Reimagining Public Safety – The Case for Privatizing Security
2024-03-19
Since the conclusion of World War II, each biennial session of Congress has ushered in a staggering 4-6 million words of additional legislation. However, amidst this flood of legal text, the State’s focus on expanding regulations and enforcing compliance has overshadowed its fundamental obligation: provision of security—the cornerstone of what progressives call the social contract.This neglect is starkly evident in the steady decline of the national homicide clearance rate over the past fifty years. While governmental efforts have been fervently directed towards the complexities of tax codes and corporate statutes, commitment to solving violent crime has dwindled.Sources: (https://www.federalregister.gov/reader-aids/understanding-the-federal-register/federal-register-statistics,
Sustainability of Eden: Can the UN’s Sustainability Agenda Succeed in a World Full of Conflict?
2023-12-26
To achieve sustainability, the world needs stability. Yet two-thirds of countries are facing major economic, political, and social problems. Most of them are also experiencing ethnic or civil conflicts, mass migration and poverty crises. The question is whether the UN’s sustainability agenda can succeed in the context of ongoing or simmering conflicts.
Paradoxically, preventing wars and conflicts isn’t one of the UN’s seventeen sustainable development goals. Perhaps there is a reason for this omission. Conflicts and wars are not a set of conditions that can be easily isolated. They are often a combination of failures in a dozen related areas that the United Nations promises to miraculously synchronize by 2030 in its quest for sustainability.
As an anthropologist interested in rural areas
Let them Merge: Foreign Acquisition of US Steel
2023-12-21
Economic nationalists are once again fawning over Democratic US senator John Fetterman from Pennsylvania. First it was for his opposition to Chinese-owned US farmland. Now he is opposing the acquisition of United States Steel Corporation (US Steel) by a Japanese company. This acquisition, however, should not be blocked. It should be embraced. The justifications for government intervention are not convincing.
News broke Monday, December 18, that Japanese steel producer Nippon Steel would acquire US Steel for $14.9 billion. As US Steel has a presence in Pittsburgh, this news predictably upset Pennsylvanian politicians, who seized the opportunity to virtue signal to Pennsylvanian steelworkers and voters. John Fetterman stated, “It’s absolutely outrageous that they have sold themselves to a