Worldview Item of the Day

Our current era of connectedness allows us an unprecedented view into international affairs, one so unprecedented that we often no longer need to trust our government to reach foreign policy conclusions on our behalf. We can evaluate the evidence and reach those conclusions on our own.

The Constitution clearly prohibits individual citizens from taking foreign policy actions on their own, but at what point does the belief by a group of citizens that the government’s foreign policy actions are wrong allow that group of citizens to act? This idea of private foreign policy is one that is growing and will likely come to plague traditional governmental systems with more frequency in the years to come. [...]

Worldview Thought for the Day
Last week, I posted on what I was thinking about the ongoing protests in Iran, which post I believe I need to clarify.
I do not, in any way, doubt the sincerity of the protesters themselves. I do not believe that the protesters are part of some kind of well-staged media event. [...]

Worldview Item of the Day

The US economy does not need any more regulation. We have plenty of laws, and at least some of those laws serve to protect us against people doing things wrong. That is, they protect us from people doing things wrong when they are applied.

It turns out that regulators at the SEC systematically ignored the fraud being perpetrated by Bernard Madoff for at least a decade, thereby failing to perform their role of enforcing the laws the US already has to prevent the very kind of scheme he was operating. In doing so, they not only cost Madoff’s investors more than he had already cost them, but they compromised the integrity of the very agency tasked with regulating activity on US stock markets. [...]