mustang19
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Posts posted by mustang19
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Context is very important in Objectivism.
What does a man need to survive? Food is to keep the body alive. Property rights, virtue, morality are to keep the mind alive. Either choice is a sacrifice: body without mind/mind without body. Which sacrifice is greater would depend on the individual, and whether he could see any possible chance for a future where his body and mind could both survive. Retaliation is the logical outcome of theft, you put yourself in danger by stealing.
No. Retaliation does not always happen. This is argument by assertion.
The statist would be catering to parasites and looters, and treating man as though he is incapable of thinking for himself. Is it impossible for a politician to gain a sense of self respect or discerning power to weigh the consequences of his actions on all of the people he loves or values.
Assertions. Please apply this to a tangible case. And prove that this case is generalizable. Obama doesn't seem to be doing that badly for himself by getting elected president. How would he be better off suddenly adopting an Objectivist political position? Most likely this would accomplish little for him and would go against his chosen values as a Democrat.
The first question to ask is “Does man need a rational set of values to live by?” Your answer seems to be no.
The understanding of self interest Objectivists put forth, though, isn't logically coherent (eg the West Virginia union examples I keep bringing up, with no one here being able to say concretely how the unions aren't in the worker's self interest).
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A robber IS pursuing his own interests but it is not his selfishness that is evil. It the sacrafice of other men's interests that is evil.
So he is acting in his self interest, but that is evil? Does Objectivism advocate evil?
That's true of the short-term, but what about the long-term? What will you get that's more beneficial than letting the person make a choice on
their own?
Money.
Is there nothing to gain by not using force?Maybe.
How is that beneficial? Doesn't economic inefficiency hurt a lot more than some temporary benefits? Economic inefficiency won't allow for those benefits to last.No. This isn't an argument. This is an unsupported assertion. I've provided evidence that unions raise wages/safety in West Virginia. No one else has provided counter evidence. It's just been a whole lot of "A follows B, B follows C, therefore A follows pancakes".
We're not merely speaking of benefit, we're speaking of the *most* benefit. You will get more out of people if they are free to act and choose as they wish. It's really the essence of why rights are properly egoistic. An egoist not only would want *some* benefit from a person, but as much as possible.
I agree. Now argue that unions and state intervention will always hurt every individual in all possible situations. Because this is the kind of extreme position that Objectivism pushes.
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No thanks. Ayn Rand gave great principled arguments grounding what ought to be commonsense values. You are too focused on the short term shiny as the epitome of what 'self interest' refers to. Your understanding of self interest is simply wrong.
"I'm right, you're wrong"? Gotcha.
2046: Thank you for the detailed and well thought out response.
I'm trying to address your point about anti-liberal politicians by addressing your idea of self-interest, because that is at the root of why you think what they do is rationally self-interested. If your idea of self-interest is wrong, it follows that your belief that self-interest entails any given pressure group's attempts at gaining unearned benefits at the expense of others (victims) is also wrong. Then, once you see the generalization of what self-interest is according to rational egoism, then you can deduce it out onto the specifics of the pro-union legislation or whatever. Follow me there?
Okay, let's see the proof.
So in rational self-interest, we aren't looking at two seconds ago like "Gee did I get more monies now than I had before? I did! Yay, I'm being self-interested!" We are looking at the long-run: examining our long-range goals, and adjusting our present action to be in alignment with the long-range effects of our actions. And so when we ask ourselves "How do we act in accordance with our rational self-interest?" we answer that this requires man to act in accordance with his nature, that that means we must acquire knowledge by means of reason, that to be selfish is to be rational, and that reason does not function merely by the range of the moment without integrating the wider context and the long-range effects of actions and character over a whole lifetime. That these broad abstractions can be summed up in generalizations called "principles" and applied to specific circumstances to ensure we are in alignment with long-range success. Among them, we see that we need to abide by the principles of rationality, honesty, integrity, productiveness, independence, justice, and we need a certain level of moral ambitiousness.
Follow me there? That rational self-interest requires long-range functioning as opposed to being bound by the range of the moment should hardly be disputed, I hope. Man's mind does not work by considering, in every decision, all aspects of the present situation from scratch. We induce generalizations, and deduce from them applications to specific situations. So you can see that it is not true that "whatever you happen to desire" is the standard of your rational self-interest.
I think you're assuming the original point here.
How do you go from:
>That these broad abstractions can be summed up in generalizations called "principles" and applied to specific circumstances to ensure we are in alignment with long-range success.
to:
>Among them, we see that we need to abide by the principles of rationality, honesty, integrity, productiveness, independence, justice, and we need a certain level of moral ambitiousness.
Why do "we see that we need to abide by" X, Y, and Z? I get reason; the rest not so much.
Generalizations are only helpful when there are no more precise ways of making judgements in a given situation. However to say that "unions are never in anyone's interest" or "you should never be a liberal to get elected" is an overgeneralization for the aforementioned reasons given in my evidence. You could say rationality is generally a helpful thing; but if you want to develop a philosophy for survival you require no values other than selfishness and rationality, not all the other jazz. It is still an unhelpful overgeneralization to say justice, honesty, etc., always serve your self interest all the time. What sort of benefit would a worker or liberal politician or whatever examples I've been presenting get out of sacrificing the benefits they get from organizing/electioneering/etc and being a good Objectivist instead. Name something, anything, that would make this worthwhile for them.
But you do partially address this next.
So why should not some workers somewhere insist on lobbying the government to initiate force on their employer for more money?
Let us apply the above to this question. So we see that rationality is a prime virtue, as above, we are using it as the means to know what we should do. We are treating things as they deserve to be treated. Dogs are treated as dogs, cats are treated as cats, cars are treated as cars, jet airplanes are treated as jet airplanes, etc. Similarly, when we interact with other persons, we recognize that they are moral agents like us, that they can be a potential value or a potential threat, and that if we want the former, we must treat them with the same "moral space" that we ourselves require. And we recognize that if we don't, we have no logical grounds to demand the same from them.
Manipulating others to serve your self interest is immoral, but does not necessarily reduce your chance of survival or happiness. Define what you mean by "having no logical grounds to demand the same from them".
So the social morality of justice comes into play, which demands according to others what they earn, what is theirs by right, for the same reason that I demand to be accorded what I earn, what is mine by right.
If that is how you define rights that will work. It doesn't prove that it is in your self interest to respect other's rights. But looks like you're getting to that.
We see that physical force is destruction, that violence and aggression from other people prevents us from choosing our values and acting accordingly,
Not to nitpick, but I assume you mean "first use of violence against others". Because I think you're allowed to use violence to defend yourself in Oism. Anyway the statement:
"that violence and aggression from other people prevents us from choosing our values and acting accordingly"
applies to Oism as well as subjectivism. By following objectivist values you are also restricted in choosing your values by what you define as "reason" as applied to the case of value formation, or according to the prescriptions of Oism.
that we must be able to be free to choose them and act on our judgment as a precondition to being moral,
Okay, that can work semantically.
and so we recognize that the initiation of physical force is anti-mind, anti-choice, anti-independent-action, and therefore is evil.This point was not adequately established as far as I can tell. Restricting yourself from initiating physical force limits your own room for independent action and choice. I'm not quite up to speed on my formal Randian definitions, so unless "anti-mind" means something in particular I'll just leave it alone. Also, you didn't define "evil" yet so it looks like you're creating a new definition rather than proving a link between two established ones.
We see that we need to be free to choose what is in our self-interest, and that if we have that freedom, rationality requires us to recognize that other persons have that same moral right to be free, on the same grounds. Thus we see that rationality, which is our prime virtue, requires us to identify other human beings' nature, identify that they are similar to you and therefore require the same freedom.
This seems mostly a summary of previous points that remain unproven. Rationality does not "require us" to do anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationality
>In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action.
You can base a philosophy entirely on egoistic sociopathy or selfless altruism and, although both could be made logically consistent, the fact that they are logically consistent does not "require" anyone to do anything.
We see that to claim a contradiction in this is to become a hypocrite, to demanding to survive by irrationality, dishonesty, hypocrisy and inconsistency, unproductiveness, parasitism and dependency, injustice, and moral cowardice ("You have to produce, but I don't have to. You have to use reason to deal with reality, but I don't have to. You have to respect my space, but I don't have to respect yours." etc.) We are demanding to survive like the animals do, instead of recognizing our own means of survival, and thus we announce to all those other human beings around us "This is how I am. This is how I will treat you. I am an animal, and you are my prey." So we can see that if we abandon the virtues that enable our own successful life as a human, we are undermining ourselves and putting ourselves in danger; both from internal corruption and external retaliation.
Actually, if you're successfully dishonest your intentions will never be announced. Alternatively, if you have sufficient power over the other person they won't be able to respond to your aggression and their perception of your character would be irrelevant. The statement you make here is an unsupported assertion or a hypothesis, not a theorem.
So why does the rational employee not lobby the government to force his boss to pay him more than he could earn on the unhampered market? Because he recognizes that he does not own the property of others, that he does not own the life of others, that others do not owe him a living, and therefore he does not demand the unearned at gunpoint from other men. Because he recognizes the laws of economics, and that ultimately what his employer pays him is not arbitrary, to be increased only by sticking a gun to the employer's head and coercing him against his reason, but ultimately his wages are decided by his marginal productivity in accordance with the law of supply and demand.
Not true. The whole point of my sources was to prove otherwise. Theoretical laws of economics are not the same thing as economic reality.
He knows that the value of his production is judged by the consumers he is serving, and that they ultimately decided the height of his wage rates by buying or abstaining from buying his product. He knows that if he demands a higher wage rate than the unhampered market would have fixed, this can only be had by throwing other workers out of employment, and thus lowering overall productivity and standards of living by creating permanent, mass unemployment, and that much less to buy his own product with. He knows that what makes wages rise is the progressive accumulation of capital, not legally fixed wage floors, and that increasing costs for his employer hampers the accumulation of new capital.This isn't true even in theory. There are countless different factors that influence wages besides accumulation of capital, like relative market power, the unemployment rate, and shifts in consumer demand. Most importantly, as my sources show, unions may induce economic inefficiency while still raising their own wages, benefits and job security at little cost to themselves.
Personally, he does not demand the illogical or the contradictory because knows that to corrupt his own internal functioning is to undermine his own means for achieving his rational self-interest. Further, he knows that he can't claim "rights" to anything, once he denies it to others. He knows that if he claims his desires as primary, justice as meaningless to him, and decides to loot his employer, he hardly has grounds to complain when his employer happens to have more political pull and loots him. He knows that the individual interventionist who grants power to the government to extort unearned benefits in favor or some group at the expense of other groups can never imagine that his (the individual interventionist's) plans might not be the only ones realized. Government power is great only because it is expected to do exclusively what the individual advocate of interventionism wants to be achieved. But he knows the interventionist is short-sighted in that he fails to imagine that there are other groups with more money, power, and influence than his labor union, and that the kinds of extortion which the government will enact might not be the ones he, the individual interventionist, wanted it to enact. He knows the interventionist can't complain when Koch Industries or some Republican governor thwart his plans, "gut the middle-class in favor of the wealthy" and do all the things that his Democrat leaders rant and rave about, and that he can't complain when the corporate state points the guns of aggression at him because he granted to government that very power.
He can't complain. But that will almost certainly never, ever happen. Please cite concrete examples in history or web links to news articles rather than develop hypothetical scenarios.
And thus, we come to the conclusion that only rational and objective ethics, based on individual rights and discovered through reason, is the guarantor of freedom and the elimination of conflicts. The mixed-economy ethics, by contrast, are a barrage of clashing interests that demands you quickly loot or be looted, pander to win or be independent and loose, grab the cash or get grabbed, stick it to the other guy or get stuck, take the money and get out quick kind of world. What are the results of this kind of system (hint, they're all around you)? Which one is proper to the life of a rational being who must survive by being free to think, to value, to choose, to act on his own independent judgment, and which is destructive to these ends?
I've noted several concrete examples of alternate conflict resolution models (eg unions). Also, you did not prove that there are no conflicts of interest in a free market. Otherwise unions would be quite unsuccessful in raising wages for their members, when in reality they tend to raise the wages of their members a lot- and provide numerous other benefits to their members which the costs of having the union don't come close to matching. Even if this is only true in one case for one union ever I fear it would bring down your entire argument.
Which one is proper to the life of a rational being who must survive by being free to think, to value, to choose, to act on his own independent judgment, and which is destructive to these ends? The individual would properly be free to unionize when it serves his self interest and would have no self-imposed restriction on resisting state policies that serve his own interests.
If you feel like we're just going in circles I understand. But I would still like to keep debating. Thanks for your time.
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Oh wait, I guess you want the actual arguments?
Few of Rand's key arguments are logical. That's why I'm wondering if this forum can provide stronger ones.
Actually, I have articulated that.And I presented evidence against that; my sources in the last post with links show that unions raise wages and improve working conditions in the mines that have them.
Again please prove that liberal politicians are always acting against their self interest by promoting liberal policies.
2046:
Not having automatic knowledge of his proper ends, or of the means by which they can be achieved, we must learn them. And to learn them we must exercise our powers of observation, abstraction, thought, i.e. "empirical verification" you might call it, or just "reason."
See my last post with information on how unions raised wages. Again, you didn't address my point on liberal politicians.
Here are those links on union benefits:
http://wvgazette.com/News/201105261234
www.wvpolicy.org/news_releases/NR101608.pdf
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From the wiki article on the Bituminous Coal Strike of 1974 "Employer contributions to UMWA's health and pension plans were dependent on the amount of coal mined."
Okay, you may or may not have a point there. 1974 is well after the mine safety study in question. But I don't feel like looking up whatever mine worker salaries were in the 1950s after regulation. So I'll give you that one.
Now assuming that there is no example anywhere in history of a union strike serving the self interest of anyone ever, you still haven't articulated to me how liberal politicians act against their self interest by promoting statist policies to get themselves elected. Let's take Obama. What if he suddenly converted to Objectivism in 2008 and became a pariah to the electorate? That wouldn't serve his self interest at all.
It's interesting that you're okay with unions, because I don't think Rand had a very favorable view of them. Unions and strikes (or work slowdowns, injunctions and related tactics) generally go together. You can't really have one without the other because a union unable to strike or reduce labor output is toothless and of no use to its members. Sure, there are unions which help train workers but unionization is generally associated with labor activism.
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The mistake you are making is to posit a dichotomy between self-interest and a free market. What everyone is trying to tell you in various different ways is that it is in NO ONE's self-interest to support legislation that initiates force in the markets. This is the Objectivist position (since you asked). The interests of rational individuals do not conflict.
You are approaching this from the standpoint of a situation where there must be winners and losers in the marketplace (and life generally) and everybody better just hope they can get a big enough gang together to get the government to make them the winners. Objectivism rejects this point of view.
I get that. I want to understand the reasoning why it rejects this view though.
Grames:
It was NOT tried, because the enabling laws that created the modern class action suit did not exist until the mid-1960's. The history of mine safety covered by your linked paper starts in the 1930's.Okay, you have a point there. But then what alternative did mine workers have? Class action just wasn't an option for them period. A lot of libertarians look down on class action lawsuits anyway and see them as a form of state intervention.
Since the mine owners did not lobby for this, and the unions did not lobby for this, it is interesting to ask just who's interest was served by this intervention?They didn't lobby against it either, the politicians did it because to win votes from miners. Why should an individual miner (who already had a secure union job) lobby against this legislation? Wages need not correlate with productivity; if workers become more expensive, then you just hire less (from outside the union) and concentrate training and mechanization on the current workforce. So wages didn't necessarily fall after regulation (data doesn't seem to be readily available unfortunately). Rather they probably kept going up in union shops as was the trend. Sure the rest of the coal industry gets trashed but it's still in the self interest of miners to organize and extract economic rents.
http://wvgazette.com/News/201105261234
www.wvpolicy.org/news_releases/NR101608.pdf
"Bad for society" does not mean "bad for unions or individual workers".
2046:
It's pretty clear that you have a subjectivist view of self-interest.If by "subjectivist" you mean "acting in self interest means acting in your own interest", then yeah. But this pretty much the dictionary definition.
Expecting someone to hold values other than their own desires and greed is not promoting self interest and is usually considered collectivism or altruism. The problem is when Rand goes around promoting "self interest" when by the dictionary definition she actually advocates collectivism where individual desires are subverted for the sake of other values.
Rational thoughts and long-range principles, not some irreducible and unquestionable "desires," direct men to their self-interests. And since peaceful cooperation is mutually beneficial, therefore a man's self-interest can only be served by non-sacrificial relationships.We're jumping from rational thoughts to judgements of what is and is not beneficial to individuals. The proof of this connection is what I'm curious about here.
And since peaceful cooperation is mutually beneficial, therefore a man's self-interest can only be served by non-sacrificial relationships.This is an empirical question, not a purely philosophical one. Unless you can prove though logic alone that always and in every case this is true, which I haven't seen yet. In fact the mining example hullabaloo we're talking about disproves that a man cannot advance their interest at others expense. Using the dictionary definition of self-interest, not yours.
Post #4 doesn't posit an argument other than directing to other material. #9 makes a concession and establishes that the non-predation rule shouldn't hold all the time. #11 makes more arguments requiring empirical verification. #12 states that Objectivist values are contextually absolute but doesn't provide a method for determining appropriate context. None of them equate dictionary definition self interest with the particular definition of rational self interest that Ayn Rand came up with.
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The support was "Everyone is free to choose to work as employee and employer under those conditions he prefers." This means one supports his self-interest by production and exchange with others. You don't own others, and so to "desire" the lives and property of others to be at your "complete control" is to desire every other person be your slave. Rational self-interest does not mean having "complete control" because no one has complete control over everything.
Okay.
To desire all "conditions" be under your "complete control" is to desire to be a god. In an exchange, your control extends over your life, thinking, body, and property. To prefer something means to desire A over B, and a rational desire is over that which is in your control, and does not demand the unearned, meaning only conditions which are possible, which are offered, and which are under consideration. Desires apart from that which is possible, which is offered, and which is under consideration are desires devoid of rational context, and are not a valid criterion for your rational self-interest.
Slippery slope. I didn't say anyone desired conditions to be under their complete control. I'm talking about whether should advocate state market intervention that serves their self interest.
All voluntary exchanges are to mutual benefit because there is a reverse valuation of the things being exchanged in order for the exchange to take place. I value that which I am getting over that which I am giving up, or else I would not make the exchange.
They're mutually beneficial, but there are ways one party can get even more out of the deal by bypassing the market.
So for an example of this, if I have a broken leg, it makes no sense to say "I really prefer not having broken my leg in the first place, therefore this doctor is exploiting me." But I have no control now over whether I have a broken leg or not, what's done is done. (It would be great if everyone could foresee all the conditions which might cause him illness, then there would be no need of doctors in the first place, but this is not to be.) Now all I have control over is whether the doctor cures it, or I go without medical assistance. In making an exchange with the doctor I demonstrate that I prefer having him cure my leg over the money, the desire of not having broken my leg in the first place is irrelevant to this exchange. If it were otherwise, I would not consult the doctor.
Inappropriate example. The doctor has no control over you breaking your leg. A mine owner, however, has some control over conditions in the mine.
Thus we can conclude, there are in the market economy no conflicts between the interests of the buyers and sellers, this includes buyers and sellers of labor services.
Economic values are not intrinsic, but are determined on the context of supply and demand,which means by the voluntary choices of people acting in the market process.
Intrinsic to what? You mean "subjective"?
The employer pursues his self-interest in asking for the lowest wages he can pay, the employee pursues his self-interest in asking for the highest wages he can find. Workers don't want less, employer doesn't want to pay more than the market value. The law of supply and demand settles the question, and where their self-interests meet, they make a deal and are both better off. So long as no man demands the unearned, there is no conflict.That doesn't erase the conflict of interest with the employee wanting to take as much profit as he can without putting the employer out of business. The employees want more than market value for a wage and they have ways outside the market of "settling the question", like legislation.
But if you are support the kind of legislation in question, you are the one. So the question remains, who are you, and all those who agree with you, to dictate your values onto others by force?
I'm wondering why someone should act against some legislation that violates free market conditions but promotes their self interest (say, requiring the employer to provide better safety or pay with all else equal) should oppose that legislation.
Again, see previous post. Who the hell are you to mandate to someone what their interest is at gunpoint? Who the hell are you to force someone to accept your values unconditionally? Actually, I think my values are better, and so I want to force you to "agree" unconditionally to my "contract." What now? Is this wrong of me?
You value your self-interest and I value mine. Of course our values are different. Sure, it's wrong of you by a utilitarian standard to do that, but if you only act in your self-interest then you're going to put your self-interest ahead of that of others.
Grames:
A better way to fight employer negligence that creates safety hazards on the job could be the class action lawsuit. Getting the employees recognized as a legal class with standing to sue has only been done in conventional liability cases so far, not 'pre-emptively' but there is no reason why it could not be done that way. Some statuatory laws may be necessary to prepare the ground for recognizing employees as a persistent legal class in a way that eliminates the need to strike and the temptation to retaliate by firing. There would be no need to strike while such class action suit was being contested, and no point in the employer firing his employees if anyone doing the work was automatically entered into the class because of that relationship.
That was tried and didn't work. Look at my mining example. Class action lawsuits didn't improve safety, legislation did.
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Some suggest that the only thing that matters in good leadership or good governance is whether or not the citizens approve of or are happy with their government. For example, this is what appeasers and moral tolerationists say oft to critisize "selfish" and "ethnocentric" foriegn policy suggestions (i.e. passing moral judgment.) Colonel Gaddafi, for example, once said that a nation shuld be viewed through the lense of whether or not its people are happy with it, not whether or not the West approves of it. Our point here, in other words, is the fact that a country is made up of 95% Muslims and those Muslims are perfectly happy with a theocratic nationalist regime does not make such a political system morally appropriate. The justness, or moral maxim of a government is an obejctive fact, not a primacy of consciousness phenomenon.
Did you just say that a government that is in the self-interest of 95% of the people is bad? Should that 95% act against their self interest and oppose the government then?
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But no conflict of interests emerges on the unhampered market. Everyone is free to choose to work as employee and employer under those conditions he prefers.
Support the assertion that "no conflict of interests emerges on the unhampered market". Employees want the highest possible wage and managers want to pay the lowest. This can lead to conflict of interest.
Neither employee or employer has complete control over their employment settings and neither necessarily works under conditions they prefer, only conditions that other people voluntarily offer.
Who in the hell are you to tell them "this is in your self-interest" and hammer it down onto them whether they like it or not? Who the hell are you to prescribe the details of production and outlaw all deviations?I'm not the one; it's up for individuals to chose whether or not to oppose particular legislation. Why should someone oppose legislation that gives them better safety or higher pay with minimal other tradeoffs?
But it is a non sequitur to say "only passing some law will create the procedures we want" is it not? It is a myth that business exists to do nothing but kill off all of the workers and consumers, especially when you can be sued for negligence from any injuries or deaths resulting from the applicable situations.
Sure, there are many alternatives, but I'm looking for an argument that safety law will always and every time be against worker self interest. In particular cases creating a law is the most effective way to improve safety because the employer is effectively forced to agree to a contract unconditionally.
@ softwareNerd :
That does not make it practical in principle, even if it works for a while for some.Apply this assertion to a practical case that proves it is always true. I gave the example of mine safety reducing fatalities while having minimal effect on wages. Most individual miners were better off. But as I mention below I understand if you're not going to contest this point...
In the U.S. and most other developed countries, industrial safety standards are mostly above those that most workers would wantSure. I'm not arguing that standards in the US are lax. I'm just wondering if the extreme generalization that state intervention is never in anyone's interest is defensible. We don't have to talk about the US- we can talk about any country. I gave a study on mine safety regulation reducing fatalities a few pages back. Although I don't think you contested this point; in which case, it's been a good and informative chat and I'll take away from this discussion that Objectivists (or at least you) admit that sometimes it is in one's self interest to advocate socialist type policies.
I see no "ever" there, it is framed as asking about an absolute, which is why I replied showing that one really needs to have more information before one can answer a question like that.Sorry about that. I'm curious, how often do you think state intervention serves the self-interest of those who advocate it? Barely ever? And when it is in someone's self interest to advocate state intervention, would you try to convince them to act against their self-interest in this case, and what would you say to them?
And then there's the whole issue that hasn't been addressed regarding what I've been calling "liberal politicians". How are politicians acting against their self-interest by voting for statist policies in order to get re-elected?
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"Ever"... sure
"Always" ... no
In one particular post, you had asked: I see no "ever" there, it is framed as asking about an absolute, which is why I replied showing that one really needs to have more information before one can answer a question like that.
Alright. Well I'm interested in the answers to both questions; I don't think that the whole progessive/liberal workers rights movement sprang up for no reason. It has to be in the self-interest of someone if it isn't just random self-destruction.
So in cases where workers benefit from regulation, should they act against their self interest and work to prevent this legislation from passing?
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You don't know what to ask because you keep thinking in terms of the false dichotomy you've created. There are more alternatives that you are evading that involve people actually taking responsibility for their own lives and choices, and not bending other men to their will by force of government. You argue in favor of the predator versus the RATiONALLY self-interested individual.
There are certainly any number of alternatives. My particular question though was, are ever workers better off pushing for safety regulation. This is a realistic concern for someone who must accept whatever job they can find to feed their family.
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What possible case could there be for one or the other being "worse" in some way. Worse for whom? I'm not saying that the market always magically maximizes welfare or something, but that "the market" is an abstraction which simply means allowing each market actor to act on his own judgment. When you paralyze that, you're not doing anyone any favors.
If you can "paralyze" the market in a way that makes you less likely to get killed while keeping the same job with the same wages I'd say you're doing yourself a favor. This is really an empirical debate and if you want to make a point you need to provide data.
They don't get paid when they lose their jobs, either. That was my point. If that's what they really wanted, to forgoe their wage in order to not be put in risky situations, they could have just not gone to work. Obviously they preferred working to not having a job at all.
Then we're down the empirical question as to whether there was any significant job loss after the regulations. And I haven't seen proof of that.
Anyway for anyone curious here's a study on how mine safety regulation reduced workplace fatalities.
Although I do agree that OSHA didn't really do anything major. Also, that CATO paper actually notes that state worker's comp programs improve worker's safety.
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In short, the image of regulations costlessly solving problems in the market is an immense oversimplification that inevitably ignores the unintended consequences of said regulation. Market actors have incentives to balance benefits against costs; bureaucracies have no such incentives, and we've all seen what happens when the people in charge of an industry don't have to pay the costs.
These arguments are still theoretical, and not particularly convincing. Even in theory the market only maximizes a mathematical abstraction called "consumer surplus" or the difference between price paid for a good and the willingness to pay, not human well being. Dying on the job doesn't fully factor into the equation; wages are only treated as incentives. Now I'd really be impressed if someone proved that 1) there was an increase in prices or fall in wages or employment (or some other cost) occuring after the implementation of safety regulations, and 2) this was worse than 20,000 people dying every year.
Obviously the employees there aren't better off; they could have accomplished the same level of safety by simply not going to work in the first place.But then they wouldn't get paid.
Often when these sorts of things are passed, many small businesses in the industry simply go out of business (in fact, it's well documented that large corporations often use these types of regulations to eliminate competition, but let's pretend for the moment that regulators are only interested in the task of making workplaces safer, and their regulations can't be influenced in this way).Can you prove that this happened in any significant way?
So we've gone from a situation where employees were consciously deciding to accept risky jobs and being compensated accordingly, and employers were gradually making the workplace safer in a cost-effective manner, to a situation where neither party has control of what happens; an outside bureaucracy does.The factory was never the worker's property in the first place. Also, can you prove that wages fell after safety regulation and provide a specific example?
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Is advocating workplace safety regulation not in the self-interest of workers? Are they better off dying in industrial accidents?
No it isn't in their self-interest, for the same reason that preying on others in not in your self-interest. Preying on others is an act of violence and so is forcing another human being (in this case a businessman) to do this or that against his will.
Well okay then. If you believe that workers are better of dying in industrial accidents than asking for regulation I don't know what else to ask.
Anyone else want to have a go at this question?
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You are all evading the question by pretending to not know what I meant. Is advocating workplace safety regulation not in the self-interest of workers? Are they better off dying in industrial accidents?
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So, do you see better what is meant by pursuing the best life possible? Really, all you don't get is why capitalism is necessarily any better than a mixed economy, fascist state, etc, for an individual person.
That's a nice theory but in practice liberal politicians live quite comfortably.
So to the 20,000 people who died in industrial accidents in the US every year before the introduction of workplace safety regulation, you'd say that the system was working in their self interest?
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@ Mustang19:
1. Have you read "Atlas Shrugged"?
Nope, and I have a lot on my plate now.
2. Do you understand how a dictatorship works in reality?
Given the example I mentioned (Francisco Franco), I see someone who died a natural death and lived comfortably all his life. In the absence of anything really terrible happening to him I don't see conclusive evidence of his life being worse for it.
Look at it this way. Rand would consider liberal politicians evil as well. However many of them, say Obama, seem to feel like they're doing a good thing and are no less hated than a conservative politician.
3. How would you generate wealth to sustain your rule?
How the government normally generates wealth- taxes.
4. What makes you think that the threat of harm provides greater incentive than the profit motive?It depends on the situation. Dictators did employ primarily the profit motive to hold their bureaucracy together. However they had to use force to acquire control of the state in the first place in order to take in tax revenue.
You seem like a thoughtful person -- why not trace the entire plan and just look at how it does or doesn't work in reality?
Doesn't it collapse when someone brings a bigger gun, or when people refuse to live in fear?
You certainly don't have to answer these questions if you don't want to, but if you do, then I am also curious about what inspired you to pursue these lines of thought -- was it a book, a movie, something in the news, what exactly?
Nothing in particular. I just don't see solid proof that disrespecting rights always makes you worse off. Do you think Obama stay awake at night regretting the bailouts or seizure of AIG? I don't think so. Rather he's probably pretty happy with himself right now, being a communist politician or not.
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Can you switch the title of the thread for the subtitle? That way I may be able to find this thread in the future when I search for "self-interest versus rights" using the search function, instead of trying to remember you decided to call it "I don't get it."
Sorry, I can't find a button to edit my post. A moderator can go ahead and make the switch.
What's a Randian superman?Someone who successfully lives as Rand proposed man should live. Although I admit that was probably the wrong word to use.
But now perhaps the real disagreement is over the standard of value itself, insofar as “man qua man” was taken to mean as “getting as high in the social pecking order” and “maximal physical stuff and wealth accumulation” and not “that which is proper to the survival and flourishing life of a rational being as required by its nature,” and so you conclude that exploiting others can lead to the attainment of the ultimate end of man's life being the accumulation of social status and stuff.
I didn't make any value judgements in this thread; I just asked questions. I was originally under the understanding that Objectivism is meant as a way to maximize your chance of survival. I now see this is an oversimplification of the philosophy.
Does that best sum up the situation? Obviously, whether or not exploiting others is morally licit will have an affect on whether or not there are any conflicts of interests. If it is not, as Rand holds, then there is a harmony of the rightly-understood interests of men in interpersonal relations, since the good is never achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. If that is the case, then what is good for the individual is good for the society, for the society or “polis” is nothing more than the sum of its parts, the individual men that make it up. What is bad for it (force, exploitation, dictatorship, disintegration of social cooperation) will be bad for its individual members.
Then we're in the territory of difficult to prove empirical arguments about whether no one ever benefits from exploitation and anyone who exploits another person will instantly suffer psychosis and panic attacks. In that case I'll let the issue rest.
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I don't understand, are you saying an egoistic ethics can only work if everyone or most people follow it, or are you saying you are skeptical about human nature?
I'm saying that being a dictator is nice but if you manage to be the Randian superman that might be just as good a deal.
I don't know how a society of people who think they should all be the dictator and that the standard of well living means achieving a life of non-effort on the backs of others will achieve anything but self-destruction. But that's why taking individual rights seriously is so important to individual flourishing, don't you think?
I'm not thinking in terms of society, just the individual. What's best for the individual isn't always best for society.
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The question asked was "Why would you be starving?" - and you gave the flip answer.
Sorry. That was impolite of me. I understand that the best option is to avoid starving in the first place but my question was just a hypothetical example.
I think I've learned a bit more about Objectivism from this thread and I've been glad to meet some intelligent, well-spoken posters here. What Eiuol said- more or less that Objectivism works well if you can reach it's ideal- is my main takeaway.
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Psychosis is a mental illness of inability to cope with reality. Psychosis is not always hallucinating or having some dramatic breakdown while frothing at the mouth.
The word psychosis always means exactly that. If you are taking it to mean something else than you are adopting a definition other than the DSM one.
The standard of mental health is a person's ability to deal with reality.In common usage detachment from reality is not the only indicator of poor mental health. You're using the Objectivist definition, not the dictionary one. But whatever, it's irrelevant for now.
I don't know anything about any given dictator's particular state of mind, and neither do you. But in general, being a dictator requires a life of fear, terror, and anxiety. People who need power over others are mentally ill because they surrender their consciousnesses to the control of others, whom are their defense from the laws of nature (e.g. requirement of production.)Dictators or liberal presidents can do plenty besides controlling others- they play golf, hang out with family, vacation at Disney World. It's not all-consuming for most, nor is the average person free from dependence on others for their well-being. We all depend on police and the military to keep us safe. Yeah, dictators and Obama have more reason to worry but it's not like it keeps them up at night.
Notice how you keep linking "social standing" and "climbing up the social pecking order" (as well as the obtainment of looted wealth, which is the same issue) with human well-being. Why do you depend on others for your own well being? Are you impotent on your own? Why do you derive your own self-value by how many people you can bash over the head and force obedience and submission? The submission of others protect a dictator from reality, from having to be productive on his own. Is this a healthy mind? Is this self-esteem? Is this successful coping with nature? What if we ripped the victims away from their grasp? How will their consciousnesses react to that? Every dictator is psychotic to some degree, and every one can potentially end up a raving lunatic like Gaddafi.Money is mostly a means to social standing. Many artists and corporate executives get their motivation to succeed from social prestige. Objectivists like acquiring money and status, right? It sucks to lose either but it's not as bad as you make it sound.
It seems like both of us are making claims without empirical evidence. It's been a nice discussion but at this point I'll have to agree to disagree with you.
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The point about Objectivism is the *best* life you can live, not merely "good enough," not merely being alive. Is a dictator living the *best* life possible? If you are interested in Objectivism, then please read about it, a forum is not going to give you a full understanding. There is already a thread on the prudent predator topic.
Okay. That might work, if you disregard the imperfect alternatives people face in real life. Most people are best off living a moral life since they don't have the opportunity to be a dictator. But in some circumstances yes being a dictator is the best life possible.
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Obviously Objectivism challenges that any denial of rights to others is in your rational self-interest. Why is denying the right of life to others beneficial for you? You would be no better than an animal then. A parasitic one, since you depend on the productivity of others. What are you going to do when your hosts don't support you anymore, for example, if you kill them off, or if they stop producing, or can't support both you and them?
Since you have abandoned rationality, how then can you justify this state of affairs? Certainly not by appeal to logic.
Most dictators were psychotics and megalomaniacs, and drove their nations into destruction while piling up mountains of skulls, until their own people or the enemies they made killed them. Is psychosis your standard of mental health? And is dying by the sword you lived by your standard of well living, then?
Psychosis is a psychiatric diagnosis for someone who suffers delusions and hallucinations. "Most" dictators certainly didn't have this condition; you can point to particular crazies like Gadaffi but in most cases being a dictator hardly hurt their mental health. Denying the rights of others is beneficial for a dictator thanks to the social and financial standing they can gain from their position alone. Many if not nearly all dictators throughout history died natural deaths after comfortable lives without being ever overthrown. Do you have any evidence that my example (Franco) suffered from psychosis?
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I would argue that they did not. Under a complete account of well-being, including psychological health, a healthy moral character, and material wealth, the only way to achieve "the good life" is by treating others as individuals to be traded with, rather than subjects to be ruled. The paranoia and psychosis alone, which is run-of-the-mill for "successful" dictators, should give one pause in saying that they lived well.
Well, in the absence of a scientific way to measure well-being we'll just have to disagree there. But I doubt that Franco would have been better off if he chose not to rule one of the world's largest countries for decades. I haven't seen anything to suggest he was having constant anxiety attacks or psychosis.
Self-interest versus rights
in Questions about Objectivism
Posted · Edited by mustang19
Sorry. I edited that out. What specifically, though, did I lie about?
I know my understanding of Objectivism isn't very good, but as forward as I am sometimes, O'ism interests me for various reasons and I'd be curious to know if I am just totally off base as to what the philosophy essentially is.