90 Miles From Tyranny

infinite scrolling

Friday, November 25, 2016

Girls With Guns

8 Houses That Are Zombie Proof


Morning Mistress






Hot Pick Of The Late Night

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Girls With Guns

Vegetarian Thanksgiving?

Let's all take a moment to mourn on  this day for

PROPERTY RIGHTS SAVED PILGRIMS FROM STARVATION


Ilya Somin of the Volokh Conspiracy, a blog hosted by the Washington Post, revisits the story of the Pilgrims at Plymouth and how instituting private property rights saved the community from ruin.

There is much to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. One lesson of the holiday that we should try not to forget is how the Pilgrims were saved from starvation and misery by private property rights. Economist Benjamin Powell summarizes the story here:

Many people believe that after suffering through a severe winter, the Pilgrims’ food shortages were resolved the following spring when the Native Americans taught them to plant corn and a Thanksgiving celebration resulted. In fact, the pilgrims continued to face chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims’ shortages. Bad economic incentives did.

In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on equality and need as determined by Plantation officials. People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. Governor William Bradford, in his 1647 history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote that this system was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. The problem was that “young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense.” Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.

Faced with potential starvation in the ...

Happy Thanksgiving

May everyone enjoy Thanksgiving this year with someone they love.

Morning Mistress

Hot Pick Of The Late Night

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Girls With Guns

Trump at NASA: Hasta la Vista Climate Fraud and Muslim Outreach…

NASA’s top climate scientist Gavin Schmidt has warned President-Elect Donald Trump that the planet just won’t stand for having a fully-fledged climate denier in the White House.

Good luck with that one, Gavin. Or “Toast” as we’ll shortly be calling you…

Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), told the Independent:
“The point is simple: the climate is changing and you can try to deny it, you can appoint people who don’t care about it into positions of power, but regardless nature has the last vote on this.”
Unfortunately, Schmidt doesn’t feel so strongly on the issue that he is prepared to offer his resignation:

Asked if he would resign if the Trump administration adopted the most extreme form of climate change denial, Dr Schmidt said this was “an interesting question”. It would not cause him to quit “in and of itself”, he said.
“Government science and things generally go on regardless of the political views of the people at the top,” Dr Schmidt said. “The issue would be if you were being asked to skew your results in any way or asked not to talk about your results. Those would be much more serious issues.”
Schmidt’s principled position on skewing results is somewhat ironic given that skewing results is what he...