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[Editor’s Note: This is a selection from “On Political Power and Personal Liberty in The Prince and The Discourses” from the spring 2014 issue of Social Research.] Although liberty is a recurring concern in Machiavelli’s writings, there is no consensus regarding either the definition of the concept or its relevance for his overall political thought. One direction of Machiavellian interpretation that has gained prominence in recent decades has focused on the concept...

© Pressmaster | Dreamstime.com Restaurants and cafés will progressively close once more across French-speaking Switzerland starting in the canton of Jura on Tuesday 22 December 2020. On 18 December 2020, Switzerland’s Federal Council decided to close restaurants, bars, cultural venues and sports and leisure facilities from 22 December 2020. However, exceptions were allowed in cantons with R-numbers (reproduction rates) below 1 and 7-day infection rates below the...

Thomas Gottstein became the new CEO at Credit Suisse in February 2020. Keystone / Ennio Leanza The chief executive of Credit Suisse has vowed the bank will start 2021 with a “clean slate” after a torrid year that began with a damaging corporate spying scandal and was punctuated by embarrassing fallout from legacy compliance and lending failures. Thomas Gottstein, who replaced the ousted Tidjane Thiam in February as head of Switzerland’s second-largest lender, told...

[From “The Exhaustion of the Reserve Fund” in Human Action, chap. 36.] The idea underlying all interventionist policies is that the higher income and wealth of the more affluent part of the population is a fund which can be freely used for the improvement of the conditions of the less prosperous. The essence of the interventionist policy is to take from one group to give to another. It is confiscation and distribution. Every measure is ultimately justified by...

Two hundred and forty-seven years ago this month, a group of American opponents of the Crown’s tax policy donned disguises and set about methodically destroying a shipment of tea imported into Boston by the East India Company. The vandals trespassed on privately owned ships in Boston Harbor and threw the tea into the ocean. These protesters were thorough. Not content with having destroyed most of the company’s imported tea that night, the activists later discovered...

© Laurentiu Iordache | Dreamstime.com Following the discovery of a new, more contagious variant of the coronavirus in the UK and South Africa, the Federal Council today decided to take steps to prevent the further spread of this new virus strain. On Sunday, 20 December 2020, all flights to and from these countries to Switzerland were halted from midnight. Today, the Swiss government announced that all those who have entered Switzerland from these two countries since...

The profit-maximizing Big Tech / Big Media Totalitarian regime hasn’t just strangled free speech and civil liberties; it’s also strangled democracy. The U.S. has entered an extremely dangerous time, and the danger has nothing to do with the Covid virus. Indeed, the danger long preceded the pandemic, which has served to highlight how far down the road to ruin we have come. The danger we are ill-prepared to deal with is the consolidation of the private-sector media and...

No daily commentary until the New Year, but watch this space for thematic pieces over the next two weeks. Here is to a safe, healthy, and prosperous 2021. Thank you for your support. You Might Also Like FX Daily, July 1: Second Verse Can’t be Worse than the First, Can it? 2020-07-01 The resurgence of the contagion in the US has stopped or reversed an estimated 40% of the re-openings, but the appetite for...

The Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech is one of three pre-ordered by the Swiss health authorities. Switzerland expects to start vaccinating the most vulnerable people this month already, and nationwide from January 4. Tampa Bay Times Swiss health regulator Swissmedic has approved the coronavirus vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech. According to the Swiss authorities, the level of protection is over 90% a week after the second dose. Two months after receiving the...

[Marxism Unmasked (2006)] Liberals stressed the importance of the individual. The 19th-century liberals already considered the development of the individual the most important thing. “Individual and individualism” was the progressive and liberal slogan. Reactionaries had already attacked this position at the beginning of the 19th century. The rationalists and liberals of the 18th century pointed out that what was needed was good laws. Ancient customs that could not...