Like everything else in 2018, business has an emotional and often polarizing effect in our society. There are, of course, legitimate stories of business behaving badly. One high-profile example: the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica debacle that thrust the social media giant into the spotlight with a data breach affecting 87 million users. Cronyism remains alive and well, as witnessed by the Foxconn deal in Wisconsin. Cities are clamoring to win the coveted second headquarters location for Amazon, offering corporate welfare...

Christians who support the free market often find ourselves accused of worshiping, in the words of the New York Times, “a false idol” – a thought, shared by a disconcerting number of evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics alike. Yet irrefutable proof to the contrary issued from two very different venues and literally echoed all over the world this week. From the unassuming and scholarly halls of Canada’s Fraser Institute on Tuesday came its annual report detailing the state of global...

Note: This is post #95 in a weekly video series on basic economics. Before it went bankrupt in 2001, many of Enron’s employees had most or all of their retirement funds pany stock. When pany collapsed, as Alex Tabarrok notes, employees who were once multimillionaires ended up with almost nothing. They failed to heed the most basic rule of investing:Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. In this video by Marginal Revolution University, Tabarrok explains why diversification is essential...

After backlash from across the globe, Walmart has stopped selling items bearing the hammer-and-sickle insignia of the Soviet Union. This followed strongly worded letters from Baltic leaders and a U.S. educational effort largely spearheaded by Mari-Ann Kelam through the Acton Institute. The controversy burst into public consciousness when Kelam wrote an Acton Commentary titled, “Walmart’s T-shirt homage to mass murder,” published on September 5. A number of news outlets picked up the story, both in print and on radio. Lithuania’s...

Amid the flurry of anti-poverty activism gone wrong, we are routinely reminded thatgood intentions aren’t enough. Although the motives of our hearts often serve as fuel for positive transformation, our corresponding efforts also require reason, wisdom, discernment, and a healthy recognition of real-world ripple effects and constraints. In public policy, we see an unfortunate mix of good intentions and unintended harm across a range of issues, from disaster relief to foreign aid to healthcare policy and beyond. At present, however,...

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is hearing allegations against Supreme Court nomineeJudge Brett Kavanaugh. This is likely to be the final stage in the process the will either approve or disapprove his appointment to the Court. Here is what you should know about the confirmation process. What does Supreme Court confirmation entail? According to the U.S. Constitution, federal judges—including Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court—are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate. Although the...

What just happened? Shortly before midnight on September 30, the United States and Canada agreed to a deal to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA). The new trilateral trade agreement is called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). When does it take effect? Before it can take effect, leaders from each of the three countries must sign it and get it approved by their nation’s legislatures. Because this process is expected to take several months, the main provisions of USMCA...

Students of 20th century American history know of the importance of the Marshall Plan to the effort to rebuild Europe after World War II, as well as the leading role taken by the United States in building international institutions and alliances that would be central to maintaining peace and checking the expansionist desires of munist world. What you may not know is that a central figure in the creation of those institutions was a United States Senator from Michigan who,...

There are few concepts today more dismissed—and yet more necessary—than chivalry. During the Middle Ages chivalry was a moral system bined a warrior ethos, knightly piety, and courtly manners. As C.S. Lewis writes in “The Necessity of Chivalry“—my favorite essay of his—the medieval ideal brought together fierceness and meekness, “two things which have no natural tendency to gravitate towards one another.” “It brought them together for that very reason,” says Lewis. “It taught humility and forbearance to the great warrior...

Marxism taught that religion is the opiate of the people and tried to indoctrinate children in atheism from their earliest days. Yet a socialist party in Germany has erected a billboard stating, “Jesus would have voted for us.” The fifth-place party in the German Bundestag, Die Linke (“The Left”), “is the direct successor of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) which held East Germany in an iron grip for many decades,” writes Kai Weiss of the Austrian Economics Center....