By Jacques Reich (undoubtedly based on a work by another artist) – Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1900, v. 5, p. 438, Public Domain, “You are the spring that puts all the rest in motion; they would not stir a step without you.” John Wesley (1703–1791) was talking about the slave trade and was impugning the buyers and owners of slaves as equally culpable as those who captured and sold them, those who “would not stir a step” without buyers...

This ad perhaps captures Deirdre McCloskey’s observation that “love runs consumption” better than anything I have yet seen. Coca Cola – What Goes es Around from THE APA on Vimeo. And embedded in Jack White’s song are some rich theological insights. For more on the backstory for the song and the ad, check out this piece at the Consequence of Sound. ...

Capitalism tends to make Christians uneasy and conflicted. On the one hand, we recognize that free enterprise has been the most effect means of poverty reduction in the history of the world. But on the other hand, we are forced to admit that the system can be used to destroy the good, the true, and the beautiful. How can we resolve this tension? One important step, as Nathan Smith explains, is to better understand the “ideological heart of capitalism”—the doctrine...

In a recent article in Commonweal, the Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart responds to a rebuttal article written last year by Acton research director Samuel Gregg. Hart say that “on at least one point Gregg did have me dead to rights: I did indeed say that the New Testament, alarmingly enough, condemns great personal wealth not merely as a moral danger, but as an intrinsic evil.” What is Hart’s basis for the claim? That he can read thekoineGreek. He believe...

The number of people living in extreme poverty continues to decline, notes a report released yesterday by the World Bank. In 2013, the year of the prehensive data on global poverty, an estimated 767 million people were living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per person per day. This is a decrease of about 100 pared with 2012. The decline is primarily attributed to the reductions in the number of the extreme poor in South Asia (37 million fewer...

Note: This is the fourthpost in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Now that we know what the supply and demand curves are we can put them together to understand how they affect prices. In this video from Marginal Revolution University, we learn how prices reach equilibrium and how the market works like an invisible hand coordinating economic activity. We also discover why at equilibrium the price is stable and gains from trade are maximized, and why when the...

“Our problem [with education] today is not to enforce conformity; it is rather that we are threatened with an excess of conformity. Our problem is to foster diversity.” –Milton Friedman, Capitalism & Freedom The education reform movement has set forth a range of strategies bat the leviathan of publiceducation. Yet more often than not, thosesolutions arecouched only with boilerplate about the glories of markets petition. There is plenty oftruth behind such rhetoric, butas Greg Forster outlines in an extensive series...

Alexis de Tocqueville’sDemocracy In Americais renowned as one of the best examinations of early American society and politics,and remains one of the most mentaries ever written on the practice of democracy in the United States. In this edition of Radio Free Acton, we are joined by John Wilsey,Assistant Professor of History and Christian Apologetics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, to discuss Tocqueville’s masterwork and its continuing relevance for modern America. We also discuss the work of Tocqueville’s panion, Gustave de...

The contrast between the treatments by David Bentley Hart and Dylan Pahman of the question of the intrinsic evil of “great personal wealth” this week pretty well established, I think, that in itself wealth is among the things neither forbidden nor absolutely required. In fact, as Pahman puts it at one point, perhaps “Christians should strive to have wealth from which to provide for others.” But all this is to merely show that wealth isn’t absolutely forbidden. From this it...

There are many factors that account for a country’s economic freedom (or lack thereof), but one ofthe most overlooked is the role of religion. Can economic freedom be explained by religion, independently ofpolitical institutions? That’s the question researchers at an economics think-tank in Germany attempted to answer. Their findings: Weinvestigate whether religion affects economic freedom. Our cross-sectional dataset includes 137countries averaged over the period 2001-2010. Simple correlations show that Protestantism isassociated with economic freedom, Islam is not, with Catholicism in...