Authored by Tom Wilson via The Mises Institute,

Housing costs in New York City have reached a level that many people can no longer afford. The response has been to push for more control—limits on rent increases and expanded tenant protections. The intention is clear. However, housing markets respond to incentives, not intentions.

Under Zohran Mamdani, New York City is moving further in that direction.

The focus is on limiting rent increases, expanding tenant protections, and increasing the role of government in the housing market.

The policy has not fully taken effect yet. Once these rules interact with rising costs, the housing market will respond to the incentives.

Rent control keeps rents down, but it does not keep costs down for the landlord.

There is no cap on insurance premiums. Property taxes can still rise year after year. Maintenance and labor costs continue to climb as well. As those costs rise, landlords are forced to adjust. Some delay maintenance. Others see their margins get too thin to justify the risk.

Single-family rentals are often taken off the market.

The landlord notifies the tenant that the lease will not be renewed, repairs the property, and sells it to an owner-occupant. Each time this happens, the number of available rental units declines.

As supply shrinks, the market tightens.

Landlords become more selective, prioritizing tenants with strong credit, stable income, and clean rental histories. For renters with past evictions or setbacks, finding housing becomes more difficult. A second chance is harder to come by.

Rent control also removes flexibility.

If the city allows a fixed annual increase, the landlord must take it each year or lose it. There is no ability to hold a rent flat during a difficult period and recover it later. What was intended as protection begins to limit discretion.

These outcomes are not unique to one city. They follow the structure of the policy itself. When rent is constrained but costs continue to rise, the system adjusts in predictable ways.

In Portland, similar policies have already been tested. After Oregon implemented rent caps and expanded tenant protections in 2019, the number of single-family homes available for rent fell by roughly 14 percent over the following years, with thousands of units leaving the market, as shown in this analysis of Portland’s rental supply.

That decline came from the same pressures building over time. Costs were not capped, but rents were. This reduced flexibility and increased risk.

Small landlords, who often operate on small margins, were the first to respond. Many chose to exit rather than continue operating under those conditions. Properties were sold, frequently to owner-occupants, and removed from the rental market entirely.

The result was fewer available units, tighter supply, and increased competition among renters. The policy did not eliminate pressure in the system. It shifted where that pressure showed up.

To make housing more affordable, the focus must shift to supply. Rents rise when demand outpaces the number of available units. Constraining rent has been shown to reduce supply and further the imbalance. Increasing supply is what addresses that imbalance.

That means reducing the barriers that slow construction. Zoning restrictions, permitting delays, and regulatory costs all limit how quickly new units can come to the market. When those constraints are reduced, supply can expand and pressure on prices can ease.

This approach works by allowing the market to adjust. As more units become available, competition among landlords increases, and rents stabilize without the need for rigid controls.

It is not a quick fix. It does not produce immediate results that can be pointed to in the next election cycle. However, it addresses the underlying problem rather than shifting the pressure somewhere else.

Demand for housing in cities like New York remains strong. Jobs, population density, and limited space all place constant pressure on available units. When supply cannot expand to meet that demand, prices rise.

The question is not whether a politician’s intention is good. The market does not care about intentions. It responds to incentives.

Authored by Micah Zimmerman via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Blockstream CEO Adam Back pushed back on concerns that quantum computing poses an imminent threat to Bitcoin’s cryptographic security, arguing that current progress in the field remains far from the level required to break real-world encryption.

Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg, Back noted that much of today’s quantum research is still in its early experimental phase. He pointed to the limited capabilities of existing quantum hardware, which often lacks full error correction and has only demonstrated trivial computations.

“The biggest calculation it’s performed is factoring 21 into 7 times 3,” he said, emphasizing that today’s machines remain closer to laboratory prototypes than practical computing systems.

While recent academic work has highlighted potential algorithmic improvements, Back argued that these advances do not yet translate into meaningful hardware capability. 

As a result, he said, the prospect of quantum computers capable of threatening Bitcoin’s elliptic curve cryptography remains “decades off,” though he acknowledged uncertainty around exact timelines.

Earlier today, Adam Back was named by the New York Times as the most credible candidate for Satoshi Nakamoto based on stylometric analysis of early cypherpunk writings, but Back and other experts strongly denied the claim, noting there is no hard evidence linking him to Bitcoin’s creation.

Bitcoin should prepare for quantum computing risks

Despite that long horizon, Back stressed that the Bitcoin ecosystem should begin preparing now. He advocated for a gradual migration path toward quantum-resistant signature schemes, giving users and custodians ample time to update keys and infrastructure without disruption. 

He noted that Blockstream’s research team has been actively working on post-quantum approaches and has already contributed implementations to Liquid, a Bitcoin layer-two network that has historically served as a testing ground for new features.

Back also referenced recent progress in standardization efforts, pointing to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s approval of post-quantum cryptography standards in late 2024 as a key milestone that could accelerate industry adoption.

Beyond quantum computing, Back dismissed concerns that artificial intelligence or artificial general intelligence pose structural risks to Bitcoin, characterizing AI instead as a productivity tool that can assist researchers and engineers rather than compromise cryptographic systems.

Shifting to Bitcoin’s global role, Back described the asset as best understood as “digital gold,” coexisting alongside national monetary systems rather than replacing them. He pointed to ongoing sovereign interest in Bitcoin, including debates around national reserves and monetary frameworks in countries such as El Salvador, as evidence of gradual institutional adoption. He also referenced discussions in Switzerland about monetary reform and the historical appeal of gold-backed standards.

E. & J. Gallo Winery, the largest wine producer in the United States and the world by volume, has completed a major pivot into hard liquor. The family-owned giant finalized its acquisition of iconic Kentucky bourbon brand Four Roses from Japan’s Kirin Holdings in a deal valued at up to $775 million. The move comes as the U.S. wine industry grapples with steep declines in sales and a generational shift away from traditional wine – especially among younger Americans.

The transaction, which closed on April 2, 2026, returns Four Roses – which was founded in 1888 and long regarded as one of the most respected premium bourbons – to American ownership for the first time in 83 years. Gallo’s chief commercial officer, Britt West, called the brand “one of the most respected bourbons in the world  defined by heritage and craftsmanship,” adding “We are committed to upholding Four Roses’ quality and building the brand as a cornerstone of our portfolio through increased consumer and trade engagement, innovation, and global expansion.” 

The existing Four Roses team, including master distiller Brent Elliott, will remain in place. The brand’s first release under new ownership – a boutique 100-proof bourbon – is expected to hit shelves by May.

The timing is no coincidence. Just two months before the deal closed, Gallo laid off approximately 93–100 workers and permanently shuttered its large Ranch Winery production facility in Napa Valley’s St. Helena.

Louis M. Martini Winery in St. Helena, pictured in 2022, is one of the locations impacted by Gallo’s layoffs. Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

The cuts also hit other premium labels, including the Louis M. Martini Winery and Orin Swift Tasting Room. Earlier, the company closed its Courtside Cellars facility in San Luis Obispo County, letting go of 47 workers.

Gallo’s struggles mirror a broader crisis in American wine. Overall alcohol consumption in the U.S. has hit a historic low: just 54% of adults reported drinking in 2025, down from 62% in 2023 – the lowest level in Gallup’s nearly 90-year tracking.

Younger drinkers are leading the exodus. Only about 50% of Americans aged 18 to 34 said they drink alcohol in the latest Gallup poll, a sharp acceleration of a decade-long trend. Health-conscious Baby Boomers are also cutting back on wine. In their place, many consumers – particularly younger ones – are choosing spirits, ready-to-drink cocktails, and lower-alcohol or non-alcoholic alternatives.

Gallo, which already sells popular spirits such as New Amsterdam vodka, E&J brandy, and the blockbuster canned cocktail brand High Noon, is betting big that premium bourbon can help offset the wine slump. Four Roses, the eighth-largest bourbon producer globally and a consistent award winner, gives Gallo a strong foothold in the faster-growing spirits category and international markets.

Kirin, meanwhile, is exiting the spirits business to focus on other growth areas. For Gallo, the purchase is a clear signal: when wine demand shrinks, the world’s biggest winemaker isn’t doubling down on grapes – it’s turning to barrels.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

In a jaw-dropping display of reality inversion, Sweden’s state-owned public transport company SL has rolled out a new advert that casts loud, obnoxious white women as the problem on buses while depicting black men as the silent, long-suffering victims politely minding their own business.

The short video, now going viral, shows a smiling blonde woman named “Anita” glued to her phone watching TikTok at full blast with no headphones, laughing and disrupting everyone around her.

It then cuts to a young black man named “Samir” quietly using his phone with headphones, looking visibly annoyed as he adjusts them and glances her way. On-screen text reads: “Anita älskar Tiktok” (“Anita loves TikTok”) and “Samir också. Med hörlurar” (“Samir too. With headphones”).

In Sweden they have released an advert where White Women are loud and annoying on public transport and Black men are the one’s being quiet and upset about this

The anti-white propaganda is unbelievable pic.twitter.com/3onCm1xk2a

— Basil the Great (@BasilTheGreat) April 8, 2026

Yeah, because this always happens like this on buses and trains doesn’t it.

The official campaign is designed to push “good manners” on public transport. Yet instead of reflecting the well-known cultural differences in public behavior, it flips the script entirely to hammer home the approved narrative: native Swedes (especially white women) are the rude ones, while migrants, or those with migrant backgrounds, are the model citizens.

This latest stunt comes just weeks after we covered a near-identical case of woke hypocrisy in the UK. In February, Transport for London’s “Act Like a Friend” campaign produced multiple ads showing harassment on public transport. One featured a black teenage boy verbally harassing a white girl on a bus. 

The Advertising Standards Authority banned that specific clip after just one complaint, ruling it “perpetuated a negative racial stereotype about black men as perpetrators of threatening behaviour” and was “irresponsible” and “likely to cause serious offence.” 

Ads in the same campaign that showed white men as the harassers sailed through without issue.

Several other recent transport ads have also depicted white men as sexual aggressors, with their victims almost always being ‘diverse’.

The pattern is now crystal clear across Europe. European authorities will censor any depiction that dares show minority crime or bad behavior – even when it is part of a broader public safety message – but they happily fund propaganda that paints native Europeans as the villains. White people must be the problem. Always. No exceptions.

The SL ad arrives at a time when Sweden’s generous immigration policies have already transformed once-peaceful cities. Public transport in Stockholm and Malmö has seen rising tensions, fights, and harassment – issues frequently tied to imported cultural norms around volume, respect for personal space, and women. Yet instead of addressing root causes, the state chooses to gaslight its own citizens with cartoonish role reversals.

Europe’s elite are not interested in integration or honest conversation. They are committed to a top-down cultural replacement project that requires constant propaganda to paper over the cracks. When the public sees the truth every day on the bus or train, the state simply rewrites the script.

The game is wearing thin. People are fed up with being told to ignore their own eyes and lived experience in favour of state-approved fiction.

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Israel is lifting its state of emergency given that the Iran ceasefire appears to be holding, and with that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-running corruption trial will resume in the coming days, according to Reuters.

“With the lifting of the state of emergency and the return of the judicial system to work, hearings will resume as usual,” a statement from the Israeli courts confirms.

via AFP

Hearings are scheduled to take place from Sunday through Wednesday. Of course, the fragile truce could collapse at any moment – after Netanyahu, along with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, have pushed to extend Israel’s wars. But normalcy is returning to Israel, and sirens are no longer constantly blaring out. Even Ben Gurion international airport is fully reopened.

Netanyahu has long been accused, even within Israel, of seeking to prolong Israel’s ‘multi-front’ wars in order to permanently delay the corruption trial and ensure his time in power is extended.

The trial focuses on three corruption cases – including charges of fraud and breach of trust, as well as charges of bribery.

The allegations range from illegally receiving expensive gifts based on political favors, to quid pro quo agreements with some Israeli media sources for more favorable coverage, to authorizing telecom-related regulatory decisions to benefit friends and allies.

Israeli Shekel Closes at Highest Level Since November 1995 on Iran Ceasefire:

Netanyahu was first indicted in 2019 following years of investigation. The trial began in 2020 and faced repeated delays, including interruptions tied to the Gaza war that began in October 2023.

President Trump has on several occasions called the whole legal saga “politically motivated” and asserted that the prime minister been through a “Horror Show”. He’s asked for Netanyahu to be pardoned, calling it a “witch hunt”.

Iran’s Foreign Minister meanwhile used this development on the resumption of the trial to troll both Israel and the US…

Netanyahu’s criminal trial resumes on Sun. A region-wide ceasefire, incl in Lebanon, would hasten his jailing.

If the U S. wishes to crater its economy by letting Netanyahu kill diplomacy, that would ultimately be its choice. We think that would be dumb but are prepared for it.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) April 9, 2026

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog does have the power to grant a pardon, but has so far resisted pressures from Washington.

His office has only indicated justice ministry’s pardons department will be busy collecting opinions and will submit them to the president’s legal adviser, who will eventually issue a recommendation, in a non-committal response.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The UK Labour government’s new definition of “anti-Muslim hostility” – rebranded from “Islamophobia” – is being shaped by a working group where every single member has links to Islamist organisations.

The details are exposed in the Free Speech Union’s latest investigative briefing which highlights ties between the group members and the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND), groups that governments since 2009 have refused to engage with due to their extreme views. 

One member, Baroness Gohir, tweeted in support of Hamas in 2014. Another stood for the far-left, Islamist-supporting Respect Party.

The Free Speech Union’s latest investigative briefing reveals that ALL FIVE members of the Government’s working group tasked with defining “Islamophobia” — now rebranded as “anti-Muslim hostility” — have troubling links to Islamist organisations.

These include the Muslim Council… https://t.co/MZsgc4amKF

— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) April 8, 2026

As the Free Speech Union states: “In a free society, no religion should enjoy greater protection than others — nor be shielded from legitimate criticism and challenge.”

The FSU adds: “This group was stacked with members already sympathetic to such a definition.” And with the government yet to appoint a new Islamophobia tsar, “there is deep cause for concern.”

Conservative MP Katie Lam put it bluntly in her video response: “The Government’s new ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ definition will make it harder to talk about Islamist extremism, FGM, and the grooming gangs. They’d rather restrict our right to criticise than deal with these problems head-on. It’s putting us all in danger.”

Parliament abolished blasphemy laws in 2008. Yet as the FSU warns: “This Government risks reviving them for Islam alone, via the back door.”

The wider context is the government’s “Protecting What Matters” report from March 2026, which rolled out the non-statutory definition alongside plans for a special representative on Muslim hostility. Officials insist it protects free speech – but the panel’s composition tells a different story. 

Read the full Free Speech Union briefing here.

This comes just weeks after we reported on the government’s leaked social cohesion strategy that branded the Union Flag a “tool of hate” and told schools children’s drawings could be blasphemous under Islamic law. 

It builds directly on the Orwellian push we exposed where UK schools are urged to snitch on “anti-Muslim hostility.” 

The pattern is clear: criticism of Islam is being reframed as hostility, while real problems like grooming gangs, FGM and Islamist extremism are sidelined.

Challenging Islamist extremism or mass migration’s consequences is now being treated as the real threat. Legitimate debate on integration failures, cultural clashes, or grooming scandals gets reclassified as “hostility” while the actual problems fester.

Britain’s free speech tradition is under sustained assault – not from the public, but from a government more interested in shielding one ideology than defending open society. 

The Free Speech Union is right to sound the alarm. Without pushback, this backdoor blasphemy regime will silence the very conversations the country desperately needs.

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OpenAI’s broader Stargate push to build next-generation AI infrastructure in the UK has been put on hold, with the company citing regulatory conditions and high energy costs as major obstacles to long-term investment. That outcome is hardly surprising: Britain, like much of dying Europe, has layered on regulatory burdens, while years of backfiring ‘green’ energy policies have left power costs structurally elevated. It’s a toxic mix for power-hungry AI data center buildouts.

“We see huge potential for the UK’s AI future,” OpenAI told Bloomberg in an emailed statement earlier today. “AI compute is foundational to that goal — we continue to explore Stargate UK and will move forward when the right conditions, such as regulation and the cost of energy, enable long-term infrastructure investment.”

Stargate UK is just one piece of OpenAI’s much larger global expansion plan, which involves spending hundreds of billions (up to $500bln) on AI infrastructure to localize and scale AI capabilities.

The pause in Stargate UK signals that growth in AI data center buildouts is colliding with power constraints and regulations in the Western world, as left-wing leaders prioritize de-growth economies with extremist climate policies, while on the other side of the world, China did the complete opposite and boosted baseload capacity on the grid with some of the dirtiest mix of power generation. 

Similar OpenAI projects are underway in Norway and the United Arab Emirates. The core buildout has been in the US, specifically the flagship data center in Abilene, Texas. However, the company abandoned a planned expansion of that data center.

OpenAI’s global compute buildout takeaway: 

US = scale + policy support

Middle East = capital + energy

Nordics = cheap power + cooling

UK/Europe = constrained by cost + regulation

Last week, Bloomberg reported that nearly half of the US data centers planned for this year were delayed or canceled – not because of memory chip shortages – but instead shortages of electrical equipment, such as transformers, switchgear, and batteries.

Related:

OpenAI Snaps Up TBPN, Slashes ChatGPT Pricing As Secondary Market Interest Fades

It certainly appears that data center buildouts are running into real-world constraints that could be a negative for AI momentum trades.

Authored by Ryan McMaken via the Mises Institute,

Late last year, German lawmakers passed new legislation paving the way for military conscription. As the Guardian reports, “The change will include the obligatory screening of all 18-year-old men to gauge their suitability to serve in the military from 1 January..” This is not (yet) full-blown conscription, but clearly moves in that direction, providing the German state with a plan to measure and assess the availability of young men who can be used as a resource in coming military conflicts. 

Now, the legislation faces additional opposition because it turns out the law “requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime.” In other words, the law restricts the emigration of young men who might be of some use to the state as cannon fodder. According to The Guardian: 

The fine print, which went largely under the radar until a media report called attention to it this week, says men aged 17 to 45 would have to apply for authorisation to leave Germany for more than three months. … The clause could potentially affect millions of German citizens embarking on anything from a gap year or study abroad to a new job or sabbatical.

It touched off agitated media coverage in a country where the changes to the military service policy have already led to street protests by school pupils subject to the law’s new requirements.

From restrictions on free speech to attempts to shut down entire political parties, the German state has increasingly showed its affinity for despotism in recent years. Now, by introducing emigration controls, Germany is reverting to an old tactic used by militarist, socialistic European regimes of the past. 

As I showed in a 2018 article on how restriction on emigration are a hallmark of despotic states, mandatory military service has long been used as a justification for regulating those who seek to leave the country:

According to Stanley Johnson, in Emigration from the United Kingdom to North America, 1763-1912, “In Germany, an enactment of 1897 forbade the departure of any citizen who had not completed his military training; it appointed also, a special staff of officials to regulate the emigration agencies.” Also: “The movement in Italy is practically in the hands of the Government, and no one can lawfully depart from trans-Atlantic ports without special permission.” In Italy, as in Hungary, there were only certain government approved “routes by which all migrants are to travel.” In Russia, “permits for crossing the frontier are only granted when all military obligations are at an end.”

Military service was not the only reason for restricting emigration, of course. European states restricted emigration whenever it was thought potential migrants might be fleeced for tax revenue or other riches before being allowed to leave. In Alan Kulikoff’s book From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers, he states

Dissatisfied German peasants, like those in Britain, could emigrate, but German states, worried about losing population and taxes, put roadblocks in their way. Emigrants had to settle all debts and taxes. Free emigrants had to pay large fees for permission to depart and to take property with them, and serfs – a substantial part of the populace – had to pay manumission fees amounting to 12-25 percent of their property.” 

Many emigrated anyway, often illegally. Indeed, military conscription proved to be a motivation for countless men across many regions from Spain to Germany to the Ottoman Empire, and to Japan. As I note in this article from 2022: 

Some immigrant groups in America, such as the Volga Germans, are practically defined by their avoidance of conscription. Specifically, the Volga Germans in America are descended from Germans who emigrated to Russia in the eighteenth century on the condition that they would not be subject to conscription into the czar’s army. When these exemptions were revoked in the nineteenth century, many Volga Germans emigrated to the United States, where they today constitute a sizable portion of the ethnic German populations of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oregon, and Washington. Anabaptist subgroups of the Volga Germans also fled to America to avoid conscription. Groups such as the Hutterites and the Mennonites were explicitly opposed to military service. …

Before the Volga Germans, many other Germans had fled the German kingdoms. A large percentage of Germans arrived in Chicago “during the 1830s … to avoid conscription in the army.”

In Spain during the 1860s, unknown numbers of young men fled to avoid military service to the crown, even in spite of the watchful eyes of government agents seeking to prevent emigration. Wayne H. Bowen writes:

Given the poor conditions for troops, conscription was always a challenge for the central government. Many potential soldiers did their best to avoid service, even through leaving Spain. Emigration was a serious problem, as the families of young boys tried to send them to the colonies or encouraged them to emigrate to Latin America or the United States in order to avoid conscription. The Guardia Civil, Spain’s national paramilitary police, had orders to watch the coast and port cities for young men trying to leave, and colonial governors were prohibited from issuing passports to boys who could not prove service or exemption.

Membership in an ethnic minority in Spain likely provided an added impetus to exit, and “evasion of military service was … widespread among Spanish Basques.”

Meanwhile, in Japan, “militarization [in the early twentieth century] and the initiation of the so-called blood tax or national conscription also encouraged many young Japanese males to emigrate to avoid the draft.” Many went to Peru and Brazil.

Although the German state has not yet adopted full conscription, Berlin is clearly up to its old tricks. Of course, the fact that the German state has to take these steps at all shows just unpopular German foreign policy is. After all, if the public were supportive of the state, conscription—or “pre-conscription,” so to speak—would not be necessary. The “need” to impose forced military service on the population is always an illustration of a state lacking legitimacy. Moreover, if a state has to intervene to prevent people from leaving, what does that tell us about that state’s so-called “social contract.” After all, how many times have we heard the political myth that sounds something like this “by choosing to live in this country, you are saying that you will abide by all the state’s demands and rules. Thus, everything the state does to you is voluntary.” But now, it seems, young men will need to get permission to leave. That’s a truly strange social “contract” indeed.  

China’s government debt has surpassed the European Union’s for the first time, marking a major shift in the global debt landscape.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S., China, and Europe have followed very different borrowing paths. While Europe kept debt growth relatively constrained, both the U.S. and China expanded rapidly—especially after 2020.

The chart below, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, visualizes annual government debt totals for the U.S., EU, and China from 1995 to 2025 in current U.S. dollars (not adjusted for inflation), using data from the IMF.

In 2025, China’s government debt reached $18.7 trillion, surpassing the EU’s $17.6 trillion total for the first time.

The crossover underscores how rapidly China’s borrowing has scaled over the past two decades.

The Rapid Rise in U.S. and China’s Government Debt

In 2008, U.S. government debt stood at $10.9 trillion, roughly in line with the EU’s $10.7 trillion total. By 2025, it had surged to $38.3 trillion, leaving the EU behind by $20.7 trillion.

The data table below shows the government debt of the U.S., China, and EU from 1995 to 2025 in current U.S. dollars:

From just $1.2 trillion in 2008, China’s government debt grew at roughly 17% annually—fast enough to overtake the EU in less than two decades.

Since 2008, U.S. government debt expanded at about 7.7% per year, compared with roughly 3.0% per year for the EU.

Why China and U.S. Debt Grew Much Faster than Europe’s

While the EU’s slower debt growth partially reflects weaker nominal growth across the bloc compared to the U.S. and China, it also is a symptom of the bloc’s tighter fiscal constraints after Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, which peaked between 2010 and 2012.

In contrast, China’s surge in debt was driven by credit expansion, infrastructure spending, and state-backed growth.

The U.S., meanwhile, combined crisis-era borrowing with persistent deficits, especially after 2020, allowing debt to scale far beyond Europe’s. With fewer fiscal constraints at the federal level, Washington has maintained higher spending levels—helping explain why U.S. debt now stands far above both China and the EU.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The World’s $111 Trillion in Government Debt on Voronoi.