Ayn Rand, young and svelte, in Hollywood

Ilya Somin, at Volokh, having just finished Jennifer Burns’s excellent new biography of Ayn Rand, makes a point of recommending it, and offers his own view of Rand.

Ayn Rand was the greatest popularizer of libertarian ideas of the last 100 years. Many more people have read Rand’s books than have read all the works of Friedman, Hayek, Mises, Nozick, and all the other modern libertarian thinkers combined. In becoming a libertarian without any influence from Rand, I was actually unusual. Over the last 15 years, I have met a large number of libertarian intellectuals and activists of the last two generations, including some of the most famous. More often than not, reading Rand influenced their conversion to libertarianism, even though very few fully endorse her theories or consider themselves Objectivists. Burns quotes Milton Friedman’s perceptive assessment of Rand as “an utterly intolerant and dogmatic person who did a great deal of good.” I think he was probably right.

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Fellow Volokhian David Bernstein, responding to Ilya, adds his own personal tribute to Ayn.

Rand turns Marxism on its head. While Marxists argue that “capitalists” make their profits on the backs of the working class, Rand illustrates that the working class, as such, makes almost no contribution to wealth, but relies on the efforts, risks, sacrifices, and most of all the genius of the entrepreneurial class. Consider, as a thought experiment, what living standards would be like if every person in the world had an IQ around the median of 103, and otherwise had average talents and ambition. Does anyone seriously doubt that “workers,” and everyone else, would be a lot poorer than they are today, and indeed would likely be living as poorly as our hunting and gathering ancestors?

Libertarian Randall Hoven, at American Thinker, sticks up for the social conservative trads.

I agree with him. The threat to liberty these days is not coming from bible thumpers. It’s coming from bien pensant liberals.

Social conservatism is taking a beating lately. Not only did it lose in the recent elections, it is being blamed for the Republican losses. If only the religious right would get off the Republican party’s back, the GOP could win like it is supposed to again. I beg to differ.

I’m anything but a social conservative. In nine presidential elections, I voted Libertarian in six. I am a hard core “limited government” conservative/libertarian; I want government out of my pocket-book and out of my bedroom. Concerning my religion, it’s none of your business, but I’m somewhere in the lapsed-Catholic-deist-agnostic-atheist spectrum; let’s just call it agnostic.

Having said all that, I have no problem with “social conservatives” or the “religious right” and their supposed influence on the Republican party. I base this not on the Bible or historical authority, but on the love of liberty and the evidence of my own eyes.

Who are the true liberty killers?

The most obvious point to me is that it is the do-gooding liberals who are telling us all what we can and can’t do. The religious right usually just wants to be left alone, either to home school, pray in public or not get their children vaccinated with who-knows-what. Inasmuch as the “religious right” wants some things outlawed, they have failed miserably for at least the last 50 years. Abortion, sodomy, and pornography are now all Constitutional rights. However, praying in public school is outlawed, based on that same Constitution.

Just think for a moment about the things you are actually forced to do or are prevented from doing. Seat belts. Motorcycle helmets. Bicycle helmets. Smoking. Gun purchase and ownership restrictions. Mandatory vaccines for your children. Car emissions inspections. Campaign ad and contribution restrictions. Saying a prayer at a public school graduation or football game. Trash separation and recycling. Keeping the money you earned. Gas tax. Telephone tax. Income tax. FICA withholding. Fill in this form. Provide ID.

For the most part, the list just cited is post-1960. Neither Pat Robertson nor James Dobson ever forced any of that on us.

Tired of government messing up your economy? Don’t want some Obamessiah spreading your wealth around? Feeling a little more anarchistic than usual? EconTalk has articles and a podcast on achieving autonomy by homesteading on the high seas.

Christopher Buckley has endorsed Obama.

This from the son of the man who wrote: “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

Neal Boortz, a conservative AM talk radio host (whose program I wish were featured on my local station) says: This speech has never been delivered at a college or a university. It was written to protest the fact that such an invitation has never been offered!

Now, I realize that most of you consider yourselves Liberals. In fact, you are probably very proud of your liberal views. You care so much. You feel so much. You want to help so much. After all, you’re a compassionate and caring person, aren’t you now? Well, isn’t that just so extraordinarily special. Now, at this age, is as good a time as any to be a Liberal; as good a time as any to know absolutely everything. You have plenty of time, starting tomorrow, for the truth to set in. Over the next few years, as you begin to feel the cold breath of reality down your neck, things are going to start changing pretty fast .. including your own assessment of just how much you really know.

So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality: Pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes. Then compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy conservatives. From the Left you will hear “I feel.” From the Right you will hear “I think.” From the Liberals you will hear references to groups –The Blacks, The Poor, The Rich, The Disadvantaged, The Less Fortunate. From the Right you will hear references to individuals. On the Left you hear talk of group rights; on the Right, individual rights.

That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics. Conservatives and Libertarians think — and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual.

Liberals feel that their favored groups have enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals. Conservatives (and Libertarians, myself among them I might add) think that individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the plunder of the masses.

In college you developed a group mentality, but if you look closely at your diplomas you will see that they have your individual names on them. Not the name of your school mascot, or of your fraternity or sorority, but your name. Your group identity is going away. Your recognition and appreciation of your individual identity starts now.

If, by the time you reach the age of 30, you do not consider yourself to be a libertarian or a conservative, rush right back here as quickly as you can and apply for a faculty position. These people will welcome you with open arms. They will welcome you, that is, so long as you haven’t developed an individual identity. Once again you will have to be willing to sign on to the group mentality you embraced during the past four years.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Bird Dog.

Roger de Hauteville takes a vicious poke at the adolescent immaturity of libertarians like Ron Paul (and some other people I know). FitzJames Stephen would be proud.

Let me save you all some time.

Look, I know it’s amusing talking about Ron Paul! Ron Paul! is a blast. Everybody loves a verbal grenade rolled into excruciatingly dull settings. But politics is supposed to be dull. Politics was interesting in Russia in 1917, in Iran in 1979, in Venezuela last year… well, what I’m trying to tell you is you don’t want to “live in interesting times.”

Now, young persons and people in rent-controlled apartments that work at fair trade coffee shops can afford the luxury of talking about whether the American Civil War was a good idea. If you just got out of college, Ron Paul! is right up your alley. Why talk about today’s silly problems when Ron Paul! is arguing about whether we should abolish the Second Bank of The US? It’s so much more lively to talk about history, because it’s on the shelf and you can find any damn version of it you want to argue over. Real time isn’t indexed yet.

Ron Paul! is captivating to youngins because he’s like the reset button on Halo. You don’t have to live with your decisions in the context of your surroundings. If you charge into a nest of fiat currency economies or Brutes, Elites, and Grunts and get slaughtered, just start over! Instead of having to offer cogent and useful advice on how to move forward in contemporary life, you just mention that contemporary life shouldn’t be that way.

Read the whole rant.

The Alternative Energy Retailer quotes a source offering some trenchant criticism of the entire Alternative Energy movement.

Government incentive programs for adopting alternative energy are totally corrupt,” warns Alex Epstein, business analyst with the Ayn Rand Institute, based in Irvine, Calif. “They consist of expropriating the wealth of Americans, including energy companies that actually produce ample, affordable power, and using it to finance sources of energy that do not produce ample, affordable power – even, in some cases, after decades of subsidies. It makes no more sense than giving Americans liberal incentives to use horses and buggies instead of cars.”

For Epstein, the federal and state governments should play no role in advocating the American usage of alternative energy. He adds that using concerns over global warning to promote alternative energy is inappropriate.

“The purpose of government is the protection of the individual rights of all to their lives, liberty and property,” he says. “For government action to be justified in response to claims of global warming – the cause of today’s alternative energy infatuation – it must be scientifically demonstrable, in a court of law, that individuals’ burning of carbon fuels will do demonstrable harm to specific individuals through some sort of catastrophic change in weather. The state of evidence regarding global warming today is not even close to that. Even the highly politicized, highly speculative United Nations projections of a gradual, 8-degree-average warming over the next 100 years would be easily dealt with by industrialized people, who have sturdy houses, air conditioners, and sunscreen to cope with heat or bad weather, and ample time to migrate if necessary.”

Under the Objectivist viewpoint, alternative energy companies should sink or swim without any assistance from public funding. “If someone has a great idea for a new method of producing of energy, great – let them prove it in the free market,” continues Epstein. “If someone wants to make himself feel good by pretending that he is averting an apocalypse by using unattractive light bulbs, throwing away his clothes dryer, driving an overpriced car, buying carbon offsets from Al Gore, or spending a fortune on solar panels in a free country, he has a right to do so. But he has no right to demand that the government compel others to sacrifice for his unproven claims of doom.”

Mencius Moldbug had too much coffee again this morning, and has produced another of his incredibly lengthy, rambling and discursive, yet very clever postings, ranging happily over the intellectual landscape of libertarian theory and the history of the American Revolution this time.

Hat tip to Tim of Angle.

P.J. O’Rourke discusses, in the Weekly Standard, how it costs the US Government almost two cents to produce a penny.

The problem is the cost of zinc, which is what a “copper” is actually made of. For the past 25 years a penny-weight of copper has been worth considerably more than a penny. And we wouldn’t want our money to have any actual monetary value, would we? That would violate all of the economic thinking that has been done since the days of John Maynard Keynes. And it would give the Federal Reserve Bank governors nothing to do except sit around saying “oops” and “whoopee” every time the economy went down or up. Therefore the U.S. Mint began making pennies out of less expensive zinc with a thin plating of copper for the sake of tradition and to keep Lincoln from looking like he’d been stamped out of a galvanized hog trough. But then a rising commodities market drove up zinc prices. (Maybe China needs a lot of zinc for, oh, I don’t know, stabilizing the lead paint of Barbie dolls so that our girls don’t start beating their girls on math tests, or something.)…

Libertarians are only human. When we’re tired and stressed, we occasionally experience delusional hallucinations involving government–the kind Hillary Clinton should be medicated for at all times. But then comes the story about the penny costing two pennies, and we experience a sudden miraculous Hayekian, Misesean, Rose and Milton Friedmaniacal psychiatric cure. All my sane disgust at and mentally balanced distrust of the political process returned like–need I say it?–the proverbial bad penny.

Meanwhile in Indiana and Idaho, as the Washington Post reports,the federal government was busy eliminating the competition.

Federal agents on Thursday raided the Evansville, Ind., headquarters of the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and Internal Revenue Code (Norfed), an organization of “sound money” advocates that for the past decade has been selling a private currency it calls “Liberty Dollars.” The company says it has put into circulation more than $20 million in Liberty Dollars, coins and paper certificates it contends are backed by silver and gold stored in Idaho, are far more reliable than a U.S. dollar and are accepted for use by a nationwide underground economy.

Norfed officials said yesterday that the six-hour raid occurred just as its six employees were mailing out the first batch of 60,000 “Ron Paul Dollars,” copper coins sold for $1 to honor the candidate, who is a longtime advocate of abolishing the Federal Reserve. The group says it has shipped out about 10,000 silver Ron Paul Dollars that sold for $20 and about 3,500 of the copper $1 coins. But it said the agents seized more than 50,000 of the copper coins — more than two tons’ worth — plus smaller amounts of the silver coins and gold and platinum Ron Paul Dollars, which sell for $1,000 and $2,000.

“They took everything, all of the computers, everything but the desks and chairs,” the company’s founder and head, Bernard von NotHaus, said in a telephone interview from his home in Miami. “The federal government really is afraid.”…

“People are pretty upset about this,” said Jim Forsythe, head of the Paul Meetup group in New Hampshire, who said he recently ordered 150 of the copper coins. “The dollar is going down the tubes, and this is something that can protect the value of their money, and the Federal Reserve is threatened by that. It’ll definitely fire people up.”

Von NotHaus said agents also raided Sunshine Minting in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, a company that makes the organization’s coins. He said agents seized huge pallets of silver and gold, worth more than $1 million, that the organization says back the Liberty Dollars.

Freakonomics’ Mellisa Laffey interviews British economist Philippe Legrain.

Legrain has served as special adviser to the director-general of the World Trade Organization and worked as the trade and economics correspondent for the Economist. His new book, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, has been nominated for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

Q: You argue that immigration is a good thing, under almost any circumstances. Why? Are there any circumstances in which it isn’t good?
A: I think freedom of movement is one of the most basic human rights, as anyone who is denied it can confirm. It is abhorrent that the rich and the educated are allowed to circulate around the world more or less freely, while the poor are not — causing, in effect, a form of global apartheid. So I think the burden of proof lies with supporters of immigration controls to justify why they think letting people move freely would have such catastrophic consequences. And, frankly, I don’t think they can.

The economic case for open borders is as compelling as the moral one. No government, except perhaps North Korea’s, would dream of trying to ban the movement of goods and services across borders; trying to ban the movement of most people who produce goods and services is equally self-defeating. When it comes to the domestic economy, politicians and policymakers are forever urging people to be more mobile, and to move to where the jobs are. But if it is a good thing for people to move from Kentucky to California in search of a better job, why is it so terrible for people to move from Mexico to the U.S. to work? …

From a global perspective, freer migration could bring huge economic gains. When workers from poor countries move to rich ones, they can make use of the advanced economies’ superior capital, technologies, and institutions, making these economies much more productive. Economists calculate that removing immigration controls could more than double the size of the world economy. Even a small relaxation of immigration controls would yield disproportionately big gains.

Read the whole thing.

Personally, I think Legrain is perfectly correct, with the exception of his ultra-libertarian perspective on Islamic immigration. I suppose it’s just the case that I believe that extremist views and hostility to the West are more common among individual Muslims than Legrain does.

Islam is not simply another religious denomination. Islam features even more intransigent claims to authority than the most authoritarian forms of Christianity extant today, and subscribing to a fundamentalist form of Islam is very likely to involve religious obligations to support violence against Western governments and/or non-Muslim inhabitants of Western countries.

Admitting Islamic immigrants at the present time would be a great deal like having an open borders policy for Germans or Japanese during WWII.

Even today as we approach the 50th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged on October 12, 1957, the New York Times acknowledges, Ayn Rand’s libertarian masterpiece is selling strongly.

Libertarian Jeremy Lott identifies the issue we really should be caring about in the Larry Craig case.

Hat tip to John Brewer.