“A familiar excuse for protective tariffs and other trade restrictions goes like this: It would be all well and good for our government to follow a policy of free trade if other governments did the same. But other governments don’t do the same. Other governments use tariffs and subsidies to give producers in their countries unfair advantages over producers in our country. Unless and until other governments embrace complete free trade, our government must ‘retaliate’ with its own protective measures to counter the protective measures imposed by foreign governments. Every competent undergraduate who has passed a well-taught course in Econ 101 can identify a significant problem that lurks in this excuse for protectionism — namely, protective tariffs and subsidies are a net cost to the people of any country whose government intervenes in these ways.” (01/06/25)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Lena Cohen
“A global spy tool exposed the locations of billions of people to anyone willing to pay. A Catholic group bought location data about gay dating app users in an effort to out gay priests. A location data broker sold lists of people who attended political protests. What do these privacy violations have in common? They share a source of data that’s shockingly pervasive and unregulated: the technology powering nearly every ad you see online.” (01/06/25)
“Despite the November 5 vote approving Proposition A (a measure that will raise Missouri’s minimum wage and mandate paid sick leave), there will continue to be debate on the matter in courts and perhaps the state legislature. Whatever those outcomes, Missourians need to be wary about the claimed successes of mandated wage increases elsewhere.” (01/06/25)
“There is no need to wait for the great revolution to begin fighting against our rulers. There is no need to wait for things to get better to experience this world as paradise. The time for both of these things is now. Right at this very moment you can begin a daily practice of sowing the seeds of revolution. You as an individual cannot defeat the empire yourself, but it is absolutely within your power to open a few people’s eyes to the reality that the status quo is unacceptable, and that a better world is possible.” (01/06/25)
“Among the many legends about vampires is the belief that one cannot enter a home unless invited. ‘He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come,’ Bram Stoker tells us in Dracula. The same legend has been associated with sundry demons (Mephistopheles in Faust requires an invitation to enter: ‘Thrice must the words be spoken’), ghosts, evil spirits, even the devil himself. … Today being January 6, it is worth thinking a little bit about whom we — 77 million of us — have invited in.” (01/06/25)
“Outgoing President Joe Biden is deliberately undermining his successor, president-elect Donald J. Trump, with his final climate decrees. With two weeks left in office, Biden is trying to permanently codify his extreme net-zero policies ahead of Trump being sworn into office. These include permanently forbidding new oil and gas leases, enacting more appliance bans, and closing off more public lands to multiple uses. Unsurprisingly, President Biden is pre-emptively derailing Mr. Trump’s ‘drill baby drill’ energy agenda that is expected to unleash more domestic production of conventional oil and gas.” (01/06/25)
“The party is on life support after a pitiful showing in the 2024 election. And while Trump wants to slash taxes and regulations, he also plans to weaponize the government and restrict personal liberty.” (01/06/25)
“Time was when a comparison of Henry Ford and Elon Musk would have focused on their respective roles in revolutionizing automaking. Ford manufactured the first cars priced at levels that enabled millions of people to purchase them, with the first factories that could mass-produce such products. Musk manufactured the first electric cars that, while not yet affordable to a truly mass market, were nonetheless built in sufficient quantity to give electric cars a substantial foothold in an economy slowly and tortuously turning away from fossil fuels. Would that were still the only way in which the two were comparable.” (01/06/25)
“Could sociology and classical liberalism ever be friend — —or at least engage each other productively? That’s a tall order, but it’s also the focus of a new edited volume from sociology professors Fabio Rojas and Charlotta Stern, Sociology and Classical Liberalism in Dialogue. It’s published by Rowman & Littlefield but open-access online. Sociology is an academic discipline devoted to the institutions and cultural patterns that shape human interactions, with a frequent focus on inequality and oppression. To the extent that sociology has an ideology … well, it’s leftist to the core. As Stern reports in her contribution, there are more self-identified Marxists (25.5 percent) than Republicans (5.5 percent) among sociologists. Classical liberalism, meanwhile, is a political ideology devoted to free markets, personal autonomy, open inquiry, and due process.” (01/06/25)
