A Cautionary Tale

Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, "Someone may steal from it at night." So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job. 

Then Congress said, "How does the watchman do his job without instruction?" So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies. 

Then Congress said, "How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?" So they created a Quality Control Department and hired two people: one to do the studies and one to write the reports. 

Then Congress said, "How are these people going to get paid?" They created two positions, and they hired someone to keep time, and someone manage the payroll. 

Then Congress said, "Who will be accountable for all of these people?" So they created an administrative section and hired three people: an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary. 

Then Congress said, "We have had this command in operation for one Year and we are $918,000 over budget, we must cutback." So they laid off the night watchman. 

Remember the reason given for the establishment of the Department of Energy... during the Carter Administration? Bottom line: We've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency... the reason for which most people cannot remember. It was very simple..and at the time, everybody thought it very appropriate. The Department of Energy was instituted on August 4, 1977, to "lessen our dependence on foreign oil." Thirty-three years later, our budget for the Department of Energy is $24.2 billion a year. It boasts 16,000 federal employees and approximately 100,000 contract employees. I don't think anyone would have taken the first step if they could have foreseen this inevitable calamity. Thirty-three years ago, 30% of our oil consumption was foreign imports. Today 70% of our oil consumption is foreign imports.
Today, we are in the process of turning over the banking system, health care, and the auto industry to the very same government.

An article in the New York Times this morning reports the mood of frustration with the Obama administration. The Times described the disappointment emanating from the crowd: "it sounded like a therapy session for disillusioned Obama supporters."

Excerpt:

“I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for,” said the first questioner, an African-American woman who identified herself as a chief financial officer, a mother and a military veteran. “I’ve been told that I voted for a man who was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class and I’m waiting sir, I’m waiting. I still don’t feel it yet.”

A 30-year-old law school graduate told Mr. Obama that he had hoped to pursue a career in public service — like the president — but complained that he could barely pay the interest on his student loans, let alone think of getting married or starting a family.
“I was really inspired by you and your campaign and the message you brought, and that inspiration is dying away,” he said, adding, “And I really want to know, is the American dream dead for me?”

I don't begrudge the audience an opportunity to vent, but I wonder whether the crux of the problem goes beyond even Obama's political ideology. While Obama's policies have not been the solution, I don't believe that political ideologies are ever a solution. Christians and Objectivists may not agree on what will fix the world's problems, but we can agree that government is not the answer.

The Universe: A Simple Answer

“Reality. That’s the simple answer to your question, ‘What is the nature of the universe?’ John always likes to start with something provocative. He knows I will continue to pursue it, not just let it drop. He’s stating that truth is objective and existence exists apart from how I perceive it. “But, how did the universe get here, and what is the meaning behind it?” I ask. “I don’t know. It just is. Not to say that there is no meaning to it, I just don’t have any evidence about what that is, except what I observe and reason.” In John’s Objectivist worldview, there is no reason to believe that the world came about through a Creator, or any other Intelligent Designer. “Maybe we got here by chance; I don’t know.” Peikoff said, “The universe is all that exists and all that has ever existed.”

Ayn Rand didn’t spend her writing on the origins of the universe. Instead, she viewed her philosophy “for living on earth.” She crafted her understanding of a universe, without God at the center. She reasoned to existence without the need for God, and certainly without the need for a Person creating and sustaining the universe we live in.

For the forty years that I have known him, John has described himself as an “atheist,” not an “agnostic.” “The question about God’s existence is not open for discussion. We don’t need God to explain the origins of the universe. Let’s move on with our lives and not concern ourselves with what is unnecessary at best, and irrelevant.” “What we do know,” he says, “is that my life is that I can observe reality through my five senses, and that I have the capacity to reason, to take what I know and organize it into concepts and categories that allow me to survive and thrive. To that end, I can create value.” In John’s worldview, there is no need and no room for faith.

Yaron Brook, from a CNN Post

Consider how just two fundamental ideas have ushered in the modern world. Rewind a scant 600 years, and modern science doesn't yet exist.
Men and women live and die in squalor and filth, largely ignorant of the germs that ravage their bodies and of the natural laws that govern the universe, instead imploring an alleged supernatural force to help them navigate this vale of tears.
But thanks to minds such as Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur and Charles Darwin, this is not how we face the world today. They taught us our method of knowing: careful, mathematically precise observation, step-by-step inference and generalization, and systematic, evidence-based theory building.
They had the courage to challenge entrenched authority, toss aside superstition and defy popes. As others followed the trail the first scientists blazed, human knowledge advanced dramatically.
Thanks to a second idea, this explosion of knowledge broke the confines of the laboratory and ivory tower. Another daring group of thinkers challenged political authoritarianism.
Kings and aristocrats were swept aside to make way for the rights of man. This idea gave birth to a new nation, our beloved America, in which the individual was free to think and pursue his own happiness. A new person arose: the industrialist.
Slandered as robber barons, what these individuals actually did was earn fortunes by studying the discoveries of science and commercializing them.
A mind-boggling array of inventions and products ensued: automobiles, oil, radios, antibiotics, refrigeration, electricity, washing machines, air conditioning, indoor plumbing, airplanes and on and on, to our present world of personal computers and cell phones.
Try to imagine life without all of this. It's not easy.
But as far as we've come because of these two ideas, human progress demands implementation of a third idea to complete the scientific and political revolutions. We're still beholden to the past in ethics.
Although few of us would turn to the Old Testament or the Quran to determine the age of the Earth, too many of us still turn obediently to these books (or their secular copies) as authorities about morality. We learn therein the moral superiority of faith to reason and collective sacrifice to personal profit.
But the more seriously we take these old ethical ideas, the more suspect become the modern ideas responsible for human progress. The scientists in their laboratories did not demonstrate the superiority of faith. Thomas Jefferson in his Declaration did not proclaim the superiority of collective sacrifice. Why should we think these ideas are the path to moral enlightenment?
Perhaps, of all the damage these antiquated moral ideas do to human progress, the most significant is how they distort our conception of moral ideals.
Ask someone on the street to name a moral hero; if he isn't at a loss, he'll likely name someone like Jesus Christ or Mother Teresa. Why? Because they're regarded as people of faith who shunned personal profit for the collective good. No one would dream of naming Galileo, Darwin, Thomas Edison or John D. Rockefeller.
Yet we should. It is they, not the Mother Teresas of the world, that we should strive to be like and teach our kids the same.
If morality is judgment to discern the truth and courage to act on it and make something of and for your own life, then these individuals, in their capacity as great creators, are moral exemplars. Put another way, if morality is a guide in the quest to achieve your own happiness by creating the values of mind and body that make a successful life, then morality is about personal profit, not its renunciation.
Monetary profit is just one of the values you have to achieve in life. But it is an eloquent representative of the whole issue, because at its most demanding, as exhibited by a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs, making money requires a profound dedication to material production.
The fact that earning money is ignored by most moralists, or condemned as the root of evil, is telling of the distance we must travel.
In effect, we need to turn the Billionaire's Pledge on its head.
The world grants, at best, no moral recognition to Gates and Buffett for the personal fortunes they've created, but it awards them a standing ovation for giving their profits away. But the standing ovation belongs to the act of creation, the profit they brought into their own lives and anyone who traded with them.
If morality is about the pursuit of your own success and happiness, then giving money away to strangers is, in comparison, not a morally significant act. (And it's outright wrong if done on the premise that renunciation is moral.)
Science, freedom and the pursuit of personal profit -- if we can learn to embrace these three ideas as ideals, an unlimited future awaits.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate.

Comments on Ayn Rand Biography

In Bloomberg article (interview) with a Rand biographer, the author says this:

For people who are passionate about what seems to me to be an unrealistic view of radical individualism, she makes the strongest possible case.What she lacked was empathy and a sense that there’s a social contract.

The interviewer betrays her view in the question, "Don’t Rand’s views seem incredibly naive?" Without reading the book, I think the interview is unfairly slanted against Rand and her philosophy. I'm guessing that's the point. Still, "Don’t Rand’s views seem incredibly naive?" is not an argument. It's simple, inflamatory propaganda.