Building El Dorado

Most of us are familiar with the myth -- a lost city of gold, built by gods, sought after for centuries by those who wanted to exploit it for themselves. However, what everyone from the Spanish Conquistadors to the "social utopianists" has failed to realize is that one can never stumble upon El Dorado.

Using El Dorado as an allegory (in addition to "Galt's Gulch," philosopher Ayn Rand's own El Dorado in her famous novel), I take a new look at the issues that our world faces today while also drawing comparisons between this mythical city of gold and the yet-to-be-achieved city of gold known as a capitalist system:

But only gods can build such a place, you say? The gods are among us: Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs – all the great innovators, thinkers, and movers of this world necessary to construct such a place are as real as any one of us. And, for a time, these men were free to build that City of Gold nearly uninhibited, pursuing their own self-interests and, in doing so, expanding the quality of life for millions of people they never knew by simply doing that which they do best: producing.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the old vestiges of altruism returned with a vengeance in the Progressive Era and in subsequent governmental policies (the “Square Deal,” the “New Freedom,” the “New Deal,” the “Great Society,” etc.) which again shackled the men of the mind in a system that rewards someone because of who they know, not what they produce. (It should be unsurprising that arguably the greatest improvements in man’s life over the past few decades have come from communication and computer technology, a relatively unregulated sector of the American economy.) Finally in 1971, the gold itself, both the literal building blocks of everything that exists in the mythical El Dorado and the symbolic building block of economic objectivity on which the society in Galt’s Gulch rests, was stolen overnight by the stroke of President Nixon’s pen. No longer was El Dorado made from gold – now, its foundations rest upon nothing more than green dye and cotton thread...

Click here to read the full article.

Comparing North and South Korea at the DMZ: A Video I Took This Month

While visiting family and friends in Korea earlier this month, I had the quite eerie and haunting opportunity to visit the "demilitarized" border zone between North and South Korea, one of the most authoritarian regimes in the entire world, and one of the freest and strongest economies in Asia, respectively.

Check out the contrast between the two in the following photographs I took: 

Standing at an observation post, and gazing across the river into the North, I saw an empty wilderness. With the aid of binoculars I could see a few random buildings with no signs of life or activity, reminiscent of Soviet-style wooden decoys of a building's facade, erected to give the false impression of prosperity and human activity.

By contrast, all I had to do was turn around and look into the South to see a bustling skyline of towering buildings and moving cars inhabited by affluent, healthy, free people with enough to eat and the liberty to pursue their own individual interests and happiness. Could the difference between (comparative) liberty and authoritarianism be any more clear than this?

Choice Words for Choice Times

The federal government has banned Aetna, a health insurance company, from marketing and enrolling new Medicare patients.  This is interesting both because it shows how willing the government is to regulate anything it can get away with, and how unwilling it is to let companies with terrible business models fail.  Of course, Aetna's president has been hasty to promise that this is just a fluke.

If this isn't an example of the state's disgusting forceful intervention into the market, I don't know what is.  It's too bad Aetna doesn't have a president like John Mackey of Whole Foods to stand up to the government and say, "Leave us alone!"

Are Corporations an Invention of the Free Market?

In a very interesting article, Gene DeNardo discusses a viewpoint that I believe should get way more attention in the libertarian world:  whether or not corporations should be considered part of the free market. I know through a class I took on corporate law that a corporation is purely an invention of the state and owes all of its success to the government which protects its investors from the liability normally associated with similar investment ventures.

The main draw to investing in a corporation is the limited liability one receives for choosing the corporate form of investment over investing in, say, a general partnership.  However, where does this limited liability come from, and who pays the price when the consequences of ones actions are not allowed to be divvied out? It is the opinion of DeNardo that society bears the cost. Therefore, in order to protect certain investors, the costs those investors would normally be held responsible for are distributed onto all of us:

Basically, when a corporation exceeds its liability in any way, when it extends itself beyond its value, the cost is socialized. It matters not whether the creditors take a bath or the government steps in, someone besides those within the corporation must make up the difference. This forced market condition in and of itself, is blantant socialism.

Thoughts?