November 2023

Reason

Free Minds and Free Markets.

Reason2 min read
Reason
Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward (kmw@reason.com), Publisher Mike Alissi (malissi@reason.com), Editors at Large Nick Gillespie (gillespie@reason.com), Matt Welch (matt.welch@reason.com), Managing Editor Jason Russell (jason.russell@reason.com), A
Reason4 min read
Love, Trade, and Force: The Machinery of Freedom at 50
“THE DIRECT USE of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations.” This spicy little sentence is typical of the zingers littered throughout David Friedma
Reason2 min read
California Is Taxing Itself to Death
FOR DECADES, CALIFORNIA has been a desirable destination for Americans lured by the promise of riches, stardom, or at least a good place to surf. That dream is over for an estimated 343,000 Californians who fled the state between July 2021 and July 2
Reason1 min readHistory & Theory
Photo
JAVIER MILEI SHOCKED the world in August by getting the most votes in Argentina’s presidential primary. His coalition, La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances), got 30 percent of the vote, compared to 28 percent and 27 percent for the main conservative
Reason3 min read
Control Your Card-board, Control Your Life
SINCE ALBERT JONES filed his U.S. patent for corrugated paper packing material in 1871, cardboard products have played the cart to globalization’s horse. Cheaper and lighter than a crate and more protective than paper or straw, cardboard has made myr
Reason3 min readAmerican Government
Q&A
Matt Taibbi is the author of four New York Times bestsellers. As Rolling Stone’s campaign reporter in 2016—and an early critic of how the mainstream media covered allegations of Russian interference in the presidential election—he concluded that poli
Reason1 min read
Flush With Cash in the Loo
Philadelphia recently installed two Portland Loos: modular, stand-alone public restrooms first commissioned by Portland, Oregon. The single-stall metal structures are easy to keep clean and feature rounded walls to deter graffiti and walls that are l
Reason5 min read
The Bad Law That Made Good Bars
WHEN YOU STEP into the Raines Law Room at The William hotel on East 39th Street in Manhattan, you’ll find a series of tastefully decorated lounges. Softly upholstered chairs, tufted leather couches, and low-light sconces create an atmosphere that’s m
Reason3 min readCrime & Violence
Trump, Who Freed Drug Offenders, Also Wants To Kill Them
DONALD TRUMP CAN’T seem to decide whether he wants to execute drug dealers or free them from prison. The former president’s debate with himself reflects a broader clash between Republicans who think harsher criminal penalties are always better and Re
Reason2 min read
Congestion Pricing Hits a New Roadblock
SINCE 2019, NEW York has sought to establish the nation’s first congestion pricing zone, which would charge drivers fees for rush hour trips to improve traffic flows and raise funds for the city’s dilapidated subway system. That plan to toll drivers
Reason2 min read
The List
THE FOOD AND Drug Administration (FDA) approves not only which drugs can go to market but also whether they require a prescription from a doctor. The agency gets this power from the Durham-Humphrey Amendment of 1951. Meant to protect patients, the la
Reason3 min readCrime & Violence
The Right To Give
IN JULY, PHILLIP Picone, a Houston activist, stood before a jury of his peers, charged with the heinous crime of feeding the needy. Picone is one of several activists affiliated with Food Not Bombs (FNB), a volunteer group with chapters worldwide. Ho
Reason4 min readCrime & Violence
Was Racketeering Trump’s Real Crime in Georgia?
IN 1969, LAWRENCE Speiser, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington, D.C., office, appeared before Congress to testify against a proposed law that would greatly expand the powers of federal law enforcement. “Our constitutional
Reason18 min readAmerican Government
The Tech Giants Were Always Doomed
IN 2017, A 27-year-old Yale Law School student published an article arguing that the online retailer Amazon had grown so large that federal regulators should treat it as inherently suspect. Amazon, the paper said, engaged in a wide variety of harmful
Reason3 min readPopular Culture & Media Studies
Our News Feeds, Ourselves
A SAFER, SANER social media world is possible, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen told members of Congress in 2021. Instead, she said, leaders at the social media company chose engagement over democracy, using algorithms that kept people
Reason15 min readDiet & Nutrition
Take Nutrition Studies With A Grain Of Salt
COMB THROUGH ENOUGH nutrition research, and you can find a study confirming or rebutting nearly every belief you may hold about how specific nutrients affect your health. “Meat Increases Heart Risks, Latest Study Concludes,” reported The New York Tim
Reason15 min readDiscrimination & Race Relations
The Joy of Capitalism
PRESUME THE ECONOMIC case for free markets is true: that capitalism makes us freer and richer, creates better jobs and greater opportunities, and helps us solve environmental problems. Does it make us happier too? The American conservative Patrick De
Reason12 min read
Mike Rowe Wants More Philosopher-welders
MIKE ROWE IS best known for his stint hosting the Discovery Channel’s longrunning Dirty Jobs, where he performed the sort of work we all rely on but don’t want to think about too much, from cleaning septic tanks to putting hot tar on roofs to disposi
Reason8 min read
The Minesweeper Moral Panic
OVER-THE-TOP VIOLENCE IN such video games as Mortal Kombat and Doom drew hand-wringing moral outrage from worrywart parents and government scolds throughout the ’90s. Minesweeper—in which players click around a rectangular grid of squares trying to a
Reason4 min read
Did Evolution Give Us Free Will?
WHAT IS FREE will? Can a being whose brain is made up of physical stuff actually make undetermined choices? In Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will, the Trinity College Dublin neuroscientist Kevin J. Mitchell argues that evolution has shaped
Reason5 min readCrime & Violence
The ‘Monstrous Beastliness’ of Urban Policing
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, IS “the edge case in American policing,” journalists Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham declare in The Riders Come Out at Night. “More has been done to try to reform the Oakland Police Department than any other police force in the
Reason6 min read
Reviews
PETER SUDERMAN In Netflix’s absurdist sci-fi black comedy They Cloned Tyrone, the U.S. government is a secretive, manipulative authority trying to enforce crude racial harmony in America by subjecting black people to bizarre experiments. The film fol
Reason2 min readCrime & Violence
Brickbats
Two Toronto cops were charged with theft, possession of stolen property, and breach of trust. Prosecutors said the men did not report two stolen bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch whisky they recovered from a man who had robbed a Liquor Con
Reason3 min read
Archives
“Last December, Kiev-based German political scientist Andreas Umland published an article on the startlingly optimistic topic of what the West should do to help along a democratic revival and prepare for a post-Putinist Russia. Umland was talking pri

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