November — 2009 — VOICES for REASON

Every day, Americans use about 3 gallons of oil a day. That’s almost one billion gallons total.

It’s hard to find anyone who thinks this is a good thing. Indeed, the overwhelming view heard in our culture is that our use of oil is an “addiction”. This term was popularized by former President–and oilman–George W. Bush in his 2006 speech.

Barack Obama is even more opposed to oil: “the age of oil must end in our time,” he has declared unequivocally. And: “the country that faced down the tyranny of fascism and communism is now called to challenge the tyranny of oil.” (Note: our President is comparing our use of oil to movements that killed a combined 100 million people.)

Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday I discussed the life-serving benefits made possible by the thriving, but fragile, medical technology industry in the United States. Literally millions of lives have been bettered and extended by the products this industry has created, such as defibrillators and advanced surgical tools. For an idea of how amazing the technology in this field is, consider that Paralympian amputees are now argued to have an advantage over non-handicapped, Olympian athletes. It’s not a pipe dream that advances in this industry might one day soon be able to restore sight to the blind, or complex motion to the paralyzed.

Not a pipe dream, that is, unless any of the health-care reforms in Congress come to pass.

Read the rest of this entry »

America is the world leader in medical device innovation, producing more new medical devices annually than any other nation. Its medical technology industry is responsible for nearly two million jobs and is one bright spot in a health-care system with many flaws. Yet, as I’ll discuss here and in my next post, if the health-care reforms presently advancing through Congress are enacted, the medical technology industry as we know it may be severely cut down.

Let’s begin with the good.

What exactly does the medical technology industry do? It designs and manufactures products ranging from stethoscopes to artificial knees to drug delivery systems to imaging machines. These devices better the lives of everyone who steps into a doctor’s office or hospital. They facilitate the delivery of medical care; they reduce the need for surgery and cut recovery time; they make living with chronic diseases manageable; they keep people from dying prematurely.

Read the rest of this entry »

One thing the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall should remind us of, in addition to the sheer brutality of communism, is the economic devastation it caused–and the unequivocal economic superiority of freedom. “If you want a contemporary demonstration of the respective merits and performances of a free economy and of a controlled economy,” Ayn Rand wrote in 1961, “a demonstration that comes as close to an historical laboratory experiment as one could hope to see–take a look at the condition of West Germany and of East Germany.”

From the end of World War II until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, East and West Germany were separated, not only by bricks and mortar shells, but by economic doctrines. People who shared a common history, a language, an environment, demonstrated over the course of decades the superiority of markets over government planning.

While retaining various forms of welfare and interventionism, Western Germany’s economy was largely free after the war. Property was privately owned, and prices and wages were determined by market forces. East Germany, however, conformed to Soviet-style central planning. The Socialist Unity Party of Germany oversaw all production, most of the means of production were owned by the state, and prices and wages were placed under centralized control. In other words, the government dictated what to produce, how to produce it, and how to distribute what was produced.

The results? Read the rest of this entry »

In the United States, the soldier’s profession has traditionally been framed as one of service and sacrifice in the name of a “greater cause.” But American soldiers are not martyrs—and it’s time our government stopped treating them as such. Alex Epstein explains in “What We Owe Our Soldiers.” Ideal reading on this Veteran’s Day.

While you read the following story, try to figure where it took place. Where in the Middle East might you expect a woman to receive such humiliating treatment?

For good reason, the woman in this story (a physician) and her husband (an academic) decide to immigrate to the U.S. to pursue a better life; he sets off first to get established and she’s to follow, with their children. That requires obtaining passports for them. When the time comes, she applies for the passports in person and brings with her a legally valid power of attorney signed by her husband. But her application is flatly denied.

Why? The clerk tells her that the power of attorney gives her the right to dispose of her husband’s property, but “not the guardianship of his children.”

“But they’re my children, too, sir,” she replies.

“A woman is not the guardian of her children. Do you understand?” This apparently is the conventional Islamic way.
Read the rest of this entry »

I sometimes receive questions from readers such as the following:

Q: I consider myself a strong free-market advocate and a fan of Ayn Rand’s writings. However, I find your denial of rising global temperatures to be contradictory to Rand’s view that we should follow the facts of reality based on reason and objective knowledge. You are not a climate scientist (your bio says “PhD in theoretical physics”), so how are you qualified to draw conclusions about global warming? If the only fact we have on which to base a conclusion is that many experts support the existence of global warming, then isn’t it only rational, under Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, to conclude that global warming is, in fact, a problem?

Here’s my answer:

A: First of all, let me clarify that I am not in “denial of rising global temperatures.” There is no question that the earth is warmer today than it has been since the start of systematic thermometer records. But it is also true that the start of that record happens to coincide with the end of a relatively cold period in recent climate history—one characterized by a little ice age. The issue is not whether temperatures are warmer today than they were a century ago, but whether the increase in global temperature can be solidly attributed to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, arguably the most famous event signaling the fall of Communism. In the days following November 9, 1989, the world saw residents of East Germany—a satellite state of the supposedly great and powerful Soviet empire—flee en masse to West Germany, revealing how hellish life under Communism truly was. The sight of Germans literally breaking down the wall is an inspiring one that should be remembered as a great landmark of the 20^th century—as Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate explain in this must-see interview.

As we celebrate an event that revealed to the world the oppression of Communism, it is important and instructive to note that for the seven decades of the Soviet Union’s existence, many journalists, authors, and intellectuals in the West evaded the atrocities of Communism, even as Communist states were racking up death tolls in the tens of millions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today, the Supreme Court will be deciding whether to accept an appeal involving the following scenario:

Forty-five people carrying placards and handing out leaflets show up inside a shopping mall.  Their message? Boycott the mall’s stores. When mall management asks them to leave, they refuse—and so the police throw them out. The boycotters sue the mall for interfering with their speech rights. They win.

What makes such a legal outcome possible? At bottom, it’s a certain conception of rights as entitlements to the property of others. On this view, the right of free speech is empty unless someone provides the speaker with a newspaper, a blog, a microphone—or, in this case, a mall full of shoppers. But that’s a perversion of rights. In reality, the right of free speech pertains only to freedom of action, on and with one’s own property (or the property of others who agree to allow its use). Because a shopping mall is private property, every visitor is there by permission of the owner. That owner has a moral right (which should be recognized legally, but isn’t) to forbid visitors from staging a boycott campaign on that property.

The case I’m talking about is Macerich Management Co. v. United Brotherhood of Carpenters. If the Supreme Court accepts the case, what’s the chance it will apply a proper view of rights? Zero.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re used to environmentalists telling us that we need to “save the planet” for our children. Now, they’re saying we shouldn’t be allowed to have them.

Echoing the sentiments of Paul Ehrlich’s environmentalist manifesto, the 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb, British columnist Alex Renton of The Guardian writes, “the worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children. If they behave as the average person in the rich world does now, they will emit some 11 tonnes of CO2 every year of their lives. In their turn, they are likely to have more carbon-emitting children who will make an even bigger mess.”

Mr. Renton’s opinion is shared by the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin. At a recent panel discussion titled “Covering Climate: What’s Population Got To Do With It?,” Mr. Revkin argued that “probably the single most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower their carbon footprint is not turning off the light or driving a Prius, it’s having fewer kids, having fewer children.”

Environmentalists have always urged us towards a more ascetic existence, and population control is a logical progression within the framework of the environmentalist ideology, which views “the planet” as an inherent good that must be “saved” from the plague of man. Thus neither Mr. Renton nor Mr. Revkin is at all shy in advocating their position, nor does either skip a beat in suggesting that government force is necessary to achieve it.

Read the rest of this entry »