At Daylight Atheism, Ebonmuse puts Rand's theory of objectivism under a bright analytical light and finds it wanting: Since Objectivists reject all notions of a social safety net, it's natural to ask what would happen to the poor and needy in an Objectivist society. This is Ayn Rand's answer: "If…
I've sometimes wondered this, and this article in Discover Magazine presents the answer. Four percent of men are raising another man's child: From the clinics to the courts, routine DNA tests uncover genetic identities—and even family secrets. British public-health researchers examined nearly 50 years of medical data from around the…
When I saw this article at MSNBC, I thought it was a joke. But no, it was no joke. Check out the photo. Apparently, 30 men and one woman residing in the Philippines actually had themselves nailed to crosses. They went through the Good Friday rites in three villages in…
In an earlier post, I argued that people need to better appreciate that dollars are fungible (see here and here). Why is it important to understand that dollars are fungible? A case in point is the new American enthusiasm for turning food into fuel. Consider this report from Fortune Magazine:…
“The free market–the invisible hand–will take care of everything.”
I’ve addressed this topic of the free market as alleged panacea several times before. I’ve referred to this blind faith in the market as unsubstantiated. I’ve mockingly referred to the common belief in the wisdom of the invisible hand as a belief in the Fouth Person in the Holy Quartet. Why mock? Because stark shortages of critically important natural resources loom in every direction. And yet we’re in denial. You deny the denial? Then how is it that we tolerate, this year, big U.S. metropolitan areas like Raleigh-Durham and Atlanta had only a few weeks left of their municipal water supplies? We tolerate that we are drawing down unreplenishable water sources throughout the desert southwest. Intelligent civilizations don’t deny such dangers. They consciously deal with their problems.
I’ve just read a well-phrased description of why the modern version of the free market can’t save us from our problems regarding impending shortages of essential natural resources. The following quote is from a new book available free on-line from Population Connection: PLAN B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, by environmental analyist, Lester R. Brown (2008).
…Now with the economy as large as it is, the indirect costs of burning coal—the costs of air pollution, acid rain, devastated ecosystems, and climate change—can exceed the direct costs, those of mining the coal and transporting it to the power plant. As a result of neglecting to account for these indirect costs, the market is undervaluing
