Free Republic

Worker unrest is on the rise at the Shanghai factory of a major supplier for Apple gadgets, with protests at times turning violent in response to draconian “COVID zero” lockdowns. Workers at the Quanta Computer plant — which makes Apple’s MacBook laptops — have been under strict lockdown for nearly two months with limited supplies as the Chinese government takes drastic measures to keep production online despite a recent COVID-19 case surge. But the fed-up employees – most of whom are low-wage earners – have reportedly started to revolt against the measures. The unrest has included violent confrontations involving hundreds...

It’s no wonder he chose to skip the Iowa caucus, given that former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg apparently thinks farmers and manufacturers all across America lack “gray matter." In a clip just now circulating online, Bloomberg, while speaking at Oxford’s Said Business School back in 2016, explained that "anybody [can] be a farmer," but that it takes "a lot more gray matter" to "think and analyze" enough to work in the tech field. “I could teach anybody – even people in this room, no offense intended – to be a farmer,” Bloomberg explained. “It's a process. You dig a hole,...

I recently read the new biography of Trotsky by Oxford don Robert Service, published in 2009 by Pan Books. It is well-written and surprisingly interesting. The book does a great public service in describing the life of the actual Trotsky, whose previous “biographies” were little more than hagiographies written by his toady worshippers (people like Isaac Deutscher). The last time that I had taken any interest in Trotsky was when I was a teenager and had fleeting delusions of believing in “socialism.” Reading the new book as an adult and as an economist, I found it a useful opportunity to...

Latin America: A weekend march by 5,000 Bolivians in favor of a free trade pact with the U.S. got little attention. But it was a clear signal to step up commerce in a troubled region we often don't know what to do about. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. The prospect of a growing free-trade movement, coming from humble factory workers, is startling. It surprised even other Bolivians who often hear anti-free trade rhetoric. After all, just about the only thing we ever hear about Bolivia is that a far-leftist, Evo Morales, leads in the presidential polls for...