Illegally downloading creative content online is all too easy. Unlike stealing a physical product from a store, there’s no need to stealthily conceal the merchandise, avoid security guards, or worry about magnetic security tags.
The group that most devalues my life is not abusive law enforcement nor white racism — though these exist and should be fought — it is black criminals.
Society was not created by design to provide safety and security, but, instead, freedom and rights emerged and evolved out of more primitive forms of tribal and collective association as responses to considered injustices and abusive power.
On the 15th anniversary of the worst domestic terrorist attack in history—September 11—a college student’s memorial flag display was destroyed three times.
Clear moral principles, such as honesty, make the right—the self-interested, win-win—course of action so much easier.
Adam Smith was one of Hutcheson’s students in Glasgow, and his influence on Adam Smith was singularly significant, from everything from the importance of division of labor and the role of private property, to the normative notion of a free society based on a “system of natural liberty.”
The “moral” that Mandeville drew from his tale was that prosperous, wealthy and great societies only arise from men’s self-interested desires, and that is what made for successful civilizations:
Protectionism is not a recipe for prosperity—free trade is.
CSR also sneaks in the ideal of altruism, the duty to serve others “to further some social good, beyond the interests of the firm.”
