For parents who rely on baby formula—whether by choice or due to medical necessity—the nationwide baby formula shortage has become increasingly difficult to ignore. According to the Wall Street Journal, Walgreens, Target, CVS, and Kroger have all begun rationing supplies of formula. Covid lockdowns, combined with a product recall by formula manufacturer Abbott Nutrition has created a very real shortage in a product that is key for proper nutrition in many children. With the shortage has come the usual half-baked bromides about "evil corporations" and how baby formula companies are...
Central Planning
An Indictment of ‘Public Health’
We live in an age of public health. Even in countries with private sector health care, government regulates and steers the practice of medicine. On the surface this may seem a positive. In theory it's an established framework to protect the patient and practitioners from injury and risks. It exists to coordinate in times of widespread crisis and can act as an impartial entity to protect those who are vulnerable. It can also act as the moral heart of a nation, determining the ethics and values in such a manner to guide those who are at times pragmatic or emotionally exposed when decisions...
Reason Has Limits, But What Doesn’t?
It is not a criticism of reason to acknowledge that no reasoning person or group can have a synoptic view of the world or of society that would enable him or it to rationally plan everything. The faculty of reason is packaged within individual human beings, and no mountaintop exists from which one could see and know all that it would take to plan a society or an economy in the interest of all its participants. The result of attempting to do so would inevitably be what Ludwig von Mises called "planned chaos." This is what F. A. Hayek, Mises's student, also worked so hard to explain. But...
How I Robbed the World Bank
I have always had a bad attitude toward official secrets regardless of who is keeping them. That prejudice and John Kenneth Galbraith are to blame for an unauthorized withdrawal I made from the World Bank. When I lived in Boston in the late 1970s, I paid $25 to attend a series of lectures by Galbraith on foreign aid and other topics. The louder Galbraith praised foreign aid, the warier I became. His hokum spurred my reading and led me to recognize that foreign aid is one of the worst afflictions that poor nations suffer. As one critic quipped, foreign aid is money from governments, to...
The Ron Paul Revolution: A Ten Year Retrospective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvMoJE7pxh4 Join Dr. Ron Paul and Tom Woods, plus very special guest Glenn Greenwald in Texas for an event you won't want to miss! Ron Paul's two campaigns for president (2008 and 2012) were watershed moments for liberty-minded people around the world. The "Ron Paul Revolution"—centered around his undiluted message of peace, property, and markets—changed the way millions thought about the American empire and the American financial system. Dr. Paul's focus on central banking and foreign policy caught politicians and pundits off guard, forcing them to...
For Every Action There Is An Equal And Opposite Reaction
I never speak it out loud, but recently I’m constantly repeating a movie our daughter used to watch when she was little. Over the Hedge I believe it was called. I constantly hear the little squirrel straining to see the end of the newly constructed impediment, in his little voice, “it never ends! It never ends THAT way too.” That’s my current state of mind regarding our virally motivated political theater. I have discovered a couple new stouts though that are truly fantastic. Always have to find the hidden positives I suppose. I mentioned a few months ago the correlation between disease...
Uncle Sam Must Cease Intervention in Haiti
The Assassination of President Jovenel Moïse During the early morning hours of Wednesday, July 7, 2021, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in his home by a team of gunmen. His first lady, Martin Moïse, was critically injured. She was airlifted to Florida for treatment where she remains in critical condition. Moïse was elected president of Haiti on February 7, 2017. According to Moïse's opposition, his four-year term was to end on February 7, 2021. Moïse refused to step down on that date, arguing the Haitian constitution entitled him a five-year term. He has since remained in...
TGIF: Liberty as a Problem-Solving Process
Strictly speaking, liberty isn't the solution to problems. It's what creates the framework in which solutions can be discovered. That is an important distinction because it reminds us that advocates of full-blown liberty do not offer the world a problem-free society but "only" a society in which problems are discovered and problem-solvers are mobilized as quickly, fairly, and efficiently as impossible. To get this point across to students in lectures, I used to quote the the title of a 1970 hit record: "I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden." Social troubles will not...
Beware Political Creationists
"With few exceptions, the tribe of academic scientists and hospital doctors which now controls our government has literally never heard such arguments [the unplanned order of thee market process]. Their worldview is a top-down one: they assume things happen because somebody ordains that things happen. Spontaneous order is a foreign concept to them. This is surprising, given that it is the essence of evolution, but when it comes to society they are in thrall to intelligent-design theories. They are political creationists." --Matt Ridley, "Britain Is in Danger of Repeating Its Post-War...
$60 Keycaps
My name is Ryan and I am an agorist. Today we are talking about free markets and $60 keycaps. I am kind've a keyboard snob. Ever since I began working full time at a computer, I have been extremely particular about what keyboard I use. My favorite brand is called Das Keyboard. They make strong, heavy, beautiful mechanical keyboards with removable keycaps and excellent switch options. A few days ago I received an email from them about new keycaps they are selling. In particular, they have a new escape key. I followed the link to see what it was. This new escape key is transparent with a...