Category:Morality
“There Will Be Blood” — The Ethics of Compensation for Bodily Fluids
January 11, 2018 | Video
Is human blood a “public resource”? Prof. Peter Jaworski argues that your bodily fluids belong to you, and governments should let you sell them.
Life isn’t fair, but can government help that?
October 25, 2017 | Post
Luck egalitarianism is, roughly, the view that inequalities in life prospects resulting from luck are unjust. If Amy has better job opportunities than Bob because she happened to have parents who could afford to send her to a fancy private school, that’s unfair.
Do NFL players have the right to take the knee?
October 9, 2017 | Post
We need to be careful about arguing that players have a First Amendment right to protest peacefully on the field.
Notes from the bubble
October 4, 2017 | Post
We treat those we believe to be ill-motivated as adversaries to be defeated, and we frequently have no compunction about excluding them from our “disinterested pursuit of truth.”
Will capitalism kill its own culture?
September 5, 2017 | Post
To gain a proper appreciation of the free market and its benefits, we need to also become aware of its weaknesses. I have written previously at Learn Liberty about how 20th-century economist Wilhelm Röpke argued that while the free market has the capacity to encourage morality, other institutions—like families and churches — are a more […]
Expert Answers on the Drug War: Highlights from Prof. Jeff Miron's AMA
August 15, 2017 | Post
Last week, Professor Jeffrey Miron joined us on Reddit for an “Ask Me Anything” conversation as part of the Learn Liberty Reddit AMA Series. The conversation focused on Dr. Miron’s 30+ years of study on the effects of drug criminalization. Check out some of the highlights below. GPSBach While there seems to be an emerging consensus on […]
Yeonmi Park’s Escape from North Korea: Go to Where the Light Is
June 27, 2017 | Video
This is the journey of one North Korean survivor, Yeonmi Park, who escaped North Korea’s borders and then had to break free from its brainwashing.
Does the market make us good? Does socialism?
June 21, 2017 | Post
Only in freedom do people have the ability to be good, but can freedom itself teach us what “goodness” means?
The right to refuse service? Business owners and gay marriage
June 20, 2017 | Post
Steve Tennes, an orchard owner in Michigan, recently refused to host a same-sex wedding on his property. Is that his right?
Dave Rubin and Deirdre McCloskey: Free Trade, Trans in Academia, and the (Classical) Liberal Heritage — Full Interview
June 4, 2017 | Post
One of the things that I’ve really been making the focus of this show is to show people what real, true, classical liberalism is.
African animals need to be owned to survive
June 1, 2017 | Post
Most wildlife in Africa is the property of the state. But in one country, people have found a market-based solution that seems to work.
Minimum Wage Laws Don't Help the Poor — Opportunities Do.
May 29, 2017 | Post
If the problem is that the poor have too few options, it’s a bad “solution” to remove one of those options.
Ritual sacrifice of chickens: religious freedom vs animal cruelty laws
May 26, 2017 | Post
Can states legally prohibit religious chicken sacrifice? What about spiritual snake handling?
How to make economics not boring
May 20, 2017 | Post
Wrestling with ethical issues can bring life to the economics classroom.
Freaking out over tiny risks: A case study from a moral panic
May 18, 2017 | Post
Cognitive psychologists have long recognized that people overestimate the occurrence of rare events. But these heuristics are not without cost.
Bryan Caplan — An Argument for Pacifism
May 8, 2017 | Video
Prof. Bryan Caplan tells Dave Rubin why he supports pacifism: the only predictable thing about war is that innocent people will get hurt. Full interview here
Dan Carlin – How Crises and Corruption Can Lead to Change
May 1, 2017 | Video
How much corruption can a government handle before it reaches a crisis point? Conversation between the radical Dan Carlin & Dave Rubin. Watch the full interview here.
The Harmony and Balance of Virtue and Liberty
April 24, 2017 | Post
Virtue and liberty are both good things, and when the world is well-ordered, they are in harmony with one another. Today we often find them at odds. The friends of virtue see liberty abused in the pursuit of vices which prove self-destructive to the individual and harmful to others, while friends of liberty think the […]
Religion and Totalitarianism
April 14, 2017 | Post
Is religion totalitarian? Some claim that religious faith demands obedience from human beings in a way that necessarily excludes any freedom of choice.
Let’s take back the meaning of “pro-choice”
April 12, 2017 | Post
Truly supporting choice means supporting the right of individuals to choose.
The skeptics are wrong. Religion and classical liberalism can coexist.
April 6, 2017 | Post
Classical liberalism is not specific to any code of morality. In fact, it needs and breeds moral law.
Anne Hutchinson: The spirit of religious liberty
March 27, 2017 | Post
Opinions of Anne Hutchinson have, shall we say, covered the waterfront. In his masterful tome, Conceived in Liberty, 20th-century economist and libertarian historian Murray Rothbard cast her as a staunch individualist and the greatest threat to the “despotic Puritanical theocracy of Massachusetts Bay.” John Winthrop, the 2nd, 6th, 9th, and 12th governor of the Massachusetts […]
The classical liberal case against nationalist immigration restrictions
March 26, 2017 | Post
If any part of liberalism needs revitalizing, it’s the case for liberalizing immigration. Nationalists on the left and right argue that easing immigration restrictions would make Americans worse off. During the Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders criticized open borders as a “right-wing proposal” that would “make everybody in America poorer.” And of course Donald Trump is calling […]
The moral dimensions of liberty; Why goodness requires freedom
March 16, 2017 | Post
Freedom is an essential component of human morality at all levels.