For Human Flourishing
At a time when most see capitalist liberalism and socialism as the only possible ordering ideas for human societies, and the former as the de facto selection…
Information Economics: George Gilder’s “Life after Capitalism”
We all know economics in the basic sense, don’t we? We all know economics not in the sense that we have all studied it, but that economics…
Populism and the Crisis of the Knowledge Elite
When the French Revolution abolished the Estates General and appeared to usher in the Enlightenment virtues of egalitarianism, the accepted liberal historical view was that the age…
What’s Natural about Adam Smith’s Natural Liberty?
Abundantly does Adam Smith use “liberty” in The Wealth of Nations (WN).[1] “Liberty” usually means “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way” (WN…
What Adam Smith’s Strange Essay on Language Teaches about Commerce
Prior to his death Smith had most of his papers and manuscripts burnt. Apart from his two seminal works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth…
Russia’s Capitalist Realism
Russia’s Capitalist Realism. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov. Vadim Shneyder. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2021. Russia’s Capitalist Realism breaks new grounds in the studies of nineteenth-century Russian…
Corruption According to Adam Smith
That awful person! How can someone be so corrupt?! Be it Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or someone else, Adam Smith pointed to an answer: “This self-deceit, this…
Taleb and Business Ethics
Many of this semester’s readings will be taken from Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He first rose to fame with his 2007 book Black Swan, the title…
The Journey Home: Wilhelm Röpke and the Humane Economy
Two Greek words define my topic: nostos and oikos. The first—from which we have ‘nostalgia’—denotes return to the home, and it is the great theme of Homer’s…
Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World
Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World. Deirdre N. McCloskey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. According to McCloskey, a change in the common…
Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age
Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age. William Deringer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. How is that we are beholden to numbers? We view…
Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy
Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy. Gregory M. Collins. Cambridge University Press, 2020. It can only be fortunate for us and the future of…
How China Escaped the Poverty Trap
How China Escaped the Poverty Trap. Yeun Yuen Ang. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. How can poor and weak societies escape poverty traps? What comes…
The Symmetrical House of Form: The Economics of Being and The Struggle for Existence in Prehistory (Part II)
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. - T.S. Eliot Burnt Norton[1] Prologue In…
The Economy of Funerals and Aunts
The office of the Vice President, FDR’s second veep John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner allegedly said, is not worth a bucket of warm spit. What do vice…