Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Jul 2025The Handy Gun was introduced by Harrington & Richardson in 1924. H&R took their Model 1915 single-barrel break-action shotgun and cut it down into a handgun. It got a pistol grip and an 8″ barrel, and was offered in both .410 and 28 gauge (the .410 model also able to fire some .44-caliber single-bullet cartridges). A 12″ version was also made, to be legal in a few states that had length restrictions. It was advertised specifically for personal protection, probably exploiting the common belief that one need not aim a shotgun at close range.
In 1931 H&R attempted to pivot the Handy Gun into the target pistol space, introducing .22LR and .32 S&W models with rifled barrels. These didn’t sell very well, as there were many other, better options for target pistols. A detachable wire stock was introduced in 1933, but this didn’t help much either.
Ultimately the National Firearms Act of 1934 conclusively killed off the Handy Gun (along with similar products from other companies, like Ithaca’s “Auto & Burglar”). That law categorized smoothbore pistols as “Any Other Weapons”, and subjected them to NFA registration with a $200 tax on their manufacture and a $5 tax on their transfer. This overhead destroyed demand for the gun, and the company simply ceased to offer it commercially. It did continue to be sold in Canada until World War Two however as Canadian law did not restrict it at that time. Total production was about 54,000.
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December 2, 2025
H&R Handy Gun: A Smoothbore Pistol Killed Off by the NFA
November 28, 2025
Social media isn’t completely a depressing waste of time
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Devon Eriksen reacts to a political hack who wants to impose regulations on social media that would allow him to shut down people who criticize him and other swamp creatures:
We all know what’s really going on here.
Utah senator John Curtis, and other political hacks like him, are getting their boomer asses handed to them on social media.
They long for the days of television, when they could control the narrative by having a cozy relationship with the networks, and so they could lie to you without fear of contradiction by some autist named @DataRepublican whose existence is solely defined by her full-time hobby of sniffing out lying dirtbags.
So they want to pass a bunch of laws to make the internet behave like television. To filter it all through a set of major website choke-points that they can control by threatening the corporate entities that run them.
Long, complicated, and vaguely defined liability laws are a tool to do that.
Basically what they do is allow John Curtis to put any website out of business if people say mean things about him on it, such as pointing out that he looks like some kind of deranged and malevolent goblin that just crawled out of a swamp.
The problem he has right now is that when I say stuff like that on Twitter, I’m the one who said it.
Not Twitter.
There’s nothing he can do to me. Because even if I get hit by a unmarked sedan tomorrow in a totally unrelated accident, there’s a million more people like me who are only too happy to point out that John Curtis looks like a deranged and malevolent goblin that just crawled out of a swamp.
So he wants legal tools to punish Twitter for what I said.
So how does he go about that? What is a deranged and malevolent goblin, with a “business management” degree, and a history of changing political parties when convenient, to do?
Why, muddy the waters with vague platitudes about “safety”, of course.
Except we’ve heard that song before, and we’re not interested. So let us laugh at him, remind him that he looks like a deranged and malevolent goblin that just crawled out of a swamp, and mock until he goes back to doing what he normally does, which is shilling for the “Fairness For High Skilled Immigrants Act”.
And then we can eventually replace him with someone who cares about fairness to actual fucking Americans.
Update, 29 November: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
November 22, 2025
Democrats may come to regret their “refuse illegal orders” messaging
Many current and former military folks ridiculed the Democrats for their sudden discovery of the right (and obligation) to refuse illegal orders … which has been part of western military doctrine since the end of World War Two. I poked some fun at them as well, but J.D. Tuccille points out that it’s a weird stance for the party that is always fully in favour of government agents’ maximizing their powers:
I favor government employees defying orders and sabotaging the instruments of the state as much as the next libertarian (well, maybe a little more). But I suspect the Democratic lawmakers urging members of the military and the intelligence community to “refuse illegal orders” haven’t entirely thought through their positions. While their advice is commendable so far as it goes, as officials of a political party known for its expansive view of the role of government their words are likely to come back and bite them on their collective asses. It’s hard to imagine them being so enthusiastic about a reboot of this message directed at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and IRS agents under a Democratic administration.
Lawmakers Say: Refuse Illegal Orders
In a video message released this week, Democratic Sens. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Reps. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, and Jason Crow of Colorado, introduce themselves with emphasis on their past roles in the military and intelligence agencies.
“We want to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community,” they say. “We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military, but that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens. Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution. And right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.”
That’s a nice lead-in. Then we get to the heart of the message: “Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”
Stirring stuff. And accurate. Referencing a Vietnam War-era atrocity, retired General Philip M. Breedlove, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, told NewsNation regarding the video, “Since My Lai, the way we have interpreted this is, as a combatant, as a military officer, you are not obligated, not obligated, to carry out an illegal or an immoral order. You simply refuse the order.”
[…]
Take Advice to Refuse Illegal Orders Seriously, and Apply It Universally
So, if we’re to take seriously — and I believe we are well-advised to do so — the six Democratic lawmakers’ advice that “no one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution,” there are interesting implications for our political culture. That’s because much of what the federal government does on a daily basis flouts constitutional protections and offends human decency.
So, how would Slotkin and Kelly, and Deluzio, Goodlander, Houlahan, and Crow, respond to campaign a few years from now under the next Democratic administration urging ATF and IRS agents, federal regulators, and general workers to refuse orders? How would they treat an attempt to recruit more whistleblowers like Manning and Edward Snowden?
Don’t get me wrong, I think the advice the lawmakers offer is praiseworthy. But I look forward to seeing it applied universally and becoming a permanent feature of our dealings with government. I suspect that likelihood hasn’t occurred to those six legislators, but thanks to them for showing the way.
In counterpoint to my original take on the issue, on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Cynical Publius expresses his belief that the Democrats are actually encouraging disobedience to legal orders that they happen to dislike:
I’m not sure I’ve ever been angrier at Democrats than I am right now.
As a career Army officer, I take this latest nefarious chicanery from these filthy Congressional Democrat veterans quite personally,
It is loathsome and disgusting. You know, I know, they know and even their brainwashed acolytes know that what they are REALLY doing is encouraging active duty service members to refuse to follow lawful orders under the guise of pretending the orders are “unlawful”.
What these Democrat filth are doing is encouraging a form of military coup where service members get to decide not to do things they disagree with politically by pretending those otherwise lawful things are “unlawful”.
This is the greatest threat to US internal stability since the last time Democrats started a civil war. A military ruled by politics is no military at all. Instead, it is a group of armed thugs akin to the South American military juntas of the 1970s.
I cannot overstate what an extreme threat this situation is to our nation.
This is a precursor to civil war, initiated and deliberately created by traitorous elected officials hiding behind the honor of the uniform they once wore but now disgraced.
I have never been angrier.🤬
Ottawa is working hard … to keep beef prices high for consumers
It’s not your imagination, beef is still much more expensive than it used to be (we no longer buy any “good” cuts of meat, settling for ground beef and “stewing beef” when we do the shopping). But rest assured, the feds are working diligently … to prevent beef prices from falling:
We recently received information from a reliable industry source about how the federal government is administering beef import permits. If accurate, it raises serious concerns about whether Ottawa is knowingly sustaining an outdated and opaque system that keeps beef prices unnecessarily high. At a time when many families are struggling with food costs, this is more than a bureaucratic issue — it directly affects affordability.
Canada’s beef import rules operate under a tariff-rate quota system. A limited volume of beef can enter the country at a low tariff, but anything beyond that is slapped with a steep import charge. When supply tightens or when specialty products are required, supplemental import permits are meant to provide flexibility and help stabilize the market. For years, the system worked reasonably well.
But the structure behind the process has not kept pace with today’s realities. The committee originally created to provide guidance — the Beef and Veal Tariff Rate Quota Advisory Committee — has not met since 2015. For a decade, no formal mechanism has existed for importers, retailers, or independent distributors to participate in discussions with government about how permits are allocated. Instead, decisions have shifted informally toward a small group of influential players, including major domestic processors who have a vested interest in limiting imports. The transparency and balance once built into the system have eroded.
Adding to this complexity is the broader concentration of market power in the sector. Beef packing and processing in Canada is dominated by two foreign-owned private companies: Cargill, based in the United States, and JBS, headquartered in Brazil. Together, they control the overwhelming majority of beef slaughter and processing in this country. When a sector is this concentrated, and when a federal system restricts competition through import controls, the beneficiaries are obvious. Any policy that tightens import access — intentionally or not — further entrenches the dominance of these two multinational giants.
The consequences are no longer theoretical. Our source described a case where a long-established importer has beef sitting in bonded storage in Canada. The product is legally imported and properly documented. The importer applied for a supplemental permit to release it into the market at the regular tariff rate. The application was refused. The justification offered — that the beef had been purchased abroad at a price “too low” compared with U.S. prices — makes little economic sense. The product did not come from the U.S., and competitive pricing has never been grounds for rejecting a permit. With no permit, the importer must wait until the next quota year or pay the full over-quota tariff. Ironically, the only reason paying the tariff is even possible now is because beef prices have climbed so sharply. The federal government, of course, collects that tariff revenue.
Cases like this raise an uncomfortable question: does Ottawa actually want to keep beef prices high? If the goal were genuinely affordability, the government could issue supplemental permits when supply conditions justify them. It could restore a functioning advisory committee to ensure balanced input. It could provide clear and transparent criteria for permit decisions. Instead, legitimate requests are rejected, supply is restricted even when product is physically present in the country, and both processors and Ottawa benefit from elevated prices.
November 18, 2025
Canada’s major projects announcements are an economic “hostage release” program
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, David Knight Legg vents about Dear Leader Carney’s penchant for even-more-Trudeauesque-than-Justin performative governing. Far more emphasis is put on the PR value of an announcement than on the common sense practicality of the thing being announced. And Carney is also starting to re-announce already announced “projects” as if speaking it aloud will magically manifest it into reality:
Canada’s major projects announcements are a national embarrassment — an economic “hostage release” program — that tells the world just how uninvestible Canada has become under the Liberal party.
1970s central planning Liberal govt arrogance is at an all time GDP destroying high.
Try naming another OECD nation (we’re at the bottom now) where the press waits with bated breath for a “dear leader” politician who has never built anything in his life to fly in to grant a bureaucratic benediction on a few projects his bureaucrats will allow past the gate of the caps, taxes, green rules and red tape his govt imposes on everything.
Idea: set up the Major Dumb Redtape office in Calgary instead and get rid of the 10 anti-business rules written into law by the Montreal green alarmist fringe that’s holding Canadian energy, ag, forestry, and manufacturing back while other nations grow …
But PM Carney seems to like his bureaucratic power over what used to be a leading free market economy. Even while our GDP grinds down to the worst in the OECD.
The arrogance is breathtaking.
So is the ineptitude. This same central planning genius just punched a record new $78billiom hole through our public finances because he can’t manage basic public service delivery without more crushing debt.
The budget is a train wreck solidifying the final year of a Liberal decade steeply eroding purchasing power, national wealth, personal security and living standards and public services.
The irony is that this has driven Canada to ever-greater 51st state economic dependency. Donald Trump didn’t do that. They did.
But he’s been a too-convenient way to con the elderly with “elbows up” PR.
But should the next generation really be forced to lend this govt another $78bn in addition to the 1 trillion they’ve already taken to fund their failed decade of central planning, green slush funds and EV mandates while real infrastructure projects wait years for the Liberal party to bless them?
It’s not going to last.
Fitch just questioned the sustainability of all this. Unlike our lacklustre press they aren’t buying “net debt” or “operating/investment” Liberal financial illiteracy.
I had high hopes PM Carney would return fiscal sanity to Canada after openly borrowing Conservative policies to get elected by cutting the carbon and cap gains taxes.
But this budget, this major projects farce and his inability to kill a dozen economy killing rules of his own govt is showing the work how uninvestible Canada has become — and it’s accelerating national economic decline.
2026 is the end of the Liberal lost decade. First recession. Then debt downgrade. Then an election. And Carney can go back offshore to his assets and all the other global investors who like him don’t invest in Canada under Liberal mismanagement.
@SteveSaretsky thx for the brilliant line chart as usual.
A day later, after his post got significant attention on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, he posted this follow-up:
This angry post I wrote a day ago got 300,000 views.
Canadians are tired of the fake “major projects” PR by the same people who prevented those projects for a decade with their green taxes and prohibitions.
Announcing the release of 7 hostage projects is a joke. Some of these projects aren’t major and most aren’t new. None needed the govt to do anything but get out of the way from the beginning.
All the several hundred major projects still in purgatory need is for this govt to reverse their anti-job and anti-infrastructure tanker ban, industrial carbon tax, emissions cap, and electricity regs.
Oh — and also clarify by law that in Canada property rights are not overridden by leftist judges and UN wishful thinking.
Then get out of the way so a couple trillion dollars can flow in, major projects can get built and the govt revenue will flow to better public services — and to pay down that debt they just added $78bn to.
October 30, 2025
Unlabelled cloned meat – coming soon to Canadian grocery stores
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois on a recent Health Canada decision to allow cloned meat to be sold in Canada with no label to differentiate it from ordinary meat:
Sometimes the most significant food-policy changes happen not with a bang, but with a bureaucratic whisper.
According to Health Canada’s own consultation documents, Ottawa intends to remove foods derived from cloned cattle and swine from its “novel foods” list — the very process that requires a pre-market safety review and triggers public disclosure. Once this policy takes effect, cloned-animal products could enter the Canadian food supply without announcement, notice, or label.
From a regulatory standpoint, this looks like an efficiency measure. From a consumer-trust standpoint, it’s a miscalculation.
Health Canada’s rationale is familiar: cloned animals and their offspring are, by composition, indistinguishable from conventional ones. Therefore, the logic goes, they should be treated the same. The problem isn’t the science — it’s the silence.
Canadians are not being told that the rules governing a deeply controversial technology are about to change. No press release, no public statement, just a quiet update on a government website most citizens will never read.
Cloning, after all, is not about making food cheaper or more nutritious. It’s a genetic management tool for breeders and biotech firms — a way to reproduce elite animals with prized traits. The clones themselves rarely end up on the dinner plate; their offspring do. The benefits, if any, are indirect: perhaps steadier production, fewer losses from disease, or marginally more uniform quality.
But the consumer sees no gain at checkout. Cloning is costly and yields no visible improvement in taste, nutrition, or price. The average shopper might one day unknowingly buy steak from the offspring of a cloned cow — and pay the same, if not more, for it.
And without labels, any potential efficiencies or cost savings stay hidden upstream. When products born from new technologies are mixed with conventional ones, consumers lose their ability to differentiate, reward innovation, or make an informed choice. In the end, industry keeps the savings, while shoppers see none.
October 10, 2025
The federal government’s gun “buyback” program pilot in Nova Scotia
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Tim Thurley responds to a report about the gun “buyback” pilot program:
This reads like a government flailing for a message. We know this is incorrect, the Minister knows it is incorrect, and we know the Minister knows it is incorrect, and yet.
(The “Ensure…” section is also painful to read, but that’s another matter.)
He’s suggesting the risk is posed by stolen firearms. Not only do we know this is a small portion of risk — and easily substituted by other sources — but to say we must confiscate your property because someone else might misuse it sounds an awful lot like victim blaming.
Nobody bought an AR-15 under the assumption it was legal when they bought it (unless FRT banned, then it gets complex).
If a licensed user bought and registered it pre-OIC (or just bought if non-restricted) then it was legal when they bought it, period. No assumptions needed.
A rebate is also incorrect. A rebate is something a customer gets back after purchase.
They get to keep both the rebate and the product.
The part about only getting some money back is at least accurate.
The government is not offering full compensation for many users based on the list prices, and has reiterated that it does not plan to offer further compensation once the initial pot runs out.
September 20, 2025
QotD: Why modern dishwashers suck
The current standards for dishwashers took effect in 2013. The standards, which were based on a consensus agreement between manufacturers and efficiency advocates, specify minimum energy and water efficiency levels. The standards require that standard-size dishwashers use no more than 307 kWh per year and 5.0 gallons of water per cycle.
In 2024, DOE finalized amended standards for dishwashers based on a joint recommendation from manufacturers and efficiency advocates. The new standards for dishwashers will cost-effectively reduce energy consumption by 15% relative to the current standards while also cutting water waste. Dishwashers
It is a general problem, but what started me thinking about it was being told by my dishwasher that it would take three and a half hours to wash the dishes. That seems, judging by a quick search online, to be longer than average but still within the normal range. I have not been able to find figures online for how long dishwashers took twenty or thirty years ago but, by what I remember, it was substantially less — and the dishes ended up dry, which ours don’t.
The explanation is in the final word of the quote above, “waste”. The owners of dishwashers pay for water and power, so if making them more efficient in those dimensions was costless, did not require giving up something else, there would be no need for the Department of Energy to make the manufacturers do it. I conclude that it was not costless, that it either made dishwashers cost more or do their job less well — take longer, not dry the dishes as well, not clean them as well. Using more power or water to do a better job is not waste.
David Friedman, “Optimizing On A Single Variable”, David Friedman’s Substack, 2025-06-02.
September 9, 2025
Uh-oh. It’s not a good sign to see your town’s name in Not the Bee
We’ve lived in Bowmanville for ten years and in that time the demographics have changed substantially. Some of those changes have been positive, but others have definitely been negative:
Video out of Bowmanville, Ontario, shows Southeast Asian men (do with that what you will) flipping salmon out of a small stream during the annual salmon run back to their spawning locations.
Early September is peak salmon-fishing season. Fisherman across the continent catch millions of fish as they return upriver to spawn.
But it is highly illegal to catch salmon near their actual spawning sites (especially with nets), which includes Bowmanville (upriver from Lake Ontario). It is also unsafe, as the fish die off in mass numbers after spawning, making the meat inedible.
Despite this, migrants have been seen poaching fish in the area for several years (at least).
In the comment section, some people shared stories of their own, including this anecdote from Port Hope, Ontario.
Over the summer, SE Asian men went viral in Muskoka, Ontario, for filming themselves shooting up a local bridge and river. Locals say they have reported such incidents for years, but despite the danger and the leftover environmental pollution, authorities have been slow to act.
September 7, 2025
Long before the “Bad Orange Man”, there was “T.R.”
In the Coolidge Review, Amity Shlaes points out some strong similarities between Donald Trump’s career and that of the Bull Moose himself, Theodore Roosevelt:
Though a century apart—TR served from 1901 to 1909 — these two chief executives have favored the same modus operandi: using unpredictability to amass power. And the record of Theodore Rex, as Edmund Morris titled his TR biography, bodes ill for both the economy and the Republican Party.
The Trump-TR Parallels
But to the similarities. They start, for both men, pre–White House. As Trump did, TR staged his pre-presidential efforts as much with an eye to public recognition as to sustained reform or strengthening institutions.
Whenever TR stumbled, he pivoted to a new venture and publicized it like mad, though the medium in those days was the printed word, not season after season on The Apprentice. Before the cognoscenti had even absorbed the meaning of the young Roosevelt’s humiliating fourth-place score in a key 1886 New York City mayoral contest, for example, TR was off to the Badlands, memorializing his ranching experiences in dispatches and books such as Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail.
As Trump does, TR routinely alienated GOP grandees, circumventing them to get ahead. As Trump has, TR skillfully cultivated the media — so skillfully that members of Congress were left trying catch up with whatever shifts in public opinion resulted from the politician’s press alliances. TR’s Rupert Murdoch was the widely syndicated William Allen White of Kansas’s influential Emporia Gazette. TR’s equivalent of Fox News was the New York Journal, whose owner, William Randolph Hearst, drummed a steady beat of support when Roosevelt called for war against Spain.
Today, Murdoch must be scratching his head over what his showcasing Trump has wrought, especially now that Trump decided to sue both Murdoch and his Wall Street Journal. White, too, found that he had second thoughts about his decision to back TR: “Roosevelt bit me and I went mad,” White reportedly told a colleague.
[…]
BULLY
The occupant of what he labeled the Bully Pulpit — “bully” as in “excellent” — proved a literal bully as well.
As president, TR perpetually unnerved fellow Republicans, pivoting back to domestic politics. As Trump has, TR cast his campaigns in moral terms rather than economic ones. Where Trump launched his tariff war, TR made war against trusts, large combinations of companies. Relying more on whim than statute, Roosevelt segregated trusts into “good trusts” and “bad trusts”.
TR targeted an invincible-looking industry that, in those days, mattered as much as the interstate highways, or the internet, do today: railroads. James Hill’s Great Northern Railway took over a struggling competitor, Northern Pacific. Roosevelt asked Hanna what he made of the combined entity, Great Northern Securities. Hanna replied that it was “the very best thing possible for the future of the whole Northwest territory”. Roosevelt nonetheless sicced the Justice Department on the Great Northern.
J. Pierpont Morgan, a participant in the beleaguered deal, called on the president to inquire, as desperate steel importers these days do from time to time, whether their attorneys might work out the matter behind the scenes.
No.
Next, the disconcerted Morgan asked whether other investments of the House of Morgan might be assailed. Roosevelt’s reply captures the chill of arbitrary leadership. The administration would not go after the other Morgan companies, he said — unless “they have done something we regard as wrong”.
As Edmund Morris reports in Theodore Rex, to observers such as French ambassador Jules Jusserand, Roosevelt seemed “more powerful than a king”. That power suited many voters fine, which is why Roosevelt won so headily when he ran for office on his own in 1904.
Of course TR, like Trump, occasionally supported laws that aligned with his impulses. One example is the Elkins Act of 1903, which made it illegal for railroads to charge different freight rates for different customers. This shallow effort to achieve market “fairness” deprived the railroads of a standard business tool: the ability to provides discounts to those who buy the product in larger quantities. Shares in railroads promptly dropped more than 20 percent, a shift that undermined TR’s premise of railroad invincibility.
August 26, 2025
“One of the top tips for having a decent country is never, ever, allow the fuckwits to gain power”
If you need to drop someone off at London’s Gatwick Airport, you’ll find yourself facing a £7 charge for the privilege, no matter what day of the week or time of day you choose. Tim Worstall explains why:
“Gatwick Airport, North Terminal” by Martin Roell from Berlin, Germany is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 
.
It’s sod all to do with congestion and everything to do with the tractor production statistics the fuckwits have imposed upon the airport.
The conditions attached by the transport secretary included national landscape provisions as per the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023, more consideration for sustainability in buildings design and additional pollution-related mitigation measures.
The government said in its formal response to the Planning Inspectorate’s recommendations on the Gatwick DCO that it wanted more detail on how it would achieve its commitment of 54% of passengers arriving at the airport via rail within the first year of dual runway operations, which could be by the end of this decade.
The government has a target. That 54% of the arrivals at an airport — yes, an airport, where people get on jet planes — must be by public transport. Therefore the airport is charging for car drop offs in order to decrease the number of car drop offs. There is no more reason than that. Or, as up at the top, the reason there’s a £7 drop off charge at Gatwick Airport is because we are ruled by the fuckwits who have a target for public transport to an airport where people then get on jet planes.
London Gatwick has also accepted a requirement to have 54% of passengers using public transport prior to bringing the Northern Runway into operation and has reiterated the need for third parties, including the Department for Transport, to support delivery of the necessary conditions and improvements required to meet this target. This would include, for example, reinstating the full Gatwick Express train service.
Given the reliance on other parties to achieve this 54% target, should it not be achieved then London Gatwick has also proposed an alternative cars-on-the-road limit to be met before first use of the Northern Runway to address concerns about possible road congestion. Furthermore, if neither the 54% transport mode share or the cars-on-the-road limit are met, then use of the Northern Runway would be delayed until £350m of road improvements have been completed. This would make sure any additional road traffic flows can be accommodated and any congestion avoided.
It’s all fuckwit targets set by fuckwits.
Of course, there are those who think that fuckwit targets set by fuckwits are a good idea. For one of the problems of life is that there are always fuckwits:
When we talk about airport expansion, we often focus on runways, terminals, and the physical infrastructure. But what about how people actually get to the airport?
The journey begins long before passengers step foot in a terminal, and their choices about transport can have a significant impact on congestion, carbon emissions, and overall passenger experience.
One of the conditions set for Gatwick’s expansion is a legally binding guarantee that 54% of passengers will travel by public transport, up from today’s 44%. On the surface, it sounds like a simple shift. But transport isn’t just about availability — it’s about behaviour, convenience, and incentives.
One of the top tips for having a decent country is never, ever, allow the fuckwits to gain power. But we have done so therefore there is this £7 charge for a drop off at Gatwick Airport. That’s it, there is no other reason. There are fuckwits buried in the belly of the British state and they’re making the rules now.
Table saws, technological patents, and rent-seeking
Tom Knighton, who I’ve “met” on my favourite woodworking forum, celebrates a small victory in the never-ending battle against the rent-seekers of the corporate world:
“SawStop” by Comfr is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 .
What does this have to do with rent-seeking?
Well, there’s a company called SawStop. They make really great table saws with a unique safety feature. They’re equipped with a brake and sensor that, when it detects moisture such as one might find in a human finger, it locks the saw and drops the blade down into the saw’s body.
It’s a really great bit of technology, and the saws happen to be really good saws, too, so the company has done well for itself.
However, it started out as a company seeking to license the technology, only no one wanted it at the time.
SawStop decided to try and press the United States government to mandate their technology on all new table saws, and the government was going to.
Was.
This video has a good rundown of the whole thing. (I’d embed it, but the channel doesn’t allow it for some reason.)
The short of it is that the rule that was being considered has now been tossed because it would specifically give SawStop a monopoly on table saw sales in the United States, legally. Yes, they were going to offer up a patent for the public domain, but it wouldn’t be enough to replicate the technology in and of itself.
Plus, at a time when woodworking isn’t the biggest hobby in the world, even if it had been enough, driving up the cost for a central piece of tooling that most consider essential for woodworkers ain’t the way to change that.
For example, Skil makes a jobsite saw that typically runs under $300. SawStop’s equivalent is around three times that much, and that’s a lot of money to spend on something you’re not sure you’ll even enjoy.
Especially since just being careful can prevent the need for the brake in the first place, to say nothing of the fact that if you cut wet wood, it’ll trigger the brake, which is a pain for a lot of people, especially building contractors whose lumber isn’t super dry to begin with.
Seeing the rug pulled out from under SawStop is great, but the real issue here is that it doesn’t happen often enough. Rent-seeking is all too common and all too often works.
August 16, 2025
This is just crazy enough to work …
Disclaimer: I’m not an American and I don’t know the details of the US immigration system, but from what I’ve read elsewhere, Copernican‘s suggestion has a lot of merit:
I can’t be the only one sick of H1Bs destroying the western labor market, particularly in tech, but across the board. Out-of-work tech workers further compress the labor market in other areas. This problem is not unique to the United States, but I understand the laws of the US better, so I’ll be arguing from that perspective.
I know it. Walt Bismarck has a whole organization dedicated to trying to find reasonable employment by job-stacking. A few new and interesting resources have appeared, dedicated to screwing with these companies that open the floodgates to a horde of foreign software engineers. Seven-eleven clerks, and SAAR YOU MUST REDEEMs, that can crash our software, our ships, and our interstate semi-trucks for us.
Fortunately, there’s something we can do to fight back.
[…]
Well, while the government doesn’t seem intent on doing anything about it, the Millennials and Zoomers that have been fucked-over appear to finally have enough cultural weight to start pushing back. Here’s the thing about hiring H1B workers: doing so requires that the company demonstrate that no American Citizens can fulfill the role. That demonstration usually takes the form of a listing in a newspaper with 500 readers, the back-end of a website with black text on a black background, or something similar. They don’t want Americans to apply for these jobs; they want to successfully demonstrate that no Americans even applied.
So they make the application process nearly impossible.
Usually, the way this is done is that when an H1B is hired, they are permitted to remain in the country for up to 6 years (2 renewals of 2 years). Once that’s completed, either the H1B worker is forced to return to where they came from, or the job must be re-posted for 2 weeks for a potential American worker. If no American worker applies (because they didn’t see it because it was posted in a hidden corern of the website or a newspaper with no readers), then the H1B may be sponsored for perminent US residency.
What was clearly once a method for gaining the Best and Brightest as potential employees in the United States has become a system of exploitation. H1Bs are underpaid, undervalued, and often booted from the country, so there’s no impetus for them to assimilate. It’s a mess all the way around, and the only ones who benefit are stockholders for billion-dollar tech companies.
For the most part, we all know the story.
But … what if during that 2-week posting, a qualified American candidate does apply for the job? Well, then everything goes to shit. The company is legally not allowed to deny an American Candidate that job without opening themselves up to a massive lawsuit and fines, and penalties. If only one American candidate has applied, then the company has to hire that individual … and if they don’t hire the American candidate and then apply for another H1B to fill that slot, the company is in deep shit in a legal sense.
August 9, 2025
Carney hints at backing away from Trudeau’s digital policy catastrophes
Michael Geist on the possibility that Prime Minister Mark Carney is starting to recognize just how damaging to Canadian interests the previous government’s various online bills have been:
Digital policies did not play a prominent role in the last election given the intense focus on the Canada-U.S. relationship. Prime Minister Mark Carney started as a bit of a blank slate on the issue, but over the past few months a trend has emerged as he distances himself from the Justin Trudeau approach with important shifts on telecom, taxation, and the regulation of artificial intelligence. Further, recent hints of an openness to re-considering the Online News Act and heightened pressure from the U.S. on the Online Streaming Act suggests that a full overhaul may be a possibility.
This week’s decision to let the CRTC’s decision on wholesale access to fibre broadband networks stand is a case in point. Last November, the Justin Trudeau-led government sent the CRTC’s initial ruling back to the Commission for reconsideration, noting that it “has concerns about future and ongoing investments in broadband infrastructure and services in Ontario and Quebec, including in rural, remote and Indigenous communities, and concerns that those investments could, if they are unprofitable, lead to a decline in quality and consumer choice in the retail Internet services market”. Nine months later, the CRTC came back with the roughly same ruling. That led to yet another request for a cabinet review but this time the government stood by the CRTC despite significant industry opposition. New leader, dramatically new approach.
The CRTC is example was preceded by the decision to eliminate the digital services tax. While the strategic approach seemed misguided – dropping the DST should have garnered more than just an agreement from the U.S. to return to the bargaining table – some noted at the time that perhaps Carney wasn’t a supporter of the DST and had few qualms with rescinding it. The tax had been a foundational part of the government’s campaign to “make web giants pay” but in a matter of 72 hours in late June it was gone.
The government has also shifted its approach on AI regulation. After months of supporting Bill C-27 and the EU-style AI regulatory approach, a new government brought a new minister and a new approach. Evan Solomon, the newly installed AI and Digital Innovation Minister, used his first public speech as minister to pledge that Canada would move away from “over-indexing on warnings and regulation” on AI. That too represents a significant shift in approach, particularly since Trudeau had embraced the EU style regulatory model.
Then there is the Online News Act and Online Streaming Act. When asked about the Online News Act this week, Carney seemed to suggest he was open to change, stating “this government is a big believer in the value of … local news and the importance of ensuring that that is disseminated as widely and as quickly as possible. So, we will look for all avenues to do that.” While that isn’t a clear commitment to change, it is far from an ironclad commitment to legislation is viewed by many to have done more harm than good. Further, reports indicate that the U.S. Congress is escalating pressure to rescind the Online Streaming Act, which may put that law on the chopping block, particularly if a court appeal strikes down elements of the bill or the CRTC’s implementation of the law puts the bill on the Trump radar screen.
August 4, 2025
The EU still dominates in one key area – over-regulation
At the Foundation for Economic Education, Cláudia Ascensão Nunes identifies the one area that the EU has carved out a unique niche for itself … and it’s global in scope:
EU regulations delenda est
In a world where global power is measured by military strength, technological innovation, or cultural influence, it is striking that the European Union, without housing major tech giants or centers of disruptive innovation, has turned bureaucracy into a tool of global power. It shapes the behavior of global companies, including American big tech firms, which adapt their products to comply with European norms. This phenomenon is known as the “Brussels Effect” and has positioned the EU as the world’s regulatory superpower, fueling growing tensions, particularly with the United States following the re-election of Donald Trump.
The European market comprises 450 million consumers with significant purchasing power, making it an essential destination for global companies. However, access to this attractive market comes with detailed regulations based on the precautionary principle, ostensibly prioritizing consumer and environmental protection, and enforced by an efficient bureaucracy capable of implementing and enforcing rules with precision. This combination encourages companies to align their global operations with European standards, as maintaining different product versions for each region is costly and complex. In practice, this exports European standards worldwide.
American big tech companies such as Apple, Google, and Meta exemplify the impact of the “Brussels Effect,” as they face the requirements of legislations like the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA). These laws have forced companies to overhaul their business models, often at high cost and with significant implications. The DMA, for instance, forced Apple to allow alternative app stores and third-party payment systems on iOS, leading the company to announce, in 2024, global changes to its app policy affecting users even outside Europe, with cost estimates in the billions of dollars to restructure its infrastructure and address revenue losses from the App Store.
Google, under the same regulation, was required to offer alternatives to its search engine on Android and to unbundle services such as YouTube, impacting its global strategy and requiring significant investments in new operating systems and interfaces. The company faced potential fines of up to 10% of its global revenue for non-compliance.
Meanwhile, Meta, under the DSA, was required to invest billions in content moderation systems, a serious imposition that openly seeks to control freedom of expression on a global scale. Operational costs increased by around 20%, according to market analysts. These costly adjustments are ultimately coercive due to the weight of the European market, demonstrating how Brussels shapes corporate behavior on a global scale.
These successive impositions and forced adaptations illustrate precisely Friedrich Hayek’s warning about the dangers of central planning. By replacing spontaneous order with top-down, uniform rules imposed by a technocratic authority, the capacity for local adaptation and respect for market complexity is lost. In this scenario, the European Union increasingly takes on the features of a regulatory Leviathan, a body concentrating disproportionate power in the hands of bureaucrats far removed from citizens, reducing freedom of choice and stifling innovation.
