Brothers Judd Blog

If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)

2025

One Economy to Rule Them All Robotics/AI

INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE:


The end of the rip-off economy: From finance and medicine to used cars, artificial intelligence is radically improving market efficiency (The Econmist, 10/27/25)

IF YOU KNOW how to use artificial intelligence, it can save you a lot of time and money. Leasing a new car? Be sure to upload a photograph of the contract to ChatGPT first. Need help with a leaky tap? AI often understands the issue—and at a lower cost than a handyman. Parents with a fussy baby can now use chatbots to answer questions in seconds, rather than waiting for a doctor’s appointment. Giving Claude a PDF of a wine list is a great way to find the best-value bottles.

These examples add up to something bigger. As AI goes mainstream, it will remove one of the most enduring distortions in modern capitalism: the information advantages that sellers, service providers and intermediaries enjoy over consumers. When everyone has a genius in their pocket, they will be less vulnerable to mis-selling—benefiting them and improving overall economic efficiency. The “rip-off economy”, in which firms profit from opacity, confusion or inertia, is meeting its match.

Information advantages have existed for as long as markets themselves. In medieval England grocers used fake scales to dupe customers; pub landlords put salt in beer to make patrons thirstier. Such squalid practices are not just annoying. In a paper published in 1970, George Akerlof, a Nobel-prizewinning economist, discussed the market for used cars. It is hard for a buyer to know if such a car works properly or is a “lemon” with hidden problems. Buyers thus assume the worst. As a result, honest brokers, worried about being suspected of exploitative behaviour, stay away. The quality of service declines. Fewer consumers fulfil their needs.

The internet has made it harder to screw over customers. With Carfax and other providers of vehicle data, customers can check the history of a vehicle, overcoming some of the problems identified by Mr Akerlof. Taxi drivers now struggle to take people on circuitous but profitable routes, since apps such as Lyft and Uber tell them exactly where to go. Tripadvisor, a reviews website, sends tourists to restaurants that will provide a decent meal. In the early 2000s there were more than 20 branches of Angus and Aberdeen Steak Houses, a notorious tourist trap, in London. Today there are four, and the ones that remain are better than before.

Efficiency is deflationary.

Israel/Palestine

A RACE OR A RELIGION?:


The assassination that changed Israel forever (Yossi Melman, 2 November 2025, The Spectator)

After the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993, right-wing circles – especially among Jewish settlers – launched a public campaign that grew increasingly aggressive. What began as verbal incitement soon escalated into physical violence and criminal acts.

Itamar Ben-Gvir – today Israel’s minister of national security – was then a young disciple of the extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, who preached Jewish supremacy. Ben-Gvir infamously tore the Cadillac emblem off Rabin’s car and declared before television cameras: ‘We got to the symbol – and we’ll get to him too.’ At several demonstrations, protesters came dangerously close to physically attacking Rabin.

Riding that wave of incitement were senior opposition figures from the Likud party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu was among the most prominent voices fanning the flames. He marched at the head of a demonstration where protesters carried a coffin bearing Rabin’s name.

At a major rally in Jerusalem’s Zion Square, weeks before the assassination, Likud leaders stood on a balcony – among them Netanyahu, who delivered a fiery speech; Ariel Sharon, and others. When posters depicting Rabin in an SS uniform began circulating in the crowd, some Likud leaders, including future prime minister Ehud Olmert, realised the rally was spiraling out of control and left the scene. Netanyahu stayed.

After the assassination, Ami Ayalon was appointed head of the Shin Bet, replacing the failed Carmi Gillon. Ayalon told me last week bluntly that the politicians on the balcony may not have intended Rabin’s death, but their presence – without condemning the sights and chants of the rally – granted legitimacy to extremists. ‘It’s always the minority that acts,’ he observed.

The justice system also failed to act. Although 340 cases of incitement and violence were opened, prosecutors and judges dragged their feet – even after Rabin himself appealed to Supreme Court President Aharon Barak to intervene. ‘Our approach,’ admitted then–Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair, ‘was to show tolerance toward free speech and the right to protest. In retrospect, that was a mistake.’

Ironically, there was a brief time when they could have escaped their spiral out of the West, when Sharon was in power and realized Israel was best served by Palestinian statehood. His stroke was the real disaster.

End of History Latin America

hISTORY eNDS EVERYWHERE:

Javier Milei’s Great Opportunity (José Papparelli, Nov 1, 2025, The European Conservative)

The overwhelming and unexpected electoral victory achieved by the ruling party unquestionably signalled renewed confidence from the electorate in the government project. The alliance La Libertad Avanza obtained almost 41% of the votes at the national level, surpassing Fuerza Patria by nine points: 9,337,665 libertarian votes against 7,276,429 of the Kirchnerist Peronism.

The extent of the victory is stunning: La Libertad Avanza has become the most voted-for force at the national level, and it won in 16 districts. Milei swept Peronism away, with hardly anybody foreseeing it. His movement managed to win even in the province of Buenos Aires, a historic Peronist bastion, today submerged in misery, corruption, and violence, with an absolute lack of public security that its citizens suffer daily.

At the polls the majority of Argentines have made clear what they do not want, what they categorically reject: to continue being governed by Kirchnerism. In the last twenty-two years, Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015), and Alberto Fernández (2019-2023) have passed through the Casa Rosada, the historic headquarters of Argentine presidents. These two decades of misgovernance have left the country mired in the most shameful poverty and geopolitically aligned with some of the most repugnant narco-dictatorships and tyrannies in the world.

One of the many possible readings of the election results is that, beyond the economic difficulties still faced by a large part of the Argentine people, thanks to the incipient and complex application of a political model defined as liberal-libertarian, the population has embraced the government’s plan. By contrast, all the opposition offered was to “unseat Milei” and put an end to the government “no matter what” by boycotting and permanently blocking any economic measure aimed at the capitalization of the economy, macroeconomic consolidation, and the end of the fiscal deficit, the adjustment of unnecessary spending, and the elimination of monetary issuance as a tool to cover the deficit and sustain inflation.

It is crucial to bear in mind that the government’s economic policies have been validated by the result.

Robotics/AI

HOLD THE SABOTS!:

AI Pessimism Fades as Reality Takes Hold (Brent Orrell, 10/30/25, AEIdeas)

In a large-scale Harvard Business School survey of 2,357 adults evaluating AI usage in 940 occupations, they found that reactions depend on how AI’s role is described. When AI was presented as a tool that augments rather than replaces human labor, a majority of Americans supported its use in 94 percent of occupations. Even when AI was described as fully automating core job tasks, respondents favored its use in 58 percent of occupations if it could outperform humans at a lower cost.

The key is specificity. When AI’s potential benefits are explained concretely—faster diagnoses, fewer repetitive tasks and injuries, better scheduling—attitudes shift from fear to interest. In the abstract, AI feels threatening; in context, it often looks like a gift.

Anglospherics

THE UNIVERSA:ISM THAT MAGA FINDS INTOLERABLE:

The Fabric of America… ‘Liberty and Justice for All’: America’s Pledge of Allegiance is a far weightier philosophical proposition than is likely recognized by those who recite it routinely. (F. Andrew Wolf Jr., October 27, 2025, American Spectator)

What is so compelling about Bellamy’s words is their affirmation of universal principles. They arrive late in the piece, but they pack a powerful philosophical punch.

Two principles are given voice: liberty and justice, but it’s the ending to the pledge — “liberty and justice for all” — that transforms abstract concepts into concrete obligations which the state has a responsibility to affect for all Americans.

When we recite the pledge we are exclaiming to the world this is who we are as Americans and what we stand for: we are both promising to be loyal to “the Republic for which it [the flag] stands” and our government is charged with the responsibility to provide us “with liberty and justice for all,” in whatever form that obligation might take.

Through the pledge, liberty and justice become tangible responsibilities which our government, bound by constitutional restraint through the Bill of Rights, is charged to honor and respect.

Baseball

OUR TEACHERS WERE GASLIGHTING US:

When Baseball Threw Physics a Curve (Brad Bolman, 10.22.25, Pioneer Works)


In October 1877, the Cincinnati Enquirer hosted a debate between two physics professors in Ohio over a broiling national controversy: Was there such a thing as a curveball?

Pitchers claimed they were throwing them, batters claimed they were missing them, and fans claimed they were seeing them, but a chorus of doubters argued that the “curved ball” was a physical and scientific impossibility. On one side of the Enquirer debate was Orange Nash Stoddard, a distinguished science professor at Wooster University, lovingly nicknamed the “Little Wizard” by students. On the other was Robert White McFarland, a mathematician and civil engineer at Ohio Agricultural, which we now know as Ohio State. Stoddard’s position: “There is no such thing.” McFarland’s: “There is a curve.”

At the end of the nineteenth century, baseball was rapidly professionalizing and growing in popularity. For many, its geometric diamond arrangement and the spectacular physics of bat and ball made it a truly scientific sport. In turn, fans, players, commentators, and even natural scientists used baseball to test theories about the natural world. How far could a hit ball travel? Could a thrown ball really curve? Although debates over the curve are known to fans and sports historians alike, they are usually understood in a narrative of progress: an old misperception of physics that inevitably gave way to scientific truth. But the curveball debate was more than that. It was an argument about the contours of our shared reality. Could baseballs really bend along their path, or was it all a collective delusion?

Sport

CAN’T HELP BUT BE MORE ENTERTAINING THAN FOOTBALL:

‘Horsepower, Gravity and Grit’: Why We’re Obsessed With the Wild Winter Sport of Skijoring: This once-niche cowboy ski-racing sport is going big this winter with its first pro tour across the Wes (Madison Dapcevich, October 28, 2025, Outside)


Cowboy boots and ski pants go together about as well as Gore-Tex bibs with a fur coat. It’s an unlikely combo—that is, unless you plan to go skijoring. (And trust me, you’re going to want to ride this trend.)

Skijoring is a high-adrenaline, low-temperature sport that involves a horse and its rider pulling a skier through a snow-packed obstacle course at full speed. For most Rocky Mountain towns, skijoring is a familiar winter activity typically accompanied by hot apple cider, slushy walkways, and crisp breaths. But in a post-Beyoncé cowboy core world, it should come as no surprise that wild western winter sport has joined the mainstream crowds.

Robotics/AI

IT’LL NEVER FLY, ORVILLE:

Q&A: How speciality retailers are winning the holiday season with agility and AI (yDr. Tim Sandle, October 28, 2025, Digital Journal)

Stern: Independent retailers plan for the holidays with precision, not prediction. They don’t have the purchasing power or storage space typically needed to pre-purchase on a large scale before the holidays. Their budgets are tighter, which forces smarter buying: every order has to earn its place on the shelf, and business owners have to be flexible to find the right product at the right price.

What’s changed in the past few years is how technology makes that kind of precision possible. AI tools can now surface insights that used to take hours of manual tracking: showing which products are trending, how pricing shifts might affect demand, or when to reorder based on sell-through velocity. For a specialty retailer, that kind of intelligence helps them compete with enterprise retailers that have dedicated analytics teams. This technology gives small retailers the same visibility into market trends and customer behavior that big chains have, but with the speed and context that fits how they actually operate.

Identitarianism

WHY ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY FAILURE WHEN I CAN BLAME A “THEM”?:

The New Medievals: The bones of our conspiracies haven’t changed, though their details are different. (Claire Lehmann, 10/27/25, The Dispatch))

We crave narratives that make the world legible, particularly in times of instability or flux. In psychological experiments conducted by Adam Galinsky and Jennifer Whitson in 2008, it was found that people who were made to feel powerless began to see patterns that were not there. Participants were asked to recall a moment in their lives when they felt powerless; afterward, they were shown random visual “static” images or sequences of stock data and asked to identify patterns. Those who had been primed to feel powerless were far more likely to report seeing shapes, trends, or connections that didn’t exist. “Participants who lacked control were more likely to perceive a variety of illusory patterns, including seeing images in noise, forming illusory correlations in stock market information, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions,” the authors wrote. Another 2020 study found that a sense of a lack of agency also predicted belief in Jewish conspiracy.

The conspiracist’s worldview transforms chaos into drama and tragedy into design. It restores meaning to a confusing world by insisting that every disaster, every death, every downturn must have a reason.

One Economy to Rule Them All

THIS IS EARLY STAGE CAPITALISM:

Four Ways You’re Living Better Than Ever: From your life expectancy to your home to your grocery cart, living standards have soared. But continued growth isn’t guaranteed. (Donald J. Boudreaux, October 23, 2025, Daily Economy)

One could go on, of course. Almost needless to say – but I’ll say it nevertheless – in 1975 almost no one owned a personal computer, and absolutely no one owned a smartphone. There was no Internet for ordinary people. Commercial air travel (which was still heavily regulated) was a luxury. Automobiles had no backup cameras, navigation screens, or keyless features. There was no streaming music. Most Americans had a choice of a whopping four broadcast television channels – and all television was low-def. Coffee quality was poor and the selection of beer was minuscule. There was no LASIK surgery. And luggage was true to its name: unable to roll, it had to be lugged. This list could be greatly extended.

There is simply no truth to the countless claims that Americans have been economically impoverished over the past few decades by freer trade and globalization.

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