Ryan McMaken attempts to explain “Why Comments Sections Are Not Coming Back to Mises.org,” Power & Market (07/31/2026). He makes the obvious point that the owner of the site can set whatever policy it wants. But as one commentator noted:

One of the article’s arguments is that the Mises Institute has no obligation to provide a platform for its critics. That is true, but it addresses only the Institute’s right to close its comment sections—not whether doing so is intellectually wise. Property rights determine who has the authority to make the decision; they do not establish that open criticism has little value or that eliminating it best serves the Institute’s educational and scholarly mission.

And of course his screed ends with this censorious little graphic:

https://t.co/ZMU2yly8eL@ryanmcmaken’s defense of keeping comments disabled on @mises raises several legitimate practical concerns, but it does not fully justify the broader dismissal of comment sections as intellectually unhelpful.

One of the article’s arguments is that the…

— 김경훈 Gyeonghoon Kim (@ActionAxiom) August 3, 2026

As I tweeted back,

If you have a blog and want to turn off comments, that’s one button. You don’t need to erase years of old archived comments, change the name of the blog, change link structure without redirects, or reimpose strict copyright controls.

I already explained what has gone wrong at Mises.org and what should be done now in “My Years with the Mises Institute,” Property and Freedom Journal (May 2, 2026), in particular in the subsections: Pointless Name Changes, Website Changes, and Journal Confusion; Open Publishing Abandoned; Mises.org; Copyright and Open Publishing/Information:

Mises.org; Copyright and Open Publishing/Information

The CC-BY policy previously used should be adopted again, and the website overhauled so that old comments are restored, broken links fixed, and the JLS and QJAE unified in one place each, with all back issues and volume easily findable. Its most useful programs, in particular the Mises U, could be expanded to invite as many  students as possible, even if it is more costly. Surely the donors who have provided funds would be in favor of such expenditures. All these are easy fixes if there is a President who understands this and has the support and resources to get this done.

I have visited this topic about forest/open heathland fires, the positive externalities of private property ownership, Tragedy of the Commons and the unintended consequences of Green not-so-benign neglect before (remember those bad fires in Australia?) before, but here’s a reminder, given recent fires in Spain, France, Greece and my native Suffolk in the UK:

Wall Street Journal:

Under its Green Deal and related policies, the European Union is designating 30% of the continent as nature-protected by 2030. Goals include increasing the amount of deadwood and the density of tree cover in forests. Whatever their environmental merit, such measures increase the amount of highly flammable fuel for fires, make it easier for blazes to spread and harder to extinguish.

The EU also wants at least a third of this protected land to fall under “strict protection,” which means it will be left “essentially undisturbed from human pressures and threats,” according to European Commission guidance. It allows for some natural disaster prevention measures, but only “when such activities are compatible with the conservation objectives of the areas on the basis of a case-by-case assessment,” the guidance says.

Ranchers and farmers in Spain and France have historically managed their land to mitigate the risk of megafires. But the EU’s regulations have made it harder for small farms to survive across Europe, accelerating a rural exodus. Red tape often hinders those who remain from carrying out preventive actions like controlled burns.

The European Forest Fire Information System publishes maps and data, updated daily, on the current blazes. They show considerable overlap between the protected nature areas in Spain and France and the wildfires. That suggests in addition to the vagaries of weather, a policy failure.

Blaming climate change is the default explanation these days for any natural disaster, but Europe’s costly solutions will make little difference to global temperatures. Better forest management and fire prevention can make a difference, however. And they would reduce the CO2 emissions from fires that now overwhelm much of the reduction from electric vehicles or other climate nostrums.

Some advocates of “rewilding” claim that fires are part of nature, and that over time, fires will trigger a response in the form, for example, of more fire-resistant species (also, certain seeds are only germinated once a fire has happened). That sounds plausible, but the problem is that in a densely populated part of the world, such as the UK southeast, people want the loveliness of nature but without a raging fire nearby, however “natural” that is. And it is worth remembering that even if you take out the Man-made global warming argument and accept that fires are part of nature – they are – that much of our visually attractive landscape is not the result of Man leaving nature alone, but of crafting and caring for it. (This all makes sense once, like good students of Aristotle, we recognise that Man is as much part of nature as a beetle, shark or buzzard).

In the meantime, I am doing the very non-atheist thing and praying for rain.

AND? U. Tampa English professor claims Trump’s words contribute to declining support for trans rights.