Month: January 2023

The Myth of Wild Nature and Creating a New Form of Paradise

A review of the new book Tickets For The Ark, by Rebecca Nesbit

Nesbit hammers home the absolutely correct point that there is no objective scientific standard providing some kind of value-neutral ecological baseline toward which conservation should aim. Since there is no goal or end state toward which any particular ecosystem is heading, who is to say that landscapes and ecosystems modified by human activities are somehow inferior?

https://reason.com/2022/12/25/the-myth-of-wild-nature-and-creating-a-new-form-of-paradise/

The “Unseen Effects” of California’s New Minimum-Wage Law

 “In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.”

Frederic Bastiat
The “Unseen Effects” of California’s New Minimum-Wage Law

Aaron Dean’s Conviction Suggests What It Takes To Hold Cops Accountable for Wrongly Using Deadly Force

The former Forth Worth officer shot Atatiana Jefferson through a window of her home. He said he thought she was a burglar.

Aaron Dean’s conviction and sentence show that cops can be held accountable when they kill someone for no good reason. But the counterexamples suggest that many jurors are inclined to accept almost any excuse that highlights the hazards of the job, even when those hazards are imaginary.

https://reason.com/2022/12/21/aaron-deans-conviction-suggests-what-it-takes-to-hold-cops-accountable-for-wrongly-using-deadly-force/

DEA Seizes Record Amounts of Fentanyl in 2022

The iron law of prohibition states that, all things being equal, as enforcement ramps up, smugglers prefer higher potency forms of a drug for the same reason those who sneak alcohol into a football game prefer hard alcohol in flasks to 12‐​packs of beer. The lethal logic of the iron law of prohibition means that we cannot enforce our way out of the opioid crisis. And if fentanyl smugglers become somehow easy to catch, there’s always carfentanil, which is about 100 times more potent than fentanyl and has already been showing up in America’s drug supply.

https://www.cato.org/blog/dea-seizes-record-amounts-fentanyl-2022

The U.S. Economy and the Failure of Keynesian Thought

The Keynesian idea, adopted by the U.S. government and many other countries, that by artificially stimulating consumption in hard times you spur economic activity all around on a sustained basis has proved to be fallacious yet again. Donald Trump and Joe Biden stimulated the economy with a combined US$6 trillion. The result, except for a brief and exceptional recovery period, is that the economy has ceased showing robustness.

The U.S. Economy and the Failure of Keynesian Thought

“I HAVE A DREAM,” 50 YEARS LATER [2013]

“Free markets,” “equality,” “liberty,”: three concepts that form the core of libertarianism… What is a free market when you can’t even sit at the lunch counter…? What is equality when all your schools… are substandard? What is liberty when you’re harassed by a police officer…?

https://www.libertarianism.org/blog/i-have-dream-50-years-later

Reputation Works Better Than Regulation: Why Demand Should Determine Prices

As consumers, we must remember that in a market-based system, consumers determine what is of value, what is demanded, and what is consumed. To maintain such authority, we would be wise to use our wallets, rather than Washington cronies, to curtail costs.

https://www.aier.org/article/reputation-works-better-than-regulation-why-demand-should-determine-prices/

Court: Requirement of Serial Numbers on Guns Doesn’t Violate Second Amendment

The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms doesn’t extend to arms that aren’t typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes. Law-abiding citizens don’t typically possess firearms with obliterated serial numbers for lawful purposes, so Mr. Reyna’s indictment and guilty plea don’t offend the Second Amendment.

Judge Robert Miller, Jr., U.S. v. Reyna

https://reason.com/volokh/2022/12/16/requirement-of-serial-numbers-on-guns-doesnt-violate-second-amendment/#more-8215805

Subsidies To Help Workers Would Hurt Poor People

Some people would benefit. Others would lose money or be rendered unemployable.

Workers’ best friend is a labor market that’s free of harmful government distortions. Such a market will not only oblige employers to continue to pay workers according to productivity but will also intensify firms’ efforts to become more productive.

https://reason.com/2022/12/15/subsidies-to-help-workers-would-hurt-poor-people/

The Supreme Court Should End Chevron Deference

Chevron is unconstitutional for several reasons. It gives judicial power—the power to interpret the meaning of the law—to the administrative state within the Executive Branch. The Constitution, however, grants all judicial power to the Judicial Branch. Chevron is also unconstitutional because it biases the courts towards the agencies, stripping the judiciary of impartiality and denying litigants basic due process. But a third reason, and the focus of our brief, is that Chevron deference is ahistorical, arising not out of the original understanding of the Constitution but rather out of the administrative bloat of the New Deal era.

https://www.cato.org/blog/supreme-court-should-end-chevron-deference