Andy Kessler Takes on Job-Destroying Mandates

Andy Kessler Takes on Job-Destroying Mandates:
In my interview with Andy Kessler (TOS Summer 2011), Kessler said, “There is always room for new creators to make the world more productive. Don’t buy the argument that technology will lead to massive unemployment and an underclass; just the opposite happens every cycle.”
Recently, in The Wall Street Journal, Kessler elaborated on this point. He observed that in doing something in the marketplace better, more efficiently, or more productively, entrepreneurs may initially cause some people to be unemployed, but ultimately they create many more jobs or wealth than previously existed. Quoting from the article:

Since 1986, Staples has opened 2,000 stores, eliminating the jobs of distributors and brokers who charged nasty markups for paper and office supplies. But it enabled hundreds of thousands of small (and not so small) businesses to stock themselves cheaply and conveniently and expand their operations.
It’s the same story elsewhere. Apple employs just 47,000 people, and Google under 25,000. Like Staples, they have destroyed many old jobs, like making paper maps and pink “While You Were Out” notepads. But by lowering the cost of doing business they’ve enabled innumerable entrepreneurs to start new businesses and employ hundreds of thousands, even millions, of workers world-wide—all while capital gets redeployed more effectively.

Kessler is right that in paying attention to the seen layoffs, and ignoring the unseen increase in productivity or wealth, economically illiterate policymakers have punished innovators for innovating, encouraged businesses to produce things that consumers don’t want to buy, and (via a host of regulations) locked in the status quo.
Kessler is also right that the solution is for the government to, as he puts it, get out of the way.

Every government-mandated low-flow toilet, phosphorous-free dishwasher detergent, CFL light bulb, and carbon-emission regulation is another obstacle on the way to a productive, job-creating economy that produces things consumers really want.

It’s hard for people to argue with any of this; after all, if consumers did want something the government would not have to mandate it. But of course that won’t stop leftists (or unprincipled “rightists”) from arguing with it, and it won’t stop policy-makers from enacting ever more mandates in the future.
What will?
While educating people about economics may help, such madness will end only when Americans—and their elected officials—come to recognize each individual’s right to property and the pursuit of his own happiness as sacrosanct. The ultimate solution, then, is to educate Americans about the source and nature of rights.
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Related:

• Interview with Andy Kessler about the Virtue of Eating People
• Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society

Wên T'ien-hsiang, on Books

Wên T'ien-hsiang, on Books:

Of his time as a captive around the year 1280, Chinese scholar, Wên T'ien-hsiang, wrote about books:



"Alas! the fates were against me; I was without resource. 

Bound with fetters, hurried away toward the north,

death would have been sweet indeed;

but that boon was refused.



My dungeon is lighted by the will-o'-the-wisp alone:

no breath of spring cheers the murky solitude in which I dwell.

The ox and the barb herd together in one stall:

the rooster and the phoenix feed together from  one dish.



Exposed to mist and dew, I had many times thought to die;

and yet, through the seasons of two revolving years,

disease hovered around me in vain.

The dark, unhealthy soil to me became Paradise itself.



For there was that within me which misfortune could not steal away.

And so I remained firm, gazing at the white clouds floating over my head,

and bearing in my heart a sorrow boundless as the sky.



The sun of those dead heroes has long since set,

 but their record is before me still.

And, while the wind whistles under the eaves,

I open my books and read;

and lo! in their presence my heart glows with a borrowed fire."

Mayor of Boston Versus Individual Rights

Mayor of Boston Versus Individual Rights:
I support gay marriage wholeheartedly, and I’ve long been appalled by Chick-Fil-A’s support for theocracy. However, I’m just as appalled by the attempt by the Mayor of Boston to exclude Chick-Fil-A from Boston. It is a contemptible violation of rights — including of the proper separation of church and state.
The letter from the mayor reads:

To Mr. Cathy:
In recent days you said Chick fil-A opposes same-sex marriage and said the generation that supports it as an “arrogant attitude.”
Now — incredibly — your company says you are backing out of the same-sex marriage debate. I urge you to back out of your plans to locate in Boston.
You called supporters of gay marriage “prideful.” Here in Boston, to borrow your own words, we are “guilty as charged.” We are indeed full of pride for our support of same sex marriage and our work to expand freedom to all people. We are proud that our state and our city have led the way for the country on equal marriage rights.
I was angry to learn on the heels of your prejudiced statements about your search for a site to locate in Boston. There is no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it. When Massachusetts became the first state in the country to recognize equal marriage rights, I personally stood on City Hall Plaza to greet same sex couples here to be married. It would be an insult to them and to our city’s long history of expanding freedom to have a Chick fil-A across the street from that spot.
Sincerely,
Thomas M. Menino

Such would be a fabulous letter from a private person, speaking his own personal opinions. From the mayor, however, that letter implies a threat of force, namely that of excluding Chick-Fil-A from Boston. That’s terribly wrong.
At this point, I strongly recommend that people boycott Chick-Fil-A. I discussed that in the 12 February 2012 episode of Philosophy in Action Radio, in fact. Here’s my 15-minute answer to the question, “Should people boycott Chick-Fil-A for its hostility to gays?”

You can also download the MP3 Segment.
Oh, and see this post from Eugene Volokh: No Building Permits for Opponent of Same-Sex Marriage. As Eugene explains, it’s a First Amendment violation, plain and simple:

But denying a private business permits because of such speech by its owner is a blatant First Amendment violation. Even when it comes to government contracting — where the government is choosing how to spend government money — the government generally may not discriminate based on the contractor’s speech, see Board of County Commissioners v. Umbehr (1996). It is even clearer that the government may not make decisions about how people will be allowed to use their own property based on the speaker’s past speech.
And this is so even if there is no statutory right to a particular kind of building permit (and I don’t know what the rule is under Illinois law). Even if the government may deny permits to people based on various reasons, it may not deny permits to people based on their exercise of his First Amendment rights. It doesn’t matter if the applicant expresses speech that doesn’t share the government officials’ values, or even the values of the majority of local citizens. It doesn’t matter if the applicant’s speech is seen as “disrespect[ful]” of certain groups. The First Amendment generally protects people’s rights to express such views without worrying that the government will deny them business permits as a result. That’s basic First Amendment law — but Alderman Moreno, Mayor Menino, and, apparently, Mayor Emanuel (if his statement is quoted in context), seem to either not know or not care about the law.

Go read the whole thing.

Civilian Responses to Active Attackers

Civilian Responses to Active Attackers:
If you ever find yourself in a mass-shooting incident, how can you safely respond?
Our friend Ari Armstrong discusses this with his father Linn Armstrong (a certified firearms instructor here in Colorado) on what unarmed — and armed — civilians can do. For instance, unarmed civilians could throw their movie theater drinks and any available objects en masse at a shooter, thus disorienting him.
Here’s the full blog post by Ari and the related video, “Civilian Responses to Active Attackers“:
FWIW, my group practices at two of the big trauma hospitals in Denver that received casualties from the Colorado shooting, The Medical Center of Aurora (TMCA) and Swedish Medical Center.
I was off-duty that night, but when I came in early that morning I talked to one of the ER doctors at TMCA who helped treated these patients.  He and his colleagues were worn out after a long and busy night, but they did a terrific job under enormous pressure.

Persuade Someone

Persuade Someone: Two blog posts have me thinking about the importance, in cultural activism, of reaching a wide audience.

The first post, by a technology blogger, makes a great point, although I don't care for his opening example. (Dictatorial rule systematically usurps the reason of those subjected to it, for starters.)

Nobody ever changed anything by remaining quiet, idly standing by, or remaining part of the faceless, voiceless masses. If you ever want to effect change, in your work, in your life, you must learn to persuade others. [bold in original]

These others are individuals, and change happens one mind at a time. But even the most persuasive people don't persuade everyone every time, no matter how right or just their cause. One reason for this is that some people simply are not bright enough or do not know enough to be reachable. Another is that some people are evasive (i.e., simply not open to reason).

I found an almost perfect example of evasion the other day, when reading a news story about the fallout from the Freeh Report. The Freeh Report had been commissioned by Penn State in order to determine how serial sexual predator Jerry Sandusky had been able to operate there for well over a decade after officials, including Coach Joe Paterno, had been made aware of his activities.

"I'll go to my grave believing he didn't do anything until someone shows me a video of him participating in whatever they're saying that he did," said [David] Sage, who later flashed his large ring with Paterno's name engraved on the side, the same ring he showed Joe's sons, Scott and Jay, at their father's on-campus memorial viewing in January. " . . . I think if you looked up the word integrity in the dictionary, you'd see his picture there."

He might as well have added that if someone ever showed him such a video, he'd "know" it was a fake. Assuming for the sake of argument that the above remains this man's position in a year -- unless some pretty good evidence against Paterno having a role in the cover-up somehow surfaces -- this is a nearly perfect example of evasion, a refusal to think. (There is the possibility that the man is in temporary denial, too shocked to believe the evidence yet.)

Most people have no trouble deciding whether to expend more effort or give up on persuading someone who is less intelligent or informed. However, some people (including myself at times in the past) don't make this call with as much ease when someone is evasive. That's a problem, because a cultural activist cannot waste his time -- or far worse, his energy -- by investing it in attempting to persuade someone who is evasive. Aside from comment threads here, I almost never participate in on-line discussions, but when I do look at them, I usually see someone who is obviously right about something allowing someone who is obviously wrong (and being evasive) to waste his time and energy by making a reply. One clue that the person in the right is wasting his time is that he is becoming angry out of frustration.

It is far better to look for help with one's persuasiveness from people one knows to be conscientious and helpful, and then to always work to reach a broader audience than any one individual. Even in an online discussion, there is a broader audience -- lurkers and passers-by -- who might be open to the points one wants to make. It is the broader audience, and the fact that there are likely to be receptive minds there that one must remember when promoting one's cause.

Strive to be persuasive, but don't beat yourself up if persuasion doesn't work on everyone.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo and corrected the wording in a sentence about the example of evasion.

Atheists Don't Need Nannies

Atheists Don't Need Nannies: In two news stories, we see self-proclaimed advocates of tolerance undercutting the causes they allegedly espouse -- and coming across as thin-skinned ninnies in the process -- by resorting to government-backed threats, rather than persuasion.

We'll look at the more obvious offense first, which Michelle Malkin writes about, in which the mayor of a major American city threatens to a restaurant chain with government discrimination because he disagrees with the views of its outspoken owners regarding such matters as gay marriage.

This week, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino declared, "Chick-fil-A doesn't belong in Boston." He recklessly slandered [sic] the company by accusing it of "discriminat(ing) against the population." And he warned ominously: "If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult -- unless they open up their policies."

Drawing on the city's history, he railed against the restaurant empire's plans to build a franchise near a famed path: "We're an open city. We're a city that's at the forefront of inclusion. That's the Freedom Trail. That's where it all started right here. And we're not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail." [bold added]

I can't help but offer free campaign advice for any future opponent of Thomas Menino in the form of a campaign slogan: "Don't let Thomas Menino close the Freedom Trail."

This atheist does not share Malkin's obvious sympathy with the religious views of the restaurant chain's owners. However, it isn't the business of the mayor to violate the property rights of the Cathy family simply because he disagrees with them and they choose to shape their chain's policies based on their views. (He compounds this offense with hypocrisy by condemning the owners for discrimination and tops that with sacrilege by invoking the Founding Fathers.) As for the proper way to protest the Cathys' arbitrary and anachronistic views, there are numerous ways that individual citizens can exercise their freedom of speech, perhaps by organizing a voluntary boycott. (Hell, the Cathys have already spotted them one day of the week by closing on Sundays.)

Another thin-skinned secularist who apparently has little confidence in the persuasive power of reason has also chosen to abuse improper government force:

[John] Wolff, a Lancaster resident who said he's never been to Prudhomme's, recently filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission claiming the 22-year-old restaurant should not give discounts based on religion. "I bear them no ill will," he said, "but they shouldn't be pushing religion."

The restaurant offers a ten percent discount to anyone wielding a (gasp!) church bulletin on Sunday. I don't care for this policy, either, but it's their restaurant, and they have the right (whether the government protects it or not) to charge whatever price to whomever they please.

There is no right to be free from other people acting according to their own judgement, unless they actually violate the rights of others by doing so. Not being able to enjoy a Chick-Fil-A sandwich provided by a company whose owners I agree with doesn't harm me. Neither does being  "annoyed" because a restaurant has people bring church bulletins in for discounts.

-- CAV

President "You Didn't Build That"

President "You Didn't Build That":

I agree with the WSJ 's conclusion that the president revealed the soul of his campaign message in his recent Roanoke speech.  It's perhaps one of the most flagrant attacks on justice -- on the very idea of earning one's way, of achieving and thus deserving one's values -- that we've ever seen in presidential politics. And as such, it might be a low-point in anti-Americanism.

The battlelines are thus clearer than usual, and it's important that this be brought to the forefront for the entire political season. 


To assist in this, I've collected some of the better commentaries and sites here:

- Perhaps my favorite column is by Rich Lowry, including this segment:

The Obama riff is a direct steal from Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic Senate candidate in Massachusetts who sent liberal hearts aflutter by throwing the same wet towel on the notion of individual success a few months ago. The Obama/Warren view is a warrant for socialization of the proceeds of success. Behind its faux sophistication is a faculty-lounge disdain for business, and all those who make more than tenured professors by excelling at it. Behind its smiley we’re-all-in-it-together façade is a frank demand: You owe us.

 For that most American figure of the self-made man, exemplified most famously by Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln, President Obama wants to substitute the figure of the guy who happened to get lucky while not paying his fair share in taxes. What a dreary and pinched view of human endeavor. What a telling insight into his animating philosophy. In his Virginia remarks, greeted with warm applause, Obama took down a notch anyone who has made it: “I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.”

 True enough, and we should value the dignity of all work, no matter how humble. But the hallmark of the man of extraordinary accomplishment isn’t simply work. Some of us may work as hard as Steve Jobs. Few of us are as single-minded, risk-taking, shrewd, or visionary. Millions of us could work twelve-hour days for years yet never come up with the idea for the iPad, let alone successfully manufacture and market it.

 To redefine Steve Jobs as the product of the (necessary and unremarkable) infrastructure and government services around him is to devalue human creativity. The Obama formulation goes something like this: Steve Jobs couldn’t get to work every day without roads; he couldn’t drive safely on those roads without a well-regulated system of driver’s licenses; ergo, the San Jose, Calif., DMV practically built Apple.

 - Here's a site dedicated to various pictures of personal achievements which the president denies (from which I shared the two photos here).


- Alex Epstein weighs in here, including this paragraph:  

The fact that builders benefit from others in a free society does not mean that they should be forced to “give something back.” It means we should all treasure living in a free society, and fight to make it freer. But if we are going to talk about who owes whom the most gratitude, then we should recognize that the biggest builders are owed the most. They have not only financed the lion’s share of government, they have, more importantly, created the most enduring achievements. When I think of whom I owe gratitude to, it is individuals like Steve Jobs, not the millions of patrons of America’s welfare state.

- Another worthwhile editorial includes this insight:

Yet on another level, the president's little lesson is self-evidently absurd. Lots of people attend public schools and have teachers. Very few people become Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Everybody uses the roads and bridges the factory owner uses to bring his products to market. But not everyone builds a factory.

The tax dollars that paid for those roads, bridges, schools, and teachers didn't just come from "someone else" or the "rest of us." They came from the innovators, the factory owners, and the entrepreneurs too. In 2009, the top 400 taxpayers paid almost as much in federal income taxes as the entire bottom 50 percent combined.

- Even milquetoast Romney got roused up (including my favorite line: "President Obama attacks success, and therefore under president Obama we have less success."). (Of course his insistence on rights being god-given is very worrisome.)

- Burt Folsom reminds us that for the most part, not only does the Federal Government not help businesses, it often targets them, including by various subsidies to competitors.

I'll conclude the list with an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged that is also making the rounds:

“He didn't invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”

“Who?”

“Rearden. He didn't invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn't have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it's his? Why does he think it's his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”

She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn't anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”

(Feel free to suggest other good links and commentary in the comment section.)

Objectivist Round Up: The Final Edition

Objectivist Round Up: The Final Edition: After *five years* of managing the Objectivist Round Up, Rational Jenn has decided to retire the Round Up. Many thanks to Jenn for all her work, and here's the link to the last edition.

“You Didn’t Build That”—Obama’s Ode to Envy

“You Didn’t Build That”—Obama’s Ode to Envy:
Barack Obama’s July 13 speech, in which he tells business owners, “you didn’t build that,” has rightly generated enormous criticism. But why did he say it? Before we turn to that question, let’s review exactly what Obama said:

[I]f you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. . . . I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something—there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

This speech is remarkable only for its ludicrousness. (It is certainly not remarkable for its originality; as others have noted, Obama took a page out of Elizabeth Warren’s campaign book. Then again, Obama would say she didn’t write that.)
Obama wishes us to believe that the successful—whatever their field and scale of success—are wrong to attribute their success to applying their minds and working hard. Unfortunately for Obama, rational Americans know that his claim contradicts the facts surrounding the achievements of every productive industrialist, producer, and creator, who succeeds by thinking, planning, and working hard.
Examples range from from J. D. Rockefeller, who revolutionized the oil industry; to the Wright brothers, who pioneered heavier-than-air human flight; to Thomas Edison, who developed a usable electric light bulb (among other innovations); to Ayn Rand, who wrote great novels on the themes of independence, individual productiveness, and the role of reason in man’s life; to Steve Jobs, who revolutionized the computer, music, and film industries.
Subscribe to the

Journal for People of ReasonObama wishes us to believe that, because not every “smart,” hard-working person reaches the pinnacle of success, that somehow diminishes the achievements of those who do. True enough, some “smart” people misapply their intelligence, for instance, by becoming animal “rights” activists or Marxist community organizers. Others go into business without having the right business plan, the right motivation, the right leadership skills, or the right good or service for their intended market; indeed, only a third of businesses survive their first decade. Often entrepreneurs fail numerous times before developing a successful business. Rational Americans understand that, while not every smart, hard-working person builds a successful business, that does not alter the fact that those who do build successful businesses do so by thinking, planning, and working hard.
Obama also wishes us to believe that, because successful producers learned something from government teachers, used government roads and bridges, employed government research, and the like, this means they don’t really own their success or wealth. Rational Americans know full well that the government funds such things by forcibly confiscating the wealth of producers. Rational Americans also know that a bum is as free to use a government bridge as is a successful business owner, but the business owner chose to apply his intelligence and work hard to build something great.
Finally, to mask the inanity of what he just said, Obama mentions that “individual initiative” perhaps has something to do with a producer’s success. But, in addition to seeing through Obama’s flagrant contradictions, rational Americans see this subordination for exactly what it is: an attempt to insignificantly mitigate what he said before, while leaving what he said before as his main and emphatic message.
Of course, that Obama flouts logic and observable facts is obvious to anyone who spends even a few moments evaluating his claims. Why, then, does he spout such nonsense?
To understand the atmosphere in which Obama delivered his remarks, watch the video. When Obama tells business leaders, “You didn’t get there on your own,” some in the crowd chant, “That’s right!” When Obama ridicules business leaders for thinking they’re “just so smart,” many in the crowd meet his comments with jeering laughter.
The purpose of Obama’s speech was not to present serious arguments about the causes of success in business. His claims are ridiculous on their face. Obama’s purpose was to give envious Americans the pretext they need to openly loathe those who have been successful—and to vote accordingly.
If the successful didn’t really earn their success—and thus the wealth that comes with it—then there’s nothing wrong with “spreading their wealth around” to those who have not been so successful. If no one is responsible for his success, then no one has a right to the fruits of his success, and thus those who haven’t been successful have the same right to those fruits. And if the successful resist the “noble” effort to redistribute what is “really” the community’s wealth, then they are evil—or so Obama wishes us to believe.
In reality, anyone who develops a new technology, writes a great novel, brings an innovative new product to market, or in any other way earns success, thereby deserves the fruits of that success. Unfortunately for Obama, rational Americans know this, and rational Americans will win this debate.
Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard.
Related:

• Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice
• Why Marxism? Evil Laid Bare

Creative Commons Image by Steve Jurvetson

On a Revisionist’s Proposal to Upend the Declaration of Independence

On a Revisionist’s Proposal to Upend the Declaration of Independence:
University of Virginia’s Center for Politics director Larry Sabato, citing the Founders’ approval of a Constitution open for revision, has proposed several revisions of his own.
One may argue over the merits of Sabato’s proposed revisions regarding war powers, Senate structure, elections, and Supreme Court terms. But no one can reasonably advocate his fifth proposal: a constitutional amendment to require every able-bodied American between the ages of 18 and 26 to “perform two years of national service, civilian or military.”
Not only would Universal National Service—which means involuntary servitude to the state—be in direct contravention to the Thirteenth Amendment; it would be nothing less than a repeal of the Declaration of Independence, the philosophical blueprint for the Constitution. The Founders could never have agreed or even conceived that the fundamental principles upon which this nation rests would ever be subject to repeal, in the name of “constructive change in a 21st-century world unimaginable to the Founders.”
A National Service Amendment would upend America’s very reason for being—that is, to protect the inalienable rights of the individual to pursue his own goals and happiness, by means of a government charged with the sole task of protecting those rights.
The signers of the Declaration pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in support of those ideals. It’s shocking that any American would so dishonor the ideals behind that pledge—and in the Founders’ names, no less.
Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard.
Related:

• Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice
• The Creed of Sacrifice vs. The Land of Liberty

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Help Joshua Lipana Fight Cancer

Help Joshua Lipana Fight Cancer:
I posted last week to inform readers that Joshua Lipana has been diagnosed with cancer, and I mentioned that I’d soon organize a fundraiser to help him pay his bills (which now exceed $30,000). I’ve created a page at gofundme.com where you can contribute. If you’d like to help Joshua, please follow this link and make a donation.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Craig Biddle

Crowdfunding

...and the Home of the Slave.

...and the Home of the Slave.:
Americans Will Work More than 6 Months to Pay Cost of Government in 2012 - CNSNews.com Article
Just pretend the stolen time/property was never yours in the first place.  We hear tell that this helps some people cope.
Full Article Here

Debt Aggregation Follow-Up

Debt Aggregation Follow-Up:
My first “vectors” feature on debt aggregation featured the story of Spain’s debt aggregation landscape.  Today two stories have emerged to complement Spain’s debt aggregation narrative.
First, from Zero Hedge:
Valencia Announces SOS, Needs To Tap Government LIquidity Support Just Eurogroup Accepts Spanish Bailout Plan

Spain’s heavily indebted eastern region of Valencia said on Friday it would apply for help under the government’s 18 billion euro plan passed on Thursday aimed at helping regional finances.

This, just shortly on the heels of a Spanish bank rescue announcement, from Bloomberg:

Euro Finance Chiefs Give Final Approval to Spain Bank Rescue

Euro-area finance ministers gave final approval to as much as 100 billion euros ($122 billion) of bank aid for Spain, putting Greece back on the front line of the bloc’s crisis-fighting agenda.

Note that the “bank aid” is a loan, via the EFSF mechanism.  This is the essence of debt aggregation: with national “too big to fail” institutions given cheap money permitted by international collusion to keep them afloat.”
For the foreseeable future, Europe’s leaders will use debt aggregation to “kick the can down the road.”  It never ceases to amaze me that this works to assuage the financial markets, and how well it “works” to keep the economy going, but piling more debt onto already un-payable debt leads to only one place: default.    In a coming update, I’ll try to predict when that is going to happen, by dissecting Germany’s untenable position in the Eurozone from a historical perspective.

Great Minds? Maybe Not

Great Minds? Maybe Not:

Guess what, folks? It’s not small-minded, second-handed, or otherwise undesirable to be interested in people. People are amazing wellsprings of knowledge, innovation, and values. They’re complex, nuanced, and unique. People matter to our lives, hugely.
Unless you allow other people to trump facts, to be interested in people is not any kind of moral or intellectual taint. To condemn that is to claim moral superiority based on differences in personality and preference. That is a mistake — a huge mistake.
Yes, I’m aware the the poster probably means to condemn gossip, but not all gossip is malicious, destructive, or petty. Gossip can be a form of benevolent interest in other people in your community, as I discussed in this webcast.

The AEI's Lame Initiative

The AEI's Lame Initiative: The true color of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, has been revealed (via HBL), and that color is Al Gore green:

On Wednesday, the conservative American Enterprise Institute hosted a secret meeting with other Washington, D.C., think tank officials, including members from several prominent liberal ones, to discuss how to build political support for a carbon pollution tax.

The discussion even apparently raised the subject of trying to get the upcoming post-election "lame duck" Congress to address the issue. [link dropped]

Fortunately, Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, got wind of this foolishness and spread the word.

The Economic Policy Director of the AEI claimed that his outfit was merely hosting an "information sharing" event, to which the CEI's Marlo Lewis responds appropriately:

[L]et's assume he experienced it that way, but what about the 'progressives' who set the agenda? They must really be into sharing, because this was their fifth meeting. Whatever the AEI folks thought the event was about, the agenda clearly outlines a strategy meeting to develop the PR/legislative campaign to promote and enact carbon taxes. [bold added]

I am grateful to the CEI for its vigilance.

-- CAV

Nature vs. Altruism

Nature vs. Altruism: In a posting at Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne discusses what it would take to disprove the theory of evolution. I found the following two points, taken together, interesting in light of a notion I have seen bandied about to the effect that altruism exists in nature or has somehow been selected for. (To be clear, each of these things are not what we actually see.)

• The observation that most adaptations of individuals are inimical for individuals or their genes but good for populations/species.  Such adaptations aren't expected to evolve often because they would require the inefficient process of group or species selection rather than genic, individual, or kin selection.  And indeed, we see very few features of organisms that seem inimical to organisms or their genes but useful for the population or species. One possible exception is sexual reproduction.

• Evolved "true" altruistic behavior among non-relatives in non-social animals. What I mean by "true" altruistic behavior is the observation of an individual sacrificing its reproductive output for the benefit of individuals to which it is either unrelated or from whom it does not expect to receive return benefits.  In this "true" altruism your genes give benefits to others and get nothing back, and this shouldn't evolve under natural selection. And, indeed, we don't see such altruism in nature. There are reports that vampire bats regurgitate blood to other individuals in the colony to whom they're unrelated, but those need confirmation, and there may also be reciprocal altruism, so that individuals regurgitate blood to those from whom, one day, they expect a return meal. Such cooperation can evolve by normal natural selection. [bold added]

I am not familiar enough with studies of "altruistic" behavior to know whether the term "altruism" in such contexts is normally used to mean something more like cooperation, but I have always disliked the term. I strongly suspect that most biologists, at least, don't mean some kind of non-cooperative phenomenon. Nevertheless, the use of the ethical term fosters misunderstanding of such work (not the least because of the actual meaning of altruism) among non-scientists in the general public. It also lends false credence to the misconception that the overwhelming evidence in favor of evolution somehow also indicates that self-sacrifice is a "natural" way for man to live. If anything, the opposite is true.

-- CAV

Leave It Up

Leave It Up: Writing as a guest columnist for the New York Times, Ta-Nehisi Coates argues against removing the statue of Joe Paterno from the entrance to Beaver Stadium, where Penn State plays its home football games. For anyone who hasn't followed the Penn State child sexual abuse scandal, the calls for removal come after the findings from the school's internal investigation, headed by former FBI director Louis Freeh, noted Paterno's role in a cover-up.

While the desire to demolish a statue created to honor Paterno is understandable, Coates holds, removing the statue would actually be a mistake. Coates ends the piece as follows:

Arguing for the statue's removal, the legendary coach Bobby Bowden said he wouldn't want [Jerry] Sandusky's crimes "brought up every time I walked out on the field." That's the point. Sandusky's crimes should never be forgotten, nor should the crimes of the broader community. It is shameful to deify men who put nationalist ritual before children. But it is more shameful to pretend that this elevation was achieved by Joe Paterno's singular hand.

Removing the Paterno statue allows Happy Valley to forget its own compliance in a national crime, to expunge its own culpability in its ruthless pursuit of glory. The statue should remain, and beneath it there should be a full explanation of Sandusky's crimes, Paterno's role and some warning to all of us who would turn a pastime into a god and elect a mortal man as its avatar. [bold added]

I agree. Tearing down the statue will not magically change for the better the cultural problems that enabled this atrocity any more than looking the other way while mouthing pieties about character meant that Jerry Sandusky had never harmed anyone or would cease his predations. If leaving the statue in place pleases a few Paterno loyalists, so be it: The very fact that it might would be an integral part of the lesson.

-- CAV

Aporia: Sexual Orientation

Aporia: Sexual Orientation:

by Jason Stotts

Aporia (Ancient Greek: ἀπορɛία: impasse; lack of resources; puzzlement; doubt; confusion) In philosophy, a philosophical puzzle or state of puzzlement;  In rhetoric, a rhetorically useful expression of doubt.

Sexual orientation is a confusing subject.  So confusing that some people have taken to the idea that your sexual orientation is whatever you want it to be, that whatever you self-identify as must be your actual sexual orientation.  But, I find that idea at least…problematic.  What about the issue of self-deception?  What about the issue of other-deception?  What about contexts in which it’s acceptable to be different and cultures where it isn’t?

If a person’s sexual orientation is simply what they self-identify as, then how do we treat a man who calls himself straight, but who only is aroused by men, who only has sex with men, and who has no desire to ever be in a relationship with a woman or have sex with one?  Certainly he’s at least self-deceptive, but isn’t he also wrong that he is straight?  If it’s true that this man does the opposite of what a straight man would do, then this man is not straight.

What about the man who calls himself straight, who is in a relationship with a woman with whom he regularly has sex, but who also feels a strong desire to have sex with men and does so on a regular basis.  He’s not self-deceptive because he knows his desires and acts on them.  He’s likely hiding his true orientation from others because of the stigma of being a male bisexual, but in so doing so he’s communicating something false about himself.  Should we simply consider him a liar?  A coward for not being true to himself?  He’s not wrong about his sexual orientation, since he actually does know what it is, but there is a problem here for other people who might want or need to know his sexual orientation (for example, the men with whom he has sex or his own partner).

So, no matter what sexual orientation is, it’s definitely not just whatever you might self-identify as.  Your sexual orientation is more than simply whatever you feel it is.

Part of the problem is that we have this polarized idea of sexuality: that everyone is either gay or straight and these are mutually exclusive categories.  But this is wrong and misses much of actual human sexuality.  Sexual orientation is not binary.  It is, at the very least, a continuum of sexual options.  I think this is best captured in the Kinsey Scale, which is 0-6, with 0 being a “perfect heterosexual” who only desires and has sex with those of the opposite sex and 6 is a “perfect homosexual” who only desires and has sex with those of the same sex.  Then there are, obviously, the vast majority of people who are somewhere in between.

One alternative scale involves ranking a person on two independent axes: androphilia and gynephilia, or desire for men and women (respectively).  So, a person could have 8/10 desire level for women and a 4/10 desire for men, making them a bisexual.  With this schema, the levels of arousal for men and women are independent and indicate desire for that sex.  Thus, one advantage of this system is that also measures level of overall desire for sexual activity as well as sexual desire for each sex.  I’m not sure which I think is better, but this system does capture more than the Kinsey system, which itself captures much more than the standard dichotomy of gay vs. straight.

Of course, there much these scales don’t capture, like propensity to form relationships versus simply having sex with a person, or a person’s overall level of sexual desire (perhaps their desire for men or women is only moderate, but they really enjoy masturbating), or the fact that a person’s sexual proclivities and orientation can change over time.  But, it does, at least, help move us in the right direction

Of course, one issue that we haven’t addressed head on is the issue of action versus desire.  Or, is being gay a matter of doing gay things or having gay desires or both.  I find this issue more confusing that some of the others.  For example, what should a man who considers himself a Kinsey 2 (bisexual – opposite sex leaning) because he has both desire for men and women, even though his desire for women is stronger, but who has never, due to lack of opportunity, had sex with a women and has only had sex with men?  He self-identifies as bisexual on the heterosexual side, but he’s never had sex with a woman.  On the other hand, it’s not because he doesn’t want to, but is merely frustrated by the situation.  This is further confounded by the fact that many men grow up in our culture with internalized homophobia and try to be bi as they come into their sexual maturity so they can maintain some semblance of being “normal,” when they really know their probably a K5 or K6.  But, leaving aside the issue of whether this particular man is being self-deceptive, what should he be considered?  I find it very strange to call him a K2 when he’s only had sex with men.  Perhaps sexual orientation is simply a matter of ideal situation and not of actual situation.  But that doesn’t seem right either.  I might wish I were a K6, but if I’ve only ever had sex with women, then that obviously seems wrong.  I don’t have an answer for the question of whether we should judge sexual orientation by action or desire, or perhaps both, but it’s an interesting topic that needs more investigating.

I wonder, though, what we should do about children, adolescents, and young adults.  Should we really consider a young person to be gay, bi, or straight when they have no actual sexual experience?  Is this not being at least somewhat…optimistic about their guessing powers?  Should we simply accept that this is what they think they would like to be or should be when they get older?  Should we consider their orientation an open question until they have some experience?  As unlikely as this last sounds, there would be some definite advantages to it: people wouldn’t try to force themselves to conform to their adolescent beliefs growing up and could approach the issue of orientation with an open mind.  Their sexuality could be treated as very tentative until they’re older, maybe even their mid-twenties.  Of course, perhaps it’d be better if we all held our sexuality less rigidly and treated it as at least something of an open question.

Ultimately, I still have more questions than answers on the question of sexual orientation, but I think the topic is a rich one and deserves more careful analysis that it usually gets.

Must-Read Social Media Books

Must-Read Social Media Books:

By the time I finish writing this guest post, there will be 100 new books published about social media. At least, that’s how it feels. It’s hard to keep up with books on the subject, simply because it’s hard to keep up with changes in social media period!

But at Martin’s request, I want to share some of the better books I’ve read about social media, blogging and internet marketing.

What I Look for 

I review business books, so for a book to stand out, I want it to:

• Teach me something
• Be easily digestible
• Let me walk away ready to do something, not just give me theories

There are many books I won’t put on this list simply because they don’t meet my requirements. Likewise, there are many books I haven’t yet read that would likely provide you benefit, no matter what level of social media understanding you’re currently at. Let’s dive in.

World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories

Truly, I recommend any of David Meerman Scott’s book. This is one of his more recent books. World Wide Rave does a fantastic job of cutting through the BS when it comes to trying to get people to talk about your brand. If you’ve ever been told by a marketing agency that they could “create a viral video” for you, please read this book. You can’t plan to create something that is guaranteed to go viral, but Scott does provide tips to nudge it in that direction.

What’s Great About this Book: You can use Scott’s techniques, no matter the size of your company or your marketing budget.

Social Media Marketing eLearning Kit For Dummies 

Phyllis Khare is the author of this book, which is accompanied by a CD-ROM for extra learning. What I love about this book is that it’s got something for every level of learner, from those who haven’t yet created a Twitter account, to those like me, that have been using marketing for years, but who always like learning new tactics. Khare delves into LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and geolocation services, and provides tips for using all.

What’s Great About this Book: It’s an easy reference book. Focusing on YouTube today? Immerse yourself in that chapter and you’ll be an expert by the end.

Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs

This book may be an oldie (published in 2009), but it’s definitely a goodie. Inbound Marketing is written by the two founders of HubSpot, the very company that coined the term “inbound marketing.”

The book centers around the concept that customers are no longer willing to allow companies to cram their messaging down their throats. Smart brands now find ways to draw customers to them, through channels like social media and blogs.

What’s Great About this Book: This book is the perfect combination of theory and application. You learn the concept of what inbound marketing is all about, but you also get great tips for executing it for your brand.

Books on My List

I’ll never get around to reading all the great social media books, but these are on my list to read soon:

30 Days to Social Media Success: The 30 Day Results Guide to Making the Most of Twitter, Blogging, LinkedIN, and Facebook 

I like the idea of setting a goal to see results with social media within 30 days.

If Social Media is a Game, These are the Rules: 10 Rules for Building a Profitable Social Media Strategy

I think many businesses--small and large--could use a few ground rules for using social media.

Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment 

Since the verdict is still out on how to measure the results of social media, I’d love to check this book out. Plus, my author crush David Meerman Scott is co-author!

What books have you read and recommend?

Susan Payton is the President of Egg Marketing & Communications, an internet marketing firm specializing in marketing communications, copywriting and blog posts. She’s written two books: 101 Entrepreneur Tips and Internet Marketing Strategies for Entrepreneurs, and has blogged for several sites, including The Marketing Eggspert Blog, as well as Mashable, Small Business Trends, FutureSimple, BizLaunch and Lead411. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing.

The Leftist-Islamic Alliance Against Freedom of Speech

The Leftist-Islamic Alliance Against Freedom of Speech: Robert Spencer, a tireless defender of freedom and the freedom of speech against Islam, was attacked recently in the New York Daily News and charged with having "inspired" Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik to go on his killing spree in July 2011. The writer, Nathan Lean, in his July 9th column, "Expose the Islamophobia industry," connects several other counter-jihadist writers with Breivik's actions, and lumps them all together as "untouchables" who ought to be ostracized.

The Islamophobia industry insists that it is not just a fringe minority who distort an otherwise peaceful faith. Instead, they point to the Koran and suggest that terrorists derive their world views from its messages. If that is so, these anti-Muslim agitators are guilty based on the logic of their own argument. After all, Breivik read and interpreted the writings of people like Spencer and [Pamela] Geller. He deciphered their diatribes much like Osama Bin Laden interpreted the Koran. Both men were compelled to act on the messages they digested.

It is doubtful that Lean has cracked open a Koran, or has heard of the Hadith, or The Reliance of the Traveler. For if he had any solid knowledge of Islam and its principal texts, he would grasp that these works do indeed sanction the violence of Muslim terrorists. He would understand that Spencer has every right to be an "Islamophobe," that is, someone who is fearful of Islam and especially of Sharia law. It is interesting to note that while Lean inveighs against Breivik, who murdered dozens of people, he does not mention the thousands of people killed by jihadists in virtually every country on earth. Moreover, he does not suggest that Breivik also was inspired by al-Qaida, in addition to a potpourri of other "Islamophobic" writers. About Spencer and his outspoken co-counter-jihadists, Lean concludes:

Society has a responsibility to counter these individuals with overwhelming overtures of pluralism — and to systematically push the fear-mongers out of public discourse.

Spencer replies:

The claim that I "inspired" the Norway mass murderer Breivik because he cited me in his "manifesto" has become a staple of Leftist and Islamic supremacist polemic against people who are trying to defend freedom against Sharia. But it founders on the facts: never mentioned is the fact that Breivik cited many, many people, including Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy, and Thomas Jefferson -- who are just three of the many who are never blamed for his murders.

Also swept under the rug is the fact that whether he is sane or not, Breivik's manifesto is actually quite ideologically incoherent -- so far was he from being a doctrinaire counter-jihadist that he wanted to aid Hamas and ally with jihad groups.

It probably has not escaped the notice of the more observant readers that the alliance of the Left and Islam reflects the same agitprop strategies, chief among is that when the Left's or Islam's policies fail, or produce disasters, or cause deaths, or provoke hostility among the electorate, blame for the failure is shifted elsewhere. When Obama's policies produce the opposite of his alleged goals, he blames Bush, when in fact Obama's policies are a continuation of Bush's soft-pedaled socialism. The difference between Bush's socialism and Obama's is that Bush's policies were founded on an ignorance of economics, or of reality; Obama's policies are intended to negate economics and remake reality.

When Muslims murder, torture, rape, go on rampages, or otherwise resort to violence anywhere in the world to enforce conformity to their ideology, their spokesmen in the West blame "extremists." But they never say that the "extremists" are wrong. The ideology is never at fault, only its finger-pointing "misunderstanders."

Thus, as Spencer points out in his Jihad Watch column, anyone who criticizes Islam is a "misunderstander" who spreads "lies" and "fabrications" and so on about the perils of Islam and can be quick-marched to the same camp with actual jihadists. Then a leap of logic is performed and Muslim violence can be blamed on criticism of Islam. The Left and Islamists "abhor" violence, express "regret" when violence occurs, and do not blame the perpetrators, but instead the "instigators" of the violence, that is, those who exercise their freedom of speech by pointing out the evils and fraud of Islam and the consistent violence its ideology encourages and promulgates. They cluck their tongues in public over the violence sanctioned by their ideology, but chastise anyone who says the violence is part and parcel of their ideology.

They must be "pushed out of public discourse." That is, shamed, humiliated, boycotted, mocked, picketed, and ultimately censored. The irony is that there is no "public discourse" about the nature of Islam and the crimes committed in its name. Nor does the Left and Islam wish there to be.

It is six of one, half a dozen of another. The Left and Islam both promote collectivism and universal submission and subjugation to them. Of course they are allies. With the help of its Muslim occupiers, France recently elected a blatant socialist. Has anyone in this country heard a single Muslim speak out against Obamacare? Has any British Muslim spoken out against Britain's welfare state? No? Why not? Because to oppose collectivism one must advocate individual rights. It is individual rights that the Left and Islam wish to extinguish. They say: Control private property, or expropriate it, and it is extinguished.

In the fantasy universe of collectivists, violence is never the fault of the ideology, it is always the fault of anyone who resists submission to the ideology or criticizes it. For secular collectivists (or the Left), as with Islamists, the fundamental means to the end is force.

The correlation between and alliance of the Left and Islam are not contrived, "constructed," coincidental, or accidental. They are fundamental, natural, and inevitable. Marx and Mohammad have gone forth into the world, holding hands, fingering their beards as their feral and predatory intelligences survey the landscape before them. For example, Marxists, socialists, and other leftists wish to collectivize property. If the property is thus "owned" by the state, then no freedom of speech is possible (except illegally underground, or via samizdat) but the "freedom" to extol collectivism. If property is Islamized – that is, owned, or controlled by Muslims in a fully collectivized society governed by Sharia law (that is, Nazified), with nominal private ownership whose purpose and end are dictated by the state, or by the caliphate – then no freedom of speech is possible, either, except the "freedom" to parrot the party line of Mohammad. In either system, an individual who dares question the ideology gets swatted very quickly. That is what Gulags and chopping blocks and bomb detonators are for.

Then there is the "purgatory" or halfway point between the full collectivization by either ideology, a gray world in which freedom of speech is not expressly forbidden by law, but exists at the arbitrary whim or politically correct discretion of politicians or the judiciary. This is the situation in the United States. Brand any criticism of Islam as "Islamophobic" and the critics are conveniently diagnosed with dementia and committed to Antonio Salieri's Vienna loony bin, the papers signed by people like Nathan Lean. Or by Hillary Clinton and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the United Nations, or Barack Obama, or by Tony Blair and the Prince of Wales, and The New York Times.

James Bloodworth almost gets it right in The Independent (Britain) in his July 5th column, "It’s time to stop using the term ‘Islamophobia’":

There has, however, been an unfortunate consequence of all of this. It is now possible to shut down almost any contemporary political debate by blurring the distinction between legitimate criticism of Islam and the anti-Muslim prejudice of the far-right. This is perhaps best expressed by the appearance on the scene of terms like “Islamophobic racism” – a further extension of the concept of Islamophobia – which conflate the idea of “race” (the way a person is born) with religion (a set of ideas passed on in the home, the school and the community).

Bloodworth is one of those leftists (and The Independent is notoriously leftist) who frown on private property but uphold freedom of speech, meaning, for all practical purposes, that one should be free to speak on any subject, so long as it's standing up at the bottom of a public swimming pool (there are no private swimming pools, except in the backyards of the political elite) and one's words have no untoward or deleterious social consequences. Bloodworth is correct to claim that the inclusion of the idea of racism is illegitimate, because Islamophobia has nothing to do with race. It is a "set of ideas," however, he presumably has not examined very closely. He still harbors a distaste for the term, without examining the root meaning of "phobia," either, which means a fear of something.

A phobia can be an unreasoning fear of things like mice or spiders or cigarette smoke or the number thirteen, or it can be a rational response to a nemesis, such as being knifed or stoned or raped or stalked by a fellow wanting to be propelled in a fireball to Paradise and seventy-two virgins. The desire to speak one's peace, or to preserve one's freedom, he insinuates but does not elaborate, is not a form of bigotry.

On the surface, the Left and Islam indulge in and promulgate the reversal of cause and effect. The mobs of Occupy Wall Street go on a rampage because they do not have the wealth of their victims. Muslims murder infidels because they are disrespectful non-Muslims who enjoy more freedom. But the reversal is only superficial. In fact, causality plays no role in the violence sanctioned by the Left and Islam. In criminal law, the causality of crime is not regarded as a legitimate, rational motive. Motives are not on trial. Murder, property theft or destruction, or felonious assault in the name of an ideology, are not admissible as rational norms of behavior. Only actions are deemed worthy of judgment.

Leftists like Nathan Lean say – and they say it often – that one having something a criminal lacks because of "the system" has denied him that thing is the cause of the violence. The wealthy sui generis are the cause of the expropriation of their property. This illogic can be and has been extended to: The bourgeoisie must be eradicated because they are the bourgeoisie. Jews must be exterminated because they are Jews. Muslims say that if infidels don't have "religion" – their religion – then their lives are forfeit and they must be fitted with fetters and assessed for jizya or just gotten out of the way. Infidels must be conquered or killed because they are sui generis infidels.

If you are a blonde, blue-eyed Swedish woman, or a British school girl, or a red-headed German secretary, you deserve to be raped by a gang of ambitious, "morally superior" Muslims who want a taste of Paradise on earth before they turn into bomb-carriers. Islam grants Muslims dispensation for being in a hurry. If you are rich, or just moderately well-off with money in the bank in spite of paying confiscatory taxes wherever you turn, you deserve to be robbed and collectivized in the name of a fantasy society projected by the looters to miraculously evolve some time after your passing. The Left grants its activists in and out of government dispensation on the basis of need and the sui generis sainthood of a "have-not." For the Left and Islam, every action is forgivable, nothing is criminal.

The reversal of cause and effect is not causality at work, but rather the irrational and the anti-reason. Lighting a bonfire beneath a pile of iron ore is not going to produce an ounce of steel. Gagging anyone who speaks out against censorship is not going to acquit one of the crime of censorship, not unless some dhimmi American judge rules that "Islamophobia" does not qualify as "civil" or "public" discourse.

Pushing "Islamophobes" out of the "public discourse" is not going to stop Islamic jihad, stealth or violent. Muslims will only be encouraged to carry more signs saying "Free speech go to hell." Prohibiting the advocates of individual rights from criticizing socialist policies will only encourage wannabe beneficiaries of socialism to smash store windows, occupy private property, and shut or shout down forums on the price of liberty in the name of "freedom of speech."

And that, in a nutshell, is the symbiosis of the Left and Islam. Its fruit is totalitarianism. Ignore it at your peril.