Is this the Biggest Practical Problem with Objectivism?

[Dustin86]

Quote

No person who valued individual rights would ever have voted for any politician making the various promises. Quite the opposite, such men would have voted against anyone making all the various promises American politicians have made over the decades.

The reason politicians make these promises is that it gets them elected. The reason it gets them elected is because the voter demand that the government should violate other people's rights and hand them (the voter) some benefit. In terms of action, it is the voters (at large) who are looking desperately for someone who will stand up and promise to violate other people's rights, while insisting that they won't violate the rights of those who vote for them. The voter votes for these people instead of voting against them. The voter -- usually demanding the impossible -- is either ignorant or foolish. 

You can try not promising things to the voter, and he won't vote for you. So much for that idea.

But we're not talking about politicians here. We're talking about the fact that the promise was put into the Declaration, which enshrined it in a way that no politician trying to get elected could have done by himself.

Edited May 1, 2016 by Dustin86

[softwareNerd]

5 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

But we're not talking about politicians here. We're talking about the fact that the promise was put into the Declaration, which enshrined it in a way that no politician trying to get elected could have done by himself.

I reckon we're going in circles now. The average American does not understand the Declaration and has been trying hard to undo it for many decades. You obviously believe differently. I doubt there's a resolution to this argument when we disagree on such a fundamental premise.

[Repairman]

5 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

But we're not talking about politicians here. We're talking about the fact that the promise was put into the Declaration, which enshrined it in a way that no politician trying to get elected could have done by himself.

I'm still trying to establish just what is your primary argument. "A promise was broken. The promise was that all people are to receive equal treatment under the law. Observing that all people are not treated equally under the law, it is inevitable that America, a liberal-democracy, is destined to degenerate into some sort of violent civil conflict." 

If I got anything wrong here, of course, make the necessary clarification.

If this is an appropriate rephrasing of your argument, I would point out that this is not a problem for Objectivism. It might be a problem inherent to the US justice system. To be sure, people with greater wealth have the advantage of spending their money on a superior team of legal defenders, or to forestall justice. But there are many examples of people in the highest levels of power being brought down, regardless of their money and their expensive friends. Conversely, I would venture to say that many members of the dangerous classes have walked away from their accusers, acquitted as a result of inadmissible evidence. How often this happens, I don't know. But if this is your complaint, it is a common complaint; every generation has witnesses enough of these and many other travesties to know that the system is not perfect, but that it usually works for the average law-abiding citizen.

People who feel that the system is so unjust as to justify their violent reactions are usually the ones that get the attention their looking for on the news. People who form a legal defense, either individually or collectively through some political organization, stand a better chance of changing the system for better or worse. The problem, or challenge for Objectivism (or Objectivists) is the conveyance of the objective standard of good to as many people as possible before these people have their day in court.

[Dustin86]

4 hours ago, Repairman said:

I'm still trying to establish just what is your primary argument. "A promise was broken. The promise was that all people are to receive equal treatment under the law. Observing that all people are not treated equally under the law, it is inevitable that America, a liberal-democracy, is destined to degenerate into some sort of violent civil conflict." 

Yes, that is my primary argument for the most part; the one part you left out is that people who get their hopes up because of promises and then those hopes are dashed are far more likely to become violent than people who merely lived in a bad or mediocre situation for their whole lives and never got their hopes up at all. Really not just "more likely" but "inevitable" if we are talking on the scale of tens or hundreds of millions of people. That is why America is destined to degenerate into a violent civil conflict.

 

4 hours ago, Repairman said:

If this is an appropriate rephrasing of your argument, I would point out that this is not a problem for Objectivism.

I don't agree with you. Both Ayn Rand and Yaron Brook (the current director of the Ayn Rand Institute) cited the USA from 1776 up until the 20th century as being the closest society historically to what they would consider "a truly Objectivist society". I'm pointing out the fundamental weakness in that statement (of Rand's and Brook's). The real truth about that period of American history is that "proto-Objectivism" was not achieved so much as that that people were pacified by cheap/free land that existed before the closing of the frontier. Then, when that ran out (i.e., the "closing of the frontier" happened) a "non-Objectivist" measure, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, had to be taken to pacify people once again, to distract them from their anger at the broken promise. Now that the New Deal, too, is now running out, there is now nothing to divert people from their anger at the broken promise. And because the most dangerous man is a man who gets his hopes up because of promises and then those hopes are dashed, America is now destined to degenerate into a violent civil conflict.

[Devil's Advocate]

1 hour ago, Dustin86 said:

... And because the most dangerous man is a man who gets his hopes up because of promises and then those hopes are dashed, America is now destined to degenerate into a violent civil conflict.

The most dangerous man is a man who reacts with violence to broken promises he never ought to have accepted.  The DOI doesn't enshrine a Right to Happiness, or free land, or peace without bloodshed.  Anyone who believes otherwise ought to check their premises, or at least review the source material that led them to accept such nonsense.  W.C. Fields probably wasn't an Objectivist, but he was correct about never giving a sucker an even break.

If I promise you a rose garden (or the Brooklyn Bridge) and don't deliver, no standard of justice allows you to break into Home Depot and steal gardening supplies, or makes it reasonable to expect you to do so because someone broke their promise.  The only ones who are destined to degenerate into violent civil conflict are those who were leaning in that direction to begin with.

[Repairman]

43 minutes ago, Dustin86 said:

 And because the most dangerous man is a man who gets his hopes up because of promises and then those hopes are dashed, America is now destined to degenerate into a violent civil conflict.

The fact that this dangerous man, or a collective we might call, the Dangerous Classes, is disappointed by any promise and takes to violence is not a flaw of Objectivism, nor for that matter a flaw in the foundation of America. So, let's take a look at some of your assertions about American history:

46 minutes ago, Dustin86 said:

 Both Ayn Rand and Yaron Brook (the current director of the Ayn Rand Institute) cited the USA from 1776 up until the 20th century as being the closest society historically to what they would consider "a truly Objectivist society".

Close perhaps, but no cigar. In fact far from it; assuming Ayn Rand and Yaron Brook made these statements, the context presupposes that no other social order in history comes any closer. If we're comparing other societies, particularly any society prior to the Industrial Revolution, religion, whether in the form of pagan mysticism, or Judeo-Christian theocracy dominated every mode of understanding reality. If you look into For the New Intellectual, you might get a better understanding of this Objectivist hypothesis. Even in the post-Industrial Revolutionary Age, Great Britain was ruled by a constitutional monarchy. It was a theocracy placing Queen Victoria at the head of the Anglican Church. As SoftwareNerd pointed out, they were successful in making the transition to a liberal-democracy. But liberal-democratic societies can still be societies of religious people. Religion in America today is much more popular than in Great Britain. In the 19th Century, religious prejudice existed, as well as a burgeoning Free Thinker's movement in America. Yet, people normally conducted commerce with members of opposing, even "foreign" religions, such as Jews and Catholics. This would been less likely have happened in a medieval European society, where intolerance was the norm. Whether it was pogroms against Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, or rebellion in Ireland, tolerance for religion was the norm and violence the exception in America. And while the overwhelming majority of the Anglo-America post-industrial society were religious, there were growing numbers of atheist/agnostic societies. The age of reason was alive. Scientific discovery and innovation was expanding as never before. The mere fact that tolerance of religion was more widespread in American is largely due to a commerce-driven society, as well as a legal system that respected individual rights. The power of capitalism not only increased output, but helped to create a less prejudice society. So, while I can't tell you the reasons 19th Century America is considered by others as the "most Objectivist" period in history, this would be my case for agreeing with this basic assertion.

1 hour ago, Dustin86 said:

  The real truth about that period of American history is that "proto-Objectivism" was not achieved so much as that that people were pacified by cheap/free land that existed before the closing of the frontier. Then, when that ran out (i.e., the "closing of the frontier" happened) a "non-Objectivist" measure, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, had to be taken to pacify people once again, to distract them from their anger at the broken promise. Now that the New Deal, too, is now running out, there is now nothing to divert people from their anger at the broken promise.

 Regarding the "closing of the frontiers," I believe I explained in an earlier post that we live in an age of new frontiers. If you look at the Progressive Age, (approximately 1880 to 1914), Christians and other social reformers were reacting to the excesses of wealth in contrast to the scandalous poverty of industrial company towns, urban slums, and the general squalor of the living conditions of the poor. Enter the new religion: Socialism. There was no Objectivism in any form available for intellectual distribution; America's leading educational institutions were turning to Pragmatism and various offshoots of German Idealism. Progressive reforms were already in place years before the Great War, 1914-1918. In my opinion, had the newly formed Federal Reserve system performed as J P Morgan had in past banking crisis, the outcome of the Crash of 1929 may have been less tragic. Of course, this would be a matter for a separate debate. To be sure, there were overwhelming numbers of angry men fomenting violent revolution in 1932. Incidentally, Herbert Hoover was one of the progressive Republicans, in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt. Hoover, the Great Engineer, believed he could engineer economies through government policy. Franklin Roosevelt, acting in the fashion of many Western leaders, adopted emergency measures more closely in line with socialism, Keynesian to be more specific. Franklin Roosevelt may not have been a socialist, but I would argue that Eleanor was. So, the world spiraled downward with controlled economies for nations that would have been better served by free-market solutions. Of course, the War was the major event that changed the entire equation. That is with the exception of popularity for faith in socialism. As this socialist trend has begun to accelerate our present downward spiral, some insist more socialism is needed, others insist more religion is needed, and some insist on both. The ideological legacy of the Square Deal, the New Deal, Fair Deal, and the Great Society have brought us to Obama's Big Fucking Deal. It is an ideology of abandonment of personal accountability and initiative. It is an ideology that has gone on for too long unchallenged. People continue to look for leaders, leaders that lead them astray. While the 19th Century was not perfect, it was the prevailing norms of Christian charity and progressive reforms that pushed us onto the wrong path. And economy gets worse, and people expect more from government, and things get worse, etc.

Dustin86, I don't know what more I can say about all of this. There are things we can agree on, but the suggestion that Objectivism, a philosophy that promotes capitalism, is to blame for our current problems just doesn't hold up under the facts.

[softwareNerd]

1 hour ago, Repairman said:

... ...  the suggestion that Objectivism, a philosophy that promotes capitalism, is to blame for our current problems just doesn't hold up under the facts.

Dustin86 is mislabeling all sorts of things as "Objectivism".  Not just the U.S. founding, but even a socialist-leaning Kerensky.

However, suppose we drop the "Objectivist" label from this thread, Dustin86 is still making these assertions:

• the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence (and, I assume, the philosophy behind the founding of the U.S.) was something that could not be fulfilled,
• American voters long for the fulfillment of its founding philosophy
• Since that founding philosophy cannot be fulfilled, voters are unhappy and are going to rebel violently

All three assertions are false, even if we ignore that his absurd use of the term Objectivism.

 

[Repairman]

Dustin86,

7 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

 The real truth about that period of American history is that "proto-Objectivism" was not achieved so much as that that people were pacified by cheap/free land that existed before the closing of the frontier.

Rather than "proto-Objectivism," the term most often used is, Manifest Destiny. It was a belief that the North American continent would be colonized and developed by white Anglo-Saxon English-speaking Protestants. It was ordained by God. And I hardly think they were "pacified" with homesteading or any conquest of untitled land. I concur with SoftwareNerd's critique. You have many misunderstandings about Objectivism, and for that matter, American history.

Edited May 2, 2016 by Repairman
emphasis on religion, not Ayn Rand

[Dustin86]

softwareNerd and Repairman:

From the Ayn Rand Lexicon, regarding Kerensky:

Quote

"During her high school years, she was eyewitness to both the Kerensky Revolution, which she supported, and—in 1917—the Bolshevik Revolution, which she denounced from the outset."

Link - Biography of Ayn Rand: http://aynrandlexicon.com/about-ayn-rand/bio.html

 

Regarding Rand's attitude on the early period of the United States:

Quote

"In its great era of capitalism, the United States was the freest country on earth—and the best refutation of racist theories."

Ayn Rand, “Racism,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 130

Quote

"The United States was the first moral society in history."

Ayn Rand, “Man’s Rights,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 93

Is this enough quotational evidence or do I need more? Because I can get 10 times more if this isn't enough.

I think we're talking past each other again. I am contending that Rand never truly understood the United States and its nature during what she called "its great era of capitalism". What I am saying is that people were bought off from being their usual selves by free land and what ended up being a false and broken promise (namely the promise of Equality as laid out in the Declaration) - thus creating the illusion that what Rand labeled "the first moral society in history" had been achieved. Now whatever immorality was avoided is going to be paid back tenfold because now there is nothing here left in the USA to dull people's rage over the broken promise.

Edited May 2, 2016 by Dustin86

[softwareNerd]

14 minutes ago, Dustin86 said:

Is this enough quotational evidence or do I need more? Because I can get 10 times more if this isn't enough.

No, this is zero evidence that Objectivism has anything at all to do with Kerensky. But, please do not provide any more on my account. I consider any such discussion to be polemic and therefore worthless to me.

[dream_weaver]

Bought off by free land?

Did I play the role of a sucker signing up for a 30 year mortgage?

As to one of your citations, it appears to omit the context with regard to America's relationship to capitalism. This is from  "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business" from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

A system of pure, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism has never yet existed anywhere. What did exist were only so-called mixed economies, which means: a mixture, in varying degrees, of freedom and controls, of voluntary choice and government coercion, of capitalism and statism. America was the freest country on earth, but elements of statism were present in her economy from the start.

[Dustin86]

Dreamweaver, no I did not remove context, you are quoting from a completely different text. I am quoting from The Virtue of Selfishness, in which Rand clearly refers to the United States as "the first moral society in history".

If Rand never truly understood the United States, if the USA truly was no more moral than any other place according to Objectivist or any other morality, which is what I argue, it seriously calls into question the feasibility of what you refer to as a fully Objectivist society because it shows that not even a partially Objectivist society has ever been achieved.

Edited May 2, 2016 by Dustin86

[Plasmatic]

3 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

Dreamweaver, no I did not remove context, you are quoting from a completely different text. I am quoting from The Virtue of Selfishness, in which Rand clearly refers to the United States as "the first moral society in history".

If Rand never truly understood the United States, if the USA truly was no more moral than any other place according to Objectivist or any other morality, which is what I argue, it seriously calls into question the feasibility of what you refer to as a fully Objectivist society because it shows that not even a partially Objectivist society has ever been achieved.

The above is a non-sequitur. 

First, one can be moral and still be wrong philosophically on a given premise because errors of knowledge and moral errors are not the same thing. America's formation was based on the moral foundation of individual rights. That does not mean they had all the correct views on what rights are and how to uphold them.

Second, this whole silly notion that the possibility of attainment of a given value system is undermined because it hasn't been fully achieved before, is just ridiculous. There was a first time for every new phenomenon that has come to be and when those phenomenon were manmade someone used reason to identify causal connections to make it so.

Edit:

This whole infantile fit theory, that men are most enraged by a broken promise, sounds like another "narrative" of the Marxist to  drum up discontent for "inequality" in order to mobilize the "vangaurd" by deconstructing American history. 

Ive seen quite a lot of increase in  these "narratives" lately. 

Edited May 2, 2016 by Plasmatic

[dream_weaver]

4 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

Dreamweaver, no I did not remove context, you are quoting from a completely different text. I am quoting from The Virtue of Selfishness, in which Rand clearly refers to the United States as "the first moral society in history".

The more precise term is "selective quoting". You could argue that I am doing the same thing. Yet compare the quotations, and the point they are trying to clarify.

It is the statist element that is undermining what was the most moral country in history. With more investigation, it would be altruism that is found to be incompatible with individual rights and capitalism.

Edited May 2, 2016 by dream_weaver

[Dustin86]

Dreamweaver and Plasmatic, I'm going to let the cat out of the bag here so to speak and say that I do not believe in "human progress" outside of technological progress and progress caused by biological evolution/natural selection (which takes tens of thousands of years to have any significant result). In other words I think that "human social progress" of the kind talked about by people like Marxists, Enlightenment thinkers, and Objectivists is in fact impossible. So it's not just you guys I'm picking on here.

That is why I am making my point about the USA. In my previous posts in this thread, I am dressing down any claim that the USA represented any kind of "human social progress" beyond what existed before. Ayn Rand obviously thought that the USA did represent "human social progress"; her writings are replete with quotes that demonstrate her views here.

If human social progress is impossible (outside of that which is directly tied to biological/evolutionary progress, which takes place only on the scale of tens of thousands of years) then an Objectivist society is for all intents and purposes impossible. That is the point I am making on this thread.

Edited May 2, 2016 by Dustin86

[Devil's Advocate]

A potential Objectivist society is essentially just another homogeneous society of which there are numerous examples to demonstrate the realization of that particular possibility.  I suppose you might argue that they are becoming less likely given expanding, interactive populations and social communications, but to dismiss it as a future possibility in the face of historical and contemporary examples isn't a very persuasive point in your favor.

[Eiuol]

26 minutes ago, Dustin86 said:

That is why I am making my point about the USA. In my previous posts in this thread, I am dressing down any claim that the USA represented any kind of "human social progress" beyond what existed before. Ayn Rand obviously thought that the USA did represent "human social progress"; her writings are replete with quotes that demonstrate her views here.

The quotes so far are progress in the sense that there is a measurable difference from the past. I don't know what you're getting the sense of inevitable human progress where mankind always improves throughout the march of history. Rand just said that the greatest political advancement was the US government when it was founded.

[dream_weaver]

58 minutes ago, Dustin86 said:

If human social progress is impossible (outside of that which is directly tied to biological/evolutionary progress, which takes place only on the scale of tens of thousands of years) then an Objectivist society is for all intents and purposes impossible.

The fact that you start this sentence off with the qualifier of "If" doesn't lay clear your position whether you agree that a society based on objective laws and the objective enforcement of those laws is actually impossible. In fact, I would say the mere fact that your tacit arguing for or against anything is a recognition that human beings are, in essence, volitional beings. A volitional (conceptual) being has the capacity to grasp things far beyond the perceptual grasp of the rest of the animal kingdom. Man's unique reward for this capacity is:

while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself. If a drought strikes them, animals perish—man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes them, animals perish—man builds dams; if a carnivorous pack attacks them animals perish—man writes the Constitution of the United States. — For The New Intellectual, pg. 15

These are all forms of technological progress, each on their own merits.

[Dustin86]

11 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

The fact that you start this sentence off with the qualifier of "If" doesn't lay clear your position whether you agree that a society based on objective laws and the objective enforcement of those laws is actually impossible.

It is indeed impossible. People who have the power to do so are always going to twist the law to their own advantage. This makes "a society based on objective laws" impossible.

[dream_weaver]

5 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

It is indeed impossible. People who have the power to do so are always going to twist the law to their own advantage. This makes "a society based on objective laws" impossible.

Then what difference does it make whether you engage in arguing for or against it, if the inevitable is all you have to look forward to?

[Devil's Advocate]

The point is not to get your hopes up.

Resistance is futile.

Fatalism

[Dustin86]

11 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

Then what difference does it make whether you engage in arguing for or against it, if the inevitable is all you have to look forward to?

The reason why I bother is that "progressivist" ideologies such as the Founding Fathers' ideology, Objectivism (which is really just an expansion of the former), and Marxism lead to violent revolutions such as the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Soviet Revolution in which thousands or even millions of people are murdered, countless amounts of property is destroyed, and the human race receives nothing in return for the murders and destructions.

Therefore, when people begin believing in these ideologies, I feel that it is the job of people like me to talk them down through reasoned arguments before the ideology spreads too far and it is too late and a violent revolution is the result.

[dream_weaver]

I originally asked a different question in my mind, while it did not come out that way. I may have misunderstood what I was replying to.

At one point I was thinking you might have meant a violent end was inevitable, to which my question is why go thru the effort to persuade. From your last response, Dustin86, this doesn't appear to be the case.

While you do state you think whatever it is that you mean by "human social progress" is impossible, it has been my experience that it is not an issue that gets easily resolved by discussing it on a political level, it was this type of "impossible" that I thought I was addressing.

 

 

 

Edited May 4, 2016 by dream_weaver

[Repairman]

18 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

The reason why I bother is that "progressivist" ideologies such as the Founding Fathers' ideology, Objectivism (which is really just an expansion of the former), and Marxism lead to violent revolutions such as the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Soviet Revolution in which thousands or even millions of people are murdered, countless amounts of property is destroyed, and the human race receives nothing in return for the murders and destructions.

What evidence do you have that Objectivism leads to violent revolution?

18 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

Therefore, when people begin believing in these ideologies, I feel that it is the job of people like me to talk them down through reasoned arguments before the ideology spreads too far and it is too late and a violent revolution is the result.

You have yet to present your reasoned argument. You are merely insisting that Objectivsim, or for that matter, all ideologies are evil by virtue of your belief that all ideologies are destructive. It is a belief that no one else to my knowledge has ever claimed. Jeffersonian democracy is not some "proto-Objectivist" scheme, although both Thomas Jefferson and Ayn Rand relied on evidence, axiomatic self-evident truth, as a means of making their case for liberty. So, again I ask you, where is your evidence that Objectivism initiates or incites violent revolution?