The Human Rational Faculty and the Necessity of Property Rights (2005) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

The Human Rational Faculty and the Necessity of Property Rights (2005) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 20, 2014
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Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2005 and published on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007.  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 20, 2014
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Each individual is, by his fundamental and inextricable identity, a rational being, with a means of accurately identifying and analyzing reality with his mind. The individual’s rational faculty is his sole gateway to knowledge, and the sole means by which he can direct the application of his knowledge to the external world.
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Nobody else’s activity of any sort can substitute for the individual’s own thinking, just as nobody else’s activity can substitute for an individual’s own digestion. Each individual is also fundamentally a volitional being, and can choose to default on the responsibility of thinking for himself, thereby also choosing to bear the consequences.

However, whatever he chooses, it remains irrefutably true that he still possesses the capacity to be rational. From this capacity it is implied that he ought to be allowed to be rational, i.e., that he has a natural right to use his reason and benefit from the applications thereof.

Nobody should be permitted to intervene with another individual’s use of reason, nor to substitute his reasoning for another’s and force another to agree with or accept the consequences of his reasoning unless the other explicitly consents.

When two individuals come to an agreement, each has used his own reasoning to embrace it. When, however, such a clear, unambiguous agreement is not present, the individual who presumes to place his thoughts in the stead of another’s is committing the initiation of force, which is the opposite of reason.

Since all natural rights are derived from the human capacity to reason, all violations of natural rights are derived from the initiation of force by some individuals against others.

The only manner in which reason can have any concrete, material expression is by means of property, i.e., those material entities which belong to an individual as a consequence of his use of reason. Even the very capacity to reason itself is dependent on property, as the individual mind is a material entity, and, were it not for the concrete biological mechanisms of the brain, there would not be abstract thought.

Thus, to be able to reason, the individual must have a property in his physical mind. In order for his physical mind to function, an individual must also have property in his physical body, since, not only is the mind part of the body but, without the proper functioning of the remainder of the body, the mind would not be able to survive. In summation, the right to the use of one’s reason implies the right to property in oneself and, as a corollary, the right to use one’s reason to determine what shall happen to one’s mind and body.

History of the 1848-1853 California Gold Rush (2003) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

History of the 1848-1853 California Gold Rush (2003) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 20, 2014
******************************
Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2003 and published in six parts on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007.  The essay earned over 43,500 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 20, 2014
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Background History of the California Gold Rush

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The real story of the California Gold Rush has to be traced back to the Mexican War, which was fought from 1846 to 1848. The war started out as a dispute over Texas. However, under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, America ended up not only with Texas, but also Nevada, Utah, Arizona and California.

During this time period, the country was expanding and its transportation improving. Once gold was discovered in California, waves of fortune-seekers, also known as 49ers (because they came during 1849), came from all over the world to California, thus drastically impacting both the economy and social life of California, which in turn impacted the rest of the nation. Even though few of the 49ers actually made a fortune from mining gold, many found other ways to earn a living, especially once the gold became scarce and xenophobia emerged. Nonetheless the incredible number and diversity of people who came to California seeking an easy fortune influenced Californian and American life.

John Sutter, on whose lands the gold discovery had occurred, moved to California from Switzerland in 1830 and obtained a property charter from the Mexican government. During this time, he established a fort at New Helvetia, at the junction of the American and Sacramento rivers. He strove to build an agricultural empire, but the gold discovery was the beginning of the downfall of his dream. Along with James Marshall, Sutter located gold at his mill in 1848.

It may seem odd that James Marshall and John Sutter were quite displeased upon testing the gold and confirming its identity. But Sutter was barely interested in profits to be made from the discovery; his original plan was to establish an agricultural powerhouse, and he stuck to it. He was afraid, however, that if news of the discovery leaked, his workers would abandon him and try to make a profit of their own from the gold fields. He also feared the competition over land and resources that would ensue if a massive rush of immigrants came to California to seek gold. Thus, he and Marshall agreed to keep the discovery secret until the mill’s completion, so that Sutter would retain the manpower necessary for the job.

Stories circulated the countryside within weeks. However, they were all too often dismissed as wild rumors, until they caught the ears of a new and ambitious Mormon immigrant, Samuel Brannan. Brannan immediately sensed immense riches in store from the potential gold boom, and keenly bought most of the picks, pans, and shovels in California at extremely low prices. Then, after he established a colossal stockpile, he ran through the streets of San Francisco, holding up gold, and shouting “Gold, gold in the American River!” He provided enough empirical evidence to be believed and trigger a massive inflow of immigrants as the news spread east. In just the next nine weeks, by selling mining equipment at prices far higher than his costs, he made $36,000.

Gold Seekers’ Journey Westward During the 1849 California Gold Rush

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The journey westward during the 1849 California Gold Rush was an arduous ordeal for many. As news of the 1848 discovery at Sutter’s Mill spread, people all over the United States were allured by the prospect of gold, but the pathways from the population centers of the East Coast to California were few and arduous. Two essential choices for forty-niners, the first wave of Gold Rush immigration in 1849 were an overland journey across the 2000 mile stretch of yet unsettled land in between, or a sea route around Cape Horn in South America.

The sea route, preferred by gold seekers from the Eastern states, would often take about six months. It was not a pleasant journey, either. Seasickness and spoilage of food and water were omnipresent.

Some time later, a third route was thought up, though not any less perilous than the other two. Migrants sailed as far south as Panama, disembarked, then made 3-day trip by mule and canoe across land to the Pacific side, where they boarded another ship. Tropical diseases in that part of the world were devastating. Malaria and cholera claimed many lives. Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant, when journeying to California in 1852, wrote that a third of his regiment was killed or incapacitated by these afflictions. To add to the problems, ships to ferry the immigrants up to San Francisco were rare, and the travelers would often end up being stranded in Panama for months.

Over land, a favorite route of immigrants from the Central states was the Oregon-California Trail, a well-worn path carved out several years earlier by fur trappers. This overland road much shorter than the sea route, but not faster. Its travelers would go for six months by covered wagon through desolate landscapes with scarce supplies of water. The Native Americans along the way, whom many xenophobic settlers initially feared, actually turned out to be helpful, providing supplies, information, and guides. The occasional entrepreneur in the area would also capitalize on the scarcity of water by selling it at prices as high as $100 per drink. Supply and demand worked even in the desert.

Because travelers reached California successfully did not imply that their journey was over. Gold was further inland near Placerville, far from the port of San Francisco where the ships docked. Some travelers were also repulsed upon reaching San Francisco by the sight of numerous bars, gambling places, and saloons, all sites of licentious life that had been taboo in the East. Additionally, many immigrants explored the Sacramento River and its delta for new gold sites to mine.

Key Figures in the California Gold Rush: John Sutter, Richard Barnes Mason, William T. Sherman, and Ulysses S. Grant

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The 1849 California Gold Rush was a magnet for ambitious personalities: individuals who would later rise to extraordinary heights in American politics, military, and economic life. The Gold Rush ruined the great landowner John Sutter but served as a testing ground for Richard Barnes Mason, Ulysses S. Grant, and William T. Sherman.

John Sutter was, as he had predicted, economically destroyed by the inpouring of gold seekers into California. His ambitions for an expansive enterprise were ruined by the desertion of his laborers and by squatters overrunning his lands after the discovery of gold. Sutter never extensively attempted to benefit from the Gold Rush, except for one half-hearted expedition which he abandoned almost upon arriving at the gold fields. His losses were never officially compensated.

Another key person in Gold Rush history was Colonel, later General, Richard Barnes Mason, who served as the fifth military governor of California from 1847 to 1849. Governors were changed with extreme rapidity during that time period, but Mason served on his post the longest. He was an astute observer who toured the gold fields with his assistant, Lieutenant William Tecumseh Sherman, and reported to Washington first-hand observations of the social and economic conditions in the state. His writings are an excellent primary source for understanding the Gold Rush phenomenon.

Sherman, the Sherman who would become an infamous Civil War general, wrote down his observations in his memoirs. Quite unexpectedly, he became a banker for Lucas, Turner & Co. in September of 1853, and oversaw construction of “Sherman’s Bank,” a building so durable and finely engineered that it still stands in California today.

The California Gold Rush seemed to be a magnet for future great generals. Ulysses Grant, upon arriving in California, also wrote detailed notes for his memoirs. His own experiences however, were not to be as glorious as his later life. Grant struck a deal with his troops to start a potato growing business, which failed miserably.

Grant’s financial failure happened because hundreds of other entrepreneurs got the same idea at the same time. So many potatoes were grown that season that everybody had enough for themselves, and no one wanted to buy any. So Grant and his troops ended up eating a lot of what they grew and letting the rest rot away. As for Grant himself, put simply, he had a drinking problem, which would notoriously feature in his later life. In 1853, he was discharged from his regiment and sent home, though he conveniently omits this fact from his accounts.

Economic and Cultural Leaders During the 1849 California Gold Rush

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A number of America’s future economic and cultural leaders began their rise to prominence during the 1849 California Gold Rush. Among them were such individuals as Mark Twain, Sam Brannan, Levi Strauss, Phillip Armour, John Studebaker, Henry Wells, and William Fargo.

The Gold Rush was the proving ground for Samuel Clemens, the future Mark Twain. He came to California as an absolute unknown and took a job at the San Francisco Call, one of the two newspapers in the city at the time. He distinguished himself before the world in a rather unorthodox manner, writing a story about a local frog-jumping contest.

As for Sam Brannan, the great businessman who first spread news of gold’s discovery in California, he became the richest man in California without once mining the gold himself. He outmaneuvered the market many times through his publicity skills and adept purchases, eventually owning much of downtown San Francisco and even printing his own currency. Brannan was also disgusted with some of the racist, nativist miners’ oppression of foreigners and new arrivals in the state. He often broke up ethnic clashes and defended the rights of immigrants against the typically racist-slanted legislature. Why did Brannan care about the plight of working immigrants? The simplest answer is that foreigners were a large portion of his customer base, and the more miners were in the business, the more Brannan would profit. The market, and its most skilled representatives, are blind to irrational prejudices of race and nationality.

Levi Strauss, the future inventor of blue jeans, was known during the Gold Rush as a dry goods salesman and tent maker. In 1853, he made what he called “canvas pants” out of tent fabric especially for miners. These gained widespread popularity and earned Strauss a fortune.

Another great businessman who got started during the Gold Rush was Phillip Armour, who came to Placerville, California and opened a meat market there. Later, he moved back to Indiana with his profits and founded the gargantuan Armour Meat Packing Company.

Moreover, John Studebaker, a wagon manufacturer, established a firm in California to provide transportation to Oregon pioneers. It would expand to become a major car producer during the first half of the twentieth century.

Finally, Henry Wells and William Fargo offered a stable, honest banking, transportation, and mail delivery system to miners, something that the uncertainty-faced miners desperately needed. Their venture would also soon expand to a nationwide level.

California’s Colossal Economic Growth During the 1849 Gold Rush

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The economy of California grew at a phenomenal rate during the days of the 1849 Gold Rush. Much of this growth was made possible by the laissez-faire economic policies of Governor Richard Barnes Mason.

Prices rose dramatically as more people found gold and gold became widely circulated on the market. Seeing that customers would afford it, merchants raised their fees on all sorts of commodities, from real estate to food to transportation. A miner in California may have made about six to ten times as much as his eastern counterpart, but he also had to pay about that many times more for his upkeep.

The following concrete illustration of this trend is useful: a plot of San Francisco real estate that cost $16 in 1847, sold for $45,000 just 18 months later. Imagine investing in real estate during that time period.

The city of San Francisco grew from an isolated village to a thriving city in the five or so years of the Gold Rush. Its population rose from 1000 in 1848 to 35000 in 1850. This contributed dramatically to California’s admission to the Union as a state in 1850. 30 new houses and 2 new murders came about every day. Theaters and newspapers were built and prospered, and eventually only London would have more newspapers than San Francisco. Wages rose with the general standard of living, and great economic expansion and demand for jobs made employment readily available.

The California agricultural boom was another significant economic result of the Gold Rush. Many of the forty-niners and later immigrants contributed to the growing demand for food. Initially, this was satisfied by imports from merchants as far away as Chile or as nearby as Oregon. However, gradually the capacity was developed to grow the food in California itself. Machines were imported into the country to equip an efficient farming industry, and eventually wheat was exported from California to other parts of the U.S.

This phenomenal economic growth was made possible by Governor Richard Barnes Mason’s laissez-faire approach to the economy. Mason recalled of his administration: “I resolved not to interfere, but permit all to work freely, unless broils and crimes should call for interference.”

During the military period, when California’s future within the United States was still uncertain, as it was not yet a state, and governments changed with great frequency, no political factions could emerge to attempt to regulate and restrict the economy. The courts were based on the Anglo-Saxon model, which stressed property rights and the rights of the accused, though occasional acts of “vigilante justice” did occur. The government was highly limited and mainly acted as a second line of defense against crime. People fended for themselves mostly, and did surprisingly well. Unlike the cities, in the mining camps, crime rates were extremely low, lower than even in the relatively peaceful Eastern cities, mainly because almost every miner owned a gun. The principle of “more guns, less crime” was clearly demonstrated there.

Immigration to California During the 1849 Gold Rush

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The Gold Rush resulted in massive foreign immigration to California from virtually every area of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. At first, immigrants were accepted by almost everyone, as land, gold, and other resources were plentiful. As those resources became less abundant, however, a minority of white racists played on miners’ fears of foreign competition and came to dominate the legislature, setting up barriers to foreign immigrants. While some immigrants left, many others persisted, and set the stage for the vast cultural diversity seen in California today.

During the 1849 Gold Rush, California’s government was tolerant toward all immigrants under the laissez-faire military administration of Richard Barnes Mason. But as soon as the civilian legislature came along in 1850, a minority of racist white miners, who feared competition with foreign immigrants, influenced the government to abandon laissez-faire and institute the Foreign Miners Tax.

This $20 monthly fee from every foreign miner was intended to “protect” American miners from foreign competition. It was a disaster and was repealed a year later, as many foreign miners quit their careers and crowded the cities, jobless and penniless. Some did not give up and spread into other fields of business, having thus defended their individual rights against the bigoted government.

Mexicans had comprised much of California’s population before the Mexican War. The war unseated them from a dominant social position and many came to the mines, seeking to regain lost wealth and status. Tensions between Mexican miners and racist/nativist interests escalated into the 1850s. An example would be the attempt by racist miners, supported by politicians from the East, to drive Mexicans out of the Calaveras and Tuolumne counties where the Mexican miners had claimed land.

The Chinese migrants to California would shape the state extensively. Once again, the Chinese encountered animosity from racist miners and the legislature. Nevertheless, their industry and persistence enabled them to find jobs as cooks, cigar makers, restaurateurs, vegetable farmers, fortune tellers, and merchants, found temples, gambling halls, theaters, and laundries, and become key contributors to the agricultural boom. Many of them planted crops or built levees.

Women and African Americans also found a new home and opportunities in Gold Rush California. In both conventional and unconventional economic roles, they defied constricting Eastern stereotypes and met with great financial success. As for African-Americans, though many came as slaves, they bought freedom with gold and those already free used gold to free families, fight discrimination and start newspapers, schools, and churches. Upon its admission to the Union, so many were free and economically active that slavery was prohibited in the state.

Sources Used

Chevez, Ken. Part Three: State’s Latinos Lost in the Rush. 1/18/98. Sacramento Bee. October 2003 <http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03mexicans.html>

Discovery Of Gold By John A. Sutter. 2003. Virtual Museum Of The City Of San Fransisco. October 2003 <http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist2/gold.html>

Discovery Of Gold Report Of Colonell Mason. 2003. Virtual Museum Of The City Of San Fransisco. October 2003 < http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist6/masonrpt.html>

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. 2003. Virtual Museum Of The City Of San Fransisco. October 2003 <http://www.sfmuseum.net/bio/sherman.html>

Gold Fever Discovery. 1998. Oakland Museum of California. October 2003
<http://www.museumca.org/goldrush/fever05.html>

Gold Fever Entertainment. 1998. Oakland Museum of California. October 2003
<http://www.museumca.org/goldrush/fever18.html>

Gold Rush And Anti-Chinese Race Hatred. 2003. Virtual Museum Of The City Of San Fransisco. October 2003 <http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist6/chinhate.html>

Gold Rush: Gold Country. 2003. Idaho State University.
October 2003 <http://www.isu.edu/~trinmich/goldcountry.html>

Hoge, Patrick. Part Three: Justice Wasn’t Pretty- But It Was Quick. 1/18/98. Sacramento Bee. October 2003 <http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03justice.html>

Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant And The Gold Rush. 2003. Virtual Museum Of The City Of San Fransisco. October 2003 < http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist6/shermgold.html>

Magagnini, Steven. Part Three: Chinese Transformed
Gold Mountain. 1/18/98. Sacramento Bee. October 2003
<http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03asians.html>

Magagnini, Steven. Part Three: Fortune Smiled on Many Black Miners. 1/18/98. Sacramento Bee. October 2003 <http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03blacks.html>

Magagnini, Steven. Part Three: Indian’s Misfortune Was Stamped In Gold. 1/18/98. Sacramento Bee. October 2003 <http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03native.html>

Perkins, Kathryn Doré. Part Three: ‘Real Women’ Who Defied Stereotype. 1/18/98. Sacramento Bee. October 2003 <http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03women.html>

The Gold Rush: Collision Of Cultures. 2003. PBS. October 2003 <http://www.pbs.org/goldrush/collision.html>

The Gold Rush: Journey. 2003. PBS. October 2003 <http://www.pbs.org/goldrush/journey.html>

William T. Sherman And The Gold Rush. 2003. Virtual Museum Of The City Of San Fransisco. October 2003 <http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist6/shermgold.html>

America: Gone West. Cooke, Alistair. BBC/Time-Life Television, 1973.

French Cartoon. 2003. Oakland Museum of California. October 2003 <http://www.museumca.org/goldrush/curriculum/4g/42103011.html>

LEV: The Game – Play to Win Indefinite Life – Article by G. Stolyarov II

LEV: The Game – Play to Win Indefinite Life – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 20, 2014
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LEV: The Game is a work in progress, whose potential to spread the message of indefinite life extension to the general public encourages me greatly. Developed by a team from Belgium – consisting of Anthony Lamot, Mathieu Hinderyckx, and Maxime Devos – this Android mobile game is currently in its Alpha phase. The creators have initiated an Indiegogo fundraiser to raise 6000 Euros (approximately 8100 US dollars at July 2014 exchange rates) in order to greatly expand the game and add its most complex and engaging elements. You can watch their video introduction to the game and the fundraiser here.

The premise of LEV: The Game is the same as the aim of those of us who wish to extend our lives without end. One’s character is challenged with living for as long as possible and attaining longevity escape velocity by reversing the damage of senescence at a faster rate than it accumulates. Every year in the game, the character receives an allotment of energy points with which to purchase power-ups, such as stem-cell therapies, applications of nano-medicine, cybernetic enhancements, or simple increments of diet and exercise. Each power-up can either increase the remaining expected lifespan, increase the rate at which energy points accumulate (called “productivity” in the game), or reduce the character’s rate of bodily decay. The player needs to achieve a delicate balancing of these power-ups to avoid expiring before he/she accumulates enough energy points to purchase the next life-extending advance.

Becoming an Alpha tester of LEV: The Game is absolutely free, and I was pleased to be able to participate in mid-July 2014. After eight attempts, I succeeded in getting a character to reach the age of 200, which is the game’s current victory condition. If the developers can raise their desired funds, they anticipate extending the gameplay to enable one’s character to reach the age of 1000.

LEV_Maximus_VIII_ScreenshotTo become an Alpha tester, you will need to join the LEV: The Game (Alpha) Google Group, using a Google account that is also linked to a mobile phone or tablet that runs the Android operating system. After you join, you can download the game from the Google Play store here. Remember to click the “Become a Tester” button to enable the download to work. When testing the game in this early stage, make sure you un-pause it first using the speed settings in the top-left-hand portion of the screen, before navigating to any of the other available windows.

Why LEV: The Game is Immensely Important

Our ability to achieve indefinite life extension personally will depend on the amount of resources and support from the general public invested in the overcoming of age-related bodily damage. Most people, unfortunately, continue to either be resigned to the inevitability of death, or to argue against the desirability of indefinite longevity due to extremely basic misconceptions. Even apart from the absurdly false boredom argument, overpopulation argument, and “playing God” argument, there is a more basic fallacy – the Tithonus error, which posits that becoming chronologically older necessarily means becoming biologically more decrepit. Yet the only way indefinite longevity could be achieved would be for people to remain biologically young, so that their susceptibility to deadly diseases does not increase beyond that of people in their twenties today. How could longevity advocates get the general public to understand this? Convincing people through arguments alone may often fail, simply because the Dragon-Tyrant of death is so ubiquitous and so overwhelming that many people will grasp at any straw, no matter how flimsy, to avoid being confronted with the grave injustice of their current predicament.

But a game gives a fresh, different, and engaging way to see and experience what indefinite longevity would truly entail. Anyone playing LEV: The Game would quickly see that becoming increasingly frail is no way to increase life expectancy. Your character will die if he/she experiences sufficient biological decay. You will be able to see a graph of the character’s remaining life expectancy and the rate at which decay is expected to proceed during the years they have left. If you apply the most effective combinations of power-ups, you will also see the life-expectancy curve shift upward – sometimes slightly, at other times by massive jumps. The latter situation reflects what can happen once humans begin to undergo periodic rejuvenation therapies to remove age-related damage, as posited in Dr. Aubrey de Grey’s SENS approach.

Furthermore, LEV: The Game encourages its players to engage in paradigm-shifting thinking about their own future trajectories. Instead of planning for gradual debilitation and eventual death, as most people do today when projecting their careers, retirements, finances, and family lives, a strikingly different mindset can take hold – the quest for perpetual maintenance and a return to youthfulness that may be possible at any chronological age, with sufficient technological advances and vigilance regarding one’s health. I admire the integration in LEV: The Game of biomedical treatments, cybernetic enhancements, and simple prudent habits – such as a healthy diet, regular exercise, cognitive activity, and access to relevant health information (even “Quantified Self” is a power-up that one can purchase). We should all strive to live the most informed and healthy lives possible, given present technology, in order to maximize our chances of surviving to the next wave of breakthroughs on the way to longevity escape velocity.

Not a day passes when I do not think about innovative ways to reach the general public with the message of indefinite life extension. For years, I have advocated the gamification of this literally vital idea as one of the most powerful ways to catalyze cultural change on this issue. I am immensely pleased to now witness such an effort taking off, due to the excellent work of Messrs. Lamot, Hinderyckx, and Devos. I donated to the Indiegogo fundraiser to help propel LEV: The Game to its hopefully world-changing final version. I hope that all readers of this article will be able to do the same.

When Zero’s Too High: Time Preference versus Central Bankers – Article by Douglas French

When Zero’s Too High: Time Preference versus Central Bankers – Article by Douglas French

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The New Renaissance Hat
Douglas French
July 20, 2014
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Central banking has taken interest rate reduction to its absurd conclusion. If observers thought the European Central Bank (ECB) had run out of room by holding its deposit rate at zero, Mario Draghi proved he is creative, cutting the ECB’s deposit rate to minus 0.10 percent, making it the first major central bank to institute a negative rate.

Can a central-bank edict force present goods to no longer have a premium over future goods?

Armed with high-powered math and models dancing in their heads, modern central bankers believe they are only limited by their imaginations. In a 2009 article for The New York Times, Harvard economist and former adviser to President George W. Bush, N. Gregory Mankiw, wrote, “Early mathematicians thought that the idea of negative numbers was absurd. Today, these numbers are commonplace.”

While this sounds clever, Ludwig von Mises undid Mankiw’s analogy long ago. “If he were not to prefer satisfaction in a nearer period of the future to that in a remote period,” Mises wrote of the individual, “he would never consume and enjoy.”

Carl Menger explained that it is “deeply imbedded in human nature” to have present desires satisfied over future desires. And long before Menger, A. R. J. Turgot wrote of the premium of present money over future money, “Is not this difference well known, and is not the commonplace proverb, ‘a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush,’ a simple expression of this notoriety?”

Central bankers can set a certain interest rate, but human nature cannot be eased away, quantitatively or otherwise. But the godfather of all central bankers, John Maynard Keynes, ignored time preference and focused on liquidity preference. He believed it was investments that yielded returns, and wrote, “Why should anyone outside a lunatic asylum wish to use money as a store of wealth?”

If liquidity preference determined the rate of interest, rates would be lowest during a recovery, and at the peak of booms, with confidence high, everyone would be seeking to trade their liquidity for investments in things. “But it is precisely in a recovery and at the peak of a boom that short-term interest rates are highest,” Henry Hazlitt explained.

Keynes believed that those who held cash for the speculative motive were wicked and central bankers must stop this evil. However, as Hazlitt explained in The Failure of the “New Economics,” holding cash balances “is usually most indulged in after a boom has cracked. The best way to prevent it is not to have a Monetary Authority so manipulate things as to force the purchase of investments or of goods, but to prevent an inflationary boom in the first place.”

Keynesian central bankers leave time out of their calculus. While they think they are lending money, they are really lending time. Borrowers purchase the use of time. Hazlitt reminds us that the old word for interest was usury, “etymologically more descriptive than its modern substitute.”

And as Mises explained above, time can’t have a negative value, which is what a negative interest rate implies.

Borrowers pay interest in order to buy present assets. Most importantly, this ratio is outside the reach of the monetary authorities. It is determined subjectively by the actions of millions of market participants.

Deep down, Mankiw must recognize this, writing, “The problem with negative interest rates, however, is quickly apparent: nobody would lend on those terms. Rather than giving your money to a borrower who promises a negative return, it would be better to stick the cash in your mattress. Because holding money promises a return of exactly zero, lenders cannot offer less.”

But still, he approvingly cites German economist Silvio Gesell’s argument for a tax on holding money, an idea Keynes himself approved of.

Keynesian central bankers are now central planners maintaining the unshakable belief that low interest rates put people back to work and solve every economic woe. “But in reality,” writes Robert Murphy, “interest rates coordinate production and consumption decisions over time. They do a lot more than simply regulate how much people spend in the present.”

Murphy points out that low rates stimulate some sectors more than others. Lower rates generally boost housing and car sales, for instance, while not doing much for consumer goods.

More than half a decade of zero interest rates has not lifted anyone from poverty or created any jobs—it has simply caused more malinvestment. It is impossible for the monetary authorities to dictate the proper interest rate, because interest rates determined by command and control bear no relation to the collective time preference of economic actors. The result of central bank intervention can only be distortions and chaos.

Draghi and Mankiw don’t seem to understand what interest is or how the rate of interest is determined. While it’s bad when academics promote their thought experiments, the foolish turns tragic when policymakers use the power of government to act on these experiments.

Douglas E. French is senior editor of the Laissez Faire Club and the author of Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money, written under the direction of Murray Rothbard at UNLV, and The Failure of Common Knowledge, which takes on many common economic fallacies.

This article was originally published by The Foundation for Economic Education.

How the Drug War Drives Child Migrants to the US Border – Article by Mark Thornton

How the Drug War Drives Child Migrants to the US Border – Article by Mark Thornton

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The New Renaissance Hat
Mark Thornton
July 20, 2014
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Most attentive parents today rarely allow their children to go unsupervised, particularly in public. It starts with the wireless baby monitor for the crib and ends with the ever-present cell phone at college graduation.

This is what makes reports from the US-Mexican border so perplexing to most Americans. It is hard to believe that parents would send their children, even young children, to travel many hundreds of miles, up to 1,600 miles without guardianship, or under the control of “mules” who guide the children with the hope of a safe voyage to the United States.

The journey is both harsh and dangerous. The northern regions of Central America (i.e., Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) and Mexico are some of the most dangerous areas of the world. The climate can be harsh, roads and travel conditions are mostly poor, and the children are subjected to robbers, kidnappers, rapists, government police and soldiers, drug cartel members, and bandits of all sorts.

As unbelievable as it seems, Central American parents are sending their children, or more often asking their children to join with them in the United States, in large numbers. In many cases the children flee on their own accord without any guardian.

A decade ago US Border Patrol agents apprehended only several hundred unaccompanied children per year. Over the last nine months they have caught nearly 50,000. Official estimates project the capture rate to reach 10,000 per month by this fall. Those numbers actually hide the enormity of the problem because historically the problem was largely restricted to Mexican children who could be immediately returned to Mexico. During the last couple of years, the majority of growth has come from children from Central American countries and these must be processed and turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (part of HHS).

One suggested reason for the explosion of child immigrants from Central America is the perception and rumors that children from Central America who cross the border will receive a “proviso” which might suggest a permit to stay in the US legally. However, it seems that the proviso is really just a notice to appear in immigration court for deportation proceedings. Whether this gives the children more time in the US, or whether it increases the probability of them being allowed to stay in the US for humanitarian reasons is unclear. In one report, only 1 of 404 children specifically mentioned the possibility of benefiting from US immigration reform.[1]

Even if the proviso rumor was having an impact, it does not explain why the children and their parents would risk such a dangerous journey in the first place.

The Role of the Drug War

The underlying cause for this mass dangerous migration is the US’s war on drugs. Central American countries have become the conduit by which illegal drugs move from South America across the US border. Unlike conventional media sources, who will sometimes vaguely mention violence and instability in Central America as a cause, The Economist [2] quite correctly found the source of the problem in America’s war on drugs:

Demand for cocaine in the United States (which, unlike that in Europe, is fed through Central America), combined with the ultimately futile war on drugs, has led to the upsurge in violence. It is American consumers who are financing the drug gangs and, to a large extent, American gun merchants who are arming them. So failing American policies help beget failed states in the neighbourhood.

The result has been that the drug cartels have a great deal of control over much of northern Central America. The cartels control the governments, judges, police forces, and even some prisons and some of the military through a combination of bribery, threats, and outright force.

As a consequence of this control drug gangs and cartels can operate in the open or they can operate deep within the jungle beyond the reach of the law. In turn, the drug cartels can act above the law and as a result they have created a culture of violence, building on the civil wars of previous decades.

The countries in the northern Central American region, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, have the highest murder rate of any region in the world. The region’s murder rate is 7.5 times the murder rate of the North American region.

Globally, the top murder rate in any given year since the 1990s has been Honduras or El Salvador. In 2012, nearly 1 out of every 1,000 citizens in Honduras was murdered. In addition to murder, there are high rates of other types of violence, crime, and intimidation. A very large percentage of the entire Salvadoran-born population has migrated, mostly to the United States.

In addition to violence, the war on drugs has been a disruptive force for the Central American economies. After reading about the region, is anyone likely to make travel plans to go there, or to consider opening a business there? Obviously, the war on drugs has been highly disruptive for job creation, commerce, and international investment outside the drug cartels themselves. Therefore it would be more correct to say that it is not so much the attraction of opportunities in the US, but the lack of and reduction in opportunities in Central America that are spurring emigration, and that this is directly linked to the war on drugs.

When you try to make sense of parents sending their children on such a dangerous undertaking, just remember it is just another despicable result of the war on drugs with few solutions.

The Economist recommends the repeal of the war on drugs and the legalization of drugs globally as the solution. Its second best solution is for the United States to finance an effort to rebuild the institutions (i.e., police, courts, prisons, etc.) and infrastructure (i.e., military, transportation, and education systems) in the countries of Central America:

Such schemes will not, however, solve the fundamental problem: that as long as drugs that people want to consume are prohibited, and therefore provided by criminals, driving the trade out of one bloodstained area will only push it into some other godforsaken place. But unless and until drugs are legalised, that is the best Central America can hope to do.

In other words, ending the war on drugs is the only solution.

Notes

[1] http://www.unhcrwashington.org/children/reports, p. 31.

[2] “The drug war hits Central America: Organised crime is moving south from Mexico into a bunch of small countries far too weak to deal with it,” The Economist, April 14, 2011.

Mark Thornton is a senior resident fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and is the book review editor for the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. He is the author of The Economics of Prohibition, coauthor of Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War, and the editor of The Quotable Mises, The Bastiat Collection, and An Essay on Economic Theory. Send him mail. See Mark Thornton’s article archives.

This article was published on Mises.org and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution United States License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

What the Media Won’t Report About Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 – Article by Ron Paul

What the Media Won’t Report About Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 – Article by Ron Paul

Comments 4 comments
The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
July 20, 2014
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Just days after the tragic crash of a Malaysian Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine, Western politicians and media joined together to gain the maximum propaganda value from the disaster. It had to be Russia; it had to be Putin, they said. President Obama held a press conference to claim – even before an investigation – that it was pro-Russian rebels in the region who were responsible. His ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, did the same at the UN Security Council – just one day after the crash!While Western media outlets rush to repeat US government propaganda on the event, there are a few things they will not report.

They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported protesters plotted the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Without US-sponsored “regime change,” it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in the unrest that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened.

The media has reported that the plane must have been shot down by Russian forces or Russian-backed separatists, because the missile that reportedly brought down the plane was Russian made. But they will not report that the Ukrainian government also uses the exact same Russian-made weapons.

They will not report that the post-coup government in Kiev has, according to OSCE monitors, killed 250 people in the breakaway Lugansk region since June, including 20 killed as government forces bombed the city center the day after the plane crash! Most of these are civilians and together they roughly equal the number killed in the plane crash. By contrast, Russia has killed no one in Ukraine, and the separatists have struck largely military, not civilian, targets.

They will not report that the US has strongly backed the Ukrainian government in these attacks on civilians, which a State Department spokeswoman called “measured and moderate.”

They will not report that neither Russia nor the separatists in eastern Ukraine have anything to gain but everything to lose by shooting down a passenger liner full of civilians.

They will not report that the Ukrainian government has much to gain by pinning the attack on Russia, and that the Ukrainian prime minister has already expressed his pleasure that Russia is being blamed for the attack.

They will not report that the missile that apparently shot down the plane was from a sophisticated surface-to-air missile system that requires a good deal of training that the separatists do not have.

They will not report that the separatists in eastern Ukraine have inflicted considerable losses on the Ukrainian government in the week before the plane was downed.

They will not report how similar this is to last summer’s US claim that the Assad government in Syria had used poison gas against civilians in Ghouta. Assad was also gaining the upper hand in his struggle with US-backed rebels and the US claimed that the attack came from Syrian government positions. Then, US claims led us to the brink of another war in the Middle East. At the last minute public opposition forced Obama to back down – and we have learned since then that US claims about the gas attack were false.

Of course it is entirely possible that the Obama administration and the US media have it right this time, and Russia or the separatists in eastern Ukraine either purposely or inadvertently shot down this aircraft. The real point is, it’s very difficult to get accurate information so everybody engages in propaganda. At this point it would be unwise to say the Russians did it, the Ukrainian government did it, or the rebels did it. Is it so hard to simply demand a real investigation?

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

The Constitution and Sectional Discord in the 1850s (2003) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

The Constitution and Sectional Discord in the 1850s (2003) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

Comments 0 Comment
The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 20, 2014
******************************
Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2003 and published in four parts on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007.  The essay earned over 3,700 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 20, 2014
***
The 1850s were a time of intense escalation for a sectional conflict between the free-labor-based, industrial North and the slavery-based agrarian South. In this controversy, both sides claimed sanction for their point of view and vision of America’s political future from the country’s founding document, the Constitution. Thus, the nature of the highest law of the land turned it from a cohesive force into fuel for the coming clash between the North and South. The contents of and the omissions in the Constitution, as well as the greatly varying interpretations thereof, brought about this state of affairs.
***

Multiple interpretations of the Constitution that fed into the crisis of the 1850s had existed since 1798, when Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions proclaimed that the Constitution and the Federal Government were the products of a compact amongst the states, and that the Federal Government’s legislation possessed no legitimate connection to the interests of the people unless verified by more direct representatives thereof (Norton 225).

This was the origin of the powerful new doctrine of States’ Rights, which Southern politicians would develop over the course of the next 63 years. During the Nullification Crisis of 1832, John Calhoun and other leading South Carolina politicians argued that a state had the right to overturn federal legislation, such as a deleterious tariff, which was passed without that state’s consent (Norton 383).

Following the immense territorial gains of the Mexican War, the issue of States’ Rights in the context of the status of slavery in the new territories gained even greater prominence. Lewis Cass, Democratic Presidential candidate in 1848, proposed the doctrine of popular sovereignty to enable the residents of a given territory to decide whether or not to institute slavery in the territory and in the state that it would become. Cass’s argument hinged on the notion that Congress did not have the Constitutional authority to legislate slavery in the territories (Norton 402).

Already this philosophy conflicted with a sentiment emerging in the North and expressed in the Wilmot Proviso of 1846, which sought Congressional action for the abolition of slavery from all territories gained from Mexico (Norton 400). By 1850, old political safeguards, such as the Missouri Compromise, which were designed to quell any discord in regard to the issue of slavery’s status in new territories, had begun to atrophy as the Compromise of 1850 legislated for California’s admission as a free state and the extension of slave status to territories such as Utah, which were North of the Missouri Compromise line (Norton 405).

During the 1850s, the safeguards to the relative stability of the Union during prior decades steadily began to crumble. The Compromise of 1850 sparked hostility from abolitionists, free blacks, and an increasing number of moderate Northerners via the enactment of a draconian Fugitive Slave Act. Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 dealt the death blow to the Missouri Compromise by outright annulling it and granting the residents of the Kansas and Nebraska territories the ability to decide the status of slavery therein by popular vote.

What resulted was a state of quasi-war known as “Bleeding Kansas,” in which over 200 people were murdered on both sides and dishonest election practices were rampant (Norton 413). In 1857, the Supreme Court itself addressed the issue of the Constitution in the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, ruling essentially that black Americans were not citizens of the United States and that Congress had no power to bar slavery from the territories (Norton 415). This ruling, along with the presence of a majority of Southern judges on the Court indicated that not even this ideally impartial body was exempt from the regional struggle.

The Constitution, indeed, was not a perfect a document, and some of the words and concepts therein left the political stage open to the enmity between the advocates of freedom and the slaveholders. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison wrote that, although the Constitution did not contain explicit mention of the words “slave” or “slavery,” it did implicitly and deliberately seek to legitimize the institution. Euphemisms such as “other persons” were used in the text, and the three-fifths clause, which counted every slave as three-fifths of a state’s inhabitant, entrenched the status of the slave as an inferior and inherently different being in the eyes of the law.

In addition, via the promise to aid states in the event of “domestic violence,” the Constitution could be interpreted to mandate Congress to suppress slave revolts (Norton 203). Such facts permitted Garrison to chastise the Constitution as an instrument of an oppressive government that violated the liberties naturally attributable to every man.

Abolitionists grew increasingly enraged in regard to the Constitution’s treatment of a slave as three-fifths of a person and the South’s disproportionate representation in the House of Representatives as a result.

To be fair, however, an alternate interpretation of the Constitution’s mentions of slavery can be argued. It was precisely because the Founders recognized the incompatibility of slavery with individual rights and wished to see its eventual extinction that they omitted any explicit references to slaves and instead unequivocally acknowledged them to be “persons.” Furthermore, the three-fifths compromise can be seen as a political necessity during the Union’s formation – as without it, there would have been little chance of getting Southern states to consent to the Constitution.

During the 1850s, while the Abolitionists in the North condemned the U. S. Constitution for its alleged support of slavery, Southern planters employed the Constitution’s perceived implicit sanction of slavery in order to claim protected or at least inviolable status for the practice.

An anonymous Georgian wrote in “Plain Words for the North” that the Constitution had recognized slavery where it existed and, since men from such regions had been pivotal in assuring the expansion of the United States into new territories, they should possess a voice in determining slavery’s status. If slaves were indeed property, as the Georgian claimed the Constitution to acknowledge, then it would be a grave injustice for Congress to prevent their mobility into land partly gained by the efforts of the slaveholders.

In the meantime, the Constitution itself did not in fact conclusively and unequivocally recognize slavery’s right to exist, as even slavery proponents like President James Buchanan seemed to recognize. In a message to Congress, Buchanan proposed an “explanatory amendment” assuring the perpetuation of slavery and reinforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. The fact that a similar clause was not present within the original document, along with the absence of a contrary clause abolishing slavery, indicated that the Constitution was ambiguous on the subject and open to a range of conflicting interpretations.

These conflicting interpretations of the Constitution further exacerbated the situation. Confederate President Jefferson Davis developed the argument of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions to its extreme and proposed that because the Constitution was a “compact between independent states” and because the process of amendment ratification heavily emphasized state sovereignty, the individual states maintained the ultimate authority to secede from the Union when they no longer deemed the compact advantageous.

Abraham Lincoln, expressing a diametrically opposite view, declared that no state had ever existed as a sovereign entity outside of the Union and that only by virtue of the national Constitution, formed within the framework of a federal Union, could the states claim whatever rights they possessed. By Lincoln’s analysis of the Constitution, States’ Rights could not be but subordinate to the federal authority that engendered them.

Both Lincoln and Davis harbored a fundamental respect for the Constitution, but their irreconcilable interpretations thereof helped establish them as the leaders of the opposing sides in the upcoming war. Ultimately, the “proper” interpretation of the Constitution on this issue would be settled by force and by blood.

In the North during the 1850s, many Americans perceived slavery as an inherent violation of the individual liberties that the Constitution was supposed to represent. The cartoon “Forcing Slavery Down the Throat of a Free-Soiler” dramatized this sentiment by depicting Democratic politicians shoving a slave into the mouth of a resisting free man who cries “Murder!”

Forcing_SlaveryMany Northerners feared that integrating free citizens and slaveholders was another ploy by the Slave Power, a Southern oligarchy bent on extending its domain over the entirety of the United States, intending ultimately to send even the free men of the North into tyranny by unconstitutionally silencing criticism of their actions via such measures as the Gag Rule of 1836, which automatically tabled abolitionist petitions brought before Congress (Norton 400).

But no measure demonstrated the reality of the Slave Power’s existence more than the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, which epitomized the Southern planters’ interpretation of the Constitution.

Chief Justice Roger Taney stated in a burst of historical ignorance that the Founding Fathers had never intended for black men to achieve equal status with the white population of the United States. Moreover, having won on the issue of popular sovereignty in the territories, the Southerners, with Taney as their spokesperson, were no longer content with the mere allowance of choice in the territories. Taney’s ruling amounted to an outright protection of slavery in the territories by barring Congress from limiting its spread (Norton 415).

If this were the true nature of the Constitution, then an increasing number of Northerners could not hope for it to preserve any semblance of liberty in the Union. Ruling on Dred Scott’s status as a slave, the Decision clothed the Fugitive Slave Act in Constitutional “justification” by affirming that presence in a free state did not free a slave.

Dred Scott also gave credence to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s association of Constitutional sanction with the Fugitive Slave Act when he denounced it in 1851. Emerson recognized the blatant immorality of legislation that would grant legal protection to the kidnapping of free black men and escaped slaves alike and would result in suicide for a country that deemed itself the home of freedom. Indeed, with laws and interpretations such as these, the conflict between the Northern and Southern ways of life was irreconcilable and could only erupt in blood.

South Carolina’s secession in December of 1860 set in motion the Southern interpretation of a Constitution dominated by States’ Rights, while the resulting Civil War and Lincoln’s use of 2.3 million federal troops to forcefully reunite the country demonstrated the Northern view which justified use of central authority on the grounds of national unity and individual liberty (Norton 461).

Ironically, the secession of the South permitted Northern Republicans to employ Congressional legislation (and the absence of Southern opposition) as a means to firmly establishing their own interpretation of the Constitution.

In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, assuring that slavery would exist no more and ending the dispute over its status in the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 guaranteed that all men born or naturalized in the United States were citizens of their respective states and entitled to inalienable individual rights, thus overturning the Dred Scott Decision. Despite the fact that the contents, omissions, and possibilities for opposing interpretations within the Constitution greatly fueled the discord of the 1850s, the document was ultimately perfectible through the amendment process to the extent of assuring a just resolution to the ideological facet of the nation’s greatest inter-regional conflict.

Source

Norton, Katzman, et. al. A People and a Nation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

The Debate Regarding the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 (2003) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

The Debate Regarding the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 (2003) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

Comments 0 Comment
The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 20, 2014
******************************
Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2003 and published in four parts on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007.  The essay earned over 14,000 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 20, 2014
***

Mid-1798 was the culmination of a development of heated antagonisms which had entangled the United States on both the domestic and the foreign scenes. The passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in June and July of that year was met with a myriad of responses by various influential individuals and political movements within the country, thus adding fuel to a multifaceted dispute. Key areas of intense disagreement included relations with European powers, the nature of acceptable political dissent, and the distinction between loyalty to the Constitution and the present wielders of power.

This essay will examine the historical events and controversies central to the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts and the debate regarding them.

American Diplomacy with Britain and France

***

In 1793 France, engulfed by a bloody revolution, declared war on Holland, Spain, and its archrival, Great Britain. The United States encountered a dilemma; it maintained key ties with both France, its principal ally by the Treaty of Alliance of 1778, and Great Britain, its chief commercial partner and the source of much of its overseas revenue.

In April 1793, Citizen Edmond Genet, a representative of the French government, employed the alliance with the United States as the pretext for recruitment of Americans on American soil to fight the British in the Western hemisphere (Norton 219). Genet also sought to entangle America in the war with Great Britain, facing instead a neutrality proclamation by President Washington, who strove to retain friendly impartiality between the United States and each of the warring powers.

Meanwhile, in hopes of averting war with England and resolving matters such as the stationing of British troops in the American Northwest and the British seizure of American merchant ships with French wares from the West Indies, Washington sent Chief Justice John Jay to negotiate a treaty in 1794-95. The treaty satisfied a substantial portion of the United States’ requests and set its relations with Britain on a stable footing (Norton 221).

In the meantime, however, the Jay Treaty provoked a reaction by France, manifested by the Directory’s order to intercept American vessels that transported British goods. Upon the deployment of John Marshall, Elbridge Gerry, and C. C. Pinckney for the purpose of negotiating an end to these violations, the American envoys were met by three agents of Foreign Minister Talleyrand, who demanded a bribe, a loan, and an apology for President Adams’ anti-French remarks before the negotiations could even begin. Their extortionist approach was publicized in the “XYZ Affair,” which sparked a severe attitudinal backlash against France within the United States (Norton 224).

Federalists’ and Republicans’ Views of Britain and France

***

As fighting between American and French navies in the Caribbean developed into an unofficial war, the ruling Federalist Party in the United States saw the volatile situation as a pretext for implementing domestic controls. Hence, the Alien and Sedition Acts, legislation that lengthened immigrants’ naturalization period (Naturalization Act), gave the President almost unlimited power to detain (Alien Enemies Act) or deport them (Alien Friends Act), and rendered any criticism of government policy a virtual crime (Sedition Act), came into being. The Federalists hoped thereby to kill two birds with one stone, to actively resist France and to crush their primary political rivals, the Democratic-Republicans.

The dispute over foreign affairs was one of the key issues which separated the advocates of the Alien and Sedition Acts from their opponents. The rampant Reign of Terror during the French Revolution horrified many Federalists, and the effrontery of Commissioners X, Y, and Z even further intensified their hostilities toward France.

James Madison wrote concerning President John Adams’s opinion of France that Adams considered the French and American revolutions to be diametrically opposite in principle. Alexander Hamilton added that it would be treason for an American to sympathize with France and thereby offend his own government, which had been so callously mistreated. Hamilton and the High Federalists especially constantly urged for an official declaration of war against France during 1798-99 (Norton 226).

The Republicans, on the contrary, sympathized with the French Revolution and viewed the XYZ affair as exploited out of proportion by the Federalists to advance the ulterior motives of the latter. Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Madison that the XYZ papers were revealed to the American public in a misconstrued format, for the purpose of creating an intentional “shock” and arousing animosity against France.

While the Federalists sought stable commercial and cultural relations with Britain, the Republicans sensed danger in all things British. Jefferson, writing to Phillip Mazzei, explicitly mentioned the Federalists’ association with England and English monarchy, and the purported desires of the Federalists to re-impose British-style government on the United States. While the Federalists perceived the integrity of America as threatened by French extortion, the Republicans saw a radically different menace in British-imitating aristocracy. Whereas the Federalists persecuted French sympathizers because of the alleged threat to national security that the latter caused, the Republicans saw the threat in the Federalists’ persecution itself.

Arguments About the Permissibility of Political Dissent

***

Aside from issues of desirable American foreign policy toward Britain and France, the arguments over the Alien and Sedition Acts also encompassed issues of free speech and political dissent.

For the Federalists, the acts were an opportunity, explicitly acknowledged by Senate whip Theodore Sedgwick, to eliminate factionalism and opposition within the country. Fifteen indictments and ten convictions resulted from the Acts, the victims including outspoken Republican newspaper editors and Matthew Lyon, a Republican congressman (Norton 224).

The Federalists did not consider the silencing of critics to be in opposition to the First Amendment; John Allen, a Federalist congressman, expressed the generally prevailing view within his party that the freedom of the press did not imply the right to slanderous smearing or incitement toward subversion of lawful government. Allen’s statement assumed that the integrity of Federalist policies was beyond question, and anyone who doubted their validity was automatically a liar and an insurrectionist.

In short, the Federalists did not see a distinction between forceful revolution and peaceful denunciation of government policies. The Republicans, on the contrary, recognized the philosophy behind the Sedition Act to be a foundation for dictatorial oligarchy and the antithesis of a free society.

Representative Edward Livingston, for example, noted that the Acts invested in the President (and his Federalist-packed courts) the authority to determine what constituted a crime under them, whom to convict, and how to punish the convicted. Thus, the Acts violated the balance between the various branches of government and tipped the scales in extreme favor of the executive.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison undertook a campaign against the Acts on a state level, drafting the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, which proclaimed the laws unconstitutional due to the fact that state approval of the measures had been bypassed. The Constitution and the Federal Government, it was argued, were the products of a compact amongst the states, and the Federal Government’s legislation possessed no legitimate connection to the interests of the people unless verified by more direct representatives thereof (Norton 225). Thus the Republicans, far from espousing any anti-American rhetoric, actively condemned Federalist policy using the principles of the American revolution and of a limited government that safeguards, not violates, the sacred liberties of man.

It is fortunate that the Republicans won the debate over the Alien and Sedition Acts, thereby setting a strong precedent against government suppression of criticism which has lasted to this day. Free political speech came under attack in the United States during the first decades of the country’s existence, and it thankfully withstood that attack.

Loyalty to the Constitution Versus Loyalty to the Government

***

In the political disputes over the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the distinction between loyalty to the Constitution and loyalty to the established government further separated Federalists and Republicans in the controversy over the Acts.

Representative Albert Gallatin criticized the Federalists for equating the two loyalties and, in contraposition, the two disloyalties. The idea that an opposition to the temporary majority of the present day is an opposition to the Constitution was, according to Gallatin, “subversive of the principles of the Constitution itself.”

The Federalists, by rendering criticism of their measures illegal, would thereby institutionalize their regime into a force-backed behemoth that would no longer be susceptible to the interests and displeasures of the people. With the press silenced, both sides of an issue would not be able to be transferred to the public, who would thus be manipulated by the government into favoring the incumbency. How, then, would the First Amendment apply? This perversion of the public’s electoral right was, stated the Republicans, the gateway to dictatorship.

Both the Federalists and the Republicans viewed each other as traitors to the American essence. The former categorized treason as dislike of the political status quo, whereas the latter saw the status quo as a form of treason in itself.

On the foreign front, the Quasi-War with France was resolved during the Convention of 1800, canceling the Treaty of Alliance of 1778 and freeing America from all binding foreign obligations (Norton 226).

Domestically, the Alien and Sedition Acts proved to be the Federalists’ undoing. Matthew Lyon, arrested during the Federalist reign of censorship, would cast the deciding ballot in favor of Republican Thomas Jefferson in 1800. Jefferson would pardon all persons convicted under the Sedition Act.

The Acts themselves expired in 1801, and the newly empowered Republicans had no intention of renewing them. The controversies over foreign affairs, political dissent, and the nature of Constitutional adherence were ultimately resolved in the Republicans’ favor; war with France was averted, freedom of speech reinstated, and loyal opposition forces encouraged in American politics up to the present day. Since the death of the Alien and Sedition Acts, America has remained a haven for spirited and vibrant ideological dispute.

To this day, it is urgent for Americans to keep in mind that loyalty to the United States and to the Constitution does not necessarily imply loyalty to the government currently in power, which can and often does trample on America’s founding principles and neglect the proper nature and limits of its operation.

Source

Norton, Katzman, et. al. A People and a Nation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

History of the Minoan Civilization of Ancient Crete (2002) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

History of the Minoan Civilization of Ancient Crete (2002) – Essay by G. Stolyarov II

Comments 1 comment
The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 20, 2014
******************************
Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2002 and published in four parts on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007.  The essay earned over 32,200 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 20, 2014
***

The Minoan civilization of ancient Crete has long fascinated historians and students of history. As early as about 4000 years ago, the Minoans already had a thriving culture with major commercial, esthetic, and technological accomplishments, unparalleled virtually anywhere else in the world of their time. Some have even speculated that the Greek legend of the ultra-advanced ancient city of Atlantis was based on knowledge, passed down through the ages, of the accomplishments of Minoan Crete.

This essay will examine key aspects of Minoan life and culture. We begin by looking at this civilization’s emergence and the kind of geographical environment in which it came to be. We then continue the examination of the Minoan civilization of ancient Crete by discussing the Minoan economy and government – both of which were remarkably advanced for their time and allowed the Minoans a then unparalleled degree of liberty and prosperity. We proceed to discuss this culture’s religious, esthetic, and technological aspects, the athletic activities common in Minoan Crete, and the manner in which this remarkable ancient civilization met its end.

Beginnings of the Minoan Culture

The site of Knossos, the capital of ancient Crete, possessed discernible human influences from as early as 7000 BC. The beginning of intense development can be detected at about 3000 BC.

The Minoans originated in Asia Minor and spoke a language not related to the Indo-European group. The interpretation of their scripts and any manner of their phonetics are lost to us, although Myceneans and later Greeks may have borrowed certain Minoan aspects of speech.

Centralization of government was gradually instituted with the construction of the first Palace in Knossos at about 2000 BC.

When population reached levels exceeding the available food supplies, migrations to neighboring islands were required to extend the accessible arable territory. Need of a navy also arose for purposes of transportation as well as commerce with other Mediterranean cultures for the acquisition of food and other raw goods.

Geography of Crete

Crete, a large island in the Mediterranean, lies halfway between Asia Minor and Greece, granting it a central spot in numerous ancient trade routes on the sea.

During the earliest days of its development, Crete was free from invasions, since no civilization had yet developed a sufficiently massive and functional navy to mount an expedition. This permitted relatively calm development, where resources could be employed for technological advancement and the arts rather than frequent warfare, subsistence, and repairs. The Minoans as a result created few defensive structures and no standing army, since the necessity for these was not present.

Crete possesses a temperate climate and highly productive soil. Large families were common, as demonstrated by houses of four to six rooms for even the poorest dwellers within the realm. Evidently, the frequent agricultural surpluses resulted in rapid population growth and hence the need for expansion and trade.

Economy

The primary vehicles of the Minoan economy were mercantile ships also equipped with armaments. They conducted journeys to mainland Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine. From there they imported basic resources such as additional food to maintain a constantly increasing population.

Minoans exported refined goods, such as jewelry, wine, oil, and artwork, for Crete was home to numerous skilled craftsmen and specialists.

Present hypotheses concerning the identity of numerous Minoan documents hint at a purpose of recording commercial transactions. It is known that accuracy and calculation were valued in conducting economic deals.

Trade was centralized and commissioned by the King, whose extensive network of bureaucrats would implement detailed designs and analyze the results. Because of Crete’s small size and relatively small population, it was possible for the monarch to govern the country in a similar way to the management of a modern corporation. Nevertheless, the government did not neglect the people, and there is evidence of even the lower classes enjoying imported goods. The distribution may not have been even, yet the differences between wealth and poverty were substantially smaller than in any other contemporary culture.

Government

Crete was ruled by a monarch from the central palace of Knossos. The first ruler (and the only one whose name is known) was the legendary King Minos, described by later Greeks as being the son of Zeus and appointed by the chief deity to reign over the island.

The monarchy, however, was far from a totalitarian regime. Historian Richard Hooker describes the role of the King as a “chief entrepreneur or CEO” rather than a dictator. Numerous administrative decisions were shared by a priesthood (which was mainly female) and an immense network of bureaucrats and scribes. This semi-meritocracy was one of the most civil regimes of its time, remarkable for its lack of rigid caste structures and barriers to individual socioeconomic advancement.

Evidence suggests that the people of Crete were permitted a large degree of liberty, and no gender inequalities existed. Cretans are anomalous in that respect, having avoided the negative impacts of late Neolithic societies upon women and the poor. Perhaps this is due to the fact that their relative tranquility placed a smaller need on a strong military and a subservient workforce. Thus patriarchy and a rule of warlords never developed.

Religion

The Minoans had a matriarchal religion in which no male gods were detectable.

Cretan religion orients itself around animals, and numerous deities seem to possess a central emphasis on them. For example, “The Huntress” represents human attempts for mastery over other creatures, while “The Mountain Mother”, a diametric opposite, attempts to preserve a natural setting for animals. A popular household goddess was portrayed as entangled in snakes throughout her organism. Other goddesses possessed exteriors of birds, most notably doves.

The Minoans worshipped trees, rocks, and springs in a semi-Animist manner.

Evil figures in Minoan religion are represented as human demons with the limbs of lions and other carnivores.

Art, Architecture, and Technology

The most renowned of the palaces in Knossos was the four-story Labyrinth, the chief palace of the King in existence from 2000 to 1350 BC. Its extraordinary abundance of rooms served as a basis for legends of foreigners, such as mainland Greeks, who perceived it as a maze in which it would be humanly impossible to remember one’s way. In reality, however, it was not the crude dwelling of the Minotaur that myths describe it to be. It possessed numerous places of worship, workshops, lavish banquet halls, and a grand courtyard in the center, surrounded by four sections. This palace was destroyed and rebuilt numerous times, in 1700 BC, and later by an earthquake in 1600 BC. The eruption of the Santorini volcano in 1450 BC was its greatest catastrophe, although it was restored once more by conquering Greeks. However, it fell into neglect and disrepair as Crete lost its political value around 1380 BC. This monumental work is thought to have been designed by the legendary architect and scientist Daidalus, the father of Icarus.

Minoan art seems to have been separated from mundane tasks and duties and oriented toward a purely aesthetic purpose. Numerous wall murals in palatial complexes within Knossos illustrate scenes from the animal world and everyday life, common in depiction but detached from practicality. The objects portrayed were often trivial and superficial, and there is no moral or political aim discernible in the works. Art was instead developed “for art’s sake”.

Minoan cities possessed plumbing and sanitation systems reaching into the confines of every home. The exact means by which they realized this was, unfortunately, lost following their decline and not recovered until 17th century Europeans had again attained this skill.

Sports

The renowned sport of ancient Crete, open to both genders and subjecting all to the same standards, was bull leaping. This was a dangerous pastime, but harmless and humane to the athlete and the animal if performed with skill. A bull would be released to charge toward the jumper. Once it was in sufficient proximity, the performer would attach his hands to the bull’s horns and vault onto the creature’s back. Another common objective was to somersault from such a position to a state of standing on a spot of land directly behind the bull.

Boxing was also a favorite activity, as portrayed in numerous wall murals. The precise regulations are unknown, but this is perhaps a source of inspiration for later Greeks, who adapted the sport to the Olympic Games.

Fate of the Civilization

The Minoans’ isolation from foreign threats caused them to maintain feeble frontiers, and gradually mainland powers such as Mycenae developed, with the fleet and army to overcome them.

The task of conquest was perhaps lightened for the Myceneans by the explosion of the Santorini volcano, four or five times more massive than the cataclysmic eruption of Krakatoa in 1888. This, along with a similar catastrophe on a nearby island from the volcano Thera, inflicted devastating blows upon Crete’s population and economy, crippling it and rendering it susceptible to invasion.

Under Achaean occupation, Knossos gradually withered away into an insignificant village, the cultural level of the Myceneans being too primitive to maintain the complexities of the civilization which they had conquered.

Nevertheless, evidence suggests that Cretan script was somewhat adopted by the occupants. Elements of Linear A, the original (and yet un-decoded) alphabet of the Minoans, have been spotted in Linear B, the early writing of the Myceneans.

Myths maintained a memory of this civilization in such fascinating works as the tale of Theseus and his struggle against the Minotaur for over 3000 years. Only between 1900 and 1931, during the extensive excavations conducted by archaeologist Arthur Evans, did details begin to surface about the true identity of this culture. Archaeologists and historians discovered a humane and prosperous society that existed during a relatively savage time, a society that provided many of the early foundations of Western civilization.

Sources

“Knossos.” http://www.culture.gr/2/21/211/21123a/e211wa03.html

Hooker, Richard. “The Palace Civilizations of the Aegean.” http://richard-hooker.com/sites/worldcultures/MINOA/MINOANS.HTM

Iraklion Museum. “City of Knossos: The Palace of King Minos.” http://www.dilos.com/region/crete/kn_01.html.

How to Fail a Class of Any Kind (2007) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

How to Fail a Class of Any Kind (2007) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 20, 2014
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Note from the Author: This satirical article was originally published on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007.  I seek to preserve it as an entertaining but didactic resource for readers, subsequent to the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices. Therefore, this article is being published directly on The Rational Argumentator for the first time.  
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~ G. Stolyarov II, July 20, 2014
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Results Guaranteed, or Your Money Back!

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Numerous online articles exist to help people who seek to pass a class or even get an exceptionally good grade in it. But, in the course of my research, I have found few reliable, comprehensive guides to failing a course. So, in the interest of those who might be seeking to learn how, I provide some assistance here. Now, granted, I have never personally failed a course, but I have seen enough people accomplish such a feat that I consider myself qualified to write about it. So here it is: a guide to failing a class in any kind of subject and any type of educational institution.
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The first thing to understand about failing a class is that it is extremely difficult to do. You must really work at it in order to accomplish this goal! After all, rarely do teachers in the public schools or universities give F grades anymore. Simple lack of knowledge of the content will no longer suffice to earn you a failing grade; it might get you a C or a D, if you are lucky. This traditional approach to failing a course is even less reliable these days because numerous instructors grade on a curve. If it so happens that most of your classmates are more ignorant on the subject than you are, then you might even end up with a B or A-, in which case your efforts to fail the course will probably be irreversibly frustrated.

But fear not! Failing a class can still be done, if you work hard enough at it. Here are some tips about how you, too, can lead the glorious life of an academic underdog.

1. Cheat, and cheat often! Most educational institutions these days have a zero tolerance policy for academic dishonesty. This is the route to go for quick, efficient results if you seek to fail a class. You might even be suspended from the school, which translates into some wonderful free time! The best ways to cheat are blatant and obvious ones. When there is a test, stand up out of your seat, walk to the student next to you, and wait until he puts down his pen and takes a moment’s pause from writing. Then grab his test, walk back to your desk, and copy every word of it, all in front of the teacher and the other students. In most cases, other students will not let you cheat off of them, since they will be conscious of the fact that the school’s academic dishonesty policy will also hold them liable in that case. But if you follow this advice, the other student will have no choice but to let you commit the infraction; he will have been coerced into it.

Extreme plagiarism is another possible route to cheating, especially for those who are shy about making a public scene. Whenever you are assigned a paper on any subject, Google that subject and copy the first search result, word for word. You will be virtually guaranteed that the teacher will be able to look up the same page you found within minutes and discover your plagiarism. Alternatively, you can simply choose to omit standard punctuation in your bibliography, or use MLA style when APA style is called for, or vice versa. These days in academic institutions, using the wrong format for your Works Cited page is almost as severely punished as plagiarism.

If you have ethical scruples about committing academic dishonesty, just give yourself a little inspirational talk in front of the mirror every morning. Repeat three times, “I, too, can be a cheater!” Remember that an early start into the field of immorality is virtually required to have a successful career as a professional gangster, pop idol, pyramid-scheme advertiser, or politician.

2. Never attend class. You cannot be aware of material discussed in class if you never go there; furthermore, you will have the advantage of not knowing what homework was assigned and what reading material you ought to study. This is a failure-proof method of failing the class, unless your school or college automatically withdraws you from it for lack of attendance. Resist the temptation of asking your friends about the proceedings in class or doing independent research into areas related to the subject matter. Remember that it is difficult to fail a class these days while retaining the slightest bit of moral reservation about your goal.

3. Go to raucous parties every night. At the parties, drink vast quantities of alcohol. When you come to class next day, you will be intoxicated out of your mind, which will safeguard you against any relapses of conscientious listening and class participation. Even if you really want to answer a question, you will be unable to. As an added bonus, you might be suspended from the educational institution for being under the influence of alcohol.

4. When taking multiple choice tests, pick a letter and stick to it! Always circle that letter as your answer of choice for every question. If there are four possible choices for each question, then your expected percentage of correct answers is 25% – well into the F range. If there are five possible choices, you can do even better with an expected grade of 20%. For more advanced multiple choice tests, where there might be more than one correct answer per question, you might even get away with grades in the single digits!

5. Sleep in class. If you cannot overcome your conscience and absolutely must attend class, at least try not to be awake for it. If you are, you might just learn something against your best attempts. Consider staying up the entire previous night in order to fall asleep with less difficulty when class is in session. Remember to choose the remotest corner of the class to sit in, possibly behind tall people who obstruct the teacher’s view of you. Otherwise, you run the risk of being awakened and, once again, learning something.

6. Always procrastinate. As a matter of fact, never turn in those assignments at all! Wait until the grade penalties for late work accumulate to the point where you get a zero grade on all your work; then, you will have failed the class without even needing to exert any effort! Once you fail your first course, you will be well on your way to a bright future. Remember that your personal merit, hard work, and knowledge do not matter at all in the real world; success is based purely on luck, or on exploiting those people who do work diligently and honestly. Just sit back, engage in your share of parasitism off the accomplishments of others, and wait for genuine success and happiness to come to you! It’s that simple, though most people are far too bound by conventional Western meritocratic prejudices to understand or implement it. If you become an outstanding failure, perhaps I will write your biography someday.