“The Trump administration reportedly directed the Department of Defense recently to begin to use military force against a slew of drug cartels in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. As a number of national security scholars and subject matter experts have argued, further militarization, particularly unilaterally, will not win the war on drugs. The White House should consider staying the course on its current diplomatic efforts while exploring demand-side options for curtailing the fentanyl crisis.” (08/28/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Fabricio Antezana Duran
“While visiting Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, I was intrigued and surprised by the amount of art and public displays commemorating communism and the Soviet era. These weren’t honorary tributes to ‘golden times,’ but rather pieces honoring those who suffered under the regime; reminders never to forget, and never to return to, those dark times.” (08/27/25)
“Four of the best — and often worst — words in the policy game are ‘I told you so.’ They’re the best for obvious reasons: Seeing your advice and predictions proven right after having publicly gone out on a limb is always a great feeling — one certainly not limited to policy. Those words can sting, however, when bad things predictably happened because policymakers didn’t take your original advice. Such is the case, alas, with Intel and U.S. industrial policy.” (08/27/25)
Source: Property and Environment Research Center
by Andrew P Morriss
“Prescribed burning is a vital land management practice that reduces wildfire risk and enhances ecosystem health. However, liability concerns, soaring insurance costs, and outdated legal frameworks severely limit its use across the United States. This policy brief proposes the creation of risk retention groups as an innovative solution to simultaneously address three critical needs: compensating parties harmed by escaped burns, encouraging safer burning practices, and promoting continuous improvement in prescribed fire techniques through data collection and analysis. By aligning financial incentives with safety improvements, risk retention groups offer a market-based path to expand prescribed burning while better protecting all stakeholders.” (08/27/25)
“One of the biggest biases in American life is the idea that Republicans are ‘good for business’. But if you’re a business with any need to receive commercial parcels from other countries, Republicans are pretty bad for you right now. Numerous industrialized countries throughout Europe and Asia have suspended business parcel shipments to the U.S. in advance of a Friday change to the so-called de minimis rules. In most countries, only letters and gift parcels under $100 are being let through, though postal services in Italy, Lithuania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Thailand, the Czech Republic, and others have suspended sending all packages to the U.S. regardless of value. E-commerce firms like Etsy and eBay have also suspended shipping of U.S.-bound parcels from some countries. Private shippers like FedEx could be used, though that will be much costlier.” (08/28/25)
“Growing public awareness of ICE abuses has made the agency very unpopular. Recent survey data indicates that large majorities disapprove of it, and a large minority — almost 40 percent in a recent tracking poll — already wants to abolish it. Yet most Democrats have hesitated to call for the agency’s abolition, probably for fear of seeming to be soft on crime. Immigrant crime was an effective issue for Trump in 2024. But opponents can avoid such accusations by combining abolition of ICE with reallocation of its funds to ordinary police, which would undercut accusations of being pro-criminal or anti-law enforcement. This could greatly expand support for abolition.” [editor’s note: Why not abolish both? – TLK] (08/27/25)
“Soon before the election that made Javier Milei president, 108 economists around the world (including prominent names like Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman, and Jose Ocampo) signed an open letter warning about the dangers of ‘non-traditional’ economic thinking. Even at the time, the letter was cluttered with flawed thinking. The letter then bemoans that ‘the laissez-faire model assumes that markets work perfectly if the government does not intervene.’ While there is some truth to the statement, the letter completely ignores the fact that most of Argentina’s problems over the past decades came about from government failure and over-intervention in the market. … So how has Argentina done with these ‘dangerous’ policies of Milei? Pretty strikingly well, actually.” (08/27/25)
“As Deirdre McCloskey put it: ‘The phrase ‘the dismal science’ was coined by Thomas Carlyle not because economics was gloomy or mathematical — but because economists opposed slavery. That made their science dismal — in Carlyle’s eyes.’ The basic facts of supply and demand weren’t pleasant to extremists then, and still aren’t. Carlyle first used the term in his essay Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, where he mocked economics for explaining the world with such ‘simplistic’ tools as supply and demand. Did he offer a better alternative? No — but he worried that a world governed by price theory would reduce ‘the duty of human governors’ to ‘letting men alone.’ One may call it simplistic, dismal, or even cold, but the simple idea of price theory — letting people decide for themselves — has been a guardian of liberty from the time of Hume and Smith to today.” (08/27/25)
“President Donald Trump and Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker are undoubtedly enjoying the media spotlight accompanying their feud over possible deployment of federalized National Guard troops to Chicago after the crackdown in Washington, D.C. Neither man has ever shied away from a television camera, and Pritzker has White House ambitions of his own. But while both men savor the attention, the fact is that Pritzker has the better hand to play. Trump doesn’t have the same authority in Chicago that he has in D.C. And the president has more to lose in a showdown over law and order in a city — or any jurisdiction — governed by his political opponents.” (08/27/25)
“I am appalled that some ‘libertarians’ continue to defend Trump and MAGA, as if there is some broader strategy at work here. That somehow the more blatant shift toward state capitalism is going to lead to some kind of ‘free market/free trade’ utopia in the future. Add in Trump’s amping-up of domestic police actions in urban centers and across the United States with the goal of terrorizing and deporting millions of peaceful, productive ‘illegal’ immigrants, as well as his intimidation of educational, cultural, and legal institutions, and his various interventions abroad and what you have is nothing resembling the libertarianism I grew up with.” ()8/27/25)
