May
May
Mar
John Bel Edwards’s War on Prosperity
I awoke this morning to find my Amazon Affiliates account terminated. For anyone who does affiliate marketing or benefits from online ads, this can be a terrifying alert. You’ve spent years building up an online link network that is finally generating some income and you’re happy because after all that hard work, your family can […]
Mar
2016 SXSW Interactive Recap
SXSW Interactive is pretty much how life should be lived—inspiring talks, great networking, and free booze. I love it so much that even though I had moved away from Austin and had to leave behind a loving family for nearly a week, I made it happen. It might even have been worth it. Obama The […]
Mar
How Western Civilization Lost Its Damned Mind
I love logic. As a form of discussion, accompanied by the Socratic method, it’s unsurpassed. The beauty of logic is that it applies to every discussion and everyone in the discussion. No matter what you’re talking about, logic can be used as a tool to make dramatic points and turn the conversation around. Dictionary.com defines […]
Feb
John Bel Edwards: Don’t Make Me Regret Moving to Louisiana
My wife and I decided to move to Louisiana from Texas in 2015 for her to be closer to her family and for me to be closer to good gumbo. It was a difficult move because Texas was the land of opportunity with no income tax, a flourishing economy, and the best brisket in the […]
Feb
The Morality of Libertarianism
Everyone is libertarian . . . for themselves. The trick is getting people to be libertarian for everyone else as well. No one likes it when people to tell them what to do. Nobody wants a nagging, paternalistic busy-body constantly poking and prodding in their personal or even public life. It’s offensive to one’s sense […]
Feb
Agreement in the Time of Zika
2015 was pretty bad for the concept of agreement. Religious differences spurred despicable terrorist attacks; protests across the US resulted in antagonism between racial minorities and police; and caustic political vitriol seemed to be at an all-time high across the globe. As one commentator wrote, “If you ask 100 different people how we should fix this […]
Jan
What Caused the Financial Crisis of 2008?
I recently rewatched one of the best financial movies of all time: Margin Call. It’s expertly acted, intensely dramatic, and has some great cinematography. There’s only one problem for a film about the 2008 financial crisis: it completely misses the root cause. Near the end of the film, it’s clear that the filmmakers see greedy […]
Nov
Keeping Abreast on Things
With the recent announcements that Playboy will stop publishing nude photographs of women, citing that with porn so ubiquitous, nudity has become passé, it’s time to revisit a discussion regarding nudity from the book Everyone Agrees. Keeping Abreast on Things On February 1, 2004, nearly 90 million Americans were shocked when they saw a female […]
Nov
Why All Libertarians Should Be Pro-Life
At a gathering of liberty-minded young professionals the other night, someone asked if there was a way to unify all libertarians. The joking answer was, “Don’t bring up abortion.” Libertarians—more than any group of people—can find common ground on just about everything, but when it comes to the contentious issue of abortion, it seems that […]