How to Settle the Tesla Controversy

Tesla, the electric car maker, has a business model that by-passes the franchise system and sells cars directly to consumers. One would think that, in America—which allegedly stands for free market capitalism—Tesla's direct-sales model would be uncontroversial.

As anyone who follows the news in New Jersey knows, one would be wrong. But the Tesla issue runs deeper than the headlines. As I explain in my latest Objective Standard blog post, Tesla is not only a victim of government coercion: There's another side to that coin.

My post, Government Victimizes and Favors Tesla by Violating Rights of All, tells the whole story—and how to resolve the issues fairly for everyone.

If you’re interested in more of my TOS posts, visit my archive page.

Related Reading:

Cronyism Doesn't Promote Competition: It Limits Competition

Obama: "what's true for individuals is also true for nations." He's Right

My recent post at The Objective Standard blog features President Obama telling us how to properly judge government economic policy through the "test" of thinking about how it would play out in one's private life. 

Read my whole post Obama, Goose, and Gander, and then see if you can come up with more ways to apply Obama's "test."

What's interesting is that, when you start applying the test, you will find that in areas where government improperly intervenes in our private lives—such as, in the field of economics and charity—virtually everything the government does would be contrary to proper private behavior. But in areas involving government's proper role of protecting individual rights, almost the opposite is true. In a fully free and civil society, we delegate to government certain functions related to objectively protecting individual rights, but not functions that violate others' rights.


So, for example: Is it ok to rob your neighbor at gunpoint and redistribute his money to yourself or others? No? Then why is it ok for the politicians you elect to do it for you? On the other hand, it would be wrong for us as private individuals to get a gun and seize property in retribution from someone we believe robbed us by force, fraud, or breach of contract, thus violating our rights, but it would be right to leave that task to government as the law enforcement entity.


Or: Do you presume to dictate, at the point of a gun, how your neighbor, who has harmed no one, is to run his life or business? No? Then why is it ok for the politicians you elect to establish regulatory agencies to do just that? On the other hand, it would be wrong for you as a private individual to grab some individual who has harmed you in some way and force him into involuntary servitude as punishment, even though he violated your rights. But it would be right for government to act as arresting agent, prosecutor, judge, and jury, and lock up criminals in jails and prescribe his daily routine.

In its rights-protecting mode, the government properly holds a monopoly on the retaliatory use of force against those who initiate force. So, in the area of retaliatory force, what's true for government is not true for individuals. But in the area of initiatory force, "what's true for individuals is also true for nations." 

Obama's has unwittingly given us a great litmus test for separating proper from improper government policies. Let's call this "Obama' Litmus Test". What would happen to his precious regulatory welfare state if American's consistently applied "Obama' Litmus Test"?

Related Reading:

Man's Rights—Ayn Rand

The Nature of Government—Ayn Rand

My TOS Blog Archive

Obama's "Going Big"

I have often observed that Barack Obama is more philosophically oriented than most modern politicians. More evidence for that claim has surfaced, and that is the subject of my recent post at The Objective Standard blog. 

Read Obama's "Big" Statist Vision for America.

Related Reading:

Obama's "Bridge": 21st Century Tyranny Cloaked in America's Founding Ideals

Obama's Collectivist Manifesto, Parts 1, 2, and 3

Another Call for "Universal National Service"

One of the most morally reprehensible ideas to surface in a free country is the idea of compulsory national service. Yet, the idea just keeps simmering below the surface, breaking out into the open at unpredictable times and from unpredictable sources. I wrote about one such breakout in General McChrystal's Un-American Call for Universal National Service, published on The Objective Standard blog.

Compulsory national service incontestably contradicts America’s founding principles. It is a grave disappointment that a military man of McChrystal’s stature manages to evade just what America's military actually fights for.

Related Reading:

July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased

A Memorial Day Tribute

Conflicts Inherent in Government-Run Schools are Endless

In a recent post at The Objective Standard blog, Natalie Ogle discusses the recent controversy over the Liberty High School valedictorian's speech in which the graduating student recited The Lord's Prayer in defiance of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause (the separation of church and state) as well as the rules of the tax-funded public school. 

Ogle notes that:

On the one hand, students are not agents of the government and thus are not properly forbidden from expressing their religious views in government-run schools. . . .
On the other hand, a “public” school graduation ceremony is a government-sponsored event, and speeches given at such an event can reasonably be regarded as sanctioned by the government school. Allowing students to give religious speeches at such events reasonably could be seen as a government endorsement of religion.

Ogle, making the same essential point I made in a previous post regarding standardized tests, said: 

This conundrum highlights the inherent problem with government-run schools. Such controversies are impossible to settle without people being forced to fund and hear the expression of ideas with which they disagree—or being forbidden from expressing views that they regard as important.

Read the rest of Valedictorian's Speech Highlights Problems Inherent in Government Schools.

Related Reading:

"The Message of Christ" and New Jersey's Education Wars

Separation of Religion (or Education) and State

Religion and Education Should Both Be Separate From the State

The Conflict Over Standardized Testing Is a Consequence of Government-Run Schools

Farm Subsidies Violate Rights and Should Be Ended

Should the government stop subsidizing "junk food" and instead subsidize health food? My answer is explained over at The Objective Standard blog in Government Should Not Subsidize Junk Food or Health Food but End All Subsidies.

Related Reading:

End All Corporate Welfare

Senator Menendez's Morally Offensive Equivocation

My latest post at The Objective Standard Blog identifies a common fraud regularly perpetrated by statists; the moral equivocation of government coercion with private voluntarism. I wrote about one such instance in Senator Menendez Dishonestly Equates Private Food Bank with SNAP.

Related Reading:

Booker's "Humble" Food Stamp Campaign Highlights the Immorality of the Food Stamp Program

Is WalMart to Blame for the Growing Use of Food Stamps?

Members of Congress Misrepresent Food Stamp Program and Ignore Its Injustice by Ari Armstrong

Dramatic Advance in Cloning Technology Holds Promise for Dramatic Advance for Medical Treatment

My latest post at The Objective Standard blog highlights a major breakthrough in cloning technology that will enable scientists to produce a virtually unlimited supply of stem cells derived from a patient's own DNA. This will enable personalized medical treatment in the form of replacement of diseased organs and cells without the threat of bodily rejection.

Read Scientists Advance Toward Genetically Perfect Replacements for Diseased Cells.

Cloning is controversial, however. Opposition to cloning comes mostly from religionists based on the mystic mythology that considers an embryo to be a person, in contravention to the obvious physical facts of reality. These opponents claim to be pro-life, even as they seek to subordinate the health of actual living human beings to a microscopic cluster of cells containing stem cells that haven't even begun differentiating into specialized human cells and organs, let alone become an actual human being.

Essentially, there are two types of cloning, reproductive and therapeutic. Most American scientists, reports Melissa Healy in the article I linked to, have (unfortunately) “squarely renounced” reproductive cloning, and 13 states have outlawed it, as have most industrialized countries (though not the U.S. federal government). But the work of the Oregon scientists falls under the category of “therapeutic cloning for research and medical treatment,” for which there is much less resistance among so-called “bioethicists.” Even President Bush’s 2002 The President’s Council on Bioethics, which urged a ban on reproductive cloning, refused to do the same regarding therapeutic cloning.

That doesn’t mean that therapeutic cloning is completely in the clear, however. Seven states ban it, and there are calls—such as from Johns Hopkins University bioethicist Jeffrey Kahn—to enforce “consistent national limits” on the practice. And some states have placed legal limits on compensation for egg donors. This could restrict the supply of donor eggs, which are critical to this avenue of research and treatment. Anyone who values their own and their loved one’s health should fight such rights-violating restrictions.

Still, therapeutic cloning is legal in most states, and that’s great news. While speculating about the ultimate practical benefits of theoretical science is always uncertain, the work of the heroic OHSU scientists should cheer every life-loving human being, for the door to treatments for currently untreatable or incurable diseases has just been cracked open wider—perhaps much wider.

For more of my Objective Standard posts, click here.

Related Reading:

Heroes at Harvard by Craig Biddle

Modern Medicine vs. Primitive Ethics

The Objective Standard blog has published my post, Time for the Ethics of Organ Donation to Catch Up with the Heroics of Dr. Joseph E. Murray. Dr. Murray, who died November 26, 2012, performed the first successful human organ transplant in 1954, thus pioneering the organ transplant industry.

Coincidentally, a couple of hours after the publication of my piece, an article by Dr. Amesh A. Adalja was published at Forbes titled To Save Lives, Allow Individuals to Sell Their Organs. It's well worth reading, along with this related material:

The Monstrous Nature of Altruism Laid Bare

Government-Enforced Organ Donor Law is Immoral

Government-Enforced Organ Donor Law is Immoral -- 2

Obama's "Cruel Disregard" for the Sick--and the Well

Legalize Market for Transplant Kidneys, by James Stacey Taylor

The Heroes That Made Sandy a Predictable "Freak" Storm

I have always been interested in weather. For as far back into my childhood as I could remember, the first thing I'd turn to in the newspaper was the weather map. I actually had a favorite weatherman--Tex Antoine.

So I got particular enjoyment out of writing my latest Objective Standard blog post, The Heroes who Enabled Advance Warning of Sandy. It's about the scientists and inventors behind today's weathermen who gave them the greatly improved means to forecast weather.

As late as the mid-Twentieth Century, AccuWeather's Meghan Evans notes, "there were no weather satellites or radar images to give meteorologists the big picture of weather patterns across the globe."

   Meteorologists painstakingly plotted weather data from widely scattered observation sites and analyzed weather maps by hand.
   It was a labor-intensive process, according to Dr. Charlie Hosler, who first became a meteorologist while in the Navy during World War II. Since then, Hosler worked at Penn State as a professor of meteorology, the head of the meteorology department and the dean of the Earth and Mineral Science College.
   "It was really tough," Hosler said of the early days of meteorology. "You really had to understand the structure of the atmosphere and its dynamics and physics. I had a lot of imagination because you had very few data points. It was like an elephant standing behind a barn and all you can see is its tail and you've never seen an elephant before so you'd have trouble describing the elephant."

And we shouldn't short-change the weathermen who must make judgements based on all of the data modern technology makes available to them today. Steve Politi writes of the chief meteorologist who oversees the New Jersey, Delaware, and Philadelphia region, forecasting storms and their impact on the region:

   "Do I want to do this?"
   Gary Szatkowski had his finger on his mouse — the panic button, essentially, for an entire region — ready to send an emergency briefing about a storm that didn't look like much of a threat in many ways.
   This was Tuesday morning, a full six days before the newly-named Hurricane Sandy touched ground in New Jersey. It was still 300 miles south of Jamaica and drifting south. Most computer models had it moving harmlessly out to sea, and while a few had it curving into the New Jersey coast, no storm in modern history had ever done something like that.
   Still: The potential was too much to ignore. The chief meteorologist at the local National Weather service office in Mount Holly considered what might happen in a worst-case scenario — the wind, the flooding, the historic damage. How could he not put everyone on notice?
   "Our region could be close to the path of a very dangerous storm," he wrote in his briefing on the morning of Oct. 23. "This storm system will bring multiple potential threats to the region."

HERO WEATHERMAN

Gary Szatkowski
Age: 55
Town: Hainesport, Burlington County
Profession: Chief meteorologist at the Mount Holly office of the National Weather Service
Fun fact: Took an interest in weather as a first grader, reading the forecast maps in an afternoon newspaper in Chicago.
Act of heroism: His accurate forecasts, along with his strong warnings and personal pleas to evacuate the coast, likely saved lives.

   He clicked to send it, hoping he had done the right thing. And hoping the storm would prove him wrong.

Sadly, he was dead on.

Related Reading:

NY mostly ignored reports warning of superstorm--AP

America an Energy Exporter?

My November 1, 2012 post at The Objective Standard blog opens with:

Confounding the “experts,” amazing new technologies such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have led to an astounding surge in American production of crude oil. Jonathan Fahey reports that the United States is set to become the world’s top oil producer:

Read the rest of Cheers to the Heroes Driving the American Oil and Gas Boom.

Related Reading:

For "Earth Hour," Celebrate Human Achievement

End All Corporate Welfare

Soviet-Style Education

Here is the opening semtence from my latest post at The Objective Standard Blog, Soviet-Style Test Question Highlights Dangers of Government-Run Schools:

Many New Jersey parents were recently shocked to learn that their state’s standardized student test contained a question asking students “to reveal a secret about their lives [and] explain why it was hard to keep.”

For more, see:

Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?

What is the Purpose of Education?

By All Means, Let Parents Lead

Does Freedom Equal the Wild West?

On the Definition of the Concept "Marriage"

Following my recent TOS Blog post Message to Gov. Christie and His Critics: Gay Marriage is a Moral Right, a correspondent asked, "[W]ouldn't a better solution be to call homosexual contracts something else while not restricting their rights?" You can read my answer in my post, Should a “homosexual contract” be called something other than marriage?

Champion of His Own Victims: Obama's New HARP Rule

President Obama announced a new government-backed home refinance program. I commented on this at The Objective Standard. Here are the opening sentences:

President Obama recently announced an expansion of the Federal Government’s Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). This new initiative seeks to help homeowners who can not refinance their mortgages at today’s low rates because their homes’ values have dropped below their mortgage balances. Obama, who places the blame for the crisis squarely on lenders and banks, says this initiative helps “more than 10 million homeowners in this country who, because of a decline in home prices that is no fault of their own, owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.”

Read the rest of my essay, The Government Should Extend Freedom, not HARP

Governor Christie Steps In It

The New Jersey democratically controlled legislature is advancing a bill to legalize gay marriage, with almost certain odds of passage. Governor Chris Christie has vowed to veto the bill. He should have stopped there, but he didn't. As a result, in an act of political punting, he raised some hackles, and in the process raised some fundamental questions about individual rights.

I commented on this episode in a post at the Objective Standard Blog. Here are the opening sentences:

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie ignited a political furor when he vowed to veto a bill recently introduced in the state legislature legalizing gay marriage because he believed the issue should be decided by popular vote through a public referendum. In so doing, he said “I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South."

Click here to read the rest.