Everyone is taught to believe that gigantic retailers are the most efficient distributors of goods to the general public. Small stores may be able to fill tiny niches. They may be quaint and picturesque. However, only the gigantic retailers have the capital and economy of scale to offer everyday lower prices and variety to the [...]
Today America is on its third economic upswing, even as the places I visit have continued to fade away… For 23 years I have been driving country roads, photographing the ruins of rural America for a documentary I call “Lost Americana.” As population decline claims town after town, I have been talking to those who [...]
At the G-7 summit in Canada, President Donald Trump described America as “the piggy bank that everybody is robbing.” After he left Quebec, his director of Trade and Industrial Policy, Peter Navarro, added a few parting words for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in [...]
Many Hungarians clearly perceive their way of life and their country as under threat and sense that influential individuals like George Soros would like them fundamentally transformed. This is a fight between nationalists and anti-nationalists… The victory of Viktor Orbán and his party Fidesz in the Hungarian elections last month elicited the predictable flurry of [...]
There still are men and women enough among us who know what makes life worth living—enough of them to keep out the modern barbarian, if they are resolute. If they are not resolute, and if they cannot make common cause, the garment of our civilization will go to the rag-bin, and the cultural debris of [...]
How does it happen that in the eyes of workmen, of publicists, and statesmen, abundance should appear a thing to be dreaded, and scarcity advantageous? I propose to trace this illusion to its source… Which is best for man, and for society, abundance or scarcity? What! you exclaim, can that be a question? Has any [...]
Much has been written in recent years about the increasing polarization in American politics. Republicans have moved further to the right, while Democrats have moved further to the left. And seldom do they even attempt to meet anywhere in the middle. The phenomenon is undeniable. It’s observable on a daily basis and confirmed by polling [...]
Some sound instinct kept Albert Jay Nock from ever becoming a reformer, in the usual sense. He was never a tub-thumper for some system; never an organization man. He was, to the contrary, a lifelong learner. Albert Jay Nock died too soon, but not before he had nailed to the mast several of the paradoxes [...]
Until individuals, families, institutions, and government are restored to their proper roles, America will continue crashing through the debt ceiling… It is official: The national debt has now exceeded $21 trillion. The tragic news comes just six months after it hit $20 trillion last September 8. This problem is obviously not going away. By voting to suspend [...]
More than just the ultimate inflation hedge, the wealth of Nature—gold, forests, land, agriculture—and the cautious stewardship of these tangible assets over easily-inflated government “IOU’s” is what distinguishes wealth from riches. When King Louis XII, in the year 1499, formed the project of taking the Dukedom of Milan, to which he thought he had a [...]
We need to challenge the economic conditions that inhibit family formation: Family life does not occur in a vacuum. But even if America was prosperous and economically booming, it does not necessarily follow it would also be demographically booming. Although economics may play a factor, the malaise lies deeper. The rot has cultural roots… A [...]
Economics alone will not provide the answer to the tariff question. We need to address the superior side of man’s nature, which is spiritual. When this spiritual side is addressed, it guides and gives rise to political, social, cultural, and economic solutions in sync with human nature… As I watch the debate over tariffs, I [...]
The bourgeois soul for Christopher Dawson is not found simply in support of the free market. The bourgeois soul is found when one puts money above God, in contrast to the religious man, who places God first. “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or [...]
If a reform produces unintended consequences of a troubling sort, succeeding generations of reformers will make use of those consequences not to undo the original reform, but rather to call for new action that requires an ever-larger federal government… All reforms are notorious for their unintended consequences; liberal reforms are noteworthy for something that is [...]