DUBAI - Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz on Friday rejected the unconditional return of U.N. arms inspectors called for by Washington.

"We do not accept President Bush's conditions," Aziz told the Dubai-based Arab satellite television station MBC in an interview being shown at 1500 GMT, footage of which was seen in advance by Reuters.

"The return of inspectors without conditions will not solve the problem...we have had a bad experience with them. Is it clever to repeat an experience that failed and did not prevent aggression?"

Alea iacta est.

posted by Jane Galt at 7:01 AM |

And from there it gets still worse. They have mastered the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. They have Crossed the Chasm. They have transformed themselves into Guerilla Marketers. And now, we find that our worst fears have been realized:

Al-Qaeda is a Learning Organization.

posted by Jane Galt at 3:58 PM |

One hopes it's the president of course, though I've heard strong minority voices for Condi Rice, Rumsfeld, and Cheney. Whoever it is, I think they've confirmed my belief that the Administration has managed this crisis like a virtuoso.

I never took very seriously the complaints that Bush was flailing, because my years of watching politics have convinced me that there is some sort of natural law decreeing that every administration policy will provoke an equal number of equally vehement voices for, and against it. Especially in a war, when the demands of national security mean that the people running the war have a lot more information than the people trying to tell them how to run it. That's not to say that their decisions are necessarily right. But it means that I am unmoved by complaints that "I don't understand where he's going with all this". Thank God. A military strategy where everyone and their brother in law can chart the moves in advance is not one that I find reassuring.

The first time I suspected Bush was smarter than he looks (well, actually, it was the second time. But I can't remember what the first one was) was when he announced the formation of the Department of Homeland Security. It seemed to me that rather than displaying panic, it was a master stroke, politically speaking. He didn't say anything until the Democrats had enough rope to hang themselves -- and then he pulled the trigger. They were left without anything to say.

This looks similar to me. The Clinton team would have been out there, aggressively putting over the spin. The Bush administration was silent until everyone had decided that the complaint they were going to hang their hopes on was the abominable unilateral bent of the US. They let everyone talk themselves out and then they delivered this.

The UN performance was brilliant in so many ways. First of all, even before the speech, the obvious push for invasion forced Europe to stop pushing to ease the sanctions and let Saddaam build whatever weapons he wants as long as he buys French equipment and pays the Russians what he owes them. It brought us to a position of strength in negotiation. Whether or not you want the US to invade, it's pretty clear that the credible threat of invasion is the only thing making Saddaam offer to submit to inspections, or making Europe actually argue for uncompromising inspections. Second of all, now that it is clear that the US is going, it is fairly clear to me that Europe is indeed going to jump on the bandwagon so that their governments don't end up looking totally irrelevant. And third of all, most brilliantly, it was a "Put up or shut up" to the multilateralists.

Saddaam is in violation of about a hundred UN resolutions. And not fluffy resolutions either. Resolutions about things like stockpiling ABC weapons.

The UN can endorse the US invasion, and lose an opportunity to aggrandize its power and appease the small countries who would like to see the US brought low.

Or it can fail to endorse the invasion, and admit that its resolutions have no force. Should this occur, I don't think it's alarmist to say that we could look for the US to pull out of the UN in the not so distant future, the UN having proved itself not only anti-American, but irrelevent to boot.

I think they're going to endorse the invasion. I think they will make Saddaam an offer he can't accept -- really, truly, disarm (in which case I think Saddaam knows he would be dead in six months) or the US gets the green light. And then I think they will -- reluctantly, painfully, resentfully -- give lip service to the American cause.

Flailing? I think the Bush administration has more discipline than we've seen in the White House for a long time.

posted by Jane Galt at 3:11 PM |

She took a lot of heat for her angry response to some people who accused her of plagiarism because she used four words from a song. My initial response was "These people need to get a hobby". For anyone who has been planning to level similar charges, yes, I cribbed large parts of a post below from the Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independance, and other sources. I assume that my readers are educated enough to pick up the references. For anyone who may have been confused, let me clear it up: I did not write either the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address, though of course I wish I had.

But anyway, as Norah pointed out to me, for a professional journalist, this is a very serious charge. That accusation could easily end up with editors who will demand explanation and hurt her livelihood, especially owing to the magic of google. The people who made the accusation may not have realized this. If they did, they deserve our full censure.

We aren't always as careful as we should be. I know that I am not, although I am more careful than I was six months ago. Certainly, I don't want to shut down other peoples' freedom of expression. But when we are leveling serious charges we should have serious evidence. For some of us, it may not matter. But for the people here who make their living in the public sphere, I think that it is right that they should be able to ask that others not deliberately spread silly or false charges because of ideological disagreements. I think it is right for us to support that by not linking those charges, and thus furthering the damage, unless we think that they are fair. Norah's blast about non-professionals was taking as a smear against bloggers who are not professional journalists, when it was rather a -- justified! -- smear against people who use the unique powers of a blog to make unfounded charges that can severely harm someone's career. I do not know that the bloggers in question were malicious; I certainly hope not. But I think it behooves us all to think hard about what we say, and whether there is a fair basis for it, before we put it in out there.

But I'm interested in what others think, about the ethics and also about the future of litigation in the blogosphere. If I put up a lie that gets wide coverage, am I liable?

posted by Jane Galt at 7:38 AM |

One of the interesting phenomenon I experience with this blog is when liberals who take offense to my generally free-market slant present me with some evidence that the market -- usually the financial market, but any market will do -- has produced an imperfect result. So there! they say, triumphantly, and presumably sit back with a satisfied smile to await the inevitable crisis when I, all my dreams of market purity having been swept away like so much chaff, crumble and admit that after all, the free market's not so hot.

They are generally shocked and hurt when instead I respond "Of course it doesn't always work perfectly. And your point is. . . ? "

The caricature of the free-market side is that, because we are mean and wish to keep all of our money to ourselves, and/or because we are stupid and probably racist and classist to boot, we are blinding ourselves to the down sides of markets in order to cling to the belief, which we know in our heart of hearts to be erroneous, that markets are perfect. I believe this is a fairly succinct statement of a belief that I have encountered from roseate interlocutors on a fairly regular basis.

Unfortunately for my erstwhile opponents, this is not the case. If you want to hear a great rundown of all the ways in which markets fail, there's no better place to get it than the University of Chicago Economics Department. All of the market failures my left-leaning adversaries describe have well known economic names, from the Principal-Agent problem to the Free Rider problem, to the eternal curse of negative externalities. The economic illiterate does not, in my experience, discover anything new under the sun.

At their base level, markets are merely systems. Sometimes the rules are sub-optimal, in which case Chicago economists and many others devote precious intellectual effort to figuring out what rules would be more optimal, and often charge private parties a pretty penny to help them implement these improved systems. And sometimes the results are bound to be imperfect within the limits of human interaction, and all we can do is mitigate the damage.

The difference between a free market economist and a more pro-regulation one is not that the former is a venal poltroon who is unaware that markets fail, much as the Nation and the American Prospect might wish that this were the case. The difference is that they impute to government different levels of ability to remedy these failures without introducing new, worse failures into the system. Liberal economists have a higher degree of confidence in the workings of regulation.

Now, just as National Review authors generally pretend that there ain't no such thing as a market failure, Paul Krugman generally pretends that there is no such thing as a government regulation that makes things worse. In neither case do I believe that the authors are actually under the delusion that the systems they are touting are perfect. But they feel that they have to pretend that they are perfect, so that the proles will not experience doubt and thus be led to make an incorrect choice come next election. But this is not that kind of web site. For example: lowering tax rates does not increase tax revenue, at least not at the current levels of taxation in the US. It would be very nice if that were true, but it isn't, and that's that. I am not going to pretend that it is true, or argue that it might be true, or what have you, in order to support my idealogical predisposition for lower taxes. It isn't. It is true that Democratic analyses of such matters always overstate the amount by which revenues will fall, because they make ludicrous assumptions about individual behavior, but no one is in serious doubt that the net effect will be to lower overall revenues somewhat. You may see this site arguing for tax cuts for other reasons, but the Laffer curve will not be among them.

My, that felt better. Back to liberal economists.

The reason that I was thinking about this is that Joseph Stiglitz, writing for a popular audience, is making ludicrous assumptions about the behavior of government. Partly this is because he worked for the NEA, which sets macro policy from the olympian heights of monetary policy and broad fiscal guidelines, not down in the trenches making particular regulations. Partly, I assume, it is ideological predisposition to wish that government regulations were very, very effective. And partly, I assume again, it is that Joseph Stiglitz doesn't want to worry his readers with the possibility that a government regulation, particularly one proposed by smart, well meaning Democrats, might not, y'know, work.

The topic of the rest of this post will be fractional reserve banking. Those of you who are operating heavy machinery, or who would otherwise find it unsafe to health or career to suddenly drop into a deep sleep, should stop reading now.

Joseph Stiglitz was excoriating the Bush administration for lowering the reserve requirements and therefore making the banking system less safe. But this is dumb. Lowering the reserve requirements doesn't make the banking system any safer, even though journalists think it does. But Joseph Stiglitz is not a journalist, and ought to know better.

First, let's talk about what fractional reserve banking is. Probably the best explanation of it is given by Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life, but I don't have time to watch the movie right now, so I'll have to wing it.

Basically the concept is this: when your bank takes your money in, it doesn't, contrary to popular belief, stick it in a vault where your bankers can periodically go and rub their hands, thinking of how they screwed the workers out of all this dough. They lend it out to other people, in mortgages and car loans and such. That's how they get the money to pay you the .005% annual interest they dole out.

But they can't loan out every penny you give them. If they did that, and you decided you needed to get some money out to buy your nephew a set of ginsu knives for his 18th birthday, it would be a little awkward. They'd have to go get the cash from the guy they loaned it to. But the guy they loaned it to is probably a 16 year old kid with his first car. His liquid assets consists of two bucks lunch money and the remains of the six pack he and his buddies bought last night when his parents thought he was at the library. In order to get the money, he'll have to sell the car. And no one wants to buy a 1981 Honda Civic that's been driven around by a sixteen year old. Plus all this takes time, which means you're going to miss out on the special Elvis cutting board, which is only available if you call in the next ten minutes.

So they only loan out a fraction of what you give them. The aim of bankers is to balance things exactly so that the amount of cash they have on hand at any given time is enough to meet all the demands of people who want cash around that time, without any extra left over. They want every penny possible to be out there working hard and earning interest. Of course, it's not possible to be that exact. It is therefore better to be somewhat conservative, to ensure that you have enough cash to meet unexpected demand. This is because the consequences of not having sufficient cash are horrendous: a bank run. Bank runs mean the bank goes out of business and the depositors lose everything.

This is how banking has worked since the system was invented. However, there are problems with this system. The main problem is that in good times, banks get too optimistic. They figure nothing bad has happened for years, so why worry? They start holding fewer reserves, lending more. This results in a dramatic increase in the money supply, fueling more growth. Unfortunately, if anything does go wrong, like too many loans default or a lot of depositors lose their jobs and start taking money out instead of putting it in, the bank goes bust. The result is a dramatic decrease in the money supply, dramatically curtailing growth. This phenomenon was one of the major drivers of the boom-bust cycle of the 19th century, which was much more volatile on both the upside (long periods of high growth) and the downside (6-10 year recessions).

So along comes a progressive johnnie and says, "How about the government requires banks to hold a certain amount of their capital as reserves?" The states had been doing this previously, but they weren't very aggressive about it; there are amusing stories (for non-depositors, I mean) of consortiums of banks that would ship the same vault, containing a lot of sand covered by a thin layer of gold coins, around between them just ahead of the bank examiners. The federal government, on the other hand, made it stick. Banks now have a percentage of their deposits that they must have in their vaults at all time. The government sets what that percentage is on a national basis; the percentage is called the reserve requirement.

The conventional wisdom is that this acts to simply force the banks to behave responsibly; carry the reserves they should in order to safely operate. This is how journalists treat the question, if they treat it. But this is not true.

Why? Because banks cannot dip below their reserve requirement. If they do, the government descends and starts asking nasty questions, and forces them to raise their reserves back to the requirement. So that money is, for all intents and purposes, off limits.

Think of it as if it were your budget. Say there's a federal mandate that you have to carry around 25% of your income in cash to deal with emergencies. If you drop below that number, they arrest you. Can you walk around with just that 25% in your pocket? No, because you're not allowed to drop below that 25%. You'll need to carry more than 25% in order to deal with your day-to-day expenses. Banks have to do the same thing.

Now, theoretically, of course, if everything goes to hell, the government can step in and lower the reserve requirements, freeing up cash for the banks to use. But this is where Joseph Stiglitz is imputing to a political system the kind of perfect efficiency that liberals accuse me of attributing to markets. To wit: if the economy is shaky, can the government lower the reserve requirement?

Hell, no. If the banking system is in trouble, lowering the reserve requirements is going to panic depositors, and more importantly, voters. The last thing that is going to happen is for the reserve requirements to be lowered.

(Note: I'm talking about a banking crisis, not a recession. Reserve requirements have in the past been lowered in the face of recession, though they've also been raised.)

Reserve requirements protect the Fed, by making sure that at least some assets will be available in case the bank melts down and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has to bail out the depositors. But it doesn't make the bank any less likely to melt down in the first place, which is what Stiglitz says it does. And it doesn't because while during the Clinton boom years, the public may have ignored the actions of the Treasury and the Fed, in times of crisis they pay close attention, and if you make the wrong move they can panic and make things worse, or panic and unelect your boss. Both severely constrain the ability for the government technocrats to manipulate the system.

In sum, when the liberal economist demands, "How can you say that free markets are best?". the conservative economist replies "Because we've looked at the alternative."

posted by Jane Galt at 6:07 AM |

I guess I'm just a reactionary at heart.

posted by Jane Galt at 8:01 PM |

Meanwhile, in my last poetic gesture for a while, I'm going to share a poem that I particularly liked:

Optimism

At last there'll dawn the last of the long year,
Of the long year that seemed to dream no end,
Whose every dawn but turned the world more drear,
And slew some hope, or led away some friend.
Or be you dark, or buffeting, or blind,
We care not, day, but leave not death behind.

The hours that feed on war go heavy-hearted,
Death is no fare wherewith to make hearts fain.
Oh, we are sick to find that they who started
With glamour in their eyes came not again.
O day, be long and heavy if you will,
But on our hopes set not a bitter heel.

For tiny hopes like tiny flowers of Spring
Will come, though death and ruin hold the land,
Though storms may roar they may not break the wing
Of the earthed lark whose song is ever bland.
Fell year unpitiful, slow days of scorn,
Your kind shall die, and sweeter days be born.

-- A. Victor Ratcliffe

I cried when they sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic at Shanksville. I was so glad it was the Battle Hymn, and not Amazing Grace. It's not yet time for us to focus on the next world; there's still much to be done in this one.

I cried when I saw how many people, in how many other countries, were taking time out of their days to honor our dead.

I cried when I saw a wounded eagle who had been nursed back to health by the parks service soar back into the wild.

I cried when I saw the towers hit again, and fall again, and saw the hole in New York's skyline still gaping.

I cried when I heard the victims talk about the helplessness and hopelessness of lives rudely interrupted, and when I saw the photographs of the men with eyes as blank and pitiless as the sun who thought nothing of this terrible thing they did.

I cried for the people I knew who died that day. They weren't particularly remarkable, except to those of us who knew them; not especially brilliant or good; just ordinary, decent people who were as surprised by their death as we were. I don't think I grasped the finality of their deaths until I heard their names read out loud. When people we know die we tend to think of their death in only the most personal way: their absence from our lives, and the lives of the people we know. Their death is a sad moment, something we'd like to tell them, something we wish they could see. But when a stranger read out loud the name of a boy I dated my freshman year of college, I realized: he is not just dead to me. He is dead to the world. He is gone forever. And I cried.

I wept for an America that vanished without warning at 8:46 AM on an otherwise unremarkable summer morning. It was a shallow and frivolous place, perhaps, but it was nonetheless sweet, and it will never be regained.

And now our year's mourning is over, and it's time to wipe away the tears.

Most of the people who died that day weren't heroes, any more than the thousands of people who die each day in this country in accidents not of their making are heroes; they were victims of a terrible injustice. But the dead at Shanksville have showed us that they could have been heroes, if only they'd had the chance. Given the knowlege of what they face, Americans will make the hard choices and the sacrifices required to defend themselves and their country from the barbarians at the gates. That knowlege, and opportunity, were denied the victims. So now the work of defeating the evil that did this falls to the rest of us.

We can never do enough for the families. We can't give them their loved ones back. We can't give them solace, save for the solace of knowing that we grieve for them. We can't give them vengeance. We cannot give them one million billionth of a tiny part of all that they lost a year ago. All we can give them is honor for their sacrifice, and freedom and peace for their families. And wish as hard as we do that we could restore their loved ones to them, we can give that gift to other people: to the victims of terror who have not yet been created. Even though we don't know their names, and God willing, never will, we can give them everything we wish we could give the families of the 9/11 victims.

Because they deserve our best efforts. There are those who dismiss our grief, arguing that 9/11 is nothing compared to car wrecks or cancer or typhoons. This is the sort of cold calculus that made the death camps possible. Human beings are not counted like cordwood. Whether you believe the answer is a stronger military or more foreign aid, they died in your place. To the attackers, you would have done just as well. To the enemy, it would be a blessing to see you follow them into the grave. You have an obligation to honor the memory of that sacrifice, even though -- especially because -- it was not freely chosen. We have an obligation, the same obligation we accept to get murderers off the streets so children can play there, and old ladies can get their groceries safe from harm.

That means being prepared to make the sacrifices required to deny terror a safe harbor anywhere in the world, and to secure, as the document says, the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our descendants. No one else is going to do it for us. Whether you believe in UN style multilateralism or not, US power is the only instrument capable of ensuring peace. If you believe, as I do, that we must invade Iraq, that means preparing for the financial sacrifices that will be required. It means not complaining if the price of oil goes up. It means being prepared, if it becomes necessary, to offer your services in pursuit of this war. And if you are against the war, well, you know what you think the solution is. Do it. Don't sit around talking about how much foreign aid would help; offer some. Don't sit around ranting about how horrible Ashcroft is; go to work for an organization dedicated to protecting our civil liberties. If what happened a year ago showed us anything, it is that it is not sufficient to talk about how much better things would be if only we ran the world. We have to do as much as we can in our own small way to make that happen.

I've been reading a lot of poetry over the last few days, particularly poetry from the World Wars. It is filled with an agony that I could not have comprehended one year and two days ago. I was struck particularly by one line, written by Perry McKaye on Christmas, 1915: Now is the midnight of the nations.

I think that two years ago was the golden hour of twilight when everything looks perfect, and everyone is content. A year ago the sun set. And while I don't yet think that we are at the midnight of the nations, I think that it is coming, and that it will be dark, as midnights are apt to be. But the other thing I was struck by is how well they met their darkest hours. That's why I cried at the Battle Hymn of the Republic -- because our ancestors, who stood at Lexington and Valley Forge, at Gettysburg and Antietam, at the Ardennes and Normandy and Hamburger Hill, knew, and they gave us, not a funeral dirge, but a call to arms:

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

That, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

That we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

posted by Jane Galt at 6:07 AM |

On the one hand, there were people espousing what we might term a classical Objectivist, Randian argument, such as John Venlet:

While I am not a practicing Objectivist, I do find much in Rand's writings that I admire and believe should be practiced by us falleable humans. With that in mind, I must heartily object to Jane's hypothetical above. While she, in theory, respects an individual's right to bodily integrity, she states that this integrity should be forcibly denied an individual for the good of another individual, at least in this hypothetical. Taking such a stance negates Rand's philosophy. Additionally, where then would one draw the line in regards to determining where one's inviolable rights end or begin? Wouldn't a better approach to the needle challenged, unwilling donor be a business transaction? What is the value of the man's blood? It is definitely valuable to him as it sustains him daily, it is also valuable to the child in need of this specific type of blood, or he will die. So what price must be paid? If the needle challenged owner of the blood cannot be induced monetarily or by reasoned discussion to donate, the price must be death for the child. Though this may sound harsh, it is in actuality a much lesser evil than forcibly taking something to which you have no right if the owner cannot be induced to part with it.

Meanwhile, Chris Sciabarra, who has written books on Rand, and whose introduction to the argument confirms my belief that I am fighting far out of my weight class, offers a nuanced view of Objectivism as separate from the life and times of Ayn Rand. It's an extremely valid point, although in my defense, I would argue that Objectivism as a philosophic movement does not seem to me to have grown fully beyond the veneration of the founder; there is still a heavy preponderance of references to her work in discussions by and about Objectivists, at least the ones I've seen. Of course, as a philisophic movement, it's quite young yet, so this isn't particularly unusual.

An interesting discussion has emerged about the extent of Rand's contempt for the common man. I'm not sure I thought of her as particularly contemptuous of the common man, although there is certainly a Nietzschean aspect to much of her literature; it's just that her philosophy didn't seem to have much place for the poor schmuck who just can't quite cut it. My impression of Rand is that she was a very, very, very smart person, and very, very intense. And like most such people, she had great difficulty tolerating those of lesser intellect who didn't agree with her. I think the fact that the great minds of her day pretty much refused to engage with her left her in a position where all the smart people she knew admired her, and agreed with her. It is not hard to see how, out of this, one develops the conviction that people who do not get on the band wagon are either idiots or evil. But that's an impression; I am nowhere near as well versed in the Annals of Ayn as my fellow conversationalists.

We all seem to agree that Ayn has an Aristotelian view of happiness and goodness as being mutually dependant. Sciabarra has a fancy greek word for it, but us plain folks don't need to learn all that gussied-up foreign palaver.

posted by Jane Galt at 6:00 PM |

Let me be among the too-few columnists in this self-absorbed, egocentric, materialistic, pleasure-obsessed, jingoistic country of ours to cry out into the great mindless void that no, in fact, we have not changed in the year since September 11.

Moreover, since I feel so much better getting that off my chest, let me add that I am achingly weary of seeing Americans treat the tragedy as if it outstrips every other contemporary tragedy in our world, and I am irked beyond belief that the victims of September 11 and their survivors are treated with a holy sanctity not afforded to other victims and other survivors of man's horrific actions against mankind.

Indeed, I say without shame to America's ever-growing, increasingly troubling and loudly throbbing Cult of Nine Eleven, "For God sakes, get a grip!"

. . .

Can you imagine how we'd hate the Brits if we were still deeply pissed off about the Revolution? Or how awful it would be if grade-schoolers sang morbid songs about the rotting Civil War dead at Richmond?

We reject the mournful, noir world of self-pitying, self-aggrandizing, excess-testosterone tribalism. We say, let other countries wallow in that if they must. But more and more, I sniff a hint of wallowing. I hear a bit of tribal whining.

So, on September 11, I suggest that you not light a candle for the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Plenty of others will do so for you."

But that would be wrong.

Besides, I've no doubt that if she opens her mouth again, plenty of others will do so for you.


posted by Jane Galt at 10:41 PM |

It's interesting that Dawn Olsen, who stirred up the controversy, is proposing a very old feminist idea: flatten the hierarchy in the blogosphere by refusing to link the big guys. I don't think it will work, for the same reason it doesn't work for Gloria Steinem, et al; they didn't grasp the basic social science phenomenon of the distribution. Human groups do not work themselves out into nice even groups; they cluster. Someone in a network has to be in the center; someone has to be at the tail ends of every distribution. We can't all be chiefs and no Indians.

Besides, I think (my personal opinion) that viewing traffic dearth through the lens of sex is not necessarily useful for determining causation. Most bloggers have low traffic. Most bloggers don't get linked by Instapundit. Most bloggers are also (to judge from what I've seen) male. There are clearly other factors, besides sex, causing the lack of linkage.

To the extent that there is a dearth, I think it's largely because female bloggers are disproportionately represented in the life diary blog style. [Note: this is an anecdotal impression, not an Actual Fact]. It's a free choice; no one's forcing them to write that type of blog. I think they should write whatever kind of blog they want, but I'm also not surprised that the market for my news commentary is larger than the market for my commentary on what I had for breakfast. Observe comedy writers. If you want to base your schtick on the funny thing your three year old did in the bath last night, you have to be really, really good. It is a sad fact of life that most of us, including me, are not that good. Also, there are more people who have an opinion on, say, the war in Iraq that they are looking to hear someone confirmed, than have an opinion as to whether or not I should use ashes-of-roses shantung for my livingroom drapes.

I will allow that I have noticed that Instapundit does tend to link the salacious items from female bloggers. But I just can't get worked up about it. I spent four years working with an all-male engineering group, went to a business school that was only 19% female, and have spent the last year of my life on a construction site. As offenses go, dirty jokes just don't register with me any more.

Anyway, I'm just a lone blogger, not The Voice of Female Blogdom. Go read the exhaustive compilation of posts on the subject that Susanna has put together and decide for yourself.

Update I've read more posts by and about women bloggers, including a second reading of Dawn's; there seems to be some consensus behind the argument that women blog differently from men, and that it's not fair that the woman-type blogging is less popular than the male-type blogging. I think it's probably true, but I'm not sure it's useful.

For one thing, it's a constant. It's an odd truth known among grammar school teachers that you can't get little boys to read books about little girls, not even well-brought up little boys with feminist moms. They'll sit still while the teacher reads A Little Princess out loud, but they aren't interested in childhood classics like "Little House on the Prairie" or "Anne of Green Gables", even though those books surpass the inferior, boy-centered ones they choose by almost any measure. And this dichotomy holds throughout life: women read books, watch movies, etc. that are aimed at women, but not the other way around. And it is easily possible to segment one's audience to be comprised of either all women, or mostly men, by the subject matter you choose.

The school of thought that has grown up around variations on this banal observation is called "Difference Feminism". Its icon is Carol Gilligan, and it strongly resembles Victorian social norms, with day care. Women are different, more caring and thoughtful and connected than rigid, hierarchical men. Women's ways of doing things aren't properly valued. In fact, many difference feminists will tell you, women's ways are better; we should make men do things the right way.

Personal experience tells me that women are different, though I have no official opinion on the breakdown between genetics/culture in that difference. Nor do I think that one way is better than the other. I like being a woman. I like the connection I feel with my close female friends and relatives, which is different from the connection I feel with my male friends, or the one that my male friends feel with their close male friends and relatives. (I say close because I don't think there's much important difference between the way I relate to my male or female acquaintances; close friends are another matter.) Men often do things that I think are typically male, which make me very angry or irritated. But women also often do typically female things that irritate me. I can't say I think one way is metaphysically better than the other.

I also don't think that, to the extent that this is true, "women's ways of knowing" translate well into a large audience. The whole point of the difference feminists is that women base their interactions on small, intimate, consensus-based interactions. That's the very opposite of blogging, which for all its bilateral linkage, is still in most important ways a broadcast medium.

So I don't think that you can right this by simply demanding more linkage of "female" blogging. It doesn't work; did your boyfriend start enjoying watching Lifetime movies because you told him he ought to, and made him sit through 20 or so to get the taste? (All right, I like Lifetime movies. On a rainy Sunday afternoon, there's nothing like a good wife-beating story or uplifting terminal disease or triumph-of-the-human-spirit prison tale to pass the time.) Over the long run, any significant effort by Glenn to distribute his links evenly between male-type and female-type posts won't help increase the traffic of the diary-bloggers; it will decrease his traffic, as his readers lose interest.

I think that current male/female norms are broken in some major ways. And I think that, by and large, even with all the ridiculous "don't say anything or I'll sue" discrimination laws, women generally end up with the short end of the stick, though I also think that this is changing. But I also think that we've passed the time where pointing to a numerical disparity and demanding redress is the answer. What is the answer? I dunno; dialogue, I guess. Dialogue always seems to be the answer to questions like that. And I guess that's what this is. So there's my 2 cents, for what it's worth.

posted by Jane Galt at 10:33 PM |

Take one of the defining values Arthur proposes:

Let's take what is perhaps a less controversial example of a difference in fundamental approach: do you consider individual rights inviolable, or do you think that sometimes it's okay to for you or some group, via the government, to make me do something that I don't want to do, even when I'm just minding my own business and not bothering anyone else?

In theory, I respect his right to bodily integrity. In practice, I would join with all the other adults in the area and hold him down so we could take his blood.

Not that this is a particularly likely hypothetical. I submit it as an example of the ways in which it becomes difficult for human beings to build a completely consistent philosophy based on total individual integrity. Yet on the other end of the spectrum, there are the "dead babies trump common sense" arguments which are all too prevalent in our news media, particularly on the op-ed pages and news magazines. I don't endorse those either. To some extent, all ethics is situational.

Or flip the argument, and look at just how rigorously we really want others to be able to enforce their right to indivdual integrity on us. The classic libertarian phrase "Your rights end at the tip of my nose" has unsustainable applications in an industrial society. Eminent domain, for example, grows out of the fact that in a deal with a large number of sellers and a small number of buyers, such as the deals required to build, say, a courthouse or a road or a military base, the power of the remaining sellers grows with each person who sells. This positive externality is captured by the last few sellers, who can extort huge amounts from their fellow taxpayers, because of the expense of starting over, and the knowlege that wherever they start, the same thing will happen all over again. This phenomenon produces decidedly suboptimal outcomes, both economically and politically.

Or look at the environment. Of course, environmental cleanliness could be easily secured by rigorously enforcing property rights -- the right of the owner of every piece of property not to have their air or water polluted by someone else's emissions. But it's not possible to control where every drop of air and water goes after it leaves your land. Enforcement of this individualist credo would require the cessation of commerce; a single individual could shut down the entire industrial complex of the United States.

We make compromises with individual integrity in order to allow society to function. As a broad principle, I agree that we shouldn't ask others to sustain us; that need is not, as Rand says, a blank check on the universe. As a rigid heuristic I disagree that children, the disabled, or the old and infirm should be allowed to starve because they can't cut it in the market economy. And yes, I'm willing to take your money, as well as mine, to support them. I think there are certain obligations incumbent upon being an adequately wealthy member of the human race. And if it weren't for the rest of us, most of the Objectivists I know wouldn't get very far trying to carve their living out of the raw earth. Scratch that "Most Objectivists"; make that "Most people".

Silber is presenting, I think, a much more nuanced view of human relations than Rand herself did. I think it's hard to deny that Rand's work is fairly intolerant of individual choices of those choices do not involve accepting Rand's individualist ethics. Silber's post illustrates that he doesn't make such rigid distinctions. Which I think essentially agrees with what I was trying to say: Objectivism works best when it is aspirational, rather than normative, at least as regards interpersonal connections.

posted by Jane Galt at 9:24 PM |

The change is not a result of the nation's reborn patriotism in the wake of Sept. 11. It is a victory for the military, but it is not a victory we should applaud. It represents a triumph of power over principle — educational principles that are especially meaningful to law schools.

For more than a decade, Harvard Law School had resisted demands by military recruiters to interview students through the school's career placement office. Almost all American law schools — including Stanford, where I teach — took the same stance. They did so not because law professors or law students are unpatriotic, but because the military rejects qualified students who wish to serve if they are openly lesbian, gay or bisexual. For the last several years, however, the military has increased pressure on law schools to allow them to recruit on campus. Now that Harvard has succumbed, other schools are likely to follow.

. . .

So why have Harvard and other American law schools changed their policy? The reason, almost everywhere, is money.

In 2000 the Department of Defense issued regulations reinterpreting federal law. The regulations say that if any part of a university denies access to military recruiters, the entire university will lose an array of federal funds. In May, the Air Force informed Harvard it was no longer content to be invited to campus by students. It demanded that the school allow military recruiters to use the school's career placement office.

Today any law school that chooses to hold firm against discrimination threatens the financial stability of the entire university. At Harvard the dean of the law school said the university was in danger of losing over $300 million in federal funds if the law school did not cooperate. The dean of the University of Southern California's law school said the school's policy, now revoked, could have cost the university between $300 million and $500 million. Across the country, those law schools that have not yet abandoned their policies face similar consequences.

Sorry. . . sometimes the libertarian side just takes over and I can't control it. You all saw The Shining, right? Same thing, without the axe.

I think my father had the best solution to this whole brouhaha. The money benefits society, you say, by providing research etc? Fine. Don't withhold the money. Withhold the jobs.

If your school does not allow one branch of the government to recruit on campus, no branch of the government will be allowed to recruit on campus.

Let the Physics department keep their money. Let's see how long Stanford Law maintains its anti-discrimination policy when its students become ineligible for Federal clerkships.

posted by Jane Galt at 6:50 PM |

Q: Why did you agree to the affair?

Barbara: For a host of very complex reasons which involved my psychology and life-experiences and convictions. But I can say that there were two fundamental reasons why I agreed. I felt considerable guilt toward Nathaniel, because I did not feel the sexual-romantic love for him that I believed I ought to.

In that respect I believed I was not the wife he should have had. I thought that if he could find fulfillment with Ayn in the areas in which I had failed him, I could not deny him that fulfillment. Further, I loved Ayn deeply, and I had been aware, from the first evening I met her, that she had suffered terribly in her romantic life. Over the years, I had come to see this with still greater clarity as she talked with me about Leo, her first love who did not return her passion, as I came to see that in her relationship with Frank she was and had to be the aggressor.

At social occasions, I would see Ayn surrounded by fascinated men who were eager to speak with her, but who, it was apparent, did not see her as a woman but only as a mind. Given her view of romance, her view of what love should be, this had to be terribly painful to her. And then writing Atlas, projecting so vividly what she thought romantic love could and should be, made the lack of it in her own life an even greater source of anguish.

And so I thought: How can I refuse her the experience she has always longed for and never had? Of course, it did not turn out to be the experience she wanted, as it could not be.

Q: Why not?

Barbara: For many reasons. Nathan was a boy; he was twenty-three years old. It was not possible for so young a man — especially a man torn by his love for his wife — to give her what she wanted. He was not John Galt. He could not be. Ayn would surely have known that had she not been blinded by her own unfulfilled needs and blinded to the fact that she was smashing the lives of the three people she loved most. And above all, she was smashing her own life. I criticize her for her blindness — and I also feel great compassion for her.

Q: Do you think she viewed the men in her life as almost Platonic abstractions, as if she didn't really see the person there a lot of times?

Barbara: Most definitely. She talked about Frank and about Nathaniel as if they were the heroes in her novels, men of the same stature as those she wrote about. It was evident that she needed to convince herself of this, to convince herself that she could not and did not love two men who were less than her heroes.

Q: Do you think Frank O'Connor was in love with her?

Barbara: I have no doubt that he loved her and was bound to her by profound psychological and emotional ties, just as I loved and was bound to Nathan. I learned, during those years, that there can be powerful factors holding two people together that have little to do with romantic love. Certainly, Frank deeply respected Ayn, admired her, and understood, at least in emotional terms, the nature and importance of her struggle and her goals. Did he love her passionately? I don't think so.

Q: Did Rand ever think that you and Frank were sacrificing yourselves?

Barbara: Not ever, not for a moment. She had convinced herself that what Frank and I were doing, what we were accepting, was wholly rational.

Q: Do you think the two of you were sacrificing yourselves?

Barbara: Of course. I did not see it that way at the time, but it's no longer quite real to me why I didn't, why I didn't understand what I was doing to myself. I know the reasons why I accepted the affair, but I can scarcely understand that they seemed like valid reasons at the time.

A basic law of nature is that young males will seek status and recognition through locally available channels. The object of the game is to make those channels lead to contentment and, ideally, productive engagement with the world. Atta's Egyptian channels didn't. In Germany, he encountered an open and vibrant society, but the cultural barriers proved forbidding. In fact, the encounter may have only fed his inchoate bitterness. Years after he left for Germany an old friend from Egypt ran into him; the friend, according to Time magazine, gathered that Atta "had made few German friends" and was "depressed about not having a career or a family back home."

To say that the juxtaposition of Atta's economically stagnant home and the vibrant but culturally alien West may have fueled his radicalism is to endorse a part of Bernard Lewis' message. Resentment of Western superiority—economic, technological, military—is central to his explanation of Islamic discontent.

But Lewis is saying something more, and on this some of the policy implications hinge. He's saying that people who grow up in these relatively poor Muslim nations aren't just resentful, they are resentful on behalf of their religion. That's why, in Lewis' view, we face "a clash of civilizations." (Yes, he beat Samuel Huntington to that phrase—it's a subhead in his 1990 Atlantic Monthly piece.) And that's why there's little we can do about the problem—it's rooted in deepest cultural memory.

Is this true? It's true ­that the terrorists had come to identify deeply with Islam—and a particularly austere version of it—by the time they became terrorists. But it's equally clear that they didn't all start out with that intense identification. So far as anyone can tell, Atta, though already devout, didn't become radically Islamic until he went to Germany. What seems to have happened is that personal resentments and frustrations, themselves products of economic and political forces, latched on to radical Islam as a congenial, affirming ideology, one that made the West a useful scapegoat. Religious ideas aren't passed down through the generations inexorably, from one passive brain to another; in each generation they can be rejected, embraced, or amended, depending on how they mesh with people's socially conditioned needs.

This isn't to say that Islam isn't in any sense part of the terrorism problem. Obviously, had radical Islam not been in the air, Atta would have found some other, presumably less lethal, outlet for his frustrations; he might even have vented them productively, by assimilating into the West, rather than attack it.

Still, it is wrong, and unduly depressing, to see the problem as being Islam in some large historical sense—to trace the origins of 9/11 all the way back to morally primitive Quranic passages that have supposedly poisoned the minds of men ever since the seventh century AD. The Holy Bible has passages every bit as morally primitive as anything in the Quran. (I've assembled a small sample.) The history of Islam, like the history of Christianity, is a history of people in some times and places focusing on morally primitive scriptures and people in other times and places focusing on loftier scriptures. Islam attained its economic and technological dominance during the Middle Ages in part by focusing on the loftier ones, extending a tolerance to Christians and Jews that, at the time, was on the cutting edge of intercultural understanding.

If we want to know why people's interpretations of their own religious doctrines vary so much from decade to decade, we have to look at what is going on in the world around them. In the case of modern radical Islam, we find no shortage of explanations, ranging from economic stagnation to political repression to an American foreign policy that over the past few decades has paid roughly zero attention to Muslim opinion (unless you count the opinion of Muslims who happened to be in charge of armies or oil wells). What we don't find is any sense in which religion is an exogenous variable, an autonomous force that floats above the social landscape and, generation after generation, mysteriously bends the minds of men to its will. (Is that last sentence a caricature of Bernard Lewis' opinion? Well, yes. Click here for my more nuanced characterization and a corresponding critique.)

The view I'm advancing is, broadly speaking, a Marxist view—that religious beliefs are largely a function of underlying economic and political circumstances, as mediated by psychology. It's also a hopeful view. Because it means we don't have to figure out how to "change Islam"—a disconcertingly amorphous task, and one that would probably backfire.

And that is where Wright really falls down. Because while his prescription -- "Improve the economy" -- is obviously a good one, it's not like it hasn't occurred to anyone else. The problem is, how do we bell the cat? And Wright's answer is a shallow rehash of DLC policy prescriptions that is both glib and completely impractical:

Policy Prescription No. 6: Draw Islamic nations—and for that matter all nations—into the web of global capitalism.

This would have several benefits: 1) It would give young men an outlet for economic ambition, diverting them from radical pursuits. 2) It would give young men an outlet for political ambition by abetting pluralism; after all, global capitalism brings modern information technologies that are powerful tools of political expression and of interest-group formation. 3) It would expand person-to-person contact with the West in a natural, enduring way; when it comes to nurturing multicultural tolerance, there's nothing like doing a mutually profitable deal with a foreigner. 4) It would expand the number of affluent Muslims who, by virtue of dependence on trade, have a stake in preserving world order against terrorist disruption, and in nourishing their country's reputation as a stable place for foreign investment.

Policy Prescription No. 7: Emphasize trade at least as heavily as aid in fighting the kind of economic deprivation that breeds terrorism.

Still, if economic modernization is your goal, trade works more reliably than aid. As economists Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner showed years ago, developing nations with the most open, least protectionist economies—the nations most plugged in to the global economy—grow the fastest.

Yet the West makes it hard for poor nations to fully plug in. Heavily subsidized agriculture in the United States and Europe stifles what is an important sector in virtually every developing country. (Egypt pretty much invented cotton farming, but the world won't give its cotton farmers a fair shake.) Heavily protected textile markets also hurt lots of poor nations. In general, according to the World Bank, economically advanced nations levy tariffs against developing nations that are four times as high as the tariffs they levy against other advanced countries.

Wright does admit that trade might not be a cure-all:

Trade is no cure-all. Many Latin American countries that embraced market economics, while seeing real growth, have also seen rising income inequality (though the commonly repeated claim that, as nations globalize, "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer," seems to be, strictly speaking, a myth). We have a lot to learn about easing developing nations along the path to modernity, as do the developing nations themselves.

Still, whatever the shortcomings of capitalist development, you didn't see any Brazilian hijackers on Sept. 11. Latin American economies by and large provide economic opportunities for a would-be Mohamed Atta. And if they fail, and enough people get economically frustrated, there are democratic outlets for rage; their leaders are held in power by the ballot box, not by repression and an unholy alliance with the United States.

Wright also drops the ball on his chief "Islam is not the problem" argument:

Of course, there's always the possibility that the key difference between Brazil and Saudi Arabia is religion, not economics or politics. This explanation might be favored by those who put a Lewisesque emphasis on the power of religious doctrine. But if the problem is Islam per se, then how do you explain Turkey? It's a Muslim nation, but in terms of exporting terrorists it ranks down around Brazil (even if one does come across the occasional Turkish terrorist). Maybe the explanation is that in terms of economic vibrancy and political freedom Turkey also ranks closer to Brazil than to Saudi Arabia (though Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who nearly a century ago put Turkey on the path to modernity and showed that the character of a nation's religion can change sharply within a generation, used a top-down, statist approach to get the ball rolling). This explanation could also apply to the 150 million Muslims in India, who by and large are much less sympathetic to radical Islam than nearby Pakistani Muslims; India is a paradise of economic and political liberty compared to Pakistan.

[Note: I am not endorsing this argument either. Just pointing out that it's a dumb example, 'kay?]

As I was reading this, I thought that I was being unfair; perhaps Wright had recognized the weakness in his argument for trade, but because the subject is so large, was going to give it it's own section. Nope. Here's the preview of tomorrow:

All this suggests that abetting globalization, and its natural concomitants of economic and political liberty, is a big part of any successful war on terrorism. Unfortunately, globalization also has some terrorism-abetting properties, a subject we'll address in the next installment.

It's not that I disagree with Wright about trade; I'm all for it. But I'd like to get some idea of how we might actually encourage it, other than the obvious answer: invade, get rid of the kleptocrats, and install a middling honest client government. Because frankly, I don't see another answer than that. And it's not an answer I like.

posted by Jane Galt at 3:57 PM |

Now, I'm not an Objectivist. My current handle is the result of a snap decision made upon entering the New York Times message boards some seven years ago, and was chosen more for the purposes of pissing off some under-educated name-calling liberal trolls than because of any allegiance to Ms. Rand. On the other hand, I find some aspects of her philosophy quite compelling, and I've read pretty much all of her work, as well as a fair number of books and articles about her, so I suppose that qualifies me to weigh in. And besides, when have I ever let ignorance stop me before?

Norah's opening item was customarily interesting and erudite:

Of course, because I must quibble a little, I draw your attention to this portion of the LOR manifesto—a part of Rand’s philosophy with which I’ve always been uncomfortable, but one with which (I’m perfectly willing to admit) I may also be insufficiently familiar to fully understand. I hereby invite explanatory replies from the folks at LOR and elsewhere. Here’s the definition they give:

Individualism: the recognition that every human being is an end in himself, and that his own happiness should be the highest, and most moral, purpose of his own life; the acknowledgment that reason can only be exercised individually, and independently; the knowledge that other people -- whether they are spouses, partners, friends or colleagues -- are an incomparable and irreplaceable blessing in our lives, but only when they are freely chosen, and when their values and goals match our own.

I couldn’t agree more heartily with the first clause of LOR’s definition: “every human being is an end in himself.” This resonates with me on several levels. First, because of its deeply humanist tenor, reinforcing the notion of the inherent dignity and irreducible complexity of every human being in the eyes of God. Second, because it echoes the moral spirit of Kant’s categorical imperative to treat each man as an end, never as a means.

It’s the next part that brings me up short: “his own happiness should be the highest, and most moral purpose of his own life.” The famous credo of selfishness, and a sentiment that I find bothersomely incompatible with Kant.

First of all, in my book, happiness is not in itself moral, unless you mean it in the Aristotelian sense –i.e. that the states of happiness and goodness are inseparable in man, or, to put it another way, man is so constituted that he can only be made happy by pursuing “the good.” Somehow, though, I don’t think that’s how she means it. Again, correct me here Randians, if you will.

The second problem is this: to make happiness the highest moral purpose of one’s life seems to me to turn Kant’s prescription on its head. It amounts to little short of an encouragement precisely to treat one’s fellow human beings as means rather than ends, for only in treating them as means, as subservients to one’s own well-being, can one ensure one’s happiness. That is, of course, unless we are (as I said above) talking about an Aristotelian man who cannot be made happy by doing ill to others.

The last line of the definition seems to put the kibosh on that interpretation, however: “other people are . . . a blessing in our lives only when . . . their values and goals match our own.”

And LOR's reply:

You are correct in assuming that I (and others) would disagree with certain of your statements and interpretations about Objectivism.

I will note two quick points, though: first, happiness as the ultimate moral purpose and goal is subordinated to reason in Rand's philosophy -- that is, happiness ought to be, and has to be, defined by a rational standard (life, or in her phrase, man's life qua man -- in short, as the rational animal), and in pursuit of rationally justifiable goals. More to be said about that point, obviously.

Second, the famous "oath" that the major hero in Atlas Shrugged takes is this: "I swear--by my life and my love of it--that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." In other words, in Rand's view, using a proper morality of rational self-interest, no one should be, or needs to be, sacrificed to anyone.

It is not uncommon for people to view Rand's approach as endorsing making others into means for our ends -- but, in fact, her entire philosophy is diametrically opposed to that view, and she was absolute in her view that no one's individual rights should ever be violated, for the pursuit of any alleged "good," whether that "good" be individual or collective (i.e., for the benefit of society in general).
In that sense, you could say (in a loose way) that Rand was talking about Aristotelian man, who cannot be made happy by doing ill to others.

I think that Rand was quite Aristotelian in her conception of goodness and happiness as being inextricably intertwined. It is a combination that many, including me, find unsatisfying, particularly as it informs her political and social theories.

To use an example from her writing, take the relationship between Dagny Taggart, Ayn Rand's tall, slender, omnicompetent heroine (hmmmm. . . . ), and her three lovers: Francisco D'Anconia, the aristocrat; Hank Rearden, the earthy meritocrat, and John Galt, the heroic archetype. She moves from D'Anconia to Rearden to Galt, each time progressing up the chain of her values until she stops at the ultimate expression of her love, John Galt. Now, the other two consider her to be the ultimate woman, and as they would never, in true Randian fashion, settle for second best, they simply gracefully relinquish her to Galt and settle down to a life of celibacy without so much as a murmur. D'Anconia makes a lovely speech about how much better it all is than living a lie, and that is that.

All very well, and I think I can agree in some Platonic sense that it is better to be alone than to be together with someone who wishes they were elsewhere, but I can't say that I have seen this graceful model in operation anywhere where actual human beings were involved, and when Ayn Rand tried to put it into action with Nathanial Brandenburg it didn't, y'know, work.

Which is not even the point. The point is that while for a Rand hero it may be better to live a hard truth than an easy lie, there are many people who would be happier living the easy lie.

But they're not really happy, says the Objectivist.

Well, that's nice, but if saying that someone's happiness should be their highest value relies on you to define what makes them happy, it doesn't look an awful lot different from your average philosophical system based around people being good, with the philosopher defining what it means to be good. And then we're right back at the question the philosopher was trying to answer in the first place: what should man be doing with his short years, and why?

The circular nature of Rand's answer makes it extremely unsatisfying. Because the Objectivist philosophy relies so heavily on the premise that two peoples' desires can't really come into open conflict, it has to postulate that people can't be truly happy unless they're also respecting other people's right to happiness. But this is a flawed premise; it relies on people internalizing a number of external values about what should make them happy, and then declares that once you have internalized them, your desires can't truly be in conflict, because no good person would, for example, want their spouse to sacrifice a greater love in order to pretend to love them. When said spouse leaves them, in reality, it's what's best for both of them. Many readers probably heard this speech from Mom or Dad before they took off for a singles condo with its own yoga room and EST support group.

But the radical notion of Objectivism is precisely that each person is their own referent -- their own end, as Vincent writes. Add in a whole list of rules that you have to follow before your happiness becomes worthy of respect invalidates this referent and makes Rand just another in a long line of people offering up an externally referent moral scheme, this one geared (loosely speaking) to Truth. But the truth is that even were her scheme the ideal one (and I've come to believe that there's no such thing as a coherent, fully consistent personal philosophy), a large number of humans will be unwilling or unable to adopt it, which makes it fully unworkable as a political, and especially a social, system.

I actually admire Rand's rigor; while not even she lived up to her expectations, it is nice that someone in the 20th century thought it worthwhile to ask that people set themselves heroic expectations and then constantly strive to achieve them. We may not always be fully consistent in our beliefs, but we can all do better at policing ourselves not to fudge on things that we know, really, deep down, are wrong. Yes, you with the magazine under your arm that the supermarket checkout girl didn't see: take it out and pay for it. Is the price of a magazine worth abandonning your ideals? I've never understood people who thought that it was okay to lie, cheat, and steal as long as the amounts are small enough; it seems to me worse, rather than better, to sell one's honor for so small a price. Which is not to let off the hook people who will turn around and drive five miles back to McDonalds if they accidentally got an extra burger, but think nothing of cheating on their taxes or padding their expense account for thousands of dollars, who rationalize that what they do isn't really cheating or stealing because it's just the government or a corporation. But of course there is no such thing as stealing from "The Government" or "A Corporation"; you are stealing from the shareholders, or your fellow taxpayers, and don't tell me that it's okay because you're a taxpayer too; you can take out the .000005 cents you saved yourself and hand the rest back to the IRS, if it makes you feel better.

But I'm not hungry. Would I steal to feed a child? Certainly. Would I kill a man to take his food if I were starving? How could I possibly know? I've never been hungry, except for temporarily or by choice. The point is, that while I am not desperate, I do have choices, and I can try to make the best ones even when it is not apparently to my advantage, because it is right. And this I admire in Rand very much; her heroes are all people who do right no matter what the cost.

But I've wandered off the topic, which was individualism.

Any road, Rand's philosophy never really came to terms with the existance of individuals who chose not to embrace her philosophy, which is particularly curious because her value system is so rigorous, and so reliant on self-discipline rather than threat-discipline, that it is guaranteed that most people will be both unable and unwilling to adopt it. In some ways it was more compatible as a philosophy for nation-states, where peaceful commerce or non-interaction backed by the threat of war are the main permissible frameworks, than to individuals, who demand much more from each other than consumer goods or silence. Which is why a phrase like "other people -- whether they are spouses, partners, friends or colleagues -- are an incomparable and irreplaceable blessing in our lives, but only when they are freely chosen, and when their values and goals match our own" just doesn't sit quite right. I don't know anyone whose values and goals are the same as mine. Some are a close match in most important ways. Others are far away. And sure, I think it would be nice to find people like that. But on the other hand, there's something -- well, something inhuman about a group of people whose goals and values are all the same. Surely, after the 20th century, we've had enough of seeking that, even in our circle of friends. But Rand's philosophy does demand just that, because otherwise the mechanistic social interactions begin to break down amid the friction of non-standard parts.

posted by Jane Galt at 11:46 AM |

Which raises uncomfortable questions.

There is the possibility that I have missed the cogent explanations that Ritter has given of his new position. I haven't seen it, but I don't actually read every article ever written, though I know that my erudition and insightful commentary may have led some readers to believe that this is the case.

Then there is the possibility that Ritter is an idiot, and changes his opinions the way I change lip gloss. I've known enough people to be afflicted by this syndrome not to rule it out entirely, but it seems unlikely.

And then there is the possibility that Ritter is lying, either for personal gain, having been bought by Baghdad or one of the countries or companies that wants to do business with Iraq; or because someone is blackmailing him, probably with a nasty personal secret he can't afford to have revealed, or, possible but unlikely, with harm to himself or his family. I think this possibility the most likely one, and the completely unconvincing character of his assertions makes me suspect that it is blackmail, rather than renumeration, that is his motivation.

I don't mean this as slander. These are speculations, based only on my assessment of what he's said, not on any knowlege of wrongdoing on my part. And I would welcome evidence that I am wrong, that Scott Ritter's stand is a principled one. But until I get such evidence, I remain utterly unconvinced by arguments about the war on Iraq that rely on his statements as a source.

posted by Jane Galt at 9:07 AM |

You are Loved

I want you to know that there is someone who loves you very
much. That's important to know in the " dog eat dog world "
in which we live. We spend our lives trying to earn love and
respect and somehow we never seem to " measure up ". It's
wonderful to be loved without reservation, without having to
earn it. We are loved , not because we are good, not because
we have lived up to expectations, and not because we've
tried to live a good life, but we are loved just like we
are...faults and all. God has put a high value on our lives
in that He gave His son to die on a cross to pay the penalty
for all our sins. He has a very high purpose for yor life!

After 42 years of struggling with the meaning of life and
what the purpose of my life should be, I met a man named
Jesus and He changed my life. It has been wonderful to be
loved unconditionally and to finally realize the meaning
of life itself.I'm writing you to share this love and to
let you know that you are a very special person in the sight
of God. He only wants good for you and wants to help you in
all of your trials.

The Holy Bible tells us in the book of Romans, chapter 3
verse 23, " For all have sinned , and come short of the
glory of God". Romans 6:23 reads " For the wages of sin is
death ; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus
Christ our Lord". Romans 10: 9-10 goes on to read, " Because
if you confess the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart
that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.
For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with
the mouth one confesses unto salvation".

If you haven't already experienced His love, you can by praying
this simple prayer and by believing in your heart that He has
answered it to the fullest. " Father, I come to you as a
sinner. I repent and ask you to forgive my sin and to come into
my heart and take control of my life. Fill me with your Holy
Spirit and enable me to be the person that you want me to be.
Please use me to help others and help me to realize and fulfill
the purpose for my life. Thank you Jesus for dying to pay the penalty
for my sin. I accept your sacrifice for my salvation. Enable
me by the power of your Holy Spirit to live a life that will be
pleasing to you. Amen ".

If this letter has inconvenienced you or offended you in any
way, I apologize.

God Bless You.

So 1 in 6 working age Swedes is on government-paid sick leave -- curious, considering how much we keep hearing about the benefits of full national health insurance. Not so curious considering that apparently, said Swedes consider stressful working conditions a legitimate reason for going out sick. But here's the money quote, from a nurse who went on the poor-health dole for two months because she was burned out:

"The wheels are spinning too quickly," said Anna Eriksson . . . "The working environment simply has become tougher. You have to do twice the work you did before."

Well, summer's over, but I've still got some good questions.

These days, we often read that America's military power is historically unique. Never before has a nation been so much more powerful than all the other nations in the world combined.

So here's the question: how much more powerful? What percentage of the world could we conquer and hold, assuming we went from the holdings with the highest benefit/cost ratio (value of holding/cost of conquering and holding) towards the lowest? What would we conquer? And how much of it could we hold onto for a longish (100+ years, Imperial type conquest) time?

And if the number is large, the matching question? Why haven't we? Why is a nation that could kick the butts of a largish portion of the planet and grind them under our boot if we so desired, so unanxious to build an empire? And what other nation in the history of the planet could have built so much military power, and refrained from using it?

Or are we using it? Are we transitioning to a more traditional sort of Pax Americana? And if so, is it because we have to in order to make ourselves secure from the envious, or because so much power concentrated in one place inevitably gets used?

posted by Jane Galt at 5:15 PM |

Conclusion: 40% of the population earns just 1% of what the remaining 60% is earning! No wonder the median income is high. This is why, the author argues, it's not correct to say that the poorest segments in Sweden have lost out compared to their American counterparts.

According to FreeLunch, a terrific free economic stats site, in 2000 total personal income in the US was about $9 trillion. The total work force was around 140 million. These numbers are rough, but they'll do for illustration.

Now let's build an equation to describe the author's claims. 60% of the population, say the authors, have a very high share of national personal income, a sum we'll call X.

The remaining 40% have a much lower share of that income. In fact, it's so low, it's only 1% of the share held by the other 60%: .01X.

Those two figures have to add up to the total income of all people in the country: X + .01X = 1.01X = $9,000,000,000,000

Therefore, the share of income held by the 60%, X = $9,000,000,000,000/1.01 = $8,910,891,089,108.91. This works out to a tidy average take of $106,082 for our aristocratic majority.

Oh, but the other 40%. They only get 1% of that, or $1,061 apiece.

Now, they might be saying something different: that the 60% have an average wage of X, while the 40% have an average wage of .01X. But the numbers it yields aren't significantly different: $106,433 for the top 60%, $1,064 for the bottom 40%. So we'll stick with the first numbers.

Given that the authors of the same Op-Ed apparently argue that there are no apartments in the entire United States for under $500 a month (news to my friends in Philly and Upstate New York), the 40% must be suffering indeed. Yet, they do not die off despite their 3rd world income. So somewhere in the United States, 40% of our population is apparently supporting itself on what the other 60% pays for dry cleaning. Why haven't I ever met any of these people? Clearly, they are not in New York, where the poorer half can be seen with cell phones and Starbucks in hand, luxuries that would pretty much entirely consume their tiny incomes were they members of that unfortunate 40%.

Of course, that doesn't mean everyone in the 40% gets $1,061. Some of them might be doing quite well. 1% of them might be earning 30K while the rest make their living returning beverage containers for the deposit.

Of course, the Op-Ed article says that the average family would only be able to last for 3 days if their primary wage earner lost their job or got sick. I'm not saying that there's no one in the country in this situation, but as far as I can tell, 100% of Americans have credit cards with ridiculous limits. 3 days? Listen up, Sweden, American style capitalism isn't that efficient. Even for us, 3 days to get your landlord to evict you, Visa to refuse to let you buy some groceries, the utilities to cut you off and the hospitals to turn you away is just too aggressive a deadline. For one thing, the hospitals aren't legally allowed to turn you away, and for another, the utilities are government monopolies -- it takes them months to get around to noticing you haven't paid your bill. You might only be able to last 3 days on your Blockbuster rentals, but there's always some idiot independant video store that'll let you rent 80's movies.

Now, I'm sure that they worked some sort of wizardry to obtain that number, involving our lack of access to state subsidized medical care or 18 weeks of annual vacation or no guaranteed supply of pickled herring, and I realize my numbers are somewhat ham-fisted, but nonetheless. A little elementary common sense is in order when you look at numbers like this. Yet I've no doubt that any number of Swedes are even now reading those numbers, opening up their government herring box, and thanking God that they don't have to get up at 5 am to hunt through the garbage cans at the Ritz for empty Coke cans.

Update
The Swede has said there's a translation problem (I'm reproducing the email from Instapundit's Update):

I mistakenly excluded missed one sentence in the translation of the article, which is why McArdle might have misunderstood. It goes as follows, and should
explain the "gem" that she included in her article:

"Average US income, not median this time around, in 1997 and distributed along income groups (adjusted to 1998-dollars) :

The 1% in the top: $869 000, The following 59%: $64 000, The remaining 40% $13 700."

Then comes the conclusion (the "gem") that I translated:

"Conclusion: 40% of the population earns just 1% of what the remaining 60% is earning! No wonder the median income is high. This is why, the author argues,
it's not correct to say that the poorest segments in Sweden have lost out compared to their American counterparts."

This still doesn't make any sense. Apparently he's saying that the author added the $869,000 to the $64,000 to get $933,000, of which he says $13,700. But this is wrong two ways. First of all, $13,700 is not 1% of $933,000; it's a little under 1.5%. Which might look little, given my hamfisted earlier machinations, but it reduced the number by 33%, which is a large error.

And second of all, it's totally retarded. You can't add those numbers together; you have to weight them:

(1/60)(869,000) + (59/60)(64,000) = $14,483 + $62,933 = $77,416, of which $13,700 is 17.7%.

There remains the possibility that there's a mistranslation, but I don't think so; the Swede (that's how he's signing himself in my comments, 'kay?) has checked himself twice, and he didn't correct it, only added another part. And someone who speaks Danish, which is supposed to be close enough for translating these sorts of documents, confirms that the author's math is -- ahem -- non-traditional; the discussion can be found in my comments section. The author also apparently argues that very high top incomes raise the median, which is silly; high top incomes raise the mean, but the median -- the middle number in the distribution -- is unaffected by how far away the tails of the distribution are. For the distributions {99 100 101} and {1 100 1,000,000,000,000}, the median in both cases is 100.

The bottom line is that the Op-Ed writer seems to be fairly innumerate, and not only committing the ordinary sins of innumeracy -- accidentally mangling numbers they don't understand as they pass them along -- but actually creating horrible numbers on their own initiative. This is the sort of thing we must stamp out; there is only room for so many number-manglers in the world before the system starts to break down, and I'm all of them.


posted by Jane Galt at 2:44 PM |

Prior to the mid-1990's, if you had a job, it was very easy to get off jury duty in New York City. Doctors, lawyers, mothers, professionals, the self-employed -- everyone who wanted to could find an exemption that fit him (or her). The people left on juries came largely from a few groups: civil servants, who get paid for their time on jury duty, and who, let's face it, are rarely linchpin employees; the unemployed; and people on welfare, disability, or retirement These people are a plaintiff's lawyer's dream: they have a lot of time, little money, and almost none of them pay significant taxes or insurance premiums. They tend to view lawsuits as the lottery, returning verdicts based on the plaintiff's need, rather than the defendant's fault. The few retirees from upper income brackets could be bounced from the panel with peremptory challenges by the plaintiff's attorney. March a poor family in front of them, pitted against a big, mean insurance company, hospital, or other corporation, and . . . well, you can guess the rest.

Problem was, with 2/3 of the jury pool getting exempted, it was becoming impossible to staff juries. Cases were actually falling behind because of lags in getting jurors from the pool. So they re-wrote the exemptions, making it very, very tough to get off a jury. Believe me, I've been there, pulled off a major project for which I was the project manager to sit in an overfilled room without recourse to cell phone. If you've just given birth, don't speak English, or have a fatal illness, you can be excused. Otherwise, you too are going to find yourself in the same room, trying to work over the din of five hundred other angry New Yorkers complaining about jury duty. And judges are tough. I almost found myself in a jury pool for a nine month trial despite the fact that I had read extensively about the case and had actually met several of the defendants. The judge, who had instructed the previous candidate to cancel her vacation plans and make other arrangements at work, quizzed me for ten tough minutes to ascertain that I had actually read about the case and wasn't lying.

The result is a radically different jury composition. The people handing out verdicts now have jobs, mortgages, insurance policies, and hefty tax bills. They are more likely to have the education to understand complex technical or medical issues. (I'm not saying that they're rocket scientists now. But the pools before the early 90's were very poorly educated. Ask a high school dropout to rule as to what a doctor should have done in surgery? How could he possibly know?) And they're much more likely to see lawsuits as a tool for administering just compensation, rather than free-lance socialism. This is cocktail party chitchat, not a confirmed number, but one of the people who was telling me about this said that jury verdicts have dropped by more than half in New York City since the change -- the place has gone from a plaintiff's paradise to an unpopular venue.

posted by Jane Galt at 11:20 AM |