u/FacetiousOwl

In my opinion the primary concern with Palantir is the concentration of information and government power. Its technology allows government agencies to aggregate and analyze enormous amounts of data, raising concerns about privacy, surveillance, due process, and the Fourth Amendment.

Other concerns include government access to commercially collected data, inaccurate information influencing investigations, limited transparency, public-private cooperation that expands state capabilities, and “mission creep,” where surveillance tools created for national security or serious crimes expand into ordinary government functions.

The broader concern is not necessarily Palantir's technology itself, but what happens when powerful data-analysis technology is combined with the coercive authority of the state. More data does not necessarily mean better knowledge, and errors become considerably more consequential when they influence government action.

Gráinne de Búrca

The EU can be viewed as placing additional constraints on national governments through free movement, economic integration, individual rights, and the rule of law. At the same time, transferring authority from national governments to supranational institutions raises questions about democratic accountability, subsidiarity, sovereignty, and how far political power should be removed from the people subject to it.

From a classical liberal perspective, does the EU represent another constitutional check on state power, or does supranational governance simply move political power farther away from meaningful democratic and constitutional control?

The plurality of political regimes in Asia clearly demonstrates that liberal democracy is not the exclusive or inevitable form of political modernity. Across the continent, diverse models of governance coexist, ranging from one-party systems like China’s to religious-communitarian democracy in Indonesia and caste- and community-inflected democratic practices in India. These models function not as deviations or transitional forms, but as established alternatives that draw legitimacy from indigenous ideologies, historical experience, and post-colonial self-assertion, writes Mateo Rojas Samper. The author is a participant of the Valdai – New Generation project.

I'm interested what other independents are considering as we enter the midterms.

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I cannot provide a comprehensive account of property rights in a single essay, nor address all possible objections to them. But liberals would do well to recognize the centrality of private property to the overall liberal project, and to support at least a presumption that land and productive assets should be privately owned, and the owners allowed to use the property as they see fit, barring proof that the use poses a serious threat to public health or safety. Whether you are a libertarian who emphasizes property rights’ role in enhancing liberty and human happiness, an egalitarian focused on the interests of the poor and disadvantaged, or some combination of both, you have good reason to support strengthening protection for private property rights.

Ilya Somin is Professor of Law at George Mason University, the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, and the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom.

Conclusion

Austrian scholars have made important contributions to economics in recent years. I personally am most impressed by the work of Lawrence White and George Selgin on free banking and other monetary issues, though certainly other Austrians have made significant contributions too. Set in historical context, I also consider the economics of Mises and Rothbard to be a great achievement in spite of my numerous reservations about it. Yet all too large a fraction of Austrian research has not been in economics at all, but rather in meta-economics: philosophy, methodology, and history of thought. Admittedly, much of the meta-economics stems out of the work of F.A. Hayek and his numerous interpreters, whose contributions to economics the present essay did not discuss save by implication. But the students of Mises and Rothbard have done more than their fair share of meta-economics too. Neoclassical economists go too far by purging meta-economics almost entirely, but there is certainly a reason to be suspicious of scholars who talk about economics without ever doing it. Paraphrasing Deng Xiaoping, "One should not talk of methodology every day. In real life, not everything is methodology."[59]

While the substantive contributions of Austrian economists to economics are significant, their sum from Human Action on is small compared to the progress that neoclassical economics has made over the same time period. The ten good ideas listed in section 4.3 are only the beginning of what economists have learned since 1949 - in spite of the large deadweight cost of mathematics and econometrics. Mises and Rothbard certainly produced an original alternate paradigm for economics - and applied this paradigm to a number of interesting topics. Unfortunately, the foundations of their new paradigm are unfounded, and their most important applied conclusions unsound or overstated. The reasonable intellectual course for Austrian economists to take is to give up their quest for a paradigm shift and content themselves with sharing whatever valuable substantive contributions they have to offer with the rest of the economics profession - and of course, with the intellectually involved public. In sum, Milton Friedman spoke wisely when he declared that "there is no Austrian economics - only good economics, and bad economics,"[60] to which I would append: "Austrians do some good economics, but most good economics is not Austrian."

States should generally finance the policies they choose to implement. Federal taxation should fund genuinely federal responsibilities rather than serve as a permanent mechanism for transferring resources among states. When states can shift the costs of their political decisions onto taxpayers elsewhere, federalism loses one of its most important disciplines: responsibility for the consequences of one's own policies.

The First and Second Banks of the United States were chartered for 20 years.

When Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, it was given the exact same lifespan. It was supposed to die in 1934.

Then the McFadden Act comes along. Signed by Silent Cal on February 25, 1927, despite his otherwise Constitutionalist and non-interventionist policies, the act rechartered the Fed banks indefinitely. It also greatly eased restrictions on the shenanigans that member banks could get involved in - like speculating in real estate - and these shenanigans may have contributed to the Great Depression.

https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/mcfadden-act

I just learned this today.

I believe the housing affordability crisis is real, but I reject the idea that it represents a failure of the free market or that it can simply be explained as a nationwide “housing shortage.” The term shortage is too often used as a convenient justification for further government intervention without examining whether there is actually a physical shortage of housing in a particular market or whether housing has simply become unaffordable at current prices. Zoning restrictions, permitting requirements, density limits, subsidies, favorable mortgage policies, artificially low interest rates, and government efforts to protect property values have distorted both supply and demand and contributed to inflated housing prices. When affordability deteriorates, the government often responds with still more subsidies and intervention rather than allowing prices to correct. I believe market corrections, including falling home values, are a necessary part of a functioning market because they bring prices back in line with what buyers can actually afford. We cannot simultaneously demand continuously rising property values for existing homeowners and affordable housing for future buyers. The solution is not to continually manufacture or subsidize demand under the banner of a “housing shortage,” but to remove unnecessary government barriers and allow supply, demand, interest rates, rents, and property values to adjust naturally.

A free market requires allowing markets to correct. If policymakers repeatedly intervene to prevent falling asset prices, they encourage ever-greater risk-taking, larger bubbles, and ultimately more severe corrections. Protecting investors from losses while ordinary people bear the costs of inflation undermines both market discipline and equality before the law