6 Million Android Phones Hacked? Really?

It was recently in the news that "6 million Android phones are at risk of being hacked." Then if you dig deeper it turns out these are the older devices in poorer countries with versions of the Android OS which Google has stopped supporting. Let me explain what "not supported" means. It means if the OS developer finds a bug or exploit (a vulnerability a hacker can exploit) they are not legally obligated to push a fix or security update. So, yes, an unsupported OS is a hacker's paradise, but that's not news, every tech person already knows that. A lot of people say a lot of things are fake news these days, but that one might really actually deserve to be called fake news. It would be like saying that people have invented this great thing called the wheel and that's worth a headline. Wheels are great, but that's not news.

The Other Astros MLB Cheating Scandal

While everyone is aware now that the Astros stole signs using a camera in center field during their tainted World Championship 2017 season, everybody seems to have forgotten the initial allegations that made reporters begin to dig: New York Yankees players alleging the 'Stros were stealing signs during the 2019 playoffs. Why isn't MLB investigating and handing out punishment for that? Maybe because MLB in its fear of the players' union cut a deal for prosecution immunity if the Astros confessed, which is reason why the culprits, those Astros players, were not and never will be punished by MLB. Were the League to do its job and rake some muck, the Astros players and the union would call their lawyers and sue, and MLB fears messy litigation. Do you job, Rob Mansfred!

A System of Legal Logic: Using Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and Analytical Philosophy to Understand the Law, Interpret Cases, and Win in Litigation (A Scholarly Monograph)

Master legal reasoning. Improve your writing and hone how to draft a brief. Understand the intersection of political philosophy and the law, and how that should shape your legal arguments to judged and juries whether you are a seasoned lawyer or pro se. Impress your friends with your grasp of logic.
This paper provides a new system of logic, including philosophical principles and logical notation, based on the work in logic done by Aristotle and later by Ayn Rand but also with a nod to modern Analytical philosophy, which is extremely useful to lawyers for analyzing facts to determine whether they satisfy the elements of a claim, as well as organizing arguments to a jury and presenting evidence. A libertarian politics emerges from the system of logic as a byproduct of the logical analysis of the intersection of law, politics, and philosophy.
Required reading for lawyers and citizens who want to understand the law and how and why it impacts them.

Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QX3DT8K/

Please see my books at RussellHasan.com

http://russellhasan.com The full catalog of author Russell Hasan on Amazon! Buy one today!

A New Theory of Investing

Here is a new theory of investing, inspired ny the libertarian belief that all government intervention in economics fails: try to guess where the market would have been, and then invest on that. In theory, eventually every government runs out of Other People's Money: the Fed can't drop rates below zero, there is a limit to how much money can be printed before inflation renders the currency worthless, they can only tax so much before a revolt. When the government fails, in theory your investment will make money. In an economic boom fueled by artificial manipulations, invest in a recession, or vice versa. Two objections can be raised: the government won't run out of money before you do betting against it, and your guess can only be mere conjecture with no proof in real financial data (because the "real" data comes from the Fed-manipulated economy). Both true. But for growth investors seeking a competitive edge against the efficient market, this a path--a risky path with no guarantees, but a new path, one which most other investors will shun. A government cannot create artificial prosperity forever, the only question is when the hammer will drop and on what, to correctly target your short sales and put options.

The Propertarian Solution to Climate Change

If climate change is real and is not a hoax (and that is a very big "if") then there is a distinctly libertarian solution. Imagine this world: all of the world's oceans and seas, and every cubic acre of air space in the sky, which right now are unowned, are put into lots and sold at auction. Then the sky and the sea are not public, instead they are privately owned. Each sky owner could post a drone sentry in his lot of air to monitor it. Now what would this mean for the pollutor who wants to dump poison into the air? The process would not be to lobby politicians and get a permit from the EPA. Instead, if a pollutor emits pollution into a privately owned lot of sky without permission, that is a violation of the rights of the owner. The pollutor must buy the right to pollute. And if the owner firmly decides "no", then that is the end of pollution in that air space, with no cost-benefit analysis weighing death against profits. If a robber wants to rob a home owner, we do not conduct a cost-benefit analysis to judge whether to issue a permit to the criminal, so why do we for pollution? This system would curtail pollution, and, if the rich liberals buy air, could end all climate change carbon emissions completely. A separate but related theory holds that if you breathe in or drink pollution you should have a legal cause of action for having your privately owned body poisoned under propertarian theory; this is probably true but the climate change argument is conceptually different. If we can license wavelength spectrum or govern ownership of lots of land, which we can, then auctioning and administering sky and sea lots should be logistically viable.

The Golden Wand Trilogy

Lord of the Rings Meets Game of Thrones Plus Dungeons & Dragons

A chance encounter puts a young thief named Zandrew in possession of a mysterious magic wand. Zandrew's life is torn apart when kings, demons, monsters, and armies come after the wand, which holds the secret to winning an ancient war between the Lord of Light and the Lord of Darkness.

In the golden wand, Zandrew sees the opportunity to seek revenge for the murder of his parents, who were killed by followers of the Lord of Darkness, the Dark God Vladius. Zandrew embarks upon a brave quest to use the golden wand to defeat Vladius, joined by valiant companions such as Rellora the noblewoman, Gennis the knight, Sheila the ninja, and Tyrona the sorceress. Standing in his way lies the many servants of the Lord of Darkness, including the insane, evil Magician-King named Deathly, the devious, manipulative dark Queen called the Eliminator, and the powerful, arrogant Emperor Kindahl Laum. In the end, after countless battles against soldiers, wizards, and all sorts of monsters, Zandrew and his friends will face the Lord of Darkness Vladius himself, with the fate of the Living World hanging in the balance of their final duel.

This swords and sorcery dark fantasy epic trilogy will delight fans of fantasy novels and please readers looking for a fun, action-packed experience. Included in this box set are all three novels in the trilogy: The Golden Wand, The Shadow of Heaven, and The Castle in the Sky. Get ready for an exciting adventure!

"Lord of the Rings meets Game of Thrones plus Dungeons & Dragons. If you like Terry Goodkind, Forgotten Realms, R.A. Salvatore, J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Mercedes Lackey, or Glen Cook, you will love these novels! Sort of like a Final Fantasy RPG video game in the form of a trilogy of novels, where a group of heroes fights through dungeons to slay foes and accomplish a heroic quest. And they have a subtle sense of humor too, like Tolkien and Terry Pratchett and Piers Anthony and Douglas Adams did. Everything you love about fantasy novels, but done a lot better than your typical fantasy novel." Learn more https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074V56851/

The Prince, The Girl and The Revolution: A Science Fiction Fairy Tale

Fans of Romeo and Juliet, The Hunger Games, 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, and Dune, will Love this Novel...

Chapter One: Prelude

An eternity ago, the human race spiraled out of control into wars between the nations of planet Earth. Genetically engineered super-soldiers were created to fight these wars. Eventually missiles were fired by many nations at each other, and a nuclear apocalypse brought about the collapse of human civilization into a wasteland of barbarians.

Now, centuries later, the world is comprised of independent city-states ruled by kings, and science is a forgotten memory. In the city-state of Aimsburg, the heirs of the genetically enhanced soldiers, now named the Elite, rule over the human population, called the Base.

Kevin, the Prince of the Elite, has been sent by his father the King on a dangerous mission. But Prince Kevin does not know that, instead of finding the secret society known only as the Rev, which he has been sent on a mission to destroy, he will discover the love of his life, and his empty, hollow existence will be given meaning and value, and a light of fire will be ignited within him that will make him see the world in a bold new way. He also does not know that, in his newfound love, lives the only hope for Aimsburg to escape from a war that is coming. For, just as war rocked the world ages ago, a new war, just as deadly, is brewing, and this war could destroy Prince Kevin and the love he will find....
Learn more at http://russellhasan.com

Golden Rule Libertarianism: A Defense of Freedom in Social, Economic, and Legal Policy

Gain Insight into Libertarian Politics and Free Market Economics. If you are interested in Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, Robert Nozick, or Ron Paul and Rand Paul, you should read this book!

An insightful mixture of political philosophy and policy advocacy, this book justifies libertarian politics using the Golden Rule of ethics to achieve a provocative new political theory called GOLD. GOLD defends the libertarian position on antiwar, drugs, prostitution, civil liberties, abortion rights, and gay marriage, GOLD explains why free market capitalism is necessary for freedom, and GOLD proves that capitalism helps the poor and racial minorities.

A sophisticated theory of GOLD economics is explained, which sheds light on the nature of money, prices, trade, supply and demand, inflation, and many other topics. The book also presents a bold new libertarian legal theory interpreting the United States Constitution and the common law. The book is organized into four parts, covering social policy, economic policy, legal policy, and the structure of government, and each part contains many different essays, with each essay analyzing an issue from the GOLD point of view.

Essential reading for libertarians and for everyone who wants to learn more about libertarian ideas.

Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HQK3KZO/

The Apple of Knowledge: Introducing the Philosophical Scientific Method and Pure Empirical Essential Reasoning

"All Men by Nature Desire to Know" --Aristotle

This groundbreaking treatise challenges the philosophies of Kant, Hume, Plato, Descartes, and Ayn Rand, and disrupts the status quo of conventional wisdom on the methods and limits of human knowledge. The book describes how to use the scientific method to answer philosophical questions, explains why science achieves knowledge, shows that the mind and the brain are identical while presenting a new theory of consciousness, proves that God does not exist and that humans have free will, and untangles Objectivist epistemology. This book demonstrates how a philosophy based on empirical experience and essential reasoning can solve the problem of induction and learn the truth about objective reality.

The treatise presents a new philosophy that explores epistemology, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of mind, through two new, unique philosophical ideas: the philosophical scientific method, and pure empirical essential reasoning.

A must-read for students of philosophy and for people who want to learn more about knowledge and reason.

Learn more at http://russellhasan.com

What They Won’t Tell You About Objectivism: Thoughts on the Objectivist Philosophy in the Post-Randian Era

A Must-Read Book for Fans of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand and the Objectivist Philosophy

Everyone has heard dark whispers about the philosophy of Objectivism. People read Ayn Rand’s novels and fall in love with her ideas, only to collapse into one of two inevitable fates: (1) eventually give up on the ideas as childish and selfish, often complaining that the philosophy is a cult, or (2) develop a religious, zealous fanaticism, obeying the tenets of the philosophy in an obsessive, robotic, mindless manner.

But what is the truth about Objectivism? What is it in Rand’s novels that makes a light turn on in the minds of her readers, and why does that light always flare and then burn out, leaving behind either anger or mindless obedience? This book argues that Objectivism has been turned into a shallow, two-dimensional cartoon caricature of what the philosophy really is, by both Objectivism’s foes and its followers. The philosophy’s enemies fight against, and its followers worship, a misinterpretation, not the ideas that are actually in the novels. Rand’s novels present a vision of reality that is both heroic in its idealism and useful for real people in its practicality, with integrity as its highest moral value, but people forget that vision, and eventually the vision fades into the paper-thin cartoon that people think of when they hear the name Ayn Rand.

This groundbreaking, innovative book looks at Objectivism in a new light, and offers an analysis, rooted in quotes from the texts of Rand’s novels, that presents Objectivism as a deep, serious, thoughtful philosophy, with emotional depth and shades of gray, a philosophy of the mind designed for smart people to heighten their intellectual freedom, not merely a cult of robots or a cartoonish Right-wing extremist defense of rich businessmen.

If you want to know the truth about Objectivism then read this book.

Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074TXY258/

XYAB Economics: A GOLD Libertarian Analysis of Money, Trade, and Freedom

The Economics Book Your Economics Professor Doesn't Want You to Read

This book presents the XYAB theory of economics. The XYAB theory of economics takes the basic idea that people create value, people consume value, and people trade what they create in return for what they consume, and then explains how this simple principle can be applied to macroeconomics. It explores the role of money as a means for complex multi-point trades among economic actors, and why value must be created by someone in order for a benefit to be consumed, even if it is not created by the person who consumes its reciprocal. XYAB explains why "making money" means creating value, and why to spend money is to consume resources that someone else made.

XYAB is explained lucidly using the visualizations of the triangle of trade and the circular pool of value, with a combination of scholarly precision and real world wisdom that is readable and clear. Here you will see, in detail, why capitalism works, and why socialism is not a superior alternative.

Many arguments are made that you will not find in any other book, such as precisely why the government printing new money causes inflation, and how the creation of new wealth causes deflation that helps poor people in proportion to how few dollars they own. The XYAB theory illuminates complex issues of economics in a way that makes it easier to understand the libertarian defense of capitalism.

Necessary reading for any serious student of free market economics.

Learn more at http://russellhasan.com

Project Utopia: A Libertarian Science Fiction Anthology

 Space explorers, time travel, artificial intelligence, the politics of freedom. What could be better?

Russell Hasan continues the proud tradition of libertarian science fiction with this contribution to the genre, a short fiction anthology featuring seven science fiction stories. Here you will find “Project Utopia,” a flash fiction story about control and freedom, “Stealth Stars,” a longer story in which an astronaut explorer lands on a strange planet and struggles to make sense of its political system, another story about a plot to travel back in time to destroy the philosophy of Objectivism before it begins, a story about a hero’s quest to defeat a sinister secret society of scientists bent on world domination, and other charming science fiction tales, each with a slant in favor of freedom.

If you like science fiction or libertarianism, there’s a good chance you’ll find something to like in this short fiction anthology.

Learn more at http://russellhasan.com

The Office of Heavenly Restitution: A Fantasy Fiction Anthology

A Great Fantasy Short Story Anthology. Fans of Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wrinkle in Time, and Harry Potter would especially like this.

These ten fantasy fiction short stories are rich in intriguing characters and suspenseful conflicts, and provide a fast, fun pace that will give you a sense of enjoyment while making you think about deep, meaningful issues in the human experience. Explore the conflict between resentment and freedom in “The Unsealed Heart” and “The Mine”, understand being true to yourself in the face of the pressure of conformity with the heroes of “The Office of Heavenly Restitution” and “Leshivia the Great”, grapple with religion and atheism in “The Blood of the New God” and “The Pearly Gates”, and witness rebellion against insurmountable odds in “The Philosopher’s Stone.” Each story, and each issue, is treated with artistic vision and thoughtful plot, and the prose is heavy with meaning and symbolism without sacrificing readability.

If you’re looking for something to read in the fantasy genre that’s not the same as everything else, please take a look at this short fiction anthology.

Learn more at http://russellhasan.com

Rob Seablue and the Eye of Tantalus

"Self-help for teens, cleverly wrapped in a YA urban fantasy novel. Fans of Wonder, Chicken Soup for the Soul, How to Win Friends and Influence People, A Separate Peace, and Bridge to Terabithia will want to read this book."

A magical curse has been unleashed and Connecticut teen Sorcerer Rob Seablue's best friend has been seduced by evil magic. To save his best friend--and to save the world from his best friend--Rob will fight magical duels, decipher an ancient riddle, and help sad, depressed teens recover their self-esteem so the curse can't destoy them. Will Rob save the world before it's too late?

Learn more at http://russellhasan.com

Author Update: Spring 2016

So...
First, I am slashing the prices on all my ebooks. They are now down to 99 cents each. Please try them and buy them!
Not writing anything at the moment, but I will let you know here the moment I have any new books or short stories to sample!

Spring 2015 Author Update

As you may or may not have noticed, my long-anticipated move of this blog to a different web host did not materialize, so this blog will remain here for the time being. Some Author Update type stuff:
1. Last year I sold 30 copies of Golden Rule Libertarianism and 30 copies of The Apple of Knowledge, despite spending no money to promote them. Thank you to all my readers!
2. I am not writing anything right now, which is why I have not posted to this blog in many months. This is because I have discovered a passion for computer programming (seriously) and am spending all my free time coding. I should have some stuff finished fairly soon. Interestingly, I always thought my undergraduate degree as a philosophy major at Vassar would be totally financially worthless, and yet I find that my formal academic training in philosophical logic actually does translate quite well into computer program logic. Who would have thought?
3. I do need to make one correction: it has come to my attention that the chapter on immigration in Golden Rule Libertarianism is open to misinterpretation, namely, that the use by me of the anti-immigration article written by Mr. Stephen Cox of Liberty Magazine was an ad hominem attack against Mr. Cox on that basis. As he is my friend and editor at Liberty, I need to set the record straight, and make clear that his article was merely a convenient example of anti-immigration ideas which I had ready access so, and was used for no other reason. Certainly, had I intended the chapter as an attack, there are plenty of anti-immigrant racist right wing conservatives that I despise and would have chosen to attack, but that intention did not even occur to me when I was writing the book. For me, ideas are always distinct from people, which perhaps explains why I am a big fan of Ayn Rand's ideas while having nothing but distaste for virtually everything I know historically about Ayn Rand as a person, i.e. how she treated her friends and followers, her sex life, her homophobia and hatred of men with facial hair (seriously--look it up), etc.

GOLD vs. Nudge

I see the theory of GOLD articulated in my new book "Golden Rule Libertarianism" as the equal but opposite of the "Nudge" theory of law professor and Obama crony Cass Sunstein. He argued in his book of the same name that government policy should let people be as free as possible, which he calls the "Golden Rule of Libertarian Paternalism" (not to be confused with MY Golden Rule Libertarianism). But--and this is an important "but"! But Sunstein believes that, even if we let people be free, the government can "nudge" them into making better decisions and choices than they would do in a system of unrestrained freedom. He speaks of "choice architecture" as the set of policies which shape our choices, and he says that if he nudges people then they will make better choices and have fewer regrets from having made bad choices. All with freedom preserved, by magic.

When Obama talked about going to war against Syria last year, he said he wanted "pinprick strikes," to which one Pentagon official replied "the US military uses sledgehammers, not pinpricks." Similarly, the government, with the army, and the police, and the regulators, and criminal prosecutors, and laws, enforced by jails and fines, does not "nudge" people, it SHOVES people into the path that it desires for them. When you break the law then you go to jail. You are either free or else you are a slave. There is no in-between.

As you would know if you had read Golden Rule Libertarianism, one of the basic ideas of GOLD is that human minds are fallible and can always make mistakes, so it isn't fair for one person to force another person to obey his decisions about what the other person should do or which behavior is best for him, because the other person could be mistaken. GOLD goes on to posit the "government as God complex" idea, which states that individuals within and outside the government are basically the same, so the same rules of private people apply to government politicians. In other words, politicians and regulators are not gods who magically know the perfect choices for everyone to make, despite their claim to be experts and brilliant legal scholars. If Cass Sunstein wants to "nudge" me into drinking carrot juice and eating tofu, he doesn't have the right to do so, because he is not God, and I can make decisions for myself just as well as he can make them for me (despite his "impressive" pedigree of Yale Law professorship and degrees from top Ivy League universities). If I want coffee and he thinks I should drink carrot juice, I might be wrong and he might be right, or he might be wrong and I might be right. But the person who will prosper and be healthy and alert or else get food poisoning and get sick and die is me, not him, so the fair and just thing is for me to decide for myself, and let Cass decide for Cass.

Contrary to GOLD, Nudge is simply a sophisticated, complicated justification for liberal leftist dictatorship, couched in soft mushy language designed to soften the public's fear of going to jail or being shot when a person refuses to be "nudged" into the decision by the Big Government which "knows what's best for us." Cass Sunstein doesn't know what's best for us, but he does want the government to rule us.

Cover Reveal!

I am presenting the ebook covers for my two new books, both of which should be available soon at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the iBookstore (and I am also changing the cover for my novel Rob Seablue). These covers were designed by Graphicz X Designs, and they did a great job.  Take a look!

December 2013 Update: Staying Power, "Friends," The Hobbit, Upcoming Titles

Staying Power: In one week, on December 20th, I celebrate the four year anniversary of quitting smoking cigarettes. How did I stay quit? In all honestly, I drink 2 to 3 cups of coffee everyday, so I get my upper fix from caffeine instead of tobacco. That, combined with iron determination and willpower, is the reason why I haven't had a smoke in the last 4 years.

"Friends": My most recent legal document review project ended. The thought I want to post about in this blog, in regards to my job, is that working is a lot of stress, and to be a good worker you need a way to relax while at work in high pressure situations (e.g. deadlines, quotas, etc.). My coworkers would relax by talking a lot, e.g. about their girlfriends and sneakers, but I developed a very useful trick for how to relax at work. I own all 10 seasons of the TV show "Friends" starring Jennifer Aniston on DVD, and I have seen all 200 episodes at least 20 or 30 times. So while I am at work I will literally play jokes or scenes from "Friends" in my mind while I am working, over and over again, because I have probably 1000 jokes and scenes memorized. This puts me in a constant good mood at work, which I think makes me a better worker and breaks up the monotony.

The Hobbit: I saw the second installment of The Hobbit trilogy today. It was escapism at its best. A rich, vividly imagined world, with great acting and an awesome dragon (and I love dragons!). The only problem was that it cut out in the middle of the story when I was looking forward to the ending with great anticipation, and it will be a pain to wait, and wait, and wait for the third movie to come out. Here let me note a story common among fantasy fans, that the two founders of the fantasy genre, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis had a conversation, in which Lewis asked "they say our novels are escapism? What sort of person hates escapism?" to which Tolkien replied, "Jailors."

Upcoming Titles: I am putting the finishing touches on my two new nonfiction books, tentatively titled "The Apple of Knowledge" and "Golden Rule Libertarianism." You will be the first to know because I will post it here as soon as they are released, probably for Kindle, Nook and iPad via Amazon, BN and the iBookstore.

Just Checking In

I have been "working like a dog" recently, billing 55 to 60 hours a week at my job in Manhattan doing legal document review. My project ends soon, so expect a longer blog post around Christmas. I continue to plan to release my two independently published nonfiction books soon, so anyone reading this should have something to look forward to. Happy Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, belatedly!

Work Portrayed on Television

The essay Thoughts on Work and Working in the October 2013 issue of The Freeman is the inspiration for this blog post, which will discuss the portrayal of working and jobs on television. In the essay, author Sarah Skwire reviews the book "Working" by Studs Terkel, which contained oral narratives of different types of workers talking about their jobs. The author uses her analysis of the book to argue that the public's view of free market capitalism is influenced by how we view and talk about work. Specifically, if we hate our job and view working for a salary as slavery to the rich then we will hate capitalism, and if we enjoy our job and take pride in doing good work then we are more likely to favor capitalism.

Ms. Skwire cites cases in Mr. Terkel's book which show that this hate-my-job vs. love-my-job dynamic does not line up neatly with poor vs. rich or working class job vs. upper class job. She describes blue collar workers, like cashiers and assembly line workers, who love their work. Here I will elaborate on this point that working class jobs are not exploitation with reference to the portrayal of jobs and working in two TV shows: Shark Tank and Project Runway. Up front I must confess that I watch and enjoy both of these shows, for reasons that should become clear below.

(1) Shark Tank is a show about a group of wealthy venture capitalists called "sharks," including famed Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who hear presentations by small business owners and then decide whether to invest in the business. This show is interesting to a libertarian because the rich investors are not portrayed as exploiting the small businessmen. Although the sharks do often make predatory initial offers, like buying 75% of a business for $10,000, the five sharks compete with each other and if the investment opportunity has merit then they frequently undercut each others' offers in ways that favor the entrepreneur, e.g. the initial offer could become a final offer of $20,000 for 20% of the equity.

The entrepreneurs who pitch ideas to the Sharks are frequently people who started off in a working class job and loved what they did and wanted to start or expand a business where they take their expertise and passion of an area and develop that passion into a brand or product, for which they need capital. Indeed, many of the Sharks themselves, including Mark Cuban, began as small businessmen and then got rich due to hard work and success. Shark Tank depicts in reality what it looks like for capitalism and Wall Street to help small business and create jobs, rather than describing that in disembodied abstract theory as so many libertarian economists have done.

For example, in the last season of Shark Tank a boy in middle school, who happened to be from a town close to where I live in Connecticut, dreamed of making gourmet dog food, and cooked up batches of dog treats in the early morning before school and sold dog treats to his friends and teammates' families at his sports teams' practices. Despite what some Marxists would assert as child labor, his story felt like an ambitious passionate young person wanting to work and make an honest living for himself. He pitched his dog treat business to the sharks and, although four of the sharks did not really take him seriously due to his age, one of the sharks liked his product and gave him a reasonable offer. He decided to take her offer and he did the deal to get her investment capital.

(2) Project Runway is a show, hosted by supermodel Heidi Klum, where a group of fashion designers compete in a series of challenges to win a $500,000 prize. Most of the contestants in this reality shows are poor and/or gay, and many of them have fascinating and eccentric personalities. Although the challenges are grueling and difficult, like sewing and working all day and all night to design a runway-ready evening gown from idea to finished clothing in 24 hours, the show does not depict the contestants as slaves in a sweatshop who are exploited by the $500,000 prize's control over them. The opposite is true: the show depicts the money as a prize for the worthy, not as an evil system of oppression. The contestants are young and ambitious and have a deep love of clothes and they enjoy the work they do despite it being very difficult. Most of them view Project Runway as an opportunity to show the world their talent and be rewarded for all their hard work and skill.

In the most recent season, the show ended in a competition between two designers, Alexandria and Dom, with everyone else having been eliminated by the end. Alexandria ended up losing and was very upset and bitter (despite winning $25,000 as runner up), but Dom, a poor young black woman from Philadelphia, had done what was in my opinion the best collection to show on the runway in the finale, with clothes that were exotic and attention-grabbing, and she worked hard and deserved her prize. Project Runway depicts work as good and something that earns its just reward, not as a necessary evil that we should all complain about and try to abolish.

Television, like Hollywood and the news media, has its fair share of Marxists. But these two shows, and others like them, are getting people to talk about work in ways that are accurate in assessing the values of freedom and capitalism.

Deconstructing the Motives of Marxist Professors

Deconstructing the Motives of Marxist Professors

By Russell Hasan

Most ideas which are too smart for their own good eventually end up in a Woody Allen movie. Continental philosopher Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction was no different, showing up in the movie Deconstructing Harry. Deconstruction looks at something, typically a text, and peels away the layers of explicit meaning and logical order in order to see the bloody reality that lurks beneath. It is interesting to attempt to apply the theory of deconstruction for a libertarian analysis, specifically by deconstructing the motives of Marxist professors on college campuses and examining why so many academics are Marxists.

Marxist professors appear to preach the political philosophy of Marx because they believe in it. Or, perhaps, they are Marxists because that is what they were taught by their professors way back when they were themselves students in college. But a deeper motive can be discerned by looking underneath the surface. In Ayn Rand’s opus Atlas Shrugged, the physicist Dr. Robert Stadler justifies his betrayal of John Galt and his support for the State Science Institute by telling Galt that he wanted to set the mind free from money by getting government funding for scientific research. The deconstruction of this statement shows that the free market either does not, or might not, place a high value on the work that professors do, such that some scholars could go unfunded if left without state assistance. Generally, in a free market traders trade value for value, so that in order to buy something you must first be productive and actually make some money. What is it precisely that a Marxist professor of sociology, history, or political science really produces? Unless their scholarship and ideas have some sort of concrete financial value, the free market would not pay them very much in return for their work. On the other hand, government funding for universities, especially in the form of Department of Education-backed student loans but also from government grants for research, results in a situation where the salary of the typical college professor bears no relation whatsoever to his or her productive value.

The situation in the economics behind university education might accurately be called a higher education bubble. Spending on education, motivated by the Department of Education’s policies, goes ever higher and higher, as seen in data presented in the Wikipedia article Higher Education in the United States, while the actual productive value that results from a college education bears no real relation to rising spending. The university administrators and professors in general don’t seem to care. Indeed, the theory of a “liberal arts” education, as articulated by Progressive education pioneer John Dewey, believed that the purpose of an education was to free the mind, not to help the student make money. Dewey also asserted a belief that part of the purpose of education is to convert youth to Marxism, as seen in the Wikipedia article John Dewey, and Dewey’s influence upon modern education cannot be understated. Today’s students should thank Mr. Dewey for the fact that their minds have been set free while their bodies need to eat in a job market that has been mercilessly crushed by the Great Recession, which resulted from the statist policies of Bush and Obama.

Perhaps the situation will be rectified when the higher education bubble bursts and the forces of supply and demand wreak havoc on college funding and drag spending back down to what is fiscally justified by the return on investment for a college education. Bubbles usually burst when state-controlled systems run out of other people’s money, in this case, the taxpayer’s money which funds student loans and grants. If the economics of supply and demand are allowed to correct the higher education bubble, then many Marxist professors might be fired unless they can provide something to students which furthers the students’ careers or future earning capacity, which would mean that the professors are actually productive. A plausible deconstruction of the motives of Marxist professors is that the professors just want to maximize the amount of money in their salaries, because the state’s influence over education accomplishes a vast disconnect between the professors’ salary received and the value that they produce. Note that the state also receives a quid pro quo from the professors in the form of the Marxist propaganda which they teach to their students in order to persuade impressionable young minds to believe in statist economic policy, so that the achievements of Marxist professors would have no value in a free market economy but have a high importance in a centrally planned economy.

Author Update

My two new nonfiction books, the first about the politics of libertarianism and the second about the philosophy of science, have now both been completed! The first drafts are written and I am editing, and I hope to release them within the next 6 months. Of course, the indie ebook self-publishing phenomenon has been driven by fiction, so indie nonfiction is something of a charting a new path, but hopefully it will go well! Although fiction is fun and entertaining, with nonfiction it is possible to sell ideas or information which are unique, so a nonfiction book can be truly one of a kind, whereas with most novels it is possible to find similar novels or substitutes. And both of my books offer content that is original and can't be found elsewhere.

In other news, I have been working a new job recently, a legal job in Manhattan. I have done legal internships and pro bono work in the past, for example I used to be an intern at the Connecticut Attorney General, but this is my first full time law job. For a lawyer to have a job that requires a law degree and bar admission, which my job does, is a great blessing, especially given the oft-chronicled collapse of the legal job market in the Great Recession era. The job is a temporary position which ends soon, but it is a nice step forward for my career. I am very grateful for the opportunity.

The Lamestream Media: Democratization vs. Nationalization as Solutions

This blog post is my reaction to the article Did Capitalism Give Us The Laugh Track? in The Freeman July/August 2013 issue. The article's main point is that the laugh track in television comedies, e.g. sitcoms, is ugly and stupid, and its widespread use was a flaw due to homogeneity caused by the fact that FCC regulations gave an oligopoly to the broadcast radio stations (ABC, CBS and NBC), and the laugh track was done in by evolution and innovation caused by the rise of free market competition in television, first with Fox and then with cable TV like HBO.

This article highlights a point that is hotly debates among the general public: what is the solution to the horrible, atrocious quality problem in the media? Most people agree that the most of the news shows on the media are stupid and offer cliched, hackneyed tripe, not deep, biting insight. Not surprisingly, the Left and the Right differ in their characterization of the problem, and in their proposed solution. The Left says that the profit motive drives news stations like CNN (and Fox News) to dumb down their news and turn the news into entertainment in order to get higher ratings. To the Left, the media can only improve if the profit motive is removed and the news is made into a public good, like PBS or the BBC. The Left in particular criticizes Fox News for being biased and stupid. The Right makes an argument not unlike Freeman author B.K. Marcus, that the government-sponsored FCC-administered monopolization of the media has stifled innovation, and the solution is deregulation and competition to improve quality. The Right complains that networks like CNN and MSNBC have a liberal agenda and view all policy debates through a Leftist lens.

In any political analysis which pits libertarian policy vs. statist policy, it is interesting to speculate about whether the findings lead to the conclusions as the result of empirical research, or whether the analysis uses a priori assumptions which conform the data to fit the desired result. The former is a neutral unbiased analysis, whereas the latter is bias contaminating the research. Can we say that the FCC helped the laugh track, or was it the low taste of the public that contributed to the laugh track? In the absence of empirical data capable of distinguishing these two possibilities with precision, we cannot achieve an answer to this question that possesses scientific certainty.

But in the case of freedom vs. tyranny in explaining the "Lamestream Media", reality is handing us something that approximates a neutral scientific experiment. This is, obviously, the internet, and podcasts and Youtube channels as independent media. The government has not yet shackled the internet media with regulatory controls, so independent internet media has the chance to break free from conformity and be innovative. If the Right interpretation is correct, then internet-based competition will produce lean, hungry new media stations which will abandon stupid shallow news shows and two-dimensional biases in favor of deep, honest, insightful analysis, and the free market will reward the new media, and the good media feeds will prosper and evolve and improve. But if the Left interpretation is correct then the profit motive will afflict new media just as it did old media, with the need for ads and ratings driving down the intelligence of the analysis. As a libertarian I predict that the evolution of media to an internet-based mode will lead to competition among thousands of news feeds, which will destroy the "lamestream" mainstream media and break the news free from the orthodox conformist paradigm through which the news is filtered in the process of being taught to the news-consuming public. Indeed, the internet is bringing new libertarian media like The Freeman of FEE, as well as other libertarian media like Reason Magazine and Liberty Magazine, to the attention of people who would never have had access to it in the absence of the internet. Internet media will enable libertarian news feeds to compete with the mainstream statist news feeds, and let the public, not the experts, decide whose accounts of the facts are most trustworthy. The eventual result of whether or not media enrichment happens once we fully transition to an internet-based media model will be a scientific proof supporting either the Right (if media gets better) or Left (if it does not) interpretation of what is wrong with the media.

What I'm Working On Right Now

I recently read an article in the KDP Amazon.com newsletter about how indie writers should blog about their works in progress, so I am blogging about the two books I am writing right now. It's been about a year since I published "Rob Seablue and the Eye of Tantalus," and it has not been a commercial success, and it was recently rejected by the Libertarian Futurist Society in their nomination for finalists for their awards. I am taking this as an indication that my fiction writing needs technical improvement, so I am now trying my hand at writing nonfiction books. Unlike my fiction, many of my nonfiction articles in Liberty Magazine have been quite popular, so apparently my nonfiction is better than my fiction. I am writing two nonfiction books right now.

The first nonfiction book is a combination of a policy paper outlining the libertarian positions on various issues, combined with a new theoretical justification of libertarianism which draws upon politics, economics and the law to show a new principle as a basis for liberty. The principle of liberty that I present in the book is more simple than Rothbardianism or Randianism, but in a sense it is also more elegant and less grandiose, and my hope is that it will appeal to a wide audience and bring in people who might not agree with Rothbard or Rand. I don't want to say what are the details of the theory of liberty that I expound in this blog post, since I think I should save that for the release date when the book comes out. I expect to finish this book this summer and publish it before the end of 2013. The book looks like it will be about 150 pages long (although for e-books in e-readers page count is less predicable than paper books).

The second nonfiction book is a treatise of pure philosophical epistemology. In this book, I make the case for the ability of science to achieve something that can be properly called "knowledge." I offer my argument for why science is capable of proving that God does not exist. And I offer a new, detailed theory of how reason and perception work as a theoretical foundation for the scientific method and experimental verification. This book should also be done by this summer. It looks to be about 200 pages long.

As a concluding note, my practice has become to post a blog post on a monthly basis, and I am now declaring monthly posting to be the new official policy for this blog. So I promise to post something each month, and you should come back once every month to see what's new. Thank you for reading this!

Fairness and Equality, Libertarian-style

I recently had a vigorous, healthy (i.e. mean and nasty) debate in a Libertarian discussion group on social media. I argued that rich children have an unfair advantage over poor children because poor children are trapped in failing public schools, and rich children can attend good private schools. The two people I was debating (one of whom was nice but foolish, the other absolutely vicious) could not think past the mistaken idea that I was saying it is unfair because the rich have more money and can afford to send their children to private schools, and poor people can't, which is NOT my argument. My argument was the libertarian argument that the government uses VIOLENT FORCE to compel poor children to attend the failing public schools, because of our rotten socialized k-12 public education system and compulsory attendance. Because the government uses this force against poor children, but not rich children, it is UNFAIR for the poor children, and the law is treating rich children differently from poor children, and giving them preferential treatment. I was making a libertarian argument against government and for the privatizing of primary school, yet the dim, dull people I argued with somehow could not get it around their brains that I was not making a Marxist/Socialist argument to outlaw private schools. Very frustrating, but, obviously, political dialogue is a good and vital element of a functioning democracy.

The Philosophy of Science

This mini-essay was expanded upon in my e-book The Apple of Knowledge. If this interests you, please take a look at my book.

The Philosophy of Science. Many famous philosophers have sought to take the approach and methods of science and translate science into philosophy to create a truly scientific philosophy. These thinkers include Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, and Quine. I argue that each failed, for the reasons below:

Hume seemed to think that because scientific theories are always capable of being disproved by new empirical evidence, that skepticism was the scientific attitude. He ignored the fact that science, when theories have been proven and experimentally verified, seeks to provide us some degree of knowledge. We can know that the sun will come up tomorrow, because of the scientific postulates of astronomy, which science has empirically verified. Whereas Hume claimed we cannot know that the sun will rise tomorrow. Hume’s rejection of faith was rational, but his rejection of knowledge based on analysis of the physical world, was irrational.

Kant argued that science can achieve certainty and universality only because the mind imposes scientific laws upon the subjective experience of reality. His basic argument was that subjectivism is the justification for scientific knowledge. This is, of course, completely backwards. The scientific attitude is that the mind revolves around the physical world. Kant’s view, that the physical world revolves around the mind, is a religious idea, that faith and belief can alter reality. And any intelligent academic generally recognizes that Kant’s actual purpose was to protect religion from the rise of science. Science achieves knowledge that hydrogen and oxygen can combine to form water, for example, from an examination of the molecules and atoms, which are things in themselves in physical reality. The scientific mind learns from reality, it does not impose its subjective beliefs onto sensory experience.

Wittgenstein sought to apply the principles of mathematics into philosophy, specifically in the form of formal symbolic logic. My favorite argument against him applies a theory called the Chinese Room, originally developed by Searle. If someone in a room is given Chinese words, and a computer software program to process them, then he could put together Chinese sentences, but if he doesn't speak Chinese then he will have no idea what any of it means. The argument is that symbolic logic can reach conclusions, but if you don’t know what the symbols mean, if you don’t know what the words in a language refer to in reality, the objective physical objects in reality to which the symbols refer, then the language, and logic, are meaningless computer programs, devoid of actual meanings relevant to human experience. For example, “sun” is not actually a word, it is a star in the sky.

Quine argued that the philosophical equivalent of scientific experiments, in which theories are experimentally verified using empirical data, is thought experiments, in which a person “tests” a theory by analyzing whether the theory matches the person’s “intuitions,” which are teased out by thinking about the thought experiment. This idea has been widely accepted in academic philosophy. The obvious flaw is that, whereas empirical data comes from objective physical reality, intuitions come from internal subjective feelings, and therefore a thought experiment is nothing like a real scientific experiment. Quine shares the Kantian fault.

The truly scientific approach to philosophy, would be to take philosophical ideas, and actually design real scientific experiments to try to test their truth or falsehood. I call this approach “experimental philosophy.” For example, if you think that sensory experience revolves around the mind, and subjectivism and solipsism are true, then test your belief. Pick up a piece of hot metal, and see whether your mind can impose a phenomena, the experience of the feeling of ice, upon the noumena, the thing in itself which you are holding in your hand. If the iron burns you and your mind could not control it, this scientifically proves, or at least lends credence to the idea, that sensory experience comes from objective physical reality, and not from your mind. On the other hand, if your mind can make you experience a feeling of ice, then your mind is creating your sensory experiences. The Kantian might reply that the structure of the mind could not be controlled by a desire to feel ice, but when we speak of “the mind,” we generally mean something that can be influenced by our feelings, desires, thoughts and beliefs.

The Veil of Ignorance

The Veil of Ignorance

by Russell Hasan

            DECIDE, God said to us. CHOOSE YOUR STYLE OF CIVILIZATION. I WILL RESHAPE THE WORLD BASED UPON YOUR CHOICE. KNOW THAT EACH OF YOU WILL BE BORN INTO ONE OF THESE SEVEN LIVES; WHICH ONE, I WILL NOT SAY…

            We seven souls stared down into a vast chasm of star-scarred space-time, looking far off into the distance at a small blue-green planet orbiting a raging fireball; we were standing in a circle, our feet sunk ankle-deep into the mists of eternity. Highlighted for us to see with special clarity were seven of the fetuses taking shape within wombs of females of the ape-like dominant species on this planet, the seven bodies that we souls were going to be placed into by God: one, the daughter of a drunken wife-beating mechanic; another the son of a Senator and a wealthy heiress; yet another a son gestating within a teenage crack-addicted prostitute; still another, the yet-to-be-born child of a lower-middle-class used car salesman and his violin-playing wife. Four of the lives were white, two dark-skinned and one mixed; three were boys and four were girls. Some were looked upon as joyous blessings by their parents as their bodies grew within the womb, others were viewed with frustration and anger, still others were a source of mixed hope and fear.

            This decision of how to structure our society is perhaps the most important decision that we will ever make. I knew roughly what I wanted the world to look like, but I hoped that the other souls would agree so that we could reach a consensus….

            “I think that it is only fair,” one of the other souls said, “once we are all born into our lives down below, for us to pool our assets and wealth and divide it up evenly among us… just as everyone should form a collective and pool everything among everyone on that planet. Let us destroy property. Since none of us knows which of the lives we will be born into, this would take some wealth away from those of us lucky enough to be born into the rich families… but some of us will be born into want and poverty, and this way we will all have a guarantee, right now, prior to the accidents of birth, of a fair share of money to live off of, so that we will no longer need to be afraid of an unfortunate birth. That way we can proceed into our new lives with confidence and vigor, rather than panicking about the possibility of the curse of bad luck.”

            “But how can we truly be free if there is no property?” I asked. His vision was the precise opposite of the society that I intended to advocate for. “I will do the work that I do, and it will produce wealth, and that wealth will be mine, if there is ownership. I want the freedom to choose to be successful. If there is no property, if everything is shared, then what is to stop you all from taking the money that I make, and giving me nothing for it in return? That doesn’t seem right. That doesn’t seem fair.”

The other souls all looked at me, some with shock and others with placid annoyance; a few of the other souls nodded their heads in agreement with me. I was the youngest among the souls, baked in God’s oven a mere sixteen trillion years ago. The soul who had spoken first, a very, very, very old soul, gave me a stern gaze, as if to say that I would be forgiven for my foolishness but only if I learned his wisdom quickly.

            “Your success will only be the result of the luck and circumstances that you were born into,” the old soul said. “Therefore there is no such thing as a right to the money that you make. You have no right to it, it was a gift that was given to you… and we are entitled to our fair share of your profits.”

            “A gift?” I asked incredulously. “But I have looked at this blue world of oceans and clouds, and the ape-things do work in order to build their towers of stone and glass and to slaughter their meat, they do work to build the mighty metal ships that sail them across the sky. It seems that I will be expected to work, and if I am assiduous and industrious then I will deserve to own the gold coins that people will pay me for my cleverness. Surely I am correct?”

The older soul laughed at my words, and a few of the other souls arced their lips up in smiles of sympathetic humor. “No, surely you are wrong. You cannot possibly know that you will be able to succeed. After all, you might be born into poverty or illness or be born into a stupid body. If you are prosperous then it will be because you inherited your wealth, or, if not, because you were born into a body with strong muscles or a smart brain, because you had good DNA, or because you were lucky enough to have loving, nurturing parents who raised you to feel pride and self-esteem. But only a few of those  seven lives are blessed; the others are doomed to torture and misery, and you should not condemn the unlucky souls to such agony. After all, you yourself might be born into the worst of all of the lives, raised by a pimp and a prostitute on the mean crime-filled streets of the ghetto, where a bullet in your head is both a constant possibility and something to look forward to as a blissful escape from a nightmare reality. Would you risk everything to play the game of luck and bet that you will be born into good fortune, will you cling to your lack of wisdom, or will you embrace the light and concede to our plan for the elimination of fear and poverty? Equality is not something that is merely noble, it is also eminently practical as a way for you to be safe from bad luck.”

“Luck?” I asked, and a note of indignant anger crept into my voice. “No, not luck! I know that I will succeed or die trying, and I am not going to let any of the pain, agony, or misfortune down on that beautiful, miraculous blue world prevent me from accomplishing my destiny. I will choose to be a success… and I will not yield to you who would steal that accomplishment away from me. You are thieves and I will not obey you!”

“Young fool, you’ll ruin everything for me!” the older soul snarled. “For us, I mean! For us!”

“This isn’t about safety from fear, is it?” I said, as horror dawned on me. “You know that we will forge our own destinies by our choices, which come from us, our souls, and not the situations which we inherit. You just want to be lazy and let me do all the work while I carry you on my shoulders! You know that if everything is pooled then you can take without giving! Isn’t that right? Isn’t it?”

“No!” the old soul screamed. “Don’t listen to him! Look into your hearts and listen to your inner voice, and listen to your fear! Only with my plan can your fear of failure be eliminated! Only with socialism can we all achieve true safety! We must make the brave decision, the one that takes our weakness into account!”

WHAT HAVE YOU DECIDED? God asked us.

“We choose socialism—”

“No!” I interrupted. “We have not yet reached an agreement!”

I HAVE NO PATIENCE FOR WAITING UNTIL YOUR BICKERING ENDS. I AM SENDING ALL OF YOU DOWN TO EARTH RIGHT NOW. YOU CAN MAKE YOUR DECISION ONCE YOU HAVE ASSUMED THE FLESH, AND THEN FIGHT TO SEE YOUR CHOICE REALIZED.

So I was born into a human life, and now I must fight to make freedom a reality, and to make something of the life that I have been given. And I stand by what I said, because, ironically, the body that I was born into is….