Wednesday, July 2, 2014
More on Brooklyn College
My piece on the refusal of Dean Willie Hopkins to consider a multimillion dollar grant proposal that supported AACSB accreditation because he was too busy pursuing AACSB accreditation (which requires funding for faculty that the college cannot afford) appears in the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy website at http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=3033#.U7RhObEzTzM .
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Income Inequality Is a Bogus Cause That Covers Up Wage Stagnation Due to Government
Recently, the media and a wide range of crackpot academics have been banging the income inequality drum. Charges of income inequality have been fundamental to socialism since its inception. When that inception was is subject to debate; Karl Popper claimed that it goes back to the ancient Greeks.
The Spartans had a communistic society based on the village's raising children, common dining, common schooling, and shared equality. There was no room for individual expression or self-actualization. The chief reason the Spartans are remembered today is their wars. The movie 300 celebrates their victory against Xerxes in the Battle of Thermopylae. More so, they are remembered for their leadership of the Peloponnesian League of Hellenic states against Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Although Athens abused its power, it was a quasi-liberal democracy; Athens invented democracy along with liberalism, science, philosophy, rhetoric, law, and theater.
Athens was a precapitalist society based on serfdom and slavery--as was Sparta--but it recognized private property. There was a considerable degree of income inequality in Athens, and Aristotle spoke of the importance of magnificence, what today might be called corporate social responsibility. The Greeks had a primitive view of private enterprise, but Aristotle began to see that private economic transactions are based on equivalent value; he saw such economic transactions as the foundation of human civilization. He did not, however, understand that technology can replace slavery as a source of value. That understanding began with capitalism in Europe, especially in 17th century Great Britain.
Communism sees all wealth as due to labor; hence, it discourages progress. Innovation under communism occurs through imitation of capitalist progress. If there is no capitalism, as is occurring in healthcare, then there will be no innovation because there is no reward for innovation. Marx saw no value as coming from innovation. He lifted this fallacy, the labor theory of value, from classical economist David Ricardo, but it is also consistent with Aristotle's philosophy, which Marx admired. Marxism, like Progressivism, reflects a medieval world view in which the universe is static and human intellect can grasp all knowledge. Marxism presses this superstition further by claiming that the dictatorship of the proletariat can run a command economy.
There was perfect equality among the citizens of totalitarian Sparta. In contrast, there was considerable income inequality among the citizens of Athens. Sparta is remembered for its warrior skills. Athens is remembered for innovation. Income equality is code for totalitarianism coupled with violence.
The Spartan economy was appropriate for its time; it was the Athenians who were well ahead of their time. The classicist Michael Rostovetzeff claims that in the fifth century BC the Hellenic colonies in Italy achieved a standard of living not again equaled until the 19th century.
All progress requires inequality. At the same time, inequality often occurs where there is no progress. Private ownership is necessary but not sufficient for innovation. The periods of great innovation, in fifth century BC Athens , 14th century AD Florence, and 19th AD America, were characterized by income inequality. Sparta had a much more equal society than Athens did, much as North Korea and Cuba have more equal societies than we do. The claim that there needs to be income equality is a claim that there needs to be suppression and exploitation. Such suppression and exploitation will benefit those who live off government: academics, investors, Wall Street executives, corporate executives, government officials, and public employees.
The issue these special interests must deflect is the stagnant real wage. This has been caused by government policy, regulation, and monetary expansion, for wages lag inflation. In the late 19th century, during the gold standard period, Americans could save. In the post-1970 inflationary period, Americans have slaved, not saved. Americans have become the serfs of bankers, corporate executives and public employees.
The Spartans had a communistic society based on the village's raising children, common dining, common schooling, and shared equality. There was no room for individual expression or self-actualization. The chief reason the Spartans are remembered today is their wars. The movie 300 celebrates their victory against Xerxes in the Battle of Thermopylae. More so, they are remembered for their leadership of the Peloponnesian League of Hellenic states against Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Although Athens abused its power, it was a quasi-liberal democracy; Athens invented democracy along with liberalism, science, philosophy, rhetoric, law, and theater.
Athens was a precapitalist society based on serfdom and slavery--as was Sparta--but it recognized private property. There was a considerable degree of income inequality in Athens, and Aristotle spoke of the importance of magnificence, what today might be called corporate social responsibility. The Greeks had a primitive view of private enterprise, but Aristotle began to see that private economic transactions are based on equivalent value; he saw such economic transactions as the foundation of human civilization. He did not, however, understand that technology can replace slavery as a source of value. That understanding began with capitalism in Europe, especially in 17th century Great Britain.
Communism sees all wealth as due to labor; hence, it discourages progress. Innovation under communism occurs through imitation of capitalist progress. If there is no capitalism, as is occurring in healthcare, then there will be no innovation because there is no reward for innovation. Marx saw no value as coming from innovation. He lifted this fallacy, the labor theory of value, from classical economist David Ricardo, but it is also consistent with Aristotle's philosophy, which Marx admired. Marxism, like Progressivism, reflects a medieval world view in which the universe is static and human intellect can grasp all knowledge. Marxism presses this superstition further by claiming that the dictatorship of the proletariat can run a command economy.
There was perfect equality among the citizens of totalitarian Sparta. In contrast, there was considerable income inequality among the citizens of Athens. Sparta is remembered for its warrior skills. Athens is remembered for innovation. Income equality is code for totalitarianism coupled with violence.
The Spartan economy was appropriate for its time; it was the Athenians who were well ahead of their time. The classicist Michael Rostovetzeff claims that in the fifth century BC the Hellenic colonies in Italy achieved a standard of living not again equaled until the 19th century.
All progress requires inequality. At the same time, inequality often occurs where there is no progress. Private ownership is necessary but not sufficient for innovation. The periods of great innovation, in fifth century BC Athens , 14th century AD Florence, and 19th AD America, were characterized by income inequality. Sparta had a much more equal society than Athens did, much as North Korea and Cuba have more equal societies than we do. The claim that there needs to be income equality is a claim that there needs to be suppression and exploitation. Such suppression and exploitation will benefit those who live off government: academics, investors, Wall Street executives, corporate executives, government officials, and public employees.
The issue these special interests must deflect is the stagnant real wage. This has been caused by government policy, regulation, and monetary expansion, for wages lag inflation. In the late 19th century, during the gold standard period, Americans could save. In the post-1970 inflationary period, Americans have slaved, not saved. Americans have become the serfs of bankers, corporate executives and public employees.
Friday, June 27, 2014
News Coverage of My Struggle against Political Correctness at Brooklyn College
The New York Post, Inside Higher Education, and the New York Observer have covered my struggle at Brooklyn College concerning the dean's refusal to provide funding for ideas I had that do not fit the college's socialist ideology. It saddens me that institutions of higher learning cannot tolerate a diversity of ideas and opinions. Since I have arrived in higher education, I have been repeatedly attacked because of my free-market views.
One thing that the articles did not make clear is that all of the ideas that the dean turned down were my own. There were no "strings attached" to anything, and the foundation did not encourage me to pursue anything. Rather, the dean refused to allow me to get funding for my ideas because the faculty will not tolerate them.
Talk about academic freedom as a reason to refuse funding from the Charles G. Koch Foundation and other freedom-oriented foundations is pretext. The faculty of Brooklyn College have squashed my academic freedom to pursue ideas that interest me. That the bigots do so in the name of academic freedom is telling. Just as their fellow totalitarians inspired George Orwell's image of Newspeak in 1984, so do universities claim that their suppression of libertarians' academic freedom is in the name of academic freedom.
One thing that the articles did not make clear is that all of the ideas that the dean turned down were my own. There were no "strings attached" to anything, and the foundation did not encourage me to pursue anything. Rather, the dean refused to allow me to get funding for my ideas because the faculty will not tolerate them.
Talk about academic freedom as a reason to refuse funding from the Charles G. Koch Foundation and other freedom-oriented foundations is pretext. The faculty of Brooklyn College have squashed my academic freedom to pursue ideas that interest me. That the bigots do so in the name of academic freedom is telling. Just as their fellow totalitarians inspired George Orwell's image of Newspeak in 1984, so do universities claim that their suppression of libertarians' academic freedom is in the name of academic freedom.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
New York Lynch Mob
I had dinner last night in El Quijote, a wonderful Spanish restaurant next to the fabled Hotel Chelsea. Although I work one day a week in New York City, I rarely spend time there because my wife and I prefer our neighborhood in the Kingston-Woodstock-Saugerties-Phoenicia corridor in the eastern Catskill Mountains. Because my cousin was visiting, though, I took a bus down, and we had a nice dinner in Chelsea.
I came early and had a martini at the bar, when a young man, probably around 30, walked in and ordered a drink. He told me that he is an unemployed piano worker, and he used to work in the Steinway piano factory. I happen to have grown up near the original Steinway factory in Astoria, Queens, and we got into a conversation.
I suggested that he consider moving to North Dakota, where the jobs are plentiful. Truck drivers in North Dakota are making $80,000, according to the Bismarck Tribune, and a Williston politician has told me that people who get off the bus in Willistion, which is in western North Dakota, find a job within six hours. The reason, of course, is the oil boom brought on by hydraulic fracturing, fracking, and horizontal drilling. These technologies involve going down two miles into the earth, then turning the drill at a 90 degree angle, horizontally. High-pressure water mixed with a chemical solution breaks up the shale rock and releases oil or natural gas.
According to Hannah Coman,* since fracking was invented in the 1940s, there have been about a million fracking applications with about 1,000 reported cases in the five states where fracking has occurred, Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In other words, fracking is safer than driving a car.
That is, the five states where fracking has occurred have a combined population of 36.6 million, according to the 2010 census, so there’s a probability of .027% (1,000/36,600,000) of an incident. In contrast, there were 6.4 million car accidents in 2005 compared to 208 million licensed drivers in 2008. The median age was 37.2, and assuming a starting age for driving of 18, Americans experienced about 19.2 x 6.4 million = 125 million car accidents over their 19.2 driving years; 125 million / 208 million is a 60% probability. In other words, car accidents are 2,222% more likely than fracking accidents.
Nevertheless New Yorkers are convinced, undoubtedly by the media, that fracking is a great evil. Most don't know what it is or why it's evil. They just know that it's evil.
When the young man asked me why there were so many jobs, I said that there was a great deal of oil extraction because of the fracking in North Dakota. He suddenly went ballistic, and he started screaming at me: "I will NEVER be involved with fracking. Fracking is evil. I hate fracking." I suggested that he do a little reading on the subject, and he answered, "I've read on it . You should read on it." I asked him whether he had learned about it from Youtube video or The New York Times. He didn't respond. I added, "OK, I'll remember you as the guy who preferred unemployment to fracking."
I then sat down with my aunt, to whom I described this interaction. "I hate fracking," she said. I don't think that she could cite a clear reason either.
New York is a city in which the City Council has called Wal-Mart's donations to charity "dangerous dollars" and "toxic money." It is a city governed by a lynch-mob mentality, where conformity to national socialist** rumors is a rule, a cornerstone of a culture governed by lockstep, illiteracy-inducing public schools, which indoctrinate the city's population in the city's national socialist ideology. Never mind that fracking has been done for 70 years; never mind that natural gas has always been obtained using fracking. Fracking is evil, according to New York's national socialists.
New York has become a place that I'd rather avoid. The people, indoctrinated and intolerant, don't interest me; the politics upsets me. The food is good, but I'm past the age at which I can afford the calories. When the jury comes in on the outcome of the Fed's recent tripling of the money supply, I don't think I want to be anywhere near New York City. I can envision the city's national socialists hoisted by their own petard, blaming George W. Bush for all their own bad decisions.
*Hannah Coman, “Balancing Our Needs for Energy and Clean Water: The Case for Applying Strict Liability in Hydraulic Fracturing Suits.”
**In popular American parlance, followers of Hegel and the German historical school of economics had been called "liberals" and now call themselves "progressives." Neither term is accurate. They are national socialists, with the same intellectual heritage that Hitler's Nazi Party had.
I came early and had a martini at the bar, when a young man, probably around 30, walked in and ordered a drink. He told me that he is an unemployed piano worker, and he used to work in the Steinway piano factory. I happen to have grown up near the original Steinway factory in Astoria, Queens, and we got into a conversation.
I suggested that he consider moving to North Dakota, where the jobs are plentiful. Truck drivers in North Dakota are making $80,000, according to the Bismarck Tribune, and a Williston politician has told me that people who get off the bus in Willistion, which is in western North Dakota, find a job within six hours. The reason, of course, is the oil boom brought on by hydraulic fracturing, fracking, and horizontal drilling. These technologies involve going down two miles into the earth, then turning the drill at a 90 degree angle, horizontally. High-pressure water mixed with a chemical solution breaks up the shale rock and releases oil or natural gas.
According to Hannah Coman,* since fracking was invented in the 1940s, there have been about a million fracking applications with about 1,000 reported cases in the five states where fracking has occurred, Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In other words, fracking is safer than driving a car.
That is, the five states where fracking has occurred have a combined population of 36.6 million, according to the 2010 census, so there’s a probability of .027% (1,000/36,600,000) of an incident. In contrast, there were 6.4 million car accidents in 2005 compared to 208 million licensed drivers in 2008. The median age was 37.2, and assuming a starting age for driving of 18, Americans experienced about 19.2 x 6.4 million = 125 million car accidents over their 19.2 driving years; 125 million / 208 million is a 60% probability. In other words, car accidents are 2,222% more likely than fracking accidents.
Nevertheless New Yorkers are convinced, undoubtedly by the media, that fracking is a great evil. Most don't know what it is or why it's evil. They just know that it's evil.
When the young man asked me why there were so many jobs, I said that there was a great deal of oil extraction because of the fracking in North Dakota. He suddenly went ballistic, and he started screaming at me: "I will NEVER be involved with fracking. Fracking is evil. I hate fracking." I suggested that he do a little reading on the subject, and he answered, "I've read on it . You should read on it." I asked him whether he had learned about it from Youtube video or The New York Times. He didn't respond. I added, "OK, I'll remember you as the guy who preferred unemployment to fracking."
I then sat down with my aunt, to whom I described this interaction. "I hate fracking," she said. I don't think that she could cite a clear reason either.
New York is a city in which the City Council has called Wal-Mart's donations to charity "dangerous dollars" and "toxic money." It is a city governed by a lynch-mob mentality, where conformity to national socialist** rumors is a rule, a cornerstone of a culture governed by lockstep, illiteracy-inducing public schools, which indoctrinate the city's population in the city's national socialist ideology. Never mind that fracking has been done for 70 years; never mind that natural gas has always been obtained using fracking. Fracking is evil, according to New York's national socialists.
New York has become a place that I'd rather avoid. The people, indoctrinated and intolerant, don't interest me; the politics upsets me. The food is good, but I'm past the age at which I can afford the calories. When the jury comes in on the outcome of the Fed's recent tripling of the money supply, I don't think I want to be anywhere near New York City. I can envision the city's national socialists hoisted by their own petard, blaming George W. Bush for all their own bad decisions.
*Hannah Coman, “Balancing Our Needs for Energy and Clean Water: The Case for Applying Strict Liability in Hydraulic Fracturing Suits.”
**In popular American parlance, followers of Hegel and the German historical school of economics had been called "liberals" and now call themselves "progressives." Neither term is accurate. They are national socialists, with the same intellectual heritage that Hitler's Nazi Party had.
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