In NJ, Wind Energy Requires ‘Political Commitment’. That’s Precisely the Problem.

In a New Jersey Star-Ledger guest column, Offshore wind is a jobs magnet for New Jersey, and labor is ready to lead, legislator says NJ state assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo enthusiastically promotes a massive offshore wind project. The key point DeAngelo makes is this telling statement, buried near the end of the article:

“Wind power can fuel New Jersey, and what fuels wind power is political commitment.”

So true, and precisely why it shouldn’t be built. “Political commitment” means force; that is, special interests using the machinery of government to force on all of us it’s pet technology, by direct subsidy and/or hampering alternatives—in this case an unreliable, costly energy source that no one would willingly invest in, build, or pay for without ratepayer/taxpayer subsidies and other government favors. No industry should be fueled by government coercion. Wind energy should succeed only by voluntary market acceptance, or fail. 

As to jobs, there is no doubt government-driven wind projects create jobs. But the jobs not created, or destroyed, must also be considered. Money spent on fossil fuel and nuclear power projects also create jobs. I understand DeAngelo is an electrician, and represents the electricians union which would get a jobs bonanza from giant wind farms. But the plumbing/pipefitters union, of which I am a member (ret), goes to bat for pipelines, which are being restricted by political commitment. So he can’t speak for all building trades unions. The same interests who push wind often want to stop fossil fuel projects, costing a lot of plumbing/pipefitting jobs. And the extra money consumers spend on the inflated electricity prices that “fuel” subsidized “renewable” energy spending can not be spent in other areas, reducing growth and thus jobs there. Worse, energy fuels every other industry. Raise the overall price of energy, which history shows happens when renewable energy is forced on us, and you take away growth and jobs across the board. Basic economics teaches you’ll end up with fewer jobs.

I’m not against wind farms. I’m against wind power fueled by political commitment. Government should streamline the permitting process for all energy projects, but otherwise leave all energy producers free to compete on a level legal playing field—that is, a market free of political coercion. Only voluntary consumer choice should determine energy choice, not political coercion. Put another way, market commitment, not political commitment, is what we should strive for. 

Wind champions will whine that the dominance of fossil fuels leaves no chance for wind to compete without government help. So they push for a government coercion-fueled “energy transition,” often camouflaged behind “justice” or “democracy” labels. But that’s nonsense. In a free market, better products generally spell doom for the dominant but inferior products, if consumers so choose. That’s how genuine transitions come about: Think of the transistions from kerosene lighting to electric lighting; from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles; from silent movies to “talkies''; from film photography to digital photography; from analogue television to cable and now to streaming. These are a few examples of market transitions, the only legitimate kinds. It just so happens that wind cannot compete in the market because it is inferior in cost and reliability. Even today, in 2022, even after decades of subsidies and government favoritism, fossil fuels are the dominant market choice, which is why they’re still growing like gangbusters despite the utopian dreams and massive political favoritism of wind’s political champions. 

If “Wind power is the future [and] can fuel New Jersey,” why hasn’t it happened already? Why is it a perpetual future fuel? Despite a decades-long massive political push, including $trillions in subsidies worldwide and other government favoritism, no place on Earth does wind generation, and renewable energy more broadly, exist without the life support of reliable energy from fossil, nuclear, or hydro—and for good reason. Renewables simply cannot carry the primary load for well-known reasons, the intractable twin drawbacks of dilutedness and intermittency. 

Perhaps as-of-now unforeseen dramatic technological advances will someday make that possible. But then, it wouldn’t need subsidies, would it? Or for that matter fear-mongering “climate crisis” nonsense. But in a competitive, largely free energy market, solar and wind tech innovations would have to compete against tech progress on other energy sources, including not only fossil fuels but non-carbon energies like nuclear, hydro, and possibly even fusion. That’s as it should be. It’s a matter of justice.

We need political commitment, alright. But that commitment should be directed toward liberating the NJ market for all energy sources, rather than politically favoring some, like wind, while hampering others, like natural gas, which along with petroleum is facing a War on Pipelines. Why are renewables champions so afraid of competition? The answer is obvious for anyone willing to be informed. 

Related Reading;

Hyping the Energy Transition by Robert Bryce

The ‘Jihad on Pipelines,’ New Jersey Front

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the 21st Century—Ronald Bailey

End preferences for unreliable electricity by Alex Epstein

The Bait: Political Equality. The Switch: Economic Equality

Last August, a guest column appeared in the New Jersey Star-Ledger by Demelza Baer of the Economic Mobility Initiative at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. The article focussed on equality, and most of it I agree with. In N.J. social justice group: After Charlottesville, you must speak out!, Baer observes:

People of color, religious and ethnic minorities, women, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities have not yet achieved full equality in the United States.  And, every time that people of color achieve significant progress towards equality, it's met with an inevitable backlash and period of retrenchment.

She goes on to give a brief history of America since the Civil War. She focuses on blacks’ drive for political equality, and the frequent reactionary backlashes that rolled back progress. But the article ended badly, undercutting Baer’s case for equality.

I left these comments:

Whenever I read an article about equality, I suspect a bait-and-switch. The bait is to advocate for political equality, a worthy goal. That’s where Baer starts out. But, sure enough, the switch rears its ugly head, in point three—the push for economic equality.

But political and economic equality cannot coexist in any society. They are antipodes. Political equality means legal protection of inalienable individual rights of everyone, equally and at all times. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action based on personal judgement in pursuit of self-chosen goals, not an automatic guarantee that one’s actions will result in achieving the same economic results as others or any automatic claim on material goods that others must be forced to provide. Rights include the result of one’s actions, including the earning, keeping, and use of property. Properly understood, political equality means equal protection of earned property—for everyone, regardless of differences in the quantity of property. Given the rich individual diversity of human life, economic inequality is a healthy and natural result of a just society in which each is free to rise, by work and trade, as far as her personal attributes, virtues, values, and personal circumstances will carry her.

You can’t have both political and economic equality, because any attempt to use government coercion to equalize economic outcomes destroys political equality. To the extent that a government tries to impose economic equality, it must cut people down by violating their rights—each to the extent that they achieve success. How else do you equalize economic outcomes except by trampling rights—taking wealth by force or regulating private choices, which violates equal protection of rights before the law?

In a sense, economic equality is worse than welfare statism. The welfare statist seeks to redistribute wealth in order to fulfill some alleged need of people classified as poor or disadvantaged. Economic egalitarianism doesn’t even care about need. It seeks to stifle upward mobility and human flourishing for the sake of equality—equality as an end in itself. It seeks economic destruction. Welfare statism, bad as it is, at least has superficial appeal to some semblance of compassion, if not greed. Economic egalitarianism appeals only to envy and hatred of personal achievement.

I suspect that the communistic principle of economic equality is the real goal of the “social justice” warriors, with political equality being window dressing to bait people into swallowing the injustice of forced economic equality. But keep in mind that communism is largely based on economic equality, and that the crimes of communism exceed even those of Nazism, theocracy, and the Confederacy. If one cares about advancing social justice, one should embrace political equality and reject the misguided and hateful war on economic inequality.

In response to another respondent's reply “rebutting” (ridiculing) my comment, I posted:

We must distinguish between fortunes by work and trade, and fortunes by government favor and theft. To earn money is to create a value that others are willing to pay you for. To make a lot of money is to create a lot of value for lots of people. Keep in mind that the very rich in America get so by creating wealth and spreading the value throughout society, bettering the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Capitalist fortunes are not like the aristocratic fortunes of old, which were gained by looting the peasant “masses”. The fortunes from John D. Rockefeller to Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, et al were earned by trade, and the benefits to consumers far exceed their fortunes. Capitalist fortune-building is healthy and progressive. My Dell computer contributed in some miniscule way to the fortune of Michael Dell. Yet his fortune doesn’t concern me, or harm me. My Dell, upon which I am typing this comment, has enriched my life immensely more that whatever fraction of a cent Michael Dell gained from the sale. There are hundreds of millions more like me. Trade is win-win. If you look around, you’ll see that our ordinary lives are full of the benefits of companies built and run by rich entrepreneurs and CEOs. Good for them, I say. They earned it. Capitalist fortunes don’t concentrate wealth. They spread it.

We should not be concerned with “the widening gap between the very rich and the rest of Americans. . .” We should only be concerned with justice; that is, did the person, rich or poor, earn it by work and voluntary trade, or did he take it through force, deception, or fraud? If you really want to “help the middle class,” you’d want to eliminate barriers to upward mobility, like occupational licensing laws, minimum wage laws, progressive taxation, and government economic regulations (which favor large established companies and the rich over new companies and people struggling to start out).

Related Reading:

Economic Equality vs. Political Equality: Which is Your America?

Freedom vs. Equality: It's Either/Or

QUORA *: 'How is capitalism good despite the fact that it creates higher and lower classes?'

Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People--Randy E. Barnett  

Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality--Don Watkins and Yaron Brook  

QUORA: '[W]hy do we ignore all the examples of capitalism failing, like the major divide between the wealthy and the poor in the US?'

QUORA: People will often use Venezuela as an example of socialism not working. But why do we ignore all the examples of capitalism failing, like the major divide between the wealthy and the poor in the US?

I posted this answer:

Whatever other “examples of capitalism failing” the questioner has in mind, the “major divide between the wealthy and the poor” is not one of them.

Economic inequality is indicative of capitalism’s greatest virtue; that people are free, through work and trade, to individually prosper as far as their ability, ambition, values, goals, personal circumstances, and moral character will carry them.

Prospering through work, no matter how great or modest the level of wealth, comes not to the detriment but to the benefit of others. Prospering involves trade, and trade involves a win-win outcome—the mutually beneficial exchange of value for value. It necessarily follows that personal betterment involves the betterment of everyone one trades with. The level of a person’s earned wealth correlates to the value added to the economic lives of others. To become wealthy is to create the most value for the most people. It’s a fact—and you can see this all around you—that the primary path to wealth under capitalism is to cater to the needs and desires of “the masses.” Any attempt to equalize economic outcomes necessarily involves cutting down and destroying individuals according to their productive ability, ultimately spreading poverty, not the wealth. That’s why the first victims of socialism are the poor, and the second victims are the soon-to-be-poor middle classes—because productive achievement is progressively cut down in the name of economic equality.

It’s true that in today’s world, some people get wealthy through government favors. But that’s the result of today’s mixed economies, not capitalism, which forbids government economic favoritism. The bottom line is that socialism fails because compulsory economic equality is built into its DNA. Capitalism succeeds because economic inequality flourishes.


Related Reading:

What is Capitalism?--Lead essay of the book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand

QUORA: 'How is becoming a billionaire even possible, chronologically?'

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader--Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire--Andrew Bernstein

Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality--Don Watkins and Yaron Brook

Atlas Shrugged--Ayn Rand

Economic Equality vs. Political Equality: Which is Your America?

A Right to Pursue versus a ‘Right’ to Provision: The Declaration and its Reactionaries

A New Jersey Star-Ledger Independence Day guest column by adjunct professor Robert Ingoglia opens with this paragraph:

The Founding Fathers used John Locke's brilliant explication of natural rights (Second Treatise of Government) as the philosophical basis for their revolt against British rule. Since then,  we,  as a nation,  have witnessed the ongoing discovery and extension of natural rights. "Discovery" is the correct word because,  as the Declaration of Independence makes clear,  this enumeration is only a partial listing (" ... among these Rights ... "). Both Locke and the Founding Fathers,  as Enlightenment thinkers,  were confident that rational men and women could -- and would -- discover additions to that list and then use government to concretize and protect these newly-discovered rights.

He then pulls a classic Leftist bait-and-switch, introduced by President FDR seven decades ago. Then, FDR introduced his so-called “Second Bill of Rights,” which consists of economic outcome ensured coercively by government. Proclaiming that “the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures—proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness,” FDR introduced his eight-point declaration of economic “rights”:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
• The right to a good education.

Thus began the steady slide from a free capitalist society to a socialist dictatorship, a slide that continues apace today. This broad mandate for government power over our economic lives has framed the Democrats’ domestic agenda ever since. Ingoglia doesn’t mention FDR or his Second Bill of Rights. But that’s what he obviously has in mind. I left these comments, edited and expanded for clarity:

True. You can add to the list of unalienable rights. This is codified in the U.S. Constitution by the Ninth Amendment, which reads “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

But you cannot alter the fundamental unifying principle tieing all human rights together. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action, not automatic claims on material values that others must be forced to provide. Rights belong to individuals, and only individuals. They are unalienable, meaning possessed by all, equally, and at all times. Implicit in the concept of “unalienable” is that there are no “rights” that necessitate the violation of the rights of others. Rights that can be violated, whether by a neighbor, society, or the government, are not unalienable rights of citizens but permissions granted to subjects.

In calling for a “readjustment,” Ingoglia is advocating nothing less than the repudiation of the fundamental unifying principle tieing all human rights together, and thus the destruction of the United States of America. How? By switching the concept of rights from pursuit to guaranteed provision, thus obliterating the fundamental principle of unalienable rights. It’s the difference between peaceful coexistence and predation. No one has an automatic claim on the lives, property, or labor of others. There is a right to pursue healthcare, not a right to force others to provide it; a right to pursue productive work, not a right to a decent-paying occupation. No one has a right to force others to provide what cannot be gained by self-effort and voluntarily through the mutually advantageous medium of trade. When your life, personal freedom, achievement, and flourishing is at the unpredictable mercy of any individual’s or group’s claim to some unalienable right to what they didn’t earn, neither you nor anyone else is safe, and the government has failed in its duty to “secure these rights.” Ingoglia isn’t proposing adding to our list of rights, but obliterating our American concept of rights.

The pursuit of happiness and “an unalienable right to one job that nourishes the soul” are mutually exclusive. It is the difference between a society of peaceful coexistence (trade) and a predatory society in which everyone has a moral and legal claim on others’ lives and property, but not to his own. There is no way peaceful coexistence and predation can coexist. Our society is well on its way to a “readjustment”—read transition—from the first to the second, thanks to the ideas peddled in this article. So don’t ask why political differences are increasingly contentious, polarizing, and even violent. The only true path that allows people to peacefully “belong, to feel a part of something larger than themselves, to contribute to society” is a society of voluntary trade, not a government chain gang of mutual dependence. To earn your keep is to actually “contribute to society.” To be provided by government is to take from society. When your life, personal freedom, achievement, and flourishing is at the unpredictable mercy of any individual’s or group’s claim to some unalienable right to what they didn’t earn, neither you nor anyone else is safe.

The author calls for a “readjustment” to our Founding principles.

Our "pursuit of happiness" must now include an unalienable right to one job that nourishes the soul,  valorizes human dignity,  fosters community participation and allows the achievement and maintenance of a decent standard of living for everyone.

At least he recognizes that the U.S was not Founded on the predator’s concept of “unalienable rights.” What he doesn’t acknowledge is that “an unalienable right to one job,” or to healthcare, or to “a decent standard of living for everyone” is not compatible with the unalienable rights to Life, Liberty, Property, and the Pursuit of Happiness. There can be no such thing as a right to anything that must be produced by the human efforts of others. Such is not “community participation” but slavery, and there is no “human dignity” in slavery. There is logically no such thing as an unalienable right to alienate others from their rights, which is the only way government can ever guarantee an unalienable right to anything others are not freely and voluntarily willing to give. To adopt those “rights” is to annihilate the only true “greater good”—the universal, equal, individual right to the pursuit of one’s own happiness through self-governance and voluntary trade, so long as the same rights of all others is recognized and respected. The fundamental alternative cannot be stressed too strongly. It’s either/or:

It is either FDR’s economic “second” bill of rights, or the original political bill of rights embodied in the U.S. Constitution.

Either your life is the property of the state, to be disposed of for the sake of whatever “unalienable right” to unearned stuff anyone claims to possess. Or your life is yours to live.

Either we have a government that secures your rights, or a government that eviscerates them.

It is either socialism or capitalism.

In my July 4 tribute, I observed that “The Fourth of July reminds us that the fight for freedom is a philosophical fight—fought not on foreign military battlefields but right here at home, on the intellectual battleground of ideas.” This article is a prime example of why the fight for freedom is philosophical.

You can’t have your Declaration of Independence, and eat it, too. You can have the unalienable rights to your own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Or you can have the “unalienable right” to exploit and enslave other lives. But you cannot have both. No matter how many new rights we “discover,” the most fundamental right from which all the others derive is your right to your own life—which means, the right to act on your own judgement, and choose accordingly. You either have it, or you don’t. If you can be forced to provide healthcare, a “decent-paying occupation,” or any other material value to others, your right to your own life—your judgement and your choice—has been violated. The choice has always been, and is now, the fundamental choice; Americanism, or not.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Interestingly, Ingoglia lists “social workers, sales associates, stay-at-home parents, maintenance workers or adjunct instructors” as occupations deserving of guaranteed monetary remuneration. No one is entitled to more than consumers of their efforts are willing to pay them. To say otherwise—to say that others must be forced by government to pay more than they voluntarily would—is to violate those others’ rights to act on their own judgement.

But notice the one occupation that doesn’t belong on that list: The inclusion of stay-at-home parents in this list is particularly egregious. A paying job implies the provision of an economic value to others, for which payment is received (earned). Doing a job in which he or she is the beneficiary of the service of his own work is not a paying job, precisely because others are not beneficiaries. If stay-at-home parents deserve a monetary payment coerced from others, then why shouldn’t I be similarly paid for cutting my grass, painting my living room, or replacing a faucet in my own bathroom (I am a plumber by trade)? Ingoglia advocates double-dipping. At least those other occupations involve services provide to others. Ingoglia goes a step further—the right to be paid for providing no benefit to others. (It’s also an invitation to government to dictate how we raise our children, which is probably why Ingoglia includes parenting, but not grass-cutting, painting, or plumbing in that list. He who pays the piper, calls the tune.)

Economic “rights” are a means to expanded government power, and nothing else. Political rights restrict government power. We must remember the difference.

Related Reading:

July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased

America the Undemocratic

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

Related Viewing:

The Real Meaning of the Fourth of July—Yaron Brook for ARI

Yaron Brook ~ The Conservative Forum ~ 6-14-2016

Fine Against Christian Baker Who refused to Serve a Pro-Gay Marriage Cake Exposes Hypocrisy on Both Sides

A Baker in Northern Ireland, where same-sex marriage is still illegal, was fined thousands of dollars for refusing to make a cake for a gay customer bearing the slogan "Support Gay Marriage" alongside a depiction of "Sesame Street" characters Bert and Ernie because doing so would have violated the bakery owner’s religious beliefs. The gay customer, Gareth Lee, had sued Ashers Bakery under Ireland's anti-discrimination laws and the auspices of Northern Ireland’s “Equality Commission.” As Shawn Pogatchnik reports for The Associated Press:

In her ruling, Belfast Judge Isobel Brownlie called the bakery's cancellation of the order "direct discrimination for which there can be no justification." The judge said the bakery was a business, not a religious organization, and therefore had no legal basis to reject an order based on a customer's sexual orientation or beliefs.

But what justification is there for the state to force any private business to serve any customer, or serve a particular product? None, if the right to freedom of association means anything. The government should be protecting everyone’s rights equally and at all times. Both gay marriage and a cake sale are contractual arrangements derived from freedom of association. The very basis of freedom of association is voluntary agreement and consent. If the state is to protect liberty, it must protect everyone’s right to associate or not associate according to one’s own judgement.

The inalienable rights of gays to forge a marriage contract recognized by law—or for anyone, gay or not, to advocate such views—does not include the right to force others to do business with them. It is just as wrong for Lee to exploit an unjust law banning discrimination to impose his values on Ashers Bakery by forcing it to serve him a cake advocating gay marriage as it is for the government to impose the bakery owners’ standards on gays by legally banning gay marriage.

The bakery owners' son, Daniel McArthur, was reported to have said on behalf of his family, "We just want to live and work in accordance with our religious beliefs.” But if that desire extends to favoring a legal ban on gay marriage, then it is not just a personal matter, because bans on gay marriage violate the rights of same-sex couples to freedom of contract and association. But as a personal matter, Ashers Bakery has every right to refuse to serve Lee the cake advocating beliefs the owners disagree with.

As a private business, Liberty Ridge has a right to choose its associations and to contract with customers on voluntary, mutually agreed terms. Freedom of contract means not only the right to voluntarily contract with others, but also to refrain from doing so for whatever reason or even no reason. Asher’s refusal to serve Lee his cake, however irrational their reasons may be, does not violate Lee’s rights or the rights of gays generally—as Lee was free to take his business elsewhere—just as a gay couple marrying does not violate the rights of Christians or heterosexual couples, who are free not to marry someone of the same sex or attend a gay wedding.

Shame on Asher’s owners for supporting a legal ban on gay marriage, if in fact that’s the case. And—though his anger at anti-marriage equality Christians is understandable—shame on Lee for forcing Ashers into court, and for supporting laws that force businesses to contract against their will. Gay marriage advocates undercut their own case for their contractual and associational rights by simultaneously fighting to violate the same rights of others. Likewise, Christian business owners who support bans on gay marriage have no credibility when they complain that anti-discrimination laws violate their religious beliefs. Both sides are hypocritical. The only resolution to the Ashers Bakery and similar conflicts is to fully and consistently uphold the rights to freedom of contract and association by defending equally the rights of gays to marry and the rights of business owners to serve or not serve whom they choose.

Related reading:

Gay Marriage Rights vs. Anti-Discrimination Laws

Archbishop's Misplaced Charge: Gay Marriage is a Threat to Freedom of Religion

How Property Rights Solve Problems—David R. Henderson for the Library of Economics and Liberty

Gay Marriage: The Right to Voluntary Contract, Not Coercive 'Contract'

Starbucks/USA Today’s Racist “Race Together” Campaign

The provocative title of this article should not be misconstrued. Starbucks/USA Today’s “RACE TOGETHER” campaign is undoubtedly motivated by a desire to foster better harmony among people of different races. But their means to that end can only hamper progress toward that goal—and likely set it back.

Why? Consider the explanation for the campaign offered by Starbucks Coffee Company CEO Howard Schultz and USA TODAY President Larry Kramer:

Racial diversity is the story of America, our triumphs as well as our faults.

Yet racial inequality is not a topic we readily discuss.

It’s time to start.

The purpose of the campaign, they say, is to confront

barriers to social justice and economic equality [that] exist in far too many corners. RACE TOGETHER is not a solution, but it is an opportunity to begin to re-examine how we can create a more empathetic and inclusive society — one conversation at a time.

The very premise that forms the basis for RACE TOGETHER is wrong. Individualism, not racial diversity, is the story of America. The Declaration of Independence—the document that lays out the fundamental principles of America and serves as the philosophic blueprint for the U.S. Constitution—states, in essence, that all people possess the same inalienable individual rights, and that every person’s rights deserve equal protection under the law, administered by a government charged with the sole task of “securing these rights.” Period.

The Declaration says nothing about racial or any other kinds of groups, and for good reason: Rights belong to individuals, not groups. Equality of individual rights before the law is the only form of equality that can be guaranteed to you. No other kind of equality, whether social, economic, or whatever, has ever been, is, or should ever be the goal of American law. Any equality other than equality of rights—which sanction the freedom of the individual to act in pursuit of his own flourishing—is contrary to our nature as human beings. That is because the individual is the only human entity that exists, and individually, each of us is unique and an end in himself. This is a matter of observable, scientific fact. By our nature as humans, we are not equal—not in our natural mental or physical capabilities, our ambition, our upbringing, the personal, social, or environmental influences on our lives. We are not equal in any characterological respect. We share only one aspect of our nature—our capacity to reason and make choices. Any attempt to enforce equality aside from the equal freedom to think, choose our values, and act accordingly would destroy America’s very reason for being.

But consider what it means to set a goal of “economic equality” based on race. If white people as a group average higher earnings than black people as a group, then a successful white person must be judged by a less successful black person not on how that white person earned his money, but only on the fact that white people as a group make more money than black people as a group. The white person may have earned his money honorably; i.e., by work and voluntary trade. But—with economic equality among racial groups as the standard—the individual white person would have to be viewed by the individual black person with moral suspicion, based solely on the color of his skin and regardless of how he earned his money. The content of the white person’s character, actions, and virtues would have to be thought irrelevant, or at least of lesser consequence than his white skin. Is this a good way to foster “a more empathetic and inclusive society ?”

America is indeed a racially diverse nation. But that is a consequence of the fact that, in America, your race doesn’t legally matter. This is what drew people from from every imaginable racial background to the Land of Liberty. The real diversity is in our individuality, not our race. Striving for any kind of equality other than equality of rights before the law is contrary to the story of America. The fact that America has often not been consistent in establishing this principle in practice is a huge stain on our history, to be sure, but beside the point. Under equality of rights under law as the fundamental political absolute, inequality is actually a welcome result of the fully free society the Founders sought to erect. Such inequality is a hallmark of a society that protects each individual’s right to live and flourish in accord with his rationality, ability, ambition, values, personal circumstances and overall character, restrained only by the obligation to respect the same rights of others.

Starbucks/USA TODAY’s diversity campaign undermines America’s noble principles by encouraging us to think in terms of race, not individual character, in our associations with other people. In this way, RACE TOGETHER is explicitly racist. This is not to imply that Schultz and Kramer or anyone else in the Starbucks and USA Today organizations is racist. But there’s no escaping the fact that lumping people together according to race fits the very definition of racism. Encouraging people to think in fundamentally racist terms can only foster racial suspicion and antagonism.

Putting race at the forefront in people’s minds won’t accomplish the goal RACE TOGETHER strives for. We should aim for an individual-conscious, not race-conscious, society. The only antidote to racism, and only path toward peaceful coexistence in a racially diverse culture, is individualism.

Racism is a subset of collectivism. Collectivism holds that the group—society, the tribe, the economic class, the race, etc.—is the fundamental focus of moral concern. Therefor an individual must be judged primarily according to his group identity—in this case, his race. This is how RACE TOGETHER urges us to judge others.

Individualism holds that the individual, regardless of his accidental, unchosen group characteristics, is the fundamental focus of moral concern. Therefor, every individual must be judged on the content of his character—his chosen actions, values, and ideas—rather than the color of his skin. This is how we should judge others.

I have no doubt that Schultz and Kramer have the noblest of motives. But I respectfully disagree with their initiative. We must learn to view our fellow human beings as individuals rather than as members of black, white, yellow, brown, or red tribes. We must celebrate America’s true, individualistic diversity.

Schultz and Kramer ask us to think about “race and what it means to you.” Very well. My contribution to the conversation Starbucks/USA TODAY seeks to foster can be summed up thusly: Race doesn’t matter, end of story.

Related Reading:

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

42: The Triumph of Courage and Moral Certitude over Irrationality and Bigotry

Larry Doby, American Hero

Are "Diversity Maps" a Precursor to Forced Neighborhood Integration?