In his essay “To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” Kant wrote that “the spirit of commerce, which is incompatible with war, sooner or later gains the upper hand in every state.” Yet Kant was not a friend of the spirit of commerce, which he associated with the Jews, whom he despised as “immoral and vile” […]
Is commerce rendering war obsolete? Read More »
A quotation from Jane Addams, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Rockford University student on progressivism’s meaning of democracy. “In this effort toward a higher morality in our social relations, we must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in
Jane Addams and the progressive mindset Read More »
The US government’s debt: “102,984 for every person living in the U.S.”* How’s that for secular Original Sin? Suppose you’re an infant just born into this world. You haven’t done anything yet — but you’ve inherited the financial misdeeds of earlier generations and will spend the rest of your life paying for them. * Source:
Government debt as secular original sin Read More »
I’m a fan of Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz’s From Poverty to Prosperity: Intangible Assets, Hidden Liabilities and the Lasting Triumph over Scarcity. I wrote about it here. It’s about Economics 2.0, as they call it, one key feature of which is putting the entrepreneur front and center — in contrast to much of traditional
Entrepreneur and Un-entrepreneur characteristics Read More »
One regularly reads or hears condemnations of the power of business corporations in the modern world. So let’s think about the nature of power. Witness Warren Buffett. Buffett is currently the sixth richest man in the world and head of the powerhouse Berkshire Hathaway corporation. I’m not a fan of his political or economic views,
Anecdote: Warren Buffett and the power of corporations Read More »
Reposting this question: In this post-colonial era, what explains the dramatically different levels of prosperity in nations after they become independent of their colonizing powers? Why, for example, has the prosperity of North America been consistently higher than that of Central and South America? Both are rich in natural resources, both involve nations started from scratch,
Empires of conquest and empires of commerce Read More »
Reprising “The Wolf and the Lamb“: A wolf came upon a lamb that had strayed from the flock, and he felt some compunction about taking the life of so helpless a creature without some excuse. So he cast about for a grievance and said at last, “Last year, you grossly insulted me.” “That is impossible,
Aesop on politicians and rationalizing tyranny Read More »
How some political ideologies depend on the self-induced selflessness of their members. Here is Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism speaking of both Nazism and Communism: “How little the masses were driven by the famous instinct for self-preservation … . The fanaticism of members of totalitarian movements, so clearly different in quality from the greatest
Is everyone selfish? Hannah Arendt quotation Read More »