In this week’s Acton Commentary I examine Sen. Marco Rubio’s case for “Common-Good Capitalism”: Americans are searching for answers for the disintegration of the family, falling participation in religious and civic institutions, drug dependency, suicide, and economic dislocation. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., believes he has found the answer to the social crises of our time in Catholic social teaching. He describes his own reading of Catholic social teaching as “Common-Good Capitalism,” drawing principally on Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum...

We continue to see the ill effects of “cancel culture” and safetyism, whether through student-led riots and intimidation efforts at colleges and universities, the garden-variety intolerances of “woke capitalism,” or the self-destructive interventionism of “bulldozer parenting.” As far as how it’s e to be, we have explanations aplenty, from declines in religious life to the fraying of the social fabric to rises in political fragmentation and polarization. In an essay at Heterodox Academy, Musa Al-Gharbi points to yet another: a...

Despite being surrounded by unprecedented levels of opportunity and prosperity, we live in a profoundly anxious age, fearful of economic decline and disruption even as we strive to resist idols of status, wealth, fortability. When observing such a state, many are quick to proclaim that “the market is not enough.” They are correct: We also need gratitude. “We should bow in gratitude to God for His many favors,” said President Calvin Coolidge in his 1925 Thanksgiving Proclamation, remarking on a...

Stephanie Slade writes in next month’s edition of Reason Magazine about, ‘Regulation and ‘the Right Ordering of Economic Life”according to Catholic social teaching: The Church’s surprising lesson for partisans of big government is that the best tools for correctly ordering economic life are found in the choices of individual market actors. Because those choices are based not only on their preferences but also on their convictions, people’s moral sensibilities—the extent to which they believe they have ethical obligations to each...

As the West has e progressively more interventionist, concern with e inequality” has been eclipsed by “wealth inequality.” However, that focus betrays a certain blindness to a vital economic reality. Measures of equality and inequality tell us nothing about what really matters: a society’s prosperity or poverty. Communist societies were far from equal in practice. However, modern concerns about inequality focus on the fact that the free market does not reward all labor evenly. Yet the West’s efficiency creates the...

Senator Marco Rubio, R-FL, touched off a debate about the values of capitalism with his remarks on mon-good capitalism” on November 5 at the Catholic University of America. Today, Acton Institute Director of Research Samuel Gregg offers his assessment at Law & Liberty, where he traces Rubio’s thought to one of the most influential political philosophies in postwar Western European history. Sen. Rubio’s speech, titled “Catholic social doctrine and the dignity of work,” holds that the state must do more...

The days in which many Westerners celebrated what many thought was mainland China’s inevitable march towards freedom as a consequence of its limited opening to global trade are now well and truly over. The present battle over Hong Kong, one of the world’s most economically-free regions, is plainly a proxy for a wider fight about China’s future—a future in which Beijing has made clear does not include much room for political freedom and rule of law. Then there is the...

The citizens of Hong Kong expanded their democratic revolution to the ballot box on Sunday, as pro-democracy parties won control of virtually every local government from pro-Beijing functionaries. Yesterday’s district council elections – the largest in history, with an estimated 71 percent of all registered voters (or 2.94 million of 4.13 million) participating – proved voters’ overwhelming support for the traditional rights enjoyed by the former British protectorate. The South China Morning Post described the landslide election as a “tsunami...

I am grateful to Fr. Ben Johnson for his thoughtful response to my recent post, “The social responsibility of Chick-fil-A is to make delicious sandwiches.”He adds some extra nuance, but I still stand my ground. Fr. Ben begins with an objection I’ve heard several times now: Friedman rightly notes that a CEO who funds a charity with the profits of a publicly held corporation spends the firm’s money, not his own. However, Chick-fil-A is a privately owned business, founded by...

As though guided by an invisible hand Dylan Pahman and I – independently and without coordination – each posted an essay about Chick-fil-A’s philanthropic giving within minutes of one another, each with slightly different emphases. Readers may see this as a conflict; however, probing the space between these analyses helps make sense of customer backlash, illustrates why “woke capitalism” of any variety is a miasma, and underlines that charitable decisions are best made by private individuals. Dylan quotes Milton Friedman’s...