Domestic violence is a stain on society, but it is worse if we only care about violence committed against people of one sex.
Original Article: “Committing Domestic Violence against Men . . . Just for a Giggle”
Removing barriers to prescribing psychologists (RxPs) saves patients the inconvenience and added expense of seeing a psychiatrist or other health care practitioner that states license to prescribe psychiatric medications. Such practitioners include family physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants—even general surgeons like me. Now comes a study showing that it also saves lives.
In Effects of Giving Psychologists Prescriptive Authority: Evidence From a Natural Experiment in the United States, researchers publishing in the journal Health Policy used data from the National Vital Statistics System of the National Center for Health Statistics from 1999–2015 to evaluate suicide rates before and after New Mexico and Louisiana expanded psychologists’ scope of practice to include prescriptive authority. The authors concluded:
Expanding the scope of practice of doctoral‐level psychologists who have completed training in clinical psychopharmacology to include prescriptive authority is associated with a 5 to 7 pp [percentage point] decrease in suicides in New Mexico and Louisiana. The largest reductions in suicides are for male, white, married, single, and middle‐aged sub‐populations. The results are robust to several different additional specifications and frameworks.
And:
In the U.S., expanding scope of practice for specifically trained psychologists to include prescriptive authority may help address poor mental health care outcomes, such as suicides. Similar policy expansions may be useful for other countries where referral from a psychologist and prescription assignment from a psychiatrist are separated.
In a recent Cato briefing paper, I urged state lawmakers to remove obstacles that block doctorate‐level clinical psychologists trained in clinical psychopharmacology from prescribing psych meds to their patients. For more than 30 years, RxPs have been providing mental health services to patients in the military, the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and the Indian Health Service. Guam lifted barriers to RxPs in 1999, followed in 2002 by the state of New Mexico and shortly after that by Louisiana. Today, six states, most recently Colorado, have expanded access to mental health services by removing barriers preventing RxPs from serving mental health patients.
With only 11 percent of psychiatrists engaging in talk therapy nowadays—most primarily practice pharmacotherapy—and roughly 50 percent of psychiatrists no longer accepting health insurance, expanding the ranks of trained psychotherapists who can also prescribe medications makes sense.
Representatives of organized medicine, most notably the American Psychiatric Association and its affiliates, oppose this reform. The President of the American Psychiatric Association argued against the proposal in a Cato online policy forum on the topic.
In testimonies before the Colorado Senate and the Arizona Senate, I told lawmakers that removing barriers to RxPs will expand access to mental health services without spending taxpayer dollars. Colorado lawmakers removed the barriers earlier this year. In Arizona, a bill to remove them passed the Senate, but the Arizona Psychiatric Association lobbied successfully against it in the House.
As the need for mental health services in the United States continues to grow, the arguments for this reform grow stronger, and the case against it grows weaker. Before long, entrenched incumbents will be unable to block this reform in the remaining states.
Critics of the H‑1B visa for skilled foreign workers often claim that the status amounts to “indentured” servitude. Indentured servitude is a contract to work for a single employer for a predetermined period without pay. H‑1B workers are not only paid—they receive wages in the top 10 percent of wage earners in the United States. As importantly, although they face more obstacles to changing jobs, H‑1B workers are not tied to a single employer, and they change jobs regularly.
In fact, H‑1B workers are leaving their initial H‑1B employers more than ever. Figure 1 shows the number of H‑1B workers changing to a new employer by fiscal year. From fiscal year 2005 to 2022, H‑1B workers changed jobs nearly 1 million times. The number of switches grew from about 24,000 in 2005 to a record 130,576 in 2022—a more than fivefold increase.
In fact, H‑1B job shifting is more common than H‑1B workers starting H‑1B employment for the first time. In 2022, about 51 percent of all H‑1B workers starting with a new employer were existing H‑1B workers hired away from other employers in the United States. This means that U.S. employers are more likely to hire an H‑1B worker already in the United States in H‑1B status as they are to hire a new H‑1B worker not already in H‑1B status.
Several causes for this increase are possible. The labor market has generally been tighter, leading to more job switching in general. In addition, more H‑1B workers are employed in the United States now for other employers to poach, and since the H‑1B cap has been so quickly met every year since 2014, there is more reason to poach. The government also made it somewhat easier to switch H‑1B jobs in 2017 by giving them a 60‐day grace period to find a new job after losing a job.
Finally, the jump in switching in 2021 is at least partially attributable to the record number of green card applications filed that year. After 180 days, H‑1B workers who have filed a green card application may change jobs without the employer being forced to restart the green card process, easing the job switching process. However, in 2022, the number of pending employment‐based green card applications declined from 2021, so this is only part of the story.
Of course, it is true that H‑1B workers are still not treated equally in the labor market. New H‑1B employers have to pay hefty fees to poach them, and the shortage of green cards for Indian workers can wrongly make those workers feel that they have to stick with their existing employer to complete that process. The best solution would be to make the conversion to a green card automatic rather than requiring a renewal after three years. The 60‐day grace period to find a new job is still not long enough to give many workers the confidence to simply quit a problematic job without a new one already lined up.
Despite these government‐imposed obstacles, the existence of widespread H‑1B job shifting further refutes the idea that H‑1B workers are “indentured” servants. The Pew Research Center reports that 2.1 percent of college graduates changed jobs per month in 2022. The population of H‑1B workers is estimated to be about 580,000.[1] The data aren’t directly comparable, but with nearly 131,000 H‑1B transfers in 2022, this implies a monthly job change rate of 1.9 percent—lower, but nothing remotely like the hyperbolic claims of “indentured servitude.”
The fact is that the government has wrongly unleveled the playing field for H‑1B workers by erecting artificial barriers to job change, but options still exist to find better employment within the H‑1B system. The government should expand those options rather than try to reduce or eliminate these workers who contribute so significantly in the areas of science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine.
Note: This post is an update of an October 2022 post on the same subject using more up‐to‐date numbers.
[1] This was estimated pre‐pandemic, and it’s probably lower now since far more H‑1B workers received green cards in 2021 and 2022 than normal.
Ryan and Zack look at how China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are reshaping the Middle East into a region where the United States no longer dominates. This is a good thing for ordinary Americans.
Additional Resources
“Thanks to Sanctions, the US Is Losing Its Grip on the Middle East” by Ryan McMaken: Mises.org/WES_11_A
“The Petrodollar-Saudi Axis Is Why Washington Hates Iran” by Gary Richied: Mises.org/WES_11_B
“Peace is Breaking Out in the Middle East… and Washington is Not Happy!” by Ron Paul: Mises.org/WES_11_C
“Why the End of the Petrodollar Spells Trouble for the US Regime” by Ryan McMaken: Mises.org/WES_11_D
“Washington Miffed as China Makes Peace” by Joseph Solis-Mullen: Mises.org/WES_11_E
Be sure to follow War, Economy, and State at Mises.org/WES.
Many economists believe that economics must emulate the physical sciences with controlled experiments to be credible. Econometric models, they claim, can fulfill the role of laboratory experiments.
Through mathematical and statistical methods, an economist supposedly establishes relationships between various economic variables. For example, personal consumer outlays are related to personal disposable income and the interest rates, while capital expenditure is explained by the past stock of capital, the interest rates, and economic activity. Various estimated relations—i.e., equations, which are grouped together—constitute an econometric model.
A comparison of the model’s dynamic assumptions versus the data establishes the model’s reliability. (In a static simulation, the model is solved using the actual lagged variables. In a dynamic simulation, the model is solved by employing lagged variables calculated by the model). Once the model is built and accepted as a good replica of the economy, economists employ the model to ascertain the possible effects of various government and central bank policies upon the economy.
Is the Mathematical Method Valid in Economics?
By applying mathematics in its analyses, mainstream economics attempts to emulate the natural sciences. In the natural sciences, mathematical formulas measure the response of objects to a particular stimulus in a given condition to see if they can be captured repeatedly.
The same approach, however, is not valid in economics since economics deals with human beings and not objects. According to Ludwig von Mises, “The experience with which the sciences of human action have to deal is always an experience of complex phenomena. No laboratory experiments can be performed with regard to human action.”
Human beings are rational animals, using their minds to sustain their lives and well-being. Human minds, however, don’t follow a fixed mechanical procedure, but rather people employ their minds according to their own circumstances, making it impossible to capture human nature through mathematical formulas.
Individuals have the freedom of choice to change their minds and pursue actions contrary to what was observed in the past. Because human beings are unique, economic analysis can only be qualitative.
Furthermore, quantitative analysis implies the possibility of the assignment of numbers, which can be subjected to all operations of arithmetic requiring an objective fixed unit, something that exists in the realm of human valuations. On this Mises wrote, “There are, in the field of economics, no constant relations, and consequently no measurement is possible.”
There are no constant standards for measuring the minds, the values, and the ideas of humans. Valuations are how conscious, purposeful individuals ascertain the given facts of reality. Once individuals establish what the facts are, they decide which of the established facts best suit their ends.
Individuals’ Goals Set the Standard for Valuation
Individual goals or ends set the standard for valuing various means. For instance, people wanting to improve their health will decide which goods benefit their health and which do not. Among those that will benefit them, some will be more effective than others. There is no way, however, to quantify this effectiveness. All that one could do is rank these goods in accordance with the perceived effectiveness.
The use of mathematics in economics also poses another problem, as using mathematical functions implies that variables determine human actions. For example, contrary to the mathematical way of thinking, an individual’s outlays on goods are not “driven” by income.
While it is true that individuals respond to changes in their incomes, the response is not automatic. An increase in an individual’s income does not automatically imply that his consumption expenditure will follow suit. Every individual assesses the increase in income against the goals he wants to achieve. Thus, he might decide that it is more beneficial to him to raise his savings rather than raise his consumption.
Note again that individuals respond to changes in various factors in accordance with individuals’ goals. This means that causality in economics emanates from individuals and not mathematical variables.
From this perspective an econometric model, which is a group of various equations, is a misleading description of the world of human beings. In the world of econometric models, individuals are reduced to robots that mechanically respond to changes in a mathematical equation.
Further Issues of Using Econometric Models
In conducting the “what if” experiment, a model builder utilizes a model with the equation’s parameters unchanged. Given that human beings have freedom of choice, a policy change by the government or the central bank is likely to alter the parameters of various equations.
Consequently, the employment of the fixed-parameters model in the “what if” experiment is likely to generate questionable results.
For instance, the model builder may want to evaluate the effect of a change in government outlays on the economy. It is quite likely that a change in outlays will affect the parameters of various equations. If the model builder were to ignore this, it would mean that individuals in the economy were frozen.
On this Mises said, “As a method of economic analysis econometrics is a childish play with figures that does not contribute anything to the elucidation of the problems of economic reality.”
According to the Nobel laureate in economics Robert Lucas,
Given that the structure of an econometric model consists of optimal decision rules of economic agents, and that optimal decision rules vary systematically with changes in the structure of series relevant to the decision maker, it follows that any change in policy will systematically alter the structure of econometric models.
Conclusion
The introduction of econometric model building in economics is an attempt to produce a laboratory where controlled experiments can be conducted. The idea of having such a laboratory is appealing to economists and politicians. Once the model is built and accepted as a good replica of the economy, economists could evaluate the outcomes of various policies. When evaluating the effect of the government and the central bank policies on the economy, however, economists employ models with unchanged parameters, thus leading to erroneous conclusions.
One of the main fronts in the current culture war in the United States is the debate over “masculinity.” Certain corners of the Left tell us that “toxic masculinity” is a terrible thing. Yet, it’s often unclear whether masculinity is itself necessarily toxic, or if toxic masculinity is just one type of masculinity. How masculinity is defined is essential to the debate, and every pundit wants to define it his or her own way. Thus, David French, in his May 28 column for The New York Times, explains that conservatives are “all wrong about masculinity” largely because they employ a faulty definition of it. Meanwhile, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley has published an entire book about “manhood” and “the masculine virtues,” supplying his own definitions. For its part, the American Psychological Association tells us that “traditional masculinity” is “marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression” and is “on the whole, harmful.”
While this disagreement over what constitutes masculinity may seem unique to the “woke” wars of the twenty-first century, it turns out this lack of general agreement over what constitutes masculine virtue is not new. Historically, one’s view of masculinity was formed by one’s views of war, the family, the state, and the economy. A society that views military adventures as the most virtuous form of service to society is likely to have a very different view of masculinity than a society that views family, peace, and wealth as the most important building blocks of civilization. Religion matters, too. A first-century Christian defined masculine virtue in a way that was profoundly different from that a Greek pagan.
Not surprisingly, then, we find that social theorists and ideologues of the nineteenth century often fought over what constituted the masculine virtues. As bourgeois, capitalist, industrial civilization spread, its proponents—known as liberals or “classical liberals”—spread their own notions of virtue that were often at odds with older pre-industrial and agrarian ideals.
By the late nineteenth century, the battle lines were being drawn: some argued that masculinity was still defined by hunting, feats of physical strength, and military “service.” This point of view was pushed by men like Theodore Roosevelt and those who romanticized the western frontier, such as Owen Wister, author of the highly influential novel, The Virginian. By this philosophy, the only way to become a “real man” was to spend time away from “civilization” on the frontier, shooting at bison or at members of the indigenous population. This “West Cure,” as it was known, would supposedly cure men of their more effete habits learned in domestic settings of the cities and towns.1
On the other side of the debate were often liberals who rejected these more traditionalistic notions of masculinity, and instead suggested that true manhood was learned from practicing bourgeois virtues such as prudence, thrift, and devotion to family life. At the forefront of this debate was laissez-faire liberal William Graham Sumner. Sumner doubted that manliness was to be learned through rural dilettantism when real civilization was being built up by the men who were doing the hard work of managing businesses, saving money, supporting families, and educating children.
Sumner’s View of the “Industrial Virtues”
Sumner is today perhaps most closely associated with the idea of “social Darwinism.” This label, as David Gordon points out, is a smear employed by enemies of Sumner and his brand of bourgeois and capitalistic liberalism. Sumner is smeared in this way as part of an effort to portray supporters of market freedom as soulless and indifferent to the fate of those who lose out in an allegedly ruthless system that is geared only toward the “survival of the fittest.” In truth, Sumner was an enthusiastic supporter of mutual aid, family devotion, and voluntary cooperation. He simply opposed state planning in these areas. Moreover, according to historian Bruce Curtis, Sumner was fundamentally a Victorian who subscribed to the “late-Victorian ideal” of the “family as a center of love, a retreat from the world’s harsh struggles.” This view also informed Sumner’s views of the family’s role within an industrial capitalistic society that Sumner believed could be harnessed to greatly improve the human condition.
Taken all together, this meant that the ideal man—rather than running off to the frontier to indulge primitivist fantasies about the great outdoors—would best learn virtue through service to the family via skills that increased prosperity and security within a modern economy. Curtis summarizes Sumner’s thought:
As both a private and public man, Sumner exhibited a range of personality traits that reduce to disciplined self-control and masculinity. … That emphasis has been recognized in the ethic of a rising middle-capitalist class, which, out of a sense of moral duty and the recognition that such a course led to success and respectability, idealized delayed gratification in both economic and sexual matters and attempted to follow a rationalized life pattern within the framework established by private property capitalism and the private, monogamous, urban family.2
In the nineteenth century, this required something of a new model for manhood, and a disregard for what many traditionalists still regarded as the most manly virtues found in militaristic pursuits. Sumner was not alone in seeing this juxtaposition between two sets of values. Curtis continues:
Sumner accepted a nineteenth century distinction between “militarism” and “industrialism.” Militarism encouraged atavistic social tendencies—war and imperialism; hierarchical class structures; monarchical, absolutistic governments; romantic, chivalric, glory-ridden attitudes; submission to traditional authority and custom. Conversely, industrialism fostered admirable qualities of contemporary “high civilization”—peaceful industry within free enterprise capitalism; laissez-faire republicanism that protected liberty under law; a middle-class society that championed popular education, science, rationality, monogamous marriage and the family. The key lesson was that man’s long rise from savagery to civilization had been achieved, not by lone individuals, but cooperatively, socially. According to Sumner’s sociology, society began within the primitive family.3
By “industrialism,” it was not meant simply people who worked in factories of what we consider to be an industrial setting today. Rather, industrialism was the new market-based order that focused primarily on trade, capital accumulation, and contracts as the way to wealth. As Sumner himself wrote, it was this new system that finally allowed men to turn toward more peaceful means of improving one’s situation:
What civil liberty does is to turn the competition of man with man from violence and brute force into an industrial competition under which men vie with one another for the acquisition of material goods by industry, energy, skill, frugality, prudence, temperance, and other industrial virtues. Under this changed order of things the inequalities are not done away with. Nature still grants her rewards of having and enjoying, according to our being and doing, but it is now the man of the highest training and not the man of the heaviest fist who gains the highest reward.
For Sumner, the most “civilizing” force could be found in the need to succeed in a free economy in service to one’s family:
The value and importance of the family sentiments, from a social point of view, cannot be exaggerated. They impose self-control and prudence in their most important social bearings, and tend more than any other forces to hold the individual up to the virtues which make the sound man and the valuable member of society. … The defense of marriage and the family, if their sociological value were better understood, would be not only instinctive but rational. The struggle for existence with which we have to deal must be understood, then, to be that of a man for himself, his wife, and his children.
Learning the Wrong Lessons about Manhood
Sumner also saw sizable threats to his ideal social structure of markets in service of family. He believed that those who encouraged men (and boys) to indulge in aggression, immoderate consumption, and lawlessness did a great disservice not just to men, but to those who depended on men—i.e., wives and children. In an 1880 essay titled “What Our Boys Are Reading,” Sumner castigates the writers, editors, and publishers of a certain “periodical literature for boys” that Sumner describes as
either intensely stupid, or spiced to the highest degree with sensation. The stories are about hunting, Indian warfare, California desperado life, pirates, wild sea adventure, highwaymen, crimes and horrible accidents, horrors (tortures and snake stories), gamblers, practical jokes, the life of vagabond boys, and the wild behavior of dissipated youths in great cities. This catalogue is exhaustive—there are no other stories. The dialogue is short, sharp, and continuous. It is broken by the minimum of description and by no preaching. It is almost entirely in slang of the most exaggerated kind, and of every variety—that of the sea, of California, and of the Bowery; of negroes, “Dutchmen,” Yankees, Chinese, and Indians, to say nothing of that of a score of the most irregular and questionable occupations ever followed by men.
Sumner, of course, is talking about the so-called dime novels or “story papers” of the period which very often preached their own version of the “West Cure” to their young readers. That is, this literature instructed the reader that the best way to be “manly” was to avoid the domestic, bourgeois life of family and prudence, and to instead embrace something else entirely. As Sumner puts this, the dangerous lessons within the pages of these magazines taught boys that:
The first thing which a boy ought to acquire is physical strength for fighting purposes. The feats of strength performed by these youngsters in combat with men and animals are ridiculous in the extreme. In regard to details the supposed code of English brutality prevails, especially in the stories which have English local color, but it is always mixed with the code of the revolver, and in many of the stories the latter is taught in its fulness. These youngsters generally carry revolvers and use them at their good discretion; every youth who aspires to manliness ought to get and carry a revolver. …
Quiet home life is stupid and unmanly; boys brought up in it never know the world or life. They have to work hard and to bow down to false doctrines which parsons and teachers in league with parents have invented against boys. To become a true man, a boy must break with respectability and join the vagabonds and the swell mob. No fine young fellow who knows life need mind the law, still less the police—the latter are all stupid louts. … The sympathies of a manly young fellow are with criminals against the law, and he conceals crime when he can.
To many modern readers, Sumner perhaps comes off as a tiresome moralist in these passages. Yet, Sumner’s agitation over the topic reflects his real concern for middle-class and working-class Americans who he believed had the opportunity to participate in the benefits of a modern market economy. Be rejecting the industrial virtues, these men had condemned themselves to hardship by embracing a childish ethic of self-indulgence rather than the truly masculine values that led to a productive middle-class household.
Sumner may have found this “boys’ literature” especially vexing given that literature did exist at the time that promoted the domestic and bourgeois virtues he favored. Unfortunately, this literature was generally targeted at girls—books more along the lines of 1908’s (still-popular and thoroughly entertaining) Anne of Green Gables and its sequels.
Nonetheless, one can see Sumner’s point. If teaching values such as prudence, thrift, and self-denial are the keys to forming the most desirable types of men, then dime novels promoting violence and the nineteenth-century version of “van life” are hardly desirable.
At this core of all this, however, is not masculinity for its own sake. Sumner views the modern, industrial, post-militaristic model of masculinity as critical to building up the family which is at the core of a prosperous, free, and civil society.
Read More:
Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre by Ryan McMakenThe Political Economy of William Graham Sumner: A Study in the History of Free-Enterprise Ideas by Dominick Armentano”The Forgotten Man” by William Graham Sumner “Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor” by Murray Rothbard
1. For a detailed examination of the conflict between bourgeois values and the “primitivism” of the West Cure, see Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.
2. Bruce Curtis, “Victorians Abed: William Graham Sumner on the Family, Women, and Sex,” American Studies, 18 (Spring 1977), 120
3. Ibid., p. 106
While the US ratchets up efforts to isolate its many enemies, the Chinese, the Saudis, the Arab League, and OPEC all shrug and look to increasing international communication and trade.
Original Article: “Thanks to Sanctions, the US Is Losing Its Grip on the Middle East”
While praising the “new” trade policy of the Biden administration during a recent interview with PBS, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai described this policy as “pro‐competition.” It seems to me, instead, that the Biden policy in international trade is, instead, anti‐competition. The protectionism of the current administration, now in full display after nearly two and one‐half years, is about insulating domestic producers from foreign competition.
In part, this policy is being pursued through conventional tariffs, such as the unilateral tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in annual trade with China. In part, it is being pursued through the application of tariffs as inflated trade remedies. Soon, a new part of this policy may include approval of discriminatory congressional proposals for carbon border tax adjustments. In part, too, this policy is evidenced in the conditions attached to the subsidies that are being handed out to businesses as one dimension of a much‐touted but much‐misunderstood “industrial policy” that purports to be new but is mostly a return to the self‐defeating protectionism of the past.
One particularly egregious form of such protection is the proliferation of domestic content mandates, which are central to last year’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). As the subsidies in the IRA are rolling out, we are starting to see how harmful these domestic content mandates are to the competitiveness of American workers, American businesses, and the overall American economy. Although “Buying American” sounds red‐white‐and‐blue patriotic in a political campaign or in a meeting with congressional constituents, Americans pay a high price for this form of protectionism. For my further thoughts on these ill‐advised mandates, see my new Cato paper, “The High Price of Buying American: The Harms of Domestic Content Mandates.”
Last month, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency proposed new power plant regulations that would put harsh limits on the amount of carbon dioxide released while producing electricity. This comes from the same administration pushing to electrify all parts of daily life, from driving to cooking. As if slamming the power grid with artificial demand is not enough, now the federal government has also set its sights on electricity suppliers.
Policies as ludicrous as this are only possible because the ideology they rest on, environmentalism, has long enjoyed a perch on the moral high ground that has gone almost unchallenged. That needs to change. Environmentalism presents itself as a philosophy advocating benevolence toward nature and prudence with resources. But in reality, it is an antihuman ideology capable of justifying atrocities.
Environmentalism rests on the valuation of untouched, nonhuman nature as the highest good. There are, of course, radical and moderate environmentalists, but all adherents subscribe to this fundamental moral valuation. They only differ in their degree of consistency.
This moral view was perhaps best summarized by National Park Service biologist David Graber in his 1989 review of Bill McKibben’s book The End of Nature. Dr. Graber concludes his review with these three haunting paragraphs:
That makes what is happening no less tragic for those of us who value wildness for its own sake, not for what value it confers upon mankind. . . . McKibben is a biocentrist, and so am I. We are not interested in the utility of a particular species, or free-flowing river, or ecosystem, to mankind. They have intrinsic value, more value—to me—than another human body, or a billion of them.
Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn’t true. Somewhere along the line—at about a billion years ago, maybe half that—we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth.
It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.
That final line was unsurprisingly revisited during the last few years. In this view, if there was anything bad about covid-19 it’s that it was not deadly enough—especially for young people who have yet to have kids. That viewpoint is evil.
This idea that humanity is a cancer can be found in the writings and arguments of other environmentalists, though most are less explicit. However, that fundamental moral frame is still there. Humans are seen as something separate from nature—an outside force diluting and corrupting nature with concrete, plastic, and carbon dioxide. If an untouched, wild planet is seen as the highest good, then any human development to make the environment more livable for humans is to be seen as the moral bad. The global climb out of extreme poverty brought about by industrialization is not to be considered a miracle but a tragedy.
This idea isn’t often said outright as Dr. Graber did above, but the sentiment can be found in widespread aversion to man-made materials, disgust with urban sprawl, and the aim for low carbon footprints. We’re so used to hearing that low carbon footprints are good, but give it a little thought: Environmentalists will freely admit that one of the worst things you can do for your carbon footprint is to have children. That’s true. And on the other, less talked about end, the people who best lowered their carbon footprints were history’s biggest mass murderers. This is a blatantly antihuman metric for success and an obvious pretext for future atrocities.
All that said, the ideologues responsible for developing and advocating this moral framework are only one part of the broader movement that has thrust environmentalism to the forefront of US policy. This green coalition has many members:
Politicians who want to win elections and secure a place in historyBureaucrats who want greater control over more people and resourcesMedia leaders who like scary-sounding storiesAcademics who want relevance, funding, and powerEnergy companies who care about their brand and who want to maneuver themselves to benefit from policy changesActivists who want to feel like they’re saving the worldManagerial elites who quite literally think they can and should run the worldEveryday people who have actively or passively accepted the environmentalist narrative
As long as they’ve been around, governments have latched on to ideologies that justify seizing more power. The unitary executive theory did not intrigue the George W. Bush administration because of its sharp arguments but because it promised them more power. The same can be said for Keynesian economics and now for environmentalism.
Over the past few decades, this coalition has taken up a campaign aimed mainly at young people to terrify the population into handing over nearly total control of the economy to fend off an ecoapocalypse caused by climate change. The argument for this is branded as one straightforward point of settled science, but it rests on nine unique premises:
The climate is not static, it is changing.The climate is currently warming.This warming will have terrible consequences.These terrible consequences cannot be overcome.Humans are responsible for the warming.Humans can slow or reverse the warming.Nearly all humans are incapable of making the choices necessary to slow or reverse the warming.A subset of humans is smart enough to understand the choices necessary to slow or reverse the warming.This subset of humans can and should use the force of government to compel the rest of the humans to make any and all changes to their lifestyle that are necessary to slow or reverse the warming.
This is presented not as a series of positive statements to be considered but as one single absolute truth that must be accepted in full. And the coalition has worked hard to create a high social cost to any level of disagreement. Further, the “lifestyle change” that is required is the deindustrialization of the developed world mixed with a halt to the industrialization of the Third World.
Although many in the developed world have thus far shown a willingness to be made poorer by their governments, the Third World will require the heavy hand of militarized government to stop them from industrializing. Denying billions of people the means to climb out of poverty will be met with resistance. And peddling the fiction that it can be done with solar and wind energy can’t sidestep the ugly problem at the heart of global climate initiatives.
There’s a common misconception that the next great evil ideological mania to sweep our world will be easily identified as a sinister movement from the outset. But that’s not true. The next great evil will play out like all the past ones. It will sound good to many. It will be popular. And there will be social pressure to join in. But underneath the moving language will lie a rejection of humanity—be it a subset or the whole species. That rejection plants the seed for future atrocities.
Environmentalism has all the traits of such an ideology. It does not deserve to hold the moral high ground. A healthy, clean, prosperous environment for humans is what our species has been building for thousands of years. Do not fall for the tricks of those who want to halt or reverse that progress, and never support a movement that thinks the world would be better without you in it.
More than forty years ago, Leonard Read urged graduates of Hillsdale College to find a premise, a belief in a universal idea of liberty.
Original Article: “Living by a Premise”