economy 39
Contemplation in Action: Booth Tarkington and the Art of Business
Tarkington hopes that more Americans will choose to trek that path of fruitful tension in this fragmented world, however difficult it may prove.
The Irony of a Wendell Berry NFT
While some are admittedly pleasing, NFTs will not be the great decentralizing force many of us long for. Instead, their rapid profusion creates speculative bubbles and too often rewards unvirtuous…
Finding Common Ground on Climate: A Review of Saving Us
In the balance, Hayhoe’s book makes a positive contribution to the climate conversation. The book encourages dialogue rather than hectoring. In that sense, though the targeted topic is climate change,…
The Market Made Me Do It (Part I)
Malibu, CA The danger in speaking after thirteen talks on Catholic Thought and Business is that there is nothing left to say. Russ Hittinger started with the observation that his…
The Politics of the Clothesline
Yesterday I ambled towards my cottage, returning from putting the cattle out to pasture for the evening. The sun was sinking low in the Texas sky, turning the clouds to…
Now Let Us Raze Famous Men
He was looking at me with what appeared to be some degree of disbelief.
Global Warming, Local Farming, and Naomi Klein: A Trip to the Land Institute
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS A couple of weeks ago some fine intellectuals, political figures, journalists, and activists associated with this blog gathered together to talk about localism,…
Untaxing the Virtues
What the political mainstream ignores, unsurprisingly, is that any change in how we raise revenue cannot be only about balancing the numbers. It also involves judgements about the texture of…
Exploiting Antiquities
To him, the created world is merely “resources” and fodder for “job creation.”
Mill, Hayek, and Our Midas Plight
Call it Factory Planet: a world in which natural processes are treated as parts of a vast world-machine operated to produce a maximum amount of wealth for humans.
Building Something of Our Own
It may be the great sentiment of this American moment: “I want to build something of my own. How do you not understand that?”
From Olive Trees to Overcapacity
A homogeneous global consumer culture flattens its victims. And, perhaps in the same vein, our meanderings around the dying furniture capital of Yecla turned up nothing: virtually everything on display…
The Politics of Ingratitude
Here is the great secret of my generation: What our parents gave us as a gift we have received as an entitlement. No one is not grateful for an entitlement.…
The Economic Stork
The answers we get are dictated by the questions we ask, but there was one question which always grated on my wife's nerves, no matter who frequently she was asked.…
The Other Side of China, and What It Might Say When It Speaks
As the heat of late summer subsides here in Nanjing and our university settles into the new semester, many look forward to the annual “Golden Week” holiday in early October. …
Risk Pool
It has been a year since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the subsequent near-collapse of the international economic system followed quickly by the massive increase of (at least visible)…
Closing the Circle: An Economy of Values, and Where to Look for It
It is no surprise that many of us connected with FPR welcomed the release in mid July of Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. As John Médaille and…
“On the Grid”: When Electricity (and Other Things) Came to the Countryside
“Come in and look,” Quintín urged me, as he disappeared with a shuffle through the low doorway in his adobe house. I got up from the wooden bench on which…
A Nation of Slaves?
Difficult economic times force people to confront the problem of economic security. In fact, it’s easy to imagine that, in an ideal world, economic insecurity would be a thing of…
Mortgaged Myth and the Monuments of a Depauperate Republic
Washington, CT. In August of 1311, the Doge of Venice.... as big shots are wont to do.... decreed that a monument to the government would henceforth be constructed and its…
Causes and Lessons of the Current Economic Crisis
ERIE, PA. As a new contributor to the Front Porch Republic, I would like to thank Mark Mitchell for his invitation to participate in what is shaping up to be…
Tea Party
Last week's motley collection of protests against taxation, centralization and the Government are now old news, but their spirit remains perennially relevant. Invoked in the name of the original "Boston…
Price, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS.* In 1947, two titans of 20th-century economic theory, Ludwig von Mises and Wilhelm Röpke, met in Röpke's home of Geneva, Switzerland. During the war, the Genevan fathers coped…
April 15
Princeton, NJ I have to admit, I have been finding it difficult to write much of anything of late. This is a fairly unusual condition - usually I find no…