Over the past couple of years I’ve fallen into a habit of infrequently pointing out the flaws, dangers, and threats to Bitcoin as a viable cryptocurrency. While I find the experiment in alternative currency intriguing, I’m just as intrigued by criticisms made against Bitcoin. Even if Bitcoin ultimately fails, it will provide numerous valuable lessons about peer-based innovation, and the criticisms that were warranted can help us avoid pitfalls in the future. We won’t know, of course, which criticisms are...

Yesterday the State Department released its International Religious Freedom Report for 2014. A wide range of U.S. government agencies and offices use the reports for such efforts as shaping policy and conducting diplomacy. The Secretary of State also uses the reports to help determine which countries have engaged in or tolerated “particularly severe violations” of religious freedom in order to designate “countries of particular concern.” A major concern addressed in this year’s report is the violent opposition to religious freedom...

“God somehow demands of us so much more than this transactional nature. It is really about the gift that we’ve been given, and the only response we can give back is with extravagance, with gratuitous beauty.” –Makoto Fujimura (Episode 6,For the Life of the World) We live in a society that has grown increasingly transactional in its way of thinking. Everything we spend or steward — time, money, relationships — must secure a personal reward or return. Even when we...

In places like Chicago, ties between unions and Catholics often run deep. However, with right-to-work ing a voting issue in many states, the intersection of union membership and church membership is ing a hot topic. Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich got himself tangled in this arena this week: At the request of local unions, Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich recently spoke at a West Side union hall about the church’s teachings on work and workers. After the speech, Democrat House Speaker Michael...

The Manhattan Institute Centers’s “Proxy Monitor Season Wrap-Up” is hot off the press, and the findings presented by author James R. Copland, are remarkable. Since 2011, MIC has monitored shareholder activism, which it describes as efforts “in which investors attempt to influence corporate management through the shareholder-proposal process.” This year’s wrap-up includes MIC-researched data from corporations’ annual meetings held by the end of June 2015. By that time, “216 of the 250 largest panies by revenues” pleted their meetings, which...

Yesterday, Princeton economist Angus Deaton won the Nobel prize in economic sciences for his work on “analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.” In honor of this recognition, here are six quotes by Deaton on poverty: On poverty measurements: “Poverty lines are as much political as scientific constructions.” On measuring global poverty: “Measuring poverty at the local level is straightforward, at the national level it is hard but manageable, but at the level of the world as a whole it is...

“With the news this week that Angus Deaton of Princeton University had won the economics Nobel,” says Victor V. Claar in this week’s Acton Commentary, “the question of how best to help the poor in developing nations takes on a greater level of urgency.” When es to understanding the specifics of global poverty, Deaton’s achievements are especially impressive. By pioneering household surveys in poor countries, he helped us gain a more accurate perspective on living standards and the particular consumption...

While it has been pointed out repeatedly by your writer and others in this space that Pope Francis’ Laudato Si contains much to mend it for the passion and depth of spirituality contained within, there remains much that is problematic. For example, there’s this: At the same time we can note the rise of a false or superficial ecology which placency and a cheerful recklessness. As often occurs in periods of deep crisis which require bold decisions, we are tempted...