The proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) assets by Netflix is already being cast as a landmark antitrust “test case.” If past deals are any guide, the critiques will follow a familiar script: narrow market definitions, selective data points, and headline-friendly market-share claims designed to trigger alarm. Yet in a video ecosystem defined by…
One way of looking at the a policy of increased ICE enforcement of US border security is as a debate over decision error costs. The expressed goal is to remove the worst of the worst criminals. Few would disagree with this goal. However, in this dragnet, immigrants without criminal backgrounds have also been detained. The…
Germany approaching energy state of emergency…shutdown of heavy industries. The consequence: another economic body blow the country cannot afford…gross policy negligence As Germany’s heating gas supply becomes increasingly tense and nears emergency low levels, policymakers will likely blame a “colder than normal winter.” But that claim will not hold. The real reason: It is what…
Eddie Slovik was executed on January 31, 1945, becoming the only American soldier put to death for desertion since the Civil War. Of approximately 40,000 U.S. service members who deserted during World War II, only several thousand were court-martialed. Forty-nine received death sentences, but Slovik was the only one whose sentence was executed. Private Eddie […]
Matt Ridley writes: I first wrote a doom–laden article for the Economist about carbon dioxide emissions trapping heat in the air in 1987, nearly 40 years ago. I soon realised the effect was real but the alarm was overdone, that feedback effects were exaggerated in the models. The greenhouse effect was likely to be a moderate inconvenience…
The real environmental emergency isn’t the modest warming that has helped humans thrive. It’s land degradation, poisoned water and other forms of pollution that are burying the Global South alive. Yes, we’ve been fighting the wrong environmental war.
My friend Maarten Boudry, a Belgian philosopher, has been increasingly demonized for his heterodox views, especially on the Hamas/Israel war, since he is sympathetic to Israel (he isn’t Jewish). In the latest post on his Substack site, also published in condensed form in The Jewish Chronicle, Maarten recounts how there is a near-unanimity among European…
In Aberdeen, the warning sirens are no longer coming from offshore rigs but from the unions themselves. A recent study cited by the GMB union paints a stark picture: the North Sea’s offshore workforce, roughly 115,000 strong today, could be slashed to around 57,000 by the early 2030s if Britain’s headlong rush to Net Zero…
Lomborg has performed a valuable service in exposing the economic wreckage of Net Zero and the hollowness of green utopianism. But by clinging to the premise that climate change must ultimately be “solved” through policy-directed and publicly funded innovation, he gives credence to the very worldview he criticises. His halfway house reassures moderates, comforts elites,…
When a truly great new invention appears, people rarely greet it with the reverence that hindsight later bestows. Instead, they squint at it through the lens of the familiar. They ask: What is this like? And because it is not like anything they already know, they underestimate it. History is littered with inventions that, at […]
Olivier Blanchard writes: The French are not lazy. They just enjoy leisure more than most (no irony here) And this is perfectly fine: As productivity increases, it is perfectly reasonable to take it partly as more leisure (fewer hours per week, earlier retirement age), and only partly in income. He has follow-up points and clarifications…
Unless you’re a policy wonk, I realize “exciting” may not be the right word to describe new developments in public-finance economics. For nerds, however, three economists at the Joint Committee on Taxation have some important new research on the Laffer Curve. The study, authored by Rachel Moore, Brandon Pecoraro, and David Splinter, concludes that the […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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