Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Friedrich Hayek'

December 29, 2014

Nothing New ‘Underneath that Burning Sun’

Friedrich Hayek once called intellectuals “professional secondhand dealers in ideas.” And the Preacher proclaimed, “There is nothing new under the sun.” So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising when ideas, memes, and other cultural phenomena pop up again and again. Continue Reading...
July 08, 2014

David Brat’s Religious Virtues

In a piece today for the NYT Magazine, economics reporter Binyamin Appelbaum examines David Brat’s fusion of faith and free-market economics. Appelbaum finds that mixture problematic, to say the least, but it’s hard to sort out whether it is the religious faith or the free-market sympathies that Appelbaum finds more troubling. Continue Reading...
March 13, 2014

The Hayekian Liberty of Ender’s Game

My conversion into a fan of science-fiction began with an unusual order from a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “Each Marine shall read a minimum of three books from the [Commandant’s Professional Reading List] each year.” Continue Reading...
March 05, 2014

Why Attitudes About Competition Matter

In an excerpt from the splendid PovertyCure series, Michael Fairbanks offers a helpful bit on why our attitudes about competition matter for economic development: I can predict the future of a developing nation better than any IMF team of economists by asking one question: “Do you believe in competition?” Continue Reading...
October 10, 2013

The Book of Revelation is Hayekian

“When you read the Book of Revelation,” says Gregory Alan Thornbury, president of The King’s College, “it’s about not giving in to tyranny when it comes to economics. I don’t know why we don’t talk about that in church.” Continue Reading...
March 22, 2013

What Economics Can’t Explain

Tyler Cowen has an interesting column in last Sunday’s New York Times, arguing that despite run-of-the-mill objections to “cold” and “heartless” economic analysis, economics is, as a science, “egalitarian at its core”: Economic analysis is itself value-free, but in practice it encourages a cosmopolitan interest in natural equality. Continue Reading...
February 15, 2013

Would Hayek Have Supported Obamacare?

“You can be for markets without being against redistribution,” says Erik Angner, a philosophy professor at George Mason University. Angner argues that the Nobel-winning economist Friedrich Hayek offers an alternative to contemporary liberals and leftists on the one hand and conservatives and libertarians on the other. Continue Reading...