Objectivism and Ayn Rand

[wild_philosophe]

I can imagine Robison crusoe without man friday tho, and he's still human really, a but lonely mind.

It's just bollocks Gmatthews i don't know what distinctions she's drawing in those propositions but it's Popper mashed with a cultist why bother?

 

[kyser_soze]

If you're more than 13 years old and still think Ayn Rands ideas have any kind of weight you really need to have a word with yourself. It's the kind of thing alienated teenager boys who jack off to Boris Vallejo fantasy art might like.

 

[wild_philosophe]

Stop polluting my mind with your untermensch fears! lol

 

[kyser_soze]

TBH the one thing I can thank her for is getting me interested in reading philosophy for *fun* (you know, that special kind of fun that being a geek gives you) - as soon as I finished Atlas Shrugged I thought 'I could do better than that FFS'

 

[wild_philosophe]

same here more or less. something to avoid, depsite that lovely selfish feeling you get when reading her stuff

 

[8ball]

I notice a kind of cold and brutalist philosophy in a lot of sci-fi writers, even when the stories don't follow suit.

Are there any warm, fuzzy sci-fi lefties out there?

 

[wild_philosophe]

she's not quite a misanthrope is it tho. not from what i've read it's not like she wants to kill peope it's just an unfortunet side effect.

 

[Demosthenes]

Facts are facts...

can anyone think of one that's true independent of a context or standard of measurement, or viewpoint ?

 

[Crispy]

independent of context? no. coherent across all known contexts? plenty.

 

[yield]

Are there any warm, fuzzy sci-fi lefties out there?

Ursula Le Guin, China Mieville, Iain M Banks, Adam Roberts. Enlightening but perhaps not that warm.

 

[kyser_soze]

Yeah, Adam Roberts is getting successively more depressing as he gets older. Gradicil is a great book (with his trademark hard science and a great freefall from orbit sequence) but fuck me it's depressing...

 

[soulman]

Not sure if you can call him a leftie but Kim Stanley Robinson is still kicking..

 

[Diamond Dog]

The whole objectivity/relativity thing I will leave aside for now, but if you want to hear some interesting arguments regarding 'laissez-faire', liberalism etc. then watch Adam Curtis' 'The Trap', or read into some governmentality studies (Foucault kicked it off, but for a more recent thesis look into work by Nikolas Rose)

 

[Gmart]

I notice a kind of cold and brutalist philosophy in a lot of sci-fi writers, even when the stories don't follow suit.

The world seems to be getting ever more brutal and cold with the stark reasoning of the market. I think that's why people graduate towards her, it is easy selfishness justified.

I would say this though, I agree with 3.

I exist for my own sake, neither sacrificing myself to others nor sacrificing others to myself, unless I want to, or choose to. The moment anyone says that I should do anything I don't want to do there better be a good reason, or else I will rebel against that law. If my freedom to do this is taken that would make me a slave.

 

[samk]

Therein lies the essential pretence of capitalism - that employers meet employees as equals, as legal persons. They're not. The capitalist owns the means of production and pays the employee - as a commodity, for what they can get away with paying them, not for what they actually produce.

A janitor is a capitalist if they own their own mop

Imho, a better short argument against free market fundamentalism that listeners hopefully won't immediately file under marxist jargon if they don't already agree with you is...

..it takes money to make money (or capital/resources in general, land in subsistence agriculture times, education now, social connections both friends and family for everyday favours&advice sharing and outright bribery and corruption)

This is a positive feedback loop, repeat over time and the result will be a growing rich/poor divide (until eventually the rich will be able to buy armies, spies, thugs, propaganda, etc and the country/world will no longer be free even by free market fundamentalist criteria)

 

[butchersapron]

The world seems to be getting ever more brutal and cold with the stark reasoning of the market. I think that's why people graduate towards her, it is easy selfishness justified.

Well you've changed your tune pretty quickly.

 

[dash_two]

I've never read any of Ayn Rand's books. Reading them seems to comprise a phase that some precocious American teenagers from well-off backgrounds go through.

King Vidor's film of 'The Fountainhead' is good though.

 

[Gmart]

Well you've changed your tune pretty quickly.

Have you been jumping to conclusions again Butcher? Did you just read that bit of my post, and in your rush to comment, not the second. Probably...

Oh it's all just so vague.

If you go to Ran cult pages they do actually argue about how she should be read... almost healthy that one.

Gmatthews why not explain what 1 and 2 mean cos i don't want to read my own hopes and fears into it

Number 1 is specifying the difference between the physical, like the computer in front of you and your thoughts which are not physical in the same way, but metaphysical.

Wishes, hopes and fears are just examples of emotions which are all metaphysical.

The implication is: don't think about other people, you don't know what they are feeling etc, just concentrate on YOUR feelings, and let them worry about theirs.

Ie this leads quite well to number 3 which says not to live your life for others but for yourself. It reminds me of the Taoist saying:

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.

In number 2 she is simply stating the truism that we have got to this lofty position evolutionarily by thinking for ourselves.

In number 4 she is saying that it's better to be traders with some form of protection from the government, rather than the previous system of simply the rich abusing the poor or as she puts it:

not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves,

Hinting at the nasty, brutish and short Hobbesian world the previous world was.

 

[butchersapron]

Have you been jumping to conclusions again Butcher? Did you just read that bit of my post, and in your rush to comment, not the second. Probably...

Well you seem a tad confused to be honest, swinging from total agreement to blasting the consequences of your new approach - unless that moaning about the world becoming 'ever more brutal and cold with the stark reasoning of the market' was just an empty platitude. Looks to me like you're in total agreement with this kiddy philosophy but don't want to face the oppropbrium that comes with it.

 

[nino_savatte]

"No man is an island"....someone forgot to tell Ayn Rand.

 

[nino_savatte]

Therein lies the essential pretence of capitalism - that employers meet employees as equals, as legal persons. They're not. The capitalist owns the means of production and pays the employee - as a commodity, for what they can get away with paying them, not for what they actually produce.

Except, of course, in the wars that the capitalist have fought to grab territory or resorces from each other

There is a contradiction when Randists claim to oppose war, because they will add the proviso that there are times when force is required. Unsurprisingly, they supported the invasion of Iraq because it "removed a dictator". Though they have a blind spot where corporate dictatorships are concerned.

 

[Gmart]

Well you seem a tad confused to be honest, swinging from total agreement to blasting the consequences of your new approach - unless that moaning about the world becoming 'ever more brutal and cold with the stark reasoning of the market' was just an empty platitude. Looks to me like you're in total agreement with this kiddy philosophy but don't want to face the oppropbrium that comes with it.

Again just read the beginning of my post. Have you been jumping to conclusions again Butcher? Did you just read that bit of my post, and in your rush to comment, not the second. Probably...

I stated my position quite well in#44, and if you bothered to read beyond the first sentence in #48, then my analysis is very clear.

I am still waiting for your thoughts, both here and in any other thread you comment on. Why should I put my thoughts down if you won't put yours? Just sitting there jumping to conclusions is just useless Butcher. Get involved! Have some courage in your convictions as I have, and comment, OR if you are not interested in this debate, leave, you have not contributed yet so you will not be missed.

I have gone thru point by point, from numbers 1 to 4. Your next response is usually to claim that I haven't, in an attempt to muddy the waters of your own lack of comment... *waits*

 

[butchersapron]

Again just read the beginning of my post. Have you been jumping to conclusions again Butcher? Did you just read that bit of my post, and in your rush to comment, not the second. Probably...

I stated my position quite well in#44, and if you bothered to read beyond the first sentence in #48, then my analysis is very clear.

I am still waiting for your thoughts, both here and in any other thread you comment on. Why should I put my thoughts down if you won't put yours? Just sitting there jumping to conclusions is just useless Butcher. Get involved! Have some courage in your convictions as I have, and comment, OR if you are not interested in this debate, leave, you have not contributed yet so you will not be missed.

I have gone thru point by point, from numbers 1 to 4. Your next response is usually to claim that I haven't, in an attempt to muddy the waters of your own lack of comment... *waits*

You also stated your postion quite well in a number of posts in which you said that you agreed with Rands summation of her 'philosophy' and that you doubted that it could be easily dismissed, a doubt that was quickly followed bt two easy dismissals. One from crispy and one from me. As you've evidently missed or were unable to deal with it, here it is again - the essensce of her philosophy, the basis for the whole thing is the belief in the economically rational individual, a patent nonsense, as will be everything that flows from this original belief, a belief which has more to do with faith and theology than an serious examination of either history, or society(s).

You're perfectly entitled to the belief that you've 'stated my position quite well in#44' but of course you haven't. What you actually done is simply offer a moral platitude about the consequences of the 'philosophy' that you can see no problems with (but are clearly holding back from embracing publically) then followed it up with something that sounds profound if you've never read any real philosophy but which actually amounts to saying nothing in itself - it needs to be hitched to the teenage-nietzscheanism of Rand and the glorification of selfishness before it becomes the exact thing you've been bemoaning at the start of your post.

As i said, you appear confused.

 

[Spion]

A janitor is a capitalist if they own their own mop

Hundreds of millions of people around the world, maybe even a majority, or near it, are in that position. Mostly peasants and urban poor. Micro-owners of property in the means of production with maybe farm tools, or a small piece of land, or a shoeshine box. You'd have to be a fool to lump them in with Murdoch, Tata etc

Imho, a better short argument against free market fundamentalism that listeners hopefully won't immediately file under marxist jargon if they don't already agree with you is...

It's a fool who would label something and then close their ears before hearing what's actually being said. Although I'd say, if it's something one believes then you have to be imaginative about how you present your case

..it takes money to make money (or capital/resources in general, land in subsistence agriculture times, education now, social connections both friends and family for everyday favours&advice sharing and outright bribery and corruption)

This is a positive feedback loop, repeat over time and the result will be a growing rich/poor divide (until eventually the rich will be able to buy armies, spies, thugs, propaganda, etc and the country/world will no longer be free even by free market fundamentalist criteria)

This is fair enough as far as it goes, but you're not really explaining how money is 'made' so it is really a description of the symptoms rather than an explanation of why it happens

 

[Gmart]

I knew you wouldn't disappoint.

I have commented on Crispy's original comments. I have also given an analysis of each point Rand made from 1 to 4 she made, by actually going into what she wrote.

You seem unable to do this, but at least you've broken your rule about commenting:

You state that the 'economically rational individual' is a patent nonsense, but it isn't really because people need money to buy food and shelter and everyone does follow this rationality by paying rent, getting a job etc.

If your basic premise is this, then you are taking an extremist position which deliberately ignores the world and it is. In fact you put it very well yourself! Your extremist position is:

a patent nonsense, as will be everything that flows from this original belief, a belief which has more to do with faith and theology than an serious examination of either history, or society(s).

Meanwhile:

This is a positive feedback loop, repeat over time and the result will be a growing rich/poor divide

Actually everyone gains from growth, it's just that the rich grow quicker. Thus taxation.

 

[Dubversion]

You state that the 'economically rational individual' is a patent nonsense, but it isn't really because people need money to buy food and shelter and everyone does follow this rationality by paying rent, getting a job etc.

so the fact that people pay rent and buy food makes assertions about the economically rational individual valid?

 

[Gmart]

so the fact that people pay rent and buy food makes assertions about the economically rational individual valid?

Yes, it is rational to buy food.

It is also rational to buy the cheaper of 2 identical products.

 

[nino_savatte]

Are you a Randist, Gmarthews?

 

[Dubversion]

Yes, it is rational to buy food.

It is also rational to buy the cheaper of 2 identical products.

Both quite true.

So what?

 

[kyser_soze]

You state that the 'economically rational individual' is a patent nonsense, but it isn't really because people need money to buy food and shelter and everyone does follow this rationality by paying rent, getting a job etc.

You misunderstand what the economic model of the 'rational actor' is. Basically, it states that no one will ever behave in a way that is economically irrational - and by this I don't mean buying an £8000 Rolex (which if you have the money and think such a purchase will give you pleasure is a rational transaction). But people aren't. I might like said Rolez, but it would be irrational of me to buy it since I would put myself in debt to do so...however, there are people who would behave irrationally in that way.

Same thing applies to say, buying a new TV. If my TV works perfectly I have no rational reason to want to buy a 42" flat screen, other than desire, and desire is NOT a rational brain function. Also, that TV doesn't contribute to my basic survival needs, and purchasing a new one, which again could get me in debt, could in fact impact on my ability to meet those basic survival needs.

The rational actor is a fallacy designed to make specific economic models work properly at a theoretical level because dealing with the chaotic unpredictability of individual decision making is impossible for classical economics (and pretty much everything else for that matter).

It's why advertisers always try and convince people that loads of others are buying something, that not having something makes you, the individual, somehow lacking by not owning X product, or that X product represents you on some mythically deep level.