“In the long history of the world, the nation-state is anomalous. In 1900, only 25 percent of the global population lived in a nation-state; today it is close to 100 percent. Nearly 50 percent of today’s states were founded in the thirty years after WWII. … After Nations tells a great historical story, yet plebian uprisings against oligarchy are one of our oldest political tales. Resentment seems as likely a part of our digital future as emancipation. [Rana] Dasgupta thinks, maybe correctly, that oligarchy can jettison the creaking state.” (06/25/26)
“Those in political power always seem to be in a hurry. It is not surprising that their time horizons for ‘action’ never extend more than a few years ahead of them, though for different reasons. If it is a dictatorship, the tyrant in power can never be sure when an assassin’s bullet might cut his life short, or if some of his ‘loyal’ followers may be conspiring to overthrow him …. Little by little, however, some began to make the case that of course liberty is essential and property rights are important, but there are some particular needs or problems for which, surely, there can be an exception. … So why is it the case that in America today (and in most other modern democratic countries), those who hold political office seem so much in a hurry with short-term horizons guiding their actions, in their own way similar to dictatorships?” (06/25/26)
“In 399 B.C., Socrates chose to drink hemlock and suffer a painful death rather than submit to the state and live a life devoid of critical examination. He would be horrified to see how close we have come to constructing his nightmare: a society willing to jettison free speech and embrace state-defined ‘safety’ over the messy, painful, and necessary work of questioning why we believe what we believe.” (06/25/26)
“In my last post, I looked at how The Free Press’s coverage of the refugee resettlement program sanitized MAGA and Trump administration rhetoric, praising Trump for ‘fixing’ a refugee program he’s aggressively sought to eliminate for everyone but white South Africans. Today, I want to look at another issue where The Free Press’s coverage has been sensationalist, overtly partisan, and consistently wrong on the facts: what happens to kids who show up at the border to request asylum.” (06/25/26)
“Some more thoughts from the Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville: 1.) This first statement is brilliant and perceptive beyond description. America, 2026: ‘When the taste for physical gratifications among [men] has grown more rapidly than their education … the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint.’ God said to Moses that when the Israelites ‘have eaten and filled themselves and grown fat, then they will turn to other gods and serve them.’ When the desire for physical gratification outruns our wisdom and moral education, then people will be ‘carried away and lose all self-restraint.’ … There is no doubt in my mind that the desire for physical pleasure in America today has far outpaced our wisdom and moral education, and the results are plainly manifest in the massive amounts of promiscuity, corruption, fraud, decadence, selfishness, and licentiousness that plague our nation.” (06/25/26)
“Pfizer knew GLP-1s worked in 1990, but didn’t see their potential. The 30-year detour shows entrepreneurship matters as much as raw invention.” (06/25/26)
“Together, Massie and Greene paint a picture of conservative voters disappointed in Trump and not MAGA true believers who take every word Trump utters as gospel. The Massie-Greene conservatives remember what Trump said on Monday. When he contradicts it on Wednesday, they say ‘What?’ By Friday, they have grown tired of waiting for the truth. Thus, they hear a call to action. Certainly, Massie and Greene do not want to be blamed for tipping one or two battleground states to a leftist Democratic nominee. … If Massie and Greene work together, talk together and make demands based on conservative principles they could push any Republican nominee, especially Vice President JD Vance, into a delicate balancing act.” [editor’s note: If Massie and MTG are not interested in running as “Libertarians,” that’s a win for them, and for libertarians, but not for fake “spoiler” reasons – TLK] (06/25/26)
“For the past couple of years, American politicians on the left and right have competed to define a political buzzword: affordability. Does it mean increasing individual resources to meet everyday costs? Or raising the output of goods and services to lower prices? Or both? On Tuesday, Congress did the country a favor by passing a bill – in a rare case of broad bipartisanship – that helps give common meaning to the word. The measure puts a stamp of approval on an often unescapable law: that supply will rise to meet demand when free to do so. The bill, which still awaits the president’s approval, mandates a range of initiatives aimed mainly at raising the nation’s housing stock. It would reduce production bottlenecks rather than raise subsidies for home purchases. The number of parts in the legislation itself reflects how much lawmakers endorse a supply-positive approach.” (06/24/26)
“In recent posts on Trump and dictatorship, people have asked me – how do you know you’re not suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome? I take this seriously; we’ve all lost loved ones to this condition. The best check on my reasoning would be an objective measure of the health of American democracy. There are several ‘democracy indices’ that purport to do this, but they have a mixed reputation. … The newest entrant in this space – Metaculus Democracy Threat Index – works differently, and deserves a closer look.” (06/25/26)
“Facebook in 2011 was already a centralized platform owned by a single company. What changed was that the underlying incentives of that centralized architecture had time to work. Centralized systems create chokepoints. Chokepoints, once they exist, attract everyone with an interest in squeezing them: companies looking to extract more value from users, governments looking to extract compliance from companies, and political movements looking to extract influence from both. In 2011, Facebook hadn’t yet figured out how lucrative those chokepoints would be, or how much leverage they offered to the powerful. By 2025, everyone had figured it out.” (06/25/26)
