When it comes to matters such as the theory of evolution and stem-cell research, so-called liberals—i.e., socialists who have stolen the name that once meant an advocate of individual freedom—ridicule religious conservatives for their desire to replace science with the dictates of an alleged divine power. Yet when it comes to matters of economic theory and economic policy—for example, minimum-wage legislation—these same liberals themselves invoke the dictates of an alleged divine power. Their divine power, of course, is not the God of traditional religion, but rather a historically much more recent deity: namely, the great god State.
Traditional religionists believe that an omnipotent God came before all natural law and was not bound or limited by any such law, but rather created such natural laws as suited him, as he went along. Just so, today’s liberals believe, at least in the realm of economics, that the State is not bound or limited by any pre-existing natural laws. In the case in hand, the State, today’s liberals believe, is free to decree wage rates above the level that would exist without its interference and no ill-effects, such as unemployment, will arise.
In this matter, the liberals have been as quick to cast aside whatever modest knowledge of economics they may once have had, as the traditionally faithful are quick to cast aside whatever relevant knowledge of physical cause and effect they may once have had. The traditionally faithful revel in the sight of a seeming miracle or even the mere report of a seeming miracle, such as a faith healer commanding the lame to walk, and on that basis abandon their knowledge of cause and effect in the realm of human anatomy and physiology. In the same way, today’s liberals have been reveling in the report of increases in the minimum wage unaccompanied by increases in unemployment, and on that basis have abandoned their knowledge that increases in wage rates reduce the quantity of labor demanded and thus do indeed cause unemployment.
The liberals’ faith healers in this instance are David Card and Alan Krueger, who are the authors of a book called Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995, 422 pp.). Their book is described by its publisher as presenting “a powerful new challenge to the conventional view that higher minimum wages reduce jobs for low-wage workers.… [U]sing data from a series of recent episodes, including the 1992 increase in New Jersey's minimum wage, the 1988 rise in California's minimum wage, and the 1990-91 increases in the federal minimum wage…they present a battery of evidence showing that increases in the minimum wage lead to increases in pay, but no loss in jobs.”
Denial of the Law of Demand
Card and Krueger and the “liberal” faithful who are eager to embrace their message may not realize it, but when they claim that increases in the minimum wage do not cause unemployment, what they are denying is one of the best established propositions in all of economics, namely, the Law of Demand.
This law states that, other things being equal, the higher is the price of any good or service, the smaller is the quantity of it demanded, i.e., the quantity that buyers purchase, and that, by the same token, the lower is the price of any good or service, the larger is the quantity of it demanded, i.e., the quantity that buyers purchase. Since wages are merely the price of labor services, the Law of Demand implies that all government and labor-union interference that forcibly raises wage rates above the height at which they would otherwise have been reduces the quantity of labor employers seek to employ in comparison with what it would otherwise have been. It thus implies that the government’s or labor unions’ interference causes unemployment.
One major reason for the existence of the Law of Demand is that while people would like to buy more goods and services, their ability to spend is always limited by the funds at their disposal. Lower prices enable the same funds to buy more, while higher prices prevent any given amount of funds from buying as much. In order to overthrow the Law of Demand, one of the things Card and Krueger would need to be able to do would be to show how the division of a given-sized numerator (i.e., the funds people have available to spend) by a larger-sized denominator (i.e., the prices and wages they must pay) does not result in a reduced quotient (i.e., ability to buy goods and labor services). It should be obvious that this is simply impossible and that insofar as the Law of Demand rests on the laws of arithmetic, no statistical data can ever overthrow it. Rather, the statistical data must be interpreted in a way that is logically consistent with the laws of arithmetic and their derivative, the Law of Demand.
It is very easy to provide such an interpretation. This is because, contrary to what Card and Krueger appear to believe, the Law of Demand does not claim that every rise in a price or wage must reduce the quantity of the good or labor service demanded below what it was before the price or wage was increased. That would be true only if all other things remained equal. When all other things do not remain equal, the Law of Demand claims merely that higher prices or wages cause the quantity of a good or labor service demanded to be less than it otherwise would have been.
The economic history of the last 60 years illustrates this. Over this period, prices and wages rose from one year to the next and yet the quantity of practically all goods and labor services demanded also increased from year to year. For example, in the late 1940s, the price of a new house was $10,000; that of a good-quality new automobile, $1,000; that of a meal at a first-class restaurant, less than $5; a high-level executive job paid $15,000 a year; and the federal minimum wage was 75¢ an hour. Since that time, all of these prices and wages have increased many times over. And yet, from year to year, the quantities of practically everything demanded increased rather than decreased.
The explanation, which is perfectly consistent with the Law of Demand, is the continuing increase in the quantity of money in the economic system. In the late 1940s the quantity of money in the United States was well below $100 billion. The total annual spending that such a money supply could support was in the low hundred billions. Since then the money supply has increased to almost $3 trillion, which is capable of supporting total annual spending that is vastly larger.
Minimum-Wage Laws Cause Unemployment Even When More People Work
With such an enormous increase in the funds at their disposal, people are capable of buying larger quantities of goods and labor services even at today’s sharply higher prices and wages. What is still true, however, is that if wages and prices had not risen as much as they have, the quantities of goods and labor services demanded would have increased by even more than they actually have, and thus that more workers would be employed than is in fact the case, with the result that unemployment would be less than it is. To the extent that the minimum-wage law has contributed to wage rates and prices being higher than they otherwise would be, it is responsible for unemployment, despite the fact that more people work today than at any time in the past.
Expenditure Shifting
A supporter of the minimum wage might argue that even though the total of people’s ability to spend is limited at any given time, their ability to spend on any one particular thing or category of things is still capable of being increased—by the simple means of their reducing their spending for other things. This is certainly true. The total wages paid to unskilled workers might increase to some extent at the expense of the wages paid to skilled workers. The total of the wages paid to all workers might increase to some extent at the expense of expenditures for capital goods, such as the materials and machinery bought by business firms.
Nevertheless, an increase in any given price or wage operates to discourage the shifting of funds to purchase the good or service in question. This is because its higher price or wage requires a greater sacrifice in terms of alternative goods or services that must be forgone in order to purchase it. For example, if a worker must be paid $200 per week, all that his employment entails is forgoing the purchase of other goods or services worth $200. But if he must be paid $300 per week, his employment requires the correspondingly greater sacrifice of alternative goods or services worth $300. The growing magnitude of sacrifice of alternative goods and services is a major reason that a rising price or wage results in a falling quantity of the good or service demanded, i.e., it is a further major reason for the existence of the Law of Demand.
Furthermore, what is required to bring about an increase in expenditure on any one good or service or category of goods or services at the expense of expenditure on other goods and services is either a decrease in their supply or a decrease in their price, neither of which is compatible with support for a minimum wage. For example, if the supply of crude oil, or the services of physicians, decreased by 10 percent, the price might easily double, because of the high value that people would attach to each unit of the remaining supply. In this case 1.8 times as much would be spent in buying the good or service—i.e., the doubled price times the remaining 90 percent of the initial quantity. Unfortunately for the supporters of the minimum wage, a case of this kind still implies a significant reduction in quantity demanded and in employment. (And I will soon show that the reduction in employment will turn out to be far greater than thus far indicated.)
As stated, what is also capable of bringing about an increase in the expenditure on a given good or service at the expense of other goods and services is a fall in its price. A fall in the price of a given good or service can often so dramatically improve its ability to compete against other goods and services for the limited supply of funds in the possession of buyers that more ends up being spent on it at a lower price than at a higher price. The automobile and computer industries provide illustrations of this phenomenon.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, automobiles were as expensive relative to the average person’s income as yachts are today. So long as that remained true, the automobile industry had to remain a minor industry. But as the cost of production and price of automobiles came down, a mass market developed in which the increase in quantity demanded far outweighed the decrease in price. The same story was repeated in the last decades of the 20th Century, as the price of personal computers radically declined and their quality greatly increased, with the result that another major new industry came into being.
It should be obvious that cases of this kind are of no help to the supporters of the minimum wage. For, when applied to labor, they rest on wage rates falling, as the means of expanding the quantity of labor demanded. The imposition of a minimum wage or of an increase in an existing minimum wage, works in the diametrically opposite direction. It reduces the ability of low-skilled workers to compete and thus forces them into unemployment.
Low-Skilled Workers Compete by Means of Low Wages
The relationship between the wage rates of the low-skilled and their ability to compete with more-highly-skilled workers needs elaboration. Lower wage rates are the means by which less-skilled workers compensate for their lack of skill and are enabled to compete with more-skilled workers. Imagine, for example, the case of two bricklayers, one of whom is able to lay twice as many bricks per hour as the other. Is there any way in which the less capable bricklayer can successfully compete against the more capable bricklayer? Yes there is. All he needs to do is be free to work at less than half the wage rate of the more capable bricklayer. In that case, the cost per brick laid is actually less using him than the more capable bricklayer.
But what is the effect of a minimum wage that sets the wage of the less capable bricklayer at more than half that of the more capable bricklayer? The effect is to prevent him from competing. It is to render his services more costly than those of his more-capable competitor and thus to force him into unemployment.
The essentials of this case are present in all instances in which some workers have less to offer employers in the way of skills and ability than other workers. For example, workers who cannot speak the native language are necessarily at a disadvantage compared with those who can. In a free market, they can overcome that disadvantage by means of being able to offer to work at sufficiently lower wage rates. Similarly, workers who do not know how to read, or cannot read very well, are necessarily at a disadvantage compared with those who can read or can read better. If they are to be employed, they need to be able to overcome these disadvantages through the offer of working for sufficiently lower wage rates.
Minimum-wage laws prevent all such workers, workers with disadvantages in skills and abilities, from competing. They condemn such workers to unemployment and thus deprive them of the opportunity to improve their skills and abilities by gaining work experience. In this way, despite all protestations of their supporters to the contrary, minimum-wage laws are the enemy of the disadvantaged.
Minimum-Wage Laws Also Cause Unemployment Indirectly
The extent of the harm minimum-wage laws cause is considerably greater than has thus far been explained. Its measure includes even those instances in which an increase in the minimum wage is accompanied for the most part by an increase in the funds expended in paying it and very little by any immediate unemployment on the part of those receiving it. Indeed, even if, contrary to economic law, it were somehow the case that a rise in the minimum wage were accompanied by such a shifting of funds from elsewhere, that exactly the same number of workers were employed at the now higher wage as were previously employed at the lower wage, it would still end up causing substantial additional unemployment among the low-skilled in comparison with what their unemployment would have been otherwise.
This becomes clear when it is realized that to the extent that funds are withdrawn from spending elsewhere in the economic system, namely, from spending on capital goods and the wages of more-skilled labor, corresponding unemployment is created in those areas. That unemployment could be overcome if wage rates in the rest of the economic system were free to fall. But under a regime of minimum-wage legislation combined with pro-union legislation, in which labor unions impose minimum wages of their own for the various grades of more-skilled labor, that fall in wage rates will be prevented. The result is simply that unemployment is created elsewhere in the economic system. (It should be realized that the influence of labor unions on wage rates extends far beyond the ranks of unionized labor. It extends to all non-union firms that want to remain non-union. Because in order to remain non-union, they must match the unions’ wage scales.)
The more-skilled workers who become unemployed as the result of funds being shifted from the demand for their services to the payment of a higher minimum wage, will be able to become reemployed in other lines of work. Thus, for example, computer programmers, say, who become unemployed will be able to find other employment where their superior skills and abilities enable them to outcompete workers who have up to now been performing these jobs. These jobs, perhaps, may be those of mid-level managers, technical writers, salesmen for high-tech products, and the like.
The workers displaced from these lines must in turn now find alternative employment. To the extent that their skills and abilities are greater than those of the workers with whom they compete, they will succeed in finding employment. Thus they may end up working as bookkeepers, clerks, and the like. But now the less-skilled workers whom they outcompete will be unemployed and in need of finding other work.
What is present is a process of labor being shifted down into occupations of progressively lower levels of skill and ability. The process ends in the increase in the supply of labor in the occupations at the bottom of the various levels of skill and ability.
The larger number of workers now competing for jobs at the bottom could potentially all be employed in those jobs. But that would require a fall in wage rates to increase the quantity of their labor demanded. That fall in wage rates, of course, is precisely what the existence of the minimum-wage law prevents.
In the absence of the fall in wage rates, the workers who become unemployed are once again the comparatively less skilled. But in this case, which is that of the less-skilled workers in occupations already requiring only the lowest levels of skill, the workers who become unemployed are the lowest-skilled in the economic system.
Thus even if, however unlikely, the imposition of a minimum wage began in conditions in which it did not directly and immediately create any unemployment whatever, because of the shifting of funds from elsewhere to pay it, it would end up creating unemployment among the least skilled members of the economic system.
What is present in this analysis is merely an application of Henry Hazlitt’s one-sentence summary of his great classic Economics In One Lesson: Namely, that “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”
That lesson was apparently never learned by Card and Krueger and their supporters. Judging the short-run effects of an increase in the minimum wage in a given state, such as New Jersey or California, on the unemployment rate of low-skilled workers in that particular state, which is what Card and Krueger did, does not begin to address the effects of raising the minimum wage. To do that, one must consider the effects, long-run as well as short-run, on the whole economic system. When one does this, one sees that the minimum wage does indeed cause unemployment among the least–skilled, most-disadvantaged members of the economic system.
Overcoming Poverty Requires Repealing Minimum-Wage Laws Throughout the Economic System
The preceding analysis has an important implication concerning how people who are genuinely concerned with improving conditions for those who are least well off might go about actually achieving that goal. Namely, instead of imposing and raising minimum wages at the bottom of the economic ladder, repeal them throughout the economic system. To whatever extent the ability of labor unions to impose above-market wage rates for skilled and semi-skilled labor could be reduced, to whatever extent licensing-law restrictions on the number of people allowed to practice in the various professions could be relaxed, the number of workers employed in all these lines would be increased. The consequence would be that the number of workers forced to compete at the bottom of the labor market would be correspondingly decreased and their wages increased.
Throughout the economic system, human ability would be better employed. Overall production would be greater and thus prices on the whole would be lower. The poorest members of the economic system would earn more and pay less. Not forcibly imposed minimum wages of any kind but the abolition of such forcible impositions is the means to overcome poverty. Repeal minimum-wage legislation, pro-union legislation, and licensing legislation. That is what will help to eliminate poverty.
This article is copyright © 2007, 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.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Friday, January 12, 2007
The New York Times Pushes the Doctrine of Class Warfare
My last post showed how The New York Times promotes the Green party line. The one before that showed how it has supported the Red party line. Like a traffic light, The New York Times alternates between Red and Green. (There is actually little fundamental difference between the two. The Reds want to abolish the individual’s pursuit of happiness on the grounds that it results in exploitation, monopolies, and depressions. The Greens want to abolish it on the grounds that it results in acid rain, destruction of the ozone layer, and global warming.)
Today we are back to Red, with two transparent attempts of The Times to promote the doctrine of class warfare.
In a January 8, 2007 article titled “Working Harder for the Man,” Times columnist Bob Herbert writes:
As if to answer the question of whether his intention is to provoke a riot or revolution inspired by the notion of class warfare, Mr. Herbert concludes his article with these words:
In this brief space, I only want to concentrate on challenging Mr. Herbert’s assertions alleging a gross disparity between the earnings of a comparative handful of Wall Streeters and the great mass of wage earners.
As soon as I saw that Mr. Herbert was comparing the alleged meager growth in real earnings of wage earners with the alleged very substantial current monetary earnings of the Wall Streeters, a warning flag went up in my mind, simply because such a thing is not a legitimate comparison. It’s comparable to comparing one entity’s net gain with another entity’s gross revenues, e.g., Toyota’s net profit with General Motors’ sales revenues.
To compare apples with apples, I was immediately curious to know what the growth in wage earners’ monetary earnings had been between 2000 and 2006. To find the answer, I turned to the Survey of Current Business, which is the leading source of statistics on national income, wages, and profits, and gross domestic product. Page D 15 of the January 2007 issue of that publication reports total annual compensation of employees as $7524.4 billion as of the 3rd quarter of 2006, which is the most recent quarter for which data have been published.
At the same time, page 197 of the August 2005 issue of the Survey of Current Business reports total compensation of employees as $5837.4 billion as of the 3rd quarter of 2000. Subtracting this number from the total compensation of employees in 2006 gives a difference of $1687.0 billion. If this, apples-to-apples number is compared with the alleged $36 billion to $44 billion of Wall Street bonuses, it is 38 to 47 times larger, not half as large.
But what about the growth in wage earners’ real earnings, their earnings adjusted for the rise in prices? Might that not turn out to be a mere $15.4 billion, as alleged by Mr. Herbert? The answer is no, far from it.
To calculate the change in real earnings, it’s necessary to allow for the rise in prices between 2000 and 2006. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is the source of the data, the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers stood at 168.9 for 2000 and at 196.8 as of November of 2006, the most recent month for which data are available. This is an increase of 17 percent. If this rise in prices is applied to the employee compensation of $5837.4 billion in 2000, that number is raised to $6801.7 billion. The difference between this inflation-adjusted figure and 2006’s total employee compensation of $7524.4 billion is $722.7 billion. This is the rise in real total employee compensation over the period. This number is more than 47 times larger than the number alleged by Mr. Herbert. It also ranges from more than 16 to more than 20 times the Wall Street bonuses alleged by Mr. Herbert.
Mr. Herbert needs to explain how he arrived at his numbers. Until he provides a reasonable explanation, I leave it to the reader to judge his honesty and to decide whether or not and to what extent the culture of The New York Times has changed since the days of Jayson Blair, The Times' reporter who simply fabricated claims.
*****************
I turn now to The Times’ second attempt to promote the doctrine of class warfare. This occurs in an article which appeared on the same day titled “[Bush] Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says.” (“Bush” is in brackets because it appeared only in the title of the print edition of the article.)
The article opens in a way that easily suggests that while tax rates at the very top are being dramatically reduced, they are actually being increased for middle-class taxpayers.
If one reads the article very carefully, from beginning to end, one learns that what is actually being complained about is merely the fact that the tax rate of the top 1 percent of taxpayers was reduced by a larger number of percentage points than the tax rate of middle-income tax payers. One also learns that the rise in the tax rate on the middle class, so prominently featured by The Times, was a very minor one that took place in the course of a four-year sustained decline in tax rates on the middle class amounting to more than 40 percent. In the article’s own words:
The article goes on to complain that
Apparently, the only thing that would satisfy The Times (and the authors of the “nonpartisan” Congressional Budget Office study) would be if the tax rate on both groups were reduced by the same number of percentage points. In that case, the middle income tax payers would pay a tax rate of only .4 percent, while the top 1 percent paid 19.6 percent.
Such logic implies that the elimination of the income tax can simply never be fair, unless by some magical means it could be accompanied by the ex nihilo creation of a correspondingly large subsidy for everyone else. Thus if the income tax paid by the middle class were .4 percent, while the tax rate on the top 1 percent of taxpayers were 19.6 percent, fairness would allegedly require that reduction of the 19.6 percent rate to zero be accompanied by the subtraction of 19.6 percentage points from .4 percent. This, of course, would mean the creation of a negative income tax rate of 19.2 percent for the middle class. That is the logic of The New York Times.
The Times and its reporters and editors regard the doctrine of egalitarianism as an axiomatic truth and insinuate it at every turn in all aspects of the newspaper. With respect to egalitarianism and all that goes with it, there is no distinction between news column and editorial at The New York Times. Apart from such features as classified advertising, the entire paper is one huge, day-in and day-out editorial for egalitarianism, collectivism, and Marxism.
When one reads The New York Times, one should know what one is getting. It is not unvarnished news, but the news as seen through the lens of a distinct philosophical and political doctrine, a doctrine that is hostile to the freedom, prosperity, and happiness of the individual, and thus to the foundations of the United States.
This article is copyright © 2007, 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.
Today we are back to Red, with two transparent attempts of The Times to promote the doctrine of class warfare.
In a January 8, 2007 article titled “Working Harder for the Man,” Times columnist Bob Herbert writes:
[T]he top five Wall Street firms (Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley) were expected to award an estimated $36 billion to $44 billion worth of bonuses to their 173,000
employees, an average of between $208,000 and $254,000, “with the bulk of the gains accruing to the top 1,000 or so highest-paid managers.” … There are 93 million production and nonsupervisory workers (exclusive of farmworkers) in the U.S. Their combined real annual earnings from 2000 to 2006 rose by $15.4 billion, which is less than half of the combined bonuses awarded by the five Wall Street firms for just one year.
As if to answer the question of whether his intention is to provoke a riot or revolution inspired by the notion of class warfare, Mr. Herbert concludes his article with these words:
I provide an exhaustive critique of Marxism and the doctrine of class warfare in my book Capitalism. Here I will observe only that the activities of businessmen and capitalists are the driving force of virtually all increases in real wages. It is their savings that pay the wages of workers and buy the capital goods with which they work and on which the wage earners’ productivity depends. It is the innovations of the businessmen and capitalists that underlie both continuing capital accumulation and the continuing rise in the productivity and real wages of the workers. To the extent that real wages fail to rise, the explanation is to be found in the frustration of the activities of businessmen and capitalists by misguided government policies that undermine capital accumulation and the rise in the productivity of labor.There’s a reason why the power elite get bent out of shape at the merest mention of a class conflict in the U.S. The fear is that the cringing majority that has taken it on the chin for so long will wise up and begin to fight back.
In this brief space, I only want to concentrate on challenging Mr. Herbert’s assertions alleging a gross disparity between the earnings of a comparative handful of Wall Streeters and the great mass of wage earners.
As soon as I saw that Mr. Herbert was comparing the alleged meager growth in real earnings of wage earners with the alleged very substantial current monetary earnings of the Wall Streeters, a warning flag went up in my mind, simply because such a thing is not a legitimate comparison. It’s comparable to comparing one entity’s net gain with another entity’s gross revenues, e.g., Toyota’s net profit with General Motors’ sales revenues.
To compare apples with apples, I was immediately curious to know what the growth in wage earners’ monetary earnings had been between 2000 and 2006. To find the answer, I turned to the Survey of Current Business, which is the leading source of statistics on national income, wages, and profits, and gross domestic product. Page D 15 of the January 2007 issue of that publication reports total annual compensation of employees as $7524.4 billion as of the 3rd quarter of 2006, which is the most recent quarter for which data have been published.
At the same time, page 197 of the August 2005 issue of the Survey of Current Business reports total compensation of employees as $5837.4 billion as of the 3rd quarter of 2000. Subtracting this number from the total compensation of employees in 2006 gives a difference of $1687.0 billion. If this, apples-to-apples number is compared with the alleged $36 billion to $44 billion of Wall Street bonuses, it is 38 to 47 times larger, not half as large.
But what about the growth in wage earners’ real earnings, their earnings adjusted for the rise in prices? Might that not turn out to be a mere $15.4 billion, as alleged by Mr. Herbert? The answer is no, far from it.
To calculate the change in real earnings, it’s necessary to allow for the rise in prices between 2000 and 2006. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is the source of the data, the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers stood at 168.9 for 2000 and at 196.8 as of November of 2006, the most recent month for which data are available. This is an increase of 17 percent. If this rise in prices is applied to the employee compensation of $5837.4 billion in 2000, that number is raised to $6801.7 billion. The difference between this inflation-adjusted figure and 2006’s total employee compensation of $7524.4 billion is $722.7 billion. This is the rise in real total employee compensation over the period. This number is more than 47 times larger than the number alleged by Mr. Herbert. It also ranges from more than 16 to more than 20 times the Wall Street bonuses alleged by Mr. Herbert.
Mr. Herbert needs to explain how he arrived at his numbers. Until he provides a reasonable explanation, I leave it to the reader to judge his honesty and to decide whether or not and to what extent the culture of The New York Times has changed since the days of Jayson Blair, The Times' reporter who simply fabricated claims.
*****************
I turn now to The Times’ second attempt to promote the doctrine of class warfare. This occurs in an article which appeared on the same day titled “[Bush] Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says.” (“Bush” is in brackets because it appeared only in the title of the print edition of the article.)
The article opens in a way that easily suggests that while tax rates at the very top are being dramatically reduced, they are actually being increased for middle-class taxpayers.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts, according to a new Congressional study.
The study, by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, also shows that tax rates for middle-income earners edged up in 2004, the most recent year for which data was available, while rates for people at the very top continued to decline.
If one reads the article very carefully, from beginning to end, one learns that what is actually being complained about is merely the fact that the tax rate of the top 1 percent of taxpayers was reduced by a larger number of percentage points than the tax rate of middle-income tax payers. One also learns that the rise in the tax rate on the middle class, so prominently featured by The Times, was a very minor one that took place in the course of a four-year sustained decline in tax rates on the middle class amounting to more than 40 percent. In the article’s own words:
Families in the middle fifth of annual earnings, who had average incomes of $56,200 in 2004, saw their average effective tax rate edge down to 2.9 percent in 2004 from 5 percent in 2000.… (My italics.)It may have escaped The Times’ reporter, and his editor, but 2.9 percent is less than 60 percent of 5 percent, which implies a reduction in middle-class tax rates of more than 40 percent. This is a decrease, relatively speaking, compared to what the rate was in 2000, a huge decrease. It is not an increase. This decrease deserves to be featured, not presented as the very opposite of itself.
The article goes on to complain that
Households in the top 1 percent of earnings, which had an average income of $1.25 million, saw their effective individual tax rates drop to 19.6 percent in 2004 from 24.2 percent in 2000. The rate cut was twice as deep as for middle-income families.…What is allegedly unfair here is that while the tax rate of the top 1 percent falls by 4.6 percentage points from 24.2 percent to 19.6 percent, the tax rate on the middle income tax payers falls only by 2.1 percentage points from 5 percent to 2.9 percent. Not only does The Times’ reporter, and his editor, choose to ignore the very substantial, more than 40 percent reduction in middle-class tax rates from 2000 to 2004, but also to completely ignore the fact that relatively speaking the reduction in rates on the top 1 percent was far less than the reduction on the middle class. A tax rate that is still 19.6 percent is approximately 81 percent of a tax rate of 24.2 percent. Thus, relatively speaking, while the income tax rate on the middle class fell by more than 40 percent, it fell by less than 20 percent on the top 1 percent of taxpayers.
Apparently, the only thing that would satisfy The Times (and the authors of the “nonpartisan” Congressional Budget Office study) would be if the tax rate on both groups were reduced by the same number of percentage points. In that case, the middle income tax payers would pay a tax rate of only .4 percent, while the top 1 percent paid 19.6 percent.
Such logic implies that the elimination of the income tax can simply never be fair, unless by some magical means it could be accompanied by the ex nihilo creation of a correspondingly large subsidy for everyone else. Thus if the income tax paid by the middle class were .4 percent, while the tax rate on the top 1 percent of taxpayers were 19.6 percent, fairness would allegedly require that reduction of the 19.6 percent rate to zero be accompanied by the subtraction of 19.6 percentage points from .4 percent. This, of course, would mean the creation of a negative income tax rate of 19.2 percent for the middle class. That is the logic of The New York Times.
The Times and its reporters and editors regard the doctrine of egalitarianism as an axiomatic truth and insinuate it at every turn in all aspects of the newspaper. With respect to egalitarianism and all that goes with it, there is no distinction between news column and editorial at The New York Times. Apart from such features as classified advertising, the entire paper is one huge, day-in and day-out editorial for egalitarianism, collectivism, and Marxism.
When one reads The New York Times, one should know what one is getting. It is not unvarnished news, but the news as seen through the lens of a distinct philosophical and political doctrine, a doctrine that is hostile to the freedom, prosperity, and happiness of the individual, and thus to the foundations of the United States.
This article is copyright © 2007, 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.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
The New York Times Pushes the Green Party Line
The New York Times must have a guilty conscience about the continuous distortions of the news that appear in its pages. Evidence of this guilt is provided everyday in The Times’ claim that its “news and editorial departments do not coordinate coverage and maintain a strict separation in staff and management.”
That claim is necessary only because The Times has become sensitive about the matter. And with good reason. Because even though there may not be formal meetings, strategy sessions, and the like to coordinate its news reporting with its leftist editorial slant, that leftist slant nevertheless very definitely does permeate its reporting.
Perhaps it’s the result simply of the fact that The Times’ editorial writers and its reporters were all educated in the same kind of universities, all promoting the same leftist ideas in economics, politics, history, and the various branches of philosophy. Whatever the explanation, the paper’s editorial writers and reporters consistently come at things from the same perspective and, with only occasional exceptions, end up pushing the same party line.
A good example of this appears in today’s (January 6, 2007) edition. On the first page of the business section, there is an article titled “The Land of Rising Conservation.” The article is a pure puff piece for environmentalism/conservationism. Its theme is that Japan is the model country of energy conservation, pointing the way for the United States on the basis of the use of the latest technology. Indeed, the subtitle of the article, in the print edition, is “Japan Offers a Lesson in Using Technology to Lessen Energy Consumption.” A leading illustration of this technology is an alleged futuristic “home fuel cell, a machine as large and quiet as a filing cabinet that…turns hydrogen into electricity and cold water into hot—at a fraction of regular utility costs.”
The article compares Japan with the United States in terms of annual energy consumption per home and trumpets the fact that in Japan’s it is less than half of that in the United States. It also declares that while Japan’s “population and economy are each about 40 percent as large as that of the United States, yet in 2004 it consumed less than a quarter as much energy as America did, according to the International Energy Agency, which is based in Paris.”
The article credits Japan’s superiority in “energy efficiency” to the “guiding hand of government,” which has forced “households and companies to conserve by raising the cost of gasoline and electricity far above global levels. Taxes and price controls make a gallon of gasoline in Japan currently cost about $5.20, twice America’s more market-based prices.” The same relationship apparently applies to energy prices in general. An advisor to the Japanese Parliament is favorably quoted as saying, “Japan has taught itself how to survive with energy prices that are twice as high as everywhere else.” The sharply higher energy prices, the article explains, are the source of tax revenues, which “[t]he government in turn has used…to help Japan seize the lead in renewable energies like solar power, and more recently home fuel cells.”
Despite The Times’ and its reporter’s obvious enthusiasm for the Japanese government’s energy policies, a careful, critical reading of the article results in a very different kind of appraisal. (Unfortunately, such a reading is not likely to be performed by many of The Times’ readers.)
It turns out that that futuristic home fuel cell, that allegedly operates “at a fraction of regular utility costs,” requires a government “subsidy of about $51,000” per unit. This is what makes possible its purchase “for about $9,000, far below production cost.” (I hope I will be forgiven for failing to see the intelligence of a policy that makes people pay twice the price for energy in order to provide funds to make possible the production of electricity at a sharply higher cost.)
But there is more. It also turns out such technological advances are only part of the story. There is also a major “human interest”/cultural angle that contributes to Japan’s "superiority" in “energy efficiency.” This centers on a Mr. Kimura and his family. (He owns the futuristic home fuel cell that a Times’ photograph shows standing in front of his house.) Without any apparent awareness of the significance of the information being revealed and certainly without any embarrassment about it, The Times’ reporter writes this about the subject of his human interest.
This article is copyright © 2007, 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.
That claim is necessary only because The Times has become sensitive about the matter. And with good reason. Because even though there may not be formal meetings, strategy sessions, and the like to coordinate its news reporting with its leftist editorial slant, that leftist slant nevertheless very definitely does permeate its reporting.
Perhaps it’s the result simply of the fact that The Times’ editorial writers and its reporters were all educated in the same kind of universities, all promoting the same leftist ideas in economics, politics, history, and the various branches of philosophy. Whatever the explanation, the paper’s editorial writers and reporters consistently come at things from the same perspective and, with only occasional exceptions, end up pushing the same party line.
A good example of this appears in today’s (January 6, 2007) edition. On the first page of the business section, there is an article titled “The Land of Rising Conservation.” The article is a pure puff piece for environmentalism/conservationism. Its theme is that Japan is the model country of energy conservation, pointing the way for the United States on the basis of the use of the latest technology. Indeed, the subtitle of the article, in the print edition, is “Japan Offers a Lesson in Using Technology to Lessen Energy Consumption.” A leading illustration of this technology is an alleged futuristic “home fuel cell, a machine as large and quiet as a filing cabinet that…turns hydrogen into electricity and cold water into hot—at a fraction of regular utility costs.”
The article compares Japan with the United States in terms of annual energy consumption per home and trumpets the fact that in Japan’s it is less than half of that in the United States. It also declares that while Japan’s “population and economy are each about 40 percent as large as that of the United States, yet in 2004 it consumed less than a quarter as much energy as America did, according to the International Energy Agency, which is based in Paris.”
The article credits Japan’s superiority in “energy efficiency” to the “guiding hand of government,” which has forced “households and companies to conserve by raising the cost of gasoline and electricity far above global levels. Taxes and price controls make a gallon of gasoline in Japan currently cost about $5.20, twice America’s more market-based prices.” The same relationship apparently applies to energy prices in general. An advisor to the Japanese Parliament is favorably quoted as saying, “Japan has taught itself how to survive with energy prices that are twice as high as everywhere else.” The sharply higher energy prices, the article explains, are the source of tax revenues, which “[t]he government in turn has used…to help Japan seize the lead in renewable energies like solar power, and more recently home fuel cells.”
Despite The Times’ and its reporter’s obvious enthusiasm for the Japanese government’s energy policies, a careful, critical reading of the article results in a very different kind of appraisal. (Unfortunately, such a reading is not likely to be performed by many of The Times’ readers.)
It turns out that that futuristic home fuel cell, that allegedly operates “at a fraction of regular utility costs,” requires a government “subsidy of about $51,000” per unit. This is what makes possible its purchase “for about $9,000, far below production cost.” (I hope I will be forgiven for failing to see the intelligence of a policy that makes people pay twice the price for energy in order to provide funds to make possible the production of electricity at a sharply higher cost.)
But there is more. It also turns out such technological advances are only part of the story. There is also a major “human interest”/cultural angle that contributes to Japan’s "superiority" in “energy efficiency.” This centers on a Mr. Kimura and his family. (He owns the futuristic home fuel cell that a Times’ photograph shows standing in front of his house.) Without any apparent awareness of the significance of the information being revealed and certainly without any embarrassment about it, The Times’ reporter writes this about the subject of his human interest.
So there you have it: the Green party line presenting poverty as technologically advanced, as the wave of the future, and as morally virtuous. We can supposedly all look forward to the day when we will be as advanced as the Japanese and energy will cost us twice as much as it now does. When we too will be unable to afford central heating and will have to live in houses half their present size. When we will have to gather our entire family into the one heated room in the house. When we will have to follow one another into the same bathwater, and then use that bathwater to wash our clothes, which we will have to dry outdoors, as our great-grandparents did. When we will have to wear long underwear and sweaters to keep warm indoors. What a glorious, green future! What green slime The Times pours on the readers of its alleged news reports.Mr. Kimura says he, his wife, and two teenage children all take turns bathing in the same water, a common practice here. Afterward, the still-warm water is sucked through a rubber tube into the nearby washing machine to clean clothes. Wet laundry is hung outside to dry or under a heat lamp in the bathroom. The different approach is also apparent in the layout of Mr. Kimura’s home, which at 1,188 square feet is about the average size of a house in Japan but only about half as big as the average American one. The rooms are also small, making them easier to heat or cool. The largest is the living room, which is about the size of an American bedroom.
During winter, the entire family, including the miniature dachshund, gathers here, which is often the only room heated. Like most Japanese homes, Mr. Kimura’s does not have central heating. The hallways, stairwell and bathrooms are left cold. The three bedrooms have wall-mounted heaters, which are used only when the rooms are occupied, and switched off at night.
The living room is kept toasty by hot water running through pipes under the floor. Mr. Kimura says such ambient heat saves money. He says the energy bill for his home is about 20,000 yen ($168) a month. Central heating alone would easily double or triple his energy bill, he says.
“Central heating is just too extravagant,” says Mr. Kimura, who is solidly middle class.
The government has tried to foster a culture of conservation with regular campaigns like this winter’s Warm Biz, a call to businesspeople to don sweaters and long johns under their gray suits so that office thermostats could be set lower.
This article is copyright © 2007, 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.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Where The New York Times Is Coming From
Below are the headlines of four obituaries that have run in The New York Times. The first is that of the recent obituary of the Anti-Communist Augusto Pinochet. The next three are those of the obituaries of the Communist mass murderers Mao, Stalin, and Lenin. Please be sure to note how many are described as having ruled by terror.
In contrast, in the case of Communist mass murderers we find non-judgmental tolerance in the headlines, along with a studious refusal to mention the incalculably greater terrors they caused. More than that, we find positive esteem and enthusiasm in the headlines for the Communist mass murderers. Thus Mao was the “Leader of Red China’s Revolution”; Stalin allegedly transformed “Russia Into Mighty Socialist State”; and Lenin’s funeral was described as a phenomenon of near worshipful enthusiasm: “…COFFIN CARRIED FIVE MILES Members of Council of Commissars Stagger Under Load, Refusing Gun Caisson…”
It is patterns such as this that lead some people to think that the reporting of The New York Times is colored by its politics and that the color of its politics is red.
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.
December 11, 2006, Augusto Pinochet, Dictator Who Ruled by Terror in Chile, Dies at 91
September 10, 1976, Friday, . . . Mao Tse-tung Dies in Peking at 82; Leader of Red China's Revolution
March 6, 1953, Friday, Stalin Rose From Czarist Oppression to Transform Russia Into Mighty Socialist State; RUTHLESS IN MOVING TO GOALS
January 24, 1924, Thursday, ENORMOUS CROWDS VIEW LENIN'S BODY AS IT LIES IN STATE; Wait Hours in Snow and Zero Temperature Outside Moscow Nobles' Club. COFFIN CARRIED FIVE MILES Members of Council of Commissars Stagger Under Load, Refusing Gun Caisson. LENIN CALLED A CHRISTIAN Archbishop Summons Synod to Declare Founder of Bolshevism Member of Church. ENORMOUS CROWDS VIEW LENIN'S BODYIn these headlines we find utter condemnation of a dictator who was relatively mild as dictators go, but who was Anti-Communist; his leading characteristic was allegedly rule by “Terror.”
In contrast, in the case of Communist mass murderers we find non-judgmental tolerance in the headlines, along with a studious refusal to mention the incalculably greater terrors they caused. More than that, we find positive esteem and enthusiasm in the headlines for the Communist mass murderers. Thus Mao was the “Leader of Red China’s Revolution”; Stalin allegedly transformed “Russia Into Mighty Socialist State”; and Lenin’s funeral was described as a phenomenon of near worshipful enthusiasm: “…COFFIN CARRIED FIVE MILES Members of Council of Commissars Stagger Under Load, Refusing Gun Caisson…”
It is patterns such as this that lead some people to think that the reporting of The New York Times is colored by its politics and that the color of its politics is red.
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.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
More on Pinochet and Marxism: The Necessity of Evil Means to Achieve Socialism
Some of the responses to my post on General Pinochet have reminded me that along with the fable of Santa Claus and his reindeer, which is so prominent right now because it is the Christmas Season, there is another fable that is still going around. And while the Santa Claus fable is innocent, serving merely to entertain small children, this one is definitely not innocent, but positively vicious. It is the fable that those who are responsible for the attempt to socialize a country’s economic system, such as Chile’s, are well-intentioned and therefore deserve to be immune from bodily harm and certainly do not deserve ever to be killed.
According to this fable, in a country such as Chile under Allende, Marxist boys and girls are happily singing and dancing, their faces glowing with love of the downtrodden, while they attempt the joyous task of building a socialist economic system. To be sure, there are also dark forces at work in the fable: again and again, wherever the innocent and happy Marxists go and accomplish their work—Soviet Russia, Communist China, Cuba, and all the other various satellites—impoverishment, enslavement, and mass murder inexplicably always seem to follow.
Of course, according to the fable, this cannot have anything to do with the nature of socialism and the actions of the Marxists who establish it. It just happens. Equally inexplicably, unless it be simply because of their evil nature, mean, nasty men appear, who for no good reason lay hold of the innocent Marxists and beat and kill them, as did Pinochet’s soldiers in Chile in response to the Marxists’ attempt to socialize the economy of that country. What a horror, what an outrage against good and innocent Marxists! Such evil surely deserves to be severely punished!
End of fable.
I have made it part of my life’s work to throw intellectual ice water in the faces of people who have allowed themselves to become so deluded as to accept such a fable. And here, straight from my book Capitalism, is a good-sized bucketful of that intellectual ice water:
“Let us begin by considering the means employed to achieve socialism. We observe two phenomena that are not unrelated. First, wherever socialism has actually been enacted, as in the Communist-bloc countries and Nazi Germany, violent and bloody means have been used to achieve it and/or maintain it. And, second, where socialist parties have come to power but abstained from wholesale violence and bloodshed, as in Great Britain, Israel, and Sweden, they have not enacted socialism, but retained a so-called mixed economy, which they did not radically or fundamentally alter. Let us consider the reasons for these facts.
“Even if a socialist government were democratically elected, its first act in office in implementing socialism would have to be an act of enormous violence, namely, the forcible expropriation of the means of production. The democratic election of a socialist government would not change the fact that the seizure of property against the will of its owners is an act of force. A forcible expropriation of property based on a democratic vote is about as peaceful as a lynching based on a democratic vote. It is a cardinal violation of individual rights. The only way that socialism could truly come into existence by peaceful means would be if property owners voluntarily donated their property to the socialist state. But consider. If socialism had to wait for property owners to voluntarily donate their property to the state, it would almost certainly have to wait forever. If socialism is ever to exist, therefore, it can only come about by means of force—force applied on a massive scale, against all private property.
“Further, in the case of the socialization of the entire economic system, as opposed to that of an isolated industry, no form of compensation to the property owners is possible. In the case of an isolated nationalization, the government can largely compensate the former owners by taxing the rest of the property owners to some extent. If the government seizes all property, however, and simply abolishes private ownership, then there is just no possibility of compensation. The government simply steals everyone’s property lock, stock, and barrel. In these circumstances, property owners will almost certainly resist and try to defend their rights by force if necessary, as they properly should.
“This explains why it takes the Communists to achieve socialism, and why the Social Democrats always fail to achieve socialism. The Communists, in effect, know that they are out to steal all of men’s property from them and that if they expect to succeed, they had better come armed and prepared to kill the property owners, who will attempt to defend their rights. The Social Democrats, on the other hand, are held back by fear from taking the steps that would be necessary to achieve socialism.
“In sum, the essential facts are these. Socialism must commence with an enormous act of theft. Those who seriously want to steal must be prepared to kill those whom they plan to rob. In effect, the Social Democrats are mere con men and pickpockets, who engage in empty talk about pulling the `big job’—socialism—someday, and who flee before the first sign of resistance by their intended victims. The Communists, on the other hand, are serious about pulling the `big job.’ They are armed robbers prepared to commit murder. This is why the Communists are able to implement socialism. Of the two, only the Communists are willing to employ the bloody means that are necessary to implement socialism.”
The preceding paragraphs appear on pp. 282-283 of Capitalism. For explanations of the necessity of terror, forced labor, and mass murder under socialism, such as characterized the bloody history of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and the numerous Communist satellites, see pp. 283-290 of Capitalism.
The above analysis applies to Chile at the time of General Pinochet’s coup. At that time, President Allende, despite having been elected with only 36 percent of the vote, was aggressively pressing ahead, as even The New York Times’ largely hostile obituary admits, “with a Socialist program to nationalize mines, banks and strategic industries, split up large rural estates into communal farms, and impose price controls.” (Not surprisingly, such measures, as The Times notes, “soon resulted in steep declines in production, shortages of consumer goods and explosive inflation.”)
The essential point here is that a massive armed robbery on the part of the Marxist Allende government was actually in progress. It possessed armed “militias” and was using them to seize people’s property. According to The Wall Street Journal’s obituary, the regime was also acting in clear defiance of the Chilean Supreme Court, which denounced it for “`an open and willful contempt of judicial decisions’” that created the threat of an “`imminent breakdown of legality.’”
So long as Marxists are content merely to write, speak, and otherwise fantasize about the destruction of capitalism and the establishment of socialism, they have every right to be left alone, just as every one else has who harms no one but himself. But when they begin to act out their fantasy in the real world and commit armed robbery, which, as I have shown, is the only means of achieving their goal, then they forfeit their rights, including their right to life.
The right to life, liberty, and property, which every man possesses, carries with it the right to self-defense. Exercise of the right of self-defense includes killing those who are an imminent threat to one’s life. It includes killing those who are an imminent threat to one’s life in one’s attempt to defend one’s property, which is what armed robbers always are, Marxist or otherwise. If the Marxists killed or beaten in Chile had wanted to avoid such treatment, they should have stayed home, written another book or article, given another lecture or speech, or gone to another protest meeting or rally. They should not have set out to steal other people’s property.
True enough, all the writing, speaking, and peaceful protest in the world have no prospect of ever achieving socialism, because they will never persuade very many people to voluntarily donate their property to a socialist state. So at bottom, it must all be futile, unless at some point it erupts into violent action.
The implication of this is that unless Marxists can be satisfied, as the Social Democrats have apparently learned to be, with merely partial and largely token movement toward their goal, such as provided by the establishment and expansion of the welfare state, they are doomed to permanent frustration. At the same time, those of them who continue to be committed to the actual achievement of their goal of socialism, cannot be expected to tolerate such frustration permanently. At some point, it would seem, almost inevitably, they must erupt into violent action, because that is the only path that can ever achieve their goal.
Such Marxists, such socialists, i.e., the serious, dedicated ones, are not at all saints or martyrs, but dangerous people with a criminal mentality.
According to this fable, in a country such as Chile under Allende, Marxist boys and girls are happily singing and dancing, their faces glowing with love of the downtrodden, while they attempt the joyous task of building a socialist economic system. To be sure, there are also dark forces at work in the fable: again and again, wherever the innocent and happy Marxists go and accomplish their work—Soviet Russia, Communist China, Cuba, and all the other various satellites—impoverishment, enslavement, and mass murder inexplicably always seem to follow.
Of course, according to the fable, this cannot have anything to do with the nature of socialism and the actions of the Marxists who establish it. It just happens. Equally inexplicably, unless it be simply because of their evil nature, mean, nasty men appear, who for no good reason lay hold of the innocent Marxists and beat and kill them, as did Pinochet’s soldiers in Chile in response to the Marxists’ attempt to socialize the economy of that country. What a horror, what an outrage against good and innocent Marxists! Such evil surely deserves to be severely punished!
End of fable.
I have made it part of my life’s work to throw intellectual ice water in the faces of people who have allowed themselves to become so deluded as to accept such a fable. And here, straight from my book Capitalism, is a good-sized bucketful of that intellectual ice water:
“Let us begin by considering the means employed to achieve socialism. We observe two phenomena that are not unrelated. First, wherever socialism has actually been enacted, as in the Communist-bloc countries and Nazi Germany, violent and bloody means have been used to achieve it and/or maintain it. And, second, where socialist parties have come to power but abstained from wholesale violence and bloodshed, as in Great Britain, Israel, and Sweden, they have not enacted socialism, but retained a so-called mixed economy, which they did not radically or fundamentally alter. Let us consider the reasons for these facts.
“Even if a socialist government were democratically elected, its first act in office in implementing socialism would have to be an act of enormous violence, namely, the forcible expropriation of the means of production. The democratic election of a socialist government would not change the fact that the seizure of property against the will of its owners is an act of force. A forcible expropriation of property based on a democratic vote is about as peaceful as a lynching based on a democratic vote. It is a cardinal violation of individual rights. The only way that socialism could truly come into existence by peaceful means would be if property owners voluntarily donated their property to the socialist state. But consider. If socialism had to wait for property owners to voluntarily donate their property to the state, it would almost certainly have to wait forever. If socialism is ever to exist, therefore, it can only come about by means of force—force applied on a massive scale, against all private property.
“Further, in the case of the socialization of the entire economic system, as opposed to that of an isolated industry, no form of compensation to the property owners is possible. In the case of an isolated nationalization, the government can largely compensate the former owners by taxing the rest of the property owners to some extent. If the government seizes all property, however, and simply abolishes private ownership, then there is just no possibility of compensation. The government simply steals everyone’s property lock, stock, and barrel. In these circumstances, property owners will almost certainly resist and try to defend their rights by force if necessary, as they properly should.
“This explains why it takes the Communists to achieve socialism, and why the Social Democrats always fail to achieve socialism. The Communists, in effect, know that they are out to steal all of men’s property from them and that if they expect to succeed, they had better come armed and prepared to kill the property owners, who will attempt to defend their rights. The Social Democrats, on the other hand, are held back by fear from taking the steps that would be necessary to achieve socialism.
“In sum, the essential facts are these. Socialism must commence with an enormous act of theft. Those who seriously want to steal must be prepared to kill those whom they plan to rob. In effect, the Social Democrats are mere con men and pickpockets, who engage in empty talk about pulling the `big job’—socialism—someday, and who flee before the first sign of resistance by their intended victims. The Communists, on the other hand, are serious about pulling the `big job.’ They are armed robbers prepared to commit murder. This is why the Communists are able to implement socialism. Of the two, only the Communists are willing to employ the bloody means that are necessary to implement socialism.”
The preceding paragraphs appear on pp. 282-283 of Capitalism. For explanations of the necessity of terror, forced labor, and mass murder under socialism, such as characterized the bloody history of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and the numerous Communist satellites, see pp. 283-290 of Capitalism.
The above analysis applies to Chile at the time of General Pinochet’s coup. At that time, President Allende, despite having been elected with only 36 percent of the vote, was aggressively pressing ahead, as even The New York Times’ largely hostile obituary admits, “with a Socialist program to nationalize mines, banks and strategic industries, split up large rural estates into communal farms, and impose price controls.” (Not surprisingly, such measures, as The Times notes, “soon resulted in steep declines in production, shortages of consumer goods and explosive inflation.”)
The essential point here is that a massive armed robbery on the part of the Marxist Allende government was actually in progress. It possessed armed “militias” and was using them to seize people’s property. According to The Wall Street Journal’s obituary, the regime was also acting in clear defiance of the Chilean Supreme Court, which denounced it for “`an open and willful contempt of judicial decisions’” that created the threat of an “`imminent breakdown of legality.’”
So long as Marxists are content merely to write, speak, and otherwise fantasize about the destruction of capitalism and the establishment of socialism, they have every right to be left alone, just as every one else has who harms no one but himself. But when they begin to act out their fantasy in the real world and commit armed robbery, which, as I have shown, is the only means of achieving their goal, then they forfeit their rights, including their right to life.
The right to life, liberty, and property, which every man possesses, carries with it the right to self-defense. Exercise of the right of self-defense includes killing those who are an imminent threat to one’s life. It includes killing those who are an imminent threat to one’s life in one’s attempt to defend one’s property, which is what armed robbers always are, Marxist or otherwise. If the Marxists killed or beaten in Chile had wanted to avoid such treatment, they should have stayed home, written another book or article, given another lecture or speech, or gone to another protest meeting or rally. They should not have set out to steal other people’s property.
True enough, all the writing, speaking, and peaceful protest in the world have no prospect of ever achieving socialism, because they will never persuade very many people to voluntarily donate their property to a socialist state. So at bottom, it must all be futile, unless at some point it erupts into violent action.
The implication of this is that unless Marxists can be satisfied, as the Social Democrats have apparently learned to be, with merely partial and largely token movement toward their goal, such as provided by the establishment and expansion of the welfare state, they are doomed to permanent frustration. At the same time, those of them who continue to be committed to the actual achievement of their goal of socialism, cannot be expected to tolerate such frustration permanently. At some point, it would seem, almost inevitably, they must erupt into violent action, because that is the only path that can ever achieve their goal.
Such Marxists, such socialists, i.e., the serious, dedicated ones, are not at all saints or martyrs, but dangerous people with a criminal mentality.
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.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
General Augusto Pinochet Is Dead
On Sunday, December 10, General Augusto Pinochet of Chile died, at the age of 91. General Pinochet deserves to be remembered for having rescued his country from becoming the second Soviet satellite in the Western hemisphere, after Castro’s Cuba, and, like the Soviet Union, and Cuba under Castro, a totalitarian dictatorship.
The General is denounced again and again for the death or disappearance of over 3,000 Chilean citizens and the alleged torture of thousands more. It may well be that some substantial number of innocent Chilean citizens did die or disappear or otherwise suffered brutal treatment as the result of his actions. But in a struggle to avoid the establishment of a Communist dictatorship, it is undoubtedly true that many or most of those who died or suffered were preparing to inflict a far greater number of deaths and a vastly larger scale of suffering on their fellow citizens.
Their deaths and suffering should certainly not be mourned, any more than the deaths of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, and their helpers should be mourned. Had there been a General Pinochet in Russia in 1918 or Germany in 1933, the people of those countries and of the rest of the world would have been incomparably better off, precisely by virtue of the death, disappearance, and attendant suffering of vast numbers of Communists and Nazis. Life and liberty are positively helped by the death and disappearance of such mortal enemies. Their absence from the scene means the absence of such things as concentration camps, and is thus ardently to be desired.
As for the innocent victims in Chile, their fate should overwhelmingly be laid at the door of the Communist plotters of totalitarian dictatorship. People have an absolute right to rise up and defend their lives, liberty, and property against a Communist takeover. In the process, they cannot be expected to make the distinctions present in a judicial process. They must act quickly and decisively to remove what threatens them. That is the nature of war. The fate of innocent bystanders, largely those who cannot be readily distinguished from the enemy, is the responsibility of the Communists. Had they not attempted to impose their totalitarian dictatorship, there would not have been any need to use force and violence to prevent them, and thus the innocent would not have suffered.
Contrary to the attitude of so many of today’s intellectuals, Communists do not have a right to murder tens of millions of innocent people and then to complain when their intended victims prevent their takeover and in the process kill some of them.
General Pinochet was undoubtedly no angel. No soldier can be. But he certainly was also no devil. In fact, if any comparison applies, it may well be one drawn from antiquity, namely, that of Cincinnatus, who saved the Roman Republic by temporarily becoming its dictator. Like Cincinnatus, General Pinochet voluntarily relinquished his dictatorship. He did so after both preventing a Communist takeover and imposing major pro-free-market reforms, inspired largely by Milton Friedman (who in large part was himself inspired by Ludwig von Mises). The effect of these reforms was to make Chile's the most prosperous and rapidly progressing economy in Latin America, Thereafter, in the words of his New York Times’—largely hostile—obituary, he used his remaining power to “set limits, for example, on economic policy debates with frequent warnings that he would not tolerate a return to statist measures.”
General Pinochet was thus one of the most extraordinary dictators in history, a dictator who stood for major limits on the power of the state, who imposed such limits, and who sought to maintain such limits after voluntarily giving up his dictatorship.
When General Pinochet stepped down, he did so with a guarantee of immunity from prosecution for his actions while in power. However, the present and previous regime in Chile violated this agreement and sought to ensnare the General in a web of legal actions and law suits, making the last years of his life a period of turmoil. This was a clear violation of contract, comparable to the seizure of property in violation of contract. Not surprisingly the regimes in question were avowedly socialist. As a result of their breach, it is now considerably less likely that the world will soon see any other dictator voluntarily relinquish his power. The Chilean socialists will have taught him that to be secure, he must remain in power until he dies.
*****
Dictatorship, like war, is always an evil. Like war, it can be justified only when it is necessary to prevent a far greater evil, namely, as in this case, the imposition of the far more comprehensive and severe, permanent totalitarian dictatorship of the Communists.
Despite the fact that General Pinochet was able to use his powers as dictator to enact major pro-free-market reforms, dictatorship should never be seen as justified merely as a means of instituting such reforms, however necessary and desirable they may be. Dictatorship is the most dangerous of political institutions and easily produces catastrophic results. This is because a dictator is not restrained by any need for public discussion and debate and thus can easily leap headlong into disasters that would have been avoided had there been the freedom to criticize his proposed actions and to oppose them. And even when his policies may be right, the fact that they are imposed in defiance of public opinion operates greatly to add to their unpopularity and thus to make permanent change all the more difficult.
On the basis of such considerations, when asked many years ago what he would do if he were appointed dictator, von Mises replied, “I would resign.”
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 General is denounced again and again for the death or disappearance of over 3,000 Chilean citizens and the alleged torture of thousands more. It may well be that some substantial number of innocent Chilean citizens did die or disappear or otherwise suffered brutal treatment as the result of his actions. But in a struggle to avoid the establishment of a Communist dictatorship, it is undoubtedly true that many or most of those who died or suffered were preparing to inflict a far greater number of deaths and a vastly larger scale of suffering on their fellow citizens.
Their deaths and suffering should certainly not be mourned, any more than the deaths of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, and their helpers should be mourned. Had there been a General Pinochet in Russia in 1918 or Germany in 1933, the people of those countries and of the rest of the world would have been incomparably better off, precisely by virtue of the death, disappearance, and attendant suffering of vast numbers of Communists and Nazis. Life and liberty are positively helped by the death and disappearance of such mortal enemies. Their absence from the scene means the absence of such things as concentration camps, and is thus ardently to be desired.
As for the innocent victims in Chile, their fate should overwhelmingly be laid at the door of the Communist plotters of totalitarian dictatorship. People have an absolute right to rise up and defend their lives, liberty, and property against a Communist takeover. In the process, they cannot be expected to make the distinctions present in a judicial process. They must act quickly and decisively to remove what threatens them. That is the nature of war. The fate of innocent bystanders, largely those who cannot be readily distinguished from the enemy, is the responsibility of the Communists. Had they not attempted to impose their totalitarian dictatorship, there would not have been any need to use force and violence to prevent them, and thus the innocent would not have suffered.
Contrary to the attitude of so many of today’s intellectuals, Communists do not have a right to murder tens of millions of innocent people and then to complain when their intended victims prevent their takeover and in the process kill some of them.
General Pinochet was undoubtedly no angel. No soldier can be. But he certainly was also no devil. In fact, if any comparison applies, it may well be one drawn from antiquity, namely, that of Cincinnatus, who saved the Roman Republic by temporarily becoming its dictator. Like Cincinnatus, General Pinochet voluntarily relinquished his dictatorship. He did so after both preventing a Communist takeover and imposing major pro-free-market reforms, inspired largely by Milton Friedman (who in large part was himself inspired by Ludwig von Mises). The effect of these reforms was to make Chile's the most prosperous and rapidly progressing economy in Latin America, Thereafter, in the words of his New York Times’—largely hostile—obituary, he used his remaining power to “set limits, for example, on economic policy debates with frequent warnings that he would not tolerate a return to statist measures.”
General Pinochet was thus one of the most extraordinary dictators in history, a dictator who stood for major limits on the power of the state, who imposed such limits, and who sought to maintain such limits after voluntarily giving up his dictatorship.
When General Pinochet stepped down, he did so with a guarantee of immunity from prosecution for his actions while in power. However, the present and previous regime in Chile violated this agreement and sought to ensnare the General in a web of legal actions and law suits, making the last years of his life a period of turmoil. This was a clear violation of contract, comparable to the seizure of property in violation of contract. Not surprisingly the regimes in question were avowedly socialist. As a result of their breach, it is now considerably less likely that the world will soon see any other dictator voluntarily relinquish his power. The Chilean socialists will have taught him that to be secure, he must remain in power until he dies.
*****
Dictatorship, like war, is always an evil. Like war, it can be justified only when it is necessary to prevent a far greater evil, namely, as in this case, the imposition of the far more comprehensive and severe, permanent totalitarian dictatorship of the Communists.
Despite the fact that General Pinochet was able to use his powers as dictator to enact major pro-free-market reforms, dictatorship should never be seen as justified merely as a means of instituting such reforms, however necessary and desirable they may be. Dictatorship is the most dangerous of political institutions and easily produces catastrophic results. This is because a dictator is not restrained by any need for public discussion and debate and thus can easily leap headlong into disasters that would have been avoided had there been the freedom to criticize his proposed actions and to oppose them. And even when his policies may be right, the fact that they are imposed in defiance of public opinion operates greatly to add to their unpopularity and thus to make permanent change all the more difficult.
On the basis of such considerations, when asked many years ago what he would do if he were appointed dictator, von Mises replied, “I would resign.”
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.
Friday, December 08, 2006
You Can’t Have Trans Fats Because They’re Bad for You, Says New York City’s Board of Health
In recent weeks, the New York City Board of Health has displayed a pattern of profound aggression against the citizens of New York City. I dealt with one major instance of this in my last article, “Pick Your Gender and We’ll Enforce Your Choice, Says New York City’s Board of Health.” There I explained how the Board’s proposed rule to allow individuals to change the sex recorded on their birth certificates, without the necessity of undergoing any actual physical change in their sex, would compel other individuals to deny the evidence of their senses in order to comply with the law.
The Board’s banning, last Tuesday [December 5, 2006], of the use of trans fats in restaurants is a second instance in which the Board shows that it has no compunctions about violating the sanctity of the human mind and its freedom to judge and to choose. The freedom of choice of the citizen apparently means nothing to the Board. Like a curt parent controlling the choices of a child and expecting that his “No” will be sufficient, the Board has taken away the power of choice from adult citizens and told them they will no longer be able to obtain food in restaurants that is prepared with trans fats.
What allegedly justifies this behavior by the Board is the mere fact that trans fats have supposedly been scientifically proven to be unhealthy. As reported by The New York Times of October 31, according to one of the speakers at the Board’s hearing on the subject the day before, “at least 6 percent of the deaths from heart attacks in the nation could be attributed to consumption of trans fats. `Everything we have learned about trans fats is damaging.’”
The meaning of this is that if something is shown to be bad, nothing else is required to put an end to its consumption: no cognition on the part of the individual consumer, no choice on his part. These count for nothing according to the New York City Board of Health and its alleged experts. They can simply be ignored and brushed aside.
Ignoring matters of knowledge and understanding, of choice and will, of voluntary consent, is certainly an appropriate way to deal with inanimate objects. However, it is not an appropriate, or practical, way to deal with the more intelligent animals, let alone children. It is absolutely not an appropriate or practical way to deal with adult human beings. It is the kind of method employed by criminals. Matters such as choice, will, and consent mean nothing to them. A rapist is perhaps the clearest example. Now, with its high-handed banning of trans fats, the New York City Board of Health has shown that it provides another example.
Such outrageous behavior on the part of government has become so common and ingrained that it well might pass as believable if someone were to claim that the following was an actual government plan being considered for enactment.
“Within ninety days, every citizen must report to a government authorized physician to be weighed, measured, and interviewed. On the basis of the data so obtained, the physician will determine the appropriate diet for the citizen in terms of calories, fats, proteins, and every other relevant category of nutrition.
“Within a further ninety days, each citizen will receive a ration book containing weekly allotments for the various nutritional categories. In buying food in supermarkets, restaurants, or anywhere else, the citizen will have to turn over whatever portion of his weekly allotments correspond to the nutritional values of the foods being purchased. All sellers of food will be required to determine the nutritional values of the foods they sell, if they have not already been determined. It shall be illegal to purchase food without surrendering the necessary allotment coupons. It shall be illegal to buy or sell such coupons.
“These measures are necessary because diets and other voluntary methods simply do not work. People are getting too fat. Diabetes is increasing. The government’s cost of providing medical care is increasing correspondingly.
“This program is what good health requires. The government already regulates alcohol and tobacco. The regulation of fats, sugars, and all other nutritional elements is no less necessary.
“Because of this program, overweight people will finally be compelled to lose weight, whether they want to or not. Diabetes and heart disease will be reduced. Health in general will improve. People will live longer.”
Such a program is implicit in the ideas people already accept. Indeed, nutritional values must already be printed on the packaging of practically all foods sold in supermarkets and grocery stores. At the same meeting at which it outlawed trans fats, the New York City Board of Health added a requirement that the calorie content of each food item be posted on the menus of hundreds of restaurants. It thus may well be only a question of time before such a program is actually proposed. If and when it is, there is presently no basis for expecting any principled opposition to it. The opponents will likely be of the kind who’ll think they’ve won a profound victory for “free markets” if they can make the ration coupons tradable.
The only basis of serious opposition is acceptance of the principle that there is something more fundamental and more important than mere physical health, that is, more important than the condition of man’s body considered as a mere hunk of mindless meat. And that is respect for the value of the human mind and of the individual’s freedom to act on the judgment of his mind. That is the principle for which libertarians must stand.
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 Board’s banning, last Tuesday [December 5, 2006], of the use of trans fats in restaurants is a second instance in which the Board shows that it has no compunctions about violating the sanctity of the human mind and its freedom to judge and to choose. The freedom of choice of the citizen apparently means nothing to the Board. Like a curt parent controlling the choices of a child and expecting that his “No” will be sufficient, the Board has taken away the power of choice from adult citizens and told them they will no longer be able to obtain food in restaurants that is prepared with trans fats.
What allegedly justifies this behavior by the Board is the mere fact that trans fats have supposedly been scientifically proven to be unhealthy. As reported by The New York Times of October 31, according to one of the speakers at the Board’s hearing on the subject the day before, “at least 6 percent of the deaths from heart attacks in the nation could be attributed to consumption of trans fats. `Everything we have learned about trans fats is damaging.’”
The meaning of this is that if something is shown to be bad, nothing else is required to put an end to its consumption: no cognition on the part of the individual consumer, no choice on his part. These count for nothing according to the New York City Board of Health and its alleged experts. They can simply be ignored and brushed aside.
Ignoring matters of knowledge and understanding, of choice and will, of voluntary consent, is certainly an appropriate way to deal with inanimate objects. However, it is not an appropriate, or practical, way to deal with the more intelligent animals, let alone children. It is absolutely not an appropriate or practical way to deal with adult human beings. It is the kind of method employed by criminals. Matters such as choice, will, and consent mean nothing to them. A rapist is perhaps the clearest example. Now, with its high-handed banning of trans fats, the New York City Board of Health has shown that it provides another example.
Such outrageous behavior on the part of government has become so common and ingrained that it well might pass as believable if someone were to claim that the following was an actual government plan being considered for enactment.
“Within ninety days, every citizen must report to a government authorized physician to be weighed, measured, and interviewed. On the basis of the data so obtained, the physician will determine the appropriate diet for the citizen in terms of calories, fats, proteins, and every other relevant category of nutrition.
“Within a further ninety days, each citizen will receive a ration book containing weekly allotments for the various nutritional categories. In buying food in supermarkets, restaurants, or anywhere else, the citizen will have to turn over whatever portion of his weekly allotments correspond to the nutritional values of the foods being purchased. All sellers of food will be required to determine the nutritional values of the foods they sell, if they have not already been determined. It shall be illegal to purchase food without surrendering the necessary allotment coupons. It shall be illegal to buy or sell such coupons.
“These measures are necessary because diets and other voluntary methods simply do not work. People are getting too fat. Diabetes is increasing. The government’s cost of providing medical care is increasing correspondingly.
“This program is what good health requires. The government already regulates alcohol and tobacco. The regulation of fats, sugars, and all other nutritional elements is no less necessary.
“Because of this program, overweight people will finally be compelled to lose weight, whether they want to or not. Diabetes and heart disease will be reduced. Health in general will improve. People will live longer.”
Such a program is implicit in the ideas people already accept. Indeed, nutritional values must already be printed on the packaging of practically all foods sold in supermarkets and grocery stores. At the same meeting at which it outlawed trans fats, the New York City Board of Health added a requirement that the calorie content of each food item be posted on the menus of hundreds of restaurants. It thus may well be only a question of time before such a program is actually proposed. If and when it is, there is presently no basis for expecting any principled opposition to it. The opponents will likely be of the kind who’ll think they’ve won a profound victory for “free markets” if they can make the ration coupons tradable.
The only basis of serious opposition is acceptance of the principle that there is something more fundamental and more important than mere physical health, that is, more important than the condition of man’s body considered as a mere hunk of mindless meat. And that is respect for the value of the human mind and of the individual’s freedom to act on the judgment of his mind. That is the principle for which libertarians must stand.
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.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Pick Your Gender and We’ll Enforce Your Choice, Says New York City’s Board of Health
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.
Applicants would have to have changed their name and shown that they had lived in their adopted gender for at least two years, but there would be no explicit medical requirements.
The meaning of these statements is that if you’re a man and want badly enough to be a woman, or if you’re a woman and want badly enough to be a man, in New York City you soon will be able to be so. In New York City, at least according to the city’s government, wishing to possess a different gender will actually make it so.
The Times confirms this judgment when it explains that “the proposed change … is an outgrowth of the transgender community’s push to recognize that some people may not have money to get a sex-change operation, while others may not feel the need to undergo the procedure and are simply defining themselves as members of the opposite sex.”
So, in New York City, starting soon if this rule is adopted, all you’ll have to do is define yourself as a member of the opposite sex and, according to the city’s government, you’ll be a member of the opposite sex. True, this isn’t strictly all that’s required. You’ll have to change your name appropriately, e.g., from Al to Alice, or from Samantha to Sam. And you’ll have to show that you’ve lived in your “adopted gender” for two years.
Please observe. This is not a matter of individuals being free to indulge in their sexual fantasies in their own bedrooms or in private clubs, or in any other private facility whose owner is willing to allow it to be used for such a purpose, whether it be a bar, a hotel, or an athletic stadium for that matter. No one who upholds private property rights can make objection to such a thing, irrespective of his personal evaluation of such behavior.
What is present in the rule being considered by New York City’s Board of Health is an attempt to forcibly impose the fantasy of some people on everyone else. It is an attempt to elevate fantasy to the level of actual reality and to compel everyone else to accept it as though it were reality.
The validity of this conclusion is demonstrated by The Times’ account of a young man who claims to be female and who said “she wanted a new birth certificate to prevent confusion, and to keep teachers, police officers and other authority figures from embarrassing her in public or accusing her of identity theft.” The Times recounts that when this individual recently visited a welfare office, “she included a note with her application for public assistance asking that she be referred to as Ms. when her turn for an interview came up. It did not work. The woman handling her case repeatedly addressed her as Mister.” The Times also states that “[t]he eight experts who addressed the birth certificate issue strongly recommended that the change be made, for the practical reasons [this individual] identified.”
What New York City’s Board of Health’s new rule would do would be to compel whoever handled such a case to refer to this young man as a woman, to call her “Ms.” and in every other respect treat her as a woman. Refusal to do so would necessarily constitute an actionable offense of some kind. For it would be refusing to comply with an official, governmental designation and doing so to the alleged hurt and humiliation of the person so designated. Refusal in such circumstances would have aspects of a “hate crime.”
Everyone who came into contact with an individual officially designated as a member of the opposite sex, and who refused to accept that designation, could potentially be accused of some form of hate crime. Supermarket checkers, cab drivers, waiters, repairmen, sales help of all kinds, and landlords and their employees, would all be at risk, along with doctors and nurses, policemen and firemen, and numerous other categories of people.
To comply with the law and avoid possible prosecution, people would be put in a position in which they would have to deny the evidence of their senses. Confronted with someone obviously belonging to one sex but claiming to be a member of the opposite sex and officially so designated, they would be compelled by the law to deny what they saw with their own eyes and to affirm as true what they knew to be false. Thus, what the New York City Board of Health is setting the stage for is the forcible violation of the human mind. In spirit, but on a far more mundane scale that can show up in the everyday lives of ordinary people, it is the heir to those who threatened Galileo because of his loyalty to the facts.
In its vicious treatment of Galileo, the Catholic Church claimed that it was acting to defend the foundations of theology and morality, which it believed required the anthropocentric view of the solar system that Galileo overthrew. What the New York City Board of Health is acting to defend is nothing nearly so grand. What it is acting to defend is a mere species of literal insanity: the insanity of fantasy indulged not now and then for a few minutes or a few hours, in the knowledge that it is fantasy, but raised to the level of a day-in, day-out way of life and regarded as reality. It wants to impose on everyone who may come into contact with those suffering from such delusion an obligation to participate in the delusion and to affirm that it is not delusion but reality.
A classic illustration of insanity is someone believing that he is Napoleon Bonaparte. The same logic that is present in its proposed new rule on gender identity would require the New York City Board of Health to certify such an individual not as insane, but as Napoleon. If someone changed his name to Napoleon Bonaparte, walked around in replicas of Napoleon’s uniforms, with his right hand always tucked into his tunic, and called his wife “Josephine,” and did such things for two years, he would have to be certified as being Napoleon by New York City’s Board of Health and the New York City government, if they were logically consistent.
If the New York City Board of Health does in fact enact its proposed rule on gender identity, its members who vote for the rule will have demonstrated a major loss of their own capacity to distinguish between fantasy and reality. They will deserve not only to be thrown out of office but also, it could reasonably be argued, to be committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Of course, it is next to impossible that they would be committed, because the source of the rule they are considering is none other than New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In New York City, the inmates, or those who arguably should be inmates, are literally running the asylum.
*****
1
Of course, it is an unjustified act of physical force to commit anyone against his will to a psychiatric hospital who has not himself previously initiated the use of physical force. And this applies to those who believe they are members of the gender opposite to their own. It also applies to those who may believe they are Napoleon.
So long as they do not initiate the use of force, they should be free to come and go as they please. But by the same token, no one should ever be threatened with the use of physical force merely for refusing to support their delusions or for contradicting them. That threat of physical force is what is coming out of New York City’s Board of Health.
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.
So long as they do not initiate the use of force, they should be free to come and go as they please. But by the same token, no one should ever be threatened with the use of physical force merely for refusing to support their delusions or for contradicting them. That threat of physical force is what is coming out of New York City’s Board of Health.
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.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Penn and Teller Send Recycling to the Dump
I’ve never had much use for Penn and Teller, a pair of comedians that I’ve seen from time to time on television and then have quickly turned off. But the other day, a reader of my blog, Mr. Robert Groot, a Canadian Ph.D. student, was kind enough to send me a link to their internet show on recycling.
I have to say that this show has made me a fan of theirs. It was a scathing critique of the illogic of recycling, done in a way that at times was hilarious.
I should add that at least in this show, the pair come across as serious libertarians, in addition to being powerful critics of recycling.
The first few minutes of the show are a little slow, but within 5 minutes, things pick up. Whatever you do, be sure to watch at least the first 8 or 9 minutes. (The full length is about half an hour.) There’s a sequence in there that you may find so funny you’ll have trouble catching your breath.
Here’s the link: http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/11/recycling-is-grigri-just-plain.html.
I have to say that this show has made me a fan of theirs. It was a scathing critique of the illogic of recycling, done in a way that at times was hilarious.
I should add that at least in this show, the pair come across as serious libertarians, in addition to being powerful critics of recycling.
The first few minutes of the show are a little slow, but within 5 minutes, things pick up. Whatever you do, be sure to watch at least the first 8 or 9 minutes. (The full length is about half an hour.) There’s a sequence in there that you may find so funny you’ll have trouble catching your breath.
Here’s the link: http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/11/recycling-is-grigri-just-plain.html.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Globalization: The Long-Run Big Picture
Summary
Globalization, in conjunction with its essential prerequisite of respect for private property rights, and thus the existence of substantial economic freedom in the various individual countries, has the potential to raise the productivity of labor and living standards all across the world to the level of the most advanced countries. In addition, it has the potential to bring about the radical improvement in productivity and living standards in what are today the most advanced countries, and to provide the strongest possible foundation for unprecedented further economic advance everywhere.
These overwhelmingly beneficial results are often hidden from view by the fact that at the same time globalization implies a substantial decline in the relative or even absolute nominal GDPs of today's advanced countries, the experience of which engenders opposition to the process. What is not seen is that to whatever extent globalization might reduce absolute nominal GDP in today's advanced countries, it reduces prices many times more, with the result that it correspondingly increases their real GDP, and that to whatever extent it reduces merely their relative nominal GDP, it again increases their real GDP many times more.
This article shows that by incorporating billions of additional people into the global division of labor, and correspondingly increasing the scale on which all branches of production and economic activity are carried on, globalization makes possible the unprecedented achievement of economies of scale—the maximum consistent with the size of the world's population. First and foremost among these will be the very substantial increase in the number of highly intelligent, highly motivated individuals working in all of the branches of science, technology, and business. This will greatly accelerate the rate of scientific and technological progress and business innovation. The achievement of all other economies of scale will also serve to increase what it is possible to produce with any given quantity of capital goods and labor.
Out of this larger gross product comes a correspondingly larger supply of capital goods, which makes possible a further increase in production, resulting in a still larger supply of capital goods, in a process that can be repeated indefinitely so long as scientific and technological progress and business innovation continue and an adequate degree of saving and provision for the future is maintained. The article shows that from the very beginning, the process of globalization serves to promote capital accumulation simply by dramatically increasing production in the countries in which foreign capital is invested, out of which increase in production comes an additional supply of capital goods.
Some critics of globalization, notably Paul Craig Roberts, do not understand how it promotes capital accumulation and instead believe that it deprives the advanced countries of capital. Others, notably Gomory and Baumol, view the effect of globalization on nominal GDP as though it were its effect on real GDP and are thus led to confuse competition for limited money revenue and income with economic conflict. This article answers both sets of errors, including related confusions concerning outsourcing.
To continue reading, please go to www.capitalism.net and follow the link to the article.
Globalization, in conjunction with its essential prerequisite of respect for private property rights, and thus the existence of substantial economic freedom in the various individual countries, has the potential to raise the productivity of labor and living standards all across the world to the level of the most advanced countries. In addition, it has the potential to bring about the radical improvement in productivity and living standards in what are today the most advanced countries, and to provide the strongest possible foundation for unprecedented further economic advance everywhere.
These overwhelmingly beneficial results are often hidden from view by the fact that at the same time globalization implies a substantial decline in the relative or even absolute nominal GDPs of today's advanced countries, the experience of which engenders opposition to the process. What is not seen is that to whatever extent globalization might reduce absolute nominal GDP in today's advanced countries, it reduces prices many times more, with the result that it correspondingly increases their real GDP, and that to whatever extent it reduces merely their relative nominal GDP, it again increases their real GDP many times more.
This article shows that by incorporating billions of additional people into the global division of labor, and correspondingly increasing the scale on which all branches of production and economic activity are carried on, globalization makes possible the unprecedented achievement of economies of scale—the maximum consistent with the size of the world's population. First and foremost among these will be the very substantial increase in the number of highly intelligent, highly motivated individuals working in all of the branches of science, technology, and business. This will greatly accelerate the rate of scientific and technological progress and business innovation. The achievement of all other economies of scale will also serve to increase what it is possible to produce with any given quantity of capital goods and labor.
Out of this larger gross product comes a correspondingly larger supply of capital goods, which makes possible a further increase in production, resulting in a still larger supply of capital goods, in a process that can be repeated indefinitely so long as scientific and technological progress and business innovation continue and an adequate degree of saving and provision for the future is maintained. The article shows that from the very beginning, the process of globalization serves to promote capital accumulation simply by dramatically increasing production in the countries in which foreign capital is invested, out of which increase in production comes an additional supply of capital goods.
Some critics of globalization, notably Paul Craig Roberts, do not understand how it promotes capital accumulation and instead believe that it deprives the advanced countries of capital. Others, notably Gomory and Baumol, view the effect of globalization on nominal GDP as though it were its effect on real GDP and are thus led to confuse competition for limited money revenue and income with economic conflict. This article answers both sets of errors, including related confusions concerning outsourcing.
To continue reading, please go to www.capitalism.net and follow the link to the article.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
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:
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.
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.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.
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.)
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.
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