www.calloftheentrepreneur.com is now open to the public. Stop on by for the latest updates on Acton’s new documentary, The Call of the Entrepreneur. You can view the trailer via YouTube or watch a higher resolution version via the “View the Trailer” tab. Find out where the premieres will be, or request to host a screening by visiting the “Premiere Information” tab. To see a little bit more about the people featured in the documentary, visit the “About the Film” tab. Read a little bit more about the calling of entrepreneurs and the place of business in society via the “Related Materials” tab. Finally, you can leave and read feedback on the trailer or the documentary by visiting the “Feedback” tab.

Updates regarding the documentary will be posted on this blog and on The Call of the Entrepreneur Website. Stay tuned!

The Supreme Court ruled today (5-4) in the case of Massachusetts v. EPA (05-1120) “that the federal government had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases that may contribute to global warming, and must examine anew the scientific evidence of a link between those gases and climate change.”

Toward the end of last year some were arguing that “this case is not about the science of climate change. There is no dispute that human emissions of greenhouse gases affect the global climate.” As we can see, the Court did find that the science of climate change is at issue.

Now that the Court has found in favor of the state of Massachusetts, affirming the state’s standing in the case, this may end up being a more important case than many, including myself, first thought. The “maze of procedural issues” ended up not preventing the Court from reaching this decision. More on this in coming days.

Update: The Court’s opinion can be read here (PDF).

A couple weeks ago the NYT magazine ran a piece by contributing writer Tina Rosenberg, which attempts to outline some of the ways in which “everyone in a wealthy nation has become the beneficiary of the generous subsidies that poorer countries bestow upon rich ones.”

What does she mean? In “Reverse Foreign Aid,” Rosenberg asserts that there are five major forms of poor-to-rich international subsidy. The first is the tendency among poorer nations to build-up great reserves of hard currency, often in the form of T-bills. The problem here is that there is an opportunity cost in holding the low-return but ultra-secure US Treasury bills: “All the money spent on T-bills — a very substantial sum — could be earning far better returns invested elsewhere, or could be used to pay teachers and build highways at home, activities that bring returns of a different type.”

A second form of subsidy is in the WTO requirements that member nations abide by copyright and intellectual property protections. “There are good reasons for countries to respect intellectual property, but doing so is also an overwhelming burden on the poorest people in poorer countries,” writes Rosenberg.

So-called “tax holidays” form a third kind of subsidy, in which poorer nations offer tax incentives and various other breaks to multi-national corporations to entice them to bring their operations to their country. Rosenberg writes, “Since deals between corporations and governments are usually secret, it is hard to know how much investment incentives cost poorer countries — certainly tens of billions of dollars. Whatever the cost, it is growing, as country after country has passed laws enabling the offer of such incentives.”

Rosenberg also describes brain drain as a form of subsidy, in which skilled professionals who are trained in poorer nations emigrate to wealthier ones. She also points out the adverse effects that domestic subsidies of various industries, such as agriculture, can have on poorer nations. Somehow or other this direct subsidy becomes a “reverse subsidy” because “corn, rice or cotton exported by rich countries is so cheap that small farmers in poor countries cannot compete, so they stop farming.”

And finally, Rosenberg calls the disproportionate negative effects of climate change on poorer nations the “ultimate subsidy.” She writes, “American energy use is being subsidized by tropical coastal nations, who appear to be global warming’s first victims.”

The essay is really a bit uneven. It’s hard to fathom why, for example, cheaper imports of agriculture commodities from wealthier nations should be seen as “reverse” subsidies. Just because a certain practice or policy negatively affects a poorer country doesn’t mean that it is a “reverse” subsidy. And just because wealth is created in the first world doesn’t mean that it comes at the expense of someone in the third world, although there are good reasons to see that Rosenberg is right about the consequences on agricultural sectors in developing nations.

With respect to the second form of “reverse subsidy,” Rosenberg is really describing a kind of competition between developing nations, and the beneficiaries aren’t so much wealthier governments but large multi-national corporations. Of course, many critics of the developed world can’t or won’t distinguish between these two (all the better to fit into the picture of a growing neo-liberal “empire”).

Brain drain is a real problem for the developing world, but as is the case with so many of these instances of “reverse subsidy,” Rosenberg is pointing to a legitimate issue or concern but failing to ask the right kinds of questions, and thus providing some questionable solutions (a neo-Keynesian answer for T-bill stockpiling?). Why, for instance, are professionals leaving developing nations to work in places like the United States? In many, if not most, cases money surely is a motivation. But there certainly are other factors at work, and the potential for greater income isn’t a sufficient explanation as to why so many people leave their home, friends, and family to go live in a foreign country. Indeed, large-scale migration out of a nation is a pretty reliable indicator that something is wrong in the native country.

And maybe the fact that poorer nations don’t respect copyright and IP rights is as much a contributor as it is an effect of their lower economic status. How can you expect to be a country that fosters innovation if there are no legal protections for innovation and invention?

A recent NBER paper, “Globalization and Poverty,” examining some of these issues makes the case that globalization is a complex phenomenon and that in some cases segments of the poor can be made worse off. This is no doubt true, and the merit of Rosenberg’s piece is that it points out some of the real-world issues that a globalized economy faces. The question remains, however, whether at least some of these negative effects might be mitigated by a freer and more liberalized system of trade rather than one which relies on subsidies, tariffs, and protectionism.

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

It is indeed fortunate that Our Father has seen fit to quech our appetites in another way and put you in a new role despite your losing in quite dramatic style your former patient to our Enemy. At least you have the good sense to continue our counsel together.

I note what you say about your patient’s apparent obsession with things terrestrial and that you’ve been taking care that he sees a good deal of his apoplectic friends. You have an opportunity here that with any modicum of sound judgement and decisiveness will yield more favorable results.

Recall that our business is foremost to get him away from the Eternal (not to mention any association with our Enemy) and from the Present, lest he conduct his life in a way that makes him of any real use to Them. Keep his passions pointed at the Future and all such wildly imaginable possibilities that the present warming of the terrestrial could cause -- significant hardship, terrific bouts of weather, droughts, disasters ad nauseum -- with no way to know the outcome.

For him to act as you wish your patient must believe himself capable of both utterly dismantling creation and being its savior. Encourage him to depend on cleverness and ingenuity to think his way out of these problems, never mind that they exist only in his own mind. He is thus kept foresquare in the midst of all of Our Father’s best vices - fear, avarice, lust and ambition - all the while thinking himself the selfless humanitarian. I say again, we want a man hag-ridden by the Future, haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth, dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see.

Make the results of his scientific inquiry of a veiled past certanties to him. As long as Hypothesis is truth he will use it to guide all of his actions and attitudes. Since his truth is devoid of “grace” scorn and blame will abound. Others will be goaded into following, expanding your influence. Never allow him access to Truth else he will become like that Moses who used the Enemy’s famines and disasters over our Lord Ra in Egypt to benefit the Slaves. Or worse still - the Son of the Enemy to whom weather and swine submit.

Our Father always encourages in humans the sense of ownership – ownership of life, body, time, the elements, & etc. Humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and Hell. Much of his environmentalism (such an artful term!) comes from the patient’s belief that his world is utterly affected by the smallest of his actions. His “ism” becomes a pastime in which it is only a matter of time until he can bring it completely under his maternal submission.

Just as he reaches the zenith of his personal piety don’t neglect to remind him he is merely an ape and has no more right to lord over the planet than any fungus. Or that he is in fact toxic fungus with no right to exist. Such despair is a feast for the senses!

Our Father has not yet ascertained why the Enemy is gently warming the terrestrial world, nor why He is granted free reign to unite governments and scientists and industrialists and activists in fruitless attempts to stop it. Until then you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it and then do the opposite. If all that can be accomplished for now is blame heaped upon mankind and the patient alike, and blindness to the Enemy’s hand in these affairs, you will likely achieve more success than before.

Your affectionate uncle,
SCREWTAPE

Those who know me are not surprised to learn that I sincerely admired Pope John Paul II for many years. At first, like many Protestants, I saw him only as the pope, thus as a person standing in some kind of opposition to my own Christian faith. After I began to grasp what I believed about the Creed’s affirmation regarding “one, holy, catholic church” I found my heart melted to love all Christians everywhere. It was not hard for me to love John Paul II when I spent time getting to know more about him and spoke with some who knew him. The real clincher was George Weigel’s masterful biography, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1999). Karol Wojtyla loved Christ very deeply and was a monumental figure in the twentieth century. He also genuinely inspired people to live better lives.

John Paul II made his final public appearance two years ago last week, March 30, sitting in complete weakness on the balcony overlooking Vatican Square where thousands expressed their deep love for him. A few days later, on today’s date April 2, he passed into the presence of Christ his Lord. So, this weekend marks the second anniversary of those final momentous hours of this great man’s life. He died, as he had lived, in dependence upon Christ for his hope. (Anti-Catholics will insist that the pope can not be a Christian. My saying that he was a great Christian will invite their opposition. I believe that any fair-minded Christian, who carefully reads the witness that he faithfully bore to Christ throughout his long life, will draw the conclusion that this was a man of true faith.)

I decided to mark this weekend by viewing the superb video: Pope John Paul II. This three-hour feature-length film first aired on television in 2005. It is now available on DVD. It stars Cary Elwes (as a young  Karol Wojtyla in Poland) and Jon Voight (as Pope John Paul II). Voight, who is an Academy Award recipient for a previous film, could actually pass for John Paul II in his features. He also mastered the late pope’s mannerisms well. Both men, in my judgment, do a superb job of portraying John Paul II faithfully in the film. (This film was made with the full cooperation of the Vatican.) It covers the whole life of John Paul II, from his early childhood, through the Nazi occupation of Poland and the the Communist takeover, right down to his final moments on earth.

John Paul was a courageous man, comfortable in himself and calmly assured of his faith. He was a true intellectual and a shepherd who loved people deeply. He often touched the lives of ordinary people with profound humility, as the film magnificently shows, especially in one deleted scene that I wish had been preserved. As I thought again about John Paul II I realized his true power lay in the two things marked his life: His sense of humor and genuine self-effacing manner and his profound intellect joined with a deep and real personal piety. These two qualities are often missing in the role-models evangelicals have provided for their own flocks. This is one reason for John Paul’s universal appeal, as it is with Billy Graham among evangelicals. John Paul lived well and suffered well, providing to many of us a faithful witness to Christ that brings us real hope that God can transform a powerful and prominent man into a truly humble Christian. (Perhaps it would be better to say that he was a truly humble man who happened to become the pope, much to his surprise, and the office never altered who he really was before God.)

Just this weekend a nun in France has reported that she was healed by praying to the deceased John Paul II. This miracle will now be investigated by the Vatican, through a rigorous process of study. Such a miracle becomes necessary in order to beatify John Paul II. This whole process is one that Protestant evangelicals rightly question given the lack of obvious biblical reasons for such a process. This remains one of those aspects of Catholicism that I find unnecessary at the very best.

Regardless of how you disagree with the idea of the papacy, and the present process of beatification, you can not deny the importance of this man to world affairs and religion in the late twentieth century. Whether you know a lot about John Paul II, or very little, you would also do well to see this film. The DVD edition includes some wonderful memories of John Paul II as well as four or five deleted scenes and some excellent cast interviews. (These clips were also worth seeing.) I commend this lavishly produced film to all. It presents John Paul II in a personal and most human way.

John H. Armstrong is founder and director of ACT 3, a ministry aimed at “encouraging the church, through its leadership, to pursue doctrinal and ethical reformation and to foster spiritual awakening.”