What makes liberal capitalism good? Here is a flowchart I’ve developed for use in some upcoming talks. The chart diagrams the positive claims about liberal capitalism by its defenders — John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and others. Click on the image for full size […]
Justifying liberal capitalism Read More »
At the Hoover Institution’s site, an anecdote about contemporary mores: “Hanson was in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart one day when he saw a young woman struggling to move a big screen television into her Honda. When he went over to help her, he noticed that she was holding an EBT card, a government-issued
Food stamps and big screen televisions Read More »
I was struck by this philosophical economist’s connecting the Aristotelian solution to the so-called naturalistic fallacy to the question of the value of money. “This approach hints at the fact that a key element in this work is the treatment given to questions surrounding the ‘naturalistic fallacy.’ The basic reasoning here is that in regard
Zelmanovitz on philosophy of money Read More »
And symphonies discriminate against the deaf. I mocked that view in criticizing last year’s lawsuit against Chipotle: Chipotle Mexican Grill versus egalitarianism. Turns out, though, that it’s cutting-edge civil rights law based on the Americans with Disabilities Act: “Justice Department Settles with Sacramento, Calif., Public Library Authority Over Inaccessible ‘E-Reader’ Devices”. The library had acquired
Libraries discriminate against the blind Read More »
Today I walked past a well-groomed old man driving an awesome Jaguar convertible. Jaguars are my favorite sports car, and I felt a twinge of envy. Later at a fast food restaurant, an energetic teenager before me in line was counting out his coins, unsure if he had enough to pay for a cold drink.
A thought about real wealth Read More »
Jumping into the debate about “bleeding-heart libertarianism” (Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, Bryan Caplan and again, David Friedman, David Henderson, and others), which seeks to integrate libertarianism with social justice. “Social justice” is one of those vaguely-specified, usually suspect phrases, defined by one defender of BHL as the position that “the moral justification of our
Bleeding-heart libertarianism? Read More »
My lengthy journal article entitled “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” [pdf] is now publicly available for free at the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies‘ site. The abstract: “Philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand are often identified as strong critics of altruism and arch advocates of egoism. In this essay, Stephen Hicks argues that Nietzsche and
“Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” at JARS Read More »
My original post on Toohey’s five strategies of altruism has been published in a print version designed by Christopher Vaughan, with graphics and scary pull quotes. Here is the PDF version. The post’s opening: “The ethics of altruism holds that others are standard of value. One is good to the extent one puts the interests
“Toohey’s Five Strategies of Altruism” reprint Read More »