Facebook is No Trifle

In a Wall Street Journal article “Why Our Innovators Traffic in Trifles”, Nicholas Carr claims that Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are examples of “innovation’s turn toward the trifling”. The evidence, he says, is that such technologies are merely “altering internal states, transforming the invisible self or its bodily container.” Truly big inventions, according to Carr, are directed “outward” and pertain to “changing the shape of the physical world” or of “society”.

While it is true that Facebook is about information and ideas, and steam engines—which Carr puts in the second category—are about machinery, it does not follow however that the former are inherently less valuable than the latter. Contrary to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which Carr invokes, man cannot fulfill even his “primitive physiological requirements” without “self-actualization”. Imitating Boromir, One Does Not Simply Reshape the Physical World. Knowledge is a necessary precondition to action; and Facebook is essentially a tool to disseminate and obtain knowledge.

Historically, it has been inventions such as phonetic language, paper, and Guttenberg press that have served man’s “desire for self-expression and self-promotion”—a desire that Carr finds to be “small” and presumably not noble enough when being fulfilled by Facebook. Yet he could not honestly label the ancestral “complex systems of communication” as trifling, and rationalizes by characterizing those as being “outward” directed, by which he means "selfless". And selfless is exactly what their inventors and users were not. It does not make any difference whether you declare “what’s on your mind” on a remote retina display or a papyrus. Both are acts of “self-expression and self-promotion”. The same goes for the steam engine: there is nothing selfless about creating a powerful machine that reduces your physical labor.

Carr’s harmless-sounding call to “enlarge our aspirations” is a deceptive cover for his call to murder the self—the only entity with the capacity to aspire. Our ancestors had to selfishly choose to lift themselves from the caves. And that makes them big, not “small”.

A steam engine or Facebook can both serve the self. Either technology can be more valuable to a man than the other. The body and mind are integrated; there is no dichotomy between “tools of survival and tools of the self.”

Q&A on Oil

As a graduate student in marine sciences, I occasionally encounter queries on environmental issues from friends and strangers. Here are my answers to three questions related to oil:

Q: What new technologies do we need in order to prevent oil spills?

A: None! You are making an incorrect assumption that the essential cause of oil spills is unreliable technology. The fact is that there are more significant factors that come into play. For example, BP and other oil companies have to undertake huge amount of risk by drilling in deep waters. If you retrace the reasons due to which they do not drill on land (in the Arctic) or shallow continental shelves, you will find that there are laws that prevent them from doing so. A shallow or surface drilling operation, if allowed, will be able to afford better technology that would make it safer. An oil spill at such a site would be local in spread, and much easier to stop. Another factor is the laxity induced by the regulatory structure, which transfers the burden of responsibility from the oil companies to the unaccountable EPA regulators. Also, many oil companies invest significantly in "green" projects that divert their focus from the research in drilling technology.

Q: Do you think the U.S. could survive without offshore drilling, or do you think we absolutely need to drill offshore?

A: I don't know what percentage of population can economically "survive" if they only depend on foreign oil. But your goal should not be mere survival. It should be to make the best of your own life. The question you should ask is: would such a restriction lower my standard of living? The fact that oil corporations desperately want to drill in the US, despite governmental restrictions and onerous regulations, suggests that they believe they can produce and sell oil cheaper than the one being imported. Hence, I am inclined to believe that (at present) domestic drilling is in all likelihood raising the standard of living, at least in the US, by making oil cheaper. Even if that's not the case, a government-imposed moratorium on drilling is necessarily bad because it restricts your choice to act on your own judgement.

Q: What alternative sources could we possibly use instead of oil? Is there a different fuel source that could be used?

A: As of today, no other alternative fuels are economically viable. As Alex Epstein, a Fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, explains:

Fossil fuels supply 86% of the world's energy--the energy that makes the difference between 40-year life expectancies in undeveloped countries and 80-year life expectancies in industrialized countries. By contrast, a meager 2% of the world's energy is produced by "green" sources such as wind, solar, and biofuels--after over three decades of subsidies around the globe.

Oil is likely to remain indispensable for many decades. It is the most significant resource responsible for industrial growth that "makes catastrophes noncatastrophic.”

For Mr. Epstein's detailed argument, see "Energy at the Speed of Thought: The Original Alternative Energy Market", The Objective Standard [requires subscription]; and "Let's Celebrate Oil's 150th Birthday And The Value It Adds To Our Lives", Investors.com.

The ideas expressed in this post are solely mine, and not of my employer or colleagues at the University of Miami.

Left's "Unfair" Attack on Healthcare Industry

Recent healthcare legislation places numerous new restrictions on healthcare providers, essentially forcing them to act against their own best interests. The enslavement of professionals, who are directly responsible for improving human life, has been facilitated by Left’s countless accusations hurled against them. Insurance companies are routinely blamed for being “unfair” whenever they raise premiums or deny coverage. President Obama, gloating on the passage of the healthcare bill, victoriously declared:

“[Insurance companies] have to start playing by a new set of rules that treat everyone fairly and honestly. The days of the insurance industry running roughshod over the American people are over.”

Such accusations are directed indiscriminately towards the entire industry; allegedly, no insurance company has been competent enough to offer “fair” prices. This only makes one wonder why none of these self-declared pundits could open their own company that offers lower-priced insurance. The only logical answer could be that the market prices of insurance are, in fact, unbeatably low. Perhaps, the Left was never really concerned about high prices. Had it been, it would not have been furious at Whole Foods CEO’s proposal to remove already-in-place governmental restrictions that have been driving the costs up.

What is it, if not pricing, that Left is actually denouncing as “unfair”? The answer becomes clear when one observes that “unfairness” is always cited in the context of need. President Obama loves to narrate sob stories of people who had to suffer from illness because they were unable to afford insurance. The claim is that it is “unfair” for an insurance company to set prices that some people cannot pay – even if setting a lower price would result in losses. This suggests that the accusation for being “unfair” is actually a denunciation for making “profit”.

To accuse a healthcare provider for making profit is to denounce him for keeping the product of his own effort. It means to treat him as sacrificial slave, who has no right to exist for his own sake. This is exactly opposite to the founding principle of United States: an individual’s right to his own life. If Left presents its anti-life morality (of altruism) in its full naked obscenity, most Americans would reject it. This is why Left attempts to sneak-it-in by perverting the concept of “unfair”. But what is really unfair is preventing a healthcare provider from earning a living.

Watch out – the phrase “unfair price hike” is going to be heard more and more often as insurance companies will inevitably struggle to meet ends under the new restrictions. To defend against such attacks, one must begin by exposing the treachery involved in Left’s usage of the concept “unfair”. It is necessary to define one's terms clearly before one can challenge the healthcare legislation on moral grounds. Epistemology is the battleground for ethics (and, thus, for politics). Capitalism has eroded in America because the Left has been successful in keeping its terms vague.

Capitalism welcomes objectivity – more precise are its terms, the stronger its defense. This is because it is a system based on reality: in order to sustain his life, man must keep the product of his own effort. Capitalism has nothing to hide. Its enemies know this, which is why they attack the language (concepts) capitalism needs in order to defend itself. Any intellectual revolution that aims to redeem capitalism must begin by clearing the epistemological fog emitted by the Left. The ideal places to begin are college and university campuses, which have been the Left’s den-of-iniquity ever since the Progressive Era.