Freedom and Flourishing

 This question is posed in the title of Chapter 10 of Steven Pinker’s book, Rationality: What it is, Why it Seems Scarce, Why it Matters. I enjoyed reading the previous 9 chapters but didn’t learn much from them. Those chapters were a painl...

 Cartoon by Peter Nicholson from “The Australian” newspaper: www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au Some erstwhile supporters of capitalism probably don’t realize that they have gone missing. They still support private ownership of property an...

Some readers may think this question is based on a false premise. So I will begin by considering the claim that Australian Aborigines were farmers rather than hunter-gatherers before 1788 when Britain established a penal colony in New South Wales. T...

 This essay was prompted by my reading of The Individualists, an excellent history of libertarian ideas by Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, which was published recently. The question I pose for myself above is related to the subtitle of the book:...

 The draft of an article on this topic is available here.  The article draws on material published in recent posts on this blog.Comments on the article are most welcome! I am seeking peer review of the article prior to publication.The draft...

 An obvious answer to the question posed above is that governments determine how much liberty people enjoy. But that response may be too glib. Some argue that much restriction of liberty reflects prevailing values of people who see individual au...

 This is a companion piece to the preceding post in which I considered the extent to which international differences in personal freedom reflect people’s values. The extent to which international differences in economic freedom reflect differ...