New and Old #255

Trust as a precondition for free enterprise, tennis NIMBYs, middle-class immiseration, and how to pray for prisoners

The Strip-Mining of Trust, The Choice Engine, Adam Butler, February 1, 2026

I like this; it reads like an old Nation or Mother Jones piece. I’ve always had a soft spot for old-school left-wing economic populism, and in some ways I think of it as being conservative in the truest sense of the term.

He begins, writing of the old floor trading in stock market…