In my latest Epoch Times column I say the now-routine desperate improvisation to avoid fiscal ruin is not going to end well in Washington, or here in Canada.

“The term nearest to being synonymous with pleasure is volition: what it pleases a man to do, or what he pleases to do, may be far from giving him enjoyment; yet shall we say that in doing it, he is not following his own pleasure?… A native of Japan, when he is offended, stabs himself to prove the intensity of his feelings. It is difficult to prove enjoyment in this case: yet the man obeyed his impulses.”

John Hill Burton, “Bentham’s editor”, quoted in I.A. Richards Principles of Literary Criticism and sourced to Jeremy Bentham’s Works, vol. I

In my latest Mercatornet column I say the mania for booster shots for vaccines that don’t work very well to stop a variant they may not work against at all is not science.

“An economic model of behaviour that lays any claim at all to predictive power must rely on the uniformity of human nature summarized in Homo economicus, or economic self-interest objectively defined. Such a model has served economists well; the model in all its variations explains much of what we know about the political-governmental sphere of human action in addition to the much more that we know and can explain about human action in market relationships… [and] yields meaningful predictions…”

“Constitutional revolution in Democracy” in Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy

In my latest National Post column I say the obvious reason Jason Kenney and Erin O’Toole are facing party revolts and ugly polling numbers is that they have abandoned conservatism for opportunism.

In my latest Epoch Times column I call the failure of the latest giant trendy COP 26 climate conference evidence of what happens when people who don’t grasp the existence of practical difficulties run into them anyway.

“For the economist who drops homo economicus in favor of an open-ended utility function, no failure can be recognized. He cannot identify market failure, but neither can he identify government or political failure.”

James Buchanan, What Should Economists Do?

In my latest Epoch Times column I say the only thing more foolish than Doug Ford raising the minimum wage was his explanation for doing so.