Pun Salad

Walter Block asks the musical question: What Makes Something a Monopoly?

Block's article is insightful, and a remedy to a lot of loose talk from politicians, journalists, and educators.

And—gee—there sure are lots of versions of Monopoly out there. Just search for "Monopoly" at Amazon if you need your eyes opened to the wonders of the free market. Imagine the small army of artists and developers Hasbro employs simply to churn out new editions of their game.

Not a job I'd want, though. ("You need a version based on Wicked by … next week!? OK, boss, just let me call my wife and tell her I won't be home for a few days.")

Also of note:

• The future is … over there? Bryan Caplan is impressed by his recent visit: Reflections on United Arab Emirates. A couple of his observations:

  1. Per-capita, UAE is the most amazing country I’ve ever seen. With a population about the size of Austria’s, they have virtually every consumer product you can imagine (and many you haven’t) in abundance. In cleanliness and crime, UAE rivals Japan. While the official language is Arabic, a local told me that English is far more useful. And while the country’s official religion is Islam, the country looks very secular. I saw not the slightest sign of Islamist fanaticism.

  2. The key ingredient of Emirati success: 88% of UAE’s population is foreign-born. That’s the highest share of any country on Earth. Why is the share so high? Because UAE is closer to open borders than any other country on Earth. They don’t just welcome petroleum engineers and architects. They welcome drivers, maids, janitors, waiters, and clerks. They don’t just welcome Europeans and East Asians. They welcome South Asians, Pacific Islanders, North Africans, and plenty of sub-Saharan Africans, too. I chatted with workers from both Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone. Yes, would-be migrant workers face a government approval process, so the border is not 100% open. But if you want to work hard to make a better life for yourself, your prospects of landing a work visa are decent no matter how humble your credentials.

  And they have the Burj Khalifa, tallest building in the world, Pic at link.

• Noticed that things are getting a little crazy? Noah Rothman explains why: If You’re Not Talking Like a Lunatic, You’re Losing.

  It’s crunch time, America. The days when fundraising totals mattered are behind us. The organizational apparatus that will put one or the other candidate in the White House is in place. The universe of genuinely persuadable voters is negligible. The real work of winning this election is in the campaigns’ hands. All that’s left for average political observers to do is sit back and count the votes on Election Day. Right?

  Wrong! Don’t let anyone tell you that your only contribution to your candidate’s electoral prospects is your own measly vote. Now is the time when you are called upon to become obnoxious. Those who are sufficiently committed to the cause understand that displays of unrelenting bombast and the kind of cynicism reserved primarily for staffers on the campaigns’ payroll can meaningfully alter the trajectory of political events. Your job, from now until Election Day, is to make yourself as off-putting as possible.

  That imperative compels you to take drastic measures. Do your interlocutors on social media seem unenthusiastic to cast their ballot for Donald Trump? The only course available to those who “know what time it is” is to bombard them with shoddy memes until they change their minds. Overwhelm them with the compelling logical power of your certainty that Kamala Harris never worked a day at McDonald’s. If that doesn’t work, demand from them proof that Harris does not owe her political career to her willingness to provide transactional physical favors to the powerful men in her life.

  We are sometimes chided to "get out of your bubble", but if you've chosen your bubble wisely, you can avoid a lot of derangement.

• Who do you trust on crime? I trust Jacob Sullum for unbiased evaluation of the evidence. He looks at the stats here: The FBI's Quiet Revision of Its 2022 Crime Numbers Adds Fuel to an Argument Between Harris and Trump.

  Since the beginning of this year's abbreviated presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have told different stories about crime trends during the Biden administration. As the Trump campaign tells it, "homicides are skyrocketing," and violent crime has risen dramatically since Trump left office.

  While the first claim is inconsistent with data from multiple sources, the second claim finds support in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which does not cover homicides but tracks other kinds of violent offenses, whether or not they were reported to police. The Harris campaign, by contrast, prefers the FBI's numbers, which reflect only reported crimes. Judging from those numbers, Harris says, "Americans are safer now than when we took office."

  The latter narrative took a hit recently when the FBI quietly revised its 2022 numbers, which initially indicated a 2.1 percent drop in violent crime. Economist John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, found that the revised numbers indicate a 4.5 percent rise in the reported violent crime rate, which you can see in this FBI Excel file. Last month, the FBI estimated a 3 percent drop in reported violent crime between 2022 and 2023, which Lott says would have been half as large but for the change in the 2022 numbers.

  Sullum digs through the data gathered by multiple sources, and concludes that Trump's "skyrocketing" homicide claim is fact-free. But:

  In addition to the question of what is happening now with homicides (which have fallen substantially since 2020, according to several sources) and violent crime generally (which likewise seems to be falling), there is the question of how much credit or blame any given president should get for these trends. Since crime control is mainly a state and local function, it would be unfair to hold Trump responsible for the 2020 surge in reported violent crime. But by the same token, it is implausible to suggest that the current president (let alone his vice president) is responsible for the 2022 surge in violent victimizations recorded by the NCVS.

  By the way, my own state recently got ranked as the second-safest state in the US. (This, despite being ranked #42 for "Workplace Safety". Everything else is outstanding.)

• Is it even round? Martin Gurri writes on The World According to Kamala Harris. Some predictions for a Harris Administration future:

  The world according to Harris is a fog-bound, incomprehensible place. Any action, any step forward, may lead to danger—or worse, political failure. The logic of such a world elevates paralysis to the highest virtue. Potential threats must be ignored or downplayed. Burning crises will be defused through a Zen-like passivity. Words of great magic power are to be uttered in difficult times: They make inaction appear like action and disaster look like success. Echoed in transnational organizations—NATO, the EU, the U.N.—these incantations, though meaningless in themselves, take on the aspect of a second nature, an agreed-upon reality.

  Ukraine stands for democracy, which is at an inflection point, so there must be no ceasefire—but neither will there be enough military assistance given to defeat Putin’s legions. Should Ukraine go under, Harris will give voice to the outrage of that magical entity, the “international community”—a most satisfying exercise.

  Israel will be supported materially like an ally but attacked rhetorically like an irreconcilable enemy. While the Trump-adjacent Netanyahu clings to office, any controversial incident can trigger a permanent rupture. Magic words like “ceasefire” and “two-state solution,” which change nothing on the ground, will mimic real policy in the region.

  Hey, but at least there will be plenty of abortions here at home.

• Democrats should have listened to him. Kevin D. Williamson tried to warn them: It Didn’t Have to Be Kamala Harris.

  It’s feeling pretty Trumpy out there, isn’t it?

  You can tell that Donald Trump’s campaign thinks he is winning from the fact that his people aren’t doing very much to soften the ground for a fresh round of “We wuz robbed!” horse pucky. They’re not doing precisely nothing, of course—Marjorie Taylor Greene is out there raving about voting machines again. But one gets the feeling Moscow Madge is working to undermine faith in American institutions on Vladimir Putin’s behalf these days rather than for the sake of Donald Trump—even the tines of a snake’s forked tongue ultimately diverge.

  You can tell that the Harris campaign thinks it’s losing from the vice president’s itinerary. When it comes to Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, Kamala Harris is out there working to build the blue wall and find somebody to pay for it. She has a West Coast progressive’s mental picture of the angry white men of the vast American interior, and so she’s been out there hunting where she imagines the ducks are, bragging about her Glock, appearing on the Howard Stern show and Fox News, while seeking to connect with black men via Charlamagne tha God. If she’d name-checked Wilson Combat or Korth rather than Glock, she might have caused some ears to perk up. If she could figure out how to talk about inflation without sticking her fingers in her ears and saying “Lalalalala I’m not listening to you!” she might have a more credible campaign.

  Here’s a reminder—it didn’t have to be Harris. I’m not quite ready to say “I told you so,” but …

  Didn’t I?

  It's difficult for me to imagine Democrats nominating anyone I'd vote for.

  But it's real easy for me to imagine Democrats nominating someone that would beat Donald Trump "like a rented mule."