Category: reason

Two years after a lack of spending brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic caused a coin shortage, American retailers still find themselves short on change.

In March, industry representatives called on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for help as the shortage lingers, but they’re unlikely to find relief. The federal government has been steadfast in its commitment to present only short-term solutions, like rationing coins or pushing social media campaigns. If the government actually wanted to solve the problem, it would allow the private sector to produce its own coins.  

In 2020, the combination of government-mandated lockdowns, consumer health concerns, and a shutdown of the U.S. Mint brought the circulation of coins to all but a grinding halt. Though the economy at large is much better than it was in summer 2020, the circulation of coins has struggled to recover.

While some businesses have chosen to break away from cash transactions altogether in response to the shortage, others don’t have that luxury. Brian Wallace, chief executive of the Coin Laundry Association said, “[If] we can’t make change, we can’t make money.” That reality became clear when some business owners began driving for hours to find available coins.

Consumers have been hit hard too. For the 7.1 million unbanked and 24.2 million underbanked households in America, cash is one of the most important resources they have for making purchases. The coin shortage has locked many of them out of the economy or caused them to incur new costs on top of current inflation.  

The Federal Reserve’s main response has been to ration coins “based on historical order volume by coin denomination and depository institution endpoint, and current U.S. Mint production levels.” The U.S. Mint, through advertisements and social media campaigns, also asked the public to “pay with exact change and return any spare change to circulation by depositing coins, exchanging them for bills at a financial institution or taking them to a coin redemption kiosk.” And a “U.S. Coin Task Force” was convened to monitor the ongoing shortage. At best, these are merely short term solutions. 

The task force’s latest report notes that its members “have worked tirelessly to address the coin circulation disruption, issue recommendations for the broader coin supply, and influence actions within their organizations.” And while they argue their report “reflects the commitment, enthusiasm, and creativity” the members used in crafting their suggestions, there was a notable solution missing from the task force’s recommendations: welcoming private currency.

It wouldn’t be the first time the private sector stepped up to provide alternative forms of currency when supplies of official money have run out. So why haven’t private businesses done so during this shortage? There are many possible reasons why a “Pat Penny” or a “Dex Dime” hasn’t taken off, but it’s most likely because the U.S. government doesn’t like to see currencies competing with its monopoly on money—even if the government itself is failing to meet the needs of Americans.

The government has made it illegal to make metal coins that are intended to be used as money. This prohibition is different from counterfeiting—the law specifically bars the creation of coins “of original design.” The Department of Justice and U.S. Mint used this section of the law most infamously in 2006 against the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code (NORFED). It declared the use of the NORFED Liberty Dollar as money to be a federal crime. After such a prosecution, it should be no surprise that the private sector has been hesitant to provide an alternative currency like it has in the past.

Congress should strike down that restrictive language and welcome coins of original design. Instead of chasing shortages with short-term solutions, welcoming the private sector to supply its own coins—as history has shown it will—could be just what’s needed to help solve the current coin shortage and stop future shortages from taking hold of the economy.

The post Americans Want Change. Private Mints Are the Solution. appeared first on Reason.com.

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“Don’t believe the claim that the internet has corrupted our public discourse with misinformation,” says Jeffrey A. Singer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and general surgeon in Phoenix, Arizona. “Experts don’t have a monopoly on the search for truth.”

In his recent article, “Against Scientific Gatekeeping,” which appeared in Reason‘s May 2022 issue, Singer examined the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which those who broke with the establishment were branded cranks or accused of having blood on their hands. “The medical science priesthood has a long history of treating outside-the-box thinkers harshly,” he writes.

Most theories turn out to be wrong—”American science fiction and fantasy writer Theodore Sturgeon said, ’90 percent of everything is crap,'” Singer notes. “But the remaining 10 percent can be important,” which is one of the major lessons of the pandemic.

“Science should be a profession, not a priesthood.”

Photo Credits: Institute of Oceanographic Sciences (Great Britain); National Institute of Oceanography of Great Britain; Great Britain. Colonial Office. Discovery Committee, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons; Dr. Dalia Ibrahim, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; BSIP/Newscom; Gavin Kent Mirrorpix/Newscom; Dr. Laughlin Dawes, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Tamar Hayardeni, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Gupta 1 Sharkpixs/ZUMApress/Newscom; PLOS Video Channel, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (for iondannis photo); Abaca Press/Berzane; Nasser/Abaca/Sipa USA/Newscom; Internet Archive, Archive.org; Envato Elements.

Music Credits: “Blue Race,” by Out of Flux, via Artlist; “Ant,” by Evgeny Bardyuzha via Artlist.

Written by Natalie Dowzicky and Jeffrey A. Singer; narrated by Singer; edited by Regan Taylor; camera by Benjamin Gaskell.

The post How 'Cranks' Advance Science appeared first on Reason.com.

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Florida faces all sorts of obstacles in its bid to strip Disney World of its self-governing status. Disney’s Florida theme parks have long enjoyed the status of a special purpose district, allowed to operate as its own city. Since 1967, this special purpose district—known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District—meant that The Walt Disney Co. had governmental control over the lands in and around its Florida theme parks, an area now encompassing around 25,000 acres. When the district was created, “the land was little more than uninhabited pasture and swamp,” notes CNN. “With the special purpose district, Disney took over responsibility for providing municipal services like power, water, roads and fire protection—but were also freed from dealing with legal red tape or paying taxes for services that benefited the broader public.”

But after criticizing a Florida bill aimed at discussions of LGBTQ issues in schools, and saying the company would pause political donations in Florida as a result, Disney earned the wrath of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican lawmakers. Earlier this month, they retaliated by eliminating the Reedy Creek Improvement District, effective June 1, 2023.

At the bill’s signing, DeSantis called the special purpose district status “an aberration.”

“You’re a corporation based in Burbank, California, and you’re gonna marshal your economic might to attack the parents in my state. We view that as a provocation, but we’re gonna fight back,” said DeSantis.

The move may violate the First Amendment, say some constitutional lawyers.

“Singling out a business in a way that detrimentally affects its free speech rights is always problematic,” Clay Calvert, a law professor at the University of Florida, told Mediaite. In this case, it’s “textbook viewpoint discrimination” and “presumptively unconstitutional.”

“If Disney can prove that that’s what happened—that there was a retaliation against Disney by the state of Florida, who sought to take away a benefit that the government had previously gave to Disney—that might set for a retaliation claim under the first amendment,” First Amendment lawyer Lawrence Walters told WESH 2 Florida.

“The question is not whether Disney has a ‘right’ to some special tax status; it is whether government officials may use the power of the state to punish a corporation for speaking out on political issues,” writes constitutional lawyer Robert Corn-Revere in commentary for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

“No one could plausibly suggest that Governor DeSantis could condition Disney’s ability to do business in Florida on making contributions to his campaign or on a commitment to publicly support his legislative agenda. Likewise, it would have been equally unconstitutional for Florida to have attached such conditions to the creation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District back in 1967,” Corn-Revere writes. “The same goes for revoking the tax district status simply because Disney publicly disagreed with the governor. The Constitution does not give license to politicians to use the machinery of government to reward those willing to mouth the party line or to punish those who refuse to do so.”

Florida’s dissolution of the district also runs up against contractual concerns. “There’s a much more basic reason [than the First Amendment] Florida can’t dissolve Reedy Creek—it promised bond purchasers that it wouldn’t,” notes Florida attorney Jacob Schumer at Bloomberg Tax:

Reedy Creek, like other special districts, can borrow money by issuing bonds, which can then be purchased by investors looking for fixed payments. Just like any other debt, the terms of the bond are based on the specific bond contract at issue. Reedy Creek is authorized to issue a few different kinds of bonds, but the most important ones are those that promise to pay from the property taxes collected by the district and those that pay from utility system revenue.

Reedy Creek’s bond offerings very much rely on the district’s unique powers. Its property-tax-based bonds discuss that the district can tax up to 30 mills and promise to tax at a rate high enough to pay the bonds. Its utility revenue bonds discuss the district’s various powers to generate utility revenue and promises to fix fees and charges sufficient to generate sufficient revenue to pay the bonds.

In authorizing Reedy Creek to issue bonds, the Florida legislature included a remarkable statement—included in Reedy Creek’s bond offerings—regarding its own promise to bondholders: “The State of Florida pledges to the holders of any bonds issued under this Act that it will not limit or alter the rights of the District to own, acquire, construct, reconstruct, improve, maintain, operate or furnish the projects or to levy and collect the taxes, assessments, rentals, rates, fees, tolls, fares and other charges provided for herein … until all such bonds together with interest thereon, and all costs and expenses in connection with any action or proceeding by or on behalf of such holders, are fully met and discharged.”

If Florida wants to end Disney’s special status, the counties where Reedy Creek is located (Orange and Osceola) could inherit Reedy Creek’s over $1 billion in bond debt and it will also violate contractual obligations to bondholders, Schumer writes. Besides, “both the U.S. and Florida constitutions place strict limitations on the government’s ability to impair its own contracts.”

Which means that in addition to being very pricey, the move could be unconstitutional independent of any First Amendment concerns.

The contract conflict has not gone unnoticed by Disney. “In light of the State of Florida’s pledge to the District’s bondholders, Reedy Creek expects to explore its options while continuing its present operations, including levying and collecting its ad valorem taxes and collecting its utility revenues, paying debt service on its ad valorem tax bonds and utility revenue bonds, complying with its bond covenants and operating and maintaining its properties,” the Reedy Creek Improvement District said in a statement to investors.

Should the dissolution proceed, it will be pricey for local governments and taxpayers. In addition to assuming bond debt, Orange County would have to provide services the Disney district currently provides for itself. “The cost of providing its services is $105 million a year and the cost of its debt services is $58 million a year,” reports the Miami Herald.

“Unless they want to cut services and cut spending elsewhere, they’re going to have to find a way to absorb $163 million,” Scott Randolph, Orange County tax collector, told the Herald. This could add an additional $200-$250 per year for the median household, Randolph estimated.

UKRAINE UPDATES

• Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said “the risks now are considerable” that the war in Ukraine could turn into a nuclear conflict. “I would not want to elevate those risks artificially. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it,” he told a state TV interviewer on Monday night. Lavrov accused NATO of engaging “in a war with Russia through a proxy” and “arming that proxy.”

“It’s very, very important that we don’t accept the way that the Russians are trying to frame what is happening in Ukraine,” commented British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “They are trying to frame this as a conflict between Russia and the West, or Russia and NATO. That’s not what is going on.”

• The U.S. and other Ukraine allies want to send more weapons to Ukraine.

• Russia is shutting off gas to Poland and Bulgaria.

• Individual Americans can now sponsor Ukrainians seeking temporary refuge in the U.S.

FREE MINDS

Elon Musk remains confused and confusing regarding free speech. “By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law,” Musk tweeted yesterday. “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”

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Pretty much every attempt to censor speech in history has been "lawful" — i.e., it "matches the law."

Free speech as a value must supercede laws. It must restrain lawmaking. That's why the 1A is so important. https://t.co/g3m4def1hS

— Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) April 27, 2022

FREE MARKETS

The Biden administration is banning incandescent light bulbs. “The new rule states that light bulbs must emit a minimum of 45 lumens per watt,” CNN reports:

Lumens are a measure of brightness. The rule is an effective nail in the coffin for incandescent bulbs, which use a higher wattage than LED bulbs for the same amount of brightness.

Old bulbs that don’t meet the new standard will need to be phased out of production within 75 days, and the Department of Energy will work with manufacturers to ease the transition. Full enforcement of the rule will go into effect in July 2023, which is also the deadline for retailers to stop selling them.

The scheme got rolling back in the George W. Bush years and implementation started under Barack Obama, but the Trump administration hit pause on the plan.

The Biden administration says the switch will save consumers money and be good for the environment—which is exactly why a government ban on incandescent bulbs isn’t needed. Consumers have already been switching en masse to LED bulbs, notes CNN:

Even with the Trump administration’s delay, LED use has been increasing in US households. Nearly half of US households said they used LED bulbs for most or all their indoor lighting, according to the 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey. It was a huge increase from the 2015 survey, where just 4% of households reported using LED’s for most or all indoor light use.

QUICK HITS

• President Joe Biden used his clemency powers for the first time yesterday, issuing three pardons and 75 commutations. “All but one of the beneficiaries were convicted of drug offenses, and many were serving egregiously long prison terms of the sort that Biden enthusiastically supported during his 36 years in the Senate,” notes Reason‘s Jacob Sullum.

• Almost 60 percent of people in U.S. have COVID-19 antibodies in their blood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For children ages 11 and younger, it’s nearly 75 percent.

• Twitter founder Jack Dorsey offers his thoughts about Elon Musk buying the company. “In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company,” tweeted Dorsey. “Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.”

• Oklahoma is banning nonbinary birth certificates.

• The city of Fort Worth, Texas, will begin mining bitcoin. “Three Bitmain Antminer S9 mining rigs will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in the climate-controlled information technology wing of Fort Worth City Hall,” reports CNBC.

• Florida has banned ranked-choice voting. “This means cities or counties can’t pass their own laws on ranked-choice voting,” notes WPTV Palm Beach.

• Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva is under scrutiny for investigating a reporter who implicated him in a police-abuse coverup.

• Residents of Llano County, Texas, are suing over county officials in federal court over the removal of books from local public libraries. “Though Plaintiffs differ in their ages, professions, and individual religious and political beliefs, they are fiercely united in their love for reading public library books and in their belief that the government cannot dictate which books they can and cannot read,” states their lawsuit.

• A new measure passed in Kentucky will “politicize county library boards,” warns PEN America.

• “The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ended a legal challenge to Texas’ nearly total ban on abortion brought by providers across the state,” reports the Austin American-Statesman. “The appeals court dismissed the remaining challenge in the suit after the Texas Supreme Court in March said state licensing officials are not responsible for enforcing the abortion ban and therefore cannot be sued.”

The post Florida Faces First Amendment, Contract, and Budget Issues in Dissolving Disney District appeared first on Reason.com.

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This continues a blog series about my new paper, “The Limits of Church Autonomy.” My first post (here) introduces the idea of church autonomy. The second (here) describes areas of confusion among lower courts in articulating the limits of church autonomy.

Some critics think that the courts are confused because they’re engaged in a hopeless mission. They would say that church autonomy doctrine is just inherently in tension with the rule of law—that the doctrine places religious institutions above the law. This critique has a theoretical component—that the high-level theories of church autonomy are incompatible with the existence of any kind of accountability for wrongdoing in churches.

This post is really a response to this high-level theory critique. I think it’s possible to protect the internal affairs of religious institutions without protecting anything and everything done within a church. In my paper, I make the case that church autonomy coexists alongside a principle of accountability for religious institutions. The goal is not just to show that accountability is a worthy objective. It is also to argue that autonomy and accountability ought to go together even on the very strongest forms of church autonomy. And it is to show that both have been deeply intertwined as a matter of theory and of history. (The paper also suggests ways to operationalize the accountability principle in doctrine that courts can apply—a subject that will have to wait for the next post.)

Let’s start with high-level theory. Social pluralist theories have been used to defend the most expansive versions of church autonomy. The idea is simply that we should conceptualize society as consisting of multiple social institutions, with the state as one among many. Church autonomy can be defended as a recognition that the state is not omnicompetent, that religious institutions constitute a valuable and important part of the social order. This is sometimes described as “sphere sovereignty”—that different social spheres should have a kind of sovereignty to pursue their own ends. The language of sphere sovereignty appears not only in some of the church autonomy literature but also occasionally in the courts as well. This tends to grate on the skeptics of broad church autonomy protections. It is often assumed that the “sphere sovereignty” model of church autonomy is the conceptualization least amenable to an accountability principle binding the church. If a “sphere” like religious institutions is “sovereign” within its domain, doesn’t that mean that there’s no way for another sphere (the state) to intervene even in the case of (say) clergy abuse? And if so, isn’t that troubling (perhaps discrediting of church autonomy)? I want to show that, even accepting a set of strong theoretical commitments to a “sphere sovereignty” theory of religious institutions, there is nonetheless an important place for accountability.

What I want to emphasize is that sphere sovereignty need not lead to a reductio of church autonomy. Often, the emphasis in the church autonomy literature (and case law) is on the independence of the church from the state. Taken alone, this can give the misleading impression that it’s all about autonomy with little or no place for accountability. But sphere sovereignty does not ineluctably result in hermetically sealed spheres. The sovereignty of human spheres is relative. The idea of separating the spheres is not just to shield the spheres from each other, but also to check each other. For this to happen, the spheres must be interactive. The state has a role to play.

To put this in theological terms: The church, for its part, is susceptible to sin, as is the state. If this sin implicates the authority of the state, then it is by no means appropriate for the state to stand back as if it had no authority to engage. The state can and should use its temporal sanctions against wrongdoers in its domain. That includes those within the houses of worship in its jurisdiction. There is no good reason to say that the sphere of the state is artificially bounded by the fact that a matter against its laws happens within a church.

At this point surely some are ready to object—what is the state’s domain? Isn’t this question begging? We’ll get to a more concrete effort at distinguishing the subject matter of church and state in the next post. For the present the point is simply that a very strong theory of church autonomy based on sphere sovereignty (or something like it) need not—and does not—logically lead to the church existing above the law and outside accountability for civil wrongs.

I also offer an argument for the complementary relationship of church autonomy and accountability in historical terms. In church autonomy cases, the Supreme Court and some lower courts have looked deep into the medieval history of church-state relations to interpret the evolution of church-state relations in the common law and then, subsequently, in the American constitutional order. As a historian, I have some ambivalence about details of this “deep history” approach to church autonomy. But just taking it as a given that the courts see this history as relevant, I think there’s a fascinating historical episode that suggests the importance of the church autonomy/accountability relationship.

One of the most telling transitions for accountability purposes was the evolution of the law of benefit of clergy. The English criminal law rule initially established which court, ecclesiastical or common law, would handle a felony. Clergy who committed felonies were committed to the ecclesiastical court (and receive considerable leniency), while everyone else would be tried in a common-law court. The English public was periodically outraged by clerics getting off lightly for serious crimes and began to chip away at benefit of clergy. The Reformation significantly reshaped the benefit of clergy. Reformation theology rejected the idea that the essential jurisdictional fact was a person’s status, clergy versus laity. Luther famously argued that all Christians have a calling to serve God in whatever (non-sinful) vocation they assume. This had implications for ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The central issue was now conduct rather than status. What mattered was whether particular substantive issues—theft, marriage, baptism—belonged in the jurisdiction of the church or of the state.

The lessons I suggest taking from this history are (1) accountability is important (obviously!) and (2) a subject matter distinction between the domain of the church and the domain of the state is the key question and has deep roots in the common law tradition of church and state.

How to connect this history to American constitutional law, and then operationalize this distinction doctrinally, will be the subject of the next post.

The post Church Autonomy and Church Accountability as Complimentary Principles appeared first on Reason.com.

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4/27/1822: President Ulysses S. Grant’s birthday. He would appoint four Justices to the Supreme Court: Chief Justice Waite, Justice Strong, Justice Bradley, and Justice Hunt.

The post Today in Supreme Court History: April 27, 1822 appeared first on Reason.com.

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Traditionally neutral nations prepare to join the again-relevant NATO military alliance, governments boost defense spending, and tensions soar between generally liberal-democratic countries on the one hand, and authoritarian regimes on the other. It’s like waking from a pleasant decades-long dream of relative peace and growing prosperity to a world that’s again on the brink of conflict. Whether or not hostilities spread, a new focus on war means greater risk and hard choices.

The immediate culprit is, of course, Russia and its regime led by Vladimir Putin. Russia invaded Ukraine in an old-fashioned land-grab and sees threats in efforts to support its victims.

“NATO is essentially going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian state TV April 25 in a huff that anybody might assist the targets of Russia’s bombs, tanks, and troops. He added that the risk of nuclear war “cannot be underestimated.”

Western officials rattle sabers themselves, though with more cause.

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters on Monday in a statement that will certainly be seized on in Moscow.

Not that international tension is confined to Europe. China is expanding its presence in the Pacific with artificial islands that serve as military bases and territorial outposts. They are “unsinkable aircraft carriers” that “help to cement Beijing’s claims on waters rich with fish and minerals,” in the words of The National Interest‘s David Axe. China’s rivals are troubled by the project, and by its expanding alliances.

“We have respect for the Solomon Islands’ sovereignty, but we also wanted to let them know that if steps were taken to establish a de facto permanent military presence, power-projection capabilities, or a military installation, then we would have significant concerns and we would very naturally respond to those concerns,” the U.S. State Department’s Daniel Kritenbrink told reporters this week about that country’s relationship with China.

So, the battle lines—real in Eastern Europe and potential in the Pacific—are drawn between two large blocs facing off across a divide of ideology and interest.

“World military spending continued to grow in 2021, reaching an all-time high of $2.1 trillion,” the Stockholm International Peace Institute (SIPRI) reported this week. “Russia increased its military expenditure by 2.9 per cent in 2021, to $65.9 billion, at a time when it was building up its forces along the Ukrainian border,” the group added. “China, the world’s second largest spender, allocated an estimated $293 billion to its military in 2021, an increase of 4.7 per cent compared with 2020.”

The largest spender, the United States at $801 billion, reduced outlays by 1.4 percent last year. But that was before the war in Ukraine; the Biden administration plans a boost.

“Once Congress approves the request — and, in all likelihood, makes it bigger — U.S. defense spending will be larger in inflation-adjusted dollars than it was at the height of the Vietnam War or President Reagan’s Cold War buildup,” Doyle McManus noted for the Los Angeles Times. 

In the Pacific, Australia and South Korea are expanding their militaries; Japan plans to nearly double defense spending out of fear of China. In Europe, Germany is beefing-up its long-neglected armed forces. Poland, which has taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees, is doing the same. The European Union plans a rapid-deployment force independent of national militaries. And, perhaps most dramatically, Finland and Sweden, which maintained neutrality through the Cold War, may join NATO together.

“The irony is that Mr. Putin’s cruel war in Ukraine will achieve the opposite of his ambitions: NATO will emerge from this crisis larger, stronger and more united,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former secretary general of the military alliance, wrote in The New York Times.

NATO and related alliances may emerge larger and more united, but only because of increasing divisions elsewhere. Some degree of rearmament is inevitable given the aggression of autocrats in Moscow and Beijing. After all, “defense against threats, foreign and domestic, is one of the main reasons governments exist in the first place,” Christopher Preble noted in his 2019 book, Peace, War, and Liberty. But preparation for war is expensive. That cost may be unavoidable, but it’s real, nonetheless.

“While most people abhor war, libertarians have always had special reasons for doing so because of the unique threat that wars pose to liberty, including the loss of life and property,” Preble added.

Stronger national defense establishments may be necessary, but this is unfortunate for world prosperity. The end of the Cold War and the spread of international trade were miraculous for improving the situation of the world’s most vulnerable people.

“The speed of poverty alleviation in the last 25 years has been historically unprecedented,” Alexander Hammond of Britain’s Institute of Economic Affairs wrote in the happier year of 2017. “Not only is the proportion of people in poverty at a record low, but, in spite of adding 2 billion to the planet’s population, the overall number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen too.” He added: “The new age of globalization, which started around 1980, saw the developing world enter the global economy and resulted in the largest escape from poverty ever recorded.”

Growing prosperity occurred in an environment of trade and free markets after the fall of the Communist bloc. It occurred while military budgets slimmed as the threats they addressed disappeared. That’s important, because military spending on bombs, guns, and armor you hope to never use displaces other uses of wealth. It even discourages economic growth, by diverting resources to less-productive uses. It also, perversely, tends to encourage the overall growth of government, even as authorities draw from economies hampered by military expenses.

“The evidence is irrefutable: throughout human history, government has grown during wartime or during periods of great anxiety when war is in the offing, and it rarely surrenders these powers when the guns fall silent or when the crisis abates,” Preble observed.

The world is back on a war footing, and there may be no alternative so long as autocrats threaten their neighbors. But we’ll all pay a high price in lives, liberty, wealth, and lost opportunities as we are dragged away from an all-too-brief interlude of relative peace and prosperity.

The post The World Is Back on a War Footing and We'll All Pay the Price appeared first on Reason.com.

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