Why do individuals pay higher prices for some goods than others? The common reply references laws of supply and demand, but what are these laws? The answer is found in the law of diminishing marginal utility.

Daniel Ellsberg died on June 16, and he remains one of the nation’s most prominent whistleblowers who leaked secret government information to the public. Upon his death the general consensus among the writers of memorials for Ellsberg was that he was right to leak government secrets. As the editorial board at The Orange County Register recently put it, he was “a true American hero.” 

First Republic, Signature Bank, and Silicon Valley Bank have all failed, and that’s not the only thing they have in common. Western Alliance Bank’s Ken Vecchione was jealous of these three large regional banks. The chief executive admitted to the New York Times, “We were, I have to admit, a bit envious of them.”

Forty years ago last week, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner published my first attack on the federal drug war. The previous year, the Reagan administration had unleashed its “Just Say No” program, vilifying anyone who smoked a joint, sniffed the wrong powder, or used nonapproved hallucinogens. I was mortified to see Ronald Reagan—who was elected on a promise to get “government off your backs”—double-cross his supporters with what morphed into the most intrusive scheme in American history.

The Political Economy of Distributism: Property, Liberty, and the Common Good
by Alexander William Salter
Catholic University of America Press, 2023; xiii + 238 pp.

Distributism attracted considerable attention during the 1920s and ’30s among people who wished to apply Catholic social teaching to the modern capitalist economy, and it has recently had a revival. The appearance of The Political Economy of Distributism is particularly welcome for those seeking further information about distributism.