Big Brother

Archive for Big Brother

Which Profession Causes More Damage, Economists or Psychologists?

I think we economists inflict more suffering when measured in total–say, damage per economist–but in terms of individually screwing with people who are completely at your mercy, it’s hard to beat psychologists/psychiatrists. How’s this (HT2 Tyler Cowen): In an effort to dominate the [Chilean] miners, the team of psychologists led by Mr Iturra has instituted […]

British Government Takes the Next Logical Step

You know how a lot of libertarians think a good reform would be for workers to get their full paychecks, and then write a check to the IRS? Well they’re proposing this–Bizarro-style–in Great Britain: The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which […]

Glenn Greenwald Describes Obama’s America

It’s even worse than what American liberals thought under George W. Bush’s America: The lawsuit — captioned Al-Aulaqi v. Obama — was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, and names Barack Obama, Leon Panetta and Robert Gates as defendants. Among other relief, the Complaint asks the court to (a) “declare that the […]

Some Disturbing Trends

In two previous posts, I linked first to this TV news report, and then this 4-minute-and-change NPR story. Something was screwy and people couldn’t leave comments. I have no idea why that was happening. Anyway, I took down those posts because I kept getting emails saying The Man was on to me, shutting down my […]

Authorities Blow the Whistle on Wikileaks Founder

Hmmm. Bob Roddis sent me some stores on Lila Rajiva’s site, raising skepticism about the street cred of Wikileaks. (Try this one for example, and follow its links at the top if you want more.) At first I thought, “Oh give me a break, so the government purposely allowed that helicopter video to leak out, […]

The Policeman Is Not Your Friend, 2nd Denver Edition

[UPDATE below.] Yikes, just six days ago I posted a video of Denver cops beating up a guy who was standing there, talking on his cell phone. To counteract the inevitable “hey man, this is one bad apple, I bet you call the cops when a guy breaks into your house” comments, I mentioned that […]

The Policeman Is Not Your Friend, Denver Edition

[UPDATE below.] [Second UPDATE below.] [Third UPDATE below.] Ryan McMaken over at the LRC blog has another “good” one. To give this some context, apparently a guy got ejected from a bar for using the woman’s bathroom. (Presumably he was obnoxious on top of it.) So the cops are arresting this guy, while his buddy […]

Federal Government Deploys “Strike Force” and Unmanned Drones…in America

[UPDATE below.] I don’t lie: The Senate agreed Thursday to add $600 million to the effort to stop the flow of illegal immigrants across the U.S. Mexican border. The money would be used for such purposes as adding 1,500 new enforcement agents and deploying unmanned aerial drones to improve border surveillance. Incidentally, I heard Senator […]