The Error

[Harrison Danneskjold]

I think the point is more that success depends on trade, and trade on marketplaces, i.e., infrastructure.

Trade of what, for what?

If I had a pair of rocks, you and I could trade them back and forth all day long and neither one of us would succeed.  In fact, if we engaged in this for long enough, we would both starve and 'fail'- nobody would win at all.

Trade enhances success, but ultimately depends on it.  Trade requires production.  If there is no production, all of the trade in the world will not feed a single person.

 

And if you believe, just as "trade depends on markets", that production is caused by resources, then any further discussion of it would be futile.

[bill harris]

re # 16

 

>>>>no metric has been provided to determine what a fair/equitable share of common use of infrastructure is with respect to individual initiative.  Apparently the metric to be used is guilt<<<

 

Fairness of metric is indeed the issue; the grounds for debate are set accordingly.

 

Obama is therefore correct in saying that those who feel individual initiative counts for everything are wrong. What's a bit annoying, however, is that he failed to state the obverse-that collective contribution and infrastructure aren't the whole story, either.

 

So we can conclude that both Galt and Marx are in error: the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and that the real grounds for discourse is to find a fair metric.

 

Lastly, cutting and pasting on a psychologism such as 'guilt' only regresses the dialogue because one's opponents will simply retort with 'greed'. 

 

BH

[aleph_1]

BH writes: Fairness of metric is indeed the issue; the grounds of debaye are set accordingly.

So a floating abstraction sets the grounds for debate? Then we shall hunt snipe!

[softwareNerd]

Well, if we want fairness to people who created the things from which we benefit, then I suppose the government should take some of the taxes we pay and give it to the heirs of J.P.Morgan, Carnegie Mellon and so on. Maybe that's what Obama is saying 

[bill harris]

Philosophy is about abstractions, floating or otherwise. If the topic were real, we'd be talking 'science'.

 

'Metric' in this case (as correctly noted by poster #16), does not carry a pre-set quantitative standard of measure. Therefore, because the standard itself is debatable, we revert to 'philosophy'.

 

Objectivism and Rand are to be congratulated for trying to devise an objective grounds for making philosophical statements. Hence my attraction to both.

 

One such standard is the primacy of the individual and his/her claim of just reward for effort, skill, and ingenuity. As such, this claim is true; yet although I find it necessary, it's still insufficient. Collective and infrastructrual inputs are part of the picture, too. 

 

In this sense, again, because no one has yet to derive a quantitative standard to measure the relative inputs, we are, indeed, left to snipe away, philosophically speaking.

 

Moreover, the worst error would be to declare that an objective standard exists simply by fiat....

 

Re Morgan, Mellon, et al: I believe that you mean Carnegie and Rockefeller, who were industrialists. The former were bankers. 

 

In any case, tossing the issue back to 1890-ish gets you nowhere. You still have the problem of (non) measured contribution, tee-vee showz on 'who bilt amerika' not withstanding.

 

BH

[softwareNerd]

Re Morgan, Mellon, et al: I believe that you mean Carnegie and Rockefeller, who were industrialists. The former were bankers.

I meant Morgan and Carnegie, but Rockefeller is well deserving, and Mellon was probably close.

In any case, tossing the issue back to 1890-ish gets you nowhere. You still have the problem of (non) measured contribution, tee-vee showz on 'who bilt amerika' not withstanding.

You missed the point though. The point is that if I concede I owed things to society, then it is not to the poor guy who cannot get his act together and works off and on or not at all. What in hell did he ever give me.

So, Obama's call is a magician's trick. it is called "misdirection".

[aleph_1]

SoftwareNerd: ..."misdirection".

Or "Bait and switch".

What hasn't been added is Mr. O's assertion that "You are your brother's keeper". This is the perversion called the duty ethic. The underlying view is that you gained benefits from undefinable others so you owe the products of your efforts to undefinable others. No decent or honest man would ever come to me and say that I owe him $1000 per month because some stranger to both of us invented the lightbulb from which I benefitted, or paved roads that I use, and if I don't pay he'll imprison me. It takes a government to do that.

First, I pay for infrastructure use through registration taxes and gas taxes. To whatever extent my taxes don't cover road maintenance, I will take no responsibility. This leaves me with no further obligation to anyone for this "infrastructure". I wish to pay for what I use because I want no further obligation to anyone else. Only a louse would make a continuing claim. An evil man would put a gun to my back to force me to pay an undefinable continuing claim.

Why the undefined continuing claim? Because the evil louse wants unearned benefits. The one who would rule the evil louse want unlimited power to force. Both want to subvert the Law of Causality--the metaphysical root of their evil.

Edited March 22, 2014 by aleph_1

[tadmjones]

As Eva Harris said philosophy is about abstractions floating or otherwise. Science tells you how to build a bridge, some philosophies can lead you to the floating abstraction of infrastructure. Or perhaps contextless abstraction of infrastructure.

Edited March 23, 2014 by tadmjones

[bill harris]

As Eva Harris said philosophy is about abstractions floating or otherwise. Science tells you how to build a bridge, some philosophies can lead you to the floating abstraction of infrastructure. Or perhaps contextless abstraction of infrastructure.

??

[dream_weaver]

??

While I can't speak for tadmjones, it appears that what is meant is: i.e.: Not all philosophies are guided by a sincere respect for reality. 

 

Edited: Added.

Edited March 23, 2014 by dream_weaver

[Plasmatic]

Bill, are you familiar with any of Rand's non-fiction? If not you will be lost when folks here talk with the common concepts shared by Oist. Atlas Shrugged won't equip one to have the discussion implicit in the concepts employed by tad above

[bill harris]

re 31 & 32:

 

That redistribution to the jobless, working poor, and the seriously needy might be taken advantage of by parasites is called 'moral hazard'. So you can relax: there's no need to get abusive or to question Obama's motives, or to make elaborated inferences as to what he 'really' meant.

 

What he said was true on face value: millions of Americans work very hard, but remain poor. Raising the minimum wage (the subject of the speech, i believe) would help.

 

And of course, the extent of the moral hazard has much to do with the viability of a policy in the first place. With the finite funding available, use the money to create jobs that pay decently well. Excepting the presence of children, don't use the money in ways that might encourage some not to work.

 

This, of course, you're free to disagree with as a matter of both philosophy and practical policy. name-calling, however, is counterproductive.

 

BH

[bill harris]

Bill, are you familiar with any of Rand's non-fiction? If not you will be lost when folks here talk with the common concepts shared by Oist. Atlas Shrugged won't equip one to have the discussion implicit in the concepts employed by tad above

Plasmatic,

 

My '?' indicated that he confused me with an 'Eva', thereby indicating a fugitive post , not a response to my previous one.

 

Yes, thanks, i'm somewhat familiar with Rand's philosophy/epistemology. 

 

BH

[Plasmatic]

re 31 & 32:

 

That redistribution to the jobless, working poor, and the seriously needy might be taken advantage of by parasites is called 'moral hazard'. So you can relax: there's no need to get abusive or to question Obama's motives, or to make elaborated inferences as to what he 'really' meant.

 

What he said was true on face value: millions of Americans work very hard, but remain poor. Raising the minimum wage (the subject of the speech, i believe) would help.

 

And of course, the extent of the moral hazard has much to do with the viability of a policy in the first place. With the finite funding available, use the money to create jobs that pay decently well. Excepting the presence of children, don't use the money in ways that might encourage some not to work.

 

This, of course, you're free to disagree with as a matter of both philosophy and practical policy. name-calling, however, is counterproductive.

 

BH

 

The morality of redistribution is precisely what is at issue here. We can add the question of the validity of a "middle of the road" conception of a principled approach to ethics... Do you accept the premise of natural rights? By this I mean that no man can earn a right, it is given in the identity of man.

Edited March 23, 2014 by Plasmatic

[bill harris]

The morality of redistribution is precisely what is at issue here. We can add the question of the validity of a "middle of the road" conception of a principled approach to ethics... Do you accept the premise of natural rights? By this I mean that no man can earn a right, it is given in the identity of man.

Because no one denies 'natural rights', an Objectivist is not special because he/she claims it as an asserted belief.

 

The more modern term, btw, is 'dignity', because NR is rather closely associated with a particular Lockean/Jeffersonain god-given. OTH, 'dignity' is what we owe each other in terms of respect and personal entitlement (privacy, reward commensurate to effort).

 

Obama has given no indication that he does not believe in either NR or dignity. Rather, the point of his speech is that it's precisely hard work without decent compensation that robs a huge number of their own dignity and sense of self-worth.

 

There is no morality of redistribution as such. Rather, the concept is mediated by 'fairness'. Again, because there is no metric, what one owes is open for discussion...

 

BH

[Plasmatic]

Bill said:

 

Because no one denies 'natural rights', an Objectivist is not special because he/she claims it as an asserted belief.

 

Is this going to be how this proceeds? You assume others definitions/meaning when I give you mine and then cast a strawman my way?

 

The more modern term, btw, is 'dignity', because NR is rather closely associated with a particular Lockean/Jeffersonain god-given. OTH, 'dignity' is what we owe each other in terms of respect and personal entitlement (privacy, reward commensurate to effort).

 

Obama has given no indication that he does not believe in either NR or dignity. Rather, the point of his speech is that it's precisely hard work without decent compensation that robs a huge number of their own dignity and sense of self-worth.

 

 

I am not talking about the concept of "dignity" nor is it possible that Obama accepts what I mean by natural rights. To quote something Nathaniel Branden said once "no man has a natural right to something another man had to earn". Theft and extortion is not dignified if you accept that rights are natural-unearned and in a free society no man has to trade with another for what he thinks is not worth his effort. Dignity, like pride, or any other virtue, is something that must be earned by satisfying the conditions required of the values of the evaluator. An automatic virtue makes virtues meaningless. You are attempting to prescribe universal values for the contextual issue of trade. The consequence of this is you are advocating the violation of others values for your own. Obama enforces the values that claim a right to what others have earned. This is the opposite of what I mean by natural rights.

 

 

Edit:

 

 

There is no morality of redistribution as such. Rather, the concept is mediated by 'fairness'. Again, because there is no metric, what one owes is open for discussion...

 

There is nothing fair about theft. Fairness is a moral term....

Edited March 23, 2014 by Plasmatic

[Hairnet]

I meant Morgan and Carnegie, but Rockefeller is well deserving, and Mellon was probably close.

You missed the point though. The point is that if I concede I owed things to society, then it is not to the poor guy who cannot get his act together and works off and on or not at all. What in hell did he ever give me.

So, Obama's call is a magician's trick. it is called "misdirection".

 

What is interesting is that the real argument going on is between the plutocrats and the entrepreneurs.  JP Morgan helped form the Federal Reserve and that institution evolved to become a very important part of modern statism. He made it big so he got to determine an important part of the political economy. A great deal of those nineteenth/twentieth century industrialists and financiers ended up giving power to the government. 

 

Welfare may be a legitimate attempt to invest in society and turn low tax revenue generating individuals into higher tax revenue generating individuals. Earlier I described the nation state as attempting to operate as a guild. The guild gives money and loans to people so that later they can pay more back into the system.  For some conservatives and democrats this is exactly what they advocate. Sometimes this is successful. My mother took welfare when I was young for a short time, and now my whole family pays taxes into the system. 

 

In many other ways welfare is an attempt to placate leftist politicians and their base. Democrats aren't really that far left in the grand scheme of things. Most europeans look at the democrats as being equicalent to their right-of-center parties. Leftists in America think that the last 40 years has been an era of "Neo-Liberalism".  I had a leftist bitching about how right-wing Clinton was on reddit just the other day.

 

However they spend a lot of time pandering to leftists just like Republicans spend time pandering to Christians. 

 

(By left, I mean egalitarian. By right, I mean not egalitarian).

[aleph_1]

re 31 & 32:

That redistribution to the jobless, working poor, and the seriously needy might be taken advantage of by parasites is called 'moral hazard'.

BH

Nope. Moral hazard occurs when the government makes choices that "risk" non-repayment, such as Solyndra and easy housing credit. Taking money and giving it to others who "might" misspend it is still just theft. When a thief gives my money to charity, he is still a thief.

It is stunning that you claim to know all about Objectivist philosophy and yet show so little evidence of it. By the way, no one has called anyone names here. If you check, labels have been applied to the positions held and not the person. Many of your positions are an advocacy for evil. This is called Identification, which is normally followed by Evaluation and Response.

[aleph_1]

Concerning the OP, "You didn't build that" assumes that I have a continuing debt that I can never repay. I claim no such debt can properly be imposed without calling me a slave. I have made payment for all of the infrastructure that I have used. I owe no further debt. To the extent that I have paid, yes I did build that!

[softwareNerd]

JP Morgan helped form the Federal Reserve and that institution evolved to become a very important part of modern statism. He made it big so he got to determine an important part of the political economy. A great deal of those nineteenth/twentieth century industrialists and financiers ended up giving power to the government.

With the caveat that people like Morgan usually have a mixture of good and bad in their past, he was clearly on the side of the angels. He was like the venture capitalists of today, always looking for bright inventors he could back. Much like today's venture capitalists, he also continued to play a role in the businesses he funded, looking to get one business to help the other, to combine them in order to be more efficient, and so on. People like Google and Apple need financiers to bet on their merit, before the public at large ever does.

Morgan never needed a lender of last resort, since he routinely had close to 100% cash reserves on demand deposits. On the contrary, he acted like a lender of last resort himself. When he did so, he profited from it. A central bank (or the FDIC) will guarantee deposits if the recipient banks have followed the central bank's guidelines about lending and reserves. On the other hand, Morgan would step in if the panic was overblown for a specific bank, and if -- looking at their books -- he judged he could get their loans at a bargain price.

The 1907 depression was the turning point. The government played a big role in supporting banks on which there were runs, but so did J.P.Morgan -- with money and also by rallying other bankers. Nevertheless, many bankers viewed him as predatory. The congressional PUJO hearings followed. The political cry of the times was that the banking system was too reliant of people like Morgan: that we needed more active and formal government involvement.

Morgan was not the driving force behind the Federal Reserve. I realize that it is shaky to argue a counter-factual. Still, in a world that did not vilify him, and a world that said "let failures fail", I see no reason Morgan would have supported the creating of a Federal reserve. Not to paint him as totally moral, but he and bankers like him were victims of the Fed than beneficiaries.

 

Welfare may be a legitimate attempt to invest in society and turn low tax revenue generating individuals into higher tax revenue generating individuals.

There's no doubt that people can need charity, and that they can end up paying it back in spades. Government shouldn't be forcing people to do charity, but there's nothing wrong with charity as such. Schools run by nuns and priests often gave free or discounted schooling to some kids. The kids were being subsidized by charitable donations, and by the tuition from paying parents. Ages ago, in New York, an organization started to make micro-loans to small-time vendors who could not get loans from banks. Even today, there are private food banks and shelters in most cities. It's likely that -- in absence of so much forced charity -- there would be still more private funding.

The micro-loan movement in Bangladesh is another example. One charity started by an American-based Indian gives scholarships to poor kids in India if they will sign a pledge to give a portion of their lifetime income (I think it's 5% or 10%) back to the charity, for the funding of future scholarships.

Edited March 23, 2014 by softwareNerd

[tadmjones]

harris, nee matthews?

re 31 & 32:

 

That redistribution to the jobless, working poor, and the seriously needy might be taken advantage of by parasites is called 'moral hazard'. So you can relax: there's no need to get abusive or to question Obama's motives, or to make elaborated inferences as to what he 'really' meant.

 

What he said was true on face value: millions of Americans work very hard, but remain poor. Raising the minimum wage (the subject of the speech, i believe) would help.

 

And of course, the extent of the moral hazard has much to do with the viability of a policy in the first place. With the finite funding available, use the money to create jobs that pay decently well. Excepting the presence of children, don't use the money in ways that might encourage some not to work.

 

This, of course, you're free to disagree with as a matter of both philosophy and practical policy. name-calling, however, is counterproductive.

 

BH

How would raising the min wage 'help'? Do you mean that if employees earned more nominal dollars , they would have more to spend and drive up production ?

 

'What' would it help? Do you mean that wage earners spending more  means 'boat lifting tides' that benefit 'all'?

 

'How' would/should it be raised? The help afforded to the 'economy' is to be directed by the government forcing employers to pay their employees what the govt deems necessary?

Edited March 23, 2014 by tadmjones

[bill harris]

Nope. Moral hazard occurs when the government makes choices that "risk" non-repayment, such as Solyndra and easy housing credit. Taking money and giving it to others who "might" misspend it is still just theft. When a thief gives my money to charity, he is still a thief.

It is stunning that you claim to know all about Objectivist philosophy and yet show so little evidence of it. By the way, no one has called anyone names here. If you check, labels have been applied to the positions held and not the person. Many of your positions are an advocacy for evil. This is called Identification, which is normally followed by Evaluation and Response.

If you don't want to call the welfare issue a 'moral hazard', that's fine with me.

 

Yet by any other name, governments have been debating the virtues and vices of welfare since time immemorial. The most important question therein always seems to be, to what extent does welfare cause a disincentive to work?

 

What we do seem to understand by virtue of empirical-based economics (ie non-Austrian) is that the disincentive seems tied closely to the market value of one's labor to begin with--the 'income versus substitution effect'. 

 

Here, minimum wage increases are designed to put people onto the 'incomes' side of the slope. 

 

The ethics of Rand are said to be classified as ultra-consequentialist in terms of a survey of all stated ethical positions. In this regard, yes, i'm aware that she called Kant 'evil' because of the consequence alone of his philosophy.

 

But also called him and Hume 'witch doctors', which is indeed name-calling. Or perhaps said 'witch doctor' is an item I missed within the lexicon of record?

 

BH

[softwareNerd]

The most important question therein always seems to be, to what extent does welfare cause a disincentive to work?

Perhaps it has been, but it is not actually the most important question.

[bill harris]

harris, nee matthews?

How would raising the min wage 'help'? Do you mean that if employees earned more nominal dollars , they would have more to spend and drive up production ?

 

'What' would it help? Do you mean that wage earners spending more  means 'boat lifting tides' that benefit 'all'?

 

'How' would/should it be raised? The help afforded to the 'economy' is to be directed by the government forcing employers to pay their employees what the govt deems necessary?

Males do not normally change their names upon marriage. Females do, however, hence the 'nee'. Nor is 'Bill Harris' an alias.

 

In the last post, you referred to me as 'Eva', now as 'nee Matthews". Combining the two, I get 'Eva Matthews', her entire family with whom I'm friends.

 

Eva does not post here. Hers was a project to retrieve information on some sort of 'dissonance/consonance scale'; in other words, to provoke anger which, from her telling, was easy.

 

The 'success' of her project, as she claimed, was the remarkable facility in which discussions about real issues became bogged down into name-calling and personal investigations.

 

A brief glance over to her participant site shows me that the moderator himself was the prime provoking agent. He caused the discussions to become personal, which is the opposite of what he's supposed to do.

 

Paradoxically, Eva leans more to your pov than i, who for all purposes remains neutral. For my part, i'm interested in open discussion in a friendly, relaxed way. 

 

BH

[bill harris]

Perhaps it has been, but it is not actually the most important question.

There's a lot on your blog--kindly direct me to an article. Otherwise, please elaborate as to what you think the most important question is.

 

Thx, Bill