Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Economic Freedom

September 15, 2014

Ending Slavery Made America Richer

There is a near universal agreement that America’s experience with chattel slavery, where people are treated as the chattel or personal property of an owner and are bought and sold as if they were commodities, was one of our country’s gravest moral horrors. Continue Reading...
September 12, 2014

Is Religious Freedom Good for Economic Growth?

In the United States, we’ve only begun to see how impediments to religious liberty can harm and hinder certain businesses and entrepreneurial efforts. Elsewhere, however, particularly in the developing world, religious restrictions and hostilities have long been a barrier to economic growth. Continue Reading...
September 10, 2014

Net Neutrality? Yes. Title II? No.

I have spoken in the past in favor of net neutrality, writing, Whoever is responsible for and best at enforcing it, net neutrality had this going for it: it was a relatively stable, relatively open playing-field for competition…. Continue Reading...
September 03, 2014

Orthodoxy and Economic Liberty

In the most recent issue of The City, I have an essay on Orthodoxy and ordered liberty. I argue that Orthodox theological anthropology, which distinguishes between the image and likeness of God and two forms of freedom corresponding to them, fits well with the classical understanding of ordered liberty. Continue Reading...
August 20, 2014

Every Market Form in a Single Chart

Reading through the German economist Walter Eucken’s work The Foundation of Economics (1951), I came across one of the most helpful charts for economic analysis I have yet to find. In it, Eucken gives every possible form of market in a single table: Eucken adds four qualifications that are important to keep in mind: “These forms of market are actual forms which have been or are to be found in actual economic life (often blended with one another, and existing alongside the forms of a centrally directed economy). Continue Reading...
August 20, 2014

Radio Free Acton: The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke, Part II

This week on Radio Free Acton, Michael Matheson Miller continues his conversation with David Bromwich, Sterling Professor of English at Yale University, on the thought of Edmund Burke. Bromwich is the author of The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke, the first volume of what will be a two-volume intellectual biography of Burke. Continue Reading...
August 13, 2014

Radio Free Acton: The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke

This week on Radio Free Acton, Michael Matheson Miller takes the interviewer’s chair for a conversation with David Bromwich, Sterling Professor of English at Yale University, to discuss the thought of Edmund Burke in the wake of the release of Bromwich’s first volume of what will be a two-volume intellectual biography of Burke. Continue Reading...
July 25, 2014

Wounding Work: Creative Service as Cross Bearing

In recent years, we’ve seen a renewed focus on the deeper value, meaning, and significance of our daily work, particularly across the realm of evangelicalism. Yet as easy as it may be for some to alter old attitudes and begin appreciating the gift of creative service, it can be extremely difficult for others — and often for good reason. Continue Reading...