A Philosophy Professor Discusses Ayn Rand in his Ethics Class

[Ladewig]

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.

I edited my post and withdraw my criticisms.

I do, however, have a question or two about your response.
To whom would such an argument be made? Also, how would that person or body of persons decide what is fair but expensive and what is so unfair as to be illegal?

I am kind of a dick, so if I owned the mining company I might say that a freak storm knocked out all the phone lines and while we are working hard to fix them, it might be best to plan to do without phone service for some time - so don't expect to call a county sheriff, state policeman or U.S. marshal.


ETA:
Wait. Am I right in assuming there is no Nevada Gaming Commission? I would sell my soul to own a casino in the new West.
Hell, I could own a casino anywhere - awesome.

 

[Akri]

I edited my post and withdraw my criticisms.

Awesomesauce.

I do, however, have a question or two about your response.
To whom would such an argument be made? Also, how would that person or body of persons decide what is fair but expensive and what is so unfair as to be illegal?

The argument would be made to whomever I'm talking to. I didn't mean it as an argument that could be made to a judge or something, I meant that from my understanding of Objectivism it seems like there's a good argument that the scenario you described violates Objective morality. If your toll cannot be paid, and there is no other way out of the area, then you have effectively trapped everyone there. I'm not sure if an Objectivist would actually agree with me or not, though. When Dinwar is back on the internets we can ask him.

I am kind of a dick, so if I owned the mining company I might say that a freak storm knocked out all the phone lines and while we are working hard to fix them, it might be best to plan to do without phone service for some time - so don't expect to call a county sheriff, state policeman or U.S. marshal.

And if you were found out you would go to jail for committing fraud, and probably either for committing additional crimes or for conspiring/planning to commit additional crimes.

ETA:
Wait. Am I right in assuming there is no Nevada Gaming Commission? I would sell my soul to own a casino in the new West.
Hell, I could own a casino anywhere - awesome.

Indeed.

 

[Brainache]

My question before about buying airspace wasn't about the setting up of an O'ist society. Let's assume that such a society already exists and I want to have rights over a particular chunk of airspace that isn't over occupied land, who would I buy it off?

Or if I wanted to buy a big plot of land in the middle of the desert somewhere previously unclaimed, who do I pay? Who sets the price?

What about the ocean? Or the Moon? An Asteroid?

 

[jimbob]

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.

<snip>

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.

Yes, but my point is that an objectivist society has fatal flaws that other systems lack

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).

Unlikely - we have seen from history how successful leaders of nearly unfettered capitalist systems behave.

Objectivist society would only work if the people in it weren't human.

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.

So they have to buy up the land to put in their infrastructure, and it is an administrative nightmare

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.

The difference is that Mariad's scenario is consistent with what we have seen happen in human society, whilst to make it work the proposed solutions show less understanding of human behaviour and motivations than Communism.

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).

That is only slightly worse for the employer, because they'd just have to wait until the child of someone with no resources grows up enough to work, and then they'd need to work and would eventually need a loan and get into the same situation as their parents.

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.

There would be vast discrepancies n economic power as even if everyine started off equal, some would end up richer and give their children advantages that would eventually work through - even though the might take several generations.

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.

You don't need force.

Just sole legal access to a resource, some individuals will find themselves in this situation at some time and then they are made.

 

[jimbob]

The argument would be made to whomever I'm talking to. I didn't mean it as an argument that could be made to a judge or something, I meant that from my understanding of Objectivism it seems like there's a good argument that the scenario you described violates Objective morality. If your toll cannot be paid, and there is no other way out of the area, then you have effectively trapped everyone there. I'm not sure if an Objectivist would actually agree with me or not, though. When Dinwar is back on the internets we can ask him.

So you institute a toll that is 75% of their wealth. If they wanted to leave *enough* they still *could* but as the whole society is run on similar principles, all that would happen is that the workers would then have to look for work with three quarters of their wealth lost. They'd be better off staying put.

 

[Sword of Apollo]

So you institute a toll that is 75% of their wealth. If they wanted to leave *enough* they still *could* but as the whole society is run on similar principles, all that would happen is that the workers would then have to look for work with three quarters of their wealth lost. They'd be better off staying put.

I am an Objectivist, and my thinking about the ideal solution to the problem of "property entrapment" (for example, someone buys all the land around yours and charges exorbitant rates for transit) is this:

Every piece of property owned by an individual or company has a minimum 3-4 foot (1-1.3 m) border of easement around the edge. This means that people have at least 6-8 feet of width for free travel. Motor vehicles might be allowed on the easement if they fit, are quiet, and are kept at a very modest speed.

The property on each side of the property line is still basically owned by the relevant owner, and they can do anything they like with it, so long as their alterations don't impede foot traffic on the easement. No walls can block the easement, but they can be built on either side. Any property that completely surrounds one or more others, like a doughnut, must have at least one easement break somewhere.

The easements for private roads would likely be incorporated into the sidewalks and crosswalks. Current city property, which lacks easement separation between walled yards, would be grandfathered in under special accommodations that allow for one easement border per block, so long as the configuration of the properties remains the same.

My thinking on this subject was inspired by an online article in The Objective Standard. Note that this article didn't discuss my plan, but only mentioned the issue of easement laws as a solution to people's ability to travel.

 

[jimbob]

I am an Objectivist, and my thinking about the ideal solution to the problem of "property entrapment" (for example, someone buys all the land around yours and charges exorbitant rates for transit) is this:

Every piece of property owned by an individual or company has a minimum 3-4 foot (1-1.3 m) border of easement around the edge. This means that people have at least 6-8 feet of width for free travel. Motor vehicles might be allowed on the easement if they fit, are quiet, and are kept at a very modest speed.

The property on each side of the property line is still basically owned by the relevant owner, and they can do anything they like with it, so long as their alterations don't impede foot traffic on the easement. No walls can block the easement, but they can be built on either side. Any property that completely surrounds one or more others, like a doughnut, must have at least one easement break somewhere.

The easements for private roads would likely be incorporated into the sidewalks and crosswalks. Current city property, which lacks easement separation between walled yards, would be grandfathered in under special accommodations that allow for one easement border per block, so long as the configuration of the properties remains the same.

My thinking on this subject was inspired by an online article in The Objective Standard. Note that this article didn't discuss my plan, but only mentioned the issue of easement laws as a solution to people's ability to travel.

Fair enough - the point still stands that there would be other monopolies that would occur* and as far as I can see, the solution would always involve infringing the property rights of the monopolists. This isn't a problem for a non-objectivist system.


*some future potential monopolies are unforeseeable - for example predicting the dominance of wintel or itunes from the 1950s would have been difficult to put it mildly.

 

[Earthborn]

Dude, seriously? Page after page of "No time for evidence, Rand addressed this, go read a book" and you can still ask me this question with a straight face? In any case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality#Evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

Just because it is evolved doesn't prove it is innate. For example, take fashion: starting from the humble beginnings of wearing animal hides, it has evolved many different styles and uses, some extinct and some still existing. Clothing has evolved to adapt to many different environments and there are even ornate and unpractical clothes to attract mates or intimidate rivals.

But we're still not born with clothes on, and neither have we developed genes for wearing certain styles. It is an example of cultural evolution.

It's analogous to language: a Chomskyan universal grammar lies hard-wired in the brain at the base of every human language, despite superficial differences in expression.

This is a good analogy, but not a very convincing argument. Chomsky's "universal grammar" is widely regarded as unscientific.

O'ism is not a Stoic philosohpy

I see quite a few parallels with classical stoicism, though.

If you want to help people, nothing in O'ism prevents you. What you're NOT allowed to do is force me to help them.

The problem with this argument is that if you think something is necessary but are not willing to contribute to it, you are forcing everybody else to pay for something you value.

 

[Sword of Apollo]

Fair enough - the point still stands that there would be other monopolies that would occur* and as far as I can see, the solution would always involve infringing the property rights of the monopolists. This isn't a problem for a non-objectivist system.


*some future potential monopolies are unforeseeable - for example predicting the dominance of wintel or itunes from the 1950s would have been difficult to put it mildly.

Coercive monopolies on important goods are actually only possible where government has the power to regulate. (Railroads where government granted land solely for building them; telephone monopolies; US Postal Service, etc.) They won't occur in a free market. Without governmental force to bar competitors from the market, there is always competitive pressure to maintain efficiency. A monopoly in a free market is a good thing, because it means that the company is extremely good at producing efficiently and giving customers good prices.

If one company can control every bit of a resource, then that means the resource is very rare. Very rare resources in a large world--by the fact that they are very rare--are not essential for human life. (People can only live within reach of a source of something essential to human life.)

A company's patent monopoly is limited to a new and unique product. If the product is new and unique, then it is not essential for human life. It was recently made possible by the inventor.

From the Wikipedia article on Rockefeller you quoted in post #359:

It kept oil prices low to stave off competitors, made its products affordable to the average household, and to increase market penetration, sometimes sold below cost if necessary.
...
Despite improving the quality and availability of kerosene products while greatly reducing their cost to the public (the price of kerosene dropped by nearly 80% over the life of the company), Standard Oil's business practices created intense controversy. Standard’s most potent weapons against competitors were underselling, differential pricing, and secret transportation rebates. The firm was attacked by journalists and politicians throughout its existence, in part for these monopolistic methods, giving momentum to the anti-trust movement. By 1880, according to the New York World, Standard Oil was "the most cruel, impudent, pitiless, and grasping monopoly that ever fastened upon a country."

Where's the part where Rockefeller arbitrarily raises his oil prices above where the market price was before he was in the industry? I don't see it anywhere in the article. Rockefeller increased oil output and reduced oil prices, yet was attacked for it. (Why? For now, I'll point out that this mentality was what Ayn Rand called "the divine right of stagnation." Also, the morality of altruism sanctions the sacrifice of the successful businessman to those businessmen of lesser ability.)

In a free market, there are always more jobs for those in competitor companies who are displaced. The human need for production is unlimited. It is intelligent labor that is scarce.

I recommend reading Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Rand and The Capitalist Manifesto by Bernstein.

 

[marplots]

Sword of Apollo, can you put that in terms I can understand?

For example, is Microsoft more efficient, or does it have a rare good, or is it supported by government fiat?

I understand Windows is not a complete monopoly, but they have run afoul of monopoly practices by attempting to kill competition when it could be controlled by their OS.

How does Microsoft evince the ideals you state?

 

[Buckaroo]

Just because it is evolved doesn't prove it is innate.

True, but that's not exactly the point I was making. I used these links because they demonstrate that social animals show morality-like behavior across species (altuism, reciprocity, etc.). This in itself is not "proof" that morality is innate, but it is at the least suggestive of a sociobiological origin to morality. But I may have been talking past the argument, given the selective anti-science tendency Objectivists display when biology, psychology, sociology, and physics are at odds with the cult's dogma.

This is a good analogy, but not a very convincing argument. Chomsky's "universal grammar" is widely regarded as unscientific.

Yeah, it's definitely controversial, with valid criticisms against it, but it's also got quite a lot going in its favor (I think "widely regarded" may be overstating things). If it survives, I suspect it will be in a modified form. But if it doesn't, it at least makes a good stepping-stone.

 

[Ladewig]

I am an Objectivist, and my thinking about the ideal solution to the problem of "property entrapment" (for example, someone buys all the land around yours and charges exorbitant rates for transit) is this:

Every piece of property owned by an individual or company has a minimum 3-4 foot (1-1.3 m) border of easement around the edge. This means that people have at least 6-8 feet of width for free travel. Motor vehicles might be allowed on the easement if they fit, are quiet, and are kept at a very modest speed.

Again it sounds good in principle, but when the time comes for me to hire private fire-protection services, I have to make sure all their firetrucks are narrow enough and short enough to travel up and down hills on narrow, winding, unpaved easements. And when i want to build a house, I just have to make sure that every component and every piece of machinery can be navigated through these alleys.

I'll read through the entire thread in a day or two. Perhaps the answers to my questions have already been posted.

 

[Akri]

Again it sounds good in principle, but when the time comes for me to hire private fire-protection services, I have to make sure all their firetrucks are narrow enough and short enough to travel up and down hills on narrow, winding, unpaved easements. And when i want to build a house, I just have to make sure that every component and every piece of machinery can be navigated through these alleys.

I think that getting emergency response vehicles into areas would only be an issue if the person running the toll road(s) had no self-preservation instinct. If that person refused to allow those vehicles free access on the road, the firemen/paramedics may decide not to respond to any emergency calls that person makes. They may even have a contract with all road owners within their region stating that they must have free road access or else they will not attempt to help the road owner in any emergency situation.

 

[shuttlt]

Perhaps it's already been covered, but how would large infrastructure projects work? Couldn't one granny who didn't want to move house at any price block the path of a road? To stop an airport ever being able to expand, couldn't environmental protesters just buy a couple of houses near the existing perimeter?

 

[remirol]

I think that getting emergency response vehicles into areas would only be an issue if the person running the toll road(s) had no self-preservation instinct. If that person refused to allow those vehicles free access on the road, the firemen/paramedics may decide not to respond to any emergency calls that person makes. They may even have a contract with all road owners within their region stating that they must have free road access or else they will not attempt to help the road owner in any emergency situation.

Doesn't work so well, because herd immunity would apply to this as well; if a house catches fire, all the other nearby houses become at risk. He just has to make sure his house is next to someone whose _will_ be protected, and the fire department shows up.

However, all this discussion is really getting into the primary problem I see with Objectivism: It only works if you discount reality completely and live in theory-forever-land -- EVEN if you stipulate the impossible of "total cooperation from everyone at once" to ensure that somehow you get a world with only Objectivists in it.

Since that's a non-starter (I notice one of our Objectivists in this thread is both "abjectly dependent on society", yet wishes to practice Objectivism whilst still reaping the benefits of that society -- the hypocrisy is hilarious) for most people, I think I see why Rand is held in such open disregard among people in their respective fields.

That, and it seems that Objectivists have fallen into the primary trap with all this sort of thing; assuming that all people are rational actors even somewhere close to "most of the time". T'ain't so, as any advertising executive can tell you, or any casino owner. The reality is that humans aren't all that far evolved from our primate ancestors, so we have a lot of irrationally chemically driven urges that override our rational decision-making ability much of the time. And, of course, that isn't even taking into account poor upbringing, education, those sort of factors that preclude our ability to even _learn_ how to make rational decisions in the first place.

Again, Barnum phrased it best as "There's a sucker born every minute"... but that doesn't mean that it's morally appropriate to view those suckers as humanity's version of prey, there for the consuming.

 

[Dinwar]

Again it sounds good in principle, but when the time comes for me to hire private fire-protection services, I have to make sure all their firetrucks are narrow enough and short enough to travel up and down hills on narrow, winding, unpaved easements. And when i want to build a house, I just have to make sure that every component and every piece of machinery can be navigated through these alleys.

Two thoughts:

First, this is an issue now. So it's not a problem with Objectivism; your problem is with reality itself. There's no system in operation now where these aren't issues, so to cite them as criticisms of any individual system is irrational.

Second, Congress once held hearings to determine if computers, printers, etc. needed regulatory oversite. Their findings: The industry was self-regulating, and that there was no way for regulatory oversite to occur that wouldn't actually shut down the market. If you want to be stupid and write your own word processing program that's completely incompatable with Word or build a printer that prints on 7.25"x13.7" paper or something no one's stopping you; people don't because doing so instantly renders the products unusable in the real world. This is where the "rational" part of "rational self-interest" comes in. The "self" part comes in because if you choose to screw yourself over, no one is obligated to help you.

I used these links because they demonstrate that social animals show morality-like behavior across species (altuism, reciprocity, etc.).

It's telling that you equate moarlity with altruism. Objectivism rejects that equivalency. If you're not at least willing to acknowledge that we reject it, I'm not sure where this conversation can go.

For example, is Microsoft more efficient, or does it have a rare good, or is it supported by government fiat?

Rationally speaking, Microsoft has no monopoly. It's merely very, very big, and made a product that set the industry standard. At home I use OpenOffice instead of Word, and I have numerous friends that use Linux or Apple.

but they have run afoul of monopoly practices

That's a completely different issue. I'm not entirely certain where I stand on that, as I'm not familiar with the particulars. I WILL say that since Microsoft isn't a monopoly, it's perfectly reasonable for them to say "You want your program to work on our OS, you play by our rules". That's the way most video game councils work, after all--third parties make the game, but the council developers get to dictate how the game functions. Bethesda doesn't go to Microsoft and tell them how to build xBoxes.

The problem with this argument is that if you think something is necessary but are not willing to contribute to it, you are forcing everybody else to pay for something you value.

Not by any sane definition of "force". I don't hold a gun to anyone's head, or commit any other act that can be rationally described as forcing anyone. If they CHOOSE to do something I value, they're doing so for their own reasons--I am quite irrelevant, and typically not even known to the people involved. If they didn't do it, I'd either have to do it myself or live without it.

Let's remove this from the realm of the hypothetical, shall we? There is an obvious practical example of this situation. Dr. Hsieh has a weekly podcast. While I have contributed a few questions, I've not paid for it. She has made it clear that she doesn't expect listeners to do so, and is willing to do the podcast for free. She values the podcast, and I get the sense that she'd do it if she weren't paid at all. She certainly treats paying listeners better than us freeloaders (special extras), but she fully acknowledges that many of us listen for free and she's okay with that. In what way am I forcing her to produce the podcast? This is something I value, yet she's doing it and I'm benifiting without contributing monitarily.

 

[Dinwar]

Perhaps it's already been covered, but how would large infrastructure projects work? Couldn't one granny who didn't want to move house at any price block the path of a road? To stop an airport ever being able to expand, couldn't environmental protesters just buy a couple of houses near the existing perimeter?

Yup. They could. Remember, you have NO right to their land, PERIOD. That said, it's a confession of incompetance when a developer says "This one house is in the way, we can't build the road."

 

[Akri]

Yes, but my point is that an objectivist society has fatal flaws that other systems lack

Having to come up with a slightly more complex system for doing something, rather than simply making it one of the government's roles, is a "fatal flaw"?

Unlikely - we have seen from history how successful leaders of nearly unfettered capitalist systems behave.

And how good of a sampling size do we have? Were there any additional factors that could have been at play (such as moral/social views that were taken from living on farms in very different conditions from what one encounters in an industrial society)? Did the government's role (because the government did have a role) influence things at all?

In other words, do we have evidence that the negative aspects of the Industrial Revolution are an inevitable result of nearly-unfettered capitalism?

The difference is that Mariad's scenario is consistent with what we have seen happen in human society, whilst to make it work the proposed solutions show less understanding of human behaviour and motivations than Communism.

Even in the Industrial Revolution there were plenty of places where one could work for more than one company. Not all towns were company towns.

I'm not saying such scenarios can't or won't happen. I'm saying that if you deliberately construct your scenario so that it only allows for potential bad things to happen then of course you'll get a situation that allows you to say "see? it's a crapsack world"--but unless the entire world is the way you've described you haven't actually demonstrated anything. So yeah, it's possible that in an Objectivist society moving closer to my family would require working for the only employer in the entire city. It's also possible that my family would be in an area with dozens of different businesses where I could potentially work.

On top of that, Dinwar pointed out that some people already have to deal with the situation described. Life is not fair, and sometimes people have to choose between a good job and living where they'd like.

You don't need force.

Just sole legal access to a resource, some individuals will find themselves in this situation at some time and then they are made.

I like how you say "just sole legal access to a resource" as though this were an incredibly simple thing to do. It may not be impossible, but it isn't a foregone conclusion either.

But let's say you somehow do manage to become the sole owner of a particular resource. So what? Why is that a bad thing? If you're not using force then all you're doing is using your property rights, which is just as acceptable for you to do as anyone else.

 

[remirol]

First, this is an issue now. So it's not a problem with Objectivism; your problem is with reality itself. There's no system in operation now where these aren't issues, so to cite them as criticisms of any individual system is irrational.

False dilemma fallacy along with incorrect equivocation. First, there are a wide array of choices between "Objectivism" and "reality". Further, in some systems, such as Objectivism, these issues would be far worse than in others, such as the one we have now. Also the perfection fallacy; just because things will never be perfect doesn't mean that we can't aim for as close as possible.

For someone who complained about others not following the "rules of philosophy", it sure seems that you're inclined to break them whenever you need to make your position consistent.

 

[shuttlt]

Yup. They could. Remember, you have NO right to their land, PERIOD. That said, it's a confession of incompetance when a developer says "This one house is in the way, we can't build the road."

Would it necessarily be just one house though. The people who live around Heathrow don't want it to expand. If it was down the them Heathrow would never expand. If you want to run a road or a rail link through a built up area you are going to have to get the agreement of an awful lot of people. It's hell to get this done now in the UK. I don't see that this is due to incompetence from the developer.