Eden is an Illusion (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

July 24, 2014 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 0 Comment

G. Stolyarov II

Originally Published April 2, 2009

as Part of Issue CXCI of The Rational Argumentator

Republished July 23, 2014

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Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CXCI of The Rational Argumentator on April 2, 2009, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.

~ G. Stolyarov II, July 23, 2014

***

Many Western and non-Western cultures alike are contaminated by a highly dangerous idea with destructive consequences – the idea of man’s “fall” from some “higher” state – an Eden, if you will. Different groups holding this idea give it different incarnations – but the implications are the same. The myth of the Fall is detrimental to human ambition, flourishing, and improvement; it stifles attempts to find creative solutions to the dreadful problems that have been plaguing humankind since its very beginnings. But beyond being destructive, the Eden myth is simply false. There never was a “better” state from which human beings have “descended.” We shall explore why the Fall is an illusion that ought to be abandoned.

The myth of the Fall is held by often mutually antagonistic groups, all of which pose considerable obstacles to the progress and flourishing of many individuals. On the one hand, fundamentalist religious conservatives see man as literally fallen from the Garden of Eden, where God had designed for him a “perfect” existence. I fail, of course, to see anything perfect about an existence where man had no technology, no love of learning, and no knowledge of good and evil. But this very existence is also embraced by people who claim to be on the opposite side of the political spectrum – radical left-wing environmentalists, who have their own vision of Eden.

Like the Eden of the religious conservatives, the Eden of the environmentalists involves no technology and no active, systematic progress of human knowledge and capacity. Rather, man’s “unity” with “Nature” is celebrated in this vision. According to the environmentalists, there was once a time – probably the pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer days – when man existed in “harmony” with this strange entity called Nature, which seems to encompass everything other than man. Allegedly, humans did not disturb the “balance” of ecosystems and took good care of the Earth in those days – whatever that means. Alas, there was never such a balance to begin with. We shall see that both the religious and environmentalist visions of Eden are plainly wrong.

Life for early man – far from being blissful or even remotely enjoyable – was, in Thomas Hobbes’s words, “nasty, brutish, and short.” Life expectancy in the Paleolithic period was anywhere from the mid-teens to the mid-twenties. Food was continually in short supply, as there was no guarantee of plentiful game to hunt or berries to forage. And if a plentiful catch did occur, there were scant safeguards to prevent the food from spoiling. Predators and disease were rampant; sanitation and health care were non-existent. Without a scientific method, a person with even the best of intentions often ended up hurting one’s fellow human beings while intending to help them.

Every conceivable vice, social problem, weakness, and fallibility of human beings today has always existed throughout human history; the only difference is the magnitude of such problems, which were most certainly greater in prior eras. Without the benefits of technology, education, and the relative safety and comfort of our times, people were far more prone to engage in violent conflicts over resources and to allow emotional clashes to escalate into bloodshed. Rape, slavery, female subjugation, ceaseless wars, adultery, substance abuse, murder, theft, and other detestable conduct were more common then than now – as there were fewer alternatives to such conduct, and fewer disincentives from it. Every problem facing mankind has always existed in some form – due to hostile natural forces or the irrationality and stupidity of many humans. But the solutions to many of these problems could only come in the form of technological and societal progress – a departure from the non-Eden of the past.

The Eden myth in all of its incarnations originates from the rather strange notion that there is something written in the cosmic laws of nature that the default state of human beings is to be happy, comfortable, justly treated, and in “harmony” with their surroundings. There is no natural law which guarantees this or even tends toward it. The term “comfort” did not even acquire its present usage until the 17^th century, and what the ancients meant by “happiness” differs dramatically from prevailing modern views. To suggest that human beings are guaranteed anything good by God, Nature, or what have you, has no evidential support; indeed, all the evidence speaks to the contrary. Humans are faced with millions of perils, injustices, and vulnerabilities. Survival is far from guaranteed, and people of merit and virtue rarely get the rewards they deserve. When natural disasters, political oppression, and disease strike, they rarely discriminate between the good and the evil. There is no natural justice, goodness, or equilibrium, and 99.9% of all species ever existing are now extinct. There is no special protection given to humans from the forces that wiped out many of their distant relatives.

The Eden myth suggests that there is natural guarantee of happiness and justice given to humans, but humans have chosen to stray from the origins of that guarantee – God, Nature, or an analogous reified entity. Therefore, humans suffer – but not because suffering is the default state, but rather because humans did something wrong in rejecting the bliss of the default state. The Eden myth might state that humans deserve lifelong suffering for the sins of Adam and Eve or their ancestors or post-Renaissance Western civilization – but it is in some ways much less grim than reality. The appeal of the Eden myth to many people is that it suggests the existence of an underlying balance and goodness about the world as such – implying that somehow, beneath all that nastiness, everything is fundamentally all right. It is not.

There is nothing to suggest any guarantees given human beings with regard to anything pertaining to their survival, happiness, or fulfillment. There is no cosmic justice and no cosmic “balance.” Rather, whatever justice people wish to obtain, they must create the conditions for. Human technologies, social systems, and esthetic and intellectual accomplishments erect a fortress of civilization which enables us to somewhat resist the onslaught of the elements. The fortress is currently quite shabbily built – with numerous gaping holes and inadequate structural support. Moreover, it is far from complete; indeed, even its foundations have not yet been completely laid. Humanity is still in a state of general barbarism – unable to even figure out ways to prevent individual humans from dying and to prevent human social and political systems from degenerating into either tyranny or chaos. But for all of our massive problems, our ancestors had it worse.

If we are to overcome the extremely genuine and massive threats to our existence coming from virtually all directions, it is essential not to take comfort in the demotivating illusions of a cosmic balance. The longing for a fictitious past bliss leads many to stifle the ambitions of some humans to create a better future. The advocates of the Eden myth seek to thwart the advocates of technological and societal progress – seeing them as taking humankind even further away from its original bliss. But only progress can help us avoid the gruesome destruction and oblivion that are currently in store for every single living individual, unless human ingenuity can enable us to pursue a better path – one which we must follow to push back the hostile aspects of nature and humankind alike and create a safer, happier, more prosperous existence.

“Human Nature” is Tautological (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

July 24, 2014 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 0 Comment

G. Stolyarov II

Originally Published March 10, 2009

as Part of Issue CLXXXIX of The Rational Argumentator

Republished July 23, 2014

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Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CLXXXIX of The Rational Argumentator on March 10, 2009, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.

~ G. Stolyarov II, July 23, 2014

***

What is meant by the term “human nature”? In one sense, it is supremely uninformative. The “nature” of any existent can be defined simply as “that which that existent is.” To say that “X is human nature,” is simply to say “X is what humans are and/or do.” This is fine by itself, provided that it is not used as an explanation for any particular human characteristic or activity. X may be human nature, but X does not occur because of human nature. To say that human nature is the cause of any phenomenon is to say that such a phenomenon causes itself. To say that “some people steal because of human nature” is to say that “some people steal because they steal” or that “some people steal because that is the way humans are.” This is not particularly enlightening as to why some people actually steal.

The striking fact about uses of “human nature” in discourse is that the term is virtually never invoked to account for all the wonderful things people do. Few, if any, people say that humans build great buildings, create art, invent machines, and save lives because “that’s just human nature.” But when it comes to some humans killing, stealing, lying, raping, and committing a host of other abuses, “human nature” virtually never leaves the discussion. This leads me to suspect that a lot of presuppositions are smuggled in under the umbrella label of “human nature” which are not implicit in the term. Namely, most people whose discussions are peppered by the term frequently presuppose that all human beings somehow have even the worst vices “in their nature.”

If “human nature” is “the way human beings are,” then it is clearly contrary to empirical evidence to suppose that killing, stealing, lying, and other vices are inherent in human nature. We can find numerous examples of good, upstanding people who have never killed or stolen – and even a few whom we cannot imagine lying. Surely, “the way they are” is such that they do not kill, steal, or lie. This is as much a part of their human nature as killing, stealing, and lying are a part of the natures of genocidal dictators in North Korea, Iran, Zimbabwe, and Sudan. There is no reason to suppose that anyone is capable of any vice just because some people have been observed engaging in some vices.

The facts that some people do commit vices that others do not commit and that no vice is universal to human beings indicates to us that no vice is inherent to human nature – the way humans are. Rather, every vice is incidental to human nature. That is, the natures of some humans happen to be vicious, just as the natures of some cats happen to be white (not that there is anything wrong with white cats). But vice is no more an inseparable part of humanity than whiteness is an inseparable part of cathood. It may well be that some people will always be irreparably vicious, no matter what external stimuli short of death are applied to them. This is why it may be reasonable to advocate killing genocidal sadists and other comparable entities. But this is no commentary on all the other humans of this world.

Moreover, it is essential to recognize that prevailing trends with regard to behavior change over time. 300 years ago, if two Western, upper-class males had a dispute, it would often culminate in a duel to the death. Today, the disputants would be more likely to sit down and quasi-civilly discuss their differences. The statistical prevalence of each kind of behavior has changed dramatically. Moreover, the change has been an unambiguous improvement. “What humans are” does not need to be static and set in stone. Rather, as incentives, institutions, and motivations change, so does behavior – and the sum of our behaviors constitutes our “natures.”

The view of “human nature” that I have presented thus far is fully in accord with the principle of individualism. This principle asserts that each human being is fundamentally different and should be judged on his or her own qualities, and not on the qualities of other human beings who happen to share some direct or indirect association. Moreover, individualism holds that each human being can control his or her own behaviors to a substantial extent. Each person is free to choose virtue but is just as free to choose vice, and each person must be prepared to be judged by the rest of us on the basis of his or her choices. The question remains, of course, what would motivate people to choose virtue as opposed to vice?

Granting that people always have free will to act virtuously or viciously, what would lead people to want to pursue either course of action? Earlier, I described some incentives for moral behavior that motivate people to pursue virtuous and beneficial courses of action with regard to themselves and others. On the other hand, what motivates vice? The kinds of vice that do damage to others – killing, stealing, infliction of injury, and deception – all seem to stem from some sense of personal inadequacy. Either one does not have enough things and wishes to take away the things owned by others, or one feels slighted, deprived, or persecuted in some manner by others and wishes to correct this perceived victimization by destroying its perceived source. Harm that people do to themselves seems to stem either from a conviction that their lives are not quite worth living or from a simple failure to consider all of the long-term harmful consequences of their decisions.

Exploring the common human motivations for committing immoral acts might lead us to an understanding of how to alter these motivations and direct the “natural” desires of more people toward virtue. For instance, if a person is motivated to steal by a lack of food, then if this person had food, he might not resort to stealing (provided, of course, that he recognizes the change in conditions and does not continue to resort to stealing due to the inertia of habit). On the other hand, the new-found presence of food might get the person to focus on some other attribute he believes to be lacking in his life – say, a car – and steal that. How might it be possible to get such a person to refrain from stealing? Clearly, all people perceive some kinds of inadequacies in their lives. The ways that people’s incentives are structured will lead them to consider whether moral or immoral means are the best ways to compensate for such inadequacies.

The proper incentive structure to give to each person is such that the costs of any vicious act will be greater than its perceived benefits. I note that these costs can be both external – such as any kind of punishment – or internal – such as a feeling of self-loathing and disappointment for having committed an immoral act. Well-developed internal aversions to vicious conduct reduce the need for external incentives to encourage virtue. A wide variety of institutions, technologies, and patterns of interaction shape both people’s external and internal incentives. Yet what is most important to remember is that we are not fated to be locked into any particular configuration of incentives, motivations, and outcomes. These continually fluctuate and sometimes experience radical directional shifts. In shaping these incentives, we ought to lose the defeatism of those who claim that “human nature” will forever sentence us to suffer evil instead of correcting it. Rather, we must act such that our individual, incremental effects are for the better rather than for the worse.

Read other articles in The Rational Argumentator’s Issue CLXXXIX.

Dispelling Popular Great Depression Myths: Robert Murphy’s “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal” (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

July 24, 2014 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 0 Comment

G. Stolyarov II

Originally Published November 25, 2009

as Part of Issue CCXIX of The Rational Argumentator

Republished July 23, 2014

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Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CCXIX of The Rational Argumentator on November 25, 2009, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.

~ G. Stolyarov II, July 23, 2014

***

Download a free audio recording of this essay here.

We live in times when fact and propaganda are all too easily – and often deliberately – conflated. I recall, a long time ago, sitting in my public high school’s Advanced Placement US History course, when the instructor explicitly mentioned “lack of government regulation” as one of the causes of the Great Depression. The odd aspect was that he prefaced this explanation with an explicit warning to me that I would not like what he was about to say.

It was as if he knew that he was presenting an ideologically charged position as fact – and he did it anyway, because, in his mind, no other interpretation of the Great Depression was possible. He and millions like him would benefit immensely from reading Robert P. Murphy’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal.

The myth of the Great Depression being caused by laissez-faire capitalism – and being solved by either the New Deal, World War II, or both – is so prevalent that in popular-opinion surveys, Franklin Delano Roosevelt routinely appears in the top five of all US presidents, while the name of Herbert Hoover has become synonymous with government inaction during an economic crisis. Hundreds of books, essays, and even works of fiction have been published to challenge these notions – but somehow the fallacies have prevailed; and they have been eagerly exploited by the would-be FDRs of the past seven decades.

For millions of Americans who have not studied Austrian economics and the Mises/Hayek theory of the business cycle, or read the brilliant critiques of the New Deal by H.L. Mencken, Isabel Paterson, Albert Jay Nock, Garet Garrett, and John T. Flynn, the commonplace myth of laissez-faire as ruinous and FDR as savior appears true, self-evident, and incontestable. Unfortunately, many of these same people vote for politicians and policies that promise a “New New Deal.” Such a plan would further exacerbate the current economic crisis, which is fueled by hyperregulation, Federal Reserve manipulation of the money supply, and the unforeseen consequences of prior interventions, including the original New Deal.

Murphy’s work seeks to correct popular misunderstandings of the Great Depression by attacking them directly. Virtually every single commonly encountered assertion – that the Depression was caused by the excesses of capitalism, that Hoover exacerbated the Depression by “doing nothing,” that the New Deal revitalized economic activity and mitigated unemployment, and that World War II energized the United States into recovery – is refuted at length. In the course of this debunking, the reader is treated to concise, elegant explanations of the Austrian theory of the business cycle, the economics of tax reduction, the virtues of the gold standard and the dangers of fiat currencies, and to discussions of the errors both in Keynesian prescriptions for deficit spending and in the Chicago School’s suggestion that the Federal Reserve triggered the Great Depression by failing to inflate sufficiently.

To add flavor to the book and enable readers to identify with more concrete aspects of the policies it criticizes, Murphy discusses many of the follies and corruptions of the New Deal: FDR’s use of “lucky numbers” to set the price of gold, the persecution of the Schechter brothers for defying the National Recovery Administration’s restrictions on poultry production, FDR’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court with his supporters after the court ruled in favor of the Schechter brothers, the confiscation of private citizens’ gold holdings, and the New Dealers’ pervasive use of government funding to bribe and intimidate constituencies into supporting FDR’s policies.

Murphy skillfully reminds us that the politicians who seek to suppress our economic and political liberties in favor of a central plan are neither omniscient nor benevolent; they quite frequently pull policy prescriptions out of thin air and they are anything but evenhanded, tolerant, or concerned for objective human wellbeing. Behind the lofty rhetoric and faux amiability of men like FDR stands the harsh, impatient, implacable, and often indiscriminate enforcer, in the mold of those thugs who broke into peaceful men’s homes to ensure that they were not violating the National Industrial Recovery Act by sewing clothes at night.

If there is any hope for an intellectual rejection of New Deal ideology in the United States, Murphy’s book will be one of the crucial elements motivating it. Murphy bridges the gulf between high theory and the concerns accessible to the majority of readers. While it is unfortunate that, given the state of education in our time, most Americans would not be able to immunize themselves against common economic fallacies by directly reading Menger, Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard, Murphy helps bring some of the key ideas of these thinkers into a format more accessible to a layman with no formal economic training.

Murphy also incorporates the work of such historians as Burton Folsom and Paul Johnson, and he draws on biographical information to shed light on the lives, motivations, and personalities of Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and other key figures of the 1920s and 1930s. Murphy does for the popular understanding of the Great Depression in the early 21st century what Frederic Bastiat did for free trade in the mid-19th and what Leonard Read and Henry Hazlitt did for basic economic principles in the 20th.

I am a former student of Murphy, and I can credit his instruction for enabling me to advance from a basic understanding of Austrian economics to the publication of a paper in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. From personal experience, I know him to be well-read, cosmopolitan, sophisticated, and capable of articulating the arguments – and recognizing the strengths and weaknesses – of an immense variety of theories and worldviews. At the same time, he possesses a talent for communicating complex and challenging ideas, connecting them to concrete phenomena, and even joking about them.

As such, he is eminently suited to bringing some of the most important economic and historical insights of the 20th century to a mass audience. Indeed, it might reasonably be hoped that thousands of readers of this book will use it as a gateway to discovering the works of the many free-market thinkers cited therein. The lists of suggested readings (“Books You’re Not Supposed to Read”) peppered throughout the text make it a worthwhile purchase by themselves.

Perhaps someday my old US history teacher, and men like him, will use The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression in their courses to balance the many explicitly pro-New Deal and prointerventionist texts and presentations that dominate public-school curricula today. If this is too much to hope for, then at least this book has the potential to appeal to many young students and be sought out by them on their own initiative – as an antidote to the fallacies they encounter from “mainstream” sources.

Read other articles in The Rational Argumentator’s Issue CCXIX.

Incentives Matter… On the Margin (2010) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

July 23, 2014 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 0 Comment

G. Stolyarov II

Originally Published January 10, 2010

as Part of Issue CCXXXI of The Rational Argumentator

Republished July 22, 2014

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Note from the Author: This essay was previously published as part of Issue CCXXXI of The Rational Argumentator on January 10, 2010, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.

***

~ G. Stolyarov II, July 22, 2014

***

One of the favorite expressions of economists is “Incentives matter.” There is much truth to this idea, but it is instructive to examine how it works a bit more closely.

An incentive is a set of conditions that favors one course of action and/or disfavors its opposite. A positive incentive increases the reward or decreases the cost associated with a decision, while a negative incentive increases the cost or decreases the reward associated with it. An incentive can be a condition of the natural environment, a conscious human choice, or an emergent outcome – a characteristic of what Friedrich Hayek called a “spontaneous order.”

But it is not the case that all human beings are moved by the same incentives to a particular course of action or inaction. For instance, an increase in the cost of gasoline might lead some people to drive less – but a wealthy car enthusiast might just take the hit and pay the higher price; for him, a negative incentive was not a sufficient deterrent to his behavior of choice. On the other hand, ample information and culture available virtually for free on the Internet might motivate more people to become computer-literate, but for certain individuals with a strong visceral fear of electronic technology, this might not be enough; the positive incentive has failed to overcome the psychological barriers within them.

We can best see how incentives matter by examining large-scale changes in behavior. Crime statistics in an area might fall, for instance, if people were allowed to carry concealed weapons in public, where a previous law might have prohibited this. But there would still be some individual acts of crime, just as there would still be some people who would never think of committing a crime, no matter how easy it would be to perpetrate one or to get away with it. If the government raised the minimum wage, the unemployment rate would increase over what it would have been otherwise, but it is not the case that all workers – or even all workers previously earning less than the minimum wage – would suffer or lose their jobs. Some low-income workers might even get a pay raise, but likely at the expense of others being laid off or never being hired in the first place. Yet some generous employers might choose to personally absorb the cost increase and refuse to lay off any workers – but this might mean fewer other investments in their businesses or a lower standard of living for these business owners.

We can summarize this insight by stating that incentives matter on the margin. If a person’s other characteristics – including ideas held, material position, and skills – strongly favor one course of action over another, then an incentive to the contrary is unlikely to change that person’s behavior. On the other hand, if a person is barely inclined one way or another, then an incentive might result in a shift of behavior.

Once made explicit, all of this might appear self-evident to someone who paid attention in a basic economics course. Why is it important, and why does it bear emphasizing? There are several reasons.

Recognizing the marginal importance of incentives prevents individuals from looking for panaceas or overnight revolutions, of which our world yields extremely few, if any. On the other hand, it also inculcates one against despair. Any sufficiently strong incentive will result in a desirable or undesirable statistical shift, but it is unlikely to completely solve a problem. On the other hand, it is also unlikely to completely doom the state of affairs, either. Human beings are remarkably resilient and intricately complex. Crimes, disasters, bad laws, and health defects will destroy some and keep down others – but human innovation and creativity will not completely die; it will flourish somewhere, in some way or another, where the negative incentives are not strong enough to thwart the civilizing desires of the best among us. But it is also important to recognize that human existence is a continual struggle against both natural perils and the follies and even the evils committed by our fellow men. We will need more than one incentive to be favorably arranged if we are to keep these enemies of civilization at bay.

The marginal functioning of incentives is also a cause for hope. If a destructive policy were to completely cripple some facet of human life, then there might not be a way to resist it effectively. But because some individuals are sufficiently strong internally so as not to be diverted from their course by the policy, they can amass the will and the resources to resist it. Moreover, people can condition themselves to respond more or less strongly to certain incentives. The more a person can train himself to persevere in the face of significant externally imposed costs, the more likely that person is to succeed despite such obstacles. Such successes are the building blocks upon which all human civilization has been built.

It is instructive to remember that there has never been an even tolerably calm and safe environment for innovators to flourish; at every time and place in history, some force – deliberate or not, more severe or less so, but never particularly mild – stood in the way of the thinkers and creators to whom we owe our progress. Where the carriers of civilization overcame these forces, they created a more favorable environment for us. We must, likewise, strive against the challenges of our time. By overcoming existing negative incentives, we can create positive ones for the future, through the examples we set and the work we bring forth.

Click here to read more articles in Issue CCXXXI of The Rational Argumentator.

Writers Can Prosper Without Intellectual Property (2010) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

July 23, 2014 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 0 Comment

G. Stolyarov II

Originally Published January 13, 2010

as Part of Issue CCXXXI of The Rational Argumentator

Republished July 22, 2014

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Note from the Author: This essay was previously published as part of Issue CCXXXI of The Rational Argumentator on January 13, 2010, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator. The fundamental concepts in this article remain sound, but the specific references to content sites – such as Associated Content, Helium.com, and Today.com – which previously allowed writers to monetize their works, are now obsolete, due to the closures of these sites. This should be a lesson to writers: utilize external sites for revenue generation if you need to, but always keep all of your writings hosted on sites you control as well!

***

~ G. Stolyarov II, July 22, 2014

***

(This article was originally published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. A free MP3 audio file of this article, read by the author, is available for download.)

***

It is commonly supposed that, whatever its moral and theoretical standing, intellectual property is necessary for creators of written works to make a living and – even more importantly – to continue to create. Here, I will set aside the theoretical status of copyright, which is amply discussed in Stephan Kinsella’s Against Intellectual Property and Michele Boldrin and David Levine’s Against Intellectual Monopoly. I will focus on existing and emerging possibilities for writers to earn a living in a world where no copyrights exist.

By way of real-world examples and suggestions based on observations of existing and historical practices, I seek to assure writers and other intelligent laymen of all persuasions that writers would not starve, and writing would continue to flourish, if copyrights disappeared off the face of the Earth tomorrow. I hope to foster an appreciation of the breadth of human creativity and the multitude of possibilities for innovative endeavors.

The popular, copyright-inspired model of revenue generation for writers entails contracting with a publishing company for a combination of payments: (1) a modest initial advance on the written work, typically paid at or prior to publication, and (2) a continual stream of royalties, typically paid as a proportion of the written work’s earnings. The royalties comprise the greatest share of revenue for most “traditionally” published writers under the copyright system; most authors and publishers within this system perceive copyright as necessary to ensure that the royalties continue for a prolonged period of time.

Even without copyright, there is a first-mover advantage to simply having released a work to market before anyone else could. Moreover, if the work is reasonably priced and attractively presented, there would be little reason for potential buyers to feel dissatisfied with it in a manner that would render it lucrative for competitors to enter the market.

For competitors, the investment of publishing the book and the considerable risk in competing with an established producer would cause them to think twice before undertaking this venture. Unless the original publisher has failed significantly in packaging, marketing, and pricing the book, its first-mover advantage is likely to last far into the future.

As for digital downloads of the book, considerable evidence exists that these do not cannibalize hard-copy sales. Indeed, book sales have skyrocketed since the emergence of easy copying possibilities on the Internet. Downloads likely also furnish a marginal gain to the author’s reputation in excess of the marginal costs of any revenue foregone directly due to a download – especially if those who download a book today would likely not have purchased it if it were not available for free online.

But suppose that the defenders of copyright are correct in their assumption that the first-mover advantage is ephemeral. Suppose that this advantage could not be relied on as the competition seized on a good work and began to market it at equally advantageous, or more-advantageous terms than the initial publisher. What other recourse could writers have?

1. More Frequent Publication of New Works

If there is a first-mover advantage that lasts several months or years, irrespective of whether intellectual property exists, then a given author who chooses to adhere to the “traditional” publishing system could pursue the strategy of writing and publishing a new work every time the first-mover advantage of the previous work has been exhausted. This would lead to a necessary change in expectations: an author could not expect to live off the royalties from a single work – even a widely popular work – forever but would need to keep creating in order to maintain his revenue stream.

Nonetheless, this is not far off from the current situation; after all, most published books do not sell nearly well enough to assure the authors even a modest stream of lifetime earnings. Moreover, such a system would incentivize creation of further works.

Indeed, prior to the introduction of copyright, European classical composers found it necessary to continually create music, as their older and already-famous pieces were often performed internationally without any compensation given to them. Even so, some of these composers managed to be phenomenally prosperous as well as prolific.

The most famous composer of the early 18th century, and one of the most prosperous, was Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), who is thought by some to be the most prolific composer in human history, with over 3000 works to his name. Telemann’s status is rivaled by Simon Sechter (1788-1867), who wrote over 8000 works, many of them short fugues, and who endeavored to create at least one short composition every day. Neither composer lived under a copyright regime.

Indeed, virtually all of the big names of classical music – Bach, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Berlioz – composed without copyright and were not dismayed when their works were performed without their participation or consent. Composers through the Romantic era would often borrow passages from their peers and predecessors and develop creative orchestrations and variations thereof. This was not considered to be theft but rather the ultimate compliment: a demonstration that a composer had been able to cultivate a musical idea that could now thrive independently of his efforts.

If composers could set still-unmatched records of productivity without copyrights while managing to earn a living, imagine what writers could do in an environment that did not give them the hope of forever subsisting off past accomplishments.

2. Larger Initial Advances

Writers seeking to publish their works via the “traditional” system could come, in an environment of no copyright, to expect larger initial advances from publishers as a tradeoff for smaller, less stable, and generally diminishing royalty streams. There is no reason why this could not be lucrative for publishers. The publisher could pay the writer a larger one-time fee, getting in exchange the first-mover advantage over the competition.

When the competition catches up and resorts to publishing a book that has been well received by the public, the original publisher has at least the potential of competing on even terms with regard to expenses; the competitors would not need to pay a substantial fraction of their earnings to the author, and neither would the original publisher.

The tremendous proliferation of British novels in the United States during the 19th century can give us a glimpse of what such a world might be like. British authors had copyright on their works in Britain since the enactment of the Statute of Anne in 1710, and American authors had copyright on their works in the United States since the passage of the Copyright Act of 1790.

However, as the era of international copyright had yet to be inaugurated (via the Berne Convention of 1886), British authors did not have copyright on their works in the United States; instead, they typically sold the rights to a first printing of their work in the United States. Thereafter, the original US publishers of these authors would not owe them royalties and would therefore not be obligated to pay this additional expense, putting them on par with potential later publishers of the same works. The British authors made more money selling their works in the US in this manner than they did under the copyright and royalty system in Britain. Moreover, their works became significantly more popular in the United States than those of their American contemporaries.

3. Patronage 2.0

Some of the greatest works in history have been created by writers and artists working under the patronage system, in which wealthy and influential individuals supported creators in exchange for a consistent and high-quality output, often used to advance the patrons’ interests and public image. The historical patronage system also exhibited numerous genuine flaws, including significant restrictions on the creativity of artists by overbearing patrons. Yet the flaws of the system were due not to the institution of patronage per se, but to the structure of preliberal, preindustrial Western societies.

Patrons were extremely scarce, and most of them had financial resources not due to personal merits or economic achievements, but due to political power. For writing in particular, this was a hindrance, as writing for a patron typically meant avoiding the expression of ideas that would upset the established political order, on which the patron built his wealth and power. On the other hand, if one’s patron was subversive of the established order, like the Earl of Shaftesbury (1621-1683), the patron and sole patient of John Locke, some radically provocative work could result.

Some creators were fortunate to find reasonable and enlightened patrons, but even these had idiosyncrasies that needed to be catered to. This bred extensive resentment of the patronage system and inspired a reaction and shift to its polar opposite: mass marketing to as broad a consumer base as possible. Yet this approach, too, has numerous evident shortcomings.

In our time, the fundamental flaws of the historical patronage system need no longer persist, because the distribution of potential patrons is so much greater. Indeed, most people who are established in “white-collar” occupations can afford to become patrons of the arts today. In addition, because of computers and the Internet, writing and publication cost very little except for the time and effort spent actually putting the words and ideas together. Not only has the capacity of most people to fund writers increased dramatically, but the exertions and materials required for writing have diminished considerably as well.

Any patronage system would necessitate some manner of creator compliance with the patron’s wishes; that is what the patron is paying for. However, with a large number of potential patrons on the market, a given writer does not need to feel dependent on financial arrangements with a particularly disagreeable patron; he is free to find another patron – or even to work for a multitude of patrons simultaneously.

Patronage can be expressed monetarily, but it need not be. In-kind patronage – such as that performed by numerous online magazines that publish essays by contributing authors – is another mechanism by which writers can find resources to support their endeavors.

4. Self-Patronage

“Self-patronage” is a concise way of expressing the concept of writing during one’s leisure time while pursuing another occupation as a primary income generator. If another person with an above-average income can serve as a patron for a writer, then it is just as easy for the writer himself to earn an above-average income in a profession of his choice and then use it to subsidize his writing.

This is a promising option for many writers today, myself included, and it should not be dismissed as a viable long-term model for the creation of quality output. Self-patronage is tremendously efficient; it frees the writer from having to get clearance from any external entity to write or publish what he pleases. Moreover, it frees the writer from needing to satisfy a mass audience; he can make his works as sophisticated, specialized, or controversial as he pleases. If they gain notice and admiration, this can result in some added bonuses for the writer; if they fail to catch on, he is not endangered in his livelihood and can always try again.

With the ability to publish for free on the Internet, writers no longer require access to large institutions or wealthy individuals in order to spread their ideas to a large audience. They do, of course, need to compete with a much larger pool of creators than has ever existed – and this may result in difficulties for quality work in getting notice commensurate with its merits. However, because self-patronage eliminates the costs of getting external clearance, a writer can be as productive as he is motivated to be. By releasing vast quantities of works, he greatly enhances the probability that one of these will be noticed and will motivate some readers to explore his other works.

5. Online-Content Sites

A remarkable development on the Internet in recent years has enabled hundreds of thousands of writers to earn modest income streams from advertisements that appear on the pages where their work is published. (In reading this section, some might wonder about the frequent mentions of my activity on the various sites to which I refer. This is done in part to comply with the Federal Trade Commission’s recent guidelines on the disclosure of writers’ institutional affiliations. Thank you, FTC, for requiring me to boast of my work more than I otherwise would have.) Large commercial websites typically contract with numerous advertisers and establish an infrastructure for writers to conveniently publish a variety of works. Associated Content, where I have been publishing my writings for over three years [2007-2010], [formerly paid] contributors both initial small advances for articles that pass editorial review and performance payments on the basis of how many page views contributors’ content receives. The performance payment is not enough to earn a living – $2.00 per 1000 page views – but several hundred articles can provide a decent supplement to one’s monthly income.

Helium.com, another site where I have published, [formerly invited] authors to write competing articles under a given title and then to rank other authors’ contributions. The authors who regularly participate [formerly received] a bonus based on the page views their articles receive. Yet another site, Today.com, the [former] host of my blog, The Progress of Liberty, [formerly paid] some bloggers a dollar for one post on any given day and supplements this with a performance payment based on visitation. Other commercial enterprises with a variety of compensation mechanisms have evolved over the last several years to enable layman writers to earn small revenues from their work without needing to have expertise in marketing or salesmanship.

The above methods of income generation, too, have their shortcomings in terms of which kinds of writing are most rewarded. But they are still in their infancy, and six years ago they did not exist at all. Within several decades at most, it will surely be possible for large numbers of authors to earn a living by writing and publishing their works on the Internet without being members of any syndicate or media organization’s staff – unless, that is, established interests successfully lobby governments for restrictions on creative Internet activities.

6. The Best Option

The best option for promoting a writer’s creativity while assuring him a stable and adequate income is a combination of the approaches above. Each approach, like most techniques in life, has its strengths and its shortcomings. For instance, patronage might result in the need to meet idiosyncratic tastes, while online-content sites that pay on the basis of unique visitors might incentivize writers to focus on breadth of appeal rather than depth. Self-patronage, on the other hand, is limited by the writer’s existing resources and technical training in other fields.

In a relatively advanced, quasi-market economy with widely available, remarkable publishing technologies, it is possible to viably combine these approaches for an overall strategy that keeps one both fed and writing. Moreover, as the marketplace continues to evolve, and technological possibilities combine with human creativity to render new options available, writers should be willing to experiment with yet more ways of delivering their content to audiences and receiving corresponding compensation.

As is typical with markets, it is virtually impossible to exactly predict the way in which patterns of behavior will emerge, especially as one looks out into the long-term future. But this should not discourage writers; indeed, it should highlight to them the importance of being open to new possibilities. They should not simply expect that existing business models – such as the copyright-based, royalty-heavy compensation system of “traditionally” published authors – will continue in perpetuity as a matter of right for the parties involved.

It is never necessary to cling to a single legal mechanism or institution as the sole path for any given peaceful and productive human activity. Human beings are much more inventive and resilient than the defenders of copyright would suggest.

Click here to read more articles in Issue CCXXXI of The Rational Argumentator.

The Victory of Truth is Never Assured! (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

July 23, 2014 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 0 Comment

G. Stolyarov II

Originally Published February 4, 2009

as Part of Issue CLXXXVI of The Rational Argumentator

Republished July 22, 2014

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Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CLXXXVI of The Rational Argumentator on February 4, 2009, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.

~ G. Stolyarov II, July 22, 2014

***

Many advocates of free markets, reason, and liberty are content to just sit back and let things take their course, thinking that the right ideas will win out, by virtue of being true and therefore in accord with the objective reality. Sooner or later, these people think, the contradictions entailed in false ideas – contradictions obvious to the free-market advocates – will become obvious to everybody. Moreover, false ideas will result in bad consequences that people will rebel against and begin to apply true ideas. While this view is tempting – and I wish it reflected reality – I am afraid that it misrepresents the course that policies and intellectual trends take, as well as the motivations of most human beings.

Why does the truth not always – indeed, virtually never, up until the very recent past – win out in human societies among the majority of people? Indeed, why can one confidently say that most people are wrong about most intellectual matters and matters of policy most of the time? A few reasons will be explored here.

First, the vast majority of people are short-sighted and unaware of secondary effects of their actions. For instance, they see the direct effects of government redistribution of wealth – especially if they are on the receiving end – as positive. They get nice stuff, after all. But the indirect secondary effects – the reduced incentives of the expropriated to produce additional wealth – are not nearly so evident. They require active contemplation, which most people are too busy to engage in at that sophisticated a level.

The second reason why truth rarely wins in human societies – at least in the short-to-intermediate term – is that people’s lifespans are (thus far in our history) finite. While many people do learn from their experiences and from abstract theory and recognize more of the truth as they get older, those people also tend to die at alarming rates and be replaced by newer generations that more often than not make the same mistakes and commit the same fallacies. The prevalence of age-old superstitions – including beliefs in ghosts, faith healing, and socialism – can be explained by the fact that the same tempting fallacies tend to afflict most unprepared minds, and it takes a great deal of time and intellectual training for most people to extricate themselves from them – unless they happened to have particularly enlightened and devoted parents. If all people lived forever, one could expect them to learn from their mistakes and fallacies eventually and for the prevalence of those errors to asymptotically approach zero over time.

The third reason for the difficulty true ideas have in winning is the information problem. No one person has access to all or even a remote fraction of the truth, and certainly no one person can claim to be in possession of all the true ideas required to prevent or even optimally minimize all human folly, aggression, and self-destruction. Moreover, just because a true idea exists somewhere and someone knows it does not mean that many people will be actively seeking it out. Improving information dispersal through such technologies as the Internet certainly helps inform many more people than would have been informed otherwise, but this still requires a fundamental willingness to seek out truth on the part of people. Some have this willingness; others could not care less.

The fourth reason why the truth rarely wins out is that the proponents of false ideas are often persistent, clever, and well organized. They promote their ideas – which they may well believe to be the truth – just as assiduously, if not more so, than the proponents of truth promote their ideas. In fact, how true an idea is might matter when it comes to the long-term viability of the culture and society whose participants adopt it; but it matters little with regard to how persuasive people find the idea. After all, if truth were all that persuaded people, then bizarre beer ads that imply that by drinking beer one will have fancy cars and lots of beautiful women would not persuade anyone. The persistence of advertising that focuses on anything but the actual merits and qualities of the goods and services advertised shows that truth and persuasiveness are two entirely different qualities.

The fifth reason why the truth has a difficult time winning over public opinion is rather unfortunate and may be remedied in time. But many people are, to be polite, intellectually not prepared to understand it. Free-market economics and politics are not easy subjects for everybody to grasp. If a significant fraction of the population in economically advanced countries has trouble remembering basic historical facts or doing basic algebra, how hard must economic and political theory be for such people! I do not believe that any person is incapable of learning these ideas, or any ideas at all. But to teach them takes time that they personally are often unwilling to devote to the task. As economic and technological growth renders more leisure time available to more people, this might change, but for the time being the un-intellectual state of the majority of people is a tremendous obstacle to the spread of true ideas.

It is bad enough that many people are un-intellectual and thus unable to grasp true ideas without a great deal of effort they do not wish to expend. That problem can be remedied with enough material and cultural progress. The greater problem, and the sixth reason why the truth has difficulty taking hold, is that a sizable fraction of the population is also anti-intellectual. They not only cannot or try not to think and learn; they actively despise those who do. Anti-intellectualism is a product of pure envy and malice, much like bullying in the public schools. It led to the genocides of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Stalin, Communist China under Mao, and Communist Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. In Western schools today, it leads to many of the best and brightest students – who know more of the truth than virtually anyone else – being relentlessly teased, mocked, suppressed, ostracized, and even physically attacked by their jealous and lazy peers as well as by some egalitarian-minded teachers.

But enough about why most people are unreceptive to true ideas. Even those who are receptive have substantial problems that need to be overcome – and most often are not overcome – in order for the truth to win. The seventh reason why the truth rarely wins is that most of the people who do understand it are content to merely contemplate it instead of actively promoting it. They might think that they are powerless to affect the actual course of affairs, and their sole recourse is simply the satisfaction of knowing that they are right while the world keeps senselessly punishing itself – or the satisfaction that at least they are not an active or enthusiastic part of “the system” that leads to bad outcomes. This, I regret to say, is not enough. Knowing that one is right without doing anything about it leads to the field of ideas and actions being wholly open to and dominated by the people who are wrong and whose ideas have dangerous consequences.

Everyone who knows even a shred of the truth wants to be a theorist and expound grand systems about what is or is not right. I know that I certainly do. I also know that theoretical work and continual refinement of theories are essential to any thriving movement for cultural and intellectual change. But while theory is necessary, it is not sufficient. Someone needs to do the often monotonous, often frustrating, often exhausting grunt work of implementing the theories in whatever manner his or her abilities and societal position allow. The free-market movement needs government officials who are willing to engage in pro-liberty reforms. But it also needs ordinary citizens who are willing to write, speak, and attempt to reach out to other people in innovative ways that might just be effective at persuading someone. To promote the truth effectively, a tremendously high premium needs to put on the people who actually apply the true ideas, as opposed to simply contemplating them.

Read other articles in The Rational Argumentator’s Issue CLXXXVI.

A Short History of German Colonialism in Africa (2003) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

July 23, 2014 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 0 Comment

G. Stolyarov II

July 22, 2014

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Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2003 and published in two parts on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007. The essay earned over 11,000 page views on Associated Content/Yahoo! Voices, and I seek to preserve it as a valuable resource for readers, subsequent to the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices. Therefore, this essay is being published directly on The Rational Argumentator for the first time. ***

***

~ G. Stolyarov II, July 22, 2014

***

Four major regions of Sub-Saharan Africa had been colonized by Germany. They are today’s Tanzania, Namibia, Togo, and Cameroon.

Tanzania was acquired via the efforts of Dr. Carl Peters of the German Colonization Society from 1884 to 1885. Promising protectorate status to the various tribes inhabiting its territory, Peters rapidly accomplished the subordination of the realm to Kaiser Wilhelm I.

Namibia was purchased by Germany shortly after the 1884 Berlin Conference. Its de facto occupation began in 1889, when 25 German troops in tourist garb, under the leadership of Major Curt of Francois, crossed through British territory near the port of Walvis Bay and occupied the colonial capital of Winterhoek (Windhoek).

The first German involvement in Togo occurred in 1884, when Dr. Gustav Nachtigal, a representative of Chancellor Bismarck, signed a protection contract (similar to those undertaken by Peters in Tanzania) with King Mlapa of Togo City. In 1888 Curt of Francois conducted an exploratory journey into the interior, and a permanent research station was founded at Bismarck Castle by Dr. Wolf. In 1891, Germany assumed direct control over Togo.

Cameroon was acquired by Dr. Nachtigal in 1884 via protection contracts with coastal peoples. The remainder of Cameroon was gradually assimilated via expeditions into the southern reaches by Captain Kund in 1887 and Captain Morgen in 1890. In 1898, rich rubber deposits were discovered in southeast Cameroon, and the area became an economic powerhouse.

Major conflicts with natives flared up in Tanzania from 1891 to 1898, when Chief Mkwawa of the Hehe systematically raided German settlements, protectorates, as well as columns of German troops. In 1898, realizing the futility of his struggle, Mkwawa shot himself over a fire.

The Maji Maji Rebellion in 1907 was sparked by natives believing that drinking a sacred water rendered them immune to bullets. They suffered devastating losses at the hands of German artillery.

In Namibia, German forces were considerably crueler to the Herero natives. In 1904, enraged by almost haphazard killing of their people at the hands of settlers, the Hereros erupted in war. They were defeated by the forces of General Lothar von Trotha at the Battle of Hamakari on August 11, 1904, and were pursued through stretches of barren desert until all but 6000 of a population of 50000 perished of starvation or skirmishes. This is widely considered to be the first twentieth-century genocide.

All German possessions in Africa were confiscated by a superior Allied military presence from 1914 to 1918.

German Language and Architecture in the Former German Colonies of Sub-Saharan Africa

***

Although Germany lost possession of its African colonies in 1918, traces of the German language and architecture remain there to this day. A visit to Namibia, Togo, and Tanzania especially will reveal numerous aspects of German culture, legacies of the colonial era.

German is widely spoken in Namibia, although it is not an official language. Namibia also maintains one of the only German-language newspapers in Africa.

All Germans were expelled from Tanzania in 1918 by a decree of the League of Nations. In 1925, many were allowed to return and rebuild their livelihoods. Today, under 2% of Tanzanians are Europeans (many of them Germans) who largely inhabit the urban centers

The Church of Christ in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, was designed by the architect Gottlieb Redecker and constructed in 1907. Its Neo-Romanesque design is almost unique on the entire continent, and within it is contained a valuable replica of Reuben’s’ “Resurrection of the Lazarus.” The original painting had been destroyed in Berlin in 1945.

Other German monuments remain in the former African colonies today. The “Old Fort” in Windhoek is the oldest building in the entire city. It was constructed in 1890 by Curt of Francois and the 32 men under his command and for some time served as a barracks the headquarters of the German occupation in Namibia. Today it is the country’s National Museum.

The Windhoek Railway Station was built in 1912 and is still in use. It is ideal in representing German colonial architecture, and displays in front a locomotive, the Illing, which had traversed a total of 271,000 miles between Swakopmund and Otavi from 1904 to 1939.

Heinitzburg Castle in Windhoek was formerly a lavish private residence constructed for the Count of Schwerin in 1914 by the architect W. Sander. Today it is a prestigious private restaurant.

Of course, no visit to Namibia is complete without visiting the statue of the man who almost single-handedly colonized the country, Major Curt of Francois.

Lome, the capital of Togo, contains a governor’s palace, which was completed in 1898, displaying an adaptation of German aesthetic tastes to the extremes of tropical climate. This building displays many of the simple angular features of indigenous African architecture.

Although the German colonial presence in Africa has been non-existent for the past 89 years, the language and architecture of Germany that remains in Namibia, Togo, and Tanzania serve as reminders of these countries’ past.

Putting Randomness in Its Place (2010) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

July 23, 2014 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 0 Comment

G. Stolyarov II

Originally Published February 11, 2010

as Part of Issue CCXXXV of The Rational Argumentator

Republished July 22, 2014

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Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CCXXXV of The Rational Argumentator on February 11, 2010, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.

~ G. Stolyarov II, July 22, 2014

***

A widespread misunderstanding of the meaning of the term “randomness” often results in false generalizations made regarding reality. In particular, the view of randomness as metaphysical, rather than epistemological, is responsible for numerous commonplace fallacies.

To see randomness as metaphysical is to see it as an inherent aspect of reality as such – as embedded inextricably in “the way things are.” Typically, people holding this view will take it in one of two directions. Some of them will see randomness pejoratively – thinking that there is no way reality could be like that: chaotic, undefined, unpredictable. Such individuals will typically posit that, because reality cannot be random, it must therefore be centrally planned by a super-intelligent entity, such as a deity.

Others, however, will use the metaphysical perception of randomness to deny evident and ubiquitously observable truths about our world: the facts that all entities obey certain natural laws, that these laws are accessible to human beings, and that they can inform our decision-making and actions. These individuals typically espouse metaphysical subjectivism – the idea that the nature of reality depends on the person observing it, or that all of existence is in such a chaotic flux that we cannot ever possibly make sense of it, so we might as well “construct” our own personal or cultural “reality.”

But it is the very metaphysical perception of randomness that is in error. Randomness is, rather, epistemological – a description of our state of knowledge of external reality, and not of external reality itself. To say that a phenomenon is random simply means that we do not (yet) have adequate knowledge to be able to explain it causally. Based on past observational experience or some knowledge of aspects inherent to that phenomenon, we might be able to assign probabilities – estimates of the likelihood that a particular event will occur, in the absence of more detailed knowledge about the specifics of the circumstances that might give rise to that event. In some areas of life, this is presently as far as humans can venture. Indeed, probabilistic thinking can be conceptually quite powerful – although imprecise – in analyzing large classes of phenomena which, individually, exhibit too many specific details for any single mind to grasp. Entire industries, such as insurance and investment, are founded on this premise. But we must not mistake a conceptual tool for an external fact; the probabilities are not “out there.” They are, rather, an attempt by human beings to interpret and anticipate external phenomena.

The recognition of randomness as epistemological can be of great aid both to those who believe in biological evolution and to advocates of the free market. Neither the laws of evolution, nor the laws of economics, of course, would fit any definition of “randomness.” Rather, they are impersonal, abstract principles that definitively describe the general outcomes of particular highly complex sets of interactions. They are unable to account for every fact of those interactions, however, and they are also not always able to predict precisely how or when the general outcome they anticipate will ensue. For instance, biological evolution cannot precisely predict which complex life forms will evolve and at what times, or which animals in a current ecosystem will ultimately proliferate, although traits that might enhance an animal’s survival and reproduction and traits that might hinder them can be identified. Likewise, economics – despite the protestations of some economists to the contrary – cannot predict the movements of stock prices or prices in general, although particular directional effects on prices from known technological breakthroughs or policy decisions can be anticipated.

Evolution is often accused of being incapable of producing intelligent life and speciation because of its “randomness.” For many advocates of “intelligent design,” it does not appear feasible that the complexity of life today could have arisen as a result of “chance” occurrences – such as genetic mutations – that nobody planned and for whose outcomes nobody vouched. However, each of these mutations – and the natural selection pressures to which they were subject – can only be described as random to the extent that we cannot precisely describe the circumstances under which they occurred. The more knowledge we have of the circumstances surrounding a particular mutation, the more it becomes perfectly sensible to us, and explicable as a product of causal, natural laws, not “sheer chance.” Such natural laws work both at the microscopic, molecular level where the proximate cause of the mutation occurred, and at the macroscopic, species-wide level, where organisms with the mutation interact with other organisms and with the inanimate environment to bring about a certain episode in the history of life.

So it is with economics; the interactions of the free market seem chaotic and unpredictable to many – who therefore disparage them as “random” and agitate for centralized power over all aspects of human life. But, in fact, the free market consists of millions of human actors in billions of situations, and each actor has definite purposes and motivations, as well as definite constraints against which he or she must make decisions. The “randomness” of behaviors on the market is only perceived because of the observer’s limited knowledge of the billions of circumstances that generate such behaviors. We can fathom our own lives and immediate environments, and it may become easier to understand the general principles behind complex economies when we recognize that each individual life has its own purposes and orders, although they may be orders which we find mistaken or purposes of which we disapprove. But the interaction of these individual microcosms is the free market; the more we understand about it, the more sensible it becomes to us, and the more valid conclusions we can draw regarding it.

The reason why evolution and economies cannot be predicted at a concrete level, although they can be understood, is the sheer complexity of the events and interactions involved – with each event or interaction possibly being of immense significance. Qualitative generalizations, analyses of attributes, and probabilistic thinking can answer some questions pertaining to these complex systems and can enable us to navigate them with some success. But these comprise our arsenal of tools for interpreting reality; they do not even begin to approach being the reality itself.

When we come to see randomness as a product of our limited knowledge, rather than of reality per se, we can begin to appreciate how much there is about reality that can be understood – rather than dismissed as impossible or inherently chaotic – and can broaden our knowledge and mastery of phenomena we might otherwise have seen as beyond our grasp.

Click here to read more articles in Issue CCXXXV of The Rational Argumentator.

Progress: Creation and Maintenance (2010) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

July 23, 2014 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 0 Comment

G. Stolyarov II

Originally Published March 8, 2010

as Part of Issue CCXXXVIII of The Rational Argumentator

Republished July 22, 2014

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Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CCXXXVIII of The Rational Argumentator on March 8, 2010, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.

~ G. Stolyarov II, July 22, 2014

***

One frequently encounters the identification of human creativity and inventiveness as driving forces for progress in technology and society. In part, this identification is correct: it is through the human creative faculty – the ability to bring forth new combinations of matter and new ideas – that improvements to the human condition arise. But while creation is a necessary component to progress, it is not a sufficient component.

Consider that the human creative faculty has existed since the emergence of our species; even cave dwellers exhibited it, to the extent that they could take even a little leisure time in their highly dangerous, subsistence-based lives. Cave paintings and tools from several tens of thousands of years ago show clearly that our remote ancestors had the ability, and the desire, to reshape the world in an attempt to improve their condition. And yet, for the vast majority of human history – up until the 18^th-century Enlightenment and the subsequent Industrial Revolution – real progress has been so slow and minuscule as to be virtually imperceptible within an ordinary person’s lifetime. This was the case despite the fact that every generation had its share of great thinkers, artists, and even mechanical tinkerers.

The other necessary component of progress is maintenance of what has already been created. While creation is an ever-present ability within human beings, there are also destructive forces that counteract and diminish its fruits. Nature itself is the source of many such forces: disease, decay, and death are omnipresent unless counteracted by arduous and continual human effort. Just as billions of lives have been lost in complete oblivion to the ravages of “natural causes” – from catastrophic disasters to senescence – so have innumerable works of art, architecture, literature, and technology been lost to these perils. Consider that even the extant works of great known philosophers such as Aristotle or composers such as Georg Philipp Telemann are a fraction of what these great men of the past are known to have created, but which was buried by the sands of time. Imagine, also, what the pitifully short lifespans throughout most human history did to diminish the output of creative geniuses, who, in better times, might have continued to innovate for decades more.

Maintenance is the ability to preserve and transmit existing knowledge, techniques, and objects. It can be performed through sheer effort of will – but only to a point. A European monk or an Arabic scholar in the Middle Ages could spend a lifetime meticulously copying by hand a single book from centuries before his time, only to have it vandalized by one of his successors some generations hence. Even the work of Archimedes was subjected to such savage mistreatment.

Since the Industrial Revolution, and especially since the Information Revolution, the techniques for the preservation of physical goods and knowledge have become tremendously more reliable than was possible in premodern societies. The ability to make multiple copies of an object and potentially inexhaustible copies of an idea – and to maintain detailed visual, textual, and auditory records of particular times, places, and activities, with little effort by historical standards, has preserved many of the accomplishments of prior and current thinkers for the creative faculties of humans to expand upon.

It is doubtful that we, in our time, are inherently more creative than our ancestors. But we do have a much more diverse and advanced subject matter to which to apply our creativity. Where we are free to do so, we may arrange these building blocks of innovation in much the same way that our ancestors arranged sticks and stones – except that the consequences of our actions are much more powerful, life-enhancing, and durable. Our infrastructure and our methods for maintaining and transmitting knowledge separate us from our ancestors to the extent that, to them, we would be as gods.

And yet, none of the wonders that enable progress in our time are ever guaranteed to continue, though not due to inanimate nature and lower life forms alone; those have always been in a steady retreat wherever human reason and productivity were unleashed at anywhere near their fullest extent. But the folly, ignorance, sloth, and envy of other men can all too easily slow the growth of progress-nourishing infrastructure to a crawl, or even reverse it and usher in a new Dark Ages. Coercive policies, economic misconduct and capital consumption, massive wars, widespread prohibitions on peaceful and productive activities, superstitions and irrational taboos, pervasive and disproportionate fears – as embodied in the “Dark Green” environmentalists’ progress-killing “precautionary principle” – and a desire for “security” over liberty, for “tradition” over growth, and for stasis over innovation, are all forces that counteract and threaten the maintenance of our civilization. In most times and places, only a handful of people have been immune to deleterious anti-progressive beliefs and their consequences, but there is no reason why we cannot all rise above such anti-life thinking. We all have the creative faculty in us, and we can all think.

The importance of maintenance to human progress can be carried into the life of the individual with profound consequences that can produce massive personal growth and productivity via a change of habits. A mere creation of reproducible records of one’s past achievements – and their publication on the Internet, where possible – can create a formidable store of knowledge to which the creator and others can refer and which they can build upon. The concepts of open-source software and distributed computing, for instance, are built on this elementary principle, but it can be applied to so many more areas of life. The creative faculty is with us every day, and every day it produces original ideas and methods for improving our lives. But, without adequate maintenance – including the establishment of a concrete form for these innovations – these gifts from within our minds will fade away into insignificance, much like the ruins of antiquity. Developing an improved infrastructure for the products of one’s own mind may be the first step toward revitalizing the infrastructure of civilization itself.

Click here to read more articles in Issue CCXXXVIII of The Rational Argumentator.

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Immigration to the United States from 1870 to 1920 (2004) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

July 22, 2014 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 1 comment

G. Stolyarov II

July 21, 2014

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Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2004 and published in six parts on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007. The essay earned over 109,000 page views on Associated Content/Yahoo! Voices, and I seek to preserve it as a valuable resource for readers, subsequent to the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices. Therefore, this essay is being published directly on The Rational Argumentator for the first time. ***

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~ G. Stolyarov II, July 21, 2014

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An Overview of Immigration to the United States from 1870 to 1920

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From 1870 to 1920, immigrants came to America from all over the world and made irreplaceable contributions. Though frequently discriminated against, most immigrants fought through the difficult times and moved forward to build a better life for themselves. It was not an easy task, but immigrants had a drive to start anew and were determined to live the American Dream and complete the work that dream required.

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Emma Lazarus’s poem, “The New Colossus,” describes with remarkable accuracy some of the actual motives that immigrants had during the time that this poem was written to inaugurate the Statue of Liberty. Such a diverse influx of people had never occurred in US history prior to this time period. Immigrants arrived not only from northern and western European nations, such as Germany, France, and Ireland, but also from Italy, Eastern Europe, Canada, and the Far East. Their motives for seeking a new home were as varied as the places from which they had come.

Numerous immigrants were indeed “struggling to breathe free” as they faced religious and political persecution in their homelands. Jews in Russia were, for example, met with severe government-sanctioned anti-Semitism. The czar’s henchmen would often stage pogroms which destroyed what little property and security Russian Jews were allowed to have. In addition, the draft in Russia was merciless and would often take 25 years of a man’s life away to fight in fruitless wars with outdated weapons and brutal discipline. To many Jews and people in similar situations, America symbolized a place where their freedom of religion and occupation could be exercised to a greater extent than anywhere else in the world.

A large portion of immigrants originated from the rural areas of their home countries, and were especially hard-hit by agricultural troubles. Events all over the world much like potato blight in Ireland that triggered an earlier Irish mass migration led people to move away from densely populated and famine-wrecked countries to a more spacious and plentiful America. Many small farmers and craftsmen were unable to find jobs in their homelands, since their original occupations had been rendered obsolete by large-scale mechanized production while the skilled labor market was already too full for them in Europe.

In general, either the difficulties at home or the prospects in the U.S. were so immense as to compel immigrants to leave many belongings behind and expose themselves to an entirely different language and culture in the U.S. A large number did not intend for the change to be permanent; about three-tenths merely came to earn a large enough amount of money to return home in greater financial security. Yet, whatever their intent, the immigrants profoundly shaped America’s history, economy, and culture.

The Journey to America and Immigrant Processing Upon Arrival

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Many immigrants experienced journeys to the United States that were similar in numerous aspects. Conditions during the voyage and upon arrival had improved from prior eras, but were still uncomfortable and lacking in many respects.

The development of passenger vessels made the journey easier, cheaper, and faster for many immigrants. By the 1870s, steam powered ships replaced sailing ships. They were bigger, faster and safer. Immigrants in the early 1800s had to endure voyages averaging 40 days, depending on weather; by the 1900’s, the average voyage was only one week long.

In order to account for and regulate immigration, the US government established immigrant processing centers on both the East and West Coasts. 70% of the European immigrants beginning in 1855 would be dropped off at Castle Garden on Manhattan Island and pass a series of examinations. In 1892, a new immigrant center at Ellis Island was built to replace Castle Garden. On the West Coast, immigrants, mostly Chinese or Japanese, arrived through Seattle or Angel Island in San Francisco.

The increased convenience of immigration did not, however, imply a level of comfort for the immigrants anywhere near modern standards. Poor sanitation and food, as well as diseases such as cholera and typhus, were still common on the trans-Atlantic liners.

Immigrants who could only afford the minimal third-class fees of about $30 were referred to as “steerage passengers.” The name came from the part of the ship, the steerage, where they were kept and which provided the cheapest possible accommodations. It was crowded below deck, and steerage passengers were seldom allowed to go up for fresh air. The trans-Atlantic shipping companies had not yet learned to provide efficient basic services, such as food, and often fed passengers nothing but soup or stew, and sometimes bread, biscuits, or potatoes.

Many immigrants had to wash themselves with salt water while drinking stagnant water that was stored in dirty casks. At the root of these problems was a mindset on the part of many of the companies that considered the immigrants “human cargo.” These same companies would often ship American-made goods to Europe on the return trip, and could not yet see the essential distinction between transporting products and people. They would learn with time.

Even after the tough voyage, immigrants were not guaranteed entry to America. About 250,000 people (2% of all immigrants) were sent back home. 1st and 2nd class passengers were inspected on the ship, but 3rd class passengers had to go to Ellis or Angel Island for screening, waiting about three to five hours in line and undergoing inspections of both a medical and legal nature.

Officials at Ellis Island also did something that is not commonly done today. When they could not pronounce an immigrant’s name, the immigration inspectors thought that this gave them the prerogative to change the name to something less difficult. Names like “Andrjuljawierjus” might be simplified to “Andrews” or something similar.

How Immigrants Lived Upon Arriving in the United States

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From 1870 to 1920, most immigrants arriving in the United States found themselves facing current material poverty, but immense prospects for opportunity and enrichment. But how did they live in the meantime, as they endeavored to achieve the American Dream?

After arrival, immigrants spread themselves throughout the country. Most of them settled in cities, as it was easiest to find jobs there as well as locate persons of similar background or ideology to oneself and cooperate with them economically. Cities that served as the gateways to immigration also came to house many immigrants. In New York City in 1910, for example, three-fourths of the population consisted either of immigrants or children of immigrants.

For lack of abundant funds, many immigrants in large cities settled in mass tenement and apartment complexes that were affordable but often exhibited uncomfortable living conditions. Many rooms did not have windows, and were ten feet wide at most. Filth, dampness, and foul odors were common inconveniences. Yet for many immigrants, this was only a transitional stage in their lives, but still something unpleasant that left a mark on their experiences.

Many immigrants were able to persevere through initial hard times because of support and guidance from relatives. Immigrant families often served as the basic economic unit; they provided assistance to their members and pooled resources together.

The location of immigrants’ relatives would also often affect their destination. If an immigrant had an uncle or cousin in a particular neighborhood, he would be more likely to settle there himself and maintain close ties. Cooperative arrangements, such as boarding with relatives or native middle and working-class families were common transitional stages for many young immigrants.

But these useful ties did not in any way bog immigrants down in one place or one mode of life for a long time. Mobility was high: the families who inhabited a certain neighborhood were unlikely to still be there in 5 or 10 years. Though ethnic districts existed, most white immigrants lived in ethnically mixed neighborhoods, testifying to the fact that families served to spur on economic opportunity and change, rather than counteract it.

Due to productivity and prudence in saving a large portion of the money they earned, many of the new immigrants were able to quickly rise to middle-class status, and some even made vast fortunes during their lifetimes. While they endured initially unpleasant conditions, these immigrants ultimately saw such circumstances as stepping stones toward a better life than they could get anywhere else in the world.

Immigrant Contributions to American Life and Culture

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Immigration from 1870 to 1920 brought to the United States a vast quantity of both ordinary and extraordinary people: individuals who, through their search for greater opportunity and prosperity, dramatically altered and improved American life and culture.

Samuel Gompers, an immigrant from England, was head of the American Federation of Labor beginning in 1886. He advocated moderate labor reforms but was a staunch opponent of socialism and coercive action on the part of unions. His memoirs give an account of his own life and experiences as an immigrant.

Ironically, however, Gompers himself came to oppose the mass wave of immigration, which he perceived to threaten the workers of his union. Many of the nativist arguments that advocated restricting foreign immigration had come from him and his associates, despite the obvious double standard that this implied.

On the opposite side of the immigration debate was an immigrant from Germany, political cartoonist Thomas Nast. His cartoons in the magazine Harper’s Weekly ridiculed nativist sentiments and advocated fair treatment and equal rights for new arrivals to the country.

Some of the most famous and lasting contributions to American culture have been made by brilliant immigrants like the composer Irving Berlin from Russia. Two of his most famous hits were “God Bless America” and “White Christmas.”

During the first decade of the twentieth century, Frank Capra came to America from Italy as a little boy. He would grow up to be a six-time Oscar-winning director who would produce some of the best-known films of the 1930s, including “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

It is important to keep in mind that, were it not for these individual immigrant innovators, American culture would not have attained some of its distinct elements. Rather than “invading” the American way of life, immigrants, in all spheres of activity, brought about great progress.

Though some immigrants were great creators and innovators, over half identified themselves as unskilled laborers or domestic workers upon arrival. They still had a role to play in the US economy.

Jobs were plentiful, and, especially in a society where living standards rose across the board, there were many jobs for which most natives were overqualified. Those jobs could be taken by immigrant workers, saving businesses money on wages while still giving those workers five or ten times what they would have received in their home countries.

Work in dry-cleaning stores, newsstands, grocery stores, and machine shops, attracted many new arrivals and served as a first step on their upward economic journey. So great was the need for people to operate these jobs, that many of the sparsely populated states actively worked to promote immigration by offering newcomers guaranteed jobs and land grants.

Immigrant Contributions to American Prosperity and Unjust Persecution of Immigrants by Nativists

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Immigrants from 1870 to 1920 made possible America’s economic growth and rise to prominence as a global power. Yet these newcomers also faced unjust persecution from nativists who sought the aid of government to stifle further immigration.

During the past two centuries, small businesses comprised over three-fourths of America’s economy. Small businesses were a sector most crucial and unique to America, as, with scant initial capital, any intelligent man with a profitable idea could quickly rise to financial security.

The small-business field was, without exaggeration, dominated by immigrants. In every U.S. census from 1880 onward, immigrants accounted for a greater percentage of small business owners than natives. These businesses greatly expanded the country’s productivity and job openings, creating jobs for immigrants and natives alike.

Moreover, immigration fueled industrialization. In 1910, foreign-born persons comprised about 53% of the national industrial labor force. So not only did immigrants carry the small business field; they played an indispensable role in large industries as well. One can say with certainty that America would not have reached the status of a global economic power in those days were it not for the contributions of immigrants.

Despite these overt contributions to American prosperity, immigrants encountered a great deal of political regulation and outright opposition from nativist groups allied with the legislature.

Not all legislation discouraged immigration; earlier bills, such as the Homestead Act of 1862 helped attract newcomers by promising anyone who would develop a plot of land in the West for five years ownership of that land. Many Europeans took advantage of this opportunity.

But on the Pacific coast, Chinese immigrants did not fare so well. Bigoted sentiments and laws that began during the Gold Rush era culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, wherein Chinese immigration was forbidden for ten years. This law would be renewed and rendered permanent in the twentieth century and would last until 1943. In 1890, the Federal Government assumed control of immigration, implying that it would be easier to establish nationwide controls for immigration and enforce any initiative that would restrict the inward flow of people.

A slight gain for immigrants, especially those of Asian descent, was the Supreme Court decision of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, in 1898. The Supreme Court ruled that children born in America of Asian parents must be granted citizenship. Denying this citizenship would violate the 14th Amendment clause that classified all persons born on American soil as citizens and would jeopardize the rights of native-born whites with immigrant parents.

The court realized that discriminating against some immigrants could easily be extrapolated to discrimination against large portions of the American population, and that immigrants and America were inseparably linked.

Yet the nativists who controlled the other two branches of the US government continued to push their exclusionist schemes. The Literacy Act of 1917 required arrivals to be literate in some language, therefore cutting off the flow of many of the unskilled and uneducated workers that would have otherwise taken the jobs that no one else wanted.

The death blow to immigration came in 1924, when the National Origins Act set a quota of 150,000 total immigrants per year, disproportionately distributed to England and Northern Europe, with few slots allotted to southern and Eastern Europe and none for Asians. The act ended mass immigration into the U.S. until its repeal in 1965.

Nativist Xenophobia and Persecution of Immigrants

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Immigrants to the United States from 1870 to 1920 were not always welcomed. Many faced unjust and even violent persecution from well-connected nativist groups, who often acted out of nothing more than ignorance and prejudice.

No one expressed and condemned the irrationality of the xenophobia exhibited by the nativist groups against immigrants more vividly than Thomas Nast. His cartoon, ironically titled, “Pacific Chivalry: Encouragement to Chinese Immigration,” portrays Nast’s response to some of the most extreme forms of racism and nativism in the country at the time.

You see a California native whipping and pulling the hair of a defenseless Chinese immigrant. In the inscription in the background, you can barely see written some of the things that aid the abuser in his cruelty. The inscription reads: “Courts of justice closed to Chinese; extra taxes to Yellowjack.”

What does this cartoon suggest about the means that Chinese and many other immigrants had to resist invasions of their rights and dignity? They had just about no means whatsoever. Nast recognized that many of these productive and peace-loving individuals were barred from resisting their inferior condition by small, well-organized activist groups connected with the legislature and prepared to use all means necessary, from the law to vigilante violence, to damage the immigrants. The American people were not opposed to immigration, but many powerful and well-connected elites of the time were.

Indeed, the xenophobia against immigrants sometimes reached horrific extremes. There was substantial discrimination against the Chinese in terms of wages and employment conditions in the West, but this passage by historian John Higham refers to some of the more brutal attacks on their freedoms.

“No variety of anti-European sentiment has ever approached the violent extremes to which anti-Chinese agitation went in the 1870s and 1880s. Lynching, boycotts, and mass expulsions…harassed the Chinese.” (Higham 1963)

Of course, in order to make these actions seem more tolerable in their eyes, nativists tried to justify them by conceiving of Asian immigrants as inferior beings. They could back down somewhat and grant some degree of equality to foreign whites, but this would enable them to play a powerful race card which contained some vicious stereotypes. Anti-immigrant stereotypes were spread by many labor unionists, especially Samuel Gompers, who wrote that “both the intelligence and the prosperity of our working people are endangered by the present immigration. Cheap labor… ignorant labor…takes our jobs and cuts our wages.”

There are numerous fallacies in Gompers’s claims. Immigration creates jobs rather than destroying them. Immigrants did not steal jobs, but rather took work that few natives wanted. Half of immigrants were indeed unskilled, but the other half consisted of people just as, if not more than, educated and innovative than the native population. Indeed, without immigrants, American economic prosperity would have been cut by more than half.

It seems, however, that some debates in American history linger on for centuries. The immigration debate is one of them. Currently, as immigration restrictions in the past thirty years have been laxer than previously, we are experiencing a new massive influx of foreigners into this country. The benefits that these immigrants bring are even more obvious today than ever, but the nativists are still around to attempt to impose stricter quotas and border-control measures. They are often still guided by the same fallacious arguments about immigrants stealing jobs or polluting the country’s culture.

Novelist Stephen Vincent Benet offered a powerful response to nativism, relevant both during his time and today: “Remember that when you say, ‘I will have none of this exile and this stranger for his face is not like my face and his speech is strange,’ you have denied America with that word.”

Sources:

http://web.uccs.edu/~history/fall2000websites/hist153/immigrants.htm
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/historymodules/modules/mod20/main.htm
http://immigrants.harpweek.com/
http://nimbus.mysticseaport.org/voyages/immigration-0.html
http://www.h-net.org/~shgape/bibs/immig.html
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/educators/workshop/european/wimmlink.html
http://dewey.chs.chico.k12.ca.us/bridging.html
http://www.edc.org/CCT/NDL/1998/institute/stan/immlinks.html
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/pages/listimmigratli.html
http://www.bcps.org/offices/lis/models/immigration/resources.html
http://www.pbs.org/newamericans/6.0/html/amimm_pp403.html
http://www.ailf.org/pubed/pe_celeb_historical.asp
http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Immigration/
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/timeline/riseind/immgnts/immgrnts.html
http://www.internationalchannel.com/education/ellis/process.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/immig/native_american3.html
http://mi.essortment.com/postcivilwarr_rrid.htm
http://dig.lib.niu.edu/civilwar/settlement.html
http://www.civilwarhome.com/irish.htm
http://www.marist.edu/summerscholars/97/modimm.htm
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/progress/immigrnt/immigrnt.html
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/riseind/immgnts/immgrnts.html
http://internet.ggu.edu/university_library/histimmi.html
http://www.historychannel.com/ellisisland/index2.html
http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/fall_2000_us_canada_immigration_records_1.html

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An Overview of Immigration to the United States from 1870 to 1920

The Journey to America and Immigrant Processing Upon Arrival

How Immigrants Lived Upon Arriving in the United States

Immigrant Contributions to American Life and Culture

Immigrant Contributions to American Prosperity and Unjust Persecution of Immigrants by Nativists

Nativist Xenophobia and Persecution of Immigrants