Alejandro Chafuen in Forbes: Think tanks and social media

Alejandro Chafuen, Acton’s Managing Director, International, writes today in Forbes with his annual analysis of think tanks’ use of social media. While social media stats shouldn’t be our only or even primary measure of success, no one can deny the prevalence of social networks in today’s world, and many groups expend considerable energy in their efforts in this field. Continue Reading...

The reason women don’t enter STEM professions revealed

Conventional wisdom believes three things: Women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); this is largely due to sexual discrimination; and the government must redress this imbalance. But multiple studies have discovered a much different reason behind the STEM gender gap. Continue Reading...

Alejandro Chafuen in Forbes: Aquinas and Bitcoin

Yesterday in Forbes, Alejandro Chafuen, Acton’s Managing Director, International, analyzed moral questions of cryptocurrency in light of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. It is an application of centuries-old thought to a very recent phenomenon—but of course, as the article seeks to show, moral considerations are perennial even as their particular objects change. Continue Reading...

The EU’s self-defeating digital tax

In today’s global economy, a company that provides a successful product or service can earn billions of dollars a year. Governments steal a greedy glance and ask how they can get their “fair share” of this money. Continue Reading...

A rule of thumb for the Green New Deal

I have a couple rules of thumb that I hope help me cut through some of the noise around various policy proposals and political debates. One has to do with budgetary reform (a topic I covered at some length last week): If the plan doesn’t engage with entitlements, then it isn’t really a serious proposal. Continue Reading...

Can Bitcoin solve the classic problems of money?

The digital currency Bitcoin has not only attracted a lot of interest from investors, but it has raised some intriguing economic and financial questions. Economists and other theorists have long grappled with problems such as inflation, counterfeiting or money laundering. Continue Reading...

Hayek is the prophet of cryptocurrencies

Even among freedom minded individuals, classical liberalism gives way to conservative resistance on the issue of money. The view prominent on the right and the left is that money is the exclusive right of the state, rather than private initiative. Continue Reading...