While traveling recently, I was stuck in a terrible bout of traffic. Unbeknownst to me, West Virginia University’s fall graduation just ended, and I was caught in the middle of the seemingly endless stream of parents, relatives, and friends who were leaving the ceremony. To deal with this problem, the City of Morgantown closed down lanes and reserved them for exclusive use by graduation attendees. Though the city may have done a fine job handling traffic, this raises an interesting question: How would road closures be handled in a free market?

Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics
by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
University of Chicago Press, 2022; 222 pp.

Deirdre McCloskey is a great economic historian, and in Beyond Positivism, she makes a number of valuable points that draw from her immense learning in this field. I’d like to concentrate on a few of these insights in this week’s column.

Last May, the chairman and publisher of the New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, wrote a twelve-thousand-word feature in the Columbia Journalism Review appealing to the importance of independent journalism and framing the Times as a news organization committed to this ideal.

Ever since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, now X, the censorship regime has been hell-bent on harassing the company and Musk himself—with bad publicity, accusations of antisemitism, and advertiser boycotts.

Frédéric Bastiat is justifiably famous among believers in liberty. His many classic contributions include The Law and his essays “Government” and “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen,” not to mention some of the best reductio ad absurdum arguments ever (such as “The Candlemakers’ Petition” and “The Negative Railway”) and more. Less well known are other essays, such as his election manifesto of 1846, which illustrated what a principled politician who believed in liberty would stand for.

To achieve sustainability, the world needs stability. Yet two-thirds of countries are facing major economic, political, and social problems. Most of them are also experiencing ethnic or civil conflicts, mass migration and poverty crises. The question is whether the UN’s sustainability agenda can succeed in the context of ongoing or simmering conflicts.