Will we have a recession in the next year or so? I don’t know. As an old joke has it—one that I’ve seen several times in the last week or so—many were those smart enough to have predicted seven of the last three recessions. My question, moral rather than strictly predictive, is whether we may [...]
In order to avoid socialism, we need to embrace a true vision of what business is for; CEOs and shareholders should be thinking about their businesses as having deeper, human ends. While businesses aren’t charities, they require justice and charity in those who own and direct them. A couple years ago at a conference a [...]
The real problem in the modern world is not that there are too many babies, but too few. In the end, both economics and environmentalism depend upon people. Money and the earth are made for man, and not man for money and the earth. The fashionable mindset among celebrities, royals, and too many ordinary people [...]
I often cringe a bit when I hear people say, “Let the markets decide.” I’m all for letting the markets decide a lot of things, but with the proviso that in the market I’m a decider. So when companies use their power and their marketing to shut down voices of sanity and to promote unhealthy [...]
Economics is one of the necessary tools that call forth the creativity and cooperation in us—aspects of our being made in the image of God. The science of the economic sphere is most interesting to the imaginative conservative when its methods and truths are applied not as ends in themselves, but as means toward the [...]
The Purloined Boy, by Mortimus Clay Several books into the Harry Potter series, Joseph Bottum wrote that J. K. Rowling’s genius was her ability to mush together elements in themselves of little worth: “A writer who puts one cliché into a book manages to produce pulp fiction. A writer who uses a dozen can produce [...]