As you may have gathered from my previous post, I’ve become interested in cryptocurrency and blockchain regulation. I’ve honestly been a little hesitant to write about this stuff because opinions on the subject are oddly polarized. I know I’ve got…

America's emerging crypto interests need to get their heads in the political game and invest in allaying the state's fear of financial disintermediation The crypto/blockchain world seems pretty well tuned into regulatory developments, and rumors…

My old friend John Tomasi, newly installed as the President of the Heterodox Academy, has written a lovely, stimulating, little essay in praise of curiosity. I encourage you to read it. John gently takes issue with another essay, written by Heterodox…

The former mayor of Beverly Hills is SO MAD about duplexes! I’m a little late to this but don’t want to let the delicious opportunity pass. John Mirisch, former mayor of Beverly Hills mayor and a current city council member, recently graced us with a…

This week, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom crushed the bid to oust him from office by a roughly 27-percentage-point, 2.5 million-vote margin, with around three-quarters of votes counted as of Wednesday. Unseating Newsom was unlikely. But that…

Subscriber audio of “Republicans Finally Caught the Car,” Model Citizen, September 3, 2021

The Back-Alley Reversal of Roe Just Made the GOP Unsafe for Right-leaning Women Texas has banned abortion, more or less. Terminating a pregnancy is now categorically forbidden in the Lone Star State except in the brief period before the embryo…

Subscriber audio of “The Density Divide and the Southernification of Rural America,” Model Citizen, August 30, 2021

When I was a kid, the accents changed. Driving north from central Iowa through the corn toward Minnesota, the dialect would gradually get a little Fargo — a little Norwegian bachelor farmer — maybe an hour or so from the border. Past “the Cities,”…

According to the promo copy for Honestly with Bari Weiss, a podcast hosted by Bari Weiss, “The most interesting conversations in American life now happen in private.” These conversations are so interesting, we are meant to understand, because they…

The QAnon conspiracy narrative is built from absolutely insane pieces and lots of people believe in it. I knew that already. But it hits differently when you see it. Watching the first episodes of Q: Into the Storm on HBO and its depiction of totally…

TLDR: Definitely; Maybe It’s now widely known that the distinctive American style of zoning developed to segregate populations by race and class. By the late 19th century, the American upper and middle classes had already developed a pastoral,…

California Senate Bill 50, legislation developed by Scott Weiner, a pro-housing state senator, would have made it easier for developers to build new, dense housing near mass transit. Despite several major revisions, SB 50 failed to clear the senate…

It’s conventional wisdom that land use regulation, like zoning, is a “local issue.” It isn’t, really. As David Schleicher and I recently discussed, restrictive zoning regulations in cities across the country have an enormous macroeconomic impact. An…

California’s population is shrinking. The Los Angeles Times reported: California lost 182,083 people in 2020, though it remains the most populous state, with just under 39.5 million residents. The state will lose a congressional seat for the first…

Subscriber audio of “The Anti-Majoritarian Mistake,” Model Citizen, April 22, 2021

This Dispatch piece by Jonah Goldberg is extremely useful in illustrating the centrality of anti-majoritarianism on the right. Jonah has been a consistent critic of Trump and the GOP’s loony, violent, authoritarian turn. However, even the most…

This is my question: can we YIMBY harder? Many people are awakening to the enormous costs of restrictive municipal land use and zoning. But what can we do about it? Most assume that restrictive zoning and skyrocketing housing costs are local issues…

Subscriber audio of “Codifying the Big Lie,” Model Citizen, April 12, 2021

I’ve been trying to keep my cool, but the right’s defense of new Republican-authored laws regulating elections, such as the one recently established in Georgia, is so dishonest it’s hard to stay on an even keel. But I’m trying, man. I’m trying. It’s…