Årsaken til vedvarende fattigdom – og hva kan gjøres for å redusere den

Et ferskt avisoppslag forteller følgende: «Denne uka la Statistisk sentralbyrå (SBB) nye tall på bordet. 101 000 barn i Norge lever nå i husholdninger med vedvarende lav inntekt. Antallet har steget jevnt og trutt siden starten av 2000-tallet. Det steg under den rødgrønne regjeringen, og det har fortsatt under dagens borgerlige regjering.»

Og politikerne vil ikke uventet ta grep! Artikkelen, som har tittelen «Over 100 000 fattige barn: [Ap-leder Jonas Gahr] Støre lover grep», nevner bla. følgende tiltak: «Vil øker bruken av lønnstilskudd og målretta tiltak mot enkelte innvandrergrupper, som «Jobbsjansen». Vi vil ha flere tiltaksplasser, mens regjeringen kutter i tiltaksplasser. Norskopplæring og yrkesrettinga i introprogrammet må styrkes. Deltakelse: Øke aktivitetsstøtten slik at det ikke er pengemangel som vil stoppe et barn fra å delta på fotball eller korpsøving … Og vi vil ikke øke egenandelen på helsetjenester … Rettferdig fordeling: Skattekutt for dem som har minst, ikke de som har mest. Universelle ordninger: Innføre makspris i SFO med søskenmoderasjon, gratis skolemat, og flere og billigere barnehageplasser.» (Artikkelen nevner at «– Det viktigste er at foreldrene kommer i arbeid», og det er et korrekt tiltak, men ingen av politikerne i de store partiene vet hvordan man skal få dette til.)  

Fattigdom har dominert menneskehetens historie i tusenvis av år, og den begynte først å bli redusert i stort omfang fra ca 1800. Fattigdom finnes dessverre fortsatt i store deler av verden, og selv i områder hvor mange er rike, dvs. i Vesten, er det fortsatt fattige. 

(Med «Vesten» mener vi de områder hvor ideer som individualisme, rasjonalitet, markedsøkonomi, frihandel, begrenset stat, rettsstat, skille kirke-stat, ytringsfrihet, etc., dominerer eller har dominert: Vest-Europa, USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc. Jeg skrev ikke «dominerer», jeg skrev også «har dominert»; dessverre er det nå slik at disse ideene i vår tid svekkes over hele Vesten. Denne utviklingen vil redusere både frihet og velstand; frihet og velstand hører intimt sammen.) 

Alle politikere har de siste 50 år forsøkt å redusere fattigdom, men noen mer intenst en andre – fra president Johnsons «War on Poverty» på 60-tallet til Kristin Halvorsens løfte fra 2005: «SV [lover]: Ingen fattige i Norge etter 2009» (løftet ble dog gitt med enkelte forbehold, se Aftenpostens artikkel om saken linket til nedenfor).   

Det er svært mye man kan si om de manglende resultater i politikernes kamp mot fattigdom, og man kan si ting fra en rekke ulike vinklinger, men vi skal kun se på to av dem. 

En relativt fersk studie utført i USA har forklaring på de manglende resultater. Kort oppsummert: de som er fattige er fattige fordi de ikke jobber. Vi gjengir noen sitater:  

«The main reason people are poor is because they aren’t working», uttalte en av de ansvarlige bak undersøkelsen, Peter Ferrara, som er forsker ved «The Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research», i en utsendt pressemelding.

Han fortsetter: «The welfare state deserves a lot of blame for that … The welfare state offers generous benefits to people so long as their cash income is small … Essentially, [the welfare state is] paying people not to work.» 

Videre: Undersøkelsen viser at fattigdommen i USA «is actually a work and marriage crisis, as lack of work and pre-marital childbearing are not just the two leading causes of US poverty, but almost the exclusive causes. As Brookings Institution research has shown, Americans who graduate high school, work full time (even at minimum wage), and marry before having kids are essentially guaranteed to not live in poverty. These are all choices, not happenstance.» 

Studien hadde også en annen konklusjon: Den offisielle fattigdomsandelen er i dag høyere enn det var da president Johnson lanserte sin «War on Poverty» på 60-tallet. Da Johnson iverksatte programmet forsikret han at  det ikke skulle låse de fattige fast i sin fattigdom. Studien viser at det er akkurat det hans program har hatt som resultat. 

Hvordan kan man så virkelig redusere fattigdom? Det er kun én måte å gjøre dette på: flere må jobbe produktivt, dvs. de må bedrive reell verdiskapning. Svært mange jobber i dag er totalt uproduktive eller direkte kontraproduktive, og dette gjelder svært mange som er ansatt i det offentlige (og da snakker vi ikke om leger og sykepleiere og lærere og bibliotekarer og brannmenn og de som vedlikeholder veinettet, etc, vi snakker om byråkrater som håndtere reguleringer og gir løyver og tillatelser, som beregner og administrerer støtteordninger, etc.). 

Hvordan får man flere til å jobbe produktivt? Produktiviteten til en som arbeider øker når den akkumulerte kapital som står bak ham, øker: en bonde er mer produktiv med en traktor enn med en spade og en plog; en lege er mer produktiv med et røntgen-apparat og en CT-scanner enn med blodigler; en skribent er mer produktiv med en PC og Internett enn med fjærpenn og et sett av munker som lager kopier for hånd, etc.       

Mao: velstandsøkning er resultat av akkumulering av kapital. Dette er den eneste veien til å redusere fattigdom. Akkumulering av kapital kan kun skje dersom private har mulighet til å bygge opp formuer, og dette er kun mulig når eiendomsretten respekteres. Dette betyr at veien til velstand går via lavere skattesatser, reduserte overføringsordninger, og et etablerings- og entreprenørvennlig klima. Altså må offentlige reguleringer – reguleringer er ikke noe annet enn enn statlige hindringer på individers fredelige bruk av det de eier – fjernes. Det er slike ting som nettopp nevnt som gjør at det blir lettere å få jobb og vanskeligere å leve uten å jobbe. Det er kun dette som kan få flere i jobb, og da er det kun dette som kan redusrre fattigdom.   

Man kan altså ikke redusere fattigdom ved å ta fra de rike og gi til de fattige, den eneste måte å redusere fattigdom på er som sagt å la de produktive produsere, la dem investere slik at det blir flere jobber. Dette viktige poenget kan ikke sies ofte nok! 

At overføringer ikke virker dersom målet er å redusere fattigdom, viser den studien vi har referert til over. All erfaring viser også akkurat det samme. Tiltak som har bestått av overføringer har aldri ført til reduksjon av fattigdom på en varig måte. Å bekjempe fattigdom ved overføringer er ikke en vei til velstand, det er en vei som ender i et stup.  

Den type tiltak som Støre går inn for i artikkelen vi siterte innledningsvis (og alle politikere i de store partiene støtter denne type tiltak) vil da bare gjøre vondt verre. Akkurat som de har gjort tidligere. 

(Jeg er klar over at behandlingen her av dette viktige tema er kort, men jeg har gitt en utførlig omtale av temaet i min bok Saysiansk økonomi.)       

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.siste.no/nyheter/politikk/arbeiderpartiet/over-100-000-fattige-barn-store-lover-grep/s/5-47-119151

https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/EQkR2/SV-Ingen-fattige-i-Norge-etter-2009

http://thefederalist.com/2018/05/24/study-no-1-reason-americans-poor-theyre-not-working/

http://jeanbaptistesay.no/

En kommentar til boken «A Critique of Ayn Rand´s Philosophy of Religion: The Gospel According to John Galt» av Dustin J. Byrd  

This review is published on the book´s site on amazon.com. Link provided below.

I was really looking forward to reading this book: a critique of Ayn Rand´s philosophy of religion written by a professional intellectual. Religion is a primitive form of philosophy, and it is a necessary step in the intellectual development of mankind – from believing in gods and the supernatural to a world view based upon observation, facts, proper concept formation, and logic: i.e. a development from faith to reason. Rand has written extensively about this, as have some of her students, and I was hoping that professor Byrd ´s book would provide a perspective that could  illuminate this important subject: religion is still with us and dominates some parts of the world (with unfreedom and poverty as an inevitable result). However, religion is not as strong a force in the West as it was in earlier times, especially in the the middle ages, a period largely caused by Christianity, which became a dominant force in the West after around 300 AD. From the Enlightenment, Christianity´s dominant presence was curtailed. Rand, of course, was an atheist and shared the Enlightenment world view: she supported reason, individualism, limited government, rule of law, free trade, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, separation of church and state – this in contrast to the dictatorships that most religionists support.

I was very disappointed by the book. Only a very few pages were dedicated to Rand´s view of religion and its influence, and professor Byrd does not discuss Rand´s main writings about this, most of the book consists of half-truths, out-of-context-quotes, speculative theories presented as uncontroversial facts, and outrageous claims that even an academic should check the validity of before he presented them as facts. There are also a few gaffes that are more amusing than embarrassing; on page 54 ha mentions the economist Ludwig von Hayek, perhaps mixing up classical liberal economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek.

Professor Byrd says early in the book that he «rarely diverged [his] attention outside of her [Rand´s] words … [he] focus[ed] on the primary material written by Rand» (page xii). This is not completely true. Byrd quotes numerous secondary sources, he provides quotes from the hack journalist Gary Weiss, he quotes unreliable biographies by Jennifer Burns and Anne Heller, he quotes people with an obvious axe to grind, and he quotes people with very poor insight in Rand´s corpus. Biographical works by people who knew Rand or had access to sources close to her (works by Jeff Britting, Michael Paxton, Mary Ann Sures, Shoshana Milgram) are not quoted or mentioned (except one out-of-context quote from Britting), quotes from or references to serious Rand scholars like Leonard Peikoff, Harry Binswanger and Tara Smith are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is that almost all of the quotes from Rand herself are from interviews, letters and journal entries published after her death, and not from the works she herself wrote for publication. Of course, in interviews, letters and journal entries not intended for written publication, the reader will not find the polished and exact formulations that one finds in an author´s published works. 

I will only give about a dozen or so examples of professor Byrd´s very poor scholarship. Professor Byrd mentions Rand´s comments about John Rawls´ thesis presented in his book A Theory of Justice. Byrd writes: «Rand said: ”let med say that I have not read and do not intend to read the book” before she proceeded to criticize it» (page 110). However, Rand did read a review of the book, and said in the sentence immediately following the sentence professor Byrd quotes: «But since one cannot judge a book by its reviews, please regard the following discussion as the review of a review. Mr Cohen´s [who reviewed the book] remarks deserve attention in their own right» (the complete quote is on page 131 in Rand´s Philosophy: Who Needs It, Bobbs-Merril 1982). I will not speculate as to why professor Byrd did not include these sentences.  

Professor Byrd claims that Rand in a quote provided by him on page 65 gave «an idealized reading of American history [that is] absolutely perverse in light of the enslavement of African [Americans] …». (Rand wrote that «The most profound revolutionary achievement of the United States of America was the subordination of society to moral law. The principle of man´s individual rights represented the extension of mortality into the social system …»). Byrd continues: «What is the moral law of private property that allowed human beings to be considered the possession of another, that allowed African children to be bought and sold …».  Byrd´s point seems to be that Rand more or less ignored the situation of black people in  America: because of the racism that dominated in large parts of America, they were legally and morally regarded not as human beings, but as property: they were slaves. How can a society subordinated to moral law, as Rand said the US was, accept slavery? 

However, Byrd ignores these  statements from Rand, easily available on the Ayn Rand Lexicon website: «The major victims of such race prejudice as did exist in America were the Negroes. It was a problem originated and perpetuated by the non-capitalist South, though not confined to its boundaries. The persecution of Negroes in the South was and is truly disgraceful. But in the rest of the country, so long as men were free, even that problem was slowly giving way under the pressure of enlightenment and of the white men’s own economic interests. …  It was the agrarian, feudal South that maintained slavery. It was the industrial, capitalistic North that wiped it out—as capitalism wiped out slavery and serfdom in the whole civilized world of the nineteenth century». Slavery had existed all over the world for thousands of years, and an entrenched institution like that will not disappear overnight; it will take time –and it was the ideas of the Enlightenment that made slavery disappear. The United States of America were in its founding principles (stated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) explicitly based upon the ideas of the Enlightenment. That does not mean that these ideas immediately were accepted by everybody at once, the spread of ideas takes time.

Also, Rand wrote that «racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage―the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas―or of inherited knowledge―which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men».    

Byrd accuses Rand of inconsistency/hypocrisy when she used social services when she opposed the existence of these kinds of government programs. Byrd: «For Rand, to know something is «evil» and to nevertheless participate in it makes the individual [Rand] evil as well» (page 140). Byrd is wrong. Rand was forced to pay taxes, and she had therefore every right to use all the services that the government provided with the tax-money that it had taken from the citizens. What was evil was the force used by the government in order to make Rand (and everybody else) pay taxes. In other words, Rand´s part in this evil program was not voluntary, she was forced. Does Byrd mean that Rand should have paid the taxes, but not used the services that the government´s income from the taxes was meant to provide for everybody, including her? Rand even wrote an essay where she discussed exactly this question («A Question of Scholarships»), but Byrd does not mention this.  

Byrd repeats the allegation that the intense sexual encounter between Howard and Dominique in The Fountainhead was rape, and quotes Rand saying that it was «rape by engraved invitation»: «In a scene … Dominique becomes the victim of a brutal sexual attack by Roark that Rand described as a «rape by engraved invitation»» (page 160). But it was  clearly not rape, as any attentive reader of the novel will understand, and Rand did not mean what Byrd attributes to her. What Rand said after receiving a question about the scene was the following:  «IF THAT WAS RAPE, it was rape by engraved invitation» (I have put in capitals the part of the quote that Byrd for some reason omitted). A thorough analysis of the scene and the rape-allegation is to be found in an article by professor Andrew Bernstein in Robert Mayhew´s collection Essays on The Fountainhead.  

On page 169, Byrd talks about the idolatry of money that he claims Rand´s ideas imply. But anyone who has read The Fountainhead knows that a Rand hero is not at all motivated by money, he is motivated by the joy of the creative process. Roark often lacks money, but he still declines commissions that will bring him large incomes if the proposed project is not to his liking. It is correct that Francisco in Atlas Shrugged says that «money is the root of all that is good», but every quote has to be understood in its context. The context of this quote really is the whole novel, but I will only provide the following: «»So you think that money is the root of all evil?» said Francisco d’Anconia. «Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?»». 

Professor Byrd also quotes other people than Rand and claim that they express Rand´s real views, even if Rand never said anything similar to the quote Byrd provides. Byrd quotes the economist Ludwig von Mises, who in a private letter to Rand about Atlas Shrugged said that: «You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you [the masses] are inferior and all the improvements in your condition you take for granted you owe to the effort of people that are better than you» (page 42). 

Rand would never have said anything like this. Also, I don´t think that Mises meant it the way Byrd interprets it: Mises is talking about «better» from the perspective of economic productivity, and then what Mises is saying is true. Rand had great respect for what is usually called the common man, the men and women who work productively to support themselves, their children and their families. She of course did not regard most people, or poor people, as in any way inferior, but claimed, correctly, that some are more productive than others. (She described some people as «looters» and «moochers», but by this she did not mean ordinary people or poor people, she meant some academics, some bureaucrats and some labour union bosses, and she meant adults who think they have a right to be fed, housed and educated by others simply because they exist.) 

On page 63, Byrd claims that Rand would «prefer the dictatorship of greed to a true democratic society». But why not let Rand herself explain what kind of political system she wanted, and what she opposed. The system she wanted was capitalism: «Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use…». She opposed majority rule, i.e. democracy: «“Democratic” in its original meaning [refers to] unlimited majority rule … a social system in which one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose.» (Both quotes are from the Ayn Rand Lexicon website). 

It seems as if Byrd does not understand what political freedom is. He writes: «For Rand, one cannot be truly free, neither intellectually or politically, if one lives an irrational life …» (page 17). This is completely wrong. One is (politically) free if one is not subject to initiation of force by the government (and if the government makes society safe from criminals). So, altruists and collectivists and religionists are free if they live in a society where the government does not initiate force against them (or anyone else). However, Rand would say that altruists and collectivists and religionists cannot be truly happy, not even in a free society – because people who follow ideologies like these will not be able to fully understand reality, and therefore, they will not be able to make good choices in their lives.  

On page 39, Byrd claims that Rand believed John F. Kennedy to be a fascist, and thinks that Rand is completely wrong. What she said – in a letter to her publisher about a talk with the title «The Fascist New Frontier», in which she discussed some of the policies of the Kennedy-administration – was that «The theme [of the talk] … is an ideological critique of the Kennedy-administration: my central point is to demonstrate that contrary to the popular illusion, the Kennedy administration´s ideology is not socialistic, but fascistic» (Rand´s italics, the quote is from Letters of Ayn Rand, page 618). An academic should know that fascism in politics implies that property rights are given lip service, but are not upheld in practice. Rand was not the only one who observed that the Kennedy administration´s policies contained fascistic elements; economist Milton Friedman, who later was awarded a Nobel prize in economics, made a similar observation. A dictionary definition of fascism includes the following: «[fascism is] a governmental system with strong centralized power … controlling all affairs of the nation (industrial, commercial, etc.) …» (The American College Dictionary, New York: Random House, 1957). This correctly described some of the Kennedy administration´s policies. I wish to add that the definition also included the following «…permitting no opposition or criticism», which of course did not apply to the Kennedy administration´s policies. 

Byrd writes that Rand «was not concerned with the poor, the powerless, the victims of history …». This is the opposite of the truth. Her view was that wealth is a good thing, that only respect for property rights and a free, unregulated economy – i.e. laissez-faire-capitalism – can produce wealth;  and that those who benefit the most from capitalism are ordinary people. Increasing wealth is a result of the accumulation of capital, and this is only possible over time if property rights are respected in full. This important point is worth an extensive quote from Rand (from Galt´s speech): 

«When you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you. When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think and whom you spend your time denouncing. The machine, the frozen form of a living intelligence, is the power that expands the potential of your life by raising the productivity of your time. If you worked as a blacksmith in the mystics’ Middle Ages, the whole of your earning capacity would consist of an iron bar produced by your hands in days and days of effort. How many tons of rail do you produce per day if you work for Hank Rearden? Would you dare to claim that the size of your pay check was created solely by your physical labor and that those rails were the product of your muscles? The standard of living of that blacksmith is all that your muscles are worth; the rest is a gift from [capitalists and entrepreneurs like] Hank Rearden.»

People like professor Byrd believe that the only way to raise the living standard of ordinary people, and help the poor, is to tax the rich, and with the money thus acquired the state can provide «free» education, health services and pensions, etc. to everybody. But in a system like this, the quality of the state run services will decline, the taxes will increase, resourceful people will move to countries with lower taxes, or into fields which are less regulated by the government (Rand described this as a «drain of brains»), and some of the people who can live somewhat comfortably on government handouts without working will lose incentives to work. We have seen this development in all socialist countries, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in all welfare states. Rand described this development in the story of The Twentieth Century Motor Factory in Atlas Shrugged, but is seems that professor Byrd skipped that part of the book.    

Byrd writes about the racism that was widespread in the USA, and supports initiation of force by the government in order to end racism. Rand never supported initiation of force by anyone, not even by the government, and thus opposed all laws that restricts individual freedom. Freedom includes the right for all individuals to do things that others consider bad or immoral, as long at these actions do not involve initiation of force. If a bigot does not want to hire people who have a skin color he does not like, he has every right not to hire them. Byrd thinks this is very wrong, he thinks that bigots and other bad people should not have the right to freedom – or, more correct, professor Byrd seems to think that nobody deserves or needs freedom (freedom is the right for every man and woman to use his or her body, income and property in any peaceful way he or she chooses).   

As do some commentators, professor Byrd blames the financial crisis of 2008 on deregulation and greedy bankers, and that both greed and deregulation were caused by the increasing influence of Rand´s ideas in the culture. But to say that the bankers of the early 2000s were more greedy than they were 20 or 50 years before, is a stretch. Why greed should cause economic crises is never really explained, and that the extent of the deregulation that happened were much closer to non-existent or minuscule than to the complete elimination of all regulation that Rand wanted, is obvious. (And as long as one tries to satisfy one´s greed by peaceful, productive activity, I can´t see that there is anything wrong with that.) 

What was the cause of the crisis? There were not only one cause, the crisis was caused by a series of bad policy decisions. One of them was president Bush´s «weak dollar»-policy in the early 2000s, which resulted in the dollar losing much of its value. The price of gold, which is an important economic indicator, increased in this period (2001 to 2008) from $ 300 to $ 1000. What this really says is that the dollar lost much of its value. In a healthy economy, the value of money is constant, i.e. the price of gold is constant. The main cause of this crisis, however, was the same as the main cause of earlier crises in the US: The Fed changed the relationship between long term and short term interest rates, i.e. The Fed inverted the yield curve (most people have never heard about this, if you haven´t and want to know more about it, google it). There were also other factors that I will just mention in passing; The CRA, adopted in 1977 and intensified from 1995, the Sarbanes-Oxley-act (2002). Later came TARP (2008) and Dodd-Frank (2010), and all of these made the regulatory burden heavier for the whole productive sector; in other words: it made it more difficult to run a business. Predictably, the growth slowed down considerably. Byrd writes on page 169 about the «slow economic recovery from the 2008 economic collapse», but he does not understand that the burdensome regulations were the main cause.

This inversion of the yield curve changes good investments into bad investments; investments that before the inversion made a profit turn into bad investments because the term structure of interest rates changed. In 2006-2007, The Fed increased the interest rate from 1 % to 5 %. The economists at The Fed believe that inversions like this are necessary when the economic growth becomes too strong (the economy grew steadily for many years after president  Reagan´s not very substantial tax cuts and deregulations); if the yield curve is not inverted, the economy becomes «over heated» and this will, the economists in The Fed believe, cause severe problems. This view is based upon a gross misunderstanding of how an economy works, and it is inspired by the ideas of John Maynard Keynes. Almost all economists today are heavily influenced by Keynes. Keynes´ theories are not correct, and that is why all western countries who follow economic policies inspired by him, from time to time suffer unemployment, inflation, government debt, and more or less severe economic crises, and that the long term development is very negative. 

After the crisis, many large firms were close too bankruptcy, and president Obama´s administration spent enormous amount of taxpayer money on bailouts in order to save some of the larger firms and banks. In other words, the Obama administration forced tax payers to cover the losses of some big firms. And yes, some of the bankers had acted irresponsibly. But when people, including bankers,  know that the government will help them and bail them out when they act irresponsibly, some of them will act more irresponsibly. 

Professor Byrd does not understand any of this; Ayn Rand understood all of this. That is why she was against the existence of The Fed, she opposed government decrees about interest rates, and she opposed government bailouts. She wanted a completely free economy, including a free banking system, and free banking will have the result that money will be based upon a gold standard. The one thinker that is the least responsible for the mess is Ayn Rand, and yet, professor Byrd puts the blame on her.

(For those who are interested in a more through discussion of the cause of the crisis, I can recommend John Allison´s book about what really happened: The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism is the World Economy’s Only Hope.) 

Rand opposed all government regulation, she wanted a society where property rights are fully and completely respected. Today, property rights are not respected, and all property owners are forced to obey thousands of rules and regulations, regulations that lawmakers create on almost a daily basis – regulations that are also because of their enormous complexity, very close to impossible to follow, and that takes a lot of work just to read and understand.   

«Capitalism is a brutal, … and arrogantly vicious» professor Byrd claims on page 93. He is completely wrong. Under capitalism, individuals have to deal with each other voluntarily, and they will only deal with each other when both parties profit from it. People who are not benevolent and honest will discover that fewer and fewer people will have anything to do with them; capitalism promotes honesty and benevolence. 

There are much of interest to be found in the Objectivist literature about the value of benevolence, On the Ayn Rand Lexicon web site one finds the following quote: «We advocate the “benevolent universe” premise». In one of her essays, Rand wrote that «It is only when a man knows that his neighbors have no power forcibly to interfere with his life, that he can feel benevolence toward them and they toward him – as the history of the American people has demonstrated. The freest people on earth was the most benevolent and the most generous (Rand in «A Nation´s Unity», part 2). There is even a whole essay, titled «Altruism vs. Benevolence», about this (written by Branden, approved by Rand). All of this seems to be completely unknown to professor Byrd. 

It is just strange to say, as professor Byrd does, that capitalism is brutal and vicious when elements of capitalism since about 1800 has made possible a wealth unimaginable in earlier times. Capitalism has reduced poverty to such a large extent that it now only exists in areas completely untouched by capitalism. When ideologies that are the complete opposite of capitalism –  Christianity, Islam, communism, fascism, Nazism – have lead to mass murder and wars that have killed hundreds of millions of people, and capitalism leads to peace and prosperity, it is strange to say that capitalism is brutal and vicious. Capitalism, to a significant extent, dominated in Europe in the period from 1815 to 1914, and in this period there were no major wars in Europe. Where socialism rules, poverty becomes more and more dominant. This happens every time a country tries socialism; in 2018, the latest example of this is the once reasonably well-off and oil-rich Venezuela, but now, after some years of socialistic policies, poverty is widespread, close to nothing can be bought in the shops, and some people are eating their dogs and cats in order to survive. Crimes of all kinds are in the rise, riots are met by violence by the police and the military. Not much benevolence there anymore.  

But the welfare states, a semi-socialist system, are unfortunately growing in size everywhere. Byrd thinks this is a good thing, and let me use Obamacare as an illustration: «… Obama´s attempt to institute a more equitable and sustainable health care system …[was] supposed to guard the nation´s common good, even when a large percentage of the populace isn´t aware of what´s actually in their interest» (page 148). There is a lot to say about this, but let me only say this: health care in the US was (before Obamacare) of a reasonably quality for most people. For some, it was very expensive because of government regulations (that was largely started in the 1940ies). Obama attempted to regulate this important sector even more, and this made it even more bureaucratic and expensive.     

The article «Moral Health Care vs. “Universal Health Care”» by Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh gives a good summary of the history of the American health care system and its problems before Obamacare. It is available here: 

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2007-winter/moral-vs-universal-health-care/

On page 172, professor Byrd writes approvingly that the pope regards the «modern capitalist economy of today as an «economy that kills» due to the exclusionary violence that it commits against millions of poor people, workers, citizens of the «global south» …, the elderly, the ill, the dying, and all of those that Ayn Rand found to be devoid of economic and/or social worth». Professor Byrd also claims, and says that he shares this view with Plato: it is a «fact that the «money makers» create the poor» (page 180). On page 93 he wrote that «capitalism is brutal». This is the opposite of the truth: Poverty was the normal state of mankind – until the rise of capitalism. The truth is the following: the money makers raise the standard of living for all, in other words: the more money makers there are, the more people become rich, and poverty is reduced: the only cure for poverty is capitalism. Why? Wealth is the result of production. Production on a systematic, large scale over time is only possible when property rights are respected, and the system that protects property rights is … capitalism. Under capitalism, all interactions between people are voluntary and peaceful, so to describe capitalism as brutal is BS. One can also confirm this by looking at countries and cultures where property rights are not protected: they are poor.      

Let us do what professor Byrd rarely does, let us look at some relevant facts. I quote a few paragraphs from Objectivist Craig Biddle´s article «Pope Francis, Religion, Capitalism, and Ayn Rand» (link provided below). 

«Given the widely acknowledged fact that countries and populations enjoy wealth and prosperity precisely to the extent that they embrace capitalism, why does Pope Francis call capitalism «the dung of the devil» and jet around the globe aiming to rid the world of it? Economists and other intellectuals have spelled out at great length the overwhelming historic evidence in support of the fact that capitalism―the system of individual rights, limited government, and rule of law―is the political-economic cause of prosperity. … Donald Boudreaux observes that capitalism «is history’s greatest force for raising the living standards of the masses», noting that Pope Francis somehow misses this: «Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the average person lived on about $3 per day (reckoned in 2015 dollars), and each denizen of today’s developing countries―those places touched least by capitalism―scrapes by on $7 per day. In contrast, the average person in today’s market-oriented industrialized world lives on $110 per day, and the average American lives on $150. Now, thanks to capitalism, billions of us . . . live lives that not even the most powerful Byzantine or European potentate dared dream of just a few hundred years ago.» … Why then does Pope Francis insist that capitalism is «the dung of the devil» and that we must eliminate or at least sharply curtail this wretched thing? The Pope sees fit to make such claims because religion … is, in principle, opposed to the very things that capitalism legalizes and venerates―most notably, in this context, the selfish pursuit of profit and the right to keep and use the product of one’s effort. The Bible is chock full of passages that oppose these pillars of capitalism …».     

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2015/09/pope-francis-religion-capitalism-and-ayn-rand/

Let me add that professor Byrd touches upon something that is correct when he describes some negative aspects of today´s culture in the West, and especially in the US. But he is wrong to think that the blame for this belongs to capitalism. The economic system in all western countries today is not capitalism, they have a mixed economy, all these countries are welfare states, they do not have the free economy that Ayn Rand regarded as an ideal. I will just give a short quote from Rand (in a letter written on March 19, 1944) where she described the problems in welfare states: «A mixed economy divides a country into an ever-growing number of enemy camps, into economic groups fighting one another for self preservation in an indeterminate mixture of defense and offense.» This seems exactly like a description of the situation today. In other words, the problems are caused not by the spread of the rational and individualistic ideas of Ayn Rand, the problems are caused by the growing collectivism and because of the inter group warfare that the welfare state must lead to.  

On page 121, professor Byrd writes as if he believes that the original claims of the IPCC were an obvious truth (that emissions from human use of fossil fuels, so called greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, will cause a global warming that within a few years will have catastrophic results). Byrd: «Rand completely missed that which is not even in question within the scientific community today, i.e. the fact that global climate change is occurring and the fact that it is man made». Byrd presents this as if it were an obvious, uncontroversial fact. But few scientists believe this anymore; climate change has been a natural phenomenon for thousands of years, the changes that have been observed in the last 150 years are clearly within normal variations, and there has been no warning these last 20 years, even if the emissions of CO2 have increased. It is professor Byrd who is in the wrong here.  

Rand was as early as 1972 writing about how environmentalism would come to be used for political purposes, used as a bogus reason for the political left´s campaign to transfer more and more power to the government. She was completely right about this, and if we use global warming as an example, anyone who has followed the development of the claims of the IPCC and some climate scientists these last few years can confirm (examples are the failed predictions of IPCC, «climategate», etc.) Byrd does not at all touch upon this very important point. He writes as if everything that environmentalists have claimed since the 1970ies is the gospel truth, which it clearly is not, all of it´s predictions have failed completely.  

A good book about this is Alex Epstein´s The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.     

However, it seems as if Rand in an interview said that emissions from cars are not harmful, if the transcription of the interview Byrd quotes is to be relied upon. But Byrd tries to give his readers the impression that Rand did not care at all about pollution, as long as the polluter could make a profit. This is clearly wrong. In her essay on environmentalism, she wrote: «As far as the role of government is concerned, there are laws  … prohibiting certain kinds of pollution, such as the dumping of industrial waste into rivers. These laws have not been enforced. It is the enforcement of such laws that those concerned with the issue may properly demand. Specific laws  – forbidding specifically defined and proved harm, physical harm, to persons and property – are the only solution to problems of this kind» (The New Left, page 142). This quote proves that what professor Byrd claims as Rand´s view of pollution is completely wrong. Maybe that is why he did not include it in his book.   

Byrd even mentions Rand´s notes in her diary about the gruesome killer William Hickman. Hickman had some admirable traits; he was self confident and had a somewhat brash personality, and it seems as if Byrd tries to make the case that Rand in some way approved of Hickman´s gruesome murders. However, one should always keep context: Rand was writing about Hickman in her journals, in 1928, when she was 23 years old. At hat time, she was planning a career as a novelist, and was looking for interesting characters to use as models for fictional characters. As everyone should know, the public is, even today, fascinated by stories about charismatic criminals; everyone knows current works like American Psycho, Dexter, The Sopranos, etc. Rand might have wanted to include a character with some of Hickman´s personality traits in a work of fiction. Yes, Rand at 23 wrote in her private journal that she admired some of Hickman´s traits, and Byrd quotes some of the things she wrote. But professor Byrd does not mention the fact that Rand´s evaluation of him was that he was a «purposeless monster», and said that «Yes, he is a monster» (both quotes are to be found on page 38 in Journals, but apparently, professor Byrd did not see them or found them worthy of inclusion). As for the seemingly positive things she said about Hickman´s personality, Rand wrote: «I am afraid that I idealize Hickman and that he might not be this after all. In fact, he probably isn´t» (Journals, page 39). I.e. Rand said explicitly that Hickman probably did not really have the admirable traits she had attributed to him on the preceding page.  

So, to present Rand as somehow a supporter or a fan of a mass murderer is an outright lie, especially since she later clearly stated that the worst one could do to another person is to initiate force against him. 

It is true that in her youth, Rand was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, and Byrd makes a big point out of this. Nietzsche was an avid irrationalist. Commentator Irving Zeitlin writes in his Nietzsche: A Re-evaluation: For Nietzsche «rationality … constitutes decadence. Rationality stands in opposition to the instincts, and is therefore a sign of sickness, not health». Nietzsche admired people who violently fought for power – he admired people like Alcibiades, Caesar, and Napoleon. Here are some quotes from Nietzsche: «The most evil is necessary for the Superman’s best», «[Freedom is] that one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one’s cause», «…one must learn to sacrifice many and to take one’s cause seriously enough not to spare men», «[Some men] are sculptors – and the rest are merely clay compared to them», «we must accept this cruel-sounding truth, that slavery is of the essence of culture». To say that the ideas of the mature Rand are in some manner related to this is just not true at all. Rand said in a radio interview in 1964 that «I am very anxious to separate Objectivism from Nietzsche altogether … I don`t want to be confused with Nietzsche in any respect». As everyone knows, Rand was in favor of rationality and opposed the initiation of force. Professor Byrd ignores all this and tries to present Rand as a Nietzschean. 

Yes, Rand lets Kira say something that was close to the Nietschean view in the first edition of We the Living, but it is wrong to claim that what a fictional character says is an expression of the author´s opinion. (But some aspects of Kira´personality were in some ways modeled upon Rand herself.) More about the changes Rand made for the reissue of We the Living in 1959 is to be found in the article «We the Living ´36 and ´59» by professor Robert Mayhew, included in the collection Essays on Ayn Rand´s We the Living, edited by Mayhew. For a professional investigation of the relationship between Rand and Nietzsche, one may read «Ayn Rand´s Evolving View of Friedrich Nietzsche» by philosophy professor Lester Hunt, available in A Companion to Ayn Rand, published in the series Blackwell Companions to Philosophy.    

Byrd wrote that he read Rand´s works, but did not enjoy it, and he did not enjoy writing about her ideas: «The book you are about to read was not a labor of love, but a work of pain and suffering. If happiness is the goal of self-interest, then writing this book was an exercise in sadness but necessary self-sacrifice. I did not enjoy reading her work …» (page xii).

I must say that reading professor Byrd´s book was not very enjoyable. To see so many misrepresentations, so many out-of-context quotes, to see Rand presented as the mother of events and cultural developments that were quite the opposite of what she really wished, was not enjoyable, to say the least. Rand was an original and important thinker, and her ideas, if they will come to dominate the culture, can change the world into the wonderful place it can be and ought to be. Rand was completely honest and had a stellar integrity, and when I saw her misrepresented the way Byrd does in this book, I wanted to defend her, and so I have tried in this short article. (I am an Objectivist, but that of course does not imply that I agree with every statement Rand ever made.) This article could easily have been much longer, there are many points I have not touched upon – for instance, I did not include anything on the unprincipled approach to philosophical ideas by some of the people who claim to be influenced by Rand, e.g. actors on the political stage in the US like Alan Greenspan, Pamela Geller and Paul Ryan. However, I was not able to see that people like these belong in a book that purports to be about Rand´s philosophy of religion.       

Two final points: there is almost nothing about Ayn Rand´s philosophy of religion in the book. And if professor Byrd´s point is to show that Objectivism really is an ideology that promotes irrationality and self-sacrifice among its adherents, i, e. that Objectivism is a religion, a «gospel according to John Galt», it also fails completely.  

Is this book then a compete waste of ink, paper and glue and the reader´s time? No, it is not. It shows clearly professor Byrd´s intellectual firepower, and it shows the level of his honesty and competence in dealing with an important thinker with whom he disagrees. And some may find that useful. 

$$$$$$$$$$$

 

(I wish to thank Per Arne Karlsen and Martin Johansen for useful suggestions during the writing of this article.)

Below are links to some additional material that may be of interest.

Ed Locke on the Burns biography:

https://edwinlocke.com/book-commentary/

Ari Armstrong on the Burns biography:

https://ariarmstrong.com/2009/10/introducing-jennifer-burns-on-ayn-rand/

Robert Mayhew on the Burns biography:

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2009-winter/ayn-rand-jennifer-burns/

Jeff Perren on the Burns biography

http://shavingleviathan.blogspot.no/2009/10/goddess-of-market-not-so-worshipful.html

 Ed Cline on the Heller biography:

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.no/2010/02/defending-ayn-rand.htm

 

The book on amazon.com:

Krigen i Midt-Østen: i dag og i fremtiden

Det som mainstream-pressen som regel kaller konflikten i Midt-Østen, dvs. krigen mellom Israel og en del land og grupper i områdene omkring, har nå vart i 70 år. Den har altså pågått med varierende intensitet siden Israel ble opprettet 14. mai 1948. 

Det er inngått fredsavtaler mellom Israel og enkelte av de som var i krig med Israel, bla. Egypt og Jordan, men det er fortsatt noen grupper som kriger mot Israel. Fremst av disse er terroristgruppen Hamas, som på demokratisk vis etter valg fikk makten på Gaza, et område som inntil 2005 var under kontroll av Israel. (Forøvrig, Hamas´viktigste støttespiller og sponsor er det islamistiske diktaturet Iran.) 

I de siste ukene har det på grensen mellom Gaza og Israel vært det som mainstream-pressen omtaler som demonstrasjoner; et stort antall Gaza-beboere har beveget seg inntil grensen for å markere sine synspunkter. 

Dagsrevyen omtalte 14. mai demonstrasjonene slik: «Blodigste dag på Gaza på mange år … Minst 52 drept og 2400 skadet [etter at ubevæpnede demonstranter er blitt beskutt] av israelske soldater … Flere tusen palestinere har demonstrert, bla. mot åpningen av USAs ambassade i Jerusalem … ».

Noen dager tidligere var Dagsrevyen noe mindre uklar på årsaken til demonstrasjonen. 30 april kunne Dagsrevyens seere høre følgende «Flere enn 30 000 palestinere startet i dag en demonstrasjon mot israelsk okkupasjon». Det ble ikke nevnt hvilken okkupasjon det var snakk om, men uttrykket «al -Nakba» er blitt nevnt. Dette arabiske uttrykket betyr «den store katastrofen», men Dagsrevyen forklarte ikke hva de såkalte demonstrantene mener med dette uttrykket.      

Det finnes dog kilder hvor man kan finne relevante opplysninger om det som skjer, opplysninger som enhver seriøs journalist ville ha tatt med hvis han skulle informere om det er bakgrunnen for aksjonene. Dette er opplysninger vi ikke har sett i norske mainstream-medier. 

Vi siterer fra frontpagemag.com om de såkalte demonstrantenes handlinger: 

«[They used] hand grenades, pipe bombs, cleavers and guns … explosive devices … There were …  gunfire and over a dozen kites carrying firebombs were sent into Israel where they started 23 …  fires.»

Dette er krigshandlinger. Demonstranter roper slagord og holder opp plakater – å omtale de som står bak denne type handlinger som beskrevet over som «demonstranter» er feil, de er krigere. Når Dagsrevyen kaller disse for demonstranter så er det en løgn. 

Hamas´ statsminister på Gaza, Yahya Sinwa, har uttalt følgende om formålet med aksjonene: «We will tear down the border [between Gaza and Israel] …». Dette er så vidt vi har sett ikke nevnt i mainstream-media.   

Videre, Hamas betaler $100 til hver «demonstrant», og tidligere har Det Muslimske Brorskap  tilbudt $ 200 til de som blir truffet av israelske kuler, $ 500 til de som får alvorlige skader, og familiene til de som blir drept skulle få $ 3 000. (Hamas har mye penger; pengene kommer fra Iran og fra en rekke vestlige land som gir penger til det de later som de tror er humanitære formål).   

Hva er så det egentlig målet for de såkalte demonstrantene? Hva er al -Nakba? Hva er det de mener med «Israels okkupasjon»? 

Kort sagt, med uttrykket al-Nakba mener demonstrantene opprettelsen av Israel. De mener at Israel okkuperer hele det området det besitter, og det Hamas ønsker er å fjerne Israel, det de ønsker er at Israel skal opphøre å eksistere. 

Det som foregår på Gazas side er intet annet enn et angrep på Israel, det er et forsøk på å trenge igjennom grensen og rett og slett invadere Israel. Nå er det sannsynlig at Hamas´ ledelse har liten tro på at de vil lykkes med dette, Israel kontrollerer all import til Gaza for å sørge for at våpen ikke kommer inn i områder (all annen import slipper inn). 

Vi vil tro at hovedpoenget med angrepene er å skape sympati for Hamas og å fremstille Israel som om landets soldater skyter og dreper «ubevæpnede demonstranter». Og vi ser at Dagsrevyen og andre i mainstream-media reellt sett fungerer som et propagandaapparat for Hamas ved å vise film og bilder av sårede «demonstranter», og ikke vise noen bilder som viser angrepene på Israel.

Vi ser også at politiske ledere i Vesten ønsker at volden skal opphøre og at partene skal finnes en diplomatisk løsning, en forhandlingsløsning. Bla. uttalte utenriksminister Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide dette i Dagsrevyen. De ønsker altså at det skal finnes en fredelig forhandlingsløsning mellom det siviliserte, vestlig orientert demokratiet Israel, og Hamas, en gruppe som ønsker at Israel skal opphøre å eksistere og at det område hvor velferdsstaten Israel nå finnes skal erstattes med et shariadiktatur. 

Vi ha svært vanskelig for å se at en forhandlingsløsning mellom to slike parter er mulig. 

Det man må se på i denne type kriger er ideologiene som de krigende parter representerer. På den ene siden har vi islamistene i terroristgruppen Hamas, på den annen side har vi velferdsstatsilhengerne i Israel. Det burde være enkelt å velge mellom de to sidene, og som alle vet, alle på den politiske venstreside velger å støtte Hamas. (Det er demonstrasjoner til støtte for Hamas i en rekke byer i Vesten, også i Oslo, se link nedenfor). Det burde ikke overraske noen at den politiske venstresiden føler seg ideologisk sett nærmere Hamas enn med det siviliserte Israel. 

Hvordan vil dette ende? Hvordan kan det ende? Vårt syn er at kriger av denne typen – en krig som altså har pågått med varierende intensitet i 70 år – må ende med en militær sier til en av partene. Uten en slik militær seier vil krigen bare fortsette og fortsette. Våpenhvileavtaler vil kunne redusere intensiteten i perioder, men det som får slutt på kriger er praktisk talt alltid en militær seier, en seier som er så klar og tydelig at den tapende part innser at den har tapt og således mister ethvert ønske om å kjempe videre. Det var slike resultater man fikk i annen verdenskrig; da var nederlagene til Tyskland og Japan så klare at det var tydelig for enhver at de ideologiene de representerte – nazismen i Tyskland og den underkastende og selvutslettende keiserdyrkingen som var ideologien i Japan – ikke lenger hadde noen mulighet til å få noe som helst gjennomslag og mulighet til å prege landet. Både Tyskland og Japan var okkupert i flere år etter 1945, dette for å sikre at disse grusomme ideologiene ikke igjen skulle få mulighet vokse frem.  

Det finnes en rekke eksempler fra historien som viser det samme – at den sikreste og oftest den eneste veien til fred er en militær seier. Den som vil vite mer om dette henvises til John David Lewis´ glimrende bok Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (link nedenfor).

Vårt syn er alt at den eneste veien til fred i Midt-Østen er en militær seier til Israel, en militær seier som er så klar at de som ønsker at Israel skal opphøre å eksistere, og at sharia skal innføres i dette området, innser at dette ønsket aldri kommer til å bli oppfylt. Å oppnå en slik seier er enkelt å få til for Israel, militært sett, men for å få dette igjennom må man ha en moralsk stryke som setter en i stand til å forsvare seg slik at truslene og angrepene opphører. I dag har Israel (og heller ikke noe annet land i Vesten) denne moralske styrken. 

Å tro at man kan få fred gjennom forhandlinger mellom Hamas, som altså ønsker at Israel skal elimineres, og Israel, tyder bare på en ekstrem mangel på virkelighetskontakt. Men folk flest, og derved politikere flest, lar seg dessverre i liten grad styre av fakta og logikk og fornuft og erfaring, de lar seg styre av ønsketenkning. Og ønsketenking fører da til at i dette tilfellet man har en krig som pågått i tiår etter tiår etter tiår, og som antagelig dessverre vil fortsette i noen tiår til.    

        

 

 

https://tv.nrk.no/serie/dagsrevyen/NNFA19051418/14-05-2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270186/thousands-gaza-hamas-thugs-attack-israel-100-day-daniel-greenfield

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Less-than-Victory-Decisive/dp/0691162026/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526453745&sr=8-1&keywords=nothing+less+than+victory

https://resett.no/2018/05/15/flere-hundre-deltok-i-palestina-demonstrasjon-i-oslo-drep-alle-joder/

Den kalde krigen mot Iran blir varm? 

I 1979 skjedde det et regimeskifte i Iran. Regimet til den vestlig orienterte og sekulære sjahen ble avsatt og erstattet av det som etter kort tid viste seg å være et barbarisk, islamistisk tyranni under ledelse av ayatholla Khomeiny. 

At det var stor motstand mot sjahen i folket er lett å forstå; hans regime var sterkt undertrykkende (men langt fra så ille som det som fulgte), og han var udugelig som leder. 

Etter regimeskiftet ble Iran den første islamistiske republikk i nyere tid, og landet ble en ledestjerne og en inspirator for den voksende islamistbevegelsen: dette skiftet var det første tegn på at islam igjen skulle bli en trussel for den siviliserte verden. 

Etter at islamistene fikk makten i Iran begynte de å omforme landet til i meget stor grad å følge sharia, og landets regime støttet på alle vis – økonomisk, strategisk, militært og, viktigst, ideologisk – islamistiske bevegelser over store deler av verden.       

Regimets fiender var Israel, som enkelte i Irans lederskap har sagt bør fjernes slik man fjerner en kreftsvulst, og USA. Disse to landene blir omtalt som «den lille satan» og «den store satan». (Hovedgrunnen til den fiendtlige innstillingen til Israel er at landet befinner seg på et område som en gang var under muslimsk kontroll; at muslimer må oppgi områder som har vært under deres kontroll er uakseptabelt.)  

Irans regime undertrykker landets egen befolkning – det er ingen økonomisk frihet, det er ingen ytringsfrihet, det er ingen religionsfrihet, det er dødsstraff for homofili og for blasfemi, jenter kan visstnok giftes bort fra de er ni år gamle, etc. (avisen The Independent: «You can get married as young as nine in Iran», men sier at denne opplysningen er ubekreftet.) Også utlendinger som er i landet blir iblant arrestert, anklaget for å være spioner, og dømt til lange fengselsstraffer. Hvorvidt slike anklager har basis i fakta er av liten relevans for domstolene.  

Regimet har støttet og finansiert terroristgrupper som har angrepet USA og Israel, og andre grupper som har begått mindre aksjoner i andre land; bl.a. har de støttet Hezbollah, Hamas, Taliban, al-Qaida. Iran støtter også grupper i Irak, i Jemen og i Syria. 

Landet har også er program som regimet hevder skal utvikle atomkraft, men alt tyder på et det virkelige formålet er å lage atomvåpen.

Så er det et viktig moment som man bør være klar over: enkelte personer i landets ledelse tror at endetiden er nær, et syn som impliserer at det å bruke en atombombe ikke vil gjøre så mye fra eller til: «The Shia’s branch of Muslim belief, most prominent in Iran, expects the return of the Mahdi, a savior who … is expected to bring justice and peace to the world at the end of this age.» 

Vesten, med USA som den sterkeste part, har på ulike vis forsøkt å hindre at Iran skaffer atomvåpen, og det ble i 2015 utarbeidet en avtaletekst som bla. innebar at Iran skulle få fortsette sitt atomprogram i noe mindre skala, et program som landets regime altså hevder kun er fredelig; selv om landet har mye olje trenger landet visstnok store mengder atomkraft. Avtalen hindret ikke regimet i å fortsette å  utvikle raketter som kan frakte atomstridshoder over lange avstander. Regimet skulle også løslate utenlandske fanger som satt arrestert i Iran. Til gjengjeld ble handelsrestriksjoner på Iran sterkt redusert, og landet skulle få enorme beløp i økonomisk støtte fra USA. Om denne støtten skriver Frontpagemag bla. følgende: 

«On January 17 [2016], Obama illegally airlifted $400 million in foreign currency on unmarked cargo planes to the IRGC [Irans Revolutionary Guards Corps, en avdeling av Irans militære styrker] as a down payment on a $1.7 billion ransom for four American hostages being held in Iran.»

Vi skyter inn at strengt tatt er det galt så si at det eksisterer en slik avtale mellom USA og Iran; den ble ikke ratifisert av Kongressen selv om president Obama ønsket dette. Som kjent har nå president Trump sagt opp denne avtalen. 

Forholdet mellom Iran og Vesten har inntil det siste lignet på en kald krig av samme type som den som foregikk mellom Sovjetunionen og Vesten etter annen verdenskrig, spesielt på 70- og 80-tallet. Det er en rekke likhetstrekk mellom Sovjet og Iran: Iran har et regime som er basert på en revolusjonerende ideologi som den forsøker å eksportere over hele verden, og spesielt i Midt-Østen. Regimet benytter flere veier for å nå dette målet: noen ganger gjennom direkte militært engasjement, noen ganger med proxy-kriger og undergraving av sittende regimer og ulike typer støtte til politiske partier, revolusjonære bevegelser og terroristgrupper – og dette er akkurat det samme som Sovjet gjorde under den kalde krigen mot Vesten; da støtte Sovjet en rekke såkalte frigjøringsbevegelser bla. i Afrika og i Sør-Amerika. Vestlige medier har fremstilt den ambisiøse terroristgruppen Islamsk Stat – IS – som den store trusselen, men det er regimet i Iran som er den store trusselen. IS er åpenbart barbarisk, men den like barbariske siden ved Irans regime er mindre tydelig. IS ønsket å bli en stat, men klarte det ikke takket være en ikke ubetydelig militær innsats fra en rekke land, bla. USA under president Trump. Man bør være oppmerksom på at Irans lederskap har en ideologi som er nærmest identisk med den ideologi IS har, og Iran er allerede en stat med et atomvåpenprogram.

Men akkurat som Sovjetunionen er Iran svakt internt. Bak bombastisk propaganda og en ordkrig preget av revolusjonær retorikk skjuler det seg en sviktende økonomi og en korrupt og undertrykkende politisk elite som har fremmedgjort sitt eget folk. Det iranske regimet har de siste tiårene undertrykt studentopprør og massive gatedemonstrasjoner med krav om større frihet. Så sent som i januar i år var det store demonstrasjoner, men mest kjent var opprøret under den såkalte grønne revolusjonen i 2009. Da burde USAs leder gitt støtte til opprørerne, men president Obama ignorerte fullstendig dette opprøret, Obama uttrykte ikke engang merkbar verbal støtte til opprøret. 

Krisen i Iran stikker dypt og bredt. Økonomien er i fritt fall. Valutaen blir svakere. Stigende priser på forbruksvarer gjør befolkningen fattigere. Lite regn de siste fem årene har redusert landbruksproduksjonen (noen husker muligens at regimet i Sovjet brukte dårlig vær som unnskyldning for den lave landbruksproduksjonen etter revolusjonen i 1917: det virker som om både sosialistiske og islamistiske revolusjoner ikke bare fører til undertrykkelse av mennesker og henrettelser av opposisjonelle, de fører også til dårlig vær. I land som bevarer elementer av kapitalisme har man for å løse problemer med dårlig vær funnet på slike ting som drivhus og kunstig vanning.)  

Nå er det mulig at den kalde krigen til en viss grad går over i en varm krig; så sent som i går sendte Israel raketter for å ødelegge iranske baser i Syria; Israel er ikke villig til å la Iran få baser så nært Israel som i Syria, dette altså grunnet den holdning som Irans ledelse har til Israel og som vi kort nevnte over. 

Vårt syn er at krig bør unngås. Men regimet i Iran må vekk. Det er umulig å få fred i området så lenge islamister har makten i Iran. Hvordan skal da dette skje? Hvordan kan regimet i Iran fjernes? Dette er et militærteknisk spørsmål som vi ikke har noen detaljert mening om. Sovjet falt uten noen varm krig, men kommunistene i Sovjet var noenlunde siviliserte i forhold til de primitive religiøse lederne i Iran; lederne i Sovjet trodde ikke at de lojale sosialistene som ble drept i en kamp mot det onde Vesten ville komme til et slags himmelrike etter døden.   

Vårt syn er at president Trumps beslutning om å trekke USA ut av avtalen med Iran er et godt trekk. At en rekke fremtredende politikere i Vest-Europa kritiserer Trump for dette tyder også på at Trump har gjort det rette denne gangen; det virker som om det er Neville Chamberlain som er den statsmann som Vest-Europeiske politikere setter høyest, om ikke i ord så i hvert fall i handling. 

 

https://www.jewishvoice.org/read/blog/israel-described-cancer-must-removed

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/the-lowest-age-you-can-legally-get-married-around-the-world-10415517.html

https://www.thoughtco.com/who-is-the-12th-imam-3555177

http://www.religion-online.org/article/waiting-for-the-mahdi/

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33521655

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270127/trump-ends-obamas-iran-hostage-crisis-daniel-greenfield

   

Svar til professor Friedman

 

I går publiserte vi her David Friedmans svar til min kommentar til hans foredrag på Liberalistenes landsmøte. Nedenfor er mitt svar til professor Friedman.  (Jeg vil takke Per Arne Karlsen og Martin Johansen for innspill til dette svaret.) 

Let me first thank professor Friedman for taking the time and effort to reply to my article (or to Christoffer´s English-language version of it, a version I have not seen).

However, my intended audience was not professor Friedman, it was his audience. My article was not called «A critique of David Friedman´s view of market failure», it was «David Friedman and the so-called «market failure»». My article, then, was not primarily a critique of professor Friedman´s lecture, it was a supplement.    

Leftist economists, that is, most economists, claim that the free market leads to so called market failures, and therefore, they claim, government intervention is needed in order to prevent these failures. When it was announced that professor Friedman was to address the free marketeers in Liberalistene on the subject of market failure, I guess most people expected him to explain that the claim of the leftist economists is wrong and that market failure is a myth, a point a large number of free market economists have made (I gave references to some of this literature in my article).

However, this was not professor Friedman´s intention. He used a different definition of market failure than the common one; as he said in his reply to me: «“market failure” is not about markets».

Professor Friedman´s main point was that sometimes individual rationality does not lead to what he calls «group rationality» – i.e. even if all individuals act rationally, the result may not be optimal when regarded for the group as a whole, that is from a perspective that no single individual is able to have. (I wrote in my article that Friedman said in his lecture that government failure is a much larger problem than «market failure», so I will not go into that here.)

Professor Friedman says: «A number of Martinson’s criticisms seem to miss that point.»

Well, I was trying to explain how a free market would deal with the examples professor Friedman raised – a point that I thought the audience might be interested in, but that professor Friedman did not address.

Professor Friedman says: «Alternatively, he [Martinsen] may agree that market failure in my sense exists but be claiming that it never results in the outcome of a free market being worse than what would happen with … [a] wise and benevolent government regulation …».  Of course I agree with this.

Professor Friedman also says «market failure was not limited to markets». In my view, then, it is confusing to then use the term «market failure».

Another quote from his reply: «Martinson never explains how the rule of first in time, first in right will prevent a situation where a firm finds it in its interest to produce air pollution even though the cost imposed is larger than the cost of preventing the pollution…».

If a firm emits a level of pollution that might be harmful to people nearby if there were someone there, and there is no one there, it has thereby «mixed its labor» with nature, and established a property right to emit this level of pollution. People who enter this area can then not complain about the pollution since the firm has established a right to emit this amount of pollution: the firm (or its pollution) was there first. However, a firm cannot start to emit harmful pollution in an area where there already are some people; in this case, the people were there first and have the right not to be exposed to harmful pollution.

Quote: «Martinson suggests control of air pollution by marketable quotas. Who does he suggest should set the level of those quotas and assign them to individual firms if not a government regulator?»

The government legitimately protects property rights, and this is not a regulation. A regulation is a government restriction on an individual´s free use of his property. As for the level of pollution, when someone can show that pollution from firm X harms him or his property, he can go to the government and demand that the pollution (that is above the non-harmful level) be stopped, and that firm X pay damages. Sometimes the government must define property rights in cases such as these, but again, this is not a regulation.

Professor Friedman ends his reply with following: «The final part of Martinson’s critique is about reasons he is in favor of freedom, none of which are relevant to the point of my talk»

They were relevant to what I wanted to tell my readers.

When professor Friedman said that sometimes there are market failures (even if «“market failure” is not about markets»), and when he talked about «group rationality», a phenomenon that only exist in the fantasies of the collectivists and not anywhere in reality, he unfortunately supplied arguments to our opponents, people who are opposed to individual freedom and free markets. The main aim of my very short article was to explain that it is wrong to claim that there are «failures» in free markets, and that to use «group rationality» as a standard for what is the best outcome, is wrong and harmful.

Let me finish with this question, which I did not get the chance to ask professor Friedman after the lecture: does professor Friedman support initiation of force by the government against the citizens in order to bring the total sum of the actions of the citizens closer to what would be the results if «group rationality» were the standard?

$$$$$$$$$$

Mitt svar over ble avsluttet med et spørsmål. Professor Friedman var så vennlig å svare på dette spørsmålet:

[Quote from VM:] «Let me finish with this question, which I did not get the chance to ask professor Friedman after the lecture: does professor Friedman support initiation of force by the government against the citizens in order to bring the total sum of the actions of the citizens closer to what would be the results if «group rationality» were the standard?»

No. But my argument for not supporting it is that it doesn’t work–a government with the authority to act that way will make things worse more often than it makes them better.

So far as your concern that group rationality is not a meaningful concept, I deliberately chose examples where the result of individuals acting rationally was that everyone was worse off, thus avoiding the issue of adding up gains and losses.

 

 

 

David Friedman: My response to a critique of my lecture offered by Vegard Martinsen.

Mandag 30. april publiserte vi her på Gullstandard.no en kommentar til professor David Friedmans foredrag om markedssvikt. Christoffer Nilsen oversatte denne kommentaren til engelsk, og sendte den til Friedman. Friedman skrev et svar som vi med hans tillatelse publiserer her.  

(I do not read Norwegian, so am basing my response on a translation kindly provided me by Christoffer Nilsen) 

Martinsen writes: “one would expect that in the talk he’d explain that «market failure» does not exist” 

Only if it doesn’t. My obligation is to say what is true, whether or not it supports my political views. In this particular case I am trying to show why one argument for those views, popular among libertarians, is wrong, and offering a better one. 

As I explained at the beginning of my talk, “market failure” is not about markets. It is a problem which occurs in markets and many other contexts―situations where individual rationality fails to produce group rationality. A number of Martinson’s criticisms seem to miss that point. In the case of the traffic jam, for example, it may be that a private road system could, in one way or another, avoid the problem, engineer around market failure, something I offered several examples of. But in the situation I described, the individual drivers are acting rationally and the result is worse for all of them than it would be if they acted differently. 

I cannot tell if Martinson thinks this claim is false, in which case he needs either to show that, in my examples, the individuals are not acting in their rational self-interest or that they would not all be better off if they acted differently, something he does not do. Alternatively, he may agree that market failure in my sense exists but be claiming that it never results in the outcome of a free market being worse than what would happen with sufficiently wise and benevolent government regulation, hence that the first half of my argument, that market failure rebuts the simple argument for freedom, is false. But that doesn’t seem consistent with his writing, near the end of his piece, that “Now, it is correct that the result may be less optimal for the whole than if someone had decided on behalf of all, even though each person chooses what is best for themselves and theirs,” which appears to concede my claim. 

Martinson attempts to rebut my examples. 

1. I am not using a battle a thousand years ago as an example of a failure in a free market, as should be obvious. I am using it as an example of market failure, a situation where individual rationality fails to produce group rationality; I started my talk by explaining that market failure was not limited to markets. 

So far as the idea that running away is not rational because deserters will be punished, that is one way of trying to prevent that particular form of market failure, a subject I discussed in my talk. Whether it is workable depends on the situation―an army that has just been defeated may not be in a position to punish anyone. 

2. Again Martinson assumes that my example has to be of a failure on the free market. 

3. Does Martinson claim that the situation I describe doesn’t happen? If not, does he deny that the people in the restaurant would be better off if all of them kept their voices down, but that each of them is better off raising his voice, given the action of the others? 

4. The example was an example of how to avoid market failure. Martinson seems to have missed the fact that the later part of the lecture was about situations where one way of doing something worked badly because of market failure and one should therefor do things in a different way. 

On point 5, Martinson never explains how the rule of first in time, first in right will prevent a situation where a firm finds it in its interest to produce air pollution even though the cost imposed is larger than the cost of preventing the pollution. He seems to be trying to convert an economic argument into a moral argument. The question isn’t who is at fault, it is whether the outcome could be improved by sufficiently wise regulation. I think my analysis of market failure shows that it could. The reason that doesn’t imply that we should have such regulation was one of the subjects of my talk― because the same logic that implies that the free market will sometimes produce the wrong outcome implies that government regulation will do so much more frequently. 

Martinson suggests control of air pollution by marketable quotas. Who does he suggest should set the level of those quotas and assign them to individual firms if not a government regulator? 

The final part of Martinson’s critique is about reasons he is in favor of freedom, none of which are relevant to the point of my talk, which was that a particular reason, what I described as the simple argument for freedom, was wrong, and should be replaced by a better argument, which I offered. 

Naivt syn på svart arbeid hos DNs lederskribent 

«Svart arbeid og skatteunndragelser er en vederstyggelighet. Det er tyveri av fellesskapets midler og dermed også av den enkelte skattebetaler. Dersom flere inntekter oppgis til beskatning, kunne skattene bli satt ned til glede for alle.» 

Slik begynner Dagens Næringslivs leder 26/4. Vi kan ikke si annet enn at dersom dette er alvorlig ment, så tyder dette på en kolossal naivitet og en manglende evne til konsistent tenkning hos den som har skrevet lederen. La oss analysere det som er skrevet. 

«Svart arbeid … er en vederstyggelighet».

Dette er vi enig i. Svart arbeid skjer for å unngå å betale tvangspålagte skatter og avgifter, og for å unngå byråkrati og skjemavelde. Det finnes kun én måte å bekjempe dette på, og det er å redusere skatter og avgifter og å redusere skjemaveldet som alle som er involvert i kommersielt arbeid tvinges til å beskjeftige seg med. Å forsøke å redusere svart arbeid ved kontrollordninger vil bare gjøre problemet større og å kreve enda mere ressurser til det helt uproduktive kontrollarbeidet.  Med andre ord: høye skatter og byråkrati dyrker frem kriminalitet!   

«Det er tyveri av fellesskapets midler». 

Dette er å sette tingene på hodet. Nå vil ikke vi forsvare noen ulovligheter, men dersom noe fortjener å bli omtalt som tyveri så er det beskatningen. Skatter tas fra den enkelte noe han eier mot eierens vilje, og oppfyller dermed definisjonen av tyveri; tyveri er definert som «å ta noe som tilhører en annen». Vi betrakter den enkeltes inntekt, vedkommendes lønn for utført arbeid, som noe som tilhører den som har utført arbeidet. Å beskatte vedkommendes inntekt er dermed å ta noe fra ham uten hans samtykke. Nå er det mange som sier at de gjerne vil betale skatten og at de betaler sin skatt med glede, og til dem vil vi bare si at de gjerne må gjøre det; vi vil ikke hindre dem i det. Vi mener bare at det er galt å ta noe fra noen uten deres samtykke, og for de som ikke vil betale skatt så blir skatten tatt fra dem uten deres samtykke.   Vi mener også det er galt å betrakte den enkeltes inntekt som om den egentlig ikke tilhører ham selv, men egentlig tilhører fellesskapet.   

Det er en kompliserende faktor å omtale skatt som tyveri i og med at beskatning er lovlig; det at staten skal kreve inn skatter og avgifter har et så stort flertall bak seg at de kan i en nasjonalforsamling trumfe igjennom slikt omfattende tyveri av hvert enkelt produktivt menneske. Men å definere tyveri som «å ta noe som tilhører en annen unntatt hvis et flertall støtter opp om det», er opplagt feil.        

(For de som lurer på hvordan et samfunn uten tvungne skatter vil fungere vil vi henvise til DLFs valgprogram, linket til nedenfor.)  

Nå sier lederskribenten at det som staten tar inn i skatt er «fellesskapets midler». Dette er et greit syn å ha. Det er etter vårt syn feil, dette synet har et kollektivistisk utgangspunkt; det betrakter gruppen som det primære og dermed er hver enkelt ikke primært et selvstendig individ, primært er hver enkelt en del av gruppen. Som sagt, dette kollektivistiske synet er svært utbredt, men det innebærer etter vårt syn ikke at man dermed kan betrakte de som har et annet syn som om de deler dette synet. Vår syn er at det er individualisme som er det korrekte grunnsynet; dette fordi det er individer som tenker og handler.    

(Vi vil også skyte inn at i begrepet «skatt» inkluderer vi her offentlige avgifter som bare har som formål å øke statens inntekter og som ikke er en rimelig stor direkte betaling for en tjeneste man mottar.)

Lederskribenten sier at skatteunndragelse er «tyveri av den enkelte skattebetaler». Lederskribenten sier altså at å beskatte ikke er tyveri av den enkelte skattebetaler, men dersom han forsøker å redusere det beløp han betaler i skatt (i strid med lovverket), er det tyveri. Dette er bare merkelig.  

I lederen leser man også følgende: «Dersom flere inntekter oppgis til beskatning, kunne skattene bli satt ned til glede for alle». Dette kan ikke være alvorlig ment. Dette er bare et forsøk på å sukre den svært bitre pillen som det å betale skatt er – skattenivået Norge i dag er slik at de med vanlige inntekter og et vanlig forbruksmønster betaler i nærheten av 70 % i samlede skatter og avgifter til det offentlige. Og ingen intensiv kamp mot svart arbeid vil kunne redusere dette; alle de store partiene er for økede skatter. Ja, selv med Høyre og FrP i regjering øker skattetrykket: et enkelt mål på skattetrykket er det offentliges utgifter, og disse øker for hver år uansett hvem som sitter i regjering. (Det offentliges samlede utgifter er et greit mål på skattetrykket fordi alle disse utgiftene må betales av de som jobber produktivt, dvs. av de som bedriver reell verdiskapning.)          

Det er ikke uvanlig at ledere i avisene avsluttes med en småhumoristisk kommentar, og det gjør også lederspalten i DN denne dagen. Under tittelen «Ok, statsråd» kommer en humoristisk opplysning som avsluttes med «Nei da. Jo da. Nei da.». Men med denne tittelen «Ok, statsråd» kom vi til å tenke på den klassiske britiske TV-serien «Javel, statsråd», som ble sendt på NRK på 80-tallet. Denne serien gir et humoristisk, men allikevel nokså realistisk bilde av en person med et naivt syn på politikk og hvordan maktapparatet virkelig fungerer overfor disse naive menneskene. Den naive i serien er politikeren, statsråd James Hacker, og maktapparatet er representert ved hans utspekulerte sekretær, sir Humphrey Appleby. I en av disse episodene sier Hacker at dersom det hadde vært mindre skatteunndragelser ville skattene kunne bli satt ned, men sir Humphrey oppklarer: «Nei, hr statsråd. Det er ikke slik staten finner ut hva den skal gjøre, og så skaffer inntekter via skatter og avgifter som så skal dekke kostnadene ved disse tiltakene. Det som skjer er at staten tar inn så mye penger som den bare kan, og deretter finner den på ting som den kan bruke disse pengene på».

Det er dessverre slik at dersom radikale sannheter skal sies høyt må de sies på en måte som innebærer at  de muligens ikke er alvorlig ment, de må forkles som komedie – og slik har det vært i svært lang tid: ved en rekke hoff inntil ca 1700-tallet var det en narr (naturlig nok kalt «hoffnarr»), som hadde to oppgaver, han skulle underholde, og han skulle fortelle kongen upopulære sannheter, sannheter som andre ved hoffet ikke våget å fortelle. Det var dette som var budskapet i TV-serien «Javel, statsråd», hvor alle episodene gir realistiske blikk inn i hvordan politikken fungerer – men på en humoristisk måte  (man finner en rekke klipp fra serien på youtube). Kanskje DNs lederskribent ville ha godt av å se noen episoder av denne serien!       

 

 

 

http://stemdlf.no/stortingsprogram/

 

Politiet misforstår sin oppgave 

For noen dager siden skrev vi om noe som skjedde med Natteravnene: de ble utsatt for steinkasting og trakassering. Etter at vi skrev om dette har aviser og andre nettsteder publisert flere artikler om denne type hendelser. 

Vi siterer  fra en NTB-melding: «Politiet fikk melding like etter klokken 23 fra en melder i området. Hun hadde observert en gruppe ungdommer som ropte og skrek til hverandre.

– Vi hadde patruljer ikke langt unna, så vi sendte dem mot stedet med tanke på siste tids hendelser for å forebygge en eskalering. Vi fikk også melding om et lite slagsmål, men ingen kom til skade, sier operasjonsleder Tor Jøkling i Oslo-politiet til NTB. De involverte er mellom 17 og 20 år. Operasjonslederen opplyser at politiet har kontroll på «de fleste» som var involvert. – Da vi kom, løp en del ungdommer i forskjellige retninger. Vi har kontroll på de fleste. Samtlige blir bortvist til i morgen tidlig klokken 8. Flere av guttene er kjent for til dels alvorlig kriminalitet, opplyser Jøkling. Ingen er pågrepet.» 

Myndighetene har svart slik på denne type hendelser (ifølge en overskrift i Aftenposten): «– Det er en uholdbar situasjon, sier justisminister Tor Mikkel Wara. Nå settes 30 nye politifolk inn i Groruddalen i Oslo».

Men det eksempel som klarest viser hva som er i ferd med å skje er det følgende, sitert fra TV2:  «Flere av hendelsene [i det siste] har vært rettet mot natteravner som patruljerer i området. Nå har politiet stoppet natteravnpatruljene på Vestli.– Det var en vanskelig avgjørelse å ta, og de ønsket selv å gå videre. Men på grunn av deres sikkerhet har vi valgt å be dem om å ta et lite opphold, sier John Roger Lund, leder for politiet Enhet Øst. Natteravnene skal fortsatt patruljere i resten av Oslo, men har altså blitt bedt om å holde seg unna Vestli.»

Det som skjer er at politet ber fredelige personer holde seg unna områder fordi områdene er utrygge eller farlige.  

Vi kan bare si at det virker som om politet har misforstått sin oppgave. Politiets oppgave er ikke å fortelle folk om områder som ikke er trygge og så be dem holde seg unna, politiets oppgave er å sørge for at alle områder er trygge. 

Det politet burde ha gjort er å sørge for at disse områdene (og alle andre området) er trygge. Dette kan de enkelt gjøre ved å arrestere de som gjør områdene utrygge. (Og som det fremgår av sitatet fra Aftenposten over, politet vet hvem dette er.)    

Vi går litt dypere inn i denne problemstillingen: hvorfor gjør de ikke dette? Hvorfor setter de ikke de kriminelle bak lås og slå? Det er fordi dagens lover og retningslinjer, gitt av myndighetene/lovgiverene, ikke gir hjemmel for det. Hvorfor ikke? Fordi de verdier som dominerer hos lovgivere er slik at de ikke går inn for å sette denne type kriminelle (de som gjør områder utrygge med steinkasting, trakassering, blikking, etc.) i fengsel.    

Ingen partier går inn for å sette denne type kriminelle i fengsel. Vi må også huske på det som ligger i ordtaket «et folk får de politikere de fortjener». Poenget her er at de verdiene partiene har er de samme verdiene som folk flest har, og disse verdiene går ut på at det er synd på de kriminelle, de vet ikke hva de gjør, og at man må tilgi og være ettergivende. Den som klarest formulerte denne etikken var Jesus, og det han sier har nærmest full oppslutning i befolkningen i dag: «Sett dere ikke imot den som gjør ondt mot dere. Om noen slår deg på høyre kinn, så vend det andre til. Vil noen saksøke deg og ta skjorten din, la ham få kappen også. Tvinger noen deg til å følge med en mil, gå to med ham, … tilgi de som krenker dere, tilgivelse er en større verdi enn rettferdighet»  (dette er hentet fra flere stedet i Det Nye Testamentet i varierende oversettelser). 

Så lenge denne etikken har stor oppslutning, og det har den i dag, vil storsamfunnet i betydelig grad la kriminelle herje fritt (småkriminelle får gå fri, storkriminelle får milde straffer, etc). For å få slutt på denne type kriminalitet, og all annen kriminalitet, må denne etikken skiftes ut med en etikk som setter verdier som rasjonalitet, rettferdighet, produktivitet og ærlighet høyt – og disse verdiene er stikk motsatt de verdier som Jesus ga uttrykk for. Sagt på en annen måte: den altruismen som Jesus forfektet, og som i dag er allment akseptert som det eneste høyverdige etiske ideal, må skiftes ut med rasjonell egoisme.    

Før vi avslutter vil vi nevne et par andre ting. Vi har hørt representanter for myndighetene si at det ikke er viktig å ta de kriminelle som står for denne type kriminalitet som skjer her: at Natteravner jages, at ungdommer blir «bøtelagt» av kriminelle ungdommer for «blikking» (mer om dette i en link til NRK nedenfor), etc., det som er viktig er å ta bakmennene. Men å henvise til bakmenn er intet annet enn en unnskylding for ikke å gjøre noe som helst. Vi skrev om akkurat denne problematikken i en nyhetskommentar på DLFs nettside for en tid siden, og vi linker til den nedenfor.

Om kapasiteten hos politiet og i fengslene – er det nok celler til å bure inne alle disse kriminelle som vi mener bør bli arresteres så raskt som mulig? For det første vil en legalisering av narkotika føre til at en enorm kapasitet hos politet og i fengslene blir frigjort, og for det annet: dersom de som begår denne type kriminalitet raskt blir idømt betydelige fengselsstraffer, vil kriminaliteten raskt syke til null: hvis de som kaster stein mot Natteravner og politi og ambulanser og brannbiler blir idømt f.eks. to år i fengsler under kummerlige forhold (med f.eks. samme type mat som serveres på dagens offentlig drevne eldresentre, et wifi som stadig faller ut, etc.) vil denne type kriminalitet opphøre svært raskt. 

Så med et lovverk som kun straffer reell kriminalitet, og straffer de kriminelle strengt, vil kriminaliteten raskt synke drastisk og behovet for politi vil dermed kraftig redusert. Så det å sette inn flere politifolk, slik dagens regjering gjør, er å gjøre det stikk motsatte av det man bør gjøre.       

   

 

 

https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/bKBAKl/Justisminister-Wara-i-kontakt-med-politiet-i-dag-om-Vestli-brak–Vi-ser-en-okende-og-ny-form-for-ungdomskriminalitet#xtor=RSS-3

https://www.tv2.no/a/9828575/

https://www.document.no/2018/05/02/nytt-brak-pa-vestli/

https://www.nrk.no/norge/tenaringer-gir-vestkantungdom-boter-for-_blikking_-og-a-_leke-deilig_-1.14021232

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matteus+5&version=LB

http://stemdlf.no/node/3462/