The main reason we are seemingly so accepting of lockdowns and vaccine mandates is that we have been conditioned to view a pandemic or an epidemic as a war being waged on our society. 

In wartime we naturally expect civil liberties to be suspended. Likewise, the reasoning goes, during a pandemic we need to act in a unified way under some central command to fight this viral existential threat. Individual rights and freedoms must be curtailed for the sake of the greater good. 

Chandran Kukathas is one of the best contemporary political philosophers, and one of the few sympathetic to libertarian views. Unlike Murray Rothbard, he does not consider self-ownership fundamental but instead defends libertarianism from a different standpoint that is skeptical of principles considered apart from their expression in particular societies. In this week’s article, I’d like to look at an extended statement of Kukathas’s position on this issue, his article “Libertarianism without Self-Ownership” (Social Philosophy and Policy, 2019).

Public commentator Amanda Marcotte is “incandescent with rage”—her words—with those who refuse to be vaccinated against covid-19.1  She wants to get back to her spin class, and the unvaccinated are ruining it for her.

The Federal Reserve says that inequality is a problem. At the same, the Fed also pretends to have nothing to do with it. 

Signs of incipient totalitarian impulses have been evident since the rise of political correctness.1  Yet, warnings from those who saw the character of contemporary “social justice” went largely unheeded.

Abstract: This article explains the theoretical importance of the quality of money as a factor of the demand for money and develops the composite indicator that measures the quality of money for the eurozone. The demand for money, i.e., the amount of money people keep in their balances, besides other well-known factors (e.g., interest rate, price level, and income) depends on how people subjectively perceive a particular money’s ability to serve its main functions: a medium of exchange, a store of value, and the unit of account.

Abstract: This article explains the theoretical importance of the quality of money as a factor of the demand for money and develops the composite indicator that measures the quality of money for the eurozone. The demand for money, i.e., the amount of money people keep in their balances, besides other well-known factors (e.g., interest rate, price level, and income) depends on how people subjectively perceive a particular money’s ability to serve its main functions: a medium of exchange, a store of value, and the unit of account.

Abstract: The conventional wisdom has it that US Democrats and those on the American left support incremental steps in the direction of socialism, if not an all-out endorsement of the concept. However, in at least one area—regulation—Republicans and the American political right have also, albeit unwittingly, spread the seeds of socialism not just in Washington, DC, but all across the world.