Promoting science is a major reason often given in support of the space shuttle program and against ending it. But the space shuttle program was never about science, as astrophysicist and celebrity science-show host Neil deGrasse Tyson recently admitted (in the video below). It was created for geopolitical reasons — to combat the commies. He thinks Americans are afraid to admit this and need to be more honest with themselves.

He also allowed that you can see the program as a waste of money from the perspective of funding science, but I disagree with his suggestion you can see it as a waste of money only if you see the program as existing solely for the purpose of promoting science. It was a colossal waste of money by any measure, and I say that as a proponent of space exploration and exploitation.

One thing that disturbed me, however, was Tyson’s claim that he could second-guess the geopolitical reasons for the space shuttle program if he were a political scientist, but he’s not so he won’t. On the one hand, it’s refreshing to see a scientist not making cocksure pronouncements about things outside of his particular area of expertise. On the other hand, speaking as a political scientist myself, political scientists should not be put on a pedestal and treated as technocratic experts to whom one must defer on political issues. Ironically, Tyson here falls prey to a kind of provincial attitude, despite warning against another kind in the video, in limiting his personal responsibility for making reasoned judgments to his own field of science . The “Oh, I’ll leave the ethical and political concerns to others, I’m just a scientist” conscience-absolving attitude is an irresponsible abdication of responsibility that has played a role in the development of government weapons of mass destruction, such as the atom bomb.

Micah White at The Guardian writes of the growing danger of ecofascism or environmental authoritarianism. Some environmentalists, like James Lovelock and Pentti Linkola, want to put democracy on hold and/or return humanity world-wide to a primitive state of existence in order to combat global warming. Ironically, his proposal to fend off this growing danger is itself an example of the very thing he fears, though perhaps his proposal is motivated not entirely by environmental concerns but also by an independent dislike of consumerism.

White’s solution is to end the culture of rampant consumerism in the West. How does he propose to do this? Ah, now there’s the rub.

White’s own ecofascist solution is three-fold: the criminalisation of advertising, the revocation of corporate power, and the “downshifting” of the global economy.

The nature of criminalizing advertising is clear. But he no doubt has equally authoritarian means in mind for implementing his two other proposals.

How does he plan to revoke corporate power? By eliminating limited liability. By “reviving the possibilty of death penalties for ['misbehaving'] corporations.” And presumably by other government means.

How does he plan to “downshift” the global economy? He offers some apparently voluntary examples here, at least, but I doubt he’d be satisfied with purely voluntary means.

It’s an awfully convenient rhetorical strategy to juxtapose authoritarian environmental and anti-market proposals with the most extreme examples of ecofascism. It makes his own proposals seem downright reasonable in comparison.

The extreme ecofascists are perhaps making a strategic blunder too in attacking the sacred cow of democracy. White is more clever. He is catering to the widespread religious devotion to democracy and demonization of market activity, crying: No need to put democracy on hold! We’ll just put the economy on hold instead!

Does White call for an end to, or even mention, government policies and rhetoric that encourage rampant consumerism? such as artificially low interest rates, inflation, stimulus checks and other forms of subsidies, taxes on savings and investment, targeted tax credits for various forms of spending, various social-welfare programs, indoctrination in public schools to be good consumerist citizens, calls from political leaders to spend spend spend, and so on.

No, he does not.

Instead, he calls for a softer ecofascism in the name of fending off ecofascism. Consumption is a compulsion and is harming the environment; only corporations are to blame and government is the solution. Where have I heard that before?

Rothbard got a favorable mention on a National Review Online blog called The Corner. Ron Paul got a mention in the same post as well, in connection with Rothbard.

About Rothbard, John Derbyshire wrote: “Dunno about you, but the more I contemplate our federal government and its works, the better Murray Rothbard is starting to look.” He then quoted from the Wikipedia article on Rothbard: “It was in 1949 that Rothbard first concluded that the free market could provide all services, including police, courts, and defense services better than could the State.” And he concluded: “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

If Derbyshire had stopped there, I’m sure all of us would have been surprised and delighted. Of course, he didn’t: “Probably there are limits.” After repeating parenthetically a smear disguised as a joke about Rothbard’s view of how private lighthouses would be run, we find out that one of those limits might be on immigration.

Click here to read a little more. Hat tip to Liberator Online for bringing this to my attention.

Economist Ross McKitrick, who along with Steve McIntyre played a major role in discrediting Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph, has an interesting proposal for a carbon emissions tax tied to actual levels of warming. The tax would be linked to tropical troposphere temperatures, which I gather are generally agreed to be “the fingerprint of the CO2 contribution to warming.” As McIntyre points out: “If models are wrong and solar or something else is causing climate change, then it would have negligible impact. If models are right, then the tax would go up a lot.” On the other hand, if the tropical troposphere temperatures continue to decline as they have since 2002, then the tax would go negative and turn into a subsidy on carbon emissions. Of course, the alarmists are convinced this won’t happen so it shouldn’t be an obstacle to them endorsing the tax.

For more information read McKitrick’s article.

McKitrick has effectively laid down the gauntlet for both skeptics and alarmists by offering them a public policy proposal they both should be able to endorse, since both are convinced it will go their way. Only those of us who have independent moral and practical reasons for opposing any form of tax or subsidy whatsoever should have a good reason for not accepting the challenge.

Here’s a fantastic video dramatizing the fact that pirates and emperors are really the same thing.

Here’s a direct link to the video on YouTube.

Find out more here

Hat tip to Sunni for alerting me to it.

Reading Don Lavoie and Emily Chamlee-Wright’s Culture and Enterprise, I was struck by the following percipient and eloquent observation by Chinese historian Ssu-ma Ch’ien (c.145-86 BC), over two thousand years ago, regarding the coordinating capacity of the market process:

There must be farmers to produce food, men to extract the wealth of mountains and marshes, artisans to process these things and merchants to circulate them. There is no need to wait for government orders: each man will play his part, doing his best to get what he desires. So cheap goods will go where they fetch more, while expensive goods will make men search for cheap ones. When all work willingly at their trades, just as water flows ceaselessly downhill day and night, things will appear unsought and people will produce them without being asked. For clearly this accords with the Way and is in keeping with nature.

The passage can be found on page 48 in:

Lavoie, Don and Emily Chamlee-Wright. 2000. Culture and Enterprise: The Development, Representation, and Morality of Business. New York: Routledge, A Cato Institute Book.

And page 477 in:

Ssu-ma, Chi’en. 1961. Records of the Grand Historian of China. Translated from the Sih Chi of Ssu-ma Ch’ien. New York: Columbia University Press.

“Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet” by Cory Doctorow

This recent article on Locus Online, the online companion to Locus Magazine, the “magazine of the science fiction & fantasy field,” is very pertinent to the ongoing Cantor seminar on commerce and culture. Aside from an endorsement of copyrights, with which many Austrian libertarians will disagree, I find it to be explicitly in favor of free markets. The author of the article, a published novelist, also explicitly criticizes patronage, contrasting it unfavorably with markets. The primary focus of the article, as the title suggests, is the great boon to SF writers that the internet is and can be.

The Internet is enabling a further decentralization in who gets to make art, and like each of the technological shifts in cultural production, it’s good for some artists and bad for others. The important question is: will it let more people participate in cultural production? Will it further decentralize decision-making for artists?

The author even insightfully remarks on a phenomenon that has been noted by Jeff Tucker and others on Mises.org, that providing free electronic copies of a published work online serves to improve sales of hard copies of that work.

Some writers are using the Internet’s affinity for SF to great effect. I’ve released every one of my novels under Creative Commons licenses that encourage fans to share them freely and widely — even, in some cases, to remix them and to make new editions of them for use in the developing world. My first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, is in its sixth printing from Tor, and has been downloaded more than 650,000 times from my website, and an untold number of times from others’ websites.

I’ve discovered what many authors have also discovered: releasing electronic texts of books drives sales of the print editions. An SF writer’s biggest problem is obscurity, not piracy. Of all the people who chose not to spend their discretionary time and cash on our works today, the great bulk of them did so because they didn’t know they existed, not because someone handed them a free e-book version.

But what kind of artist thrives on the Internet? Those who can establish a personal relationship with their readers — something science fiction has been doing for as long as pros have been hanging out in the con suite instead of the green room. These conversational artists come from all fields, and they combine the best aspects of charisma and virtuosity with charm — the ability to conduct their online selves as part of a friendly salon that establishes a non-substitutable relationship with their audiences. You might find a film, a game, and a book to be equally useful diversions on a slow afternoon, but if the novel’s author is a pal of yours, that’s the one you’ll pick. It’s a competitive advantage that can’t be beat.

Score another one for voluntaryism and the free market in the fight against email spam. Tired of receiving tons of spam? Don’t want to join a coercive government registry or support any coercive government legislation? Then you might want to check out Blue Security.

The ingenious developers at Blue Security have created a way for you to report spam and reduce the amount you receive with little or no hassle. All you have to do is join the Blue Community, download the Blue Frog software program, and report spam when you receive it. If spammers don’t stop sending spam to those in the community, Blue Security identifies the spammer and uses scripts in Blue Frog to automatically post complaints. The power of large numbers. Many, if not most, spammers have strong business incentives to reduce complaints and stop sending spam to those who have declared their intention not to receive it.

There are downloadable extensions for Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, making the service even easier to use for those who use these programs.

The service is currently in beta testing and free. You can register up to 10 email addresses and one domain name. I’m not sure if they’ll eventually start charging for email protection but the FAQ on their website indicates that they will eventually start charging businesses and for domain name coverage. However, those who sign on now, the company says, will continue to be served for free. And this is no April Fools joke.