Category: Economics
Gray on Sociology
Gray: If Positivism is the chief source of the twentieth century’s most powerful secular religions it is partly through its impact on the social sciences. For Positivists, modernity is the transformation of the world by the use of scientific knowledge....
Reading the Pan-Africanists: Julius Nyerere (II)
Continuing: The production of wealth, whether by primitive or modern methods, requires three things. First, land. God has given us the land, and it is from the land that we get the raw materials which we reshape to meet our...
Positivism and Universal Free Markets
Gray: The core of Logical Positivism was the development of a scientific worldview. Going further than Saint-Simon and Comte, the Logical Positivists declared that only the verifiable propositions of science have meaning: strictly speaking, religion, metaphysics and morality are nonsense....
Basil the Great Addresses the Rich
St Basil: Since, then, the wealth still overflows, it gets buried underground, stashed away in secret places. For (they say), “what’s to come is uncertain, we may face unexpected needs.” Therefore it is equally uncertain whether you will have any...
Opportunities for Renewal After the Sexual Revolution
Matt Yglesias has an astute piece noting some reasons for concern amongst progressives re: the long string of success their movement has enjoyed with regards to LGBT+ issues: We had a roughly 10-year period of political routs (starting with the...
Christian Publications in a Post-Christian Context
We know there are two models that work for financing media jobs right now. The first model is to work for a print legacy institution that was well-positioned to weather the transition to digital and is now flush with subscription...
The Quiet Centrality of Market States
It is not overstating the case to say that Americans are having a protracted debate about the relationship between markets and the nation. The conversation is simmering in both of America’s major political parties and, somewhat curiously, it may end...
The Post-Liberal State and the (Highly Technical) Goods of Modernity
Several years ago my dad suffered a traumatic brain injury. To put it as plainly as I can: He is alive today because he had major brain surgery followed by a three-week long nap in the ICU that cost someone...
Martin Bucer’s Anti-Poverty Program
In his book De Regno Christi, Martin Bucer outlines his vision of a Christian society, including details on how he believes such a society should handle questions of poverty. The basic vision can be sketched out as follows:
Is Burnout a Generational Issue or a Class Issue?
If you haven’t yet, please do read Anne Helen Peterson’s excellent Buzzfeed essay on millennials and burnout. My first reaction to the essay was to agree with nearly every word of it and pass it on to others. But after...