Dreher Condemns Capitalist Materialism
And the Wall Street Journal celebrates his contribution.
Damnant quod non intellegunt.
Why Socialized Medicine Leads to the Prohibition of Private Medicine
An article in today’s (Feb. 20, 2006) New York Times makes clear that Canada’s much ballyhooed system of socialized medicine, in addition to being plagued by interminable waits for treatment, has prohibited competition from private medicine. But now, as the result of a ruling last June by Canada’s Supreme Court, limited forms of private medical care are apparently in process of being allowed to appear, at least in some provinces.
This Time, Summers Has Gone Too Far
No wonder the President of Harvard is being canned for politically incorrect comments. Here is the latest story, as related by an ex-dean: “Summers suggested that some funds should be moved from a sociology program to the Kennedy School, home to many economists and political scientists. ‘President Summers asked me, didn’t I agree that, in general, economists are smarter than political scientists, and political scientists are smarter than sociologists?’”
Does Venture Capital Spur Entrepreneurship?
A new paper by Steven Kreft and Russell Sobel, “Public Policy, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Freedom” (Cato Journal, Fall 2005), examines the causal relationship between venture capital (VC) and entrepreneurship. Do increases in venture funding lead to increases in entrepreneurial activity, or does VC flow to areas in which entrepreneurship is already taking place?
Stateless in Somalia, and Loving It
Somalia is in the news again, writes Yumi Kim. Rival gangs are shooting each other, and why? The reason is always the same: the prospect that the weak-to-invisible transitional government in Mogadishu will become a real government with actual power.
Thomas Woods, New in the Store
The winners write the history, and the winning states especially so. Thomas Woods, however, sets out to write a primer on American history from a different point of view, one that doesn’t glorify centralization and intervention.
The result is the only primer on American political history that is heavily informed by the economics of the Austrian School. It was also a New York Times bestseller and one of the most controversial books in American history to appear in decades.
Flu Frenzy
A duck gets sick in France; Britian goes nuts. Here are the number of “confirmed” cases of death so thus far. Tens of thousands worlwide? Actually 15 in 2006. Here is a thing I wrote on this topic.
The Failure of Government Justice
Writes T. Norman Van Cott: the answer to the problem of crime is the complete privization of prison and parole.
What Happened to Katrina Aid?
Manuel Lora looks at Katrina aid six months since the hurricane.
Two Losses
This week, two important associates of the late Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, have died.
Dr. Paul Poirot was the editor (and really writer) of The Freeman for 30 years. The Rev. Edmund A. Opitz was author of Religion and Capitalism: Allies Not Enemies. Both men, with their deep learning, commitment to the free market, and elegant manners, exemplified the old republic.
May they rest in peace.
