Source: Law & Liberty
by Stuart Halpern
“Beyond raising foundational questions of individual autonomy versus governmental authority, our relationship to the Highest Authority would also be impacted by the arrival of ET-like creatures. After all, the question of whether other minds exist is also a question about what makes our own minds—and our moral obligations—distinctive. Would other-worldly beings have their own salvific commandments and beliefs?” (09/18/26)
Source: Inequality.org
by Deepak Xavier & Janet Mudzviti-Zhou
“As we mark 15 years since Occupy Wall Street, it is worth remembering that the movement against inequality has a long lineage. The Gen Z-led protests flooding the streets of India, Kenya, Bolivia, and Tunisia today have been building for generations. On the last day of November 1999, tens of thousands of people shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle. Trade unionists marched alongside environmentalists, students locked arms with farmers, and for a few extraordinary days the people who run the global economy could not get into their own meeting. The press called protesters a rabble with no coherent demand. They were wrong. The demand was simple and it has not changed: an economy that works for the many, not for a handful at the top.” (09/19/26)
https://inequality.org/article/15-years-on-from-occupy-the-long-fight-of-the-99-continues/
Source: EconLog
by Alberto Mingardi
“The movement took its name from a Ned Ludd who never existed—yet protesters signed letters and proclamations against mechanization as Ned Ludd, King Ludd, or General Ludd. It began in Nottinghamshire in March 1811, peaked in 1812, and had flickered out by 1816. It was the most prominent, but neither the only nor the first, episode of machine-breaking. Resistance to the introduction of machines in production was not new. It was strongest in old trades, such as wool and hosiery, which were long established in England and capable of expressing political demands. Mechanization in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England was not merely the introduction of new machinery; it was also a breakthrough in that particular technology known as organization.” (09/18/26)
Source: Persuasion
by Charles Lane
“The southern border is a case in point.” (09/18/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/congress-failed-to-act-on-the-border
Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman
“Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), the great English individualist and classical liberal, emphasized that societies based on contract, unlike societies based on status and coercion, blossom with creative diversity. (How wokeism has corrupted that word in our time!) Free association bestows countless benefits on all socioeconomic levels. Paradoxically, greater individuality accompanies growing interdependence through specialization, the division of labor, and trade. Self-sufficiency is the way to stay poor. The result of industrialism, Spencer wrote, is general affluence and a fading away of coercion.” (09/18/26)
https://sheldonrichman.substack.com/p/tgif-herbert-spencer-real-liberalisms
Source: American Greatness
by Adam Turner
“The Shia Muslim terror proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Houthis of Yemen, are tightening their control over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. This is a big deal, because an average of 8.1 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum liquids moved through the Strait during the second quarter of 2026. There is also the non-energy trade. All this international trade then heads to Europe and/or the Americas. … With Iran also threatening the Strait of Hormuz—however ineffectively—this is bound to have grave repercussions for the world energy market and the international economy. Which leads me to my big question for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi: ‘What would you say … you do here, President Sisi?'” (09/18/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/09/18/egypt-should-be-fighting-against-the-houthis-in-yemen/
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“While we’ve grown used to public school educators fiddling with grades, exams like those currently required — even if far from perfect — constitute an even better way to glean how well (or badly) teachers and students are doing. Government schools suffer, of course, from ‘increased spending and mediocre results,’ as Reason puts it. (I covered Michigan’s problems yesterday, for example.) The avoidance of ‘metrics’ — in business lingo — is just the kind of evasion that one might expect from under-performing institutions. New York’s opt-in downgrade is comparable to a failing student doctoring his report card or forging a parent’s signature.” (09/18/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/09/18/graduation-without-testing/
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jared Walczak
“A recent tax court ruling in Maryland pours cold water on a tax proposal championed in Michigan by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The Maryland Tax Court struck down that state’s first-in-the-nation digital advertising tax, ruling that it violated the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act, as well as the interstate commerce and due process clauses of the US Constitution. Lawsuits have also been filed in Utah and Illinois, which adopted their own digital advertising taxes earlier this year.” (09/18/26)
https://fee.org/articles/learning-from-the-failure-of-marylands-digital-advertising-tax/
Source: The UnPopulist
by Nicholas Grossman
“More than six months after Trump started the war, and nearly three months after he signed an agreement that would supposedly end it and normalize shipping, the U.S. and Iran are still fighting over the Strait of Hormuz. The damage keeps growing, and the Trump White House is both unable to fix it and unwilling to admit it.” (09/18/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/trumps-iran-war-is-a-rolling-disaster
Source: In These Times
by US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
“AI experts have told us that, within a few years, AI may be able to do anything we can do better than we can do it. The economic impact of that is that AI has the potential to eliminate tens of millions of jobs, wiping out entire professions and making it harder for young people to enter into the workforce. But it’s not just the economy. Psychologists have warned us about the increased isolation and mental health challenges young people are experiencing as they become more dependent upon an AI chatbot for their emotional support. Educators are worried about a decline in our kids’ reading scores, writing abilities and cognitive capabilities. Civil libertarians warn that AI is in the process of eviscerating our privacy rights by making it easier to collect and analyze every[thing we do], creating a mass surveillance state.” (09/17/26)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/bernie-sanders-artificial-intelligence-ai-openai-ban