Friedrich Hayek’s individualism is not the Rousseauian individualism of the person stripped naked of all his relations and his history, but rather that of Edmund Burke, with each person both encumbered and liberated by the little platoons to which we all belong… Sometime during the early to mid-1980s, I encountered the work of Friedrich August von [...]
If we are to know and rebuild a conservative civil social order in this country, then we need to “rake from the ashes” of recent American history the books that influenced a generation of conservative scholars and public figures, books whose message resonated with much of the American populace and resulted in astonishing political triumphs. [...]
Economics deals with statements of “is,” not of “ought.” It can tell you the consequences of particular public policies, but it cannot itself demonstrate the rightness or wrongness of such policies… Some debates on economic matters seem destined to recur in the public square. The minimum wage is one. Rent control is another. With several [...]
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 [...]
“Capitalism” needs to be pinned down by definition; it needs to be circumscribed so that it doesn’t lead us off in increasingly meaningless and therefore futile lines of reasoning… If words are to have any value they must have definite and definable meanings. If too many meanings are ascribed to a single word, the word [...]
That boredom, sexual perversion, consumerism, and the general malaise of the West are to a great extent the fruits of past economic growth is long recorded… “Conquest or superiority among other powers is not, or ought not ever to be, the object of republican systems.” —Charles Pinckney of South Carolina The Rise of Neo-Mercantilism. [...]
Self-service is often presented as the best of all buying options because it allows individuals to get the exact product they want quickly without interference from others. But by making purchases “easier,” is the buying experience truly enriched?… Self-service is often presented as the best of all buying options because it allows individuals to get [...]
To shun wickedness, to care for our souls, and to love one another without looking for rewards, if followed by all, would turn injustice, now a constant companion of human life, into a stranger. In his 2005 masterpiece, Match Point, Woody Allen explores moral failing in a universe governed by chance, or what the protagonist [...]
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 [...]
Whereas Adam Smith had warned that government must intervene in the economy from time to time, Edmund Burke believed any interference in the economy on the part of government to be a violation of the natural law… […]
There seems to be very little cultural space for humanistic studies. It is difficult to perceive how literature, philosophy, or theology could contribute to technological capitalism… I would like you to imagine the following situation: Sometime after graduation a college student is hired as an intern at his university’s newly founded Center for Leadership Studies [...]
Ludwig von Mises was born on September 29, 1881, in the city of Lemberg in the Austro-Hungarian empire. His mother was Adele (Landau) von Mises; his father, Arthur Edler von Mises, a construction engineer in government service to the Ministry of Railroads, died at the age of forty-six (after a gall bladder operation) when Ludwig [...]
Should Christians support capitalism? Surely yes, if only because capitalism deserves most of the credit for the decline of extreme poverty in the world, from about one-third of the world’s population a generation ago, to about one-tenth today, using World Bank definitions of poverty. But capitalism has its moral dangers, one of which is that [...]
When Edmund Burke surveyed the names of those leading the French Revolution in its first half year of existence in 1789, he despaired. Several were certainly good men, he noted, and many were quite accomplished. Yet, not a single man possessing any necessary experience in the world appeared on the list. “The best,” he lamented, [...]