"Climate change fear is causing life-changing anxiety. You might be hearing nothing but bad news, but that doesn’t mean that you’re hearing the full story." ~ Bjorn Lomborg | Continue reading
"The 2020s are turning out to be a transformational decade, profoundly so. When the shaking stops, things will be different, life will be changed." ~ Llewellyn King | Continue reading
"Discharging foreign debt undermines financial institutions, distorts prices, redistributes resources, and impairs the integrity of all parties. It also risks becoming the default practice, as political choices undertaken under exigent circumstances all too frequently do." ~ Pete … | Continue reading
"At best, the critics of tipping are guilty of inexcusable sloppiness. At worst, they’re selectively weaponizing the horrors of slavery to advance an ideological cause." ~ Phillip W. Magness | Continue reading
"If we are lucky, this documentary and Riley’s biography will be part of the necessary and overdue work of rectifying the oversight. I suppose I owe my aunt an apology." ~ Thomas Chatterton Williams | Continue reading
"Mark Spitznagel certainly is not captive to convention, which is why Safe Haven is such a joy. To the author, 'becoming conventional is self-defeating in this business.' Amen to that. The world needs more people like Spitznagel, and more books like the one he’s written." ~ John … | Continue reading
"Economics supplies indispensable mental habits and analytical tools for gaining a better understanding of why and how it is that each of us, every moment of every day, enjoy the fruits of the labors and creativity of literally billions of strangers."~ Donald J. Boudreaux | Continue reading
"Thus the country the media loved to hate is reaping the best of all worlds: Few current cases and deaths, stronger economic growth than the lockdown countries, and its people never experienced the yoke of tyranny." ~ Michael Fumento | Continue reading
"The doors have, sadly, been thrown wide open to psychic healing and alternative wellness gibberish. Lockdowner scientists have, in turn, given these suspect claims and defective survey designs a welcome home in the most prestigious institutions of journalism, government, and the … | Continue reading
"If you think science is when people of authority agree, you’re not just naïve but heavily deluded. Stop venerating science in the singular and start embracing its core, plural, and contentious ethos: that plenty of people are wrong about almost everything, all the time. Even – p … | Continue reading
"When the State expands, it tends to do so at the expense of other sources of authority and loyalty. The family, the community, the church or other religious group, the employer, the club - all are undermined as the State grows." ~ David McGrogan | Continue reading
"Unilaterally and arbitrarily shutting down all of economic and social life was never part of the solution, nor should it ever be. Covid-19 has been the first test for these experimental lockdown policies and no rational observer should look back at the results and conclude that … | Continue reading
"Whatever the reason, it's keeping Americans in the dark about how many people have active immunity from Covid-19. It's keeping people needlessly fearful and suspicious of each other. It's empowering executive overreach. Worst of all, it's tempting people to consider government a … | Continue reading
"Many Americans once believed government officials unless/until they had good reason to doubt them but increasingly they disbelieve officials unless/until they have reason to believe them. Maybe that is a good thing as it will eventually induce Americans to ask why they continue … | Continue reading
"Even though freedom is its own wondrous virtue, panicky politicians erased it in 2020 on the supposition that personal and economic desperation was the best solution for a spreading virus. Historians will marvel at the abject stupidity of the political class in 2020." ~ John Tam … | Continue reading
"As the United States nears the hopeful end of its public health crisis, the mounting evidence domestically and abroad seems to suggest that harsh lockdown policies were not only overkill, they were counterproductive. In light of this information, it is increasingly apparent that … | Continue reading
"It is, I believe, deeply misguided to insist that the principle of government even-handedness requires that government ignore the age profile of a disease’s victims. It is misguided to demand – either on grounds of equity or by noting, correctly, that all lives are sacred – that … | Continue reading
"Just over one year ago, the epidemiology modeling of Neil Ferguson and Imperial College played a preeminent role in shutting down most of the world. The exaggerated forecasts of this modeling team are now impossible to downplay or deny, and extend to almost every country on eart … | Continue reading
"Now we can see the failure in black, white, and full color, daily appearing on our screens courtesy of the CDC. Has that shaken the pro-lockdown pundit class? Not that much. What an amazing testament to the stubbornness of elite opinion and its bias against basic freedoms. They … | Continue reading
"If there ever was a troubling sign of the power and arrogance of big tech, of which I’ve long been a defender, this new action is it. Dr. Kulldorff has been a brave proponent of traditional public health in the midst of an unprecedented and very obviously failed policy of lockdo … | Continue reading
"The new biofascism in the West, very much driven by Big Tech leaders, and soon to be exploited by our enemies geopolitically, is a war against free human beings and against the qualities that make us human. Why is this? Why develop policies that punish, encumber and restrict hum … | Continue reading
"The Biden administration is reviving America’s proselytizing for democracy around the globe. But Covid-19 crackdowns are a warning for people to be wary of oppressive governments regardless of their purported mandate. The world doesn’t need any more Cage Keeper Democracies where … | Continue reading
"Masking children is as absurd, illogical, nonsensical, and potentially dangerous as trying to stop ‘every case of Covid’ or ‘stopping Covid at all costs.’ Masks are not needed for children based on near zero risk in children. The risk of dying from Covid-19 is 'almost zero' for … | Continue reading
"The civil authorities have decided, in effect, that fully indemnified pharmaceutical companies have the de facto 'right' to force me to take an experimental vaccine that, in the very, very best of circumstances, will only match what my apparently well-functioning body has alread … | Continue reading
"Please do not give up hope. In the Spring of last year, all seemed lost. As the Spring comes again, we are again reminded that history is nothing more than what we make of it. We are not its victims but its authors. Freedom will return!" ~ Edward Peter Stringham | Continue reading
"What the central bank RTGS/LSM two-step teaches us is that we need a good balance between fast and slow. Sure, real-time settlement is a nice feature. But let's also have delayed settlement. If brokerages have a choice to use some combination of two-day and real-time settlement, … | Continue reading
"People are starting to question the failed strategy of lockdowns, much as they questioned the wisdom of LBJ’s Vietnam strategy. While nonviolent protest is certainly warranted, especially when it comes to the pressing need for our children to return to school, we need an end to … | Continue reading
"Here we are a full year later, with the reports of lockdown carnage pouring in by the day and hour. It’s a gigantic mess, to be sure, but the end does seem to be in view, and thank goodness for that. Let the blowback begin." ~ Jeffrey Tucker | Continue reading
"Think of a world without essential third parties, including the most dangerous third party ever conceived of by man: the state and the central bank. Imagine that future and you begin to grasp the fullness of the implications of our future. Ludwig von Mises would be amazed and su … | Continue reading
Covid-19 is another in a long series of pandemics that have been part of the human experience. Somehow we managed to cobble together the idea of freedom in any case. The most recent serious pandemic of 1968-69 is almost forgotten today – and was hardly paid attention to at all at … | Continue reading
"We keep hearing about how we should follow the science. The claim is tired by now. We know what’s really happening. The lockdown lobby ignores whatever contradicts their narrative, preferring unverified anecdotes over an actual scientific study of 10 million residents in what wa … | Continue reading
"A terminological confusion, a misplaced decimal point, a one-word error in data description, and a massive amount of arrogant presumptions about how to control a virus set in motion a series of events that turned our great and prosperous country into a disaster of confusion, dem … | Continue reading
"As with all tyranny, the truth will eventually emerge. In the future, people’s eyes will open to the exaggerations, half-truths, distortions, and outright lies used to excuse today’s tyrannical restrictions. Someday people will look back on 2020 and see it as a year in which tyr … | Continue reading
"Money isn't best thought of as a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. Let’s just think of it as just a medium of exchange and a unit of account. For the most part these circles overlap, and the two functions are united. But this isn’t always the case." ~ J.P. … | Continue reading
"We are far from triumphing over the oppression inflicted upon us by politicians and so-called experts, but refusing to give into their absurd dictates is the only path to victory. The more of us who reject the idea that avoiding the coronavirus should inform virtually every aspe … | Continue reading
"The public should know that the pandemic will not be here forever. While these are challenging times – and, for many families, life-changing times – like every other pandemic in human history, the COVID-19 pandemic will end. With wise and informed policy choices, we can reduce i … | Continue reading
"The value of your work isn’t what you say it is; it’s what others say it is, and more so what they’re willing to part with to get that. Even without the particular NBA rules LeBron couldn’t stand up and say his basketball skills are worth a trillion dollars a year. That’s for ot … | Continue reading
"It is possible that these prepaid card providers aren't competing very hard, and thus unbanked households face abnormally high fees. If so, the unbanked population could benefit by having the USPS enter the market. On the other hand, if the market for prepaid cards is already co … | Continue reading
"Silencing debate and demonizing those who disagree with you have more of a place in the Spanish Inquisition than it does in the halls of science. Public policy is informed not just by experimental theories but real-world observations and input from a variety of perspectives. The … | Continue reading
"The Great Barrington Declaration doesn’t deny that Covid-19 may lead to sickness and death in elderly and vulnerable individuals, but its focus is on avoiding the unnecessary physical, mental, social, economic, and educational impacts of lockdowns, which if appended to a discuss … | Continue reading
"The book, while scary and disheartening, is truth-seeking and ultimately optimistic. Ritchie doesn’t come to bury science; he comes to fix it. 'The ideals of the scientific process aren’t the problem,' he writes on the last page, 'the problem is the betrayal of those ideals by t … | Continue reading
"The question is not whether to aim for herd immunity as a strategy, because we will all eventually get there. The question is how to minimise casualties until we get there." Martin Kulldorf | Continue reading
"The paper’s conclusion is that the data trends observed above likely indicate that nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) – such as lockdowns, closures, travel restrictions, stay-home orders, event bans, quarantines, curfews, and mask mandates – do not seem to affect virus trans … | Continue reading
"How does all of this get resolved? Probably not through contrition much less restitution for all the damage they’ve caused. It’s just an intuition for now, but I am guessing that there are many politicians at home and abroad who are already planning their next career moves, out … | Continue reading
"A mystery for months is how it is that so many governments in so many different places on earth could have adopted the same or very similar preposterous policies, no matter the threat level of the virus, and without firm evidence that interventions had any hope of being effectiv … | Continue reading
"It seems odd that the crime of uttering currency is considered to be so grave an offense in this day and age. Reducing the punishment might cause law enforcement officers to approach cases of uttering as they do other less serious, non-violent offenses." ~ J.P. Koning | Continue reading
“AIER is convincing the world that lockdowns were poor policies indeed, never to be repeated for this or any similar threat.” ~ Robert Wright | Continue reading
Once a federal court (especially SCOTUS, from which there is no appeal) declares a law unconstitutional, as SCOTUS has often done to state laws throughout US history, the political dynamic changes dramatically. States must comply or face that other side of federalism. | Continue reading