CATEGORIES
TikTok Goes From Silly to Serious
“Most sectors of the economy are a conspiracy between the big incumbents and their punitive regulators,” venture capitalist and software engineer Marc Andreessen tells Reason this month (page 48). Asked to identify pockets of relative freedom and competition, he offers what he calls “the cynical answer”: There’s still innovation “in the spaces that don’t matter. Anybody can bring a new toy to market. Anybody can open a restaurant.”
A Successful Challenge to a Ban on 'aiding and Abetting' Abortion
When the city of Lebanon banned abortion in 2021, it initially seemed like a pointless stunt.
IS ENCOURAGING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION PROTECTED BY THE CONSTITUTION?
FEDERAL LAW PROHIBITS encouraging or inducing unlawful immigration for private financial gain. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case, United States v. Hansen, that asks whether that law unconstitutionally abridges freedom of speech.
DON'T 'PAUSE' A.I. RESEARCH
HUMAN BEINGS ARE terrible at foresight— especially apocalyptic foresight. The track record of previous doomsayers is worth recalling as we contemplate warnings from critics of artificial intelligence (A.I.) research.
POPPY SEEDS TRIGGER CHILD NEGLECT INVESTIGATIONS
BEFORE KATE L. gave birth to a baby girl last September, a nurse at New Jersey’s Hackensack University Medical Center collected a urine sample from the soon-to-be mother.
TRUMP'S NEW YORK INDICTMENT IS JUST THE BEGINNING
WHEN FORMER PRESIDENT Donald Trump arrived at a Manhattan courthouse on April 4, crowds of people and rows of TV cameras were there to witness an unprecedented moment: the first-ever arraignment of a former U.S. president. How quickly can something this important be relegated to the footnotes of American presidential history? We may be about to find out.
BOMBING MEXICAN CARTELS WON'T STOP FENTANYL
AMERICANS CONTINUE TO overdose on illicit fentanyl despite increased seizures of the drug coming north from Mexico.
THE GREAT EGG SHOCK
AS INFLATION RAISED prices on all manner of goods throughout 2022, eggs earned special attention. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the average price of a dozen eggs in urban areas rose from $1.92 in January 2022 to $4.82 in January 2023.
THE NEW RIGHT ISN'T SO NEW
IN THE CLOSING weeks of 1969, a debate broke out in the pages of National Review about how American conservatives should respond to the threat posed by the New Left—the expanded universe of socialists, civil rights activists, anti-war protesters, feminists, environmentalists, and other lefty radicals then making political waves. Fifteen months earlier, police and demonstrators had met in a bloody clash outside the Democratic National Convention.
Flo Crivello Says A.I. Will Be Bigger Than the Internet
Flo Crivello is the founder and CEO of Lindy, a software company that has created an executive assistant powered by artificial intelligence (A.I.). Lindy can take care of your calendar, perform basic email correspondence, book travel, and take notes during meetings. The long-run goal is to automate as much work as possible and free up time for tasks that only humans can do.
Adam Smith's Sly American Proposal
SOMETIMES A PROPOSAL IS A LESSON IN DISGUISE.
Marketplaces Find a Way
THOUGH HISTORY HASN’T ALWAYS BEEN KIND, BUTCHERS, BREWERS, AND BAKERS STILL THRIVE AT URBAN MARKETS.
Adam Smith's Quiet Christianity
THE SCOTTISH THINKER’S FAMOUS FRIENDSHIP WITH DAVID HUME DEMONSTRATES HIS LIBERALISM, NOT HIS ATHEISM.
Adam Smith Understood That We Need Each Other
THE THINKER’S VIEWS OF HUMAN SYMPATHY, BENEFICENCE, JUSTICE, AND THE DIVISION OF LABOR STILL RESONATE.
GADGETS AND GIZMOS THAT INSPIRED ADAM SMITH
MEDITATIONS ON THE DANGEROUS, ALLURING BEAUTY OF INTRICATE SYSTEMS
Why America Needs To Be 'Open to Debate
Clea Conner on the need for healthy conflict
Proposition: Cats Are More Libertarian Than Dogs
Cats, like libertarians, think for themselves.
FAILING TO REFORM SOCIAL SECURITY MEANS MANDATORY CUTS
WHEN PRESIDENT JOE Biden sparred with Republicans during his State of the Union address in February, he vowed to veto any attempt at cutting Social Security benefits. Yet the budget proposal he unveiled in March lacked a plan to avert the mandatory Social Security benefit cuts that are quickly approaching.
THE BIOMEDICAL TESTING REVOLUTION
“CANCER SIGNAL NOT detected.” That was the happy finding of my Galleri multicancer early detection (MCED) blood test from the Silicon Valley biotech company GRAIL. The Galleri test presages an emerging wave of new precision biomedical tests produced by a panoply of biotech startups.
Diana Alvarez Knows She's 'Doing the Right Thing' Running a D.C. Smoke Shop
Diana Alvarez’s son always wanted to go to college, so she started working in a smoke shop to earn some extra cash.
Fighting the Feds in the American South
JEFFERSON COWIE IS a prodigious researcher who often shows sensitivity to historical complexities, and his narrative skills shine. The Vanderbilt historian’s latest book, Freedom’s Dominion, is readable and often provocative. But it superimposes a dubious thesis about Southern his tory over the facts, arguing that “land dispossession, slavery, power, and oppression do not stand in contrast to freedom— they are expressions of it.”
Who Owns Your Brain Data?
WE ARE RAPIDLY heading toward a world of brain transparency, in which scientists, doctors, governments, and companies may peer into our brains and minds at will,” Duke University bioethicist Nita A. Farahany declares in The Battle for Your Brain. As a defense against this neuro surveillance, her timely book argues for a right to cognitive liberty that includes “mental privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination”—a right that allows us to track and hack our own brains but bars us from trespassing on other minds.
MARC ANDREESSEN ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE FUTURE
Is the A.I. breakthrough for real this time?
ZEROT AMERICA
SECRECY IS THE DEGRADED CURRENCY OF THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT.
The Most Hated Person on Campus
HOW A SHAKY ALLEGATION IGNITED A FRENZY AND DESTROYED A YOUNG WOMAN'S LIFE
WILL 2024 BRING THE RETURN OF THE NEOCONS?
THE GOP NOMINEE CAN FORGE A HUMBLER PATHOR TURN BACK TO FAILED NEOCONSERVATISM.
THE LEFT-RIGHT SPECTRUM IS MOSTLY MEANINGLESS
THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE DOESN'T FIT ON A SIMPLE MAP.
Storks Don't Take Orders From the State
FALLING BIRTHRATES, PRO-NATALIST POLICIES, AND THE LIMITS OF POPULATION CONTROL
Where's Your Adderall?
Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, prescriptions for Adderall, the stimulant medication used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), skyrocketed.
A.I. Is Here
ChatGPT can create everything from novel dad jokes to fairly well-written computer code. At my prompting, it wrote a serviceable sonnet describing Gilgamesh’s failed quest for immortality.