In her recent book The Mattering Instinct, philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein argues that much of what human beings do is driven by a universal need to matter — to prove to ourselves that we are worthy of consideration. She argues that efforts to fulfill this need are responsible for a wide range of human projects, from the greatest achievements of scientific discovery and artistic creation, to the worst atrocities of murder and genocide.

On this episode of ARI Bookshelf, Greg Salmieri, Ben Bayer, Mike Mazza and Sam Weaver discuss Goldstein’s book. The episode includes discussions of the merits and limitations of Goldstein’s account of mattering and her emphasis on the idea that life involves resisting entropy. They also comment on the book’s brief mention of Ayn Rand and relate her ideas to Goldstein’s.

Topics include:

• Goldstein’s basic account of why people have a need to matter

• Her conception of what constitutes objective mattering

• The absence of businessmen and entrepreneurs from her categories

• The book’s quotation of Ayn Rand in a section about intolerance

• How Goldstein uses the concept of entropy in her account of mattering

• Her apparent unwillingness to radically rethink conventional ideas about morality

This episode was recorded on September 19, 2026.

Summary: Diesel prices are at record highs, making everything in our economy less affordable. The short-term cause is wars in the Middle East and Europe; the short-term solution is working with allies to free up more diesel supply. The long-term cause is decades of anti-fossil-fuel policies; the long-term solution is becoming the world’s diesel superpower. A proposed ban on diesel exports would raise overall fuel prices and wreck America’s energy superpower status.

Diesel prices have never been this high—and things could get worse

Diesel is the dominant fuel of heavy-duty vehicles: from the farm equipment that grows our food, to the mining and logging equipment that provides raw materials for manufacturing, to the semi-trucks that carry almost everything we consume.

Diesel is also many Northeast homes’ source of heat (in the slightly modified form of “heating oil”).

When the price of diesel goes up, the price of everything goes up. And the price of diesel has gone way up. A year ago, the price of US diesel averaged $3.66 a gallon. It recently hit $6.53 a gallon—an 80% increase.1

Other countries are experiencing even more pain. Australia is paying about $7/gallon for diesel. The UK and France are paying around $10.2

As we head toward winter, the problem could become even worse as the US, Europe, and parts of Asia use more diesel in the form of heating oil.

Americans are understandably upset, especially those who suffer most directly from rising diesel prices, such as farmers (who are in harvest season), truckers, and Northeast residents.

Politicians understandably want to “do something”—especially as an election approaches. But to make sure that the “something” actually makes things better instead of worse, we need to first understand what’s responsible for our diesel problems.

The short-term cause: wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe

The number one thing to understand about today’s diesel prices is that it’s overwhelmingly a lack-of-supply problem.

Diesel is a global market, with prices set by global supply and global demand. It’s good that diesel is a global market, because this makes diesel supply more secure at generally lower and more stable prices than they would otherwise be.

High demand has certainly played a role in price increase. We are in the fall harvest, where diesel-powered agricultural equipment creates increased demand for diesel use.

But low supply of diesel is the overwhelming cause of today’s prices.

The global seaborne diesel trade—which plays a central role in setting diesel prices worldwide—has lost over 60 million gallons a day, or nearly 20% of its normal volume!3

The leading short-term causes of insufficient refining capacity and supply disruptions are the wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

The Iran war has taken an estimated over 30 million gallons/day of diesel from the market, about 10% of the seaborne diesel trade.4

Ukraine’s successful attacks on Russian refineries have taken out an estimated 25-30 million gallons/day of diesel exports. This is another 8-10% of the seaborne diesel trade.5

The long-term cause: global anti-fossil-fuel policies

While today’s supply disruptions are dramatic, they did not need to be nearly as disruptive as they have been.

If the US and our allies around the world had embraced the growing need for diesel and dramatically increased refining capacity accordingly, we would have significant excess refining capacity and diesel stockpiles to draw upon in the current moment.

But thanks to two decades of global obsession with anti-fossil-fuel policies, most of our allies have failed to grow capacity and in many cases reduced it.

Since 2020, Australia has lost 50% of its fuel refining capacity, Canada—the fourth-largest oil producer in the world—lost 6%, the UK lost over 9%, Japan more than 5%, and the EU lost almost 7% of its refining capacity despite growing demand for refined fuels inside the EU and globally.6

The US should have responded to attacks on global refining by rapidly scaling up our own refining abilities to become a diesel superpower. We were perfectly positioned to do so, with record amounts of crude oil production (that’s increased by 340 million gallons a day since 2010) and huge opportunities to import even more crude oil from Canada (Keystone XL was designed to bring 30 million gallons a day).7

But instead we squandered our opportunity through anti-fossil-fuel policies of our own.

We have disincentivized untold potential refining through anti-fossil-fuel policies such as Biden’s “whole of government” opposition to fossil fuels, state and national bans on diesel vehicles, and threats of “windfall profits” taxes.8

We stopped Keystone XL and other projects that would have brought a “heavy” oil well-suited to existing US diesel refining capacity.9

Since 2019 America has lost an estimated 21 million gallons a day of diesel refining capacity (about 70 million gallons a day of total refining) when we should have been keeping more existing capacity and adding much more new capacity! Diesel would be much cheaper now had we not done that.10

The long-term solution: become the world’s diesel superpower

Long-term, becoming the world’s diesel superpower is the solution to our diesel problems.

To be sure, we should encourage our allies to reverse anti-fossil-fuel policies, as we can use as much diesel fuel as we can get. But no matter what our allies do, we need to be committed to dramatically increasing our refining capacity and removing the many roadblocks to doing so.

On this front, the Trump administration has done a great job at reversing domestic and global anti-fossil-fuel policies.

It has challenged the endangerment finding, reversed the Biden “whole of government” attack on fossil fuels, cut subsidies for unreliable electricity, and reversed bans on gasoline and diesel vehicles.

Domestically, it can continue to work for comprehensive, tech-neutral permitting reform (freedom-to-build) legislation that will make it easier to build refineries along with all other energy projects.

Being a diesel superpower requires not only refining a lot of diesel but also having refiners to make great, mutually beneficial deals with customers in other countries who can rely on our exports.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, is considering an action that would wreck our prospects of becoming a diesel superpower, undercut our broader energy dominance, and increase fuel prices: a diesel export ban.

A diesel export ban would wreck US energy dominance and raise overall prices

Since diesel prices are set by supply and demand, there is a temptation to lower US diesel prices by banning any of the supply we produce from going abroad. That way we will have up to 63.3 million more gallons/day (19.5% of global seaborne trade) domestically.11

Make no mistake, flooding the market with diesel that was planned for export will temporarily lower diesel prices in much of the US, just as banning any export will temporarily lower its price in the US. (If we ban wheat exports, automobile exports, or tractor exports, the prices of wheat, automobiles, and tractors will temporarily go down.) But at what cost?

Short-term gasoline and jet fuel price increases

Refiners will quickly run out of places to store the excess diesel, requiring them to cut production. Since refineries simultaneously produce diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel, gasoline and jet fuel prices will rise.

Devastating consequences for our allies—and for our energy superpower status

If the US removes 63.3 million gallons/day from the global diesel trade we will dramatically increase prices for Mexico, Latin America, and Europe. As well as California, Alaska, and Hawaii, who also get their diesel from global diesel trade.

Mexico, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil have trusted us to deliver them diesel, have few alternatives within 4000 miles, and cannot afford far higher prices than today’s.

Europe will suffer higher prices just as they’re heading into the winter, where diesel in the form of fuel oil is crucial to keeping them warm.

The US, led by the two Trump administrations, has spent the last decade positioning itself as an energy superpower that reliably exports energy to allies. A diesel export ban will destroy that positioning and the US will lose out on countless mega-deals to more countries that will be perceived as more reliable suppliers—such as China, Iran, and Russia.

Longer-term prices increases for everyone

At the end of the day, a US diesel export ban cuts US refining and therefore reduces US and global diesel production.

As long as the ban stays active, gasoline and jet fuel prices will stay higher than they would otherwise be.

When the ban ends, there will be higher US prices for diesel (along with all other fuels) than there would have been.

US refining investment will be disincentivized for the foreseeable future. If the Trump administration is going to punish domestic refiners then who can refiners count on to make investment worthwhile?

The real short-term solution: work with allies to open Hormuz and free up more diesel

The most effective US short-term policies are: open the Strait of Hormuz, suspend biofuel mandates, continue to suspend the Jones Act

Keep opening the Strait of Hormuz: No near-term policy can come close to this. It would quickly add tens of millions of gallons a day to the global diesel trade.

Work with countries to put idle refining capacity to use: Mexico, Venezuela, and Nigeria have reported substantial refining capacity the US might be able to help put to rapid use.

Temporarily reduce or eliminate diesel (excise) taxes: Americans currently pay on average 60 cents a gallon in federal and state diesel taxes. For more relief, reduce or eliminate the 52 extra cents a gallon we pay in federal and state taxes for gasoline.12

Extend Jones Act waivers beyond November 15: This will ensure the ability of diesel to move from the Gulf Coast to constrained US markets like California and New England.

Work with allies to release diesel fuel reserves: This can only work if the US is seen as a reliable trading partner.

Our government faces a choice.

It can use rising diesel costs as a way to educate Americans about the damaging consequences of anti-fossil-fuel policies and the need for America to be an even greater energy superpower that our allies depend on.

Or it can panic and pass an export ban that will just create a cascade of new problems, including rising gasoline prices and an enduring decline in our superpower status.

Tell the Trump administration and Congress to make the right choice.

Daniil Gorkatenko and Steffen Henne contributed to this piece.

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"Before you give the government new powers, try the 'Munger Test': cross out 'government' and insert the name of the politician you trust least. Then see if you still like the idea..."

~ from the podcast 'Public Choice and Politics Without Romance' (with Russ Roberts & Mike Munger)'

The death of anti-ICE activist Renee Good is a tragedy, full stop.

It also could have been avoided.

Video shows Good, who harassed ICE officials and ignored repeated warnings, began to drive into an ICE agent seconds before he shot and killed her in self-defense.

Facts.

The Left demonized the ICE agent in question anyway. U2 even penned a song honoring Good and ignoring the reason why she no longer walks among us.

Now, it’s The Daily Wire’s turn to bring Good’s story, and the larger anti-ICE movement, to cinematic life.

TMZ reports that the company’s upcoming “Pawn Shop” is currently filming in Montana. The fictional tale features a Good-like character in the story. 

Enter The Bulwark.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Enjoying Hollywood in Toto? I hope you’ll leave a coin (or two) in our TIP JAR.

The far-Left site, ostensibly created as a Republican backlash against Donald Trump, allegedly got its hands on the film’s script. The article is dismissive of both the screenplay’s contents and the recent Daily Wire original, “Run Hide Fight: Infidels,” produced by site co-founder Ben Shapiro.

Here’s where it gets interesting – and emblematic of the Modern Left’s zest for censorship.

Locals got their hands on the script, too, and started honking their car horns and attempting other small-scale disruptions to the shoot.

“We want them to know: Don’t come do this s*** in our town,” one protester, who asked not to be named for fear of online retaliation, told me.

An admirable effort [emphasis added], but I think Shapiro’s film is sufficiently self-sabotaging on its own.

Admirable? Why?

Does The Bulwark want the movie shut down? What about free speech? Can’t the “other” side of the Good narrative have its say? Why can’t a conservative company make a movie about a contentious event with its own perspective?

Imagine if Michael Moore shot a film and conservative protesters did all they could to interrupt the shoot. The outcry would be palpable – as it should be. (Except that’s a very unlikely scenario)

This isn’t an isolated moment. 

RELATED: ‘INDY 5’ DIRECTOR: BOYCOTT FOX NEWS

We’ve seen other right-leaning projects face stiff winds from the cultural Left. The pro-life movie “Unplanned” faced major obstacles en route to theaters in 2019. Google even dubbed the film “propaganda.” 

Film crews asked that their names be removed from a right-leaning documentary for fear of professional retaliation.

The L.A. Times dubbed “Infidels” racist weeks before the film’s release.

Now, this.

All for a streaming original with a microscopic budget that will live primarily on The Daily Wire site for its subscribers.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. just poured as much as $180 million into “Digger.” The Tom Cruise vehicle is a two-hour Climate Change screed, full of lectures on the evils of oil.

Last year, the same studio threw well north of $100 million to produce “One Battle After Another,” a far-Left assault on white men and, more specifically, anyone who thinks arresting illegal immigrants is wrong.

The latter movie lost millions. Who knows how much “Digger” will cost Warner Bros., but the figure could reach $200 million.

Did anyone leak the scripts of these far-Left films and suggest they shouldn’t be made, let alone seen? Why would the far-Left Bulwark complain about “Pawn Shop,” an indie film that won’t have the marketing muscle to ensure widespread distribution?

It’s simple.

The Left owns Hollywood, by and large. That includes the industry’s messaging machine, too. That’s why both the Left and the media, but we repeat ourselves, went into mourning when “The Late Show” and its nightly progressive messaging got cancelled.

More importantly, any threat to that cultural dominance, even from an indie film offering a different perspective, is seen as a threat.

Here’s betting the attacks on “Pawn Shop” have only begun.

The post Bulwark’s Attack on Daily Wire’s ICE Movie Says It All appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

Statism – government control of the economy and people’s lives – is on the rise and freedom in decline, as developments around the world show. In Canada, the federal government directs infrastructure projects, including oil and gas pipelines, foreign trade, housing development, and AI, among other things. It has also established a sovereign wealth fund that gives the state an increased stake in capital markets and as financier of government-favored projects. In the United States, the federal government is using tariffs and ownership stakes in companies to direct the economy. Similar observations can be made in the EU, Asia, and elsewhere.

       Governments assume that through their votes, voters sign away their individual rights – their freedom – and let the government decide what is best of them. Elitist government leaders presume that they are naturally equipped to make better decisions than people trading in free markets and are therefore justified limiting their freedom, based on the leaders’ political philosophy of collectivism. Collectivism, according to Ayn Rand, “ … is based on a view of man as a congenital incompetent, a helpless mindless creature who must be fooled and ruled by a special elite with some unspecified claim to superior wisdom and a lust for power.”

       Often, governments use some perceived threat as a justification for increasing their control. As Ayn Rand observed, “In order to justify it, the statists have to rouse people to a hysterical fear of some malevolent enemy who threatens them with constant, unpredictable dangers.” In the recent past, those malevolent enemies have been capitalists whose profit-seeking industrial activity has allegedly caused a “climate emergency,” the pandemic-causing corona virus leaked from a Chinese research lab, and now, President Trump and his unpredictable tariffs disrupting international trade.

      Why do government leaders succumb to the hubris that they know what’s best for everyone? These are some plausible reasons:

• They are true believers in collectivism and have therefore adopted statism as their political ideology.
• They evade the importance of freedom to human flourishing and the government’s role in protecting it because that contradicts their philosophy of collectivism and statism.
• Like everyone else, they have a psychological need for self-esteem but instead of gaining it from their own productive efforts, they seek if from power over others  that inflates their view of their own abilities.

      On the other side of rising statism is its acceptance by those who repeatedly vote statist governments into power. Such voters share their political leaders’ ideology and want to be taken care of and looked after by the government. They want the state to ensure equal shares for all in the common pie that it has baked with their tax money.

      To challenge statism and “the government knows best” thinking, we need to point out statism’s flaws and identify an alternative.

      The problem with statism is that by attempting to direct and control the economy, the government diminishes human flourishing – which, ironically, it claims to protect by arguably meeting basic economic needs and ensuring equity for all. In Canada, despite the government’s efforts to direct the economy through industrial policies, the sovereign wealth fund, and taxation, growth is stagnant, capital is fleeing the country, productivity is sluggish, inflation is persistent, and almost a third of Canadians lives paycheck to paycheck. In the U.S., where greater freedom still exists, these problems have been largely avoided.

      But human flourishing does not mean bare economic survival and equal struggle for all. The condition of flourishing is that people are able to depend on their basic tool of survival, reason. They must be free to think, engage in any productive activity, and trade with others of their choosing, to survive and enjoy life. Thinking, producing, and trading requires freedom to choose one’s work, to keep the proceedings from it and to prosper accordingly.

      By limiting or abolishing that freedom – through confiscation of property and “redistributing” it to others, trough taxation, welfare programs, and foreign aid,  or through restricting trade through regulations – a statist government undermines individuals’ freedom to pursue their values and thereby their flourishing.

     The alternative to statism is a free society where the government plays a limited but crucial role and  flourishing can be maximized.

      Instead of controlling the economy and restricting individual choices, the government in such a society protects freedom by upholding individual rights to life, liberty, and property. Because those rights can only be violated by force, whether physical coercion or fraud, the government upholds them by deterring and punishing those who initiate force. This is the government’s only legitimate role and limits its functions to policing to protect citizens against common criminals, maintaining the military against foreign invaders, and operating the law courts to protect contracts and help resolve disputes.

     In a free society, there is no role for the government in the economic and social realms. It doesn’t collect taxes and fund industrial or social policies, hand out subsidies, or bail out businesses. It leaves the citizens free to live, produce and trade, as long as they respect the freedom of others to do the same, which makes flourishing possible for all.

      The gap between today’s statism and a free society is wide, but if we want to maximize human flourishing, we must strive to narrow it. One way to begin is to challenge those who hold the “the government knows best” premise by simply asking them “why?”.

Photo by William Zhao on Unsplash

I have a new article up at The UnPopulist, continuing my work for them on charting Donald Trump’s abuses of executive power.

This time, I focus on an effort to deprive universities of tax-exempt non-profit status on vague and arbitrary grounds.

Earlier this month, the Treasury Department and the IRS proposed a rule that would revoke tax-exempt status from private schools—everything from elementary schools to universities—that offer “targeted support to Black or other minority students.” This isn’t just a ban on explicit racial preferences or quotas. It’s a ban on any help offered specifically to minority students, down to minority student clubs and mentoring programs, which the administration apparently considers an offense against that most victimized minority in America: white men.

Aside from the nefarious goal of this rule change, we should be concerned about how the administration is using the IRS to impose it. The politicization of the IRS’s nonprofit rules has implications that go far beyond college admission policies. It is a way to gain direct presidential control over civil society.

A word on the substance of this particular policy. The Trump administration is trying to use the language of civil rights, talking about eliminating special favors, but doing so in a way that is actually designed to roll back the advances of the civil rights movement and the end of Jim Crow.

Let’s put it this way. I grew up still seeing ads for the United Negro College Fund, with its famous motto, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” The fund aimed at providing scholarships for talented young black people who otherwise could not afford to go to college. Is this a special favor for black students? Yes, but one that was based on merit, recognizing the disadvantages they faced from poverty and from the lack of educational opportunities and helping them overcome that.

But under Trump’s rules, this would be targeted by the IRS as an illegitimate purpose. Follow the link about how the Trump administration pressured universities into disavowing a mentoring program for black Ph.D. students because this is “discriminatory.” Here’s what that looks like in practice:

MIT, like many of the schools cited in the investigation, had paid The PhD Project “a nominal fee” to participate in the group’s university fairs or conferences, allowing MIT to send representatives to answer questions about attending their school, spokesperson Kimberly Allen said.

MIT informed the government in April 2025 it had ended its participation in such conferences.

I don’t know about you, but telling MIT it can’t even engage in recruitment of black students doesn’t sound like anti-discrimination. It sounds like a return to discrimination. And that’s a lot clearer when you realize that this administration is chock full of explicit racists. (This is something I’ve covered in the past, but I’ve been storing away even more examples, which I’ll be sharing soon.)

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But that’s not the focus of this article. I focus on the arbitrary way the Trump administration is reshaping its rules for tax-exempt nonprofits. While they’re imposing new restrictions on universities, they’re loosening restrictions on churches by allowing religious organizations—but not other tax-exempt nonprofits—to engage in political activity and endorse candidates. I sum up the administration’s policy this way: “Starve the universities, feed the churches. Exploit a politicized IRS to discourage activity you deem politically unwelcome in institutions you regard as hostile, while you open the floodgates of money and influence for institutions you regard as friendly.”

I point out how vague statutes and undefined powers in the law made this possible, but then I point to a more ominous factor.

Today’s authoritarian right has revived and adopted the ideas of the Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt. The central idea of Schmitt’s theory is that no legal doctrine can really be based on universal and neutral liberal principles. Instead, he insisted, the only basic distinction in politics is between friend and enemy. The fundamental political imperative is to reward one’s friends and punish one’s enemies.

Here we see that doctrine put into practice in the nitty-gritty of IRS tax rules.

Read the whole thing.

The UnPopulist

Trump Is Reshaping IRS Rules to Defund Minority Programs and Empower Churches

The Trump administration’s civil rights agenda is becoming clearer. Earlier this month, the Treasury Department and the IRS proposed a rule that would revoke tax-exempt status from private schools—everything from elementary schools to universities—that offer “targeted support to Black or other minority students.” This isn’t just a ban on exp…

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2 hours ago · 12 likes · 1 comment · Robert Tracinski

And please do follow those links, especially Andy Craig’s article, which lists some of the contemporary American right-wing endorsements of Schmitt. It’s one of those things that sounds so cartoonishly evil you can’t believe it’s really happening—but then the vice-president name-drops a Nazi theorist.

But you don’t need a theorist to engage in the age-old political impulse to rig the system in favor of your gang, which is the rule of our politics right now, until we demand something better.

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