Imagine your property is stolen and then having to have this conversation. Government authorities: “Good news, we recovered your stolen property!” You: “That’s great! When can I get it back?” Gov: “Eh, the bad news is we can only give you back 56 percent of what was stolen.” You: “Well, I guess that’s better than nothing.” Gov: “The good news is that you’ll receive cash as restitution for the rest.” You: “Oh wow. That’s incredible!” Gov: “The bad news is...

Note: This is post #63 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Common resources are nonexcludable but rival, says Alex Tabarrok in this video by Marginal Revolution University. For instance, no one can be excluded from fishing for tuna, but they are rival — for every tuna caught, there is one less for everyone else. Nonexcludable but rival resources often lead to what we call a “tragedy of mons.” In the case of tuna, this means the collapse of...

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, but the civil rights leader is a figure of worldwide significance. He learned the principles of non-violence from those resisting the British empire, received the Nobel Peace Prize in Stockholm, and is one of the “twentieth century martyrs” whose statue sits atop the great west door of Westminster Cathedral (alongside Maximilian Kolbe, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and others). And 50 years after his death, his moral crusade for equal treatment under...

“While popes and bishops preach about the duties to the poor and suffering,” says Kishore Jayabalan in this week’s Acton Commentary, “the dilemma of how to help is usually left for the laity to figure out on their own” While CST explicitly speaks of ing all, it implicitly recognizes that unlimited multiculturalism is not feasible. The burdens and costs of ing ers are real and must be shared to be made acceptable. But what happens when some refuse to do...

While trying to teach the most consequential thoughts of West civilization to undergraduates, C. Ivan Spencer hit upon a unique idea: What if they were written in tweets instead of tomes? That’s the kernel of his book Tweetable Nietzsche: His Essential Ideas Revealed and Explained. Somehow, the idea that the callously exploitative philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche could be mass-marketed so easily makes it all the more unsettling. Spencer’s book is reviewed this weekend by Josh Herring, a humanities instructor atThales...

Intellectuals like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk increasingly worry about an apocalyptic world awaiting in the not-too-distant future, when automation replaces all human work(and, in time, artificial intelligence displaces humanity). A new UK study finds the robots may have found an ally: a higher minimum wage. A looming increase in the minimum wage will likely result in a robots replacing a growing number of workers, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). The UK’s minimum wage – the National...

2017 was a difficult year for many in Latin America. While Mexico endured 6.77 percent inflation, Argentina reached 24.5 percent and Venezuelans suffered a whopping 2,616 percent inflation. parison, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the United States saw inflation between 2.0 and 1.7 percent in 2017. Alex Chafuen, managing director of international outreach at Acton, recently addressed the issues in Latin America on NTN24 “Nuestra Tele Noticias.” Chafuen denounces how inflation feeds corruption, especially in Venezuela and Argentina....

On this week’s episode of Radio Free Acton, Caroline Roberts speaks with Liz Forkin Bohannon, CEO and Founder of Sseko Designs, on wealth creation and effective poverty alleviation. Then, on the Upstream segment, Bruce Edward Walker hosts a roundtable discussion with Acton staffers on Godless, a new Western show by Netflix. Check out these additional resources on this week’s podcast topics: Register for the Acton Institute’s lecture series event: Family Breakdown and the Economy Sseko Designs ‘Godless’ IMDb Learn more...

The game of Monopoly has brought generations of people together, even as it’s somehow managed to tear friends and family apart. Indeed, amid all the fun and frivolity, it’s still a cut-throat game driven by luck, exploitation, and money-lust. Just like the actual marketplace, right? Alas, despite being “just a game,” Monopoly has surely done its share of feeding the various pop-culture caricatures of plete with a twirly-mustached mascot. But despite those subtle distortions, perhaps it can still teach us...

For the sixteenth consecutive year, North Korea is ranked as the most oppressive place in the world for Christians, according to the international non-profit ministry Open Doors. Every year Open Doors publishes the World Watch List to highlight the plight of persecuted Christians around the world. The list represents believers “who are arrested, harassed, tortured—even killed—for their faith.” The list measures the degree of freedom a Christian has to live out their faith in five spheres of life (private, munity,...