My question is, Where is the outcry against Anita Dunn?

Her remarks were not limited to a casual comment that had vicious implications. Rather they constituted a prolonged, blatantly explicit, and far more fundamental endorsement of an incalculably worse person and program than did those of Trent Lott.

She has dared to say that one of her “favorite political philosophers” is one of the greatest mass murderers in the history of the world, a man whose takeover of China was responsible for as many as 70 million deaths during his reign.

She has dared to present the words of this monster as a source of inspiration to youth! FULL ARTICLE

From a reader in Cambridge, ON, Canada:
RE:The Real Right To Medical Care….

[T]hanks for the fantastic article on real medical care vs. socialized medicine. I am writing this email because I am a young Canadian who has a socialized medical system. While I cannot argue your logic for a true free market medical care system, I did finish your piece feeling like there is one hole. Not to say the idea is flawed, by no means, but if individuals have a right to life, and had an illness that was fatal if not treated but could not afford said treatment, where does that leave doctors? You mention charity, and I’m sure to a degree that would exist, but if you were a practicing medical doctor, and knew you could save a life with a simple procedure, how many could you turn away based on cost? While I wholeheartedly agree with the principles you outline in your piece, I found it fascinating, I did get the sense that the issue was not broached for that reason. Now I realize this may only be a small percentage of the population in a truly free market, but a life is a life at the end of the day. I hope you find the time for at least a modest response, if I somehow missed you stating said circumstance in your piece, please simply direct me to said section.

Dear Reader:

Thank you for your note. The right to life is not a right to be kept alive by other people, against their will. If there were such a right, then you and I and everyone else not in poverty would have to be devoting our lives to keeping alive countless numbers of impoverished people all over the world. To the contrary, paraphrasing Ayn Rand, the right to life is the right of an individual to take all of the [peaceful, non-coercive] actions that sustain and promote his life. This understanding of the right to life is incompatible with the notion of people having a right to be kept alive at others’ expense.

Of course, people may wish to give to charity within the limit of their perceiving that doing so enhances their own lives. The funds raised through charity together with the time doctors were willing to provide to charity patients would undoubtedly be concentrated on cases in which all that was necessary were relatively simple, inexpensive procedures that would save life or limb. But this cannot be a solution for all those medical problems requiring more complex and costly treatments that are beyond the means of patients and of the willingness and ability of people to provide charity.

What the solution for these medical problems is, is economic progress, which continuously improves medical care and makes it less and less expensive, while at the same times making practically all other goods and services better and less expensive as well, thereby freeing up more income to be spent on medical care if necessary. The foundation of economic progress, of course, is individual freedom and capitalism.

Always, however, there will be some people who will die because still more and better care, that others might have provided, was beyond their reach. There is simply no way to avoid this. It’s an aspect of the fact that man is mortal.

Trying to avoid it by compelling everyone to devote his life to keeping other people alive, beyond his perception of the personal, value to his own life of doing so, destroys the incentives to produce and advance, and thus ultimately does no good to anyone.

Because of this destruction, attempts to enforce such an obligation always stop short after a time. In fact, this is what we are seeing right now in the United States in the proposed roll backs in Medicare and denial of treatment to the elderly. It’s what already has taken place in Great Britain, and, I believe, in Canada and everywhere else that medical care has been collectivized long enough.

The government simply lacks the means to provide everyone with unlimited medical care. Eventually, it has to impose limits. But its limits entail depriving people of medical care who could have afforded it, if left free to use their own resources for that purpose. Its limits entail aborting further progress in medical in order to hold down the cost of operating its collectivized system.

There are two sorts of limits to medical care. One is reality, which encompasses the state of scientific and technological knowledge, the state of capital accumulation, the resulting productivity of labor, and the relative performance of different individuals cooperating together under economic competition and the pursuit of individual self-interest. Under capitalism, as the result of the pursuit of self-interest and competition, this limit is continually pushed outward and the level of care for everyone continually improves. (See my book Capitalism, chap. 9, for further discussion of this.)

The other kind of limit to medical care is arbitrary government fiat. The government takes over medical care and it decides who is to receive care and to what extent. Under government control, the limit to medical care tends to be frozen, indeed, declining. Progress in medical care is largely prohibited as a threat to the government’s budget and decline accompanies the coming to the fore of doctors who are content to be mere tools of government policy; it also accompanies the general economic decline that results from related government policies that are hostile to capital accumulation and economic efficiency.

There’s undoubted more to be said. But I hope that these remarks serve to address the matters you raised.

Sincerely,
George Reisman

________________________________________

From a reader in Perth, Western Australia
Subject: stupid Samaritan patsy

“It should be obvious that such an arrangement entails the utter perversion of the right to medical care.”

Dear Dr Reisman,

I find it astounding that a man who can write some many thousands of words on a topic, in apparently grammatically good English, can have the whole concept so wrong.

Altruism, empathy – those are the core concepts of society, not the market place. Health care is part of the altruistic nature of society, and it arose not out of purely commercial needs, it arose because most people on this planet have empathy for those who are sick, those who are unwell. People form collective societies for exactly that reason, to share the common burdens and chance misfortunes in life equally and fairly between those can and those who can’t afford it.

I assume you are basically an anarchist with your attitude. All people are free from obligations to any other person, no matter what their circumstances. Hence the idea of Government to provide common services is unnecessary. I guess you probably believe that education should also be a purely commercial domain as well.

It scares me that you may have been teaching these attitudes to your economics students, the world is a poorer place if you have done so. Did you ever lecture or write on the economics of altruism or is it so far away from your moral centre that you can’t
understand the concept?

You are one of the people who left the man in the ditch for the stupid Samaritan patsy to come along and waste his good economic resources of food, water and labour on the man who for no reason of his own was in dire needs.

Your attitude may seem intellectually clever, put it is morally poor.

As a contrast, here in Australia we have fine collective system of medical care that works extremely well for the citizens of Australia. It is affordable, and we have better health care than the USA.

So, Dr Reisman, I think you need to look at the poor, the unemployed, those born with impediments such as lower intelligence, mental or physical disabilities and try to apply your huge mind to putting yourself into their position. It is probably difficult for you to do so, but should you be successful, you will hopefully feel remorse for your shockingly selfish position on health care.

Dear Reader:

Altruism is a philosophy of misery, suffering, poverty, and the hatred of man for man. It is the philosophy that ruled the Dark Ages and underlay such accompaniments as the Iron Maiden, the rack, and burning people alive at the stake.

Civilization is founded on the philosophy of egoism and recognition of the individual’s right to the pursuit of his own, selfish happiness and the corollary recognition that the means of accomplishing this is voluntary, peaceful social cooperation under the division of labor. The gains from the division of labor give to each individual a rational self-interest in the existence of other people and in their individual freedom and right to the pursuit of their own happiness. This is the arrangement that progressively increases the supply of goods and services and improves life for everyone. (For elaboration, see Ludwig von Mises’s Socialism and my Capitalism.)

Under this arrangement–i.e., capitalism–the individual comes to regard other people with benevolence, because their existence improves his existence. In such conditions, people are prepared, within limits, to help others who suffer through no fault of their own. Thus, they help victims of earthquakes, floods, and all other natural disasters. They help people who cannot help themselves, including those who are stuck in a ditch. But that is not their primary goal or, as a rule, a major goal. It is secondary and rests upon their pursuit of their own happiness.

In contrast, when altruism prevails, each individual must regard all other individuals as a source of loss and misery. Their existence is a constant claim against his wealth and time and thus against his ability to enjoy his life. In such circumstances, the individual easily reaches the conclusion that he would be better off if those others did not exist. He would then be free of the burdens they impose.

Historically, the United States was characterized by the individual’s freedom to pursue his own happiness (a basic right enumerated in our Declaration of Independence). Thus, not surprisingly, it was also known for the goodwill and benevolence of its citizens. In contrast, the Dark Ages and the Soviet Union, two leading exemplars of altruism, were known for their hatred and barbaric treatment of human beings. What results from the prevalence of altruism is conveyed in a widely told story in the Soviet Union. It was the story of the Russian who is asked by God to wish for something that he would like God to do for him, on the understanding that whatever God does for him, he will do twice as much for his neighbor. After hearing this offer, the Russian asks that God pluck out one of his eyes, so that his neighbor can lose both eyes. (The story was reported by Hedrick Smith, in his book The New Russians, New York: Random House, 1990, p. 204.)

So much for altruism.

George Reisman

P. S. For elaboration on the contrasting natures of egoism and altruism, see the writings of Ayn Rand, in particular, Atlas Shrugged and The Virtue of Selfishness.

P.P.S. Concerning education, I believe that it should be stricly private. Schools would be legally free to operate on a commercial or non-commercial basis, as they chose. Individual would be free to support non-commercial schools and to provide scholarships for students attending for-profit schools. The main thing is that the government should not be allowed to attempt to improve students’ minds on a foundation of pointing a gun at anyone’s head, such as unwilling taxpayers, unwilling parents, and unwilling students.

Finally, I am not an anarchist but a supporter of government that is limited to the defense of the rights of the individual against the initiation of physical force, including fraud.

George Reisman’s replies to readers are copyright © 2009, by George Reisman. George Reisman, Ph.D. is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute. His web site is www.capitalism.net and his blog is www.georgereisman.com/blog/. A pdf replica of his book can be downloaded to the reader’s hard drive simply by clicking on the book’s title Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics and then saving the file when it appears on the screen. The book provides an in-depth, comprehensive treatment of the material discussed in this post and of practically all related aspects of economics.

The status quo with respect to medical care does not deserve to be preserved. It does bear the earmarks of financial lunacy. It does call for reform – for radical reform. The question is, what kind of radical reform? FULL ARTICLE

Credit expansion was the source of the funds that fueled both the stock market and the real estate bubbles. In the case of the stock market bubble, credit expansion provided funds for the purchase of stocks. The sellers of the stocks then used the far greater part of their proceeds to purchase other stocks, whose sellers did likewise. In this way, the new and additional money created by credit expansion traveled from one set of stocks to another, raising the prices of the great majority of them. It continued to do this so long as the credit expansion went on at a sufficient rate. FULL ARTICLE

General Motors was once not only the world’s greatest and most prosperous automobile company but the world’s greatest and most prosperous manufacturing company, indeed, the world’s greatest and most prosperous company of any kind. Its success, wealth, and economic power, were symbolic of the success, wealth, and economic power of the United States.

General Motors has now perished, brought down by a kind of philosophical and economic tapeworm that consumed the company from within. The economic tapeworm was the United Automobile Workers union, which transformed the company into a carcass upon which it could feed while tying GM’s hands and feet with arbitrary work rules that prevented it from competing and providing any addition to what was to be consumed by the UAW’s vultures. The philosophical tapeworm lay within the minds of those running the company. For decades, it led them never to take a stand on principle and forcefully resist the UAW. Always the present cost of a major strike was allowed to outweigh the prospect of the ultimate destruction of the company, which was never considered fully real because it lay in the future.

In its last years, the company was reduced to the status of a “benefits” company, a company existing primarily for the purpose of paying the pensions, medical benefits, and exorbitant wages of the UAW members. In its last year, the company was reduced to the status of a beggar-benefits company, as it repeatedly turned to the Federal government for the billions of dollars that were needed to keep it in existence for just the next few months, in the hope that in that time a miracle would appear that would allow it to survive.

Now the company is gone, along with the billions of dollars of “bailout” money needlessly spent to “rescue” it. It would have been far simpler not to have given any bailout money and to have allowed the bankruptcy to occur last fall. That would not only have saved billions of dollars, but it would have avoided the United States Government becoming the major stockholder in the company that will control many or most of the remaining assets of GM.

General Motors was destroyed by operating under the ignorance, stupidity, and irrational greed of a labor union. From this point on, it is to operate under the ignorance, stupidity, and irrational greed of government officials acting in combination with that same labor union. It will survive only if fresh billions continue to be thrown at it. It if survives, instead of being a source of wealth, it will be a continuing drain of wealth.

What has happened to General Motors is symbolic of what is happening to the United States. The United States is being destroyed economically and culturally by irrational theories and policies. The standard of living of its people is falling. Government officials are preparing to accelerate the fall by means of the imposition of insane policies designed to curtail energy consumption and roll back the production of wealth. The American people have elected a President who has expressed regret that the Supreme Court “never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth” because it “didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.”

If a company as great and as economically powerful as General Motors once was can collapse into a shadow of its former self, so too can every other company in the United States. So too can the United States itself.

Copyright © 2009, by George Reisman. George Reisman, Ph.D. is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute. His web site is www.capitalism.net and his blog is www.georgereisman.com/blog/. A pdf replica of his book can be downloaded to the reader’s hard drive simply by clicking on the book’s title, above, and then saving the file when it appears on the screen.

New York–Now that carbon dioxide has been declared a pollutant by the EPA, numerous local jurisdictions around the country, whose finances have been badly hammered by the current recession, are considering the imposition of “Exhalation Taxes.”

New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg and California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger are reportedly preparing a joint statement citing the legitimacy and inevitability of taxes on CO2 emissions in general and on human exhalations of CO2 in particular. Humans emit CO2 into the atmosphere and thus contribute to global warming every time they exhale, in other words, every time they let out their breath. Some studies have estimated that taking all human beings together their exhalations account for as much as 8 per cent of all human-caused CO2 emissions. This is more than the proportion emitted by all privately owned aircraft in the world and is thus an important and fruitful target for reduction.

The Obama Administration has until now preferred a system of “cap and trade” as the means of limiting CO2 emissions, rather than any direct tax on emissions. Under that system, the Federal Government will limit the overall total amount of permissible emissions but allow individuals to emit as much they wish by buying the emission rights of others. A high official in the New York City government, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the Mayor and the Governor have arranged for a joint task force, financed at the Mayor’s expense, out of his personal fortune, to study the feasibility of adapting this system to human exhalations. A particularly troubling aspect of any adaptation, the source explained, is how to combine it with plans by the Federal Government gradually to reduce the overall total of permissible emissions.

Among the task-force’s assignments are determining the extent to which people might use the oxygen they breath in more efficiently (oxygen-efficiency option), so that they would be able to correspondingly reduce their exhalations of CO2. Another potential solution under study is the possibility of sequestering the exhalations in jars and various other containers, so as to reduce the overall release of CO2 into the atmosphere (CO2 sequestration option).

No official estimates have been released as to what the average person might expect to have to pay in order to exhale in compliance with the law, but some insiders place it initially as working out to as little as 50 cents per day. According to polls conducted among individuals who identify themselves as environmentalists or as political moderates, the general consensus is that “we can live with that” and “it’s a small price to pay, to keep the planet safe.”

Support for higher exhalation taxes and/or more stringent cap-and-trade limitations is indicated by the reported brisk sale of bumper stickers urging “polluters” to stop exhaling altogether. The stickers say, “Stop Exhaling, You God-Damned Polluting Bastards.” It is unclear whether the drivers of the vehicles which carry the stickers count themselves as polluters too.

In contrast to the extremist position expressed in such bumper stickers, key Obama Administration officials and Congressional leaders are reportedly prepared to guarantee that “no American will ever be allowed to be in a position in which he cannot afford to pay for all of his reasonably necessary exhalations.” The Federal Government, they say, will provide whatever financial subsidies as may be necessary to assure everyone’s right to exhale on terms that he can afford.

Copyright © 2009, by George Reisman. George Reisman, Ph.D. is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute. His web site is www.capitalism.net and his blog is www.georgereisman.com/blog/.

Advancing the goals of environmentalism is capable of creating a virtually limitless number of jobs. Big-rig trucks and their “polluting” emissions might be done away with by replacing them with human porters who would carry freight on their backs. Ocean-going ships and their emissions might be done away with by replacing their “dirty engines” with the clean labor of banks of oarsmen. FULL ARTICLE

The popular version of the Keynesian doctrine, which is championed above all by the labor unions, is simply that a fall in wage rates, in reducing the incomes of wage earners, causes a fall in consumer spending, which allegedly serves to worsen the problem of unemployment. This doctrine can be disposed of fairly simply, before proceeding to the scholarly version of Keynesianism, which is known as the IS-LM doctrine. FULL ARTICLE

While the influence of Marxism stands directly in the path of a fall in wage rates and prices, by blocking its way with laws and threats, Keynesianism aims to prevent any attempt to overcome these obstacles by allegedly demonstrating the futility and harm of doing so. Both doctrines are fundamental obstacles in the way of economic recovery and must be deprived of influence over public opinion in order for economic recovery to take place. The prerequisite of this necessary change in public opinion is the existence of a powerful, demonstration of the utter fallaciousness of these doctrines that at the same time proves that a free market is the foundation both of full employment and of progressively rising real wages. Happily, this demonstration already exists, in full detail. FULL ARTICLE

Collective bargaining, with its imposition of higher costs and prices and lower product quality, is at the root of the destruction of the American automobile industry and many other American industries. President Obama not only chooses not to know this, but selects union leaders as his companions, including the leader of the United Automobile Workers Union. FULL ARTICLE

An economic system entering into a major recession or depression is in a situation very similar to a sleep-deprived individual. A stimulus further depletes his body’s already diminished energy reserves and takes him down the path of utter exhaustion.The main difference between such economic “stimulants” and pharmaceutical stimulants is that the economic stimulants will not succeed even in temporarily restoring the economic system to anything approaching its normal level of activity. FULL ARTICLE

The companies bailed out expected to go on operating as private businesses, but with government money. That’s how the bailouts were advertised. But that is impossible.

Once government money enters the picture, the firms are effectively nationalized, even though the outward guise and appearance of private ownership may remain. This is because their operations are no longer based on profit-and-loss considerations but on satisfying the government and whatever sectors of public opinion are loud enough at the moment to influence the government’s decisions. FULL ARTICLE

A disastrous economic confusion, one that is shared almost universally, both by laymen and by professional economists alike, is the belief that falling prices constitute deflation and thus must be feared and, if possible, prevented. Contrary to The Times and so many others, deflation is not falling prices but a decrease in the quantity of money and/or volume of spending in the economic system. To say the same thing in different words, deflation is a general fall in demand. Falling prices are a consequence of deflation, not the phenomenon itself. FULL ARTICLE

A recent New York Times article provides two significant pieces of information about Larry Summers, the man designated by President-Elect Obama to be head of the National Economic Council and, as such, according to The Times, “his lead economic adviser inside the White House.” (David Leonhardt, “The Return of Larry Summers,” November 26, 2008, p. B1.)

First, The Times’ article informs its readers that Summers, a former Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, and later President of Harvard University, so impressed Henry Kissinger that years ago “Kissinger suggested that Mr. Summers be given a White House post in which he was charged with shooting down or fixing bad ideas. Mr. Summers’ loyal protégés — Timothy Geithner, who beat him out to become the next Treasury secretary; Peter Orszag, the next budget director; Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook; and others — say that Mr. Summers can make them smarter in ways that almost no else can.”

The second significant piece of information provided by The Times’ article describes the nature of Mr. Summers’ own ideas. It describes how “His favorite argument today…goes like this: To undo the rise in income inequality since the late ’70s, every household in the top 1 percent of the distribution, which makes $1.7 million on average, would need to write a check for $800,000. This money could then be pooled and used to send out a $10,000 check to every household in the bottom 80 percent of the distribution, those making less than $120,000. Only then would the country be as economically equal as it was three decades ago.”

The Times’ reporter has apparently known about Mr. Summers’ redistributionist ideas, as well as his closeness to Mr. Obama, for at least a year and a half. As a professional journalist, he had a moral obligation to share such important knowledge with the general public. But he, and many others, similarly so informed, did not bother to do so. Instead, even in the face of the substantial public upset in connection with the question about redistribution posed to Mr. Obama by the now famous “Joe the Plumber,” they chose to remain silent.

They personally favored the election of Mr. Obama and his ideas on the subject of redistribution. Badly lacking in professional standards and personal morals, they placed their own political agenda above their professional obligation to inform the public about a matter vital to an intelligent decision as to how to cast its ballots.

And now, when they openly describe the redistributionist egalitarianism of Mr. Summers and, implicitly, Mr. Obama, they try to make a far-left agenda more palatable by depicting these gentlemen as belonging to the “center” of the political spectrum.[1]

Summers apparently does not see, or if he does see, does not care, that in presenting his proposal for redistribution, what he is urging is armed robbery on a massive scale. That is the essence of any policy of “redistribution,” whether advocated by Summers and Obama or by Lenin, Stalin, or Mao.

For what is going to make each of the top 1 percent of income earners pay an extra $800,000 in taxes? The only thing that would make them pay it is fear of being arrested and imprisoned. And who would arrest and imprison them? Armed thugs wearing the uniforms and badges of officers of the United States Government, who would give them no other choice but to pay the money or be hauled off to jail and clubbed or shot if they resisted. (What a total perversion this would be of what the United States Government once stood for: a transformation from an institution designed for the protection of individual rights into a gang of bandits massively violating individual rights.)

How would this differ in any essential respect from those who are to receive the loot, in the form of $10,000 checks, taking matters into their own hands and simply robbing the homes and businesses of the top 1 percent of income earners to the extent of $10,000 each? They would give the homeowners and businessmen the same choice, of their money or their lives.

And why should it stop at $800,000 in extra taxes and $10,000 each for the looters? If the economic inequality represented by that $800,000 per capita of the top 1 percent of income earners must be done away with, why should not all economic inequality be done away with? Why not make everyone an equal owner and equal income recipient, i.e., why not go straight for communism? That’s the logic in what Summers is advocating.

Not only is Summers advocating the kind of evil committed by criminals, but he also displays a degree of lack of thought that is often found among criminals.

One of the implications of his proposal is that an individual who increased his earnings by just one dollar could be liable for an additional $800,000 in taxes. Based on the most recent available data, which are for 2006, an individual who increased his earnings from $388,806 to $388,807 would thereby be thrust into the top 1 percent of income earners and thus be made subject to the $800,000 of additional taxes urged by Summers. This, of course, would leave such an individual with an after-tax income of minus $411,193. (In addition, of course, all of the ordinary income taxes for which he would be liable at that level of income would also have to be subtracted, throwing him still further into Summers’ Alice-In-Wonderland world of negative after-tax income.)

Summers is probably unaware of this, because he appears to focus on the $1.7 million average income of the top 1 percent of income earners. This enables him to ignore all the below-average incomes of members of that group that would be rendered negative on an after-tax basis if his scheme were imposed.

A proposal this hare-brained makes Summers come across more as an intellectual lightweight than as any kind of brilliant thinker able to identify the errors in others’ thoughts.

There is actually a reason for Summers’ advocating a scheme that implies negative after-tax income for many upper income taxpayers. That’s the fact that that is what is necessary to make it appear that redistribution can constitute any kind of significant gain to large numbers of people. If one rules out taxes that imply negative after-tax income, and also taxes that serve to reduce the demand for labor or capital goods, it turns out that there is very little to “redistribute.”

First of all, all of the wealth of businessmen and capitalists that is in the form of capital (which in the case of large businessmen and capitalists, is almost all of their wealth) already benefits the entire population. It does so by virtue of serving to produce the goods and services that everyone buys and by virtue of constituting the source of the demand for the labor that wage earners sell.

The wealth of Exxon, General Motors, Dell, etc., is in the means of production that bring gasoline and heating oil, automobiles and SUVs, computers and monitors to the masses. Their wealth and that of all other firms is also the source of the demand for the labor that wage earners sell. Thus there is a twofold general benefit from privately owned means of production: the benefit to the buyers of products and to the sellers of labor.

Exactly the same is true of profit and interest income and of capital gains and inheritances to the extent that they are saved and invested, which, in the case of large incomes and inheritances is overwhelmingly the case as a rule. The only special benefit of the businessmen and capitalists, i.e., the only benefit that they obtain which the non-owners of the means of production do not obtain, is the additional personal consumption that their wealth makes possible, plus the satisfaction of knowing that if necessary they could consume their wealth.

The truly personal consumption of businessmen and capitalists is insignificant in the scheme of things. For Warren Buffet, the world’s richest man, it appears to be on the order of an extra ice-cream soda per billion dollars of additional capital accumulated, plus mosquito nets to fight malaria in Africa. The few dozen or even few hundred mansions, yachts, and personal jets of other very wealthy businessmen and capitalists, pale into insignificance alongside the tens of millions of ordinary homes, automobiles, refrigerators, freezers, washer-dryers, air-conditioners, television sets, and computers of the general population. A major, probably the greater part of the consumption of the leading businessmen and capitalists takes the form of the support of such institutions as universities, hospitals, opera companies, libraries, and the like. When all this is taken into account, it turns out that in the first place there is simply not very much to redistribute the benefit of which the intended beneficiaries of the redistribution do not already have.

It also turns out that attempts to redistribute the wealth of businessmen and capitalists serves almost entirely to reduce the supply of means of production and the demand for labor. In essence, it is a self-destructive policy of eating the seed corn. Summers and Obama are ignorant of such facts. Never having studied the works of Mises, they have no way of knowing them. (For elaboration of these points, see the author’s Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, pp. 297-303, 622-639.)

It speaks volumes that apparently no one to whom Summers presented his “favorite argument” had the ability to find any moral or practical flaws in it.

Summers should be fired. He’s too shallow and ignorant and his ideas too evil for him to serve in the United States Government in any capacity. Although generally viewed as a prominent professional economist, his actual knowledge of the subject is minimal. This conclusion follows from the fact that the essential subject matter of economics is capitalism. And Summers’ ideas on redistribution reveal that he fails to understand the nature of the most essential feature of capitalism, namely, private ownership of the means of production and the indispensable role it plays in the standard of living of the average person.

His views may qualify him to be an economic advisor to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela or Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, but certainly not to be an economic advisor to the President of the United States. Before anyone assumes that position, he should know and understand the ideas of Ludwig von Mises, who is far and away the leading theorist of capitalism, and whose works explain its operation as it is has never before been explained. In the absence of extensive knowledge of Mises, one is, simply put, an economic ignoramus, irrespective of the degrees, awards, and public acclaim one may enjoy.

[1] These are the same kind of reporters who define laissez-faire capitalism in an equally bizarre way. Just as you supposedly can be an egalitarian and a Marxist and still be a centrist, so too you allegedly can have virtual economic fascism and it will still be laissez-faire capitalism. And it will be laissez-faire capitalism which is then blamed for all of the evils of economic fascism. Thus, irrespective of the present-day magnitude of taxation and government control over economic life, irrespective of the massive government intervention in the form of credit expansion and of laws compelling the making of loans to unqualified borrowers, which in fact caused our present financial crisis, laissez-faire, they say, still existed and it is what is responsible for the crisis. They claim that laissez faire existed because financial innovations were able to take place without their first being thoroughly understood by government bureaucrats and only then being allowed to occur. Never mind that the major flaw in the innovations was the mistaken belief, held almost universally, but first and foremost by government bureaucrats and by their allies in the media, that the Federal Reserve had made the existence of depressions impossible. (For elaboration on the attempt to blame the crisis on laissez-faire, see the author’s “The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Financial Crisis.”)

Copyright © 2008, by George Reisman. George Reisman, Ph.D. is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics. His web site is www.capitalism.net and his blog is www.georgereisman.com/blog/. A pdf replica of his book can be downloaded to the reader’s hard drive simply by clicking on the book’s title Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics and then saving the file when it appears on the screen.

The myth that laissez faire exists in the present-day United States and is responsible for our current economic crisis is promulgated by people who know practically nothing whatever of sound, rational economic theory or the actual nature of laissez-faire capitalism.

They espouse it despite, or rather because of, their education at the leading colleges and universities of the country. When it comes to matters of economics, their education has steeped them entirely in the thoroughly wrong and pernicious doctrines of Marx and Keynes. In claiming to see the existence of laissez faire in the midst of such massive government interference as to constitute the very opposite of laissez faire, they are attempting to rewrite reality in order to make it conform with their Marxist preconceptions and view of the world.

FULL ARTICLE

From the website of Barack Obama:
• Immediately Provide Emergency Energy Rebate. Barack Obama will require oil companies to take a reasonable share of their record‐breaking windfall profits and use it to provide direct relief worth $500 for an individual and $1,000 for a married couple. The relief would be delivered as quickly as possible to help families cope with the rising price of gasoline, food and other necessities. The rebates would be fully paid for with five years of a windfall profits tax on record oil company profits. This relief would be a down payment on Obama’s long‐term plan to provide middle‐class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief. The Obama energy rebates will: offset the entire increase in gas prices for a working family over the next four months; or pay for the entire increase in winter heating bills for a typical family in a cold‐weather state.

From “Sarah Palin, an Outsider Who Charms” (The New York Times, August 30, 2008):
One of her most significant accomplishments as governor was passing a major tax increase on state oil production, angering oil companies but raising billions of dollars in new revenue. She said the oil companies had previously bribed legislators to keep the taxes low. She subsequently championed legislation that would give some of that money back to Alaskans: Soon, every Alaskan will receive a $1,200 check.

Comment by George Reisman: On this fundamental issue, not just of oil and energy, but, wider, of morality and economics in general, there is no difference in principle between these two. Both advocate legalized theft, in the expectation of doing good.

Obama thinks he can do good to the oil companies’ customers by depriving the oil companies of the means to expand production, which expansion they would quickly undertake and achieve if not prevented year after year by his leftist, environmentalist cronies in Congress and the courts. It is that gang of cronies that is responsible for the high price of oil and, indirectly, for the very high profits of the oil companies. The more they restrict the supply of oil, and of competing forms of energy, such as atomic power, the higher they drive its price and thus the profits of its producers. Whoever is unhappy about the high price of oil and oil products should blame the leftist/environmentalist bloc in Congress and in the courts, and the environmental movement behind it. These are the parties actually responsible.

Obama also fails to see another major aspect of the absurdity of his proposal. Namely, that more money placed in the hands of poor buyers of gasoline and heating oil will serve simply to drive the prices of the limited supplies of gasoline and heating oil presently available still higher. This will make it impossible for people a little higher up on the economic ladder to afford them. Obama does not, perhaps will not, perhaps cannot, see that only more production can enable anyone to have more oil and oil products without others having less.

The first of the criticisms I just made of Obama’s plan applies equally to that of Sarah Palin. The two plans differ somewhat in the extent of their destructiveness. The destructiveness of Palin’s plan is limited by the fact that it can be applied only within the confines of the State of Alaska. But within the State of Alaska, it gives away more money to the individual recipient than does Obama’s plan: $1,200 versus $500.

A major consequence that both Obama’s and Palin’s plans overlook is that even insofar as the oil companies are presently prevented by drilling restrictions from using their funds for expanding oil production, their funds still perform a valuable economic function. Namely, they provide the capital for carrying on production elsewhere in the economic system. To the extent that the oil companies simply put their funds in the bank, buy Treasury bills, repurchase their own stock, or pay out extraordinary dividends, those funds are then available in the financial markets, all of which are interconnected. Their presence makes it easier for other businesses to obtain loans or sell stock and thereby have the funds to carry on their business activities.

Sarah Palin probably never thought of this when she dipped her hand into the oil companies’ till and withdrew $1,200 for every Alaskan. What she was actually doing in her ignorance was helping to make the credit crunch that the United States has been experiencing that much worse. She was helping to deprive businesses around the country of capital they would have had, if that capital had not been made available to be consumed to the extent of $1,200 for each and every Alaskan.

Obama and Palin are both obviously ignorant of economics. John McCain, who picked Palin to be his running mate, has admitted his own lack of knowledge of the subject. Knowing little or nothing of the subject himself, he could not be expected to realize that Palin knew nothing of the subject either. An examination of the record of Obama’s running mate, Senator Joseph Biden, would probably turn up a more extensive record of comparable ignorance of economics, given his greater number of years in public life as a leading spokesman for the Democratic Party.

This is certainly frightening. What is even more frightening is that the whole intellectual world, including the press and the media in general, the professors of economics, law, political philosophy, history, and all other fields directly or indirectly bearing on politics, all are overwhelmingly characterized by the same level of ignorance and thus unable to identify it in the candidates. We now apparently live in a society and culture that has become comparable in its level of economic knowledge to a pool table, on which mindless billiard balls randomly careen and collide and no knowledge or understanding of any kind is present.

Copyright © 2008, by George Reisman. George Reisman, Ph.D. is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics. His web site is www.capitalism.net and his blog is www.georgereisman.com/blog/. A pdf replica of his complete book can be downloaded to the reader’s hard drive simply by clicking on the book’s title Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics and then saving the file when it appears on the screen.

What Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez have in common is the conviction that prosperity can be achieved by consuming the means of production. But capital accumulation and economic progress depend on saving and innovation, and these in turn depend on the freedom to make high profits and accumulate great wealth. The impediment that stands in the way of people recognizing that everyone benefits from tax cuts for the “rich” is the collectivistic habits of thought inspired by Marxism and its doctrine of class interest. FULL ARTICLE

A credit crisis has been spreading through the economic system. It began with the collapse of the housing bubble, which was the result of years of Federal Reserve-sponsored credit expansion. This follows generations of almost continuous inflation and credit expansion, in which almost everyone has become accustomed to assume that asset values will always rise.The solution is a radical reform: a full-bodied precious metal monetary system and an end to the government’s control over the money supply and all of the violations of individual freedom that that control represents and makes possible. FULL ARTICLE

In my previous post, “A Word to Environmentalists,” I wrote “[t]he first step you need to take is to stop using the same word `environmentalist’ to describe both them [advocates of mass destruction and death] and you. So long as you do use the same word, people cannot help but think of you all in the same terms.”

In reply, a respected colleague of mine at the Mises Summer University, wrote the following:

I’m not sure I buy that argument.  It seems to assume something like the following premise: “If many of the most prominent people who embrace the label `X-ist’ have advocated bad stuff, then one shouldn’t call oneself an `X-ist.’” But that premise seems to have some odd consequences, as follows:

Many of the most prominent people who embrace the label “atheist” (e.g. Stalin, Pol Pot) have perpetrated great evil, so Ayn Rand shouldn’t have called herself an atheist.

Many of the most prominent people who embrace the label “liberal” (e.g. Woodrow Wilson, FDR) have perpetrated great evil, so Ludwig von Mises shouldn’t have called himself a liberal.

Many of the most prominent people who embrace the label “capitalist” or ‘”free-marketer” (e.g. the GOP) have perpetrated great evil, so George Reisman shouldn’t call himself a capitalist or a free-marketer.

Many of the most prominent people who embrace the label “egoist” (e.g. Max Stirner, Nikolai Chernyshevsky), while not exactly perpetrators of evil, have at any rate advocated some pretty dubious stuff, so Ayn Rand shouldn’t have called herself an egoist.

And so on.

I mean, why let the bad guys set the meanings of all these terms?

I have quoted my colleague not so much in order to answer  him in particular, but because his response provides a good starting point for providing a further explanation of the profound and inherent evil of environmentalism and why a reasonable person should no more call himself an environmentalist than he would call himself a Communist or Nazi.

It
should be realized first of all that “environmentalism” is in a very
different category than the examples of the advocacy of atheism,
liberalism, et al. by authors who also propound clearly destructive
ideas. This is because atheism, liberalism et al. in themselves
do not represent a philosophy or program that is evil on its face or
that necessarily implies evil. (In this connection, it should be
recalled that Stalin and Pol Pot committed their atrocities not in the
name of atheism, but in the name of Communism.) In addition, in all of
the examples cited there are also prominent supporters of the doctrines
who go out of their way to present theories and programs that
demonstrably promote human life and well being. Thus both Ayn Rand and
Mises were atheists, liberals, pro-capitalist and pro-free market, and
were egoists. Their writings serve as far more than a counterweight to
the wrong or dubious ideas of other supporters of these doctrines and,
indeed, make a compelling case for why these doctrines themselves in
fact serve to promote human life and well being.

However,
there are no counterparts to Rand and Mises in the advocacy of
environmentalism. (Nor could there be.) No one in environmentalism
rises to challenge the evils that its leaders and spokesmen advocate or
to show that environmentalism is the opposite of what they claim.

By
way of contrast, consider the following case. Imagine that someone
known as a prominent supporter of Austrian economics wrote an article
or gave a speech in which he advocated the enactment of wage and price
controls or the nationalization of industry. I think that everyone
affiliated with the Mises Institute, certainly myself included, would
be all over this person and make it as clear to the world as possible
that his views not only did not represent those of Austrian economics
but were in complete and total opposition to everything Austrian
economics stands for.

Now
imagine that a prominent environmentalist writes an article or gives a
speech in which he expresses the wish for a virus to come along and
wipe out a billion people. What will be the reaction of the
environmental movement? Will that individual be denounced for
misrepresenting the movement? Will the rest of the movement’s leaders
rush to assure the world that that individual was so far from
representing environmentalism that he actually represented the
diametric opposite of its principles?

Not
at all. There will be no negative reaction of any kind from within the
movement, not even a raising of eyebrows. I can say this with the
utmost confidence, because such statements have already been made, and made repeatedly. And there has been no outrage, no negative response of any kind from within the environmental movement.

Here’s David M. Graber, in his prominently featured Los Angeles Times book review of Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature: “McKibben
is a biocentrist, and so am I. We are not interested in the utility of
a particular species or free-flowing river, or ecosystem, to mankind.
They have intrinsic value, more value–to me–than another human body,
or a billion of them.… It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World
its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo sapiens
should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right
virus to come along.”

And here’s Prince Philip of England
(who for sixteen years was president of the World Wildlife Fund): “In
the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly
virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.” (A
lengthy compilation of such statements, and worse, by prominent
environmentalists can be found at Frightening Quotes from Environmentalists.)

There is no negative reaction from the environmental movement because what such statements express is nothing other than the actual philosophy of the movement. This is what the movement believes in. It’s what it agrees with. It’s what it desires.
Environmentalists are no more prepared to attack the advocacy of mass
destruction and death than Austrian economists are prepared to attack
the advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism and economic progress. Mass
destruction and death is the goal of environmentalists, just as
laissez-faire capitalism and economic progress is the goal of Austrian
economists.

And this is
why I call environmentalism evil. It’s evil to the core. In the
environmental movement, contemplating the mass death of people in
general is no more shocking than it was in the Communist and Nazi
movements to contemplate the mass death of capitalists or Jews in
particular. All three are philosophies of death. The only difference is
that environmentalism aims at death on a much larger scale.

Despite
still being far from possessing full power in any country, the
environmentalists are already responsible for approximately 96 million deaths from malaria across
the world. These deaths are the result of the environmentalist-led ban
on the use of DDT, which could easily have prevented them and, before
its ban, was on the verge of wiping out malaria. The environmentalists
brought about the ban because they deemed the survival of a species of
vultures, to whom DDT was apparently poisonous, more important than the
lives of millions of human beings.

The deaths
that have already been caused by environmentalism approximate the
combined number of deaths caused by the Nazis and Communists.

If and when
the environmentalists take full power, and begin imposing and then
progressively increasing the severity of such things as carbon taxes
and carbon caps, in order to reach their goal of reducing carbon
dioxide emissions by 90 percent, the number of deaths that will result
will rise into the billions, which is in accord with the movement’s
openly professed agenda of large-scale depopulation. (The policy will
have little or no effect on global mean temperatures, the reduction of
which is the rationalization for its adoption, but it will have a great
effect on the size of human population.)

It is not at
all accidental that environmentalism is evil and that its leading
spokesmen hold or sanction ideas that are indistinguishable from those
of sociopaths. Its evil springs from a fundamental philosophical
doctrine that lies at the very core and deepest foundations of the
movement, a doctrine that directly implies the movement’s
destructiveness and hatred of the human race. This is the doctrine of
the alleged intrinsic value of nature, i.e., that
nature is valuable in and of itself, apart from all connection to human
life and well being. This doctrine is accepted by the movement without
any internal challenge, and, indeed, is the very basis of
environmentalism’s existence.

As I wrote in Capitalism, “The
idea of nature’s intrinsic value inexorably implies a desire to destroy
man and his works because it implies a perception of man as the systematic destroyer of the good, and thus as the systematic doer of evil. Just
as man perceives coyotes, wolves, and rattlesnakes as evil because they
regularly destroy the cattle and sheep he values as sources of food and
clothing, so on the premise of nature’s intrinsic value, the
environmentalists view man as evil, because, in the pursuit of his
well-being, man systematically destroys the wildlife, jungles, and rock
formations that the environmentalists hold to be intrinsically
valuable. Indeed, from the perspective of such alleged intrinsic values
of nature, the degree of man’s alleged destructiveness and evil is
directly in proportion to his loyalty to his essential nature. Man is
the rational being. It is his application of his reason in the form of
science, technology, and an industrial civilization that enables him to
act on nature on the enormous scale on which he now does. Thus, it is
his possession and use of reason–manifested in his technology and
industry–for which he is hated.”

Thus these are
the reasons that I think it is necessary for people never to describe
themselves as environmentalists, that to do is comparable to describing
oneself as a Communist or Nazi. Doing so marks one as a hater and enemy
of the human race.

Whoever
believes that it is possible to be a “free-market environmentalist” is
guilty of a contradiction in terms. The free market rests on a
foundation of human life and well-being as the standard of value.
Environmentalism rests on a foundation of the non-human as the standard
of value. The two cannot be reconciled. It’s either-or.

I know that
these conclusions are upsetting to many people. It’s got to be
upsetting to realize that one is advocating destruction and death. But
fortunately, there’s a simple and ultimately happy solution: just stop doing it. Stop being an environmentalist!

Copyright © 2008, by George Reisman. George Reisman, Ph.D.  is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics. His web site is www.capitalism.net and his blog is www.georgereisman.com/blog/.

The “extremists” among you openly call for the death of 1 to 6.4 billion human beings. The “moderates” among you openly call for the forced reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 90 percent within a few decades, which would serve to reduce energy use almost to the same extent. Such a severe reduction in energy use follows from the fact that there are no presently existing large-scale viable alternatives to fossil fuels other than atomic power, which is regarded by most members of your movement as a death ray and is opposed more vehemently than fossil fuels. Furthermore, the likelihood of ever finding and developing such alternatives will be greatly reduced by destroying the energy sources we do have and need to increase. So what your movement advocates is mass death or, at the very least, dreadful mass impoverishment whose outcome will be tens or hundreds of millions of unnecessary deaths and a life of misery for those who survive.

If your motivation in calling yourself an environmentalist is merely such things as that you like to see flowers bloom on open meadows, and love trees, whales, and polar bears, and the like, then you owe it to yourself to put as much intellectual and moral distance as possible between you and those who advocate mass impoverishment and mass death.

The first step you need to take is to stop using the same word “environmentalist” to describe both them and you. So long as you do use the same word, people cannot help but think of you all in the same terms.

Don’t think you can solve the problem by calling yourself a “free-market environmentalist.” That’s like calling yourself a “free-market Communist” or a “free-market Nazi.” They’re contradictions in terms.

The free market exists to promote prosperity and human life, and that is what it has accomplished, splendidly, with breathtaking brilliance. In the industrialized world, the average person today enjoys a standard of living superior to that of kings and emperors of the past. The whole world’s population is capable of enjoying the same marvelous results, if it adopts economic freedom. But if you call yourself an “environmentalist,” you mark yourself as sharing the goals of mass destruction and death. A socialist dictatorship is the vehicle for achieving those goals, not a free market.

It is true that many American businessmen, some of them extremely talented and successful, now call themselves “environmentalists” and are stumbling over themselves in a race to prove how “green” they are. In the early 1930s, many talented and successful German businessmen did essentially the same thing when they began to call themselves “Nazis” and raced to prove their devotion to National Socialism. It’s possible for people to be geniuses in one area of their lives and fools, or worse, in other areas. In any event, the outcome for the German businessmen, and for all other talented individuals who joined either the Nazis or the Communists, was that they ended up as accomplices of mass murderers. The same will be true in the United States, if the environmentalists succeed in imposing their agenda.

If you care about your moral character, don’t place an indelible stain on it by supporting a movement that seeks to destroy Industrial Civilization and all the human lives and human well-being that depend on it. Accept moral responsibility for the ideas you propound and stop standing in the service of mass destruction and death.

Do not come back with the argument that if we uphold individual freedom, our great grandchildren will have to live in an uninhabitable planet, one that is either too hot or too cold. Sooner or later Nature itself will make the climate considerably warmer or considerably colder than it is today (most likely colder). The only significant question is what is the best method of coping with such change? Is it the free market or a centrally planned dictatorship that reaches down into every detail of everyone’s personal life and productive activities, that, indeed, wants to control the carbon content practically of every breath that anyone draws?

Even if you are absolutely convinced that human activities are responsible for global warming and, if nothing is done, will ultimately result in an intolerable rise in temperature, there is a very simple test that you need to apply. Pretend, for just a moment, that that same global warming is coming about independently of human activities, that it is strictly the product of natural forces. Then ask yourself, what would be the best fundamental method of coping with it? Maintaining a free market or establishing a centrally planned socialist system?

More fundamentally, what is the appropriate fundamental method for Man to use in dealing with Nature in general? Is it the motivated and coordinated human intelligence of all individual market participants that is provided by a free market and its price system? Or is it the unmotivated, discoordinated chaos in which one man, the Supreme Dictator, or a handful of men, the Supreme Dictator and his fellow members of the Central Planning Board, claim a monopoly on human intelligence and on the right to make fundamental decisions?

Suppose even that the warming caused by Nature were such that what was required to deal with it was some sort of space program, perhaps emitting thousands of tiny mirrors that would prevent some sunlight from reaching the earth by reflecting it back into space. Suppose further that as a practical matter, given our present state of social organization, the only realistic means of carrying out such a program was through governmental action–a kind of public works project, as it were. In which circumstances, would such a program be more likely to be feasible: in those of the primitive economies characteristic of third world countries or in those of advanced industrial economies? And would they not be more likely to be feasible in an economy substantially more advanced than our own is at present?

The answer to the question of how best to cope with intolerable global warming caused by Nature is obviously the maintenance of the free market, not its replacement by Socialist central planning. Indeed, the answer is to make the free market freer than it now is–as much freer as is humanly possible. This is because while the primary reason for advocating a free market is the greater prosperity and enjoyment it brings to everyone in the course of his normal, everyday life, a major, secondary reason is to have the greatest possible industrial base available for coping with catastrophic events, whether those events be war, plague, meteors from outer space, intolerable global warming, or a new ice age.

In effect, what the environmentalists would have us do as the means of preparing for coping with a coming global warming is analogous to the imaginary absurdity of the United States in the 1930s having reduced its economy to the level, say, of  Poland’s economy. Then, when World War II came, our country would have had to fight the war with horses instead of tanks and planes. In the same way, the environmentalists would have us cope with global warming by waving little fans instead of using air conditioners, refrigerators, and freezers.

Now what, if anything, changes if we assume that global warming is an unintended by-product of the human productive activities that make life possible and enjoyable? How does it possibly follow from this that the only means of stopping this much-less-than-certain outcome is by suffering the absolutely certain impoverishment and death that will come from the destruction of most of our present sources of energy?

Is there absolutely no other way to deal with global warming than the destruction of our economic system? Is that how we would deal with it if global warming were the product of Nature, and not the by-product of our activities? Would the environmentalists then ask us to engage in what in the circumstances would be a merely ritual sacrifice incapable of accomplishing anything beyond itself?

If they would not do that, then they would have to look for other alternatives as the means of coping with global warming. Why aren’t they looking for those other alternatives now? Why on earth should the first and only solution for global warming as a by-product of human activity be the scuttling of our energy base? Do we deserve to be exterminated for our unintended by-products? Must we really choose to live in poverty and misery, surrounded by death, in order to avoid excessive heat? Can absolutely no other way be found? (The likely answer is actually no more complicated than having the greater energy base required to build bigger and better air conditioners.)

Do you environmentalists who do not want to think of yourselves as misanthropes, as recycled Communists or Nazis, do you really want to entrust your lives and material well being, and the lives and material well being of everyone who may matter to you, to the power of government officials to tax carbon emissions and to limit the total of such emissions? Are you willing to entrust this power to today’s President (who at least has the good sense not to want it)? Do you want to entrust it to any of the candidates with a realistic chance to succeed him (who do want this power and may even crave it)? Do you want to entrust it to the members of the United States Congress? To the members of the United Nations General Assembly?

Do you want them to decide how much man-made energy is to be available to you in every aspect or your life, by their imposing carbon taxes and carbon caps? These will be taxes and constraints on you that are tantamount to adding extra dead weight to your body and to restricting your power to move your own limbs. And they will go on increasing in severity, to the point that you, or your children or grandchildren, will drop from exhaustion. For the effect of every loss of energy use is a corresponding  imposition on the meager power of human muscles and the human frame. And if the impositions cannot be borne, the products that depended on the lost energy use can no longer be produced. If the environmentalist agenda is imposed, the day will come when your descendants, if they have any awareness of it at all, will look back on our time as a mythical Golden Age never to be achieved again.

Is that what you want?

It’s not too late for you to change your mind, abandon any support you may have been giving to environmentalism’s program of impoverishment and death, and come over to the side of the values of human life, wealth, and happiness–the values Mises fought for under the banner of genuine Liberalism.

Copyright © 2008, by George Reisman. George Reisman, Ph.D.  is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics. His web site is www.capitalism.net and his blog is www.georgereisman.com/blog/.