Could You be Flying Cars in a Few Years?

First published in TOS Blog.

Exciting things are happening in the flying car industry (yes, there is a flying car industry). CBS reports that Terrafugia, an American company, just conducted a successful test flight of its flying car. A Dutch company successfully tested its model in the same week. These amazing developments have the potential to drastically change the way we travel, making it easier, faster, and a lot more exciting.

Check out the videos. Here’s the Terrafugia Transition:

And here’s the Dutch model, the Pal-V:

 

If the video of the Pal-V doesn’t appear above, click here to view its test flight.

Image: Creative Commons by Ian Maddox

NPR: The Secret Document That Transformed China

NPR has a fascinating report on China which involves collectivism and the virtue of the profit-motive. From the report:

In 1978, the farmers in a small Chinese village called Xiaogang gathered in a mud hut to sign a secret contract. They thought it might get them executed. Instead, it wound up transforming China’s economy in ways that are still reverberating today.

The contract was so risky — and such a big deal — because it was created at the height of communism in China. Everyone worked on the village’s collective farm; there was no personal property.

“Back then, even one straw belonged to the group,” says Yen Jingchang, who was a farmer in Xiaogang in 1978. “No one owned anything.”

At one meeting with communist party officials, a farmer asked: “What about the teeth in my head? Do I own those?” Answer: No. Your teeth belong to the collective.

In theory, the government would take what the collective grew, and would also distribute food to each family. There was no incentive to work hard — to go out to the fields early, to put in extra effort, Yen Jingchang says.

“Work hard, don’t work hard — everyone gets the same,” he says. “So people don’t want to work.”

They defied the system and made a secret contract to practice capitalist principles.  The result was fantastic. “At the end of the season, they had an enormous harvest: more, Yen Hongchang says, than in the previous five years combined.”

Their self-interested work was creating abundance and prosperity; The Communist Party took notice.

Click here to read the fascinating report.

Commented on a Story on Mysticism and Rain

I commented on a report that tribesmen in northern Mindanao are doing mystical rituals to “appease nature” and prevent rainstorms.

My comment: “It is better drainage systems, stronger structures, and effective communication, that the provinces need to better deal with rainstorms. These tribesmen should throw away their mystic beliefs, and instead embrace reason, science and capitalism.”

Besides my writing for TOS and other publications, I’ve been doing a lot of commenting lately on websites. I think more pro-freedom people should go out of their way—within the context of their life (time, priorities, etc)—to firmly and politely advocate for reason and capitalism.

Ayn Rand on Self-Determination of Nations

“The right of “the self-determination of nations” applies only to free societies or to societies seeking to establish freedom; it does not apply to dictatorships. Just as an individual’s right of free action does not include the “right” to commit crimes (that is, to violate the rights of others), so the right of a nation to determine its own form of government does not include the right to establish a slave society (that is, to legalize the enslavement of some men by others). There is no such thing as “the right to enslave.” A nation can do it, just as a man can become a criminal—but neither can do it by right.

“It does not matter, in this context, whether a nation was enslaved by force, like Soviet Russia, or by vote, like Nazi Germany. Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). Whether a slave society was conquered or chose to be enslaved, it can claim no national rights and no recognition of such “rights” by civilized countries—just as a mob of gangsters cannot demand a recognition of its “rights” and a legal equality with an industrial concern or a university, on the ground that the gangsters choseby unanimous vote to engage in that particular kind of group activity.

“Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the non-existent “rights” of gang rulers. It is not a free nation’s duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses.”

HT: The Ayn Rand Lexicon

In addition, and this bears an underscore:

“This right, however, is conditional. Just as the suppression of crimes does not give a policeman the right to engage in criminal activities, so the invasion and destruction of a dictratorship does not give the invader the right to establish another variant of a slave society in the conquered country.”

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone!!! To this benevolent day and season, cheers!