Dante

If you think about what types of society have those 'worst conditions' you're referencing, where working in a sweatshop is a relatively good job that people compete over, these are also precisely those societies which lack a significant number of super-rich people who could be taxed somewhat without even really noticing it. Once there is enough wealth at the top of society so that we could tax the rich lightly and have more than a few pennies per person for the poor, we find that the sweatshops have already disappeared and the standard of living has risen for all involved. So I would start here by objecting to the possibility of finding a way to secure the goods one needs through redistributive taxation; once there is enough wealth at the top so that this 'providing goods for those at the bottom without significantly harming those at the top' argument applies, there's enough wealth at the bottom so that we don't see people in abject, horrible conditions anymore.

EDIT: Not exactly a principled philosophical argument, but that's what I got

The best thing one can do is to repeal many statist laws.

Firstly, welfare laws should be repeal at least to the extent where almost nobody wants to be on welfare. This ought to apply to ethnic Germans just as much as it applies to ethnic Turks or Somalians. Even if only 0.5% of ethnic Germans mooch off the system while 10% of ethnic Somalians do, the law should deny both those sets the ability to mooch. In fact, a refugee is likely to be more deserving of charity for the first few months, as he looks for a job and so on (private charity, of course).

However, many refugees may not be able to find jobs because of other laws. So, drastically cutting back on welfare would not be enough. One would have to roll back minimum-wage laws, to allow refugees to earn their living and not be priced-out of the economy due to lower skills. However, things won't end here, because they might find that they cannot afford housing because the law stipulates rules for what is considered livable housing. So, one would have to roll back housing and rental laws.

As long as one has a huge welfare state, people will fear any class of poor. By definition, anyone who earns less than an average wage is likely the recipient of redistributed money. When a large percentage of people in some particular ethnic group -- Turk, or Somali, or Muslim, or black -- is poor, then people will see that group as a recipient of welfare funds, and the worst racist sentiments will be aroused.

The primary cause of most immigration is economic: people want to move to a place where they will have a better life in material terms. It is important that the system has the right incentives to induce them to stand on their own feet as soon as possible. The welfare state works in the opposite direction, retarding the poor from becoming self-sufficient, and encouraging those who are irresponsible.

Evaluating the character of an entire movement of people and ideas is quite an involved task, and involves drawing from many different people's accounts of events and evaluating the objectivity and trustworthiness of the people giving accounts. As such, I see no reason whatsoever to suppose that people who come to different conclusions than you are lying to themselves. It's not like the Objectivist movement is some physical object somewhere and we can just look at it to see whether it's dogmatic or not. Personally, I haven't seen any evidence of dogmatism in today's Objectivist movement that doesn't involve some action or statement by Peikoff, who (as I understand it) currently has almost no involvement in the activities of ARI. My personal interactions with people at ARI have been entirely devoid of any kind of dogmatism or intellectual bullying. When I contacted ARI about requesting their help in starting an Objectivist club at my university, I was incredibly surprised by how little he asked me about my knowledge of and experience with Objectivism. All that I was asked was whether or not I had read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. From some of the rumors I had heard circulating about ARI, I half expected him to ask me whether I thought Objectivism was a closed system or not; there was absolutely none of that.

Also, most of the Objectivists I've talked to are right there with you on the worthlessness of the U.S.'s current wars, myself included.

In post-agricultural societies, most downturns are caused by the over-extension of credit. "Over-extension" implies that the investments are not going to pay off (as a whole). At some point, this realization sets in. Instead of being the first to get in, people want to be the first to get out.

The attempt to pull back credit ripples through the economy, with creditors asking for their money back and debtors not able to repay. The way banking has been organized -- for a few centuries -- is that it is impossible for all the debtors in the economy to pay back all their debts at the time they are due. The system depends on debt being "rolled over" into new debt; i.e., the system depends on the fact that all creditors will not demand their loans back at the earliest point they may legally do so. A debtor may be solvent (i.e. able to pay back his liabilities over time), but may still go down if he cannot pay them back when they're actually due. People know that banks only keep a small reserve. If they fear that their neighbors will draw money from banks, they too will rush to do so. To illustrate, suppose a bank has 10 depositors who have each placed $1,000 in the bank. The bank has promised that it will pay back the money "on demand", but has lent the money out for months or years, keeping only a small amount on hand. If a small percentage of depositors panic and pull their money out, there will be none to make even the smaller payments requested by the others. This motivates those others to try and be the first to pull their own money out. This leads to a "run" on the bank.

Each particular crisis revolves around a different industry (or set of industries). So, the 1873 and 1893 panics involved railroad booms (remember how the dot-com bubble popped?) Sometimes, a truly revolutionary technology can result in great improvements in standards of living; yet, the accompanying euphoria can see more money being thrown at the industry than is warranted (at least in retrospect). Most panics also have their cast of villains: one or two big companies that did something shady. These actors do not cause the boom and bust, they ride the boom and precipitate the bust: i.e., they make things worse. Sometimes, these actors did not do anything illegal, they simply did something stupid. In fact short term thinking causes much heavier losses than any actual criminal acts.

In modern times, except for wars, the root cause of busts and booms can always be traced to the ebb and flow of levels of credit. When a depression becomes a panic, it is almost always because of some type of "run" on banks or bank-like institutions. In other words, the mismatch in duration of when money is legally due and when it can actually be paid allows creditors to demand money that cannot actually be repaid. This causes fear to escalate into a panic. The traditional way of "dealing" with panics has been that people and banks (or finance companies) that have invested in poor ventures lose money; those who have deposited funds with such banks and finance firms lose money. Even some investments that might have made it in normal times go down during a panic. In other words, marginal investments lose, along with the actually poor ones. Over a few cycles people behind "smart money" become richer and those behind "dumb money" lose. It is analogous to biological evolution, applied to investments.

In fact, for someone who has not gone hog wild, and still has a cash reserve and depositors who believe firmly in his long-term approach (e.g. J.P.Morgan), a panic was a time to buy assets in fire sales. This is not the primary reason people like Morgan acted during panics. They realized that the system as a whole could be threatened if panic was allowed to spread. However, there is also a sense in which they were not "bailing people out". In essence, the decision making of the deep-pocket folk goes something like this: some investments of the boom have been bad, and must be allowed to fail; but, other investments are suffering because of "contagion". The solution is to draw the line and make a judgement of which ones are in each category. Then, deploy cash into the ones that are temporarily down, but which will be good in the long run.

In the U.S., the crisis of 1907 was the last one where private investors played the lead role in deciding when to pull back credit, who should fail and who should be rescued. The Fed was formed in 1913 because the government wanted to play a larger role. Unsurprisingly, the plan for the Fed was pushed by a certain bunch of bankers. Well, the problem is that governments are not driven primarily by the desire for profit, and the people in government don't put their own money on the line. At the sign of a downturn, the government has a propensity to not want to let the failures fail. They start to help much earlier than someone like Morgan would have done -- when things have turned down, but not yet dropped "enough". This can often have a modulating effect. The government also has a capability that Morgan did not have: the ability to redistribute money. The government can take money from Morgan, before Morgan would ever act, and give it to some of the marginal companies. Voila! The downturn is less steep!

This process (aka "the socialization of losses") modulates the previous evolution-like successes and failures. The longer-term result is a lower variability coupled with lower growth. In banking itself, the government has mostly run smart, super-conservative bankers out of business. How're they going to make money in an environment where the government underwrites the liabilities of the other bankers?

The two really drawn out depressions in that chart you linked to have been on the government's watch: the "great depression" and our current one.

One of the major issues that led to the financial crisis was the fact that banks had very limited liability and responsibility, but increased 'freedom' that came from deregulation. In this case, deregulation basically meant: more freedom to play with other people's money and not face the consequences if that play went bad. Obviously, this is not the vision of the free market that Objectivism advocates. In a truly free market, deregulation is accompanied by a system where companies reap both the benefits and the hazards of excessive risk-taking.

If I had to choose between a system where banks were not held responsible for most of the losses resulting from the risks they took, but they weren't allowed to take very many risks in the first place (because of regulation), and a system where banks were not held responsible for the losses of taking risks, and were relatively unrestricted in the actions they could take, I'd choose the regulation. Of course, neither of these is a truly free market, so they have nothing to say about Objectivism's ideal political system.

Actually I had no idea what I was talking about

Those are forms of illegal initiation of force.


As in any case of initiation of force, the government's role is to protect the rights of everyone involved. If parents are abusing their kids, they are committing a crime, and should be treated as criminals. It's not that the children would be taken away from their parents, it's that the parents would be taken away from their kids and restrained, by force if required.

Another interesting question is how do you determine if something is child abuse or not. For example, is spanking child abuse? Clearly, a parent needs to be able to force their kids to do (or not do) certain things, in order to keep them safe as they grow up. So, the rules aren't the same as for the general public.


Foster care is fine. Foster parents should voluntarily accept the role and the associated cost.

For starters, your packaging of non-volitional and reactionary together, as well as volitional and non-reactionary. Yes, it is true that all volitional action is self-caused in a sense (non-reactionary). However, your claim is much stronger; namely, that all non-reactionary action is volitional action, and I see no support for this claim. In fact, in a universe where spontaneous actions seems to be an inherent capacity of the fabric of the universe, I see only evidence to the contrary.

I think you have a real fundamental misunderstanding of Objectivism here. Of COURSE it is morally OK to help someone who develops Alzheimers - in fact, if it is someone like your mother or father (assuming they were good parents or even decent parents to you) it's pretty much immoral not to. What Objectivism is against is UNCHOSEN obligation, not freely chosen aid to people you value. It's absolutely moral for me to care for and assist, for example, my autistic sister because she may never be fully independent. I love my sister, I value her, and to fail to help her would be inconsistent with my values, thus harmful to my life. It is also moral for a stranger to help my sister IF that person chooses to do so (say, through a charity dedicated to autistic people). What is NOT moral is for me to force a stranger to care for my sister whether they want to or not, because I can't or won't, and using government as an intermediary vehicle for that force makes it even more immoral.

It's been said before but you really, REALLY need to read Rand before you come in here and ask stuff like this. You would have a lot better sense of the philosophy. You are far too focused on what Objectivism is against and not at all focused enough on what it is FOR. Objectivism is pro-values. Other people are frequently values.

The evidence on the subject available at the time was a bit lacking, certainly compared to what it is today. Today, we know that this claim is wrong. Google is a wonderful tool.



Simply labeling disagreement with you 'the *insert unsavory word to Objectivists* approach' is not a valid argument or defense of your viewpoint, no matter how much you seem to enjoy doing it.

Your question is loaded; it presumes that the "acts against others" is in one's rational self interest.

So you go on forums and imply bad things about communities/ideas you clearly know nothing about?

Except that each person's highest value is his or her own life. Attempting to claim that the highest value is some abstract "life" and therefore homosexuality, because it does not result in children, 'does not value life' is rationalistic, and a confusion of what is meant by valuing life for the Objectivist. Objectivism as an ethical code is always a guide for the individual valuer, who should always be focusing on his particular life. Valuing one's own life and therefore being true to oneself could certainly result for some people in a homosexual lifestyle, and everyone engaging in homosexuality for these reasons is operating on the premise of life: their own individual life, not some nebulous, abstract, 'furtherance of the species' conception of life, which by design refers to no life in particular.

Except that each person's highest value is his or her own life. Attempting to claim that the highest value is some abstract "life" and therefore homosexuality, because it does not result in children, 'does not value life' is rationalistic, and a confusion of what is meant by valuing life for the Objectivist. Objectivism as an ethical code is always a guide for the individual valuer, who should always be focusing on his particular life. Valuing one's own life and therefore being true to oneself could certainly result for some people in a homosexual lifestyle, and everyone engaging in homosexuality for these reasons is operating on the premise of life: their own individual life, not some nebulous, abstract, 'furtherance of the species' conception of life, which by design refers to no life in particular.

Ayn Rand has stated explicitly that homosexuality was not normal homo sapien behavior. I support that view. It appears as though, in terms of morality, too many proclaimed Objectivists of this generation take the anarchist/subjectivist approach. This line of reasoning is simply not in line with the philosophy of Objectivism that that Ayn Rand created, Peikoff maybe, but not Ayn Rand. That being said, I don't think she would have an issue with someone choosing to be gay, but she would certainly not endorse it as Objectivist approved morality. The Objectivism of today seems more concerned with a libertarian approach to subjects that Miss Rand stated were contrary to her philosophy. Will the defenders of Rand's work and beliefs please stand up?

Except that each person's highest value is his or her own life. Attempting to claim that the highest value is some abstract "life" and therefore homosexuality, because it does not result in children, 'does not value life' is rationalistic, and a confusion of what is meant by valuing life for the Objectivist. Objectivism as an ethical code is always a guide for the individual valuer, who should always be focusing on his particular life. Valuing one's own life and therefore being true to oneself could certainly result for some people in a homosexual lifestyle, and everyone engaging in homosexuality for these reasons is operating on the premise of life: their own individual life, not some nebulous, abstract, 'furtherance of the species' conception of life, which by design refers to no life in particular.

Except that each person's highest value is his or her own life. Attempting to claim that the highest value is some abstract "life" and therefore homosexuality, because it does not result in children, 'does not value life' is rationalistic, and a confusion of what is meant by valuing life for the Objectivist. Objectivism as an ethical code is always a guide for the individual valuer, who should always be focusing on his particular life. Valuing one's own life and therefore being true to oneself could certainly result for some people in a homosexual lifestyle, and everyone engaging in homosexuality for these reasons is operating on the premise of life: their own individual life, not some nebulous, abstract, 'furtherance of the species' conception of life, which by design refers to no life in particular.

Except that each person's highest value is his or her own life. Attempting to claim that the highest value is some abstract "life" and therefore homosexuality, because it does not result in children, 'does not value life' is rationalistic, and a confusion of what is meant by valuing life for the Objectivist. Objectivism as an ethical code is always a guide for the individual valuer, who should always be focusing on his particular life. Valuing one's own life and therefore being true to oneself could certainly result for some people in a homosexual lifestyle, and everyone engaging in homosexuality for these reasons is operating on the premise of life: their own individual life, not some nebulous, abstract, 'furtherance of the species' conception of life, which by design refers to no life in particular.

Just a comment on this; I don't think that this line of argument is a valid approach to determining whether or not intellectual property rights are valid. After all, if a thief put hundreds of man-hours into planning and executing an elaborate heist, we would not then say that he is entitled to "reap the rewards" of his effort. This is because his efforts have been geared towards an activity that violates someone else's rights.

So the question is whether the patent-breaker is violating someone else's rights through his labor, like the thief, or engaging in valid production, like the original inventor. Obviously, this hinges on whether or not the original inventor has a property right in the idea that is being copied. In either case, it is begging the question to say, "Well the patent-breaker exerted effort, so he's entitled to the copy," because it assumes that his efforts were not violating the rights of the inventor.

The more intellectual property debates I observe, the more I'm convinced it always comes down to one's overall theory of property rights; why we have them, what they are meant to do, etc. Most other arguments that I see about IP specifically, like the one you've put forth, end up ultimately depending on a pre-formed theory of rights, and don't help to determine whether IP is valid.

There are very few out there who deny the self-evident, and many of those people simply misunderstand what is being put forth as self-evident by Objectivists. Furthermore, I see no indication of anything like that in the OP; just someone who thinks Rand said a bunch of stuff she didn't actually say (contempt for the poor and weak, moral indifference to the suffering of others, and her demanding to be treated as a demi-god) and misunderstanding what 'closed system' means. Calmly and rationally arguing with such people is not always a waste of time; how else will misconceptions about Rand ever get cleared up? I do agree, though, that Youtube comments are not the place for it.

Can't we all just acknowledge that in any coherent system of equal individual rights, people cannot be owned by other people, and then move on from the bearing children example?

Well you kind of have epistemology and ethics confused together.

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature and means of human knowledge, e.g. how do we acquire it, how do we perceive reality, how do we judge the truth or falsehood of conclusions, etc.

You have recognized in the first sentence the metaphysical base of Rand's epistemology, that since reality exists independent of consciousness, existence sets the terms of cognition, and thus if we want to gain knowledge, we must adhere to the standards reality sets. Then, after we are done figuring out what those standards are, and fleshing out the details of the theory of knowledge, we move on to ethics. Ethics is where we run into the problem of an ultimate end, a final goal that acts as a criterion to judge all values. Rand attacks this problem by questioning the nature of values and why they arise in human existence in the first place, and thus discovers that there are inexorably linked to the phenomenon of life. So her ethics are biocentric, as the life of the organism must be its ultimate end. It is then that she examines the nature of man, that it is through the use of his reason that he survives and functions, and so forth. The issue of force only comes into the picture when we look at social ethics and politics as we think about what should be the principles of interpersonal relations.

About the principle of the initiation of force as evil, it's very easy to understand. Think of it this way: you would have done something different if you were not forced. That's the whole point of forcing you to do something, i.e. to get you to do something that you wouldn't otherwise have done, or to get you not to do something that you would have done. In this way, force is aimed at the rational judgment of another person, to force them to act against their own mind. But as we have seen in the Objectivist ethics, we need the judgment of our reason to select the values we pursue. If force interrupts this, then it keeps us from acting according to our judgment, and thwarts our ability to achieve our values.

Here are two good threads on force:
Induction of "the initiation of force is evil"
Reduction of "the initiation of force is evil"

On the connection between egoism and self-interest, there's not like one case to be made for egoism then a separate case to be made for self-interest, to pursue your rational self-interest is what an egoist ethics mandates. Pursuit of your rational self-interest, pursuing what is beneficial for you, must be the egoist's "policy" so to speak (obviously, the opposite would be pursuing what is detrimental to you.) So, in this way, egoism is infused with the very nature of a rational morality, in the earlier concepts of life and values that Rand explored. We saw that, if a man wishes to live, his own life must be the ultimate end. The end tells you the standard by which you judge the various means. The standard tells you what "policy" you must take in regards to achieving the end. So if the end is my survival and well-being, then I should work to achieve my survival and well-being, and I should not sacrifice my survival or well-being to the demands of others.

So holding a man's life as the standard of value necessarily means egoism, because who is the one doing the living in each case? Individual humans, right? In this way, self-interest follows directly from the ultimate end. We can see it makes sense that way, because the ultimate end gives us the standard of value (man's life qua man), but man's life qua man is an abstraction that applies to all men as the standard. But the purpose of acting according to that standard is each person's life, life being the attribute of individual acting men. Each individual's life is the basic unit of morality, each individual's life is what mandated the necessity of value achievement in the first place, thus requires a policy of rational selfishness.

If you're suggesting that the theistic side of the debate does not suffer from this problem, then you don't understand what they are arguing. Both sides in this discussion are positing that something "has always been there." The two sides simply disagree over what that something is; for us, it is the universe pretty much as it is now, while for the theists it is a conscious being, God, who initiated the universe as we know it. The reason for this is simple; if you're ultimately 'not really satisfied' with something always having been here, then your only alternative is truly causeless creation at some point in the past; something from (literally) nothing. Neither Jacob nor we Objectivists are willing to make that kind of claim. Are you?



You cannot make that claim on the basis of the evidence. All that we can say at this point is that almost 14 billion years ago, the universe as we know it was a singularity which then rapidly expanded. We have absolutely no evidence at this point to suggest what shape the universe was in before that singularity, and certainly nothing on which to base the claim that it didn't exist before that point. A series of bangs and crunches stretching back forever (for example) is equally likely.



You seem to be suggesting that there might be something else which is equipped to address questions when we have absolutely no evidence to go on. Some kind of shortcut to knowledge when we don't have any hard facts. This is simply not the case. Any questions that cannot be addressed using 'observable reality' simply cannot be addressed. There is no shortcut to knowledge through faith or feelings or guessing or anything else.

There are very few out there who deny the self-evident, and many of those people simply misunderstand what is being put forth as self-evident by Objectivists. Furthermore, I see no indication of anything like that in the OP; just someone who thinks Rand said a bunch of stuff she didn't actually say (contempt for the poor and weak, moral indifference to the suffering of others, and her demanding to be treated as a demi-god) and misunderstanding what 'closed system' means. Calmly and rationally arguing with such people is not always a waste of time; how else will misconceptions about Rand ever get cleared up? I do agree, though, that Youtube comments are not the place for it.

There's a big difference between 'not likely' and 'impossible;' between 'Most Objectivists remain Objectivists' and '100% do.' Decide which you are arguing for and stick to it.



So if they make an error and contradict Objectivism's fundamentals, they 'still have not rejected Objectivism'? How exactly do you figure that? Objectivism consists of much more than just honestly seeking the truth.