A Philosophy Professor Discusses Ayn Rand in his Ethics Class

[jimbob]

Of course, this raises the much more real but tangential issue: How do you deal with the blood-from-a-stone problem? It seems like an environment in which all sorts of things which, insufficiently tested, can be handled extremely cheaply by the manufacturer... but pushing the potential cost to the consumer, and there simply won't be enough money to sue back from the offender if things go wrong, leaving everyone screwed.

In this case, Ms. Flaky has every incentive to shove the risk downstream to her customers, because if she doesn't succeed (due to risk getting her in the jibblies and half her clients developing green pus-filled boils), there won't be anything worthwhile to get back from her -- if she _does_ succeed, though, then she can trivially drive Mr. Scrupulous right out of business in the process, despite doing it wrong.

Rational? Well, actually, yes... sociopathic, but rational. Of course, this goes back to my prior message where assuming rational actors is a howling mistake.

Indeed, hence my previous comment that objectivism only works if people aren't human - and with an additional stipulation if they often *don't* work in the most rationally self-interested manner.

We have skirted around the related issue of the tragedy of the commons but it is another situation where objectivism falls over.

 

[Akri]

However Ms Flaky is taking risks, and every year there is a 10% chance of a catastrophic meltdown destroying her factory, and polluting the drinking water of the neighbouring town.

If that happened she'd have to pay the damages. If she couldn't pay up front then a percentage of any wages she made in the future would go toward that until her debt was repaid. It's unlikely she would get any business loans in the future because she would have proven herself to be a risky investment. Getting any line of credit, for anything, would be difficult. It's also possible that some of her possessions would be auctioned off to pay for her debts. I'm not 100% sure on that last one, but it's entirely conceivable that this risky business plan could end with her penniless in a gutter.

 

[jimbob]

If that happened she'd have to pay the damages. If she couldn't pay up front then a percentage of any wages she made in the future would go toward that until her debt was repaid. It's unlikely she would get any business loans in the future because she would have proven herself to be a risky investment. Getting any line of credit, for anything, would be difficult. It's also possible that some of her possessions would be auctioned off to pay for her debts. I'm not 100% sure on that last one, but it's entirely conceivable that this risky business plan could end with her penniless in a gutter.

And why would that stop the sort of person who likes taking big risks and sailing close to the wind?

 

[marplots]

It occurs to me that we are talking about personal sovereignty here and it would be useful to see how these issues are handled on a "between nations" basis for guidance.

Is the parallel apt?

 

[Akri]

And why would that stop the sort of person who likes taking big risks and sailing close to the wind?

I didn't say it would (you also never said we were talking about trying to "stop the sort of person who likes taking big risks and sailing close to the wind"). I said those were the potential consequences.

Edit: It occurs to me that there's another potential consequence which I left out: prison. If her factory leaks pollution into people's drinking water then she's likely guilty of a crime, depending on how the laws are written (it could be considered either a civil or a criminal matter). So incarceration is another possibility.

 

[remirol]

And why would that stop the sort of person who likes taking big risks and sailing close to the wind?

Worse than that -- what risk? You've described a standard win big, lose big scenario here. At 4-to-1 odds in favor of success on top of it, that's one hell of a good gamble. Not so much for the town, of course, but them's the breaks right? When someone's aimin' for a profit, everyone nearby needs to just get outa the way or get trampled.

One assumes, of course, that there's no INC or LLC available, the standard means behind which one prevents personal liability so that one can take risks in the first place. If she can INC or LLC before embarking on this plan, it's home free -- the corp can go bankrupt and she can walk away saying "Oops, didn't pan out."

And then it comes into the "enforcement" territory. Talking wage garnishing, lawsuits, etc. is all well and good, but who's gonna sue? The whole town's sick and doesn't have any drinking water. What do they do in the meantime? Who handles enforcing the garnishments, and tracking Ms. Flaky so that her wages can be garnished? (Let's not even talk about the under-the-table industries that immediately develop, of course).

 

[Akri]

It occurs to me that we are talking about personal sovereignty here and it would be useful to see how these issues are handled on a "between nations" basis for guidance.

Is the parallel apt?

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're asking.

 

[jimbob]

And why would that stop the sort of person who likes taking big risks and sailing close to the wind?

I didn't say it would (you also never said we were talking about trying to "stop the sort of person who likes taking big risks and sailing close to the wind"). I said those were the potential consequences.

Yes, but it does lead to the crapsack world.

 

[Akri]

Yes, but it does lead to the crapsack world.

I could point to several bad situations that occur today and claim those mean we live in a crapsack world. Perhaps the problem is that reality is crapsack regardless of the philosophy you live by?

 

[marplots]

It occurs to me that we are talking about personal sovereignty here and it would be useful to see how these issues are handled on a "between nations" basis for guidance.

Is the parallel apt?

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're asking.

Well, when the US deals with another nation, there's the same kind of sovereignty involved as we've been describing in this thread -- property rights, issues of the commons and the right to be free from coercive behaviors. Isn't that so?

I was thinking that looking at how nations solve the problems mentioned (or do not solve them) would answer some of the questions.

 

[Akri]

Well, when the US deals with another nation, there's the same kind of sovereignty involved as we've been describing in this thread -- property rights, issues of the commons and the right to be free from coercive behaviors. Isn't that so?

I was thinking that looking at how nations solve the problems mentioned (or do not solve them) would answer some of the questions.

Ah, I see. You're right, there may be many parallels that we could look at.

 

[jimbob]

Yes, but it does lead to the crapsack world.

I could point to several bad situations that occur today and claim those mean we live in a crapsack world. Perhaps the problem is that reality is crapsack regardless of the philosophy you live by?

But how many of them would solved by an objectivist society?

Assuming it lasts long enough, there would be people who are very rich, and would have nothing to stop them abusing their power.

What is to stop a rich speculative merchant buying cornering the grain market in a region, and then making a killing. All perfectly within the objectivist rules, but entirely bad for the people forced to starve or go into penury.

This is recognised as a problem by some proponents of objectivism in certain situations (see this post on "property entrapment", for example). However the proposed solution seems to be to recognise that certain aspects of property rights should be curtailed for the greater good. To me this seems to be non-objectivist solution shoehorned onto the proposed system. I'm not saying it is a bad solution, but that it indicates a weakness in the objectivist approach.

Even communism would require less abnormal human behaviour for it to work than objectivism.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I could point to several bad situations that occur today and claim those mean we live in a crapsack world. Perhaps the problem is that reality is crapsack regardless of the philosophy you live by?

This might be a bit subtle for you, but there's a class of fallacious argument often referred to as the "truly general" argument. If an argument can apply to absolutely every case, or nearly every case, then it's actually a meaningless argument.

"Bad stuff happens in non-Objectivist world too" is an over-general argument. You could say it in response to a trivial argument, and you could say it in response to an argument which shows that the Objectivist world would be utterly awful for everyone.

If someone has shown that Objectivist-world is worse in some important way than the world we live in, you need to show some equivalent compensating benefit if you want people to think Objectivist-world isn't a terrible idea.

I think you're going to have an uphill battle there since there are people here who understand why laws regulating businesses and individuals exist. Objectivism plays well to people who think that these rules exist to annoy them, but not so much to people who understand that these rules exist to nail shut stable doors which some rather nasty horses tended to bolt out of.

 

[Akri]

But how many of them would solved by an objectivist society?

Well the limited role of government would mitigate a lot of issues. Buckyballs would probably still be in business, for one small example. Health care might be much improved, for a larger example (I don't want to even try to get into the nuts and bolts of that here, but suffice to say that American healthcare is very much tied to government, and that relationship has not helped to keep costs down or quality of care up).

Assuming it lasts long enough, there would be people who are very rich, and would have nothing to stop them abusing their power.

Depends on what you mean by "abuse" and "power". And also "nothing", because there are very few actions which do not carry at least some risk of negative consequences.

What is to stop a rich speculative merchant buying cornering the grain market in a region, and then making a killing. All perfectly within the objectivist rules, but entirely bad for the people forced to starve or go into penury.

Why do you ask "what is to stop ____?" when you specify that whatever goes into the blank is "within the Objectivist rules"? Wouldn't that seem to be rather self-explanatory?

This is recognised as a problem by some proponents of objectivism in certain situations (see this post on "property entrapment", for example).

I have read the thread, you know.

However the proposed solution seems to be to recognise that certain aspects of property rights should be curtailed for the greater good. To me this seems to be non-objectivist solution shoehorned onto the proposed system.

How is it a non-Objectivist solution? How is it curtailing property rights? The easements are not on anyone's property, but are outside it (either they cut between two properties owned by different people, or between to properties owned by one person, but either way the easement is not part of the property).

 

[jimbob]

What is to stop a rich speculative merchant buying cornering the grain market in a region, and then making a killing. All perfectly within the objectivist rules, but entirely bad for the people forced to starve or go into penury.

Why do you ask "what is to stop ____?" when you specify that whatever goes into the blank is "within the Objectivist rules"? Wouldn't that seem to be rather self-explanatory?

What I mean is that the merchant buys grain and/or futures at agreed prices simply to corner the market - no fraud or coercion. The merchant then has a monopoly on a staple food and can milk the inhabitants of the region for whatever they own.

I think this is not a good situation, and the fact it is allowed (maybe even implicitly encouraged) in objectivism suggests to me that it is another pretty severe flaw in such a system.

 

[marplots]

I feel I am being coerced by Microsoft. Almost daily.

 

[Akri]

What I mean is that the merchant buys grain and/or futures at agreed prices simply to corner the market - no fraud or coercion. The merchant then has a monopoly on a staple food and can milk the inhabitants of the region for whatever they own.

I think this is not a good situation, and the fact it is allowed (maybe even implicitly encouraged) in objectivism suggests to me that it is another pretty severe flaw in such a system.

Nothing is explicitly put in place to prevent that (if there was something in place to prevent it then it would no longer be within the rules). As far as what could keep it from happening, two possibilities are the merchant simply being unable to buy up all the grain/futures (perhaps because other people are trying to do the same thing and so none of them end up with a monopoly) and the inhabitants of the region switching to a different, cheaper staple food. Or he may somehow monopolize all of the staple foods in an area, so people figure out a way of buying from farther away, or they move to a different region (assuming that every single food market has not somehow managed to have a monopoly on every staple crop). Or some farmers (either existing ones, or new farmers) could decide to sell their crop for less than the merchant is charging. People might decide to run some kind of communal farm and just grow the stuff themselves (depending on the size of the region). They may convince the merchant that he'll gain more if he lowers his prices and collects money over many years (not guaranteed to work by any means, but the point is that there are a lot of options here that could be tried).

The biggest limit on potential ways to deal with this kind of problem is imagination.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

A: "Under your proposed system of government it would be legal to beat people to death with a stick. Isn't that worse than the existing system?".

B: "Nothing is explicitly put in place to stop people beating you to death with a stick, but it's possible they might not be able to beat you to death with a stick. Or you could get together with friends who also have sticks. Or you could have a bigger stick. Or you could hide until they go away. The biggest limit on potential ways to deal with this kind of problem is imagination, so if you're worried about being beaten to death with a stick the problem is your lack of imagination.

Bottom line, if I can imagine a way to solve a problem, it isn't a problem!"

 

[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?

Did any of the Objectivists answer this? If so, I missed it. I am prepared to admit I might be missing something obvious here, but in O'ist world, who has property rights over unoccupied land?

 

[Dinwar]

And why would that stop the sort of person who likes taking big risks and sailing close to the wind?

Nothing stops them now. NOTHING CAN. As soon as industrial society exists the risk of toxic release exists. If you don't like that, move somewhere that hasn't yet experienced the industrial revolution.

Can we all please agree that universal flaws aren't flaws in Objectivism? If not, what value does the conversation have? You'll just pick any random flaw in the modern system that Objectivism doesn't immediately solve to your satisfaction, and say "See? See? O'ism sucks!"

My question before about buying airspace wasn't about the setting up of an O'ist society.

Not sure. A related proble is oil underground--oil fields and property lines don't always coincide.

A possible solution is that home ownership only extends to a certain distance above and below ground surface. After all, unless you have an airplane or heavy mining equipment you're not going to be able to use much above or below it. But that's just an option. I'm not entirely certain.

As for uninhabited territory such as asteroids and the moon, the one to develop it is the owner, within limitations. The limitations would be something that can be debated by lawyers. The foundational principle is that the one who utliizes it owns it.

think this is not a good situation

Than outbid them. If you're unwilling to do so, you obviously don't have as much a problem with it as you say you do.