Yaron Brook’s speech on activism today was powerful and inspiring.  He basically argued that Objectivists need to do more to share the ideas of Objectivism and bring them out to the mainstream.  He described how people are aching for ideas.  ”There’s a void of ides out there,” he said and went on to state, “This is a world war and western civilization is what is at stake.”

This lead to a number of discussions over lunch and margaritas at the pool.  The question was: What can we do to be better activists? Danielle Morrill blogged several of the ideas that we had.

The whole discussion got me to thinking about my upbringing in the Pentecostal church and one of the common exhortations we received was to “go witness” to non-Christians or to people whose faith could be helped with your testimony.

For those unfamiliar with the Christian parlance, “to witness” is a particular tactic for spreading the Christian ideology and it involves giving your testimony.  Your testimony is your account of your personal experience with coming to Christianity.  The idea is that you outline your sins and problems, explain what made you look to Christ, describe your epiphany as well as you can, and tell of the benefits and enlightenment that ensued.

I wondered to the group if that was effective for Christianity and if there are any parallels that might be adopted for Objectivism.

I’m reluctant to present this as a comparison for a couple of reasons. For starters, Objectivism is not a religion and I have no interest in feeding those nonsensical accusations that this philosophy represents a cult.  Also, Objectivist philosophy is pretty much the opposite of Christianity.  Christianity promotes the supernatural and Objectivism promotes reality.  Christianity promotes faith and Objectivism promotes reason.  Christianity promotes altruism and Objectivism promotes eogism.  Christianity promotes theocratic communism and Objectivism promotes capitalism.  Christianity promotes suffering, sacrifice, and privation for individuals and Objectivism tells us to pursue our values, achieve happiness, and to love life.

There’s very little Objectivism has in common with Christianity, if anything at all, but there’s no denying that Christianity has achieved a certain popularity over the years.

Of course, Christianity has also achieved that popularity through guilt, violence, and generally villainous conduct and I don’t think any of that sort of tactic should be considered.  But the particular tactic of being a witness seems like an approach that could be valuable and effective to Objectivists.

So, how does it work?

Well, Objectivists should actively seek opportunities to share their values with people who are receptive to it.  Do you have a friend who shares your taste in music?  Discuss music with them. Promote an approach to art that is rational.  Is there some issue confronting your business, eg. Obamacare, Sar-Box, zoning, that you can discuss with coworkers, clients or your boss? Frame the discussion in rational terms and tie your principles to the concrete issues confronting you in this situation.

I think it’s critical to actively look for these opportunities and pursue them.

Too often, because Objectivist ideology is often regarded as shocking and scandalous, I think Objectivists are sometimes reluctant to throw their ideas out there.  It’s not an illegitimate concern, but we need to prepare ourselves to respond constructively to the curious as well as the offended.

For example, I know very well that my blog is visible to clients, employers, friends, and family.  And I am very open with who I am and what I think.  Should someone care to treat me poorly without telling me that my ideas are behind their behavior, there is nothing I can really do about that.  But if they bring it up, I am prepared to elaborate and discuss it with them at length and, hopefully, in a way that will aid in their understanding and encourage them to explore the work of Ayn Rand.

So, as activists, I think we should consider the tactic of being a witness and presenting our testimony in support of rationality, productivity, and pride.

I cannot give enough credit to Mark Perry’s blog, Carpe Diem, for calling attention to the way market forces operate, often in spite of government interference intended to get people to behave in a different way.

Today, I’d like to call your attention to this:

[Carriers] will aggressively cancel flights before and during storms—even if the bad weather never materializes. The threats could foreshadow significant changes in air travel, making it even less reliable for millions of road warriors and vacationers. By canceling flights, it could take days for all travelers to get home when storms strike.

Here’s the issue: carriers have no idea when “acts of god” will interfere with their ability to get you from point A to point B. Because of logistical concerns with boarding and unboarding, they would prefer to keep you on the plane in cases where they believe they’ll be able to take off and get you to point B.

And they really, really do want to get you to point B, because if they don’t, they usually have to deal with a lot of bitchy customers and sometimes refunds.  It’s a pain in the ass.  It’s WAY better when they can just fly your bitchy asses where they want to go.

But if they spent a lot of time letting you run on and off the plane, then the airport looses money because it could let another plane park there and the airline looses money because they can’t process as many flights.

As much as it sucks, if airlines keep you on the plane, you are more likely to get where you want to be.

But the government has increased the fees for people who, for whatever reason, don’t get moving to their destination at the 3 hours mark.  This means that airlines would be better suited by avoiding the 3 hour mark. Let me try to make this more clear:

A passenger on the plane proceeding to their destination without worry is worth $100.

A passenger on the plane delayed for any amount of time going to their destination is worth $50.

A passenger who deplanes and doesn’t get to their destination is work $5.

A passenger who sits on the plan, delayed, for more than 3 hours under new legistlation: -$Eleventy Million Dollars.

Basically, it’s more profitable with this legislation for carriers to simply not offer new flights in the event of weather delays with are beyond their control.  As a business, they have to choose between making $5, the cost of paying off people whose flights were cancelled, or paying eleventy million dollars because they try to fulfill the original ticket requirements.

Once again, the government is making things harder and more costly for us while allegedly trying to make things easier and cheaper.

The Blue Owl tipped me off to this article on Fox News this afternoon.

Fox News: Kerry Calls on FDA to Lift Longstanding Ban on Gay Men Donating Blood

Sen. John Kerry called on the government Thursday to abolish a “discriminatory” law that bars homosexual men in the U.S. from donating blood, saying “not a single piece of scientific evidence supports the ban.”

In a letter sent to the Food and Drug Administration, Kerry, D-Mass., along with a host of other Democrats, urged Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to change existing law that bars gay men from giving blood.

Kerry also called on the FDA to review its donor screening questionnaire to ensure a healthy blood supply.

“A law that was once considered medically justified is today simply outdated and needs to end, just as last year we ended the travel ban against those with HIV,” Kerry said in a statement on Thursday.

Before I became sexually active, I used to donate blood regularly.  I always thought it was cool, interesting, and a nice thing to do.  When I recognized the fact of my homosexuality, I was more than a little miffed by the ban on gay blood, but I have to acknowledge that I do believe the ban on gay blood was at one time justified.  You see, men who have sex with other men are statistically more likely to carry certain blood-borne pathogens.

What makes this restriction appear nonsensical today is the simple fact that all donated blood is tested for those pathogens.

Statistics are only really useful for making actionable decisions about things you can’t test directly. For example, if you would like to know whether or not you should pack an umbrella for your trip tomorrow, you check the weather forecast and it tells you that given the current conditions there is an 80% chance of rain tomorrow for your destination.  So, you pack an umbrella.

But you would not use the weather forecast to tell you if you should pick up an umbrella for running out and checking the mail right now.  For that, you’d look out the front door and see if it’s raining.

Because every batch of donated blood is tested, it appears that the FDA’s use of statistics is foolish and unreasoned.  After all, there is no reason to use statistics to predict whether or not a given batch has a given disease when you’re going to check the blood for that given disease anyway.  That’s just foolish.

The challenge to this argument in favor of lifting the prohibition comes from the fact that the tests for said diseases are not 100% correct.  They are correct within a certain margin of error. I’ve read that HIV tests, for example, are about 99% accurate.  I don’t know if this means that they tend toward false positives or false negatives, but for the sake of discussion, let’s assume that it means there’s a 1% chance of a false negative.  This means that 1% of the time a batch of HIV+ blood will get into the blood supply.  Out of 1MM donations, that’s 10,000 batches of tainted blood being pumped into sick babies and injured firefighters and whatnot.

Given that we don’t have a way to reduce the risk of diseases slipping into the blood supply to absolutely nothing, we have to decide what level of risk is acceptable to us.

Whatever is decided, the risk of diseases slipping into the blood supply would be reduced by restricting high-risk groups from donating blood.  Those groups include “men who have sex with men.”  I’d hasten to point out that just because prohibition is applied to intravenous drug users and prostitutes as well as men who have sex with men does not mean that the risks associated with each group are equal.  All it means is that the risks are above whatever threshold of comfort was used in establishing these prohibitions in the first place.

The real outrage here is why the government is dictating to us whose blood we are allowed to accept or not.  That is a decision that could be easily and well managed by free markets.

What if you had the option to choose between screened blood and not-screened blood?  Not-screened blood would be much cheaper but would carry higher risks.

What if you could choose blood that was screened and was guaranteed to not come from any risk groups?  The more risk groups you choose to apply to blood you accept, the more expensive it would be, because the blood you accept would be harder to find.

What if you had a disease like HIV and you were willing to accept HIV+ blood, but only if it contained viruses with matching genetic qualities to your own?  You’d likely get some kind of bargain on blood for which there is very little demand.  Or what if you have malaria or some other disease that lives in the blood? You could accept similarly infected blood and get a deal if you’re in the hospital.

In all cases, you’d just have to specify your preference with your primary care physician or in documents given to the people who drag your unconscious body to the hospital when necessary.

The blood you choose to accept is a personal health decision and not one that should be dictated to Americans by the nanny-state.  Once again we have the FDA interfering with the health and livelihood of Americans everywhere.

Update 9:04am ET 3/5/2010: Corrected an instance of hyphen abuse.

Subway Blogger is debating whether or not the MTA should start charging for children and eliminating student discounts.  See, the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) is the entity that, among other things, runs the subways here in NYC.  The MTA is, according to Wikipedia, a nefarious organization known as a “Public Benefit Corporation.”  Basically, the government founded it and the government oversees it, regulates it, and charges it with goals and responsibilities, but it is run by folks who aren’t really government employees.  I don’t know how that works exactly, but you can probably already see my objections.

The MTA is bloated, inefficient, and clogged with unions. This should come as no surprise since it’s basically run by the government and is basically forbidden to act as a sensible business would.

Anyway, the MTA is having financial woes and they aren’t sure how to address the problem.

If the MTA were a real business, they would address the issue with tactics that either raise more money or cut costs.

The easiest way to raise more money is to increase prices.  The MTA can’t raise prices without freaking everyone out and they seem to have to get permission from the government to do so.  Of course no one in government wants to let them do that because it would mean losing votes from the public.  So, the price to ride the subway in NYC is CRAZY low.

A way to cut costs is to stop running trains 24/7.  Again, reduced service freaks everyone out and blah blah blah…

They could stop running trains as frequently, but… you see where I’m going with this?

So, anyway, they’re thinking about charging children to ride the subway.  The standard fare is $2.25, but today, paying adults can bring up to three children with you for free as long as they’re less than 44 inches tall.  (I’ve never seen anyone measuring children.) Also, children K – 12 may be eligible for reduced fare metrocards.

And they’re thinking about doing away with both of these practices.

Frankly, I don’t care what decision they make here because neither will address the underlying problem with the NYC transit system.

If the subway system were privatized, the business would be free to spend and save as they see best in order to make more money.  Contrary to popular anti-business sentiments, businesses do give some consideration to the “public good,” but they do it secondary to making sure they can stay in business.  It would be foolish to do otherwise.  Running as they do, the MTA would have gone out of business many times over.

If the subway system were privatized, it is very likely that the business would offer free and reduced fares to children with adults and school children on their own.  Why?  Because it encourages people to use the subway and ultimately sells more tickets.  But they wouldn’t do so until they were profitable without it.

In the past, I’ve advocated both raising prices and reducing service for the MTA, so given then current context, I would say that the MTA should get rid of ALL reduced and free fare practices.  I’m talking about you, too, old people!

I’m just going to re-post this entire post from Principles in Practice. Why? Because The Objective Standard is an EXCELLENT journal and I don’t want you to miss out on this.  You should subscribe now if you haven’t already.

The print edition of the Winter issue is at press and will be mailed shortly; the online version will be accessible to subscribers beginning December 20. For promotional purposes, we are making Robert Mayhew’s review of Jennifer Burns’s Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right available on our website early and for free.

The contents of the Winter issue are:

From the Editor

Letters and Replies

ARTICLES

Pharmacide: The Pharmaceutical Industry’s Self-Destructive Effort to Loot America
by Cassandra Clark

Antitrust with a Vengeance: The Obama Administration’s Anti-Business Cudgel
by Eric Daniels

What the “Affordable Health Care for America Act,” HR 3962, Actually Says
by John David Lewis

The California Coastal Commission: A Case Study in Governmental Assault on Property Rights
by Paul Beard

The Barbary Wars and Their Lesson for Combating Piracy Today
by Doug Altner

Objective Moral Values
by Craig Biddle

BOOKS REVIEWED

Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns
Reviewed by Robert Mayhew

Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science by Ian Plimer
Reviewed by Gus Van Horn

Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed by Christopher C. Horner
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

Islamic Imperialism: A History by Efraim Karsh
Reviewed by Andrew Lewis

The Israel Test by George Gilder
Reviewed by Daniel Wahl

Due to popular demand, we have extended our 60% off sale through January 1. Online subscriptions—including gift subscriptions—are only $19. If you have not yet subscribed to TOS, now is the perfect time to give it a try. And if you are looking for the perfect gift for an active-minded friend or relative, what could be better than a steady stream of clearly written, easy-to-read articles addressing current events and cultural issues from a rational, principled perspective? You can purchase gift subscriptions online or by calling 800-423-6151.

Enjoy your holidays!

Via Fun With Gravity, I absolutely HAD to blog about this: Arianna Huffington, apparently, understands Capitalism!!!

In the film, Michael describes capitalism as evil. I disagree. I don’t think capitalism is evil. I think what we have right now is not capitalism.

In capitalism as envisioned by its leading lights, including Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall, you need a moral foundation in order for free markets to work. And when a company fails, it fails. It doesn’t get bailed out using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. What we have right now is Corporatism. It’s welfare for the rich. It’s the government picking winners and losers. It’s Wall Street having their taxpayer-funded cake and eating it too. It’s socialized losses and privatized gains.

Sadly, although she knows what it is, she doesn’t seem to support it.  But baby steps, OK?