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Dante

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Posts posted by Dante

  1. Nicky,

     

    Ms. Rand argues that there needs to be one government which acts a the final arbiter and there can not be competing governments. However, if objective laws can be formulated based on the way reality is, then it should not matter if there is one government or dozens within a certain geographic location since all the governments will be enforcing the same objective laws.

    It does not follow that 'all governments will be enforcing the same objective laws' simply because objective political principles are discovered, not created, by men. These political principles result from a long process of induction and deduction, and people are not infallible or inerrant in this process. Consider the laws of economics; we are clearly discovering, rather than creating, these laws, and yet there is wide disagreement even among professionals about even the most basic questions. One central principle of Rand's philosophy is that individuals are not inerrant, that there is no automatic and guaranteed path to knowledge. Over time, the truth has an advantage in the battle of ideas, but there is no guarantee it will prevail.

  2. It is the government's proper function to guard the borders to prevent criminal or military attack.

     

    Since the government is THE agent which can wield force legally,  the government has the job of border defense and military action.

     

    ruveyn1

     

    This is all true.  However, this does not give carte blache for the government to keep out anyone that it wants to, simply because voters like it.  A proper border policy would screen for criminals and enemy combatants, and keep those people out.  Keeping out anyone else, on economic grounds for example, is an abuse of government power, and is just as illegitimate as any other time the government reaches beyond its fundamental purpose of protecting our rights.

  3. Each individual that is granted such authority as a member of the government also accepts the responsibility to use such authority to faithfully execute the laws of the government.  Thus, whether this exercise of authority is legitimate or not depends once again on the legitimacy of the laws themselves.  Governmental legitimacy is determined by whether these laws stick to or deviate from the proper function of government.

  4. Sorry to have introduced such confusion.  The salient point here is this:

     

    The individual in the original post who opposes Law A (capital punishment) removes his explicit consent for this law from the government.  The OP then goes on to claim that this means that the government is now initiating force against this person; that the withdrawal of explicit consent means that the government is now acting outside of its authority.

     

    This is not the case.  The government does not need to obtain explicit consent from every citizen it represents for every law it passes.  By participating in civil society, the individual has forfeited his authority over matters of the administration of retaliatory force, and his explicit consent is not required.

  5. Consider the very next passage in that essay: 

     

    There is only one basic principle to which an individual must consent if he wishes to live in a free, civilized society: the principle of renouncing the use of physical force and delegating to the government his right of physical self-defense, for the purpose of an orderly, objective, legally defined enforcement. Or, to put it another way, he must accept the separation of force and whim (any whim, including his own).

     

    Rand clearly states the issue on which men have delegated authority to the government if they choose to live in civilized society.  I should have spoken more clearly: Rand's theory clearly leaves no role for the kind of explicit consent your example involves.  One cannot participate in civil society and at the same time attempt to retain authority over the details of the use of retaliatory force.  The type of explicit statement "I agree with the way in which the government is protecting my rights" is not a necessary condition for a citizen to be represented by the government.  By participating in civil society, he has given up his authority in this manner.  Correspondingly, the government choosing a different method of punishment than the one he would like is not an initiation of force against him.

  6. You can turn off the new style of quoting in the reply box with the "BBCode Mode" button, it looks like a lightswitch and it's the first one.  This turns off all the other reply box functions, but you can toggle it on and off to quote in the old way and still use the other functions (bold, emoticons, etc).

     

    This solves the problem of copying and pasting quote blocks, at least for me.  I'm currently using Google Chrome.

  7. If the government chooses to enforce Law A, then those supporters of Law B will be compelled to act against their own rational judgment if they continue to consent to the government’s authority, and vice versa. At this point, the government is not using reason by obtaining voluntary, uncoerced agreement from its citizens, it is using non-retaliatory force. If the government is initiating force against its citizens rather than protecting its citizens from the use of force when it enforces objective laws, then how can government be the necessity that Ms. Rand claims it to be?

     

    This is not an accurate characterization of legitimate government.  A government does not gain or lose its legitimacy based on whether it "obtains voluntary, uncoerced agreement from its citizens."  Such agreement is not a necessary condition for a proper government.  Rand's political theory is not based on any form of consent theory.

  8. Do I judge myself as immoral for two actions in a life time? Nope. (While not self-justifying my actions.)

     

     

    Do we judge Roark as immoral for one, dramaticized, over the top act, consistent with his values.

    How do you believe his creator would like us to judge him? Should his creator know best, in fact?

     

     

    Is the issue here simply judging the character of a person vs. judging an action by that person?  That's an interesting topic, and certainly we wouldn't say a person has an immoral character from one isolated action alone, particularly if that action is 'out of character' for that person.  However, the point of the dynamiting is that it's a powerful expression of the characteristic artistic integrity that Roark has displayed throughout the entire novel, so I'm not sure the argument works here.

  9. I say we have the most corrupt government in the world in the last 20 years. Our system countenances trillions of dollar of corruption as well as patronage on a massive and unsustainable scale.

     

    This is simply wrong, and it's a case of losing historical and global perspective.  Our government is an absolute mess compared to what it should and could be, but the very fact that you're writing about this without fear of prosecution disproves your point, as there are countries out there where you could not write such things about the government.

     

    The American government has real and serious problems, but let's not lose perspective and pretend that we have the worst government that ever existed on the face of the earth.  That's just silly.  People talk about us being Greece in the next few decades, but don't forget: Greece is Greece right now.

  10. Stephen,

     

    Thanks for your reply.  A theory of ethical egoism certainly has to justify any empathy and concern for others back to one's own self-interest, and I think this is precisely what the conception of caring about another's happiness does.  It attains a direct and emotional benefit for the actor to do something good for someone they value.  At the same time, an egoistic theory that claims to provide objective values cannot simply say that "whoever you happen to care about, you should act to value them" any more than it can say that "whatever you happen to value, value it" as hedonism does.  We must have principles to distinguish which relationships are objectively good for us and which are bad.  I think Objectivism accomplishes this in much the same way that it guides our choice of a career, so I'll use that as an analogy.

     

    First and foremost, one's choice of a career depends on personal, subjective values; on what one is passionate about.  If I'm passionate about furthering the study of economics (as I am) then I should seriously consider this personal preference when choosing a career.  However, if I'm passionate about robbing banks, say, or conning others, Objectivism provides a moral framework that enables us to reject 'bank robber' and 'con man' as rational career choices.  Thus, Objectivism provides some moral constraints, within which our personal, subjective preferences play a major role in determining what we should do.

     

    Objectivism informs our decisions about relationships in much the same way.  Much is left up to personal preference, to romantic attraction and chemistry, and yet there are objective constraints on what kind of relationships are 'good' for us.  Someone that physically abuses you (to use an extreme example), or someone that constantly manipulates you, is objectively destructive to your life and goals.  Even if you are in love with such a person, you should act to change that, much the same way you would strive to reform yourself if you felt pulled towards a life as a con man.

     

    Thus, I think we can say that valuing others and acting for them fits into our self-interest in the same way that pursuing a career that we love does.  These things bring immediate and important psychological benefits, in addition to more clearly instrumental values, and we can still objectively distinguish the good for our life from the bad.  This is what a theory of ethical egoism must accomplish, and I think Rand's does so.

  11. Not only that, but it's not moral or legal to conspire to commit the fraud of passing off one's work as someone else's. Ask Fab and Rob of Milli Vanilli about it. When one's partner in fraud enters into a contract with others by passing off one's work as his own, he is going into the contract with the intention of violating it. One then doesn't have the right to claim that the other side didn't hold up their end of the contract.

     

    J

     

    The fraud and the dynamiting are two separate issues.  On the subject of the fraud, Roark realizes and admits that he was wrong to engage in it and pass off his work as Keating's.  This is part of his character progression; he initially doesn't see the harm in helping Peter, he feels sorry for him, etc.  However, by the end, he has made this realization:

     

    I'm guilty too.  We both are... It's I who've destroyed you, Peter.  From the beginning.  By helping you.  There are matters in which one should not ask for help nor give it.  I shouldn't have done your projects at Stanton.  I shouldn't have done the Cosmo-Slotnick building.  Nor Cortlandt.  I loaded you with more than you can carry.  It's like an electric current too strong for the circuit.  It blows the fuse.  Now we'll both pay for it.  It will be hard on you, but it will be harder on me. (pp. 611, centennial edition)

     

    Roark begins the novel with a mistaken premise and an inadequate understanding of the consequences of helping Keating in this way.  The progression of the novel then illustrates, to Roark and to us, the consequences of this error.  In this respect, it's much like Rearden's initial flawed approach to dealing with family obligation: the events of the novel illustrate to him and to us the error in his thinking.

     

    The dynamiting is not a deliberate error Rand is using in this way.  Rather, it is a powerful aesthetic statement about artistic integrity; Roark takes the only action possible to him that will protect the integrity of his work.  The dynamiting and the fraud serve different purposes and are used in different ways in the novel, and must be analyzed differently.

  12. Are there many commentators who take a "throw up your hands" approach: in the sense of saying "politicians are all corrupt, working to their own ends,... we can never design something good... etc." ?

     

    I don't know many public choice scholars who do.  Anarchists generally are willing to use the arguments to support their viewpoint, but most public choice economists take the same approach to government that economists generally take to the market: we can improve outcomes with some selective changes.  At least that's my impression.

  13. David Kelley, founder of the Atlas Society, recently debated John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods and admirer of Ayn Rand, on the role of selfishness in our lives and in our societies.  I just watched it and had a response that I felt compelled to write down and then share here.  The debate is here:

     

    http://www.atlassociety.org/david-kelley-debates-john-mackey

     

    David Kelley defends Rand's conception of selfishness while Mackey accepts the traditional view of selfishness and argues that some selfishness is good, but too much is a bad thing, and it should be balanced with other virtues.  I think this is an important position to respond to primarily because we hear it so often, and there's much confusion on the issue.  Also, I don't think Kelley's response was nearly adequate.  So, I'll post my own response to the debate in the next post, so as not to have a huge OP.

  14. This is a very interesting, thought provoking quote said by Kira before it was edited:

    "If one believes one's right, one shouldn't wait to convince millions of fools, one might just as well force them. Except that I don't know, however, whether I'd include blood in my methods."

    Galt found a creative method. It's all about method in the context you are living in. Ours is a zombie culture:

    http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=24577&hl

     

    She struck that passage because it no longer accurately represented her worldview, and she wanted to avoid the attempts of others to paint her mature philosophy with the same brush... which seems to be exactly what you're trying to do.

  15. How can the  miarchanists'(which I guess is the new term for proponents of limited government ) view be reconciled with what seems like some postmodernist garbledee-gook?  I'm not sure I uunderstand the implications of the posted question

     

    'Postmodernist garbledee-gook'?  Public choice economics simply applies a central economic principle (incentives matter) to the behavior of politicians in government as well as businessmen in a marketplace.  Fundamentally, it is about looking at the incentives that politicians actually face, and evaluating how effective a given government program or institution will actually be at achieving its goals, based on how it is structured.

     

    To the OP, public choice does point out some endemic problems that are faced by democratic systems.  This is not the same as saying that the system is broken to the extent that we should just go for anarchy.  In fact, we need to know about these incentive problems in order to design a government structure that minimizes them.  Public choice doesn't speak at all to the purpose of government.  What it does do is tell us the likely outcomes of different structures of government.  In designing a government, we could make it more or less robust to a lot of these incentive problems.  This is precisely what things like separation of powers, checks and balances, term limits, state vs federal authority, etc are intended to address.  Public choice allows us to apply economic reasoning to the question of how an elected official or a bureaucrat might behave within a certain system design, and therefore helps us use economics to address how we should structure a government, given the purpose that we want it to fulfill.

     

    In short, it doesn't address the purpose of government, or replace political philosophy in this respect.  What it does is tell us how to best translate a political philosophy into an actual structure of government, e.g. a constitution.

  16. http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2013/02/06/atlas-shrugged-producer-shares-insights-and-a-surprse-that-awaits-in-atlas-iii/

    According to this interview with John Aglialoro, Part III is going ahead as planned. There's a little detail buried in there that seems designed to get tongues wagging, but doesn't strike me as a big deal at all. Aglialoro says there will be a scene that's not in the book, where Dagny goes into St. Patrick's, which is of course across the street from the Atlas statue in Rockefeller Center, and a priest talks to her. Shrug.

     

     

    Interesting... Wasn't there a priest character planned in AS (or maybe TF) but then was left out of the novel?

  17. The state already sets reading requirements. The argument should be abolishing the public school system, not arguing about which books the state should be allowed to require.

    Although I think this particular case of requiring Atlas Shrugged is ridiculous, we shouldn't give up trying to influence school curricula simply because schools are currently public. If a couple of creationists got on the school board in your county and started assigning creationist materials for science classes, would you push back? Or simply shrug and suggest that schools be privatized?

  18. Is he philosophy fiction? Her morality fictional? Wasn't Ayn Rands Objectivism, "a philosophy for living on earth"? We're any of he novels in any way vehicles for he philosophy? Or was it just fictionalized philosophy for only fictional characters in a fictionalized world to "live" by? Does her Objectivism involve the application of it to our own lives, to our own world, to our own character? Should we disregard, dismiss everything her characters say, do , feel, think, desire simply because they are fictional "living" in a fictionalized world? Or do we just try to understand bow they apply he philosophy in their own world, their own "lives", in their own world? How that applies in any way to us, in ours? Should we even study the characters, their fictional world, what they say, think, feel, desire, do, then - if it's all fictional? Or do we look for any relevance at all to us, our world our lives?

    ... You really see no option other than either to judge all of her characters' thoughts and actions as the paragon of virtue, or to disregard everything in her books? Nothing between those two?

  19. Roark did not have the human material to work with. In AS there were enough Heroic Producers or Heroic spirited folks to at least start a partially self sufficient community. This was not the case in TF

    I think that's the wrong analysis. In my view, The Fountainhead is simply more optimistic about American society at that point than is Atlas Shrugged. Roark makes his case before the jury, and is acquitted. In The Fountainhead, beneath all of the ridiculousness of high society and the scheming of Ellsworth Toohey, the average American has respect for the integrity of a creator and for the sanctity of the individual and his creative work. Thus, Roark is able to make his case, and the public identifies with and accepts it.

    We see similar scenes in Atlas Shrugged; for example, when the crowd at Hank Rearden's trial bursts into applause at his statements, or when masses of people volunteer for the trial run of the John Galt line. However, the formal system is too far gone by that point, and Galt has to form his own system and demonstrate the moral bankruptcy of the prevailing system through a strike. Roark can make his appeal within the system and be left free to build on his own terms; but by Atlas Shrugged, Galt cannot.

  20. You can use a nuclear weapon in self-defense in certain boundary situations. Seems like every Bruce Willis movie involves him defending himself with a flamethrower or shoulder-fired rocket. Any number of scenarios could be concocted. Based on the logic above, then, all of these weapons should be legal, and yes, HB's blanket statement that, "all guns should be legal" certainly holds.

    But it is different than what Yaron said, wherein he made it clear that regulation of weapons in certain contexts is proper...

    However, Brook doesn't allow these scenarios, because he further specifies the context of his statements: immediate self-defense against criminals, in a country with a legitimate government and a functional military that will defend you against anything bigger. In that context, your provision of your own self-defense does not require nuclear weapons, biological weapons, any of that. If that context doesn't apply; for example, if you're in a revolt (to use the case Brook discussed) then things might be different. However, when we're talking about the case of gun control measures being enacted in today's America, Brook's assumed context applies, and any number of weapons can be disqualified from legitimate self-defensive use.

  21. I didn't say "statistics trump individual rights" either. Straw man much?

    Yaron agrees that there is a some line at which regulation begins with weapons. He explicitly said that he didn't want to get into where that line was, and didn't address the issue altogether. HB said that all regulation of guns is wrong, which is sloppy at best.

    I further stated that the technical line should be defined by the sum of our knowledge, some of which may include aggregate facts, aka statistics.

    He doesn't define the line in practical terms, in terms of specific weapons, but he draws a crystal clear philosophical line between defensive and offensive weapons. The right to self-defense is an individual right that must be recognized by the government. There is no room here for trying to reduce shootings or gun deaths by banning specific weapons that are commonly used in such crimes. You look at the weapon, determine whether it is a viable weapon for self-defense or not, and then you're done. No 'banning this gun would reduce gun violence by X' or 'well, these guns are mostly used in a bad way.' It's either a fundamentally offensive weapon, and banned, or it's not, and you can have one.

  22. Several things wrong here. As at least one other person has said and you ignored: the end product of Ayn Rand's ideas is not really capitalists. Capitalists is a group of people, we exist as individuals. The end product is the ethical man; the selfish, non-sacrificial man. This man cannot be a christian. Christianity is completely opposed to living for oneself. Christianity and Objectivism "cannot be reconciled"; they are not "compatible". Which is what the title of the thread asks.

    Christianity does not explicitly set its moral code against the interests of its followers, or 'completely oppose living for oneself.' It claims to preach an ethical code which benefits the practitioner. Rand herself did a good job of highlighting the contradiction between the egoistic focus on personal salvation and the altruistic code that is actually advocated: (from Letters of Ayn Rand p.287, written in 1946)

    There is a great, basic contradiction in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism -- the inviolate sanctity of man's soul, and the salvation of one's soul as one's first concern and highest goal; this means -- one's ego and the integrity of one's ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one's soul -- (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one's soul?) -- Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which told them that in order to save one's soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one's soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires or needs of others, which means the subordination of one's soul to the souls of others.

    This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. This is why men have never succeeded in applying Christianity in practice, while they have preached it in theory for two thousand years. The reason of their failure was not men's natural depravity or hypocrisy, which is the superficial (and vicious) explanation usually given. The reason is that a contradiction cannot be made to work. That is why the history of Christianity has been a continuous civil war -- both literally (between sects and nations), and spiritually (within each man's soul).

    It would be better to say that Christianity sets itself in opposition to the actual moral code that is compatible with living for oneself; it claims to lay out this moral code, but in actuality does not.

    I'm an end product of following Ayn Rand's ideas, and I'm a Capitalist. Others who have done the same enjoy the same rewards. Regardless of how wonderful her ideas are, they are totally useless if they are not realized by our actions.

    On this I can only elaborate on Marc's previous statement (quoted above); the end product isn't a capitalist. It is someone who applies reason to every area of his or her life, and fully accepts and implements a moral code oriented towards self-interest and based on fact. You may share some ethical and political views of hers, but clearly not all.

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