McCain: Invent, Or Else
One of the things I hate most about discussions on today’s “energy crisis” is how so many people take inventions and men’s ideas for granted. For example, when the issue of today’s gas prices comes up, it won’t be long until someone says that “we” need to think of a better energy alternatives. Everybody has an opinion of what those alternatives *should* be — wind, solar, ethanol, etc — but that’s about as far as their thinking will go. When it comes to researching and implementing their ideas, they pass. Leave that for the guys who know more, right? All they know is, the idea is good, it hasn’t been put in place yet, so something’s wrong. And for some, the solution is for someone (like the government) is to just make the good idea finally happen.
While driving from home tonight, I heard one of the worst examples of this on the radio. And no surprise, it was from John McCain. Today he gave a speech detailing how he thinks we can get through this crisis. His solution: Make the smart people figure it out! According to McCain:
Higher end auto companies like BMW, Porsche, and Mercedes employ some of the best engineering talent in the world. But that talent isn’t put to the job of fuel efficiency, when the penalties are too small to encourage innovation.
Here he’s pushing the idea that we have a lot of smart people who could solve our energy problems… if they were just put on that task. They’re not, though, so McCain continued:
But I am confident they can do more, and do it faster, in the interest of our energy security. And if I am elected president, they will. Whether it takes a meeting with automakers during my first month in office, or my signature on an act of Congress, we will meet the goal of a swift conversion of American vehicles away from oil.
In other words, the smart people could solve our problems but they’re not, so I’m going to make them do it.
The problem with this isn’t just that McCain wants to use government force to make people behave a certain way, which is already bad enough. He also thinks that “we,” as people that happen to live in the same country as so many inventors, somehow played a part in those inventions. And by taking action against the people that make the things that we need and enjoy, “we” will solve our problems. To reinforce this idea, he later says (emphasis mine):
Think of all the highest scientific endeavors of our age — the invention of the silicon chip, the creation of the Internet, the mapping of the human genome. In so many cases, you can draw a straight line back to American inventors, and often to the foresighted aid of the United States government.
So according to McCain, the inventions he mentions was not just a product of the inventor; they were also a product of us either providing aid or “incentive” (like a signature on an act from Congress) for their work. Want more inventions? Vote McCain, 2008!
Politicians don’t produce anything, individuals do. An individual thinks of the idea, an individual chooses to act on that idea, and the an individual does the work to make the product. If we want to foster that process, the best thing we can do is stay out of their way. And to take it one step further, if we want to be free to live our own lives we must respect those inventors by staying out of their rights. And to take it even one more step further, if we really admire inventors and producers for what they offer, we won’t feel resentment toward them.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of people really don’t admire or respect the people that bring about the things we enjoy. They want the results of their work, but they don’t think they should have to meet their “arbitrary” demands. I think Ayn Rand put it very well in Atlas Shrugged (emphasis mine):
Tags: [atlas shrugged, mccain]If you want to know what you lost when I quit and when my strikers deserted your world—stand on an empty stretch of soil in a wilderness unexplored by men and ask yourself what manner of survival you would achieve and how long you would last if you refused to think, with no one around to teach you the motions, or, if you chose to think, how much your mind would be able to discover—ask yourself how many independent conclusions you have reached in the course of your life and how much of your time was spent on performing the actions you learned from others—ask yourself whether you would be able to discover how to till the soil and grow your food, whether you would be able to invent a wheel, a lever, an induction coil, a generator, an electronic tube—then decide whether men of ability are exploiters who live by the fruit of your labor and rob you of the wealth that you produce, and whether you dare to believe that you possess the power to enslave them.
Comments
Iron Man and Making Money
I saw Ironman the weekend it came out, and I really liked it. So much so, I went to see it again with a friend the next week (I think 300 is the only other movie I’ve gone to see twice). While the movie is by no means perfect, I totally agree with everything Scott Holleran wrote in his positive review. Iron Man is just like Batman in that he’s a normal who turned himself into a superhero. This movie is heads-and-shoulders above the normal type of movie that is released today, and I’m looking forward to buying it when it comes out on DVD.
There was one huge plot-hole in the movie, though, and it runs counter to the other good ideas in the movie. Since what I’m about to talk about can be figured out from the movie trailers and the first ten minutes of the movie, but I’ll do the obligatory warning:
WATCH OUT, PLOT SPOILERS!
The hero, Tony Stark, runs a very successful, multi-billion-dollar weapons company. His biggest client is the United States military, who pays a premium for Stark’s revolutionary weapons. During a trip to Afghanistan to demonstrate his latest weapon, Stark’s convoy is attacked by terrorists who use Stark weaponry to take Stark hostage. Immediately after Stark escapes, he starts an investigation of his own company to figure out if they’ve been “double-dealing:” Selling weapons to America as well as America’s enemies. And sure enough, they are. In his mad quest for money and power, the movie’s villain sells weapons to terrorists.
I can imagine someone building a suit that allows man to fly at super-sonic speeds. I can imagine someone finding a way to protect the human body from the intense forces generated at that speed. I can imagine someone inventing a tiny engine that’s capable of generating enough electricity to power that flying suit. I can even imagine artificial intelligence that’s powerful enough to assist a scientist and appear to communicate like a real person. What I cannot believe, however, is the idea that a billion dollar business can build its success and power through working with terrorists, murderers, and thieves. That’s beyond belief. It’s impossible. When you think about what is involved in a business as large as Tony Stark’s, how long it had been in business, all of the people involved, and and all of the investment… how could this be built on terrorism? Making money requires producing something of value, which terrorists just don’t do.
This reminds me of part of Francisco’s money speech in Atlas Shrugged (emphasis mine):
If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose—because it contains all the others—the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’ No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity—to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.
It maybe be possible for someone to get away with a crime, but I believe that it will always catch up with you in the long-run. You can’t win a war against reality. Because of this, it’s impossible for me to accept today’s popular idea that businesses can be successful through lying and cheating. It’s not just true that crime doesn’t pay. Crime can’t pay.
Plus, how much money can a terrorist have, anyway? Stark’s primary client is the United States military, which probably spends more than every other military in the world combined… and there are some people in Stark’s business that think they can make some money by dealing with some thug in a cave in Afghanistan? No way.
Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the movie. I’m just afraid that by promoting this bad idea, some of the good ideas were lost. Instead of Iron Man being about a self-made superhero, it’s about a guy who stands against evil businessmen. Or worse, it’s about a man who realizes that the act of making money has to be tempered by “social responsibility.” Iron Man is good, but it could have been even better.
Tags: [atlas shrugged, capitalism, iron man]Comments
Bernstein on Peter Mac Show
Andrew Bernstein was interviewed on the Peter Mac show. He went on the show to discuss Atlas Shrugged, but he also talked about socialized health care and politics. It’s a pretty long, good interview. Check it out here.
Tags: [andrew bernstein, atlas shrugged, peter mac]Comments
Love of money
I was searching through Ayn Rand’s writing for a suitable quote for my wedding, and I came across this quote from Atlas Shrugged:
Tags: [atlas shrugged, ayn rand, money]“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another—their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.”