Capitalist Solutions
Damn.We’ve just been reading Dr. Andrew Bernstein’s latest book and it is a barn-stormer. Entirely relevant to today’s political and economic problems this short volume is the perfect antidote to the problems the Occupy Wall Street children's choir are crying about.Go grab yourself a copy (and a few for your liberal– and conservative — friends) as it is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com.Here is the table of contents:Introduction: Resolving the Country’s ProblemsPart 1: The Relevant Principles of ObjectivismPart 2: Rational Solutions to Current Moral/Political Problems
1 Repudiating Environmentalism in Theory and Practice
2 Defeating Islamic Totalitarianism
3 A Free Market Solution to Problems of Health Care
4 The Right to Abortion as an Application of Individual Rights
5 The Superiority of Free Market Education to Government Schooling
6 Individual Rights Applied to Representative IssuesEpilogue: Re-Stating the Theme
NYOS Offering Students 50% Discount on NYC Conference
The NYOS conference November 4-6, is offering a group discount: four people may register for the price of three. NYOS is also offering a 50% discount to students, at the low price of $300 for the entire conference.This is going to be a great event celebrating the ideas of Ayn Rand through the presentation of some of the most prominent intellectuals in the Objectivist movement. Read more at: www.NewYorkObjectivistSociety.orgIn Praise of the Businessman
Writes Yaron Brook on What We Owe Steve Jobs:If dedicating your life to creating the values that advance it is a moral achievement, then there is nothing greater or nobler than the creative geniuses whose productive ability has created our modern world: a world where we live more than three times as long as our ancestors; where our homes are heated in the winter, cooled in the summer, and lit at night; where we can travel across a continent in a matter of hours; where we can say goodnight to our children from the other side of the globe.
But far from holding up the great producers as moral exemplars, we lump them in with the Al Capones and the Bernie Madoffs as people who must be stopped or at least shackled until they learn to selflessly serve others. Even Jobs was criticized because he devoted his life to Apple rather than philanthropy.
Insight Into America’s Largest Ponzi Scheme
Writes Richard M. Salsman on Social Security is Much Worse Than a Ponzi Scheme – and Here’s How to End It:
In recent debates GOP presidential rivals have been sparring on Social Security, with some (Rick Perry) insisting it’s a “Ponzi scheme” that should be decentralized (run by fifty states), and others (Mitt Romney) conceding that it’s shaky and needs “reform” but isn’t fraudulent because “millions of people depend on it.” (Mitt Romney). Another (Herman Cain) says privatize it, as Chile did. They’re all wrong, because they don’t name the real problem with the system – and they forego an easy fix that might boost their election chances.That we’ve only seen GOP rivals “spar” on this key issue is an apt description, for there’s no real fight going on. It’s mere shadow-boxing. Worse, the GOP contenders are mostly on the same side of the issue (the wrong one) and aren’t sufficiently distinct from the rival party. Yet Democrats don’t even try to be candid about Social Security, or try to present a real fix; they’re content to run ads with GOP suits tossing granny off a cliff, which means they’re content to be infantile – which means they’re unfit to lead this great nation.The facts about Social Security are these. Yes, it’s a Ponzi scheme, thus criminally fraudulent (as I’ll explain), but even worse, because it coerces us to be a part of it. Since the scheme began in 1935 the full force of the U.S. government has compelled a growing portion of citizens to suffer by it, such that we all do so by now. A scheme of such widespread, compulsory fraud is unprecedented in U.S. history, and one of the most shameful (and popular) of FDR’s schemes.Rationality and justice require that this atrocity be terminated – now. Yet neither virtue can be found in Perry’s proposal to pawn it off to fifty states and thus to decentralize the fraud – or in Romney’s plan to “reform” and “save” the scheme and thus to perpetuate the fraud – or in Cain’s notion that it be operated by quasi-profit-seeking (loss-imposing) “firms” like Bernard Madoff Investment Securities LLC, and thus to privatize the fraud. A fraud remains a fraud regardless of its size, scope, or duration, and it is simply evil to evade this plain fact and deliberately enact policies to decentralize the fraud, perpetuate it, or profit by it.Read the rest.