Monthly Archives: October 2009

The Geeks Who Built the Internet

One of the perennial tropes of the network neutrality debate has been the tendency of the pro-regulation side to paint it as a David-and-Goliath struggle between big, evil corporations and the little guy. Way back in 2006, James Gattuso pointed … Continue reading

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The Case against Exhausted Doctors

My wife is a first year medical resident, so I read this article by my friend Kevin O’Reilly with interest. Until I started dating a med student, I didn’t realize how absurdly overworked medical residents (recently-graduated doctors going through mandatory … Continue reading

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Cord Blomquist on Free Software and Libertarianism

Thanks to Slashdot, my last post generated a ton of discussion. My favorite comment comes my friend and erstwhile co-blogger Cord Blomquist. I think it’s worth quoting the bulk of it: I think the reason that most of the folks … Continue reading

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Rand, Rothbard, and State-Worship

Kerry’s article about thick liberalism has generated a ton of intersting discussion. Here’s Ilya Somin, Kerry, and Ilya again. Here’s Will. I still think Kerry and Will are right and Kerry’s critics are wrong, and I won’t re-hash the various … Continue reading

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Thin Liberalism and the Folly of Burning Bridges

James Lakely, a research fellow at the Heartland Institute, recently pointed me to a new study he’s written on the network neutrality debate. (See also his op-ed summarizing the argument.) Lakely is clearly a smart guy, and his paper is … Continue reading

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Making Money with Free-as-in-Beer Software

Reader Rhayader asks a good question: I love free software, but as someone who’s a novice (at best) when it comes to programming, most of the direct benefits I see have to do with the “free as in beer” side … Continue reading

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Free Software as a Liberal Project

In the early 1980s a dispute over Xerox printer source code transformed Richard Stallman from a shy hacker to into a quixotic activist. Stallman had cut his teeth in a 1970s programming culture in which it was conventional for programmers … Continue reading

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Libertarianism as a Liberal Project

My friend Kerry Howley’s has a fantastic essay about the relationship between individualism and libertarianism: I call myself a classical liberal in part because I believe that negative liberties, such as Min’s freedom from government interference, are the best means … Continue reading

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Driving Towards the Future

Last year I did a three part feature on the future of driving, and how the emergence of autonomous navigation systems could change society. Computer science researchers have always demonstrated prototypes of cars that can drive without human intervention, including … Continue reading

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Reihan Salam on Neoconservatism and Bottom-Up

This interview with my friend Reihan Salam is worth a read. Reihan is generally regarded as a conservative, but he is one of those guys who seems to have read absolutely everything, and he seems to incorporate a little bit … Continue reading

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