2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
The switch of highly educated professionals to making a risky living selling small batches of craft products has its roots in work that is its own reward, writes Brian Dijkema, a Hamilton-based beekeeper who is also Cardus Program Director for Work and Economics.
There is a little bit in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations where he gives five circumstances that help explain wage inequality. As someone who has long made the case for the ...
Detail from Maulbertsch's The QuackIt's not too hard to look back at some of these bizarre rituals and beliefs and to hold our noses up in disdain at such ignorant understandings of the world. With our sanitation systems and medical acumen, our iPods and our Weather Networks, we know so much more ... right?
There were times when people would give children large doses of morphine just to calm them down; rub mercury into cuts as a way of healing; and even bathe themselves in urine and excrement to increase cleanliness.
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But legal definitions should not overly influence our perception of Christian (or other religiously-based) institutions. There are more basic things to keep in mind.
Supreme Court cases on both sides of the 49th parallel last week focused on what ...
Yet how does this all work? What prevents confusion from reigning? Two things: government regulation and the power of culture. The mirror of the devolution of responsibilities to business, government, educational, and social partners is a huge and rather onerous system of regulations. . . . . . . .
Germany is a skilled-trades producing machine. But behind this machine is a web of institutions executing different, and distributed, responsibilities so smoothly that it's easy to imagine why the Germans produce Porsches. Their success is fuelled by their ...
I guess what has changed—or so the writers here argue—is how we think about death now, and how conflicted the modern Western mind is when it reflects upon that inevitable day when we'll "shuffle off this mortal coil." Our current saturation with images of death for entertainment is perhaps unparalleled, yet I wonder if such a morbid fascination is simply a byproduct of our capacity, also unparalleled, to stave off the Stygian shore.
Gearing up for Halloween, the National Post ran a spate of articles last week on "How We Die Now." Spoiler alert: we still stop breathing.
I guess wha...
For instance, Newton's Principia may not help you build a faster processor, but the story of Hans Neilson Hauge (cf. Cam Harder) can help you gain vital perspective on your difficult social innovation labours.
Innovation can be very, very difficult. Are we turning enough to the deep well of human history? History has many social and cultural lessons to teach, and they may be more applicable to social innovation than we think.
For instance, Newton's Prin...
In his response, Jacobs challenges Renn on a number of points of inadequately defined terms and formal logic, rather like a professor spanking a student for sloppy thinking in a paper. But I find Jacobs' critique less compelling than Renn's original question, which is a good one, even if his answer is a little uneven.
Alan Jacobs takes on Aaron M. Renn on the subject of sacred space in a blog post on The American Conservative. Re...
But is it true, like Alexis Wichowski has argued, that social media is now so central to good governance, to political and social life, that "to ignore or disdain it would amount to professional malpractice?"
The twitterati are now an established class of pundits. Journalists and politicians are increasingly known for their 140-characters of sass, more so even than their editorials or full press releases. The Canadian International Council has launched a new ann...
Charlie Brown always thinks he's going to kick the ball, but Charlie Brown always ends up falling on his back. He's never really out of the game, and he's always keen to try again—but each time he falls. Canadian unions are always up for another try. However, like Charlie Brown, there is a sense of predetermination, of inevitability in each try.
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Such was the case last week when a regular correspondent of mine, a Mr. P.A. George, set out in five easy steps the recipe that activists cooking up all manner of "social progress" have used in Canada during the past 40 years: If I were to suggest any addition to this stellar summary, it would be to expand point four to include professional associations beyond just teachers.
Sometimes, someone chances past who brilliantly captures in a handful of words what others spend whole careers trying to express.
Such was the case last week when a regular correspondent of mine, a Mr. P.A. George, set out in five easy steps the reci...
The task force of Ontario Provincial Police surrounded the house of my sister's neighbours, lights blinking, sirens wailing, scouring barns and residence, terrifying the locals, cuffing the father while wife and children wailed, turning over every table, chair, and bookshelf in the house in search of nefarious goods.
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The Globe and Mail announced earlier this spring after consultations with union representatives that some of its employees were going to be given the opportunity/asked to take unpaid furloughs for the summer to help the company manage costs and avoid permanent staff reductions. Given that the size of a newspaper is generally dictated by the volume of advertising purchased for it and that summer months constitute weak advertising and readership volumes, this appears to be a sensible solution. Unless of course you are a 35-year-old newsroom employee with a family to support who has been asked to take two months of unpaid leave. In that case, you may wish to spend those two months retraining or otherwise preparing yourself for the post-print journalism era.
Recent events continue to confirm that media in Canada is undergoing a fundamental transformation away from dominant legacy platforms into an era of diversity and competition that should and could enrich the culture.
The Globe and Mail announc...
This August, barring catastrophe, a robotic rover named Curiosity will be climbing a mountain on Mars. The six-wheeled explorer will parachute down to the Martian surface, cross a plain and ascend a mountain slope, sampling rocks and atmosphere as it goes. Though each day's new robo-call revelation is revealed to us as the gravest imaginable threat to Canadian democracy, at summer's end we will certainly have been provided whiffs of equally ominous instances of corruption and depravity.
As Canada's media and political exhibitionists scandalize themselves with tales of robo-dialed phone calls, real robotics overhead have humanity on the further edge of wonder.
This August, barring catastrophe, a robotic rover named Curiosity w...
Can't quite figure it out. Don't want to say that though. Afraid will look like old fuddy-duddy. And face social exclusion. Worse, euthanized as no lngr prdctv member of society. Stream of consciousness. Know every thought that has ever. Popped into Andrew Coyne's head. Or emerged from Kady O'Malley's fingertips.
I am a late adapter. To Twitter anyway. Slow learner 4 sure.
Can't quite figure it out. Don't want to say that though. Afraid will look like old fuddy-duddy. And face social exclusion. Worse, euthanized as no lngr prdctv member of society. Stream of ...
The great issue of our day is whether we can order our world with flourishing institutions apart from government and markets. This is the key question behind the very taxing challenge facing the Houe of Commons Standing Committee on Finance today. As tax tools go, Canada's charitable tax credit is one of the most successful ever implemented.
Presented (3:00 pm EST) February 14, 2012, to the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, Pre-Budget Consultations.
The great issue of our day is whether we can order our world with flourishing institutions apart from gov...
As it turns out, for such a poorly understood group, think tanks are an increasingly powerful cadre of activists and thinkers. The United States of America has one of the most sophisticated and developed think tank cultures, with most western states not far behind (or catching up quickly). Emerging after the first World War, think tanks were designed to serve two functions: policy development and political combat.
Think tanks are an odd breed, so odd in fact that I often dispense with the term entirely when people ask me what I do. Prayer around the family table, in which invocations for blessings on work are given, usually go something like, "Bless Rob, and whatever...
Apple's iPad is a small and easy thing. Apple's iBooks is a small and easy program. Put them together and you are able to get, as I discovered during Christmas, more than 7,000 pages of G.K. Chesterton for a mere $1.99. From Heretics to Orthodoxy, from the Crimes of England to the Innocence of Father Brown, The Club of Queer Trades and the magisterial essay on Dickens, it's all there and, of course, all good.
Great progress is best measured, I think, in the splendour of small and easy things combining to make the good available to all.
Apple's iPad is a small and easy thing. Apple's iBooks is a small and easy program. Put them together and you are able to...
The physical structures we build, the infrastructure that supports us, and the communication links that enable our exchanges have a specificity that can be partially underwritten by mathematics. These mathematics and the materials of our built environment are the stock-in-trade of engineers, architects, planners, economists, consultants, and legislators.
At Cardus we are exploring the language and practice of social architecture. Turns out it can mean a lot of things. Sometimes it means the nature of the relationships between people and institutions, o...