This chapter explains how the generation of renewable energy and the creation of sustainable communities can guide capitalism to survive climate change on a self-reinforcing basis. The process depends upon introducing an ecological “use it or lose it” rule for owning money, land, buildings...

Most contemporary moral defenses of capitalism rely on ideas drawn from the modern philosophic tradition that emerged in the 17th-18th centuries. Almost always, advocates of a free market society have either invoked the notion of a social contract, a theory of natural rights, the insistence that...

This paper explores the problem of envy (“sadness at another's good”) from both theological and economic perspectives. The theological analysis helps show why envy is a perennial feature of human existence and an ongoing problem for ordered and flourishing social life. The economic analysis...

Written for the Chapman Law Review Symposium on “What Can Law & Economics Teach Us About the Corporate Social Responsibility Debate?,” this Article applies the lessons of public choice theory to examine corporate social responsibility. The Article adopts a broad definition of corporate...

Throughout history, but particularly in the last century or so, the Catholic Church has developed a formal body of teaching on economic and political matters. Other Christian faiths have absorbed much of that work, as have non-Christians, and thus the body of Catholic Social Teaching has often...

Departing from the almost invariably skeptical view of privacy encountered in economics, we re-evaluate privacy from the perspective of economic liberalism. We argue that the idea of freedom is fundamental to economics and that privacy can be best conceived as a specific form of freedom....

Why has environmental enforcement waned as environmental harms continue to grow bigger? This article, part of a symposium on enforcement of laws in the environmental and financial sectors, posits that a change in perceived immediacy of environmental harm, coupled with a change in communitarian...

Taxation is shadow life. As our culture monetizes more and more life activities, the shadow grows. This article looks at the potential tax issues arising from a new life activity: online role-playing games in virtual worlds. Currently, some 12 million people regularly play such games and the...

This chapter reviews the theory of the voluntary public and private redistribution of wealth elaborated by economic analysis in the last forty years or so. The central object of the theory is altruistic gift-giving, construed as benevolent voluntary redistribution of income or wealth. The theory...