Ayn Rand for Dummies

[Sam_Stone]

@elucidator

In my estimation, the fundamental right is the right to speech, and to participate in civic decisions, the right to participate in the decisions that make the laws that determine what are, in fact, the rights of property and their limitations.

Really? So, if we enshrine the right to speech, but tax newsprint at $1000 per page, then give special government newsprint to those agencies that toe the government line, you’re okay with that?

How about if we make speech free, but take away everyone’s property and only give it back to the people whose free speech aligns with the government’s position? Still okay?

How about we allow free speech, but shut down the internet connection of anyone who isn’t a Republican? Hey, you can still get on a soapbox and yap all you want - but sorry, no one will hear you.

We hold that truth to be self-evident, that the right to speech existed long before any such device as a printing press came into being. Not that anyone had much opportunity to use such rights, but that they existed nonetheless.

Really? Tell you what - head over to Riyadh tomorrow and stand in a public square and yell that Mohammed was a big fat child abusing rapist. Let me know how that works out for you.

Or hell, just come to Canada and try to publish the cartoons of Mohammed.

Travel back in time to the Soviet Union, and start cranking out anti-Marxist leaflets. Or do the same thing in Cuba today. Or go to Venezuela and and set up an anti-government radio station. See how much fun you have.

Throughout history, speech has rarely been free.

But my dogma is not more true than your own, your basic assumptions are a matter of choice. Though why you felt a need to drag Stalin starving the Ukranians into this discussion eludes me, unless you think a Jeremiad is somehow superior to an argument, and thereby more persuasive.

The point I was making was that the Ukranians didn’t have property rights, and found that this rapidly translated into not have a right to life either, as their food was taken from them and they were left to starve to death.

We cannot associate on common ground? Why? Why couldn’t such a meeting place be held in common, what is gained by having it under private ownership? In other words, huh?

Gee, you’ve never seen a rally on public property be broken up by the police? You’ve never seen demonstrators kicked off the steps of Congress? Do you think Woodstock would have been allowed to run if it had been in a public park instead of Nasgur’s farm?

We already have plenty of restrictions on how you can assemble in public spaces. But the point is that without private property, your ability to assemble will ALWAYS be at the whim of the state. If you don’t enshrine property rights, everything else becomes a privilege granted by the state.

[LonesomePolecat]

@haymarketmartyr

… the rest of us live in a society of other people who have a right to form a government and make laws and rules for all of us to live by. And those rules go beyond the very bare bones “don’t hurt anybody”.

Sounds an awful lot like that dreaded “tyranny of the majority” the lefties were always on about when they were the ones out of power.

[XT]

@elucidator

Or, she might just be dumb enough to believe precisely what she says.

Leaving aside the ‘dumb’ part, this isn’t mutually exclusive to what I said. I have no doubt she believed what she says…and no doubt she deliberately exaggerated certain aspects of her stories in order to emphasize the points she was trying to make.

-XT

[Sam_Stone]

@The_Piranha_Brothers

Now, now. It is pretty clear that it we are to draw conclusions from the book about the real world and that some people in fact do that.

Yes, and some people read the Bible and become fundamentalist nutbars, and others read it and extract the essence of the message and try to fit it into a modern world view.

As for Robin Hood, I didn’t want to open up a debate on the character. I can’t even remember if Rand mentioned him. I was just reaching for an example of an idealized character.

Nobody likes to pay taxes and give the state half your income. Anarchy isn’t cool either. You’re better off with the state than without it.

Rand was not an anarchist. She believed in a state that was actually quite large, and she believed that taxes should be raised to pay for it if necessary.

[elucidator]

…and no doubt she deliberately exaggerated …

Well, I’m not about to argue with a man who has a Certificate of Telepathy. You do have such, yes?

[XT]

@Sam Stone

As for Robin Hood, I didn’t want to open up a debate on the character. I can’t even remember if Rand mentioned him. I was just reaching for an example of an idealized character.

He’s mentioned several times in Atlas Shrugged because of how his story has been twisted by society to make him a paragon. In the book she says something along the lines that the historical figure was certainly noble, but the story (as said today) is evil.

-XT

[XT]

@elucidator

Well, I’m not about to argue with a man who has a Certificate of Telepathy. You do have such, yes?

I’d be a Medium, not a Telepath, due to the fact she has a bad case of being dead, 'luci.

-XT

[Spoke]

@Ruminator

I think your parsing of her quotes look ridiculous.

I think Ayn Rand’s philosophy/religion looks ridiculous. Not my fault if you can’t stomach her “principles” taken to their logical conclusion.

[Ruminator]

@spoke-

I think Ayn Rand’s philosophy/religion looks ridiculous. Not my fault if you can’t stomach her “principles” taken to their logical conclusion.

Right… the logical conclusion of Rand’s philosophy is for someone to refuse to give the time of day whenever it is asked because it requires the person wearing the watch to expend energy lifting up their arm and glance down at it thereby diverting (sacrificing) his attention for 5 seconds from whatever else he was doing.

Go ahead and copy & paste that into future “debates” you want to have about Ayn Rand. See if others react to that and consider your insight to be that of a towering intellect. “Wow…he really took Ayn Rand to her logical conclusion! Whoa.”

[LonesomePolecat]

@elucidator

Or, she might just be dumb enough to believe precisely what she says.

And that’s not nearly as dumb as believing we will still have freedom of speech when everyone depends on the state for his material needs.

[flonks]

@A.Selene

The amount of disapproval in this thread is impressive. I haven’t been on the SDMB long, but I’d have to guess only threads on religion and Republicans showcase more contempt.

So, you want to tell us that you are surprised that people disapprove of something you approve? Well, the world is full of surprises.

Edit: cool, the third time in 8 pages that my post is the first on the page …

[LonesomePolecat]

@elucidator

Well, I’m not about to argue with a man who has a Certificate of Telepathy. You do have such, yes?

You’re saying that it’s never reasonable to make inferences about what an author intended when you are very familiar with her work?

[flonks]

@Sam_Stone

Where did ‘productivity’ come from? Where did I say that productivity was the critical measure? You do know that productivity <> economic growth, right? Productivity is simply GDP divided by number of workers.

If you cared to read the cites you would have seen that it is productivity per working hour.

It’s entirely possible that productivity is higher in France simply because France has labor laws which punish employment, and therefore companies make due with fewer employees and therefore work them harder.

If you cared to read the cites you would have seen that in France people work less (time) than in the US.

It could also be higher because France may on average have an economy more focused on less labor-intensive goods. In short, it’s a dishonest measure of overall governmental success.

It is dishonest because it does not support your point of view.

This is a country where a good day is one in which less than 100 cars are burned in the streets by disaffected citizens, and which has had a growth rate in the 2000’s hovering around 1%. I don’t think you really want to use it as a model.

I do. Riots in 2005? Well guess what, there were Riots in Los Angeles - in the 80ies, granted. And crime rate in NY must be way over the crime rate in Paris.

That was from 2006, before any of the economic downturns hit. Riots in the streets, burning cars, and 40% of young women and 36% of young men in urban areas unemployed. That’s what France’s stringent labor regulations bought them.

Cite for that? In urban areas? all of them?

PS: i will not be able to reply, I am away for a couple of days, sorry.

[LonesomePolecat]

@spoke-

I think Ayn Rand’s philosophy/religion looks ridiculous. Not my fault if you can’t stomach her “principles” taken to their logical conclusion.

I don’t believe you really understand her philosophy at all. Certainly you’ve said nothing intelligent or perceptive about it on this thread.

[Sam_Stone]

@Damuri_Ajashi

Didn’t the American Indiands have a diffgerent concept of property rights?

Yes, they did. They were also a tribal society, and had an awful lot of harsh rules and engaged in a lot of violence within the tribes and against other tribes to maintain their culture. They were also ultimately not very successful.

The US government is relatively unintrusive compared to Western European governments and yet the US doesn’t seem to be doing so hot.

Really? Go check the per-capita income of Americans and compare to the average European country. I’ll save you the trouble, actually.

In 2008, the per-capita GDP of Americans measured in purchasing power was $47,440. The U.K. was $36,358. Germany was $34,535. France was $34,205.

Or, maybe a better measure is median household income, which removes the influence of the ultra-rich. Using the U.S. median household income as a normalized value of 1, the UK is .63.

In terms of unemployment, until the recent downturn all of these countries had higher unemployment than the U.S.

Now, I’d agree that the U.S. is having a hard time in this recession - harder than most. I happen to think think that it’s because it currently has the most interventionist government doing the most to try to ‘manage’ the recession. It spent more on the ‘stimulus’ than anyone else, it injected more money into the economy, took over more businesses and bailed out more busiinesses than anyone else. And it’s having the hardest time recovering. Funny how that works.

Perhaps its because there are examples on the other side as well.

There are always outliers. Small countries with homogenous populations rich in resources, etc. That’s why I prefer to look at broad trends and statistical measures.

For example, many people on this forum believe that government can help make the economy more competitive. Barack Obama is always talking about initiatives to make America competitive, to create jobs, to lead the world in exports by growing the size of government. And yet, measures of world competitiveness have the world’s freest economies clustered at the top, and the ones which engage in government industrial management near the bottom.

For example, According to the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook for 2008, these are the top 3 countries:

1. The United States
2. Singapore
3. Hong Kong

Those happen to be the three countries which are widely considered to have the most economic freedom as well. So where do some of the large ‘managed’ economies come in?

16. Germany
17. United Kingdom
18. Japan
19. France

Remember when Japan was going to take over the world because its ‘enlightened’ government was making ‘strategic investments’ in the economy? Remember the UK and France engaging in government industrial policy like the Concorde and Airbus Industrie? That’s really not working out so well for them, is it?

And if we were living in a society where we were actually in danger of abandoning the concept of property rights then I could see your point but we are living in a society where we are in danger of raising the top marginal tax rate from 35% to 39.6%.

And that’s not what we were talking about. The specific question was, “can you name a successful economy that operates under the notion that property is theft?”

I guess my biggest problem with Rand is that so many people use her philosophy for the idea that we should get rid of taxation.

Since Rand herself rejected that notion, that’s rather unfair of you, don’t you think?

So you don’t think that members of society have any other duty to society other than to do their best to prosper? If I don’t particularly value national defense, is it immoral to tax me to pay for everyone else’s security?

Now we’re getting into some other areas such as free-rider problems, the tragedy of the commons, and other larger social issues. Suffice it to say for now that Rand felt that the proper role of government was to provide for the common defense, to maintain courts of law, to establish order and enforce private contracts, and that taxation could be used to fund these proper roles of government if necessary. She also would not have had a problem with regulations intended to prevent externalities like pollution, because she saw an externality as a cost imposed on others against their will.
[/quote]

I think a lot of this comes down to taxes. People use Rand to argue that taxation is theft and I find that immoral.

Again, they really don’t. I think you’re just lumping Rand in with certain libertarians, anarchists, and anyone else on the far right you don’t like, then picking out the ideas you dislike the most and using them to smear Rand. That’s not really fair.

[Starving_Artist]

Thanks for the explication, Sam. As I’ve said, I’m not that knowledgeable about Rand and you’ve made clearer some of things I didn’t understand and brought up others in a way I hadn’t thought of, and I appreciate your taking the time to write the two detailed posts that you did in answer to my questions.

However, I’m of the impression that she hoped her philosophy would eventually become the prevailing one in society, guiding and setting standards not only for individual human behavior but for government and industry also. But as people in this thread have said–and rightly I think–that like Marxism, her philosophy would be fine in a perfect world but we don’t live in a perfect world.

She was clearly an extremely intelligent woman and I can’t believe she didn’t have some sort of answer to this, but in all the discussion I’ve seen with regard to Rand and Objectivism I’ve never seen it addressed. It’s possible that, like you said, her philosophy was intended to be more a set of guidelines rather than a literal set of instructions as to how life should be lived, but in that case it’s hard to see how she could have believed, as she seemed to, that her philosophy should come to encompass not only individual human behavior but that of industry and government as well.

So I’m wondering if anyone ever posed the question of Objectivism vs. human nature to her in this way, and if so what was her response?

[A.Selene]

@haymarketmartyr

Sorry, but I would take issue with the first statement. people are not free to live their lives as they see fit. Maybe if they live on a self sufficient island and they are the final authority there, sure I can buy that. But the rest of us live in a society of other people who have a right to form a government and make laws and rules for all of us to live by. And those rules go beyond the very bare bones “don’t hurt anybody”.

We live in a community where our individual interests are not paramount compared to those of the larger community. Balance must be achieved.

If you had read my post more carefully, you would realize I said that people should be free to live their lives as they see fit, not that they are. Arguing that people aren’t free to live their lives how they wish is silly; of course they aren’t. But shouldn’t they be? Or are you arguing that people shouldn’t be free? In a country where we have to wear seat belts or face fines, can’t smoke or ingest what we want, where hundreds of thousands languish in prisons, and a considerable amount of people can’t even marry who they want, you are seriously arguing that we must achieve “balance” - i.e. less freedom?

[Spoke]

@LonesomePolecat

I don’t believe you really understand her philosophy at all. Certainly you’ve said nothing intelligent or perceptive about it on this thread.

Why do Randians always respond to criticism of Rand the way teenage girls respond to criticism of their boyfriends: “Oh, you just don’t understand him the way I do!”

I understand Rand. And find her repugnant.

[John_Mace]

@flonks

Debatable. It’s not IMO. You need alcohol to survive on the street…

No, you do not. Unless you have a cite that proves you do…?

@spoke-

But see those are distinctions you are making, not distinctions Ayn Rand made.

She’s not here to make those distinctions. I’m simply pointing out that the “giving a dollar to a beggar” problem is complex, with not a one-size-fits-all answer.

In Ayn Rand’s philosophy, if I give up some of my possessions to help another I am immoral. Regardless of my circumstances or theirs.

No. Your quote from before (I think it was you who quoted her on self-sacrifice) doesn’t prove that, so if you’re going to keep saying this, you need to show us where she says it’s immoral to give someone something under any and all circumstances.

[LonesomePolecat]

@spoke-

I understand Rand.

Based on what? A thorough reading of her works? I’ve read all of her novels and much of her non-fiction. I’ve engaged in lively debates with Objectivists, and not one of them has ever accused me of not understanding her philosophy (though I did get called a collectivist, an Atilla, a Witch Doctor, a social metaphysician, a looter, a second-hander, and a lot of other things). The only area of her philosophy I don’t feel that I understand fully is her epistemology, mainly because I’ve never been able to slog all the way through Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. I’d like to know why you think you understand her well enough to be entitled to attack her so venomously.