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Why was Ayn Rand opposed to a safety net even?

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In 1976, she retired from her newsletter and, despite her lifelong objections to any government run program, was enrolled in and subsequently claimed social secirity and medicare government assistance with the aid of a social worker. 

Page 62

Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul  Weiss, Gary 

I'm sorry but being a recipient of welfare yourself while arguing for its removal from others is not only hypocritical, its unfair and just not cricket as we say in the UK. 

 

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The contention that Thatcher failed to achieve her mission to destroy the welfare state starts from a false premise; she never intended to do so. However, she was largely successful in residualising welfare, and efforts to do so went along with an increasingly harsh rhetoric about those reliant on social security.

Thatcher saw individualism as a fact of life; her adviser Alfred Sherman (the first director of the new Thatcherite think-tank the Centre for Policy Studies) wrote in a speech draft for her in 1977 that 'we simply recognise the force of self-interest in human affairs, particularly economic affairs. We neither praise it nor denigrate it.' Thatcher's brand of individualism was profoundly marked by the self-help and charity stressed in her Methodist upbringing in interwar Grantham. It was far from selfish or greedy, but it was rooted in the values of self-reliance and independence ingrained in Nonconformism and Liberalism (Thatcher's father, Alfred Roberts, was a Liberal Alderman). 

https://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/margaret-thatcher-individualism-and-the-welfare-state

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Rand did not oppose the safety net for the poor and disabled any more than she opposed schools or roads or healthcare. She simply wanted to make these activities private and voluntary.

The best way to understand her actions in connection with Medicare and Social Security would be to read The Question of Scholarships, her own treatment of the question. Briefly, she says that you paid for these benefits under duress and you do nothing reprehensible by taking some of the money back. Some auxiliary reading

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1 hour ago, clear blue water said:

In 1976, she retired from her newsletter and, despite her lifelong objections to any government run program, was enrolled in and subsequently claimed social secirity and medicare government assistance with the aid of a social worker. 

Page 62

Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul  Weiss, Gary 

I'm sorry but being a recipient of welfare yourself while arguing for its removal from others is not only hypocritical, its unfair and just not cricket as we say in the UK. 

 

It is not hypocritical to take steps in order to get back monies she paid in taxes, of numerous kinds, direct and indirect, over a great portion of her lifetime.

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Ayn Rand opposed imposition of forced charity which is what welfare, when mandated by Government, is.

The freedom she espoused is consistent with voluntary individual, social, and cultural action, including generosity, charity, encouragement and rehabilitation/training initiatives, and by implication would require Government NOT to interfere with, regulate or tax, such welfare, community, charity work.

Far from banning the citizenry from being as generous and charitable as they wished to be, she posits the only system in which the citizens would be entirely free from interference to do so.

It all boils down to a question of force versus freedom.

 

Since you clearly believe in charity and the welfare of others... I encourage you to devote some of your personal time and money in direct support of it.

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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46 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Ayn Rand opposed imposition of forced charity which is what welfare, when mandated by Government, is.

The freedom she espoused is consistent with voluntary individual, social, and cultural action, including generosity, charity, encouragement and rehabilitation/training initiatives, and by implication would require Government NOT to interfere with, regulate or tax, such welfare, community, charity work.

Far from banning the citizenry from being as generous and charitable as they wished to be, she posits the only system in which the citizens would be entirely free from interference to do so.

It all boils down to a question of force versus freedom.

 

Since you clearly believe in charity and the welfare of others... I encourage you to devote some of your personal time and money in direct support of it.

I'm of the opinion that government should mandate a social safety net to alleviate deprivation and support the most vulnerable in society. There is no evidence to assume that if it was left to private charity that anyone would volunteer.

Edited by clear blue water
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Just now, clear blue water said:

I'm of the opinion that government should mandate a social safety net to alleviate deprivation and support the most vulnerable in society. There is no evidence to assume that if it was left to private charity that anyone would volunteer.

There is plenty of evidence which shows all throughout history many people have volunteered to provide charitable services and/or resources to the needy.  This is a fact that cannot be ignored honestly.

Even if one were to dishonestly ignore such a fact, and argue that human nature as such, is such that no one would help... nor have any inclination, reason, or motivation to do so... including you.... what basis could you possibly have to argue that government *should* mandate a safety net, if you, like everyone else would literally have no inclination, reason, or motivation to do it?  Any reason you give for government to do so, would be sufficient reason for at least someone doing so.
 

But in any case we do not have to dishonestly ignore the facts of history.
 

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8 minutes ago, clear blue water said:

There is no evidence to assume that if it was left to private charity that anyone would volunteer.

There is also no evidence to assume that government confiscation and control alleviates "derivation" or that it supports the most "vulnerable" members of society.

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6 hours ago, clear blue water said:

To protect the most vulnerable in society.

Why is the comparative MOST so often run into the desideratum these days? All living things are vulnerable things. Why isn't the ideal to reduce vulnerabilities of oneself and fellow humans, period. Surely that is best done by each for themselves and according to their own assessment of who is innocently unable to help themselves sufficiently.

In my community (of about 80,000) many of the residents are sensibly pained that about 24 percent of our fellow residents here live below the poverty level of income, which is determined by how much income is required for basic things required for survival. I know at least one church where there is a bulletin board on which there are services for which one could confidently volunteer knowing that one is helping others in this or that way. And without any such organizational suggestion, my husband and I have sent donations so that young children do not start the day of school with nothing in their stomach. Unfortunately, we have lately had to stop all of our charitable gifts whatsoever because the inflation has effectively cut in half our pension and our life savings.

Who caused that inflation? Was it not largely due to the ability of the federal government to print money and the power of the government to run budgets in the red (the last 23 years here)? —Spending on what the politicians judge best for getting themselves votes. Sell it as protecting the most vulnerable. Call for long (and expensive, even if lousy-level care) prison sentences meted on loads of activities declared criminal, prison and rehabilitation empire spun off from the game of advancing electoral careers of prosecutors. . . . Get political power and glory for themselves with someone else's money.

People here don't think of Social Security Disability or Pension as protecting the most vulnerable. I know nothing of your corresponding programs over there. The Disability part is thought of as like the original function of private health insurance firms here, which was providing income while one is unable to be employed and make money due to suffering injury or disease. The Pension part is of course simply a pension at an advanced age, having for the most part stopped commercial employment.

I'm 75. Glad to see you here. Thanks for communicating with us.

Once I got steady employment in my early twenties, I was no longer in days of no food, although the income I earned could not have supported a family. I did not want to have children, due to skyscraper intellectual ambitions, so that was OK. Later I got more commercially valuable education. I never took welfare. That was not because I thought it a wrong function of government (which I do). It was because where I grew up, in Oklahoma, raised by parents who grew up in the Great Depression, you stay independent. Welfare from any source was shameful of one taking it. I know attitudes have changed enormously. Ours is now a very rich country overall, and the government has lots of money. And health and life-preservation technology has undergone revolutionary advancement.

Accepting Social Security, as others have remarked here, is not accepting welfare, not accepting gifts for the most vulnerable, and not accepting or supporting (so far as I comprehend it) redistribution-of-wealth program money.

There were people who helped me sooner or later. My mother, who was an elementary school teacher, paid for most of my first college degree (whose major was for love, not money, but that was a help to making me the mind I became). When, in mid-life, I was struck down by a new then-fatal illness, generous and good leaders in my company did not kick me out, but facilitated my survival, and the government money put into scientific research of the disease and rescue medicines for it also extended my life to what I now have.

I am not opposed to having my taxes go to public education (a State and City provision in this country) or to military defense (and defense research) or to research for public health or to supporting the FBI or judiciary. I'm opposed to deficit budgets, redistribution programs, graduated income tax, prohibitions of formerly elective abortions, and politicians preaching religion with law. On some of those items, Rand would not agree with me.

I'll not bend your ear much by my early adult life, which I hold in vivid detail, with hunger and no vehicle and prejudice/hatred against me and getting on a train with my bicycle bound for Chicago with no job and $54 in my pocket. I just want to share a couple of clips of early life of Ayn Rand, born in 1905 in Russia soon going through revolution of old tyranny into a new, radically redistributive one. All of us come to convictions partly by our own experience of life and witness of life around us.

Rand's father had been a chemist (pharmacist) in St. Petersburg, and he could provide for his family pretty well. But in the revolution and its new arrangement, he lost his business. He had owned an apartment building in Petrograd, and the family lived in there in the early 1920's, in the post-revolutionary, communist Russia. Rand once recounted "We were living in real squalor of the same kind I describe in We the Living. . . . That was the real time of starvation for us. I remember a day when all we had in the house was one pot of dried beans, no, peas, you know the kind of split peas, that Mother had cooked and we all had our portions, and there was only one portion left for Father, and he was late coming home. I couldn't stand up, I was so hungry, I had to sit on the floor. We didn't have much furniture in the house."

Rand stayed with relatives in Chicago a while before getting on to Hollywood, where she wanted to become a screenwriter (and did—I love "Love Letters" late in that career). She sent a copy of her novel We the Living (1936) to one of those relatives in Chicago, scribing within it: "—with profound gratitude for saving me from the kind of hell described in this book – Ayn"

 

Edited by Boydstun
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4 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

There is plenty of evidence which shows all throughout history many people have volunteered to provide charitable services and/or resources to the needy.  This is a fact that cannot be ignored honestly.

Even if one were to dishonestly ignore such a fact, and argue that human nature as such, is such that no one would help... nor have any inclination, reason, or motivation to do so... including you.... what basis could you possibly have to argue that government *should* mandate a safety net, if you, like everyone else would literally have no inclination, reason, or motivation to do it?  Any reason you give for government to do so, would be sufficient reason for at least someone doing so.
 


 

It's ironic but unsurprising, to see how those calling loudest for government support, welfare, etc. have the lowest opinion of human nature. Especially, rational and free "human nature". To them a society must have forced 'charity', and 'kindness' - aka taxation - when, left to one's own devices and free choice, it's certain there'd be more disposable wealth and a much greater benevolence to the needy by the rich - even from the less well off. They know this, I think, but their altruism demands force be applied, negating individual freedom, or goodwill to men.

Edited by whYNOT
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Governments cloak the expropriation of wealth through schemes appealing to altruistic sympathies. They never fail in applying force in orchestrating and to carrying out the schemes, and by creating victims of theft through redistribution and punishing dissidents they never fail to add to the aggregate human suffering.

Individual altruists or altruistic actions of individuals even acting in concert are not dangerous or evil, coercion attained in using the monopoly power of force aka the government whether structured 'honestly' on an altruistic footing or not is the evil to be guarded against.

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Don't answer these trolls with even legitimate answers guys, mass report them for their designed nonsense. Don't give  lying trolls the benefit of the doubt. Think deeper that what they are actually doing instead of asking honest questions is making the Forum look bad when legitimate non-trolls with honest intentions comes here.

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I don’t disagree much, but your urging is based on a conclusion that the OP is a lying troll. We have had quite a number of people exhibiting attitude who did become quite productive contributors. The test is to observe not just one or two posts, but the pattern of behavior. It is an error to consign all forms of disagreement to dishonest trollism, you need a handful of datapoints. In this case, I agree with the conclusion, but I don’t always. The focus should be on objective troll-identification, not on recommendations for dealing with acknowledged trolls. I don’t think anyone here thinks we should encourage trolls (leaving aside the resident trolls), it’s merely a matter of sufficiency of evidence.

I am not of the opinion that reporting is a productive response, generally just not feeding them.

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4 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

I don’t disagree much, but your urging is based on a conclusion that the OP is a lying troll. We have had quite a number of people exhibiting attitude who did become quite productive contributors. The test is to observe not just one or two posts, but the pattern of behavior. It is an error to consign all forms of disagreement to dishonest trollism, you need a handful of datapoints. In this case, I agree with the conclusion, but I don’t always. The focus should be on objective troll-identification, not on recommendations for dealing with acknowledged trolls. I don’t think anyone here thinks we should encourage trolls (leaving aside the resident trolls), it’s merely a matter of sufficiency of evidence.

I am not of the opinion that reporting is a productive response, generally just not feeding them.

In general I agree, but a massive series of "one-offs" over a long period of time from "new people" constantly popping up and doing these things points to targeted collusion an attempt to make the forum, and Objectivism itself, look bad and discredit it. The questions and statements they keep popping up with "randomly" have been explained and discredited in tons of places that are easily accessible countless times over decades. Even a cursory glance at Objectivism would cause the truly honest to essentially not go in the directions they constantly go in with their attacks. Example, the philosophy that is opposed to every form of mysticism being randomly accused by a newcomer of being responsible for the creation some strange niche form of some specific type of a larger mysticism type? And look at what it all does. We can't have productive discussion between actual Objectivist do to the bombardment. No discussions of advanced ideas and how to apply them and everything of importance is constantly buried.

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