Archive for Tibor R. Machan

Social Security Is Moral?

A good many people express incredulity with the consistent free-market, or libertarian, position. They consider opposition to the welfare state as something bizarre, rejection of unlimited democracy as almost un-American, and opposition to things like Social Security as bordering on outright callousness. For this reason it may be of some value to illustrate how a [...]

1Jul2010 | Tibor R. Machan | 3 comments | Continued

Property and Prosperity: The Vital Link

Contributing editor Tibor Machan is a professor at the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University. Professor Richard Pipes has written extensively about the connection between property rights and prosperity in the history of Russia. Others, including Peter Bauer and Amartya Sen, have noted the connection in various places around the globe. Without [...]

1Jan2004 | Tibor R. Machan | 0 comments | Continued

Atomistic Individualism: Anatomy of a Smear

Contributing Editor Tibor Machan is a professor at the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University. For more than two centuries classical liberalism has irked thinkers both right and left. Hegel, Rousseau, Comte, and of course Karl Marx did a great deal of pen-wielding to combat it, and one of their most potent [...]

1Oct2003 | Tibor R. Machan | 1 comment | Continued

Book Review: The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics, by Mark Lilla

The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics by Mark Lilla TNRB Press • 2001 • 230 pages • $24.95 Reviewed by Tibor R. Machan Mark Lilla’s book The Reckless Mind chronicles some of the most egregious corruptions of philosophy. The life and thought of Martin Heidegger (along with Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers), Carl Schmitt, Walter [...]

29Jan2003 | Tibor R. Machan | 0 comments | Continued

Chicken or Egg: Rights and Government

A theme of prominent contemporary political thinking is that our rights are gifts from government. Famous academics such as Stephen Holmes and Cass R. Sunstein have argued as much in their book, The Cost of Rights (W. W. Norton, 1999). As they put it, “individual rights and freedoms depend fundamentally on vigorous state action” (p. [...]

1Jul2002 | Tibor R. Machan | 1 comment | Continued

Ivy League Faith in the State

Tibor Machan is a professor at the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University. Those of us who are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the free market is a better forum than its alternatives for making sensible economic decisions face a persistent difficulty. This is well illustrated in the following passage from [...]

1Jan2002 | Tibor R. Machan | 0 comments | Continued

Individual and Society: Irreconcilable Enemies?

Contributing editor Tibor Machan is a professor at the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University. Do individual rights clash with the interests and “rights” of communities? Some say that they do, at least sometimes. And some think they clash quite often. But an individual “right” that can be abrogated at will whenever [...]

1Oct2001 | Tibor R. Machan | 1 comment | Continued

The Perils of Positive Rights

Tibor Machan is a professor at the Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University. One of the most powerful ideas opposed to the free society is a notion political philosophers call “positive rights.” Sounds good, doesn’t it? What could be wrong with being positive? Sounds like something out of Anthony Robbins or Norman Vincent [...]

1Apr2001 | Tibor R. Machan | 5 comments | Continued

The Self-Imposed Poverty of Economics

Tibor Machan is a professor of philosophy at Chapman University. David Brown is the editor of The Daily Objectivist (www.dailyobjectivist.com), a webzine. Life is more than a game, and human beings are more than rule-bound strategists. Moral values are possible. Authentic allegiance to such values is possible. Too obvious a point to debate, you think? [...]

1Dec2000 | and and Tibor R. Machan | 0 comments | Continued

The Fountainhead: An American Novel by Douglas J. Den Uyl

Twayne Publishers • 1999 • 123 pages • $32.00 “But of course, if individualism really is central to Americanism, then The Fountainhead is the quintessential American novel.” This is the concluding sentence of Douglas Den Uyl’s wonderful discussion of Ayn Rand’s great novel, which has been at the center of the resurgence of interest in [...]

1Mar2000 | Tibor R. Machan | 90 comments | Continued

The Collectivist Illusion

Tibor Machan is a professor in the school of business and economics at Chapman University. Some fallacies are easy to detect. Consider the fallacy of composition: take a group of human beings and ascribe to it capacities only individuals can have. “Society says,” “We decided,” “America is violent.” Strictly speaking, none of these claims can [...]

1Dec1999 | Tibor R. Machan | 2 comments | Continued

On Airports and Individual Rights

Tibor Machan teaches ethics in the school of business at Chapman University. His latest book is Generosity: Virtue in Civil Society (Cato Institute). For a couple of years, Orange County, California, has been buzzing with controversy over what to do when the El Toro Marine Air Base is closed. The question on everyone’s mind is [...]

1Feb1999 | Tibor R. Machan | 1 comment | Continued

Lying Government Ads

Tibor Machan is a professor at the Leatherby Center of Chapman University, California, and research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, California. His latest book is Generosity: Virtue in Civil Society (Cato Institute, 1998). As I was driving to the pharmacy not long ago, I heard a “public service” radio announcement, crafted by some California [...]

1Mar1998 | Tibor R. Machan | 0 comments | Continued

Paparazzi and Public Property

Tibor Machan is professor of philosophy at Auburn University, Alabama (on leave), distinguished fellow and professor at the Leatherby Center of Chapman University, California, and research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, California. He is author of, among other books, Private Rights and Public Illusions (1995). In the wake of the crash that killed Princess [...]

1Dec1997 | Tibor R. Machan | 1 comment | Continued

Communitarians and Slavery

Dr. Machan, who teaches political philosophy and business ethics, is the author of Private Rights and Public Illusions (Transaction Books, 1995). He is at work writing books on generosity, individualism, and business-bashing A recent report in the New York Times tells how in Ghana many preteen girls are subjected to slavery, supposedly to atone for [...]

1Jul1997 | Tibor R. Machan | 0 comments | Continued

The Welfare State and the News

In the welfare state, news reporting has been taken over by lobbying that masquerades as news. Nearly every news item in magazines and the papers, or on radio and television, except for something truly earthshaking and unique (a peace agreement between England and Northern Ireland or winners of the Nobel Prize), amounts to featuring some [...]

1Dec1996 | Tibor R. Machan | 0 comments | Continued

Why Some Federal Jobs Should Be Abolished

Dr. Machan teaches political philosophy at Auburn University. His most recent book is Private Rights and Public Illusions (Transaction Books, 1995). It is a sad spectacle when political leaders lack a coherent framework by which to explain to the public why various official actions being taken are required and, indeed, just. This is the predicament [...]

1Oct1996 | Tibor R. Machan | 0 comments | Continued
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