In a 2001 article in the New Oxford Review , Michael Naughton examines the spectacular rise of executive salaries in large publicly traded companies in the light of Catholic social teaching. He notes that the key issue is a change of ownership and an accompanying change in the dynamics of power in . . . . Continue Reading »
In his Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire , William Cavanaugh offers an Augustinian critique of the notion of “freedom” as it appears in free market advocates. He notes that Augustine defines freedom not merely negatively (absence of external coercion) but positively . . . . Continue Reading »
Hayek write that in a free market the individual is recognized as “the ultimate judge of his ends,” and this means that cooperative actions among individuals arise from “coincidence of individual ends.” Social ends are “merely identical ends of many individuals - or . . . . Continue Reading »
In a chapter of Robert Wuthnow’s Rethinking Materialism: Perspectives on the Spiritual Dimension of Economic Behavior , Emory’s John Boli explores the “economic absorption of the sacred.” For Boli, the sacred is not some distinct realm of culture but rather the . . . . Continue Reading »
The Left does not know what the word “economy” means. President Obama hinted at this, I think it was during the campaign, when he railed against those who said that government jobs were, somehow, not “real” jobs. He seems to believe that going to a work location bringing home . . . . Continue Reading »
Jim Rogers of Texas A&M writes: “I’m not as certain as you are that it’s generally true that ‘If there’s one thing that Americans want, it is to be rich.’ This is, presumably, an empirical question, and so my armchair observations are certainly not to . . . . Continue Reading »
In his book on the Peruvian village of Pomatamba, Adam K. Webb applies the much-mocked Distributism of GK Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc to issues of globalization and development. In an interview available on the Intercollegiate Studies Institute web site, he answers a question of whether he . . . . Continue Reading »
In The Quest for Community , Robert Nisbet - no wild-eyed lefty he - argues, following Karl Polyani, that ” Laissez faire . . . was brought into existence. It was brought into existence by the planned destruction of old customs, associations, villages, and other securities, by the force . . . . Continue Reading »
Looking back, one cannot help but be struck by the seemingly symbiotic relationship existing between the state, military power, and the private economy’s efficiency in the age of absolutism. Behind every successful dynasty stood an array of opulent banking families. Access to such bourgeois . . . . Continue Reading »
Karl Polanyi ( The Great Transformation ) notes, “There was nothing natural about laissez-faire ; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course. Just as the cotton manufactures - the leading free trade industry - were created by the help of . . . . Continue Reading »
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