The Undercurrent

"You're Not Welcome Here"

Noah Stahl — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:24:30 +0000

Why America’s Opposition to Immigration is Un-American

By most standards, Eric Balderas would be considered a model citizen. After graduating high school as class valedictorian, Balderas was admitted to Harvard on a full-ride scholarship to study molecular biology, with hopes of pursuing a career in cancer research. Yet the 19-year-old recently found himself detained and handcuffed by government agents, threatened with having his scholarships revoked and his life turned upside down.

He had broken the law.

What sinister act had Balderas committed, and who were his victims? Was he accused of fraud, theft, or perhaps assault against a fellow citizen? No, Balderas’ crime was that he was not a citizen. Having crossed the border from Mexico with his mother at age four, he had been living in fugitive status for most of his life without realizing it. For all his hard work and achievement, he was ultimately confronted with the prospect of deportation.

Though Eric Balderas is in many ways exceptional, his case is not an unfortunate misunderstanding, an instance of a law incriminating someone it wasn’t intended to. According to the United States government, Balderas is equally as guilty as the hundreds of thousands of others deported each year for being inside the nation’s borders without authorization, and the millions more who haven’t yet been caught.

Thus, we’re confronted with a disconcerting reality: our government, on the premise of upholding the rule of law, finds it necessary to handcuff and threaten to upend the life of an aspiring cancer researcher who embodies the American work ethic and American dream. Why?

Immigration and the controversy it inspires are nothing new. Long before America was established, immigration was contested and restrictions were enforced. As early as the mid-1600s, colonial officials took measures to prevent the settlement of Quakers, who were then considered to have “accursed” beliefs. Over the nation’s history, other groups restricted from entering the country have included Catholics, single women, Chinese, Irish, Japanese, all Asians, and even all “non-white” people. The reasons justifying such restrictions have been equally diverse: they’ve included fears of the “morally corrupting” influence of immigrants on society, a desire for social homogeneity, attitudes toward various classes of immigrants as inferior or undesirable, and a view of immigrants as economic parasites.

From this long, varied line of sentiments, arguments,and policies, a common thread emerges: an emphasis on classifying people into groups. People are narrowly viewed as Christian or non-Christian, Anglo-Saxon or “non-white”, native-born or foreign, citizen or non-citizen, “legal” or “illegal” – and their group identity becomes the standard by which their worthiness to immigrate is judged. Put explicitly, the rule is: If you’re part of the right group, you’ll be let in; if not, you’ll be kept out.

Many have come to view America’s past treatment of immigrants as marred by old prejudices that have finally been put behind us. To be sure, the kind of raw racism that a century ago motivated opponents of Chinese and other immigrants (who were often victims of violent attack and discriminatory legislation) is fortunately rare today. But in fact, the “us-versus-them” mentality that gave rise to such overt forms of racism has not disappeared; it’s merely shifted to a more general, tacit preoccupation with group identity.

Eric Balderas’ predicament bears witness to this fact: on the sole basis of his birth in Mexico, he is legally barred from living, working, or going to school in the United States without the permission of the federal government. Had he been born within U.S. borders, he would face no such scrutiny.

We ought to be asking: why? Why is it that a person must be assigned a category and be judged by his peers and the law differently on that basis? Why is it that if Balderas had lived exactly the same life, with the same mother, going to the same school, pursuing the same goals, but had been born in Texas, he would be considered an exemplary citizen both in the eyes of the law and his fellow Americans–truly, one of “us”? Why does America instead consider him one of “them,” with the suspicion–and often, the handcuffs–that this entails?

There are no good answers to such questions, no legitimate justifications. On some level, many people understand this. That’s why so many can look at a case like Eric Balderas’ and recognize that something is definitely wrong: it’s his merit as an individual that we should regard as important, not the place he happened to come from 15 years ago.

Doesn’t immigration overburden welfare and other public services?

A common objection by those otherwise sympathetic to immigrants is that their arrival represents a new drain on government services and therefore on the taxpayers already living here. The first fact to note is that, almost universally, people immigrate to America as a place to work, to earn a better living, not as a place to leech off “the system.” But granting that, there is an important element of truth to this concern: under a government that taxes some people to provide services to others, an immigrant could indeed represent a new recipient of welfare or public services–and thus, a potential additional drain on your wallet and your life.

But consider: so could the American baby about to be born down the street–or your neighbor–or anyone who lives on the other side of the country. Under a government that forcibly redistributes wealth through taxation to provide public services and welfare, every person becomes a potential economic threat to every other. This creates a society-wide conflict of interest that naturally leads to the formation of groups seeking to defend themselves against the others: the rich from the poor, the workers from the businessmen, the doctors from the patients, and the “natives” from the “foreigners.” Each camp perceives a real threat–the threat of their hard-earned wealth being seized by another group using the coercive hand of government.

The solution to this problem isn’t merely to root for one group as opposed to another, even if one group’s arguments seem to have more merit in a given circumstance. The solution is to abolish the artificial cause of the conflict, namely, the welfare state. If there were no forced redistribution of wealth, there would be no threat. Neither a baby born down the street, nor in Mexico, would have a legal claim on your wallet. Every individual would be left free to produce and earn for himself, without the need to fear the government’s power to seize those earnings for the benefit of his neighbor (immigrant or not).

Immigration presupposes an individualistic approach to government, not today’s paternalistic approach. In short, this means: a system of laissez- faire capitalism. For more information, visit our website or read Ayn Rand’s collection of essays, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

As Americans, we’re in a unique position to understand this point. In seeking to establish this country, America’s Founders rejected the long-entrenched attitude that a man ought to be viewed as a faceless, insignificant member of society dutifully toiling for the benefit of the king or nation. Rather, they eloquently argued that every person ought to be able to pursue his own life and seek his own happiness, and to interact with one another voluntarily on that basis. This represented a new outlook on human nature, one that demanded men be judged and treated as individuals and not simply as part of a tribe, nation, or other collective. In America, for the first time in history, the individual was able to exist on his own terms and merits–regardless of society’s desires to the contrary.

To a large extent, that notion of individualism is still alive in America and still inspires the immigrants coming here, but it’s an idea increasingly under attack. Just consider: in the recent census, the government was equally as (if not more) concerned with our racial category as with our age or place of residence. In the media and elsewhere, commentators often speak in terms like “Black America,” “the Hispanic vote,” “the interests of the middle class,” effectively lumping disparate people together as if their individual differences, opinions, and judgments were of little consequence. Politicians argue about the “rights” of the uninsured, of business owners, of consumers, of the poor or middle class, as if a person’s rights were not the inalienable individual rights that the Founders advocated, but special privileges conferred through group association.

The result is tragic. Many immigrants set out for an America known as the birthplace of individualism, as a place where a man is judged by his work and the content of his character—only to be met with a startling reaction: “you’re not welcome here.” They encounter an America that first asks where they were born, and then proceeds to grant or deny, by collective consensus, permission to live, work, or seek an education within its borders. Consequently, we continue to keep hard-working, motivated people from achieving their full potential here either by keeping them out altogether, or by treating them like fugitive criminals when they attempt to come here anyway.

It’s true that Eric Balderas wasn’t born here, but who cares? Why should that determine whether he is allowed to live here? A truly American immigration system would be an individualistic one, in which anyone would be free to come here to live, to work, and to be happy, barring only those known criminals or carriers of infectious diseases who represent a clear threat to those around them. There would be no years-long waits for special permission to enter, no arbitrary quotas, no deportation of people who have committed no legitimate crime–only a system designed to assist newcomers in properly participating in the country they’ve sought out for good reason.

Such a system would not only be morally proper, but also eminently practical. Immigrants are able to express and realize their productive and creative capacity here in a way that is only possible in a free country. One need only peruse a list of famous immigrants–from Andrew Carnegie, Alexander Graham Bell, Albert Einstein, to the founding members of Google and Intel–to realize how much the country, and the world, has benefited from immigration. Whether one looks at science, arts, technology, entertainment, or any of the less glamorous areas of economic activity, the immense contribution of immigrants is clear.

Before we can effectively address any of the practical challenges of fixing the immigration system, we must first confront the growing trend toward collective judgment that clouds our thinking on the issue. Only once the nature of individualism is understood and its value reaffirmed will we be able to implement an approach to immigration in which upholding the law and doing the right thing are one in the same, and in which productive, energetic immigrants are welcomed and celebrated as fully American.

Noah Stahl received his BS in Computer Engineering and MS in Information Assurance from Iowa State University. He currently works as an information security engineer in Tampa, Florida.

To Study or Not To Study

Ramandeep Girn — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:59:56 +0000

The false alternative between achieving academic goals and having fun

Each September, students arrive on college campuses and prepare for the academic challenges ahead. They arm themselves with lists, schedules, and planners as they seek out classes, bookstores, and financial aid offices. The air seems alive with a sense of energy as students begin the pursuit of their chosen goal: to attain a higher education.

September is a fresh start, a chance to plan, prepare, and follow through on that goal. But it is also a time of excitement, when students feel alive and happy, and are eager to celebrate that feeling. The semester’s beginning promises new friendships and new experiences.

Before long, however, the fun can seem to come into conflict with academic pursuits. Our focus at the beginning of the year can be quickly diminished by a series of invitations and impulses: Do I go to see a movie, or study for Friday’s test? Have dinner with friends, or eat in and complete the essay due tomorrow? The will to study, so strong initially, seems to get sapped by the lure of television, parties, and text messages.

So it can seem that the only way to achieve the longer- term goals of good grades and graduation is to resist and forgo any pleasure and lock oneself in the library all weekend. This means constantly resisting the temptation to act impulsively, to slam the books shut and go downtown in defiance of looming deadlines. An internal conflict arises: distant future success through current suffering, or current pleasure at the expense of a bright future.

Does it have to be that way? We see from many counter- examples that it does not. College campuses are full of students that seem to have the knack to strike a balance— students that don’t seem constantly to be undermining their future for the lures of the moment, and yet who also seem to enjoy plenty of moments while pursuing that future. What is it that these students have, but many others lack?

They have a different underlying attitude toward the relationship between short- and long-term values. The underlying attitude of the student who experiences a need to act impulsively is that the purpose of forethought is to make sure you “do your duty”. The underlying attitude of the student who achieves harmony between the short and long term is that the purpose of forethought is to make sure you achieve your happiness.

Any conflict between impulsiveness and duty is a false alternative. Such conflicts assume that if you pause to think about it, you’ll always decide that it’s a mistake to have fun instead of studying, because your duty is to study. Impulsive action therefore seems the only means of really enjoying the present. When studying becomes associated with drudging duty in this way, its apparent opposite, hedonism—thoughtless impulsiveness—seems to be the only way to enjoy life.

Pursuing hedonistic pleasure means reacting to whatever impulse you feel without considering future consequences. In contrast, students who seem to be striking a balance are pursuing genuine happiness. They are trying to live a life of pleasure, which means enjoying the present while remaining aware of long-term considerations and making thoughtful choices on that basis. Any human value— whether a Friday night movie, a college degree, a successful career, a fulfilling romance, or good health—presupposes thought-directed action. A person who characteristically fails to act thoughtfully will not even be able to stay on top of simple things like paying bills, buying groceries, remembering birthdays, and saving up to go to the movies, let alone be able to achieve profoundly rewarding goals like an enduring romance or a Ph.D.

Impulsiveness: The Pleasure Killer

The main reason not to pursue fun impulsively is that it leads to less overall enjoyment. When a freshman impulsively abandons his plan to prepare for tomorrow's test by accompanying his roommate to a movie, it is easy to sympathize with him—he wants to enjoy his youth and his life. But in ignoring the future implications of his present action, he is stealing later enjoyment from himself (the enjoyment, for instance, of doing well on the exam, and later reaping the rewards of his high performance). This is not because he has consciously decided that seeing the movie is more important to him than passing the exam, but because he has failed to think through the relative importance of either alternative. By acting on impulse instead of reasoned thought, he has robbed himself of the opportunity to judge what course of action will bring him the greatest present and future enjoyment—thereby leaving it in the hands of dumb luck.

But there’s a deeper reason that impulsive action is a bad idea: it undercuts the very fun being pursued. Think of the freshman going to the movie. While getting ready, he has to ignore the nagging feeling that he shouldn’t be doing this. While walking to the theater, he has to suppress the worry that something bad is looming, that he may fail a test he could have otherwise passed. When he learns that another friend decided to stay and study, he has to push away the sinking feeling that he should really be doing the same thing. For him, the pleasure comes to be experienced as something temporary and stolen—lasting only as long as he’s able to ignore the unreasonably high price that he risks paying. Such pleasure is always accompanied by guilt that he must continually evade.

The student who acts on impulse sets himself up for a conflict between the short and the long term. He will feel like tomorrow's test is what is keeping him from that party he wants to attend. He will then either deprive himself, forcing himself to study, or more likely, he’ll see that conviction vanish in the teeth of a tempting phone ring or IM pop-up, giving in to the temptation. And the more he gives in, the more likely he’ll be to give in next time. The very experience of fun then becomes a source of guilt.

Underneath it all, he probably feels that his mistake is a lack of discipline—if I just had willpower, he thinks, I wouldn’t do this. In this way, he’s a hedonist because he thinks self-denial is the only alternative. But the problem is not really a question of willpower. Mere discipline is not really the source of the motivation to study. The proper (and far more motivating) source is the commitment to enjoying life—the same motivation that leads someone to go to the movies. Discipline is indeed required—but it’s the discipline necessary to pursue pleasure selfishly over the long term, not the discipline to deny pleasure.

If you’ve ever found that your long-term goals feel like unpleasant obligations, it’s worth reflecting on the deeper reason why we take present action to prepare for the future: in order to enjoy life. For an animal, rewards automatically motivate and directly follow from successful effort—a wolf hunts, then it eats. For a human being, whose goals are long-range, rewards don't usually follow so immediately. The effort we exercise in planning and studying for a calculus test is rewarded, but that reward isn’t immediately tangible (it might only come about as a better job years later). We, unlike other animals, can lose sight of the justification for putting forth the effort—we can forget that our fundamental reason for studying is our desire to achieve a more enjoyable life. This is why student counselors advise us to put aside plenty of time and money for leisure and entertainment; such relaxation helps us remember that we’re working, not out of duty or obligation, but for the sake of pleasure. Rewarding ourselves for hard work, such as by treating ourselves to a good movie after acing a difficult exam, gives the purpose of our efforts an immediate emotional reality. It reminds us that happiness is the end of our efforts.

(And there is, of course, the joy of the doing itself. Just as the wolf enjoys the meal and the hunt, so you can enjoy the effort of studying. Work is effort, but it can be satisfying effort. If you seek out work that you love, the process of earning pleasure itself becomes a pleasure.)

If we accept the idea that our purpose in college is to earn a life of enjoyment, it’s possible to erase the perceived conflict between working hard and having fun. This involves a conscious commitment to enjoy life today while also preparing to enjoy the future, and to use this commitment truly to guide our choices. When unexpected opportunities arise, for example—we win free tickets to a concert, say—we should neither cling militantly to our work plan nor abandon it, but instead try to revise our schedule to fit it in. This is the approach of the many students who live it up on the weekends while keeping up with jobs and coursework. The rewards they pursue—food, games, novels, movies, parties, road trips, sex—are healthy and desirable values because they are pursued thoughtfully. It's only the false alternative between hedonism and duty that produces the frustrating conclusion that enjoying student life precludes being a good student.

Acting thoughtfully and planning long-range does not mean long years of misery while we wait for eventual pleasurable rewards. To the contrary, only the student who acts in accordance with a plan is truly capable of appreciating the pleasures big and small, future and present, that life has to offer. Such a student fills his long-term plan with short- term pleasure, and then he enjoys today, knowing that he has not forgotten that tomorrow really will come.

Thought and planning allow us both to earn good grades in service of our future enjoyment and to enjoy our life in the present. If we can create in ourselves the discipline to study tonight and go out tomorrow to celebrate (or if we thoughtfully decide that it actually makes more sense to go out tonight and study tomorrow, and then we follow through on studying tomorrow), the rewards of this policy are both happiness and success. We should recognize that recreation is very often the right choice and see that going straight from one academic effort to the next, without any enjoyment in the doing and without any pause for fun and celebration, will result in as much misery as simply acting on one’s impulses. As a result, there is no clash and no guilt in the pleasure—only the clean feeling of a unity of achievement and enjoyment.

Pleasure is the result of action—and action, for a human being, properly means thought-guided action. To the extent that we fail to grasp the importance of long-range planning as a means to enjoying life in the short term, our approach will be not action but reaction. We will constantly react to things that seem worth having or doing now, without due consideration of what is actually good for our life and happiness in light of both our short- and long-range needs. If we find ourselves tempted to abandon thoughtful planning for the sake of momentary pleasure, we should remind ourselves that it is pleasure that we’re actually abandoning. We should work to view indulging in transient impulses not as throwing off an unchosen duty, but rather as giving up, to some degree, on our pursuit of happiness. Instead, we have a powerful alternative: consciously to assess all the relevant factors and thoughtfully choose, in every instance, the course of action that we know is best for us, applying our minds to the task of squeezing every ounce of pleasure we can into life—today, tomorrow, and into the future.

The Value of Atlas Shrugged

The Editors — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:48:28 +0000

Originally published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged, one of the most controversial novels in American fiction, recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Annual sales have been growing for years and may grow even faster when the film adaptation is released.

Atlas Shrugged is routinely included on “favorite books” surveys. It is not uncommon to hear a businessman, a teacher, a truck driver, or a musician say, “Atlas changed my life.” How is it that a fifty-year-old, 1200-page novel about industrialists and inventors can have such an effect on so many people?

Written by Ayn Rand, the Russian-born philosopher who escaped communism early in the 20th century, Atlas Shrugged is a compelling novel about a cast of business executives struggling to achieve their interests in an inimical world. Set in New York City, it tells the story of Dagny Taggart, an underappreciated railroad VP, who fights to save her company from the incompetence and envy of her brother, the company’s President. It is the story of Henry Rearden, creator of a new metal alloy, who defends his invention against government bureaucrats who first mistrust then covet the valuable metal. It is the story of Francisco D’Anconia, heir to a lucrative copper mining firm, who pursues his own mysterious agenda while seemingly wasting away his wealth on frivolities. And it is the story of several other protagonists, each struggling in their own way to achieve and articulate their personal values.

What makes Atlas different is its philosophic depth. Underneath the suspenseful action, the story is fundamentally an intellectual mystery. Why do characters make the choices they do? What ideas animate them? The answers penetrate to the very core of Western Civilization’s traditions and values: Is man his brother’s keeper? Is the love of money the root of all evil? Is sexual pleasure base? Is happiness possible? What does it mean to be moral?

Atlas Shrugged, like all classics of literature, dramatizes a particular worldview, a way of approaching life that readers can judge, learn from, and incorporate into their own perspective. Unlike other classics, however, Atlas dramatizes values that are normally opposed in our culture—the justice of unfettered capitalism, the morality of principled egoism, the absolute efficacy of human reason. The heroes of Atlas are idealized expressions of values normally attacked in America’s college classrooms, churches and political platforms: commercialism, selfishness, and rational certainty.

If college is a time to survey the intellectual landscape in order to discover one’s own identity, if it is a time to read the great works of literature and philosophy, then it is eminently a time to read Atlas Shrugged. Atlas is a novel about what it means to be moral—and the answer, presented in an intense, page-turning, emotionally moving, intellectually challenging form, is one that will otherwise not be given a fair hearing. And it will be unlike anything you’ve ever encountered before.

To learn more about Atlas Shrugged, visit AtlasShrugged.com.

Embracing the “Unnatural”

Daniel Casper — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 02:50:27 +0000

Imagine telling someone that human beings could use large flying machines to travel across oceans or use small talking machines to speak to anyone in the world as if they were standing nearby. Imagine telling someone that the universe is composed of unseen particles or that emotions ranging from joy to rage can be influenced by minute quantities of chemicals in the brain.

Anyone hearing these facts today would understand and say, “Of course!” But six centuries ago, quite in contrast to today, you would have likely been regarded as a lunatic (or hanged) for harboring such beliefs. Over the course of human history, the seemingly impossible has been made real by science and technology, resulting in previously unimaginable improvements to human life.

The frontiers of science and technology continue to promise us even greater benefits. Quantum physics allows us to harness the energy of atoms in nuclear reactors to power our cities, hospitals, and electronics. Research into the regenerative power of stem cells has shown their capacity to fight malignant tumors, grow organs, and perhaps extend our lifespan by decades. Cybernetics has allowed amputees, the blind, and the deaf to enjoy fuller lives with artificial limbs, yes, and hearing aids. These achievements only hint at what more is possible in the future.

But despite the success of science in improving human life, there exists a long history of opposition to scientific innovation. New discoveries have often met with resistance and resentment. In 1163, Pope Alexander III banned the study of physics, directing that those who disobeyed “be avoided by all and excommunicated.” A 19^th century group known as the Luddites denounced the Industrial Revolution, physically attacking inventors and destroying efficiency-improving machines. In the early 20^th century, resistance to the new theory of evolution culminated in the Scopes Monkey Trial, which convicted a man of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which forbade any educator from denying the Biblical account of creation.

A mistrust of science still persists today. Groups like Greenpeace and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service advocate restricting or outlawing genetic engineering and nuclear technology, despite the many existing and potential benefits thereof. Interest in homeopathic medicine is widely popular, with adherents expressing an automatic trust of anything “natural” and regarding man-made pharmaceutical remedies with categorical skepticism or suspicion. Inventions like microwave ovens, mobile phones, and disease-preventing fluoride water treatment have all been attacked with baseless claims of their alleged dangers.

This is a curious contradiction: on the one hand, the many benefits of science seem obvious; on the other, many people harbor a level of distrust towards science and technology, some going so far as to advocate the halt of some areas of scientific inquiry altogether. Why?

Religion is one source of this view. Consider, for example, the Catholic Church’s longstanding opposition to birth control, grounded in its view that sex is for procreation and never for pleasure alone. For the same reason, the Church warns scientists “not to play God” by cloning human embryos—because they also believe procreation should only occur through sex. Birth control and genetic cloning are seen as unnatural interventions in God’s plan.

The same attitude can be seen in other religions. From tribal Africans regarding electricity as the work of demons, to Hollywood scientologists rejecting psychiatric medicine in favor of mystic rebalancing, religion often characterizes nature as beyond our intellectual grasp and necessarily out of our control. Morally, we’re told to follow a nonscientific path—whether by drinking the potion of a shaman or following the holy edicts of Deuteronomy. Practices like genetic engineering, on this view, are presumptuous deviations of a species that should recognize its need for divine subservience.

Religion is not the only obstacle with which scientists find themselves confronted; secular ideas also contribute to the mistrust of new sciences or technologies. Consider the seemingly science-friendly environmentalists who warn that when we cut down a forest to make paper, or drill a well to extract oil for fuel, or modify the DNA of plants to make them grow more robustly, we violate the “natural order” of how things ought to be. In doing so, they argue, we destroy a natural thing and create something unnatural, placing us at war with nature. Instead, we’re told to minimize our “footprint” on our surroundings, to seek “natural” solutions for all our needs, and to view scientific marvels like plastic bags and gasoline-fueled cars as undesirable blemishes on the planet’s surface.

Both the religious and secular versions of scientific mistrust share a common premise: that human life should be subordinated to a “higher order”, despite the benefits to be gained by going beyond the naturally given and creating something that never before existed. The Church opposes the manipulation of our genetic code despite the fact that doing so could eliminate fatal hereditary diseases. The secular counterpart fares no better—many environmentalists oppose genetic engineering of crops despite the millions fed by such agricultural improvements. Both viewpoints agree that human beings’ place in the universe is to be subservient to a higher power—that we must leave the forests and the fish and nuclear particles alone because we are not equipped to understand and control the world in which we live. Any vain attempts to the contrary will result in punishment from a higher power, be it God or Mother Earth.

But the fact is that human life demands certain things for survival and healthy, happy lives. Unlike other animals which rely on their instincts to find food and shelter, we as human beings require something much greater: knowledge. Everything that we need to make life possible comes from something we know, whether it is how to plant a seed and cook a meal, or how to build a hospital and perform a surgery. Neither God nor nature provides for our biological needs, like reliable sources of food, energy, and shelter, or uniquely human needs like communication infrastructure, education, and entertainment. It is only through science and technology that we create these values to address our needs, both material and spiritual.

Human life demands these values be produced, making our nature that of a creative being. Our invention of technology—our rearranging of the world to suit the purposes of our lives—is as natural and good for us as a dam is to a beaver, or a nest is to a bird. We are rational animals, capable of using our minds to find solutions to the problems facing us, to engage in the task of discovering the workings of the world and use that knowledge in service of our needs—whether that means building a skyscraper or creating entirely new organisms in the lab. Through scientific study, we acquire the knowledge necessary to create; through technological productivity, we apply that knowledge to the needs of life. Every product of scientific discovery or practical innovation is evidence of the fact that we are creative beings whose basic nature is to apply our minds, invent technology, and further our lives beyond our alleged “natural limits.”

Contrary to those who mistrust science and its products, human beings are not incapable of the sometimes daunting task of knowing and then manipulating nature. The human mind is capable of independently achieving success—health, wealth, convenience, peace, happiness. We are not passively dependent on a supernatural God or the planet to provide us with the guidance to solve our problems, nor should we limit ourselves to follow the arbitrary laws derived from them.

Fundamentally, the conflicted feelings many have about scientific and technological progress comes down, not to a conflict between the scientific and the unscientific, but to a conflict between two views of human progress: either we should act and innovate in pursuit of our material well-being and happiness, or we should subvert that ability in an attempt to live meekly in service to a nonexistent higher power or purpose. Either we seek to create a new, previously unknown world with our knowledge, or we submissively accept the world in front of us as one where no improvement is necessary or possible.

Science and technology have demonstrated their value to human life on earth, here and now. If our goal as human beings is to flourish, we should be eager to enrich our lives as much as we possibly can. To this end, we should celebrate the process of scientific discovery and technological innovation, and pursue them confidently. This doesn’t mean assuming every scientific or technological innovation comes free of risk or unintended consequences, but we must reject the superstition that technology as such is a threat, and realize the irrational nature of such opposition. To those who insist that we should restrict ourselves to the given, to the “natural,” let us answer: embrace the “unnatural.”

Daniel Casper is a fiction and nonfiction writer living in Dallas, Texas.

Now Taking Orders for the Fall 2010 Print Edition

Victoria Genther — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 23:05:57 +0000

The Fall 2010 Edition of The Undercurrent (TU) is now available to order! Influence new students at your school and increase your club’s campus presence by passing out TU at back-to-school club fairs. This edition will feature articles on the destructive premise underlying America’s un-American immigration system, the root of popular opposition to scientific progress, and how the false alternative between hedonism and duty frustrates achieving academic goals and having fun.

Place your order at http://the-undercurrent.com/order today, or e-mail your name, address, and the number of copies you would like to contact@the-undercurrent.com.

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If you don’t have the time to hand out copies, we would greatly appreciate a donation so we can continue to provide papers to students free of charge. If you’d like to support distribution efforts in a particular region or university, we can contact distributors and club leaders in the area you indicate. As The Undercurrent is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, your donations will likely be tax deductible. However, please check with your tax professional to be certain. For more information about donating to The Undercurrent, please visit http://the-undercurrent.com/donate or e-mail us at contact@the-undercurrent.com.

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Campus Media Response: Intellectual Property Rights Keep the Music Playing

Valery Publius — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 09:29:14 +0000

Jake Begun of Wisconsin/Madison’s Badger Herald thinks he’s noticed something pretty funny:

Every day tens, if not dozens, of albums are sold in record stores across America. And yet the average American musician represented by a major record label is forced to scrape by on only millions. Their only fault: Being born talented and with a marketable face. They are forced to criss-cross these United States in search of sustenance, peddling their wares hoping to provide for their backup dancers, many of which have never known the feel of a gold Jacuzzi filled with Dom Perignon or the simple pleasures of a personal jet. No one should have to settle for mere multi-platinum status. Won’t you help?

Begun is lampooning a recently passed provision of the Higher Education Act, which threatens to withdraw federal funding from universities who do not act to stop multimedia piracy on college networks. Mr. Begun regards the policy as self-evidently ridiculous, so much so that he does not bother giving an argument for his position. He simply laughs at the notion that glamorous pop stars are hard up for money—as if everyone had decided a long time ago that the wealthy have no right to control their intellectual property. But superstars and the industries that bring their work to the public do have this right, and protecting it is essential to ensuring that they continue to provide us with the fruits of their creativity. Writing in The Undercurrent in the Fall of 2009, Rituparna Basu notes:

The recording company saw the value in the artist’s talent, gave the artist the means to create his music, and then compiled this music for our enjoyment (on specific terms). Denying producers, artists, and distributors the value they seek, whether this is money, publicity, or recognition, in return for enjoying their products denies them the ability to enjoy the well-earned fruits of their labor. One of these fruits includes being able to produce more of the music that we love.

Read the rest of Rituparna’s piece. Students in today’s economy don’t have to resort to listening to 70-year old public domain records, as Begun sarcastically suggests, to refrain from stealing. There are numerous inexpensive ways to pay for downloaded music, believe it or not. But it’s hard to say how long music companies will be able to offer their services, if no one continues to pay. On the day the music dies, nobody will be laughing any more.

Image from Flickr User Lunchbox Photography.

Should You Be Allowed to Know What's in Your DNA?

Paul Hsieh — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 05:37:47 +0000

“You can’t handle the truth!”

That’s the federal government’s latest message to Americans seeking to learn the content of their own DNA.

Recent advances in biotechnology have allowed private companies to offer affordable genetic testing directly to consumers, to help them determine their risks of developing problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and various forms of cancer. In response, the U.S. government has told these companies that their tests must be approved by FDA regulators before they can be sold because, in the government’s words, “consumers may make medical decisions in reliance on this information.”

These restrictions thus represent a new level of government paternalism over the citizenry. In the name of “protecting” us, the government seeks to prevent willing consumers from learning medically useful information about their own bodies that could tell them which diseases they may develop — and help them make important treatment, prevention, and lifestyle decisions.

Ten years ago, Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Craig Venter announced the first successful (independent) sequencings of the human genome. Since then, the cost of genetic sequencing has fallen dramatically in a biotechnology equivalent of Moore’s Law. Mapping the first human genome took years and cost $3 billion. Now it takes only 8 days and $10,000. Industry analysts predict that in three years, it will take only 15 minutes and a mere $1000 — comparable to many routine medical tests.

As prices have fallen, several companies had started offering direct-to-consumer genetic tests which would give customers partial information about their DNA.

In May 2010, San Diego-based Pathway Genomics struck a deal with Walgreens to sell test kits at 6,000 stores nationwide. Customers would spit into a small vial, then mail the sample back to the company for analysis. For $79, customers could learn how their bodies were “likely to respond to 10 substances, including caffeine, cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, the blood thinner warfarin and the breast cancer drug tamoxifen.” For $249, customers could be tested for their risk for 23 conditions “including heart attack, high blood pressure, leukemia, lung cancer and multiple sclerosis.”

The FDA immediately warned Pathway to either show that it had FDA approval or “prove why it should be sold without the agency’s blessing.” Walgreens then suspended its plans. In June 2010, the FDA sent letters to five other personal genomics companies warning that their direct-to-consumer tests would also require FDA approval as “medical devices.” The FDA’s logic was because customers might base medical decisions on their test results, Americans’ access to these tests must be restricted until the government gave its approval — for our own good.

Esther Dyson, a director of one of the affected companies (23andMe.com), has described such government restrictions as “appallingly paternalistic.” Customers wish to learn their personal genetic information precisely because it may help them make important medical and lifestyle decisions.

For instance, scientist Seong-Jin Kim learned from his genetic test that he had a “tenfold increased risk of macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in people over age 60.” As a result, he is taking “high doses of antioxidants, which have been shown to slow progression of the disease, has regular eye exams, and avoids activities that tend to overexert the eyes.”

Genetic testing can reveal important information about how quickly an individual’s body metabolizes certain drugs, such as the widely used blood thinner Coumadin. Such genetic information could help doctors tailor a dosage individualized for each patient, potentially reducing the chances of undertreatment (with continued risk of developing blood clots) or overtreatment (with risk of internal bleeding). Similarly, the FDA has already issued a recommendation that patients of Asian descent be tested for a specific genetic variation before they take the anti-seizure medicine carbamazepine, because that genetic mutation could greatly increase their risk of certain serious side effects.

Of course, like any technology still in its infancy, consumer genetic testing is imperfect. Craig Venter and colleagues performed an interesting experiment where they sent duplicate saliva samples from five different individuals to two separate testing services to see how the results compared. They found that the companies reported essentially identical results with respect to the subjects’ raw genetic data, but did show some variations in how they interpreted their medical significance. Venter and colleagues then made several recommendations on how to improve the quality and consistency of such commercial tests — recommendations which notably did not call for increased government regulations.

Fledgling technologies like genetic testing require a free market to thrive and mature — a market free from onerous regulations. As we’ve repeatedly seen with products such as home computers, DVD machines, and MP3 players, new consumer technologies follow a typical market trajectory. The initial products are expensive and often flawed, appealing only to “early adopters.” But these early adopters help establish a viable market for the product, creating incentives for existing manufacturers to lower costs and improve their quality, and for new manufacturers to enter the market. This attracts new “middle adopter” customers, which in turn spurs further innovation, attracting yet more customers in a virtuous cycle.

The early adopters who purchased the first Apple iPods in 2001 spent $400 for a device with only 5 GB memory. But because of the market created by the early adopters, in 2004 middle adopters could buy a $400 iPod with 40 GB memory. Today in 2010, customers can buy an iPod Classic for only $250 containing a whopping 160 GB memory.

But what if government regulators had prevented early adopters from purchasing the initial crude iPods? They would have strangled the infant iPod market in its cradle, to the detriment of millions of future iPod customers. Yet that is precisely what the government is threatening to do with the infant consumer genetic testing industry.

Thwarting the early adopters for consumer genetic testing could also thwart important future medical innovations. In September 2008, Google co-founder Sergey Brin stunned the technology world when he announced that genetic testing had revealed a mutation which increased his chance of developing Parkinson’s disease. As a matter of rational self-interest, he has chosen to donate $50 million of his fortune to Parkinson’s disease research which may someday bring enormous benefits for himself — and for millions of Parkinson’s disease patients around the world.

Admittedly, Brin is an unusual early adopter. According to Wired, he is “likely the first who, based on a genetic test, began funding scientific research in the hope of escaping a disease in the first place.” But he may not be the last.

If government regulators had prevented Brin from gaining access to this information, who knows what future medical advances might never be discovered?

Opponents of direct-to-consumer genetic testing typically raise three standard objections, including: (1) the test results may be inaccurate; (2) even if the results are accurate, customers will not know what to do with the information; and (3) customers may learn about genetic defects that could make health insurance prohibitively expensive or impossible to purchase. However, a truly free market in health services and health insurance would address all of these concerns.

Customers concerned about the reliability and accuracy of their test results are best served by a free market that subjects products to the pitiless scrutiny of consumers seeking the best value for their money. Of course, if an unscrupulous company makes fraudulent claims about its services, it should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Protecting consumers against fraud is one of the proper functions of government. But if personal genomics companies otherwise truthfully describe the capabilities and limitations of their tests, then the early adopters should be left free to exercise their best judgment as to whether they wish to purchase those services.

Over time, competition between genetic companies making truthful claims about their products will spur innovation as they seek to address customers’ needs for accurate results. Furthermore, independent reviewers would also spring up to assess the quality of these services, much along the lines of the above-mentioned Venter experiment — just as there are already countless independent reviewers to help customers purchase computers, cars, or camping gear.

With respect to potentially confusing test results, in a free market genetic counseling services would quickly spring up to help customers understand and interpret their significance. These genetic advisors may vary in quality, just as financial advisors currently vary in quality — some may be excellent, whereas others may be mediocre. But a free market would allow customers to find advisors that best suited their needs and preferences. Because genetic science is evolving so rapidly, it is each individual’s responsibility to perform his due diligence and consult with his personal physician before making major medical decisions based on a genetic test result.

Finally, concerns about so-called “genetic discrimination” would also be addressed by a fully free market in health insurance services. George Mason University professor Alex Tabarrok has proposed allowing people to purchase “genetic insurance,” where they pay insurers a premium prior to getting tested in exchange for promise of payments to cover higher health and/or life insurance costs if they subsequently learn that they have an unfavorable genetic profile.

University of Chicago professor John Cochrane has proposed a variant known as “health status insurance,” where customers could pay their insurers an additional small fee now to lock in their ability to purchase insurance in the future, even if future test results or other changes in their health status might otherwise render them uninsurable.

(Those who are interested in further discussion of such issues might also enjoy the paper by Manson and Conko of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, “Genetic Testing and Insurance: Why the Fear of ‘Genetic Discrimination’ Does Not Justify Regulation.“)

Although these concerns raised by the opponents of direct-to-consumer genetic testing are legitimate, they would be addressed in a free market, precisely because service providers (e.g., testing companies, genetic counselors, and insurance companies) would have a powerful economic incentive to meet the demands created by customers seeking to better their lives and their health.

In summary, the central issue is whether you should be free to acquire knowledge about yourself that will help you act according to your best judgment for your benefit — in particular, by helping you treat, mitigate, or prevent bad diseases.

The federal government wants to deny you that freedom, essentially saying, “You can’t handle the truth. Instead, we’ll decide what’s best for you.”

Any self-respecting adult who wishes to exercise his responsibility (and his right) to manage his own life as he sees fit should be offended by this paternalistic attitude. Our lives are our own. Americans already know this. Let’s demand that our government recognize it as well.

This post originally appeared at Pajamas Media.

Paul Hsieh, MD, practices in the south Denver metro area. He is co-founder of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (MD) and a guest contributor to The Undercurrent.

Campus Media Response: The Freedom to Produce: Both Moral and Practical

Valery Publius — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:12:24 +0000

In an article appearing in UC Berkeley’s Daily Californian, Andrew Glidden describes the scope of the absurdity of our nation’s current environmental regulatory system, from its recent prohibition of Kevin Costner’s oil salvaging machines, to the pending regulation of all carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. After suggesting that the cost of carbon regulation will be economically crippling, he goes on to make a deeper moral point against the attitude of today’s environmentalist regulators:

But this is really not about BP, carbon dioxide, or any other environmental issue. It is about a political culture that not only authorizes, but encourages, ambitious "do-good" bureaucrats to take control of the lives of everyone else. In the name of "the environment" or the ever-vacuous "public welfare," they propose to dictate to citizens what we can and cannot produce, what we can and cannot consume, what we can and cannot do.
It's time to take a look at more than just the particulars of a policy. We should be thinking about the moral principles that formed the foundation of our society. They include, first and foremost, freedom: the freedom to live as we choose, to work as we choose, to think as we choose. And that requires a repudiation of any policy or person that presumes to manage our lives in any manner whatsoever.

We agree with Glidden 100%. But we’ll go further. The individual’s moral right to be free to live and think and produce—freedom that is hindered by environmental regulations—is also essential to solving what genuine environmental problems (those that threaten human welfare) there may actually be. As Ryan Puzycki wrote on TU’s blog back in 2008:

If global warming really is a problem, throwing our modern civilization and rights on a sacrificial pyre to Al Gore won’t solve it. Instead of drastically transforming the fundamental nature of our civilization, we should investigate the facts underlying the problems Gore claims fossil fuels cause and then leave individuals free—financially and politically—to solve them as required. Coercive taxation only has the power to destroy, and no matter how much Gore stands to gain in the short-term, his plan will certainly leave a path of destruction where a vibrant, fossil-fueled economy once flourished.

Read Ryan’s whole article. We need not only the freedom of thought and action to make possible the innovation needed to solve environmental problems, but also the freedom of production to maintain the prosperity that makes such solutions possible. Freedom is not merely a moral dogma that hangs from the clouds. It is a profoundly practical value that we need to live on Earth.

Image from Flickr User MikeWebkist.

Campus Media Response: Without Oil, Kiss your iPhone Good-bye

Valery Publius — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 20:51:38 +0000

Writing in the Texas Tech Daily Toreador Chris Leal asks us to ponder a puzzle:

It seems as if we truly live our lives out of a work of science fiction. Yet, despite the vast wealth of knowledge we have gained in the last century, we still continue to fuel our lifestyles and our automobiles by burning the decomposed remains of dinosaurs and organisms that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. Think about that….

Imagine if you had to put gasoline in your laptop, or that your iPhone was coal powered; what a funny piece of technology that would be. Yet, we live in a world where news about oil spills and coal mine accidents are still all-too-common…

Yes, think about that. We use decomposed dinosaurs to fuel our industrial civilization—a feat possible only because our engineers have learned methods of extracting a substance from miles beneath the surface of the earth, a process fraught with hazards which have been dealt with so effectively that harmful accidents have been relegated to rare exceptions. And fossil fuel extraction is not just a feat of advanced technology in its own right, but one that does fuel that laptop or iPhone—if you are one of the nearly 70% of Americans whose electricity comes from fossil fuels. Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute notes additional ways in which petroleum and its products contribute to state-of-the-art technology and our standard of living:

One underappreciated form is petroleum-based products. We live in a world where chemists are able to employ oil to suit any conceivable purpose, from making shatterproof glasses to ultra-durable synthetic rubber tires to medical implants to bacteria-resistant refrigerators to HDTVs to iPhones. Look in your home and you can find 100 things made of oil in no time.

And if you look at the "Made In" labels on everything you use — from your Asian electronics to your pineapple from Hawaii to your oranges from California to your beef from Omaha to your furniture from Sweden — you will begin to appreciate the system of global trade that could not exist without oil-powered transportation — the 800 million-plus planes, automobiles, trucks, ships and tankers that move men, machines and material quickly and cheaply.

Nearly every item in your life would either not exist or be far more expensive without oil; there is simply no comparable source of practical, portable energy.

Read the rest of Epstein’s article in Investor’s Business Daily, and a more recent blog post elaborating on the same theme.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Campus Media Response: Keith Yost of the MIT Tech Outclasses his Peers on Muhammed Cartoon Controversy

Valery Publius — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 04:24:47 +0000

Congratulations to Keith Yost, a columnist at The Tech of MIT, who recently put the editors of the paper to shame, by saying “I am Spartacus!” and publishing a statement of support for the free speech rights of Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park, and for the series of other cartoonists and writers who have been threatened with violence by Islamic totalitarians. Though there are a few muddled points in the article, Yost’s message shines through clear as day when he writes the following:

Muhammad in a bear costume (as South Park pseudo-portrayed him) may sound silly, but with this censorship what we are looking at is our core democratic principles under attack. Our citizens have the right to satirize Muhammad without fear of retribution, just as they have the right to declare themselves gay or to let their religious beliefs be known. A violent minority has, through the threat of violence, caused us to surrender this right. It is one thing for someone to decide, of their own volition, whether or not to say something. It is an entirely a different matter when someone wants to say something, but fears they will be harmed as a consequence.

…

I wanted this article, or something like it, to run as an editorial, a declaration that not just I, but this entire organization stood behind free speech rights everywhere. I thought it was our duty — aren’t we, as a newspaper, both the first and last line of defense against the Mohammed Bouyeri’s of the world? I also wanted to run an illustration, a respectful depiction of Muhammad. I felt there was no better image to drive home to point that free speech should triumph against political correctness and coercion. I wanted us to stand up and say, “I am Spartacus”— not to give a hollow statement of support or merely write an article bemoaning the state of affairs, but to actually share the risks that are born by those who exercise their right to unpopular free speech. Unfortunately, The Tech is unwilling to take this stand.

However, if any other media organizations are reading, I urge you to publish your own depictions of Muhammad as a declaration of the supremacy of free speech. We cannot, we must not, we will not allow our citizens to be browbeaten into submission. This is one point on which they, not us, must yield.

Hats off to you, Keith Yost. We stand with you.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

The Spiritual Value of Work

Daniel Casper — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:15:03 +0000

What’s more important – your work or your relationships? That’s the question posed by David Brooks in his op-ed in the New York Times. He references the case of Sandra Bullock, whose career success has recently been overshadowed by her husband’s infidelity. There are other common examples of the work-versus-relationship struggle –the businessman who goes on trips and misses his children’s events, a man who leaves behind his first love for a job opportunity, the tireless inventor who spends more time in the lab than with his wife.

Brooks argues that relationships are what are really important. “[E]conomic and professional success exists on the surface of life, and...emerge[s] out of interpersonal relationships, which are much deeper and more important,” he says. Brooks cites various studies, which claim that a marriage is the “psychic gain equivalent of a $100,000” and that “meeting with a group at least once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income.”

In other words, the idea is that work is a shallow, materialistic necessity surpassed in importance by the spiritual, personal value of a relationship. Indeed, it is easy to see why a relationship is a spiritual value worth its weight in money. Personal relationships bring immense benefit to one’s life in many ways. The connection between two people can serve as a source of strength in difficult times, and a means to celebrate and enjoy success. A relationship can inspire one to be a better person by observing the good in a friend or lover and wanting to emulate it, or can help one grow through the guidance of a mentor.

But is work as empty by comparison as Brooks would lead us to believe? Is what a man does from the hours of 9 to 5 so surface-level that it should take a back seat to the depths of meaning found in one’s relationships?

Not necessarily. Consider the following perspective:

“The object of living is work, experience, and happiness. There is joy in work. All that money can do is buy us someone else's work in exchange for our own. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.”

That was said by Henry Ford, who was no stranger to long hours. As Ford indicates, what one accomplishes through his work does provide a spiritual value: the pride that comes from knowing that you are working towards your own happiness, and the satisfaction that this knowledge brings you. This is why a person feels elated after accomplishing a difficult task: because all values, spiritual and material, have to be created before they can be enjoyed. Inherent in the process of creation is work – the effort it takes to make values real – and just as the end result is rewarding, so is the process. And since work deals with the creation of values, it follows that there is no other place in a man’s life where he can express his creativity to its fullest potential.

Clearly, productive work can and ought to be personally fulfilling. But where does this put one’s career in comparison to one’s personal relationships? Consider a hypothetical relationship between two people who undertake no productive endeavors, neither work nor vigorous hobbies. What would such a relationship consist of? There would be no ambitions to share, no accomplishments to celebrate, no independent growth to encourage or experience in the other person. Such a relationship would be ultimately empty, an association between two barely-existing people.

In contrast, the best relationships demonstrate the necessity of a productive foundation. One’s work creates not only the material possessions one enjoys, but also one’s character. It is central to achieving integrity, honesty, and a sense of self-worth, all of which help form the substance that rewarding relationships are made of.

The argument that work is a lowly activity compared to the nobler, transcendent nature of relationships is a classic philosophical view. But there is no basis for this dichotomy. To view relationships as more important than work is like viewing water as more important than food. Both are vital for a full life.

Of course, it can be difficult to integrate one’s working life with one’s interpersonal relationships in a way that makes the best of both. What’s important is to grant both of them the emphasis they deserve, and to appreciate the way they fuel and enhance each other. So to the question “what’s more important, work or relationships?” we can answer: both.

Campus Media Response: Don’t Return to 1970s Economic Anemia

Valery Publius — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:46:25 +0000

Lamenting BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Mark Costigan of the University of Oregon’s Daily Herald calls for an end to all offshore drilling. Faced with the objection that this would mean importing more of our oil, Costigan bites the bullet and says we should stop foreign oil imports as well:

If oil companies stopped buying oil from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, we would lose about 24 percent of our oil imports. The price of gas would rise and people most likely would be discouraged from driving. The oil companies could invest the money they would have forked over to rich serfs in clean-energy projects and have a head start at dominating a new market. This would satisfy both free-market Republicans and “gas-tax” proposing Democrats. Unite both parties for economic growth and environmental progress? Sounds like a deal to me.

But does Costigan remember the last time we stopped drilling offshore and stopped buying foreign oil? As Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute reminds us, restrictions on offshore drilling after the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 set the stage for the energy crisis of the 1970s, which also included an embargo by Arab oil producers. The 1970s were not exactly a time of progress and prosperity.

Those who propose imposing controls on the production (or importation) of oil in response to the Gulf spill should reconsider the consequences.of this proposal for economic growth. Oil spills do have tragic human consequences. But energy from petroleum is also the lifeblood of modern civilization. When an economy is already hemorrhaging wealth, the solution is not self-imposed anemia.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Campus Media Response: Are American Workers Threatened by Immigrant Workers?

Valery Publius — Mon, 24 May 2010 23:12:57 +0000

In a recent column for the Harvard Crimson commenting on the dubious legislation in Arizona that would make it easier for police to question people about their immigration status, Raúl Carrillo makes the following argument:

Immigration reform, even during a recession, doesn’t have to put American’s citizen workforce and undocumented immigrants at odds. There’s more than enough room for common ground. Reform policies should be guided by the principle of offering safe employment to the undocumented who already work here and unionizing those jobs to raise wages. When workers of any origin can’t live with their families, organize, and work for their children’s healthcare and education, everyone in this country suffers. A more controlled and humane immigration system can help undocumented immigrants integrate into the rest of the American workforce.

Carrillo is right that American and immigrant workers don’t have to be at odds with each other. But he’s wrong that the source of the harmony is found in a policy that increases the level of government intervention in the market. As Rebecca Knapp argued in The Undercurrent in September of 2006, it is the free market, rather than government intervention, which ensures a harmony of interests between citizens and non-citizens alike:

It's easy to see that the employer benefits from having his property rights protected when he's hiring the cheapest babysitter or fruit picker. What everyone seems happy to ignore is that the other guy-the more expensive babysitter or fruit picker, the guy whose job was "stolen" from him-also benefits. He benefits from living in a society in which jobs are given to the most competitive job-seekers. He benefits because when goods can be produced at a cheaper price, the economy grows. He benefits because the owner of the orchard where he didn't get a job uses his savings to open a produce store or cultivate a new orchard and hires twice the workers he employed before. Or it allows him to spend more money on entertainment and the entertainment industry grows, or he banks the money and the bank invests it in new, productive industries which hire more workers. Whatever the farmer does with his extra money, wealth increases, the economy improves, and the country becomes a better place to live.

Read Rebecca’s whole piece.

Image by Flickr user johnwilliamsphd

Campus Media Response: Everybody Draw Muhammad On Campus

Valery Publius — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:21:07 +0000

Writing in opposition to the recently publicized “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” a show of solidarity for Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame, Saif Ansari of The Daily Bruin writes:

There is no need to abuse or disrespect others in order to show that one cares about the right to free speech. And, although it is within your rights to insult or taunt, you shouldn’t. So it is curious indeed that some advocates of free speech, in an attempt to defend it, support exactly what the right to free speech permits but certainly does not condone: the abuse of others in its name….

To be clear, it is within the rights of every advocate of “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” to participate in it and to voice his opposition to Revolution Muslim and others who seek to suppress the right to free speech. I oppose “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” however, not because it violates any right, but because it abuses one….

But Ansari misses the point, both of “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” and of the right to free speech. Nobody would be interested in offending against the Muslim prohibition of the depiction of their prophet if it were not for threats of violence that have been issued against anyone who violates that prohibition. The point of drawing Muhammad now is to defend freedom of speech by emphasizing that it protects the right to offend—and this requires a patently offensive act of solidarity. If freedom of speech were the right only to say only what was unoffensive, it would not be a right, but a permission of society. Back in 2006, The Undercurrent explained this principle in our nationally-issued pamphlet which reprinted the original Muhammad cartoon:

As American citizens and as human beings, we know that free speech includes the right to offend. Our right to speak is not erased the moment someone wants us silenced. We have that right always, undyingly, and in principle. If, at the very moment we are called to defend that right, we instead limit it, downplay it, and appease those who attack us for exercising it, then it won't be long before its exercise will no longer be possible.

The media should respond by expressing solidarity with the persecuted editors: they should re-print the cartoons. There are too many American editors to kill. It's easier to intimidate a few people than an entire nation.

Read the rest of the text of TU’s pamphlet, and our analysis of the campus media’s reaction to the Muhammad cartoon controversy.

Drawing by Diana Hsieh

Asking Permission to Live

Noah Stahl — Thu, 20 May 2010 01:29:12 +0000

Within the confusion surrounding the immigration issue is a crucial moral question

Much has been said about the recent Arizona law that requires police to verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. Critics argue the law is vague, unconstitutional, and will lead to racial profiling as police try to enforce it. Defenders respond that it is simply a means to enforce the rule of law – if people are committing crimes, shouldn’t the police be empowered to bring them to justice? On its face, there seems to be a conflict between two compelling cases: the rights of citizens on the one hand, and the rule of law on the other.

The issue has become a confusing maze of seemingly unrelated aspects. A short list would include racial profiling, police-public relations, federal versus state jurisdiction, drug smuggling, employment of undocumented workers, untaxed welfare benefits, and social impacts on immigrant families. Consequently, our media pundits and politicians offer up uncertain, inconclusive attempts at solutions.

Despite this, the Arizona law has done something clarifying: The chilling image of a police officer demanding proof of citizenship from a person they “suspect” of being illegal has reminded us of the fact that all one has to do to break the law is to have been born in the wrong country. What the papers in question represent is the fact that even the most peaceful, hardworking, and good-natured person is considered a criminal simply by lacking the permission of the federal government to pursue his peaceful, hardworking life in the United States.

But there is no rational basis for such policies, and never has been. America’s founding doctrine of freedom rightly framed a society where no man is causelessly presumed a threat to his neighbor. So long as one respects the freedom of others, he was to be granted the same. Unfortunately, that idea was distorted and replaced by the contradiction that still persists today: that a nation literally born of immigrants considers outsiders criminals until and unless they are granted legal permission to breath, walk, and work inside our borders.

Fundamentally, there is only one thing to say about the issue of immigration: the very existence of the term “illegal immigrant” is a disgrace. Immigration is a legitimate human activity fully consistent with individual rights. Provided he poses no objective threat to anyone else, any man who wants to work or live in America should have his freedom respected by our government—not violated by it. Politically, this means a policy of open immigration, where immigrants are able to register with the government upon arrival in order to properly participate in the legal system and receive protection of their rights. So long as a would-be immigrant poses no clear threat by entering the country (for example, by having a criminal background or an infectious disease), the government imposes no obstacle to entrance. Immigrants would then be free to live their lives as any other resident, bearing full responsibility for earning their own livelihood. (Read more about open immigration here.)

The other issues–racial profiling, legality, alleged economic impact—only serve to distract from the crucial question that the Arizona law prompts us to confront: what has a man done wrong by standing on an American street without permission?

On The Road to Ever-More Government Control

Rituparna Basu — Mon, 10 May 2010 05:41:20 +0000

A California county recently banned fast-food restaurants from including toys in their kids' meals. The goal of this new ban is to reduce rampant obesity in today's youth by breaking "the link between unhealthy food and prizes." On the face of it, the effects of this ban seem trivial: so what if there are no longer any toys with meals?

But however petty this law may seem at first glance, its implications are anything but. If we accept the underlying premise of this ban, that it is proper for the government to outlaw practices with which it disagrees in the name of what's "best" for us, then the debate is no longer about whether the government should control our lives; it is merely a question of how much.

Our lives are comprised of a constant series of decisions, ranging from the foods we should eat to the careers we pursue to the relationships we choose to have, any number of which it might be asked: is that a healthy choice? Is that really best for you? If we accept that it is the government and not we as individuals who decide the answers to these questions, there is no logical end to how intrusive the government may become in order to purportedly protect us or our children from obesity or any other real or alleged harm.

If kids' meals should not include toys, then maybe McDonald's should be banned from having playgrounds because these might attract children to eat there. Or maybe the company's mascot, Ronald McDonald, should be banned because he appeals to children. Or perhaps fast food restaurants should not be allowed to paint their exteriors with bright, cheerful colors but instead must look drab (like cigarette cartons and ads are forced to do). And maybe banning fast food restaurants in general would be a good idea since they're not healthy for anyone, as has already been done in other California towns.

The logical consequence of banning toys in kids' meals is the government's ever-increasing control over what foods a restaurant can sell, how it can sell them, and what we as consumers can eat. This means that someone who usually eats healthy foods but likes to occasionally bite into a juicy cheeseburger may no longer have the choice to decide whether he can do so. This decision will be left up to the government. Or a mom who on occasion purchases kids' meals for her child for the convenience of an easy and quick bite may no longer have the luxury of deciding to pursue that option. Uncle Sam will decide what any parent feeds his child.

There are those who will scoff at this "slippery slope" argument. But if these predictions seem too speculative, remember that the laws of today were the parodies of yesterday. Back in 1994, many people thought it was absurd for tobacco companies to argue that anti-smoking legislation opened the door to regulation of food. Sixteen years later, here we are. Where will we be in 2026? Once a legal principle is established and increasingly entrenched—as this law will further entrench the principle that government should control our food choices—history shows us that the implications of such a principle will be carried out over time.

This nation was rightly founded on the premise that we have the right to exercise our own choices, even when our decisions might be mistaken or when others disagree. If companies want to offer toys with their kids' meals, even if these meals may be considered unhealthy, they should be free to do so. Likewise, parents should be free to decide whether they want to purchase such meals for their children. And of course, those that oppose such practices should be free to advocate their opposition.

What the fast-food toy ban does instead is sidestep all of these freedoms and paternalistically impose a course of action on law-abiding Americans. Our government should not be making these choices for us under the ostensible goal of doing what is in our "best" interest. We should be able to decide that for ourselves.

Photo by Flickr user noodlepie.

Celebrating 5 Years of The Undercurrent

Valery Publius — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:36:03 +0000

Five years ago this month, The Undercurrent released its very first issue. We’ve come a long way since then.

Here is the untold story how the The Undercurrent came to be.

For years, Objectivist campus clubs have come and gone. Some of them have even had their own local publication. But once the leader of a club would graduate, the club would typically disband.

In the early part of the last decade, one of the most successful Objectivist campus clubs was the University of Toronto’s. Their publication, The New Intellectual, attracted attention across North America for the quality of its articles and design. One of us, then a graduate student at the University of Illinois, caught notice of TNI, and worried that it would suffer the same fate as so many other campus club publications over the years. He contacted TNI’s editor and wondered if he was interested in collaborating on a grander-scale version of that paper, one that would reach students across the continent and outlive the passing of local clubs. By the fall of 2004, we had assembled other Objectivist friends from Toronto, the University of Illinois, the University of Chicago, Tufts, and Boston University to join our new project.

The beginning was rocky. Learning how to edit collaboratively was a huge challenge, especially when we first wanted to make the paper a monthly publication. As it turned out, this was totally unsustainable. But we did cut our teeth meeting deadlines, as we managed to turn out three issues in the spring 2005 alone, and then another four in the 2005-2006 school year.

Over the years, TU gradually matured. If you look over our back issues, you’ll see the sophistication of our writing and the esthetics of our design gradually improve. You’ll see the length of the paper expand from 8 to 12 pages, the list of advertising campus clubs double, and the distribution numbers go from 8,000 copies of the paper to over 40,000 copies. As of 2010, we will have distributed papers at 60 different schools throughout North America.

And we like to think we’ve made a difference. During the controversy over the Danish cartoons of Muhammed in 2006, we printed a flyer reproducing the image of the prophet and encouraged students to poster it wherever we distributed papers, out of solidarity with the targeted cartoonists. For the first Tea Parties during the spring and summer of 2009, we produced a special edition of our paper to educate protesters dissatisfied with the creeping statism of the Obama administration.

When TU began, the staff was composed entirely of students. Since then, we’ve graduated and moved on in life, to become teachers, lawyers, and businessmen. Some of us have even married each other! But many of the core staff from the beginning are still involved in one way or another with the paper.

Though the founders of the paper are no longer students, we still maintain our focus on college campuses, and are constantly on the lookout for fresh young college talent. We’re still committed to our roots: to spreading Ayn Rand’s ideas on college campuses, where we first became enchanted with these ideas, and where they must continue to spread if today’s students are to have a future.

Essay Contest on the Moral Foundations of Capitalism

Rituparna Basu — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 17:01:54 +0000

The recent financial crisis has commonly been blamed on capitalism. Ruthless greed for profits, many say, led the financiers on Wall Street to carry out careless business practices that fattened their pockets but harmed those of us on Main Street. But is capitalism really that- a merciless system that allows a few individuals to step on many others for profit? Or is it a political system with a strong underlying moral foundation that has been deliberately misrepresented by its opponents? And if capitalism is based on moral principles, what exactly are these principles?

These are some of the questions posed in the first ever essay contest issued by The Objective Standard, a quarterly publication of scholarly articles on Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. The first place winner of this contest will be awarded $2000 and the opportunity to have their winning essay published in The Objective Standard. It is open to students and non-students alike, and anyone who values capitalism is encouraged to contribute. Essays must be submitted by August 15. More information can be found at http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/essay/

Additionally, if you are interested in the contest or unfamiliar with Ayn Rand’s thoughts on capitalism, we suggest checking out a copy of her Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, a collection of her essays on the subject.

The Great Health Care Squabble: A Battle of Ideas?

Gena Gorlin — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 19:59:00 +0000

Are those who oppose health care reform simply racist? Or perhaps just trying to fill their unemployment-related free time? Two articles recently appearing in the New York Times offer just such accounts of what motivates the Tea Party protesters and other vocal opponents of the new health care legislation

In “The Rage Is Not About Health Care,” columnist Frank Rich argues that racism and white conservatives’ “fear of disenfranchisement” are the real motivators behind this recent upsurge in opposition. In “With No Jobs, Plenty of Time for Tea Party”, Kate Zernike blames economic adversity.

At a glance, the two arguments share little in common. But they are identical in one important respect: both explanations divert our attention away from the content of the dissenters’ objections concerning the new law. The arguments avoid any reference to protesters’ concerns, for instance, about the government’s encroachment upon individual liberty, its coercion of insurance companies to offer financially crippling policies, or the moral indecency of subordinating individual choice to collective will—and point, instead, to whatever ulterior motives or in-group biases they can scrape up to explain the protesters’ opposition.

Unfortunately, many of those on the Right resort to similar tactics—from Republican Senator John Boehner’s argument against the health care bill primarily on the grounds that it “def[ies] the will of the American people” (an argument that can just as easily, and just as meaninglessly, be countered by President Obama’s claim that the health care bill is “a victory for the American people”), to Tea Party activists’ emotionally charged appeals to “time-honored” tradition and even, in a few cases, incitements of mob-like violence and vandalism amongst their fellow protesters.

These unreasoning, argument-by-pressure-group tactics, which equally characterize both sides of the debate, shrink what should be a battle of epic moral and philosophical proportions down to the size of a petty tribal skirmish. That is, rather than engage in a battle of ideas, the opposing sides often sidestep the task of providing intellectual support for their claims, focusing instead on irrelevant features of their opponents’ respective demographic groups.

A properly-reasoned debate, on the other hand, would be primarily concerned with asking and answering the basic philosophical, moral questions upon which any legitimate policy would rest. Questions like: should health care be considered a right, like freedom of speech and the right to the ownership of property? On what factual basis? Should the government be allowed to restrict the freedom of individuals to benefit the “public good”? Is there even such a thing? Do companies, as groups of individuals, have the right to offer services at a profit as they judge best, or are they properly considered servants of the public?

Amid the intellectually hollow group-think of today’s rivaling political parties, there exists an opportunity as well as a desperate need: questioning minds are starved for answers grounded in objective, independently observable evidence. This need became palpable as multitudes of indignant Americans spoke out in furious (but, for the most part, intellectually empty) protest against the passage of the health care law. If those enraged Americans would speak out, not in blind fury, but in clear-sighted, solidly reasoned intellectual protest against the health care law and all it implies, they would be unstoppable—for they would have no real opposition.

Is America Still the Land of Opportunity?

Ramandeep Girn — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 09:52:14 +0000

Writing in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman applauds a recent event honoring the finalists of Intel’s national science talent search, a contest that recognizes promising American high school science students. Friedman notes the high number of finalists of Chinese and Indian descent and reminds us that it’s our willingness to welcome immigrants that allows such talented youth to flourish in our nation.

Friedman argues eloquently for the value of immigration. “If you need any more convincing about the virtues of immigration,” he says, “just come to the Intel science finals”. It’s the American system that makes such achievement possible. In Friedman’s words, “when you mix all of these energetic, high-aspiring people with a democratic system and free markets, magic happens.”

Indeed, it does. Friedman’s example, however, leaves ambiguous what precisely it is that immigrants bring to our country. While they certainly bring intelligence—even the groundbreaking intelligence that the kids in Intel’s contest represent—intelligence is not the primary trait that captures the soul of those who come to seek a new life in America.

Immigrants demonstrate many virtuous traits—from the courageof the Cuban refugee who escapes home in a raft hoping to begin anew in a better world, to the perseveranceof the Sri Lankan doctor who has to wait tables while he earns a license to practice in the US. The hallmark quality of the American immigrant, however, is industriousness. The overwhelming majority of immigrants come to America because they want the opportunity to work. The American dream is not the dream of a free lunch, but of the chance to earn for oneself and one’s family a higher station in life.

America, the land of opportunity, has always been a beacon to those seeking the opportunity to work, live freely, and rise to the highest heights that their effort can take them. Are we still that land?

At a time when jobs are scarce, however, many are clamoring instead to turn America into the land of safety nets, a place where the ambitious are harnessed to provide money and food and health care for everyone else, a place where an American citizenship is regarded as a claim to be given the rewards of the American system without having to earn them.

Underneath the question of immigration reform, we face a deeper question: Is America still that nation that in past generations opened its arms to foreigners, inviting them to demonstrate their industry and earn their just rewards? Do we still hold that in this nation, we do not care about an individual’s lineage or heritage, but care only if he is honest, industrious, and freedom-seeking—and if he is, recognize him as American in spirit, whether he was born in Texas or China, New Hampshire or Zimbabwe?

Thomas Paine, writing in 1776, welcomed the immigrant:

O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the Old World is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe, Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her as a stranger and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

Do we still care to prepare such an asylum—a land of opportunity, a place where the industrious are given the freedom to produce great values and profit by them, and to enrich all of our lives in the process?

Photo by rickz on Flickr.