A Libertarian Leaning Blog
Regulations are typically framed as necessities designed to protect consumers. Except that in reality they are often designed to protect existing businesses from competition, thus making consumers worse off. The video below produced by John Stossel provides a good look at how this works in practice.
JFB
John Stossel recently produced a short video on charter schools. It is well worth watching. See below.
JFB
It is sad but true that most people believe that free markets represent a zero sum game. Winners only win to the extent that other people lose. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. In a free market, entrepreneurs win by creating new goods and services, thereby making society richer. Moreover, entrepreneurs typically retain only a fraction–around 2%–of the added value they create.
In the video below, John Stossel discusses these and other widely believed myths about capitalism.
JFB
When Darwin published Origin of the Species in which he presented his data in support of his theory of evolution, the Archbishop of Canterbury was said to have offered a prayer: “Dear God” he said “Please let it not be true, or at least let it not be widely known.”
The same prayer is being uttered across the land of woke in instance after instance as inconvenient facts are discovered. One example is SAT tests. See the video on college admissions tests by John Stossel below. And then ask why the woke brigades are such fans of cancel culture. To ask the question is to answer it.
JFB
It is seldom remarked, although obviously true, that hostility to free markets (and freedom in general) is the driver of much of the environmental movement. That proposition is not restricted to the environmental project though. It also holds true for many fashionable causes shot through with lies that are gussied up as the search for justice. The New York Times 1619 project is a case in point.
The video below, produced by John Stossel, makes the point well. The campaign to save the Rhinos is more about shutting down free markets than saving Rhinos. Like virtually all of these campaigns the emphasis is on controlling demand. That is a prospect doomed to failure when the underlying service or commodity is valuable. For instance, 50 years of drug war failure, not to mention the prohibition experiment, provides convincing evidence of that.
On the other hand, the quest for renewable energy attacks the issue of climate change (at least in part) from the supply side. It is unfortunate that many renewable proponents continue to attack the use of fossil fuels and to try to shut down their use. But the fact that a substitute is being proposed provides a glimmer of hope that rationality will ultimately prevail.
Please take a look at the short video below.
JFB
In an era where bumper sticker slogans substitute for thought, the master propagandists of the BLM Movement have learned their craft well. Plenty of otherwise sensible people have signed on to the sentiment without understanding what they have actually signed up for. Others have simply been intimidated. Still others just use it for marketing campaigns.
But the BLM Movement, led by radical Marxists, will never be satisfied. The video below provides a useful warning of what this is really all about. And it isn’t about equal opportunity for all.
JFB
Minneapolis has long been one of, if not the, most progressive city in America. It also is the city where George Floyd was killed in police custody. And it is home to one of the widest income gaps between white and black Americans. Progressives are perplexed by this. They shouldn’t be. Their policies caused it. See the video below.
JFB
There was a time not so long ago when leftists routinely charged that the radical right, roughly defined as anybody who didn’t agree with leftist orthodoxy, consisted largely of a bunch of Neanderthal book burners. Well, look who the book burners turned out to be.
America’s institutions are failing because, among other causes, America’s elites are not willing to defend liberal values. Free speech is under attack by social justice warriors who want to destroy anybody who doesn’t buckle under. Take a look at the John Stossel Video below.
JFB
Gary Becker, a Nobel Prize winning economist from the University of Chicago was once asked what government’s mainly produces. “Lines” he replied.
So here we are in March 2020 with the economy screeching to a halt and citizens staying in their homes largely as a result of government decree. The reason? There is not enough equipment available to test to see who has COVID-19 so that they might be isolated and treated, and the spread of the disease stopped.
Why did we lack adequate supplies of diagnostic kits, hospital beds and other treatment facilities and equipment? Routine bureaucratic incompetence. See the video below. Then think again about a “single payer” system.
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JFB