Mention the term “legal tender“ in polite company and most people will resemble a deer in the headlights. In simple terms legal tender is a kind of money a creditor cannot refuse in discharge of a debt due to him in the money issued by government. This is a legal designation for government-issued money—usually fiat money, nowadays—with special status. And although legal tender laws do not force consumers and merchants to use the “official” money, this money comes to be highly favored.

Recently, there has been a debate in Germany on the constitutionality of additional government borrowing of €60 billion. The borrowing is debated because Germany has a constitutional debt brake. The debt brake limits the possibility of the government to indebt itself and pushes it toward a balanced budget in normal times. In times of emergency, however, the debt brake allows for exceptions and higher deficits to fight the emergency. Unsurprisingly, huge amounts of debts were issued to cope with the corona crisis.

Price inflation is the highest its been since 1982. Real wages are plummeting. Joe Biden’s approval ratings are now on par with George W. Bush’s after both the Iraq War, the financial crisis, and eight years of Jon Stewart. This is with the benefit of Kim family–level devotion from the corporate press, Big Tech, and almost every pop culture figure.

“If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers ‘separation’ over ‘union,’ “I have no hesitation in saying, ‘let us separate.’” 1

~ Thomas Jefferson

Recently, a relatively new economics called behavioral economics (BE) has started to gain popularity. Its practitioners, such as Daniel Kahneman, Vernon Smith, and Richard Thaler, were awarded Nobel Prizes for their contribution in the field of BE.

The BE framework emerged because of dissatisfaction with the neoclassical theory regarding consumer choices. In the neoclassical theory, individuals are presented as if a scale of preferences is hard-wired in their heads. Regardless of anything else, this scale remains the same all the time.

The Chinese communists are hoisting the U.S. government on its own petard, at least with respect to Julian Assange, the Australian citizen who, with WikiLeaks, disclosed war crimes committed by the U.S. national-security establishment.

For decades stretching back to the Cold War, U.S. officials have reveled in leveling condemnations and criticisms of Red China for its human-rights abuses and denial of civil liberties.

The crown jewel of Las Vegas trade shows, the Consumer Electronics Show, just left town having attracted only a quarter of the show’s typical attendance. At the same time, the Consumer Electronics Show was the first big test for Elon Musk’s Boring Company’s one mile underground tunnels running from one end of the Las Vegas convention center to the other, theoretically turning a twenty-minute-walk into a one-minute-ride. 

The historian and economist Deirdre McCloskey often laments the power that pessimism and despair seems to have over us.

For all the great value in Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein’s new book, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, we find plenty of enmity toward markets and market forces.