Mt. Gox operated just as a Ponzi scheme does. You put your money in, which could not be pulled out. This has been visible for almost a year, but nobody mentioned it in the bitcoins media world. It was considered too embarrassing. “No problem.” I labeled this thing a Ponzi scheme, and that is exactly what turned it out to be for a million investors in Mt. Gox. [links in original]

Mr. North must be hoping that no one actually clicks on the links he provides, because if you actually go back to the article he wrote in November, (and which I responded to), you’ll see the he didn’t identify MtGox as a Ponzi scheme, but the entire bitcoin enterprise. Of course, we know that Mr. North can tell the difference between personal possession of assets versus depositing your assets with a broker. His understanding is so great that he has consistently been a strong proponent of direct bailment of gold and opposed the e-Gold/e-Bullion proxies.

So, either he’s feigning ignorance or deliberately trying to deceive his readership. He even equivocates on the idea of “trust”, comparing trust in the bitcoin protocol (which is strong and stable) with trust in shady brokers like MtGox. Also, his statement that no one was pointing out the problems with MtGox except him is clearly false. The bitcoin community has been complaining about MtGox since before North even heard of bitcoin.

My consolation in this whole process is that Gary North’s audience is shrinking, and he’s encouraging this by hiding his articles behind a paywall. He’s still out there encouraging people to buy gold and silver, though, even though the value of silver has halved in the last two years. Hypocrisy much?

[bitmate-author-donate]

Carrying openly was no accident. I’ve made the conscious decision to start visibly carrying, after thinking through the various elements involved. I figured I might as well write up my thinking, as it might help encourage others who are sitting on the fence.

I won’t go into all the comfort benefits of open carry, but they are there. My gun is easier for me to access, draw, and holster, and with the retention mechanism, almost impossible for me to accidentally drop or have taken from me. It’s also more comfortable as I’m not competing for space inside my waistband.

There are other intangible benefits that I’d like to describe, though, since I believe that many of the concerns that people have with open carry come from a mistaken perception of the role of the armed citizen in society. Please note that my goal is not to convince any anti-gun folks of my position. I’m writing to people who accept the idea that guns are appropriate for personal self-defense. There are plenty of resources available defending guns for personal defense.

For those who are still reading and do consider it appropriate to carry a gun for self-defense, I’d like for you to consider the arguments supporting that role. You accept the idea that you are the one primarily responsible for your own protection, and, if you have a family, for the protection of the people in your care. (While that primary role is given to husbands and fathers, I strongly believe that all members of the family should understand their role in protecting others, including mothers and children.)

Since you accept the idea that protection of others is your responsibility, think about how far that responsibility goes. Are you not also required to protect your neighbor? Your church family? How about a total stranger? Jesus teaches in the Parable of the Good Samaritan that our neighbors are anyone that we have the opportunity to protect.

At this point, you’re wondering what this has to do with open carry. After all, you can be prepared to protect your friends and neighbors without advertising the fact that you’re carrying a gun. However, carrying a gun secretly prevents us from showing love to the person whom we’re often tempted to ignore in the defense equation… the “criminal”.

Take a step back and ask yourself why the police carry guns openly. In fact, go a step further and ask why police advertise their presence at all. After all, plainclothes police officers do exist, so why is it that police officers, as a rule, wear distinctive uniforms and display their weapons. The simple answer is because the power of the police comes from their potential to draw a weapon, not in the weapon itself. Their uniform is an advertisement of the potential use of force. The hope is that by displaying the potential use of lethal force, the needs to actually use that force would be minimized by folks who are deciding whether to do the wrong thing.

But, as we just saw, the police do not have a monopoly on the potential use of lethal force. Anyone who carries a gun is also exercising their own right to wield lethal force. However, when you carry concealed, you are hiding the potential, keeping that knowledge to yourself.

In contrast to the police, who carry themselves in a way to dissuade crime, the concealed carrier is only seeking to protect themselves from criminals. While the difference is subtle, I believe it evidences a huge difference in the attitude towards others. In showing concern to others before they commit to a crime, I am showing myself as a volunteer towards keeping peace and not just protecting others.

If my argument doesn’t convince you, think about the history of carrying swords for personal protection. While I’m no expert on the subject, it seems that it was the honorable man who carried a sword openly at his side, while it was the knave who hid his blade. The honorable samurai carried his sword openly, while the dishonorable ninja hides in the shadows.

[bitmate-author-donate]

Let me caveat this response by stating my love for Pastor Wilson and his writing. No one can fairly accuse him of whimsical positions, and his thoughts, while often controversial, are consistently thought through and defended Biblically. He’s also appropriately nuanced when our culture wants simplistic, black-and-white answers to complicated moral problems. His books have been a profound blessing to me and my family, and while I ultimately disagree with his positions on cannabis, I believe that even the best people have to be wrong every now and then to evidence that no mortal man can be right all the time.

In Pastor Wilson’s short video, he makes a few arguments, and I’d like to break down the positions he lays out.

1. Cannabis should be decriminalized.
2. Smoking cannabis is a sin.
3. Smoking cannabis is an excommunicatable sin.
4. Not all sins should be crimes because it’s often impractical to prosecute some sins as crimes.
5. Smoking cannabis is not comparable to consuming alcohol.
6. The whole point of smoking cannabis is to “get stupid”.
7. While there are “God honoring” uses for beer, there are none for cannabis.
8. Alcohol use that inhibits “clearheadedness” is sinful.

There’s no argument from me on point 1, and polls show that many of the people in Colorado and Washington who voted to legalize cannabis did so not with the goal of seeing consumption increased, but because they thought that the resources being used to suppress consumption could be better spent elsewhere. The so-called “War on Drugs” over the last century has been such a disaster that even if cannabis consumption could be shown to be the most grievous of sins, the response by our civil government has been even more so. Since we’re in agreement, I won’t press that point, but if any readers are in doubt, there are other excellent resources discussing the subject.

Despite Wilson’s statement that smoking should not be a crime, he does state that it is a sin, and more-so, a sin so grievous as to warrant being cast out of the church. The lack of any nuance is so out of character for Pastor Wilson, and enforces the position by calling medical usages a “farce”.

As to the topic of “clearheadedness”, I have found that the reality of inebriation due to alcohol consumption is much more gray than Pastor Wilson would have us believe. During the Q&A, Wilson agrees with the interviewers statement that “I can have a beer to the glory of God and all is well; I just can’t cross the line of getting drunk.” The premise of that statement is that there is a “line” to getting drunk, while the reality is that no such line exists. Ken Gentry, in his excellent book “God Gave Wine“, makes the argument that “drunkenness” is a very subjective state. He writes, “Obviously, the Christian must avoid drunkenness resulting from overindulgence. And just as obviously different people have different capacities or tolerances for safe and wholesome alcohol consumption.” While our civil government loves to make rule upon rule regarding blood alcohol levels and field sobriety tests, the reality is that the effects of alcohol are so subjective as to make “drunkenness” undefinable.

Biblically, there is strong evidence that certain levels of inebriation is subjectively appropriate. Psalm 104:15 refers to “wine to gladden the heart of man”, and Proverbs 31:6-7 encourages the reader to “give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more.”

In contrast, there are times when abstinence is appropriate. Proverbs 31:4-5 states that “it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted.” We see that authority requires sobriety, and kings have given a special calling that requires a level of selflessness not imposed on society in general.

As a rule, the Bible acknowledges a sliding scale of allowed inebriation depending on the responsibilities one has been given. At one extreme is the rule of the land who takes the lives of an entire country into his hands and should be living a lifestyle of sobriety, while at the other is the man dying and in pain, to whom inebriation is a blessing to forget pain. We can extrapolate that in between is a sliding scale of responsibility which would dictate the level of inebriation appropriate. I would agree with Pastor Wilson that a policy prohibiting airline pilots from cannabis consumption a number of days before a flight would be appropriate, just as policies prohibiting them to be drunk are already on the books.

As the Bible allows for a sliding scale, it follows that there may be times when delegating responsibility in anticipation of inebriation is fully appropriate. Acknowledging that one is too drunk to operate a vehicle or heavy machinery is not an admission of sin. Planning on having a designated driver is showing responsible foresight.

As “incapacitating” levels of inebriation are allowed, the argument that “all pot smoking leads to ‘getting stupid'” ends up rather impotent. Even if it were the case that all cannabis consumption leads to the inability to drive a car or solve complex mathematics (which I do not concede), “getting stupid” is no more immoral than “being stuffed” after a large meal. (Incidentally, to argue that being incapacitated physically is somehow less immoral than being so mentally is an argument from Gnosticism.)

I would make the argument that “drunkenness” is a lifestyle, not an event, just as gluttony is defined as a lifestyle of consumption, not eating too much at a buffet. My plan is to develop that argument in a future post, but for now, consider Proverbs 23:20, and think to yourself how the writer expects us to identify a drunkard.

I do have a lingering concern about the limitations that Wilson is promoting when comes to alcohol, and would be interested in seeing his position more explicitly. His arguments on cannabis lead me to believe that he would condemn anyone who feels any effects from consuming alcohol or smoking tobacco. I hope I’m wrong, and would love to see evidence otherwise, and if I am wrong, I would wonder how he allows that the effects that comes from alcohol is somehow more allowable than the effects of cannabis.

[bitmate-author-donate]

Imagine falling asleep knowing that you will dream for two weeks. Once in that dream, you find yourself in new, exotic locations where you’ve never been before. You meet characters with whom you spend every moment interacting. Like in a dream, things happen that don’t make complete sense. You leave your bed unmade, and come back and it’s made. You’re eat at restaurants for every meal, even though such activities are economically unfeasible. You wear expensive suits and drive expensive cars, tip porters for carrying your bags and bartenders for mixing your drinks.

Your “real life” friends no longer exist, but are replaced with new and interesting friends. These friends are from exotic places like Washington and Tokyo and London and Cambridge. They have strange accents and interesting stories. You talk with them about computers and lobster and saunas and Scotch. Like Alice in Wonderland, you find jenever labeled “drink me” that makes you twenty feet tall and pâté labeled “eat me” that shrinks you to nothing. You share your discoveries with your new friends, and their excitement fuels and motivates you to discover even more.

All the friends in your dream are dreaming as well, of course. They claim to have their own waking worlds with families and mortgages and water bills, but those worlds are so far away. Occasionally during the dream, we remember the people from the waking world, but most of the time, we enjoying the dream together, waiting for that next experience around the corner.

But, with each day in our dream, we know that will soon wake up. We look forward to the waking with a very real conflict. We miss the waking world, with the real people we love and cherish, and we know that each moment dreaming is a moment away from them. Yet, our friends in our dream world have become just as real, and we know that when we wake up, everything will be gone except for the memories. No friends, no food, no fast cars.

So, on the last night before the flight takes us back to the world of reality, we desperately look for ways to hold on to the dreams. We promise we’ll find ways to keep in touch, and we make those promises honestly. However, all dreams fade quickly upon awakening, and we quickly forget the promises we made.

This is probably for the best.

I am starting to appreciate, though, how much intimacy in relationships and conversation is so vitally important in maintaining my own personal sanity, and how much it’s missing in my daily conversations. When I say “intimate”, I don’t mean romantic or sexual, although clearly those components would be part of certain intimate conversations, but in this case, I mean the act of conversation with trust established and our guard down.

I am very blessed to have family and friends where intimacy is so engrained as to be invisible. I have a wife, brothers, and men in the church who taken on various roles in my life, willing to listen to my rants and weaknesses, and able to share their own with me. I’ve become so familiar with that blessing that I don’t realize how necessary it is until I’m removed from it.

When I am removed during business travel, relationships that on the surface seem similar after a while seem dull and colorless. The temptation appears to polish the dull relationships by fomenting intimate relationships with coworkers, and thus the danger presents itself. I realize I’m starving, and fear becoming ravenous. In order to protect myself, I force myself to distance myself, and start counting the days until I’m able to fly home.

I think this is why alcohol has become so intrinsic to business travel. Alcohol allows us an excuse to form temporary intimate relationships with coworkers or other local acquaintances without having a basis of trust. For the cost of a few dollars, we can consume a magic elixir that temporarily removes the established social mores that define our normal daily relationships. For that short period of time, we can fulfill the need that we have to share ourselves openly, and to experience others doing the same. We begin to emotionally undress ourselves and enjoy seeing others do the same. Of course, the magic wears off in the morning, and there is always the awkwardness of putting our masks (and clothes) back on. We deal with the physical sickness, but secretly reminisce and look forward to the next time.

There’s no substitution for good relationships, and when you have them, there are like a good, satisfying pantry, always able to provide strengthening meals. It can sometimes be difficult to appreciate the blessing while in the midst of it, but the absence is painfully obvious when it’s gone.

Before I begin, I do need to thank Mr. North for all he’s done over the last few decades. I’ve been reading his books for over twenty years, and much of my thinking has been shaped by words he’s written. I write this from a perspective of great appreciation for the work he has tirelessly performed for the world for years.

Mr. North divides his article into two major sections: The first is an overview of Ponzi schemes, and the second is a defense of the Austrian theory of money (Austria here refers to the theories articulated by a number of Austrian economists in the early part of the 20th century, and not to anything about Austria’s actual economy.)

Is It Really Fiat?

The first misconception is evident almost immediately when he writes that the designer(s) of bitcoin “made it out of nothing. Think ‘Federal Reserve wanna-be.'” Sadly, Mr. North starts off with a cheap shot by comparing Bitcoin to fiat money, without actually comparing the two. He simply makes an assertion that since both are made from “nothing”, they therefore share the same flaws. However, this is not the case. While Federal Reserve notes (i.e. “U.S. Dollars”) are made from nothing, their nothingness is intrinsic. A small group of people are authorized to create dollars as quickly as they desire. (In the past, they were limited by how fast the printing presses could actually create the money, but as most dollars are electronic today, that limiting factor is no longer in effect.)

Bitcoins, however, cannot be created arbitrarily. Built into the design is a known rate at which bitcoins are created, divided out to groups of people mining those new bitcoins. Those miners are choosing to spend their existing capital on mining hardware, with the hope that their investment will output bitcoins into their wallet. This is no different than gold mining companies investing capital to access difficult to reach gold veins. The key is that no one in the world can create more bitcoins than the protocol allows, and that number is known throughout the bitcoin creation lifecycle. This is in such contrast to the Federal Reserve that the comparison is clearly unfair. (This is not intended to be a full explanation of bitcoin mining. Mining is currently an industry in itself and one I’ve educated myself on and chosen not to get involve with.)

Early Adopters vs. Mr. Ponzi

Mr. North does go on to talk about early adopters, and I share his concern. The smart people that have analyzed the public bitcoin ledger called the “blockchain” have speculated that the small group of people who were the early adopters may have in their possession up to 1.2 million bitcoins, with a current market value of $1.3 billion. More important than the dollar values is that they may be controlling 10% of the currently mined bitcoins. (As an aside, I have the same concern about unbalanced distribution of gold reserves, so this problem isn’t unique to bitcoin.)

First, due to the nature of bitcoin mining, the balance of coins held by the initial group will grow smaller as a ratio of the whole over time. While this in no way assures that the value will be distributed to the common man, it does mean that the system was designed to increase the distribution of bitcoins among the user population. This can’t be said of the dollar, which is designed to centralize wealth in the hands of the governments and banking system.

Second, the same criticism can be made of gold and silver. Precious metals are currently in the hands of “early adopters” (being defined as anyone who bought before I did). Those early adopters made a lot of money watching the price of gold increase since the early part of the last decade. This benefit to early adopters is fundamental to those who get in early on a good idea. Eventually, though, the early “mania” cools off and the value becomes more stable. We’re simply in the vertical part of the economic S-curve, and it will flatten out, just like Facebook stock and gold prices. There’s no evidence that a crash is an inevitable result of a quick increase.

Calling this a Ponzi scheme is disingenuous, and Mr. North should know better.

The Origin of Money

North’s section on the origin of money is right on, and I agree with every word. However, I believe he undermines his later conclusion in his own words:

In that book, Mises argued, as Menger had before him, that money arises out of market transactions. That which did not function as money before, now functions as money. Something that was valuable for its own sake, most likely gold or silver, becomes valuable for another purpose, namely, the facilitation of exchange. [emphasis mine]

He later writes “The central benefit of money is its predictable purchasing power. [emphasis his]” If that’s the case, then why would he use gold and silver as an example previously as examples of money? If we look back at the purchasing power of gold over the last few years, we see it fluctuate from $300 ten years ago to a peak around $1900 last year. Yet, I don’t recall seeing North state that this ridiculous rise in the price proves its lack of value. In fact, he says just the opposite.

So, a person can buy money by the sale of goods or services, set this money aside, and re-enter the markets in a different location or in a different time, in the confidence that he will probably be able to buy a similar quantity of goods and services.

Tell that to the people who lost a quarter of their gold value in the last two years. Any criticism he makes of bitcoins needs to be applied equally to any other wealth storage that he actively promotes. Stability is a good thing, but stability comes as a result of good fundamentals. If the nature of an instrument promotes stability, as it does with precious metals and bitcoins (and doesn’t with dollars and beanie babies), then stability will result. The fundamentals of bitcoin are provably sound, and therefore, I believe that this will result in stability. This is the same belief that draws me to gold and silver, and away from fiat money.

(Sadly, I’m seeing a lot of historical gold defenders like Peter Schiff and Gary North badmouthing bitcoin. One does need to take their protestations with a grain of salt, since bitcoin is clearly a competitor in the gold market in which both are heavily invested.)

The Fundamental Misunderstanding

Finally, let’s consider the statement Mr. North makes that evidences his complete failure to understand bitcoin, undermining any attempt that he makes to discredit bitcoin as a currency.

The price will soon be too high for most people to buy one Bitcoin. What I think is going to happen next is that somebody is going to start a Bitcoin mutual fund. You will be able to buy fractional shares of a Bitcoins. Maybe you can get in for $250.

When purchasing public shares of a company, investors are usually limited to purchasing a minimum of one share (ignoring things like DRIPs and fractional shares). For example, Apple Computer is currently trading at about $550 per share. In order for an individual investor to buy a share, they would need to pull together as much as a single share costs in order to buy that fraction of the company. In Apple’s case, that would be 1/900,000,000 ownership of the company.

However, it is already as easy to purchase a fraction of a bitcoin as a full bitcoin. Since a bitcoin is currently divisible to eight decimal places, the currently value of the smallest part unit of a bitcoin right now is only worth 1/1000 of a cent.

Mr. North’s failure to grasp this concept explains his failure to understand the biggest benefit of bitcoin over other tangible wealth containers like gold. Even Peter Schiff’s hawking of the Valcambi CombiBar demonstrates gold’s divisibility problem. One gram of gold is currently worth about $50 and is smaller than my fingernail. As wealth storage, gold works pretty well, but for any daily usage, gold is practically useless. Bitcoin, on the other hand, was designed from the ground up to facilitate instant, provable value transfer to a very granular level. Mr. North refused to even evaluate this aspect since he’s so focused on the cost increase.

Conclusion

I appreciate that Gary North took the time to write what he did about bitcoin, and I think there are warnings that many of us who have transferred some of our savings into bitcoin should heed. Proverbs 11:13 says “Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it”, and there are plenty in the bitcoin community who are ignoring that wisdom. While I think there is a reason why the price of bitcoins are rising outside of the speculation, I do look forward to seeing the price stabilize. I would encourage Mr. North to educate himself on the fundamentals of bitcoin, look beyond the speculation, and reevaluate his thoughts.

First, go watch this video to see a quick overview of what the Open Source Ecology people are doing.

This was the original goal of the patent and copyright systems. If you look back at the U.S. Constitution, you find a short section referred to as the copyright clause:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Intellectual property is a recent idea. Before copyrights and patents, knowledge was protected by simply not telling anyone. So, if you had an innovative means to distill alcohol, fold metal, or make violins, you would protect the secrets and sell the results. The reason for this is pretty clear… if people were to make public the methods they spent time and labor engineering, others could profit without putting in the same effort. Because of this, many secrets were lost over time, and even today have not been fully rediscovered.

Recognizing that valuable learning was being lost, patent laws were created which codified an agreement between producers and the government. If an innovator shared their discoveries or inventions with the public, in exchange, the government would grant an exclusive license to the innovator to produce that item for a limited time. Keep in mind that the inventor was purchasing a license for his own work from the civil government in exchange for divulging the secrets. He was making the information publicly available, and, in exchange, was receiving back exclusive rights to his work. He always the option to keep his knowledge secret, but was risking others discovering his methods and not being protected. (We still have this form of protection codified in “trade secrets“, but even those laws have been mangled beyond recognition.)

Nowhere in the original patent laws do we see any ideas about intellectual property or the ownership of ideas. Historically, there is no precedent for owning an idea or a process, and that once divulged, a thought can no longer be controlled by the thinker. The Bible gives us very strong principles regarding property and ownership of tangible items, condemning general theft (Exodus 20:15), but also giving more details regarding restitution for theft (Exodus 22:1-4), theft due to negligent destruction (Exodus 22:6), etc. We also learn about things that aren’t considered theft like gleaning (Leviticus 23:22). In fact, failure to allow the poor to glean from your fields was considered theft from the poor.

Throughout all of scripture, we never see any hint that information or knowledge is something that can be stolen, or that stealing a thought, idea, or song was condemned by God or anyone else. (I’d love to be proven wrong, and encourage any information to be posted in the comments.)

I believe the reason for this is fairly obvious… “taking” an idea does not actually remove anything from the originator. Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“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.”

So, this leads into my love affair with Open Source Ecology (OSE). Currently, many of the tools that our society uses every day to survive are wrapped up in many layers of intellectual property laws. The OSE team has realized that many societies around the world are unable to pay for the initial costs of purchasing many of the industrial tools, nor can they afford for continue to pay for the maintenance and rights to continue to use those tools. Instead, the OSE team is working to produce a Global Village Construction Set, which is a tool set comprised of what they refer to as the “50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small civilization with modern comforts.” Each of these tools will be designed, built, and testing, and each tool will be shared along with the design drawing, materials lists, and software needed to build the tools.

As information becomes more and more locked up by international treaties, I’m excited that there are groups that are bucking the trend, and promoting the growth and sharing of knowledge, instead of the hording of knowledge to maximize profits. I’d encourage you to look for opportunities to help share the knowledge you have, and also to support organizations like Open Source Ecology, the Free Software Foundation, and Wikimedia, who are working to “promote the progress of science”.

Now, if we could just get Bible translations out from under the thumb of copyright laws and publishers.

My plan is to go through the book, chapter by chapter, and spend time writing about the various issues presented from a Biblical perspective. As I said, not all of Rand’s ideas are trash, and I did want to give credit where she does convey truth, accidental as it may be.

I’m hoping to do this chapter by chapter, but some chapters are extremely long, and will probably need to be divided in order to better facilitate conquering. If I find I’m getting too long winded in a single post, I’ll split them to allow for better digesting.

Before digging into the content, we need to check out the table of contents. Atlas Shrugged is divided into three parts, each with ten chapters. The three parts are given the names “Non-contradiction”, “Either-or”, and “A is A”. Those of you familiar with formal logic will recognize these as the three classic laws of thought, the law of noncontradiction, the law of excluded middle, and the law of identity, respectively. These laws were articulated by Aristotle, and are fundamental to Rand’s philosophy. I will be going into more detail throughout the book, but I wanted to point out that Rand’s love for formal logic hits you right from the start.

So, starting with Part 1, Chapter 1, “The Theme”, let’s see what we find.

“Who is John Galt?”

An unnamed bum utters the Atlas Shrugged catch phrase as the first line of the book, and it’s clearly intended to confuse the reader. Eddie Willers, the nondescript anyman, is clearly shaken by the question, but shrugs it off and moves on. As he continues is walk through the city, we see descriptions of economic troubles. As Eddie walks, he remembers back to an oak tree from his youth. The tree appeared solid from the outside, but when lightning stuck it during a storm, the truth was different.

The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside-just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it.

These subtle analogies continue throughout the book. Willers finally arrives at Taggert Transcontinental, a railroad corporation run by his childhood friend, James Taggert. James is not described attractively, and his first interaction does nothing to creating a good impression of him. There was an accident on the Rio Norte line, and we discover that the company is far behind on maintaining the line.

James Taggert had made a business deal with Orren Boyle, the president of Associated Steel, but Boyle hadn’t delivered on his promises. Willers reminded Taggert that the order was thirteen months late, and there was little evidence that Boyle would ever deliver.

“I resent your attitude. Orren Boyle will deliver that rail just as soon as it’s humanly possible. So long as he can’t deliver it, nobody can blame us.”

This line from James Taggert gives us an initial glimpse into his fundamental motivations. His goal in every activity is not to get the job accomplished, but to avoid being held accountable. He would have succeeded in this goal had not his failure to deliver to his customers allowed a competitor to successful take Taggert Transcontinental’s business. We also learn about Ellis Wyatt, an oil prospector who doesn’t seem to have the same business values that James Taggert possesses. We learn that when Taggert failed to deliver on his business commitments, he took his business to Taggert’s competition.

“Ellis Wyatt is a greedy bastard who’s after nothing but money. It seems to me that there are more important things in life than making money.”

Right in chapter one, we see the business values conflicting, and are introduced to a theme that will be repeated many times. James Taggert makes a jab at Wyatt, accusing him of valuing only money, while Taggert places himself on a higher rung on the moral ladder because he has better understanding of priorities in life, and making sure money isn’t at the top.

“Yes, I know, I know, he’s making money. But that is not the standard, it seems to me, by which one gauges a man’s value to society. And as for his oil, he’d come crawling to us. and he’d wait his turn along with all the other shippers, and he wouldn’t demand more than his fair share of transportation-if it weren’t for the Phoenix-Durango. We can’t help it if we’re up against destructive competition of that kind. Nobody can blame us.”

As Rand’s focus in Atlas Shrugged is to make a point regarding business ethics, I’m going to be spending a lot of time writing about how Christian ethics relates to business. At first glance, Taggert seems have a point. It is true that there are more important things in life than money. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:33 that we are to seek first his kingdom, so it would impossible to obey this statement while doing what Taggert was accusing Wyatt of, considering money the most thing in life.

But, what remains to be seen is whether Taggert’s accusations against Wyatt are accurate, and whether Tagger’s priorities that he values as more important than money are correct.

On that trip, after taking care of the boring logistics, he and I set out by train with just a rail pass and the faintest semblance of a plan. Our travels reached a surreal peak when we found ourselves on a two hour ferry from Aomori to Hakodate enjoying the sights of the fishing boats on Mutsu Bay.

Through trips to Tokyo, Japan, Bendigo, Australia, and London, England, we’ve always found our common passion for travel and food would lead us on the best adventures, and I always enjoyed them immensely.

He’s taken a leave of absence from the company, off on what seems to be his best adventure yet, and I’m looking forward to seeing his updates. Check out his page, Beyond My Front Door.

I have been looking back through my old blog posts, and see a lot of material that I really wanted to continue, including expanding on my previous article on Ayn Rand, written over two years ago. Where does the time go?

I’m going to commit to writing at least one blog post a week. If you don’t see something from me, please encourage me to write. Even if you don’t care for my writing, just encourage me to do it for the sake of my personal growth. Like I said, my brain is getting fat on the empty calories of Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.

There’s no gatekeepers to distribution anymore, and while that can be a good thing, it has horrible unintended consequences, in that the masses that are consuming this drivel are idiots who don’t know how to pronounce “vice versa“. People are idiots, and “success” is defined as anything that appeals to those idiots. The folly of self-promotion is the idea that we need to appeal to mentality of those idiots.

The bigger issue is whether this is going to be the crack in the dam, inspiring legalization campaigns around the country. My interest is going to be in how the recent 10th amendment folks are going to react. We’ve been hearing a lot about nullification and states rights regarding “Obamacare”, but are these folks really principled federalists, or just whiners? Are they going to apply their newfound love for constitutional principles to issues they might not agree with? After all, it’s the commerce clause in the constitution that the federal usurpers use to defend control over drug laws and health insurance.

So, I put this as a challenge to the “tenthers” out there. Are you going to be consistent, or are you going to show that your “principles” were mere whitewashed pragmatism?

It’s kinda hard to miss Rand these days. Fox News has people from the Ayn Rand Institute on often criticizing just about every action made by the Obama administrator, and for good reason. The reactions of our current federal government in response to economic crisis (starting with the Bush administrator, I should note), reads like a significant portion of Atlas Shrugged, under the section of “what not to do”. It’s hard to watch the news without hearing stories of bailouts, crony-ism, “corporate welfare”, and other actions of governments and corporations not only in bed together, but filming amateur porn, and forcing us to watch it.

For those not familiar with Rand’s magnum opus, it tells of the story of a the struggle for success for American capitalists whilst overcoming a society increasingly jealous of their successes. Rand’s philosophy is based on the premise that society runs on the backs of private enterprise and entrepreneurship, and that as long as those entrepreneurs are willing to bear the load, society’s flourish. However, when the community takes advantage of these “Atlases”, at some point, it is no longer advantageous to the entrepreneur, and he will shrug off society, leaving it nothing left from which to leech.

In my opinion, Rand failed before she started writing Atlas Shrugged. Her goal was to write an all-encompassing philosophical defense and a page-turner at the same name, and her didn’t succeed in either respect. One reviewer wrote that the “characters are less flesh-and-blood humans than mouthpieces for various philosophical points” However, as a philosophical argument, her book does a fantastic job in fleshing out the various types of personalities that lead to the establishment in society of the false ideas of justice that endlessly eat away at the true freedom and liberty that society should enjoy. She could have written “There are people in society who feel entitled to the wealth of others,”, but instead she created those people, and this is where Rand succeeds.

However, my goal is not to defend her observations on the failures of society, but to critique her solution offered in Atlas Shrugged, and ethical egoism in general. My goal is to show that while Rand does correctly identify the sin of greed and especially established greed under the misnomer of “compassion”, her solution to government enforced equality is as bad as the problem.

Contrast this to what I believe is the Biblical view of ethics and personal property. When reading the Bible, it’s easy to defend diverse ideas of how wealth, poverty, property, and charity. A fiscal lasse faire capitalist, a mutualist, and a Marxist could all pull out different verses to support their positions. However, I believe that the Bible does support a single economic philosophy of personal and property “rights” (a la Rand), while still embracing charity as a moral duty. Unlike Rand, I see no reason for these ideas to conflict.

Charity and giving are clearly commanded of Christians in Scripture, and even codified in the morals law (Lev. 19:10). Even the Jubilee laws that commanded slaves be set free also commanded that the land be left fallow for an entire year “that the poor of your people may eat” (Exodus 23:11). In even a surface examination of scripture, it’s undeniable that the Bible stands in clear disagreement with Rand’s objections towards charity.

But, at the same time, the idea of property rights are also very strongly supported. From the root moral law of “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15), the scriptures condemn scripture and command restitution for property stolen (Exodus 21:1). (As an interesting aside, the Bible does recognize that one may sympathize with a person who steals, but it doesn’t take away the need for the thief to restore the stolen property, even if he were to forfeit all that he owns. (Proverbs 6:30-31)).

Many today have concluded that since charity is a moral good, and since the civil government is an agency for promoting good (Romand 13:4), therefore, the civil government should be an agency for charity. This thinking, however, passes the moral buck, and in fact, undoes all the charity works to accomplish the life of the giver. When a person is forced to give (if I can even put those words together), the moral goodness that comes from the act is stripped. Likewise, when the state coerces a person to give under duress, whether that penalty be the threat of fines, jail, or even death, the state is no longer acting as an agent of good. In addition, it can cause the victim to begin to horde whatever money is left to them by the state.

In order to promote charity as an social norm, we must first promote a society where property is protected. The ultimate moral responsibility for charity is the individual alone (although he may choose to voluntary work with collective organizations like the local church), and it should be the role of the state to promote this reality by encouraging charity, while protecting property rights. Historically, America has excelled at private charity, and I strongly believe that this follows from recognizing our wealth, promoting strong property rights, and upholding charity as a strong moral good. For the most part, I believe America still considers the poor as an opportuntiy to show love, and not as a mass of ingrateful consumes. I strongly hope that this positive attitude is not replaced by politics of greed, forcing the rich to turn to people like Ayn Rand for ideas about how to protect their wealth from the masses.

As a final thought, I think the best argument against Rand’s personal philopsophy of ethical egoism is the results her life showed as she attempted to live according to her principles, dying arrogant and alone. She has many admirers, but very very few friends. I honestly cannot imagine a true friendship based on upon the ideas of Rand’s egoism. After all, if you knew that a person was going to act exclusively in their own best interest, then any relationship with them will always last as long as it is practical for them. The idea of personal sacrifice is unknown, even immoral, and even if an egoist were to help you, you would always suspect an ulterior motive.

• Installing Zimbra.
• Messing with VirtualBox.
• Enjoying Sapporo.
• Preparing to travel to Colorado.
• Starting to invest using TradeKing and Kapitall.
• Watching the kids grow up.
• Enjoying Tab getting her yellow belt in karate.
• Waiting for summer.