Topic: Government

Elections and Legitimacy

– November 11, 2020

“The election results will likely further erode federal legitimacy at a time when Uncle Sam has no trust to spare. How many more election debacles and brazen abuses of power does Washington believe the American people will tolerate?” ~ James Bovard

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David Skarbek on Prison Order

– November 11, 2020

“At best Skarbek has illustrated how governance institutions can be analyzed, providing us with a fascinating case study of prison life in a dozen settings. A bit more charitably, governance theory applied to prisons is not falsified by the examples he uses. Whether he has proven the usefulness of the theory, or its ability to explain the observed world, is much less clear.” ~ Joakim Book

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What Drives Progress: The State or the Market?

– November 11, 2020

“The idea of an entrepreneurial state as proposed by Mazzucato is a romantic one. It’s an idea that people can come together and through sheer will can make innovation happen. That some very smart people with fancy degrees and prestigious titles can steer society to an optimal location. The only problem with that is just about everything.” ~ Ethan Yang

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Why Politics Breeds Divisive Fears and Angers

– November 10, 2020

“Politics becomes a life and death struggle, a fight to the finish, since the winning side with the majority upper hand is able to impose and enforce its views and values on all in society. Only by limiting government to those few though essential functions can these tensions, angers, and divisions be reduced or even removed.” ~ Richard M. Ebeling

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For Better Health and a Stronger Economy, Don’t Lock Down Again

– November 9, 2020

“Instead of following Europe into a second round of lockdowns, the United States should follow the advice of the top scientists and medical experts who have signed the Great Barrington Declaration. They advise avoiding lockdowns and focusing instead on protecting the most vulnerable, letting the disease spread among the young and healthy to build population immunity.” ~ Benjamin Powell

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Agreeing and Disagreeing with Tyler Cowen on Covid-19

– November 9, 2020

“By failing to take account of Covid’s differential impact on people according to their age, governments have compromised their credibility. By falsely treating everyone from kindergartners through college students and even middle-aged folks in normal health as if they all are as imperiled by Covid as are residents of nursing homes, governments signal a disregard for relevant facts. They reveal that they’ll seize upon any crisis, inflate it opportunistically, and use it as an excuse to grab more power regardless of the underlying realities.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

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Let a Billion Preferences Bloom

– November 9, 2020

“Mass customization and diversity are commercial society’s virtues. Mass regimentation and uniformity are political society’s vices. The stark contrast is clear in the proximity between Halloween and Election Day.” ~ Art Carden

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Reflecting On Communism After 103 Years

– November 8, 2020

“Communism and big government ideologies more generally have made the lethal promise that nature can bend to the will of man. That human nature, the laws of economics, and basic political science are merely suggestions. How dreadfully wrong they were.” ~ Ethan Yang

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The Mystery of Taiwan

– November 7, 2020

“According to the lockdown narrative, Taiwan did almost everything ‘wrong’ but generated what might in fact be the best results in terms of public health of any country in the world.” ~ Amelia Janaskie

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It’s Time To Admit: Drugs Won The War On Drugs

– November 7, 2020

“Ten years ago, ending the drug war was a pipe dream. Now, medical marijuana and recreational marijuana are being legalized in state after state. I can only hope that the end of all this Reefer Madness is near.” ~ Art Carden

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The Political Parties Abandon the Working Class

– November 6, 2020

“The approach to the pandemic that the Democratic Party and liberal-left has adopted represents the culmination of Frank’s concerns expressed in Listen, Liberal. The working class and poor have been utterly forsaken; the party serves primarily the interests of the ruling class. The Democratic Party cannot expect to win back the working class until it addresses this shortcoming. Because even if Joe Biden wins this election narrowly, this fundamental issue will remain.” ~ Jenin Younes

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The Many Ways in Which Freedom Won the Election

– November 6, 2020

“The media and the elites learned nothing from the 2016 election. But for now, some pretty awful policies were defeated. May the utter disaster and election mismanagement unfolding before our eyes in many states right now lead a few people to wonder why on earth they should believe that a government that can’t do something as basic as running an election should possibly be in charge of the rest of our lives.” ~ Veronique de Rugy

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