Archive for economics
Recapping the interesting and significant news of the past (few) weeks…
It has been a quiet past week at LCC, for one particular reason that is quite newsworthy: my wife and I had our first baby boy! Everything went extremely well: born at home, healthy and alert, momma and baby Caleb Horn are doing just great. Of course, we are still working into a new routine here at the Horn household. In short, we like to call this “breeding for liberty!” If you can’t beat the State now, just make enough babies until you can! Haha. Here’s a cute pic of the new wee one.
Here are a few other fun articles for your reading pleasure in the meantime. You’ll begin to see an uptick in blog posts here starting tomorrow (hopefully). Thank you all for your support and prayers!
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Best read of the week: What does theology have to say about economics?
New at the American Liberty Association: The Patriot Church.
Anarcho-capitalism: so crazy, it might work!
The excellent First Things Blog shows how the dystopian world of the Hunger Games relates to our present world.
Did you know that the US federal government has the power to, and in most cases does, record nearly all phone traffic within the US borders and beyond? Yes Virginia, they do.
And moreover, the Feds are smart enough to declare definitively that the US mobile market is too dynamic to be considered “competitive”. Yeah.
Oh well, at least you can now get yourself an anti-drone hoodie.
Have something new and interesting to share? Let us know in the comments. I read every comment made, and respond to as many as I can!
Tags: anarcho-capitalism, economics, Hunger Games, News of the Week, police state, security, surveillance state, theology
Christ and Compassion
Posted by: |Lawrence Reed (president of the Foundation for Economic Education) speaks of compassion and the State in a new article in The Freeman.
In every election campaign, we hear the word “compassion” at least a thousand times. One political party supposedly has it, the other one doesn’t. Big government programs are evidence of compassion; cutting back government is a sign of cold-hearted meanness. By their misuse of the term for partisan advantage, politicians have thoroughly muddied up the real meaning of the word.
The fact is that some of what is labeled “compassionate” is just that, and it does a world of good; but a whole lot of what is labeled “compassionate” is nothing of the sort, and it does a world of harm. The former tends to be very personal in nature while the latter puts an involuntary burden on someone else.
A remarkable irony of statists in general is their definition of “charity.” On the one hand, they claim their giving to the poor is “compassionate” and “caring.” Yet in the very next breath they demand and force peaceful people to fork over the assets to be given. Prior theft does not charity make. I am reminded of what Penn Jillette said about such things:
In the aforementioned article, Reed recalls his visit to the Bahamas and the Nassau Institute. He was interviewed on a television program and ended up in an impromptu debate about liberty and charity. It’s a long clip, but has a lot of interesting material in it:
Again, you can read the original article by Lawrence Reed here.
Tags: charity, Christianity, compassion, economics, ethics, Lawrence Reed
Our Disordered Lives
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Rev. Edmund Opitz
By Rev. Edmund Opitz, author of The Libertarian Theology of Freedom and Religion and Capitalism: Allies, Not Enemies. This essay was originally published in the July 1973 issue of The Freeman. Read more in the Edmund Opitz Archive.
The colonists had won a war and, desiring to set up a republican form of government, they installed a Constitution designed to limit the public authority and thus maximize personal liberty.
Now that they were free, what did these early Americans do with their newly won liberty? For one thing, they worked. They had to provide their own food, clothing and shelter, so work was a necessity of survival. Moreover, these people remembered the poverty endured by their ancestors in Europe and how life was demeaned thereby. Now that these Americans were free to enjoy the fruits of their toil they became more productive, and with the gradual increase of wealth came a new sense of human dignity which accompanies modest economic success. The Puritan Ethic was sound when it endorsed work, thrift and frugality. This ethic fitted in well with the burgeoning interest in the new science of economics, masterfully set forth in 1776 by Adam Smith. It is significant that more than twenty five hundred copies of Wealth of Nations were sold in this country within five years of its appearance. Obviously, the book addressed itself to a real need.
Economic activity is fundamental to human existence. A Robinson Crusoe could get along without politicking, but if he did not work he would die of hunger and exposure. Emerging from economic activity are the concepts of rights to property and claims to service around which many political battles are fought. Economics, on the surface, deals with prices, production, and the operations of the market as determined by the buying habits of every one of us. In reality, however, economics is concerned with the conservation and stewardship of the earth’s scarce goods; human energy, time, material resources and natural forces. Read More→
Tags: economics, Edmund Opitz, freedom, history, religion
Can artists make money without copyrights?
Posted by: |Check out this great video from LearnLiberty.org about copyright – and opera! This excellent presentation is with Dr. Stephen Davies, historian at the Institute of Economic Affairs in England.
For more interesting news on intellectual property, see Stephan Kinsella’s Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom.
Tags: art, copyright, economics, intellectual property
Liberals, Conservatives, and the Welfare State
Posted by: |Ronald Sider is a liberal. Paul Ryan is a conservative. But don’t let the labels fool you; they are more alike than you think.
Sider is the founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, a think tank that promotes “peace with justice for the oppressed and marginalized throughout the world” by combining “biblical scholarship with astute policy analysis to further economic wholeness, support multilateral rather than unilateral U.S. foreign policy, promote racial and ecological justice, and generally try to make the world a better place.” Sider, who is the professor of Theology, Holistic Ministry and Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary, the seminary of Eastern University in Pennsylvania, is the author of more than 20 books, including Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (InterVarsity Press, 1977), named as one of the 100 most influential books in religion in the 20th century.
Ryan is a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin. First elected to Congress in 1998, he is now the chairman of the House Budget Committee. He was also the 2012 Republican Party nominee for vice president. According to the Washington Post, Ryan voted with the majority of his party 93 percent of the time in the 112th Congress. The American Conservative Union gives him a conservative rating of 84 percent for 2012 (the GOP average was 83.94%), and gives him a lifetime rating of 91.14 percent.
Although it might seem as though Sider and Ryan are poles apart politically, both fully support the welfare state. And their support of the welfare state is typical of liberals and conservatives in general. But before looking at some recent criticisms and comments they made about it, we must first look at the welfare state itself.
Tags: economics, libertarianism, statism, welfare state
Norman Horn is the creator and primary writer for LCC. Learn a little bit about him in the 