The Tunguska Event on This Day in History

 

This day in history: The Tunguska event happened on this day in 1908. The Tunguska event (occasionally also called the Tunguska incident) was a ~12 megaton explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of June 30, 1908. The explosion over the sparsely populated Eastern Siberian Taiga flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an area of 830 sq miles of forest, and eyewitness reports suggest that at least three people may have died in the event. The explosion is generally attributed to a meteor air burst: the atmospheric explosion of a stony meteoroid about 160–200 feet in size. The meteoroid approached from the east-southeast, and likely with a relatively high speed of about 60,000 mph. It is classified as an impact event, even though no impact crater has been found; the object is thought to have disintegrated at an altitude of 3 to 6 miles rather than to have hit the surface of the Earth.

The Tunguska event is the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history, though much larger impacts have occurred in prehistoric times. An explosion of this magnitude would be capable of destroying a large metropolitan area. It has been mentioned numerous times in popular culture, and has also inspired real-world discussion of asteroid impact avoidance.

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Liberty's Masterful Storyteller, Frederic Bastiat on This Day in History

This day in history: Economist Frederic Bastiat was born on this day in 1801.

From Lawrence Reed:

“Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it,” wrote novelist N.D. Wilson. “The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself.”

In the last six of his 49 years of life, brought to an untimely end by tuberculosis, the classical liberal Frenchman Frédéric Bastiat produced an astonishing volume of books and essays in defense of free markets and free people. He towered over the smug intellectuals and politicians of his native France, most of whom were mentally mired in the country’s ancient traditions of statist central planning of the economy.

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws,” he reasoned. “On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”

Bastiat also gave us perhaps the world’s most succinct description of the redistributive apparatus of government: “The State is the great fiction through which everyone lives at the expense of everyone else.”

The world in the 21st century is beset with economic fallacies that are, for the most part, modern versions of those that Bastiat demolished 16 decades ago.

If a posthumous Nobel Prize were to be awarded to just one person for crystal-clear writing and masterful storytelling in economics, no one would be more deserving of it than Bastiat. Here is the great pity of his short time on this earth: while he lived and ever since, his own country never possessed the collective wisdom to give him the honor and attention he deserved. His selfless courage in expressing timeless, irrefutable truths while almost all around him wallowed in fallacy constitutes a great moral victory indeed.

Bastiat was born in the port village of Bayonne on the Bay of Biscay in southern France. He was just 14 when the French defeat at Waterloo dispatched the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte and put the old monarchy back in place.

At 17, Bastiat was working for his family’s export business, where he experienced firsthand the absurdity of protectionism and other wealth-stifling trade restrictions of the French government. Of this period in Bastiat’s life, economist Jim Powell writes,

While he didn’t want a commercial career, he was interested in the civilizing influence of commerce and the many ways that laws hurt people. He observed, for instance, how the 1816 French tariff throttled trade, resulting in empty warehouses and idle docks around Bayonne. In 1819, the government put steep tariffs on corn, meat, and sugar, making poor people suffer from needlessly high food prices. High tariffs on English and Swiss cotton led to widespread smuggling.

Inheriting the estate of his grandfather upon the elder’s death in 1825, Bastiat could afford to devote considerable time to the thought, reading, and debates with friends that a few years later would yield an explosion of wit and wisdom from a prolific pen. He was elected to two minor public positions in the early 1830s: justice of the peace and county assemblyman.

Bastiat published his first article in 1844. He was 43 years old, but he understood the economic world better than almost anyone twice his age, and he knew better than anybody how to explain it with an economy of words. He employed everyday language, conversational tone, and an innate clarity that flowed from his logical and orderly presentation. Nothing he wrote was stilted, artificial, or pompous. He was concise and devastatingly to the point. To this day, nobody can read Bastiat and wonder, “Now what was that all about?”

He was unequivocal in his opposition to limitless government. “It is not true,” he wrote, “that the function of law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our wills, our education, our opinions, our work, our trade, our talents, or our pleasures. The function of law is to protect the free exercise of these rights, and to prevent any person from interfering with the free exercise of these same rights by any other person.”

David Hart is the editor of Liberty Fund’s English translation of The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. He writes,

Bastiat thought the modern bureaucratic and regulatory State of his day was based on a mixture of outright violence and coercion on the one hand, and trickery and fallacies (sophisms) on the other. The violence and coercion came from the taxes, tariffs, and regulations, which were imposed on taxpayers, traders, and producers; the ideological dimension that maintained the current class of plunderers came from a new set of “political” and “economic sophisms” that confused, misled, and tricked a new generation of “dupes” into supporting the system. The science of political economy, according to Bastiat, was to be the means by which the economic sophisms of the present would be exposed, rebutted, and finally overturned, thus depriving the current plundering class of its livelihood and power.

Economics these days can be dull and lifeless, larded with verbosity and presumptuous mathematics. Bastiat proved that economics doesn’t have to be that way, or at least that the core truths of the science can be made lively and unforgettable. In literature, we think of good storytelling as an art and stories as powerful tools for understanding. Bastiat could tell a story that pierced you with its brilliance. If your misconceptions were his target, his stories could leave you utterly, embarrassingly disarmed.

Bastiat was unequivocal in his opposition to limitless government.

One of his most memorable analogies comes from “The Candlemaker’s Petition,” in which candlemakers protested to the government “the unfair competition of a foreign rival. This foreign manufacturer of light has such an advantage over us that he floods our domestic markets with his product. And he offers it at a fantastically low price.”

That competitor turns out to be the sun, which provides free light in competition with the makers of candles. Bastiat wittily demolished the proposed “remedy” of the protectionist candlemakers — forbidding windows or requiring that they be painted black — and explained that it is to society’s advantage to accept all the free sunlight it can get and use the resources that might otherwise go to candles to meet other needs.

Protectionist arguments such as those from the candlemakers came under relentless assault by Bastiat. Why should two countries that dig a tunnel through their mountainous border to facilitate travel and trade then seek to undo its advantages by imposing burdensome taxes at both ends? If an exporter sells his goods abroad for more than they were worth at home, then buys valuable goods with the proceeds to bring back to his homeland, why would anyone in his right mind condemn the transactions as yielding a balance of trade “deficit”? If you’re a protectionist before reading Bastiat, you’ll either repent after reading his work or forever remain in darkness with no excuse that you weren’t instructed otherwise.

Bastiat’s 1850 essay, “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen,” introduced his famous parable of the broken window. It’s a brilliant exposition of what would later become known as “opportunity cost,” a core concept in economics. If a hoodlum breaks a baker’s window, the economy in general is not “stimulated” because the baker must now do business with a glazier. Less visible but just as real is the fact that to replace the broken glass, the baker must cancel his plans to buy other things, such as a suit of clothes. The act of destruction means a gain for the glazier, but that gain is more than offset by the losses of the baker and the tailor.

Bastiat served the last two years of his life in France’s Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, where he worked tirelessly to convince fellow members of the merits of freedom and free markets. They proved to be his toughest audience. Most were far more interested in selfish and ephemeral satisfactions (such as power, money, reelection, and the dispensing of favors to friends) than in eternal truths.

He could be devilishly brilliant in his denunciations of his colleagues with political power who presumed to plan the control the lives of others, as in this admonition:

Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.

Or in this one, my personal favorite:

If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?

His most famous work is The Law, which appeared the year he died. Were it required reading in schools today, it would transform the world, as it has opened minds and changed lives for many decades.

Bastiat was interested in the civilizing influence of commerce and the many ways that laws hurt people.

Inspired by The Law and other contributions of Bastiat, a “network of principled business leaders” now bears his name: The Bastiat Society.

The world in the 21st century is beset with economic fallacies that are, for the most part, modern versions of those that Bastiat demolished 16 decades ago. The answers to the vexing problems those fallacies produce are rarely to be found in proposals that empower bureaucracy while imposing tortuous regulations on private behavior. It’s far more likely that the answers lie in the profound and permanent principles that Frédéric Bastiat did so much to illuminate, and to which Powell offers these words of tribute:

And so that frail Frenchman whose public career spanned just six years, belittled as a mere popularizer, dismissed as a dreamer and an ideologue, turns out to have been right. Even before Karl Marx began scribbling The Communist Manifesto in December 1847, Frédéric Bastiat knew that socialism is doomed. Marx called for a vast expansion of government power to seize privately owned land, banks, railroads, and schools, but Bastiat warned that government power is a mortal enemy, and he was right. He declared that prosperity is everywhere the work of free people, and he was right again. He maintained that the only meaningful way to secure peace is to secure human liberty by limiting government power, and he was right yet again. Bastiat took the lead, he stood alone when he had to, he displayed a generous spirit, he shared epic insights, he gave wings to ideas, and he committed his life for liberty. He earned his place among the immortals.

For further information, see:

• Jim Powell’s “Frédéric Bastiat: Ingenious Champion for Liberty and Peace”
• David Hart’s “Frédéric Bastiat on Legal Plunder”
• Richard Ebeling’s “Bastiat: Champion of Economic Liberty”
• Robert G. Bearce’s “In Defense of Freedom: Frédéric Bastiat”
• William Henry Chamberlain’s “The Wisdom of Bastiat”
• William L. Baker’s “Frédéric Bastiat: Harmonious Warrior”
• Dean Russell’s biography, Frédéric Bastiat: Ideas and Influence
• Video: A ten minute condensation of Bastiat’s The Law
• Connor Boyack’s adaption of The Law for children
• The Bastiat Society’s website

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. Reed is FEE's President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty, having served for nearly 11 years as FEE’s president (2008-2019). He is author of the 2020 book, Was Jesus a Socialist? as well as Real Heroes: Incredible True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction and Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism. Follow on LinkedIn and Like his public figure page on Facebook. His website is www.lawrencewreed.com.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Elon Musk on This Day in History

This day in history: Elon Musk (Tesla) was born on this day in 1971. 

Elon Musk dropped an economic truth bomb on Joe Rogan’s podcast a couple of months ago.

“If you don’t make stuff, there’s no stuff.”

Obvious? You’d think so. But, as Musk pointed out, our economic policies throughout the COVID-19 pandemic have ignored that simple truth.

The prevailing assumption is that the government can press “pause” on the economy throughout the pandemic, throwing millions out of work, and then simply tide everyone over with relief checks.

“This notion,” said Musk, “that you can just sort of send checks out to everybody and things will be fine is not true.”

“They’ve become detached from reality,” he added. “You can’t just legislate money and solve these things.”

Musk’s point is indisputable. Government checks are only valuable to the extent that there is enough actual “stuff” (goods and services) available for those dollars to buy. The more you lock down production, the more our stock of “stuff” will shrink, and the more our living standards will worsen. No amount of zeros added to those government checks can change that.

When “stuff” dwindles, printing government checks cannot magically reverse that impoverishment. It can only do two things:

1. Shift who gets impoverished by redistributing wealth (that is, access to the remaining “stuff”), and
2. Delay the drop in living standards by enabling higher consumer spending.

Higher consumer spending means burning through our remaining “stuff” faster instead of investing it in production. This means even less “stuff” down the road.

It’s like if you lost your job and cheer yourself up by splurging on an expensive new TV. Government checks merely make us feel less poor by inducing us to further impoverish ourselves in reality. It postpones the pain today by condemning us to much greater pain tomorrow.

America has a lot of “stuff” to shift around and burn through, so we can delay the pain of impoverishment for quite a while. The same cannot be said for poor countries, however. People there have so little “stuff” that they feel the pain of production lockdowns immediately.

“If you don’t make the food,” Musk warned months ago, “if you don’t process the food, you don’t transport the food... there’s no stuff.”

And now, for hundreds of millions of people around the world, the stark truth of that statement is manifesting as empty stomachs and ruined lives.

According to a new report from World Vision, a global humanitarian organization, as many as 110 million children in Asia alone are facing hunger, and 85 million households across Asia have little or no food stocks as a result of the economic impact of COVID-19 and the lockdowns.

The report also found that as many as eight million children in Asia are being exposed to begging, child labor, and child marriage since parents are unable to buy food in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Our rapid assessments in countries across Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia show that it’s clear we are on the cusp of a catastrophe for children,” said Norbert Hsu, World Vision’s partnership leader for global impact. “Without urgent action we risk an increase in extreme poverty and hunger not seen for decades.”

World Vision’s numbers are no outlier. Similar figures were recently reported by the World Bank.

Hsu doesn’t explain precisely what “urgent action” should be taken. It wouldn’t be surprising if it involved massive amounts of foreign aid, the usual remedy prescribed by such organizations.

But international “relief” is not a real solution for them, any more than domestic “relief” is for us. As Musk said, “You can’t just legislate money and solve these things.”

To meet these massive problems without making them worse, we need to come to grips with economic reality: especially the concept of scarcity, and how it pertains to production and money.

Only then will we fully understand just what we are setting ourselves up for by locking down the economy indefinitely to combat the pandemic. Only then will we be able to make truly informed judgments about the trade-offs involved.

The crisis facing the global poor is a heart-rending tragedy. It is also an ominous warning, the proverbial canary in a coal mine.

If we keep burning through our “stuff” faster than we’re replacing it, we will eventually descend into an economic crisis that dwarfs what we have been through so far, and our fraying social fabric may not be able to handle it.

Like gravity, scarcity can be denied, but it cannot be defied.

“If you don’t make stuff, there’s no stuff.”

Dan Sanchez

Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in chief of FEE.org.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Burned at the Stake on This Day in History

This day in history: The thirteen Stratford Martyrs were burned at the stake near London for their Protestant beliefs on this day in 1556. This day in history: The thirteen Stratford Martyrs were burned at the stake near London for their Protestant beliefs on this day in 1556. The executions were said to have been attended by a crowd of 20,000. According to John Foxe, "eleven men were tied to three stakes, and the two women loose in the midst without any stake; and so they were all burnt in one fire".

Death by burning has a long history as a form of public capital punishment, and many societies have employed it as a punishment for and warning against crimes such as treason, heresy and witchcraft.

The first recorded case of heretics being burnt in Western Europe in the Middle Ages occurred in 1022 at Orléans. Civil authorities burned persons judged to be heretics under the medieval Inquisition. Burning heretics had become customary practice in the latter half of the twelfth century in continental Europe, and death by burning became statutory punishment from the early 13th century. Death by burning for heretics was made positive law by Pedro II of Aragon in 1197. In 1224, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, made burning a legal alternative, and in 1238, it became the principal punishment in the Empire. In Sicily, the punishment was made law in 1231, whereas in France, Louis IX made it binding law in 1270.

As some in England at the start of the 15th century grew weary of the teachings of John Wycliffe and the Lollards, kings, priests, and parliaments reacted with fire. In 1401, Parliament passed the De heretico comburendo act, which can be loosely translated as "Regarding the burning of heretics." Lollard persecution would continue for over a hundred years in England. The Fire and Faggot Parliament met in May 1414 at Grey Friars Priory in Leicester to lay out the notorious Suppression of Heresy Act 1414, enabling the burning of heretics by making the crime enforceable by the Justices of the peace. John Oldcastle, a prominent Lollard leader, was not saved from the gallows by his old friend King Henry V. Oldcastle was hanged and his gallows burned in 1417. Jan Hus was burned at the stake after being accused at the Roman Catholic Council of Constance (1414–18) of heresy. The ecumenical council also decreed that the remains of John Wycliffe, dead for 30 years, should be exhumed and burned. (This posthumous execution was carried out in 1428.)

Burning was also used during the witch-hunts of Europe, although hanging was the preferred style of execution in England and Wales. The penal code known as the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (1532) decreed that sorcery throughout the Holy Roman Empire should be treated as a criminal offence, and if it purported to inflict injury upon any person the witch was to be burnt at the stake. In 1572, Augustus, Elector of Saxony imposed the penalty of burning for witchcraft of every kind, including simple fortunetelling. From the latter half of the 18th century, the number of "nine million witches burned in Europe" has been bandied about in popular accounts and media, but has never had a following among specialist researchers. Today, based on meticulous study of trial records, ecclesiastical and inquisitorial registers and so on, as well as on the utilization of modern statistical methods, the specialist research community on witchcraft has reached an agreement for roughly 40,000–50,000 people executed for witchcraft in Europe in total, and by no means all of them executed by being burned alive. Furthermore, it is solidly established that the peak period of witch-hunts was the century 1550–1650, with a slow increase preceding it, from the 15th century onward, as well as a sharp drop following it, with "witch-hunts" having basically fizzled out by the first half of the 18th century.

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Universal Product Codes on This Day in History

 

This day in history: The first Universal Product Code was used on this day in 1974. The 12-digit UPC code consists of three groups of numbers with different purposes. In a product UPC, the first 6 numbers indicate the manufacturer, the next 5 digits are the item number, and the final number is the check digit.

There was skepticism from conspiracy theorists, who considered barcodes to be an intrusive surveillance technology, and from some Christians, pioneered by a 1982 book The New Money System 666 by Mary Stewart Relfe, who thought the codes hid the number 666, representing the "Number of the Beast". Old Believers, a separation of the Russian Orthodox Church, believe barcodes are the stamp of the Antichrist. Television host Phil Donahue described barcodes as a "corporate plot against consumers".

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General Custer's Last Stand on This Day in History

This Day in History: Civil War General George Armstrong Custer was killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana Territory on this day in 1876, an action that came to be known as "Custer's Last Stand." His two brothers, Boston Custer and Thomas Custer were killed alongside him at Little Bighorn. Custer was German-American. His paternal ancestors, Paulus and Gertrude Küster, came to the colonies around 1693 from the Rhineland in Germany. More than 200,000 native Germans served in the Union Army in the Civil War, mostly from New York, Wisconsin, and Ohio.

He graduated last in his class at West Point, and he had contracted gonorrhea, possibly from a prostitute in New York City. He may have also fathered a child by a Cheyenne woman.

"George Armstrong Custer had almost as many nicknames as George W. Bush. When he was young, his family called him Armstrong and Autie, which came about when a young Custer tried to pronounce his middle name. Later in life, his troops called him Curley and Jack. Jack was actually because of his initials, G.A.C., which were emblazoned on his satchel. Finally, the Plains Indians called him Yellow Hair and Son of the Morning Star. I bet they had some other choice nicknames for him as well." Source

Despite often being seen as a negative, controversial figure, monuments, places and at least one statue are named in his honor. The Battle of Little Bighorn was one of 45 battles won by indigenous peoples of the Americas.

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The Kenneth Arnold UFO Sighting on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington on this day in 1947. Kenneth Arnold claimed that he saw a string of nine, shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier at speeds that Arnold estimated at a minimum of 1,200 miles an hour. This was the first post-World War II sighting in the United States that garnered nationwide news coverage and is credited with being the first of the modern era of UFO sightings, including numerous reported sightings over the next two to three weeks. Arnold's description of the objects also led to the press quickly coining the terms flying saucer and flying disc as popular descriptive terms for UFOs.

Any skepticism the reporters might have harbored evaporated when they interviewed Arnold at length; as historian Mike Dash records:

Arnold had the makings of a reliable witness. He was a respected businessman and experienced pilot ... and seemed to be neither exaggerating what he had seen, nor adding sensational details to his report. He also gave the impression of being a careful observer ... These details impressed the newspapermen who interviewed him and lent credibility to his report.

Speaking to a reporter for the Associated Press, Arnold said: "This whole thing has gotten out of hand. I want to talk to the FBI or someone. Half the people look at me as a combination of Einstein, Flash Gordon and screwball. I wonder what my wife back in Idaho thinks."

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The QWERTY Keyboard on This Day in History

 

This day in history: On this day in 1868, Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for the typewriter, and we still use his QWERTY keyboard to this day. 

"The weirdest thing about the evolution of the QWERTY keyboard layout is that no one knows for certain why the layout took the shape it did. It’s a genuine mystery, despite many seemingly authoritative sources writing to the contrary. In a comprehensive 1983 paper titled The QWERTY Keyboard: A Review, Jan Noyes wrote, 'There appears … to be no obvious reason for the placement of letters in the QWERTY layout, and doubts concerning its origin still remain...the exact meaning behind most of the letter positions within the layout itself has been lost to history. None of the keyboard’s inventors left a record explaining the layout before they died. 'The origin is obscure and the historians disagree,' wrote Roy T. Griffith in 1949. As a result, it’s been the subject of frequent speculation for the past 100 years.'” Source

Others maintain that the DVORAK keyboard is superior. DVORAK is a keyboard layout designed to minimize movement, and make typing as easy and painless as possible. The idea behind it is to have the most commonly typed keys under the fingers, and make it as easy as possible to type common words and combinations of letters. To give an impressions of just how big a difference this makes, consider that the average Dvorak typist's fingers will travel about one mile in a day of typing. A Qwerty typist's will travel anything from 16 to 20 miles.

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Galileo's Forced Recantation on This Day in History

This Day In History: The Holy Office in Rome forced Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe in the form he presented it in, after heated controversy on this day in 1633.

Galileo’s story is a well-known illustration of the dangers of both unchecked power and declaring scientific matters “settled.”

“And yet, it moves.”

Thus muttered Galileo Galilei under his breath after being forced by the Inquisition to recant his claim that the Earth moved around the Sun, rather than the other way round. The public vindication of Copernican heliocentrism would have to wait another day.

Today, Galileo’s story is a well-known illustration of the dangers of both unchecked power and declaring scientific matters “settled.” Yet, throughout history, Galileo wasn’t alone.

Scientists once knew that light moved through space via the luminiferous aether—how else could its waves travel? In 1887 Albert Michelson and Edward Morley proved with a high degree of certainty that it wasn’t so thanks to a “failed” experiment designed to conclusively demonstrate the existence of this invisible medium. Poor Michelson suffered a nervous breakdown when faced with such unexpected results.

In 1931 a book published in Germany, One Hundred Authors against Einstein, defended the settled science of Newtonian physics, proclaiming Einstein’s theory of relativity a fraud. Einstein was reported to have replied, “Why one hundred? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.”

Bad Science, Bad Policy

"Settled science" can spur the public to act. The results can be catastrophic.

The important thing is that “settled science” can be used to spur the public to act.

On these pages I recently recounted the story of the early 20th century belief in Eugenics, a science widely adopted by governments around the world as a basis for social policy, with horrifying results.

Australian physicians Barry Marshall and Robin Warrens were ridiculed when they hypothesized that ulcers were caused by microbes, which every scientist knew couldn’t survive in stomach acid. Doctors were sure that peptic ulcers were caused by stress and spicy foods. In frustration, Marshall drank a Petri dish full of cultured H. pylori, proving the settled science wrong. Hopefully, the Nobel Prize he and Warrens received compensated for the illness that resulted.

And remember the government’s dietary guidelines, including the warnings against salt and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Pyramid urging Americans to eat more carbs and fewer fats? That didn’t work out so well, did it?

We all grew up knowing that life began in the “primordial soup” of the seas, sparked by lightning. A recent paper in Nature casts doubt on that theory, producing evidence that life may have begun in hydrothermal vents in the ocean floor. The jury is still out on this one.

And that’s the point.

The Jury Is Always Out

It’s worth keeping the above examples in mind, when someone proclaims that surely we are much smarter today than we were in the past. That we can finally put our faith in scientific certainty, especially when journalists and politicians tell us that 97 percent of scientists agree on something. That once consensus is reached among experts, it’s important to stop listening to criticism. If you have any doubts, just Google up the phrase, “Science Says,” and view the parade of claims that carry that new and improved Good Housekeeping Seal of Infallibility.

Real science is characterized by healthy skepticism, relentless questioning, and a constant testing and re-testing of theories.

Yes, reactionaries on the payroll of nefarious forces insist on reminding us that science is a process, not a destination. What difference does it make if a hypothesis has been artfully constructed to render itself immune to falsification by experiment? Who cares if computer simulations enshrined at the heart of public policy have never made a correct forecast? How dare anyone imply that billions of dollars in government grant funding create perverse incentives for researchers to support the party line?

The important thing is that “settled science” can be used to spur the public to act.

And exactly what has the “settled science” of cataclysmic anthropogenic global warming convinced us to do? Deliver unprecedented power to politicians and bureaucrats. Power to commandeer entire industries. Power to pump billions of taxpayer dollars into half-baked schemes cooked up by crony corporatists.  Power to redistribute income on a global scale. And to maintain this power, when cracks begin to show in the narrative, criminalize dissent, much as the Inquisition did to Galileo.

Real science is characterized by healthy skepticism, relentless questioning, and a constant testing and re-testing of theories, systems, and models. Casting dogma in stone, then stoning non-believers, is a hallmark of religion, not science. And when we finally wake up from our global warming-inspired public hysteria, our progeny will pat themselves on the back for being so much more advanced than we were. Before, alas, the cycle repeats again.

 

Bill Frezza

Bill Frezza is the former host of RealClear Radio Hour and the author of New Zealand’s Far-Reaching Reforms: A Case Study in How to Save Democracy from Itself.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Greenland on This Day in History

 

This Day In History: Greenland assumed self-rule on this day in 2009. Greenland is an island country part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is the world's largest island, and though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe (specifically Norway and Denmark, the colonial powers) for more than a millennium, beginning in 986. The majority of its residents are Inuit, whose ancestors migrated from Alaska through Northern Canada, gradually settling across the island by the 13th century.

The lowest temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere was recorded in Greenland, near the topographic summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet, on 22 December 1991, when the temperature reached -69.6 °C (-93.3 °F)

The rate of suicide in Greenland is very high. According to a 2010 census, Greenland holds the highest suicide rate in the world. Another significant social issue faced by Greenland is a high rate of alcoholism.

Greenland also has a high infant mortality rate and high rates of death due to unnatural causes, especially suicides and accidents.

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The Movie JAWS on This Day in History

 

This Day In History: The film Jaws was released on this day in 1975, becoming the highest-grossing film of that time and starting the trend of films known as "summer blockbusters".

"Jaws was the first movie released in more than 400 theaters in the United States, and the first movie to gross over $100 million at the box office. It was the highest grossing movie of all time until Star Wars was released two years later." Source

While in theaters, the film was said to have caused a single case of cinematic neurosis in a 17-year-old, female viewer. Cinematic neurosis is a condition in which viewers exhibit mental health disturbances, or a worsening of existing mental health disturbances, after viewing a film. The symptoms first presented as sleep disturbances and anxiety, but one day later the patient was screaming "Sharks! Sharks!" and experiencing convulsions.

This case study caused the film to become notable in the medical community alongside The Exorcist for causing stress reactions in its viewers, and was later used in a study by Brian R. Johnson to test how susceptible audiences were to cinematic stress inducers. His study found that stress could be induced by cinema in segments of the general population, and Jaws specifically caused stress reactions in its viewers. While Johnson could not find an exact cause for the stress response in viewers, whether it be the suspense, the gore or the music production, a 1986 study by G. Sparks found that particularly violent films, including Jaws, tended to cause the most intense reactions in viewers.

The last sequel to Jaws, Jaws: The Revenge (1987) is considered one of the worst films ever made.

In July 2018, Steven Spielberg expressed interest in a Jaws prequel film focusing on the 1945 sinking of the USS Indianapolis.

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A Star Trek Actor's Vehicle Death on This Day in History

 

This Day In History: Anton Yelchin, 27, an American actor known for portraying Pavel Chekov in the Star Trek reboot movie series, was found pinned between his car and a brick wall on this day in 2016. His driveway was on an incline and his car was found running and in neutral. The manufacturer had recalled the car make in April 2016, for concerns about its gearshift design that could cause rollaway incidents, but the software patch to repair the vehicles did not reach dealers until the week of Yelchin's death.

Telchin joins the list of many famous people that lost their lives in auto wrecks, such as Paul Walker, Princess Diana, Randy Savage, James Dean, Sam Kinison, Falco, Linda Lovelace, Grace Kelly, Jayne Mansfield, Cliff Burton, Duane Allman, Marc Bolan, Harry Chapin etc.

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The Wicked Bible on This Day in History

This Day In History: The Wicked Bible was displayed at Cambridge until this day in 2011. The Wicked Bible was so-called because the printer omitted the word "not" in one of the 10 Commandments: "Thou shalt commit adultery." The publishers eventually were fined £300 (1633 A.D.) and deprived of their printing license. That Bible also had a second error. A section of Deuteronomy that is supposed to exalt God’s “greatnesse” ends up reading: “And ye said, Behold, the LORD our God hath shewed us his glory and his great-asse.”

There was also the "Party Bible" in 1716 that was supposed to read “Sin no more” at Jeremiah 31:34 but instead read “Sin on more.” A 1795 edition of the King James Bible that read "Let the children first be killed" at Mark 7:27 (the word was supposed to be "filled"). In a 1763 printing, Psalm 14.1 says: “The fool hath said in his heart there is a God,” when there should be a “no” where the “a” is.

There are also translation decisions that feel like errors, such as Joshua 15.18 in the New English Bible: "As she sat on the ass, she broke wind, and Caleb asked her, “What did you mean by that?"

See also: Bible Curiosities by William S Walsh 1893
https://newworldtranslation.blogspot.com/2017/10/bible-curiosities-by-william-s-walsh.html

Printing Errors in Bible Versions by Henry Barker 1911
https://newworldtranslation.blogspot.com/2020/03/printing-errors-in-bible-versions-by.html

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The Statue of Liberty on This Day in History

https://archive.org/details/ldpd_5655298_000/page/n8

This day in history: The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor on this day in 1885. We are often told about Emma Lazarus's poem which was contributed to the statue years after, but at the unveiling Chauncey M. Depew gave a speech which concluded with this warning: "...there is room and brotherhood for all who will support our institutions and aid in our development; but that those who come to disturb our peace and dethrone our laws are aliens and enemies forever."

The Conclusion of the Oration is as follows:

In all ages the achievements of man and his aspirations have been represented in symbols. Races have disappeared and no record remains of their rise or fall, but by their monuments we know their history. The huge monoliths of the Assyrians and the obelisks of the Egyptians tell their stories of forgotten civilizations, but the sole purpose of their erection was to glorify rulers and preserve the boasts of conquerors. They teach sad lessons of the vanity of ambition, the cruelty of arbitrary power, and the miseries of mankind. The Olympian Jupiter enthroned in the Parthenon expressed in ivory and gold the awful majesty of the Greek idea of the King of the gods; the bronze statue of Minerva on the Acropolis offered the protection of the patron Goddess of Athens to the mariners who steered their ships by her helmet and spear - and in the Colossus of Rhodes, famed as one of the wonders of the world, the Lord of the Sun welcomed the commerce of the East to the city of his worship, But they were all dwarfs in size and pigmies in spirit beside this mighty structure and its inspiring thought. Higher than the monument in Trafalgar Square, which commemorates the victories of Nelson on the sea; higher than the Column Vendome, which perpetuates the triumphs of Napoleon on the land; higher than the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge, which exhibit the latest and grandest results of science, invention, and industrial progress, this Statue of Liberty rises toward the heavens to illustrate an idea which nerved the three hundred at Thermopylae and armed the ten thousand at Marathon; which drove Tarquin from Rome and aimed the arrow of Tell; which charged with Cromwell and his Ironsides and accompanied Sidney to the block; which fired the farmer's gun at Lexington and razed the Bastille in Paris; which inspired the charter in the cabin of the May-flower and the Declaration of Independence from the Continental Congress.

It means that with the abolition of privileges to the few and the enfranchisement of the individual, the equality of all men before the law, and universal suffrage, the ballot secure from fraud and the voter from intimidation, the press free and education furnished by the State for all, liberty of worship and free speech; the right to rise, and equal opportunity for honor and fortune, the problems of labor and capital, of social regeneration and moral growth, of property and poverty, will work themselves out under the benign influences of enlightened law-making and law-abiding liberty, without the aid of kings and armies, or of anarchists and bombs.

Through the Obelisk, so strangely recalling to us of yesterday the past of twenty centuries, a forgotten monarch says, "I am the Great King, the Conqueror, the Chastiser of Nations," and except as a monument of antiquity it conveys no meaning and touches no chord of human sympathy. But, for unnumbered centuries to come, as Liberty levels up the people to higher standards and a broader life, this statue will grow in the admiration and affections of mankind. When Franklin drew the lightning from the clouds, he little dreamed that in the evolution of science his discovery would illuminate the torch of Liberty for France and America. The rays from this beacon, lighting this gateway to the continent, will welcome the poor and the persecuted with the hope and promise of homes and citizenship. It will teach them that there is room and brotherhood for all who will support our institutions and aid in our development; but that those who come to disturb our peace and dethrone our laws are aliens and enemies forever. I devoutly believe that from the unseen and the unknown, two great souls have come to participate in this celebration. The faith in which they died fulfilled, the cause for which they battled triumphant, the people they loved in the full enjoyment of the rights for which they labored and fought and suffered, the spirit voices of Washington and Lafayette join in the glad acclaim of France and the United States to Liberty Enlightening the World.

Oration by Hon. Chauncey M. Depew at the Unveiling of the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, October 28, 1886.

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Economist Adam Smith on This Day in History

This day in history: Adam Smith was born on this date in 1723. He wrote what many consider the Capitalist Bible, The Wealth of Nations, whose theme can be summed up by the following: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” In other words, the only reason you have food on the table is because someone acted selfishly. Someone provided a service, not because he likes you, but he simply wanted to remove you from your money and benefit himself. Despite this, the Capitalist free market system is still the best system we have. As Milton Friedman put it, "It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.”

From Lawrence W Reed:

The first ten days in the month of March 1776 brought forth momentous events that played roles in shaping the modern world.

The American Revolutionary War was not quite a year old. On March 2, American troops began shelling the British-occupied city of Boston. Two days later, they reclaimed Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston’s harbor, leading to the Brits’ evacuation of the city within a fortnight. Meanwhile in the South, militia from South Carolina and Georgia attacked a British fleet with fire ships in the Battle of the Rice Boats.

On March 3, American naval commodore Esek Hopkins took Nassau, Bahamas from the British in one of the first engagements of the fledgling American Navy and Marines.

Three thousand miles away in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 9, a professor published a new book in which he noted, “Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.”

Of these various developments, which do you think produced the greatest long-term consequences?

Correct answer: It was the book with the dog revelation.

Taking Boston was a milestone but arguably, American colonists were sooner or later likely to gain independence regardless of the disposition of one town. The battle in the South was a minor skirmish. The Continental forces left Nassau and returned to Connecticut before month’s end. In the war between the Americans and the British, March came in like the proverbial lion but went out like the quiet lamb.

The book that appeared on March 9, however, was a barnburner. It was An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations by the moral philosopher Adam Smith. 245 years ago today, it made its debut. Economics has never been the same since.

In fact, before Smith, Economics wasn’t really much of a science of its own. Not every word in Smith’s book was new and original. Smith drew many ideas from previous thinkers much as, say, Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy and State drew heavily from Mises, Menger, and more. But Smith pulled together some ideas of others, added many of his own, and presented it all in one comprehensive tome that earned him the title, “Father of Economics.”

The book wasn’t the last word on Economics and Smith didn’t get everything precisely right (who does?). A century later, for example, Austrian economists thoroughly demolished the labor theory of value which Smith (and the classical school) had mistakenly embraced.

Still, Smith’s insights were profound. He blew away the notion that society would be chaotic without the dictates of potentates, postulating a spontaneous order that arises from people constructively pursuing their self-interest. “In the great chessboard of human society,” he wrote, “every piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature chooses to impress upon it.”

A chapter devoted to Smith in my book, Real Heroes: Inspiring True Stories of Courage, Character and Conviction, notes,

The ideas of Adam Smith exerted enormous influence before he died in 1790 and especially in the 19th century. America’s Founders were greatly affected by his insights. The Wealth of Nations became required reading among men and women of ideas the world over. Until his day, no one had more thoroughly and convincingly blown away the intellectual edifice of big government than the professor from Kirkaldy. A tribute as much to him as to any other individual thinker, the world in 1900 was much freer and more prosperous than anyone imagined in 1776.

Any country that produced an enlightened giant like Adam Smith should be immensely and forever proud of it. But alas, the cancel culture has its knives out for him. In the land of his birth—Scotland—and in one of the cities where he wrote and taught—Edinburgh—a few misdirected malcontents are thinking about modifying or removing a statue of him on the Royal Mile.

Why? Not because Smith advocated slavery (he was a fierce opponent of it), but because he simply noted that the evil institution is historically ubiquitous.

How ironic! Small-minded, virtue-signaling activists—who will likely accomplish in their entire lifetimes but a fraction for liberty what Smith bestowed upon us in a single volume—want to bring the great man down. Shameful (and shameless) doesn’t begin to describe just the thought of it. Pray that such iniquity does not materialize.

This week in The Spectator, Matt Kilcoyne of the Adam Smith Institute provides the details. He writes,

To describe a process is not to condone it. It is perfectly consistent to argue that slavery is ‘ubiquitous and inevitable’ while wanting to see it curtailed in all its forms. Indeed, Smith was one of history’s greatest allies against slavery—and often quoted by abolitionists in popular anti-slavery literature.

Let’s mark the 245th anniversary of Adam Smith’s hugely influential work not by a senseless re-writing of history or the application of poisonous presentism to his legacy, but by a celebration of his contributions. We can start in that regard with a sample of his wisdom in his very own words:

_____

As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value, every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

_____

[M]an has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

_____

The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

_____

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chessboard.

For additional information, see:

Presentism Imperils Our Future by Destroying Our Past by Lawrence W. Reed

Why Edinburgh’s Adam Smith Statue Should Stay by Matt Kilcoyne

Adam Smith: Ideas Change the World by Lawrence W. Reed

How Adam Smith Showed We Can Do Good by Doing Well by T. Norman Van Cott

What Adam Smith Can Teach Us About Being Lovely by Barry Brownstein

Adam Smith’s Three Moral Principles for Navigating our National Crisis by Caroline Breashears

Adam Smith on What It Means to Flourish by Ryan Patrick Hanley

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. Reed is FEE's President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty, having served for nearly 11 years as FEE’s president (2008-2019). He is author of the 2020 book, Was Jesus a Socialist? as well as Real Heroes: Incredible True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction and Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism. Follow on LinkedIn and Like his public figure page on Facebook. His website is www.lawrencewreed.com.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

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The First Socialist Government in North America on This Day in History

 

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This Day in History: In the Saskatchewan general election on this day in 1944, the CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation), led by Tommy Douglas, was elected and formed the first socialist government in North America.

From a 1967 Article:

Saskatchewan, with a population of slightly under one million peo­ple, for 20 years from 1944 to 1964 had a socialist government—about the only one in North America, except Castro’s. Two years ago, we defeated that gov­ernment.

Saskatchewan is primarily agri­cultural. We have many well-to-do and efficient farmers. We have one of the higher standards of living in the world. The questions frequently are asked: "How did socialism take over? How did it last for 20 years?"

To find an answer, one must go back to the dark days of the de­pression. In the 1930′s a terrible drought struck. Year after year, crop failure followed crop failure. At the same time, the world price of wheat dropped to less than 35 cents per bushel. These two fac­tors brought our prairie economy to its knees. Unemployment was everywhere. Men lost their dignity and their self-respect.

Of course, the government and the economic system of the day were blamed. Out of the depths of the depression, the Socialist Party, which glibly promised to solve these terrible problems, was born.

Among other things, the social­ists proposed:

1.      To end unemployment;

2.      To provide jobs by building so­cialist factories;

3.      To provide free medical and health services;

4.      To give a new deal to the farmer.

Thus, as a protest to depression conditions, in 1944 Saskatchewan elected a socialist government.

For 20 long years, our people were subjected to a leather-lunged propaganda machine, paid for from public funds, which filled the air with plausible platitudes and clichés. You have heard some of them —

"Tax the rich to help the poor"; "The capitalist is an exploiter of the masses";

"Only a planned economy is the answer to unemployment"; and so on.

They had all the answers.

How Did They Succeed?

In 1944, the socialists said they would solve the unemployment problem by building government factories. Not only this, they prom­ised to use the profits from these socialist enterprises to build high­ways, schools, hospitals, and to finance better social welfare meas­ures generally. Over the years they set up 22 so-called Crown Corporations. By the time we had taken over the government, 24 months ago, 12 of the Crown Cor­porations had gone bankrupt or been disposed of. Others were kept operating by repeated and sub­stantial government grants. Vir­tually without exception, those which have had to compete with private enterprise on equal terms lost huge sums of money regularly and consistently. The whole Crown Corporation program became bogged down in a morass of bun­gling, red tape, and inefficiencies. The experiment cost the taxpayers of Saskatchewan millions of dollars.

War on Business

During the whole period, the socialists waged war against pri­vate business. They passed legisla­tion giving the government power to expropriate and operate any in­dustry or business in the province. The making of profits was con­demned as an unforgivable sin. The public and avowed objective of the socialist government was to "eradicate capitalism."

What was the result?

Investors from Eastern Canada, from Europe, from the States, simply turned their back on the socialists. Industry after industry looked over sites in our province, only to by-pass Saskatchewan and locate elsewhere in Canada. Dozens of oil companies pulled up -stakes lock, stock, and barrel and moved out of the province because of dis­criminatory legislation. Gas ex­ploration ground to a complete halt. Prospecting in our vast north became almost nonexistent. Dur­ing the period, while Canada was experiencing the greatest economic boom in her history, Saskatchewan received only a handful of new factories.

From 1945 to 1963, more than a million new industrial jobs were created across Canada. Yet in Sas­katchewan, after 18 years of so­cialism, there were fewer jobs in manufacturing than existed in 1945 — this despite the investment of $500 million in Crown Corpora­tions.

Social Services

As I said earlier, prior to tak­ing office the socialists promised a greatly expanded program of so­cial welfare measures. There was to be "free" medical care, "free" hospitalization care, "free" drugs, and so on. The money to finance these projects was to come from the profits of the Crown Corpora­tions. Of course, in the overall picture, there were no profits; rather, there were colossal losses. Thus, the welfare program had to be financed from taxation.

Most people in Saskatchewan like the principle of our hospitali­zation plan — all hospital bills are paid by the government, from tax revenue. However, in 16 years, costs have gone from $71/2 million to $57 million. Three years ago, a medical care scheme was intro­duced — under which all medical bills are paid. The same pattern of skyrocketing costs is evident also in this field. Our people have found that medicare and hospitalization are anything but "free." On the contrary, they will cost our people $110 million this year — and are still rising 10 per cent annually.

Taxes

Under the socialist government, our provincial debt went from $150 million to $600 million. Dur­ing the period more than 600 com­pletely new taxes were introduced; 650 other taxes were increased. "Per capita" taxes in Saskatche­wan were soon substantially out of line with our sister provinces — one more reason why industry located elsewhere.

Compulsion

Throughout their regime, the socialists tended to use compul­sion. Repeatedly, their boards and agencies were manned by some so­cial theorists, who told business­men how their businesses should be run. Everyone in the north was forced by law to sell his timber to the government-monopolized timber board, every trapper, his fur through the government fur mar­keting board. Every fisherman who caught a fish was forced by law to sell it through the govern­ment fish board. Every purchaser of an automobile license was forced to take his insurance from the Government Insurance Com­pany. Two years ago, they intro­duced a medical plan where every doctor would have been forced to receive his remuneration from the government. Only an aroused pub­lic opinion forced them to with­draw this contentious legislation. Drivers of government cars and trucks were instructed to buy their gasoline from Co-ops.

Population

Twenty years ago, the socialists promised to make Saskatchewan a Mecca for the working man. In­stead, we saw the greatest mass exodus of people out of an area since Moses led the Jews out of Egypt more than 3,000 years ago. Each of the other nine provinces which had a "private enterprise" government increased in popula­tion by leaps and bounds after 1945. On the other hand, Saskatche­wan virtually stood still. Her pop­ulation increased 12 per cent while the nation’s increased 60 per cent. Since the war, 270,000 of our citi­zens left Saskatchewan to find em­ployment elsewhere.

Socialist Defeat

Finally, two years ago, our peo­ple decided they had been the Ca­nadian guinea pig for socialism long enough. They threw the so­cialists out. The Saskatchewan Liberal Party campaigned on a straight program of private enter­prise. We made no extravagant social welfare promises. Instead, we committed ourselves to reduced government spending, reduced taxes, incentive programs for in­dustry, and so on. The people gave us the job of cleaning up the mess.

Lesson

Is there a lesson to be learned from Saskatchewan’s experiences? I think there is — a rather horrible lesson.

If there are any Americans who think that socialism is the an­swer, I wish they would come to Saskatchewan and study what has happened to our province. Twenty years of socialism gave us indus­trial stagnation, retarded develop­ment, oppressive taxation, major depopulation.

At this moment, you are doubt­less saying to yourself, "It can’t happen here." Yet, people all over the world are finding, "It can."

We know, as you do, that the private enterprise system is not perfect — but it is still the best system devised for progress. Un­der the system, Americans and Canadians have enjoyed the high­est living standards in the world. It is our task to prove in the next few years that the private enter­prise system can do more for our people than socialism.

I would like to tell you some of the actions we have taken to get Saskatchewan moving again eco­nomically.

Timber Board Monopoly Ended, Private Interests at Work

One-third of the land in Sas­katchewan is covered by timber. We are told there is sufficient lum­ber for three or four major pulp mills. During the socialist regime, the government had assumed a complete monopoly in the produc­tion of lumber. Producers could not sell a toothpick unless it went through the Timber Board. The new administration has discon­tinued this monopoly. We are en­couraging private enterprise to come into our timber limits. We are providing incentives for them to do so. Already three lumber complexes have moved into our north — employing an average of 250 men each. Four months ago, we persuaded a New York com­pany to invest $65 million in a huge pulp mill, which will employ, when in operation, 3,500 men. We are hopeful that a second mill may also locate in our province within a year.

Minerals

The northern half of Saskatch­ewan lies in the Pre-Cambrian Shield. When we assumed office, we were concerned by the almost complete lack of new mineral de­velopment in our north. By 1964 prospecting in Saskatchewan had almost come to a halt. We found that royalty rates sometimes were out of line with rates applied else­where in Canada. We called repre­sentatives of the mining industry and discussed the problem with them. From those discussions emerged a new formula for min­ing incentives. Already, we are seeing results. Prospecting activ­ity throughout the whole north has gone ahead spectacularly. Fifty new companies are doing exploration work in northern Sas­katchewan at this time. Three new mines have commenced opera­tions, including a major copper mine at Lac La Ronge.

Potash

Potash is a field which offers tremendous prospects for future development. We believe that pot­ash will do for Saskatchewan what oil has done for the province of Alberta. World demand is increas­ing at a rate that doubles every 10 years. The overwhelming bulk of this demand will be met by Sas­katchewan in the years ahead. At the present time, three potash mills are in production. Six addi­tional mills are now under con­struction. We are negotiating with at least four other potash pro­ducers, which are now seriously looking at the potential of Sas­katchewan’s reserves. Investment and commitments now total more than $500 million. When it is real­ized that each of these mines costs from $50 to $80 million and em­ploys from 500 to 800 people, you can realize the impetus the indus­try is giving Saskatchewan.

Oil

Saskatchewan, in 1964, pro­duced 20 per cent of the total Ca­nadian petroleum demand. Right­ly, or wrongly, many of the oil people felt that Saskatchewan had not been friendly to the oil indus­try. We found keen resentment at some of Saskatchewan’s rules and regulations. Upon taking office, we found that drilling activity in Sas­katchewan was just holding its own with the previous year, and was lagging far behind Alberta’s. No new fields had been found for a number of years.

We immediately sought the ad­vice of the industry as to how the situation could be improved. We asked them what we could do to encourage greater development in Saskatchewan. Having received the advice, the government adopted a new major incentive program.

The results have been spectacular. Dozens and dozens and dozens of new companies have moved in. Eight new pools were discovered during 1965. Our royalties and bonus bids in the past year reached $40 million as compared to $18 million in the last year of socialist administration. Our op­ponents have accused us of selling out our resources to big business. But, the oil resources of Saskatch­ewan are not much use to our peo­ple when they are buried a mile underground.

Gas

Saskatchewan is blessed with substantial gas fields. Under the previous government, the Sas­katchewan Power Corporation was given a complete monopoly, and paid the producer a price which was substantially below market value. As a result, gas exploration last year came virtually to a halt. The new administration canceled the Power Corporation monopoly and opened the gas industry to competition. Again, the results have been most gratifying. Dozens of gas exploration crews have moved into our province in recent months.

Secondary manufacturing has also made encouraging strides, since the socialists left office. These are only a few of the excit­ing developments which have taken place recently in Saskatche­wan. Instead of exporting thou­sands of our people, as we did year after year under the social­ists, this year our population is again headed upward. Our prov­ince is one of the booming areas in all Canada.

In short, we think our "experi­ment in private enterprise" is working.

In our province, we know social­ism not from textbooks but from hard, bitter experience. We have found that there is nothing wrong with socialism, except that it doesn’t work. I am sure you have heard some people say: "We don’t agree with socialism — we wouldn’t support it generally — but a little bit of socialism might be all right." We found in Saskatchewan that once it begins to develop, it is pretty hard to stop.

I think we can all be proud of the private enterprise system. But, I also think we must be vigilant. The danger from socialists, far too frequently, is not what they can do directly, but what they can ac­complish indirectly.

Far too often we find political parties which pay lip service to the principles of private enter­prise but at the same time, for the sake of political expediency, en­deavor to neutralize the socialists by adopting large segments of their programs. Such a course can only be disastrous. 

W. Ross Thatcher

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.