Blog Roundup

A Friday Hodgepodge

Editor's Note: I will be experimenting with my writing schedule next week. Blog posts may appear evenings rather than mornings.

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1. At New Ideal, Elan Journo reviews Jennifer Burns's "worse than incompetent" Goddess of the Market, concluding:

Diminished to the point of triviality is Rand's thought, her values, her distinctive idealism. Burns tries to recast Rand's original, philosophic radicalness as merely the wisdom of the old ways, tarted up. The person we encounter in this book is a cardboard character. Her extraordinary, biography-worthy life and her enduring popularity as an author become less, not more, intelligible. The book trades on Rand's name, growing fan base, and enduring cultural presence, while erasing what's essential to this inimitable novelist-philosopher. Whereas Atlas Shrugged dramatizes the role of the mind in human life, Goddess of the Market negates the role of Ayn Rand's mind in her own life.

This review is long, savage, and well-justified in equal measures. I recall, at one point during my reading, encountering the phrase, But it gets worse, and thinking Good Lord! How?

This essay is a much-needed corrective that I think any fellow advocate of Ayn Rand's ideas should read with the view of being able to give an informed recommendation of it to anyone who has read that travesty of a book.

This will take about half an hour to read, but is worth it.

2. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn challenges the collectivist, mindless original premise of Labor Day as she argues that we should celebrate work, and notes the high spiritual cost of the kinds of government policies favored by labor unions:

In Rand's argument, elaborated by Tara Smith in The Virtuous Egoist, only productive work, and not hobbies or social relationships, qualifies as the central purpose that helps prioritize the rest of our values. Productive work must be the central purpose, because our survival and flourishing requires material values continually, and acquiring them requires a major effort, even if our needs are modest. Working productively also requires that we cultivate qualities such as initiative, responsibility, perseverance, and ability to solve problems, that are helpful in achieving values also in other areas of life. Hobbies and social relationships are important values and part of enjoying life, but they cannot substitute for productive work as providers of material values, self-esteem, and purpose.

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But productive work can be hard to find. High unemployment in Canada and elsewhere today, particularly among young people, is a sad reality, thanks to government policies, regulations, and taxes. Despite Hillary Clinton's claim, governments don't create (productive) jobs.

On the contrary, government interference in the markets destroys jobs.

Woiceshyn is absolutely correct that we should not only celebrate work, but act to save it from the Leviathan state.

3. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney, offers her thoughts on overthinking:

After back-and-forths with some Thinking Labbers, I've got a lead to what causes some people to bog down in thinking about issues and never get into action. It's popular to say that such people are "overthinking" and need "a bias for action." But inaction is a symptom of the problem, not the problem per se. I would never recommend someone have a "bias" for action. A "bias" is like a prejudice. So, a "bias" for action implies that it is proper to jump into action as soon as you see an opening. But a moment of reflection to validate the action is always justified. That is a necessary step in the thinking process. "Overthinking" can't be solved by avoiding thinking! It needs to be solved by changing how you think so that you can spend an appropriate amount of time on thinking, given the situation at hand.

Here's my conclusion: "Overthinking" is a symptom of a mistake in grasping what a logical thinking process is. So far I have spotted three basic mistakes in understanding logical thinking -- any of which could bog you down in "overthinking" and inaction.

It's only a four minute read, and I found it quite helpful to learn about the three mistakes she describes.

If you're an "overthinker," go! At four minutes to read, the piece may well save you time you would have otherwise wasted on making the decision!

4. At Value for Value, Peter Schwartz and Harry Binswanger discuss the seemingly peculiar hostility towards Israel on the part of many Libertarians summed up as follows by Schwartz:

Image by Valentina Storti, via Wikimedia Commons, license.

I have long maintained that the Libertarian movement is at root not anti-statism, but anti-state, and that it is therefore hostile toward free, or semi-free, countries because they demonstrate the rational value, and necessity, of a proper government.

I chuckled when I got to Binswanger's comments on the "2% difference" Libertarians claim their professed beliefs have from Objectivism, as it resembles that often cited as the "difference" between the human and chimpanzee genomes.

Maybe more people need to think about difference ... differently.

-- CAV