Since the Fates seem to be frowning on my place of employ this week, I thought I’d share some happier news.

1. I had some good visits with friends and family this spring break, which included seeing my niece for the first time.

2. On Monday, three different babies called me “Uncle Dom,” or at least they called me the closest thing they could manage. I am only actually related to one of them.

3. Whilst driving through the rustic backroads of Virginia en route to Raleigh, I saw two buffalo frolicking in a fenced pasture. Sadly, I couldn’t easily pull over to get a picture, so I kept going, which is now the single greatest regret of my life. But dammit, they were buffalo. I am not a crackpot.

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Aside from that, I have no further comment.

In all the hullabaloo about (1) requiring religious organizations to purchase insurance plans that cover contraceptives, (2) requiring insurance companies to cover contraceptives in the insurance plans that they provide to religious organizations– which is, like, completely different from Item 1– (3) whether a particular Presidential candidate would attempt to ban contraceptives, (4) whether a particular political party would attempt to ban contraceptives, (5) whether it makes economic sense for a company to insure contraceptives, (6) whether contraceptives provide enough positive externalities to warrant government subsidization, (7) whether men are trying to control women’s reproductive rights, (8) whether women should try to control men’s reproductive rights, (9) the terminology used by a particular conservative talk show host to describe a particular woman promoting items 1 and 2 above, (10) the subsequent boycotts and loss of sponsors in response to item 9, (11) the terminology used by various liberal commentators to describe various conservative women, (12) the subsequent boycotts and cancellations of cable subscriptions and cancellations of talk show appearances in response to item 11, (13) the withdrawal of a particular comedian from hosting the Radio and TV Correspondents’ Dinner, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, few have addressed what I think is the most important question in the matter.

Why can’t I create an insurance company that doesn’t cover contraceptives? If I start such a company, why am I a criminal? Why should I be fined or imprisoned?

An anonymous reader asked, “What do you think of Ayn Rand? I recently read Atlas Shrugged and wanted to hear what you think.”

From what I’ve seen and read of her interviews, she seemed like an unpleasant-enough person that she’d cast almost anything I wrote about her as foolish, ignorant, infantile, malicious, stupid, or some combination of the five. But she’s dead now, so here goes:

I read Anthem back in high school. Maybe it was required reading, maybe some teacher mentioned it in class and it piqued my interest enough to track down a copy. Anyhow, it’s dystopian, with the gimmick being that using any first-person singular term is a capital crime. It differs from most dystopian fiction in that it takes place in a technologically regressed world. It’s worth reading, if only because of the advantage it holds over Rand’s other famous works: it’s short and simple.

I have read much about, but not actually read, Atlas Shrugged. I generally agree with the central theme of the book (as I understand it), which is opposition to the state’s intervention in the economy and society. If Rand were alive, and here, and inclined to suffer an intellectual peon, she would no doubt berate me for either oversimplifying her ideas so thoroughly as to completely miss the point, or being a complete and utter hypocrite for supporting any sort of state intervention (I do teach in a public school).

Furthermore, it is my understanding that the style of the book isn’t my cup of tea. John Galt gives a three-hour speech? Pass. I didn’t mind meta-reading about IngSoc in 1984, because that was presented as Winston Smith reading Emmanuel Goldstein’s book. But to read a three-hour speech and believe that people willingly sat through it? I’ll only suspend my disbelief so much.

The previews for the movie adaptation looked awful. I’ll wait for it to show up on Netflix or in a dollar bin at a thrift shop. That said, it seems that both book and movie contain some important messages about capitalism, property, and liberty. It would be nice to see more novels, fables, short stories, and movies that addressed those themes in some way other than “Capitalism bad! Businessman evil!”

To summarize: nice ideas, so-so presentation. If she had the disposition of a Milton Friedman, I think she’d be more widely read and her ideas would be more warmly received. But then, perhaps her disposition dictated her ideas? Who knows?

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I’d comment further, but I’m about to head down to Orlando to catch up with Mole and his family. My people spent the last several days tracking a pig worthy of being served for dinner this eve. Casualties were heavy, but the deed was done, and tonight my friends and I shall sing songs of gallantry past, and offer toasts to epic adventures yet to come, and feast on the finest puerco pibil any one has ever tasted. Hopefully the pig was nobody important.

A few days ago I was asked to watch and presumably comment on an interview with Immanuel Wallerstein about capitalism and the debt crisis. Here’s part one. Here’s part two. Here’s part three.

Wallerstein had some interesting things to say about the long-run stability of systems, but I would probably disagree with most of his other beliefs. For instance, he used a much broader definition of capitalism than I would. He talked about accumulating capital instead of the far more important goal of creating capital (more on that in a minute). He claimed that the overall cost of inputs has risen steadily over 500 years, which I would argue is not true in any meaningful sense. He claimed that one day soon, capitalists will not be able to accumulate any more capital– I’d love to hear him talk more about that because it reminds me of long-dead concerns that humans were physically incapable of traveling faster than 60 mph, the long-disproven boasts from patent officials who thought that everything useful had been invented, and the apocryphal claims that no more than this many computers would ever be necessary.

I think he was slightly mistaken about the priorities of capitalism and capitalists– though I may have simply misunderstood where he was ranking “the accumulation of capital” and “profits.” Let me explain how I see it, then you can watch the video and tell me whether he agrees with me. If you’re a capitalist in the sense of being a person who favors capitalism, then earning profits is a means to an end, which is capital creation. If you’re a capitalist in the sense of being a person who accumulates or creates capital, then it’s the other way around: you accumulate or create capital in order to earn profits for yourself. You can fit one definition of capitalist without fitting the other.

Wallerstein claimed that the world will soon face a choice between capitalism, which favors the “privileged,” is “hierarchical, exploitative and polarizing”– though he is gracious enough to grant that there may be worse systems– and a system that will be “relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian; a system the world has never seen.” To me, this raises a Red flag. The uppercase “R” is deliberate. I think it is very safe to generalize that throughout history, the most hierarchical, exploitative and polarized countries have been the least capitalist countries. I don’t see that changing anytime soon. But who knows? Maybe we are at an inflection point in history. Marx has to be right eventually, doesn’t he?

Wallerstein spoke about debt problems faced in the 1980s by Poland, Romania, and eastern Europe in general, and even attributed the execution of Ceauşescu to his efforts to pay back Romania’s foreign debts. He didn’t mention the economic systems used by (or, more properly, imposed upon) Poland, Romania, and eastern Europe up through the 1980s. It’s as if they just happened to have poverty, massive debt, and poor economic growth, and it had nothing to do with socialism and communism. He’s ignoring the elephant in the room. Latin America and Africa were not exactly bastions of capitalism, either.

“Fine,” one might say, “but that doesn’t explain why capitalist countries are facing debt crises today.”

True, that doesn’t– at least not directly. I would point out that the debt crisis has grown along with the size of the welfare state within capitalist countries. In short, I think it’s being driven by the least capitalist element of capitalist countries.

There are typically three culprits blamed for the debt crisis today: massive social spending, massive military spending, and inadequate tax revenue to pay for it all. As I just said, I think that in most countries facing massive debt today, the biggest problem is the social spending– but let me address the other two factors first.

It’s possible that inadequate tax revenue is the main culprit. But I’d be willing to bet that countries with both high and low tax revenues (as a percentage of GDP) are facing debt crises today. I would also point out that the higher you have to raise tax rates to pay for whatever the government’s buying, the harder it is to call yourself a capitalist country.

It’s possible that massive military spending is the main culprit. Wallerstein strongly suggested this when he mentioned Bush, Iraq, and the fact that we spend more on our military than the next however-many highest-spending countries combined. I think he also hinted at it when suggesting that American decline began in 1970, i.e., during the Vietnam War. Big military budgets might explain the debt crisis in some countries, such as America and Greece. But what about the countries that don’t devote much of their budget to the military, such as Portugal, Japan, Spain, and Ireland? I’m not saying military spending shouldn’t be frozen or cut– just that military spending isn’t the biggest part of the problem.

I think the main culprit is the social spending. I don’t think Wallerstein would agree. Nation after nation has promised more and better social programs over the last several decades, and without major reform (which is resisted far more heavily than are cuts to military spending), these programs grow far beyond projections– sometimes by orders of magnitude.

Furthermore, “social spending as biggest factor” also fits Wallerstein’s timeline of American decline. He said the decline began around 1970? Fine. The Vietnam War was going sour, true, but the late 1960s and early 1970s also saw the creation of massive new welfare programs, the creation of a new entitlement program (Medicare), and the expansion of an old entitlement program (Social Security). Later Presidents and Congresses expanded these programs (or at least did very little to slow their growth) and added some more. The growth in social spending far and away outstrips the growth in military spending. Butter is at least as much to blame for this mess as guns.

But in fairness, I haven’t read Dr. Wallerstein’s broader body of work, in which he may have qualified and explained his thoughts in a more satisfactory fashion.

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P.S. I love the concept of a “government bubble.” Wallerstein didn’t use that precise term in his list of post-1970 bubbles, but I’m going to start using it.

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In my first draft of this, I wrote that the ultimate goal of capitalism is to create capital. That’s not quite right. The ultimate goal is to raise standards of living, which is made possible by capital creation. I think capitalism is historically unmatched in both regards.

In my “Resolutions for 2012,” #10 was “I shall make a 10th resolution before February 29th, 2012.” I now have one.

After doing a bit of cleaning and reorganizing ’round the house this weekend, it occurred to me that roughly 82% of the total mass of my house is books. In fact, two of the piles were declared lode-bearing by the inspector. It’s time to renew one of my old resolutions from a few years back. Thus do I hereby resolve that:

10. I shall put all the books I’ve bought but not yet read on a particular shelf, and either read, sell or give away more than half of them.

The closing of Borders was a blessing in disguise.