Friday Hodgepodge

Notable Commentary

"None of these problems [poverty, cronyism, and low economic growth --ed] has anything to do with the inequality gap between rich and poor." -- Yaron Brook, in "Economic Equality Is an Immoral Ideal" (PDF) in The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, vol. 40, no. 1.

"[Coolidge] did not merely recognize medicine's contribution toward mitigating disease and increasing life expectancy, he went further, praising the root cause of those advances: reason." -- Jared Rhoads, in "Calvin Coolidge's Speech to American Doctors: Praising Medicine and Venerating Reason" at Coolidge Blog.

"The Saudi regime's domination of women; the public executions of apostates; the floggings for blasphemers; the patrols of the morality police; the prohibition on buying or consuming alcohol; the subjugation of the individual under sharia law -- all of that calls to mind the horror of daily life in Raqqa, a stronghold of Islamic State." -- Elan Journo, in "Why Trump Should Disrupt the Scandalous US-Saudi Relationship" (blogged here) at The Hill.

"[G]overnment health administrators might be more interested in using AIs to maximize overall cost savings for a large population by mandating 'cookie cutter' health guidelines." -- Paul Hsieh, in "3 Big Questions About AI-Guided Medicine" at Forbes.

"[My 2014 book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels] argues that the way we have been taught to think about and discuss energy issues is wrong, and that if we follow a better method of thinking, we will conclude that the proper energy policy for the foreseeable future requires increasing our use of fossil fuels -- not dramatically and coercively restricting our fossil fuel use." -- Alex Epstein, in "A Straw Man Attack on the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels" (PDF, blogged here) at Energy Law Journal, vol. 37, no. 3.

"The story switches midway from the-dollar-will-collapse to gold-will-go-up." -- Keith Weiner, in "The Gnome Underpants Gold Model" at SNB & CHF.

"[Gold and silver] perform different functions." -- Keith Weiner, in "Will Gold or Silver Pay the Higher Interest Rate?" at SNB & CHF.

"In a free country, soldiers who fight against an actual threat to America are not sacrificing what is most important to them -- they are upholding it." -- Peter Schwartz, in "Memorial Day -- but Don't Call It a Sacrifice" (2015) at Huffington Post.

-- CAV