Ryan Young

The results of a Reason-Rupe poll that was released on Monday are more interesting than the pollsters may have intended. Two of the questions they asked rely on the same basic principle: whether or not the government should be able to force you to purchase a certain product. The answers were wildly different. (more)

The Arab Spring is over a year old now. It’s too early to tell if that movement will bring liberal democracy to countries that badly need it. But if it does succeed, it will be right in line with a decades-long global trend. According to Freedom House, 41 percent of the world’s countries in 1989 were democracies. By 2011, 60 percent were democracies. (more)

The 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded this morning. The winners are Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, and Adam Reiss. They revolutionized astronomy in 1998 by finding out that the universe is not just growing, but growing at an accelerating rate. Their discovery has influenced the entire discipline. Everything from the search for dark matter, to theoretical multiverses, to string theory and M-theory, rests at least in part on what today’s laureates discovered. (more)

The philosopher Yogi Berra once said that "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Let’s apply his lesson to the proposed $39 billion AT&T-T-Mobile merger. The Department of Justice is predicting that the merger, by creating the country’s largest wireless carrier, will reduce competition. Today, the DOJ sued to block the merger. (more)

AT&T and T-Mobile would like to merge. The $39 billion deal would make them the largest mobile phone service provider in the country. Not everyone thinks this is a good idea. One website, notakeover.org, lists some of the reasons. (more)

The U.S. is slowly working towards free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. After years of wrangling, they might even pass this summer. President Obama is making the agreements a priority. But it won’t be easy. Some people prefer protection to competition, and they have the ear of many politicians. (more)

Once upon a time, GOP politicians wanted $100 billion in spending cuts. As Reason's Peter Suderman points out, "the GOP's budget cut promises [went] from $100 billion to $61 billion and then resulted in a deal party leaders claimed cut $38 billion but really cut just $14 billion . . . The Congressional Budget Office now says the deal will reduce the budget deficit by just $353 million." (more)

There is nothing good about a natural disaster. The tsunami that hit Japan today is an unmitigated tragedy. Still, there is a certain optimism in the human condition that tries to find the upside even during the worst of times. This is one of our species’ nobler attributes. But sometimes it leads smart people to say dumb things. (more)

There is a lot of talk about tone these days. People think political arguments are nastier than they used to be. They are certainly nasty. But I'd argue people are actually more civil now than they used to be. (more)

Turns out there is such a thing as bad publicity. School districts across Wisconsin have closed because of the number of teachers calling in sick. They aren’t sick, of course. They are in the state capital Madison to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed labor policy changes. This is not a good way to get parents on one’s side. If anything, many parents scrambling to find and pay for daycare are livid. (more)

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched a satellite into space. Therefore, taxpayers should give more money to politically favored corporations. This is not a rigorous line of thought. But it was typical of yesterday’s State of the Union address. (more)

The last time I voted was in 2002. And once again, after careful thought, I decided to sit this one out. There are lots of good reasons to vote. But there are also good reasons not to vote. They deserve to be taken seriously. (more)

On Friday, the 2010 Federal Register eclipsed the 50,000-page mark with a notice from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Dr. Robert F. Hunt, D.O., had his registration revoked for prescribing anabolic steroids to a patient in a way the DEA does not approve of. (more)

With yesterday’s Senate vote in the books, Elena Kagan has finally passed through the confirmation gauntlet and earned the title of Justice. Now she has some time to take a breather and ponder the role of the court that she will help guide for the next two decades or more. Based on her recent statements, she believes the judiciary should almost always defer to the other branches. Justice Kagan should reconsider that stance. (more)

One of the best parts of getting published is getting feedback from readers. Some point out supporting arguments I may have missed. Others make opposing arguments challenging my position. This kind of engagement has led me to facts, data, and sources that made my subsequent articles better. Knowing that readers will pick even the smallest nits keeps me on my toes. (more)

Could your cell phone be killing you? A lot of people seem to think so. Some activists say that talking on your phone for 30 minutes a day over several years can cause brain tumors. They say governments need to address the problem with regulations. The alternative? “[D]o nothing and wait for the body count,” according to the University of Albany’s  David Carpenter. (more)

Federal regulations cover everything from the size of holes in Swiss cheese to the label text on over-the-counter flatulence medication. There are so many rules, it takes 157,000 pages to list them all. And they cost us $1.187 trillion, according to “Ten Thousand Commandments,” a new study from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. (more)

Every March, millions of workers slack on the job to follow college basketball’s championship tournament. Challenger, Gray & Christmas CEO John Challenger’s famous annual survey predicts this year’s March Madness will cost $1.8 billion in lost productivity from Selection Sunday to the end of the first round. Sounds pretty scary. Fortunately for the economy, he blows the story way out of proportion. (more)