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Video by ReasonTV "I am not okay with you making laws that prevent me from doing what I feel is good for me." ---------------- Meet Aella. She's the daughter of evangelical Christians from Idaho, so poor they couldn't always manage to put food on the table. A former factory worker who never graduated college, she became one of the most successful performers on the adult subscription site OnlyFans, earning in some months over $100,000 on the platform. She still does one-on-one appointments but only with clients who can afford to pay her current rate of $3,000 an hour. But Aella is also known for her oddball social media polls, for sexy and silly personal moments on Twitter, and for using her giant platform to spread hot libertarian takes, such as declaring, "I like capitalism." "I think generally most of what the government does should be privatized," she writes. "I don't think it should be involved at all in healthcare, social security, or welfare." "I am not okay with you making laws that prevent me from doing what I feel is good for me," Aella told Reason. "That is the border here. This is the respect of freedom." She's also an outspoken defender of sex worker rights. She compares her current life to what it was like at the age of 19, when she would wake up at 4:30 a.m. to go do repetitive tasks on an assembly line in a windowless factory, often putting in 54 hours a week. "Why do people talk about survival sex work but not like… survival factory work or survival burger flipping?" she wonders. Yes, there's exploitation in sex work, but "decriminalizing sex work would let workers actually go get police help if they needed it." Even before she got rich and famous, back when she was "scraping change off the ground to eat," Aella says she still "had libertarian-leaning economic views." Reason's Liz Wolfe met up with Aella at her home in Austin, Texas, for a wide-ranging conversation about everything from how sex work made her a better data scientist to why many successful practitioners in her industry are selling not just sex but the personal connections that so many of us are missing in our lives. Interview by Liz Wolfe; edited by Zach Weissmueller and Isaac Reese; camera by Andrew Miller and Weissmueller; audio post-production by Ian Keyser; graphics by Nodehaus.

Video by ReasonTV The breakout Netflix series contains critiques of a decidedly "anti-capitalist" political and economic system that's haunted the Korean Peninsula. ---------------- Squid Game, the breakout Korean series about players competing to the death for a giant piggy bank full of cash, is Netflix's biggest series launch, and co-CEO Ted Sarandos says "there's a very good chance it will be our biggest show ever." Critics have argued that the show offers a devastating critique of contemporary capitalism. In a Jacobin review headlined, "Squid Game Is An Allegory of Capitalist Hell," the writer asserts that "Korea's extreme inequality is Squid Game's central theme." New York Times reporter Jin Yu Young wrote that "it has…tapped a sense familiar to people in the United States…that prosperity in nominally rich countries has become increasingly difficult to achieve, as wealth disparities widen and home prices rise past affordable levels." The show's creator Hwang Dong-hyuk told Variety that he "wanted to write a story that was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist society, something that depicts an extreme competition, somewhat like the extreme competition of life." "Is there a theme more unifying in global pop culture than 'capitalism is bad?'" asks Vulture writer Roxana Hadadi in her recap of one episode before continuing, "It helps that the statement is true, of course…" But Squid Game has a much richer and more resonant takeaway than "capitalism is bad." (Warning: This article and video contain spoilers.) The series hints at a different message when Front Man, the Darth Vader–esque manager of the dangerous and lucrative series of competitions, chastises an employee who violated the rules. "You've ruined the most crucial element of this place: equality," he says. Later, players are invited to witness the mass execution of those who violated the "pure ideology" of this insulated world when they participated in an organ harvesting scheme for personal enrichment, with the emphasis on the enrichment as the heart of the crime. Throughout the games, the faceless pink-uniformed workers are all masked with only symbols distinguishing their ranks in the collective's hierarchy. Meanwhile, the elites sit cloistered together, observing the spectacle from above. Does this all sound like a reference to capitalism or a different economic system—the one that's actually haunted the Korean Peninsula? Produced by Zach Weissmueller; graphics by Calvin Tran Photo credits: Dong-Min Jang/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Wang Yiliang / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; Rod Lamkey - CNP/Sipa USA/Newscom

The maverick Columbia neuroscientist explains why America should embrace drug legalization for all. ------------------ In a world where drug legalization efforts are on the march and the pernicious effects of drug prohibition on criminal justice, education, foreign policy, and racial and ethnic communities are being scrutinized like never before, Columbia University neuroscientist Carl Hart is breaking bold new ground on how we think about drug policy, substance use and abuse, and individual freedom. In his controversial book Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear, Hart makes the case that adults should be free to use the intoxicants of their choosing. "The Declaration of Independence guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all of us, as long as we don't disrupt anybody else's ability to do the same," says Hart. "That means we get to live our life as we choose, as we see fit. Taking drugs is a part of that for a lot of Americans." He writes that his use of drugs—including heroin—helps him be a better person. "I do not have a drug-use problem," he declares. "Never have. Each day, I meet my parental, personal, and professional responsibilities. I pay my taxes, serve as a volunteer in my community…and contribute to the global community as an informed and engaged citizen." In this live taping of The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie, Hart talks about all that, his path-breaking research on addiction, how he turned from an ardent supporter of the drug war to one of its leading critics, elitism within the legalization movement, and how he talks with his kids and his students about responsible drug use. Interview by Nick Gillespie; edited by Adam Czarnecki. Photo Credits: Shane T. Mccoy/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Jim Gehrz/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Francois Pesant/Polaris/Newscom

Video by ReasonTV Jeff Kosseff's The United States of Anonymous makes a strong case for letting people hide behind the First Amendment. ------------------ In 2019, Jeff Kosseff published The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet, the definitive "biography" of the controversial law known as Section 230. Part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, Section 230 grants broad immunity to websites and internet service providers from legal actions based on user-generated content. Section 230 enabled the participatory nature of the web, from YouTube videos to Yelp reviews to basically all of Twitter. It's the reason why Reason can't be sued for libelous or defamatory content posted in our comments section (though the authors of such comments can be). Now Kosseff, who teaches cybersecurity law at the United States Naval Academy, is back with The United States of Anonymous: How the First Amendment Shaped Online Speech. His new book looks at the history of and controversy surrounding anonymous speech and activism. Before becoming a law professor, Kosseff worked as a journalist at The Oregonian, where he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and a winner of the George Polk Award. Nick Gillespie talks with him about why he thinks anonymous speech is generally a good thing but getting harder to maintain, why Democrats and Republicans alike keep freaking out over Section 230, and how his past as a journalist informs his interest in protecting freedom of speech and assembly. Interview by Nick Gillespie; edited by Adam Czarnecki. Photo Credits: Rafael Henrique/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Rafael Henrique/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Andre M. Chang/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Dreamstime/TNS/Newscom

Video by ReasonTV Elvis Summers crowdfunded $100,000 to build dozens of tiny homes. City officials looking to pass a $2 billion housing plan tried to shut him down. ---------------- Each night, tens of thousands of people sleep in tent cities crowding the palm-lined boulevards of Los Angeles, far more than any other city in the nation. The homeless population in the entertainment capital of the world has hit new record highs in each of the past few years. But a 39-year-old struggling musician from South LA thought he had a creative fix. Elvis Summers, who went through stretches of homelessness himself in his 20s, raised over $100,000 through crowdfunding campaigns last spring. With the help of professional contractors and others in the community who sign up to volunteer through his nonprofit, Starting Human, he has built dozens of solar-powered, tiny houses to shelter the homeless since. Summers says that the houses are meant to be a temporary solution that, unlike a tent, provides the secure foundation residents need to improve their lives. "The tiny houses provide immediate shelter," he explains. "People can lock their stuff up and know that when they come back from their drug treatment program or court or finding a job all day, their stuff is where they left it." Each house features a solar power system, a steel-reinforced door, a camping toilet, a smoke detector, and even window alarms. The tiny structures cost Summers roughly $1,200 apiece to build. LA city officials, however, had a different plan to address the crisis. A decade after the city's first 10-year plan to end homelessness withered in 2006, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced in February a $1.87 billion proposal to get all LA residents off the streets, once and for all. He and the City Council aim to build 10,000 units of permanent housing with supportive services over the next decade. In the interim, they are shifting funds away from temporary and emergency shelters. Councilmember Curren Price, who represents the district where Summers's tiny houses were located, does not believe they are beneficial either to the community or to the homeless people housed in them. "I don't really want to call them houses. They're really just boxes," says Price. "They're not safe, and they impose real hazards for neighbors in the community." Most of Summers's tiny houses are on private land that has been donated to the project. A handful had replaced the tents that have proliferated on freeway overpasses in the city. Summers put them there until he could secure a private lot to create a tiny house village similar to those that already exist in Portland, Seattle, Austin, and elsewhere. "My whole issue and cause is that something needs to be done right now," Summers emphasizes. But the houses, nestled among dour tent shantytowns, became brightly colored targets early this year for frustrated residents who want the homeless out of their backyards. Councilmember Price was bombarded by complaints from angry constituents. In February, the City Council responded by amending a sweeps ordinance to allow the tiny houses to be seized without prior notice. On the morning of the ninth, just as the mayor and council gathered at City Hall to announce their new plan to end homelessness, police and garbage trucks descended on the tiny homes, towing three of them to a Bureau of Sanitation lot for disposal. Summers managed to move eight of the threatened houses into storage before they were confiscated, but their residents were left back on the sidewalk. If the city won't devote any resources to supporting novel solutions, Summers urges officials at least to make it easier for private organizations and individuals like him to pave the way forward. The city owns thousands of vacant lots, many of which have been abandoned for decades, that could provide sites for tiny house villages or other innovative housing concepts that can have an immediate impact. "Everything that they have been doing doesn't work. It's just years of circles and bureaucratic holds and wait times," says Summers. "10, 20, 30, 40 years—where's all the housing?" Produced by Justin Monticello. Shot by Alex Manning and Zach Weissmueller. Additional footage courtesy of Elvis Summers. Music by Silent Partner, Riot, Kevin MacLeod, Audionautix, Battle of Wood, Topher Mohr and Alex Elena, The 126ers, and Elettroliti.

Video by ReasonTV Honk Honk HODL raised more than $1 million of bitcoin for the Canadian truckers. About two-thirds of it got to them. ---------------- Financial censorship, or cutting off access to the global banking system, is one of the most powerful tools that governments have for punishing people. The U.S. Department of Justice used it in 2013 through a program known as Operation Choke Point. It went after firearms dealers, payday lenders, and sex workers by pressuring banks to cut off their access to financial services. The federal government blocks marijuana businesses that are legal under state law from opening bank accounts. And the U.S. Department of the Treasury financially censors other governments around the world that commit human rights abuses or senselessly attack other nations, most recently Russia for invading Ukraine. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau financially censored the Canadian truckers occupying the country's capital city, Ottawa. It's clear that governments can use financial censorship to squeeze worthy and unworthy targets alike for the time being, but it's less clear if governments can maintain this power for much longer. The moment raises a pressing question for cryptocurrency enthusiasts: Does bitcoin solve this? Does a global, decentralized monetary system that nobody can manipulate or control take away the power of the state to use financial censorship as a weapon, for good or for ill? A surprisingly successful bitcoin-based crowdfunding campaign called "Honk Honk HODL," which raised more than $1 million worth of bitcoin for the Canadian truckers, shed some additional light on that question. And the answer appears to be, "eventually, maybe, but there's more work to be done." Nick, who goes by @NobodyCaribou on Twitter, started talking with Canadian truckers in early February, teaching them about bitcoin, raising small amounts to hand out, and eventually partnered with a pro-bitcoin YouTuber to launch Honk Honk HODL on the bitcoin-based crowdfunding site Tallycoin. "My idea was like, if we get to a thousand or 2,000 dollars, and I can go around and give a hundred bucks to different truckers, that would be amazing. It would be a cool experiment to do. So why not do it?" says Caribou. Then crypto investors Jeff Booth and Greg Foss jumped in to lend their names and credibility—as did the popular Canadian YouTuber and streamer Ben Perrin, who goes by "BTC Sessions." "So things just started snowballing a lot quicker than anticipated," says Perrin. "My initial thought was, 'Oh, maybe we'll get a few thousand dollars and some people can buy some gas cards and some food or something.'" But the fundraiser took off after GoFundMe was pressured into canceling a fundraiser that had accumulated $10 million for the Canadian truckers, and then a judge blocked the distribution of $9 million from another crowdfunding platform. And when the Canadian government announced it would be freezing truckers' bank accounts, some supporters of the movement began to turn to cryptocurrency. The Honk Honk HODL fundraiser eventually surpassed $1 million U.S. dollars' worth of bitcoin. Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Graphics by Nodehaus. Photos: Normand Blouin/Polaris/Newscom; CHINE NOUVELLE/SIPA/Newscom; Lin Wei / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; Arindam Shivaani/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Richard B. Levine/Newscom; Marco Verch; Nazareth College

Video by ReasonTV Martha Bueno's organization, People 4 Cuba, smuggles food and medicine directly into the hands of suffering Cubans to help undermine an oppressive dictatorship. ---------------- A massive protest movement broke out in Cuba on July 11, 2021. Food, medicine, and electricity shortages exacerbated by the COVID pandemic were pushing an already desperate, oppressed, and impoverished nation to the brink of rebellion. Demonstrators used the internet—which has only been legally available in the country since 2018—to coordinate action in large and small cities across the island. "Freedom…I felt free. I have never experienced in my life something so spectacular and wonderful. You had to have lived it to understand," one Cuban citizen, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the Cuban government, told Reason. In the face of widespread protests, the Cuban government arrested hundreds of protesters and shut down the internet. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel appeared on state TV to call for the violent suppression of the protests against "counter-revolutionaries." In Miami, members of the sizable Cuban-American community planned to load their own fishing boats with supplies to make the 90-mile journey to the island themselves but were deterred by the U.S. Coast Guard. So they set off fireworks in international waters off the coast of Cuba instead. "I think what people don't understand is that the problem in Cuba stems from the fact that people can't do anything for themselves," says Martha Bueno, a Cuban-American activist. "You're only allowed to make money if the government says it's OK. And that's how the government throttles people. They'll throw you in jail if you decide to try and feed your family on your own." Bueno started the group People 4 Cuba following the protests. They assemble packages of dry foods and medical supplies and then pay people $35/pound to smuggle them onto the island. They've shipped more than 800 pounds so far, but she says it's become more difficult in recent months as the Cuban government has cracked down harder on smuggled medical supplies. "The big reason that we have to smuggle it into Cuba is because if I send it legitimately… the Cuban government will take that and then sell it in the stores," says Bueno. "I wanted people to receive it, people who needed it to be able to receive it without paying. And I especially won't help the Cuban government. I refuse to fund raise, pay for, and then give it to them so that they can sell it in the stores. I'm not that kind of girl." Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Photo credits: Al Diaz/TNS/Newscom; Yander Zamora/EFE/Newscom; Michele Eve Sandberg / SplashNews/Newscom; Elvis Gonzalez/EFE/Newscom; INSTARimages/Cover Images/Newscom; Ismael Francisco/AP; imageBROKER/Egon B�msch/Newscom; Ernesto Mastrascusa/EFE/Newscom; Cristian Mijea/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Circa Images/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Ardavan Roozbeh/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; YAMIL LAGE/TNS/Newscom; CHINE NOUVELLE/SIPA/Newscom; José Méndez/EFE/Newscom

Video by ReasonTV A pandemic film for our times. ---------------- In a world gripped by a global pandemic, the brilliant scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are the only hope left for humanity—or so you'd think, if you've seen Outbreak and Contagion. But what if everything you thought you knew about the pandemic…movies…was wrong? What if the real CDC has always done things such as telling a nurse with ebola she can board a commercial flight from Cleveland to Dallas, or botching the rollout of the Zika virus test? From the producers who brought you contradictory mask guidance and told you to cook your prosciutto comes the true story of an agency that was—once again—completely unprepared for the one thing it was meant to do: fight disease. Featuring guidelines that suggested you wipe down your groceries for more than a year after scientists knew the coronavirus was mostly airborne, a disastrous monopoly for wildly inaccurate COVID tests, red tape delays and math-illiterate pauses on vaccine administration, data sourced from an inaccurate New York Times infographic, data that's not statistically significant, an $8 billion budget that expands an infectious disease agency's purview to everything from sports injuries to gun violence, the crushing of all dissent, and an endless supply of contradictory narratives. Coming this spring—over two years into the pandemic—don't miss CDC: The Movie. This time, it's more of the same. Produced and written by Justin Monticello, Austin Bragg, and Meredith Bragg; performed by Austin Bragg and Justin Monticello; shot by Tim Harbour and Meredith Bragg; edited by Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg.

Video by ReasonTV Out of 27,900 research publications on gun laws, only 123 tested their effects rigorously. ---------------- After reaching historic lows in the mid-2010s, gun violence rates in America have gone up in recent years, and they remain higher than in some other parts of the developed world. There are hundreds of laws and regulations at the federal and state level that restrict Americans' access to guns, yet according to some advocates, social science research shows that a few more "simple, commonsense" laws could significantly reduce the number of injuries and deaths attributed to firearms. There has been a massive research effort going back decades to determine whether gun control measures work. A 2020 analysis by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, parsed the results of 27,900 research publications on the effectiveness of gun control laws. From this vast body of work, the RAND authors found only 123 studies, or 0.4 percent, that tested the effects rigorously. Some of the other 27,777 studies may have been useful for non-empirical discussions, but many others were deeply flawed. We took a look at the significance of the 123 rigorous empirical studies and what they actually say about the efficacy of gun control laws. The answer: nothing. The 123 studies that met RAND's criteria may have been the best of the 27,900 that were analyzed, but they still had serious statistical defects, such as a lack of controls, too many parameters or hypotheses for the data, undisclosed data, erroneous data, misspecified models, and other problems. And these glaring methodological flaws are not specific to gun control research; they are typical of how the academic publishing industry responds to demands from political partisans for scientific evidence that does not exist. Not only is the social science literature on gun control broadly useless, but it provides endless fodder for advocates who say that "studies prove" that a particular favored policy would have beneficial outcomes. This matters because gun laws, even if they don't accomplish their goals, have large costs. They can turn otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals, they increase prosecutorial power and incarceration, and they exacerbate the racial and socioeconomic inequities in the criminal justice system. For full text, links, and more, go to https://reason.com/video/2022/03/31/d... Produced and edited by Justin Monticello. Written by Monticello and Aaron Brown. Graphics by Isaac Reese. Audio production by Ian Keyser. Music: Aerial Cliff by Michele Nobler, Land of the Lion by C.K. Martin, The Plan's Working by Cooper Cannell, Thoughts by ANBR, Flight of the Inner Bird by Sivan Talmor and Yehezkel Raz, and Run by Tristan Barton. Photos: Hollandse-Hoogte/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Robin Rayne/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Ted Soqui/Sipa USA/Newscom; YES Market Media/Yaroslav Sabitov/YES Market Medi/Newscom; Chuck Liddy/TNS/Newscom; YES Market Media/Yaroslav Sabitov/YES Market Medi/Newscom; Brett Coomer/Rapport Press/Newscom; Martha Asencio-Rhine/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Jebb Harris/ZUMA Press/Newscom; John Gastaldo/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Greg Smith/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Richard Ellis/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Matthew McDermott/Polaris/Newscom; KEVIN DIETSCH/UPI/Newscom; Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Newscom; Michael Brochstein/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Sandy Macys / UPI Photo Service/Newscom; E. Jason Wambsgans/TNS/Newscom; Eye Ubiquitous/Newscom; Matthew McDermott/Polaris/Newscom

Video by ReasonTV Can you define "partisan circus?" ---------------- On March 24, 2022, the Senate Judiciary Committee wrapped up its confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. The questioning, which lasted more than 20 hours, whipsawed from Democrats praising Jackson's record to Republicans attacking her handling of child pornography cases and defending a Guantanamo Bay detainee. They didn't play Dungeons & Dragons. Here's what we would like to have seen. Starring Andrew Heaton and Austin Bragg; written and shot by Heaton, Bragg, and Meredith Bragg; edited by Austin Bragg.

Video by ReasonTV "My dad had an expression," said President Joe Biden as he announced his budget plan for FY 2023. "Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value." ---------------- So at the very moment that we're experiencing the highest inflation in 40 years, what does Biden value? The same sort of government spending that is already sending prices through the roof. You'd figure that with Covid receding, debt rising, and a tidal wave of unfunded liabilities staring us right in the kisser, Biden would take the opportunity to radically reset the federal government's balance sheet. Instead, his budget plan could be titled Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic. The president wants to spend $5.8 trillion, which would include jacking spending on defense, education, and police. He talks about levying a controversial—and probably unconstitutional—wealth tax on billionaires to help pay for it all but still expects a budget deficit of $1.2 trillion (see Table S1 in Summary Tables)! If you're going to tax unrealized capital gains, President Biden, at least spend it on something pretty! It's debt-financed spending that helps spur inflation in the first place. Rather than cutting spending and reforming entitlements, the government borrows and prints money so it can keep giving more goodies to its favored citizens. You get more dollars chasing the same amount of goods, and that leads to price hikes. Meanwhile, at least a dozen states—including such far-flung places as California, Georgia, Hawaii, and Maine—are thinking about giving residents money to spend on things like gas, the price of which has gone through the roof. "Direct relief will address the issue that we all are struggling to address," says California Gov. Gavin Newsom. "That's the issue of gas prices, not only here in our state, but of course, all across this country." Is he serious? Doling out tax dollars to alleviate the pain of inflation is like drinking a beer in the morning to ease your hangover. It's only setting up the next binge. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has announced a series of interest rate hikes to help tame inflation, but in a recent speech, he made no mention of the increase in the money supply measured by M2, which has risen by a record 41 percent in two years, or of the Federal Reserve's holding of U.S. debt, which has jumped $3.5 trillion over the same time period. Powell's interest rate hikes will be small enough that it's unclear whether they will have much impact. Back in the 1980s, Fed Chairman Paul Volcker allowed the fed funds rate to more than double in less than two years' time to over 20 percent, which helped kill inflation but also caused the most severe recession since the Great Depression. Worse, serious hikes by the Fed today will not just likely cause a major economic downturn, they will devastate the government's balance sheet, requiring either massive tax hikes on everyone, huge reductions in government services, or a combination of both. According to recent conservative estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, as the federal budget grows, the cost of paying interest on the debt will keep increasing until it accounts for about 24 cents of every dollar spent by 2050. And that's assuming interest rates will remain historically low. So even moderate increases in the fed funds rate would push the cost of servicing the debt much higher, causing the government to borrow more money and kicking us into a vicious cycle of economic despair. Biden can talk a good game about "returning our fiscal house to order," but it's clear he doesn't understand why prices are going up—and that his policies will keep them high for the foreseeable future. That might cost Democrats control of the House and the Senate in the fall and perhaps Biden the White House in 2024. That will be too bad for him and his party. But his unwillingness to confront massive spending and debt is going to cost all of us a lot more than that. Music Credits: "Dark Fantasy," by IamDayLight via Artlist. Written and narrated by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Regan Taylor.

Video by ReasonTV There's a powerful David vs. Goliath lesson emerging from Russia's brazen, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine that should give deep pause to global superpowers who still think they can simply muscle the world into any shape they want. Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won't get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines. ---------------- Every Russian tank that gets fried in Ukraine is sending the message that traditional armies can no longer expect to dominate simply because they have more troops, weapons, and money. Russian armored vehicles are falling victim to Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons (NLAWs), which can be carried by individual soldiers, unslung in seconds, and deployed with little training and fatal accuracy. There are credible reports that Russia has already lost $5 billion worth of military equipment in a month of fighting in Ukraine. The human cost for Russia is even more staggering: Nearly 10,000 soldiers have been killed in action, including at least five generals. That's the reality of contemporary warfare: Smaller, nimbler groups fighting back effectively against lumbering, dumb relics of the past. Despite being the fifth largest fighting force on the planet and starting the war with five times the number of active military as Ukraine, Russia has been stymied in what virtually all observers expected to be a cakewalk. This isn't to say that Russia isn't also inflicting massive, horrific violence against Ukraine—or that it won't prevail in this conflict, especially the longer things drag on. But this war underscores what James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg called the changing "logic of violence" and "the diminishing returns to violence" in their prophetic 1997 book The Sovereign Individual. As weapons have become smaller, cheaper, more effective, and more widely dispersed, it's harder and harder for old-style militaries and countries to quickly and effectively achieve their objectives through brute force as they meet resistance at every turn. That resistance includes "information warfare"—which includes hacking and cyber attacks—but also the use of social media, which Ukraine's President Zelenskyy has excelled at to project an aura of invincibility and to cast the conflict in stark terms of good vs. evil. This lesson shouldn't be new to Americans, as our failures over the past two decades in Afghanistan and Iraq underscored the new reality that old-school invasion and occupation is more expensive and temporary than it is quick and effective. But Russia's incompetence drives home in graphic detail to us—and, one hopes, to the Chinese officials supposedly eyeing an invasion of Taiwan—that even if Goliath does take out David, the price is too high and the victory too transient to bother undertaking. If the collapse of the Soviet Union—that gargoyle incarnation of belief in top-down authority, power, and decision-making—was the beginning of the end of the 20th century's romance with the nation-state, then Russia's blundering in Ukraine and the United States' mess in central Asia and the Middle East may be its epitaph. The future belongs not to the ignorant armies of the night who seek to command and control but to those who embrace and empower the decentralization of weapons, technology, information, currency, and individual ingenuity and courage. Written and narrated by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Regan Taylor.