Principles in Practice: The Blog of the Objective Standard

Principles in Practice: May 2008

The Morality of Capitalism by ARI Media
The Threat of Totalitarian Islam: A panel discussion at Harvard University by ARI Media
Set Yahoo! Free by Alex Epstein by ARI Media

Friday, May 09, 2008

The Morality of Capitalism

Posted by ARI Media at 12:48 PM

Who: Eric Daniels, research assistant professor at the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism and speaker for the Ayn Rand Institute

What: A talk explaining why capitalism is the only moral social system. A Q&A will follow.

Where: Hilton Costa Mesa, 3050 Bristol Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92626

When: Thursday, May 22, 2008, at 7:30 PM

Admission is FREE.

Description: Despite capitalism's enormous success in producing material abundance and political freedom, it faces a crisis—one that may lead to its demise. Capitalism is perishing because its supposed defenders lack a real defense.

In this lecture, Eric Daniels explores the most common arguments in favor of capitalism. He finds that they all break down in the face of the popular argument that capitalism is immoral and destructive—because it is selfish. Dr. Daniels explains that only Ayn Rand's crucial insight—that capitalism is the only moral social system because it is based on "the virtue of selfishness"—can truly defend capitalism. He illustrates the need for a moral, and not just an economic, defense of capitalism.

Bio: Eric Daniels is a research assistant professor at the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He has lectured internationally on American ethics, on American business and legal history, and on the American Enlightenment. Dr. Daniels's publications include a chapter in The Abolition of Antitrust and five entries in the Oxford Companion to United States History.

For more information on this talk, please e-mail events@aynrand.org.

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Eric Daniels is available for interviews now and after his talk.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213

For more information on Objectivism's unique point of view, go to ARI's Web site at http://www.aynrand.org/. Founded in 1985, the Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

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Tuesday, May 06, 2008

The Threat of Totalitarian Islam: A panel discussion at Harvard University

Posted by ARI Media at 7:47 AM

What: A panel discussion on the nature and threat of totalitarian Islam, followed by a Q&A

Who: Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute; Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum; and Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch

Where: Harvard University, Emerson Hall, Room 105, Cambridge, MA

When: Tuesday, May 6, 2008, at 7:30 pm

Admission is FREE. However, the organizers of the panel have informed us today that non-students must now RSVP in order to attend this event. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP to events@aynrand.org by 5 pm Eastern time tomorrow May 6.

Description: What is the nature of totalitarian Islam--is it limited to terrorism or is it a broader movement? Are non-Muslims its only victims? Who precisely is the enemy? Does the West bear responsibility for creating this movement? What policies can defeat it?

Defenders of Islam around the world have striven to silence critics with threats, protests and acts of violence. How should the West respond to demands for censorship, as in the Danish cartoon controversy?

Panelists will address these critical issues in a lively discussion.

Bios:

Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and is a contributing editor to The Objective Standard. A former finance professor, he has published in academic as well as popular publications. He is frequently interviewed in the media and appears weekly on the new Fox Business Network to debate and discuss current economic and business news. His columns and opinion-editorials are published on forbes.com and in many major newspapers. Dr. Brook lectures on Objectivism, business ethics and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and a columnist for the New York Times Syndicate. Abroad, he appears weekly in Israel's Jerusalem Post, Italy's l'Opinione, Spain's La Razón, and monthly in Australia's and Canada's Globe and Mail. His Web site, DanielPipes.org, is the single most accessed Internet source of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam. Dr. Pipes has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Reports, Crossfire, Good Morning America, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, O'Reilly Factor, The Today Show, the BBC and Al-Jazeera.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of seven books on Islam and jihad, including the New York Times bestsellers The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Spencer is a weekly columnist for Human Events and FrontPage Magazine, and also writes a weekly Qur'an commentary for HotAir.com. He has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the U.S. intelligence community.

For more information: e-mail media@aynrand.org

Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.

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Thursday, May 01, 2008

Set Yahoo! Free by Alex Epstein

Posted by ARI Media at 3:00 PM

Yahoo! has just released its first-quarter earnings numbers, and neither the market nor analysts are impressed. What will be the company's next move? Multiple suitors claim that they can leverage Yahoo!'s online products and talented employees better than Yahoo!'s widely criticized management is doing. The leading bidder is Microsoft, whose $40 billion offer it is prepared to take directly to Yahoo! shareholders via a proxy fight. Other proposals said to be in the running are an advertising collaboration with Google, a merger with AOL, and a possible deal involving News Corp (including MySpace).

The stakes are high. The right move could lead Yahoo! to a new level of innovation and profit, while the wrong move could cause the company's value to plummet.

Unfortunately, the fate of Yahoo! will not be determined simply by who makes the best proposal to shareholders—but by whose proposal antitrust bureaucrats arbitrarily deem sufficiently "competitive."

Consider the Microsoft bid. If Yahoo! shareholders decide the Microsoft bid is best for their company, and want to move forward immediately with the challenging task of combining two companies with thousands of employees, they may be prohibited from doing so. Antitrust enforcers could hold up progress for months deliberating whether the merger is "anticompetitive"—and then possibly kill it altogether. Competitor Google is cheerleading this outcome, claiming on its official blog that "Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet."

But a Microsoft and Yahoo! combined market share offers no threat to competition whatsoever—a fact that search-giant Google should know, given that the once-puny company was able to out-compete the once-dominant Yahoo! and the mighty Microsoft. Whether a market is competitive is not determined by the number of competitors or the percentage of customers that choose to buy their products; it is determined by whether companies are free to attempt to outdo one another to win over customers with superior products. The fact that someone is winning in a market by a large margin does not make the situation anti-competitive. It illustrates that competitive freedom has produced a company with superlative products.

Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have high market shares only insofar as their products are more appealing to consumers than are their competitors'. None of these companies, or any combination of two or even three of them, can force a single consumer to use its services instead of a more attractive search engine or web portal available—nor can it prevent competitors from outdoing it with superior products.

A Microsoft-Yahoo! combination could not threaten competition. To the contrary, it would be an act of free competition, an ambitious attempt by two companies to improve their products by combining strengths. What would actually stop competition would be to prevent the shareholders of these companies from making a move they regard as vital to their success.

The threat of antitrust prosecution is also impeding Google's own efforts to make a deal with Yahoo!. Google has proposed that Yahoo! outsource its search advertising to Google, a move that some analysts say could boost Yahoo!'s ad revenue by 25 percent. Unfortunately, if Yahoo! agrees to the deal, the government will likely kill it because, once again, the companies have a high combined market share. According to Reuters, "Antitrust experts said regulators would likely oppose any permanent alliance between Google and Yahoo." And, just as Google is calling Microsoft's bid anti-competitive given its market share, Microsoft is saying the same of Google: "Any definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google would consolidate over 90 percent of the search advertising market in Google's hands," Microsoft's general counsel complained. "This would make the market far less competitive."

In reality, no deal between Google and Yahoo! is a threat to anyone besides inferior competitors; neither company can force even one person to click on http://www.google.com/. Yahoo! should be able to field and accept any offer from Google it chooses—including a full-blown acquisition. Indeed, it is very possible that if cash-rich Google were not terrified of antitrust prosecution, it, like Microsoft, would try to acquire Yahoo! outright. Such a deal might be Yahoo! shareholders' best option and make possible a whole new level of Internet content—but under antitrust, it won't even come to the table.

What we are observing in the battle over Yahoo! is not genuine, merit-based competition, but competition based on political pull. He who cajoles antitrust bureaucrats to endorse his deal and stop his competitors, wins.

Instead of attempting to outdo one another in crying to the government, Google and Microsoft should take a principled stand in favor of open competition for Yahoo!—a competition in which the company's fate is decided by who makes the best business proposal and not who has the craftiest lobbyists and lawyers.

More broadly, they—and we—should call into question the antitrust laws that make competition-by-pull possible.

Alex Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, focusing on business issues. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

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