Free Trade In Liquified Natural Gas Benefits the Creators

A recent news article illustrates the sort of unprincipled, short-range thinking that can occur in our society, especially when it comes to issues of free trade.  (“US Gas Exports Clear Hurdle” by Keith Johnson and Tennille Tracy, The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324001104578161461770971222.html)  The article discusses a government study that endorsed allowing the free export of liquefied natural gas from the United States, which is currently restricted.  While the study makes the right conclusion, it appears to do so without citing the best reason for doing so.
For those who haven’t been following this issue, North America is currently projected to become a net exporter of natural gas and oil as a result of the creation of new technologies that allow for obtaining these resources from areas that were outside the reach of conventional oil and gas drilling techniques.  These new technologies involve directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing (i.e., “fracking”).  (“The U.S. Natural-Gas Boom Will Transform the World”, by by John Deutch, The Wall Street Journal, August 14, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303343404577514622469426012.html)
The article describes the government study as concluding that the benefits to natural gas exporting companies, businesses, and workers would outweigh the losses from domestic companies, consumers and businesses that use natural gas.  This later group of domestic natural gas consumers is viewed as “loosing” some from exporting natural gas, since the price of natural gas will rise due to increased demand from abroad.
However, the first article never mentions whether any consideration was given to the people who invented these new oil and gas drilling technologies.  What will be the result if they are not allowed to gain maximum economic benefit from the invention of these new drilling techniques?  It is true that the price of natural gas in the US market probably will rise slightly from its current record low levels if the export of liquefied natural gas occurs.  But, this increased price will mean increased profits for the oil and gas companies that are implementing these new drilling technologies, which will mean that the people who created these new technologies will benefit.  They will be given an increased economic incentive to create new technologies in the future, which will further increase the standard of living of everyone.  Furthermore, other young scientists, engineers, and businesspeople will know that they will also materially benefit from any new technologies that they invent and bring to market, which will create the incentive for the development of new technologies in the future.  Ultimately it is new technology that increases standards of living, and we must ensure that the people who create new methods of production have every incentive to invent.  Considering the benefits to the people who created the new energy is a much more principled justification for free trade in natural gas, but it is overlooked by those who don’t seem to understand that the free human mind is the root of all production.

Teacher Convicted of Consensual Sex with 18-year-olds

Hopefully this case will now be appealed.  I believe this statute violates the right to privacy of teachers who have consensual sexual intercourse with persons who are over the age of consent.  Something that should be considered by her attorney is the fact that the statute makes it an affirmative defense if the teacher is married to the student.  In other words, the State of Texas is saying it’s a crime only because the two people involved were unmarried.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/former-texas-high-school-teacher-sentenced-to-5-years-in-prison-for-sleeping-with-5-students/2012/08/17/0dc4035e-e8c9-11e1-9739-eef99c5fb285_story.html

Why I prefer a free society

A free society leaves the individual free to create the values necessary for his life. It respects private property rights, and thereby ensures that one can earn and keep the material means necessary for living. It respects freedom of speech in order to ensure that one can disseminate and gain the knowledge necessary for producing the values, both spiritual and material, necessary for living. History demonstrates that people who live under dictatorship and totalitarianism are less prosperous. Freedom includes the right to protect oneself from criminals, foreign and domestic, who would deprive us of our life or liberty. Freedom therefore entails the right to own the means of protecting oneself from criminals when the police are unavailable. That freedom typically takes the form of gun ownership. Can people misuse their freedom? Yes. Would restrictions on the freedom to own small arms stop some criminals? Possibly, although the statistics seem to suggest such restrictions just disarm the law-abiding. Press censorship might also prevent “copycat crimes”, and arbitrary searches and seizures by police might uncover some criminal activity. But, crime is always a small component of any free society, and the probabilities of becoming the victim of a felony are minimal. The certain result of restrictions on freedom is to prevent good people from being able to take the actions necessary for living –whether that action takes the form of starting a new business, writing a novel, or defending oneself from a murderer. Restrictions on freedom mean restrictions on life itself.

The Movie “Agora”

Agora makes some fairly easy observations about the nature of faith and how it necessarily leads to force, and usually outright violence, but that is not what I want to focus on here. I think that an even greater truth is revealed by this great movie. It is an exploration of the nature of evil men, and how they survive and thrive with the assistance of good people. Just so that the reader is clear, when I say “good”, I mean that the ultimate standard of the good is man’s life. That which promotes his life is good. Furthermore, all things created by men should be judged by this standard, if living is one’s goal. An automobile is good if it serves the purpose of transportation of human beings in the most efficient manner possible. A house is good if it serves the purpose of habitation. A philosophy is good if it serves the purpose of guiding human beings in living their lives. Similarly, all men should be judged by this standard. A man is good if he strives to produce the values necessary for living. (For more detail about life as the ultimate standard of value, consult the works of Ayn Rand.)

The movie is set near the end of the Roman Empire. Christianity is on the cusp of becoming the dominant philosophy of the time, and society and government is disintegrating. In Alexandria, the pagans and a few Christians still continue to study the works of the Ancient Greek philosophers and scientists. Hypatia is a female natural philosopher teaching the ideas of Ptolemy: that the Earth is the center of the universe, and that the Sun and the Planets revolve around the Earth in complicated epicycles. (This notion was later enshrined by the Catholic Church and it wasn’t seriously challenged until the 1500’s.) At the beginning of the movie, Hypatia is a believer in the Ptolemeic system, but, throughout the movie, she begins to doubt this system of planetary motion, and even conducts scientific experiments to test some of the objections that are raised against the modern, heliocentric view of the solar system.

There are two major plot threads running through the movie, and Hypatia’s struggles to understand the nature of our solar system is one of them. In and of itself, this plot thread would have made an excellent movie. The author of the script goes even deeper than this, however, by skillfully interweaving another thread into the plot. This second thread involves the struggle between the remaining secular elements in Ancient Alexandrian society, and an increasingly dominant, and emboldened religious group. The secularists are represented by Hypatia, the natural philosopher, and her student and suitor, Orestes. At the beginning of the movie, Orestes is still her student, and he rather casually notes that the planetary system proposed by Ptolomy seems rather silly. It is this initial criticism of Ptolomy by Orestes that plants the seed of doubt in Hypatia’s mind, and leads her to begin rethinking the entire system of planetary motion.

The men of pure faith are represented in the movie by two characters: Ammonius, who is a classic “rabble rouser” and street thug, prone to acts of violence, and Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, who is motivated by power-lust. However, the movie makes it clear that by themselves, Ammonius and Cyril would not have been able to unleash the death and destruction that they bring. Better men like Orestes choose to compromise with them out of political and social expediency over the years, and thereby lend them an aura of social and political respectability, which eventually results in the best person being held in subjugation by the worst people, with the worst possible result.

Since it is historical fiction set prior to the fall of the Roman Empire, and the advent of one of the darkest periods in human history, one should not expect a happy ending in Agora. But, bad things happen to good people in (good) fiction for a reason, and it is very important that the reasons in Agora be understood by all of us.

Atlas Shrugged Movie, Part I (With some plot spoilers)

I think that I read that Ayn Rand simply wanted to use an “Atlas Shrugged” movie as a vehicle to advertise the novel. In other words, I think that her standard for a successful Atlas Shrugged movie was whether it would encourage people to read the novel –people who otherwise might not be aware of Atlas. I am probably not the best person to ask about whether the movie version has achieved that purpose, as I am so blatantly “partisan” when it comes to Ayn Rand and her philosophy. I am so devotedly in the “Ayn Rand camp”, that I cannot easily tell whether someone who is not already a fan will see the movie and get anything out of it -other than some of the more superficial political themes of “capitalism good, government regulations bad”- much less, go out and read the novel. I hope that someone is tracking sales of Ayn Rand’s novel, and that they will publish some sort of report or paper showing whether sales of the novel increased after the movie came out today. This would seem to be the best indicator of whether the movie is successful, by the definition described above.

With that said, I have to say, as a fan, I enjoyed the movie. I deliberately kept my expectations low. I knew it had a low budget, and that the actors and directors were relatively new to movies. I am no expert when it comes to directing or acting, I mostly look for good plot, theme and characters in a movie, but I thought that the actors and director were quite successful in making me forget that I was watching a movie, and at mentally “putting me in the moment”. I actually think that using unknown actors was better than using “big name” actors could have eclipsed the movie itself in viewer’s minds.

As a fan, I enjoyed seeing how the creators of the film chose to portray the movie, how close its plotline was to the novel, and what the actors looked like for each of the characters. As far as the look of the actors went, I thought they did a pretty good job. (Keep in mind as I write all of this, that I haven’t read Atlas Shrugged in a number of years, so I may be remembering things in the novel wrong.) I liked how the actress, Taylor Schilling, played Dagny Taggart. I think that she seemed to “get” Dagny’s character pretty well. (Or, at least, the way she saw Dagny was close to how I saw Dagny.) She mostly portrayed Dagny as a woman successfully working in a “man’s world”, but the movie character doesn’t try to pretend like she is a man, and maintains a lady-like poise. I think this is close to the novel version. I also liked how actor Graham Beckel, who played Ellis Wyatt, portrayed that character. As I recall Ellis did not “suffer fools gladly”, and the actor definitely gave you the feeling he wasn’t to be trifled with. But, that said, I always thought Ellis Wyatt was younger, thinner, and better looking –I know that’s somewhat superficial of me, and that’s why I can’t complain too much on that count. (I also would think that Ellis Wyatt would have more of a sort of quiet, “simmering rage” towards the collectivists, and wouldn’t resort to actually yelling, which occurred in the movie at one point.) Just so that it’s clear that I’m not totally superficial, I was glad that they didn’t portray all of the “bad guys” in the movie as physically unattractive. James Taggart was played by an actor who is physically good looking. The actress who played Lillian Reardon is also an attractive person. I think that it is a common mistake, even amongst fans of Ayn Rand, to think that good people are all physically beautiful, and bad people are all physically ugly. Since genetics, not choice, plays a large roll in your body type, especially when you are under about age 40, I regard this as a mistake.

There were a couple of scenes in the movie that I was disappointed with, however. Both of these scenes had to do with Reardon’s relationship with Dagny. Once again, keep in mind that I haven’t read the book in some time, and this is just how I recall the novel. As I recall it, Reardon’s feelings towards Dagny were somewhat in conflict initially –or, at least, he didn’t want to acknowledge how he felt about her. He admits at some point in the novel that he fell in love with her from the moment he saw her, and learned that she was the head of Taggart Transcontinental Railroad. (As I recall it, before he knew who she was, he liked how she looked, but then when he learned she was the business woman he had heard about, he wanted to have sex with her on the rails.) However, since Reardon was married, he couldn’t act on his feelings for Dagny. He regarded his marriage as a contract, and Reardon regarded a contract as a promise that he would never willingly break. This leads to the first scene from the movie that was written weakly, and, I think, quite differently from the novel. In the novel, at a party being thrown by Reardon’s wife Lillian, Dagny loudly confronts Lillian after she publicly makes a joke of the bracelet of Reardon metal that Hank gave her as a gift. As I recall it, Dagny loudly calls Lillian a coward, and all eyes at the party turn to watch the two of them. At that point Dagny trades her diamond necklace for the Reardon metal bracelet. Hank then approaches the two of them, criticizes Dagny for her behavior, kisses his wife’s hand, and proceeds to act as a doting husband for the rest of the night. In other words, Reardon takes his wife’s side in the conflict, even though he is secretly in love with Dagny. He does this because he thinks that he has a moral obligation to his wife as her husband, despite the fact that she does nothing but bring misery and unhappiness to his life. In the movie, when this confrontation occurs, everybody keeps dancing, hardly paying the scene any mind, Dagny doesn’t call Lillian a coward, and Hank doesn’t offer any criticism of Dagny. I think part of the reason for this is that they had written the script in such a way that Dagny and Hank were already developing a clear friendship, with some sexual chemistry. So, it wouldn’t make sense, given how they had written the script, to suddenly have Reardon act that cold towards Dagny. In the novel, I think that up to the point of this party scene, Reardon maintained an outward appearance of cool, formal indifference towards Dagny in order to hide his feelings from her. Taking his wife’s side at the party in the novel therefore makes more sense, because he is still trying to maintain the masquerade that he doesn’t love Dagny.

The second scene that I found to be pretty weak was the sex scene between Dagny and Hank. It was way too gentle. As I recall that scene, Hank is pretty rough with Dagny –after securing her verbal permission for sex. I seem to recall that either that scene or a subsequent post-coitus scene in the novel involved Dagny having bruises or blood on her body after a night of manhandling by Reardon. I viewed the nature of their sexual relationship in the novel in this way: Given the fact that Reardon has given in to his desire for Dagny, he feels a certain amount of resentment towards her and himself because he has broken his marriage contract. He therefore feels a certain desire to treat her like she is “cheap” or “sluttish”, and the rough sex is how he attempts to accomplish this. As I recall, after the first time they have sex, he declares that they are both depraved. (Also as I recall, she retorts that she is even more depraved than him because she doesn’t think she’s depraved.) Regardless of whether my interpretation of his motives are correct, Reardon is pretty rough with Dagny, and the movie didn’t follow the novel at all on that point.

With that said, there was another semi-sexual scene in the movie that I liked very much, and I cannot, for the life of me, remember if that was how it happened in the novel. At one point, Dagny goes to her ex-lover, Francisco d’Anconia, who she now despises, and asks him to loan her money to start the John Galt train line. After she sees he isn’t going to loan her the money for “conventional business reasons”, nor out of charity, she tries to use “feminine wiles”, and implies that she will let him sleep with her if he will give her the money. I don’t remember this scene from the novel, but it seemed very “Ayn Rand-esque” to me. (See Rand’s novel “We The Living” for an example of women sleeping with men they consider to be their enemies to save someone they love.) Obviously, I don’t endorse prostitution as a normal career choice for a woman, but its one-time use by a businesswoman in a movie as a way to save her life’s work from destruction by the government is very compelling fiction to me.

Does the Oil Spill Matter?

Imagine a hypothetical scenario: a valuable substance is discovered on the moon. This substance is so valuable that corporations are willing to spend billions of dollars traveling to the moon to extract it and bring it back to Earth. These corporations institute procedures and guidelines for the safe extraction of this substance from the moon, because it will affect their profits if any of it were accidentally spilled on the lunar surface. However, since human beings are neither omniscient, nor infallible, it is possible that accidents will occasionally happen despite everyone’s best effort to avoid them. When this happens, some of this valuable hypothetical substance would be lost. Since we are talking about the moon, and there is nobody living on the moon, there is no property damage, and there is no danger to human life. Would there be reason to complain when such a “lunar spill” occurs? If human life is your standard of what is important, then the answer is no. Human life and human property is not endangered. The only tragedy when such a hypothetical lunar spill occurs is the loss of this valuable hypothetical substance.

Now imagine a second hypothetical scenario, back here on Earth: If your neighbor negligently released a flammable, black viscous substance onto your property, and it substantially interfered with your use or enjoyment of your land, what would you do? Under the property laws of most American states you could likely file suit against your neighbor in court. The specific cause of action might vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but it would typically be called something like “private nuisance” or “trespass”. The right to private property includes the right to the reasonable use and enjoyment of that property, and the law can and should protect it.

Now consider a current, and very real, event: An oil well in the Gulf of Mexico recently suffered a catastrophic explosion, and is releasing oil into the water. The primary tragedy here is the loss of human life from the explosion. This obviously was not an intentional act on the part of the owners or management of the oil company, but it did happen, either because people were negligent, or just because of a bad set of random circumstances beyond anybody’s control. This is not the first time an industrial accident has occurred, and it will not be the last. As long as human beings continue to be human beings, such events will occur –although I contend that such events are rare in a free society, made up of mostly reasonable people. To the extent that there is a causal connection between the negligent acts of any person or persons, and the loss of human life resulting from this industrial accident, and to the extent that that causal connection can be proven in a court of law, then there is, and there should be, legal liability for the person or persons responsible. In other words, to the extent that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is like the second hypothetical scenario that I set forth above, then the law can and should be brought into play.

However, the oil being spilled into the water, as opposed to the preceding explosion that resulted in a direct loss of human life, seems to have a lesser impact on the lives or property of human beings. The only two industries that are obviously affected by the spill are the fishing and recreational tourism industries in the Gulf region. “Recreational tourism” would primarily mean the beaches in the states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The legal solution to this problem is easy. Since the beaches are presumably owned by someone, they should have a legal right to go to court, and file suit against any person(s) who were negligent in causing the oil spill. This is exactly like the second hypothetical scenario I outlined above. With regard to the fishing industry, the legal solution seems a little bit more complicated for the simple reason that nobody owns the ocean. While fishermen should have a right to extract whatever aquatic life they want from the ocean, they have no property rights to the ocean itself. Perhaps it is time for property rights in the ocean to be defined and protected by government, but they appear not to be at present. Nobody can currently claim a right to an oil-free ocean, anymore than people could claim a right to the surface of the moon in my first hypothetical example.

Excepting the recreational tourism and the fishing industries, no other persons are damaged by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, because no other person’s property rights have been infringed. The oil spill matters no more than if someone were to spill a hypothetical substance on the surface of the moon.

There is a common sentiment that would take exception with me when I claim that, aside from the recreational tourism and fishing industries, nobody should care about oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. In fact this is more than just a “sentiment”, it is an ideology. That ideology is typically referred to as “environmentalism”. This ideology asserts that the oceans, non-human organisms, rivers, the land, and the air have a value apart from their service to human life and needs: “It is a belief in biocentrism, that life of the Earth comes first…” Earth First!. Web. 6-7-2010. http://www.earthfirst.org/about.htm This ideology asserts that human beings should, at the very least, return to pre-industrial technology levels. The fact that current human population levels could not be sustained by living at this level of technology means that this ideology, put into practice, would cause large numbers of human beings to die of starvation and disease. Indeed, wiping out humanity is the true goal of this ideology. Environmentalists with more of a conscience talk about government-forced birth control: “…cut the birth rate to one child per couple, for a few generations at least. The population would dwindle by about 5 billion people over the next century…” Engber, Daniel. Global Swarming Is it time for Americans to start cutting our baby emissions?. Slate.com. 9-10-2007. Web. 6-7-2010. http://www.slate.com/id/2173458 The more consistent adherents of this ideology talk about human extinction. The goal of human extinction is consistent with environmentalism because it holds that the Earth comes first. This ideology is far more dangerous than any industrial accident because it attacks the very root of human survival –technological progress, and the fact that humans should come first.

It doesn’t matter if most people who call themselves “environmentalists” don’t know that this ideology is opposed to human life. The majority of people who called themselves socialists during the cold war didn’t know that the logic of their ideology led to the gulags of Soviet Russia, and still probably don’t know it today, but that was the logical result of an ideology that holds that individuals must sacrifice their lives to the collective. Legitimate pollution problems can be solved with technological progress and the application of the laws of private property, such as the common law cause of action for private nuisance. Such problems cannot be solved by means of an ideology that opposes human happiness and progress.

New York Times Article on Kagan

“In another case, she recommended that the federal government intervene in a case to support religious freedom. The California Supreme Court ruled that a landlord violated a state law prohibiting housing discrimination by refusing to rent an apartment to an unwed couple because she considered sex outside marriage to be a sin.”http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/politics/12kagan.html?pagewanted=2&src=me

Kagan’s position here was incorrect. If the case is as the NY Times article describes it, then this was a law of general application (prohibiting housing discrimination against unmarried couples). Providing exemptions from statutes of general application on “freedom of religion” grounds would lead to the absurdity that people can abuse children or engage in human sacrifice because of their need for “religious freedom”. Warren Jeffs would claim that he has a right to sexually abuse children because of his “religious freedom”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Jeffs

The Kite Runner

Thematically, I think this movie was about guilt and atonement. The setting was interesting to me because it portrayed one of the few nations in world history that has been under both collectivism and theocracy -Afghanistan. It shows how the country was utterly destroyed by those two political ideologies. Pay attention to the Afghanistan prior to the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the Afghanistan in 2000, prior to September 11. Although the pre-1979 Afghanistan had its flaws, namely, tribalism and cast-discrimination, it was like a utopia compared to the brutal theocracy of 2000.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419887/

Judge John E. Jones III for US Supreme Court

In between stories about the latest celebrity sex scandal, the news is occasionally noting that Justice John Paul Stevens of the US Supreme Court is going to retire, allowing President Obama to make another appointment. I would like to propose that Judge John E. Jones III, of the Middle District of Pennsylvania be considered for the job. Judge Jones was appointed by President George W. Bush for his present position, and is a Republican. But, Judge Jones was the presiding judge in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Judge Jones ruled that the School Board’s policy on “Intelligent Design”, which is another word for creationism, violated the Establishment Clause. In an interview about his decision, Judge Jones responded this way: “A significant number of Americans, if you poll, believe that creationism ought to be taught, either supplanting evolution or alongside of evolution. And, again, you ask how the judiciary works. We protect against the tyranny of the majority.” Amen.