On November 30, 2022, ChatGPT was made available to the general public, and the world was forever changed. While many had prophesied about the potential impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for years, ChatGPT gave us the first glimpse into an AI-powered future. The novelty of OpenAI’s creation propelled interest in AI into the stratosphere, while at the same time reigniting concerns about the impact of AI on the economy. One can easily imagine a “nightmare” scenario where AI puts everyone out of their jobs virtually overnight—scrambling the economy and impacting untold numbers of workers. Minimally, this would lead to a painful adjustment period and, at worst, damage the economy irrevocably. But are these fears justified?Artificial intelligence is a new
Read More »Articles by J.W. Rich
Harris-Walz: The Ticket of Covid Tyranny
September 3, 2024Quarantine, lockdowns, social distancing—words I’m sure everyone reading never wants to hear again. Even several years removed, the pain inflicted by Covid-19 and subsequent policy reactions is still fresh in our collective consciousness. I wouldn’t blame anyone for wanting to forget the whole thing, and you wouldn’t be the only one. The authoritarians who violated your freedoms in the name of Covid safety would love for those years—and their mistakes—to be forgotten. As it happens, two of those authoritarians will be appearing together on ballots this November—Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.Kamala Harris is a familiar name to many Americans. Picked out by Biden to serve as vice president on the 2020 Democrat ticket, she has served the past three-and-a-half years as
Read More »The Bombing of Hiroshima: The Crime and the Cover-Up
September 6, 2023The real effects of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima were hidden from Americans until the New Yorker published an exposé in 1946. Americans finally were confronted with the truth—even if they didn’t want to believe it.
Original Article: "The Bombing of Hiroshima: The Crime and the Cover-Up"
[embedded content]
Tags: Featured,newsletter
Read More »Were Recent Bank Failures the Result of Lax Regulation? In a Word, No
April 8, 2023With the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, financial markets all around the world are on edge. Despite promises from the Federal Reserve that a “soft landing” of the economy is on the way, all signs point to an imminent “crash landing”! While the full consequences of these bank failures are yet to fully play out, a prized and popular scapegoat has already been trotted out to explain the current crisis: deregulation of financial markets.
According to proponents of this view, the partial rollback of the famous Dodd-Frank Act that took place in 2018 enabled banks to engage in overly risky behavior that has now become those banks’ undoing. This perspective has even started to gain traction in Washington, DC, as well. On March 14, Senators
Austrians vs. Neoclassicists on Monopolies
July 30, 2022A monopoly is often seen as one of the gravest and most concerning manifestations of market failure. In the neoclassical tradition, the existence of a monopolist in a market is generally seen as sufficient justification for government intervention to put a halt to the monopolist’s exploitative ways. The Austrian tradition, however, has historically remained skeptical of this alleged problem of monopoly.
Two of the most prolific Austrian theorists, Murray Rothbard and Israel Kirzner, have themselves offered objections to the neoclassical perception of monopoly. While they attack the traditional conception of monopoly differently, their arguments are ultimately compatible and offer an alternative perspective on this important economic issue.
First, we should briefly