There is growing interest in socialist ideas, especially among college-age Americans. To be precise, 62% of young Americans between 18 and 29 years old have a favorable view of socialism, according to a 2025 survey by Cato Institute and YouGov. This makes Friedrich A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, a critique of the dangers of...
As a business professor, I strive to teach sound principles and practices, focusing on the benefits of productivity and value creation. I want my students pursuing business careers to be proud of their chosen profession. While business ethics is a topic worthy of classroom coverage and discussion, I do not view my role as one...
Tim Friede let venomous snakes bite him roughly 200 times, suffering anaphylactic shocks, and spending four days hospitalized in a coma. But this wasn’t a suicide attempt. He was seeking immunity to all snake venom, so that his blood could be used to create a universal antitoxin. The Centivax startup reports promising results from an...
The idea that people have an unalienable right to pursue their own happiness is a very radical idea. Prior to the eighteenth century, almost no one in the world believed it. Even today, only a small sliver of humankind agrees with it. Equally radical is the idea that the only purpose of government is to...
Last month, like many, I went to see the newly released Superman movie by James Gunn. As a kid, I loved the 1978 Superman film with Christopher Reeve and the scene when he takes Lois Lane for an evening flight is one of my favorites. Margot Kidder portrayed Lane as smart and quirky — and...
It’s a poorly-kept secret that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) has faced crisis after crisis. But the latest scandal over 3 million “unseen patients” may be its worst yet. In fact, this omnicrisis is worsened by the fact that barely anyone is speaking about it. Throughout the 2000s, headlines warned of an overwhelmed and underfunded...
Northwood University will launch its 2025 Freedom Seminar on Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025, with a keynote address by Professor Daniel J. Smith, a Northwood alumnus and Director of the Political Economy Research Institute at Middle Tennessee State University. Smith will explore the continuing relevance of Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek’s critique of socialism and its application...
After 47 years of Superman movies, James Gunn’s 2025 film offers a poignant take on the values Superman has always embodied: truth, justice, and the American Way. Through his origin story as an alien adopted and raised in Kansas, Superman symbolizes the hope and idealism that define the American Dream: that through hard work and...
erhaps the greatest example that good policymaking intentions go awry is the minimum wage. Proponents of increasing the minimum wage argue that doing so will help the poor. If we could snap our fingers and make the poor suddenly rich, there would be no reason to object. Unfortunately, in a world of scarce resources, this...
Industrial researchers are sounding the alarm as thousands of AI companies are being eliminated in the wake of the first wave of AI fever sparked by OpenAI. At the same time, however, prominent tech leaders and Silicon Valley CEOs such as Jensen Huang continue to promote the narrative of China’s technological leadership in AI. While...
While the Big Beautiful budget bill recently enacted into law has a multiplicity of good, bad, and benign features, the law’s biggest and most beautiful feature is the continuation of the soon-to-expire 2017 income tax reduction enacted in Donald Trump’s first term. Although much of the American press has characterized this as a big gift...
Boeing is struggling. The most recent round of bad news to hit the manufacturer came when, after Boeing’s project to build the next Air Force One was delayed again, this time until 2029, President Trump announced he would instead accept a jet gifted from the Qatari royal family. While the legality of that move has...
In India, government jobs pay far more than equivalent jobs in the private sector—so much so that the entire labor market and educational system have become grossly distorted by rent-seeking to obtain these jobs. Teachers in the public sector, for example, are paid at least five times more than in the private sector. It’s not...
Critics often scoff at the market economists’ claim that competition fosters relentless innovation. A recent meme points to the ubiquity of chicken sandwiches across major fast food chains as supposed evidence of stagnation in capitalism. If twelve top firms offer a similar product, the argument goes, how innovative can an economic system truly be? But...