A visiting professor to Lithuania discovers a generation of bright, committed and principled students who aspire to change their world
University professors have a unique, daunting and exciting responsibility. They’re tasked with educating, empowering and inspiring the next generation of leaders. And not just our next political leaders. I’m also referring to the next generation of leaders in all fields of human endeavour. In the arts and sciences, in business and technology, in agriculture and…
China is conquering the world by creating money when it needs it and simply absorbing debt. Perhaps we should be copying them
The United States military believes we're losing the Third World War to China. According to U.S. Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer, not only has that war started, but it’s unlike any conflict in history. “When it comes to China, the bottom line there is the chequebook,” he says. According to military leaders, this…
As the taxi industry faces off with Uber, governments should let the marketplace sort out the winners and losers
What do creation, destruction, sharing and profit have in common? When it comes to the sharing economy, the answer is everything. In slightly over a decade, Uber and Lyft have gone from San Francisco startups to worldwide juggernauts. Their march to becoming international multibillion-dollar companies has sometimes met fierce resistance from taxi companies and community…
The parallels between Russia more than 20 years ago and the United States today are deeply disturbing
When the horrible first reports of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., began hitting my smartphone feed, I somehow involuntarily reconnected with feelings that I associate with the societal chaos I experienced working in Russia more than 20 years ago. It was the post-Mikhail Gorbachev era, when communism had…
Brutal communist societies did advance economic equality, although what was shared equally was poverty rather than prosperity
Western civilization and liberal democracy are under siege. This isn’t new. We’ve been challenged just in the last century by fascism and communism, by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Soviet Russia and Red China. One might have expected – and many did– that the ideology of these failed societies would remain in its grave. But,…
There is only a diverse and beautiful ‘we:’ we can be confident we’ll find the answers we’re looking for as we move forward together
We live in a time of great polarization – but there is a way out. While the post-Second World War era promised prosperity to all, in recent years we’ve seen a decline in real wages for the common person, exponential increases in salary for the heads of large corporations, and government bailouts of businesses deemed…
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, some romantics still embrace the fallacies of communism and its sister socialism
A number of Canadian newspapers recently noted the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The attention was misplaced and lacked perspective. In 1917, a small band of fierce, committed and violent extremists seized control of the Tsarist Russian Empire. They then created the much more oppressive and murderous Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. After the success…
Income tax is an industrial-era institution that won’t survive globalization and the digital revolution
With all due respect to federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau, if you're going to declare war on tax cheats, do it right. The truth is there’s a deep structural flaw in Canada's (and every other country's) income tax system. It's rooted in the unequal tax treatment of one class of individuals over another. Ever since…
The world desperately needs to change and we can deliver what's needed: a new mindset, flexibility, innovative genius, moral goodness and guts
EDMONTON, Alta. Mar. 20, 2017 /Troy Media/ – The 21st century just might be Canada's, in much the same way the 20th century belonged to the United States. As Canada enters into its maturity as a nation, it could provide much-needed moral authority and a few groundbreaking ideas just when the world desperately needs them. It's been a…
Hopefully, as disaster looms, Venezuela can start down a road away from both crony capitalism and socialism
VANCOUVER, B.C. Aug. 18, 2016/ Troy Media/ - Imagine a city where menus don’t print prices because inflation drives them higher daily; where streets are ghostly empty after dark and the murder rate is the world’s highest; where people queue for hours for meagre supplies of medicines and food, leaving many hungry and sick; where…
University professors have a unique, daunting and exciting responsibility. They’re tasked with educating, empowering and inspiring the next generation of leaders. And not just our next political leaders. I’m also referring to the next generation of leaders in all fields of human endeavour. In the arts and sciences, in business and technology, in agriculture and…
