What is your view of Libertarianism and Ayn Rand?

[Winston Hughes]

le sigh - the Hitler card and name-calling have begun.

Not by me, and my point stands unanswered.

How can the weakling states you imagine prevent individuals or groups from becoming powerful enough to subvert them, and to replace them with something far less friendly to individual freedoms?

Allowed nothing more than the enforcement of contracts, property rights, and non-violence, the state would have no way to prevent individuals or cartels acquiring power vastly greater than its own. And once you reach that point, it's inevitable that the power of the state itself will fall into the hands of those who might reap far greater profit from expanding that power than from continuing its restriction.

 

[JollyRoger]

I think we may be comparing apples to oranges here.

The limited liability concept is used largely for forming corporations [or in England, often called "joint stock companies"]. When a group of businessmen and investors want to form a company together, they create a legal entity which issues shares and people buy the shares in order to own a part of the company. The money paid for the shares is used as the assets of the company.

This is an extremely effective method of voluntary co-operation between people. However, people can form other types of companies [in UK, these are called "partnerships" or "sole proprieters"] which may not have any limited liability.


So I can go into business, alone or with partners, and I don't have to be a limited liability company if I don't want to. So it really is a free choice.

As for other types of regulations, these are often legally binding. There is no choice - meaning there is no alternative [within the national borders].

So there is a difference between non-voluntary and voluntary regulations that is more than just "you can go away if you don't like it" and is really more "you can do pretty much the same thing, a different way, if you don't like it".


Also, self-styled "left libertarians" seem to express a dislike of Corporations - which is what I think this may be partly about.

The problem is, that once you have easy access to a government liability shield, most entities of any size take it. In the good ole days, partnerships were the primary business type because corporations were severely regulated by the government. Eventually, these regulations loosened, but that wasn't enough for those wanting the protection from the nanny state. They needed s-corps, LLPs, PCs, LLCs, etc., etc., etc.

You say we can avoid those carrying the government shield, but can we? When is the last time you bought gas from a sole proprieter or partnership?

The point is, if you have a government provided shield and a bunch of people acting in their rational self-interest, most are going to take the handout of the shield. In a true free market, the shield should not be government provided, but should be negotiated on a contract-by-contract basis, with silence in the contract meaning the shield is not there.

 

[Traitorfish]

*snip*

I think that you're certainly right that Rand didn't set particularly great store on social domination for its own sake, and that she was on the contrary interested in, as you say, domination of objects - "man over nature", rather than "man over man", as Marx would have had it.

However, the fact that she rejects social domination for its own sake does not imply that she rejects social domination altogether. Her conception of rational creation as the driving purpose of human existence doesn't settle on self-employed artisans, as a conservative interpretation of this principle might, not only accepting but enthusiastically embracing modern industry as a further shedding of the fetters on freedom as she understands it. This is a form of production which necessarily entails the subsumation, however voluntary, of the creative will of the majority to that of the minority, a subsumpation which only becomes more advanced as the production process becomes more refined. It becomes a form of production in production in which a minority dominate the majority in the process of the production and re-production of daily life. The very act of "playing with their toys", whether they want it or not, makes them masters over others.

Now, the obvious response is to say that this is only a temporary domination, one that ends at the factory gate, and that's accurate insofar as we're a specific relationship between individual and individual. (Setting aside the draconian interference of some employers aside, for a minute, because it's not a fundamental issue.) But to end our analysis there neglects to acknowledge the fact that the world is not just a jumble of independent relationships, conducted in isolation, but a social totality, that the aggregate of these individual relationships determines the overall structure of society. In a world in which a minority control the process by which society is re-produced, they come to hold the last word in how it is reproduced, both as a process and as an outcome. There may well be conflict within this elite- even Marx accepted that this was the case- but the fact is that they remain within an elite. Society becomes theirs to shape in their own image, and even if their motives are those of Aristotelian virtue, and they prove entirely happy to let the majority lead lives of peace and happiness, the relationship of domination persists.

This is why "going Galt", and Rand's ideal society more generally, cannot be satisfactorily addressed as a simple retreat from authority. Rand advocates that the small elite of "producers" take radical action, as radical as any syndicalist mass strike, to achieve very real social and political change; that is in itself an exercise in authority. The majority are obliged to submit to the construction of a society orientated around this "productive" elite, the fact that it is ultimately for their own good being entirely secondary to the fact that they have no real choice to the contrary. And I don't think that this is something that Rand wasn't aware of, because the choice offered to the populace by Galt is quite coolly acknowledged as one of submission or death.

 

[JonBonham]

That outcome (me putting whatever I want in my products and not labelling it as so) is certainly not the aim of Objectivism - although it's a complex area of law/economics. Objectivism looks primarily to the markets to resolve that problem, but as you point out the system must be resilient and handle these kind of problems - primarily I imagine this being done through gradual legal evolution.

So answer me this, when we are not required by regulatory laws to have certain standards in advertisingélabelling etc. do you think companies will simply volunteer to put out all the information on their products? I am surprised that you seem genuienly surprised by Ziggy Stardust's 100% Orange Juice example that is only 10% juice and that you seem to think this a strange/peculiar funny and not ideal company but also don't seem to think that it's the norm. In Objectivist society I create a cigarette company and market that my cigarettes have health benefits, (as they used to be marketted) so how will the market resolve that issue? The other companies will start marketting their health benefits instead. Those nasty government mandated labels will come off the boxes.

You keep saying the legal mechanisms would be kept, but what legal mechanisms? The regulations and laws we currently have? Why must we keep law based on other social theories and ideas, let's not talk about gradual, if Objectivism is the best social theory around than surely the laws should be based on Objectivist principles. So what law will say I cannot label my cigarettes as such?

Since the role of the courts is to enforce these laws I really would like to hear what laws these courts would be enforcing. For instance, will there be some 'government' regulatory law requiring I can't advertise how I choose for my own business?

 

[Antilogic]

Both. It's a wonderful system, but not one particularly useful on it's own for getting close to truth, because it's really not it's purpose.

I ask because the parenthetical is my interpretation of truth and is obviously not more than an opinion. But there are several writers who would disagree with your first disagreement.

 

[Berzerker]

"Ownership" traces back to government grants and is maintained and enforced by manipulation of government records.

Owning property is older than government

 

[Leoreth]

Property as in things you can carry around and protect on your own capacity, yes.

 

[Cutlass]

Owning property is older than government

Only when you can take it from others and defend it with violence.

 

[Ayn Rand]

Libertarianism has some redeeming merits, Rand does not.

Would you care to share some of the distinctions? What is different about the two that makes you like Libertarianism but dislike Rand's ideas?

I'm curious, would there be election during that transition? Would a non-objectivist party be allowed to run?

I don't know if we are ever planning to take power, but as we are not the kind for military coups then it would probably have to be the election route. Under Objectivism, every kind of political party would be allowed to stand for election, recruit, write newspapers, annoy us etc. We have almost unlimited commitment to freedom of expression.

The problem here is, the consumer would not be any the wiser if there is no one who actually checks the products or the food producer is not forced to display the correct ingredients. The consumer is too busy with his job to do tests, the company itself won't do this and it's not the court's job either.

So if we agree to have regulations that the ingredients need to be displayed, who's job is it to test the validity of labels? You mentioned a "consumer group". Who finances the consumer group?

Indeed, but there are private consumer monitoring groups out there and for most of history, this kind of thing has been handled privately and we somehow managed to avoid self-slaughter. Such groups can be charities, or financed by an industry association, newspapers, philanphropists and so on.

I know, I know - people solving their problems without help from government. Who would have thought? But seriously, there are two models [as you know] - one is private, the other government-based. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but as I observed above, people tend to take a "faith" based approach to the question of which one works best.

I just don't buy them, because obfuscation is cheaper than truth.

My very best example of the failure of the free market system with food

Anecdotes can be very interesting but also have the potential to be misleading - for example, your anecdote doesn't give a breakdown of the costs of the government program, nor corruption risks, nor cases where government has gotten it wrong, nor the burden on the companies of conformance etc. So in the overall scheme of things, it's not possible to evaluate something so complex just because one libertarian thought cheerios were healthy [and let's face it, they're not exactly toxic waste that kills you on contact are they? It's not that bad].

Have you thought about a scenario where the government decided to sell all public lands to private companies or individuals?

Let's see.
A big oil company would buy up ANWR so they can drill there unregulated. Say goodbye to the pristine wildlife sanctuaries across the nation.
Natural gas Fracking would contaminate the drinker water because, unregulated, it would have no safeguards in place.
A mining company would buy up the Grand Canyon National Park so they can get to the Uranium.
Public Parks would probably be bought up by Fast-Food companies or other industries.

First thing I would ask is - "what are the real economic costs including opportunity costs of keeping those lands as national parks".

Then if we could get a dollar figure, would you be prepared to pay a fair contribution to that each time you used the parks? If you would, then private interests can buy parks and keep them for you and others to pay to use. If you wouldn't, then why should someone else have to pay the cost for you?

The thing about freedom is that people get to choose what their real priorities are, instead of having those priorities chosen for them. While I wouldn't want to see the national parks sold off, if people don't value them enough to pay for them then why should their productive assets be kept out of use?

I appreciate your effort of making a joke, but I was expecting a genuine answer - which I have even made explicitly clear before - and you didn't give it. That's disappointing.

There are supposed to be no contradictions in Objectivism, so the short answer is that if you were an Objectivist and found that a free society was in not in your interests, then you would simply not be a real Objectivist. This answer was contained in my post, maybe it just didn't come through

This seems a bit disingenuous to me as nobody succeeds completely on their own.

If person A gets help from his Dad to get into the elite, that doesn't mean that I owe person B a free education to give him an equal footing to get himself into the elite. So yes, people get varying amounts of help from others, but so what? They don't have a right to extort money from me and force me to help them, just because they are ambitious - if they want it badly enough, let them get it themselves even if they do start out from a disadvantageous position.

Isn't that kind of a strawman because the elite in Atlas Shrugged are absurdly so? I mean, the Galt Engine is complete science fiction. Pure and utter trash. Why couldn't she illustrate her point with a more believable premise?

Likewise, the people "getting in the way" of the elite rarely do so because they religiously believe in Das Kollective. And, sometimes, those people are also brilliant entrepreneurs. I mean, look at Warren Buffet. How are we supposed to apply her theories to a society that works much differently than she envisioned it? AS spoiler ahead:

Kind of a moot suggestion - it is a work of fiction so it serves well enough. As for your statistic, it's funny I don't remember seeing that figure - also, if you read the book it explains what happens, I'm not going to walk you through the whole plot.

The point is that people will not form the companies without the protections. And so capitalism cannot take root without the government.

You are arguing for a capitalism without government, when there is no such thing as capitalism without government.

Nope, Objectivists are minarchists

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchist

We believe in limited government, rather than no government [that is anarchists and some libertarians or anarcho-capitalists].

What makes you think that the golf playing is a function of taxes and not a function of having enough stashed away to be able to play golf for the rest of one's life? If anything, taxes delay the golf playing days, keeping your supermen making brilliant business decisions a bit longer before the golf playing days arrive.

I can't really answer that - perhaps it is a bit of both? I don't know of any study.

 

[Cutlass]

Nope, Objectivists are minarchists

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchist

We believe in limited government, rather than no government [that is anarchists and some libertarians or anarcho-capitalists].

See, there's another problem. You want a state to protect what you want, but not to protect what others want. So you're really just another group of authoritarians.

 

[Berzerker]

Only when you can take it from others and defend it with violence.

People all over the world have lived out their lives without taking land from anyone, and the fact they may have needed to fight to keep it from those who don't respect property ownership doesn't matter one bit - they were the rightful owners and thats what property ownership and the market is about.

 

[Cutlass]

People all over the world have lived out their lives without taking land from anyone, and the fact they may have needed to fight to keep it from those who don't respect property ownership doesn't matter one bit - they were the rightful owners and thats what property ownership and the market is about.

At one point in time no one owned the land. All could use it. Then someone took it and said "this is mine now, you can't use it unless I let you. And if you do, I'll kill you." How is this consistent with the "non-aggression principle" that anarcho-capitalists, libertarians, minarchists, and so forth claim to support?

 

[Berzerker]

At one point in time no one owned the land. All could use it. Then someone took it and said "this is mine now, you can't use it unless I let you. And if you do, I'll kill you." How is this consistent with the "non-aggression principle" that anarcho-capitalists, libertarians, minarchists, and so forth claim to support?

What point in time was that? Even critters practice property ownership, everyone is looking for a nice home with nearby resources. The aggressor would be the person invading the home of another and even hunter gatherers would not look kindly upon you for hunting game on their lands... By your logic the Hopi were the aggressors when the Navajo showed up ~4 centuries ago and started raiding their crops. And its not non-aggression, libertarians believe in self defense and would have taken the Hopi's side, its about who initiates the force - the Navajo did that.

 

[JollyRoger]

So if I am peacefully living in my home and the sheriff shows up to enforce a foreclosure, which side are the libertarians on?

 

[Berzerker]

it aint your home if you stop paying for it

 

[Cutlass]

What point in time was that? Even critters practice property ownership, everyone is looking for a nice home with nearby resources. The aggressor would be the person invading the home of another and even hunter gatherers would not look kindly upon you for hunting game on their lands... By your logic the Hopi were the aggressors when the Navajo showed up ~4 centuries ago and started raiding their crops. And its not non-aggression, libertarians believe in self defense and would have taken the Hopi's side, its about who initiates the force - the Navajo did that.

Somebody was the first to lay claim to the land that all could use previous to that.

 

[JollyRoger]

it aint your home if you stop paying for it

It's my home until someone uses force to remove me.

 

[Old Hippy]

It should be given a good chance and will almost certainly work - but if it doesn't, then a hard choice has to be made between introducing some kind of welfare, or having starving orphans on the streets and other terrible things. Personally I would take the welfare option, but there are different opinions about it.

[But that's if private charity doesn't work, it has a history of working quite well.]


.

yes it does have a good history, BUT it also has a history of opposing the views your supporting , unless you have an example i don,t know about, I mean even the Salvos take Huge government grants and lobby for more Government intervention, so your sort of saying yes there are private solutions avalible that work well, if we don't adopt the system your advocating for

perhaps you could give an example where the private charity ALSO advocates the ideas your advocating

 

[Berzerker]

Somebody was the first to lay claim to the land that all could use previous to that.

At what point in time did everyone share all the land? All could not use the land, all were not there. The Hopi were, and you've just accused them of being aggressors for growing crops on land nobody else was using. So I imagine that means us libertarians would have been on the Hopi side and you would have sided with the Navajo raiding their crops?

It's my home until someone uses force to remove me.

But it aint your home, it belongs to someone else. You are using force against the rightful owner, they spent part of their life for that house. If that was my house and I needed that $$$ I sure as hell would not appreciate being called an aggressor by the person sitting in my house. Would you?

 

[Cutlass]

You're just assuming bands of nomads didn't wander across the land before someone settled on it.