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Mike Munger writes on “how pathological a reliance on politics as a solution can be.”

Brian Doherty remembers the late David Koch. A slice:

In a 2005 interview for my book Radicals for Capitalism, Koch told me his father taught him that “big government was bad, and impositions of government controls on our lives and our economic fortunes was not good.” In the mid-1960s, with encouragement from Charles, he attended the Freedom School, an early libertarian educational institution run by Robert LeFevre, whose variety of libertarianism rejected both political activism and violence, even in self-defense. While LeFevre was one of their earliest exposures to the organized libertarian movement, both brothers denied that they ever embraced his entire package of ideas. As they began financing, working with, and guiding libertarian institutions in the 1970s, their activism involved support and promotion for the pro-market Austrian school of economics exemplified by Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek. Libertarian educational institutions, think tanks, legal action groups, grassroots activism, magazines, criminal justice reform efforts, and student groups all received largess and guidance from the Koch brothers from the 1970s through the present.

And here’s Walter Olson on David Koch. And Bob Levy and Peter Goettler. And Nick Gillespie.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Phil Gramm and John F. Early explain that we Americans are richer than most of us realize. A slice:

When corrected for documented price overstatements, real average hourly earnings from 1975 to 2017 are shown to have risen some 52%, not 6%—an additional $6.77 an hour. Real median household income increased 68%, not 21%—$17,060 more annually. Gross domestic product grew 253% rather than 216%—$6,312 of additional output per capita. Productivity expanded 142% rather than 117%—$10 of additional value for every hour worked. And published poverty incidence fell by almost half. Combined with the 67% drop in poverty that comes from accounting for all government transfers, poverty incidence sank from 12.3% to about 2%.

Colin Grabow explains this reality: “For more U.S.-flag ships, lift the domestic-build requirement.”

Russ Roberts talks with Arthur Diamond about openness to creative destruction.

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