Defending Freedom, Combating Collectivism
Against collectivist impulses, the defense of freedom, personal responsibility, and the moral, political, legal, and economic foundations of a free society is ever necessary. Protecting the American experiment in ordered liberty is a debt that we owe to the past, and a challenge to pursue in the future. We examine the following issues in this area: the case for free trade vs. protectionism, individualism vs. the new collectivists (DEI/Critical Theory/Marxism/Social Democracy/Economic Nationalism/etc.), shareholder capitalism vs. ESG and stakeholder capitalism, foreign policy for a free society, and the foundations and first principles of freedom and free markets.
Research Publications for Defending Freedom, Combating Collectivism
Cryptocurrencies, Blockchain, and Public Choice
RM Yonk, D Waugh
Cryptocurrency Concepts, Technology, and Applications, 2023
Gordon Tullock and the Economics of Slavery
P Magness, A Carden, I Murtazashvili
Available at SSRN 4318585, 2023
AI ≠ UBI: Income Portfolio Adjustment to Technological Transformation
RE Wright, A Przegalinska
Augmented Education in the Global Age: Artificial Intelligence and the …, 2023
Darity, Camara, and MacLean on William H. Hutt
PW Magness, A Carden
Econ Journal Watch 19 (2), 204-231, 2022
Understanding the exceptional pre-vaccination era East Asian COVID-19 outcomes
J Bhattacharya, P Magness, M Kulldorff
Advances in Biological Regulation, 100916, 2022
Articles
Free Kids from Their Cells
“To keep our kids from harm, we have exposed them to brain-altering habits, online predators, and addictive pastimes that don’t just have the risk, but the near certainty, of making those now children turn out to be anxious and dysfunctional adults.” ~Michael Munger
Techno-Tyranny of Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’ is ‘1984’ for 2024
“This movie that routinely appears on ‘best British film’ lists impressed me with its entertainment value, but even more with how relevant its message has become in 2024.” ~Paul McDonnold
Civil Discourse and Political Reality
“It is one thing to dislike someone’s policies and argue against them in a civil discourse, discussing the merits and consequences of their proposals. But there is no place to demonize and so diminish the character of a candidate.” ~Will Sellers
Misunderstanding Poverty: a Review of ‘Second Class’
“Frédéric Bastiat famously warned against economic sophisms, the facile myths around free trade and economic policy… Alas, Batya Ungar-Sargon is not even a bad economist.” ~Nikolai Wenzel
The Threats Posed by Environmental, Social, and Governance Policies
Leaders in business, government, and finance have increasingly imposed Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria on the rest of society. These top-down restrictions on society are costly and ineffective ways to address perceived and actual social problems. Societies flourish when
Unbundling Zoning
This paper investigates the case for abolishing zoning. Recent arguments for zoning abolition maintain that local governments can adequately regulate land use without the strict separation of permitted uses that characterizes modern zoning. The harms of zoning are consequential, and