David Bahnsen, NRI trustee, successful wealth adviser, and host of Capital Matters’ Capital Record podcast, has launched a new six-part digital video series, No Free Lunch, here on National Review Online. In it, we bring the debate over free markets back to “first things” — emphatically arguing that only by beginning our study of economics with the human person can we obtain a properly ordered vision for a market economy.
Right-leaning defenses of capitalism centered around market efficiency often leave out the powerful moral case for free enterprise. Yet by beginning the economic debate with an exploration of liberty, virtue, and human flourishing, conservatives can successfully counter the utopian promises of progressivism that lead only to disaster.
Only in understanding that liberty and virtue are not in a trade-off, but are an indispensable combination where the loss of one assures the loss of the other, can we advance the cause of human flourishing.
In No Free Lunch, David takes the conversation back to “first principles,” defending the ethical foundation of the American economic system. The first video in the series is now up, and it features David in conversation with Father Robert Sirico, co-founder and president emeritus of the Acton Institute.
It is, needless to say, very well worth watching.