A Philosophy Professor Discusses Ayn Rand in his Ethics Class

[Merton]

Either rights apply to EVERYONE, or you can't trust that they'll be applied to you.

That is pretty much what I was getting at: why do rights apply to everyone and not just Objectivists? What about rational self-interest leads to rights for everyone? In my example, it seems to me that self-interest would allow the killing of this communist, as everyone benefits from this act yet the Objectivists, who now comprise the whole of society, retain their rights. To turn your comment around on you, it seems that rights apply to everyone in power, or you can't trust they'll apply to you. If Objectivists have power (and their rights are therefore guaranteed), I don't see what would stop them from "violating" the rights of others.

 

[Akri]

That is pretty much what I was getting at: why do rights apply to everyone and not just Objectivists?

Because there's no rational basis for giving rights only to Objectivists, and because it's in everyone's self-interest to have a society where all individuals are considered to have rights.

What about rational self-interest leads to rights for everyone?

So long as you're the one in power it need not trouble you if everyone gets rights or not. You have the power, so your rights are secure. But there is no way to guarantee you will always have the power. If you should lose your power it would be bad for you if you no longer had rights. Thus it's in your best interest if everyone has rights, even if you're currently in power.

To turn your comment around on you, it seems that rights apply to everyone in power, or you can't trust they'll apply to you.

How does that work? If I'm not the one in power (either because I never was, or because I lost it) how does having rights apply to those in power help me at all? The entire point of my statement is that power can be lost, so you have to consider what your situation would be if you were the powerless one.

 

[marplots]

(some clipped)

So long as you're the one in power it need not trouble you if everyone gets rights or not. You have the power, so your rights are secure. But there is no way to guarantee you will always have the power. If you should lose your power it would be bad for you if you no longer had rights. Thus it's in your best interest if everyone has rights, even if you're currently in power.

This caught my eye because it reminded my of Muammar Gaddafi, Ceaușescu and others - dictators with no retirement plan. But immediately after, I wondered why they hadn't acted rationally under the same idea.

It would seem that if rights were set as mentioned, an alternative would be to make sure you are never out of power - exactly what has been accomplished by other dictators who died while still in power.

 

[Akri]

It would seem that if rights were set as mentioned, an alternative would be to make sure you are never out of power

This is impossible, though. Not because it's impossible to be in power your entire life, but because it's impossible to make sure you will be in power your entire life. No matter how cruel your regime is the peasants could revolt. If you've got an army that could squash the revolt your army could be swayed against you. An enemy could show up with a bigger army. A famine or plague could hit, killing your soldiers just as your peasants are getting really really mad at you.

You could certainly TRY to ensure that you never lose power, and you may succeed at never losing power, but it's a gamble.

 

[marplots]

This is impossible, though. Not because it's impossible to be in power your entire life, but because it's impossible to make sure you will be in power your entire life. No matter how cruel your regime is the peasants could revolt. If you've got an army that could squash the revolt your army could be swayed against you. An enemy could show up with a bigger army. A famine or plague could hit, killing your soldiers just as your peasants are getting really really mad at you.

You could certainly TRY to ensure that you never lose power, and you may succeed at never losing power, but it's a gamble.

I can't get past the fact that people do this though. People who become dictators with no retirement plan, at least none assured. Whatever the mechanism (denial, fooling themselves, too stupid to get it), the fact is that we do have dictators who do not follow this principle.

If I say those people aren't acting rationally for the reason you cite, then all I am saying is that people do not act rationally and dictators are one type. Even if I don't dispute that point (which we could wrestle with a bit), it still leaves the matter of Objectivism in a world where the non-Objectivist has more room to maneuver (dictator being one such place). This brings us back to the situation that brought up the point - an imbalance in recognized rights in a mixed situation.

 

[Merton]

This is impossible, though. Not because it's impossible to be in power your entire life, but because it's impossible to make sure you will be in power your entire life. No matter how cruel your regime is the peasants could revolt.

Wouldn't this allow encourage those in power to only allow enough rights to stay revolt? In fact, if you could run a propaganda campaign and influence people to like the government/dictator/what-have-you that's in power, wouldn't that be a worthy goal? For instance, Kim Jong-il enjoyed an immense cult of personality while in power, despite what I think we'd agree are human rights violations imposed by the government. It is likely that Kim Jong-un will enjoy the same benefits, so why should he better the condition of North Korean citizens? Or why should he give them all their rights instead of just a few to keep them happy?

 

[jimbob]

Recipe for a crapsack world.

Boycotting McDonalds has no effect because the company does business all over the world, no amount of local opposition will make a difference, and an ugly building in some far away city is not enough to get people to give up their Happy Meals. Not even if the building also blocks the main landing approach for the local municipal civilian airport.

But by the same token, the owners of Ronossus have no recourse when the airport decides to route planes right past the building anyhow. No one can tell them where they can and can't fly their planes!

Then, one foggy and windy day, the problem resolves itself, at the cost of one jetliner, one ugly building, and 8,000 lives (all of whom chose to work in a building that had planes flying past it 100 feet away every day, or chose to take a flight that they knew, or at least could have figured out had they investigated closely, would be flying close to a skyscraper while landing, so what's the problem?) Another scorching success for Objectivism!

The error is assuming that being able to make a choice means a better alternative is available. Air travelers who didn't want to risk the Ronossus landing could choose another airport... but the next closest airport is also unsafe, because the new transmitter for "radar-phone" service was built nearby and jams the airport's radar (if I own the land, I can emit whatever electromagnetic radiation from there that I want to, it's not as though the electromagnetic spectrum were some sort of commons, right?). Or you could take the roads hoping that none of the 2,400 toll booths en route would decide to charge the 20,000% "peak time premium" that day (it's my road and I can charge whatever I like, or you can just turn around, right?). Or if you want to be able to visit Mom without those risks, you can move closer to her... and work in Ronossus because that's where the only business in your line of work that's hiring in the area is located. In crapsack world, there are always alternatives but never any better ones.

Heck, you can't even stop your next-door neighbors from having noisy parties all night every night, because it's their land.

Wait, yes you can. There's a solution. You and your neighbors can sign a binding covenant that sets up rules you all agree to for mutual benefit. Such as, no noise after certain hours, and no putting up a toll booth on the part of the road that goes past your house, and no broadcast transmissions that overload everyone else's radios and TVs making them useless. Your right to enter into and participate in such a covenant is unrestricted, even if it's permanent and includes provisions that you cannot sell or transfer your property without the buyer also agreeing to the same covenant. If you breach the covenant, the courts will enforce it upon you at your neighbors' request.

I'm beginning to see the light here. If we want to prevent Ronossus, everyone in the city can sign a covenant, to agree to a set of rules that include, for instance, zoning restrictions and building height restrictions and requiring approval from an aesthetics committee to build buildings.

But... what if our Ronossus CEO doesn't want to sign the covenant? We can't force him to. No problem! We include, in the covenant, a provision that no signer is permitted to engage in any trade within the region with anyone who is not a signer. That includes permitting them to travel through your property. If everyone else signs, Mr. CEO can still use his land however he wants, but getting to and from his land requires the use of other people's land (there are no commons, remember) and so is not his right! Perhaps he can come and go by helicopter (as long as he keeps in mind that his abutters are free to aim lasers and loft large balloons on Kevlar tethers however they see fit from their own land, assuming their covenant permits it), but good luck to him getting his construction workers and materials to the site to build Ronossus, or expecting businesses or employees to come there to use the building. Thus, he can choose to keep the land but do nothing with it that he can't do with his own hands or those of a few people coming and going by helicopter, choose to sign the covenant himself and abide by its provisions when deciding what to build there, or sell the land.

That works so well, perhaps we could scale it up even more. There's no reason why everyone in the country couldn't choose to agree to a similar covenant!

Which means: the only thing standing between anyone right now, and living in a manner consistent with every principle of Objectivism, is for them to make a declaration stating:

By my free choice, I agree to be a citizen of [name of country], and to abide by the laws and governmental systems of that nation in perpetuity.

Of course, the government will just continue to enforce the laws on every citizen regardless of whether they've made that declaration or not.

And that's where we stand today. You can choose to personally assert the declaration above any time you want. Then, congratulations, you're living in a manner entirely consistent with Objectivist principles. If you do not, then that's your free choice and if you're a true Objectivist you have to accept the consequences without complaint.

Respectfully,
Myriad

I've posted along similar lines before, but yours is better.

 

[Akri]

I can't get past the fact that people do this though. People who become dictators with no retirement plan, at least none assured. Whatever the mechanism (denial, fooling themselves, too stupid to get it), the fact is that we do have dictators who do not follow this principle.

I'm not saying people don't do this. I'm saying that those people are making a dangerous gamble, and expressing why it would be in their self-interest to have a society where all rights are respected.

If I say those people aren't acting rationally for the reason you cite, then all I am saying is that people do not act rationally

Agreed. But the discussion wasn't about whether people act rationally. It was about why it is in the self-interest of Objectivists to extend rights to non-Objectivists, even when the Objectivists are in power.

 

[Akri]

Wouldn't this allow encourage those in power to only allow enough rights to stay revolt?

People don't just revolt because they lack rights. They might revolt because they don't think the king is a good leader for other reasons. Someone else may want power, and he may get enough followers to lead a revolution. It doesn't need to be a peasant revolt, either. A few of the ruler's advisers could organize a coup because they want the power.

There is nothing a person in power can do that removes the risk of losing power.

In fact, if you could run a propaganda campaign and influence people to like the government/dictator/what-have-you that's in power, wouldn't that be a worthy goal?

It might be, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. But you still have the problem of it being impossible to ensure that the person who is in power will remain in power (and in this case you also cannot ensure that the person in power will remain on your side).

For instance, Kim Jong-il enjoyed an immense cult of personality while in power, despite what I think we'd agree are human rights violations imposed by the government. It is likely that Kim Jong-un will enjoy the same benefits, so why should he better the condition of North Korean citizens? Or why should he give them all their rights instead of just a few to keep them happy?

Can a revolution not happen if there's a cult of personality surrounding the leader? Unless such an event is impossible (not unlikely, but completely impossible) then Jong-un can lose power.

 

[Akri]

I've posted along similar lines before, but yours is better.

You may want to take a look at the posts which refute large chunks of that.

 

[marplots]

I'm not saying people don't do this. I'm saying that those people are making a dangerous gamble, and expressing why it would be in their self-interest to have a society where all rights are respected.

Maybe it's a matter of self-interest being multi-dimensional. Certainly, I do take risks and I think I take them rationally by balancing payoff against negative outcomes.

So this makes me wonder how important to Objectivism, not only rationality is, but how skilled people are at using the tool to achieve their desired outcome and avoid mistakes. I assume there's a spectrum of ability here.

And this leads me once again into the area of rights. For example, at some point I assume people lose whatever it means to be human under objectivism, in the way we do it now with fetuses and extended to those in a coma or aged. Can I violate their rights when they are incapable of utilizing them? I suppose infants would be a form of this and Objectivism allows us to raise children. But more nuanced is the idea that someone fails to make solid rational decisions in the sense of mistakes, but not just mistakes, maybe a kind of demonstrable flaw about their thinking process.

Somewhere in there they ought to lose their right to be free from outside obligation. Is that addressed in Objectivism? After all, your inability to be rational could potentially harm me, couldn't it?

 

[Akri]

marplots, you're starting to hit on issues I don't fully understand myself. Hopefully Dinwar or someone else who understand Objectivism will be able to come along and address your post.

 

[jimbob]

You may want to take a look at the posts which refute large chunks of that.

Could you show me some? I am not being sarcastic but haven't actually seen any that effectively refute most of that.

 

[Akri]

Could you show me some? I am not being sarcastic but haven't actually seen any that effectively refute most of that.

Posts 200 and 203 point out the issues with the first half of the post, and post 209 kicks off a bit of discussion about the issue with the second half. I'm too lazy to go beyond that right now, especially since I have a game of Diablo 2 waiting for me

 

[jimbob]

Boycotting McDonalds has no effect because the company does business all over the world, no amount of local opposition will make a difference, and an ugly building in some far away city is not enough to get people to give up their Happy Meals. Not even if the building also blocks the main landing approach for the local municipal civilian airport.

But by the same token, the owners of Ronossus have no recourse when the airport decides to route planes right past the building anyhow. No one can tell them where they can and can't fly their planes!

Actually, I believe air space could be owned the same way land is--so the airport would be able to halt the construction of Ronossus if it was going to be in airspace they owned for landing planes. Meanwhile if the owners of Ronossus owned the airspace around the building then planes would not be allowed to fly there without permission.

If all airspace is privately owned, that makes it even sillier. How does any airport do anything - having to find out who owns then rent/buy airspace rights from every small householder under the flightpath? Maybe they don't bother and just steal the rights until Ronossus builds a GBFO tower, wherreupon you are back to Myriad's scenario.

the next closest airport is also unsafe, because the new transmitter for "radar-phone" service was built nearby and jams the airport's radar (if I own the land, I can emit whatever electromagnetic radiation from there that I want to, it's not as though the electromagnetic spectrum were some sort of commons, right?)

I don't know how Objectivists would deal with this issue. Though one possible argument is that if you're interfering with someone's property (not property values, mind, but the property itself) then you're violating their rights and are in the wrong. But that's just an off-the-top-of-my-head guess. Dinwar will probably be able to provide a more accurate answer.

The answer to this is to have a collective allocation of the electromagnetic spectrum. The only way this can work is by a state-mandated enforcement.

Or you could take the roads hoping that none of the 2,400 toll booths en route would decide to charge the 20,000% "peak time premium" that day (it's my road and I can charge whatever I like, or you can just turn around, right?).

If there's only one route to get somewhere important (or if one person owns all routes) then yes, this might happen. But if you have multiple routes owned by multiple people then you also have competition, which tends to drive prices down. And if one person does own all the roads (or if the road-owners all agree to fix prices or whatever) there's always the chance of someone else buying some land and building a new road, having a lower toll, and becoming filthy rich when everyone uses his road.

Another possibility is that the roads WOULDN'T be privately owned--everyone in a community could agree to pay for the construction and maintenance of a road or road system. That certainly wouldn't work in all situations, but probably would for some (neighborhoods, for example).

Building new roads is going to take time and capital. Owners of established roads would be able to modulate the price to make it unattractive for newcomers to enter into the business and justify their investment.

I already have my stretch of road - you do not. At the moment I make a huge profit on my tolls, but it is still cheaper (just) than any of the alternatives. Because of the huge profits, my road is fully depreciated so have no capital costs, and only have to mange upkeep costs and toll collection.

You consider building a competing road, but need to satisfy investors that it will make a profit. You will have capital costs to sustain this road and pay off the investors within their required timescale. Because of this your break-even point would be above the break-even point for my road. We both know this and you (and your potential investors) also know that I will have no compunction in lowering my tolls below your break-even point and ensure you never return a profit on your road.

Because of this - nobody decides to build a competing stretch of road to mine and I have a nice little earner which I maintain at the minimum level to make it attractive. (Yes I live in the UK and know about borked transport policies, or indeed the Skye Bridge which shows that you don't need an objectivist system for monopolistic practices to occur).

Or if you want to be able to visit Mom without those risks, you can move closer to her... and work in Ronossus because that's where the only business in your line of work that's hiring in the area is located. In crapsack world, there are always alternatives but never any better ones.

Sure, if you design the scenario so that the only options are bad ones then that's the result you're going to get.

I'll come back to the rest of your post later, if Dinwar doesn't beat me to it. The really really short version is that there are differences between a voluntary contract between individuals, and the laws of a government (quick note: laws WOULD exist under Objectivism, so this isn't an argument against the concept of laws).

The point isn't that you design the scenario so that the only options are bad ones. The pint is that such a scenario is the most plausible outcome for an objectivist system. Who will rise to the top? The most ruthless business leaders. The objectivist system has fewer checks and balances than the current system and indeed or indeed the 19th Century version of capitalism, where such unscrupulous practices were more common.

Payment in company Scrip? Child labour? Company towns? Bankrupting all opposition? Unfettered monopolistic practices? Then one has to discuss matters like defence of the realm. How does such an objectivist system with so many monopolies making everything inefficient a decent military or indeed military research? What is to stop North Korea deciding that California would make a nice addition to the People's Democratic Republic?

 

[Akri]

If all airspace is privately owned, that makes it even sillier.

I didn't suggest that all airspace would be owned. I merely suggested that airspace would be ownable--meaning the issue of someone building a skyscraper that would interfere with takeoff/landing for an airport is not a situation that would necessarily occur.

How does any airport do anything - having to find out who owns then rent/buy airspace rights from every small householder under the flightpath?

Why would every small household own the airspace up at 20,000 feet?

But let's say that this ridiculous scenario occurs: maybe airports will (either individually or as a group) buy the airspace that makes up their flight paths, so that nobody else can interfere. Really, this is not an insurmountable problem.

The answer to this is to have a collective allocation of the electromagnetic spectrum. The only way this can work is by a state-mandated enforcement.

Actually, Dinwar gives another solution--airports own the frequencies they use (at least within a certain area).

Snipped the section on roads

Nobody said there couldn't be problems in an Objectivist society. But your scenario starts with a few assumptions, like the idea that either there's only one road to get somewhere, or that all of the roads are owned by one person. Neither of those will be the case in every area. And if those do occur and the result is high tolls, there are still ways around it--for instance, carpools or buses that split the cost of the toll between all the people using it.

And concerning the argument that you can always lower your tolls to stop new roads from being profitable, there's a limit to how far you can go with that. What happens if your road needs maintenance? How much are you paying the toll booth operators (or, if you use machines, how much is the upkeep cost on those?) How long can you keep your prices low enough to make competition impossible?

The point isn't that you design the scenario so that the only options are bad ones.

Except that's exactly what Myriad did. Saying "if you want to live here you must work for a bad company because they're the only one around" is deliberately designing the scenario so that there can be no good option. WHY is Ronossus the only place around to get work? Hell, how was Ronossus built? I asked that question before and never got an answer--it's merely assumed that any bad thing someone can imagine will occur, while any good alternative has to be justified.

The objectivist system has fewer checks and balances than the current system and indeed or indeed the 19th Century version of capitalism, where such unscrupulous practices were more common.

You mean the version of capitalism where workers didn't typically have rights, leading to scenarios that would be criminal in an Objectivist society?

Payment in company Scrip?

If that's what you agree to, then sure.

Child labour?

Unless there are large numbers of children who cannot be cared for this is unlikely to be an issue. Child labor wasn't a problem because everyone back then hated children; it was a combination of societal views (children doing work had always been a normal part of society) and the kids needing to work so that they could eat.

Company towns?

Again, if the workers agree to it.

Bankrupting all opposition?

How? This is similar to another question I've asked and not gotten an answer to. Remember, we're talking about an Objectivist society, here, so the actions cannot involve things like fraud or coercion (not that those won't happen, but they'd be just as illegal as they are now).

Unfettered monopolistic practices?

Such as? And how do the monopolies get established?

Then one has to discuss matters like defence of the realm. How does such an objectivist system with so many monopolies making everything inefficient a decent military or indeed military research? What is to stop North Korea deciding that California would make a nice addition to the People's Democratic Republic?

You've left out a few words here. But A) the military would be run by the government, and B) you're assuming everything would be done with monopolies without explaining why this is the necessary result.

 

[Ladewig]

Please ignore this post.
I did not read the whole thread yet and therefore shouldn't be commenting.

Why would every small household own the airspace up at 20,000 feet?

I don't see why they wouldn't - but the important question is how do we go from the current system to the new system. Do airports simply lay claim to the airspace they currently use or do homeowners simply lay claim to a 20,000 foot column of air above their houses?

At Chicago's O'Hare, runways 27L and 27R require a swath one mile wide that extends from the airport all the way to Lake Michigan (about 11 miles away). There are tens of thousands of property owners in that eleven square miles.

Actually, Dinwar gives another solution--airports own the frequencies they use (at least within a certain area).

Works for me. I'll just buy up small parcels of land near growing cities that don't have airports and build my own radar frequency and radio frequency towers. When someone wants to build an airport, I will say that I have a right to the frequencies I've been using for years and will need millions of dollars to stop using my personal antennas.

.............
But rather than argue over how to solve very specific problems that might have workaraounds, let's talk big picture. If you are an office clerk in NYC, you can quit your job and perhaps find another the next day. On the other hand, if you are a coal miner in the mountains of West Virgina, quitting your job will be orders of magnitude more difficult under the new system. The coal company can buy up the very few roads that lead into and out of the town. It can then say, the toll will be $1 for company employees and $1000 for non-employees. No one is going to build a competitive road across mountainous terrain to go to what will essentially be a company town. At that point, the miner owners can institute company script and require employees to sign away their rights and resources arising from deaths caused by safety violations. At this point, a miner cannot simply sell his house and move away because no one will want to buy a house surrounded by company property and company stores.

 

[Brainache]

But let's say that this ridiculous scenario occurs: maybe airports will (either individually or as a group) buy the airspace that makes up their flight paths, so that nobody else can interfere. Really, this is not an insurmountable problem.

Just out of curiosity, who would they buy the airspace from? Who owns it in the first place?

 

[jimbob]

I

If all airspace is privately owned, that makes it even sillier.

I didn't suggest that all airspace would be owned. I merely suggested that airspace would be ownable--meaning the issue of someone building a skyscraper that would interfere with takeoff/landing for an airport is not a situation that would necessarily occur.

How does any airport do anything - having to find out who owns then rent/buy airspace rights from every small householder under the flightpath?

Why would every small household own the airspace up at 20,000 feet?

But let's say that this ridiculous scenario occurs: maybe airports will (either individually or as a group) buy the airspace that makes up their flight paths, so that nobody else can interfere. Really, this is not an insurmountable problem.

Why should landowners *not* own the mining rights below their land and the airspace rights above their land? At what altitude should they be owned by some other entity? Who decides what this entity is? Why should airports have first dibs at this? What if a landowner wanted to build their own airport?


To me the answer is easy - the government owns the rights to the airspace and can lease it out.

The answer to this is to have a collective allocation of the electromagnetic spectrum. The only way this can work is by a state-mandated enforcement.

Actually, Dinwar gives another solution--airports own the frequencies they use (at least within a certain area).

Why should they? Do airports have some special place that entitles them to this? Who decides that spectrum allocation is actually an asset?

To me the answer is easy - the government owns the rights to the spectrum and can lease it out.

Snipped the section on roads

Nobody said there couldn't be problems in an Objectivist society. But your scenario starts with a few assumptions, like the idea that either there's only one road to get somewhere, or that all of the roads are owned by one person. Neither of those will be the case in every area. And if those do occur and the result is high tolls, there are still ways around it--for instance, carpools or buses that split the cost of the toll between all the people using it.

And concerning the argument that you can always lower your tolls to stop new roads from being profitable, there's a limit to how far you can go with that. What happens if your road needs maintenance? How much are you paying the toll booth operators (or, if you use machines, how much is the upkeep cost on those?) How long can you keep your prices low enough to make competition impossible?

Not quite. I am assuming that I am a road-owner and for reasons of efficiency own a stretch of road, along the lines of the British Turnpikes but without the need for acts of parliament to enable their setting up.

If I have an established stretch of road that is fully paid off, all my expenses will only be running costs. Any new competitor will have running costs as well as having to pay the capital costs in order for their investors to make money. Therefore the established road has a far lower break-even point. As the investors know this, they know that it is a bad risk to try competing with an established road.

I am making the (reasonable) assumption that the capital costs will be significantly more than the running costs.

How would you deal with water supply and electricity supply or indeed any other infrastructure? - I guess compulsory purchase orders are frowned upon.

As for the highlighted bit - that isn't really the issue. There will be places where it is.

The point isn't that you design the scenario so that the only options are bad ones.

Except that's exactly what Myriad did. Saying "if you want to live here you must work for a bad company because they're the only one around" is deliberately designing the scenario so that there can be no good option. WHY is Ronossus the only place around to get work? Hell, how was Ronossus built? I asked that question before and never got an answer--it's merely assumed that any bad thing someone can imagine will occur, while any good alternative has to be justified.

History shows that this is what happens. Read up on robber barons
For example Rockefeller:

For many of his competitors, Rockefeller had merely to show them his books so they could see what they were up against, then make them a decent offer. If they refused his offer, he told them he would run them into bankruptcy, then cheaply buy up their assets at auction.

There will be places and industries where this is the case. Not everywhere, but there would be many.

The objectivist system has fewer checks and balances than the current system and indeed or indeed the 19th Century version of capitalism, where such unscrupulous practices were more common.

You mean the version of capitalism where workers didn't typically have rights, leading to scenarios that would be criminal in an Objectivist society?

Not exactly.

Situations where there are local monopolies or slum landlords who are local economic superpowers, so that the best option for many people would be to sign away their rights in exchange for exorbitantly priced sevices.

Debt Bondage is another social ill that would occur

Debt bondage in India is most prevalent in agricultural areas. Farmers taking small loans can find themselves paying interest on the loans that exceeds 100% of the loan per year.[1] Debts that are not paid off in a debtor's lifetime can be passed down to their descendants, making the original debtor's family indebted to the families of rural landlords and money lenders, across multiple generations.[citation needed] This has been portrayed in the famous 1957 Hindi film epic Mother India.

Payment in company Scrip?

If that's what you agree to, then sure.

Situations where there are local monopolies or slum landlords who are local economic superpowers, so that the best option for many people would be to sign away their rights in exchange for exorbitantly priced sevices.

Child labour?

Unless there are large numbers of children who cannot be cared for this is unlikely to be an issue. Child labor wasn't a problem because everyone back then hated children; it was a combination of societal views (children doing work had always been a normal part of society) and the kids needing to work so that they could eat.

Company towns?

Again, if the workers agree to it.

With vast discrepancies in economic power, there would be many people for whom this is their least bad option. If such is illegal - then such a problem won't occur as the employers will still find it profitable to employ people at currently legal rates.

Bankrupting all opposition?

How? This is similar to another question I've asked and not gotten an answer to. Remember, we're talking about an Objectivist society, here, so the actions cannot involve things like fraud or coercion (not that those won't happen, but they'd be just as illegal as they are now).

Unfettered monopolistic practices?

Such as? And how do the monopolies get established?

Monoploies occur and are broken up under the current system, they'd occur but I am not familiar with an objectivist system to break them up. Do objectivists even recognise that monopolies are bad?



When an objectivist system is set up - how are the resources allocated? I am guessing there is not a communist reallocation but a recognition of current asset ownership. Some people are richer than others. Many many times richer, so they could buy up assets as money farms.

The most successful would be those who acted like the caricature of robber barons.

Then one has to discuss matters like defence of the realm. How does such an objectivist system with so many monopolies making everything inefficient a decent military or indeed military research? What is to stop North Korea deciding that California would make a nice addition to the People's Democratic Republic?

You've left out a few words here. But A) the military would be run by the government, and B) you're assuming everything would be done with monopolies without explaining why this is the necessary result.

What would happen to government-sponsored research? Who decides what the research should be? The US is militarily strong because it has a wide technical base, not just because it has a lot of military research, but because there is cross fertilization between the military and commercial technology and science.

A lot of people would not be able to afford education, so there would be a smaller pool of people able to go to university, and so the technical base would shrink anyway.

There are industries where monopolies are not natural - there are also industries where monopolies or cartels are natural - there is a high bar to entry, so established players can keep out the rest.

A lot of infrastructure will be natural monopolies, so there would be huge dampers on other parts of the economy. An Objectivist country amongst normal countries will fall back, and would have to have a vastly reduced military with an even greater reduction in effectiveness as the whole industrial base gets shredded. On the plus side, few people living in such a state would mourn its demise.

 

[Akri]

I don't see why they wouldn't - but the important question is how do we go from the current system to the new system.

That's a very different discussion from what we're talking about right now, akin to the difference between discussing evolution and abiogenesis. The current conversation has been about how an Objectivist society might function, not how to create such a society beginning with what we have now.

Works for me. I'll just buy up small parcels of land near growing cities that don't have airports and build my own radar frequency and radio frequency towers. When someone wants to build an airport, I will say that I have a right to the frequencies I've been using for years and will need millions of dollars to stop using my personal antennas.

How much will this project cost you? And either the airports will decide that the price you're asking will be offset by the money they'll make operating out of those cities, or they'll decide it's not worth it and you won't get any money unless you lower your price.

But rather than argue over how to solve very specific problems that might have workaraounds, let's talk big picture. If you are an office clerk in NYC, you can quit your job and perhaps find another the next day. On the other hand, if you are a coal miner in the mountains of West Virgina, quitting your job will be orders of magnitude more difficult under the new system. The coal company can buy up the very few roads that lead into and out of the town. It can then say, the toll will be $1 for company employees and $1000 for non-employees. No one is going to build a competitive road across mountainous terrain to go to what will essentially be a company town. At that point, the miner owners can institute company script and require employees to sign away their rights and resources arising from deaths caused by safety violations. At this point, a miner cannot simply sell his house and move away because no one will want to buy a house surrounded by company property and company stores.

Nobody is saying an Objectivist society would be perfect or easy to live in. Some people may get faced with hard choices, such as whether or not to quit their job and move far away to find new work. Of course, this already happens now. And while the company could require people to sign their rights away, the people could choose to quit instead. The company can't introduce company script unless the workers agree to be paid in script (and this assumes they don't already have a contract stipulating that they must be paid in national currency).

And before you say that people would be unable to leave if they quit because of the $1000 toll, I think an argument can be made that this would be illegal (it would essentially be imprisoning people). I'm not sure if that's how an Objectivist would see it, though.

Just out of curiosity, who would they buy the airspace from? Who owns it in the first place?

Dunno. But the conversation so far has been about how an Objectivist society might work, not how one would start.

Why should landowners *not* own the mining rights below their land and the airspace rights above their land?

Alright, let's try this again. I'm not saying all airspace would be owned. I'm not saying all airspace would not be owned. I'm not saying all airspace would belong to the people who own the buildings below that airspace. I'm not saying everyone wouldn't own the airspace above their buildings. I'm not saying airports would own all airspace. I'm not saying airports would not own all airspace.

I am saying that airspace, like land, could be owned. The actual specifics would depend on who bought what. Maybe airports would own all of the airspace needed for their routes. Maybe most of that airspace would be owned by homeowners and businesses, and airports would have deals with all of them allowing the airport to use that airspace for a monthly fee. The point is the problem is not insurmountable.

At what altitude should they be owned by some other entity? Who decides what this entity is?

At what distance should a piece of land be owned by some other entity, and who decides what that entity is?

Why should airports have first dibs at this?

Who said they should? And this looks like a question of "how do we go from this society to that society", which I'm not prepared to deal with.

What if a landowner wanted to build their own airport?

Then they buy the necessary land and airspace to do so.

To me the answer is easy - the government owns the rights to the airspace and can lease it out.

Yes, that is an easy answer. It also violates the Objectivist principles of what a government is supposed to do, and thus cannot be an Objectivist society's solution to the problem.

Why should they?

So that others don't use the same frequency and cause problems for planes that need to communicate with the airport.

Do airports have some special place that entitles them to this? Who decides that spectrum allocation is actually an asset?

These sounds like questions of how to create an Objectivist society starting with what we have, which is not something I'm prepared to deal with.

To me the answer is easy - the government owns the rights to the spectrum and can lease it out.

But since this violates the Objectivist ideas on how a government is supposed to operate it cannot be the solution in an Objectivist society.

Not quite. I am assuming that I am a road-owner and for reasons of efficiency own a stretch of road, along the lines of the British Turnpikes but without the need for acts of parliament to enable their setting up.

Ah--so if there are other roads around and yours is simply the most efficient, people still might decide your tolls are not worth the efficiency of the route (especially if the tolls exceed what they would pay in gas mileage to take the longer route).

If I have an established stretch of road that is fully paid off, all my expenses will only be running costs. Any new competitor will have running costs as well as having to pay the capital costs in order for their investors to make money. Therefore the established road has a far lower break-even point. As the investors know this, they know that it is a bad risk to try competing with an established road.

How much the capitol costs would be depends a lot on how quickly they would have to start repaying their investors (assuming they even HAD to pay back the investors--said investors could be people tired of using your road, who consider their contribution a gift rather than a loan).

How would you deal with water supply and electricity supply or indeed any other infrastructure? - I guess compulsory purchase orders are frowned upon.

I'm not sure. I think these would be handled by private companies.

History shows that this is what happens.

I didn't say it couldn't happen. I said that Myriad wanted the scenario to have no possible good solution, and so tailor-made it to fit. It's possible that there would only be one company where people could work, but it's also possible that this would not be the case. If the people opposing Objectivism want to offer scenarios where there can be no upside and say "see? Objectivism is bad because the result is that you always wind up in a crappy situation" then I could present a scenario where everything worked perfectly and say that clearly Objectivism is awesome. Neither scenario actually means anything, though, because in both cases we specifically designed them to get the result we wanted.

Not exactly.

Situations where there are local monopolies or slum landlords who are local economic superpowers, so that the best option for many people would be to sign away their rights in exchange for exorbitantly priced sevices.

Assuming this situation actually arose, then yeah, it would stink for some people. I don't recall ever saying an Objectivist society would be nice.

As for the debt bondage, it would not be mufti-generational (your children are not bound by contracts you sign, unless they choose to be).

With vast discrepancies in economic power, there would be many people for whom this is their least bad option. If such is illegal - then such a problem won't occur as the employers will still find it profitable to employ people at currently legal rates.

Assuming there are vast discrepancies in economic power that be what happens. I don't actually know if Objectivists consider printing money to be the job of the government or not.

Monoploies occur and are broken up under the current system, they'd occur but I am not familiar with an objectivist system to break them up. Do objectivists even recognise that monopolies are bad?

Depends on the type of monopoly. If it uses force to maintain it's status (in which case the government is probably involved) then yes, they're very bad. If they're a monopoly because everyone would rather buy from them, or because they invented something and thus are the only ones selling it, then no.

When an objectivist system is set up

This is about implementation, which is separate from what I'm discussing.

What would happen to government-sponsored research? Who decides what the research should be?

Depends on how the government is set up.

A lot of people would not be able to afford education

What are you basing this on?