An Open Letter to the Faculty of the Philosophy Departments of Ivy League Schools, Regarding the Teaching of Objectivism in College Classrooms

Russell Hasan has published the following open letter to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, UPenn, Cornell, Brown, and Dartmouth philosophy departments:

Philosophy departments should achieve diversity and inclusion in philosophy, with more women and minorities in philosophy, so that the list of famous philosophers is not merely a list of old white men. Please let me put forward a suggestion for how to help: begin to teach the philosophy of Objectivism in the classroom. Assign “Atlas Shrugged” in your introductory philosophy classes, and offer seminars devoted to Objectivism. Ayn Rand was a woman, and an immigrant from Russia to the United States. I myself, Russell Hasan, am a contemporary Objectivist philosopher. I am openly LGBTQ and of mixed race.

What prevents you from doing this?

Mischaracterizations of Objectivism:

(1) Objectivism is an ideology, not a philosophy.

When you consider this statement, it does not make any sense, and is intended to insult Objectivism, not to convey truth. In academics, an ideology is something less that a political philosophy, which asserts that a certain economic system is superior. Objectivism does not fit the definition of an ideology; however, the definition of “ideology” itself is highly dubious, because every political ideology either is, or implies, a political philosophy. Socialism, for example, is an economic system and a political ideology and a political philosophy formed by the ideas of the various socialist political philosophers. Its ideological aspect does not prevent professors from taking it seriously.

Objectivism does not merely assert that capitalism is superior to socialism as an economic system, as an ideology would. Instead, Objectivism explains why capitalism is superior to socialism, using arguments that are distinctly philosophical, and grounded in logic, ethics, and political philosophy. Objectivism is a complete philosophy, which holds positions in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, logic, political philosophy, economics, and aesthetics.

(2) Objectivism does not deserve to be taken seriously.

Who decides what is, or is not, a “real” philosophy? How is that decision made? On the basis of what criteria? Is Confucianism or Daoism or Stoicism a “real” philosophy? Is Existentialism a “real” philosophy? What does “real” mean in this context? Objectivism contains a serious set of ideas on subjects such as epistemology, ethics, logic, and political philosophy. You might not agree with those ideas, but your disagreement does not prove that those ideas are not legitimate or that they should be banished from intellectual debate.

(3) Objectivism is a form of elitism.

Objectivism does not believe that great human beings form an elite who should rule. Instead, it believes that every human being can, and should, achieve greatness, or seek and strive to do so.

(4) Objectivism is a form of Far-Right Conservatism.

Objectivism is an atheistic philosophy which asserts that reason is superior to faith. It does not collapse into or imply the Christian Far Right.

(5) Objectivism is a form of Neo-Modernism, not relevant in the Contemporary Era.

Objectivism believes in freedom, reason, logic, rationality, virtue, knowledge, science, industrial capitalism, and the existence of the external physical world. It holds these beliefs in a simple and sincere way. It does seem like it would have belonged more in the 1700s or 1800s, not in the Contemporary Era. But many details of Objectivism are unique and deserve study.

(6) Objectivism is not important to the history of philosophy.

Since its publication in 1957, “Atlas Shrugged” has had more influence in philosophy, as measured by number of readers, than, for example, Plato and Aristotle, or the German Idealists. My own books related to Objectivism have sold, or been downloaded for free, thousands of times. “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” have both sold millions of copies and been read millions of times, and had a huge influence on American culture and politics, which make them important to the history of contemporary philosophy.

When you exclude Objectivism from the academic debate, you exclude one of the greatest woman philosophers of the contemporary era ever, Ayn Rand, and you also exclude me, Russell Hasan, a philosopher who is openly LGBTQ and of mixed race, and I also consider myself to be one of the best philosophers currently doing philosophy. Objectivism disagrees with most of the basic ideas taken for granted in academic philosophy, and we do things differently than you. I can understand that you don’t want to have to address a philosophy that calls your basic unquestioned beliefs into question and which asserts that most of what you believe is wrong. But that is not a rational grounds, in itself, to exclude us, if we make arguments that can be rationally understood and which make valid points, and if you have a sincere desire for a lively intellectual debate in academic philosophy.

I request that you add Objectivism to your academic curriculums immediately. Although I, Russell Hasan, am a nobody, and you are the great and powerful Ivy League, I write this letter, not in arrogance, but out of a humble desire to help you find new ways to meet your diversity and inclusion goals.

The Contradiction of Subjectivism: Russell Hasan's Paradox

Contemporary academic psychologists and neurobiologists, as well as contemporary academic philosophers, if they want to sound trendy and give the impression and appearance of being sophisticated, like to talk about how the human brain creates experience, and the various biases that manifest in this creation. 

But we, as Objectivists, must ask the real questions: The human brain creates experience... from what? From magic? From fairy dust? From thin air? If the human brain creates experience from a source in the external objective world, but what we ourselves experience is merely created by our brains, then how could we, as thinkers, ever gain knowledge of the external world, since we would have no direct access to it? But, if experience is not created from a source in the external world, then from what source is it created? Where does your brain exist, if not in the external world, and, if you have knowledge of your brain itself being in the external world, then from where did this knowledge come, if not from the external world? 

Their belief collapses into a contradiction, and in a hurry, too, if anybody actually bothers to examine it in a logical way. If experience is real, then something is real, so where could any real experience come from, if not from reality? It's like the reverse of Descartes' classic motto "I think, therefore I am": I experience the external physical world; therefore, the external physical world must be the thing that I am experiencing. 

For example, if I brush my teeth, then I feel my teeth, and I hold the toothbrush, and I feel the toothbrush brushing my teeth; each of these things exists physically outside of my physical brain, therefore it adds nothing beneficial to our philosophical analysis to say that my brain created my experience of my teeth and the toothbrush and brushing my teeth. Yes, I can only taste the tastes of the toothpaste that my tongue has the taste buds with which to sense and that my brain has the neurons with which to understand, but that only means that my point of view limits the scope of what I can experience, it does not mean that the things which I actually can experience are subjective. 

Another example of this: the human eye cannot see ultraviolet light, but that does not prove that the colors we can see, red, green, blue, etc., are subjective. The ocean is blue, and apples are red (or green, and their insides are yellow or white), and if the blue ocean exists, then the fact that it is blue is an objective fact, and this is what we see when we look at the ocean and see a blue ocean. The blueness of the ocean, and the experience of that color blueness, is the ocean itself, is the ocean as a thing in itself, and that perceived thing is what we experience when we see the blue ocean. 

The objectivity of existence does not say that you perceive everything, instead it only says that what you perceive exists objectively, so it is perfectly plausible, and compatible with this account, that what you have the actual ability to perceive is limited to your point of view. For example, if you are facing forward, then you can only see what is in front of you, however, if you see a rose garden in front of you, then that rose garden objectively exists, despite the fact that your point of view limits you to see only this rose garden, and not, for example, the brick wall behind you. 

Either reality is objective, or else it is subjective. There is no middle ground. As I have written elsewhere, some things, like our artistic preferences, or our sexual orientations and romantic desires, are entirely subjective. But they are subjective only in the sense of moral objectivism or moral subjectivism, not in the sense of epistemic subjectivism or epistemic objectivism: that one person cannot pass valid judgment upon another person's desires or tastes, and desires and tastes can be neither right nor wrong. To the extent that a preference or a desire does in fact exist in reality, it, too, exists objectively. However, experience itself, and the objects of our sensory experience, are objective. Existence exists objectively. 

Inevitably, because these idiots say that the human brain creates experience, which would require the contradiction that we have no direct access to the external world and yet we know that the human brain is creating our experiences from content in the external world, their answer is that we have direct access to knowledge of the external world, not from our experience, but by means of our intuition, or instinct, or faith, of phenomenological revelation. So, their neuropsychological false premises always cause them to collapse into philosophy, which then causes their philosophy to collapse into religion and mysticism, of the worst variety. With my theory of epistemology, no need for this sort of stupidity exists. The experience of driving a car, for example, is itself merely the act of that person driving a car, in objective reality, which one experiences, the experience of a thing is what the objective real thing looks like to that person, and so consciousness is merely the name for objective reality as experienced from the point of view of the person who is aware of it. 

Likewise, the perception of something, for example the taste of an apple, is the perceived thing itself, is really the thing in itself as experienced by a person, for example the taste of an apple is the apple itself as perceived by the tongue, and the experience of an apple is the apple, and the consciousness that experiences it is the person who tastes it. The perception of an apple is not a perception, it is an apple. And, in a sort of similar way, words in a language are merely symbols or signs or representations that show a thing to the mind’s eye, such that dog is not a word, dog is a four-legged canine animal, which can be shown to a listener or reader by speaking or writing the word “dog.” 

Essential logic says that a thing is a set of properties, and, if you can define the property or properties that are the essence of a thing as that type of thing, and then prove what other properties a thing will have because it has those essential properties, then those things, as the consequence of the essence, must necessarily and universally be true for all things of that type, so I prove truths that are necessarily and universal, but at the same time I hold that physical reality consists only of specific concrete real objects, because essences are properties of real physical things as analyzed by essential logic, and the surface properties of a thing as a set of properties can be known directly by means of sensory perception, so the essences are not themselves real abstract beings in some other spiritual or intellectual realm known by means of faith or revelation or intuition. Instead, knowledge of essences and consequences as necessary and universal truth in the physical world comes from logic and reason and perception and awareness. 

You can call my analysis above by the name of "the contradiction of subjectivism," or Russell Hasan's Paradox, that, if our experience of reality is subjective, then we cannot directly know objective reality by means of perception and sensory experience, but then we could not know what our supposedly subjective experiences are actually of, such that if we experience an external physical world, if we see the ocean, taste an apple, or know what brushing our teeth is like, this proves that the world that we experience exists objectively, because we have knowledge of it from our experience. 

If you hold true to the belief that your brain creates your experience, then you either collapse into a contradiction, that your brain is creating the experience of things outside of your brain, or abandon your subjectivism and embrace objectivism, or else you must concede that you actually know absolutely nothing, and you have no idea what the fuck you are really experiencing when you have an experience, or else you must fall back on the position that intuition or instinct or revelation is your source of knowledge for what you experience and what those things really are. 

Some philosophers seek to solve my paradox by means of what they call "inter-subjectivity," that your brain creates your experience, but, because everyone else's brains are also creating their experience, and we all experience the same world that we share which we are all in, our shared subjectivity is what creates objectivity. But this is like saying that a shared dream or a shared hallucination is real, just because multiple people experience the same dream or the same hallucination. And my paradox refutes this, too, in this way: how do you know that the other people in your shared world are real? You either know that other people exist, on the basis of your sensory perceptions of them, your experiences of them, and a set of valid logical inferences that you draw from that experience: you see someone, hear them talk, see them smile, engage them in a conversation, observe their behavior, so you infer that this other person is someone like you, is a real person. If not, then the other people in the subjective experience that you brain creates, would be just as subjective, and unreal, as everything else in your experience, so either you would have no direct knowledge that other people exist, and so you cannot derive your objectivity from their shared subjectivity, or your knowledge that other people are real would come from intuition or instinct or revelation--and what is both good and bad about intuition, is that no one knows how it works, and that is the whole point, so you would require blind trust and faith in intuition, and abandon reason and rationality, or you would still know nothing, and be limited to solipsism, that the world you experience is just in your own mind. Inter-subjectivity as a solution to my paradox merely collapses, again, into my paradox. 

The one and only solution to my paradox is strict philosophical epistemological Objectivism. If your brain creates your experience, then how could you ever have any direct access to the external world, ever, at all, so how could you ever know that an external world exists, other than by a process of transcending your subjective experience to a spiritually known objectivity by means of intuition, which is pure mysticism and faith and nonsense and religious bullshit, and requires completely abandoning reason and rationality and logic? And even that is not rational knowledge of objective reality, it is merely faith in intuition of objective reality. 

Three other attempts to solve or refute my paradox: First - The human brain creates experience, but you can tell the difference between the parts of your experience that are subjective and the parts which are objective. You can tell the difference: how? Why? On what basis? How could you even have a concept of objectivity to begin with, as a starting point for this analysis, if all of your experiences were created by your brain, and none of your experiences were the direct experience of objective existence? 

Second - the human senses are subjective, but, for example, camera video footage is objective, and scientific test instruments' measurements are objective, so you can use such things as a measure or basis of knowing objective reality. Yes, that's great, except that, from a person's own subjective point of view, if they watch video, that video is within their experience, therefore they would think their brain had created the experience of the video footage, or, if you read the results of scientific tests using scientific instruments, you read those results with your eyes, the test results are things you see, so the experience of reading the test results would be subjective, so the test results themselves, too, would be entirely subjective. 

Third – there is the argument that how the human brain processes information is very important to our experiences, and this has been proven by science, in research study after research study. Yes, but that does not solve my paradox, because “how the human brain processes information” is the means by which an experience is obtained, it is not the content of the experience itself. How the brain works says how we get experiences; it does not say what an experience is. There is no reason to assume that the means of experience somehow constitute the contents of the experience itself, if the experience is of something in the external world that exists objectively, unless that position was reasoned and logically deduced from some basis in reality, and I do not accept that there is a proof of such a position anywhere in objective existence. 

Your brain, and how your brain processes information, as your cognitive point of view, might limit what you have the ability to experience, much as your eye’s point of view limits what you have the ability to see, but this does not prove that the actual experiences or perceived things themselves are subjective. The scope of what you can experience, which is defined by your means of experience, is not identical to an actual real experience, which is defined by the external world in objective reality. An actual real experience is identical to the actual real thing that it is the experience of, in other words, an experience is identical to the thing which is experienced. If you see something in the external world, then something in the external world is what you see. And the proof of this is that what you see is physically located outside your own skull and brain, in space and time, if you see a table over there, in the corner of a room, then you see a table in the external world. The external world is the world outside your mind, outside your brain, which exists objectively, and the meaning of “objectively” is that it exists independently of, and separately from, the means of perception, means of awareness, means of consciousness and means of experience, and of the acts of perception and awareness. 

If the means of experience does not bias the contents of experience (and there is no proof that it does), then we can directly experience the external world, and this is true even if we experience reality by means of our brains. I could go further and assert that reality, in other words existence, merely refers to space and time which exists objectively. If you analyze these arguments using strict, coherent, rational logic, they collapse into contradictions. Your knowledge of objectivity would itself have been within, and have come from, a purely subjective experience or a set of purely subjective experiences, unless you began by directly perceiving things that objectively exist in reality, as your experience. And the philosophy which says that this is true, is called Objectivism. 

For citations as to who inspired this analysis, I must cite, in general, to Ayn Rand, and also to Mortimer Adler, who himself cited to Thomas of Aquinas, who himself cited to Aristotle.

Some Fun Facts About Me, Author Russell Hasan

Favorite Color: Yellow

Favorite Food: Sushi

Favorite Movies: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and The Matrix

Favorite Novels: Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Catch-22

Favorite Album: The Castlevania Symphony of the Night soundtrack

Favorite Composer: Tchaikovsky

Favorite Band: Radiohead

Favorite Video Game: Super Mario World

Favorite Computer Game: League of Legends

Favorite Beer: I don't drink!

Favorite way to smoke 420: I don't smoke!

Favorite Exercise: Weightlifting

Favorite Season: Summer

Favorite Drink: Coffee (black, with Splenda)

Philosophical Aphorisms - By Me (Russell Hasan)

(1) The Logical Positivists held that everything which cannot be verified by science has no meaning. My position is precisely the reverse: that everything which has a meaning can be verified by science.

(2) Nietzsche once said: "Every philosopher must be forgiven for his first followers." I have a similar motto: every writer must be forgiven for their first book.

(3) Nietzsche said, or meant, in gist, something similar to this: "We hold the greatness of geniuses a safe distance above ourselves for the purpose of considering ourselves unable to reach it." Similarly, people who choose to be stupid look up to smart people in order to relieve themselves from the burden of having to think.

(4) What is a Libertarian?

A Libertarian is someone who doesn't obey the rules.

But then how do they know what to do, if they don't follow rules?

You would have to think for yourself.

Precisely.

(5) The history of philosophy, summarized in one paragraph: Pre-Kant, there were the empiricists, who had sensations but not reason, and the rationalists, who had reason and the analysis of concepts, but not sensations. The empiricists were like Pavlov's dogs, merely animals reacting to sensations like a smell or a noise, or to a mental image, without thought; the rationalists were like blind men, having a mind that could think but lacking eyes that can see. Kant "combined" the two, by saying that reason and the analysis of concepts imposes truth onto sensations, and he called this scientific. And the popular narrative of the history of philosophy calls Kant a hero, for having done that. I might be viewed as having said the opposite: that reason acts upon sensations, but it is the sensations which impose truth upon reason, and it is the sensations which impose truth upon the analysis of concepts, and that this is what science is.

But that is a shallow, two-dimensional view of my work. My philosophy runs deeper. There is no sharp distinction between sensations, on the one hand, and reason and the analysis of concepts, on the other hand, the former is object, the latter, subject, you could not have a sentence without the form of "Subject verb object." The subject does something to the object, or else nothing would happen, but the subject is subject, and the object is object. What the subject actually does to the object is summed up by this pithy quote: "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."

(6) If someone from another country, a long distance away, in a land where they grow mangos but not apples, and he has never seen an apple before, if he asked you, "what does an apple look like?" How would you answer? The only true answer is that an apple looks like an apple. A thing is what it is. And a thing's appearance is what it looks like. If you have seen an apple, then an apple, itself, is something that you have seen. The apple's appearance, what the apple looks like, is equal to the visual properties of the apple itself, of the apple in itself, the thing as such, the thing in itself. So, if something looks like an apple, then it has an apple's appearance.

If something looks good, then you know that it is good-looking, because these are one and the same thing, and if something looks ugly, then you know it is ugly looking, because that is what it looks like, and good-looking and ugly are properties of visual aspects of things, and so those can be directly perceived. If you see something, then you know what it looks like, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know what it is, in the sense that you don't necessarily know what is underneath its appearance, you don't know what structure is there, what physics of body and mass, what chemical composition, or what actions the thing can do, what its purpose is, and so on. Any one of those things could surprise you, if you assume, absent proof, that the thing is exactly what it looks like it is.

But to see a thing, and to then have knowledge of what it looks like, is incorrigible, and the only way to truly know what a thing looks like, is to see it. Sensations are simple, what Ayn Rand called "the irreducible primary," they do not break down as visual appearances into smaller components, although the visual things can be described using abstractions, like "blue" or "cloudy" to describe how the sky looks, etc.

But things themselves as such are not simple or irreducible, it is only the directly perceivable properties of things, which is what an appearance is, that are of this sort. And, of course, you could draw a picture of an apple, to try to show the foreigner what an apple looks like, but that is merely an abstraction, and sensations are always fully concrete, so it is not the same, seeing a drawing of an apple is not the same experience as seeing a real apple (although it is the same as seeing a drawing of an apple), because of what sensations are. This is why to experience something is to have an experience, which is a unique, simple, irreducible thing. There are some philosophers who say, "you cannot say what experience is." But you can. Experience is experience. That says everything that there is to be said. And, no, that isn't a tautology, because there are plenty of philosophers of logic who would disagree with me. You can say what it is, in a statement that is true, but that isn't the same as experiencing it.

However, experiences can be analyzed, using logic and reason, because they are things, like, for example, asking why an apple looks the way that it does, for what purpose, and how this shape helps the apple seeds become trees, and such. The experience of seeing a hammer, for example, is the perceivable and sensory aspect and attributes of the hammer itself: the hammer is the sensation, plus the substance, such as, in this example, the logic of why this shape and this material can hammer nails, and so on, which reason and logic can analyze. The hammer as a perceived thing is-plus the set of sensations; you see the sensations, but it is also true that you see the hammer, that you see the thing itself, because the thing itself is the sensations plus other properties. A thing is a set of properties, and an experience is a set of sensations which are properties of a set of perceived things. The things, as such, exist in objective reality, so the things that you perceive do in fact exist objectively, outside of your own subjective mind; experience is not in itself subjective, although your own mind and point of view and angle from which you see experience is.

Sensations can give us a path to knowledge of the depth behind the surface appearance. Such things can be real, or illusions, but reason and logic can tell the difference, much as a scientist might look to empirical data to see if his research is on the right track or has hit a dead end. In general, as I have written elsewhere, if the sensations were what a theory would expect, they serve to confirm it, to the extent that those sensations are a statistically significant sample set of the entire thing, but if the sensations were not what a theory would expect them to be, they refute the hypothesis.

A caveman in ancient times could see the stars at night, and he knew what stars look like just the same as we do, but we know that they are stars, which the ancient cavemen did not know, because we have science and reason built upon generations of research and scholarship, and he had only the knowledge that came from immediate experience of the sensations of stars. The difference between what he knew and what we know is the difference between empirical knowledge and rational knowledge.

(7) Some philosophers would say "a dollar bill on Mars isn't a dollar bill, it is just a piece of paper." But, no, it is still a dollar bill--because the dollar bill always was just the piece of paper. There are some who have said that a hammer isn't really a hammer objectively, it is only a hammer for human beings, because that identity, being a hammer, exists only relative to our human purpose. No. It is a hammer--that is a fact in objective reality--it is useful precisely because, in reality, it has a handle of wood, and a head of metal, with this hardness, in thus-and-such a shape, that makes it useful for hammering--the fact that humans can use it to hammer nails into wood is a fact in reality, which is true because of what the hammer is--because it is a hammer---it is not a merely a subjective wish or feeling. What humans find useful, is a fact in objective reality--whether we succeed or fail, whether we live or die, exists objectively. Also, if a human actually used a hammer to hammer nails, the fact that they did so would be objectively true, and would be fully objective.

(8) Mark Twain once said "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." He also said "Do the right thing. This will please some people and astonish the rest." I would combine the two: "Do the right thing. Everything else is already being done."

(9) If people are not allowed to be proud of their virtues, then they will be proud of their sins.

(10) What is Heaven for one man is Hell for another.

Aristotle and the Seven Deadly Sins

Let us see if we can combine Aristotle's theory of the Golden Mean, which holds that the good is a ratio, virtue lies in the middle ground between two extremes, and that the ethical behavior is in between one extreme of excess and one extreme of deficiency, with the Christian doctrine of the Seven Deadly Sins, defining each sin as an extreme of excess:

My statements will always take the following form: First, the sin of excess, then, a naming of the virtuous middle virtue, then the sin of deficiency. I will then state the topic to which the degrees of too much or too little pertain.

Take this example: Too Much, Just Right, Too Little. Virtue.

(1) Lust, Healthy Sexuality, Involuntary Celibacy. Sex.

(2) Gluttony, Healthy Eating, Anorexia. Eating.

(3) Envy, Inspiration from Others' Achievements, Apathy towards Goals. Comparison and Competitiveness.

(4) Pride, Self-Esteem (but also being Humble and Grateful), Low Self-Esteem or Self-Criticism. Self-opinion.

(5) Wrath, Righteous Anger against Injustice, Complicity or Weakness. Anger.

(6) Sloth, Relaxation and Enjoyment, Stress and Anxiety. Idleness or Laziness.

(7) Greed, Rational Self-Interest and a Healthy Desire for Money and Ethical Selfishness, Poverty. Money.

If this is true, then the Christians completely misunderstood their own doctrine, because they believe that, for example, any desire for money is greed and is evil, or any desire for sex is lustful and is therefore evil, so a truly virtuous person holds zero desire for money and zero desire for sex, so they are led down the wrong path by their misunderstanding of their own Bible. In reality, for ethics and virtue and morality, you can do the wrong thing, but you can also have too much of a good thing, which itself becomes another wrong thing, and, because a good person desires goodness, doing too much of the right thing might be an even greater temptation than doing the wrong thing.

Take, for example, this question: if eating lots of cake and junk food tastes good, then how can it be true that perception is truthful, which is the position held by the philosophy of Objectivism, because the cake tastes good, but eating it is bad for you? But I hold that the cake tasting good is truthful, because the cake is good, it is only bad to eat it because eating it is too much of a good thing, for example, too much fat and too much sugar, so the fact that fat and sugar taste good is not evidence that the senses are deceptive or that perception lacks accurate knowledge of objective reality, fat and sugar taste like exactly what they really are in reality.

Similarly, for sex, it looks hot and beautiful because it is hot and beautiful, but the naked human body is also gross and disgusting and dirty, as an animal body, so sex looks exactly like what it really is. One should want some food, but not too much and be fat, or too little and starve; one should desire some sex, but not too much and be dirty and disgusting, or too little and be mired in sexual frustration and a lack of pleasure in life.

There are countervailing arguments against me: for example, that greed is the love of money in itself, which is an unhealthy attitude towards money, whereas a healthy attitude towards money is to use money as a means to an end but never as an end in itself, and so on for sex, food, etc., so it is a question of attitude, not a question of degrees. There is also the argument that I get Christianity wrong (and, I admit, most theologians would not agree with my analysis), that food, money, sex, self-esteem, etc., are the tools by means of which a person stays alive in the physical world, and any behavior that clings to life in the physical world is wrong, and true virtue lies in renouncing the physical world, which purifies the soul for its journey to Heaven upon death. That is one extreme Christian view, although, if that is the official Christian position, then, obviously, my theory is not Christian, it is merely a synthesis of certain elements of the Bible with certain elements of Aristotle.

One may, of course, point to sex, food, money, and self-opinion, as things that tempt one into betraying one's moral integrity, such as, for example, if money is a temptation to commit a crime, or if sex tempts you to betray a friend for a woman (or for a man), or if pride leads you to an act of arrogance or grandiosity or to steal credit for someone else's achievement. Envy, or wrath, could also be an emotional influence that tempts you to evil. To betray law-abiding society (by crime, for money), to betray someone else (for sex), or to do the worst thing you could do, to betray yourself, is the ultimate evil. Betrayal, symbolized by Judas in the story of Jesus Christ, is the one true evil, but, expressed on our lives, it is our own betrayal of our ethics and our moral integrity. So defined, one could say that the seven deadly sins are merely a list of temptations to betrayal, to evil. If so, then, used in a good or ethical way, food and sex and pride etc. would not be sins, they would only be sins when expressed as the temptation to bait you into betraying your own soul.

Oops, I did it again

 I have done it again.

I wrote a new book, "To Be Loved, Love," which, at slightly over 100 pages long, took me two months to write, and I have now published it.

I also reformatted my older book "XYAB Economics" into a Kindle-friendly format, and reissued it under its new and improved title, "Economics: A Theory of Capital."

And, yes, I have been listening to a lot of Britney Spears recently--I am an LGBTQ Millennial, after all--and she inspired the title of this blog post.

Two New Titles for 2022

This year I published two new books:

"On Self-Reliance, Self-Esteem, and Intellectual Honesty," which is sort of a philosophy self-help book, and

"Love Without Labels," which is a very LGBTQ Pride sort of book, mainly of interest to people questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Happy Reading!

New Books

I have written two new books:

Everything is Something

and

The Collected Essays on Logic.

Please buy them! Thanks!

People, critics, often accuse Objectivist philosophy of not engaging with "real" academic philosophy, so these books try to answer that objection, by engaging with some very famous theories from academic philosophy and explaining why Objectivism can refute and replace them.

Back to Vegetarian

Hello Readers,

I have gone back to being a vegetarian. This time, not for cost or health reasons, but for ethical reasons. I have previously been of the opinion that animals do not possess consciousness. I am now of the mind that animals do, in fact, have some very limited form of consciousness. In which case, they experience their own deaths, when murdered. So eating meat has lost its enjoyment for me. Alas! But the health benefits for me are icing on the cake--pun intended!

UPDATE: So once again, I could not do completely without meat, but my compromise is that now I am what is known as a "pescetarian": I will only eat vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy, eggs, and fish. Fish and seafood are the only meat I will eat. I don't eat mammals or poultry. This decision, again, is ethical, as fish and seafood have brains that are so primitive that they probably cannot possess self-awareness, although they might be aware of what is in front of them. In contrast, most mammals probably can be self-aware, and maybe some birds too. To be a mammal, which humans are, and to eat mammals, is pretty horrible, honestly, and I say this as someone who did, for the majority of my life.

The Philosophy of Objectivism in Ten Comparisons Against All Major World Religions

1. Buddhism says you should renounce your desires as the path to inner peace. Objectivism says you should achieve your desires as the path to happiness.

2. Religion says you should focus on the afterlife. Objectivism says you should focus on this life.

3. Existentialism says nothing means anything. Objectivism says your life means something.

4. Marxism/socialism says capitalism is evil. Objectivism says capitalism is virtuous.

5. Christianity says Jesus Christ died to save you from your sins. Objectivism says there is no such thing as original sin, and to be human is good, not evil.

6. Islam says the Prophet Mohamed is your source of truth. Objectivism says your reasoning mind is your source of truth.

7. Kantianism says knowledge comes from intuition. Objectivism says knowledge comes from experience.

8. Judaism says the Jews are God's chosen people. Objectivism says every human being belongs in this reality.

9. Subjectivism says you know only your own subjective point of view. Objectivism says that perception and logic are your means of knowing objective reality.

10. The government says you need government experts to make your decisions for you. Objectivism has confidence in you that you can make the correct decisions for yourself.

Poem of Love and Logic

 A Leftist can be at one with Leftism. Or not.

Leftism cannot be at one with itself, because it cannot pay for the cost of what it wants to spend to help the poor.

A Conservative can be at one with Conservatism. Or not.

But Conservatism cannot be at one with itself, because its core virtue is freedom, yet it opposes freedom across a broad range of "social" issues, like abortion and gay marriage and recreational drug use.

An Objectivist can be at one with Objectivism. Or not.

Objectivism can be at one with itself. It has no internal contradictions.

Therefore only an Objectivist at one with Objectivism is perfectly at one, perfectly logical, without contradictions, coherent, with integrity.

Update 2021

So quitting coffee has gone great, went from 5 cups a day down to one or two cups a week. Saving a lot of money.

Being vegetarian did not go so good. It turns out that meat contains protein, which is what makes you feel full after you eat. I ate a lot of broccoli and carrots and bananas and tomatoes and did not feel full. And didn't feel like I was getting all the nutrients I needed, despite eating a ton of vegetables--apparently meat contains actual nutritional value. Who knew? So I'm back to eating meat, but just sparingly--not in every meal.

Big Changes 2021

So I'm blogging... Who blogs anymore, right? I am such an Xenial... (Xenial is the name of the sub-generation between Generation X and the Millennial Generation. So sort of like an older Millennial. I am technically a Millennial but I just made the cut.)

Anyway, so, after spending the last decade drinking 5 cups of coffee a day, I have stopped drinking coffee...

And, after being an omnivore for virtually my entire life, I have decided to become vegetarian. I will eat plants and dairy, but not meat or eggs.

Why? A combination of cost and health. Meat is both unhealthy and economically inefficient, from a point of view of cost as compared to the same nutrition produced from plants.

I had also reached the point with coffee where my body is so desensitized that 5 cups was having no effect... That's a sign it's time to stop!

Poems of Love and Logic

Having low self-esteem is bad.

Having a small ego is good.

But self-esteem = ego.

Is having a big ego good?

Objectivism is the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand was human and therefore fallible.

But Objectivism = The Truth.

Truth can't be false, therefore, The Truth is infallible.

Can Objectivism be added to, by someone not named Ayn Rand, if she were wrong about something?

How many different names for the elements of logical syntax can the philosophy professors define?

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

The philosophy professors don't take Ayn Rand seriously.

Ayn Rand is a plausible interpretation of Aristotle.

Aristotle and Plato are the foundation of (Western) philosophy, and that is a historical fact.

Therefore the philosophy professors don't take philosophy seriously.

Books, Books, Books

More new books.

Some people podcast.

Some people write email newsletters.

But I write books.

I just enjoy it more.

Please check out my newest works!

On Immanuel Kant

I took it upon myself to read the Critique of Pure Reason. That lasted a few days, before I couldn't pick it up anymore. But I will say this: say what you want about Immanuel Kant, he was a great enemy of Objectivism, but he was also a great writer. He takes the fact that his theory is so absurdly crazy that there literally are no real-world examples of his ideas, and turns that to his advantage: "I sacrificed examples in the interests of clarity," is basically what he says, but he says it so much more elegantly. He says "this is the last work there needs to be in philosophy, ever, this answers every question, and you have no choice but to agree with me, you must agree with everything I say," then, in the next sentence, obviates any anger the reader might feel at being talked to with such arrogance, by saying that any previous philosopher, who put forward any theory of the soul or reason, was actually being far more arrogant than Kant--which is obviously not true, but the quality of Kant's prose form was so good that he makes the reader feel as if it was true. I think Kant's staying power in philosophy, at 300+ years and counting, owes more to how good of a writer he was, and far less to the quality of his philosophy.

Fans Can Write to Me!

 Hello Readers,

I have created a dedicated email account for reader fan mail: 

author.russell.hasan@outlook.com

I promise to look at this inbox and reply on a fairly regular basis. If you don't hear from me within two to four weeks, feel free to resend your letter.

I've also recently published some new books, you can find them here: Russell Hasan on Amazon

The Books on My Bookshelf

 It has become a trend to talk about the books on someone's bookshelf that you see in the background of people on their Zoom meetings, and to analyze what their books say about a person's personality. The way my webcam is set up, my bookshelf is not in the background, so you would never see it. So I thought I would share a list of the books on my bookshelves:

Harry Potter Books 1 through 7

Dragons of Autumn Twilight

The Crystal Shard

A Spell for Chameleon

ElfQuest Volume 1

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

John Locke's Second Treatise of Government

F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom

A copy of all of my own books: Rob Seablue and the Eye of Tantalus, The Office of Heavenly Restitution, Project Utopia, The Prince, The Girl and The Revolution, The Golden Wand Trilogy, The Apple of Knowledge, Golden Rule Libertarianism, What They Won't Tell You About Objectivism, XYAB Economics, A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs, A System of Legal Logic, and On Forgiveness

Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead

Ten Philosophical Mistakes by Mortimer J. Adler

That's it (other than some "Teach Yourself How to Speak Spanish" books that I bought when I went through a phase where I tried to learn Spanish, only to learn that I am not good at learning other languages.) The reason why there aren't more is that, usually, after I read a book, I donate it to my local public library! Or buy a Kindle edition.

About Me

 I was reading the entry entitled "Contemporary Philosophy" on Wikipedia and reading the subsection on "The Professionalization of Philosophy" and it said something like, and I paraphrase: "Now only philosophy professors can be philosophers, and philosophy is something that is done by publishing academic papers in highly technical trade journals, which non-philosophers cannot understand and which are not designed to be read by non-philosophers, and the age of the amateur philosopher with no technical training and no PhD who writes genius philosophy books intended for a mass audience, the age of philosophers like Descartes or Spinoza or David Hume, is over," and I remember thinking, "That's me! They're talking about me! I'm a precocious amateur genius who writes philosophy books! They are saying the age of me is over!" And I don't think my age is over. Here I am.

Objectivism in Ten Quotes

1. "Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?" (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, which is an almost verbatim statement of one of the ideas of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, although Rand spent her entire life denying that Nietzsche influenced her.)

2. "...for these truths hold good for everything that is, and not for some special genus apart from others. And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being. ... For a principle which every one must have who understand anything that is, is not a hypothesis. ... Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect..." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged, quoting Aristotle.)

3. "No one survives in this valley by faking reality in any way." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

4. "You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island--it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his seed stock today--and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

5. "I am, therefore I'll think." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

6. "My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists--and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

7. "Reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth. The most depraved sentence you can now utter to ask is: Whose reason? The answer is: Yours." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

8. "Life, Liberty and Property." (John Locke's statement of basic human rights, which America's Founders, lacking the political consensus to use that phrase, changed to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.")

9. "In the beginning was Logic, and Logic was God, and Logic was of God." (Alternate English translation of the original Greek version of the opening passage of The Gospel of John, The Christian Bible. Although a Platonic doctrine based on the Greek philosophical concept of logos, which means "the logical understanding understood expressed in words" but which is often mistranslated in Bibles as "The Word", this might as well be an Objectivist slogan.)

10. "I swear--by my life and my love of it--that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

Top Ten Famous People Quotes

These are my 10 favorite quotes by random famous people:

1. "Always do right. This will please some people, and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain.

2. "Lack of money is the root of all evil." - Mark Twain.

3. "Suppose you were a member of Congress. And suppose you were an idiot. But I repeat myself." - Mark Twain.

4. "The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain.

5. "Learn like you'll live forever, live like you'll die tomorrow." - Mohatma Ghandi.

6. "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." - Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, himself quoting Pablo Picasso, while discussing the Mac Operating System.

7. "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." - Oscar Wilde.

8. "It's a republic, if you can keep it." - Benjamin Franklin, when asked what form of government the Constitutional Convention had chosen for the USA.

9. "You are never alone, when alone." - Cicero.

10. "I'm gay, and that's a good thing." - quote attributed to the first openly gay Mayor of Berlin, Germany.

Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche - The Top Ten Quotes

These are the top ten (my ten favorite) quotes said by philosophers Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche:

1. "How can you return to me if you do not leave me?" - Nietzsche

2. "Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours . . . and could have been mine." - Rand

3. "Sometimes, when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you." - Nietzsche

4. "Insist on it." - Rand

5. "God is dead, and we are the ones who killed Him." - Nietzsche

6. "Are you happy, Mr. Superman?" - Rand (Yes, this is Rand, not Nietzsche - she is referring to him. It's one of my favorite lines from The Fountainhead.)

7. "I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." - Rand

8. "A philosopher must always be forgiven for his first followers." - Nietzsche

9. "It's the soul, Peter, the soul, not whips or swords or fire or guns." - Rand

10. "He didn't want to make money, only to get it." - Rand

The Top Ten Virtues from The John Galt Speech in Atlas Shrugged

 I have not seen a simple list of the virtues enumerated in Atlas Shrugged, so I made this list:

1. Reason

2. Purpose

3. Self-Esteem

4. Rationality

5. Independence

6. Integrity

7. Honesty

8. Justice

9. Productiveness

10. Pride

For Ayn Rand's explication of these virtues, see pages 932-33, Atlas Shrugged, Signet Paperback Edition.

One can further subdivide this list: Reason, Purpose and Self-Esteem are "the Big Three Virtues," Rationality, Independence and Integrity are "The Intellectual Virtues," and Honesty, Justice, Productiveness and Pride are "The Social Virtues." These three sets of values comprise the bedrock foundation of Objectivist morality.

What is the Libertarian Axiom? Politics, Reimagined

Most libertarians would point to the principle that one should never initiate violence and use force only for self defense as the core axiom for liberty—the axiom that I call NVP, the Non-Violence Principle. Here I write to propose a second axiom, based on some recent conversation with my fellow Libertarian Party members.
I know one LP member who opposes big government except for public education to give poor kids a leg up. I know another who opposes big government except for Social Security for retirees, on the belief it isn't fair to deny someone benefits they paid into for decades. I know a third who opposes big government except for welfare and food stamps for the very poor. This person is convinced that a Marxist revolution will happen if all welfare is cut. I have also heard a Libertarian talk about the "real" pain and suffering of the poor that is alleviated by welfare, as if the pain caused by big government is not equally real.
These people, and I now suspect most Americans, understand libertarian economics, but they think that theft (in the form of taxation) is justified if it is for a good, worthy cause. Each person has his own pet cause that he wants government to fund, even while wanting taxes cut to pay for anything else.
I propose a new axiom: that the ends never justify the means. I term this the Anti-Marxist Axiom. If you believe this, then theft is never justified, even for the noblest purpose, and even if the rich have more money than they need. My justification for this axiom is moral, not pragmatic, and, in a weird way, Kantian. Kant's signature contribution to ethics is the theory of the Categorical Imperative, which I interpret to mean that, for something to be good, it must be right at all times and places universally. If there is an exception to an ethical (or political) principle then it was not rational or true, it was merely an expediency of the moment. To be a coherent theory, libertarianism needs the Anti-Marxist Axiom, otherwise it is just a rule of thumb to be compromised or abandoned when someone feels justified in doing so. If you use evil means to achieve good ends, logically the result will not be ethical, because you conceded to evil in order to achieve your goal.
If you want to fund a good cause with taxes then you conceded the validity of statism. If you accept that people make and earn money, and thereby morally deserve to own wealth, and then say that you can take someone's money away from them to spend as you see fit, even for a good cause, you have conceded and condoned widespread systemic theft. It should not then surprise you that a bunch of crooks, literally thieves, actual criminals, will run for office to acquire this opportunity and then will raise taxes on you to pay for evil things while spouting all sorts of virtuous good causes to justify it. There is a saying "power corrupts, and power attracts the corruptible." (Attributed to Frank Herbert.) I can say something similar: theft attracts criminals. This is a necessary and sufficient explanation for why big government is evil and will always become evil even if it begins as good.
Absent this axiom, you will find good cause after good cause, requiring tax raise after tax raise, and more and more theft to pay for your virtuous plans, until, from a libertarian starting point, you inevitably collapse into socialism. Either you have a universal, absolute axiom, or you face a very realistic slippery slope--even if sliding down it takes a nation 200 years.
Libertarians should consider abandoning their pet causes and commit to the Anti-Marx Axiom, to protect the purity of our principles. Libertarianism as a political theory needs an axiom, a self-evident principle to justify itself. If it does not have a principle then it is not a theory, it would be a mere pragmatic movement, or merely a feeling that government is bad. NVP is a good axiom, but many libertarians feel justified in making exceptions. The axiom that the ends never justify the means says there are no exceptions. If people want compromise, let them vote for the establishment. If they want principled politics, then they should vote for us. But how can we be a party of principles if we don't know what our core principle is?

Are libertarians left or right?

Are libertarians left or right? This is not an easy question to answer, for several reasons. First, no one definition exists of what is a libertarian. Ask twenty libertarians, by which I mean people who self-define as libertarian, what is a libertarian? and you will get twenty different answers. Being libertarian might mean you consider yourself a member of a libertarian movement, or a Libertarian Party, of that you believe in one of the many different types of libertarian philosophy, like Austrian or AnCap. Second, when you ask are libertarians left or right, you assume that left and right are the only two options. Many libertarians think of themselves as neither left nor right.

What is left? what is right?

Many libertarians say that the left vs. right analysis is a false dichotomy. The famous libertarian Nolan Chart was designed to be a visual explanation of this fact. These libertarians do not choose to see things as left vs. right. They see left as social freedom plus economic control. And they see right as economic freedom plus social control. Libertarians want economic freedom plus social freedom. This is why libertarians sometimes say they are fiscally conservative, socially liberal. In fact, this became an old pun. Libertarians are fiscally conservative and socially awkward.

However, libertarians exist in the GOP who self-define as being on the right, are pro-life, support the conservative Republican movement, and support Donald Trump. The conservatives and the libertarians share many positions. We support free market capitalism. We take pride in the United States of America. And we hold a belief that the rich are good for society. Libertarians and the right hold a strong desire for tax cuts. Also, we both express staunch opposition to gun control legislation. The libertarians on the right may hold even more in common. They oppose immigration. They say abortion is murder.

However, points of disagreement exist between libertarians and the right. Many libertarians support legalized abortion. And many libertarians want open borders and free and open immigration. Libertarians are usually antiwar pacifists. In contrast, most conservatives on the right want a strong military. Libertarians are isolationists. Isolationism has grown in the right under Donald Trump. But previously, conservatives had wanted a strong foreign policy that would aggressively police the world. The Afghan and Iraqi Wars under George W. Bush are examples of right foreign policy.

Furthermore, most libertarians support legalizing marijuana. That position is almost universally hated on the right. Some libertarians would even go as far as legalizing sex work and all recreational drugs, things like cocaine and opioids. As you might expect, conservatives turn pale at the thought of such things.

What is libertarian?

Are libertarians left or right? In fact, you can have many different answers to that question. My own answer is that some libertarians are right, but most are neither left nor right, and a very small minority are left. The ones on the left are sometimes referred to as left-libertarians. The left-libertarians have carved out their own special niche. But they are a small minority within the movement.

Libertarians are right in some ways. And we are left in a few ways. Also, in some ways do not fit neatly into a left vs. right analysis. We simply do not have a place in the world seen from the left-right Democrats vs. Republicans point of view. We have our own unique worldview, where we are the alternative to both liberals and conservatives.

Links to My Newly Released Nonfiction Books: On Forgiveness, and A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs

I have to share links to my two new books on Amazon--just to make it easier for you to find them!

A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs: The Proportionality Test for E-Discovery Law

And

On Forgiveness

Love them or hate them, this nobody can deny: my nonfiction books are unique!

My Two Newest Books: On Forgiveness and Law and Economics

I recently pushed two new nonfiction books:
On Forgiveness
And
A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs.
On Forgiveness explores forgiveness, not from a religious point of view, but instead from a psychological perspective. It explains self-forgiveness, and the way your self-esteem benefits if you forgive yourself for your own flaws.
The other book is aimed at lawyers, and people who hire and pay lawyers. If you are grappling with understanding why your lawsuit is so expensive, this book may help. Fans of the Law and Economics jurisprudence also have to read this book. I present some new ideas on that topic, and those ideas are must-read ideas.
Please do check them out on Amazon!

The Government is Borrowing Money to Fight Coronavirus. What Does That Mean?

The Government is Borrowing Money to Fight Coronavirus. What Does That Mean?

Russell Hasan

Where is All This Money Coming From?

The federal government is borrowing trillions of dollars to pay for the coronavirus bailout. What does that actually mean? Where does that money come from? Who pays for it? And if the government can give away $2 trillion, why don't they do so more frequently?
The best analogy is a farmer and seed stock. A farmer harvests seed. Some of the seed, he and his family eats. Some of the seed, he saves to plant a future harvest. The seed he saves? That's his seed stock.

Economics is simple, with a few basic premises. To spend money is to consume stuff. To make money is to create stuff. You pay for the stuff you consume with the stuff you create. If someone spends money to eat food, that's like eating some of the seed. The consumer's money pays for the seed. If someone invests money, that's like paying for seed stock. If someone gives you a loan, it's like they're buying seed stock for you. You pay them back from next year's harvest.
The American economy has an enormous amount of what is metaphorically seed stock. Americans invest wealth in productive activities and reap their profits in the future. For example, an investment in real estate buys food to feed the workers who are building a skyscraper set to open in five years.

When government borrows money to give to people for them to consume with no return on investment, it is taking wealth that was slated to pay for future profits, and consuming it today. You pay the workers so they can eat, but the building isn't built.

Death Now, Death Later

The government borrowing money to give to people during the age of coronavirus is as if the farmer is about to starve to death, so he eats some of his seed stock. That is the correct decision for him. He would die otherwise. But he can't eat so much of his seed stock that he doesn't have enough left to plant for next year's harvest. If he did, he would die of starvation when next year's harvest is due to be eaten.

So the government can borrow the money, and the economy can pay for it. But there is a serious, fatal risk if Trump and Pelosi borrow and spend too much. They need just the right amount: enough for us to survive the coronavirus crisis, but not so much that the economy can't pay off the debt and goes bankrupt. Everyone dies if the government does too little or too much. Theirs is a grave responsibility. I hope they get it right.

Infrastructure and Jobs

Another recent policy proposal from Trump and Pelosi is borrowing money to build infrastructure to create jobs. That is not rational. The only reason why all the jobs went away is because of the coronavirus. If the coronavirus crisis ends, the jobs will come back. They will have no reason not to come back. And if the coronavirus crisis isn't over yet, then it's the wrong time to be gathering large groups of workers for construction projects. One infected worker could spread it to all the others. So it's pointless.

With small business loans so easy to get now, that money will be invested in private business if it doesn't end up in a federal infrastructure project. To return to my farmer analogy, it just shifts which fields the seed stock gets planted in. It does not actually create more seed for anyone to eat.

This concludes my explanation of federal debt for coronavirus relief.

Can Donald Trump Win in 2020?

The short answer is: no, and it's because of the coronavirus. In chess, when a player can take two of your pieces on his next move, if you move one to safety, then the other is lost, and this is called being forked. Donald Trump is forked. If he eases social distancing to save the economy, your grandparents die (along with up to a million other people), and the voters will blame him. If he doesn't, the economy dies and we all lose our job and starve to death. There is no winning move for him to make.
Voters won't understand, or won't care, that it is not his fault and the virus is to blame.
Ironically, the Democrats were weak foes whom I believe Trump would have beaten easily, but in the coronavirus, Trump faces an enemy as tough, as resilient, as crafty, and, yes, as contagious as he is. It is precisely the type of opponent he is ill equipped to handle and was not ready for.
I'll be voting Libertarian and have no skin in the RepPa vs. DemPa game, but right now this is Biden's election to lose.

What is the Libertarian Party?

Today we're going to learn about the Libertarian Party! Come on! It will be fun!
Everyone knows about the USA's two party system, with the Democrats and the Republicans. Did you know that there are other political parties in the United States? Well there are! And the Libertarian Party is the largest third party in America.
Generally, Democrats are liberals and Republicans are conservatives. Members of the Libertarian Party are usually libertarians. There is no one definition of what makes a person be libertarian, but their ideas are often based on one of four thinkers: philosopher/novelist Ayn Rand, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, economist Murray Rothbard, or economist Ludwig von Mises.
Libertarians support unregulated free market capitalism. Issues they feel strongly about include: legalizing drugs, giving people the right to own guns, and cutting taxes. The Libertarian Party generally supports any policy that maximizes individual freedom and limits government intrusion.
Did you know? America is a republic, not a direct democracy, and when you vote for a president, you're really voting for your state to send an elector to the electoral college, which chooses the president. When Nixon was elected, there was a rogue elector who voted for the Libertarian Party candidate in the electoral college!
The Libertarian Party is divided into various caucuses, each of which promote different issues and a different point of view. The Anarcho-Capitalists (also called AnCaps) want anarchy. The Pragmatists Caucus wants to win elections. The Radicals Caucus wants to take extreme and shocking policy positions. And the Mises Caucus tries to promote the ideas of Mises and Rothbard within the Party.
Did you know? The Libertarian Party's first presidential candidate was John Hospers, who was not a politician but was instead a philosophy professor. He told a colleague "I'm running for president" and they said "of the American Philosophy Association?" and he replied "no, of the country!"
The Libertarian Party asks its members to take a loyalty pledge that they will never advocate for the use of violent force in society. Some members of the party disagree with requiring a pledge, but it remains to this day. Other areas of internal disagreement include immigration and abortion, which some in the Libertarian Party support and some oppose.
Did you know? The Libertarian Party is America's fastest growing and largest third political party!
As a third party, the Libertarian Party routinely does not have ballot access, and must petition and collect signatures to get on the ballot, unlike Democrats and Republicans. Despite this, many Libertarians have run for office, and dozens have won positions at the town and city level across America.
Did you know? Ron Paul, the longtime Republican Congressman from Texas, was a member of the Libertarian Party for many years, before switching to the GOP. His son Rand Paul went on to become a Republican Senator from Kentucky. The Koch Brothers, who were famous as billionaires who donated vast sums to conservative causes, also supported the Libertarian Party at one point, although they later shifted their allegiance to the GOP.
The Libertarian Party is actually a patchwork of organizations: the National Libertarian Party exists, and each of the 50 states has its own State Libertarian Party, and towns and cities can have their own Libertarian Party Affiliate. Joining one organization does not automatically sign you up for the others, so you could be a member of a state Libertarian Party but not the National Libertarian Party, or vice versa.
The Libertarian Party has an official mascot, the porcupine, to answer the donkey and elephant of the two major parties. The porcupine was chosen because it is typically non-violent but uses its spikes to defend itself if attacked.
I hope you enjoyed learning about the Libertarian Party! I'll bet you thought there are only two parties, right? Now you know better!

What is Objectivism?

What is the philosophy of Objectivism? Let's learn about it together! I bet you'll learn something new!
Objectivism is the name of a philosophy--a set of ideas--developed by novelist Ayn Rand in the 20th Century. Objectivists are people who practice Objectivism. What do Objectivists believe? They think that a person should be happy, and that your happiness is the moral and ethical purpose of your life. They claim that rationality and reasoning are your main tools to succeed in the world, and that success causes happiness. They promote capitalism and individualism, feeling that the individual is more important than society.
Did you know? The 1980s were called The Decade of Greed because many people were influenced by Objectivism at that time, including high-ranking officials of the Reagan Administration. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was also a known Objectivist.
Who was Ayn Rand? She was born in 1905 in Russia to Jewish parents. She lived through the 1918 Communist Revolution in Russia, which gave her a lifelong hatred of Communism and socialism. Eventually she escaped the USSR and fled to the USA. She achieved wealth and fame with her bestselling novel The Fountainhead (1943), and followed it up with her novel Atlas Shrugged (1957). Atlas Shrugged is the foundation of Objectivism, and is over 1000 pages long!
Did you know? There was a surge of interest in Objectivism in the 1960s, and a large Objectivist movement, centered around New York City. But Ayn Rand had an affair with another one of the leaders of the movement, a man named Nathaniel Branden, and when they broke up in 1969, an explosive conflict developed and the fallout destroyed the Objectivist movement of the 1960s.
I hope you enjoyed learning this lesson about Objectivism as much as I did! Thanks for reading!

Online Classrooms and Remote Work Might be Here to Stay

As the coronavirus crisis triggers a forced switch for schools and colleges to online learning and for office workers to work from home, it is worth speculation that some of these changes are permanent. Schools and businesses are figuring out how to do everything remotely online. That know-how is worth money, and, even after the crisis is over, they will need to recover their investment in that know-how, probably by continuing to use it. Also, real estate costs money. People are always going to pay for their homes, so if people work at home or learn at home, then the cost of the office or the campus vanishes, costs go down, so profit goes up. Sadly the joy of the experience of being on campus or in the office is lost, but once people get used to its absence they may not care. Tomorrow may be here today, earlier than any of us wanted to see it.

What did the stock market do today? It went crazy

The coronavirus crisis has caused an unprecedented level of volatility on Wall Street, accompanied by one day which saw the largest single-day drop on almost 30 years. Why stocks are collapsing is simple: the coronavirus is going to cost every business money, so they will have less profit and pay smaller dividends, so their stock is worth less. Such a correction is actually how the market is supposed to work: prices send signals to tell people what things are really worth, and the stocks are now not worth as much as they were in our recent economic boom.
A more interesting question is why is there so much volatility? It has been reported in WSJ, and is obvious if you look at recent charts of the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average, that most of the volatility is either right when the market opens or right before it closes. They say that investors buy and sell based on news. I think the major institutional investors have ways to buy and sell US stocks while the market is closed overnight, perhaps by using futures which they are covering, and then they all cover at the opening bell and buy their collateral for overnight at the closing bell. Not only is this causing chaotic wild swings every day, but it isn't fair to the small investors who can't afford to do this.
One solution would be for markets to be open 24/7, and be staffed by online systems only, not by floor traders. Such a move would create a more fair and less volatile stock market. If there is news at 2AM and 4AM those trades should be made at those times, not at the opening bell. This (and many other problems) need to be addressed--after the coronavirus pandemic is over.

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/

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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