Craig Cantoni | The Libertarian Institute

Why America Has Splintered Into Identity Groups

by Craig Cantoni | Feb 9, 2022 | Book Reviews, Featured Articles

Many Americans are concerned about the splintering of America into identity groups and are bewildered by critical race theory, queer studies, the proliferation of genders, cancel culture, the claim that reason and logic are constructs of white culture, and the corresponding shift from classical liberalism to identity-based authoritarianism. Other Americans believe that these are passing fads that will dissipate like former fads if they are ignored, or humored, or accommodated until they run out of steam. The scholarly book below can inform the first group and disabuse the second group....

The Student Debt Racket

by Craig Cantoni | Nov 15, 2021 | Featured Articles

American universities pride themselves on instilling communitarian values in students and enlightening them about social justice, diversity, and inclusion. It’s debatable whether their particular take on these important subjects has brought benefits or harm to society. It’s not debatable, however, that they have practiced the opposite of what they teach. In a nation rife with hypocritical and morally bankrupt institutions and leaders, they and their faculty rank near the top in hypocrisy, greed, and political self-dealing. If you think that’s the ranting of a crackpot or right-wing...

Essential Marxist Reading for Liberals and Conservatives

by Craig Cantoni | Sep 21, 2021 | Featured Articles

Fredrik deBoer is the author of The Cult of Smart, a book that unwittingly explains the sharp left turn of the Democrat Party and a growing number of young Americans. It also shows why the widening chasm between the far left and liberals and conservatives will never be bridged. For those reasons alone, it’s a very important book and should be read by traditional Democrats and Republicans, although a root canal would be less painful. If the book had been published when I was younger, I could’ve learned about Marxist thinking without having to labor through Das Kapital. At the leading edge of...

It’s the Bureaucracy, Genius: How Bureaucracy Has Lowered Productivity and Income

by Craig Cantoni | Feb 26, 2020 | Featured Articles

The supposed brightest minds, educated in the supposed best universities, can’t figure out why American productivity has languished in this era of technological innovation, resulting in income growth being lower than it would otherwise be. Well, my mediocre mind came up with the reason 29 years ago and wrote about it in my book and in scores of subsequent journal and newspaper articles. This was certainly not a great intellectual feat, because the root problem was, and continues to be, obvious to anyone who is not isolated in an ivory tower, as the problem pervades corporations,...

The Reductio ad Absurdum of Diversity

by Craig Cantoni | Jan 2, 2020 | Featured Articles

Pasted several paragraphs below is a letter to the Wall Street Journal from the chancellor of the University of California at Davis and the vice chancellor for diversity, equity and inclusion. The letter reveals what they believe is the mission of a university and what their real agenda is regarding diversity. No doubt, such thinking is shared throughout the California system and across academia. The letter was in response to a previous commentary in the Journal by the chair of the university’s math department, who took exception to the university requiring new faculty members to sign an...

Plutocrats Laughing at the Plebes

by Craig Cantoni | Dec 22, 2019 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

What do bigshot bankers at Goldman Sachs have in common with such celebrities as Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris Hilton, Jamie Foxx, Swiss Beatz, Busta Rhymes, Kate Upton, and Kanye West? They’re among America’s rich and famous, an elite group noted for hypocrisy, for contributing to the moral decay of American society, for causing the socialist backlash of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and for resembling the proverbial fish that rots at the head, or more accurately, that rots on the West Coast and East Coast. The bankers and the celebrities also have Jho Low in common. Who’s that? Low is...

Nightmares About Social Justice Phonies

by Craig Cantoni | Dec 19, 2019 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

A recent nightmare is still vivid in my mind: I dreamt that I had just begun a new job as a public relations executive for a big corporation and had gotten a note from the CEO that he wanted me to work with local government and nonprofit organizations to address the local homeless problem. Knowing that the company and the other entities really didn’t want to do what was necessary to solve the problem and were just going through feel-good motions, I wanted to get out of the assignment but faced a dilemma. On the one hand, I knew that the quickest way out of the assignment was to go public...

Fake Ads, Fake TV, Fake News

by Craig Cantoni | Jul 22, 2018 | Featured Articles

Vance Packard published his Hidden Persuaders in 1957. I read the book a couple of decades later and now like to think—or lie to myself—that, as a result, I became less susceptible to advertising, especially to so-called lifestyle advertising or status-symbol advertising. This type of advertising attempts to convey that a featured product can make someone attractive, sexy, cool, hip, sophisticated, smart, or the envy of others, all of which would be an impossible feat in my case. The Marlboro cowboy is a textbook example. The message to smokers is that if they smoke Marlboros, they are as...