Month: May 2017

  • The Right to Discriminate – It’s Not About Being Gay or Racist

    The Right to Discriminate – It’s Not About Being Gay or Racist

    An Alexandria gym terminated the membership of white nationalist Richard Spencer last week after another gym member confronted him with his racist views. Quite naturally, the private company used its right to discriminate. The media generally applauded the gym’s decision. On the other hand, various court decisions according to which Christian bakers and florists were…

  • Der Suizid im Liberalismus

    Der Suizid im Liberalismus

    “Es gibt nur ein wirklich ernstes philosophisches Problem: den Selbstmord. Sich entscheiden, ob das Leben es wert ist, gelebt zu werden oder nicht, heißt auf die Grundfrage der Philosophie antworten. Alles andere – ob die Welt drei Dimensionen und der Geist neun oder zwölf Kategorien hat – kommt später. Das sind Spielereien; erst muss man…

  • The Fallacious Romance of Politics with the Concept of Public Interest

    The Fallacious Romance of Politics with the Concept of Public Interest

    The theory that there exists a thing called „public interest“ is a fallacious belief based on a romantic idea of political man. In truth, the overwhelming evidence shows us that governments are more likely to fail than markets, and when they do, the consequences of their failure are more catastrophic. Political man vs. economic man…

  • The Right to Be Let Alone in a World of Cultural Diversity

    The Right to Be Let Alone in a World of Cultural Diversity

    The right to be let alone, as Justice Louis Brandeis famously put it in “Olmstead v. United States”, is commonly associated with the right to privacy in the Fourth Amendment. The constitutional “[…] right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures […]” critically separates…

  • Why Freedom Is Favored by Secession and Subsidiarity

    Why Freedom Is Favored by Secession and Subsidiarity

    Majority voting inevitably alienates large parts of a population. As a Swiss citizen, I am all too aware of that fact, since we go to the polls as often as six times a year. This may be the necessary price of our more direct form of representative democracy. But in Switzerland, it has also led…

  • The War Against Cash in Europe

    The War Against Cash in Europe

    There are good reasons why the debate on cash is heating up right now. While European governments and central banks have stepped up capital controls in the last few years, cash has become the major hurdle for conventional monetary policy. Therefore, many economists, as well as a number of high-ranking government officials, have presented and…