Many academics, business leaders, and governments are claiming that technology is a critical part of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. By utilizing the surveillance capabilities of modern data acquisition systems, it is believed, citizens can be provided with tools that will allow them to see if they have come into contact with someone infected with the virus.
Contact-Tracing Apps
There are two proposed models for contact-tracing apps of this type. One model proposes that location data on citizens be collected and processed centrally by governments. This type of data collection has—understandably—been widely criticized by consumer and privacy rights groups, because of the unprecedented level of surveillance it would represent. Given that tech companies are already deploying this power in service to their governments—with YouTube blocking content that contradicts the WHO, for instance—these fears seem well justified.
Another proposed model is to collect and store location and contact data on citizens’ own devices. This distributed form of data collection has received widespread academic support, because it is claimed that it provides a way for...
Read Article : Contact Tracing: Laying the Foundation for Real-Time Social Tracking
I have been asked, as CEO of The Atlas Society: Why did The Atlas Society not take bailout money from the federal government?
Why, during these tremendously challenging economic times, when 40 million Americans are unemployed, when the voluntary donations on which your organization depend are in jeopardy, when other organizations like yours -- including Objectivist organizations many, many times your size -- applied for and accepted government bailout funds, why did you forgo that route at The Atlas Society?
That question deserves an answer, so let me give you four reasons:
1. The Atlas Society is a non-profit educational organization -- our mission is to engage the next generation with the ideas of Ayn Rand. The Atlas Society is not a restaurant, or a beauty salon, or a car wash that has been shut down and prevented from doing business by government policy. To the contrary, we have leaned in to the marketplace of ideas, found new ways to sell our wares, and found new markets in which to operate. We’ve created new videos, leveraged new technologies, created new online forums.
The Atlas Society is the ZOOM of the Objectivist space -- not the movie theaters or the office building industry -- of our space.
Now, we have many donors whose businesses have been shut down and for whom it would be perfectly moral to seek restitution, and we stand by them in that decision. And while we are affected by the...
Read Article : Why We Did NOT Take Bailout Money
Editor’s Note: Jay Lapeyre is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of The Atlas Society. A New Orleans native, he is President and CEO of the Louisiana-based Laitram, LLC, a diversified global manufacturer of industrial equipment, including food processing. Objectivist business ethics helped him overcome hurricane Katrina, the severe recession of 2008, gulf oil spills and more. Jay spoke to Senior Editor Marilyn Moore about his introductions to Ayn Rand and to The Atlas Society, and how Rand’s philosophy can help young people navigate a future in a time when “all the old rules are off.”
MM: How did you discover Ayn Rand?
JL: That's a great story. I was on the basketball team at UT Austin, and I was lucky enough to get a roommate who had read everything by Ayn Rand. He was just steeped in her ideas. At one point early on, as we were getting to know each other, I said, “Communism is good in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice.” And he said, “Communism is the most immoral political system ever conceived.”
Six or seven hours later, the sun was coming up, and he was so angry he said, “We are never going to speak of these issues again until you've read these books. You are so ignorant and so stubborn, that I just can't communicate with you!”
So he gave me a number of books. Among them were Bastiat’s The Law, Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, and something by von Mises. But the book that just hammered the ideas...
Read Article : Trustee Spotlight: Jay Lapeyre
Editor’s Note: Jaroslav Romanchuk lives in Minsk, Belarus. He is the Executive Director of the Analytical Center “Strategy,” President of the Scientific Research Mises Center, and was a candidate for President of Belarus in 2010. He won the Atlas Economic Research Foundation Sir Anthony Fisher Award in 2009 for his book, In Search of an Economic Miracle, and in 2006 forBelarus: Road to the Future. He served on the Supreme Council of the Republic of Belarus Commission for Economic Policy and Reforms, the Presidential Council for Entrepreneurship Development, the Working Group on Tax Reform, and was Deputy Chairman of the United Civil Party.Romanchuk has been involved with The Atlas Society since the 1990s. He spoke with me from his home in Minsk via Zoom.
We talked about his introduction to capitalism and Ayn Rand in post-Soviet Belarus:
It was the luckiest of luck. Back in 1993, a group of Americans came to Belarus on a fact-finding mission. Charles and Susanna Tomlinson were part of that group. I was involved in arranging the various meetings in Belarus, and I assisted the Tomlinsons throughout the trip. We talked about life in post-Soviet Belarus. They were very curious to learn about it. And I was very curious about what life in the capitalist west looked like, which was a beacon of freedom for all of us.
We got along, and after they went home, they sent me a copy of Atlas Shrugged. I’d never heard of this book, even though I...
Read Article : Member Spotlight: Jaroslav Romanchuk
A common joke in the American gun community goes something like this:
Q: Why do you carry a gun?
A: Because carrying a cop is too heavy.
This humorous quip should not detract from the fact that many individuals in the United States (including me) own and carry a firearm for purely pragmatic reasons. The simplest case for the right to keep and bear arms can be summarized in one sentence: You are ultimately responsible for your own safety and security.
Understanding Gun Rights
This sobering pill can be difficult for many people to swallow, but that's reality. Evil exists in this world. Under the right circumstances, people can and will do unspeakable things to each other as any student of history or psychology will know. Those fortunate to live in gated communities and able to afford armed security are often oblivious that most other people do not enjoy the same luxuries.
Many violent crimes take place and are over in a matter of seconds (and stopped in seconds that prevent the worst). As another popular saying goes, "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away." In the United States, depending where you live,...
Read Article : Why Gun Rights Are Essential In a World of Uncertainty and Scarcity
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