Capitalism and the Gospel of Love

By |2023-09-06T19:06:29-05:00September 6th, 2023|Categories: Adam Smith, American Republic, Capitalism, Economics, Free Markets, George Stanciu, Love, Modernity, Timeless Essays|

In “The Wealth of Nations,” Adam Smith was absolutely right: The widespread division of labor would cause the interior life to die; an unsurprising result, for under capitalism, the human person became a commodity, a resource, a thing used to further profits. My parents, Romanian gypsies, born in a Transylvanian village and raised in thatched-roofed [...]

How Modernity Diminishes the Human Person

By |2023-06-22T17:04:34-05:00June 22nd, 2023|Categories: Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Apple, Capitalism, Community, Democracy, Democracy in America, Featured, George Stanciu, St. John's College, Technology, Timeless Essays|

Because of the strong secular faith instilled in us by education, most of us trust that science and technology, democracy, and capitalism, the three legs of Modernity, can bring about only good ends and fail to see that these three triumphs of humankind can diminish the human person. With the publication of the book The [...]

Romantic Nationalism, Trade, & Moral Contingency

By |2022-10-10T19:42:49-05:00September 20th, 2022|Categories: Adam Smith, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Economics, Free Markets, Free Trade, Nationalism, Pat Buchanan, Political Economy, Wilhelm Roepke|

It is the perennial task of the conservative to disentangle the truth from the weeds of confusion which keep growing up around it. Samuel Francis and Patrick Buchanan have greatly contributed to the present resurgence of conservative elements rising up in America. Whatever political victories may come of their work should certainly be celebrated. “Go [...]

The Best Possible World and Concrete Living

By |2022-07-18T19:30:44-05:00July 18th, 2022|Categories: Adam Smith, Capitalism, Free Markets, George Stanciu, Politics, Timeless Essays|

When we strip away all the fancy arguments and strong opinions about capitalism, or industrialism if you like, we see a person in the workplace is a commodity, a thing to be used up and discarded. As a result, capitalism creates a thing-oriented society, where machines, profits, and properties are more important than people. I [...]

Car Repair, Self-Interest, & the Benevolent Investor

By |2021-05-19T10:43:50-05:00May 19th, 2021|Categories: Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Christopher B. Nelson, Happiness, Liberal Learning, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

The figure of the universally benevolent man seems in many circles to have taken a back seat to the stunted, self-centered Economic Man. We ought to ask ourselves: Are we losing a nuanced sense of self-interest rightly understood? I have been reminiscing a lot lately, probably a sign of my age. But I recently came to [...]

Why Adam Smith’s Critique of Mercantilism Matters Today

By |2021-03-08T16:18:20-06:00July 1st, 2020|Categories: Adam Smith, American Republic, Capitalism, Economic History, Economics, Free Markets, Free Trade, Political Economy|

Adam Smith, the father of the discipline we now refer to as economics, was a moral and political philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment and contemporary and acquaintance of Edmund Burke. Long heralded as a proponent of self-regulating markets, limited government, and free-market “capitalism,” Smith is often invoked by proponents of corporate capitalism as an archetype [...]

Freedom vs. Free Trade

By |2020-02-10T15:41:27-06:00February 10th, 2020|Categories: Adam Smith, American Republic, Civilization, Economics, Free Trade, Joseph Pearce, Political Economy, Senior Contributors|

Can “free trade,” as understood by Adam Smith, bring peace among nations? Or does it just allow the strongest nations to become imperial powers? In answering these questions, we must keep in mind that Smith was an economist and not a prophet. In all normal civilisations the trader existed and must exist. But in all [...]

The Intellectual Revolution That Made the Modern World

By |2019-07-19T17:20:55-05:00July 19th, 2019|Categories: Adam Smith, Books, Economics, History, Morality, Philosophy|

The Enlightenment may well be the end of an old story rather than the beginning of a new one. The philosophy of insatiable appetites changed the Christian-Aristotelian moral order into the modern world, but now that the change is just about complete, what purpose does its catalyst serve? Power, Pleasure, and Profit: Insatiable Appetites From [...]

The Un-Burkean Economic Policy of Edmund Burke

By |2019-06-17T10:55:49-05:00June 16th, 2019|Categories: Adam Smith, Economics, Edmund Burke, Ralph Ancil, Wilhelm Roepke|

Edmund Burke allowed his fear of the French Revolution to cloud his judgment of a fitting response to the needs of agricultural workers. He was blind to the dangers of monopoly and concentration of economic power, to the possible ways of intervening that conform to the character of a market economy. “The mistakes which have [...]

In Defense of Capitalism

By |2019-06-13T12:39:13-05:00December 2nd, 2018|Categories: Adam Smith, Capitalism, Economic History, Economics, Free Markets, Ludwig von Mises|

The term capitalism has long been used by critics as a catch-all to denote a system replete with greed, indulgence, excess, and deprivation. It is easy to misinterpret self-interest as selfishness and write off capitalism and economics. But the truth of the matter is much more complicated… I find myself still scratching my head over George Stanciu’s [...]

Pope Francis and the Caring Society

By |2022-12-31T08:48:42-06:00September 30th, 2017|Categories: Adam Smith, Books, Catholicism, Christianity, Civil Society, Compassion, Louis Markos, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, St. John Paul II, Virtue|

I’ve not been fully sure what to “make” of Pope Francis. He is clearly a man of God with a deep love for the poor and an even deeper personal humility. But how is one to respond to his pronouncements on economic and environmental issues? Pope Francis and the Caring Society, ed. Robert M. Whaples (Independent [...]

What Is Economics?

By |2019-02-05T16:16:48-06:00March 2nd, 2017|Categories: Adam Smith, Capitalism, Christianity, Economics, Humanities, Joseph Pearce|

Economics is not a stand-alone science, as disciples of the Enlightenment claim, but a branch of philosophy. In short, economics is one of the liberal arts… My recent essay seeking an adequate definition of capitalism prompted an intriguing comment from a usually eloquent interlocutor, who wondered how those who “have no economic training… think that [...]

What is the “Invisible Hand”?

By |2017-01-12T20:50:03-06:00January 12th, 2017|Categories: Adam Smith, Capitalism, Economics|

Observers who disapprove of others’ exchanges too often want to substitute the visible fist of the state for the invisible hand of the market… “As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may [...]

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