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Kevin Williamson celebrates the spontaneous order of markets – markets featuring both competition and cooperation.  (HT Richard Fulmer)  A slice:

What is truly remarkable about 21st-century capitalism is not the competition – creatures that aren’t even quite sentient, like catfish, snails, and members of Congress, compete over scarce resources, too – but its cooperation. Every time you buy a T-shirt or a fast-food hamburger, you tap into a vast network of productive resources involving everything from agriculture to information science to logistics, millions of people who do not know one other – who, if they did, might even hate each other – cooperating in relationships of literally incalculable complexity, in the service of ordinary schmucks like us.

And there is one remarkable aspect of all that to keep in mind: No one is in charge of it.

My colleague Larry White asks if the gold standard failed.

Jeff Jacoby rightly complains that the furies are too seldom unleashed on Congress.

The great lawyers at the Institute for Justice (with some help from an amicus brief submitted by the Reason Foundation) have won an important legal victory for consumers, competition, and a correct understanding of property rights.  (See also here.)

And one benefit of this legal victory will be reduced racism.  Another benefit will be continued, market-tested innovation.

Shikha Dalmia puts the egregious and indefensible Donald Trump – and many of the reactions to his boorishness – in perspective.

Baruti Libre Kafele explains that free trade promotes economic growth.  (I pick one small nit with this essay: contrary to the author’s claim, protectionism does not cause unemployment.  Protectionism ‘protects’ relatively poor jobs and prevents the creation of better jobs.  But the overall level of employment in a country is no different with protectionism than it is with free trade.)

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