Star Wars: The Last Jedi is now the only topic more controversial than Trump, and certainly the only one causing a larger number of pointless debates. Given this dubious distinction, it’s fitting that The Intercept’s Kate Aronoff has brought the two issues together in a recent commentary on the film.
Through November of 2017, the State of Colorado collected more than $226 million in revenues from cannabis taxes, licenses, and fees. That’s a lot for a state government with total discretionary spending of about $10 billion.
In modern America, government schools are one of the last remaining truly socialist institutions. And when I use the term socialism, I’m using the technical and old-school definition: government ownership of the means of production.
Although private schools do exist in America, schooling in general — especially at the pre-college level — is overwhelmingly delivered by government-owned institutions called “public schools.”
According to multiple sources, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going to revoke the Obama-era Cole Memo, which directed federal law enforcement to respect states’ marijuana legalization laws.
Readers of Ludwig von Mises appreciate not only the depth and breadth of his insights, but also the elegance of his language. Even writing in English, a language he adopted in middle age, Mises conveyed dense conceptual theories and big ideas with a vigorous style not normally associated with economists. Nothing in his writing is dry or technical. This is why, for example, opening Human Action to any random page can yield immediate benefits.
Earlier this week I returned a pair of indoor/outdoor heated slippers that I purchased online from a niche retailer as a Christmas present for my wife. The problem was that they resembled outdoor boots more than they did indoor slippers. As I started to search for the retailer’s policy on returns, I steeled myself for a time-consuming and costly process of perusing ambiguous and closely packed text and then undertaking the arduous and messy task of repackaging the item and engaging a shipper to return it. As it turned out, the return process was a breeze.
As the Austrian School has pointed out, the ultimate source of human poverty and failure lies in poor logic.
Here is an example from Forbes Magazine and a leading hedge fund investor who is also a major charitable donor genuinely devoted to helping humanity and the planet.
The editor of Forbes, Randall Lane, quotes Paul Tudor Jones, as follows:
Once upon a time there was a northern, medieval phenomenon as much the subject of universal myth and curiosity as that of the enchantress city-republics flourishing down south: the Hanseatic League of the mid-13th to 16th centuries. “The Hansa“ (old German for “associations“) or “The League,“ as it was known, began as a treaty between Lübeck and Hamburg “to clear the road of pirates and robbers between the Elbe and the Trave“ [a river in northern Germany with its delta at the Baltic sea].
Yugoslavia was a communist country from the end of World War II until its bloody breakup in 1991. In the years directly following the war, it was as brutal as any communist regime — it repossessed property and jailed or killed whoever uttered a word against Marxist ideology. However, in the decades after the 1940s — especially in the 70s — it was the most liberal communist country in the world. In sharp contrast to the Soviet Union, this Balkan state enjoyed a dose of economic freedom that the average Russian could only dream of.
