Henrique Schneider
Henrique Schneider
Head of economic policy at the Swiss Federation of Small and Medium Enterprises; he teaches economics at the Nordakademie in Elmshorn, Germany, and also publishes regularly on Austrian Economics, Asia and international politics
The Lockdown-Quagmire

The Lockdown-Quagmire

Economics tells us that every decision comes at a cost, an opportunity cost. In the same period of time that I am writing this article, I could have done other things. Deciding to spend time writing automatically entails missing out, for example, on watching TV, reading a book, or writing other pieces. The missed opportunities are the costs of writing this article. More


IP, Fire, and Other Dangerous Things

IP, Fire, and Other Dangerous Things

Why is there more money being invested in the development of (video) games than in research of new drugs and medicine? Well, the claim underlying the question may be overblown. But there is evidence for the gaming industry being larger than the movie or sports entertainment sectors.[1] There is also evidence suggesting a surge of innovation in gaming and a simultaneous decline of innovation in the pharma sector.[2] This begs the question: What does all this have to do with intellectual property or IP? More


“Search Neutrality” Is Not Possible

“Search Neutrality” Is Not Possible

Search neutrality – the idea that any search engine should reveal all and each of the Internet’s entries without favor, i.e. unbiasedly – is on its rise. But then again, what is an unbiased search engine? Is it the one that gives most results or the one that gives best results? Google’s secret in the early 2000s was to rank the results. Is that the best approach?  More


Is Small still Beautiful? A Swiss Perspective

Is Small still Beautiful? A Swiss Perspective

Small polities have different advantages. Because of their smallness, they can be more efficient; this allows them to be alert to opportunities. Because of their social tissue, small polities have the advantage of self-regulating through bonding and bridging, i.e. through social capital, rather than through bureaucracy. Social capital increases with its usage and is a resource for implementing novelties based on alertness. The third factor that contributes for small polities being at an advantage is competition – in its economic and political sense. There is a cautious note, however: not all small polities can mobilize these factors.  More


Equality, Justice and Other Nonsense

Equality, Justice and Other Nonsense

There are different conceptions of “equality”, and “justice”, but only some of these conceptions are commensurate with the institutions of individual liberty, private property, consensual contractualism and personal accountability. This essay argues that classical-liberal thinkers like Adam Smith and John Locke offered superior conceptions of equality and justice than much of the contemporary discourse does. This essay claims that the contemporary use of equality and justice is nonsensical; whereby nonsense is the absence of meaningful denotation and the intentional hiding of subjective normativity.  More


Karl Marx and Switzerland

Karl Marx and Switzerland

“The key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx (1818-83) is at bottom simple: Karl Marx was a communist”.Rothbard (1995, 317) succinctly makes a crucial point for understanding Marx: His ideas are not primarily about economics, sociology, of philosophy – let alone about singular or aggregate law-like relationships such as wage and value, time and investment, household formation and capital accumulation. If Marx dwelt in those issues, it was only to serve his ultimate aim, the definition and institution of a new society, or, his version of communism.Marxian Communism is not the outcome of some social mechanism. It is a goal to which all social mechanisms should be subservient. This goal equally subdues issues, theories, and frames of reference to its own implementation. While other forms of communism believed that such a system would be the eventual outcome, or, the synthesis, of human evolution, Marxian Communism was revolutionary. It is conceptualized as a synthesis, but one that has to be actively sought by revolution and enforced by the revolutionaries. Marxian Communism was about how to force and enforce the synthesis, thus, his idea of a synthesis was that human evolution as such is and shall be determined by an all-encompassing, synthetic, system. More


The Anthropocene-Fallacy: Learning from Wrong Ideas

The Anthropocene-Fallacy: Learning from Wrong Ideas

The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change. While it is not an academically established definition, as of yet, it is proposed to have begun in the 1950s. This article posits that the concept is erroneous in at least two ways. First, it relies on a normative, activist, appropriation of science. Second, it disregards the system-property of the ecosystem, which is marked by the continuous interaction between the system and its parts, or agents. But more than this, the idea of the Anthropocene is a case study for how activist agendas appropriate science and academia depriving it from an important academic feature, its skeptical method.  More


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