Stephen Hicks – Page 88 – Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Rockford, Illinois and the free society (Friedman, Tullock, Coase)

3 Comments / Economics, Politics / Stephen Hicks

Milton Friedman (Nobel Prize in Economics, 1976) received an honorary doctorate from Rockford College and was our commencement speaker in 1969. Gordon Tullock (co-founder of Public Choice economics with James Buchanan, Nobel Prize in Economics, 1986) was a native of Rockford. And I was charmed to find this bookplate in the Rockford University library’s copy […]

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Bertrand Russell’s pacifism in the face of Nazism

16 Comments / Politics / Stephen Hicks

Reprising this anecdote about philosopher Bertrand Russell’s opinion that the world would be better off with a Nazi victory. As reported by Richard Jencks, who was one of Russell’s students at UCLA in 1940: “The British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who had been jailed in World War I for his pacifism by a government of which

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On “giving back”

7 Comments / Ethics, History of Philosophy, Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

Like many other people, I am troubled by this phrase when I hear it. The usual scenario: A successful person makes a donation to a worthy cause but downplays any praise by saying “I’m only giving back.” The usual gentle rejoinder is to point out that the phrase assumes that the giver has taken something

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Werner Sombart on heroes versus merchants

12 Comments / Business Ethics, History, History of Philosophy, Politics / Stephen Hicks

Those of us in the democratic-republican West often find it impossible to understand how the world could go to war so often in the 20th century. We were raised in a culture that had internalized Locke, Jefferson, Mill, and others—for whom the goal of peace and respect for others’ rights to life, liberty, and property

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Roark’s failure and Keating’s success — The Fountainhead Part I [80th Anniversary series]

Leave a Comment / Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

The Fountainhead‘s themes are independence and integrity. In Part One, novelist Ayn Rand’s primary purpose is to contrast the characters Howard Roark and Peter Keating. Here is a table summarizing the main events in each young man’s early career. Structurally, each plot event for Roark is matched by an opposite event for Keating. Roark’s career

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Socialists and the Berlin Wall — disturbing changing attitudes

Leave a Comment / Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

Socialists in 1980: “We use walls, barbed wire, and men with guns to control our people. Deal with it.” Socialists in 2000: “We’re ashamed of the Wall, but now we’re democratic socialists. Trust us!” Socialists in 2020: “Just kidding. Bring back the Wall!” Source: Jacobin, the Marxist/neo-Marxist true-believer magazine. Related: Marx and Engels’ The Communist

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A prodigious practical joke in music

1 Comment / Music / Stephen Hicks

Reprising this Dmitri Shostakovich story of Alexander Glazunov‘s astounding musical memory. Glazunov was one of Shostakovich’s teachers in St. Petersburg, and by all accounts his ability to retain and recapitulate music was perfect. Here’s the practical joke played upon a visiting composer, Sergei Taneyev: “Taneyev had come to Petersburg from Moscow to show his new

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Imperialism and Capitalism

Leave a Comment / Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

Capitalism: All humans have the rights to life, liberty, and property. Imperialism: We have the right to control you, take your stuff, and kill you if you resist. Imperialism existed for millennia before the revolutionary modern world of the last few centuries. During the modern era, both capitalism’s liberalism and imperialism’s authoritarianism existed within modernizing

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