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Randian Philosophy: Atlas can suck my wang
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I have only relatively recently gotten into Randian Philosophy, like only in the last year and a half. During this time I have read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, The Virtue of Selfishness, and others as well as various essay's by other people on Objectivist ideas. I am in no way an expert, and if anyone finds any holes in my argument please point them out to me and I will try to address them.
Second- My views on Objectivism
I consider my self to be a Neo-Objectivist, taken from Wikipedia...
Neo-Objectivism covers a large family of philosophical viewpoints and cultural values derivative from but not necessarily in agreement with Objectivist philosophy. Different and even logically incompatible viewpoints have been sometimes described as "Neo-Objectivist", provided that these viewpoints are substantially similar to – though not exactly the same as – the viewpoints endorsed by Objectivist philosophy.
Summarized, my beliefs are the importance of reason and the acceptance of reality, individualism, egoism, enlightened or rational self-interest, and capitalism. I will attempt to defend these views in response to posts made on this thread
Third- Rebuttals (Italics are points I address)
I would argue that that the people who build our houses and supply our food are not moochers at all. They are thinkers because they provide for themselves with a skill they can trade, such as farming or masonry. These people would be moochers only if they expected a producer to provide for them with nothing in return, such as a poor farmer demanding that his more prosperous neighbor give him food because he needs it, and I don't. That is the key part in my argument. If the poor farmer simply asks with the intention and ability to pay back his debt, the prosperous farmer can respond as he wants in regard to his own interests. If the poor farmer decides to demand a share of the prosperous farmer's, or PS's, profits, he is mooching. He is saying that the PS lives to serve him, that his life is not his own. In Objectivism that is considered the greatest evil. To quote Atlas Shrugged, "He knew only - as from a great, clear distance - that man exists for the achievement of his desires, and he wondered why he stood here, he wondered who had the right to demand that he waste a single irreplaceable hour of his life."
To address the poverty argument, I would agree that I have never experienced crushing poverty. But I do not agree that those people in poverty are somehow inferior. They, to quote you, "Fucked Up" yes. BUT, to take from Andrew Carnegie's ideas in "Wealth" to give a man help when he is down is an insult to him and his abilities. Simply feeding his down-time does not give him incentive to rise up and better himself.
However, this is where I differ from pure Objectivism. I do believe that the poor and downtrodden need some help, but this help must never be detrimental to yourself and it must always serve some purpose. I do not beleive in giving a man a job when he cannot do the work adequately, but I do believe in giving the man a low-paying starting job and allowing him somewhere to stay for a low price. If the man can earn his keep for me, I have no problem with me using some of my assets to provide for him. In this way it is not a sacrifice, but a trade.
In everything you say so far, I find no problem with as it does not harm me and is logically correct choice in some perspectives. However, the passage I have italicized and limed is, to me, fundamentally evil.
What right do you, or anyone, have to tell me or anyone else what my purpose in life is. My purpose is not to be the sacrificial animal on the altar for other people to sacrifice and gain the benefits of. If my life is simply to be used to help other people, then that is no life at all. As I have quoted earlier, "Man exists for the achievement of his desires" and for no other purpose should he live. If a man decides to spend his life living for others, such as helping orphans in an orphanage, that does not make him evil. In fact, I see that as a noble thing for him to do. However, no one forced him to take that path in his life and he gains something from his helping of the orphans. He likes helping orphans, and gains a happiness from helping them and doing good work in achieving something. However, the looter would demand that he work tirelessly at helping the orphans, not for his benefit but for theirs and theirs alone.
No, the parasite would force me to eat my own cock by using my own moral code against me.
Edit- various grammar issues and spoilered for wall of text
And the first part of my sentence stated that in and of itself, I didn't find it to be crazy.
I don't know what bizarro world you live in but people are radically different not just in capabilities, but desires as well. Not only do I not have a desire to be pro baseball player, I couldn't even if I wanted too. Being a pro baseball player takes an enormous amount of natural skill and intense training. That's why so few can do it. They aren't twice as good as me, they are many orders of magnitude better than me. Why shouldn't they be compensated accordingly?
Now let's say I magically get pro baseball skills. I still have little desire to play (other than perhaps money) so I would still be of less value than some one who lived and breathed it.
You seem to be completely ignoring choice. If the janitor's abilities are the same as the store owner then why doesn't the janitor go start his own business? If he wants the same pay as the owner then he can do the same work. If he doesn't want, or can't do, the work (or risk) of the store owner then that's on him.
That quote is what I don't like about Bioshock in respect to Randian ideology. A man is entitled to the sweat of his brow, yes. But, he can use that sweat to get what he wants. Rand, or at least my interpretation of her philosophy, has no problem with Unions. If a man wants higher pay and he has the ability to demand it and back it up, he should get higher pay. If he doesn't, he should use his skill to get a higher paying job somewhere else. A man is perfectly entitled to demand more, if he has the ability to back it up.
Edit: Also Rands whole thing about how some forms of music are inherently superior to others is just retarded.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
To your edit, yes that is pretty retarded.
But, I object to your argument on handouts. Yes, I think handouts are bad and I try to be a self-made man, but the public school argument is weak. The only reason I use/used public schools is that I had no choice, by law I must go to a school and I can/could not afford a private school. Do I think that the school system would be better if privatized? Yes, yes, a thousand time yes.
To your argument about the debt owed to previous generations, I don't really define that as taking a handout. I define that as taking advantage of the situation put in front of me and using all the tools available to me to improve my life.
Depends. If he backs it up with an AK-47 he's out of the club. In the real world, disputes tend to be resolved by who has more (fire)power.
Thought experiment: One man is born realizing he is fast and strong and cool under fire. He spends his time training at arms, studying tactics, taking from those weaker than him. Another man is born realizing he is clever and spends his time building neat things that other people are willing to trade for. First man kills and takes second mans things. Right or wrong?
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
But you are not a selfmade man. Even ignoring public school because you had no choice, did you go to a public university? If you went to a private university, did you accept any scholarships funded by donations and endowments? When you go to other cities, do you use their roads and sidewalks that you have not paid taxes for? Have your parents ever helped you out since you turned 18? Will you inherit any property? All of these things are handouts, whether you like them or not. If you truly want to be a free and self made man, go live in the woods and catch your food with your hands.
Damn, that is a fun exercise. I would say wrong, because no one has the right to take anything away from someone else at the barrel of a gun. This conclusion can be reached using the quote, "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." The important part hear is the, "nor ask another man to live for mine." This man is not living but dying, true, but the principles are still the same.
Yes, I am not a self made man. The key part I said was that I try. And if I went to a public university or got a scholarship funded by donations, I would have earned those scholarships by using my knowledge.
Truth.org.
There are virtually no self-made people, since that is a dumb goddamn concept and we are all the sum of the parts instilled in us by those around us. No matter who you are and what circumstances you come from, you are a direct result of the people and concepts you've encountered.
The best of the best are many times better than the worst of the worst. But take your average man[or slightly above average man due to the wonders of specialization] and they are not so many times different. Even if they were, the pay increase is astronomical, many many times removed from the amount of income they produce.
There is good reason for this, but i am sure you cant be bothered with actual economics.[It has to do with marginal returns]
That is an easy morality for someone lucky enough to be born with brains. How about this situation. The fast strong dude, buying into the moral principle of non-agression doesn't kill and take from the smart guy, instead, the clever guy enters into a contract with the tough guy whereby the tough guy will pay one grain of rice for the first square on a chessboard, and double each subsequent square. The tough guy spends the rest of his life in servitude to the clever guy trying to pay off the debt (because he's principled and not about to break the non-agression thing). Was the smart guy right or wrong?
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Yeah, you're sort of forgetting something here.
Let's say I work 50 hrs/week as that business owner, and let's say I net $40/hr. Let's say that the janitorial work amounts to 2 hrs/day of extra work. Now, you're arguing that since I make $40/hr, the value of any time spent that's in any way connected to that job is also worth $40/hr.
Except you're really, really wrong. Let's pretend I didn't have that janitor. Would my floors suddenly be not clean? No, I'd clean them myself. Would I clean them in lieu of, say, balancing the books or ordering supplies or whatever? No, I would do all that stuff too, unless I was a retard. The time spent mopping the floors isn't coming out of my time spent doing other business-related stuff. it's coming out of my leisure time.
The question, then, is how much is my leisure time worth? You, presumably, assert that it's worth $40/hr. The logical extension of this is that whenever I pay anyone to do anything, I must pay them $40/hr or else I'm abusing my power differential, because we've established that's how much my time is worth. Except that's dumb. It's not worth $40/hr to have some kid mow my lawn, or to have a waiter serve me dinner, or to have some guy wash my car. If I'm paying a kid $10 to spend an hour mowing my lawn, then it means my free time is worth at least $10/hr to me. It's, of course, impossible to figure out exactly how much my free time is worth from this example. Perhaps I would pay up to $20/hr, but we'll never know, because the market has determined that $10 is more reasonable.
You keep referring to prices being set by the power differential, but all you've done is taken the conventional notion of supply and demand and relabeled the terms to make people with money sound all evil and scary. The unfortunate bit is that I know you understand economics enough to know better.
Or, you know, the ability to go to a bank and procure a loan. For which you don't need that much money.
I mean, it's still not easy, but you're making it sound like the only way to start a business is to already be rich.
Hmm, that's pretty tough. I would probably say right in some aspects and wrong in others. The smart man is right for using his brain to gain an advantage over another man and using his talents to give himself a profit. However, both the strong man and the smart man are wrong because one is living his life for another man and the other is allowing him to do so. No matter what contract there is, no man should live for another.
I realize I'm opening myself up here for a killer rebuttal.
Actually, if you were making money based on the time you worked[which you arent, you are making money by getting everything done], then the time to mow the lawn and hire the janitor, etc, etc, must necessarily be worth more than 40 dollars/hour to you. Otherwise you would be working instead of doing those things and making 40 dollars. You would do this because those other things arent worth 40 dollars to you.
But you are not working at a rate, and how hard you work just determines how quickly you get done to do other things. So that time might be worth less because working more has a small marginal return.
So the amount payed is between the value of your time to the value of his time. But the market does not always come to a reasonable result[because of various things].
The reason i brought up the value arguement is to clearly show that people are not payed what their value is, not to argue that they ought to be[as Rand argues that they both are and ought to be]. Because paying people by their "value" doesnt work[as defined as creating the greatest general welfare]
Lets just say this. There are very few externalities that occur because of wealthy people getting payed to little for their work.
So you outlaw debt and contracts? Because the entire basis of a contract is that each side is obligated to act for the other side.
Wow, now that janitor really has no chance to start a business.
Actually, this is one of my biggest issues with Rand. She ignores that power begets power. She ignores that in a lazie faire economy, in many cases its easier to make money with money than with talent, and the best don't always rise to the top, or get the right resources to start a successful business. She seems to think raw capitalism will lead to a Utopian aristocracy with the best and brightest its rightful leaders, instead of the powerful just becoming more powerful (on average).
Full disclosure, my middle name is Rand. No really.
I got nothing. My only point is that it isn't surprising that Rand supports a philosophy advantageous to her nature. If smart weak people can convince dumb strong people not to attack them, more power to them.
Edit: to clarify--why is it wrong to use your god given talents to take advantage of another using might but not by using guile?
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
I think I more or less agree with you, but I also think that the very practice of referring to the value of people is flawed. A person is not worth anything, economically speaking. The work they do is what's worth something. I could, in theory, mop floors for $10/hr, and also to people's tax returns on the side for $40/hr. So am I worth $10/hr or $40/hr? Neither, I'm not worth shit. But the services I can provide are.
If janitors are making $10/hr, then the value of mopping the floor, according the market, is $10/hr in the sense that this is what one will reasonably expect to pay for it. The actual value to a specific person can be pretty much anything - it could be $1/hr to someone who has plenty of time to burn and doesn't mind mopping floors and only has 100 sq feet of floor to mop. It could be worth $1000/hr to someone who desperately needs a floor mopped right fucking now to impress a client. It's not a static figure even for any given person or venue, and so it's kind of pointless to even talk about it in that way.
Now, we can say that janitors are undervalued in some sort of grand, karmic sense of justice, but that's not really an economic discussion. If you look at an unskilled job for which everyone on the planet is pretty much qualified, you're not going to be looking at a job that commands a high salary. You can organize unions or enact legislation to artificially inflate the cost of such services, and this may be an economically wise thing to do, but it really has little to do with "value" or "power differentials" or anything else.
This is very true.
So I've never really understood how "nor ask another man to live for [my sake]" follows from Objectivist 'enlightend self interest'? That's always seemed like a really arbitrary assertion to me, from a system that's supposed to get 'ought' from 'is'. Why not have slaves? It's worked for a lot of people really well.
You're talking about cost, not value. The cost of the work is $10/hr. You even brought it up— if all the janitors in the entire city decide that they won't mop floors for less than $15/hr, that doesn't change the work they do in any way, it just raises the cost.
If I'm buying a car from a guy who needs cash to leave the country, I can get it for significantly less than what the car is really worth to me. Similarly, if I'm paying a guy to mop my floor who needs to pay his rent, I can pay him significantly less than what the mopping is actually worth. That's what we're talking about.
OK, you have a point there. Contracts should be honored if you make them. Pure Objectivism would say that the smart man is right in all aspects, and the strong man is an idiot for entering into such a stupid contract. However, as stated in my previous post I am a Neo-Objectivist, which means I believe that Objectivism is open for interpretation. I honestly don't know how best to address this question.
Quote by themightypuck On rethinking my arguments. I would have to say that if both men used their own gifts to get what they want, then they are both right. However, if the strong man killed the smart man, the strong man would be making a mistake. The smart man has the ability to make more of his ideas and inventions and apply them in a way that would better his life. If the strong man kills the smart man for his inventions, he is really getting nothing.
Pardon me, I was sloppy with my terminology. That doesn't alter the fact that talking about the "value" of the work is kind of pointless, because the value has nothing to do with economic forces, and isn't even really predictable on a large scale. Prices shouldn't be set based on value, because value is such a wishy-washy, subjective beast.
And I still maintain that talking about the value of a person is weapons-grade stupid.
So they make a fair deal and civilization is born.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
He gets the fear of all the other smart men without having to work them over individually.
edit:
Objectivism and all ultra-capitalist views all fall apart then instant its understood that people can willingly make choices that cause them great harm.
I've wondered about this as well. The philosophy seems to fundamentally assume that all men are not equal. Where did this golden rule clause come from? It seems out of place.
What about in the context of safety. How much do you spend to make your elevator or airplane safe? People have values in this context although it is fairly ugly and dangerous for companies to talk about them--see the whole Ford Pinto fiasco.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Oh shit. So on rethinking my arguments. The Mafia is born.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Its "enlightened self interest" because you cant say slavery is fine.
The golden rule is "treat others as you wish to be treated"[and its many iterations].
Do you mean that part in the declaration[and iirc many democratic documents] that "All men are created equal"
Well, its all men are created equal, not are men are equal.
I disagree with that, but I find the analogy to be pretty hilarious.
Anyway, reading The Romantic Manifesto is what finally turned me off Ayn Rand. I got into her after reading Terry Goodkind when I was thirteen.
Exactly, people do not have to be in the upper class of society to apply Objectivist views to their everyday life. And I haven't read The Romantic Manifesto yet, but I pretty much disagree with most of her views on Sex and Love already, so it probably won't be to much of a shocker.
Ask me what I think of Spinoza. (Hint hint: it's unfavorable).
Okay, now let's take a couple exerpts from the Rand page.
This is the "problem of universals," on which Western philosophy has foundered.
Plato claimed to find the referent of concepts not in this world, but in a supernatural dimension of essences. The Kantians regard concepts (some or all) as devoid of referents, i.e., as subjective creations of the human mind independent of external facts. Both approaches and all of their variants in the history of philosophy lead to the same essential consequence: the severing of man's tools of cognition from reality, and therefore the undercutting of man's mind. (Although Aristotle's epistemology is far superior, his theory of concepts is intermingled with remnants of Platonism and is untenable.) Recent philosophers have given up the problem and, as a result, have given up philosophy as such.
This is a wildly inaccurate representation of epistemology--both in terms of it's references to Platonics and Kantians as if they were the only schools of thought, and in the vague handwaving reference to "all of their variants in the history of philosophy." There are plenty of non-skeptics and realists outside of objectivism, and in fact, those are likely the dominant positions among modern philosophers. Furthermore, describing the problem of universals as the key problem of philosophy is just silly, and if you're going to accuse "recent philosophers" of having "given up philosophy as such," then I would expect a much more thorough argument.
This is just florid, surface-level talk, which declares victory without substantially engaging much of anything. It's third-rate philosophy at best.
Let's try another, shorter quote:
This really exemplifies the silliness of that page. Who's to say that man cannot think unless knowledge is his goal? What if he views knowledge as only instrumental to securing other, more basic goals--like survival or comfort? Who's to say that logic is the only method of thought--clearly, people are not always logical, and yet in those instances they certainly still manage to think (however incorrectly). Finally, even were thinking to be a delicate, difficult process, one which required logic and a commitment to knowledge, it still wouldn't follow that it required selfishness. For instance, one could be committed to the pursuit of knowledge precisely because knowledge serves a public good.
The Rand Institute isn't presenting an argument, it's presenting a loose string of statements, which spectacularly fail to meet the criteria of a strong deductive argument. The premises are by no means self-evident (who says thinking is a delicate process, anyway?), the terms aren't precisely defined, and the premises fail to entail the conclusion. This is, again, the shittiest of third-string philosophy.
This isn't even getting into the train-wreck that is objectivist ethics.