“When I first started teaching, David Henderson gave me some advice: to be open about who I am regarding my economic philosophy. At the beginning of class (and several other times throughout), I mention that I am a classical liberal — a free-market economist who argues that individuals rather than governments are best suited to deal with complex social relationships and problems. I don’t rule out government intervention completely, but I make a strong presumption of liberty that must be overcome before government intervention is justified. Law exists to enhance liberty, not restrict it. That is some of the best teaching advice I have gotten.” (11/05/25)
“The Supreme Court heard arguments for nearly three hours on President Trump’s authority to overhaul the tariff system of the United States through an emergency statute. Trump decided at the last minute not to show up to the hearing, and it’s a good thing he did, because he would have wanted to change the channel. Most of the conservative justices seemed pretty skeptical of the argument that the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA), which allows a president in an emergency ‘to regulate importation and exportation,’ confers worldwide, unlimited tariff authority that could raise as much as $4 trillion over a decade, per the government’s brief. Solicitor General D. John Sauer characterized these as ‘regulatory tariffs’ and not taxes, designed to change consumer behavior by buying domestically and as leverage on other countries for purposes of negotiation. The justices weren’t totally buying that.” (11/05/25)
“Former U.S. vice president Richard ‘Dick’ Cheney died on 3 November 2025 at age 84; his family said he had suffered from pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease. Best known for steering national security policy after the 9/11 attacks, he became the dominant force behind a ‘war on terror’ that unleashed torture, preventive war and mass surveillance. Amnesty International has described him as one of the principal architects of a program that amounted to torture, while the Brown University Costs of War project attributes more than 900,000 deaths and trillions of dollars in spending to the post‑9/11 wars he championed. Cheney’s legacy is one of unprecedented destruction and the erosion of civil liberties.” (11/05/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Laurent Hynes
“Mainstream financial academia regularly seeks to impress upon investors the supposed pointlessness of any entrepreneurial effort on their part, under the guise of cost efficiency and risk reduction. Besides misleading empirical evidence, the core argument used to justify the selection of highly passive and diversified financial products is the neoclassical efficient market hypothesis (EMH). Yet the EMH has suffered continual reputational blows, and the Austrian School’s causal-realism is well suited to disassemble it as another example of neoclassical physics envy.” (11/05/25)
“Imagine it’s a bright and pleasant Sunday morning. You walk through the doors of your church and are greeted by familiar faces, friendly handshakes, and warm coffee. The service is an uplifting refuge from a challenging week full of difficulties at home and at work. … Everyone in your church gets in their cars and looks at their phones before driving away to find each and every one of you was the target of a digital propaganda campaign; you go from spiritual transcendence to the sobering realization that you are a datapoint of a geofencing effort. The casualty of a foreign information war. This is the collision between one of the oldest domains of the human experience, religion, and one of its newest, cyberspace.” (11/05/25)
“Mamdani’s win, obviously, isn’t a victory for every Democrat. Cuomo’s desperate campaign — almost certainly his last — tried to knit together a coalition of Republicans, independents, and Democrats worried that a socialist mayor would wreck their city and their party. You can expect more centrist Democrats (who are most of them) to point at the margins in Virginia and New Jersey and say that the candidates who won big in swing states truly show what they stand for. But every Democrat got something out of Tuesday night. They’ve had a year of special election overperformances, followed by hand-wringing about how unpopular and leaderless their party is.” (11/04/25)
Source: The Peaceful Revolutionist
by David S D’Amato
“What I want to suggest is that the true divide within the political world is between indulging this – the strictly fictional entertainment world of hate-your-neighborism, GDPism, and meaningless abstraction – and recognizing others as your equals. The former is designed as a series of business plans, and as reports from pollsters and consultants, all to make you confuse a coherent politics with dutiful obedience to the state and a shrinking set of global companies. To me, this could never be a valid mode of political life, but is only the cynical embrace of a thoroughly commercialized and powerless performance of identity.” (11/04/25)
“Suppose taxpayers are subsidizing air pollution. ‘Cutting the subsidies wouldn’t have a large effect on pollution, and the people getting subsidies are poor’ is a good argument that the subsidies aren’t awful. But it hardly shows that subsidizing air pollution is actually a good idea. I say the same logic is at play here. As long as middle-class families are eager to adopt, why should government subsidize non-adoption?” (11/04/25)
“In times of national emergency, should the Supreme Court dictate America’s grand strategy and international economic policies? This question confronts the justices this week in Learning Resources v. Trump, a case that puts the president’s tariff powers to the test. If President Donald Trump loses, the Treasury faces having to refund more than $100 billion in tariff revenue, and the president’s trade strategy will be thrown into chaos. Businesses that have already changed their operations because of the tariffs, drawing jobs and supply chains back to America, will be subject to grave new uncertainties: Will Trump find other legal grounds for his tariffs — or will his project collapse, throwing the country back to an era of unfettered globalization?” [editor’s note: “But if he has to follow the law, it will go back to being like it was when he had to follow the law!” doesn’t seem like much of an argument – TLK] (11/04/25)
