Standards of Environmental Good and Evil: Why Environmentalism Is Misanthropic

It is very common for people to talk nowadays about environmental good and evil, but with virtually no explicit statement of the standards by which something is to be judged environmentally good or evil. People are unaware that a standard is always present and that there is more than one such standard. There are in fact two diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive standards of environmental good and evil. The following example will bring them out.

Thirty years ago, the land under the house I live in, in Southern California, was empty desert. Had I wanted to sleep in the same location that my bedroom now stands on, I would have had to bring a sleeping bag, take precautions against rattlesnakes, scorpions, and coyotes, and hope I could find a place for my sleeping bag such that I wouldn’t have rocks pressing into my body. If it rained, I would get wet. If it was cold, I would be cold. If it was hot, I would be hot. Going to the bathroom would be a chore. Washing up would be difficult or impossible.

How incomparably better is the environment provided by my house and my bedroom. I sleep on a bed with an innerspring mattress. I don’t have to worry about snakes, scorpions, or coyotes. I’m protected from the rain, the cold, and the heat, by a well constructed house with central heating and air conditioning. I have running water, hot and cold, a flush toilet, a sink, a shower, and a bathtub, in fact more than one of each of these things, and I have electricity and most of the conveniences it makes possible, such as a refrigerator, a television set, a VCR, and CD and DVD players.

It’s obvious to me that the existence of my house constitutes an enormous improvement in my environment compared with living at the same location on the bare ground, and that the same is true of the existence of virtually all houses in relation to the environment of their occupants. It’s further obvious to me that the process of improving the environment in this way starts with developers and contractors who bring in bulldozers and other heavy construction equipment to clear the tops of hills, level and compact the land, build streets, and utility connections, and construct houses.

Yet those who are called “environmentalists” describe the exact same process of development and construction as harming the environment. Why? Because they have a profoundly different standard of environmental good and evil than the one that is present in my example. The standard that is present in my example is that of human life and well-being. What is environmentally good according to this standard is the promotion of human life and well-being, notably, housing construction and the existence of houses. What is environmentally evil is what impairs human life and well-being, such as preventing housing construction.

The environmentalists call the construction of houses evil because, as I say, their standard of value is very different. Instead of taking human life and well-being as their standard of value, they take nature in and of itself as their standard of value. Nature, they say, has intrinsic value, i.e., value in and of itself, apart from all connection with human life and well-being. Thus, in their view, hillsides and empty land, as they exist in a state of nature, together with their wildlife, have intrinsic value. And it is those alleged intrinsic values that are harmed by development and construction. In other words, the harm the environmentalists complain about in such cases is harm only from a non-human, indeed, anti-human perspective.

Here is a classic statement of the doctrine of intrinsic value by one of its leading environmentalist supporters:

This [man’s “remaking the earth by degrees”] makes what is happening no less tragic for those of us who value wildness for its own sake, not for what value it confers upon mankind. I, for one, cannot wish upon either my children or the rest of Earth’s biota a tame planet, be it monstrous or—however unlikely—benign. McKibben is a biocentrist, and so am I. We are not interested in the utility of a particular species or free-flowing river, or ecosystem, to mankind. They have intrinsic value, more value—to me—than another human body, or a billion of them.

Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn’t true. Somewhere along the line—at about a billion years ago, maybe half that—we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth.

It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. (David M. Graber, in his review of Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature, in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Sunday, October 22, 1989, p. 9.)

The doctrine of intrinsic value is present in such statements as the North Slope of Alaska is “a sacred place” that should never be given over to oil rigs and pipelines. It is present in such statements as, “There is a need to protect the land not just for wildlife and human recreation, but just to have it there.” It is present in all instances in which forests, rivers, canyons, hillsides, or any other natural formation is presented as automatically deserving to be preserved, irrespective of its value in being put to use by human beings. And, of course, it is present in all the numerous cases in which human life or well-being have been sacrificed for the sake of the preservation of this or that species of animal or plant. Such cases range from the sacrifice of the property rights of human beings for the sake of snail darters and spotted owls, to the sacrifice of untold millions of actual human lives. This last has occurred as the result of the resurgence of malaria because the use of DDT was prohibited in order to preserve the alleged intrinsic value of some species of birds.

It is crucial that people recognize the distinction between the two standards of environmental good and evil and that the standard of the environmental movement is fundamentally that of the intrinsic value of nature, not that of human life and well-being. Given its standard of value, it is certainly not possible to accept as sincere or well-motivated any of the claims the environmental movement makes of seeking to improve human life and well-being, whether in connection with its allegations about global warming, the ozone layer, acid rain, or anything else.

Indeed, environmentalism’s acceptance of the doctrine of intrinsic value implies a profound hatred of man and a desire to destroy him. Such statements as those of Mr. Graber, that I quoted above, expressing a wish for a virus to come along and kill a billion human beings, are not at all accidental. They are logically implied by environmentalism’s standard of value.

Acceptance of the doctrine of intrinsic value, as I wrote in Capitalism, “inexorably implies a desire to destroy man and his works because it implies a perception of man as the systematic destroyer of the good, and thus as the systematic doer of evil. Just as man perceives coyotes, wolves, and rattlesnakes as evil because they regularly destroy the cattle and sheep he values as sources of food and clothing, so, on the premise of nature’s intrinsic value, the environmentalists view man as evil, because, in the pursuit of his well-being, man systematically destroys the wildlife, jungles, and rock formations that the environmentalists hold to be intrinsically valuable. Indeed, from the perspective of such alleged intrinsic values of nature, the degree of man’s alleged destructiveness and evil is directly in proportion to his loyalty to his essential nature. Man is the rational being. It is his application of his reason in the form of science, technology, and an industrial civilization that enables him to act on nature on the enormous scale on which he now does. Thus, it is his possession and use of reason—manifested in his technology and industry—for which he is hated.” (p, 82)

The primitive hunter-gatherers who were modern man’s remote ancestors left virtually no mark whatever on the rest of nature. The alleged intrinsic values destroyed in their gathering and eating nuts and berries and in their hunting, killing, and eating animals were quickly and automatically replenished by nature. The pre-industrial farmers who were modern man’s more recent ancestors left an imprint on nature that was essentially limited to plowed fields and primitive villages. And though somewhat more enduring, it was still very limited in extent. Great limitation of extent characterizes the enduring mark left by the pyramids, the ruins of towns and cities built in antiquity, and the stone castles of the Middle Ages.

In contrast, the modern man of capitalism clears entire forests and jungles; he drains swamps and irrigates deserts. He changes the balance of nature by decimating and destroying entire species of plants and animals and, though not often mentioned, radically increasing the populations of others, whose characteristics he alters to suit him. He establishes mechanized farms, large numbers of major towns and cities, indeed, giant metropolises. He builds factories, roads, bridges and tunnels, dams and canals. He digs mines, sometimes moving entire mountains in doing so, and drills for oil and gas, often reaching depths of several miles. From the perspective of environmentalism and its doctrine of intrinsic value, these activities, which leave a large and enduring mark on a vast swath of the rest of nature, constitute the destruction of intrinsic values on a massive scale and thus characterize modern man as the doer of massive evil.

Keeping all this in mind, it follows that it is absolutely perilous for human beings to allow themselves to be guided by policies recommended by the environmental movement, especially when doing so would impose great deprivation or cost, such as would be entailed in having to make radical reductions in carbon dioxide emissions to combat global warming. Nothing could be more absurd or dangerous than to take advice on how to improve one’s life and well-being from those who regard one’s wealth and happiness as a source of harm, who accord one the status of vermin, and who wish one dead as the means of preserving nature’s alleged intrinsic values. Indeed, not only Mr. Graber, but also other prominent environmentalists have expressed a wish for human deaths on a scale that far surpasses all those caused by the Nazis and Communists combined.

The danger of accepting environmentalist claims, it must be stressed, applies irrespective of the scientific or academic credentials of an individual. If an alleged scientific expert believes in the intrinsic value of nature, then to seek his advice is equivalent to seeking the advice of a medical doctor who was on the side of the germs rather than the patient, if such a thing can be imagined. It is the equivalent of a Jew asking the medical advice of a Dr. Josef Mengele.

All advice, all policy recommendations emanating from the environmentalist movement must be summarily rejected unless and until they can be validated on the basis of a pro-man, pro-wealth, pro-capitalist standard of value. Such a standard will never imply such a thing as the destruction of the energy base of industrial civilization as the means of addressing global warming.

The environmental movement is the philosophic enemy of the human race. It should be treated as such. If we value the material well-being and, indeed, the very lives of billions of our children and grandchildren, we must treat it as such. We must treat environmentalism as our mortal enemy.


This article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book and provided that mention of the author’s web site www.capitalism.net is included. (Email notification is requested.) All other rights reserved. George Reisman is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics.

Two Ice Ages, With Up to 16 Times the Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere

In the last 500 million years, there have been two ice ages at the same time that vastly higher carbon dioxide levels prevailed in the earth's atomosphere—up to 16 times the present level.

This remarkable finding, along with others, was reported in yesterday’s (November 7, 2006) New York Times. For details, see the article by William Broad, “In Ancient Fossils, Seeds of a New Debate on Warming.”

The article contains references to the work of a number of important scientists who aren’t supposed even to exist, according to the environmentalist propaganda machine, which brooks no opposition. The article deserves to be required reading for everyone who is seriously interested in the subject of global warming.

Freedom of Choice in New York City: Diet, No; Gender, Yes

From The New York Times of October 31, 2006:

Dozens of people appeared before the city’s Board of Health yesterday, offering a largely favorable response to proposed restaurant regulations that would ban all but a minute amount of artificial trans fats in food preparation, and require some restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus and menu boards.

The board has said it planned to vote on both proposals, which are supported by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in December. The hearing yesterday was part of a process of public comment that also includes written responses.

The New York City proposals, which have drawn attention across the country, would establish some of the most rigorous limits on trans fats in restaurants and set requirements for menu labeling more rigid than in any other American city.

From The New York Times of November 7, 2006:

Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery.

Under the rule being considered by the city’s Board of Health, which is likely to be adopted soon, people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates by providing affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex, and asserting that their proposed change would be permanent.

Bottom line: Starting soon, in New York City, you won’t be able to buy a donut baked with trans fat, but you will be able choose your sex, irrespective of your anatomy.

If you think this is crazy, you’d better watch out and not say so. That’s because sooner or later, if there isn’t already, there will be a further regulation that bans such dissent as “antisocial,” “insensitive,” or “offensive.”

Even so, I can’t suppress the thought that if the hosts of, say, the Boston Tea Party, were alive, they might physically relocate New York City’s Board of Health to the streets below, perhaps with its office furniture wrapped around its members’ necks. A hostile response, I know. But then I’m feeling like that rattlesnake on a flag of my country’s Revolutionary War. His message to the world was, “Don’t Tread on Me.”


George Reisman is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics. His web site is www.capitalism.net. © 2006, by George Reisman.

Britain’s Stern Review on Global Warming: It Could Be Environmentalism’s Swan Song

To the accompaniment of much fanfare and hoopla, the British government has released Sir Nicholas Stern’s Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, a report that it commissioned but that it labels “independent.”

The report is a rehash of now standard environmentalist claims concerning alleged disasters that await the world if it continues with its wicked ways of fossil fuel consumption: the disappearance of islands beneath the sea, the flooding of coastal cities, more severe droughts and hurricanes, famines, disease, the displacement of tens of millions of people from their traditional homelands—it’s all regurgitated in the report. A couple of times, however, the report provides a hint of something even much worse:

Under a BAU [business as usual] scenario, the stock of greenhouse gases could more than treble by the end of the century, giving at least a 50% risk of exceeding 5°C global average temperature change during the following decades. This would take humans into unknown territory. An illustration of the scale of such an increase is that we are now only around 5°C warmer than in the last ice age. (p. ix of the Executive Summary.)

It remains unclear whether warming could initiate a self-perpetuating effect that would lead to a much larger temperature rise or even runaway warming . . . . (p. 10 of the full report, the Stern Review.)

The frightening allusions to “unknown territory” and “runaway warming” come very close to conjuring up old-time religious images of hellfire and brimstone as the fate of the world if it does not take Sir Nicholas’s Report to heart and repent of its ways. But Sir Nicholas never actually does make this threat. He leaves it merely to implication.

Perhaps if it were made, it would be easier for people to identify the environmentalists’ fears for the empty bugaboo that they are and dismiss them. Their response would need be only that if economic progress and the enjoyment of its fruits will consume the world in flames, and thus that living like human beings means we really will all go to hell, as the preachers have always claimed, then so be it. Better to live as human beings now, while we can, than throw it away for the sake of descendants living as pre-industrial, medieval wretches later on. (But, of course, we will never have to make such a choice, for reasons that will become clear shortly.)

Surprisingly, the actual negative consequences Sir Nicholas alleges that will occur from global warming are extremely tame, at least in comparison with hellfire. In his “Summary of Conclusions,” he writes:

Using the results from formal economic models, the Review estimates that if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.

Sir Nicholas’s use of the words “don’t act” is very misleading. What he is urging when he speaks of “action” is a mass of laws and decrees—i.e., government action. This government action will forcibly prevent hundreds of millions, indeed, billions of individual human beings from engaging in their, personal and business private action—that is, from acting in ways that they judge to serve their own self-interests. Thus, what he is actually urging is not action, but government action intended to stop private action.

Furthermore, he does not explain why he believes that global warming means the end of all subsequent economic progress, though that is implied in the words “now and forever.” He compares the dangers of global warming to “those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century(ibid.),” yet seems to forget the stupendous economic progress that followed them.

According to Sir Nicholas, what we must do to avoid the loss of up to 20% of annual GDP, is ultimately to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions “more than 80% below the absolute level of current annual emissions.” (p. xi of the Executive Summary. My italics.) Lest one think that such drastic reduction lies only in the very remote future, Sir Nicholas also declares,

By 2050, global emissions would need to be around 25% below current levels. These cuts will have to be made in the context of a world economy in 2050 that may be 3 - 4 times larger than today - so emissions per unit of GDP would need to be just one quarter of current levels by 2050. (Ibid.)

In appraising Sir Nicholas’s views, it should be kept in mind that our ability to produce, now and for many years to come, vitally depends on the use of fossil fuels. These fuels are the source of most of our electric power and thus of our ability to use machinery. They propel our trucks, trains, ships, and planes. And, of course, their use entails the emission of carbon dioxide. Thus, it would seem that Sir Nicholas’s means of preventing even a 20% loss of GDP would entail a far greater loss of GDP than 20%. It follows that if it is output that concerns us, we would be better off simply accepting global warming, if that is what is in store, than attempting to avoid it in the way Sir Nicholas prescribes. We will certainly not produce 3-4 times the output in 2050 with 25% less carbon dioxide emission. Far more likely, if such a reduction is forced upon us, we will produce substantially less output, despite the probable existence of a substantially larger population by then.

Sir Nicholas appears to be as naïve in his estimate of the cost of replacing today’s technologies of fuel and power as he is in estimating the effect of their loss. Without evidence of any kind, he claims that while the cost of “inaction” is as much as 20% of annual global GDP, “the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year.”

Thus his program is designed to appear as really quite a bargain: the world’s governments will appropriate an additional mere 1% of global GDP each year in order to prevent their citizens from wantonly destroying as much as 20% of annual global GDP by foolishly pursuing their own self-interests. And it turns out that, in Sir Nicholas’s view, even this 1% is far more than is required by the governments for the actual development of new technologies. In his chapter titled “Accelerating Technological Innovation,” he writes that “Global public energy R&D funding should double, to around $20 billion, for the development of a diverse portfolio of technologies.” (p. 347 of the Stern Review.) Twenty billion dollars are a mere one-twentieth of one percent of the world’s current annual GDP of roughly $40 trillion. That’s supposed to be all that it takes to develop the technologies that will enable the world to eventually reduce carbon emissions by 80% from today’s levels.

How easy and simple it is all supposed to be, if only we will do as we are told, and get started doing so right away. All we have to do is sit back and leave the direction of our lives in the hands of the government. It will solve the problem of changing the global technology of energy production with the same success that the Soviets and the British Laborites pursued their respective varieties of socialism and with the same success that our own government has conducted its wars on poverty, drugs, and terror, and in Vietnam and Iraq. Did I say, “success”?

Sir Nicholas’s Review is characterized by an apparent belief in a kind of magical power of words to create and control reality. Thus, the actual fact, as reported in The New York Times, is that “About one large coal-burning plant is being commissioned a week, mostly in China.” In the same report, The Times points out that “A typical new coal-fired power plant, [is] one of the largest sources of emissions, [and] is expected to operate for many decades.” Totally ignoring these facts, Sir Nicholas believes he has said something meaningful and significant when he writes,

Developing countries are already taking significant action to decouple their economic growth from the growth in greenhouse gas emissions. For example, China has adopted very ambitious domestic goals to reduce energy used for each unit of GDP by 20% from 2006-2010 and to promote the use of renewable energy. India has created an Integrated Energy Policy for the same period that includes measures to expand access to cleaner energy for poor people and to increase energy efficiency.” (p. xxiv of Executive Summary.)

To say the least, this represents the use of a mere statements of intent concerning action in the future in an effort to override the diametrically opposite character of China’s and India’s actual actions in the present, and in the foreseeable future as well if these countries are to achieve further substantial economic development.

Another illustration of the attempt to employ words as though their use could control reality, occurs in Sir Nicholas’s discussion of “learning and economies of scale” in connection with low-carbon technologies. He notes that “The cost of technologies tends to fall over time, because of learning and economies of scale,” and appears to conclude from this that low-carbon technologies can therefore eventually be as efficient as the high-carbon technologies they are supposed to replace when the latter are forcibly curtailed. He writes, “There have been major advances in the efficiency of fossil-fuel use; similar progress can also be expected for low-carbon technologies as the state of knowledge progresses.” (Stern Review, p. 225.) It apparently does not occur to him that there may be some necessary order of sequence involved and that the use of high-carbon technologies is the necessary foundation for the possible later adoption of low-carbon technologies.

Presumably, he does not believe that in the period 1750-1950, industrialization could have proceeded on the foundation of low-carbon technologies. For example, before such technology as that of atomic power could be developed, generations of industrial progress had to take place on a foundation of fossil fuels. And this was equally true for the technology of wind turbines and solar power. The ability to produce the materials, components, and equipment required by these low-carbon technologies rests on the existence of previously established highly developed carbon-based technologies. Further substantial economic development on the same foundation is required for the further development of low-carbon technologies.

Wherever the use of high-carbon technology is cheaper than that of low-carbon technology, forcibly curtailing its use implies the forcible reduction of the physical volume of production in the economic system, including its ability to produce further capital goods. Thus, forcibly curtailing the use of carbon-based technology cuts the ground from beneath the development of future low-carbon technology. It aborts the development of the necessary industrial base. (For elaboration of these points, see my Capitalism, pp. 178-179, 212, 622-642.)

Sir Nicholas’s and the rest of the environmental movement’s hostility to carbon technology, is ultimately contrary to purpose not only insofar as it prevents the development of the low-carbon technologies they claim to favor, but also in that it simultaneously, and more fundamentally, operates to deprive the world of the ability to counteract destructive climate change, such as global warming.

Whether or not they are aware of it, in attempting to combat alleged global warming, Sir Nicholas, and the rest of the environmentalists, are urging a policy of deliberate counteractive global climate change by the world’s governments. They want the world’s governments to change the world’s climate from the path that they believe it is otherwise destined to take. They want the world’s governments to make the earth’s climate cooler than they believe it will otherwise be as the next two centuries or more unfold. But their policy of climate control is the most stupid one imaginable. It’s more stupid than a modern-day equivalent of a savage’s attempting to control nature by the sacrifice of his goat.

The reason it’s more stupid, much more stupid, is that the goat that they want to sacrifice is most of modern industrial civilization—the part that depends on the 80% of the carbon emissions they want to eliminate, and which will not be replaced through any magical power of words to create and control reality, however much they may believe in that power. It is precisely modern industrial civilization and its further expansion and intensification that is mankind’s means of coping with all aspects of nature, including, if it should ever actually be necessary, the ability to control the earth’s climate, whether to cool it down or to warm it up.

If mankind ever really finds it necessary to control the earth’s climate, whether to prevent global warming or, as is in fact probably more likely, a new ice age, its ability to do so will depend on the power of its economic system. An economic system with the ability to provide such things as massive lasers, fleets of rocket ships carrying cargoes of various chemicals, equipment, and materials for deployment in outer space, with the ability to create major chemical reactions here on earth too, if necessary—such an economic system will have far more ability to make possible any necessary change in the earth’s climate. That is the kind of economic system we could reasonably expect to have in coming generations, if it is not prevented from coming into existence by policies hostile to economic progress, notably those urged by Sir Nicholas and the environmental movement.

What Sir Nicholas and the rest of the environmental movement offer is merely the destruction of much of our existing means of coping with nature and the aborting of the development of new and additional means. To the extent that their program is enacted, it will serve to prevent effectively dealing with global warming if that should ever actually be necessary.

A major word of caution is necessary here. The above discussion implies that the use of modern technology to control climate is infinitely more reasonable than the virtually insane policy of attempting to control climate by means of destroying modern technology. The word of caution is that in the hands of government, a policy of climate control based on the use modern technology could be almost as dangerous as the policy of government climate control by means of the destruction of modern technology.

In fact, a possible outcome of today’s intellectual chaos on the subjects of environment and government is a combination of major destruction of our economic system resulting from policies based on hostility to carbon technology and climate damage caused by governmental efforts to control climate through the use of modern technology. It’s not impossible that what we might end up with is an economic system largely destroyed by environmentalist policies plus the start of a new ice age resulting from government efforts to counteract global warming through the use of technologically inspired counter measures.

The only safe response to global warming, if that in fact is what is unfolding, or to global freezing, when that develops, as it inevitably will, is the maximum degree of individual freedom. (For elaboration and proof of this proposition, see Capitalism, pp. 88-90.)

Any serious consideration of the proposals made in the Stern Review for radically reducing carbon technology and the accompanying calls for immediacy in enacting them makes clear in a further way how utterly impractical the environmentalist program for controlling global warming actually is. The fundamental impracticality of the program, of course, lies in its utterly destructive character. But in addition to that, the fact that people are not prepared easily or quickly to make a massive sacrifice of their self-interests dooms the enactment of the program. Even if, in utter contradiction of the truth, the program were sound, it would simply not be possible to enact it in time to satisfy the environmentalists that the level of carbon buildup they fear will not occur. In other words, the world is quickly moving past the window of opportunity for enacting the environmentalists’ program for controlling global warming. (Concerning this point, see pp. xi-xii of the Executive Summary, especially Figure 3 on p. xii.) The implication is that either they will have to find another issue or different means for addressing the issue.

The only different means, however, are technological in character. Environmentalism thus stands a very strong chance of ultimately reverting to the more traditional socialism of massive government construction and engineering projects. It’s future may well lie with what is coming to be called “geo-engineering.” We shall see.


This article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book and provided that mention of the author’s web site www.capitalism.net is included. (Email notification is requested.) All other rights reserved. George Reisman is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics.

The Green Business Racket: Con Customers, Cut Corners, Boost Profits

At the most fundamental level, environmentalism and the Green movement that represents it are hostile to business. The ethics of environmentalism and the Greens is one of human deprivation and individual self-sacrifice. Business in contrast rests on a foundation of the pursuit of happiness and the profit motive. The one represents a joyless existence devoted to selfless service to the “environment,” which is allegedly valuable in and of itself, i.e., is “intrinsically” valuable. The other represents progressive improvement in human life and well-being, i.e., the achievement of ever greater comfort, ease, and enjoyment of life, based on the recognition that human life and well-being alone are the proper sources of values for human beings.

Nevertheless, in utter disregard of their opposite natures and of the blatant contradictions involved, a philosophical monstrosity has been hatched that goes by the name “Green Businesses,” i.e., businesses infused with the spirit of environmentalism.

Not surprisingly, a so-called Green Business functions very differently than does a normal business. While a normal business seeks to add amenities to its offerings, a so-called Green Business seeks to subtract them, by means of pursuing a deliberate policy of corner cutting. Thus, for example, for some time, “Green Hotels” have been busy attempting to persuade their customers to forego the customary daily provision of fresh sheets and towels in guest rooms. And more recently, they have begun to replace the provision of fresh bars of soap each day with the installation of fixed liquid-soap dispensers, similar to those in public lavatories, even in showers and bathtubs, where they can actually be dangerous.

Of course, there are times when a normal business too cuts back on the amenities it offers, as when the cost of continuing to provide them comes to exceed what its customers are willing to pay for them. A Green Business, however, cuts back in conditions in which its customers clearly are willing to pay substantially more for the amenities being eliminated than the cost of providing them. In the case of sheets and towels in a hotel room costing two-hundred or more dollars per day, it would probably take a fairly significant deduction from the daily rate to get many people to choose to forego a daily change on economic grounds. The hotel would thus lose far more in revenue than it would save in costs. Precisely this is the reason that good hotels traditionally changed sheets and towels daily.

Green Hotels avoid this loss of revenue when they get people to accept less frequent changes. They do not offer the choice of a rate deduction great enough to induce customers to accept a less frequent change on the basis of their own self-interest. No. Instead, they prey on the ignorance, guilt, and general lack of self-confidence of many of their guests.

They tell the guests that the amenities are being reduced for “the sake of the environment” and to help “save the planet.” The guests are thus urged to think of their loss of amenities as a contribution to a noble and urgent cause, a contribution which also serves to make them personally, morally better people for having made it. Very few people in such circumstances will think of asking for a lower rate. To do so would appear to them to be asking to be compensated for behaving morally, which would be an utterly contradictory and profoundly immoral request when the morality that one accepts is precisely the morality of self-sacrifice.

Thus the Green Hotels are able to practice a racket that would be the envy of many a scam artist. They preach a morality of self-sacrifice to their guests and proceed to profit from their guests’ acceptance of that morality. For them the sacrifices of their guests are a simple cost saving, which allows them equivalently to increase their profits, since the reduction in amenities provided is not accompanied by any reduction in revenue. In other words, the Green Hotels are playing their guests for suckers and getting away with it. That is the essence of their Green Business.

In the long run, of course, the extra profit of the Green Hotels will be eroded. They will probably lose guests and may end up having to trim their rates after all, in order to stem that loss. They may also incur some additional costs, for example, in the form of having to contribute to environmentalist organizations in order to keep up recognition for their activities.

Irrespective of the effect on their profits in the long run, what the Green Hotels are doing is disgusting. It is part of a cultural assault on luxury and pleasure. One that works to make every day of everyone’s life one of unrelieved drudgery and sacrifice, to the point of there being no escape. Even vacations and holidays are now to be stamped with the mark of sacrifice. Sacrifice not even for other people, but for the “planet.”

The Green Hotels are becoming increasingly brazen in their racket. Until recently, it was enough to leave a card on a pillow if one wanted the sheets changed. Now it’s becoming necessary to call the hotel’s front desk. In addition, notification that sheets and towels will not automatically be changed is becoming much less prominent. Just last week, I personally experienced these things at what I would have expected to be a really first-class hotel, namely, the Hyatt Regency in Newport, Rhode Island. (This hotel also had a liquid-soap dispenser installed at the bathroom sink, though it continued to provide fresh bar soap each day. It was at the [Dis]Comfort Inn near Boston’s Logan Airport, that bar soap was entirely replaced with liquid soap dispensers.)

Hotel guests should protest vehemently against any loss in their comforts or conveniences for the alleged sake of the “environment” or the “planet.” They should demand lower rates as compensation for any sacrifices they are asked to make and tell the hotels that they resent being abused for the sake of a dishonest profit being made at their expense. Either in making reservations or at check-in, they should ask about the hotel’s policy with respect to sacrifices for the environment and have it noted that they want no part of it.

People need to tell the hotels that they’re vacationing for enjoyment, not self-sacrifice. And business travelers too should insist on their comfort. We human beings do not exist for the sake of the “planet.” We are not “stewards” of the planet. We are the lords of the planet. We have the ability to make it exist for our benefit—for our pleasure. And that is what we can and should do.


This article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book and provided that mention of the author’s web site www.capitalism.net is included. (Email notification is requested.) All other rights reserved. George Reisman is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics.

Saving Versus Hoarding

Saving is the use of revenue or income by a business or individual for purposes other than expenditure on consumers’ goods (or consumers’ services). It is revenue or income that is not consumed.

Because what is saved is not spent by the saver for consumption, a popular fallacy has grown up that saving is synonymous with hoarding—i.e., with the retention of money in the manner of a miser. This fallacy is not so difficult to understand when committed by people with limited education, who thus know little beyond their own personal experience. Most such people are wage earners, who normally do not personally make any kind of expenditures but consumption expenditures. In the absence of wider knowledge, it is easy for such people to confuse consumption spending with all of spending and thus to conclude that what is not spent for consumption is simply not spent. But the fallacy is also prevalent in the press, which persists in equating an increase in the rate of saving with a decrease in the spending for goods. For example, whenever it is reported that some increase in the rate of saving has taken place, the press concludes that the effect must be economically dampening at the very least.

Worse still, the fallacy that saving is hoarding is prevalent among professional economists—notably the Keynesians and neo-Keynesians—who routinely describe saving as a “leakage” from the “spending stream.” (Such economists have taught the fallacy to the members of the press.)

Indeed, so complete has been the intellectual severance of saving from spending that for several decades it has been routinely taught in college and university classrooms not only that what is saved simply disappears from spending and depresses the economy, but also that what is invested virtually comes out of nowhere and financially stimulates the economy. This is a state of confusion that would be comparable to believing that the seeds a farmer scatters simply disappear, and that the crop that later comes up, comes out of nowhere. Yet such a state of confusion is the corollary of believing that saving is hoarding. If one recognized that investment comes from saving, one would have to recognize no less that saving goes into investment—that the two are merely different aspects of the same phenomenon. In that case, one would not view saving as depressing, nor investment as stimulating.

The Hoarding Doctrine as an Instance of the Fallacy of Composition

It should be realized that while any particular individual might save in the form of adding to his cash holding—that is, in the form of “hoarding”—it is not possible for the economic system as a whole to do so. Indeed, the belief that the economic system as a whole can save by means of hoarding is an instance of the fallacy of composition—the same fallacy encountered in connection with the belief that not only an individual industry or group of industries can overproduce, but that the economic system as a whole can overproduce.

The reason that an individual can save by means of hoarding cash, while the economic system as a whole cannot, is because whatever cash an individual adds to his holding, some other individual has had to subtract from his holding. If I sell my goods for $1,000, say, and decide to retain that sum in the form of cash, it is true that I increase my savings in the form of cash by $1,000. But in the very same period of time, the individuals to whom I have sold my goods have had to reduce their cash holdings, and thus their accumulated savings in the form of cash, by that very same $1,000. I have $1,000 more in savings in the form of cash, but they have $1,000 less in savings in the form of cash. Adding up the change not only in my position, but in theirs as well, it thus turns out that in the economic system as a whole there is no increase whatever in savings in the form of cash holdings. What some individuals save by means of adding to their cash holdings other individuals have had to dissave.

The situation of students in a classroom provides an excellent illustration of this proposition. At any given time, the members of the class have just so much cash in their possession. If the doors to that classroom were locked and that class became a “closed economic system” for an hour or so, with its members carrying on some form of production and buying and selling from one another, any individual student might increase his savings by adding to his cash holding over that interval of time. But then the rest of the class must decrease its savings in the form of cash holdings to exactly the same extent. There is no way that the class as a whole can increase its savings by increasing its holding of cash.

It follows that if there is to be saving in the economic system as a whole—that is, an increase in the savings of some or all members of the economic system that is not compensated for by a decrease in the savings of other members of the economic system—the only way it can take place is in the form of an increase in assets other than cash. The increase in the savings of the economic system as a whole must take the form of an increase in its capital assets, such as business plant, equipment, and inventories.

The only exception to the principle that the economic system cannot save by means of adding to its cash holdings exists insofar as there is an increase in the quantity of money. If, over a period of time, the quantity of money in the economic system increases, then, to that extent, there can be an increase in the holding of cash that does not imply an equivalent decrease in the holding of cash by others. But this is the only exception, and it obviously does not reduce spending. Moreover, it is inescapable inasmuch as the new and additional money must be added to the cash holdings of someone and in that capacity will constitute part of their savings.


This article is adapted from pp. 691-693 of the author’s Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996). The article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book and provided that mention of the author’s web site www.capitalism.net is included. (Email notification is requested.) All other rights reserved. George Reisman is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics.

A Root Cause of the Failure of Contemporary Education

Ask yourself if the following paragraph would seem believable to you if you were to read it a in a newspaper:

Washington, D. C., Oct. 10. Following in the footsteps of “No Child Left Behind,” the Department of Education is considering new requirements applicable to all colleges and universities benefiting in any way from federally financed programs, such as student loan and dormitory-financing programs. Continued eligibility for participation in the programs would require graduates receiving a baccalaureate degree to demonstrate at least a 9th-grade level of reading ability and a 7th-grade level of ability in mathematics.

I think that the deplorable state of contemporary education that is indicated in that paragraph is essentially accurate and that the paragraph would probably be accepted by the majority of informed people without challenge, as a straightforward news report.

In my book Capitalism, I explain a root cause of the collapse of contemporary education in terms of its essential, guiding philosophy. Here is my explanation. It begins with a quotation from W. T. Jones, a leading historian of philosophy. The quotation describes the philosophy of Romanticism, which appeared as a hostile reaction to the Enlightenment:

To the Romantic mind, the distinctions that reason makes are artificial, imposed, and man-made; they divide, and in dividing destroy, the living whole of reality—“We murder to dissect.” How, then, are we to get in touch with the real? By divesting ourselves, insofar as we can, of the whole apparatus of learning and scholarship and by becoming like children or simple, uneducated men; by attending to nature rather than to the works of man; by becoming passive and letting nature work upon us; by contemplation and communion, rather than by ratiocination and scientific method. (W. T. Jones, Kant to Wittgenstein and Sartre, vol. 4 of A History of Western Philosophy, 2d ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1969), p. 102.

The Romantics held that “we are nearer to the truth about the universe when we dream than when we are awake” and “nearer to it as children than as adults.” (Ibid., p. 104.) The clear implication of the philosophy of Romanticism is that the valuable portion of our mental life has no essential connection with our ability to reason and with the deliberate, controlled use of our conscious mind: we allegedly possess it in our sleep and as children.

In its essentials, the philosophy of Romanticism is the guiding principle of contemporary education. Exactly like Romanticism, contemporary education holds that the valuable portion of our mental life has no essential connection with our ability to reason and with the deliberate, controlled use of our conscious mind—that we possess this portion of our mental life if not in our sleep, then nevertheless as small children.

This doctrine is clearly present in the avowed conviction of contemporary education that creativity is a phenomenon that is separate from and independent of such conscious mental processes as memorization and the use of logic. Indeed, it is an almost universally accepted proposition of contemporary pseudoscience that one-half of the human brain is responsible for such conscious processes as the use of logic, while the other half is responsible for “creativity,” as though, when examined, the halves of the brain revealed this information all by themselves, perhaps in the form of bearing little labels respectively marked “Logic Unit, Made in Hong Kong” and “Creativity Unit, Made in Woodstock, New York.” Obviously, the view of the brain as functioning in this way is a conclusion, which is based on the philosophy and thus interpretative framework of the doctrine’s supporters.

Now, properly, education is a process by means of which students internalize knowledge: they mentally absorb it through observation and proof, and repeated application. Memorization, deduction, and problem solving must constantly be involved. The purpose is to develop the student’s mind—to provide him with an instantaneously available storehouse of knowledge and thus an increasingly powerful mental apparatus that he will be able to use and further expand throughout his life. Such education, of course, requires hard work from the student. Seen from a physiological perspective, it may be that what the process of education requires of the student through his exercises is an actual imprinting of his brain.

Yet, under the influence of the philosophy of Romanticism, contemporary education is fundamentally opposed to these essentials of education. It draws a distinction between “problem solving,” which it views as “creative” and claims to favor, and “memorization,” which it appears to regard as an imposition on the students, whose valuable, executive-level time, it claims, can be better spent in “problem solving.” Contemporary education thus proceeds on the assumption that the ability to solve problems is innate, or at least fully developed before the child begins school. It perceives its job as allowing the student to exercise his native problem-solving abilities, while imposing on him as little as possible of the allegedly unnecessary and distracting task of memorization.

In the elementary grades, this approach is expressed in such attitudes as that it is not really necessary for students to go to the trouble of memorizing the multiplication tables if the availability of pocket calculators can be taken for granted which they know how to use; or go to the trouble of memorizing facts of history and geography, if the ready availability of books and atlases containing the facts can be taken for granted, which facts the students know how to look up when the need arises. In college and graduate courses, this approach is expressed in the phenomenon of the “open-book examination,” in which satisfactory performance is supposedly demonstrated by the ability to use a book as a source of information, proving once again that the student knows how to find the information when he needs it.

With little exaggeration, the whole of contemporary education can be described as a process of encumbering the student’s mind with as little knowledge as possible. The place for knowledge, it seems to believe, is in external sources—books and libraries—which the student knows how to use when necessary. Its job, its proponents believe, is not to teach the students knowledge but “how to acquire knowledge”—not to teach them facts and principles, which, it holds, quickly become “obsolete,” but to teach them “how to learn.” Its job, its proponents openly declare, is not to teach geography, history, mathematics, science, or any other subject, including reading and writing, but to teach “Johnny”—to teach Johnny how he can allegedly go about learning the facts and principles it declares are not important enough to teach and which it thus gives no incentive to learn and provides the student with no means of learning.

The results of this type of education are visible in the hordes of students who, despite years of schooling, have learned virtually nothing, and who are least of all capable of thinking critically and solving problems. When such students read a newspaper, for example, they cannot read it in the light of a knowledge of history or economics— they do not know history or economics; history and economics are out there in the history and economics books, which, they were taught, they can “look up, if they need to.” They cannot even read it in the light of elementary arithmetic, for they have little or no internally automated habits of doing arithmetic. Having little or no knowledge of the elementary facts of history and geography, they have no way even of relating one event to another in terms of time and place.

Such students, and, of course, the adults such students become, are chronically in the position in which to be able to use the knowledge they need to use, they would first have to go out and acquire it. Not only would they have to look up relevant facts, which they already should know, and now may have no way even of knowing they need to know, but they would first have to read and understand books dealing with abstract principles, and to understand those books, they would first have to read other such books, and so on. In short, they would first have to acquire the education they already should have had.

Properly, by the time a student has completed a college education, his brain should hold the essential content of well over a hundred major books on mathematics, science, history, literature, and philosophy, and do so in a form that is well organized and integrated, so that he can apply this internalized body of knowledge to his perception of everything in the world around him. He should be in a position to enlarge his knowledge of any subject and to express his thoughts on any subject clearly and logically, both verbally and in writing. Yet, as the result of the miseducation provided today, it is now much more often the case that college graduates fulfill the Romantic ideal of being “simple, uneducated men.”

The bulk of this article is an excerpt from pp. 107-109 of the author’s Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996). The article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book and provided that mention of the author’s web site www.capitalism.net is included. (Email notification is requested.) All other rights reserved. George Reisman is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics.

Stiglitz in The Times: A Study in Confusion

In today’s New York Times, Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize winner in economics, has an article titled “How to Fix the Global Economy.” Judging from his article, Stiglitz appears to believe that the main problem of the global economy is ”global financial imbalances.” By this, he means “America’s enormous trade deficits,” which he states are close to $3 billion a day, and “China’s growing trade surplus of almost $500 million a day.”

An indication of the level of analysis to expect in the article is given in its second paragraph, when he says that while the United States blames China’s undervalued currency for its trade deficit, “the rest of the world singles out the huge American fiscal and trade deficits.” The meaning of this statement, and of its acceptance by Stiglitz without challenge, is that it is legitimate to argue that what is to be blamed for America’s trade deficit is America’s trade deficit—at least in large part. Whether or not this is Stiglitz’s own view is irrelevant here. What is relevant is that he’s willing to let it go by as though it were legitimate and required no comment.

In typical Keynesian fashion, Stiglitz confuses saving with hoarding, as when he says, “No one seriously proposes that businesses save money instead of investing in expanding production simply to correct the problem of the trade deficit . . . .” How can saving itself not mean investment, unless the savings are hoarded? How can saving be an alternative to investment, unless saving means simply non-spending, i.e., hoarding? Indeed, Stiglitz makes no secret of his Keynesianism. He concludes his article by urging the imposition of an updated version of Keynes’ scheme for global credit expansion based on a new global currency. Only that will allegedly solve the “fundamental structural problems with the global reserve system” and end the “imbalances that threaten the financial stability and economic well-being of us all.”

Until then, the best that we can do, according to Stiglitz, is impose a Keynesian-inspired scheme of government “expenditure cuts combined with an increase in taxes on upper-income Americans and a reduction in taxes on lower-income Americans. The expenditure cuts,” says Stiglitz, “would, of course, by themselves reduce spending, but because poor individuals consume a larger fraction of their income than the rich, the `switch’ in taxes would, by itself, increase spending. If appropriately designed, such a combination could simultaneously sustain the American economy and reduce the deficit.”

The content of this last paragraph needs to be gone over carefully. The government will cut its spending. (Amazing that Stiglitz would even consider this.) This will not reduce overall, economy-wide spending, however, because it will be accompanied by tax reductions. As the result of reduced taxes, the taxpayers will spend more while the government spends less. So much is true, and good for Stiglitz for recognizing so much as the possibility of this happening. But Stiglitz thinks it’s essential that the taxpayers be poor, low-income tax payers, because only such taxpayers, he believes, engage in significant spending. What do the richer, higher-income tax payers do with their funds? All they do, Stiglitz thinks, is hoard them. That’s why, when their taxes are increased, Stiglitz sees no fall in spending anywhere. All he sees is funds coming into the hands of the government and reducing its deficit—funds that allegedly would otherwise have been hoarded.

The fact is, of course, as John Stuart Mill pointed out in the middle of the 19th Century, that what is saved, i.e., not spent in purchasing consumers’ goods, is spent. But it is spent productively, i.e., in buying capital goods and in paying the wages of workers employed by business firms. These workers, of course, then consume their wages.

Moreover, some significant part of the funds that are saved is lent to consumers. It should be realized that it is only on a foundation of savings, partly their own, but mainly those of others, which they borrow, that most people can afford to buy expensive consumers’ goods. In this category are major appliances, automobiles, and, above all, homes. Such consumers’ goods, which cost the income of months or years, could not be purchased in any other way except on a foundation of savings—either those of the purchasers themselves or those from whom the purchasers borrow.

Because their funds are spent in these ways, taxing the rich to reduce the government’s deficit actually means reducing the spending of business firms for capital goods and labor, the spending of business’s employees for consumers’ goods, and the spending of all consumers for expensive consumers’ goods.

Because what is saved is spent, simply reducing government spending, and thus the government’s need to borrow, makes correspondingly more funds available to business firms and consumers to be spent in these ways. The savings the government would have absorbed through its sale of securities are instead available for these vital purposes. There is no need to complicate matters with accompanying tax decreases and tax increases, especially when the tax increases have the negative effects that I’ve shown.

The point here is that to reduce the government’s budget deficit, all that needs to be done is to reduce its spending, nothing more. It would be a further improvement if government spending were reduced not only to the point of eliminating its deficit, but to the point of making possible the radical reduction, indeed, complete elimination, of taxes that fall on savings and the greatest possible decrease in taxes that fall on private consumption. In that way the demand for capital goods and labor by business would be at a maximum consistent with the citizens’ degree of time preference, and everyone would enjoy as much as possible of the benefit of his own wealth and income. The effect of the rise in saving and investment would be a sharp increase in the rate of economic progress in the United States. A further, indirect effect would be an increase in the size of the American economy relative to that of the rest of the world.

It never occurs to Stiglitz that America’s trade deficit is actually benign and doesn’t need to “fixed”–by him or anyone else. In part it is the result of the fact that the US dollar is a global currency. As the supply of dollars is increased in the US, a substantial proportion of them flows abroad, where they are held by individuals and businesses who do not want to hold the more rapidly inflated currencies of their own countries. These individuals use these dollars to a considerable extent in making purchases in their own countries, from other individuals who are eager to acquire them. To the extent that these dollars leave the US in the purchase of goods and services from abroad, they represent imports. The fact that they are then held abroad and do not return, means that there are no corresponding exports. Hence, the balances of trade and payments are “unfavorable.”

Of course, there is nothing really “unfavorable” to the United States about such a situation. It exports paper dollars that cost it virtually nothing to produce in exchange for actual goods and services. It is in the position of a gold mining country under an international gold standard, with a principal difference being that it does not incur the substantial costs of gold mining.

To be sure, there is a major danger in this situation. And that is, that the United States government will increase the supply of dollars rapidly enough to deprive them of their desirability for being held abroad. In that case, the dollars that have gone out will come rushing back in. We will then have to exchange a mass of goods and services for these little pieces of paper. Our economy will be impoverished, but the goods and services leaving in exchange for the little pieces of paper flooding back in will count as “exports,” and so our balance of trade will turn from “unfavorable” to “favorable.” Then, in the midst of impoverishment and major inflation, we shall allegedly know the meaning of prosperity—Keynesian style.

It should be obvious that the present “unfavorable” balance of trade is much preferable to such a “favorable” balance of trade.

For the rest, our “unfavorable” balance of trade is the result of nothing more than the relative desirability of the United States as a country in which to invest. Despite our substantial and continuing loss of economic freedom and respect for property rights, the United States still compares very favorably in these vital respects with practically all other countries. The laws here still cannot be changed at the whim of a government official. Contracts are almost always still enforced. As a result, the United States continues to be the best country in which to invest for enough people, enough of the time so that each year substantially more capital enters the country from abroad than leaves it. This net investment of foreign capital is what mainly finances our continuing excess of imports over exports.

The way to grasp the connection between foreign investment and our trade deficit, in terms of principle, is to think back a few generations, to the time when Western geologists first discovered vast oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. At the time, that country was essentially an empty desert. Oil wells, refineries, and pipelines did not yet exist there. They first needed to be built. To do this, a mass of construction equipment and construction materials needed to be brought into the country, along with substantial supplies of consumers’ goods for the Western construction workers required. All of these goods coming in were imports. They were also the physical constituents of the capital being invested in Saudi Arabia.

Could Saudi Arabia possibly have avoided an “unfavorable” balance of trade. It could not even if it had exported all of the sheep, goats, tents, and camels in the country. In fact, of course, it did not have to export anything to pay for these imports—not until the oil began flowing, and then it exported that. Its “unfavorable” balance of trade and the accompanying foreign investment were in fact as genuinely favorable an economic development for that country as it is possible to imagine.

Like all foreign investment, the foreign investment coming into the United States today is necessarily in the form of an excess of imports over exports. It and the capital accumulation it makes possible is no more genuinely unfavorable to us than was the excess of imports over exports that came into Saudi Arabia, and the capital accumulation it made possible.

Unfortunately, today, in the United States, part of the foreign investment being made finances our government’s budget deficits. But in so doing it prevents those deficits from stripping away savings and capital from the rest of the economic system. It would certainly be much more desirable if those deficits could be eliminated. Then that foreign capital would simply add to the savings and capital invested in our country, instead of, to a considerable extent, merely maintaining it. Foreign investment and the excess of imports over exports that it makes possible also serves to make up for the lack of savings and capital accumulation on the part of the United States’ own citizens. Our economy would be vastly worse off without it.

Such global “trade imbalances” are not a problem. They are a profoundly important means of preventing problems. What will cause a problem is allowing wreckers, devoid of serious knowledge of economics, to “fix” things.


This article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book and provided that mention of the author’s web site www.capitalism.net is included. (Email notification is requested.) All other rights reserved. George Reisman is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics.

Ludwig von Mises: Defender of Capitalism

Today, September 29, 2006 is the one-hundred-and-twenty-fifth anniversary of the birth of Ludwig von Mises, economist and social philosopher, who passed away in 1973. Mises was my teacher and mentor and the source or inspiration for most of what I know and consider to be important and worthwhile in these fields—of what enables me to un­derstand the events shaping the world in which we live. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to him, because I believe that he deserves to occupy a major place in the intellectual history of modern times.

Mises is important because his teachings are nec­essary to the preservation of material civilization. As he showed, the base of material civilization is the division of labor. Without the higher productivity of labor made possible by the division of labor, the great majority of mankind would simply die of starvation. The existence and successful functioning of the division of labor, how­ever, vitally depends on the institutions of a capitalist society—that is, on limited government and economic freedom, private ownership of land and all other prop­erty, exchange and money, saving and investment, eco­nomic inequality and economic competition, and the profit motive—institutions everywhere under attack for several generations.

When Mises appeared on the scene, Marxism and the other socialist sects enjoyed a virtual intellectual monopoly. Major flaws and inconsistencies in the writ­ings of Smith and Ricardo and their followers enabled the socialists to claim classical economics as their actual ally. The writings of Jevons and the earlier “Austrian” economists—Menger and Böhm-Bawerk—were insuf­ficiently comprehensive to provide an effective counter to the socialists. Bastiat had tried to provide one, but died too soon, and probably lacked the necessary theo­retical depth in any case.

Thus, when Mises appeared, there was virtually no systematic intellectual opposition to socialism or de­fense of capitalism. Quite literally, the intellectual ram­parts of civilization were undefended. What Mises undertook, and which summarizes the essence of his greatness, was to build an intellectual defense of capi­talism and thus of civilization.

The leading argument of the socialists was that the institutions of capitalism served the interests merely of a handful of rugged “exploiters” and “monopolists” and operated against the interests of the great majority of mankind, which socialism would serve. While the only answer others could give was to devise plans to take away somewhat less of the capitalists’ wealth than the socialists were demanding, or to urge that property rights nevertheless be respected despite their incompat­ibility with most people’s well-being, Mises chal­lenged everyone’s basic assumption. He showed that capitalism operates in the material self-interests of all, including the non-capitalists—the so-called proletari­ans. In a capitalist society, Mises showed, privately owned means of production serve the market. The phys­ical beneficiaries of the factories and mills are all who buy their products. And, together with the incentive of profit and loss and the freedom of competition that it implies, the existence of private ownership ensures an ever-growing supply of products for all.

Thus, Mises showed to be absolute nonsense such clichés as “poverty causes communism.” Not poverty, he explained, but poverty plus the mistaken belief that communism is the cure for poverty, causes communism. He showed that if the mis­guided revolutionaries of the backward countries and of impoverished slums understood economics, any desire they might have to fight poverty would make them advocates of capitalism.

Socialism, Mises demonstrated, in his greatest original contribution to economic thought, not only abolishes the incentive of profit and loss and the freedom of competi­tion along with private ownership of the means of pro­duction, but makes economic calculation, economic co­ordination, and economic planning impossible, and therefore results in chaos. For socialism means the abo­lition of the price system and the intellectual division of labor; it means the concentration and centralization of all decision-making in the hands of one agency: the Central Planning Board, or the Supreme Dictator.

Yet the planning of an economic system is beyond the power of any one consciousness: the number, variety and locations of the different factors of production, the various technological possibilities that are open to them, and the different possible permutations and combina­tions of what might be produced from them, are far beyond the power even of the greatest genius to keep in mind. Economic planning, Mises showed, requires the cooperation of all who participate in the economic system. It can exist only under capitalism, where, every day, businessmen plan on the basis of calculations of profit and loss; workers, on the basis of wages; and consumers, on the basis of the prices of consumers’ goods.

Mises’s contributions to the debate between cap­italism and socialism—the leading issue of modern times—are overwhelming. Before he wrote, people did not realize that capitalism has economic planning. They uncritically accepted the Marxian dogma that capitalism is an anarchy of production and that socialism repre­sents rational economic planning. People were (and most still are) in the position of Moliere’s M. Jourdan, who never realized that what he was speaking all his life was prose. For, living in a capitalist society, people are literally surrounded by economic planning, and yet do not realize that it exists.

Every day, there are countless businessmen who are planning to expand or contract their firms, who are planning to introduce new products or discontinue old ones, planning to open new branches or close down existing ones, planning to change their methods of production or continue with their present methods, planning to hire additional workers or let some of their present ones go. And every day, there are countless workers planning to improve their skills, change their occupations or places of work, or to con­tinue with things as they are; and consumers, planning to buy homes, cars, stereos, steak or hamburger, and how to use the goods they already have—for example, to drive to work or to take the train, instead.

Yet people deny the name planning to all this activity and reserve it for the feeble efforts of a handful of government officials, who, having prohibited the plan­ning of everyone else, presume to substitute their knowledge and intelligence for the knowledge and intel­ligence of tens and hundreds of millions. Mises identified the existence of planning under capitalism, the fact that it is based on prices (“economic calculations”), and the fact that the prices serve to coordinate and harmonize the activities of all the millions of separate, independent planners.

He showed that each individual, in being concerned with earning a revenue or income and with limiting his expenses, is led to adjust his particular plans to the plans of all others.

For example, the college student who decides to become an accountant rather than an artist, because he values the higher income to be made as an accountant, changes his career plan in response to the plans of others to purchase accounting services rather than paintings. The individual who decides that a house in a particular neighborhood is too expensive and who therefore gives up his plan to live in that neighborhood, is similarly engaged in a process of adjusting his plans to the plans of others; because what makes the house too expensive is the plans of others to buy it who are able and willing to pay more. And, above all, Mises showed, every business, in seeking to make profits and avoid losses, is led to plan its activities in a way that not only serves the plans of its own customers, but takes into account the plans of all other users of the same factors of production throughout the economic system.

Thus, Mises demonstrated that capitalism is an economic system rationally planned by the combined, self-interested efforts of all who participate in it. The failure of socialism, he showed, results from the fact that it represents not economic planning, but the destruction of economic planning, which exists only under capital­ism and the price system.

Mises was not primarily anti-socialist. He was pro-capitalist. His opposition to socialism, and to all forms of government intervention, stemmed from his support for capitalism and from his underlying love of individual freedom and conviction that the self-interests of free men are harmonious—indeed, that one man’s gain under capitalism is not only not another’s loss, but is actually others’ gain. Mises was a consistent champion of the self-made man, of the intellectual and business pioneer, whose activities are the source of progress for all mankind and who, he showed, can flour­ish only under capitalism.

Mises demonstrated that competition under capi­talism is of an entirely different character than competi­tion in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition for scarce, nature-given means of subsistence, but a compe­tition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth, from which all gain. For example, the effect of the competition between farmers using horses and those using tractors was not that the former group died of starvation, but that everyone had more food and the income available to purchase additional quantities of other goods as well. This was true even of the farmers who “lost” the competition, as soon as they relocated in other areas of the economic system, which were enabled to expand precisely by virtue of the improvements in agriculture. Similarly, the effect of the automobile’s supplanting the horse and buggy was to benefit even the former horse breeders and blacksmiths, once they made the necessary relocations.

In a major elaboration of Ricardo’s Law of Compara­tive Advantage, Mises showed that there is room for all in the competition of capitalism, even those of the most modest abilities. Such people need only concen­trate on the areas in which their relative productive inferiority is least. For example, an individual capable of being no more than a janitor does not have to fear the competition of the rest of society, almost all of whose members could be better janitors than he, if that is what they chose to be. Because however much better janitors other people might make, their advantage in other lines is even greater. And so long as the person of limited ability is willing to work for less as a janitor than other people can earn in other lines, he has nothing to worry about from their competition. He, in fact, outcompetes them for the job of janitor by being willing to accept a lower income than they. Mises showed that a har­mony of interests prevails in this case, too. For the existence of the janitor enables more talented people to devote their time to more demanding tasks, while their existence enables him to obtain goods and services that would otherwise be altogether impossible for him to obtain.

On the basis of such facts, Mises argued against the possibility of inherent conflicts of interest among races and nations, as well as among individuals. For even if some races or nations were superior (or inferior) to others in every aspect of productive ability, mutual cooperation in the division of labor would still be ad­vantageous to all. Thus, he showed that all doctrines alleging inherent conflicts rest on an ignorance of eco­nomics.

He argued with unanswerable logic that the economic causes of war are the result of government interference, in the form of trade and migration barriers, and that such interference restricting foreign economic relations is the product of other government interference, restricting domestic economic activity. For example, tariffs become necessary as a means of preventing unemployment only because of the existence of minimum wage laws and pro-union legislation, which prevent the domestic labor force from meeting foreign competition by means of the accep­tance of lower wages when necessary. He showed that the foundation of world peace is a policy of laissez-faire both domestically and internationally.

In answer to the vicious and widely believed accusa­tion of the Marxists that Nazism was an expression of capitalism, he showed, in addition to all the above, that Nazism was actually a form of socialism. Any system characterized by price and wage controls, and thus by shortages and government controls over production and distribution, as was Nazism, is a system in which the government is the de facto owner of the means of pro­duction. Because, in such circumstances, the govern­ment decides not only the prices and wages charged and paid, but also what is to be produced, in what quantities, by what methods, and where it is to be sent. These are all the fundamental prerogatives of ownership. This identi­fication of “socialism on the German pattern,” as he called it, is of immense value in understanding the na­ture of all demands for price controls.

Mises showed that all of the accusations made against capitalism were either altogether unfounded or should be directed against government intervention, which destroys the workings of capitalism. He was among the first to point out that the poverty of the early years of the Industrial Revolution was the heritage of all previous history—that it existed because the productiv­ity of labor was still pitifully low; because scientists, inventors, businessmen, and savers and investors could only step by step create the advances and accumulate the capital necessary to raise it. He showed that all the policies of so-called labor and social legislation were actually contrary to the interests of the masses of work­ers they were designed to help—that their effect was to cause unemployment, retard capital accumulation, and thus hold down the productivity of labor and the stan­dard of living of all.

In a major original contribution to economic thought, he showed that depressions were the result of government-sponsored policies of credit ex­pansion designed to lower the market rate of interest. Such policies, he showed, created large-scale malinvest­ments, which deprived the economic system of liquid capital and brought on credit contractions and thus de­pressions. Mises was a leading supporter of the gold standard and of laissez-faire in banking, which, he believed, would virtually achieve a 100% reserve gold standard and thus make impossible both inflation and deflation.

What I have written of Mises provides only the barest indication of the intellectual content that is to be found in his writings. He wrote approximately twenty books. And I venture to say that I cannot recall reading a single paragraph in any of them that did not contain one or more profound thoughts or observations. Even on the occasions when I found it necessary to disagree with him (for example, on his view that monopoly can exist under capitalism, his advocacy of the military draft, and certain aspects of his views on epistemology, the nature of value judgments, and the proper starting point for economics), I always found what he had to say to be extremely valuable and a powerful stimulus to my own thinking. I do not believe that anyone can claim to be really educated who has not absorbed a substantial mea­sure of the immense wisdom present in his works.

Mises’s two most important books are Human Action and Socialism, which best represents the breadth and depth of his thought. These are not for beginners, however. They should be preceded by some of Mises’s popular writings, such as Bureaucracy and Planning For Freedom.

The Theory of Money and Credit, Theory and History, Epistemological Problems of Economics, and The Ulti­mate Foundations of Economic Science are more spe­cialized works that should probably be read only after Human Action. Mises’s other popular writings in English include Omnipotent Government, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Liberalism, Critique of Interven­tionism, Economic Policy, and The Historical Setting of the Austrian School of Economics. For anyone seriously interested in economics, social philosophy, or modern history, the entire list should be considered required reading.

Mises must be judged not only as a remarkably brilliant thinker but also as a remarkably courageous human being. He held the truth of his convictions above all else and was prepared to stand alone in their defense. He cared nothing for personal fame, position, or finan­cial gain, if it meant having to purchase them at he sacrifice of principle. In his lifetime, he was shunned and ignored by the intellectual establishment, because the truth of his views and the sincerity and power with which he advanced them shattered the tissues of falla­cies and lies on which most intellectuals then built, and even now continue to build, their professional careers.

It was my great privilege to have known Mises personally over a period of twenty years. I met him for the first time when I was sixteen years old. Because he recognized the seriousness of my interest in economics, he invited me to attend his graduate seminar at New York University, which I did almost every week there­after for the next seven years, stopping only when the start of my own teaching career made it no longer possi­ble for me to continue in regular attendance.

His seminar, like his writings, was characterized by the highest level of scholarship and erudition, and al­ways by the most profound respect for ideas. Mises was never concerned with the personal motivation or character of an author, but only with the question of whether the man’s ideas were true or false. In the same way, his personal manner was at all times highly re­spectful, reserved, and a source of friendly encourage­ment. He constantly strove to bring out the best in his students. This, combined with his stress on the import­ance of knowing foreign languages, led in my own case to using some of my time in college to learn German and then to undertaking the translation of his Epistemologi­cal Problems of Economics—something that has always been one of my proudest accomplishments.

Today, Mises’s ideas at long last appear to be gaining in influence. His teachings about the nature of socialism have been confirmed in the most spectacular way possible, namely, by the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and by the substantial conversion of Mainland China, Russia, and the rest of the Soviet Empire to capitalism.

Some of Mises’s ideas have been propounded by the Nobel prizewinners F.A. Hayek (himself a former student of Mises) and Milton Friedman. His ideas inspired the “miracle” of Germany’s economic recovery after World War II. They have exerted a major influence on the writings of Henry Hazlitt, Murray Rothbard, and the staff of the Foundation for Economic Education, as well as such prominent former students as Hans Sennholz and Israel Kirzner. They live on with increasing power and influence in the daily work of The Ludwig von Mises Institute, which publishes books and journals and holds conferences, seminars, and classes on his ideas.

Mises’s works deserve to be required reading in every college and university curriculum—not just in departments of economics, but also in departments of philosophy, history, government, sociology, law, busi­ness, journalism, education, and the humanities. He himself should be awarded an immediate posthumous Nobel Prize—indeed, more than one. He deserves to receive every token of recognition and memorial that our society can bestow. For as much as anyone in history, he labored to preserve it. If he is widely enough read, his labors may actually succeed in saving it.

George Reisman is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics. He is the translator of Mises’s Epistemological Problems of Economics (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1960) and is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996). His web site is www.capitalism.net.

Armed and Dangerous

The New York Times has reported that California’s Attorney General, Bill Lockyer, is suing the six largest automobile manufacturers because of their alleged contribution to “global warming” and its resulting damage to the State of California.

“Global warming,” it reports the attorney general as saying, “is causing significant harm to California’s environment, economy, agriculture and public health. . . . Vehicle emissions are the single most rapidly growing source of the carbon emissions contributing to global warming . . . .”

The suit accuses the auto companies, in the words of The Times, “of creating a public nuisance by building millions of vehicles that collectively discharge 289 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.”

Mr. Lockyer and his supporters apparently to not think in terms of principles. If they did, they would realize that the logic on the basis of which he is suing the automobile companies would also enable him to sue Caltrans, the state agency responsible for highway, planning, construction, and maintenance. He could sue Caltrans for its role in making possible the presence of the millions of automobiles in the state emitting carbon dioxide. After all, if Caltrans had not built its roads, the number of automobiles that would have been sold in California would have been far less, and thus the problems that Mr. Lockyer complains of would also have been far less. By extension, he could add to the list of defendants the state legislators who voted for the annual budgets of Caltrans.

And by the same logic, applied at a more fundamental level, he could sue all the millions of individual California residents whose purchases of automobiles over the years provided the automobile manufacturers with the incentive and financial means to continue their allegedly destructive activity of providing people with convenient, low-cost means of transportation. Few things are more certain than that in the absence of their purchases, very few automobiles would ever have come into California.

As the chief law enforcement officer of the state, Mr. Lockyer is armed. His utterly bizarre lawsuit shows that he is also dangerous.

In an earlier era, when confronted with the possibility of encountering an armed and dangerous man, citizens were cautioned not to attempt to approach him but to summon law enforcement instead. The tragedy—the joke—is that today Mr. Lockyer and others of his ilk so often are law enforcement.


This article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book and provided that mention of the author’s web site www.capitalism.net is included. (Email notification is requested.) All other rights reserved. George Reisman is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics.