…urities and (perceived) inability to cope with existence. Just ignore such people. Their internal conflicts need not hold sway over your conclusions about anything. Be sure to “friend” Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Rehoboth Beach DE). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest…. Continue reading →

…e occasional and unfortunate natural disaster, and leaving aside war, there is never a prolonged shortage of goods in a free society. The best antidote to shortages is hands-off capitalism. Capitalism leaves the best and brightest free to produce for us all, under the motive of profit. Capitalism delivers the goods. Sorting out your trash is nothing more than an obsessive-compulsive ritual designed to make a statement for those who hate capitalism… Continue reading →

…idden and repressive. Let’s get real about oil companies for a moment. Oil companies compete for a profit. Like any private entity — and unlike the government — they face liability. If they make a mistake, they pay for it in reduced profits and (worst case) insolvency and bankruptcy. If they harm private property or public utilities such as drinking water (one reason given against the Keystone pipeline), they will face legal liability. Private com… Continue reading →

…ronment, and suit it to their purposes. The other approach is to leave the environment alone — completely alone being the ideal — and do as little as possible to tarnish or “despoil” it. The hard fact in play is that billions of people cannot continue to survive on planet earth unless engineers, entrepreneurs, profit-makers, producers and others make life as habitable and as comfortable for human beings as possible. A case in point has to do with… Continue reading →

…a row in which all 20 acting nominees are white. Charlotte Rampling is the latest actress to weigh in on the race row that has erupted over this year’s Academy Awards. Rampling, 69, who is nominated for the Best Actress Award for her role in “45 Years,” called the decision by some actors to boycott the Oscars “anti-white racism.” “Maybe this time, no black actor or actress deserved to make it to the final selection,” she said during an interview o… Continue reading →

…in this reasoning: The thousands of cases where people DO wear masks, and test positive for COVID anyway; the many false positives with COVID testing; group think (“Everyone else seems to think this, so it must be true”); the thousands of cases where people do NOT wear masks, and still do NOT get COVID. Motivation for confirmation bias: ignorance; lack of intelligence; sheer stupidity; political bias (e.g., irrational hatred of Trump); or a psych… Continue reading →

…aises of. The only level playing field is one in which everyone is equally free to compete and produce. If everyone has an equal right to sell his product and keep whatever he earns from it, then the field is level. Level fields and level outcomes, of course, are not the same thing. If an outcome is more favorable for one business than another business, then it’s because the one business satisfied more customers, in a more efficient way, than did… Continue reading →