Why would we, why should we, employ government power to assist you in any way? We would use government power to assist you in your recovery because you are part of our community -- however much you may disapprove of your membership. You will be a more productive member of the community if you can move around freely than if you can not. — Bitter Crank
Life doesn't exist in a vacuum. You cannot treat life as some science experiment, whereby you reject some experiences in favour of others. Life without regard for the emotions or intuitions is inauthentic life. It is a life that is missing something. You, whether you like it or not, are an emotional being. You are driven by your emotions, desires, fears. Most of which is unconscious. These things are not something you can simply choose to switch off in the name of objectivism. Ask yourself why you are so inclined towards this position.
Life includes the irrational, the absurd the mysterious..
You cannot have only one side of a coin. Objectivism is an exercise in ignorance. — emancipate
And here in a nutshell is the poverty of Objectivism. — Banno
I don't disagree. I guess I'm thinking in terms of valuation. I think independent types tend to think in terms that valorize the worldview which accommodates the type of life they're living. It's hard to separate the valorization from the ideology itself. — csalisbury
Arguing is fun. But when you talk about seeing how wrong others are - how could that be anything but antagonistic? — csalisbury
Why? To both assertions. — Tzeentch
So how does listening to one's emotions fit into this? — Tzeentch
Even though I don't agree with the general sentiment of this statement, it should be noted that it was not unrestricted capitalism that created a moral system. It was in fact the balance between economic freedom and individual rights. In practice these are often juxtaposed, which is why Rand's assertion that total economic freedom is 'the' system of individual rights is quite simply wrong. — Tzeentch
That's no life. That's an attempt to reduce from life the elements and qualities you dislike. — emancipate
I don't know if you're lonely. I'm saying I liked her when I was. If you're not lonely, mine is a case to pass over quickly, noting how its particulars are inapplicable to your case. — csalisbury
I like the philosophers in my bio - Sloterdjik, Lyotard, Sellars, and Hegel. — csalisbury
It seems that way, but I may be wrong. What were you looking for in posting? — csalisbury
Considering Rand's philosophy is called 'objectivism', and it is explicitly stated that emotions make for poor guides in life, I think you are not staying true to her point by saying emotional choices can be rational. — Tzeentch
What does such a rational life look like? — Tzeentch
If we cannot agree that de facto enslavement of the working class is a bad thing, I doubt we will be able to agree on anything. — Tzeentch
I liked Ayn Rand back in the day. As I got older, it became clear to me that what I found appealing in her was her valorization of a life of excellence lived alone. And it became to clear to me that I found that appealing precisely because I was alone. The less alone I was, the more her appeal wore off. — csalisbury
don't know where you're at in your life, and how alone, or non-alone, you feel. But I do know the thing of setting something up, in order to draw out antagonists, in order to defend it. — csalisbury
Your reasons thus far have boiled down to their terrible "Climate change is a leftist religion and we can't mitigate it", claims that groups don't exist — MindForged
Buddy, you compared the disabled being given easier access to entering a business location to the Nazi regime, — MindForged
you had such brilliant insights as "Can't try to save the world by weaning off fossil fuels because it might 'hurt' the economy" (I don't think you understand the multiple absurdities of this claim of yours) — MindForged
and have betrayed a lack of understanding of how capitalism works and when it works best. — MindForged
You thought it was OK for monopolies or near monopolies to exist because "It only happened through free exchange, which makes it good". — MindForged
I mean it's not like capitalism's main selling points and fertile ground is when there are high levels of competition which is the antithesis of monopolies (which, not coincidentally, use their power to control the government through means I mentioned earlier). — MindForged
Maybe it's just me but I think it's clear this is just someone puking out bog-standard conservative and libertarian talking points. The poor are bad because the social safety net (I wonder why Rand used SS then???), affirmative action is bad because who knows why those uppity blacks couldn't get into university (what is racism???), and the gubment is bad because not free. — MindForged
This feels like someone who hasn't engaged in any broader political discourse, has no knowledge of any non-trivial aspects of sociopolitical history (race relations, ideological developments and shifts) and is not at all familiar with the underlying philosophy and consequences of their own views. — MindForged
Rather, it's a matter of moral intuition first and then may be a matter of opinion or rationalization. For example, it would be a typical human intuition that selling organic vegetables is more morally 'good' than selling cigarets. Provided that we know about the unhealthy effects of smoking, we should have an intuitive sense that selling them generally does harm to some degree. We might reason that in this case personal liberty or the liberty to buy and sell cigarets is more important than the harmful effects, but the intuition is still experienced regardless of whatever moral reasoning is employed. — praxis
So you agree that disabled people organising together to push the introduction of disabled access ramps is fine? And that it secures their individual rights? If not, why? And why does it go against individual rights? — fdrake
And you agree that slave revolts and humanitarians back home organising to push the abolishing slaving was good? And that it secures individual rights? If not, why does the abolition of slavery go in the face of individual rights? — fdrake
Do you think disabled people wanting disabled access groups are 'trying to win at the expense' of non disabled people? Slaves revolting and humanitarians back home also definitely were 'trying to win at the expense of other people' - they wanted the fucking slave owners not to remain in possession of some of their assets. This is completely incoherent, and I believe you know this because you're always presenting more trivial reasons people might organised to solve their collective problems.
In this is the incredible equivocation that the abolition of slavery was the same as forcing a baker to make a gay couple a wedding cake. — fdrake
You see disabled people not having access to the same places as people who can walk as not a problem. Of course you don't, you don't have to care about the problem[/u]. You're a bloke who doesn't need a wheelchair. People who need wheelchair access see it as a problem because it is a problem for them. — fdrake
Also, why should what you see as a problem matter? Lack of disabled access really is a problem for people who need wheelchairs! You would deny them access to spaces because you believe them raising their voices together to gain access is disabled people 'winning' over the non-disabled. The reason they would want to do this is because non-disabled people already win over disabled people due to the established norms and expectations of society. — fdrake
Someone may quit a well-paying and stable job because they feel unhappy there. — Tzeentch
Who defines what reasonable is, then? — Tzeentch
People in those factories didn't work sixteen hours a day because they wanted to. They did so because they had to in order to feed themselves. I'm getting an impression you don't quite realize how appalling the conditions were during these 'best and most free times'. Children had to work in order to keep families fed. For someone who holds reason as one of the highest ideals that sure is a strange definition of a utopia. — Tzeentch
One of the most succinct rebuttals to Objectivism as a socio-political philosophy that I've heard is it has no place for children, as it distills all relationships down to subjective value: at best as an abstract affective, and at worst as a commoditized value, rendering it, at least in theory, infecund. In the fantasy worlds that Ayn Rand constructed, the protagonists have no children, they do not discuss having children. They are simply excluded. A socio-political philosophy without children is a philosophy without a future. — Maw
That is an extreme statement; one could flip it and say there is no such thing as individuals: everything belongs to a group of some kind. It seems to me we are both individuals and members of groups. This is so biologically, socially, economically, politically, existentially--any way one thinks of it.
We simply can not be only individuals. We don't arrive as fully formed individual adult economic operators. We start out with two parents and are born into a culture composed of complex configurations of groups. And individuals, of course. And as we progress through life we get more complicated and at once more group-invested and individuated. — Bitter Crank
You might continue following objectivism and Ayn Rand as your guiding light till the end of a long life, but it is quite possible that you will abandon it and her somewhere along the line--maybe this year, even. This may happen several times -- different philosophies will seem like the brightest light on the horizon, until they don't anymore. If you, a 20 year old, did abandon a love affair with Rand, or Sartre, or Aristotle, or whoever, that would be 100% normal. I fully understand that seems impossible right now and you are not going to entertain the notion that next year you might not be interested in Rand. — Bitter Crank
I'm speaking as a 72 year old who has gone through a whole bunch of enthusiasms, and watched a whole bunch of other people doing the same thing. Today it's Buddha, tomorrow it's somebody else.
The enthusiasm of today always seems like the last stop on the railroad. Until it doesn't. — Bitter Crank
I agree with you that, at this point, we can not prevent climate change. Whatever is going to happen is making itself manifest already.
Can we make it worse? Yes.
Are we going to stop using fossil fuels? Not today. But wind/solar power have become competitive with coal-fired electrical generation. Is there enough wind and solar power to go around? Yes; the sun is generous. Where the winds blow regularly, there is enough wind -- but there are places where the prevailing winds are insufficient.
You are quite right about fossil fuels: they are inextricably part of the world technology and economy.
I used to be a climate optimist but I have been pushed to the climate pessimist position: we're screwed. We're screwed because individually we can not see our common interests with sufficient clarity and force to act upon them effectively. Hell, we can't even see our own interests clearly half the time. — Bitter Crank
I agree that emotions shouldn't shape your conception of reality. I disagree that emotions make a bad guide in life. Objectively proper choices can be completely wrong if a person does not agree with them emotionally, or subjectively. — Tzeentch
I can't find the "and everybody else"-part anywhere in the description that is provided in the link you shared, and if that was the intended meaning behind the principle the term 'self-interest' is a poor choice of words. — Tzeentch
Coupled with Rand's thoughts on how the economy should work, I think her intended meaning is "As long as people do what they think is best for them, things will work out okay", and I don't think that is the case at all, because a lot of people have not the slightest idea of what is best for them. — Tzeentch
Politics is about power, and power is about wealth. But what situation are you referring to? Wasn't the beginning of the 19th century the shining example how horrible unregulated capitalism was? The modern world eventually universally agreed (under much pressure) that the capitalists had to be regulated in order to avoid people, including children, working 16 hour days in the factories. — Tzeentch
I agree entirely. I think the problem stems from what is meant by objectivism. It's not objective truth. Rather, it seems to be about isolating the individual from all moral implication and responsibility — karl stone
Right. Ok. So you agree that gay people banding together for equal treatment, the Haitians, slaves and so on banding together for their individual rights are fine. I'm curious what you think remains of your original position at this point. All the examples I gave of people banding together were for their individual rights, and seemingly you thought towards the start of the thread that they were banding together for special privilege. They were not, it's mostly for an expansion of individual freedom; a removal of unfair limitations on their conduct. — fdrake
There is a default state assumed by a society. This default state consists of norms of conduct and expectations of capacities. If we live in a world where the default state is considered to be a human who can walk, this limits the freedom of people who cannot.
If we live in a world where the default state is considered to be a human who can hear, this limits the freedoms of the deaf. What we can do, in such a world, is to try and accommodate these differences by placing requirements on society that allow these people to function as normally as possible.
Fine, whatever. Give these people equal "states" with the use of government force.
— fdrake
You actually believe that having your legs blown off in a minefield is equivalent to having mild social anxiety.* You actually believe that the poor veteran shouldn't attempt to lobby for the introduction of disabled access ramps - what, should they have just gone up to the owners in the shop they couldn't get inside and asked them to fit something? How would that solve the problem in general? It wouldn't! That's the point. The only way you're going to be able to solve this problem is through collective action, and it's easiest to achieve by influencing the creation of a law which binds the construction of buildings. I think you're starting to realise this though, since you say: — fdrake
*I don't mean to say your social anxiety is easy to deal with, that's a low blow. What I'm stressing is that the kind of options available to you to try and fix it just aren't available to the vet with no fucking legs - they need to address things at the level of building regulations, not at the level of themselves, they can't get their legs back. Though, I'm sure if they could get those cybernetic lower leg implants that are possible nowadays they would, but they're probably way too pricy to get esp. if you're out of work due to the disability of having no fucking legs. You can address social anxiety by doing normal people stuff, there are free counsellors online and so on, no amount of personal change will get the vets their legs back. — fdrake
The dog being in the box would be that we're already in a state of unregulated capitalism. The dog should be in the box would be that we should be in a state of unregulated capitalism. You clearly believe that we are not in a state of unregulated capitalism, but you also believe that we should be in a state of unregulated capitalism. Should — fdrake
Why do you believe that a law which requires disabled access ramps for building access if at all possible is a special privilege? It's actually a special privilege to enter the building without using a wheelchair - it is a capacity which some humans lack. — fdrake
Though, I'm glad that you picked up on that I was trivialising the gun metaphor. It is very silly. — fdrake
But, there was a good reason for me applying it out of the context. The logic of the gun metaphor is that people are prohibited from doing things due to threat of force, this applied to black people who were caught using white people fighting, gay people who were caught having sex and so on. I would prefer if the metaphor were more generalised, that a person has a gun to their head whenever the norms of the actions of others impinge upon their freedoms - just like when construction norms for buildings did not require disabled access ramps or elevators. These are all limitations on freedom that people deserve. — fdrake
I thought you'd be down with things that improve the freedoms of individuals, but apparently you don't write as many blank cheques in this area as you say you do. — fdrake
Your world view has lead you to equate the approval of laws which require the construction of disabled access ramps with Naziism. — fdrake
Nothing has to be wrong with profits in general. What I'm against is profiting from slavery, because I think slavery is wrong. What unsettles me is that slavery, the slave trade as it was called, is consistent with unregulated capitalism. It's part of what makes me suspicious of unregulated capitalism. — fdrake
Would you extend this to the slaves? Who had literal guns and other weapons pointed to their heads. And if they disobeyed their masters they would be tortured, sometimes to death.
Were the black towns in the US after abolition victims of the KKK and other hate groups by choice?
Were the Jews victims of the Holocaust by choice?
Are veterans who have their legs blown off due to mines privileged whiners who want their life to be easier than others'? — fdrake
The Haitian rebels did not want to be slaves. So they banded together so that no person would have to be a slave, fighting their masters. This improved the rights of individual slaves. The motive for banding together was so that no one had to be a slave - improving the lot of the individual. Please explain to me how this is placing the group above the individual, when its goal is literally the freedom of all individuals in the group. — fdrake
Actually it doesn't always pan out like this. If you pick the default, you often pick a winner by default. The default position in the time of slavery was more slavery, the default position before disabled access legislation was no disabled access, the default position for treating acute depression in women was confinement to an asylum. You pick a winner by picking the default. What collective action attempts to address is that a winner has already been picked, and it isn't fair. Life already shuns all the loser groups, that's why there are differential advantages and specific problems that groups organise to tackle. — fdrake
You are equating having your legs blown off by a landmine with being socially awkward. The veteran can't magic their legs back on, they can try to organise politically to receive equal priority to people who can walk. They're going to be more of a man than you, they've been to war and not let it fuck them up for life, they want to make life better for veterans. — fdrake
The two claims are inequivalent. "There are only individuals" vs "politics (in some vague sense) should concern only individuals.". This is the same difference as the difference between "the dog is in his box" and "the dog should be in his box" - see? Huge. Biiig difference. That you're not particularly attuned to the distinction between normative and descriptive claims isn't really your fault though, Rand herself notoriously has a deaf ear for it - google Ayn Rand 'is ought problem' and you'll find loads of literature. Some of it supportive of her, of course, so you can maybe learn your way out of this objection for the next time someone highlights it to you. — fdrake
You're being dense here. Not being able to get in the shop isn't a right or a privilege for the wheelchair user, what they actually want is equal standing with other people who can enter the shop. They want to enter the shop. They can't. They need to buy shit. What to do? Maybe try to change it so that in the future people who need to use wheelchairs can access shops. Simple. — fdrake
The same thing applies to your gay rights example, collectively organising to exert political pressure is how they got their rights. These are rights for individuals, the collective organisation concerned ensuring and then vouchsafing the rights of gay individuals.
— fdrake
The wheelchair users and the gay people already have a giant gun pointed at their heads all the time, — fdrake
it's called being a wheelchair user in a world designed for walkers or a gay in a world designed for straights. They're forced to act in ways healthy/straight people don't, and can't act in ways healthy/straight people do. What they want is to be able to go in the shops or have civil partnerships. How should they go about getting it? — fdrake
Not as much as having a free worker, sex slave, and tradeable asset. If all you care about is your profits, you don't give a damn... What world are we talking about again? — fdrake
We're not talking about a world that resembles Ayn Rand's fantasy claptrap at all. Whether some Russian bint threw a book at the slave owner and the slave has no fucking relevance here. Nothing in this entire fantasy of how things should be is telling us anything about the real world. As soon as you switched to how the world should be, you switched to a realm of your imagination. Now the world is being measured by how it fails to live up to your imagination, and phenomena within it are being predicted with respect to deviations from your imaginary fantasy land. — fdrake
You suggest organisation along group lines is bad because it's not individual, but it demonstrably advances individual freedoms and can bring a more just, equitable and free world. You switched the discussion explicitly to a normative one, how things should be, then gave this amateur hour horse shit to justify it as a principle: — fdrake
So, right, I take 8 individuals, and they pair themselves in groups of 2 voluntarily, then the pairs pair, giving groups of 4, then the groups of 4 pair and look! We have constructed the number 8 out of 8 copies of the number one! Amazing. Yes. The ability to group a collection of people together into different sub groups which sum to the original number is totally something related to how politics works. — fdrake
You're doing this instead of focussing on the easy reality that people organise along group lines to address common problems, that this organisation is done to attempt to give the individuals in the organisations a life without those problems, and that this is how political actions are taken. — fdrake
You're doing this instead of focussing on how people are effected by stuff, like the wheelchair user and the stairs, and forming groups based on the stuff people have to suffer. — fdrake
when you noticed that Rand's system of unregulated capitalism and the ideas about how things work are quickly refuted; descriptive claims about how reality is; you shifted ground to defend her ideas as how reality should work; normative claims about how reality should be. Don't treat what should be as what is, nor shift between these two registers, because this means you're changing the point of the conversation. — fdrake
Yes and yes. There's something called the collective consciousness that makes it very difficult to be an individual in an absolute sense. The language you use, the concepts from which your arguments are built - and the fact that I can understand what you're saying, are all the consequence of societies, and cultures. Then there's food production, which is - necessarily achieved by the division of labour, and the trade of goods and services. — karl stone
One reason the group is more important than the individual is that the group can protect individual rights, whereas the individual often can't. — karl stone
To my mind, objectivism means objective truth. It's a matter of fact that human beings evolved as tribal animals, and later, tribes joined together to form societies and civilizations. Furthermore, natural and sexual selection craft the individual - in relation to the social and natural environment, giving them psychological characteristics, pre-dispositions and aptitudes - including an innate moral sense, built upon by experience. There is no self made man, no Robinson Crusoe, no individual as such. To ignore this is a contradiction of objectivism - if by objectivism you mean objective truth. — karl stone
There are two reasons - I would argue. First, is the question, what is my existence, if there's no future? Why should I have children, or build a business, or write a book, if I have no genetic, economic or intellectual legacy? To please myself? A mere masturbation then? I'd go out of way to deny a conception of myself as an empty issue. — karl stone
Second, is the fact that previous generations struggled endlessly to build all this, which I inherit. My body and mind, crafted by evolution, my language and culture, the infrastructure, the house I live in, this computer. I didn't invent, or build any of that. Receiving all these gifts, I think there's a natural moral obligation to use what others struggled to build, and I inherited, to provide as well as possible for subsequent generations. — karl stone
You claimed, on no basis, that climate changes was a leftist religion. You literally have nothing that even comes close to a fraction of what would be required to overcome the agreement of nearly every climatologist with respect to the facts about climate change. That was my point. — MindForged
No one said the world would end in 2012 due to climate change, don't be a juvenile right winger. If we do not act within the next couple of years to drastically reduce our CO2 emissions, in about 12 years we will not be able to avoid the 1.5 degree increase in temperature. The effects of that alone are terrible, and worse if we can't even avoid that it's likely we'll hit 2 degrees change in which case that's catastrophic for the climate and life on Earth. As I said, imagine the Middle East but as an uninhabitable zone. That's the kind of ridiculous fallout of your false view of things applied to reality. — MindForged
Then I'm done. I don't care if you disagree. No one cares if the random fool on the street thinks engineering is bunk. Buildings, Bridges and homes generally stand upright (when they abide by government regulations anyway!) — MindForged
regardless. Climate change is based on decades of empirical research and is based on some well understood physics. That you had the audacity to say "But greenhouses are good for plants" shows the childlike mindset at play. — karl stone
You know what else greenhouses do? They warm things up. Writ large in a planetary scale, that distorts ecosystems (hooray, even more rapid extinction of many species), melts the ice caps (hooray, hundreds of millions must flee inland causing until disasters as people pile into each other and kill because of resource shortages), and rapidly distorts weather patterns resulting in an increase of even worse storms at a greater frequency. — karl stone
You are seriously a living parody of how people say conservatives misrepresent and desperately try to deny climate change because they want to perpetually continue their own selfish lifestyles irrespective of what damage it does to other people. — karl stone
I mean it's bad enough to have the nearly untenable view that groups exist, but to relegate hundred of millions to death because you baldly refuse well attested science on grounds of greed? Props, that takes mountain sizes balls. — karl stone
You are not arguing here, you are parroting conservative talking points and jumping into hilariously idealized scenarios that don't represent how people actually engage in the world. It's not my choice to participate in an economic transaction that ruins the climate for future generations, and yet that is the inevitable, known result of reliance in fossil fuels. — MindForged
Again, idealizations that don't represent reality. — MindForged
Yes, I can imagine a world with greatly reduced fossil fuel. Plant based plastics, nuclear energy (fission and fusion based), solar energy, electrical cars, large scale public transportation fueled by the previous methods, etc. That you think capitalism can solve the issue despite having completely failed to have done so *in reality* is telling. It's exactly the mindset like yours that has made it virtually impossible to fight. You deny it exists and then fight tooth and nail to change the things that would actually alleviate it. Yes, dropping fossil fuels would be the number 1 way of combatting CC. — karl stone
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In 'Enemies of an Open Society' (1947) Karl Popper warns that science as truth leads to tyranny. It seems to me that Rand is skirting this problem in a deliberate, but unsuccessful manner. The argument that there are no groups, only individuals - is an absurd notion, but necessary to maintain objectivism construed as "reality, reason, self-interest, and capitalism" - because, the natural implication from objectivist philosophical proscription, is an objectivist state - in which political and personal freedom, individuality, creativity and so forth - would be crushed out of existence by the need to 'make our representations conform' to an unarguable objective truth. — karl stone
Rand's conceit - that people can live as individuals, without forming any kind of organisational structures - is necessary to avoid the implication that objective truth is unarguable - and thus, tyrannical. But individualism is contrary to the natural order of human evolution, our psychology and the entire history of society and civilization. That's a massive abdication from reality; and thus a contradiction of objectivism's own supposed values. — karl stone
in order to meet challenges such as climate change, deforestation, overfishing, pollution and so on; but I do not ignore vast swathes of reality in order to do so. The larger part of my arguments are concerned with how to integrate scientific truth politically and economically - while avoiding these negative social implications. And I dislike intensely the impression formed from reading this thread - that objective truth should be used as an excuse to shirk all such responsibilities. — karl stone
I take silly ideas seriously all the time. That's part of why I enjoy philosophy and learning more generally. I would not have attempted to rebut your ideas if I didn't think they were worth rebutting - see the difference in approaches in my response to your different claims: On the one hand I put a bit of effort in explaining why I thought you were wrong during most of the post, but just linked you to a introduction to climate change video course for your climate change denial. I was hoping that since you've enjoyed studying objectivism so much you'd spend some time, maybe in the future, actually looking into climate change analysis from reputable/well cited climatological sources. — fdrake
Note that in spite of this you are actually conceding the point that political actions are done by and effect groups. Your claim has now morphed into the claim that political actions should not concern groups, something much different from the original descriptive claim of 'there are only individuals'. — fdrake
This is quite strange. You seem to be under the impression, at least for the purposes of your post, that people choose their political subjectivity like they choose what they have for dinner or what bars they go to. A wheelchair bound person does not identify as a wheelchair bound person because they want to park closer to the supermarket, they get to park closer to the supermarket because they need a wheelchair. Now imagine that the supermarket has steep steps, and you have one supermarket within range of access. Now this poor sod has to get someone else to do their shopping for them. The thing about this that induces a group identity is that for some people, they need to enter the shop but can't because of the steps. Then it makes sense to organise along those lines to exert political or economic pressure to get such things changed, for the betterment of your group. This 'betters the group' because they were already aligned by an identity that was ascribed to them usually without their volition.
The same thing applies to what country you're born in, whether you're LGBT, whether you're white or black or hispanic or Asian, male, female, trans, whether you're a steel worker or a telephone salesperson and so on. People do not choose the effects of these things, it just so happens that they have common life problems to organise around. The same thing even applies for big businesses, they want to make lots of money and so organise around issues that either prevent them from losing money or allow them to get more money. It's really simple: alliances of people form from shared problems, not through arbitrary associations. Groups of people form alliances to attempt to solve common problems for the individuals which constitute them. You get all of this out of the effective application of self interest, you don't even have to be a nice person, just pragmatic.
On top of these coalitions of common problems, we also can also add empathy and solidarity; an attempt to aid those who suffer from problems we might not for the betterment of everyone.
So, why shouldn't individuals organise to tackle problems common to them? — fdrake
Please note that I never said Ayn Rand was an anarchist, and also note that in the original post you quoted that I said Ayn Rand reserves a place for government in her political theory; it protects the sanctity of freeform contracts, which is taken to be as equivalent to protecting the trader principle.
The issue isn't whether Ayn Rand would tell the slaves to be slaves; for all her failings she did have some human dignity, the issue is whether unregulated capitalism is consistent with its idealisation. Since we already have that unregulated capitalism is consistent with slavery, surely you must see that it isn't. — fdrake
The slave owner doesn't give a damn about the slave, they're an asset. All that matters is maximising the return from them; perfectly calculated, just immoral. If the slave doesn't want to be tortured to death, if they want to survive (remember Rand's ethics has survival as a cornerstone) they will usually benefit most from behaving like a slave. — fdrake
Unless of course they banded together to break their chains, but we wouldn't want any identity politics coming in here would we. — fdrake
Good thing we ask the community of climatologists and not you then. You are an expert on nothing relevant here, while those who are your betters and mine on the matter say in near uniformity that all current models project a very near future deadline (technically 12 years, but since this escalates the later they're addressed, it's likely more like 5 or 6 years if we don't act now) within which to actto avoid catastrophic climate damage in the coming decades (if you think the Middle East is a shitshow now, just wait until it's uninhabitable). — MindForged
It's this kind of nonsensical, even idiotic, response to the dangers of climate change that makes so many people even consider socialism in the first place. — MindForged
There will be an obvious problem presented (e.g. climate change) which is in large part caused or made worse by the behavior and operations certain sectors of the economy. People like you will show up, complain about faults being pointed out about the economic system worsening the issue because the negative effects not a market force, and then either do what you're just short of doing (denying climate science as a lefty religion... Great argument) or will just say a variation of "Nothing we can do in practice cause we need fossil fuels". And so these people conclude that, well, if that's capitalism and it requires such mental gymnastics to avoid admitting any fault or failure with it, then I'm against that. You are you're own worst enemy. — MindForged
Because of the very well established problem between capitalism and market externalities that can't be easily (if at all) be made monetizable, we know there is more keeping civilization going than this ridiculous idea that "Well herp de derp, since we require fossil fuels right now we can't even bother weaning ourselves off them". It's exactly this unthinking response that got us stuck in this rut. We've known for certain that climate change had a huge man made component to it for decades. Large areas of business knew it existed even longer and some even buried their research regarding it in the 50s and 60s (again, if it's not profitable capitalism will deny it or fight it even if it's self destructive). — MindForged
The suggestion that we can combat these issues individually because you have a nakedly unjustified view that groups don't exist is laughable. I mean yeah, sure my dude, show me the obvious and feasible solution to global sea level rising. You can't put up a seawall around the entire world landmasses, it's friggin huge. We can't even put a border wall on the southern border of the U.S. because it's both incredibly impractical, stupidly expensive and it doesn't solve the problem. And you know what that means? People will inevitably flee inland and boy doesn't that bring with ita host of other enormous problems to solve? It's almost like some problems are a result of others — MindForged
It would be many orders of magnitude larger to try and "individually" target sea level rising caused by CC in any case. You know what would slow down sea level rise? Attempting to end climate change. — MindForged
It's like the textbook example of many giant problems having a narrow range of causes that we can attempt to alleviate. But the peddlers of economic magic that you are part of (note I am not a socialist) have made this impossible because underneath every out they give themselves is just one fundamental view. — MindForged
What's good for me won't hurt anyone else. The individual is supreme.
But, hey, I'm sure you just have the inside knowledge on why leftists are just trumpeting up climate change despite it being the case that massive captains of industry are directly funding campaigns and politicians to fight any non trivial attempt at diminishing the impact of CC because it would mean they couldn't make all the money in the world. This is your brain on Objectivism. — MindForged
Not sure that I get the difference here between a salesperson who sells products that harm buyers and a salesperson who cheats buyers. In both cases the buyer is being taken advantage of and harmed in some way, though in the case of cheating the buyer is only taking a financial hit.
The moral model appears to be libertarian, valuing personal liberty above all other moral dimensions (including harm/care). I assume Rand was libertarian? — praxis
The salesman is nothing but a particular member in the general set of traders. Galt, and therefore Rand, defines trader as this moral symbol of respect, implying that he who is of this kind is the epitome of some moral disposition of her announcement. Practical experience, on the other hand, shows some traders are of some other, diametrically opposed, moral disposition. Therefore, either the Randian characterization of trader, or the moral symbol which describes him, is catastrophically false. — Mww
Or, to be fair, possibly the instances of practical experience are false, insofar as a customer knows he’s getting taken to the cleaners in the name of “buyer beware”, and doesn’t bargain or walk away, which makes him morally deficient in objectivist theory. Even so, such theory makes no allowance for the altogether feasible circumstance, wherein the customer has no alternative, and the trader recognizes it and takes advantage, rather than abstaining from the capitalist mantra of “seller’s market”. — Mww
Be that as it may, I think taking a logical law and making a theory out of it, is very far less philosophically satisfying than having a theory and using a logical law to justify it. — Mww
Now I grasp the subtlety here....a cake sits in front of you as an A, as soon as you take a bite out of it, it is no longer the A it once was. I’d like to know, if reason is the power of knowledge, how is it the identity of “cake” wouldn’t remain even with a bite out of it? Even if it is true A is no longer A in the absolute strictest sense, it does not follow from that, that reason is prohibited from a practical position in favor of maintaining a pure one, such that cake and cake - bite is not a contradiction of either reason or knowledge. And if that wasn’t enough, while it is true a leaf cannot be a stone, would a leaf be any less a leaf to a caterpillar munching on it? I think not, kemo-sabe.
A further subtlety: if A is a cake is a cake, then a cake with a bite out of it is just B. In this state modified from A, B is B, law of identity obtained. Big deal; the cake is still both had and eaten. — Mww
Which makes the entire Objectivist philosophy nothing short of a 1000-word lament over the failure of a More-ish Utopia.....the world sucks because it’s inhabitants are unworthy of it, being of improper moral or even natural disposition (never mind the intrinsic nature of them), which makes any form Shanghai-La, DaTong, e.g., mere fantasies.
Finally, it is hardly my opinion. Research will show that Rand’s moral philosophy, personified in Galt’s speech, is a direct condemnation of continental Enlightenment metaphysics in general and you-know-who in particular. — Mww
Reality: "Facts are facts". Okay, but what does man really know about facts or reality? Great thinkers have tried and got no further than "I think, therefore I am" and "I know that I know nothing". But the underlying idea seems to be to accept the laws of nature that one is confronted with, which is reasonable. — Tzeentch
Reason: A repetition of the first. To follow reason and to accept reality are one and the same. There is a curious line, though: "To choose to follow reason, Rand argues, is to reject emotions, faith or any form of authoritarianism as guides in life." Rejecting emotions is a terrible idea for any human being. Perhaps "controlling" was the intended meaning here, but to deny one's feelings is a road to guaranteed unhappiness. Emotions are a great guide in life if one seeks happiness (one might even argue they are the guide to happiness), just not a great guide for one's immediate course of action. — Tzeentch
Self-interest: Do whatever you want, there are no rules? That's a choice, but to pretend that this is a road to happiness, let alone a functioning society, is a dubious claim at best. — Tzeentch
Capitalism: Laissez-faire capitalism? That has only one outcome, oligarchy. The idea that state and economics can be split is naive, because politics are greatly dependent on economics. — Tzeentch
Large economical powers will always gain political power, and uncontrolled capitalism will eventually lead to several (or even a single) huge firms controlling everything, which will inevitably come to control politics. Hasn't the industrial revolution already warned us enough of the dangers of uncontrolled capitalism? — Tzeentch
I'll just mention a single thing. Traders were responsible for the financial crisis of 2007–2008. — S
Oh dear. That's another big red flag right there. The prognosis doesn't look good for you if you continue down this path. — S
Well I'm glad you're not that deluded, and being determined to succeed is usually a good thing, so grats. This idea that there are only individuals is rather silly though. — fdrake
If we take the statement that there are only individuals literally, this would mean that no aggregates of individuals exist - which is quickly undermined by group nouns like people, sheep and so on. So we definitely have the capacity to refer to groups, and it's useful to be able to do so.
If you strengthen the idea to a more metaphysical principle, that there are no groups except for the individuals which constitute them, this is true in a literal extensional sense; the posters on this philosophy forum now, say, applies to each and every poster, and without each poster the collective would be different. What this highlights though is that aggregates don't have to markedly change their properties with the addition or subtraction of members.
Take another example of a group, a football team, what would the claim that there are no groups except for the individuals which constitute them say about the team? Well, it could only say that the football team is equivalent to its constitutive members. This misses a lot though, because changing members can change team dynamics. What this highlights is that aggregates can markedly change with the addition or subtraction of members, and moreover that the playstyle of the team is a property of the aggregate, the group of players, and not a property of the individuals. IE, there are groups, and they can have distinct properties or even types of properties from their members.
A more mathematical example, certain concepts like median wage, GDP, and so on; statistical properties; apply first and foremost to aggregates/populations.
So, what remains of the concept that there are no groups except for the individuals that constitute them? What about these things that look like groups of people, say innovative capitalists, captains of industry, the poor, charity workers and so on. In what sense are they not groups? Why of course because the group doesn't exist, only the individuals do!
Except this misses a lot, a lot of our social reality is founded on inter group relations and laws which concern groups. EG, treaties between countries, affirmative action in hiring. Current legal systems adjoined to capitalism actually treat things on the level of the aggregate - we can have interventions to bring needle exchanges into heroin addled areas, increase literacy in poor areas, confine immigrant children to cages and so on. This is to say nothing of corporate personhood, in which a corporation itself has certain rights and responsibilities similar to but distinct from its constituent members. Even the idea of regulatory capture which Randians are so against still requires two groups - corrupt capitalists and corrupt government workers - to get going. — fdrake
Oh dear oh dear. Please watch this series through. — fdrake
Anyway, let's take an example of people who actually did have their rights stolen - slaves in the Atlantic slave trade. The trade of slaves wasn't regulated by a government, it was rich colonialists with guns stealing people and rich collaborators corralling candidate slaves, the slaves were traded for profit and were extremely efficient in producing returns for their owners. Laws allowed slavery at the time of course, and when the laws changed through the work of rebels in the colonies and the work of humanitarians at home, history rejoiced. This is a good example of a government changing their tune for justice, and is strikingly opposed to the unfettered capitalism of the slave trade. — fdrake
You will probably say; a true Randian doesn't believe in the slave trade! Yes, maybe so, but a true Randian wouldn't believe in legislation to end it either - a wrong government cannot legislate rightly, so to speak. Will you join me, against Rand, and say that sometimes governments can do right? And sometimes unfettered capitalism can be systemically wrong? — fdrake
Lastly, your example of 19th century America as a time of prosperity and opportunity for all is incredibly misguided and historically inaccurate. Most factory workers did not make enough to live on, worked impossibly long hours, children worked in the factories, and the working conditions lead to long term sickness and death - with no sick pay or medical insurance of course. It was only under pressure from disgruntled factory workers that eventually child labour laws were put in place, with similar humanitarian developments on workplace safety and an attempt to provide a living wage following from later efforts of unified workers. — fdrake
Yeah, some of it really isn't your fault. If you go back through the forum over the years, we get about a few Randians per year. They usually come, having solved all the problems of philosophy, preaching the virtues of freedom and the market (is there really any difference?) and of non-aggression (people should relate to each other as individuals and form contracts thereby, rather than having them interposed by a government which has monopoly over force). They also usually come with the attitude that everyone's an idiot. — fdrake
I do feel genuinely surprised that people identify with Galt more than the dregs of society though, considering that seeing yourself as a hero like Galt or the captains of industry and innovation should require feeling like you have a lot of power and influence and that you're a self made person. It's frustrating to me to see people who have the freedom and opportunity to study, typically students at universities, biting the hand that feeds them; as if they were not benefitting from what society (at least attempts to treat) as a common good. — fdrake
Of course the usual Randian rejoinder is that all the ills of the university system, like our current debt peonage, is as a result of government intervention ensuring education monopolies or power concentration, so they start charging through the roof for a premium good. This follows the general pattern of economic power concentration being equated to 'crony capitalism' - which is where capitalists are allowed regulatory capture by governments. In the ideal Randian world, such regulatory capture would not be possible as it requires a state to represent the interests of powerful capitalists rather than the interests of general people (which, apparently, is always aggressive and thus immoral). — fdrake
However, Rand does not draw much of a distinction between the interests of powerful capitalists and the interests of general people. Her ethics focuses on heroic individuals associating freely with each other, and a state is ethical just when it enforces individual contracts between them - if the state oversteps those bounds it is forcing people to do things, which goes against a non-aggression principle that's central to Randian ethics. What this misses is that political negotiation doesn't actually occur in a sphere of individuals freely associating with each other, there are power differentials everywhere, and what's needed to get a good deal in the presence of a big power differential is collective bargaining strategies; an inverse of regulatory capture where the government is forced to serve the interest of its people. — fdrake
The weakest point of Randian political theory in my view is precisely that it explains political and economic phenomena with reference to deficiencies from an ideal state, an unregulated free market system, which would emerge save the interventions of corrupt government officials. — fdrake
Really what this shows is a big misalignment between the short term profit motive that makes good business and the long term welfare motive that makes good politics. There's no special emphasis in Randian theory on protecting the commons from powerful corporate interests or the requirements of collective bargaining strategies for those subject to power differentials to get a fair deal; it's a theory tailored to the short-term interest of capitalists and shareholders rather than the long-term interest of humanity and stakeholders. The world it speaks about doesn't exist, and the closest historical analogues we have to capitalism without regulation took a huge toll on the people and, eventually, the planet. — fdrake
Some people want things that are clearly not good for them, such as cigarettes, junk foods, drugs, etc. What moral reasoning would Rand use to praise or condemn those who sell such products? — praxis
And you are so bold as to say I haven’t read and don’t understand Rand, when you don't know I haven’t and I don’t? Because we disagree means I’m wrong? Wouldn’t it be better if you showed me how I was wrong, instead of claiming it despite the demonstration of a particular passage appearing to lack as much consensual philosophical merit as the entire message? — Mww
It has been long established that Rand both follows Kant is some regards, and demonizes him in others. But either way, the chances of her even being remembered as anything but a half-way decent fiction author, is directly related to her attacks on Kant, but hardly for a successful refutation of him. — Mww
The fact you don’t understand my use of the trades I chose, shows a distinct lack of understanding of the denial of a categorical assertion, which should have no exceptions, with a mere viable possibility. I summarily reject any philosophy that tells me what, who, and even why......but make no effort to tell me how, either from itself or from its proponents. — Mww