Thomas L. Knapp | The Libertarian Institute

Contemplating a Jobless Society: I For One Welcome Our New Robot Overlords

by Thomas L. Knapp | Jun 21, 2017 | Economics, Featured Articles

Writing in Reason magazine, Ronald Bailey asks (and tries to answer) a question you’ve probably been hearing a lot lately and may have silently asked yourself: “Are Robots Going to Steal Our Jobs?” Bailey takes an optimistic view. “[A]s we look ahead now to the end of the 21st century, we can’t predict what jobs workers will be doing, he writes. “But that’s no reason to assume those jobs won’t exist.” Bailey has history on his side. On the other hand, the question is certainly worth taking seriously. Technological advances have historically ended up creating more jobs than they eliminate...

Stand With Ross Ulbricht. Shun His Tormentors.

by Thomas L. Knapp | Jun 19, 2017 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice

On May 31, a panel of three judges on the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld the conviction and sentence of American political prisoner Ross Ulbricht. It’s been two years since I last devoted a column to Ulbricht’s plight, so a refresher seems in order: After a show trial so obviously fixed in advance that Stalin’s pet prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky would have blushed with embarrassment to participate in it, judge Katherine Forrest sentenced Ulbricht to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the crime of running a web site. Yes, really. In theory, the issue was that...

Drug Overdose Deaths, 2016: Casualties of War

by Thomas L. Knapp | Jun 12, 2017 | Blog

Drug overdose is now the leading cause of death among Americans under 50, the New York Times‘s Josh Katz reports. In 2016, overdoses claimed somewhere between 59,000 and 65,000 lives. That’s more American lives than were lost in the Vietnam war. It’s 20 times the casualty count of 9/11. It’s half again as many deaths as attributed to the “gun violence” we hear so much about in its peak year, 1994. Katz pins the blame for these deaths on use, abuse, and sometimes accidental overdose of heroin, fentanyl, and prescription opioid painkillers. He goes along with the current fad of calling the...

The Problem Isn’t Willie Pete. The Problem is War Crimes.

by Thomas L. Knapp | Jun 12, 2017 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The New York Times reports that US and/or US-allied forces in Syria may be using white phosphorous munitions in the assault on Raqqa, capital city of the Islamic State in Syria. The use of white phosphorous in war is a perennial complaint among human rights activists. And while it’s valid as far as it goes, it misses a larger and more important point. White phosphorous — nicknamed “Willie Pete” by the US mortar, artillery and air forces who use it — produces highly visible plumes of white smoke, justifying its use to mark targets or screen movements. It’s also highly incendiary. It sets...

Free Speech: Ted Wheeler is the Enemy He Invokes

by Thomas L. Knapp | Jun 9, 2017 | Blog

Ted Wheeler, the mayor of Portland, Oregon, wants to control who can say — and hear — what. He’s asked the federal government to cancel one permit and deny another, both for “alt-right” demonstrations at Portland’s Shrunk Plaza. His excuse: Portland is “in mourning” and its “anger is real” over an incident in which an anti-Muslim bigot, Jeremy Joseph Christian, allegedly harassed two women on a commuter train and then stabbed three men who came to their defense, two of them fatally. Not a bad excuse as excuses go, I guess, but no excuse can be allowed to trump our rights of free speech and...

CIA Torture Report: Where’s Our Next Heroic Whistleblower?

by Thomas L. Knapp | Jun 9, 2017 | Blog

In December of 2014, The US Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence issued a report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s “inadequate and deeply flawed” interrogation techniques, concluding that those practices were “not effective” and that they were “far more brutal” than the public — or Congress — had been led to believe. The document is commonly referred to as “the CIA torture report” for obvious. Among other atrocities, it describes a detainee being chained naked to a concrete floor until he died of hypothermia, and other detainees being subject to “rectal feeding.” Or, rather, it...

Bitcoin: Riding High, But in Crisis

by Thomas L. Knapp | Jun 9, 2017 | Economics, Featured Articles

As I write this, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency sits at a near record price level — $2,800 US dollars buys one Bitcoin. While the price is volatile, it’s been on a fairly steady upward trend recently and its price graph for the last year looks like the proverbial “hockey stick” (last June it traded for around $600 per Bitcoin). Mark Cuban — a billionaire investor who’s a billionaire investor precisely because he has a head for this kind of thing — thinks that Bitcoin is due for a fall. He tweets: “I just don’t know when or how much it corrects. When everyone is bragging about how...

SCOTUS: Patent Trolls’ Loss is a Win for Honest Commerce

by Thomas L. Knapp | May 29, 2017 | Blog

On May 22, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously — and correctly — on a fairly obscure case that nonetheless has huge implications in an area where millions or even billions of dollars are frequently at stake. In TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods Group Brands, the Court came down against the practice of “forum shopping” in patent disputes. Hopefully this will reduce the incidence of “patent trolling.” “Forum shopping” is the practice of filing suit in the court where you think you’re most likely to get the result you want. It’s a neat trick if you can get away with it, but in the normal course of...

« Older Entries

Next Entries »