Greed wasn’t good in the Middle Ages – historian looks at medieval business ethics
Camille Brown, Medievalists.net
In describing the contradiction between present-day business attitudes and a medieval mindset, Stokes said, “A medieval businessman would surely be impressed by the successes of his modern descendants, but he would also despise them as men without honor or virtue.”
In 2010 Alexandra Abraham slipped on a wet floor and into a business idea. According to Forbes magazine, U.S. restaurants face an estimated $2 billion in “slip and fall” lawsuits each year. So Abraham, a 23-year-old college student, designed and started manufacturing DripCatch, a plastic tray that snaps tightly on the racks that go inside industrial dishwashers to catch the water from getting on the floor.
Articles: “Invited Articles: Business as Mission”
Journal of Biblical Integration in Business 15, no. 1 (Spring 2012)
The most recent issue of JBIB focuses on the subject of hybrid business and features a controversy on the subject of Business as Mission. Margret Edgell, the issue’s guest editor, describes it as follows: “Three invited authors respond to each other from their different disciplinary and theological perspectives. They raise and debate the question: Is Business as Mission a new field with great potential for Christian scholarship?” (10)
Article: “A Model for Business Outreach Across the Business Curriculum”
Evan D. Wood and Heather Y. Z. St. Peters, Christian Business Academy Review 7, no. 1 (Spring 2012)
The Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as “Obamacare”, is a strange law from the perspective of economic theories of insurance markets. Still, one can see where its designers were starting from. The individual mandate may be onerous from a liberty standpoint, but it makes sense if you understand that insurance markets are vulnerable to a phenomenon known as the “death spiral.”
The idea behind the death spiral is based on the recognition that insurance is a risk management scheme. Insurance companies, despite their best efforts, are less knowledgeable about its customers’ health than are their customers. As such, the prices an insurance company charges are based on the average risk that a customer will need care. Read more on The Tortured Logic of the Obamacare Law…
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Jon Hilsenrath and Kristina Peterson report, “The Federal Reserve is heading toward launching a new round of stimulus to buck up the weak economy, but stopped short of doing so right away.” The predicted means of stimulating the economy is another round of the unconventional policy of quantitative easing (QE), i.e. when a central bank purchases financial assets from the private sector with newly created money in effort to spark economic growth. Thus, the quantity of US dollars would be increased, debasing their value and causing inflation.
Read more on The Prospects of More QE for Economic Stimulus: A Lesson from History…
Five Myths About Free Enterprise
Values & Capitalism
Given the economic hardships the United States has endured in recent years, it is tempting to conclude that free markets are no longer best for us — but that would misread our history, and buy into myths about the impact of free enterprise.
From the producers of Little Miss Sunshine comes this charming mix of comedy, suspense, drama, and—possibly—science fiction. Safety Not Guaranteed is the story of melancholy Darius (Aubrey Plaza), an intern at a Seattle magazine, who goes on assignment with reporter Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) and fellow intern Arnau (Karan Soni) to investigate the author of a peculiar classified ad that reads:
One of the most basic forms of entertainment that friends and families share together is playing board games, such as Monopoly or Risk. While we may not realize is how much these games are teach us about economic ideas such as trade or scarcity.
I must confess I’m a bit of a board game snob. I don’t really care for common games like Monopoly as I prefer so-called “designer” games such as the Settlers of Catan or Power Grid. In an article for the Washington Post, Blake Eskin calls Settlers the “board game of our time.”
Eskin explains that Monopoly had an appeal in the depression-era because it allowed poor kids the opportunity to feel rich and successful for a day. He also mentions several of the reasons I do not care for Monopoly: It takes several hours to play; the outcome is too dependent on luck; it can often become clear who is going to win far before the game actually ends, etc. It is also an elimination game, meaning that an early loser can be stuck with nothing to do for hours while their friends finish the game.
Read more on What Board Games Can and Cannot Teach Us About Economics…
The Obama administration’s controversial contraception-abortifacient mandate goes into effect yesterday, creating a difficult choice for pro-life business owners. If employers don’t change their plans, they will be hit with fines of up to $100 per employee per day. But if they stop providing health coverage, employers with more than 50 employees could be hit with an alternative fine of $2,000 per employee per year.
The Obamacare HHS provision went into effect yesterday. Here is a round-up of posts with reaction to that.
The Day After the HHS Mandate Kicked In
Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review Online
