“I received feedback from a friend that made me wonder if he had misunderstood my argument against compulsory labeling of foods’ ingredients. He referred me to a post that makes the case that seed oils are bad for our health. So I think it’s worthwhile to explore an issue that I discussed on EconLog back in January 2012. Here’s what I wrote: I’ve noticed in discussions–in person, on Facebook, and in blogs–how hard it is for most people to see that opposition to having the government subsidize or require activity X does not mean that one opposes activity X. … One can strongly object to the use of illegal drugs and yet think they should be legal. One can strongly object to U.S. taxpayers being forced to subsidize Israel’s government without being ‘anti-Israel.'” (12/29/25)
“On Tuesday, President Trump denounced the New York Times in a Truth Social post as a ‘serious threat to the National Security of our Nation’ and a ‘TRUE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE’ for publishing an article detailing Trump’s close personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. … That was the Times’s second recent treasonous offense. After the Times published a story on how 79-year-old Trump was ‘slowing down physically’ and ‘showing signs of fatigue’ in his second term … rump proclaimed that ‘it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean ‘THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.’’ … Trump is using practically a mirror image of treason compared to the standard the Founding Fathers canonized.” (12/29/25)
“Privacy isn’t dead. Just ask Kristi Noem. The Department of Homeland Security secretary has spent 2025 trying to convince the American public that identifying roving bands of masked federal agents is ‘doxing’ — and that revealing these public servants’ [sic] identities is ‘violence.’ Noem is wrong on both fronts, legal experts say, but her claims of doxing highlight a central conflict in the current era: Surveillance now goes both ways. … ‘ICE watch’ groups have appeared across the country. Apps for tracking immigration enforcement activity have popped up on (then disappeared from) Apple and Google app stores. Social media feeds are awash in videos of unidentified agents tackling men in parking lots, throwing women to the ground, and ripping families apart. From Los Angeles to Chicago to Raleigh, North Carolina, neighbors and passersby have pulled out their phones to document members of their communities being arrested and vanishing into the Trump administration’s machinery.” (12/29/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Douglas E French
“Jim Beam has been making whiskey for a long time, through thick and thin. But the Trump tariffs have shut down the venerable distillery. Bourbon Whiskey is a high-order (as Austrian economists would say) beverage due to the aging process required. Jim Beam is aged for four years in new charred oak barrels. Jim Beam Black is aged 7 years. … The uncertainty created by today’s tariffs will create scarcity (and higher prices) of lower order goods (in this case whiskey) in the future.” (12/29/25)
“Why, in the previous Millennium, did Europe come to dominate the world, rather than China, India, or some other region? How did the Catholic Church, the legal profession, and the fall of the Roman Empire all set the stage for Europe’s eventual global supremacy? Meanwhile, in today’s age of AI, rockets, and robots, how can societies continue to innovate and prosper, rather than stagnate and decay? In Two Paths to Prosperity, Joel Mokyr, a 2025 Nobel laureate and professor at Northwestern University, offers a compelling narrative.” (12/29/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Benjamin BH Ko
‘On the Isle of Lewis, crofters still work the old way: one man, two dogs, a flock and the Atlantic wind. Watching Leslie and his collies, Bruce and Jude, round up sheep across the moor, I was struck by how little command was needed. After a whistle and a word, Bruce and Jude’s instincts took care of the rest. It was order without control, and freedom within purpose. This is liberty properly understood.” (12/29/25)
“The United States is a generous nation, and most agree that low-income households deserve help from their fellow Americans when times are tough. But that help should not inadvertently trap people in poverty and government dependence by disincentivizing healthy, working-age adults from working more hours, pursuing higher wages, or marrying out of fear of ending up financially worse off. … The need for reform is clear, as we recently argued in a report along with several colleagues. The solutions and how to enact them are less so. A common response is universal benefits or more government assistance higher up the income scale to allow for a more gradual phase out of benefits. But this approach creates more government dependence among American households rather than encouraging independence and hope. This would also require substantial new federal resources at a time when budget deficits are already unsustainable. That’s why we need a new approach that starts with the states.” (12/29/25)
“New research strongly suggests teachers’ unions are driving the skyrocketing administrative bloat that’s sucking resources away from classrooms. By diverting additional funding toward hiring more people, they starve effective educators of the raises and support they need, all to pad their own power structures. Unions benefit enormously from inflating the number of employees in the system, turning public schools into top-heavy bureaucracies that serve adults — not our kids. Teachers’ union bosses gain in two major ways from the rapid expansion in administrative hiring — which also siphons resources away from teachers, students, and classrooms.” (12/29/25)
“Something has gone wrong in America. By historical standards, we live in a time of unimaginable abundance. Yet there is a malaise, and we all feel it. The normal rules of normal politics no longer seem sufficient to answer our questions. The straitjacket of the Long 90’s is breaking: what will replace it? Enter Brink Lindsey’s The Permanent Problem. A vice president at the Niskanen Center, Lindsey diagnoses America’s malaise as a breakdown of two opposed forces: the dynamism of capitalism and the inclusiveness of communities. … According to Lindsey, we must recover the Promethean spirit — the willingness to go out and change the world, and use this to solve Keynes'[s] ‘permanent problem’ of ‘living wisely and agreeably and and well.'” (12/29/25)
Source: ProSocial Libertarians
by Andrew Jason Cohen
“I recently heard Jill Lepore, professor of history at Harvard University, on The Good Fight podcast. In discussing campus culture, she expressed dismay at the fact that some of her students had refused to read the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision (1857), which she had assigned. They refused, apparently, because it would cause them (or perhaps others) pain to read a defense of slavery in the United States. … Students need to know — and do know — that they do not stand on desks in their classrooms, that they do not lecture to the class (unless the professor assigns that to them), and a host of other things. That has always included — and ought to still include — the simple fact that professors, like all teachers, make the assignments and they, the students, do them or get lower grades. This is simply how the institution works.” (12/29/25)
