June — 2010 — VOICES for REASON

In recent lectures on the incessant pressure group warfare over land rights in America, I’ve highlighted the legal hurdles that Walmart faces everywhere it tries to expand. Walmart’s low prices and non-unionized workforce pose big competitive challenges to high-price mom and pop stores as well as labor unions. Our legal system encourages such groups, as well as nearby landowners, to exert pressure on state regulators and courts to deny Walmart the zoning and development permits it needs to expand.

As far as I knew, however, other large chain stores typically refrained from trying to block Walmart’s expansion through local political pressure. Boy, was I wrong. According to this article in The Wall Street Journal, Walmart’s competitors are sometimes hiring outside consultants adept at “black arts” to block new Walmart projects, while disguising the true opponents’ identities.

In Mundelein, Illinois, near Chicago, a grocery store chain called Jewel-Osco became alarmed when a developer announced plans for a shopping center anchored by a 200,000-square-foot Walmart supercenter with a full grocery store inside. (Walmart is now the nation’s largest purveyor of groceries.) Jewel-Osco turned to the ironically named Saint Consulting Group for help. Saint appointed a project manager who, per company policy, adopted an assumed name. This manager then contacted landowners near the Walmart site and complained—falsely—about how construction of a Walmart had driven down the price of his parents’ home and ruined their planned retirement. Suitably riled up, neighbors climbed on the anti-Walmart bandwagon. Read the rest of this entry »

The Objectivist Academic Center is currently accepting applications for its Fall 2010 incoming class. Designed to provide a comprehensive and systematic study of philosophy, Objectivism and objective communication, this unique program is for those who are serious about advocating pro-reason, pro-individual rights, pro-capitalism views.

The program is especially designed for full-time college students, for whom there is next to no cost. Applications from professionals interested in pursuing careers as intellectual activists are also welcome.

For those who are not able to commit to a full program, the OAC offers an auditing option. Consider taking our “Seminar in Ayn Rand’s Philosophy of Objectivism.”

The final application deadline for this year is July 30.

The U.N. is about to pass another round of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. Is it despite the three earlier rounds of U.N. sanctions that Iran has geared up to produce even more nuclear material — or because of them?

Past sanctions were puny to begin with, then eviscerated by friends of Tehran at the U.N. (Predictably, the regime has sidestepped existing sanctions.) But even if credibly effective sanctions could be imposed — which at the U.N. is fantastical — Iran’s decades of pro-jihadist aggression demand a far more assertive response. Tehran is a belligerent theocracy stained with American blood. Ending the mounting threat from Iran requires a resolute, confident policy on our part, but by pursuing mousy “sanctions” and extending Tehran countless second chances, we’ve appeased the regime.

No wonder Iran’s leaders (credibly) brag of realizing their nuclear goals. Our weakness in the face of this malignant regime empowers it.

Agência BrasilWikiCommons

ObamaCare included a little-noticed provision that will force restaurant chains with twenty or more stores to list how many calories are in each menu item. My view: The government has no business getting involved here. If we want to know how many calories are in our lunch, we can patronize only restaurants that tell us.

But you might wonder: Who could possibly object to giving people more information?

Well, here’s one man who does. Ken Schelper is a Vice President of Davanni’s, a small chain of pizzerias. He notes that under ObamaCare’s caloric mandate, his company will have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to replace all of its store menus, brochures, and drive through signs–every time it changes a single ingredient.

Information isn’t costless. Whether it involves scientific experiments to discover how many calories are in a slice of cheese or printing new menus, providing customers with information imposes genuine costs on businesses–costs that ultimately get passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices and fewer options.

Supporters of the menu requirement would have us believe that the only reason a company would choose not to provide certain kinds of information is because it’s trying to put something over on us. That’s simply not true. It’s worth noting, in this regard, that before ObamaCare passed, customers of Davanni’s were able to find out the caloric content of their food. It was on the restaurant’s website.

Image: flickr

“Brutal blackmail” and “a violation of corporate social responsibility.” That’s how some diabetics in Greece are describing the recent decision by Novo Nordisk, a Danish pharmaceutical company, to stop selling certain insulin products in Greece.

Novo Nordisk manufactures easy-to-use insulin delivery devices that resemble fountain pens. More than 50,000 Greek diabetics use them. But not for long. The company has withdrawn the products from the market.

Why? Because the government of Greece is trying to mitigate its financial crisis at pharmaceutical companies’ expense by unilaterally ordering a 25% reduction in the price of all medicines. According to a Novo Nordisk spokesperson, “the price cut would force its business in Greece to run at a loss.” Oh yes, there’s also a little matter of $36 million that Greece already owes the company, with no certainty of payment in sight.

By any rational standard of justice, Novo Nordisk is completely in the right here. The company has done nothing to harm Greeks—on the contrary, it has offered them a positive value they didn’t have before, benefiting tens of thousands of people. By refusing to sell its products at a loss, the company is simply leaving Greek diabetics exactly as they were before it first offered those easy-to-use insulin pens for sale. Greeks who want more such devices should figure out a way to pay for them—not expect Novo Nordisk to sacrifice for the resolution of financial problems created not by them but by the Greeks themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the hallmarks of intellectual adulthood is the ability to put events in context–to gather all the the relevant facts before drawing definitive conclusions and certainly before taking drastic, long-term action. A tragic accident involving offshore oil drilling (over 1/4 of domestic production is offshore) is certainly a case calling for adult thinking.

Thomas L. Friedman disagrees. In a recent column he encouraged us not only to feel the distress President Obama tells us his 11-year-old daughter is feeling, but also to act on it by trying to get rid of oil altogether. Friedman says that President Obama’s “most important job” is

shaping the long-term public reaction to the spill so that we can use it to generate the political will to break our addiction to oil. In that job, the most important thing Mr. Obama can do is react to this spill as a child would–because it is precisely that simple gut reaction, repeated over and over, speech after speech, that could change our national conversation on energy.

. . . he has to think like a kid. Kids get it. They ask: Why would we want to stay dependent on an energy source that could destroy so many birds, fish, beaches and ecosystems before the next generation has a chance to enjoy them? Why aren’t we doing more to create clean power and energy efficiency when so many others, even China, are doing so?

Someone taking an adult perspective that puts issues in context might explain that oil is essential to our standard of living–he might explain that accidents are part of life (a part to be learned from every time, and prosecuted when appropriate)–he might explain that offshore drilling generally spills very little oil in the scheme of things (far less than natural oil seepage from the ocean floor)–and he might explain that we don’t use much “clean power” (nor does China) because solar panels and windmills are very expensive, not very reliable, and not very powerful.

But for Friedman and his ilk, “A disaster is an inexcusable thing to waste.” And it is a lot easier to foist drastic energy policies upon the nation, when people adopt the perspective on oil that he endorses.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Since Israel forcibly intercepted ships heading to Gaza with “humanitarian” aid, the choir of condemnation has shrieked in unison — from the UK, and most of the European continent, across the Atlantic to the bowels of the U.N. But putting aside questions on the laws governing international waters, was Israel morally right to prevent the ships from reaching Gaza? Yes–I’d argue it was fully within its rights to enforce the naval blockade on Gaza.

To judge Israel’s actions, it is crucial to recognize the broader context: the Gaza strip is under the control of Hamas, a totalitarian Islamist group, that is at war with Israel. Allowing arms, money, and other forms of aid to enter Hamas-controlled Gaza means allowing a sworn enemy to be sustained and strengthened to fight on. And a state facing that situation is entitled to thwart attempts to aid its enemy.

P.S. A word on the blockade itself. My view is that Israel is entitled to seal Gaza off from the world. Is that the most efficient means of thwarting, let alone minimizing, the threat from Hamas? I doubt it — in part because exceptions are often made for so-called humanitarian supplies. Should Israel act assertively to remove the Islamist group from power and dismantle its infrastructure in the Palestinian territories? That’s a point I’ve argued in other places.