James Randi and Objectivism

[Dinwar]

It seems that to Ayn Rand, the prohibition against force only applied to those whom she did not regard as "savages".

Not without some justification--many of the native tribes were quite hostile to Europeans. I'm not saying that the natives weren't also justified in many cases--I'm just saying that the issue is a bit more complex than you're portraying it.

Besides, Rand more or less defined "savages" as "those who consider the use of force an appropriate way to deal with people". Thus, it IS appropriate to use force against savages--for the same reason it's appropriate to use force against burglers, muggers, tyrants, and the like. Please understand, I'm not saying Rand was right, wrong, or indifferent here--I'm merely explaining where I believe she was coming from.

 

[MichaelM]

Back to the Injuns! It seems Ms Rand had little patience for the argument of "they were here first". I wonder how she'd feel about the same argument being used against her property? I mean, a factory or a farm would be a better use of that land, just because she's there doesn't give her some "right" to it. And It's got nothing to do with the color of her skin! We just think she needs to move the hell out because she clearly doesn't know how to use her land and we do!

Now back to the "Injuns".

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Gord_in_Toronto,

Hello.

The same way this country did when it was founded ... government the wielder of force restricted to defense against force and all the checks and balances and more to hold it to that task. The government and all the laws would be directed at the guarantee of this single principle:

Not the way my country started. And, if you check the history of the US of A, you will find that the original colonists were religious fanatics who did not like anyone very much. And if you read your history leading to your Constitution, you will see nothing about the country getting out of the government business, only endless arguments as to how responsibilities were to be apportioned between the states and the central federal government.

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

That's fine. But what of those who don't agree with you? In the Real World such people exist and we have universally applicable laws that restrict their abilities to disagree with you and the enforcement of these has to be paid for somehow.

Every value other than that defense would be achieved by the same people who produce the values that sustain and enhance our lives today by whatever manner they can, so long as they do not use physical force.

I'm sorry but this does not scan very well into English. But, in any case how do you prevent an individual from not using physical force? Other than calling the police of course. Do you and your friends just shoot him? What then prevents his friends from then shooting you?

Do you really think that there would be no roads or schools or certification of drugs or whatever if men could not gang up on each other with a gun? Think before you react!

No. I think people would organize to establish roads, schools, drug certifiers, and etc. And they would need methods to enforce payment for them and punish those who refused or otherwise violated rules for their use. Such an organization is called a government.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

I'm saddened that the Objectivists disliked Pratchett's idea. It's the perfect way to culturally rationalize having children as long-term investments.

Maybe the goldbugs will warm to it. Then they'll have two things in common with his dwarfs.

Well, three things - if the goldbugs are right we'll all be reduced to eating rat fairly shortly, and they plan to charge a pretty penny for ketchup.

Okay four things, with the proclivity towards heavy weapons and oh my god they're dwarfs!

 

[Gazpacho]

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

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

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

That's a nice recitation of Bastiat/Rand property theory that never quite gets beyond the concept of divine right. To put it in Objectivist terminology: Greater value— according to whom? Voluntary— under what circumstances? Blank-out.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

If I, in an Objectivist World, own a piece on land next to a Fellow Objectivist (who for purposes of this thought experiment remains un-named) on which I build a Quantum Mangling Plant that no one has ever seen or heard of before and it blows up killing everyone for 1200 kilometres around what is the Fellow Objectivist going to do about it?

Sue me?

Suggest I don't build any more?

Check with Consumer Reports?

 

[Gazpacho]

This question is directly addressed in Atlas Shrugged. The answer is that no such accident can happen under the direction of a rational mind and anyone who mistakes the person who causes the accident for a rational man deserves death.

 

[marplots]

I don't trust people to be rational. I hardly trust myself to be.
Is Objectivism meant for humans or only fictional characters?

 

[Buckaroo]

Did you read the Ayn Rand quote regarding Native Americans? She justified the use of force to rob them of their homes by claiming that they had no right to it. It seems that if the founders had been objectivists, they would have manufactured an excuse to use force to secure slave labor by claiming that they had no right to object. It seems that to Ayn Rand, the prohibition against force only applied to those whom she did not regard as "savages".

Damn! You beat me to it.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

This question is directly addressed in Atlas Shrugged. The answer is that no such accident can happen under the direction of a rational mind and anyone who mistakes the person who causes the accident for a rational man deserves death.

Did you forget a smiley?

I suggest:

 

[Buckaroo]

Deleted.

 

[Buckaroo]

But, in any case how do you prevent an individual from not using physical force? Other than calling the police of course. Do you and your friends just shoot him? What then prevents his friends from then shooting you?

... I think people would organize to establish roads, schools, drug certifiers, and etc. And they would need methods to enforce payment for them and punish those who refused or otherwise violated rules for their use. Such an organization is called a government.

Quoted for emphasis. Despite several pages of blustery, condescension-filled sophistry on MichaelM's part, I don't see him providing any resolution to this fundamental problem of Objectivism. Neither have I found it elsewhere.

 

[tsig]

You are trying to judge a system that does not exist and about which you know next to nothing by the standards of the present one without taking into account all of the other factors that would arise if the whole system were quite different.

The reaction of a society would be dramatically different if there were no regulations. For one thing, a giant chunk of the populace trusts that the government is taking care of everything on the one hand, and are fatalistic about the possibility that they could ever have any input.

The absence of a specific regulation of a problem in a government regulated market is tantamount to a certification of no problem. But in a world without government regulation, management trembles with fear of the will of their customers. In a capitalist society one of the most profitable businesses would be warning customers of dangers and giving them a voice and a weapon to rectify them.

I don't think human nature would change.

2nd hilite.
We call that a government.

 

[tsig]

Yes. I will coerce you to refrain from using violence or the threat thereof against your fellow man to get what you and the majority gang want for your own benefit.

That is to say, I will use force to make sure you cannot use it against others, as you appear to want to continue to do. Unfortunately, of course, that will also mean that they cannot use it against you— the price one has to pay for being logical.

You're going to use violence to end violence?

Who will be these wielders of force?

 

[joesixpack]

many of the native tribes were quite hostile to Europeans.

And not without justification, many of the Europeans were quite hostile to the natives, so we can assume that Rand approved of the natives' use of force.

Oh, no, , we can't.

She's remarkably silent on that issue. And as to her definition of "savages", we can certainly add the European settlers, though based on that quote you'd think they showed up with the sun shining out of their asses.

Objectivism seems to be the jumping off point to rationalize pretty much doing whatever the **** Ayn wants to do.

 

[tsig]

You haven't even begun to understand the implications of forbidding the use of force in a society.

The most powerful check and balance the people would have to prevent frivolous wars is that an Objectivist government may not fund itself with taxation, because it necessitates the use of force to take values involuntarily.

So it is time for you to come to grips with the fact that corporations will be controlled by the votes of their customers' pennies, combined with the fact that the masses have more pennies than the rich do.

So the largest corporations would compete to fund government for the sake of their customers just like so much free and low cost stuff is funded for advertising and good will. Those corporations will listen to their customers long before any politician would respond to a PAC.

If the public does not want to go to war, they would not allow it to be funded.

So the citizens are supposed to persuade the corporate bosses to with hold funding from the government?

 

[tsig]

Consumer Reports would launch a full investigation...

And the owner of the airplane tells you to mind your own business and orders you to leave his property alone.

 

[tsig]

It's not a hand-wave. It's a reference to a complex argument made by an expert in the field. The fact that you're unfamiliar with it merely illustrates my point: People here do not understand Objectivism. Here's my reasoning, for you to critique: If you don't know what the experts in a field are saying, you obviously are not paying much attention to that field. The discussion of the experts is, in one sense, the field--thus, ignorance of what they're discussing is ignorance of the field as such. However, you could also have stopped paying attention. Which is fine--I don't pay attention to geochem, for example, and that's not irrational--but knowledge of evolving fields requires continued exposure and participation in them, even if the participation is limited to being in the audience and listening (actively, I'd say--merely HEARING is not enough in philosophy). Thus, again, if you don't know what the experts are saying you do not know the field. Objectivism is no different than any other field in this regard.

So I've quoted one person demonstrating that they are unfamiliar with basic arguments made by Rand, and now have your own words saying that you don't know what's happening in modern Objectivism. Thus, we can now conclude that TWO peopel don't know enough about Objectivism to criticize it (you're more honest, in that you at least can criticize SOME of Objectivism).

As that's my main point, and always has been, I consider that vastly more important than any discussion of specific O'ist ideas in this conversation.

You wrote a lot of words complaining about our lack of understanding but not a single word explaining your doctrine.

Less complaining, more explaining.

 

[tsig]

"But profits, ma'am, well, that depends on what you're after." ~Rand, the bum's speach.

O'ism is not a philosophy about getting as much money as one can. Rather, it's a philosophy that argues that ethics should properly about living the best life one can. Sometimes that means making money. Sometimes that means spending it.

The philosophy underpinning the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and other foundational documents to this nation are largely in agreement with Objectivist philosophy. In practice, the nation certainly violated O'ism in a number of ways, including the continuation of the practice of slavery and the way we treated the native population. The United States is the closest anywhere has come to an O'ist nation in history; but close does not mean identical, and I know of no O'ist that would argue that the USA was an O'ist nation at its foundation or any time thereafter.

How does the practice of slavery violate O'ism?

 

[tsig]

Pay attention! Slavery is coercion by force, the very thing that never would have happened if Objectivists had been the founders.

Slaves are property, by what right do you tell someone what to do with his property?