mustang19
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Posts posted by mustang19
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Others are doing a fine job of that already. So yes, that is all.
I would like to hear your opinion however. How can you prove that unions and social security can never possibly be in anyone's self interest?
You have no idea how Objectivists conceive of self-interest. You are not being self-interested if you are taking value from others by force because you are acting on the same principle as someone taking value from you by force. The only way you can truly be self-interested is by not initiating force against others.
I'd also recommend you read "The Objectivist Ethics" before you continue contributing to this thread.
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ari_ayn_rand_the_objectivist_ethics
The problem is that, if you're positing that the Objectivist definition of self interest is different from the dictionary definition of self interest, you should make that clear to people. In some ways the Objectivist definition of self-interest is entirely opposite the commonly used definition, and saying that Objectivism is a philosophy based on self-interest would be misleading.
It depends on the context. Did someone kidnap you and throw you out into the middle of nowhere (and do you intend to pay the owner back?), or did you voluntarily go out and starve yourself?
Let's say you went on a camping trip, your compass broke, and now you're lost. And regardless, how is it in your self interest to starve to death because of moral restraint in any situation?
This is only if your standard of value is your own pleasure. Unfortunately, someone else might use their own pleasure as their standard of value and steal from you if you have no means of effective retaliation. Why would you want to live in a world where people think this way?
I wouldn't want to live in such a world. But we're talking about one individual's action, not collective behavior. It can still be in your individual self interest to use force. I use the dictionary definition of self interest by the way: a focus on the needs or desires of oneself.
But even if we go with a standard of your own pleasure, how long do you think you can keep up stealing before you get punished?
Possibly forever. Depends on the situation.
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What's the Objectivist take on handicapped and disabled people? If someone develops or is born with a severe mental disorder, paralysis, ALS, Alzheimer's, or any other condition that makes them unable to live on their own, should they be left to die?
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No, only if he denies me the ability to trade with others.
So in that case, given the starving-person-lost-in-the-woods-comes-across-stocked-cabin example earlier in this thread where this line of debate originated, it is in your self interest to refuse to steal food and starve to death?
If you resort to force have you not abandon the mind? One must defend oneself, but NEVER throw the first punch. It is the person throwing the first punch that has abandoned the mind therefor negating it. I have no other proof, just this simple example.
How has the person throwing the first punch "abandoned the mind"?
To use force against another rational being is to reject the use of reason in one's dealings with them.May or may not be true depending on if by "one's dealings with them" you mean "one's social interactions with them"; in which case your statement would make sense, but it then has a different meaning than what I had thought.
From what I can gather from your post, by "abandoning the mind" when one uses force you meant "abandoning attempting to debate them". I had originally thought that what the other poster meant that when one uses aggressive force one stops thinking rationally, which is not necessarily true. If you can steal from another person without them mounting effective retaliation then it may be in your self interest to steal from them and gain some item that will benefit you, making theft in this case a rational thing to do if your goal is to advance your self interest.
I understand that is your claim, but as you say, you've been discussing this in the thread and it is not a given as it has been disputed by numerous posters. As such, you were asking a question that assumed something that is still in dispute.
Okay. Is that all, or are you going to dispute my claims?
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How can I just toss God out the window all of a sudden and make that transition?
Look at it this way. There are thousands of religions out there. None have any better arguments than the next one. How can you justify believing in religion X over religion Y? In the absence of particular evidence for one of 'em, the simplest explanation is that they're all made up.
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Microsoft did not keep its position in the OS world because of a lack of capital to go against it, nor does it keep its position today because of a lack of capital to go against it. There are some products where customers seek standardization, they seek the product that other people seek. The presence of a single dominant OS has meant a huge cost saving across the software industry and for buyers of software. There was a time when a company producing an accounting package had to make a version for IBM, another for Bull, another for Unisys, another for Vax, another for Wang, another for Hitachi, and so on. The primary reason Unix began to become popular on mid-range systems is that the flavors were fairly similar. the fact that Unix was free got it into colleges and that produced graduates who were familiar with it. However, the fact that it was also a negative for Unix because entrepreneurs often did not see a way to push it as a platform while showing some distinctive competitive advantage. Some economists would have us believe that a distinctive competitive advantage is a bad thing, but it is the only means of progress and innovation. You might not like the cost-saving product, just like many people pooh-pooh WalMart, but their existence is based on the huge cost-saving they pass on to their customers: the same with Microsoft.
I wouldn't even call Wal Mart a monopoly due to the nature of the retail industry. However the fact that the most used applications won't run on anything besides Windows gives MS a huge advantage. It's incompatibility more than anything else that sank Unix; it was a decent OS in all respects besides the fact that people could not run the popular Windows-only apps on it. A colossal amount of capital would be needed to create several new companies able to develop a competitive brand strength and popularity. It's not merely a matter of designing an OS; you'd need all the advertising, supplier agreements and OS-specific apps that Microsoft has too to get people to buy your OS.
If you're arguing that this would eliminate all the cost savings of standardization and not be worth it in the end, I agree. However, standardization is a double edged sword and also means the company that makes the standard product faces little competition.
Do you really think that Microsoft's badly performing browser was a good thing for Microsoft? I already said in my previous post that there were executives at Microsoft who believed the same theory that you do, and decided to rest on their laurels. This hurt them.
It did, but how much so, considering it saved them development costs? They pursued their monopoly strategy and still have just as dominant a position in the computer market; there's more competition in browsers now perhaps but that would have happened eventually regardless. Acting as a monopoly could well have been worth it for them.
I'm not familiar with the DRAM market, but I did say that people try to fix prices. it rarely lasts, and it seldom serves the price-fixer well in the long term.
Price-fixers have little to lose in the long run; the worst that can happens is the cartel breaks up and they return to normal competition. The only bad thing that might happen to the firm to make price fixing not worthwhile is a regulator antitrust lawsuit. You also did not present an argument as to why the government should allow price fixing.
Obviously if you insist that a market where nobody has any ability to compete is "perfect competition", you may not find such a market forthcoming.
When did I say that? How would creating a hundred new PC companies create a "market where nobody has any ability to compete"?
"...destructive self-interest" is usually not in one's self interest over the long run.
I don't know about "usually". But in the DRAM market case among other examples what's best for the company isn't always best for innovation.
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Acting in ones self interest, one would not have to choose between the two. I don't understand the notion that being selfish must negativity affect others. Acting in ones self interest, positively affect all parties involved. i.e. If a looter was starving and needed food he would resort to steeling (you see them on corners holding signs - Feed Me, I am LAZY). If I were were starving I would trade anything and everything that had with less value to me then the food, both parties benefit. If I were unable to trade for food, someone would have stolen my ability to trade, and force could be used. So I am not "avoiding acts against other before their own self interest" I am defending my rite to life. That is the only situation where actions against another life is acceptable.
What if you have something to trade but the other person doesn't want to trade with you for food? Would they have stolen your ability to trade?
Force is the negation of the mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_assertion
How do you prove that force is negation of the mind?
Finally, let me say this. I believe this may be the most important point: look at politics. Capitalism is based on self-interest and non-aggression. Capitalism recognizes your right to pursue happiness and own your life. The non-aggression principle is implicit in this statement. Socialism is based on selflessness and men living for other people. Socialism is based on force. Socialism is not based on the pursuit of happiness or the right to own your life.
Both systems rely on the state; both have laws that limit individual freedom. Neither capitalism nor socialism give the individual complete freedom of action as long they require the existence of a state.
Your question is loaded; it presumes that the "acts against others" is in one's rational self interest.
They can be. We've been discussing them in this thread. Unions, social security, liberal politicians, and so forth can all be in someone's self interest in the examples I provided throughout the thread.
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Earning=profit. Rate when expressed as a numerator, using Capital as the denominator. Rate of return on Capital/Investment.
Well, the facts of reality contradict your model. It "does happen", of course, but those companies do not last long. The problem with the typical over-simplified economics model is that they assume cause and effect are some type of instantaneous reaction, once again ignoring the nature of the human mind, human evaluative process, and the (good) attribute of human beings to use principle rather than going from one-off experience. Microsoft kept its position for many years primarily by offering value. Their attempts to gain some advantage simply for being Microsoft were not durable.
Really? I think if there was adequate competition in the OS market there would be a faster and less buggy 64 bit OS out there that ran games other than Vista or 7. But to each his own.
Here's the problem: the executives who work at Microsoft graduated from the same universities as most others and learnt many of he wrong lessons. Obviously, there are many Microsoft executives who would agree with your theory of monopolistic competition. So, seeing that they were now in a company that they believed was close to a monopoly, they chose to act on the economic lessons they were taught. According to their theory, they were being villains, to give Microsoft an advantage. Ironically, it is this that helped other companies take the lead. The complaints about the advantages Microsoft gains from keeping its APIs to itself in the early stages are mostly bogus. Again, do not simply take your theory as a starting point and try to rationalize where it will lead: instead, look at reality. For all its API secrets, for years Microsoft had the slowest browser, and not just by some small degree, but slow as a snail.
Oh yeah, it was always a POS browser. Exactly because they were a monopoly Microsoft didn't need to bother to produce a competitive one thanks to bundled software. Neither IE nor Microsoft's other products are of particularly stellar quality, but often you pretty much have to buy these products to stay compatible. I would use Linux if only games were made to run on it.
Once again, cartels rarely manage to exact a durable advantage. Just because some people form a cartel and set a price does not imply that they do so in their best long-term interests.
"Rarely"? Sure, but there are cartels out there which last for years. Cartels like the DRAM one often last until regulators bust them. How does letting cartelization and price fixing go on help the economy?
No, there is no shortage of capital in the world. We have had unpteen examples of capital flowing to the most crazy ideas and upstarts, on the chance that some may pay off.
Saying there is no shortage is a strong word; it would cost hundreds of billions to create enough PC companies to make this market competitive. Sometimes monopolies, market failure, and destructive self interest are a fact of life.
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Does anyone else agree with BradN? Individuals should put avoiding acts against others before their own self interest?
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Interesting responses. So it seems like Rand was okay with women doing anything besides, for some reason, being President.
So what kind of political system would a Objectivist state have? I always assumed some kind of constitutionally limited democracy. What about a constitutionally limited nondemocracy, assuming it worked efficiently and followed Objectivist ethics pretty well? Are Objectivists supporters of democracy, and are they opposed to all other forms of government?
I'd really like to see an answer to my nationalism question. What do you guys think? Are you proud to be an American or Australian or whatever else?
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I reckon you meant to cite agriculture as an industry that is in perfect competition.
Yes. I can't see the edit post button for some reason.
By definition, an industry that produces something that is easy for anyone else to replicate (i.e. a commodity) is not monopolistic, and everyone else is monopolistic to the extent to which it is non-trivial for someone else to produce a similar product. I definitely do not want to go back to the age where most of my money would be spent on commodities. I love the many non-commodity values produced by modern economies. No, I do not think the government should encourage anyone to produce anything more than just commodities; not in a positive sense. All i want is for the government to keep out of my way and let me buy all the cool stuff I want from all the cool folks who make that stuff.
Okay. No problem there. Just want to understand your economics argument.
Actually, that was not the primary thrust of my post. My main point was that the whole model of "perfect economy" is a flawed one. The economists take a specific type of market and make that into a general theory. It is flawed because that specific case is just that: specific. Further, the instances become less prevalent with every decade of human thinking, progress and diversity. Analogous would be for a vet to say "I like cats, therefore I'm going to treat every dog like a cat and spend all my effort trying to make every dog as cat-like as possible".
Here's the thing: if you define "high entrance costs" to mean that I cannot start an airline if I rely on my own net worth, then the point is trivial and insignificant. If the whole proof relies on "there are N companies" in a market, then the question can simply be phrased that way. If we are to make any sense of the question, and consider it significant we must interpret to ask the following: if someone has a technique to compete against a large company and only lacks the capital, will capital be forthcoming. Today, the answer is "yes".
In a over-simplified model modern economy, if Company X has the ability to earn more than the "market rate" on capital deployed, the value of the company will immediately rise to account for this, thus reducing the rate of earning back to the market rate. In other words, any advantages are in the past, and not durable.
I'm confused here. I'm not aware that "rate of earning" is a technical term. What do you mean by that?
Anyway, one of the main problems with a monopoly is that companies have reduced incentive to invest in innovation due to lack of competition. Product quality doesn't matter as much when you're the only one making widgets. Not to advocate any particular government intervention that could accomplish that without creating bigger problems. Just saying this does happen, and leads to monopolistically competitive firms investing in new product design at a reduced rate or designing products that are incompatible with competitors', in a way that's best for the firm but not necessarily for economy wide innovation. To present an example: Microsoft designing APIs to favor its own browser over others.
What really becomes a problem is when firms engage in cartelization and price-fixing. It's hard to say there's some kind of economic benefit from all the major companies in a sector agreeing to charge more for the their products. The result is an economic profit for the monopolies or oligopolies and higher price for buyers. When these monopolies produce some kind of capital, increased capital costs effectively reduce economy wide investment and innovation. Example: The DRAM industry before 2002.
Financial barriers to entry will be a non-issue under laissez-faire, and to an extent already ARE a non-issue today.I can see one or two new companies garnering a few billion in capital to take on Microsoft, if they have a really whiz-bang ideas. There's still never going to be enough capital going around to create hundreds of Microsoft challengers and create as high a level of competition in the PC industry as there is in, say, agriculture.
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All of which is a way of saying this: far from being some disruption of the ideal state, so-called "monopolistic competition" is the norm and is ideal in the real world.
There are plenty of sectors that are not in perfect competition. Agricultural staples are a good example, even in the presence of government distortions. So if "monopolistic competition is ideal", should a government encourage monopolistic competition?
The rest of your post gives reasons why monopolies may not be a bad thing, which I don't generally agree with and can give my reasons if you ask, but I haven't seen a compelling argument against the OP's apparent proposition that high entrance costs can result in monopolistic competition.
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The bureaucracy of SS takes more than it gives. How is SS supposed to help her if it is bankrupt?
Sure if you count savings going into the SS trust fund as "bankruptcy". But the rich pay most of the taxes to hold up SS and a lot of lower and middle income people, maybe even my Grandma, take out more than they pay in.
Union workers and needy Grandmas don't have enough of a “self” to be interested in. Most people have an immense potential that they never tap into; a self that is 'worth' being interested in. How is it not in their self interest to discover what they are capable of, rather than mindlessly scrape by on what they can scrounge off of the effort of others? It is more than self interest it is 'Rational' self interest, not blind whims, it is about the greatest potential over the long range course of a life.
What definition of self are you using? The self is an individual person as the object of his or her own reflective consciousness? How can you tell that grandma does not have a self? How can you yourself determine if someone does or does not have a self? What does this have to do with collecting social security?
A change in perspective could inspire Grandma to discover an amazing skill she didn't know she had, Grandma Moses didn't start selling her work until she was in her 70's: http://en.wikipedia....i/Grandma_moses
The union worker would realize he could run a better business, and start his own company, and inspire all of the best workers in the company to come with him.
How would collecting Social Security prevent Grandma Moses from doing anything? How would opposing a strike for higher wages help the union worker start his own company? If anything he could use higher wages and union contacts as financial and social capital.
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If businesses weren't being strangled there would be plenty of competing companies offering jobs for the worker to choose, the company would have to raise wages in order to provide incentive for workers to stay.
Unsupported assertion. Additionally, you're thinking in terms of society rather than whether or not an individual worker should oppose unions. If unions are choking the economy to the point where they reduce worker's wages in WV (which no one here has provided proof of) that doesn't necessarily mean an individual worker should oppose a strike for higher wages for themselves.
Unions/governments have taxed the life out of people all through history. The Declaration of Independence established the first government that limited how much of their hand they could put in the pie. (At least they used to) And it began the greatest influx of new wealth, ideas, and technology history had ever seen.
Okay. Now prove that all unions and statist policies everywhere in history never serve anyone's interest.
To clarify, every time I say unions I mean "unions that strike and do things that O'ists don't like".
I don't know how anything can be in the self interest of someone who is dead.
Being a parasite takes money out of the gross national product, working productively adds money to the gross national product. The value of money is based on the productivity of the country. Being a parasite makes each dollar worth less, being productive makes each dollar worth more.
Safety net programs don't necessarily need to be scrapped, they just need to be voluntary. How would it be in the self interest of someone who will never need social security to pay into it?
It isn't. How is it in the interest of someone who receives more money than they lose from SS to oppose it?
If Grandma would have been inspired to live a life of productive self sufficiency she would not need government pittance, which is usually inadequate.
Not all Grandmas, some Grandmas have a clearly defined sense of self respect.
You didn't explain how opposing SS is in Grandma's self interest.
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Car companies? You must be talking Greek here. If car companies are a monopoly, a buyer should have no choice of which company to buy from. Are you aware of how many car companies sell cars to the U.S. consumer?
We're not on the same page here. You seem to be thinking according to the boardgame definition, "monopoly" meaning only one company in the world selling something. The formal economic definition simply refers to a market where a firm has room to be a price maker rather than a price taker. These are two ends of a spectrum not practical absolutes. Typically depending on the sector, a sector of the economy with less than about 100 firms is considered to be in monopolistic competition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition#Many_firms
An oligopoly is an even less competitive situation where only a few firms dominate the market; perhaps less than ten.
As for computer companies like Dell... that's an even bigger joke... buying a PC, you have a whole lot of options on the internet, and you can even build one yourself readily enough.
You can do that but the personal computers you buy on the market are almost certainly going to be made by one of the eight big personal computer firms. As for individual hardware components like video cards or routers there are generally very few firms dominating those sectors as well. Lots of R&D and branding, high entrance costs.
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When we say "high entrance costs" in this context, we're talking about natural monopolies where the features of the business itself impose incredibly high costs on potential newcomers. The industries that you have cited a.) are not monopolized in the first place, and b.) to the extent that they are dominated by a few large firms, these firms maintain market share primarily through regulation levied against potential competitors, rather than costs inherent in production.
I'm not really seeing that in the absence of proof of the specific regulations you're talking about. And if these regulations create the monopoly, why are car and computer manufacturers monopolies not just in their host country but around the world? How are new companies supposed to cope with the huge advertising, R&D, and economies of scale setup costs of creating a new competitive brand of car? And why were there regulator antitrust suits against Microsoft and Dell, are those all just pretend?
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Great posts, Volco and VcatoV.
So I guess you don't expect remarkable changes right away after a transition to an Objectivist cultural or political system. Wouldn't the transition be difficult though? A lot of roads going unmaintained until someone got around to fixing them, another Savings and Loans type financial crisis, public schools being shut down in neighborhoods where people can't afford to pay for private school? What do you think would be the immediate effects of this kind of economic policy (which as was mentioned has never really existed in a modern, industrialized country since the 19th century if ever)?
I have some other questions for you guys. What did Ayn Rand think about gender roles? Women should stay in the kitchen and not have a career and so forth, or was she some kind of feminist? Are women just as qualified to be CEOs and presidents and so forth?
Are Objectivists okay with the phrase "contributing to society"? Or is that concept too collectivist for y'all?
What's the Objectivist take on nationalism? Is it okay to be proud of being an American or a Russian or whatever? Is it okay to burn the flag to protest statism?
What do O'ists think of cyborgs, androids, and transhumanism, stuff like that? When does an artificial intelligence become human enough to have the sort of rights Objectivists think humans should have?
Finally, VcatoV used the word "win". What do you expect for the future? You think it's pretty much inevitable that Objectivism will "win" and at some point humankind will mostly live in an Objectivist society?
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In today's context, the problem is mostly illusory. Can you list 5 businesses which are monopolies primarily because of high entrance costs?
Every major car company or computer manufacturer, for one.
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Well, these things don't happen suddenly, so that's a hard question. Also, what do you mean by "the world"? Everyone?
Yes, everyone. Or at least most people. How does that affect your answer?
I take the answer to the disaster relief question to be "no, government shouldn't get involved".
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Couldn't that same reasoning be used to justify licensing for anything?
Yeah. Well that's what's so interesting about this forum.
I have another question. What is the Objectivist take on government led disaster relief efforts? Say the response to Hurricane Katrina or the recent tornadoes in the south. Or even the cleanup and evacuation efforts of the Soviet government after Chernobyl. Would a proper Objectivist state have something along the lines of FEMA or would disaster victims pretty much be left to fend for themselves or rely on private charity?
An additional question: Can you point out a historical example of a society that more or less followed Objectivist principles pretty closely?
Finally: What do you think would happen if the world suddenly "turned Objectivist", that is if all the people in the world realized the Objectivist position was right? Sudden technological and industrial renaissance or something along those lines?
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Yes retaliation does always happen, maybe not immediately or directly to the perpetrator, but a conscientious man will stop working for the possessions that are going to be stolen any way, he will move away from crime infested areas, he will loose the enthusiasm necessary to maintain the business that is strangled by irrational demands made by those who do not know how to create their own business. And the parasites will be left with nothing more to feed upon.
Okay. You've posited this already. You've presented an argument as to why it might in some particular cases but not necessarily all cases be true. Now apply it to the example I keep bringing up (unions in WV).
a conscientious man will stop working for the possessions that are going to be stolen any way, he will move away from crime infested areas, he will loose the enthusiasm necessary to maintain the business that is strangled by irrational demands made by those who do not know how to create their own business.Assertion, slippery slope. The unions/government/whatever will rarely tax these productive people that much to the point where they refuse to work or significantly reduce work effort.
How do you prove that always in every case "the parasites will be left with nothing more to feed upon"? Plenty of people have received raises or benefits thanks to unions or welfare policies for a great part of their lives until death. How would fighting to scrap these programs or institutions be in their self interest? How is voting to repeal Social Security in the self-interest of my grandma when she has negligible taxable income? I understand she may have payed into it earlier in life, even if not as much as she'll be taking out, but at this point it makes no sense for her to want to end the sinister collectivist coercive institution of Social Security.
The greatest mind will seek a place where he will not be stepped on, he will receive a greater return on his investment with a man who is his equal.
Not necessarily. If Grandma can collect social security without paying anything she'll probably go for it and wouldn't see a reason to vote against it.
A collectivist thinks in terms of using others an individual does not.Well, not according to the dictionary definition but I understand your use of prose. That's not what I'm asking about though.
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Thanks SN. So looks like Rand wasn't quite a libertarian. And from the lack of response I assume you guys are okay with stuff like heavy weaponry being legislated.
Are these random questions or are you actually trying to get at something?
Oh not really, just trying to kill some time, and also get a better idea of what the Objectivist position on things is.
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Did Ayn Rand have anything to say about driver's licenses, or something similar? She must have touched on those sort of things at some point. Driver's licenses, personal ownership of armored fighting vehicles, the age of majority and age of consent- the kind of legal stuff that matters to people in day to day life. What was her opinion? Did she think it should be not illegal to have consensual sex with five year olds? Or that people should be allowed to keep heavy artillery and explosive ordinance in their backyard? Or am I just misunderstanding Objectivism in terms of the absolute-sanctity-of-human-freedom-and-property bit.
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Thanks for the responses guys. Although I'd like a better idea of what you think the results of the US not instating the draft in World War II would be like. Did it not matter at all whether the US got involved in World War II? Would it be fine if (for the sake of argument) Hitler won the war because the US couldn't conscript people?
Here's question #6 for you. Are drivers licenses a moral evil? That is, is it wrong for the government to require you to get a driver's license before you can drive a car? Do two year olds have an inalienable natural right to operate a motor vehicle?
Question #7. Should personal ownership of nuclear weapons be legal?
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1. Should the US have not instated the draft during World War II? If so, what do you think would happen?
2. Was it immoral for Ayn Rand to collect Medicare?
3. Are public libraries a moral evil?
4. Are Objectivists opposed to government issued fiat currency in principle?
5. Did Ayn Rand get anything wrong?
Not really interested in starting a shitfest this time. Just curious as to what the opinion of people here is.
Self-interest versus rights
in Questions about Objectivism
Posted · Edited by mustang19
Actually, no. But what you said makes Objectivism make a whole lot more sense to me.
The thing is that Objectivists have their own arbitrary definition of self interest which is very different from the dictionary one, and is actually similar to the dictionary definition of altruism. The problem is when O'ists tell other people that their philosophy is based on self interest when that's not entirely true and has what would be called altruistic aspects (like respecting property when it is in your self interest to steal) by the conventional definition of these terms.
Well, for what it's worth every time I have used self interest in this thread I have meant the dictionary definition of the term, not the one Ayn Rand came up with. In that sense I cannot see how Objectivism places self interest as its highest value. The Grandma Debate remains unresolved.