Karen Horn interviews Israel M. Kirzner, Professor Emeritus of Economics, New York University, New York City. HORN: Professor Kirzner, one of your books is entitled “What is the economic point of view?”. That’s quite a foundational question. So please, tell us, what exactly is the economic point of view? KIRZNER: Over the history of economics, […]
On February 19th, the Swiss voters taught political demagogues a lesson. With impressive clarity, the sovereign rejected a popular initiative launched by the conservative nationalist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) officially directed against criminal foreigners. 59 percent voted “No”, recognizing that the initiative would create a mess in the political and legal system, jeopardizing the separation […]
Direct democracy means work. This upcoming Sunday, the Swiss are called to cast their votes on no less than four popular initiatives. By far the most important one is the popular initiative entitled “For the effective expulsion of foreign criminals”. It has been launched by the nationalist Swiss People’s Party (SVP), the country’s largest political […]
Europe is a magnet. Crowds are queuing at the Schengen borders, hoping for a safe and better life. In the receiving countries, however, people are concerned about the changes that mass immigration may mean for their political and social cultures. One of the most popular theoretical devices used to argue against more immigration is a […]
The mood is currently somewhat tense in Switzerland. Whether you go to a pub or to the movies, whether you wait at the bus stop or in the queue at the post-office, you will inevitably witness some people emphatically discussing the countries’ right-wing shift. Banking on xenophobia, resentment toward immigration and the EU, the right-wing […]
The current immigration tsunami is one of those extreme experiences that automatically sort out moral values and allies. All of a sudden, it becomes crystal clear what is right and what is wrong. True, Europe cannot take in everybody. Yes, while there is no limit to asylum by principle, practical capacity is finite and it […]
The principle of legal certainty may seem as self-evident as it is overestimated. Taken for an absolute value or falling prey to special interests, this ideal may turn into a recipe for injustice. Legal certainty is only a good thing when the law itself is appropriate and just. There is no reason for holding on […]
Karen Horn interviews Allan Meltzer (Allan H. Meltzer University Professor of Political Economy at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh) HORN: Professor Meltzer, we’re here in the train from Zurich to Freiburg. The Swiss national bank (SNB) has returned to a floating franc-euro exchange rate in January, as a result of […]
I have been offline for quite a while. I am sorry. The reason was not a lengthy vacation, which would have been enjoyable. Instead, the reason was my involvement in a – still ongoing – battle against the populist “New Right”, a movement that has been gaining momentum over the past couple of years. It […]
On the evening after the FIFA showdown in Switzerland at the beginning of this month, when a handful of delegates were arrested at a classy hotel near the lake, I met an elderly gentleman at a bus stop in Zurich. As we waited there together, he began a friendly small-talk, the focus of which was […]
Turnout wasn’t bad in last week’s general elections in Britain. Two out of three eligible British voters went to cast their ballots (66.1 percent). In France however, presidential elections typically mobilize more than 80 percent. Parliamentary elections, less important, still attract around 60 percent. In Germany, turnout used to be very high in general elections […]
We live in the age of reason – or don’t we? Modernity is a terrific era to live in, benefitting as we are from enormous economic growth, technological progress and easy access to information. And yet, precisely for this reason, conspiracy theories, myths and ideologies seem to mushroom, one more abstruse than the other. Most […]
Remember the earworm “Que sera, sera”, interpreted by Doris Day, so typical for the Fifties? “When I was just a little girl / I asked my mother, what will I be / Will I be pretty, will I be rich …” Children know that there is no free lunch. Money promises access to the many […]
The book “Nudge”, published by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler in 2008, came as a godsend for politicians. Here they were at last, the much hoped-for theoretical underpinnings of government action that might even overcome fierce libertarian resistance. It is no coincidence that the two scholars – a law and economics professor and a behavioural […]
Poor chap. Never mind his perfect rationality, his perfect information, his perfect foresight, his perfectly immediate reactions to market signals, his perfectly enlightened self-interest – the Homo Economicus, once a much solicited model, has fallen into disrepute. He now carries the heavy load of popular anti-capitalist resentment on his shoulders. Psychologists frown at his wretched […]
Can a small country remain economically and politically independent from its neighbours? How useful is it to even try and defend one’s own different ways? Is it at all possible to ward off unwanted spill-ins? Is sovereignty only a dream? More than ever, these questions haunt the Swiss regarding their relationship with the rest of […]
When children are taught the difference between left and right, grown-ups like to make fun of them by saying that all they have to do is to look at their hands: The left is in the direction of that hand on which the thumb is to the right of all other fingers, and vice versa. […]
Pe-what? Only three months ago, the combination “Pegida” would have looked like a bad-luck leftover set of letters in a Scrabble game. Widely known today, the acronym stands for “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident”. An outgrowth of a Facebook group, this self-declared civil movement in the eastern German city of Dresden attracts […]
“Violet is the last try”: this popular German saying is probably hundred years old, and it was originally used to make fun of frivolous women who attempted to attract attention by dressing in vivid colours. Fittingly, the liberal party (FDP), the morose grand old lady of German politics, is now also putting on shades of […]
Most people like to walk down to the farmer’s market to get some vegetables. Doing one’s groceries at the market feels a bit as if the countryside has come to town, and with it the good old days. The market stands are small, the produce is alluring, the farmers have wrinkles in their face and […]
