Class actions are often described as a tool of consumer justice. In practice, however, they frequently function as a settlement industry.

Jul 27, 2026

|

3 min

Your doctors and other healthcare professionals are doing both—practicing medicine and playing defense against a perpetual threat of medical malpractice litigation. Economically and professionally, it is unfortunately rational. No doctor today can afford to ignore—even temporarily forget—the risk of a lawsuit and the ever-present possibility of a “nuclear verdict” at trial, sometimes $50 million or more.

Jul 20, 2026

|

3 min

While headlines focus on corporate liability battles, small businesses are absorbing a disproportionate share of America's tort costs—often facing meritless claims where defending a case costs more than settling it, regardless of guilt. This piece breaks down the data behind the imbalance, from high-volume ADA lawsuits to employment claims that drag on for a year with no payout, and asks what it means when the legal system rewards volume over merit.

Jul 13, 2026

|

3 min

Whatever else tort law is today, it is expensive. Not merely expensive for corporations, doctors, universities, or newspapers. It is expensive for everyone.

Feb 20, 2026

|

3 min

A counter-revolution is sweeping Western civilization—it is philosophical at root, cultural in transmission, and political in impact. It has unfolded over centuries, but only now reveals dramatic and unmistakable consequences. Most of us may not recognize it for what it is--erosion of the modernist worldview and ascendance of a postmodernist one. We speak of endless senseless shooting sprees, politically correct reporting, “woke” indoctrination in schools, loss of trust in reason, and noxious scientific fads. We debate the new varieties of collectivism, the politics of “identity,” racial and other quotas in hiring and admissions, cancel culture, rioting and looting as political protest, and the degradation of the university. These are symptoms. The malaise is philosophical: Our civilization of modernism is being sacked; we live in the twilight of its ideals.

May 9, 2025

|

3 min

Who today sets the world price of gold? It is not the United States and not Europe. The concept of the marginal purchaser becomes germane, here. It is a bit complicated, but it means the party who at a given time, at a given price, is always a buyer, but at a higher price is not. Some will want to debate that definition, but put simply we are talking about the prime, dominant buyer. And that, today, is the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Apr 29, 2024

|

3 min

The most horrendous threats to humanity have simply been too monstrously evil to be believed—at first.

Apr 4, 2023

|

3 min

We “medicalize morality.” We “medicalize crime.” It seems we even medicalize war crimes and genocide… But having observed the medicalizing of what used to be called “evil,” or “wicked,” psychiatry does not know how to respond.

Apr 19, 2022

|

3 min

When is a novel in the Romantic tradition “popular” and when is it “literary”?

Sep 29, 2021

|

3 min

Who could even imagine, now, a modern nation without recycling bins, recycling plants, and yoghurt containers made with recycled materials..

Dec 3, 2019

|

3 min

I wonder how many of you have waited, over the decades—with growing scorn for our academic..

Oct 3, 2019

|

3 min

Walter Donway’s romantic thriller O Human Child is an entertaining read with an end of summer theme. Jan and Victoria DeVries began what the

Sep 9, 2019

|

3 min

As Democratic presidential candidates debate their competing promises to voters, without the slightest reference to the concept of property

Jul 10, 2019

|

3 min

On Thursday, June 19, the subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee met to shape recommendations on payment of

Jul 1, 2019

|

3 min

The fearful blaze ravaging Notre Dame Cathedral came under initial control, this evening. Parisians then gathered on Cité Island in the Sein

Apr 16, 2019

|

3 min

It has taken more than two decades for Venezuela, once the wealthiest nation in Latin America, with a long tradition of independence and dem

Mar 3, 2019

|

3 min

For Ayn Rand, an argument was the distinctive human banner, the banner of reason and persuasion. Where brutes force, human beings argue, a

May 30, 2017

|

3 min

Ayn Rand delved into some of Objectivism’s most fundamental ideas—and their most poignant personal implications—in the essay she devoted to.

May 2, 2017

|

3 min

There was a time, when Ayn Rand’s new essays came out monthly and, as often as not, mentioned or enthusiastically recommended some writer

Apr 22, 2017

|

3 min

This week, the opposition forces in Venezuela are still in the streets, struggling with government forces, to protest last week’s lurch of..

Apr 10, 2017

|

3 min

Has the United States become truly and thoroughly “polarized”? Two camps (very broadly speaking) face each other with extreme positions, implacable in their intent to defeat the other, incapable of tolerance for the opposing view, and screaming insults and shaking fists? If this isn’t polarization, what is?

Apr 7, 2017

|

3 min

I haven’t made up my mind about the debates regarding “nationalism,” conducted mostly in terms of epithets and denials, that have poisoned..

Mar 28, 2017

|

3 min

Ayn Rand issued many oft-repeated admonitions—almost all relating to the requirements of reason.

Mar 16, 2017

|

3 min

Ayn Rand permitted herself to write of Romanticism with a terrible yearning redeemed only by her fighting spirit. In the introduction to...

Mar 12, 2017

|

3 min

Reading about the Age of Faith, Age of Enlightenment, Age of Science—all eras in the history of the West—did you ever ask: what is our age..

Mar 1, 2017

|

3 min

For partisans on both sides of the nomination (and hard-fought confirmation) of Betsy DeVos, 59, of Michigan, as secretary of education...

Feb 23, 2017

|

3 min

I will celebrate Washington’s Birthday. That is still the official federal holiday—“President’s Day” and “Washington’s and Lincoln’s Day”..

Feb 20, 2017

|

3 min

What I call the “Not Our President Elite” (NOPE) believes that a frighteningly ignorant, bigoted, and distinctly inferior America—not the...

Feb 16, 2017

|

3 min

Today, I dropped by the office of my ophthalmologist. Although my eye glasses were broken, the first thing I asked the receptionist was...

May 19, 2016

|

3 min

Measurement often is the crucial step in understanding—and gaining control—of a complex phenomenon....

Sep 21, 2012

|

3 min

When government proposes to nationalize a major industry, it is a loudspeaker blaring the message that the country is abandoning the market

Jul 25, 2012

|

3 min

Saluting the philosopher who gave reason its foundational tool, Ayn Rand named the three sections of Atlas Shrugged after Aristotle’s axioms

May 7, 2012

|

3 min

On April 17, President Barrack Obama addressed Americans about rising prices of gasoline, now above $5.00 a gallon in parts of the country..

Apr 25, 2012

|

3 min

On March 8, the front page of the Wall Street Journal carried a weird story. It was weird because it involved what is arguably America’s...

Mar 9, 2012

|

3 min

At the Baghdad International Airport today United States military forces lowered the American flag, and, in a ceremony with a long tradition

Dec 21, 2011

|

3 min

In Barcelona's summer night..

Jul 28, 2011

|

3 min

August 14, 2009 -- I am told that today's system of medical care in the United States lets too many people "fall through the cracks.".....

Apr 29, 2011

|

3 min

What do we know about what makes creative genius possible? Can we say anything new about the awesome creative ability of an Aristotle...

Mar 29, 2011

|

3 min

Among the virtues we promote at The New Individualist are the courage, independence, integrity, and vision of creative producers in all walk

Mar 28, 2011

|

3 min

This is a collection of essays and reviews by an American sociologist who for some forty years has been slugging it out in academic journals

Aug 31, 2010

|

3 min

A half-century ago, when the American medical care system was largely free and voluntary, and people regularly called it “the world’s finest

Aug 10, 2009

|

3 min

I've reread Thorton Wilder's The Ides of March many times, always with the equivalent of a slight mental frown: Why do I like this book so

Mar 21, 1998

|

3 min

Description: Matthew Josephson’s 1934 best-seller, The Robber Barons, with its damning portraits of great industrialists and Marxist analysi

Sep 4, 1992

|

3 min