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…

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…

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…

It felt like Christmas had come early when I got my package of Buckyballs in the mail a few days ago. Buckyballs are small, super-strong spherical magnets made of the rare earth metal neodymium. A set of 216 Buckyballs fits comfortably in the palm of your hand. I stared amazed…

Everyone is aware that America faces a financial crisis involving the $16.3 trillion national debt, the impending “fiscal cliff,” and the long-term insolvency of entitlement programs. But America also, and more fundamentally, faces a moral crisis—a crisis that underlies and gives rise to the financial crisis—and we cannot effectively act…

I cannot stop the Federal Trade Commission’s persecution of Google, a government action stemming from the antitrust laws that violate the rights of businesses and their customers to act on their own judgment and associate voluntarily. But I can offer Google—and its CEO Larry Page and its employees—the justice of…

The President of the United States said in a public address: Taxes take from everyone a part of his earnings and force everyone to work for a certain part of his time for the government. . . . I want the people of America to be able to work less…

You can’t accuse Elon Musk of not thinking big. He helped found the internet commerce site PayPal and went on to found SpaceX, which has successfully rocketed a supply capsule to the space station. Now Musk is in the early stages of planning a colony on Mars. As Rob Coppinger…

Thanks to new research with embryonic stem cells, doctors may one day be able to transplant neurons developed from stem cells into patients who suffer brain damage, including Alzheimer’s patients. Connie K. Ho reports for RedOrbit.com: Researchers from the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute [and other research centers] recently discovered that…

Although Reason magazine publishes some pro-liberty articles and videos, it unfortunately publishes an occasional endorsement of statism. Such is the case with a November 19 article by A. Barton Hinkle, “The Case for a Carbon Tax.” Hinkle, granting the highly disputed notions that the globe is warming, that this is…

How many times have you heard a tax cut described as a “subsidy?” It’s bad enough that government forcibly confiscates our wealth for the purpose of transferring our money to others in the form of welfare (whether regular or corporate). Adding insult to injury, pundits and politicians often speak as…

The news reads like the pages of Atlas Shrugged: The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union forced Hostess Brands Inc.—makers of such products as Twinkies and Wonder Bread—into liquidation, and a judge has ordered the company and the union back to talks. Hostess announced November 16 (prior to…