Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Brett Kavanaugh: champion of free speech. Really?  Well, he seems to be on the right side this time, and in a perilous time one takes one's help where one can find it.  On August 14, the US Supreme Court rejected an emergency bid from a social media sponsors' industry group, NetChoice.  NetChoice had sought a block to enforcement by the state of Mississippi of an age certification law. So by refusing to hear the matter on an emergency basis, SCOTUS has allowed enforcement to proceed for now. But it has not yet addressed the substantive issue.  The law in question says that social media sites must verify the ages of their users and make efforts to protect young people from being exposed to harmful material.  Non-compliance brings civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation, as well as the possibility of criminal prosecution. This case seems to me to belong to an enormous set -- the set of all cases in which "think of the children!" is pretext. The real goal is...

At  this time of year I ask myself what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months in business/financial news.  Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme, and in the list below I'll spell out and boldface the theme. Yet the theme itself isn't the story. Here are the twelve stories, by month, that especially caught my attention and that in retrospect I recommend to yours.  1. January. Immigration. Well, of course. But I want to highlight a different aspect of the immigration question than the one that has caught the most attention.   In the early days of the new year, Reuters appears to have heard from sources that the President elect (as he then was) was in talks with hi-tech employers about the possible overhaul of the H1B visa system. At the end of the month, word leaks out that the now President, Donald Trump, is moving in the opposite direction from what those employers presumably had hoped . This will...