The last 14 months elevated a global group of intellectuals and bureaucrats about which most people had previously cared very little. Among them, the ones who believe least in freedom entrenched their power, thanks to a big push by the lavishly funded but largely discredited World Health Organization. The WHO tapped an “independent panel” (the fix was already in: the panel’s head is former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark) to figure out what the world did right and did wrong in response to Covid-19. The final report has all the expected verbiage about the needs for more global coordination and largesse going to public health.

May 17, 2021

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Jeffrey A. Tucker

En repetidas ocasiones este año, los acólitos de los confinamientos de la COVID-19 nos han exhortado a «seguir la ciencia». Muchos de los que amonestan suponen que los escépticos del confinamiento son unos malhechores miopes y «anticientíficos» que muestran un desprecio temerario por la salud, la seguridad y la vida de las personas. Sí, algunas personas son tan emocionales, fóbicas, religiosas o políticas que no pueden razonar con razón; pero ¿no puede haber un escepticismo racional y saludable sobre los efectos de la COVID-19 en la salud o los efectos de los confinamientos en la salud? Nada puede estar más lejos de la verdad, nada más lejos de... la ciencia.

Apr 14, 2021

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Dr. Richard M. Salsman

10 minutos

I’m sitting at a bar in Texas, surrounded by maskless people, looking at folks on the streets walking around like life is normal, talking with nice and friendly faces, feeling like things in the world are more-or-less normal. Cases and deaths attributed to Covid are, like everywhere else, falling dramatically. If you pay attention only to the media fear campaigns, you would find this confusing. More than two weeks ago, the governor of Texas completely reversed his devastating lockdown policies and repealed all his emergency powers, along with the egregious attacks on rights and liberties.

Mar 26, 2021

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Jeffrey A. Tucker

After the widespread power outages in Texas, reputable publications – the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today – blamed deregulation for the electrical grid’s failure. What’s the alternative to deregulation?

Mar 3, 2021

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Jack Nicastro

A century ago, as the post-war world struggled with recovery from the Spanish Flu pandemic, totalitarian movements rose to power and would go on to shake the very foundations of human civilization. Two ideologies, German National Socialism (Nazism) and Soviet Communism, left behind a legacy of mass death, unparalleled destruction, and soul-shattering poverty.

Mar 2, 2021

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Aarón Tao

Back around 2007, investor John Paulsen began to feel skeptical about the viability of mortgage securities. Though demand for them was much greater than supply, Paulsen sensed that lending standards had plummeted so far that loan delinquencies were set to surge. The “third rate” hedge fund manager (that’s what those who covered him at top investment banks felt) proceeded to very inexpensively purchase insurance on mortgages. He was able to because the consensus in the marketplace was that he was very wrong.

Jan 29, 2021

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John Tamny

What a glorious thing the reopening is! After nearly a year of darkening times, the light has begun to dawn, at least in the US. Given how incredibly political this pandemic has been from the beginning, many people smell a rat. Is it really the case that the reopening of the American economy, particularly in blue states, is so perfectly timed? Do the science and politics really line up so well?

Jan 25, 2021

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Jeffrey A. Tucker

As a naturally optimistic person, it vexes me that the word catastrophe has echoed in my mind since early March 2020. It’s the word the great smallpox eradicator Donald Henderson used in his 2006 prediction of the consequences of lockdown, a word that wasn’t around then. His masterful article addressed the idea of travel restrictions, forced human separation, business and school closings, mask mandates, limits on public gatherings, quarantines, and the entire litany of brutality to which we’ve been subjected for nearly a year, all summed up in the word lockdown.

Jan 5, 2021

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Jeffrey A. Tucker

What better way to begin a review of what is an excellent book than to say that the book’s author always knew. It’s as simple as that. Jeffrey Tucker knew in March of 2020 that tragic times were ahead.I remember it vividly. In February of 2020 witless headline writers were trying in vain to tie a falling stock market to a coronavirus that investors had been pricing for many weeks. They revealed their misunderstanding of big market lurches. They’re a consequence of surprise. In February the surprise wasn’t a virus that had been in the news since early January; rather it was the presidential primary success of a since forgotten socialist by the name of Bernie Sanders. Of course, by month’s end Sanders was falling as quickly as he had risen. Stocks soared as a risk-factor to future growth was vanquished. Sanders, as I argue in my upcoming book When Politicians Panicked, was the original “coronavirus.”

Jan 4, 2021

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John Tamny

I was born under the flag of the People’s Republic of China, a country that remains under the absolute rule of the Chinese Communist Party to this day. I have very few memories of my early childhood in mainland China, save for a visit to the Forbidden City—a brief tourist stop when my family traveled to the American consulate in Beijing to apply for a visa.

Dec 11, 2020

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Aarón Tao

Does the sight of a dolphin make you sad? Does the gentle lapping of the sea only make you think of the plastic water-bottle in your hand? Does a sunset fill you with fear and panic? Do you look at the world around you and in the place of wonder see only death?

Nov 17, 2020

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Joel D. Hirst

Arthur Baranovskiy’s family immigrated from Russia when he was only two years old. His goal is to build a business empire and become a philanthropist. And at 23-years-old, he is already a serial entrepreneur and has started investing in The Atlas Society.

Nov 2, 2020

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Leonard A. Robinson

The Great Brain is an excellent collection of children’s books that was written by John D. Fitzgerald, and was said to be loosely based on his life growing up in Adenville, UT. Tom is the “Great Brain” in possession of remarkable skills when it comes to making money while helping out other kids in his somewhat idyllic, early 1900s world.

Oct 28, 2020

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John Tamny

The lockdowns have disproportionately targeted fun. No house parties. No travel. Bowling, bars, Broadway, theater, amusement parks, all banned. Weddings, forget it. Restaurants, hotels, conventions, and even golf were all targeted by the lockdowners.

Oct 26, 2020

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Jeffrey A. Tucker

At first glance, a lot of the social problems and resource waste emerging from government intervention seem pretty easy to fix: the government should just stop doing whatever it is doing that is creating the problems and the waste. The stubborn persistence of institutions and organizations that keep societies poor is a vexing problem for social scientists. In Political Capitalism, the economist Randall Holcombe takes on this problem by analyzing “political capitalism” as a distinct economic system with its own logic and features rather than as some kind of midpoint between capitalism and socialism.

Sep 28, 2020

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Arte Carden

"We don’t realistically anticipate that we would be moving to either tier 2 or reopening K-12 schools at least until after the election, in early November.” Those are the words of a west coast health director. No in-person schooling until after the election? Hmmm.Please think about what was said. It reads as kind of a ransom note. Vote for science-reverent candidate Joe Biden, or else….

Sep 21, 2020

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John Tamny

For so many months, it’s been nonstop bad news on business closures, arts trashed, museum shuttering, unemployment, missed surgeries and diagnostics, plus rising loneliness, drug overdoses, depression, and suicide. Every day has been as dark or darker than the previous one.

Sep 3, 2020

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Jeffrey A. Tucker

11 mins

“She was a dangerous woman.”That was the impression Rodrigo Hernandez Mirajes had about Ayn Rand in college. “It was as if she was on a list of banned books,” he recalls. Teachers also dismissed Adam Smith as a crazy, old, white man.

Sep 1, 2020

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5 mins

Why watch COVID press conferences and briefings by politicians? They are just upsetting. These people seem to have no clue about why the virus is ignoring them. They keep issuing strange and arbitrary rules that they make up, change by the day, all enforced by intimidation and compulsion.

Aug 18, 2020

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Jeffrey A. Tucker

5 mins