What’s going on in Nigeria? During an attack that started January 3 and continued through this past weekend, the African Islamic militant group Boko Haram opened fire on 16 northern Nigerian villages. The death toll estimates range from 200 to as many 2,000 people. Another 10,000 people who managed to escape have fled to neighboring Chad. Many Nigerians drowned in an attempt to cross Lake Chad to escape what is now described as the “deadliest massacre” in the history of...

I grew up with the attitude that wealth was measured by whether the sun was shining and the fish were biting and whether my belly was full and the family larder stocked with canned vegetables and fruit as well as fresh meat and poultry raised on our tiny 80-acre farm in Michigan. To quote Dylan Thomas: “And the sabbath rang slowly / In the pebbles of the holy streams.” Certainly there were items and conditions we desired, desires often unmet...

You may have heard of the puter game World of Warcraft (WoW), which recently released its fifth expansion, which adds more quests, dungeons, and other content, in November. WoW has over 10 million players and there are few signs of this slowing down, which is impressive for a game originally released in 2004. What you might not have known is that there plex economic and social structures in place everywhere in the game. But do these systems mirror real life...

Even before the Paris attacks, there were worries over a sharp rise in anti-Semitism in the UK and mainland Europe in 2014, says Caroline Wyatt of the BBC. In the past few years thousands of French Jews have fled the country to the one place they feel safe: Israel. “The French munity is gripped by a very deep sense of insecurity and that sense is often traced back to the attack in Tolouse in 2012,” says Avi Mayer, a spokesperson...

I think it is important to keep in mind that it is not the world of economics that is critical to human life on earth. When I left the field of economics for what I still believe to be a more important life agenda, it was because I regarded economics as driving cross-country at 80 mph with myeyes firmly fixed on the rear-view mirror. We do, in fact, live in a world defined by economic and political realities, just as...

It is award season in Hollywood. Nearly every weekend for the next few months, there will be a parade on some red mentators bashing some actress on her wardrobe choice, and self-aggrandizing speeches from people who seem to know little about life outside of a West Coast mansion and an East Coast apartment. Last night, at the Golden Globes, one speech stood out. Michael Keaton has worked steadily for years as an actor, but has never been recognized as one...

Not Abba Pistamon Today at Ethika Politika, I examine some ancient economic wisdom from one of the desert fathers: Abba Pistamon. Far from the newest of Nintendo’s Pokemon monsters (despite the sound of his name), Abba Pistamon was one of the first Christian monks. The dialogue between him and an unnamed brother that I examine from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers has a lot to say about production, labor, profit, and exchange. I write, Far from a gnostic allergy...

In light of the discussion about distributism in the ments, I’m posting John Zmirak’s excellent Religion & Liberty review of The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom that Tolkien Got and the West Forgot by Jonathan Witt and Jay Richards (Ignatius Press, 2014) here on the PowerBlog. Note how he ends the review with a discussion of Tolkien and whether his work lent support to distributism. Have at it. In Praise of the Bourgeois, Liberty-Loving Race of Hobbits By John...

In the latest video from For the Life of the World, Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft expounds on the Economy of Wonderand how it intersects with our stewardship of God’s house. Hipster head-bobbingispermitted: There’s beauty everywhere. We just don’t see it…Life is a mystery to be lived continuously, not a problem to be solved suddenly… In this life, we are so full and foolish that we appreciate only a few of these things, since we have more and more slaves that...

At Wired, Issie Lapowsky says most of us are paying rent on our garbage. Not that we think of it that way. Millions of businesses are paying billions of dollars in rent on their garbage. They don’t think of it that way, of course, just as the fees they pay trash haulers to pick up their junk. But a significant portion of that money covers the cost of the landfill space itself. And what is a landfill if not a...