Dollars & Crosses
Capitalism Magazine's Blog.
Cross:
The Monopoly Myth: The Case of Standard Oil
(June 22, 2009)
Video of Lecture by Alex Epstein | Recorded February 19, 2009
America’s experiment with laissez-faire capitalism in the 1800s was a disaster, historians tell us, because businessmen used anticompetitive tactics to form giant, invincible monopolies. The textbook example of these evils of Big Business is John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust. In an era before government regulations and antitrust laws, the story goes, Rockefeller wielded market power to squelch innovative competitors and jack up consumer prices at will.
The textbooks need to be rewritten, argues Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Center. In this talk, Epstein tells the true story of Rockefeller’s rise to market dominance. Rockefeller’s success was not based on shady practices but on his company’s remarkable ability to bring the best oil to millions of Americans at the cheapest prices. Did Standard Oil abolish competition? Far from it. The company’s success actually made the oil market far more competitive, innovative, and productive. The story of Standard Oil, it turns out, does not reveal evils of Big Business but illustrates its great virtues.
Posted by Alex Epstein | Link
Cross:
Iran Election Chaos...Future of The Islamic Republic of Iran in Question?
(June 22, 2009)
John Lewis appears on Pajamas TV to discuss the Iran Election Chaos. He also gives an excellent contrast between Israel and Iran. ( LINK) Posted by John Lewis | Link
Dollar:
Record Number of People Are Listening to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged
(June 22, 2009)
Washington, D.C., June 22, 2009--The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights and the media have been reporting on the surge in sales of Ayn Rand’s classic novel Atlas Shrugged over the last six months. Not surprisingly, sales of the Atlas Shrugged audio book are also making impressive gains.
According to Blackstone Audio, one of the publishers of the full text audio edition of Atlas Shrugged, 16,000 audio copies of the novel were sold in the first five months of 2009, compared to around 20,000 in all of 2008. “This is a huge increase,” noted Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “This year audio copies of Atlas Shrugged are selling at about twice the rate as last year.”
Reports from trade sources have indicated that book purchases of Atlas Shrugged have also spiked recently, having tripled in the first four months of 2009 compared to the first four months of 2008. “The tripling in sales of Atlas Shrugged is remarkable,” said Dr. Brook, “especially considering that in 2008 a new all-time record in annual sales of the novel was established with more than 200,000 copies sold in the United States.”
More than 6,500,000 copies of Atlas Shrugged have been sold to date.
“Given the striking similarities between the plot-line of the book and the events of our day, more Americans are reading and listening to Atlas Shrugged than ever before,” said Yaron Brook. “Hopefully, they will find in Atlas Shrugged the principled solutions to the problems we face today.”
Posted by News Wire | Link
Cross:
Regarding USA Today's Opinion on "China then and now: 20 years after Tiananmen, Chinese democracy flags"
(June 9, 2009)
Sylvia Bokor sent the following in to USA Today:
USA Today's opinion writer calls the vicious totalitarianism of China "authoritarian capitalism." The use of this phrase so evidently confuses economic and political power that one must wonder whether such usage is another socialist attack on capitalism or whether the writer is so totally ignorant of what capitalism is. Capitalism is not merely the production of goods---especially the making of goods without regard for the political climate it exists in. Slaves also make goods. That does not mean they exemplify capitalism.
It would have been a welcome blow for freedom had the writer identified the difference between political and economic power. Political power is the force of the gun. A strong government is a limited government. Economic power is the result of thought and effort that produces values. A strong economy is an economy completely free of coercion.
It is not "democracy" that China needs but a representative republic which limits government to protecting individual rights, leading to laissez-faire capitalism. Which is what we need here in the States as well.
Posted by Sylvia Bokor | Link
Cross:
Punishing Google for Its Success
(June 8, 2009)
Washington, D.C., June 8, 2009--In an op-ed published last week by Investor’s Business Daily, Alex Epstein, analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, reacted to the Department of Justice’s recent announcement that it will increase enforcement of antitrust laws, and argued that the government should leave successful businesses alone to operate as they see fit.
According to Mr. Epstein, companies like Google, which are in the crosshairs of the Department of Justice, have “no power to force consumers” to use their products and “no power to prevent competitors from offering products” of their own. Consequently, such companies can pose “no threat to anyone’s rights or to the competitive process.”
The only player in today’s market that can thwart competition, said Epstein, is the government. “By using the vast and arbitrary political power given to it by antitrust law, the government can forcibly control successful companies such as Google and Microsoft, telling them what products they cannot sell, what markets they cannot enter, what prices they cannot charge. Obama’s new push to ‘protect’ competition,” noted Epstein, “is the real threat to competition.”
“Under the reign of antitrust, any superior company can be stopped in its tracks because some bureaucrat, company, or academic decides that the prices in its voluntary contracts are too high, or its voluntary terms are too onerous, or even,” added Epstein, “that its stable of free products is too large!” “Success earned in a free, competitive process is an achievement.” It is a travesty, concluded Epstein, that “our Department of Justice regards it as a crime.”
Posted by News Wire | Link
Cross:
Judge Sonia Sotomayor is Unqualified for Supreme Court
(May 27, 2009)
Washington, D.C., May 27, 2009--“Judge Sonia Sotomayor is unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States,” said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. Sotomayor was nominated yesterday for the seat being vacated by the retiring Justice David Souter.
“What disqualifies Judge Sotomayor,” said Bowden in his new commentary at the Voices for Reason blog, “is a judicial philosophy that explicitly rejects objectivity and impartiality. She has declared that ‘the aspiration to impartiality is just that--it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact’ that ‘our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions.’
“Elsewhere in her 2001 speech titled ‘A Latina Judge’s Voice,’ she noted that judges are typically unable to ‘transcend . . . personal sympathies and prejudices’ and that ‘gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.’ She also stated that ‘there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives.’
“Referring repeatedly to her ‘Latina soul’ and ‘Latina identity,’ Sotomayor rejected the view often expressed by the Court’s first female Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, that ‘a wise old man and a wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.’
“On the contrary, Sotomayor said, ‘I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.’
“This is a blatant endorsement of subjective emotional decision-making, which has no place on the Court and will swiftly corrupt what’s left of its integrity,” said Bowden.
“The Supreme Court has a solemn duty to interpret and apply the Constitution. That is an intellectual task requiring ruthless objectivity--which, contrary to Judge Sotomayor, is not an illusory ‘aspiration’ but a requirement of justice.
“A conscientious judge strives to banish all emotional influences from the decision-making process. But here is Judge Sotomayor declaring herself helpless to resist--indeed, even welcoming--the influence of personal intuitions that cannot be grasped or shared by persons of another gender or ethnicity.
“Although Judge Sotomayor has many of the tools necessary for service on the Supreme Court--judicial experience, intelligence, legal knowledge--she has adopted a philosophy of judging that makes all of those qualities irrelevant.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee should expose Judge Sotomayor’s dangerous judicial philosophy, and the Senate should vote to reject her nomination.”
Posted by News Wire | Link
Dollar:
Ayn Rand Playboy Interview
(April 29, 2009)
From the introduction:
That any novel should set off such a chain reaction is unusual; that "Atlas Shrugged" has done so is astonishing. For the book, a panoramic novel about what happens when the "men of the mind" go on strike, is 1168 pages long. It is filled with lengthy, sometimes complex philosophical passages; and it is brimming with as many explosively unpopular ideas as Ayn Rand herself. Despite this success, the literary establishment considers her an outsider. Almost to a man, critics have either ignored or denounced the book. She is an exile among philosophers, too, although "Atlas" is as much a work of philosophy as it is a novel. Liberals glower at the very mention of her name; but conservatives, too, swallow hard when she begins to speak. For Ayn Rand, whether anyone likes it or not, is sui generis indubitably, irrevocably, intransigently individual.
She detests the drift of modern American society: She doesn't like its politics, its economics, its attitudes toward sex, women, business, art or religion. In short, she declares, with unblinking immodesty, "I am challenging the cultural tradition of two-and-a-half-thousand years." She means it.
A dark-haired woman with penetrating brown eyes and a computer-quick mind, Ayn (rhymes with mine) Rand was born to the family of a small businessman in St. Petersburg, Russia, where she lived through the Soviet Revolution. She attended the University of Leningrad, loathing communism and its philosophy. In 1926 she managed to leave the U.S.S.R., stayed for a few months with distant relatives in Chicago, then moved on to Hollywood. She had always wanted to be a writer. Since her command of English was somewhat less than adequate for writing fiction, she found a job preparing outlines for silent movies, as she went about mastering her new language. Between bouts of unemployment, she worked as a movie extra, waitress, newspaper subscription salesgirl and studio wardrobe-department clerk.
Then, in 1936, she completed her first novel, "We the Living"—an attack on totalitarianism, set in Soviet Russia—which drew little notice. Two years later she finished "Anthem," a short novel about a society in which the word "I" has been extirpated in favor of the collectivist "we." It was not until five years and 12 publishers' rejections later that her first commercially successful book, "The Fountainhead," appeared; the story of an architect's battle for his own individuality, it became a national best seller, and was later made into a movie.
For nearly a decade after that, Miss Rand struggled to write "Atlas Shrugged," which she views not merely as a novel, but as the crystallization of a philosophy aimed at nothing less than reversing the entire direction of change in America—turning society toward a state of pure laissez-faire capitalism, even purer than that which existed during the 19th century. But her philosophy—which she calls "Objectivism"—encompasses more than economics or politics: Primarily, it sets forth a new kind of ethics which she defines as a morality of rational self-interest.
[...]
Read the rest here.
Posted by News Wire | Link
Dollar:
CNN Video on the Popularity of Atlas Shrugged
(April 20, 2009)
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/politics/2009/04/18/finnstrom.atlas.shrugged.cnn (Hat Tip: HB)
The video (to add balance) also quotes an anti-capitalist on the banking crisis who blames freedom for the mess. Peter Schwartz's Mob Rule Comes to Washington: Capitalism as a Scapegoat for Government Intervention answers her nicely by pointing out that Washington by Peter "blames capitalism for the mortgage and credit crisis, in order to divert attention from the real culprit: government intervention."
[Update] And this from ARC:
First, ARC executive director Yaron Brook was interviewed on CNN on Saturday. The report, titled "Ayn Rand Resurgence," can be viewed on the CNN Web site. Unfortunately, the report concludes with comments attempting to blame capitalism for the present financial crisis, and to link Ayn Rand to the failed policies of Alan Greenspan. Dr. Brook was not given an opportunity to respond to these statements, but readers may visit the ARC Web site to read our statements on the financial crisis and Alan Greenspan.
In addition to this, yesterday Dr. Brook published an op-ed in The Fox Forum titled “The Ayn Rand Renaissance.” The article discusses the popularity of Atlas Shrugged, and its relation to today’s cultural and political trends. As of this writing, there are more than 500 comments on the article.
Posted by News Wire | Link
Dollar:
How to End Piracy in the High Seas
(April 20, 2009)
Washington, D.C., April 20, 2009--In a dramatic rescue operation a week ago, U.S. Navy Seals succeeded in freeing Capt. Richard Phillips from captivity by Somali pirates.
According to Elan Journo, analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, even though the operation was successful, it did not teach the pirates the appropriate lesson, as evidenced by news of a pirate attack on another American-flagged ship, the Liberty Sun.
“The pirates have not been deterred,” said Mr. Journo, “because we have emboldened them for years through an entrenched policy of passivity and accommodation--and the freeing of Capt. Phillips was unfortunately just one halting step in a better direction.
“What we need--in response to piracy as well as other foreign threats--is an across-the-board reversal in U.S. policy. When, for example, it became clear more than a year ago that the waters off the coast of Somalia are a playground for pirates, the minimum that Washington should have done was to lay down an ultimatum to the pirates to leave Americans alone or else--and lived up to it.
“The substance of that warning: if any American vessel is captured by pirates, we will use military force to destroy every last pirate base in Somalia. When such a threat of retaliation is made fully credible, it can be sufficient to deter would-be aggressors. If any dare test us, then we must unapologetically respond with force.
“When America has once again earned a reputation as a power that none dare cross,” Mr. Journo concluded, “we won’t have to worry about pirates.”
Posted by News Wire | Link
Dollar:
End States That Support Piracy
(April 18, 2009)
Elan Journo has an excellent short piece on dealing with piracy off the Coast of Somalia in his blog post "Ending the scourge of piracy?" His solution:
The substance of that warning: if any American vessel is captured by pirates, we will use military force to destroy every last pirate base in Somalia (and any neighboring African country). No country that harbors pirates can demand that its sovereignty be respected. When such a threat of retaliation is made fully credible, it can be sufficient to deter would-be aggressors. If any dare test us, then we must unapologetically respond with force.
Not just occasionally, when negotiations go south — but on principle.
When America has once again earned a reputation as a power that none dare cross, we won’t have to worry about pirates.
This appraoch is similar to the one America should take with terrorism in general. For details see Dr. Peikoff's End States That Sponsor Terrorism.
Posted by News Wire | Link
|
