The Objective Standard Blog
Thursday, February 2, 2012
What’s So Super About the Super Bowl?
When more than 150 million Americans tune in to watch the game, advertisers pay up to $4 million for 30-second commercial spots, and a nation consumes food on a scale rivaling Thanksgiving, Super Bowl Sunday can safely be declared a de facto national holiday. As Evan Weiner, a sports writer for the New York Sun, put it: “The Fourth of July is America’s birthday party, but Super Bowl Sunday has become America’s biggest party.”
What explains the popularity of a game that annually ranks among the most-watched single-day events? Certainly, the gambling, the glitzy commercials, and social events play a part in attracting a wider audience. But something more fundamental is at play: the nature of football itself.
Football is a uniquely intense and dangerous game that demands equal parts physical and mental effort. Its athletes study, memorize, and practice extensively choreographed plays that they must execute with pinpoint precision—and maximum exertion—all while risking serious injury.
Moreover, since NFL teams play just 16 regular-season games, compared with 162 in baseball and 82 in basketball and hockey, each play from scrimmage holds considerably more weight. Add to this football’s single-game, win-or-go-home elimination playoff system, which, unlike those of comparable sports (e.g., the World Series, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup) leaves no room for error, and you begin to see telling differences.
True, some Super Bowls have been so lopsided that by halftime they were no longer worth watching. Yet despite its relatively short history, the Super Bowl has produced some stellar contests and many dramatic, critical plays that have attained folklore status.
Fans will never forget Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway’s dive into a gang of Green Bay Packers, who spun him like a helicopter prop, to sustain what became a tie-breaking drive in Super Bowl XXXII. Also etched forever in the minds of fans is the image of St. Louis Rams linebacker Mike Jones tackling Tennessee Titans wide receiver Kevin Dyson to stop him one yard short of tying the game on the final play of Super Bowl XXXIV. And then there was New England Patriots kicker Adam Vinatieri’s last second, game-winning field goal against the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI.
Super Bowl XLVI, between the New York Giants and New England Patriots on Sunday, has no shortage of pre-game elements of intrigue. Chief among them is that the contest is a rematch of the Super Bowl four years ago, in which the upstart Giants, a 12-point underdog, derailed and defeated the Patriots, who otherwise were headed to immortality as the second undefeated team in NFL history.
On Sunday, restaurants, bars, and pizza-delivery chains across the nation will rake in big bucks thanks to the mass appeal of the big game. That appeal is rooted in the immense value fans derive from watching superlatively honed athletes who demonstrate exceptional determination and ability in a seriously dangerous contest with near equals.
Is it any wonder the Super Bowl has reached the status of a national holiday?
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Related:
Image: Creative Commons by Jack Newton
Posted in: Sports
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Three Ways iDoneThis Helps Me Get Things Done
If you’re looking for a useful app to boost your productivity, I recommend iDoneThis, which I’ve used every day for the past six months. Here are three ways the app helps me get more things done:
1. It enables me to effortlessly keep track of what I’ve done and thus how productive I have (or haven’t) been.
At the end of each day, iDoneThis sends me an email. “Hi there,” it says, “Take 30 seconds to write out what you got done today.” So I do—and that’s that. Keeping track of what I’ve done isn’t something I have to think much about; with iDoneThis it’s just a question in my inbox that I respond to in less than a minute.
2. It motivates me to get the right things done.
I have a handful of things I want to do each day and knowing that I’m going to report what I did sometimes gives me just enough added motivation to take action on the most important things when I otherwise would not.
For example, I normally treasure reading to my son. Sometimes, however, particularly when I’m tired, I waver between going upstairs to read to him and skipping it. Then I remember that I’ll be able to report the activity to iDoneThis by email—and just that much tips me to read. Shortly thereafter, I’ve read two or three short books to my son and strengthened not only an important habit but also a vital relationship—and I’m feeling more energetic to boot.
3. It keeps me honest about what I have actually done.
It can be easy to blame outside factors for not getting things done or not being happy. After all, other people and chance events can influence both of these things. But iDoneThis keeps a clear and definitive record of what I do each day, and when I look back on what I have done I can see the results of my decisions and actions.
For example, I can see that over the past month I read many more books for my own enjoyment than I had planned and, partly because of this, wrote much less. Without iDoneThis, it would be easy to tell myself that I was productive, having read so much, and leave it at that. But with the record that iDoneThis provides, I can see that my indulgence in reading, however productive on one level, precluded me from doing the writing that I wanted to do. This enables me to adjust my plan for the following days, weeks, and months.
There are other ways iDoneThis helps me boost my productivity, and other ways it can help you boost yours too. If you want to give it a try, you can sign up to use the app here. (It’s free.)
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Posted in: Productivity, Psychology, Science and Technology
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Have a Selfish Randsday!
American philosopher Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905, and her long-time associate Harry Binswanger has designated her birthday a new holiday: “Randsday.” I love this idea.
Rand, author of The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and several other revolutionary books, was, from the standard of the value of man’s life, the most important philosopher of the 20th century.
Rand advocated what she called rational egoism: the idea that one should always act in a rationally self-interested manner, always pursue one’s life-serving values by means of one’s best judgment, always consider the long-range consequences of one’s actions, and never commit a sacrifice (“the surrender a greater value for the sake of a lesser one”). To enact this principle, she held, is to be moral; hence the virtue of selfishness.
Rand saw this idea both as the key to personal happiness and as the moral foundation of a free society. And she was right. If you want to live your life fully and achieve the greatest happiness possible, you must act in a rationally self-interested manner as a matter of unwavering principle. You must choose life-serving goals, activities, and relationships, and you must pursue them rationally and ambitiously throughout your days and years. To do otherwise is to live less fully, less happily than you are able to live.
Likewise, if you want to live in a society where you are free to act consistently as you see fit, you must advocate a social system in which individual rights are fully recognized and protected. You must uphold the inalienable right of each individual to act on his own judgment for his own sake—whether in regard to his career, business, recreation, romance, or any other value—so long as he does not violate the same rights of others. The proper purpose of a government, Rand emphasized, is to protect rights and thus enable individuals to live their lives in accordance with their judgment.
This is the essence of Rand’s philosophy: Go by reason, pursue your life-serving values, respect the rights of others to do the same, and advocate a social system that makes all of this possible. And this is why Randsday is a worthy holiday. It celebrates the birthday of the philosopher who codified the virtue of selfishness and made the moral argument for a rights-respecting society.
How to celebrate Randsday? As Binswanger puts it: “You do something not done on any other holiday: you give yourself a present.” The idea is to treat yourself to something that you really want and will greatly enjoy but that you ordinarily would not buy for yourself now: that MacBook Pro or that beautiful dress you’ve been eying, that snowboard you know will improve your turns, reservations at that picturesque hotel in the Caymans, tickets to that Broadway show, a Lexus, a puppy—whatever you’ll love and can non-sacrificially afford. Buy it for Randsday and enjoy it.
What will it be?
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Related
Image: Gary L. Friedman www.FriedmanArchives.com; Copyright © Sandra J. Shaw Studio 2011.
Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
There is No ‘Right to Work’ Against an Employer’s Consent
People have the right to associate voluntarily and to contract by mutual consent. Those rights have long been under assault by the “progressive” left; now they are attacked by conservatives as well. Today Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, signed a “right to work” bill that further erodes freedom of contract.
Conservative writer Liz Peek praises this bill on the grounds “that union labor costs and work rules have become an obstacle to job growth.” No doubt her claims about unions are true. But the problems arise from various federal statutes, including the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act signed by FDR in 1935, that violate the rights of employers and employees to contract as they see fit. One practical result has been to hamstring the American auto industry, as Daniel J. Mitchell pointed out even before the auto bailouts.
The conservative solution, as articulated by Peek, merely compounds previous violations of freedom of contract with new ones, apparently on the grounds that two wrongs somehow make a right. In her view, the bill is good because it “prohibits contracts requiring workers to pay union dues.” But why should the government be in the business of setting the terms of employment contracts? Employers should be free to hire whomever they want on whatever terms the parties mutually agree to accept.
More broadly, there is no “right to work” against an employer’s consent, any more than there is a “right to health care.” A right refers to a freedom of action—such as the right to seek employment or medical care from willing partners—not to an entitlement to a specific good, service, or outcome. People have the right to work for others only insofar as the employer freely consents to the terms of employment. (Of course, people always have the right to work for themselves using their own labor and resources.)
The solution to rights-violating labor laws is not to impose more rights-violating labor laws, but rather to repeal them all and restore liberty of contract.
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Related:
Image: Bob Glass
Posted in: Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Texas Anti-Abortion Law Violates Rights to Liberty and Freedom of Speech
Earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas law that forces women seeking an abortion to obtain a sonogram and wait 24 hours before being able to act according to their own judgment. The law also requires doctors to present information and claims that neither doctor nor patient may regard as relevant.
Though praised by some conservatives, the law violates the rights of doctors and patients and opens the door to similar attacks on all our rights.
The Texas law violates freedom of contract by restricting consensual, voluntary agreements between women and their doctors. Conservatives who support such restrictions on abortion can offer no principled resistance when leftists wish to use government force to restrict freedom of contract in medicine in other ways, as by imposing myriad costly insurance mandates.
The law violates rights of trade and self-determination by forcing women to wait 24 hours to get an abortion in most cases. By the same logic, the government could force people to wait to enter any other controversial economic transaction. No doubt other activists would love to use government force to make people wait to buy a gun, buy unhealthy foods or drinks, trade certain stocks or other financial instruments, or even read or publish “sensitive” materials (such as that denying human-caused global warming).
The law also violates the free speech of doctors who, under the law, must discuss what politicians dictate rather than what their professional judgment demands. By the same standards, politicians could impose rote speech on marriage and divorce counselors, sellers of controversial magazines, etc. (The argument that the Texas law merely ensures informed consent is an obvious pretext to make abortions costlier and more difficult to obtain; the idea that women seeking abortions don’t already understand what an abortion entails is ludicrous.)
The choice is stark. We can have either economic liberty or laws that restrict freedoms of contract, trade, and speech; we can’t have both. Those who act to restrict economic liberties in the realm of abortion should not be surprised when other sorts of transactions fall prey to the same types of controls.
Regarding the broader case for why women have the right to seek an abortion, and why fetuses don’t have rights, see Diana Hsieh and my recent Objective Standard article, “The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties.”
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Related:
- Gingrich Seeks to Violate Rights of Women and Doctors to Engage in Fertility Care
- The American Right, the Purpose of Government, and the Future of Liberty
Image: Creative Commons
Posted in: Health Care, Individual Rights and Law
Monday, January 30, 2012
Gingrich Seeks to Violate Rights of Women and Doctors to Engage in Fertility Care
The spectacle of Newt Gingrich—of all people—trying to dictate the family planning of others is ludicrous.
Yet Gingrich’s recent call for more rules controlling in vitro fertility treatments raises an important issue: Under the proposed anti-abortion “personhood” laws that Gingrich endorses, common fertility treatments would be outlawed. The result would be that many women who wish to have children would be legally barred from getting pregnant.
“Personhood” laws would arbitrarily declare eggs at the moment of fertilization to be the legal equivalent of a born child, conferring full legal rights to zygotes. Among many other things, such laws would ban common fertility treatments that involve harvesting multiple eggs from the woman, trying to fertilize those eggs, and then implanting one or more of the resulting zygotes in the woman’s uterus. Because these procedures typically produce extra zygotes that are later destroyed, “personhood” laws declare them to be murder.
If doctors were forbidden from fertilizing more than a single egg at a time, that would dramatically increase the cost of fertility treatment and dramatically reduce the chances of success. As a result, many women who wish to have children would be legally prevented from doing so. (For details, see a 2010 paper on the subject by Diana Hsieh and me.)
Thus, “personhood” laws would violate the rights of women and their partners to seek fertility care as well as the rights of doctors to administer it—a violation of the founding rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
And yet, even though they would prevent many women from having children of their own, the “personhood” laws are preposterously called “pro life” by their advocates. They are in fact profoundly anti-life, and it it time for Americans to recognize them as such.
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.
Related:
- The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties
- Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society
Image: Creative Commons by Gage Skidmore
Posted in: Health Care, Individual Rights and Law, Presidential Candidates
Monday, January 30, 2012
The Grey: A Great Reminder of Crucial Truths
Could you survive deep in the Alaskan wilderness and make your way out with only the resources from a crashed airplane?
That’s the stark challenge faced by the seven protagonists of the movie The Grey, starring Liam Neeson. An airplane carrying Alaskan oil field workers crashes during a storm, and they must battle harsh winter conditions and a pack of aggressive wolves while attempting to find their way back to civilization. In addition to spectacular cinematography and spellbinding action scenes, the movie demonstrates surprising philosophical depth in delivering its theme: “What does it really mean to fight for one’s life?”
The movie also dramatizes three related principles that are easy to forget during everyday life but that are made vividly clear in the context of the movie:
1) Man’s basic means of survival is his reasoning mind.
The wolves in The Grey survive using their claws, fangs, and instincts in accordance with their basic nature. Humans, however, cannot survive in this fashion. We lack the fur to keep us warm in subzero temperatures, claws and fangs to kill prey (or to protect ourselves against predators), and instincts to dictate our actions. To survive, we must use our minds, rearrange nature, and create the goods we need. Reason is our basic means of doing so.
2) Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Do you need to start a fire? Then you must identify the nature of the material at hand and proceed accordingly. Do you need to cross a violently rushing river? Then you must devise a method that holds the weight of a full-grown man; you must respect and apply the laws of physics. Wishful thinking, bluster, or drunkenness won’t make reality bend to your desires or make your problems go away. The only way to solve your problems or accomplish your goals is to face reality head-on, heed the facts, and act accordingly.
3) Modern man is extremely dependent on the benefits of technology.
Technology is an incredible enhancement to our lives. I would rather be typing a movie review on my MacBook Air in the comfort of my living room than shivering in a dark cave wondering whether I’ll be eaten by wolves tonight.
But it’s easy to take for granted the benefits of industrial civilization until we are reminded (in fiction or in real life) what life is like without those benefits. In Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden hosts a fancy party during a storm. During the party, Francisco D’Anconia tells him:
“[Y]ou are able to have summer flowers and half-naked women in your house on a night like this, in demonstration of your victory over that storm. And if it weren’t for you, most of those who are here would be left helpless at the mercy of that wind in the middle of some such plain.”
The Grey reminded me how grateful I am for the many entrepreneurs, engineers, and businessmen who have created our modern industrial civilization. Without them, we wouldn’t enjoy the iPads, cell phones, automobiles, central heating, and electricity we so easily take for granted. Instead, we’d be like the protagonists of The Grey, struggling mightily against raw, untamed nature, hoping to survive another day.
For this reason, although The Grey is not a political movie, it also helped me better appreciate Ari Armstrong’s recent blog post, “Great Producers Deserve Our Gratitude, Not Obama’s Tax Hikes.”
In the hubbub of everyday life, it’s easy to forget some basic truths about man, nature, and the fundamental role of reason in our lives. A gripping tale of novel and dire circumstances, The Grey reminds us of what we must never forget if we want to live.
Posted in: Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law, Philosophy, Science and Technology, The Arts
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Obama Should Help End All Energy Subsidies, Not Play Favorites
President Obama is schizophrenic in his energy proposals.
In a Thursday address at Buckley Air Force Base, Obama said he wants “the same set of rules for everyone.” Yet, on one hand, he said he wants to end subsidies and “taxpayer giveaways” to oil companies, while on the other hand he wants to establish “clean energy tax credits” and mandates that compel people to use politically favored energy sources.
In other words, Obama wants one set of rules for productive oil companies and a different set of rules for his political cronies who run parasitical “alternative” energy companies like Solyndra. Instead, Obama should call for the elimination of tax-funded subsidies and the even-handed lowering of taxes across the board.
A business subsidy—corporate welfare—is an abomination. As Mike Brownfield argued for the conservative Heritage Foundation last year, “The left’s anti-subsidy rhetoric is right on. Ending all energy subsidies, including those for oil and gas, would be good for American taxpayers and consumers.” More importantly, it would protect their rights to control their own wealth. Why, then, do some people condemn corporate welfare for oil companies even as they champion it for their own pet projects? Brownfield notes that, for such activists, “vilifying an industry [oil] is their end game.”
The problem of discriminatory taxes is trickier. However, clearly the wrong approach is to confuse subsidies with tax breaks. A subsidy involves forcibly confiscating the wealth of some parties and giving it to other parties. A tax break involves letting a business keep more of the wealth that it produces and properly owns. The two things are fundamentally different.
That said, the federal government ought not play favorites by punishing some businesses with higher tax rates. Discriminatory taxes violate the basic principle of equality under the law.
The solution to discriminatory taxes is not to impose even higher taxes on the historically favored businesses. To do so would be to act on the flawed principle that two wrongs somehow make a right. Instead, the proper approach is to start by dropping everyone’s taxes to the lower rate. Obama should not try to raise net taxes on oil companies; he should reduce net taxes on everyone paying more.
But Obama refuses to demand “the same set of rules for everyone.” Instead, he wants to pick the winners and losers in the economy—the rights and well-being of energy companies and their customers be damned.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.
Related:
- Interview with Alex Epstein, Founder of Center for Industrial Progress
- Energy at the Speed of Thought: The Original Alternative Energy Market
Image: Creative Commons by Bernard Pollack
Posted in: Business and Economics, Environmentalism, Presidential Candidates
Friday, January 27, 2012
Warren Buffett Immorally Calls for Tax Hikes on Top Producers
Warren Buffett so loves the idea of higher taxes on the wealthy that the proposal to accomplish that even bears his name: the “Buffett Rule.” This week Buffett seconded Barack Obama’s call for “a minimum effective tax rate of 30 percent on those who earn a million dollars or more,” Reuters reports.
The “Buffett Rule” is based on the tired lie that (in the words of the Reuters reporter) “millionaires [pay] a smaller share of income taxes than middle-class taxpayers.” While it is true that the tax rate for capital gains is “only” 15 percent, generally the wealthy pay far more taxes than everyone else (as reports by the AP and the Heritage Foundation confirm).
But the reason not to raise taxes on the wealthy is not that they currently already pay a greater share of their income in taxes than others pay. The reason is that the wealthy, like others, have the right to use their earnings and property as they judge best. Indeed, as I have argued, that fact justifies dramatically lowering taxes on the wealthy.
As for Buffett, he is already perfectly free to write a check to the federal government for whatever amount he wishes, up to his entire fortune. Instead of acting with the courage of his convictions, Buffett recently wrote an extra check to the Treasury for what is to him a paltry sum of $49,000. As of November, he was worth $39 billion (about a quarter of a percent of the federal debt). If he seriously believes federal politicians and bureaucrats can spend his billions more intelligently than he can, he is free to let them try.
But for Buffett to advocate that the government forcibly seize more wealth from producers is immoral—and for the government to seize their wealth is a violation of their rights. Great producers who earned their money building the companies and technologies that enhance and prolong our lives should be free to use their resources according to their own discretion and for their own self-interested purposes.
Related:
- To Give Americans a “Fair Shot,” Obama Should Stop Violating Our Rights
- The American Right, the Purpose of Government, and the Future of Liberty
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Posted in: Business and Economics
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Great Producers Deserve Our Gratitude, Not Obama’s Tax Hikes
In his State of the Union address, Barack Obama said the wealthy need to pay higher taxes in order to pay their “fair share.”
As Newt Gingrich told Newsmax, Obama’s plan apparently would entail doubling the capital gains tax to 30 percent, something Gingrich justifiably characterizes as the “most destructive anti-jobs proposal by a president in my lifetime.” (The tax hike would be on top of the double taxation already applied to capital gains.)
But Obama’s proposed tax hikes are not merely economically destructive, they are the antithesis of actual fairness. Toward genuine fairness, a good first step would be to dramatically cut taxes on those who produce enormous wealth. Such producers earn their money by creating the technologies, products, jobs, and effective business practices that keep us alive and help us flourish. They deserve to use their resources as they judge best rather than see their earnings looted by federal politicians and the special-interest groups that many of those politicians serve. And yet, rather than applaud the giants of industry whose productivity enhances our lives in myriad ways, federal politicians punish them with insanely high taxes. (James Pethokoukis reviews relative tax burdens for the American Enterprise Institute, and I discuss the matter in a piece for Pajamas Media.)
To puff up his claim that forcing the wealthy to pay higher taxes is somehow more “fair,” Obama presumes that their wealth automatically belongs to the federal government. If politicians allow wealthy producers to keep more of the money they earn, he argued, then that is a “special tax subsidy,” no different than if the government hands the wealthy the money that somebody else earned.
The federal government should forcibly seize more of the earnings of the wealthy, Obama argued, in order to give that money to someone else, whether “a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet.” Elsewhere in his speech Obama suggested that politically-connected parasites posing as businessmen also deserve more corporate welfare. But, regardless of which interest groups win the federal payouts, Obama’s principle is the same: the wealth of the great producers should be forcibly confiscated and turned over to those who did not produce it but allegedly need it or profess to need it.
In other words, one’s “unalienable rights” to one’s “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” must make way for the collectivist doctrine: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
Fairness does not mean letting the federal government forcibly confiscate more of the wealth of those who produce the goods, services, businesses, and jobs on which our lives depend. It means limiting the government to the protection of each person’s rights to his property and earnings, whether that person earns ten thousand dollars every year or ten billion.
Related:
- To Give Americans a “Fair Shot,” Obama Should Stop Violating Our Rights
- The Justice of Income Inequality Under Capitalism
Image: Public Domain
Posted in: Business and Economics, Presidential Candidates
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