No, AI Won’t Make Money Obsolete

Source: The Daily Economy
by Peter C Earle

“The notion that artificial intelligence at full bloom might eliminate the need for money reflects a deep confusion about what money is and does. Money is not merely a barter-avoiding convenience layered onto an otherwise frictionless world. It is a solution to fundamental problems of exchange, profound difficulties in coordination, and comparison of alternatives under scarcity. Even in a hypothetical future defined by extraordinary productivity gains and broadly collapsing prices, those underlying problems do not disappear. Instead they change form, and for as long as scarcity, tradeoffs, and uncertainty persist in any domain, so too will the need for money.” (05/06/26)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/no-ai-wont-make-money-obsolete/

Thomas L. Knapp

Will John Fetterman Go Full Benedict Arnold?

Source: The American Prospect
by Ryan Cooper

“Is Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) going to switch parties? That’s the scuttlebutt in Washington, D.C., according to Politico. He has been one of Trump’s loudest supporters among congressional Democrats, and with the GOP looking down the barrel of a catastrophic loss in the upcoming midterms, they are hoping to buy themselves a Senate seat—literally. It seems Sens. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and Katie Britt (R-AL) have been assiduously working on Fetterman. Donald Trump as usual cut to the chase and offered a huge sack of cash by way of a message delivered through Fox News contributor Sean Hannity: ‘Your job is to tell him,’ as Hannity recalled the conversation, ‘‘He’s gonna run as a Republican, he’s gonna have our full support, more money than he ever dreamed of, and he’s gonna win big.’'” (05/06/26)

https://prospect.org/2026/05/06/will-john-fetterman-go-full-benedict-arnold/

Steve Trinward

Trump’s War on Iran Is Destroying America

Source: Antiwar.com
by John J. Duncan, Jr.

“I think Trump realizes that both the U.S. economy and the world economy will be greatly damaged and possibly go in to a major recession if the war is not ended very soon. JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said it ‘will be worse than people think.’ The President seems to be trying very hard to reach an agreement, but he knows Israel wants to go in the other direction and escalate the war even further. And he knows the Israel Lobby has almost total control of the Congress and will go along with Netanyahu no matter what.” (05/06/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/rep-john-j-duncan-jr/2026/05/05/trumps-war-on-iran-is-destroying-america/

Thomas L. Knapp

DC: Man charged in shooting was reportedly walking along path of Vance’s motorcade

Source: SFGate

“A man accused of firing a gun at law enforcement officers near the Washington Monument this week was walking along the path of Vice President JD Vance’s motorcade before the shooting and made a vulgar remark about the White House after the confrontation, according to a court filing Wednesday. Michael Marx, 45, of Midland, Texas, was shot multiple times during Monday’s confrontation and was in the back of an ambulance on his way to a hospital when he said, ‘F**k the White House!’ and ‘Kill me, kill me, kill me!’ as a Secret Service agent said in an affidavit. The sworn statement does not specify whether investigators believe Marx had a particular target.” (05/06/26)

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/shooting-suspect-made-vulgar-remark-about-white-22244732.php

Steve Trinward

Uganda: Lawmakers Pass Scaled-Back Sovereignty Law After Central Bank Warning

Source: US News & World Report

“Uganda’s parliament passed legislation to ⁠curb ⁠alleged foreign influence after scaling back ⁠proposed restrictions on funding from abroad that the central bank governor ​said risked ‘economic disaster.’ The proposal, entitled ‘The Protection of Sovereignty Bill,’ was adopted late on Tuesday and now awaits ‌the signature of President Yoweri Museveni. Museveni, ‌who has been in power since 1986, and allies in the ruling party regularly ⁠decry outside influence ⁠in Uganda, accusing domestic political rivals of receiving funding from abroad ​and pushing foreign agendas such as LGBTQ rights. Several Ugandan opposition parties have traditionally received some of their funding from outside the country.” (05/06/26)

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-05-06/ugandan-lawmakers-pass-scaled-back-sovereignty-law-after-central-bank-warning

Thomas L. Knapp

Is Libertarianism Incoherent?

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by David Gordon & Roger E. Bissell

“Libertarianism has no ‘fixed philosophical essence,’ [Matt] Zwolinski says, or you wouldn’t have seen the drastic swings in how the term was applied between Déjacque’s anarcho-communism of the 1850s and Leonard Read’s free markets and limited government of the 1950s, let alone the present-day. There simply has never been a permanent, stable paradigm of liberty. Yes, an apparent consensus was arrived at in the 1970s in the ‘rights-based free-market’ views of Robert Nozick, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard — which Zwolinski also tellingly labels as rationalist and absolutist. (Code-word alert: he means unempirical and dogmatic, which are bad things, unlike the empirical and flexible approach he favors.) But this was more of a historical accident, or perhaps a breathing spell, before society in general and libertarian theory in particular began a steady unraveling and loss of cohesion.” (05/05/26)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/libertarianism-incoherent

Thomas L. Knapp