At the APEE conference next month in Las Vegas, I will be presenting “The Evolution of the Mixed Economy – A Schematic Approach.” My talk integrates themes from several major thinkers from whom I have learned a great deal: Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and Gordon Tullock.
APEE talk on the mixed economy Read More »
Like Peter Keating, Gail Wynand pursues a use-and-be-used career strategy. Wynand uses strong-arm tactics when necessary in building up his newspaper’s market; he manipulates his employees with money to break their integrity; he fires those like Dominique who refuse to bend; and he lets the lowest-common-denominator of public taste dictate the content of the newspaper
Gail Wynand’s power strategy (Part 1) Read More »
[This is Section 32 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.] 32. On Judaism and Christianity: opposite or identical? One more key difference between Nietzsche and the Nazis is important, and that is their views on Christianity. Nietzsche consistently states that Judaism and Christianity are allies, both stemming from the same source, both advocating a religious ethic
On Judaism and Christianity: opposite or identical? Read More »
My colleagues in the Department of Philosophy, Shawn Klein and Matthew Flamm, will be leading a reading group on Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Adam Smith is best known as an economist and a critic of mercantilism and as an early advocate of market economies. Less well known is Smith the moral philosopher.
Reading group on Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments Read More »
A warning to start: This video is repulsive, but I can’t stop thinking about it. The scene is Christmas morning, and we see a youth opening a present. He first thinks he’s gotten an Xbox — but then he realizes that his present is clothes packaged in an Xbox container. We see the kid’s emotions
Sadistic gift giving Read More »
Heard on a call-in talk show about this year’s most popular songs. A young woman phoned in to give her opinion about the rankings and along the way made this comment: “A lot of radio stations have ‘The Drive at 5’ shows, when they play a lot of cool songs without commercials. I think it’s
Fairness: frontiers in re-definition Read More »
[This is Section 16 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.] 16. Eugenics Nazi education and censorship attempted to control people’s minds. The Nazis also controlled the bodies of their citizens as much as possible. Milder controls involved new public-health measures such as an aggressive campaign against smoking: the Nazis banned smoking in certain public places, ran
Eugenics [Section 16 of Nietzsche and the Nazis] Read More »
Following up on an earlier post contrasting modernism with pre-modernism, I here contrast post-modernism to both. Postmodernism as a philosophical system is defined by means of its characteristic claims in the five major branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, human nature, ethics, and politics. Postmodernism as a historical movement is defined by the time of its
Defining postmodernism Read More »