Book Review: Adam Smith can Change Your Life
Adam Smith is a deeply underrated thinker. This might seem like a strange thing to say about the author of the Wealth of Nations, which is often described as free…
Property Rights Are Human Rights
Property rights are human rights, but in order to advance them, we need to anchor them as moral and just. Throughout the second half of 2014, a national consultation looked…
The Model of a Modern Major University
‘You can’t say “the black kid over there”. No, it’s “the guy with the red shoes.” You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.’ Those are the…
The Wars of the Roses
A metallic, five-pointed Tudor rose glints menacingly from the dust cover of Dan Jones’ The Hollow Crown, looking suspiciously like the emblem for a new instalment of George R. R….
When Monopolies Work
When one of the leading participants in the development of the digital economy writes a book about the essences of business management, entrepreneurship, and innovation in the modern world...
The Men Who Shaped America
Anyone seeking to understand the tensions about the scope and size of government in modern democratic societies needs to have an understanding of the titanic struggle between Federalists and...
American Sniper
A boy stumbles towards a group of US marines. Chris Kyle (played by Bradley Cooper) watches him from above. The boy is holding something in a cloth, but Kyle cannot…
Reforming Taxation Isn’t About Increasing Taxes
In the United States they say that the states are the ‘laboratories of democracy’. What they mean is that a federal system—made up of a separate national government and numerous…
Chipping Away at Freedom
Australians’ legal rights are under an ongoing assault. Every year new laws are passed that undermine the principles of the legal system which are designed to protect our liberty. These…
Who’s Afraid of More Free Trade
There were few bright spots for the Coalition government in 2014, but trade was definitely one of them. Where the Gillard-Rudd governments had made overtures to Asia, spouting rhetoric...
Net Neutrality is Techno Socialism
Net neutrality is a grab-bag of cartoonish anti-corporate populism. The introduction of net neutrality rules by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in late February is a threat to...
Australia at the Crossroads
At the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, Australia’s economy was the envy of the world. Economic reform and fiscal responsibility had unleashed Australia’s potential and the mining boom...