I don't know why the subject came up, but one day my college roommate asked me if I realized that the Hungarian
city of Budapest was actually two places, Buda and Pest.
That didn't sound right to me, so I told him he was full of it.
It so happened that the only library that was open that night was quite a ways away, so in this pre-Internet age we had no choice but to make the trek.
All the way there he kept telling me that I could back out if I changed my mind. I stupidly persisted.
And sure enough, the book we consulted mentioned two separate towns, Buda and Pest.
Darn it.
But now, as I sit to write this to you, I read online that the towns were in fact united as Budapest in 1873, so why wasn't I in fact correct after all?
So: the Internet is a great advance. With it, I wouldn't have had to make that trek to the library, and I might have more efficiently tracked down the line of argument that may have vindicated me.
This is how I looked at the Internet as it began to develop: it's an amazing resource putting the knowledge of mankind at my fingertips, and liberating us all from constraints on free thought.
I wish I could still feel that way today.
Yes, the Internet continues to be a net plus.
But we've just endured the greatest public-health fiasco in the history of the world, and instead of helping us, the major powers on the Internet silenced the most prophetic and educated voices, leaving us at the mercy of quacks and hypochondriacs whose recommendations wrecked whole societies for no discernible result.
We've thereby established the precedent that the powers that be can shut down your business and ruin your life, and if you try to say anything about it they can shut you up, too.
Forget about whether these are "private companies." Is this a society in which you would care to live?
We've got some serious problems ahead of us, folks.
We have the aftermath of COVID. Then the spending and debt that grew rapidly in their wake. Then the schools -- which have somehow managed to become more propagandistic than ever. And so on.
How do we navigate these and other potential disasters so that we come out all right -- even prosperous -- on the other side?
These and other questions are what a docuseries called Endgame seeks to answer, and as you know, the old man here was interviewed for it. (As I told my other list, my mother says it was one of my best interviews ever.)
Until tonight, the whole series, along with a boatload of extras and bonuses, is available in a pretty attractive deal.
Enjoy:
Tom Woods