Stuff reports: A Government ministry has taken the time to threaten legal action against Stuff, all over a photo of a 45-year-old magazine used in a Stuff Quiz. On June 26, question five of the Stuff morning trivia quiz asked who appeared on the debut cover of Playboy magazine. To accompany the question, the quiz featured an archive image of a person…
One public servant we could survive without
One public servant we could survive without
03 Jul 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, health economics, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, property rights Tags: economics of smoking
Supreme Court upholds ban on trans-identified men participating in sports in public schools
03 Jul 2026 Leave a comment
in discrimination, gender, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights Tags: political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
In a decision split along ideological lines yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on trans-identified boys and men competing in girl’s and women’s sports were Constitutionally legal. Although the judges were unanimous in arguing that those laws did not violate Civil Rights laws (Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education), they…
Supreme Court upholds ban on trans-identified men participating in sports in public schools
Rent Control: The Ceiling Trap
02 Jul 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, economics of regulation, law and economics, property rights Tags: rent control
Rent control is in the news again. Check out my new website, Rent Control: The Ceiling Trap. Here is just one bit: Norway abolished its rent control in 1982, and the economist Are Oust realized the newspapers had been quietly recording the whole experiment. He collected housing classifieds from Oslo’s Aftenposten from 1970 to 2008 and watched…
Rent Control: The Ceiling Trap
A New Deal for Presidents? The Supreme Court Overturns Humphrey’s Executor and Reaffirms Executive Power
02 Jul 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, law and economics, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: constitutional law
Below is my column in the New York Post on the historic ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, reinforcing the authority…
A New Deal for Presidents? The Supreme Court Overturns Humphrey’s Executor and Reaffirms Executive Power
Pre-market societies could sometimes have alot of violence
01 Jul 2026 1 Comment
in economic history, economics of crime, law and economics Tags: evolutionary anthropology
Non-capitalist or pre-capitalist societies can have quite a bit of violence. The first quote comes from The Making of Economic Society, 13e by Robert L. Heilbroner and William Milberg. “It is difficult for us to reconstruct the violent tenor of much of feudal life, but one investigator has provided a statistic that may serve to…
Pre-market societies could sometimes have alot of violence
Renationalising British utilities
29 Jun 2026 1 Comment
in industrial organisation, law and economics, property rights, Public Choice Tags: British politics
There is talk of this with the pending change in PM, but I would not do it. I am quite aware that a) not all of the privatisations went well, and b) American data indicate that state-owned utilities do not seem very economically different than, or less efficient than, privately-owned utilities. Especially for water, where…
Renationalising British utilities
Nine Tweets Ripping Mamdani’s Economically Illiterate Expansion of Rent Control
28 Jun 2026 1 Comment
in applied price theory, income redistribution, law and economics, Marxist economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, urban economics Tags: rent control
I’ve written several columns (here, here, here, here, and here) detailing the folly of rent control. And now that New York City’s dilettante socialist mayor has proposed to expand rent control, I thought about doing the same thing. But I noticed so many clever comments on Twitter/X that I decided on a different approach. Here […]
Nine Tweets Ripping Mamdani’s Economically Illiterate Expansion of Rent Control
I’m a non-gestating parent!
26 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in discrimination, gender, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
The NY Post reports: A woke new bill erases the terms “mother” and “father” from state child custody and parental laws — a gender-neutral rewriting that’s expected to spark a flood of similarly clunky legislation. “Mother” would be replaced with “gestating parent” while “father” becomes “non-gestating parent” or “parent” in family court along with in domestic and education law,…
I’m a non-gestating parent!
The Partition: Ireland Divided 1885 to 1925 by Charles Townshend (2021)
23 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, economics of crime, law and economics, war and peace Tags: Ireland
‘None of the Irish leaders understood the northern situation or the northern mind.’ (Cahir Healy, Irish nationalist born in Ulster, quoted on this book’s last page)) This ought to be a great book – a long, scholarly, up-to-date and immensely detailed description of the social, economic and cultural reasons why Ireland was partitioned. All the […]
The Partition: Ireland Divided 1885 to 1925 by Charles Townshend (2021)
Ancient Clay Tablets Show Markets Worked 4,000 Years Before Economists Explained Them
21 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, development economics, economic history, history of economic thought, international economics, law and economics, property rights
Clay tablets unearthed in Asia Minor reveal a sophisticated commercial order emerging spontaneously nearly four thousand years before economists explained how markets work. By Surse Pierpoint of The American Institute for Economic Research.”A clay tablet from Kanesh, in what is now central Turkey, contains the founding charter of a twelve-partner trading company. Twelve merchants pooled thirty-three…
Ancient Clay Tablets Show Markets Worked 4,000 Years Before Economists Explained Them
150 laws to go
20 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, property rights
Chris Bishop announced: More than 150 outdated and obsolete laws are likely to be repealed as part of the Government’s statutory spring clean, Attorney-General Chris Bishop says. The legislative cleanup is being run in stages led by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, alongside the Department of Internal Affairs for local Acts. To date, 152 outdated Acts…
150 laws to go
Caplan-Jones UATX Debate Video
17 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, development economics, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, liberalism, libertarianism, politics - USA Tags: economics of immigration
Here’s the full video from my recent immigration debate at UATX with Garett Jones. Coleman Hughes moderates. (A great guy, and not only did we finally meet in person for dinner; he also came to UATX karaoke!) Here are more debate details from the UATX Substack. I’ve got multiple post-debate commentary essays in my queue,…
Caplan-Jones UATX Debate Video
The Spanberger Surge: Virginia Governor May Prove the Greatest Gun Influencer Since Charlton Heston
16 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: gun control
Is Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) a mole for the National Rifle Association (NRA)? After the recent scandal involving the…
The Spanberger Surge: Virginia Governor May Prove the Greatest Gun Influencer Since Charlton Heston
The History of Greenpeace: The Evolution of Green Extremism
14 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of climate change, economics of crime, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, International law, law and economics, Marxist economics, politics - USA, property rights Tags: climate activists, nuisance suits
The era of unchecked “activism” that masks itself as science while practicing inhumane sabotage is reaching its end. We are witnessing the slow, painful process of reality catching up to the Greenpeace propaganda. And frankly, it’s about time. The post The History of Greenpeace: The Evolution of Green Extremism appeared first on Watts Up With…
The History of Greenpeace: The Evolution of Green Extremism
Safety and nation-building in Mexico
14 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, economics of crime, growth disasters, law and economics Tags: economics of prohibition, Mexico
That is the topic of my latest Free Press column, here is one excerpt: Consider the special nature of Mexican politics. First and foremost, Mexico is still not a mature nation-state. By one estimate, drug gangs may control as much as one-third of its territory. That might sound bizarre, but from the standpoint of Mexican history,…
Safety and nation-building in Mexico
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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