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21121. A Civilized Society: The Necessary Conditions

Author:
Craig Biddle
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Author's note: This is chapter 7 of my book Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It (Richmond: Glen Allen Press, 2002), which is an introduction to Ayn Rand's morality of rational egoism. Chapters 1–6 were reprinted in prior issues of TOS. We have seen that being moral consists in being self-interested—acting in a life-promoting manner. We have also seen that what most fundamentally makes life-furthering actions possible to human beings is rational thinking. In order to live, we have to use our mind to discover the requirements of our life, and we have to act accordingly. We begin this chapter with the question: What can prevent us from acting on our judgment? What can stop us from employing our means of survival? Observe that if you are alone on an island, nothing can stop you from acting on your judgment. If you decide that you should acquire some food, you are free to make a spear and go hunting, fashion some tackle and go fishing, or plant a garden and tend to it. And if you obtain food, you are free to eat it, save it, or discard it. Likewise, if you decide that you should build a shelter, you are free to gather materials and construct one. And if you do, you are free to live in it, build an addition onto it, or tear it down. Alone on an island, you are free to act according to the judgment of your mind. But suppose another person shows up on the island, grabs you, and ties you to a tree. Clearly, you are no longer free to act on your judgment: If you had planned to go hunting, you cannot go. If you had planned to build a shelter, you cannot build it. Whatever your plans were, they are now ruined. And if you are not freed from your bondage, you will soon die. The brute's force has come between your planning and your acting, between your thinking and your doing. You can no longer act on your judgment; you can no longer act as your life requires; you can no longer live as a human being. Of course, the brute could feed you and keep you breathing; but a “life” of bondage is not a human life. A human life is a life guided by the judgment of one's own mind. In order to live as human beings, we have to be able to act on our judgment; wild animals aside, the only thing that can stop us from doing so is other people; and the only way they can stop us is by using physical force. Consider another example. A girl is walking to the store intent on using her money to buy some groceries when a man jumps out from an alley, points a gun at her head, and says: “Give me your purse, or die.” Now the girl cannot act according to her plan. Either she is going to give her purse to the thief, or she is going to get shot in the head. In any event, she is not going grocery shopping. By placing a gun between the girl and her goal, the thief is forcing her to act against her judgment—against her means of survival. If she hands her purse to him, and if he flees without shooting her, she can resume acting on her judgment—but, importantly: not with respect to the stolen money. While the thief may be gone, the effect of his force remains. By keeping the girl's money, he continues to prevent her from spending it; and to that extent, he continues to stop her from acting on her judgment. This ongoing force does not thwart the girl's life totally, but it does thwart her life partially: If she had her money, she would either spend it or save it; but since the thief has her money, she can do neither. She cannot use her money as she chooses, and her life is, to that degree, retarded.

21122. Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Americans today have been told to expect years of military action overseas. Yet they are also being told that they should not expect victory; that a “definitive end to the conflict” is not possible; and that success will mean a level of violence that “does not define our daily lives.” John David Lewis holds that this defeatist attitude is completely at odds with the lessons of history. In Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History, Lewis shows how nations in the past that faced far greater threats and more formidable foes than America does now went on to defeat their enemies and win lasting peace. Lewis examines six major wars, devoting one chapter each to the Greco-Persian wars, the Theban wars, the Second Punic War, the campaigns of the Roman emperor Aurelian, the American Civil War, and two chapters to World War II. He shows how the Greeks defeated the mighty Persian empire, how the Thebans shattered the mirage of Spartan invulnerability, how the Romans swiftly ended a long war by attacking the enemy's home front, how Aurelian battled enemies on many fronts to reunite Rome, how William Tecumseh Sherman marched through the American South and destroyed the Confederate will to fight, and how America achieved a permanent victory over Japan. While recounting the key events of each conflict, Lewis draws several important, universally applicable lessons.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
America and Romania

21123. Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Ide

Author:
Burgess Laughlin
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
In Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea, authors C. Bradley Thompson and Yaron Brook show that the neoconservative intellectual movement is very much alive. Those who carry its banners are “deeply embedded in America's major think tanks, philanthropic foundations, media outlets, and universities” (p. 1). Then why would the authors select a title that implies that the object of their study is dead? The title is ironic, in part because the authors hope that their book may cause the movement's death, thus “inspiring the need for some future obituary” (p. 2). The authors wrote their lean work to Americans “who value our nation's founding principles” (p. x). The main message is that neoconservatives, who boast of being “in the American grain,” threaten those principles. That inference is based on an investigation that ranged across a diverse and sometimes deceptive intellectual movement. The authors examined the movement's leaders today; the movement's publicly stated guiding ideas; the lineage of the ideas passed down from the movement's ex-Marxist founders; the actual, but usually unstated, principles of the underlying neoconservative worldview; and, finally, the consequences of the guiding ideas and worldview in political policies that affect American lives. The ambitious scope of the book raised a crop of problems for Thompson and Brook. First, the authors say, the neoconservative movement's founders have presented a moving target. “[O]ver the course of forty years, [the neoconservatives] evolved rather seamlessly from neo-Marxists” at Brooklyn College in the late 1930s, to “neo-liberals” in the 1950s, and to “neoconservatives” in the late 1960s.
Political Geography:
America

21124. The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics: The Case Against the Brandens

Author:
Roderick Fitts
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Ayn Rand was an influential and controversial novelist and philosopher whose name invariably ushers in a flood of debate. Unfortunately, not all of the controversy stems from Rand's radical ideas, such as her advocacy of egoism and laissez-faire capitalism. Distracting from the discussion of her ideas is a controversy concerning claims made about Rand's personal life and character in the works of two of her former students: Barbara Branden's The Passion of Ayn Rand (Doubleday, 1986) and Nathaniel Branden's My Years with Ayn Rand (Jossey-Bass, 1999). For eighteen years, the Brandens (who were married to each other from 1953 to 1965) were among Rand's closest friends. However, their relationships with Rand ended abruptly in 1968, at which point they became her most vocal and publicized critics. In their books, both of which were published after Rand's death, the Brandens tell their stories. James Valliant's The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics: The Case Against the Brandens is the first book-length critique of the Brandens' allegations. Valliant's book is divided into two parts: the first, an analysis of several dozen claims made by the Brandens about Rand; the second, a selection of journal entries from Rand concerning psychological issues that Nathaniel Branden revealed to her during their romantic relationship. (Rand was happily married but had an open affair with Nathaniel Branden, with the full knowledge and consent of her husband and Barbara Branden.) The purpose of Valliant's book is to dispel false claims the Brandens made regarding Rand, setting the record straight for those interested in the details of her life.

21125. How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Very few economists predicted an economic catastrophe in 2007. Even following the crash, many continued to claim that our present economic course was fine. As for today? “Three years into the mess, economists now offer remedies that strike most people as frankly ridiculous. We are told that we must go deeper into debt to fix our debt crisis, and that we must spend in order [to] prosper” (pp. xi–xii). The source of such seeming obliviousness, according to Peter and Andrew Schiff, is the early-20th-century economist John Maynard Keynes. According to the Schiffs, Keynes taught that governments could smooth market volatility, increase employment, boost growth, and raise living standards simply by going into more debt and printing more money. Although they grant that Keynes was smart, the Schiffs say he developed some very stupid economic ideas—ideas that are false, dangerous, and causing the collapse of America's economy. The Schiffs set out to counter these harmful ideas in How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes. The book is an extended allegory of U.S. economic history, with supplementary discussions and illustrations. It begins with three men living on a tropical island, each subsisting on one fish per day, which he catches with his bare hands. One of the men, Able, devises a better way to catch fish: a net. Thus equipped, he hopes to catch more fish, and faster, leaving himself spare time to make new clothes.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
United States

21126. The Flaw of Averages: Why We Underestimate Risk in the Face of Uncertainty

Author:
David H. Mirman
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Consider a drunk staggering down the middle of a busy highway and assume that his average position is the centerline. The state of the drunk at his average position is alive, but on average, he's dead. (p. 83) This is an example of the danger of the “Flaw of Averages,” Sam Savage's term for the common mistake of “representing an uncertain number by its average” (p. 59). “Plans based on average assumptions are wrong on average,” he explains. “In everyday life, the Flaw of Averages ensures that plans based on the average customer demand, average completion time . . . and other uncertainties are . . . behind schedule, and beyond budget” (p. 11, emphasis original). In The Flaw of Averages, Savage demonstrates the harm caused by the error and arms his readers with skills to avoid it.

21127. Vernaculars Cross-Dressed as Universals: Globalization as North Atlantic Hegemony

Author:
James C. Scott
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
Most conceptions of “globalization” take the term to mean simply the various ways in which all corners of the globe are increasingly connected by trade, finance, communication, travel, cultural exchange, etc., and the degree to which the interconnections are of much greater volume and much greater speed than before. With the 2008 financial crisis in immediate view, one can appreciate the speed with which not only, say, jazz and pop music circulate the globe, but also the speed with which financial panics have been communicated and amplified.
Political Geography:
North Atlantic

21128. The Co-Evolution of the Washington Consensus and the Economic Development Discourse

Author:
Ravi Kanbur
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
The 1980s were a hell of a decade. They began with the reverberations of the second OPEC oil shock and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In between, we had the Reagan-Thatcher-Kohl economic policy era in North America and Europe, the Volcker interest rate shock, the Latin American debt crisis, economic collapse in Africa, the start of rapid growth in China and India, and on and on. Oh, and by the way, in 1989 John Williamson coined the term “Washington Consensus.”
Political Geography:
Africa, China, Europe, Washington, India, Latin America, and North America

21129. Oil, Development, and the Politics of the Bottom Billion

Author:
Michael Watts
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
The Economist of 4 August 2007 called it a “slip of a book” and “set to become a classic.” Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion argues that most of the bottom billion, the world's chronically poor, live in 58 countries (almost three quarters of which are African) distinguished by their lack of economic growth and the prevalence of civil conflict. Most are caught in a quartet of “traps,” two of which (in Collier's account they are deeply related) concern me here: the civil war trap (the average cost of a typical civil war is about $64 billion) in which 73% of the poor have been caught at one time or another; and a natural-resource trap (resource wealth or dependency turned sour), which accounts for another 30%. Collier's argument is not simply that civil conflict is expensive in human and developmental terms nor that wars are associated with economic stagnation and poverty (“low income means poverty, and low growth means hopelessness. Young men, who are recruits for rebel armies, come pretty cheap…Life itself is cheap”). Rather, he sees this nexus of forces as arising from resource dependency (“Dependence upon primary commodity exports…substantially increases the risk of civil war”). That is to say, there is a robust relationship between resource wealth and, paradoxically, poor economic performance, poor governance (resource predation), and the likelihood of falling into (debilitating and enduring) civil conflicts. Collier's book speaks to a wider interest taken by economists and political scientists in what seems like a challenge to economic orthodoxy, namely, that resource wealth (as a source of comparative advantage) turns out to be a “curse.” The “resource-curse” literature—whether emphasizing poor economic performance, state failure (oil breeds corruption or “resource rents make democracy malfunction”), or the onset of civil violence (blood diamonds, oil secession)—has generated a vast amount of research of which Collier and his colleagues have been central contributors.

21130. Response to Kanbur

Author:
Colin Hottman
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
Within the economic development discourse, few ideas have been as contested as the “Washington Consensus.” It is widely considered to be both synonymous with neo-liberalism and hegemonic within the discourse. By placing the Washington Consensus within a historical context, Professor Kanbur shows that it emerged as a response to the statist development consensus of the 1950s–1970s. Several important lessons can be drawn from this circumstance. First, each distinct period of development policy, both the early state-directed policies and later the Washington Consensus, were promoted by economists and international financial institutions at the time. Second, the economic development discourse is event driven. Third, the new economic development consensus differs fundamentally from previous prescriptions since it is not “one size fits all.” Each of these lessons will be covered in Section II of this essay.
Political Geography:
Washington