SNB & CHF

The concept of the state has more to do with the worldview of ancient Greek philosophers than with the Roman Empire. We could learn a few things about statelessness from the Romans. Original Article: Should We Embrace the Stateless Roman Political Thought? [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter

With a large regional market and youthful population, Africa should be on the cusp of greatness. Yet instead, it remains the poorest continent on earth. Analysts are conceding that Africa’s outlook is gloomy because the region is on track to miss poverty reduction goals. Successive African administrations have consulted multiple strategies to tackle the scourge of poverty with varying degrees of success; however, the plague of poverty has been persistent. Combatting...

Henry Hazlitt, a great champion of liberty and Austrian economics, was born on November 28, 1894. His most famous book, Economics in One Lesson, remains a best seller thirty years after his death. Original Article: Remembering the Great Henry Hazlitt on His Birthday [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter

For the last two weeks, delegates from the world’s governments have met in the United Arab Emirates for COP28, the United Nation’s annual climate change conference. Over one hundred thousand attendees, ranging from heads of state to climate bureaucrats, corporate leaders, nongovernmental organization representatives, and activists, descended on the lavish Dubai venue to hash out new policies for governments to force on their citizens in the name of fighting climate...

Commentary will resume with a 2024 outlook on December 29. Overview: The dollar is trading with a firmer bias today ahead of the outcome of the FOMC meeting. Standing pat for two meetings was framed as a pause, but given the decline in price pressures, being unchanged for a third meeting is understood as the end of the historically aggressive tightening cycle. Fed Chair Powell is expected to express greater confidence that policy is sufficiently restrictive to bring...

While China achieved strong economic growth in the post-Mao years by allowing free markets to work, the Communist leadership wants to return the economy to its old socialist ways. However, while the government can give fake growth numbers, it cannot reverse socialist failures. Original Article: Overcoming Chinese Communist GDP Myths [embedded content]...

Contrary to popular assertions, Ancapistan is a real place and is conventionally referred to as prison. In all seriousness, I have been living in the US federal prison system for four years now, and in many ways, prison society actually is fairly anarchic. Considering these societies (plural because prison culture is heterogeneous across geography and across institutions’ security levels) seriously should dispel any notions of humanity that could be categorized as...

Can the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, now 75-years-old, still keep its promise of freedom, equality and justice for all? Imogen Foulkes puts the question to Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. --- swissinfo.ch is the international branch of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Its role is to report on Switzerland and to provide a Swiss perspective on international events. For more articles, interviews and videos visit swissinfo.ch or...

David Gordon reviews Only a Voice, by George Scialabba, dealing with the author's comments on antiwar progressives Randolph Bourne and Dwight Macdonald. Original Article: Bourne Again [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter

The statist is a complex creature, composed of many parts, some of which are more obvious than others. No two statists are exactly the same, but many of them share a set of common elements. Studying these elements can shed light on why the statist is so wedded to their statism, and it can also shed light on what can be done to transform them into a civilized human being. The following list of elements is by no means accurate or complete. This is, after all, still a...