Philosophy and Methodology

Hilary Putnam ranks as one of the outstanding American philosophers of the twentieth century, but never before now has he shown any interest in economics.

John Gray is Ayn Rand's nightmare come true. Once a classical liberal, he now finds the inanities of Tony Blair's "Third Way," as expounded by its oracle Anthony Giddens, more to his liking. 

Liberty is incompatible with taxation, writes Tibor Machan. This is despite the famous saying by Oliver Wendell Holmes that "Taxation is the price we pay for civilization." In fact, taxation is a most uncivilized way of obtaining funds, given that it boils down to nothing less than extortion.

John Gray is Ayn Rand's nightmare come true. Once a classical liberal, he now finds the inanities of Tony Blair's "Third Way", 

Lew Rockwell asks us to think of a robber who promises to stop coming through your front door if you promise to leave open the back door. So it is with the state that promises to stop taxing your income if you let it tax your consumption. The issue is not the method; it is the amount.

When intellectuals teach the children of nonintellectuals to hate their own civilization, and regard its achievements as acts of villainy, writes Steven Yates, they only invite waves of understandable anti-intellectual reaction.

Most academics in the social sciences assume that civilization is saved by attacking such antiquated and anti-egalitarian notions as property rights and freedom of association, writes Chris Westley. This is notable because universities used to be concerned with the business of discovering and teaching the truth.

It is hard to understand the vague and ill-defined laws Martha Stewart and Sam Waksal are accused of violating. But the premise of the law is not hard to divine: Competition in capital markets must proceed from a level playing field. All investors are entitled to the same information advantage irrespective of effort and abilities. In a word, socialism!

Those who have written in favor of distributism on moral grounds appear to revel in their ignorance of economics--as if a discipline devoted to the application of human reason to the problems of scarcity in the world could actually in itself be antagonistic to ethics and faith.