What is your view of Libertarianism and Ayn Rand?

[REDY]

Hmm with such perspective I am afraid of extraterrestrial objectivists

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I must say I like the sentiment. It means Europeans have the right to take over the American continent.

Pre-empting two comments. No, we can't. You'd kick our arse. But we would have the right. Not surprising that Americans are once again trampling all over the rights of other countries. Pre-empting the other one: Ours is superiour.

 

[tonberry]

She isn’t talking about the current situation, she’s talking about the actual takeover of the americas.

Let me ask you this : was it acceptable, according to objectivists, for the europeans to come into the new the new world, colonize it and, in the process, kill or forcibly move it’s native population?

 

[Leoreth]

The fact that you yourself unable to provide a more nuanced perspective on the issue than one of all-or-nothing racial conflict doesn't speak well of Objectivism's ability to provide useful ethical guidance.

Actually, the more I know about it, the more "all or nothing" seems to be one of the central tenets of Objectivism to me. Or at least of its followers.

 

[Cutlass]

I'm going to have to call "conspiracy theory" at this point. This is a drastic over-simplification of the legal process.

Not at all. But this is the political process we are talking about. Not the legal process. We haven't even gotten to scratching the surface of why the legal process fails yet.

The political process wants to choose courts over regulation as a means of getting a desired result because the political process understands the legal process.

So Russian and German soldiers on the Eastern front in 1942-45 had the maximum personal liberty?

They were a part of it. Not being ignored by it.

All forms of existence on Earth are coercive in some way. While I kind of concede your point, I think you should be careful to perceive the modalities of force that exist, rather than create an undifferentiated equation of all types of force to one another.

Not at all. The first priority is to knock down the "force v no force" argument. From there you can move on to the nuances.

 

[Ayn Rand]

The fact that you yourself unable to provide a more nuanced perspective on the issue than one of all-or-nothing racial conflict doesn't speak well of Objectivism's ability to provide useful ethical guidance.

I think that's a poorly considered/worded choice of comment

PS I wrote a full-length response to your earlier post but the internet ate it, now I have to do it again

 

[Crezth]

That would be true if we suddenly "turned off the tap" of UE all of a sudden. However, over the last century or so, if UE didn't exist then we would have evolved other means for education, for certain.

Oh? Like what? Care to give any examples? UE is in order to standardize education, you know, something homeschooling or a variety of private schools can't really compete with.

The past is a big place Not all of it was bad or limited a person's capacity to achieve. It is a question of selecting the proper social model - obviously, there is some degree of difference between an individual's freedom to achieve their potential without UE at different places in both the past and present.

Most of the past is dramatically inferior to what we have today. Some of it is only slightly inferior. The rest, you can't compare.

You can't compare 1800s USA to 1900s USA, for example, because the 1800s saw people having opportunity by giving them massive tracts of unexplored land. People were able to go out and carve new identities for themselves as they moved west. Society and social mobility were irrelevant concepts because you had no masters as a cowboy in Oklahoma. The 1900s, by contrast, do not have such freedoms and see an increasing number of people effectively chained to the company they work for. "Freedom" is a wholly relative concept in this respect, as while Americans are "free" they are not as free as the cowboy frontiersmen.

It's interesting that we both read the same book in completely different ways - an argument to demonstrate the power of subjectivism, if ever there was one

I agree.

I'll run around getting sources when you do As for China - let's ask the 7 million heroin addicts in the country what they think of their social system?

Not trying to speak up the benefits of China as a whole, but the benefits of a universal education system. Don't straw man.

Also, source.

It is all a question of where you place your emphasis, I suppose. I dislike UE because it generally fails, it is expensive on society, and it is compulsory and thus limits the best elements. It also institutionalises the members of a society until, after several generations, there are virtually no people left in the Country who have not spent most of their childhood going through a State institution in some form or other. That is potentially quite distortive and dangerous for freedom and free thought.

But this isn't the purpose of UE, and a lot of the failings of UE come from the irresponsible policies of the higher-ups and the continued slashing of desperately needed funding to inner-city schools that have less social capital to work with.

UE doesn't exist to institutionalize people, or indeed, any education system other than homeschooling (and even that, to an extent) could be described as such. It exists to standardize education by providing solid benchmarks for people from all of society to compare their knowledge. It exists to train people to take skilled roles or pursue higher education.

I haven't given an opinion on Donald Trump, nor will I. We can get lost in the details of single, person examples, but what difference does it make?

I guess.

So a society without upward mobility is bad, unless it is socialist/communist, then it is good. Gotcha

Socialism ~= communism.

Also, congratulations on deliberately misinterpreting my point.

 

[KaiserElectric]

Socialism ~= communism.

I digress. Socialism is using legislation and the political process to achieve a classless society, while communism is instigating a violent revolution to achieve a classless society. The paths are different, but the destination is the same.

 

[Murky]

I digress. Socialism is using legislation and the political process to achieve a classless society, while communism is instigating a violent revolution to achieve a classless society. The paths are different, but the destination is the same.

That's B.S. There's nothing that says any form of government cannot be achieved through the political process rather than by force. It's just highly unlikely that you could convert a Free Market economy into one that is a centrally controlled in order to establish a classless society through political persuasion alone.

 

[KaiserElectric]

That's B.S. There's nothing that says any form of government cannot be achieved through the political process rather than by force.

I don't recall saying that. I'm making the point that socialism and communism have the same vision of what society would be like. I didn't say anything about whether or not either form of government was impossible to achieve.

It's just highly unlikely that you could convert a Free Market economy into one that is a centrally controlled in order to establish a classless society through political persuasion alone.

That's nice, but it still doesn't change the fact that communism and socialism have similar goals in mind.

 

[Traitorfish]

I digress. Socialism is using legislation and the political process to achieve a classless society, while communism is instigating a violent revolution to achieve a classless society. The paths are different, but the destination is the same.

In what usage has that ever been the distinction?

The only general distinction between the two terms is that socialism refers to any system of collective ownership of the means of production, while communism refers more specifically to a system of communal ownership and non-market exchange. Any other distinctions are specific to given theories or schemas, and not to regarded as general definitions.

 

[Crezth]

In what usage has that ever been the distinction?

The only general distinction between the two terms is that socialism refers to any system of collective ownership of the means of production, while communism refers more specifically to a system of communal ownership and non-market exchange. Any other distinctions are specific to given theories or schemas, and not to regarded as general definitions.

Socialism also doesn't necessarily describe a society without class, right?

 

[Glassmage]

I love Ayn Rand, most people choose to be stupid and deserve to be treated less.

Moderator Action: Warned for trolling.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[ParkCungHee]

I like this new system of classification Traitorfish, because it means most of the Soviet Bloc had no communists in it.

 

[Cutlass]

I like this new system of classification Traitorfish, because it means most of the Soviet Bloc had no communists in it.

But did they think they were communists?

 

[ParkCungHee]

But did they think they were communists?

Not by this new system of classification.
I was going to say that the parties in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and East Germany all achieved power through peaceful means. Things are kind of tricky for the Czechs. Also confusing for the Chinese Communist Party. Since there was no system of law, they can't have supported unlawful violence. On the other hand, they fought a civil war.

However, since I notice this says "Socialism is using legislation and the political process to achieve a classless society," that would mean all of the soviet bloc is socialist "while communism is instigating a violent revolution to achieve a classless society" this means nobody has been communist, or ever advocated communism, ever as far as I can tell.

 

[Cutlass]

Not by this new system of classification.
I was going to say that the parties in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and East Germany all achieved power through peaceful means. Things are kind of tricky for the Czechs. Also confusing for the Chinese Communist Party. Since there was no system of law, they can't have supported unlawful violence. On the other hand, they fought a civil war.

However, since I notice this says "Socialism is using legislation and the political process to achieve a classless society," that would mean all of the soviet bloc is socialist "while communism is instigating a violent revolution to achieve a classless society" this means nobody has been communist, or ever advocated communism, ever as far as I can tell.

I'm no expert on Marx. But I think if he was looking at that argument his expression would be something like

 

[ParkCungHee]

I think you should go read electric and traitorfish's posts, then mine.

 

[Cutlass]

I had. I stand by my

 

[ParkCungHee]

I'm following Electric's system of classification to it's natural extension.
Marx for example, wasn't a communist, and would have thought communists were stupid, if Marx ever met a communist.