“Effective altruists have been getting a lot of hate lately. But if you ever actually meet a group of effective altruists, even their harshest critics will struggle to maintain their anger. In person, they’re some of the most cheerful, friendly, curious, and smart people you will ever meet. Effective altruists are the opposite of the angry, self-righteous, apathetic, asocial youths who have given their generation a bad name. (And yes, strange as it seems, human beings can be angry, self-righteous, apathetic, and asocial at the same time). Not only are EAs extraordinarily likeable; they have also made strong arguments that have causally improved actually-existing philanthropy.” (09/28/26)
“The coming midterms lay bare a divide that runs deeper than policy and older than any party platform. Beneath every debate sits a single question, and it is the question on which this election turns: Who do you trust to run your life, you or the government? House Republicans’ answer is our closing argument. The current Republican majority arrived in Congress in January 2025 and spent the next 20 months answering that question. After record highs of hundreds of thousands of illegals [sic] streaming over the southwest border into the country under President Joe Biden, we’ve slammed the door shut. We now have the most secure border in modern American history. Families in El Paso, Texas, no longer worry about migrants roaming the streets at night.” [editor’s note: Yes, Republicans certainly answered that question — but not in anything like the way McClain seems to be claiming – TLK](09/28/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith
“War is a special preoccupation of governments. And governments, we all learn at a young age, are the foundation of civilization. Without government who would protect us from foreign and domestic threats? Trump finds Iran a threat, as George W. Bush found Iraq under Saddam a threat. A threat to whom? The American people, most of whom happen to live on the other side of the Atlantic. In today’s world and for most of history, ‘government’ means an organization with a territorial monopoly of force and is usually called a state. It is sovereign within this territory. To be under its jurisdiction is to grant approval of government’s right to enforce its commands or laws, one of which is the demand that it be supported economically. … Imposing a state on society doesn’t make life better.” (09/28/260
“With Amtrak smashing ridership records and Brightline’s ridership rising, Americans appear increasingly willing to travel by rail. Brightline’s financial troubles raise a more difficult question: Who will pay to build the infrastructure needed to give more of them that option?” [editor’s note: It seems obvious to me, but not to the author, that the people who should pay for passenger rail infrastructure are the people who run companies hoping to offer rail travel profitable to paying customers. If people really “want more trains,” they’ll pay for those trains – TLK] (09/28/26)
“Amidst all the talk of the need for government regulation of AI, there has been too little discussion of the simplest route: criminal liability. The basic story is that the AI companies are being irresponsible in dealing with a product they know to be dangerous. The companies and the people who run them need to know that they face serious monetary risk from letting their little models run wild, and possibly criminal prosecution and jail time.” (09/28/26)
“The U.S. electric grid is fragmented, with limited to no power exchange between regions and interconnections. This fragmentation increases costs to consumers and risks blackouts from power shortages during winter storms and heatwaves. One solution is the development of a ‘macrogrid’— a network of high-voltage transmission lines that can span the country and move power between regions, with relatively little loss of power over long distances. Building a macrogrid may seem daunting because of the sheer scale of such an effort, but it does not have to be built all at once. With modern technology, high-voltage direct current (HVDC) lines can be built one at a time and linked later to form a macrogrid.” [editor’s note: The larger the grid, the more people can lose power from a single failure, as we’ve seen in the past. We need more localized/decentralized power generation and delivery, not more failed century-old tech – TLK] (09/28/26)
“The Washington, D.C. area has long had a reputation for being both wealthy and recession-proof, based on money forcibly extracted in the form of taxes from people living productive lives elsewhere in the United States. That may no longer be the case. Downsizing of the federal workforce concentrated in the DMV area—the District of Columbia and parts of Maryland and Virginia—has hit many residents hard, and some are considering leaving or have already done so. While it’s not nice to wish troubles on anybody, there’s nothing wrong with introducing government employees to the same risks and uncertainty that participants in the private sector face every day.” (09/28/26)
“Two years ago, Michigan Republican Mike Rogers stood in a grocery store for an advertisement blaming Joe Biden for the price of eggs (without mentioning the bird flu that was jacking prices). This week he’s back in nearly the same folksy jacket telling voters that it’s time for Trump to end his illegal war against Iran so gas prices can come down. Rogers new ad leaves out, of course, the fact that he’d cheered for the war on the day it began in February, claiming Iran was an imminent threat to the United States (it wasn’t and isn’t), and hit multiple rightwing podcasts and media opportunities to demand Americans unite behind Trump in prosecuting the war.” (09/28/26)
‘The global trillionaire count returned to zero not long after SpaceX’s IPO. Market fluctuations show the danger of imposing cash tax bills on stock-price wealth.” (09/28/26)
“People in a president’s party might be satisfied, complacent, a little disappointed, or deeply disillusioned, but they are rarely pumped up and energized, thinking, ‘I can’t wait to go vote.’ Conversely, people in the opposition party, particularly in this era of hyperpartisanship, hate anything the president is doing. They hate everything he might even think about doing. Everything. They want to relitigate the last election. They can’t wait to vote. And then you’ve got this little slice of pure independents, and I’m not talking about the 45 percent of all adults or the third of all registered voters who claim to be independents but consistently lean toward and vote for one party. I’m talking about the three to six percent who don’t lean toward either party and are legitimate independents. They tend to be very fickle.” (09/28/26)
