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12. Letters and Replies
- Publication Date:
- 03-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- No abstract is available.
- Topic:
- Government
- Political Geography:
- New York and America
13. Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution
- Author:
- Thomas A. Bowden
- Publication Date:
- 06-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- Examines the meaning and consequences of Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous dissent in Lochner v. New York, showing how and why it has devastated American jurisprudence, and indicating what future jurists must grasp and do in order to begin reversing the damage.
- Political Geography:
- New York and America
14. Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller
- Author:
- Eric Daniels
- Publication Date:
- 06-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- During the Great Depression, the English economist John Maynard Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, in which he argued that governments could spur employment and reinvigorate an ailing economy by borrowing and spending money. The recent financial crisis has reinvigorated interest in Keynes's ideas. Articles in the Financial Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, and Forbes have heralded the resurgence of interest in Keynesian theory. Commentators across the political spectrum, from Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz to Bruce Bartlett and Greg Mankiw, have called for a return to Keynesian economics. Congress and President Obama have enacted a gargantuan "stimulus" bill and are pursuing massive spending programs the likes of which Keynes could only have dreamed. It seems that pundits and politicians are all Keynesians now. A new book, however, argues that Keynes's theory is much more profound than most people realize. In Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller present what they regard as the essence of Keynesianism-Keynes's view of man as an animal saddled with inherent, irrational drives. These "animal spirits" have historically been ignored, say the authors, which is why Keynesianism has, at times, given way to other theories. Those who want Keynesian political policies to rise back to dominance and endure need to understand and embrace this neglected aspect of the theory. The authors point out that, because Keynes published his work in the middle of the Great Depression, his followers wanted governments to adopt his policy recommendations as soon as possible. To make his prescriptions more palatable, Akerlof and Shiller tell us, Keynesians of the time deemphasized the more insightful yet more abstruse "fundamental message" in Keynes's work. Although the watered-down version of Keynesianism was more politically acceptable, it was, according to the authors, less politically potent and more vulnerable to attack. Yes, the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations engaged in deficit spending, but they "lacked the confidence to pursue those policies far enough" (p. viii). The Keynesian borrowing and spending of World War II was more robust, Akerlof and Shiller say; consequently, it ended unemployment, became all the rage in the 1940s, and remained a widely respected policy for some time. But even this broader and longer-lasting support for Keynesian deficit-spending was bound to fizzle because the "more fundamental message of The General Theory was cast aside" (p. viii). . . .
- Topic:
- Economics and Government
- Political Geography:
- New York
15. Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law, by Philip K. Howard
- Author:
- David Littel
- Publication Date:
- 06-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- New York: Norton and Company, 2009. 221 pp. $24.95 (cloth). Reviewed by David Littel A political consensus is forming around the ideas of attorney and author Philip K. Howard. Beginning in 1990 with The Death of Common Sense and continuing through scores of articles and the work of his organization, Common Good, Howard has depicted an American legal system run wild, and he has advanced a thesis about what must be done. Political figures from Al Gore to Newt Gingrich praise his work. Self-proclaimed pragmatist Michael Bloomberg raves that Howard "offers big-picture ideas for how we can solve entrenched problems." In a prepublication review, George Will announced that Howard's latest book, Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law, "surely will be 2009's most-needed book on public affairs." The bulk of Life Without Lawyers is an indictment of American law, covering everything from public schools to administrative regulations to civil lawsuits. As in his earlier books, Howard describes a series of nightmare scenarios drawn partly from his own experience as a practicing attorney and partly from other sources. For example, he tells the story of a family-owned dry cleaning business in Washington, D.C. that was sued for $54 million because of a lost pair of pants. The plaintiff calculated his damages based on a $1,500 consumer fraud penalty multiplied several times over in addition to $15,000 per weekend for a rental car to take his laundry to a more reliable establishment, $542,000 for his own time in pursuing the matter, and $500,000 for mental anguish. The suit was not dismissed but was allowed to linger for two years, costing the business owners more than $100,000 in legal fees (p. 72). . . .
- Topic:
- Law
- Political Geography:
- New York and America
16. The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder New York: Bantam, 2008. 976 pp. $35 (cloth).
- Author:
- Daniel Wahl
- Publication Date:
- 10-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- Nine-year-old Warren Buffett is in his yard playing in the snow. Warren is catching snowflakes. One at a time at first. Then he is scooping them up by handfuls. He starts to pack them into a ball. As the snowball grows bigger, he places it on the ground. Slowly it begins to roll. He gives it a push, and it picks up more snow. Soon he reaches the edge of the yard. After a moment of hesitation, he heads off, rolling the snowball through the neighborhood. And from there, Warren continues onward, casting his eye on a whole world full of snow (prologue). Many decades later, Alice Schroeder, a former insurance analyst at Morgan Stanley and the author of The Snowball, is sitting in front of Warren Buffett, one of the world's richest men. "Where did it come from," she asks, "Caring so much about making money?" Buffett leans forward, "more like a teenager bragging about his first romance than a seventy-two-year-old financier," and begins to tell his story: "Balzac said that behind every great fortune lies a crime. That's not true at Berkshire [Hathaway]" (p. 4). Thus begins The Snowball, one of the most highly anticipated biographies of the past few years and the first to be written about Buffett with his full cooperation. As its full title indicates, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life sets out to present Buffett's thinking, not only about business but about life in general. Among the many topics this hefty volume explores are those individuals who influenced his thinking. A major figure in this respect is Buffett's father, whom he idolizes and from whom he learned a crucial point when it comes to judging both oneself and others: The big question about how people behave is whether they've got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard. I always pose it this way, I say: "Lookit. Would you rather be the world's greatest lover, but have everyone think you're the world's worst lover? Or would you rather be the world's worst lover but have everyone think you're the world's greatest lover?" . . . Now my dad: He was a hundred percent Inner Scorecard guy. He was really a maverick. But he wasn't a maverick for the sake of being a maverick. He just didn't care what other people thought" (p. 33). In addition to the valuable lessons he learned from important figures in his life, Schroeder shows how Buffett's own interests and thinking during childhood contributed to his development. Schroeder reveals him to have been an efficacious child, intensely interested in collecting and processing facts. . . .
- Political Geography:
- New York
17. Fred Astaire by Joseph Epstein New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. 198 pp. $22 (cloth).
- Author:
- Scott Holleran
- Publication Date:
- 10-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- In the light and lively Fred Astaire, author and journalist Joseph Epstein offers an excellent overview of the career of the world's greatest male ballroom and tap dancer. This short biography, part of Yale University's Icons of America series, is like its subject-accessible yet elegant. Astaire began his dance training at the age of five after his mother, Johanna Austerlitz, brought him to New York City in the hopes of grooming him and his talented older sister, Adele, for careers in show business. Attending dance school with his sister, young Frederick took to the art form and was soon rehearsing with Adele in routines developed by their instructor. Changing their last names to "Astaire," the brother-sister act hit the theatrical circuit and began a professional career that lasted many years and included appearances on Broadway with Al Jolson and Fanny Brice; and work with famed showman Flo Ziegfeld, who paid the duo an impressive $5,000 per week during the Depression (pp. 12, 15). After Adele retired at the age of thirty-five, Astaire sought fortune in Hollywood. Shortly after being famously dismissed by a studio executive as "Balding. Can't sing. Dances a little." (p. 18), Astaire was noticed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and signed to a three-week contract for $1,500 per week. His first role-playing himself in Dancing Lady opposite Joan Crawford-proved that he had potential as a screen star.
- Political Geography:
- New York
18. The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants by Jane S. Smith New York: The Penguin Press, 2009. 368 pp. $25.95 (cloth).
- Author:
- Daniel Wahl
- Publication Date:
- 10-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- In 1849, millions were starving due to a then-mysterious disease that "in a matter of days, if not hours, could transform a thriving field [of potatoes] into a slimy, foul-smelling patch of rotting vegetation" (pp. 38-39). Everywhere, plants were "extremely inconspicuous, [tasted] terrible, or [went] to seed in a fast and fabulously prolific way, leaving nothing behind to harvest." And plants had evolved characteristics by which they survived just long enough to reproduce, characteristics that were unsuitable for feeding a large and fast-growing population (p. 40). But all this was about to change, and dramatically so, thanks to a man born that year: Luther Burbank (p. 6). In her new book The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants, Jane S. Smith presents the life of this extremely influential but mostly forgotten plant breeder and businessman, emphasizing his innovations and the methods he used to develop and sell them. Burbank displayed some mechanical ingenuity as a child, but, Smith reveals, apart from this, nothing in Burbank's background suggested that he might become an inventor of new plants (p. 19). Though young men of his time were encouraged to work in an academic setting, Burbank, fond as he was of the outdoors, was unsure whether he wanted to follow suit-until, at the age of 21, he picked up a copy of Charles Darwin's The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. Smith describes this book as a "detail-crammed response to those who had criticized On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection as a hypothesis unsupported by sufficient proof" (p. 27), then concisely sums up what Burbank read: From gooseberries to gladioli, Darwin compiled his evidence: plants changed in response to outside stimulus (like the cabbages Darwin described that changed their shape or color when planted in different countries), and these changes could happen within a short time span (like the hyacinths he said growers had managed to improve from the offerings of only a few generations earlier). The causes of the changes were still largely unknown, but their occurrence was a fact beyond dispute. This was evolution measured in human time (p. 28). Burbank took from the book several big ideas-each of which Smith relates in an easy-to-read style: The first was that it was possible to force the emergence of latent differences in fruits and flowers, even to the point of generating what seemed to be entirely new varieties. Still more exciting was Darwin's tentative suggestion that selecting, grafting, hybridizing, or simply moving a plant to a new environment might spur changes that would persist over generations. According to Darwin, these alterations were often inadvertent, but as Burbank immediately realized, such happy accidents could also be deliberately pursued. The creation of new plant varieties, something far beyond the familiar efforts to breed the best of an existing stock, did not need to wait for the slow accumulation of natural advantages Darwin had described in his Origin of Species. Evolutionary change could be accelerated by human intervention (p. 28). Darwin's words "opened up a new world" for Burbank (p. 27). Not only did the book give him an intellectual framework for viewing the world and man's place in it, but an advertisement on the last page of Burbank's edition of Darwin's tract (for a book called Gardening for Profit) enabled him to see for the first time his place in it. He would not have to choose "between the outdoor life and the inventor's bench" after all-plant life "could be a subject for experimentation and improvement, and a commercial garden could provide a good living for an imaginative and enterprising man".
- Political Geography:
- New York
19. Letters and Replies
- Publication Date:
- 12-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- No abstract is available.
- Political Geography:
- New York and California
20. Property Rights and the Crisis of the Electric Grid
- Author:
- Raymond C. Niles
- Publication Date:
- 09-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- Surveys the history and achievements of America's electricity entrepreneurs, shows how government interference in the transmission grid has hampered their enterprises from the outset to the present day, and indicates what America must do to liberate the grid and enable a new wave of entrepreneurs to supply this vital product commensurate with the country's demand.
- Topic:
- Economics and Government
- Political Geography:
- New York and America
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