Shane Atwell's Blog

Reaching Students Through Book Reviews

2013-01-22T05:00:00.000-08:00

This blog doesn't get a lot of traffic, so I pay attention to those posts that do. Most of the all-time favorites are ones that have been featured in other, higher-traffic blogs, like one on Walmart and the DHS that made it onto some kind of right-wing e-mail list and one on collective bargaining that was featured on Mish's site.

One post that has gotten consistent readership and strange little spikes (e.g. 260 pageviews this last month despite being two years old) is my review of Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt. The book is a defense of socialism and was recommended to me by a leftist college (biology) professor. He read it for his professors' book club. No doubt it's assigned reading in many classes around the country. I knew shortly after I published it that it was probably being used by students researching for those assignments. The fact that my, not especially eloquent, review is now reaching the top of my favorites list suggests one small way to reach high school students: writing reviews of leftist books, books likely to be assigned in classes. I doubt the students are finding much criticism of the books from the right, so one could be quite effective in providing arguments and convincing younger readers. Heck, you could have a whole blog devoted to it. Would be a breath of fresh air for the more rational students suffocating in the mustard gas of left-wing propaganda.

In Search of Where We Went Wrong

2013-01-14T17:37:00.001-08:00

First a big thanks to Leslie Eastman, the most link generous blogger I know, fellow SLOB and now frequent contributor to College and Legal Insurrection. She tells a good story and makes a big effort to pull together the thoughts and posts of other bloggers. She's been quoting my e-mails and throwing me links in her posts, which makes me remiss in not posting something new here.

WARNING: this post has no conclusion. Its just a description of an intellectual journey half over. Call it a thematic compendium of book blurbs.

Where did we go wrong? This question has been bothering me for years. We started out with a near perfect system of government, as close as could have been achieved given the knowledge of the founders, a system that protected the individual's right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. Almost 250 years later the system is in taters. Our liberty and is hemmed in on all sides by hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations. Our property is taxed more than a medieval serf's. And our happiness is deemed ok if it is small. But if it is large and conspicuous then "you didn't build that" and don't expect to keep it our pass it to your children. What happiness we have is largely thanks to the productiveness of individuals in earlier, freer times (or in sectors that are lightly regulated). Similarly, what legal protections we have from the state are remnants of an earlier time and wouldn't exist if our professors, politicians and judges had their way.

Why and when did we shift from the individualism of the Declaration of Independence to the collectivism of massive regulations, taxation and the welfare state? This is the question I've been trying to answer and has been a central motivation in my reading choices of the last few months. The answer should be helpful in getting us out of the mess we're in.

For a long time I thought that were were living through the abandonment of our founders' principles. I thought that Atlas Shrugged was prophecy. It might be in its description of the ultimate collapse of civilization. But in its description of the steps to that collapse...it's already happened. Not long ago I read Amity Shlaes The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. There's not one government edict in Atlas Shrugged that didn't have some parallel in actual law from the 20s and 30s. The attacks on capitalism are there. The smearing of businessmen, there. The tongue-tied inability of most businessmen to defend themselves, there. The assumption that the government should be solving all problems, there. Neifeh and Smith's biography of Jackson Pollack is a fascinating book covering a similar time period. It's an inside look at the rise of irrationality in art and the government's takeover in order to promote welfare programs. (If you like Dostoevski, you'll like this biography.) In other words, Atlas is as much a description of what happened under Hoover and FDR as it is a a description of what's happening under Bush and Obama.

My interest in collective bargaining as well as some recommendations of Alex Epstein lead me to several books covering the late 19th century. I've already reviewed The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists, describing the anarchist attack on Chicago police in 1886 that was whitewashed out of memory by collectivist authors. More recently I read 1877: Year of Violence by Robert Bruce describing the great railroad strikes and riots of that year. The take home message for me: in almost every violent clash between the strikers/rioters and faithful railroad employees or law enforcement, it was the strikers that first trespassed, first destroyed property, threw the first punch or fired the first shot. The author is sympathetic to the strikers, but provides sufficient detail to see who was standing for justice and who stood for violence and theft. I also read Chernow's biography of John D. Rockefeller Sr. Titan. What comes through in the later two books is that businessmen, industry, and success were already under attack in the 1870s and 1880s. Large businesses are considered "common carriers" with no right to operate as they see fit. During the railroad strikes, mobs ransacked and burnt not only railroad yards, but armories, gun shops, grain elevators and various local, unrelated businesses because they were "monopolists". Most of the nation's newspapers were sympathetic with the strikers. Rockefeller, involved in similar conflicts and controversies all his life, was silent until long after he was retired.

While the extent of the regulations was later dwarfed by the New Deal, the same types of laws existed in the late 19th century. The Sherman (R-OH) Anti-Trust Act was passed in 1890 to break up the somewhat artificial trust organization Rockefeller Oil had adopted to get around state controls concerning corporate ownership. Rockefeller was too successful. Where were the intellectual defenders of laissez-faire, of individualism? They must have existed, but they weren't popular enough to rate a mention in any of the books I've read. There were a couple vocal railroad executives that tried but that's it. I was shocked to see in The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt Roosevelt (who entered politics in 1881) denigrate Thomas Paine, "filthy little atheist," and Thomas Jefferson, a "slippery demagogue".

The battle lines between individualism and collectivism were thus already drawn in the 1880s and the individualists had already lost, at least the intellectual battle if not the political/legal one. Note that the Republicans were already joining Democrats to destroy capitalism. How far back do I have to go to find someone who defends the Constitution and capitalism? The next stop for me was The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (H/T Chip Joyce through HBL). Enlightenment individualism and a respect for the rights of man played a large role in the early emancipation movement and civil war, but the entire enterprise was co-opted by nationalists, neo-aristocrats and other collectivists by the end. Much of them sounded like our neo-cons: war builds character, sacrifice, good of the nation, etc. By the end no one was discussing the rights of individual blacks. Of course the more individualistic, states-rights founders were significantly eclipsed (Jefferson especially).

The transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman) abandoned their "individualism" and embraced nationalism by the end of the war. This is perhaps not surprising because their individualism was more Kantian than Lockean, i.e. more mystical than empirical. They believed in some kind of otherworldly oversoul that we're mere shadows of. Emotions are the key to insight. Very platonic. They got their German philosophy from Carlyle's translations of Kant. All of which means that by the early 19th century the enlightenment, rational defense of individualism and individual rights had already lost in intellectual circles.

Since the Constitution went into effect in 1789 and the Revolutionary generation was around for another couple decades, that leaves only a small window during which their enlightenment principles of individualism were supplanted. Probably between 1810 and 1840. If that is the case, then the culprit might be in the growth of new colleges, the importation of European professors and the education of many American's in Europe. In Europe, Kant's philosophy of unreal particulars and otherworldly forms came to dominate subsequent to the unresolved difficulties faced by the rationalists (e.g. Descartes) and empiricists (e.g. Locke). Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was published in 1781, roughly contemporaneous with the Declaration of Independence.

My journey half over I find that individualism might have been lost in America, at least intellectually, almost as soon as it had been enshrined. The publication of Kant's implicitly collectivist Critique on the morning after the Declaration of Independence would fit an epic retelling of the history of collectivism versus individualism. "This will kill that" said Victor Hugo in another context. I still have much to read to figure out if Kant killed Locke.

Finishing the stroll backwards, I should mention one more book: Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free by John Ferling. I've ready many biographies of the Founders, all of them good, but this has the virtue of covering all the figures so you get a complete picture and can place them relative to one another. It also does a fantastic job explaining the actual issues that motivated the colonists to rebel.

to be continued...

French Atlases Protest

2012-10-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

French Socialist President Hollande and majority socialist government are trying to save their welfare state by raising taxes on the current and future wealthy (i.e. entrepreneurs). On top of the 75% tax on millionaires, a new progressive capital gains tax that would cost entrepreneurs up to 45% (60+% with other charges) finally prodded the victims to rebel. Anonymous entrepreneurs have formed 'Les Pigeons' in protest. Pigeon in French is slang for 'sucker'.

In any economy, it is the businessman who translates scientific and technical advances into new products and profitable businesses. Yet businessmen are targeted with guilt for their sin of profit seeking. They make possible the rise of civilization out of poverty into affluence and yet are pilloried and made to pay for welfare programs entitled to others by the virtue of not having been successful.

As of now, Les Pigeons is a protest movement with no positive defense of their right to pursue profits (and happiness), but it has already gained one victory. Their main leverage appears to be the implicit threat to go on strike. The government has backed off implementation of the progressive capital gains tax, for now.

I've watched several tea-party-ish movements in France over the last few years, but this one looks to have more energy than the rest. Since its creation a week ago, its facebook page has 60,000 likes. Its twitter account has 8000 followers and hashtag #geonpi is very active. I hope they find a positive message before they run out of anger. They would do well to read La Greve!

(H/T Mish Shedlock)

UPDATE: Confirming the lack of a positive message, les pigeon have released a video that states they are not a political party, nor are they dogmatists (i.e. they have no ideology), they are simply pragmatists who want economic growth and jobs. No movement without a moral foundation has ever succeeded. Get one.

Review: Veronica Mars (TV)

2012-10-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

I've just finished watching (with my family) the Veronica Mars TV series, the 2004 teen noir detective show by Rob Thomas. I highly recommend it. The central character is a high school student who works part time for her private investigator father. She's an effective sleuth herself and solves problems for her classmates. The plot arc of the first season revolves around the murder of her best friend, over which she is emotionally crushed, estranged from her friends and her father loses his job as sheriff. Within this arc there are usually two subplots: cases that take several episodes to resolve (e.g. the framing of a family friend) and an even smaller one that's resolved in each episode (e.g. the loss of a laptop). The plots are interesting and handled masterfully. The setting is the mythical town of Neptune somewhere in San Diego county, an ultra-wealthy enclave in proximity to a poor hispanic area, both of which are represented at the high school. The characters range from the smart and independent Veronica, to vacuous snobs, rebellious brats, nerds, gang members, athletes and momma's boys. Various characters undergo dramatic changes (for better or worse), changes that are explained by the events. Some characters you start out hating, but come to love. And vice versa. Veronica's character is by far the most admirable. She's smart, independent, proud, rebellious, sometimes vengeful, and most of all completely lacking in self-pity. The contrast with popular culture and other series is shocking. Think of Smallville for example, the story of a young Superman, who with all of his super powers can't stop feeling sorry for himself, and whose theme song has the plaintive line "somebody saaaaave me" repeated over and over again.

Unfortunately there are only 3 seasons. The first is the best. The characterization of Veronica towards the end of the second season loses its consistency, slipping from a very strong moralism in the first season to amorality in the late second and third seasons. Throughout the series Veronica is willing to break the law to solve cases, the one major flaw, but early on she acknowledges a moral conflict and has a clear if sometimes flawed justification. As the series continues, her law breaking escalates and the justifications just kind of disappear. Her relationship with her boyfriend also veers towards the irrational.

Veronica's target audience is late teens and does contain numerous references to sex (including rape) and violence. It is not visually racy, but references quite a bit of adult or young adult subject matter. It is definitely appropriate for late teens and adults. My wife and I loved it and plan to re-watch it in a year.

I don't know how I found Veronica Mars, but I think it was this review that finally convinced me to check it out: Veronica mars -- the Best Show Noone Bothered to Watch. Thanks CJ Far.

Veronica is available on Netflix.

Good Riddance Cass Sunstein

2012-08-09T22:16:00.003-07:00

Cass Sunstein is leaving the Obama administration:

Cass Sunstein, the Obama administration’s regulatory czar, has announced that he’ll be returning to academia.

I blogged about him two years ago. He's the guy who thinks that free speech should only be protected if its for the 'common good'. He once argued that bloggers should have to install pop-up windows with opposing views to those they advocate and that government agents troll blogs. He'll probably do more damage back in academia than he did in the Obama administration, but I'm still glad he's gone. Perhaps he's another rat fleeing the sinking Obama ship.

EconTalk Interviews Gary Taubes

2012-07-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

If you don't want to read Taubes' book(s) but are interested in his carbohydrate-causes-obesity hypothesis, check out this interview on EconTalk:

Thanks to Don Watkins for alerting me to the excellent EconTalk podcast.

2012: Individualism versus Collectivism

2012-07-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

President Obama has really crystallized the meaning of the November election. It is a referendum on the competing ideologies of individualism and collectivism. Can you take personal credit and derive personal profit from your actions, or are you but an inert, faceless member of the herd who deserves no credit? Did you build your business or do you deserve no recognition because other people helped you? Obama and the leftist establishment say "you didn't build that". Individualism and reason say you did.

Ayn Rand wrote two books on the subject. This particular quotation comes to mind:

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received—hatred. The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

Repeal Obama-care Rally

2012-07-07T20:22:00.000-07:00

I attended the Stop Taxing Us "Repeal Obama-care Tax Rally" this morning. It was good. Several hundred in attendance, lots of signs and good speakers. Several SLOBs were in attendence and B-Daddy has his description here.

The parts I remember: After singing God Bless America and reciting the pledge of allegiance, Gonsalves and Iverson kicked it off. Gina Loudon was especially good, taking some Republicans to task for wanting only to repeal "parts" of Obamacare. She repeatedly referred to them as "statists" for wanting to leave in place other rights violating provisions. Fitting. She's apparently on the radio all week and has a book coming out soon. Popaditch gave an impassioned promise to defend our right to make mistakes, like not buy insurance or purchase a chevy volt. Bilbray (the only named speaker in the announcement) started very weak by saying that everything reduces to taxes. Then the sound system cut out... After restoring the sound he continued to try to tap into Tea Party energy, but was clearly not into it. (Full disclosure: I especially dislike Bilbray for voting for every socon and neocon powergrab that's ever come before him, like the NDAA and Patriot Act. Dawn Wildman has more thoughts on Bilbray here.) One of the Stop Taxing Us co-founders spoke just before Bilbray and spent much of it restraining himself from criticizing Bilbray.

Besides attending, listening, supporting, I was also there to pass out flyers. I handed out dozens of copies each of Leonard Peikoff's "Health Care is Not a Right", COHP's "Is Healthcare a Right?" and Watkins and Brook's "Ayn Rand and the Fight to Limit Government" a sort of preview of their upcoming book, Free Market Revolution. I think I was the only one there passing out flyers, though there were some bumper stickers being passed out. Most people were very receptive, either agreeing immediately that health care isn't a right or acknowledging that they know and like Ayn Rand. Ended up handing one to Bilbray without realizing it was him and then latter to Michael Crimmins, who acknowledged hearing about Rand from Mike Slater.

Overall an excellent rally. Really glad I went.

Yaron Brook on the Obamacare Decision

2012-06-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

The Ayn Rand Institute's Yaron Brook says it best:

In part: "There is a consistent view across the entire political map that we have no rights when it comes to our economic life. It's just a question of where they want to draw the line, how they want to regulate, how they want to play around at the margins. What is needed today in America is a revolution--a moral revolution, a political revolution. The fundamental is a notion of individual rights, that we have a right to live our lives as we see fit, that we have a right to buy insurance or not buy insurance. We have a right to choose from a bunch of insurance options that a free market would provide. The insurance companies have a right to provide all kinds of insurance products to us. We have to fight for economic rights of individuals, of businesses, of corporations. We have to fight for the principle of economic freedom. We have to fight for true free markets, ultimately for real separation of state from economics. Anything short of that ultimately leads to this kind of decision, to a slippery slope, to a systematic erosion of our freedoms. Toward a free market revolution, that's what we should be fighting for."

It's going to be a long fight, but well worth it. I'm excited about November. A big part of that battle is going to be undoing the damage Republicans have done in their appointments to the Supreme Court.

See also a rundown of critical commentary by the Left Coast Rebel.

On the legal aspects of the decision, check out Scotusblog (here and here).

Lastly, Temple of Mut's "if you like your death panels, you can keep your death panel."

Collective Bargaining Lost in Wisconsin

2012-06-06T18:44:00.000-07:00

Great news from Wisconsin last night. The attempted recall of Gov. Scott Walker failed by a good margin (7%). If you hadn't heard, this was a referendum on collective bargaining, which Walker has significantly curtailed for public employees. The state is better off. Employees are better off. The unions, not so much.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to remind you that the 'right' to collective bargaining is just like any other entitlement. It is an entitlement on the part of unions to be heard and negotiated with by employers. Collective bargaining' forces employers to negotiate with employees by virtue of their having banded together into a group.

In a rational world employees would have the right to associate, but not to force recognition. They'd have the right to charge dues, but not to compel dues. They'd be able to post notices, but only if they got the permission of whomevers property they wanted to post on. They'd have the right to hold elections (privately or with permission), but not to compel access to employee records.

In brief, there would be unions in a free country, but its unlikely they would be overly adversarial towards employers. The employers would have the right to simply not recognize the union, fire its leaders, fire all its members, prohibit any communication on company property regarding the union, etc. All rights anyone has when hiring others, i.e. the rights to associate and contract as he sees fit. More likely unions would function to speak for employees on topics of interest to employers, perhaps negotiate on behalf of employees regarding pay schedules, raise concerns, etc. I would be very surprised if an employer would ever require union membership as a condition of employment, though it would be his right to do so (contra "right-to-work" laws).

What about public employees? For public employment the issue is somewhat more complicated: laws regarding public employment function like voluntary employment policies do in the private sector. You could argue that governments have a right to set the terms of employment just like private companies do. Except for the fact that the ultimate employer/owner is actually the taxpayer. Any policy the government adopts that isn't required by the status of the labor market amounts to welfare for government employees. They should be payed the salaries and benefits necessary to obtain a quality workforce, but no more. If the government can obtain quality employees without any aspect of collective bargaining (exclusive union representation, forced dues, closed shop hiring), then it should do so. Experience says that collective bargaining is an impediment to obtaining quality employees.

So Glad Lugar Lost

2012-05-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

Here's Dick Lugar (R-Indiana) on why he lost the primary in Indiana to Mourdock:

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) today blamed his primary loss on “a large portion of the Republican Party of Indiana” believing “in the idea of individualism as opposed to community.”

Reminds me of Rick Pursuit-of-happiness-harms-America Santorum.

Brett Kimberlin: White Collar Terrorist for the Left

2012-05-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

There's been quite a bit of discussion in the blogosphere this week about Brett Kimberlin, professional harasser for the left. Check out this Examiner piece for details. Disturbing stuff.

But far more sinister is the tactic adopted by Brett Kimberlin, an activist and the founder of the group Velvet Revolution who was convicted in 1981 of exploding eight bombs in 1978 in Speedway, Ind. One of his bombs blew off the leg of a man who subsequently committed suicide.

Nowadays, Kimberlin targets conservative bloggers like Aaron Worthing and Robert Stacy McCain in Maryland, and Patrick Frey of Patterico's Pontifications in California. Why? For publishing facts about Kimberlin's criminal record.

Kimberlin harasses his targets by, among many other ways, filing false charges in courts that require expensive, time-consuming litigation, disrupting his targets' workplaces, and dropping dark hints about spouses and kids.

This is my small contribution to the Michelle Malkin organized blogburst of truth surrounding Kimberlin's attacks on bloggers.

If You're not on Twitter, You Should Be

2012-05-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a good post at Legal Insurrection, which begins:

As has been said on here before: If you’re not on Twitter, you need to be. Nowhere is this point made more readily apparent than the way in which the Tea Party has utilized social media outlets like Twitter, to begin to reshape the Republican Party from the inside out.

After watching the Democrats’ sheer dominance over social media forums during the 2008 Presidential election, it is doubtful that anyone could have predicted the conservative base would supplant them so quickly.

But beginning with the midterm elections of 2010, conservatives have been on a path to claim outright dominance over the medium altogether in a way comparable to that of the Talk Radio industry. This effort is taking its toll not just on the Democrats, but also on entrenched Republicans who, in the eyes of the GOP base, have lost their way.
Conservatives have long been upset with the direction their party was headed. One need look no further than the last 5 Presidential candidates the party has put forward, each one more typical and predictable than the last. It tends to share more in common with a Royal line of succession, than a series of democratically elected candidates.

Every 4 years, the GOP and its party members knew who their next candidate would be before the primaries even began, and the people that made up the party’s base knew that there wasn’t much that could be done about it.

This past primary cycle changed that, and it forced this year’s “next-in-line” candidate into a primary fight that nearly cost him the nomination. A significant contributing factor of this was the centralized dissatisfaction with big government policies as represented by the Tea Party, and the use of Twitter to communicate this dissatisfaction to an increasingly broad audience. In the end, the establishment won out, and in the interest of defeating a President that no self-respecting conservative could bear to have in office for another 4 years, Romney will get the votes from the base. The same cannot be said for a number of hopelessly entrenched Republican members of Congress.

Go read the rest.

Watkins: What's Really Wrong with Entitlements

2012-05-09T14:00:00.000-07:00

I just received the following announcement from the Ayn Rand Institute. Should be a good talk:

What’s Really Wrong with Entitlements

A talk at the University of California, San Diego

Who: Don Watkins, fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute

What: A lecture examining America’s entitlement state

Where: Price Center West, Eleanor Roosevelt College Room, UCSD [Map]

When: Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 7 p.m.

Description: It's an open secret that America's entitlement state is in disarray, and that the United States faces a crushing debt thanks to programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But according to Ayn Rand Center analyst Don Watkins, that's not the biggest problem with entitlements.

In this talk, you will discover the unknown history of life in America before the entitlement state, and discover the surprising reason why the United States went from a limited government to an entitlement nation. In the process, you will find out why all of the usual solutions to our entitlement crisis cannot work—and what kind of solution could.

Admission: FREE. Open to students and the public.

Bio: Don Watkins is a columnist at Forbes.com and his op-eds have appeared in such venues as Investor's Business Daily, The Christian Science Monitor, FoxNews.com, CNBC.com and Forbes magazine. He has appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs, and is a regular guest on PJTV's Front Page with Allen Barton. His book, Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand's Ideas Can End Big Government, co-authored with Yaron Brook, will be released in September.

More information: Please e-mail Alana Goycochea at agoycoch@ucsd.edu.

The Invisible Hand

2012-05-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

I confess that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" never made sense to me. I think I finally figured out why.

First let us recap the phenomenon the "invisible hand" is meant to explain. Private actors in a free economy produce and trade. They make things, provide services and trade those things and services with other people who make things and provide services. The school teacher sells his services, the farmer sells his produce, the factory worker sells his labor and the factory owner sells his pins. The teacher, farmer, worker and owner trade with each other. In each trade, each considers himself better off. The owner would rather have his children educated than keep all his profits. The worker would rather have food than keep all his wages. Through each person acting in their self interest and achieving their self interest, each is better off.

If two people trade to mutual benefit, which is what most trades are in a free market, both benefit. If an organization of 40,000 employees sells their product to a million customers, both the organization and the customers are better off. If an entire economy of 350 million, filled with producers trading their wares with other producers, each trade benefiting buyer and seller, should we be surprised that all of these trades to mutual benefit lead to general benefit? The benefit accruing to the aggregate of individuals is nothing more than the sum of the benefits accruing to each. So if you leave people free to produce and trade to mutual benefit, why would you be surprised that everyone benefits?

The presumption of the "invisible hand" is that there is something amiss, something requiring explanation. When you leave people free to pursue their self-interest, everyone's self-interest is achieved! Shocker! Far from being shocking, it is exactly what you should expect. It is simply the mathematics of summation. Let every individual pursue his self-interest, then the aggregate of individuals will achieve their self-interest.

The real need for an "invisible hand" comes from the idea that there is something evil or destructive about self-interest. If self-interest were evil or destructive, then the fact that the sum of self-interested actions leads to something good (a wealthy, healthy, happy society) would require an explanation: an "invisible" hand, a philosophers stone that turns evil into good. But self-interest is not evil, it is the essence of good. And one should not be surprised that when millions of people each pursue their own happiness, trading to mutual benefit, they usually end up happy. It is not an invisible hand that guides a free economy to prosperity, but thousands and millions of very visible handshakes between self-interested invidividuals.

Book Review: Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists

2012-05-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists: Terrorism and Justice in the Gilded Age
by Timothy Messer-Kruse

I will henceforth remember May 1st as Victims of Communism Day. Until now, its been celebrated as an international workers' holiday to commemorate the Haymarket affair. On May 4, 1886, during an 8-hour-day strike, a bomb was thrown at police setting off days of gunfights and rioting. Seven police officers and four civilians were killed and scores injured. Eight anarchists were tried and seven eventually sentenced to death for conspiring to kill police. Their goal: cause widespread mayhem and a violent overthrow of capitalism for the sake of communism in the U.S. (Sound familiar?). Popular history has it that they were railroaded by an unsympathetic judge and a packed jury.

When Timothy Messer-Kruse took a second look into the affair, he found a very different past buried in unexamined court transcripts and contemporary popular accounts. He recounts his experience researching the book and attempting to update Wikipedia here.

In 2001 I was teaching a labor-history course, and our textbook contained nearly the same wording that appeared on Wikipedia [that "The prosecution, led by Julius Grinnell, did not offer evidence"]. One of my students raised her hand: "If the trial went on for six weeks and no evidence was presented, what did they talk about all those days?" I've been working to answer her question ever since.

I have not resolved all the mysteries that surround the bombing, but I have dug deeply enough to be sure that the claim that the trial was bereft of evidence is flatly wrong. One hundred and eighteen witnesses were called to testify, many of them unindicted co-conspirators who detailed secret meetings where plans to attack police stations were mapped out, coded messages were placed in radical newspapers, and bombs were assembled in one of the defendants' rooms.

In his book, The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists, he discusses in detail his research and the events of 1886, showing that the bombing, deaths and subsequent rioting was fully intentional. The actual bomber slipped through the police's fingers before he could be arrested, but many of the other conspirators were tried and convicted. The reason history has treated the anarchists so sympathetically is most academics are already leftists and historians largely relied on summaries of the trials written by the defendants' lawyers. Messer-Kruse, on the other hand, was able to use the recently digitized court transcripts.

I highly recommend this book for the history, for the discussion of revolutionary communism's methods and for all the parallels to today's occupy wall street movement, which is a stale, anti-intellectual reprise of the anarcho-communism of the late 19th century. Today's anarcho-communists have the same goal the haymarket rioters did: chaos followed by a dictatorship of the proletariat, or in today's language, dictatorship of the '99%'. Then then they'll start piling up the bodies of tens of millions of new victims of communism.

E-Verify: Another Totalitarian Tool

2012-05-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

Here's an excellent interview from the Cato Daily Podcast discussing Arizona's SB1070, especially the E-Verify strengthening provisions. The main political point he makes is that e-verify is having to get permission from the government to employ someone. This verification goes through a government bureaucracy that misclassifies 1% of Americans (that 3.5 million). How easy it would be for an administration to 'accidentally' alter the statuses of all the conservative bloggers and watch them all get fired. Ooops!

For the record, besides being against E-Verify, I'm also for much more open immigration. But that's for another post.

Collective Bargaining Like a Monopoly?

2012-04-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

I just came across this older article comparing collective bargaining to monopolies. The key paragraph is the following:

Labor unions like to portray collective bargaining as a basic civil liberty, akin to the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion. For a teachers union, collective bargaining means that suppliers of teacher services to all public school systems in a state—or even across states—can collude with regard to acceptable wages, benefits and working conditions. An analogy for business would be for all providers of airline transportation to assemble to fix ticket prices, capacity and so on. From this perspective, collective bargaining on a broad scale is more similar to an antitrust violation than to a civil liberty.

Its an ok article, but I have to disagree on both sides of this analogy. First of all, the customers of businesses aren't usually forced to deal with them. New airlines can compete with the cartel, undermining it in a free market. That is, unless the government has given the cartel a legal monopoly. Strangely, legally enforced monopolies, like the post office or federal reserve, aren't subject to antitrust laws. Secondly, it is not the collusion of union members that is wrong. They have a right to associate and organize. It is the fact that their employers are compelled to deal with them (euphemistically called 'bargaining') that is immoral.

CISPA Exempts Companies from Privacy Suits

2012-04-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act apparently just cleared the house. Despite Speaker Boehner's (R) promise that he's "from the government and here to help", it has at least one horrible provision. From Ron Paul's site:

CISPA represents an alarming form of corporatism, as it further intertwines government with companies like Google and Facebook. It permits them to hand over your private communications to government officials without a warrant, circumventing well-established federal laws like the Wiretap Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. It also grants them broad immunity from lawsuits for doing so, leaving you without recourse for invasions of privacy. Simply put, CISPA encourages some of our most successful internet companies to act as government spies, sowing distrust of social media and chilling communication in one segment of the world economy where America still leads.

I'm guessing this also means the companies will also be granted immunity from lawsuits based on the privacy provisions of the contracts they sign with their customers. In other words, CISPA is a backdoor out of provisions in all their contracts with users. This is how our corrupt politicians grow the state, by pitting pressure groups against each other. Got too much opposition from Facebook and Google? Throw them a bone and sacrifice the users and the sanctity of contracts.

The other disturbing aspect of the bill is that it promises "voluntary" cooperation between the government and internet companies. In what sense can such data sharing be considered voluntary when the same companies are regulated by dozens of government agencies ready to crucify them if they get uppity?

On EPA Powerlust

2012-04-26T16:14:00.001-07:00

Offered without comment. The EPA administrator responsible for the region including Texas, speaks on EPA methods:

It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them.

Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.

Backpedaling here.

The Fourth Businessman

2012-04-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand describes three types of businessman.

The first is the brilliant industrialist who builds his business with intelligence, honesty, and an abundance of productivity, never seeking a handout, but who nevertheless accepts the morality of altruism and is thereby powerless to fight the expanding welfare state. He pays lip service to altruism while living and growing his business by another morality, the morality of profit and self-interest. It is his productivity that the looters need to support their destructive entitlement, regulatory state. He feels what he is doing is right, but he's powerless to stop the destruction the socialist wreak. He is the victim of the altruistic policies, disagrees with practical aspects, but doesn't reject altruism itself. He is the victim who gives moral sanction to his own destruction. Rand call's it the 'sanction of the victim'. Hank Rearden is the prime example in Atlas. His real life counterparts are numerous. See the giving pledge for examples of billionaires who have pledged to give half their fortunes to charity (Watkin and Brook's criticism can be found here). You can bet that those charities are advocates for more government handouts, higher taxes and more regulations, all of which are directed at destroying the very businesses built by their donors.

The second is the mediocre businessman who instead of making a better product, runs to Washington for subsidies. He employs more lobbyists and PR people than engineers. He is a parasite in the business realm, never having been productive and living off taxpayers and the carcasses of his destroyed competitors. Orren Boyle is the book's prime example. Examples of this type are also numerous in real life. Practically the entire 'green' industry is a creation by government handouts to mediocrities, e.g. Solyndra, who couldn't even manage to stay in business with the handouts and competitor-killing regulations.

The third is the businessman who knows that creating products that are good and selling them to willing customers is moral, perhaps man's most moral act. In other words, he knows that self-interest is moral, that the pursuit of happiness described in our Declaration of Independence is good. He pays no lip-service to altruism and fights for his freedom and property with a rational, conscious, righteous stance. Since this requires a completely rational, philosophic defense of self-interest, such a businessman doesn't appear until late in Atlas, after John Galt has articulated that philosophy. In the course of the book Galt convinces the best of the first type of businessmen that his is the morality they've always lived by and should embrace consciously for their own preservation. In real life, for the same reason, there are few of this type of businessman. Mostly they are businessmen who have read Rand's statement of a morality for living, e.g. John Allison, who minimized his bank's involvement in subprime and since the economic crisis of 2008 has been very publicly fighting the welfare state and altruism.

Parenthetically, Steve Jobs appears to have been very close to this third type, without as clear an understanding of the philosophic issues. E.g he famously did not sign the giving pledge. In 1985 he criticized philanthropy because its success can't be measured! This is similar to a criticism Rand levels against altruism, which I've discussed myself (here and here), i.e. that altruism isn't a moral code, it's an admonition to sacrifice without any means of deciding which sacrifices are better than others or of figuring out if your sacrifices have worked. (If you want to see the snarling face of altruism, do an internet search of "steve jobs altruism" and read a few articles. The snearing attacks on one of America's greatest producers are revolting.)

In addition to these three types off businessman, there is a fourth, common in real life but not described in Atlas. This is the successful businessman who, after acquiring his wealth, turns it against his fellow producers or against capitalism itself. This type of businessman isn't content to take advantage of existing expropriatory laws, but promotes the passage of new ones through his many business and political contacts. He partners with statist politicians and bureaucrats to loot or destroy his competitors, carve out special legal treatment for himself, increase taxes, etc. He brings (non-objective) anti-trust suits against his competitors. He is an advocate not of the status quo, but of an ever larger and confiscatory state. Examples in real life abound. Google, an internet content provider, has advocated for shackling the service providers with horrible 'net neutrality' laws. The Federal Reserve, bailout agent without equal, was designed by successful bankers. The Bolshevik revolution was financed by bankers. Obamacare (and the FDA) are supported by pharmaceutical companies. Many of the current attacks on America and capitalism are being financed by George Soros, a successful investor with messianic socialist ideas. (Relatedly, many of the charitable foundations established by early American industrialists were staffed by avowed leftists with the intent of destroying capitalism.)

These are not examples brilliant businessmen quietly acquiescing to power, these are businessmen actively promoting the growth of state power. They use their wealth and well-earned reputation to promote the destruction of the very system that made their success possible. These are the Hank Rearden's or John Galt's who sold out. Their closest analog in Atlas is Dr. Robert Stadler, the genius physicist who prostitutes his mind and reputation to state run science, ultimately becoming a power-lusting destroyer. Stadler doesn't himself campaign for increased scientific funding, regulations on private sector scientists, or political powers being granted scientists, but by joining the institute his name is used in those campaigns. Stadler is rightly portrayed as one of the most evil characters in Atlas.

The phrase 'sanction of the victim' no longer applies to this fourth type of businessman. He is no longer a victim. By advocating and taking concrete steps to enslave his fellow businessmen, he has become an aggressor.

While Atlas focused on the first two types of businessmen, I believe this fourth is as common. His existence baffled me when I first entered private industry. I was not prepared to find so many intelligent businessmen who were active enemies of capitalism and advocates for more regulations, more entitlements and more taxes. These are the anti-capitalist 'capitalists' who are helping to destroy our freedom. They have been a driving force for statist politics for the last century, equaled only by the progressive intellectuals of the universities, and all the more guilty since they should have known better. They are the 'cronies' who should have known better than to appeal to the use of the state, the use of force, to succeed.

Alex Epstein Speaking Tonight

2012-04-25T09:03:00.003-07:00

Just a quick note to say that Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress is speaking tonight (4/25/12) at SDSU:

Energy in 2012 Election by Alex Epstein
5:00pm until 6:00pm
Aztec Mesa Room 107, SDSU

Hosted by the SDSU College Republicans

http://www.facebook.com/events/226963344075673/

This election year, we will be faced with a choice: What energy policies will maximize prosperity and minimize pollution? President Obama and others argue that the key is for the government to promote “green energy” sources, such as solar and wind.

In “The Green Blackout,” energy expert Alex Epstein, Founder of the Center for Industrial Progress, argues that forcing Americans to use solar and wind power would be disastrous not only for our economy, but also for our environment.

Alex Epstein is the Founder and Director of the Center for Industrial Progress, whose website is www.industrialprogress.net. His writings on energy and energy policy have been published in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Business Daily, and dozens of other prominent publications. Mr. Epstein’s writings on philosophy, business, and energy have been featured in 10 books, including, most recently, Why Businessmen Need Philosophy.

If you miss the talk, check out Alex's excellent site and podcast.

Update: I'm attempting to confirm with the organizers that this is open to the public.
Update: It is open to the public and there will be pizza and soft drinks!
Update: Added blurb from Facebook page.

It's Only Fair

2012-04-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

When asked why raise the capital gains tax if that'll only decrease revenues, Obama replied in 2008 that he would do so for "purposes of fairness."

Lets chew that a bit.

What he's saying is that he would support increased taxes on the rich, even if that meant he gets less out of them, i.e. even if that means less money to distribute to the entitled poor.

This is the nihilism inherent in egalitarianism. Egalitarianism isn't about raising the poor up to the level of the rich. Egalitarianism is about crushing the rich (or smart, able, or beautiful) until they are reduced to the level of the poor etc. And worse, egalitarianism desires the destruction of the rich even at the cost of the welfare of the poor. Egalitarianism is the worst, most evil of motives: destruction of the rich for the sake of destruction itself, with no benefit and actually harm coming to everyone else.

Think of that the next time you hear "It's only fair".

When raising taxes on the rich leads to less to distribute to the poor...it's only fair. When destroying the oil industry doesn't doesn't help 'green' energy and only causes high oil prices, it's only fair. When shutting up large campaign donors via campaign finance laws actually leads to more entrenched establishment politicians, it's only fair. When regulating banks actually leads to a more unstable financial system, its only fair.

Welcome to the politics of ~~egalitarianism~~ nihilism.

That Was Before We Were In Power

2012-04-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

I read Oleg Atbashian's Shakedown Socialism almost two years ago now. I remember it being an enjoyable short read on the evils of communism. I don't remember many details. But one quotation comes back to mind over and over, everytime I hear about the Left's supposed support for due process, or freedom of the press, or closing Guantanimo, or transparency in government (from the bottom of page 8):

In the words of prominent Party theoretician Nikolai Bukharin, "We asked for freedom of the press, thought, and civil liberties in the past because we were in the opposition and needed these liberties to conquer. Now that we have conquered, there is no longer any need for such civil liberties."

Look! Rich People!

2012-04-18T11:54:00.000-07:00

Love these Ramirez cartoons that capture Obama's anti-wealth scapegoating tactics, which will probably be his main campaign strategy until November:

From IBD (here and here):