I don’t think she ignores them, though. I think she believes that those who are unlucky will benefit from those who are luckier. A moocher may not benefit, because he has no virtue, and therefore, a good, producing, upstanding citizen will see no benefit in helping a moocher, who doesn’t at all share his own values. But an unlucky person of virtue will find that many good, upstanding, producing citizens may be of great help, seeing that they share values with that person, and seeing how assisting that person may benefit them. I think that is what she is saying. If I am wrong, I will chew through this laptop.
I think we’ve had more than enough of trickle-down economics in any form. Otherwise, we have a system where the unlucky benefit from the lucky, it’s called progressive income taxation.
I don’t believe her ideas will work. I believe that when people get rich, they are prone to get greedy and blind to the virtues that the less fortunate hold. So, I’m not disagreeing with you here. I am only trying to clarify her position because it appears to me that her critics either don’t understand it or are purposefully misrepresenting it.
That’s not why her ideas won’t work. They won’t work because having great personal wealth is not the same thing as being individually productive.
While there may be no such thing as the right to consume, control and destroy those without whom one would not be able to survive. Those who have control over wealth and capital, have power to consume, control and destroy those who do not, and they frequently use it.
Per Ayn Rand, “The small minority of adults who are unable rather than unwilling to work have to rely on voluntary charity. Misfortune is not a claim to slave labor. There is no such thing as the right to consume, control and destroy those without whom one would not be able to survive.”
The severe problem here is the direct equating of taxes with slavery, and that having to pay taxes was the same as being consumed, controlled, or even destroyed. The industrialized democracies have proven her fantasies to be wrong. A moderate tax rate doesn’t “destroy” anything, but relieves suffering on a very large scale.
Charles Dickens knew a lot more than she ever did.
There is no direct equation of taxes with slavery. Taxes that go to pay for private goods such as welfare (as opposed to public goods such as law and order, sanitation, pollution control, public health, perhaps education etc.) though, are analogous to slavery, and that is the statement that she’s making. The statement that government welfare is analogous to slave labour, for all its insensitivity, at a fundamental level isn’t wrong, particularly in the way Rand has represented it, although more nuance could perhaps help, as with many of her views.
What is slave labour? If we avoid the historical baggage of the US, it means Group A forces Group B to act in a way that benefits only Group A, and does not benefit Group B. As a hypothetical, assume there is a country where 55% of people are not productive, and 45% are. The 55% vote in a politician that promises to provide, along with all the other functions of government, free food to all, free healthcare to all, free consumer goods to all. The politician promises to pay for all this through taxes. Taxes, as all taxes are, are collected by force. In this hypothetical, tax obviously is very much akin to slave labour, and frankly, it is this hypothetical that Rand is fighting against. Is the world at large the same as the hypothetical I’ve just presented? Of course not. In some respects though, it is similar. Most of all, in that taxes are collected forcibly at the behest of the majority, and should thus be limited to the maximum extent possible only to public goods.
I’m also not saying all this just because I think it is wrong for those ‘poor’ and ‘weak’ people to be able to force the ‘rich’ and the ‘strong’ to provide them a living. There could be moral arguments to be made for that. I’m also saying this because it doesn’t work. A focus on providing private goods through taxation weakens provision of public goods. Which results in weaker governance and in everybody -poor, rich, weak and strong - being worse off. But of course, as usual the poor and the weak will bear the brunt of it. And as usual policies that purport to help them will end up harming - of that there is more than enough evidence in the world as it is.
Welfare is not a private good anymore than Highway 70 is. Welfare serves the public intent to not have fellow citizens starve, as medicare and similar programs serve the public desire to prevent others dying painful unnecessary deaths.
I use neither welfare, Medicare nor unemployment benefits, but they still serve me. They aren’t there to make sure that Thomas Jones does not go hungry, they are there to try to prevent anyone from doing so.
Just as there are people who will never use Highway 70 in their lives. If they are participating in American society, they already have benefitted from the fact that Highway 70 exists.
By the way, this is why the Randian idea that it’s perfectly fine for weathy people to freely give their money to charity if they are suckers. A. As above, it is a societal good to provide a safety net, not a philanthropist’s hobby. B. The dollars that the wealthy have are, in this case, US dollars. They obtained them by using their skill in conjunction with a system that has Highway 70 and a social safety net and national defense and so on. They don’t get to completely opt out of ensuring that America continues just because they are themselves weak. Weak in that their limbic system is deficient in processing normal human affect. Let them go off to Austistc Gulch if they think their success was independent of America (or of course whatever society they took advantage of).
Rand did not believe “rich people were suckers for giving money to charity”. Nor do I think she was against public services.
She believed that no one had the right to force you to pay for those services or to give to charity just because you had extra money. If you wanted to take advantage of government services like health care or education, you would have to pay into them “a la carte” I suppose. Highways would be toll.
But the problem is the “free rider problem” IMHO. Some people will always enjoy the benefits of these systems without paying into them.
Please go through the wiki article on public goods.
< busted up laughing at this one > Stands and applauds. Well played, lady. Well played. 
I do believe she lived and breathed Obvectivism. I read The Fountainhead in Senior year H.S. ( My g.f. at the time was intensely interested in all things Rand. Shoulda tipped me off… :rolleyes: ).
Only about 18 months ago did I pick up Atlas Shrugged. Lurved it. An alloy that is an allegory and an analogy for societal themes. Cleverly wrought, that tale. Not sure I could live my life by the Objectivist precepts, but as the foundation for fiction it’s pretty compelling.
Okay, done. And??
Please read the wiki page on public services.
And the point is that welfare(particularly in terms of food or secondary/tertiary healthcare - a case can be made for primary healthcare) is not a public good. I did read the article on public services. Here is the third sentence “The term is associated with a social consensus(usually expressed through democratic elections)” Which is exactly where things start getting quite subjective. Unless you have a referendum that establishes there is, in fact, a social consensus, what you’re really doing is forcing the minority to go along with what the majority thinks is right. Which is why, no matter who is in the majority, our aim should be to keep such forcing to a minimum. And this principle, along with the definition of ‘public goods’, helps us identify a useful and usable framework for the things that are the proper roles of government and what it should be involved in. When you extend the role of government beyond public goods, not only is it fully likely that you’re forcing one group of people to work for the benefit of another, you’re also diluting the accountability for government’s primary task - provision of public goods. This is a dangerous road to go down.
Do you reject the role of representative government? If a majority of the state legislature passes a law, do you hold that it fails the test of legitimacy? Are only directly-voted-upon measures sufficient to determine a consensus?
In states that have initiatives and referenda, it’s remarkably difficult for the minority to impose its will on the majority. Even in states without those safety valves, representation is normally viewed as the basis for legitimacy and for consensus.
The threat of tyranny of the majority is better handled through constitutional limits, federalist design and other systems of checks of balances rather than some dubious injunction on an otherwise free representative legislature that they cannot enact legislation because it upsets libertarian principles.
I certainly don’t accept such principles, and I don’t agree with the libertarian conception of coercion. I want my representatives to enact legislation which maximises my understanding of liberal autonomy and human flourishing which is rather different to the libertarian conception. Why should I be deprived of representation, within constitutional limits, pursuing my vision through valid legislative processes because libertarians suggest it is somehow off-limits? If you cannot lobby enough political support to carry the issues, then too bad.
I think representative governments are far from perfect, and this has been shown by quite a few empirical and theoretical studies(Arrow’s impossibility theorem for instance). If a system is thus imperfect, and potentially requires forcing a large number of people to do something, one should limit its application to the extent possible, and the public goods limitation is a perfectly reasonable one. If you feel this is not so, it would be good if you could explain why.
I don’t call myself a libertarian, nor have I reached any of my opinions from a libertarian reading of the world. What, for instance, is the ‘libertarian conception of coercion’? Do you deny that there is coercion involved in taxation? Of course there is, regardless of whether your representation, i.e, your vote was included among several millions of people, all clamouring for attention on various issues or not. And that is precisely why you accept that limits are required, you’re just trying to gainsay the limits that I propose, instead of other limits. And the constitutional limits that you accept as legitimate, what are they based on? Merely whatever was the historical fad at that time and place, whereas I’ve offered up a sound theoretical framework which is generally accepted by scholars and is/can be the basis for empirical work and testing. Not just something that ‘libertarians suggest is off-limits’.
Arrow’s theorem is a technical theorem in social choice theory that is often erroneously invoked to suggest that popular policy is illusory or that democracy is inherently tyranny. It doesn’t say that. What it actually says is that you can’t go from individual choices to an pareto optimal global ranking of overall community preferences.
As you propose to restrict the function of a democratic legislature, which is endowed with presumptive plenary power, subject to constitutional limits, which goes beyond just public goods, I believe it is up to you to provide an explanation for why such a restriction is warranted not the other way around.
I’m not going to play a game of definitions, though you can assume I use accepted mainstream philosophical nomenclature. I reject the propertarian ontology at the heart of libertarianism, and the concept that taxation is inherently coercive simply because the agency of the state is involved. I don’t view criminal law as coercive either, though it can certainly can be used to constrain and restrict someone’s personal liberty, conditionally.
It seems you misunderstand the normative status of representative democracy. My act of voting within a specific electorate simply secures the local representative position and then that person is otherwise unencumbered in the legislature until a subsequent election. I vote for them on the basis of them holding forth their intentions and policies. But there is no guarantee of their conduct. I don’t get to recall them if they act radically differently.
What you are saying, that I find deeply troubling, is that the representative ought to be prohibited from doing things that fall outside a technical economic definition of public goods - (where is that defined and who decides?) I agree that public goods are deserving areas of policy, but I don’t accept that as a basis for legislative legitimacy.
I love it how you imply that centuries of experience with plenary government powers diffused by parliamentary bodies and constitutional limits is somehow just arbitrary nonsense whilst your criterion of public goods – something practised nowhere and with no established literature – is somehow on firmer footing.
If I was to do as you ask, I would need to articulate the general principles of liberal political morality and limited government in the western canon going back years and establish a basic state template. I’m not prepared to waste my time doing that and I view many different systems as equally legitimate. I am happy to provide answers to more specific questions however.
Right, but Arrow’s impossibility(and thank you for the greater specificity) does back me up in that you cannot translate individual preferences to a community wide preference without violating one of his conditions of ‘fairness’. And Arrow’s impossibility is far from the only issue with representative government. Another is that the marginal value of a vote in many/most constituencies is practically zero, while marginal costs associated with voting remain the same for everyone, which leads to special interests cornering much of law making. There are many, many more, and indeed you’re cognisant that significant issues exist, or you would not recognise the need for limits at all. The issue at hand is only how these limits are to be decided.
I have provided such an explanation. I am asking a different poster than you to tell me if he does not regard this explanation to be sufficient, and why. If you don’t regard it to be sufficient, you’re welcome to point it out too. So far, I can see little other than ‘I don’t recognise your approach as valid’ and ‘It’s always been done this other way’.
Here I will borrow from Rand. Your viewing something as coercive or not does not make it less or more so. If someone is put into a prison, coercion is almost necessarily involved. How, precisely, is coercion not involved in either taxation or punishment of criminals? Of course there is coercion. The only issue is under what circumstances that coercion is justified.
No you misunderstand my statement(besides being wrong about the fact that recall is, in fact, something you get to do to your representatives, even in the US, AFAIK). My statement was meant to
Why is it that you find it deeply troubling? It encompasses most of what the American government, for instance, does, and circumscribes little. And the definition of public goods is quite clear already, and while the question of ‘who decides’ is naturally fraught, it at least provides a framework on the basis of which to judge any efforts thereof, instead of purely arbitrary jaw-jaw.
What centuries of experience do you refer to? Democracy was very young at the time most of the constitutions that we depend upon today were written, and they were thus based on little other than the entirely subjective musings of the ‘wise founding fathers’ of America for instance, or philosopher writers like Rousseau. I contend that something rooted in modern understanding(which I’m sure you know doesn’t ignore history) and theoretical and empirical work. And are you actually seriously saying that public goods haven’t been studied and don’t have an established literature? You would be mistaken if so.
I apologise that an earlier version of what I was typing out seems to have gotten posted.
Errata(in brief) -
My statement was meant to point out how imperfect/limited representative democracy is.
and
contend that something rooted in modern understanding(which I’m sure you know doesn’t ignore history) and theoretical and empirical work is better
Whatever these limits are, I don’t believe they are sufficient to place what I consider to be an arbitrary limit on legislative power. I am perfectly comfortable with the representative democracy model, and relatively unfettered legislative power.
Fair enough. I haven’t read the relevant posts, so that’s my fault for jumping in without doing the reading…
Sorry, I don’t accept Rand as an authority in any respect. Moreover, I don’t think justified vs. non-justified coercion is a sophisticated framework which captures the relevant issues. These are matters which are best considered through the prism of political morality and jurisprudence, such as the obligation to obey the law.
When someone is a citizen, a voter, and civic participant they meaningful consent to the laws of the land over time. Taxation according to those laws is not coercive. It can be poorly designed, it can be harmful to business, it can have perverse incentives. But it isn’t coercive simply because that person individually may will it otherwise and the state has the power to enforced it backed by force, if necessary.
You may as well say the state is exercising coercive power in every statute on the books including, say, the law determining that people must drive on right side of the road, because there are other people within the polity who would like it to be on the other side. Yet that choice cannot be left to the individual, so the state must make a decision and apply the law to everyone. It cannot refrain from picking one side of the road and ensuring that everyone obeys. So I find that to be a completely absurd definition of coercion which ignores the necessary role of the state in organising society, and the kinds of ongoing voluntary support that constitute the legal reality which is being enforced. I think there is a general rebuttable moral presumption to obey the law generally.
I will reiterate that there is nothing in the representative model which implies that the representative is somehow obligated to do the bidding of voters. The voters simply select them and then they can fail to be re-elected later without sufficient support.
Perhaps I am simply misunderstanding you, but I felt your sentiment echoed a deeply anti-democratic tendency I have seen in libertarian thinking which tries to use economic arguments to circumscribe the functioning of democracy. I believe democracy should be subject to constitutional limits, but otherwise relatively unfettered. I’m am deeply uncomfortable with the idea that the people are not permitted to structure major elements of their society according to their will. If they want high taxes and generous social services, that’s one valid approach. If they want low taxes and minimal safety net, then that’s another valid approach that is also good. I don’t want any preconditions on such matters, however, which stipulate that they cannot decide.
Most states have evolved with inherent plenary power. Where we have the model of enumerated powers, it comes from states with plenary powers coming together in federation. I am happy with that model as an expression of government. I don’t know why I am supposed to believe it is the wrong model, or that a public good model. But I haven’t read your original post, so I suppose I should do that before commenting further.
Once you’ve proven that no possible system of government (or economy) can be fair, where do you go next? Rand’s objectivist utopia is also impossible, for the same reason. Historically, representative democracy has shown the least number of faults. Since we can’t have the ideal – because it is self-contradictory – isn’t it simple wisdom to go with the system that has the best record?
I actually once had a libertarian tell me that his vote has no value unless it is the deciding vote. Since even the smallest local elections tend to be decided by hundreds or thousands of votes, he insisted that he receives no utility at all from his vote.
I responded, loftily, that I desired him to explain this reasoning to all libertarians; meanwhile, I will be explaining a different view to all of my statist correspondents.
Okay, call it coercion. In my opinion, this dilutes the meaning so far as to render it meaningless. I am “coerced” not to go on a murderous rampage. Well, if so, that’s a damn good thing! I hope all of my fellow citizens are so coerced!
Since laws are enforced, and in the end are backed up by force, you’re just reciting a tautology. And since you’re defining society as existing under a lack of freedom…what, then, for objectivism? It can’t exist: the tautology won’t permit it. A society without laws will be open to murderers. I’ll just come round and kill people I disagree with, until such time as a coercive law is enacted to prevent this.
By definition you’re going to be living under the threat of coercion. Either a government that has laws…or the crazy murderer guy!
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, why not work in practical terms to produce a working system of government that does the least amount of coercion. And, again, we fall to the representative democracy, because all the others are worse. Churchill knew what he was saying.
The biggest problem with rebutting objectivists is that the term isn’t defined as a working system of government. It invites a “No True Scotsman” fallacy. You can say that you aren’t an anarchist, and that you favor some laws, as opposed tono law at all. But you won’t tell us how those laws are to be defined, or enacted, or enforced. You can call taxation wicked because it is enforced, but you don’t present any other means by which law-enforcement is to be funded.
The only alternative I’ve ever heard proposed involves openly selling votes in the legislature. Selling shares in Congress, so to speak. It’s purely voluntary; the coalition that invests the most money gets to pass the laws…and the funding is taken care of too. Is this a libertarian solution?