The American Way of War

On TPM Cafe, a part of the Talking Points Memo media empire, I’m in a week-long discussion of a new book, The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men and a Republic in Peril, which oddly takes the title of the Russell Weigley classic without acknowledgement.
The other participants are the author, Eugene Jarecki, who […]

Against Intellectual Monopoly Forum - Nov. 10

It is commonly believed that intellectual property law in the form of copyright and patent is necessary for innovation and the creation of ideas and inventions such as machines, drugs, computer software, books, music, literature and movies.
But Michele Boldrin and his coauthor David K. Levine argue that intellectual property laws are costly and dangerous government […]

Cato Debates Potential Auto Industry Bailout on NPR.org

Cato Senior Fellow Daniel J. Mitchell participated in a debate yesterday on NPR.org that discussed the possible implications of a government bailout of the U.S. auto industry. Mitchell argued against it, and in the middle of the debate, NPR held an online poll that showed that 68 percent of listeners agreed with him.
Quotes from Daniel […]

Does Harper Support Regulation of Gambling and Financial Services?

My post yesterday regarding Members of Congress who voted to exempt financial derivatives from state gambling laws created a firestorm of controversy. Well, two people asked me about it, anyway . . .
(A new WashingtonWatch.com post on the presidential candidates who didn’t help create our economic problems is available for your perusal, by the way.)
“Why […]

No Socialists Here

Is Barack Obama a socialist? That’s the question Cato adjunct scholar Don Boudreaux asks in one of the last paper editions of the Christian Science Monitor. Not really, he concludes. But
Anyone who speaks glibly of “spreading the wealth around” sees wealth not as resulting chiefly from individual effort, initiative, and risk-taking, but from great social forces […]

If??

Brookings Institution economist Henry Aaron writes in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine:

Unfortunately, the U.S. health care system could not be better structured to frustrate the elimination of waste than if it had been designed to do just that.