RichyRich
-
Posts
37 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Posts posted by RichyRich
-
-
Bush saddled the Socialist horse that Obama is now riding. I have no particular love for him or what he did during his presidency. I don't know what you're on about other than to "prove" that Objectivism is "right wing" whatever that entails and for whatever purpose you have in your mind.
What I'm on about is that Obama is not the worst president in history as the title of the thread asks. From an Objectivist perspective he's about the same as Bush.
-
Yes, it's evil. Continuing to fund unconstitutional programs by coercing hard earned money out of citizens by threat of force to give to others as an unearned benefit is the epitome of evil.
The first part of your post is not even worth a response.
You're missing the point of this thread. Bush did exactly the same as Obama. Financing something with debt without raising taxes to pay for it just means that Bush will raise taxes by more in the future (since interest costs will increase). Yet Obama gets more flack than Bush from the Objectivist community even though their policies are essentially the same from an Objectivist perspective. I'd say that is because the Objectivist community is part of the American rightwing, and has all the biases that this entails.
-
Do you have a specific citation to back that up? The CBO deficit chart I'm looking at indicates the highest deficit under Bush at around $440 billion in 2008, with two other years (2003 and 2004) at close to the same level. The deficit under Bush was trending down from 2004-2007. By contrast, the deficit for 2009 was 3-4 times that level, and the most recent CBO report puts the deficit in 2010 at $1.5 trillion.
Can you post your chart that you're looking at please? I'm pretty sure it'll look the same as Krugman's:
Can we agree that the deficit in the first quarter of 2009 — Obama didn’t even take office until Jan. 20, the ARRA wasn’t even passed until Feb. 17, and essentially no stimulus funds had been spent — had nothing to do with Obama’s polices, and was entirely a Bush legacy? Yet the deficit had already surged to almost 9 percent of GDP. Even in 2009 II, Obama’s policies had barely begun to take effect, and the deficit was already over 10 percent of GDP.
What this chart really tells us is what you should have known already: the deficit is overwhelmingly the result of the economic slump, not Obama policies. But the usual suspects want to fool you.
-
This thread is an example of why I maintain that Objectivism is a right wing philosophy. How can you for one second even contemplate that Obama is worse than Bush? It's completely outrageous. I think you guys have been watching too much Fox News.
Obama is increasing deficit financed government spending at the same rate as Bush did. The only difference is that Obama is proposing tax increases to pay for that spending. Wow he actually wants to pay for spending, that's evil!
-
I don't think it's possible to fully understand and disagree with any Ethics, and stay moral according to that Ethics. That would be a logical contradiction.
If your philosophical system is open and encompasses the possibility that truth is not fixed then I don't think the above applies. It seems it's systems like Christianity (or O'ism), which require 100% adherence it's system, that your comment applies to. Saying this, I think most Christians (and O'ists) are tolerant of disagreement.
Interesting question.
Given Rand is fully consistent with reaity, reason and rationality, and that to "fully understand" is to fully integrate her principles and their consistency, one would have to agree short of serious rationalization and/or evasion (post-integration). If the latter, then he is not being rational, thus not moral.
Don't you think that it's ridiculous if Objectivism allows no intelligent moral disagreement?
Now, if the question is about Objectivism as a philosophy (as the title of the thread suggests) then Tanaka's answer is correct.
Yes, this is the question I meant, apologies for the confusion.
That doesn't necessarily make one immoral to disagree, obviously, it depends on if they have a good reason for disagreeing and they better be able to say what and why. So if ethics is rational, then the question is not “do you disagree with X and does that make you immoral,” the question is “what and why?”
I agree.
That is not true at all. Rand's philosophical principles are formed and validated inductively through utilizing knowledge of the world and of human nature and the requirements of human life. It is quite possible to reject some philosophical formulation of hers because you are not convinced of the factual basis upon which it rests. Such an error of knowledge is not an indication of immorality or the failure to think.
There is a difference between understanding Rand's principles and confirming firsthand the facts upon which they rest.
I agree.
But if you are not convinced, then you have not fully integrated said principles - unless you believe there is some flaw in them. One does not have to "confirm firsthand" in order to be so convinced.
I disagree. I guess I started this thread because I knew that some Objectivists believe anyone who disagrees with them either doesn't understand O'ism fully, is being immoral, or being stupid. I hope most Objectivists do not believe this.
But there are perfectly valid reasons for believing there is some flaw in her principles (these reasons inevitably come down to some error of knowledge). She herself said that it would be very hard for an individual who lived before the Industrial Revolution to understand the vital role that man's mind plays in his life. This is because they would not have the requisite knowledge to form and validate that principle inductively. One just has to look at a high school textbook section on the Industrial Revolution to know that there is still a lot of misinformation out there about the subject. Simply because it happened and we can gain some knowledge from it if we have the facts straight doesn't mean that everyone living now either understands the truth or is evading. In fact, there are many common knowledge mistakes in today's culture which make it difficult for people to accept the principles of Objectivism. For instance, there is a widespread belief that man's interests are set against one another; that selfishness requires the sacrifice of others to oneself. The factual and theoretical argument against this perception can get quite involved, and it is not always a refusal to understand which leads one to accept that particular dichotomy.
I agree with this.
To answer the question -- yes, it's possible. I know a few individuals that I have discussed Objectivism with who can give reasonable objections to the philosophy. I think it is also true that most do not understand the philosophy or have not studied it sufficiently to have reasoned objections.
I agree, most people do not understand Objectivism and attack a strawman.
Edit: I have to put a caveat on some of my agreements above. To the extent that you guys are saying "unless you fully understand Objectivism, then it's immoral to disagree" I do not support you. But if you are saying that one can fully understand Oism, and morally disagree, then I support your argument.
-
Do you think it is possible for someone to read and fully understand Ayn Rand, yet disagree with her, AND not be immoral?
-
How many concerts have you been to that have had a mosh pit? How many circle pits? Skank pits? Do you also think dancing is "mindless"?
I've not been to any rock concerts, just a couple of rock clubs where people were "moshing". I don't think dancing is mindless, quite the opposite, especially dance forms like this:
As I said earlier, I think "moshing" is anti-dance. It is completely mindless:
I typed in "moshing" into Google images to get that pic and it was the second one; I haven't cherry picked a bad picture, there were far worse.
-
I goto a lot of local punk/metal/alternative music shows. I will pit a few times at most shows I attend. However, I've lately found violent pits rather unappealing. It's just kind of fun to let loose completely, run around in circles with fellow punks and have a good time. You bump into each other, but that's really just a result of the craziness.
You realise that "moshing" is about as mindless an activity that could be invented? I'm not sure how it could be a moral thing to do (from an Objectivist perspective) unless one was intoxicated and had their judgement impaired.
Again, sorry to be harsh about this, but if you want to run around in circles play baseball! This will involve developing skills and is most certainly not mindless fun.
-
Some of the American rightwing have come out in support of his performance because they like that he has brought the "Hollywood elite" down a few pegs. However a lot of people are saying he crossed the line of civility etc and that it was awkward and unfunny. What do you guys think?
-
I wouldn't say it's a good thing to do. People have died in mosh pits by being trampled. Injury is common.
Aesthetically I'd describe moshing as anti-dancing. Sorry for being harsh about something you obviously enjoy. I was in a mosh pit once as a teenager and enjoyed it mainly because of being intoxicated at the same time, but I can't really see the appeal to a sober person!
-
I don't know if you're trying to pull the wool over our eyes, or if you're the one being deceived here, but quoting Krugman would be like me quoting Mark Perry. I could be equally dishonest and present the following graph, claiming it shows the more typical relationship between government Debt and debt as a % of GDP.
Cut the crap! Either discuss and argue in good faith or get lost.
I hope you don't think I "sighed". That was Krugman in my quote box. With the graph you posted I would say that is indeed the typical relationship between increasing debt and debt as a % of gdp. I think most Keynesians would agree. Krugman (as far as I've seen) argues for stimulus only when in a liquidity trap in a depressed economy.
I'm not advocating Keynesianism here. I just contributed because I think that people weren't addressing the actual arguments just strawmen.
People could have made this a whole lot simpler by just posting this:
The Empirical Case against Government Stimulus
I've been reading this source for the past ten minutes and it seems interesting but biased. It only mentions the Keynesian's strongest point (WWII) in the last paragraph and only briefly. I'm going to read this WWII point again tomorrow as I've actually typed this sentence last and it's getting late.
With regards to the ECB historical points in the mises article, I think Krugman's reply is good. He summarises with:
So every one of these stories says that you can have fiscal contraction without depressing the economy IF the depressing effects are offset by huge moves into trade surplus and/or sharp declines in interest rates. Since the world as a whole can't move into surplus, and since major economies already have very low interest rates, none of this is relevant to our current situation.Mises.org replies to this by saying:
It's not worth commenting on Krugman's reaction just yet; let's get some more samples.
They never actually get round to commenting on why Krugman was wrong in his explanation.
For the Rogoff paper, again Krugman posts his reply with what I think are reasonable explanations. Mises.org replies with:
Now things are already starting to look a little shaky for Dr. Krugman and his Keynesian allies. They have been backed into a corner, having to explain away (at least) nine historical episodes that contradict their theories. Sure, maybe one, two, three, even four of those examples really are irrelevant; but all nine? At what point should we start to question the basic Keynesian premise, namely that having politicians borrow and spend a bunch of money is a way to help the economy?Again they never explain WHY Krugman is wrong when he gives reasons for why Keynesianism didn't work in each of the cases.
-
He thinks WWII was useless?
Has he checked his ancestry?
I don't think he's using "useless" as a word to judge the decision to enter WWII. Rather he's saying that we should spend the same as we spent during WWII today, but since we are not in a world war, we can spend it on "useful" things such as bridges and hospitals, instead of fighter planes and tanks.
-
Marc, I think your post is well reasoned. Here is how I understand part of your argument, please say if I have mischaracterised or misunderstood your argument:
You believe it is just to mutilate in order to scare the enemy enabling information extraction from others who witness the mutilation. You believe it is just to mutilate to enact justice against an aggressor by avenging deaths.
If this is your argument then I disagree. The film should have shown Jews efficiently killing Nazis without stooping to the Nazis level by using barbarism. For example, in the baseball bat scene, in order to get the information they should have threatened to shoot the captain and if necessary done so with an efficient bullet to the head. In the fire scene, they should have rigged the fire and the bombs but should not have sprayed bullets into the crowd or sprayed bullets repeatedly into Hitler's body. This is barbarism.
If the movie did things like I have just suggested then it would have rejected pacifism without promoting barbarism.
-
Paul Krugman, the celebrated Keynesian economist, has addressed this exact topic in his blog:
October 25, 2010, 3:42 am
A Far Away Country Of Which We Know Nothing
I’ve been getting a lot of correspondence lately that runs something like this:
You’re an idiot. Give me one example in all of history of a country that spent its way out of a depressed economy
Ahem. There’s this country — people may not have heard of it — called the United States of America:
The blue line is total debt, public plus private, in billions of dollars; the red line debt as a percentage of GDP (both on left scale).
But that was different, you say — it was a war! To which I reply, you think it’s better if we spend all that money on useless things?
Sigh.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/a-far-away-country-of-which-we-know-nothing/
-
I admit that I am a novice in Economics. Why don't you spit out your views? That's how a forum WORKS.
I'm not advocating Keynesianism here, just saying that no one has actually engaged with the Keynesian position. Keynes' position is not that if total govt spending increases, total govt debt will decrease. Rather it is that if total govt spending increases, total govt debt will increase, but decrease as a share of total GDP.
So that's the theory. If you're interested I can post empirical data on when this has actually been observed.
brian0918, you ask what the definition of "work" is. Well it works in the sense that total production and consumption in the economy increases. However whether you view that, or the means of how that is acheived, as immoral is down to you.
-
Thank you for backing my arguments and saving my hassle of breaking out the books. The consequence of deficit spending would probably be a greater disparity of wealth among juniors (It would be easier to understand using the words taxpayers or the next generation), and that the highly uneven distribution of resources is not what economists wish to see.
Put government spending aside, if I were the authority of the college I would want to get the snazziest computers installed on my campus. Resources is put to best use when it is utilized, as opposed to leave it unused and stale.
You guys really haven't understood the Keynesian argument for why spending your way out of debt does work. You are attacking a strawman until you understand it.
-
One criticism I have of this index is that the top two ranking countries, Hong Kong and Singapore, are "city states" and not comparable countries to the USA or Germany etc.
-
You do realize you say this from sterile comfort of the movie reviewer's seat and not as the person who may have been faced with such moral decisions in real life circumstances? I have to ask, what similar experience do you have that you can make such a pronouncement of what "you would do" in such an extreme situation as veterans of WWII and Jewish victims were faced? It's always easy to say what we would do IF we were in the driver's seat. it's usually quite another thing being the driver.
Fair enough. I'll change my comment from "Would I have assassinated Hitler given half a chance? Yes. Would I have mutilated his body? No." to "Would I have made a movie about assassinating Hitler given half a chance? Yes. Would I have shown sadistic mutilation of his body in such a movie? No."
-
Ewww. I think attempting to substitute pacifism for justice is very great moral failure itself.
And yes, it is pacifism being upheld as the moral ideal in that review because if the middle of a war is not an appropriate moral context to fight back against evil with violence then violence is never justified period, which is the pacifist conclusion.
If I or that reviewer had said that it was immoral to show a movie where Jews fight back then THAT would be pacifism. In no way do I advocate pacifism, I think killing Nazis is fine. Instead I am saying that mutilating Nazis makes the mutilator as bad as the Nazi. It is sickening to have to watch rounds of bullets being carved into Hitler's head. It is sickening to watch a baseball bat dent the Nazi officer's skull while they are alive. Would I have assassinated Hitler given half a chance? Yes. Would I have mutilated his body? No. That would be sick. Being sick is what Nazis are and were. We degrade ourselves if we stoop to their level.
The worst bit in the film was obviously the scene where the Nazis are trapped in the cinema and are burned alive while machine gun fire is unloaded into their backs. The fact that this stuff actually happened to Jews and is now being casually perpetrated on film (while the audience is meant to feel sadistic glee) makes me so so seethingly angry. Its outrageous. Words cannot describe the moral sewer that has been wallowed in here.
-
Absolutely fantastic movie. Made me smile at all the right places. My only disappointment was with regard to the Good characters being a little dim-witted. This is surely a movie most O'ists should appreciate. Justice is served with a side order of
scalps
.
The above post is nearly as sickening as this movie.
IB was well made, well acted, funny, I agree with all of this. This however should not detract from the seriousness of the film's moral failings. I agree with the following review completely (bold mine).
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/08/13/inglourious-basterds-when-jews-attack.html
In Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino indulges this taste for vengeful violence by—well, by turning Jews into Nazis. In history, Jews were repeatedly herded into buildings and burned alive (a barbarism on which the plot of another recent film, The Reader, hangs); in Inglourious Basterds, it's the Jews who orchestrate this horror. In history, the Nazis and their local collaborators made sport of human suffering; here, it's the Jews who take whacks at Nazi skulls with baseball bats, complete with mock sports-announcer commentary, turning murder into a parodic "game." And in history, Nazis carved Stars of David into the chests of rabbis before killing them; here, the "basterds" carve swastikas into the foreheads of those victims whom they leave alive.Tarantino, the master of the obsessively paced revenge flick, invites his audiences to applaud this odd inversion—to take, as his films often invite them to take, a deep, emotional satisfaction in turning the tables on the bad guys. ("The Germans will be sickened by us," Raine tells his corps of Jewish savages early on.) But these bad guys were real, this history was real, and the feelings we have about them and what they did are real and have real-world consequences and implications. Do you really want audiences cheering for a revenge that turns Jews into carboncopies of Nazis, that makes Jews into "sickening" perpetrators? I'm not so sure. An alternative, and morally superior, form of "revenge" for Jews would be to do precisely what Jews have been doing since World War II ended: that is, to preserve and perpetuate the memory of the destruction that was visited upon them, precisely in order to help prevent the recurrence of such mass horrors in the future. Never again, the refrain goes. The emotions that Tarantino's new film evokes are precisely what lurk beneath the possibility that "again" will happen.
-
Rand values work above friendship (http://www.playboy.com/articles/ayn-rand-playboy-interview/index.html):
PLAYBOY: According to your philosophy, work and achievement are the highest goals of life. Do you regard as immoral those who find greater fulfillment in the warmth of friendship and family ties?RAND: If they place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite; whereas, if he places his work first, there is no conflict between his work and his enjoyment of human relationships.
-
I don't know how it began but ironically it was Alexander Hamilton who first coined the term "capitalism"
I thought the word "capitalism" was coined by Marxists as a pejorative term and then was captured by capitalism's supporters to be a non-pejorative term.
Edit:
According to Wikipedia -
The initial usage of the term capitalism in its modern sense has been attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850 and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1861. -
You're simply asserting something without any argument or proof.
I've given my proof on this thread, I'll paste it in if you want? Here's some more proof: ARI intellectuals are welcomed onto Fox News as valued commentators, they would NOT be welcome on left wing outlets even though Rand has many "left wing" opinions.
One- you have already acknowledged misquoting Rand. To say one's only debt is to X is a very different matter than to say one's only philosophical debt is to X. I suggest if you don't understand the importance of that distinction you suss it out before continuing to argue this point as it is impossible to take your argument seriously as it stands- based on a (deliberate? misquote).
Two- What is it to be indebted? Please define. What is it to be influenced? Please define. Being indebted and being influenced are completely different things. I am influenced by many things that I can honestly say I have no debt to.
On these first two points I will advise you- Objectivists (and non Objectivists that are actually serious about gaining understanding) take this two things seriously- if you are going to quote someone and hold them in judgement over it use the actual quote or, if you must at least admit first and openly that you are paraphrasing. Anything else is intellectual dishonesty. The second- definitions. Definitions are serious things. Words have real, actual meanings. Debt is a specific thing. A philosophical debt is an even more specific thing.
I acknowledge the misquote and see the importance of the difference. I think its absolutely outrageous that Rand thought she had only one philosophical debt. Its the most arrogant thing that a philosopher could say. She is literally standing on the shoulders of giants and she spits on them. It really is annoying.
In other words, this whole thread is much ado about you deliberately misquoting Rand, then refusing to acknowledge the difference in the meaning of words all so you can go on a tangent about right vs left in politics.
I didn't deliberately misquote. I agree that Rand being left or right is a tangent.
-
Is that an explanation?
I'm not sure how to make myself any clearer. Another example: Trotskyism and Stalinism are different but they are close cousins. But lets not get bogged down. My point is simple. Ayn Rand is part of the American Right, and is not a part of the American Left.
Is Obama the worst President in history?
in Political Philosophy
Posted
I guess I think that Objectivism qua philosophy is neutral when it comes to the political parties. But qua philosophy that is interpreted by most American Objectivists, it becomes right wing.