Science And Industrialization

Policy Digest: Environmental Issues

Mike “The Health Ranger” Adams, founder and director of the popular health news tabloid website Natural News, recently posted an article calling for the death of scientists, journalists anybody else who has written favorably about the technology of genetic engineering. Adams declared anybody working to improve foods to be the equivalent of Nazis perpetrating a holocaust on the world.
Government And Business

Policy Digest: Welfare State Edition

The S&P recently came out with a report on how inequality is allegedly dampening economic growth. If you’re following the debate over Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, don’t miss this analysis from the Tax Foundation or this article from Don Boudreaux.
Culture And Society

Policy Digest: Ayn Rand Edition

TIME.com asks: “Who should be the first woman on a modern dollar bill?” Ayn Rand is leading in the poll. Who could be a more worthy candidate? Ayn Rand did, after all, argue that money is the root of all good. Take the poll here.
Science And Industrialization

Policy Digest: Environmental Issues

Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and Cosmos star, took a stand on genetically modified foods in a video posted online recently. In response to a question by a French reporter, Tyson came out strongly in support of food biotechnology, saying he is “amazed how much objection genetically modified foods are receiving from the public.” In the video, viewed over half a million times, Tyson makes the point that practically every food we eat has been improved by mankind:
Government And Business

Policy Digest: Welfare State Edition

Laurence J. Kotlikoff testifies before the House Committee on Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee on the state of the program. I don’t agree with all his conclusions, but I definitely agree that the program’s finances are in far worse shape than is commonly understood. “To pay its scheduled benefits in full through time, the Social Security system needs a 32 percent immediate and permanent increase in the future path of payroll tax revenues. Based on the current covered earnings ceiling, this represents a 4-cent-on-the-covered-dollar higher payroll tax starting today and continuing forever. . . . Social Security is in dire financial shape.” Kotlikoff was the first guest featured on my podcast The Debt Dialogues, which you can check out here.
Foreign Policy

Policy Digest: Foreign Policy Edition

In the past Arab regimes would pounce to vilify Israel’s efforts at defending itself from Palestinian aggression, but curiously, many have been quiet amid the Gaza war. One explanation, sketched in this New York Times piece is that the Arab states view the Islamists of Hamas (whose patron is Iran) as a major problem, a higher priority than their (unwarranted) enmity toward Israel. If so, that implies these regimes understand the Islamist threat better than many in the West.

Further Reading

Ayn Rand | 1957
For the New Intellectual

The Moral Meaning of Capitalism

An industrialist who works for nothing but his own profit guiltlessly proclaims his refusal to be sacrificed for the “public good.”
View Article
Ayn Rand | 1961
The Virtue of Selfishness

The Objectivist Ethics

What is morality? Why does man need it? — and how the answers to these questions give rise to an ethics of rational self-interest.
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