John Cochran writes today: 

Yet again, the government wants to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. According to the Obama administration and the FCC, it is necessary to regulate internet service providers so that they don’t interfere with people’s access to the web. The claim immediately prompts one to ask: Who is being denied access to the web?

I want to thank Professors Jeffrey Herbener and Shawn Ritenour for inviting me to give the Ludwig von Mises lecture at the Austrian Student Scholars Conference and for doing such a great job organizing the event. Dr. Lucas Engelhardt (a former Mises Summer Fellow) did a great job giving the Hans Sennholz lecture. I must also say that I was very impressed with the students’ paper presentations. I would also encourage other professor to encourage their students to participate in the event in the future.

Lew Rockwell writes: 

If you’re a libertarian, chances are you find yourself bombarded with objections, or feeling compelled to respond to the barrage of uncomprehending criticism your friends are sharing on social media. Conservatives badger you about war, drugs, even liberty itself, and left-liberals demand to know why you don’t favor redistribution and a Scandinavian welfare state.

I have two suggestions for you, and they both involve new books by Tom Woods.

As a historian, my training is about analyzing the past.  Those times I have strayed into predicting the future, I have failed pretty spectacularly (”Yes, class, I predict that the Berlin Wall will not come down in my lifetime or yours!”--Oct 23, 1989).  

[Originally published February 25, 2015.]

Super tall buildings, or skyscrapers, are being built at an astonishing rate. Ninety-seven buildings that exceed 200 meters (656 feet) high were constructed in 2014, setting a new record. The previous record was eighty-one buildings completed in 2011. The total number of skyscrapers in existence now is 935, a whopping 350 percent increase since the year 2000.

Unfortunately, there is a sentiment the persists among some Christians of all types that historical and traditional Christian ethics are somehow opposed to free markets. This idea has long been fueled by many proponents of free markets themselves, it seems, as many of them subscribe to rather questionable quasi social-Darwinist theories or strange notions about how monetary profit is somehow more valuable than non-monetary motives or values. 

The current issue of the Cato Policy Report (January/February 2015) contains a short article about a book by Zhang Weiying called The Logic of the Market: An Insider’s View of Chinese Economic Reform, which was originally published in Chinese (and said to be a best-seller in China in that form) and was recently translated into English.