Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Business and Society

February 08, 2006

A Tocquevillian in the Vatican

With the publication of Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI is warning that an all-encompassing government would be unable to provide the one thing that people really need — loving, personal concern. Continue Reading...
February 07, 2006

A Case for Conversation

Here’s a convincing op-ed piece by William Romanowski, who teaches film studies at Calvin College, “Missing the big picture.” He writes in USAToday about the ambivalent impact of the upswing of religiously-oriented movies coming from Hollywood. Continue Reading...
February 07, 2006

Windy City Wal-Mart

What might a big city Wal-Mart look like? Until now, such a question was only answerable through some imaginative speculation. Wal-Mart has announced plans to open the first store within Chicago’s city limits in the Austin neighborhood this summer. Continue Reading...
February 03, 2006

The Rest of the Story

More from the State of the Union: “…the number of children born to teenage mothers has been falling for a dozen years in a row.” That’s a good thing. But there’s still a marriage crisis, and part of it is related to birth rates among unmarried women: Births to unmarried mothers reached a record high of almost 1.5 million and made up 35.7% of all births in 2004. Continue Reading...
January 27, 2006

Agog and Aghast at Google

A number of bloggers have expressed grave concerns over Google’s decision to accomodate the demands of the communist government in its web search offerings in China. David Mills at Mere Comments writes that Google is “serving a brutal government and helping it oppress its people, even if its service will prove only partially effective.” He complains that Google’s motives are purely pecuniary, and that the company is only acceding to the government’s wishes because “If it didn’t help the Chinese government oppress its people, it wouldn’t make much money in China.” Mills notes that Google is following Microsoft and Yahoo search engines in making these concessions It seems a pretty easy judgment to make: Google is selling out. Continue Reading...
January 26, 2006

Driven a Ford Lately?

If you’re like most Americans, the answer is probably “No.” Faced with loss of market share and declining revenues, Ford announced a restructuring plan that would cut nearly a quarter of its workforce and close 14 plants over the next six years. Continue Reading...
January 24, 2006

Super-Size Government

“The political left in America is emerging victorious,” writes Patrick Chisholm, and its true because “the era of big government is far from over. Trends are decidedly in favor of that quintessential leftist goal: massive redistribution of wealth.” Over the past two decades, “Republicans’ capture of both Congress and the White House was, understandably, a demoralizing blow to the left. Continue Reading...
January 23, 2006

Discerning Threats to Marriage

Bill Robinson at The Huffington Post says that the real “enemies of marriage” consists of “those who treat it as a commodity, a temporary merger, a corporate buyout,” citing the impending fourth divorce of billionaire Ron Perelman. Continue Reading...
January 19, 2006

Christ and the Culture Wars

Mark your calendars: The Institute for the Study of Christianity and Culture at Michigan State University is hosting a conference on April 7-8 with the keynote address to be given by Dr. Continue Reading...
January 13, 2006

A Harsh but Good Market

Apologies for a second Apple-related post in a row, but I thought this example might prove to be a decent case-study of competition in the marketplace. One of the new products that Apple recently introduced was iWeb, a new program that makes it easy “to create websites and blogs — complete with podcasts, photos and movies — and get them online, fast.” Why do I bring this up? Continue Reading...