Capitalism Magazine Classics

1. Hatred of Western Civilization
   Why Terrorists Attacked America
   
2. In Defense of the "Barbarous Relic"
   Why The Enemies of Capitalism Smear The Gold Standard
   
3. Immigration and Individual Rights
   Does a foreigner have a moral right to move to America? And should America welcome him?
   
4. A Tale of Two Novels
   Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Versus James Joyce's Ulysses

Auto Atlas Has Shrugged

Mike from The New Clarion in this article talks about the state of the auto industry in America being discussed at the National Summit on the economy in Detroit. He talks about Nolan Finley, editor of the Detroit News who laments the fact that nobody seems to care about business and industry any more. In reponse to his charge that no one in charge is much interested in hearing their ideas for fixing things, Mike highlights the role of media:

Could it be all those past editorials claiming that some taxes, some emission regulations, some fuel economy regulations, some labor regulations and other government mandates were noble and virtuous goals, but we mustn’t over do it by trying to be too noble and virtuous. Could it be that people no longer believe that it’s virtuous to take poison with their food?

Some of the media morons might be having some doubts but the majority still thinks that a little bit of poison will act like a digestive and be good for you. The conference had a CEO wanting reviving business by making it "cool." So it's not the principles involved but the cool factor which is important. In response to this appealing to "feelings", Mike say:

Never mind appealing to anyone’s mind, their reason, or their own moral and constitutional right to make the cars they want to make with the kind of fuel efficiency and emissions people are willing to pay for. No. We must figure out a way to make life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the prosperity it brings, ‘cool’. In a culture where sacrificial emotions take precedence over reason, the more consistent emotionalists will prevail. That’s why Obama, Pelosi and Reid are now in charge.

Mr. Finely also talks of the free market lesson one of the Senators got from a CEO who just ended up extolling the Senator to fine tune his powers to distribute the resources. This is a classic case of "sanction of the victim." Instead of standing up to these leeches, businessmen all over the world are convinced about their mortal sin of being producers, originators of that horrible word, dare I say it - profit. They should listen to Yaron Brook, who said in his keynote speech to the Virginia Republicans," businessmen are the heroes."

I see Industrialists coming on TV every year after the broadcast of that marvel of Socialism - budget, the annual exercise of allocation of resources in India by the Finance Minister. Their companies are in hands of one man and I have yet to see even one business federation give the budget a thumbs down. They just make polite noises (could have been better.) The business schools need to make Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal mandatory reading.

Conservatives and liberals- Are they any different?

In my last post "Conservatism- Intellectual backbone wanted" I wrongly assumed that Conservatism could be backed by an intellectual backbone. In his comment on the same post Burgess Laughlin said:

Conservatism, by definition, opposes capitalism. Conservat-ISM is an ideology, the ideology that holds four values as its guide: God (or religion generally), Tradition, Nation, and Family (as in "family values"). Philosophically these values mean supernaturalism, mysticism, and altruism. The step from those to statism is very short -- and it usually involves the nationalistic sort of statism.

Today I read an article "Are you a conservative or a liberal? by Linn and Ari Armstrong which addresses the issue of what exactly do conservative and liberal tags actually mean. They define both as:

What does it mean to be a conservative? Many of the same conservatives who claim to support free markets and liberty also endorse economic protectionism, censorship, welfare spending, corporate welfare, immigration restrictions, prohibitions of various substances and activities that violate nobody's rights, abortion bans, and so on.

Liberalism, one might think, has something to do with liberty. Yet today's liberals endorse political economic planning on a vast scale. They typically want to forcibly redistribute more wealth, impose controls on private property, and impose more “enlightened” forms of censorship.

Many of today's conservatives and liberals find common cause in the belief that politicians should largely control your life.

The above description renders the tags meaningless as they both lead to the same thing- a mixed Government. Armstrong's also mention Thomas Paine's discussions with Edmund Burke in his "Rights of Man" where Paine defines mixed government as:

A mixed government is an imperfect everything, cementing and soldering the discordant parts together by corruption, to act as a whole. In the mixed Government there is no responsibility: the parts cover each other till responsibility is lost; and the corruption then moves the machine, contrives at the same time its own escape.

Paine goes on to offer the alternative.

But in a well-constituted republic, nothing of this soldering, praising, and pitying, can take place; the representation being equal throughout the country, and complete in itself, however it maybe into legislative ans executive, they all have one and the same natural source. The parts are not foreigners to each other, like democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. As there are no discordant distinctions, there is nothing to corrupt by compromise, nor confound by contrivance.

In the end nobody says it better than Ayn Rand who is quoted by the authors as saying:

“The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism. For decades, this issue has been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-terms of ‘conservatism' and ‘liberalism' which had lost their original meaning and could be stretched to mean all things to all men.”

George Reisman on demise of GM

Reisman in this post discusses the demise General Motors. He talks about it's glorious history.

It was once not only the world’s greatest and most prosperous automobile company but the world’s greatest and most prosperous manufacturing company. Its success, wealth, and economic power, were symbolic of the success, wealth, and economic power of the United States.

He mentions the reasons for this devastating and depressing loss. He talks about the unfortunate election of the wealth redistributive Obama. Isn't it ironic that the politicians who talk about redistributing wealth are the ones who ultimately cause it's destruction and in the end there is nothing left to distribute. They are like leaches whose bellies are never full and they never drop off. They are the parasites who destroy their host. That's why the countries who choose this path of anti-capitalism have a dark future. We have seen this time and again but it's the ignorance and denial which makes sure that history will keep repeating itself.

I suggest reading George Reisman's Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. A free pdf replica is available for download. I am reading this book and I can tell you that reading economics with an Objectivist angle (Reisman knew Ayn Rand) is quite unique and illuminating.

Reismans blog is back on blogger. Read about Google's stupid handling of the whole affair.

Definition of "Excessive force"

There has been a lot of hue and cry over the attacks on Indian students in Australia. There are over 90000 Indian students in Australia and there have been half a dozen attacks recently of varying degrees ranging from beatings to a stabbing. There has been a lot of noise over the racial nature of violence.

What I would like to know is whether the brutal beating of the non-racial nature is any less painful or acceptable? A lot of the acts were robberies gone wrong. In any case racism of all variety is deplorable but to condemn the whole country as racist because of a few nuts is ridiculous. A lot of my relatives have been and some still are in Australia and they can't stop singing it's praises.

The role of media in whipping up of hysteria is verging on unethical. There have been no figures given on the comparisons in attacks on Indian students and other students, number of attacks in past and the current year. The TV channels in their enthusiasm now are going hysterical on the alleged excessive force used by the Melbourne police in removing protesters forcibly who refused to move from one of the busiest streets of Melbourne. Excessive force? You've got to be kidding me? I saw the footage and I saw nothing of that sort. Besides, what were they supposed to do? Let them sit there and inconvenience everybody else?

The students by their mass protest and blocking of the streets have done their cause no good. I'll quote Ayn Rand who said the following:

The forcible occupation of another man’s property or the obstruction of a public thoroughfare is so blatant a violation of rights that an attempt to justify it becomes an abrogation of morality. An individual has no right to do a “sit-in” in the home or office of a person he disagrees with—and he does not acquire such a right by joining a gang. Rights are not a matter of numbers—and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
The Cashing-In: The Student ‘Rebellion,’” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 256.

In India a protest like this would not be handled by Indian police with such civility. There are far more worse things police here do then bodily lift protesters. These include tear gassing, cane charge, hitting with rifle-butts (I was beaten-up during anti-reservation protest in 91, couldn't walk for three days), molestation of women (the whole country saw the groping of doctors on TV), shooting- frequently resulting in seriously wounding and killing of protesters (retaliation against stone throwing).

The hypocrisy of the Indian media is unbelievable. I have not seen such massive collective cry of outrage by the media in recent past over the far more serious violations by the police in India. If the conduct of Aussie police is labeled "excessive force", I wonder if we can ever find the right words to suitably describe the barbaric behavior of the Indian police.

Capitalism: The Only Moral System

Today's Denver Post published a nasty attack on capitalism. This is Ari Armstong's online comment. Here is the letter:
http://tinyurl.com/qw2z4u
And here is his reply:
I’ll untangle Brickley’s many confusions. Capitalism protects people’s right to live their own lives and interact voluntarily with others, by their own judgment, free from political controls. Capitalism means a system in which individuals rights to property and contract are consistently protected. In capitalism, the job of the government is to protect people from force and fraud.

To the degree that politicians interfere in the market, that is not capitalism, but its opposite. If “bribed governments” grant to some businesses political advantages to seize wealth by force or forcibly harm competitors, that is not “unregulated capitalism;” it is a market controlled to some degree by politicians.

Capitalism is regulated (made regular) first by a government that protects against force and fraud, and second by the independent judgment of individuals. If you don’t like a company’s products or services, don’t buy them! If you think you can do better, you are free to try. But this is not the sort of “regulation” that the enemies of capitalism have in mind. Instead, they call on politicians to control the economy and violate people’s rights.

Brickley is right about one thing: capitalism is incompatible with pure democracy. Capitalism protects individual rights. Pure democracy is mob rule, it is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner, it is 51 percent of the population enslaving the other 49 percent.
Brickley calls capitalism, the only system compatible with the reasoning mind of man, a “religion,” and equates it with Soviet communism. This is pure projection. For the full justification of capitalism, see Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

Capitalism is marked by men of drive and genius developing the goods and services — the health care, the technology, the food, the housing, the cars — we need to thrive. Their motive is to produce life- enhancing products and exchange them voluntarily with others for their personal gain. No motive could be more noble.

As for nastiness, we need look no further than Brickley’s smear campaign against capitalism and capitalists.

Union of Keynes and Kant

Updated
In his article "The Nuttiness of Negative Interest Rates" Robert P. Murphy on Mises Institute web-site wrote that
"In his April 18 New York Times op-ed, Harvard professor (and Bush adviser) Greg Mankiw calls on the Federal Reserve to promise future inflation, in order to fix the economy. Mankiw's article beautifully illustrates what is wrong with today's economics profession: it consists of very sharp guys (and gals) who can develop interesting models that spit out policy recommendations that would destroy the economy. It is no coincidence that Mankiw's worldview leads him to literally propose destroying the currency in order to fix the economy."

It is not surprising that the proposal of literally destroying currency comes from an American professor of one of the leading universities. An economics professor is the ultimate union of Kant and Keynes. Kant laid the foundation for the destruction of human mind and Keynes followed closely with his own recipe for the destruction of the capitalism.

The collectivist view that the economies resources are somehow their responsibility, to be managed and disposed off as they like is the dominant theme of the article. So what if the problems were caused during this management as pointed out by the author which Mankiw conveniently refuses to address. Though I am no great authority on economics, even with my basic knowledge, I can recognise the ugly mishmash of non-reason and anti-capitalism coming together in this call to destroy what Rand said was "the ultimate barometer of a society's virtue"- the money.

Read a part of the speech made by Francisco d'Anconia, Galt's friend on the meaning of money:
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence...
To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortune-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being-the self-made man-the American industrialist.
If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose-because it contains all the others-the fact that they were the people who created the phrase "to make money.""
"The Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.

In America today, the phrase "to make money" is losing it's shine. The strangled free-market system is under a renewed and a more vigorous assault. The solutions which are proposed by the current administration are going to push the existing mixed-economic system dangerously close to Socialism. It is the system which is depressingly familiar to those Objectivists living in third-world countries. My overwhelming concern is that when I come to America, I hope it doesn't resemble the place I have left behind.

The proposed solution to solve the current crisis, of encouraging households and businesses to borrow and spend with the helpful dose of inflationary currency as proposed by the Harvard economist is not a new one. Ayn Rand wrote in her "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" in October 65 that "there are economist who proclaim that the essence (and the moral justification) of capitalism is "service to others-to the consumers," that the consumers wishes are the absolute edicts ruling the free market, etc. (...what all such theorists fail to mention is the fact that capitalism grants economic recognition to only one kind of consumer: the producer-that only traders, i.e., producers who have something to offer, are recognized on a free market, not "consumers" as such-that, in a capitalist economy, as in reason, in justice, and in reality, production is the pre-condition of consumption.)"

Green, mean and anti-capitalist

What Ayn Rand said is so true that " Within every category of goods and
services offered on a free market, it is the purveyor of the best
product at the cheapest price who wins the greatest financial rewards
in that field-not automatically nor immediately nor by fiat.."(Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal).
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Green Trade Wars
Forbes Magazine dated April 27, 2009

While the world has had its eye on tariffs and quotas, another trade
war has been simmering, over dumping. This month, U.S. Steel and other
American manufacturers filed suit against China, alleging the dumping
of $2.6 billion worth of welded and seamless steel pipes...

What makes this fight different is that steelmakers have a curious
ally: the environmental crowd. Steel is a polluting industry, slurping
up lots of coal for smelting and spitting carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere. If the U.S. puts a cost on domestic CO2 (in the form of a
tax or an expensive emission permit), and if China doesn't impose a
similar burden on its smokestacks, then Chinese steel companies have
an unfair advantage. The enviros propose to make the contest fair by
imposing a pollution equalization tax at the border. This tariff idea
gets a loud "amen" from the U.S. steel industry.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence

Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence:
A video presentation by Onkar Ghate
In 1776 Thomas Jefferson announced to the world America’s plans for independence. For the first time in history, there was to be a nation and a government dedicated to the individual’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.....
On this, the book’s 50th anniversary, we will examine the moral revolution launched by Ayn Rand, without which the political revolution of the Founding Fathers had to remain incomplete. We will see what this moral revolution has meant for America so far, and what it promises for the future. We will see why Atlas Shrugged should be considered America’s second Declaration of Independence—a declaration not of political but of moral independence.

Growth of corruption equals decline in freedom

Forbes in its article "The Most Corrupt Countries" says

Corruption is on the march. In 2008, the number of countries sinking deeper into the clutches of influence peddling, bribery and scandalous business dealings outpaced improvements by a 2 to 1 margin. Countries falling by more than 10 spots outnumbered risers 8.5 to 1....
Nations with the highest risk of corruption are often the desperately poor, where foreign aid and assistance can easily be transferred through back channels of oppressive regimes. As a result, the impact of corruption can extend well beyond any economic detraction to affect the quality of life for millions of citizens.

It is clear from the article that the growth of corruption is directly related to decline in freedom. One can clearly see that the discretionary powers given to government officials which violate the basic tenets of Capitalism have increasingly resulted in the chaotic economic mess the world finds itself in.The blaming of the mess on the free markets is laughable since even in America in the last hundred years the markets have been heavily regulated and burdened with unsound polices.

The obvious solution for this problem of corruption as George Reisman in his epic work "Capitalism- A Treatise on Economics" said:
"The solution is, of course, the restoration of the businessman's freedom and his security from the destructive actions of the government officials. When the businessman can once again act for his profit by right rather than permission, when the government has lost the power both to harm him and to harm others for his benefit, the problem of such bribery and corruption will shrivel to insignificance."

The counter-attack against Ayn Rand

Paul Hsieh has posted this on the OActivist.
The too-brief honeymoon that Ayn Rand has enjoyed in the media is now over, and the anti-Rand counterattack is now in full swing. There have been a number of recent high-profile articles disparaging Rand and her ideas, including:
"Ayn Rand is the last role model we need right now" (Independent) http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/christina-patterson...
Do their misrepresentations of Rand make you mad? They make me mad.

Damn right they make me mad so in response to the one written in the Independent, I wrote:
I wish you had come to India where I live instead of Cambodia. Most people have seen in the recent past how difficult it is to live and work for productive people in a place where profit was a dirty word, it is very easy for people here to understand what Rand was talking about in the "Atlas Shrugged". The coming out (even partially) out of the socialist pit was like a lifeline for the people and which has bought unprecedented rise in living standards and made heroes and icons out of people like the billionaire Ambani brothers.

It's not about strong trampling the weak instead its rewarding competence and giving freedom to people to pursue there goals and happiness. The example you give of an injured child being ignored was more likely to happen in the socialist past then it is today where there is a thriving media willing to highlight injustices and people are more willing to share there prosperity and help others.I wish that the author of the article was more through in her research and had Ayn Rands views before writing such a piece.

What is it about such a philosophy which advocates rational self-interest and capitalism as its expression- essentially freedom for people to deal with each other without govt. interference- that brings out such misleading and negative comments. Who could have thought that the very idea of free people could scare so many people.

Living under Socialism

It was the summer of 89 and I was in my second year of college doing my B.Com. I was working for my father in New Delhi. He had a factory where we made cast iron machine parts. A few years ago the government had set quota's for the pig iron used for casting. The criteria for quota was whatever quantity had been bought during the previous months. It was the start of the shortages, black market and bureaucratic interference in the business which was already very difficult to conduct. There were dozens of inspectors from various departments and they had be paid-off or you could forget about doing any business. There were so many ridiculous laws that it was impossible to comply with them even if you wanted to.

One of my jobs was to check with the local govt. office if our quota of pig iron had come. I had to go to the office which was on the outskirts of the city on my puny scooter between rashly driven trucks since nobody would tell you anything on the phone even if you somehow got through. One time I went their consecutively for three days , stood outside the office (no place to sit and during summer it can reach 44 deg. C/111 F.) and still had no news of our iron. Since there were no mobile phones at that time and no payphones around I had to beg some official to let me use his phone to make a call.

The staff was indifferent at best of times and outright hostile at other times. All the offices were dull, dusty, drab, dreary and every time you entered one your heart sank a little at the prospect of dealing with people who didn't even bother to look at you and were deliberately dismissive. If you persisted they would snap at you like a rabid dog and it was almost physically painful when you had be very polite and use deferential tone even when you wanted scream at them and ask them if they were human before grinding there faces in the pile of dusty files in front of him.

Sometimes I wish I could have made a virtual tour of the whole experience for the benefit of those people who want more regulation, more interference and remind them of those days. As such we are hardly out of the license and inspector raj and some people want to drag us back to those evil times.

I wish I could tell people in America that I had lived through the worst case scenarios portrayed in "Atlas shrugged" by Ayn Rand. A society which mocks and denigrates the achievements of it's producers is not a pleasant place to live in. I dreaded the days when some new teacher would ask kids about their fathers profession and I kid you not when I say that after saying my father was a businessman I would see contempt and in one particular case downright hostility. This one teacher got on my case and constantly taunted me by saying why did I have study since my father was a big businessman I didn't have to worry about making a living anyway.

I wonder about America's capacity for more abuse. Is Obama going to be the last straw? Is he going to turn people away from socialist idea's by proving their futility and failure. With Santelli's rant on CNBC getting widespread support and a lot of resistance to the bailout I would say Americans are not ready to throw in the towel and surrender meekly. With core of objectivist activists leading the way their is still hope for the greatest country in the world. And don't forget people like me who are American at heart (born in the wrong place) who will do there best to keep it that way.

Maruti Suzuki wants to sell less cars

Few days back I went to the Maruti's (Nariana, Delhi) car service outlet. There were signs all over the place wanting people to avoid using their cars once a week and instead use the public transport. I asked a couple of officials who were around the reason for it and they said that the company was pro-environment and they wanted me to admire the various measures like their compost pit etc. (you get the idea). When I explained that I thought that the sign was illogical and if they thought that their cars were damaging the environment wouldn't it make more sense to simply use public transport everyday and completely do away with the cars. He had no answer and he explained that it was their GM's idea and since he was standing just behind us why didn't I talk to him.

He introduced me to the GM (who comes to work on a bicycle) who was flabbergasted when he heard about my objection to his sign. He just blurted that this was the first time someone had any problems with the environmental message of his. When I explained that it was illogical for a business to want it's customers to use less of it's product and that it made no sense, he became outright hostile and said that I was entitled to my opinion and that he didn't want to argue with me. He softened a little when I patiently explained that I was a big admirer of the company (first modern car maker in India) and that I assumed that his message was for welfare of his customers and people in general. If that was so then it made more sense for company to sell more cars, build more plants, establish more dealerships and continue to bring prosperity as it had been doing in the past (and not go back to riding bicycles).

The guy first refused to acknowledge that using less of a product means selling lesser amounts of it and tried to bluster his way out by asking me if I had been to Australia and if knew how things worked there? (made no sense at all). I said I was very well informed (didn't go to Moon to know about the terrain on it) but I was more interested in his reasons for his action here in India. He just said a thing can't be wrong if so many intellectuals had come together and decided that this was what was right. Ah! the consensus thing again. I reminded him that just a few centuries ago only one man on the planet said that it was spherical and the rest believed it was flat and that it didn't change the fact that it was round just because millions said it wasn't so.

Reality, reason and logic are not decided by a popularity contest. Needless to say that the conversation didn't go anywhere but I made my point and objection heard (had an audience of three junior officers). The GM who I believe is a IIT and management school product was less open to reason then his lesser educated juniors. The so called institutes of higher learning have become places of non-reason and anti-intellect. These people who should be proud flag-bearers of capitalism have turned suicidal and instead embraced all sorts of irrational and anti-man ideologies. All we can do is object to these stupid things and try to get our point across using reason as our primary tool.