Category: Commentaries

Atlasphere member Ed Younkins has published an excellent article titled “Atlas Shrugged in the Business School.”
In the article, Younkins makes some great points about the instructional utility of fiction, Atlas Shrugged‘s unique value in this regard, and the many formats in which the novel is already being taught in business school and business ethics programs around the country.
From the introduction:

Novels, as well as plays and films, are excellent teaching tools for communicating ideas to students. A well-constructed and compelling story can engage students and make a subject more vital to them.
Fiction provides students with interesting material that does not seem like hard work. The result is that novels tend to have greater teaching power and more appeal to students than articles, textbooks, or case studies.
Because students are apt to enjoy reading fiction, it is likely that they may grasp ideas quicker and better than when more conventional teaching methods are used. For many people, pure theory is not as exciting as a good story.

The full article is well worth reading in its entirity.

Edward Hudgins, TOC Washington Director, raises an interesting twist on the Iraqi abuse scandal. Writing for TOC’s Media Center, Hudgins asks, Why are we outraged at the abuse?

We react the way we do because we are a civilized country based on certain universal principles of morality and justice: that human beings possess an inherent dignity and autonomy as individuals and should not be subjected to the arbitrary use of force, either by other individuals or by government.
Governments should protect the life, liberty and property of individuals, and thus their powers must be limited and checked lest they become our masters rather than our servants. Even suspected criminals and terrorists should be protected by some form of due process; they are not the playthings for the whims of their guards. If we punish them, it is in order to administer justice, not to satisfy sadistic urges.
Our military violated those principles, but we have a system that allows us to expose and correct such violations—a mark of our system’s political health. And our revulsion at the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison is a mark of the moral health of our culture.

Hudgins then goes on to critize the the values and cultures of most Middle East countries.

Consider attitudes in the Middle East toward arbitrary violence. The Pew Research Center found that of those surveyed in Morocco and Jordan, two moderate Arab countries, 66 percent and 70 percent respectively believe that suicide bombings against Americans in Iraq are justified, and 74 percent and 86 percent believe such bombings by Palestinians against Israelis are acceptable. Consider attitudes in the region toward government. A survey taken last year in Iraq by Zogby International found that 37 percent of respondents thought that the United States would be the best model for a new government. But 28 percent favored Saudi Arabia and the remainder favored Syria, Iran or Egypt. That is, 63 percent favored dictatorships.
President Bush is correct that every individual deserves freedom. He is right that a tolerant and peaceful Iraqi government and culture would be beneficial for the citizens of that country, a model for the region and a bulwark against terrorism. But we must ask a more basic question: Are the people of Iraq and other countries in the region fit for freedom?

Read the full article…

Writing for TownHall.com, Alan Reynolds provides an elegant analysis of how taxation influences one’s motivation to work. From his article:

I have discovered a fool-proof strategy for beating the income tax, the Social Security tax and the Medicare tax: Lower your income.

After analyzing his own (tongue-in-cheek?) experiences with this strategy, he concludes:

The sensible solution is to stop working at 62-65, or to work as little as possible — like running a 12-cylinder engine on 4 cylinders. Yet this is a dangerous message to send to our rapidly aging population. Future growth of tax revenues, and of the economy, will be heavily dependent on whether or not older Americans choose leisure over work.
Between 2000 and 2020, the population between the ages of 25 and 54 is projected to increase by only 3 percent while the population over 55 increases by 63 percent. If older people shun work, there will be virtually no growth in the labor force aside from immigration. America’s medium-term challenge is not a shortage of jobs but a prospective shortage of willing and able workers.
Even if only a fraction of future seniors respond in the ways I have to tax penalties on work, money flowing into the Treasury, Social Security and Medicare from an aging workforce will slow even more than expected.
A few years ago, the Russell Sage Foundation (which routinely bankrolls egalitarians) sponsored a collection of papers turning Ayn Rand’s opus into a question, “Does Atlas Shrug?” The authors could not get the right answers because they did not ask the right questions. Work effort cannot be measured by hours on the job. Work effort is more like a dimmer switch than a light switch; we adjust it by degrees. And mature, educated taxpayers are not docile sheep but wily foxes. When tax collectors set out to punish extra effort and investment, we get the message.

See the full article for additional information.

ChronWatch.com has published an op-ed by Peter Schwartz titled “The Threat of the Paternalistic State” that begins:

A precondition of freedom is the recognition of the individual’s capacity to make decisions for himself. If man were viewed as congenitally incapable of making rational choices, there would be no basis for the very concept of rights. Yet that is increasingly how our government views us. It is adopting the role of a paternalistic nanny, zealously protecting the citizen against his own actions. In the process, our freedom is disappearing.
Obvious examples of this attitude are laws mandating the use of automobile seat belts and motorcycle helmets. Gambling is another area in which the state believes it must keep the individual from harming himself. New York State, for example, has threatened to sue Citibank for allowing credit cards to be used for Internet gambling and for “making profits off the financial hardships of compulsive gamblers.”

See the full article for further elaboration.

In his latest op-ed, Ed Hudgins, Washington Director for The Objectivist Center, calls April 15—tax day in the US—a day of moral shame. Hudgins writes:

Politicians tell us, “We know you’re not up to the burden of raising your own children, earning enough money to educate them, insuring yourselves against illness or unemployment, saving for your retirement, tying your own shoes or wiping your own noses without our help. Don’t worry, we’ll give you all you need.”

If we have any integrity we should spit on such offers. We should resent the theft of our opportunities to experience the pride that comes from taking responsibility for our own lives as well as the theft of our money by tax collectors to make good on these politicians’ promises. Rather, we should tell our government to protect our lives, liberties and property—that is, our freedom and independence—and otherwise leave us alone. Instead, a majority of citizens applaud politicians and candidates who drag them further down into the depths of dependency.

Read the full article…

Elan Journo, writing for ARI’s MediaLink, provides excellent answers to the question, “Are America’s CEOs paid more than they deserve?”

To successfully steer a corporation across the span of years by integrating its strengths toward the goal of creating wealth, requires from the CEO exceptional thought and judgment. Excellent CEOs are as rare as MLB-caliber pitchers or NFL-caliber quarterbacks. And in the business world, every day is the Super Bowl. There is no off-season or respite from the need to perform at one’s peak.
Given the effect a CEO can have on a company’s success, we can understand why their compensation packages can be so high. One way employers reward excellence is through bonuses. For many CEOs, bonuses amount to a large portion of their earnings. Some CEOs are paid a token salary, but are rewarded with large parcels of company stock; last year, for instance, the CEO of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs, earned $1 in salary and received stock valued at $75 million. As is the case with athletes and other individuals whose talents are rare and much prized, the CEO’s pay package is calculated with an eye on the competition. Companies pay millions of dollars to a valuable CEO, one who they judge will produce wealth for the shareholders, in part so he will not be hired away by a competitor.

See his full editorial for further illumination.

Philip Coates published the following on the OWL discussion forum. It’s one of the best commentaries I’ve seen on the subject of how to critically absorb the information handed down by the mass media.

Every few years, I break my rule about not following the news week in and week out (repetitious, lame, stupid, biased, non-essential) and follow an entire current event with complete thoroughness until it winds down.
I do this when it seems to tell me something about the culture or when something which could affect my life is at issue.
I did this with the OJ trial because I was interested in the philosophy of law and how the legal process works. I did this for similar reasons with the ‘Florida battle’ over whether Bush or Gore won fairly in that state. Today I did it one more time with Condoleeza Rice’s testimony before the 9-11 Commission on whether or not the Bush Administration did enough about terrorism prior to 9-11 and whether they could have prevented it or were warned about it.
Continue reading “How to Follow the News Intelligently”

ARI MediaLink op-ed columnist Robert Garmong has published a new editorial titled “Politics Without Mirrors” which begins:

In a current Supreme Court case, Michael Newdow has challenged the constitutionality of reading the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. Newdow, an atheist, argues that the Pledge’s reference to America as “one nation under God,” constitutes governmental establishment of religion. The Bush administration counters that the pledge is “a patriotic exercise, not a religious testimonial,” and should be allowed.
This might seem to be a trivial case. But as part of a “culture war” between the religious Right and the secular Left, it has taken on an ominous significance. Both sides have demonstrated naked hostility to the independent mind: the Right, by its desire to force school-aged children to profess religious belief; the Left, by its demands for governmental support for secular ideas.
The First Amendment established what Thomas Jefferson termed a “wall of separation” between Church and State?a deliberate break with the then-standard European practice of establishing an official church by governmental edict and supporting it by taxes. The purpose of Church/State separation was to protect the right to disagree in matters of religion: to ensure that the power of the government would never be used to force a person to profess or support a religious idea he does not agree with. Government officials may make whatever religious pronouncements they wish, on their own?but they may not use the power of the government to promote their ideas.
On religion or any other topic, an individual’s ideas are the matter of his own mind, decided by the application (or misapplication) of his own rational faculty. To force a man to adhere to a particular doctrine is to subvert the very faculty that makes real agreement possible and meaningful, and thereby to paralyze his mechanism for recognizing truth. The kind of forced “agreement” obtained by governmental edict is every bit as meaningless as was the Iraqis’ “love” for Saddam.

See Garmong’s full editorial for additional analysis.