When thinking and talking about principle of subsidiarity I’ve tended to resort to using metaphors of size and space (i.e.,nothing should be done by a higher orlargerorganization which can be done as well by a smalleror lower organization). But philosopher Brandon Watson explains why that is not really what subsidiarity is all about: The subsidiarity principle is often paired with the principle of solidarity, and there is a real connection between the two. Solidarity is the active sense of responsibility...

A series of governments across the West have crafted policies designed to help women achieve their goals. However, they failed to ask women what those goals might be. Economic interventions designed to nudge women into careers they don’t want, or to enter the workforce full-time even if they prefer to work in the home, uniquely disempower the women they are intended to help. Juan A. Soto, executive director of the Barcelona-based think tankFundación Arete, tackles the issue in a new...

As supporters of economic freedom, we frequently find ourselves in vigorous defense of personal choice, whether in business, trade, consumer goods, education, or otherwise. But while the elevation of economic choice is based on plenty of principle, not to mention historical and empirical analysis, we ought to be careful that our views about freedom aren’t confused or conflated in the process. Given our cultural appetite for turning choice into an idol above all else, it’s a risk we’d do well...

In the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, Catholic theologians, many of whom were members of the Society of Jesus, studied the intersection of morality and merce. Jesuits includingJuan de Mariana, Luis de Molina, and Leonardus Lessius explored the ethics of money, economics, and trade.In his famousHistory of Economic Analysis, the distinguished economist and historian of economic ideas, Joseph Schumpeter, described many of these Jesuits’ insights as anticipating similar ideas expressed by Adam Smith two centuries later. The Jesuits contributed greatly...