Morals & Markets with Dr. Richard Salsman

Join Atlas Society Senior Scholar Richard Salsman, Ph. D.,  for our quarterly Morals & Markets webinar. This session, Dr. Salsman examines the nature of capitalism, socialism, and fascism and discusses how historical patterns offer insight into today's ideological trends and the potential risks for liberty. "Fascism ruled most during the 1920s and 1930s, the major examples being Mussolini in I...

"Profit foes accept the ‘zero-sum’ fallacy and the myth that factors of production create equal value. Disdain for profit reflects a deeper distrust of its ethical essence – rational self-interest. Profit is crucial to capitalism, but even in our personal (non-commercial) lives, we’re rational and right to maximize the benefits versus the costs of our actions. On economic, ethical, and personal gr...

Join Atlas Society Senior Scholar Richard Salsman, Ph. D.,   for our quarterly  Morals & Markets  webinar to discuss arguments for and against capitalism as proposed by its strongest supporters and opponents. "A free society depends not only on rational philosophy, capitalist economics, and rights-respecting politics but a psychology of mental health rooted in self-esteem and its corollaries (...

Join Atlas Society Senior Scholar Richard Salsman, Ph. D.,   for our quarterly Morals & Markets webinar to discuss arguments for and against capitalism as proposed by its strongest supporters and opponents.  “For the past five years at Duke University, I’ve conducted a popular seminar which assesses both the pros and cons of capitalism. In this session, I recount the seminar’s origins, share t...

"A free society welcomes manageable flows of goods, capital, and people over its borders, whether incoming or outgoing. A state is defined as the institution with a monopoly on the legitimate use of retaliatory force within a  specific territory  – and the  last  feature requires  fixed and protected borders . An indispensable job of a legitimate government includes managing the borders, setting l...

Central banking is not—as most economists claim—a benign institution that ensures our economic and financial well-being. It is central planning applied to money and banking and as such it proliferates statist regimes, to the detriment of liberty and prosperity.

"AI is just a fancy name for automation—which is the embodiment of advanced human intelligence in tools and machines—and like all technology it should be welcomed, not feared, curbed, or banned. History shows that fire, the wheel, the gun, electricity, nuclear power, and many other technologies have been enormously beneficial to humans; that they’ve also been misused by evil actors only means we s...

Join Senior Scholar and Professor of Political Economy, Richard Salsman, Ph. D., in fresh episodes of  Morals & Markets  "From the Vault." These episodes were from early episodes of  Morals & Markets  from before it became a podcast.  Tune in to this episode from September 2021, in which Dr. Salsman is joined by Senior Fellow Robert Tracinski to discuss "Why America Can't Win Wars Anymore....

Join Senior Scholar and Professor of Political Economy, Richard Salsman, Ph. D., in fresh episodes of  Morals & Markets  "From the Vault." These episodes were from early episodes of  Morals & Markets  from before it became a podcast.  Tune in to this episode from June 2021, in which Dr. Salsman discusses "The Religious Marxism of Critical Race Theory." “Critical Race Theory”(CRT) claims th...

Join Senior Scholar and Professor of Political Economy, Richard Salsman, Ph. D., in fresh episodes of  Morals & Markets  "From the Vault." These episodes were from early episodes of  Morals & Markets  from before it became a podcast.  Tune in to this episode from back in May of 2021 in which Dr. Salsman discusses the idea of free college, President Biden's proposal for student debt forgive...

Join Senior Scholar and Professor of Political Economy, Richard Salsman, Ph. D., in fresh episodes of  Morals & Markets  "From the Vault." These episodes were from early episodes of  Morals & Markets  from before it became a podcast.  Tune in to this episode from back in April of 2021 in which Dr. Salsman discusses anti-capitalist aspects of the environmental movement: “Initially called th...

Join Senior Scholar and Professor of Political Economy, Richard Salsman, Ph. D., in fresh episodes of Morals & Markets  "From the Vault." These episodes were from early episodes of Morals & Markets from before it became a podcast.  Tune in to this episode in which Dr. Salsman discusses PPE Programs at Universities: "Until recently, the social sciences in academic - philosophy, politics, an...

FTX, an exchange for cryptocurrencies, was fraudulent almost from its start in 2019. Its recent bankruptcy reveals that it robbed millions of people and billions of dollars, then spent most of it on Democrats. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) veiled his fraud with "effective altruism," a pseudo-ethical scheme from academic philosophy, the opposite of egoistic profit-maximization. Altruism is be...

The GOP received more votes in recent House elections (50MM vs 44MM) but its widely expected “red wave” didn’t materialize. After two years of Democrat incompetence, corruption, and vice – with inflation at a 40-year high, no economic growth, rampant crime, border anarchy, civil liberty assaults, bans on fossil fuels, publicly-subsidized genital mutilation – Republicans won only a bare majority of...

ESG is a fast-spreading policy pathogen deployed by environmentalists and other anti-capitalists to infect every aspect of life, but especially corporate and political governance. ESG prioritizes “environmental, social, and governance” goals to dilute and pollute positive forms of governance, especially the shareholder model in economics and rights-based constitutionalism in politics. The necessar...

Cronies who receive political favors include not just corporate “fat cats” but colleges and college students. President Biden recently decreed a unilateral cancellation of student debt (up to $20,000 per borrower) which would cost roughly $500-750 billion. Aside from the question of whether Biden, Congress or some agency is empowered to cancel debt, is the policy just or unjust? Practical or impra...

It’s now commonplace to hear it said that markets “corrupt our morals.” This sentiment derives from the false premise that the selfish pursuit of our interests, values, possessions, and happiness is low, crude, vulgar, and immoral. The supposed “higher” and “nobler” things lie beyond our selves and beyond this earth. In fact, markets – whether the construed as the exchange of material or intangibl...

Join us LIVE on the 4th Thursday of every month to take part in Morals & Markets with Dr. Richard Salsman, presented by The Atlas Society. We only include the first 30-minutes of opening remarks from these seminars in the podcast. Attending live grants you access to another 60-minutes of Q&A and discussion with Dr. Salsman and the other participants!  Register HERE & add future session...

The model of so-called “stakeholder capitalism,” a contradiction in terms, is fast replacing the model of shareholder capitalism (a redundancy). The stakeholder model entails scores of pressure groups (including politicians and regulators) dictating what corporations must do, especially if the doing is less rational, less profitable, and averse to shareholders’ goals. A related designation, “ESG,”...

Many nations recently have imposed economic sanctions on Russia. Is this proper? Effective? In “The Roots of War” (1966) Ayn Rand argued that “the essence of capitalism’s foreign policy is free trade—i.e.,the abolition of trade barriers, of protective tariffs, of special privileges—the opening of the world’s trade  routes to free international exchange and competition among the private citizens of...

Note From Dr. Salsman: Just as rational egoism is the only proper ethic to guide an individual’s life, it’s the only proper ethical guide for a state’s relations with other states. The essence of America is its liberties, its rights, and its capitalist system; consequently, the self-interest of the United States lies in preserving those values, neither sacrificing nor surrendering them, especially...

"Increased global reliance on increasingly expensive oil and gas from Russia has fueled its foreign aggressions. As was true of the oil-rich Middle East despots in the 1970s, Russia’s biggest ally has been environmentalists who, being anti-capitalist, oppose precisely the energies that best power capital infrastructure: fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Instead of advanced economies using these abu...

Central banks, as monopolist issuers of state-based fiat (mandatory) money, operate not to help economies but to assist fiscally profligate governments in funding themselves cheaply and surreptitiously. Lately, in response to the spread (and threat) of cryptocurrencies, central banks have pursued plans to issue their fiat monies in digital form. Per the BIS, 86% of them are actively researching ce...

In this special co-hosted session of Atlas Society Senior Scholar, Dr. Richard Salsman's monthly Morals & Markets Seminar he discusses:   Are cryptocurrencies genuine or instead fraudulent as monies?   What role have they played in the economy so far, and how might they influence the future?   What explains their attraction?   What are their main risks and might they spread as a contagion glob...

Civil law and tort courts properly require monetary restitution to those who are harmed, given objective evidence of causality, responsibility, and materiality. Class action lawsuits also can be legitimate. But “reparations,” as now conceived, unjustly collectivize wrongs, designate innocents as perpetrators, and classify the undeserving as victims. The problem with reparations isn’t so much logis...