Dr. Bernstein’s latest book, Capitalist Solutions: A Philosophy of American Moral Dilemmas, is available to pre-order on Amazon.com and will deliver sometime in October of 2011. He lectures around the country—and internationally—on Rand’s novels and philosophy.
Learn more about this book by visiting his website.
“How to Be Profitable and Moral: A Rational Egoist Approach to Business” by Jaana Woiceshyn
The book is intended for “thinking managers:” with a lot of concrete examples, it shows how rational egoist principles apply to business. John Allison, Doug Arends, Carl Barney, and Andrew Bernstein wrote nice endorsements.
From the book’s conclusion: “Being both profitable and moral is possible for business. Egoism holds—and shows—that being moral is in fact a fundamental requirement of long-term profitability. To sustain maximum long-term profitability requires that businesspeople reject both altruism and cynical exploitation of others and adopt egoism as their moral code. This means seeking objectivity—consistency with the factual requirements of human survival and flourishing through the use of reason—in all our choices and actions, as demonstrated by the philosophy and conduct of the BB&T Corporation. To achieve long-term profitability requires that we adopt and apply rational principles consistently. The virtues of rationality, productiveness, honesty, justice integrity, independence and pride, as identified by Ayn Rand, specify the actions that achieving long-term profitability entails. The main substance of this book consists of examining these virtues and showing how they apply to business, with the hope you can put them in your tool kit and use them the next time you encounter a moral dilemma in business.”
For those who wish to pre-order the book Jaana Woiceshyn writes:
How to pre-order: Contact the customer service department of Rowman & Littlefield (the parent company of Hamilton Books, my publisher) *before November* by calling 1-800-462-6420 or by e-mailing custserv@rowman.com and give my name and the book title. I don’t think the ISBN number is necessary, but here it is for reference: 978-0-7618-5699-3. They will ask for your credit card number.
The hardcover price is US$ 40 per copy. Your credit card will not be charged until the book is shipped to you in February.
Full disclosure: as a part of the contract with Hamilton Books, I am obligated to pre-order 70 hardcover copies by November. If you think the book would be valuable to you, or as a gift to someone, please consider pre-ordering from Rowman & Littlefield to help me fill the quota. But please do this only if you think the book is worth it (it will be available through Amazon, probably for less). If you do pre-order from Rowman & Littlefield, please let me know (jwoiceshyn@gmail.com) so I can keep track of the numbers.
From Scott Holleran’s blog:
The goal of a war is to defeat an enemy’s will to fight. So argues the author of Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (Princeton University Press, 2010), who makes the case that a strong military offense can win a war and establish lasting peace while playing defense often leads to destruction. This study of six major wars, from the Second Punic War to World War 2, by historian John David Lewis, contrasts the use of overwhelming force, such as the Greek victory over Xerxes’ army and navy, with a lack of reason, purpose, and commitment to fight. On the eve of the 10th year since the worst attack in American history, I turned to my friend John Lewis, a visiting associate professor of philosophy, politics, and economics at Duke University and teacher at Objectivist Conferences (OCON), to discuss today’s war from an historical perspective. Dr. Lewis is the author of Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens and Early Greek Lawgivers.
Scott Holleran: What is the theme of Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History?
John David Lewis: That wars are driven and caused by people’s decisions to fight and that those decisions are based on the ideas they hold. This has enormous implications for what victory means, because it means discrediting the ideas we’re trying to defeat. For example, one could never explain Germany’s massive attacks [against other countries] or Japan’s massive attack on America, in which they launched into intercontinental warfare, without understanding the ideals that they held. The theme of Nothing Less Than Victory is that one must defeat the enemy by discrediting his ideas.
Scott Holleran: How was Nothing Less Than Victory suggested by your students?
John David Lewis: I was teaching a class on ancient and modern warfare and it became clear that a comparative history would be useful. My students posed good questions.
Scott Holleran: While writing about the rise of the Nazis, did The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America by Leonard Peikoff help your understanding?
John David Lewis: Yes, because it’s the only book I know of that places philosophical ideas as the lesson of history. It’s not only an explanation of Nazi Germany in terms of ideas but, much more deeply and widely, it demonstrates how ideas move history.
Scott Holleran: The current administration supports military involvements in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as other underreported incursions in nations such as Yemen and Pakistan, with something other than, or less than, a purpose let alone a victory. The Oxford English Dictionary defines warmonger as “a person who seeks to bring about or promote war.” As a commander-in-chief who supports and initiates militarism with no purpose or end, is President Obama a warmonger?
John David Lewis: I think he’s incompetent but I don’t think Obama is a warmonger. He inherited those wars but he’s simply unable to bring those wars… [Read the rest at Scott Holleran’s blog.]
From Wynn Resorts’ CEO Discusses Q2 2011 Results – Earnings Call Transcript – Seeking Alpha:
Well, here’s our problem. There are a host of opportunities for expansion in Las Vegas, a host of opportunities to create tens of thousands of jobs in Las Vegas. I know that I could do 10,000 more myself and according to the Chamber of Commerce and the Visitors Convention Bureau, if we hired 10,000 employees, it would create another 20,000 additional jobs for a grand total of 30,000.
I believe in Las Vegas. I think its best days are ahead of it. But I’m afraid to do anything in the current political environment in the United States. You watch television and see what’s going on, on this debt ceiling issue. And what I consider to be a total lack of leadership from the President and nothing’s going to get fixed until the President himself steps up and wrangles both parties in Congress. But everybody is so political, so focused on holding their job for the next year that the discussion in Washington is nauseating.
And I’m saying it bluntly, that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it and I could spend the next 3 hours giving you examples of all of us in this market place that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right. A President that seems — that keeps using that word redistribution.
Well, my customers and the companies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they are frightened of this administration. And it makes you slow down and not invest your money. Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America. You bet. And until we change the tempo and the conversation from Washington, it’s not going to change. And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don’t want to say that. They’ll say, “Oh God, don’t be attacking Obama.”
Well, this is Obama’s deal, and it’s Obama that’s responsible for this fear in America. The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution, and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest or holding too much money. We haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody’s afraid of the government, and there’s no need to soft peddling it, it’s the truth. It is the truth. And that’s true of Democratic businessman and Republican businessman, and I am a Democratic businessman and I support Harry Reid. I support Democrats and Republicans.
And I’m telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he’s gone, everybody’s going to be sitting on their thumbs.
Dr. Yaron Brook, along with business hero John Allison and philosopher Leonard Peikoff, are the leading voices today in promoting Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism: which advocates reason, individual rights and the virtue of selfishness (i.e., the pursuit of one’s long-term happiness). Listen to this full-hour Interview with Yaron Brook, President of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights and the state of the Culture at Don’t Let It Go…Unheard #22.
Writes C. Bradley Thompson: “In 1958 Mike Wallace interviewed the Marxist social theorist, Erich Fromm (author of “The Sane Society”). If you want to understand the philosophy behind the New Left and the world in which we live today, I recommend that you watch it. […] Watching the Fromm interview helps us to understand why the Dustin Hoffman film, The Graduate, was such a hit in 1967. The culture had been prepared by Fromm, Marcuse, et. al. The famous line uttered by Mr. McGuire to Benjamin is straight out of Fromm: ‘I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. . . Are you listening? . . . Plastics.’ “