Evolve!

Feb. 12th is Darwin's birthday!

Spontaneous Order

One of my favourite "media guys" is John Stossel. From years ago he did information programs on ABC's 20/20 about Junk Science, that I frequently used as a teaching tool. Today, alas, I can't watch him on television because my cable company does not carry the Fox Business channel (it is a government plot).
Stossel and I have much in common, we share exactly the same birthday (dd/mm/yyyy), ethnic origin, sort of close on religion, and we are both outspoken libertarians. OK, I'm not even close to his level of "outspokenness," but I'm certainly annoying to friends and family. But I digress, the purpose of this posting is to present a clip from a recent STOSSEL about something that is poorly understood by most people who have been schooled by the collectivist educational system in Canada and the United States: Spontaneous Order in economics.
Stossel interviews Larry Reed of FEE and its great stuff, simple, clear and to the point. 

Drugs? - "There's too much money in it!"

Some people say the dumbest things.

The price of democracy?

Muslim Brotherhood logo

"The dark ages are staging a comeback via the age of enlightenment." So begins a column in the National Post where George Jonas muses about the Egyptian Crisis. In Opening a back door to theocracy, Jonas suggests that it may be goodbye Hosni, which leads ultimately to hello Hamas.
Democracies have done this before, yielding to religious or non-religious dictatorships, especially when limits are not adhered to. Yes, Mubarak's 30 years have been dictatorial, but the implication is be careful what you wish for.
Jonas suggests that recent comments by Obama have not helped. Actually it was the comments that Obama didn't make that might lead to problems. Obama didn't say how the current uprising would lead to an orderly transition. He didn't say how the past and present unorganized opposition would suddenly get organized. Most importantly he didn't say how these protests would prevent handing over Egypt to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
Of course we would say that is the price of democracy, the people may choose and sometimes those choices are not wise. In limited democracies where there are checks and balances, where orderly transitions can and do occur, mistakes can be corrected. Just remember, the Muslim Brotherhood needs only to be elected once.