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Foreign Intervention

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phareign

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... , or am I still a party to your imaginary contract?

You are still a party to the contract. You must leave the country or have the balls to hazard your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor in armed rebellion. Choose wisely. Armed rebellion has succeeded in the past and is succeeding today, this is a real alternative not a rhetorical flourish in the form of an in-your-face double dare. (For that matter, unarmed rebellion sometimes works too i.e. Ghandi, Martin Luther King.)

Under Ayn Rand's contract tax, one can refuse to fund the government in its activities by avoiding contracts through living in the cash economy and on "honor system" agreements with trustworthy counterparties. This is a peaceful means to withdraw explicit sanction to a government you disagree with. If you want to withdraw implicit sanction as well, then make war or emigrate.

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You are still a party to the contract. You must leave the country or have the balls to hazard your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor in armed rebellion. Choose wisely. Armed rebellion has succeeded in the past and is succeeding today, this is a real alternative not a rhetorical flourish in the form of an in-your-face double dare. (For that matter, unarmed rebellion sometimes works too i.e. Ghandi, Martin Luther King.)

Is there a clause in this imaginary contract that states I am exempt from it if I wage war against the government? Or would waging war constitute an imaginary violation of the contract, making me dishonorable for going back on my imaginary consent to abide by it?

For that matter, unarmed rebellion sometimes works too i.e. Ghandi, Martin Luther King.

What on Earth was Gandhi (by the way!!) thinking, consenting to a contract to be ruled by the British, and then changing his mind and refusing to live up to it.

Edited by Tanaka
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Just to clarify my position on this whole fighting / disobeying the government thing: I don't want to do either at the moment (well, with small exceptions: there are laws I don't obey, because they are a violation of my rights and it suits me better to sometimes break them).

But that doesn't mean I'm willing to commit to live by any contract in the future. I will live by the rules of society as long as it is in my rational self interest to do so, not a minute longer. The sole judge of what is and what isn't in my self interest is, and always will be, my own rational mind. I have never agreed to any contract stating otherwise, explicitly or implicitly.

Everything I have ever done implies the exact opposite of your claim that I would sign my mind away to some government.

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I will live by the rules of society as long as it is in my rational self interest to do so, not a minute longer.

So when a criminal invades my house, holds a gun on me, tells me to feed him or else, and I comply for a time while considering how to defeat him, I am giving my consent? Completely absurd.

Also, if a criminal holds me up and says "your wallet or your life" and I give him my wallet, I have no recourse. When the police catch him and he says "but he consented, he gave me his wallet", then according to you the police should let him go? Wow, more evidence of your lack of understanding of Rights and the concept "consent". Please stop.

Furthermore, Tanaka is correct here:

The specific rules of the running of a corporation have nothing to do with the discussion. The point is that those rules were agreed to by all the owners of the corporation, their shares were sold to them on the condition that they agree to those rules.

That is twice in this thread you have equivocated between the functions of government and the functions of a free market. Do you not understand that there is a fundamental difference between the two? That one deals in force exclusively and the other is completely devoid of force? Or are you one of those who believes that there can be a "market in force"? Nice to meet you Mr. Anarchy.

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And he's wrong on two counts. Rights are an objective fact, and so is the justness of a rights protecting government. Neither rights nor objective justice come from of any god or man's permission.

Whether the governed consent to the powers of a government is entirely irrelevant to whether those powers are just or unjust.

Wrong. A dictatorship wields power, through force, without the consent of the governed. This in no way is a legitimate government. Rights may exist theoretically, but they can be taken away by a gang with guns. Only when the citizens are in control, through a legitimate, rights recognizing system,i.e., a republican form of governance, can rights be secured.

Edited by Maximus
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Wrong. A dictatorship wields power, through force, without the consent of the governed. This in no way is a legitimate government. Rights may exist theoretically, but they can be taken away by a gang with guns. Only when the citizens are in control, through a legitimate, rights recognizing system,i.e., a republican form of governance, can rights be secured.

You misunderstand what he's saying. All governments, even dictatorships, exist through the consent of the governed. Tanaka's point is simply that the fact that a given government exists and is viewed implicitly as legitimate by its own people does not have any bearing on whether or not that government is morally legitimate by an objective standard of value.

Some suggest that the only thing that matters in good leadership or good governance is whether or not the citizens approve of or are happy with their government. For example, this is what appeasers and moral tolerationists say oft to critisize "selfish" and "ethnocentric" foriegn policy suggestions (i.e. passing moral judgment.) Colonel Gaddafi, for example, once said that a nation shuld be viewed through the lense of whether or not its people are happy with it, not whether or not the West approves of it. Our point here, in other words, is the fact that a country is made up of 95% Muslims and those Muslims are perfectly happy with a theocratic nationalist regime does not make such a political system morally appropriate. The justness, or moral maxim of a government is an obejctive fact, not a primacy of consciousness phenomenon.

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  • 2 months later...

In what chapter (the page number would be of great help too) of Capitalism does Ayn Rand discuss the morality of foreign intervention? (note: I have the Signet Centennial Edition)

Edited by Xall
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In what chapter (the page number would be of great help too) of Capitalism does Ayn Rand discuss the morality of foreign intervention? (note: I have the Signet Centennial Edition)

Could no longer edit my post, but I wanted to ask also in which chapter she discusses the issue of compromise in regards to international politics.

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  • 1 month later...

Some suggest that the only thing that matters in good leadership or good governance is whether or not the citizens approve of or are happy with their government. For example, this is what appeasers and moral tolerationists say oft to critisize "selfish" and "ethnocentric" foriegn policy suggestions (i.e. passing moral judgment.) Colonel Gaddafi, for example, once said that a nation shuld be viewed through the lense of whether or not its people are happy with it, not whether or not the West approves of it. Our point here, in other words, is the fact that a country is made up of 95% Muslims and those Muslims are perfectly happy with a theocratic nationalist regime does not make such a political system morally appropriate. The justness, or moral maxim of a government is an obejctive fact, not a primacy of consciousness phenomenon.

Did you just say that a government that is in the self-interest of 95% of the people is bad? Should that 95% act against their self interest and oppose the government then?

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Self-interest is not a matter of emotionalism. The mere fact that someone wants something does not make it good for them, does not make it right, or make it in their rational self-interest. Rand's ethics of rational egoism is a naturalist theory of ethics, which holds that self-interest is a function of our nature and the facts of reality, discoverable by man's reason. This is why the mere fact that someone approves of his government does not make it a good government, just like the mere fact that someone feels like doing X doesn't make X good for him.

Edited by 2046
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