Publishing Institution: The Objective Standard / Journal: The Objective Standard

301. The Barbary Wars and Their Lesson for Combating Piracy Today

Author:: Doug Altner
Publication Date:: 12-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Over the past few years, Somali pirates have attacked numerous ships, hijacking more than forty in 2008, holding more than six hundred seafarers for ransom that same year,1 and extorting more than $150 million in ransom payments from December 2007 to November 2008.2 More troubling is that, as of September, reported pirate attacks for 2009 have already surpassed the total number reported in 2008-a strong indication that the problem of piracy is only worsening.3 Because of these attacks, shipping companies must choose between navigating dangerous waters and taking costly alternate routes in order to protect their crews and goods. In November 2008, Maersk, one of the world's largest container shipping companies, announced that, until there are more convoys to protect its ships from attacks, some of its fleet will avoid taking the most direct sea route to the East through the Suez Canal, which leads to pirate-infested waters.4 By taking the next best route from Europe to the East-around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope-shipping companies such as Maersk will add an average of 5.7 days and three thousand miles to each trip. The average annual cost of this route change to such a shipping company will range in millions of dollars for each of its ships that uses the alternate route,5 not to mention short- and long-term expenses from additional wear on its vessels. And, of course, given the integrated nature of the economy and the amount of goods shipped to and from the East, such route changes negatively affect all industries, directly or indirectly. Although the piracy threat has been well known to those in the shipping industry for a few years, it became manifest to most Americans in April 2009 when Somali pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama and captured twenty U.S. sailors. Although the sailors soon regained control of the ship,6 four pirates took Captain Richard Phillips hostage on a lifeboat. The three-day standoff that ensued ended when a team of navy SEAL snipers rescued the captain.7 Fortunately, neither the captain nor any sailors were seriously harmed during this attack-but it is disconcerting that a small gang of third-world pirates dared to attack an American ship and abduct its captain. Why were the pirates not afraid of a standoff with the most powerful navy on earth? To determine what is motivating these pirates and how the U.S. Navy should best combat their attacks, many policy analysts, historians, and defense experts are looking to the Barbary Wars-two wars the United States fought in the early 19th century to end North African piracy-for guidance. These experts are wise to look here, for the situation surrounding the Barbary pirates of the revolutionary era is similar in important respects to the situation surrounding the Somali pirates of today. Like the Somali pirates, the Barbary pirates attacked trade ships, stole goods, took prisoners, and demanded ransom from wealthy nations with strong militaries. And like the Somali pirates, the Barbary pirates got away with their thievery for some time. But unlike the Somali pirates, who continue their predations, after the Second Barbary War the Barbary pirates stopped assaulting U.S. ships-permanently. Toward establishing a policy that can bring about this same effect with regard to the Somali pirates, it is instructive to examine those aspects of late-18th- and early-19th-century U.S. foreign policy that were effective against Barbary piracy and those that were not. In particular, it is instructive to identify why the First Barbary War failed to end the pirate attacks but the second succeeded. Let us consider the key events surrounding these two wars. . . . To read the rest of this article, select one of the following options:Subscriber Login | Subscribe | Renew | Purchase a PDF of this article
Topic:: Foreign Policy and War
Political Geography:: United States, Europe, South Africa, and Somalia

302. Objective Moral Values

Author:: Craig Biddle
Publication Date:: 12-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Author's note: This is chapter 4 of my book Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It (Richmond: Glen Allen Press, 2002), which is an introduction to Ayn Rand's morality of rational egoism. Chapters 1-3 were reprinted in the prior three issues of TOS. In the book, this chapter is subtitled "Basic Human Needs." We have seen that human life is logically the standard of moral value-and that each individual's own life is logically his own ultimate value. Here we turn to the question of the human means of survival. What things do we need in order to live? What actions must we take in order to gain and keep those things? And, most importantly: What makes those actions possible? All living things have a means of survival. Plants survive by means of their automatic vegetative process known as photosynthesis. Animals survive by means of their automatic instinctive processes such as hunting, fleeing, and nest building. Human beings, however, do not survive by automatic means; our means of survival is not instinctual, but volitional. Since we have free will, we choose to live or not to live-and if we choose to live, we must also choose to discover the requirements of our life and to act accordingly. While the choice to live is up to us, the basic requirements of our life are determined by nature. In order to live, we must take a specific course of action; random action will not do. We cannot survive by eating rocks, drinking Drano, or wandering aimlessly in the desert; and we cannot achieve happiness through procrastination, promiscuity, or pot. If we want to live and enjoy life, we have to discover and act in accordance with the actual, objective requirements of our survival and happiness. What are they? . . . To read the rest of this article, select one of the following options:Subscriber Login | Subscribe | Renew | Purchase a PDF of this article.

303. Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns

Author:: Robert Mayhew
Publication Date:: 12-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography. . . . Formerly we used to canonise our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarise them. -Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist" (1891)
Political Geography:: America

304. Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science

Author:: Gus Van Horn
Publication Date:: 12-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Al Gore, the Weather Channel, "environmental activists," and many politicians claim there is a worldwide "consensus" among scientists that the earth's climate is about to change drastically due to human activity. On the basis of this alleged consensus, governments are considering coercive measures to head off catastrophe-rationing fuel, regulating carbon dioxide emissions, dictating the kinds of lightbulbs we can buy, and so on. Of course, the idea that man is responsible for impending climatic doom has its detractors. Some say the science is not settled; some say it is settled, and that human activity is not warming the planet; and some say that even if human activity were warming the planet, that might be good. But who among us truly understands the scientific arguments alleged to support the various claims? Wouldn't it be nice if a scientist wrote a book carefully documenting and explaining, in layman's terms, the cases for and against man-made global warming? Then, we could determine for ourselves which claims are supported by evidence and logic. Based on favorable publicity from conservative media and politicians, Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science would appear to be just such a book. Plimer claims to present an "integrated scientific understanding of the environment," and the book-chock-full of figures and graphs and containing more than 2,300 footnotes in its 504 pages-certainly makes a powerful first impression. Add to that EU President (and noted climate-change skeptic) Vaclav Klaus's statement that the work is "clear, understandable, and very useful," and a good grasp of the arguments for and against man-made global warming would seem to be just a few hundred pages away. Unfortunately, Heaven and Earth utterly fails to deliver on its promise. Rather than clearly presenting the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis and specifying the kind and scope of data necessary to evaluate it, Plimer presents the reader with a disorganized hash of poorly-presented data; repeatedly mocks climate models without providing sufficient evidence or argument to warrant such mockery; dismisses the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a bogeyman "unrelated to science" (p. 20), without adequately explaining why this is so; and generally presents an incoherent argument against a straw-man version of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. . . . To read the rest of this article, select one of the following options: Subscriber Login | Subscribe | Renew | Purchase a PDF of this article
Topic:: Climate Change

305. Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed

Author:: Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:: 12-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: I'm an environmental scientist, but I've never had time to review the "evidence" for the [man-made] causes of global warming. I operate on the principle that global warming is a reality and that it is human-made, because a lot of reliable sources told me that . . . Faith-based science it may be, but who has time to review all the evidence? (p. 318) That is just one of many astonishing statements by global warming alarmists that Christopher C. Horner catalogs and analyzes in Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed. Horner amply demonstrates that the acceptance of such "faith-based science" is the modus operandi of many activists, journalists, and politicians-who want you to accept it too. Horner exposes the tactics alarmists use to sell you on the faith and keep you ignorant of the facts surrounding alleged global warming. One such tactic is simple, premeditated deception: Consider the example of Gore's co-producer Laurie David, who followed [Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth] with a book aimed at the little ones. . . . [In the documentary] one ought to have suspected that Al Gore was up to something when he ran two lines [for CO2 concentration and temperature change] across the screen . . . claimed a cause-and-effect relationship, and then forgot to superimpose them. . . . Gore was correct to insist there was a relationship between the temperature line and the CO2 concentration line, as measured over the past 650,000 years. . . . The relationship, however, was the precise opposite of what he suggested: historically, it warms first, and then CO2 concentrations go up. Gore's wording and visuals were cleverly deceptive-he implied, without stating . . . that CO2 increases are followed by temperature increases. The reason he didn't source his claim is that the literature doesn't support it. Somehow believing only the young would bother to open their [book] targeting children, David and [co-author Cambria] Gordon weren't so clever. Their book included the two lines, but dared superimpose them, and even stated the phony relationship more outlandishly than Gore did in his film. The reason that temperature appeared to follow CO2 proved to be because they reversed the labels in the legend (pp. 199-200). Horner shows that such deceptions are typical, not just of documentary producers and author-activists seeking to spread the faith, but also of so-called scientists and purportedly scientific organizations including, for instance, the UN's Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Of the IPCC, Horner writes: The unsupportable advocacy from these supposed sages of science begins with their threshold dishonesty of putting forth a lurid and alarming "summary," drafted by a few dozen people who often are activists-and encouraging claims that these conclusions represent the consensus of thousands of "the world's leading scientists" from the world over (p. 294). These summaries, Horner shows, are written before scientists have submitted data. Even worse, it "appears that the IPCC intends to make the scientists . . . change their findings if they depart from the summary in order to bring them in line with it" (p. 304). The IPCC's "Lead Authors" edit out inconvenient findings, such as the following two, which, according to one scientist, had intentionally been "included at the request of participating scientists to keep the IPCC honest." . . . To read the rest of this article, select one of the following options:Subscriber Login | Subscribe | Renew | Purchase a PDF of this article
Topic:: Climate Change

306. Islamic Imperialism: A History by Efraim Karsh

Author:: Andrew Lewis
Publication Date:: 12-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Since 9/11, cultural critics and religious apologists have argued the question of Islam's militaristic nature: Is Islam inherently violent, or is it a peaceful religion corrupted by today's Islamic terrorists? Efraim Karsh does not argue that Islam is necessarily more inclined to violence than any other religion, or that today's terrorists have perverted Muhammad's message. Rather, he claims, Islamic culture has always been (and potentially always will be) associated with and spread by bloodshed and violence. This, he believes, is less because of the fundamental tenets of Islam than because of the fact that the religion's leaders and adherents have always been motivated by delusions of imperial grandeur achievable only by force. In trying to explain the motivation behind the attacks of 9/11 and the militancy of today's Islamists in general, Karsh documents Islam's history of political violence. He tells the story of Islam, from Muhammad's rise to power in the early 7th century, through the rule by caliphates of the medieval period, through the rise and fall of the Ottomans, up to today's "renewed quest," headed by terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, for a universal Arabic-Islamic empire. In Karsh's view, Islamic violence has always been driven more by political and imperial ambition than by religious fervor. Recounting key aspects of Islamic history, from Muhammad's many raids; through the persecutions, assassinations, and wars of conquest that followed; through the resurgent violence in the last century, Karsh leaves the reader with no doubt that Islam's past and present have been riddled with violence, and that its future likely will be too. Karsh explains that Islam developed on a foundational premise of an "inextricable link between religious authority and political power," established by Muhammad himself (p. 13). What "made Islam's imperial expansion inevitable" is that Muhammad's umma (community of believers) accepted a credo that combined a universal religion with the necessity of territorial conquest to establish political rule to enforce that faith (p. 18). Islamic Imperialism: A History is not a comprehensive or straightforward history of Islamic empires or culture. Rather it is a history of Islamic leaders' dream (Karsh's word) of achieving a global empire and the actions they have taken toward realizing that dream-a dream that, Karsh argues, can never become a reality. . . . To read the rest of this article, select one of the following options:Subscriber Login | Subscribe | Renew | Purchase a PDF of this article
Topic:: Islam

307. The Israel Test, by George Gilder

Author:: Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:: 12-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: According to George Gilder, Israel's defenders have failed to make a compelling case for the country's right to exist-though not for lack of trying. Gilder cites, as one example, Alan Dershowitz, who has contributed two books offering "over thirty chapters of evidence against [anti-Israel] propaganda."Dershowitz cogently contests the proposition that Israel is a racist bastion of apartheid, a genocidal expansionist power, and a crypto-Nazi perpetrator of "massacres." He ably refutes the verdict of the relevant UN committee that Israel is "the world's primary violator of human rights" . . . [And he] even takes the trouble to answer charges of the ineffable Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as if the ruler were moved by legal niceties and resourceful argument (pp. 20-21). But, although Gilder acknowledges that Dershowitz's arguments refute the typical charges made against Israel, he says that this defensive posture is an all-too-typical mistake. "The central error of Israel's defenders is to accept the framing of the debate by its enemies. . . . Locked in a debate over Israel's alleged vices, they miss the salient truth running through the long history of anti-Semitism: Israel is hated above all for its virtues" (pp. 21-22). For all its special features and extreme manifestations, anti-Semitism is a reflection of the hatred toward . . . capitalists that is visible . . . whenever an identifiable set of outsiders outperforms the rest of the population in an economy. This is true whether the offending excellence comes from the Kikuyu in Kenya, the Ibo and the Yoruba in Nigeria . . . [or] the over 30 million overseas Chinese [throughout] Southeast Asia (p. 36). In The Israel Test, Gilder zeros in on both the source of Israel's success and the source of hatred toward the nation, making a strong case for why the nation's continued existence should be both supported and celebrated. . . .To read the rest of this article, select one of the following options: Subscriber Login | Subscribe | Renew | Purchase a PDF of this article
Topic:: Human Rights
Political Geography:: Israel

308. From the Editor

Author:: Craig Biddle
Publication Date:: 06-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Welcome to the Summer 2009 issue of TOS.First up in this edition is my interview with Jonathan Hoenig, who discusses the nature and value of hedge funds, the government's role in the financial crisis, and how to fight for free markets.
Topic:: Government

309. Letters and Replies

Publication Date:: 06-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Letters and Replies To the Editor: I wanted to let you know that I received my first issue of The Objective Standard (Winter 2008-2009) in the mail and was greatly impressed. I am relatively new to the ideas of Objectivism, and the articles in this issue have helped to clarify both the theory behind the philosophy and the practical implications of its principles. Seeing how the principles apply to real-life issues and current events makes them much easier to understand (and to explain to others). I just ordered all the available back issues and look forward to reading them as well. Kendall Bryan Jacksonville, Florida
Political Geography:: Florida

310. An Interview with a "Capitalist Pig" Jonathan Hoenig on Hedge Funds, the Economic Crisis, and the Future of America

Publication Date:: 06-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: I recently spoke with Jonathan Hoenig, manager of the Capitalistpig Hedge Fund and regular contributor to Fox News Channel's Cashin' In, Your World with Neil Cavuto, and Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld. Mr. Hoenig is also a columnist for Smartmoney.com and contributes economic commentary to WLS 890AM in Chicago. -Craig Biddle Craig Biddle: I must ask at the outset, why did you name your firm "Capitalistpig"? Is there a story behind that? Jonathan Hoenig: Yes, there is. From weeding yards as a young boy to working at Starbucks in high school, I have always been interested in money and actively hustling for dollars. Getting an "A" in school didn't mean much to me, but earning a few hundred dollars working in a local warehouse or passing out samples of Nutella (another summer job) always provided a tremendous sense of accomplishment and pride. One of my earliest memories is going with my dad to our local bank and opening my first passbook savings account. Even then, it was a real thrill to watch the balance slowly build. As a kid, while many of my contemporaries were either bullying (or being bullied), I was busy discovering the virtue of mutually beneficial exchange. My neighbor appreciated me cleaning out her basement, and, for a few bucks, I was more than happy to do an excellent job. Ever since I can remember, capitalism wasn't something I spurned, but embraced. Knowing I wanted to pursue a career in the financial markets, after college I traded futures at the Chicago Board of Trade for a few years before opening up my firm in 2000. The name Capitalistpig Asset Management was a punchy way of communicating the philosophy by which my operation is run. We also give all new clients a copy of [Ayn Rand's] Atlas Shrugged. The name Capitalistpig also helps to attract the right type of customer. I prefer to work with like-minded individuals who support capitalism and individual rights and are happy to be part of an operation that loudly promotes these ideals. CB: What exactly is a hedge fund? How is it different from a mutual fund? And what do you and other hedge fund managers do? JH: A hedge fund is simply a pool of money funded by profit-seeking investors and managed by a professional money manager. In that sense, it is similar to a mutual fund. But unlike a mutual fund, a hedge fund is not required to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This doesn't mean hedge funds are unregulated; far from it. The government places stringent restrictions on how hedge funds can operate. Most notably, we're prohibited from accepting investments from "nonaccredited" individuals-meaning, those who don't have a liquid net worth of at least $1 million or haven't earned an income of at least $200,000 for two consecutive years. This, incidentally, is the source of the notoriously "exclusive" and "elitist" nature of hedge funds: They're exclusive and elitist not by choice, but by government edict. While most people assume that hedge funds trade frequently and make big bets on financial esoterica, the truth is a hedge fund is a legal structure, not an investment technique. Some trade frequently and use leverage, others buy and hold stocks for months or years at a time. So while the media routinely characterize hedge funds as "risky" or "highly leveraged," the reality is that hedge-fund strategies, just like mutual-fund strategies, run the gamut from the ultraconservative to the highly volatile. Some managers employ complex spread trades, while others simply buy and sell stocks. Just knowing someone runs a hedge fund tells you absolutely nothing about how it's run. What matters are the strategies, positions, and discipline that the manager uses to maximize the money. My fund is focused on absolute return, ideally earning a profit regardless of the condition of the stock market or larger macroeconomic environment. To accomplish this, I use strategies such as selling short, trading options, commodities, currencies, and other instruments, some of which aren't directly correlated with the stock market. My fund functions as one part of an individual's portfolio, usually no more than 25 percent, and it has been profitable eight out of nine years, earning a total return of over 345 percent. The Dow Jones has lost 28 percent over the same period. CB: Hedge funds and their managers have been loudly and repeatedly condemned for having somehow caused or exacerbated the current financial crisis. Did hedge funds lead to or worsen the crisis? If so, how? If not, what do you make of such claims? JH: Such accusations are absurd. Hedge-fund managers have neither caused nor exacerbated the financial crisis, and they couldn't have done so even if they had tried. These managers simply invest money for their clients. If they make good investments, their clients make money; if they make bad investments, their clients lose money. Moreover, hedge funds-one of the few financial industries that has not asked for and will not receive a bailout-actually helped shoulder the burden of the credit collapse. In buying and selling risky mortgages, loans, and other instruments, hedge funds substantially mitigated the crisis by adding liquidity to the marketplace and facilitating trade. Wealth creation requires investment, and the savings needed in order to make loans, finance operations, start new companies, and invest in R come from investors, such as hedge-fund managers, who are seeking to profit. Far from fueling the financial crisis, hedge-fund managers reduced its severity, and continue to do so, by allocating capital in accordance with the principles of economics, long-range thinking, the profit motive, and market demand.
Topic:: Economics
Political Geography:: America and Chicago

311. Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution

Author:: Thomas A. Bowden
Publication Date:: 06-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Examines the meaning and consequences of Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous dissent in Lochner v. New York, showing how and why it has devastated American jurisprudence, and indicating what future jurists must grasp and do in order to begin reversing the damage.
Political Geography:: New York and America

312. Energy at the Speed of Thought: The Original Alternative Energy Market

Author:: Alex Epstein
Publication Date:: 06-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: The most important and most overlooked energy issue today is the growing crisis of global energy supply. Cheap, industrial-scale energy is essential to building, transporting, and operating everything we use, from refrigerators to Internet server farms to hospitals. It is desperately needed in the undeveloped world, where 1.6 billion people lack electricity, which contributes to untold suffering and death. And it is needed in ever-greater, more-affordable quantities in the industrialized world: Energy usage and standard of living are directly correlated. Every dollar added to the cost of energy is a dollar added to the cost of life. And if something does not change soon in the energy markets, the cost of life will become a lot higher. As demand increases in the newly industrializing world, led by China and India, supply stagnates-meaning rising prices as far as the eye can see. What is the solution? We just need the right government "energy plan," leading politicians, intellectuals, and businessmen tell us. Of course "planners" such as Barack Obama, John McCain, Al Gore, Thomas L. Friedman, T. Boone Pickens, and countless others favor different plans with different permutations and combinations of their favorite energy sources (solar, wind, biomass, ethanol, geothermal, occasionally nuclear and natural gas) and distribution networks (from decentralized home solar generators to a national centralized so-called smart grid). But each agrees that there must be a plan-that the government must lead the energy industry using its power to subsidize, mandate, inhibit, and prohibit. And each claims that his plan will lead to technological breakthroughs, more plentiful energy, and therefore a higher standard of living. Consider Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore, who claims that if only we follow his "repower American plan"-which calls for the government to ban and replace all carbon-emitting energy (currently 80 percent of overall energy and almost 100 percent of fuel energy) in ten years-we would be using fuels that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home. . . . We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world's energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses. And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America. . . . [W]e can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses. And Gore claims that, under his plan, our vehicles will run on "renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 per gallon gasoline." Another revered thinker, Thomas L. Friedman, also speaks of the transformative power of government planning, in the form of a government-engineered "green economy." In a recent book, he enthusiastically quotes an investor who claims: "The green economy is poised to be the mother of all markets, the economic investment opportunity of a lifetime." Friedman calls for "a system that will stimulate massive amounts of innovation and deployment of abundant, clean, reliable, and cheap electrons." How? Friedman tells us that there are two ways to stimulate innovation-one is short-term and the other is long-term-and we need to be doing much more of both. . . . First, there is innovation that happens naturally by the massive deployment of technologies we already have [he stresses solar and wind]. . . . The way you stimulate this kind of innovation-which comes from learning more about what you already know and doing it better and cheaper-is by generous tax incentives, regulatory incentives, renewable energy mandates, and other market-shaping mechanisms that create durable demand for these existing clean power technologies. . . . And second, there is innovation that happens by way of eureka breakthroughs from someone's lab due to research and experimentation. The way you stimulate that is by increasing government-funded research. . . . The problem with such plans and claims: Politicians and their intellectual allies have been making and trying to implement them for decades-with nothing positive (and much negative) to show for it. For example, in the late 1970s, Jimmy Carter heralded his "comprehensive energy policy," claiming it would "develop permanent and reliable new energy sources." In particular, he (like many today) favored "solar energy, for which most of the technology is already available." All the technology needed, he said, "is some initiative to initiate the growth of a large new market in our country." Since then, the government has heavily subsidized solar, wind, and other favored "alternatives," and embarked on grand research initiatives to change our energy sources-claiming that new fossil fuel and nuclear development is unnecessary and undesirable. The result? Not one single, practical, scalable source of energy. Americans get a piddling 1.1 percent of their power from solar and wind sources, and only that much because of national and state laws subsidizing and mandating them. There have been no "eureka breakthroughs," despite many Friedmanesque schemes to induce them, including conveniently forgotten debacles such as government fusion projects, the Liquid Fast Metal Breeder Reactor Program, and the Synfuels Corporation. Many good books and articles have been written-though not enough, and not widely enough read-chronicling the failures of various government-sponsored energy plans, particularly those that sought to develop "alternative energies," over the past several decades. Unfortunately, the lesson that many take from this is that we must relinquish hope for dramatic breakthroughs, lower our sights, and learn to make do with the increasing scarcity of energy. But the past failures do not warrant cynicism about the future of energy; they warrant cynicism only about the future of energy under government planning. Indeed, history provides us ample grounds for optimism about the potential for a dynamic energy market with life-changing breakthroughs-because America once had exactly such a market. For most of the 1800s, an energy market existed unlike any we have seen in our lifetimes, a market devoid of government meddling. With every passing decade, consumers could buy cheaper, safer, and more convenient energy, thanks to continual breakthroughs in technology and efficiency-topped off by the discovery and mass availability of an alternative source of energy that, through its incredible cheapness and abundance, literally lengthened and improved the lives of nearly everyone in America and millions more around the world. That alternative energy was called petroleum. By studying the rise of oil, and the market in which it rose, we will see what a dynamic energy market looks like and what makes it possible. Many claim to want the "next oil"; to that end, what could be more important than understanding the conditions that gave rise to the first oil? Today, we know oil primarily as a source of energy for transportation. But oil first rose to prominence as a form of energy for a different purpose: illumination. For millennia, men had limited success overcoming the darkness of the night with man-made light. As a result, the day span for most was limited to the number of hours during which the sun shone-often fewer than ten in the winter. Even as late as the early 1800s, the quality and availability of artificial light was little better than it had been in Greek and Roman times-which is to say that men could choose between various grades of expensive lamp oils or candles made from animal fats. But all of this began to change in the 1820s. Americans found that lighting their homes was becoming increasingly affordable-so much so that by the mid-1860s, even poor, rural Americans could afford to brighten their homes, and therefore their lives, at night, adding hours of life to their every day. What made the difference? Individual freedom, which liberated individual ingenuity. The Enlightenment and its apex, the founding of the United States of America, marked the establishment of an unprecedented form of government, one established explicitly on the principle of individual rights. According to this principle, each individual has a right to live his own life solely according to the guidance of his own mind-including the crucial right to earn, acquire, use, and dispose of the physical property, the wealth, on which his survival depends. Enlightenment America, and to a large extent Enlightenment Europe, gave men unprecedented freedom in the intellectual and economic realms. Intellectually, individuals were free to experiment and theorize without restrictions by the state. This made possible an unprecedented expansion in scientific inquiry-including the development by Joseph Priestly and Antoine Lavoisier of modern chemistry, critical to future improvements in illumination. Economically, this freedom enabled individuals to put scientific discoveries and methods into wealth-creating practice, harnessing the world around them in new, profitable ways-from textile manufacturing to steelmaking to coal-fired steam engines to illuminants.
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: United States, China, America, and India

313. A Brief History of U.S. Farm Policy and the Need for Free-Market Agriculture

Author:: Monica Hughes
Publication Date:: 06-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: The most important and most overlooked energy issue today is the growing crisis of global energy supply. Cheap, industrial-scale energy is essential to building, transporting, and operating everything we use, from refrigerators to Internet server farms to hospitals. It is desperately needed in the undeveloped world, where 1.6 billion people lack electricity, which contributes to untold suffering and death. And it is needed in ever-greater, more-affordable quantities in the industrialized world: Energy usage and standard of living are directly correlated. Every dollar added to the cost of energy is a dollar added to the cost of life. And if something does not change soon in the energy markets, the cost of life will become a lot higher. As demand increases in the newly industrializing world, led by China and India, supply stagnates -meaning rising prices as far as the eye can see. What is the solution? We just need the right government "energy plan," leading politicians, intellectuals, and businessmen tell us. Of course "planners" such as Barack Obama, John McCain, Al Gore, Thomas L. Friedman, T. Boone Pickens, and countless others favor different plans with different permutations and combinations of their favorite energy sources (solar, wind, biomass, ethanol, geothermal, occasionally nuclear and natural gas) and distribution networks (from decentralized home solar generators to a national centralized so-called smart grid). But each agrees that there must be a plan-that the government must lead the energy industry using its power to subsidize, mandate, inhibit, and prohibit. And each claims that his plan will lead to technological breakthroughs, more plentiful energy, and therefore a higher standard of living. Consider Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore, who claims that if only we follow his "repower American plan"-which calls for the government to ban and replace all carbon-emitting energy (currently 80 percent of overall energy and almost 100 percent of fuel energy) in ten years-we would be using fuels that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home. . . . We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world's energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses. And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America. . . . [W]e can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses. And Gore claims that, under his plan, our vehicles will run on "renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 per gallon gasoline." Another revered thinker, Thomas L. Friedman, also speaks of the transformative power of government planning, in the form of a government-engineered "green economy." In a recent book, he enthusiastically quotes an investor who claims: "The green economy is poised to be the mother of all markets, the economic investment opportunity of a lifetime." Friedman calls for "a system that will stimulate massive amounts of innovation and deployment of abundant, clean, reliable, and cheap electrons." How? Friedman tells us that there are two ways to stimulate innovation-one is short-term and the other is long-term-and we need to be doing much more of both. . . . First, there is innovation that happens naturally by the massive deployment of technologies we already have [he stresses solar and wind]. . . . The way you stimulate this kind of innovation-which comes from learning more about what you already know and doing it better and cheaper-is by generous tax incentives, regulatory incentives, renewable energy mandates, and other market-shaping mechanisms that create durable demand for these existing clean power technologies. . . . And second, there is innovation that happens by way of eureka breakthroughs from someone's lab due to research and experimentation. The way you stimulate that is by increasing government-funded research. . . . The problem with such plans and claims: Politicians and their intellectual allies have been making and trying to implement them for decades-with nothing positive (and much negative) to show for it. For example, in the late 1970s, Jimmy Carter heralded his "comprehensive energy policy," claiming it would "develop permanent and reliable new energy sources." In particular, he (like many today) favored "solar energy, for which most of the technology is already available." All the technology needed, he said, "is some initiative to initiate the growth of a large new market in our country." Since then, the government has heavily subsidized solar, wind, and other favored "alternatives," and embarked on grand research initiatives to change our energy sources-claiming that new fossil fuel and nuclear development is unnecessary and undesirable. The result? Not one single, practical, scalable source of energy. Americans get a piddling 1.1 percent of their power from solar and wind sources, and only that much because of national and state laws subsidizing and mandating them. There have been no "eureka breakthroughs," despite many Friedmanesque schemes to induce them, including conveniently forgotten debacles such as government fusion projects, the Liquid Fast Metal Breeder Reactor Program, and the Synfuels Corporation. Many good books and articles have been written-though not enough, and not widely enough read-chronicling the failures of various government-sponsored energy plans, particularly those that sought to develop "alternative energies," over the past several decades. Unfortunately, the lesson that many take from this is that we must relinquish hope for dramatic breakthroughs, lower our sights, and learn to make do with the increasing scarcity of energy. But the past failures do not warrant cynicism about the future of energy; they warrant cynicism only about the future of energy under government planning. Indeed, history provides us ample grounds for optimism about the potential for a dynamic energy market with life-changing breakthroughs-because America once had exactly such a market. For most of the 1800s, an energy market existed unlike any we have seen in our lifetimes, a market devoid of government meddling. With every passing decade, consumers could buy cheaper, safer, and more convenient energy, thanks to continual breakthroughs in technology and efficiency-topped off by the discovery and mass availability of an alternative source of energy that, through its incredible cheapness and abundance, literally lengthened and improved the lives of nearly everyone in America and millions more around the world. That alternative energy was called petroleum. By studying the rise of oil, and the market in which it rose, we will see what a dynamic energy market looks like and what makes it possible. Many claim to want the "next oil"; to that end, what could be more important than understanding the conditions that gave rise to the first oil? Today, we know oil primarily as a source of energy for transportation. But oil first rose to prominence as a form of energy for a different purpose: illumination. For millennia, men had limited success overcoming the darkness of the night with man-made light. As a result, the day span for most was limited to the number of hours during which the sun shone-often fewer than ten in the winter. Even as late as the early 1800s, the quality and availability of artificial light was little better than it had been in Greek and Roman times-which is to say that men could choose between various grades of expensive lamp oils or candles made from animal fats. But all of this began to change in the 1820s. Americans found that lighting their homes was becoming increasingly affordable-so much so that by the mid-1860s, even poor, rural Americans could afford to brighten their homes, and therefore their lives, at night, adding hours of life to their every day. What made the difference? Individual freedom, which liberated individual ingenuity. The Enlightenment and its apex, the founding of the United States of America, marked the establishment of an unprecedented form of government, one established explicitly on the principle of individual rights. According to this principle, each individual has a right to live his own life solely according to the guidance of his own mind-including the crucial right to earn, acquire, use, and dispose of the physical property, the wealth, on which his survival depends. Enlightenment America, and to a large extent Enlightenment Europe, gave men unprecedented freedom in the intellectual and economic realms. Intellectually, individuals were free to experiment and theorize without restrictions by the state. This made possible an unprecedented expansion in scientific inquiry-including the development by Joseph Priestly and Antoine Lavoisier of modern chemistry, critical to future improvements in illumination.18 Economically, this freedom enabled individuals to put scientific discoveries and methods into wealth-creating practice, harnessing the world around them in new, profitable ways-from textile manufacturing to steelmaking to coal-fired steam engines to illuminants. . . .
Topic:: Development
Political Geography:: United States and America

314. The Is–Ought Gap: Subjectivism's Technical Retreat

Author:: Craig Biddle
Publication Date:: 06-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Author's note: This is chapter 2 of my book Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It (Richmond: Glen Allen Press, 2002). Chapter 1 was reprinted in the previous issue of TOS (Spring 2009). The book is an introduction to Ayn Rand's morality of rational egoism. As we have seen [in chapter 1], subjectivism-whether "supernatural," social, or personal-fails to provide proper guidance for human action, because each version calls for human sacrifice and leads to human suffering. If we want to live and achieve genuine happiness, we need a non-sacrificial alternative that is grounded in the facts of reality. But in search of such an alternative, we are faced with a big problem: The world is full of facts. In fact, facts are all there are out there: Paris is a city in France. The Earth revolves around the Sun. Men are mortal. Acorns are potential oak trees. Computers are man-made objects. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Electrons surround the nucleus of an atom. Fire is hotter than ice. Some grass is green. People make choices. Mountains are bigger than molehills. A bush cannot speak. "Think" is a verb. The stock market rises and falls. The list goes on and on. But where among all the facts is morality? Behind a tree? Up in the sky? On the Web? In a crystal? Where? The problem is that in just looking around, facts appear to be everywhere, but morality does not appear to be anywhere. Our task is to discover moral principles in a world full of facts. To begin, note that we can identify facts on several levels. Some are directly perceivable (fire is hotter than ice; some grass is green; the Sun rises). Others must be logically inferred (heat is a function of the motion of atoms; color is a function of the wavelengths of light; the Earth revolves around the Sun). With our five senses, we can observe countless facts at the concrete, perceptual level. And with the power of our minds, we can infer even more facts on the abstract, conceptual level. The faculty that enables us to advance from the perceptual level (which we share with other animals) to the conceptual level (which is distinctive to human beings) is: reason. Reason enables us to form concepts, to use language, to discover causal relationships, and to make the logical connections necessary for the achievement of our goals. It is our means of understanding the world in ever deeper and wider ways and of applying our discoveries to our chosen ends. But reason allows us to identify facts and only facts, which alone do not seem to tell us anything about what we morally ought to do. There simply is no fact labeled "ought" out there. This is a serious problem. As human beings, we need moral guidance. Without moral guidance, how do we know the right way to spend our time or where best to put our effort? How do we know whether we should work for a living or steal from others or beg for handouts? How do we know whether we should tell the truth always or sometimes or never? How do we know if we should befriend someone, do business with him, trust him with our children, support his campaign, or grant him our vote? And how do we know the proper way to deal with criminals, tyrants, or terrorists? In order to live and achieve happiness, we need to know how to evaluate our alternatives; we need to know how in principle we should act. In order to establish and maintain relationships conducive to our life and happiness, we need to know how in principle we should evaluate and respond to the actions of other people. And in order to define and defend the social conditions necessary for a life of happiness, we need to know what in essence they are. So, since facts are all there are out there, and since reason is our means of discovering and understanding facts, the question we must answer is: How can we use reason to derive moral principles-principles regarding what people ought to do-from the facts of reality-from what is? . . .
Political Geography:: Paris and France

315. Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller

Author:: Eric Daniels
Publication Date:: 06-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: During the Great Depression, the English economist John Maynard Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, in which he argued that governments could spur employment and reinvigorate an ailing economy by borrowing and spending money. The recent financial crisis has reinvigorated interest in Keynes's ideas. Articles in the Financial Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, and Forbes have heralded the resurgence of interest in Keynesian theory. Commentators across the political spectrum, from Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz to Bruce Bartlett and Greg Mankiw, have called for a return to Keynesian economics. Congress and President Obama have enacted a gargantuan "stimulus" bill and are pursuing massive spending programs the likes of which Keynes could only have dreamed. It seems that pundits and politicians are all Keynesians now. A new book, however, argues that Keynes's theory is much more profound than most people realize. In Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller present what they regard as the essence of Keynesianism-Keynes's view of man as an animal saddled with inherent, irrational drives. These "animal spirits" have historically been ignored, say the authors, which is why Keynesianism has, at times, given way to other theories. Those who want Keynesian political policies to rise back to dominance and endure need to understand and embrace this neglected aspect of the theory. The authors point out that, because Keynes published his work in the middle of the Great Depression, his followers wanted governments to adopt his policy recommendations as soon as possible. To make his prescriptions more palatable, Akerlof and Shiller tell us, Keynesians of the time deemphasized the more insightful yet more abstruse "fundamental message" in Keynes's work. Although the watered-down version of Keynesianism was more politically acceptable, it was, according to the authors, less politically potent and more vulnerable to attack. Yes, the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations engaged in deficit spending, but they "lacked the confidence to pursue those policies far enough" (p. viii). The Keynesian borrowing and spending of World War II was more robust, Akerlof and Shiller say; consequently, it ended unemployment, became all the rage in the 1940s, and remained a widely respected policy for some time. But even this broader and longer-lasting support for Keynesian deficit-spending was bound to fizzle because the "more fundamental message of The General Theory was cast aside" (p. viii). . . .
Topic:: Economics and Government
Political Geography:: New York

316. Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law, by Philip K. Howard

Author:: David Littel
Publication Date:: 06-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: New York: Norton and Company, 2009. 221 pp. $24.95 (cloth). Reviewed by David Littel A political consensus is forming around the ideas of attorney and author Philip K. Howard. Beginning in 1990 with The Death of Common Sense and continuing through scores of articles and the work of his organization, Common Good, Howard has depicted an American legal system run wild, and he has advanced a thesis about what must be done. Political figures from Al Gore to Newt Gingrich praise his work. Self-proclaimed pragmatist Michael Bloomberg raves that Howard "offers big-picture ideas for how we can solve entrenched problems." In a prepublication review, George Will announced that Howard's latest book, Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law, "surely will be 2009's most-needed book on public affairs." The bulk of Life Without Lawyers is an indictment of American law, covering everything from public schools to administrative regulations to civil lawsuits. As in his earlier books, Howard describes a series of nightmare scenarios drawn partly from his own experience as a practicing attorney and partly from other sources. For example, he tells the story of a family-owned dry cleaning business in Washington, D.C. that was sued for $54 million because of a lost pair of pants. The plaintiff calculated his damages based on a $1,500 consumer fraud penalty multiplied several times over in addition to $15,000 per weekend for a rental car to take his laundry to a more reliable establishment, $542,000 for his own time in pursuing the matter, and $500,000 for mental anguish. The suit was not dismissed but was allowed to linger for two years, costing the business owners more than $100,000 in legal fees (p. 72). . . .
Topic:: Law
Political Geography:: New York and America

317. Fooling Some of the People All the Time Updated and Revised: A Long Short Story, by David Einhorn

Author:: Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:: 06-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: The scene is the offices of Donaldson, Lufkin Jenrette (DLJ) in late 1991. Analysts here are regularly given deadlines requiring them to work through the night; hundred-hour workweeks are the norm, and the environment is extremely hectic-even by Wall Street standards. It is three o'clock on a Sunday morning, and a young David Einhorn sits at his desk trying to finish the job he was given. A few months into this position, he has lost fifteen pounds due to the stress (p. 12). Two years later, Einhorn takes a job working for Siegler, Collery Company, a mid-sized hedge fund with about $150 million under management. He learns "how to invest and perform investment research from Peter [Collery], a patient and dedicated mentor" (p. 12). He spends weeks "researching a company, reading the SEC filings, building spreadsheets and talking to management and analysts." He then turns in his work to Peter-who, having read everything, makes a detailed list of questions that Einhorn wishes he had asked (p. 12). In 1996, confident in his own abilities, Einhorn resigns from the firm to start his own. The original business plan is written on the back of a napkin. The original office is a 130-square-foot, windowless room. He names the firm Greenlight Capital, as suggested by his wife, who also gave him the green light. As Einhorn explains, "When you leave a good job to go off on your own and don't expect to make money for a while, you name the firm whatever your wife says you should" (p. 12). Greenlight Capital is a "long-short" hedge fund-which means a fund that "goes long" on investment opportunities that it thinks are substantially undervalued and "short" on those it regards as substantially overvalued. Einhorn succinctly explains these terms: Short selling is the opposite of owning, or being long a stock. When you are long, the idea is to buy low and sell high. In a short sale, you still want to buy low and sell high, but in this case the sale comes before the purchase. It works this way: Your broker borrows shares from a stockholder who lends them to you, and you sell them in the market to a new buyer, thus establishing a short position. To close out the position at a later date, you buy shares in the market and return them to your broker to "cover" your short, and the broker returns them to the owner. Your profit or loss is the difference between the price you receive when you sell the shares short and the price you pay to buy them back. The more the stock falls, the more money you make-and vice versa (p. 5). For instance, on the long side, Greenlight invests 15 percent of the fund in C. R. Anthony, "a small retailer that had recently emerged from bankruptcy and returned to profitability. The market valued the company at $18 million despite its having twice that in net working capital (current assets less all liabilities)." When other investors (finally) notice the discount at which it is selling relative to net working capital, the stock increases substantially. And when they start to value the company based on its future earnings potential, the stock shoots up 500 percent from Greenlight's initial investment (page 19-20). On the short side, Greenlight sells Sirrom Capital, a business development company that Einhorn considers overvalued. "By tracking performance of [Sirrom's] loans from the year of origination, we determined that although the overall portfolio statistics appeared appealing, rapid asset growth masked poor results. . . . We estimated that from inception to final maturity, 40 percent of the loans went bad" (p. 29). After researching how Sirrom has accounted for bad loans in the past, Einhorn predicts that the company will have to recognize a significant loss on its loans in the near future. If this is correct, the market will lower its estimation of both Sirrom's current assets and its future earnings potential; the company will be unable to sell new stock in amounts large enough to mask past errors; and the price of its current shares will decline accordingly. Einhorn's prediction proves accurate. Sirrom is able to sell shares to the public only one more time before reporting disappointing results, at which point the shares collapse from a high of $32 to just under $3 (p. 30). The foregoing are just two of Greenlight's many such successes. By figuring out the true state of a company, comparing it with the state of the company as reported by its management team or as judged by the market, and then going long or short accordingly, Greenlight proceeds to earn spectacular returns for its clients. The company's earnings and assets under management soar-as does peer respect for Einhorn himself. Because of Greenlight's success in shorting Sirrom, Einhorn is approached by a hedge fund specializing in financial institutions for his opinion on a company with a structure identical to Sirrom's and with seemingly identical problems. The company in question is Allied Corporation (p. 43). . . .

318. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

Author:: Heike Larson
Publication Date:: 06-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Free marketeers reading the news these days cannot help but feel depressed. Media reports would lead us to believe that entrepreneurs are exploiters, that global trade hurts rather than helps people in America-in short, that capitalism has failed and that only the "change" offered us by central planners can alleviate our economic woes. In this climate, Marc Levinson's book The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger provides a welcome respite and intellectual refueling for weary capitalists. It tells a suspenseful story of achievement-replete with many twists and turns and a swashbuckling American hero-that will leave you wanting to run to the nearest container port to admire with newfound appreciation the industrial machinery that impacts almost every part of our daily lives. The Box, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the first sailing of a containership christened The Ideal-X, tells the story of how a seemingly mundane thing-a metal box with a wooden floor-managed to fundamentally change the world we live in. Until the 1960s, shipping had not changed much in decades. Handling cargo was a labor-intensive activity, and transportation costs and times-whether by land or by sea-were huge obstacles to trade, often making transcontinental, let alone global, trade economically unfeasible. In the 1950s, moving goods by ship was "a hugely complicated project," involving "millions of people who drove, dragged, or pushed cargo through city streets to or from the piers" (p. 16). Docks were cluttered with every kind of good imaginable, "steel drums of cleaning compound and beef tallow alongside 440-pound bales of cotton and animal skins"-all of which needed to be loaded and unloaded manually by gangs of longshoremen (p. 17). The process of loading and unloading a single ship during a single visit to a port often took weeks and accounted for between 60 and 75 percent of shipping costs. And, given the difficulties inherent and time involved in moving goods housed in a variety of different containers, it was imperative that factories locate close to docks for fast access to raw materials. Transportation costs and long delivery times made long-distance trade challenging and expensive-even before factoring in the heavy regulation that plagued the shipping industry. Recognizing the great expense and wasted time inherent in shipping practices of the day, two companies-both outsiders to the maritime shipping industry-developed in parallel an alternative system. Malcom McLean, an entrepreneur who grew his trucking company from a single vehicle purchased on credit during the Great Depression to one of the largest in America, bought a marginal East Coast maritime shipping line using "an unprecedented piece of financial and legal engineering" to circumvent regulations that prevented trucking companies from owning ship lines (p. 45). McLean set out to design and build a new shipping system from scratch based on a novel approach to the business: Whereas most shipping executives at the time believed that their business was operating ships, "McLean's fundamental insight, commonplace today but quite radical in the 1950s, was that the shipping industry's business was moving cargo" (p. 53, emphasis added). Within less then two years, McLean and his company, Pan-Atlantic, bootstrapped the first viable container system, in which cargo was loaded into stackable metal and wooden boxes of uniform dimensions, eliminating much of the labor required for and many of the problems inherent in loading ships with goods housed in a variety of containers. Further, "McLean understood that reducing the cost of shipping goods required not just a metal box but an entire new way of handling freight. Every part of the system-ports, ships, cranes, storage facilities, trucks, trains and the operations of the shippers themselves-would have to change. In that understanding, he was years ahead of almost everyone else in the transportation industry" (p. 53). His team of entrepreneurial, fast-moving engineers, managers, and partners designed, among many other things, the 33-foot box (only small steel containers were previously available); developed a quick-release locking system that eliminated the need to chain containers to ships or trucks; built a new trailer chassis to guide containers automatically into place; and put in place large cranes equipped with spreader bars-devices stretching the entire length of a container that enabled crane operators to attach and release hooks at the container's corner with the flick of a switch, thereby eliminating the need for longshoremen to climb up to each container corner and attach chains manually. And they accomplished all of these things while dealing with skeptical regulators who doubted the safety of containers and were pressured by truck and rail competitors to prohibit the container shipping experiment. When the first containership sailed on April 24, 1956, McLean's detailed cost tracking system showed clearly the benefits of the new system: "Loading loose cargo on a medium-sized cargo ship cost $5.83 per ton in 1956. McLean's experts pegged the cost of loading the Ideal-X at 15.8 cents per ton. With numbers like that, the container seemed to have a future" (p. 52). . . .
Topic:: Economics
Political Geography:: America

319. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Author:: Amy Peikoff
Publication Date:: 06-2009
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: You strive to be as productive as possible in your career. You have relationships with friends and family you want to enjoy and nurture. You have hobbies or other interests you want to pursue. You have a car, a home, or other physical things that command your attention. You have a body to maintain. Your life is full and, at least at times, you feel overwhelmed by all the commitments you have made to yourself and others. At those times you find it difficult, perhaps impossible, to "live in the moment"-to focus on whatever you are or need to be doing right now, and thereby make the most of your time and life. If you have explored other strategies for managing your time and life, then you might be skeptical of David Allen's claim at the beginning of Getting Things Done (GTD): "It's possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control" (p. 3). You may be even more doubtful when Allen tells you that, although he will incorporate "many of the things you've been doing instinctively and intuitively all along" into "a new behavior set," the results will nonetheless "blow your mind" (p. xiv). The promise to "blow your mind" is not representative of Allen's style in GTD, however. The book is a logically structured presentation of an approach to time and life management that is grounded in good epistemology and designed to facilitate productivity in light of certain features and limitations of the human mind. The problem, Allen says, is that all the commitments you have made are "on your mind," which overwhelms you to the point that you cannot think clearly and be productive. The question becomes, why are all these things on your mind? "[T]he reason something is 'on your mind,'" Allen writes, "is that you want it to be different than it currently is" (p. 15). Allen's formulation is deliberate. Many people have not really thought about the commitments they have made, and therefore have neither "clarified exactly what the intended outcome is" nor "decided what the very next physical action step is" (p. 15). And yet, inherent in allowing a commitment into one's life, Allen says, is a further commitment: a "commitment to . . . define and clarify its meaning" (p. 17). Allen explains that, in order for your mind to let go of this corollary commitment so it can be clear and ready to focus on the task at hand, you must envision the outcome you desire and decide what is the very next physical action you must take in order to move the current state of affairs toward that outcome. Thus arises one of two main prongs of the GTD approach, "disciplining yourself to make front-end decisions about all the 'inputs' you let into your life so that you will always have a plan for 'next actions' that you can implement or renegotiate at any moment" (pp. 3-4). You must do whatever thinking is necessary to define outcomes and requisite actions for each of your commitments, from the simplest to the most complex. Allen facilitates this thinking by introducing an intentionally broad definition of "project": "any desired result that requires more than one action step" (p. 37). Some things that Allen calls "projects" are so simple-for instance, "make guacamole for party"-that one can immediately call to mind not just the next action, but all actions required to complete them. More-complex projects may require the use of a more elaborate project-planning model, which Allen provides (chaps. 3, 10). Such a model is needed because, insofar as the next actions are not yet identified, a complex project on a "to-do" list will seem vague, in need of clarification, and thus in need of your attention. The goal is to see all projects as a sequence of discrete actions because, as Allen puts it, "You don't actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it" (p. 38).

320. From the Editor

Author:: Craig Biddle
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Welcome to the now-orange-for-better-visibility-on-the-newsstands Fall 2008 issue of TOS. Here is a preview of the seven articles at hand:My essay, "McBama vs. America," surveys the promises of John McCain and Barack Obama, shows that these intentions are at odds with the American ideal of individual rights, demonstrates that the cause of such political aims is a particular moral philosophy (shared by McCain and Obama), and calls for Americans to repudiate that morality and to embrace instead a morality that supports the American ideal.
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: Japan and America

321. The Resurgence of Big Government

Author:: Yaron Brook
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Following the economic disasters of the 1960s and 1970s, brought on by the statist policies of the political left, America seemed to change course. Commentators called the shift the "swing to the right"-that is, toward capitalism. From about 1980 to 2000, a new attitude took hold: the idea that government should be smaller, that recessions are best dealt with through tax cuts and deregulation, that markets work pretty effectively, and that many existing government interventions are doing more harm than good. President Bill Clinton found it necessary to declare, "The era of big government is over." Today that attitude has virtually vanished from the public stage. We are now witnessing a swing back to the left-toward statism. As a wave of recent articles have proclaimed: The era of big government is back. The evidence is hard to miss. Consider our current housing and credit crisis. From day one, it was blamed on the market and a lack of oversight by regulators who were said to be "asleep at the wheel." In response to the crisis, the government, the policy analysts, the media, and the American people demanded action, and everyone understood this to mean more government, more regulation, more controls. We got our wish. First came the Fed's panicked slashing of interest rates. Then the bailout of Bear Stearns. Then the bailout of Freddie Mac. Then a $300 billion mortgage bill, which passed by a substantial margin and was signed into law by President Bush. No doubt more is to come. All of this intervention, of course, is supported by our presidential candidates. Both blame Wall Street for the current problems and vow to increase the power of the Fed's and the SEC's financial regulators. John McCain has announced that there are "some greedy people on Wall Street that perhaps need to be punished." Both he and Barack Obama envision an ever-growing role for government in the marketplace, each promises to raise taxes in some form or another, and both support more regulations, particularly on Wall Street. Few doubt they will keep these promises. What do Americans think of all this? A recent poll by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News found that 53 percent of Americans want the government to "do more to solve problems." Twelve years earlier, Americans said they opposed government interference by a 2-to-1 margin. In fact, our government has been "doing more" throughout this decade. While President Bush has paid lip service to freer markets, his administration has engineered a vast increase in the size and reach of government. He gave us Sarbanes-Oxley, the largest expansion of business regulation in decades. He gave us the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the largest new entitlement program in thirty years. He gave us the "No Child Left Behind Act," the largest expansion of the federal government in education since 1979. This is to say nothing of the orgy of spending over which he has presided: His 2009 budget stands at more than $3 trillion-an increase of more than a $1 trillion since he took office. All of this led one conservative columnist to label Bush "a big government conservative." It was not meant as a criticism. Americans entered the 21st century enjoying the greatest prosperity in mankind's history. And many agreed that this prosperity was mainly the result of freeing markets from government intervention, not only in America, but also around the world. Yet today, virtually everyone agrees that markets have failed. Why? What happened? To identify the cause of today's swing to the left, we need first to understand the cause and consequences of the swing to the right.
Topic:: Education and Government
Political Geography:: America

322. The Mystical Ethics of the New Atheists

Author:: Alan Germani
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Examines the moral ideas of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins, exposes some curious truths about their ethics, and provides sound advice for theists and atheists alike who wish to discover and uphold a rational, secular morality.
Topic:: Islam
Political Geography:: Middle East

323. Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America

Author:: Paul Hsieh
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Identifies the theory behind the Massachusetts mandatory health insurance program, exposes the program as a fiasco, explains why the theory had to fail in practice, and sheds light on the only genuine, rights-respecting means to affordable, accessible health care for Americans.
Topic:: Government and Health
Political Geography:: America

324. Deeper Than Kelo: The Roots of the Property Rights Crisis

Author:: Eric Daniels
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: On June 23, 2005, the United States Supreme Court's acquiescence in a municipal government's use of eminent domain to advance "economic development" goals sent shockwaves across the country. When the Court announced its decision in Kelo v. City of New London, average homeowners realized that their houses could be condemned, seized, and handed over to other private parties. They wanted to know what had gone wrong, why the Constitution and Fifth Amendment had failed to protect their property rights. The crux of the decision, and the source of so much indignation, was the majority opinion of Justice John Paul Stevens, which contended that "economic development" was such a "traditional and long accepted function of government" that it fell under the rubric of "public use." If a municipality or state determined, through a "carefully considered" planning process, that taking land from one owner and giving it to another would lead to increased tax revenue, job growth, and the revitalization of depressed urban areas, the Court would allow it. If the government had to condemn private homes to meet "the diverse and always evolving needs of society," Stevens wrote, so be it. The reaction to the Kelo decision was swift and widespread. Surveys showed that 80 to 90 percent of Americans opposed the decision. Politicians from both parties spoke out against it. Such strange bedfellows as Rush Limbaugh and Ralph Nader were united in their opposition to the Court's ruling. Legislatures in more than forty states proposed and most then passed eminent domain "reforms." In the 2006 elections, nearly one dozen states considered anti-Kelo ballot initiatives, and ten such measures passed. On the one-year anniversary of the decision, President Bush issued an executive order that barred federal agencies from using eminent domain to take property for economic development purposes (even though the primary use of eminent domain is by state and local agencies). The "backlash" against the Court's Kelo decision continues today by way of reform efforts in California and other states. Public outcry notwithstanding, the Kelo decision did not represent a substantial worsening of the state of property rights in America. Rather, the Kelo decision reaffirmed decades of precedent-precedent unfortunately rooted in the origins of the American system. Nor is eminent domain the only threat to property rights in America. Even if the federal and state governments abolished eminent domain tomorrow, property rights would still be insecure, because the cause of the problem is more fundamental than law or politics. In order to identify the fundamental cause of the property rights crisis, we must observe how the American legal and political system has treated property rights over the course of the past two centuries and take note of the ideas offered in support of their rulings and regulations. In so doing, we will see that the assault on property rights in America is the result of a long chain of historical precedent moored in widespread acceptance of a particular moral philosophy.Property, Principle, and Precedent In the Revolutionary era, America's Founding Fathers argued that respect for property rights formed the very foundation of good government. For instance, Arthur Lee, a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, wrote that "the right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive a people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty." In a 1792 essay on property published in the National Gazette, James Madison expressed the importance of property to the founding generation. "Government is instituted to protect property of every sort," he explained, "this being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own." Despite this prevalent attitude-along with the strong protections for property contained in the United States Constitution's contracts clause, ex post facto clause, and the prohibition of state interference with currency-the founders accepted the idea that the power of eminent domain, the power to forcibly wrest property from private individuals, was a legitimate power of sovereignty resting in all governments. Although the founders held that the "despotic power" of eminent domain should be limited to taking property for "public use," and that the victims of such takings were due "just compensation," their acceptance of its legitimacy was the tip of a wedge. The principle that property rights are inalienable had been violated. If the government can properly take property for "public use," then property rights are not absolute, and the extent to which they can be violated depends on the meaning ascribed to "public use." From the earliest adjudication of eminent domain cases, it became clear that the term "public use" would cause problems. Although the founders intended eminent domain to be used only for public projects such as roads, 19th-century legislatures began using it to transfer property to private parties, such as mill and dam owners or canal and railroad companies, on the grounds that they were open to public use and provided wide public benefits. Add to this the fact that, during the New Deal, the Supreme Court explicitly endorsed the idea that property issues were to be determined not by reference to the principle of individual rights but by legislative majorities, and you have the foundation for all that followed. . . .
Topic:: Development and Economics
Political Geography:: United States, America, and London

325. The Menace of Pragmatism

Author:: Tara Smith
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Author's note: This essay is based on a lecture delivered at the Objectivist Conference (OCON) held in Newport Beach, CA, July 2008, and retains some of the informal character of an oral presentation. While people commonly disagree about competing world views and substantive ideologies-arguing the merits of different religious creeds or value systems, for instance, of environmentalism or dominant business practices, of volunteerism or the specifics of political platforms-many are blind to the fact that nearly all these ideologies are fueled by a single, more basic philosophy: pragmatism. As people increasingly complain that political candidates are "all the same," in fact, many of the ideas and approaches supported by these candidates do reflect a shared method. It is important to understand this common element not simply because of the breadth of its influence, but because of its destructiveness. While pragmatism presents itself as a tool of reason and enjoys the image of mature moderation, of common sense and practical "realism," in truth, it is anything but realistic or practical. Pragmatism has become a highly corrosive force in people's thinking. And insofar as it is thinking that drives actions-the actions of individuals and correlatively, the course of history-as long as a person or a nation is infected by a warped philosophical approach, genuine progress will be impossible. In this essay, I seek to demonstrate the stealth but all too live menace that pragmatism poses. Pragmatism is not a substantive set of doctrines so much as a way of thinking, a unifying approach that helps to sustain an array of doctrines that are, in their content, irrational. Because it is a method, however, and informs the way that a practitioner tackles any issue, it proves much more difficult to unroot than an erroneous conclusion. Moreover, thanks to its positive image, pragmatism tends to give harmful ideas a good name, bestowing them with the misplaced aura of reason. It thereby makes people who wish to be rational all the more susceptible to those ideas. I will begin by clarifying exactly what pragmatism is and proceed to supply evidence of its prevalence. I will then consider the distinctive appeal of pragmatism, as well as the heart of its error-where its goes wrong. Next, I will explain its destructive impact, the principal means by which pragmatism is, indeed, corrosive. Finally, I will offer some thoughts concerning means of combating its influence. What Pragmatism Is As a formal school of philosophy, pragmatism was founded by C. S. Peirce (1839-1914) in the late 19th century. Its more renowned early advocates included William James (1842-1910) and John Dewey (1859-1952). Primarily, pragmatism is a way of tackling philosophical questions. This, according to its founders, is what made pragmatism different from all previous philosophy. James wrote that pragmatism does not stand for any results or specific substantive doctrines; rather, it is distinguished by its method of "clarifying ideas" in practical terms by tracing the practical consequences of accepting one idea or another. The meaning and the truth of any claim depend entirely on its practical effects. The mind, accordingly, should not be thought of as a mirror held up to the external world, but as a tool whose role is not to discover, but to do, to act. What, then, should we make of the concept of truth?-or the concept of reality? Don't we need to respect those, in order to achieve practical consequences? Well, of course truth exists, says James, but truth is not a stagnant property. Rather, an idea becomes true-"truth happens to an idea." Truth "lives on a credit system" in his view; what a truth has going for it is that people treat it in a certain way. The true is the "expedient," "any idea upon which we can ride." Any idea is true so long as it is "profitable." All truths do have something in common, then, namely, "that they pay." The question to ask of any proposed idea is: What is its "cash value in experiential terms?" The traditional notion of purely objective truth, however, is "nowhere to be found." The world we live in is "malleable, waiting to receive its final touches at our hands." As Peirce memorably put it, "there is absolutely no difference between a hard thing and a soft thing so long as they are not brought to the test." In the view of a much more recent and influential pragmatist, Richard Rorty, truth is "what your contemporaries let you get away with." To call a statement true is essentially to give it a rhetorical pat on the back. In short, for the pragmatists, we find no ready-made reality. Instead, we create reality. Correlatively, there are no absolutes-no facts, no fixed laws of logic, no certainty. . . .

326. How the FDA Violates Rights and Hinders Health

Author:: Stella Daily
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: This article is dedicated to Anna Tomalis, a young girl who died of liver cancer on August 15, 2008. Anna's parents desperately sought experimental treatment that might have saved her life, but were delayed for months by FDA bureaucracy. Anna finally received approval to obtain treatment through a clinical trial in July, but died after receiving just one round of treatment. She was thirteen years old. Abigail Burroughs was not the typical cancer patient: She was just nineteen years old when she was diagnosed with squamous cell cancer that had spread to her neck and lungs. Her prognosis was poor, but a then-experimental drug, Erbitux, offered the hope of saving her life. Abigail was denied that hope by the Food and Drug Administration. Because the drug was considered experimental, she could receive it only as part of a clinical trial-and Abigail was ineligible to participate in any trials at the time. Despite the best efforts of her family, friends, and doctor, Abigail was unable to receive the treatment that might have saved her life. At twenty-one years old, Abigail died of her disease. Abigail's father, Frank Burroughs, thought other patients with life-threatening illnesses should not be denied the ability to try any treatment that might give them a chance. In his daughter's name, he formed the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs, which sued the FDA in 2003. The group argued that the FDA's restrictions on access to experimental treatments constitute a violation of the right to self-defense as well as of the Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. In August 2007, the Appeals Court of the District of Columbia struck a blow against the Abigail Alliance, and against individual rights, when it ruled that patients, even the terminally ill, do not have the right to receive treatment that has not been approved by the FDA. Erbitux has since been approved by the FDA to treat cancer of the head and neck-too late, of course, for Abigail Burroughs. How has America come to a point where the government denies dying patients the right to try to save their own lives? To answer that question, let us begin with a brief history of the Food and Drug Administration.A Brief History of the FDA Prior to the 20th century, the government did not regulate pharmaceutical products in the United States. Although Congress had considered federal regulations on food and drug safety as early as 1879, it had refrained from passing any legislation in this regard. However, with the muckraking journalism of the early 1900s, and especially with the publication of Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, which portrayed unsavory practices in the meatpacking industry, the American public clamored for laws to ensure the safe production of food and drugs. This public outcry pushed Congress to pass federal legislation in 1906. As the resulting Food and Drugs Act applied to drugs specifically, products were required to be sold only at certain levels of purity, strength, and quality; and ingredients considered dangerous (such as morphine or alcohol) had to be listed on the product's label. Violators would be subject to seizure of goods, fines, or imprisonment. Thus, in order to enforce the Act, the Food and Drug Administration was born. In its early years, the agency focused primarily on food rather than on pharmaceuticals, but in 1937 it increased its focus on drugs after a new formulation of sulfanilamide, a drug that had previously been successfully used to treat certain bacterial infections, proved to be deadly. The drug's manufacturer, S. E. Massengill Company, had dissolved an effective drug in a toxic solvent. More than one hundred people, babies and children among them, died as a result of taking Massengill's product, known as Elixir Sulfanilamide. Under the 1906 Food and Drugs Act, the FDA was not authorized to prosecute Massengill for selling an unsafe drug, and the agency had the power to recall Elixir Sulfanilamide only via a technicality. Because "elixir" was defined as a drug dissolved in alcohol, and because Massengill's formulation used the nonalcoholic solvent ethylene glycol, the product was technically mislabeled, bringing it under FDA jurisdiction and enabling the agency to recall the product. The public and legislators wanted more: They wanted the FDA not only to recall mislabeled products, but to prevent the sale of unsafe drugs in the first place. Thus, popular demand gave rise to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938, which greatly expanded the FDA's authority. The most important change brought about by this Act was a shift in the burden of proof. Rather than prosecuting a drugmaker after the fact for having fraudulently marketed a product, the FDA would now require proof of safety before a drug could be marketed at all. (Note that this required manufacturers to prove a negative-i.e., that a given drug would not harm consumers.) After World War II, pharmaceutical companies came under still more scrutiny. Then, as now, complaints about the cost of drugs reached Congress, and in 1961 Senator Estes Kefauver led the charge in an investigation not only of drug pricing, but of the relationship between the drug industry and the FDA. Kefauver sought to pass legislation that would increase the agency's authority over drug production, distribution, and advertising. Whereas previously proof of safety alone was required to gain FDA approval, the proposed law would require drug manufacturers also to prove the efficacy of their products. Kefauver's bill might have languished in congressional debate but for the emergence at that time of data showing that thalidomide, which was then sold as a sleep aid and antinausea medication for pregnant women, caused severe birth defects in the children of women who took it. Thalidomide had not yet been approved for use in the United States at that time due to concerns of an FDA reviewer over a different side effect noted in the drug's application for approval. The drug was widely used in other countries, however, and the babies of many women who used it were born with grotesquely deformed limbs. As their harrowing images flooded the media, Americans realized they had narrowly escaped inflicting these deformities on their own children. The resulting public outcry led to Kefauver's bill being made law in 1962. This law served as the cornerstone for the wide powers that the FDA acquired thereafter, from requiring companies to include warnings in drug advertisements to dictating the way companies must investigate their own experimental compounds. Thus, although the scope and power of the FDA were modest at the agency's inception, its scope widened and its power increased markedly in the decades that followed. Now, a century later, the agency's purview includes foods and drugs for humans and animals, cosmetics, medical devices (including everything from breast implants to powered wheelchairs), blood and tissues, vaccines, and any products deemed to be radiation emitters (including cell phones and lasers). And the agency's power is nothing short of enormous. . . .
Topic:: Health
Political Geography:: America

327. Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions

Author:: Elan Journo
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: The measure of success in the Iraq war has undergone a curious progression. Early on, the Bush administration held up the vision of a peaceful, prosperous, pro-Western Iraq as its benchmark. But the torture chambers of Saddam Hussein were replaced by the horrors of a sadistic sectarian war and a fierce insurgency that consumed thousands of American lives. And the post-invasion Iraqi regime, it turns out, is led by Islamist parties allied with religious militias and intimately tied to the belligerent Iranian regime. The benchmark, if we can call it that, then shrank to the somewhat lesser vision of an Iraqi government that can stand up on its own, so that America can stand down. But that did not materialize, either. So we heard that if only the fractious Sunni and Shiite factions in the Iraqi government could have breathing space to reconcile their differences, and if only we could do more to blunt the force of the insurgency, that would be progress. To that end, in early 2007, the administration ordered a "surge" of tens of thousands more American forces to rein in the chaos in Iraq. Today, we hear John McCain and legions of conservatives braying that we are, in fact, winning (some go so far as to say we have already won). Why? Because the "surge" has reduced the number of attacks on U.S. troops to the levels seen a few years ago (when the insurgency was raging wildly) and the number of Iraqis slaughtering their fellow countrymen has taken a momentary dip. Victory, apparently, requires only clearing out insurgents (for a while) from their perches in some neighborhoods, even though Teheran's influence in the country grows and Islamists carve out Taliban-like fiefdoms in Iraq. The goals in Iraq "have visibly been getting smaller," observes John Agresto, a once keen but now disillusioned supporter of the campaign (p. 172). Iraq, he argues contra his fellow conservatives, has been a fiasco. "If we call it 'success,' it's only because we've lowered the benchmark to near zero" (p. 191). . . .
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Iraq and America

328. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Author:: Eric Daniels
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: One of the distinguishing features of American life is the large degree of freedom we have in making choices about our lives. When choosing our diets, we have the freedom to choose everything from subsisting exclusively on junk food to consuming meticulously planned portions of fat, protein, and carbohydrate. When choosing how to conduct ourselves financially, we have the freedom to choose everything from a highly leveraged lifestyle of debt to a modest save-for-a-rainy-day approach. In every area of life, from health care to education to personal relationships, we are free to make countless decisions that affect our long-term happiness and prosperity-or lack thereof. According to Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, professors at the University of Chicago and authors of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, this freedom and range of options is problematic. The problem, they say, is that most people, when given the opportunity, make bad choices; although Americans naturally want to do what is best for themselves, human fallibility often prevents them from knowing just what that is. "Most of us are busy, our lives are complicated, and we can't spend all our time thinking and analyzing everything" (p. 22). Average Americans, say Thaler and Sunstein, tend to favor the status quo, fall victim to temptation, use mental shortcuts, lack self-control, and follow the herd; as a result, they eat too much junk food, save too little, make bad investments, and buy faddish but useless products. Many Americans, according to the authors, are more like Homer Simpson (impulsive and easily fooled) than homo economicus (cool, calculating, and rational). "One of our major goals in this book," they note, "is to see how the world might be made easier, or safer, for the Homers among us" (p. 22). The particular areas where these Homers need the most help are those in which choices "have delayed effects . . . [are] difficult, infrequent, and offer poor feedback, and those for which the relation between choice and experience is ambiguous" (pp. 77-78).The central theme of Nudge is the idea that government and the private sector can improve people's choices by manipulating the "choice architecture" they face. As Thaler and Sunstein explain, people's choices are often shaped by the way in which alternatives are presented. If a doctor explains to his patient that a proposed medical procedure results in success in 90 percent of cases, that patient will often make a different decision from the one he would have made if the doctor had told him that one in ten patients dies from the procedure. Free markets, the authors argue, too often cater to and exploit people's tendencies to make less than rational choices. Faced with choices about extended warranties or health care plans or investing in one's education, only the most exceptional and rational people will make the "correct" choices. Most people, the authors argue, cannot avoid the common foibles of bad thinking; thus we ought to adopt a better way of framing and structuring choices so that people will be more likely to make better decisions and thereby do better for themselves. Hence the title: By presenting information in a specific way, "choice architects" can "nudge" the chooser in the "right" direction, even while maintaining his "freedom of choice."
Topic:: Health
Political Geography:: America and Chicago

329. The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack

Author:: Joe Kroeger
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: In the years since the attacks of 9/11, there have been numerous attempts by terrorists to attack Americans on our own soil, but all of these attempts have been foiled. Who is responsible for this remarkable record, and how have they achieved it? These questions are answered in Ronald Kessler's recent book, The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack, which surveys the work of the individuals involved in America's intelligence community since 9/11. In twenty-seven brief chapters, Kessler documents the post-9/11 work of the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency (NSA), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), and other agencies-showing the organizational, tactical, and technological changes that have occurred, along with their positive results. The book begins by recounting the events of September 11, 2001, from President Bush being informed of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center, to his "We're at war" declaration, to the initial coordination of efforts among the vice president, the military, and law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Proceeding from there, Kessler shows how the CIA immediately linked some of the hijackers to Al Qaeda and how, a few days later, the president began redirecting the priorities of the FBI and the Justice Department from prosecuting terrorists to preventing attacks. . . .
Political Geography:: America

330. The Tyranny of the Market: Why You Can't Always Get What You Want

Author:: Eric Daniels
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: According to Joel Waldfogel, a professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School of Business, "a dominant strand of current thinking" regards markets as superior to government when it comes to providing consumers with what they want. When government undertakes the provision of goods, the products offered are limited to those that meet with the approval of the majority, whereas "[m]arkets are thought to avoid the tyranny of the majority because in markets each person can decide what she wants." According to this dominant argument, he writes, "what's available to me in markets depends only on my preferences, not on anyone else's" (p. 2). In his recent book, The Tyranny of the Market, Waldfogel challenges this assumption. When one considers what actually happens in free markets, when one considers the products available therein, says Waldfogel, "it's clear that you can be better off in your capacity as a consumer of a particular product as more consumers share your preferences" (p. 4). In other words, you are more likely to get exactly what you want if your tastes are shared by the majority and less likely to get exactly what you want if your tastes differ from the majority. Thus, Waldfogel contends, when it comes to providing the goods that people want, "the market does not generally avoid the tyranny of the majority" any more than does a democratic political system that allocates goods (p. 6). Waldfogel's goal is to examine "how markets actually work" in order to allow policy makers and citizens to balance the shortcomings of markets against the shortcomings of government and "to determine an appropriate mix in each arena" (p. 36). Toward this end, he leads the reader through a series of examples in which there appears to be a breakdown in the market provision of goods. . . .
Topic:: Government

331. First into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War by George Weller, edited and with an essay

Author:: John David Lewis
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: During World War II, the prime source of information for Americans about the war overseas was the dispatches of foreign correspondents-men who put their lives on the line in war zones to report the truth. George Weller was a giant among such men. Captured by the Nazis and traded for a German journalist, Weller watched the Belgian Congolese Army attack Italians in Ethiopia, saw the invasion of Crete, interviewed Charles de Gaulle in South Africa following an escape through Lisbon, and overcame malaria to report on the war in the Pacific. He was the first foreign correspondent trained as a paratrooper, and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his report of an appendectomy on a submarine. He wrote the book Singapore is Silent in 1942 after seeing the city fall to the Japanese, and he advocated a global system of United States bases in his 1943 book Bases Overseas. After witnessing Japan's surrender on September 2, 1945, he broke General Douglas MacArthur's order against travel to Nagasaki by impersonating an American colonel and taking a train to the bombed-out city. In a period of six weeks, he sent typewritten dispatches totaling some fifty thousand words back to American newspapers through official channels of the military occupation. Under MacArthur's directives, they were censored and never made it into print. Weller died in 2002 thinking his dispatches had been lost. Months later his son, Anthony Weller, found a crate of moldy papers with the only surviving carbon copies. Anthony Weller edited the dispatches and included his own essay about his father, resulting in this priceless addition to our information about World War II in the Pacific, and the birth of the atomic age. The importance of the dispatches, however, extends far beyond the value of the information from Nagasaki. George Weller is a voice from a past generation, and the publication of his censored dispatches raises a series of deeply important issues and, in the process, reveals an immense cultural divide between his world and ours today. On September 8, 1945, two days after he arrived in Nagasaki, Weller wrote his third dispatch concerning Nagasaki itself. He described wounded Japanese in two of Nagasaki's undestroyed hospitals, and recorded the question posed by his official guide: Showing them to you, as the first American outsider to reach Nagasaki since the surrender, your propaganda-conscious official guide looks meaningfully in your face and wants to know: "What do you think?" What this question means is: Do you intend writing that America did something inhuman in loosing this weapon against Japan? That is what we want you to write (p. 37). What would many reporters today write if asked this question by bombed enemy civilians? . . .
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Japan, America, Germany, and Nagasaki

332. McBama vs. America

Author:: Craig Biddle
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Surveys the promises of John McCain and Barack Obama, shows that these intentions are at odds with the American ideal of individual rights, demonstrates that the cause of such political aims is a particular moral philosophy (shared by McCain and Obama), and calls for Americans to repudiate that morality and to embrace instead a morality that supports the American ideal.
Political Geography:: America and Europe

333. From the Editor

Author:: Craig Biddle
Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: No abstract is available.
Topic:: Economics
Political Geography:: America

334. Letters and Replies

Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: No abstract is available.
Political Geography:: New York and California

335. Capitalism and the Moral High Ground

Author:: Craig Biddle
Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Concretizes the selfishness-enabling nature of capitalism and shows why this feature makes it the only moral social system on earth.
Topic:: Economics
Political Geography:: America

336. Reason or Faith: The Republican Alternative

Author:: John David Lewis
Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Analyzes the resounding Republican defeat and shows that the party faces a fundamental decision that will determine whether it orchestrates a comeback or stumbles into further defeat.
Topic:: Education and Government
Political Geography:: Taliban

337. Net Neutrality: Toward a Stupid Internet

Author:: Raymond C. Niles
Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: The Internet is an achievement of historic importance, arguably rivaling or exceeding the invention of the printing press in its capacity to spread human knowledge and entertainment to the farthest corners of the globe. With the introduction of his printing press in 1450,1 Gutenberg took the books from the hands of cloistered monks and put them into the hands of those who would challenge the orthodoxy of the Church-and into the hands of those who would build the free society that has produced the industrial and technological marvels we enjoy today. In the same manner, the Internet takes encyclopedic knowledge from the libraries and puts it into the homes of people all over the earth. It delivers images of artworks from the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to our homes. It makes the wares of locally owned boutiques available to a world of customers. It facilitates discussions between distant scholars and enthusiasts on every possible subject. And, as did the printing press, it can lead to great cultural and political change, by spreading truths that censored media around the world cannot speak. The Internet promotes the open exchange of ideas and information in an unprecedented way. What makes this open exchange of ideas and information possible? According to some, the answer is something called "net neutrality." "Net Neutrality is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online," claims one website. And, say its advocates, net neutrality-and thus the Internet itself-is in grave danger: The big phone and cable companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to gut Net Neutrality, putting the future of the Internet at risk. . . . The consequences of a world without Net Neutrality would be devastating. Innovation would be stifled, competition limited, and access to information restricted. Consumer choice and the free market would be sacrificed to the interests of a few corporate executives.2 Such claims naturally catch the attention of people who value innovation, competition, and information. And anything that threatens to thwart the free market is certainly cause for alarm. But what exactly is net neutrality? Does it really protect these crucial values? If so, how? And if not, might it actually assault them? To answer these questions, we must first specify the exact nature of the Internet. . . .

338. Bubble Boy: Alan Greenspan's Rejection of Reason and Morality

Author:: Gus Van Horn
Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Not long ago, Alan Greenspan was widely regarded as a sort of gnome of Zurich, on whose unique, ineffable powers our prosperity depended. His famously cryptic mumblings could spook markets and spur investors, many of whom believed that his every word carried great weight. One news channel would cite the thickness of his briefcase before certain meetings as an "economic indicator." The "Maestro," as one biographer called him, even appeared on the cover of Time as part of a three-man "Committee to Save the World." And, most remarkably, Greenspan's reputation as a brilliant economist and potential savior of the world was part and parcel of his reputation as a capitalist. Indeed, he had studied under the great "radical for capitalism" Ayn Rand and had written cogent essays in defense of individual rights and free markets. But then, on October 23, 2008, media outlets around the country dropped a bombshell: Alan Greenspan, "lifelong champion of free markets," had declared capitalism dead. The financial crisis, it seems, shook Greenspan to his core and led him to conclude that free markets do not work. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported: Asked by committee Chairman Henry Waxman [D-CA] whether his free-market convictions pushed him to make wrong decisions, especially his failure to rein in unsafe mortgage lending practices, Greenspan replied that indeed he had found a flaw in his ideology, one that left him very distressed. "In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right?" Waxman asked. "Absolutely, precisely," replied Greenspan, who stepped down as Fed chief in 2006 after more than eighteen years as chairman. "That's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence it was working exceptionally well." But the idea that Greenspan possessed "free-market convictions" and that those convictions are why he failed to rein in unsound lending practices is ridiculous. The very purpose of the Federal Reserve-the central bank at the heart of our troubled, government-controlled economy and the money machine that Greenspan operated for almost twenty years-is to manipulate the market. Such a "bank" would not even exist in a free market, and its precise function in our mixed economy is to engage in unsound lending practices as a means of such manipulation. As explained in The Federal Reserve System: Purposes and Functions, which is available from the Federal Reserve's website, one of the primary functions of the Fed is "conducting the nation's monetary policy by influencing the monetary and credit conditions in the economy." The document elaborates, explaining that the Fed "influences" the rate of inflation by setting the interest rate (known as the "federal funds rate") at which private banks can borrow from the various Federal Reserve banks. When the Fed lowers this rate, it thereby expands credit and increases the supply of fiat money-money that is unmoored to any commodity; money that is just printed paper representing no real value in the marketplace; money that is, essentially, worthless. This constitutes inflation and wreaks havoc on the economy. Once upon a time, Greenspan openly acknowledged the destructive nature of fiat money. "The law of supply and demand is not to be conned," he wrote in his famous 1966 essay "Gold and Economic Freedom": As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy's books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes with the money proceeds of the government bonds financed by bank credit expansion. Again, "the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value . . . represent[ing] the goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes." In other words, Greenspan acknowledged in 1966 that one of the primary functions of the Fed is to violate property rights-yours and mine-by printing fiat money and thereby coercively decreasing the value of our hard-earned savings. The Federal Reserve-in all its anti-capitalistic glory-is by its very nature the primary generator of unsound banking. Greenspan knew this in 1966, when he wrote that article; he knew it in 1987, when he accepted his post as chairman of the Fed; he knew it during the eighteen years he manipulated the money supply; and he knows it today. . . .
Topic:: Economics

339. The Assault on Energy Producers

Author:: Brian P. Simpson
Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: "We've got to go after the oil companies," says President-elect Barack Obama in response to high oil and gasoline prices. "We've got to go after [their] windfall profits." Explaining the purpose of recently proposed energy legislation, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says: "We are forcing oil companies to change their ways. We will hold them accountable for unconscionable price-gouging and force them to invest in renewable energy or pay a price for refusing to do so." Calling for government seizure of private power plants, California Senate Leader John Burton insists: "We have to do something. These people have got us by the throat. They're making more money than God, and we've got to fight back-not with words, but with actions." This attitude toward energy producers, which is practically unanimous among American politicians today, is wreaking havoc not only on the lives and rights of these producers, but on the lives and rights of Americans in general. It leads to laws and regulations that prohibit producers and consumers from acting on their rational judgment with respect to energy. It causes energy shortages, brownouts, and blackouts that thwart everyone's ability to be productive and enjoy life. And it results in higher prices not only for energy, but for every good and service that depends on energy-which means every good and service in the marketplace, from food to transportation to medical care to sporting events to education to housing. Energy producers, like all rational businessmen, are in business to make money. Profits are what motivate them to exert the requisite brain power, to engage in the necessary research, and to invest the massive amounts of money required to produce and deliver the energy we need to light, heat, and cool our homes, and to power the factories, workplaces, and tools required to produce the goods on which our lives depend. Their profit motive is to our benefit. Moreover, energy producers, like all human beings, have a moral right to act according to their own judgment so long as they do not violate the rights of others. They have a moral right to use and dispose of the product of their effort as they see fit. They have a moral right to contract with customers by mutual consent to mutual benefit. In other words, they have a moral right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. And it is only by respecting these rights that we can expect energy producers to produce energy. So let us examine the assault on these producers, count the ways in which this assault is both impractical and immoral, and specify what must be done to rectify this injustice. . . .
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: America and California

340. Demystifying Newton: The Force Behind the Genius

Author:: Gena Gorlin
Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Einstein credited Isaac Newton, the father of physics and arguably the founder of scientific certainty, with "the greatest advance in thought that a single individual was ever privileged to make." The compliment is not hyperbole: In his Principia and the discoveries that preceded it, Newton single-handedly deciphered more of the universe's enigmas than perhaps any other scientist in history. He revolutionized mathematics, integrated the previously disparate fields of mechanics and astronomy, and thus opened the door to the science of force and motion as we know it. And yet, ironically, Newton himself remains an enigma to those biographers who attempt to identify the force that moved him-the motive that compelled him to strive for the discovery and validation of scientific truths on such a grand scale. Most biographers shy from examining Newton's motives, asserting that a genius and creative power of Newton's magnitude defies mundane human explanation. One scholar, however, accepted the charge. Frank Manuel, in his biography, A Portrait of Isaac Newton, attempted to diagnose the source of Newton's genius by means of what is, in effect, a retroactive psychoanalysis. In keeping with the neo-Freudian school of psychology, Manuel attempts to demystify Newton's thought and behavior by speculating about repressed insecurities and unconscious defense mechanisms that may have commanded Newton's psyche. Since the book's publication in 1968 and to this very day, biographers and Newton scholars defer to Manuel-with varying degrees of enthusiasm-on the question of what, in Newton's character and soul, could have spawned his inexhaustible passion for discovering the nature of things. Manuel's model of Newton's underlying motives stands, by default, as the definitive account of the psyche whence sprang the Principia. For example, James Gleick, in his recent biography Isaac Newton, quotes-without critique or comment-Manuel's interpretation of Newton's relationship with his niece Catherine, whom he raised and nurtured into adulthood: "'In the act of fornication between his friend Halifax and his niece was Newton vicariously having carnal intercourse with his mother?'" Such rhetorical suggestions offered in explanation of Newton's words and actions abound in Manuel. And because other Newton scholars have defaulted on the task of evaluating Newton's motives, such "suggestions" have stood unchallenged and unrefuted to this day-coloring the legacy and tainting the name of one of history's greatest scientists. It is easy to sympathize with biographers who struggle in vain to knit together the apparently disparate threads of Newton's psychological life. By common accounts, Newton was a man of perplexing contradiction-described alternately as an arrogant, self-obsessed egomaniac and then as a neurotic "recluse" crippled by "searing" self-doubt. On one hand, he is the man who proclaimed his own theory of light to be "the oddest if not the most considerable detection which has hitherto been made in the operations of nature"-which Manuel interprets as an instance of Newton's "fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience and his self-image as the perfect one." On the other hand, Newton himself, denying a friend's compliments of his preternatural genius, mused that his success is the outcome of "nothing but industry a patient thought." And in the twilight of his years Newton reflected on himself as "only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." These are not the words of a "narcissist" or an "egomaniac" who is "completely wrapped up in himself," as is commonly postulated-but of a man wrapped up in the quest for truth, and humbled by the vastness of its terrain. Indeed, Newton's close friend John Locke described him as "a nice man to deal with and a little too apt to raise in himself suspicions where there was no ground." This seeming contradiction between Newton's supreme "arrogance" on the one hand and his apparent self-doubt on the other is what led Manuel to postulate that Newton was driven by deep-seated unconscious insecurities. But is there really any contradiction? In truth, when Newton was certain of his conclusions, he was unshakably sure of himself-and did not suffer criticism that he considered misguided, let alone dishonest. Yet when he was uncertain, he did not rest content until he copiously checked his conclusions against the facts. For instance, in 1666, he tested his theory of an inverse-square gravitational force, likely formulated in the early 1660s by deduction from Kepler's elliptical theory, against observations of the moon's motions. He found that the motions agreed "pretty nearly," but not nearly enough-and because he could not explain the discrepancy, he set aside the theory until he could amass further evidence. Whereas his fellow scientists, from Ptolemy to Copernicus to Galileo, sought nothing further than approximate agreement between their theories and the empirical phenomena, Newton was "extreme" in his demands for accuracy. In Manuel's account, such polar extremities of behavior bear the elusive signature of a "neurotic." For Manuel, Newton's apparent "swings" of extreme self-assurance and extreme self-doubt are symptoms of a deep neurosis rooted in his childhood. In true Freudian fashion, Manuel points to Newton's abandonment by his mother when she remarried and sent him to live with his grandmother. He also points to Newton's puritanical education, which allegedly inculcated in him a powerful fear of wrongdoing. These traumatic experiences, according to Manuel's account, begat a combined longing for attachment and fear of punishment that molded his scientific thought. Manuel even goes so far as to speculate that Newton's discovery of the gravitational force was inspired by his childhood anxieties: Newton "knew of the common metaphoric description of the attractive power of a magnet as love" and of the "'sociability' of liquids." Consequently, Manuel speculates, Newton's "longing for the absent ones, his dead father and his remarried mother" inspired his formulation of gravity as "a sort of an impulse or attraction." And as for Newton's vehemence in defending the certainty of his conclusions-this Manuel explains as a wall of defense against the puritanical guilt constantly clamoring to invade his mind. In one instance, Manuel cites a fervent (and thus, in his view, feverish) letter in which Newton defends his theory of light against a religiously motivated attack by a group of Jesuit scholars. The letter was penned in response to a charge by Anthony Lucas, a Jesuit who leveled a cavalier accusation against Newton's measuring accuracy, claiming that Newton had incorrectly reported the length of an image of the light spectrum. Newton had previously refrained from defending himself against the unscientific accusations of the Jesuits, writing that he did not wish to become a "slave to philosophy" (which meant, in his terms, to empty sophistic bickering) by engaging them in argument. But now, he was infuriated: Lucas had challenged the accuracy of Newton's experimental data, without bothering to supply any evidence in support of his challenge. Enraged, Newton wrote to Oldenberg, president of the Royal Society of London: "'Tis the truth of my experiments which is the business at hand. On this my Theory depends, which is of more consequence, the credit of my being wary, accurate and faithful in the reports I have made or shall make of experiments in any subject, seeing that a trip in any one will bring all the rest into suspicion." Ultimately the Royal Society duplicated Newton's experiments and formally refuted Lucas's objections, such that, in Newton's terms, he stood "convicted" by the "trial of the Royal Society." Lucas had miscalculated in groundlessly questioning the truth of Newton's calculations; his error was in underestimating Newton's reverential devotion to that truth. In Manuel's interpretation, such reverence bespeaks neurosis. Interpreting the incident, Manuel writes, "Ambivalent neurotics have a craving for certainty. Themore searing the doubt the more profound the need for a safe haven. Newton had two such refuges, a great blessing for a man in his state of everlasting tension: one was the Bible . . . the other was mathematical proof." He proceeds to explain the neurotic basis for Newton's intolerance of doubt: "Scientific error was assimilated with sin, for it could only be the consequence of sloth on his part and a failure in his divine service. For Newton a sin was not an act of human frailty that could be forgiven, but a sign that the culprit was possessed by evil." Manuel thus diagnoses Newton's preoccupation with scientific certainty and his impatience with doubt as symptoms of a psychotic insecurity, which stems, in turn, from his oppressive puritanical upbringing. But such a diagnosis seems quite peculiar if one considers that Newton is right. As is the case with his theory of light, Newton's theories do stand or fall on the truth of his evidential arguments, because true theories admit of no contradictory evidence. If an objector such as Anthony Lucas were to discover an error in Newton's empirical measurements, he would indeed cast doubt on Newton's entire theory. Thus, in vehemently defending the truth of his experiments against those who launch a frivolous attack against it, Newton reveals his "religious" devotion, not to his puritanical schoolteachers or to a wrathful God who censures his every step, but to the real, physical world-and to his understanding thereof. It is not Newton's departure from reality, then, but rather the intensity of his devotion to it that Manuel finds psychotic. Psychosis is generally defined as a state of delusion, a split from reality. A preoccupation with "divine service," as Manuel describes it, implies obeisance to an invisible God at the expense of any rational judgments grounded in this-worldly evidence. But Newton's alleged psychosis consists precisely in obeying the evidence of this world as he searches for scientific truth; the preoccupation Manuel refers to is not with an otherworldly authority, but with physical reality. Manuel does not seem to recognize this distinction, as he repeatedly lumps together Newton's reverence for the truth with his deference to God and his alleged cringing fear of divine punishment. Manuel's psychoanalytic model of the mind treats any pervasive behavior or thought pattern as symptomatic of childhood trauma or some other brand of prior conditioning. What this model does not seem to admit as a possibility is a mind not buoyed along by external circumstances, but rather governing itself, holding the truth as its sole guide and master-a mind conscientiously committed to the pursuit of truth as its primary and fundamental motive. And yet such a scenario should not seem so far-fetched, given that grasping the truth is the mind's proper and primary function. Viewed in this light, Newton's "craving for certainty" is not a symptom of illness but of exemplary mental health. Indeed, the craving for certainty is a venerable virtue-for to crave certainty is to crave the truth, and truth is infinitely valuable. Given the advances in science enabled by the certainty of Newton's laws, and the vast benefits ultimately conferred on human life by those advances, the objective value of Newton's "preoccupation" with truth is indisputable. . . .
Topic:: History

341. Errors in Inductive Reasoning

Author:: David Harriman
Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Author's note: The following is excerpted from Chapter 6 of my book in progress, "The Inductive Method in Physics." In contrast to perception, thinking is a fallible process. This fact gives rise to our need for the method of logic. Logic, when properly applied, enables us to arrive at true conclusions. But it comes with no guarantee that we will apply the method correctly. The laws of deduction were identified by Aristotle more than two millennia ago, and yet people still commit deductive fallacies. If one remains attentive to the evidence, however, further use of logic leads to the correction of these errors. The same is true of false generalizations reached by induction. Although even the best thinkers can commit inductive errors, such errors wither and die in the light shed by continued application of observation and logic. During the past century, however, many philosophers have rejected the validity of induction and argued that every generalization is an error. For example, Karl Popper claimed that all the laws of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton have been "falsified"; in his view, no laws or generalizations have ever been or can ever be proven true. By demanding that a true generalization must apply with unlimited precision to an unlimited domain, Popper upheld a mystical view of "truth" that is forever outside the reach of man and accessible only to an omniscient god. In the end, he was left with two types of generalizations: those that have been proven false and those that will be proven false. He was then accused by later philosophers of being too optimistic; they insisted that nothing can be proven, not even a generalization's falsehood. Such skeptics commit-on a grand scale-the fallacy of dropping context. The meaning of our generalizations is determined by the context that gives rise to them; to claim that a generalization is true is to claim that it applies within a specific context. The data subsumed by that context are necessarily limited in both range and precision. Galileo, for example, committed no error when he identified the parabolic nature of trajectories. Obviously, he was not referring to the 6,000-mile path of an intercontinental ballistic missile (to which his law does not apply). He was referring to terrestrial bodies that could be observed and studied in his era-all of which remained close to the surface of the earth, traveled perhaps a few hundred feet, and moved in accordance with his law. Similarly, when Newton spoke of bodies and their motion, he was not referring to the movement of an electron in an atom or of a proton in a modern accelerator. He was referring to observable, macroscopic bodies, ranging from pebbles to stars. The available context of knowledge determines the referents of the concepts that are causally related in a generalization. The context also includes the accuracy of the data integrated by a law. For example, Kepler's laws of planetary motion are true; they correctly identify causal relationships that explain and integrate the data available to Kepler. By Newton's era, however, the measurement errors in astronomical data had been reduced by more than a factor of ten, and today they have been reduced by another factor of ten. In order to explain the more accurate data, one must grasp not only that the sun exerts a force on the planets, but also that the planets exert forces on each other and on the sun. The truths discovered by Kepler were essential to these later discoveries; they made it possible to identify deviations of the new data from the original laws, which in turn made it possible to identify the additional causal factors and develop a more general theory. In cases where the data are insufficient to support a conclusion, it is important to look closely at the exact nature of the scientist's claim. He does not commit an error simply by proposing a hypothesis that is later proven wrong, provided that he correctly identified the hypothetical status of the idea. If he can cite some supporting evidence, and he has not overlooked any data that contradict it, and he rejects the idea when counterevidence is discovered, then his thinking is flawlessly logical. An example is provided by the work of Albert Ladenburg, a 19th-century German chemist, who proposed a triangular prism structure of the benzene molecule.1 Ladenburg's hypothesis was consistent with the data available in the 1860s, but it was rejected a few years later when it clashed with Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff's discovery of the symmetrical arrangement of carbon bonds. In such cases, the scientist's thinking is guided by the evidence at every step, and he deserves nothing but praise from the logician. A true generalization states a causal relationship that has been induced from observational data and integrated within the whole of one's knowledge (which, in terms of essentials, spans the range of facts subsumed by the generalization). A scientist makes an error when he asserts a generalization without achieving such an integration. In such cases, the supporting evidence is insufficient, and often the scientist has overlooked counterevidence. I make no attempt here to give an exhaustive list of the essential inductive fallacies. Rather, I have chosen five interesting cases in which scientists have investigated a complex phenomenon and reached false generalizations by deviating from the principles of induction. In each case, I examine the context of knowledge available to the scientist and seek to identify the factors that cast doubt on his conclusion. . . .

342. New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America

Author:: Eric Daniels
Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Seventy-five years have elapsed since Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the flurry of government programs he called the New Deal. In the years since, most historians have lavished FDR with praise, claiming that his bold leadership helped to pull America out of the Great Depression. Even those who acknowledge the failure of particular Roosevelt-era programs claim that FDR instilled hope and confidence in the American people, and that his economic failures were the result of his not going far enough in his policies and not spending enough money. Today, amidst calls for increasing government regulation of the financial industry and increasing government spending through stimulus packages, the New Deal is making a comeback. In light of the recent mortgage crisis and economic downturn, pundits are calling for a revival of 1930s-style policies. Daniel Gross claimed at Slate.com that New Deal reforms were "saving capitalism again." Newly minted Nobel economist Paul Krugman issued calls in the New York Times for President-elect Obama to mimic and expand FDR's response to the Great Depression. And a recent Time cover called for a "New New Deal"-and featured an iconic photo of FDR, with Obama's face and hands substituted. As the Obama administration begins to implement its economic plan, Americans would do well to reexamine the history of the original New Deal and its effects. Though most historians rank FDR as a great president, some, including Burton Folsom Jr., boldly dare to ask if "the New Deal, rather than helping to cure the Great Depression, actually help[ed to] prolong it" (p. 7). According to Folsom, a professor of history at Hillsdale College, the answer is clearly the latter. In New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, he challenges the myth that FDR's New Deal represents a shining moment in American history. As long as the mythology surrounding the New Deal remains intact, he notes, "the principles of public policy derived from the New Deal will continue to dominate American politics" (p. 15), costing Americans billions of dollars and further damaging the economy. . . .
Topic:: Economics, Government, and History
Political Geography:: America

343. Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000

Author:: Gus Van Horn
Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: In August 1919, three white men brutally beat John R. Shillady in broad daylight outside his hotel. Shillady, also white, had come to Austin, Texas, as executive secretary of the NAACP to persuade state officials not to suppress its local branch. One of his attackers, a county judge, claimed that "it was my duty to stop him" because Shillady was there to "sow discontent among the Negroes" (pp. 105-106). In 1920, Shillady would resign from the NAACP, expressing despair for his cause: "I am less confident than heretofore . . . of the probability of overcoming, within a reasonable period, the forces opposed to Negro equality" (p. 109). And yet, not even a century later, the United States has elected its first black president-in an election in which race was hardly an issue. How did racial equality in America progress so far in so short a time? This is the remarkable story that Adam Fairclough relates in Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000. Fairclough succeeds in making his introduction to the struggle for black equality accessible to the general reader in two ways. First, he concentrates on events in the South, wherein particularly harsh forms of racial domination made it the logical focus of black efforts to achieve equality. Second, he follows the lead of fellow historian John W. Cell and classifies the approaches taken by various figures in his narrative as either "militant confrontation" (defiantly opposing racial oppression), "separatism" (working toward the creation of an all-black society here or abroad), or "accommodation" (gradually securing improvements from within the system of white supremacy) (pp. xi-xii). It is from this perspective that the book's chapters examine prominent individuals, organizations, events, and periods of the civil rights movement. Fairclough begins his narrative at a time when blacks were "more powerless than at any other time since the death of slavery" and had been "purged from the voting rolls" of the former Confederacy (pp. 15-17). He proceeds to examine the many different ways in which blacks fought against discrimination and oppression: from the intransigent, confrontational approach of Ida B. Wells, who campaigned against lynching in the 1890s; to the accommodation of Booker T. Washington, whose emphasis on black self-improvement over confrontation is characterized by Fairclough as "a tactical retreat in order to prepare the way for a strategic advance" (p. 63); to the separatism of Marcus Garvey, who proposed that blacks fight for an independent, united Africa (p. 126). Fairclough continues this kind of analysis throughout subsequent chapters, where we learn, among other things, about the involvement of the labor movement and the Communist party in the civil rights movement during the 1930s, the evolution of the NAACP's strategy to include legal challenges to discrimination in education after World War II and then mass civil disobedience after 1955, and the rise and fall of the "Black Power" movement. . . .
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States and America

344. From the Editor

Author:: Craig Biddle
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: No abstract is available.

345. Property Rights and the Crisis of the Electric Grid

Author:: Raymond C. Niles
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Surveys the history and achievements of America's electricity entrepreneurs, shows how government interference in the transmission grid has hampered their enterprises from the outset to the present day, and indicates what America must do to liberate the grid and enable a new wave of entrepreneurs to supply this vital product commensurate with the country's demand.
Topic:: Economics and Government
Political Geography:: New York and America

346. Vindicating Capitalism: The Real History of the Standard Oil Company

Author:: Alex Epstein
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Who were we that we should succeed where so many others failed? Of course, there was something wrong, some dark, evil mystery, or we never should have succeeded!1 -John D. Rockefeller The Standard Story of Standard Oil In 1881, The Atlantic magazine published Henry Demarest Lloyd's essay "The Story of a Great Monopoly"-the first in-depth account of one of the most infamous stories in the history of capitalism: the "monopolization" of the oil refining market by the Standard Oil Company and its leader, John D. Rockefeller. "Very few of the forty millions of people in the United States who burn kerosene," Lloyd wrote,
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: United States and New York

347. Proof of the Atomic Theory

Author:: David Harriman
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Author's note: The following is adapted from a chapter of my book in progress, "The Inductive Method in Physics." Whereas my article "The 19th-Century Atomic War" (TOS, Summer 2006) focused on the opposition to the atomic theory that arose from positivist philosophy, this article focuses on the evidence for the atomic theory and the epistemological criteria of proof. It is necessary to repeat some material from my earlier articles in TOS, but the repetition is confined mainly to the first few pages below.
Topic:: Government
Political Geography:: New York

348. The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law by Steven M. Teles

Author:: Larry Salzman
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: Conservatives today have considerable influence on America's legal culture. They are welcome on law school faculties at even the most elite institutions, and they man dozens of think tanks, policy centers, and public interest law foundations pressing varying brands of conservative doctrine on the courts-with a degree of success rivaling competing liberal organizations. Shrill leftists allege a "vast right-wing conspiracy," and senators now begin judicial nomination hearings with hand-wringing warnings about the behind-the-scenes influence of "Federalist Society lawyers."
Political Geography:: America

349. Sun-tzu: Art of War, translated with an introduction and commentary by Ralph D. Sawyer

Author:: John David Lewis
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: War is one of man's most destructive activities (only dictatorship has ruined more lives), and it is not surprising that thousands of books have been written about it. Yet, paradoxically, books on war itself-books concerned with war as a phenomenon, rather than focused on strategy, tactics, or some particular war-have been relatively few. This is due in part to the focus by modern scholars on the minutiae of human affairs, and their reluctance to deal with broad generalizations; but the failure to come to grips with the abstract principles of war goes back to the dawn of historical writing. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides, a soaring intellect obsessed by the great war between Athens and Sparta, identified "honor, security and interest" as causally important principles that motivate men "for all time." But even Thucydides did not examine the philosophical foundations of these factors; he took them as given in human nature, which left the study of war mired in the vagaries of human desires and without philosophical grounding.1 As a result, important questions remained unanswered: What are the principles of war; what are their philosophical foundations, and what methods of waging war do they imply? In ancient China, a thriving culture of thinkers tried to answer such questions. They derived principles of warfare from ideas that were fundamental to their own philosophies and applied those principles to the practical needs of military commanders. The extant remains of these works have been compiled into the so-called seven Chinese military classics, the best preserved of which is Art of War by Sun-tzu, who lived sometime between 450 and 250 BC, about the time of classical Greece.2 This was approximately the "Warring States" period of Chinese history, when China was divided among military warlords, iron was first used in weapons, armies grew to more than one hundred thousand men, and commanders needed expert guidance to help them organize their huge forces. Ralph Sawyer has produced a lively translation, with a historical essay and explanatory notes, of Sun-tzu's classic work. Sawyer also includes new supplementary material, found in graves and carved on bamboo stalks, that adds to our knowledge of ancient Chinese thought. . . .
Topic:: War

350. Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society by Laura J. Snyder

Author:: John P. McCaskey
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: The 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill is widely regarded as one of history's leading proponents of inductive science and of political liberty. Yet, oddly, philosophers working in his train have been remarkably unsuccessful in saying exactly what is wrong with the scientific skepticism or the political tyrannies of the past one hundred and fifty years. Is it possible that Mr. Mill was not such a good guy after all? This question is not the stated theme of Laura Snyder's Reforming Philosophy, but it is the underlying spirit of this excellent work of scholarly intellectual history.

Search

Search Constraints

Search Results

Refine your search

Topic

Political Geography

Content Type

Journal

Publishing Institution

Author

Publication Year

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS