Shane Atwell's Blog

Altruism Versus Honest

2012-02-25T14:23:00.000-08:00

Altruism, the idea that your life only has moral worth if you're serving others, has always been associated with irrationalist philosophies, including religion. That is, the same philosophies that attack self-interest also attack the idea of reality and or truth. So altruism often goes hand in hand with philosophic dishonesty. But get a load of this direct attack on honesty using Kant's morality of sacrifice. The Scientific American post was written in reference to Peter Gleick's fraudulently obtaining Heartland institute documents and then publishing them online:

Kant said that when judging the morality of an act, we must weigh the intentions of the actor. Was he acting selfishly, to benefit himself, or selflessly, to help others? By this criterion, Gleick’s lie was clearly moral, because he was defending a cause that he passionately views as righteous.

He fudges a bit in the third sentence, switching from selfish vs. unselfish to "passionately views as righteous." What he should have said is that Gleick's lie was clearly moral because he was acting to help others. Whether the 'others' are people or trees or bugs is immaterial. As I've discussed elsewhere, there is no standard to judge helping others and this principle therefore is carte blanche to lie, steal and cheat as long as you can claim to be acting selflessly.

Contrast Kant's and altruism's moral blank check for dishonesty with Ayn Rand's description:

Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud—that an attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness become the enemies you have to dread and flee—

In fact Gleick was counting on not just the blindness of the Heartland Institute, but of the entire internet community. That didn't work out so well. The bloggers' intelligence, rationality and perceptiveness outed him pretty quickly and he's been removed from the ethics committee he chaired (!) and taken a leave of absence from his job. If only the Kantian professors whose creed justifies Gleick's actions were put on leave as well.

Rand continues:

[Honesty is the recognition of the fact]—that you do not care to live as a dependent, least of all a dependent on the stupidity of others, or as a fool whose source of values is the fools he succeeds in fooling—that honesty is not a social duty, not a sacrifice for the sake of others, but the most profoundly selfish virtue man can practice: his refusal to sacrifice the reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others.

Energy and the Power of a Positive Message

2012-02-04T13:32:00.000-08:00

Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress has an excellent interview with Marlo Lewis reviewing the top energy stories of 2011. They cover the new and very successful methods of extracting oil and natural gas, Solyndra, EPA regulations, etc.

Stick around especially for the last 10 minutes (starting at 46:20) when Alex discusses his own efforts to promote capitalism and industry in the face of the environmentalist onslaught and the main lesson he's learned as an advocate.

http://centerforindustrialprogress.com/2012/01/04/power-hour-the-year-in-energy-with-marlo-lewis/

Bad Calories in Poster Form

2012-01-30T19:50:00.000-08:00

Consider this a postscript to my review of Good Calories, Bad Calories. I've been on a mostly low carb diet since reading that book almost a year ago. Its sometimes a struggle to find interesting foods that are low carb, but other than that I'm enjoying all the other benefits of the diet: some weight loss, more muscular, more even energy throughout the day, easier to go without snacks.

GCBC in poster form from http://pinterest.com/pin/61924563596166300/

Source: fastcodesign.com via BestSelf on Pinterest

Review: Ayn Rand and the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged

2012-01-27T15:00:00.000-08:00

I saw the documentary Ayn Rand and the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged last night with some friends and at least one fellow SLOB. It was ok.

The documentary covered several topics: the early life an Ayn Rand (born in Tsarist Russia, moved to the U.S. for its individualism), the publication of her 3 novels (what they were about and how they were received), the radicalism of her morality of selfishness, the plot of Atlas Shrugged and its parallels with today's economic/political crisis, and the appeal of Atlas Shrugged to young readers.

It definitely had its high points. There were observations that were surprising to me even as a long-time Objectivist. The interviews with Yaron Brook and Harry Binswanger were excellent. And of course the footage of the various Ayn Rand interviews was fantastic, with her piercing eyes and philosophic precision. It also did a decent job in outlining Rand's philosophy for non-experts.

But it fell short in tone and lack of integration. If it had concentrated on one subject, like Rand's life, or the publication and reception of her books, or the prophetic nature of Atlas, it could have done much better than it did only touching on each of these.

Personally, I was hoping for the last. I was expecting descriptions of elements in the book, followed by visuals of headlines from 2006-2010 with suitably ominous music. Like taking the scene when in the midst of a collapsing economy one of the bureaucrats whines "I can't help it, I need more powers" and telling the story of the financial meltdown (I think it was about when AIG was bailed out) when one of the regulators was whining to Congress that in order to fix the mess he needed more powers. Or tell the story of the men going on strike and discuss the restaurant owner from Martha's Vineyard or the coal mine owner who did just that for the same reasons. Or talk about the producers in the novel compared to Steve Jobs. Or talk about the businessmen who are better at running to Washington than making things work and GE's Emelt. Or discuss the spreading incompetence when no one is willing to take responsibility and the electricity blackouts in the northeast a few years back. Or the corruption of science when it becomes government funded and the sham of government funded global warming "research". Or the parallels, perhaps intended, between John Galt and Rand. I could keep going, but you get the idea.

Instead the documentary was spread over several topics and further diluted by more irrelevant anecdotes, like those from an f-bomb dropping movie producer that tried to make Atlas, but wouldn't give Rand script approval.

I further felt that the tone was marred by the voice actors, especially the female ones, who read the passages of Atlas in a very condescending or overly dramatic manner, when the delivery should have been even, forceful and with just a touch of emotion. They shouldn't have been trying to induce shock or surprise in the listeners by means of their intonation, the meaning of the passages and the cognitive/emotional abilities of the listeners is sufficient.

I know nothing of the author Anne Heller, who was interviewed extensively for the movie, but it was hard to watch her beaten down face and dead fish eyes.

Lastly, the documentary really starts off wrong: using the scene from Atlas when Eddie Willers discovers metaphorically the emptiness of strength in the collapse of an oak tree, eaten out and hollow. The written scene is powerful. But to show it on the screen with a tree that isn't big, i.e. doesn't give the impression of strength, and isn't hollow?! With repeated close-ups of the not hollow core...I've seen the kind of tree Rand wrote about. The producers should have found one or skipped the gimmick.

Do I recommend seeing the movie? Only if you want to know everything you can about Rand and Atlas or if you want to know very little. In the latter case the movie will give you a smattering of information on several aspects of Rand's life and the book with little effort. But you really should just read the book.

Note: my apologies for the lack of links in that fifth paragraph, perhaps I'll come back and fill it in.

Right-to-Work is a Bandaid

2012-01-21T15:35:00.000-08:00

Update (2/2/2012): Welcome RedState readers and thanks for the mention LaborUnionReport. LaborUnionReport is my go to newsfeed for everything union. Please check out my other posts on compulsory bargaining.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about "right-to-work" states. These states, 22 at present, have "right-to-work" statutes that prevent non-union workers at a unionized company from being compelled to join the union. The statutes derive from the Taft-Hartley act, passed in the 40s in an attempt to weaken the pro-union provisions of the National Labor Relations Act. (If only conservatives had had the guts to repeal the NLRA then...)

The NLRA institutes "collective bargaining rights", requiring employers to allow unionization, negotiate with the unions, and to not recognize competing unions. In other words, the NLRA obliterates the rights of employers, primarily the right to walk away from the negotiating table and the right to fire employees. As a result of the NLRA, unions obtained ~~agreements~~ contracts with employers that required the employer to fire employees that refuse to join the union or pay dues. These agreements resulted in "closed shops." All existing employees were union members and new employees had a limited time to join the union.

Facing the awful consequences of the NLRA, especially a sharp rise in strikes after World War II, congress decided to tinker with it. Sound familiar? Kinda like many Republican's want to repeal and replace Obamacare with something less bad. What they should have done is repeal the NLRA, recognizing that "collective bargaining" is coercion. Right-to-work was part of this package of amendments.

I don't think right-to-work is entirely bad, but it misses the point. First of all its terribly misnamed. It refers not to a right to "work," but a right to an open shop. Second, as implemented it represents a abridgment of legitimate rights, added on top of the injustice of collective bargaining. Right-to-work laws prohibit employers and employees from making a certain kind of agreement. On what grounds? The only reason for that prohibition is that employers are already compelled to negotiate with unions and we find the consequences of that intolerable. But if the consequences of collective bargaining are intolerable and the concept of collective bargaining an assault on property rights, it is collective bargaining we should eliminate.

The evil is collective bargaining. If collective bargaining was recognized for the absurdity it is, then no further restrictions on employers or employees or employee organizations would be necessary.

Jim Rickards on the War with Iran

2012-01-20T04:42:00.000-08:00

Here's an excellent interview on King World News with Jim Rickards discussing what describes as an already begun war with Iran that is going to escalate soon.

Fair warning, Jim Rickards is an advocate of hard money but still believes (like the monetarists) that money should be controlled by the government. He rightly criticizes fiat money policies, but only goes so far as to suggest that things would be better if only his sympathizers were in power, which never lasts beyond a single administration. Other than that, he tends to be dead on, is incredibly intelligent and clearly has access to government intelligence no one else does. As he shows in spades in this interview.

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2012/1/14_Jim_Rickards_files/Jim%20Rickards%201%3A14%3A2012.mp3

Montanans Attempt Recall of Senators Over NDAA

2012-01-19T16:31:00.000-08:00

Blogger in Chief alerted me to this item. Montanans have initiated a recall petition drive to remove Democratic Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester over their votes for the NDAA. Montana is one of nine states that allows recall of federal officials, in this case under the heading of "violation of an oath of office."

The petitions read, in part:

The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees all U.S citizens:

"a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed..."

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA 2011) permanently abolishes the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, "for the duration of hostilities" in the War on Terror, which was defined by President George W. Bush as "task which does not end" to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001.

Those who voted Aye on December 15th, 2011, Bill of Rights Day, for NDAA 2011 have attempted to grant powers which cannot be granted, which violate both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

The Montana Recall Act stipulates that officials including US senators can only be recalled for physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of the oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of a felony offense. We the undersigned call for a recall election to be held for Senator Max S. Baucus [and Senator Jonathan Tester] and charge that he has violated his oath of office, to protect and defend the United States Constitution.

Well said. I wish them well.

For more details, check out this article in the Winston-Salem Journal:
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/december252011/ndaa-recall.php

Don't close the parks, privatize them!

2012-01-17T19:13:00.000-08:00

Jerry Brown, governor of California, has promised to close state parks to anger voters into supporting big government spending. He's betting that people will so sorely miss their parks that they'll keep feeding the beast. The problem, of course, is that the parks have nothing to do with California's budget problems. Our budget problems come from two things: entitlements and unions. Actually that's one thing, entitlements for the sick/unemployed and entitlements for the working. 40% of the state budget is education spending (teachers and administrators salaries and pensions). As I've blogged about before the entire mess could be cured by abolishing 'collective bargaining', that absurd principle that forces schools and local governments to recognize and negotiate with unions. Let them negotiate freely (i.e. walk away from the table when they want) and you'd see those salaries come down, pensions become manageable and the incompetents and pedophiles out of a jobs.

But governor Brown has decided to make it about parks instead. Well, Jerry, I see your bet and I raise you... Lets not close the parks but sell them! To investors, developers, HOAs, conservation groups.

This is not as radical as it sounds. Say we attempt to recapitulate what should have happened when our cities and state was built. Presumably many communities and organizations would have bought land and/or established parks, parks for private, community or pay-to-play use. So how about selling the parks to the highest bidder but give a discount to the local HOA or perhaps a conservation group that would stipulate open use in the title? Then the people who selfishly want to use the park could pay for it, as part of an HOA, a preservation society, conservation group, hunting group, surfing group, etc. You know what? I bet they could hire gardeners and groundskeepers to take care of those parks at a fraction of what California is paying park rangers. I doubt parks would disappear entirely, but if they did that would be because of the choices of individuals in how to spend their money. And noone should be forced to supply someone else's supposed values, including parks.

Instead of California skimping on parks, it could cut them entirely out of the budget and pocket the money from the sales to boot. And when that works much better than anyone expected, we could do the same for schools.

So We Bought a House

2012-01-08T15:21:00.000-08:00

Despite believing that the housing market could continue to fall for several years, my wife and I recently bought. The following are my thoughts on the process.

1. Educate yourself about the housing market, government involvement, how credit works economically. Try Patrick.net (though he's gotten too progressive for my tastes), the Irvine Housing Blog, Peter Schiff's books and podcasts, Piggington's Almanac. Your knee-jerk reaction should be skepticism regarding anything from anyone in the housing industry, including your agent. They've been wrong for decades and they haven't learned much.

2. Valuation: use comparable rents, not sales. Because if you lose your job and have to move, you'd rather count on rental income covering the mortgage and repairs rather than the resale price being high. And anyway, the alternative you face is renting or buying, so it should be at least the same to buy if not cheaper. You can use craigslist to find nearby similar rentals, or simply drive around. We believe we did find a place and a mortgage that costs about the same as similar places we were renting. We started looking in late 2006 and it's taken a while to fall sufficiently to be equivalent to renting. Many areas haven't yet fallen enough and in some places its much cheaper to buy than rent.

3. Find a good agent. There is quite a lot of stuff between the initial offer and closing that an agent is very helpful for. They'll have names for mortgage brokers, inspectors, plumbers, handymen, termite inspectors, mold inspectors. They'll also be able to inform you of issues that you'd not think of. Still don't swallow everything they say whole.

4. Use online MLS services, like redfin, to find and compare houses. They're much better than what your agent can find or will send you. The agent might not like that your muscling in on her job, but you're more likely to find something you like. And you'll be able to do price comparisons yourself.

5. Probably goes without saying that you need to decide on your max price very early. Stick to it. Both the listing agent and your buyer's agent will be working to make you pay the max you're willing to. They'll be good at reading your body language too, so if you're not firm in your mind on your max price, and willing to walk away, then you will be paying more than you want.

6. We kinda blew our final walk through. We were so star struck at buying a house, that we just walked around admiring everything and missed a few items that we really should have the sellers take care of: broken sprinkler system (agent says it works, why check it?), water damage in the living room (minor repair, unnoticed when the furniture was in), gate that's falling over (so that's why it was locked every other visit!).

7. We've lived in the same area for the last 6 years, in 3 different rentals. I'm very glad we rented for as long as we did since it gave us plenty of time to learn about the various local neighborhoods, different commutes, restaurants, shops. We also got to dabble with gardening and repairing, which will prevent some false steps when we start modifying our own home. E.g. butterfly gardening was cool, but only one of the plants we tried really took off and attracted lots of butterflies. Will try edible gardening here. If you're young, or vacillating, try renting for a couple years in the same neighborhood you'd like to buy in.

8. Lastly, I'd only buy if you have sufficient cash for the down payment that you don't want to invest elsewhere or hold. Don't jeopardize your retirement or unemployment nest egg or investments to buy a house. Its not a good or safe investment.

Thomas Paine on Reconciliation

2011-12-19T13:50:00.000-08:00

Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense at the beginning of the American rebellion and is credited by other Founding Fathers as having united the colonists in the cause of independence. In the pamphlet Paine describes the absurdity of monarchy and of England's mongrel system fusing hereditary monarchy (in the King and peers) with republicanism (in the House of Commons). He goes on to argue for American independence with some specific suggestions on the structure of the continental congress, building a navy and what a declaration of independence should look like.

The target of his pamphlet was that large, undecided portion of the population, those thinking that reconciliation with England was possible. His ideas came at a critical time and were widely read. 500,000 were sold in the course of the revolution, amongst a population of 2 million. John Adams said, "Without the pen of the author of 'Common Sense,' the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”

The battle he engaged is being fought again. The form then was republicanism versus monarchism. Today it is capitalism versus welfare statism. Both are forms of individualism versus statism. Are we as individuals right in making our own decisions and pursuing our own happiness, or does the government own us and have the right to dictate how we should live?

My favorite quotation is below. Consider that we have two political parties. Democrats are completely devoted to statism and have even dropped their support for freedom of speech (e.g. in 'hate speech' legislation, the 'fairness' doctrine in broadcasting and campaign contribution regulations). Republicans are a mixed bag, with some genuine advocates of freedom and others that would reconcile some economic freedoms with welfare statism (e.g. George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism).

[A]ll those who espouse the doctrine of reconciliation, may be included within the following descriptions. Interested men, who are not to be trusted; weak mean, who CANNOT see; prejudiced men, who WILL NOT see; and a certain set of moderate men, who think better of the European world than it deserves; and this last class, by an ill-judged deliberation, will be the cause of more calamities to this continent, than all the other three.

Conservatives, don't think better of welfare statism than it deserves.

(Craig Nelson's biography of Thomas Paine is my current favorite: Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations. Recently deceased Christopher Hitchens has also written a biography, which I'd love to read.)

Better to Give or Receive? No.

2011-12-17T09:16:00.000-08:00

The North County Times ran a cartoon by David Fitzsimmons of the The Arizona Star yesterday on the letters page. In it, a charity bell ringer wearing a "merry christmas" hat stands with a sign "'Tis Better to Give than to Receive." Walking past him away from the reader, with his hands pointedly in his pockets, is an I-heart-Ayn-Rand-t-shirt-toting Republican. The non-donating Republican's thought: 'socialist vermin'.

While mildly amusing, it's wrong on many levels.

First, the implication is that Republicans or Objectivists (followers of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism) don't give to charity. I've never seen data for Objectivists, but comparisons of Republicans and Democrats show that Republicans give more (see also "Bleeding Heart Tightwads" from the NYT).

Second, is it better to give than receive? My 8-year-old daughter saw the cartoon and unbidden said, "Its better to give than receive? Huh? I think its better to receive." That's the Christmas spirit!

But seriously, is it better to give? In the narrow sense, for a particular person, at a particular age, with a particular family, the question might be answerable. For a kid, with no income and infinite wants, its definitely better to receive. For a retired grandparent who has everything he wants, it might be better to give--to experience vicariously the excitement of his youthful receiving for example. Then again, maybe not. Maybe he'd prefer receiving that handmade coffee mug with I *heart* grandpa on it, to giving yet another sweater he didn't pick out to a kid that hates sweaters.

Is giving better than receiving in the broad sense? Here's where I have my biggest beef with the cartoon. If that bromide is to be taken as some kind of moral guidance, then it must be flatly rejected. Rejected not because it is better to receive, but because that isn't the real choice.

The give-or-receive world of the altruist progressive is one of a fixed pie, divided among the population that can be redistributed (given or received). The altruist practitioner is obliged to give up some of his slice to those that have a smaller slice, while the altruist advocate skims off his commission. This bizarrely makes the altruist advocate and those he defends recipients. Doesn't that make them evil?

The real moral choice we face is not to give or receive, but to produce or mooch. Among producers there need be no question of give versus receive. Their interactions are not sacrificial, they are exchanges to mutual benefit. Furthermore it is their abundance of production that makes charity possible.

The bell ringer is 'socialist', but not for advocating giving. He's a socialist for his pretense that giving and receiving are the alternatives. The real alternatives are: production, trade and abundance that makes giving (and receiving) possible versus mooching, looting and the mutually assured destruction that the altruist doctrine leads to.

On another level the cartoon captures the revolting moral-political atmosphere we have in the world: the advocate for the producers who make giving possible and in fact are the biggest givers, is scorned and derided by the receivers, while being berated that its better to give than receive!

Contra 'giving versus receiving', here's John Galt's Oath from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Happy winter solstice to you all! May you enjoy the selfish pleasure of giving to and receiving from the ones you love.

Yaron Brook on the Tea Party Moral High Ground

2011-12-13T15:01:00.000-08:00

In this speech to the Southwest Metro Tea Party in Chanhassen, Minnesota, (HT Ayn Rand Center), Yaron Brook explains how the Tea Party can take the moral high ground in the political debate: by embracing the pursuit of happiness the Founders referred to in the Declaration of Independence, i.e. the morality of self-interest.

YouTube link

Been Busy

2011-11-02T20:40:00.000-07:00

I've been busy buying a house. More on that later. Hopefully I will be back to blogging by early December.

I had to post this Thomas Wood's interview of C. Bradley Thompson on his book Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea from Peter Schiff's radio show:

"Maybe the best way to define it [neoconservatism] is to use the definition by Daniel Bell, who was one of the leading neoconservatives, who describes himself as a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture."

http://fetch.noxsolutions.com/schiff/audio/CBradleyThompson_101311.mp3

Obama Won't Wait for Constitution to Act on Jobs

2011-10-12T18:14:00.000-07:00

Right from the horses mouth, in the face of the bipartisan defeat of his jobs bill in the Senate, Obama pledges to act anyway. He states his defiance of the Constitution and the separation of powers:

We’re not going to wait for Congress. So my instruction to… all the advisers who are sitting around the table is, scour this report, identify all those areas in which we can act administratively without ~~additional~~ congressional authorization

Out of control.

The Artifacts of Coercive, Collective Bargaining

2011-09-15T20:48:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard, the outgoing Chair of the NLRB has declared, by regulatory fiat, that workers don't have the right to request a secret ballot for unionization. From Big Government:

Outgoing NLRB Chair Wilma Liebman and the of the Obama Appointed NLRB Board members, Craig Becker & Mark Pearce, voted to eliminate secret ballot election protections. Now, when employers make secrets deals with a union bosses agreeing to recognize a union without allowing his employees a secret ballot vote; employees no longer have the right to force an NLRB secret ballot election and allow workers to decide if they want the union or not.
Unable to pass EFCA, Card Check Forced Unionism, through a Democrat-controlled congress, Obama is paying off Big Labor through his handpicked NLRB Board. He is doing all this at the expense of worker freedoms and worker paychecks. And, the NLRB Decision is applied retroactively to bar even elections that have already been held but not counted.

This is bad news for workers and employers. It gives a handful of employees the power to assert their coercive bargaining power and hold an election wherein they are given lists of employees (from employers compelled to provide the lists by the NLRB) and have the ability to harass and intimidate workers into voting for the union.

Bad news that it is, it is not what I wanted to write about. The point I'd rather make is that the whole issue of secret or open ballots for unionization wouldn't be an issue if employers and workers rights were recognized. Whether or not the unionization election is secret becomes a serious issue only in the context that the resulting unionized employees have the coercive power of 'collective bargaining,' under which the employer is not allowed to fire union members or walk away from the bargaining table.

In a free society, outside the context of the apparatus of government, how do elections and ballots arise? Elections arise in an organized group of people that desires to or has agreed to make a decision by majority vote. A business charter might specify that the board has to vote on a budget. Or the president of a company might decide to put a Christmas party venue to a company-wide vote. It is possible that a company contemplating unionization might put that decision up to a vote by the employees. Or an employee organization primarily concerned with social events might put a vote to its membership to become a union and thereby start bargaining regarding wages, hours, etc. In each of these cases, the freedom of the employer and employees to abide by or defy the result of the vote would be specified by whatever contracts they have already agreed to. Lastly, it would be entirely up to the organization or individual initiating the election to decide whether or not the ballots would be secret.

So if the president held an open vote for the Christmas party venue, and a third of employees decided not to vote and the president decided to fire those employees, that would be within his rights. Also, if an employee disagreed with the venue and decided to quit, that would be within his rights. If the president decided he didn't like the results of the vote and picked his favorite spot anyway, that would be within his rights (unless he had signed a contract to abide by the result of the vote). The point is that there's nothing magical or sacrosanct about an election and it doesn't supervene the rights of employers and employees or their contractual agreements.

It is hard to imagine a unionization vote arising out of voluntary contractual agreements similar to what occurs today. Contemporary unionization elections could only occur under the coercive powers of the NLRB. In what world would a handful of employees be able to compel a company to conduct a unionization election, secret or not? Only in the insane world of NLRA regulation with the irrational concept of 'collective bargaining.' In a rational world those employees might decide to form a union. They wouldn't need to vote, they would just arrange a offsite meeting and tell everyone who wanted to unionize to show up. Voila the union exists and the employees would have every right to form that union. The employers would then have the right to either recognize it as the negotiator for that group of employees, recognize it as the negotiator for all employees, not recognize it as a negotiator for anyone, or fire everyone that went to the meeting. Nowhere in this scenario is a government imposed ballot or a government decision regarding the election's secrecy.

An approach that recognizes the rights of employers and employees and doesn't attempt to compel them to negotiate with one another at the point of a gun, has no need to specify secret or open ballots. The issue just doesn't come up. Card-Check (non-secret ballots), Right-to-Work and various other measures to tame the coercive powers of unions are artifacts, half-measures to control union coercive power. When we get rid of collective bargaining, all of these other issues will disappear. An employer that can simply fire employees that attempt to unionize or refuse its latest labor contract could care less whether the elections are secret or open.

Vast Majority Believe We're Overregulated

2011-09-14T17:40:00.000-07:00

From HotAir, Poll: Vast majority believe businesses and consumers are over-regulated:

The president was three-quarters of the way through his jobs speech last week before he explicitly mentioned the word “regulations” — and, when he finally did, it was to disparage concerns about over-regulation, to suggest that those who advocate regulatory rollback don’t care about safety or honesty in business.
But the American people perceive the regulatory environment somewhat differently than does the president. Three quarters — 74 percent — of voters throughout the country believe that businesses and consumers are over-regulated, according to a Public Notice poll released today. And they strongly suspect that much of that over-regulation has been implemented recently: 67 percent believe that regulations have increased over the past few years.
In fact, they’re right. The rate at which regulatory burdens are growing has accelerated under the Obama administration, according to a Heritage Foundation backgrounder. During its first 26 months, the Obama administration imposed 75 new major regulations with reported costs to the private sector exceeding $40 billion. During the same period, six major rulemaking proceedings reduced regulatory burdens by an estimated $1.5 billion — for a net increase of more than $38 billion.
“No other President has burdened businesses and individuals with a higher number and larger cost of regulations in a comparable time period,” Heritage’s James Gattuso and Diane Katz write. “President Bush was in his third year before new costs hit $4 billion. President Obama achieved the same in 12 months.”

Read the rest, especially the plug for the REINS Act.

San Diego Blackout, Deregulate Electricity

2011-09-10T09:28:00.000-07:00

Electricity (lights) in regulated N. Korea vs. relatively free S. Korea

Everytime there's an outbreak of salmonella or even speculation of some minor crisis in an unregulated market, the statists come out of the woodwork to discuss 'market failure' and the need for more regulations. But when a heavily regulated industry fails--an industry who's regulations were supposed to make it cheaper, more efficient and safer--those statists are silent.

From one who knows that reason, freedom and happiness are intertwined, I'll say that the blackouts show that heavy energy regulation doesn't lead to cheaper or more reliable energy. Heavy regulation leads to the more expensive and unreliable energy. The San Diego blackout that left 1.4 million homes and businesses in the dark and shut down the government schools is reason to doubt the goals of regulation. The blackout is reason to deregulation. Just like supposed 'market failure' prompted regulation, government failure begs for deregulation.

P.S. Keep this in mind over the next few years as California water regulations destroy California farming.

(HT HBL for the article on government failure. See also wikipedia: Government Failure, though the latter has a strong collectivist slant.)

Tea Party Founder Rick Santelli Discusses Ayn Rand

2011-09-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

Dennis Miller interviews Tea Party founder Rick Santelli, who recommends reading Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. I've often thought that the moral fire, the righteousness, behind the Tea Party comes from Ayn Rand's uncompromising moral defense of capitalism. Rick Santelli is a prime example. (HT Randex.org)

Democrats and Republicans, Totalitarian Tag Team

2011-09-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

This history of American politics for just about the last century has been a slow descent into totalitarianism. By the time of Hoover, the old conservative (monarchist) vs. liberal (freedom) distinction was gone, swept out by a wave of irrationalism, altruism and statism. The new distinction was between rebranded 'liberals', essential Marxist progressives, versus Republican 'conservatives' part pro-capitalist and part fascist. The 'liberals' advocated compulsory wealth redistribution, business regulation, union power and wished to protect freedom of speech and association. The 'conservatives' defended economic freedom (excepting cartellization and import restrictions) and were indifferent to the freedom of the press. In brief 'liberals' wanted controls in the economic realm and freedom in the intellectual, conservatives wanted freedom in the economic (mostly) and control in the intellectual.

While in power each party advanced its favorite controls and did little to roll back the controls of the other party on the complementary realm. It was as if they were working as a tag team, battering a defenseless American citizen who only wanted to be left alone. The Democratic 'liberal' would jump on him, beating him about the body, imposing new regulations, new entitlements and new taxes. The Republican 'conservative' would call out and say that he'd reduce taxes and regulations. The citizen would consent to be in the ring with the Republican, who would then proceed to beat him about the head, wire tapping his phones and teaching creation 'science' in his compulsory schools. Neither did anything to treat the wounds inflicted by the other.

This totalitarian tag team acted to slowly ratchet up the controls to the point we're at today, where Congress acts without any awareness of limits, government agents take nude pictures of innocent citizens, no action is uncensored by some regulation and the government calls citizens concerned with their constitutional rights 'terrorists'.

We should really break up the tag team. The natural division in politics is not between left and right but between statism and individualism, between the idea that the state owns you and the idea that your life is your own. We should separate into corresponding political parties. All the power hungry, meddling politicians could join the American Statist Party, with its left-leaning, former Democrat wing and its right-leaning, former Republican wing, each stressing the controls that are their favorites and being content in the other wing's controls as well. The American Statists would have a platform of total control of your life, property to thoughts. Then the rest of us could join the American Individualist Party in support of a limited, secular, small government that protects property rights, the freedom to contract and take on risks as reasoning adults, as well as privacy, freedom of speech and freedom to privately practice whatever religion we might be interested in. Within the American Individualist Party there would be former 'fiscal conservatives' who stress economic freedoms, and former 'blue dog Democrats' who stress freedom of the press. Both wings would be united in defending liberty and in recognizing that each kind of freedom is integrally related to the others.

House Bill Proposes Defunding the U.N. Gradually

2011-08-31T20:36:00.000-07:00

The sooner the better.

From Investor's Business Daily:

Politics: The United Nations has long been a font of waste, corruption, fraud and anti-Americanism. Always in need of "reform," it's never happened. But a House bill may change that, and it can't pass soon enough. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen introduced a 153-page bill Tuesday to gradually defund the U.N. until it lives up to its goals and accounts for its actions. Seems the fat checks coming in from U.S. taxpayers have given the U.N. the idea it can be as anti-American as its dollars allow, especially with the "leading from behind" crowd in the White House going along. Ros-Lehtinen's proposal has teeth and deserves to be passed. H.R. 2829 will make U.S. funding "voluntary" rather than based on what the U.N. itself "assesses." Passage means the U.N. won't be able to spit in the face of its largest donor without consequences. That's fair to taxpayers, of course, and U.N. bureaucrats will scream. It's about time they did. The U.N.'s latest stunt is to make Palestine a state and voting member without requiring it to admit Israel's right to exist. That proposal, coming up in the fall, stands to upset the balance of power in the Middle East, bankroll terror, put U.N. muscle behind a new rogue state and isolate Israel.

Read the rest at IBD.

Washington Examiner: Economy is Drowning Under Regulatory Flood

2011-08-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

Under the title "Obama's regulatory flood is drowning economic growth" the Washington Examiner has an editorial explaining why businesses are reluctant to do anything: thousands of new regulations in the works including EPA initiatives destructive to the tune of $90bln.

One doesn't have to look far for an explanation of why the economy grew at an anemic 1 percent rate during the last quarter.

Businesses large and small face more uncertainty today about the federal regulatory environment than at any point since the New Deal radically increased the role of the government in the nation's economy. Thanks to Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, plus President Obama's decision to use bureaucratic regulation to start major initiatives like cap and trade that Congress refused to pass, the federal bureaucracy has been drafting new regulations at an unprecedented pace. Seeing this tsunami of red tape flooding out of Washington, company owners and executives wisely opt to delay new hires and investments until they have a clearer idea how much their already huge compliance costs will increase and how the markets will be warped by changes mandated by the bureaucrats.

As House Speaker John Boehner noted earlier this week in a blog post, "a simple scan of the Obama administration's current regulatory agenda indicates that the administration currently has 4,257 new regulatory actions in the works, of which at least 219 will have an economic impact of $100 million or more. That is an increase of nearly 15 percent over last year, when a similar search showed 191 new economically significant regulatory actions by the administration to be in the works." Even before those 4,257 new regulations go into effect, the Federal Register shows more than 81,000 pages of regulations, which result in compliance costs in excess of $1.7 trillion, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute's "Ten Thousand Commandments: How much regulation is enough" report for 2010.

Regulation Watch - 08-29-2011

2011-08-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

This might be my last regulation watch for a while. Its been informative for me and hopefully for you. Rather than try to summarize all the happenings each week, I'll probably just highlight particular events in individual posts. For those who want to continue monitoring the regulatory bodies, I recommend Investor's Business Daily's opinion pages for most news and the LaborUnionReport.com for NLRB news.

General

CEO explains how Obama is killing the economy. http://bit.ly/qX9tTM
Obama's idea of regulatory relief? Giving you two more years to comply with the existing regulations. Besides being ridiculously beside the point, isn't he piling up all his awful policies to take effect in the first year of his second term? http://bit.ly/mVBBUo
Nearly all regulations survive Obama 'reforms' http://bit.ly/qdgQdi

EPA

EPA's looming blackouts. http://bit.ly/nFnaDF

FCC

FCC finally kills the "fairness doctrine" http://bit.ly/oKTugL

HH&S

Think the government handled the financial crisis badly? Just wait, because health care is next. http://fxn.ws/pMedBI

Interior

Exxon sues government for canceling deepwater well. http://bit.ly/pz8SOR

Justice

Gibson Guitar Plants in Nashville and Memphis raided over importation of wood. http://bit.ly/noRIV3
Obama administration war on business attacks iconic American manufacturer. http://bit.ly/pZ6A7L
Gibson Guitar factory raid, CEO interviewed by Dana Loesch. http://bit.ly/qrefH4
Gibson CEO responds to federal raid. http://bit.ly/plBusk

NLRB

NLRB orders all employers to post union notices. http://bit.ly/mUyMFj
LaborUnionReport asks GOP NLRB member Brian Hayes to resign to halt NLRB activities. http://bit.ly/q8gO37

Book Review: Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes

2011-08-25T05:00:00.001-07:00

Good Calories, Bad Calories is about science, history and politics. It is a book that explores the conventional wisdom concerning the so-called diseases of civilization: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity. It explores and debunks the conventional wisdom that heart disease is caused by fat consumption and then thoroughly describes and supports a long-standing alternative hypothesis, that the diseases of civilization are caused by refined carbohydrates (flour, sugar, white rice, etc.). As such it is loosely connected with the Atkins and Paleo diets, but is not a diet book. The only diets mentioned are those in the numerous studies he describes.

The first half of the book focuses on heart disease, its supposed causes, the government agencies and institutions pushing the fat/cholesterol hypothesis, and the problems with that hypothesis. Turns out there's very little connection between eating fat and high cholesterol, and a tenuous connection between high cholesterol and heart disease. Why then would the government and academics have been pushing this for so many decades? Because the views of an aggressive academic, Ancel Keys, who had been crusading against fat for a good while, with poor scientific support, was picked up and made official government policy in 1977.

It's possible to point to a single day when the controversy was shifted irrevocably in favor of Keys's hypothesis--Friday, January 14, 1977, when Senator George McGovern announced the publication of the first Dietary Goals for the United States. The document was "the first comprehensive statement by any branch of the Federal Government on risk factors in the American diet," said McGovern. [Today that would be reason enough to dismiss it. Not so then.]

This was the first time that any government institution (as opposed to private groups like the AHA) had told Americans they could improve their health by eating less fat. In so doing, Dietary Goals sparked a chain reaction of dietary advice from government agencies and the press that reverberates still, and the document itself became gospel. It is hard to overstate its impact. Dietary Goals took a grab bag of ambiguous studies and speculation, acknowledged that the claims were scientifically contentious, and then officially bestowed on one interpretation the aura of established fact.

One reporter suggested that the reason for the pamphlet was that the committee, which included such figures as McGovern, Ted Kennedy, Bob Dole and Hubert Humphrey, was facing a downgrade to a subcommittee and needed to prove its usefulness. The consequence? First the national media, then the academic institutions got behind the committee recommendations and dietary fat was under assault for the next 30 years. And according to the rest of Taubes' book, the resulting reduction in dietary fat has lead to a dramatic increase in dietary carbohydrates and all the diseases (and more) that were intended to be reduced by the recommendation in the first place.

Its worth pointing out that Keys used that scare tactic so common among environmentalists today: the data is inconclusive, but we have to act now to save lives.

Taubes is a science journalist and states in the book that it wouldn't have been possible without the internet. He used the internet to help him cover a vast amount of english and foreign literature, to track down and interview scientists and politicians, in brief to survey the entire literature of diet and disease from the first fad diet in the mid-19th century to the present. The literature covers hundreds of studies as well as numerous descriptions of cultural differences in diet and their consequences for disease.

Taubes' positive contention is that consuming carbohydrates leads to insulin production. Insulin signals cells to convert circulating sugars to fat. If you're not ingesting sufficient calories to feed your cells as well as accumulate that fat, then you starve your cells (even while accumulating fat) and become hungry. Chronically high carb consumption and insulin levels can then lead to obesity (even in the face of vigorous attempts to diet and excercise), insulin resistance (type II diabetes), feeds nascent cancer growths, and perhaps causes some other ailments due to glycation (Alzheimers, aging, cataracts, loss of skin suppleness).

It wasn't until I read The Logical Leap by David Harriman that I realized what I liked so much about Taubes' book: he attempts to survey the entire field of nutrition and integrate it all in support of a single hypothesis. (The same process Harriman describes of Newton and other scientific greats.) Respectful of his reader, Taubes often indicates the epistemological status of various contentions, i.e. what's certain, what's probable, what's possible. Of the carbohydrate hypothesis he indicates that it is probable, but still requires rigorously controlled human studies. Hopefully this will happen soon, and if it does it'll be thanks to Taubes. (See this recent study on low-carb diets and cancer.)

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in diet, disastrous government campaigns, science or anyone who has struggled with weight problems or just wants to eat healthier.

Regulation Watch - 08-22-2011

2011-08-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

General

Obama dismisses farmer's concerns about regulations: 'don't always believe what you hear'. http://bit.ly/pISEfd
Woohoo. Obama announces new rural economic plan during midwest bus tour. http://bit.ly/nFZdVX
Upgrading America. 'Liberals try to blame every economic woe on “market failures,” but where is this free market exactly? From top to bottom, there’s not one inch of our economy on which the government does not exert some control.' http://bit.ly/rf0uTa
Parallels between Obama and FDR grow. http://bit.ly/nilIpm
Regulatory sector booming under Obama. http://bit.ly/nP2DFw

ATF

ATF promotes three key supervisors of gun running operation that put guns in drug cartel hands. http://lat.ms/q0ATww
ATF implementing multiple gun sales regulations despite sham gun running controversy, caused by itself. http://thedc.com/qulHox

California

Nice title: "The Edge of Reason", U2's The Edge steps into the irrational world of the California Coastal Commission jurisdiction as he tries to build a complex of homes in Malibu. An excellent piece on the insanity that is the CCC. http://bit.ly/nVhJfH
Mike Ward: redistricting panel broke law. http://bit.ly/pDa4Zl

DHS

I'm pro-immigration, but simply refusing to implement immigration laws administratively is not the way to govern a republic. http://bit.ly/pRxk1b

Education

Federal education standards coming soon. http://bit.ly/oJ3VwH

EPA

Get ready for a wave of coal-plant shutdowns. http://wapo.st/oB1fVz

Fannie/Freddie

Administration favors "restructuring Fannie and Freddie as public utilities overseen by a government regulator." http://bit.ly/ohMiwW

FDA

Government regulates drug industry. Drug shortage. Surprised? http://usat.ly/p8Ginv

Fed

The aura of the fed is gone, good riddance. http://bit.ly/qZoapm

FMCSA

Just in time for the bus tour, administration retreats on requiring commercial drivers licenses for farmers. http://bit.ly/p6v2fh

HH&S

Federal war against medical technology. http://bit.ly/qWlti7
On the exclusion of tort reform from Obamacare legislation. http://bit.ly/pZWcKa

Interior

Exxon fights regulatory pirates. http://bit.ly/pdNafY

NLRB

NLRB exists because workers would supposedly 'have a gun to their head' in negotiations with a company that could legally fire them, and yet its the unions that are the perpetrators of actual violence, like shooting non-union bosses. http://bit.ly/rfkALe
More on union violence from IBD. http://bit.ly/nvf3tT

SEC

Burying evidence of its incompetence. SEC files were illegally destroyed, lawyer says. http://nyti.ms/o1O13Q

Dead End of the Amorphous Public Good

2011-08-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

I have discussed previously the irrationality of the altruist/collectivist morality. It is an arbitrary morality that contradicts reality and defies definition or implementation. There's no reason on earth a living being should sacrifice its life. Nor can sacrifice be a standard for action since that would ultimately mean sacrifice of life itself (i.e. death). Attempting to substitute collectivist notions like the 'good of society' in order to shore up the irrational altruist morality doesn't help. The 'good of society' is just as arbitrary and just as immeasurable.

Since the 'good of society' can't be defined, measured or justified, its advocates assume a moral blank check to declare whatever they feel is good as the 'good of society'. What the apostles of the public good feel is good ranges from the relatively benign (e.g. full employment) to the horrific (e.g. mass extermination of whole classes, races or political enemies). Once you grant that 'society' is something separate and above a collection of individuals, once you divorce morality from the lives of individuals, then you can claim anything of that mystical 'society'. And so you arrive at the absurdity of Socialists, Communists, Fascists, Environmentalists, and Theocrats claiming that policies that hurt every actual individual are somehow beneficial to the 'public good'.

ATF victim Terry Nichols' family ran smack into this absurdity last week. Terry Nichols was the Border Patrol agent who was killed by an AK-47 funneled into the hands of Mexican drug cartels by the Obama administration-sanctioned Fast and Furious gun running program. Nichols' family has requested recognition as crime victims by the court trying the straw buyer. From Fox News:

Terry Nichols

However in this case, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke argues because the family was not "directly or proximately harmed" by the illegal purchase of the murder weapon, it does not meet the definition of "crime victim" in the Avila case. Burke claims the victim of the Avila's gun purchases, "is not any particular person, but society in general."

Think about that a bit. A U.S. Attorney argues that a routine request by a victim's family should be rejected because the actual victim is "not any particular person, but society in general." He doesn't say that Terry Nichols was the only victim, or that other future victims of crimes committed with the buyers weapons will be victims, he says that no particular person was the victim. 'Society in general' was the victim. This is the dead end of the collectivist morality, within which a dead individual is not a victim, nor is a family with a murdered member. Collectivism recognizes no individuals, even if they're lying bloody in the street. According to collectivism and the apostles of the public good, only 'society' apart from any actual individuals has moral or legal status.

Next time you see 'society' or 'the public' used in some argument, think about Terry Nichols and his family. Think about the fact that a dead and buried Border Patrol agent and his grieving family don't count as 'society', that no individual counts as 'society'. Think of the blank check you grant those that wish to enslave you by accepting that they can do anything in the name of 'society' and your piddling individual life, or death, doesn't matter.