“In the early 1930s, the Australian government lost a war against emus, and its present war, this time on tobacco, is heading the same way. Excessive taxation in the name of public health has backfired in extraordinary fashion, helping create a massive black market in tobacco products. This has led to an effective transfer to criminal gangs of billions of dollars of revenue previously earned by the legal tobacco industry, and a corresponding significant drop in excise tax revenue collected by the government, unprecedented violence between those gangs as they scrap over money and territory, and, to top it all off, an increase in the consumption of tobacco and nicotine.” (07/20/26)
“Young progressives are more likely to consider normal day-to-day struggles — like difficulty sleeping and feeling blue — as mental health problems, per a new analysis. Is it any wonder, given the left-leaning ideology that convinces Americans that the system is simply stacked against them? Data from the US General Social Survey, analyzed by the Financial Times, revealed that younger people and more progressive people were more likely to believe that everything from feeling worried, trouble sleeping and feeling a little sad were symptomatic of a disorder. … This politics of suffering and victimization pairs perfectly with a population eager to identify with their struggles rather than their strengths. In recent years, claiming mental illness has become chic in progressive spaces, conferring socially valuable oppression points in the battle to prove who is most downtrodden.” (07/20/26)
“Think about it: every day, every person of influence is likely to encounter an army of auxiliaries who at any moment could overhear privileged information. Bank tellers, family counselors, pharmacists. For a nice little earner, wedding planners could short a celebrity marriage, security staff have a flutter on which stars will show up, and soldiers gamble on the capture of a Venezuelan strongman — except that’s already (allegedly) happened. Closeness to major events transforms being ‘in the know’ into possessing insider alpha; with these new incentives, secrets become stranded assets. He who dares is not gambling on uncertainty — his privileged access means he knows the direction of travel — but rather on the likelihood of being rumbled. Taking that risk could set him up for life, and could far outstrip baseline salaries for clerical or flunky work. You can see the appeal. Within the present White House, the temptation would seem to be irresistible.” (07/20/26)
“In her new book, Ray Madoff argues that America’s wealthiest exploit the tax code at the public’s expense. But her critique understates both what the rich pay and what they produce.” (07/21/26)
“Lovers of liberty tend to concentrate on human threats which must be countered in self-defense by having and using a firearm. But animals are also threats that must be addressed.” (07/20/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Alvaro Vargas Llosa
“I have visited five countries across Asia and Europe over the last few weeks. The hatred the Argentine national soccer team seems to have awakened in people around the world—due to their behavior at this World Cup—is something Argentina’s soccer authorities must take seriously. Now that they have lost to Spain, and given that Lionel Messi, the best player on the planet, is 39 and on the verge of retirement, they will have to reconstruct much of their team. … The broader issue—and what appears to make Argentina so widely disliked around the world—is that the team has learned neither how to win nor how to lose with grace in international competitions.” (07/20/26)
“If there’s a problem with the American economy, it’s only because some people have to work for a living. Income from investment—the primary source of income for roughly 1 percent of Americans—is soaring. The remaining 99 percent, who depend primarily on income from their work, are the laggards grousing about prices and necessities that may be out of reach.” (07/21/26)
“‘Democratic socialists’ are a growing movement on the political left. And many of them are also prison abolitionists. But there is a deep contradiction between their socialism and their abolitionism. Socialism requires making numerous economic activities illegal, and those laws have to be enforced by some system of punishment. As the history of actual socialist states shows, serious attempts to implement socialism lead to vastly greater incarceration (and other punishment), not less. There are a number of possible ways to try to escape this contradiction. But none of them work.” (07/20/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Seventeen military personnel have died in President Trump’s war on Iran. Compared to the 58,200 military personnel who were killed in the Vietnam War, that’s not a large number … well, unless one happens to be among those 17 or among their friends or family members. In that case, 17 becomes an extremely large number. But there is one thing in common between those 58,200 military personnel who died in the Vietnam War and those 17 military personnel who have died in Trump’s war on Iran: They all died for nothing. No, they didn’t died for their country. No, they didn’t die defending our freedom. No, they didn’t die to make the world safe for democracy. They died for nothing.” (07/20/26)
