What happened to the comments sections at mises.org? Unfortunately, we had to eliminate the comments, for now. The amount of spam was becoming difficult to manage, it was taking up a lot of staff time, and it was all slowing down the site quite a bit. The spam you did see what just the tip of the iceberg. However, some of our fine readers have put together a site where you can still comment on the articles, and with a lot of the same people who have contributed comments for years.

When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.

—1970s TV commercial

Imagine if your surname was synonymous with genius. And not just genius, but creative genius. Is there anything you could write or say that could be seriously challenged? Among your colleagues, certainly. Science is never closed, always debated, always contingent on certain postulates. But the lay public is apt to regard you as infallible.

In perhaps one of the most unexpected and sudden shifts in consumer demand in recent years, sales of Bud Light have now fallen sizably for six weeks in a row, with no end in sight. The New York Post reported on Monday that “Sales of the US’s No. 1 beer were down 24.6% for the week ended May 13 compared to a year ago — slightly worse than the 23.6% dip they suffered a week earlier.” 

America and the Art of the Possible: Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay
by Christopher Buskirk
Encounter Books, 2023; xxv + 162 pp.

Christopher Buskirk is the publisher and editor of the magazine American Greatness, and the title of that magazine, like that of the book, shows his principal concern. How can the American people regain the sense of optimism and purpose which we once had but have now lost?

Buskirk says that in

Technocrats frequently pressure the US government to increase R and D as a strategy to upstage China. The assumption is that public R and D will lead to innovation and economic growth because research generates the science that spurs innovation. Yet the formula is mistaken, for history has shown that science often lags technology. Innovations prior to the advent of modern science in Europe occurred without crucial advancements in scientific knowledge.

Last month, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency proposed new power plant regulations that would put harsh limits on the amount of carbon dioxide released while producing electricity.