A Free and Open Internet Is a Threat to the Establishment
2023-12-27
Last week, a video clip of Francis Fukuyama went viral. In the clip, the political scientist called freedom of speech and a marketplace of ideas “18th century notions that really have been belied (or shown to be false) by a lot of what’s happened in recent decades.”
Fukuyama then reflects on how a censorship regime could be enacted in the United States.
But the question then becomes, how do you actually regulate content that you think is noxious, harmful, and the like—and do it in a way that’s consistent with the First Amendment? Now, I think you can push the boundaries a bit because the First Amendment does not allow you to say anything you want. But among liberal democracies, our First Amendment law is among the most expansive of any developed democracy.
And you could imagine a future
2024’s Deficit Is Already on Track to Be the Worst Since Covid
2023-12-25
Weakness in the US economy continues to hide behind surging debt levels and government spending. As noted last month by Daniel LaCalle,
[A] large part of the growth in GDP came from bloated government spending financed with more debt and inventory revaluation, adding 0.8 and 1.4 percentage points to GDP growth. …
The increase in gross domestic product between the third quarter of 2022 and the same period of 2023 was a mere $414.3 billion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, while the increase in public debt was $1.3 trillion ($32.3 to $33.6 trillion, according to the Treasury).
The United States is now in the worst year of growth, excluding public debt accumulation since the thirties.
This trend is continuing at least into the first quarter of the new fiscal year, as it is
How the Free Market Drove History’s “Great Enrichment”
2023-12-22
Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economicsby Deirdre Nansen McCloskeyUniversity of Chicago Press, 2022; 222 pp.
Deirdre McCloskey is a great economic historian, and in Beyond Positivism, she makes a number of valuable points that draw from her immense learning in this field. I’d like to concentrate on a few of these insights in this week’s column.
She stresses the importance of the “Great Enrichment,” the process by which the free market has, by rescuing millions from poverty, increased longevity and bettered conditions of life and material well-being far beyond all previous advancements. Concerning this, she says:
We economists have been trying ever since 1776 to explain the Great Enrichment. About the lower end of the Great Enrichment, the economic historian