It is so difficult to mix with artists! You must choose business men to talk to, because artists only talk of money.
Jean Sibelius, as quoted by Bengt de Törne in Sibelius: A Close-Up (1937), p. 94.
On December 10, 1884, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published. This novel, narrated in the first person by the title character, is a dark comedy of the antebellum South and slavery, and has been considered by more than one literary critic as the “Great American Novel.”
On this date in 1901, the first Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded — to economist Frédéric Passy, co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Union; and to Henry Dunant the founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Passy was an admirer of Richard Cobden and an active member in the French Liberal School of Political Economy that developed in the tradition of J. B. Say, Destutt de Tracy, and Frédéric Bastiat. His published works include Leçons d’économie politique (1860-61); La Démocratie et l’Instruction (1864); L’Histoire du Travail (1873); Malthus et sa Doctrine (1868); and La Solidarité du Travail et du Capital (1875).
Many newly unemployed are unhappy about having to job-hunt. Some complain about having to take jobs from profit-making businesses. Others lament sparse communication from prospective employers.
“When asked about barriers to finding employment, 85% of respondents cited lack of employer response as their primary challenge,” Aparna Rae’s not-very-shocking-at-all Forbes article elaborates. “The irony is stark: a sector built on human dignity subjects job seekers to dehumanizing ‘digital hiring mazes’ where qualified candidates are ghosted after final-round interviews. The disconnect between mission and practice erodes the sector’s moral authority.”
Wow. Dehumanizing to have to . . . look for work (or customers)? Worse because your last job was all about dignity — unlike all those grubby profit-sector jobs or, for that matter, jobs with nonprofits that rely only on voluntary private donations?
“I want to be seen and recognized as a human,” explains one representative job seeker. “The lack of communication and impersonal nature of the hiring process is demoralizing and makes job seekers feel devalued.”
Job hunting can be tough. It’d be nicer if qualified candidates who have been considered but lose out to other qualified candidates were always notified. Sure. But how does failure to do so represent a “disconnect” between mission and practice, and how does it “erode the [nonprofits’] moral authority”?
Job seekers might feel less demoralized if they didn’t take the impersonal aspects of the search so personally.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on; le malheur
est qu’il soit un maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves.
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
Hector Berlioz, letter written in November 1856, published in Pierre Citron (ed.) Correspondance générale (1989), vol. 5, p. 390; as quoted by Paul Davies in About Time: Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution (1996), p. 214.
On December 9, 1958, the John Birch Society was founded in the United States. December 9 also marks the birthdays of
As Reclaim the Net reports, the European Union wants platforms to open themselves to what it calls “independent research.” In practice, this means that “academics and NGOs, often with pro-censorship political affiliations” get special access to the data, “exactly the kind of surveillance the [Digital Services Act] claims to prevent. . . . The EU is angry that X is not policing speech the way it wants.”
My advice to Elon Musk is to shut down X (formerly Twitter) throughout the EU. And refuse to pay the fine.
X’s departure from the EU wouldn’t need to be permanent. For the censors would then have not only X and its uncooperative CEO to contend with; suddenly, a pro-X lobby of millions of Twitterers would be putting pressure on the censors.
The chances of unilateral surrender by the EU? Pretty high. And that’s the only kind of surrender Musk should accept.
If he agrees to even a little EU repression in return for lifting of the fine, that could lead to a total loss for the freedom-of-speech side; the bureaucrats, spies, and busybodies would likely take that seemingly marginal concession and relentlessly work to enlarge it.
Accept only total victory. And be ready to again leave the EU the instant the EU-crats resume their attacks.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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If we understood the world, we would realize that there is a logic of harmony underlying its manifold apparent dissonances.
Jean Sibelius, as quoted in Henry Thomas & Dana Lee Thomas, Living Biographies of Great Composers (1946) p. 309.
On December 8, 1974, a plebiscite finalized the abolition of the monarchy in Greece. The last Greek king, Constantine II, had ceased any royal pretensions while in exile on June 1. The December referendum was something of a formality.
Readers of Paul Jacob’s Common Sense are quite aware that he has long targeted the FCC on this site, as can be seen by just a few of his past Common Sense commentaries:
But if you yearn for something more, consult Robby Soave on Ayn Rand:
In 1962, Rand penned a prophetic warning about the public interest standard, which then–FCC Chair Newton N. Minow was citing to justify pressuring television companies to create more educational programming. Minow famously railed against a supposedly “vast wasteland” of shoddy television shows, and he claimed that the FCC’s charter empowered him to push for editorial changes to the medium that would align with his view of the public interest.
“You must provide a wider range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives,” said Minow in his well-remembered 1961 speech. “It is not enough to cater to the nation’s whims; you must also serve the nation’s needs.”
Minow repeatedly claimed that he was not in favor of government censorship and was not trying to tell broadcasters what they could and could not say. Rather, he charged them to make nebulous and ill-defined improvements to the product that he believed would be better appreciated by the American public — i.e., the public interest.
In her March 1962 essay “Have Gun, Will Nudge,” Rand argued that this was censorship by another name. “It is true, as Mr. Minow assures us, that he does not propose to establish censorship; what he proposes is much worse,” she wrote. Unlike explicit bans on speech, Rand warned, the modern method of censorship “neither forbids nor permits anything; it never defines or specifies; it merely delivers men’s lives, fortunes, careers, ambitions into the arbitrary power of a bureaucrat who can reward or punish at whim.”
Robby Soave, “Ayn Rand Denounced the FCC’s ‘Public Interest’ Censorship More Than 60 Years Ago,” Reason (January 2026).
Read the whole magazine piece at Reason’s online site.
Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais
rien toutes seules, et c’est fatigant, pour les enfants,
de toujours et toujours leur donner des explications.
Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Le Petit Prince (1943), first chapter.