Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Two anti-capitalist arguments: scarcity and depravity (UFM seminar)

As part of an invited lecture series, I led several seminars on the topic The Best Arguments against Free-market Capitalism. The format is Socratic and the participants are professors at my host, Francisco Marroquín University.

In this second seminar, we take up the arguments that:
a) We live in a world of scarce resources, and
b) Humans are too immoral for freedom (at 23 minutes).

Forthcoming: Three more arguments against free-market capitalism.

Related:
This seminar at UFM’s site.
I. Entrepreneurial Ethics.
II. Philosophy and the Evolution of the Mixed Economy.
III. Socratic seminars on the Best Arguments against Free-Market Capitalism:
1. “Capitalism is dog-eat-dog.”
2. “We live in a world of scarce resources.”
3. “Humans are too depraved for freedom” (at 23 minutes).
4. “Humans are too incompetent for freedom.”
5. “Wealth is a social creation” (at 11 minutes).
6. “Value is not of this world” (at 32 minutes).
IV. Interview: Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility.

Seminar: Philosophy and the Evolution of the Mixed Economy

One of my talks at Francisco Marroquín University was on making sense of our mixed economy–an unwieldy combination of market and socialist elements. The 28-minute talk integrates themes from my intellectual heroes–Smith, Mill, Mises, Hayek, Rand, Popper, Friedman, Buchanan, and Tullock–and connects market economics, politics, ethics, history, and public choice to explaining our semi-coherent mixed economy. The flowchart worked through is online here.

Related:
The above talk at UFM’s site.
The flowchart: Pathologies of the mixed economy (or, How we got into this frackin’ mess).
The previous talk referred to at the beginning: Seminar on entrepreneurial ethics.
Interview with UFM’s Luis Figueroa on Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility.

UFM interview on business ethics

I was video-interviewed by Luis Figueroa at Francisco Marroquín University on the topic of business ethics. In the twelve-minute discussion, I respond to the following questions:

* What do you think of “corporate social responsibility”?
* Why do you believe business ethics should begin with entrepreneurship?
* Are there differences between ethics in family and business contexts?
* What is your favorite business ethics book?

Report on my visit to UFM, Guatemala

… is online here at Francisco Marroquín University’s site.

While at UFM, I visited the rare book library and got to hold an original copy of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. Awesome.

The increasing(ly clear) relevance of Ayn Rand

“Read the news today? It’s like ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is happening in real life,” as this Facebook group points out.

Many intelligent observers have noted the connection, which has led to sharply increased sales of Atlas and prominent coverage of Atlas’s themes in Business Week, Forbes, the New York Times, the Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and other major publications. And from across the pond comes this British magazine’s tribute and commentary on Ayn Rand’s significance. (Thanks to Bob H. for the link.)

Amity Shlaes’s recent piece in Bloomberg is well worth reading: Atlas Is Shrugging With a Growing Load. Shlaes is the author of a recent history of the Great Depression and so is well positioned to offer commentary on our times. A pair of key quotations from Shlaes’s piece:

On punitive taxation: “In 1986, a year when Atlas Shrugged sold between 60,000 and 80,000 copies, the top 1 percent of earners paid 26 percent of the income tax. By 2000, that 1 percent was paying 37 percent, and Atlas Shrugged sales were at 120,000. By 2006, the top 1 percent carried 40 percent of the burden.”

On government fiat money and deficit financing, quoting Rand: “Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, ‘Account overdrawn.’”

Today’s events are a consequence of political, economic, and, more importantly, philosophical principles adopted by the most influential thinkers and doers of the last several generations. The antidote, accordingly, requires that this and the next generation’s most influential thinkers and doers change their philosophical course.

For follow-up material on Rand’s philosophical analysis of the roots of the crisis and the antidote, I recommend the following.

For general readers, here is my introductory overview of Ayn Rand’s biography and ethics at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

For all readers, here are two recent anthologies of essays on Atlas Shrugged, one edited by Professor Edward Younkins and the other edited by Professor Robert Mayhew.

For a technical, book-length discussion of Rand’s ethical theory, here is Tara Smith’s Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics. For further discussion of Professor Smith’s book, here is my review [pdf], published in Philosophy in Review, and Carrie Ann Biondi’s extended review [pdf], published in the most recent issue of Reason Papers.

For a philosophically-informed analysis of the crisis by a top-level financial professional, I recommend John Allison’s analysis. Allison is Chairman of BB&T and one of the great businessmen of our generation. Evidence: BB&T is one of the major banks that is still very healthy. Like Todd Zywicki, I recently heard Allison speak on the origins of the financial crisis and how BB&T avoided being sucked into the mess, and I recommend his analysis highly.

As we are suffering through yet another hard experiential lesson about collectivism and enforced altruism, let’s resolve to learn the lesson clearly and in principle so that the next generation will see more encouraging signs like these.

An inspiring university points to the future

Atlas is not shrugging at Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala.

I was there to give a talk on “Is Economics Value-Free?” [answer: No, and that's a good thing] at the Association for Private Enterprise Education conference. This sign made it feel like an intellectual homecoming [click the images for full size]:

The first academic building one comes to at the university has this sculpture and accompanying plaque:

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Thanks to co-hosts FMU and APEE for a memorable event. Thanks also to organizer Douglas Rasmussen and my co-sessionists Alexei Marcoux, Pierre Garello, and Aeon Skoble for a good discussion of a fundamental issue in philosophy of economics. (The 80-degree weather and heated, outdoor pool weren’t bad either.)

Update: Joshua Hall of Beloit College, by way of thanking FMU and its students for their co-hosting the conference, has this link for those who would like to make a donation to FMU’s student scholarship fund.