Source: Foreign Policy In Focus
by Lena Simet & Anna Bacciarelli
“Most discussion of artificial intelligence and work is about the future: which jobs may disappear, which skills may lose value, which workers may be replaced. But for millions of gig workers, who work for online platforms such as Uber, this future is already here. Algorithms set their pay, assign their tasks, monitor their performance, and determine whether they can keep working at all. … This leaves many workers with unstable pay, dangerous conditions, and little recourse when something goes wrong. But this could be about to change. From June 1 to 12 in Geneva, governments will enter a final round of negotiations at the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations agency dedicated to labor rights, over the first binding global standard for what is called platform work.” [editor’s note: The “problem” with gig workers is that they don’t answer to government bureaucrats, and lovers of government bureaucracy hate that – TLK] (06/04/26)
“Gary, Indiana, initiated its action against a laundry list of gun makers, distributors and dealers in August 1999. The suit accused them of culpability for crimes committed with the weapons they had brought into the marketplace. At the time, making and marketing guns was legal; still is. So the suit was manifestly absurd from the outset. Perhaps cities contemplating litigation against baseball bat makers and steak knife vendors will accept the lesson.” (06/04/26)
“[T]he big story that fans of free markets everywhere should be focused on is the money we pay for things like drugs and medical equipment. This year we’ll spend close to $750 billion on drugs and other pharmaceutical products. We’ll spend over $50 billion on various therapeutic devices used at home. Hospitals and other providers will spend over $130 billion on medical equipment. … Insofar as drugs or scans are expensive, it is almost certainly due to patent monopolies or related protections.” (06/04/26)
“[T]he so-called Abraham Accords, long touted as a major achievement from Trump’s first term, are a pious fraud. Though depicted as a kind of peace deal, they have nothing to do with peace, since none of the participants—so far Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates (Sudan signed on but fell into civil war before ratifying the agreement)—have been at war with Israel. Nor has the lack of Israeli embassies across the Persian Gulf and North Africa prevented any nation from engaging in back-channel security cooperation. … expanding the Abraham Accords would act as a Hail Mary political pass to Netanyahu, who faces a difficult reelection campaign. It would both offer a dramatic success to the Israeli prime minister and act as a de facto endorsement by the American president. Indeed, Trump appears to believe his ability to shift votes is as great in Israel as in U.S. primary contests.” (06/04/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Tanya Goudsouzian & Ibrahim Al-Marashi
“Washington may view these talks as a standard business transaction, but history has taught Tehran that a compromise with the West is a trap.” (06/04/26)
“Impeachment has become more common in American politics in recent years. Democrats impeached Donald Trump twice in his first term. The Senate failed to convict him both times. Yet the power remains poorly understood despite its rising prominence in political discourse. Keith E. Whittington’s new book aims to fix that.” (06/04/26)
“The recent California gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral elections—where, remarkably, Steve Hilton and Spencer Pratt both appear to have advanced to the general election in November—offer a glimmer of hope. Could it be that some on the Left, along with a number of Independents, have finally realized that neither wealth nor an upscale ZIP code can protect them from the Left’s vindictive socialist madness? California gas prices, even prior to the Iran war, had reached the highest levels in the continental United States. The cause is self-evident: left-wing policies that forbid most new gas and oil exploration, impose radical green-fuel mandates and levy the highest gas taxes in the U.S. and drive out oil refineries. Illegal immigration has soared. Currently, some 11 million Californians—28 percent of the resident population—were not born in the U.S.” (06/04/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“Famed for his contributions to the hard sciences—most notably his theory of heliocentricity—the sixteenth-century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was also an acute analyst of monetary policy. To that end, Ralph Benko has done us all a great service with this new edition of Copernicus’s classic, if neglected, treatise On the Minting of Money. Indeed, its lessons, though nearly five centuries old, remain evergreen.” (06/04/26)
“Homer is back in the discourse on account of Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film, The Odyssey. The latest controversy began with Elon Musk, among others, protesting the supposed inaccuracy of casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen, a fictional character, who among other fantastic elements is the daughter of the god Zeus and was laid as an egg by her human mother. … the fight over Homer represents just another skirmish in the campaign mounted by bigoted very-online right-wing self-described ‘chuds’ to claim Greek and Roman culture for their own fascist, or at least fascist-adjacent, ideology, which demands the exclusion of minorities, women, and LGBTQ people.” (06/04/26)
