Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson Is the idea of “The Great Reset” merely a conspiracy theory? That seems unlikely given the fact that if you type in those three words in a search engine, you will find more than 900 million hits. Last year the founder of the World Economic Forum co-authored and published a book called COVID-19: The Great Reset. The authors see the current situation in the world as a means of dealing with the “weaknesses of capitalism” supposedly exposed during…

Kerby Anderson Recently I was on a program in which the host was videotaping my comments about these emerging technologies. We talked about bitcoin, blockchains, and NFTs. Then the conversation turned to the Metaverse. As you may know Mark Zuckerberg believes this will become Web 3.0 and has already invested more than $10 billion in its development. People and companies are already investing in this virtual world. They are 21st century colonists exploring and even buying virtual land. They are…

Penna Dexter Like many of the Canadian truckers, author Abigail Shrier never set out to make anyone angry and certainly not to become the center of controversy. To do that, she told an audience of Princeton undergrads recently, “You need only be two things: effective and unwilling to back down.” Ms. Shrier’s bio includes Jewish day school, Columbia University, a fellowship for graduate study at Oxford, and a law degree from Yale. Then came a job at a law firm,…

Kerby Anderson Not so long ago, authoritarian leaders who wanted to extend their power and reduce the freedom of their citizens had to resort to force. State police were directed to round up political opponents and put them in jail or make them disappear. Brownshirts or party members were sent into protests to break them up. But our new digital world has shown political leaders there is a different way to force their will on the citizens. We have seen…

Kerby Anderson Let me introduce you to a word that is probably new to you but will probably be used much more in the future. Decades ago, when I talked about concepts like “secular humanism” or the “New Age Movement” on radio, I think most listeners wondered why I was talking about such philosophical concepts. But they soon learned how important they were. The word is “panopticon.” It is used in two YouTube videos I’ve seen and is used many…

Kerby Anderson Americans say they hate inflation. But many really like inflation, or at least like the impact inflation has on their home values and other assets. We shouldn’t be surprised at this ambivalence. When house prices rise, homeowners are encouraged and will even pat themselves on the back for making such a good investment. Rising home prices make them feel richer (even if the increase is due more to the money printing of the federal government). At the same…

Kerby Anderson We still don’t know the origin of the virus that has infected hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Two years ago, the consensus was that it was a zoonotic virus that jumped from an animal species to humans, or perhaps jumped through an intermediary at the wet market in Wuhan, China. There were a few reasons then, and many reasons now to doubt that scenario. There was only one laboratory in China able to handle such coronaviruses, and…

Kerby Anderson The US has been guilty of bowing to China, and I am not just talking about America’s response to the Winter Olympics. A recent op-ed in the Daily Wire documents “4 Ways America Routinely Bows Down to China.” The first way is in area of trade. You might not expect that a former WWE wrestler and actor who plays a tough guy would be the sort of person to grovel before the Chinese. But you can see the…

Penna Dexter The International Olympic Committee has allowed transgender athletes to compete since 2004. The first to participate openly did so in Tokyo’s summer games in 2020. Several competed this year in Beijing. The rules for transgender women  — biological men — competing in women’s sports are that they must demonstrate testosterone below a certain threshold for 12 months before competing. And they can only qualify after four years post-transition, at the earliest. But it still isn’t fair. In the…

Kerby Anderson No doubt you have heard the phrase, “turnabout is fair play.” The proverb arose in the mid-1700s in reference to gaming. But we now use it to suggest that it may be appropriate to respond in kind to someone who has been doing it to you. A few pundits have applied this to next year. Assuming Republicans take the House and perhaps the Senate, what would be the reaction if the Republicans treated Democrats the way Democrats have…

Kerby Anderson What does the average American worker make each year? This is a question that a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business asked of her students. The school is one of the top three business schools in the country, so you would assume the students are some of the best in the country. Last month I saw her Twitter post and was shocked. A quarter (25%) of the students thought the average income was over…