“Normally when we speak of ‘losing’ something or ‘costing’ something, it’s in terms of already having that thing. You lose $50 on a bet, or a steak dinner costs you $50. Using the definition preferred by supporters of ever-increasing government revenue, though, I ‘lost’ thousands of dollars yesterday when I walked past a bank instead of walking in, waving a gun at the tellers, and taking all the cash from their drawers. It ‘cost’ me thousands of dollars. And committing to not robbing every bank I happen to walk past in the future ‘costs’ me too. I’m ‘losing’ all that money! Oh, the humanity! … even if one supports taxation for the purpose of funding government operations, it’s beyond dishonest to claim that cutting, or just not raising, taxes is a ‘cost’ or a ‘loss’ to government.” (08/15/26)
“The rapid spread of public surveillance cameras represents something far more consequential than a new piece of police technology. It represents a fundamental change in the relationship between the individual and the state. These cameras allow government agents to record, identify, catalog and retroactively track the movements of people who have committed no crime, are suspected of no wrongdoing and have done nothing to invite government scrutiny. That’s not public safety. It’s an assault upon individual privacy. Privacy is not a privilege granted by government. It is an aspect of personal liberty that government exists to protect. It is a natural human right protected from the government in the Bill of Rights. The fact that a person leaves his home and travels upon a public road does not mean that he has surrendered that right.” (08/14/26)
“[D]ecentralization prevents a lot. The idea is that because you control and own your own data, and because the entire network isn’t owned by a single person or company, you have long-term freedom that can’t get taken away by the whims of the company behind whatever platform you’re using. On a centralized and closed platform, if ownership shuts it down or changes it in ways you find intolerable, you’ve got two options: stick it out and suffer or leave and lose all your friends. On a decentralized and open network, if the particular piece of it you’re on (the server, the app) shuts it down or changes it in ways you find intolerable, you’ve got a third option: head somewhere else, but keep your connections to all your friends. … Decentralization is, in other words, insurance. And that’s why it’s such a hard sell.” (08/14/26)
“Before reading Mark Pennington’s recent book, Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom, it would not have occurred to me that libertarians could learn anything from the social theories of Michel Foucault. Pennington has persuaded me that some beliefs associated with Foucault, and postmodernism more generally, are not devoid of merit. As will be discussed below, however, the beliefs that he identifies as postmodern differ somewhat from the collection of beliefs that I have hitherto associated with postmodernism.” (08/16/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
‘FDR signed the program into law in 1935. Demographic shifts and federal spending created trillions in unfunded liabilities. Private accounts offer a direct path to real wealth.” (08/14/26)
“The Watergate-era maxim still applies today: follow the money. In American education, the question is not how much money is spent, but where the money goes. Does funding follow institutions, or does it follow children? Does it serve adult interests, or truly benefit students? This distinction increasingly explains why some states spend more without producing better results, while others see academic gains by empowering parents with meaningful educational choices. New York City is a striking example. In 2024, its Department of Education spent roughly $40 billion, about $36,000 per pupil, one of the highest levels in the nation. Despite this massive investment, student literacy outcomes remain dire. Recent reports found that in 503 of 906 NYC schools studied, most students failed both reading and math exams. State data revealed only 29% of eighth graders were proficient in reading.” (08/14/26)
“Trump’s populist style ensures he will always try to project himself as the outsider on a crusade against ‘the establishment’—but as his party’s nominee in the last three presidential elections, and as a winner of two of them, he has no business portraying his movement as the rebellion when it is actually the empire. It’s time liberals made that clear by embracing an underdog spirit befitting liberalism’s new underdog reality.” (08/15/26)
“Although President Donald Trump is unable to publicly admit that ‘mistakes were made’ in his war with Iran—as American leaders sometimes describe their own blunders—he seems to be implicitly acknowledging that the military strategy he pursued has failed. He’s moving to a new strategy of extracting concessions from Iran via economic coercion, rather than bombing. Trump has described this as a ‘low-key’ and longer-term approach to the conflict. … Trump’s strategy of wearing Iran down economically would seemingly require him to keep the blockade and sanctions in place and the assets frozen, and certainly rules out providing war reparations. Moreover, the strategy isn’t truly ‘new’—America has long maintained economic pressure on Iran—and there’s little reason to suppose it will work now.” (08/15/26)
“In trying to hatch their own artificial intelligence, many countries are playing catch-up to the two world giants: the United States and China. In recent months, however, Japan has taken a different course. It admits it cannot create the most advanced AI models. Yet it might be the first nation to put AI at the center of a new economic strategy. In late July, Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae’s Cabinet approved a plan to inject $2.3 trillion in public and private investment toward strengthening key industries by 2040, starting with AI and the computer chips that run it. The plan goes beyond merely automating current work, improving efficiencies, cutting costs, or boosting the economy. It would also enhance human creativity and innovation by focusing on applying AI to real-world problems – starting on the factory floor of Japan’s existing world-class manufacturing industries.” (08/14/26)
There is a difference between reporting and storytelling, and the story many observers wanted to tell this summer—that this primary season is a referendum on the ideological future of the Democratic Party—is at least in part at odds with the reported facts. Sometimes the DSA wackadoodle pulls it out, sometimes the relatively sober municipal-government guy takes the win. That’s the thing about elections: Whatever you may hear on the internet, they really are not fixed—on Election Day, things can go either way. … The general consensus among psephologists is that female major-party candidates do about as well as male major-party candidates for federal office, ceteris paribus. But the picture gets a little more complicated when you start asking the right questions.” (08/14/26)
