James Randi and Objectivism

[Buckaroo]

The proof of that lack of understanding is on full display in this thread. It is that neither you nor anyone else so far in this blog has been able to correctly identify a tenet of the philosophy (even when Dinwar and I lay it out on the page for you) and deal with it on the level of principles.

The favorite modus operandi of the commenters here consists in arguments from intimidation, ad hominems, innuendo, insults, unsubstantiated characterizations, jokes, false assumptions, and other juvenalia that testifies to the desperation of your desire to stop the Ayn Rand train in its tracks—tactics as effective as lying across the tracks in hopes of derailing it.

Just consider the inane assertion that there is no evidence to be found in a YouTube video of a brief TV interview from a talk show in the early 1960's. What on earth made you expect a full philosophical discussion in a talk show interview. Did you look up the position for which you found no evidence and did you investigate if that evidence was in other associated writings? Can you explain your position now?

No amount of fancy-schmancy long-haired pseudo-erudition can dispel the image I suddenly have of l'il MichaelM stamping his tiny feet, red-faced in fury and frustration, while petulantly demanding that we take him seriously and proclaiming that we'll rue the day once the Ayn Rand train pulls into the station. Yes, in my mind's ear he uses the phrase "rue the day."

 

[Twiler]

Okay, here are some specific questions.

Now back to the "Injuns".

Both the Europeans and the earlier tribes had irrational conceptions of who deserved to live or be here or there. Those are issues that raise different concerns, and whether you can grasp it or not yet, on which I think most of your positions and Objectivist positions will agree. Rand was no racist, and neither am I.

The issue that is more complex and pertinent in the current context is the one of property rights that are a corollary to the right to life from which they derive their validity. Property rights recognize the fact that human beings are not genetically equipped like other living entities to automatically act for the sustenance and flourishing of their lives. They have to apply the product of their reason to their physical actions to produce that sustenance.

Where do the rules concerning property rights come from?

The mere fact that men can greatly increase their productivity by voluntary cooperation does not constitute any claim by any other person or persons to a right to compel such cooperation. There does not exist any grounds that would support any one man's claim to the product of another's reason and effort. It is a primary moral principle, therefore, that each man owns and has the sole right to use and/or dispose of the product of his own reason applied to his own physical actions. That product is his property.

Why? The lack of a reason for something to not be true does not indicate that it is true. There's no reason why a man's produce should not belong to me, but that does not indicate that it must belong to me.

Conversely, no man may claim to own something that is not produced by or acquired in a voluntary exchange of a product of his own reason/effort. That is why a thief or an accomplice does not have a right to booty.

Getting this from the above is circular reasoning. You're saying:

1. There is no reason for a man to own another's produce.
2. Therefore, a man owns his own produce.
3. Therefore, another man does not own a man's produce.

It is also why matter cannot be owned, because it is not the product of anyone's reason/effort. Grasping this, one must then distinguish between possession and ownership. The thief possesses your watch, but does not own it.

You can claim you own the land by just consuming the plants and animals on it or sleeping and eating there, but unless you incorporate into the land the product of your reason/effort, there is nothing you can own. The ownership of land actually means that you own the reason/effort that is embodied into the matter you possess and gives it a value greater than it had in its natural state. Because no one else can claim to own that matter, your moral claim to the value of the embodied reason/effort also sanctions a right to its possession.

Where does this rule come from? It seems like an interpretation of your above rules about produce, but someone could equally say that you can't own land because you didn't produce it. And how much produce do you have to incorporate into land to make it yours?

Even if they could not explain these facts when they came here, most of the Europeans did grasp the notion of establishing ownership by the principle of homesteading. The tribes that preceded them neither understood that nor tolerated it.

Evidence?

To the extent the Europeans acknowledged the property of those who settled on and planted the lands and only killed those who killed the arriving settlers that homesteaded other lands and did not support herding them into reservations, they were innocent. To the extent they did not, they were not.

So, which specific people do you believe were guilty, and which were innocent?

 

[arthwollipot]

When consumers are angry corporations turn on a dime.

Yes - that's why the Occupy movement has been so successful.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I read Nathaniel Branden's "Judgement Day" when it came out. I had, myself, only recently exited a fundamentalist religious cult after a stay of over 15 years. The parallels of Mr. Branden's and my experience astounded me - as do the apologies of Ms. Rand's supporters here. The basic "We know the Truth and you don't!" being the chief argument.

It's all so petty and juvenile in retrospect. And the true believers will not be discouraged no matter what evidence is brought to bear. It's something that only a lot of time and continual exposure to ACTUAL reality can remedy...

Alan Greenspan was one of those Rand cultists. His mind boggling shock when the economy crashed revealed him to be a cultist that unfortunately had a negative impact on the world's entire economic system. Really sad and had terrible consequences for so many people.

 

[joesixpack]

I thnk it should be obvious, but I guess it needs saying: I disagree with you on this.

I think it should be obvious, but I guess it needs saying:No you don't, and you actually prove this in the next paragraph

You really know nothing about the current state of the philosophy, do you? Dr. Hsieh is against taxation entirely. Leonard Piekoff, as I recall, advocates a limited taxation. Personally, I think any contract should include a tax, to pay for the enforcement of that contract.

And here is a perfect starting point as to why you don't. You already assume that society has an obligation to tax a contract. This right here is an encroachment on my rights to enter into any contract I so choose. Furthermore, I'm pretty certain your objectivist society will make my use of violence against another illegal with the exception of self defense. This is a restriction on freedom and assumes an objective morality. What Objectivists fail to understand is that simply calling the philosophy "objective" does not make it objective reality. "Rights" are a complete social and cultural construction. There is nothing objective about them

But again, you're committing the Is/Ought Fallacy. If you limit the government to its proper role--protecting citizens from force and fraud--you don't NEED a huge tax base.

It's not a fallacy when you propose a perpetual motion machine and tell you that it violates the laws of physics. Pointing out facts can't be dismissed as is/ought

Nothing you've said thus far, including the pointless commentary on my income, is anything but "This is the way things are now". I mean, look at this line:

The commentary on our income was not at all pointless. Do you imagine the building of roads will become affordable when the government get's out of the way? Schools will be cheaper? Hospitals? Fire departments? No, all of these things are very expensive. I suspect you've never actually looked at the expenses of developing a private road. I happen to know that building a quarter mile of gravel driveway (a one way road) is out of my reach. And maintaining it is a pain in the ass too.

OUR income comes into this equation because you and I are not likely able to pay for the infrastructure that we depend on (unless you're one of the 1%). I was pointing out that, even for the top tier income bracket, the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure necessary for the standard of living that I think people deserve is out of reach. Taxes must be collected.

The translation of this is: It won't work today, under the current system, therefore it's impossible.

No, that's not exactly the proper translation, see above. For further clarification, let me point out that we can't depend on the charity of the 1%ers to provide us with anything but a feudal society. This is fact and has been demonstrated throughout history. If I'm starving, my "Objective rights" mean nothing. You and I are slaves to whomever will give us a scrap of food, and the Koch brothers won't give me any more than a scrap because there is nothing to force them too. And no amount of boycotting them for their greed and unfair labor practice is going to matter because there'll be no one to do it, you and I will be fighting over that scrap of food.

Unless you plan on a vast redistribution of wealth before we change over to an objectivist society, it will not work. And the gradual change over will simply concentrate material wealth in the hands of a smaller and richer elite.

Is/WILL HAPPEN because history shows us this.

Until you're willing to accept that I'm talking about a different system, any further discussion on this point is wasted.

I accept totally that you're talking about a different system. The one you're talking about requires a huge leap of faith in the charity of the very wealthy. You honestly think you'll have the power (financial or legal) to pry the wealth from the very small minority who control it now without force of government on your side? In an objectivist society you will be simply be one of the poor and you will only be able to drop further into poverty.

Again, you really are ignorant of the philosophy. Rand herself discussed this point: having other people around is a value, but it is not the PARAMOUNT value. Most Objectivists I know are quite gregarious, in fact. They understand the value of having other people around, and understand the value of other people in an economy particularly well. Nothing in Objectivism says that we must survive on our own without any interactions with others. In fact, a great deal of the work in this philosophy amounts to answering the question of how to interact with others.

I'm sure you're a fun guy to hang out with and so are many objectivists. But the billionaires dont care. They have plenty of friends at the country club, though they may find you a pleasant person to chat with while you're holding their towel for them. But outside of that, you'll be gregarious with your other poor friends in the vast slums that exist around the giant estates run by the 1%.

What you don't seem to understand is that the second million is a lot easier to make than the first. As you control a certain more wealth, it becomes exponentially easier to both make and take more.

The objective reality which you refuse to see is this; Without government regulation and coercion, wealth becomes more concentrated, not less.

No, not really. Not in the long run. In the long run, the "other options" are merely increased subsurviance to collectivized society.

Actually, this has not been the historic trend. Freedoms exist only in that they may be exercised. Abject poverty renders freedoms meaningless. The cost of reducing abject poverty requires taxing the very wealthy. Why is this such a crime to objectivists? Like I said, the pretzel logic and mental gymnastics of "Objectivist thought" all come down to "I hate paying taxes". Why is the idea of paying taxes considered "subservience"?

And you really should learn what Rand meant when she said that phrase.

I know exactly what she meant when she said that phrase. It was an appeal to emotion. It had nothing to do with reality. It was a way of dressing up her philosophically bankrupt idealism.

Humans are rational beings

Actually, not, they're not. Humans are motivated almost exclusively by emotional drives. Some are more successful at using rationality to satisfy those drives, some less so.

--and sometimes that means interacting with others on a rational basis. You seem to be laboring under the impression that O'ists beleive that hermits are the ideal--alone, cut off from society, without interaction with anyone.

No, I am not. I am under the impression that objectivists believe that it is a viable option and that man somehow evolved outside of culture and social structure. I know otherwise.

They're not. The ideal in O'ism is the businessman: a trader who gets value for value, and who interacts with people constantly. Her heros were scientists, industrialists, teachers, etc.--hardly a philosophy that advocates hermits.

So the ideal is not what most humans are. Most humans are laborers. Most are mediocre. But the world would grind to a halt if they ever stopped their work. All the industrialists and scientists and teachers would starve without them. Objectivists would have them (and their children, regardless of talent) condemned to serfdom.

In fact, historically it's Christianity, which is a collectivistic religion at heart, that lead to the rise of hermits. Something to think about: an individualistic philosophy that advocates dealing with people on a rational basis leads to peolpe gathering together, while a collectivistic religion that stresses asceticism leads to hermits alone in the desert.

Actually, humans invented Christianity, like they invented a lot of social structures, to give meaning to their instinctive need for community. Since most Christians weren't hermetic I don't see that the data supports your assertion.

 

[joesixpack]

... and do what the U.S. did in when they broke the back of the Berlin blockade after World War II.

So, just to point out the giant hole in your example in case you miss it; You're suggesting that the best model for an objectivist response to this humanitarian crisis is the actions taken by a GOVERNMENT funded by TAX REVENUE using a CONSCRIPTED ARMY. It should also be pointed out how unbelievably expensive this operation this was and how meager the supply line was. Helicopters would be less effective and more expensive, by the way.

Let's see a bunch of objectivists get this started. Otherwise, my money's on the villagers (not the Village People) with pitchforks and torches. Oh Wait! That would be illegal AND immoral under the objectivist standard.

 

[The Norseman]

So.

There's a moderate-sized moutain community.

I own a plot of land that happens to be in one of the passes leading into town. By keeping my eye out for opportunity, I later aquire, through voluntary exchange, the plot of land that sits astride the other pass out of town.

Now, I put up a fence, and simply demand a toll of $1000 per trip for anyone who wishes to cross my land.

There's no other way into or out of town (short of climbing the mountains, or a helicopter).

So how would this be handled? Is it perfectly fine for me to, essentially, starve most of the town to death (those who can't afford a helicopter or my tolls)? I have not initiated the use of any force, except as explicitly allowed (to maintain control and use of my own property). I got everything I have by voluntary exchange.

What if I let everyone use the roads across my land for free, unless you're black? Then I simply tell you that you can't use my land?

To question another part of the proposition, who decide whether or not I'm "adding value" to my property? Suppose there are 10 individuals who all buy plots of land covered in timber. 8 start logging operations, producing lumber and timber products for the local community. The other two simply own the land, doing nothing with it but keeping others off it. Which one is adding value?

I think I spotted the flaw in your example and why it'd fail.

The road leading into the town wouldn't be owned by someone who could then voluntarily sell it to you; it'd be community owned, as it were. I don't know if this would be the Ayn Rand way of looking at it, but the road would already be considered "productive use of the land" and vital to the survival of this town and all the inhabitants.

Besides, from the little I understand from O'ism, you could very well be considered to be committing harm to the rest of the individuals through blackmail, coersion and threats of harm and/or death (by deprivation of food). This would prompt community action in preventing you from inflicting this potential harm on the rest of the community.

If you had somehow had control of one of two roads into the town and decided to charge a toll, I'd think that everyone would be fine with it because they'd still have the option of going around. If you controlled one road and someone else controlled the other road, then I have no idea what would happen because my understanding pretty much fizzles out at this point.




However, I still think that the majority of O'ist detractors in this thread are still seeing O'ism only from the point of view of an American-like culture with an essentially small enclave of O'ists in the midst. People aren't seeing that there would be fundamental differences in viewing the world that simply wouldn't occur to people if they were "really" in that situation. O'ism could conceivably work -- just as communism could conceivably work -- when it's the dominant cultural and societal norm. Just because it has never been, nor is currently, does not therefore mean that it cannot work. We simply don't know. But setting up theoreticals based only on how they work now, today, in this society, and then saying that O'ism fails is certainly false.

In other words, if one is to set up theoreticals with which to test the strengths and weaknesses of O'ism, then one should have O'ism as the default frame of reference and not quasi-American belief structures.

Having said that, I'm not particularly attached to one belief structure over another and I'm not trying to defend O'ism per se, especially since I'm not as well-versed in it as others in this thread.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Again, this is why these scenarios are of no value--they can't be implemented in practice. I mean, the instant your henchmen touch someone outside of your property your entire plan collapses. And again, you're not going to be able to stop people like me, who are used to rugged areas, from getting out.

My henchmen find you sneaking over the mountains (which, incidentally I have bought from the local indigenous people who weren't using them anyway) and kill you. The vultures eat your meat and your bones disintegrate in the sun and wind.

Now what? Does Consumer Reports do a retrospective analysis and tell people they should not live in the village? You personally are still dead.

Good luck on your absolute right to your personal property. You personally are still dead.

Your minimalist government says, "Gee, for circumstances such as this we would have to have a Police Force, tax people to pay for it and allow us to restrict the property rights of all -- including yours".

Onanism (sp?) doesn't work. Humans have tried just about every conceivable permutation of societal balance between individual and collective rights. There is a narrow spectrum in which societies survive.

Is your philosophy any more or less justifiable than the Divine Right of Kings? Why is it more "moral"?

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

<big snipporoonie>

13) A moral government must therefore guarantee that:

No person shall initiate the use of physical force or threat thereof to take, withhold, damage or destroy any tangible or intangible value of another person who either created it or acquired it in a voluntary exchange, nor impede any other person's non-coercive actions.

Fine. Fine. Wonderful. Wonderful.

In the Real World ^TM how exactly do you achieve this nirvana?

I'll ask Karl Marx the same question about Communism if you wish.

In neither case do I expect an answer involves assumptions that are not contrary to human nature as it currently exists.

 

[MichaelM]

I think I spotted the flaw in your example and why it'd fail.

The road leading into the town wouldn't be owned by someone who could then voluntarily sell it to you; it'd be community owned, as it were. I don't know if this would be the Ayn Rand way of looking at it, but the road would already be considered "productive use of the land" and vital to the survival of this town and all the inhabitants.

Yes. And actually there could be many ways to own a road. One or more persons, a condominium association, a corporation, a club ... anyone could build a road for any purpose if they could get the land and afford the cost to build it. But most roads would be built by the companies who could make the most profit from them by enticing the most drivers to use them because they provided the highest quality surfaces at the lowest possible cost of use and ease of payment. Many retail corporations or groups thereof would build roads open to the public for free just to get them to their stores. No such business would ever survive if they arbitrarily cut off access without a reason their customers agreed with. They would switch to the roads of a competitor.

Besides, from the little I understand from O'ism, you could very well be considered to be committing harm to the rest of the individuals through blackmail, coersion and threats of harm and/or death (by deprivation of food). This would prompt community action in preventing you from inflicting this potential harm on the rest of the community.

No. The road owner in this case could block it for whatever reason unless he had a long term agreement with the town or others to keep it open. And what town would grow into a position like that without first securing access through the one road out?—only one of the gaping holes in this hypothetical that resulted from the poser not thinking it through first.

However, I still think that the majority of O'ist detractors in this thread are still seeing O'ism only from the point of view of an American-like culture with an essentially small enclave of O'ists in the midst. People aren't seeing that there would be fundamental differences in viewing the world that simply wouldn't occur to people if they were "really" in that situation.

Absolutely! With few notable exceptions, the comments to this thread are nothing but colloquial assumptions drawn from irrelevant examples.

 

[MichaelM]

Fine. Fine. Wonderful. Wonderful.

In the Real World ^TM how exactly do you achieve this nirvana?

Education. When a significant portion of the population of any particular nation rediscovers thinking and begins to recognize how much more civilized a society would be wherein coercion would be prohibited, policies would gradually change: those who want to be able to take from others and dictate their lives whenever they can manage to outnumber their victims will gradually be outnumbered by those who want to interact with their fellow man on a voluntary basis.

The progress of Ayn Rand's influence has been phenomenal from 1960 to now. If her ideas were not succeeding and threatening the old ways the commenters here cling to so desperately, this thread would not be 8 pages long. No one would pay attention to it.

GoogleAlerts sends me notifications of multiple threads about Ayn Rand and Objectivism every day. There are Objectivist scholars now with chairs in Universities, and school teachers request over a million copies of her books each year from the Ayn Rand Institute. Libertarian TV hosts like Judge Andrew Napolitano and John Stossel quote Rand and invite guests from the Ayn Rand Center think tank to appear on their shows frequently. Atlas Shrugged is now 50 years later still in the top of the Amazon best seller lists in its category, and on, and on....

I'll ask Karl Marx the same question about Communism if you wish.

Do not underestimate the difference between the potential success of a philosophy that has to sell the public on the benefits of being a victim of coercion from that of a philosophy teaching them the benefits of freedom.

 

[MichaelM]

So, just to point out the giant hole in your example in case you miss it; You're suggesting that the best model for an objectivist response to this humanitarian crisis is the actions taken by a GOVERNMENT funded by TAX REVENUE using a CONSCRIPTED ARMY. It should also be pointed out how unbelievably expensive this operation this was and how meager the supply line was. Helicopters would be less effective and more expensive, by the way.

Let's see a bunch of objectivists get this started. Otherwise, my money's on the villagers (not the Village People) with pitchforks and torches. Oh Wait! That would be illegal AND immoral under the objectivist standard.

Lacking from your comments is the ability to take a quite different concrete example like the blockade and discern the principle it is an instance of then apply that principle to the example under consideration.

 

[MichaelM]

Okay, here are some specific questions.
Where do the rules concerning property rights come from?

From the specific nature of the human being, i.e. the prerequisites necessitated by the particular means by which the kind of living entity we are survives and flourishes consistent with that nature.

There's no reason why a man's produce should not belong to me, but that does not indicate that it must belong to me.

If a human being survives and flourishes solely from the application of his reason to his effort, then he has a moral obligation to himself to never condone a society in which that necessity may be taken at will by others for their purposes. Rather his obligation is to advocate and support a social structure in which the values he creates and acquires in exchanges will be his to use and disperse in accordance with his own judgment of what is good or bad for his own life.

So you may own the product of another by trading him for some of yours on the terms the two of you agree to with no interference from anyone else.

 

[Twiler]

Okay, here are some specific questions.
Where do the rules concerning property rights come from?

From the specific nature of the human being, i.e. the prerequisites necessitated by the particular means by which the kind of living entity we are survives and flourishes consistent with that nature.

Aren't you really saying 'Property rights are practical'?

If a human being survives and flourishes solely from the application of his reason to his effort, then he has a moral obligation to himself to never condone a society in which that necessity may be taken at will by others for their purposes. Rather his obligation is to advocate and support a social structure in which the values he creates and acquires in exchanges will be his to use and disperse in accordance with his own judgment of what is good or bad for his own life.

So you may own the product of another by trading him for some of yours on the terms the two of you agree to with no interference from anyone else.

Why? Can't a person decide to support a society that has the power to confiscate a person's produce because they believe that such a society will serve the greater good?

And again, where do your rules concerning the ownership of land come from?

 

[tsig]

Okay, here are some specific questions.
Where do the rules concerning property rights come from?

From the specific nature of the human being, i.e. the prerequisites necessitated by the particular means by which the kind of living entity we are survives and flourishes consistent with that nature.



If a human being survives and flourishes solely from the application of his reason to his effort, then he has a moral obligation to himself to never condone a society in which that necessity may be taken at will by others for their purposes. Rather his obligation is to advocate and support a social structure in which the values he creates and acquires in exchanges will be his to use and disperse in accordance with his own judgment of what is good or bad for his own life.

So you may own the product of another by trading him for some of yours on the terms the two of you agree to with no interference from anyone else.

Property rights come from human nature?

 

[joesixpack]

Lacking from your comments is the ability to take a quite different concrete example like the blockade and discern the principle it is an instance of then apply that principle to the example under consideration.

Wut? I don't understand what you mean by the underlined part.

If you're suggesting that this is an impossible scenario, then I will point out that where I live is a narrow peninsula. It would be relatively simple for a person to block all economical access to my town and two others. They don't have to literally starve us all, just making access to my area too expensive to make any economic enterprise unprofitable would render my land (and my 'reason/effort') worthless.

ETA: Oh, wait, I do understand what the underlined part means. Your saying that in principal this demonstrates how altruistic objectivists could jump to the aid of those who have been cut off. What I pointed out was the sheer magnitude of such an undertaking would be incredibly expensive, and my objectivist friends outside the blockade would not have the resources to win.

 

[joesixpack]

If a human being survives and flourishes solely from the application of his reason to his effort, ...

Do you have an example from history where this has happened? I don't think that it has actually never happened. Furthermore, you're not going to be the first.

 

[Earthborn]

This is a gross underestimation of the capacity of men to survive alone and just as grossly irrelevant. Men are not tribal animals. We do not have to act together. We choose to act together to benefit from the efficiencies inherent in the division of labor. A group of human beings who choose to interact socio-economically is not a tribe.

We are genetically equipped with the tools necessary to act for our sustenance (reason and physical capacities) but unlike other animals, we are not genetically programmed to make the choices of how to use our tools.

Here's a little experiment I suggest you don't actually perform, because the results are rather predictable: Take a newborn baby. Put it somewhere in the wilderness. See how long it survives. It is equipped with all the genetics everyone else has. It only lacks the knowledge gathered by others, the care it needs from others and the physical capacities others have helped us develop.

Another experiment you can do that is less problematic: watch one of those survival shows on Discovery. (I like Dual Survival the best). See how the survivalists clammer to every piece of civilisation they have or can find. Their knife, a piece of fire steel, an empty can, a small sheet of plastic... They know that everything that they cannot make with their bare hands from the trees and rocks around them can help them survive. And they also know they can only do so because of the knowledge they have gained from other people.

Many animals depend on the care and knowledge of their peers to survive. But few are so helpless without it as humans are.

On the contrary, with a few exceptions, it would be an irrational choice to forsake the enormous value of living in a society of (rational) men.

It would even be an irrational choice to forsake the enormous value of living in a society of irrational men (there are no others).

1) "Man is a rational animal" means that his specific and unique means of survival is a rational faculty—a capacity that enables him to organize an infinite number of sensory perceptions into broad concepts and concepts of concepts and so on to amass the necessary knowledge to survive and flourish.

Using this definition it does not seem obvious to me at all that "man is a rational animal".

Human beings do have automatic functional, physical actions over which they have little or no control. Human beings have automatic psychological actions that appear to be instincts, but are actually responses to prior evaluations of oneself and the rest of the universe in relation to oneself. Those can be altered and controlled.

All behaviour can be altered and controlled.

Human beings do not have instincts like the other animals that genetically predetermine their responses to their perceptions or other stimuli.

Other animals don't have those either, though to be fair: when Ayn Rand wrote her stuff it was a popular misconception that they did.

As I have previously explained, to advocate such is self refuting, because to be useful, it has to be advocated as being true. But you cannot have both truth and instincts, because there would be no way to distinguish those assessments of your thoughts and actions from each other.

This is meaningless.

 

[arthwollipot]

Okay, I've read this thread. As I mentioned before I know very little about Ayn Rand or Objectivism except what I've heard from Objectivists (I refuse to call them O'ists), and I still haven't read a word that Rand wrote.

Purely from the contents of this thread I will say this. Objectivism terrifies the hell out of me. I do not want to live in that world. Please, give me my taxes and regulations, since they seem to be the only things that protect me from human nature, which seems to me to be utterly contradictory to what Objectivists in this thread have described it as.

I have a question for the Objectivists. What do you do with sociopaths? There have always been people who put their own welfare above that of others. How do they fare in an Objectivist "utopia"?

 

[MarkCorrigan]

I have a question for the Objectivists. What do you do with sociopaths? There have always been people who put their own welfare above that of others. How do they fare in an Objectivist "utopia"?

Who do you think rises to the top?

All humans, given the chance, will screw over other humans that they are not intimately acquainted with to get themselves, or their intimate acquaintances a better deal. Always. That's why regulatory groups have to exist. Once the free market is left totally to itself, waste and bloating are an inevitable outcome, because all the people involved with the process will line their own pockets. Instead of cutting this waste, standards will instead be cut. Groups will use cheaper, lower grade things to make their products with because then they can charge less than their competitors. Once the other firms notice this, they will either slash their own costs somehow or die. Once again, it will be the consumer that loses out.

However, once we get to the lowest possible grade produce being used, customers will complain. They may even organise themselves and complain on a wide scale. However, during this time, those involved with the production, those at the top of the tree, will have made enough money that they will be the ones able to dictate what happens with the voluntary pay police or army. They will be the ones holding the purse strings, so they will be in charge. Even if sections of the police and army rebel, history shows there will always be enough out there willing to do whatever they are ordered to do, or whatever they can to survive.

The outcome of a deregulated market is not that the market will regulate itself, it is that it will continue to race to the bottom in standards to cut costs. If there is no outside force (like government) that has the ability to stop this, and the legitimacy to back it up, all the power will be in the hands of the rich. I have no desire to see this happen, but I'm quite prepared to send all the objectivists off on their own to some remote corner, and when what's left come crawling back, I will be quite happy to take them back under the revolting wing of government.