“To those of us old enough to remember the before-times, these ‘woke’ times feel different because we never saw that instinct to hurt manifest in political discourse. Back then, live and let live was the fundamental assumption that enabled Western politics. Today, for all too many, it is not: literally, politics has become, for millions, live and let die.” (09/17/25)
“In the grim competition between environmental destruction and nuclear war over which one will cause the demise of civilization, the nuclear option gets considerably less media coverage than global warming. This is unfortunate, for nuclear weapons are no less of a threat. In fact, given how many close calls there have been since the 1950s, it’s miraculous that we’re still around to discuss the matter at all. In a global geopolitical environment that continues to see rising tensions between the West and both China and Russia, as well as between India and Pakistan and between a genocidal nuclear-armed Israel and much of the Middle East, few political agendas are more imperative than, to quote US President Donald Trump in early 2025, denuclearization. The signs are not auspicious, however.” (09/17/25)
“In 2006, Whirlpool paid $1.7 billion to buy its largest competitor (Maytag) and said competition from foreign producers would prevent it from wielding unseemly market power. But U.S. consumers continued to like imported machines’ prices and qualities. So, early in his first term, President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on washing machines to protect Whirlpool from the competition it had said it welcomed. In August 2020, Trump visited a Whirlpool factory where, strangely, he bragged about imposing tariffs on Canadian aluminum, raising Whirlpool’s manufacturing costs. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports, Whirlpool says perfidious foreigners are fibbing, paying lower tariffs by claiming low values on appliance imports, valuations not reflected in prices charged to U.S. consumers. Presumably the government will deftly untangle the mess its protectionism has produced.” ()9/17/25)
“In my earlier post on preference falsification, I argued that a culture of free speech and open debate is a necessary factor for the benefits of free speech to be fully realized. This post expands on that, examining a common fable involving preference falsification, how the dynamics of preference falsification are different in reality than the fable, and how what is commonly called ‘cancel culture’ is a factor that undermines free speech culture and keeps preference falsification in place. The fable, as you might have already guessed, is The Emperor’s New Clothes.” (09/17/25)
“We have been examining Adam Smith’s role as a moral philosopher and finding relevance of his Theory of Moral Sentiments to living a good life, even in everyday interactions. Imagine living in one of the most beautiful spots on the planet, yet being unable to experience it. In Acadia National Park, there is an organization called the Mount Desert Island Wheelers whose volunteers pedal specially designed bicycles to bring the elderly and infirm on rides in the park’s remarkable carriage roads. … We celebrate volunteerism as a pathway by which the lives of others are improved. Yet, often underappreciated are the vital commercial activities that ‘serve real people in the real world.'” (09/17/25)
“President Trump may want a Defense Department rebrand — but rather than changing its name to ‘Department of War,’ he should force the Pentagon to stop being a department of waste. Our investigators at Open the Books last month identified 20 areas of fiscal concern within the Pentagon, many of them tolerated for decades, that damage its warfighting abilities. The Defense Department has long been ‘a department of everything,’ running its own schools, grocery stores, golf courses and more — splitting its focus and allowing for rampant overspending. The department has never passed an audit, uses overclassification to wrongly conceal programs from oversight, and squanders billions every year through lax contracting practices and questionable congressional earmarks. Even the most fiscally prudent administration would struggle to reform all that systemic Pentagon waste at once.” (09/17/25)
“The question for the Fed is whether it has to worry more about inflation or a weak labor market. Last week’s data indicate both are real concerns, but to my mind, the labor market weakness is unambiguously the bigger problem. I acknowledge that I am generally far more concerned about workers being unemployed than modest inflation rates that may be somewhat higher than we want, but the specific circumstances do warrant much more concern about the former than the latter.” (09/17/25)
“The UK is in the process of implementing a prohibition on any trans person accessing any single-sex space. Trans people will be barred from using facilities that match their gender (i.e., a trans woman will not be able to use the women’s toilets), but also, it seems, may be barred from using those that match their sex at birth (nor may the same trans woman use the men’s toilets). Effectively, this policy will bar trans people from leaving their homes, and as such it is radically oppressive. The ban is sweeping: it applies to workplaces, hospitals, schools, shops, restaurants, gyms, pubs, clubs, sporting bodies, schools, services like counseling or a women’s support group, and even voluntary clubs and associations. And it is mandatory: it’s not that these institutions can exclude trans people but they must exclude trans people.” (09/17/25)
“The world is now closer to a full-scale war between NATO and Russia than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. In the early morning hours of September 10, 2025, Western air defenses spotted a fleet of Russian drones that had entered Poland’s airspace. Shortly thereafter, NATO fighter planes intercepted the intruders, shooting down 16 of them. NATO’s military forces also elevated their alert status. Questions immediately arose about whether this episode was a deliberate provocation on Russia’s part, or simply a case in which Moscow’s contingent of unmanned drones heading for targets in Ukraine flew off course.” (09/17/25)
“Dave Fosdeck crested a dirt berm on the Hogback, a ridge of hills west of Farmington, New Mexico, when the scent hit him. ‘Whoa! It stinks!’ he yelped. It was June, and he was there with two others to look at the cleanup operations around a battery of massive oil tanks that sat abandoned for years in this rolling, high-desert corner of New Mexico. The berm surrounds a hole where a semi-buried tank the size of a backyard swimming pool once sat, collecting and leaking waste sludge from surrounding oil wells. Nearby is an even bigger but much newer hole where a cleanup crew had removed contaminated soil. The void wasn’t fully excavated but already was big enough to drop a small house in. The pit’s sides were stained orange and an even stronger petroleum smell rose from it.” (09/17/25)
