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What Makes Twitter Great
“I’ve got better things to do than broadcast a message to the world about my lunch.” An uncountable number of people have said this …
The Case for Live Blogging a Book
The buzz on the next big thing: products and services that claim to make you smarter. Forbes says it is the next trillion-dollar industry. …
How Government Wrecked the Gas Can
The gas gauge broke. There was no smartphone app to tell me how much was left, so I ran out. I had to call …
Material Progress and the American Spirit
The 1968 epic Planet of the Apes ends with Taylor the astronaut, played by Charlton Heston, coming upon the Statue of Liberty, except that …
The Case of the Missing Low-Mileage Car
How would you like to drive from New York to Los Angeles with just one stop for gas? It seems incredible and wonderful, but …
If Government Spends Less, Are We Sunk?
Easy prediction: Congress will not cut spending. The hysteria in Washington is for naught, as usual. There will be no “austerity,” at least not …
Greedy Governments and the Double Irish
Beginning last year, mainstream reporters began kvetching about a rather brilliant tax strategy used by Google, Apple and hundreds of other technology firms. It’s …
Economics By and For Human Beings
“Economics puts parameters on people’s utopias.” Yes. That’s exactly it. That’s why the politicians hate economics. That’s why the media are so… selective in …
How to Ruin a Kid’s Life
I was just down at the “feed and seed” buying two baby chicks to replace my female duck that was carried off by a …
What Is or Should Be the Law?
It seems that the president is frustrated with Congress. What kind of legislature is this, he asks, that fails to immediately enact the will …
Throwing Out the Old
Two years ago, I was the soul of generosity. I had culled through my sizeable collection of CDs and found 30 discs that I …
The Economy Is Us: A Tribute to John Papola
For many people around the world, the first they had ever heard of the great economist Friedrich A. Hayek came from a rap video. …
The Great Lawn Mower Hack
The functioning of millions of our consumer products has been wrecked by government regulations in ways that are extremely hard to detect and difficult …
Wal-Mart, Victim of Extortion
To do serious business in America requires vast campaign contributions to several layers of elected politicians, an army of lobbyists in Washington, retired government …
The Secret History of the Club (Part 1)
“Launch” has been the watchword this week in the world of Spy Briefing Books. It’s been on everyone’s mind since the brilliant idea of …
Money and Finance as if You Mattered
During the 2008 credit crisis, a horde of central bankers, Treasury officials and large corporations screamed that the end of the world was upon …
The Bizarre World of Plastic Fees
Most everyone is really down on financial companies these days. What kind of scam are they running, anyway? It seems as if everywhere we …
Despair and the State
The sad and tragic story of Andrew Wordes — the chicken farmer who was driven to despair by government harassment and killed himself last …
How Regulators Wrecked Our Mowers
When I was a kid, lawn mowers worked. You pushed them and they cut grass. The grass went into the bag. Then you emptied …
It’s a New World, and America Is Not Leading It
In the last decade, something astonishing has happened that has escaped the attention of nearly every American citizen. In the past, and with good …
Regulators Take on the E-Book
Get this: The federal bureaucrat who last month started the litigation against Apple and book publishers for e-book pricing is the same person who, …
The Good News (for Animals) on Health Care
There’s so much bad news about health care these days. Maybe it’s time for some good news. One sector, technology, is advancing at a …
A Tool of Human Liberation
Of all social media on the Internet, LinkedIn is the least splashy. A movie will never be made about this tool. It has introduced …
Commerce, Our Benefactor
What if we had the following economic system? This system would shower the globe with free goods day and night, asking nothing and giving …