Source: Independent Institute
by K Lloyd Billingsley
“Longtime NIAID director wielded unprecedented influence over COVID policy with little public accountability.” (08/04/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/08/04/was-anthony-fauci-too-powerful/
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Wanjiru Njoya
“Economists who worry about wealth disparities between racial groups are preoccupied with addressing the causes of racial inequality. They all have different theories and explanations about the causes of racial wealth gaps, but the prevailing assumption is that some form of unfairness must be driving it. The key form of unfairness thought to produce disparities in racial outcomes is discrimination. Discrimination may be direct or indirect. According to critical race theories, it includes things like legacies of oppression, systemic racism, and even unconscious bias. The general idea is that government can fix these manifestations of discrimination—by banning or penalizing them—thereby reducing or eliminating the racial attainment gap. Those who assume economic disparities are caused by racial discrimination rely on what Robert Nozick termed ‘normative sociology,’ where any narrative can be used to derive one’s preferred causal explanations.” (08/04/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/problems-causation-race-and-discrimination
Source: Common Dreams
by Connie Peck
“Currently we live in a world bristling with nuclear and conventional weapons, with a potential destructiveness unprecedented in history. A nuclear war, for example, would largely be over in one hour, with each second equivalent in destruction to World War II. Meanwhile, our security is increasingly threatened by skyrocketing global military expenditure at the same time as the United Nation’s capacity to maintain peace is being undermined by member states starving the organization of funds. In the aftermath of two world wars, there was considerable hope that humanity would learn its lesson and that each would be ‘the war to end all wars’.” (08/04/26)
Source: Washington Monthly
by Bill Scher
“The opposition party is on an electoral roll yet is pilloried for not fighting Donald Trump hard enough.” (08/04/26)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/08/04/democratic-voters-anger-establishment/
Source: EconLog
by Jon Murphy
“A major objection by protectionists is that international trade with other countries, especially low-wage countries, will undermine American workers. As a consequence, there will be a ‘giant sucking sound’ (to use Ross Perot’s phrasing) as jobs are pulled from the United States to these countries. From a purely theoretical perspective, there is little reason to think this will happen. Wages are determined by the marginal productivity of workers. Workers across countries are not identical, which is why firms do not necessarily pursue low wage workers. … Standard theory gives us good reason to doubt protectionist claims. But the protectionists present an alternative theory. We can test the empirical claims of the protectionists to see which theory better explains the empirical evidence.” (08/04/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by David Youngberg
“When policymakers obsess over inequality statistics, they often overlook the institutions and policies that actually keep people poor.” (08/04/26)
Source: The American Conservative
by Jude Russo
“Last week, there was a lot of rumbling out of Washington about a massive escalation against Iran. … But the hand of mercy stayed the whip of calamity, or something. Trump on Sunday said the attack was off following interventions from our Gulf allies, who apparently haven’t been too hot on the idea of Iran wiping out their desalination plants and oil infrastructure in retaliatory strikes. … A remarkable cycle! But perhaps not so very remarkable. People have started to notice that the administration has a propensity for extravagant threats followed by equally extravagant walkbacks, often in concert with the weekly operations of the markets.” (08/04/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-american-believability-crisis/
Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander
“Superforecasting is the art/science/sport of predicting the future – for example, who will win elections, which countries will fight wars, when key technologies will be discovered. Over the past few years, it went from an obscure academic subfield to a multibillion dollar industry in the form of prediction markets. More recently, AI superforecasters have come close to the accuracy of top humans, and their performance is rising rapidly. … Either humans have already come close to some fundamental limit on the predictability of world events – in which case AIs will plateau at or slightly above the human level – or the trend line will continue until AIs are far beyond top humans.” (08/03/26)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/does-forecasting-have-room-at-the
Source: Independent Institute
by Phillip W Magness
“Marx’s conception of alienation posits that, under capitalism, workers become alienated from the products of their labor. Instead, the owner of the factory who employs them asserts control over something that was made by another’s hand and sells it for his own profit, depriving their workforce of not only its full economic value but any meaningful stake in how it is sold. Since Marxists view laborers and owners of capital as adversarial parties, alienation also reveals a disparity of economic power through which the latter exerts control over the former and reduces them to subjugation.” (08/03/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/08/03/the-alienation-of-marxists/
Source: Fox News Forum
by Peter St. Onge & EJ Antoni
“Thirty-five years after the Soviet Union collapsed, the Communist bread line is poised for a comeback in the Big Apple, as Mayor Zohran Mamdani announces his government grocery stores will be undercutting real groceries by 30%. Not to worry, socialism will work this time. The announcement came during a press conference on July 27, where Comrade Mamdani promised 30% discounts for ‘essential’ products at his new city-run grocery stores. The problem, of course, is grocery stores are in a razor-thin industry, sporting profit margins of roughly 2%. And that’s with competent management, which New York City government is decidedly not famous for. That means even if the socialists somehow manage to run a grocery as efficiently as Aldi, Walmart or Gristedes, the city will be losing an ungodly amount of money — at least 28 cents on the dollar.” (08/04/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/mamdanis-city-grocery-plan-could-leave-taxpayers-paying-every-banana