Who collects the trash in Galt's Gulch?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Little_Nemo

I can easily see how objectivism appeals to the people at the top of the economic pyramid. But I’m not seeing what its appeal is to the people who aren’t at the top. And I’m not seeing how you can have a working society made up only of people at the top of the pyramid.

Randroids will claim there is plenty of room in Utopian Randocracy for the low value worker to realize their full potential by working for whatever pay they can negotiate with the more affluent members of the society who will surely pay them a fair wage (because we all know that the albor pool shrinks if wages are too low, better to starve than to work for less than you are worth) and its not like charity will be outlawed, it just won’t be imposed.

@bldysabba

I’ll happily grant that public goods(the commons) is one of the big things that Rand gets wrong, particularly in terms of voluntary payment. But not all wrong either. She does define national defence, law and order, and a couple of other things as public goods which are the ‘proper’ functions of government. Her big problem is no taxation whatsoever.

According to many Rand acolytes these days the tax issue is a feature not a bug.

There are plenty of influential economic models which do propose solutions to the problems that too, migration being one of them. So she’s not being completely outlandish or something. It’s simply one of the things that needs adjustment. And given that concession on public goods(which have a specific, narrow meaning) and taxation for them, her ideas on governance are quite sound, especially when contrasted with the ones that her work is a reaction to.

The specific narrow definition of “public good” does not include things like public education and universal health care, that includes subsidy of emergency rooms for those who don’t have the ability to pay. Its not like it is unheard of for people to die on the hospital doorsteps for lack of ability to pay in other parts of the world.

Her ideas were aimed first and foremost at criticising and proposing an alternative to communism.

So how is it relevant in policy discussions in the US today? Why are so many of her acolytes waving her books around like the bible duiring the inquisition? Do we still need an alternative to communism?

And she correctly predicted its collapse 40 years in advance. What’s more, it happened more or less how she predicted - the economic engine broke down because of poor incentive structures. And while that’s not the only reason the Soviet Union collapsed, the economic system that she was criticising failed for those reasons everywhere it was tried. How come she doesn’t get any credit for that?

Was she a lonely voice in the wind or were there a lot of people (as well as some economists) saying the same thing.

The alternative system that she admired, the one that came the closest to her ideal, i.e the US, is the richest and most powerful country on Earth.

And her ideas are being used to dsiassemble that system peice by peice.

@bldysabba

And, for the gazillionth time, Rand’s vision does not incorporate “leaving those less successful to starve in the street”

Of course not, its just the likely result of her “vision”

Her idea is that your moral duty is to be happy. If helping people who’re starving is what makes you happy, then that is the best thing for you to do. She wants to leave the judgment of who to help and how up to those who’re giving the money to help. And, frankly, not only is this the better way of doing it, its far more morally defensible.

If only we had tried a society where the social safety net was based on the charity of the willing. :rolleyes:

That is the world before we created these social safety nests. Oliver Twist lived in that world and in one of the wealthiest countries in the world at the time. When you don’t have a social safety net, any bad turn in the economy can have horrible results.

Consider the most successful people on Earth today and the least - the western countries and least developed countries. International aid provided by governments from tax money over the last half decade has been a massive failure

there is a good Kenyan comedy called “the Samaritan” that pokes fun at how painfully dysfunctional the NGO space is in Africa.

It is really hard for one country to provide a social safety net for another country. But that is hardly an argument against domestic social safety nets.

@bldysabba

The idea that Atlas Shrugged is your society is what is delusional.

And how do you think the Rand acolytes feel about that? They think we’re halfway through the book right now. Someone is about to set fire to his oilfields and go live in Galt’s Gulch.

Evidence? Because I see plenty of evidence of voluntary charity. I see none that it would necessarily reduce if the taxation led redistribution was removed.

And unless you are including religious charities, its never been sufficient to provide even even the basics. Heck if it weren’t for religious institutions and tithing (which are just as anathema to Rand as government and taxes) orphans would have starved in the streets.

I think people are basically good and want to help other people, it is how we’ve evolved to be.

People help those that they see directly around them so the homeless in Palo Alto will probably be all right. Your really think that people would donaate enough to a national charity to feed starving orphans in Detroit?

And I think that if you introduce competition into the realm of redistribution/charity everyone involved would experience better results, similar to how taking away state control of production in China and India has improved the lives of millions. That is because I don’t think redistribution is a ‘commons’, a public good, and thus it is simply not efficient for government to be performing that function.

Its the only way it actually gets done. In the history of mankind can you name a time when you think we have provided an adequate safety net without the coercion of government or religion being involved?

@BrainGlutton

It is testament to the appeal of her ideology to alienated teenagers and I-got-mine 1%ers.

Well it also appeals to a significant percentage of the 99%ers that think they will be 1%ers one day and there are a lot of 1%ers who recognize that there was more than a bit of luck involved in becoming a 1%er.

@John_Mace

In the book, of course, it’s hardly a tantrum given the laws that were being passed to expropriate private property and control business. No one allowed to fire anyone. Everyone had to produce the amount of products dictated by the government. The US was, essentially, being turned into the USSR. Remember, the book was fiction.

And yet so many of her acolytes feel like its going on in this country right now.

@John_Mace

Are you kidding me? In one post you say “Ayn Rand did X” then when asked how, you say “Ayn Rand didn’t actually do X”.

I think you need to reread my posts in light of what I said. Where do i say that reardon or any of the heroes in Atlas were actually villians. I was talking about the real life folks who take on the mantle of Atlas heroes to jsutify their actions.

Secondly, I’m not seeing how Bill Gates or Warren Buffett are significantly less of “paragons of virtue” than is Hank Reardon. I’m not seeing anything significantly “bad” about either BG or WB. Not in the sense of an actually bad person like Bernie Madoff.

No they’re not Bernie Madoff (and I notice you don’t defend Jobs). Bill gates didn’t invent Windows. Warren Buffett is a money manager who invests money in good companies that are undervalued, I don’t think he even changes the management (he picks companies that generally have good management already), so I’m not sure how much value he creates that wouldn’t have been created anyway. but TBH, the only less than virtuous thing I have seen him do was throw up all sorts of defenses for the bad behaviour of Moody’s after he acquired a large stake in them. He did this in front of regulators and legislators in testimony where he downplays the culpability of ratings agencies generally and moody’s in particular.

@pbbth

What happens when the people who collect garbage, clean houses and serve food in the gulch can’t earn enough money to live doing these jobs? Obviously plenty of the characters were happy enough to take any job as long as they weren’t mooching, but what do they do when 50 hours a week of physically strenuous labor doesn’t earn you enough to pay rent and buy food?

You always pay them enough to live, just don’t pay them enough to dream.

[ThisUsernameIsForbidden]

No one in their right mind would leave the Gultch.

[BrainGlutton]

@John_Mace

Work more hours, get a better job, or leave the Gulch.

Why? What did you think they would do?

Unionize and strike – again, why not? No law prevents them, and no police force limits their tactics. Likewise with strikebreaking tactics, of course.

[elucidator]

@ThisUsernameIsForbidden

No one in their right mind would leave the Gultch.

Nobody in their right mind be there in the first place.

[ThisUsernameIsForbidden]

@elucidator

Nobody in their right mind be there in the first place.

What? Everyone gets to pull themselves up by their bootstraps!

[XT]

@elucidator

Nobody in their right mind be there in the first place.

And I’ll take the middle, more moderate position that some folks in their right minds might decide either, or both. Gods these threads are so predictable, but still so fun.

[John_Mace]

@BrainGlutton

Unionize and strike – again, why not? No law prevents them, and no police force limits their tactics. Likewise with strikebreaking tactics, of course.

They could strike if they chose to do so.

[elucidator]

Objectivism was the Scientology of its time, that time is past. To be generous but fair, it should be noted that Ayn Rand was not as wretched a science fiction writer as L. Rob Hubbard. In the night, in the dark, his typewriters would weep with shame.

[Little_Nemo]

Can somebody explain what the definition of a moocher is? If I ask my employer for a raise am I mooching? I am, after all, asking him to give me some of his money. He obviously doesn’t want to pay me more money or he would have already been doing so. And if I tell him I’ll go look for another job if I don’t get the raise, then I’m trying to coerce my boss into doing something he doesn’t want to do.

[John_Mace]

@Little_Nemo

Can somebody explain what the definition of a moocher is? If I ask my employer for a raise am I mooching? I am, after all, asking him to give me some of his money. He obviously doesn’t want to pay me more money or he would have already been doing so. And if I tell him I’ll go look for another job if I don’t get the raise, then I’m trying to coerce my boss into doing something he doesn’t want to do.

A moocher is someone who thinks they deserve something for nothing. In your scenario, you would only be a moocher if your boss turned you down and you then tried to get a law passed requiring your boss to give you a raise.

Bargaining about the value of something (wether it’s a car or your salary) is a part of the free market. Forcing other people to provide for your needs is mooching.

[ThisUsernameIsForbidden]

@John_Mace

A moocher is someone who thinks they deserve something for nothing. In your scenario, you would only be a moocher if your boss turned you down and you then tried to get a law passed requiring your boss to give you a raise.

Bargaining about the value of something (wether it’s a car or your salary) is a part of the free market. Forcing other people to provide for your needs is mooching.

Nah, the deserve has nothing to do with it. That is a recent invention. You’re a moocher if you ask for something from someone else out of your own laziness. Someone who lives at home with parents because he doesn’t want to work is a moocher. It is not the ultimate insult, though.

[John_Mace]

@ThisUsernameIsForbidden

Nah, the deserve has nothing to do with it. That is a recent invention. You’re a moocher if you ask for something from someone else out of your own laziness. Someone who lives at home with parents because he doesn’t want to work is a moocher. It is not the ultimate insult, though.

My definition is the one applicable to Atlas Shrugged, which is the topic of this thread and the basis of the question I answered. This is not apocryphal-- it’s in the book.

[Little_Nemo]

@John_Mace

A moocher is someone who thinks they deserve something for nothing. In your scenario, you would only be a moocher if your boss turned you down and you then tried to get a law passed requiring your boss to give you a raise.

Bargaining about the value of something (wether it’s a car or your salary) is a part of the free market. Forcing other people to provide for your needs is mooching.

Are you sure that’s Rand’s view on the subject? There’s another recent thread on Atlas Shrugged where people are discussing this passage from the book.

Now it certainly appears that Rand was against the situation she was describing. But it wasn’t a situation of people getting something for nothing. The people involved were all working for the Twentieth Century Motor Company.

Rand seems to be saying that a system where majority rule decides how much everyone works and how much everyone is paid is unworkable. I’m not going to argue there aren’t problems with such a system. But is the solution of one person deciding how much everyone works and how much everyone gets paid a better plan? That seems like a plan that will go wrong a lot quicker. Compare the United States to North Korea. The problem in communist societies isn’t the people having too much power; the problem is somebody like Lenin or Stalin or Mao or Kim having too much power.

[John_Mace]

@Little_Nemo

Are you sure that’s Rand’s view on the subject? There’s another recent thread on Atlas Shrugged where people are discussing this passage from the book.

Now it certainly appears that Rand was against the situation she was describing. But it wasn’t a situation of people getting something for nothing. The people involved were all working for the Twentieth Century Motor Company.

Rand seems to be saying that a system where majority rule decides how much everyone works and how much everyone is paid is unworkable. I’m not going to argue there aren’t problems with such a system. But is the solution of one person deciding how much everyone works and how much everyone gets paid a better plan? That seems like a plan that will go wrong a lot quicker. Compare the United States to North Korea. The problem in communist societies isn’t the people having too much power; the problem is somebody like Lenin or Stalin or Mao or Kim having too much power.

I didn’t read that whole passage, it looks like it’s about 10 pages long, and certainly don’t remember it word-for-word form when I did read the book, but I searched and there are only 2 instances where the word “moocher” appears:

Well, anyway, it was decided that nobody had the right to judge his own need or ability. We voted on it. Yes, ma’am, we voted on it in a public meeting twice a year. How else could it be done? Do you care to think what would happen at such a meeting? It took us just one meeting to discover that we had become beggars – rotten, whining, sniveling beggars, all of us, because no man could claim his pay as his rightful earning, he had no rights and no earnings, his work didn’t belong to him, it belonged to ‘the family’, and they owed him nothing in return, and the only claim he had on them was his ‘need’ – so he had to beg in public for relief from his needs, like any lousy moocher, listing all his troubles and miseries, down to his patched drawers and his wife’s head colds, hoping that ‘the family’ would throw him the alms. He had to claim miseries, because it’s miseries, not work, that had become the coin of the realm – so it turned into a contest between six thousand panhandlers, each claiming that his need was worse than his brother’s. How else could it be done? Do you care to guess what happened, what sort of men kept quiet, feeling shame, and what sort got away with the jackpot?

<snip>

“What was it we were supposed to work for? For the love of our brothers? What brothers? For the bums, the loafers, the moochers we saw all around us? And whether they were cheating or plain incompetent, whether they were unwilling or unable – what difference did that make to us? If we were tied for life to the level of their unfitness, faked or real, how long could we care to go on? We had no way of knowing their ability, we had no way of controlling their needs – all we knew was that we were beasts of burden struggling blindly in some sort of place that was half-hospital, half-stockyards – a place geared to nothing but disability, disaster, disease – beasts put there for the relief of whatever whoever chose to say was whichever’s need.

I don’t see where that is different from what I said.

[John_Mace]

I may have been lumping “moochers” and “looters” into the one category. The difference is in the means. Both want something for nothing, but a “moocher” is a beggar, or someone who appeals to your sense of guilt to get you to support them. A “looter” is someone who uses force-- either direct, physical force (that is, a their) or indirect force (that is, leveraging the government to force you yo support them).

But the key is that they are asking to be given something of value (that is, you time or money) without giving value in return.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Little_Nemo

Are you sure that’s Rand’s view on the subject? There’s another recent thread on Atlas Shrugged where people are discussing this passage from the book.

over 5000 words and you could probably sum it all up in a couple of sentences.

Rand seems to be saying that a system where majority rule decides how much everyone works and how much everyone is paid is unworkable. I’m not going to argue there aren’t problems with such a system. But is the solution of one person deciding how much everyone works and how much everyone gets paid a better plan? That seems like a plan that will go wrong a lot quicker. Compare the United States to North Korea. The problem in communist societies isn’t the people having too much power; the problem is somebody like Lenin or Stalin or Mao or Kim having too much power.

I have seen systems where people vote on each other’s compensation. You effectively get to affect the bonus level of your boss and colleagues as well as your subordinates. It is only one factor but it some places put a lot of stock in these reviews when determining who gets promoted or given firm clients.

[BrainGlutton]

@John_Mace

A moocher is someone who thinks they deserve something for nothing.

We all get something for nothing. Human life is mostly free lunches.

[John_Mace]

@BrainGlutton

We all get something for nothing. Human life is mostly free lunches.

Got a cite for that?

[msmith537]

@Little_Nemo

Can somebody explain what the definition of a moocher is? If I ask my employer for a raise am I mooching? I am, after all, asking him to give me some of his money. He obviously doesn’t want to pay me more money or he would have already been doing so. And if I tell him I’ll go look for another job if I don’t get the raise, then I’m trying to coerce my boss into doing something he doesn’t want to do.

No, you may negotiate whatever wage for your labor you can. If your employer values your labor, he may grant you a raise. If he doesn’t, he will tell you to get bent. And you can either accept it or look for a new job that pays what you want. Sort of how it works now.

A moocher is someone who expects that they should be compensated, even if they provide no labor. Particularly egregious is if they feel entitled to it and resent the source of that compensation. Hank Rearden’s wife and brother were moochers. They had no source of independent income and lived off of Hank’s wealth. And yet they felt they had the right to dictate how he spent it.

A looter is someone who attempts to use force or the threat of force, including government regulation, to obtain wealth from others.

@BrainGlutton

We all get something for nothing. Human life is mostly free lunches.

A nonsensical statement that contradicts basic economics. Every item you own or use or see around you is produced by the complex exchange of individual’s labor.

@Damuri Ajashi

I have seen systems where people vote on each other’s compensation. You effectively get to affect the bonus level of your boss and colleagues as well as your subordinates. It is only one factor but it some places put a lot of stock in these reviews when determining who gets promoted or given firm clients.

I’m sure the people who actually own equity in the company enjoy a different system. I always tend to question these sort of unorthodox compensation systems or management structures. I feel like they promote groupthink and absolve people of responsibility.

I often wonder what Ayn Rand would make of the modern perception of corporate culture. IMHO, forced collectivism and dehumanizing loss of individual expression is no different if it enforced by a government or by an employer who holds the implied threat of loss of income.
There is one big flaw in Rand’s philosophy IMHO. It doesn’t really get into the mechanism by which people who legitimately create great wealth are prevented from being corrupted into using their wealth to game the system and thus becoming looters.

[panache45]

@msmith537

There is one big flaw in Rand’s philosophy IMHO. It doesn’t really get into the mechanism by which people who legitimately create great wealth are prevented from being corrupted into using their wealth to game the system and thus becoming looters.

You call that a “big flaw”? I’ve got a bigger one. All of Rand’s epistemology, ethics and politics are based on one concept: Man as a being of volitional consciousness. And her concept of individual rights is entirely based on the needs of our consciousness, not at all based on the needs of our bodies. I’m not debating whether we have volitional consciousness; I agree that we do. But we are more than that; we’re not MERELY conscious beings; we also have bodies that have specific needs. And though we need reason to satisfy those needs, we also have physical needs that reason has nothing to do with. Rand herself wrote a lot about the “soul-body dichotomy,” yet she didn’t recognize it in herself. All the sex that goes on in her books: it’s all done for spiritual reasons, never as a result of simply being attracted to someone. And especially in her own personal life: How in hell can you bully someone into having an affair with you, based on the fact that you’re his “ideal” and “highest value,” ignoring the fact that he’s “just not into you” that way.

Rand once said that a philosophy is only as strong as its epistemology. But that should include Objectivism.