Archives: January 2025
Excerpts from Reason's vaults
5 years ago
January 2020
"I wonder how many more tens and hundreds of thousands will die needlessly before I can again freely visit the country of my birth. Socialism kills in Venezuela, like everywhere else it has been implemented. It kills regardless of local flavoring or whatever branding the individual dictator employs. It is beyond reason that this ideology, which has led to the deaths of more people than any other during modern history, which was thoroughly and tragically discredited in the 20th century, is still racking up body counts in 2019. May we finally learn this tragic lesson."
José Cordeiro
"Socialism Killed My Father"
30 years ago
January 1995
"The Internet is that concatenation of linked computer networks that allows far-flung researchers, writers, and citizens instant or almost-instant access to the latest scientific research, weather data, or even just letters from friends. The National Science Foundation, which provided infrastructure support for this network of networks through its NSFNET program since 1985, has begun gradually eliminating such funding over the next five years. (It will continue to subsidize connection fees for specific institutional users.) Eliminating the NSF's subsidy to the 'backbone' of the Internet (the infrastructure that links local service providers) has made some users nervous, NSF spokesperson Beth Gaston acknowledges. 'There's a sense of protectiveness on the part of Internet users, like "We have this, don't mess with it." With any change people are concerned. In this case the concerns are mostly unwarranted.'"
Brian Doherty
"Privatizing Internet"
40 years ago
January 1985
"The roaring, enthusiastic energy that was associated only several years ago with the beginnings of the free-enterprise launch business has taken on a bitter edge. The groups of mostly young entrepreneurs and engineers are running up against a major obstacle to their dreams of space exploration and financial success. That obstacle is not a lack of energy or talent or ideas. Ironically, it is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the very organization that has fueled so many Americans' fascination with space."
Patrick Cox
"Space Entrepreneurs"
45 years ago
January 1980
"Many people perceive business as just another special-interest group using a defense of the free market as a ruse to get rid of only the regulations it doesn't want. In a sense, business has become its own worst enemy and finds it increasingly difficult to make a credible defense. David Boaz helped to set up the Council for a Competitive Economy to solve this problem. By uniting business organizations in a wholehearted support of the free market, he hopes to lend credibility to their call for less intervention. 'The fact that the Council is a consistent defender of free enterprise,' he says, 'and never of special interests or privilege, helps assure that its voice is heard and respected.'"
John Lott
"Competition Booster"
"Were the federal government to prohibit the reading of certain materials, the best people would be up in arms, and justifiably so. Free citizens are presumed competent to choose their own reading matter. But the courts have held that they are incompetent to choose the fuel consumption of their cars and appliances. The traveling salesman who needs a large trunk and the young mechanic who likes power and style have become nonpersons. People always think they have the best of reasons for frustrating others' choices. Some would censor the professor's books, and the professor would censor others' engine displacement. As far as consequences go, their desires are indistinguishable. Each degrades the quality of the other's life."
Robert Michaels
"Hell, No, We Won't Go (to the Energy War)"
55 years ago
January 1970
"The First Amendment establishes the legal recognition of the right to a free press in all cases, not merely in uncontroversial cases. It is precisely in controversial cases that this guarantee is of greatest importance. While one can certainly criticize the exercise of a right without calling the propriety of the right into question, any attempt to make and enforce laws against obscene publications constitutes just that kind of an attack on the propriety of the guarantee of the right of free press."
Tibor Machan
"Lawyers and Free Speech"
