A New Blog by Brook and Watkins

I'm thrilled to see that the dynamic duo that brings us the Forbes column "The Objectivist," Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, now will be providing more material on a new blog called LaissezFaire: The Uncompromised Case for Capitalism.

Image from the Ayn Rand Institute. 

From the Government and Here to Help

The Ford Hall Forum recently made available the recording from the debate that we attended on the rain-drenched evening of September 29th in Boston. 


The debate pitted ARI's Yaron Brook against David Callahan, the co-founder of Demos. As anyone who knows me would guess, I judged Dr. Brook's position to be rock-solid and consistent with a comprehensive, rational, and principled worldview while Mr. Callahan's was concrete-bound, pragmatic, and "but"-laden. (By "but"-laden, I mean filled with craven, unprincipled compromises following the explicit or implicit pattern, "Freedom is nice, but . . .," "Justice is fine, but . . ., " etc. Actually, come to think of it, such compromises are not merely unprincipled but anti-principled, designed to attack and subvert a principle. In effect, the speaker pretends to stand by an abstract principle so long as it is shackled just a bit by his "nuanced," middle-of-the-road stance--such shackling being all that is required to completely undermine the principle.) 

Judge for yourself.

Yaron Brook at Babson College

Why does society reject free markets and like the idea that the government will solve our problems? Why, after a century of ever-increasing government regulations and spending, do Americans think the obvious solution is to increase government regulations and spending? Why, when companies in the least regulated industries prosper and those in the most heavily regulated industries struggle and fail, do people blame failures on capitalism and free markets?

Yaron Brook asked—then answered—these questions in an exhilarating speech, “Capitalism without Guilt: The Moral Case for Freedom,” at Babson College last night.

The answer, of course, is morality. As long as people hold morality to mean sacrifice, altruism, and suffering—as long as people regard selfishness to mean what they have absorbed uncritically since childhood: namely, a predatory or hedonistic satisfaction of personal whims—political freedom is impossible. In articulating every man’s right to pursue his own happiness, the Founders of America expressed, as Dr. Brook pointed out, the most profoundly selfish political declaration in history. The essential foundation for capitalism and political liberty is an embrace of reason and rational self-interest.

image from Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

If you ever get a chance to see Yaron Brook speak, you should not miss it. He is one of the greatest living heroes in the fight for liberty.

Yaron Brook’s Call to Action - July 2009

In a newly released video, Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute speaks out against the socialization of the medical industry (i.e. “health care reform”), reminding us that health care is not a right.

Yaron Brook - Capitalism without Guilt: Sacrifice

The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights just released a brief video of Yaron Brook discussing sacrifice versus trade.

The points he makes are so obvious to me: that sacrifice consists of giving up a greater value for a lesser one, and that some things commonly regarded as "sacrifices" are not sacrifices at all.  Despite being obvious, Brook's precise account of sacrifice flies in the face of conventional... well, I was going to say conventional thinking, but the passive absorption of cultural norms does not quite deserve to be called thinking.

Capitalism in China: Should We Trade With Them?

A few years ago - almost a decade ago, actually - I struggled with this same question.  The company I was working for was for the first time courting a potential customer in China, and I wondered: was it moral to do so?

I was assailed by conflicting thoughts.  Was doing business with this communist country essentially sanctioning evil?  Or was it a mistake to still regard China strictly as a communist country, since it had evolved so much in a seemingly positive direction during the 1990’s?  Would commerce bolster the Chinese government, or would it weaken it?  Was my doing business with Chinese companies harmful or beneficial to me in the long run?

Needless to say, the Chinese government itself was not the potential customer - that would have made my decision easy.  On the other hand, I’m not sure how much meaning there is in a “private company” in China; however much the strict communism has diminished, as long as the country is officially communist, I don’t see how there can be actual private property.  Another concern of mine was that our product, though it was a consumer product and not military in nature, had some reasonably advanced communications technology.  I worried that it could conceivably fall into a “dual-use” category (i.e. it could be reverse engineered or adapted for military use). 

I did a little bit of research at the time, reading a couple of books and poring over some reports from the Commerce Department and Congress.  (Coincidentally, Congress had just come out with an extensive report on the topic of Chinese trade and espionage, compiled by Christopher Cox, if I recall correctly.)  In the end, the business opportunity fizzled out and so it became a moot point for that particular time.  But after all the thinking I had done about it, I had not arrived at a conclusion with certainty.  I leaned toward trade with China being a good thing - and I am even more of that mind today - but it’s a difficult issue.

Anyway, this all came back to me tonight when I stumbled across this video from the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

The Financial Crisis Hotline

I've added a new link list in the right column of my blog: The Financial Crisis Hotline.  

The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has dedicated a page that features pertinent articles by Yaron Brook, Alex Epstein, Harry Binswanger, and others.  Unlike the news coverage that for the most part absurdly characterizes the recent crisis as a "failure of the free market," these ARC articles pierce to the root of the matter to show that we are suffering from a failure of the unfree market.

ARC: The Unfree Market Has Failed

The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights recently released a short statement by Yaron Brook that accurately captures the nature of our financial crisis:

The Unfree Market Has Failed 
September 19, 2008

Washington, D.C.--“Everyone is blaming ‘the free market’ for today’s financial crisis,” observed Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. “But we should be blaming the unfree market. The mortgage and financial markets have been thoroughly controlled by government--and that is why they failed.

“It was the government’s hand in the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve Board’s inflationary policy of keeping interest rates artificially low, the irrational lending standards forced on lenders by the federal Community Reinvestment Act, and the quasi-official policy of bailing out large financial institutions deemed too big to fail, that contributed to creating a situation in which millions of people were buying homes they could not afford, in which the participants experienced the illusion of prosperity, in which billions upon billions of dollars were going into bad investments.

“We do not need more regulation or economic ‘supervision.’ What we need to do is remove the government’s power to coerce, bribe, reward and bail out irrational decisions. The unfree market has failed. It’s time for a truly free market.”

NOTES

1. "The Unfree Market Has Failed," Yaron Brook, Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, 18 Sep 2008.  ("http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=21249")

Yaron Brook on "putting the country first"

"Both the left and the right have been 'putting the country first' for decades -- and that's the problem," Yaron Brook said in a new press release from the Ayn Rand Center.  

An excellent point.  Behind the calls from both John McCain and Barack Obama to "put the country first" is the doctrine of collectivism - the very opposite of the American ideal of individualism.  The article is brief and well worth reading.

Dr. Brook will be presenting a talk called The Resurgence of Big Government on September 18, 2008, in Costa Mesa, CA.  That is unfortunately on the wrong side of the country for me, but it's a good opportunity for those of you on the west coast. 

The Next Apollo Mission

I went to see Yaron Brook’s excellent lecture, Woodstock’s Legacy: The Rise of Environmentalism and the Religious Right, at the Ford Hall Forum tonight.  (Actually, I guess I have to say it was last night, not tonight, since it is now past midnight!)  I can’t possibly capture the order, integration, and eloquence of his speech, but I will try to recap some of ideas as faithfully as I can, with apologies to Dr. Brook if I’ve gotten something wrong.

He started by referring to Ayn Rand’s 1969 article, Apollo and Dionysus, in which she used two particular major events of the time - the Apollo 11 mission and the Woodstock rock music festival - to represent the wider concepts of reason and emotionalism, respectively.  In many respects, in 1969 the Dionysian elements in American culture were smothering the Apollonian ones.  It was a battle not of rich versus poor, but of intellectuals versus the people, hippies versus scientists - and the hippies and intellectuals seemed to be winning. 

So Dr. Brook asked the question - are we better off now than we were then?  There are some positive signs.  After George McGovern (an archetype for the Dionysian side) lost to the unpopular Richard Nixon, it seemed a thorough repudiation of the emotionalism of the hippie generation.  Indeed, the only Democrats elected to the Presidency since that time have run as centrists.  Reagan and Thatcher were elected.  Capitalism revived; Americans were prosperous and adored technology.

Unfortunately, the rebellion against the New Left was missing an explicit philosophical defense.  And many Americans, revolted by the shallow horrors of nihilism, flocked to the only prominent groups that boasted of absolutism and moral guidance: the evangelical churches.

Somewhat paradoxically, evangelical Christianity appeals to the 1960’s generation because of its emotionalism and spiritualism.  It is explicitly anti-reason.  Dr. Brook noted that, “the emotionalism of Woodstock was replaced by the emotionalism of Billy Graham” and “it was a rebellion against the Left - but not a rejection of Dionysus.”      

Dr. Brook then brought in the environmentalist movement as the other significant cultural movement that has made great inroads, showing that despite a veneer of scientific content and some lip-service geared to making it palatable to ordinary people, environmentalism is at root virulently anti-man.

These two strands - evangelicalism and environmentalism - are ultimately united in the realm of ideas; in essence, they share the emotionalism and hatred for reason.  But it gets really scary when these two unite as cultural and political forces - and that is exactly what appears to be happening.  (Dr. Brook illustrated this with many examples that I didn’t jot down, but I’m sure they’re on the recording that will be available soon at ARI.)

Brook’s sobering conclusion: “America is more Dionysian today than it was in the 1960’s.”  

Interestingly, though, Dr. Brook is unmistakably positive and optimistic.  What is needed today, he said, is a new Apollo mission that can provide a philosophical defense of freedom and capitalism.