Breaking up the NSA
In a Wired series on how to “save the net,” Bruce Schneier argues the best reform for the NSA is a full break up. Founded over 60 years ago, it may be time to...
Economic Thinking Posts on Debate Topics
Equity in Lost Language, Lost Liberalism
Liberalism was long a word for a family of perspectives and policies thought central to advancing societies of free and responsible people. Firms, churches, clubs, societies, and a wide range of voluntary associations advanced...
Life is Tough on the Street, for Jaywalkers and Street Vendors
Hard I think to find a more powerful case of injustice/lack of equity–of not treating people fairly–than the revenue model for the City of Ferguson, Missouri. Alex Tabarrok discusses the problem in his MarginalRevolution...
The economic roots of the Arab Spring
The McKinsey on Society website includes a number of compelling videos. For students researching and debating U.S./Middle East policy, the video below featuring Hernando de Soto on the economic roots of Arab Spring is...
The “wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition…”
Angelo M. Codevilla’s August 17th post on the Library of Law and Liberty website takes a critical look at past and present U.S. policy toward Iraq. He argues that the whole idea of a...
Equity Requires Equal Access to The Law
Inequality of income and wealth are different than inequality of legal status. Social equity requires equal access to a just rule of law. The great British, American, and French revolutions advanced western world legal...
Ageless Iraq: “At the Center of Our World…”
Titled “Ageless Iraq” the short British film below presents an optimistic view of life in Iraq in the 1950s. Iraq was home to far fewer people in the 1950s, just five million compared to...
Letting Terrorists in and Keeping FreedomFest Attendees Out
Governments want citizens to have access to education, but that doesn’t mean governments should run schools. Similarly, governments have an interest in monitoring visitors and immigrants to keep terrorists out. But that doesn’t mean...
A Value Clash? Freedom versus Intergenerational Equity
Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All is the subtitle of the 2011 United Nations Development Report. The full report is here (pdf), Sustainability and equity are themes in each year’s United Nations...
Advocating Limits on Freedom
Cato Unbound is featuring a discussion among economists on limiting freedom in order to provide equity, in the form of a guaranteed minimum income. The discussion begins with Matt Zwolinski’s essay “The Pragmatic Libertarian...