Objectivism and Ayn Rand

[kyser_soze]

Yes, it is rational to buy food.

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

Yeah, but people won't always buy the cheaper product. It may be because it's genuinely better value to buy the more expensive of the two, it might be based on a completely non-rational decision.

 

[Dubversion]

what I find astonishing is that the people who'd you'd assume would have most sympathy with Rand's nonsense - Nozick, Rothbard etc - were quickest to dismiss her. That speaks volumes

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Funny thing is, though, it's often the most powerful people in the free-market world who behave least rationally.

For instance, when you've made your fortune, is it actually rational, instead of retiring, and enjoying the rest of your life, to keep on working all hours, acquiring, dominating, never stopping? Of course it isn't. But on the whole, that's what happens.

So what we get, instead of rational behaviour, is actually deeply obsessional and irrational behaviour driven by impulses which are neither altruistic nor objective. And madness is the minds of the powerful is genuinely socially destructive.

 

[Gmart]

Yeah, but people won't always buy the cheaper product. It may be because it's genuinely better value to buy the more expensive of the two, it might be based on a completely non-rational decision.

IDENTICAL products Kyser. If you offered me the latest Tom Robbins book for 10 quid and then someone else offers the identical book for 8. then being a rational person I would by the latter.

And 999 people out of 1000 would do the same. Just because there is an occasional madman who decides not to, does not mean that it doesn't hold logically...

 

[butchersapron]

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:

Meanwhile:

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

I've broken my rule about commenting by repeating my comments made within 6 minutes of your original post? My you are on a roll here. I've no ned to really comment directly on points 1-4 as they're all essentially variants of or supporting arguments for the theology of the rational economic individual - that's the 'rotten timber' on which the whole thinsg rests.

Your defence of this theology is, again, confused. Of course people have to live and to live they need certain needs and those needs have to met by the social organisation of production and distribution - but that doesn't mean that this must rest on the idea of the economically rational individual and their puruist of their selfish interests. The merest of glimpses at history will show you that the idea is a nonsense.

You have two ideas here that you need to make some sort of case for a) that the existenceof production by itself demonstrates the existence of this wonderous beast, the economically rational individual - once you've done that you'll be able to then try and show b) how the societies constructed around this creature are the best possible ones at that time.

And please, is this

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.

really your understanding of the 'economically rational individual' - someone who pays by direct debit? (And there's a rational choice to be made not to pay by direct debit or use self service as this is part of the cutting costs, including labour, package). Don't you see any constraining material circumstances for this free rational choice, the 'dull compulsion of economic relations' for example? Your freedom is actually nearer to the slavery you so melodramatically rejected a few posts up, and your realism is actually you ignoring the world as it is.

 

[Dubversion]

IDENTICAL products Kyser. If you offered me the latest Tom Robbins book for 10 quid and then someone else offers the identical book for 8. then being a rational person I would by the latter.

And 999 people out of 1000 would do the same. Just because there is an occasional madman who decides not to, does not mean that it doesn't hold logically...

and you believe this is incontrovertible proof for the rational economic individual?

 

[Yossarian]

It's too bad Ayn Rand emigrated from Soviet Russia, she'd have been perfect gulag material.

 

[nino_savatte]

It's too bad Ayn Rand emigrated from Soviet Russia, she'd have been perfect gulag material.

Aye, her and her family left just in time.

 

[butchersapron]

Funny thing is, though, it's often the most powerful people in the free-market world who behave least rationally.

For instance, when you've made your fortune, is it actually rational, instead of retiring, and enjoying the rest of your life, to keep on working all hours, acquiring, dominating, never stopping? Of course it isn't. But on the whole, that's what happens.

So what we get, instead of rational behaviour, is actually deeply obsessional and irrational behaviour driven by impulses which are neither altruistic nor objective. And madness is the minds of the powerful is genuinely socially destructive.

A lot of free-marketers, those not stuck in 1930s New York anyway, accept the irrationality of the market, hence the recent interest in the social psychology of the stock market. Doug Henwood on Wall Street does a really good job of taking apart the rational action model.

 

[nino_savatte]

It is no accident that Rand's 'philosophy' has never enjoyed the same popularity in Europe and elsewhere as it has in the US and Canada.

I'll finish this later.

 

[kyser_soze]

IDENTICAL products Kyser. If you offered me the latest Tom Robbins book for 10 quid and then someone else offers the identical book for 8. then being a rational person I would by the latter.

And 999 people out of 1000 would do the same. Just because there is an occasional madman who decides not to, does not mean that it doesn't hold logically...

But no one said that people don't act rationally did they? Now, this seems to be the difficult bit for you to get so I'll say is slowly.

People can sometimes be rational.
Sometimes they aren't.
The rational actor model assumes that people are rational all the time.
This is a falllacy because it is clearly not true.
People behave irrationally all the time.

See, Rand assumes, as the model does, that humans are perfectly rational. Even if someone is rational 99.999% of the time, that 0.0001% time they aren't fucks the model, and people behave irrationally far, far more often than that.

For example - I earn £1,000 pcm. I have to pay £500 in rent&bills, I wish to buy a Prada handbag that costs £600. This will leave me no money for transport, food or disposable income, however I go ahead and buy it, leaving me in debt and unable to feed myself for a month.

That is an irrational decision, but is an example based in fact from a woman I once worked with - she basically got into debt and virtually starved herself for a month in order to buy a handbag.

That is irrational behaviour.

 

[Dubversion]

IDENTICAL Prada bags, kyser

 

[Spion]

There's also the blindingly obvious fact that a lot of what we do just isn't driven by our reckoning about our personal profit and loss account. This board is a good example, with the thousands of hours people expend posting for no (narrowly) material gain whatsoever.

 

[Spion]

Kyser earlier today

 

[Gmart]

Your freedom is actually nearer to the slavery you so melodramatically rejected a few posts up, and your realism is actually you ignoring the world as it is.

I can understand why you might feel this. Obviously I DO feel that most people are generally rational. You feel otherwise, we'll leave it at that I think.

Meanwhile Kyser, you might think your actions were irrational, but actually they were rational because you wanted that handbag more than you cared about how you would survive in the future with such debt. You probably thought that it would be hard, but manageable. Maybe you have an overdraft?

Utility maximisation now, is rationality.

And if 99.9% of people are like that, then that's a general rule which is all you'll ever get from a social science like economics.

 

[kyser_soze]

Don't venture down the road of subjective pleasure Spion, it's hard enough getting Marthews to understand that people can behave rationally and irrationally as it is, without throwing something that complex into the mix.

OK, GMarthews...another example...

People spend less time deciding to commit to buying a house, on average, than they do picking out a pair of shoes. A perfectly rational person would base the time expended on a decision on the size and cost of that decision - therefore one would expect something like a pair of shoes would take minutes, whereas a house purchase would require deep consideration. However, as anyone who's ever been dragged from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch and back again with their gf on a shoe buying mission will testify, that's not the case. And research shows that people will generally make a decision to buy a house within 20 minutes.

 

[butchersapron]

I can understand why you might feel this. Obviously I DO feel that most people are generally rational. You feel otherwise, we'll leave it at that I think.

I should have trusted my instincts.

 

[Dubversion]

I can understand why you might feel this. Obviously I DO feel that most people are generally rational.

but the rational economic individual can't be GENERALLY rational, dumbass, they have to be wholly rational.

 

[kyser_soze]

I can understand why you might feel this. Obviously I DO feel that most people are generally rational. You feel otherwise, we'll leave it at that I think.

Meanwhile Kyser, you might think your actions were irrational, but actually they were rational because you wanted that handbag more than you cared about how you would survive in the future with such debt. You probably thought that it would be hard, but manageable. Maybe you have an overdraft?

Utility maximisation now, is rationality.

And if 99.9% of people are like that, then that's a general rule which is all you'll ever get from a social science like economics.

Jesus, there really is no fucking point is there? I worked in advertising for 10 years, so I know, from a practical use angle, how to engage, manipulate and use irrationality.

There's very little point in trying to argue with someone who thinks that choosing a handbag (which she already had plenty of) over basic survival needs is rational, which is basically what you're arguing.

 

[Gmart]

but the rational economic individual can't be GENERALLY rational, dumbass, they have to be wholly rational.

Why? 99% is a good enough percentage for me. This isn't a pure science you know, dumbass.

 

[Dubversion]

righty-ho

i'm off to staple some jelly to a wall. Which, given that the alternative is to watch Gmarthews drool his way to oblivion, is a rational decision

 

[samk]

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

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

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

Yes, they are obviously not in the same situation, but there seems to be a bit more to it than owning the means of production.

There are a lot of fools about, being able to put an argument in a different way if they can't or won't understand one way might be helpful.

It would happen even without money, in a barter economy. I don't understand finance well enough to know how much worse the system of money creation makes things.

 

[kyser_soze]

Can I just ask Marthews, do you have problems with normal social interaction? Because if you predicate other people's motivations on the rational actor model you must get a large number of unpleasant surprises...

 

[Idaho]

IDENTICAL products Kyser. If you offered me the latest Tom Robbins book for 10 quid and then someone else offers the identical book for 8. then being a rational person I would by the latter.

And 999 people out of 1000 would do the same. Just because there is an occasional madman who decides not to, does not mean that it doesn't hold logically...

Humans are completely irrational. Perhaps if I offered you the same two books, but one had been read once before and the other was brand new. The second hand one was still in very good condition. The words would be just as easy to read. The cover picture was the same. The second hand one would sell less often even though it was cheaper.

Humans do things on a daily, even hourly basis that are not rational. We base the majority of our decisions on routine, basic needs, desires, emotions and now and again, reason.

 

[Gmart]

Jesus, there really is no fucking point is there? I worked in advertising for 10 years, so I know, from a practical use angle, how to engage, manipulate and use irrationality.

There's very little point in trying to argue with someone who thinks that choosing a handbag (which she already had plenty of) over basic survival needs is rational, which is basically what you're arguing.

But she IS going to survive, AND she knows it.

Advertising is about getting people to connect products to being happy. Fooling people into being this irrational takes a lot of effort (10 years you say!) and money (wanna know about advertising budgets?).

 

[Idaho]

But she IS going to survive, AND she knows it.

Advertising is about getting people to connect products to being happy. Fooling people into being this irrational takes a lot of effort (10 years you say!) and money (wanna know about advertising budgets?).

Advertising is far more complex than that. It is about directing our irrationality, not deviating us from the path of rationality.

 

[Gmart]

i'm off to staple some jelly to a wall.

Which is what would rationally maximise your utility for you. That's if you actually did it! Saying it to me was also rational

 

[kyser_soze]

But she IS going to survive, AND she knows it.

Advertising is about getting people to connect products to being happy. Fooling people into being this irrational takes a lot of effort (10 years you say!) and money (wanna know about advertising budgets?).

Actually, it takes no fucking effort whatsoever, and ad budgets have very little impact over the success of failure of engaging people unless you are talking about products with no real USP that exist in undifferentiated markets - e..g soap powders, fizzy drinks. Smaller, niche products such as luxury goods require very little exposure to actually sell them - the trick is in making sure you hit the right people with the right message.

Altho that you seem to have problems with basic English (yes I worked in advertising for 10 years, however I was competently able to plan and deliver successful campaigns within about 6 months of starting...), so maybe that's why you singularly fail to understand what's being said to you...

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Which is what would rationally maximise your utility for you. That's if you actually did it! Saying it to me was also rational

You're operating this as a circular argument, though, aren't you? People do things to maximise their utility, therefore if you did something, it must have been to maximis utility.

Whereas another view would be that some people behave like that, but many others do not.

 

[butchersapron]

Which is what would rationally maximise your utility for you. That's if you actually did it! Saying it to me was also rational

...and here you see the irrationally circular nature of matthews rationality.