Benpercent

Transfer of Writing; Bye

2010-07-04T19:02:00.000-07:00

I no longer have an interest in being a *formal* intellectual activist, so from here on out this blog will be inactive but open for its archives, at least for now. Trying to maintain two blogs as different as Benpercent and Musing Aloud is like trying to maintain two different mental systems. I don't like the intellectual split required in the thinking for my posts. It makes the writing seem like work, and that's no fun. Making the identification that I don't want to become a writer has, regrettably, had a significant impact on my views on my writing and my willingness to maintain good habits. I've even noticed a laziness welling up in me to leave rather bad sentences in my recent posts simply because I don't care to strive for excellence in this area all the time, but I should change on that. (<<< A bad sentence!)

The most significant factor in this decision, however, is the project I've mentioned at my other blog. In case you missed it, I've noted that I'm undertaking a months long project to remedy a problem that is interfering with my learning, productivity, and emotional health. It's developed to the point that most of my consciousness is often diverted into concerns regarding the solution to this problem and visualizations of the joys of successfully solving it. I speak of the problem and project in vague terms since secrecy is vital to the efficiency of the solution, especially since the solution is taking months to implement. Once it's finished I'll construct a detailed explanation at my other blog, but right now it's indeterminate as to the actual time-frame. Given the proper circumstances it can be completed in 1-3 months, but I'm waiting for a certain something to occur before that time span (or "waiting period") can be considered in effect. The uncertainty is agonizing, but the success of this project means a major step forward in my life, so I'll just have to shut up and put up until then.

This does not mean I'm giving up activism. Given my interests, I will try to blend it into my personal writings over at Musing Aloud; only I don't plan on writing formal academic essays. The only subjects covered would be that of personal interest or impact to me, whether it be a career development or my fears over foreign policy.

So don't expect any more new writing to show up here. The purpose of this blog now is to simply have searchable archives. Follow Musing Aloud if you wish to keep track of new content. See you there.

My Future

2010-04-25T08:36:00.000-07:00

Check out my other blog to see what's been going on in my life to hold me from writing, and to see what changes I plan on making to both my lifestyle and writing habits.

The Burden of the National Debt

2010-04-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

I am still very ignorant about economics -- I have only read Economics in One Lesson so far in my studies -- but I would still like to raise a moral question I have in regards to the debt of the United States.

It is without question that the United States is in a massive amount of debt and that the politicians will incur yet more. Unless the appropriate measures are taken, the US may experience total economic destruction. My question is: To how much of the debt does the United States have a *real* obligation to pay back, and from whom?

One thing that disturbs me in discussions about the debt is when people break it down to how much each individual citizen (born and yet to be born) will have to pay in order to pay back the debt in full. I know that in my personal situation, and in millions of others, I have not elected to take part in these financial "contracts" with other countries and whatnot. For the most part, if not entirely, the politicians have incurred debt with money that either wasn't theirs to begin with (taxes), money that has no value (fiat), or money that doesn't even exist. Unless I'm improperly taking this literally, I think it amounts to nothing in the moral context since these contracts were formed without the participants' permission.

As a parallel, take the imprisonment of the American Japanese during WWII. After they were released, if I recall correctly, they had to start over economically since their property had been distributed. In truth, while it would certainly be a mess to disentangle, the Japanese victims should have gotten their property back since having had it stolen from them does not mean that their right to it had been eliminated. While the new owners may have been innocent in receiving the property, their innocence does not mean they have a right to that property since it was distributed by an entity which had no right to distribute it in the first place.

To apply this to the national debt, is it not the case that the debt cannot be morally satisfied by taxing citizens? To force someone into a contract is a contradiction which invalidates its standing. I understand that the debt must be paid by somehow since it has been incurred, but I don't understand how it can be paid back by moral means.

All I know is that when the government interferes into the economy it leads to messes like these that are difficult to intellectually dissect.

Specialize or Generalize?

2010-03-27T13:35:00.000-07:00

For the past few days I've been contemplating the appropriateness of my current blog theme. This week someone commented on a blog and stated that very few blogs perform very well at general themes, and that got me to thinking about how well it is that I pull off my theme of epistemology, ethics, and politics. When I think back to what kind of posts I have written, I noticed that at large I do not consistently generalize; instead I have "trends" where I tend to post articles centered around one subject for a while before I move on to the next. As evidence, take my posts on the medical care debate. This blog does not specialize in medical-political issues as, say, FIRM does, and yet when one considers just how consistently I've focused on that issue one could accidentally get that impression.

Furthermore, because of these trends I end up neglecting the other portions of my theme as a result. In focusing on the medical care issue so much, when is the last time I've written a technical post on epistemology? I can't remember the last time I've issued an analysis of my local political situation (never you mind the fact I've quit following it in exchange for an interest in federal happenings). In short, I'm beginning to think that by adopting a general theme I may be stretching myself too thin, therefore becoming a jack-of-all-trades and master to none. While it is a nice prospect to attempt to become a master-of-all-trades, it is simply impossible, and I would rather become masterful in a few things than mildly competent in everything.

I think I'll begin giving serious consideration to changing the theme of this blog. As implied in my post about my central purpose, I'm in a developmental phase in my life. For months I was at a loss as to what goals to pursue since I finally realized I didn't want to dedicate my life to writing (and I held onto that idea for years), and with the identification to how much I'm beginning to value nutrition and cooking my life is gaining direction again. Perhaps I should change my theme in regard to those interests. Last year I wrote an article that would indicate such a theme. I don't know; much thinking needs to be done.

At first glance, I'm considering perhaps simply narrowing the focus of my current theme: Rather than write about epistemology, ethics, and politics in every area of life, I could focus on them as they apply to nutrition and cooking (saving recipes for Musing Aloud, when I get to that point). I'm not sure. Again, more thinking needs to be done.

(As for Musing Aloud, I won't be rethinking or tampering with the theme of that at all. I love the way it is, and I think it works perfectly. It has increased my motivation to post since I'm focusing on myself as a whole person as opposed to some isolated portion of my intellect. I've got to admit: I'm the most interesting person I have ever met. As such, MA will continue on as it is. )

I welcome and encourage reader input on this issue. What do you think of my blog as a *whole*? Do I skip around in subjects too much? Do I try to cater to too many different audiences?

Obamacare Passed: Now What?

2010-03-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

According to Yahoo! News Obamacare has passed the senate and will now be sent to the President for his signature. If you're a long-time reader of this blog you know I've been following this issue for several months since it was born, and it is certainly sickening to many to see that the efforts to prevent this legislation from going through have failed.

But strangely enough I'm not offended in the least by this event. If anything, I find that my resolve has been boosted as a result.

As I stated in my last post no matter what the outcome is the opportunities to help bring about a rational culture is neither lost nor finished. The passing of this legislation, in fact, may be a golden opportunity for philosophical activism. The latest Rasmussen report, which has been updated since my last post, now indicates that even more voters oppose the plan and even fewer people support it, now resulting in a 13% gap. Even with the 3% margin of error that is still a dramatic split. Given this, do you think that America is going to sit idly by and accept its "fate"? I doubt it. I predict that the legislation will go into effect even despite current procedural difficulties, but I also believe that Americans will be more receptive to Objectivist ideas than ever, and in the long-run it's the ideas that matter.

This could be a significant advantage. You know the saying "You can't tell a kid not to touch a hot stove"? The meaning of this saying, in the context of its example, is that you cannot teach a kid that touching a hot stove is bad for him unless he has a conception of what it is to be "burned." Once he gets burned is when he'll learn that it is not good to touch a hot stove. Of course we could have avoided such a legislative outcome in America if the culture had a better epistemology, but instead we now may have the opportunity to touch a hot stove with both hands on the burners, and our bodyweight bearing down on top. Given the inevitable failure that's going to occur of Obamacare people are going to be looking for answers again. As a reminder, here's a sampling of what failures are going to occur not just as a matter of the concrete effects of this particular legislation, but rather as a matter of principle given the nature of this type of legislation and all others like it:

1.) Rationing and long waits; shortages: Since health insurance will be extended to all it will inevitably lead to a decline in efficiency since there isn't an equal increase of service providers to accommodate the soon-coming deluge of demand. When you tell someone they can have as much of something as they want at no cost then they have a perverse incentive to take more than is rationally justifiable or to be reckless; people will start going to the doctor for things they otherwise wouldn't if they were making the decision based on their finite supply of money ("Hmm, I've got a cold. Better go see the doctor.").

And if that weren't sufficient on its own to cause inefficiencies and shortages, there is a likelihood that a significant number of doctors will leave the medical profession as a result of this legislation, thereby decreasing available service providers and further undermining the medical industry's ability to accommodate demand. What people seem to forget to take into account when considering lowering the payments of doctors or insuring more people is the nature of the doctors' job: not only did it take years of practice, learning, and hard study to bring them up to the level of competence they have achieved, but there is also the risk inherent in their work that they have to deal with. They could err and accidentally give themselves an illness or fatal disease (e.g. by accidentally being pricked by a syringe), or, worst yet from a psychological standpoint, they could cause a patient to become sick, sicker, or even to die. It is a very stressful job by its very nature, and when politicians put upon doctors more work and risk for lesser reward the likelihood is that many doctors will soon find their work just isn't worth the effort anymore, and so will quit.

2.) Skyrocketing costs: This is a complex area, but the economic effects of this legislation could not only exacerbate the depression (if it be a depression) we're already in, but also make it last the rest of the time this legislation remains in effect. The above mentioned increase in demand will obviously drive up costs to astronomical levels. Doctors quitting will contribute to expenses even more. Ignorant politicians dictating medical decisions, the new taxes, the establishment of new government agencies, and so on: Even more.

Another thing that has been misunderstood in the debate is the actual nature of insurance itself. The reason you insure yourself is to protect yourself against risk, not so you can just withdraw money whenever your situation necessitates it, without having paid into the system first. Insurance companies charge their costumers a certain amount so that they can pool the money and make it available to whatever costumers submit a claim and satisfy the criteria for being awarded money; otherwise it would be impossible for the companies to exist. Regulations have lead to today's unaffordability. What are companies to do if laws mandate which conditions and treatments they *must* provide coverage for, regardless of whether or not the particular costumers agree to pay for it, or even need it? Raise prices, since covering a broader spectrum of things means the companies has to satisfy a potentially greater number of claims in that regard. What are companies to do if laws mandate that they accept any and all applicants regardless of preexisting conditions and as soon as they submit an application? Raise prices, since the company needs to build itself up so it can pay out the claims, as it is taking on greater risk. What are companies to do if politicians enforce price ceilings? Withdraw from the particular markets that have such regulations, since insurance companies need a certain amount of funding in order to maintain a resource pool large enough to satisfy its costumers. What happens if all these past mentioned laws become national federal law? Insurance companies jack up their prices even more, or go out of business. With Obamacare we may see not only higher prices, but also the possible elimination of private insurance through economic suffocation.

3.) Possible further governmental intrusions: As I've mentioned on this blog before, an egg company in the United Kingdom had one of its commercials, known by the phrase "Go to Work on an Egg," censored by the UK government since it was deemed as promoting an unhealthy lifestyle, and was therefore a potential risk for increasing medical care costs (conventional nutrition again). Under this same justification the American government could impose further controls in other areas of life as a response to the failures of socialized medicine, stating that such measures would "cut costs" or "increase efficiency." Remember the proposed ban on butter? What about the proposed ban on salt, which has been taken seriously enough to be made into an official bill? There's already extreme restrictions on raw dairy products.

And so on and so forth. (For an excellent and thorough analysis on why socialized medicine is a failure on principle, distinct from any concrete instance of it, consult Moral Health Care vs. "Universal Health Care." It's from a subscription journal, but this particular article is available in its entirety for free.)

What the Democrats have passed through last night will inevitably blow up in everyone's face if put into effect, and it's still a question as to what degree it will go into effect, if it goes into effect at all. From what I gather from my reading, there's still plenty of complicated issues unresolved: some states are passing legislation to nullify parts of this legislation, or are even going so far as to sue the fed; Republican John McCain has mentioned an intention to attempt to repeal this measure, there's constitutionality concerns about some aspects (such as mandatory insurance), there's the soon-coming public outrage, and so on. As I said above, things are not lost yet; there's golden opportunity abound.

While I understand that some may be disenchanted and demotivated today, I feel reenergized and full of resolve. To quote Betsy Speicher: "Reality is always on the winning side."

I cannot help but exclaim "en guarde!"

The Big Sunday Vote

2010-03-20T08:50:00.000-07:00

True to my word, I have managed to send a letter to my representatives every single day this week. They weren't all lengthy, some in fact simply told them to vote no on Obamacare, but the point in my sending such a quantity of letters was to make obvious I wasn't going to forget this issue and become indifferent to how my representatives voted on the matter. Here's the letter I sent off today, which I believe will be the last one this week:

Dear [representative],

Tomorrow is the big day: The vote for Obamacare. As you know, I am against it in every form and degree. Are you still dedicated to a "yes" vote? If so, then you have lost any further consideration from me towards you as a future candidate.

I only have one life to live, and I won't be having any people deciding for me how it should be lived. What goes on with my insurance plan is between me and my insurance company, not me, them, and some bureaucrats. What goes on in my doctor's office is between me and my doctor, not me, my doctor, and some bureaucrats. I should be free to cooperate with them on mutually beneficial terms -- or to not deal with them at all if I so wish. I eternally resent that you and other politicians in Washington believe it's alright to force me to buy a product I may not want or may be unable to afford (insurance) and to **dictate** the terms on which I am allowed to cooperate with insurance companies and doctors. This is not merely impractical in regards to health issues, but also IMMORAL. To live my life I need to live according to my own judgment, and you guys right now are working to nullify and make it useless in regards to medical-economical matters. I will never forgive nor endorse what is going on. Believing morality to be on MY side I will have motivation and resolve to ever dispute this legislation if it comes to pass, for however long it remains in effect. Again, I only have one life to live and I'm not going to let YOU waste it.

So what's your vote going to be? Remember, you are, right now, responsible for what happens to not merely your constituents, but the millions of people that make up the United States. If you vote with the majority, then you are equally responsible as the other politicians in bringing forth whatever consequences may arise. Think wisely, and make sure your vote is something you can take credit for, rather than blame.

Vote no on Obamacare. It's immoral that it violates individual rights by *forcing* people to buy products, join programs, pay money, and adopt procedures against their will. It's impractical in that this legislation is merely a variation of medical care systems we have seen fail so many times in other countries, resulting in longer waits, higher mortality, and increased suffering.

Regards,
Benjamin

From what I understand, tomorrow is supposed to be the day for the big vote. As far as I can tell, things are still up in the air as to how it will turn out, so take the time to contact your representatives!

Furthermore, it's still uncertain as to what would result in either of the alternate outcomes. If the legislation is passed, then it's still not the end of the world since the overwhelming public opposition will certainly not lead to the nation acquiescing to the outcome; it's probable, if not certain, quite a spectacle could occur if the legislation passed, and that would be a stellar opportunity for activism. But if the legislation should fail then it's must be made clear not to consider it too big a success, since a man who truly believes that his actions are condoned by morality will take a greater effort than the mere defeat of a bill to make him lose his resolve, and since American culture is currently saturated with the kind of morality that is being used to justify this bill there is little to stop it from being resurrected and brought to vote again. In either situation, our work to support a rational culture is neither lost nor finished.

Modern Paleo Launched

2010-03-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

Diana Hsieh has launched a new website called Modern Paleo, a blog and information center run by advocates of Objectivism. The e-mail list OEvolve is one of my favorite places to spend my time on the internet, so I hope this site lives up to expectations! It includes new e-mail lists, a blog that is to be run by multiple authors, a good collection of paleo resources, and more.

Go check it out!

The End

2010-03-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

Paul Hsieh of FIRM has noted that this week will be the critical week for health care legislation. He has given permission for the contents of his post to be distributed, so I will do so here:

This upcoming week will be the critical week in the health care fight. Speaker Pelosi is expected to start the process for the House to hold its final vote to approve the Senate bill. The vote will probably take place at the end of this upcoming week.

Right now, they are probably still a few votes shy of the majority they need:

"Dem House vote-counter lacks health care votes now"
Associated Press, 3/14/2010

"Can Nancy Pelosi Get the Votes?"
Michael Barone, Wall Street Journal, 3/11/2010

This is an extremely risky move by the Democrats. Normally, a Speaker wouldn't plan on voting on such major legislation unless he or she was sure of having enough votes.

But the Democrats are also (correctly) concluding that time is not on their side. They have made the calculation that if they push for it now, then maybe then can squeeze out the last few votes via a combination of threats and bribes. For example, they have "sweetened" the deal for the wavering moderates by promising billions of dollars of new student loan subsidies.

On the other hand they recognize that if they wait much longer, then when these wavering Congressmen go back home for the Easter recess, they will get an earful from their constituents who are strongly opposed to the bill, and they'll lose even more support.

Hence, from the Left's perspective, it's now or never.

From our perspective, this means three things:

1) We are winning. We have a chance to defeat this terrible bill.

In particular, do not get discouraged when you read the inevitable news stories about how the Democrats are "close to getting the votes" or how Pelosi is "confident she'll have the votes". She has to exude an aura of public confidence, otherwise her coalition will quickly unravel.

Polls repeatedly show Americans opposed to ObamaCare:

"Why Obama Can't Move the Health-Care Numbers"
Rasmussen and Schoen, Wall Street Journal, 3/9/2010

Similarly, head counts of House Democrats also show that they don't quite have enough votes yet:

"Scrambling for votes, Democrats face uphill climb to pass healthcare reform"
The Hill, 3/13/2010

"The Hill's 'Whip Count' on ObamaCare –- as of 3/13/2010"

If they had the votes, they'd have already passed it by now.

2) We must keep up the pressure.

The Democrats are pulling out all stops to find some way to get this through now, before the critical Easter recess.

At this point in time, the single most important thing you can do is tell your Congressman to vote "NO" on this bill:

http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

This is especially important if your Congressman is one of the undecided or swing votes on these "Code Red" lists:

http://www.nrcc.org/CodeRed/targets/
Tea Party Patriots Code Red Alert

But even if your Congressman is a firm "Yes", it's still important to let them know. If even the liberal Democrats from "safe" seats consistently hear that their constituents are against it, it will give the wavering moderates more political cover to vote "No". They can then tell Pelosi, "Even your constituents hate this thing -- there's no way I can support it".

*** Our counter-pressure is our best weapon against the pressure that the statists will exert on these wavering Congressmen. ***

Your letter doesn't have to be long or eloquent. It just has to convey certainty, passion, and moral conviction. Something short and simple like:
"Please vote NO on this terrible health care plan! If you vote yes, you will destroy the ability of me and my family to receive good health care in the future. This is personal! If you vote yes, we will never forgive you for hurting our lives and trampling on our basic freedoms."
(Of course, you may wish to adapt that to suit your own style and values.)

Feel free to use all contact methods -- phone, fax, and e-mail. And please feel free to contact them multiple times over the upcoming week. In this context, repetition is a virtue!

And of course, if your Congressman is a probable or firm "No", then thank him or her for his position. They also need our moral support.

3) If you have friends or family in other parts of the country, tell them to do the same thing and contact their Congressmen.

If you need intellectual ammunition for them, one of my personal favorites is from the AFCM website:

"Fifty Fallacies About Health Care" by Richard Ralston

Jared Rhoads' Lucidicus Project also has a good set of OpEds.

And of course, FIRM has its archive of articles and OpEds.

I personally think that the most important thing we can do in the next few days will be to directly contact our Congressmen and have friends/family do the same. LTEs and OpEds will still be important, but not as much as before. (That said, I'm still going to continue writing and/or disseminating some of my earlier writings to people I know around the country.)

This is the endgame, folks. Most political observers regard the health care bill as a 50-50 "toss-up" or "too close to call". It really could go either way. What happens this week will determine the course of this great country (for good or for ill) for decades to come.

Your voice could be the critical difference in swaying the right one or two minds. If you value your lives and your freedom, the time to speak up is now!

(Anyone is welcome to forward or repost this to any appropriate recipients or venues.)

I'll make an effort to e-mail my representatives every day this week. What will you do?

First Butter, and Now Salt?

2010-03-12T19:39:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have heard that the mayor of New York a few weeks ago put forth the "suggestion" that restaurants reduce the amount of salt used in food preparation out of concern for health. Now it has come to the point that a legislator has come up with a bill in this regard, not to reduce salt but to ban it. A couple months ago I made mention of a call for a ban on butter from a doctor. Well, do we see now that we must take even the most comical of suggestions seriously?

I agree with previous speculation that the chances of this bill passing are excruciatingly low, but it is nonetheless the case that an absurdity has come closer to passing. Unless the philosophical ideas about the proper role of government are changed there is nothing to prevent this bill from being resurrected.

While this may predate the legislative endeavor, comedian writer Tom Naughton has written an excellent analysis on this subject, taking care to examine both the practical consequences if such a suggestion were carried out and the nutritional science behind it.

The Health of the Hadza

2010-03-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

Stephan of Whole Health Source has written an interesting post on the contrasts of modern living against the culture of some primitives. However, I believe this post to erogenous in diagnosing current problems and that it encourages the emulation of impractical habits.

Due to some technical errors I was not allowed to post the comment I originally wanted. I managed to get my comment below 4,000 characters, but still it would not accept it, so here's what I posted in its place:

Interesting, but I think you're stepping out of your specialization here. Biology and nutrition can explain a lot, but not that which is within the jurisdiction of philosophy (ethics) and psychology (emotional health).

In truth I believe the stress of modern living is not caused by modern living itself, but rather irrational ideas regarding modern living. To take your example about people being stressed by being subordinate to other people, emotions are such an individual experience that we cannot generalize from any one instance. A person who hates his job and resents his boss will necessarily feel stressed as a result and will probably suffer negative physiological effects, but the exact opposite would be true for the person that loves his job and values his boss. In the former case we cannot blame modern living for the person's stress, but rather his ideas.

It is irrational ideas, not modern living, that causes the stress.

P.S. Is there a glitch in Blogger that prevents long comments from being posted? I originally wanted to post a much longer comment, but it would not accept it even as I got it under the defined character limit.

Here's what I wanted to post:

I think you are stepping outside the appropriate specialization. Biology and nutrition can explain a great deal, but only to an extent. While it may account for some parts of mental health, as certain practices and diets can have effects on brain development and chemical balance, it cannot account for all of it, because at some point one steps outside the realm of physical science and into the realm of philosophy and psychology. I think this is an instance of such. Forgive the length of this comment, but I believe it is important for understanding the nature of the error.

Most importantly, I think this post neglects the nature of emotions, though I assume you believe in the impact on health one’s consistent emotions can have. The nature of our emotions is determined by our ideas; our emotions are the physical response to our evaluations of things. Therefore the nature of our ideas can contribute significantly to how much stress we bear.

Take the amount of free time available to the Hadza. While this appear ideal for some this would be extremely stressful for others. A person who takes an Adam and Eve view on what composes an ideal life and the nature of work may find the existence of the Hadza to be ideal since so much free time is available, but for a man who absolutely loves his work and routinely stays up late in order to keep at it this would be hell, therefore adding a negative impact on health.

This applies in many places. A person who resents his employer will necessarily dislike his job and feel stressed by it, but a person who loves his job, values his employer, or both will find that his job provides an emotional benefit in addition to his financial sustenance and may enjoy health benefits on top of all that. The issue of emotional evaluations as they apply to health is so individual that we cannot generalize from any one experience.

Furthermore, remember that the Hadza are primitive, which comes with major risks. They have no warfare, but what prevents it? Feeling good and sharing emotions with other people cannot be a sufficient defense against possible future warfare. Emotionalists, people that believe emotions can provide knowledge of existence, cannot rationally convince other people of their conclusions since their conclusions are isolated entirely within emotions. ("For those that understand no explanation is necessary; for those who do not none is possible.") An emotionalist therefore either has to suffer the stress of being impotent to persuade other people, except for people who share his emotions; break off from the group, or use physical force in order to make people adhere to his conclusions in physical action, which would inflict stress on everyone. The Hadza lack a rational ideology, so they put themselves at immense risk for stress if a significant number of people disagree in their conclusions about what is right. While the Hadza may now be enjoying peace, it is fragile and virtually unsustainable. Only in a rational society where men share a rational morality, a rational epistemology, and explicitly agree that force is an improper way of dealing with men can there be a sustainable peace and minimal violence.

To summarize, the fallacies are 1.) applying the wrong scientific methodology, 2.) neglecting how emotional responses come about and how individual they are, 3.) making a generalization off your own individual experiences, and 4.) neglecting what risk the Hadza are at for being a primitive culture without a rational ideology.

It may seem as though I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but my purpose is to make explicit that this conclusion about a primitive culture has the potential to add more stress than eliminate. In short, I think the real problem is that our culture adheres to irrational ideas regarding modern living and takes up stress as a result rather than modern living itself causing the stress. As stated above, opposing views on work will lead to vastly different emotions and physiological responses depending on what view is held. We must hold responsible the true culprit, irrational ideas, if we are to advance towards a healthy solution.

Due to the debate that went on in the comments Stephan has posted a follow up piece on how commenters have been engaging in a false dichotomy between miserable savages and Garden of Eden primitives, and I agree that it is a false dichotomy, but I still believe that his original post still makes an incorrect diagnosis.

Without a rational philosophy, man is helpless to sustain himself. Without a rational epistemology he will have no way except by luck to identify what foods are good for him, and without a rational morality he has no way to determine the practical way to live, alone and with others. The Hadza may be enjoying good health now, but can it last?

Political Sacrifice and the Permanence of Laws

2010-03-10T12:13:00.000-08:00

From We Stand FIRM I learned of an article from Mark Steyn that states that the political price, being voted out of office, may be worth it to the Democrats in order to pass the controversial and unfavored medical care reform bill. Morality is a significant motivating power for men if not the most significant. As quoted (paraphrased?) before from Noodlefood: "Men are willing to create hell on earth if they think it's moral." We have already seen in the middle east how men can be willing to go so far as to commit suicide when they think their actions are moral.

Though the one thing I would like to elaborate on in this post is the fallacy noted by Paul Hsieh in the last paragraph of his FIRM article: treating the laws of men as equivalent to the laws of nature. I've seen some people prone to making this error.

The fallacy entails that a person treats the laws (political sense) enacted by man as if they were the equivalence of the laws (metaphysical sense) of nature, thereby meaning that the laws of man are immutable and will remain in effect forever. This ignores that men have free will and can choose their courses of action.

Just because the Democrats may be willing to sacrifice their political careers in order to pass a piece of legislation unfavorable to the public does not mean that the legislation will remain in effect forever or even for a long time; it may not even go into effect at all. Given the proper education and philosophical foundation a culture can be nurtured so as to reject these kinds of measures in any degree or variant.

At this point in the debate I'd say that we may speculate about the chances of or difficulties inherent in passing this legislation, but if it does pass I think it remains indeterminate how the American people will respond to it. Given that there is such a significant amount of opposition to this legislation (53% according to the latest Rasmussen poll), how do you think the public would react if the bill were passed against their wishes? Certainly not with a "Shucks! We lost! Well, I guess we'll just get used to it!" In the scenario of the bill being passed it would be extremely likely that Congress would have an almost complete turnover, and it also wouldn't be far-fetched to assert that there would be demand for a repeal of the law, but right now there's little evidence to derive any conclusions from.

Whatever does happen, we must remember that the results are not absolutes set in stone that will last forever and ever. If the legislation passes, then there's still hope for repeal, education, and activism; if the legislation fails, then we must continue work to advocate a rational philosophy so that the legislation doesn't get revived in some other form, which would be inevitable in the absence of such support. Right now things are up in the air.

McCain Abandons Supplement Legislation

2010-03-09T16:46:00.000-08:00

Interesting development in regards to the The Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 (S. 3002) mentioned a few posts ago: John McCain, the person who originally came up with this bill, has abandoned it.

This does not mean that the bill is finished, since it can still be passed, but to be ditched by its own father is a telling sign. Don't forget to write to your representatives.

Possible Research Orientation?

2010-03-06T12:04:00.000-08:00

I'm in the process of my first official college research paper, and I'm doing, well, awful. I hate doing parenthetical citations since I believe it's distracting to the reader, but then again I'm awful at in-text citation since it messes up my style and I end up being very redundant and reusing phrases over and over again. But still: Justice is a very big value to me and I worry all the time about making explicit, public distinguishments between other people's thoughts and my own. Give credit where credit is due.

As such, I'm contemplating adapting a formal citation method to this blog in order to practice my skills, as I think it would be of vast intellectual benefit. This particular blog, as opposed to Musing Aloud, is purposely more formal since I use it for intellectual activism, so placing superscript citations at the bottom wouldn't be disruptive to the theme.

I don't have any plans for incorporating this any time soon since I still need to purchase the proper resources and study them -- and that may be a while since I'm focusing my limited funds on groceries due to my being unemployed -- so don't go about anticipating it, but don't be surprised once you see me start doing it.

One Size Kills All

2010-03-02T06:51:00.000-08:00

From Citizens for Health I learned that there is a new health-related bill that poses yet another significant threat to our lives, The Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 (S. 3002). If passed this bill could financially destroy brands of supplementation and cause others to be prohibited by law, decrease the effectiveness of some products by prohibiting certain ingredients, make it more difficult to find useful information by requiring the companies to document non-essential information, and increase prices by imposing new operating costs. A nutritional company named Life Extension offers some very insightful anecdotal evidence about how the FDA abused its authority in the 80's by forcibly taking their supplements:

I was in a Walgreens last week picking up some pictures, when a recorded voice came on to the store’s speaker system announcing the heart healthy benefits of fish oil and CoQ10.

This brought a flashback to the year 1987 when FDA agents stormed Life Extension’s premises and seized these supplements, along with a brochure that described how they could help protect against heart attack.

Accompanied by armed US marshals, I vividly recall FDA agents ridiculing me about the concept that fish oil had any relationship to cardiac disorders. The sad fact in this story is the millions of heart attacks suffered by Americans because the FDA had the power for so long to censor the truth about omega-3 supplements. [Underlines changed to italics.]

Read it all.

This reminds me of John David Lewis' article about little dictators, about how laws like the one above create people who act like miniature dictators since they have the means to exercise government coercion and thus can enact their whims at will. If the above bill becomes law, not only will we suffer the practical consequences I listed but many more little dictators will also be born and unleashed into the world, causing further suffering.

And aside from all of the above, this also allows us to see the consequences of a moral-economic principle: the suffering that is caused when it is believed to be morally proper for the government to force everyone in the nation to comply with the judgment of a few bureaucrats.

In one of my earliest essays, The Sisyphean Judgment of Politicians, I detailed why politicians are doomed to failure as a matter of principle when they try to force their judgments on their constituents. Most essentially we must remember that politicians are specialized in the enactment and enforcement of law, not in nutritional study, environmental science, economic policies, and so on. Since they are not properly specialized for the tasks they undertake it follows that they cannot be expected to make specialized decisions properly. When a bureaucrat does make a practical decision in these fields we can view it literally as a matter of luck, as the odds heavily favor that they're taking on more than their skills can handle.

Because of our bureaucrats' lack of specialization and their forcing their judgment upon everyone, everyone suffers as a result when their judgment happens to be wrong. As Life Extension pointed out, millions of people may have suffered from heart disease because the bureaucrats in the FDA had the power to seize omega-3 supplements, thereby forcibly preventing consenting costumers from purchasing a product that would preserve their health, maybe even save their life. In a free economy the situation would be different: the failure of one man would serve as knowledge for other men on what not to do, and the totality of the nation would not have to suffer for the misjudgment of a few.

The danger of blanket judgments will only increase if the above act is passed, as the consequences of giving the FDA more power will be to make supplements more expensive, less effective, and less available nation-wide. The justification for the bill is that it will help make it so that only safe supplements will be available, but do we really want to the entire nation to be follow only a single standard of safety chosen by a few bureaucrats? We must reject this on moral and practical grounds, that we have a right to cooperate with each other as we deem profitable, without coercive interference, and that no politician can properly make the decisions for us.

The Battle Resumes

2010-02-27T08:25:00.000-08:00

One evening while I was in class I observed the spectacle of two fellow classmates advocating -- and yes, in these explicit terms -- the government taking over the medical industry and the elimination of free markets. I am not accustomed to seeing socialist (or communist, or Marxist, or whatever) positions expressed out in the open, and I prepared to pose some Socratic questions to learn their justifications for these positions, but given the immaturity of one person and the potential hostility of the other I opted to stay out of the conversation and offer no body language (e.g. head shaking) that would incite a response. I am not afraid to support my own convictions in the open, but given how many rude arguments I have gotten into I prefer to be careful with whom I debate.

This situation does, however, light an incentive for me to resume posting on the current health care debate, though I'll be careful to make it an isolated issue rather than focusing on it as if it were the theme of this blog.

The excellent Paul Hsieh of We Stand Firm has written a detailed analysis of a presenter at the health care summit (?) and discusses why the debate must move onto moral grounds.

I forgot which author on NoodleFood stated this, but to paraphrase: Humans are willing to create hell on earth -- if they think it's moral. So long as we dwell on petty economic issues in the health care debate it will always be the man with the sanction of morality that will have the upper hand.

Do Americans truly believe that it is moral for non-medical expert politicians to dictate the actions of professional doctors? for the people who produce in industry to be taxed to pay for all this lest they be fined or imprisoned? for anonymous bureaucrats to decide which Americans can and cannot receive certain treatments? This is where we must direct our thoughts.

Saved? According to Whom?

2010-02-17T11:46:00.000-08:00

According to Yahoo! News Obama has been reported as stating the now one-year-old stimulus package saved the economy and has helped avoid a depression.

Absurd. As has been noted before it is logically impossible for the government to stimulate the economy since it cannot create monetary value; only transfer it from here to there. If Obama is correct (and that is extremely dubious given his complete lack of credibility, as noted in Lies Against Reality parts I and II) that his stimulus plan has caused approximately 2 million people to retain their jobs then it is also true that he has caused approximately 2 million people to lose their jobs since the stimulus money is composed entirely of tax money. Obama's efforts are worse than useless.

Regarding Obama's statement that he has helped the U.S. avoid a second depression, I previously noted in Another Successful Reality Evasion Maneuver by Pilot Obama that

...no one is at liberty today to say whether or not America has avoided a depression since the concept is not precisely defined; that is, it has not been given strict standards that give us the precise measurements that would determine when a depression is officially present. As of right now the concept is merely a vague approximation used to describe an economic situation that is more intense than a recession, though exactly how much more intense is what is unknown. For what we know we could be in a depression right now but not really aware of it since our present standard of living does not give away to national suffering so quickly.

Without objective criteria the line between a recession and a depression is very fuzzy.

These claims are without justification from logic or economic principles, and should be immediately dismissed. Let us not forget that the Great Depression lasted for over a decade when it could have died out as a recession in a handful of months, due to all the "stimulating" of the economy done by FDR. How else will Obama choose to "save" the economy during the rest of his term?

The Dairy Police

2010-02-13T11:14:00.000-08:00

Building upon what I stated about the proposed butter ban, humorous writer Tom Naughton (creator of Fat Head) writes about the various legal absurdities regarding the selling and purchasing of raw milk products.

Again, while such things may make us snicker (which is only exacerbated by Mr. Naughton's writing style) this is a thing we should take seriously: politicians, believing themselves to "know better" than their constituents, far too often go on to force their constituents to adhere to their judgment, or else.

I find this personally upsetting since, thanks to my local politicians, it is made harder for me to maximize my health by the means I judge most appropriate, and whatever means still happen to be available to me are more expensive than they should be. I've come to detest Michigan for both its cultural and culinary atmosphere.

Platonistic Consistency

2010-02-06T14:32:00.000-08:00

If you can recall, over at my brother blog Musing Aloud I asked the question as to whether or not the philosophy of Plato might be to blame for politicians going forward with their agenda despite massive public opposition towards them. Myrhaf over at The New Clarion presents us with an excruciatingly insightful post titled The Perks of Power which is a good elaboration and further concretization of the points I mentioned in my own post.

In short, the "hypocrisy" that political commentators love to point out about certain politicians and public officials isn't true hypocrisy; it is entirely consistent with their worldview. By holding the belief that there is a specific individual (revealed by revelation) supernaturally ordained to lead, they believe themselves to be above the dictates of the rules they call for since they're the ones that make the rules. Since revelations aren't valid means of cognition, you end up with the result of multiple public figures believing that they had the revelation that they are the chosen one and therefore above the rules. (Paraphrasing Leonard Peikoff: how does such a person know his revelations are true? He feels it. How does he know his emotions have truth value? He feels it.)

Such "hypocrisy" is going to continue to be a regular occurrence in politics until bad philosophies are uprooted.

"Butter Ban" Not a Laughing Matter

2010-01-31T13:04:00.000-08:00

As has probably been deducted from my readers who have read my first Power of Epistemology piece it is clear that I reject the Standard American Diet. I do so in favor of the "Paleo" diet. I thought it might of interest to incorporate some dietary politics into this blog given my interest, though, to stay relevant to the overall theme of epistemology, ethics, and politics, I will not do such things as examine the merits of nutritional findings or display recipes (I might do the latter for Musing Aloud).

* * * * *

According to Daily Mail Dr. Shyam Kolvekar is calling for a ban on butter and is suggesting "healthier" substitutes such as margarine for the purpose of reducing incidents of heart disease.

The absurdity here is obvious and does not require lengthy discussion given the context of this blog: this doctor is proposing an impractical, immoral law that would utilize physical force in its enforcement, all on the basis of the evidence-less theory that fat consumption causes heart disease. The cruel irony is that the doctor's suggestions for healthier substitutes would actually increase heart disease rates, as the human body isn't meant to handle such large amounts of vegetable fats as would be present in a tub of margarine, thereby leading to adverse effects (obesity, dense LDL cholesterol, etc.). If such a proposal were enacted it would be promptly contested by a black market and would result in greater heart disease rates in law-abiding citizens.

But as absurd as this proposal may seem -- enacting a law prohibiting a food substance absolutely! -- we must be extremely careful not to brush it away nonchalantly. Here we must keep two sayings in mind to remind us of the danger. The first is by Ayn Rand: The uncontested absurdities of today are the slogans of tomorrow. (Quotation marks omitted in case of inaccuracy.) For number two I do not know the originator, but paraphrased: No idea has ever been so absurd that some philosopher did not take it seriously. The point of these two sayings is that ignoring an absurdity may be all it requires for it to become culturally accepted, and nothing is so ridiculous that at least one person won't seriously entertain it. If we dismiss and laugh at this "butter ban" then we could put ourselves at risk for seeing it come to pass.

And we do have evidence that such a thing could come to pass if uncontested, even in the United States. In the same country where this proposed ban originates, the United Kingdom, there was an incident where an egg company had one of its commercials censored ("Go to Work on an Egg") because the government agents thought it promoted an unhealthy way of living and judged it morally appropriate to silence them. In my very own America the selling of raw milk would be banned almost entirely if it were not for the random states that keep it legal and for the legal loophole that allows a person to drink milk from their own cow (thereby leading to the development of "cow share" programs). Naturally fed meat (e.g. grass-fed beef), although this may be unintentional, has largely been driven into unnecessary scarcity by way of the government subsidizing grains, thereby making it an artificially cheaper stock feed. And so on.

From these we observe that some governments are actively willing to exert force in the name of "public" health, that there are laws already banning some food substances, and that even random bad economic policies (grain subsidies) can have a dramatic impact on diet via unintended consequences (grain-fed beef becomes more common than grass-fed). So it is in all seriousness we must take this proposal, for the laws of the same nature already exist and there are people present to take it seriously.

Most of all, the philosophy is there, the systematic worldview that gives ideological justification for such actions. In today's culture -- worldwide, not just in the United States -- Altruism is the dominant code of morality, and within that code of morality lies the tenant that it is proper to deal with men via physical force in order to uphold morality. Knowing that every law is backed up by physical force, take for evidence when a politician enacts a law and gives it an explicit moral endorsement. It is here we must wage the battle to win not only against this proposal, but against all proposals of this nature.

The reason why I bring this topic up to begin with is to put forth that while on the road to statism some very absurd proposals may pop during the meanwhile, but it does not change the fact that it's a symptom of statism. Aside from this "butter ban," I have also noted other absurdities. Dan Kildee proposed that destroying property would help Flint's economy, but no evidence was given for why this would be. Senator John Kerry proposed giving bail-outs to the newspaper industry, but a shallow examination of basic economic principles reveals that such an idea could never be helpful, thereby indicating Kerry's intention may be to influence the speech of the papers (censorship). And so on. I'm not sure if this is a credible source, but apparently there are laws that go beyond extremes in absurdity, such as it being illegal to peel an orange in a hotel room or to walk on your hands on a crosswalk.

All of these laws may make us smile and laugh when they pop up, causing us to dismiss them as unserious, but if we ignore them for so long and find ourselves without control of our lives -- then we won't laugh.

"Enshrine Mediocrity -- and the Shrines are Razed"

2010-01-30T11:50:00.000-08:00

Over at my Posterous account -- which is for my college course and exists solely for homework -- I have managed to write a post that may be of interest to the readers here. Most of the posting at that account will more or less be aimed only at fulfilling technical requirements, so I do not recommend actually following that account. If I write something that may be of interest, I will be sure to link to it from here or Musing Aloud, whichever blog theme is appropriate.

I thought about pasting the whole article here, but I think that could get me in trouble since the article may be property of my college, so I'll link to it instead.

Your Faithful Leaders

2010-01-13T13:43:00.000-08:00

Myhraf informs us of a political incident that could be used to symbolize politics as they stand today.

I actually feel a sense of disturbance at this. How could he have the audacity to do it so openly in front of so many witnesses and yet have the security that he will likely not get punished for it? Because that's our culture today.

An Epistemological Exercise for Your Approval

2010-01-06T17:20:00.000-08:00

Here's a problem I could really use some input on. Ever since reading Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology I have been concerned with making sure my conceptual equipment is explicitly grounded in reality; that is, that I am fully aware of what the concepts I use mean and that I know how I can be certain that I have inferred the correct meaning.

The means I have established to that end is a rather complex vocabulary exercise that I assign to myself as a part of my grammar studies. I do the assignment in two parts, taking one day to write up the homework and another -- though not days next to each other -- to reread, review, and think about what I have written. It has done well for the trip down the road to certainty, but I think it could still be optimized, so I would like to submit its specifics for your approval. I will explain the exercise step by step and then give two examples from my homework assignments. First, what the process is:

First, look up the word in the dictionary and copy verbatim the appropriate definition.

Second, identify whether or not the concept is perceptual (i.e. whether the concept denotes something that is part of physical reality). If the concept is not directly perceptual then identify what unfamiliar concepts serve as its units, and if one is familiar with the concepts then instead move on to step three.

Third, write what the concept actually denotes. For instance, if the concept were "tree" then one would write "A physical entity," or if the concept were "green" one would write "An attribute."

Fourth, list any extreme contrasting or closely related concepts for comparison purposes. For example, for "rage" one could write "angry" as being a similar concept and "euphoria" as being a direct antonym.

Fifth, write a sentence employing the concept.

Sixth, record whether or not the concept is entirely meaningful. I do this so I know at all times what confuses me and what I'm certain on.

Finally, jot down any notes, concerns, or whatever. This is an optional step that can be incorporated anywhere in the process, multiple times if need be.

Some examples, first starting with a perceptual concept. Notes in square brackets indicate editorial content not in original homework:

Vituperation > /Noun/ Bitter and abusive language. [Concise Oxford American Dictionary.]

Height: Perceptual. Language is an audio-visual format of concepts. [Human language is accessible by the five senses, which is what makes this a perceptual concept.]

Denotes: Language with an emotional attribute and intention to harm [emotionally].

Similar: swearing, cursing.

[Sentence omitted.]

Fully meaningful?: Yes

Note: Duplicate of concepts already existing; differs only in connotation.

And an abstract one:

Addendum > (Plural: -da, -dums) An item of additional material, typically omissions, added at the end of a book or other publication.[Concise Oxford American Dictionary.]

Height: Abstract. Requires understanding of the abstractions involved in the information in the publication. [This concept is abstract because there is no physical existent or phenomenon known as "addendum." One may object by bringing forth a book and tapping the bottom of a page where there is an addendum, but that would be incorrect. What would exist in physical reality is ink and paper, not a physical manifestation of the concept addendum.]

Denotes: Additional information added at the end of a published work. [Simplied definition.]

Similar: Additional

Sentence: How frustrating it is to have sat and read a blog post for an hour only to read in the addendum that the article is factually wrong.

Fully meaningful?: Somewhat.

So are there ways that the reader thinks I can improve this process?

Coming Climax?

2009-12-28T13:32:00.000-08:00

As you may already know by now, the Senate has passed both the House version and the Senate version of medical care reform. Such legislation requires no additional comment given the archives of this blog. However, unless I am mistaken, there is still time to defeat this bill. I am not well versed as to the technical details of how the various political offices operate, but from what I have heard the House version and the Senate version must be reconciled and voted on one more time in the Senate before it can go for Presidential signature, so that means the legislation has not really "passed" the Senate yet.

As always, consider writing to you senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

We are running out of time, but there is still a sliver of hope. Rest in the battle now and you could find decades of fighting to be added, or perhaps even an institution that will exist the rest of your life.

Here is what I sent to my senators:

Dear Ms. Stabenow,

Upon reading the list of the few Democrats that have voted against the presently entertained medical care reform legislation I felt betrayed when I did not see your name on that list, meaning you voted in favor of the bill.

To every single one of my messages you have been sending me a mere copy-and-pasted response, leaving unacknowledged my arguments about how this bill is impractical AND immoral. It is impractical because legislation of this type has never and can never succeed in securing general individual physical health and it is immoral because it violates my right to voluntarily contract with others I choose on the terms that I agree to. Practicality and morality lie in freeing man from men, not enslaving men to men.

I will say this one last time: if you do not vote against the medical care reform legislation then I will vote against you in the coming election. I have been following this issue for months and will not forget whether or not my senators were loyal to me. The public may tend to have a selective memory, but I assure you I exert effort to be otherwise.

Regards,

Dear Mr. Levin,

Upon reading the list of the few Democrats that have voted against the presently entertained medical care reform legislation I felt betrayed when I did not see your name on that list, meaning you voted in favor of the bill.

The majority of my e-mails to you have not been given the responses I have requested, leaving unacknowledged my arguments about how this bill is impractical AND immoral. It is impractical because legislation of this type has never and can never succeed in securing general individual physical health and it is immoral because it violates my right to voluntarily contract with others I choose on the terms that I agree to. Practicality and morality lie in freeing man from men, not enslaving men to men.

I will say this one last time: if you do not vote against the medical care reform legislation then I will vote against you in the coming election. I have been following this issue for months and will not forget whether or not my senators were loyal to me. The public may tend to have a selective memory, but I assure you I exert effort to be otherwise.

Regards,

A Trillion Monopoly Dollars

2009-12-15T16:40:00.000-08:00

It was no joke when I said incidents for activism would continue to be handed on a golden platter. In less than a month, Obama worries about "too much" government spending, changes his mind, and will now have the opportunity to sign into law yet another trillion dollar spending bill. I said before that his previous spending projects were historical expenses; now it just seems as if though he is trying to make his record unbreakable. The answer is too obvious in whether or not he will sign it.

And, last I have heard, a significant portion of the first spending bill has not even been spent. -- and yet they want to put another trillion on top of that.

It can be quite frustrating to imagine how many years of intense work it took to create the value that backs that money -- and it is all being destroyed within months. While my optimism for long-term cultural change is unaffected, the economic prospects are not good.

Permanent Disclosures for the FTC

2009-12-15T16:08:00.000-08:00

Following Ari Armtrong's lead, I fear I too am forced to offer up complete disclosure about my blog, lest I suffer an allegation from the nonobjective rules passed by the FTC.

This will be my permanent disclosure page, meaning I will post a permanent link to this page within my blog layout regarding all my disclosure information for Benpercent and Musing Aloud. If the facts are otherwise; that is, if it is the case I have received a product for review or engage in a financial relationship with an organization, I will edit this page or note the individual exceptions at the beginning of the relevant blog posts.

As of March 2010, I have joined the Amazon Associates program, which compensates me financially if any reader on my site follows an Amazon link and purchases the advertised product.

I am also a participator in Google Adsense -- though I don't know my official active date since I wasn't notified of my application approval -- which financially compensates me when readers click the appropriate advertisements.

This is the extent of my financial relationship with these companies, and that is all I have to say.

"WHAT THE 'AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE FOR AMERICA ACT,' HR 3962, ACTUALLY SAYS"

2009-12-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

If you can recall, Professor John Davis Lewis took it upon himself a few months ago to read the language of the legislation HR 3200 and post an analysis that isolated key aspects of the bill and translated into layman terms the technical passages. Well, he has taken the task upon himself again in analyzing the language of HR 3962 in the same format as before. He answers these key questions:

1. Will the plan punish Americans who do not carry the required
insurance, or employers who do not provide it?
2. Will the plan make private insurance illegal?
3. Will the plan ration medical care through budgets?
4. Will the plan ration care through waiting lists?
5. Will the plan impose special, higher taxes on Americans who earn
more than others?
6. Will the plan levy special taxes and surcharges on medical devices?
7. How will the plan affect health insurance provided by employers?
8. Does the plan allow the government to set fees?
9. Can the government officials audit taxpayers, employers, and
insurance plans to enforce compliance?
10. What limits are set to the powers of government officials?

This is a critically important article that deserves to be sent far and wide, for the extravagant length and technical difficulty involved in reading the bill is certainly far too much for most people to undertake, including myself. See for yourself, and make known to others, how the preceding questions are confirmed or denied by the actual words of the bill.

Another Successful Reality Evasion Maneuver by Pilot Obama

2009-12-08T12:09:00.000-08:00

Two posts ago I noted the irony of Barack Obama being concerned about excessive government spending damaging the economy after he had already participated in not merely record, but historical levels of government spending and intervention into industries. Well, it turns out he changed his mind and is no longer worried:

President Barack Obama outlined new multibillion-dollar stimulus and jobs proposals Tuesday, saying the nation must continue to "spend our way out of this recession" until more Americans are back at work.

After being concerned about too much spending he now wants more spending since he thinks the last round was not enough? Make up your mind!

"We avoided the depression many feared," Obama said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. But, he added, "Our work is far from done."

Actually, no one is at liberty today to say whether or not America has avoided a depression since the concept is not precisely defined; that is, it has not been given strict standards that give us the precise measurements that would determine when a depression is officially present. As of right now the concept is merely a vague approximation used to describe an economic situation that is more intense than a recession, though exactly how much more intense is what is unknown. For what we know we could be in a depression right now but not really aware of it since our present standard of living does not give away to national suffering so quickly.

A major part of his package is new incentives for small businesses, which account for two-thirds of the nation's work force. He proposed a new tax cut for small businesses that hire in 2010 and an elimination for one year of the capital gains tax on profits from small-business investments.

Tax cuts that will amount to nothing given Obama's proposed spending. For every dollar the government spends that is one fewer dollar for a private citizen to spend. Since rising taxes would be far too obviously hypocritical on Obama's part, I predict that he will resort to printing money, and, of course, printing money amounts to a hidden tax since it devalues/confiscates the value of the money of private citizens. The ridiculous episode of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, for instance, has made it so that one-hundred-trillion Zimbabwean dollars ($100,000,000,000,000) is only valued as equivalent to ten U.S. dollars ($10).

Obama also proposed an elimination of fees on loans to small businesses, coupled with federal guarantees of those loans through the end of next year.

Which will do further damage. Elimination of fees on loans will make loans unprofitable and thus unbeneficial from the investor's perspective, and the federal guarantees will only exacerbate the problem by making it almost certain that loan companies will have to suffer loan defaults and thereby risk going out of business. Remember the Community Reinvestment Act, which caused the financial crisis in the first place?

I could go on analyzing this article, but it becomes depressing to think not only are economic mistakes continue to be made and are continuing to harm the economy, but that our politicians are making precisely the same mistakes down to the last detail. It should become quite apparent now that, despite his impressive education, Obama is an intellectual and philosophical mess.

Economic recovery is very much longed for, but it seems we must bear the difficulties for a while longer yet.

The Ultimate Result

2009-11-30T16:13:00.000-08:00

As far as political issues go, it is most vitally important, more important than any other issue, to understand that a mixed economy always leads to a dictatorship, regardless of whether or not the people who advocated the all-subsuming laws intended such a result. Here we have a dichotomy: either you have absolute freedom or a slow slide into absolute dictatorship; there is no permanent stalling in the mixed economy stage.

Government controls on the economy -- since politicians are not properly equipped to deal with the business decisions they take it upon themselves to make -- lead to problems in the economy which demand either the repealing of the controls or further controls to correct them, and if further controls are chosen further problems occur. If further controls are always the chosen solution to the problems caused by the preceding controls, eventually one establishes a dictatorship.

That is why I give my strongest recommendation to reading the series of blog posts by Don Watkins on why controls breed further controls in the economy. I do not know for how long this series will extend, but as of far it runs three parts:

Part one
Part two
Part three

Facing Reality or Paying Cheap Lip-Service?

2009-11-18T07:44:00.001-08:00

I know I may be a little off on my regular posting schedule, but I have come across another absurd article that I simply could not wait to comment on:

President Barack Obama says he's worried that spending too much money to help revive the economy could undermine a fragile U.S. recovery and throw the economy into a double-dip recession.

A pragmatic mind in action. If spending "too much" (how much?) money to help revive the economy would actually harm it, then why would he go so far as to think that stimulus packages would be economically healthy in any degree? If stimulus spending is sound in theory then it should be helpful in any degree in practice, but, of course, it is not. In theory and practice it merely amounts to taking money away from those that make it and giving it to those that break it.

Obama told Fox News in an interview Wednesday that his administration is weighing tax breaks that could encourage businesses to begin hiring again.

And this is coming from the one president that perhaps has initiated the greatest tax increase ever in the entire history of America, whether by direct taxation (like when he tried to push a 90% "punishment tax" on the AIG insurance employees) or by inflation (his trillion dollar stimulus, which could actually put us at risk for hyperinflation). After this massive taxing spree, now is the time he admits that perhaps, just maybe, easing up on taxation might be good for the economy?

The reality of things gets some lip-service, but is once more betrayed in action.

The Case for Long-Term Optimism

2009-11-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

As you may already know by now, the House has voted in favor of the medical care overhaul legislation (I cannot keep track of all the titles since they either change them or divide them into separate legislation pieces) and it will now go to the actual Senate, the final hurdle to be met before it either gets rejected or goes to the president to be signed into law. Here we have it: legislation of a type that has failed everywhere it has been tried, in other nations and here in parts of America; legislation that is impractical economically and is immoral, legislation that is vicious in its very nature since it will cause nothing but harm and is absolutely indefensible -- is a step closer to becoming reality here in America. As depressing as it may be to think about, the likelihood is in favor of this legislation getting passed:

As Judge Napolitano notes, socializing medicine is much worse than just bad economics:

Even the Republicans have introduced their version of Obamacare Lite. It, too, if passed, will compel employers to provide coverage, bribe the states to change their court rules, and tell insurance companies whom to insure.

We do not have two political parties in this country, America. We have one party; called the Big Government Party. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. The Democratic wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties. Both parties like power; and neither is interested in your freedoms. Think about it. Government is the negation of freedom. Freedom is your power and ability to follow your own free will and your own conscience. The government wants you to follow the will of some faceless bureaucrat.

Please note that even the Republicans are pushing further government intervention into medicine. No matter what happens, we’ll get screwed. [From The New Clarion. Note that I do not endorse Libertarianism, as it is somewhat implied in the quote above.]

The Democrats and Republicans both want further government intervention into medical care, and all this is despite increasing opposition. Obama has been cited as even going so far as to tell his fellow politicians to be willing to *sacrifice* their political careers in order to pass this legislation. House speaker Nancy Pelosi feels confident enough to call this legislation a "Christmas present."

Now has it become fully clear how powerful and dangerous philosophy can be? If ignored and left to ivory tower intellectuals, it is such a power that can dictate, and possibly destroy, your life without you having any say in the matter. Of all the years philosophy has been viewed as a subject detached from life, we have come to the point where a massively destructive and immoral piece of legislation is close to being passed since its advocates think, no, feel that it is moral and that sacrifice is a practical way of living, and they may do it despite massive protest since they may view themselves as philosopher kings that know better than you and are above morality and therefore allowed to force things upon you. From now on when a view of existence is uttered, we must be careful to think carefully about its implications, and to dispense with the jokes about philosophy ("How do you get philosophy off the front porch? You pay for the pizza!").

But as grim as things are, it is not yet time to fret and view things as hopeless. Truth be told, I believe that they are plenty of reasons to look to the future with optimism. This piece of legislation, which has an indeterminate future as of now I remind you, is not the equivalent substitute for a culture and its ideas, but rather an effect. There is still time, and here are five reasons why I think we can look forward to a better future:

* * * * *

1.) A single piece of legislation does not alter a culture absolutely; it is only a consequence of a culture that supports the ideals that give rise to the legislation in the first place. The present legislation that would enact universal medical coverage did not arise out of a vacuum, but rather it rose out of a culture that supports a certain morality (altruism) that sanctions the use of force against other people in order to make them sacrifice for the common good. Whatever effect this legislation will have on the culture will not be total, and even then it is still a logical consequence of ideals rather than a series of actions alone.

If the culture can be made to reject its current moral ideals of altruism, or to at the very least rethink and debate them, we can perhaps achieve a different kind of consequence if this legislation were to be passed. If the ideals giving rise to this legislation are still fully supported by the time the consequences of this legislation are felt then the people who advocated and supported such measures will view such a reality as a proper way to live, and their kids will not know things could have been better; otherwise, if the ideals are rejected then the people will perhaps demand fundamentally different courses of action. A saying goes: Raise a kid in a swamp and he will never know that the air does not have to stink. What we need to do is let people know that there is not only a swamp.

2.) Barack Obama is acting in accordance with his ideals, and, as we have seen, his ideals, in their consistent form, disturb a significant portion the voting public. Since Obama will most probably, if not certainly, continue acting in accordance with his ideals, people will continue to be disturbed by his actions and there will continue to be a receptive audience for those who want to explain what is essentially wrong with his actions and world view. In other words, opportunities of activism will continue to be handed to us on a platter for a while yet.

We have yet to observe what the effect of the surge of interest in Atlas Shrugged will be, that is, how many people may have converted to the Objectivist world view or at least have become a sympathetic audience. This is one of the reasons why I am so particularly pleased with the Ayn Rand Center Blog: such a constant stream of commentary will do well to maintain and educate an interested audience.

3.) As an extension of point two, keep in mind that this legislation will not be enacted until 2011 if passed (so much for immediate reform). In that three year period much activism can be had.

4.) The Tea Party revolts indicate that there is still emotional respect towards the ideals that America was originally founded on, and that means the American mind can still be saved: all we have to do is offer education that attaches those ideals to reality. If such an opportunity is let to pass by then the revolts will probably amount to nothing, sinking since it has no intellectual buoyancy. Take advantage of the energy and fan the flames with ideas.

5.) Free speech is still a respected right (to a degree). So long as there is free speech there is free thought and the door is still open to rational discussion. However, this right is also under extreme danger.

* * * * *

The most important of the all the points is that about free speech. There is always time so long as rational discussion is not prohibited. If prohibited, there would be no other option other than civil war, which can still be prevented now.

When one loses hope, that is when all is lost.

Not You Too Alton Brown!

2009-11-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

Out of the somewhat little television I watch, Good Eats is one of my favorite shows. It is, in fact, the only cooking show I am willing to watch. The best way to describe it, it seems, is Bill Nye the Science Guy and cooking combined into one series.

It dismayed me greatly, however, to hear Alton Brown, the host, advocate a very destructive position in the name of protecting culinary options. Last Monday's episode was about sustainable fishing: how some species were in danger of going extinct due to overfishing and what alternative species people should eat instead. In the middle of the episode he stated that the solution to the problem of overfishing, and if I recall correctly he said it was the only solution, is for there to be government regulations imposed on fisheries.

What could go wrong? You know, other than the fact that unqualified and untrained politicians, in such a scenario, would be set forth to regulate an industry they may know nothing about, have not the time nor ability to learn anything about, would lack the proper knowledge to judge which authorities to delegate authority to, and would immorally violate the rights of fisheries by using threats of physical force to impose fishing quotas (unless they prohibit fishing altogether)?

Considering his celebrity status (he does have the prime time slot on Food Network), Mr. Brown could end up really hurting his way of living since interested cooks are more apt to listen to him.

To my even greater dismay there seems to be no formal way to contact Mr. Brown, whether by e-mail or postal mail. There is only a media contact on his website, nothing on Foodnetwork.com, and my e-mail to Food Network went unacknowledged. I will instead have to satisfy myself with commenting here. (This prompts the question: with no obvious formal way to contact him, how is it that Mr. Brown speaks time to time of receiving e-mail from his fans?)

There are two issues to consider: the problem of advocating government regulations and alternative solutions.

* * * * *

1.) The problem: Aside from the obvious problem of incompetent politicians having authority over something that have little to no knowledge of, the influence of environmentalism in politics in the present age would make it feasible for legislation prohibiting fishing altogether to get passed under the justification that it is protecting the environment. Fishing counts as man utilizing/altering/exploiting his surroundings, which environmentalism opposes and environmentalists would (or at least should, according to their ideology) advocate prohibiting. In an effort to protect certain species of fish so that we may continue eating them Mr. Brown could accidentally contribute to such fish being forcefully taken off our plates.

Also, government regulation as such is just plain immoral in whatever degree or form it appears in. The enforcement of it always entails the use of physical force, for there is no other way to enforce laws. Is it really to be believed that guns are the solution to a peaceful problem of fishing?

2.) Solutions: Contrary to Mr. Brown's beliefs, an absolutely free market is the solution to the problem of sustainable fishing. In fact, I believe we need to look no further for a solution than the pricing system.

Except for very predictable manufactured goods such as computers, food more than anything is subject to price fluctuations given so many factors affecting its availability (crop yields, diseases, factory accidents, shipping methods, etc). Time matters greatly when one speaks of perishable items: if a truck were caught on a freeway with computers, that would affect the price none; fish, on the other hand, could expire, cause losses for the seller, and, as a result, raise prices.

The scarcer a food item is, the higher its market value (i.e. price) is. If lobster were in a certain abundance then prices could actually fall to the point where the highest quality lobster would only cost a dollar a pound, or even less. But such is not the case: lobster is scarce. As a result, the price per unit of lobster is rather expensive and people buy less of it than they otherwise would if it were cheaper. If the price continues to go up then people will continue to decrease their consumption. If it comes to be that selling/fishing lobster is not profitable at all then fishing will cease altogether and the species will have a chance to repopulate at a quick rate. It is only government price setting that can interfere with this free market process.

While this may be perhaps the best solution let us not forget there are others. Activism, for one, could be used to convince people to alter their menus regardless of whether or not unsustainable fish are affordable. Alton Brown himself performed this job wonderfully in his sustainable fishing episode where he explained the problem of overfishing certain species, suggested alternative species, and then engaged in demonstrating a few recipes with the alternative species he suggested. In other words, he identified a problem, offered a solution, and then offered a few demonstrations of that solution to drive the point home.

And what about science? Alterations to the genetic code of various plants have resulted in crops being more disease-resistant and more able to survive in harsher conditions. The result: more people get fed. Can science not do the same for fish?

* * * * *

Even with regards to his fallacious assumption that the government is the only solution Alton Brown did a wonderful job in supporting his cause. But he risks doing much more harm than good unless he rethinks his position and discovers that he is actually advocating the source of economic problems rather than the source of solutions.

Slavery or the Highway: "Volunteerism"

2009-10-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about this issue for several months, but upon hearing that over sixty television networks plan on directing their broadcasting towards promoting the "ideal" of service to others, I see that I must bring myself to action. Service is not an ideal at all; it cannot even be called a mistaken ideal or an immoral ideal, but rather it must be called a vicious idea. Its consistent practice leads not to a society of people happily assisting each other, but a society where everyone mutually resents each other for being each other's slave.

To be clear, in this essay, by slavery I mean the state in which one is physically forced to take a course or courses of action at the commandment of another party over an extended period of time (as opposed to a single instance).

Slavery as such is becoming the case in a certain degree with the enactment of The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which uses federal funding to promote service-based functions such as groups set up for middle school and high school students. (I strongly recommend reading the article and its comments section.)

Now the claim, admittedly, seems to be exaggerated and overly bold: how can the mere encouragement by the government of performing service be considered slavery when no one is being dragged away in chains? As of now, it is being offered to people the option to participate or not to participate. While this may be true, it is still the case that it is slavery or will lead to slavery for two reasons: slavery is a logical implication of this ideal and the choices available are being coercively limited.

* * * * *

* Slavery as a ideological implication: The morality of altruism, the code of morality which states that other people should be the beneficiary of your actions, holds that man does not exist by his own right, but rather by the right of other people. In other words, you do not belong to yourself; you belong to other people.

Such an ethical tenet leads to an inverted view of individual rights where, instead of having the right to be free from physical coercion, people view themselves as entitled to the efforts of other people by right of an innate obligation on the second party. Under this view, if I were to earn a great amount of money from various business ventures that money would not be viewed as my property, but rather as something I have an obligation to distribute to other people. Logically, this means that if I do not distribute this money it is to be considered as a violation of the rights of the potential recipients. Rights violations, of course, are dealt with by physical force. In such a society the agents of the government would go after those that wished to keep "their" property and then would redistribute it among chosen recipients.

Service to other people is an altruistic ideal, which means that it is not merely viewed as being good to perform service to others, but as proper as par the nature of man. Altruism, practiced consistently, would mean that performing service would be enforced by governmental force since it would be held that other people had a right to be served and that by not being served their rights are being violated.

However, this prompts the question: if this is what the ideal of service will lead to if practiced consistently, then why can a person not practice the ideal inconsistently in order to prevent such a consequence?

The simple answer is that opposing principles, when mixed, lead to failures in practice and therefore require that one abandon one set in favor of practicing the other(s) with full consistency. If one does not do so, the failures will continue and one will not be able to honestly claim to be practicing those principles. Look at what the mixing of government controls and freedom has lead to in the economy: economic disaster. In each economic disaster, courses of action were judged by the standard of philosophical principles held in the culture at large. Since individual rights are largely misunderstood, freedom thought as a superfluous luxury, and the government thought as a practical solution to any and all problems, the principle of freedom is most commonly given up in favor of practicing statism more consistently. As economic disasters keep happening, freedom will continue to give in to statism until there is no freedom left, unless people accept the other principle wholesale. (This is not to say that practicing a single principle consistently will always mean success will follow; it merely means that the fullest logical consequences will be experienced by that principle.)

* The number of choices being coerced: This issue is a little more complex to understand, but it is the one that is most relevant to the claim that the government encouraging service is slavery, at least to a certain degree. Let us start off with a quote from my essay Socratic Questions about the Israel-Gaza Conflict:

3.) Who is responsible for the killing of innocents in war?

This is by far the biggest issue in the Gaza war and by far the most lazily treated by the public. The popular answer merely consists of “It is morally wrong to kill innocents in war” without further digging. We shall give this one a lengthy treatment, for not only is it the worst misconception but also the most damning one for Israel.

This is where is becomes evident that these “self-evidencies” are being asserted outside of context. Yes, it is true that killing innocents is wrong in war, but one must distinguish between the person(s) who physically carries out the killing and the person(s) that is responsible for it. Because of this failure to distinguish, people automatically assume that the responsibility of killing lies with the person who physically does it. In truth, the responsibility lays with those that have caused the situation to arise and force a person to act in such way. If Gaza had not been aggressing against its own citizens and against Israel then Israel would not have had to go on the offensive as it did, so therefore the government of Gaza is to be blamed for the casualties of innocents. To clarify our thinking for the future, do not equate killing with the notion of being automatically responsible for it, but do equate being responsible for murder as the same thing (in a moral sense) as having done the physical killing itself. To rephrase using these terms, Israel has killed civilians but the government Gaza is responsible for it in the same fashion as if its agents had done it.

But the public’s mistaken conception has done much more harm than merely misplacing responsibility; it has undermined Israel’s efforts and empowered the Hamas army. What the public failed to perceive is that some ideologies, evil ideologies nonetheless, maintain that the end being pursued is of such moral status that it becomes morally acceptable to use any means to acquire that end. As the familiar saying goes: “The end justifies the means.” Since both the majority of the United States and Israel accept the notion that the killing of innocents in war is wrong (in the context-dropping sense), Hamas is empowered by being able to exploit this ethical tenet. And so then we have the case where Hamas soldiers dress in civilian clothes, use children as helicopter spotters, and hide in civilian buildings. Israel was put in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation, for if they restrained themselves towards “civilians” Hamas got the upper-hand, and if they did not restrain themselves then Hamas would use the casualties as propaganda. Hamas succeeded in creating a situation where it was seemingly impossible to act morally.

Not only that, but this ethical tenet offers a deadly distraction. Consider this philosophical hypothetical:

Let us assume you are driving a trolley car. After a while on the trip, you come to three people tied to the track. You can save them by pulling a lever and changing track, but if you do that then you will set the trolley on course to where one person is tied. What should you do and why?

Nowhere in this hypothetical is there even so much as a passing mention of the person who is tying people to tracks. All the focus, and perhaps even blame, is directed at the poor soul driving the trolley, while the villain is forgotten. It works exactly in the same way in the Gaza war. By accepting that any direct killing of innocents in war is wrong, everyone has focused on how many civilians Israel has harmed while ignoring the people who put them in that situation, so Israel is blamed while Hamas is forgotten. To prevent such from happening again, we must always first ask as to why the situation has arisen to begin with instead of examining how the people have acted in it. [Quoted as is. 10/2009]

To summarize, Israel was harmed in three ways: 1.) it received blame from the world for killing civilians, even though the civilians were thrown in the line of fire by their own government; 2.) it weakened itself in the war due to accepting moral responsibility for killing civilians and acting accordingly (restraint), and, worst of all, 3.) it empowered Gaza by restraining itself and allowing attention to be diverted away from them.

We shall refer to the logic that is employed by the army of Gaza as treating coerced choices as metaphysically absolute. By metaphysically absolute I mean inherent in the nature of reality itself and independent from anyone's choices or wishes, such as the law of gravity. The logic behind this phenomena is simple: person X chooses to coercively limit the range of choices another person can choose, but when person Y picks out of this artificial set of choices X holds Y absolutely responsible for the outcome of his choice, evading the fact that person X could have chosen otherwise and allowed for other choices to be available. In the case of the army of Gaza, soldiers actively threw civilians into the line of fire, thereby limiting, or even eliminating the choice on the part of Israel to NOT fire at civilians, but when the army of Israel did fire at civilians it was held responsible as if the alternatives of firing or not firing were metaphysically absolute, i.e., it is evaded that these options do not arise as inherent in the nature of reality itself and that the army of Gaza could have chosen to do otherwise and not have put its constituents in danger.

It may surprise you that this type of logic is virtually everywhere. Have you ever heard the saying "nothing in life is certain except death and taxes"? Here taxes is treated as a metaphysical fact, completely evading that men identified it, employed it, and maintain such a practice all on their own freewill. Have you ever gotten home from school, complained about your homework load, and then had your parent state "that's life"? This gives homework a metaphysical status and evades the fact that the school officials could have exercised their freewill as to not issue homework or to issue a smaller amount. And so on.

All variants serve the same purpose: for a person or group to manipulate a set of choices available, (implicitly) deny having any choice in the matter of manipulating those choices, and then to claim the entirety of the responsibility lies with the person(s) who now have to deal with that set of choices.

Ask yourself just how far a murderer would get with this line of reasoning:

Person X is enjoying an afternoon stroll with his daughter in the park when suddenly person Y jumps out at him and pulls out a gun. Y demands that X either give up his daughter or Y will shoot him dead. X refuses to give up his daughter, and so Y shoots him dead. A police officer sees that Y has committed a murder, and so restrains him, calls an ambulance, and begins questioning the criminal. Surprisingly, Y is surprised that he is arrested. When asked, here is the exchange that occurs:

Y: But I did no wrong! I am entirely moral!
Police: What are you talking about?! I just saw you murder a man right in front of me!
Y: I did not murder him! He chose to be killed!
P: What?!
Y: I offered him a choice. He was to either give me his daughter or he was to be killed by me. Since he chose not to give me his daughter, he chose death. I merely carried out his wish.

Obviously, today that defense would not go very far, but in other cases not involving murder this logic escapes unnoticed. In the case of the Gaza war the actual murderers of the civilians go unnoticed in favor of the army that is forced to do such killing or be killed itself. In the case of taxes the politicians exempt themselves as conductors of stealing. In the case of a heavy homework load the teachers avoid being an object of frustration.

And in the case of The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, it is evaded that its enactment leaves people with fewer and fewer choices than to not participate and its enactors are viewed as providing "more" choices.

For one, such programs are going to be funded either by taxed money or printed money. As a result, either your income will decrease or prices will increase and you will be unable to afford the same amount of goods and services as before. As a result, you will have less to choose from. As a result, more and more people will have no other choice than to participate in these programs if they should desire to have money or to get an education.

Furthermore, the enactment of this legislation is equal to partial censorship (albeit indirectly and perhaps unintentional). When the agents of government undertake to use tax money to support one ideology, other people will have fewer funds with which to support their own ideology and will be unable to advocate their viewpoint as strongly as the government agents can advocate their stances. Plus, when the government speaks: people listen. Therefore people's choices are further limited by their knowledge; you cannot make a choice you did not know was available or a choice that was prevented from coming into existence (e.g. a business that eliminates a paid internship position due to resources being limited by taxation). Ignorant of other choices available, people will have fewer choices than to participate in these programs.

And let us not forget that some government-run schools have a service requirement for graduation, and so some people have no choice but to participate in these programs if they should want to pursue their goals, and that is slavery, however temporary.

* * * * *

Combine the first reason with the second, and given an ignorant enough people, you could have a very discreet form of slavery. Someone one once said, "If socialism comes to America, it will come without anyone knowing." The same can happen to slavery, that is, there can be a case where slavery exists but few, if any, know about it explicitly. We must break free from what slavery looks like in our imagination and understand what it is.

Consider the case of Kira Argounova of the novel We the Living. (While I know this is a fictional novel, I present this as a good illustration, especially when considering the fact the author is writing from her own experience.)

Kira lives in the Soviet Union. In this time one cannot obtain food legally except through government rations and government approved private stores. The selling of food without the government's permission is illegal. Buying food is nearly impossible by legal means, since the opening of a shop means competing with the government, a Sisyphean endeavor since the government gives away its items for no price and imposes astronomical operating costs on private businesses and the "bourgeois" in general. As a result, most shops go out of business, illegal vendors are punished, and people are left with little else but the choice of the government supplier. But there is a catch in obtaining government rations: one has to be a Soviet employee. And to be a Soviet employee one must claim to support the regime. Kira eventually manages to get a Soviet job, but has a hard time keeping it as they demand she actively remember Soviet trivia day and night, and to "prove" her support by being an activist. If she fails in one instance to show her support, she could quickly, if not instantly, lose her job.

In one particular case she is "suggested" to attend a workers' protest "voluntarily" to show her support of the regime in the face of British workers. But look at the facts. If she does not attend this protest she will lose her job, and if she loses her job she cannot obtain food rations, and if she cannot obtain food rations she will starve to death, literally not metaphorically. This is obviously enslavement of the people by their government, but as you can see here there are no whips and chains or slave masters in cotton fields; there is just the "suggestion" that one go support the Soviets, with a simple withholding of subsistence to motivate. Here a Soviet would apply the same logic we have been familiarizing ourselves with: that if Kira did not choose/could not maintain a Soviet job, she brought death upon herself by her own will (which evades the fact that she is forced from being able to sustain herself).

This is rapidly becoming the case in America today, although in a smaller degree. What the slavery amounts to today is the stealing of some time from your life to support a cause chosen as worthy by the agents of government by threat of making it harder for you to pursue your goals (e.g. making service a graduation requirement, decreasing your income and then offering service initiatives as a method of funding, and so on). While this is not absolute slavery today, it could become so if the ideal of service is not opposed at its root: the morality that claims man is not a being in his own right. Since economic disasters are the result of government intervention in the economy, and since such disasters are treated with more government intervention, that means eventually our economy could lead to total government ownership, private schools and all.

And if the agents of government still advocate the morality of altruism, they will still advocate the ideal of service, and will then be able to provide you with no choice but to participate, lest you choose to starve.

The Power of Epistemology II: Institutionalized Education

2009-10-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

Some authorities are warning that Obama's plan to lengthen school days could possibly lead to increased stress in children. In fact, some are even going so far, such as Mavis Brown in the article, as to suggest that kids should be kept in school year-round.

While some may be grading the plan "A plus", the truth is that there is no pen red enough to write an F upon it. Mr. Obama not only ignores what is causing the epistemological crisis in children, he intensifies the causes.

Now where have we seen this type of mentality before? If you will recall, a few months ago I wrote an article titled The Power of Epistemology: The Fat Controversy where I examined the controversy about the objective nutritional value of fat and cholesterol, about how it was corrupted by a single scientist who refused to acknowledge (i.e. he evaded) contrary or refuting evidence. As a result of one man's bad epistemology, suffering and death has been hoisted upon millions for following false nutritional guidelines.

I must add emphasis to this: Because one man practiced bad epistemology, millions paid the price in death and suffering. Confronted with contrary data or conclusions, Keys and his disciples would ignore them, and when reality would show that their theory is wrong they would merely deny it and calls would be made for an intensification of the practice of their theory.

Here again we have the misfortune of seeing the same mentality and responses recurring in another branch of practical science: educational theory. Confronted with the reality that children and (college) adults are emerging from their schools less and less educated, the policy-makers ask not for a reexamination of their methodology, but instead for an intensification of the application of it. In other words, like Ancel Keys, they are evading the evidence reality is providing them and trudging forth. Only, this time we have a higher price to pay. As evil as Keys was, there is already significant amounts of educational resources on why his theory is wrong and what guidelines the evidence favors, and prestigious spokesmen, such as Gary Taubes or Tom Naughton, being active advocates for such views. If government funding of scientific research were to be pulled out of the picture, then Keys's theory could perish in a matter of a handful of years.

It is otherwise, however, for education. There is widespread ignorance that the problem with education is epistemological at root rather than a matter of concrete problems, such as whether a teacher should teach mathematics or have his students teach each other (I believe it is called "Whole Math"). In truth I can only summon into mind one school that recognizes the problem and pursues to remedy it: Vandamme Academy. With so much ignorance and disputes over concretes, educational reform is surely to move in a direction only for the worse.

And what price do we have to pay? Everything. If you abandon or destroy the mind then you lose the products of the mind. Children are born in the state that of savages, and it is horrifying to think that the incredible failure of governmental education has brought us adults that go through life with the unformed epistemology of a child. If the whole culture is brought down to that epistemological level then we could have a coming of another Dark Age.

Knowing what we have to lose, now we have to ask: What exactly is the nature of the problem, and how do we solve it? Well, I am not an educational theorist nor have I done any extensive study on such a field, so I can only make observations based on my personal experiences and what little reading I have done. While my observations may be correct, I must make sure my readers know that my range is limited. For a more thorough analysis, I would suggest partaking in the various articles on education available at The Objective Standard (one article is free, others can be previewed for free and then purchased for a few dollars. I recommend "The Hierarchy of Knowledge: The Most Neglected Issue in Education" the most) and of other writings available by the authors on that page.

As for my own experiences and knowledge, I think the problem breaks down into two parts: motivation and hierarchy.
* * * * *
1. Motivation: Children not only have to face the difficulty of properly learning a subject, but also of maintaining the constant motivation to continuously exert effort in that endeavor, now and throughout the entirety of their lifetime. Many things in school work to undermine this. For one, kids are often not told or even denied answers when asking questions as to why they should learn the subject at hand or how they will apply such knowledge in practical life. The end result is that kids forget what they "learned", begin to become averse to, and even detest "learning" (which is really brute memorization in this case); or both. I myself have had my respect for institutionalized education crushed by a math teacher who was unable to answer my question as to how the concept of factoring applies to concrete reality, but ordered me to sit down and "learn it" anyway.

But a greater killer of motivation would be methodology. An absolutely false theory of epistemology is worse than useless not in that it does not facilitate actual learning, but in that it prevents and may make impossible actual learning. What is a greater way to kill motivation than to exert months and months worth of effort in a class only to lose a majority of the information within weeks of being out of it?

2. Hierarchy: The human mind has a certain nature, and so must have a method of learning of a certain nature as well. One of the crucial aspects of proper learning is hierarchy, the order in which things are to be learned. No greater example can be had than from mathematics: first one must learn to count, then to add and subtract, then to multiply and divide, and so on. It would be absolutely absurd, and impossible, to teach a child mathematics by first starting with calculus then skipping to arithmetic and then skipping to fractions, all before he has learned to count. And yet this is exactly what happens in other subjects.

The existence of atoms, for instance, cannot be taught to a baby who has yet to learn about the entities of which are composed of atoms (e.g. inanimate objects, animals, etc.), i.e., he cannot perform a process of abstraction without having a perceptual base.

The result of ignoring such a simple fact is that children today engage in a process of memorization, not learning. To learn is to understand the relationship of a concept(s) or phenomenon with reality and to integrate it with the entire context of one's knowledge; to memorize is to simply retain something mentally. Kids today memorize while in class and then let the floating abstractions float away when they are finished.
* * * * *
Combine these two factors together and you have the makings of a potential disaster: "educated" adults emerging from their schools having learned little, if anything; with a bad and misinformed attitude towards exerting mental effort, and being put in charge of a world which demands that you use your mind to its limit, or perish.

The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.-- Thomas Sowell

Worse than stressing kids out, if Obama's plan passes it can bring us many steps closer to destroying the world.

Nobel "Peace" Prize

2009-10-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

On the heels of the news story that reports Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize, Doug Reich provides us with some excellent commentary as to how the ideology Obama follows necessarily leads to violence, which thereby discredits the award as having any merit:

And what exactly would a pragmatist seek to achieve in foreign policy, i.e., what would be the standard by which he would determine what "works"? Since "peace" is their ostensible goal, this means that any action in the short run that seems to be a step towards non-fighting would be regarded as good. Therefore, "easing tensions with the Muslim world" or appeasement of our enemies is regarded as worthy of praise and even a Nobel Prize. In the long run, will appeasement of those who overtly seek our destruction result in "peace"? To them, who knows? They must be pragmatic which means making everyone feel good right now.

[...] As Iran continues to build a nuclear bomb, as Chavez seeks Russian help to realize its own nuclear ambitions, as troop morale hits an all time low, what is clear is that Obama's weakness and pragmatic appeasement is making the world more dangerous not less. Obama has given a tacit green light to every enemy of the United States by implying that we will not defend our values either morally or practically.

If a consumer safety company became known for putting its seal of approval on products that more often than not harmed consumers then it would become a meaningless seal which no one would respect. The Nobel Peace Prize has reached this status by not only having been given to a person who has yet to accomplish anything to deserve it, but also by having been given to a person that is actually responsible for the perpetuation of violence. Some reward.

(See also: Commentary by Galileo Blogs and my previous post on foreign policy, Dr. Dolittleism in Foreign Policy.)

Dan Edge's Adventures in Activism

2009-10-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

Dan Edge of The Edge of Reason is in great legal danger in which he faces up to six years in jail. Why? For the crime of having had a minor hand a poster to him and say thanks.

He had but merely organized a protest against what he judged to be an improper exercise of governmental power: a curfew imposed on minors for the crimes and irresponsibility of a minority. Some minors happened to participate in the protest, and when it came time that the curfew had passed the police began inquiring as to the age of certain protesters and told those whom proved underage to depart. One police officer, however, arrested two of the underage protesters without allowing them the chance to depart (as per a requirement of the law) and arrested Mr. Edge when one minor handed a poster to him.

I strongly recommend reading Mr. Edge's personal documentation of the events, in which he also reveals that his local media is purposely neglecting to show his side of the story (thus making his reputation to burn at stake since the public is making improper judgments of him) and how he learned that the media industry in general is prone to distortion due to legal threats from the government:

Adventures in Activism: A True Story of Protest, Arrest, and Release: Mr. Edge's account of the events that happened at the protest.

The Greenville News -- Corrupt from Core to Top: Mr. Edge reveals the legal danger he is in, and how his local media is intentionally neglecting to write about the protest from his perspective (even though he has been interviewed and has given his account to the media).

Why I Am Innocent, While the City is Not: An explanation of what laws were broken in the process of the arrest of Mr. Edge and the two minors.

Who to Contact About my Case: Mailing and e-mail addresses for people of significance in Mr. Edge's area.

I myself am going to write an e-mail of moral support for Mr. Edge. If we do not practice justice and recognize the morality of moral men around us, then what is to serve as their motivation to keep practicing virtue? In such times as these we cannot have the virtuous quitting on us. Or worst yet, to allow them to be taken by the evil.

Sprinting to the Start; Crawling to the Finish

2009-09-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

A opinion writer for The Wall Street Journal, no name for the writer is given, has brought to my attention that Democrats are now attempting to bring HR 3200 to vote within the next six weeks. A noteworthy excerpt:

The six-week limit also happens to fall—conveniently—before the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, both of which the GOP has an even-to-better shot of winning. Democratic losses will terrify the Blue Dogs, who are already wavering in their support for an extreme health makeover.

The title of the webpage is "Health Care Deadline Is Arbitrary", and rightly so. As was noted before, this specific piece of legislation, if passed, would not go into effect until sometime in the year 2013. That means that politicians are sprinting to pass something which they will then crawl to put into effect. Along with the above information in the quote, it is conclusive now that our representatives are trying to force this legislation onto the American people before opposition becomes too great.

Now would be a good time to send a reminder to your representatives about your views on this piece of legislation. You can find your appropriate contact forms here. Here is my letter for a reference, which I give permission for anyone to take and alter (but not to copy verbatim):

Dear [representative],

I am writing to remind you that I am opposed to the medical care reform legislation HR 3200, and that I have asked you to cast a vote against it. If you should cast a vote in favor of it, I will not consider voting for you as a candidate for political office again, as this issue is cardinal.

This legislation is not either impractical *or* immoral, but *both* impractical *and* immoral. Any degree of government intervention in the medical industry, whether it be a full nationalization or something as simple as insurance mandates, has been a recorded failure in the multiple countries that tried it, including the United States (referencing Massachusetts in particular). The results of such interventions have been longer waits for appointments, skyrocketing costs, a declining number of doctors, decreasing quality, lack of innovation, and, immorally, the prohibition of a doctor and patient to voluntarily contract on payment and treatment options since the government holds the threat of physical force against them.

The legislation, as it currently stands, gives arbitrary power to bureaucrats, imposes higher taxes on individuals, imposes rationing, and places multiple agencies it establishes above the jurisdiction of the courts: http://theobjectivestandard.com/blog/2009/08/health-care-bill-what-hr-3200-americas.asp

Big government is the cause of our current medical care ills, and has always been. Only a free market, and I mean an *absolutely* free market that contains no governmental controls, can fix this.

Regards,
Benjamin

Lies Against Reality II

2009-09-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

Robert Tracinski provides an insightful article as to how Barack Obama's considerably consistent lying is dissolving his credibility, particularly in the debate about medical care legislation HR 3200.

This is the way an article about lies should be written. All too often it seems like those who put forth political arguments leave assertions hanging in mid-air, which leads to only the like-minded, rather than a general audience accepting such an argument. In this article Mr. Tracinski does not merely accuse Obama of lying, he takes note of what assertions Obama has put forward and then cites the facts of reality that contrast his words, thereby proving, rather than just saying, that Obama is a liar by chosen nature.

It is much too good to post any single excerpt. Read the whole thing.

Introducing "Musing Aloud"

2009-09-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

One of the frustrations I run into when maintaining this blog is that I sometimes come upon something that I would wish to blog about but will not since it is outside the theme (epistemology, ethics, politics), style, and formality of this blog. In short, I refrain from ever using this blog for anything personal since it was not established and is not used for such a purpose.

This is why I am going to open up a brother blog titled Musing Aloud. This is where I am going to locate my personal writings, writings about my personal observations, the values I hold, or questions that arise in my mind (in hope for discussion from commenters). I have also relocated my Twitter feed to that page, as that is something relevant to the theme of Musing Aloud, not of Benpercent.

I do not plan on, at least currently, adding it to the Obloggers blog network, so that means my posts from that site will not show up in the blogging feed. Instead I will have a link on the upper right hand side titled "Brother Blog" and may periodically link to posts from this site.

Oh, and I know that the proper terminology would be "Sister Blog" since all inanimate objects are usually referred to with female pronouns...but I arbitrarily decree my blog to be a boy blog.

Invading Your Myspace?

2009-09-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

Ken Boehem informs us that the White House is apparently secretly soliciting offers for someone to mine data from various social networking websites:

NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites.

The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.”

First there was @flag.whitehouse.gov, and now this. Again the question arises: For what purpose?

Now I know that this article may seem too much like a conspiracy theory in the negative sense, but it is valid. If one will click the link presented in the article it will go to an official government website which confirms the contents of the article.

Could this be an attempt to restrict free speech by means of intimidation?

Before They Can Even Think....

2009-09-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

It has been announced that Obama plans on addressing a special speech to students on September 8th, Tuesday. There seems to have been quite an upset over this, so much so that some are calling that day to be a national "Keep Your Kids Home Day". The charge being leveled is that this address amounts to indoctrination, but is it?

First, let us make our terms clear. Indoctrination is the process of instructing a person in a doctrine or an ideology. While this definition is harmless enough and does not set off any alarms, it is the who that it applies to that matters. If one were to indoctrinate, say, a thinking adult, then that would be fine as he would possess the capability to critically assess what he is being presented with and would be able to reject or accept it accordingly. A young child that has not learned how to think, however, is an inappropriate target for indoctrination as he cannot properly do a critical evaluation of the information before him, and will therefore have few other options than to accept the presented doctrine on faith.

The proper function of a school is to train a child in how to use his mind. Certainly the intellectual content is very important in that training, but the intellectual method holds primacy. Instruct a child in the proper methods of gathering data and thinking and you will have a child that will continue learn throughout the entirety of his lifetime, as opposed to the kids today who are being instructed in brute memorization and coming out of schools explicitly stating they hate learning.

Also, how morally bad a particular case of indoctrination in a school is to be regarded depends on what level of schooling is being considered. On a college campus the students should have developed to the point where they at least *should* have had some basic instruction in proper thinking methods, so indoctrination in a college classroom should be considered in bad taste rather morally wrong. In an elementary school, however, it is to be considered morally despicable. Indoctrination at that age is not to be considered wrong merely because it may happen against a parent's consent or because it may enforce unjustified prejudice, but because doing so hinders the minds of the children. Since they do not possess the ability at that age to rationally think about the doctrine they are being presented with, they have few other choices but to accept it on irrational grounds and thereby learn methods of non-thinking which could hinder or stunt the growth of their mind for the rest of their life. To fail to teach a child how to learn is the most condemnable failure any teacher could allow to happen.

Now, what evidence do we have that Obama may be presenting a speech which is a shielded attempt to indoctrinate students? First, we have evidence directly from official White House sponsored documents. From the prek-6 PDF file listed under the heading "Classroom Activities" in the link presented above:

During the Speech

As the president speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note‐taking graphic organizer such as a “cluster web;” or, students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children could draw pictures and write as appropriate. As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:

What is the president trying to tell me?

What is the president asking me to do?

What new ideas and actions is the president challenging me to think about?

Teachers could ask students to share the ideas they recorded, exchange sticky notes, or place notes on a butcher‐paper poster in the classroom to discuss main ideas from the speech, such as citizenship, personal responsibility, and civic duty.

Students could discuss their responses to the following questions:

What do you think the president wants us to do?

Does the speech make you want to do anything?

Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?

What would you like to tell the president?
[All emphasis is mine except for bold on heading above bulleted list]

As Michelle Malkin has noted, this has a rather heavy activist type of wording to it, especially that which I have put in bold. Why should an American President be telling anyone to "do" anything? Given the nature of a proper government, it is highly inappropriate that he instruct children in "civic duty".

But we still have yet more evidence. Take into consideration this four minute video, which some schools have already showed in classrooms (although not at the behest of the Department of Education):

The use of celebrities in this video indicates that it is directed at the youthful crowd. Many of the pledges made in this video are obviously tinged with politics, and the last portion where they state "I pledge to be a servant to our president and all mankind" in unison drips of the philosophical doctrine of altruism and of slavery.

So, to conclude, yes, the probability is that Obama is going to use his address as a means of indoctrination. Regardless of whether or not one thinks the content of Obama's ideas is true, it is still not proper to present them in this format, let alone present them at all, to children.

Furthermore, this would not be proper no matter which President wished to do it and what his intentions were. It is not the job of the government to instruct its citizenry, using involuntarily extracted funding (taxes) from which the original owners may not approve of its usage.

What of opting out?, one may ask now. Surely if a parent disapproves of a certain activity he can submit his refusal and have the educators accommodate with an alternative activity. Not in all cases, states Michelle Malkin:

Reader Ernest emails a link to the notice on the Broward County FL school district site, which informs parents that they cannot opt their kids out of the president’s speech on Tuesday because the administrators are committed to “encouraging civics education in the broadest sense.”

Who controls your kids?

This amounts to physical coercion in public schools. It is a law that children must receive education in some form, whether it is via home schooling or attending an educational facility. Taxes for education may make it so that parents cannot afford to home school their children, as they may have to work, nor afford to send them to a private school, so the government forcibly limits their options down to government-run public schools.

Let us call it then: Tuesday shall officially be Keep Your Kids Home Day.

This "Death Panels" Business

2009-08-24T05:00:00.000-07:00

My readers must forgive me for being a one-topic blog for the past few weeks, but the medical reform issue is of far too much importance not to focus on. Lately there has been much talk about "death panels" being inherent within HR 3200, panels of bureaucrats that decide who lives or dies, which has been given much heat. "Preposterous" they all say.

Those that have been keeping up with my last few posts will know that no lengthy argument is necessary. The real question is: how can supporters, and opponents alike, of HR 3200 not see that it will lead to death panels?

The logic is simple. As I have said before, the impracticality of socialized medicine is that, by removing prices, it encourages people to over-consume medical resources and for doctors and nurses to either go into a concierge practices or to leave their profession. A shortage results. A shortage is when there is not enough of a product or service to satisfy the demand for it. Rationing of medical resources will ensue under such a system.

What happens in rationing? Panels of bureaucrats will decide whom is allowed how much of what medical resources, and whom is not to have any.

And so there you have it.

Nice Try

2009-08-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

According to Yahoo! News, the White House is preparing to drop public option from HR 3200. Instead, what is to be pursued in its place is a thing called "cooperatives". The article is extremely vague as to what they are.
Michael D. Tanner, however, warns us that co-ops are simply public option by another name. (HT: Paul Hsieh.)

Should we be surprised? No, this is simply an old trick of politicians. If something is found to be unfavorable with the voting public, simply change the terminology, pretend like it is a whole new thing and you may perhaps fool them. We must remember our Shakespeare: "A rose by any other name smells just as sweet." (Though I would not be using roses in the metaphor...)

This plan must be defeated wholesale, not instead accepted in some lesser degree. In one of my earliest essays I pointed out as to why government officials are doomed to failure whenever they try to intervene in the economy to "improve" things. Given this knowledge and the fact that more regulations are habitually proposed to fix these failures, we must recognize that this leads to a vicious circle: when the government regulates the economy it causes failure, leading to more regulation, more failure, more regulation, more failure, ad infinitum. If this legislation piece is passed in any degree we will be merely taking another step in this endless circle.

The absurdity of all this is that some of the complaints the politicians are putting force about insurance companies are about problems the government has created to begin with. From the Yahoo! article:

"Nothing has changed,” said Linda Douglass, communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform. “The president has always said that what is essential is that health insurance reform must lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans and it must increase choice and competition in the health insurance market. He believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals."”

If that is what is desired to be accomplished, to make insurance companies more affordable, competitive, and to offer more choices, then why do they not suggest the repealing of the laws that have prevented insurance companies from achieving these goals? Laws have driven up the operating costs of business, so insurance companies raise their prices out of necessity, not greed. Laws have forced insurance companies to cover certain conditions and treatments regardless of whether or not the particular consumers wish to be covered for them, so insurance companies are lacking in competition and choices because they are prohibited from competing and prevented from offering more choices.

Instead of suggesting the repealing of the problem laws, even more laws and more regulations are being proposed.

If this circle is not broken then the government will inevitably take over the entirety of the medical care industry, not just insurance.

Hurrying to Wait?

2009-08-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

I should not be surprised, but I am. Stella Zawistowski from ReasonPharm reports:

Here's something I didn't know about HR 3200 until today: that the massive expansion in health insurance coverage sought by Democrats would not actually take effect until 2013 -- after the next presidential election.

Given all the calls that we need medical care reform quickly, the democrats seem to be overly patient in actually implementing their plan. Why, exactly, do we need to pass HR 3200 in such a hurry if it is not going into effect for almost four years? Because the bill is without rational justification. It is neither moral nor practical. If this legislation saw the light of day for too long people would see that in the future it can only lead to long waits for medical treatment/appointments, doctors and nurses leaving their profession, bureaucrats deciding who gets treatment, if any at all; innovative medicines and technologies abandoned at the blueprint stage, and more. In short, suffering for all without even an anthill's worth of the moral high ground. If anything could be chosen as the symbol of the logical consequence of socialized medical care, I would choose this case.

This legislation needs to be opposed absolutely. If passed, we face the possibility of it never being repealed within our lifetime. If people ever come to view medical care rationing, chronic suffering, and little to no innovation in the market as "things as they just have to be" then we may very well have lost. Someone once wrote: Raise a kid in a swamp and he will not know that the air does not have to stink.

But there is still time. The vote is not coming until next month or so, and the opposition is great already. We can better our understanding and ability to oppose even more by actually reading the bill. However, I realize that 1017 pages of complicated, nearly incomprehensible legal language is far too daunting a task for most people; even I would not spend my time like that. That is why I would like to point you to an analysis written by John David Lewis, which may be the best analysis of the concrete bill itself. The purpose of his article is to answer nine questions:

Will the plan ration medical care?,

will the plan punish Americans who try to opt out?,

what constitutes “acceptable” coverage?,

will the plan destroy private health insurance?,

does the plan tax successful Americans more than others?,

does the plan allow the government to set fees for services?,

will the plan increase the power of government officials to scrutinize our private affairs?,

does the plan automatically enroll Americans in the government plan?, and

does the plan exempt federal officials from court review?

It is structured into nine sections with two subsections in each. The subsections are ordered that the question is posed at the heading, the relevant passage from the bill quoted second, and an evaluation of the passage third. I would go so far as to say this is "required reading".

Spread it where you can.

The Snake Rattles?

2009-08-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

Amazing.

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov. [Emphasis added]

Check out Gus Van Horn and C. August for excellent commentary regarding this. I have nothing to add to their points.

The Snake Bares its Fangs

2009-08-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

John David Lewis has written an excellent article that succinctly explains why universal medical care/socialized medical care/single-payer medical care/public option medical care systems are not only impractical economically, but are also immoral. We must pay special attention to the medical care scene for the present as the America's Affordable Health Choices Act is coming up to vote in the next month or so.

As I have explained in my article Poisonous Snake Bite? Run to the Hospital!, the impracticality of socialized medical care (this is the label that is most accurate and the one I will use consistently) is a simple supply and demand problem. If politicians say that people can have as much medical care as they want at no price then people start to "demand", i.e. use up more medical resources than they otherwise would have and a shortage of medical resources occurs (doctors, instruments, medicines, etc.). Yes, that means long lines for appointments and treatments, if they are available and if the politicians determine that you are allowed to have any.

But not only would the present supply be overwhelmed by a massive increase in demand, it would also decrease. Of all the rambling that goes on about how overpaid doctors are, it is seldom acknowledged the nature of the doctor's profession. To become a doctor requires years of intensive study, experience, and the willingness to take on the risk of contracting a disease or illness from one's patients. To demand that a doctor take on more patients for less money is to demand that he work harder and take on an even higher risk of getting a sickness without getting just rewards. Such is enough to make a doctor decide to exclude patients with a certain governmental insurance plan, to open up a concierge practice and accept cash payments only, or to leave the medical profession altogether. It is already happening, so imagine how much worse things will be if the AAHCA is passed. Medical insurance does not mean one is guaranteed to actually receive medical care.

But, of course, John Lewis above has warned us about using purely economical arguments. An author on the blog Noodlefood once said that humans are willing to create Hell on earth if they think it is moral.

Socialized medical care is immoral. To say that one has a right to medical care is to also state that someone has a duty to satisfy that right, which means that the right to medical care requires the enslavement of some to satisfy that right. There is no right to medical care, for it runs into the contradiction that some have the right to violate the rights of others. Unless these moral implications are made clear to the public, we will only be fighting a Sisyphean battle with this type of legislation; right up until it inevitably gets passed.

It would not get passed, or even considered, if it was to be rejected on moral, rather than solely practical, grounds. As always, I recommend reading the analysis Moral Health Care vs. “Universal Health Care”, which deeply examines both the moral and practical sides to the debate about universal medical care. Sending an e-mail to one's representatives would not hurt either.

Associated Press Announces New Business Model

2009-07-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

I am not familiar with the news website The Associated Press, content or quality otherwise, but methinks this is a bad business model. Stating that people should pay for merely linking to your content is dubious enough, but stating that you plan on planting spyware on your consumers' computer seems like an awfully bad idea:

Each article — and, in the future, each picture and video — would go out with what The A.P. called a digital “wrapper,” data invisible to the ordinary consumer that is intended, among other things, to maximize its ranking in Internet searches. The software would also send signals back to The A.P., letting it track use of the article across the Web. [New York Times]

Are they purposely trying to commit suicide? It makes one wonder how they even got to where they are at now.

"Buying Local"

2009-07-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

It has recently come to attention that the UAW, at least in Michigan, prohibits cars of foreign make from parking in union hall parking lots and that any violators of the rule are to be towed away. Such sentiments are not limited to the UAW: in the past few weeks I have noticed that the editorials continuously call for people to purchase goods and services produced only within the local economy. The premise underlying all of this, of course, is that keeping money within the local economy improves the local economy.

This, however, fails to establish the context. While so many are quick to condemn businesses for daring to outsource work and to import foreign materials, none ask the most important question: why are these businesses choosing to outsource? By not answering this question we risk merely making the economy worse, so let us examine the possible reasons.

I am not aware of any explicit reasons as to why the companies based in Michigan would want to outsource (e.g. harmful legislation, favorable conditions overseas, et cetera), but we can conclude that their reason(s) fall within two categories: 1.) the cost of running business is cheaper in particular foreign locales, and/or 2.) the quality of production is greater in particular foreign locales. Few businesses uproot their operations "just because".

Michigan editorials are calling for either people to purchase things only locally or for companies to relocate their operations locally, but by not answering the question above, what do we risk losing? If businesses are relocating because the cost of business is cheaper elsewhere, then we will have to face higher prices than we otherwise would have to pay; if businesses are relocating because the quality of production is greater elsewhere, then we lose that superior quality. If it is a combination of both factors, then we have lost much.

The point is that we must have in mind the full context before choosing to take a course of action. If we do not, then we are merely making guesses, even if educated ones.

"Buying local" as a principle does no good or harm; it is meaningless without the context of appropriate factors. People, for instance, bought locally in The Great Depression. The Smoot-Hawley tariff mostly, if not entirely, cut off U.S. trade with other countries. "Buying local" improved the economy none since people were subject to such excruciatingly high taxes back then in order to fund New Deal programs.

When thinking about these issues we must chant the mantra context, context, context within our minds.

Burning the Casino Down

2009-07-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

One particular difficulty I run into when discussing economics is that so many people seem to be ignorant of the fact the economy has principles and causal factors by which it runs; instead they think of the economy as some sort of big casino that the government needs to regulate after a bad deal, especially so in this recession. Luckily, however, we have people like Doug Reich to provide excellent commentary. Today I would like to point your attention to his post titled Obama: Please Try This at Home, which examines the underlying reasons as to why economic stimuluses do not work and why the ones recently passed will actually do harm. What is so great about the post is that it is written in a language specifically for those who have no knowledge of formal economics, so it is perfect for forwarding in e-mails. I cannot quote any notable excerpts since the whole essay is worth reading.

I would also like to direct your attention to his philosophical/psychological analysis titled Rational Animal Spirits, which is a dissection of the mentalities of our current central planners (i.e. politicians) and an explanation as to why forgoing principles is very harmful, if not fatal. A noteworthy excerpt:

If you are trying to eliminate the effects of a particular problem, do you think it would ever help to understand the causes that give rise to the effects? For example, if a building were on fire, do you think it would help that the firemen in charge understood what tends to fuel a fire and what tends to extinguish it? If they did not understand the causes, wouldn't they be as likely to throw a ham sandwich on the fire as to pour water upon it? ...Obviously, if one does not understand the causes, the solution may actually be worse than the problem itself. At best, the supposed solution can only mitigate or eliminate effects through random chance.

Both of these analyses give further clarity into our current times and show us what must be done about the economic crisis: the government must stop throwing gasoline on the fire.

A Bit Longer...

2009-07-13T07:35:00.000-07:00

While this may be contradictory to my previous post about benevolent comedy, I cannot help but hold this as my favorite magic trick of all time:

Benevolent Biff

2009-07-08T11:01:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for being light on my posting as of late; I have been facing a small bit of difficulty that has prevented me from being Johnny-on-the-spot with maintaining a steady stream of posts, but I do have several ideas for some posts, including one in particular I have been contemplating for several weeks, if not months. I shall not reveal them lest I give any other writers an idea. :-) For now one will have a positive article to be tided over with.

Here is a link to my favorite comedy comic, The Book of Biff. There is simply far too much vicious comedy out in the media these days, comedy where you are expected to take amusement at someone's suffering, however mild. Such things I cannot laugh at, for I prefer benevolent comedy. The difficulty is that benevolent comedy of decent quality can be hard to find.

As for The Book of Biff, the comic is about random moments in the life of a man with flowing eyebrows and an overwide mouth. In many ways the comic can borderline on Charlie Brownian misfortunes such as with Biff's constantly being laid off or having his property destroyed, but in the end optimism and resolve reign through. Some of my particular favorites are here, here, and here.

What are your favorite things that showcase a benevolent sense-of-life?

So...You Have Finished Saving the Economy Then?

2009-07-01T17:01:00.000-07:00

Via FreeColorado.com I have learned about this video:

For those that are unable to watch the video, here is my personally typed up transcript, with emphasis added and but one grammatical note inserted in brackets:

The problem is, can you really get the American people to say this is important and force their representatives to do the right thing? That requires mobilizing a citizenry. That requires them understanding what is at stake. And climate-change is a great example, you know, when I was asked about the issue of coal. You know, under my plan, of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say whether coal is good or bad. Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal-powered plants, you know, natural gas...you name...whatever the plant's worth, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money [and] they will pass that money onto consumers.

This is an strange assertion coming from a guy who has stated a few months ago that the he would be trying his best to save the American economy; now he is alright with explicitly stating that he has knowingly drafted a plan that will harm the economy? Astonishing.

But the President may not have been up on his Henry Hazlitt, for he only noted the direct impact. The absolute impact, so to speak, is enough to bring America into its second depression, and that is not speaking hyperbolically. Many have been pointing out as of late that this cap-and-trade legislation is the new Smoot-Hawley tariff.

The Smoot-Hawley tariff is one of the primary factors that started the Great Depression. (A tariff is a tax that is imposed on foreigners for importing their goods into a certain geographical area.) This particular tariff was so outrageously high that is prevented almost entirely, if not entirely, foreigners from importing anything, so in retaliation the trading countries imposed a high tariff of their own which effectively prevented American businesses from exporting goods and thus isolated America trade-wise. As a result, businesses suffered by losing their export sales, consumers suffered by having to buy inferior products or by losing some products entirely, and prices went up. (While this tariff may have been vital in starting the Great Depression, it was not what made it decade-long. For an examination of the economic policies that made the Great Depression great, please refer to the book New Deal or Raw Deal?)

The currently discussed cap-and-trade legislation would be more harmful than Smoot-Hawley in that it would affect the entirety of the American economy. Obama has stated that electricity rates would skyrocket, but does he acknowledge that every aspect of the American economy depends on energy in some way? Not only would electricity rates skyrocket, but all prices would skyrocket as well, thereby crippling the economy and preventing it from recovering until the legislation is repealed.

This is a good time of all times to contact your elected officials.

Lies Against Reality

2009-06-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

I had been anticipating such a piece for quite some time. Peter Wehner has written an article titled Decoding Obama that takes a sampling of Obama's assertions and shows that they are lies by exposing the actual facts of reality. Take this excerpt for instance:

Then there are the things that have almost been forgotten by now. Obama, during the campaign, said, "[Lobbyists] will not work in my White House" – even though he immediately allowed waivers for lobbyists. Having pledged to slash earmarks by more than half when he became president, Obama signed an omnibus spending bill containing 8,500 of them. Having made bi-partisanship a pillar of his campaign, Obama has so far governed in a more partisan fashion than any president in generations. Having claimed the capacity to “see all sides of an argument,” the president routinely constructs strawmen he can set ablaze. And having said “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,” Obama spends an inordinate amount of time and energy doing just that (in one speech alone, he included more than two dozen critical comments, direct or implied, against the Bush Administration).

The consistency of his lying shows us that Obama is a "Peter Keating", Peter Keating being one of the main villains of the novel The Fountainhead. What is interesting about Keating's evilness is that he does not do evil deeds to others, but rather slowly destroys himself throughout his lifetime by following one single poisonous premise: placing others above oneself. Keating does not care about what is "good" or what is "true"; he cares about what other people think is good and what other people think of the truth. As a result he lives a life of dishonesty, for he says what other people what to hear while never living up to it in action.

Obama is the same way in that his words seemingly always oppose his actions. He states that he is not going to run the business of General Motors, but in action his administration is responsible for the firing of several employees, honoring warranties, and designing new products. He states that he is outraged at the actions of the government of Iran during its election protests, but in action it amounted to nothing since it has been stated that talks with Iran will still persist despite recent violence (which is more Dr. Dolittleism in foreign policy). He states that he is going to cut spending by $100 million dollars, thus saving the United States money, but in action he has increased the debt by trillions.

It is nonsensical now to take any of his future words seriously. Read the whole article.

Establishing the Context

2009-06-24T06:05:00.000-07:00

I am not aware as to what the status is currently vote-wise of Barack Obama's medical care reform legislation, but I do know it is a threat and worthwhile focusing on. Paul Hsieh of We Stand FIRM has posted some interesting links and commentary as to why the free market is not to be blamed for the current problems of medical care. I also recommend reading, for a more thorough and exhaustive understanding, Moral Health Care vs. "Universal Health Care" if you have the time, for it explains how certain aspects of universal medical care have already been implemented in some states and have failed horribly.

To add an epistemological postscript to these articles, the blaming of the free market for the failures of universal medical care is a spectacular example of the epistemological poison known as "context-dropping". To drop the context, in this instance, means to improperly disassociate information or someone's stated words from the context that gives it its appropriate meaning, thereby forming a distortion. While one may be tempted to argue so, it is not always the case that when someone isolates a certain piece of data or a statement of someone's speech that it is automatically dropping the context (it is certainly "removing from the context"); "context-dropping" isolates instances when the meaning is *distorted* by the act of removing information from its context. An example for clarity: say politician X is speaking about the holocaust and in his speech he quotes Hitler on his contempt for the Jewish. Then politician Y comes along, politician X's opponent, and then publicly quotes only X's quote. This would be dishonest context-dropping, as this new quote distorts the meaning by making it seem as if politician X holds contempt for Jewish people when in reality he is merely quoting someone else who did.

To relate this back to universal medical care, the context-dropping that is taking place is in regard to the totality of the factors affecting medical care quality and prices. This is the fault of pragmatism. Pragmatism denies that there are such things as principles, or at least that principles are practical, and therefore, by corollary, denies the purity of principles. By "purity" I mean "absolute". Anything introduced to a guiding principle that is irrelevant or inapplicable to it means that that guiding principle is no longer being used. A laissez faire free market, for instance, entails that the government does not intervene in the economy is any way whatsoever. Even the most minuscule regulation, say a penny tax on cigarettes, is enough to change a laissez faire market into a mixed economy.

But our politicians think they can eat their cake and have it too.

Thus we see the practice of politicians continually adding taxes and regulations to the economy while at the same time calling it a "free market". This is as dishonest as saying chocolate milk is bone white plain milk. In reality, America has neither a controlled economy nor a free one: it has a mixed economy, an economy that employs a mixture of freedom and controls (the ratio of freedom to control is the measurement omitted).

The result of this context-dropping is that we have national confusion as to what constitutes a free market, causing economic problems to be far too often misdiagnosed. To demonstrate, there were within the last few months two contradictory polls. One poll asked about how favorable certain economic models were and indicated that fewer Americans are supporting capitalism, but then another poll by the same organization indicated that Americans mostly favor the free market. Capitalism and free markets are synonymous, so it makes no sense as to distinguish between them except to show that Americans are confused as to what capitalism actually is.

To prevent this epistemological poison from seeping into our systems and establishing confusion and dishonesty, we must employ its antonym; we must "establish the context". Establishing the context means finding out what constitutes essential information in a particular context and then actively retaining it as one works with it. When we quote someone's words we must make sure to include in that quote all the essential sentences which give that portion meaning and when we isolate a piece of data we must also isolate all the factors that give it meaning.

In the medical care debate over cost, quality and service, establishing the context would mean to take into account the following factors which may or may not be relevant: cultural, environmental, things affecting other industries, governmental, and that which is left up entirely to the discretion of a provider. As of far, only the last factor on the list has been popularly focused on, and in a dishonest fashion too, for people far too often attribute to freedom choices made by medical industry workers that were actually coerced choices. To establish the context, I again echo my deepest recommendation in inquiring the links mentioned at the beginning of this piece.

It may be redundant to say this, but if we misdiagnose this problem, it could be fatal for millions.

Bulldozing the Economy?

2009-06-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

This is probably one of the most strangest proposals I have ever read in my life, and cannot grasp the "logic" justifying it. Apparently it is being seriously considered that some U.S. cities should be bulldozed in order to improve the economy. What?

At this point it seems like it would be best to consult the article for clarification, but all the given justifications are useless since they provide no technical explanation whatsoever as to why this should work. All we are given are either analogies or unsupported statements as to what should be done:

"The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we're all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way," said Mr Kildee. "Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity."

[...]"Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They're at the point where it's better to start knocking a lot of buildings down," [Karina Pallagst] said.

[...]If the city didn't downsize it will eventually go bankrupt, [Mr. Kildee] added.

[...]Mr Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Americans considered his solution "defeatist" but he insisted it was "no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again".

These particular excerpts constitute the bulk of the most important quotes regarding the plan, but, as you can see, none of them explain in any way whatsoever just how shrinking the confines of some cities is supposedly going to help the economy.

In times when the government, local and national, faces a budget crisis, the best thing to do is incur massive expenses? In times of wealth destruction, the best thing to do is intentionally destroy wealth? (Remember, property, not just money, counts as wealth.) In times when the threat of bankruptcy is at its highest, the best thing to do is to support actions that will accelerate the decline?

As to why this proposal will fail if enacted, the most important thing to remember in this case is that the government is funded by taxpayer money. Anything it does that costs money is costing your money.

This proposal is not free of cost. In order to carry this out, the government is going to have to fund the companies that will provide the equipment, workers, and resources; it will have to pay for the use of the equipment and the cost of labor.

The end result? *Perhaps* some savings on fuel, for maybe at the end of this tearing-down people will be within walking distance of their place of employment. But the petty savings on fuel is not enough to justify the costs of such a big deconstruction project. Are there any other benefits? No.

With a straight face, the government officials are stating "We know that your personal wealth has been threatened during this economic crisis, so we propose to help you prosper by taking some of your wealth and using it to destroy potential wealth."

Ultimately, all this project will achieve is the destruction of potential wealth. People are leaving Flint for a reason: economic decline. Contrary to what Mr. Kildee asserts, the economic decline of Flint is not just a fact of reality in the same sense gravity is, it has human causes. Only by examining those causes can anyone properly construct a plan of action as to how to solve these problems. By refusing to acknowledge the actual problem Mr. Kildee is but preparing to only perpetuate it.

I can think of no better time to recommend the reading of Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt.

Sonia Sotomayor

2009-06-10T05:00:00.000-07:00

I was planning on writing a piece on the Supreme Court candidate Sonia Sotomayor, but Thomas Sowell has beaten me to the punch and would top me in any excellence that might be achieved. I urge the reading of his series of articles titled "Out of Context", which can be found in three parts here, here, and here.

Though I do think I should clarify something that Mr. Sowell seems to have not explained to satisfaction. As has been said before by Ayn Rand, the most difficult thing to explain is the most blindingly obvious that nobody decided to see. The offending quote of Sotomayor's is this:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life. [Excerpt from The New York Times.]

Some people seem to be stating that this is no grounds to accuse her of being a racist and sexist, but it is plainly obvious. To translate the sentence without distorting its meaning, she is stating that she hopes a woman of Latina descent would reach better conclusions, by reason of her race and gender, than a white male, by reason of his race and gender, that has not lived the life of a Latina woman. Everything is so specific here that no debate is possible. Ms. Sotomayor uses gender specific pronouns ("woman" and "male") and race specific adjectives ("Latina" and "white").

But we have not only her statement as grounds to accuse her; we have also have note of some of her actions. Regarding firefighters that sued The City of New Haven due to the denial of a promotion on the basis that not enough minorities passed the given exam:

New Haven city officials knew they were headed for a catch 22 when the test results came back.

The city decided to throw out the test results, fearing a lawsuit by the black firefighters. They got one anyway -- from the white and Hispanic firefighters, who said New Haven's decision discriminated against them.

The firefighters lost in court. They appealed, and that's how this case got to Sotomayor, who is currently a federal appeals judge.

What has all of Washington talking is what happened next: Sotomayor and two fellow appellate judges dismissed the white firefighters' claims -- and 2,000 pages of court papers and filings -- in a one-paragraph ruling. [Excerpt from ABC News.]

Whether or not one agrees with the particular law, the law is clearly written out that it is legally prohibited for an employer to discriminate against his employees, current or potential, on the basis of race, gender, or religion. By denying the promotions promised to those that satisfied the specified conditions on the basis that a racial group did not perform as well as other racial groups, the City is thereby guilty of racial discrimination and is to be dealt with as detailed by law. Did Sonia Sotomayor make her decision based on the lettering of the law? No, for the law should have ruled against the City, but instead the case was dismissed altogether.

Prejudiced or not, when a judge makes a judicial decision that is not based on the lettering of the law, that should amount for the automatic disqualification of a Supreme Court candidate. I stated in my article Vagueness and the Road to Power that nonobjective laws are bad because they are literally impossible to follow. A nonobjective judge is far worse, for not only would he be willing to operate on and support nonobjective laws, but he would actively ignore objectively defined laws as well.

If you think it is like a bad dream to have in temporary office a terrible politician, think of how bad things will be to have a bad judge appointed for an entire lifetime. I must add emphasis to reading Sowell's above articles, and encourage sending a letter to your elected representatives.

Technological Retrogression

2009-06-01T10:18:00.000-07:00

C. August has written an article titled The Government Killed My Jet Pack over at Titanic Deck Chairs, about how the government is to be blamed for the slowing, and sometimes elimination, of technological progress:

Still, he points to the fact that our highways are still jammed, and that people are becoming disillusioned with what technology can promise the future. He notes dystopian movies like Blade Runner where "technology creates more problems than it solves," and Battlestar Galactica where "human beings abandon their faith in technology's ability to improve the future. They destroy their fancy machines and start again as simple hunter-gatherers."

I don't think our culture's disillusionment is coming from a loss of "faith" in technology to "save us" but instead the ever-increasing draining of reason and the ever-increasing power of the state over our lives. The loss of reason and the increase of the state go hand in hand. We are losing our confidence in our individual ability to command our own lives, and instead are turning to government to "save us." Government, in turn, is crushing the productive output of what is left of capitalism.

In effect, the loss of reason precedes technological retrogression. It may seem absurd and impossible, but it is possible for humans to retrogress all the way to the barbaric life of jungle savages if they were to abandon the mind, and therefore its products, which is why it is important to grasp the issue of the relationship between technological progress and freedom, and therefore by implication reason itself. Stagnation is not possible; without the mind humans cannot even maintain the current level of technology.

If things keep going the way they are now we will have bigger things to worry about than a slower growing prosperity: we will be going backwards.

Read the article.

Objectivist Roundup

2009-05-28T16:59:00.000-07:00

The latest Objectivist Roundup has been posted over at Ramen & Rand.

For those that do not know, this is what is known as a "Blog Carnival." The purpose of such is to gather links to the best blog posts or so of authors that share an interest or theme. In this case, the Roundups gather together posts from authors that are supporters of the philosophy known as Objectivism.

If you have enjoyed my posts then perhaps you might enjoy some of these articles.

Proofs that Ideas Matter

2009-05-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

In the climate of today where people assert that ideology is an unjustifiable prejudice and that ideas matter not, only immediate action, I present to you two articles showing the contrary. Ideas not only do matter, but are vastly more powerful than people currently conceive and are necessary for living a proper life.

The first article is that of a millionaire that chased down a petty thief using his helicopter, all in the name of the principle of property rights. If more men were as passionate about principles as this man has demonstrated himself to be, evil would be thoroughly defanged. It is by compromise and discarding ideas at "convenience" can evil sink its baby teeth deeper and deeper and defeat the good.

The second article is even more inspirational, for it is about how the Canadian leader of the Ku Klux Klan disavowed his racist views after reading the writings of Ayn Rand while in prison:

He read a book a day, but was transformed by the words of Ayn Rand. A Russian-American Jew, Ms. Rand was a champion of individualism, and her writing challenged Mr. McQuirter to see the world as a collection of individuals rather than a map of racial groups. "It gave me a way to view the world differently," he said.

This goes to show that even the most seemingly ideologically lost people can be transformed if exposed to the right ideas.

If people continue to treat ideas as dispensable entertainment for the erudite, then nothing but inconsistency and suffering will be possible.

Dr. Dolittleism in Foreign Policy

2009-05-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday morning I happened to catch glimpse of a cartoon called The Replacements while reading the paper. By the time I had walked in on the episode, the two main characters, a brother and sister, were talking about the brother's bullying problem. At one point the sister exclaimed "Well, I'm going to show you that everyone can be reasoned with" and proceeded to let into the brother's bedroom the very bully he had been complaining about. The sister walked out of the room, to let them "work it out", and then the bully proceeded to beat the brother out of his senses.

The lesson is obvious: not everyone can be reasoned with. It is obviously very typical of a children's cartoon for characters to be characterized as astoundingly ignorant in some way, if just in only one area of knowledge. In this case, the sister was portrayed as being ignorant of the psychological workings of a vicious bully, even going so far as to letting a bully into her home to beat her brother within the confines of his own bedroom, all under the pretense that it was the logical thing to do in order to solve the bullying problem. Though there is something more tragic than this fictional situation: the ignorance of the sister has a very real counterpart in uncartoon-like people, the people in charge of handling U.S. foreign policy.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, has announced the successful testing of a long-range missile capable of traveling 1,200 miles. This should be unnerving news for any possible targets within that range, but then again, why should anyone be surprised? As of far, nobody has done anything productive to actually try and stop Iran, and other hostile nations, from developing such weapons. Of course, unless you take into account diplomacy and count that as "productive".

Truth be told, when negotiating with dictatorships, diplomacy has never worked and will never work. The error committed with diplomacy is the same error the sister above has made: believing everyone is capable of being reasoned with. To be more exact on a philosophic level, the error is a failure to distinguish between human-like animals and actual humans.

In the context of all the evidence we have available to us, the distinguishing characteristic of humans, the characteristic that distinguishes humans from other types of animals, is that humans possess the faculty of reason, the faculty which can focus on reality and integrate and retain knowledge on a wider scale than any other animal. A wild animal's mind can only work with instinctual knowledge and memorized actions. Humans can go beyond that by learning the nature of reality itself, rather than just merely acting within reality, and can develop their minds indefinitely, up until death.

Keeping this in mind, it is literally possible for a human to retrogress into an animal. No, not in the sort of science-fiction fashion where a man will walk into a machine at one end and come out a chimpanzee the other. A man ceases to be a man when he dispenses with his distinguishing characteristic, his faculty of reason, and therefore his mind. A mindless man is an animal.

The men who maintain and control dictatorships are men that have dispensed with rationality in the belief that it is irrational to treat men as rational. They have given up on trying to deal with men with logical persuasion, that is, reasoned arguments, and have instead resorted to the only option left: brute, physical force. There are no other alternatives.

A consequent implication of man's distinguishing characteristic is that it leads to the conclusion that rational persuasion as the proper way to deal with other men; a consequent implication of other animals' lack of a faculty of reason is that the only way for them to deal with other animals is by physical force. Humans use mind; animals use violence.

It goes without saying how humans have, and must, deal with animals. Despite all your protests, your pet dog will not stay where you want him to without being retrained on a leash. Despite all the PETA advertisements about how meat is murder, a lion will not be persuaded to cease eating meat, and killing to get it. Despite all the talking you do, a cockatiel will never understand the conversation.

It may be difficult to tell when a human has ceased being a human, but the moment comes when a person ceases to think and refuses to think. It is important to note that the actual refusal to think is an important aspect. By refusing to think, the person has given up his mind and rationality, and therefore his humanity, literally. When that has happened it does not necessarily follow that the person must be dealt with by force, only when he decides to use force, but it does follow that he can only be persuaded like an animal can: emotionally. All the logic in the world will not make such a person agree with you unless what you say stir his emotions so.

This is why diplomacy with hostile dictatorships will not work. Those in charge of a dictatorship have reduced themselves to the level of an animal. Certainly they do pretend to act like humans and may even convince themselves that they are human, but it is not so. By making violence as the rule to deal with people they follow the law of the jungle not the law of the city.

We can already see what fruit diplomacy has bore. That is, none. No matter all the chastising, negotiating, and agreements that goes on, nothing less will impede those that operate on violence than the *only way* they leave themselves open to be dealt with. They are impervious to being chastised because they have given up their mind and therefore the only thing that could grasp the rationale behind the chastising. Negotiation never satisfies them because of the nature of compromise between good and evil: in a compromise in moral issues, good loses absolutely and evil wins absolutely as well as being encouraged to demand more compromises. Agreements are non-binding to them because "the end justifies the means"; they have lost belief in reason and only use it as a means to duping others into going along with them.

So long as our Dr. Dolittle politicians fail to distinguish between how to properly deal with a human and how to properly deal with a human-like animal, these human-like animals will be able to develop their power. For such an error, we may pay the price.

Edit: Changed Doolittle to Dolittle.

Vagueness and the Road to Power

2009-05-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

This article regarding the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act brings up justifiable concerns for the possibility of using it to censor speech. The article is so well formed that I only need to bring up one addition: the only laws needed are laws that protect individual rights. If one chooses to associate with a person that aggravates one's existing psychological problems, then the fault lies with the person with the problems, not the associate. The only time an associate would be at fault (and thus legally and morally responsible) for harm is when an infringement of individual rights is involved.

But, to bring our knowledge out from the concrete level and turn it into a principle, this is a good example of how a *vague* law can give a politician(s) way more power than the law states it will give them. Such is accomplished by employing legal terminology that is either undefinable, insufficiently defined, or applies to different persons in different ways.

In this case, the article states, the offending passage is here:

Even Sanchez's attempt to define the term "cyberbullying" poses problems, said UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh.

"The bill defines it as 'using electronic means to support severe, repeated and hostile behavior,' but what does 'severe, hostile and repeated behavior' mean?" he asked.

Anyone can easily look up electronic and repeat for a definition that can be understood and employed by all in the exact same fashion, but, as the question states, what qualifies as "severe" and "hostile"? While one is able to come to an objective definition to be understood by all, these are concepts, when applied to behavior, denoting evaluation and therefore are employed differently by each person according to his own ideas, values, and standards.

To illustrate, imagine a football stadium where, currently, the majority of the spectators are loudly booing one of the teams. One person may evaluate this to be "hostile" behavior against the unfavored team while another person may merely evaluate it to be playful sportsmanship and a demonstration of team loyalty. One person may evaluate brushing one's teeth for an entire five minutes to be "severe" while the person engaging in such an act, plagued by worry, may evaluate it as a just barely sufficient amount of time. Many people can view the same phenomena, but the majority, if not all, will reach different evaluations of that same phenomena.

It is in this sense that this law being proposed is a nonobjective law, a law that is not clearly defined and delimited. Such a law is nearly impossible to follow. The only way a perpetrator will know he has broken such a law is...after he has broken it and is being prosecuted for it.

Even being careful not to offend, i.e., walking on eggshells is not enough to try and protect oneself from such a law worded like this. Even if one were to word an online criticism of another politician's proposal in the most polite way humanly possible, the politician being critiqued may take offense that they are being critiqued to at all and may be able to bring up legal charges. The only absolute protection is self-censorship.

If this law passes, people will be able to exercise their dictator fantasy by claiming to have had their feelings hurt.

Objectivist Round Up

2009-05-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

The latest Objectivist Round Up has been posted over at Try Reason!.

For those that do not know, this is what is known as a "Blog Carnival." The purpose of such is to gather links to the best blog posts or so of authors that share an interest or theme. In this case, the Roundups gather together posts from authors that are supporters of the philosophy known as Objectivism.

If you have enjoyed my posts then perhaps you might enjoy some of these articles.

Post Script to The Power of Epistemology

2009-05-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

In my previous article it was discussed how bad epistemology can actually threaten one's own life, case in point, how emotionalism on the part of one scientist (Ancel Keys) may have lead to the suffering and death of millions. Now we have another example, non-life threatening, of how bad epistemology can possibly lead to the permanent extinction of actual facts:

When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.

His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.

The sociology major's made-up quote — which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28 — flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India.

Again we come upon the case where a single epistemological poison can invalidate the entire system, the poison being, this time, a failure to maintain an active mind.

Every credible researcher should know that Wikipedia should not be used as a primary source. If it be used at all, it is best to go straight to the sources cited section and treat the site as if it were a mere gathering of links to reference material.

Because of the journalists' laziness they unintentionally mislead their readers, and if their error had gone unnoticed then the error could have become self-perpetuating:

"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."

What then, referencing the question posed last time, should we do now that we have been confronted with another conundrum of bad testimony? First off, every journalist that went to the Wikipedia entry and copied that quote should lose their credibility for such a failure to exercise proper journalism techniques. As I said before, what takes one minute to do may lead to consequences that take one decade to undo. The lazy journalists do have the opportunity to regain their credibility, but it will take a long time to achieve it in the eyes of those holding a healthy system of epistemology.

The journalists that quoted the other journalists, however, are much more innocent. They are among those who have been duped by those they thought to be credible but turned out to be incredible. If they want to keep their credibility (and, in actuality, enhance it), they should disavow those particular sources and offer a correction to those they mislead.

The bad news is, however, that many news sources try to take advantage of whatever bad epistemology its own consumer base may have as to try and make the situation go unnoticed so that the consumers are never aware of an error occurring. For example, my own local newspaper has/had a section devoted to corrections that is so small and difficult to find within the newspaper that I wonder why they included it at all; the majority of times I could not tell if it was there or not.

So protect your mind. It is being assaulted from bad epistemology much worse than this, all around.

Edit: Formatting

The Power of Epistemology: The Fat Controversy

2009-05-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

This is rather "old news", but I would like to point out this lengthy article by Gary Taubes regarding the fat/cholesterol controversy, amusingly titled What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?. I bring it to attention because I think this is one of the greatest demonstrations of the power of epistemology, how bad epistemology can be fatal.

In short, nearly everything we have heard about fat and cholesterol is wrong. To paraphrase Taubes in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories, the whole fat-and-cholesterol-is-bad-for-you thing was started by a scientist named Ancel Keys who based his theory on the assumption that Americans were switching from a diet high in carbohydrates to a diet high in fat and cholesterol and that heart disease incidents were increasing as a result. But no such evidence existed. At the particular time he formed the hypothesis, agricultural data was unreliable and heart disease was just becoming easier to diagnose (making it appear as if rates were increasing). While one may forgive him this error, what makes Keys an evil (not speaking hyperbolically) scientist is that he would rationalistically dismiss evidence that was contrary to his theory or refuted it absolutely. When our Sisyphean politicians were confronted with his hypothesis, it consisted of nothing but data that supported it, when no evidence supported his theory (keeping the context of the entire body of evidence), and thereby won by default. The results of the doctrine can be seen today in the nation's current unhealthiness: the obesity and diabetes epidemic.

What we can observe is how damaging and outright fatal a bad system of epistemology can be. To be clear, epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of human knowledge, how humans acquire and validate knowledge. A good system of epistemology will lead one to the truth and, as a corollary, will allow an immeasurably greater probability for successful action; a bad system of epistemology will steer one away from the truth and allow an immeasurably lower probability for successful action. Ancel Keys held a bad epistemology in the sense that he was not *truth oriented*.

It is true that in order to be a scientist he had to hold a somewhat healthy psychological-epistemology or else he would progress his career none at all, but he allowed a single poison that made the whole system worthless: emotionalism. By the time he had formed his hypothesis, he became prejudice to it and would not dare face the fact that he could have been wrong. When confronted with contrary evidence he dismissed it by saying things such as the evidence was not relevant or significant, or that the scale of the study was not big enough to establish causal links. When confronted with evidence that agreed with his hypothesis but *could have the same objections assigned to them so as to dismiss them*, he accepted it. It became too late to repent when ignorant politicians ran with the theory.

But, of course, the damage cannot be considered irreparable until the human race goes extinct. You can rejudge your own nutritional prejudices by checking out Taubes's Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health and see how nutritional knowledge has retrogressed and the bad scientists behind it. I also recommend the blog Mark's Daily Apple.

The knowledge of a several-decades' long deception may concern some people: if Ancel Keys was dishonest and unreliable but able to keep people ignorant of proper nutrition for several decades, how can one trust testimonies at all? Such a worry is not without merit considering how common dishonesty is.

Simply put, to protect oneself one must pay attention to both reality and how a particular source states its conclusion. If a person were to tell me that he witnessed a bullet magically turning at a right angle as soon as it touched a cop's nose, I would ignore him out of hand since his assertion contradicts reality. If a person were to convince me of a position by supporting it with data but I found out later that the data was falsified, distorted, or out of context, I would permanently discontinue consulting that person, correct the conclusions I had based on his position, and notify all persons that I had unintentionally mislead (so as to maintain my own reputation as a credible source). If a person were to state to me that he advocated lying in order to achieve political ends, well, he makes it easy, does he not?

All in all, the most exhaustive and proper solution is to study formal epistemology, especially formal logic. Seeing that Ancel Keys probably caused the death and suffering of many who followed his bad advice, is it not enough to convince that there needs to be a proper method of learning?

The Triumph of the American Imagination: A Book Review

2009-05-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking that perhaps I have been running off far too many negative articles since the conception of this blog and should integrate the habit of writing positive ones now and then, lest I sadden my readers into not getting out of bed. For my first positive article I will be doing my first book review, a review of Neal Gabler's biography of Walt Disney titled: Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination
.

I picked up this book just out of pure curiosity as to why Disney was so popular. It is regretful for me to admit this, but I never gave justice to any sort of Disney product during my childhood. Now having satisfied my curiosity, I am supremely glad I have picked up this book, for it has made my life wealthier. It is my outmost recommendation to read this book not just for a pleasure read, but for the admiration of a hero.

While the 800+ page thickness of the book may make one think that it is an exhaustive look at the entirety of Mr. Disney's life, it is actually a book focused only on the essentials, including:

The conception of Mickey Mouse,

The work on Snow White, the first ever feature-length animation,

The development of Fantasia,

The events leading up to Walt Disney shifting his interest from animation to the formation of an amusement park, Disney Land,

The plans for EPCOT, Walt Disney's final major project, which never left the planning and funding stage due to Disney's passing away.

For those that are interested in a more detailed look at a certain project or a certain period, one is encouraged to look to the works citation section at the back of the book, for there are literally hundreds of sources cited, spanning over two-hundred pages. Indeed, Mr. Gabler asserts to have actually attempted to read the entirety of all Disney information available.

Overall, one can expect to obtain at least three values from the reading of this biography:

1.) The pleasure of the reading,

While Mr. Gabler writes in a very intelligent fashion, he never goes so far as to seem erudite in an intimidating sense, meaning that this book may be considered both a serious work of scholarship and a colorful word portrait of a life lived. The length of this work only serves to deepen the impression that Walt Disney is still alive, making his death at the end more difficult to bear.

2.) A deeper appreciation of past Disney productions,

If I may classify a certain aspect of my childhood, I would say that I was among those unimpressed with how great everything was. My birth placed me in the era of Michael Eisner (formally known as The Disney Animation Renaissance), but I would have none of it. Now having read the present biography, I have been giving Disney classics a second chance and am enjoying them thoroughly, perhaps an enjoyment deeper than if I were a child. The best way to better enjoy things may be to see what work goes into it.

3.) The traits of a hero,

I endorse the reading of not just this work, but of any good biography to see how great men are made. Aside from analyzing what happened in Disney's life, Gabler analyzes how things happened, so one may learn what traits lead to Disney's successes and hardships accordingly, such as his tremendous work ethic resulting in his staying ahead of competitors and his mistreatment of his employees resulting in the collapse of his first studio and the strike in the next. One can then work to integrate the good habits and be wary of the bad ones.

Aside from observing traits, the third value also serves as *emotional fuel*. It is understandable to see how one can sometimes get burned out, frustrated, and end up wondering if the highest goals are obtainable at all. One of the easiest and most potent of the remedies is to read of a person who thought he could, and did. To see how the greats dealt with their frustrations, setbacks, and tragedies can give us the power to deal with our own.

All in all, this book is so well crafted that I can think of but two superficial criticisms. First, from time to time Gabler has an awkward way of transitioning to quoted speech; he will be going in narrative mode in one sentence and then seemingly randomly quoting someone the next. Second, at the beginning of the book some of the sources that are quoted seem to be irrelevant to the topic at hand, or it is at least difficult to figure out why they are relevant, such as the opinions of a journal leaning on a certain side of the political spectrum. Otherwise, this book is nearly without vice.

To conclude, this book is a wonderful tribute to a man who provided more ways for people to enjoy life, and will be worth reading to those that have either enjoyed Disney products in the past or want to see by what means Walt Disney had attained his success and status. One can hope that this book will make way for a second animation renaissance.

Edit: formatting

Poisonous Snake Bite? Run to the Hospital!

2009-04-28T17:03:00.000-07:00

Medical-care blogger Paul Hsieh of FIRM has warned of the danger of Democrats trying to "fast track" a universal medical care legislation that would effectively socialize medical care.

Very little needs to be said as to why Universal Medical Care (to be exact, Universal Medical Insurance) is a bad thing. When politicians promise that something can be obtained at any amount at no cost, the demand skyrockets to the point that it overwhelms the amount of supplies available to satisfy that demand, and a shortage results. In this context, people start going to the doctor for things they otherwise would not, and the result is a long waiting line (sometimes up to several months) for all involved. But, to be clear, supplies do not decrease only because demand is taking them all up, but also because suppliers are less willing to continue supplying. When medical suppliers see profits decreasing or being eliminated, or when doctors find their work becoming less rewarding (whether their motivation be monetary or spiritual), they leave. (Which seems to be the case happening already.)

(For a more in dept, though still short, explanation, check out Leonard Peikoff's lecture transcript Health Care is Not a Right. For a more exhaustive analysis of the fallacies involved in Universal Medical Care, and how it has already been employed partially the United States and failed, check out Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh's essay Moral Health Care vs. "Universal Health Care".)

This legislation is the greatest immediate threat to our health and freedom. If it passes, you can expect a lot more controls to follow as a result of desperate attempts to keep prices under control. At worst, it could come to the point where a politician decides whether you live or die (if your treatment is "too expensive", you do not get any). Please, send an e-mail to your representatives. You can find their contact information here.

Here is what I sent off to both of my senators:

Dear [representative],

It came to my attention yesterday that Democrats are currently trying to rush through Congress a piece of legislation that would put Universal Health Insurance into law. This is a dishonest attempt to force Universal Health Insurance onto an unwilling public. Dishonest because supporters of the legislation piece have explicitly stated that they are employing this particular methodology in order to avoid opposition and debate (referencing the article on Reuters titled "Democrats near deal to 'fast-track' health bill").

I am writing to ask you to oppose this.

Little needs to be said as to why universal health coverage is a bad thing: when politicians promise that anyone can obtain any amount of a certain thing at no cost, the demand for the product or service surpasses the amount of supplies available (doctors, medicine, diagnosis machines, etc.) to satisfy that demand and a shortage results, a shortage being fatal if one were to occur in the medical industry. If it becomes law that anyone can receive medical care at any time at no price, then people will start going to the doctor for things they otherwise would not, and a long wait results for all involved. Long waiting lines can be fatal for someone needing immediate medical attention.

Not only that, but further governmental controls would be an inevitable result of the government trying to keep prices under control. In other countries with socialized health care, there are special taxes on certain foods and beverages, further restricted speech (an egg commercial called "Go to Work on an Egg" was censored in the United Kingdom because it was considered as promoting an unhealthy lifestyle), and even outright denial of medical insurance, which means little to no medical care for that particular individual in a socialized system, if the government deems one to be too unhealthy and therefore too expensive to cover. It is ironic: an attempt to "free medical care from the rule of the dollar" inevitably leads to an even fiercer monetary rule.

I encourage you to read the essay titled “Moral Health Care vs. ‘Universal Health Care‘", authored by Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh, which analyzes why Universal Health Care is immoral and impractical, and how it has already been partially implemented in the United States and has failed:

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2007-winter/moral-vs-universal-health-care.asp

Regards,

Benjamin

Of course, one not need to be as detailed as I have; only a sentence or two will suffice if one is clear. I give permission for one to use (and alter) my letter if it is the case that you *do not* live in Michigan.

Remember, it is your health.

No Phoenixes Here

2009-04-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

Senator John Kerry is planning on holding Senate meetings on April 30th to consider possibly extending aid to the troubled newspaper industry.

To my friends I had been speaking as to why it would be atrociously silly to try and bail out the newspaper industry, using an analogy, but I never expected the politicians to seriously consider it! I will reserve the analogy for the end of this post.

John Kerry, of course, makes the same weak arguments in regards to extending aid:

"America's newspapers are struggling to survive and while there will be serious consequences in terms of the lives and financial security of the employees involved, including hundreds at the Globe, there will also be serious consequences for our democracy where diversity of opinion and strong debate are paramount," Kerry wrote in his letter, addressed to "the Boston Globe family".

His argument consists of two points: that 1) serious economic consequences and 2) public debate losing diversity in opinion will be the result of the newspaper industry being left to suffer or fail.

In both his points, he fails to realize that demand for news sources is not disappearing, but rather shifting. People are reading fewer newspapers, but more and more of other news sources (Internet and television). Information dissemination to the public is only changing form, not amount. Economically, while certain companies may be laying off their staff, other companies are hiring because of the increased demand of their particular product/service, so the economy will not be harmed unless there is governmental interference. Debate-wise, things will only become more efficient. The only group that would be harmed by the newspaper industry failing is those who refuse/are unable to resort to the television or Internet, and even then the harm would still be minimal considering many restaurants offer televisions (mostly on news or sports stations) and countless libraries offer free Internet access.

Another thing Mr. Kerry fails to realize is that extending aid to the newspaper industry would actually achieve what he asserts to be preventing. He would achieve economic harm by giving out capital because that would deprive another company of capital (remember we are speaking of tax dollars, and it does not matter whether it is directly taxed via taxes or indirectly taxed via printing money); he would achieve lack of diversity in debate by making newspapers less apt to criticize politics considering political leaders are their investors. (One piece of legislation actively seeks to infringe on freedom of speech by prohibiting political endorsements, which, of course, logically means political un-endorsement is prohibited as a corollary. To clarify, the reason why un-endorsement would be prohibited is because by asserting what one stands against clues others into what one stands for, a sort of process of elimination. Therefore, the alternatives of criticism and endorsement are both forbidden.)

Finally, let us not forget, bailing out the newspaper industries would be futile. The analogy I use to illustrate this is that of comparing this to the hypothetical bailing out of the now extinct cassette tape. It is obvious why cassette tapes would be doomed to extinction regardless of how large of a subsidy the companies received: people would simply not buy them. Compact Disks are what are in demand. The same applies to newspapers: no sense in bailing them out when the consumer base is demanding televised and Internet sources. What does Mr. Kerry expect? A Phoenix rising out of its (newspaper) ashes?

The truth of the matter is that we cannot afford to *keep* the newspaper industry. If we want economic progress and higher efficiency, we must let devalued and inefficient industries fail.

Where is the Political Lexicon?

2009-04-23T09:42:00.000-07:00

Thomas Sowell has come up with another excellent article about "universal health care".

What especially stuck out to me was this:

Those who think in terms of talking points, instead of trying to understand realities, make much of the fact that some countries with government-controlled medical care have longer life expectancies than that in the United States.

That is where the difference between health care and medical care comes in. Medical care is what doctors can do for you. Health care includes what you do for yourself — such as diet, exercise and lifestyle.

In many arguments against universal health care it has been absolutely essential to distinguish between having health insurance and actually receiving medical care. Having insurance does not automatically mean that one will receive what the insurance covers.

In truth, universal health insurance would actually greatly restrict access to medical care, contrary to what politicians assert, and reduce the quality of it as well. This is due to the economic principle known as supply and demand. When supplies (of a product or service) increase while demand decreases, prices decrease; when demand surpasses supply, prices increase. In both cases, prices help keep supplies aplenty by regulating demand: when things become unaffordable, people become more frugal; when it becomes cheaper, people buy more.

If politicians were to completely abolish prices from the medical system and promise the masses that anyone could get medical care at any time and be guaranteed to receive it, demand would greatly surpass the amount of supplies, and a shortage would result.

A shortage occurring in the medical industry is deadly. People who need treatment in the short-term, those that have a disease or injury, are delayed from getting it because they are in line behind people who have the sniffles or are being reckless in their hospital visits.

For an extensive analysis about the failings of universal health care and how it has already been partially implemented in the US, I recommend the essay "Moral Health Care vs. Universal Health Care" by Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh, accessible in its entirety for free.

To close with another quote by Mr. Sowell, about politicians:

This is just one of the many ways in which self-righteous busybodies leave havoc in their wake, while going away feeling noble.

Jackie Chan's Absurdity

2009-04-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

Actor Jackie Chan has recently given a statement that Chinese people need to be controlled, and is receiving a negative backlash.

I must admit, every time I hear such an argument for establishing/maintaining an all-powerful government I cannot help but shake my head at the absurdity. In such arguments it is asserted that individuals are innately irrational and cannot manage their own lives. Their solution: put individuals in charge of those individuals.

This is the fallacy of arbitrary exclusion, or, if a politician is making the claim, the fallacy of self-exclusion. The fallacy entails that one make an assertion that logically subsumes an entire category (e.g. all X's are A) but then arbitrarily and implicitly excludes particular instances. In the case of the politician, he is stating at the same time that he is rational and that all individuals are irrational. They fail to see that a group, a collective, is not a separate entity with a special nature, but rather a collection of individuals.

Sadly enough, the contradiction has gone over the heads of many societies, thereby allowing absolute government control to take place. But they are always star-crossed by reality from the beginning. The politicians not only succeed in destroying the people they control, but also at destroying themselves.

Tea and More Tea

2009-04-17T15:52:00.000-07:00

I must apologize for my lack of posting this week. I am still struggling with what particular blogging methods and style I shall employ, and am still having especial difficulty trying to figure out what to blog about. All in good time.

Today I present a link to Titanic Deck Chairs for his post regarding analyses of the Tea Party protests that have been happening recently. The limited media coverage I have encountered has been disappointing.

Perhaps the media's attitude can be summarized in this video:

To summarize, a reporter at one of the Tea Parties questions a protester and immediately becomes hostile after the protester mentions Abraham Lincoln's stance on liberty, going so far as to cease interviewing him and argue. She cuts off the interview by stating such was not suitable for "family viewing" and that things should switch back to the anchorwoman (despite nothing offensive taking place). Even stranger, the anchorwoman states that this is a "prime example of what we're following across the country" when it was the reporter whom had made a spectacle of herself.

An excellent analysis of this can be found at The New Clarion.

Fire the Holdrenizer Smithers!

2009-04-10T16:01:00.000-07:00

The blog Titanic Deck Chairs has a good piece about an absurd proposal to combat global warming by heavily polluting the atmosphere (thereby preventing sunlight from hitting the earth's surface).

While it be absurd, this proposal is extremely dangerous. What is rarely noted is that more heat is good (by the standard of man's life), not bad, for the environment as it promotes plant life, which promotes animal life, which increases food supply. By this standard (delimited to temperatures not hostile to life), global warming is actually desirable. Cold is hazardous to life.

If this proposal comes to see the light of day it may prevent a very ambiguous catastrophe, but it could have catastrophic consequences on human life as a whole.

"Atlas Shrugged and the Tea Party Revolts"

2009-04-08T14:00:00.000-07:00

The Ayn Rand institute has come out with a new video advertising the best-selling book Atlas Shrugged.

I must confess that I find this video to be unsatisfactory, but it suffices for the time it runs. What is troublesome, as I have said in a previous post, is that the majority of the current focus on the book is on its plot-theme, that is, its political aspects. Atlas Shrugged is not a political novel, but rather a primarily ethical and epistemological work.

It is not about what happens to the economy when the government imposes controls; its about what happens to the world when men stop using their minds.

Adjustable Interest Rates and Economic Forcasting

2009-04-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

A few days ago my local representative, Carl Levin, sent me an e-mail announcing that

[...] this week the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committee passed the Dodd-Levin Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009 (CARD Act, S.414).

He states that this legislation

[...] seeks to put an end to unfair credit card practices that mire millions of American families in debt. [...] Under this legislation, for example, credit card companies would be prohibited from applying higher interest rates retroactively to existing credit card debt, hiking interest rates on customers who pay on time, and collecting interest on credit card debts that were repaid on time. In addition, this bill would crack down on unreasonable fees, including repeated late fees, over-the-limit fees, and fees to pay your bill, and would prohibit charging interest on those fees. It would also prohibit so-called “universal default” interest rate hikes in which a credit card company hikes a cardholder’s interest rate for reasons unrelated to the account held with that company. It would also make sure that cardholders get their bills 21 days before the bill is due and give them until 5:00 p.m. on the due date to make a payment.

(More information can be obtained from this press release.)

What needs to be realized is however "outrageous" (according to whom?) or "unfair" (according to whom?) some of the business practices are of credit card companies is irrelevant; a private business has the right to operate as it so pleases as long as its consumers mutually consent. If a consumer is ignorant enough to have signed a contract without reading that it gives the company the power to charge over thirty percent interest, he has screwed himself over and must responsibly face the consequences. Whether or not the terms are desirable is of no concern of anyone but the involved parties. This bill amounts to "but I don't wanna pay so much!"

This bill is a violation of the credit card companies' owners' rights, as it dictates how they must and must not run their business, and the price for such will be paid by yet more worsening of the economy. Let us focus on interest rates in particular.

While some companies may count on the ignorance of its consumers to be able to charge high interest rates, adjustable interest rates do serve a practical purpose in helping keep businesses afloat. Take, for instance, the economic phenomena known as inflation, where the money supply is artificially increased ("artificial" because the economic output does not warrant a monetary increase) and thereby decreases the value of each unit of money.

Any business that deals with lending money or credit must take inflation into consideration in its policies to be able to adjust when it happens, because if inflation hits during a time it has increased its loans or has not all of its loans paid back it must increase interest rates lest it lose money. A simple illustration:

Let us say, for example, that you loan $1000 to a friend who is hard on his luck and you both agree to have the debt repaid two years later in a lump sum payment. What if, during those two years, the Federal Reserve was to double the money supply? The value of each unit of money is cut in half, so by the time your friend pays you back, you are getting the same amount of money back in monetary terms, but only half the value; you lent out $1000 in value but received only $500 back. To clarify our thinking, we could appropriately and literally think of this as losing money.

Businessmen realize this, and so they raise interest rates when the economic forecast yields that the value of money will decrease during the repayment of a debt. To prohibit outright increasing interest rates or to set a price ceiling is to force businesses to take a loss and risk bankruptcy.

But this is not the only reason interest rates increase and need to be adjustable. What if a credit card company's consumers start defaulting on their debt in large numbers? They have to raise interest rates on those that are repaying their debt (assuming the contracts allow it). What if governmental or economic factors make it more expensive to operate the business? Again, interest rates will have to increase. But the CARD Act will prohibit such actions, or at the very least make them much harder to go through on short notice (which will be harmful if immediate action is required).

We need not wait to see the long-term or even short-term consequences of this legislation if it should happen to pass, for we already have our concrete example in the banking crisis. The Community Reinvestment Act changed the lending practices of some banks by forcing them to lend to non-creditworthy people. Lending to non-creditworthy people means the banks run a much great risk of losing money from people not repaying their debt. The banks could have survived such legislation if they were allowed to increase their interest rates so as to recoup the losses, but not only were they prohibited from doing so, the Federal Reserve set the interest rates for them.

We have seen the results.

Wesley Mouch with your Paycheck?

2009-04-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

Another disturbing proposal is upon us. Legislators are actually entertaining the notion of dictating the pay of all employees of companies that have received government funding.

But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

Of course, this is but only a logical development, as would be known by anyone familiar with the nature of government intervention and money in general. When we spend money, we want to know where it is going and, if we are smart, will not finance activities we do not approve of. When the government starts paying for the operation of a business or industry the politicians involved will sooner or later act as if it were their money that had been spent, and will be suggesting, or forcing, courses of action.

What is their standard of how people should be paid?

In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is "unreasonable" or "excessive." And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate "the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates."

And how will he decide what is "unreasonable" or "excessive"? And by what process will the Treasury Department come up with method to evaluation performance? Will it be based on sound economic principles of how employers keep their employees, or by the popular opinion of voters?

This will be particularly harmful to our economy, especially at a time like this, since the government does not work from the motivation of profit as a business does. I predict that, if Geithner is granted these powers, he will take a look at some sheets and decide that everyone is being overpaid. In a free economy, the proper amount of payment is according to the economic worth of the work or the abilities of the person; in the government, the arbitrary ideas of politicians as influenced by the smiles and approval of potential voters.

Worst yet, what is to stop this from expanding even further beyond businesses that received government funds? As I argued in The Sisyphean Judgment of Politicians, any attempt by politicians to run the economy is doomed to failure as Sisyphus is doomed to have the boulder roll down the mountain, so we have a vicious circle of government creating crises and trying to cure those crises with more government.

If this continues unabated by principled thinking or cultural change, Timothy Geithner may soon be cutting your own paycheck.

90th Objectivist Round Up

2009-04-02T13:21:00.000-07:00

The latest Objectivist Roundup has been posted over at Rational Jenn.

For those that do not know, this is what is known as a "Blog Carnival." The purpose of such is to gather links to the best blog posts or so of authors that share an interest or theme. In this case, the Roundups gather together posts from authors that are supporters of the philosophy known as Objectivism.

If you have enjoyed my posts then perhaps you might enjoy some of these articles.

Taser Controversy Unwarranted

2009-04-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

My local news media has published a biased article about a death during a police confrontation that paints the police as evil for having used a taser.

It is a supposition that since tasers may cause the death of a suspect they should not be used, but this is utter nonsense. All police weapons, all *physical objects*, when used a certain way, can be fatal: nightsticks can induce comas or worse, pepper sprays may set off an allergy, guns obviously can stop vital functions, and so on. The only reason tasers are so often targeted is because they are so commonly used due to their effectiveness and ability to subdue anyone regardless of their strength or pain tolerance.

Henry Hazlitt stated that the majority of economic fallacies stems from the error of not using the imagination to think beyond the effects of a policy in the short-term or the effects on a certain group; let us exercise that needed imagination, for people are making errors by not thinking past their writing tablets.

Let us say, as in the presented article, that you are the one of the policemen that is facing the youth in the apartment. He is not complying and is taking a fighting stance against you. What should you do? First let us ask: does he have a knife or perhaps a....Well, it is too late now. In the time it took you to ask that question and make the necessary observations the suspect could have you killed by then. We will start over. Instead, this time, we will concern ourselves solely with action. Should we use a nightstick? Should we use...‘tis too late again!

The point should be clear now that police officers do not have the time to examine the exact nature of a suspect or to weigh all the pros and cons of a course of action as a newsreader, who is granted omniscience when he imagines the situation, does in his armchair. All decisions must be made as instantaneously as absolutely possible, for in the law enforcement line of work it merely takes a moment’s bad decision to be fatal to the officer. Obviously then the police officers must resort to the most effective method of subduing the suspect as soon as their “instincts” tell them to. This is why a police officer would pull a gun on you even if you were merely fooling around in the glove box during a traffic stop: you may know your intentions are innocent but the officer does not.

But why do we not take it upon ourselves to accept the premise that tasers should not be used due to their potential fatalness? What would be the fullest logical conclusion of such an action?

Immediately we would know that a policeman’s self-defense weapons are reduced to nightsticks, pepper sprays, and guns. Would these reduce the amount of deaths while at the same time maintaining the same amount of effectiveness as we have in enforcement today? No. The pepper spray could largely be considered by far the most ineffective weapon, as it is entirely dependent on pain, amounting to nothing if the suspect has his adrenaline pumping or has a high level of pain tolerance. The nightstick would increase the number of long-term injuries and fatalities, as it is a close-range weapon that could fail an officer if he were to come up against a criminal with a knife (or worse) and could cause a number of injuries to suspects including, but not limited to, concussion, brain injury, coma, or death. Even guns have a possibility of failure; for the bullets could miss the target or hit an inconsequential area of the body (pain tolerance applies here too).

The results are clear: without tasers law enforcement difficulties, injuries, and fatalities increase. Let us not forget that the worst of criminals would only be emboldened upon learning certain self-defense mechanisms are forbidden to the officers, further increasing the difficulties, injuries, and fatalities.

This whole taser controversy is nonsense once logic is applied to it. Why the police are sometimes targeted for biased news stories is beyond my understanding.

Earth Hour Not Man's Hour

2009-03-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday night from 8:30 P.M. to 9:30 P.M. the symbolic Earth Hour took place, the hour that is supposed to "demonstrate" that humans can go without burning fossil fuels and that it can be enjoyable as well. But it is a false message: going without light for an hour is not even close to mimicking the conditions of a fossil fuel-less world.

Ayn Rand Institute writer Keith Lockitch brings the point to full clarity:

Participants spend an enjoyable sixty minutes in the dark, safe in the knowledge that the life-saving benefits of industrial civilization are just a light switch away. This bears no relation whatsoever to what life would actually be like under the sort of draconian carbon-reduction policies that climate activists are demanding: punishing carbon taxes, severe emissions caps, outright bans on the construction of power plants.

He goes on to propose an “Earth Month”, where people would truly see what a world without fossil fuels would be like. Over the long-term, even in just a matter of weeks, people would die by the millions due to going without the benefits of mass production, fast transportation, and even something so simple as centrally-heated homes. The overwhelming majority of industry is fueled, in one form or another, by fossils, so it is literally keeping us alive.

Another point that is far too often overlooked is that an industrialized society is far more “environmentally-friendly” than a non-industrialized society will ever be. That is because an industrialized society has both the time and technology to help improve its standard of living and to enjoy the surrounding nature. A non-industrialized society, on the other hand, has not even the time to enjoy a sunrise, for it is working sunup to sundown to produce the barest subsistence by *any means necessary*, even if that means producing vast amounts of smog.

Make no mistake: Earth Hour is not man’s hour.

Government Can't Be Economic Engine

2009-03-27T15:00:00.000-07:00

My local newspaper has published my letter to the editor. It can be read here.

"There is much debate as to what jobs the government is going to create and where it is going to place them, but is it ever asked if the government can even create jobs? It cannot.

Where will it get the funding for the incomes? Taxes. Where do tax payments come from? The taxpayers.

In order for the government to pay incomes, it will have to tax incomes first, meaning that every job created in the public sector is a job destroyed in the private sector.

Let us not focus on jobs, but rather on what fuels jobs: wealth.

Benjamin M. Skipper"

In the future I hope to increase my effort in activism to at least sending out one editorial per week, but at my current skill level I must concern myself more with my studies and improvement rather than writing. It shall be a goal then!

Environmentalist Colors

2009-03-25T14:00:00.000-07:00

Chuck of The New Clarion has stated that the mask of environmentalism has finally came off. And so it has.

One need not look any further than this article to see that environmentalism is anti-man and anti-industry. Mr. Porritt *explicitly* calls for a plan to reduce population and economic growth; any way you spin this the man is advocating destruction.

To be clear, the reason why environmentalism is anti-man and anti-industry is because of two of its tenets: its definition of "natural" (to paraphrase: "that which is untouched by man") and its arbitrary belief in the notion that the environment holds innate value (meaning it is a value outside of all other considerations). Because of this, anything humans do to alter their environment, and literally *anything*, is damned as evil by environmentalism, whether one digs a hole or erects a building.

This is why any changes to the environmentalist fashions are never satisfactory to environmentalists: even the process of becoming "environmentally-friendly" is environmentally-unfriendly. To be truly environmentally-friendly, one need be dead.

"Is Rand Relevant?" Editorial

2009-03-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute has published his first editorial for the Wall Street Journal.

It is a shame these days most people advocate reading Atlas Shrugged on purely political grounds, that the novel speaks only of what happens when the government intervenes in the economy. Politics is but part of the plot-theme of the novel; the real theme of the novel is ethical and epistemological: it is, as Rand states, "the role of man's mind in his existence."

Hopefully new readers will be able to walk away with more than a superficial understanding and become more integrated in principle. What the leading voices today advocate will lead to nothing but superficial understandings, making the reading of the novel almost entirely worthless.

To help stay consistent in principle or find out more information about Objectivism, I give great recommendation to the browsing of the Ayn Rand Lexicon.

Socialize Not That, But This?

2009-03-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

I am rather surprised. A good measure to require that wounded veterans pursue private insurance is being met with lots of criticism.

To be clear, the reason why this is a good measure* is because veterans, regardless of which conflict they served in or their soldier status, do not have a right to use the money of tax payers (money which is taken without the tax payer's voluntary consent) to pay their healthcare expenses. The majority of them have voluntarily chosen to serve and have thereby consented to all the risks and consequences imposed on them. As for the Vietnam veterans that did not serve voluntarily, the proper course of action would be to criminally charge the politicians that have gone so far as to violate their right to life, not guarantee compensation at the taxpayers' expense.

Whether or not the veterans can afford private insurance is an invalid consideration as well. It is all a matter of the fact that people are simply not entitled to other people's money unless on voluntary trading terms. If it is the case that many veterans cannot afford private insurance, we not need worry much; given the criticism we can see there is lots of support for those that have served, so if the government insurance is canceled then people may use their freed dollars to help run a charity to support them, which is the appropriate course of action. To force those dollars out of hands will not benefit us any; as I have said before, stealing is not healthy for anyone.

We can perceive here an inconsistency in principles. Given the state of our culture, if presented with a proposal to blatantly nationalize the entire economy, the overwhelming majority of people would oppose it and reject such a measure. Obama, or any politician for that matter, cannot go up to the podium and say "I am going to socialize healthcare" or "I am going to nationalize all businesses", instead they have to sneak it in little by little and under new terminology so that people do not see where they are heading or deny that they are heading in that direction at all. What we hear instead is that Obama is going to "give everyone healthcare" and that the businesses merely need government "supervision."

Americans would reject socialism outright if presented to them in total overnight, but they are willing to tolerate it here and there. Case in point: veteran government-funded health insurance. Americans would reject socialized medicine, but it is okay, they say, to have guaranteed insurance for veterans. And children. And the elderly. And so on.

The point is that whether it is in part or total, socialism is bad in all amounts, and even small amounts may later lead to the all-subsuming version. If socialized medicine is bad for everyone, then certainly it is bad for individuals. To explain in this context, veterans' health insurance funded by the government is bad because it destroys wealth and violates rights. The wealth is destroyed in two ways:

Transfer: In the time that it takes for the government to take funds from one person and transfer them to another person is time in which wealth is destroyed because what could have been created has now not been allowed to come into existence. As the old saying goes, "time is money."
Capital: The person that has been taxed now has less capital to invest. What wealth he can create is now limited because he has fewer resources to work with.

With the wealth destroyed, the result is a poorer living standard for everyone, and that means a poorer quality of health care for the veterans, along with higher prices. One may not actually see health care quality or the standard of living actually decrease, but remember that it is what could have been that is lost. What capital that could have been used to fund medical innovations, resources, and researches for cures has instead gone to the taxman, and what could have benefited the veterans has not been allowed to come into existence, or will at least be delayed into being realized at a later date.

We must choose our principles as absolutes and exercise them in total. Those that we would find to be harmful to practice in total will certainly be harmful in part as well and must be rejected in total.

*One, of course, may be quick to point out that Obama is not well-meaning with this measure, that he intends this as merely a way to reduce his own budget expenses, but that is beside the point.

Another Money-Taking Scheme

2009-03-03T14:20:00.000-08:00

Looks like a local government in Michigan is considering fining home security companies for every false alarm the police respond to. This is nothing but a dishonest and unjust money-taking scheme for the officials that desire to increase the budget.

It is dishonest and unjust because of two things:

It is dishonest because, contrary to what mayoral candidate Sheldon Neely asserts, the proposed fine is blatantly constructed so as to recoup an excess beyond what resources are wasted:

"The Fines? They start at $50 and increase by $25 for every subsequent false alarm call." [Emphasis added]

If it were true that they were merely trying to regain what they had lost, then the fine would either be equivalent to what it cost to respond to a certain alarm call or it would be at a static amount (adjusting as costs change), but that is not the case. Instead, the company would first have to pay $50, and after that $75, $100, $125, and so on ad infinitum. Twenty fines alone for a single company would total $5750. To imagine what it would have cost if the government officials had issued a fine for each of the 10,000+ false alarms last year is difficult.

It is unjust because they would be fining security companies for the purpose for which they are created and for an incident they are not at fault for. Who can always foresee if a branch is going to hit the side of the house at night, if a bird is going to fly into a window, or if a pet might bump into a door? All of these factors are sufficient to set off a home alarm, but are out of the control of the company to either prevent or acknowledge immediately. However, given a more appropriately formed fine, it would be just to fine the owner of the property for a false alarm because one should pay for a service one expects to use.

Do these officials think they can just fine the hell out of security companies without consequences? Given the dismal economy of Michigan as of now, this would make the situation even worse by either raising prices or by causing the company to withdraw from the state economy.

This reminds me of the politicians in the novel Atlas Shrugged who ended up destroying the economy of America by foolishly assuming that the producers would be able to bear any hardship that was placed on them. When the question arose as to how the producers would be able to survive a certain new economic regulation the answer would always be: "somehow." Well, how will the security companies cope with the fines placed on them, assuming a similar number of false alarms as last year? "Somehow."

Aesop begs to differ: "Thinking to get at once all the gold the Goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find,- nothing."

A Good Stimulus Analogy

2009-02-28T16:55:00.000-08:00

Here is a good analogy regarding the recently passed economic stimulus:

Shortly after class, an economics student approaches his economics professor and says, "I don't understand this stimulus bill. Can you explain it to me?"

The professor replied, "I don't have anytime to explain it at my office, but if you come over to my house on Saturday and help me with my weekend project, I'll be glad to explain it to you." The student agreed.

At the agreed-upon time, the student showed up at the professor's house. The professor stated that the weekend project involved his backyard pool.

They both went out back to the pool, and the professor handed the student a bucket. Demonstrating with his own bucket, the professor said, "First, go over to the deep end, and fill your bucket with as much water as you can." The student did as he was instructed.
The professor then continued, "Follow me over to the shallow end, and then dump all the water from your bucket into it." The student was naturally confused, but did as he was told.

The professor then explained they were going to do this many more times, and began walking back to the deep end of the pool. The confused student asked, "Excuse me, but why are we doing this?"

The professor matter-of-factly stated that he was trying to make the shallow end much deeper.

The student didn't think the economics professor was serious, but figured that he would find out the real story soon enough. However, after the 6th trip between the shallow end and the deep end, the student began to become worried that his economics professor had gone mad. The student finally replied, "All we're doing is wasting valuable time and effort on unproductive pursuits. Even worse, when this process is all over, everything will be at the same level it was before, so all you'll really have accomplished is the destruction of what could have been truly productive action!"

The professor put down his bucket and replied with a smile, "Congratulations, and welcome to socialism. You now understand the stimulus bill."

This analogy demonstrates one method in which wealth can be destroyed. Given that we have a finite lifespan and can only do so much during our lifetime, any moment we do not create wealth is a moment in which wealth that could have been created will now never come into existence. The time that it takes for the stimulus to collect and distribute the money will be potential wealth that is lost forever.

But this is not the only method in which wealth is destroyed. To be clear, wealth is created when one creates a product/service that is worth more than what had to be paid in the costs of production. If it takes $90 to create a piece of technology that is valued at $120 on the market, then $30 of wealth is created per unit*. In the same vein, wealth is destroyed if time is wasted by creating a product/service that is equal to the cost of production (again the issue of time) or is worth less than the cost of production. So if money is taken away from Skillful Joe and given to Average Joe, wealth is not only destroyed in the actual transfer but also by Average Joe, who cannot seem to make a decent profit. Worst yet, if money is taken away from Skillful Joe and Average Joe (Skillful Joe is always taxed) and then given to Below-Average Joe, then wealth is destroyed at an even faster rate because BA Joe is always going bankrupt and throwing money into a black hole.

This list is not exhaustive, but it does illustrate how taxation is harmful, no matter what the intention.

One way that the stimulus will destroy wealth in its own special is by creating economic distortions that may deceive all the Joes into throwing his money into a profit venture that is really a false boom. The distribution of money (in cases where money is printed and put into the economy or when one area is taxed for the benefit of another) can sometimes lead to, at first, a concentration of money in one area of the economy. The concentration of what appears to be “profits” may deceive some people into thinking that that particular area is very profitable and then engage in it when in reality no new value has been created. Once the money has been fully absorbed into the economy people will see their profitable venture was in truth not profitable at all, and the saturation of competitors, products, and services drives the value way down.

Numbers do not lie, but the people manipulating them do.

*This assumes a sound monetary policy, which in that case one can properly measure value in monetary terms. Since the U.S. does not follow a sound policy, I would recommend measuring value in terms of purchasing power, i.e., how many goods and services one afford.

Objectivist Roundup

2009-02-26T13:50:00.000-08:00

The latest Objectivist Roundup has been posted over at Making Progress.

For those that do not know, this is what is known as a "Blog Carnival." The purpose of such is to gather links to the best blog posts or so of authors that share an interest or theme. In this case, the Roundups gather together posts from authors that are supporters of the philosophy known as Objectivism.

If you have enjoyed my posts then perhaps you might enjoy some of these articles.

Socratic Questions about the Israel-Gaza Conflict

2009-02-24T13:49:00.000-08:00

One of the worst things anyone could do in a debate is to allow an opponent to get away with asserting context-less "self-evidencies" in their position; that would be allowing them to win by default with little chance of appeal. This error of debate has been especially prevalent during the brief war between Israel and Gaza, where some moral evaluations of the situation were given as self-evident and thus pitting the world against Israel from the start. To counter this problem we must employ the Socratic method of questioning, i.e., the method questioning that makes the person reduce his or her positions into underlying premises that support them and those premises into further premises and so on, until one finds he has hit the bottom. But we will not resort to reduction to such a depth; after all, the Socratic method got Socrates killed. We must use such a method sparingly lest our opponents refuse to converse with us.

Using this method has multiple benefits. By making explicit your opponent’s premises you may be able to convince people witnessing the debate (whether it be online or verbal) that your position is correct, even if you should happen to fail to convince your opponent. If your opponent is dishonest, then you may undercut his confidence in his position and perhaps prevent him from spreading his ideas around. Or if your opponent is honest, he may realize that his position is not sufficiently supported or is without merit and will examine himself. And so on. You will not know until you try.

The way this essay is formatted is that we will start by introducing a question that needs to be asked about the Israel-Gaza conflict but has been left to implicit defaults, and then dissect it. In the first paragraph underneath the question I will state the popular opinion and then in the following paragraphs explain what is wrong with it.

Now, let us boil down sloppy thinking into essentials.

* * * * *

1.) Should a killer or an army be acquitted of aggression just because of its lack of competence?

Before a war starts we of course have a reason it was initiated. The reason Israel decided to go to war with Gaza is because the army of Gaza had been firing missiles into Israel for several months in an attempt to kill civilians. After months of a disobeyed cease-fire, Israel took action. But the public thinks that its actions were excessive and not justified by what aggression had occurred, that Israel should not be taking out cannons to combat butter knives.

The big error here is that such people have dispensed with moral principles and are trying to judge the appropriateness of a course of action according to what already has happened instead of what may happen. Since, the popular opinion states, the missile attacks have been almost futile there is no need for action. But this ignores two things: to let any type of evil army to continue to exist is to allow the possibility for them to grow stronger, and no army bent on victory is going to quit until the odds are excessively in or against their favor. The former point shows that judging armies only by what they have done is an extremely dangerous and ignorant route. Just because Hamas today is attacking with "poorly" made missiles offers no assurance that they will not drop bombs tomorrow or launch nuclear weapons in the coming years. To wait until such a situation arises is to wait until it is too late. The latter point tells us that to win a war is to destroy the opponent's will to fight. So long as either side sees a chance of getting ahead of its opponent will neither side back down. This is why America won WWII: Japan had to pay the price of having two cities leveled in exchange for its bombing of Peal Harbor; an arm and a leg were given for an eye.

2.) Do perpetrators of evil have rights?

Except for the perpetrators themselves, rarely anybody disputes that the actions of some countries in the Middle East are evil. There are plenty of articles listing the brutality of the civilians and government, including everything from sulfuric acid attacks on women to stonings as par cultural norm. But with Israel, however, it is of opinion (and rationalism) that it has cast the first stone by taking land from Palestinians and therefore has brought upon itself the attacks and widespread hatred.

Again the public has dropped principles in favor of a concrete mentality; only this time we have the absurd problem where a person has two different opinions on one subject because of scale. To give an example, it is rarely argued against that a robber or a murderer deserves to be punished and lose their rights because they have violated other’s rights. If, however, we change the scale so that we are dealing with an entire country of robbers and murderers, the same people that would agree with the previous statement of justice may now conclude to the contrary that this country does have rights. But again, it is only a difference in number we are dealing with; we have the same subject with two opposing opinions. In a group these persons see not a collection of individuals, but a new, unique entity.

The fact is that anyone or anything that does not observe rights cannot have rights, and this subsumes both cases where a person may be actively violating rights and cases where a person may not have conceived of rights. To assert the opposite is to make the concept of rights useless. What is the use of saying there are property rights if people are allowed to steal without penalty? How can one say there is a right to life if a murderer may take lives while retaining his own? In order for rights to be observable and respected by other people there must be penalties for not respecting them. A robber gets time taken from him by being incarcerated; a murderer compensates with his life.

In the case of Israel and Palestinians, the Palestinians did not have a moral right to that land since they did not observe rights; therefore Israel was morally justified in its establishment.

3.) Who is responsible for the killing of innocents in war?

This is by far the biggest issue in the Gaza war and by far the most lazily treated by the public. The popular answer merely consists of “It is morally wrong to kill innocents in war” without further digging. We shall give this one a lengthy treatment, for not only is it the worst misconception but also the most damning one for Israel.

This is where is becomes evident that these “self-evidencies” are being asserted outside of context. Yes, it is true that killing innocents is wrong in war, but one must distinguish between the person(s) who physically carries out the killing and the person(s) that is responsible for it. Because of this failure to distinguish, people automatically assume that the responsibility of killing lies with the person who physically does it. In truth, the responsibility lays with those that have caused the situation to arise and force a person to act in such way. If Gaza had not been aggressing against its own citizens and against Israel then Israel would not have had to go on the offensive as it did, so therefore the government of Gaza is to be blamed for the casualties of innocents. To clarify our thinking for the future, do not equate killing with the notion of being automatically responsible for it, but do equate being responsible for murder as the same thing (in a moral sense) as having done the physical killing itself. To rephrase using these terms, Israel has killed civilians but the government Gaza is responsible for it in the same fashion as if its agents had done it.

But the public’s mistaken conception has done much more harm than merely misplacing responsibility; it has undermined Israel’s efforts and empowered the Hamas army. What the public failed to perceive is that some ideologies, evil ideologies nonetheless, maintain that the end being pursued is of such moral status that it becomes morally acceptable to use any means to acquire that end. As the familiar saying goes: “The end justifies the means.” Since both the majority of the United States and Israel accept the notion that the killing of innocents in war is wrong (in the context-dropping sense), Hamas is empowered by being able to exploit this ethical tenet. And so then we have the case where Hamas soldiers dress in civilian clothes, use children as helicopter spotters, and hide in civilian buildings. Israel was put in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation, for if they restrained themselves towards “civilians” Hamas got the upper-hand, and if they did not restrain themselves then Hamas would use the casualties as propaganda. Hamas succeeded in creating a situation where it was seemingly impossible to act morally.

Not only that, but this ethical tenet offers a deadly distraction. Consider this philosophical hypothetical:

Let us assume you are driving a trolley car. After a while on the trip, you come to three people tied to the track. You can save them by pulling a lever and changing track, but if you do that then you will set the trolley on course to where one person is tied. What should you do and why?

Nowhere in this hypothetical is there even so much as a passing mention of the person who is tying people to tracks. All the focus, and perhaps even blame, is directed at the poor soul driving the trolley, while the villain is forgotten. It works exactly in the same way in the Gaza war. By accepting that any direct killing of innocents in war is wrong, everyone has focused on how many civilians Israel has harmed while ignoring the people who put them in that situation, so Israel is blamed while Hamas is forgotten. To prevent such from happening again, we must always first ask as to why the situation has arisen to begin with instead of examining how the people have acted in it.

* * * * *

All of these questions which have been lacking serious debate have served to seriously harm Israel by retracting its efforts and eventually causing it to lose the war (explanation below). The confusion of how to gauge immorality and competence has allowed the Hamas army to grow with temporary impunity. The confusion of rights has lead to the belief that the aggression against Israel is justifiable and “understandable". The confusion of responsibility has made Israel reduce its efforts while allowing Hamas to intensify its own.

Israel withdrawing from Gaza was not ending the war in a stalemate, but in total loss. As I have written before, life is what makes the pursuit of values possible and must therefore be the standard of value, i.e., of morality. To be absolutely good is to be fit for existence; to be absolutely evil is to be dead. Evil brings nothing but destruction to itself and whatever it touches, so it has everything to gain from good. But good has nothing to gain from evil except loss. Hamas, in this case, has won an absolute victory in this war and will be encouraged to continue its aggression. Whether Israel will win its next wars (which are inevitable) or not all depends on whether or not we win the war of intellect here in America.

Me Time on Valentine's

2009-02-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

Today is St. Valentine's Day. I myself am particularly indifferent to it except for the pleasure of the sight of all the candy boxes and seeing the color pink on women, but for some this can be a spectacularly miserable holiday. Its misery has gone so far as to be a classic stereotype, but let it be known that each single person's misery towards the lack of romance is their fault. Not their fault along the lines of being undesirable or having bad luck or whatnot, but their fault along the lines of accepting the notion that being in a relationship is necessary to one's happiness. This could not be further from the truth.

The underlying issue to the problem is the chosen standard of happiness, that is, what people choose to base their happiness on. In principle, there are two types of this kind of standard: either one's standard is based on something within one's control or it is not. If the base of one's happiness is not in one's control, then the obvious problem one will run into is that what will be achieved will not be happiness; rather the best-case scenario will be that one will achieve occasional periods of good moods that can be stopped at any time. This is the problem miserable single people face on Valentine's. Implicitly, or (less commonly) explicitly, such people have placed their standard of happiness, at least some of it, on other people. But one cannot arrange people as one arranges furniture. It does not matter how sexually attractive a person is on the outside or inside (considering people paying attention to personal traits), one simply does not have the power to guarantee a satisfying personal relationship at any given time, which is what leads to the discontent of single people reminded of their relationship status on Valentine's.

Furthermore, this irrational standard leads to the disregardance of an essential component of happiness: self-love. If one does not love oneself, then a love of other people is impossible. This arises for two reasons:

Nobody can escape or be parted from their *self*; so if there is an absence of self-love then one is always around in the presence of a person one dislikes. Such people cannot bear the thought of being alone for any reason.
Self-love is a corollary of self-esteem, the psychological attribute of the individual confident in his abilities. Such individuals feel that they are worthy of pursuing and achieving values, so without self-esteem one will not believe one is worthy of having values and people will become an escape from an unpleasant reality, not an affirmation of a pleasant one.

To quickly summarize, not only does one need a rational standard of happiness to be able to form a consistent sense of life, but also one needs to attain a degree of *self sufficient* happiness before pursuing the additional value of people at all.

Of course, then double questions pop up: how does a rational standard of happiness translate into practice and how does one go about establishing self-love? The answer to both is the pursuing and achieving of goals. To repeat, a rational standard of happiness and self-love are logically connected and can be established in the same way at the same time. You do not like that you spend most of your morning oversleeping? Start setting a bedtime and a wakeup time, and move the alarm clock to the furthest part of the room; you will like yourself all the better and be happier. You do not like that you are ignorant? Start a study routine or form a mental habit of focusing on trying to understand what one deals with; you will like yourself all the better and be happier. And so on. The point is to identify attributes you admire as being a part of your vision of the ideal person and then work to integrate them into your own habits. After a time, one will have created a self that one can admire and love, and thereafter only the maintenance of the desired attributes will be necessary. That is when one can start pursuing people as values, to offer spice, not subsistence.

If all single people fully understood the necessities of happiness the stereotypical gloom of Valentine’s Day would disintegrate and much less often would a person’s sense of life risk being destroyed by something as simple as an unsuccessful relationship. We would also have many more people who would be able to enjoy their alone time more often, as they will always be around a loved one. In short, everyone would be much better off and happier. So remember: love yourself before all else.

Pushing Paper Around

2009-02-13T13:34:00.000-08:00

John Tomlinson has written an excellent article regarding the economic stimulus package. To sum it up, a good portion of the economic stimulus has nothing to do with stimulating the economy and most of it will not be spent until between 2010 and 2019, when the recession is either healed or over with.

I would also like to add that regardless of its purpose any economic "stimulus" that the government proposes is destined to fail and will only make things worse. The government *cannot* create wealth, it can only destroy it, due to its current method of funding, taxation, and its two methods (direct and indirect). Direct taxation is direct confiscation of the money of private citizens, which is the most explicit form. Indirect taxation, however, is much more secretive (perhaps even to politicians ignorant of economics) as no physical object is being taken, but rather its value. This is done by printing money. Since we have a fiat monetary system (money that is not backed up by any valuable commodity), the value of each unit of money is prone to changing according to the total number of units. When the government prints money it has confiscated the value of the monetary wealth of private citizens and the ignorant never even notice it.

This is why the stimulus will fail: when an excess of money is printed the prices go up to accommodate the new cash, which leaves the economy right in the same position as before. But it is during the transition when people are benefited and hurt by new money. For example, say that the government prints money for an economic stimulus so that persons X may have a higher "purchasing power." When they receive the money they start immediately spending it at their desired stores to get more goods and services than they did before, and to deal with this increase of demand the stores increase their prices. But persons Y did not receive any of this money and now they have to deal with higher prices; they can buy less goods and services than before. Persons X, in this situation, was only able to benefit at the expense of persons Y. Of course, on the total, everything balances out and nothing has been lost or gained.

If we are lucky that is possibly all we will have to deal with, but given how people depend on the government we may see corollary actions. To go back to persons X and persons Y, let us assume that persons Y is outraged with the "unfair" price increases and then demands that the government set price ceilings so that businesses only take their fair share. What happens then? Given the artificial purchasing power now belonging to both person X and Y, the demand for the given products and services will succeed the available supply, leading to a shortage. Worst yet, given the limitations on profits, the particular businesses either will not have enough capital to continue business (and will go bankrupt) or do not have any incentive to replenish their resources, which leads to scarcity. Wanting to get a bigger share of goods and services, persons Y has foolishly created a situation where there are fewer goods and services.

The ball rolls on however! What if, in an attempt to remedy the problem, the government makes the particular businesses' resources forcibly cheaper? Now we have scarcity in increasing circles that not only harm the standard of living for persons X and Y, but also for A, B, C, Z and so on. What started out as a temporary imbalance of purchasing power between groups has turned into a full-blown depression.

To refer back to the real economic stimulus, all the simple errors inherent in it can be recognized merely by spending a few days with an introduction to economics book, which means that these politicians know the stimulus is going to fail and are purposely pursuing it because they see the opportunity for a power grab. Let us retain this in our memories, so as to keep in mind the cause of all the bad things we have coming to us.

Banning Utility Shut Offs Allows Stealing

2009-02-06T17:58:00.000-08:00

Recently it has been reported that a man in Michigan froze to death in his home; he had over $1000 in unpaid bills and to remedy the problem the problem the electric company installed a limiter that turns the thermostat down according to how great the unpaid amount is. It has been proposed (and enacted, if I heard correctly) that the electric company not be allowed to cut off power during the winter months, and in some areas this is already a law. What I am going to demonstrate is that this "solution" is both immoral and impractical, and that the electric company had a right to limit or cut off the Michigan man's power. Let us first focus on the practical side by applying the lessons we have learned from The Consequences of Not Facing Consequences.

Let us assume that in an area there is a law that prohibits electric companies from cutting off anybody's power during the winter months, regardless of reasons. What happens then is that the consequence of not paying one's power bills is seemingly removed; if you pay your bill then you may continue to consume electricity, and if you do not pay your bill you may still continue to consume electricity. The incentive to pay one's power bills is now removed, or at the very least reduced. Some people may start to use the money they would use for the bill for a rainy day fund instead, only paying when absolutely necessary. Others may be more irresponsible and use their money for unnecessary things or never intend to pay their bill, which is outright theft. How does this affect the electric company?

Now the electric company is in trouble! Their costumers are consuming their resources but they are not getting enough profits to either improve their resources or even so much as replenish them. If the problem is small scale and not so many people are ignoring their bill, then that means that price rates will increase for everyone and the responsible people who do pay their bills will be punished. If the problem is large scale and very many people are not paying their bill, then the company could go into total bankruptcy and then everyone using electricity from them will lose power and possibly freeze to death. A body that has no subsistence cannot hold life (in this case, a business without money cannot stay in business). But the latter scenario is worst-case and very unlikely. Before the company went bankrupt the government would step in again and either nationalize the company, which would put ignorant bureaucrats in charge of a specialized business, or would try to forcibly make its resources cheaper, which only spreads the scarcity and bankruptcy. In the case of the nationalization, the electric bills one thought one could get away with not paying are now being paid with one’s tax dollars; only now power may be rationed (limiters for everyone) or more prone to outages. In the former scenario where prices are merely increased, one could also run into the same problems. People have a tendency to regard a lower price that existed in the past as the more “normal” price than a higher one, even though prices are contextual, so a person may be upset that his bill went up “unfairly” and then demand that the government push prices down to more “acceptable” rates. Again the company curtails bankruptcy by not having capital and again the government steps in to nationalize the company or make its resources cheaper. Rarely ever does the government blame its policies for the problems, because for that the politicians would have to openly admit fault, so thus we get ourselves in a vicious circle of government intervention, failure, more government intervention, more failure.

As you can see, the government’s attempt to prevent anyone from freezing to death could very well leave *everyone* frozen to death, or at least a reduced quality of life. But not only is the proposed solution impractical, but also morally wrong.

Life is what makes the pursuit of values possible, so life must be the standard of value, i.e. of morality, to refer to when choosing values if life is what one wishes to keep. Whatever benefits life and makes one live longer is a moral good; whatever harms life and makes one live less is an anti-value. In a civilized society, one sustains one’s life by production and trade, which requires the use of money. When the government prohibits the electric company from cutting off power it is allowing for people to steal its resources, thus violating it property rights in two ways. The company takes monetary losses and the people employed there are less able to survive. In our worst-case scenario where the company goes bankrupt, the employees cannot buy their groceries and the electricity consumers cannot have their heat; both have lost. To protect the survival of one party the government has compromised the survival of both.

To bring back the focus on the news story presented, the electric company had full moral right to limit that man’s power consumption. Without paying his bill the man was not morally obtaining his power, and to prohibit the cutting off of power is to advocate stealing. Stealing, we know, is not healthy for anyone, even if one needs the object.

If we want to prevent another person from freezing to death we must learn to respect property rights and to let people face the consequences of their actions and decisions.

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On a related note, Kendall Justiniano has started a new blog that specializes in the discussion of economics and economics as related to current events. I recommend it, for so many blogs only brush by on economic principles and do not fully explain themselves, leaving its readers unsatisfied.

Another Sisyphean Gesture

2009-01-28T17:06:00.000-08:00

Whoa! That was extremely fast! In less than a few days Obama managed to get his $819 economic stimulus passed.

To predict the obvious future, this bill is not going to do a thing to the economy except make it worse. This is because of the way they will be getting the money to spend: By printing it. To be more economically clear, this is bad because the United States uses fiat money, i.e. money that isn't backed up by any valuable commodity (previously we used the standard of gold). Every single dollar bill's value is *entirely* relative to every other dollar bill. Print more money and monetary value goes down; destroy it and it goes up. Even more concrete: If the money supply were to double, everyone's sum of money would be halved in value, prices would double, which would leave the American people with the exact same amount of value as they started with before, and thus accomplishes nothing.

The worst part is that this is all something that can be deducted using only *common sense*. More likely than not, as Thomas Sowell pointed out, this rushed economic stimulus is a power grab for politicians during a time people are too scared to object.

How this is going to damage the economy is via distortion; businesses will have a harder time making long range plans due to monetary instability and because the value of a service/product is not properly represented by its monetary price.

For example, in Zimbabwe there is hyperinflation which has caused so much as a loaf of bread to cost millions of dollars (not exaggerating!). If we were to deduce a loaf of bread's value using the gold standard, it would certainly only amount to a few dollars, maybe less. Given that in Zimbabwe the monetary prices are a far cry from their true value, how are businesses to decide what would be a valuable range of action?

At this point there is no way to stop this money from being spent. The best we can do is prepare for the consequences that shall follow and reap the lesson that *the government caused this problem to begin with*. Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.
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Here's another absurdity: http://www.readthestimulus.org/

Obama has been president for eight days. The economic stimulus bill is over 1500 pages long. Does anyone really think that the politicians have read carefully the entirety of this document and have comprehended it? Aside from the politicians aiming for a power grab, we have some running around trying to makes things better while at the same time not taking the time to actually sit and think as to what would be the right course of action. Not a terribly productive methodology.
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On the bright side, republicans have opposed the bill entirely. They said that it entails too much wasteful spending (anything outside a government's proper function is necessarily wasteful spending) and that more tax cuts are needed (they provided a substitute bill that composed almost entirely of tax cuts, but was voted against). It will benefit them politically in the future, but hopefully they can ground their objections in principles and morality next time. Hopefully.

The Draft: Either Your Life or Your Life

2009-01-21T13:40:00.000-08:00

It has been reported that Representative Charles Rangel plans on reintroducing a bill to congress that would reinstate the military draft. Given that Obama is a supporter of national community service it is most likely that he will either advocate it or pass it.

This bill is the most fundamental violation of individual rights possible. When it comes to light (Rangel plans on reserving it until an economic stimulus is passed) we need to write to our representatives to let them know that we oppose this legislation and why.* This bill is immoral and, as a corollary, impractical.

It is immoral because it violates an individual's right to life by not only forcing him to join and participate in an organization he may not want to (the military), but also by placing him in life or death situations (war). It is an unspeakable horror to think that a politician can force his judgment on an individual and send him off to war and then shrug apathetically if the individual should happen to die or sustain an injury (psychological or physical likewise) that will reduce the quality of his life for the rest of his lifetime.

It is impractical because if a country cannot obtain enough voluntary soldiers to fight a war, then why should it hope that an involuntary military force will solve the problem? Obviously, the person that would make the worst soldier is the person that does not want to be a soldier. Have we not learned from Vietnam, where American soldiers threw grenades into the tents of their commanding officers? If people do not want to fight the war, then it is both immoral and futile.

Worst yet, a drafted person (assuming they do not want to serve) is forced into a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation by the fact that the consequences of either obeying or "dodging" the draft are essentially the same. If he avoids the draft, then he gets the punishment of partial death by being sent to jail. Obeying the draft, on the other hand, not only forces him into a state of partial death, but also risks absolute death as well. "Partial death" is when a person is partially "killed" by being forced to spend a part of their lifetime either by not acting in accordance to their values or by stagnating, which means that a part of their life amounts to nothing while the grave gets ever closer in time.

It has been frustrating enough that the government thinks it can control our wealth as it sees fit, but it is sickening to contemplate that it could spend humans lives as it sees fit as well. A draft is not within accordance of America's founding principles, but rather of that of a dictatorship, where the individual is only seen as a means to serving the ends of a bigger collective (the community, society, state, etc.), despite the fact that a collective is simply a group of individuals.

Please be explicit in your disagreement with the draft and do not passively "let it go", for in a finite lifespan no amount of death is permissible or affordable. We are getting dangerously close to the end of freedom in America.

*Some argue that writing to one's representatives is a waste of time, but it is not so. The only type of politician that can maintain his political career is the one that the majority wants in office, and for the majority to want him in office he must be attuned to popular opinion. The only way for him to know what the popular opinion is is for us to express it.

The Sisyphean Judgment of Politicians

2009-01-13T12:01:00.000-08:00

I remember several years ago when I was cleaning the lawn I heard my neighbor start swearing as loud as he possibly could, saying "Godd**n it! God f***ing d**n it!" Given that he seemed like a very unhappy man, I thought he had finally snapped and was strangling his wife. When I went over there his wife was the one to answer the door and apologize for his actions, that he had only been yelling at a football game on television.

Fits right into a sitcom does it not? Only the usual stereotype goes as a husband yelling at the television that he is capable of doing better than the coach or referee. It has not happened yet that anyone has been able to get out of his armchair and bench of coach, but the stereotype can serve as a metaphor. Not only do people get upset at the judgment of sports officials, but also at everything else regarding judgment, such as someone's preference in clothing or their taste in movies. But in each case the restriction is the same: people can do nothing about such things other than what is immediately relevant in their lives. The person in exception is the politician.

Politicians do not merely sit irritated in their armchairs; they have the actual means to act on the threat "I can do better than them." Contrary to what they believe they can do, they cannot do better and have caused every economic crisis by attempting to do so. There are five reasons why every politician who forces his judgment will be unable to achieve his initiatives:

1.) Lack of specialized knowledge

In order to succeed in one's career endeavors one has to be an expert in the field. This requires specialized knowledge, and obtaining specialized knowledge requires months, if not years, of study plus the time it takes to master putting that knowledge into practice. To expect that a random politician can in five minutes assume the responsibility of making a decision that may take five years of study to be able to deal with the context is absurd.

An example in our present time is the auto bailout. As a condition to receiving federal money the Big Three automakers were told by congress to submit a business plan of what they were going to do with that money. The people of congress and of the White House are not business men nor are well-practiced in the area, so how can one expect them to make an appropriate judgment on the plan, let alone be able to comprehend it?

2.) Lack of time for dedicated study

Not all advanced decisions require specialized knowledge, but rather at least informed knowledge. One can purchase insurance without being an insurance expert or having the aid of one; one only need know what specific coverage is needed and what the budget is, and then afterward to weigh the alternatives between competing companies. The process takes not an hour, but multiple days to do the research on what companies offer and also to get a price quote (unless the law requires companies to charge all their patrons equally).

Such a process presents problems for the politician, for even if they are making a decision that requires one only to be informed, they do not have the time to do the appropriate studying/research. They are making decisions and weighing alternatives everyday and they have no time to go too deeply into any one consideration. Combine this with the fact that politicians are gaining more power and thus having more decisions to preside over, and the damage is multiplied.

Worst yet, sometimes politicians don't even bother *to try* and take the time. The original $700 billion bailout was a proposal entertained less than two weeks, and the proposal outlining it is hundreds of pages long. Could they really have read and understood the provisions that fast?

3.) Absence of profit motive

Combined with the above factors, what motivation do politicians have to do well in terms of success rather than merely having good intentions? In some areas where they do a good or even a great job they benefit none. For instance, roads. Everyone complains about a bad road, but no one says anything about a good one. No one sends a candy bouquet just because a mayor fixed a road, which is why road maintenance is largely neglected. Instead the focus is shifted on things that will make the newspaper, such as park openings or other community improvement projects. Anything that will give them good publicity is exactly what they are going to do.

Most of all, let us not forget that it is almost always the case that politicians do not get subjected to the problems they create, and thus cannot be counted on to "sympathize" with the public. Healthcare crisis causing long waiting lists at the doctors'? Politicians can use their celebrity status to jump to the front of the line and get all the best care first. Higher taxes reducing the prosperity of everyone? Their paycheck is fine and their standard of living unharmed. And so on.

Since politicians only want to make decisions that will benefit their career and since they have limited experience with the problems they create, what do they care to try their best to make things better for everyone?

4.) Making the judgment of others impossible

In an attempt to make things better politicians oftentimes take actions that make it so other cannot make a rational decision, thereby making things worse instead. The best example would be the Federal Reserve, the government agent that controls the money supply. The federal ability to increase or decrease the money supply is what causes inflation (too much money) and deflation (too little money). Inflation is what caused the housing crisis. Inflation distorted the *true* prices of the housing market and made it appear more profitable than it actually was, so people came to erroneous conclusions based on the distorted data and more houses were built, banks lent more (though mostly by the force of government), and people borrowed more, creating a false boom. The money supply came back to earth and the true prices became known, and there we have our bust. Some may have seen it coming, but most did not due to the data (the money) being distorted.

5.) They take on the impossible

Combining again all the above factors and then you have politicians way over their heads. For example, consider the people in charge of setting prices in a centrally planned economy. Prices in general need to be adjusted everyday. In order for a single business to be able to set their prices to the most profitable level, they must know what prices they and their competitors charged in the past and how profitable that was, the expenses involved in the production of the product/service, the demand and supply, the value relative to the market rate and demand, and many other factors, all for just one business to consider. In all these considerations what is required is specialized knowledge, time for study and research, a motive, and correct data. A soup company may try different prices over a period of weeks, months, or even years; they will not make such short-range decisions such as saying soup needs to be one cent cheaper today and two cents cheaper tomorrow.

To expect even a few thousand people to be able to adjust millions and millions of prices on a day's notice is beyond impossible when one small business (outside a centrally planned economy) may slave for hours over its own limited considerations. A centrally planned economy deals with so much it is humanly impossible.

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But given all this why do politicians continue to try? Should they not be honest enough to know better and learn from their mistakes?

The answer becomes apparent when examining why jobs appeal to people. Broadly, for example, doctors want to save lives, mechanics love working on cars, accountants love dealing with finances (or perhaps mathematics), and so on. Given a certain nature and corresponding duties, a certain job appeals to certain people.

What of politics? The dregs of society. For example, taxes are involuntary and are thus stealing; either pay them or go to jail. Now what type of person would want to preside over taxes? One would want to steal, a thief.

To make matters more frustrating, sometimes when a person is elected to a position he turns into a monster with a mind of its own, unwilling to listen to the considerations those who elected him and only worrying about his concerns. Rod Blagojevich is such a person. When Barack Obama left his senate seat Blagojevich decided it would be a great opportunity to make some money. Having been caught in the act, he rationalizes that he has not done anything wrong and vows to fight every step of the way, just like how a robber who has been caught at the cash register tries to, when on the way to the back seat of the police car, rationalize that the police are bullies.

Given that the job entails doing what thugs and power-lusters do, thug and power-lusters are logically attracted to the profession. So not only do we have politicians making decisions they cannot make properly, we have the worst people doing it.

The only solution to both problems is to bring government back to its proper state, the state of protecting individual rights. By doing this then a whole different class of people will be attracted to the profession: people who want to protect rights. Then individual judgment will be left free. To let people make judgments to the best of their ability is the only way for the economy to prosper. Even bad judgments are profitable: people will learn what not to do and why, thereby avoiding a repeat of the same mistake in the future.

But for the time being we are entering a period where the government is viewed as not only proper in making economic calls, but also as capable of doing so better than the competitors in the arena. Reality will show these people to be sorely mistaken.

What can we do to make things change for the better? Simply: disagree. When someone raises an objectionable point do not allow it to go unchallenged, even if the challenge amounts only to saying “I disagree.”

It is really too bad politicians cannot stay within the confines of the stereotype, and resign to their armchairs.

The Importance of Introspecting

2008-12-29T18:05:00.000-08:00

This should be the greatest of all New Year's resolutions, the one most fundamental to well-being while others are merely supplements.

I. The Base of Happiness

The basic key to happiness is to know it. When one does not know what makes one happy, then there is no way to maintain it or even have a clue to pursue it. You cannot cross a line that has never been drawn.

The majority of unhappiness today is not caused solely by the dreariness of our culture's direction or of the goings-on in our personal lives, but rather, in principle, what we base our happiness on. It is a fatal mistake to base happiness on things such as the number of friendships established or how the political horizon looks, because then that is to place it on something out of one's control and demolish any hope for consistency throughout life. A proper standard of happiness is to be based on something directly within control, and the only thing in absolute control is oneself.

For a proper happiness we must focus entirely on ourselves and how true we are to the values we hold (the achievement of said values is what constitutes happiness). In order to be true to those values and thereby maintain a consistent sense of life, we have to reflect inwardly to make sure those values are consistent, that the satisfaction of one premise does not mean betraying another premise.

This piece contains information on the method I have found most effective in establishing happiness: introspection. With it I have managed to drastically change my view on life and my habits, as well as give myself more motivation and increase my productivity. I will describe (in section four) my own personal method of introspection, but it certainly is not limited to that and one can choose one's own method or variety of execution.

First some terms must be defined for the less technical readers.

II. Introspection and Premises Defined

Introspection is the process of analyzing one's mental content, a specific form of thinking. This definition does not discriminate as to what mental contents are being analyzed, only that they are mental contents.

A premise, in the context of this piece, is an idea that a person has integrated into their subconscious that serves as a standing order that will affect how the subconscious functions later on in the future. Premises greatly influence (but do not determine) what habits of thinking and acting a person will have, as well as what emotions they will experience. What premises a person chooses to accept or reject matters greatly, because it will decide how hard or easy it will be to pursue one's goals.

Through introspection one can examine one's premises and decide properly on a course of action to either enforce or uproot them and integrate new ones, thereby indirectly controlling the subconscious. When you find out what makes something tick, you can control those "ticks". One could use this to eliminate the urge to be lazy or the life's view that life is nothing but boredom, or perhaps to start and maintain good habits.

But why should we introspect? Can we not just let the subconscious alone and let it pick up whatever it may? You would be surprised how many people have already answered yes to this. They may have not answered explicitly, but the results are certainly for all to see.

III. The Importance of Introspection and the Consequences of Not Doing So

Cumbersome to you or not, everyone needs to introspect, or, as the famous saying goes, you need to "check your premises." The subconscious can be viewed as a computer. It programs into itself (automizes) what ideas you consciously choose to accept and then operates according to those principles. If you feed it contradictions, then, both in your emotions and thinking, it will feed back to you contradicting data. To be concrete, you will have conflicting feelings which will hamper your ability to make a decision and be satisfied with what decision you do make.

Take, for example, Jake, who has integrated the "duty" premise that he should visit his brother (whom he dislikes) at least once a week and the value premise that his favorite television show is Monk. Monk comes on during the only one spare hour he has during the entire week (Jake is busy!), but he pledges to visit his brother for one hour also (his visits are not included in his normal schedule). Now he has a conflict between two premises, a “duty” and a value. If he chooses to visit his brother, then he will increasingly hate his visits for they deprive him of a value. If he chooses to watch television, then he will feel guilty for not fulfilling his duty and will be less able to enjoy the show. With this contradiction heeding attention to one premise necessarily means betraying another.

If Jake chooses not to identify and then resolve the conflict through introspection, then he will always experience those emotions and achieve less happiness. If he were ever to engage in introspection, he would have to make explicit *why* he thinks such an obligation to his brother exists. (Rationally he should give up his visits, as they do not contribute any value to his life and the duty is arbitrary.)

So then the reason we need to introspect is to make sure that our premises are consistent, otherwise we will not be able to act, think, or feel consistently. If you do not introspect then contradictions will simply pile up on one another and become harder to alter. It is during youth that it is the easiest time to do such work, as then there is not too many deeply rooted, if any at all, premises.

Although, surprisingly, continuous introspection becomes more crucial after one assumes the responsibility of thinking. This is because introspecting with the purpose of checking or altering your premises , after a while, means that you have accepted the premise that analyzing oneself is a good thing and to refrain from it is bad. If one chooses to ignore one’s faults and vices after a thinking session, then the subconscious will send the thought and emotion of deserved guilt. This will then become a sore which will resend that guilt-inducing response whenever stimulated, whether it be conversation, a poor action, or the likes. Over time if there is continuous evasion then there will be a sore on just about every critical part of the subconscious. Such a person as that would be unbearable in almost all human associations (to both parties), because there would be little to no ways to avoid upsetting them. So, if you choose to introspect, keep it up despite what emotional uneasiness you may feel. With practice it will form into an action you are indifferent to and feel uneasy refraining from.

Also, aside from keeping the subconscious consistent, introspection can open one up to consistent happiness. Being subconsciously consistent *does not* mean one is or can be happy. Happiness is achieved by pursuing and gaining values, which requires that you know what those values are and how you should pursue them. Of course, I will not forget, before one can ask “What makes me happy?” one must ask “How do I introspect?”

IV. Methods of Introspecting

I am sure that with some thinking you can find what personal method you would like to use, but I am going to stick to explaining two methods only: one method everyone should use regardless of their tastes and the method that works for me.

The first method consists in merely examining yourself *immediately* after you have a mood swing, whether it is good or bad. This way you will remember the stimulus that set it off or what action you took and it will be the easiest time to do it. To illustrate with an absurd example:

Let us say that Jane is afraid of teddy bears, but since she keeps herself so busy during the day it never occurs to her to actually examine why. Really, she would never think of it again if she never saw another teddy bear again (which would make the second method we will discuss absolutely useless. This is why this method must be accepted: some premises will only remain within one's mind clearly during a mood swing.).

But, terribly, she walks by a toy store that is advertising a new line of Rumpelstilskin bears. At that window she feels anxiety and a desire to escape. Even during such emotional distress this would be one of the best times to examine herself and ask “Why am I frightened of teddy bears?”

Checking her memories while walking, she suddenly remembers that her mean Uncle Tom used to whap her over the head with her stuff animals, particularly teddy bears. “I am afraid,” she explicitly and consciously thinks to herself, “of teddy bears because I associate them with the memory of my mean uncle.”

Jane has completed two tasks: she has identified a premise (that she is frightened of teddy bears) and why she is so (abuse from her uncle). Now she needs to figure out what she should do about that knowledge. “In the future,” she thinks, “when I am confronted by my fear I will tell myself in my mind ‘it is just an inanimate object. I fear it merely because of a dead relative.’” In this case, she only has to actively recite the cause of her fear every time she is confronted by it. Sooner or later (and this is an important point: how long it takes to alter a premise greatly depends on how long one has held it), this premise will be uprooted because she will subconsciously understand there is nothing to fear. But if she evaded the knowledge of this premise, she would have to deal with guilt too.

When you have a mood swing, ask yourself these three questions: 1.) what is the premise causing this emotion, 2.) why does this premise exist, and 3.) what should I do about it. Never let your emotions overwhelm you into not thinking, lest you become a wreck of a human being later on who cannot desire anything but a wish to ignore reality exists.

The second method is writing in a diary/introspection journal, which is my personal method. In fact, this is one of the most effective methods. This is because of the nature of the involvement of the subconscious during the writing process (*before* editing). Writing a first draft consciously is literally impossible because then one would never get done, as one would have to actively search for deliberate about each and every single word. Everyone must write according to what knowledge their subconscious has made automatic. It is very appropriate to say everyone writes their rough drafts according to their feelings (though further drafts or editing is not needed in a personal journal). Identifying premises and their causes become much easier when letting the subconscious speak for itself. Upon rereading what you have written you can see whether you are telling the truth or rationalizing.

Although the only requirement of this method may slow some down at the beginning: writing competence. Such skill can be developed with continued practice, but it will be discouraging to the sloppy at first. It is not required that one be *good* at writing per say, only that one write grammatically. Writing and thinking are connected. The quality of your thinking shows up when you write, so if you think in vague approximations then you are going to write vague approximations, so in the area of introspection approximates are a cardinal sin, as they defeat the purpose. To know something is to know it precisely, not fuzzily.

I choose this method because not only do I think and understand better when thoughts are put into written words, but it also trains my writing ability as well (I go so far as to fill a set number of pages everyday). However, there are other methods to choose from, such as audio diary. But since these two methods suffice for me I choose not to entertain the idea of anything else.
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To be clear, concerning both methods, it is of absolute importance that one tell the truth when one introspects or at least recognize when one is rationalizing. Rationalizing is when one uses an arbitrary or distorted standard of logic in order to make seem logical something that is obviously illogical or irrational.

Lying to oneself or purposely distorting one's perception is not hazardous to one's habit of thinking, but it negates entirely the purpose of introspecting to begin with. Such deceptions do not give a sense of comfort by satisfying a subjective desire, but rather they replace one bad premise with another and resolve no contradictions, making for a waste of time. Using the methods above make sure to make explicit whenever one should happen to, or be tempted to, distort thinking.

V. Results

To sum up my own experience, I have managed to change myself drastically, both in how I act and think. For a brief example (I give permission for you to ask for a deeper explanation), in the past I had difficulty getting anything done and was not able to focus on my personal studies at all, but after a bit of writing my productivity keeps increasing as well as becoming more efficient, and studying is such a value to me that I feel unproductive and brain-starved a single day without it. But it has taken me tons of thinking and over ninety journal entries to get myself up to this point. So most importantly, remember that it takes a long time to uproot or alter your premises, for premises unchecked can be held for years and take years to dispose of. Have patience. Take a look at overweight people who are just starting out at the gym. They may set ambitious goals for them to achieve, such as running five miles every other day, but right when they first start out they will not be able to maintain pace within half of the track’s length. The difficulty is always at the start of things.

In the long run the person who introspects will feel much more in control of their life and will be more easily able to control themselves, unlike their opposites. The person who does not introspect will feel like life is out of control for him, and that their feelings and actions are determined by outside forces. In short, they will have chosen to build and maintain their own personal hell.

Either way, you have a choice and make a choice in either regard. Whatever choice you make, you get what you deserve in the end. You just ought to make sure that what you deserve is what you want.

The Consequences of Not Facing Consequences

2008-12-21T11:14:00.000-08:00

It is astounding how one can see something coming miles away and yet people still act stupefied when it comes and have no clue as to its obvious cause. Specifically, it is amazing how some people can be confused as to why every other business seems to be opting for a bailout now that the financial industry has (somewhat) secured one and another one for the auto industry is in the works.

It is because the government has made promises it cannot keep that people are acting irrationally and demanding that they not suffer for it. The government has been making the promise that people will not have to face the consequences of acting irrationally, and with the dangers seemingly removed people feel free to make any type of decision regardless of any consideration, with the hope that the government will have a net ready.

Anyone can see what would result if a parent either did not act on their threats or gave rewards despite disobedience. If a parent threatens to take away dessert if their child does not eat all of their dinner but gives it to them anyways, then the child will cease to believe in the validity of the threat and will actively ignore its presence. The continued practice of this will make the parent's authority dwindle down to nothing.

Our government has bred economic children. Because the government has offered up assistance to the banks, everyone else simply cannot see why they should have to face failure while other people do not. Or, in the words of children, "if he gets a bailout then I get a bailout too!" Sure, the assistance was given under the notion that we would be better off economically, that nobody would be able to get a loan otherwise, but that is not true. If the banks had failed then it would be the case that it would be difficult to borrow millions of dollars, not impossible to get a loan altogether, and the economy would be able to recover from the liquidation of the banks' assets. An important rule to remember is that that wealth creation is what is essential to the health of an economy, not the number of people employed. (Though the rate of wealth production and rate of employment cannot be separated. The greater the wealth, the greater the possibility for wealth creation, which also means a higher demand for employment for those productive endeavors. I am just stating that wealth has primacy over employment and production primacy over wealth.)

In fact, the worst drawback of avoiding consequences is that, ironically, it makes the consequences even worse or come in a different form. Reality allows for no one to escape their consequences, good or bad (“consequences” here is a synonym of "result"); "there is no free lunch." The bailouts, if fully implemented, will achieve the depression it was trying to avoid. When the bailout was approved there was no mention of any new tax or of a redirection of funding, so where are they going to get all this money? By printing it. This makes things worse because then our money will lose even more of its value and will have exceeded economic growth, meaning higher prices will be required to make any sort of "true" profit.

If the government had let the banks fail to begin with the benefit would have been twofold: 1.) the economy would be recovering right now and 2.) a message would be sent to every major business in the economy that everyone must strive to make rational decisions, for their failures are theirs to face.

It is not only harmful economically that the government makes such promises, but it has also destroyed lives. This is why Hurricane Katrina was so devastating.

The government promised that if anyone should happen to decide to live in such disaster prone areas. such as New Orleans, they would be insured against the damages of the storms. Thousands and thousands of people then move into such areas thinking "I am only but a drop in the government's budget", and these drops fill cities. A storm hits, and that's when the reality of the government's impotence comes to surface.

In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the government was inadequate to be able to respond in short amount of time, and was unable to provide aid or compensation to so massive a number of people. Even though people realize that the government was incompetent, they do not realize that this will always be the case (since such aid is outside the nature and proper function of government) and have called for expansions of government aid.

The absence of the government would have stopped any problem from forming in the first place: people would see that help is all but nonexistent, for insurance rates in that area are either sky-high or not available, their lives would be on the line every hurricane season, and, as a result, fewer people will choose to live there.

Even if the government refuses to stop making such false promises, the people can save themselves by understanding that consequences can never be avoided and that no one can collect the burden.

The principle to remember is: you can either drop a stone on your foot today, a brick on your hand tomorrow, or a cinder block on your head next week. The alternatives are unavoidable, but you are able to choose and act to avoid those situations in the future.

America is in for a rough time. With the bailouts we will have to face many businesses calling for the same, with many politicians hoping to try and please their calls due to “economic necessity”, and we will have to face the consequences of not facing consequences.

An Insufficient Diet

2008-12-10T16:28:00.000-08:00

In a land not very far away, in a time just minutes ago, there was a village called Amerika. It was a place of about one thousand people, all fed by a single farmer, Paul. This farmer was the only man on his workforce; he planted all the vegetables, slaughtered all the pigs and chickens, built all farming structures, and maintained all his equipment. In fact, he didn't even use any power tools; he had nothing but manual tools.

But the people of the village did not think highly, if they thought at all, about farmer Paul. "He's selfish," they complained. "Our town is barely living by a thread and he has the audacity to keep to himself half of every harvest."

These complaints went on for so long that eventually they reached all the way up to court. People started filing cases like mad, which were dismissed equally mad. All stated the damaged done by farmer Paul was that he kept into his stomach what should have been put in theirs.

For weeks and weeks the judges kept refusing to consider these lawsuits. That is, until the opinion section of the newspaper started becoming filled with calls for the judges to be evicted from their seats. If popular opinion kept on going the way it was, then these judges would be voted out next term. Out of fear for their job, they allowed one case through, which was titled Paul versus the People.

The prosecutor accused Paul of causing harm to the public by withholding what they needed, but Paul defended himself by saying he needed the food just as equally. "The need of one man!" shouted the prosecutor. "The need of one man is equivalent to the need of one thousand? He is so needy that he needs to eat the amount of food that could feed hundreds? Is this not the epitome of selfishness and greed? We're suffering and he's profiting! Profiting on our empty stomachs!" The crowd applauded approvingly; Paul offered nothing.

Influenced by the anger in the crowd, the judge ruled against farmer Paul and ordered that he offer up to the food market three-quarters of his harvest. The crowd celebrated, confidently hopeful that health was on the way; Paul offered nothing.

And for a while people were getting fatter. But soon enough Paul was to find his way around the ruling.

"Local Gilroy's Out of Seeds" headlines read. "Discontent with the ruling that he take only his fair share of the harvest, farmer Paul thundered over to Gilroy's and promptly purchased all the vegetable and fruit seeds. First he stole from out stomachs and now he must steal our backyard gardens? What is the depth of cruelty in a man who would punish us for rightfully taking our sustenance?"

A ruling was quickly made within hours of the judges becoming aware of Paul's doings. It was from then on that it was illegal for Paul to purchase any food at the market, whether it be potential (e.g. seeds) or actual. He was to stick only to what he produced, and he was only to take his fair share.

Over time then the quality of Paul's work declined greatly. "Malnutrition" he reasoned in his newsletters. People wrote him replies of calling him a liar, for after all how could one man starve when he had food that could satisfy two hundred and fifty people? Paul offered nothing in return.

Eventually the village went right back to its prior poor state of health, before the first ruling was made. People were rolling their eyes and saying they didn't need such a terrible farmer as Paul. Newspapers were stating that Paul was incompetent. The opinion section filled with calls for the nationalization of the farm.

The third ruling came weeks later. The government and its employees were to take over all the farming and Paul was to live on welfare and have his meals delivered to him, to assure no greedy appetites should come about.

There was no time for a victory. Less than two weeks later, Paul, the fifty foot tall farmer, died and killed fifty people with the coming-down of his corpse

The town learned its lesson, but a lesson they would never have time to apply. Due to the incompetent of the government workers, everyone else died too.

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This is the metaphor that comes to my mind whenever I read unfavorable opinions against Big Oil, about how they're being greedy and taking more than their fair share of the profits. The people that rallied against the giant and the people who rally against Big Oil are both guilty of the same logical fallacy: context dropping. It is always a must that one keep in mind the *entire context* of relevant information before drawing a conclusion, otherwise the chance of falsity increases limitlessly.

You can see what the faulty conclusions of the villagers brought them. They thought of most everything except the requirements of survival for a man who is fifty feet tall, and so thus they forced him into an insufficient diet, ending up killing what they refused to believe was the lifeblood of their village.

We face the same danger today. People are condemning oil companies for the same reasons and calling for the same actions: that their profits be "rightfully" redistributed to the public and that the government nationalize the industry.

But is anyone asking what the requirements of survival is for the oil companies, or how the economy works to begin with? According to the Wall Street Journal, the profits of the oil companies average to about 9% to 11%. That means that the other 91% to 89% is pure expense, money they had to pay to stay in business (employees' paychecks, equipment, etc.). If their profits are only average, then what are people angry about? Some computer companies make over *20%* profit, a much larger margin.

Here we have our context dropping. People are looking at the oil companies' profits listed as a whole number, instead of a percentage, and then quickly concluding "That's way too many digits! Surely they don't need that much do they?"

So then they go on to support actions to lower gas prices that are actually the cause of high prices to begin with. Taxes to punish their greed? They already have high taxes, so higher taxes mean....higher prices! Prohibit drilling? As it stands now, their future oil supply is already uncertain. This is because there is great inconsistency and contradictions in the realm of politics, such as Bush lifting the ban on offshore drilling while Obama seeks to reinforce it. Making the future oil supply even more uncertain means...higher prices!

Worst yet, some people say we should abandon the oil companies and opt for alternative sources of power. As the villagers doubted the giant, people doubt that oil is the lifeblood of our nation, that it can be replaced and we'll be fine. All this despite the fact that billions have been wasted on research with little results and that people are not purchasing or switching (large scale) to what environmentally-friendly technology is available. This should all send the signal that "green" power is just not viable. Not to say that it never will be, only that a mass scale switch right now would deal a near fatal blow to the economy. The rule here is that as technology and knowledge advances and changes, so do the requirements of life. They both progress in symmetry.

So, next time, make sure you have *all* the relevant date before drawing a conclusion. Some lessons of reality cannot be learned by experience, as it may be a fatal lesson. Learn beforehand. If Big Oil is brought down, then their coming-down will surely be just as fatal to us as it was to the villagers.