Thomas Time

San Francisco Pics

2010-03-21T15:26:00.002-06:00

As promised, I've sorted through our TONS of pictures from San Francisco, and put the best ones up on Flickr. Here is a very small selection... Please take a look at the whole collection, if you love SF as much as we do. :)

Coming Soon: SF Stuff

2010-03-17T21:10:00.002-06:00

Yo, folks. We're back (a day late) from San Francisco. Soon I'll be posting two things:

A selection of great photos.
Recommended places and services, based on great experiences we had.

Stay tuned!

Off to San Francisco

2010-03-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

Suzy and I are off to San Francisco tonight. I might post a few pictures while we're there, but for sure I'll have stuff to post by the time we get back! Hasta! :D

Scarlet A

2010-03-05T20:57:00.001-07:00

Let's Regulate Bubble Wrap, Too!

2010-02-24T22:26:00.006-07:00

I work at a UPS Store. My store's franchise owner was recently commanded to appear before a special session of the United States Congress. There, he was grilled by a congressman. A portion of the transcript follows:

Congressman: Sir, you have been summoned before this special session to resolve a troubling matter. Is it true that your store raised the retail price of shipping boxes and bubble wrap by an average of 15% last year?

Franchise Owner: That is correct.

Congressman: Would it be correct to say that our national economy is struggling, and the average consumer already faces the heavy burden of existing prices?

Franchise Owner: Yes. However, we are also struggling to some extent -- with a difficult economy, retail stores usually face a drop in customer count. To be able to cover operating expenses, the cost of supplies, and payroll for my employees, price increases are sometimes necessary.

Congressman: I see. And yet, despite the "difficult" economy, as you call it, you gave one of your employees a $1 per hour raise and instituted an incentive program to offer bonuses to high-performing staff.

Okay, you've probably guessed that the owner of my little UPS Store was not summoned before congress. But looking at this fictionalized exchange, does it not strike you as a bit ridiculous? I can't think of any good reason why the government would have any business demanding answers to questions about my store's pricing, or how bonuses or pay raises are handled. I'm sure you'd agree that it's really none of the government's business how we price things or how employees are paid. If prices are too high, customers will go elsewhere, and we'll be forced to lower prices or suffer from the loss of revenue. Similarly, if employees are treated or compensated poorly, they may leave. The market has a way of working these things out and punishing business leaders who make poor decisions.

And yet, so many people who read this (and so many people I know) think that the above conversation (and government intervention) is completely justified when it comes to things like health insurance. In a just society, there would be no difference between insurance companies and my company when it comes to government meddling -- namely, the government has no place asking about prices or raises or bonuses in any business, much less demanding answers or demanding compliance to arbitrary regulations to make "the people" feel good.

On NPR tonight, they were talking about Anthem Blue Cross in California, and the large rate increases. Nevermind the logic that says if the number of paying customers drops, the overall rate for remaining customers will probably increase to pick up the slack. Logic is not allowed in this kind of discussion, apparently. But there were a couple of points in the news coverage that pissed me off:

The government demanding answers and "grilling" executives from Anthem Blue Cross. What the %$@# business is it of the federal government? If the premium prices really are too high, then Anthem Blue Cross will either correct the prices or lose customers to a cheaper competitor, and/or go out of business. Problem solved, no government meddling necessary. Of course, everyone conveniently ignores the fact that if the government hadn't regulated health insurance in the first place, there would be more competition and these premium hikes would likely not occur. Regardless, government has exactly ZERO business in investigating, much less dictating, the price for any product provided by any industry. Zero.
The government goons saying, in effect, "WELLLLLLLLLLLL, you gave some executives $1 billion bonuses last year, didn't you?" Again, government, none of your freaking business. If a company wants to give bonuses for good performance, or even give bonuses for being able to balance a pencil on top of one's head, that is their business. Nobody has the right to tell a company what to do with their money. If they give huge bonuses and it screws up their pricing for customers -- too bad! Now the company gets to face those consequences by losing customers, or losing money, or having to trim payroll, etc. Saying that any company has an obligation to keep prices low, regardless of what the company wants to do with its own money... That is socialist bullcrap.
NPR quoted some lady saying, "If I sent a letter to my customers telling them I was raising my prices by 39%, I'd likely be out of a job." Hey lady, the great thing is that your business is not regulated by the government. You have the freedom to make the business decision of raising your price by 39%, or not. You have the freedom to make bad decisions that may put you out of business. If you decide to raise your price by 39%, or 390%, you can do that! Nobody -- not I, nor Uncle Sam -- can tell you not to. If we tried, you would rightly tell us to shove it. And yet if it's health care, suddenly it is everybody's right to stick our collective noses into how a company prices its product. This logic is just couching socialist ideals in fake concern for the success of the company in question. "Oh, don't do that! You might run yourself out of business!" What that actually translates to is, "We've decided we have a fundamental right to the fruits of your labors, and you no longer get to run your business freely."

Of course the reason this all occurs is because the sheep in this country have decided that we all have rights to nouns and things, rather than rights to freedoms of action. Here's the dirty thing nobody wants to hear and few people want to say, but I will say: nobody (not even YOU) has any right to health insurance or any other product or service. I say this as a person who does not have health insurance and cannot afford it. Neither you nor I have a right to health insurance, or to water, or to food, or anything else. If we want those things, we have to pay for them. If we can't afford them, then we either have to go without or we have to find some way to get the money. I can't afford a Lexus, but the government isn't going to give me one of those -- why is health insurance different? Why doesn't the government go investigate the high prices of Lexus cars? They're just begging for regulation, those guys.

Now you may say that the difference is, health care is required for a healthy life, but a Lexus is not. Fine. But food is also required for a healthy life, and I don't see the government investigating Whole Foods for charging $1.50 for an apple, while Wal-Mart charges something like $0.49. They don't demand Trader Joe's justify charging $3.49 for a bottle of orange juice when Kroger sells some brands for $1.99. In food, there is a much freer market with supply-and-demand forces in play. If prices are too high and the product value or quality is not there to justify them, people go elsewhere and the offending businesses will naturally lose money or be forced to change their business models.

If the government had kept its paws off of health care all these decades, we would have a similarly broad range of choice and competition as we enjoy with the other "necessities" of life: food, employment, education (not always a good example because of government regulation, but still not as eff'ed up as health care), etc.

When will people learn that the more government "oversees" and "regulates" any business, the more it ultimately hurts us all? It doesn't look promising so far.

The Last Supper

2010-02-21T16:46:00.004-07:00

Opera May Steal Me Back

2010-02-11T20:19:00.001-07:00

Way back in the day, Opera was my main browser of choice. Having abandoned Windows in 1998 and adopted Linux full-time, the browsing scene was a bit dark and dreary. Prior to Opera releasing a stable version for Linux, the only viable choice was Netscape Navigator 4.x, with its hideous interface, horrible speed (or lack of it), clunky appearance, and proprietary garbage out the wazoo. Opera, by comparison, was speedy, rather good-looking, and loaded with great features like tabs, customizable keyboard shortcuts, and mouse gestures.

With the release of Phoenix (which became Firebird, and which then became Firefox), I gradually shifted away from Opera. As Firefox became more stable and offered a big playground of extensions and themes, Opera started to look a bit tired and old -- not to mention that it was (and still is) closed source, which I've never been a big fan of, philosophically.

In the years since, Firefox has held a pretty solid grasp on my browsing. I've dabbled in Opera, Safari, and Chrome off and on, but I usually end up going back to Firefox. It's been showing its age in the last couple of years, but its virtually flawless compatibility and open development have usually won me over.

That may change very soon.

For the last couple of months, I've been playing with the very early pre-alpha builds of Opera 10.5 for Linux. They've been very bleeding-edge so far -- more than a few crashes, some wonky site compatibility issues, and a bizarre tendency to peg my computer's CPU even when Opera is not actively doing anything.

With today's release of Opera 10.5 alpha for Linux (and the beta for Windows, which will soon come to Linux), I've seen massive improvement. Gone is the CPU-hogging inefficiency, gone are many of the crashes I encountered before. In place of those things is speed, speed, speed and all the customization glory I've always loved about Opera.

Opera 10.5 may be the release that finally steals me back from Firefox, after these many years. I love to see the browser wars heating up again! With years of stagnation and boredom behind us, the excitement of competition and new features is back!

Whether you're on Linux or Windows, I highly recommend downloading Opera 10.5 and checking it out.

What Is Really Inhuman?

2010-02-04T16:22:00.008-07:00

When I lived in China, I had a generally negative opinion of how people there go about life. Even when I left after two years of living there -- working with them, being friends with them, and marrying my wonderful Suzy -- I couldn't help passing a negative moral judgment on the average Chinese person.

In retrospect, I now have to say I greatly admire the Chinese in a lot of ways. To help explain why, I want to go back to something I blogged about before: rights as nouns and verbs.

The majority of people today have a very irrational view of what "rights" are. They talk about a right to this, a right to that, but almost every right they talk about is a noun, a thing that can be possessed or held on to. The implications of this backwards view are quite simple to figure out, and the irrationality and immorality of insisting on rights as nouns is self-evident once you do.

First, it's important to realize that effort is an essential component to human life. The universe does not magically provide food, shelter, and joy to a human simply because he is born. If you are born and you do not feed yourself, or if somebody else does not feed you, you will starve and you will die. It's a sad fact, but sadness does not make it any less true. To live, you need to eat food; to eat food, the food must come from somewhere; to get the food, it has to be grown, harvested, found, bought, borrowed, or otherwise acquired through someone's effort (yours, or your parents', or somebody else's -- regardless, human effort is required to make it happen).

I'm sure you agree with me then that it is the very nature of human life that to continue living, someone must expend effort to make that possible. If you don't agree with me on that point, stop reading now and please go read someone else's blog, because you either lack the logical capacity to understand what I'm saying or you are so emotionally overwhelmed that you don't want to face it.

Once you're an adult and your parents have (hopefully) equipped you with skills to interact with the world, the necessity for effort to sustain your life does not just go away. If you want food, you'll need to grow it yourself or buy it from someone else who grows it. If you want shelter, you'll have to build it yourself, rent it, buy it, or otherwise compensate someone else who will provide it. Again, all these things require effort -- the defining characteristic for all known lifeforms, which includes us.

The problem is that a lot of people really dislike this truth of human existence. Oh sure, virtually nobody will argue against the idea that you have to get your food through effort. And yet when it comes to any of a number of "rights" that people love to assert, that fact goes out the window completely.

As a living person, you have the right to live. You don't have the right to any specific life, but you do have the right to live. Notice the distinction I'm making here -- you have the right to take action, to live, which is a verb. You do not have the right to a great life, which would be a noun. You do have a right to take whatever moral actions you can to make a great life, but there's no guarantee that you will achieve it. The only guarantee is (or should be) that you can make the attempt.

Does this sound needlessly cruel? There's a reason I believe in this crucial difference. If you have a right to a verb, to an action, that means the rest of the world is not allowed to stop you from taking that action. If you want to pursue (verb) happiness, nobody else has the right to stop you. That does not mean you are guaranteed to have happiness, which is a noun. If you are guaranteed to have it, that means your right entitles you to it whether you lift a finger for it or not.

Let's go back to food. Since you have the fundamental human right to live, that means you have the right to pursue the necessary conditions of living. One of those conditions is to eat food. As we already agreed, the universe will not magically give you that food. You have the right, then, to grow the food yourself, or to buy it from someone else who does, or to trade for it, or to otherwise acquire it without infringing on the fundamental rights of other people (infringing on theirs would invalidate your own claim to the same rights).

All of those rights you have for pursuing food are actions, verbs -- grow, buy, trade, acquire, etc. Now imagine that we decide you have a right to food. Now your right is to a noun, to a specific thing. And again since the universe won't just give it to you for doing nothing, that thing has to come from somewhere. It has to be produced or acquired by somebody.

If you have a right to food, but you won't grow your own, or buy it, or trade for it, or otherwise get it through your own effort, it still has to come from somewhere. That means somebody else has to grow it, or buy it, or trade it, and then give it to you. Until we figure out some magical technological breakthrough to produce food out of thin air and with no effort expended by anybody, this is an undeniable fact of reality. The food has to get to you by somebody's effort, and if it's not yours, then that means someone else is providing it.

Now you can see the fundamental problem with having a right to a noun, rather than a right to a verb. The moment you are entitled to a product, a service, or anything other than your own freedom to act, some other person (or people) has been enslaved for your benefit.

Right to food, but you don't want to pay for food? Somebody else has to grow it, transport it, and make it available to you. That somebody else must give their time and energy for you because of your "right."

Right to a job, but you don't want to develop the credentials necessary to earn it yourself? Somebody else has to provide that job to you, whether they want to or not and whether you're qualified or not.

Right to a university education, but you don't want to apply your mind? Some unfortunate university somewhere must take you and figure out some way to shuffle you through a four-year degree, whether you're smart enough or hard-working enough or worthy of it or not.

Right to clean dishes, but you don't want to clean them or even bother to put them in the dishwasher (which would be effort), nor do you want to pay somebody else to clean them? Some sap must put them in the dishwasher for you, or wash them by hand for you anyway.

There's not a noun-right you can name that does not ultimately imply someone else sacrificing time, money, or effort to grant you what you're supposedly entitled to. If you agree that human beings have the fundamental right to freedom and to not be enslaved for the purposes of others, then you cannot agree with rights to things. You can only agree with rights to freedom of action, such as the right to pursue happiness. Freedom of action infringes on nobody, but entitlements to products, services, and things must inevitably infringe on the rights of another person who must provide them to you.

Back to China. While there is much to be disgusted about with regards to the elite there, the average person I met in China (knowingly or unknowingly) lives in accord with what I've just outlined above. When I first went to China, Chinese people struck me as greedy and anti-social because they did not demand rights to food, housing, education, and jobs.

What I didn't realize then, and what I realize now, is that most Chinese live life very honestly. Life can be hard, it always requires effort, and there are never any guarantees. If a Chinese person wants something, they go after it with a passion and dedication that is regrettably lacking in most people I've met here. Chinese people face the reality of human existence and rarely do they complain about it.

Ironically, a lot of Europeans and Americans (including my former self) call them inhuman for that, when in fact the most human thing you can do is to honestly admit that life takes effort. And unless it's your effort, effort you've paid or otherwise compensated someone for, or the effort of someone who values you so much that they are willing to freely help you -- that effort to sustain your life can only come from enslaving somebody else.

Now tell me... Who is really inhuman?

Being Selfish is Hard Work

2010-01-31T21:59:00.001-07:00

This is the real revolution in Ayn Rand's ethics. Ayn Rand's ethics is not about doing what you feel like doing... It's figuring out. This is why being selfish is hard work. It's figuring out what is really in my long-term, rational, self-interest...

Self-interest is not doing whatever whim comes. It is thinking about what is truly, rationally in your self-interest.
~ Yaron Brook, Stossel (episode 3)

Obama vs. the First Amendment

2010-01-30T08:29:00.000-07:00

From Obama v. the First Amendment:

According to Obama’s State of the Union address: “With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests... I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.” If that weren’t clear enough, Vice President Biden said of the Court’s ruling, it “was dead wrong and we have to correct it.”

This is brazen defiance of the rule of law. The President and Congress do not get to “correct” the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution. They do not have the power to pass laws the Court has found violate the First Amendment rights of Americans.

(emphasis mine)

State of the Union

2010-01-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

From a quick reading of the speech, some statistics:

Number of times President Obama said “I”: 105–mainly pushing for the government programs he seeks to pass.

Number of times President Obama said “individual rights”: 0.

Number of times President Obama said “liberty”: 0.

Number of times President Obama said “freedom”: 1–but it was freedom for Afghanistan.

(from State of the Union in one sentence)

Obligatory

2010-01-27T21:42:00.009-07:00

<insert post about the Apple iPad here>
<insert obligatory "Maxi Pad" jokes about the name>

My initial reaction to the iPad was that it looked really slick. $500 is a good price for a tablet.

But after the initial "oooooh!" wears off, it's basically just a giant iPhone. All the reasons I'm not gaga over the iPhone apply here as well:

No multitasking?! Why can't a $500 device do multitasking when a $250 netbook can?
Locked down to AT&T again. Eff that.
Same old crappy on-screen keyboard with no innovation whatsoever, and a wobbly back unsuitable for typing on flat surfaces. How come nobody, not even Apple, can get anywhere close to the level of predictive text that my Texas Instruments Avigo had in friggin' 1997? Or even the predictive input on my $30 Tracfone?
Same old closed App Store ecosystem -- which suits most people, but does not suit me... Especially when Apple blocks apps that compete or might someday compete with them.

These are some of the things that suck about the iPad. Then there's stuff like having to use ugly USB dongles if you want to plug stuff in, etc. So what exactly do you get for your $500? A big iPhone with all the same drawbacks. It's the size of a netbook but double the price and with half the capabilities. A bargain!

Most "Rights" Today Mean Slavery

2010-01-26T21:55:00.001-07:00

Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t.
~ Ayn Rand, "Welfare State"

The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
~ Ayn Rand, "Man's Rights"

Poison, and More Poison

2010-01-25T07:40:00.001-07:00

If your doctor gave you the choice between drinking a mixture of water and poison, or drinking a glass entirely of poison, what would you choose?

That's right, you'd choose "neither." You'd also think your doctor was crazy, incompetent, or both. And yet when it comes to virtually every aspect of life, our politicians are too much like the crazy doctor in this scenario, and people don't call them out on it! Our elected officials continue to offer nothing but false alternatives, neither of which is particularly better than the other in the end.

They offer the water of capitalism, mixed with the poison of government regulation. After the gullible public accepts that compromise, we are all somehow shocked that the poison is harming us -- credit defaults, the house market in shambles, the dollar tumbling in value, etc. But it seems we've all bought into the notion that if we take "only a little" poison, that's enough to somehow keep it from being poison.

They offer the water of health care, mixed with the poison of "a public option" and "a public exchange" and "universality" -- all of which translate to: government interference. The public has accepted this kind of compromise in the past, and it's gotten us nothing but pain and expense. The solution, the government tells us? More poison. Don't worry, folks! That turpentine you were mixing in with your tap water, we know the cure for that. Drink a whole jug of turpentine all at once. That'll do the trick!

Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and Haiti

2010-01-23T16:10:00.094-07:00

Note: I'm still pretty new to Objectivism, but I write posts like this for two reasons: 1) To try to understand it better myself, through the writing process and feedback from others, and 2) To encourage others to learn more about Objectivism and to think about its implications. I appreciate any and all constructive feedback!

I've seen a lot of unenlightened discussion about how Ayn Rand's philosophy (Objectivism) somehow makes helping people in Haiti immoral. I've also seen it said that if it were up to Ayn Rand, we would "leave the people of Haiti to rot."

My earlier attempt at responding to this was not as clear or as precise as I wanted it to be. So I've rewritten this post and would like to work in some quotes from Ayn Rand herself.

My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.
~ “Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand,” March 1964.

The fact that a man has no claim on others (i.e., that it is not their moral duty to help him and that he cannot demand their help as his right) does not preclude or prohibit good will among men...

It is altruism that has corrupted and perverted human benevolence by regarding the giver as an object of immolation, and the receiver as a helplessly miserable object of pity who holds a mortgage on the lives of others—a doctrine which is extremely offensive to both parties, leaving men no choice but the roles of sacrificial victim or moral cannibal...
~ “The Question of Scholarships,” The Objectivist, June 1966, 6.

Objectivism does not say it is immoral to help people, to donate, to volunteer, to give to charity, etc. Ayn Rand does, however, refuse to play on altruism's playground. The Objectivist perspective is indeed incomprehensible if you start from the premises of altruism that we are all programmed to buy into without thinking about:

What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.

Sacrifice, by definition, requires giving up that which you value for that which you don't. Ayn Rand opposes self-sacrifice because as a philosophical ideal, it reduces one's life to a slow, painful death:

To achieve the virtue of [altruistic] sacrifice, you must want to live, you must love it, you must burn with passion for this earth and for all the splendor it can give you—you must feel the twist of every knife as it slashes your desires away from your reach and drains your love out of your body. It is not mere death that the morality of sacrifice holds out to you as an ideal, but death by slow torture.

For an Objectivist, then, helping the people of Haiti is immoral if one does it out of self-sacrifice.

Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you.

Do you exist for the purpose of rebuilding Haiti, for helping New Orleans, for paying inflated health care costs for other people, for subsidizing American corn farmers, for paying back the home loan of a stranger who never should have been granted it, etc.? Is the sole purpose of your life to pay off those debts to "society" as a slave who "owes" it? Do you donate to Haitian charities because you are obligated to?

The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: “No.” Altruism says: “Yes.”

So, if you help the people of Haiti, do you do it out of a self-sacrificial obligation? Or do you do it because you value you them and consider them worthy of your help? If you agree with Ayn Rand, you can't have it both ways.

Blogging By The Numbers #6

2010-01-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

[This is part of my occasional Blogging By the Numbers series.]

One Hundred Sixty-Two Thousand: The number of miles our new-to-us Honda Civic has on it. It's a solid little horseless carriage!
Twenty-Four: How many days it's been since I started my first Ayn Rand book, and become completely obsessed with her writing.
Ten: That's how many years I've known the crazy cool bunch of people I met on Gameslink, back in the Unreal Tournament days.
Seven Point Three: The number of minutes on my cell phone that were wasted, trying to politely end an unsolicited phone call from my domain registrar (Go Daddy). I should bill them.
Six: How many years it took Bush to thoroughly piss off his opponents and get the Republicans kicked out of Congress. Obama's accomplished a similar result in roughly one year.
Five: The number of restaurants here that are "Suzy approved" -- Cowgirl, Chopstix, Village Inn, Elephant Bar, and Chic-fil-A.
Four: How many Ayn Rand books I'm reading at the same time right now (Letters of Ayn Rand, For The New Intellectual, Philosophy: Who Needs It, and Anthem).
Two: The number of hours it took me to manually configure wireless on my Linux system. I did it as a geeky exercise, because I don't like relying on the cutesy graphical tools that make it too easy. ;-)

White House Sticking Its Nose Into State Business

2010-01-20T11:04:00.001-07:00

Regarding the senate election in Massachusetts...

As voters went to the polls, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, made it clear that the president was “not pleased” with the situation Ms. Coakley found herself in.

Thanks for letting us know, Mr. Gibbs. It's important that the White House spends its time expressing how "pleased" or "not pleased" it is with state elections. I wasn't sure which side to support until Obama made it clear which candidate "pleased" him. God forbid any state do something that makes the federal government or the president "not pleased."

Honestly, I think the more a candidate "displeases" the feds, the better.

Nothing Good Ever Came of Capitalism

2010-01-19T22:50:00.006-07:00

Thinking back, it strikes me that capitalism really has been the wrong direction for America. I mean, let's think about some examples that show the accomplishments that capitalism could never have brought us.

Let's start with food. If it wasn't for the government requiring grocery stores to all carry a standard range of foods, and dictating that they offer the same price across the country regardless of petty issues like the cost of storage, transportation over long distances, local taxes, etc., food would be virtually unaffordable for the average American. Had grocery stores been allowed to compete with each other and try to find ways to meet customer needs, obviously the cost and availability of food would be out of control and we'd all be starving in the streets today.

And if there weren't massive government subsidies on corn, we would be forced to eat that crystalline gunk called "natural sugar." Instead, we are blessed to have virtually every meal infused with the pure goodness of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Thanks to HFCS, our growing worldwide population problem may be partially curbed as we increasingly develop diabetes, liver disease, stunted development of sexual organs, and more of God's natural cures to overpopulation. Whew! Dodged a bullet there!

What about inventions? If the Wright Brothers had been allowed to run their own business and gain mechanical knowledge through experience, they never would have managed to invent the first working airplane. And if private investors had been permitted the insanity of investing their capital in Alexander Graham Bell's work, his work on the telephone surely would have failed. The government wisely did not allow things like patents or competition to stifle this inevitable development that is the glory of our great collective.

And books? Authors are freed from the burden of deciding what to write about, and from the scourge of unfair competition by other people who write better than they do. Our government wisely dictates a series of approved writing topics and sends bailout checks to authors who can't write worth a crap. If authors actually had to express themselves in interesting or informative or entertaining ways, or if they had to have some kind of talent to distinguish themselves from the masses, where would society be? Fortunately, such a hellish world is limited to imaginary flights of fancy.

How about internet search? Google and other search engines brought high-quality tools to just about everybody with access to the internet -- information is easy to find and spread. Thank goodness the government passed legislation establishing the Right To Search Engines for all citizens. By subsidizing Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft and forcing them to offer the same products and services at regulated prices, the government encouraged the information age we currently enjoy. Free market competition, choice for consumers, and strategic investment of capital by private individuals -- none of those dead-ends could have brought about such a renaissance as this.

Yes, it is clear from these examples (and countless others) that government intervention has been the key to all our technological and economic triumphs. Looking back at our history, it is obvious that our moments of greatest financial despair were those when government tinkering was absent from the smallest aspects of our daily lives. Thank goodness in the 21st century we are returning to sanity, and breaking free of the shackles of capitalist failure.

Your Rights: Verbs, Not Nouns -- Actions, Not Things

2010-01-18T19:00:00.002-07:00

Yaron Brook, at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, has written a great piece titled, "Why Are We Moving Toward Socialized Medicine?" I recommend reading the whole thing, but there are some tidbits I'd like to share:

By the time Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in 1965, this view of health care as an economic product--for which each individual must assume responsibility--had given way to a view of health care as a “right,” an unearned “entitlement,” to be provided at others’ expense.

This hints at the fundamental problem with our health care discussion, and many things that are going wrong in America today. People seem to have this equation burned into their brains:

a right = a "thing" one is entitled to

The dirty little question is, where does the "thing" I'm entitled to come from? As Ron Paul said, it's easy to evade this fundamental question by answering it with "society." So not only am I entitled to some "thing", but the money and effort to create or buy that thing comes from "society" -- a very convenient way to look at things, because it keeps you from facing the the reality that somebody, an actual person, has to give up his time, effort, and/or money to put that thing in your pocket.

When it comes to things like Medicare and Social Security, that time, effort, and money are given up unwillingly and without any freedom to say no. In a word, it is theft. It's legal theft, but still immoral theft.

The solution to this ongoing crisis is to recognize that the very idea of a “right” to health care is a perversion. There can be no such thing as a “right” to products or services created by the effort of others, and this most definitely includes medical products and services.

You are not entitled to anything I produce, unless I freely give it to you. In an honest, balanced, and rational society, you would not have a "right" to anything that is a thing. As Yaron Brook so eloquently puts it:

Rights, as the Founders conceived them, are not claims to economic goods, but to freedoms of action.

You have a right to verbs (live freely, control your own property, and pursue happiness) but not to nouns (health care, medicine, universal mail service, a paycheck). Unless of course you use your real rights (your actions) to pay for those things and receive them from other people who freely offer them in return.

Estate Tax Follow-Up

2010-01-15T20:34:00.010-07:00

It seems a couple of people out there misunderstood my previous post about the estate tax. I just want to re-iterate my overall point in writing that post:

Any tax that forcibly takes your money or possessions and redistributes it to "society" is, by definition, socialist in nature.
The estate tax represents just such a tax.
Also, the estate tax is effectively double-taxing you. Money you've earned (and paid income taxes on), the business you've built up (and paid taxes on), and possessions you've acquired (and paid sales taxes on) get taxed again at death.
If a thief breaks into my house, holds a gun to my head, and takes the money from my wallet so he can give it to the poor -- that is theft, legally and morally. If I die and the government holds a gun to my wife's head, and takes the money from my estate to benefit "society" -- somehow that is not theft, legally. But it is theft morally, and it is hypocritical.

Also, I managed to offend a self-described American socialist (who I shall refer to as "My Socialist Buddy"). He took offense at the following:

My assertion that Bill Gates, Sr.'s statement ("Society has a just claim on our fortunes") is socialist in nature.
My assertion that this is a bad thing.
An imagined assertion that Bill Gates, Sr. is a socialist.

Let me just make my perspective clear: I did not say Mr. Gates is a socialist. I said he appears to be from that statement. There is no more cut-and-dried definition of socialism than "Society has a just claim on our fortunes." Also, I wanted to point out the inherent hypocrisy when someone whose family has amassed tremendous wealth from capitalism and free markets so boldly trumpets a socialist ideal.

My Socialist Buddy also claimed that without this estate tax, which he proudly called a "death tax," there would be "even more social inequity." There are a number of problems with this statement.

First, My Socialist Buddy, show me a country where socialism has actually functioned and eliminated (or even come within 100 lightyears of eliminating) social inequity. Soviet Russia? Not so much... Bloody civil war, massive poverty and death. Just read We The Living or any of hundreds of possible books on that time period. Communist China? Bloody civil war, The Cultural Revolution (I recommend reading Blood Red Sunset to see how bad this was), and massive poverty and death. Oh and China now struggles with massive overpopulation, thanks to a certain Chairman who encouraged the peasants to hump like bunnies so their offspring could farm for The People. China redeemed itself by adopting more capitalist elements.

Second, if you look at socialism and communism historically, "social inequality" is indeed corrected by making the people more equal. That is, people who have anything at all are equalized to the level of the people who have nothing. This is necessarily how socialism operates, wealth has to be created. You can't pull extra abundance out of thin air and give it to the poor -- but you can take abundance away from those who create it and redistribute it to those who don't.

Historically, instead of having a small population that's in poverty, everybody gets made "equal" and they all become poor. Except, of course, that not everybody gets equalized in this way -- the elites at the top usually manage to scrape by with their cozy mansions, private cars, imported champagne, and social status in tact. Funny how that works.

Third, we've had a "death tax" for a long time in the US, the UK, and elsewhere. Hell, our distant cousin England has had this kind of tax since 1796 -- and I'm proud to say that after 214 years, England has eliminated all poverty and social inequality. Oh, wait...

Fourth, a key idea: the estate tax, like all socialist ideals, assumes that wealth is limited in quantity. Wealth is not limited in quantity -- otherwise, there's no way we could have gone from the limited wealth of living in caves to the comparative wealth of living in skyscrapers. Skyscrapers had to come from somewhere, and they came from the wealth of advanced knowledge and from the wealth of a free society that can encourage such massive undertakings. Soviet Russia built skyscrapers, but they were built with unpaid labor and built on the corpses of the unwilling. I figure most skyscrapers built in America were built primarily through the labor of willing people who got paid. Just a hunch.

This kind of forced "social equality" is rooted in the mistaken emotional belief that wealth is finite and that if one man gets rich, that means somebody else must have gotten poorer. Of course that can happen. But are you trying to tell me that because I have a job, rather than not having one, I have somehow put some other person into a homeless shelter? Is it so morally reprehensible that I keep a roof over my head and my wife's head, and that I be able to pay for food?

A socialist or communist would say -- in a perfect world, you wouldn't have to do those things. But if I don't work to pay for the roof over my head and to pay for my food, who will? This is the unanswered question. It goes unanswered because the actual answer is: somebody else, somebody who is forced to give up something they have so another can have it instead.

That is essentially what socialist logic boils down to. It says that I am a sinner for living, and that my very existence is a sin because it requires resources and I earn them through my own effort. And yet, somebody who decides they are "entitled" to a life they did not make the effort to earn -- they are somehow morally superior to me. I, the productive person who willingly exchanges his time and effort for a salary, am somehow evil whereas the person (a member of "society") who lives off of money stolen from me by government force is blessedly free of sin.

As Nathaniel Branden writes in "The Divine Right of Stagnation":

It should be clear that the enemies of capitalism are not motivated, at root, by economic considerations. They are motivated by metaphysical considerations -- by a rebellion against the human mode of survival, a rebellion against the fact that life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action.

Basically the dirty little secret of socialism (and communism) is that it seeks to make humans stop being humans. Humans need to act, humans need to eat and breathe and accomplish their survival. Socialism hates that idea and wants us to somehow be exempt from this unavoidable fact of reality. Nathaniel sums up:

[Socialists] dream that, if only they can harness the men who do not resent the nature of life, they will make existence tolerable for those who do resent it.

Estate Tax: Making Your Death a Socialist One

2010-01-13T21:41:00.013-07:00

Boy the government can sure give us some great deals! If you don't like your family members much, 2010 is the year to hope they die. Not only will you lose that annoying cousin or family black sheep, but you won't have to pay any estate tax on what you inherit! Win-win!

More seriously, though...Yaron Brook and Terry Jones talked about the estate tax on PJTV's "Front Page with Allen Barton," and this brought the issue to my attention. While the estate tax is not in effect this year, it will return in full force starting in 2011. And how much will the estate tax be? 55%.

The very notion of an estate tax is just ludicrous. Besides the fact that this seems like double punishment for most beneficiaries of a large will ("Hi, your mom just died. And by the way, you owe us $700,000 in taxes. Will that be cash or check?"), what is the justification for this tax?

I can understand taxes that pay for the roads I drive on, or for the community services (e.g. the police) that I rely on as a citizen. What, exactly, did the government do that justifies a tax of this magnitude? Did my family member make use of some government-subsidized highway infrastructure while driving to the Pearly Gates?

If you accept (grudgingly or otherwise) the presence of income tax, then you can make an argument from that perspective that some of the estate is taxable since it's a kind of income. If you want to go down that road, it's not too ridiculous to claim that whether it's from someone's death or from your own labor, income is income and taxes that apply to one income should reasonably apply to another. But come on! 55 freakin' percent?!

Terry Jones made an excellent point during the PJTV discussion: what if the estate includes a small business? Imagine there's an owner of a small but successful restaurant, worth about $2 million. Now imagine that the owner of the restaurant dies and wills the restaurant to his son.

Faced with this 55% tax, what can the son do? If everyone is lucky all around, the son is rolling in dough and willing to pay the tax out of his own pocket. But in all likelihood, that tax will have to be paid out of the value of the estate. The son may have to take on the debt of a large loan. Worse, there is the very real possibility that he would have to cut the payroll and other expenses at his newly-inherited restaurant. He may even give up entirely and just close the business, to avoid the crushing burdens this kind of tax represents. For all the employees who work there -- kiss your job goodbye, courtesy of Uncle Sam!

So basically, the government has taken a situation that is already pretty bad (someone's death and, in this case, the loss of leadership at a business) and made it even worse by adding a tremendous financial burden. I work for a small business, and I can tell you that even with the talent of my colleagues and the savvy business decisions of the two owners, it's not easy going -- even in a good economy, which is not the kind we're in now!

If our business had to endure an emotional change in ownership and this massive taxation on the new owner, I can tell you now that our business would not survive. I and my hard-working coworkers would be out of a job, and not through any fault of ours or any fault of the owners -- but through the greed and disdain of an overbearing government.

Considering the smiley-faced, warm hugs and kisses image our government likes to project (climate change to care for the earth, health care reform to care for the sick, yadda yadda), I wonder how they would justify this ridiculous tax if they were asked to?

Bill Gates, Sr. said "Society has a just claim on our fortunes and that claim goes by the name estate tax."

Tell me, sir, why does "society" (a bullshit, non-existent entity if I've ever heard of one) have any claim to the fruits of my labors as an individual? Mr. Gates justifies his remark by saying that people do not build their wealth through their own efforts alone.

You're right, Mr. Gates, but because this is still a somewhat capitalist country, those people have been compensated for their contributions. Slavery and unpaid "laboring for the people" are not yet the building blocks of American business.

My bosses have built their business through their own efforts and the efforts of associates like myself. I get a salary. My "just claim" to my bosses' efforts ends there.
They may have borrowed money from a bank to pay for necessary startup expenses. The bank gets interest on loans and gets service fees for maintaining the accounts. The bank's "just claim" ends there.
Revenue has come in from customers. Those customers got a service or product in exchange for the money they paid us. The customers' "just claim" ends there.
The business has benefited from the protection of the police and the fire department. The local government got paid local taxes. The local government's "just claim" ends there.
My bosses enjoyed four walls and a roof overhead, street signs to bring in customers, clean sidewalks, painted parking space lines, speed bumps, landscaping and trees around the parking lot, etc. The property landlords were paid rent and service fees every month. The landlords' "just claim" ends there.

So tell me again, Mr. Gates, why this "society" thing is entitled to a person's "fortune"? And why does society get to steal the fruits of someone's labor and possibly run their business, and the business's employees, into poverty or bankruptcy? That is what we are talking about here. In legal terms it's not stealing, but morally it is theft. If you take what you did not earn, that is theft. There is no way around that clear-cut, simple definition of theft.

What did any member of "society" do for the business owner that wasn't compensated? Employees gave time and effort, they got paid. Landlords offered space and services, they got paid. Government gave essential services and infrastructure, they got paid. What could possibly be leftover that justifies a 55% tax?

Nothing at all. Unless you're a socialist, which Mr. Bill Gates, Sr. appears to be from that quote above.

Tell me, Mr. Gates, how much of your charity and generous donations would have been possible in a socialist, communist, or collectivist nation built on your idea of society's "just claims" to other peoples' money? How much of the wealth in your family could have been built up if you had all been living in Soviet Russia or Maoist China (instead of Capitalist America)? That's right, sir: Not one damn penny of it.

Goodness at Gunpoint

2010-01-11T20:57:00.044-07:00

From Ayn Rand's essay, "Collectivized Ethics":

Altruism erodes men's capacity to grasp the concept of rights or the value of an individual life; it reveals a mind from which the reality of a human being has been wiped out.

The man who is willing to serve as the means to the ends of others... will tend to devise schemes "for the good of mankind" or of "society" or of "the public" or of "future generations" -- or of anything except actual human beings...

Wait! Stop everything! [slams on the brakes] *screeeeeeeeeeech!*

I used to think that doing things "for the good of mankind", or "for society" or whatever, was a good thing. But just think about it for a second. There's an implicit, unspoken assumption in the very statement of "for the good of society." That unspoken assumption is that this "society" thing deserves the fruits of whatever labor we're talking about. Is that really a society you want to live in? A society that must get its "good" from suckling at the teat of a hardworking people in golden handcuffs?

I volunteer, I donate to charities, and I try to chip in wherever I can. I strongly believe that it is an expression of very noble qualities in a person if they are willing, able, and really wish to help others. I volunteer and donate because I want to, not because I have to. But there is a very dangerous undercurrent in all the discussions of things we do "for the public good" and the like.

The dangerous undercurrent is this: the almost deity-like entity of "society" is more important than you and I are, and our contributions to it are mandatory. Even if you struggle to feed your family, these "contributions" will likely be forced out of your bank account and into the hands of "the people."

Since there is no such entity as "the public," since the public is merely a number of individuals, any claimed or implied conflict of "the public interest" with private interests means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interests and wishes of others. Since the concept is so conveniently undefinable, its use rests only on any given gang's ability to proclaim that "The public, c'est moi" -- and to maintain the claim at the point of a gun.
~ "The Monument Builders"

We should sacrifice, often at government gunpoint, the essence of our lives so that "society" may benefit. Am I being overly dramatic?

Leo could do the work at home, and it paid well, although when he received his money at the Gossizdat, it was accompanied by the remark: "We have deducted two and a half per cent as your contribution to the new Red Chemical Society of Proletarian Defense. This is in addition to the five per cent deduction for the Red Air Fleet, and three per cent for the Liquidation of Illiteracy, and five per cent for your Social Insurance, and..."
~ We The Living (p.116)

Does this sound like your life? No? Are you sure?

How much money was taken out of your pay this month for Social Security, Medicare, and the like? Looking at my last paystub, about 10% of my pay went to those. I really could've used that 10% to help pay for food, gas, or rent. Oh well, it's "for the good of the people!" And hey... Do you have a phone line? If you're one of the poor saps that lives around here, your phone bill likely includes a "universal service fee," to cover the expense of providing telephone service to people in rural areas.

It doesn't matter if you feel charitable and wish to pay these taxes/fees, or not. It doesn't matter if you think they're misdirected or a waste of your money. When it comes to this kind of generosity, which is "for the good of society," you do not get to choose whether you are generous or not. You are required to surrender your money for these noble purposes. These things, by law, make that percentage of your money not your money whether you like it or not. That's theft. Legal theft, but immoral -- and thus still theft in my book.

Setting aside the issue of morality, what have we actually gotten out of these warm, fuzzy programs? Has Social Security removed the haunting shadows of financial uncertainty, fear, and abandonment experienced by older/retired citizens? Nope. Has Medicare transformed the face of the health industry for the better, bringing affordable and high quality medical services to all Americans? If that were actually the case, we wouldn't be having debates about "health care reform" for months on end.

Clearly all the government interference and giving-with-a-knife-at-your-throat haven't gotten us anywhere positive. And just as clearly, our politicians tell us, more government interference and giving-with-a-knife-at-your-throat will make it all better! Makes sense, right?

What was it that Albert Einstein said? "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results." I guess that doesn't apply when we're talking about government.

The hallmark of such mentalities is the advocacy of some grand scale public goal, without regard to context, costs or means. Out of context, such a goal can usually be shown to be desirable; it has to be public, because the costs are not to be earned, but to be expropriated; and a dense patch of venomous fog has to shroud the issue of means -- because the means are to be human lives.
~ "Collectivized Ethics"

We (supposedly) teach our children that "the ends don't justify the means." And yet virtually everything we do speaks to exactly the opposite moral. The ends don't justify the means... unless those ends are fueled by vague platitudes of doing things for the public, for the helpless, for the planet, for the generations to come. Then it's okay to put a gun to somebody's head and take their money (or, if they won't give that, their freedom).

It's okay to force your foggy dreams of Utopia on me, and to spend my money or control my property, to make society's dreams come true. Just wait till they pass a law to take away 5% of your money to pay poor "citizen journalist" bloggers like me. Hey, kids. Do as we say, not as we do!

Sustaining Hope and Change

2010-01-05T18:57:00.000-07:00

A great excerpt from a great article at Big Government:

There is plenty of fuel to sustain “hope and change”:

Who but the mindless can believe that government run health care will reduce costs and improve care while covering more people?

Who but the mindless can believe that this President is now serious about reducing the deficit after shattering spending records during his first year?

Who but the mindless can take seriously the sham “jobs summit” held by a President whose every policy is a lesson in job destruction?

Who but the mindless can believe Obama’s lie that “Cash for Clunkers” which cost taxpayers $24,000 per car was successful?

Who but the mindless would not outraged that our government has reneged on its promise pay back the unused TARP fund to taxpayers?

Who but the mindless would not question the morality that the world’s finest health care, which has extended and improved human life in unimaginable ways—conceived and produced by countless unsung heroes in the private sector—should magically be transformed by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi into a “human right”, taken over by the state and rationed out as they please?

The assault on reason by our President and Congress goes on ad infinitum. It is mindlessness that elected “hope and change” and mindlessness that sustains it. Ayn Rand recognized that the greatest struggle on earth is that between the individual and the collective, and to submit to the collective, the individual must lose his ability to think for himself.

The Only Service Government Can Offer: Force

2010-01-05T16:54:00.010-07:00

"Remember that forcible restraint of men is the only service a government has to offer."
~Ayn Rand, "The Nature of Government"

Whenever someone says "we need more government oversight in the ____ industry" or "there's not enough regulation of ____", keep in mind the above quote from Ayn Rand.

If you think she's exaggerating, try to think of something your government has done (positive or negative) that didn't involve some form of force against somebody. Can you think of anything, even the most trivial thing, that the government has done that doesn't restrain or infringe on someone else's rights in even the tiniest way? I can't. Probably the only non-forceful thing a government can do is to repeal the forceful laws or regulations it has already applied (e.g. bans on gay marriage).

Some uses of force or restraint are justified. If I steal your car (a violation of your right to property, which is your right to control the fruits of your labor), the government (in the form of police) has a rational and justified cause to find me, arrest me, and get your car back. Or if you and I have a contract, and I skip out on my obligations under the contract, that is a kind of theft (and another violation of your rights) which justifies some forceful response. These uses of force, which must be permitted by objectively written laws that are objectively applied, keep society from degenerating into a mess of "might makes right".

Now what about, say, healthcare reform? The "reform" that's been debated and voted on these last months is a great demonstration of government offering the only thing it can offer: the use of force. Let's imagine that some healthcare laws are implemented that involve the following:

All citizens must purchase health insurance.
The health insurance must meet a certain standard.
Citizens who do not purchase health insurance must pay a fine.
Those who do not purchase health insurance and don't pay the fine will be put in prison.

Let's look at this from Ayn Rand's perspective. First... If I, as a citizen, must purchase health insurance, that is a violation of my right to my property. Money that belongs to me is now forcefully (see items 3 and 4) spent on something, whether I wanted to spend that money or not. If I came to your house and forced you (at gunpoint) to give money to either Company A, Company B, or Company C, would that be right? Nobody in their right mind would say yes. So why is it acceptable if a government does essentially the same thing? Because it's "for my own good"? If it was for my own good, wouldn't I exercise my free choice to do it willingly?

Secondly, item 2 is a further violation of my right to property. Not only is my property (money) being taken away (forcefully spent) for something I as an uncoerced individual did not choose, my options are further limited. Now the money I must spend unwillingly may have to be spent on a product I consider to be inferior or not worth the cost.

Thirdly, if I do not spend the money on something I (perhaps) don't want, and I also don't spend that money on a government fine (which nobody in their right mind would willingly choose to do), there's item 4. Because I did not surrender my right to property (my money), I must surrender my right to life, namely the right to freely engage in actions of my choosing.

Actions like this proposed "reform" are fine demonstrations of government offering the only service is can: forcible restraint. Government will kindly give us this warm, nurturing "gift" of healthcare reform; but in fact the gift is bought with stolen money and shoved down the throats of people in handcuffs.

This is not a political stance I'm taking -- it's a social stance. If you believe that individuals have fundamental rights to their lives, their property, and their actions, you cannot simultaneously believe that healthcare reform like what I've outlined above is actually a good thing. It's a total contradiction to believe in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness while also believing the government (or anybody else) has the right to take your money or your freedom, even if it's supposedly for your own good.

I'm all for more affordable healthcare and insurance. Ideally, everybody would have access to what they need for a healthy life, and this would be available at a price they could reasonably pay. But just because I hope for such things doesn't mean it's right to use force (and the violation of the rights of individuals) to make it happen. And that's even assuming this so-called reform would actually reduce healthcare expenses -- which is itself a dubious claim, at best.

Forcing me to spend my money at gunpoint, on something I probably don't want, and getting little improvement (or even a worse situation) in return? No thanks. Maybe we wouldn't even be in this mess if the government had kept its paws off of healthcare to begin with.

More government controls, we are told, are necessary to solve problems such as skyrocketing health-insurance prices, lack of competition among insurance companies, the inability of workers to keep their insurance policy when switching jobs, etc.

Really?

Then why do giants of the computer industry like Google, Microsoft and Apple compete vigorously without a “public option”? Why do we have such plentiful, affordable food without a government “food insurance mandate”? Why does laser eye-surgery, which is not covered by Medicare or government insurance laws, get better and cheaper all the time, while the price of health services the government is most involved in, skyrockets?
~ Alex Epstein, "The Problem with Our Health-Care Debate"

Subordinate Society to the Individual, NOT the Other Way Around!

2010-01-04T21:13:00.005-07:00

I swear, the more I read from Ayn Rand, the more I love her philosophy and her way of expressing it. If only modern society possessed more individuals like her, who held such simple but powerful ideas and could express them in such bold ways.

The following is excerpted from Ayn Rand's essay, "Man's Rights":

The most profoundly revolutionary achievement of the United States of America was the subordination of society to moral law.

The principle of man’s individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system—as a limitation on the power of the state, as man’s protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right. The United States was the first moral society in history.

All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals. All previous systems had held that man’s life belongs to society, that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favor, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at any time. The United States held that man’s life is his by right (which means: by moral principle and by his nature), that a right is the property of an individual, that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights.

Good lord, does it get any more eloquent and beautiful than that? Can you hear the fiery flames of passion in Ayn Rand's writing in that last sentence?

Of course, a lot of people get the idea of a "right" completely mixed up from what the founders of the United States had in mind (and what is really feasible for a society of true individuals)...

Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it.

Contrast that last sentence with what we see today: the bailout of AIG, GM, banks, etc., the sense of entitlement that led to loans for houses people could not afford, healthcare reform that will force us all to pay for insurance (for ourselves and others) whether we want it or not, etc. Even notions of "health" are treated as objects, which are in turn bastardized and morphed into "rights," which the government in turn enforces by blowing tax dollars on swine flu vaccines and (in some areas) passing laws allowing the forced vaccination of individuals.

Society has no rights. Only individuals can have rights. And your rights end where my rights begin, which means you (and "society") have no right to force a needle into my arm, or to force me to take on the burden of others' business mistakes (e.g. bailing out General Motors), or to do basically any of the outrageous things our government and mainstream political movements do every day.

Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.

Ahhhhh! Ayn Rand's writing is a breath of fresh air, a cool breeze of sanity and reason in the face of the ridiculous farce of modern society. I might as well paste the whole essay here, because every word of it rings with beautiful, simple truth. But I will leave it up to your choice, as a free individual, whether you wish to read the rest or not. I, exercising my voluntary and uncoerced choice, heartily recommend that you do!

I leave you with one final question... Which society would you rather live in: one of free individuals following their interests and their individual tastes, or one of lock-step conformity where your rights are subordinate to the godlike entity of "The People" or "The State" (assuming your rights even exist at all)?