Tag Archives: capitalism

Environmentalists threaten the kitchen garden
Small kitchen gardens like the one I just started are threatened by environmentalists.

Threat from Environmentalists – Lessons from the Garden

So, this post isn’t what I had planned on posting this week. I started working on a post about Horatio Alger stories and why people today, even adults, should read them but it isn’t close to being ready yet. Also, one of my free days for writing and editing, Saturday, got taken up with getting a garden going which brings me to this post.

My garden from 2003

My last really successful garden. Lots of time and money put into it.

Growing up in rural Vermont, a college classmate of mine once called me a hick, having a garden in is nothing new. When I was younger, my parents always read more

Never Trump

Why I Will Never Support Trump

This article is late in being written. I first thought about writing something about my opposition to Donald Trump’s candidacy back before the Vermont primary, but somehow I never got around to writing it. Then, as he was battling with Ted Cruz, I thought it would be a good time to write it finally. Again, I never seemed to find the time or energy to write it then either. Now, now that Trump is the presumptive nominee for the Republican party, I finally do have the energy and time, though read more

[Video] Yaron Brook Q&A in Kiev

Yaron Brook Q&A in KievOne of the greatest sources of motivation for me, in both my thinking and my posting here on the blog, is listening to talks by Yaron Brook. He is an incredibly engaging and prolific speaker and thanks to platforms such as YouTube I am able to watch far more of these talks than if I could only see those I attended in person. Indeed, I have viewed dozens of videos of his talks from all over the world but have only been to one read more

[Video] Black Innovators and Entrepreneurs Under Capitalism (OCON 2015)

Black Innovators and Entrepreneurs Under CapitalismSomeday I will be able to attend the Objectivist Summer Conference, OCON, but until then at least the Ayn Rand Institute posts videos of some of the presentations, such Andrew Bernstein’s talk about great black innovators in the United States, including the first self-made female millionaire in  history, Madame C.J. Walker. He discusses not only examples of the amazing successes achieved by black’s in the United States but also the obstacles they had to overcome to succeed.

Weaving read more

[Video] Yaron Brook Talks Capitalism in Warsaw

Yaron Brook talks capitalism in Warsaw

Yaron Brook talks capitalism in Warsaw.

Dr. Yaron Brook has been on something of a whirlwind speaking tour over the last week in Europe. One of the seven talks he gave over a six-day period was his Morality of Capitalism delivered in a beautiful venue in Warsaw, Poland to about 200 people.

For those who have watched Yaron’s talks in the past, this one covers familiar ground although I find that each time I listen to the material I notice something different that makes my understanding clearer and a bit more complete. As always, read more

Quote of the Day: America’s Persecuted Minority

Capitalism: The Unknown IdealI currently am doing some thinking and researching for a future post and as a part of that I am rereading sections of Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. In particular I am focusing on the essay titled “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business.” In this essay Ayn Rand points out that while protecting the rights of minorities is almost universally supported, this principle is applied in a most discriminatory manner. If you are a business owner.

The entire essay read more

[Video] Yaron Brook at ELITE Department of Entrepreneurial Thinking

If we stop changing the environment…we will die.

This is another great talk from Yaron Brook, this time from ELITE (Latin American School of Engineering, Technology and Business) in Bogota, Colombia. While much of the talk will be familiar to those who have watched videos of Dr. Brook’s talks in the past, this had a bit of a different slant as it had an emphasis on applying the rational principles of self-interest to entrepreneurial read more

[Video] The Morality of Capitalism – Yaron Brook

In a talk (you can find another talk here)  given on March 12, 2015 at the Steamboat Institute, Dr. Yaron Brook discusses why capitalism is the only moral system of government in front of what he describes as a “standing room only” crowd. His emphasis is not read more

[Videos] Inequality – A Debate Between Yaron Brook and Paul Vaaler

I’ve gathered here the four videos that have been posted from the debate on Inequality between Yaron Brook and Paul Vaaler, hosted by the Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business on February 7, 2015. This was an interesting debate that covers a fair number of topics within the general idea of inequality. I think I have the videos linked in proper order, though I am not sure it makes too much difference if they are read more

[Video] Leslie T. Chang: The Voices of China’s Workers

(h/t Yaron Brook for sharing this video via Twitter)

In the fascinating video, journalist Leslie T. Chang talks about some of what she learned spending two years in one of China’s booming mega-cities. In this brief, less than 15 minutes, video she disposes of the idea that we in the West are somehow “exploiting” these workers and explains that they take what we would consider low paying jobs because they are better than their alternatives and give them a chance at a better life. read more