The Company You Keep

By Andy, cross-posted from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM)

We are often judged by the company we keep. Sometimes it is fair, sometimes not. In this case I think it is fair.

A looter in Venezuela:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez: May 8 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will raise taxes on foreign oil producers, grabbing a larger share of windfall profit from companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips.

Looters here in the U.S.:

Senator Trent Lott in The Olympian: "The message to the oil companies is, 'Hold down your price of gasoline and it better start sliding back the other way,' " said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. "If they don't control it, and if they continue to have prices go up, profits go up and salaries go up, Congress will do something that might not have the beneficial long-term effect," Lott told CNN's "Late Edition."

Senators Arlen Specter and Carl Levin at WFRV: Lott's comments came a week after Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, echoed the Democratic call for a windfall profits tax when oil prices top $50 a barrel.

Senator Carl Levin appeared on CNN's "Late Edition" with Specter. The Michigan Democrat said he believes gas prices "would come down within a matter of days" if President Bush told oil companies that he was going to support a windfall profits tax.

Senator Chuck Schumer at ABC News: Schumer also supported a windfall profits tax on the oil companies making record profits as drivers pay more at the pumps.

A bunch of looters all.

Because They Say So

By Gus van Horn, cross-posted from the Gus Van Horn blog

There is an editorial in the New York Times by self-proclaimed ex-skeptic of global warming and former used-car salesman Gregg Easterbrook that proclaims that global warming is no longer scientifically controversial. (Yes, his past life is irrelevant here, but I couldn't resist delivering a well-deserved cheap-shot.)

This (non-climate) scientist begs to differ. Consider Easterbrook's idea of a definitive argument in favor of man-induced global warming.

That research is now in, and it shows a strong scientific consensus that an artificially warming world is a real phenomenon posing real danger:

The American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society in 2003 both declared that signs of global warming had become compelling.

In 2004 the American Association for the Advancement of Science said that there was no longer any "substantive disagreement in the scientific community" that artificial global warming is happening.

In 2005, the National Academy of Sciences joined the science academies of Britain, China, Germany, Japan and other nations in a joint statement saying, "There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring."

This year Mr. Karl of the climatic data center said research now supports "a substantial human impact on global temperature increases."

And this month the Climate Change Science Program, the Bush administration's coordinating agency for global-warming research, declared it had found "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system."

Case closed. [link added]

So the liberal media, already known as a giant echo chamber, has now adopted, to bolster its appeals to authority, the argument, "If it weren't true, it wouldn't be so loud."

A layman can be forgiven for taking the word of a scientist or, in this case, a bunch of organizations that purport to speak on the behalf of so many scientists.

But someone who hangs a shingle out as an expert on "global warming" cannot. He has a responsibility to determine whether there really is such a consensus and on what scientific facts that consensus is based. He should furthermore report these very things, laundry lists of organizations with impressive names be damned.

And if there is not a consensus, or it is not based on scientific fact, such an "expert" risks becoming part of the real story -- a massive fabrication -- by failing to report that.

I haven't time to investigate every last institution and person in the above litany, but I know offhand that the AAAS, as the parent of a prestigious journal, Science, is, as such, suspect when it says anything about global warming. I blogged about this awhile back.

(One question: If a view is explicitly backed by 1% of all papers and is implicitly backed by a third, how is it a "consensus" view?) So Peiser contests findings published in Science. Fair enough. Science should at least give him a hearing, right? And if he's right, shouldn't these results be published?

Dr [Benny] Peiser submitted his findings to Science in January, and was asked to edit his paper for publication - but has now been told that his results have been rejected on the grounds that the points he make had been "widely dispersed on the internet".

Let's grant that the findings could be described as "widely dispersed on the internet." But the other results have the credibility of publication in a major peer-reviewed scientific journal, while Peiser's can be dismissed as "junk from the internet" until they are subjected to the same rigorous scrutiny. Furthermore, since scientists generally depend upon data vetted by their peers rather than "junk from the internet," rejection of this study on such flimsy grounds is a disservice to those scientists who read the contested article in Science. They will remain under the mistaken impression that Oreskes is correct until Peiser is published.

So at least one of Easterbrook's authorities is probably not quite being honest. Would it be too terribly surprising if other major associations of scientists have also placed political goals over objective truth? How many non-leftist scientists, exactly, are there? (Creationists do not count. They're not scientists.)

And as to Easterbrook himself, consider that just yesterday, I blogged about how ABC shouted from the rooftops that, "[A]ll but a handful of hurricane experts now agree this worsening bears the fingerprints of man-made global warming," while a real live expert calmly laid out facts and arguments plainly to the contrary. Would it be too far-fetched to believe that Easterbrook is doing basically the same thing? Not to me. Not when his "evidence" consists of appeals to authorities of whom at least one is known to be non-objective about the very issue he is writing about.

-- CAV

Our Friends, the Saudis

By Gus van Horn, cross-posted from the Gus van Horn blog

A Failure to Educate

By Gus Van Horn, cross-posted from the Gus Van Horn blog

Reader Hannes Hacker sent me a link to an amusing video clip of the effects of dropping samples of various alkali metals into water. I won't spoil it by describing the last such demonstration, so I'll describe the second to last by quoting from the clip: "Imagine the effects of dropping a hand grenade into a bath tub."

This video clip reminded me of a memorable footnote I encountered while reading Oliver Sacks's Uncle Tungsten a couple of years ago. Sacks quotes from an autobiographical account by Linus Pauling, in which he describes how he was able to purchase potassium cyanide as a lad from the druggist:

Just think of the differences today. A young person gets interested in chemistry and is given a chemical set. But it doesn't contain potassium cyanide. It doesn't even contain copper sulfate or anything else interesting because all the interesting chemicals are considered dangerous substances. Therefore, these budding young chemists don't have a chance to do anything engrossing with their chemistry sets. As I look back, I think it is pretty remarkable that Mr. Ziegler, this friend of the family, would have so easily turned over one-third of an ounce of potassium cyanide to me, an eleven-year-old boy. (86)

For crying out loud, we have to worry about what adults might do with such substances these days! That's an important point I'll return to shortly, but not before I relate a few more vignettes.

In parallel with the above story, fellow submarine blogger Bothenook relates that it used to be fairly easy for kids to get guns and ammunition.

You've all heard the "When I was a kid...." lines.

Here's one of my own: when I was a kid, nobody in town (Burns Oregon, pop. 1400) even thought twice about seeing two 11 year olds walking down the street with side by side shotguns or 22s slung over their shoulders. I used to go to old man Wentzl's store, buy a box of #4 shot 20 gauge shotgun shells, and John would buy a box or two of 22 long rifle hollow points (Hey, those were the best dammit. We knew that hollow points were the bullet of choice of shooting writers in field and stream, so that's the best, no questions asked!) Hell, jackrabbits were just a couple of feet outside city limits. As long as you didn't point the guns back into town, nobody cared. That's what kids were supposed to do! [I guess Bo ran out of real "caps" and resorted to busting the ones from this passage, so I've slipped a few in here. My bold, too.]

Note two things about the passage in bold. (1) Our young gun fanatic knew what safety precautions to take, and I am sure this went well beyond not pointing the gun towards other people. (2) More importantly, he observed these precautions. Part of why he did is nicely summed up by the last two words, "Nobody cared." In other words, the gun-toting kids knew full well that someone would care if they did not act responsibly, and that they'd pay for it. Until (and unless) children become independent adults, it is crucial that adults make it clear to them that the irresponsible actions will have bad consequences.

Bo's wrote the above passage in reaction to a news story from which he quotes:

Police closed off most of the Golden Triangle and blocked highway exits to Downtown while they investigated reports of an armed man atop a building on Wednesday afternoon.

After about two hours of frenzied police activity, officials held a news conference on Penn Avenue and said that they had determined that the man seen by witnesses had only been shooting a pellet gun at pigeons.

In this day and age, such stories of overreaction on the part of public officials are commonplace. Still, something about that post stuck in the back of my mind, only to be jarred back, so to speak, by the explosive video above and by a story about -- of all things -- how city slickers are moving to the country only to learn about septic tanks the hard way.

"It's a big frustration," said Tom Miller, an agricultural extension agent who has spent 15 years teaching Maryland residents about septic systems. "This state has half a million households on septic, and many have no idea how to use it."

Teaching people to use their septic tanks properly doesn't mean they'll do it, according to a report last year in the Journal of Environmental Health. After canvassing Ohio counties, the authors found that "at best only a handful of residents" pumped their tanks in response to education about septic systems.

The solution, the report said, may be more aggressive regulation. After systems are installed, few local governments require that they be inspected, pumped out or maintained. [bold added]

Consider this story in relation to Bothenook's post, and you will see that only a few decades after kids could often be trusted to behave responsibly with firearms, adults cannot reliably be trusted to keep from having to pump human waste from their own property or presumably facing lawsuits for the fact that their negligence can contaminate their neighbors' wells. What's going on here?

Surely by now, I thought, if the consequences of letting a septic tank overflow were dire enough, there would already be laws on the books and court precedents to take up the slack where a homeowner's desire to keep up his property left off. But then, I realized that there are probably a million ways a negligent homeowner would be able to get off the hook.

A quick disclaimer before I move on: Much of the following is speculation. I have not researched property rights issues pertaining to septic tanks, but I have a hunch I'm probably on the right track here....

And when the government does not protect the rights of its citizens, by holding the negligent or the criminal to account, you see both an increase in noncompliance with social norms and the law, and, in response, calls for more preventative action by government officials.

Our new rural homeowners probably know they'll get a slap on the wrist at most if they let their tanks overflow, and they can just pay someone to clean up the mess anyway, so they skip the common-sense maintenance. Probably, most septic tank overflows are not a big deal when the rights of nearby property owners (vs. the false standards of environmentalism) are considered, but they can be. And when a well does get poisoned enough to sicken someone else, I am sure that every excuse is made to call it an "accident" so the negligent homeowner can escape being made an example of. This will obviously fail to encourage others to be more vigilant about their own tanks.

And so many of the same people who fight for criminals to be excused from responsibility will support the government taking an ever-larger role in making sure that what ordinary adults and even children used to be trusted to do will get done. A government official will inconvenience you at your own home to make you pump your tanks whether or not you would do that already. And law enforcement will overreact to reports that someone might have something remotely like a gun. And our lawmakers will get closer and closer to banning the possession of firearms outright.

And if I sound like I am being alarmist, consider some real-life symptoms of our society's failure to transmit its cultural norms to its children. As our society stops holding individuals accountable for their own actions, we see the apparent paradox of more government intrusion into our lives coupled with its less effective protection of our individual rights. This seeming paradox arises because we are attempting to have the government do the impossible: assume the responsibilities its citizens abdicate daily. It is no more possible to have a "centralized morality" than it is to have (the more widely-discredited) centralized economy. Why? For the very same reason: In large part, because no government bureaucracy is all-knowing or omnipotent, which is what would be required to replace the countless decisions made by individuals on a daily basis.

And so we have stories like this about drivers "refusing to buckle" their seat belts -- as if the government's job is to protect some bumpkin in a truck from his own foolishness (or pay his medical bills) at my expense.

"Those who still don't buckle up need to know that police officers will be aggressively enforcing seat belt laws throughout the country and that violators will be ticketed," said Phil Haseltine, executive director of the National Safety Council's Air Bag & Seat Belt Safety Campaign.

I submit that someone who worries more about getting a ticket than protecting his own life is not a free man and is unfit to continue living anyway. He is a second-hander focused on what others think rather than on what he should do to live his own life.

And then we have stories like this.

An investigation by the Los Angeles Times found that in the past four years, nearly 16,000 inmates released without serving their full sentences were rearrested, including 16 men who were charged with murder.

More than a quarter of those were charged with violent or life-endangering crimes such as robbery and drunken driving.

Some inmates were freed early -- sometimes spending only days in jail -- despite judges' orders that they serve their full terms, the newspaper said.

A sheriff's department analysis of booking statistics since 1999 found that inmates released early were no more likely to be rearrested than those who served full terms, the Times said. [bold]

"No more likely to be rearrested, eh?" If the government were more concerned about protecting its citizens than making sure the criminal element were comfortable in jail, or out of jail altogether, the crimes committed by such should-be inmates would be taken as an argument that they (and perhaps the ones not released early) weren't being held long enough. But in today's responsibility-free society, this is taken to mean that our lousy criminal justice system can continue conducting business as usual. This will encourage crime, not deter or prevent it.

Our society is failing to transmit the cultural elements necessary for civilized existence to the next generation. If we continue to do this, we will find out that government control of our lives is no substitute for responsible behavior on the part of most citizens.

-- CAV

Mom's Invaluable Lesson

By Nicholas Provenzo, cross-posted from The Rule of Reason

Joseph Kellard was kind enough to offer RoR his article recaling his mother on Mother's Day.

My late mother, Rita, showered lots of love on her children, and she expressed her love to me best in a lesson capsulated by the saying "Be your own person."

My individuality sprouted at age 7, when the seeds of my atheism were sown. My Catholic school teacher taught that Jesus walked on a body of water, but I doubted this "truth." Years later, I questioned why the equally unrealistic tales of Greek gods were called "myths," but an immaculate conception and a parted sea were "miracles" to be taken on faith

By 13, I'd rejected religion, refused to make my confirmation and stopped attending church. While my mother voiced her disapproval, she ultimately respected my decisions. She never imposed her beliefs on me. Her unstated yet invaluable lesson was that it's good to think for myself.

Nonetheless, my mother wielded a strong influence on me throughout my adolescence. Intellectually, through her example as a voracious reader, she instilled in me a life-long love of learning. Morally, she shrewdly dissected people's beliefs and behavior, and fearlessly criticized them when they acted unjustly. Politically, she was a devout liberal of the FDR variety. Her positions seemed well reasoned, and she exemplified how to passionately stand up for your beliefs.

The more experienced and well-read I grew, however, the more the independent, reasoning mind she'd cultivated in me challenged her beliefs. We often had some heated debates.

For instance, my mother, a switchboard operator, believed the relatively low wages workers like her made was due to business owners collaborating to pay below what their employees should earn. If true, I asked, then why didn't employers conspire to pay all operators even lower wages? Because, I argued, when employers pay workers below what the free market demands for any labor, other employers will attract those workers with higher salaries, thus raising average wages.

During such arguments, my mother often stubbornly repeated her positions. She clung to her beliefs -- her faith. And I'd stood by the truth, just like she'd taught me to do.

While we eventually grew apart, my basic love for my mother never ceased. In part, I always admired her for teaching me, as I eulogized at her funeral, "how not to just passively accept what most people hold as true, but to question them to find the logic in their beliefs."

Today, this lesson serves as the basis of my philosophy, one of rational inquiry and integrity toward my conclusions. If, instead, my mother had scornfully crushed my independent, individual beliefs early on, I¹d have been robbed of the opportunity to achieve the much greater happiness I've enjoyed since adopting my reason-based ideas. This achievement alone makes a parent's respect for a child's individuality a crucial part of parenting.

I agree. Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers who teach their children well.

The missed debate over 'price-gouging'

By Nicholas Provenzo, cross-posted from The Rule of Reason

Investor's Business Daily recently ran an interesting editorial on the price-gouging legislation before Congress. The following is an excerpt:

To an economist, there's no such thing as "gouging" in a market that is free and efficient, and the oil and oil-product markets meet that standard. They have been probed often for collusion and other forms of manipulation, and they have come up clean. Charging the going rate under such conditions is inherently fair. The price is right as long as it's determined by the free market.

Economists don't call the shots in a democracy, of course, and public anger over high prices can force even the most sensible politicians into a corner. Do they try to educate the public -- and risk losing office in the process -- or do they go with the flow and try to do as little damage as possible? If it's the latter, they can limit the market interference by making sure any price-gouging rule is limited in time and place to some short-term crisis, like a hurricane.

Unfortunately, the House bill is not designed to fade away. If it were put on the books, it would eventually create price rules of some kind, with stiff penalties for violators and potentially rich publicity for prosecutors. The net effect would be a new price-control regime, and millions of American motorists remember how the last such regime went.

It's a fundamental rule of markets that setting an artificially low price for something will lead to less production -- an artificial shortage. We don't have gas shortages. We'll have them, as in the 1970s, if oil companies, refiners and station owners are forced through regulation or threat of fines to sell below the market price.

Even if Congress thinks it's not serious about price controls, it's already done some damage by endorsing the idea that something -- or someone -- other than supply and demand may be to blame for the gas-price spike. In effect, it's drawing attention away from the steps that should be taken and blaming the usual suspects instead.

I agree with most of the economic analyses, but there is point this article misses that is critical in my mind: it is not knowledge or ignorance of economics that prompted the House to pass anti-"price-gouging" legislation; economics has nothing to do with it. The House voted to outlaw "price-gouging" on moral grounds--animated by the view that profit itself is immoral.

Consider the argument against "price-gouging" during a disaster--an extreme situation that is often used to highlight the alleged evils of capitalism. Let's say that a disaster strikes an area and the municipal water supply is put out of service. In the absence of the normal supply of water, there will be entrepreneurs who will drop what they are doing, fill up trucks with water, drive to affected area and sell that water for a premium, motivated only by the profit that they will receive. Anti-"price-gouging" would criminalize their profits on the grounds that these entrepreneurs are exploiting those who need water.

But are the entrepreneurs immoral? Before the entrepreneurs, there was no water to be had. The entrepreneurs chose to reconfigure their lives in an emergency situation to provide a critical good. In exchange, they set a price for their time and energy that would allow them to profit--that is, they sought to get something out of the work that they performed. To force the entrepreneurs to charge less than the price that they would freely choose is to mandate that they be robbed under the aegis of the law. Furthermore, such action prevents others from buying water at a price that they would freely pay given the circumstances.

Could the victims of the disaster choose not to by water at disaster prices? Of course. Entrepreneurs do not put guns to people's heads saying, "buy from me or else." They say instead, "these is my price; you are free to take it or leave it" and no one has a right to outlaw such terms. Why? Because even in a disaster, one does not have a right to upend an individual's right to live his life for his own sake.

Now I know that to many people, the above scenario sounds cruel and unfeeling. These people will ask what about charity and human kindness. Charity and human kindness are wonderful things and there never has been a shortage of them to people who have been hurt though no fault of their own; think of the millions of dollars of donations made on behalf of the victims of 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina. Yet charity is not a right and when it is coerced, it is no longer charity. It is human cannibalism--and that's precisely what the House seeks to instill through its anti-price-gouging legislation.

Thus the "price gouging" debate ultimately hinges upon a moral argument. Furthermore, note that the free-market economists, for all their practical defense of the market, are unwilling to justify their position with a moral argument. They will offer economic truth after economic truth but they will never challenge their opponents directly by simply stating that the market works because people have a moral right to pursue their self-interest. These free-market economists can never win against the advocates of state power--not when their opponents claim that morality is on their side and continue to remain unchallenged.

Eminent domain debate recap

by Nicholas Provenzo, cross-posted from The Rule of Reason

As promised, here is my report on The Objective Standard's debate on eminent domain between Jeffrey Finkle, president of the International Economic Development Council (arguing to preserve eminent domain), and Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute (arguing to abolish it).

On one level, one has to admire Jeffrey Finkle for chutzpah. Given the massive backlash against the Kelo decision that enshrined the use of takings for private economic development, one would think that here is an issue where one would wish to tread softly, if only out of fear of being tarred and feathered by angry homeowners. Not so with Finkle; for him, eminent domain is a failing community's tool of choice so it can provide the needy with services such as Meals on Wheels.

I'm not kidding. Meals on Wheels was among the central moral justifications for taking of property--and I use the term "property" loosely. When I asked him for an explicit definition of what he thought the word meant, Finkle outright evaded a question. And in a statement that would make Mussolini proud, Finkle argued that he would not sacrifice the needs of an entire community to some obstinate property holder. At root, Finkle believes that need is virtue.

It was intriguing to see how Finkle arrived at his position. Individuals acting out of self-interests are usurious slugs; as an example, Finkle argued that grocery stores avoid the inner-city while simultaneously overcharge their inner city customers. Yet put those same people into groups and give them power over other people's lives and they become omni-benevolent. At root here, Finkle believes that selflessness is a virtue.

And all the while, Finkle battered the audience with package deals. Houston is a disaster because it doesn't have zoning; families are forced to live next to chemical factories. New Orleans could never be redeveloped without eminent domain; abandoned property would remain titled to its last owner forever. No highway would exist without eminent domain; a minority of one could squelch every new avenue and no alternatives save for the takings power exist.

In contrast, Yaron Brook simply argued that individual rights matter. The right to property is a corollary of the right to life and no less important. People should deal with one another though persuasion and voluntary exchange; not to is to enshrine force as a means to an end and threaten all rights accordingly. The desire for growth is not license to usurp the rights of others. Brook's arguments were clear, they flowed logically, and they explicitly addressed the fundamentals of the debate.

And in the debate's most telling moment, Brook expanded Finkle's claim that he supported a Quaker's right not to serve in the military (don't ask me what made Finkle mention this; it seemingly fell out of nowhere) to the right of a property holder not to give his property to others. Where Finkle disintegrated, Brook integrated. That's what Objectivists do.

So in the end, score one for the Objectivists and the debate host The Objective Standard (and its editor Craig Biddle). In my view, The Objective Standard is proving to be everything an Objectivist publication should be and more and I look forward to more events of this caliber.

Another wrong answer on the FDA

by Nicholas Provenzo, cross posted from The Rule of Reason

Need more proof that the Republican are clueless? Then read on . . .

A top Republican senator on Monday called for Congress to give the Food and Drug Administration more power to review drugs after they are approved for the public, citing a government report that found lingering safety concerns at the agency.

The report, conducted by the Government Accountability Office, said there is no clear process for the FDA to monitor products once they are sold and that the agency should have the authority to require additional, post-approval studies from drug manufacturers.

"This report identifies the kinds of problems I've been tracking and investigating for the last two years," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, who released the report. "The FDA needs to make big changes."

The Iowa Republican requested the GAO review in late 2004 after Merck & Co. Inc. recalled its arthritis pill Vioxx because of links to heart problems.

The FDA has also been criticized for its handling of other safety issues, including antidepressant use among children and teenagers amid evidence it may cause suicidal behavior.

"FDA lacks a clear and effective process for making decisions about, and providing management oversight of, postmarket drug safety issues," the GAO report said. "We observed that there is a lack of criteria for determining what safety actions to take and when to take them."

The FDA sometimes approves products under the condition that companies later provide more data, but it lacks the authority to require such studies in most cases. The GAO said longer trials after approval could "answer safety questions about risks associated with the longer-term use of drugs." [Susan Heavey, Reuters]

Great--the freedom to make medical choices for one's self now looms even more distant.

I have a bold idea: why not simply recognize that people must be responsible for their own choices, including what medicines they are to take? One suspects that such a view runs counter to Sen. Grassley's theory of government; after all, Iowa is a state so fat off of government subsidies to agriculture (which are predicated upon the idea that the American farmer is incapable of running a profitable farm and thus must be rescued from both himself and the market) one wonders if Grassley and his electorate had an independent brain cell between them all.

Pasnau on Churchill

By Diana, cross-posted from NoodleFood

This letter to the editor on the Ward Churchill scandal was published today as an op-ed in Boulder's Daily Camera. It was written by the chairman of my department, Bob Pasnau. And it's yet another reason why I like and respect him so very much.

Since the investigative report released earlier this month on the Churchill affair, little has been heard from CU faculty. This is understandable, since the whole affair is such a quagmire, but still the silence is unfortunate, since no one is so well placed to judge the matter. I hope these remarks will provide some helpful context.

A careful reading of the investigative report (available on CU's web site [here]) shows the committee to have discharged its duty with tremendous care for the many nuances of the case, scholarly and political. Ironically, however, the very care taken in the report, which runs to over 100 pages, may have kept the full seriousness of the charges from being fully appreciated. In short, the committee found two cases where Churchill extensively plagiarized the work of others. They found other cases where he first wrote articles under a false name, and then in a later work cited those earlier articles as providing independent confirmation for his own claims. They found a great many places where apparently detailed footnotes turned out on close inspection to offer no support whatsoever for the claims being made, and found that Churchill continued to stick with these false sources in later work even after being confronted in print with their inadequacy. Assessing the cumulative impact of these tactics, the committee describes "a pattern and consistent research stratagem to cloak extreme, unsupportable, propaganda-like claims of fact that support Professor Churchill's legal and political claims with the aura of authentic scholarly research by referencing apparently (but not actually) supportive independent third-party sources."

The fact that this disparate group of highly distinguished scholars could reach its verdict with complete unanimity -- save for the final, delicate question of what sanction to impose -- should give one a great deal of confidence in their verdict. No such confidence can be taken from Churchill's own statement (available on the Camera's web site [here]). A careful reading of the original report, next to his response, shows him to have misstated and ignored the committee's findings at every stage. Indeed, one might almost laugh at the way his slipshod responses reenact the very sorts of intellectual failings that the report originally highlighted.

One might laugh, that is, if the whole affair were not so depressing. Perhaps its most unfortunate aspect, beyond the immediate and very serious damage to CU, is the impression it seems to have left in some quarters that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Here my own experience is relevant. In the course of my duties evaluating the work of my colleagues, I have never encountered a single instance of fraud or misconduct, or even the bare allegation of such. Additionally, in all of the graduate seminars I have conducted, and dissertations I have read, I have never seen anything even remotely resembling this sort of conduct. Furthermore, over many years of evaluating thousands of job applicants, reviewing their qualifications with the greatest care, I have never seen or heard of even the shadow of this sort of behavior. Finally, in all my years of scholarly research, over the countless articles and books that I have read, I have never encountered anything of this kind.

Happily, it does not fall upon me to decide what sort of penalty is appropriate in this case. But were such misconduct discovered among my own faculty, or in my own field at large, I would be the first to seek that person's dismissal.

Professor Robert Pasnau
Chair, Department of Philosophy, CU/Boulder
1837 Mapleton Ave., Boulder, CO 80304
303-938-8803

Although I haven't yet read the report in detail, the proven misconduct of Ward Churchill clearly warranted his firing, particularly since he steadfastly refused to acknowledge any substantial wrongdoing. Yet just one committee member positively recommended that sanction: two actively opposed dismissal, recommending suspension without pay for two years instead, and two accepted dismissal as appropriate but recommended five years suspension without pay for two years instead. Those four committee members were terribly unjust: although they formed the proper moral judgment, they failed to act upon that knowledge.

So I certainly wish that Bob Pasnau -- or men and women more like him -- composed that faculty committee. Then Ward Churchill would have been fired as he so richly deserves. Sure, he would have sued, then the University would have bought him off with some outrageous sum of money. Still, the proper moral message would have been clear. As it stands, even the most basic forms of academic integrity and honesty are no longer required of the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Marginal Humans

Too many moons ago, I uploaded my paper "On the Margins of Humanity" to my web site without announcing it. The paper attempts, probably not terribly successfully, to attack the marginal humans argument for animal rights. Frankly, I think that properly understanding this issue requires a good theory of broken units, but I couldn't see a way to argue that in a graduate paper. Nonetheless, I suspect the paper contains at least a few true and interesting thoughts.

By Diana, cross-posted from NoodleFood

The Anichkovsky Horses

I recently finished re-reading We the Living (which I hadn't read in over 10 years), and I was especially struck by this magnificent passage near the beginning of Part 2. Rand is describing the famous statues on the bridge near Anichkovsky palace:

Four black statues stand at the four corners of the bridge. They may be only an accident and an ornament; they may be the very spirit of Petrograd, the city raised by man against the will of nature. Each statue is of a man and a horse. In the first one, the furious hoofs of a rearing beast are swung high in the air, ready to crush the naked, kneeling man, his arm stretched in a first effort toward the bridle of the monster. In the second, the man is up on one knee, his torso leaning back, the muscles of his legs, of his arms, of his body ready to burst through the skin, as he pulls at the bridle, in the supreme moment of the struggle. In the third, they are face to face, the man up on his feet, his head at the nostrils of a beast bewildered by a first recognition of its master. In the fourth, the beast is tamed; it steps obediently, led by the hand of the man who is tall, erect, calm in his victory, stepping forward with serene assurance, his head held straight, his eyes looking steadily into an unfathomable future.

After some Google searching, I was able to find images of each of the four sculptures. (Much to my surprise, there was no single website that had an image of all four).




For those with a taste for art collection, the Hermitage Museum also sells tiny replicas of all four statues for $70-80 apiece.

Posted by Paul, cross-posted from NoodleFood

Three Cool Videos

1. The human body can an awe-inspiring instrument, if raw physical talent is subject to proper training and discipline.

2. Pascal's Wager and other bad arguments for the worship of God are perfectly dramatized in this short film. (I lectured on Pascal's Wager to the full Introduction to Philosophy class this semester, so I particularly appreciated the perfect humor of the film.)

3. Some high school students made a trailer for a movie version of Anthem. As expected, the production values aren't terribly high, but it was cool to watch.

By Diana, Cross-posted from NoodleFood

The Dangers Of Belief: Enron

The Enron case is fraught with belief (in the sense of faith) from one end to another. Alex Epstein noted a few months ago in Capitalism Magazine:

Most of its executives believed that Enron was a basically productive company that could be righted. This is why Chairman Ken Lay did not flee to the Caymans with riches, but stayed through the end....

...Observe that Enron's problem was not that it was "too concerned" about profit, but that it believed money does not have to be made: it can be had simply by following one's whims. The solution to prevent future Enrons, then, is not to teach (or force) CEOs to curb their profit-seeking; the desire to produce and trade valuable products is the essence of business--and of successful life.

Kenneth Lay's defense team seem to be heading down the same dangerous path. They believe, or at least want the jury to believe that Lay is a good guy. Why believe that? Well, just believe:

May 8 (Bloomberg) -- Defense lawyers at the fraud trial of former Enron Corp. executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling rested their case in Houston federal court after a Baptist preacher testified in support of Lay's character.

The Reverend Edwin Young, pastor of Houston's Second Baptist Church, said today that he believed Lay's civic generosity stemmed from the poverty of his youth.

I'll leave it up to the jury to make the final decision. I haven't heard the evidence. I just hope that they look at the evidence, and don't allow any part of their decision to be based upon believing what a Baptist preacher has to say about a defendent. Lay is either guilty or not guilty. Whatever "civic generosity" in which he may have indulged is irrelevant.

By Andy, cross-posted from The Charlotte Capitalist

Galbraith Myths

Fannie Flono of The Charlotte Observer liked John Kenneth Galbraith:

The ideas in that book continue to reverberate in today's discussion of social and economic policy. Economists and politicians differ over the Keynesian ideas Galbraith espoused -- that government intervention is necessary at times to help the economy, particularly during crises.

But the notion of an America obsessed with consumerism, one where the rich get richer and the working class gets poorer in money and in social services, still resonates. The gap between the rich and poor is wider than it's ever been, and it's getting wider every day. Couple that with an ever-shrinking middle-class and many have found a fresh take on Galbraith's old tome.

"Government intervention is necessary at times?" "At times" would actually be refreshing compared to the constant breath and life-crushing intrusions. And what is wrong with the rich getting richer? Nothing, if they earned it. Please tell me Fannie, what country are you talking about where the poor get poorer. Surely, not the United States of America. You must be refering to some dictatorship in Africa or South America or Asia. Not in America.

Get the straight scoop on Galbraith here.

By Andy, cross-posted from The Charlotte Capitalist

Another Stupid Gas Gimmick

By Gus van Horn, Crossposted from the Gus van Horn blog

Why don't more Objectivist scholars do this . . .

That is, why don't they recommend books? After re-reading my post on IP, it dawned on me that while the history of property law is important, I personally don't know much of that history. Wouldn't it be nice if an Objectivist put out a reccomend reading list of good books on the subject like Objectivist and Ph.D. student in economics Isaac DiIanni does on his website for texts on economics? Wouldn't it be nice if every Objectivist scholar listed five essential texts for his field so if you needed to get your bearings on a topic, you would have an easy resource to call upon?

After all, how long does it take to write a handful of 100-word book reviews of texts that are useful and important in your field of study?

Update: I hear Scott Powell plans to offer such a list as his website as part of what he calls "A First History for Adults." I've heard nothing but raves about Scott's telephone course on history, so I look forward to seeing his list (and taking his course myself).

Update II: Art historian Lee Sandstead now has recomendations online too.

Posted by Nicholas Provenzo, cross-posted from Rule of Reason

Another inane bill out of Congress

Here's another bill (S. Res. 458) that takes the cake. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has proposed a non-binding resolution that says the Senate thinks all American patriot songs, poems and oaths should be recited only in English. (Rep. Jim Ryun (R-KS) has proposed parallel bill (H. Res 793) in the House.)

Here's the part of the bill that gets me:

Whereas the people of the United States are united not by race, ancestry, or origin, but by a common language, English, and by common belief in the principles prescribed in the founding documents of the Nation, especially the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution

That's a strange grammatical construction. The phrase places "English" before the principle of individual rights and constitutional government; while the "and" attempts to make the two equal, there's simply no way one's language can be made co-equal with one's agreement with individual rights. It is like saying the most important thing in life is clean teeth, and freedom.

If every American and American immigrant really agreed with the principle of individual rights, I wouldn't care one lick what language they chose to sing the nation's hymns in. I don't know about you, but I am of the mind that the Star-Spangled Banner would sound great in Arabic.

Update: Graig at The Primacy of Awesome pretty much thinks the same way.

Posted by Nicholas Provenzo, Crossposted from Rule of Reason

Interview WITH ALLEN FORKUM

Stay tuned for a phone interview with Allen Forkum of Cox & Forkum. [Editor's comment: Don't touch that dial!] More information will be available at Egoist Solid Vox radio podcast homepage and Thinker To Thinker blog in the near future.

Related: My post, INTERVIEW WITH JOHN COX & ALLEN FORKUM.


Ego preparing for the radio podcast show. Photo from Blue Chip Café. The framed image is Cox & Forkum's editorial cartoon, Bar Codes, 12/22/01, p. 110, Black & White World.



UPDATE 05/27/06:

Here is a link to the interview at Egoist.SolidVox.com and here is the MP3 audio file. Read Allen Forkum's comment. If you want to comment on the show, please go to Egoist.ThinkerToThinker.com.

Posted by: Martin Lindeskog, Crossposted from EGO

Bush and Congress Should Lift Environmental Restrictions on Energy Production

American supply of energy is being strangled by the policies of U.S. federal and state governments.

By Andrew Bernstein

With American consumers currently paying the highest gasoline prices in recent history, and after another winter of high heating costs, many Americans are properly concerned about America's energy future. Predictably, many politicians and commentators blame the "greed" of U.S. energy companies for the soaring prices. The truth, however, is that prices rise when demand increases relative to supply, and that the American supply of energy is being strangled by the policies of U.S. federal and state governments.

A prime example of such strangulation is the moratorium on offshore drilling for oil and natural gas imposed on 85 percent of America's coastal waters for the past quarter century. Last week, when the House rejected an attempt to lift the moratorium, it sent a powerful message that the strangulation will continue.

Let us examine some of the other policies that have brought America--a country blessed with abundant natural resources and possessing the technology to produce energy more efficiently than ever--to a state of energy poverty.

In addition to the moratorium on offshore drilling, the federal government repeatedly refuses to permit oil drilling in Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Geologists claim that ANWR holds seven billion barrels of oil, enabling it to add significantly to American energy production. Further, in large measure due to environmental restrictions, America has not built a new oil refinery for more than 25 years, meaning a diminished ability to refine crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, and other petroleum products. Our refineries run at capacity constantly, making repairs difficult, leaving them more susceptible to breakdowns and fires, and--with most centered in the Gulf of Mexico--leaving the country's supply of refined oil vulnerable to such natural disasters as Katrina.

Additionally, regulations have made building new nuclear power plants economically uninviting--despite the fact that nuclear plants, operated in free countries, where top minds are liberated to create advanced technology, have proven their reliability and safety. In France, for example, nuclear power provides roughly two-thirds of the nation's electricity. American nuclear plants have had, and continue to show, a superb safety record--and this includes Three Mile Island, whose 1979 partial meltdown led to no deaths or injuries.

Finally, environmental restrictions also limit production of natural gas, which currently supplies 25 percent of the energy Americans consume, a figure that will rise in the future. Huge natural gas reserves in places such as the Rocky Mountain basins, Alaska, and the Outer Continental Shelf are either "off limits" or have their development severely restricted. These unnecessary restrictions endure despite the fact that the wholesale price of natural gas has quadrupled since the 1990s. As an example of the hurdles placed in front of natural gas companies, producers in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, which holds 39 trillion cubic feet of gas, several years ago saw the federal government suspend the issuing of drilling permits pending the outcome of a second "environmental impact" study. Is this kind of treatment going to encourage more companies to get into the energy business?

The United States is a country rich in both energy sources and the technology necessary to develop them. But the policies of our own government are preventing such development from occurring. America needs to learn from the bitter experience of England. Last century, a popular expression "taking coals to Newcastle" (a center of English coal production) was coined to indicate the absurdity of taking a product to a place that was plentiful in it. But in the late 1940s, when the British government nationalized the coal industry, shortages and rationing resulted, and taking coal to Newcastle became a grim reality. Similarly, the United States today, with its enormous supplies of oil, natural gas, and other energy sources, is suffering high prices because of restrictions imposed by our government.

If the U.S. government established freedom in the energy industry by removing environmental restrictions, we would witness a significant increase in domestic production of oil, natural gas, and electricity. This would do more than increase supply and lower prices for American customers. It would herald a new commitment by the U.S. government to economic freedom and capitalism. The relative freedom of the computer industry has led to an explosion of innovativeness and productivity. The same freedom in the energy industry will lead to the same result.

What We Owe Our Soldiers

By Alex Epstein
Every Memorial Day, we pay tribute to the American men and women who have died in combat. With speeches and solemn ceremonies, we recognize their courage and valor. But one fact goes unacknowledged in our Memorial Day tributes: all too many of our soldiers have died unnecessarily--because they were sent to fight for a purpose other than America's freedom.

The proper purpose of a government is to protect its citizens' lives and freedom against the initiation of force by criminals at home and aggressors abroad. The American government has a sacred responsibility to recognize the individual value of every one of its citizens' lives, and thus to do everything possible to protect the rights of each to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. This absolutely includes our soldiers.

Soldiers are not sacrificial objects; they are full-fledged Americans with the same moral right as the rest of us to the pursuit of their own goals, their own dreams, their own happiness. Rational soldiers enjoy much of the work of military service, take pride in their ability to do it superlatively, and gain profound satisfaction in protecting the freedom of every American, including their own freedom.

Soldiers know that in entering the military, they are risking their lives in the event of war. But this risk is not, as it is often described, a "sacrifice" for a "higher cause." When there is a true threat to America, it is a threat to all of our lives and loved ones, soldiers included. Many become soldiers for precisely this reason; it was, for instance, the realization of the threat of Islamic terrorism after September 11--when 3,000 innocent Americans were slaughtered in cold blood on a random Tuesday morning--that prompted so many to join the military.

For an American soldier, to fight for freedom is not to fight for a "higher cause," separate from or superior to his own life--it is to fight for his own life and happiness. He is willing to risk his life in time of war because he is unwilling to live as anything other than a free man. He does not want or expect to die, but he would rather die than live in slavery or perpetual fear. His attitude is epitomized by the words of John Stark, New Hampshire’s most famous soldier in the Revolutionary War: "Live free or die."

What we owe these men who fight so bravely for their and our freedom is to send them to war only when that freedom is truly threatened, and to make every effort to protect their lives during war--by providing them with the most advantageous weapons, training, strategy, and tactics possible.

Shamefully, America has repeatedly failed to meet this obligation. It has repeatedly placed soldiers in harm's way when no threat to America existed--e.g., to quell tribal conflicts in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. America entered World War I, in which 115,000 soldiers died, with no clear self-defense purpose but rather on the vague, self-sacrificial grounds that "The world must be made safe for democracy." America's involvement in Vietnam, in which 56,000 Americans died in a fiasco that American officials openly declared a "no-win" war, was justified primarily in the name of service to the South Vietnamese. And the current war in Iraq--which could have had a valid purpose as a first step in ousting the terrorist-sponsoring, anti-American regimes of the Middle East--is responsible for thousands of unnecessary American deaths in pursuit of the sacrificial goal of "civilizing" Iraq by enabling Iraqis to select any government they wish, no matter how anti-American.

In addition to being sent on ill-conceived, "humanitarian" missions, our soldiers have been compromised with crippling rules of engagement that place the lives of civilians in enemy territory above their own. In Afghanistan we refused to bomb many top leaders out of their hideouts for fear of civilian casualties; these men continue to kill American soldiers. In Iraq, our hamstrung soldiers are not allowed to smash a militarily puny insurgency--and instead must suffer an endless series of deaths by an undefeated enemy.

To send soldiers into war without a clear self-defense purpose, and without providing them every possible protection, is a betrayal of their valor and a violation of their rights.

This Memorial Day, we must call for a stop to the sacrifice of our soldiers and condemn all those who demand it. It is only by doing so that we can truly honor not only our dead, but also our living: American soldiers who have the courage to defend their freedom and ours.

Alex Epstein is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

"Indecency" Fines: An Ominous Attack on Free Speech

By: Yaron Brook:

The Senate bill passed last Thursday boosting fines against media companies that violate "indecency" standards is an ominous attack on the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.

Just as the government doesn't fine newspapers that publish cartoons that some Muslims deem indecent, it shouldn't fine broadcasters that air shows that some viewers deem indecent. Viewers are free to change the channel or turn off their TV set if they do not like what they see. They can't be forced to patronize a station they find indecent.

Moreover, it is the parents--not the government--who should be responsible for determining what their children are allowed to watch on TV.

They Made America

Crossposted from Literatrix...

Businessmen are the symbol of a free society--the symbol of America. If and when they perish, civilization will perish. But if you wish to fight for freedom, you must begin by fighting for its unrewarded, unrecognized, yet best representatives--the American businessmen. -Ayn Rand

This quote is truly appropriate for Harold Evans' new book, a fantastic journey through the history of American innovation over the past two hundred years. (Evans is also the author of The American Century.) Ayn Rand is actually mentioned in Evans' introduction, albeit briefly, so I thought I would start out this review with one of her insights.

In great dramatic style, Evans tells the stories of dozens of people that have truly turned America into what she is today. They are not all inventors, although some, like Edison, are renowned for their inventions, but they are all innovators: people that had a new idea and through courage, canniness, and sheer unadulterated drive, used their idea to rattle the nation.

The heavy, high-quality work is just about the right size for a history textbook. It's divided into three sections: Pathfinders of a New Civilization, America Takes Off, and The Digital Age, dealing respectively with three types of innovators.

Evans first details the people who set the stage for America's emergence into manufacturing and industrialization when the Founding Fathers foresaw a society of landowners and gentleman farmers. His coverage includes everything from the opening of America's waterways for shipping to the quiet political revolution that turned semi-coherent ideas of economic freedom into a reality.

One of the things that stood out to me most in the first section is the absolute need for good legislation of intellectual property. Government rulings on the matter seemed to segue wildly between refusing to protect a particular inventor's idea at all and handing a canny manipulator a government-enforced monopoly on anything even similar to his invention, choking off people that came up with their own approaches to the same problem. In the swamp of arbitrary and contradictory rulings, inventors could spend most of their time and most of their money just trying to get legal recognition for their work.

He then tackles the businessmen of the newly formed culture of economic freedom and industrial progress, subdividing into three secondary sections: Inventors, Democratizers, and Empire Builders.

Inventors is self-explanatory, including such greats as the aforementioned Edison and the Wright Brothers, but also less-famous individuals like Leo Hendrik Baekeland (plastic) and Garrett Augustus Morgan (the gas mask). Their technical achievements through trial and error make for terrific reading, Evans' descriptive style making each story exciting and uplifting. He has a talent for pulling the really essential points from a wealth of complexity.

Democratizers are those who, while not necessarily being first on the mark with originating a product, came up with the idea of bringing that product to everyone, so that the man on the street could enjoy the benefits of his own car (Henry Ford), camera (George Eastman, Kodak), and bank account (Amadeo Peter Giannini, Bank of America). Some of their innovations have become so ubiquitous that it's hard to imagine a day when it was almost impossible for the man on the street with some modest savings simply to get a bank account.

Empire Builders includes the likes of Walt Disney, Estee Lauder, and Malcolm McLean (container shipping); individuals that leveraged a simple concept into a sprawling industry. In some cases their contributions may seem small, but they are responsible for turning America into more than just a country--into a culture. Some aspects of that culture aren't beloved by everyone, but welding a culture is still quite an accomplishment.

The Digital Age isn't all computers: it covers the really cutting-edge advances and changes like biotech, and, weirdly, hip-hop culture. As I said, you may not like all of it, but you have to admit that it's had an effect on you, and even the maestro of hip-hop turns out to be a serious, dedicated businessman.

The book does have some flaws; Evans is semi-liberal in his personal views. He spends a fair amount of time enumerating the charitable contributions of the various businessmen and talking about their altruistic goals, meaning that they weren't just in it for money: they loved their work and what they could provide for their customers. He makes some conclusions that I would consider off the mark, such as his enchantment with the mixed-economy "marriage" between government and business. Still, he does justice to every single one of the businessmen (and women!) that he profiles. So I have to say that despite some small flaws this book gets my complete approval.

On a sad note, though, my copy of this book has fade-marks from sitting on a shelf in the sun for too long. I can't help but think it's an ominous warning.

Rating: 5.0

"Price Gouging" Can't Be Objectively Defined--and Should Not Be a Crime

By David Holcberg:

The House has approved a bill that imposes criminal and civil penalties (up to $150 million for refiners and $2 million for retailers) on any energy company found guilty of "price gouging." But selling at prices some people feel is too high violates no one's rights--there is no such thing as a right to cheap gasoline. Moreover, "price gouging" has no objective meaning or definition--it is in the eyes of the beholder. People who complain about "price gouging" merely want a product at a lower price than it's being sold for.

Perhaps recognizing the unsolvable problem of objectively defining "price gouging," the House bill does not even attempt to do it, but delegates the task to the Federal Trade Commission.

But as Jeffrey Schmidt, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition admits, "One of the problems with price gouging is that there are a lot of different definitions of what price gouging is."

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has his own "definition": "we know price gouging when we see it."

"Price gouging" laws are like the sword of Damocles, hanging over the heads of businessmen, who at any time may be found guilty of the "crime" of selling at market prices that politicians deem too high. Businessmen should not have to live under this constant threat; as owners of the products they sell they have the moral right to set the prices.

Around the Web on 5-4-06

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Around the Web on 4-26-06

By from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Song of the Day: Taps

Diana Hsieh has a very lengthy, but extremely worthwhile post on her long and systematic betrayal by Chris Sciabarra. This passage, I think, best characterizes his modus operandi.

As Chris says, the "fundamental differences" between us "on many, many significant questions" are fairly obvious. However, my views on important particulars, such his "dialectical" interpretation of Ayn Rand, are not at all obvious to bystanders. Moreover, I did not choose to remain silent about those particulars because I regarded them as unworthy of discussion, but out of concern to honor my prior friendship. Chris knows that. He also knows that our friendship was based upon his deceptions and manipulations. He knows that he's been whispering unjust lies about me behind my back. Yet he's content to keep me bound and gagged by my promise to him. A semi-honorable man would have released me from that promise in this blog post, so that we could duke out our differences in the open. Then again, a man with genuine confidence in the value of his work would not have accepted that promise in the first place.

As someone who has been betrayed, she has my sympathy; as a writer, my respect. And as one whose opinion, that "promoting the highest standards of objectivity in scholarship on Ayn Rand and Objectivism is ... of particular pressing importance", is essentially the same as my own, she has my thanks.

And be sure to peruse the comments. Nick Provenzo makes a particularly good point about how such opponents of the Ayn Rand Institute so frequently paste supporters of ARI with the charge that they demand "loyalty oaths". I think this fits in quite well with an observation on Diana's part that some of Sciabarra's behavior towards her was a form of psychological projection.

I look forward to reading her eventual critique of Sciabarra's Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical.

And what do I mean by the title of this section? You may have to dig a little. Dig?

Alida Valli, RIP

Via Randex, I have learned that the actress who played Kira in the bootleg movie version of Ayn Rand's We the Living made in Fascist Italy, has died.

Gas Fumes


Cox and Forkum very nicely sum up the hypocrisy of every American who complains about the oil companies raising prices for gasoline.

I vaguely recall reading an economist somewhere who lamented the fact that the word "wage" is used instead of the less-loaded phrase "labor price". That four-letter word certainly does provide a convenient cover for statists who seek to increase government interference with the economy when prices for other commodities go up.

24

Help my shipmate! Willy Shake has a cat whose weight is "the same number of pounds as the title of a popular TV show on Fox".

I have a cat with a similar problem, but with the added twist that I have an older cat who needs food around all the time. So my advice to Willy, if he doesn't already do this, is to give his cat limited quantities of food twice or three times a day.

So if anyone has any ideas he -- or I -- can use, leave a comment or drop a line, and thanks in advance.

Soviet Submarine Base Pictures

There's one and links to more over at The Stupid Shall Be Punished. Sez Bubblehead: "The pictures at Fun Mansion really look like the base was straight out of a James Bond movie..." I agree.

Iran is the New PLO

Hmmm. Yasser Arafat harasses Israel with murder and mayhem for decades -- and gets them to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. So is it really any big surprise that Iran is building nukes and threatening to launch them at Israel -- and calling for them to withdraw from Israel altogether?

The president of Iran, depending on what moment it is, will deny the holocaust, threaten Israel with one, or tell the Germans to "let go of [their] anti-Judaism". Read the whole thing and ask yourself why the hell anyone at all would seriously consider negotiating with (which entails speaking with) this regime. It is incredible that this has gone on for as long as it has.

How do you say ...

... "without a clue" in Portuguese?

Contradiction Required

Mike's Eyes quotes from a Q&A from the Sunday print edition of The Detroit News.

Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac to prove his faith, and he did so without knowing that God would send an angel to stay his hand at the last moment. In order for Abraham to pass this ultimate test he had to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time. He had to believe that the God of love and justice would never ask him to sacrifice his innocent, beloved son, but he also had to believe that the God who gives life deserved to be obeyed completely. In holding both beliefs, Abraham passed the test and was not required to sacrifice Isaac. [Mike's italics]

I'd say that it was his mind -- though not in so many words -- that Abraham was asked to sacrifice.

Being Intoxicated is No Excuse

I've been meaning to point to this for awhile. The General quotes from a very good legal opinion.

The rationale behind our long-standing rule as to voluntary ingestion of intoxicants and drugs is apparent. An individual who places himself in a position to have no control over his actions must be held to intend the consequences. Such a principle is absolutely essential to the protection of life and property.

Read more if you want to see a legal opinion which actually uses the phrase "inestimable gift of reason"!

Note that if this was an April Fool's joke, it was posted 11 days too late!

Archivist to Speak at NYU

Mike at Passing Thoughts notes that there is to be an interesting talk by an ARI archivist on "The History of the Objectivist Campus Club Movement" to be held, ironically enough, at NYU, which recently would not permit its campus club to display images of my blog's mascot.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Fixed some bad HTML.

Medical Liability Reform

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Free @objectivismonline Gmail Accounts!

ObjectivismOnline.net is participating in the new Gmail domain program.

This means that you can get an @objectivismonline.net email address and use Gmail as your mail interface. Google will manage your mail and provides the storage, so you don't have to worry about the security or reliability of the service.

To sign up, contact me. I need a name, last name, desired email address, and optionally, a password.

Hurry! Only the first 50 users will be given a free account.
Your account comes with a Google Talk chat account, which will integrated with your mail account.

Additionally, I am making these four domains available as Gmail accounts or forwards ONLY for Patron Members: @SelfMadeHero.net @RationalMind.net @Objectivistr.us @Objectivist.name

Cheers,
david @ objectivismonline . net

$25 Objectivism Wiki Competition

To encourage contributions to the Wiki, I am running a simple competition: the person who contributes the most to the Objectivism Wiki during the month of May will receive a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate.

The winner will be decided by a combination of quantity and quality. I will judge the winner. If no significant contributions are made, the winnings roll over to next month. If the contest is successful, I may put up another $25 next month.

You don't have to write your own content: over a hundred of our members have allowed all their posts to be used, either with or without contribution in the Wiki. To find them, go to the members page, and click "Toggle More Options." Select "Public Domain" or "Must Attribute" in the "Copyright" dropdown.

Anti-'price-gouging' regulation not worth the cost

With gasoline prices across the nation at $3 a gallon, one knows that American oil companies are easy targets for every regulator (and every potential regulator) in town. And when an oil-man-turned-president blames Americans for having an "energy addiction," it is only a matter of time before those that feed that "addiction" come under the gun.

It's not surprising then that the US House of Representatives just passed one of the worst bills to control the price of fuel since the 1970's era of gas lines and odd/even gas rationing. H. R. 5253, the so-called "Federal Energy Price Protection Act of 2006" grants the Federal Trade Commission the power to define claims of "price gouging" by oil producers and impose criminal fines of up to $150 million dollars and two years in jail. Additionally, the bill would permit courts to award civil damages of up to three times the difference between the "gouging" price and the FTC-determined "fair" price.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM). Not surprisingly, after reading though the congresswoman's bio, despite the "Spirit of Free Enterprise" award bestowed upon her by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, it seems Wilson's has zero background in economics. This is a telling omission, for it evidences that even a rudimentary understanding of economic principles did not drive Rep. Wilson to propose her bill to regulate oil prices. Morality did-and a corrupt morality at that.

In the government regulator's alternate universe, the producers of things such as oil, healthcare, computer operating systems, or even staples as mundane as "super-premium ice cream" do not live for their own sake. Instead, these and other producers exist solely to assuage the needs of their customers-and it is need and not productivity that is the currency of this universe.

In contrast, the free market is predicated upon the recognition that each person has a right to live for his own sake-including people who work in the oil industry. Each of us works because our lives and our happiness demands that we be productive. We seek profit for our endeavors, which is nothing more than the return on our investment of time and money after expenses are paid.

Call the above seemingly obvious points the moral basis of the free market. The free market deserves to be fought for, yet it is precisely the market's moral basis that Rep. Wilson and her fellow would-be regulators seek to overthrow. These regulators say that they will permit producers to profit from their work-but only to a point. Pass that arbitrarily defined threshold and one becomes guilty of "price gouging."

Yet price is nothing more than the intersection between supply and demand. To criminalize a price on the free market is criminalize our right to set terms for our work and our time. After all, when markets are free, every price is a negotiation and every purchase is voluntary; anyone can choose either to take a price or leave it. In the case of oil, when the price goes up, we can choose to conserve the fuel we purchase by using it in ways that are worth its price, seek substitutes by purchasing more fuel-efficient cars, or in the long term, develop other sources of energy that are cheaper than oil.

But if high prices are outlawed simply because some regulator decides that too much profit would be made, the incentive to produce is destroyed (along with the inventive for any newcomers to enter the market).

Additionally, if oil companies had the easy ability to squeeze their customers for usurious profits, one would expect that more people would enter the energy production market so they could get a piece of the action. Why don't those who think they have the expertise to claim the oil companies are price gouging simply drop what they are doing, form an oil company that undercuts the supposed fat cats on price and make a fortune for themselves in the process?

The truth is, harvesting oil from the Earth and bringing it to market is a complex process requiring tremendous organizational ability and financial acumen. In blaming American oil producers for high oil prices, the oil industry's critics ignore the political situation in the world (such as Iran threatening to unleash atomic jihad or strongman Hugo Chavez's Marxist posturing over Venezuela's oil resources) which leads to oil prices being highly volatile. They ignore the increased worldwide demand for oil, such as from China growing economy. And they ignore the human cost of the weak American dollar, which makes imports more expensive and reflects the world's lack of confidence in America's economic and monetary policies.

These critics also ignore the of government's other interventions in energy markets, such as the cost of gas taxes, Congress' decision to refuse to allow oil production in ANWR, as well as the cost of mandating 'boutique' fuels under the guise of reduced emissions. At root, anti-price-gouging legislation is nothing less than an attempt to get something for nothing, and shift the blame for America's oil woes from the supporters of government regulation to the men and women who actually work to bring energy to the marketplace. Such is way of those who enshrine need as a virtue.

If Rep. Wilson's price-control bill passes in the Senate and is signed by President Bush, it guarantees that America will return to the gas crunch era of the 1970s. If energy producers cannot adjust their prices to market forces and are compelled to sell at artificially reduced rates, Americans will see gas shortages at the pump. No legislature on the face of this earth can suspend the law of supply and demand at their will. No legislature can criminalize production and still expect energy producers to keep to their work. It is immoral and it cannot work.

30 years ago, Americans let Democrats under Jimmy Carter devastate the American economy by enacting their price controls on energy. The real crime will be that the American people might very well allow the Republicans to make the same mistake today.

Medical Liability Reform

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

By Andy from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM),cross-posted by MetaBlog

I really can't wait to see the Republicans get totally crushed in the fall elections. At one point, Republicans had at least a partial understanding of individual rights and of economics.

Now, they are random spouters of the arbitrary. So here, are the Republicans from Fox News:

Frist said Tuesday he changed his mind on his plan [to give a $100 per driver tax rebate], opposed by business leaders, and has gone back to the drawing board. The proposed accounting change would have required oil companies to pay more taxes on their inventory of crude as a way to pay the one-time rebate.

How is a $100 tax rebate going to produce more oil?

They say that would be more helpful to consumers than the 60-day gas tax holiday proposed by Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. That proposal would remove the federal government's 18.2 cent per gallon take for much of the summer driving season.

I would be for this if it were permanent and if there were spending cuts of about three times the amount of the total reduction in taxes. In the end, this proposal won't produce more oil.

"It [the $100 rebate] doesn't have the same kind of direct adverse consequence" as the gas tax holiday tax, "but there are other issues that we have to think about — Is that the best way to be using our tax revenues? Is it the most efficient way to allocate our resources?" he said.

No, this is not a liberal Democrat warbling about "our resources". It is "The White House's top economist" Edward Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. There is not one ounce of capitalism in his statement. Is Lazear familiar with the concept of production and of supply? Or do "we" have limited resources which "we" must distribute via collectivism?

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., hasn't jumped on to the oil company tax, but he said he wants to know why the companies aren't investing record profits into increased gas production.

What does Hastert think they are doing with the money? Buying expensive cigars and yachts? Hiring butlers? They are investing it and would do more if Republicans fought for dropping controls on oil production. For the record:

Representatives from ExxonMobil say the company made $36 billion in profits in 2005 but invested $18 billion to find and produce more oil. Over the last 15 years, the company says it earned $201 billion in profits, while investing $210 billion.

If anyone should go on strike, it should be the oil companies. They should re-light Wyatt's torch and tell dumb ass Americans and politicians, "Fine, you don't value us and our productive abilities, we will leave you alone. You expect us to produce oil cheaply, but you won't let us produce. Fine. You made your bed you sleep in it. You don't want us to produce. We won't. We will blow up our fields and our equipment and our refineries. You don't think you need us. Well, we don't need you."

Here are some ideas on what to do.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

I really can't wait to see the Republicans get totally crushed in the fall elections. At one point, Republicans had at least a partial understanding of individual rights and of economics. Now, they are random spouters of the arbitrary. So here, are the Republicans from Fox News: Frist said Tuesday he changed his mind on his plan [to give a $100 per driver tax rebate], opposed by business

Why don't more Objectivist scholars do this . . .

By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

That is, why don't they recommend books? After re-reading my post on IP, it dawned on me that while the history of property law is important, I personally don’t know much of that history. Wouldn’t it be nice if an Objectivist put out a reccomend reading list of good books on the subject like Objectivist and Ph.D. student in economics Isaac DiIanni does on his website for texts on economics? Wouldn’t it be nice if every Objectivist scholar listed five essential texts for his field so if you needed to get your bearings on a topic, you would have an easy resource to call upon?

After all, how long does it take to write a handful of 100-word book reviews of texts that are useful and important in your field of study?

Why don't more Objectivist scholars do this . . .

That is, why don't they recommend books? After re-reading my post on IP, it dawned on me that while the history of property law is important, I personally don't know much of that history. Wouldn't it be nice if an Objectivist put out a reccomend reading list of good books on the subject like Objectivist and Ph.D. student in economics Isaac DiIanni does on his website for texts on economics? Wouldn't it be nice if every Objectivist scholar listed five essential texts for his field so if you needed to get your bearings on a topic, you would have an easy resource to call upon?

After all, how long does it take to write a handful of 100-word book reviews of texts that are useful and important in your field of study?

How Oil Companies Use Their Profits Is Their Own Business

By David Holcberg:

It is highly disingenuous for President Bush to call on oil companies to expand refining capacity, when environmental regulations enforced by his administration continue to make it extremely costly to open new refineries.

And it is totally inappropriate for the President to call on oil companies to invest in research of "alternative" energy--he doesn't own these companies and should not use his position to pressure them. What if oil companies judge that investing in the discovery of new oil deposits makes more sense than improving wind turbines?

In a free economy the government has an obligation to protect the right of businessmen to make their own decisions and to run their companies as they see fit. How energy companies want to use their profits is their own business--not the government's.

An Eye-Opener by ... Todd Gitlin

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

An Eye-Opener by ... Todd Gitlin

Don't Steal This Article!

By Greg from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

After stumbling across yet another libertarian slamming the idea of intellectual property (one who was specifically taking Rand to task for her defense of IP in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal), Don Watkins invited me to investigate the issue for the January issue of Axiomatic Magazine. Recycled here for your philosophical enjoyment is the result of immersing myself in the strongest arguments I could find against the legitimacy of IP.

For a little bonus, try this experiment: Go read Rand's "Patents and Copyrights" essay before reading this article. No hurry, I'll wait. Heck, it's only about 1600 words, barely more than two standard op-eds in length. (At the very least, pause to recall the "sure, sounds okay" nod you likely gave it back when you read it.) Okay, now go ahead and read my article here -- then re-read Rand's essay.

If you are anything like me, that second reading will leave your jaw in your lap. Until I'd engaged the sharp thorns of the issue, I really didn't appreciate Rand's brilliant, economical, focused coverage of the essentials, seemingly tossed off in response to some reader's query. Astonishing.


DON'T STEAL THIS ARTICLE
On the Libertarian Critique of Intellectual Property

by Greg Perkins

Marxist scholars don't have much interest in defending individual rights, private property, and free markets -- so their antipathy to intellectual property rights in patent and copyright isn't surprising. In contrast, there are a significant number of libertarian scholars who proclaim individual rights and free markets to be good and desirable, yet who share an antipathy to intellectual property. That is, they systematically defend material property rights while decrying intellectual property as a confused, destructive, and morally bankrupt idea that should be abolished for the protection of our true individual rights.

In making their case, these libertarian scholars[1] cite a blizzard of puzzles and problems surrounding intellectual property. They see incoherency: how is it that, unlike all other rights, intellectual property rights should abruptly vanish after some set number of years? They see arbitrariness: why single out for reward the mental work behind the practical inventions of industry, but deny it for the mental effort behind the theoretical discoveries of science that make those inventions possible? Besides, they maintain, the line between invention and discovery is inherently vague and artificial. And they see a fundamental contradiction: inalienable rights cannot logically conflict with one another, but they find that intellectual property rights violate material property rights in an automatic and unchosen transfer of partial ownership to inventors and authors. Owners of paper and ink can use their property in certain ways only by permission of copyright holders; owners of metal and tools can use their property in certain ways only by permission of patent holders.

To resolve such issues, these libertarian scholars seek a theory of property that will firmly establish material property rights while excluding intellectual property.[2] Stephan Kinsella explains its basis:

Let us take a step back and look afresh at the idea of property rights. Libertarians believe in property rights in tangible goods (resources). Why? What is it about tangible goods that makes them subjects for property rights? Why are tangible goods property?

A little reflection will show that it is these goods' scarcity -- the fact that there can be conflict over these goods by multiple human actors. The very possibility of conflict over a resource renders it scarce, giving rise to the need for ethical rules to govern its use. Thus, the fundamental social and ethical function of property rights is to prevent interpersonal conflict over scarce resources. ...

Others [in addition to Hoppe] who recognize the importance of scarcity in defining what property is include Plant, Hume, Palmer, Rothbard, and Tucker.

Nature, then, contains things that are economically scarce. My use of such a thing conflicts with (excludes) your use of it, and vice versa. The function of property rights is to prevent interpersonal conflict over scarce resources, by allocating exclusive ownership of resources to specified individuals (owners).[3]

Thus Kinsella concludes that "[t]he problem with IP rights is that the ideal objects protected by IP rights are not scarce..." Property rights "are not applicable to things of infinite abundance, because there cannot be conflict over such things."[4] As our first patent examiner, Thomas Jefferson, put it: "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."[5]

Finally, Kinsella points to the ironic twist that "IP laws create an artificial, unjustifiable scarcity" which "itself needs a justification." On this last, he quotes Arnold Plant:

It is a peculiarity of property rights in patents (and copyrights) that they do not arise out of the scarcity of the objects which become appropriated. They are not a consequence of scarcity. They are the deliberate creation of statute law, and, whereas in general the institution of private property makes for the preservation of scarce goods, tending ... to lead us "to make the most of them," property rights in patents and copyrights make possible the creation of a scarcity of the products appropriated which could not otherwise be maintained.[6]

Other contemporary libertarian scholars echo the same ideas, and Tom Palmer's analysis emphasizes the same essential points regarding the basis of property and our right to it:

The key to all of this is scarcity. ... Tangible goods are clearly scarce in that there are conflicting uses. It is this scarcity that gives rise to property rights. Intellectual property rights, however, do not rest on a natural scarcity of goods, but on an 'artificial, self created scarcity.' That is to say, legislation or legal fiat limits the use of ideal objects in such a way as to create an artificial scarcity that, it is hoped, will generate greater revenues for innovators... But the attempt to generate profit opportunities by legislatively limiting access to certain ideal goods, and therefore to mimic the market processes governing the allocation of tangible goods, contains a fatal contradiction: It violates the rights to tangible goods, the very rights that provide the legal foundations with which markets begin.[7]

The above stands as the core theory offered in the libertarian case against intellectual property rights. What is particularly striking is that none of the contemporary heavyweights like Palmer and Kinsella grapple with the meaning of individual rights in general, nor their still-deeper basis in ethics, epistemology, and human nature. That is, their chief observation begs the question: is the splendid characteristic of conflict-prevention the central purpose of property rights, or merely a benefit -- is it the cause or an effect? To determine this, we need to investigate the source of rights in general. These scholars seem hesitant to do so, but Ayn Rand wasn't, and her perspective illuminates the central difficulty in their case: they have missed the essence of all rights.

* *
Rand noted that rights -- including property rights -- are ultimately based in the needs of man's life: if a man is to live, he must be able to act to sustain his life. An objective morality defines the broad principles by which men must act to sustain their lives, and a proper government preserves the conditions required for men to do so when living among others. This is why Rand described a right as "a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context."[8] More broadly, she explained,

"Rights" are a moral concept -- the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual's actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others -- the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context -- the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law... The principle of man's individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system -- as a limitation on the power of the state, as man's protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right...

There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action -- which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. [9]

The immediate corollaries of the right to life are the rights to liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Each flows from an essential aspect of the Objectivist ethics, which is itself rooted in epistemology and the nature of man.[10] Consider liberty. Reason is our basic means of survival and so rationality is our primary virtue; in general, we must have the liberty to grasp the nature of the world and act accordingly to live. That is, the right to liberty flows from a recognition of our primary virtue of rationality. And consider happiness. It is our emotional reward for achieving values over time, the emotional experience of living. The right to life entails the right to pursue and achieve values to serve our individual lives -- and the concomitant right to the pursuit of our individual happiness. That is, the right to the pursuit of happiness flows from a recognition of the individualistic, egoistic nature of life and morality.

Finally, consider property. While other animals adjust themselves to nature, man adjusts nature to his own needs by creating the values that sustain his life -- everything from food and shelter, to transport systems and communication networks, to medical technologies and art. We need to produce, keep, use, and dispose of values to serve our lives, and productiveness is the virtue by which we do so. The right to property flows from a recognition of the cardinal virtue of productiveness. Rand singled out the right to property as having special significance in the implementation of all rights:

The right to life is the source of all rights -- and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.[11]

This brief sketch of the Objectivist view of rights indicates why, contrary to the view of libertarians opposed to intellectual property, the essential basis of property is not scarcity -- it is production. Their complaint that intellectual property is an oxymoron because ideas are not scarce in the same way as apples has no merit, for the concepts of property and ownership lie fundamentally in the need for men to produce and enjoy values in support of their lives -- not merely in the narrower and subsidiary need to avoid conflict with one another in that enjoyment.

* *
Studying the most challenging puzzles and problems raised by libertarian scholars against intellectual property will help us to better understand the requirements of man's life as the basis of rights in general, production as the basis of property in particular, and the role of the mind throughout. In each case we will dive below the surface to appreciate the implications of essential facts from ethics, epistemology, and the nature of man to enrich our understanding of intellectual property and reinforce the principles at play.

Consider the issue of recognizing inventions as intellectual property while excluding discoveries. Kinsella discusses how "the distinction between the protectable and the unprotectable is necessarily arbitrary" in his view:

[P]atents can be obtained only for so-called "practical applications" of ideas, but not for more abstract or theoretical ideas... But the distinction between creation and discovery is not clearcut or rigorous. Nor is it clear why such a distinction, even if clear, is ethically relevant in defining property rights... [I]t is arbitrary and unfair to reward more practical inventors and entertainment providers, such as the engineer and songwriter, and to leave more theoretical science and math researchers and philosophers unrewarded. The distinction is inherently vague, arbitrary, and unjust.[12]

To gain some purchase on this issue it is helpful to distinguish between wealth and other things we value in markets. Carefully drawing this contrast, economist George Reisman describes wealth as specifically material economic goods.[13] Goods, as beneficial and life-preserving rather than merely any object; economic goods as against "free goods," which are benefits that do not need to be created (such as air and sunlight); material economic goods as existing benefits to men's lives -- rather than potential economic goods, or mere proxies (like stocks and money) or means (like labor) or preconditions (like ideas). Labor and ideas are valued as economic goods, not because they are themselves wealth, but because they are the indispensable means to wealth.

The distinction between wealth and its preconditions lets us clarify the ethical significance of inventions: inventors use their understanding of nature (often involving discoveries made by scientists) to solve specific problems in human welfare. Inventors are not recognizing some general fact about reality, but creating a recipe for producing wealth, thereby enabling the production of specific life-serving objects which would not have existed without their mental work. The crucial distinction between discovery and invention lies in their object: facts of nature are what they are and exist waiting to be discovered, while inventions are objects which would not exist without a creator. So intellectual property rights are a recognition of a crucial precondition of the life-serving creation of wealth -- and they are not, contrary to this complaint, a general reward for mental effort that is arbitrarily denied for some classes of thought.

Moreover, a failure to distinguish between practical invention and theoretical discovery in intellectual property protection would work directly against the very purpose of individual rights. It would be unjust and contrary to the requirements of man's life to protect discoveries as intellectual property, by making possible the demand that people ignore facts and act on known falsehoods in lieu of paying for the privilege of living. It would mean people being prohibited from acting in accordance with a fact once it is known -- including barring their taking life-sustaining actions and using that knowledge to create new, life-serving objects. In contrast, there is no injustice when inventors or artists peacefully withhold the use of their recipes for manufacturing things that could not otherwise exist. Indeed, injustice would lie in denying creators the right to set their terms for providing the necessary means to life-serving wealth.

* *
This brings us to the central problem cited by libertarians opposed to intellectual property: that intellectual property rights conflict with material property rights. Palmer introduces the issue this way:

Arguments such as Spooner's and Rand's encounter a fundamental problem. While they pay homage to the right of self-ownership, they restrict others' uses of their own bodies in conjunction with resources to which they have full moral and legal rights.[14]

And I'll let Kinsella flesh it out with his explanation of the exact nature of the alleged "taking" involved in intellectual property rights:

Let us recall that IP rights give to pattern-creators partial rights of control -- ownership -- over the tangible property of everyone else. The pattern-creator has partial ownership of others' property, by virtue of his IP right, because he can prohibit them from performing certain actions with their own property. Author X, for example, can prohibit a third party, Y, from inscribing a certain pattern of words on Y's own blank pages with Y's own ink.

That is, by merely authoring an original expression of ideas, by merely thinking of and recording some original pattern of information, or by finding a new way to use his own property (recipe), the IP creator instantly, magically becomes a partial owner of others' property. He has some say over how third parties can use their property. IP rights change the status quo by redistributing property from individuals of one class (tangible-property owners) to individuals of another (authors and inventors). Prima facie, therefore, IP law trespasses against or "takes" the property of tangible property owners, by transferring partial ownership to authors and inventors. It is this invasion and redistribution of property that must be justified in order for IP rights to be valid.[15]

The first thing to note is the plain fact that people are routinely prevented from using their material property when it would violate any right -- so the protection of intellectual property rights would not be unique in so "controlling" other people in their use of their material property. For example, my neighbor's person and property rights are not violated when he is not allowed to spontaneously whack me in the head with his fully-owned two-by-four. His rights are not violated in preventing him from using his tangible truck to pull up to my house and drive off with my entertainment center. We are all restricted from using our persons and property to violate the rights of others, and such restrictions do not themselves constitute an infringement of rights because nobody has the right to violate rights.

It is bad enough that these libertarian scholars ignore such an obvious point, but the evasion reaches full bloom in Kinsella's explanation of the alleged "taking" caused by the appearance of intellectual property. The charge is that, as intellectual property comes into existence, liberty is lost in a magical transfer of partial ownership from the owners of material property to an author or inventor, thereby unjustly preventing them from doing something they were otherwise free to do with their own property. But in no sense is any ability, permission, or liberty lost. Recall that intellectual property rights protect the manufacture of creations -- objects which did not and would not otherwise exist. Before a novel has been written, absolutely nobody has the power to publish it, so its being authored cannot remove any liberty previously enjoyed by printers. And before some better mousetrap is invented, nobody has the power to produce it -- so its being invented cannot deny manufacturers any previously enjoyed freedom.

Indeed, far from losing any power or liberty, the options available to owners of material property only increase with the appearance of intellectual property: they are presented with at least the potential to use their property in the production of new, life-serving objects in collaboration with an inventor or artist.

* *
Finally, we turn to the subtlest issue we will explore: time limits. Libertarians opposed to intellectual property see unprincipled arbitrariness in protecting it for some given number of years; for if intellectual property is legitimate, why wouldn't we provide unlimited protection as with material property? But they also note that if there were no time limits, then people would become mired in impossible record-keeping, drained by endless royalties, paralyzed in innovation. In the face of both limited and unlimited protection seeming unprincipled and heinously impractical, they reject intellectual property protection altogether -- and this is further justified in light of their scarcity-based theory of property.

Certainly the practical point about the crushing burden of endless royalties and record-keeping is a useful sign that unlimited patent and copyright protection is a bad idea we should reject. But that alone does not constitute the full case against the idea; we also need to look to the nature of man's life to identify what is wrong with unlimited intellectual property rights. Further, in seeing the trouble there, we can identify what gives rise to the need for time limits in the first place -- and we can identify principles to guide us in the delicate challenge of determining just intellectual property durations which are not arbitrary.

Our starting point is the examination of what would be entailed in owners enjoying both material and intellectual property in perpetuity. First, recall that in discussing wealth as material economic goods we carefully distinguished it from its essential means (ideas, labor). In the present point, this distinction appears again in understanding material property rights as a claim on a specific amount of existing wealth, where intellectual property rights are a claim on limitless potential future wealth in the application of an idea.[16]

Regarding the former, Rand observed that material property "can be left to heirs, but it cannot remain in their effortless possession in perpetuity: the heirs can consume it or must earn its continued possession by their own productive work."[17] Value evaporates if a farmer neglects his land, an apartment owner neglects his building, or the owner of a business neglects its operation. Even a trust-fund baby must manage his investments lest they wither or be lost due to mismanagement -- consider the recurring story of lottery winners who quickly find themselves back where they were before winning. People may enjoy a lucky "leg up" in accumulating wealth, but they must be productive to maintain and grow that value, or suffer its disappearance. That is, they must earn its continued possession by their own productive work. Even under such favorable circumstances, the specific basis in ethics of the right to property -- the cardinal virtue of productiveness -- continues to stand as a broad requirement.

In contrast, intellectual property cannot be so consumed and requires no productive effort on the part of its holder to maintain its value. No work would be demanded of an heir to intellectual property: he may continue to apply the idea to produce wealth, but he could just as well sit back and soak up royalties from others who use the idea to produce wealth. The owner of intellectual property need not earn its continued possession. Seeing the implications of this, Rand commented that if intellectual property were held in perpetuity, "it would lead to the opposite of the very principle on which it is based: it would lead, not to the earned reward of achievement, but to the unearned support of parasitism."[18] That is, a distant heir would effortlessly enjoy a share of the wealth being produced by others who alone are keeping the idea alive, embodying it in new life-serving goods. In the role of mere heir to intellectual property, one could not earn any part of that wealth. This follows from Rand's point that

Intellectual achievement, in fact, cannot be transferred, just as intelligence, ability, or any other personal virtue cannot be transferred. All that can be transferred is the material results of an achievement, in the form of actually produced wealth. By the very nature of the right on which intellectual property is based -- a man's right to the product of his mind -- that right ends with him. He cannot dispose of that which he cannot know or judge: the yet-unproduced, indirect, potential results of his achievement four generations -- or four centuries -- later.[19]

Thus by looking further into the meaning and purpose of property, we see how unlimited protection of intellectual property rights would not be analogous to unlimited material rights protection and would in fact be the very opposite in important ways.

Regarding the delicate challenge of determining specific limits for the protection of various classes of intellectual property, the scope of "fair use," and so on: as with the above issues surrounding intellectual property, legal philosophers must look to politics, ethics, and the nature of man for the appropriate guiding principles to develop just implementations -- not interfering with the freedom of creators to profit by their creations while at the same time not enabling parasites to burden the productive.


Lest we be driven by the difficulty of that challenge into entirely abandoning intellectual property protection, we should note that just as unlimited intellectual property protection would encourage destructive parasitism in future heirs, the absence of intellectual property protection would encourage destructive parasitism in present manufacturers.

Abandoning intellectual property protection is saying that the author who invests thirteen years in writing a bestseller has no more right to profit from its sale than anybody else. It is saying the studio that risks $100 million on producing a blockbuster movie has no right to set the terms of its use to enjoy blockbuster profits, even though it retains the sole right to suffer the losses of a flop. The same is true for the labs that invest billions in developing mechanical, electronic, and virtual tools and toys that improve peoples' lives. It is saying that biotech companies who risk vast fortunes and decades of sweat in striving to create life-saving drugs and population-sustaining crops should simply give away the benefits of their risk, toil, and dedicated genius.

It is true that the sudden abandonment of intellectual property rights would be a boon for manufacturers and customers, instigating a burst of wealth-creation as they deployed formerly protected ideas more freely. But this would be short-lived and stagnation would soon follow as those who might have risked, invested, toiled, and dedicated their genius to the next opportunity simply shrug. Creators would stand aside and not bother, or they would spend their minds on developing those (much more limited) things which aren't easily copied and imitated. Having killed the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs, countless life-serving creations would come more slowly or not at all. Why risk a billion dollars and half a lifetime attempting to develop a cure for cancer if others can profit by that achievement any way they see fit? Then decline would follow stagnation as shifting conditions in populations and resource availability bring new challenges that will go unmet.[20]

But again, disastrous practical results alone are not a full justification; they are only a (very strong) hint that there is a deeper explanation we must appreciate, an important fact we need to respect. In this case, the numbingly unjust and destructive results are ultimately caused by the denial of the crucial role of ideas in wealth-creation. Rand summarized it this way:

Every type of productive work involves a combination of mental and physical effort: of thought and of physical action to translate that thought into a material form. The proportion of these two elements varies in different types of work. At the lowest end of the scale, the mental effort required to perform unskilled manual labor is minimal. At the other end, what the patent and copyright laws acknowledge is the paramount role of mental effort in the production of material values; these laws protect the mind's contribution in its purest form: the origination of an idea.[21]

* *
Looking below the surface to understand the role of reason in man's life and its connection to property rights is essential to grasping the importance of intellectual property -- and to achieving its proper implementation. But this is precisely what has gone missing in the accounts of libertarians against intellectual property. In a telling aside, Kinsella writes:

Even Rand once elevated patents over mere property rights in tangible goods, in her bizarre notion that "patents are the heart and core of property rights."[22] Can we really believe that there were no property rights respected before the 1800s, when patent rights became systematized?[23]

Consider: people employed reason before Aristotle systematized logic; they used geometry before Euclid organized the field; they lobbed rocks with catapults before Newton formulated the scientific principles by which missiles fly. There are countless cases where an implicit or partial understanding of a deep truth developed before some thinker explained and systematized it. Rand often commented that it was the advent of the Industrial Revolution that made it possible to fully appreciate the central role of reason in man's life: it was there all along, but hard to see in such stark relief until that point in history. The crucial role of reason in production was not fully recognized until then, and so the essential role of the mind -- of ideas -- in wealth-creation was not yet fully grasped, either.

As the Industrial Revolution unfolded and it became easier to publish information and mass-produce objects for wide distribution, people began to grasp more fully the fundamental role of ideas in wealth-creation. They began attempting to protect the interests of the creators of ideas -- in fits and starts, justified by troubled appeals to utilitarianism in the US[24] and mystical appeals to extension of personality in Europe[25]. But problematic justifications and inconsistent implementations do not invalidate the reality of intellectual property.

Now as we enjoy the rise of the information age, the critical role of reason in the life of man is more prominent than ever, and facing the implications squarely is paramount. So it can be no accident that in addressing a reader's query about intellectual property, Rand opened her essay with an integrative statement reflecting this fundamental fact and inviting us to appreciate its fuller meaning. "Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man's right to the product of his mind."[26]

Notes

[1] In this article I will rely on two noted contemporary scholars to speak for libertarians opposed to intellectual property: Tom G. Palmer and N. Stephan Kinsella. Each has produced an extensive survey covering the subject, drawing on the thoughts of a long line of historic libertarian thinkers.
[2] Tom G. Palmer, "Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified?: The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects," Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, vol. 13, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 817-865, available online at http://www.tomgpalmer.com/papers/palmer-morallyjustified-harvard-v13n3.pdf, 855.
[3]Stephan Kinsella, "Against Intellectual Property," Journal of Libertarian Studies, vol. 15, no.2 (Spring 2001):1-53, available online at http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf, 19-20.
[4] Kinsella, 22.
[5] Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, Monticello, August 13, 1813, letter, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 13, ed. A.A. Lipscomb and A.E. Bergh (Washington, D.C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), pp. 326-38.
[6] Kinsella, 23, from Arnold Plant, "The Economic Theory Concerning Patents for Inventions," Selected Economic Essays and Addresses (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), 36.
[7] Palmer, 864.
[8] Ayn Rand, "Man's Rights," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Signet, 1986), 321.
[9] Rand, "Man's Rights," 320-321.
[10] Much in these two paragraphs is paraphrased from Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York: Plume, 1993), 354.
[11] Rand, "Man's Rights," 322.
[12] Kinsella, 15.
[13] George Reisman, "Wealth and Goods," Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Jameson Books, 1996), viewable online at http://capitalism.net/Capitalism/CAPITALISM%20Internet.pdf, 39-41.
[14] Palmer, 827.
[15] Kinsella, 25.
[16] Rand, "Patents and Copyrights," 132.
[17] Rand, "Patents and Copyrights," 131.
[18] Rand, "Patents and Copyrights," 131.
[19] Rand, "Patents and Copyrights," 132.
[20] Reisman, "Diminishing Returns and the Need for Economic Progress," 70-71.
[21] Rand, "Copyrights and Patents," 130.
[22] Rand, "Patents and Copyrights," 133.
[23] Kinsella, 18.
[24] The Constitution of the United States of America, available online at http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/constitution/, Article I Section 8.
[25] Palmer, 835, 843, 862.
[26] Rand, "Patents and Copyrights," 130.

Don't Steal This Article!

After stumbling across yet another libertarian slamming the idea of intellectual property (one who was specifically taking Rand to task for her defense of IP in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal), Don Watkins invited me to investigate the issue for the January issue of Axiomatic Magazine. Recycled here for your philosophical enjoyment is the result of immersing myself in the strongest arguments I could find against the legitimacy of IP.

For a little bonus, try this experiment: Go read Rand's "Patents and Copyrights" essay before reading this article. No hurry, I'll wait. Heck, it's only about 1600 words, barely more than two standard op-eds in length. (At the very least, pause to recall the "sure, sounds okay" nod you likely gave it back when you read it.) Okay, now go ahead and read my article here -- then re-read Rand's essay.

If you are anything like me, that second reading will leave your jaw in your lap. Until I'd engaged the sharp thorns of the issue, I really didn't appreciate Rand's brilliant, economical, focused coverage of the essentials, seemingly tossed off in response to some reader's query. Astonishing.


DON'T STEAL THIS ARTICLE
On the Libertarian Critique of Intellectual Property

by Greg Perkins

Marxist scholars don't have much interest in defending individual rights, private property, and free markets -- so their antipathy to intellectual property rights in patent and copyright isn't surprising. In contrast, there are a significant number of libertarian scholars who proclaim individual rights and free markets to be good and desirable, yet who share an antipathy to intellectual property. That is, they systematically defend material property rights while decrying intellectual property as a confused, destructive, and morally bankrupt idea that should be abolished for the protection of our true individual rights.

In making their case, these libertarian scholars[1] cite a blizzard of puzzles and problems surrounding intellectual property. They see incoherency: how is it that, unlike all other rights, intellectual property rights should abruptly vanish after some set number of years? They see arbitrariness: why single out for reward the mental work behind the practical inventions of industry, but deny it for the mental effort behind the theoretical discoveries of science that make those inventions possible? Besides, they maintain, the line between invention and discovery is inherently vague and artificial. And they see a fundamental contradiction: inalienable rights cannot logically conflict with one another, but they find that intellectual property rights violate material property rights in an automatic and unchosen transfer of partial ownership to inventors and authors. Owners of paper and ink can use their property in certain ways only by permission of copyright holders; owners of metal and tools can use their property in certain ways only by permission of patent holders.

To resolve such issues, these libertarian scholars seek a theory of property that will firmly establish material property rights while excluding intellectual property.[2] Stephan Kinsella explains its basis:

Let us take a step back and look afresh at the idea of property rights. Libertarians believe in property rights in tangible goods (resources). Why? What is it about tangible goods that makes them subjects for property rights? Why are tangible goods property?

A little reflection will show that it is these goods' scarcity -- the fact that there can be conflict over these goods by multiple human actors. The very possibility of conflict over a resource renders it scarce, giving rise to the need for ethical rules to govern its use. Thus, the fundamental social and ethical function of property rights is to prevent interpersonal conflict over scarce resources. ...

Others [in addition to Hoppe] who recognize the importance of scarcity in defining what property is include Plant, Hume, Palmer, Rothbard, and Tucker.

Nature, then, contains things that are economically scarce. My use of such a thing conflicts with (excludes) your use of it, and vice versa. The function of property rights is to prevent interpersonal conflict over scarce resources, by allocating exclusive ownership of resources to specified individuals (owners).[3]

Thus Kinsella concludes that "[t]he problem with IP rights is that the ideal objects protected by IP rights are not scarce..." Property rights "are not applicable to things of infinite abundance, because there cannot be conflict over such things."[4] As our first patent examiner, Thomas Jefferson, put it: "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."[5]

Finally, Kinsella points to the ironic twist that "IP laws create an artificial, unjustifiable scarcity" which "itself needs a justification." On this last, he quotes Arnold Plant:

It is a peculiarity of property rights in patents (and copyrights) that they do not arise out of the scarcity of the objects which become appropriated. They are not a consequence of scarcity. They are the deliberate creation of statute law, and, whereas in general the institution of private property makes for the preservation of scarce goods, tending ... to lead us "to make the most of them," property rights in patents and copyrights make possible the creation of a scarcity of the products appropriated which could not otherwise be maintained.[6]

Other contemporary libertarian scholars echo the same ideas, and Tom Palmer's analysis emphasizes the same essential points regarding the basis of property and our right to it:

The key to all of this is scarcity. ... Tangible goods are clearly scarce in that there are conflicting uses. It is this scarcity that gives rise to property rights. Intellectual property rights, however, do not rest on a natural scarcity of goods, but on an 'artificial, self created scarcity.' That is to say, legislation or legal fiat limits the use of ideal objects in such a way as to create an artificial scarcity that, it is hoped, will generate greater revenues for innovators... But the attempt to generate profit opportunities by legislatively limiting access to certain ideal goods, and therefore to mimic the market processes governing the allocation of tangible goods, contains a fatal contradiction: It violates the rights to tangible goods, the very rights that provide the legal foundations with which markets begin.[7]

The above stands as the core theory offered in the libertarian case against intellectual property rights. What is particularly striking is that none of the contemporary heavyweights like Palmer and Kinsella grapple with the meaning of individual rights in general, nor their still-deeper basis in ethics, epistemology, and human nature. That is, their chief observation begs the question: is the splendid characteristic of conflict-prevention the central purpose of property rights, or merely a benefit -- is it the cause or an effect? To determine this, we need to investigate the source of rights in general. These scholars seem hesitant to do so, but Ayn Rand wasn't, and her perspective illuminates the central difficulty in their case: they have missed the essence of all rights.

* *
Rand noted that rights -- including property rights -- are ultimately based in the needs of man's life: if a man is to live, he must be able to act to sustain his life. An objective morality defines the broad principles by which men must act to sustain their lives, and a proper government preserves the conditions required for men to do so when living among others. This is why Rand described a right as "a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context."[8] More broadly, she explained,

"Rights" are a moral concept -- the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual's actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others -- the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context -- the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law... The principle of man's individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system -- as a limitation on the power of the state, as man's protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right...

There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action -- which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. [9]

The immediate corollaries of the right to life are the rights to liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Each flows from an essential aspect of the Objectivist ethics, which is itself rooted in epistemology and the nature of man.[10] Consider liberty. Reason is our basic means of survival and so rationality is our primary virtue; in general, we must have the liberty to grasp the nature of the world and act accordingly to live. That is, the right to liberty flows from a recognition of our primary virtue of rationality. And consider happiness. It is our emotional reward for achieving values over time, the emotional experience of living. The right to life entails the right to pursue and achieve values to serve our individual lives -- and the concomitant right to the pursuit of our individual happiness. That is, the right to the pursuit of happiness flows from a recognition of the individualistic, egoistic nature of life and morality.

Finally, consider property. While other animals adjust themselves to nature, man adjusts nature to his own needs by creating the values that sustain his life -- everything from food and shelter, to transport systems and communication networks, to medical technologies and art. We need to produce, keep, use, and dispose of values to serve our lives, and productiveness is the virtue by which we do so. The right to property flows from a recognition of the cardinal virtue of productiveness. Rand singled out the right to property as having special significance in the implementation of all rights:

The right to life is the source of all rights -- and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.[11]

This brief sketch of the Objectivist view of rights indicates why, contrary to the view of libertarians opposed to intellectual property, the essential basis of property is not scarcity -- it is production. Their complaint that intellectual property is an oxymoron because ideas are not scarce in the same way as apples has no merit, for the concepts of property and ownership lie fundamentally in the need for men to produce and enjoy values in support of their lives -- not merely in the narrower and subsidiary need to avoid conflict with one another in that enjoyment.

* *
Studying the most challenging puzzles and problems raised by libertarian scholars against intellectual property will help us to better understand the requirements of man's life as the basis of rights in general, production as the basis of property in particular, and the role of the mind throughout. In each case we will dive below the surface to appreciate the implications of essential facts from ethics, epistemology, and the nature of man to enrich our understanding of intellectual property and reinforce the principles at play.

Consider the issue of recognizing inventions as intellectual property while excluding discoveries. Kinsella discusses how "the distinction between the protectable and the unprotectable is necessarily arbitrary" in his view:

[P]atents can be obtained only for so-called "practical applications" of ideas, but not for more abstract or theoretical ideas... But the distinction between creation and discovery is not clearcut or rigorous. Nor is it clear why such a distinction, even if clear, is ethically relevant in defining property rights... [I]t is arbitrary and unfair to reward more practical inventors and entertainment providers, such as the engineer and songwriter, and to leave more theoretical science and math researchers and philosophers unrewarded. The distinction is inherently vague, arbitrary, and unjust.[12]

To gain some purchase on this issue it is helpful to distinguish between wealth and other things we value in markets. Carefully drawing this contrast, economist George Reisman describes wealth as specifically material economic goods.[13] Goods, as beneficial and life-preserving rather than merely any object; economic goods as against "free goods," which are benefits that do not need to be created (such as air and sunlight); material economic goods as existing benefits to men's lives -- rather than potential economic goods, or mere proxies (like stocks and money) or means (like labor) or preconditions (like ideas). Labor and ideas are valued as economic goods, not because they are themselves wealth, but because they are the indispensable means to wealth.

The distinction between wealth and its preconditions lets us clarify the ethical significance of inventions: inventors use their understanding of nature (often involving discoveries made by scientists) to solve specific problems in human welfare. Inventors are not recognizing some general fact about reality, but creating a recipe for producing wealth, thereby enabling the production of specific life-serving objects which would not have existed without their mental work. The crucial distinction between discovery and invention lies in their object: facts of nature are what they are and exist waiting to be discovered, while inventions are objects which would not exist without a creator. So intellectual property rights are a recognition of a crucial precondition of the life-serving creation of wealth -- and they are not, contrary to this complaint, a general reward for mental effort that is arbitrarily denied for some classes of thought.

Moreover, a failure to distinguish between practical invention and theoretical discovery in intellectual property protection would work directly against the very purpose of individual rights. It would be unjust and contrary to the requirements of man's life to protect discoveries as intellectual property, by making possible the demand that people ignore facts and act on known falsehoods in lieu of paying for the privilege of living. It would mean people being prohibited from acting in accordance with a fact once it is known -- including barring their taking life-sustaining actions and using that knowledge to create new, life-serving objects. In contrast, there is no injustice when inventors or artists peacefully withhold the use of their recipes for manufacturing things that could not otherwise exist. Indeed, injustice would lie in denying creators the right to set their terms for providing the necessary means to life-serving wealth.

* *
This brings us to the central problem cited by libertarians opposed to intellectual property: that intellectual property rights conflict with material property rights. Palmer introduces the issue this way:

Arguments such as Spooner's and Rand's encounter a fundamental problem. While they pay homage to the right of self-ownership, they restrict others' uses of their own bodies in conjunction with resources to which they have full moral and legal rights.[14]

And I'll let Kinsella flesh it out with his explanation of the exact nature of the alleged "taking" involved in intellectual property rights:

Let us recall that IP rights give to pattern-creators partial rights of control -- ownership -- over the tangible property of everyone else. The pattern-creator has partial ownership of others' property, by virtue of his IP right, because he can prohibit them from performing certain actions with their own property. Author X, for example, can prohibit a third party, Y, from inscribing a certain pattern of words on Y's own blank pages with Y's own ink.

That is, by merely authoring an original expression of ideas, by merely thinking of and recording some original pattern of information, or by finding a new way to use his own property (recipe), the IP creator instantly, magically becomes a partial owner of others' property. He has some say over how third parties can use their property. IP rights change the status quo by redistributing property from individuals of one class (tangible-property owners) to individuals of another (authors and inventors). Prima facie, therefore, IP law trespasses against or "takes" the property of tangible property owners, by transferring partial ownership to authors and inventors. It is this invasion and redistribution of property that must be justified in order for IP rights to be valid.[15]

The first thing to note is the plain fact that people are routinely prevented from using their material property when it would violate any right -- so the protection of intellectual property rights would not be unique in so "controlling" other people in their use of their material property. For example, my neighbor's person and property rights are not violated when he is not allowed to spontaneously whack me in the head with his fully-owned two-by-four. His rights are not violated in preventing him from using his tangible truck to pull up to my house and drive off with my entertainment center. We are all restricted from using our persons and property to violate the rights of others, and such restrictions do not themselves constitute an infringement of rights because nobody has the right to violate rights.

It is bad enough that these libertarian scholars ignore such an obvious point, but the evasion reaches full bloom in Kinsella's explanation of the alleged "taking" caused by the appearance of intellectual property. The charge is that, as intellectual property comes into existence, liberty is lost in a magical transfer of partial ownership from the owners of material property to an author or inventor, thereby unjustly preventing them from doing something they were otherwise free to do with their own property. But in no sense is any ability, permission, or liberty lost. Recall that intellectual property rights protect the manufacture of creations -- objects which did not and would not otherwise exist. Before a novel has been written, absolutely nobody has the power to publish it, so its being authored cannot remove any liberty previously enjoyed by printers. And before some better mousetrap is invented, nobody has the power to produce it -- so its being invented cannot deny manufacturers any previously enjoyed freedom.

Indeed, far from losing any power or liberty, the options available to owners of material property only increase with the appearance of intellectual property: they are presented with at least the potential to use their property in the production of new, life-serving objects in collaboration with an inventor or artist.

* *
Finally, we turn to the subtlest issue we will explore: time limits. Libertarians opposed to intellectual property see unprincipled arbitrariness in protecting it for some given number of years; for if intellectual property is legitimate, why wouldn't we provide unlimited protection as with material property? But they also note that if there were no time limits, then people would become mired in impossible record-keeping, drained by endless royalties, paralyzed in innovation. In the face of both limited and unlimited protection seeming unprincipled and heinously impractical, they reject intellectual property protection altogether -- and this is further justified in light of their scarcity-based theory of property.

Certainly the practical point about the crushing burden of endless royalties and record-keeping is a useful sign that unlimited patent and copyright protection is a bad idea we should reject. But that alone does not constitute the full case against the idea; we also need to look to the nature of man's life to identify what is wrong with unlimited intellectual property rights. Further, in seeing the trouble there, we can identify what gives rise to the need for time limits in the first place -- and we can identify principles to guide us in the delicate challenge of determining just intellectual property durations which are not arbitrary.

Our starting point is the examination of what would be entailed in owners enjoying both material and intellectual property in perpetuity. First, recall that in discussing wealth as material economic goods we carefully distinguished it from its essential means (ideas, labor). In the present point, this distinction appears again in understanding material property rights as a claim on a specific amount of existing wealth, where intellectual property rights are a claim on limitless potential future wealth in the application of an idea.[16]

Regarding the former, Rand observed that material property "can be left to heirs, but it cannot remain in their effortless possession in perpetuity: the heirs can consume it or must earn its continued possession by their own productive work."[17] Value evaporates if a farmer neglects his land, an apartment owner neglects his building, or the owner of a business neglects its operation. Even a trust-fund baby must manage his investments lest they wither or be lost due to mismanagement -- consider the recurring story of lottery winners who quickly find themselves back where they were before winning. People may enjoy a lucky "leg up" in accumulating wealth, but they must be productive to maintain and grow that value, or suffer its disappearance. That is, they must earn its continued possession by their own productive work. Even under such favorable circumstances, the specific basis in ethics of the right to property -- the cardinal virtue of productiveness -- continues to stand as a broad requirement.

In contrast, intellectual property cannot be so consumed and requires no productive effort on the part of its holder to maintain its value. No work would be demanded of an heir to intellectual property: he may continue to apply the idea to produce wealth, but he could just as well sit back and soak up royalties from others who use the idea to produce wealth. The owner of intellectual property need not earn its continued possession. Seeing the implications of this, Rand commented that if intellectual property were held in perpetuity, "it would lead to the opposite of the very principle on which it is based: it would lead, not to the earned reward of achievement, but to the unearned support of parasitism."[18] That is, a distant heir would effortlessly enjoy a share of the wealth being produced by others who alone are keeping the idea alive, embodying it in new life-serving goods. In the role of mere heir to intellectual property, one could not earn any part of that wealth. This follows from Rand's point that

Intellectual achievement, in fact, cannot be transferred, just as intelligence, ability, or any other personal virtue cannot be transferred. All that can be transferred is the material results of an achievement, in the form of actually produced wealth. By the very nature of the right on which intellectual property is based -- a man's right to the product of his mind -- that right ends with him. He cannot dispose of that which he cannot know or judge: the yet-unproduced, indirect, potential results of his achievement four generations -- or four centuries -- later.[19]

Thus by looking further into the meaning and purpose of property, we see how unlimited protection of intellectual property rights would not be analogous to unlimited material rights protection and would in fact be the very opposite in important ways.

Regarding the delicate challenge of determining specific limits for the protection of various classes of intellectual property, the scope of "fair use," and so on: as with the above issues surrounding intellectual property, legal philosophers must look to politics, ethics, and the nature of man for the appropriate guiding principles to develop just implementations -- not interfering with the freedom of creators to profit by their creations while at the same time not enabling parasites to burden the productive.


Lest we be driven by the difficulty of that challenge into entirely abandoning intellectual property protection, we should note that just as unlimited intellectual property protection would encourage destructive parasitism in future heirs, the absence of intellectual property protection would encourage destructive parasitism in present manufacturers.

Abandoning intellectual property protection is saying that the author who invests thirteen years in writing a bestseller has no more right to profit from its sale than anybody else. It is saying the studio that risks $100 million on producing a blockbuster movie has no right to set the terms of its use to enjoy blockbuster profits, even though it retains the sole right to suffer the losses of a flop. The same is true for the labs that invest billions in developing mechanical, electronic, and virtual tools and toys that improve peoples' lives. It is saying that biotech companies who risk vast fortunes and decades of sweat in striving to create life-saving drugs and population-sustaining crops should simply give away the benefits of their risk, toil, and dedicated genius.

It is true that the sudden abandonment of intellectual property rights would be a boon for manufacturers and customers, instigating a burst of wealth-creation as they deployed formerly protected ideas more freely. But this would be short-lived and stagnation would soon follow as those who might have risked, invested, toiled, and dedicated their genius to the next opportunity simply shrug. Creators would stand aside and not bother, or they would spend their minds on developing those (much more limited) things which aren't easily copied and imitated. Having killed the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs, countless life-serving creations would come more slowly or not at all. Why risk a billion dollars and half a lifetime attempting to develop a cure for cancer if others can profit by that achievement any way they see fit? Then decline would follow stagnation as shifting conditions in populations and resource availability bring new challenges that will go unmet.[20]

But again, disastrous practical results alone are not a full justification; they are only a (very strong) hint that there is a deeper explanation we must appreciate, an important fact we need to respect. In this case, the numbingly unjust and destructive results are ultimately caused by the denial of the crucial role of ideas in wealth-creation. Rand summarized it this way:

Every type of productive work involves a combination of mental and physical effort: of thought and of physical action to translate that thought into a material form. The proportion of these two elements varies in different types of work. At the lowest end of the scale, the mental effort required to perform unskilled manual labor is minimal. At the other end, what the patent and copyright laws acknowledge is the paramount role of mental effort in the production of material values; these laws protect the mind's contribution in its purest form: the origination of an idea.[21]

* *
Looking below the surface to understand the role of reason in man's life and its connection to property rights is essential to grasping the importance of intellectual property -- and to achieving its proper implementation. But this is precisely what has gone missing in the accounts of libertarians against intellectual property. In a telling aside, Kinsella writes:

Even Rand once elevated patents over mere property rights in tangible goods, in her bizarre notion that "patents are the heart and core of property rights."[22] Can we really believe that there were no property rights respected before the 1800s, when patent rights became systematized?[23]

Consider: people employed reason before Aristotle systematized logic; they used geometry before Euclid organized the field; they lobbed rocks with catapults before Newton formulated the scientific principles by which missiles fly. There are countless cases where an implicit or partial understanding of a deep truth developed before some thinker explained and systematized it. Rand often commented that it was the advent of the Industrial Revolution that made it possible to fully appreciate the central role of reason in man's life: it was there all along, but hard to see in such stark relief until that point in history. The crucial role of reason in production was not fully recognized until then, and so the essential role of the mind -- of ideas -- in wealth-creation was not yet fully grasped, either.

As the Industrial Revolution unfolded and it became easier to publish information and mass-produce objects for wide distribution, people began to grasp more fully the fundamental role of ideas in wealth-creation. They began attempting to protect the interests of the creators of ideas -- in fits and starts, justified by troubled appeals to utilitarianism in the US[24] and mystical appeals to extension of personality in Europe[25]. But problematic justifications and inconsistent implementations do not invalidate the reality of intellectual property.

Now as we enjoy the rise of the information age, the critical role of reason in the life of man is more prominent than ever, and facing the implications squarely is paramount. So it can be no accident that in addressing a reader's query about intellectual property, Rand opened her essay with an integrative statement reflecting this fundamental fact and inviting us to appreciate its fuller meaning. "Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man's right to the product of his mind."[26]

Notes

[1] In this article I will rely on two noted contemporary scholars to speak for libertarians opposed to intellectual property: Tom G. Palmer and N. Stephan Kinsella. Each has produced an extensive survey covering the subject, drawing on the thoughts of a long line of historic libertarian thinkers.
[2] Tom G. Palmer, "Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified?: The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects," Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, vol. 13, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 817-865, available online at http://www.tomgpalmer.com/papers/palmer-morallyjustified-harvard-v13n3.pdf, 855.
[3]Stephan Kinsella, "Against Intellectual Property," Journal of Libertarian Studies, vol. 15, no.2 (Spring 2001):1-53, available online at http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf, 19-20.
[4] Kinsella, 22.
[5] Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, Monticello, August 13, 1813, letter, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 13, ed. A.A. Lipscomb and A.E. Bergh (Washington, D.C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), pp. 326-38.
[6] Kinsella, 23, from Arnold Plant, "The Economic Theory Concerning Patents for Inventions," Selected Economic Essays and Addresses (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), 36.
[7] Palmer, 864.
[8] Ayn Rand, "Man's Rights," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Signet, 1986), 321.
[9] Rand, "Man's Rights," 320-321.
[10] Much in these two paragraphs is paraphrased from Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York: Plume, 1993), 354.
[11] Rand, "Man's Rights," 322.
[12] Kinsella, 15.
[13] George Reisman, "Wealth and Goods," Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Jameson Books, 1996), viewable online at http://capitalism.net/Capitalism/CAPITALISM%20Internet.pdf, 39-41.
[14] Palmer, 827.
[15] Kinsella, 25.
[16] Rand, "Patents and Copyrights," 132.
[17] Rand, "Patents and Copyrights," 131.
[18] Rand, "Patents and Copyrights," 131.
[19] Rand, "Patents and Copyrights," 132.
[20] Reisman, "Diminishing Returns and the Need for Economic Progress," 70-71.
[21] Rand, "Copyrights and Patents," 130.
[22] Rand, "Patents and Copyrights," 133.
[23] Kinsella, 18.
[24] The Constitution of the United States of America, available online at http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/constitution/, Article I Section 8.
[25] Palmer, 835, 843, 862.
[26] Rand, "Patents and Copyrights," 130.

Eminent domain debate recap

By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

As promised, here is my report on The Objective Standard’s debate on eminent domain between Jeffrey Finkle, president of the International Economic Development Council (arguing to preserve eminent domain), and Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute (arguing to abolish it).

On one level, one has to admire Jeffrey Finkle for chutzpah. Given the massive backlash against the Kelo decision that enshrined the use of takings for private economic development, one would think that here is an issue where one would wish to tread softly, if only out of fear of being tarred and feathered by angry homeowners. Not so with Finkle; for him, eminent domain is a failing community’s tool of choice so it can provide the needy with services such as Meals on Wheels.

I’m not kidding. Meals on Wheels was among the central moral justifications for taking of property—and I use the term “property” loosely. When I asked him for an explicit definition of what he thought the word meant, Finkle outright evaded a question. And in a statement that would make Mussolini proud, Finkle argued that he would not sacrifice the needs of an entire community to some obstinate property holder. At root, Finkle believes that need is virtue.

It was intriguing to see how Finkle arrived at his position. Individuals acting out of self-interests are usurious slugs; as an example, Finkle argued that grocery stores avoid the inner-city while simultaneously overcharge their inner city customers. Yet put those same people into groups and give them power over other people’s lives and they become omni-benevolent. At root here, Finkle believes that selflessness is a virtue.

And all the while, Finkle battered the audience with package deals. Houston is a disaster because it doesn’t have zoning; families are forced to live next to chemical factories. New Orleans could never be redeveloped without eminent domain; abandoned property would remain titled to its last owner forever. No highway would exist without eminent domain; a minority of one could squelch every new avenue and no alternatives save for the takings power exist.

In contrast, Yaron Brook simply argued that individual rights matter. The right to property is a corollary of the right to life and no less important. People should deal with one another though persuasion and voluntary exchange; not to is to enshrine force as a means to an end and threaten all rights accordingly. The desire for growth is not license to usurp the rights of others. Brook’s arguments were clear, they flowed logically, and they explicitly addressed the fundamentals of the debate.

And in the debate’s most telling moment, Brook expanded Finkle’s claim that he supported a Quaker’s right not to serve in the military (don’t ask me what made Finkle mention this; it seemingly fell out of nowhere) to the right of a property holder not to give his property to others. Where Finkle disintegrated, Brook integrated. That’s what Objectivists do.

So in the end, score one for the Objectivists and the debate host The Objective Standard (and its editor Craig Biddle). In my view, The Objective Standard is proving to be everything an Objectivist publication should be and more and I look forward to more events of this caliber.

Eminent domain debate recap

As promised, here is my report on The Objective Standard's debate on eminent domain between Jeffrey Finkle, president of the International Economic Development Council (arguing to preserve eminent domain), and Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute (arguing to abolish it).

On one level, one has to admire Jeffrey Finkle for chutzpah. Given the massive backlash against the Kelo decision that enshrined the use of takings for private economic development, one would think that here is an issue where one would wish to tread softly, if only out of fear of being tarred and feathered by angry homeowners. Not so with Finkle; for him, eminent domain is a failing community's tool of choice so it can provide the needy with services such as Meals on Wheels.

I'm not kidding. Meals on Wheels was among the central moral justifications for taking of property--and I use the term "property" loosely. When I asked him for an explicit definition of what he thought the word meant, Finkle outright evaded a question. And in a statement that would make Mussolini proud, Finkle argued that he would not sacrifice the needs of an entire community to some obstinate property holder. At root, Finkle believes that need is virtue.

It was intriguing to see how Finkle arrived at his position. Individuals acting out of self-interests are usurious slugs; as an example, Finkle argued that grocery stores avoid the inner-city while simultaneously overcharge their inner city customers. Yet put those same people into groups and give them power over other people's lives and they become omni-benevolent. At root here, Finkle believes that selflessness is a virtue.

And all the while, Finkle battered the audience with package deals. Houston is a disaster because it doesn't have zoning; families are forced to live next to chemical factories. New Orleans could never be redeveloped without eminent domain; abandoned property would remain titled to its last owner forever. No highway would exist without eminent domain; a minority of one could squelch every new avenue and no alternatives save for the takings power exist.

In contrast, Yaron Brook simply argued that individual rights matter. The right to property is a corollary of the right to life and no less important. People should deal with one another though persuasion and voluntary exchange; not to is to enshrine force as a means to an end and threaten all rights accordingly. The desire for growth is not license to usurp the rights of others. Brook's arguments were clear, they flowed logically, and they explicitly addressed the fundamentals of the debate.

And in the debate's most telling moment, Brook expanded Finkle's claim that he supported a Quaker's right not to serve in the military (don't ask me what made Finkle mention this; it seemingly fell out of nowhere) to the right of a property holder not to give his property to others. Where Finkle disintegrated, Brook integrated. That's what Objectivists do.

So in the end, score one for the Objectivists and the debate host The Objective Standard (and its editor Craig Biddle). In my view, The Objective Standard is proving to be everything an Objectivist publication should be and more and I look forward to more events of this caliber.

Causality In Action

By Paul from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Here is a fun 13-minute video showing a variety of Rube Goldberg-type machines in action. (And unfortunately, no, I don't know what the Japanese text says on the pop-up flag at the end of each machine's run.)

Exercise for the reader: How does this illustrate the Objectivist concept of causality as "the law of identity applied to action", as opposed to the standard Humean "billiard ball" concept of causality?

Hints: Consider the following from OPAR, Chapter 1

Since the Renaissance, it has been common for philosophers to speak as though actions directly cause other actions, bypassing entities altogether. For example, the motion of one billiard ball striking a second is commonly said to be the cause of the motion of the second, the implication being that we can dispense with the balls; motions by themselves become the cause of other motions. This idea is senseless. Motions do not act, they are actions. It is entities which act -- and cause. Speaking literally, it is not the motion of a billiard ball which produces effects; it is the billiard ball, the entity, which does so by a certain means. f one doubts this, one need merely substitute an egg or soap bubble with the same velocity for the billiard ball; the effects will be quite different.

The law of causality states that entities are the cause of actions -- not that every entity, of whatever sort, has a cause, but that every action does; and not that the cause of action is action, but that the cause of action is entities.

Or the following from "H Acstonus":

Causality, at least since Hume, has been conceived of as a chain of events, each antecedent event causing the other. This conception has led to confusion. While it is true that antecedent factors play a role, a proper conception of causality would have to incorporate a wider context. In Aristotle's view, cause and effect is rooted in the identity of acting things. What a thing is, says Aristotle, will determine what it does. An acorn can become an oak tree, and not a catfish, because that is its nature. The actions an entity can take are determined by what that entity is. On this view, when one billiard ball strikes another it sends it rolling because of the nature of the balls and their surroundings, not just antecedent events.

The incompleteness of modern science lies in the fact that it rests on a purely mechanistic, non-Aristotelian view of causation. Consequently it cannot be defended against critics such as Hume. Aristotle's view provides a basis for a better understanding of cause and effect, and has the potential to ground science and induction in first principles. Aristotle has the potential to provide for modern science the philosophic foundations it never had.

Teaching impotence

By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This wonderfully pompus article at Salon.com recounts the chilling steps a leftist parent took to scrub the mind of her young child for his innocent love of America. First, let's set the stage. Author Nina Burleigh would much rather live in France.

Our family first arrived in Narrowsburg [NY] in 2000, as city people hunting for a cheap house. For barely $50,000 we were able to buy the "weekend house" we thought would complete our metropolitan existence. But soon after we closed on the home, we moved to Paris, spurred by the serendipitous arrival of a book contract. When our European idyll ended after two years, and with tenants still subletting our city apartment, we moved into the Narrowsburg house. After growing accustomed to the French social system -- with its cheap medicine, generous welfare, short workweek and plentiful child care -- life back in depressed upstate New York felt especially harsh. We'd never planned to get involved in the life of the town, nor had it ever occurred to us that we might send our son to the Narrowsburg School. But suddenly we were upstate locals, with a real stake in the community.

And Narrowsburg is tough community for an enlightened Francophile such as Burleigh to endure.

[F]or the first few months, we felt uneasy. Eighty of Narrowsburg's 319 adults are military veterans and at least 10 recent school graduates are serving in Iraq or on other bases overseas right now. The school's defining philosophy was traditional and conservative, starting with a sit-down-in-your-seat brand of discipline, leavened with a rafter-shaking reverence for country and flag. Every day the students gathered in the gym for the "Morning Program," open to parents, which began with the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by a patriotic song, and then discussion of a "word of the week." During the first few weeks, the words of the week seemed suspiciously tied to a certain political persuasion: "Military," "tour," "nation" and "alliance" were among them.

One shudders at the thought. How will Burleigh's six year old come to embrace her mother's highbrow contempt for the hypocritical betrayal that is America? This is a deep concern: Burleigh notes that "[i]f you knew nothing else of the world, if you were just 5 or 6 or 10 years old, and this place was your only America, you wouldn't have any reason at all to question the Narrowsburg School's Morning Program routine."

And why should you? There is a reason that we think of our childhoods as an age of innocence. It is a time when we are able to focus our embryonic minds on our relationship with existence. I was six when Saigon fell to the communists and I can remember watching the evacuation on the news and even thinking that it was something that must be important. Nevertheless, the egoistic thrill of riding around the block in my "green machine" and the joy of wiring together my toy train set held more sway for me. During childhood, one's focus is on things far more immediate and it ought to be.

In contrast, Nina Burleigh has Iraq on the mind. She writes,

[j]ust before Christmas, my son and I drove together into New York City with bags of children's clothes and shoes that he and his sister had outgrown. The Harlem unit of the National Guard was putting on a Christmas clothing drive for Iraqi children. On the way into the city, I tried to explain to my son what we were doing, and -- as best I could -- why. As we crossed the George Washington Bridge and the Manhattan skyline spread out below us, I began to give him a variation on the "Africans don't have any food, finish your dinner" talk. I wanted him to understand how privileged he was to live in a place where bombs weren't raining from the sky. It was a talk I'd tried to have before, but not one he'd ever paid much attention to until that day, trapped in the back seat of our car.

In simple language, I told my son that our president had started a war with a country called Iraq. I said that we were bombing cities and destroying buildings. And I explained that families just like ours now had no money or food because their parents didn't have offices to go to anymore or bosses to pay them. "America did this?" my son asked, incredulous. "Yes, America," I answered. He paused, a long silent pause, then burst out: "But Mommy, I love America! I want to hug America!"

Yeah kid, but the president invaded Iraq on a lark and is "bombing cities and destroying buildings" and starving families "like yours" just for the giggles it gives him. Why don't you wrap your arms around that, you little six-year-old twerp!

No wonder so many leftists are so embittered. After all, what is a 6 year-old to do about geopolitics (or his mother's attendant rages) except sit there in helpless impotence? Burleigh has taught six-year old that America is a vicious place controlled by monsters--and that there's nothing he can do about it. And you thought learning that there was no Santa Claus was bad. At least with that horror you learn where the gifts really come from and that you can still give and receive them.

If it were my child, I'd want to teach them that they were efficacious--if they kept their wits about them. During the developmental years, contemporary politics would be off the table altogether. In its stead, I'd share with my child everything I knew about history, be it the history of science, literature, philosophy, or nations. When my child understood how ideas shape both men and civilizations, then we could then talk about politics (and my attendant rages). Until that point, the message would be lost.

Burleigh has one haughty observation to make before she concludes her article. You see, for all its jingoism, life in Narrowsburg actually expanded her child's mind.

Now it has been almost a year since my son scampered down the steps of Narrowsburg Central Rural School for the last time. We've since returned to the city, driven back to urban life more by adult boredom than our children's lack of educational opportunities. Our son is enrolled in a well-rated K-5 public school on Manhattan's Upper West Side; not surprisingly, the Pledge of Allegiance is no longer part of his morning routine. Come to think of it, and I could be wrong, I've never seen a flag on the premises.

My husband and I realized, though, that Narrowsburg did more than mold our boy into a patriot. He can, it turns out -- despite the warnings of other city parents -- read at a level twice that of his new peers. Since we returned to the city, he has learned how to ride a bike, long for an Xbox, practiced a few new swear words and, somehow, learned the meaning of "sexy." He has pretty much stopped favoring red, white and blue.

Not surprising. I hear the culture in Manhattan can do that to you.

"Academic Freedom" In North Carolina

By from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM),cross-posted by MetaBlog

Here's a story: The faculty at Meredith College in Raleigh struck a blow for academic freedom Friday, and in so doing, might've cost the college $420,000 from the BB it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders." Rand continued: "In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a

"How Can I Live Without You?"

By from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM),cross-posted by MetaBlog

Dr. George Reisman: Without the UAW, GM would have an average unit cost per automobile close to that of non-union Toyota. Toyota makes a profit of about $2,000 per vehicle, while GM suffers a loss of about $1,200 per vehicle, a difference of $3,200 per unit. And the far greater part of that difference is the result of nothing but GM’s being forced to deal with the UAW. (Over a year ago, The

Nucor Of Charlotte, North Carolina

By Andy from The Charlotte Capitalist (TM),cross-posted by MetaBlog

Most Charlotteans are familiar with Nucor here in Charlotte. Do you know the history? From Steven Brockerman at American Renaissance: Ken immediately reduced administrative staff from twelve to two. Then he packed up the company headquarters lock, stock & barrel into a couple of vans and moved it from Phoenix, Arizona, to Charlotte, North Carolina, near the profitable grate and joist operation

Common Sense: Only for Sports

By from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

I am all for spectator sports as a celebration of excellence, but often find myself annoyed with sports coverage in the media. On the one hand, the facts of a sporting event are usually far more straightforward than those of, say, the war or the economy, and so biased reporting is usually not a problem that keeps important facts away from the audience. On the other hand, since sports concretize

Freedom vs. Unlimited Majority Rule

The concept of freedom rests on a government limited to the protection of individual rights, while the concept of democracy rests on a government run by unlimited majority rule; we need to stop confusing these two opposite ideas.

By Peter Schwartz

America's foreign policy has led to a bizarre contradiction. President Bush claims to be pursuing freedom in the world, so that Americans will be safer. Yet this campaign's results--a more zealous proponent of terrorism in the Palestinian Authority, and the prospect of theocracy in Iraq--are posing even greater threats to us.

The cause of this failure is Mr. Bush's hopeless view that tyranny is reversed by the holding of elections--a view stemming from the widespread confusion between freedom and democracy.

Ask a typical American if there should be limits on what government may do, and he would answer: yes. He understands that each of us has rights which no law--regardless of how much public support it happens to attract--is entitled to breach. An advocate of democracy, however, would answer: no.

The essence of democracy is unlimited majority rule. It is the notion that the government should not be constrained, as long as its behavior is sanctioned by majority vote. It is the notion that the function of government is to implement the "will of the people." It is the notion we are espousing when we tell the Iraqis, the Palestinians and the Afghanis that the legitimacy of their new governments rests essentially on their being democratically approved.

And it is the notion that was repudiated by the founding of the United States.

America's defining characteristic is freedom. Freedom exists when there are limitations on government, limitations imposed by the principle of individual rights. America was established as a republic, under which government is restricted to protecting our inalienable rights; this should not be called "democracy." Thus, you are free to criticize your neighbors, your society, your government--no matter how many people wish to pass a law censoring you. But if "popular will" is the standard, then the individual has no rights--only temporary privileges, granted or withdrawn according to the mass sentiment of the moment. The Founders understood that the tyranny of the majority could be just as evil as the tyranny of an absolute monarch.

Yes, we have the ability to vote, but that is not the yardstick by which freedom is measured. After all, even dictatorships hold official elections. It is only the context of liberty--in which individual rights may not be voted out of existence--that justifies, and gives meaning to, the ballot box. In a genuinely free country, voting pertains only to the particular means of safeguarding individual rights. There is no moral "right" to vote to destroy rights.

Unfortunately, like Mr. Bush, most Americans use the antithetical concepts of "freedom" and "democracy" interchangeably. Sometimes our government upholds the primacy of individual rights and regards one's life, liberty and property as inviolable. Many other times it negates rights by upholding the primacy of the majority's wishes--from confiscating an individual's property because the majority wants it for "public use," to preventing a terminally ill individual from gaining assistance in ending his life because a majority finds suicide unpalatable.

Today, our foreign policy upholds this latter position. We declare that our overriding goal in the Mideast is that people vote--regardless of whether they care about freedom. But then, if a Shiite, pro-Iranian majority imposes its theology on Iraq--or if Palestinian suicide-bombers execute their popular mandate by blowing up schoolchildren--on what basis can we object, since democracy is being faithfully served? As a spokesman for Hamas, following its electoral victory, correctly noted: "I thank the United States that they have given us this weapon of democracy. . . . It's not possible for the U.S. . . . to turn its back on an elected democracy." The Palestinians abhor freedom--but have adopted democratic voting.

The Iraqis may reject freedom, in which case military force alone--as dismally inadequate as our efforts in that realm have been so far--will have to ensure our safety against any threats from them.  But if we are going to try to replace tyranny with freedom there, we must at least demonstrate what freedom is. We should have been spreading the ideas and institutions of a free society, before allowing elections even to be considered. For example, we should have written the new constitution, as we did in post-WWII Japan. Instead, we deferred to the "will of the people"--people who do not understand individual rights--and endorsed a despotic constitution, which rejects intellectual freedom in favor of enforced obedience to the Koran, and which rejects economic freedom and private property in favor of "collective ownership." The consequence: looming neo-tyranny in Iraq.

We need to stop confusing democracy with freedom. Morally supporting freedom is always in our interests. But supporting unlimited majority rule is always destructive--to us, and to all who value the rights of the individual.

Peter Schwartz is a Distinguished Fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute (http://www.aynrand.org/) in Irvine, California. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

He did it for the oil.

By from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

He did it for the oil.

What the mid-term elections will tell us

By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This article by University of Chicago doctorial candidate Jay Cost in the Wall Street Journal has been sitting on my desk for over a week and in my mind it underscores the need for an alternative voice within the Republican Party. Cost believes it likely that the Republicans will keep control of the Congress this November.

At best, many facts of importance, like 2004's 98.8% incumbent retention rate or 2006's incredibly low 4.6% incumbent retirement rate, are mentioned only to be unceremoniously dismissed. This is the sign of poor argumentation. It is not enough to proffer one's case by rallying the supporting facts. One must also handle the opposing facts.

One of these ignored items has to do with the Senate. It is, according to most, out of the Democrats' grasp. I strongly agree with this estimation. For the Democrats to take the Senate, they would have to defeat incumbents in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana, Missouri and Rhode Island; win the open seat in Tennessee; and hold seats against strong challengers in Minnesota, Maryland, New Jersey and Washington. This amounts to a sweep of all 10 of National Journal's 10 most vulnerable races. Most would thus admit that the Senate is not on the table; those who make no such admission usually grow silent when asked to explain why they refuse.

The consensus on the Senate is actually a major problem for the consensus on the House. Historically speaking, the House switches only when the Senate switches. In other words, the improbability of a Democratic capture of the Senate is a sign that a capture of the House is improbable. Consider the following.

The 17th Amendment, which mandates the direct election of senators, took effect prior to the 1914 election. Since then, the Senate has changed hands 10 times due to the biannual congressional election. The House, on the other hand, has changed hands only six times due to the biannual congressional election. (A seventh switch occurred in the middle of the 72nd Congress. The 1930 elections left the GOP with a slim majority. However, 14 representatives-elect died before the 72nd Congress convened, and the Democrats won enough of the subsequent special elections to take the House. This capture was "ratified" in the 1932 elections, which would have delivered Congress to the Democrats even if this tragedy had not occurred. So, let us henceforth identify 1932 as the seventh time that the House has switched since 1918.)

Of these seven times the House has switched, the Senate has also switched. Not only does the Senate switch more frequently, it always switches with the House. A switch in the Senate, therefore, seems to be a necessary, but insufficient, condition for a switch in the House. Conversely, a switch in the House is a sufficient, but not necessary, condition for a switch in the Senate. Thus, historically speaking, three scenarios are possible: both House and Senate stay the same, the Senate alone changes, or both the House and the Senate change.

Is this simply historical coincidence, or is a causal logic driving the correlation? A pattern that holds over 46 observations without exception is probably not random. Most important, however, is that this sort of pattern coheres with what we already know about Senate and House elections--namely, House elections are much less susceptible to national trends than Senate elections. This is the case for several reasons.

First, senators lack the ability to draw district lines to minimize opposing partisans. Second, Senate challengers tend to be more qualified and better funded than House challenges. Third, these challengers can use campaign resources more efficiently. Many House challengers cannot efficiently spend money on television advertisements because it is wasted on voters in other districts; however, with Senate elections, there are efficient ad markets. Fourth, senators are less able to cultivate close relationships with constituents--they lack the requisite geographical proximity. Fifth, senators are much more visible to the public; whereas House members can operate in the Capitol without much scrutiny, constituents tend to be more aware of their senators' activities.

Thus, Senate elections are contests where the partisan division is more equal, the average voter has a more balanced view of the candidates, and he has more information about the issues in the race. Like House races, they tend to be referendums on incumbents; Senate incumbents are simply less favored. It is thus no surprise that senators' re-election rate is consistently lower than representatives'. It also no surprise that control of the Senate is more susceptible to change. If individual senators face enhanced competition, so does their partisan caucus.

Why, then, does the Senate always switch when the House does? National political moods do not usually translate into changes in party control in the House. The reason for this is that individual members of the House are fairly invulnerable to that mood. However, they are not perfectly invulnerable. If the mood is sufficiently strong or sufficiently directed against one party, the House incumbency advantage is not enough. Since the House incumbency advantage is greater than the Senate advantage, we should expect the Senate to switch when the House switches. If the mood is strong enough to change the House, it will be strong enough to change the Senate. On the flip side, we can expect relatively milder political moods to change the more competitive Senate, but not the House.

Cost’s premise passes the initial sniff test and it my mind, underscores the larger issue that there is no organized, credible voice for both secularism and lassie faire within the Republican Party. That needs to change, or Objectivists will have to simply get used to living under a governing party that is animated by evangelical Christianity and altruism. Yet again, the larger threat to freedom comes from the right.

What the mid-term elections will tell us

This article by University of Chicago doctorial candidate Jay Cost in the Wall Street Journal has been sitting on my desk for over a week and in my mind it underscores the need for an alternative voice within the Republican Party. Cost believes it likely that the Republicans will keep control of the Congress this November.

At best, many facts of importance, like 2004's 98.8% incumbent retention rate or 2006's incredibly low 4.6% incumbent retirement rate, are mentioned only to be unceremoniously dismissed. This is the sign of poor argumentation. It is not enough to proffer one's case by rallying the supporting facts. One must also handle the opposing facts.

One of these ignored items has to do with the Senate. It is, according to most, out of the Democrats' grasp. I strongly agree with this estimation. For the Democrats to take the Senate, they would have to defeat incumbents in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana, Missouri and Rhode Island; win the open seat in Tennessee; and hold seats against strong challengers in Minnesota, Maryland, New Jersey and Washington. This amounts to a sweep of all 10 of National Journal's 10 most vulnerable races. Most would thus admit that the Senate is not on the table; those who make no such admission usually grow silent when asked to explain why they refuse.

The consensus on the Senate is actually a major problem for the consensus on the House. Historically speaking, the House switches only when the Senate switches. In other words, the improbability of a Democratic capture of the Senate is a sign that a capture of the House is improbable. Consider the following.

The 17th Amendment, which mandates the direct election of senators, took effect prior to the 1914 election. Since then, the Senate has changed hands 10 times due to the biannual congressional election. The House, on the other hand, has changed hands only six times due to the biannual congressional election. (A seventh switch occurred in the middle of the 72nd Congress. The 1930 elections left the GOP with a slim majority. However, 14 representatives-elect died before the 72nd Congress convened, and the Democrats won enough of the subsequent special elections to take the House. This capture was "ratified" in the 1932 elections, which would have delivered Congress to the Democrats even if this tragedy had not occurred. So, let us henceforth identify 1932 as the seventh time that the House has switched since 1918.)

Of these seven times the House has switched, the Senate has also switched. Not only does the Senate switch more frequently, it always switches with the House. A switch in the Senate, therefore, seems to be a necessary, but insufficient, condition for a switch in the House. Conversely, a switch in the House is a sufficient, but not necessary, condition for a switch in the Senate. Thus, historically speaking, three scenarios are possible: both House and Senate stay the same, the Senate alone changes, or both the House and the Senate change.

Is this simply historical coincidence, or is a causal logic driving the correlation? A pattern that holds over 46 observations without exception is probably not random. Most important, however, is that this sort of pattern coheres with what we already know about Senate and House elections--namely, House elections are much less susceptible to national trends than Senate elections. This is the case for several reasons.

First, senators lack the ability to draw district lines to minimize opposing partisans. Second, Senate challengers tend to be more qualified and better funded than House challenges. Third, these challengers can use campaign resources more efficiently. Many House challengers cannot efficiently spend money on television advertisements because it is wasted on voters in other districts; however, with Senate elections, there are efficient ad markets. Fourth, senators are less able to cultivate close relationships with constituents--they lack the requisite geographical proximity. Fifth, senators are much more visible to the public; whereas House members can operate in the Capitol without much scrutiny, constituents tend to be more aware of their senators' activities.

Thus, Senate elections are contests where the partisan division is more equal, the average voter has a more balanced view of the candidates, and he has more information about the issues in the race. Like House races, they tend to be referendums on incumbents; Senate incumbents are simply less favored. It is thus no surprise that senators' re-election rate is consistently lower than representatives'. It also no surprise that control of the Senate is more susceptible to change. If individual senators face enhanced competition, so does their partisan caucus.

Why, then, does the Senate always switch when the House does? National political moods do not usually translate into changes in party control in the House. The reason for this is that individual members of the House are fairly invulnerable to that mood. However, they are not perfectly invulnerable. If the mood is sufficiently strong or sufficiently directed against one party, the House incumbency advantage is not enough. Since the House incumbency advantage is greater than the Senate advantage, we should expect the Senate to switch when the House switches. If the mood is strong enough to change the House, it will be strong enough to change the Senate. On the flip side, we can expect relatively milder political moods to change the more competitive Senate, but not the House.

Cost's premise passes the initial sniff test and it my mind, underscores the larger issue that there is no organized, credible voice for both secularism and lassie faire within the Republican Party. That needs to change, or Objectivists will have to simply get used to living under a governing party that is animated by evangelical Christianity and altruism. Yet again, the larger threat to freedom comes from the right.

Teaching impotence

This wonderfully pompus article at Salon.com recounts the chilling steps a leftist parent took to scrub the mind of her young child for his innocent love of America. First, let's set the stage. Author Nina Burleigh would much rather live in France.

Our family first arrived in Narrowsburg [NY] in 2000, as city people hunting for a cheap house. For barely $50,000 we were able to buy the "weekend house" we thought would complete our metropolitan existence. But soon after we closed on the home, we moved to Paris, spurred by the serendipitous arrival of a book contract. When our European idyll ended after two years, and with tenants still subletting our city apartment, we moved into the Narrowsburg house. After growing accustomed to the French social system -- with its cheap medicine, generous welfare, short workweek and plentiful child care -- life back in depressed upstate New York felt especially harsh. We'd never planned to get involved in the life of the town, nor had it ever occurred to us that we might send our son to the Narrowsburg School. But suddenly we were upstate locals, with a real stake in the community.

And Narrowsburg is tough community for an enlightened Francophile such as Burleigh to endure.

[F]or the first few months, we felt uneasy. Eighty of Narrowsburg's 319 adults are military veterans and at least 10 recent school graduates are serving in Iraq or on other bases overseas right now. The school's defining philosophy was traditional and conservative, starting with a sit-down-in-your-seat brand of discipline, leavened with a rafter-shaking reverence for country and flag. Every day the students gathered in the gym for the "Morning Program," open to parents, which began with the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by a patriotic song, and then discussion of a "word of the week." During the first few weeks, the words of the week seemed suspiciously tied to a certain political persuasion: "Military," "tour," "nation" and "alliance" were among them.

One shudders at the thought. How will Burleigh's six year old come to embrace her mother's highbrow contempt for the hypocritical betrayal that is America? This is a deep concern: Burleigh notes that "[i]f you knew nothing else of the world, if you were just 5 or 6 or 10 years old, and this place was your only America, you wouldn't have any reason at all to question the Narrowsburg School's Morning Program routine."

And why should you? There is a reason that we think of our childhoods as an age of innocence. It is a time when we are able to focus our embryonic minds on our relationship with existence. I was six when Saigon fell to the communists and I can remember watching the evacuation on the news and even thinking that it was something that must be important. Nevertheless, the egoistic thrill of riding around the block in my "green machine" and the joy of wiring together my toy train set held more sway for me. During childhood, one's focus is on things far more immediate and it ought to be.

In contrast, Nina Burleigh has Iraq on the mind. She writes,

[j]ust before Christmas, my son and I drove together into New York City with bags of children's clothes and shoes that he and his sister had outgrown. The Harlem unit of the National Guard was putting on a Christmas clothing drive for Iraqi children. On the way into the city, I tried to explain to my son what we were doing, and -- as best I could -- why. As we crossed the George Washington Bridge and the Manhattan skyline spread out below us, I began to give him a variation on the "Africans don't have any food, finish your dinner" talk. I wanted him to understand how privileged he was to live in a place where bombs weren't raining from the sky. It was a talk I'd tried to have before, but not one he'd ever paid much attention to until that day, trapped in the back seat of our car.

In simple language, I told my son that our president had started a war with a country called Iraq. I said that we were bombing cities and destroying buildings. And I explained that families just like ours now had no money or food because their parents didn't have offices to go to anymore or bosses to pay them. "America did this?" my son asked, incredulous. "Yes, America," I answered. He paused, a long silent pause, then burst out: "But Mommy, I love America! I want to hug America!"

Yeah kid, but the president invaded Iraq on a lark and is "bombing cities and destroying buildings" and starving families "like yours" just for the giggles it gives him. Why don't you wrap your arms around that, you little six-year-old twerp!

No wonder so many leftists are so embittered. After all, what is a 6 year-old to do about geopolitics (or his mother's attendant rages) except sit there in helpless impotence? Burleigh has taught six-year old that America is a vicious place controlled by monsters--and that there's nothing he can do about it. And you thought learning that there was no Santa Claus was bad. At least with that horror you learn where the gifts really come from and that you can still give and receive them.

If it were my child, I'd want to teach them that they were efficacious--if they kept their wits about them. During the developmental years, contemporary politics would be off the table altogether. In its stead, I'd share with my child everything I knew about history, be it the history of science, literature, philosophy, or nations. When my child understood how ideas shape both men and civilizations, then we could then talk about politics (and my attendant rages). Until that point, the message would be lost.

Burleigh has one haughty observation to make before she concludes her article. You see, for all its jingoism, life in Narrowsburg actually expanded her child's mind.

Now it has been almost a year since my son scampered down the steps of Narrowsburg Central Rural School for the last time. We've since returned to the city, driven back to urban life more by adult boredom than our children's lack of educational opportunities. Our son is enrolled in a well-rated K-5 public school on Manhattan's Upper West Side; not surprisingly, the Pledge of Allegiance is no longer part of his morning routine. Come to think of it, and I could be wrong, I've never seen a flag on the premises.

My husband and I realized, though, that Narrowsburg did more than mold our boy into a patriot. He can, it turns out -- despite the warnings of other city parents -- read at a level twice that of his new peers. Since we returned to the city, he has learned how to ride a bike, long for an Xbox, practiced a few new swear words and, somehow, learned the meaning of "sexy." He has pretty much stopped favoring red, white and blue.

Not surprising. I hear the culture in Manhattan can do that to you.

Would that be "Always"?

By from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Would that be "Always"?