My Weekly Reading for August 3, 2025
by J.D. Tuccille, Reason, July 30, 2025.
Excerpt:
Are Stablecoins CBDCs in Disguise? NoWhile Americans rightfully resent the lockdowns, mask mandates, and other intrusions into their liberty that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic (not to mention politicians’ flouting of their own rules), most of us had it pretty easy compared to people elsewhere. In Canada, for example, pandemic restrictions were tighter and lasted longer than in the United States. That prompted public pushback culminating in the protest known as the Freedom Convoy and draconian retaliation against demonstrators by the Canadian government. While the government’s actions have since been ruled unconstitutional, two of the Freedom Convoy’s leaders have been convicted for their efforts and potentially face prison sentences longer than those handed out to killers and rapists.
by Nicholas Anthony, Cato at Liberty, August 1, 2025.
Excerpts:
Only CBDCs [Central Bank Digital Currencies] involve governments having direct access and control over your financial activity by default. For that reason, stablecoins are no more CBDCs than [are] mobile banking apps or debit cards. For any of these electronic payment mechanisms to be a CBDC, the government would have to take over their production from private companies and strictly control every aspect of their use. The threat of such a government takeover is always in the background, but that threat is not unique to stablecoins.
And:
Lawmakers Sue ICE To Protect Right To Visit Detention Centers UnannouncedIt is only with a CBDC that your financial information would be held with the government by default. In contrast, a stablecoin in this scenario carries the same risks to civil liberties as a debit card. Rather than having direct control, overzealous governments must first go to the bank or stablecoin issuer to request information.
This air gap separating individuals from the state is by no means ideal. In fact, when I’m not writing about the risks of CBDCs, I’m often writing about how financial privacy in the United States has been an illusion for decades. However, it’s important to maintain distinctions in this conversation because things could become much worse.
by Autumn Billings, Reason, August 1, 2025.
Excerpt:
The lawsuit argues that a new rule implemented by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which prohibits visits to ICE field offices and requires at least seven days’ notice before touring a facility, blocks members of Congress from ensuring DHS compliance with federal law and properly overseeing how taxpayer dollars are being spent.
Section 527 of the DHS Appropriations Act protects the legal right of members of Congress to visit immigration detention centers, stating, “none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Homeland Security…may be used to prevent” members of Congress or their staff “from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the [DHS] used to detain or otherwise house aliens.” According to the act, no prior notice is required for lawmakers, but DHS may require congressional staffers to provide notice at least 24 hours in advance.
Gail Heriot on the Minimum Wage
Gail Heriot, Instapundit, July 29, 2025.
Excerpt:
A few years ago, when the Commission did a report on whether to get rid of the special minimum wage for severely disabled employees, the parents and families of the affected employees (overwhelmingly Down syndrome sufferers) were strongly in favor of keeping it. I am so #$^#% tired of do-gooders who think they know what’s good for these folks and that their parents and families don’t. It should be obvious that removing the special minimum wage will result in job loss. Indeed, one of the advocates for eliminating the special minimum we spoke to even ADMITTED this.
The alternative theory is that most of these “do-gooders” are not do-gooders at all, but just a wholly owned subsidiary of the SEIU. Maybe they actually WANT these people to lose their jobs, so that SEIU workers can get two jobs–the one that used to be performed by a Down syndrome employee and one baby-sitting the now-unemployed Down syndrome employee.
DRH note: Gail Heriot is the only blogger at Instapundit whose posts I read without exception. I always learn from them.
Canada Seeks To Jail Freedom Convoy Organizers for 8 Years by J.D. Tuccille, Reason, July 30, 2025. Excerpt: While Americans rightfully resent the lockdowns, mask mandates, and other intrusions into their liberty that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic (not to mention politicians' flouting of their own r...
The Roman Empire was in trouble. During the fifty-plus years known as the Crisis of the Third Century (235-284 AD), the throne of Rome changed some 26 times, with the Roman Army engaging in a steady diet of crowning and removing claimants to the throne. These autocrats, known as “barracks emperors,” because they of...
At the end of my last post, I said I’d be following up by describing both some of Musa al-Gharbi’s modes of analysis and assumptions in his book We Have Never Been Woke, and outline who is the “we” he describes, and what he means by “woke.” First, the ground rules. Musa al-Gharbi sets out his examination...
econlib
