The Ayn Rand Institute Speaks Out on ‘Going Galt’

rvine, CA, March 18, 2009–In a recent appearance on PJTV, Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, addressed the current media sensation known as “going Galt,” in which productive individuals consider withdrawing their labor from society. The phrase is a reference to John Galt, the central character in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, and a strike that he leads against an oppressive government, and the society that supports it.

“I would encourage people not to go on strike, in that sense,” says Brook. “It’s not time to go on strike, to leave and go to Galt’s Gulch. It’s time to fight. What I would call for is a moral revolution. Let’s get rid of the morality that says ‘your moral responsibility is toward your neighbor,’ that ‘you are your brother’s keeper.’ Ayn Rand presents us with a new morality, a morality of rational self-interest. There is a lot of fight left in us, and I think it’s too early to give up on this world.”

Ayn Rand Center Launches Blog: Voices for Reason

Washington, D.C., March 17, 2009 – The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has launched its blog, Voices for Reason. The Center’s experts post commentary every weekday on today’s most pressing issues from the perspective of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of reason, individualism and laissez-faire capitalism.

At Voices for Reason media professionals will find unique, thoughtful and controversial commentary on current events and the state of our culture, which can be found nowhere else. The blog covers the economic crisis, environmentalism, foreign policy, free speech and property rights, and provides journalists and the general public with the principled answers Ayn Rand’s philosophy offers to today’s political, economic and cultural problems.

Experts from the Ayn Rand Center are available for print, radio and TV interviews based on the commentary they publish.

To read our most recent commentary in Voices for Reason, go to http://blog.aynrandcenter.org/. To interview our experts, e-mail Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights (ARC) is a public policy research and outreach group. The Ayn Rand Center’s mission is to advance individual rights (the rights of each person to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness) as the moral basis for a fully free, laissez-faire capitalist society.

Is Rand Relevant?

By Yaron Brook (The Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2009)

Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged,” is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history.

There’s a reason. In “Atlas,” Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?

The novel’s eerily prophetic nature is no coincidence. “If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society,” Rand wrote elsewhere in “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” “you can predict its course.” Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don’t just happen by themselves; they are the product of the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society–particularly its dominant moral ideas.

Why do we accept the budget-busting costs of a welfare state? Because it implements the moral ideal of self-sacrifice to the needy. Why do so few protest the endless regulatory burdens placed on businessmen? Because businessmen are pursuing their self-interest, which we have been taught is dangerous and immoral. Why did the government go on a crusade to promote “affordable housing,” which meant forcing banks to make loans to unqualified home buyers? Because we believe people need to be homeowners, whether or not they can afford to pay for houses.

The message is always the same: “Selfishness is evil; sacrifice for the needs of others is good.” But Rand said this message is wrong–selfishness, rather than being evil, is a virtue. By this she did not mean exploiting others à la Bernie Madoff. Selfishness–that is, concern with one’s genuine, long-range interest–she wrote, required a man to think, to produce, and to prosper by trading with others voluntarily to mutual benefit.

Rand also noted that only an ethic of rational selfishness can justify the pursuit of profit that is the basis of capitalism–and that so long as self-interest is tainted by moral suspicion, the profit motive will continue to take the rap for every imaginable (or imagined) social ill and economic disaster. Just look how our present crisis has been attributed to the free market instead of government intervention–and how proposed solutions inevitably involve yet more government intervention to rein in the pursuit of self-interest.

Rand offered us a way out–to fight for a morality of rational self-interest, and for capitalism, the system which is its expression. And that is the source of her relevance today.

Dr. Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

——

Here is the link to the Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123698976776126461.html
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Anti-Smoking Paternalism: A Cancer on American Liberty

By Don Watkins

Newport Beach is considering banning smoking in a variety of new places, potentially including parks and outdoor dining areas. This is just the latest step in a widespread war on smoking by federal, state, and local governments–a campaign that includes massive taxes on cigarettes, advertising bans, and endless lawsuits against tobacco companies. This war is infecting America with a political disease far worse than any health risk caused by smoking; it is destroying our freedom to make our own judgments and choices.

According to the anti-smoking movement, restricting people’s freedom to smoke is justified by the necessity of combating the “epidemic” of smoking-related disease and death. Cigarettes, we are told, kill hundreds of thousands each year, and expose countless millions to secondhand smoke. Smoking, the anti-smoking movement says, in effect, is a plague, whose ravages can only be combated through drastic government action.

But smoking is not some infectious disease that must be quarantined and destroyed by the government. It’s a voluntary activity that every individual is free to abstain from (including by avoiding restaurants and other private establishments that permit smoking). And, contrary to those who regard any smoking as irrational on its face, cigarettes are a potential value that each individual must assess for himself. Of course, smoking can be harmful–in certain quantities, over a certain period of time, it can be habit forming and lead to disease or death. But many understandably regard the risks as minimal if one smokes relatively infrequently, and they see smoking as offering definite value, such as physical pleasure.

Are they right? Can it be a value to smoke cigarettes–and if so, in what quantity? This is the sort of judgment that properly belongs to every individual, based on his assessment of the evidence concerning smoking’s benefits and risks, and taking into account his particular circumstances (age, family history, etc.). If others believe the smoker is making a mistake, they are free to try to persuade him of their viewpoint. But they should not be free to dictate his decision, any more than they should be able to dictate his decision on whether and to what extent to drink alcohol or play poker. The fact that some individuals will smoke themselves into an early grave is no more justification for banning smoking than that the existence of alcoholics is grounds for prohibiting you from enjoying a drink at dinner.

Implicit in the war on smoking, however, is the view that the government must dictate the individual’s decisions with regard to smoking, because he is incapable of making them rationally. To the extent the anti-smoking movement succeeds in wielding the power of government coercion to impose on Americans its blanket opposition to smoking, it is entrenching paternalism: the view that individuals are incompetent to run their own lives, and thus require a nanny-state to control every aspect of those lives.

This state is well on its way: from trans-fat bans to bicycle helmet laws to prohibitions on gambling, the government is increasingly abridging our freedom on the grounds that we are not competent to make rational decisions in these areas–just as it has long done by paternalistically dictating how we plan for retirement (Social Security) or what medicines we may take (the FDA).

Indeed, one of the main arguments used to bolster the anti-smoking agenda is the claim that smokers impose “social costs” on non-smokers, such as smoking-related medical expenses–an argument that perversely uses an injustice created by paternalism to support its expansion. The only reason non-smokers today are forced to foot the medical bills of smokers is that our government has virtually taken over the field of medicine, in order to relieve us inept Americans of the freedom to manage our own health care, and bear the costs of our own choices.

But contrary to paternalism, we are not congenitally irrational misfits. We are thinking beings for whom it is both possible and necessary to rationally judge which courses of action will serve our interests. The consequences of ignoring this fact range from denying us legitimate pleasures to literally killing us: from the healthy 26-year-old unable to enjoy a trans-fatty food to the 75-year-old man unable to take an unapproved, experimental drug without which he will certainly die.

By employing government coercion to deprive us of the freedom to judge for ourselves what we inhale or consume, the anti-smoking movement has become an enemy, not an ally, in the quest for health and happiness.

Sales of "Atlas Shrugged" Soar in the Face of Economic Crisis

Sales of “Atlas Shrugged” Soar in the Face of Economic Crisis

Washington, D.C., February 23, 2009–Sales of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” have almost tripled over the first seven weeks of this year compared with sales for the same period in 2008. This continues a strong trend after bookstore sales reached an all-time annual high in 2008 of about 200,000 copies sold.

“Americans are flocking to buy and read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ because there are uncanny similarities between the plot-line of the book and the events of our day” said Yaron Brook, Executive Director at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “Americans are rightfully concerned about the economic crisis and government’s increasing intervention and attempts to control the economy. Ayn Rand understood and identified the deeper causes of the crisis we’re facing, and she offered, in ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ a principled and practical solution consistent with American values.”

—————-
 
Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. Dr. Brook is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV shows, having appeared on the new Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel, CNN, CNBC and C-SPAN. Dr. Brook, a former finance professor, lectures on Objectivism, capitalism, business and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please contact media@aynrandcenter.org.

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Ayn Rand Center Launches New Blog: "Voices for Reason"

Washington, D.C., February 9, 2009—Today, the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has launched its blog Voices for Reason, where its experts will provide daily commentary on breaking news from the perspective of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism.

According to Debi Ghate, vice president of Academic programs, “Every weekday, we will post new commentary on current events on topics such as the financial crisis, environmentalism, foreign policy, free speech, and property rights. We will also explore the principled solutions Ayn Rand’s philosophy offers for tackling today’s political, economic and cultural problems.

“It is our goal to make Voices for Reason the go-to source for our unique perspective on the most important news of the day and the state of our culture. Our writers will share their insights, evaluating current events using Ayn Rand’s philosophy of reason, individualism, and laissez-faire capitalism as their guide.”

Voices for Reason will also carry announcements and updates from the Ayn Rand Center and the Ayn Rand Institute.

Pain of Recession Foretells Agony of Green Economy

Washington, D.C.–For the first time in 25 years, global demand for oil is expected to decline two years in a row. The decline is an effect of the global economic recession, which has dramatically reduced production and trade worldwide.
 
“This recession, with all its grim news of job loss and economic hardship, should be seen as a cautionary tale against coercive energy and climate policies,” said Keith Lockitch, fellow of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
 
“Energy is the motive power that fuels production and trade. When economic activity slows, so does energy demand. But it goes the other way too. Imposing restrictions on the use of energy–as would occur under a system of carbon regulation–would choke off the economy’s fuel and shut down productive activity. The economic pain we’re all feeling in this recession is nothing compared to the pain we would feel if we adopt green policies that cut off fossil fuel consumption.
 
“For one thing, a recession is a temporary downturn; we can expect that once the economy picks up again, producers will increase their demand for energy toward renewed growth and prosperity. Also, nobody sets out to cause a recession. But if we voluntarily adopt green policies that force cutbacks in energy, the result would be a self-inflicted depression that would cause economic pain for as long as the policies are in place.
 
“Those who claim that we could avoid economic hardship by running a green economy on windmills and solar cells are seriously out of touch with reality. None of the so-called alternative energies that are supposedly going to power the ‘green energy revolution’ have proven themselves to be practical sources of energy. And this despite decades of research and billions of dollars in subsidies.

“Whatever you think about global warming–and there is ample evidence to reject the hysterical claim that we are facing any sort of planetary emergency–the reality is that a drastic reduction in carbon emissions means a reduction in the use of energy far greater than anything we are seeing right now, and the corresponding economic decline would make this recession seem like a party.”

What to Resolve This New Year

By Alex Epstein (January 1, 2009)

Given the devastated state of many Americans’ finances, our New Year’s resolutions will take on greater significance this year. To “get out of debt” was often a casually stated goal to be set as midnight approached and forgotten soon after; today it is rightly recognized as a fundamental necessity of life.

Unfortunately, the New Year’s commitment to self-improvement is widely viewed with cynicism–in part because New Year’s resolutions go so notoriously unmet. After years of watching others–or themselves–excitedly commit to a new goal, only to abandon the quest by March, many come to conclude that New Year’s resolutions are an exercise in futility that should not be taken seriously. “The silly season is upon us,” writes a columnist for the Washington Post, “when people feel compelled to remake themselves with New Year’s resolutions.”
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Since When Does America Allow Czars?

Washington, D.C. – “Our Founding Fathers must be turning over in their graves hearing Americans, of all people, discussing the need for a ‘car czar’ and an ‘energy czar,’” said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

“The whole purpose of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was to liberate individuals from czars, kings, and other dictators who violate individual rights and kill progress by shackling everyone to their ‘vision’ of how others should act.

“The new advocates of czarism claim that freedom has failed, and so we need some economic strongman to order everyone into line. But in fact, the energy and auto industries are suffering because they have been the victims of central planning and regulatory strangulation for decades. The solution to our problems is not to centralize government intervention from many czars to a few, but to remove it altogether. We must de-socialize the electric grids, liberate nuclear power, end bankrupting fuel economy mandates, and remove the many other government interventions that destroy freedom and progress.

“What we need is not a new set of czars, but freedom.”

Save the Big Three, Kill the U.S. Auto Market

Washington, D.C.– Advocates of a bailout for the Big Three claim that if we allow these giants to fail, it will destroy the U.S. auto industry. “In fact,” said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, “it is the bailout, a veritable marriage between Detroit and Washington, that will destroy the U.S. auto industry.

“The Big Three have no right to demand that taxpayers risk money on them when private investors won’t. They do, however, have a right to demand the repeal of the policies that have helped destroy the auto industry. These include the labor laws that have forced them to acquiesce to economically catastrophic UAW demands, and fuel economy laws that have forced them to produce small cars that they can’t profit from given their labor costs. Indeed, the Big Three should have done this long ago–so that they would have been free to produce desirable cars at a profit in America, just as they do in scores of countries around the world.

“But instead of demanding their freedom and making a case to the market, the automakers are surrendering even more of their freedom to the government in exchange for taxpayer money. They have met Congress’s demand to commit to producing more small cars–even though it is small cars that have bankrupted the companies in the first place.

“By seeking handouts, not freedom, the auto industry is helping to destroy any remnant of a genuine auto market. In a real market, free companies would make money by producing the cars that free individuals judge best. In the new pseudo market, companies will make money by collecting taxpayer dollars in exchange for making whatever cars Washington tells them to. If this is what it means to save the U.S. auto industry, then the industry should die, and then real, freedom-seeking, profit-making companies might emerge.”

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