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Laissez-faire: An Impractical Ideal?

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drewfactor

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I have a question regarding the practicality of Laissez-faire.

From the informations I have got off the internet, the West Virginian Mine Wars were a product of no regulations from the government.

My question is: Did government intervention help create the Mine War situation?

After doing more research, I have found the answer to my question.

Moderator: Please feel free to delete the above two posts.

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Would you care to share your discoveries?

According to this site,

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In Virginia, after the Revolutionary War, the state gave land grants on their western border to the veterans and sold some of the rest to land speculators. Most of this land was forfeited back to the state because the original title holders had failed to pay their taxes or register their land. The state then sold this land to people who lived there, but the current capitalists purchased those original deeds, knowing they were invalid and sought help from the courts to take away the land from the people who lived there. Twice, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that those deeds were invalid and that the local inhabitants legally owned their land. The capitalists then found federal judges who were “friendly” to them, probably due to bribery, and the land was declared as belonging to the land speculators. This enabled them to take over the land and entitled them to the coal profits. It no longer mattered whether the locals wanted to sell their land or not, and it planted the seeds of mistrust for the court system and the government (Corbin, Rebellion).

Due to a government fiasco and help, the speculators were able to acquire huge tracts of land, effectively creating their own cities. They brought miners from different parts of the US. Because the speculators owned most of the land through govt. help, no competition was possible. The miners who worked at the mines were always in debt to the company due to the high prices of the company stores. The company also issued its own money which could not be used elsewhere.

If the govt. had not failed to protect the property rights of the original landowners, instead of a few investors owning huge tracts of lands with no competition, there would have been many investors and consequently such a situation would not have occured.

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  • 2 weeks later...
I'm not a formal student of economics, however, based on my own readings I think I have modest grasp of the principles of free-market economics.

I find that there are very very few people out there who are willing to entertain the notion of laissez-faire capitalism. Everyone I discuss/debate with, even university economics students, end up saying something to the effect of laissez faire being "idealistic" or "impractical" since it doesn't account for what it's like in the "real world." Even listening to John Ridpath debate on a tape I ordered from ARI, he is faced with the same attack from his opponent and it he doesn't really tend to it.

How do others respond to this criticism against others?

I can tell you how I respond although my position isn't an orthodox objectivist Randian position.

First, I disagree with Rand's epistemology although I agree with many of her moral positions. I think Karl Popper and W. W Bartley were right about epistemology. That is, people are fallible and they learn by noticing problems with their current ideas about the world, then they propose solutions to those problems and criticise them until there is one set of ideas left, at which point they notice a problem with their new set of ideas and so on. People may criticise a practical idea by trying it out and showing that it doesn't work as well as other ideas.

What does this have to do with socialism? Well, the people of whom you speak think that it is practical for the state to provide charity by taxing people and then spending their money on their schemes to help the poor. However, government officials can be mistaken like everyone else and so their schemes might be poorer than other ideas that people could try to help the poor. We cannot find out whether they are mistaken except through critical argument and usually we will not be able to settle the issue except by trying out different ideas. And of course, some people may think we ought to spend more on the poor or less on the poor and the only way to settle that issue is, again, through critical argument and trying out different ideas about how much people ought to spend. However, if the government is stealing from people to support its own schemes it restricts our ability to discuss and try out different ideas.

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  • 2 weeks later...
I'm not a formal student of economics, however, based on my own readings I think I have modest grasp of the principles of free-market economics.

I find that there are very very few people out there who are willing to entertain the notion of laissez-faire capitalism. Everyone I discuss/debate with, even university economics students, end up saying something to the effect of laissez faire being "idealistic" or "impractical" since it doesn't account for what it's like in the "real world." Even listening to John Ridpath debate on a tape I ordered from ARI, he is faced with the same attack from his opponent and it he doesn't really tend to it.

How do others respond to this criticism against others?

It seems like the worst opponents are not the outright socialists, who you can easily prove wrong, it is conservatives and liberals who demand the need for a "social safety net" or some form of controls because it is "practical."

(For those who are interested, Ridpath's opponent in the debate is Bob Rae, a social democrat who was voted premiere of my province of Ontario and he bankrupted us with his socialist policies).

It's not at all impractical at all. Pure Laissez-faire is very natural and very medieval too in comparison to today's standards. Think Ebeneezer Scrooge. That was how Laissez-faire worked. An honest day's pay for an honest day's work and a day off without pay. And as the pilgrims preached: if you don't work, you don't eat. Simple as that.

As you pointed out, today's economy with all its safety nets, inflationary money, and so on is completely artificial. That's all I have to say for now.

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  • 3 weeks later...
I can tell you how I respond although my position isn't an orthodox objectivist Randian position.

First, I disagree with Rand's epistemology although I agree with many of her moral positions. I think Karl Popper and W. W Bartley were right about epistemology. That is, people are fallible and they learn by noticing problems with their current ideas about the world, then they propose solutions to those problems and criticise them until there is one set of ideas left, at which point they notice a problem with their new set of ideas and so on. People may criticise a practical idea by trying it out and showing that it doesn't work as well as other ideas.

What does this have to do with socialism? Well, the people of whom you speak think that it is practical for the state to provide charity by taxing people and then spending their money on their schemes to help the poor. However, government officials can be mistaken like everyone else and so their schemes might be poorer than other ideas that people could try to help the poor. We cannot find out whether they are mistaken except through critical argument and usually we will not be able to settle the issue except by trying out different ideas. And of course, some people may think we ought to spend more on the poor or less on the poor and the only way to settle that issue is, again, through critical argument and trying out different ideas about how much people ought to spend. However, if the government is stealing from people to support its own schemes it restricts our ability to discuss and try out different ideas.

Perhaps you can explain it a bit better to me, but I don't see how you can agree with Rand's moral positions and deny their epistemological basis. Due to the systematic and hierarchical nature of Objectivism, I would assume that you cannot validate any of Rand's moral positions without validating her epistemological position first. While it is true that people are fallible (Rand never said they weren't), the link between her epistemology and ethics is that reason (epistemology) and life as the standard of value (ethics) are inextricably linked.

Pertaining to Capitalism vs. Mixed Economy vs. Socialism, I would say that regardless of Popper's notion of perpetually tentative solutions, the morality and practicality of Capitalism over the latter are objectively verifiable. According to Objectivism, capitalism is moral and practical because it is consistent with man's nature (ie. the fact that life requires self-sustaining action, rationality, productiveness etc..). Since this gives us the superiority of Capitalism over all other known political-economic systems, what basis do we have to suggest that this is merely a "tentative solution" ? My hunch is that there is no basis, and to suggest that there is, without offering a suggestion, would be to assert the arbitrary, and thus is not worthy of consideration since there is no context to suggest a better system.

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