Karin Fischer

The coronavirus exempts no one and respects no national borders. According to the UN Development Program, the human development index – a combined measure of education, health, and living standards – is on course to decline for the first time since 1990. The decline is expected across the majority of countries – rich and poor – around the globe. This observation should not evoke an “equalitarian imaginary.” COVID-19...

Think tanks come in many shapes and sizes, but appear to be proliferating and growing in importance. Formerly supplementing universities and research institutions of interest groups or membership organizations, they have become critical agents in politics and policy making. The rise of the think tank model has pushed university-based intellectuals to the margins of public political debates. The think tank professional has replaced the university professor...

Antony Fisher, a British businessman from an upper-class family, read the Reader’s Digest condensation of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and was enthusiastic about it. In this wartime book, F.A. Hayek coupled socialism with fascism and lashed out at government planning which, in his view, inevitably leads to slavery. After the Second World War, Fisher wanted to go into politics but Hayek convinced him to “forget politics. Politicians...