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Ludwig Wittgenstein on Errors Made in Economic Language
You may be wondering why a philosopher like Ludwig Wittgenstein is so important in economics. We know how vital the ideas of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Francis Bacon, David Hume, Karl Marx, Keynes, Mises and Samuelson were in the history of the economic field and a name such as Wittgenstein seems uncommon. Yet, we have to admit that Wittgenstein was a philosopher who dedicated his entire life to shape the perfect arguments on the basis of pure logic. Moreover, a state of fact which is correctly observed is linked to logic. When it comes to the power of decisions, the truth is found in actions and is the only way which enforces the reasoning capacity of human beings. More
On Brexit and Other Exits
The United Kingdom has just spent its first days out of the European Union. The exit, completed by the Prime Minister Boris Johnson (the third British PM in a row, since Brexit began, four years ago) together with his political counterparts from the intricate EU institutional architecture, stands proof that in the age of multilateralism, unilateralism is far from a lost idea. More
Faux Treaty on Witch-Hunting
“Russia has invaded Ukraine! Russia must be punished!” Thus goes the most commonly expressed sentiment these days, postulating an imperative that seems, however, by far easier said than done. “Economically, politically”, the speech then emphatically continues, “...and militarily” in a rather light whisper. Yet, even if we were to content ourselves with “verba” without moving further to “facta”, a heady operational riddle is evident to those who pay close attention to the words being used (said usage being, in itself, a factum as much as an intended expression of facts). Which Russia are we referring to? All of Russia? Should V.V. Putin, the “ringleader” who originated this crisis, be condemned before anything and anyone else? Should we also not punish the (active and passive) accomplices of the now infamous head of state: the apparatchiks (who fill the ranks of the country’s political leadership); the oligarchs (from the pseudo-private business); the state-serving intelligentsia (with both its academic and artistic branches)? Maybe sanction the Russian nation itself, for surely it has democratically legitimized the tyrant, either involuntarily (through ignorance) or voluntarily (through deluded conviction)? Why not the Russian culture altogether, with its departed and unborn, since the racketeers have the same unhealthy origins as the Karamazov brothers and poor Karenina? More
Prospects for Russia’s Energy Market
Both during and after World War Two, analysts recognized the vital role played by energy resources – petroleum, natural gas, and coal – in calculating national power and a nation’s ability to endure an international crisis. Economic development and industrial production are largely determined by success in securing these crucial energy components. More recently, nuclear power has joined the ranks of essential energy resources. More
With Regards to Government Charity for the Private Sector
In a market economy, which is also presumed to function within a free society, generally, the goods and services needed for individuals are acquired through economic transactions (regularly through work and the processes around it – saving, investments and so on). Part of these goods and services are delivered by the state (more exactly, by the public sector of the state), the so-called public goods. The present intervention is intended to advance some considerations about the phenomenology of the public goods. It must be mentioned that there are two categories of public goods: More
The European Significance of the War in Ukraine
The all-out war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine in February 2022, after months of Sitzkrieg (a play on words between blitzkrieg – lightning war – and sitting around) on its North-Eastern borders, is obviously of primordial concern for European security and politics. However, its fundamental significance for the continent’s contemporary political project has not been clearly recognized to date. More
The Curse of the ‘Abroad’: A Romanian Perspective
Samuel Huntington’s observations summarized in the above quote offer valuable insight, mostly regarding the mentality of former empires and great powers. For Romanians, the opposite is true. The ‘abroad’ has always been civilized, while we Romanians were not. We identify as being outside of the civilized world. Romanians have had a passionate love and desire for all things foreign for a long time. The socialist regime only helped intensify this desire by forbidding it. So, to any canny observer, this love for the abroad is not a new phenomenon. Neither is the low national self-esteem which comes with this reality, by focusing the attention on how much better off ‘the abroad’ is and how deficient Romanian society is. More
Political and Economic Fallacies: A Tribute to Sir Roger Scruton
Adam Smith’s invisible hand, Frederic Bastiat’s essay “What Is Seen and What Is Unseen,” Michael Polanyi’s Tacit Dimension, Friedrich Hayek’s “spontaneous order,” and the Christian doctrines of subsidiarity and sphere sovereignty – these are ideas we ignore at our peril. We may not understand exactly how they work, but, as Shakespeare put it in another context in Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” More
Mayday, May 9!
Europeans believe that on a day like May 9 the European Union was made. In fact, it was on the 9th of May 1950 that the idea was launched, in the form of a public declaration that was assured of its impact. It is the famous “Schuman Declaration”, not after the name of the composer, which is spelt with two “n” at the end, but after the name of the French Foreign Minister of the time, Robert Schuman. It is an emblematic text, clear and quite concise, which rightly underpins everything that has been built along the lines of European unity since then. More
No Laughing Matter: What the Presidential Elections in Ukraine Have to Teach Us about Politics
When the possibility arose that Ukrainian actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelensky could run for President of Ukraine and actually win, it might well have elicited a few amused chuckles and raised eyebrows, but it was no longer a laughing matter when he came to dominate opinion polls and eventually confirmed his approval ratings by winning the elections by a landslide, garnering over 73% of the votes. Zelensky soundly defeated incumbent Petro Poroshenko against the backdrop of the ongoing war in the Donbass region between anti-Russian and pro-Russian factions. More
Russian Relations with North Korea
The changing relationship between Russia and North Korea has its beginnings when the Soviet Union and China became rivals for influence within the Communist world. In the contemporary context, there is a triangle of complicated relations involving Russia, China and the United States. In an analysis of the history of Russian foreign policy, Michael Mandelbaum quoted former Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, who observed that no important international question could be resolved "without the Soviet Union or in opposition to it". While that was the standard during the Soviet era when the Kremlin was routinely opposed to Western initiatives, Russia is well past that powerful situation and now focuses on certain regions as being paramount while others are only peripheral concerns. What we now refer to as Russia’s post-Communist foreign policy began before the collapse of the USSR when Mikhail Gorbachev began to speak of values other than those of Marxism-Leninism as the driving forces of international policy. Under Gorbachev’s “new thinking”, there was a focus on universal values such as a clean environment and not simply the advancement of "international class struggle". For Gorbachev, it was important that the Kremlin be able to cooperate with the West and be integrated into Western institutions that helped shape the international economy. Of course, this innovation eliminated the USSR as the main benefactor of those states which once comprised the “Soviet bloc”. The Brezhnev doctrine was repudiated and the Soviet military would no longer guarantee the maintenance of Communist party regimes in East Europe. More
Some Aspects on Complexity Economics in the Actual Context
In Stephen Hawking’s terms, the 21st century will be regarded as “the century of complexity”, implying the ability to unify accepted definitions of complexity from mixed fields, under the auspices of an exhaustive theory which is built under the fundamental laws of operation principles, in common conditions, of matter. More
