Archive for Norman Barry
The Americanization of Japan
Norman Barry (norman.barry@buckingham.ac.uk) is a professor of social and political theory at the University of Buckingham, UK, the country’s only private university.
Although it was an up-and-down 2006 for the Japanese economy, there have been signs of an emergence from its long recession. Unlike previous recoveries that proved short-lived, this one shows every indication of being [...]
Europe: Still a Laggard Economy
There have been increasing signs of optimism from European economy watchers. After some years in the doldrums, with slow growth and rising unemployment, things appear to be looking up: labor markets are more efficient; growth was good for 2006; and the euro is doing well against the dollar after years of weakness following its inception [...]
1Mar2007 | Norman Barry | 0 comments | ContinuedJapan, Germany, and the End of the Third Way
Norman Barry is a professor of social and political theory at the University of Buckingham, UK, the country’s only private university.
Last year’s election results in Japan and Germany are not only important for those countries but also have wider lessons, for they herald a decisive defeat for a once-fashionable doctrine—the Third Way. This was adopted [...]
New Labour
As Britains New Labour governs for an unprecedented
third term in the United Kingdom, it is time to look back a little, at least as a way of modestly predicting the future. The obvious domestic question is: will capitalism and the market economy be
any safer in the next five years than they have been in the last eight? Or will the subtle and blatant departures from economic freedom that have occurred in the first two Labour terms accelerate and will the country be under old socialistic Labour in everything but name? Tony Blair has said he will stand down as prime minister at the end of the next Parliament, but has the damage already been done? Will the likely succession of Gordon Brown be that much different?
Estonia Moves to Liberty
Contributing editor Norman Barry (norman.barry@buckingham.ac.uk) is professor of social and political theory at the University of Buckingham in the U.K. He is the author of An Introduction to Modern Political Theory (St. Martin’s) and Business Ethics (Macmillan).
We have read a lot about former Soviet regimes struggling to shake off the last remnants of communism. It [...]
Pensions: A Wordwide, But Avoidable Crisis
Almost every country in the economically advanced world is worried about nationalized pensions. American statisticians have some grisly fun predicting on what day of the week and in what year the Social Security system will finally go bust. Or whether Medicare will be broke first. And most young Americans think that there is as much chance of picking up Social Security when they retire as there is of a sighting of Elvis.
1Oct2003 | Norman Barry | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Loss of a Scholar: Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson
On April 12 the free-market tradition lost an important scholar with the death, in Málaga, Spain, of Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson. She was 93.
Although English-born she spent much of her life in Spain and made the study of that country’s history and intellectual tradition her life’s work. Her reconstruction of its liberal past was unparalleled.
1Sep2003 | Norman Barry | 0 comments | ContinuedLaw and Property: The Best Hope for Liberty?
There is little left of the conventional protections for individualism in the modern world. Whatever theoretical virtues there may be in democracy (and there aren’t many1), in practice it has disintegrated into a struggle among self-regarding interest groups, mediated by government, over wealth that is exclusively created by private individuals.
1Jul2003 | Norman Barry | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat’s So Good About Democracy?
It was once said that “democracy is the most promiscuous word in the language; she is everybody’s mistress.” Indeed, political regimes of widely differing institutional features label themselves democracies, as did totalitarian communist orders. Often, the best guide to a country’s democratic credentials was that it didn’t call itself democratic: compare West Germany’s Federal Republic with the East German Democratic Republic.
1May2003 | Norman Barry | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Right Morality for Capitalism
This is not a good time to defend the morality of capitalism. Even the dismal economic failure, not to mention the appalling inhumanity, of socialism did not produce a new affection for the free-exchange, property-based system. Its alleged greed-driven, anti-social ethic has never gelled with the moralism of the modern intellectual, who is more likely [...]
1Dec2002 | Norman Barry | 0 comments | ContinuedDworkin’s Unbounded Legalism
For a number of reasons, libertarians should be interested in the legal philosophy of Ronald Dworkin.1 Of course, he is a leftist who seeks to implement the American "liberal" agenda through judicial activity. But it is not often realized that the legal doctrine that underlies this is not much different from classical liberalism. He believes [...]
1Nov2002 | Norman Barry | 0 comments | ContinuedAfter That
“Somewhere in the world today walks the next Marx. But he is not a communist. . . . Nonetheless, he or she will attempt to seize upon the trends behind today’s headlines to shape a competitor to ‘American capitalism’ that the disenfranchised in nations around the world can embrace.”
—DAVID ROTHKOPF1
David Rothkopf, chairman and CEO [...]
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Book Reviews
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The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy–If We Let it Happen
By Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter J. Tanous
