Archives: August/September 2024

Excerpts from Reason's vaults

5 years ago
August/September 2019

"Money is flowing toward cultured meat, which is beginning to attract investment from traditional players. Tyson holds a minority stake in Memphis Meats and put $2.2 million into Future Meat Technologies, an Israeli company that wants to cut the price of cultured beef to $2.27 per pound by 2020. Just, in addition to its chicken nugget product, recently announced a contract with the Tokyo-based farm Toriyama to produce lab-cultured wagyu beef. If 'clean meat' can scale up, it could mean a world with less animal suffering, the restoration of ecosystems damaged by industrial livestock operations, a reduction in harmful emissions, and, ultimately, a cheaper source of delicious protein engineered to satisfy a growing global population."
Zach Weissmueller
"Meatless Meat Is Better Than Ever"

10 years ago

August/September 2014

"The coming era of autonomous autos raises concerns about legal liability and safety, but there are good reasons to believe that robot cars may exceed human drivers when it comes to practical and even ethical decision making. More than 90 percent of all traffic accidents are the result of human error. In 2011, there were 5.3 million automobile crashes in the United States, resulting in more than 2.2 million injuries and 32,000 deaths. Americans spend $230 billion annually to cover the costs of accidents, accounting for approximately 2 to 3 percent of GDP."
Ronald Bailey
"The Moral Case for Self-Driving Cars"

15 years ago

August/September 2009

"Currently only the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) can legally supply researchers with marijuana. NIDA, which guards its gatekeeper status jealously, is oriented toward the idea that pot is harmful, not useful. Even when researchers have received Food and Drug Administration approval for their studies, NIDA frequently refuses to sell them the pot they need to carry out their research, essentially exercising a veto on the FDA's decisions."
Brian Doherty
"Weed Control"

20 years ago

August/September 2004

"In their attempt to prevent prescription drug abuse, the [Drug Enforcement Administration] and the [Department of Justice] in effect have taken upon themselves the authority to regulate the practice of medicine, traditionally the province of the states. Worse, they have transformed disagreements about treatment decisions into criminal prosecutions, scaring physicians away from opioids and compounding the suffering of patients who have trouble getting the drugs they need to relieve their pain."
Maia Szalavitz
"Dr. Feelscared"

"If colleges discourage young reporters from investigating powerful interests while in school, how can society expect them to probe political corruption once they graduate? When students cower rather than proclaim their opinions on campus, how can we expect them to stand up for what they believe off campus? There's a simple, market-driven tactic to convince schools not to strangle free speech. Parents who value the First Amendment should steer away from colleges that censor their students. Hitting offending colleges in the endowment would provide dictatorial administrators with a valuable lesson, one they would not soon forget."
David Wallis
"The Wrong Lesson"

50 years ago
August 1974

"If you wanted a perfect example to prove Henry Hazlitt's contention that things which look good in the short run don't always work out in the long run, you wouldn't have to look any further than the history of rent control in New York City. After three decades of stringent controls on New York's million-plus apartments built before 1947, the consequences are just what could have been predicted from a reading of Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson: an apartment vacancy rate of less than one percent, over 400,000 deteriorated or dilapidated apartments, a gap of $274 million between the costs of proper maintenance and the revenues actually allotted by controlled rents, and the literal abandonment of between 15,000 and 30,000 apartment units annually."
David Grant
"Phasing Out Rent Control"