Dan Hugger is Librarian and Research Associate at the Acton Institute.
Posts by Dan Hugger
September 11, 2019
Thirty five years ago the American novelist Thomas Pynchon asked the question, “Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?” The occasion was the then 25th anniversary of C.P. Snow’s Rede Lecture, “The Two Cultures of the Scientific Revolution,” which argued, way back in 1959, that our culture was increasingly polarized into “literary” and “scientific” factions unable to understand each other.
Continue Reading...
August 28, 2019
Jordan Ballor recently brought to my attention this remarkable passage from Michael Novak’s
The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, “Our moral and cultural traditions have not kept pace with our economic possibilities.
Continue Reading...
August 19, 2019
Kimberly Uslin reports on the discovery of a of previously unknown manuscript by the philosopher John Locke
at the Greenfield Library at St. John’s College:
According to Walmsley and Waldmann, this was the first major discovery of new work by Locke in a generation.
Continue Reading...
August 09, 2019
Deutsche Bank, once one of the giants of European finance, is in deep financial trouble. Matt Egan of CNN Business helpfully summarizes the difficulties,
Germany’s biggest lender is rapidly slashing jobs, it’s losing a ton of money and the stock is trading near all-time lows.
Continue Reading...
August 05, 2019
There are several things, universally known, which one is never supposed to discuss over dinner: religion, politics, and money. I violate this generally well regarded rule on a regular basis while never impeding my digestion.
Continue Reading...
July 23, 2019
Economics is often dismissed as ideological, reductionist, and mendacious. In the United States we see these criticisms increasingly from both the political left and right. This should come as no surprise as the lessons of economics have implications for the prudential decisions that make up much of our political life.
Continue Reading...
July 16, 2019
Sarah Kliff did some fine reporting on, ‘The Lessons of Washington State’s Watered Down ‘Public Option’’ for the New York Times last month,
For those who dream of universal health care, Washington State looks like a pioneer.
Continue Reading...
July 12, 2019
One of the abiding joys of working at a think tank like the Acton Institute is that interesting people are always asking you big questions. I was recently asked, “Why should Christians support free markets?” The question is large, interesting, and necessitates the answering of a more basic question first, “Why should Christians be interested in economics?”
Adam Smith, and his many antecedents, began crafting the analytical tools which we would come to call economics in response to phenomena which they saw in their world.
Continue Reading...
July 01, 2019
The British economist John Kay made a powerful argument in his 2011 book Obliquity: Why our goals are best achieved indirectly that the best way to achieve any complex of broadly defined goal is indirectly through a gradual process of risk taking and discovery.
Continue Reading...
June 26, 2019
One of the highlights of my summers working at the Acton Institute is leading discussions with our interns over major ideas, thinkers, and issues. This afternoon we had a spirited and thought provoking discussion about conservative critiques of liberalism.
Continue Reading...
