A is A

Ayn Rand Institute's Former Participant essay submission

2011-07-26T18:20:00.003-06:00

Below is my submission for the ARI former participant essay contest where I won third place.

Here is the prompt: What was your initial response to the novel(s)? In what ways has reading Ayn Rand inspired you and the choices you have made in your life?

For more information on other contests visit the AYN RAND NOVELS website.

Also, for more information about The Ayn Rand Institute visit their website HERE.

Here is my essay: How Ayn Rand has Affected Me.

“Howard Roark laughed… He laughed at the thing which had happened to him that morning and at the things which now lay ahead.” Roark is laughing at the fact that he has been expelled from Architectural school. He is laughing because there will be more obstacles, and he knows he will win. Seemingly his career should be over, yet he shrugs the incident off as would a child who has scraped his knee and quickly goes back to play. Immediately, Roark’s viewpoint in life had a deep impact on me.

Throughout the novel Roark is never deterred from his goal, and never imagines he might be unable to accomplish his deepest values. Dominique on the other hand believes Roark’s success is not possible. He is great, but greatness can’t live for long in this world, she thinks. While Roark waits for clients and struggles from commission to commission, Dominique actively seeks to ensure he does not attain any commissions. His view is that values are achievable, hers that they are not.

Ayn Rand called these metaphysical views the benevolent and malevolent universe premises.

I was constantly confronted with the malevolent viewpoint. It was a view that seemed always to hamper my progress. At the age of 16 I decided I wanted to be a public speaker and open a seminar production company. I was promptly informed this was not possible, because I’d have to prove myself in some way first. This seemed like good advice, so at 17 I planned out in great detail how I would achieve financial independence by the age of 35 through real estate investing. “Make sure to be practical,” and “that isn’t a likely outcome, but good luck,” were common reactions to my goals. I had no defense against these proclamations except for my desire to run my own seminar production company and travel the country expressing my passion for life. I continued with my plans while this doubt was still picking at my brain.

As I started out on my course of action I realized this plan had a huge hole in it. I did not enjoy real estate investing. How could I stand waiting 15-20 years to do what I actually wanted to do? I had no answers, and that doubt, which became fear, was that I didn’t know if it was even possible.

At 17, fortunately, I read The Fountainhead. In it was the man who laughed at the actions of the Dean, and at Ellsworth Toohey’s attempt to destroy him. I witnessed the portrayal of a hero achieving against seemingly impossible odds. I started to create a new vision of what was possible for me. I had stifled a passion for film years prior, because I was assured nobody can really become successful in the film industry. But, as Roark says to the dean, “I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture.” Roark’s courage, his view that values are achievable, gave me courage, and a similar view of what is possible began to emerge within me.

At 18 I read Atlas Shrugged, and met Dagny Taggart and John Galt. Here I saw the full demonstration of what I felt in reading about Roark and his struggle. I saw what is possible at the deepest philosophical roots. I understood Dagny’s race to find the inventor of the motor, while all the men of the mind are disappearing around her, comes from her deep set need to view the best possible in man. She requires a reaffirmation that man is a being capable of achieving high values on earth. Her search, and the entire novel, showed me the contrasting views of the benevolent and malevolent universe premises, and what the consequences to each were in such vivid detail I no longer held any doubt.

By the age of 20 I was fully on my way to becoming a writer and producer of films. The inevitable responses of how impossible this would be began. However, now I had a deep philosophic base upon which to draw. I often pointed out to people the hundreds of individuals in the credits of just one film, and the hundreds of movies made each year. They made this film, why do you think it impossible for me, I’d ask. Those were the lucky ones, and realistically that rarely happens, I was told. I saw the malevolent universe premise peering its ugly head at me. The people around me did not view achievement as a possibility to any but the born lucky. This was the view of James Taggart, Orren Boyle, and Howard Roark’s Dean. They didn’t believe true success was possible in the world.

For me however, I knew that so long as one assessed reality and oneself, as Roark, Dagny and Galt do, what I sought was achievable. When Dagny looks up into Galt’s face after crashing in Atlantis she says, “We never had to take any of it seriously, did we?” This was the expression of the benevolent universe premise, which has been deeply ingrained into my soul. Success is possible, it is not given to man, he must create it, but it is possible to create the career he desires, to create the life he wants – I can be what I want to be.

Ayn Rand’s philosophy as demonstrated in her novels, and elucidated in her essays, has given me the assurance and courage to pursue my dreams. May, 2011 marks my graduation from film school. During my time there I began a film production company where I’ve produced and written over 14 short films, documentaries, commercials, and promotional videos. I also wrote my first feature length screenplay. The difficulties occur regularly as they do for Roark, and as they would in the pursuit of any worthy endeavor. The benevolent universe premise that is now deeply integrated into my ideas always helps me gain perspective of what I can accomplish.

In Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand calls the shack which contains Galt’s motor, “an altar.” The connection to a religious symbol is not coincidental. When Dagny meets Galt she is witnessing the ideal, the possible. If Galt exists, anything is possible.

Ayn Rand’s work gives me the same euphoric feeling, a feeling of worshipful grandeur, and a fuel to continue through the inevitable difficulties. I can laugh at the unimportant, the irrational, while holding the knowledge that if Rand exists, anything is possible.

Life: Capitalism's Motive Power

2010-10-29T23:26:00.006-06:00

In today’s political climate Americans are more thoroughly confused than ever. In the 2008 elections Obama was elected by a large portion of voters long considered politically inactive. A year later these same Americans were utterly shocked when Obama followed through on his espoused ideological aims. There is also a mass of uncertainty in the realm of political issues. A tea party attendee may carry a sign that states, “Keep your hands off my medical care!” But when addressing the issue of financial reform, this same person is likely to say “we should do something about those Wall Street fat cats.”

Constituency shifts occur regularly between the right and left. Moreover, the two major parties have converged into one ideological pot. Lifelong republicans branch away from the party to join libertarian or “constitutional” parties. Claiming they are the “real” conservatives. Liberals join neo-conservative movements and juxtapose concepts of American patriotism with progressive ideas; such as the wholesale slaughter of American soldiers for proportionality in war: As if this is somehow American.

This confusion among serious minded Americans stems from the only alternatives presented to them: Either; a heavily regulated and controlled financial industry, or complete nationalization; a self destructive war or endless and unhindered terrorist attacks on our own soil; today’s semi-free, partially capitalistic, mixed economy - or total statism. There is no large support for any other alternatives. When people are given the choice of death by firing squad or death by slow torture it should be clear as to the reason for American’s difficulty in deliberation.

In the two major parties it is the democratic progressives that have continually accumulated numerous policy wins. The republicans have only accomplished slight speed bumps on the road to a larger socialist state. In any dispute between democrats and republicans, it is the democrats who are called “fiscally irresponsible,” but it is the republicans who are called “morally irresponsible.” The major opposition to Obamacare was that the bill was too big to understand and would lead to economic destruction. There were very few voices questioning the outright enslavement of doctors and the obliteration of individual rights.

Democrats have been long time supporters of a growing moral movement: environmentalism – which establishes as the moral that which is best for nature. The republicans have long been supporters of religion, which states the moral is that which God commands. In practice, the difference means that the democrats claim to hold the morality of reason, science and secularism, while the republicans hold the morality of supernaturalism and faith. In any debate it is the secular moralists vs. the religious zealots.

This has been the state of the fight for capitalism. The moral defenders are pitted as the irrational religious, while the ‘humanist/progressives’ hold reason and science as absolutes. For example, in regards to a complex scientific issue such as energy reform, to whom should the populace agree with - the religious moralists or the secular scientists? So has been the achievement of most of the democratic policy wins.

The democrats have won by moral default. They hold up to a nation of life lovers the ideal that voting for them is a vote for this life, reason and the future of science and technology. They are believed to be the only advocates of earthly motivations to live by.

Men yearn for motivations. And so long as a man desires to live he must take actions. In this there is no choice. As with all living organisms, there must be an acquisition of values in order to continue functioning. A single celled amoeba must obtain its food by surrounding and capturing its prey in accordance with its nature. A plant must photosynthesize sunlight into energy and absorb nutrients from the soil; if these living creatures do not do this, they perish.

The values these creatures seek are set automatically by their nature, and are determined by the type of entity that they are. For instance, a tiger could not survive by seeking the values a shark requires. Neither could a dog plant its feet into the ground and attempt to photosynthesize the sun’s light and absorb nutrients from the dirt. The same is true of man.

Men must seek values congruent with their nature. Man is not born with the knowledge necessary for life. In order to accomplish the continual process of survival and flourishing, men must take certain actions. To not act is a choice which will lead to the death of any organism. Much like a prey’s inability to act in the face of a predator leads to its death. In every hour of every day man is inundated with actions he must take. Upon waking he must decide to stay in bed or get up, eat breakfast or leave without it, work or beg.

This illustrates that every action, from talking to the beautiful woman in dance class to what shirt to wear for the big business meeting, implies choices that must be made. Even taking the action of inaction is a choice. As has already been indicated, animals make their basic choices based on their nature and instincts. A plant can grow towards the sun, but it cannot build a ditch to ensure it receives water. A man cannot absorb moisture and nutrients in the manner a plant can. But he can choose to use his unique tool of survival; reason, to build a ditch.

What then are the values a man should seek? Since man does not have the ability to automatically know what actions to take, what actions are right for him, he needs a guide: a compass that can help direct him to a correct course of actions. Man cannot act without a motivation to do so. A car cannot move or even start without a motive power, gasoline, so to humans are incapable of making decisions without motivations, or a motive power to act as their energy source. For machinery, motive power is its primary energy source. Steam was the motive power for boats in the 19th century, and oil for boats today. A motive power is the reason a machine can move. What then is man’s motive power?

Many individuals accept one or both of the two dominant ideologies in America today, Environmentalism and Religion. These two systems offer a ready-made guide to human actions. They claim to hold the right motive power for man.

Man requires a code for all of his values – i.e. an ethics (or morality). As philosopher Tara Smith puts it, “Ethics is a code of values whose purpose is to steer human beings to the achievements of the more concrete values that fuel an individual’s existence.”(Emphasis mine) Even the seemingly innocuous choice between cheerios and cyanide does not come automatically to a person; there must be a reference to all the values man ought to make.

There are various moral theories each offering their own version of what is the proper motive power that moves man. Three codes in existence today are utilitarianism, altruism, and egoism.

Utilitarianism offers the motive power of the “greatest good for the greatest number.” This theory advocates ensuring the actions of each individual are allotted towards the greatest good. When a person deliberates on a career the choice should be that career which provides the greatest good for the majority. It would be irrelevant whether a ‘selfish’ person wanted to enter the field of law enforcement if the majority decided there needed to be more teachers.

Utilitarianism is a variation of one of the oldest motive powers in human history - altruism. But altruism does not require merely a motive power in terms of good for the majority; altruism requires sacrifice to anyone. It is irrelevant to where a person’s rewards are distributed – whether to the old, the poor, or the handicapped person down the street – so long as the person creating the rewards does not receive them. Altruism literally means “other”-ism - the standard upon which all decisions should be made is what is good for other people. Moreover, this means everyone is a slave to any other person’s random need. If other peoples good is the standard of value, the motive power for each man, than any moocher with a cup in his hand requires the sacrifice of anyone capable of filling that cup. Utilitarianism discriminates upon the “others” saying the rewards should be a maximizing of the majority of peoples good. Altruism requires a person to give up any values to any person or thing; to the dipsomaniac, the bum, the enemy to humanity, any tree, rock, or pasture that supposedly needs something. As Dr. Peikoff explains, “altruism is not a synonym for kindness, generosity, or good will, but the doctrine that man should place others above self as the fundamental rule of life.”

There is, of course, never a rational basis to adhere to any of these moralities. Their defense usually boils down to some form of authoritarianism. People are told these moralities are correct because “God said so,” or it is the “will” of the majority, or our noumenel selves demand it as our duty, or the Fuehrer says so. Never are they expounded by the facts of reality. Thus David Hume’s statement that “an is does not imply an ought.” Moreover, these moralities are advocated as the only options available.

Egoism, the morality discovered and advocated by Ayn Rand, is that other alternative. Egoism should not be confused with hedonism, which is the morality that claims the motive power is that which maximizes pleasure. Rational egoism is the theory that advises taking actions which are in an individual’s best long-term interests. A person does not act in their own interests when they destroy their ability to live long-term, as in cases of subjective egoism (i.e. hedonism), wherein a person sacrifices others to self. Rand’s discovery is the idea of non-sacrifice. Opponents of egoism will point to such men today as Bernie Maddoff and Tiger Woods as crude egoists. Bernie Maddoff swindled millions of dollars from people and ended up losing his family, friends, self-respect, money, business, and freedom. Tiger Woods engaged in indiscriminate sex and alienated his wife, lost millions of dollars of endorsements, and lost the respect of most of the nation. It is absurd to proclaim these men were somehow acting egoistically; they in fact acted towards the destruction of all their values.

Life is not a onetime accomplishment. It is an ongoing process. Tiger Woods may have valued his wife enough to marry her, but marriage is not the end of a relationship, it’s the beginning. Certain actions need to be taken in order to maintain the relationship, trust being merely part of that equation. Much like a person wouldn’t try fixing their car by putting vinegar in the gas tank, so to a person shouldn’t undercut other values in their life by sabotaging them with a string of one night stands. When Bernie Maddoff was running a successful investment firm he had to work hard to ensure his customers were happy and would return for repeat business. Tiger Woods worked towards achieving success in golf from the age of three. These true successes do not occur overnight.

Egoism promulgates the idea that man’s proper motive power is his own life. That in the choices he ought to take are those choices which coincide with the values required by the type of being that he is. This would mean not taking actions congruent with the values of a dolphin, amoeba, or redwood, but that of the rational animal.

People living in close proximity, and engaging in beneficial activities require a social system to implement rules of actions that are to be tolerated or outlawed. Murder and theft are normally the first actions to be forbidden. When it comes to more ‘complex’ rules such as: private property, free expression, and freedom to pursue one’s own goals, people need a guide to help them decide. Men living together require rules or chaos will ensue. A system – such as feudalism, communism, fascism, or capitalism – is mandatory. The obvious problem is what rules are proper, and what principles are necessary to guide a society when establishing a social system.

It must be stressed that there must be social rules in any society. Even in a so-called “anarchist society,” eventually one group will rise up and enforce their social rules. Whether the rules are based on, slave to master, proletariat to bourgeois, or that of free men trading their goods for mutual gain and mutual benefit. These social rules must be more than mere taboos, they must be enforceable absolutes. For instance, throughout history, the social rule of property rights has been largely abnegated. That an individual be allowed to utilize and dispose of their property in any way they see fit. The degree this rule was allowed or outlawed is the degree to which that country and its citizens were prosperous – or impoverished. In almost all social systems some form of private property is allowed, if not merely de facto. Feudalism allowed for peasants to own some of their property that was unable to be fully controlled. In communist Russia small and private gardens in people’s backyards outgrew all of Russia’s massive ‘community’ farms.
The purpose of a government is to enforce the social rules believed to be correct by a society. A government is pure force. It serves no other function. A government cannot create, it can only dictate. It cannot produce, it can only command. However, this function is vital to a human civilization. There must be some societal norms which some entity must uphold. A government is that entity.

The type of social system a person, or nation, will advocate is based directly upon the motive power they hold. For someone who holds that the basic motive power for men should be the needs of others he will believe, implicitly at least, in some form of socialism. To hold that proper actions are those that benefit others at the expense of self (i.e. altruism and utilitarianism) inevitably means a country must force those who are not doing their part, to contribute. The same applies to rules against murder; people not respecting this rule must be forced to do so, because it has been established as morally wrong to murder. If sacrificing part of one’s possessions to others is morally right, then those who don’t must be made to do so. The reason Obamacare, or any welfare program in the last 100 years, has passed is because the majority of Americans believed it was right. It makes no difference that this last set of welfare programs woke some Americans up to the bankruptcy these bills will bring about; people needed them, and so something ought to be done about it.

Holding that man’s motive power is “the greatest good for the greatest number” means that person will advocate social rules which put this moral policy into effect. To say what is right is that which benefits the greatest good is to admit that there are no standards, and that man is subordinated to any two people who claim a need. There is no way to quantify or identify a “greater good” in actuality, greater good becomes whatever the “greatest number” says it is. If 51% of the population decides to take the other 49%’s property, this would be the enforceable social rules under this moral social system. This may occur in the form of income taxes, or in the act of a literal destruction of a minority of ‘undesirables’ within a society; the theory is the same, destruction and abnegation of the individual.

Egoism in morality leads to capitalism in politics. If each individual is their own sovereign entity, to which no one can rule, then this will lead a society to delegate government into the role of protector of the individual. This means recognition of each individual’s right to life, liberty, and property. This system has the distinguishing characteristic of recognizing that man’s motive power is his own life.

Respecting this motive power means recognizing the requirements of man qua man. This includes utilizing reason to solve the problem of survival through production, and enjoying the effects of one’s success. Whether the enjoyment is manifested in eating an extravagant meal with a loved one, listening to a symphony, or globetrotting in a private plane; the individual that created the rewards keeps them.

This is the purpose of the concept “Rights” (more specifically, individual rights); recognizing the fact that in order to survive each man must utilize his own tool for survival, means recognizing that each man has a fundamental right to choose which actions he thinks will lead to his success. This concept is also vital to understanding that a person has a sphere of rights that are limited. A Right is a concept which sets the terms for enforceable social conduct in a society based upon mans proper motive power. As Rand elucidated,

Rights are a moral concept – the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others – the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context – the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

Laissez-faire capitalism respects these rights by banning the initiation of force among men – either direct or indirect – within a given geographical area. In this system all property is privately owned and government is strictly assigned to the protection of individual rights, and they are forbidden interference in the economic realm. This means that if a person wishes to convince others to buy their products they must create the best product available and offer it at the best price. They cannot force a person to purchase their products. Nor can they attain subsidies from the government. There are no subsidies, government creates no money. There are no special favors, government has no power to arbitrarily make new rules that must be obeyed. Objective law is the only king. Businesses cannot lobby, government can do nothing for them, but protect their rights as they do everyone else’s. Wal-Mart may become the richest corporation in America, but there are plenty of people who refuse to step foot in their stores – and there isn’t a thing Wal-Mart can do about it.

Capitalism allows each man to judge his own situation as he sees fit, allowing each to receive their due rewards. Every individual person is able to take actions, unhindered by outside forces. It allows everyone to decide which products or services they desire and gives them the ability to choose which path they deem proper to achieve their values. A person can decide to take actions to save money for the possibility of a medical emergency, or they can neglect to do this, but they will suffer the consequences of their own choices. Society will not fix the irrational decisions of each of its citizens. If someone decides to imbibe alcohol and watch television all day, they are perfectly free to do so, but they are not free to run to the government and ask them to use force on more responsible adults to pay for their irresponsibility. In a just society the population is encouraged to make rational decisions, if they don’t, they, and they alone, suffer the consequences.

Imagine a bank in a free society. This bank can enact policies to lend out money based on a person’s need, but if this policy leads to bankruptcy there can be no bailout by the government. Once these irrational policies catch up to them, they are done. At the same time, a company that provides great products that the majority of people want, and decides to compete by offering a free service with every purchase, they are allowed to do so. Even if this means their competitor must shut down. Each person keeps the rewards of their actions, and decides what to do with them. It is irrelevant whether the person is a janitor or if they represent the collected interests of many individuals that voted them to run their multi-billion dollar corporation.

Capitalism’s defenders give half-hearted defenses for advocating the system of private property and individual rights. Their defenses serve to undercut the core that allows the system to operate; selfish pursuit of ones values. These are normally counterproductive at best and absolutely devastating at worst. To say, for instance, that capitalism is the best system because it provides the greatest utility for the greatest number is to destroy the morality necessary for each person to pursue the values congruent with their nature. In other words, the defense goes, capitalism should be allowed, in spite of the depravity of its motivations, on the premise that it has the awesome ability to produce goods which brings happiness or pleasure to the greatest number of people. As Peikoff points out, “the essence of this argument is the claim that capitalism is justified by its ability to convert ‘man’s baseness’ to ‘noble ends.’ ‘Baseness’ here means egoism; nobility means altruism. And the justification of individual freedom in terms of its contribution to the welfare of society means collectivism.” He goes on to explain that the father of modern utilitarianism – to whom the above argument derives – John Stuart Mill, understood the contradiction in “trying to defend an individualist system by accepting the fundamental moral ideas of its opponents.” This led Mill to eventually proclaim his advocacy of socialism.

Men must be given explicit moral reasons to advocate capitalism. Much like the progressives have given people moral reasons to vote socialism into America piecemeal, so to must advocates of capitalism give moral reasons to scale government back to a point where its only job is to protect the individual. A motive power, a person’s moral code, is what gives energy to each person to make decisions in their daily deliberations. It is the fundamental reason that enables men to decide upon any particular action. The vast majority of proponents for capitalism point out every possible economic reason to fight for capitalism. It brings prosperity, they say. It allows for the free flow of goods and services, they proclaim. There have been thousands of books and articles that show all the economic reasons to establish a capitalist society. Even with all of this there is no massive movement towards unfettered capitalism; in fact the opposite is true. The choice is still between a mixed economy and a completely controlled economy.

Socialist and Communist countries are even beginning to adhere to the economic praise for capitalism. They are proclaiming countries should utilize freedom to achieve ‘progressive’ ends. When the supposed defenders of capitalism sound exactly like the enemies of capitalism, it is time to alter course.

When men join a cause or a war (intellectual or otherwise) they do so for purely moral reasons. No one has ever gone to war or advocated a revolutionary new ideal because their economist decreed this new regime’s economic policy would increase GDP by 25%. When someone goes to war, it’s because they were given a moral motivation to do so.

In 480 BC the Persian Empire, ruled by Xerxes proclaimed King of Kings, attempted to conquer the known world based on the moral ideal of Zoroastrianism. This was a view that split the world in to two parts: Those in the Persian empire of “light and truth,” and everyone else of “darkness and lies.” It is no wonder they voraciously attempted to bring “light and truth” to the world. America’s Founding Fathers fought purely for the moral reason of their “inalienable rights.” The rebellions over tea taxes (economic reasons) were only representational of the moral indignation held by the founders. In fact, previous taxes were much higher than the tea tax which set off the revolution. In 1860 America, the south was motivated by the collectivist moral ideology of states’ rights and white supremacy. That each state could justify any collectivist goal they desired – in this instance; chattel slavery. As Dr. John Lewis shows, the north and south were fundamentally skewed by two opposing motive powers. “Alexander H. Stephens, vice-president of the confederacy, knew it, and expounded upon this at the Georgia convention on March 21, 1861: ‘our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [from abolition]; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition.’” And from the north, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “’slavery is essential to the community, or it must be fatal to it, - there is no middle ground… War has flung the door wide open, and four million slaves stand ready to file through… What the peace which the south has broken was not doing, the war which she has instituted must secure.’” Right or wrong, these men had a motive power to fight for their cause.

Whether the men were ancient Persians, Athenians, Spartans or modern Americans, Japanese, or Germans, they have always, and will always, fight because of the morality they have discovered. The destructiveness of giving men only economic reasons to accept an idea is that it cedes the moral high ground to ones opponents. Like saying one should adhere to a diet of eating healthy foods, but fail to defend against assertions that health should not be purpose of a diet. Instead, the purpose should be the sugar farmer’s needs; therefore, advocate high sugar diets.

Prosperity is not the reason to accept capitalism. Freedom is the reason. No other system allows a motivation of one’s own life as an end in itself.

To win the fight for capitalism, an absolute acceptance of the moral reasons for it are more than necessary, it is mandatory. Most men yearn to live a moral life, simply witness the vehement outcries against capitalism; they are all moral. Capitalism should be advocated because it is the only moral social system that is consistent with the rights of man.

Those who fight for tomorrow live in it today. The fight ahead will be as tough as any revolution; albeit, hopefully a bloodless battle of ideas. Winning is not guaranteed merely because someone is right. However, to those people who choose to struggle for the promise of future values achieve those values during the struggle. No matter the outcome, merely the possibility of long-term values is worth an attempt at the enormous feat ahead. Men must make choices to live. Let us choose life.

Endnotes

1. Rand, Ayn. The Virtue Of Selfishness. (New York: Signet, 1964), 17-20

2. Ibid., 21-23

3. Smith, Tara. Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 23

4. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. October 9th, 2007. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/ (accessed August 7th, 2010).

5.Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. (New York: Penguin Group, 1991), 240

6. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Oct 29, 2004. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/#io (accessed July 28, 2010).

7.Craig Biddle, “Capitalism and the Moral High Ground,” The Objective Standard Winter 2008-2009. Especially read pages 21 -22 for specific reasons that have been given as to why one should advocate a morality that requires enslavement of self to others.

8. Sowell, Thomas. Basic Economics. (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 168

9. Rand, Ayn. The Virtue Of Selfishness. (New York: Signet, 1964), 107-115

10. Ibid., 146 -149

11. Rand, Ayn. "What Is Capitalism?" In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, 1-30. (New York: Signet, 1967)

12. Rand, Ayn. The Virtue Of Selfishness.( New York: Signet, 1964), 92

13. Armentano, Dominick T. Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1982. There has been an immense amount of literature destroying the myth that free markets create destructive monopolies of any type. This book investigates all major cases of antitrust in America since its inception in 1890, and showing them all to have falsely identified the problem. Other sources worthy of investigation are: 1) Greenspan, Alan. "Antitrust." In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, 63-72. New York: Signet, 1967. 2) Branden, Nathaniel. "Common Fallacies About Capitalism." In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, 73-100. New York: Signet, 1967. 3) Epstein, Alex. "Vindicating Capitalism: The Real History of the Standard Oil Company." The Objective Standard, 2008., 4)Daniels, Eric. "Antitrust with a Vengeance:The Obama Administration's Anti-Business Cudgel." The Objective Standard, 2009-2010: 21-29

14. Peikoff, Leonard. The Ominous Parallels. (New York: Meridian, 1982), 120

15. Lewis, John David. Nothing Less Than Victory. (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010), 13-17

16Ibid. 143

Use It or Lose It

2010-01-31T13:22:00.004-07:00

We find ourselves in a peculiar era today. There are many people still alive who can recall a time when America was the envy of the world. Millions of immigrants fled to our borders for the chance to work even a menial job here. Intellectuals, doctors, scientists, and businessmen of all flavors came in droves to the freest country earth has ever held. Yet, we look around today and all the hard work seems to be crumbling in on itself. There are American cargo ships that must prepare for the possibility of pirate attacks (yes, pirates!). The greatest military the world has ever witnessed is unwilling to do what is necessary to protect American vessels on the open seas. Our country currently has over-zealous followers to a demagogue that resorts to extremely derogatory language against any who oppose them. This, of course, is not new, but the fervor has increased to the point of classifying anyone who disagrees with the present administration as right wing extremists (or “teabaggers”), and clumps them with right wing terrorists. Consider what this could mean if someone disagrees with a political policy and is deemed a terrorist under the Patriot Act (especially if the act is expanded).

This is the same country that flooded the world with unimagined goods and services. This is also the country that ushered in an era of unfathomed prosperity. Today, the average person living below the poverty line owns: a television, a car, a refrigerator, shelter, has money for food, and dozens of other amenities never possible to the richest kings of old.

The question becomes how did we get from where we were to where we are? The answer is simple. The hard working people, who produced all the great values we now enjoy, never spoke up against a government that grew brick by brick around them. It is the old story of the boiling frog experiment. Put a frog in a boiling pot of water and it will immediately jump out. Put a frog in a pot of room temperature water and slowly turn up the heat, and it will boil to death. Well folks, it looks like today we are the frog and we’re boiling.

But it’s not too late.

There are a myriad of ways a government can grow to eventually dominate our lives. It inevitably starts with words like “temporary” or “public interest.” A temporary fix will always lead to more “temporary” fixes. Once the government fails, which it almost always does, it will clamor for more, and bigger, “temporary” fixes. Anything done in the name of the public interest or public good is even more dangerous, primarily, because there is no such thing as “public interest.” A public is merely a collection of individuals, each with their own wants, needs and desires. When someone says they are doing something for the “public interest,” ask them; “Well, who decides what that is?” The answer in some form or another ends up being, “I do.”

Medicare in the 60’s was instituted because it was said to be in the best interest of the elderly to not have to rely on private charity. Despite the glaring fact that elderly people who were incapable of paying for their own medical care were taken care of by private charity. Social Security was instituted because it was in the public interest to have a guaranteed retirement plan paid for by everyone together. It was in the best interest of the country to force banks to invest in risky communities they normally avoided (e.g. the Community Reinvestment Act). It was in the interest of America to appease terrorists abroad for decades. Look what appeasement has gained us. The trend continues today. We are told it is in the public interest to bailout big banks, and big automakers. They are too big to fail is the alleged theory. The government tried to tell us it was in our best interests to let them take over our health care industry. Finally, some individuals decided to speak up.

These are only a fraction of our government’s policies for the past sixty plus years. They got away with it because of one reason. Like the frog, the American people never realized they were being boiled alive. As our freedoms were being slowly expropriated, there was silence. The only voices heard were arguing over which freedoms to eliminate next, and how to do it.

Our most important freedom, which is being hampered by both the Right and the Left, is our intellectual freedom. Our freedom to speak out is our protection against the formulation of a tyranny. Our founding fathers had a definite structure to the constitution. The Bill of Rights is our first set of amendments, with our first amendment being strictly about intellectual freedoms; such as free speech. They understood that without these freedoms, none others are possible. Unfortunately, it has been those against individual rights who have spoken their minds the most. The men and women who attempt to corrupt the concept of rights and apply them to whatever they desire.

What else is the meaning of the right to medical care, housing, jobs, food and all the other supposed rights? This is the idea that some people have the right to anything so long as they need it. Who shall provide for their need? This is when a proper right – or a right that infringes nothing on anyone else – is corrupted to mean whatever someone wants it to mean. The people advocating these policies force one group of Americans to pay for the need of another group. They accomplish this by shouting for the biggest gun in the world; the American government. The fact that this group expropriates the wealth of some to give to another by the use of the government, elucidates their true belief; might is right.

The people who advocated these so-called rights were the main individuals in the political and intellectual forum. The hard working American’s who paid for these policies were too busy producing values, and living their lives, to bother looking up long enough to notice the devastation around them.

We see where this silence has led America.

It is now time for those who never spoke up to take a stand, or one day we will all wake up to a totalitarian dictatorship with access to the most advanced weaponry on the planet. To stand by indifferently, crying that this can never happen in America is all our enemies’ desire of us. They aren’t interested in our support. They have their minority of fervent followers. They merely want you out of their way; they’ll gladly take your indifference.

If you do not use your freedoms, you will lose them.

To arm ourselves intellectually will take time and hard work, but it’s worth it. It is much easier to stop a dictatorship from occurring in our country than it will be to overthrow it. One can begin by reading books, articles, blogs newspapers and whatever else is available to start understanding the issues. Listen to intellectuals to hear what all are saying. Find sources on the internet, podcasts, and other online writings of people spending their time fighting for their liberties. Understand this, not all ideas were created equal; tread carefully. Hard work this may be, but vital to our future.

Once armed, it is necessary to be prepared to shoot your enemies on sight. Don’t be afraid, stand up on principles, such as the principle of individual rights, and you will soon discover your intellectual enemies will crumble like a house of cards – assuming you have rational ideas of course. It is very likely you will take fire, and this is why building your intellectual ammunition is so vital. Remember, once that freedom is gone, we’ll never see it again.

If it is your goal to bring America back to our intellectual foundation it must start now. It must start with each one of you. It is in all of our self interests to learn what is occurring in America today and take a stand. There is no longer an easy way to win back our freedoms. The easy way ended over a century ago. Now, we must work towards our own bright future. But not to worry, there have been great thinkers of the past, and today, that you can rely on. They were and are men and women who have paved the way for the possibility of a future with freedom; mental giants all. And, once you expose the enemy for what they are, mental midgets with an inferiority complex, they will shy away from any and all rational responses. Reveal their disguise and fight back the torrent of evils, now, before it’s too late.

Letter to the editor of the Denver Post 12/08/09

2009-12-12T15:06:00.003-07:00

Here is another letter I wrote to the open forum of the Denver Post. It is in regards to the article on sunday entitled: CSU Gun Ban is the Right Call.

This author makes several illogical statements to fuel his false conclusions. Point one, accidental shootings might occur if students are allowed concealed weapons (with a permit). This is equivalent to claiming we should ban driving on campus because students may get in accidents. Driving accidents do happen frequently and should be punished accordingly. Gun accidents from a licensed holder rarely happen, but should be punished if they do. Second point, shooting sprees are too rare to really worry about. This is no reason to take away any persons right to defend their life. When was the last time someone accidently shot thirty people? Third point, the killer probably wouldn’t run into a gun holder, especially considering the 21 year old law. This is a good reason to repeal the law banning 18 year olds from acquiring a license. The author raises one more point worthy of addressing. Rape victims don’t need to use guns, they should use pepper spray. The idea of worrying about the offender of a crime is not only silly, but evil.
In regards to the last sentence of students not fighting back; we will.

LTE to Denver Post 12/06/09

2009-12-09T09:17:00.002-07:00

Here is another Letter to the Editor I wrote to the Denver Post in their Open Forum section (unpublished). The title of the article I addressed was "We all Pay the Price for Obesity, Diabetes."
The article is about the growing problem of diabetes and obesity in America.

The author never addresses an actual solution; he simply spews out arbitrary stats and hides his agenda behind his supposed ‘good intentions.’ After all, who wouldn’t want to lower diabetes in America, especially in our children? Yet, look closer and it is clear this author simply wishes to enforce the way he believes we should all live our lives. The fact that costs will go up – because of government mandates, Medicare and Medicaid – is why we must do something, as the author postulates. The author does allude to a personal responsibility we all have to ourselves, but fails to connect that idea to the principle of individual’s rights.

The fact that we are paying people to lead unhealthy lives is the real problem. Begin to rid our nation of the thousands of government intervention in the medical industry, and we will begin to see people take responsibility for their lives. Nothing will get people thinking more about their own health, than when it hits their pocketbooks.

Letter to the editor of the Denver Post 11/29/09

2009-12-04T09:57:00.004-07:00

Below is a short LTE I wrote to the Denver Post in regards to THIS op-ed piece. The article is entitled "Salazar Right to Rebuff Critics." The article is about interior Secretary Ken Salazar position on the oil and gas industry, and critics pegging him as an anti-driller.

Be wary whenever you hear a politician claim what they are doing is for the “public good,” or for the good of the “taxpayer.” Salazar stated that trade groups don’t own public lands; taxpayers do. What exactly does that mean? Who specifically is the ‘taxpayer,’ and how does anyone know what’s best for them? An important thing to understand is that there is no such thing as a public. The public is merely made up of individuals. You cannot have a public commodity or a publicly own anything, because this concept “public” is simply an abstract term denoting a group of individuals. The question we must ask is if these policies help me as an individual?

By using this term “taxpayer” Salazar is asking for a free-for-all in his ability to trade political favors. After all, as long as he can say it is in the “public good” he can get away with almost anything. America’s constitution is designed to protect individual rights, not public rights; which is a contradiction in terms.

The Reality of Medical Care

2009-10-21T07:41:00.000-06:00

People forget that words have specific meanings and that certain ideologies can accrue very real negative consequences; whether intended or not. The health care question is not merely what type of government takeover we want, but how much our government can fake reality. American’s today are so far disconnected from reality that their concept of rights, among other concepts such as medical coverage versus medical care, has been eroded to mean whatever politicians or intellectuals tell them it means.
Ignoring facts has deadly consequences. For example, many American’s are under the impression that other industrialized countries are far superior to America because they all have some form of single-payer government medical care. The idea that a whole country is ‘covered’ for medical services will not alter reality. Medical services are a limited resource and thus it is impossible for every person in a country to have access to their own MRI, CAT, or private doctor twenty-four hours a day. Rationing must take place. The possible choices historically are to either allow the government to ration in any way it sees fit, or to allow prices to ration objectively in a free society. Looking strictly at the practical results it is the latter option which has proven far superior.
In Canada, a country that has a single-payer system, the average time a person might wait from being referred by a general practitioner to actual treatment is over 17.7 weeks according to The Fraser Institute’s annual waiting list survey. Depending on where a Canadian patient resides the time could range anywhere from two to twenty-four weeks simply to receive a diagnosis using machinery such as MRI’s, CT’s or ultrasounds. Britain is no different, worse even. In 2002 the London Observer (3/3/02) published statistics illustrating cancer patients waiting over eight months for treatments, during which time cancer can become incurable. Even taking into account America’s heavily regulated medical industry, it usually only takes a few days to receive diagnosis and begin treatment.
The evidence that socialized medical care systems are deadly can be seen by simple investigations into any countries with socialized medicine. Yet, the country always damned, America, is the one country the entire world depends on for new medications, treatments, technological advances, and more.
Another absurdity often touted is that unchecked capitalism has allowed greedy business people to run up costs on innocent and unsuspecting customers. To believe this idea is to completely divorce oneself from reality. Our government is the single largest spender of medical services in America, totaling nearly half of all spending in the industry. The so-called ‘private’ companies are subject to thousands of federal and state mandates, regulations, oversights and more. To call this capitalism is an absolute abnegation of reality.
A more serious abnegation is American’s vast disconnect with reality in regards to the concept of rights. To believe that someone is born with a right to have unlimited access (or any access) to medical care; is to disregard the fact that medical care doesn’t grow in nature, and that someone will have to provide this service whether they want to or not. There can be no such thing as the right to enslave.
It is claimed that every American has the right to life; after all, it says so in the constitution. Once again, words have specific meanings and to negate the concept of rights is to destroy all of humankind’s progress so far. A right can only pertain to actions. A person has a right to pursue a career in order to make money so they can buy a house or pay for a health insurance plan that fits their needs. They do not have a right to a car, a house, health care, a cell phone, a trip to Fiji or any other such good or service which must be provided at the expense of someone else.
To those who say that many American’s are unable to afford health insurance; look at reality. American’s can most certainly afford medical care. Where do you think the government gets the money it spends? They get it from the American middle class taxpayer. Although, the rich do pay higher taxes, there are vastly more middle class American’s than there are rich ones, and the burden will assuredly fall to the middle. For those truly unable to afford insurance, they must rely solely on other people’s charity. Regarding this concept and its modern negation, consider two points.
First, there can only be a small minority of people who truly can’t afford healthcare in any country considering comprehensive single-payer health care. If a majority couldn’t afford medical care that country couldn’t afford a massive government takeover.
Second, this small minority must rely on private voluntary charity, which is abundant in a free society. In the 1960’s when Medicare and Medicaid were being pushed through congress, liberals did not claim that the elderly were not receiving medical care, because they were. Less fortunate elderly people should not have to rely on charity is what they claimed. Switching the meaning of a word doesn’t change reality. If some people receive a service at no cost to them, and paid for by others, this is charity. It doesn’t matter what name someone gives it. To assume the government taking money from one group of individuals and giving it to another is not forced charity is like saying a college student receiving most of their income from their parents is ‘self-reliant.’
Evading facts of reality doesn’t change anything. To continually push our country down the road of socialism and call this a good solution is to flat out ignore all the countries throughout history that have suffered under socialist ideology. It is time we advocate “change;” let’s try capitalism for once.

The Real Goal of the Green Climate Crusade - A speech by Dr. Keith Lockitch

2009-10-17T00:18:00.003-06:00

Come see Dr. Keith Lockitch explain what the Climate crusade is really all about.
Located in Denver Colorado on the Auraria Campus on November 18th from 6:30pm-8:30pm

The Real Goal of the Green Climate Crusade
Environmentalists claim that our use of carbon-based energy is altering the climate, making us more vulnerable to climate disasters. Human survival, they insist, requires the immediate abandonment of fossil fuels in favor of carbon-free sources. So why do environmentalist groups vehemently oppose projects involving every alternative form of energy ever proposed to replace fossil fuels—including wind farms and solar power plants? And why do they ignore the dramatic degree to which industrial development under capitalism has reduced the risk of harm from severe climate events? Before we rush headlong into drastic climate policies and energy rationing, a critical examination of these policies is urgently needed. Dr. Keith Lockitch will address these important issues and answer audience questions.

Click HERE for more information.

The Importance of the Amazon Kindle 2

2009-08-23T12:07:00.003-06:00

It sits there, next to my computer, whirring in exalted silence, seeming to say to me, “read me! Read me!” It is the Amazon Kindle 2. For those poor uninformed souls out there, unaware of what a kindle is, put yourself at ease, I shall reveal to you the wonder that is The Kindle 2. A kindle – produced by Amazon – may be one of the next great technological improvements of our time. Simply put, it is an electronic e-book reader. While true that there are other e-book readers on the market, and soon to be more, the Kindle easily trumps them all.

The Kindle 2 (Amazon’s second version) is stock full of new goodies. It includes special gray tone technology to ensure ease of reading on your eyes – it’s just like reading a print book. The screen has anti-glare technology, and the kindle also is equipped with whisper net capabilities. Whisper net is free internet – works like a cell phone – to allow ease of purchasing new books, magazines, newspapers, blogs and more; on the go. The Kindle also has a speak to me function – although this is like listening to a robot attempting to pronounce proper names not in its dictionary, still somewhat effective for reading on the go.

The way in which The Kindle 2 will revolutionize our lives is threefold. One, people who found excuses not to read, such as difficulty in carrying books around wherever they go, will have no such excuses today; the kindle is lightweight and little thicker than a fountain pen. Next, individuals who wish to write: books, blogs, newspapers, magazines, but find it difficult to get their work published, now have a cheaper alternative. Who needs the printed word anymore? Lastly, it will save the poor backs of every student the world over! Why would anyone carry humongous loads of books around in burdensome backpacks when a Kindle can fit in the back pocket of many a baggy jean? Moreover, The Kindle 2 holds over 150,000 books, not including your own online library – care of Amazon.

This remarkable product was brought about in a free market, where the decline of readers of the printed word has opened up a whole new market. Yet again, we are given a brilliant example of free minds in open markets establishing new ways to give their customers what they want. E-reading will not eliminate reading, but enhance it; and, assuming the government stays out of this sector of the economy, the price of The Kindle and e-readers like it will drop dramatically in price as technology improves through competition – much like computers – making this wonderful product (with a battery life of up to two weeks) available to everyone. Bye-bye New York Times, Denver Post, Economist, Constitutional Reporters – PRINT – I have my kindle now, I’ll see you there.

Thomas Sowell's "The Housing Boom and Bust," A review

2009-08-22T19:55:00.004-06:00

Before Obama took office his soon-to-be chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel uttered these words, which every American should clearly understand: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” He added: “What I mean by that is that it’s an opportunity to do things you could not do before.” (Ch. 5) That this was said explicitly, with no consequences, is atrocious. Whether said explicitly or not, however, this seems to be the policy of most politicians today. Dr. Sowell, author of Economic Facts and Fallacies, and Basic Economics, points out the consequences of Mr. Emanuel’s statement, and how true it turned out to be. Dr. Sowell illustrates the reality of the harm caused by government meddling in the housing industry, explaining the use of ‘solutions’ in order to fix imaginary ‘problems.’ “What is called a solution in politics is often simply a patch put over problems caused by previous political ‘solutions,’” as Dr. Sowell puts it.

In the Housing Boom and Bust, Dr. Sowell shows the impacts of all the major government programs in the housing industry, and their dramatic consequences. This book holds all of the relevant necessities for anybody who wishes to clearly understand the root causes of the housing crisis; including the loud cries by some experts and public officials who warned against this disaster years before it occurred.

Dr. Sowell points out the efficiency in which the government – both the Bush administration and the Obama – passed bills such as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The idea behind this bill was apparently to ‘stimulate’ a stagnating economy, in other words, get people spending money again. However, the government throwing money at banks had the exact opposite effect; predictably this was immediately blamed on the greedy Bank CEO’s and their enormous paychecks. It seems that politicians and their media cronies can always blame someone else when the very specific plans they institute fail. The TARP money, ideally, was going to trickle its way throughout the economy. “The idea sounds fine, as most political ideas do. But the real question is: Is that what has actually happened? Is that what usually happens?” (ch4) In his book, Dr. Sowell adamantly states the answer is no, and through clear empirical evidence he proves his case. As he points out, the only real increase in spending was accomplished by the government.

There has been no worse patch instituted by the government then the imaginary problem America has had with ‘affordable’ housing. Acts such as the Community Reinvestment act of 1977 (CRA) forced banks to make loans to people with bad credit history, merely because politicians wanted to give the illusion of affordable housing for everyone, and this gave way to such ‘creative’ loans as adjustable rate mortgages (ARMS) and eventually progressing to no down payment housing. When interest rates were raised by the Federal Reserve, the first people to be hit the hardest were usually minorities, the very same group of people the government was attempting to make housing affordable for, “so much for the favor being done to minorities.” (Ch. 3)

In order for politicians to reach their goal of increased power, facts must be not only distorted, but ignored. The idea that housing was somehow unaffordable in America was first untrue, and second, increased housing prices were caused by government interference in the housing markets to begin with – a pre patch, patch so to speak. The average price for a home in America is only 3.6 times Americans average income, in Great Britain it’s 5.5 times, New Zealand 6.3, as in many other places. Before the 1970’s Americans only spent around twice as much on their home as their median income – meaning “A family dedicating a quarter of its income to a mortgage could pay off a loan for a home in a little more than 10 years.”(Ch. 2) Of course, this all changed with legislation passed in the 70’s, such as CRA.

One importance economic fact to understand is that it does not cost a million dollars more to construct a house in California as it does most anywhere else in the U.S. The reason for the extra expense is land cost. However, Dr. Sowell explicates that a vast majority of land in coastal California, among many places across the U.S., is illegal to build on, which subsequently drives up the price of the remaining land, and is a major cause to the huge increase of creative financing for home loans in these regions.

There is much misunderstanding in regards to the housing crisis. Moreover, most people don’t even know who all the major players involved are. Government organizations whose duty it was to prevent a crisis like this, such as: The Federal Reserve, The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). All of these organizations were set up by the government in order to protect Americans from the catastrophe that they though was inevitable, their failure indicates not the failure of the free market – which they claim – but a failure to realize that the manipulation of the economy by the government can only lead to one horrid conclusion.

Beyond the major players involved in this fiasco are all of the economic misunderstandings of the housing market, which Sowell clears up. He covers the economic impacts of zoning laws, minimum lot size laws, open space laws, height restrictions, preservations laws, building permit laws and much more. In his explanation of the many impacts of these policies, Dr. Sowell elucidates the reality that when facts are pushed around Washington, demagoguery always trumps.

The only missing ingredient to this book seems to be its utter failure to defend capitalism on a moral ground. He makes the very loud claim that “rights are not the issue” and that “The purpose of Government is not to exercise every conceivable right it has. But to exercise whatever wisdom it has for the benefit of the country.”(Ch. 5) While his book shows every practical reason the government should leave the housing market alone, he doesn’t mention one moral reason. If it is practical, but “rights are not the issue” then doing the moral thing should be obligatory, and since there is no defense of the morality involved it is left open as to why we should only follow the practical reasoning. It doesn’t really matter that the government enlists laws like “open space laws” under the claim that we are destroying too much nature even though we only inhabit 10% of the land in The United States. The relevant moral problem is why does a government have the ability to force American’s to build their homes on more expensive land because some interest groups feel that land has intrinsic value?

Dr. Sowell has once again put forth a fascinating case study into the history of the housing crisis going all the way back to the 30’s, and despite its moral lacking it stands up as one of the few books giving a thorough breakdown of all the relevant factors regarding the 21st century housing boom and bust.

This book is available for sale on Amazon HERE for $16.47

Reporting myself

2009-08-06T22:39:00.001-06:00

Below is an e-mail I sent to the whitehouse in order to report myself for opposing Obama's new healthcare bill. Ari Armstrong and many others have written in, and so should you. Read here for more information.

Here is what I sent:

I am a 24 year old film student at the University of Colorado Denver. I want to turn myself in to whoever is in charge of your thought police. I have started a newspaper, a blog, and I am currently working on a video to infect the youth on campus of that nasty word which you have no right in uttering; truth. I will ensure that many young people are aware of what you are doing to their futures. Please inform me of where I need to go in order to turn myself in for the abhorrent crime of thinking.

Tea Contest Video

2009-08-03T00:18:00.001-06:00

This is a video Cornered Tumbleweed Productions did for a 15k scholarship. Please check it out, the more hits we get the better chance we have of winning.

Thanks for all the help everyone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWDgPpuH92Y

A Schopenhauerian dialogue on the frustraions of a broken heart

2009-07-23T12:44:00.006-06:00

In a Nazi concentration camp two Jewish captives sit, huddled together in the freezing winter snow seeming to hang tenaciously to the last remnants of their humanity. Around them are a few hovels and men in Nazi uniforms laughing and eating heartily. Once in a while a Nazi officer walks by wearing a large extravagant fur coat eating a massive turkey leg spilling it all over his shirt and looks right down at the two captives and says “I dare you to eat the crumbs.” The captives don’t move they merely huddle closer together. Upon witnessing this scene it looks almost comical in its horrific juxtaposition of happiness and human depravity; the eyes of any visitor are led directly to the massive painting of the camps leader the man to whom all owe their allegiance a huge 10 foot by 12 foot painting of the fuehrer Hitler.

Jew1: Oh how I miss my dear one.
Jew2: Yes, I know.

Jew2 slyly picks up a few crumbs from the preceding officer and shovels them greedily into his mouth.

Jew2: I think it is time you just realize where we are. We are in a concentration camp and will soon be dead, so be it.
Jew1: I don’t want to die! I want to see my wife, just one more time, I wish for life!
Jew2: Don’t you see there is no life left here; there is only death.
Jew1: OOH but…

Jew1 gets up and begins dancing and singing.

Jew1: OOH but… MYYYY “Heart, my achy breaky heart”

As he begins to sing a knife flies right next to his face and loud boos and calls to SHUT UP come from the Nazi tent next to them. Jew2 seems unperturbed by this sudden outburst and greedily picks up a bug and sticks it into his mouth.

Jew2: So you have a broken heart… Who cares, we’ll all be dead soon anyway, life doesn’t mean a thing.
Jew1: But it does! Don’t you see, as long as we have life there is a chance, ooh my friend there is a chance, we can give into our morbid desires and pass away into the ether or we can fight back! I say we fight.

A loud yell comes from the Nazi tent: “SHUT UP YOU JEW!”

Jew2: Well you won’t have much of a life soon if you don’t stop talking. I say we see if we can get more crumbs from the officers tent. They are too busy masquerading as philosophers to know what’s going on; if you would just be quiet.
Jew1: But we can’t! We might get caught and die and be killed, then what will we do?
Jew2: I have come to view life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.
Jew1: What? What on earth does that mean?
Jew2: EXACTLY!
Jew1: You can do whatever you want; I’m staying right here.
Jew2: Suit yourself.

Jew2 cleverly sneaks from one post to another. Whenever an officer walks by the area he simply begins whistling a Richard Wagner tune lightheartedly and pretends to be doing some form of work. The first time he is seen he takes an officers coat and begins to dust it off; another time he grabs a pot of coffee from the Nazi tent and begins filling the cups of the nearby officers. All the while, he is slowly taking crumb after crumb from the tables and floor around the officers and slipping it into his tucked in shirt. Eventually he seems to be attaining a bit of a belly. Soon, he heads back over to Jew1.

Jew2: SEE! Mmmm. You are sitting around accomplishing nothing, while I have attained some food for myself!

Jew1 looks heartily at the food while saying this line

Jew1: how can I think of food when I haven’t seen my wife for 4 months! I miss her so much. What if she’s been forced to find another man? Or what if she’s dead? Or worse?
Jew2: Meh, all my family was killed long ago; what does it matter? Human existence must be some kind of error anyway! Its bad one day, worse the next.
Jew1: I know it seems that way, but I won’t accept that this is the norm of life. I have lived 32 years of life in relative ease and great comfort! I have seen life is benevolent. Ooh woe is me. What is happening to this world?

Jew1 begins sobbing hysterically. Just as he begins sobbing, a rather morose looking young Nazi soldier walks past them and looks down at the two Jews.

Nazi: What are you crying about Jew? Why aren’t you satisfied with what we’ve given you? You are still alive and able to serve men such as us. Quit your blubbering.
Jew2: He is sad because he has lost his love.
Nazi: AAAH. Love. What a terrible mistake is love. Your woman is probably off procreating with some man, I would not worry about that too much, Jew, you have other things to be tending to; life is miserable and we are here to help you through this misery. We will see that you’re life is no longer a waste. Look Jew, I will tell you something. Do you see that woman Jew over there? Why do you not go there and copulate with her? She is as good as any other right?

The three look over at the raggedly ugly woman stumbling into the scene.

Jew1: oh but my lovely is mine. I miss her, how can I imagine being with someone who is not my lovely?
Nazi: She is only your lovely in the past. Not anymore. Love is fleeting and only a result of your will-to-life as father Schopenhauer teaches. It is not up to you who you love. You only claim to love this woman of yours because in your subconscious mind you believe you will breed better Jews from her. Let me tell you, one Jew is as good as another.
Jew1: Oh no sir that isn’t true! I know this might seem strange to you, but we are meant for one another. I just know I will see my darling dearest again. I can see us out on the balcony of our home, which does not exist anymore, just dancing.

Jew1 gets up again and grabs the Nazi officer in a daydream like trance and begins singing and dancing with him.

Jew1: Heaven, I’m in Heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak, and I seem to find the happiness I seek, when we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.

Once again loud shouts from the tent and a barrage of eaten turkey leg bones, plates, forks, knives come flying towards the three individuals. The Nazi soldier composes himself and pushes jew1 away; trying to play off the fact that he was dancing voluntarily.

Nazi: You are crazy.
Jew2: That’s what I’ve been telling him for months now!
Nazi: Shut up! Your opinion doesn’t matter.
Jew2: I apologize. I am simply agreeing with everything you say. This is a world in which human life must be some kind of mistake; this is sufficiently proved by the simple observation that man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy; that their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only given over to boredom; and that boredom is a direct proof that existence is in itself valueless, for boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence.[1]
Nazi: I am glad you have read father Schopenhauer. It is too bad you are only a Jew.
Jew2: yes. It is too bad.
Jew1: Wait! You haven’t helped me with my broken heart at all!
Nazi: As our father would conclude “That our Existence itself implies guilt is proved by the fact of death.”
Jew1: What does that mean? And how does that help my broken heart.
Jew2: OOH. Show him show him good sir!

Nazi systematically takes out his side arm and shoots Jew1 three times in the chest. Jew2 claps and says:

Jew2: yes he is no longer guilty. Good day to you Sir.

Nazi summarily shoots Jew2.

As Nazi holsters his sidearm and walks away Jew1 miraculously stands up and begins singing to his beloved.

Jew1: Night and day, you are the one; Only you beneath the moon or under the sun; Whether near to me, or far it’s no matter darling where you are I think of you day and night.

Once again pots, pans, knives, food, drink, even a stuffed animal comes flying at the Jew, and everyone yells together: SHUT UP!

[1] Schopenhauer, Arthur. On the Vanity of Existence. Essays and Aphorisms. s.l. : Penguin Group.

Integration of Music and Movies

2009-07-17T23:47:00.004-06:00

Today, movies and music go hand in hand, and it seems hard to imagine a time when movies had no sound; in fact, even from the very outset of images on screen music was played alongside them. Throughout the 20th century many possibilities have been attempted in regards to the integration of movies and music. These attempts usually became the conventionalities we see today, such as the cliché on screen of playing a slow sad musical composition with a slow sad scene in a movie. Eventually it has been attempted – somewhat successfully – to juxtapose two mixed aspects of sight and sound in order to convey some mixed concepts; this is when a director has a high suspense action scene and has a slow classical composition as the background music, and many times this contrast can effectively – if in a bromidic fashion – emphasis the event occurring on screen.

These attempts at using images and music can, if done correctly, result in magnificently portrayed abstract concepts. However, in almost every instance a movie director has a certain task – such as to project love – and merely uses love songs along with the story of Romeo and Juliet; when this happens all the director has accomplished is a simple bromidic surface level concrete of this complex abstract idea, and no one is left understanding what love really means or where it comes from. The combination of images and sound are capable of portraying much deeper concepts. Unfortunately, this has not been attempted properly very often; however, there are three movies where they have been: Immortal Beloved by Bernard Rose, Copying Beethoven by Agneszka Holland, and Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus by Milos Forman.

The first of these Immortal takes place primarily in the form of an inquisitive search. Beginning with Beethoven’s death, a letter is found; Beethoven’s last will and testament, which he names a new heir to his estates and it’s not his brother, but his immortal beloved. The letter sends one of Beethoven’s most faithful servants – Schindler – on a journey into Beethoven’s past. He discovers a troubling man. It is a story that delves into the making of a musical genius; it’s theme: the effects music has upon our emotions and what it can do to their creator.

The next movie Copying Beethoven covers a much smaller time span in Beethoven’s life; mainly the composing and debut of his 9th symphony. A female musical copyist is sent to help Beethoven finish his composition before the appearance in four days. The story is more about the copyist’s revelations through the genius of Beethoven.

Lastly, Amadeus is a movie that takes place in the story telling of the movies main character – the court composer Antonio Salieri. When Salieri discovers the musical brilliance he has always admired is wasted on a childish jokester like Mozart; he begins to plot for Mozart’s demise. Through a series of failures and successes Salieri is finally triumphant in defeating Mozart, but it has cost them both a great deal.

These three movies depict music in three distinctive manners. Immortal uses carefully selected images to convey the mood Beethoven was trying to impose. In Copying, they merely use the reactions of audience members to show the mood. Amadeus shows only what the two main characters feel as a result of their music. Amadeus is different than the other two because it is naturalistic to a much higher degree; the movies main goal is to enumerate the steps and consequences of a sadistic man’s jealous nature about his own inferiority. What makes the movie to be a mere surface level naturalist movie is the fact that it takes humans as readymade, and it presupposes people as being jealous without showing where it comes from or what causes a person to become so jealous.

Movies have an uncanny ability to express concepts to us using one of our most important perceptual senses; sight: it also can use our sense of hearing as a clear awareness of the mood the movie is giving us. To combine the two – sight and sound – is of profound importance that has not been properly accomplished. This is due to the fact that as far as our precepts go in music we have not discovered an objective manner in deciphering and understanding the meaning of sounds in regards to our subconscious mind.

Most movies, especially today, show a very crude understanding of music and what it is able to achieve. An example is a recent movie: The Soloist by Joe Wright. During an important scene wherein one of the main characters – Nathaniel Ayers played by Jamie Foxx – is taken to a private rehearsal of a local orchestra and is overcome by the music he loves so much. Mr. Wright has assumed the very worst in regards to music and our subconscious. The way in which music is ‘shown’ in this movie is by random colors thrown on screen in a Stan Brakhage manner. This displays the director’s vision of music; which is mystical, other-worldly and unknowable.

Art is a selective re-creation based on an artist’s view. In The Soloist the director has chosen to elucidate his ideals as to the epistemology behind music using random shapes and colors; in essence, he claims that music can only give the emotional equivalent of an annoying pin prick, but he doesn’t understand that music is capable of much more.

The most unfulfilled potential in art lies with movies. Since movies are a visual art, but don’t merely give one image but thousands of images over a certain span of time, they have the ability of communicating what an artist painting a series of paintings could never dream of doing. The movie has only one master and term-setter which is its literary aspect; this means literature is what provides the metaphysical element that enables the pictures on screen to become a concretization of an abstract view of human beings. When the literary aspect is removed from film it is simply a vaudeville or circus. Music has always been an incidental accompaniment to movies.

The most unique of the arts is music. This particular art form works backwards in regard to a human’s interaction between the conscious mind and the automatic functions of the subconscious. All other arts create a physical object such as a book or a painting, which then carries the person’s perceptual grasp upon the object to a conceptual grasp.[1] As Rand put it, the pattern is:

From perception – to conceptual understanding – to appraisal – to emotion… In
music it is perception – to emotion – to appraisal – to conceptual
understanding. (emphasis mine)

When listening to a piece of music it can seem very similar to dreaming. Ostensibly random images pop in the listeners mind, but these images are not exactly random since the abstract emotion is carefully selected by the composer. The power of music is to use the vibrations from sonorous bodies to bring about a particular feeling of a certain abstraction. For example, a musical composition cannot show you what piousness looks like – as in the Bellini painting St. Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy – but it can give you the feeling; it can’t show you what it is like to stand in front of your beloved after returning from war, but it can give you the feeling. With music’s ability to reach straight into your subconscious emotions and then allow your mind to perform the concretization process the possibilities for music is as of yet almost completely unknown.

In particular scenes throughout the three movies – Immortal Beloved, Copying Beethoven, and Amadeus- each director gives specific examples of what they believe music’s capabilities are, and of the three only Immortal comes close to any particular truth in this manner.

In Amadeus music is shown mainly through its effects upon the two main characters, which incidentally somewhat coincides with the plot-theme: The jealous Salieri’s destructive attempts to destroy Mozart. Also, the movies theme is the inspiration of genius, and what effects this has on inferiors. The movie fails artistically to convey where that inspiration comes from; and it also fails to properly use music to express the abstraction of jealousy. This is due to the naturalistic approach of the story. When we see a scene which has Mozart or Salieri conducting, the movie concentrates upon what it is doing to the composer, and sometimes a few audience members. This is presupposing the antecedent event; in other words, the movie’s director expects the viewer to simply enjoy the same emotions as the composer, which almost negates the effect the music might have.

Copying Beethoven is guilty of the same laziness as Amadeus. The director expects the viewer to garner a sense of what he wishes to convey as the concrete, but he does not want to do the work himself, he is like a child beating on pots and pans in his parent’s kitchen expecting beautiful meanings to emerge. Both directors are succeeding in producing very rudimentary concepts in regards to the abstract feeling or idea they want to allow the audience to understand. Immortal goes a little further in both the explanation of music and its subsequent portrayal of it throughout the movie.

In one of the scenes that sets Immortal apart in regards to understanding music, and being a bit more of a romantic story, is the scene when Herr Schindler – the character going on the journey to discover who Beethoven’s immortal beloved is – tells the story of how he met Beethoven: Schindler is listening to two virtuoso’s rehearse the new Beethoven Sonata, Beethoven enters and loudly starts talking to Schindler – Beethoven is mostly deaf by this point – and he explains his understanding of music

Music is a dreadful thing. What is it? What does it do..? If you hear a marching
band; you march. If you hear a mass you take communion. It is the power of music
to carry one directly into the mental state of the composer. The listener has no
choice, it is like hypnotism… So now, what was in my mind when I wrote this? A
man is trying to reach his lover, his carriage has broken down in the rain;
wheels are stuck in the mud, she will only wait so long. This is the sound of
his agitation.

What sets this movie apart in regard to understanding music is the image shown during this sequence. As Schindler listens to Beethoven’s Sonata an image comes to the screen of an incident that has happened in Beethoven’s mind that inspired the Sonata, and the image is of Beethoven struggling in a dark, muddy, insolent forest; rain dousing him, his muscles strained to the extreme trying to push this carriage back onto the road so he may reach his beloved. It is important to note when listening to this Sonata that nobody else will be imposed by this particular image of Beethoven pushing a carriage in the rain – the listener will only get the feeling the composer had at that time.

As an attest to Beethoven’s greatness many movies have used his 9th symphony in their musical score. However, the two movies, Immortal and Copying both sought to demonstrate what the cause and effect of this piece has on our subconscious emotions. In Copying the director illuminates his surface level approach with regards to musical capabilities. As Beethoven is conducting the concert the camera holds on the intense emotions of Beethoven, his copyist and Karl (his nephew); among a few other audience members. By holding the camera on those three individuals it is left unsaid how and why they are feeling such emotions. Immortal does a much more succinct job with this same concert. As the concert begins we are shown an image of a young Beethoven after just having been abused by his father; he is running away to the sound of The Ode to Joy. As the boy reaches a pond the music is approaching its climax. The boy takes his shirt off and lays half naked in the dark black pond reflecting the starry night sky above. The camera has a bird’s eye view of the boy; then it begins to pull back with the increasing intensity of the music, and as it pulls back the boy looks as if he is laying among the stars, which concretizes in one image the feeling of heroics and the feeling of being among the gods that Beethoven was trying to demonstrate.

This image is a great example of what a proper marriage of sight and sound in motion can be capable of in art. These two mediums, together, have the ability to more succinctly concretize certain philosophical abstractions in our minds. It is not enough to merely juxtapose music to an image and randomly hope people will grasp the full meaning of the idea being attempted. It is unfortunate that psychologically we have not intoned the meaning of sounds epistemologically. And, there is still room for much improvement in this art. If one were able to fully integrate abstract ideas in both sight and sound, through a story, an artist could reach a level of the human psyche rarely ever touched. Understanding the basic principles of a human’s ability to form concepts could inevitably bring about new forms of meaning in images and sounds on screen. It would take a genius psychologist, magnificent composer and brilliant philosopher all in one to formulate a brand new way of integrating sounds to images. This would bring about new possibilities in all of the arts, and would make possible grand achievement in other areas of human endeavors. This form of integration could bring about an entirely new artistic era and usher humans back to the knowledge of their own benevolent greatness.

[1] Rand, Ayn. Art and Cognition. The Romantic Manifesto. New York : New American Library, 1971

Epicurus Dilemma Dialogue

2009-07-13T22:53:00.002-06:00

An old woman Helena Piraska kneels in a garden, meticulously working the various flowers of a grand garden. She carefully holds a beautiful Acacia Rose flower in one hand, and carefully prunes the petals around it; with the same loving care she pulls out a spray bottle and gently sprays the flower, breathing life into life. At that moment George Boswell comes out of the large estate Helena is working at and walks to his car; grumbling to himself.

George Boswell: Helena! You’re still here, there’s no need; the garden looks fine.
Helena Piraska: Yes sir, I am almost done here.

George walks over to his car and before getting in turns to the old woman.

GB: Helena, may I ask you a question?
HP: What is it?
GB: How are you always so happy, honestly, I do not pay you that well.
HP: You pay me for the job I do, and I thank you for that.
GB: How can you be so happy from the little I give you?
HP: You do not give me anything, I earn it, it is not a gift, but I procure it for my services: I earn it.
GB: Ok. Ok. You earn it, true enough. How can you be so happy to live off of so much?
HP: I get what I need from you.
GB: Why do you keep evading my question?
HP: Honestly, sir, I don’t think you would understand.
GB: I think now I want to be more open to listening, things aren’t going to great.
HP: What has happened?
GB: I just lost an enormous deal that would have put me on the map; I mean really put me above the rest of those hacks. I could have been one of the top 50 richest men in America. But not anymore, who knows what will happen now.
HP: Are you going to lose all of your money?
GB: Good god no! I’ll be fine. I have enough to last the rest of my life in luxury. It just doesn’t seem to be enough. I break down corporations and sell them off piecemeal; but sometimes I feel as if I’m doing it unscrupulously, and I don’t like how I earn my money anymore. Still, I know I want money, I want to have money and I never seemed good at producing anything, only destruction. I feel lost if I can’t be up there with the big boys. So, I guess I’m just curious how someone can live off of the amount that I give them? And, at the same time seem so happy!
HP: it’s easy really. I just don’t have the same values as you do Mr. Boswell.
GB: What do you mean; values? What do you value?
HP: Well, I would prefer working on my relationship with my husband rather than on a huge multi-million dollar deal. That type of value.
GB: Oh, so you enjoy the simple pleasures.
HP: If you wish to call them simple.
GB: What would you call them?
HP: Just about as extravagant as your values sir. I follow a certain philosophy, Epicureanism, or rational hedonism as some might call it.
GB: Now you’re speaking more my language. If you are such a hedonist how can you be content working in a garden for nickels? I’m a hedonist.
HP: Maybe, but are you living rationally is the real question?
GB: I enjoy pleasures, and I understand that they are the first good and that they are natural to us. This is what Epicurus said.
HP: Yes he did, but I think you should finish his statement. “For this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them: and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time. Every pleasure then because of its natural kinship to us is good, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen: even as every pain also is an evil, yet not all are always of a nature to be avoided. Yet by a scale of comparison and by the consideration of advantages and disadvantages we must form our judgment on all these matters…”
GB: What does that mean?
HP: Be rational.
GB: ugh, I must have skipped that class-
HP: What?
GB: Nothing! Can you explain that a bit for me please?
HP: Sure, it means that you must rationally choose what pleasures are best suited for you. Not all pleasure is the best, and you also much choose the pains which you need to survive and which are best suited to endure; not all pains are worth having. For example, you are in good shape; would you advocate eating 3 cartons of chocolate ice cream if you wanted to stay in good shape?
GB: Of course not. That would make me sick.
HP: That is a rational choice, and you should avoid those types of extremes. There are certain pains you must endure, for example; the pain it takes when you are working out in order to stay in shape. You, however, would not want to lift weights all day every day, or to try and lift 600 lbs when you know you are only capable of 250.
GB: yes, true.
HP: Well this is what it means to be a true Epicurean. I choose the values which are best suited to enhance my life, which I think are quite universal in many manners.
GB: Such as your husband?
HP: Exactly, I never eat alone. Tonight we are having friends over, I am working hard now so I may get done with work and go to the grocery store to buy a nice bottle of Pinot Noir, this I will gladly share with those who truly understand me in this world; people who do not need to be fooled by fancy clothes or nice cars, but who truly understand who I am and what I mean in this world. That is a value that you cannot buy Mr. Boswell.
GB: I can see the value in that. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had good company over. I think this conversation is the best I’ve had for quite a while. You know, when I started in college I was a bright eyed wannabe philosopher. Now I realize the practical.
HP: Have you received just compensation?
GB: No, I suppose I haven’t. Honestly, I don’t ever feel very happy. There was one time I felt happy.
HP: When was that sir?
GB: My freshman year, I met a grad student who was emphasizing in Aristotle. He told me a little bit about the great organizer, but there was one thing I really wanted to understand more. He showed me the theory of Aristotle’s subsequent metaphysics on the immovable movers. I believed they were supposed to be the giants of industry in today’s terms, but now I realize they are that and much more. I would really like to speak to that grad student again. I think his name was Andrew Ryan. I only met him the one time, but based off of that encounter he showed me what he believed were Aristotle’s intention. I suppose I really didn’t study it enough and took upon myself the wrong premises. All I can remember now is the mere fact that Aristotle could come up with and organize into theory and practice so much that this grad student thousands of years later was going to major in him. I knew there was no way anyone would ever major in me, I couldn’t even understand his very succinct explanation of the immovable mover. How was I to change the ideas of the world? I knew I would never be great enough to achieve such things, but I could go down a line my father did. He was a businessman, so I felt I could be one too.
HP: Why don’t you change your path and continue where you were?
GB: Bah, it’s too late now Helena. I’m a businessman, or I should say I destroy businessmen…
HP: I think, before I go, I will let you in on one of the major acquisitions Epicureans teach, which is thought.
GB: Yes, I’d like to hear about that.
HP: Epicurus was determined to ensure he and his friends would analyze all things involved in their lives; whether concerning death, money, illness etc. He believed firmly that upon rational thought a person would come to the proper conclusions about money. It isn’t bad to have money, it is just important to also have friends in order to experience life with. You can’t experience life with just your money Mr. Boswell.
GB: I know.
HP: Well I hope you will think on this: “The wealth demanded by nature is both limited and easily procured; that demanded by idle imaginings stretches on to infinity.”
GB: I don’t understand.
HP: It will take some thought, Mr. Boswell.
GB: Ok. I will think about what you said and I’ll be back! (To himself) To think, I have my own philosopher in my backyard.
GB (CONT): Oh by the way, take this; I want you to buy a nice bottle of Pinot Noir for you and your friends on me.
HP: I do not accept alms.
GB: It is not alms Helena. It is payment for my first philosophy lesson.

Bad Science and Green Crazyness Isn't New

2009-07-11T09:38:00.004-06:00

So, which is it; Global Cooling, Global Warming or Global Temperature Change?

Apparently, it is all three. In the 70's there was a huge uproar of what we should be doing to prevent the global cooling. Of course, we haven't cooled down, but we have obviously warmed up. Until, that is, the evidence that our whole world was warming up went away and now we are supposed to call it climate change. That seems quite ridiculous. Doesn't the global climate change constantly? Through the day, week, month, millenia? Of course it does, and history including very good science can even show us some of the changes, such as The medieval warming, the little ice age etc. Today we are worried about a temperature change not because anyone really cares what will happen to other people (the real damage will occur when they destroy technology), but because they wish to utilize the fear of average American's in order to take control over our lives. People are much more willing to give up certain liberties if they are convinced their lives and their families lives are at stake.

If you are unsure of my reasoning, below is a link to an article written in 1974 in TIME magazine. I want you to keep in mind that this is 1974 not 2009 and you will realize that the garbage we are being fed today is the same garbage they've been feeding us for over 30 years.

Time Magazine (1974): "Another Ice Age?"

Socratic Dilemma Dialogue

2009-06-27T18:19:00.002-06:00

(A script writer sits alone in his home working on his next project his wife enters after a few moments)

Andrew Kauf: Why, can’t I just write what I want?
Morgan Kauf: Hun, what’s the matter?
Andrew: I’m having difficulties with my next script. I’ve never felt like I can write what I want, but this idea I have is good, really good! I know it, but no one would ever buy it.
Morgan: How do you know that?
Andrew: I’ve been in the business for 15 years, I know what they want.
Morgan: What exactly is it they want, and why does it make you so angry?
Andrew: What they want is the same trash I always write. They wish me to write about the bum next door, the wretch, the whore, the man without purpose. They only want me to write about man’s depravity.
Morgan: What is wrong with exploring such things? Don’t people need to see what is wrong with men? Isn’t it the best way for them to learn, to understand, to appreciate?
Andrew: Maybe for other writers, if that is what they wish, maybe someone even is helped by it; although I doubt it. I just don’t know if I can write about another bum. How will people remember me?
Morgan: You are correct in your assumption there, they will remember you from the one thing you have been able to do. But, my question to you my dear is why you are worried about how people will remember you?
Andrew: Isn’t that what the value of life is? How else should I live my life?
Morgan: What is life, Andrew?
Andrew: What kind of question is that? I am life.
Morgan: Just a thought experiment Andrew… Let me ask you, if you are life, does that mean I am not life?
Andrew: Well of course you are life as well. But, I am alive so I am life.
Morgan: You are running circles around me in this experiment, it seems. Let me try again. Is a plant alive? Is a bird? A rock? What is life?
Andrew: Ok, well these questions seem a little weird, but I’ll humor you. Of course plants are alive, birds, but not rocks! Life is all that which is alive.
Morgan: If life is that which is alive, are cells and atoms alive? What about the rocks? They are made up of matter, which could seem alive, could they not?
Andrew: Well yes, but I think this is self evident darling.
Morgan: If it is self-evident then it shouldn’t be hard to explain, correct? So, my questioning returns to what is life? You see honey, if we can determine what is life, we perhaps can determine the purpose of life, and if you are leading the correct purpose.
Andrew: Alright fair enough, I’ll play along. Life consists of all living creatures, plants and animals alike, which are able to be a part of this existence past, present and future. Life could probably be best described by things which can procreate, for it is the continuation of a life which is necessary for life.
Morgan: Wow, that is really good Andrew. So, if we say life consists of all living creatures, plants and animals alike, and that life is determined by the ability to procreate, then we can determine that all living creatures have many things in common, correct?
Andrew: That is correct.
Morgan: Great, now we’re getting somewhere. What then determines human life, how are we different then a muskrat?
Andrew: Ok, I know this one. We are different because we have languages, arts, mathematics, philosophy and more.
Morgan: This is true, but what is it that allows human beings to have developed a Socrates and a Victor Hugo?
Andrew: Their mind.
Morgan: That makes the most sense. They have a conscious mind and are able to use it more aptly then do animals.
Andrew: correct.
Morgan: Then what exactly is it that we have that is so different? I think we should specify this difference.
Andrew: Our ability to reason?
Morgan: precisely, but again what exactly does our ability to reason allow us to do?
Andrew: Understand the world we live in?
Morgan: I think you’re right there; I would go farther in that it allows us to form concepts, and more importantly broad abstractions, such as life.
Andrew: How can this help me determine how to best live life?
Morgan: That is a spectacular question! Now that we better understand what life is, we need to begin to question the purpose of life.
Andrew: Good.
Morgan: if life is being alive, and procreating, can we not say that being alive requires a certain flourishing of life?
Andrew: You mean it isn’t enough to survive, but we must also attempt to live the best and most prosperous life possible?
Morgan: Correct. Think of a tree and its roots. A tree has certain goals based upon its nature. As the good Hursthouse writes in On Virtue of Ethics that “a living things nature will dictate what is good for it by pointing us to its needs, [and] what living things do is live, and a good living thing is one that lives well. For humans, certain traits are virtuous because of facts about human needs, interests and desires, just as certain traits make for a good elephant because of facts about elephants needs, interests, and desires.” So the good and the purpose should be determined by what is good for the organism. So we should therefore strive for an enjoyable life and a morally upright life, as this is part of our nature. For what is good for us is to be morally upright. Also, it is good to enjoy the life we have, for these pertain to our goals of flourishing; for I dare say that humans seek to enhance their lives.
Andrew: In other words I should live the life best suited to my goals?
Morgan: Precisely.
Andrew: Then, I should write this screenplay if my goals in life are simply to attain money?
Morgan: Precisely, but I know you won’t because I didn’t fall for a person who stands for nothing.
Andrew: I guess you’re right. It’s not easy standing by what you believe I guess.
Morgan: Nor is it supposed to be.

Music is Reason

2009-06-22T18:28:00.003-06:00

I was given a discussion topic in school about the Middle Ages and The Renaissance. Specifically in regards to music. My professor made the comment that people believe The Renaissance or 'rebirth' is the period that followed the Middle Ages or 'Dark Ages,' and that these terms can be misleading, because history tends to move continuously rather than by leaps and bounds. The disusion was to talk about the gradual improvement of music through these periods.

First it is necessary to disprove the statement “these descriptions can be misleading as history tends to move continuously rather than by leaps and bounds.” This is false. After the fall of the Roman Empire western world did not see many of the necessities Romans took for granted for almost one thousand years. It wasn’t until St. Thomas Aquinas rediscovered Aristotle in the 13th century that we began seeing the emergence of the Renaissance. When I say rediscover, I mean rediscover in the true context of Aristotle’s writings. The Greek language, culture and more was all but lost for a thousand years after the fall of Rome. The barbarians who destroyed Rome found they had nothing of significance to replace it’s splendor with. St. Thomas Aquinas was an Aristotelian, and fortunately, he brought back reason to our world. After the rebirth i.e. renaissance began, man was able to begin considering himself an individual. It would take hundreds of years for this to fully take effect, but eventually rebirth would give way to enlightenment. In enlightenment we see the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Polish-Lithuanian Constitution of May 3, 1791 and much more. For once men shrugged off the shackles of God and King, and realized his own greatness.

Next we must define what art is and what music is to our cognition. Art is a selective re-creation of an artist’s metaphysical value judgments, and, as such it is an indispensible medium for the communication of a moral ideal. Looking at a piece of art injects several abstractions; life, death, hope, love, hate, fear etc, and it is how we react to these things which indicates what our sense of life is. A sense of life can be defined as something that happens before our concepts, on a more emotional level, the way we react to art helps us to indicate what our sense of life is, but it does not define it. Our sense of life can be developed in two ways; by a conscious effort or be chance. We either choose what values we hold by deciding basic philosophical premises such as; where we are, how we know it, and what to do, or we evade such actions and come to these conclusions based off of our friends, family, or teachers. This latter method is very dangerous.

Looking at a painting can invoke certain emotions. The painting uses certain abstract and concrete concepts in order to fill the viewer with certain emotions. Music on the other hand does not have the ability to show anything, music uses different sounds produced by periodic vibrations of a sonorous body. Music works in reverse of a painting. It does not invoke images directly, but indirectly through your subconscious. While listening to a piece of music you may feel yourself seeing random images as if from a dream, but this is actually your subconscious at work and is not random but carefully selected. Let me give some examples: A piece of music can’t show you what it looks like to be about to kill someone, but it can give you the feeling. It cannot show you what it is like to be in love, but it can give you the feeling. It cannot show you a beautiful garden, but it can give you the feeling. Another great example of this is in the move “Immortal Beloved” where Beethoven tells a future servant of his that the music he is hearing is his frustration at not being able to get to his lover. As an aside, for great examples of music and the emotions they convey see the aforementioned movie. What is important to follow here, is that the emotion is conveyed by the composer whether that is happiness or anger, and how the person reacts to it are dependent upon their sense of life.

Now, looking into the middle ages, it is important to remember that the church pretty much had a monopoly on the arts for almost 700 years. During this time the main form of music was ‘Gregorian Chant’ a rather ominous and morose kind of monophonic sound. The art of the time was meant to convey a sense of uselessness. It was meant to keep the average person from realizing his or her own potential and condemn them to a life in fear of mystical leering gargoyles and an eternal hell. Going to church was not the celebration as it is to some today; it was as if going to mourning. They were mourning life. In “Music an Appreciation” by Roger Kamien he illustrates that many of the secular songs were about love. Note however, that the majority of these songs and illustrations weren’t predominant until the 13th century. This is not to say that there were no secular songs before then, just very seldom. Secular music and secularism in general began appearing more and more after reason was re-introduced.

For more on this read Ayn Rand’s The Romantic Manifesto

Why are students becoming philosophy majors?

2009-06-22T11:38:00.006-06:00

I was given an old article from the New York Times that reffered to a large growth in the number of philosophy majors and minors in America. I was then asked the question why young 'practical' minded people (as the teacher called them) are becoming more interested in philosophy?

It is possible that young college students are becoming more enamored with philosophy simply because they are not satisfied with the abhorrent answers they normally get in the 'real world.' Some of these answers come from parents, teachers, bosses and even friends. The idea that everything is nothing may not bode well with some younger people who understand - on some level at least - that their life is something. They hear things like they are just a mass of protoplasm with no meaning. Young people are very impressionable, however, and I believe they do realize that their life is important to them: their future means something, and they wish to understand what is going on around them.

They see the giants of their world crumbling around them. They see the power of the presidency taken over by a man they helped put in to office, and do nothing but more of the same. They see pirates (yes PIRATES) hindering our trade as if we have returned to more primitive times. They understand that the majority of the country is against a war that is killing their friends, brothers, sisters, cousins; and yet their government heeds not their words. They remember hearing in history class and social studies that the government was set up as a system 'of the people by the people and for the people,' that there was supposed to be some semblance of morality, of reason, logic and so on. They see the rule of law being deteriorated around them, by such acts as imposing 'empathy' upon the judgements of judges. They see the erosion of property rights and wonder what is the 'principle' that backs property rights. They see the businessmen around them being punished, and wonder why. They don't understand why capitalism could have failed, they question, and hope philosophy will lead them towards the road of discovery. They wish to seek the best within themselves, they do not wish to allow the people of the world to condemn them for attempting greatness.

They possibly question things like socialized medicine. Why, they may ask, is it my duty to help others?

Some young men and women wish to bring back what they remember reading in their history books. 'Where are the great men who built this country?' They ask. There are some who wish to have something to look forward to. They do not wish to be infringed upon, they have a sinking guilt in the bottom of their stomachs at seeing neanderthals gyrating their bodies to the beat of a primitive drum claiming that 'we must leave nature alone!' spitting their fury at anyone who attempts the evil of living their life to the best of their ability.

Then there are those who wish to use philosophy to destroy the men and women I just described. They wish to use their greatest weapon against them, reason. They will twist reason to suit whatever needs they wish. And these young impressionable people can seek one defense; philosophy. If they do not understand the basics that philosophy teaches, such as, where we are, how we know it and what we should do once we know it, they will inevitably succumb to the gross ideology that is overtaking their world.

It is unfortunate that most of the people who are joining philosophy en masse are individuals who wish to destroy the best within others. They do not wish to be held to the responsibility of their own greatness, and seek to destroy what others wish to achieve. They use filthy language to impose guilt upon the aforementioned young people of the mind by saying 'they are greedy, they are selfish, they have no empathy.'

These young people who wish to understand why they see people condemning the great men and women of industrial power and still they don't go to their defense because they feel guilty; they are the ones who need to be taught; not Plato, or Nietzsche, or Kant but Aristotle. They are the ones who should understand that values are something achievable, that we live in a world of concretes and they can either abide and prosper, or evade and perish.

It is also unfortunate that these young people may never have the courage to question; they may not have the ability to admire, nor to take pride in their own actions. They can, if they discover the proper philosophy. If they learn not that reason can be some 'sublime' fantasy, but it is their reality. They all have the ability to change, as long as we are human we have volition.

It is volition which eventually led mankind to throw off the shackles of, God, King, and now we must throw off the shackles of 'society.'

I can only hope that it will be the people of the mind who will give sanction to the best within themselves. We already seem to be going down a road quite opposite to this idea, and it is each of us who are paying the price.

Review of "Crito" by Plato

2009-06-15T18:16:00.002-06:00

This is a brief review of Socrates' reasoning as is shown in Plato's Dialogue entitled "Crito"

On Socrates’ reasoning

First of all, I must commend Socrates for his effective use of logic. Socrates has succinctly used and or created logical discussion. He first defends himself from Crito by using Argumentum ad Numerum or even Argumentum ad Populum. The first 'Numerum' is the fallacy perpetrated by an individual who claims something is more right the more people hold it as true. As Crito seems to be doing when he says, “but do you see Socrates, that the opinion of the many must be regarded, as is evident in your own case, because they can do the very greatest evil to anyone who has lost their good opinion.” This is also similar to 'Populum' which is appealing to the people; this fallacy is usually characterized by emotive language which Crito obviously uses. These defenses by Socrates demonstrate his ability to be steadfast to reason under any incoming fire. Based upon the antiquated reasoning of the time Socrates does seem to be holding true to his integrity. So, if we define integrity as an unfaltering holding to ones values, whether there are other's watching or not, then Socrates is most assuredly a man of integrity.

However, I believe Socrates makes a few fundamental and costly mistakes in his assessments of the state. For one, to assume the state owns him simply because of some arbitrary 'social contract' is ludicrous. It is true that Socrates agreed to live under Athenian law, but when these laws are set in place for the mere ability of allowing the polis to create criminals at its discretion, the polis and not Socrates has betrayed any 'social contract.' Socrates fails to understand what the state is. As Murray Rothbard explicates in Anatomy of the State:

“The State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly
of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it
is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary
contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion."

Furthermore, Socrates makes the preeminent mistake most individuals make, which is equating each individual person as 'a part' of the state. In other words saying 'we’ are the state.' In essence, 'we,' as the individuals who make up the state, are made equivalent to some unknown controller of violence. We are made to believe that as citizens of such and such society 'we' are all one, and 'we' must obey the laws and dictums handed down from on high. The fundamental error here is that we are individuals. Rothbard shows that if we are the state, than anything the state forces upon us is done voluntarily.

"Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not
murdered; instead, they must have "committed suicide," since they were the
government (which was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the
government did to them was voluntary on their part."

Also, simply because we are all participating in our societies does not implicate us to their every action. As Williamson M. Evers from the department of political science at Stanford elucidates, "Mere participation is not enough for obligation. If a burglar lets you argue with him while he is relieving you of your valuables, it does not place you under an obligation to him."

Socrates also uses the argument that he has accepted the ‘gifts’ from society i.e. schooling. This is once again a fundamental error in reasoning. He uses the analogy of parents giving a gift to their child as equivalent to the ‘gifts’ from society. The problem lies in the conditions in which the gifts are given in the two scenarios. When a parent gives something to their child, such as room and board, there is only an obligation to the parents for as long as the child accepts the gifts. When the child moves away from home and stops accepting gifts from their parents, they subsequently disallow all ‘rules’ or edicts handed down from their parents. The difference with the state is that one can not merely ‘shrug’ off their allotted ‘gifts.’ These so-called gifts are imposed rather than something that is attached as a condition to a gift.

Socrates, while defending his position, accepts many irrelevant and counter-intuitive ideals that unfortunately lead to his early demise. While it is admirable that Socrates had the integrity to stand up for what he believed was right, his failure to come to more correct and logical conclusions deprived him of years of life.

Pajamas TV

2009-06-02T13:31:00.002-06:00

Interested in a different news story. Check out Pajamas TV, dedicated to covering stories not always on your mainstream news station or radio. Pajamas also has a list of dedicated bloggers. Since the Blog world can be like the "Wild West," as they call it, they attempt to weed out some of the erroneous blogs and supply you with a fresh taste of excellent blogs based upon reason and truth. Their TV is informative, mostly free, and quite entertaining. Enjoy their commentaries on Obama's Healthcare plan, the right to life debate, the climate change debate, and much more!

http://www.pjtv.com/

Great Blog Roll

2009-06-02T13:30:00.003-06:00

If you are the type to go from blog to blog to find your favorites, a great blogroll is available for you.
Visit http://www.condron.us/ to find see a list of blogs on their website. You may even add your own to their blogroll if you wish. You can determine the speed it runs through blogs, what kind of blogs you wish to look at and more. So check it out!

The Crucible

2009-06-01T12:32:00.003-06:00

The Crucible

Faith and lies can twist and destroy lives. This is a basic premise of Arthur Miller’s wonderful play The Crucible, produced by the Arvada Center. The play, set in the 1690’s showcases the lunacy and terror that occurs when a society arbitrarily places faith in a higher power. Upon entering the world of The Crucible we are immediately confronted with one character’s consummate second-handedness. An important central figure to the play, Reverend Parris, is shown kneeling in front of his unconscious daughters’ bed. He is praying, most likely about the situation at hand. Before the start of the play the Reverend stumbles upon some of the local girls, including his daughter, dancing in the forest. In a place where god and law are one and the same, anything perceived as a moral wrongdoing is a punishable offense. Reverend Parris, a main representative of the mood of the play, is completely obsessed with the beliefs and perceptions of those around him.

Only a few characters in the play show their first handed ability to live their own lives dependent of other’s opinions. The main character, John Proctor, showcases the tragic story of The Crucible. A man who has only once told a lie, he takes on the whole town when finally pushed to the edge. Although, initially, he bides his time attempting to outlive his one dishonest moment, eventually he sees that truth is the only way and confesses his previous weakness with Abigail. The antagonist of the play, Abigail Williams, is a young lady infatuated with the striking John Proctor. Their affair, which ended in Abigail being fired by Proctors wife Elizabeth, was never known by the public. For once again, the public opinion is everything in a town based on faith.
Arthur Miller has done a great job in showing that lies feed other lies. When people are threatened they will seek any way out, even losing their integrity. This concept of integrity is integral to the plot and story of this play. For at the plays end, the upright man Proctor, refuses to implicate other people accused of being a witch. With his final testament that they can try and take his soul, but to leave him his name, Proctor comes close to some grander understanding of life. Miller shows us that men can be pushed, but no matter what, there is always choice.

The play almost seems to take on the format of an epic tragedy. With many characters, and the time taking place over several months, this almost is true. However, a closer look shows the climactic formatting of the story structure. It is true that the play takes place over a few months, but the location doesn’t really change in any meaningful way. The farthest we are taken is in John Proctors property on the outskirts of town, where he is confronted by many of the characters from the town, but this doesn’t seem enough evidence to allow this play to meander into the realm of epic tragedy.

John Proctor could be considered a tragic character. He is upright, a goodly man, who is willing to take his beliefs to their inevitable end. He may have his doubts along the way, but his unwavering integrity is crucial to the story of The Crucible.

The production elements were effective and to the point. A simple black box theatre, with a few easy to maneuver sets. The set, which included a vast arrangement of ropes as the backdrop, and a disproportionate (twisted) framing of the houses and court, fully captured the essence of the play. In Act III, the courtroom scene, Abigail begins to accuse Mary of bewitching her. The closeness of the audience to the stage allowed her to begin pointing over our heads shouting about a bird. This involved the audience (the voyeurs), almost making them feel uncomfortable at times. This is highly effective in twisting the audience’s mood to feel what the protagonist feels; frustration. We as the audience are completely unable to fix or alter others lies. Even though we are completely aware that Abigail is lying, because we see no bird, we feel helpless to do anything about it. As the protagonist (Proctor) also feels helpless. It is this that the production is most effective. After leaving the theatre with the twisted buildings and lynches littering the stage, we are unable to shake the feeling that others beliefs can one day effect our own lives. As it has done in our own recent history, much like the red scare did in America. It is this basic theme that has been so proficiently driven home in the mind of the audience. We may believe that people would not lie when someone’s life is on the line. But, as we were shown, faith can twist and destroy lives.

The Departed

2009-06-01T12:30:00.002-06:00

The Departed
By Martin Scorcese
Produced by PLAN B/INITIAL ENTERTAINMENT GROUP/VERTIGO ENTERTAINMENT
Review by Kirk Barbera

“When I was [younger] they would say you could become cops, or criminals. Today, what I’m saying to ya is this; when you’re facing a loaded gun, what’s the difference?” The antagonist of the film, a brilliant Jack Nicholson, is initially purposefully under lit, leaving his face always in shadow. As the audience is lead through a series of shots of Boston, Nicholson’s character Frank Costello goes through an explanation of what it takes to be a man in modern Boston, and how the Irish rose from peasants to rulers of the Boston underworld. Upon the conclusion of the “what’s the difference?” line we finally see Frank Costello fully illuminated, and this greatly elucidated moment propels the story into well planned out chaos. As Frank emerges and delivers the last segment of his line we automatically get the premise for the entire movie, for indeed the movie endeavors to satisfy an answer to that very question. The major meanings of this movie can be found in this opening statement. In modern Boston two moles on both sides of the law compete to out-lie the other, leading to an intermingling of deception, self, love, friends and family.

The story follows two men from the Boston State Police academy and their subsequent paths. Billy Costigan (played by Leonardo Dicaprio) is raised as a ‘double kid’ his paternal familial side is completely engrained in the southie (Boston) projects, while his mother apparently lives uptown. This juxtaposition of Costigan’s inner workings enables him to creep his way into Costello’s gang. In contrast to Collin Sullivan (Matt Damon), who is a sly and intelligent kid from the wrong side of the track who was able to embed himself into the state police, and work as a mole for Costello. A movie that could be characterized as a criminal drama, a thriller or a cleverly written character drama, the audience is amazingly shown the conflicts in these two characters’ lives. In this drama each character is trapped in a cocoon of his own deception, leaving the audience in utter wonderment as to what can be considered good or bad.

Several motifs run rampant throughout the movie. Some are a bit much at times, for instance the rat symbolizing… well, a rat, is quite unnecessary. Yet there are a few visual motifs that help to illuminate the underlying story and theme, as well as give credence to the two main characters. The first and most prominent of the motifs is the Boston state capitol’s golden dome. Collin Sullivan seems infatuated with this symbol from the onset of the script. This makes sense given what the film is attempting to say about Sullivan and modern times. For one, Sullivan is a gangster pretending to be a state police detective, and attending law school at night. Throughout the film we see his desire to ‘prove’ himself to his friends, his co-workers, and lover and to anyone who will pay attention including his father figure Costello. In the first date scene with Madolyn we are inundated with his sad attempt at pretending to be sophisticated, while he is obviously charming, he seems to fall short of the upper class he so desperately wants to be a part of. While Sullivan is attempting to prove himself, Costigan is attempting to find himself. Costigan uses many drugs to keep himself sane. This double life pushes these two characters to the edge and back again, making them unravel from the strain of maintaining identities antithetical to their true natures.

Another Motif that seems prevalent in the movie is the use of America memorabilia, everything from flags, and United We Stand Posters to the State capitol dome mentioned above and more. This visual theme is Scorsese’s way of including in the film the underlying theme of America’s uncertainty in contemporary times. As all the elements battle it out in the movie the idea that nothing can be known for certain is inundated on us over and over. What really is good, what really is bad? This theme is hammered home over and over again.

Scorsese illustrates his masterful ability to portray the underbelly of society, and how a countries lower caste often bleeds over into the other molds of society.

All in the Timing: Performed at the University of Colorado - Denver

2009-06-01T12:26:00.004-06:00

All In the Timing
A review By: Kirk Barbera

A play about two universal truths important to us all: time and language. As we enter deeper into the 21st century we are still plagued with these two themes. Many nuances in our daily lives seem to be of the utmost of import, yet numerous individuals are caught complaining, they say things like: “I never have enough time,” or “If only there were more time, I could…” or “I never seem to be able to get my point across,” even in love “If only I had a tongue of silver, I could get her/him.” These ideals are commonplace in our lives today, as they were in the lives of most people everywhere at all times. The one commonality in everyone’s life is time. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, it doesn’t matter how far you can kick a football; everyone has twenty four hours in a day. You have twenty four hours, I have twenty four hours, and Albert Einstein had twenty four hours. The difference is merely what we do in those twenty four hours. This play and production succinctly illustrates the humor of our actions in regards to time and language.

The very first play, Sure Thing, is reminiscent of a Meisner acting exercise, in which one person attempts to sit next to another person while the other person attempts to read. The subsequent dialogue is, at least in the exercise, completely dependent upon the two individuals and their ability to listen and feel the other’s reactions. In the play it is used to great effect. And, for obvious reasons, it is David Ives’ most reproduced play. The ensuing effect on the audience is to connect to the individuals thinking to ourselves, “Well, I’ve done that!” As we see the progression of these two people attempting to battle it out in a Groundhogesque way the audience can’t help but feel attracted to these two characters. The stage itself, a thrust, is crafted both elegantly and meaningfully to allow the audience to really be a part of the action. Rooting for the man to say the right thing, than as the dialogue shifts to the woman attempting to win the man, we begin to root for her. It is a great play on emotions, made more prevalent by the enormous backdrop that shifts colors; literally elucidating emotions.

Next we have Words, Words, Words, while seemingly the least effective in garnering laughs, a rather insightful attempt to convey our societal attempt to re-create art of the past. The set design again simply explains the three ‘monkeys’ situation. Automatically, through music cues, swings, and acting, we understand that these three people are in fact monkeys. Seemingly not the most popular of plays this one can strike a chord with many writers in the audience. Words, Words, Words showcases the frustration that can sometimes happen when attempting to write.
Universal language, the third play of the night, and probably one of the more popular ones, mesmerizes an audience whether they are capable of keeping up with the funny tongue or not. No matter who the audience member is, it is seemingly impossible to keep up with all of the doubletalk. Yet, we are still left with a vague assurance that we have walked away with a meaningful experience on trust, love, language and some of our frustration at being unable to communicate effectively, and thusly fit in.

Everyone can understand living temporarily, or sometimes forever it seems, in a Philadelphia. You ask the drive-thru person for no onion, and you of course, get onions. On an attempt to print out your economics homework you subsequently fry your motherboard. It’s easy to connect with the poor sap that has seemingly fallen into a ‘Philadelphia.’ With that dear friend who seems to always be living that L.A. dream, juxtaposed together with ones misery, this makes for real comedy. Seeming to play on the concept of the way we act according to our situation. As some of us were told, you can’t control your circumstances, but you certainly can control the way you react to them. As Mr. L.A. is put up against a Philadelphia we all realize that although most of us go through these days, some people just can’t handle it.

Variations on the Death of Trotsky, depending on how one looks at the puzzle of this play, may actually be the crux of the whole thing. Explaining to us that ‘the victors always write the…’ Upon entering Trotsky’s parallel universe it is seemingly apparent of his unfortunate, yet humorous, predicament. As many in contemporary times read the history books, holes in the writing become immediately apparent. This one plays on this to great humorous effect. As Mrs. Trotsky points out, Mr. Trotsky has had a mountain-climbers axe embedded in his head, yet as she reads the encyclopedia (a 2009 edition, the play is set in 1940) they discover he is struck in the head one day, and dies the next. This is the imagined happenings of that ‘next’ day.
The last play of the night brings together all the plays and showcases, a little too easily, the point of the play. Time and language. The baker at one point even plays a clock. Although the play seems oversimplified, it is still a fun way to end the night.

Overall, the night can appeal to a hugely wide audience. Through the transitions of stages, all quite different, to the funny and playful plays themselves, almost everyone can get something out of this night with the University of Colorado Denver, Theater, Film and Video department.

Richard III

2009-06-01T12:21:00.002-06:00

Richard III Play Review
By Kirk Barbera
Performed by The Denver Center for Performing Arts

The silliness of the latest production of a rather contemptible character is reminiscent of a man reaching into a bag of tricks to accomplish the unknown. Richard was played by an incredible actor, Andrew Long, who seemed to have a firm grasp of his role. It seemed however, while watching this mediocre play by Shakespeare, which was ruined and brought down to the level of a beginners understand of Richard III, by director Jesse Berger. The individual actor’s performances where grandiose and believable, the director’s haughty vision got in the way of a true Shakespearean experience.

First is needed a brief dissection of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Richard is a man deformed at birth, but born into royalty. A noble outcast. His desire to lead the life ‘given to him’ is what drives his morality, believing he is only living according to his nature. Richard Isn’t satisfied with wars ending; only the never-ending battle interests him. As he says in his opening soliloquy:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover to entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days.

It is apparent what his motivation is throughout the play, simply that of power. The major dramatic question I believe Shakespeare is attempting to bring up is what the taste of power does to a man, but more importantly it brings up the rather interesting inspection of a true unapologetically evil man.

The main error in Mr. Berger’s sad attempt to bring this play to life is his evident ‘dummying down of Shakespeare’ for a more modern audience. This was rather obvious with some of the choices the actors made, more than likely at the bequest of their director. The use of certain gestures to ‘help’ the audience understand what is being said on stage was rather insulting. Worst of all however, was the music used, the trite and overly dramatic music that played whenever another one of Richard’s victims was about to die was horrendously distracting. It was also very hard to get engaged by this supposedly ‘charming’ character when I only felt bad for the stupidity of the supporting characters. It is true that Richard was very convincing; it is also true that a person is a buffoon to be duped by a family member they’ve known their whole lives; this is like a woman who is surprised that her abusive husband beat her again.

There were some notably good features to this play as well. For one, the costumes were done beautifully. Especially that of Richard himself, his costume bellied his evil yet innovative nature. He did not need to apologize for his ragged limp and ugly deformity. He seemed to use it to his advantage. The knife on his left ankle was a clever way to convey to the audience this is a man underestimated, who knows very well how to take care of himself. The set design was also eloquently done. Personally there are two scenes I rather enjoyed: First was the scene when the people begged Richard to be their king and he is seen walking on the scaffolding above, showing his supposed superiority to everyone around him, and his subsequent refusal than acceptance of the position. That scene was ingenious by both the directorial choices and the writers’ choices. Secondly was the dream sequence. In this sequence the use of the lighting and music was incredibly on task. It truly shows the damage done to Richard’s mental situation. Although, he may have been a good natured child he seemed to have been changed by his environment, this sequence shows the consequences of those choices.

Overall, Richard III is a story of a man corrupted by power and turned to evil. The theatrical elements needed for this production were there. Unfortunately for us the director wished to commercial one of Shakespeare’s most famous, yet unworthy plays.

The Diviners by jim Leonard, Jr

2009-06-01T12:18:00.002-06:00

Performed by: Metropolitan State College of Denver’s Theatre Program of the Department of Communication Arts & Sciences

In the tiny town of Zion Indiana an idiot boy charms a preacher and teaches the town how to appreciate what they have. Although, the story lacks much depth, the story of a handicapped child with the supernatural ability to sense water, and is thusly destroyed by it, can teach us all to choose to understand our surrounding on a deeper level. The play starts out with Buddy laymen using a divining rod to help him find water. After finding water the protagonist C.C. Showers (played by an incredible Ben Cowhick) enters the scene. C.C. a semi in depth psychological character seeks to escape the life he had. In the town of Zion he attempts to work as a mechanic and is hired during the great depression even without any skills as a mechanic. C.C. is hired by the father of Buddy Laymen and Jennie Mae Laymen which suggests the family is not quite as bad off as the rest of the town and country. After it is discovered C.C. was a preacher from Kentucky the whole town goes in an uproar. Zion has been without many of the common luxuries of the day, they spend the majority of their time fixing bikes, digging ditches, hauling hay and praying before meals. The towns’ womenfolk imagine that with a preacher in their midst they may be able to get the one thing small towns seem to love the most: church.

The water allegory, while done millions of times in the past, is actually quite well done in this Metro production. The stage, a black box, pulls us all right in with its simplicity and small town feel. The movement of the characters in the final scene in cooperation with the elegant sounds, lighting and the large backdrop was extremely memorable. Although many of the characters may be forgotten the moment you leave the school, C.C. and Buddy are most assuredly going to touch the audience’s heart

A story to turn some heads and remind us all that our current economic times are nothing compared to the travesty felt during the Great Depression. We can all learn from C.C.’s abandonment of a job in which he did not enjoy, and his attempt to start over. While the playwright seems to want to warn us of the dangers in attempting to lead meaningful lives, he makes the point that if we don’t learn to control our environment it can destroy us.

The Soloist

2009-06-01T12:15:00.002-06:00

The Soloist
Directed by Joe Wright

Reviewed by Kirk Barbera

The Soloist is a movie about two individuals living in the same city, but seeming to live in alternate universes. Steve Lopez is a journalist for the esteemed L.A. Times. Mr. Lopez is at a point in his life where he isn’t sure how he feels about the direction he is headed, and where he has been so far. This includes his job, his seemingly wrecked marriage with a fellow journalist, and his relationship with his son. Right at what could be one of the lowest points in his life Mr. Lopez meets a very unusual character; Nathaniel Ayers. Nathaniel is a middle aged black American who went to Julliard. When Mr. Lopez sees him he is playing the violin and quite beautifully. Oh, there’s one thing about Nathaniel, he lives on the streets, and that violin of his only has two strings. The ‘two little pigs went missing’ as Nathaniel says. Nathaniel also has a mental illness most likely schizophrenia.

It would be hard to watch this movie and not see the directors’ viewpoint on genius. Nathaniel is completely infatuated with the great Ludwig Van Beethoven. Although, obvious differences between the two people and both individuals are separated by more than 100 years, they both were portrayed as being quite similar. Ludwig, for example, was mentally handicapped, or so many people thought due to his deafness. Both men were likely to erupt in fits of rage. They also loved music with a similar passion, explicating music’s ability to speak through everyday nuances; life explains itself through music they might say. But, most of all, they both were absolutely in love with Ludwig Van Beethoven.

Each shot of the movie was meticulously crafted to showcase how these two men would eventually become great friends who influenced each other heavily. As in the tracking shot of the cello which had been donated after Mr. Lopez’s article about Nathaniel. The shot tracks this cello from an elderly ladies home to the office of Mr. Lopez. This elucidates the beginning of their ‘friendship.’ Previously, Mr. Lopez had thought of Nathaniel as merely a guy to do a story about, but now he is getting personally involved and this will set off all the incidents throughout the movie. Another great shot showing their distance as two human beings but Mr. Lopez’s willingness to try and enter Nathaniel’s world is a shot in which Lopez is leaning against a large gate while Nathaniel is finishing playing or ‘making love’ as it seems to his two stringed violin. This funny scene starts off with Lopez not wanting to be rude and interrupt Nathaniel as he seems more intent on playing this broken instrument than Lopez has ever been with anything in his entire life. To Lopez, it would seem irreverent to interrupt this god-like infatuation Nathaniel seems to have with his music. It is something that throughout the story Lopez most admires about the estranged Nathaniel, and why he wishes to ‘help’ him.

In the end it isn’t just Mr. Lopez helping Nathaniel, he discovers it’s not his place to help him. Lopez realizes the importance of friendships or as Aristotle exclaimed ‘the importance of a perfect relationship between men.’ Lopez attempted to force drugs and psychiatric help upon Nathaniel, and it almost ended up getting him murdered by his friend. Nathaniel is one of the few truly independent souls in the country, and unfortunately his illness is portrayed as the reason – which it isn’t – Nathaniel can teach us all about how to live our lives for ourselves, no matter what others may think. Nathaniel wasn’t helped by Lopez, he helped Lopez. It may be argued that they helped each other, and in a way this is true, the relationship did seem symbiotic. However, by the end of the film it was apparent that Lopez, a man who lived based off of the opinions of others, was transposed after his encounter with the independent thinking man; Nathaniel Ayers.

The Real Hollywood Ten

2009-05-27T14:46:00.006-06:00

The Hollywood Ten were humanitarian heroes. They were ten individuals, who were fired for holding certain beliefs, beliefs which just happened to be communist. These individuals were fired from top paying jobs that carried a great amount of respect. They were fired for the heroic deed of defying congress and their employers. This belief is common today in a world heavily influenced by leftist Hollywood, and it is also a load of baloney. The public is content with believing the farce put forth by Hollywood and other ‘intellectuals’ that these people were innocent victims accused merely of thinking. Whenever one mentions communists and a threat of losing a job there is an enormous uproar. ‘Witch-hunts’ they say. No one should be forced to say what their ideological viewpoints are to keep a job. Nonsense, of course they can.

When a businessperson opens up shop, puts their blood, sweat, tears, money, and more into their business; they have every right to decide who can and cannot work in their place of business. This is a fact many intellectuals of our time – and times past – wish to skew. To them, everyone has a ‘right’ to a job, even at the expense of the business owner. After all, it is the workers who are doing all of the ‘work.’

That’s one way of looking at it. Another way is this. When a business is opened up, the capital put forth; what is the first thing a businesswoman must do? Spend money. They must spend money on construction, or renting an office building, telephones, faxes, internet and more. They must also hire workers, and pay for advertisement. This is done before the proprietor sees one cent of profit. Many times an entrepreneur must take a loss for up to 5 years or more before seeing any returns. Yet the people still continuing to be paid are the workers, the companies that provide telephone service, internet service, cleaning service, and so on. Each of those companies receives money from the businessperson and is able to pay their workers. If a business does not pay its workers, it will inevitably lose those workers and go bankrupt.

To assume that workers in Hollywood should be any different is just the elitist attitude that is the major problem. The Hollywood Ten and any other worker is accepted and hired to work at a particular place of business on the basis of the business’s requirements. Businesses do not grow in nature. Men and women must start them and make them work. Since the entrepreneur is putting up all the risk, it is their right to hire whom they wish. If the owner chooses it is not in the best interests of their company to hire a person for any reason that is their choice. As the business owner, they will have to live by their choices. If the executives in charge of Hollywood during the 40s decided that having communists in their employ was detrimental to their success, they have every right, and obligation, to terminate their contracts.

A book entitled Ayn Rand and Song of Russia: Communism and Anti-communism in 1940’s Hollywood by Robert Mayhew, attempts to put the record straight as to the farce of intellectual deterrents put up over the last fifty plus years. Song of Russia is a movie produced in 1943 with such obvious propaganda as to show every Russian as a happy little peasant enjoying life in Stalinist Russia, and to show such things as these peasants enjoying a bountiful harvest. This at a time when even the Russian government admitted to an enormous famine which killed – according to their government – an estimated ten million people (many accounts say much more than this). It shows the two heroes of the movie dancing in a luxurious club, while in the real world millions were killed by maniacal dictatorship. It claimed the peasant farmers ‘owned’ their tractor, even though they lived in a place where no one owned anything. It presented the female lead, a peasant girl named Nadya, traveling from a small town into Moscow. While excluding the GPU agents and other massive obstacles to her progress of attaining a pass to enter Moscow.
In the book Mayhew succinctly covers the massive changes the script undertook, at the behest of many very dubious characters; as well as Ayn Rand’s testimony to the House Un-American Activities (HUAC) congressional board in 1947. The author introduces his book with a sentence told to Ayn Rand which motivated her throughout the rest of her days.

At a bon voyage party for Ayn Rand in January 1926, before she left Russia for
the United States, a gentlemen approached her and said: ‘When you get there,
tell them that Russia is a huge cemetery and that we are all dying.’ This is
what Ayn Rand spent her life attempting to proliferate to the world.

Today there are many claims presented as the atrocities the Hollywood Ten - and others who were supposedly prosecuted by congress during the three periods of the investigations towards Hollywood in 1947, 1951-52, 1953-55 - underwent. The claims touted are always the same; these ‘Ten’ and their comrades were heroes who were standing up for the Bill of Rights, for freedom of speech and more.

What these supposed advocates of freedom fail to acknowledge – or refuse to acknowledge – is the differentiation between the ideological and the physical. This is what is meant by the Bill of Rights. The idea of civil liberties i.e. free speech, free assembly etc applies and belongs only in the realm of ideas. Once those ideas cross into physical violence, they become null and void. What the HUAC (House Un-American Activities) was investigating was not merely what their ideological viewpoints were, but whether or not those under question were a card carrying member of the Communist Party. Indeed they carried cards. Being a member of the Communist Party meant much more than simply believing in what the communists believed, it meant adhering to their creed and law. It meant taking orders. It meant belonging to an organization of murder, violence, sabotage, and spying. This moves the individuals being investigated from the realm of ideas into criminal law. Moreover, those who were card carrying members also received their orders from a foreign government, which puts them in the realm of treason and military law. The Congressional hearings were correct in their condemnation.

To further elucidate this point I refer to Ayn Rand’s commentary on her HUAC testimony regarding communist membership.

Membership in the Communist Party is a formal act of joining a formal
organization whose aims, by its own admission, include acts of criminal
violence. Congress has no right to inquire into ideas or opinions, but has every
right to inquire into criminal activities. Belonging to a secret organization
that advocates criminal actions comes into the sphere of the criminal, not the
ideological…

As she further states, allowing members of the Communist Party is like saying it is ok for a certain religious sect to practice religious sacrifices. The members of that religious sect would be persecuted for murder. Their ideological backing would have no merit on the trial. The same logic applies to the HUAC hearings, although Congress seemed to pursue these villains with a half-hearted vigor.

The fact that the Hollywood Ten claimed they did not want to reveal their connection to the Party because they would lose their jobs, only indicates their perpetration of a fraud. It attests to the fact that they wished to conceal information from their employers, co-workers, customers and the general public. That people would not deal with them if they knew the truth only shows the gravity of their wrongs. By condemning Congress for not allowing the Hollywood Ten to commit their crimes is a mockery to the idea of individual rights and the Rule of Law. This is equivalent to a con artist saying to congress that if they force them to reveal their con then the jig is up for them and they will lose their livelihood.

The false idea being pushed around the intellectual forum today that these supposed heroes were fighting for their freedom of speech is ridiculous. Again, free speech wasn’t an issue. The issue was whether or not these people were in fact members of a party which would kill any of their own people to keep them quiet. Ironically enough, as these Ten were portraying their viewpoints of Stalinist Russia in American movies, an atrocity rarely heard of was being carried out by that evil dictator; the extermination of the Lubyanka Thousand. The Lubyanka was a Moscow headquarters of the Soviet secret police. Many innocent people were imprisoned, tortures, and killed there. The Lubyanka Thousand were the over one thousand writers murdered there.

A Supreme Let Down

2009-05-25T21:23:00.006-06:00

As many American’s are aware, Supreme Court Judge David Souter is now retiring after 19 years. This gives President Barrack Obama the opportunity to exercise one of his most important executive powers; to appoint the next Supreme Court Justice. Obama has made it very clear his major requirements for the next Supreme Court choice. As he has said on a few occasions “We need someone who’s got the heart to recognize – the empathy to recognize what it’s like to be a teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges” This bold statement completely refutes the intent of our constitution.

Our framers specifically and painstakingly designed a state that is a ‘constitutionally restricted republic.’ Today, people believe our country is merely a democracy, yet they forget democracy is only one check on the overall state.

A problem with the way America’s state was designed begins to occur when we look at what a state really is.

Murray Rothbard succinctly covered many aspects of the state in his essay The Anatomy of the State. First, understanding the state is not us. This is a common misconception today, that ‘we are the government.’ This sad and ideological term ‘we’ has prevented citizens of a particular state to be unaware of the reality of political life. As Rothbard States: “If ‘we are the government.’ Then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also ‘voluntary’ on the part of the individual concerned.” As he further explains,

“under this reasoning any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not
murdered; instead, they must have ‘committed suicide,’ since they were the
government (which was democratically chosen), and therefore, anything the
government did to them was voluntary on their part.”

This reasoning seems ludicrous, but yet, it is completely in line with the common thinking of our time. It must be emphatically stated that we are not the government, and understand what the government is and its general purpose. A state is an organization that has a ubiquitous monopoly on force over a given geographical area. Moreover, it is the only organization which does not attain its monies by voluntary measures; its only means to attaining revenue is force.

There are only two ways a human may attain wealth; voluntary trade, or compulsion. Open hand, or the gun. The state only has one option available to it.

This then leads into the development of our own constitutionally restricted republic. Our founding fathers knew one thing, and that is, if a state is left unchecked it will trample individual rights, as per the states nature. Our founders began with the understanding that individual rights are not granted from god, society, king or any other means – but that individual rights are inalienable. Some may cite the Declaration of Independence’s statement: “That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” This seems to say that our founders believed our rights derived from god, or something outside of ourselves, yet this is not congruent with what our framers tried to convey. Merely a line before that ‘Creator’ line it states: “…assume the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” It is clear through the writings of our framers what they hoped future generations would retain, and that is our conception of our individual rights. Rights are a moral concept which serves as a transition from the principles which guide each and every one of us individually to the principles guiding our relationship with others. As Ayn Rand wrote, “the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.” Also in Atlas Shrugged the character John Galt explains, “the source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law but the law of identity. A is A and man is man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational.”

There is a disconnect, from what our founders intended, and what they in fact implemented in our constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States of America has the ultimate and last say in the interpretation of our constitution, and it is a part of the government. The masses may believe that the judicial branch of the government is separate from the other two, yet the members are chosen from the executive and legislative branches. This allows the federal government to pick the individuals who will be enforcing the rules they will create, which is like a professional basketball team picking the referee who will ref their games. The basketball team (and the politicians) will obviously pick those people who are most likely to call the game in their favor. So comes to fruition, once again, the battle between state power and social power.

In our system, the best check on this blatant flaw is our president picking the best person for our country. When we select a president to run for 4 years it should be known by the public that when the president chooses a Supreme Court Judge, it is a lifetime position. Justice John Paul Stevens all but wiped away the constitutions restrictions on the government’s ability to confiscate private property in “Kelo v. New London” – 30 years after President Ford appointed him.

When Obama speaks of choosing Judges based off of their ‘empathy’ he neglects the purpose of the judges. Obama, a former law professor, completely ignores the reasoning behind our lady justice being blindfolded. The reason Justice is blind, is that it matters not what a person’s skin tone is, what their social status, wealth, fame, handicap, political preferences, sexual preferences and more are. Only justice matters.

It is unfortunate but when Barack Obama chooses a judge it will be in complete accordance with his world views, which he has elucidated very clearly to the American people and we are still buying into what he is selling. The only factor that Obama cannot forestall (yet) is time. It takes a lot of time for judges to retire, or die. If our country can sound the alarms now, it just might be enough time to alter the course of the way our constitution is upheld for the next 30 years.

Regrettably, our current media is on the side of destroying our constitution. In the last Sunday Denver Post an article written by Michael Riley outlines the grievous errors in all of our judgments. Governor Bill Ritter and two freshman senators asked Obama to “Seriously Consider” appointing Secretary Ken Salazar to the U.S. Supreme Court. What did they and the article cite were Salazar’s qualifications? That he is a “Westerner who from hard-scrabble beginnings has risen to become one of the country’s most successful Latino politicians.” The people pushing Salazar mainly are explaining his heritage, his skin color and his ability to rise from nothing to political bureaucrat. The article also points out that politicians and interest groups have been weighing in on their judgeship pick since Souter announced his retirement. Here is how they wish to ‘weigh in’ on who should be picked, “an African-American, a Latino, a woman, a liberal, to balance the court’s conservatives or a moderate who would sway from the middle.” This erases the most important qualification, which is whether the new judge will uphold our constitution. The article does point out that Salazar has never served as a judge but that doesn’t matter because Obama will consider real world experience when he is making his big choice.

The question our politicians should be asking our judges is not whether they will have empathy for the people they judge over, but whether or not they will uphold the constitution which protects all of our individual rights. The biggest danger for our country is not merely how a judge will vote on this or that issue, but whether they will undermine the very concept of the rule of law. Our country was founded on this idea. The idea that ‘laws not men’ govern. Once we erode this concept, our very ability to live as free people is wiped away.

Anti Trust Part Two

2009-05-24T11:04:00.006-06:00

In Part two I will go over such cases as the Alcoa Case, Borden Case, and Californias 2001 energy scare. Read part One HERE

ALCOA CASE (1945)

The Aluminum Company of America was one of the few corporations which successfully attained and held a monopoly on a product. This of course depends on how the market is defined. It is true that because of certain production patents Alcoa owned they were able to become the only producer of ‘primary’ aluminum, this they were able to hold for almost 20 years. In 1888 aluminum had no known uses, although its potential was obvious. The main problem was the extreme expense and the scarcity of the product. In the beginning, it would cost $5 to $8 dollars per pound, and Charles Hall (the man who discovered and patented the first commercial method for making aluminum) was unable to get more than 10 pounds produced a day. Because of this expense aluminum ingots were all but obsolete since it was unable to effectively compete with cheaper substitutes. However, by extremely effective entrepreneurial efforts they were able to produce 50 pounds a day by 1889, and over 1000 pounds a day in 1892, and by 1897 over 8000 pounds a day. Subsequently the price fell from $5 dollars in 1887 all the way to 37 cents by 1910, and by 1941 it fell all the way to 15 cents a pound.[1] Through Alcoa’s own ingenuity they were able to promote several uses for its product including; metal in the wire industry, for surgical instruments and other medical apparatus, and for fabrication into cooking utensils.

Alcoa was also accused of practicing many discriminatory business practices, but once again the facts tell another story. The making of aluminum ingots was very difficult and there are certain natural resources which were, and still are, needed. One claim against Alcoa was that it had monopolized bauxite deposits (used for mining the ore). Another claim was that they had monopolized water power sites, also that they conspired with a foreign cartel of producers.

The first case against Alcoa brought about by the Federal Trade Commission in 1925 was found to be in favor of Alcoa. The FTC examiner proved that Alcoa did not have a monopoly on bauxite deposits “there being sufficient supplies of bauxite in the world, exclusive of respondent’s holdings.” Also that Alcoa did not hold a monopoly on water power as “its holdings now being only a small percent of the available water power in the world.” Lastly it was found that Alcoa “never attempted to control and does not now control the market for foreign aluminum in the U.S”[2]

So this begs the question, why was Alcoa, after already being found innocent of all the claims, suddenly in 1945 convicted of being a monopoly and forced to break apart? Due to the lengthy and complex nature of the lawsuits against Alcoa a special act was passed on June 9th, 1944 which allowed a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the case rather than the Supreme Court. The previous court of appeals found that if the market is defined not only by ‘primary’ ingot but also including secondary or ‘scrap’ ingot (also highly used at the time) Alcoa’s market share was a mere 33 percent, hardly a monopoly. The new Judges, headed by Judge Learned Hand, thusly reduced the relevant market to include only virgin ingot, which Alcoa was the sole supplier of in America. Alcoa supplied 90 percent of the virgin ingots in America, 10 percents came from foreign supplies. As Dr. Armentano shows

This broke familiar legal and economic guidelines as to the meaning of
‘monopolize’ and to the ‘relevant’ market under consideration. A relevant market
for a product ‘should include all firms whose production has so immediate and
substantial an effect on the prices and production of the firms in question that
the actions of the one group cannot be explained without direct reference to the
other. One should include in a market all firms whose products are, in fact,
good and directly available substitutes for one another in sales to some
significant group of buyers and exclude all others.[3]

So in essence, Judge Learned Hand had basically changed the way monopolies were discussed at the time, minimized the relevant market share and because of this came to the conclusion that in this skewed view of the market, Alcoa now was a monopoly. Once again the reality showed something different, Alcoa had in fact reduced prices and increased output, Judge Hand was condemning Alcoa for being too efficient and too good. In Judge Hand’s famous indictment of Alcoa he said:

It was not inevitable that it should always anticipate increases in the demand
for ingot and be prepared to supply them. Nothing compelled it to keep doubling
and redoubling its capacity before others entered the field. It insists
that it never excluded competitors; but we can think of no more effective
exclusion than progressively to embrace each new opportunity as it opened, and
to face every newcomer with new capacity already geared into a great
organization… (Emphasis mine)[4]

By condemning our most productive members of society for being too good and too efficient we are distorting the best use of our capital in America, while at the same time endorsing less efficient business practices and condemning the best within us. It is impossible for a businessman to start a business and know ahead of time whether or not he is going to break some arbitrary anti-trust law and go to jail or lose his investment. This brief history illustrates where anti-trusts have come from and two of their most disastrous cases, now it is important to understand the main underlying themes that are regularly attacked by anti-trust legislation.

VERTICAL AND TYING AGREEMENTS

In order to understand some of the damage anti-trust has caused it is important to get a full grasp on a few of the supposed negative consequences of a free and open market. The idea that a company will rise up and eventually gain enough power to discriminate in price and make vertical, and tying agreements is in actuality not a bad thing but in many cases a very effective way to allocate resources to their most efficient uses.

THE BORDEN CASE

Price discrimination is when some firm sells a product, usually homogeneous to different buyers at different prices Dr. Armentano’s case study of The Borden Evaporated Milk Case shows the irrationalities of attempting to enforce laws against price discrimination. In 1958 Borden was indicted for selling their product to different buyers at different prices. They had charged a smaller price for their milk that they had packed and sold to private-label customers than what they had charged for its own Borden brand of milk in retail stores. It is true that the milk sold to both buyers was chemically the same, ‘consumer perception’ of that same milk sold at retail was definitely not the same. “Consumers were willing to pay more for the Borden brand of evaporated milk than for milk packed by Borden but sold under various private labels.”[5] The reason for this is that Borden had at that point established a high reputation for their products. When Borden sold their products to private label companies their responsibility ended when the product left their factories, with their own product they were highly controlled on how they maintained the quality of milk they sold to their retail consumers. As Armentano notes the most important aspect of this case was that no one was injured by the lower prices charged to private-label distributors. Borden’s private-label costumers did not suffer by having a cheaper product, and Borden’s own costumers did not suffer by purchasing a high quality well known brand for slightly higher, especially when they could have switched to a cheaper brand of evaporated milk if they chose, also Borden only maintained an 11 percent market share in the Midwest.

The main complaints came from smaller less efficient Midwest firms who were losing business because of Borden’s efficiency. What had occurred is what happens nearly every time with anti-trust legislation, some smaller company complaining of a larger company that is lowering prices and providing a better product to their costumer’s, which is in turn negatively effecting their business. In fact over 90 percent of all anti-trust lawsuits are brought about by one private company suing another company.[6] Although the case was dismissed in 1967 this began to lead anti-trust legislation in a new direction, that of protecting high-cost rivals against lower-cost and more efficient companies.

CALIFORNIA’S 2001 ENERGY CRISIS

In 2001 there was a great scare that California, specifically the prosperous Silicon Valley, would possibly be shut down. That event could have shut down America’s whole economy. The reasons lauded at the time were the so called deregulation of the energy market in California. A bill was introduced to alleviate the problem, AB 1890. The fact is that bills like AB 1890 did not deregulate but simply shift regulations, and actually added a vast array of new regulations on power generators and distributors. AB 1890 is another attempt to reign in some form of ‘pure competition.’ Under AB 1890 it is not possible for energy companies to combine their generation with their distribution business. Editor of The Intellectual Activist Robert W. Tracinski said in an article,

They were forced to sell off many of their power plants. Any power they still
generated on their own had to be sold on the open market at prevailing prices –
with no special discounts for themselves. The result is that power distributors,
like Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison, were
made utterly dependant on the prices charged by independent generators. They
couldn’t fall back on their own, less-expensive supply.[7]

The other detrimental aspect of AB 1890 was to restrict long term contracts. This section of the bill would not allow a company to negotiate certain contracts which are vital to their organization. These long term contracts allow for the companies to lock-in a price agreement to protect themselves from sudden price changes in their industry. This however is perceived to give them ‘market power’ so it is not allowed. The last of the important intrusions into the business sector AB 1890 allowed for was to cap the price power distributors could charge. This is because under the anti-trust theory of ‘perfect’ competition, prices will always go down. The end result was that when prices spiked power distributors were unable to raise prices and this caused a shortage in the supply of energy, which resulted in the rolling blackouts and the scaring of the American public with thoughts of their biggest money makers having to ‘shut down.’

The lesson here is that anti-trust legislation doesn’t always have to be specifically used in order to affect all types of industries. It is the ideologies behind anti-trust legislation which need to be refuted.[8]

MICROSOFT AND MARKET SHARE

In the majority of anti-trust cases a few terms are used loosely, such as what constitutes a monopoly and what a company’s market share really is. For example in the Microsoft case at the turn of the century Microsoft’s market was defined as “that for computer operating systems for stand-alone personal computers using microchips of the kind manufactured by Intel.”[9] This narrowly defined market share completely left out any relevant competitors such as the operating systems used by Apple as well as other operating system competitors produced by; Sun Microsystems or the Linux system for stand-alone computers. The companies who have effectively defined Microsoft’s market share this way were able to prove that Microsoft had a dominant market share and thusly a monopoly power. In order to fully understand the Microsoft case it’s vital to know the history of the governments ‘assault on Microsoft.’

Beginning in 1990 the Federal Trade Commission began to investigate Microsoft, but did not file any charges. Because the FTC is charged with ‘policing’ so-called unfair practices this investigation helped lead to the subsequent anti-trust laws Microsoft had to deal with in later years. It was later found by the Justice Department that because Microsoft ‘per processor licensing fee had a 2 year lease on it this discouraged the manufacturers of PC’s from installing competitive software, which lead to the ‘unfair’ harm on rival software companies. Instead of dealing with a long legal debate Microsoft decided to shorten its 2 year leases to 1 year.

Almost immediately thereafter Microsoft was under new anti-trust litigation for tying its products. Microsoft was not accused of increasing prices or for reducing output, they were explicitly accused of the exact opposite.

The anti-trust lawsuit, however, did not accuse Microsoft of jacking up prices
unconscionably, in the classic manner of monopoly theory. Rather, Microsoft had
added an Internet browser to its Windows operating system free of charge,
undermining rival browser producer Netscape.[10]

Yet somehow the anti-trust enthusiasts claimed this harmed consumers because it harmed competition. The fact is, what Microsoft had done was succeed at beating out its rivals and was therefore condemned for their actions. Competition can be defined as “the effort of two or more parties acting independently to secure the business of a third party by offering the most favorable terms”[11] Microsoft was not engaging in any evil business practices by offering their customers to purchase their product which would include a free internet browser on top of their other services; the only ones harmed would be internet browser companies such as Netscape, who helped initiate the suit. The Microsoft lawsuit was a blatant protectionist attempt. In 1998 however, the lawsuit was found in favor of Microsoft. Afterwards, the Department of Justice and twenty states filed an anti-trust suit against Microsoft. The reason for their lawsuit was that the ‘aggrieved’ claimed Microsoft had an unfair monopoly in operating systems. Again, this unfair monopoly was using the loose and narrowly defined market for Microsoft, and a loose definition of monopoly. To determine whether or not Microsoft actually had any real monopoly it is necessary to properly define what a monopoly is. In reality a perfect monopoly would have a complete control of all supply of a product in a well defined market which had strong legal barriers to entry.[12]

A couple facts, even in their narrowly defined market Microsoft only had 90 percent of the operating system licensing for PC’s. There were also no legal barriers to entry and there were several rather large operating system competitors. The problem is, many proponents of anti-trust claim that a monopoly is any company that has a 70 percent market share; again this depends on how the market is defined. In an article by Professor Thomas Sowell he showed the ‘economic’ reality of market share. Explaining that during the time of the trial the city of Munich had ‘replaced Microsoft Windows with a Linux operating system in 14,000 of its computers.”[13] This showed that Microsoft was most definitely under pressure from competitors and did not have any relevant monopoly.

The use of these ‘murky’ and ever shifting definitions are where anti-trust legislation gets most of its power. Under the Sherman Act a ‘monopoly’ is not illegal per se, it is ‘monopolization that is made illegal. So even if a company is producing a superior product, is cutting costs, reducing prices, and increasing output they can be prosecuting under anti-trust legislation. What needs to be found out is whether or not the company achieved their monopoly through free enterprise ingenuity and business foresight, or through scrupulous business practices such as receiving special government franchises, patents, and subsidies. When looking at Microsoft it is apparent that the company achieved its market share through aggressive innovation and by promoting their standardized operating system that included various other applications. These applications included; file sharing, fax utilities, network support and more. These applications were previously purchased separately, which cost consumers more. Microsoft had effectively integrated all of these services into a ‘bundle’ package which consumers obviously enjoyed. This was the real source of any of Microsoft’s power, and did not exclude others from coming into the market and innovating their own operating systems, which is what now is occurring.

So in the end by defining the market share so narrowly and having such a shifty definition of monopoly we have allowed one of America’s most innovative companies to be greatly harmed. The effective allocation of resources was once again forced to flow to less efficient venues. Instead of allowing Microsoft to offer a superior, cheaper product through free trade, anti-trust laws have forced consumers to continue to purchase their web browsers separately, in effect costing them not only cash but resources which could have shifted to more useful avenues.

CONCLUSION

If our goal as an economy is the most efficient allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses, then the only way to allow for such efficiency is to ensure that those in our economy who are risking their capital, time, and energy are free to do whatsoever they can to increase productivity, reduce costs, reduce prices and also increase output which will moreover allow these companies to effectively compete in an open and free market. As long as there is no interference into the marketplace from the government, and the only thing the government is allowed to do is protect individual rights, through ensuring fraud is punished and patents are protected. Then if this is our goal it is important to not only refute anti-trust legislation but the ideology behind them.

Business practices such as; price collusion, price discrimination, mergers, tying and others allows for companies to stay on the ‘competitive’ edge. It does not lead to some coercive monopoly where a company is able to ‘force’ out other companies and ensure there are no new entrants into their market. The only organization which has a monopoly on force is the government, and only through government power are monopolies ever possible.

By allowing anti-trust legislation to continue we condemn business men to being guilty for the mere fact that they are in business. As philosopher Ayn Rand summarized:

Under the [U.S.] antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he
goes into business… if he charges prices some bureaucrats judge as too high, he
can be prosecuted for… ‘intent to monopolize’; if he charges prices [too low],
he can be prosecuted for ‘unfair competition’ or ‘restraint of trade’; and if he
charges the same price as his competitors he can be prosecuted for ‘collusion’
or ‘conspiracy’[14]

Any corporation that is allowed to produce freely will inevitably act in their own best interest, and their best interest will be the best interest of their customers. Since a company can only offer products better and cheaper than the competition there can be no way to force any individuals to purchase their product and help continue them on the way to monopoly prices. The shoulders’ on which all our lives depend, the producers, are under constant attack and we must as free people protect these individuals who give us so many life enhancing and life saving products and services. The Henry Fords, John D. Rockefellers, Andrew Carnegies, Bill Gates’ and more are not to be lauded as evil greedy businessmen, but to be rewarded and applauded for their business ingenuity and innovativeness.

ENDNOTES

[1] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure [Book]. - New York : John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1982. Pgs 100-103

[2] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure. Pg 104

[3] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure. Pg 111

[4] Greenspan Alan Antitrust pg 72

[5] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust: The Case for Repeal. Pg 72

[6] Paul Ron and Armentano Dominick Anti-Trust and monopoly [Interview]. - Jul 13, 1983.
[7] Tracinski Robert W. Capitalism Magazine [Online] // Capitalism Magazine. - Jan 22nd, 2001. - Oct 14th, 2008. - http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=159.
[8] Cunha Mark Da Capitalism Magazine [Online]. - June 10th, 2001. - Oct 14th, 2008. http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=922
[9] Sowell Thomas Basic Economics: a Common Sense Guide to the Economy 3rd edition [Book]. - New York : Basic Books, 2007. Pg 156
[10] Sowell Thomas Basic Economics: a Common Sense Guide to the Economy 3rd edition Pg 156

[11] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure. Pg 14

[12] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust: The Case for Repeal

[13] Sowell Thomas Capitalism Magazine [Online] // Capitalism Magazine. - June 28th, 2003. - Dec 13th, 2007. - http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2892.
[14] Rand Ayn America's Persecuted Minorty: Big Business [Book Section] // Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. - New York : Signet, 1961

Anti-Trust Part One

2009-05-22T15:09:00.006-06:00

There are a set of laws in America that are believed to increase productivity and efficiency in the economy. These laws are called anti-trust laws, and they include; The Sherman Act, The Clayton Act, The Federal Trade Act and many more. The ideologies and their subsequent laws have subjugated our best producers to irrelevant and counterproductive practices. Alan Greenspan in 1961 called the anti-trust laws “reminiscent of Alice’s Wonderland: everything seemingly is, yet apparently isn’t, simultaneously. It is a world in which competition is lauded as the basic axiom and guiding principle, yet ‘too much’ competition is condemned as ‘cutthroat.’”[1]

Anti-trust in essence is a set of laws to ensure that competition is kept on a more even keel. That there can be no business which comes to power and ‘monopolizes’ any industry i.e. has complete control over said industry. Anti-trust legislation derives much of its intellectual power from a few ideas. One being the idea of ‘pure’ or ‘perfect’ competition; this is the idea that the best and most efficient market is one in which there are many sellers of a product all who make no real profit and who have absolutely no effect on the market price. Economists for over a hundred years have been building models off of this idea, coming to conclusions based off faulty assumptions. Some of the assumptions used, by economists, are noted in Dr. Armentano’s book Antitrust and Monopoly: “The model begins by assuming that a substantial number of small firms already exist in some relevant market, and that they are already producing homogeneous products.”[2] As was said earlier these atomistic firms have no control over the market price since the products are all homogenous (the products are the same in the eyes of the consumers). This also means that although in the short run some economic profits are possible, under these assumptions in the long run what is called “normal” profits will occur. Normal profits means marginal revenue will equal marginal costs and there will be no real profits made in an industry because entry and exit into this particular industry is open and easy.

The idea of a ‘pure’ competitive market is not what most economists believe is absolutely necessary. They do not think that the market needs to be so extremely competitive, in this sense, but simply that they use this idea as a benchmark to determine efficiency. They claim we need certain regulatory policies to help us bring in a more ‘purely’ competitive market.

Another area these legislations get their power from, which also derives from the ‘pure’ competition idea, is the idea that such things as mergers (vertical), tying agreements, gouging, product differentiation, advertising, price discrimination and more are all considered detrimental to a free and pure competitive market. Anti-trust laws are set out to destroy these business practices.

The Sherman act of 1890, which is the first industrial policy in America, had an effect on American businesses which is almost impossible to fully perceive. The way in which the law is stated and implemented is all but impossible to actually follow within the guidelines, in other words, the Sherman Anti-trust Act is absolutely arbitrary. To quote section two of the Sherman Act “Monopolizing trade a felony.”:

Every person who shall monopolize or attempt to monopolize, or combine to
conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade
or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed
guilty of a felony. (Emphasis mine)[3]

As Greenspan said in his essay:

No one will ever know what new products, processes, machines, and cost-saving
mergers failed to come into existence, killed by the Sherman Act before they
were born. No one can ever compute the price that all of us have paid for that
Act which, by inducing less effective use of capital, has kept our standard of
living lower than would otherwise have been possible.[4]

By implementing this law America has subjected the producers to the whim of any judiciary or politician who wishes to ‘make an example’ of those who they perceive are being greedy or unethical in some manner.

The Clayton Act of 1914 specifically stopped tying agreements and mergers that would allow a company to attain a ‘majority’ of the market. A tying agreement is when one company leases or sells a product with the sole agreement that the purchaser shall buy or lease some other product sold by the producer. Mergers, usually either horizontal or vertical, are also condemned. Vertical mergers occur when a manufacturer of some product purchases the distribution centers for its products such as the retail stores that sell it. One of the largest and best known of this type of merger was the Standard Oil Company which had in effect owned almost everything needed to produce and distribute their product, kerosene.

Proponents of anti-trust legislation explain that horizontal agreements; such as joint ventures, price agreements and horizontal mergers, are a root cause for economic inefficiency which can reduce output and increase price. Generally this is taken into effect using what is called the ‘rule of reason’ in which the courts decide the probable social costs possibly being lost if the merger is not allowed. The social costs can be very high; these mergers can bring about substantial cost savings in production and distribution, also in industrial research and product development. Also they may come up with entirely new products and services that might otherwise not be possible.

HISTORY

The idea that there was a need for the government to interfere in the market in order to ensure there was this ideal type of competition, mainly started after the Civil War. The railroads played a big hand in the coming of anti-trust legislation and over one hundred and forty years of government interference in the business sector. In the eastern United States before the civil war the railroads had to deal with heavy competition. This not only included other railroads but also other forms of transportation, including barges, riverboats, and wagons. In the 1860’s there was an outcry to move the railroads to the west, and therefore connect California to the rest of the country. The railroads however, did not see enough profit in building all that was needed to make the move to California, especially not simply for ‘the public interest.’ This brought about the government subsidizing the railroads and in essence giving them the edge they needed to become a monopoly. During the time between 1863 and 1867 the Federal government granted the railroads close to one hundred million acres of public lands, and these lands granted were given to specific individually owned railroads, which gave that particular company the ability to break away from the competition of the other railroads, as well as the other forms of transportation.[5]

These government aided railroad companies in the west were able to act like a ‘true’ monopoly in the very textbook sense of the word. Again, this arbitrary power they had accrued was made possible exclusively because of the government interference into the transportation industry. As the west grew however, it opened up the transportation field to more competition, which the railroads had a hard time dealing with. This is where an “Ominous turning point had taken place in our economic history: the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887”[6] This act in effect allowed the government to all but fully control the railroad industry. It is still thought to this day that these regulations were necessary because of the obvious monopoly the railroads had, but the reality is that the monopoly the railroads were able to attain came directly from government interventionist policies. This then lead to the belief that the government had to continue to regulate the business industry. These same beliefs eventually led to Americans fear of the formidable “trusts.” A trust is a legal entity that owns several smaller companies each with their own duties in the larger trust. The most formidable and well known of these was the Standard Oil Trust ran by John D. Rockefeller.

THE MYTH OF THE STANDARD OIL MONOPOLY

The majority of the myth of the greedy and monopolistic company Standard Oil actually stemmed from a woman named Ida Tarbell a journalist in the early 20th century. Ms. Tarbell perpetuated the myth that before Rockefeller came on to the scene the petroleum industry was a perfectly competitive market and the men involved all enjoyed great and prosperous lives. Ms. Tarbell tells with vivid detail of the men, using many real names, which had been involved and had enjoyed with confidence their achievements, and she exclaims that these men looked forward to the future of their industry with eagerness and joy, then, as Tarbell explains it:

…Suddenly, at the very heyday of this confidence, a big hand [Rockefeller’s]
reached out from nobody knew where, to steal their conquest and throttle their
future. The suddenness and the blackness of the assault on their business
stirred to the bottom their manhood and their sense of fair play.[7]

This view propelled the hatred for large trusts and especially Standard Oil. This is still believed mostly true to this day. As philosopher Alex Epstein explains in his article Vindicating Capitalism: The Real History of the Standard Oil Company. “Pick a modern history or economics book at random and you are likely to see some variant of the Lloyd/Tarbell narrative being taken for granted.”[8]

Standard Oil was accused of many things including; predatory pricing, receiving special rebates from railroads, collusion, and more. As the story continues these ‘predatory’ and ‘anti-competitive’ practices forced companies to sell their holdings to Standard Oil or risk losing everything. It was almost as if Rockefeller was holding a gun to their heads. This idea has convinced the majority of people that in a openly free market it is possible for a corporation to come into existence that will take over all else and become a ‘coercive’ monopoly, similar to the power a government has.

Ron Chernow author of the popular Rockefeller biography Titan; says, “[Rockefeller] had taught the American public an important but paradoxical lesson: Free markets, if left completely to their own devices can wind up terribly unfree.”[9]

As Epstein explains this is “the logic behind antitrust law, in which government uses its political power to forcibly stop what it regards as ‘anticompetitive’ uses of economic power.”[10]

This standard story of the Standard Oil Company is completely false, Standard did not ever have a monopoly, the company was still subject to the laws of supply and demand, and the railroad rebates they received were not evil business practices but the product of extremely good foresight and ingenuity. Moreover, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil revolutionized the way business was conducted and led the way to the ever increasingly high standard of living American’s today enjoy.

Before Standard came on the scene most people had to light their houses with sperm whale oil, which was very expensive, usually only the rich could afford such things. The majority of the world had to stop any productive activities once it got dark. Once petroleum was discovered to have certain properties to allow for long lasting light, mainly kerosene, it allowed for a whole new world to open up. People now had easier access to light and could enjoy such activities as reading at night, among other amusements, especially in the winter season.

At the beginning of the petroleum industry the process of refining and distributing kerosene was, as expected, very crude. The refiners had used, for storage, expensive barrels costing upwards of $2.50 a barrel; they would then load them onto barges, wagons or railroads, each having to make numerous stops, since the majority of these refiners could only produce a few barrels at a time. Along the way to their destination, these barrels would often fall off, leak, and even explode. Even after finally making it into the homes of customers the kerosene would still explode and kill many people, this was a huge problem in the 1860’s and even 70’s. This problem is actually the reason Rockefeller named his company ‘Standard Oil.’[11] These early refiners also were very inefficient in the distillation of crude oil. Usually using only a small fraction of the actual oil, the fraction was usually kerosene, and the rest was thrown away.

Rockefeller came on the scene and almost immediately began cleaning up the mess that was the petroleum industry. Some of the major accomplishments are diametrically opposed to the rhetoric most hear on the subject of Standard Oil. For one, Standard did not restrict output nor did it stop any new competition from entering the market. A little known fact is that Standard’s market share in petroleum refining declined from “roughly 85 percent in 1890 to 64 percent in 1911. In 1911, at least 147 refining companies were competing with Standard, including such large [vertically integrated] firms Gulf, Texaco, Union, Pure, Associated Oil and Gas, and Shell.”[12] It is interesting to note that when the anti-trust case against Standard was initiated in 1911 all this was going on. Yet Standard was still forced to break up their holdings and was put at a large disadvantage with their competitors, at no real fault of their own. Another important fact to note was that instead of the popular myth that Standard had achieved a monopoly power and thusly began to raise prices, it did the exact opposite. Standard had lowered costs and consequently lowered prices, “Prices for kerosene fell from 30 cents a gallon in 1869 to 9 cents in 1880, 7.4 cents in 1890, and 5.9 cents in 1897.”[13]

What happened to Standard is very logical when looked at in a historical setting. There was a large shift in two areas which affected Standard. One was the invention and mass production of the light bulb and the subsequent electricity boom. This had a large impact on Standard Oil mainly because the company’s main revenue source, kerosene, was becoming more and more obsolete. The second source of a shift away from Standard Oil was the different uses for crude oil, Standard had a hard time keeping up with; this of course was the use of gasoline. What all this shows is that anti-trust legislation was not the cause of Standard’s decline, but the open and free market was.

If one is to try and study Standard it is important to first understand what Standard oil specifically did to improve upon the industry. When Rockefeller first invested in the refining of oil in 1863 he did not set up shanty refineries as did most people at the time, he instead invested and created the largest refinery in Cleveland: Excelsior Works. Almost immediately Rockefeller was improving the distillation process and was soon producing more than 505 barrels a day in opposition to most refiners at the time who were only producing around 5 barrels a day. He also bought land for his refinery in a place where he would be able to ship his oil by land and sea, which would come in handy later on when Rockefeller was negotiating with the railroads.

Probably one of the most important characteristics of Rockefeller was his keen accounting skills. He was able to drastically cut costs throughout his whole reign at the helm of Standard Oil. One way in which he accomplished this was by cutting costs of transporting oil in barrels. Instead of relying on the ‘unreliable’ barrel makers he simply began making his own barrels, this helped drop his costs for barrels from $2.50 to under $1 a barrel. He also hired and trained his own purchasing agents, “which eliminated the need for paying ‘jobbers’ (purchasing middleman)”[14]

All in all, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company did not monopolize nor destroy any industry. He in fact revolutionized the industry, cut costs, increased output, and drastically reduced prices; he also invented the idea of companies investing in research and development. For this he was punished and forced to break apart a business he spent a lifetime building. The impact of anti-trust laws on Standard Oil was very drastic, but unfortunately not the only time it has happened. It has happened repeatedly and dramatically throughout the history of anti-trust legislation. As was shown above Standard did indeed vertically integrate its operations, but this was not a ploy that was worthy of condemnation, but was worthy of praise. Standard achieved rebates from railroads not through so-called ‘scrupulous’ business practices, but through ingenious foresight and great business sense. In essence it was not any wrongdoing that Standard was condemned but in its efficiency.

Another famous anti-trust case, the Alcoa case of 1945, also illustrates the wrongdoing of these set of laws and the damage that occurs to businessmen’s lives.

In Part Two I will briefly go over other famous cases such as the Acloa case of 1945, The Borden Case, and some of the reaons behind California 2001 Energy crisis, including some other rather mushy problems these ideals incur.

ENDNOTES
[1] Greenspan Alan Antitrust [Book Section] // Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal / book auth. Rand Ayn. - New York : Signet, 1967. Pg 63
[2] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure [Book]. - New York : John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1982. Pg 15

[3] Anthony D. Becker Ph.D. The Antitrust Case Browser [Online]. - April 16th, 2004. - Sept 9th, 2008. - http://www.stolaf.edu/people/becker/antitrust/index.htm.
[4] Greenspan Alan Antitrust. Pg 71

[5] Greenspan Alan Antitrust. Pg 64-65

[6] Greenspan Alan Antitrust Pg 65

[7] Tarbell Ida THE HISTORY OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY [Online]. - 1904. - Oct 10th, 2008. - http://www.history.rochester.edu/fuels/tarbell/MAIN.HTM. Pgs 36-37
[8] Epstein Alex Vindicating Capitalism: The Real history of the Standard Oil Company [Journal] // The Objective Standard. - 2008. - pp. 29-65.
[9] Chernow Ron Titan [Book]. - Vintage : Random House, 2004. Pg 297
[10] Epstein Alex Vindicating Capitalism: The Real history of the Standard Oil Company

[11] Epstein Alex Vindicating Capitalism: The Real history of the Standard Oil Company
[12] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust: The Case for Repeal [Book]. - Auburn : Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 1999. Pgs 40-43
[13] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust: The Case for Repeal. Pg 41

[14] Epstein Alex Vindicating Capitalism: The Real history of the Standard Oil Company

[15] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure [Book]. - New York : John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1982. Pgs 100-103

[16] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure. Pg 104

[17] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure. Pg 111

[18] Greenspan Alan Antitrust pg 72

[19] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust: The Case for Repeal. Pg 72

[20] Paul Ron and Armentano Dominick Anti-Trust and monopoly [Interview]. - Jul 13, 1983.
[21] Tracinski Robert W. Capitalism Magazine [Online] // Capitalism Magazine. - Jan 22nd, 2001. - Oct 14th, 2008. - http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=159.
[22] Cunha Mark Da Capitalism Magazine [Online]. - June 10th, 2001. - Oct 14th, 2008. http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=922
[23] Sowell Thomas Basic Economics: a Common Sense Guide to the Economy 3rd edition [Book]. - New York : Basic Books, 2007. Pg 156
[24] Sowell Thomas Basic Economics: a Common Sense Guide to the Economy 3rd edition Pg 156

[25] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure. Pg 14

[26] Armentano Dominick T. Antitrust: The Case for Repeal

[27] Sowell Thomas Capitalism Magazine [Online] // Capitalism Magazine. - June 28th, 2003. - Dec 13th, 2007. - http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2892.
[28] Rand Ayn America's Persecuted Minorty: Big Business [Book Section] // Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. - New York : Signet, 1961

Student Cinefest Denver Colorado Production One Review

2009-05-17T10:03:00.004-06:00

Upon entering the student Cinefest for spring ’09, our audience was treated to a mix of comedy, action, experimental and non-fiction, and that’s just for production I class. The show kicks off with a rather interesting futuristic movie about the end of man. Mainly, it is clips of a man smoking in front of a blue screen. Putting our narrator in dark at all times, where we can only see his outline. This gives us the impression he is in hiding. Although, it lacks a definite story line, plot or narrative in the movie, it does showcase the beginnings of one filmmaker’s possible career in futuristic thrillers. The film’s best actual element was the explosion sound transitioning between all cuts. This gave the audience a sense of the world they are now exploring. The major downside to this opening movie was the fact that there was absolutely nothing interesting about it visually – after the first 30 seconds. Once the audience got sick of watching some guy’s mouth and a cigarette we tune out to any meaningful through-line the author might have had, if any.
Overall, the movies for production I were a great success. All of the movies shown seemed to showcase these beginning filmmakers starting visions. The movies were rough, they were sometimes not edited together in a meaningful way, such as “Yes, Of Course I Speak English!” This movie is a great example of how one person can try and make something decent out of a lot of hardships in creating the film. “Rhapsody of a Life Extra” is a movie that shows how filmmakers can patch together meaning when they believe there is none in life. The two best movies of the night which elucidate good storytelling, effective mise-en-scene and great editing are Role Play and Three Stock Crossroads.

Three Stock Crossroads efficiently showcased a view of a desolate life in which there are no rights, and there is no reason to life. Although, personally, I am diametrically opposed to such ideas, their great use of cinematography brought me into their story, whether I liked it or not. The simple set, with three stocks holding three people out by a road in the middle of nowhere, worked great for the desolate feel they were going for. The exposure of the camera, which gave it a somewhat unrealistic feel, was even effective in drawing the audience in to what was going on.

The movie I wish to dive into a little bit more however, is Role Play. This movie starring Presley Conkle as an aging professor finally attempting to say his piece to his non-appreciative student body; utilizes great mise-en-scene elements, narrative flow, hilarious editing, great acting and more. When we are first introduced to Professor Harris he is running through the halls, this may just indicate a once in a while late person, however the opening shot of his feet and the falling paper, really giving us a sense of his character; lost and confused. The director then has us on an over-the-shoulder ride along with his character. To ensure we are feeling his tardiness we even see Harris attempt to look at his watch while running. When Harris finally gets to the door to his room, the editing (having been speeding up throughout his entire jog) speeds up rapidly, in successive cuts until he opens the door, begins talking, and we see he is talking to himself. The sound at the beginning is nothing but heavy footsteps and rustling paper, which serves to further elucidate his lonely and yet hectic life. By having the character run into a door further adds comedy in a way that helps the audience understand the kind of crazy lifestyle Harris is living. A great establishing shot is used after Harris enters the classroom and begins talking to his ‘class.’ The shot serves as one of the last straws to Harris’ psyche. Almost immediately afterwards he is seen talking to himself, as if teaching his class. Off screen a piece of crumpled up paper is thrown at Harris, and now begins his declaration of his feelings to the ‘invisible’ class. The edits are very nicely matched with the characters overall feeling, hot and fast when he hits on the beautiful women towards the end, slow and kind of scary when he splashes the latte on the innocent texting girl, and quite steady everywhere else.

The Make-up and wardrobe really helped this young actor look as if he were actually an aging professor. The close-up of his wrist watch and the sound of the clicking watch further exaggerate his absurd behavior. The end of the movie brings the character full circle, and shows that unfortunately he never really learned anything. Harris is stuck in his little world of pretending or ‘role-playing’ in his imagination the life he wished he could live. Although, the story might miss a few deep points it could touch upon, it is a well done project implementing many aspects learned in their first year.

Ayn Rands Playboy Interview (1964)

2009-05-04T14:43:00.004-06:00

Ayn Rands Playboy Interview.

The 20th century Philosopher and Writer Ayn Rand, author of Mega-best sellers such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, was interviewed by playboy in 1964. This particular interview – one of hundreds- is famous for it’s breadth. In it she discusses guild, original sin, emotions, motherhood, religion, morality, Romantic love, sex, hedonism, promiscuity, charity, compassion, literature, government, free will, foreign policy, nuclear treaties, politicians and others.

She also succinctly describes the practical application of her philosophy; objectivism.
It is now online HERE. Enjoy and send feedback!

Water is a Toxic Pollutant?

2009-05-02T18:58:00.003-06:00

Dr. Charles R. Anderson a materials physicist has posted a blog which logically links C02 being a pollutant to water being a pollutant. The problem is, as he points out, this logic isn’t actually very logical. Recently the EPA has claimed C02 is a pollutant. For those of you that remember science class in elementary school, we exhale C02 and plants ingest C02. As Dr. Anderson points out in his blog, the two of us kind of need each other. You may be wondering how he could come to the conclusion that based off the faulty logic of the EPA he has equated H20 is as much a pollutant as C02. Well, actually he shows how it more of a pollutant:

“Aside from the fact that the maximum absorption frequency for infrared radiation is somewhat different for CO2 and water vapor, their activities as greenhouse gases are very similar. Of course, water vapor has an effect which is about 18 to 20 times greater, owing largely to its about 100 times greater concentration in the atmosphere and its ability to form a wider range of dimers, trimers, and other forms to absorb infrared radiation across a broader spectrum than does CO2. So, if CO2 is a pollutant because it is a greenhouse gas, then so is water. We should next expect to see the EPA drawing up restrictions on the human use of water which may add to the water vapor concentration in the atmosphere. I would assume that this will mean no more farm irrigation and no more watering of lawns as a start. The formation of more lakes and ponds by man must also be stopped.”

He then explains the idea behind water being a toxin may be the problem. Lastly he concludes that the “EPA has taken the prize for the most irrational decleration of supposed science and economics ever.”

Honestly, that seems harder to believe, the government is responsible for some pretty irrational things. But, I’ll let you all decide whether you agree with Dr. Anderson or not. Read his full article HERE.

More Guns, Less Crime an interview with John Lott

2009-05-01T14:37:00.003-06:00

Dr. John Lott interview

John Lott wrote the book More Guns, Less Crime. The book discusses the pertanent facts to gun ownership in America. Although, there are many anecdotal stories on both sides of the gun argument, Lott argues proper data is needed to infer decisions.
In an interview with John Lott he explicates his position on many of the dogmas perpetrated about guns in our politically correct climate:

Lott: Criminals are deterred by higher penalties. Just as higher arrest and conviction rates deter crime, so does the risk that someone committing a crime will confront someone able to defend him or herself. There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate—as more people obtain permits there is a greater decline in violent crime rates.

Lott defends his position by showing his study is the biggest crime study in American history. Covering over 18 years and including all 3,054 counties:
Lott: The analysis is based on data for all 3,054 counties in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994

Lott’s analysis wipes away all of the prevalent beliefs made mainstream in our liberal media today. For example, the must believed ‘truth’ that most people are killed by someone they:

Lott: You are referring to the often-cited statistic that 58 percent of murder victims are killed by either relatives or acquaintances. However, what most people don't understand is that this "acquaintance murder" number also includes gang members killing other gang members, drug buyers killing drug pushers, cabdrivers killed by customers they picked up for the first time, prostitutes and their clients, and so on. "Acquaintance" covers a wide range of relationships. The vast majority of murders are not committed by previously law-abiding citizens. Ninety percent of adult murderers have had criminal records as adults.

His books, and subsequently the in depth research has been almost completely ignored by the media. One day we may all have to pay the price for such ignorance.

Read the whole interview here.

Obama's Approval

2009-04-29T10:06:00.005-06:00

Many Obama supporters would like to believe that their beloved is favored above all by Americans. Unfortunately for them this is not the case. Obama is the second least popular president in 40 years. These five presidents have rated higher than Obama at the end of the 100 day mark: Ronald Reagan with 67% approval, Jimmy Carter with 63%, George W. Bush with 62% Richard Nixon with 61%, and George H.W. Bush with 58%. Of course we're not hearing to much of this in the liberal media. After propping up this poster boy it would be wrong to actually begin reporting the news. Instead they ignore the facts and pretend that everything is just honky dory.

As The Washington Times explicates, the reason for this low rating is that Obama ran as a moderate, yet he has only governed our country from far left field. The people responsible for allowing this person into our most honored American office should at the very least admit their mistake. Obama was voted into office by claiming he was going to reduce government spending and reduce the size of the deficit. Blame was his biggest weapon. He blamed the economic crisis on the excessive deficit, and at no time did he say that increased deficit spending was the answer.

Although, most believe people rarely learn from their mistakes, one can hope that this mistake will wake people up to the dangers of where our society is moving along. Changes need to be made in the natural order of our thinking. Socialism or Capitalism. We all decide our future.

Gun Control Facts and Fallacies

2009-04-25T09:39:00.005-06:00

Talking facts often lead to heated and unfounded debates among those who wish to enforce their lifestyles upon others. Gun control zealots often spout the rhetoric that because England has stricter gun control laws and lower murder rates than The United States, the gun laws obviously are the difference. However, one can easily compare Germany to Switzerland and discover that gun ownership is three times as high in Switzerland, yet the Swiss have a much lower murder rate. This is true in many other countries as well: Israel, New Zealand and Finland, for example. Rural Areas in the United States have higher rates of gun ownership, and lower murder rates. And, for the country as a whole, gun ownership doubled in the late 20th century followed by a decreasing murder rate. Stricter gun laws create more death. This is a simple fact, based upon dozens of empirical studies. These facts are rarely commentated on in the media, however.

The fallacious arguments continue. The media and anti-gun advocates argue guns serve only one purpose, to kill. This is true, but there is also a reason guns are considered “the great equalizer.” Many gun control advocates claim the atrocious shootings of Columbine, Virginia Tech, and more are caused by a lack of gun control laws. Once again this comes in direct conflict with facts and logic. It is gun free zones where American’s are the least safe. All of the following areas were gun free zones where the only person with a gun was the shooter: New York City Pizza shop (employee shot 15 times, two officers killed), The Amish West Nickel Mines School in Pennsylvania (5 children murdered), Columbine (killing 13 and injuring 23), Virginia Tech (32 killed and many injured), and finally Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas where Dr. Suzanne Gratia Hupp complied with the gun free zone law and placed her gun in her glove compartment before entering the restaurant (23 murdered, 20 injured –Dr. Hupp had to watch her parents being murdered, fully aware her gun was sitting in her glove compartment). These horrific tales are merely the beginning, and if American’s do not begin to understand the concept and morality behind the rights to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” we shall be doomed to repeat our past mistakes.

But, what about the children? Many people for and against gun laws explain their biggest problem with the debate is the fact that many children die in gun related incidents. To most this sounds like a great reason to ban guns, yet those willing to see facts will understand the illogic. Most children killed by guns are not merely toddlers who happened upon a loaded weapon lying around. The majority of those ‘children’ are members of teenage criminal gangs who purposefully terminate each other. Unfortunately, there are some children who do in fact die by gun related incidents, but fewer than die in bathtubs. I doubt anyone will advocate banning baths, or fire, knives, chairs, swimming pools, electric cords, or the biggest killer of children: vehicles.

Having a gun in the house will increase a family’s chance of being harmed is one of the most popular gun related dogmas. The reasoning behind this idea is that if a criminal breaks in and sees you holding a gun he is more likely to attack. Once again factual research tells us the exact opposite is true. People who have not resisted have gotten hurt twice as often as people who resisted with a firearm. Of course, those who resisted without a firearm got hurt the most.

People who are in favor of gun control laws because they believe stricter laws leads to less gun related deaths are not the problem. These individuals will easily be swayed once they read some facts on the matter. The problem lies with those who advocate and have the power to ignore such facts. Many books and studies have been released and are available to the public, yet the vast majority of people perpetuate the fallacious arguments. Books such as Pointblank by Gary Kleck, Gun and Violence by Joyce Lee Malcolm, and one of the most researched books, More Guns, Less Crimes by John lott; Mr. Lott analyzed 18 years of crime data from all 3,054 U.S. counties, and he discovered that there was nothing more decisive in lowering violent crime rates than the passage of ‘right-to-carry’ gun laws. In Counties with populations of 200,000 or more, the concealed-carry laws lead to an average drop in murder rates of 13 percent. Sadly, these facts are rarely discussed in gun control advocate circles. When John Lott attempted to give some of his initial studies to a gun control advocacy group, she refused. After the book was published, ABC contacted the leader of that group to garner her comments; she said the study was flawed. When Lott later phoned her to ask how she could say the study was flawed when she refused to even look at the study, she hung up. People who base their reasoning on unsound logic must deny all facts or their so-called ‘logic’ will crumble like a house of cards.

The evidence on the other side is just plain silly. One of the most cited studies was done in the New England Journal of Medicine back in ’93. This article claimed that guns in the home increase the risk of violence and death. The way they ‘discovered’ this was based on comparing people who were killed in their homes with a sample of similar people in the general population. Those who were killed at home owned guns more often than the others. This is equivalent to the fallacy of judging hospitals by their death rates. People who go into hospitals are more likely to die than people who don’t go to hospitals. Does this mean hospitals are dangerous? Or could it mean that people who go to hospitals already have health risks? Death rates are higher in world-class medical facilities than in the local county hospital, but the reason for this is people go to those hospitals with worse ailments than those who go to county hospitals. It is just as fallacious to assume that people with guns in their homes were in no more danger initially than those who do not have guns in their homes. Some of these people with guns in their houses were criminals to begin with and were killed by the police.

These facts continue on endlessly. Criminals are more likely to back off if they see a potential victim is carrying a weapon. Many school shootings were stopped by a person with a gun, schools such as: Edinboro, Pa., Appalachian Law School and Peal, Miss. Yet, only 1 percent of news stories pointed out the fact that the killers were stopped by a person with a gun. In one incident (Appalachian Law School in Grundy Va.,) an off duty Sherriff/law student got his gun out of his car and pointed it at the perpetrator who then raised his hands and dropped the gun. Fellow students then tackled the suspect. Upon a search of all the news stories reported it is almost always stated that the gunmen was merely ‘tackled by students,’ with no mention of the sheriff student. The idiocy behind believing a group of students simply ‘tackled’ an armed gunman is too much for words. One last fact worthy of mention is only 12 percent of bad guys purchase firearms from gun stores or pawn shops; according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

2nd Amendment rights are under attack. People here on campus, and all over the world, espouse the belief that we must increase gun control laws. Leaving guns in the hands of civilians is a dangerous undertaking they say. The majority of the population believes in the fallacy that ordinary people are too careless to own guns, and we’d be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals paid by the government. Herein lies our greatest danger. When a government has nothing to fear from its people, its people will be defenseless against their government.

Look to history for proof. The main tool for subjugating both slaves and free blacks in the South was disarmament. In Florida, patrols would search blacks’ homes for weapons and would confiscate them and punish the owners. In contrast, the North allowed blacks to own guns and they were able to sometimes defend themselves against racial mob violence. There are many atrocities throughout history which showcase the error in allowing government to control all weaponry: Stalin’s mass murders, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name a few. Imagine a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto holding off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with merely a handful of weapons. Then imagine 6 million Jews armed with rifles being herded into cattle cars; not likely.

Fortunately for us, our framers were intelligent enough to embed our right to defend ourselves in our Constitution. It may be hard to believe now that someday our government will force us to comply with their wishes, however, a free people can only make that mistake once. We must never forget the words of one of our greatest fore-fathers Benjamin Franklin when he said “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

April 22nd is Exploit the Earth Day

2009-04-22T13:33:00.005-06:00

April 22nd should be exploit the Earth Day

Instead of the fanaticism associated with earth day, American’s especially should understand the fundamental need to transform the raw materials of the earth into life supporting/enhancing tools for our future. Environmentalism VS capitalism. These are the two choices open to western civilization, and we may be coming to the inevitable crossroads where only one can continue along its designated path. Unfortunately for human beings, only capitalism is meant for life on earth. The philosophy behind environmentalism is that nature has intrinsic value. In reality this equates to a man-hating ideology where human beings must not infringe on the supposed ‘rights’ of tree shrubs and caribou.

The mentality is anything done in nature is good, and anything done by man is bad. If beavers ravage trees its good because it is done in nature. If solar and sunspot activity effect the temperature of the earth it is good because it occurs in nature. If a virus comes along and wipes out a billion human beings it is lauded as the right thing. Yet, if human beings build oil refineries, dams, coal factories and more, it is condemned as immoral by environmentalism. Many readers may come to the conclusion that this writer is exaggerating and say that ‘they don’t really mean it.’ Don’t be so sure about that. Those who truly listen to the consistent advocates of environmentalism in the public light will come to realize the full determination these communal thinkers have. Philosopher Paul Taylor mentions “the ending of the human epoch on earth,” in his book Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics. In David M. Graber’s review of Bill McKibben’s book The End of Nature Mr. Graber explicates the environmentalist view in all its grandiosity “Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet… Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” The vernacular used by environmentalists leaves no room for doubt; they advocate an all out condemnation of humankind.

For those wishing to live their lives to the fullest of their capabilities will see themselves hindered in every respect by these so-called lovers of the earth. If a person chooses to ‘respect’ the environment and build a more eco-friendly and efficient form of energy producer, they would most assuredly choose nuclear. However, they would meet every obstacle imaginable by the green movement. Moreover, these greenites choose to ignore all relevant facts and come to their own conclusions when it comes to the environment. For instance, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just ruled that C02 is a pollutant, and this ‘pollutant,’ which we are all made of and plants need to live, is condemned and shall be regulated as a pollutant. Sea levels will raise to catastrophic levels is their reasoning. Yet, if one were to do even the most modest amount of investigation it would become very clear this is not the case.

For one there is only a modest net loss in Greenland. Second, 90% of earth’s ice is in Antarctica. This is also where 80% of our fresh water comes from. The assertation that western Antarctica has suffered a loss of ice is very true, but eastern Antarctica is four times as large and getting colder. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic research has issued a report explicating the “significant cooling in recent decades.”

Many such facts can be easily unveiled if one were to be actually interested in the facts. There may be many environmentalist who believe in the green cause because it sounds like a good idea, and “who wouldn’t want to help mother earth?” Unfortunately, they may be unaware of the dire impacts these rulings and regulations may have on our world economy. It will mean many of the things we need to survive will increase in price and scarcity such as: gas, electricity, food, medical treatment, and more. Some may believe that an increase won’t be so bad. The problem is the ripple effects will be much more grandiose than anyone will be able to imagine. When oil reached 150 dollars a gallon this last summer many people were speaking of the dire consequences to the world economy, if we were to reach 200 dollars it could mean total devastation. Our world may not be able to survive the ‘help’ of these environmentalists.

Today, earth day, celebrate not the environmental movement, but celebrate the men and women of the mind. Celebrate those who wish to convert the raw materials around us into our houses, cars, groceries, oil, energy, computers, latte’s, fine dining and more. We should not condemn such people but applaud them for their commendable work in saving and enhancing all of our lives.

Values of Harry Potter: Lessons for Muggles (A review)

2009-04-18T17:43:00.008-06:00

Values of Harry Potter: Lessons for Muggles
By, Ari Armstrong

With over 400 million sales and having been translated into 67 languages, and making the author –J.K. Rowling – the first person to ever become a billionaire from book sales, the Harry Potter series has been a fantastic success. Fans enjoy the series for a vast assortment of reasons; ranging from simply finding a new realm in the fantasy genre, to the underlying philosophical premises presented in the novels. Over, 50 books have been written on the boy wizard. Many of these espouse the obvious religious morality of Harry potter. John Grangers’ Finding God in Harry Potter, and many other books seem to merely discuss Harry Potters’ morality from a religious standpoint. In a book entitled What’s A Christian To do with Harry Potter?, author Connie Neal says “If you are firmly set against Harry Potter, I won’t try to dissuade you, as that is one biblically viable position.” Fans desiring something more seem to have nowhere to go. These books shower their viewers with allegories of Christ, sacrifice for others, the afterlife and more. Yet, upon reading the books, these allegations don’t seem to match up. What does Harry really seek in his life? It doesn’t seem clear that he wishes to live his life as an altruistic Christian. After all, it is a Christian’s duty to turn the other cheek to evildoers. For example, Mathew 5:39 “But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” The philosophy of Harry is diametrically opposed to this. The Harry books are filled with opportunities for him to ‘turn the other way,’ yet he never does. The reason is the idea of altruistically sacrificing ourselves to anyone and everyone is simply not as prevalent in Harry Potter as many would like to believe.

Values of Harry Potter: Lessons for Muggles a book written by Harry Potter fan Ari Armstrong argues that the real theme of the series is the “heroic, courageous fight for values.” Rowling’s works not only renewed literacy in young people, but more importantly, renewed a sense of moral literacy. As Ari writes, “Adopting the virtues portrayed by the heroes of Harry Potter can make you a better person.” Ari makes it clear throughout his book what morals he speaks of. As he elucidates, the morality of the Potter series does not promote sacrificing life on earth, but instead supports the notion of living life fully.

In his first chapter, Ari clearly covers each value the characters embody-heroes and villains alike. If we are to understand why Harry’s morality is the correct one, we must contrast it with an incorrect one, namely that of Voldemort the antagonist in the Potter series. Values presents the real case against Voldemort: He isn’t evil because he was predisposed to be; it wasn’t some innate biological malfunction. It was a clear and conscious decision on his part to lead a life in which he has no true values.

Chapter two covers the independence of the characters throughout the story. Here Ari brings us a grand explanation of the difference between living first handedly and second handedly through others; or, as Ayn Rand made famous in her book The Fountainhead, the parasite vs. the primary movers. Although, Harry may not be a true primary mover in the sense of a Howard Roark, or Albus Dumbledore, by living his life for himself and based off of his own independent thinking, Harry is able to continuously lead a good and noble life. Here we learn how a simple book series designed for teens can show us all how to live proper lives.

On September 30th, 2008 Ari was invited to 9 News in order to explain how the Harry Potter series could teach politicians and leaders in general, how to act. He Includes such advice from the books as: “Do the right thing even when it’s difficult,” “Government is not always the answer,” and among others “Don’t cling to power.” Masterfully, Ari uses stories from the books to explicate the importance of morality in our lives.

In arguably one of the more important chapters of the book Values, chapter three discusses free will. By comparing individuals in the Potter series who grew up in good, bad and horrible situations, and their subsequent rise – or fall – Ari showcases to his readers that ‘it matters not what someone is born.” It is beneficial to anyone born in any circumstance anywhere in the world to comprehend that our future is determined by our choices. As Dumbledore points out to Harry in his second year, “it is not our abilities that determine who we are, but our choices.” Ari seems to argue that the philosophy of choice appears to be the most dominant theme Rowling chooses to explore.

In part two of Ari’s book he dives into a more literal and moral criticism. Chapter four “The Clash of Love and Sacrifice,” Ari points out many inferences people have in regards to Harry’s likeness to Jesus. In comparing Harry to the philosophy of Christianity and contrasting that idea with the philosophy of Aristotle and Ayn Rand, Ari gives sufficient evidence to some of the problems inherent in Rowling’s premises. Ari makes it clear that Harry does not act consistently in a self sacrificial manner throughout the books and, in fact, acts egoistical.

In the chapter entitled, “Materialism and Immortality,” Ari discusses such ideas as ‘materialism and the pathological fear of death,’ and ‘supernaturalism and death.’ Ari mentions the flaws in such thinking and how Rowling again mixes some of her premises. He also points to Rowling’s more prevalent Christian ideals being construed in an apologetic manner.

In the end, we must put down the last Harry Potter book and remember that the boy wizard and his friends are not real, yet the imagined work of a single mom. However, as in all great works of art, we can be left with a singular vision of the books impacts upon our lives. Works of art may show us we are going down a path not best suited to our true desires. It may teach us, make us laugh, cry, and change. Although, Potter isn’t real he can teach us all how to love better, enjoy a great conversation, and compete in our favorite sports. Most importantly the books can teach us how to attain the values best suited to each and every one of our lives. Ari Armstrong shows us that, through Harry, we can learn life isn’t just what is; but what can and ought to be.

If you would like to purchase Ari Armstrong's book Values of Harry Potter: Lessons for Muggles it is for sale on Amazon.com for 12.95, click HERE to purchase

OIL VS Alternative Energy

2009-04-05T19:57:00.004-06:00

Many claims are made by politicians, however most people would agree that very few are actually upheld. A lot of what a politician says, especially during an election period, is what people want to hear. This all makes sense from a politician’s standpoint, given their incentives and restraints. However, it is very dangerous to continue to take any politician just on their word. Studies and facts need to be taken into account. For example, a politician who proclaims they will bring down our dependency on foreign oil, while at the same time fight global warming by curbing c02 emissions, must change their stance when facts and reality will not coincide with such claims. The question we must ask ourselves is how a politician could possibly accomplish such a feat and how this agenda affects each of us.

On one hand, if we are attempting to decrease our foreign oil dependency it makes sense to increase America’s refining and drilling capabilities. This is not very plausible given the incentives and constraints which are given to American explorers and refiners of oil. So the solution for a politician is rather complex. A politician will have a hard time convincing extremist environmentalists, and many in the general public, that freeing up the energy market would actually create an increase of America’s energy supply and drop the price of gas and other products affected by oil. What a politician does instead of this is go for the oldest and most trusted of allies, blame. Pointing fingers at all the people who seem to be villains by merit of their actions, such as the greed of corporate CEOs. Politicians claim that while these companies are getting rich the constituents of a particular politician are being hit where it hurts them the most, their pocket books. Politicians point fingers at these CEOs and exclaim that these companies’ profits are too extreme to be mere ‘economics.’ In their minds, Americans having to pay ever increasing amounts of money at the pump, while oil companies make record breaking profits is simply unacceptable.

Many will claim that we must invest in alternative energy. While there is nothing wrong with individuals spending their own time and effort on a new type of energy, it is highly immoral to make taxpayers pick up a bill for someone’s political agenda. Many people claim this is the best way to secure our future. It is praiseworthy for those who wish to invent new ways to convert nature’s resources into energy. However, it is not praiseworthy to spend billions of dollars on futile endeavors not worth their weight in paper. The idea that crippling oil companies and forcing alternative energy to the forefront of our current economy is reminiscent of the broken window fallacy made famous in Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. The fallacy is when one claims that by the destruction of property, we actually create wealth. Its claim is that if a hoodlum were to throw a rock and break the window of a baker, it is not a bad thing, because now the baker, upon replacing his window for one hundred dollars will allow the man fixing his window to buy a new suit, which will give money to the tailor and so on. The fallacy is that the shopkeeper must now spend his hundred dollars on a new window, instead of on new shoes for himself, or new equipment (capital) to help his business. This misallocation of resources is the fallacy. And, it is no different than allowing the government to hinder oil companies from doing their job, while at the same time, giving millions or billions in subsidies to alternative energy advocates. We are simply rerouting precious resources. Confiscating hard earned money from taxpayers and handing the money to whomever has the most political pull at that moment.

An oil company is like any other company. It provides a product to a customer and asks for money in return; trading value for value. There is no gun involved. Therefore, there is no force. Men and women are free to purchase the product or not. There is no denying our need for energy, as individuals and as a society. The discovery and subsequent success of oil is due to its value to each of us as individuals, not because the company forced people to buy its product.

The claim that oil companies are cartels or monopolies is also a myth. The idea here is that these oil companies collude with each other to force us to purchase their products and force out any competition. The basis for this argument is that capitalism will inevitably lead to collusion or monopoly of some sort. Oil companies, like any individual, act in a self interested manner. If an oil executive decides it is in his best interest to collude with other oil companies in order to increase the demand for their product, it is their right to do so. The oil executive will soon discover, however, why such endeavors have failed throughout the history of capitalism.

The failure will begin simply. As all the oil companies in collusion raise prices above market level, some of the colluders will realize the opportunity for undercutting their fellow conspirators and making a profit. Once again, greed comes to the rescue. Each company will realize the opportunity and work to seize it. Businesses do not make money by simply raising prices; they make money by lowering prices, making the product available to more people, and by increasing output, quality and more. To understand this more just simply look to history. Standard Oil was accused of price collusion, predatory pricing and much more. The facts tell another story however. In 1869 the price of kerosene was 30 cents a gallon, and 28 years later the price decreased to 5.9 cents. People paying 30 cents in 1869 probably did not complain as prices began regularly dropping. Another classic example in more recent history is the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). This company was able to gain and hold an actual monopoly. Did they raise prices? No. In fact, it lowered its prices dramatically. ALCOA was the only producer of ‘primary’ aluminum in America (there were foreign competitors). In 1887, aluminum was 5 dollars a pound and by 1941 it was 15 cents a pound. The reason ALCOA would drop prices when they had a monopoly, rather than increase, is simple; substitutions. ALCOA knew that if they were to raise prices their customers would simply purchase substitutes such as wood.

In a free market, would people have alternatives to oil if oil became a monopoly? Yes. If the market was free and open, and oil companies began to collude to increase prices, people would begin looking into alternative forms of energy. They would not need government to confiscate money from the population and feed it to alternative energy, because people would be motivated by profit. As prices rose above market level, investors would shift their money from oil to alternative energy, thusly creating true wealth. Economic fact: money flows to its most valued uses.

Although this scenario is possible it is actually unlikely. Oil companies would not increase prices, as ALCOA did not raise prices, because they know economics: raising prices above market level will bring in more competition that will drive down price. By freeing the oil companies, we would solve all problems. Oil companies would compete with one another by reducing prices and increasing quality. The end product would eventually be a cheaper and cleaner burning fuel.

These facts don’t stop oil executives from being attacked for making a profit. During this previous summer when the price of gas rose to 4 dollars a gallon, senators dragged oil executives to Capitol Hill in order to investigate ‘bad’ business practices. Senator Patrick Leahy claimed they wanted to identify the causes of the rising prices of oil. The problem was oil executives were not in charge of the price of oil, the market was, as is determined by supply and demand. Notice these executives were condemned for making large profits during this time and considered greedy and evil, but also notice that as prices dropped to almost 1 dollar a gallon across the country, there was no congressional hearing to praise these individuals for their hard work; nor, was there much in the media about the benevolence of these executives. This makes sense given politicians’ and the media’s incentives to be elected and receive high ratings. For nothing gets officials elected faster – or higher ratings - than enormous problems in our country.

So, what does the government do to help the problem? Create more problems. Refining and distributing oil involves millions of interactions. The government impedes these interactions every step of the way. I will very briefly outline three major aspects of oil and how government interferes.

DRILLING

America has large sections of its underground oil off limits to oil explorers, such as the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve and our coasts. This causes the U.S. to have to purchase more of its oil from outside of the country. If these sections were to be freed up to allow for oil exploration there would be a larger supply of world oil to help with the ever increasing global demand. This past summer saw huge profits for oil companies. These profits did not go directly into the executive’s pockets. The vast majority was reinvested into the oil industry. These oil companies were able to purchase new drilling equipment and more efficient rigs to transport their product more safely, among other investments.

REFINING

There have not been any new refineries built in America in over three decades. Inevitably, this causes much inefficiency in the older refineries still in existence. The reason for these inefficiencies is that the government has passed so many environmental laws, thereby making new refineries uneconomical, leading to the extinction of many old refineries. From 1990 to 2004, 50 out of 194 refineries were shut down. These regulations have caused the current refineries to produce at full capacity, due to high demand. This limits the contingency for catastrophe. Which make it nearly impossible to shift from one oil sector to another. When the government interferes with supply and demand the result is always the same. The oil companies are then unable to offset certain sectors during a time of crisis, the net effect is a spike in price. As full producing refineries are shut down due to unforeseen externalities, the only way supply and demand can correct themselves is through an increase in the price of oil.

Another unfortunate byproduct of a government that creates restraints (rather than incentives to build new refineries) is that there has been an overall decline in the actual capacity refineries can handle. While capacity has declined demand has increased. What this all equates to is a country that has less ability to create more supply as demand increases. When any problems occur where more oil is needed, we must turn to foreign supply.

DEMAND

As China and India have grown exponentially, it is obvious that global demand for oil will increase accordingly. As companies begin to adjust to the new demand, the price of oil will increase. In a free market, oil companies will simply increase output to make a higher profit by decreasing prices and meeting the new demand. In a market that is shackled by government, meeting consumer needs is much harder than in a free market.

Fortunately, American consumers are making smarter choices. For the first time in decades, trucks have lost their spot as the number one vehicle sold in America. This will trigger a decrease in oil consumption at home.

Profits allow oil companies to reinvest in the drilling and refining of oil, so long as the government doesn’t get in their way. Oil Companies receive a bad rap whenever something unwanted happens in the economy. However, the fact remains that American oil companies remain the most efficient oil producers in the world, despite the regulations and restraints imposed by the government. It is time for American voters to implore congress to step aside so that the professionals can do their jobs.

Book Review: To Save America - How to Prevent our Coming Federal Bankruptcy

2009-02-27T10:03:00.004-07:00

To Save America - How to Prevent our Coming Federal Bankruptcy By Martin Buchanan

Martin Buchanan, a writer and a local Denverite working at a consulting firm wrote a book in 2007 to warn America of our countries impending bankruptcy. Mr. Buchanan, a former fan of President Bush, was tillywinked into believing the fiscal ‘conservative’ was a better choice for president than his opponent Al Gore. To Buchanan’s great dismay, he was wrong: dead wrong. According to Mr. Buchanan President Bush did not curtail spending, but instead “ran huge deficits in every year of his term in office.” By the end of Bush’s reign of spending he ran a total deficit of 1.5 Trillion dollars, more than 300 billion dollars of wasted taxpayer money a year.

To Save America is a great and easy read, with clear cut examples and an achievable way of fixing our current fiscal fiasco. As the title suggests, without any changes to the governments wild spending habits, America is setting itself up for impending doom. Bankruptcy is real. Bankruptcy has happened in many countries for centuries. Bankruptcy can happen to this country. As he explains on page 41:

"Nations have been going broke for centuries. In the hundred years from 1571 to 1670, Spain went bankrupt seven times; in the thirty years from 1633 to 1662, France went bankrupt three times. During the Napoleonic wars, half of Europe went bankrupt."

These bankruptcies occur in several fashions; one is by default, think about defaulting on a personal loan, another is by hyperinflation – imagine having to load up a wheel barrel full of cash in order to buy a loaf of bread.

Mr. Buchanan gives clear examples and illustrations of why we need to balance our budget (outside the obvious). Also, gives a thorough analysis of many of the causes of the problem, and a great explanation on how to understand the federal budget on top of the federal debt and deficits.

At the end of every section where the author suggests budget cuts, he includes a table that demonstrates the savings for each individual American, each family, and the country as a whole. His noble goal is to curtail the budget by a whopping one trillion dollars a year.

OVERVIEW

Each chapter is short, concise and thorough. Beginning with his introductions and explanations of our federal budget and the budget crisis, Buchanan then moves on and explains what needs to be done.

His chapter “Stop the Giveaways” discusses the many irrelevant and counterproductive programs our government initiates in and how to cut them.

Ending traditions such as pork spending – when individual members of congress spend money for their district, which alone would save 24 billion dollars a year.

Ending frivolous farm subsidies which neither make sense nor are economically feasible, the author explains these programs as “Robin hood in reverse.” Mr. Buchanan points out that most of the subsidies go to rich corporations and large farms. Other programs he suggests ending are: subsidizing debt, ending foreign aid, ending long term disaster relief and insurance, and ending corporate welfare.

A major unnecessary expenditure is our current military budget. Buchanan suggests declaring peace all over the world immediately. As well as keeping out of future conflicts not directly related to the U.S. specifically recalling all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, keeping out of any and all civil wars, but most importantly cutting our military budget in half. For any hawks out there who would be worried about this budget cut, be put at ease; even if we cut our military budget in half we would still have twice the budget of any country in the world.

Next, he gives vivid and horrifying examples of the worsening budget problems occurring with Social Security and Medicare, instead of doing as some would like – the moral thing, cutting the programs slowly altogether – he suggests minor reformations that would be the difference between large deficits and a surplus.

Lastly, are the suggestions of getting rid of many non-essential programs such as NASA and restoring federalism.

Overall the book is a must read for anyone interested in the future of our country. Without change, there will be, not might, will be horrible consequences we must all face. The immoral way our government has been pursuing their goals has put the United States of America, once the freest country in the world, on the brink of financial disaster. Martin Buchanan is a clear voice that cuts through all the rhetoric normally seen in the nonsensical intelligentsia of our time. It is time people like Martin Buchanan are more listened to and appreciated for their grandeur and sense of American life.

Interested in buying this book?
$14 dollars on Amazon.com
Heres the link: To Save America - How to Prevent our Coming Federal Bankruptcy

Denver International Airport Monster

2009-02-10T19:35:00.002-07:00

The government rarely gets anything right. In 1992 the Denver government continued the many millennium long failure of projects done in the name of the ‘public.’ The monstrosity I am referring to is the blue mustang located outside of the Denver International Airport. This project was commissioned to artist Luis Jimenez 17 years ago for $300,000. In a normal laissez-faire deal Jimenez would have to prove his artistic work to people actually interested in the money, since of course it would be their own. Instead, the government, with its deep pockets was issuing the money. There was no artistic ‘objectivity’ in their evaluation. More than likely Jimenez was merely adequate at filling out forms and meeting the right sorts of government cronies in order to procreate this savagely grotesque horse from his mind into the real world.

There is currently a quite popular facebook site called byebyebluemustang.com, where thousands of denverites and others have voiced their dissent. The site is full of complaints about the ‘ugliness’ of the artwork. They decry that this should not be the first thing visitors to our great city encounter.

My opponent may cry a different song. Pointing out a few facts and pulling on the emotional strings of their audience. In 2006, for instance, after spending more than twice the estimated budget, Jimenez was killed when a piece of his artwork fell on him. The Jimenez family finished the project and is adamant about keeping the horse where it stands.

The other issue, or moot point I should say, is the fact that the project was funded with municipal bonds rather than taxpayers money.

All of these points are of no consequence to the fact that the government once again misallocated scarce resources.

Although it is true that municipal bonds are issued in order to fund projects. It is also true that the projects could go to more needed venues, such as police, roads and more.

To allow the government to fund art in such a way is to make art an open forum for the pull-peddlers. This discourages true artists from even approaching the field of aesthetics. When pull-peddlers can gain the upper hand, this discourages more talented yet less social artists from attempting great work.

It is time to take art out of the realm of the ‘public’ good and into the realm of the individual good.

The-Undercurrent

2009-02-09T17:50:00.001-07:00

The Undercurrent (TU) is an independent, student-run Objectivist newspaper distributed twice a year at college campuses across America. TU is currently looking for distributors and donors for its Spring 2009 edition.

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Inhale the Freedom!

2009-01-29T21:43:00.003-07:00

Take a deep breath. Smell that? That’s the smell of tyranny. The Colorado Clean Indoor Act, passed in 2006 is now looking to go back in time 2 ½ years. There is a new proposal which will allow business’s that receive 5% (or 50k) of their income from the sale of tobacco products to be able to apply for a permit to be established as a cigar-tobacco bar.

The anti-smokers aren’t happy about this. In their world it’s somehow acceptable to force another human being to comply with their way of life. I’m a non-smoker, personally I dislike smoking immensely, I also dislike mind numbing techno beats at Rock Island, but I’m not going to pass legislation to ban their music.

It’s time these people who are supposedly looking out for the rest of us to grow up and start living their own lives, quit dragging me along. Coloradans are not so stupid that they can’t make their own decisions. If someone meanders into a bar that has smoking, yet they hate smoking, if they decide to stay for a drink wouldn’t that be their choice? Call me crazy, but I think it’s ok for people to make their own mistakes. I know plenty of people who eat too much Mcdonalds. I dare people to try and take our micky d’s away from us though

Obama’s Inauguration Speech: A Contradictory Nightmare

2009-01-26T12:36:00.002-07:00

If the merit of a president could be condoned by their oratory skills, Obama would already be at the level of a Reagan, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. Unfortunately for Obama, the merit of a president is discovered through the process of his actions. The first speech of our newly elected President indicates his fervent willingness to break away from the ideals of our founding fathers. This most memorable of speeches is littered with so many contradictions and ironies; it’s like walking into an AA meeting when everyone is drunk.

Before he even spoke a word, we were witness to the first ironic gesture as he placed his hand on President Lincoln’s Bible. This symbolically spoke of contradictions. Common knowledge of Lincoln was that he freed the slaves in his Emancipation Proclamation, yet this is only true depending on where the slaves were located. The proclamation, if closely read, only freed slaves “In rebellion against the United States.”

As the London Spectator mocked shortly thereafter, “The Principle (of the Proclamation) is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.”

Therefore, Lincoln only really freed slaves in areas he had no control in, as in the slaves located in rebellion to the Union.

Contradiction number one.

The next contradiction came from the most sacred of oaths itself. The President’s job is to execute the laws constitutionally passed by congress. When the founding fathers gathered to produce a great and free country, they took meticulous care as to how the government was to be chartered. It was imperative to these men that they protected their people against both anarchy and tyranny. As odd as it may seem, they feared democracy as much as any of us alive today fear a totalitarian dictator.

As Benjamin Franklin once said “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb protesting the vote.”

Their goal was not to set up a democracy, but a constitutionally-restricted republic. When a man like Obama took the oath to protect the Constitution, he perpetrated an enormous contradiction. It is impossible to both protect something and seek to destroy it. Obama has been on record as saying that the constitution is highly defective since it does not allow for the redistribution of wealth. Alluding to the ‘positive’ rights Obama wishes were in the constitution, i.e. the forced confiscation of money from some to be given to others. The constitution was set up with certain negative rights, what a government cannot do to its citizens. This is how to properly protect individual rights.

Contradiction number two.

In his speech itself Obama spoke of individuals who questioned his ability to execute his grand schemes. Claiming that “their memories are short.” And, that those cynics no longer remember what free men and women were able to accomplish. Yet, the irony is that Obama has forgotten that it was men and women who were able to labor in freedom, to usher in a new era of prosperity unhindered by their government. It was not individuals joined in some unnamed ‘common’ purpose, but individuals striving for the pursuit of happiness that achieved America’s greatness.

Contradiction number three.

I have learned, as I’m sure most of you have, that we are all in for disappointments if we try and find any real substance in a political speech. History has shown that politicians are renowned for their ability to say one thing and do another. It is my personal hope that this man, my president, will chuck aside his ideals for a more socialist America, and resume the mantle of the freest country on earth. For the success or failure of a presidency isn’t determined by its beginnings. It is determined by how they leave the state of the union upon their departure.

The Moral Defense of Capitalism

2009-01-23T11:37:00.009-07:00

There are many in the political and intellectual world now discussing the failure of capitalism. Once one of capitalisms staunchest allies, former head of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan has openly admitted to what he claims are the faults inherent in capitalism. This one time defender of capitalism claimed “capitalism is dead” in a recent San Francisco Chronicle article. Contemporary intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky claim that we must not put people in charge of their own assets, for this eliminates the need to look after each other. President Barack Obama has outwardly claimed a war on energy producers, and thusly free trade, when he has said “We’ve got to go after the energy producers.” As if the men and women who provide American’s with heat, electricity and more should be punished -rather than rewarded- for their hard work.

The criticism touted towards capitalism, and conversely property rights, is the fact that it enables men to act in a selfish manner. Karl Marx has said that “the right of man to property is the right to enjoy his possessions and dispose of the same arbitrarily, without regard for other men, independently from society, the right of selfishness.” The men and women who call themselves the defenders of capitalism usually do more harm than good by their method of ‘defense’, which is to espouse the immorality of selfishness but condone the practicality of capitalism and the benefit it brings to all people.

These defenders are normally half hearted and scared witless that they will be called out on their ‘evil morality.’ Republicans and Libertarians alike have often repeated the mantra that capitalism will save us all. But, when it comes down to the actual implementation of any real capitalist ideals, they back out, like a man afraid of heights attempting to bungee jump for the first time. These “defenders” of capitalism claim that their ideals are in the best interest of everyone; that capitalism really starts with charity

In a recent article in The Objective Standard, Craig Biddle quotes an advocate of capitalism George Gilder who claims that selfishness is simply not the essence of what makes capitalism, and that “capitalism begins with giving.”

These pretend defenders not only fail to understand what capitalism is, but fail to acknowledge that capitalism has never been attempted in the history of mankind. There have been a few laudable defenders of capitalism, Adam Smith and Ludwig Von Mises and Murray Rothbard to more contemporary men such as Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Dominick T. Armentano but they solely defend the practical economic side, not the moral. These men have effectively proven both in theory and with voluminous empirical evidence how capitalism can improve all avenues of our lives: the standard of living, health care, the energy crisis, and the infamous socioeconomic disparity. However, they usually fall short in their ethical premises of capitalism, leaving this to some of the lesser minds who fumble and destroy the core of capitalism: rational self-interest.

Capitalism needs to be understood not just as the most practical system, but as the only moral system for man qua man to live by. It has been chortled out many times that although capitalism is selfish; it taps the creative flux of the sinners among us to create more abundantly for the rest of the population. This ignorance is the real destroyer of capitalism. The moment these intellectuals concede the immorality of their own supposed philosophy they condone the opposite side of their argument.

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. Our current mongrel system is nowhere near what true laissez-faire capitalism should and could be. The reason for our present prosperity in America and the world is simply a result of our traditional, capitalistically leaning ideology.

For life to be sustained all living things must follow a certain course of action required by that creature’s nature. In human terms, survival of the fittest is determined by the quality of the reasoning mind. To disable or stifle the reasoning mind in order to produce freely will inevitably cause moral and physical demise. Production, whether farm or industrial, is the application of reason to the problem of survival.

Production is the fruit of the principle of individual rights. Freedom is essential for survival. Since Laissez-Faire capitalism allows everyone to consistently act selfishly. The problem lies in the dominant philosophy of our time, one of selfless sacrifice to others, altruism. The misconception of altruism is that it means simply to help others. But in actuality, it is the worst case of illogical martyrdom.

Contrary to popular belief Bill Gates and Sam Walton embody the truest morality. They raised the standard of living, employed millions, provided meaningful products at cheap prices etc. Yet these men, are denounced as being evil profiteers. Who then are we to idolize? Juxtaposed with the commonly understood moralist Mother Theresa, Gates and Walton’s selfishness fostered the utilitarian society. Mother Theresa served by sacrificing her time and energy, while Gates and Walton selfishly traded value for value.

Thus, we come to the major problem in our battle for capitalism. The general consensus is that sacrifice is an equal exchange of choices. The reality is that a sacrifice surrenders something of value for a lesser or non-value. For example, it is not a sacrifice for a married couple to forgo movies and restaurants in order to save for a home. It is a sacrifice to give up those things so their neighbor may have a house. This is what happens when you pay your taxes. Life is made happier by forgoing lesser values for higher values. A sacrifice always results personal loss. If a student wants to become an architect because of their passion, and ability to transform raw materials into whatever they envision, but gives this up to ‘do the right thing’ by becoming a mediocre social worker instead, they have then perpetrated a sacrifice. But, by pursuing his or her passion for architecture they are trading a lesser value for a greater value. Capitalism allows each and every individual to pursue autonomy for passion.

In a truly free society government is forbidden from initiating force, except against those who initiate it, i.e. crime. If an automaker develops a new model he or she is not required to go through government channels to do so. This also means that if the model is not wanted or needed by the public, they must suffer the consequences. No bailouts. This company would be allowed to go bankrupt while other more efficient companies, all acting in a selfish manner, will emerge and prosper upon satisfying the needs of consumers. This process allows consumers to choose and freely influence the marketplace.

Altruism is completely incompatible with capitalism. Altruism forbids people to act in a self-interested way. Under an altruistic ideology, a property owner has no right to use and dispose of his own property as he sees fit.

Capitalism depends on its moral consideration beyond that of its economic counterpart. The point must be conceded that every human has a right to live by their own rational judgment. Our seemingly capitalist practices is immoral because it protects people’s rights inconsistently, and violates everyone’s rights perpetually. With our current ideology we are given a choice between food and poison, poison always wins.

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To learn more about how to morally defend capitalism click the link above (The Objective Standard) and read, for free, Craig Biddles great article, which inspired mine.

Goodbye Big 3

2008-12-03T16:12:00.005-07:00

My latest article in the School Newspaper The Advocate

Detroit's Big Three - Ford, Chrysler, and GM-are once again marching on Washington, begging alms, for what will turn out to be one more taxpayer expense. Apparently, they have learned their lesson when it comes to public perception: Last week was a public relations nightmore for the automakers when it was revealed that the corporate fat cats were flying in on multi-million dollar private jets. This time, however, they will be driving a fleet of 'green' cars from Detroit to Washington. It seems much better, of course, to drive hundreds of cars 500 miles to show how they are becoming more fuel efficient.

These guys are becoming much better at begging for handouts, while getting worse at building cars.

One question no one seems to be asking is, if Congress does throw another $25 billion into the proverbial money pit, will this actually make the Detroit automakers any more efficient? Doubtful, since the main goal of Congress seems to be to incentivize automakers to be less efficient rather than more.

For example, the previous $25 billion promised to the Big Three was for retooling their factories in order to produce more eco-friendly cars. This was congress's promise to America to promote a greener nation. The problem is that U.S. consumers have not been inclined to purchase these cars - especially not anymore, with declining gas prices.

This will spur the American carmakers to come back to Congress in the future for another $25, $50, or even $100 billion. They would simply tell lawmakers they complied with all the stipulations on their money, and now they are in financial striats, again, because consumers don't want their products.

So what should be done? How about allowing these companies to fail? This isn't little league baseball, you know, where everyone is a winner. Sometimes failure is a good thing. We have forgotten that The Big Three only account for about 50 percent of car manufacturing and sales in this country. The other 50 percent is produced by Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and others. In fact, these companies have several factories all across America (employing over 100,000 Americans), pay American taxes, contribute to charity, the list goes on. Yet they are not seen on the steps of Congress asking for help. These companies are also suffering from a decline in demand, but instead of continuing to pour money into vehicles Americans no longer want, they shifted resources in order to create vehicles consumers would actually purchase.

The failure of one or more of The Big Three will obviously displace some workers and cause a slight downturn, temporarily. However, it will also allow for those resources that have been allocated inefficiently to find more efficient venues in which to rest.

This tradition we have of only buying American is absurd. In a global economy we should be looking for the best deals. Also, if Americans are to subsidize some automakers, why not give that money to the more efficient automakers to help them continue to be more efficient? General Motors is reportedly bleeding $6 billion a month - how long is this $25 billion really going to last these three companies?

It's time to do what the steel industry did at the beginning of this century: consolidate. Where there were 12 steel factories producing 75 percent, there are now three producing 80 percent, and this has been their most profitable decade ever. it's time to say goodbye to the Big Three and hello to The Big One.

Free Thoughts

2008-12-02T18:34:00.005-07:00

Is it too late for freedom in America? As we continue down road after road towards socialism we make it harder to wane ourselves off of the welfare state we have all allowed to come into existence. Today, 40% of our GDP is taxed. After much reflection it becomes apparent that there is only a few narrow paths ahead of us. First, A decline and fall of America, see Edward Gibbons Book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to see the eerie correlations. Second, is a military coup to overthrow our already statist government, economist professor Thomas Sowell and others have sadly professed to this possibility. Lastly, we can only hope for the possibility of an intellectual take-over by free minds. In an article by Gen LaGreca, entitled “The Declaration of independence 2008,” she rewrites one of America’s most sacred documents to show the horrible lose of individual rights we’ve given up over the last 100 years. Instead of attacking King George the III as Thomas Jefferson did in the original Declaration of Independence, LaGreca has pointed out the evils our own government has perpetrated.

I suggest everyone take a long hard look at where we are, and find the time to engage in a little intellectual activism. When some man or woman yells hysterically that we must have socialized medicine, stop and ask them ‘by what right do some individuals have a claim over others?’ When people say we must stop CEO’s from earning so much, stop and ask, ‘By what right can we stop productive individuals from earning their just compensation?’ And, worst of all, when we hear those many individuals claiming these things such as; healthcare, housing, leisure, jobs and more are rights and that we must all pitch in to help our fellow man. Stop and ask, ‘when did our country stop protecting individual rights and become a country of parasites and looters?’

I wish everyone a life filled with prosperity, justice, and freedom.

Greenspan's Folly

2008-11-06T14:14:00.002-07:00

Just a short 250 word piece I wrote for the newspaper. It is in a section called "In this Corner" basically one person's view against another. The subject is whether or not Greenspan and the bush admin is responsible for our current economic problems.

As many American’s went to the voting polls yesterday in order to pick a candidate who will hopefully fix the major economic problems we are now facing. There are many who are also wondering “what happened?” There are several reasons for our economic problems but one of the biggest is the very loose monetary policy headed up by the former head of the FED Alan Greenspan. Mr. Greenspan’s extremely low interest rate policy from December 2000 to June 2004 of one percent is one of the underlying problems at the root of our economic troubles. By pumping so much money into the market this allowed for frivolous investments in the housing industry which was the beginnings of the massive housing bubble, and we are now just beginning to see the effects of that burst. People flocked to the mortgage companies to invest in homes they couldn’t afford on a subprime i.e. creative financing, or in other words interest rates were not fixed and as the rates changed people at the bottom rung realized they were going to have to default on their loans. This caused a ripple throughout the market which we are still reeling from. My opponent may ask why some banks would be willing to invest in such bad loans; the reason is simple, government interference into a quasi free market. Greenspan and other pseudo-capitalists may blame this on greedy businessmen but it really comes down to the government policies which promoted unhealthy investments in the first place, such as the Community Reinvestment Act which encouraged risky loans in neighborhoods banks would normally not send their money.

Rhetoric and Logical Fallacies

2008-10-30T17:27:00.004-06:00

Letter to the Editor, to me.

In my school newspaper (The Advocate) this week there was a letter to the editor posted about my article last week on Mcbama. Since I will not be able to give a response to the individual who wrote this nor the readers who read our paper I thought I’d take the opportunity here to dispel some myths the majority of people seem to have, pertaining to socialized medicine.

First here is the LTE in the paper this week:

“Kirk Barbera is out of his mind. I’m sad to say that, contrary to Barbera’s column last week, neither candidate has proposed a truly universal healthcare plan. Kirk would do well to note, however, that developed countries with socialized medicine are healthier, happier, and live longer than American’s. Period.

Waiting lists to see a doctor in Canada are long? Wow. Have you been to an emergency room in the states lately? It’s a nightmare. And when it’s all over, you get a bill for thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting hurt or sick in America.

In an age of unprecedented technological and material wealth, denying anyone medical attention (or driving them to bankruptcy for the audacious desire to stave off dying for a while) is an atrocity. Barbera has it backwards. Socialization of healthcare would liberate rather than oppress. It would liberate us from a system in which life-saving technology is hoarded from the masses by a greedy few. Universal health care is socialism. So what? It couldn’t be any worse than what we have now.”

Weston Wilson,
Metro

The first thing I’d like to say is that writing an editorial as I did and writing a letter to the editor like Mr. Wilson did, are obviously entirely different. Writing an editorial is mainly about sifting through the facts to get the information to your readers. It is about garnering a “reasoned, well-informed, cogently argued stake into the larger community of perspective,” as my editor has said. Now an opinion piece is just that, opinion.

There still comes a time when logical fallacies; a technical flaw which makes an argument unsound or invalid, is something that needs to be watched and warned of. There are probably hundreds of logical fallacies, I’m sure you and I are guilty of them all the time. However, it must be fought against because a logical fallacy can make some people believe you, and your argument, even though you are incorrect.
When I write an editorial it is to inform based off hundreds of bits of information I have attained on a specific subject. I sift through it and come to conclusions for my readers and give them the facts with my view of the situation. LTE’s are just an argument, Wilsons’ argument is the same as most arguments deductive he wishes to dispute the fact that I made the claim Obama has said he will universalize (I.E. Socialize) medicine, and that this is a bad thing. Wilson has about 200 words to prove his point and I believe his rhetoric would make Obama proud. Now there are one or two logical fallacies that are seen more often than others. One of the most common of them is what is called a Red Herring. This occurs when someone brings up irrelevant material to the argument being discussed in order to divert our attention from the points being made. In essence they bring into the argument a totally different argument to hide the fact that their argument is weak. For example:

“Waiting lists to see a doctor in Canada are long? Wow. Have you been to an emergency room in the states lately? It’s a nightmare. And when it’s all over, you get a bill for thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting hurt or sick in America”
- Wilson

In my article I explained the waiting lists in Canada were very long and implied this leads to much suffering and death, I then cited a reliable source. For facts on this I refer you to a few places

1. My article on Socialized Medicine
2. Next is the article I quoted in my Mcbama; an article from Dr. Paul Hsieh and Lin Zinzer in the Objective Standard "Moral healthcare Vs Universal healthcare".
3. Lastly here is The Fraser Institutes (Canadian think tank) yearly “Waiting your turn” survey where they give the stats for waiting lists in Canada:

There are of course hundreds of other places to find stats about this and other things Mr. Wilson brought up, but for now I will just discuss this. The Red Herring in this case is when Wilson brings up the irrelevant information that American Emergency rooms are overcrowded and the waiting list in AMERICA is long. The main problem here is I have never disputed the fact that America has long waiting lines and overall not a very good health care system. This Red Herring allowed Wilson, and unfortunately many like him, to agree with a logical fallacy that perpetuates the myth of how great socialism is.

Also he has made the claim that developed countries are healthier, happier and live longer than American’s, assuming they have socialized medicine of course. There are a couple of problems here, the first is that once again he brings up the fact that America’s health care system isn’t working, which is something entirely different then the point I made of Obama bringing in socialized medicine and how this creates problems, the main one being long waiting lines. Now however, he is using it in a different way to try and persuade people that his point is right based merely off the fact that America’s mainly socialist and partly capitalist system isn’t work. Once again I have never disputed this fact. A second problem with this is that proving that a country has citizens who overall are healthier is hard to prove, and if they are happier it can easily be a subjective idea they have. The only claim he made which can be proven is life span. Which again is not something I’m debating here all I’m saying is that Obama is advocating Socialized medicine and that this is bad, one reason being that it causes such long waiting lines people die waiting.
The purpose of this blog is that I want everyone to think for themselves and do the research to find the truth.

Rhetoric and logical fallacies should not be taken seriously and should be denounced, even ridiculed. When we have a man who is outright lying to each and every one of us who might become president these are the things we need to watch out for. Rhetoric will not save our health care system, rhetoric will not save us from a nuclear Iran, and rhetoric will not get America energy dependent. We need principles, not rhetoric.

Think for yourselves.

Editor of Rocky Mountain News Chooses NOT to endorse political candidate

2008-10-28T14:01:00.003-06:00

Another article I did for the school newspaper. This one is about John Temple, Editor and Chief of the Rocky Mountain News (denver newspaper) and his decision to NOT endorse political candidates anymore. Endorsing political candidates is something that has been going on for a long time and there are many people who agree with newspapers decisions and many who disagree.

It’s curious to me that there are so many people threatening to cancel their subscription to The Rocky Mountain News, among others, simply because the editor refuses to support either candidate. Honestly, I can’t blame Mr. Temple for refusing to endorse a candidate this time around. Consider the options. Not since 1972 have we had such painfully inadequate candidates running for president. At the same time, to make accusations that endorsement is a tradition, that newspapers have a ‘duty’ to their readership is ludicrous. John Temple being the Editor, Publisher, and President of the Rocky Mountain News has every right to remain politically neutral, regardless of potential loss of readership.

In Temple’s judgment, rather than popular opinion in mass media, a newspaper’s job should focus on giving fair and balanced news, allowing the reader to decide, instead of telling them who to vote for. Temple has said:

“I don’t think fair-minded readers resent opinion per se. In fact, it’s clear that they value opinion writing a great deal. What they do resent is evidence that their newspaper is in the tank for one political party or the other. And too many reader’s tend to confuse endorsements – particularly if a majority happens to be for one party – as evidence that a newspaper is partisan as opposed to principled”

But it is the tradition for a newspaper to endorse a candidate some say. This is true, since the beginning of newspapers in America there has been endorsing of candidates. Since 1791 when the Bill of Rights took effect and newspapers jumped all over the opportunity to garner monies from political candidates to report their ‘opinions’ of their particular candidate. Newspapers were formed mainly for this purpose they were not trying to hide their opinions or endorsements, in fact the majority of readers purchased certain newspapers simply because the papers views were somewhat in line with their own. There was also a much different environment to work a newspaper in. Today readers of print papers are declining dramatically and hometown newspapers rarely have the chance to interview major candidates anymore. Whereas in the past the newspaper was the only source to get the information needed to decide. The internet, TV, and more have changed the political scene forever, as the saying goes Abraham Lincoln and FDR would never have been elected if they were interviewed on television. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, simply a different thing. What needs to be done now is to change with the times, sticking with something just because its tradition is crazy. Just imagine if we stuck with human sacrifices just because it was tradition.

Some people may choose to cancel subscriptions, as many comments to John Temples article “Input not Endorsements” have shown may happen. Temple obviously believes the loss will be minimal and the gain will be optimal. After all as he has said the papers motto is “Give light and the people will find their own way.” He will have to find out how correct he is.

John Temple is not alone; many newspapers large and small are deciding to not endorse political candidates. Jay Rosen, chair of the Journalism department at New York University says that using “the endorsement as a tool of power is just a display of institutional chest-thumping that proclaims the civic authority of the newspaper”.

Denverites are intelligent enough to garner the facts and make their own decision. We really don’t need someone to tell us who they think is the best person for the job, just give us the facts and let us think for ourselves.

Amendment 48 (COLORADO)

2008-10-11T22:24:00.004-06:00

A new amendment to the colorado constitution is being proposed for the upcomming vote. Here I wrote a short (200 word) article for the school newspaper The Advocate, in a section entitled "Grief, Relief, or Beyond Belief" where three writers write three different views, mine will be (if accepted) in the Beyond Belief section

ENJOY!

"Amendment 48 seeks to define a person at the point of fertilization. This is despite the biological facts that concur with the fact this doesn’t happen until birth. The consequences of this law are to enormous and ridiculous for most people even to consider. For instance, If a person is defined at the point of fertilization in Colorado law under sections 3 (Inalienable rights), 6 (Equality of justice), and 25 (Due Process of law) any woman or doctor involved in an abortion would be subject to criminal prosecution. Including and up to the death penalty, since an abortion would be a planned murder of a person and under statute 18-3-102 of Colorado Law this would equal murder in the first degree. The thought of such draconian views may be beyond the view of most proponents of amendment 48, but it is consistent with the laws of this state and nation. To do otherwise would undermine the very legal structure in America. Even things like the morning after pill and other such post fertilization procedures would be made illegal. Although we are protected under Roe vs. Wade, the proponents of A48 wish to overturn even that. Amendment 48 is ludicrous and beyond belief!"

Mcbama

2008-10-05T19:53:00.005-06:00

During the presidential debate on September, 26th the candidates tried once again to establish their distinctiveness and persuade us they offer fundamentally different paths, with each of the presidential hopeful trying desperately to distance himself from the other, and the pundits seem to be listening. All over the press these differences are annunciated, such as the last issue of Newsweek which has a section dedicated to how “fundamentally” different the two candidate’s worldview’s are. With all this talk of how different the two major presidential candidates are at a fundamental level we have to ask ourselves, what really are their differences?

McCain has said that he will fight big drug companies. In other words he will continue us on our road of government interference into the medical industry. Obama has allotted to universalize- that is, socialize- our medical industry, which is different from McCain, only the same. Maybe we should read up on the enormously long waiting lines. Dr. Paul Hsieh founder of FIRM (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine) gives statistics of Canadians having to wait an average of 18 weeks for most ordinary treatments, and much longer for more difficult procedures such as heart surgery. This time maybe it will be different, and Obama can get socialism right. McCain said in his debate with Obama we must reach for energy efficiency by building 45 new nuclear power plants. You have to wonder how he came up with that particular number. Why not 30 or 50 power plants? McCain must have some brilliant insight to know what the most efficient number of nuclear power plants would be. Obama has exclaimed he will fix our energy problems by pouring taxpayers money into “alternative energy” as if the government has the constitutional right to take monies from free citizens and subsidize tilting windmills.

Regarding the two major candidates Craig Biddle of the Objective Standard nicknamed them Mcbama. He explains that each of their views on the role of government is actually quite similar. As Biddle explains McBamas view is that “the purpose of government is to manage the economy, regulate businesses… to redistribute wealth.”
Is this really what our founders wanted and were trying to accomplish with America? The constitution and the framing of our country was set up for one purpose, to protect individuals’ negative rights. Most importantly however, the constitution was set up to bar the government from interfering in the lives of its citizens.

An act introduced into congress every year since 1995 by Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz, called The Enumerated Powers Act would require that any bill introduced would have to explain where in the constitution it is allowed to spend that money. In the House of Representatives it has received 44 co-sponsors, in the senate not a single one, and this is a senate that includes both McCain and Obama. This is a clear example of Mcbama not wishing to be held accountable to the Constitution.

There really doesn’t seem to be much if any fundamental differences between the two presidential candidates. The lesser of two evils is still evil, so what is there to do when these are our only options? One thing everyone can impact is to take a closer look at what these two men stand for and attempt to change the status quo. We still live in a semi-free country of great men and women; there really isn’t any reason that by 2012 by broadening our knowledge we can’t see a swing away from where we are headed now, towards an ever larger government. And swing ourselves back to a free country.

Letter to the editor of the Denver Post

2008-09-04T16:28:00.005-06:00

This is a short LTE (letter to the editor) I wrote to the Denver Post regarding a most common phenomenon, that of blaming any and all natural occurances on 'global warming' Here is the article in the Denver Post I replied to. http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_10374393

notice two things: 1) the first paragraph blatantly blaming the occurance on global warming. 2) the scientists never are quoted as saying it was global warming that caused it.

Here is my LTE, lets see if it gets posted or not.

LTE DENVER POST “ICE SHELF BIG AS MANHATTAN BREAKS LOOSE IN THE ARCTIC” 9/4/08
It’s important not to jump to conclusions when researching something as complex as global warming and the ‘breaking off’ of the arctic shelf. Though that’s exactly what seems to happen in most cases. When an ice shelf breaks off, which happens quite often, it is not necessarily the work of ‘global warming.’ In many cases, as NASA (among many others) have discovered, it is actually caused by variable oceanic and atmospheric currents such as the Arctic Oscillation. NASA has also admitted that not all of the large changes seen in arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends towards global warming. So let us not get too worried and blame everything on global warming, let us look at the science first.

Pull Peddlers

2008-08-27T15:18:00.002-06:00

Once upon a time men of great merit ruled the lands through free trade, although for a very short time. One person in his or her free will was able to trade their ideas and products with one another, very few people forcing them to do the things they did not wish to. Men were not forced to purchase or endorse items and ideals that were not what they wanted. People actually had to develop sound business tactics and have a great new product in order to make it big in business. However, we have slowly been destroying our basic tenets of capitalism and giving way to the pull peddlers. It used to be someone would have a great idea or an improvement on an old idea and would then begin to seek all the necessary financing and such needed to run the operation. If the operation was good and solid with great leadership and economic foresight it very well could last the test of time and competition, to become a great organization. Nowadays it is straight to politics for new up and coming businessmen. Men of small minds, small ideas and gigantic ambitions go to politicians on both the right and left in order to get the things they want. They say ‘I’ll bring you constituents from the environmental group if you just simply sign off on this tax subsidy’. Or, ‘I’ll help get you elected if you just push this bill to ensure my company gets first dibs at new developments and tax breaks’.
A great, or rather horrid, showing of this is a 131 foot wind turbine which is on display near the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. In an article by Andy Vuong of the Denver Post entitled “Eco-energy advocates crank up efforts” (8/26/08) He quotes several businessmen in the Denver area whom are “showing off” their new technologies, and hoping to gain political allies to help their business ideas. Sam Ley a chief designer for Boulder-based Standard Renewable Energy discusses why he wants political pull to help his business. “In a new industry like this” he says, “the only way any company can survive is if everybody bands together.” Whatever happened to ‘may the best man win’? Capitalism is all about selling a superb product to the customer, if said customer is uninterested they will likely go elsewhere. In a free market renewable energy would actually have to prove its merit to their customers. Unfortunately, what we have now is far from a free market. With congress blocking the road to energy independence through offshore drilling, with politicians and the media alike misinforming the public about oil drilling on currently owned leases, and with a ever confused population, we have a very uncertain future. What we need now more than ever to save us is capitalism, what we need are those ‘greedy’ businessmen to step in and develop the energy sources we have available and ‘exploit’ the resources in order to make a dollar and provide us with outstanding products at a low price. That’s idealistic people would tell me. The businessmen would only be after their mighty dollar and neglect the public. But, to neglect the public would be to neglect the almighty dollar. If we were to have all energy be completely free, which means no subsidies to big oil or little renewable energy sources, also if we were to allow drilling in ANWR and off our coasts as well as lifting any and all environmental bans we would see a torrent of new energy supplies and we would see what the people really wanted. My guess would be the people would want nuclear energy, the safest, cheapest and all round most productive energy source available to us now. Even if we just slowly lifted bans off of our energy market we would still be light years ahead of the rest of the world. America would do what America does best, stand alone. We don’t need pull peddlers like Ron Lehr of the American Wind Energy Association who was quoted in Mr. Vuong’s article, at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, that securing political favor is a part of this week’s efforts!
Bring back the men of merit the men who built railroads (without political help) the men who built skyscrapers, eradicated many diseases, built the first planes, jets and so on. America doesn’t need people like Sam Ley, what America needs are the Bill Gates, Michael Dells, J.P Morgan’s, Andrew Carnegies, what America needs is a Rockefeller.

The Importance of Speculation to the Economy

2008-07-13T22:57:00.006-06:00

What is speculation? And does an economy need or benefit by having individuals speculate? These are two important questions that need to be answered in order to understand the vital role speculators play in a dynamic economy. First, the question what is speculation? The definition I am referring to here is "engagement in business transactions involving considerable risk but offering the chance of large gains." However, everyone 'speculates' even in very small ways. Some of us make sure to fill up this week when we think gas is going to go up next week. Sometimes we succeed and gas does indeed go up next week which in effect saves us money. But, sometimes we fail, and gas actually goes down next week. If we were to have waited a week to fill up we might have saved a little bit of money. This is the basis of what speculation is. Now the important question is "does an economy need or benefit by having individuals speculate?" Here is where it gets a little bit more in depth.

Many people, professional and non professional alike, invest in things such as company stocks. When someone buys a stock of a new up and coming corporation they are hoping the stock will increase in value, giving the investor a good return on their investment. As an example, among many, is the internet company Amazon.com which rose in price for years before the company actually made any real profits. The idea for speculators in this example is to buy Amazon.com stock early in the hopes that the stock will go up, whether or not Amazon.com actually makes any profits or not. This allows the initial investors to make a profit.

Businesses speculate all the time as well. To take pharmaceutical companies as an example; a pharmaceutical company can spend millions of dollars developing a new drug all in the hopes that they can one day go out and sell that drug to the general public and make a profit. These companies never have a guarantee they will make anything back, they just have a hope and a good enough knowledge in their areas of expertise to make an educated guess. Something many people don't realize about pharmaceutical companies is they often fail to create or find anything of significance in their research. This is all failed speculation, but once there is something that is found, this is where the profits come in. Once a company develops a new drug and is able to pass all the regulations it is time to start production and make a profit. In the case of pharmaceutical companies they have a bottom line which they have to sell a certain amount of this drug at a certain price to make a profit and thus make their hard work, and all their failures, worthwhile. This is speculation at its best.

There are numerous other examples in every industry. A more easy and fun one to understand is movies. Every movie costs a certain amount to make. These costs are things like 'speculating' that a script one company purchases is going to be a hit. Movie studios also speculate by paying a big star lots of money in the hopes they will draw a big enough audience to make their enormous salaries worthwhile. To use some recent examples of failed speculation in the movie industry, let us use two recent movies, The Love Guru and The Happening. The Love Guru starring Mike Myers, Jessica Alba and Justin Timberlake, is a movie about a man named Pitka who is an American raised outside of his country by gurus. Pitka Returns to the States in order to break into the self-help business. His first challenge: to settle the romantic troubles and subsequent professional skids of a star hockey player whose wife left him for a rival athlete. Although Mike Myers has a large fan base now, a plot like this is not what people were looking for in this now very volatile movie industry. The Love Guru cost 62 million dollars to make. In three weeks at the box office it grossed a mere $29 million and some change. Rendering it almost impossible for any Justin Timberlake fans to ignore the fact that each and every single movie he has been in has completely flopped. Now a completely unrelated movie that shows the overall decline of a rather interesting individual's ability to make a great and interesting movie is M. Night Shyamalan in his latest movie The Happening. This movie which cost over $60 million to make grossed in 4 weeks only 62 million with huge declines every week. While this movie technically made a profit, movie executives are going to be rather edgy about signing any 60-80 million dollar contracts with Mr. Shyamalan in the future. Track records can be very important in speculation.

As is hopefully very clear by now, speculation is something that the average Joe can involve himself in as well as professional speculators. A professional speculators main role is in relieving other people from having to speculate as part of their regular economic activity. Put differently risk is inherent in all aspects of human life. Speculation is one way of having some people specialize in bearing these risks, for a price.

At this point it is very important to understand the difference between speculations and gambling, which is what many individuals like to consider speculation. Gambling simply creates a risk that would otherwise not exist, such as Russian roulette. These games are usually conducted to either profit or just simply to show off one's own skill or lack of fear. Economic speculation differs in that it deals with inherent risks in such a way as to minimize it and to leave it to be borne by whoever is best equipped to bear it. In other words it deals with risks that are a fact of life so to speak, and speculation allows these risks to be shouldered by men and women who are experts in dealing with such things.

To quote Thomas Sowell in his book Basic Economics where Mr. Sowell gives an example of commodity speculators and their importance to the market, using wheat.

"When a commodity speculator offers to buy wheat that has not yet been planted, that makes it easier for a farmer to plant wheat, without having to wonder what the market price will be like later, at harvest time. A futures contract guarantees the seller a specified price in advance, regardless of what the market price may turn out to be at the time of delivery."

What this does in essence is to separate farming from speculation, or mining from speculation etc. It allows the farmer to concentrate on what he does best, farming, while allowing a speculator to concentrate on what he does best, speculate. Each can benefit from the other. Let us say this farmer, who has to deal with wheat from all over the world, plants crops in the hopes of being able to sell his crop at $150 a bushel. Now with the market having such vast ups and downs which depend on everything from war and famine to drought, it is hard for one farmer to be sure what he may be able to gain from this season of harvesting. Instead of worrying about it, this farmer may decide to sell his crops to a speculator for $90 a bushel and guarantee a profit. Some may believe that the speculator is profiting off of the farmer, but they ignore the fact that now the farmer has a guaranteed profit whether or not he would have actually made a profit. Let's say the price of wheat actually goes down because of bumper crops all over the world, and now it is trading at $30 dollars a bushel. If the farmer had not 'purchased' the speculators services he would have lost $20 dollars a bushel (assuming it cost the farmer $50 dollars a bushel to plant and grow the wheat) and is possibly forced to sell his farm, thus leading to less wheat being produced the next year.

A rather important aspect and cost of speculating besides the money itself is also worry. Some individuals are simply not cut out for industries which have such an enormous amount of volatility in them. When a farmers livelihood hangs in the balance, as is shown in the above example of selling wheat at $90 dollars a bushel, may appeal to a farmer who knows he now doesn't have to worry about what might happen if the price drops and he loses money. In other words he leaves the future risk in the hands of the professional speculators, and the professional speculators leave the planting and harvesting of crops in the hands of farmers.

It is important to understand that without profit there would be no one willing to bear such a heavy burden, that of risk. It is because profits can be so high that many people begin careers in speculation, while at the same time it is because of the high risk nature of the industry that many people also stay away.

Just like any other industry speculators have to compete with other speculators, so this brings up the question of whether or not the service rendered is worth the price charged. Farmers are able to on a one on one basis decide if the price is worth it or not. If the farmer believes the price will go up he has every opportunity to bear the cost himself and take that chance. However, since every speculator must bid against other speculators, which is no different than each farmer competing with every other farmer. Competition, as always, determines the prices speculators are able to charge for their services. If that profit exceeds what it takes to entice investors to risk their money in this volatile field, more investments will flow into this segment of the market until competition drives profits down to a level that just compensates the expenses, efforts, and risks. It is easy to actually understand this frantic competition when looking at commodity exchanges between people shouting in a large room on Wall Street or other similar places. Some farmers do indeed speculate in their own crops which gives them more control over their financial future. But, the majority of farmers are going to try and make sure they are guaranteed a profit, and therefore sell to speculators. In the end it is up to the farmer whether they believe the service is worth the price being charged.

The major debate of our current presidential election is now Gas Prices. One scapegoat is the speculators, it is easy to see the evil of a speculator, since they work purely for profit, and profit is evil. However, In order for a speculator to actually affect the oil market in any significant way he or she would have to purchase extreme amounts of oil and keep it off the market, thus driving the price up, and sell later at a higher price. Since there is no evidence of this happening, nor will there ever be just because it's not economically viable, this is pure "speculation," and bad speculation at that, speculation without any evidence or analytical proof. If we think about it there is only one group that is actually 'hording' oil and keeping it off the market for the future. That group is the government, especially the United States government with reserves of oil in excess of one billion barrels of oil.

As far as greed goes, editor of The Intellectual Activist Paul Blair states:
"The idea that speculation is causing higher prices just boils down to the idea that prices are going up because certain greedy people want them to go up. But if people could raise prices just by wishing, why weren't prices already skyrocketing ten years ago? Why aren't they always skyrocketing in every market? Why don't the speculative short sellers greedily lower the prices simply by wishing them to go lower?" (http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5224)

Lastly, in an article by economist Walter Williams titled "in defense of Oil and gas speculators," Mr. Williams eloquently explains the importance of speculation using corn futures.
"Say that today's price of corn is $7 a bushel. I have a hunch that because of Midwest flooding, higher demand due to droughts and war in other parts of the world, that in may 2009, corn will sell for $12 a bushel. I stand to make a lot of money by buying corn now for $7 a bushel, holding it, and in may 2009 selling it for $12 a bushel. If many speculators share my hunch and buy more corn now, today's price, sometimes called the spot price, is going to rise let's say to $10 a bushel."

The way this effects the economy is in a very positive long term way. Mr. Williams goes on to explain that if the government were to outlaw the corn futures market or make them more costly, then this might cause the spot price to be lower, possibly bringing it all the way back down to $7 a bushel. The question to ask is this; "What happens in May 2009?"

Let's say all the horrible things that we hoped would not happen, did indeed happen. Midwest flooding caused an enormous dip in supply, and demand goes up because of war and drought in far off places in the world. Since congress outlawed or made it more costly to trade in corn futures the (May 2009) prices are going to be much higher since there will be much less corn on the market and more of a demand. The important thing to remember is that if congress had not interfered people would have used less corn now (because of higher current prices), which would allow there to be more corn in the future (May 2009). This illustrates the most important aspect of speculation, the allocation of resources over time. Congress in essence allowed Americans to ignore the future.

This is the very core of the importance in speculating. It is of vital importance to take the future into consideration when consuming today. This is the entire reason for prices, higher prices help to curb demand and also increase incentives to bring up supply. This is exactly what is happening with oil right now, as demand is increasing (India, china) Americans and others worldwide are curbing their consumption. At the same time, oil companies are increasing investment into more drilling and better refining techniques.

The oil problem the world is currently undergoing is the same economic principle that has always affecting the world, supply and demand. The answer is to have less government intervention, not more. Allow the market to work the way it was intended, without politicians interfering.

What would lower the long-term price of oil is for Congress to permit exploration for the estimated billions upon billions of barrels of oil domestically available, not to mention the estimated trillion-plus barrels of shale oil in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. Some politicians pooh-pooh calls for drilling saying it would take five or ten years to recover the oil. I guarantee you we would begin to see a reduction in today's prices even if it took five to ten years for us to get the first barrel. Put yourself in the place of an OPEC member knowing there would be a greater supply of U.S. oil in five or ten years, hence maybe driving oil prices lower to say $40 a barrel. What will you want to do now while oil is $130 a barrel? You would want to sell as much oil now and OPEC's collective efforts to do so would put downward pressures on current oil prices. Right now the U.S. Congress is OPEC's staunchest ally. (Mr. Williams, http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5221)

Human Rights

2008-06-20T18:24:00.001-06:00

Human Rights

The one term used in politics the most it seems is the word ‘rights’. Democrats claim people have a ‘right’ to things such as housing, education, medical care and more. Republicans claim people have a ‘right’ to force others to comply with their worldview i.e. religious and otherwise. Both Democrats and Republicans are wrong. It is our vast misconception of what really is a ‘right’ that has caused much confusion in almost all of the debates of the day. One side will debate their view of the ‘facts’ and the other side will debate their views. Both sides are constantly neglecting the real issue which is the violation of human rights. So it is of vital importance to understand where our rights come from and what a ‘right’ really is. Who has ‘rights’ and what do they apply to? These are things that need to be understood if any real debate can go on not only in this country, but in the world. Philosophers like Ayn Rand have explained what a ‘right’ is and where we derive our rights from, which is nature. Thomas Paine explained of rights and the right to life in general as one of the most powerful forces in our world. He said this of liberty “they had no idea that liberty was capable of such inspiration, or that a body of unarmed citizens would dare to face the military force of thirty thousand men.” This statement made in regards to the French Revolution. In the past the term rights, especially referring to right to life i.e. liberty, have engaged in men the ability to do things never before thought of on this earth. In a book by Thomas Sowell entitled Applied Economics. Dr. Sowell mentions a conversation between a teacher and a student. Where the student innocently asks his professor the question of where did slavery come from? The professor replied simply. “You are asking the wrong question the question is where did the idea of freedom come from?”
Possibly it is because the idea of freedom and ‘rights” being so new to mankind that the majority of the populace, including the freest country in the world, still have not fully grasped that ever elusive, and beautiful word ‘right.’ In order to explain rights I shall quote several small sections in one recent philosophers’ definition and defense of individual rights. Ayn Rand.
“Rights” are a moral concept, the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others – the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context – the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society. Between ethics and politics, individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law (Virtue of Selfishness, 108)
She also explained on page 110
A right is the property of an individual that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights. A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): A man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self generated action – which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life (such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (Italics mine)
Lastly she said in her most popular book Atlas Shrugged this about the source of man’s rights:
The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law but the law of identity. A is A and man is man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational.
For the first time in history human rights were not given to them by a dictator or by god as a privilege, but were understood to be inalienable and to be part of man’s nature and the best part of them. That government was not there to dictate a man’s life but was instilled by the people and for the people. The Declaration of Independence laid down the principles that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men” This provided the only valid justification of a government and defined it’s only proper purpose: to protect man’s rights by protecting him from physical force.
There has been a breaking and a misunderstanding of what rights truly are and how they operate in a social context. An alleged right which takes away the rights of another man cannot by its very definition be called a right. Right’s do not enforce obligations on another person or on a group of persons. No man can claim a right to impose an unwanted obligation, an unrewarded duty or involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as “the right to enslave”
One of the biggest key indicators of our society losing sight of the concept of rights and their corollaries was the Democratic Party Platform of 1960 which summarizes the switch from the concept of rights from political to the economic realm. The platform declares that a democratic administration “will reaffirm the economic bill of rights which Franklin Roosevelt wrote in our national conscience sixteen years ago”
1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms of mines of the nation.
2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food, clothing and recreation.
3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his product at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.
4. The right of every businessman, large and small to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home and abroad.
5. The right of every family to a decent home
6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accidents and unemployment.
8. The right to a good education.
These alleged rights are still being shouted out at the public, and most people listen to the yelling simply because it sounds good to them. An important aspect of morality people need to realize is that none of these things; jobs, food, clothing, recreation, homes, medical care, education etc grows in nature. These are all man-made values, goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them? A question to add at the end of all eight points above is a simple one, at whose cost? The question number one then becomes ‘the right to a useful and remunerative job … at whose cost?’ If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.
Our fore fathers intelligently spoke of the Pursuit of Happiness; they did not speak of the right to happiness, only a guarantee to the pursuit of happiness. This means that anyone can take the actions he or she thinks are necessary to achieve their own personal happiness. It does not mean that others must make him or her happy. For example the right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work and to have the opportunity to reach as high a level as he possibly can. It does not mean others must provide him with the necessities of life. The right to property means that a man has the right to take the economic actions necessary to earn property. To use it and to dispose of it; it does not mean that others must provide him with property. The right to free speech means that a man has the right to express his ideas without danger of suppression, interference of punitive action by the government; it does not mean that others must provide that person with a lecture hall, a radio station or a printing press through which to express his ideas. (Virtue of Selfishness, Rand)
In order to become a free society people must have an understanding of their rights and that no one may take away their rights unless they allow someone to take their rights away from them. Over the last eighty years or so there has been a systematic destruction of man’s rights and only very few willing to do or say anything about it. This is because the main flaw in the founding of the United States of America was a lack of a moral code to back up the constitution. Abraham Lincoln once said that “those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.” Does this simply mean outright slavery, or does it imply a slavery of any kind? Slavery of forcing a man to hire employees he normally would not, or of forcing some group of people to pay for the hardship of others? One of the major problems with society today is the concept of their rights, that it is their right to medical care and a job simply showcases the ignorance’s of society and its individuals in our modern culture. A group of individuals who claim they have these rights and it is the responsibility of the government to provide them with these rights.
“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows that as a government grows liberty decreases.” – Thomas Jefferson.
In this end I leave a simple way to understand rights. Imagine this scenario, a man lives on a deserted island, in order to finally understand man’s rights he must ask himself these questions.
1. Do I have a right to food?
2. Do I have a right to housing?
3. Do I have a right to water?
4. Do I have a right to medical care if I get injured?
5. Do I have a right to a job?
The man on the island has none of these alleged ‘rights’ along with many more that today we have begun to imagine as rights. The only right this man has is the right to use his mind in order to build a net to catch fish, to make a fire to cook the fish. He must use his mind to cut down trees in order to build a shelter for himself. He has the right to make bandages when he injures himself, he does not have a magical right to medical care on a deserted island. Rights are a moral transition from his individual rights to the rights in his dealing with other men.

An overview of Socialized Healthcare

2008-06-13T16:49:00.002-06:00

CURRENT PROBLEMS IN THE MEDICAL INDUSTRY
America has produced the most advanced medical technology the world has ever seen. All around us there are more and more advancements each year. Already there are things like ‘clot buster’ drugs which have helped patients to survive heart attacks, which in the past would have killed them. There are new forms of keyhole surgery to help patients with appendicitis, allowing them to be treated and discharged in 24 hour or less, in the past this could have taken at least a week. America has improved tremendously in the advancement of cancer treatment, allowing bicyclist Lance Armstrong to live through a testicular cancer which would have killed him had he lived 40 years ago. (Zinzer and Hsieh)
The problem lies in many Americans getting access to this health care, and deciding what the best way to distribute the care is. With health insurance getting higher and higher, and medical costs are soaring. Medicines are becoming too expensive to buy and Medicare is not covering many of the elderly enough to pay for their health costs. Geri Barbera, a 79 year old grandmother, had to dip into her and her husband’s savings as well as sell their truck just to be able to afford the extra costs in medicine she needed for her husband’s treatments, Alzheimer’s, and prescription medicine. (Barbera) One of the many things that compound this problem of Americans not having access to the treatment they need is a decline of medical doctors and overall medical care.
Decline of Medical Doctors
Currently there is a problem with burn out in doctors, including many doctors not wanting to see patients who are now on Medicaid and Medicare. The American Medical Association’s survey indicates a massive 90% of doctors turning down patients who are on Medicaid, making the shortage of doctors available to those people even higher, while at the same time 99% will see anyone on private insurance. Lin Zinser a 20 year litigator in the medical and business field, and Paul Hsieh A medical doctor in Denver Colorado and co founder of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine foundation (FIRM) wrote an article titled Moral Health Care vs. Universal Health Care. They had this to say about a decrease in doctors.
“According to a recent survey of doctors, 30 to 40 percent of practicing physicians would not choose to enter the medical profession if they were deciding on a career again, and an even higher percentage would not encourage their children to pursue a medical career.” (Zinzer and Hsieh)
Health Care Spending
Right now the money spent on health care in America is totaling around 17% of our entire economy, which according to many economists like Walter Williams, will increase to at least 20 percent by 2019. Also in the report by Zinser and Hsieh on health care, “annual spending [is] consistently growing faster than the overall economy… because of skyrocketing health care costs, the U.S. federal Medicare trust fund is expected to go bankrupt in 2019… potentially leaving millions of elderly American’s without health insurance coverage.” (Zinzer and Hsieh)

Main Proposed Solutions
The two proposals in America are to make all Americans purchase insurance through government mandates, and those who are unable to purchase their own insurance will receive subsidies from the government. Or the other proposal is to have a ‘single-payer’ system in which the government is the only insurance company, and all private insurance companies are to be utterly wiped out. According to the executive director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine and author Richard E. Ralston in his article titled Free-Market Health Insurance is Not the Enemy, “Insurance companies do not pay all of every claim, but neither does Medicare. Yet history indicates that Medicare and Medicaid spending is out of control.” (Ralston). There are many problems in our current system; however the concept that what we currently have is a ‘free market’ is vastly mistaken.
BACKGROUND: HISTORY OF OUR CURRENT MEDICAL INDUSTRY
There are many misconceptions of the medical industry, such as the difference between ‘cost’ and ‘price’, the difference between ‘health care’ and ‘health insurance.’ First, is the difference between price and cost. Prices pay for costs, yet if someone were to ask a politician they might hear them say “I will bring down the cost of medical care.” This according to author and economist Thomas Sowell simply means, “… A quick fix that will win votes at the next election, regardless of what the repercussions are.” Because prices cover costs, if the prices a doctor charges does not cover the cost this will always lead to a decline in supply and in the quality of the service and or products. In Dr. Sowell’s article The Cost of Medical Care he says “the average medical student graduates with a debt of more than $100,000. The cost per doctor running an office is more than $100 an hour. The average cost of developing a new pharmaceutical drug is $800 million. These are among some of the costs of medical care.” (Sowell)
Secondly is the difference between health care and health insurance. Health insurance helps to pay for catastrophic health care costs, such as cancer, diabetes, heart attacks and other problems that cause long hospital stays and extreme prices. In the past when someone were injured they would simply go to the doctor and pay cash for service, or the hospital would put them on a payment plan. Those who could not afford even the payment plan had the option to use some of the many charitable organizations. What America has now is the idea that health insurance should cover the cost of all their medical needs, including normal checkups with their doctors. Again this misses the point of insurance, which is designed to spread risk. Most people would not say their house insurance should cover everything from lawn mowing services to fixing shingles and painting their fence. Home owners insurance merely protects against catastrophic incidents such as hurricanes, floods, fires. Health insurance is the same thing.
Government Interference in the Health Insurance Industry
There are many regulations, mandates, and unequal taxation of health insurance companies that give the appearance of a free market but which in actuality is far from it. Insurance companies are taxed on the premiums they collect but are in many cases also ordered to set aside a certain amount of reserves to cover future claims.

BLUE CROSS AND BLUE SHIELD
One problem happened when during the great depression some of these insurance companies were exempt from these tax laws. They were called; Blue Cross and Blue Shield. These two organizations successfully lobbied the government to be considered ‘non-profit’ and thus exempt from many of the tax laws. The two ‘Blue’ companies offered community rating which allowed everyone in the same community to pay the same premium, based off of that particular community.
These two organizations which by the 1950’s became the biggest providers of health insurance in America wanted mainly to provide steady income for doctors and cover all expenses of medical treatments even the routine, which in the past had never been done. The problem occurred when the blues were able to get special privileges from the government in the form of their nonprofit status. This in turn harmed other insurance companies and turned health insurance into a ‘pay for all’ expense rather than a service which covered costs that would normally bankrupt a family. Eventually more and more insurance companies began to offer similar packages to their customers in order to compete with the two blue companies.
According to Zinser and Hsieh, “this new model [for health insurance companies] was a disaster in the making. In addition to minimizing incentives for insured customers to comparison shop for medical services, it also minimized incentives for doctors and hospitals to compete on price.” (Zinzer and Hsieh) Unfortunately this model did not come about by free market thinking it was a direct result of a government getting involved in the health insurance industry.
1942 STABILIZATION ACT
Another major impact on the health insurance industry was the 1942 Stabilization Act that was passed during WWII in order to freeze wages in America. The effect was that a business in order to attract new and better employees would offer health insurance coverage instead of giving a pay increase. This gave rise to the idea that it is an employee’s ‘right’ to have health insurance provided by their employers, which simply is not the case. Businesses do not cover an individual employee’s home insurance or their car insurance or other such things. This Stabilization Act was followed quickly by the IRS decreeing that health insurance premiums paid by employers are not taxable income. Another thing they decreed was that these premiums were a legitimate cost of doing business and can be deducted from the employer’s taxable income. (Zinzer and Hsieh)
This led to the major problem of employees not knowing the ‘cost’ of their health insurance and therefore to increase many employees anger at having some of that cost shifted towards them. Also these acts caused an enormous explosion in employer purchased health care, rather than individually purchased health care.
STATE AND FEDERAL MANDATES
There are over 1,900 different state and federal mandates across America which increases the cost of insurance for two main reasons. First are the mandates, usually from special interests groups like Parkinson’s advocates. These advocates lobby the government to then force insurance companies to cover Parkinson’s for all customers. This mandate leads to higher costs, as the insurance company is forced to take into account people who will need this type of coverage, whether an individual customer needs to be covered for Parkinson’s or not.
Second are the guaranteed issue laws, which force insurance companies to take on a new customer with previous ailments allowing people to wait till they are sick in order to get insurance coverage. Insurance companies must than increase the prices of their policies to their pre-existing clients and to new clients. A guaranteed issue law is equivalent to passing a law allowing someone to purchase home owners insurance for fire after their house burns down.

Government Interference in the Medical Industry
Many of the laws that have been passed cause doctors to pay fines and sometimes even jail time for things other than malpractice, such as simply making a mistake on their documentation of patient’s records. Programs like Medicaid and Medicare also have lead to a tremendous overcrowding in emergency rooms. Many of the people who go to ERs do not have critical problems but since they are covered under Medicare or Medicaid they go for ‘free.’ This makes it harder for those with serious problems to get the care they need when they need it.
EMERGENCY MEDICAL TREATMENT AND LABOR ACT OF 1985 (EMTALA)
The EMTALA law requires a hospital which accepts Medicare or Medicaid patients to accept anyone within two hundred feet of an emergency room, whether the person can pay for treatment or not. If a doctor or hospital fails to comply with this law they are subject to fines up to $50,000 for each infraction. To give an example, this would be like forcing grocery stores to allow anyone within two hundred feet to get any amount of food they say they need. A law like this would bankrupt most grocery stores. According to the American College of Emergency Physicians, from 1993 to 2003, while the U.S. Population grew by 12 percent, emergency room visits grew by 27 percent – from 90 million to 114 million visits. In the same period, however, 425 emergency rooms closed (14 percent of the ERs that existed in 1993), along with 703 hospitals and nearly 200,000 beds. (Zinzer and Hsieh)

HEALTH INSURANCE PORTABILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT (HIPAA)
This is an act that was passed in 1996 which requires by law that all doctors and any institute that provides medical services to fill out enormous amounts of paperwork saying they acknowledge their patients right to medical privacy. Dr. Reinhardt a retired surgeon in Pueblo Colorado said this about HIPAA “Every doctor needs to plan for the possibility of several fines every year.” (Reinhardt) Physicians must also have their own ‘specialized’ insurance that covers millions of dollars for fees and fines. This cost is than shifted to their patients.
Laws such as HIPAA merely turn Doctors into criminals for a simple error in paperwork. Penalties can range anywhere from $100 all the way up to $25,000 per year. Doctors are also able to be prosecuted for these errors, again this has nothing to do with actual malpractice but simply a failure to disclose or fill out all the proper paperwork. In the report done by Zinser and Hsieh a doctor told one of the authors that emergency room doctors are constantly breaking the HIPAA laws simply because it would be unethical to do otherwise.
“Complying with HIPPA… Would delay emergency medical treatment, keep families from understanding their loved-one’s condition, and preclude the crucial sharing of knowledge between family members and doctors about the history and condition of the patient.” (Zinzer and Hsieh)
The laws HIPAA enforce are the same things doctors have been acknowledging without these laws anyway, these laws simply add to the paperwork a doctor must fill out. This additional paperwork just takes away time a doctor should spend on saving lives.
DISCUSSION: ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF SOCIALIZING MEDICINE
There are several negative economical impacts socialized medicine has had on other countries. First, are the immense waiting lists many individuals are subjugated to in order to ration the medical services to everyone. Another problem that arises in these countries is the exodus of doctors and an overall decline of the medical care provided by the doctors in the system. Lastly is the loss of innovation, most countries currently and have always relied heavily on the innovativeness of America.
Waiting lists
Many advocates of socialized medicine in America point out the fact that America is the only industrialized country without a ‘single-payer’ system. One thing these advocates do not discuss is the enormous waiting lists these other countries must comply with. A major problem happens when people who normally would not go to see a doctor are now allowed to see one for ‘free’, at the expense of the taxpayer. People begin seeing doctors in droves for any ache or pain they might have, whether they would normally see a doctor or not.
In an article written by author and professor of economics Walter Williams Free Health Care in Canada? Dr. Williams quoted several sources from the Fraser Institute, a Vancouver based think tank. Showing some of the waiting lists Canada has to deal with. “The average time a patient waited between referral from a general practitioner to treatment rose from 16.5 weeks in 2001-02 to 17.7 weeks in 2003.” The research found that Saskatchewan had the longest wait time with thirty weeks, and Ontario was the shortest at fourteen weeks. As far as Diagnostic procedures; Computer Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and Ultrasound, ranged anywhere from two to twenty four weeks. (Williams, Walter E. Williams)
Exodus of Doctors
Another problem industrialized countries with socialized medicine are having is a decline in medical doctors, as well as low enrollment for medical schools. A study conducted by the Canadian Medical Association Journal showed an exodus of thousands of doctors leaving Canada. The study shows over the past 30 years 19,000 Canadian trained physicians left Canada for America. In 2006 there were 8,162 physicians who left Canada for America, “That figure accounts for about one in nine Canadian-trained physicians, which is equivalent to having two average-sized Canadians medical schools dedicated entirely to producing physicians for the United States.” (Arvantes) Two medical schools may not sound like a lot; however Canada only has 17 medical schools.
This decline in medical doctors and enrollment is a direct result of a human being not being willing to dedicate a lifetime to the perfection of a craft, than to be told how they are to operate and who they are allowed to see. A doctor is no different than any other individual who wishes to provide a service and or product and be compensated for said product/service.
Loss of Innovation
One of the most important attributes of America is its ability to create new products for itself and the world. This is shown in every aspect of Americans daily life. From telephones, cars, planes, televisions, computers, internet and more it is this ability to be innovative that has allowed America to remain the most powerful country in history. This innovation remains because of one fact, America allows individuals the freedom to create new products and then sell them however they see fit. In other words America allows for incentives, and very powerful incentives. Dr Reinhardt, although an advocate of a ‘single-payer’ health system in America, admitted America is by far the most innovative country in the world in the medical field. (Reinhardt)
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The research in this report was extracted from; lead economists, authors, statistical data from World Health Organization and the Fraser institute, as well as individuals in the current American Health industry, and has lead to the following conclusions on Socialized Medicine in America.
Conclusions
1. The current system in America is far from an actual free market, and many of the problems America is now facing are a direct result of the thousands of mandates and regulations both the health insurance industry and the medical industry are subject to in America.
2. Countries around the world currently under a form of socialized medicine have many problems of their own, such as the waiting lists, exodus of doctors, and an overall decline in the quality of medical services.
3. Some of our current government programs like Medicaid and Medicare will go bankrupt, without changes, by 2019.
4. The majority of the world depends on America for new life saving procedures and medicines. With a loss of incentives to create these new innovations, America is at risk of losing its ability to keep innovation going in this industry.
Recommendations
1. From the research and findings of this report it is recommended that the solution to the health care problems in America is not more government intervention, but less. It would however be a grave mistake to simply eradicate any and all government programs immediately. The best solutions are to start slowly, with for example the repealing of EMTALA. This can allow doctors and hospitals to set their own terms for garnering payment for their services.
2. Eliminate any type of special treatments certain companies might get, such as allowing ‘The Blues’ companies to have non-profit status. Repealing acts such as HIPAA can be done immediately, since these laws do nothing but add to the useless paperwork doctors and hospitals must do and adds tremendously to the amount of money they must pay out for malpractice suits.
3. The things that need to be done are to eradicate any and all government interference in the medical industry. As was mentioned before it has been this government interference that has caused the high costs of insurance and medical services we now have. To add more would only compound the problem.

Works Cited
Arvantes, James. Canadian Physician Exodus Benefits United States, Hurts Canada . 2 May 2007. 18th April 2008 .
Barbera, Geri. Interview. Kirk Barbera. 18th March 2008.
Ralston, Richard E. Capitalst Magazine. 5 February 2008. 10 February 2008 .
Reinhardt, Eric. Interview. Kirk Barbera. 8th April 2008.
Sowell, Thomas. Capitalism Magazine. 4 May 2004. 21 February 2008 .
Stossel, John. Capitlalist Magazine. 10 August 2007. 2 March 2008 .
Williams, Walter. "Walter E. Williams." 21 July 2004. George Mason University. 18th Jan 2008 .
—. "Walter E. Williams ." 1 July 2004. George Mason University. January 2008.
Zinzer, Lin and Paul Hsieh. The Objective Standard. 2007-08. 1 March 2008 .

OIL AND AMERICA

2008-06-10T18:20:00.002-06:00

OIL
Many claims are made during an election time, however most people would agree that very few are actually upheld. A lot of what a politician says during this time of year is, honestly, whatever people want to hear. Politicians go after culprits and evil doers at a much higher rate than in non election years. This all makes sense from a politicians’ standpoint, given their incentives and restraints. However, it is very dangerous to continue to take any politician just on their word. Studies and facts need to be taken into account. When for example, a politician says they will bring down our dependency on foreign oil while at the same time fight global warming by curbing c02 emissions. The question a voter must ask themselves is how this could possibly happen given the incentives and constraints on these particular sectors of our economy? On one hand if we are attempting to decrease our foreign oil dependency it makes sense to increase America’s refining and drilling capabilities. This is not very plausible given the incentives and constraints which are allowed by American explorers and refiners of oil. So the solution for a politician is rather complex. A politician will have a hard time convincing extremist environmentalists, and many in the general public, that freeing up the energy market would actually allow the increase of America’s supply and drop the price of gas and other products affected by oil. What a politician does instead of this is they go for the oldest and most trusted of allies, blame. Pointing fingers at all the people who seem to be villains by merit of their actions. Such as the greed of corporate CEO’s, especially those of oil companies, claiming that while these companies are getting rich the constituents of a particular politician are being hit where it hurts them the most, their pocket books. Politicians point fingers at these CEO’s and exclaim that these companies profits are to extreme to be mere “economics” and how America having to pay 4 dollars a gallon while oil companies make record breaking profits is just too much of a coincidence.
Whenever an economist comes on the air to defend the profits or to explain that what is happening is the most basic of economic principles they are often pushed aside as idealists. If the average voter would investigate the facts a little more they would begin to realize it is just that, basic economics. Oil companies are getting larger and larger amounts of profits, as well they should. What people fail to realize is that these profits don’t go straight into the CEO’s pockets, a large portion of profits are reinvested in oil exploration, drilling and refining. This allows for a higher amount of supply to be developed by a particular oil company which will in turn allow them to offer cheaper gas at the pump and undercut their competitors, which will in turn increase that oil companies future profits. This is the first thing everyone who went to public school in America should have learned, that of supply and demand. As supply goes up relative to demand prices go down. To blame oil companies of being greedy and over charging their customers is to claim that those oil companies are setting prices at will. However, if these companies could just set prices whatever they wanted to then they would never have allowed gas to be priced under a dollar in the 1990’s. In actuality if the oil CEO’s could have their way they would simply charge prices at the most outrageous amounts possible, but they don’t set prices at will prices are set according to supply and demand. At the same time, if customers could have their way they would pay as little as possible to get the gas they need, but customers don’t set prices at will either, prices are set according to supply and demand. The claim that CEO’s are greedy is a no brainer, but as economist Thomas Sowell once said “you can be the greediest man in the world and it won’t increase your income by one cent.” That’s because greed doesn’t make money, productivity makes money.
So this begs the question of what are the real causes of the increased barrel of crude and thus the higher gas prices at home. The answer to that question has to do with a few things. One reasons is the fact that 85% of our coast is off limits to drilling and so is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Secondly, is the limitation put on refining capabilities, which has caused there to be no new refineries to be built in America for over 30 years. Thirdly is the growing demand at home and abroad.

DRILLING
America has large sections of its underground oil off limits to oil explorers. This causes the U.S. to have to purchase more of its oil from outside of the country (which by the way would happen whether these sections of our country were opened up or not, the problem being America would not have to rely as much as we currently do on other countries) . If these sections were to be freed up to allow for oil exploration there would be a larger supply of world oil to help with the ever increasing demand of oil all over the world.
REFINING
There have not been any new refineries built in America in over 3 decades. This does cause there to be many inefficiencies in the much older and out of date refineries still in existence. The reason there haven’t been any new refineries built in so long is the government has passed so many environmental laws to make it uneconomical to build a new refinery. This has also led to many old refineries to be shut down, 50 out of 194 refineries were shut down from 1990 to 2004. Moreover, these regulations have caused the current refineries to be producing at full capacity. When a major disruption, such as a hurricane, shuts down a section of oil refining in America it is nearly impossible to shift oil production from one sector to another since every refinery is producing at full capacity rather than at a less than full capacity. Another unfortunate byproduct of a government that creates restraints rather than incentives to build new refineries is that there has been an overall decline in the actual capacity refineries can handle, while at the same time, demand has increased. What this all equates to is a country that has less ability to create more supply as demand increases.

DEMAND
It is pretty obvious to most people that with China, and India, growing at such a fast pace there is going to be a much larger global demand for oil. No matter what would happen the price of oil would have gone up because again the price of oil goes up according to supply and demand. The problem is the amount it would have gone up, and it is very hard to be able to calculate such a number (although people have tried).
In the end it is a textbook example of what happens in an ever increasing world economy. However, there are some really good things that are happening just in America. One is the decline of consumers purchasing gas guzzling Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV’s), and trucks. For example; trucks for the first time in decades, have lost their spot as the number one vehicle sold in America which will trigger a decrease in oil consumption at home. The Boeing Corporation has been creating a new more efficient jet airplane, and much more is happening in the free market. Also there could be enough pressure to free up some of restraints on America’s ability to supply itself oil. What is beginning to happen with the price of oil going so high is that in current oil fields which were abandoned because they were not economically viable at the old price of oil, but are not profitable at the current price of oil. This is why profits are a good thing, now oil companies have more money which allows them to reinvest in the drilling and refining of oil, so long as the government doesn’t get in their way. Oil Companies receive a bad rap whenever something bad happens in the economy. However, the fact remains that American oil companies remain the most efficient at producing oil as cheaply as possible, despite the regulations and restraints imposed by the government. It is time for American voters to write their congressmen and implore they step aside and to allow the professionals to do their job.