Category:Ethics
Is It Unfair to Pay CEOs Billions? Q&A with Prof. Howie Baetjer
January 29, 2018 | Video
Is it fair that CEOs get paid millions—even billions—while there are so many people still in poverty? Well, it depends! Watch the second entry in our question and answer series with Prof. Howie Baetjer.
The Sweet Cakes case: Let the market give discrimination its just desserts.
January 18, 2018 | Post
The Oregon-based Sweet Cakes bakery has been ordered to pay $135,000 in damages for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple for their ceremony. In December of 2017, the Oregon State Court of Appeals upheld the decision to force the bakery to pay the couple for damages.
“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.
What’s wrong with making money?
January 4, 2018 | Post
Social justice advocates argue that it is “society’s” duty to eliminate pain and inequality wherever and whenever it exists. What is interesting is that I have never met Mr. Society.
A Brief History of Title IX
December 7, 2017 | Video
“Title IX” was never intended to regulate romantic relationships on campus. So how did we get here? Robert Shibley, Executive Director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, explains.
Spiked Magazine Panel – "Title IX: Feminism, Sex & Censorship on Campus”
December 4, 2017 | Video
Do “Title IX” rules on campus protect women or restrict them? Watch the Unsafe Space Tour panel discussion with Tom Slater and Ella Whelan of Spiked Magazine, Robert Shibley of FIRE, and Elizabeth Nolan Brown of Reason. Special thanks to Reason for helping us relocate the panel discussion on very short notice.
DEBATE: Should We Limit Free Speech for Nazis?
November 30, 2017 | Video
Professors Laura Kipnis, Angus Johnston, and author Brendan O’Neill debate: Should We Limit Free Speech for Nazis? Excerpted from the Spiked Magazine Unsafe Space Tour panel discussion at New York Law School. Moderated by Tom Slater (of Spiked Magazine).
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.
There's one situation where classical liberals can justify foreign intervention.
October 3, 2017 | Post
For any kind of libertarian/classical liberal, the question with foreign policy is which course of action is going to most maximize liberty, both in the country that is potentially doing the intervening and the part of the world where the intervention might take place.
This is the best way to provide relief after a hurricane.
September 27, 2017 | Post
When we experience a large decrease in supply, or an increase in scarcity, the price mechanism helps us know what to do next.
Prices are the moral rationing agents of market exchange.
What’s wrong with being a rich kid with rich parents?
September 22, 2017 | Post
In partly free societies, more intergenerational mobility isn’t always a good thing.
Who are the most generous helpers in the wake of Hurricane Irma?
September 21, 2017 | Post
The media rarely celebrate ordinary people doing jobs for which they get paid. But the man selling several generators can be more impactful than the man giving one away.
Most benefits of eating local are wildly exaggerated, and this is why
September 7, 2017 | Post
The locavore movement, like many parts of environmentalism, has an unfortunate tendency to dress itself in the clothing of science before lapsing into mysticism.
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 […]
How “price gouging” could help Houston right now
August 29, 2017 | Post
The invisible hand of the market reaches out to help people in a disaster, but anti-gouging laws cut it off at the wrist.
Doctors violate American women’s rights in delivery rooms every day.
July 17, 2017 | Post
Violations of consent during childbirth are surprisingly common.