My new book, The Socialist Temptation, is out today! Get your copy at Amazon or all fine booksellers. amazon.com/Socialist-Temptat…

As someone once said, "Dance with the one who brung you." That goes as much for game design as for politics.

1/2 @ISMurray is vice president for strategy and senior fellow at @CEIdotorg. He is also one of the founders of the @FreeConTalk project. In a recent article for The Daily Economy, Murray wrote that America won’t outcompete China by restricting imports on robots. “It will win by becoming the best place in the world to build and deploy them.” “It is a major part of the administration’s policy to ‘reshore’ American manufacturing to bring back jobs,” he explained, “and a tenet of the National Conservatism movement that America needs blue-collar jobs that pay a good wage. Yet both of these propositions rest on the idea that manufacturing needs to be labor-intensive.” What neither officials in Washington nor NatCon influencers seem to understand is that the best chance for reshoring manufacturing capacity is to seek more automation of industrial processes, not less. “That means more robots, but the administration has recently moved to restrict the import of robots, specifically humanoid robots from China,” Murray wrote. “The more hostile the administration is to automation, the more it will drive manufacturing back offshore.” “Restricting access to robot hardware cannot be the answer. The sensible response is to make America the best place to invent, improve, and deploy robots in new and remarkable ways.” #FreeCon

Ofcom Concedes Defeat in the 4chan Case prestonbyrne.com/2026/10/20/…

this California wealth tax thing is just incredible. so in October 2025, a California healthcare union proposed a "one time" 5% tax on any billionaire's wealth. the ballot measure will be voted on next month. In early December 2025, California announced that it would be a retroactive tax if passed, applying to anyone with CA residency as of Jan 1, 2026. The objective is to pay for Medi-Cal, California's incredibly dysfunctional healthcare system. (which also functions as a glorified welfare apparatus, but that's a discussion for another time). polls reveal that the CA electorate is split around 50/50 on the tax, but prediction markets only give Prop 40 a ~23% chance of passing (there are competing measures on the ballet that would nullify it). there are 200 billionaires in CA, worth collectively somewhere between $2.3 and $2.6 trillion. 5% of that is around $100b, accounting for a small amount of attrition. proponents of the tax forecasted a significant windfall, assuming only a 10% departure rate. supporters thought they were being clever with the retroactive concept. no billionares would leave CA in the few short months between the tax being proposed and the residency cutoff date, without the tax even having passed yet, right? well as it turns out, they did. a new paper [1] from two academics at Stanford called "The Net Present Value of the California Billionaire Tax Act", argues that not only did more billionaires leave due to the proposed tax than its proponents expected, but that the value of the tax, if it does pass, is actually negative. proponents of the tax only assumed 10% avoidance, that is, only 10% of the taxable base of targeted billionaires would leave CA within the very short Oct-Dec 2025 window. Jaros and Rauh, the Stanford academics, find that a lower bound of 28.6% of the taxable base managed to leave. just based on known departures, those departures total $577b in net worth, or $28.8b in potential tax lost. this of course does not capture everyone (many left without announcing their departure), so the authors normalize to departure rates estimated from other wealth tax events, and apply other discounts for litigation, arriving arrive at a figure of only $28-$36b in forecasted tax revenues. but this isn't all! all of the income taxes paid by the departed billionaires are also forsaken. the authors estimate that CA billionaires pay $3.3- 5.8b in annual income taxes. they assume a midpoint of $2b lost in annual collections from departed billionaires. the net present value of that lost income stream is -$68.9 billion. so when you add it all up you get: + $30b one-time tax windfall (estimated) - $69b in present value of lost future income taxes = - 38.9b overall net present value of the tax of course, this analysis is highly estimate driven. the authors simulate the parameters 100k times and find a negative NPV of the implemented tax 85 percent of the time. and if the tax doesn't pass, which it's not looking like it will, California still ended up losing at least $577b in departed net worth, and they have permanently poisoned the well with entrepreneurs who will now worry about future wealth taxes. [1]: nber.org/system/files/workin…

WAKE UP BABES NEW TARIFF LAWSUIT JUST DROPPED libertyjusticecenter.org/cas…

Mad Mitch, the hero of Aden

This is the future the UK wants for the entire Internet: only a handful of companies, ones that obey British censorship rules, may be permitted to survive.

RT @GreenRupertRead: It’s pretty safe to say that when one has alienated the likes of Aaron Bastani, George Monbiot and Peter Tatchell (not…

BREAKING NIUS: Für mich ist es einer der unglaublichste Auftritte von Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz in dessen Amtszeit. Seit 17 Monaten erzählt Merz, er wolle Deutschland deregulieren, unnötige und schädliche Bürokratie beseitigen. Dann hat dieser Bundeskanzler die Möglichkeit, auf der Weltbühne, vor milliardenschweren Investoren dem Nvidia-Chef Jensen Huang eine Frage zu stellen. Und was fragt der Bundeskanzler? Er will wissen, wie man Künstliche Intelligenz am besten REGULIEREN kann. Als Huang antwortet, nunja, erstmal müsse die KI-Industrie in Deutschland aufblühen, bevor man sie regulieren könne, legt Merz nach. Er erklärt Huang, aus seiner Sicht sei entweder eine europäische oder gar eine globale Regulierung notwendig, um die "Schädlichkeit" von KI zu begrenzen.

To put a 2020s twist on @JamesCarville's admonition, it’s the cost of living, stupid. Workers see on their household budget line items and their paychecks that the president's economic strategy has made them worse off. As my colleagues @BenGlasner and @CardiffGarcia noted in an @InnovateEconomy analysis ten days ago, over the past year real wages have fallen for most workers across the pay ladder, including at the 90th percentile, the 10th percentile, and the median. When workers are asked in our @EchelonInsights survey which party they think has the better approach for American workers’ interests, Democrats come out well ahead, 44 percent vs. 29 percent for Republicans, reflecting a net surge to the Democrats of 7 points from our 2024 survey. Democrats have the advantage here among blue-collar workers (+11), white-collar workers (+14), and service workers (+16). So much for the ballyhooed GOP working-class coalition. wsj.com/opinion/trumps-tarif…

Shoutout to everyone's favorite op-ed:

Oh this story is delicious. Some choice parts for you:

Another British #WarOnPrices Judges determine a market rent. Judges also determine the wage of store staff relative to warehouse staff unless the company can prove the market rate is justified. NUTS.

As so many of us warned, there is absolutely no incentive for people not to sign a rental contract/receive a rent rise then immediately challenge it. Meaning logjam in the courts and fewer people putting properties up for rent, damaging the rental market further.

What a CHEAP-A$$ team!!! This is BS!

The 49ers are absolutely crushing every #Commanders receiver after the catch, and none of it is getting flagged. This game feels dirty.

Evergreen Commanders tweet

Hey if this is your first time watching commanders football implode halfway through a season, just trust me and stick around, this game is about to get alot worse

#SCOTUS grants challenge to use of taxing power to prohibit home distilling. #MakeEnumeratedPowersLimitedAgain

unfathomable damage done to America. You could have abundant, cheap, emission-free electricity flowing to your home right now if it weren't for these people.