Articles

In his latest Forbes.com article, Dr. Paul Hsieh elucidates the need for liberty-loving Americans to speak out against ObamaCare, saying, “[do] not let the government escape responsibility for problems they’ve created”: As the problems of ObamaCare inevitably emerge, the big question will be whether they will be blamed on the…

It isn’t Galt’s Motor from Atlas Shrugged, the fictional generator that pulls unlimited amounts of static electricity from the air. Still, an innovative new use of available materials shows promise in converting static electricity into power for small devices. Katherine Bourzac, writing for the MIT Technology Review, explains the work…

Hats off to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit for linking to C. Bradley Thompson’s latest TOS article, “The New Abolitionism: Why Education Emancipation is the Moral Imperative of our Time.” Thompson’s article vitally important, and Reynolds’s link is a major promotion. Thank you, Instapundit! Related: The New Abolitionism: Why Education Emancipation…

Piers Morgan is a citizen of the United Kingdom currently working in the United States on a green card as a CNN television host. After Morgan advocated stricter gun laws and called Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America “an unbelievably stupid man,” more than 44,000 Americans signed petitions calling…

Why is it that Sam Harris, a committed utilitarian, sometimes sounds a bit like an egoist? In my recently published essay “Sam Harris’s Failure to Formulate a Scientific Morality,” I point out that Harris upholds as his standard of moral value the utilitarian precept of the greatest good (or happiness)…

Today is the end of the world, according to some. Of course, last year marked the end of the world, too; as did the year before that. It seems that some people just can’t get enough mysticism or despair. People have been predicting the imminent destruction of the earth on…

The Perfect Last-Minute Gift The Objective Standard makes a great gift for your active-minded friends and relatives. The journal presupposes no specialized knowledge and will be appreciated by anyone with an interest in cultural or political issues. Gift subscriptions start at just $29 and are available in Print, E-Book, Kindle,…

A report issued earlier this year from the Property and Environment Research Center shows how capitalism helped save honey bees (and thus related markets) from “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD), a problem sometimes hysterically reported by the media. The paper’s authors, agricultural economists Randal R. Rucker and Walter N. Thurman, conclude:…

“In an unprecedented fall, the US drops out of the top ten of the 2012 Legatum Prosperity Index,” reports the London’s Legatum Institute. We’re now twelfth in this ranking. But what does that mean? There’s good reason to be skeptical of the index’s rankings. Much of the data derives from…

French actor Gérard Depardieu justly condemned his nation’s 75 percent marginal tax rate, explaining that, in France, “success, creation, talent—difference, in fact—must be punished.” Depardieu renounced his French citizenship and moved to Belgium, where taxes are lower. Although various French politicians and commentators have harshly criticized Depardieu, the actor deserves…

Jennifer Collinger, Andrew Schwartz, and other researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System have made spectacular progress in the treatment of severe paralysis by producing a new, highly advanced thought-controlled prosthetic arm. In a summary of their work published today in The Lancet, the research…

Two new Christmas-themed videos promote (respectively) sound economics and the right to control one’s own wealth. Both videos justly and humorously condemn, through satire, instances of government force. “Deck the Halls with Macro Follies” from EconStories promotes a fake Christmas album with such “hits” as “Income Equals Expenditure,” by John…

Though usually known for his leftist op-eds, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on Sunday made a surprising admission of the failure of a government “antipoverty” program and praised a private charity organization. In his column, Kristof reported that U.S. Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a federal assistance program for low-income…

What to give friends this Christmas? “I read Ayn Rand’s fiction years ago and loved it, but I never thought her ideas applied to the real world. Last Christmas [a friend] gave me a subscription to TOS, and I can’t tell you how clarifying it has been. From privatizing education,…