Live-streaming of The Atlas Summit Available for June 28-July 1, 2012!

Register for Live-streaming! I am very happy to inform you that The Atlas Summit that is going to be held in the following days in Washington, D.C. is going to be available for Live-streaming.Here is a link to the Speaker Bios and information on the topic of their talks.

I am very exciting about this event since I will be talking this time on the History of Capitalism in two sessions.  I will be more than happy if you can join and send any questions during the Q&A Sessions: The History of Capitalism 1 and The History of Capitalism 2

If you can’t be in D.C. for the Atlas Summit you can still view all of the presentations by purchasing a live-streaming ticket. You will even be able of submitting questions for the Q&A sessions.Cost: $99 for entire conference.Students: $19 for entire conference. Sign up now!


Minorities are for the 1st time in History a Majority in the United States

“So long as racial discrimination remains a fact of life and statistics can be arranged to support racial difference, the American belief in races will endure.” Painter, Nell. The History of White People.

Though race holds no scientific validity it has been use as a political weapon to conceal power into the hands of small elitist groups.  Among the most elitist groups that have existed in the last thousand years lays the story of White Anglo Saxon Protestant control of the United States of America.  Their history can be easily studied since they dominated the political and economic arenas of the United States since before its birth.  As well, their social relations with other groups whom they deemed to be different racially  and  culturally is also easily accesible to any well educated reader.  To read that for the first time in more than 200 years a well established (nativist) minority is for the first time becoming a majority is a great news for the elimination of racial paradigmas that have long survived in which is still the most powerful country on Earth.

As confirmed by the Census bureau of the United States it is now official that minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4% of of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday.  And for the first time in history, White births are no longer a majority in the United States.

What is the significance of this information for Americans and for the rest of the World?

From a political, economical and sociological standpoint the significance of this change in birth rates will be evidently reflected in the way marketing of products, political goals and social discourses will be elaborated by the elites in the next 15 or 20 years.  But more immediately, this change in births will bring the White elite for the first time in the United States history to understand their positions and will invite them to eliminate their 250 years discourse of imperialist segregation and racism in the organization of society.

Racial discrimination has been a constant of the history of the United States.  While discrimination against minorities of Hispanics, blacks, Asians and other mixed races is a recently new event; the history of the U.S. was made upon the discrimination by whites among other white migrant groups: Irish, Polish, German and many other northern Europeans.  Indeed, still by the 1840s, White Anglo Americans identified themselves as “belong(ing) to a hereditary aristocracy by dint of a mythology driven by the notion of tainted blood and a belief in invisible ancestry.” (Painter, Nell. The History of White People)

The fact that starting in 2012 the United States will become a more multiethnic and culturally diverse country is a positive signal to open the doors for a society in which the rights of all individuals could be effectively protected and defended.  A society in which minorities are no longer outnumbered by the long standing elite will be more tolerant to opening and maturity of its members.  Of course, the elites will always try to keep the control on their hands and the potential for more open fights between racial and socioeconomic groups is always latent.

While political positions could slowly be more racially diverse in the future years, the chances for cronyism to expand into the new elites of the minority groups is a fact.  Cronyism has been part of the United States political and economical history for too many years already.  It is now the chance for the minority leaders to follow rational and objective principles and start a moral revolution in their country. By doing this they have the power in their hands to make the American Dream come truth, and to show the rest of the world that morality and justice is not necessarily the subject of the White men and its Eurocentric narrative.

Summer Seminar 2012. Either-Or: Atlas Shrugged and the Future of Individualism

WHEN: June 29-July 1, 2012

WHERERenaissance HotelWashington, D.C.

WHO: individuals from all around the world interested in learning Objectivist values and ideas.

FROMThe Atlas Society 

OFFICIAL WEBSITEAtlas Society Summer Seminar 2012

THEME:  “Either-Or“. “Either-Or” is an affirmation of Aristotelian logic, particularly the tenets of the Law of identity (A = A; a thing is identical to itself), the Law of excluded middle (either A or not-A; a thing is either something or not that thing, no third option), and the Law of noncontradiction (not both A and not-A; a thing cannot be both true and not true in the same instant).

For this Seminar The Atlas Society will provide seminar scholarshipto worthy students.

I am also very pleased to announce that I will have the honor of being part of this excellent group of lecturers (Click here to view entire program).  In the two lectures I will discuss what is the real history of Capitalism. Te goal of my talk is that all attendees will be able of explaining accurately why and how Capitalism is a social system that has never existed in its full, perfect, and unregulated form. In Part 1, we will explore the growth and flourishing of the ideas of free-market capitalism in the 18th and 19th centuries.  In Part 2, we will ook at the assault against capitalism in the 20th century and consider where we find ourselves today.

SEMINAR LECTURERS:

 VIEW  PROGRAM
To access on your mobile phone, enter 
www.either-or.sched.org

REGISTER NOW FOR SUMMER SEMINAR 2012

New Blog: Laissez Faire by Don Watkins and Yaron Brook

A new blog has been born for those of you interested in learning and discussing the principles of Capitalism.  The title of the blog is “Laissez Faire: The Uncompromised Case for Capitalism” and is going to be written by Don Watkins and Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute.  The blog aims to discuss the philosophic ideas that shape economic policy.

I invite you start following it and to start commenting their articles.  Indeed, this is great news for the spread of Objectivism, the Philosophy of Ayn Rand!

Social Media of Laissez Faire

Drugs: A Legal Market is not a Free Market

English: Flower of a Opium Poppy
Image via Wikipedia

A couple days ago, Otto Perez Molina, recently elected as President of Guatemala; announced that he was willing to decriminalize the commercialization of drugs. According to U.S. authorities, Guatemala has became the transshipment point for more than 75 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States since 2005.  Along with this, the Opium poppy cultivation is already done in large parts of the countryside making the production of Guatemalan heroin a greater and the newest worry for the United States. The country’s elites are already part of this business and the paranoia of crimes that used be a remembrance from Colombia‘s 1990s history seems to be repeating in these Central American countries.

What impresses me the most now is how this news has started spreading around my Facebook contacts (mostly libertarians and liberals). Both groups seem to be happy to hear this announcement by Guatemala’s President.  However, both groups applaud the news for different reasons.  The legalization/decriminalization of drugs will not be the panacea we all are hoping for.  Specially not if started by any of the Central American governments.  The reasons are many and I will begin by listing some of them to open the discussion,

  • Corruption, lax enforcement, and judicial impunity levels in Central America are among the highest of the world.
  • Drug lords and their new and powerful money have been mentioned by many analysts to be already part of the politic and economic elites of these countries.
  • The Central American countries in which this drugs are produced and transported are inhabited by a large majority of people living in the lowest leves of Human Development.
  • If legalized, the trade, production and commercialization of drugs (cocaine and heroine mainly) will be regulated by these governments.
  • Without any doubt, this regulations will enable and create legalized monopolies ruled with the partnership of previous drug lords and government officials.
  • It has not been advocated by any of the political leaders which road would take the legalization of drugs. This is important, because under current legalization procedures it is not the same to get the approval for a new medicine in the market as to get the approval for a new liquor, a new energizing drink or of a new edible product.

The history of the legalization (production, trade and commercialization) of items considered by many as drugs and for others as commodities has shown that for as long as a government elite hold the power to legalize it; it was in their power to take the first steps into the acquisition of a monopoly of its trade and production.

If legalized, the emergence of a coercive monopoly would be inevitable. As noted by Ayn Rand, the governments and their partners in these coercive monopolies “will be able of setting the initial prices and production policies independently of the market, with immunity from competition, from the law of supply and demand. An economy dominated by such monopolies would be rigid and stagnant.”

If we support the complete and absolute free trade of all commodities it is necessary that we do not grant to government an intrinsic right to regulate it.  No compromise should ever be done with a government that requires regulation in order to give us legalization.  Legalization should result in freedom and not in regulation.  The drug trade should be opened to businessmen and entrepreneurs in the freest way possible. The freest way is that of requiring the traders to inform their buyers about all the necessary information about the products they are offering.

We may be taking part in a historical moment in which the most important thing are principles.  Let us remember that one of the most valuable principles of trade is Freedom; and that one of the most valuable principles of government is to seek that i will Protect Individual Rights and not to regulate their lives.

Note: To understand more which are the principles that really matter in this discussion, I invite you to take a look to the video titled: The Drug War in Guatemala: A Conversation with Giancarlo Ibarguen.