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Bob uses Trump’s call to ban congressional insider trading as a springboard to explain why, from an Austro-libertarian perspective, insider trading and speculation could help markets work, while still justifying special rules for government employees.
Mainstream economists want us to believe that money gains its value from state decrees. Yet, Austrian economists more than a century ago explained why money has value.
It has been 20 years since the Duke Lacrosse Case dominated the news media. It was a story in which false narratives of guilt pushed by corrupt police and prosecutors, radical members of Duke’s faculty, and the legacy media nearly railroaded three innocent men into prison.
California cannot permit the construction of a smartphone factory, an electric car plant, or a Navy destroyer shipyard. Not won’t — can’t. The regulatory environment makes it effectively impossible to build new semiconductor fabs, automotive paint shops, battery gigafactories, or steel foundries.
Tesla didn’t put its Gigafactory in Nevada out of affection for Reno. General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego can build destroyers only because it’s been grandfathered in since 1960. If it closed tomorrow, it could not be rebuilt.
I get tired at all the discussion of tariffs and industrial policy and manufacturing. All of it is BS in comparison to the basics. We have the met the enemy and the enemy is us. Our future is in our hands. Is that optimistic or pessimistic? Either way complaining about China won’t fix our problems.
The post Banned in California appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
1. Special tribute issue on James C. Scott.
2. Gauti Eggertsson: “I now find myself replicating papers and experimenting with frontier methods in an evening or a few days using Claude Code. That would have taken weeks before — which in practice meant I wouldn’t have done it at all.” And yet his vision is still far too conservative.
5. The price of war.
6. Is China an expansionist power? And China fact of the day.
7. Paul Graham on branding, design, and watches.
8. António Lobo Antunes, RIP ( NYT).
9. In fact in the Gulf there are too many vulnerable targets.
The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
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