Interesting (and courageous) essay by medical student Michael Poulson in the Washington Post. At age 18, Poulson donated a kidney. Like almost everything in American life, organ donation is overregulated by the government. The government imposes a ‘list’ system and criminalizes any selling of organs or other profit-potential ventures which might unleash innovation. And, it …
Category Archive: the sociology of innovation
Jun 01
American death rates rise for the first time in a decade
Free, capitalist societies invariably produce populations who live longer, healthier lives. Wherever markets have become freer, life expectancies have grown, and death rates have gradually decreased. For years, the only country on earth where life expectancy has declined was North Korea. Now the New York Times is reporting that the U.S. is experiencing a rise …
May 07
Government slave plantation health care generating more ‘group doctor visits’
Every government program designed to help poor people get health care produces the opposite effect: Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare all subsidize artificial demand, causing prices to rise. If government withdrew its evil tentacles from health care, medical prices would quickly adjust downward and quality would quickly adjust upward. Markets always win. Now the New York …
Apr 29
New Course!!: Energy Storage Innovation
Lysander Spooner University will put on an exciting 1-hour course on Friday, May 20, 2016 at 6:30 p.m.: Energy Storage Innovation!! The course will be taught by a local Montana mystery man: “Right On John.” See his Facebook page here. Right on John purports to be from Canada. He has invented and designed a wide …
Apr 03
In the trucking industry, government is demanding what the industry is already doing
Government bureaucrats frequently spot good ideas being implemented in the private sector, and then try to show they are doing something by mandating that the private sector must do what it is already doing. The intrusive mind of the tyrant never pauses. Consider the trucking industry, which is filled with business owners and operators who …
Apr 02
Another Government-Subsidized ‘Green’ Energy Company Fails
For years, trusters of government have promoted ‘green’ energy schemes by which the government subsidizes so-called alternative energy technology. The goal, supposedly, is to build up solar, wind and other alternative-energy industries, until they can compete with (and ultimately displace) fossil fuels. It never works. Solar and wind sources cannot stand on their own against …
Jan 22
“Alternative Energy”: California government to charge taxpayers millions to build electric-car charging stations
There seems to be a religious hatred among government trusters against fossil-fuel suppliers. A loathing almost as irrational as the unshakeable, almost hypersexual, love of self-styled “conservatives” for men in government uniforms. Even as petroleum products have been made cheaper and cheaper by private sector innovators, the government of California is poised to forcibly take …
Dec 08
Lost? Need Directions? Ask a Man
Fascinating psychological research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology suggests that male brains are better at judging directions than female brains. See here. The research involved MRI scans of brain activity.
Nov 13
Self-driving cars are already safer than human-driven cars
On a per-mile basis, the automobile is the safest form of land transportation ever invented. See here. It is often said that planes are safer than cars; but on a per-trip or per-hour basis, cars are even safer than planes. Yet governments, for a century, have burdened car travel with reams of unnecessary rules and …
Oct 21
Driverless Cars–Brought to us by the Private Sector–Are Upon Us
(Pictured above: visionary and futurist Julian Simon) After a century of needless regulation, and hundreds of thousands if not millions of violent arrests of drivers for traffic violations, the era of driverless cars is upon us. Dozens of private firms, including Tesla, Apple, Google, GM, Honda and many others, are already producing driverless-car prototypes which …