Government And Business

The Debt Dialogues [Episode 54]: William Watson on the Inequality Trap

The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview McGill University economist William Watson on his book The Inequality Trap. Topics covered include: How the focus on income inequality distracts us from dealing with genuine economic challenges, the deserving and undeserving rich and putting CEO pay in context.
Foreign Policy

What Makes the Islamist Movement Tick [Video]

When you look around the globe, the Islamist movement is far from defeated. On the contrary. The movement is strong materially, in its ability to inflict harm, to control territory, to subjugate people. And, what’s more significant: it is strong in its morale, exhibiting an astounding confidence.
Foreign Policy

Why Americans Struggle to Understand Palestinian Violence

To many Americans, the spate of random stabbings and car-ramming attacks in Israel, often carried out by young Palestinians, seems unfathomable. One significant reason such attacks are hard to understand is that a lot of Americans assume that basically everyone everywhere wants the same things: a good life for themselves, a bright future for their children. But that life-affirming orientation is far from universal. Yet that assumption has shaped the common view of the Palestinian cause. The result: it subverts our ability to understand what animates that cause.
Government And Business

The Debt Dialogues [Episode 53]: Jared Meyer on Uber

The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview Manhattan Institute fellow Jared Meyer on the ride-sharing company Uber. Topics covered include: How Uber is creating opportunity for drivers and passengers, whether there is any merit to the criticisms of Uber and what Uber can teach us about how to fight for limited government.
Government And Business

Bernie Sanders Is the Cause of Cronyism

The consensus among pundits about the Democratic presidential debate is that Hillary Clinton “won” in the sense that she came across as trustworthy, likable, and “presidential.” I’ll leave to readers to ponder the use of words like these to describe someone who has been dissembling about her emails for years now and who angrily dismissed a Congressional investigation into the cause of the Benghazi attacks with “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

Further Reading

Ayn Rand | 1957
For the New Intellectual

The Moral Meaning of Capitalism

An industrialist who works for nothing but his own profit guiltlessly proclaims his refusal to be sacrificed for the “public good.”
View Article
Ayn Rand | 1961
The Virtue of Selfishness

The Objectivist Ethics

What is morality? Why does man need it? — and how the answers to these questions give rise to an ethics of rational self-interest.
View Article