Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'trade'

August 24, 2007

Coffee, Capitalism, and Corporate Encroachment

Railing against corporate dictatorship, delocator.net helps consumers find locally-owned cafes, bookstores, and movie theatres in their area — alternatives to the “invasion” of Starbucks, Borders, and their ilk. The site itself is actually quite an interesting capitalist idea in its freshness and creativity, and people certainly should eat or drink or shop where they are most comfortable. Continue Reading...
August 06, 2007

Debunking the ‘Eat Local’ Myth

An op-ed in today’s NYT by James E. McWilliams, “Food That Travels Well,” articulates some of the suspicions I’ve had about the whole “eat local” phenomenon. It seems to me that duplicating the kind of infrastructure necessary to sustain a great variety of food production every hundred miles or so is grossly inefficient. Continue Reading...
May 07, 2007

In defiance of logic and good sense

Last Friday, the New York Times editorialized in critique of American tariffs, which it says “raise the price of goods and are all too often based on outdated political considerations that defy logic and good sense.” Continue Reading...
April 02, 2007

‘Reverse’ subsidies

A couple weeks ago the NYT magazine ran a piece by contributing writer Tina Rosenberg, which attempts to outline some of the ways in which “everyone in a wealthy nation has become the beneficiary of the generous subsidies that poorer countries bestow upon rich ones.” Continue Reading...
February 07, 2007

Commerce and war: Poles apart

Make trade, not war? In an excerpt from his new book “The Commercial Society,” Sam Gregg examines the long held view that nations engaged in trade are less likely to wage war. Continue Reading...
August 29, 2006

China-Taiwan Trade Spike

Tension between China and Taiwan is one of the more troubling matters in geopolitical affairs. Now AsiaNews reports that trade between China and Taiwas increased by 15 percent in the first half of 2006. Continue Reading...
April 19, 2006

Cashing in on carbon credits

As Earth Day approaches (April 22), Jordan Ballor reflects on the Kyoto Protocol and some of the results of the “market-based” incentives promised to those who signed on. The Kyoto Protocol created a carbon trading system, a “cap and trade” mechanism where a set number of carbon credits were established based upon the 1990 levels of emissions from the involved countries. Continue Reading...
April 13, 2006

Bigger and better

When I was in college, living in the dorms, friends of mine would play a game called bigger and better. In this game, they would take an object–something that they owned–and trade it up for something that was worth a bit more to them, but worth a bit less to the person that they were trading with. Continue Reading...