José Azel

Invertebrate Spain (as in without backbone), and The Revolt of the Masses are two of José Ortega y Gasset’s best known works. Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), a Spanish philosopher and essayist, wrote during the first half of the 20th century…
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Are you dematerializing? I ask, not because I think you are overly concerned with material possessions and should become more ascetic. Nor am I trying to find out if you are dematerializing to be tele-transported back to the Starship…
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Over the years I have published a number of columns on inequality. Among these are “Fleeing Equality,” “Redistributive Injustice,” The Rich Do Not Exist,” and others reproduced in my book “Reflections on Freedom.” Invariably, this topic…
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This brings up the obvious question as to why has extreme poverty declined so dramatically as of late. To this question, International Development economist Steven Radelet offers a witty explanation: “In 1976, Mao single-handedly and…
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I cite the Superman story, not to defend undocumented migration, but to introduce a little levity to a topic often discussed only using hyperbole, acrimonious statements, and name-calling. Today, over three percent of the world’s…
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One reason for this predominance of reported bad news is the editorial dictum of “if it bleeds it leads,” which prioritizes spectacular stories that prey on our anxieties. Also, as Dr. Pinker points out, news coverage is about things that…
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Entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is not a promising topic for a newspaper column. However, its ramifications for politico-economic systems is a matter of common sense. In essence, entropy is a measure of the disorders that exist…
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In Cuban education, the French Revolution was emphasized and the American Revolution was not studied as a revolution at all. It was mostly considered a war for independence of little worldwide sociopolitical intellectual consequence. The…
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“In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car.” That saying, attributed to the economist Lawrence Summers, former President of Harvard, is a delightful metaphor for the relevancy of a culture of private property…
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