Never, right?! What has motivated this blog post was this report (Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed, 11 May 2026) that Instructure (the company that owns Canvas) has paid an undisclosed ransom to a gang of cybercriminals that hacked the company’s learning management system (twice!) earlier this month. Here is some background:
“ShinyHunters” (a black-hat criminal extortion group active since 2019; Wikipedia)
Now, to the business at hand: when, if ever, should ransomware be paid? Below are links to some of the scholarly literature (ungated or open access*) on the economics and law of ransomware payments, in alphabetical order by author:
“Should we outlaw ransomware payments?” (Debabrata Dey & Atanu Lahiri, Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2021)
On this day (13 May) in 1846, the United States Congress approved a declaration of war against Mexico. As a result of this unjustified war of aggression (see here or here, for example), the United States would end up acquiring — “stealing” would be a more accurate term — 500,000 square miles of Mexico or roughly 55% of her territory, including present-day Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah, as well as portions of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming! Two bonus links: Manifest Destiny and Mexican Cession.
Yes, today (12 May) is National Limerick Day, which falls on the birthday of English artist and poet Edward Lear (born 12 May 1812), who popularized the five-line humorous poetic form in his Book of Nonsense, first published in 1846. (More details here, via The Smithsonian.)
In addition, as blogger and writer Richard Bist explains (see here), not all limericks are naughty. Below, for example, is a little limerick I wrote about Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”:
Markets may appear quite unplanned, But by a hidden force both subtle and grand, Though each man seeks his gain, It’s clear to explain: They’re all led by an Invisible Hand.
And here is another one about the famous “Adam Smith Problem”, i.e. the apparent or real disconnect between Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and his Wealth of Nations:
Adam Smith, two tomes did he write, But the books made many scholars fight, For one spoke of self-gain, The other, of empathy’sreign, Leaving critics to wonder who’s right!
The inaugural 2026 Canadian Baseball League (CBL) season opens today (10 May) with the Kitchener Panthers visiting the Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Club at Dominico Field. Among the players on the diamond will be my favorite right fielder, Yasiel Puig! (The Leafs signed the ex-Dodgers star last month.) Although Puig was found guilty earlier this year on trumped-up federal charges of obstruction of justice and false statements (remember James Comey’s vindictive prosecution of Martha Stewart?) and is still awaiting sentencing, I am confident he will be exonerated on appeal.
Update 5/11: I can’t find the box score of yesterday’s CBL season opener, but according to Ball Player Universe (@Ballplayerverse), Yasiel Puig hit a home run in the 9th inning of the game.
Congratulations to my students who are graduating from the newly-christened Barry S. Miller College of Business today (8 May 2026); this 2005 speech by Steve Jobs is for you!
On this day (7 May) in 1794, amid the infamous “Reign of Terror” phase of the French Revolution (La Terreur, September 1793 to July 1794), the National Convention of the First French Republic (République française, 1792–1804) officially replaces the Revolution’s atheistic “Cult of Reason” with a new non-denominational state religion known as the “Cult of the Supreme Being” (Culte de l’Être suprême). Here is some background via Wikipedia (footnotes and some hyperlinks omitted):
“The French Revolution had caused many radical changes in France, but one of the most fundamental … was the official rejection of religion. The first new major organized school of thought emerged under the umbrella name of the Cult of Reason. Advocated by radicals like Jacques Hébert and Antoine-François Momoro, the Cult of Reason distilled a mixture of largely atheistic views into an anthropocentric philosophy. No gods at all were worshipped in the Cult of Reason; the guiding principle was devotion to the abstract concept of Reason.
“This rejection of all godhead appalled Maximilien Robespierre…. He thought that belief in a supreme being was important for social order, and he liked to quote Voltaire: ‘If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him’. To him, the Cult of Reason’s philosophical offenses were compounded by the ‘scandalous scenes’ and ‘wild masquerades’ attributed to its practice. In late 1793, Robespierre delivered a fiery denunciation of the Cult of Reason and of its proponents. and proceeded to give his own vision of proper Revolutionary religion. Devised almost entirely by Robespierre, the Cult of the Supreme Being was authorized by the National Convention on 7 May 1794 [18 Floréal Year II] as the civic religion of France.”
More details about this tumultuous chapter in French Revolution history are available here: Mathias Sonnleithner, “More Voltaire than Rousseau? Deism in the Revolutionary Cults of Reason and the Supreme Being,” in Anna Tomaszewska (editor), Between Secularization and Reform: Religion in the Enlightenment, Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill (2022), pp. 160-196. See also this short report by Rumaysa Haqqani (via The Collector): “When Robespierre Created the Cult of the Supreme Being“.
How can us mere mortals, living in a ruthless, dog-eat-dog capitalist system, ever hope to obtain the sagacity and wisdom of a Stoic sage? Is it even possible to become wealthy or to better one’s condition in a way that is both logically and morally consistent with the main precepts of Stoic ethics? These questions are no minor intellectually masturbatory quibble. To the extent most people live in a “commercial society,” i.e. a society in which “Every man … lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant ….” (Wealth of Nations, I.iv.1, p. 37), the Stoic-capitalist dilemma should be of interest to all. My contribution to these questions is to propose a Smithian solution to the Stoic-capitalist dilemma by imagining Adam Smith’s “impartial spectator” device as a Stoic sage–our inner Marcus Aurelius. (See my previous post.)
But at the same time, my Stoic portrait of Smith’s impartial spectator poses several deep questions that deserve further study. For starters, if a Stoic spectator is possible, what about a Kantian impartial spectator or an Hegelian or even a Nietzschean one? Is it possible to conjure up different versions of Smith’s impartial spectator, and if so, does this possibility undermine or bolster my argument for a Stoic spectator? In addition, the ontology of the impartial spectator is open to two radically different and diametrically opposed interpretations. Some Smith scholars conceptualize Smith’s imaginary entity as “an ideal observer with divine grounding whose normativity comes from an Archimedean point of view.” (Weinstein 2026, p. 174) Others, by contrast, “flatten” Smith’s imaginary spectator, seeing him as “a product of an individual agent’s imagination and therefore limited by the imaginer’s fallible capacities.” (ibid.) Which of these two pictures of the impartial spectator is the correct one, and does the divine interpretation rule out the possibility of a Stoic spectator? Is God a Stoic?
To recap my series on the “Stoic-capitalist” dilemma thus far, how can we promote our own interest while at the same time promoting the common good? Is it possible to solve this “Stoic-capitalist dilemma” or otherwise reconcile the pursuit of virtue with the pursuit of profit? My solution to this predicament builds on the “impartial spectator” device in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. More specifically, I would transform or repurpose Smith’s imaginary observer into a Stoic sage, an inner Marcus Aurelius, if you will. Simply put, instead of trying to become a Stoic sage (an all but impossible task), one consults one’s inner Stoic sage and tries to follow his example as best one can. Let me explain:
Although Adam Smith is mostly known today for his great political economy treatise An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, during his lifetime he also published another treatise on moral philosophy (six editions in all), which was originally titled The Theory of Moral Sentiments or “TMS” for short. It is in TMS where Smith introduces his “impartial spectator”—an imaginary, unbiased judge that helps individuals evaluate their own actions and emotions:
“When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.” (TMS, III.i.6)
In many ways, Smith’s spectator device is modelled after what Marcus Aurelius scholar William O. Stephens (2012, p. 110) refers to as Marcus Aurelius’ “big picture strategy” in Meditations, for the Roman emperor-philosopher makes many references to a proto-impartial spectator, so to speak, in his great work. He often refers to one’s “inner divinity” (ii.17), “the ruling power within us” (iv.1), and “[t]he directing and sovereign part of your soul” (v.26). Moreover, the Roman emperor-philosopher also invites us to “[t]ake the view from above” (ix.30), to imagine what the world would look like “if you were suddenly lifted up to a great height and could look down on human activity and see all its variety.” (xii.24) Accordingly, the leap in logic from Marcus Aurelius’ “view from above” to Adam Smith’s impartial observer thus entails, at most, one small step. Moreover, by repurposing or recasting Smith’s imaginary spectator as a Stoic sage, we not one but two separate problems:
First off, our inner Stoic sage can help us resolve the tension between Stoic ethics on the one hand—i.e. the pursuit of virtue for its own sake—and our capitalistic or bourgeois projects on the other—the pursuit of profits and the perpetual desire of bettering our condition. Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD) was the supreme leader of one of the most powerful and prosperous empires in the history of the world, yet despite all his wealth and power he takes the time to describe his inner struggles—his attempts to cultivate his moral virtue and his rational judgement—even as he is fighting barbarian tribes and burying his own children. (see generally Stephens 2012, Ch. 1) If a Roman emperor is able to embody Stoic ideals while ruling a vast empire and leading men in battle, then why can’t we do so as we pursue profit opportunities or strive to better our condition in a capitalist system? In short, if Marcus Aurelius could do it, why can’t we? Perhaps with the help of an impartial spectator, our inner Marcus Aurelius, we can.
This imaginary impartial spectator/Stoic sage also solves an even deeper problem with Stoic ethics more generally: the unfeasibility, if not impossibility, of any mere mortal ever becoming a Stoic sage. To the point, how can anyone, especially in a commercial society like ours, ever hope to attain the moral perfection of a Stoic sage? After all, Stoic ethics is a demanding moral philosophy because Stoics define virtue as the only true good—what David Hume accurately but somewhat derisively refers to as “that grave philosophic Endeavor after Perfection.” (Hume 1742, p. 34) Everything else—health, money, reputation, etc.—are indifferents. Stoicism thus requires (i) total internal control over one’s emotions and judgements, (ii) constant self-examination to align one’s desires with nature, and (iii) indifference toward external events—in short, inner freedom over worldly success (cf. Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations). Is this ethical ideal even attainable, especially in a capitalist world, where ambition, material goods, and instant gratification are the order of the day?
Here is where Adam Smith’s imaginary Stoic sage comes into play. Smith’s spectator is, by definition, a made-up or imaginary entity, so why not imagine him as a Stoic wise man—a personalized Marcus Aurelius, so to speak. After all, even if Hume’s devastating critique of Stoicism is correct—even if Stoic perfection or moral virtue is an impossible ideal—we can still imagine what such an ideal might look like and use this ideal to inform our choices. Smith’s impartial spectator, recast as a Stoic sage, allows us to consult our “inner Marcus Aurelius.” Instead of trying to become or embody a Stoic sage—a difficult and perhaps impossible task—we imagine what an ideal Stoic sage would do or feel and act accordingly. In short, how to become a Stoic capitalist? Listen to your inner Marcus Aurelius!
Nota bene: I will conclude my series on the Stoic-capitalist dilemma in my next post.
prior probability 