What is liberalism? How ought we to understand it? Entire forests have been felled in the attempt to answer these questions. Much of the literature that undertakes a “taxonomy” of ideas has focused on whether liberalism is a single principle or a plurality of principles, or whether liberalism always contained within it the seeds of [...]
For the conservative, the real end of economic production is to raise man above the savage level, to make possible the leisure which sustains civilization, and to free man from the condition of a simple drudge. When efficiency or production becomes an end in itself, then truly technology has triumphed over humanity. —Prospects for Conservatives: [...]
My American Enterprise Institute colleague, Jonah Goldberg, recently wrote a book entitled The Tyranny of Clichés. One of the clichés is that conservatives are rigid, judgmental ideologues. Progressives, by contrast, are praised as flexible pragmatists who seek practical solutions and go wherever the data lead them. Year after year, this tired old narrative yields an [...]
There are several areas in which distributists and free-market economists can find common ground, and even common ends. Both share a desire for more widespread ownership of the means of production, and a desire for a less powerful centralized state. With this essay, I am venturing into unfamiliar territory. My previous essays featured in this journal have [...]
Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” is not a call to activism or a program for some version of social justice. It is, rather, a manifesto of political and social libertarianism that displays both the strengths and weaknesses of that trend in American thought. Henry David Thoreau’s long essay, first published under the title “Resistance to Civil Government,” [...]
Western social philosophy has produced many, many writings on the nature of sovereignty. Chiefly, these works are concerned with the individual or group of individuals who are entitled to rule. The medieval conception of divine right held that kings were the apex in a heavenly-ordained social order, ruling legitimately to the extent they upheld the [...]
June 20th, 1998, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the German “economic miracle.” Of course, there was nothing miraculous about it. Germany’s success was not due to the hard-working character of her people, or to foreign aid, or to any other special reason. It was the natural outcome of a market economy and currency reform. And yet [...]
Society, community, and family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability and to prevent, or at least to slow, change. But the modern organization is a destabilizer. It must be organized for innovation and innovation, as the great Austro-American economist Joseph Schumpeter said, is ‘creative destruction.’ And it must be organized for the [...]
Economic efficiency is one of the most important concepts economists use to classify and understand the social world. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most misused. There are two aspects of economic efficiency, the positive and the normative, both of which must be understood in order to apply the concept fruitfully. The former involves [...]
The effect of actions based on self-interest turned loose from any anchor in morality is not an adequate basis of economic or social organization. The sphere of legitimate market activity must be limited so that it harmonizes with the rest of the community and with other values. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords [...]
We have been hearing a great deal about income inequality in recent days, particularly from Senator Bernie Sanders. Part of this interest is fueled by many examples of excess at the top. J.P. Morgan Chase, after a year immersed in scandal, decided to award its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, $20 million in compensation for 2013. [...]
Too many people have a naïve belief in the freedom of the market. Big companies like Starbucks do not compete fairly with their smaller rivals but seek to eradicate them. There’s nothing like starting the New Year with a new controversy. My recent essay, “Finding Freedom in Your Pocket,” prompted a scathing response from one [...]
We got away with increasing the national debt exponentially in a very short time because of a low-interest rate environment. But are you willing to bet that interest rates will always be rock-bottom? If you’re a young American, welcome to your inheritance. According to the United States Treasury, the total national debt is $18.2 trillion. [...]
Bernie Sanders, the Democrats’ only (openly) socialist presidential candidate joined the chorus of criticism against Walmart a while back. But many conservatives also spend a good deal of time and effort criticizing the discount store giant. The mass hysteria of Christmas shopping season provides an opportunity to reconsider Walmart—at least to a certain, limited extent. [...]