It’s amazing listening to the interventionist fantasies of the Presidential candidates, as if the US has a way to pay for it all.  We ran dry long ago, the culprit being a gullible voting populace that bought into these fantasies.  It’s cathartic, to believe that, through the alchemy of politics, we really can have something for nothing.  Well, the tab has come due, and the world is tired of dollars.

There is also a macabre humor in the way that many middle-aged Trump supporters, who previously voted in the authoritarians who wrecked the country, think they’re a part of some type of “revolution” that going to Make America Great Again.

“Without principles we drift”-Hayek, from Individualism: True and False.

From Market Watch.  This story has a creepy, Big Pharma aspect to it, but still interesting.  Epidiolex, the drug, is designed to treat Dravet Syndrome, and is pending FDA approval.  All well and good, but why not just completely legalize marijuana and let people grow it and treat themselves?  That wouldn’t be a patentable solution, while something with the name “Epidiolex” probably is.  Which means companies like GW Pharmaceuticals are setting themselves up to be against marijuana legalization as a matter of policy.

After over a decade of fighting tech-free Third World insurgents to a stalemate, one has to wonder: how would the US do against a real army with real wartime technology?  Forbes.

From The Onion.  Probably a WaPo headline a few weeks from now.

Aside from expanding the gov’t by 50% and costing $13.5 trillion in the first decade, the burden of Bernie Sanders’ plan to raise taxes to fund hand-outs would fall primarily on the very people he professes he wants to help, according to Reason‘s J.D. Tuccille:

“…researchers find that people who are more likely to succeed economically are also more likely to dodge taxes. And targeting them specifically increases the likelihood that they’ll hide their money from the authorities. No matter what he intends, Sanders’ proposed tax hike looks destined to fall most heavily on those who can least afford to pay the tab for his promised goodies.

Just by hiking taxes at all, Sanders and others who favor an expansive state face an uphill battle. “In almost all studies it has been found out, that the tax and social security contribution burdens are one of the main causes for the existence of the shadow economy,” writes Friedrich Schneider, a professor at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, and expert on tax evasion and off-books economics. By “shadow economy,” he refers to work and business conducted out of reach of tax collectors and regulators.”

Trevor Timm at the Guardian.  Libya, the Saudi assault on Yemen’s civilians, Presidential war powers, nukes, and drones.  If they’re okay with all of these, and want more, they’re going to be lousy, which means more of the same we’ve had for decades.

USA Today.  Relevant chunks: “The world can seem like a pretty depressing place, especially if you follow the news, which tends to focus on the scary and depressing. But in fact, despite the legitimate risks and downsides — war, invasion, depression, asteroids, hackers, disease! — in most ways, things are better than they have ever been, and they’re getting better all the time…

…Things aren’t perfect today, of course, and there are still plenty of things to worry about. But it’s worth noting just how far we’ve come. It’s also worth noting that most of these advancements are the result of free enterprise and open markets, and worth remembering that politicians, for their own selfish purposes, might stop this progress at any time. Free markets are great, but they don’t offer the opportunities for graft and personal aggrandizement that un-free markets do. And to politicians, that’s a bug, not a feature.”

His latest Antiwar.com column.  Relevant chunks: “…the Russians have announced they are withdrawing the bulk of their forces on the eve of the renewed Geneva negotiations. Unlike in the US, where any hint that we might declare victory and get out is perceived as a sign of “weakness” that would bring a collapsing “world order” down on our heads, in Putin’s Russia foreign policy is directed by realists who refuse to be manipulated by their allies and realize that their power has limits.

Unburdened by the conceit that the fate of the world depends on asserting his nation’s role as an international policeman, Putin is free to cannily pursue Russia’s real interests. Those interests were served by shoring up  Assad’s regime, which was crumbling under a sustained assault from the US and its Islamist allies in Riyadh and Ankara (with the Israelis cheerleading from the sidelines). In the meantime, the head-chopping jihadists of al-Nusra and its spin-offs – covertly supported by the Saudis and Turkey – have been declared terrorist outfits by the United Nations, and negotiations are underway in Geneva while the ceasefire continues to hold (albeit somewhat shakily).”

Even though we make up less than 5% of the world’s population.  Yikes.

28,000 Americans died in 2014 due to opioid overdoses, which make up 60% of all overdose deaths in the US for that year.  The painkiller business is big business, they’ll do all they can to prevent marijuana from becoming a legal, patent-less, cheap alternative.

-The ability to accept the spontaneous change that is the outcome of liberty.  The spontaneous forces that operate unseen in a free society will produce outcomes no one can predict.  But it is crucial that we accept these changes, or at least refrain from looking longingly at the State as a remedy.  Politicians almost to a person rail almost exclusively against the outcomes of the spontaneous forces of a free society.  They offer a phony salvation via State-sanctioned coercion, but that same salvation in practice results in nothing more than mass impoverishment, a free fall to a sub-animal quality of life.

Being “for liberty” means having “faith” in liberty.  It means that, if liberty is treated as an inviolable principle, the spontaneous forces that are unleashed will handle any “crisis” that appears.  Indeed, one only need worry when liberty is abandoned in order to “address” the crisis.

Liberty is important because of the invisible forces it unleashes that benefit all of us without any central direction.  But it’s the most difficult public policy to defend precisely because its benefits are largely hidden from view.  It’s too easy for political demagogues to find examples of “winners” or “losers” emerging from the market process as proof that it has failed, and almost too difficult for defenders of liberty to counter that the process that created language, money, culture, and manners, would vastly raise the quality of life for everyone on the planet if only we stepped out of its way.