Join Me in Donating to Reason

I just gave to Reason, to support their excellent coverage and analysis. We are editorially independent of Reason, and contributions to them don't support us. (We split our modest advertising revenue with them, and they provide technical and other services.) My donation just reflects my respect for the work they do; I don't always agree with it, but I think it's on balance a huge contribution to public debate.

You can donate yourselves here, if you are so inclined. To quote their pitch this year,

Welcome to the most wonderful time of the year: Reason's annual webathon, our end-of-year fundraising drive. All year long, we offer investigative reporting, sharp analysis, and arguments for free minds and free markets. We offer cheap subscriptions and give most of our content away for $0.

So why are we asking for your donations this week? Because Reason is stubbornly independent.

We don't take government money (gross), and we don't tailor our journalism to please anyone (as my inbox demonstrates every single day).

Your donations support high-quality journalism covering such important areas as civil liberties, free speech, the rule of law, politics, criminal justice, economics, innovation, and more. (Plus we cover a bunch of fun stuff, including video games, books, movies, and new tech.)

Turning out all the podcasts, videos, articles, TikToks, and newsletters you love isn't cheap. We have to keep Kennedy in bus tokens, Zach Weissmueller in plane tickets, Damon Root in law books, Emma Camp in poppy seed bagels, Matt Welch in tickets to baseball museums, and C.J. Ciaramella in FOIA fees. Plus everyone needs the occasional lawyer or cup of coffee. It all adds up, and your donations make it possible.

So please donate! We take U.S. dollars. We take crypto. We take PayPal. Whatever form of peaceful, consensual exchange you prefer.

If you'd like to make a donation RIGHT NOW you can do that RIGHT HERE.

Obviously, there is swag. (I know why you're here.)

• $50—Reason Plus subscription: ad-free browsing, early access to the magazine, commenting privileges, exclusive live online events, and archive access
• $100—Reason camper mug: everything at $50 plus a Reason-branded camper mug
• $250—Reason-branded scarf: everything at $100 plus a Reason-branded scarf
• $500—Jacob Sullum's new book: everything at $250 plus Beyond Control
• $1,000—Reason Weekend eligibility, a Torchbearer pin, podcast shoutout: everything at $500 plus Torchbearer status (including an invitation to Reason Weekend), a special Torchbearer pin, and a shoutout on The Reason Roundtable
• $5,000—Lunch with an editor: everything at $1,000 plus lunch with a Reason editor in Washington, D.C., or New York
• $10,000—Ticket to Reason Weekend (first-time attendees valued at $2,300): everything at $5,000 plus one ticket to Reason Weekend for first-time attendees.

As always, donations are tax-deductible, so you get the added benefit of sticking it to the taxman when you give.

Comments

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Hard pass.

[AmosArch]

I'd consider donating if Reason did or at least attempted to tackle some issue of broad everyday importance to a broad swath of Americans that I thought was dangerously neglected or where advocacy/momentum was seriously one sided in the wrong direction. Like for instance the constant erosion of privacy or the clampdown on individual liberty to edit and share media thanks to AI hysteria. The dystopian social engineering experiments in the EU/Anglosphere and the attempts to import them here. Or perhaps comment on interesting topics like the rise of sex negativity in the current generation where the left has ironically managed to achieve the goals of generations of past fundamentalists. Theres a little of this to be sure but not enough.

For their part however, Reason and the VC seems to fall back on a few stool leg categories like Trump, typical political back and forth. academic libertarian neuroses, and VCer pet topics like Mr. Somin's open borders obsession, or Eugene's court case wordplay. Mildly interesting at times but not the sort of thing I'd feel the need to get out my wallet for.

[AmosArch]

I'd consider donating if Reason did or at least attempted to tackle some issue (concerning actually defending liberty like libertarians are supposed to be all about) of broad everyday importance to a broad swath of Americans

thought I should emphasize this part

[Estragon]

“EU/Anglosphere”

Yeah, ok, this kind of sums it up for me.

[Dan Lo Pan 2]

Why is it that the Volokh comments are (generally) exponentially better than those on all the other Reason articles?

[Bwaaah]

It could be the lean of commenters toward being lawyers and engineers. Just a guess.

[Bwaaah]

Thanks for asking, EV.

[y81]

I don't read Reason much, other than the Volokh Conspiracy, but based on that experience, I think that there are much better friends of human liberty and freedom of expression than this website, and I will direct my contributions to those organizations, notably FIRE.

[Mark N.]

Reason Magazine (both print and online) is much more consistently libertarian than VC imo, if that's what you're looking for. I don't donate, but I do pay for a subscription, and it usually has something worth reading.

[David Nieporent]

But again, it's important to distinguish between the publication and the commenters.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

There are two Reasons: the .org foundation and the .com with the fundraiser and the "popular" articles.

My reluctance to support the .com site stems entirely from their lack of interest in the ideological side, of libertarianism and individualism. The articles on housing, science, politics, and pretty much everything else mention more efficient or better-directed taxes and spending far more than they mention reducing spending and taxation. In contrast, the .org site is nothing but policy briefs: how to get more bag for the buck. They are honest about focusing on improving what we have. I expect more from the .com site.

Trump figures in a whole lot of this. He's polarizing, divisive, call it what you will; but for all the anti-liberty things he's done, he's done more than any President since Reagan to turn back some of the regulatory state. He's declared war on woke and climate alarmism. He's also an economic ignoramus, a proto-socialist, and is as convinced of the President's unlimited power as was Kaiser Wilhelm II.

He's also light years ahead of sleepy Joe, and the No Kings protestors were remarkably quiet about who was pulling Biden's puppet strings. I know which one abused Presidential power more, and the .com's constant drumbeats about Trump's excesses makes their Biden complaints seem like tapping fingers in comparison.

A real libertarian magazine would include more libertarian content. Their rent control articles wouldn't just bemoan Mamdani's worse rent control, it would make sure to include at least one or two paragraphs about the evils of rent control, period. The articles moaning about Trump's tariffs would at least explain the basic definitions that elude Trump and his followers: that dollars out have to equal dollars in, that trade deficits between pairs of countries are meaningless, that total trade deficits are the good foreign investment that Trump claims to want. Instead, all we get is sob stories about some small shop whose products have to double in price, and all that's going to do is make the Trumpies sneer about serves them right for having products made in China.

Look how many staff live in DC and NYC, the middle of the swamp.

They've got some basic fixes to make before I will donate again.