I recently spent two weeks traveling in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a vast country with many contrasts: old vs. new, poor vs. rich, traditional vs. modern, East vs. West. While it is a strange experience with many impressions, what’s most striking is the obvious and contradictory economic contrast between wealth and waste.

This week’s expected House vote to add more sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea is a prime example of how little thought goes into US foreign policy. Sanctions have become kind of an automatic action the US government takes when it simply doesn’t know what else to do.

According to popular view people accept money because of a government decree.1 A government decree it is argued makes a particular thing accepted as a general medium of exchange. But, does it make sense?

Many libertarians seem to love to hate Elon Musk these days. His crime is to live off the public purse. His companies would be bankrupt without green subsidies and cheap government loans and contracts. He seeks out favorable terms from governments and angles to capture subsidies and cheap loans with no reservation and with vast success at doing so. This situation, along with certain financing practices and relationships among his companies, has led to it becoming fashionable to disdain Musk as a public figure and to characterize him with sweeping put-downs.

Healthcare once again dominated the headlines as Republicans continue to struggle in their efforts to replace Obamacare. Of course, as Ryan McMaken noted this week, that’s part of the Republicans’ problem. The obsessions of Obamacare itself has prevented honest conversation about what was plaguing American healthcare prior to the “Affordable” Care Act becoming law. Instead of eliminating government intervention in the healthcare industry, the GOP simply wants their own intervention.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a fascinating project. Built by the Norwegian government on the island of Spitsbergen at a cost of approximately $9 million and opened in 2008, its mission is to preserve the seeds of the world’s food crops in case other seed banks lose samples due to mismanagement or large-scale regional or global crises.