This week on Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon reviews The Price of Our Values by Augustin Landier and David Thesmar. While the authors claim that economists often substitute utilitarianism for moral values, they dismiss any idea of objective standards for morality.
In the world of private enterprise, business owners pay attention to costs already incurred that cannot be recovered, also known as “sunk costs.” Government officials, however, see sunk costs as an incentive to promote public projects where costs clearly outweigh benefits.
When people speak of “social justice,” they are not speaking of justice in any historical form but rather an imaginary state of affairs in which the state enforces a progressive view of equality. F.A. Hayek wrote that “social justice” is “wholly devoid of meaning or content.”
Although politicians, pundits, and the media claim that a trade deficit is harmful to a country, the reality is much different. In a free economy, individuals interact with each other in mutually-beneficial exchanges. As Murray Rothbard noted, free exchanges do not produce winners and losers.
Cinephiles are mourning the death of Val Kilmer, who is remembered for many movies, but we ought also to be remembered for his performance in the underrated anti-war classic, Real Genius.
When intellectuals and political elites call for equality, they usually mean creating social conditions that are make believe at best and harmful at worst. Their latest hustle is “equity,” which means the state should guarantee equal outcomes for everyone.
In this edition of Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon reviews Arnold Schelsky‘s The Hype Cycle and finds some worthy insights into things that modern culture has hyped, such as climate change.
The first 100 days of the second Trump administration have made it clear that those who want the foreign policy status quo to continue are serious about doing what it takes to accomplish their goals, while those who want to change it are not.
Higher education has become unaffordable and its curriculums hopelessly politicized. We should remember that all of this is a result of programs developed more than a half-century ago to make higher education more accessible.
The welfare state is supposed to signal the existence of the “compassionate” society that provides care for all. However, this “compassion” has resulted in the proliferation of social pathologies that undermine civilization itself.
