Weekly Writers Round-Up: Veterans Day, Lotteries, and Airbnb

Each week, we’ll be featuring the work of the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. For more information on the program, see here. Applications for the spring are now open!

On World War I Armistice Anniversary, Time for Civilians to Revive Veterans Day by Beth Bailey (Fall 2018) in The Washington Examiner
This Veterans Day, we celebrate the centennial of the date from which our modern celebration gets its start: Armistice Day, and the end of World War I. With the passage of 100 years, our Veterans Day celebrations have evolved. Just as the solemn occasion of Memorial Day has been hijacked for barbecues and frivolity at the beach, many Americans mark Veterans Day as just another day off of work. Even for veterans, as military comic Terminal Lance annually jabs, it can be little more than a chance to eat free food at a variety of small restaurant chains…

Mississippi’s New Lottery Will Help Save the State Budget by Stephen Lusk (Spring 2018) in The Clarion Ledger
In late October, Governor Phil Bryant announced the first board of directors for the Mississippi Lottery Corporation, the administrators of the state’s forthcoming lottery system. The lottery was approved by the legislature earlier this year in a special session that addressed a state government budget crisis—a crisis that has affected everything from the safety of rural bridges, education funding, and the number of psychiatric beds available to mental health patients (between 2010 and 2017 the number fell from 1,156 to 486). Implementing this state lottery could finally offer the solution we’ve long needed to the problems wreaking havoc on our state…

San Francisco’s War on Airbnb Is a War on the Free Market by Fergus Hodgson (Fall 2018) in The Epoch Times
The most ingenious arbiter of resource allocation is under attack around the globe: market pricing. In the cross hairs stands the peer-to-peer economy, which circumvents price controls, favoritism, and central planning. The intermediary platforms—Airbnb, Uber, Kickstarter, Turo, etc—have enabled a flowering of mutually beneficial exchange. The beauty of these decentralized networks is surpassed only by the economic value they bring to users…