Can Ants Teach Us Anything About Free Markets?

Source: Students For Liberty
by Ilia Zhuzhunashvili

“Observing a single ant often reveals little about the organization of ant behavior. Its movements may appear erratic: it changes direction, retraces its path, pauses, and resumes without any obvious plan. Considered in isolation, the ant does not seem to act with clear purpose or coordination. The colony, however, presents a very different picture. What appears disordered at the level of the individual can become highly structured at the level of the group. When a source of food is introduced, ants may rapidly establish a direct and efficient route between the nest and the food. The resulting trail can resemble a carefully planned transport network. Yet no individual ant designs the route, issues instructions, or oversees the movement of the colony.” (08/10/26)

https://studentsforliberty.org/blog/can-ants-teach-us-anything-about-free-markets/

Is It (Still) Un-American to Care?

Source: Common Dreams
by Danaka Katovich

“I initially wrote this piece in 2024 during the student uprisings that took place around the United States. The content was focused on Gaza and the people who made up the movement for Palestine in the belly of the beast. I’ve rewritten some of it and replaced Gaza with Cuba. The arguments needed no editing at all. In March, a delegation traveled to Cuba to bring medical aid to Cubans who were suffering under the fuel blockade imposed on them by the United States of America. In recent months, people and organizations who took part, including my own organization, have been targeted by the Trump administration via investigations, subpoenas, and threatening reports such as Marco Rubio’s 100-page report ‘The Capital of 21st Century Communism’.” (08/10/26)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/un-american-to-care

Rediscovering the Comparative Advantage of Business Schools

Source: The Daily Economy
by Kimberlee Josephson

“Before asking students how businesses should change society, business schools should ensure they understand how businesses create value in the first place.” (08/10/26)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/rediscovering-the-comparative-advantage-of-business-schools/

The Barbarous Relic’s Revenge

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith

“For Americans, the gold standard was killed by presidential decree during the crisis of the Great Depression. In 1971, another president told foreigners they could no longer get gold for American dollars and thus removed the last trace of monetary gold from international trade. Since then all governments have been on a fiat money standard, depreciating their currencies as a matter of policy. The story of gold’s disappearance is part of a larger narrative about the growth of government. Besides being a check on bank counterfeiting, or inflation, gold is also a serious restriction on government expansion. For the advocates of big government, therefore, gold becomes a barbarous relic that stands in their way.” (08/10/26)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/barbarous-relics-revenge

You Want a Real Commie?

Source: The American Conservative
by Bill Kauffman

“Fox World is all a-twitter because a handful of members or fellow travelers of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are about to be elected to the U.S. Congress and various state legislatures. They’re ‘godless communists,’ according to President Trump, and what with inflation, an insane war, and Trump family grift, we’ll be hearing about commies all election season. Michael ‘The Other America’ Harrington, founder of DSA, was about as threatening as the Mills Brothers. The current DSA candidates seem, at first glance, as off-putting as your typical hectoring grad-school wokester, but I can’t get too worked up over them. After all, New York City once sent a real communist to Congress—and his example complicates the Sean Hannity narrative.” (08/10/26)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/you-want-a-real-commie/

Populism is Emotion Without Governing Principle

Source: The Erick Erickson Show
by Erick-Woods Erickson

“This is the fundamental weakness of populism. It possesses no governing philosophy, only a disposition. It moves from one grievance to the next, and each time it acts to remedy a single complaint, it creates others that must later be remedied in turn. It resolves that cheap imports are destroying jobs, so it taxes the imports, and then expresses surprise when the toaster, the washing machine, and the burrito all cost more. It demands that the government make housing affordable while defending the guarantees that made housing unaffordable. It insists at once on lower prices and greater intervention, and those two aims cannot be reconciled.” (08/10/26)

https://ewerickson.substack.com/p/populism-is-emotion-without-governing

Public presence, public duty

Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton

“Is it reasonable to say that libertarians, and even lovers of liberty who are rational, free-market, anarchists, believe that members of a community do have some public duties? Even while we recognize that people have a God-given right to reject those duties, just as they have the right to stupidly refuse to accept responsibility for their actions?” (08/09/26)

https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/08/09/public-presence-public-duty/

Jason Arday, Barack Obama, and the Making of Myths

Source: American Greatness
by Stephen Soukup

“Yesterday in these pages, the inimitable Roger Kimball recounted the tall tale of Jason Arday, the youngest black professor at the University of Cambridge. As Kimball noted, Arday has been shown over the last few weeks to be more than just your average modern academic charlatan. With every passing day, it appears more and more that he’s a full-throated fabulist in the contemporary sense, which is to say that he made up almost everything about his life and public persona and plagiarized the rest. All his lies and deceptions were, however, uttered in the service of a larger purpose: to undermine the establishment and force its members to reckon with their hatreds and prejudices. Arday overcame more obstacles and barriers than the average man could ever even imagine, and therefore his struggle must be admired and applauded, while his ‘scholarship’ is celebrated.” (08/10/26)

https://amgreatness.com/2026/08/10/jason-arday-barack-obama-and-the-making-of-myths/