The Economist magazine recently published "What's gone wrong with Democracy ... and what can be done to revive it?" The suggestion is that democracy is some kind of ideal for organizing human conduct. That's a popular misconception. The ideal way to organize human conduct is to create a system that maximizes personal liberty for all.

By: Alex Tabarrok This post originally appeared at MarginalRevolution.com In Ferguson and the Modern Debtor's Prison I wrote: You don't get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate.

Filling in for "Hardball's" Chris Matthews, Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart told viewers Thursday night that he has faced an onslaught of racial attacks since his editorial this week debunked Ferguson protesters' "hands up, don't shoot" narrative.

One of the truly delightful things about college is that it allows earnest young people to try out all sorts of ridiculous ideas without causing much lasting harm. After graduation, most will grow up and learn how to laugh at their prior selves. (The rest will become professors.)

While the Western world was watching and grieving over the slaughter in Paris last week, and my colleagues in the media were fomenting a meaningless debate about whether President Obama should have gone to Paris to participate in a televised parade, the feds took advantage of that diversion to reveal even more incursions into our liberties than we had known about.

What if the current massive spying on Americans began with an innocent secret executive order signed by President Reagan in 1986? What if Reagan contemplated that he was only authorizing American spies to spy on foreign spies unlawfully present in the U.S.? What if Reagan knew and respected the history of the Fourth Amendment?