Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Walter Block
“Everyone is now concerned about the unemployment rate, it would appear. The scribes are busily scribbling as to the possible causes of this economic debilitation. Their list is long, creative, and clever. One explanation is that the quit rate has plummeted. People are sticking around in jobs they would have left in rosier markets. Well, yes, if this replacement source of new job openings is decreasing, that could well account for fewer new employment slots opening up. But this is a two-way street. Presumably, people are not downing tools for fear that new appointments will not be open to them, at least not on better terms, overall, than they now enjoy. So, it is likely that the unemployment rate is at least partially a cause of this phenomenon, not only a result. Further, this is a sign of economic health, rather than disarray.” (04/17/26)
“There are moments in public health when the path forward is unusually clear, when the evidence aligns with behavior, when risks are well understood, and when policy has a genuine opportunity to reduce harm at scale. This should be one of those moments. Non-combustible nicotine products — vapes, heated tobacco, and especially nicotine pouches — are widely understood to be far less harmful than smoking, a point I and many others have covered repeatedly, and one that no longer sits at the frontier of scientific debate. … One might expect regulators to respond accordingly, adjusting policy to reflect both the risk gradient and the changed behavioral landscape, but that has not happened. Instead, the system has stalled, quietly but decisively, with approvals for new products slowing to a near standstill.” (04/17/26)
“The Ivory Tower was an image, medieval like the university itself, of an institution made of a valuable material and grounded in society but towering above it. In this view, any university in America depends on America for its survival but does its best to rise above its politics. Politics is argument, for example about welfare policies. As an Ivory Tower, the university tries to define the bigger, more abstract question of what is welfare. Policies are about society; abstract definitions come from the Ivory Tower. In abandoning the Ivory Tower Harvard was denying its independence.” 904/19/26)
Source: Law & Liberty
by Claudia Franziska Brühwiler
“New technology is changing how human beings learn. But preserving both humanity and democracy means we have to cling to traditional ways of knowing.” (04/17/26)
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Kevin Carson
“Part I of this two-part paper will examine a number of loosely related and considerably overlapping conceptual issues concerning the nature of money and credit: metallism vs. chartalism, money theories of credit vs. credit theories of money, and advance vs. synchronization economics. They all hinge, in one way or another, on the question of whether money and credit are ‘real’ material entities, on the one hand, that must be in some way ‘saved’ or ‘accumulated’ before they can be ‘lent’ or ‘invested,’ or simply units of account for allocating resources and tracking the balance of exchange of material goods, on the other. That is, is money a store of value — a commodity with intrinsic value in its own right — and does credit require a stock of past savings to be lent against?” (04/17/26)
“The knives are out for OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, both figuratively and pretty close to literally. Last week—a few days after publication of a New Yorker piece featuring tons of anonymous attestations to Altman’s duplicitousness, and a few days before a Wall Street Journal piece about his conflicts of financial interest—an anti-AI extremist threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s house. Altman suggested a causal link between the two kinds of attacks.” (04/18/26)
“Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) still has much to teach us if we want a society in which individuals freely pursue their happiness. The economist and social philosopher lit the path to that widely shared goal in his magnum opus, Human Action (1949). especially chapter 24, section three, ‘The Harmony of the ‘Rightly Understood’ Interests.’ The title alone is refreshing, considering how preoccupied political philosophy, economics, and history have been with mankind’s supposedly fated and endless conflict — racial, national, or class — and power struggles. That alone should draw us to the work of a thinker who understood that this emphatically is not man’s destiny.” (04/17/26)
“If you want to get a sense of Donald Trump’s deepening dementia, look no further than his self-annihilating vendetta against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. As you may recall, Powell’s term as chair expires soon, on May 15, but his term as a Fed governor continues through January 2028. Trump has appointed a successor, former Fed governor and investment banker Kevin Warsh, who would ordinarily have his confirmation hearing next week. Warsh would then become Fed chair, succeeding Powell, who would likely leave the Fed entirely. So the quickest way for Trump to oust Powell would be just to let Warsh’s confirmation proceed and avoid screwing it up. But Trump being Trump, his vanity, rage, and muddled thinking are causing Powell to stay in office.” (04/17/26)
“New York City Mayor Commie Mamdani is putting into action, sort of, his plan to introduce government-run grocery stores and bring down grocery prices. Renting a Brooklyn storefront may cost anywhere between $60,000 to $600,000 a year depending on location and square footage. And there are other costs. Investors profit when they’re right about the opportunity and revenue exceeds costs. This means that they must satisfy customers. Or … taxpayers can fund everything regardless of success or failure.” (04/17/26)
