Author Archive
What is so great about individualism?
Image via Wikipedia What is so great about individualism? I teach two populations who have quite a long history of collectivism: Chinese and Japanese. OK, the Chinese also have a history of personal entrepreneurship. In an English media class, we read a recent article about the latest scandal surrounding the Japanese Sumo Association. This concerns [...]
How to raise entrepreneurs (TED talk)
Cameron Herold didn’t do well in school. Fortunately, his dad knew what to do about that.
C.S. Lewis biography
I’m thoroughly enjoying the biography of C.S. Lewis by Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper. I’ve been reading as much of Lewis’ as I can recently, starting with re-reading all the Narnian stories (I’m teaching two of them this year), and then reading some of his literary essays and lectures, followed by Till We Have [...]
Why I no longer read John Derbyshire
Image via Wikipedia Update: Derbyshire’s homepage at Taki magazine includes links to some of my favourite libertarians/Austrian economists, such as Tom Woods, Karen de Coste, Peter Schiff, Justin Raimondo and Paul Gottfried (OK, I’m not sure Gottfried is a libertarian and he’s probably not an Austrian economist, but I like what he writes update: but [...]
Foot-and-mouth disease in Japan
Image via Wikipedia I see foot and mouth has raised its ugly head again, this time in Japan. (Note the fear-inducing picture of the men in hazmat suits.) I’m British, and have lived through at least 2 foot-and-mouth scares, but it was a chance remark in an old interview I was reading that alerted me [...]
“The original goal was INDIVIDUAL freedom”
These days, capitalism has a bad name. Is capitalism evil? Is it an idea whose time has come and gone? Surely we need big government these days? Artist and journalist Jon Rappaport examines the original purposes of the U.S. founding fathers and of the Constitution, and produces one of the most succinct appraisals of the [...]
Author sues the US Government for copyright infringement!
Image via Wikipedia An author and film-maker, J. Neil Schulman, wrote a novel in 1979 about the collapse of the American economy due to massive government overspending and pumping massive amounts of unbacked money and credit into the the system. Schulman claims the US government has stolen his plot! How long before the Randians follow [...]
So, with all these bailouts, the fiscal crisis must be licked, no?
Gary North (subscribers only), an economist and historian, pointed out that the bailouts have not worked. This is not just his opinion, but the opinion of the American public Nearly two-thirds of Americans do not believe the $787 billion stimulus package the president passed last year has helped create jobs, according to a new Pew Research [...]
A good speaker tells stories
Lawrence W. Reed, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), here gives a talk on his seven principles of public policy. Sounds (yawn) fascinating. It’s actually a good example of how to give an interesting talk. Reed tells stories, and these stories elucidate, educate, enlighten. First off, there’s his funny story about the property [...]
Book notes – “My Antonia”
Image via Wikipedia Here are some brief notes and quotes on reading Willa Cather‘s “My Antonia“. This is the third Willa Cather story I’ve read, all within the last month. I’m enchanted. I was inspired by this chapter from Literature and the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture, a fresh approach to literary criticism [...]
