Seminar Three | Fall 2012
Professor Alexandratos
Office Hours: Monday and ThursdayITF: Karen Gregory
Contact: Karen.Gregory@gmail.com
Office Hours: WednesdaysAdd Users
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Weekly Assignment #13
Zero Waste – It IS Possible
When people consume, nobody really takes a second to think what happens to their waste. To them, it simply disappears, and becomes somebody else’s problem. However, it’s alarming to see what really happens after a single day, when New York City discards 50,000 tons of garbage daily. This waste must be taken elsewhere, and it is shocking to see how inefficient NYC was in terms of waste management up until 2001. Furthermore, it is unacceptable to allow this waste to be piled up in a town in Pennsylvania. Who knows how much harm the landfill in Tullytown is really doing?
Prior to 2001, NYC had shipped all of their garbage to the Fresh Kills Landfill, causing diesel-fueled trucks to run for miles more than they really had to. In the 1940s, way after the invention of the assembly line, people should have had the mentality that it would be most efficient to split the waste management responsibilities between the boroughs that produced them. Only in 2001 did NY begin to transition to a more efficient method, which includes creating transfer stations all around New York. However, the ethical question of where to place these transfer stations became commonplace. Nobody wanted to live near these transfer station, and Tony Ard was right when he said that they don’t belong in any residential area. They simply don’t belong anywhere.
What I don’t understand is, why create transfer stations when you are just moving the problem to another location? Instead of trying to make the garbage magically disappear; why not take a step towards reusability. Why can’t New York be more like San Francisco, where they are successfully practicing a policy of zero waste? It is clear to me that the New York Officials are thinking only on the short-term track, and this has to stop. There is no time for change tomorrow, change must happen today.
On another note, the presentations this past week were rather moving. Treece, Kansas and Picher, Oklahoma were once settled towns. All that remains today are mounds of chat, which make the air toxic to breathe. This metal mining was unethical, and posed a serious threat to the immediate communities. Lead and other metals poisoned children, causing life-threatening illnesses. I suppose the towns people did not mind, as the mining provided jobs and economic prosperity, however it seems like there was no thought as to what serious hazards these towers of poison would pose to society. The fact that the EPA would then decide to shove these beacons of death into the ground is even more unsettling. They are creating a potential disaster, and the land could be seriously compromised if this poisonous material ever trickled into a ground water source. The towns’ imminent destruction was inevitable, and the irresponsible mining projects should have never taken place.
I enjoyed the ad-campaign as well – Jackie and Joe put across a serious message. The advertisement could have been taken in two different lights. One – in the sense that New Yorkers are polluting one of the greatest cities in the world and that this needs to stop, and Two – in the sense that we can should use the garbage that we produce and build on what we already have with that. We should promote the idea of zero waste, and begin creating more ad-campaigns to drive this movement. Media is one of the most influential means of getting a message across, and it should be taken advantage of for this good cause. I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore. We need to put the idea across America that producing waste is NOT ok, and should emphasize that eventually, the harm that the individual does to the planet will come back to haunt them. Zero waste is possible, it’s just a matter of getting the message across the nation.
Week 12 — Demetra Panagiotopoulos
When I think about all the ways that it could go wrong, nuclear power terrifies me. Why? Because fission is a process that unleashes potentially catastrophic amounts of energy, and because it’s being put in the hands of human beings. People—whatever their accomplishments—are just people. And I have trouble trusting them. Nuclear power could work out really well in a better world. (Ahem, like in France). And it could work just as well here, too, once people get over their carnal American need for profit and start doing/spending whatever it takes to ensure people’s safety. As long as private investors have a stake in this, the corporations that build and operate nuclear power plants will always have their eyes on the short-term bottom line. They’re operated by trained and qualified engineers, but a corporation-esque board of trained and qualified engineer-directors is what makes decisions for them. A long-term overhaul would clearly cause a drop in the stock value, so instead of pushing forward for reform, the power plants only nudge through the standard level of maintenance and repair that regulators expect. They’re still businesses run by businessmen. We can do better than that.
I chose to argue for keeping the Indian Point Power Plant open because, theoretically, it could work out. I truly believe that it could. But I still wouldn’t want to live near it. Because, like the city’s subway system, it’s old and outdated. Because it’s not as securely built as a 21st-century reactor could be. And, most of all, because I don’t trust the American way. Can we get things right? Yes. Will we? I don’t know. And not knowing makes me afraid.
Maybe nobody noticed, but in my argument, I chose not to overly focus on the economic advantages of nuclear power. Because money is not the bottom line. Corporations might see things differently, but that’s too bad, because corporations are not people. They are groups with a specific, highly self-centered and self-interested goal. What do they value? Do they have a conscience? It all depends on the people involved. But, because of their size and their capital, they inherently have more power—they have a greater capacity to do good or cause damage than individuals alone can—and that’s why they can’t be allowed the same freedom in their decision-making as individuals.
The bottom line is quality of life. Having more money does not automatically equal a better quality of life. In America, people often have more than enough to spare, and it seems to me that this surplus capital can go three ways—people can invest it, save it, or waste it. What are we doing with our surplus capital? Are we just going spend it without thinking, causing as much damage as we can unintentionally manage until we run out of fuel? Will the profits from Indian Point wind up more often in the accounts of wealthy investors, or will they go into reinforcing our current clean energy technology standards and researching even better alternatives?
Nuclear power comes with inherent risk, but the long-term cost to the environment—and to the humans directly and indirectly involved with it—is much smaller than the cost of mining, deforestation, fracking, oil refining and whatever else humans do to suck the last vestiges of fossil fuels from beneath the earth’s surface. It is, by far, a cleaner option, when done properly. And when done properly, it’s safer. Whether we choose to make it work is up to us. Whether we choose to take advantage of its potential and enforce the best possible standards is, as I stated in my debate, up to us.
Fracking Frackers
This week, we discussed two very separate concepts, water filtration and fracking. They do not have much to do with each other, but there is a very important overlap that I will discuss.
When the EPA began to mandate water filtration systems, many cities had to pay huge amounts of money to put them in place. New York City took initiative and came up with an alternate method to circumvent the huge costs of building filtration infrastructure. It bought up land around water sources upstate and set up monitoring points for water quality along its path to the city. This solution cost only 1.5 million dollars versus the potential 16 million that a filtration system may have cost. However, other cities did not follow this example because they did not have the same financial pressures as New York City. They simply yielded to EPA regulations. It worries me to think that, if New York had the funds, it may have gone that route as well. The point here is that many environmental problems have cost effective and green solutions that go unnoticed. It was not the forward thinking environmentalism of New York City that led to this innovative solution that continues to provide some of the cleanest drinking water ever. It was an immediate fiscal threat that jolted the city into action. The outcome was good but this does not bode well for future action.
Fracking is a process by which natural gas is extracted from bedrock by drilling horizontally and pumping in fracking liquid until the increased pressure fractures the rock. Unfortunately, the fracking fluid contains chemicals that are known to be dangerous and the process is not completely undestood from an environmental perspective. People living in areas where fracking is done complain about headaches and other illness. Those who defend it can only say that there is no proof of any causation. This is a misallocation of the burden of proof. The impetus to prove safety should be on the companies that want to engage in fracking. Instead, they do not even fully disclose the contents of their fracking fluid. I understand the notion of company secrets but when lives are at stake there is no room for uncertainty. If fracking continues while studies are done, the consequences can be terrible. The companies will have major liability to affected locals. They should learn a lesson from New York City here. Instead of taking the risk of paying massive fees later on, they should find a compromise. Perhaps until the study is done, the companies should only be allowed to drill under land they own upon which no one lives (similar to New York and its reservoir system). This is very important because they cannot actually guarantee that their pipelines are completely secure and filled with cement. Unfortunately, like New York City, without a fiscal incentive up front it is unlikely that any fracking company will discontinue drilling or reveal the contents of its fracking fluid. Without such an incentive, a better solution may never be reached. Job growth in those communities can wait two years especially because guaranteeing safety for the locals is the right thing to do because private profits cannot come at social costs. Most importantly, US law needs to mandate proven safety before any action by these companies. This will even provide an incentive for these companies to fund the safety research themselves. This is good because, “the EPA, God bless them, tries these two year studies often.”
These companies are prepared to deal with the consequences of their actions but refuse to take preemptive measures. This is short sighted and, as evidenced by New York City’s water purity solution, often times a less efficient solution. Attacking the cause of a potential problem, rather than the symptoms, is an important part of environmental engineering. Making cars that are easier to recycle, buildings that have zero energy impact, and clothing that lasts and is not damaging to the environment are all great examples of this trend of forward thinking that must be adopted and in the end may even prove profitable. All we need is incentive.
Koyaanisqatsi and the Qatsi Trilogy
Godfrey Reggio’s “Qatsi” trilogy of Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi are artistic representations and discussions of human life in its many forms. Qatsi is taken from the Hopi word for life and the translations of the titles, as used by Reggio, are “Life Out Of Balance,” “Sorcerer Life” and “Life as War,” respectively. These titles provide some platform on which to examine the plotless films.
Reggio has stated outright that the films were made “not so much about something” nor with “a specific meaning or value,” and that their power comes from making the audience ask their own questions and have their own experience rather than simply dictating one to them. However, these films are absolutely not without intentionality. The brilliant image selection and intense cinematography, in conjunction with Phillip Glass’s incredibly abstract scores, makes each film a deeply powerful event, making it impossible for one who views it seriously to not be moved.
Koyaanisqatsi, the first and most well-known of the films, is deeply environmental in tone and exhibits mankind’s distance from environmental equilibrium. The opening sequence of a rocket during takeoff, with a chorus repeating “Koyaanisqatsi” over a dark organ progression, immediately imbues the viewer with an eerie feeling, a vibe which the music continues when Reggio next moves to the deserts of the southwest. His images of mining operations, atomic bomb blasts and other interruptions of nature, such as oil fields and dams, are followed by images of human society, then interruptions to that with powerful images such as the destruction of a housing project and time-lapse shots of massive crowds moving through streets. Reggio jumps between images displaying the artificial and the natural world, contrasting nature and society while showing the dissonance that mankind brings to all that we interact with.
Powaqqatsi, or “Sorcerer Life” brings the focus away from the mass interruptions that technologically evolved societies are capable of and instead examines countries in the developing world and highlights the evolution of society and its interactions with the environment as the society grows. The film begins displaying smaller cultures and smaller scale interaction with their surrounding environments and people are shown in a very primitive light, only carrying things with their hands or on their heads. The evolution of technology and tools then builds, first with a pottery wheel, followed by metal knives and machetes eventually concluding with a society much like our own. The film also makes a point of displaying the difference sizes and densities of societies using aerial perspectives. The societies begin nearly one with nature and move to a point where nature is so distant from every day life that society itself was not derivative from it. Earlier shots in the film display nature in an overwhelming light, displaying the immensity of mountain ranges, bodies of water and other geographic elements, while the end of the film shows the pure awesomeness of society with shots of enormous crowds of people in the cities of the same developing countries.
Naqoyqatsi, “Life as War,” is the most difficult of the trilogy, focusing on societal pressure, artificiality and mankind’s new existence in a technological culture rather than a naturalistic one. The film works off the idea that technology is the new nature, with Reggio calling technology the “big force” and like oxygen, for “it is always there, a necessity that we cannot live without.” Naqoyqatsi shows man’s development of language and through it false reality with money, a purely man made idea, becoming the most central part of life in society. The film draws to a close on a word filled with madness and “civilized violence,” the film’s interpretation of the Naqoyqatsi. While the first films create their scenes with intense time lapse and slow motion shots focusing primarily on man and environment, Naqoyqatsi uses an erratic blend of images from modern society, weaving them together in a non-linear way that produces an intensely disgusting view of the modern world. Where in Powaqqatsi nature is falling out of human society, in Naqoyqatsi, nature is gone, playing no roll but to be harvest by man simply to maintain the gross existence that our conquest for money and an endless appetite to consume. Of the three, while Koyaanisqatsi was likely the most enjoyable, Naqoyqatsi was the most powerful, with an air of dystopianism reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange.
Environmentalism is undoubtedly one of the core ideas behind the Qatsi trilogy with each film displaying mans different interactions with the environment. While Koyaanisqatsi’s shots of the seemingly endless deserts of the South West may display some artifacts of our old nature, Naqoyqatsi all but dispels that hope. The larger concept of society consuming and exhausting nature may be most prominent in the developing world of Powaqqatsi, however without Koyaanisqatsi’s look at the capabilities of man and the futuristic result of the development the study would not be complete. Each film can of course function on its own but the experiences of seeing them are far stronger as a collective work than by themselves.
When seen after understanding the concepts of this class and the questions to be considered such as how much is too much and what are the values of the environment and environmental sustainability, the Qatsi trilogy provides a wealth of images extremely suitable as a backdrop to try to help one come to their own conclusions. The trilogy fails slightly however in that the sense of overwhelming doom, particularly in Naqoyqatsi, leaves the viewer with a slighted towards simply accepting this warped, culture. Like the beginning of the semester when lessons focused on all of the damage being done without any solutions, the Qatsi trilogy pounds out a dark future for our planet and for mankind. However while the semester developed in an arc, where solutions are raised and addressed, the trilogy stops short before giving any sign of hope, conversely ending far darker than it came in. Although Reggio’s intention was to simply create an intense experience to which one draws their own message, the experience seems somewhat incomplete even if that is exactly what he wanted. Never the less they are profoundly successful in creating an experience the viewer can draw much from. The Qatsi trilogy is an incredible collection of images, sounds and ideas each with a powerful intrinsic greatness that when brought together creates a truly extraordinary experience, with the same being said for the films themselves and as parts of a collection.
The Past, Present, and Future
The Past, Present, and Future
Many people would say that America has progressed greatly over the last century, from abolishing slavery to winning the space race. Indeed, America has progressed greatly since the early 1900s, but there are always new issues that must be addressed. Although the US is doing well socially and economically, many countries are not. Outsourcing is becoming a huge problem both for the United States and for the countries where these corporations are moving.
In developing countries, people are practically being tricked by huge corporations into working far from their home for years in factories with horrible condition, and nothing is being done. Mind you, these corporations are raking in billions of dollars in profit a year. Although some make the argument that these working are making well above the average monthly salary, they are still making less than $60 a month. For the long hours these workers put in, it is practically slavery. This is unacceptable behavior by any corporation, and more so by the companies that make tons of yearly profit. In order for that third world country to ever develop, the working class’ salary must go up to drive the economy forward. Only then will progress be made to a more developed nation.
Until that day however, these outsourced corporations will continue to pollute the environment around their facilities. I mean, that is precisely why they outsourced the jobs in the first place – to be able to do what they want, where they want, when they want as cheap as possible. Until these nations realize that there will be extreme repercussions in the future, nothing will be done. All nations should be able to agree on a set of laws that they see fit so that tomorrow’s world is not environmentally compromised. Although Americans might think that mercury filled rivers in Asia would never impact them, one day, that mercury will end up on your plate containing a deadly concentration of poison.
To address these environmental issues, I feel that there should be worldwide organizations that maintain the environmental well being of the world as a single entity. By establishing a set of guidelines to follow, progress could be made towards sustainable development. However nations that are already developed, such as the United States, would have a hard time to move towards environmental sustainability simply upon the fact that there would have to be a total shift in the manufacturing processes. Infrastructure would have to be rebuilt, and some things would even be less efficient than they are today. In my viewpoint, this is one of the largest problems that any nation would have in moving towards environmental sustainability. This progress would take much longer to achieve than it did to abolish slavery in the United States and even longer than getting a man on the moon, I believe, all because of a single fact. All humans are wired to seek instant gratification. With environmental sustainability there will be no instant gratification, which is something we must accept as a reason to push even harder towards going green.
In the case of slavery, steps were taken at a slow pace to abolish slavery, but each of those steps had immediate effects. In comparison, getting a man on the moon was practically instant – build a rocket, put a man on the rocket, and he will reach the moon given that scientists had a good knowledge of physics. However, people will not be able to appreciate the steps taken towards sustainability. Yes, the initial costs will be high and unpleasant, but if we leave things the way they are now, the total costs of living in the future will be higher than possibly imaginable.
Green Engineering as Sustainable Development
Because the midterm was Monday and Thursday’s lecture covered “Applying the Principles of Green Engineering,” this response will focus on the article alone. Green engineering is an amazing thing. It seems like the clear “next step” for us to take in terms of industrial development, but it also seems like science fiction.
The three main ideas of green engineering, that waste is food, we should use current solar income, and that we should celebrate diversity, seem like good tenets to not only base an industry on, but a lifestyle. The idea of waste as food should resonate with anyone who recycles or composts. Many people advocate for an end to oil and the rise of green power. And diversity should agree with people both on the surface, and on a deeper level. Most people know about cultural and species diversity, but, as the article detailed, we must also consider the diversity of locale. Each place on this planet has its own unique environment, and its own resources and challenges. We must take all of them into account when determining how to proceed most effectively (and this is sustainable development).
A product that is “commercially productive, socially beneficial, and ecologically intelligent” meets the triple bottom line almost by definition. And the article doesn’t just outline a plan for creating such a wondrous product in the future; a couple instances of actual application are described. I immediately have to ask, “what’s the catch?” Do the products come apart easily, are they scratchy, are they prohibitively expensive? I couldn’t quickly find answers to those questions, but Professor Alexandratos seemed to think they were reliable in those areas. I then asked, “but are they still around? Why haven’t I heard of them?” It seems that DesignTex, which invented the sustainable fabric by 1993, still exists and is still committed to producing a green product through green means.
On the other hand, the Shaw carpet company described later in the paper does not seem to fully emphasize its environmental repute. The main page of their website does not mention ecological advantages; only by navigating to different pages of the site are certain “environmentally friendly” products found. It seems that Shaw does still use the Nylon 6 material advertised in the article, but this information is hard to find and not well-emphasized.
This brings me to yet another question. Why are these systems not the main selling point of the products? I would think such environmental advantages would find an enormous market in the ecologically-conscious portion of our society (the same portion that buys exclusively organic food and drives hybrid cars). I was under the impression that being seen as environmentally conscious was, if not actually useful to the environment, at least trendy and popular. Do these products not have a large enough market to be a main selling feature? If price is the obstacle, I can think of a way we might better spend some of the subsidies we give to oil and gas companies. Barring that, government owned or rented buildings and manufacturing process should make use of these techniques to whatever extent they can.
My main concern now is that this article is 9 years old. Where have we gotten in that span of time? I can’t think of any such ecologically beneficial products off the top of my head, with the exception of organic farming and dry cleaning. Even then, I question to what extent production of “organic” foods and products actually resemble the process described in the article.
Reva McAulay
10.18.12
MHC 200 Weekly Writeup #6
There seem to be a couple of running themes in everyone else’s responses this week. One, that environmental sustainability is impossible, and two, that the Civil Rights movement and indeed every other issue in history has not been all that successful. I disagree with both those points. Environmental sustainability is very possible, just not immediately. It doesn’t need to happen immediately. The world is progressing towards it, and that’s good, even if the progress could be faster. To say, oh, it’s impossible and will never happen so we should not even try just slows that progress. Everyone who cares needs to do things to facilitate progress to make up for the people who don’t care, and if some of the people who care don’t do anything because they think it is futile, that just swings the balance in favor of the care-nots. And I bet most of the people who are saying that progress is impossible because people don’t care are not doing anything about it themselves.
As for the second point, the Civil Rights movement has been extremely successful, and anyone who doesn’t think so has expectations that are too high. Sustainability might be a more technically difficult problem to solve, but in getting people engaged it has similar roadblocks, and engagement is ultimately what makes or breaks it. For Civil Rights, the problem was that it affected other people, not the people who had to make the changes. For the environmental problem, the issue is that it will affect people at some point in the future. The world moves slowly, and the change between 50 years ago and today is enormous. If sustainability changed that quickly we would be in a far far better situation than we are in now. If sustainability changed that quickly, it would not even be a pressing issue today.
Emotional engagement is a strange point to agree or disagree with. It’s obvious that they way people are, no change will take place without emotional engagement. The only people who do things for the environment are the ones who are emotionally engaged. I guess the arguable point is who should be doing the emotional engagement, and whether it should be a substitute for or addition to educating people on the facts. Emotional engagement is only good if its based on solid evidence, and if the solid evidence is widely known. Otherwise it could be seen as kind of manipulative. (Then again, what part of elementary school isn’t manipulative?).
Emotional engagement isn’t, though, the ultimate solution to sustainability. It can make people reduce their waste and buy more environmentally friendly products, but emotional engagement is never going to make lots of people decide to fundamentally change their lifestyle away from the ‘constantly increasing GDP’ model. Or I don’t know, maybe it will, but it would take a deeper, longer term, more pervasive kind of emotional engagement than just getting people scared or riled up or virtuous. Its probably the kind of thing that takes a generation or two to change, starting with kids (and here we come back to elementary school and the manipulative aspects thereof), like in the Civil Rights movement. A couple generations from now could consist mostly of people who don’t buy the same amount of things we do, who don’t upgrade and replace everything constantly. That would really be sustainability.
Unrelated to anything else, this closing-the-loop business is really cool. Not like NASA/Space race/man-on-the-moon cool, but still pretty cool. It’s got people figuring out ways to do things previously thought to be impossible, and it’s not so esoteric as biochemistry and finding a magical cure for cancer. All it needs is a little Space Race, Iron Man, this is the future of the human race marketing.
Symbiosis
Symbiosis
The world has become such a diverse place over its lifetime, from simple one-celled bacteria to humans. That must mean that something has been right from the start, which is the idea of having absolutely no waste. This has been accomplished as dead organisms provide the nutrients for new organisms to grow, which is the foundation of how we have come to evolve into smart and efficient creatures. This idea, which I think is an extremely simple one, can be and should be utilized in the corporate world, as it will only advance technology and efficiency in ways that we could never imagine possible.
Ever since the industrial revolution, many people have been thinking of how to improve the current situation, how to make things more efficient. When a system is so flawed from the foundation, such as based on coal power, a huge problem arises. It becomes extremely hard to change the foundation on which corporations were built upon. However if these corporations realize there is an exponential amount of money to make by redefining the problem, progress will be made. Instead of having to create waste and paying to dispose of it, these companies can utilize waste to make new products, minimizing costs, increasing profits. This is definitely the basis for success, as it is precisely this system that has allowed many species to arise and thrive throughout the world.
There is a lot of work to be done for cradle-to-cradle production to be entirely efficient, however we can start by having corporations slowly phase into using renewable energy. Solar energy, for example, is a prime example of a type of renewable energy source that can provide power to homes and factories. Although it may seem more expensive than using oil as a source of energy, our oil repositories will run out soon and then oil prices will be much higher than the price of implementing solar energy. This will provide the framework for future development. With green engineering, we will be able to close the loop that has been destroying the world, and possibly even reverse some of the damage that has been done.
Once this destructive loop is closed, we will all be able to celebrate biodiversity. The basis for how well an ecosystem is the amount of biodiversity that single ecosystem encompasses, which is something that we can increase only after sustainable growth and development begins to occur. Once renewable energy is utilized and no waste is generated, corporations and the environment will be able to live in harmony. There will be some costs to this shift in ideology, however the benefits will indeed outweigh the risks as time passes.
We are currently parasites to the world that we live in, using all of its resources and dumping toxic wastes into it. However, after this paradigm shift takes place, we will be able to live harmoniously with Earth. With this healthy relationship, the Earth will thrive like never before. Ecosystems will be able to diversify while the business world expands and generates profits in ways unseen just decades ago. Corporations will be able to evolve from a primitive creature into something far more advanced, utilizing its waste to make something new so that no waste is generated at all. This future needs to come sooner than later, and we must learn to develop a mutualistic relationship with our home.
Week 3 Response: Alda Yuan
Alda Yuan
Professor Alexandratos
MHC 200
Week 3 Response
The struggle between government regulation and liberty is hardly new or unique to the environmental movement. Every regulation, every law redistributes something, takes power or wealth or liberty from one group and gives it to another, subordinates one interest to another. Even the most basic laws, such as prohibition against thievery are written with the view of putting the interest of societal order above the robber’s liberty to take what he or she wills. Depending on who you ask, environmental regulations are either an example of heavy handed governmental intervention stifling the free market or sorely needed protocols that tip the balance between powerful corporations and individuals.
It cannot be denied that environmental regulations put a burden on business. They force corporations to allocate resources and manpower toward avenues that generate no extra income for the company and open them up to governmental sanctions and legal liability. But it is far from obvious that such a burden is undue. This debate has had a central role in the current presidential election. The slogan of the Republican National Convention for instance was, “We Built It.” This is a linguistic play from a soundbite in which President Obama seemed to declare that business owners did not build their own companies. In reality, he was referring to the public goods such as roads made available and maintained by the government. But the distinction here is almost immaterial because the crux of the matter is that no one truly builds anything on their own. Even if an entrepreneur takes no loans from the government and accepts no help from family members, they cannot claim to have received no aid.
Free enterprise itself is only possible because the government provides a mechanism by which private contracts can be enforced and intellectual property protected. Public schools provide people the basic literacy and arithmetic needed to run even the simplest of businesses. The military might and diplomatic leverage of the country enable our goods and people to travel to and through other countries without hindrance. So while it might be politically expedient to declare businesses owners are all ubermensch, it remains a gross oversimplification. This is not to detract from the hard work and innovation people bring to the free market. And indeed, regulation should not be so onerous as to strangle this. Any country that wants to continue to be an economic power needs people who are motivated, dedicated and ambitious. The strength of a capitalist system is the power of profit as an incentive to continuously develop and improve. But, as the founders might have said, wealth and power come with the responsibility to act with virtue. At the very least, it means not harming the communities from which you derive benefit. And government regulations, while doubtless cumbersome to follow a times, promote the general welfare. Despite the suspicions of our founding fathers for government authority, they understood this principle. In his “Thoughts on Government”, which would serve as the framework for the Massachusetts Constitution and thus for the Constitution of the United States, John Adams said “the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.” Of course, he was arguing for a republican form of government but this utilitarian view of the role of government more than provides justification for intervention in areas where private entities have infringed upon the liberty and comfort of others.
