Government Dogma, and Oversight of Industry

The following came from the Pacific Research Institute, using an article from the San Jose Mercury News, from December 15, 2008:

"One week after the election, a think tank founded and led by President-elect Barack Obama's transition chief, John Podesta, referred to synthetic biology as "the most profound challenge to government oversight of technology in human history." In an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News, Daniel Ballon, Ph.D., PRI technology studies fellow, explains that synthetic biology offers an unprecedented opportunity to transform modern medicine, generate clean, renewable biofuels, and create millions of "green collar" jobs. Will the Obama administration encourage this innovation and respect the scientific community, or cave in to special interests peddling fear and hysteria?"

The better question is this: What authority does the government have to "oversee" any industry? We recognize such things as its authority to oversee standards that have been set for such things as pollution controls; national security interests such as selling items like supercomputers or explosives to enemies who would use those things against us; or in sorting out the vagaries of such things as where the rights of one industry may or may not overlap, such as the right of independent VOIP companies to use the high speed internet providers who offer their own VOIP?

President Bush is the first, and hopefully the only, President who can be said to be of the "religious right". His administration prevented the use of embryonic stem cells in research because his extreme right wing views are such that he--and millions of other people--believe that once the egg has been fertilized by a sperm, it has a soul provided by the Almighty, or that in some way it is one of God's sacred creations and therefore cannot in any sense of moral conscience be destroyed.

Where is the separation of church and state? Since several federal courts have deemed atheism to be a religion for the purposes of protection under the Constitution, an atheist who wishes to experiment with embryonic stem cells ought to be able to do so; after all, I do not have to follow the religious dogmas that Mr. Bush lives with, and he does not have the right to implement such dogma into law.

So where does the right of government oversight begin and end?

It seems it is to have a new beginning under the Obama Administration, which is going to print billions of dollars of money to put into those industries it deems either necessary, worthy, or "green."

Along with all these manufactured dollars will surely come oversight. Free money does not come with out strings. And it is not going to be a simple case of an industry accepting government funding for something it is already doing. The Federal government agencies responsible for handing out these unsecured greenbacks are going to be looking for results--and only the results it wants to see.

Obama is going to replace religious dogma with government dogma.

This is the reason that Ayn Rand stated the principle that there ought to be a wall of separation between industry and state, for the same reason as there is between church and state.

The Bush administration pushed for the government dogma of alternative fuel in the form of corn-based ethenol. This pushed up the price of corn to indefensible levels, farmers put wheat on the back burner in order to cash in on the profits to be made from corn, and as a result both wheat-based and corn-based products went up in price.

Government dogma screwed the American citizen. Fuel mileage is lower with corn-based ethenol, but it costs less, which was a priority when oil prices were going up, and in the attempt to wean us from middle east oil. Instead of paying higher prices at the pump, we now pay a much higher percentage for our food than we would have paid for our oil-based gasoline with the corn syrup left out of it.

Government dogma has no idea of how to "manage" industry or the economy. As a matter of fact, they cannot be "managed" without dire consequences. The housing market bubble disaster is because of government "management" of interest rates, which encouraged Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to perform in a very un-business-like manner, something they never would have done if money had not been so cheap.

Part of Detroit's problems are caused by concessions made to the Union--after the government stepped in many times to help negotiate a settlement because it was deemed "disastrous" to let the industry sit idle while both sides held their ground.

Part of Detroit's problems are that it's own dealers protested when, for example, GM announced several years ago that Chevrolet was going to be making only small cars, and the bigger cars would be in the other brands. Chevy dealers protested that they could not sell only small cars. Now, mini cars are the rage, along with the small, compact, efficient vehicles put out by the Japanese and the Koreans and the Germans and others.

Government oversight of how to build a car, i.e., what specifications and standards it should meet to be viable in the market place, would have bankrupted the industry already if it had such oversight. It seems it is going to get such oversight, at least in that part of the industry where it will have a "car czar" to tell it where government dogma says it is doing wrong or right.

I read, in a highly respected science magazine, that the Chinese are building a different kind of nuclear reactor than American law allows for. These reactors are smaller, cheaper, easier to build, can be transported in sections and erected in series, as needed, to increase output when it becomes necessary. And the Chinese reactors are so safe that the "China Syndrome" can never happen.

America knew about this type of reactor before "oversight" outlawed it. As a matter of fact, this kind of reactor was invented by the west before it invented the kind of reactor we use now.

But government dogma had other ideas: it seems that cheap, plentiful electricity, easily installable, would throw the electricity industry into some form of "confusion," and the big monopolies would no longer have monopolies, which means that they and their share holders would lose money because competition to build these smaller, cheaper, cleaner reactors would cause the existing companies to shrink.

"Physicists and engineers at Beijing's Tsinghua University have made the first great leap forward in a quarter century, building a new nuclear power facility that promises to be a better way to harness the atom: a pebble-bed reactor. A reactor small enough to be assembled from mass-produced parts and cheap enough for customers without billion-dollar bank accounts. A reactor whose safety is a matter of physics, not operator skill or reinforced concrete. And, for a bona fide fairy-tale ending, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is labeled hydrogen." Wired

When mayors of Chinese cities and towns need more electricity for their citizens because of population growth and capitalist-style industrial growth, they call the manufacturers of these small reactors and order them! And when they need more power, they order another one to be put in line with the first one. This series can apparently go on for as much electricity is needed.

Instead, America goes for dogma instead of the Chinese idea of how capitalism can cause a nation to become rich.

Certainly China has problems too, such as the murderous chemicals its unscrupulous manufacturers put into their products. But every nation has unscrupulous manufacturers. "Oversight" can never catch such forms of immoral behavior. It would require inspectors everywhere, in every industry, at all times, 24/7/365. And it still would not catch what smart but unscrupulous people will do to their goods just to make profit-making easier or quicker.

Communists used to be fond of saying they did not need to invade other nations to "take over" those other nations. Just let socialism creep in and take over everything, like vines creeping on a brick building, and when there was enough socialism, communist political takeover would not seem threatening at all.

Bush has created the biggest federal statism in our history. It is now Barak Obama's legacy, before it has even begun, to finish the socialist task of creeping into every nook and cranny of American industry.

Perhaps in my lifetime I will even see a communist President who denies he is communist, as Obama (never denied) he is Marxist.

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Capitalism, China, and the U.S.

Do Americans Understand the Concept of Capitalism?

Twenty years ago or so products from China started showing up on American shelves. Things like pot holders, and cheap little ceramic statues.

I'm old enough to remember when the same thing happened with Japanese items, but it was cheap transistor radios and other electronics, remarkable in that the Japanese industry would revolutionize the way electronics were designed, manufactured, and marketed. Look at the percentage of the electronics market they own in the U.S.--almost all of it. There are no TVs made in America, the last time I checked.

But it doesn't matter me that the Japanese have done so well. They are our political friends; we helped rebuild their nation after WWII.

But the revolution came to Japan first, not America. Americans refused to listen to W. Edwards Deming, widely credited with improving production in the United States during World War II, but laughed at--by Americans after the wa--because of American egotism: American manufacturing had proven itself during war-time production, and now it was king.

Japanese was not king, it barely existed. The Japanese were hurting economically, and being the smart people they are, they knew that quality goods would sell if they only manufactured them inexpensively enough. America laughed at those early Japanese products because we thought quality meant expensive, but we bought them because they worked--and because they were inexpensive.

As for the Chinese products America began to see two decades ago, I was incensed to see them in our stores, on our shelves, competing with products made in free nations. Anything that had a tag that said "Made in China" I put back, and bought more expensively--when there was a choice.

The world has changed. No longer can you just put back things "Made in China" because so much of what is for sale is made there. Thousands of dogs and cats died a year ago because of tainted food products; the year before that it was children's toys painted with lead. After the pet food scandal, the very same scandal erupted in China itself, with the tainting chemical being in infant formula.

The Chinese industrial revolution is filled with unethical practices, but with fear of the government: the man who owned the toy factory that used lead-based paint committed suicide because it was more honorable to him than being put to death by the Chinese government for his "mistake."

"You may remember when the world was divided between communism and capitalism, and when the Chinese were communists. The Chinese still call themselves communists, but now they’re also capitalists," writes Robert B. Reich, the twenty-second United States Secretary of Labor, serving under President Bill Clinton. http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0110-42.htm

But saying China is capitalist is like saying America is socialist--true, yet not true. The bigger truth is, we are becoming more like a socialist nation than the Pilgrims could have imagined; they gave up communism in the spring of 1623.

Gus Van Horn quoted The New Republic: "It's too bad for many reasons that, 'this nominally communist country now [only] seems more capitalist than Wall Street'" [italic added by Van Horn] He then added his own observation:

"The people [of China] have come to expect the fruits of capitalism (e.g., high wages and a good standard of living) while remaining ignorant of the nature of capitalism. True, they may blame the government when things turn sour, but this will likely be for the wrong reasons. Anyone who expects a government to be able to turn things around by any means other than simply protecting individual rights will be repeatedly disappointed.A blind rebellion is unlikely to result in China ending up free. Worse, capitalism will get the blame for the uneven and unsustainable growth pattern that has resulted from foolhardy attempts at central planning on both sides of the Pacific." [emphasis added] http://www.objectivismonline.net/

Unfortunately, what Van Horn forgets to say is that most Americans are ignorant of the nature and the source of capitalism.

"The gap between China’s rich and poor is turning into a chasm," writes Reich. "China’s innovators, investors, and captains of industry are richly rewarded. They live in luxury housing developments whose streets are lined with McMansions. The feed in fancy restaurants, and relax in five-star hotels and resorts. China’s poor live in a different world. Mao Tse Tung would turn in his grave.

"Capitalism has won hands down. The real dividing line is no longer economic. It’s political. And that divide is between democracy and authoritarianism. China is a capitalist economy with an authoritarian government." http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0110-42.htm

In the sense that the use of capital exists in China and that its users are allowed to profit, it may be called capitalist. But in the sense that politics is the dividing line, America is becoming more like a socialist nation every day.

"Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned," wrote Ayn Rand. http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/capitalism.html Private ownership means private decisions about the use of the property, and money is property because it was created by the minds and labor of those who earned it, not by the government that printed it.

But soon we are to see "the shared presumption that the way forward is always through moderation and compromise." http://www.aynrand.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=43221&em_id=46243.0 And we will see it in the way Americans handle the incoming administration of Barak Obama and the Democratically-controlled Congress.

Rights, as in property rights, as in money being property, are not something to compromise on. Compromising on rights turns them into privileges that are "allowed" by the government only to the point that we as Citizens allow; or so we thought. The overwhelming majority of Americans told the Congress not to use our money to bail out Wall Street's economic mess in the mortgage industry. They failed to listen. We did not vote the bums out of office, we increased the majority of the greater of the two sets of bums, the set which is more dangerous because they don't even give lip service to the free market as do the Republicans.

In the November 4th vote, Americans "presumed the way forward" was to compromise on their rights. This demonstrates we, as a nation, no longer understand the nature of how capital is created.

"The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve 'the common good', wrote Rand. "It is true that capitalism does[achieve the "common good"]—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice. What Is Capitalism? Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal 20

Americans voted in the most liberal legislator of our times, one who will not even acknowledge that associating with people who hate America and/or committed crimes against it is anything to own up to.

Clearly Americans do not understand the justice in capitalism, or we would not, year after year, treat our right to control our own property as a privilege granted by the government and as something we can allow to be compromised into obscurity.

See also: Obama's Continuing Socialism; Obama and the Fairness Doctrine; Al Gore and Coercion in the Free Market; No Justice in "Luck Egalitarianism"; Distribution of Labor, Capitalism, and Obama; Originalism and Obama; Artificial, Public-Financed, Non-Profiteering Indu...; Economic Freedom Needed in the U.S.

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The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
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© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

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Forest Losses and Leftist Science Policies

Nature Loss Dwarfs Bank Crisis Says Deutch Bank;

U.S. Forestry Svc Says Otherwise for U.S.

"The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.
It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change." Circle of 13 http://circleof13.blogspot.com/2008/10/nature-loss-dwarfs-bank-crisis.html

If that is true in Europe, Europe is in a sorry state. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forestry Service:

"It is estimated that—at the beginning of European settlement—in 1630 the area of forest land that would become the United States was 423 million hectares or about 46 percent of the total land area. By 1907, the area of forest land had declined to an estimated 307 million hectares or 34 percent of the total land area. Forest area has been relatively stable since 1907. In 1997, 302 million hectares—or 33 percent of the total land area of the United States—was in forest land." [emphasis added] http://fia.fs.fed.us/library/briefings-summaries-overviews/docs/ForestFactsMetric.pdf

The E.U. reports states: "The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis..."

If both the E.U. and the U.S. reports are correct, America is holding its own against the losses of the rest of the world. In other words, the "global economy" where it regards the "disappearance of forests" is affecting all parts of the world except the U.S.

Forests, Science, Left-wing Politics continued

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC

Morality is Within Human Nature, Not God-Given

In a world that often believes morality is "written in the stars" and cannot be other than what it is, and that to serve God is to be moral, it is refreshing to hear a professional philosopher say, "there can't be morality in a world without human beings."

The question asked was this: "Does the morality of the universe depend on the presence of moral beings to "judge" it? Like the question of whether the tree falling in the forest makes any sound if there is no sentient being present to hear it...So, would good and evil exist at all in a world without human beings?" Ask Philosophers http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/2350

It is unfortunate that the philosopher did not draw a distinction between the actions of humans on other humans as "morality," versus the question of the "tree falling in the forest." She does ask the question, "is there a more independent standard -- provided by God, for example...?" but never addresses the question of the conundrum of the "tree."

As I stated in my blog titled If A Tree Falls, Does It Make a Sound?--the Primacy of Existence , "Every answer I have ever read misses the essential point, which is not about 'sound or sound waves being heard or not heard,' nor about whether sound is different from noise. Those are the excuses of metaphysicians who will not, or cannot, face the real question, or who have no idea that another question more real exists.

"The question is: Does existence exist independently of consciousness? When seen in this context, it does not matter if 'sound" or "noise' is used as the definition of what happens when the tree falls; it matters whether you think things happen whether or not a consciousness is there to perceive that it happens."

The point is that given the Primacy of Existence [see the article] the tree does not require "the presence of 'moral' beings to judge" whether a sound or a noise is created. The laws of physics states that it cannot be otherwise. If the only point to the question is whether or not it takes an animal's ear to perceive the sound or noise, then of the course the answer is yes.

And if that is all there is to the question, then why bother asking it?

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The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of the

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© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®