TABLE OF CONTENTS – OCTOBER 2018
Editorial
Scott Hargreaves
Inside the Intellectual Dark Web
A new breed of entertaining and enlightening free thinkers bypassed mainstream media to reach millions of people worldwide
Gideon Rozner
Right Climate for Nuclear Power
An eco-modernist concerned about climate change says nuclear energy can avoid a looming crisis in our energy supply.
Ben Heard
Clause for Concern
In an Australia held back by red tape, counting restrictive clauses in legislation is a powerful tool to roll it back.
Darcy Allen
To Yield and Not To Strive
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull promised ‘a thoroughly Liberal Government’ … but instead it was a thorough disappointment.
Simon Breheny
Rewarded For Not Thinking
A Melbourne schoolboy captures the costs of thoughtcrime under Stalin, via stories from his great-grandparents.
Maxim Bishev
Benefits for workers are the real success of modern management, which flourishes only in free societies.
Bradley Bowden
Vatican’t?
The Vatican’s passivity and appeasement towards repressive regimes means danger for Catholics and the church.
Fr James Grant
Reap What You Sue
A libertarian lawyers argues that public figures like Jordan Peterson harm free speech by resorting to defamation law.
Matthew S. Widmaier
Stick Your Neck Out
Nassim Nicholas Taleb of ‘Black Swan’ fame is interesting for what he says and how he says it, including in his latest book.
Scott Hargreaves
A Conservative Answer to Liberalism’s Crisis
Three new books describe liberal ideas and institutions in crisis, showing the need to restore confidence in our civilisation.
Andrew Bushnell
Martin Luther’s profound influence is captured in a new history of Protestantism, but tolerance and freedom came later.
Richard Allsop
Upper Cut to Snootocracy
A British book on ‘patronising bastards’ is cathartic and entertaining, but also hit and miss.
Gideon Rozner
Strange Times
Our correspondent has been calculating his Social Credit score, and he’s in trouble.
James Bolt
Featured Articles
Bradley Bowden
A Capital Idea: Modern Management in a Free Society
Benefits for workers are the real success of modern management in free market societies, writes Professor Bradley Bowden (originally published in the October 2018 IPA Review). Management, as a discipline and an occupation, has become a ubiquitous feature of the modern world. Among university students, business and management is now the most commonly studied degree. For those of us who work, a manager
Ben Heard
Right Climate for Nuclear Power
Whatever your take on climate change, nuclear power is the safest option for averting Australia’s looming energy crisis, argues Bright New World Founder Dr Ben Heard. Once upon a time, Australia made the National Electricity Market (the NEM), geographically the largest electricity network in the world. The NEM operated efficiently for many years until the conditions on which its design was predicated began
Gideon Rozner
Upper Cut to Snootocracy
Quentin Letts letting loose delivers a cathartic read even though some stray punches strike the wrong targets, writes Gideon Rozner. As countries throughout the West buckle under the disconnect between the political class and the mainstream, the London Daily Mail’s columnist Quentin Letts unloads on the ‘snootocracy’: the political, cultural and financial elites that have steadily ‘betrayed Britain’. And Letts
Darcy Allen
Clause For Concern
Counting restrictive clauses in legislation is a powerful tool to reduce red tape, argues Darcy Allen. It is time for a new approach to red tape reduction. Governments seeking to systematically reduce red tape need a metric by which they can measure their success or failure. In particular, we need to focus on ‘regulatory restrictions’ or ‘restrictiveness clauses’ in regulations—providing
Book Reviews
Richard Allsop
Luther Nailed It
Historian Alex Ryrie expounds Martin Luther’s profound influence on the modern world but also explains Protestantism can’t take all the credit for the rise of tolerance and freedom, writes Richard Allsop. Without Protestants, the story of Western Civilisation in the past 500 years would have been very different. That is not to say that if Martin Luther had not nailed
Scott Hargreaves
Stick Your Neck Out
In this review of “Skin in the Game; Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life”, Scott Hargreaves argues that Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s writings on the benefits of a stake in risks—‘skin in the game’—are helpful at policy and personal levels alike. Nassim Nicholas Taleb is one of the most interesting thinkers to have emerged in the 21st century, both for what he
Andrew Bushnell
A Conservative Answer To Liberalism’s Crisis
Three recent books describe a crisis of liberal democracy. But we can’t resolve our problems simply by retreating into localism—we also need a renewed confidence in our civilisation, and a new conservative story to tell, writes Andrew Bushnell. In a famous essay, the economist FA Hayek disassociated himself from conservatism. Despite admiring figures like Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, both
