Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Keli’i Akina
“One of the most effective ways for lawmakers to reduce poverty in Hawaii wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime: housing reform. … It might be tempting to think that rent control would quickly reduce housing costs. But before lawmakers consider that, they should know such price fixing has been shown to reduce available rental housing and increase rent prices in nearby areas where rent is not controlled. So what could Hawaii do to reduce poverty through housing reform? Simply follow the example of cities that have already seen success: Allow higher-density homebuilding, streamline permitting, simplify building codes, eliminate parking mandates and revise restrictive land-use rules.” (10/21/26)
“A distraught woman pled with masked men not to destroy a store, identified by reporters (not memesters) as a Franprix supermarket on Rue du Faubourg du Temple. ‘Why are you doing this?‘ she demanded, then screamed ‘this is not the cause!’ All for naught. The rioters brushed past her, breaking windows, looting, committing mayhem. The mob cheered. Her look — of bewilderment and betrayal — has become the new face of France. FAFO, in French fashion.” (10/21/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“Federal bureaucrats want to regulate artificial intelligence but private innovation remains our only practical solution to the national debt crisis.” (10/21/26)
“Readers may recall the well-known science fiction story about a planet where, every few centuries, the multiple suns of its system all set and suddenly, the sky was dark and stars appeared. This event would trigger panic: people would start fires and do more to try and end the darkness. This would lead to mass insanity and the civilization would crash and burn. Is that happening in Europe?” (10/21/26)
“A friend asked me to investigate the following mystery: why do 5-10% of skulls from 10,000 BC to 3,000 BC, all over the world, have holes in them? Why do bone growth patterns indicate that most skull-hole-havers survived years after their holes were drilled, even though brain surgery today requires careful sterilization (and frequently, prophylactic antibiotics) to prevent fatal infections? And why did everyone stop doing this sometime around the beginning of recorded history? Was it cultural diffusion? No. Trepanation (the technical term for drilling a hole in the skull) was common across Europe and South America, with scattered cases in Africa and other continents. The Old and New Worlds had limited contact after about 10,000 BC, and most customs don’t survive for five thousand plus years with no reason.” (10/21/26)
“Sometimes, it seems, a writer’s style and sensibility can seep into the public consciousness so thoroughly that it washes away all particular facts about the works themselves. Ernest Hemingway is perhaps the paradigm case. Everyone agrees that he is gruff and terse and manly and emotionless; his main interests are bullfighting and big-game hunting and deep-sea fishing and overusing the word ‘and’. Most importantly, the things that tend to preoccupy other great novelists — interpersonal relationships, the delicate gradations of human thought and feeling — tend not to get much of a look in. It is for this reason that readers who open up The Sun Also Rises, which celebrates its centenary today, might be in for a surprise.” (10/21/26)
“The Trump administration’s campaign to compel hundreds of billions of dollars of new military appropriations out of Congress, citing new materiel needs downstream of its unsanctioned Iran War, has been stalled in the Senate for months. But one unexpected winner has emerged from the congressional stalemate over defense spending: an obscure investment office in the Pentagon known as the Economic Defense Unit (EDU). Earlier this year, Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg stood up the EDU and appointed George Kollitides, a one-time executive at Feinberg’s former private equity firm, Cerberus Capital Management, who recently was the subject of a ProPublica investigation for his role in steering a $350 million Department of Defense contract to a consulting firm where he was a partner until just weeks ago.” (10/22/26)
“The budget deficit for FY 2026 was just shy of $2 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). That’s a 12 percent increase over FY 2025. Some will undoubtedly attribute the budget deficit’s size to the refunds the Trump administration had to issue after the Supreme Court struck down its illegal tariff regime. That’s partly true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story about the deficit and the growing budgetary woes the federal government is experiencing.” (10/21/26)
“Toward the end of the summer, I bought a new dishwasher after agonizing over a big-ticket purchase. … The same day my dishwasher was installed, my family went out to eat, and when the bill arrived, I found the comparison almost laughable: our meal plus the tip was approaching half the price of the dishwasher. How silly I had been to put off buying an appliance that would undoubtedly make my life easier and last for thousands of wash cycles — unlike the dinner that we enjoyed and consumed in under an hour. In retrospect, there was no need to agonize over the appliance purchase. I could manage the expense by forgoing a few nights of eating out. But that realization also highlighted a familiar consumer behavior: we often scrutinize large, infrequent purchases while accepting smaller, convenient expenses with little deliberation.” (10/21/26)
