Some loopholes I see with Objectivism

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

It is definitely possible and even necessary to judge what another man does with his money, but I don't see that as the primary issue. The issue is what was brought up about the claim that it would be rational for a wealthy man to give away some of his money to those less off without any benefit to himself. Clearly this is against Objectivism and against reason. The argument relies on altruism as its base for morality, and Objectivism rejects that in favor of egoism -- of doing with your property only that which will benefit oneself as the moral action.

A lot of people mistakenly think that throwing more money at a problem will fix the problem, but the problems in Somalia go deeper than their poverty. They are so poor because they don't have capitalism, and throwing money at them will not change their social / political structure. No, it is not the fault of the Somalian two year old that he wasn't born into a capitalist environment, but also it is not the fault of the wealthy American businessman that Somalia is the way it is. If a man can figure out how to bring capitalism to Somalia -- with no sacrifice on his own part -- then that would be beneficial to himself and to the Somalians, but to do it at his own cost, no matter how wealthy he is, would be an act of self-sacrifice, and Objectivism rejects that as immoral and irrational. So, I strongly disagree with Doug that it would be rational to aid the poor around the world with no benefit coming to those who hand out the money. Altruism is not rational.

And I think the world would be better off in thinking that a man's money is his own and that no one else has any claim on it whatsoever unless the wealthy man voluntarily takes on that responsibility. In other words, if property rights were respected around the world, then the world would be better off; and it would be better off if it accepted egoism over altruism.

[SapereAude]

Lastly, you make the statement: "We assert that a man's property is his own. Period. Of no one's concern but his own. Period." Who is 'we' in this statement. Again, not to say I've read every word Rand ever wrote, but that statement was nowhere. What IS there is something that starts out the same, but ends differently "We assert that a man's property is his own, to dispose of as he wishes." If there is a quote by Rand that follows that up with this being 'no one's concern', I'll buy the book and read it and stand corrected, but I don't believe it exists.

I think we (as in you and I) are taking from different meanings of the word "concern" here. I am using it in the connected to or be the affair or business of. You seem to be taking "concern" by the definition of something one contemplates. It is an important distinction in this argument.

Of course one may think about what someone else has.

That does not mean you have any connection to it or any business with it.

If you reread Francisco's money speech in AS:

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1826

it addresses the folly of concerning yourself with the inherited wealth of others

it addresses directly your case of the worthless heir and the "good to society" that could come of redistribution of wealth:

"Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one"

If one looks up the many attributable meanings of envy it is generally connected to an unhealthy concern or awareness of or notice of that which belongs to someone else.

The basic problem we (again, meaning you and I in the context of this conversation) have here is that you come off as obsessed with other people's property. (Again since you seem very particular with the words of others I will restate you seem to have an unhealthy fixation on the wealth of others- I do not jknow this for an absolute fact) You've mentioned all the names of very wealthy people you know or have met who you state have too much. You've talked about your father's boss' money. You've talked about your (presumably ex) business partner's share of the sale of your business. You've never talked about what you should do with your money. (please correct me if I missed something-a definite possibilty). Perhaps I am coming on overly strong in constantly restating that the money someone else has isn't your business but I do so because in your mindng the affairs of others you seem to be forgetting it is what is yours that should be primarily in your mind.

Edited October 7, 2009 by QuoVadis

[DougW]

I think we (as in you and I) are taking from different meanings of the word "concern" here. I am using it in the connected to or be the affair or business of. You seem to be taking "concern" by the definition of something one contemplates. It is an important distinction in this argument.

Of course one may think about what someone else has.

That does not mean you have any connection to it or any business with it.

If you reread Francisco's money speech in AS:

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1826

it addresses the folly of concerning yourself with the inherited wealth of others

it addresses directly your case of the worthless heir and the "good to society" that could come of redistribution of wealth:

"Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one"

If one looks up the many attributable meanings of envy it is generally connected to an unhealthy concern or awareness of or notice of that which belongs to someone else.

The basic problem we (again, meaning you and I in the context of this conversation) have here is that you come off as obsessed with other people's property. (Again since you seem very particular with the words of others I will restate you seem to have an unhealthy fixation on the wealth of others- I do not jknow this for an absolute fact) You've mentioned all the names of very wealthy people you know or have met who you state have too much. You've talked about your father's boss' money. You've talked about your (presumably ex) business partner's share of the sale of your business. You've never talked about what you should do with your money. (please correct me if I missed something-a definite possibilty). Perhaps I am coming on overly strong in constantly restating that the money someone else has isn't your business but I do so because in your mindng the affairs of others you seem to be forgetting it is what is yours that should be primarily in your mind.

Quo,

Thanks! The quote from Francisco is enlightening, and I think gets to the bottom of where the differences in our thinking lies. I agree perfectly with him. Giving the money to one person creates one parasite. My objection has been that all along everyone seemed to be saying that it doesn't create any parasites... and he is also right, the second act creates 50 (or 100 or whatever) parasites. Where we split in thinking is what the likely outcome of the two processes would be. I can't see how parasite 1 (the heir) would be any more or less likely to use reason to raise himself out of the irrationality of being a parasite based on whether he is given $1 million dollars as his inheritance or $350 million. (in fact, I would bet that there are statistics if one looked hard enough that would show that the inheritors of $1 million do better in terms of avoiding alcoholoism, mental illness, suicide, drug abuse, etc. than the $350 million set...). Anyway, in the second example, in my mind we would be elevating the 50, or 100 from 'savages' to 'parasites'. Even if you don't believe that is a step up the rational ladder, I would also postulate that an 'educated' parasite has a far, far greater chance of becoming rational than an uneducated savage.

Anyway, I'm not obessed with other people's property, it happens to be the subject of this argument (I could hardly argue about religion in this forum...). What I am completely, insanely obsessed about, is never ever accepting anything that doesn't make sense to me. I really am sorry that the thing not making sense is something you feel so strongly about...and I don't mean that sarcastically or anything.... I completely realize that I am overly obsessed with needing to see logic in everything...

So, after I read Rand's books, I imagined a world following Rand's theories, but I could not imagine how it could exist without the judgement of the marketplace being an integral part. By that I mean the individuals that make up the marketplace would look at each person or company that they trade with and would weigh whether they think that person/corporation is adding to the rationality of the world, or lowering it, and would only trade with those who they felt were acting rationally. And to follow that up, if I were the individual doing the calculating, I would say that a person who gathers resources to the level of a Bill Gates or Warren Buffet is lowering the rationality of the world. I would, on the other hand, say that the actions of Paul Newman were increasing the rationality of the world. I know we will never agree on that, but that is what I believe.

That also is the motivation behind my 'surprise' at my partners actions when we sold the company. I thought I knew him to be a rational person. Now, as a partner, I knew all of the workings of our company. I knew exactly what his contribution and my contribution to the growth, stability and success of the organization were. I also knew what the contribution of each employee was. I know exactly how much 'risk' each of us took (in fact the business was started with capital I contributed, and which was repaid over time prior to the sale). So, in my mind, the bonuses to the staff weren't gifts, they were payment for services they had rendered, which while not expressly written into their contracts, were in return for the 'risk' they took working for a startup, for the extra hours they put in when things weren't going well, for the lack of 'ownership' benefits that other workers enjoy (i.e. stock grants, etc.) because we were a small enough company that we couldn't split ownership and still effectively make decisions. In fact, when we hired people, we expressly played up the idea that as a small company, they were 'getting in on the ground floor' and that in the future there would be a chance to 'buy into' the company's success once we got large enough. Instead, we sold to a larger company, that had no obligation to those employees. Anyway, in my mind, my partner's first choice seemed like a betrayal of people who we were friends with, valued, and had shared a dream with. The fact that after a half-hour of discussion he agreed with me made me feel better, but what I was saying earlier is that we can't ignore that there is an inherent greed in all of us that we have to be aware of, and make sure it isn't coloring our decisions about what is rational.

As for what I do with my money, I doubt you'll think it wise. I believe in rationality at the transactional level, but with a twist.... I enter every single transaction I am involved in by calculating what I believe the value is to both parties, then I make an offer that is slightly to the benefit of the other person. If they accept it, I go forward. If they don't I usually walk away completely, I never negotiate (probably because I know how crazy I would get in that process...). But, the benefit I receive is that the people I do business with like doing business with me because I never undervalue their contribution. The 'loss' I take from making my initial offer 'more than fair' is, in my mind compensated for by these future relationships, as well as by the time I save not dickering with people. To me, it seems like a rational system, but I know for a fact, I haven't extracted the most I could from these transactions.

Edited October 7, 2009 by DougW

[Eiuol]

"So, after I read Rand's books, I imagined a world following Rand's theories, but I could not imagine how it could exist without the judgement of the marketplace being an integral part. By that I mean the individuals that make up the marketplace would look at each person or company that they trade with and would weigh whether they think that person/corporation is adding to the rationality of the world, or lowering it, and would only trade with those who they felt were acting rationally."

The level of "rationality" in the world as being important is too close to a collectivist mindset and sounds very utilitarian. The amount of value you get is what should matter. I wouldn't refuse to deal with a racist businessman that denies services to minorities because he is "decreasing" rationality of the world, but because he is actively destroying things that are of value to me, which would be any hope of living in a place where anyone is rational. It is still similar to what you are saying, but I don't think you recognize the importance of "value" as much as you should.

[DougW]

"So, after I read Rand's books, I imagined a world following Rand's theories, but I could not imagine how it could exist without the judgement of the marketplace being an integral part. By that I mean the individuals that make up the marketplace would look at each person or company that they trade with and would weigh whether they think that person/corporation is adding to the rationality of the world, or lowering it, and would only trade with those who they felt were acting rationally."

The level of "rationality" in the world as being important is too close to a collectivist mindset and sounds very utilitarian. The amount of value you get is what should matter. I wouldn't refuse to deal with a racist businessman that denies services to minorities because he is "decreasing" rationality of the world, but because he is actively destroying things that are of value to me, which would be any hope of living in a place where anyone is rational. It is still similar to what you are saying, but I don't think you recognize the importance of "value" as much as you should.

Eiuol,

that's cool, I don't think our viewpoints are that far off... the concept of destroying "any hope of living in a place where anyone is rational" is really what I mean when I say 'increasing the levl of rationality in the world"... to me it isn't so important to couch it in Objectivist-speak, but I understand your desire to be more accurate within the objectivist system.

I know Rand sometimes spoke about how it's wrong to judge the Objectivist philosophy by using 'extreme' examples, but it's hard not to sometimes. The question I was trying to ask (and maybe not doing a good job of wording it..) was "is there no point at which keeping wealth for your self becomes irrational?"....if you take that to an extreme, I can't see how a world would be 'rational' if 100 people control all of the wealth on the planet (of course that's a crazy scenario....). In my mind, desperate people will do 'irrational' things to survive, they literally can't think too far ahead, if they do they'll probably eb dead before they get there... increasing education among the 'savage' (I hate that word!) populations in the world would do so much to 'create rationality'....population growth would almost certainly go down... production would increase....aggressive wars aimed at acquiring resources for pure survival would be reduced....

Anyway. continued thanks for the opinions.....

[bluecherry]

What do you mean by extreme examples? Atlas Shrugged was set in an extreme scenario. What is objected to though is trying to judge morality by concocted emergency "lifeboat scenarios." Morality is designed to be about how to go about life in general in reality to best benefit, so judging morality against extremely rare or even impossibly unrealistic situations where (and this is the really important part here) the normal way of things may be turned on its head (and possibly due to people getting into the situation for bad reasons) is not a good idea because that goes against the very purpose for which morality is designed. For example, a typical lifeboat scenario where you’ve got too many people and not enough life boat space thanks to poor planning and yada yada leading to no way everybody can hope to survive, this is a very poor way to judge morality because that is something which goes against the nature of just about everything else in life where as long as people respect each other’s rights we can all survive and even benefit from each other, and besides, the real moral thing would have been bringing more life boats or fewer people to begin with to avoid such a potential situation altogether.

Your later scenario of 100 people controlling all the wealth in the world is also flawed. Either those people violated the rights of pretty much everybody else to steal all kinds of stuff or else the rest of the world is full of almost exclusively lazy bums I'd have to assume who haven't earned anything. If those 100 people got everything through violating rights, first of all Objectivism wouldn't condone that and second of all it wouldn't last long before people managed through force to start getting their stuff back and/or they created new values. If they were lazy just lazy bums who wouldn't do anything to earn wealth, clearly they don't value their lives much of at all, so it isn't worth wasting your sympathy on them being broke. What could not happen is a scenario where through capitalistic trade 100 people got everything and everybody else got nothing. Every time a trade is done something is gained in exchange for what is given up, something which is valued more than what is lost. And as I earlier mentioned, more value can always be made even when you've run out of stuff. The only way you could think trading could give a small bunch of people all the wealth is by confusing currency as being the only form of wealth and concluding if you lose currency you must be getting less wealthy. Currency is only a convenient representation of value which makes trading easier. Remember people weren't all starving to death back before currency and people used to be able to trade, though less conveniently, through the more direct exchange of bartering.

[avgleandt]

is there no point at which keeping wealth for your self becomes irrational?"....if you take that to an extreme, I can't see how a world would be 'rational' if 100 people control all of the wealth on the planet

Hi DougW. Well it depends, did these 100 people create the wealth themselves or did they take it by physical force? If they created it themselves, then the rest of the population has not lost anything, the weath would not exist without the top 100 anyway. Though the rest of the population don't have direct ownership of the wealth it is very likely that they have highly benefited from it. Attacking, killing, ect the only productive people in population would be very stupid of them, they would perish much faster without them. That would be a classic example of bitting the hand that feeds you. Furthermore in a proper free society the top 100's rights would be protected by government.

Your main question is "is there no point at which keeping wealth for your self becomes irrational?"

Yes that point does exist. The point is when keeping the wealth for your self no longer makes you happy. Objectivism holds that the proper moral purpose of one's own life is the pursuit of one's own happiness. Happiness is the state of consciousness that proceeds from achieving one's values. Thus the proper moral/rational purpose of one's own life is the pursuit of one's values. If you value education then you should pursue that. If your rich you can open a charter school. If your not rich like me you can donate to organizations that promote educations such as Ayn Rand Institute for individual rights. The list of values you may hold goes on and on. Now you may ask whats the point of keeping your 60th billion if you already have 59 billion? I don't know what the point might be, but I can imagine one. Maybe they are trying to save enough money to buy a piece of land and start a new country. Or think of it this way. When Bill Gates reached 3 billion dollars what would be the point to continue, that is arguably enough wealth. However, he went on to create even more wealth 60 to 80 billion. And now you look, he decided to give most of it to charity, if he stopped at 3 billion the charities would miss out. The point is you should be doing what makes you happy, that which achieves your values.

In addition addressing your other concern. In a proper free society you would be free to criticize and judge the values that people are perusing. You would be able to speak out for or against them, and even try to persuade people to persue that values you think are important. But you would not be able to use physical force against them yourself or through a third party such as the government to force them to do what you want.

Pual Krugman advocates the use of physical force to achieve his values, do you agree with him on that?

[Castle]

The point you are missing is that it is completely impossible for what you are describing to happen. If by some fiat the magical unicorn gave all of the wealth to 100 people the situation would quickly resolve itself. For one, your conception of what wealth is is flawed in the extreme. Wealth is not something we go out into the jungle and find, its something we create. So right there its impossible, people would immediately begin producing the things they need and improving their methods. This would drive trade. New wealth would be created. Also, you have these 100 people with "all" the wealth. How do they survive? They sit on the wealth and go farm turnips in the backyard? Dig a well? They would need things done, lots of things. Trade. Saying 100 people control all the wealth is like saying there would only be 100 productive people on the planet.

An earlier assertion of yours needs to be addressed as well, apologies if it already has. Money that is hoarded or inherited doesn't just "sit" in the bank doing nothing. Car loans? Business loans? Real estate loans? Loans to pay for promising research? Credit lines to meet payroll when the cycle of a business doesn't seamlessly mesh with pay cycles? Where do you think this money comes from? It comes from the aggregate deposits of the middle class as well as deposits of the upper class. The funds of the idle rich are not idle. It can't be in a free market if the rich person desires to stay that way. This is one of the great strengths of capitalism and one of the reasons that taxation and arbitrary regulation are so dangerous. To paraphrase Rand, you are consuming the nation's seed stock. With regulation you are also salting the field.

Let me be the first to say thank you to the idle rich. Either your money will come my way in the form of loans I couldn't get otherwise or you'll make bad choices and you will lose control of it.

[DougW]

The point you are missing is that it is completely impossible for what you are describing to happen. If by some fiat the magical unicorn gave all of the wealth to 100 people the situation would quickly resolve itself. For one, your conception of what wealth is is flawed in the extreme. Wealth is not something we go out into the jungle and find, its something we create. So right there its impossible, people would immediately begin producing the things they need and improving their methods. This would drive trade. New wealth would be created. Also, you have these 100 people with "all" the wealth. How do they survive? They sit on the wealth and go farm turnips in the backyard? Dig a well? They would need things done, lots of things. Trade. Saying 100 people control all the wealth is like saying there would only be 100 productive people on the planet.

An earlier assertion of yours needs to be addressed as well, apologies if it already has. Money that is hoarded or inherited doesn't just "sit" in the bank doing nothing. Car loans? Business loans? Real estate loans? Loans to pay for promising research? Credit lines to meet payroll when the cycle of a business doesn't seamlessly mesh with pay cycles? Where do you think this money comes from? It comes from the aggregate deposits of the middle class as well as deposits of the upper class. The funds of the idle rich are not idle. It can't be in a free market if the rich person desires to stay that way. This is one of the great strengths of capitalism and one of the reasons that taxation and arbitrary regulation are so dangerous. To paraphrase Rand, you are consuming the nation's seed stock. With regulation you are also salting the field.

Let me be the first to say thank you to the idle rich. Either your money will come my way in the form of loans I couldn't get otherwise or you'll make bad choices and you will lose control of it.

OK, I guess the lesson for me here is not to use extremes as a way of proving or disproving a point.... Obviously 100 people couldn't control all the wealth in the world, I was just trying to see if 'Even then...' it would be considered rational not to give a large portion of it away... (Although I recommend Roger Zelazny's 'Lord of Light' as a good example of what might happen if we continue to allow power to accumulate to fewer and fewer people...)

But that said, I completely disagree with the follow-up points. So 'my world' where 100 people control all the wealth in the world is 'impossible'... so is the world postulated by Rand, where the rich pay fair value for labor, and take only their fair share of the wealth created by production. In our world, people with wealth, and wealth-derived power act irrationally every day, in the 'Golden Era' that Rand is always waxing poetically about they sent workers into coal mines without ventilation, knowing they would develop life-threatening illnesses...they allowed copper to saturate the water table in the towns where miners lived, they forced slaughterhouse workers to endure sub-human conditions, working such long hours that they would often lose fingers or even hands to the cutting mechanisms.... more recently they lie about the health of the company, knowingly taking money from workers paychecks and 'investing' it for the workers retirement, knowing that it is worthless...

In the world I live in (and you too...) there are plenty of people working their butts off, playing their role in production, but when those at the top of the companies do the math, they somehow calculate that their handshakes and golf outings are worth 50, 100, even 1000 times what the efforts of those who put in long days on a noisy assembly line are worth. And please don't give me some story about how irreplaceable these guys are...I've worked along side them, most of them aren't that bright, some of them are downright stupid, but the one trait they all had was their willingness to take whatever is on the table for themselves, whether they deserve it or not!

Also, where did the idea come from that production is unlimited? Markets are saturated, lomg-term deals are in place with many suppliers of raw materials, those with inherited wealth and the power that goes with it do work hard at one thing, and that's making sure that the opportunities for competition are limited. There is no virtually minable land left in the US that isn't already owned or has the mineral rights leased. The search for oil has moved offshore where the cost of becoming a player is in the billions, so old Jed with his shotgun isn't gonna strike oil while shootin at some food... Our economy has become 'service-oriented' where again a cap exists on how muh can be provided, limited by both the size and wealth of the population that we wish to service.

And the whole taxation thing.... what about roads, sewers, schools...they should be private? I'd love to see what would happen when the guy who 'owns' the roads in your town decided he wanted to buy two or three more mansions, and upped the toll to use the roads by 100% one day... And all private education...perfect...well just price it so that the lower class can't quite afford it, less competetion for our kids to face in the workplace, plus the bonus of a cheap, hungry labor force... And we couldn't have enough police from Rand's 'voluntary' tax, so we'd need lots of 'private' police forces, I'm thinking Pinkerton's or maybe even Blackwater sounds like a good solution for that....

And finally, I never said that inherited money 'sits'..only that it is 'irrational' to think that a world where the wealth of the economy is distributed so unevenly will be a fun place for anyone to live. Keeping a vast, hungry, uneducated mass of people is the absolute surest way to bring about terrorism, revolution, war. If you'd like to live in a society where people with guns and bombs aren't constantly knocking on your door, you would probably be better with a philosophy that says: A) those born with wealth aren't 'better' or 'more deserving' than those born poor. As much as you'd like to believe otherwise, 80 hours of your work each week is very, very, very unlikely to be worth 1000 times the 40 hours of production put in by the average worker. C) It makes absolutely no sense to claim that giving money for food and education to strangers who are starving and uneducated would actually cause them harm, rob them of pride, teach them sloth, etc., but also to claim that giving huge amounts of money to your children wouldn't harm them one bit, no sir! and finally D) While it's fun to play the 'look I just moved up 2 spots on the Fortune list, watch out Gates...' game, once you have covered your necessities for like 1000 lifetimes, it's difficult to come up with a rational reason why you should continue building personal wealth. (and no, 'Because I can...' is not a rational reason)

Capitalism is certainly the very best system ever devised for a fair, free economy. But it isn't without it's problems, and one is that it allows a cyclical build-up of economic power that in turn allows those with capital to reduce the choices of those without capital to "play our way or starve", and nobody wants to starve....

Edited October 13, 2009 by DougW

[RationalBiker]

In Rand's world people acted irrationally everyday too. Objectivism does not make people act rationally, it tells people that this is the way they should live according to their nature as rational beings. You can lead a person to rationality, but you can't make them drink it so to speak.

Have you read any of the NON-fiction yet???

If it hasn't already been said, you WILL NOT get a comprehensive understanding of Objectivism just from reading the fiction books. It just won't happen.

Edited October 13, 2009 by RationalBiker

[2046]

You need try to understand the difference between "justice" and "fairness" and "free market" and "fair market." What is this "fair" you keep using?

[TLD]

to raise the price of the drug and limit it's distribution?

Anyway, its these gray areas that are the biggest problem with objectivism, that and the fact that it seems to imply an inherent trust in individuals with great power to do the right thing, when in fact it seems that the more power someone has the less likely they are to do the right thing....

I hope you can see after all the responses that there are no "gray" areas with Objectivism.

It is up to each individual to be trustworthy... virtuous. Objectivism gives the guidance - objective guidance.

[AllMenAreIslands]

Quo,

...I think I have such an inbred 'Christian' dislike of money and power ...

Interesting.

A dislike of money, you say? That is why you are having such a hard time with the subject matter, Doug. It's as if you were talking about farming but you loathed any and all machinery developed to make farming more efficient and more doable.

Money is a tool. It is of little use to those who don't first establish and define for themselves a hierarchical system of values. Until you know what you value in life, you'll be hard-pressed to get up each day, let alone decide how to apportion the very limited resource that is your time on Earth.

Having reached this part of the thread (and I acknowledge there are still another 5 or 6 pages to go), what I've gotten from Doug's replies to the various posts is that he figures that anyone who has amassed a great fortune should rationally want to decide to "help others," rather than continue making more money in his chosen profession or indeed in a brand new profession.

And if such people don't spontaneously decide their life's pleasure consists in handing out their wealth to strangers in need, then something must be wrong with Objectivism for not telling them that that's what their goals OUGHT to become, at some point or other in the grand scheme of things.

Why? Why is handing out money to "the needy/less fortunate" something you consider to be of value? Just from reading the posts made by the half-way point of the thread I was reminded that capitalistic endeavours actually cause more good to be done in the world than straightforward charity. So why is charity such a big deal to you?

[TLD]

DougW' date=Sep 29 2009, 01:23 PM

What is a bit confusing to me is saying "The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life" without later expressing what is meant be 'rational', and not seeming to deal with the concept of people who are made 'happy' by gathering and using as much power over others as they possibly can. Isn't every dictator on the planet pursuing his own self-interest and happiness? Are there more detailed explanations of what is meant by these statements, or are they purposely very 'high-level', and is the belief of objectivism that it's better to live with the occaisional fallout from 'irrational' people acting in their 'self interests' than to even consider restricting the rational people in any way?

Upholding rational self-interest means to act on the values required for human survival, not the values produced by desires, emotions, feelings and whims. It means upholding the principle of individual rights: neither sacrificing oneself for others nor others to oneself.

You cannot remove “rational” without removing the distinction between rational people and dictators.

[TLD]

'DougW'

... are you saying that any attempt to calculate the 'common-good' will be flawed and should therefore be discarded?

What I have not seen stated here is that The “common good” (= “public interest”) is a meaningless moral concept: there is no such entity as “the public.” Public or Society is only a collection of individual men. How can the needs of (and what is good for) individuals be grouped together without sacrificing some for others?

This concept is used to derail morality and to irrationally suggest that there is something superior to the individual good of the individuals within the collective. But once one or more persons is sacrificed for the sake of the majority, all rights have been abrogated.

[TLD]

'DougW'

I think the biggest 'loophole' in objectivism from what I have seen so far is that while it gives a clear description of how to act at a high level, it seems to give little guidance in gray areas, and in fact can be construed to be encouraging what many people would consider bad behavior.

Better to start with the assumption that there is no loophole and there are no gray areas.

Principles can address all issues without "gray."

One example is the CEO of a drug company has a cure for a deadly disease....does he release the drug at an etremely low profit margin to everyone, thus saving thousands of lives, or does he use his business and marketing skills to extract as much money from the marketplace as possbile, allowing many to die (it's important to remember in this example that the highest return from the marketplace will be selling less of the drug at a much higher price...if everyone can afford it then you have not priced it correctly!).

Philosophy does not care what he does as long as it is moral and does not violate anyone's rights. And no one has a right to his drug. Much of the discussion here goes beyond philosophical and purely objective questions.

Example... that we all deal with every day...the owner of a small business is about to set pay guidelines for his company. If he knows that the economy is bad, and many people are out of work, should he lower pay across the board to his employees, knowing that they will be afraid to quit in the current economic climate, and keep all the extra money for himself? You might argue that if he is thinking rationally, he would realize that the 'bad will' he will generate from lowering salaries will have more value than the immediate gain of cash he would receive, but what if his intention is to sell the business in a few years, before that equation could tip?

I use this example to note that it is in the best interest of the owner to do whatever he deems best for himself in the long-run. But what he does is not necessarily dictated by morality.

Anyway, its these gray areas that are the biggest problem with objectivism, that and the fact that it seems to imply an inherent trust in individuals with great power to do the right thing, when in fact it seems that the more power someone has the less likely they are to do the right thing....

You are calling it "gray" because it is not clear how people should act in particular situations. But you seem to be falsely assuming that there should only be 1 right answer to any given situation. Where an issue is subjective - not objective, "gray" has no meaning.

Also, there is no blind trust in individuals. And when someone does the "wrong" thing, then we have a court system to determine how to punish him. But a rational/moral person will not turn bad due to increased power.

Edited October 20, 2009 by TLD

[AllMenAreIslands]

OK, I guess the lesson for me here is not to use extremes as a way of proving or disproving a point.... Obviously 100 people couldn't control all the wealth in the world, I was just trying to see if 'Even then...' it would be considered rational not to give a large portion of it away...

I would consider it less rational to give it away in the face of two better alternatives. One, to invest it. Two, to keep it. "Giving it away" implies having little or no interest in what is done with it. If one DID take an interest, it would be more of an investment, with some purpose to it and some profit expected. Profit is not always measured in money; it can also be measured in happiness, in satisfaction, in the achievement of some value or other.

Earlier in this thread I read a response of yours that sounded like whining to me. Paraphrasing, you said something about how nobody would tell you what is the most rational thing you could do, so how will you be prepared if you somehow acquired billions of dollars? In my previous post I told you: what you need in order to settle these questions IN YOUR OWN MIND is to identify YOUR OWN hierarchy of values. What do YOU value? What do YOU want to achieve with your time & your resources? Whether you have a dollar to spend, or a billion dollars, you won't be able to take action until you identify what it is YOU hold to be of value, and figure how best to work towards the achievement of your values. That is rationality at work on the individual level, and that is how anything worthwhile gets done.

But that said, I completely disagree with the follow-up points. So 'my world' where 100 people control all the wealth in the world is 'impossible'... so is the world postulated by Rand, where the rich pay fair value for labor, and take only their fair share of the wealth created by production.

You should scroll back thru this thread and re-read, if you read once, the quote that Plasmatic posted from Galt's speech. Read it slowly and carefully.

Here's the deal: the "bad" entrepreneurs are the ones who could not (or believe they could not) succeed without the help of government intervention into the economy. They take advantage of the mixed economy, using political pull to steal what doesn't rightfully belong to them. But they are not the ones who are bringing values into the world. The rich who earn their wealth by producing values - who bring new goods & services into the world - their compensation in terms of money is a pittance compared to the values they bring to the rest of us. I am not going to tar all rich people with the same brush, erasing the difference between those who earned their wealth and those who stole it. Learn the difference.

In our world, people with wealth, and wealth-derived power act irrationally every day, in the 'Golden Era' that Rand is always waxing poetically about they sent workers into coal mines without ventilation, knowing they would develop life-threatening illnesses...they allowed copper to saturate the water table in the towns where miners lived, they forced slaughterhouse workers to endure sub-human conditions, working such long hours that they would often lose fingers or even hands to the cutting mechanisms.... more recently they lie about the health of the company, knowingly taking money from workers paychecks and 'investing' it for the workers retirement, knowing that it is worthless...

... what? WHat's your point with that paragraph?

In the world I live in (and you too...) there are plenty of people working their butts off, playing their role in production, but when those at the top of the companies do the math, they somehow calculate that their handshakes and golf outings are worth 50, 100, even 1000 times what the efforts of those who put in long days on a noisy assembly line are worth. And please don't give me some story about how irreplaceable these guys are...I've worked along side them, most of them aren't that bright, some of them are downright stupid, but the one trait they all had was their willingness to take whatever is on the table for themselves, whether they deserve it or not!

See above. Mixed economies produce more mixed individuals. It's the system that needs fixing most of all. Put the government into its proper role, get it out of the economy, clear the way for freedom for all individuals.

Also, where did the idea come from that production is unlimited?

From the idea that to all intents and purposes, the Earth is a giant ball of resources. We are severely hampered by our relatively tiny population and tiny amount of time (individually) to do all that could be done. Just because a GIVEN industry might reach saturation point, or a given mine be worked to the point that is at this moment profitable, doesn't change the fact that yet more resources are waiting for a revolutionary new technology, or the need for the resource to drive the price to the point where it's profitable to be worked.

Understanding capitalism is something you sorely lack, Doug. Read up on it.

Our economy has become 'service-oriented' where again a cap exists on how muh can be provided, limited by both the size and wealth of the population that we wish to service.

And yet, amazingly, individuals think up new services every day. PLEASE! You are being silly here.

And the whole taxation thing.... what about roads, sewers, schools...they should be private?

Yes, they should. Government's proper role is to protect individual rights. Education is a service that should be completely privately owned. Roads & sewers should be privately owned.

I'd love to see what would happen when the guy who 'owns' the roads in your town decided he wanted to buy two or three more mansions, and upped the toll to use the roads by 100% one day...

Oh boy, and how about when "the guy" who owns the road does a really shitty job of repairing a giant hole in it, and won't even return our phone calls or come back and fix the crappy job he did???? Oh wait - that's what happens now.

SHeesh, wake up already, Doug. The system you are wailing about is the one we have right now - where a legal monopoly exists by force backed by the legal use of a gun - where nobody else has the right to build another road, or set up their rival sewer system. Hell, in good ole Toronto, we had a garbage strike and private waste removal companies were prevented by picketers from doing the job of picking up the damn garbage.

Please, don't tell me these essential services ought to be run by gov't. The answer is, no, they should not.

Would you please go to a mall, and check out the incredible number of shoe stores, clothing stores, goods & services of all kinds which proliferate. The privately owned business world is full of competitors, most of whom do manage to stay in business. There is absolutely no reason to think that there would not be a similar kind of proliferation of businesses handling streets, schools, sewers, hospitals, and so on & on.

The one thing - the only thing - that government is meant to do is protect the rights of all individuals. It seems to be neglecting that job, funnily enough, as crime increases. In fact, there isn't any productive person I can think of who isn't being legally harassed & robbed by government each & every day.

Edited to add: The HUGE difference between privately owned and publicly owned is that a private individual does not have the power to prevent others from entering the market. In your example of "a town" even if 100% of the roads were owned by one guy, there is nothing to stop another guy from deciding his unused field would be perfect for a by-pass. There is nothing to stop a guy from developing a hovercraft, or opening an airfield, so that people could run hovercars, or airplanes.

Government ownership has and can only result in real oppression of the vast majority of us all, with no recourse available. When gov't legislates a monopoly into being, there is no way for a competitor to enter the marketplace.

And all private education...perfect...well just price it so that the lower class can't quite afford it, less competetion for our kids to face in the workplace, plus the bonus of a cheap, hungry labor force...

Goshers. You mean - like in Soviet Russia during the heyday of communism? Please. Do wake up already, Doug.

The hellhole at the end of your "dream" has already happened and indeed is happening in plenty of places on Earth right now, where it all began with someone bemoaning the uneven distribution of something or other.

The only reason we even have the amount of wealth we have now on Earth is thanks to a few moments of freedom in America, during which tiny window of opportunity the creative energies of enough individuals were unleashed and productivity & creativity soared. The fumes of such freedom are what we are running on now. Fumes, and memories of the possibilities that are available to humankind.

It is all that is needed. Freedom. Freedom to think and act according to one's own judgment. The only bar to one individual is the same bar to all individuals - to respect the rights of others to do the same (i.e., to act according to their own judgment.) That is the essence of the issue.

What we really need is to eliminate the legalized use of the initiation of force. Force is properly used only in retaliation against those who initiate it. A lot of the problems you have been pointing out in your posts, Doug, are the result of legalized theft, legalized robbery, legalized fraud, legalized monopolies - in short, the legalized initiation of force.

Edited October 21, 2009 by AllMenAreIslands

[Zip]

DougW, some light reading for you with regard to private schools.

Keep in mind that these people being referred to are the poorest of the poor. Where they live and what they live off make the worst inner city slum in NA look like a garden spot.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/pri...r_the_poor.html

From the article:

Nobody was going to believe his anecdotal evidence, so Tooley obtained funding to test 24,000 school children from all types of schools in Africa, India and China. His results were unequivocal. Except in China, the unrecognized slum schools out-performed government schools by a wide margin. They performed only a little below the regulated private schools for the middle class.

There is no mystery about this. Regulated or not, the slum schools work because there is a chain of accountability. "[P]oor parents [are] keen education consumers." School owners must deliver to their fee-paying customers. They must offer the programs that parents want, and they must deliver results in the government school qualifications exams. And they do.

One thing parents want in India is "English-medium" instruction.

In Hyderabad, 88 percent of recognized and 80 percent of unrecognized private unaided schools reported they were English medium, compared with fewer than 1 percent of government schools.

[Lucio]

OK, I guess the lesson for me here is not to use extremes as a way of proving or disproving a point.... Obviously 100 people couldn't control all the wealth in the world, I was just trying to see if 'Even then...' it would be considered rational not to give a large portion of it away... (Although I recommend Roger Zelazny's 'Lord of Light' as a good example of what might happen if we continue to allow power to accumulate to fewer and fewer people...)

And how do you propose "we" stop "allowing" it to happen?

But that said, I completely disagree with the follow-up points. So 'my world' where 100 people control all the wealth in the world is 'impossible'... so is the world postulated by Rand, where the rich pay fair value for labor, and take only their fair share of the wealth created by production.

Doug, maybe you must recheck your premises.

Wealth is created by specific individuals in voluntary association, not by some (collective/impersonal) "production".

Then, there is no collectivelly owned result wealth from wich somebody "takes" shares.

In the Rand's world nobody "TAKES" a share of someting collectivilly owned.

You exchange your labor for money. If you think you are not getting fair price, then take your bussiness elsewhere. Same for the company's owners.

You rationally decide whats fair value for you and act accordingly. If both partners are rational, they reach an agreement where BOTH gain value with the trade.

In our world, people with wealth, and wealth-derived power act irrationally every day, in the 'Golden Era' that Rand is always waxing poetically about they sent workers into coal mines without ventilation, knowing they would develop life-threatening illnesses...they allowed copper to saturate the water table in the towns where miners lived, they forced slaughterhouse workers to endure sub-human conditions, working such long hours that they would often lose fingers or even hands to the cutting mechanisms.... more recently they lie about the health of the company, knowingly taking money from workers paychecks and 'investing' it for the workers retirement, knowing that it is worthless...

Workers should have rationally refused working in that conditions.

Where they "forced" at gunpoint?

How was the money "taken" from paychecks? some gunpoint there?

In the world I live in (and you too...) there are plenty of people working their butts off, playing their role in production, but when those at the top of the companies do the math, they somehow calculate that their handshakes and golf outings are worth 50, 100, even 1000 times what the efforts of those who put in long days on a noisy assembly line are worth. And please don't give me some story about how irreplaceable these guys are...I've worked along side them, most of them aren't that bright, some of them are downright stupid, but the one trait they all had was their willingness to take whatever is on the table for themselves, whether they deserve it or not!

If you think they're getting a lot of value, then is in your self-interest to get one of these positions!

If somebody in the production chain believe he's not getting fair price, then is in his self-interest to take his bussiness elsewhere.

And finally, I never said that inherited money 'sits'..only that it is 'irrational' to think that a world where the wealth of the economy is distributed so unevenly will be a fun place for anyone to live. Keeping a vast, hungry, uneducated mass of people is the absolute surest way to bring about terrorism, revolution, war.

If wealth is created by rational exchange, there cannot be in a free society one whealthy person surrounded by "vast, hungry, uneducated mass of people". (this happens only in totalitarian regimes or slavery)

But less assume youre in that position.

You are the only whealty person surrounded by vast, hungry, uneducated mass of people... and, you believe they can become violent looters soon.

Is in your self-interest to:

a) Arm yourself in order to protect yourself.

Try to educate the mass so they become only vast (let's assume with education they can at least feed themselves)

To choose a) or will depend on your rational evaluation of the exact situation, then choosing the path that maximizes your self-interest.

A) those born with wealth aren't 'better' or 'more deserving' than those born poor.

Again, re-check premises.

"deserving" of what? distributed by who? created by who?

As much as you'd like to believe otherwise, 80 hours of your work each week is very, very, very unlikely to be worth 1000 times the 40 hours of production put in by the average worker.

In the eyes of who?

The worker and the CEO are there by their own will ?

C) It makes absolutely no sense to claim that giving money for food and education to strangers who are starving and uneducated would actually cause them harm, rob them of pride, teach them sloth, etc., but also to claim that giving huge amounts of money to your children wouldn't harm them one bit, no sir! and finally

I guess your children are partially "you" (genetically speaking).

Is up to you to prepare them to manage your inheritance.

Most of the people feel happier giving his wealth to their children than to strangers. I guess "you own happines" is the moral reason to do it.

D) While it's fun to play the 'look I just moved up 2 spots on the Fortune list, watch out Gates...' game, once you have covered your necessities for like 1000 lifetimes, it's difficult to come up with a rational reason why you should continue building personal wealth. (and no, 'Because I can...' is not a rational reason)

You do it because you rationally evaluate that this is your self-interest.

If you're really-really happier teaching in somalia, then do it. But do not doit as a "moral duty" or because you think others have a claim on you just by having less. Doit because you'll be happier.

Capitalism is certainly the very best system ever devised for a fair, free economy. But it isn't without it's problems, and one is that it allows a cyclical build-up of economic power that in turn allows those with capital to reduce the choices of those without capital to "play our way or starve", and nobody wants to starve....

"Use your mind and reason to produce or starve" is a consequence of nature, not capitalism.

Capitalism gives you the best chance to use your mind and your potential.

I've readed all the thread, you seem to be a good guy. A lot of life experiences.

I'm trying my best to make you reach logical answers to your questions. (that's all my rethorical questions intended to do)

No intention to offend you in any way.

I'm like you in some aspect, I'm also need to reason and apply logic to everything.

Please read past sintactic and grammatical errors.

Greetings.

[whYNOT]

And greetings to you too, Lucio!

Does anyone know the story of a journalist way back then, who suggested in an article that John D. Rockefeller give away all his wealth, divided equally amongst the masses?

So he received a cheque from JDR for 30 cents, with a note saying "here's your share."