Twelve Principles of International Trade: Part 2
“Foreigners do not treat us ‘unfairly’ if they insist on sending to us more imports in exchange for a given amount of our exports (or, what is the same thing, if they accept fewer of our exports in exchange for a given amount of what we import from them). Accusing foreigners in such a case of treating us unfairly makes no more sense than accusing your employer who gives you a raise of treating you unfairly.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux
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Why Hayek was Right About Nazis Being Socialists
“I would further ask him to concede that whether he agrees with the ends and goals of other socialists, their use of command and control and their introduction of some form of institutional central planning to pursue their declared ‘social good’ makes their system just as much a ‘socialist’ one as any other that Ronald Granieri might endorse or look more favorably upon. So, whether he likes it or not, the Nazis, too, were socialists, just a different stripe than the ones he feels more comfortable with.” ~ Richard M. Ebeling
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Scaring Ourselves to Death
“People thinking that, regardless of age, they are liable to die if they get Covid, leads to panic if they become ill or get a positive test. In turn, panic likely leads to some unnecessary Covid deaths among all age groups, accelerates the death rate in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities, and fuels chronic or ‘long-haul’ coronavirus illness. We need to turn down the fear.” ~ Keith Gandal
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Covid Regulations in Loco Moco
“Unfortunately, all the bankrupted local businesses, all the shafted young children, and the surge in cases of attempted suicide and mental illness are irrelevant to how MoCo scores its good deeds. As long as county officials can claim that things would have been worse without its destructive edicts, they can continue pretending to have saved humanity.” ~ James Bovard
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I, Chaos: The Simple Anatomy of an Interventionist Snowball
“Intervention tends to beget intervention, which tends to beget still further intervention. In the long run, we are all worse off than we would have been had we just been able to avoid getting the government involved in the first place.” ~ Art Carden
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The Hype Surrounding Environmental, Social, and Governance Investing
“The shares of ESG companies will get wicked expensive as more and more money piles into them. At that point, with the expectation of low returns on ESG and high ones on ‘wicked’ stocks, virtue investors and ESG fund managers will have to eat palpably lower returns or creatively reclassify ‘wicked’ companies to get higher performing stocks into their portfolios, i.e., destroy the meaningful differentiation between ESG and ‘wicked’ companies once again.” ~ Robert E. Wright
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The Great Reset: Between Conspiracy and Wishful Thinking
“It is quite bizarre that we tend to divide the world between awful private interests and those who use glowing words. Perhaps glowing words can be aligned with some private interests too.” ~ Alberto Mingardi
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Communities in the Pandemic
“Are local communities self-organizing because politics is being unduly constrained, limited in its spending capacity, and disempowered, or are they self-organizing because, in spite of consuming more than a third of GDP (in England), governments are simply lacking the flexibility and the responsiveness to deal with people’s demands, particularly when they are new and when they are changing?” ~ Alberto Mingardi
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What the Hasidim Tell Us About Being Americans
“It is the philosophy of human rights and liberty applied consistently and equally to all that makes America America. If it takes Hasidim, who live according to ancient Biblical and Rabbinic law and 18th century Eastern European customs and fashion, and who may choose to ignore even the best scientific advice, the better to pursue their own happiness, to remind us of this, well, more power to them. L’Haim, to life!” ~ Mitchell Heller
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Fragile and Unsustainable Lies
“Just as a fiat currency can quickly lose value through the self-interested actions of market participants, so too can lockdowns dissolve. In fact, in both cases governmental attempts to bolster its Lie (that its monetary policies or lockdowns work) will serve to speed the inevitable. If policymakers do not take the ‘Thanksgiving Rebellion’ as a serious warning, they are dumber or more hubristic than even the most pessimistic have claimed.” ~ Robert E. Wright
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Darth Sidious’s Lockdown
“Scrupling the ill consequences of frenzy and restrictions is the least we can expect from anyone who has ever maintained pretensions of giving some presumption to the freedom of association and other liberal principles.” ~ Daniel B. Klein
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The Lasting Consequences of Lockdowns
“Alongside the immediate consequences of lockdowns, our leaders should consider the long-term problems as well to ensure we do not pass along a degraded shell of our society to our posterity in exchange for a short-term goal. Years into the future, we should be able to be proud of who we are, not who we used to be.” ~ Ethan Yang
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