Libertarianism has had a prominent position in America for my whole life. It goes by many names: free-market capitalism, classical liberalism, neoliberalism, monetarism, freedom, limited government, supply-side economics, and on and on. People who use these labels may protest that they are not all the same thing (I’ll address that in a little bit), but…
Eric Schwitzgebel wrote a recent blog post called Love Is Love, and Slogans Need a Context of Examples. The post makes the point stated in its title. Slogans, taken on their own, are mostly meaningless. If you took someone with no knowledge of the fight for marriage equality in the US, and said to them,…
I was driving with my daughter the other day when she asked, “Why do we have to pay for things?” I told her that there’s a cost to making things, so we have to pay that cost. She’s nine, so of course she asked another question, “But what about things that aren’t made? Why do…
The pandemic has highlighted many of our problems. One of the most disturbing, for me, is the complete lack of a national conversation. There’s very little public conversation at all, and that tends to be confined to geekdoms. There’s almost nothing that can properly be called public discourse. All we have is a bunch of…
Trump’s second impeachment trial is currently happening in the Senate. I feel like I should be paying attention, but I can’t. I’m just so fatigued from the last four or five years. He’s not president anymore, I’d like to never think about him again. In some vague way, I hope he’s convicted. He’s obviously guilty,…
People have been talking about the $15 federal minimum wage for a while now. With Biden’s election, it’s a real possibility. Democrats have a way of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, so I’m not making any predictions, but it has a better chance than it did a year ago. So, this seems like…
Everyone with siblings is probably familiar with the phrase, “It’s not a competition.” I have two brothers. We thought everything was a competition. My parents often had to remind us that dishes is not a competition. For years I’ve been saying that politics is not a competition. Politics lacks two necessary components of competitions. First,…
As Trump left the White House, I felt a huge amount of relief. I’m not exactly optimistic about the future, but it’s a step in the right direction. While I was thinking about this, I had a strange thought that I want to explore a little bit. In actuality, Trump’s presidency wasn’t as bad as…
Like almost everyone else, I spent a good chunk of yesterday watching in horror as Trump’s thugs looted the Capitol. I tried not to, but I wound up on social media and some news sites reading what people had to say about it, everyone from pundits and politicians to regular people, friends, strangers, people I…
I know that’s a snarky title, but it’s a (mostly) serious question. I’m not talking about Mitch McConnell or Rand Paul or Paul Ryan. I don’t have much positive to say about the Republicans in government, but I don’t think they are, as a rule, lazy. I’m talking about the regular people who self-identify and…
