Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'free markets'

Friendship, Markets, and Reciprocal Gifts

In his 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI highlighted the inadequacy of a social imaginary that includes only the market and the state: The exclusively binary model of market-plus-State is corrosive of society, while economic forms based on solidarity, which find their natural home in civil society without being restricted to it, build up society. Continue Reading...

Who Is a Libertarian?

In their new book, The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism, Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi have created an exhaustive and fascinating history of the libertarian movement and its animating philosophies. Continue Reading...

Tetris and the Birth of an Obsession

It may be hard to picture now, when American children spend seemingly every waking hour absorbed in Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, but once upon a time the country’s youth contented themselves with activities that did not involve gazing into tiny screens—you know, riding bikes, throwing around a football, jumping rope. Continue Reading...

The Adam Smith We Need

There are two reasons to read Glory M. Liu’s new comprehensive book, Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism. The first is that if you are a student of economics or history, there is a remarkable amount of well-documented information packaged into a logically sequential analysis that is well worth your time. Continue Reading...

Free Enterprise Is Saving African Lives

For years, Africa has dominated the podium in the “bad healthcare” Olympics. For reference, the average cost for an established patient and Medicare recipient to make one visit to a family practice in Pennsylvania (where I live) is approximately $88—the cost of less than a week’s worth of groceries. Continue Reading...