April — 2010 — VOICES for REASON

Obama recently gave a speech pushing for increased regulation of the financial industry in which he said, “Now, what we’re doing, I want to be clear, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned.” He then went on to begrudge it: “I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

Coming from one who is on record advocating “spreading the wealth around,” this paean to egalitarianism is not particularly surprising. But unfortunately that sentiment is common even among alleged defenders of the free market. They’re uncomfortable with the idea that some people are earning tens of millions (or hundreds of millions) of dollars a year. Even if they can point out the economic reasons why great producers earn so much, they can think of no admirable motivation that would lead someone who made twenty-million last year to want to earn thirty-million next year. (You can see this in the ongoing debate over CEO pay.)

In the book Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of her Q&A, Ayn Rand addresses a similar issue. Asked why it is to a successful businessman’s interest to continue producing she responds in part: Read the rest of this entry »

What can brown do for you? Well, if you’re FedEx, it can lobby Washington to strangle you with pro-union legislation.

House Transportation Chairman James Oberstar (D., Big Labor) last year slipped 230 words into a spending bill that would make it easier for the Teamsters to unionize FedEx. This ambush was included at the urging of UPS, which has been saddled with the Teamsters for decades and wants FedEx to feel its pain.

On a free market, UPS and FedEx would engage solely in economic competition, trying to outdo each other by offering the best value to customers. But when the government intervenes in markets, as it does today and has been doing for decades, it opens the door to this sort of political pseudo-competition: the attempt to pressure government into using force to provide one’s own business with special favors or one’s competitors with special burdens.

Under economic competition, everyone wins. Even if a competitor “loses” in some particular case, he benefits by living in a free, productive economy. But under political, or pseudo-competition, everyone loses–even those who “win” in some particular case. We’re all forced to pay higher prices, to accept fewer opportunities, to resign ourselves to a lower standard of living.

What we need to be asking is: Why does the government have any say in this matter? Why can’t FedEx and its employees be free to decide voluntarily the terms under which employees can unionize? Why doesn’t Washington put an end to political competition by returning to the role the founders envisioned for it: the protection of individual rights.

Image: flickr

In his New York Times column, Ross Douthat recounts the backstory behind the death threat—posted on a Muslim website—against the producers of “South Park” and discerns a broader issue. He argues plausibly that Comedy Central’s decision to bleep out references to “Mohammad” and remove the supposedly offending episode is part of a larger pattern of self-censorship in our culture.

What concerns him is the apparent lopsidedness of the self-censorship: practically every value and idea today is subject to criticism in popular culture, whereas the “South Park” incident is “a reminder that Islam is just about the only place where we draw any lines at all.” There’s something to that observation (though I don’t subscribe to Douthat’s explanation of it); but I want to put that aside for the moment to isolate a widely ignored, and broader, point. What he and others who echo this line overlook (or evade?) is that self-censorship in North America and (to a far greater degree in) Europe is in significant part a function of governments’ failure to uphold the freedom of speech.

The guardian of that right is the government — and it’s AWOL. To put it mildly.

The pattern we’ve witnessed in previous crises—from the death decree against author Salman Rushdie in 1989 to the Danish cartoons crisis, and similar cases—is the refusal of our political leaders to defend us against threats to our freedom of speech. Worse: we’ve seen them genuflecting before and seeking to appease aggressive Muslim activists and their backers. (I touch on this in Winning the Unwinnable War.) Yes, there have been publishers and TV networks and bookstores that exhibited fear, and perhaps cowardice, in the face of such threats. But when our government issues limp, apologetic statements mollifying the aggressors—and effectively leaves writers, publishers, filmmakers and everyone else unprotected from the threat of reprisals by would-be Islamist enforcers—is it surprising that self-censorship grows?

Throughout the health care debate, we have been arguing that the push for government control of health care is driven by a certain moral view: the view that need is a claim. That view is typically taken to be noble and benevolent, and one of Ayn Rand’s most controversial conclusions is that it is in fact vicious and unjust. Well, the latest proposal out of Massachusetts seems designed to prove Rand’s point.

Massachusetts, you probably know, passed a bill very similar to ObamaCare a few years back. Well, shocking news: the state is now hemorrhaging money. To stop the bleeding, it is clamping down on doctor reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid, which has meant fewer and fewer doctors willing to accept Medicare/Medicaid patients. The state’s solution? Force them.

Every health care provider licensed in the commonwealth which provides covered services to a person covered under “Affordable Health Plans” must provide such service to any such person, as a condition of their licensure, and must accept payment at the lowest of the statutory reimbursement rate…

As one doctor noted: Read the rest of this entry »

In choosing a successor to retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, President Obama is preoccupied with the Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That’s the case upholding a corporation’s right to spend its own money speaking out during political campaigns.

Obama has made no secret of his disdain for that decision. Justice Stevens authored the dissent in that case—the dissent that Obama wishes had been the majority decision. Stevens argued at length for sustaining the power of campaign finance regulators to throttle corporate speech.

Speaking in the Rose Garden recently, Obama said he’s searching for “someone who, like Justice Stevens, knows that in a democracy, powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.” In short, Obama wants Citizens United to be overturned, and he’s looking for a new Justice who will be as steadfast as Stevens was in opposing corporations’ rights. Read the rest of this entry »

Look out world: the rich are getting richer by helping the poor get richer. The New York Times warns us that “Big Banks Draw Profits From Microloans to Poor.”

According to the Times, “Drawn by the prospect of hefty profits from even the smallest of loans, a raft of banks and financial institutions now dominate the field, with some charging interest rates of 100 percent or more.” Now critics of these companies are complaining that the reputation of microloans will be “tarnished by new investors seeking profits on the backs of the poor…”

But profits aren’t made on anyone’s backs. They are made by creating value and are a sign of mutual gain. Nike profits by making great shoes. Amazon.com profits by running a quality online bookstore. McDonald’s profits by serving delicious food to anyone willing to spend a few bucks. They all profit by making us better off (otherwise we would patronize their competitors). Well, microloan companies profit by providing the poor with a service they desperately need at prices they willingly pay. Read the rest of this entry »

In a new editorial published on foxnews.com, Alex Epstein writes:

This Earth Day, Obama renewed his call for “comprehensive energy and climate legislation that will safeguard our planet, spur innovation and allow us to compete and win in the 21st century economy.” In lockstep with environmentalists, Obama has previously said the ultimate goal of legislation is “a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming–an 80% reduction by 2050.”

But this raises the question: What is going to replace the coal, oil, and natural gas that we use to heat our homes and offices, fuel our cars and airplanes, power up our computers, and light up the night? [Read the whole thing.]

Keith Lockitch is quoted in a National Geographic article on the history and meaning of Earth Day. He touches on the anti-capitalist ideas behind the environmentalist movement.

[update] On PajamasMedia.com, Alex writes: “This Earth Day, take a moment to thank the Greens’ biggest punching bag: Big Oil.” Read the whole post. Alex also appears with Keith Lockitch to discuss Earth Day on PJTV’s Front Page here and here.

For a unique perspective on the history, science, economics, and philosophy behind Earth Day, check out the resources listed in the post Cancel Earth Day, Stop Green Guilt.  And if you missed the Earth Day interview with Onkar Ghate and Keith Lockitch, here’s Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

image: barunpatro

My colleague Onkar Ghate has written a guest post for the Division of Labour blog answering a question on the moral views of Adam Smith and of Ayn Rand. The question was prompted by a recent debate between ARI’s Yaron Brook and Prof. James Otteson (a scholar of Smith). That spirited debate took place at the annual conference of the Association of Private Enterprise Education. The question:

Take Smith’s famous thought experiment about — by some fantastic unstated mechanism — you (“a man of humanity in Europe”, in 1759) could prevent an earthquake in China by cutting off your pinky. Smith says that of course you would do so, and then addresses why. Yaron, would you cut off your pinky? Assume that knowledge of the whole affair would necessarily remain entire personal. If yes, and you claim to square that with “selfishness,” aren’t you using words in an opportunistic and unmanageable way?

In response, Dr. Ghate begins his post:

The question’s undertone is that everyone “just knows” it’s right to cut off your finger. Moral theory’s task is to rationalize this incontrovertible conclusion; Rand’s theory can’t, however, because it’s an abuse of language to call the action selfish.

But it’s a mistake to think that Rand’s ethics begins with the moral beliefs that happen to saturate the culture, not with reality. True, it would be an abuse of language to label the action Smith envisions “selfish”: it is self-sacrificial. Precisely for this reason, Rand’s ethics would pronounce the action immoral.

To understand the radical difference between Smith and Rand here, one must grasp the principles at work.

Read the whole thing.

image: wikimedia commons

Given that our country is mired in a severe recession, the history of the Great Depression—especially the history of how we got out of it—is rightly regarded as relevant to fixing today’s problems.

Some popular accounts would have us believe that the Great Depression ended via a) FDR’s New Deal and/or b) World War II. Translation: it was ended via a) a veritable government takeover of the economy, including massive wealth transfers to pay for make-work projects and/or b) an extremely costly war, both in money and in lives. Keynesian economists (and the politicians they influence) have used this supposed history to justify claims that more government spending, no matter what form, is the key to economic recovery.

But economic historian Burton Folsom and his wife, Anita Folsom, have written a forceful Wall Street Journal piece debunking the popular mythology of the Great Depression.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stanley Fish, a self-confessed opponent of free speech, reports on a meeting of First Amendment scholars. It provides some fascinating insights into how these scholars think about free speech issues.

One point that I found particularly interesting–or, rather, hair-raising–was the view that the government can regulate the “volume” of speech without undermining freedom of speech.

You may have heard this “volume” metaphor before: supporters of campaign finance regulations frequently use it to suggest that some people’s speech will “drown out” others, the way that a rock band drowns out your voice when you go to place a drink order at a concert. But that’s a false comparison: Rush Limbaugh can pontificate all he wants and that doesn’t prevent me from speaking. (You’re reading this blog, right?)

But the argument Fish describes puts a new twist in that metaphor, and claims that Read the rest of this entry »