Topic: Crisis

Fighting Invisible Enemies

– June 17, 2021

“The point of waging war against invisible enemies is that the struggle never ends. There is no armistice, no unconditional victory. No overview of the battlefield and no assessment over what more is to come. So, the war keeps going, on and on and on, with no end in sight – and indeed, nobody desires the surrender.” ~ Joakim Book

Crisis, Government, Regulation

Has the Government Forgotten How Society Works?

– June 16, 2021

“The premise for the modern administrative state is the dubious notion that the federal government can scientifically plan the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The practical outcome is a regime of sheer incompetence and counterproductive policymaking that is fundamentally at odds with the normal functioning of society. It is a system meant not for a nation of pioneers and entrepreneurs, but hall monitors and clerks.” ~ Ethan Yang

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Government

Defining Down Freedom

– June 16, 2021

“Politicians vindicated lockdowns by claiming that all the sacrifices are justified if they ‘save just one life.’ But what about ‘just one freedom’ – especially freedoms previously enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people? Instead of ‘Build Back Better’ further empowering reckless rulers, we need to ‘Build Back Freer.'” ~ James Bovard

Crisis, Government, Science

Wuhan Lab Controversy Illustrates How Government Funding Throttles Scientific Integrity

– June 14, 2021

“We must separate government completely from science for the same reason we separate church from state and press from state. Don’t force our scientists to become supplicants to government bureaucrats in order to pursue truth. That will be the death of reason, science, and truth, and lead to disasters, such as misunderstanding the origins of deadly viruses.” ~ Raymond C. Niles

Crisis, Economic Education, Government

The Labor Shortage Is a Government-Contrived Scarcity

– June 14, 2021

“Contrived scarcities, in principle, could be gone tomorrow if the government’s economic policies fostering, creating and sustaining them were abolished and eliminated. The individual’s freedom of choice and action as both consumer and producer will have been more fully restored with a less intervening government.” ~ Richard M. Ebeling

Art and Culture, Books, Crisis

Doomed by Politics

– June 13, 2021

“How we prepare and what we do with the worldly events that face us matter: even catastrophes that stem from pathogens or poor harvests are man-made, a message for which Ferguson’s fidgitive book only narrowly succeeds.” ~ Joakim Book

Authoritarianism, Classical Liberalism, Crisis

The World May Be Getting Darker, But We Must Carry on the Light of Liberalism

– June 11, 2021

“Liberalism is not merely an abstraction we fight to advance for its own sake, but rather for the sake of the flesh and blood of humans of the world, and in remembrance of those who have fought the good fight before us. As ‘society is sweeping towards destruction’ let us keep in mind our own limited knowledge of the future and thrust ourselves ‘vigorously into the intellectual battle’ once more.” ~ Zachary Yost

Crisis, Government, Science

Stinky Stuff Happens, but How Do We Prepare?

– June 9, 2021

“The problem is that we don’t know what disasters are lurking on the horizon, and preparing for all the possible ones we can reasonably foresee is impossible and excessively costly. Even if we somehow managed to, individually or as a society, it still doesn’t guarantee protection against the truly black swans, i.e. the disasters of kinds and magnitudes that nobody could foresee.” ~ Joakim Book

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Government

Support for Lockdowns: A ‘Bootleggers and Baptists’ Phenomenon

– June 8, 2021

“This goes a long way toward explaining the behavior of white collar professionals during the pandemic: they have been acting out of a genuine sense of virtue, but they have also done rather well out of doing so, at least in the short term. It’s not one or the other, and high and low motives are not mutually exclusive – it’s both in combination that does the trick.” ~ David McGrogan

Crisis, International, Science

The Fantasy Prediction of 510,000 Deaths

– June 7, 2021

“The 510,000 figure, which turned the world on its head, was a fantasy number churned out by absurd modeling of a zero-probability event. Cummings does not see that the reason why the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak escalated into the public policy catastrophe that it became was the fundamentally flawed Imperial College modeling on which the government based its response.” ~ David Campbell & Kevin Dowd

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Government

Will Biden’s Sham Corruption Crackdown Endanger Freedom?

– June 7, 2021

“Joe Biden has never provided any evidence that he is more trustworthy on corruption than any other career Washington politician. Regardless of the plaudits that Biden receives, new federal crackdowns on cryptocurrency and “pernicious foreign influence” could roil financial markets and undercut freedom of the press.” ~ James Bovard

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Science

Why Is There Such Reluctance to Discuss Natural Immunity?

– June 4, 2021

“Whatever the reason, it’s keeping Americans in the dark about how many people have active immunity from Covid-19. It’s keeping people needlessly fearful and suspicious of each other. It’s empowering executive overreach. Worst of all, it’s tempting people to consider government and business restrictions on the unvaccinated, regardless of their actual immunity.” ~ Jon Sanders