In another thread http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=22606&page=1 several people questioned the very possibility of a voluntarily-funded government, with such statements as:
Whether moochers will be a greater or lesser issue in some future society is hardly the point: they will exist insofar as mankind possesses the faculty of volition. . .
The undeniable nature of Man says that we have volition, and even if “most” follow the right path, it’s impossible that all will follow the right path. . . So insofar as humans maintain the faculty of volition, there will be freeloaders. . .
I don’t know why I’m even answering this, but here goes: crime exists insofar as Men have freewill. Protection from crime is necessary in order to live freely in a society. . .
The commonality being that ‘Volition excludes full rationality’; a concept best summarized here:
To suggest a Utopian Objectivist Society where all men are rational even as a possibility is to suggest a fantasy world.
And also by Ayn Rand:
But the possibility of human immorality is not the only objection to anarchy: even a society whose every member were fully rational and faultlessly moral, could not function in a state of anarchy; it is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men that necessitates the establishment of a government..
-The Nature of Government, by Ayn Rand
Which means that men will never be responsible enough to objectively settle their own disputes. It’s a thinly-veiled variation of the exact same assertion found here:
The use of physical force—even its retaliatory use—cannot be left at the discretion of individual citizens. . . Whether his neighbors’ intentions are good or bad, whether their judgment is rational or irrational, whether they are motivated by a sense of justice or by ignorance or by prejudice or bymalice—the use of force against one man cannot be left to the arbitrary decision of another.
-The Nature of Government, by Ayn Rand
Which means exactly what it says.
The common premise throughout all of these, implicitly and explicitly, is that no society could ever be fully rational- or alternatively, that societies are necessarily irrational.
How does this relate to individuals? Well, in conjunction with this:
The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone.
-The Soul of an Individualist, by Ayn Rand
If society is necessarily irrational, and a society is only a group of men who do nothing arbitrarily, then each man is necessarily irrational.
If each man is necessarily irrational to some degree or another (and must necessarily be so, forever) then those who propose such are necessarily irrational.
Since reason is the logical integration of available facts, necessary irrationality would be some minimum amount of evasion which cannot be avoided.
“Nobody could be fully rational” entails “I cannot help my irrationality.”
Now, I don’t mean that everyone who says such things means it as an intellectual excuse (although I’m certain some have). And I certainly don’t mean to imply that miss Rand was one of those people. Rather, I think she should’ve taken her own advice:
“It’s only human,” you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept “human” mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward. . . as if “to feel” were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not—as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not. . .
In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads.
-Galt’s Speech
