Yesterday's Question
Are you planning an out-of-state vacation this summer? – Staying closer to home 26.12% – Yes, flying 14.93% – Yes but not flying 21.64% – Don’t plan a summer vacation 37.31%
Price gouging is whose problem?
Horrors. The profiteers running this year's World Cup are forcing fans to shell out thousands for a single ticket. But they're not. FIFA, which oversees the once-every-four-years soccer tournament, is slapping astounding prices on the tickets. No one has to buy them. This should be very obvious. That said, some products are priced in ways that understandably bring out villagers with pitchforks. Bread in 18th-century Europe, for example. Rapidly rising prices for the "staff of life" helped foment the French Revolution. The peasants demanded what they deemed a "just ...
Trump stuck between two realities
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war. I don't worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality. On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran "Schrodinger's ceasefire." This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrodinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of "superpositionality" in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the ...
Keep politicians out of college sports
Nearly everyone who is a college sports fan, myself included, knows the state of affairs in the NCAA is one fine mess. Especially regarding football and men's basketball, the two major money-making sports, things have changed massively in the last few years — and mostly not in a good way. Elite and even above-average athletes have effectively become free agents selling their services each year to the highest bidders. Every year the school rosters are different, so there's almost no team or university loyalty. It's rent-a-player, and the big college teams are now effectively ...
Bureaucrats get in the way
Is your business "needed"? Bizarrely, in many states, if you want to start a business, you first must convince bureaucrats that your business is "needed." Four years ago, Louisiana blocked social worker Ursula Newell-Davis from helping kids with special needs. Bureaucrats said she hadn't proved her business was needed. "Why does the state of Louisiana have the right to stop me from doing what I love?" she asks in this update video. Good question. Ursula has a master's degree and a social work license. For two decades, she's helped kids with special needs. One, Kamal, told us he ...
Daily Poll
Should companies use AI to conduct job interviews? It's perfectly fine No, should be person-to-person Not sure