The argument is usually “the free market will provide”. As I mentioned previously, I do have a formal education in civil engineering, so actually understand in practice how large public works actually get built.
I suppose my brain can comprehend a world where cities and intercity transportation like roads and rail evolve organically through private development. I suspect it might look very different from our world (perhaps bizarrely so) and may not necessarily be better or worse. Maybe rail becomes more of a dominant form of long range transportation without state funded interstates and gasoline subsidies. Maybe cities eschew efficient grid designs in favor of bizarre layouts based on whatever street patterns the developers could negotiate. Maybe Central Park is either paved over with skyscrapers or privatized so billionaires don’t lose their views.
In fairness some Randians do* complain about both things (specifically the ones who have no hope if being elected to national office in the US, and so don’t need to keep the military industrial complex constituency on side). But then you’re into fantasies about defense based on plucky gun toting voluntary militias defending America against foreign powers without all those evil taxes going to those collectivist hippies in the defense dept.
‘*’ - or did until Trump turned up and then they decided authoritarian fascist tyrants forcing them to pay taxes for wars of aggression and big palaces was a-ok
And I can comprehend a world where the dictatorship of the proletariat will lead inevitably to true democracy. But only a little bit objectivism is required to see neither world is the world we are actually living in.
Owner: "That property, there. Take it, and me and my boys will kill you."
There’s always going to be private property, the only question is if the law acknowledges it, or if ownership is instead enforced with threats and violence. Anarchy, realistically doesn’t mean nobody is in charge; it means that whomever has the most ability to apply violence is in charge.
And yes, that’s not what anarchists say anarchy means; but then, Objectivists claim Objectivism isn’t just an excuse for the wealthy to crush and exploit those less wealthy. Both are wrong. The claims of an ideology and the reality of it typically have little in common.
That’s the problem with real estate. Even in a world where everyone is perfectly equal and nobody has more than anyone else, some people are going to be living closer to the beach.
First, technology changes. Historically, it’s the people who were only trainer for “grower” jobs who were stranded in an economy that didn’t need them any more. Farmhands, assembly line workers, coal miners…
Second, no one “invented” childcare jobs. I usually use obtaining food and caring for children as the two fundamental jobs that every human society absolutely needs to fill. All the rest is ornamentation.
And I have long felt that a fundamental flaw of Rand is that no one in any of her books is a child, or seems to have ever been a child, or has children of their own.
Because despite her worship of the powerful individual, every one is us enters this world as a helpless mewling. And a lot of us will leave it that way, too. And civilizations care for their children (and their elderly, unless they are incredibly impoverished).
Huh, i thought that was kind of the defining feature of Randianism.
Putatively it is, but few of them will say it openly. They prefer to live in abstractions and platitudes and not grapple with the dirty consequences. That’s more the province of Libertarians, who are perfectly willing to be that gauche, which is why Rand loathed them.
I only dip into this thread from time to time, but it seems that the emphasis has shifted strongly from what Rand wrote herself, to what supposed followers of Rand or supposed followers of her philosophy believe in. I think it’s worth noting that these are often different things, sometimes very different.
Well, i may be out of touch, then. Like everyone else, i read Rand as a teen. But o have no idea what her followers claim. Until this thread, i didn’t think she had followers, in any organized way, and assumed that people who admired her identified as libertarians.
And once a friend pointed out the total absence of children in her milieu, i have rejected the rest of her philosophy our if hand. Because any philosophy that doesn’t account for rearing children is a non-starter.
I would tend to agree. In fact my whole point of starting the thread was that as far as I interpreted it, Rands philosophy was not:
Fuck the poor (at least not deliberately and maliciously so)
Only the interests of the rich matter
Anarchy
No government, public infrastructure or taxes at all
Every man for himself
It seemed like she promoted a philosophy that had minimal government or taxation which mostly ensured to protect rights and enforce contracts. People collaborated but it was transactional and voluntary. I suppose charity existed too, but it was based on people’s goodwill, not mandated through government.
IOW, you are free to donate to charity, join the military to protect your country, and start your own business with minimal regulatory interference as opposed to being heavily taxed to pay for a welfare state, drafted, or forced to work where the state tells you.
We can debate specific implementations of that philosophy but the core tenet seemed to be that people should be free as to the extent possible to pursue their own economic and personal interests and not be compelled to prioritize the interests of the state or the collective.
But what I tend to find is that many supporters of Rand or her philosophy (even if they are unfamiliar with her works) are people who operate from a position of economic privilege. It has become aligned with a sort of tech/finance bro mentality that I’ve witnessed over the years where people who have been born on third and underhand-pitched their way to a home run pat themselves on the back thinking their great wealth is a sign of some superior ability or alignment with the greater market.
The argument I would give to that is think about deciding to take a) half the firemen, construction workers, nurses, teachers, policemen or b) half the lawyers, venture capitalists, management consultants, and phone sanitizers on a big spaceship and send it into the sun. Which would cause greater harm to society?
To be honest, a Randian life of constant work seems empty and tedious to me. I liked, but didn’t necessarily love my old job. I ostensibly also like spending time with my wife and kids. I also resent the current corporate environment seems to push the idea that “work / life balance” is an unreasonable expectation. Almost as if the ideal employee is an 25 to 38 year old workaholic incel with no interests outside the corporation hoping to amass enough fortune so they don’t have to work after turning 40 and Corporate America no longer has a use for them. I don’t think Rand’s vision included de factor corporate white collar slavery. But as you say, there isn’t much in her writings about how people exist her imagined childless societies where everyone’s sole purpose is individual pursuit of their professional goals.
It just seems that way to you from your naive subjective emotional viewpoint. Actually Randians have a sophisticated intellectual viewpoint based on a rational objective assessment of the realities of the economic and political system, it’s absolutely not just “f_ck the poor”.
What’s that you say? Trump just rolled up and gets to say whatever terrible thing he wants with no repercussions. In that case nvm. Absolutely “f_ck the poor, the blacks, and women, and gays and everyone else I don’t like”. LOL you took us seriously with all that randian bs. Sucker!
Nothing about collaboration is voluntary if you need to collaborate today in order to feed your children. The idea that this isn’t deliberately “fuck the poor”, has more to do with her lack of vision than any realistic result of the philosophy.
I’m now imagining Bea Arthur - Did you collaborate last week? No. Did you TRY to collaborate last week? Yes!
There’s also an extended sequence in The Fountainhead depicting a school for developmentally disabled children, for whom Rand(’s narrator) shows nothing but contempt.
I didn’t even know she had no children, although it’s hardly surprising. Many people who don’t have children of their own remember being children, or have friends or siblings with children, or at least have an intellectual understanding that new humans don’t leap out of Zeus’s head as fully-formed adults.