Category: ideological culture

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ideological culture

Prize Optimist

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research has awarded its annual Friedrich Hayek Lecture and Book Prize to Matt Ridley, for his book The Rational Optimist.

I wrote about the book last July, focusing on the title theme. The course of the last few hundred years gives us plenty of reasons for an upbeat long-​term view, in part because a few revolutions have occurred over that time, giving us plenty of, well, plenty.

Ridley, a popular science writer, actually takes a longer view than that. He identifies the source of most progress in trade. He starts the book discussing human prehistory, noting the evidence that Cro-​Magnon people traded widely, while Neanderthals did not. This probably explains why we descend from the former, not the latter. The traders won out, out-​producing (out-surviving) the more “socialistic” folk with bigger brains.

The ability to trade gave our ancestors a huge comparative advantage — a key economic principle that Ridley ably explains.

Ridley and Hayek share a general outlook, so the award is fitting. It’s also fitting to learn of it during “Hayek Week” — what with the new, “definitive” edition of F.A. Hayek’s classic Constitution of Liberty out, receiving reviews in major papers.

Here’s hoping Ridley continues to echo Hayek’s success in the marketplace of ideas. His recent Wall Street Journal op-​ed cheering on “the cheapeners and cost-​cutters” (rather than the usual ballyhooed inventors) suggests that he will do just that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Is Atlas Shrugging?

Atlas Shrugged: Part I, an adaptation of the first third of Ayn Rand’s 1957 bestseller Atlas Shrugged, is hitting theaters.

The movie has been awaited for decades, but some say it’s more than timely. Political commentator Robert Tracinski suggests that its portrayals of the themes of the state stomping the productive individual and the productive individual “going on strike against the creed of self-​sacrifice” are being multifariously echoed in the real world.

Tracinski relates how one moviegoer saw the film at a giant mall built with millions in government subsidies that now stands nearly empty — much like the many empty buildings in the socialism-​ravaged cityscapes of Atlas Shrugged. Other parallels Tracinski sees:

  • The federal government demanding that companies not locate operations in states relatively free of onerous regulation.
  • Environmentalists and regulators seeking to thwart innovative ways of extracting resources from the earth, like hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from shale.
  • Government punishing successful companies in order to provide bailouts for failing companies (General Motors, Chrysler).

And entrepreneur Jerry Della Femina just sold his famous eponymous restaurant and abandoned other business ventures. “I’m just not ready to have my wealth redistributed,” Femina explains. “I’m not ready to pay more tax money than the next guy because I provide jobs and because I work a 60-​hour week and I earn more than $250,000 a year.… Read a brilliant book by Ayn Rand called Atlas Shrugged, and you’ll know.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

A Fairy Tale Day

Aren’t weddings fun? And romantic, don’t forget.

That’s why I’m excited about the wedding of two young people I don’t even know: Gladys Smith and Fred Klinkle. Yet, you won’t see their wedding on your television today. Instead, the tube will revel in the wedding of Britain’s Prince William and “commoner” Kate Middleton.

Too bad. Neither Gladys nor Fred are known to benefit from unjust privilege or to have been enriched through centuries of their family’s tyrannical rule. 

Not to be the skunk at the royal party, but I have a slight problem with those who live off the involuntary sweat and toil of others. Granted, to her credit, Miss Middleton has not been a leech on the British people … until today.

Sure, princes and princesses are just precious when animated by Disney. And it’s nice to know that in today’s real-​life Britain the royals can no longer separate the heads of “subjects” from their shoulders. But still I find it hard to get in a celebratory mood for the activities of a family that represents the most rotten aspects of our unfree past. 

Why do the Brits put up with the royals? 

Inertia, perhaps.

Why would any liberty-​loving American be caught fixed to today’s TV spectacle? 

Beats me!

To Gladys and Fred and other loving non-​monarchical couples, best wishes: live long and multiply. To William and Kate? Once you renounce your position and stop fleecing the taxpayers, same to you. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

The AP’s Memory Hole

In our age of the Internet, cheap digital video recorders, etc., it’s harder than it once was to enforce an “official” version of an event .… the un-​airbrushed knowledge of which might embarrass some potentate.

Memory-​tweakers keep trying, though. Including Winston-​Smith wannabes at the Associated Press.

An example is President Obama’s appearance at a wind turbine plant, where he made a pitch for “energy independence,” a concept presidents have been pitching at us at least since the long gas lines of the 1970s. One concern of attendees was the latest bout of high gas prices, caused by inflationary pressures and uncertainty about the Middle East.

According to an early version of the AP’s report, “Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 a gallon nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-​guzzling vehicle. ‘If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,’ Obama said laughingly, ‘you might want to think about a trade-​in.’” The passage downplays how jovially patronizing the president was even after it became clear that the questioner had ten kids to support.

Obama’s unscripted condescension toward a struggling plant worker is not so outrageous as the AP’s strange memory-​hole behavior. The incident was later scrubbed from their report. But InstaPundit’s Glenn Reynolds saved a screenshot of the original passage. And there’s video.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture tax policy

The Audacity of Sleep

During Wednesday’s big speech, just as President Obama laid into Rep. Ryan’s Medicare reform proposal, Vice President Joe Biden skirmished with the Sandman. Zzzzz.

Obama wasn’t boring, though. He had a theme.

As he saw it, the Republicans’ “pessimistic” vision is of an “America [that] can’t afford to keep the promise we’ve made for our seniors” or “invest in education or clean energy” or fix “our roads” or afford to do all the cool things done by South Korea, Brazil, and China.

He didn’t explain how it might have come to pass that our government became disabled. He barely mentioned previous budgets’ waste — on goofy projects, overpayments, duplicated efforts, and undeclared, never-​ending wars. Or how government regulation and subsidy might be the reason many people cannot afford medical insurance.

Or that if the government doesn’t invest in something, it doesn’t mean that private investors aren’t investing.

But he did mention his opposition to “more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy.”

And then came the corker: “In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of all working Americans actually declined. The top 1 percent saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each.  And that’s who needs to pay less taxes?”

Wow. America’s wealthiest merely “saw their incomes rise”? They didn’t actually do something for their gains?

Maybe Obama was napping while others were working.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture individual achievement

Atlas Screened

John Galt had it right in Atlas Shrugged when, stepping to one side so that the whole world could see the gun being pointed at him, he told the politicians and bureaucrats: “Get the hell out of my way!”

Want markets to work? Leave markets alone. Leave people alone.

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, Rand’s perennial bestseller has been selling even better. Now sales of the apocalyptic fable are about to jump again. After 18 years trying to bring a studio on board, rights holder John Aglialoro decided to produce the movie himself.

He made that decision in April last year. Filming began two months later, just before his option would have expired.

“I have been an entrepreneur with companies in different industries — from airlines to health care, oil services, and exercise equipment — and I have had to deal with government in every one, at every step of the way,” says Aglialoro. “It’s a constant drain of time and energy. We could be in the 24th century today, in terms of technology, innovation, and wealth if it were not for all the controls.…

“Atlas Shrugged is my fortification against all that. It’s a liberation of the human spirit. That’s what I get from making the movie. And that’s what I want people to get from watching it.”

The movie hits theaters April 15, 2011. Catch the trailer online. And a scene.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.