All Your Rights Are Belong To U.S October 29, 2005
Posted by Resident Egoist in : Interventionism , add a commentDemonstrating the fact that our present culture stinks rotten of altruism and envy, several members of Congress have decided that they simply can’t stomach the fact that oil companies are making a profit — i.e., they are achieving the very goal for which they went into business in the first place.
Oct 27 — via the Christian Science Monitor:
NEW YORK — Many oil companies have seen their rigs get battered in the Gulf of Mexico this hurricane season. But now, the companies are facing a new kind of storm, as Congress wants to show constituents it is concerned about oil companies reporting record profits.
At the moment, it’s mainly just a windstorm. Warnings swirl about price gouging. Some in Congress are urging the oil companies to reinvest their profits in new US refineries and energy sources. But some Democrats are also proposing windfall profits taxes, which would make the companies either spend their money on new energy projects or send it to the US Treasury.
Well, there you have it. One group of thugs wants to tell the oil companies how to handle the profits they’ve made by directing their future investments, and the other simply wants to have its share through legal looting. The common theme? The owners of energy companies have no right to property — that the justification of their existence is the welfare of unthinking masses and the puny grace of incompetent politicians.
Today, Oct 28, the Los Angeles Times reports:
WASHINGTON ? Oil industry executives will be summoned to Capitol Hill to explain why gasoline prices are so high ? the latest effort by Republican lawmakers to head off political fallout from high fuel costs.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called Thursday for hearings into fuel prices, becoming the second congressional Republican leader this week to raise questions about the soaring profits of an industry that long has been a GOP ally.
With the industry posting record profits, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) earlier called on oil companies to plow more money into increasing fuel supplies and lowering costs to consumers.
“Our free market works best when all know and follow the rules of the road,” Frist said in a statement on his request for hearings. “If there are those who abuse the free-enterprise system to advantage themselves and their businesses at the expense of all Americans, they ought to be exposed, and they ought to be ashamed.”
What on earth are those supposed “rules of the road” that Mr. Frist is refering to?! The rules [read: regulations] which he sets — i.e., the criminality of making a profit? But then why call the market “free”? Why even call it a “market” at all when the State is the entity charged with directing investments?!
True to his unacknowledged teacher, Karl Marx, Mr. Frist seems to think that not only are prices mere numbers to be stamped on goods by businessmen regardless of the circumstances prevalent in the market, but also that all profit must come at the expense of someone else. Of course, this notion has been disproved both theoritically by countless capitalist economists, and historically by the unrivaled success of capitalism in creating abundance and material progress on the one hand, and the bloody failure of socialism on the other.
But Mr. Frist’s ignorance of economic theory and history notwithstanding, one would expect at least some degree of logical consistency from him. He is a medical doctor after all. If one person’s gain can only come at the expense of another, then the difference that exists between a high and low rate of profit is merely one of degree — not of kind. But if such is the case, then why let any degree of injustice / oppression / profit-making to exist at all? If the goal of privately going into business is to make a profit, i.e., to oppress and take advantage of those oh-so-defenseless masses, then why let individuals start businesses in the first place? Why not have the Omnipotent State simply take over everything, put a final end to injust, oppressive profit-making and hence bring about Selfless Utopia?
I suspect however, that the above questions are for the “extremist” to ask. Mr. Frist is not an “extremist.” Hence, thanks to him and his ilk, present American businessmen are trapped in a hopeless mess of irreconcillable contradictions: if they happen to charge a “high” price for the goods/services that they produce, they are accused of price gouging. If they charge “too low” a price, they are sued for predatory pricing. Nor are they safe by charging the same price as their competitors, for then they can be accused of price fixing — i.e., conspiracy! What if they take their business elsewhere? No; I mean: what if they choose to take the injust and oppressive profit-making elsewhere? Then the unpardonable sin, of course, is outsourcing.
Economist Joseph Schumpeter once wrote that
[c]apitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets. They are going to pass it, whatever the defense they hear; the only success victorious defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment.
So far he has proven to be quite prophetic.
Technorati Tags: Capitalism, Oil Prices, Katrina, Price Gouging
Let Us Do Evil That Good May Come October 28, 2005
Posted by Resident Egoist in : Ecology, Interventionism , add a commentWhat you are about to read is an attempt at problem-solving from the venerated New York Times — Here’s some of the latest verbiage from the editorial staff:
There’s no serious disagreement that two major crises of our time are terrorism and global warming. And there’s no disputing that America’s oil consumption fosters both. Oil profits that flow to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries finance both terrorist acts and the spread of dangerously fanatical forms of Islam. The burning of fossil fuels creates greenhouse emissions that provoke climate change. All the while, oil dependency increases the likelihood of further military entanglements, and threatens the economy with inflation, high interest rates and risky foreign indebtedness. Until now, the government has failed to connect our crises and our consumption in a coherent way …
And apparently, the all-knowing New York Times has?! Apart from the fact that Islamo-Fascism is indeed a “major crisis” of our time, virtually everything else in the above statement is wrong. I did say earlier that this was to be an attempt at problem-solving … well, feel free to divine where we’re headed if the subject can’t even make a correct diagnosis of the problem to be solved.
Not to mention that even the problems we are offered are simply thrown at us — as if they were self-evident — through sheer intellectual intimidation. Yes, we are supposed to simply accept that “global warming” — the anthropogenic kind — exists, and its cause being nothing but our “addiction” to energy consumption. Why? Problably because the NYT says so — and we would also look “unserious” if we disagreed. Now, who wants to looks unserious, and by Zeus, who dares disagree with the New York Marxist Times Itself?! Well … read on.
America does have a serious crisis on its hands today — and I do not mean anything that the NYT refers to above. I mean something much more serious: the fact that people have little to no idea as to what is truly wrong! Hence the near-agonizing spectacle of everyone pointing at symptoms of problems, but never identifying their root cause. The NYT itself provides an excellent exemple of this fact: it identifies general high prices as being the cause of inflation — but alas, that is merely a symptom of the existence of inflation — its real cause being that thing called the Federal Reserve Bank and its careless manipulation of the money supply. The NYT’s diagnosis is as false as that of a medical doctor who would point to a fever as the cause — and not the symptom — of a headache.
As to “connect[ing] our crises and our consumption in a coherent way”, the NYT — once again — does anything but. The West, especially the United States, is not entirely innocent with regard to the phenomenon of Islamo-Fascist terrorism as it exists today. No, I do not mean this in the manner a socialist would, i.e., alleged U.S imperialism and oppression, and Muslim alienation. In the domain of Foreign Policy, the West’s guilt consists essentially of moral cowardice — its constant apologies for its material success, and failure to assert its just and unalienable right to exist; e.g.: by letting primordial thugs nationalize its property and hold its citizens for ransom. Today, Islamo-Fascists are merely exploiting this moral default.
Terrorism needs more than moral fuel to thrive, however. It needs material, i.e., financial fuel as well. This is where the domestic anti-business policies of the past decades come in. Specifically, this is where environmentalism comes in. It is this anti-human ideology, arguably more than anything else, that is responsible for the existence of virually all the financial assets that presently serve as means towards the ends of Islamo-Fasism.
The editors at the NYT seem astute enough to note that there is a link between our large dependence on foreign oil and the propagation of Islamist terrorism — that “[o]il profits that flow to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries finance both terrorist acts and the spread of dangerously fanatical forms of Islam.” Alas, being devoted ecologists, anything else they have to say beyond this stage, is less than worthless, as it is the endless number of environmental regulations — supported and instituted by the back-to-nature movement — that are the cause of our dependence on foreign, Arab oil; therefore, whether intentionally or not, ecologists hold enormous responsibility concerning the present terror crisis … not to mention your excrutiatingly high gas prices.
No, it isn’t that we are “running out” of crude oil, as they can’t stop telling us. It is that, thanks to their anti-human-life, and not-in-my-backyard policies and regulations, the last oil refinery to be built in the U.S was in 1976; 29 years ago. As to the domestic supply of oil, in the name of, “wetlands”, “fragile ecosystems” and “wildlife refuge[s]“, it is untouchable. With regard to nuclear power, which is by far the cleanest and safest source of reliable power that we possess today, it is anathema to ecologists. But that’s because a clean and safe human evironment was never the goal of their crusade, as these insatiable enemies of human values will assault wind and solar energy as well when these are thought to interfere with the migratory patterns of birds.
So, functioning with this sort of mentality, you can safely except the NYT editors not to propose as a step toward the solution to the terror crisis, anything related to the repeal of destructive ecological regulations. No, the NYT proposes something much more interesting: the stifling of the American demand for energy by an increase in the gas tax — hence the following:
The best solution is to increase the federal gasoline tax, in order to keep the price of gas near its post-Katrina highs of $3-plus a gallon. That would put a dent in gas-guzzling behavior, as has already been seen in the dramatic drop in the sale of sport-utility vehicles. And it would help cure oil dependency in the long run, as automakers and other manufacturers responded to consumer demand for fuel-efficient products.
There you have it: the alleged solution to satisfying our growing demand for energy is to reduce our demand for energy! And if you don’t want to curb your unsustainable addiction voluntarily, the NYT will have the government give you “market incentives” to do so. One important thing to know however, is that the inevitable result of an artificially hightened price of gasoline is a reduction in consumption that would otherwise not have existed, i.e., if we pay more for gasoline, we must buy less of, i.e., forgo, something else. But that is not all: the NYT’s cries about “fuel-efficien[cy]” notwithstanding, the standard of living that we enjoy in the West today is entirely proportional to the amount of energy that we consume — and to the extent that we restrict that consumption, we must forfeit our standard of living as well. But of course, ecologists, being the ascetics that they are, have no problem with such a prospect.
This latter fact is made rather very clear by the very title of the editorial in question — which is: “Gas Taxes: Lesser Evil, Greater Good”. Interesting that the NYT editors think that not only can evil means lead to good ends, but that supposedly good ends justify the use of admittedly evil means, is it not?! If Human Life is to be the standard of value however, and if history is to serve as guide, I am afraid to say that they are sorely mistaken.