Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie

“Many people equate economics with the stock market, personal finance and business management. Whereas what economists actually study are incentives, choices, trade-offs, markets, institutions, and how scarce resources are allocated. Money is involved, but it’s only one piece. Non-economists tend to ignore trade-offs. They often assume we can have lower taxes and higher spending, or strict environmental rules and unchanged consumer costs. Many think we can have price controls and no shortages. Economists emphasize opportunity cost; everything has a cost, even if it isn’t a monetary one. Non-economists sometimes confuse individual behaviour with aggregate behaviour, reasoning from personal experience. They say things such as ‘I lost my job, so the economy must be worse,’ or ‘I’m spending more, so inflation must be rising.’ Economists focus on aggregate interactions, which often behave differently from individual components.” (12/04/25)

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/what-non-economists-often-misunderstand

Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone

“One thing I try not to think about very often is how many reports we’ve been seeing about Israeli prison guards training dogs to rape Palestinian captives in torture camps like Sde Teiman. Drop Site News has a new write-up about a testimony from a journalist published by the Palestinian Journalists Protection Center. The reporter says that during his 20 months of hell in Israeli prisons he was electrocuted, beaten, starved, and sexually assaulted on film. He also says he was sexually assaulted by ‘a trained dog’ — just the latest in a long string of such allegations coming out of Israel’s notorious network of torture prisons. Last month Novara Media published an article titled ‘Israeli Prison Guards Are Using Dogs to Rape Palestinians, Former Detainees Say’, based on information collected by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.” (12/04/25)

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2025/12/04/sorry-if-this-is-antisemitic-but-i-think-its-wrong-to-train-dogs-to-rape-prisoners/

Source: The Daily Economy
by Donald J Boudreaux

“Forced redistribution dominates public discourse about wealth inequality, yet much of the debate overlooks how people earn, trade, innovate, and create value.” (12/04/25)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/economics-of-envy-cant-answer/

Source: spiked
by Luke Gittos

“There is a grim irony to David Lammy’s plan to restrict jury trials. This week, the UK justice secretary confirmed that juries would be abolished for all criminal trials where the maximum penalty faced by defendants is less than three years’ jail time. He claims that a court backlog of 80,000 cases, and a consequent delay in bringing matters to trial, had made this necessary. Yet in doing so, Lammy is undermining a significant chunk of his own life’s work.” (12/04/25)

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/12/04/lammys-war-on-juries-exposes-the-futility-of-the-echr/

Source: Law & Liberty
by James M Patterson

“Postliberals would much rather spar over definitions than over the ideas and their implications.” (12/04/25)

https://lawliberty.org/integralism-by-another-name/

Source: The Spectator
by Matt Ridley

“Finally, thankfully, the global warming craze is dying out. To paraphrase Monty Python, the climate parrot may still be nailed to its perch at the recent COP summit in Belém, Brazil – or at Harvard and on CNN – but elsewhere it’s dead. It’s gone to meet its maker, kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. By failing to pledge a cut in fossil fuels, COP achieved less than nothing, the venue caught fire, the air-conditioning malfunctioned – and delegates were told on arrival not to flush toilet paper. Bill Gates’s recent apologia, in which he conceded that global warming ‘will not lead to humanity’s demise’, after he closed the policy and advocacy office of his climate philanthropy group is just the latest nail in the coffin.” (12/04/25)

https://thespectator.com/topic/climate-politics-come-down-to-earth/