Ayn Rand, Objectivism, Atlas Shrugged, et al.

[Ziggy Stardust]

At this point it really doesn't matter anymore.

The economy will improve greatly and charity can pay for everything are the two obviously bogus claims which will be uttered as if they're trueisms outside the scope of discussion. They're not even presented as assumptions.

So what's the use in continuing. This child murder enthousiast is signing off.

Just for Farm Home Boy: of course it wasn't. You know me

 

[useless]

I like how he seriously believes that only those who pay should have justice.

Can't afford to pay to enforce the law against murder, when a family member or a friend got murdered? Sucks to be you poor person

Also congrats on dehumanizing anyone who isn't rich

 

[brennan]

2- Charity can help those at the botom like it currenty does with food.

... You are aware that we have social security and government healthcare systems because charity never, ever, helped most poor people enough to keep them healthy, or educated... you know this right? Modern socialist systems are the single most effective and cost effective charitable systems ever.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

See cop-out #2

Economy will be so superplus good everyone will have loads of cash to spare so they'll naturally donate 16 times as much to charity.

I have seen less daft emails ftom Nigerian princes.

 

[classical_hero]

I should probably spend even less time than I do in OT these days.

More people have be killed this way than the Nazi's could have ever dreamed of.

If you think that the unborn is a "parasite", then welcome to the Nazi world also, which was their justification for killing those less desirable than the Aryan race.

 

[brennan]

Don't get so much from Nigeria these days. It seems that UN officials and US army officers want me to take their millions lately.

 

[useless]

More people have be killed this way than the Nazi's could have ever dreamed of.

If you think that the unborn is a "parasite", then welcome to the Nazi world also, which was their justification for killing those less desirable than the Aryan race.

[Citation Needed]

Not only do you manage to be offensive towards women who have abortions but also to the victims of the holocaust

 

[Arakhor]

More people have be killed this way than the Nazi's could have ever dreamed of.

Nazi science sneers at ending sentences with a preposition and forming plurals with an apostrophe!

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

You abortion supporters are treating the unborn as if they're Palestinians

Just as the Nazis did

 

[El_Machinae]

The increase in charity hypothesis has been tested. We've had steady economic growth for some time, and a severe concentration of wealth into the hands for whom the marginal utility of money is low, and yet charity has floated very near 2% for some time. From well before the rich got super rich.

 

[Bootstoots]

Moderator Action: Enough with the Nazi comparisons.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

From what I've read, the data seem to show that increasing government spending on social services does tend to decrease private charity, but once people get used to caring for the poor being the responsibility of the state rather than of themselves then it mat take generations for them to return to their previous levels of charitable giving. This may imply that we should not increase extent the welfare state, but that reducing it would be a disaster.

 

[El_Machinae]

Even if there's an inverse correlation, the numbers are using vastly different scales.

 

[Traitorfish]

Isn't it ironic that in this era of strong governments a person was never less likely to die from the actions of another person.

Not really. The purpose of state violence is power, not death. Sometimes that means less people dying, sometimes it means dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Depends.

The state is a tool. It can be used for good or ill. Like that old quip about whether a sword is good or evil. It isn't the tool which is good or evil, but rather the task it is used for.

Complex tools have a way of exerting power over their users, and the state is no exception. It imposes certain logics upon its users which are not always in keeping with liberal values. Liberals historically recognised this even when arguing for the expansion of the state, yet many contemporary liberals, such as yourself, seem so preoccupied with combatting the (faux-)libertarianism of the Reaganist right that they forget it.

 

[Cutlass]

Not really. The purpose of state violence is power, not death. Sometimes that means less people dying, sometimes it means dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Depends.

By the same token, the purpose of not having a state is power. The state gets a monopoly on violence because it is bigger and tougher than the individual. So the individual who wants to do violence for the power that results from it considers the state to be his primary obstacle.

Complex tools have a way of exerting power over their users, and the state is no exception. It imposes certain logics upon its users which are not always in keeping with liberal values. Liberals historically recognised this even when arguing for the expansion of the state, yet many contemporary liberals, such as yourself, seem so preoccupied with combatting the (faux-)libertarianism of the Reaganist right that they forget it.

I don't forget it at all. I'm well aware of the dangers of the state. But I don't let myself forget the dangers of the private actors. Those who preach the evils of the state, and the necessity of removing or at least reducing the state, ignore or downplay the dangers of the non-state actors. But if they actually took the time to look at their lives, they would see that they are being harmed by non-state actors far more often than by state actors. Simply put, non-state actors have a great deal more incentive to harm you. They get more out of it.

So the issue here is not that I don't consider the dangers of the state, but rather that the libertarian/anarchist doesn't consider the dangers of the private actors.

 

[Traitorfish]

By the same token, the purpose of not having a state is power. The state gets a monopoly on violence because it is bigger and tougher than the individual. So the individual who wants to do violence for the power that results from it considers the state to be his primary obstacle.

Historically, the state has functioned as an oppurtunity for power as much as an obstacle to it. It just depends on who we're talking about; a mugger would probably consider it an obstacle, a Wall Street financier an oppurtunity. (A mafia boss might well view it somewhere in between.)

I don't forget it at all. I'm well aware of the dangers of the state. But I don't let myself forget the dangers of the private actors. Those who preach the evils of the state, and the necessity of removing or at least reducing the state, ignore or downplay the dangers of the non-state actors. But if they actually took the time to look at their lives, they would see that they are being harmed by non-state actors far more often than by state actors. Simply put, non-state actors have a great deal more incentive to harm you. They get more out of it.

So the issue here is not that I don't consider the dangers of the state, but rather that the libertarian/anarchist doesn't consider the dangers of the private actors.

But you see, even now, while affirming your scepticism of the state, you're engaged in a thinly-veiled valorisation of it by juxtaposing it to a chaos of maelovelent "private actors". It's as if civil society doesn't exist! I mean, you say above, "the point of not having a state is power"- that's positively Orwellian. I understand the point you're trying to make, but liberals should be wary of this kind of thinking, deeply wary.

 

[Old Hippy]

But you see, even now, while affirming your scepticism of the state, you're engaged in a thinly-veiled valorisation of it by juxtaposing it to a chaos of maelovelent "private actors". It's as if civil society doesn't exist! Liberals should be wary of this kind of thinking, deeply wary.

totally agree with that, but it is a thread about Ayn Rand, so we start from the position that civil society dose indeed not exist...

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm going to take inspiration from Rand's uncritical acceptance of dumb ethnic stereotypes and chalk that up to her being Russian.

 

[RFC_Viceroy]

What are you trying to say? Never has a police officer been less likely to be killed in the line of duty as now. And never has a police officer been less likely to kill someone else in the line of duty. So your ambiguously worded statement is false in either way the meaning is taken.

I was talking about police officers killing other people. I'll address everything else later, but I did want to clear this up now.

 

[jackelgull]

Everyone seems to talk about the state as if it were one monolithic entity with a will of its own. States are made up by people for the purpose of pooling together labor, resources and wealth and organizing their expenditure. So a state is made up of the interactions of its actors and thus magnifies their strengths, as well as their stupidity. 1984 will never happen, because mankind will never be smart enough to set up a perfect machine of oppression like that. This kind of reminds of Kurt vonnegut's book the Cat's Cradle because it is not evil that destroys the world, but human greed and stupidity along with selfishness mixed in.