A great disservice has been done to the young people of the United States. Those who are slowly emerging into adulthood, and are now looking around and taking stock of the nation that has been bequeathed to them by their elders are horrified at what has been allowed to happen. They see problems, but have rarely been offered guidance on the path toward solutions to the fiscal, regulatory, and military rot that has been allowed to fester by those of the older generation. Many young people, natural idealists who don’t know any better, turn to “socialism” as an answer to this country’s ills. These people, of the aging “millennial” generation of which I am a part, and even younger, are immediately scoffed at and written off by the older generations, who have never bothered to offer them an alternative, because they have none to offer.

It’s become a pastime to ridicule young “socialists” by the same people who allowed the political climate to decay to a point that the youth feel that they must take it upon themselves to fix it. Having not received any guidance or vision whatsoever by the chattering, chiding, finger-wagging blob of older generations, they take their idealism and turn their backs. Unsurprisingly.

And so, being idealists, they go to hear those who preach idealism while also presenting a plan of action. They genuinely want to change the world for the better, but as so few prophets of liberty are able to capture their imagination, they gravitate to those who do. Enter the socialists, who masterfully appeal to this wayward idealism of the young and gain their support.

Yes, socialism is a false prosperity doctrine, but these kids came of age during the end of the Bush Presidency, throughout the disillusioning Obama terms, and have been disgusted by the Trump Presidency.

We are failing to appeal to the one group that will see liberty to its fruition: the young idealists. Our philosophy of liberty is for them, and would speak to them if only more people had the courage to speak it. Instead, we allow free trade to be associated with Trumpism, or just another brand of authoritarianism. It is much more than that.

Trump seems to awake the middle-aged adolescent in his supporters. Even his detractors. The young of this country are sickened unto death by this behavior. They know they deserve better, than the human race is meant for more than an endless sequence of bickerings and petty squabbles that consume the time of so many people. The young socialists are so because they have been offered no alternative. But the philosophy of liberty thrives best within just such people, if only they are given the opportunity to hear it and allow it time to “click”.

The young adults of this country have been the driving force behind marijuana legalization, despite having been schoolmarmed about the dangers of marijuana throughout their childhood. They pursued this ideal anyway, and all the while were laughed at by the older generations who now frequent the many cannabis shops that have opened throughout the country. But what they may not understand is that marijuana legalization has been a victory for liberty, a removal of authoritarian prohibition over a harmless plant, prohibition that has caused endless suffering and death. Now all that suffering and death is ending, the cannabis market has erupted, and thousands are employed in actual jobs.

The heart and spirit of liberty is its idealism, even its utopianism. This is the philosophy that these young socialists are truly seeking, they just don’t know it yet. The removal of all barriers to voluntary action, the removal of force and violence from transactions, is the true idealism of liberty. Advocates of liberty must keep this in mind; their idealism is their strength. Ron Paul used idealism to great effect, it was the greatest awakening to the philosophy of liberty that will probably ever occur. But it was the idealism of Paul that fueled his success. There was none of the MAGA baggage to pollute the message, it was just liberty. Paul’s revolution lives on in the cannabis legalization movement, even the vaccine choice movement.

It is the act of fearlessly advocating for liberty in a pure and consistent manner which will win hearts and minds, something that apparently few people are capable of, but will naturally attract those predisposed to seeking it out. But lets not ridicule the young for desperately wanting to fix a country that has been allowed to reach such a state of rampant mismanagement, corruption, authoritarianism, and apathy.

Popcorn-worthy stuff right here.

On a podcast, Hillary clearly smeared both Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein as Russian assets, essentially accusing them both of being traitors to their country. Tulsi’s legal response is more than appropriate, given the fact that she is a current, very popular Democratic Presidential candidate, and a Hillary smear could certainly derail her momentum.

What’s the next step? Hillary clearly believes she is above the law, a vaunted member of the Political Class, a group that she probably feels she has adequately served over the past three decades. More than likely, though, is that this lawsuit is the final blow to her sputtering political career and relevance.

This will be a relatively off-topic rant on a subject that generates considerable controversy among hand-wringers, busybodies, pearl-clutchers, and the like: screen time/video game time for children. It’s something that most people worry endlessly over. I worry as well, particularly when the screen time involves passive viewing of movies/TV/YouTube programming. What I don’t worry about nearly as much are video games for children. That’s not to say that limits shouldn’t be placed on the amount of time played, but we are overlooking a very significant benefit of goal-oriented, creative video games that children would never receive otherwise: the ability to cope with failure at an early age.  Another way to say this, or an adjacent benefit, would be the healthy development of confidence in one’s own ability to accomplish something, whether it’s a logic problem, riddle, et cetera. Amid all the hysteria over “screen time”, I think that this huge benefit should be addressed. Just think about it: the ability to cope with failure, and the stubbornness to keep trying at a new or unfamiliar activity, is a skill that has to be learned. How many other opportunities do kids today get to experience something like that? Are they really getting that from school? Are parents providing it?

Surely many parents with children who play these types of goal-oriented games have witnessed a similar development. And I believe it is significant for their success later in life. The resilience to cope with failure must be learned. But children can only develop that resilience when they believe that they have the agency to also achieve success. Many video games are providing this type of unique experience to children who otherwise would never be placed in a situation where failure

I have not ventured into the wilds of the internet to find out if researchers or anyone else has noticed this phenomenon. I can only speak personally. But, from what I’ve seen, the positive effect goal-oriented/creativity-oriented video games on the character of children is profound.

The resilience to handle failure or rejection is a hallmark of emotional maturity. It is a wonder to see this type of emotional maturity displayed in full in a 10 year-old, and how this confidence in his own abilities carries over into the real world.

Of course, video games should not be a child’s only source stimulation. No one is saying that it should. But we sell kids short by depriving them of these creative outlets.

And the games today are endlessly creative. It really is unbelievable. Most worrywarts have in mind only the ultra-violent games when they descend into a paranoid delusion. And yes, those games are terrible. But there is so much more than just that. Log in to Roblox and you’ll find hundreds of thousands of the most creative, funny, and challenging games in existence. All to play for free. Or check out Minecraft. Or even older NES/SNES games like Zelda. They’re challenging, and fun. Kids want to be challenged. It’s in their nature to develop the resilience and emotional independence that is offered in such scant amounts in every other aspect of their lives.

I could continue on with other benefits that I’ve noticed from these games: a lengthening of attention spans, an enrichment and stimulation of the imagination, emotional independence, the crucial development of patience, the capacity for sustained concentration on a single complex problem, and others.

There are far worse things that kids can get mixed up with now than video games. Growing up, we adults have seen childhood friends get involved in the most self-destructive and mindless wastes of time. And the character traits that grew out of those experiences have shackled them throughout their lives. But I’ve known kids who loved video games with a passion, who grew to become some of the most driven, interesting, and independent people I’ve ever known. Did the games do it, or was the character already there?

I’ll leave it at that for now.

From page 134 of volume 2 of F.A. Hayek’s brilliant trilogy, Law, Legislation, and Liberty:

“Most people are still unwilling to face the most alarming lesson of modern history: that the greatest crimes of our time have been committed by governments that had the enthusiastic support of millions of people who were guided by moral impulses. It is simply not true that Hitler or Mussolini, Lenin or Stalin, appealed only to the worst instincts of their people: they also appealed to some of the feelings which also dominate contemporary democracies. Whatever disillusionment the more mature supporters of these movements may have experienced as they came to see the effects of the policies they had supported, there can be no doubt that the rank and file of the communist, national-socialist or fascist movements contained many men and women inspired by ideals not very different from those of some of the most influential social philosophers in the Western countries. Some of them certainly believed that they were engaged in the creation of a just society in which the needs of the most deserving or ‘socially most valuable’ would be better cared for. They were led by a desire for a visible common purpose which is our inheritance from the tribal society and which we still find breaking through everywhere.”

Including 26 deaths that were recorded between September 1st, 2010, and September 15th, 2011.

Just behind Colorado, according to a new study.

Also, in 2019, the state of Oklahoma collected $54,751,171 in total taxes on medical marijuana. You want a real-world miracle? You’re witnessing it.

I’ve attempted as much as possible to limit the “Doomsday-tarian” style of commentary on this platform, in part because there’s already more than enough of that taking up space on other liberty-oriented websites, but also because, try as I might, I do not see doomsday on the horizon. In fact I see the opposite. The world is getting better. A sustained environment of liberty, spread through greater reaches of the world, is generating a more cultured, better fed, better educated population than has ever existed in the history of the human race. The proto-fascist ravings of Greta Thunberg notwithstanding, the past decade that she has lived through has been the most prosperous ever witnessed in Western nations, and most certainly in her home country. Greater numbers of people are experiencing true progress, despite the process generating it existing below the surface, and despite this real progress being taken for granted by most. Greater numbers of people are recognizing the truth that, when left to their own devices, when left free, the human species is capable of real-world miracles. When left free, the invisible hand, or spontaneous order, or whatever you’d like to call it, goes to work, and the daily actions of each free individual working within a web of hundreds of millions of other free individuals generates unimaginable prosperity. And they are miracles, only ones taken for granted.

Many do not want to hear that the world is getting better. The doomsday tale is far more interesting. ‘Doomsday-ism’ sells. People love to be told to fear something, to be told that war is just over the horizon, to hear reports of various atrocities breathlessly reported on the nightly news. They love the cinematic aspect of world-ending scenarios, of war, terrorism, et cetera. Reality, as channeled and distorted through the news, becomes cinematic, and dramatic. And interesting. “If it bleeds it leads.” People want Armageddon as entertainment, as they always have. It’s human nature I suppose. We all know someone who is addicted to complaining, and appears to inject every new crisis directly into a vein.

Yet despite the reports of humankind’s inevitable demise, contrary facts continue to emerge. For instance. The market prices for this planet’s stock of non-renewable resources continue to fall, contrary to the Ishmael doomsday-ists, and really contrary to what one would expect in the face of a rising global population. CATO’s Simon Abundance Index tracks this miraculous fall in the price of 50 fundamental commodities.

Liberty is the principle that becomes the engine of miraculous progress, but one that gets almost no credit from those who benefit the most. In fact it’ the only means of achieving progress, but because it’s benefits are indirect, voters have a much harder time of seeing those benefits as opposed to the ones stemming from direct government action, even when that action undercuts the progress that they most benefit from.

Marijuana legalization is a perfect example. The rapid cascade of legalization across the United States has unleashed a tidal wave innovation, entrepreneurship, job creation, and widespread access to a risk-free alternative to expensive, dangerous, and addictive pharmaceutical drugs. This has been a true, real-world miracle, and it should be hailed as such. Many do, but too many still fail to see the source of the miracle, a source that could be tapped and channeled to cure other, greater societal ills that far too many people look to government to solve through the magic wand of the legislator.

It’s fairly obvious that we humans are hardwired to seek out a Messiah, and despite the modern world we live in, most of us still look to the sky for miracles or signs of approaching Armageddon. And so we imbue various man-made institutions with divine authority, and demand miracles.

We should be careful of how frequently we indulge our primitive desire for Messiahs, because when they do appear it’ll be too late to get rid of them.

The advocates of liberty must become more than mere chroniclers of the rise of authoritarianism. An imaginative and consistent vision of what a truly free society would look like must be developed. Doomsday-ism does sell well though, which is nothing new. Busybodyism, that ugly Puritan hatred for, and distrust of, anything new and different, also sells well. With every demographic shift or cultural change, the busybodies emerge, columns and books fully-formed, to deride the change. But the change is good, if it is a product of the natural, unforced, purely voluntary process that liberty generates.

So, to the title of this post. Contra the doomsday crowd, the world is getting better. This, of course, is thanks to a sustained, relatively free environment for uncontrolled experimentation and entrepreneurship to flourish. While much of the world is nowhere near to developing an open society that respects the rights of individuals, the entire world is benefiting from what little liberty does exist. It’s vitally important that as many as possible understand the principle underlying this progress, in the hope that greater numbers of people will give up their quest for a government-created Paradise and permit the liberty from which can be the only true environment in which a real-world Paradise can emerge. We must understand why prosperity occurs. It’s not god, nor is it government, nor is it merely accidental. It has a source that we are able to discern. While we cannot use government to force a plan for prosperity upon society, we are able to create the conditions from which it will emerge. If we’re to have another decade of marvelous prosperity, it’s vital that as many people as possible understand how it occurs.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this once I’ve given it time to marinate.

Disturbing article from the Independent:

Speaking about the 12 published HPV vaccine trials:

“Researchers at Newcastle University and Queen Mary University of London discovered the trials were not designed to identify cervical cancer, which takes decades to develop. 

Dr Claire Rees, lead researcher, said: “Trials may have overestimated efficacy by combining high-grade cervical disease with low-grade cervical changes that occur more frequently but often resolve spontaneously without progressing. We found insufficient data to clearly conclude that HPV vaccine prevents the higher-grade abnormal cell changes that can eventually develop into cervical cancer.

“Abnormal cell changes are likely to have been over diagnosed in the trials because cervical cytology was conducted at six to 12 months rather than at the normal screening interval of 36 months. This, too, means that the trials may have overestimated the efficacy of the vaccine, again because some of the lesions would have regressed spontaneously.”

Professor Allyson Pollock, co-author of the report, urged women to attend regular cervical screenings. She said: “We have good evidence that cervical screening significantly reduces the risk of cervical cancer in women regardless of whether they have been vaccinated.””

The HPV vaccine may create a false sense of security in young women as well, making them even less inclined to attend a screening, believing that they are protected because they received the vaccine.

Several legal experts believe there’s a chance she could win.

228 officers killed themselves in 2019, a number far and above the 47 who were gunned down, or even the 77 who died as a result of car crashes and other accidents. It’s not a number that’s talked about all that much, either, but shows that there is something very wrong happening under the radar for the cops themselves. Whether the job is attracting individuals prone to violent, self-destructive behavior, or the stress of the job is compelling suicidal thoughts, or some combination, the toll it is taking is very real. We hear quite a bit about the “War on Cops”, but the truth is the officers are the real threat to themselves. A change is badly needed in the way that police work is done in the US, for the sake of citizens and for cops.