 What about those Hoodies?
by Tibor R. Machan
Over the last couple of weeks I have been waiting for something to be mentioned about hoodies, something that I thought was staring us all in the face. This is that during the recent London riots, nearly everyone depicted by the TV cameras was wearing hoodies as they were caught vandalizing the stores in the neighborhood under siege. (Read more...)
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Ideological Thinking Revisited
by Tibor R. Machan
Following the December 15th Republican “debate,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote once again about the evils of ideological thinking. (Read more...)
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Why Is Religion Still Popular?
by Marty Lewinter
The Enlightenment broke many religious shackles on the minds of men, but some remain. (Read more...)
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Glengarry Glen Ross: A David Mamet Word Play
by Edward W. Younkins
David Mamet’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize winning play, Glengarry Glen Ross, is about the struggles of four shady small-time salesmen in a small branch of a larger real estate company located in Chicago. Taking place over two business days, the play portrays the dog-eat-dog world of real estate and the ends ruthless salesmen w... (Read more...)
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Machan's Archives: Essay on Libertarianism in One Lesson
by Tibor R. Machan
This essay should come in handy these days when "libertarianism" has become almost a household word. Here is a summary discussion of its central tenets, at least as seen by some prominent libertarians. (Read more...)
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Cash McCall: The Story of a Heroic Corporate Raider
by Edward W. Younkins
Cash McCall (1955) is a novel by Cameron Hawley that is positive about business and free-market capitalism. It explores many of the same themes as does Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged but it is not nearly as philosophical. Like Atlas Shrugged, Cash McCall is populated with a range of good and bad characters. It is also a 195... (Read more...)
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Why not Pessimism?
by Tibor R. Machan
By most accounts there is little good news about any progress toward a freer society, quite the contrary. Around the globe, of course, there are some regions that are making small moves away from tyranny but even in those few, human freedom doesn’t appear to be a priority. Instead tribal and religious conflicts are the rule, even as the more vicious rulers are losing their grip on their populations. In Syria the tyrant is hanging on by a very thin thread yet elsewhere it’s mob rule that has replaced dictatorships. (Read more...)
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Executive Suite: A Story of Corporate Success and Succession
by Edward W. Younkins
For over a quarter of a century, Cameron Hawley had two simultaneous successful careers—as a businessman and as a writer of short stories in magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, McCall’s, and Good Housekeeping. For several years, he was an advertising executive in Minneapolis. This was followed by a 24-year car... (Read more...)
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Cuba Awakes?
by Tibor R. Machan
Cuba’s fate over the last half a century has been disastrous, although before that the island wasn’t a Caribbean paradise either. US government policies haven’t made it easier for Cubans to escape their misery since instead of opening up the routes of free trade, the US has mostly chosen to issue penalties against the country, never mind that Cuba has done little against the USA per se to deserve most of it. (Read more...)
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A conversation with an altruist
by Marty Lewinter
Altruism is a despicable doctrine that, in addition to being wrong, robs all participants – givers and takers – of dignity. It is, was, and will be used by every totalitarian state to justify its power over the individual citizen. It must be fought tooth and nail in the fight for freedom. (Read more...)
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Saturday
December 31, 2011 |
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman: A Case of Self-Delusion
by Edward W. Younkins
One of the best known fictional depictions of business is Arthur Miller’s 1949 play, Death of a Salesman, which tells the story of a traveling salesman who has reached the end of his road. Several fine films have been made of this drama, and in 1984 Dustin Hoffman starred in an acclaimed revival of it. The story is tol... (Read more...)
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Saturday
December 24, 2011 |
Capitalism & Socialism Rightly Understood
by Tibor R. Machan
Nozick pointed out that in the libertarian system he presented in his book there is every chance to experiment with a great variety of human associations--he called the “utopias”--provided these do not sanction the coercion of some people by others. And since the kind of associations that “worker owned companies” are by no stretch of the imagination involve any kind of coercion, they are entirely compatible with capitalism wherein the major element is freedom of association, not the pursuit of any particular goal (including profit). (Read more...)
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The Rise of Silas Lapham: A Story of Self-Identity, Self-Respect, and Morality
by Edward W. Younkins
William Dean Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) was the first important realistic novel to focus on an American businessman. The author intended his highly regarded novel to provide moral education to the readers. Early in the novel Howells presents an essential business-related moral dilemma that has repercussi... (Read more...)
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Creating a Virtues-Based Business
by Edward W. Younkins
Virtue ethics can contribute importantly to a comprehensive theory of business and supply a context in which actions can be taken to attain the mission of a particular business. At the same time, the virtues can play a pivotal role in establishing a corporate culture (and related climate) that provide meaning and purpo... (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 23, 2011 |
The Keynesian Non-Answer
by Tibor R. Machan
I have never managed to appreciate why these people keep assuming that the judgments and actions of government officials are superior to those of the citizenry throughout the world where these Keynesian proposals are being made and followed routinely. I keep asking, “Who are these people whom we can trust with such tasks as running a country’s economic affairs?” Somehow thousands of intellectuals who would never entrust government with tasks such as censoring literature and newspapers nevertheless have no compunction about entrusting them with the very delicate and idiosyncratic tasks of directing people’s economic affairs. (Read more...)
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An American Romance: King Vidor's Epic Film of Immigration and the American Dream
by Edward W. Younkins
The advent of railway and steamship transportation during the mid-19th century started a mass intercontinental and transcontinental migration unequaled before or since. Between 1860 and 1920, more than 45 million people left overpopulated Europe with over half of this number arriving in the United States. Many ... (Read more...)
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Moral Responsibility and the Poor
by Tibor R. Machan
The liberal attitude about morality stems, in part, from widespread scientism, the view that science has invalidated morality, made it something bogus like astronomy has made astrology bogus. Extrapolating the empirical scientific method to everything else of interest to human beings achieves this distortion. (Read more...)
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Other People's Money: A Tale of Capitalism and Creative Destruction
by Edward W. Younkins
Jerry Sterner’s 1989 play, Other People’s Money, plays to different groups of people as key players battle for the principles on both sides of a corporate takeover attempt. Both the play, and director Norman Jewison’s 1991 film based on the play, present, in dramatized form, both the arguments for and against corpo... (Read more...)
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Ron Paul’s Foreign Policy Troubles
by Tibor R. Machan
Is it a good idea to explain 9/11and other terrorist attacks on Western and especially American populations by reference to the fact that the West has inserted itself into many regions of the Muslim world without much popular support from those who live there? The idea is that because governments such as that of the US have indeed done this, there can be no complaint when those who live there carry out attacks on Westerners including hundreds of innocent people who had nothing at all to do with the foreign policy that perpetrated the insertions. (Read more...)
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Fallacious Arguments for the Minimum Wage
by William Dwyer
In this article, which I wrote some time ago but which I thought might be of interest to readers, I refute the claims of liberal economist Charles Prasch that the minimum wage law benefits our economy by increasing effective demand, promoting rapid technical change, and equalizing bargaining power in labor markets. As I explain in the article, these claims are entirely without merit, despite their appearance in a standard peer-reviewed economics journal. (Read more...)
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Who Builds Obstacles to Real Stimulus?
by Tibor R. Machan
It is odd that at this time, when Washington is desperate for some genuine, bona fide economic stimulus, real funds that make it possible for citizens to go to market and generate commerce, including, of course, employment, that very same Washington is prohibiting the use of funds for just that purpose. (Read more...)
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Taking a Look at Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward
by Edward W. Younkins
Edward Bellamy’s popular novel, Looking Backward 2000-188, is frequently cited as one of the most influential books in America between the 1880s and the 1930s. This novel of social reform was published in 1888, a time when Americans were frightened by working class violence and disgusted by the conspicuous cons... (Read more...)
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Another Criticism of Animal Rights
by Tibor R. Machan
Though this is a topic that I have visited on several occasions, having recently become an avid fan of the Discovery Channel’s series on life in the deep oceans and other seas, I am motivated to observe just how absurd the notion of animal rights really is.
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The Structural Marxism Underlying Austrian Economics
by Libertarian Realist
Some self-described free-market economists of the Austrian school explicitly credit Karl Marx for the analytical framework they employ. A few years ago I attended a seminar put on by the Institute for Humane Studies in which an Austrian economist openly stated that his analytical method was Marxist in nature. He subs... (Read more...)
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Cleaver’s Bad Theology
by Tibor R. Machan
Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri produced a sound bite following the recent passage in Congress of the compromise bill on the debt ceiling and spending cuts. Even as this bill didn’t by any means manage to demonstrate Congress’s serious understanding of economic reality, Cleaver said that the bill amounts to a devil’s sandwich, by which he meant that it amounts to the defiance of centuries of teachings of the world’s greatest religions about how one must look out for the poor and needy as one lives one’s life. (Read more...)
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