I started this blog in part to earn income through affiliate marketing channels. A lot of companies like Uber, Lyft, Dollar Shave Club, Nozbe, and others offer referral incentives. If you use my Uber or Lyft codes for your first rides, I get a $20 discount on a future ride. If you sign up for […]
Consider how frequently you hear someone in a firm or a bureau complain that they are under-funded and that they need more resources to complete a mission. Should they get a larger budget? I would venture to say “probably not,” though there are certainly exceptions, because everyone could say “I can do more of the things I […]
Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. This is nowhere more clearly in evidence than in the AMC hit The Walking Dead. How well will we do after the zombie apocalypse? Not well, I think—we’re a species that burns cars when a football team loses. If anything, watching The Walking Dead has made me wonder how […]
I’m glad to hear that. As a friend and mentor once said, “as famous as he is, Adam Smith is still underrated.” Where should you begin? Shortly after I finished my PhD I went to the Liberty Fund’s “Adam Smith Boot Camp.” It was there that I read The Theory of Moral Sentiments for the first […]
New on the Kindle: Rosaria Butterfield, “The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert” Amazon Product Description Rosaria, by the standards of many, was living a very good life. She had a tenured position at a large university in a field for which she cared deeply. She owned two homes with her partner, in which they […]
Welcome to my new blog! This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve blogged for Division of Labour, the Mises Institute, the Independent Institute, Kosmos Online, and EconLog, I write a periodic column for Forbes.com, and I’ve recently started blogging for LearnLiberty. In addition to my research and classroom teaching, I do a lot of writing by […]
I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama . In addition, I am a Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics, a Research Fellow with the Independent Institute, and a Senior Fellow with the Beacon Center of Tennessee. I was a Visiting Research Fellow at the […]
Infant and child mortality has fallen precipitously in the last few centuries, and life expectancy has increased dramatically. We have made a lot of progress in the protection of public health, but we are still wasting staggering amounts of life that gets snuffed out early by disease and war. Consider diarrhea, which is an inconvenience […]
“Discourse failure” can characterize democratic deliberation. Pincione and Teson explain how and why. There’s a lot more to all this than meets the eye. A lot of legislation is floated with no intention of passage–rather, it is floated in order to extract contributions from the affected parties.
“Yay!” That’s from a not-too-long-ago escapade with my daughter, who was about to spend her money on what I honestly thought was dumb. Why, if she was making a mistake, didn’t I stop her? My kids get a weekly allowance of a few dollars, and we have, effectively, no restrictions on how they spend their […]
1. People are very tribal, and the more I’ve read scholars like Robin Hanson and Jonathan Haidt, the more I’ve become convinced that a lot of what we do is about showing which team we’re on rather than pursuing truth or effecting change. Given that this is the most likely motivation for action, people are […]
Just so we’re clear, calling the cops because you see a large black guy in your neighborhood is harassment. This has happened to a friend with a door-to-door job in three separate neighborhoods over the last few months. And if you’re going to protest and appeal to the black male crime rate to justify your […]
It was wet. It was cold. It was miserable. It was New Year’s Day and we just got home from church and lunch out with friends. Birmingham was a rainy, chilly mess, and it was not the kind of day where people want to spend a lot of time outdoors. As I changed out of […]
In February 2015, Leroy Butler gave a speech at Samford University on “Diversity in Missions.” It raises unique challenges at a University that was only integrated in the late 1960s and that is still overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly affluent. I wasn’t surprised but I was frustrated to see that from my vantage point, it seemed […]
