two and a half centuries of economic analysis exaggerated the virtues of free trade? Have economists been wrong all these years to insist that consumers should be free to buy imports even when the prices of imports are quite low and their purchase takes business away from particular American firms and workers? Most economists, including myself, believe not. But if we’re mistaken, our professional duty demands that we point out that Trump’s protectionism is insufficiently ambitious; it should go much further. Trump’s protectionism overlooks a source of low-priced goods that poses a far worse threat than do foreign producers to American producers and workers. That source of low-priced goods is the past. Goods sold in resale markets cost nothing to manufacture today.” (09/16/25)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/tariffs-are-missing-the-real-enemy-yesterdays-products/

Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Kevin Carson

“[T]here’s an entire milieu of self-identified ‘libertarians’ whose views are characterized mainly by ‘hostility toward openness to foreigners and the wider world and to anger at what presents as scientific authority.’ For starters, that describes about nine-tenths of the commenters under Reason articles. There’s also Argentina’s Javier Milei, widely celebrated as a ‘libertarian’ in publications like Reason, whose authoritarianism I recently examined. There’s Walter Block, who has repeatedly vouched for the libertarian character of ‘voluntary slavery’ over the course of his career. And then there’s the entire paleolibertarian movement, which can be described with little exaggeration as having grown into a giant festering sore with the withered cadaver of the historic libertarian movement attached.” (09/16/25)

https://c4ss.org/content/60729

Source: Liberal Currents
by Hagen Blix & Ingeborg Glimmer

“Without a doubt, AI has already automated the production of bullshit — that is, text and images that do not commit the producers of that content to any kind of truth. Where these are intended to act as political speech, we can see the resonance between AI and far right politics, where texts and images are often used to manipulate the emotional valence of a particular topic and amplify its affective resonances. … Is any of this an issue of hype, of some discrepancy between promised capabilities and real capabilities? Or is the root issue that the very real affordances of very real AI potentiate fascist political aims and methods? Is the problem that some model output is untrue, or is it that AI models operate akin to the online troll, who just asks questions and just says (bullshit) things for the lulz?” (09/16/25)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/deflating-hype-wont-save-us/

Source: Expression
by David Hudson

“A recent survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education found that a majority of Americans (57%) correctly recognize that the First Amendment protects hate speech from governmental regulation, punishment, or censorship — but 45% think that it should not be protected. The First Amendment makes no general exception for offensive, repugnant, or hateful expression. … speech by adults as free citizens does not lose First Amendment protection because it is considered hateful.” (09/16/25)

https://expression.fire.org/p/is-hate-speech-protected-by-the-first