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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
In Need of Cyber-Education
Before the Industrial Revolution, education was a luxury few could afford. Currently, you can benefit from education free of charge (if you ignore the “stealth” taxation, as there is no free lunch, and neither does free schooling exist either), but its value is much lower if we understand value as the satisfaction derived from the consumption of the product. Human intelligence accommodates the ability for academic exigency, but this does not mean that academic exigency defines intelligence as a whole. Education should be adapted to cope with the changes to come at the grassroots of daily progress. More
Romania: A New Energy Power
While contemporary interest in energy questions focus on the Middle East, Romania has an impressive record in petroleum production which can be traced to 1517. Romania has a history of more than 150 years in oil extraction and in 1838 became the first country in the world with the production of 275 barrels of oil. It was followed by the United States in 1859 and Italy in 1862. By the 19th century, Romania had become one of the largest petroleum producers in Europe and Ploiești was among the best-known centers and was the site of the first Romanian refinery. Bucharest was the first city in the world illuminated with 1000 kerosene lamps, using kerosene which was produced in Ploiești. More
Why Columbus Was Not Chinese
Christopher Columbus, the world’s most famous explorer, represents a unique case study in world history and innovation. He is regarded as being a (very) controversial figure, his story being filled with mass murders and enslavement. However, he may have left us a unique perspective about where innovation come from and how we can encourage it. More
What Kind of Innovation Do We Need?
The morality of capitalism is, without a doubt, based on the value called to have (money, goods, power, social position, and so on) – and to have-to be is intensely debated in social philosophy and in ethics. I will not examine this from an ethical standpoint, since it is generally accepted both by the supporters of capitalism and by its opponents. I will narrow my considerations to the issue of innovation, as a paradigmatic model of improving human life. More
From Energetics to Economics
The fine connoisseurs say that statistics are perfectly comparable with the beach attire of an attractive young woman: reveals what everyone is allowed to see, but hides from the public eye the most appealing details. Because statistics is a science preferred by the economists, and in the economy some of the most intensively used benchmarks are turnover and gross domestic product (GDP), here are some very relevant examples: More
The US Supreme Court – Kritarchy and Compartmentalizing Manias
A recent leak from the Supreme Court of the United States (a very serious breach of trust, probably with political aims) is whipping up a severe political disturbance, right before the mid-term elections, which the Party in the White House traditionally loses when all does not become milk and honey after the Presidential elections. The leak hit a particular sore point for American politics, since it is on the issue of abortion, a problem that arouses massive emotional reactions in inverse proportion to the actual ability of politicians to address the issue. Apparently, the current Supreme Court, following a tactical case brought to its attention from Texas (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization), is leaning towards repealing the 50 year-old constitutional ruling on Roe v. Wade (1973), which set hard limits on the restriction of abortion rights. Chief Justice Roberts confirmed that the draft by Samuel Alito was real, but mentioned that it is an old version and it is not indicative of the current version of the Court’s opinion. Following this possible repeal, individual states would be able to set a wider variety of abortion policies which are much more restrictive than the current norm and likely more in keeping with the view of the median American voter, who is more conservative than American elites. This has naturally resulted in much wailing and gnashing of the teeth and much posturing by politicians of all stripes. It is impossible to even discern right now the motivation behind the leak – whether it was a Republican sympathizer trying to drum up support from conservatives now that they are tantalizingly close to an important dream, or maybe it was a Democrat sympathizer trying to galvanize a disappointed electorate to show up to vote for an Administration which, in most practical ways, has been quite moderate and an overall failure on the big issues. More
With Concern, Concerning Pensions
In a well-ordered society (in Rawlsian terminology), every person gains his social place and, consequently, his income (wealth) based on his objective merits – usually based on his work. Unfortunately, beyond a certain age, the physiology of humans does not allow people to engage in work activities anymore. In such a situation, some resources (usually in monetary expression) are needed to maintain the standard of living or, in more general terms, the wellbeing (no matter if all persons agree with a little smaller level of it, since, in fact, the general needs are, after the mentioned age, smaller). These resources form the concept of pension – that is retirement benefit. But who must provide the pension to retired persons? All logical judgements would tell us that the pension should be composed of savings on the part of the beneficiaries themselves, from their personal (or disposable) income gained during the active period of their life. Such savings should be the result of prudential behaviour in the long term. Since, in the real world, the prudential behaviour is not granted to all persons, the state took over the burden to fuel that “savings account”. Such saving has some features as follows (NB: I discuss here only the type of public pensions of the 1st pillar in the Romanian system, the pay-as-you-go public system): More
