Europe became prosperous through a burst of innovation and capital accumulation during the eighteenth-century industrial revolution that allowed individual freedom to replace feudalistic rents and privileges. A new industrial revolution based on digitalization, advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and automation is in the making, but the reputed analyst Wolfgang Münchau claims that Europe is about to miss it.
In recent months, Federal Reserve officials have repeatedly referred to monetary policy as restrictive. In September, Jerome Powell said policy was “clearly restrictive,” and in November, New York Fed President John Williams stated “I still view the current monetary policy level as moderately tight...”
With Charlie Kirk out of the way, TPUSA which he co-founded, is now lobbying for a US war with Iran.
Nature is stingy; the things we need to sustain life above a primitive level are scarce. Fresh tomatoes, iPads, and rotator cuff surgery do not come forth as easily as the air we breathe, and thus man had to discover on his own how to produce or acquire them.
We often hear demands to ban so-called “hate speech.” Negative remarks about various groups, including women, black people, homosexuals, Jews, Muslims, can it is alleged, have a negative effect on members of the group who hear or see the speech. It encourages people to hate them and cements negative stereotypes about them in people’s minds. In addition, hearing or seeing “hate speech” offends the members of the group.
Many people are up in arms over President Trump’s red-carpet welcome of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). They cite the CIA’s conclusion that bin Salman orchestrated and ordered the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to secure documents relating to his upcoming marriage.
At a press conference yesterday, Trump observed that “things happen” in life but emphasized that bin Salman played no role in Khashoggi’s gruesome murder, which bin Salman himself denies playing a part in.
A recent debate between Dave Smith and YouTuber “Liquid Zulu” highlighted a deep misunderstanding of libertarian theory related to the nature and scope of the philosophy, and its axiom, the Non-Agression Principle. Liquid Zulu argued for an uncompromising position — that it is always immoral to violate the NAP, without exception. This rigidity was tested with hypotheticals. In one, an alien race threatens to destroy Earth unless someone steals a single penny. In another, a man could save his dying mother only by stealing his neighbor’s ladder.
The late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century philosopher F. H. Bradley is not at the center of contemporary philosophical discussion, but he was, in my opinion, one of the greats, and, in his book Ethical Studies (first published in 1876) he raises some important questions criticisms of utilitarianism, mainly of the sort favored by John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick.
