Ironically, it was going just fine before you posted to say you weren’t going to post. Dare I say it? Topic, please.
Alright then. On the note of philosophy, can we all agree that Objectivism is a terrible system?
Objectivism is highly misunderstood by the general public. I’ve been reading Atlas Shrugged for some time, carefully digesting it’s core messages, and honestly the book managed to predict a fair bit of the left wing’s current agenda. The overall message of the book, for me at least, is “do not deny the inventive and successful the opportunity to grow and succeed, for without vision and ambition, society will fall apart at the seams.” That, in and of itself, is what I’ve taken away from Atlas Shrugged, and I feel it is a logical, sensible message. I may not always agree with the ideas presented, and the characters’ tendency to soliloquize in place of any shorter dialog often annoys me, but the book is quite a fascinating look at Ayn Rand’s worldview.
For those not interested in Shrugged, a much shorter and to the point expression of Ayn Rand’s views would probably be the short story “Anthem.” It isn’t as drawn out as Shrugged, and it isn’t nearly as direct at beating the reader over the head with it’s message. It also gets it’s point across far, far faster.
thats a message thats both evil and bollocks.
e: what is the left wings current agenda?
I read Anthem, a while ago, and the message seemed to be that society would fall apart and revert to a horrible, hive-mind like medieval state if we place too much emphasis on group welfare and not enough on the individual. I’m not interpreting, I’m fairly certain the book said that exact thing in some sort of speech.
Bioshock does a fairly good job detailing some of the flaws of Objectivism. I actually once wrote a paper on the subject for a high school class.
Except the society in Bioshock wasn’t a Ryndian utopia at all. Andrew Ryan, if anything, was attempting to exert too much control over Rapture in a war against Fontaine. The ideal scenario for Rand’s ideas to work in practice would be that each person has a skill or set of skills that can be hired out to others. It assumes that the person would absolutely not give up until they find a way to make themselves useful or make money, exemplified by Dagny Taggart in the book when she gets to Galt’s little utopian villa around halfway into the novel and gets herself a job as a live-in housekeeper.
Are her ideas perfect? No, but the fact that people’s intrinsic worth is measured by the nature and the profitability of their skills, rather than abstract societal notions such as race or gender in an affirmative action scenario or delegated by a central authority like the society in “Anthem” is certainly a welcome notion.
And how would a person’s “intrinsic worth” be measured? Who would decide how much a person is “intrinsically worth”? The “profitability of their skills”? How would that work, in real life?
Everyone’s got a skill. I can write, and I can design levels. So I’d work in the field of my choice. It wouldn’t be handed to me on a silver platter, nor would it be arbitrarily restricted from me due to lifestyle choices or collective guilt-tripping. Capitalistic meritocracy would be the ideal, and “intrinsic worth” would be the quality and quantity of one’s productions. A substantial part of the book is devoted to examining why people consume or buy things, and why the left-leaning socialist nightmare United States in the book turns away the fugitive entrepreneurs and even the artists. Examine the case of Richard Halley, a composer who worked feverishly on his music and was greeted with gigantic crowds of people to hear his compositions.
After a rough but ambitious start, he premieres his fourth concerto, but the very night it debuted to an excited crowd, he is recruited by John Galt and disappears. He joins Galt because, rather than appreciating his skill or his art, the people flock to see him because of his background, his humble beginnings, his fight to get where he is. This insults him because the audience would rather judge him based on that rather than the worth of the works he produces. I think there’s an important point to Halley’s story, in that it examines Halley’s fiercely auteur mindset in his musical composition clashing with the means of which he achieves success in Atlas Shrugged’s dystopic future.
More to your question, Daniel, the intrinsic worth and profitability of a given person would be decided based on what that person produces, modified based on chosen profession. Despite “equal work for equal pay” being a frequent slogan of socialism, it equally applies to this sort of economic focus. But this is just my interpretation based purely on my readings of some of Rand’s work, rather than any kind of purely objective look at Objectivism (heh, see what I did there?). Sure, this sounds a lot like how things technically are now- I’m just trying to cut out some of the B.S. people have to go through to get hired.
You didn’t answer my question.
See my edit. But if it’s tl;dr: market forces and common sense, basically.
But, isn’t that just an “abstract societal notion…delegated by a central authority like the society in ‘Anthem’’”?
Economic forces are not centrally planned. I’m talking about the whole “people buy what they want to buy” mentality where goods and services are provided at-will by both employee and employer. If you’re useful, you keep your job. If you aren’t, you don’t. No hiring quotas. No enforced diversity. No using of social status, race, or gender as a qualification for employment. I personally think that’s more fair than having affirmative action or any other similar type of preferential hiring.
Still feels like a central authority dictating things that you just aren’t calling ‘government’.
However, I don’t believe that what you’re calling for can work in real life any more than “communism” or “socialism” can. There’s a scene in Office Space that explains the problem perfectly.
Peter: Our high school guidance counselor used to ask us what you would do if you had a million dollars and didn’t have to work. And invariably, whatever you’d say, that was supposed to be your career. So if you wanted to fix old cars, then you’re supposed to be an auto mechanic.
Samir: So what did you say?
Peter: I never had an answer. I guess that’s why I’m working at Initech.
Michael: No, you’re working at Initech because that question is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her, there would be no janitors, because no one would clean shit up if they had a million dollars.
Maybe we don’t really need janitors. Maybe the concept of labour and wage isn’t the be all and end all of societal organization. Maybe a company or whatever which is run cooperatively could work out some sort of rotation so everyone cleans up some shit.
Ideology should die a horrible painful death already. Let’s try to run our society based on facts and numbers and deliberation and cooperation, instead of high minded ideals and abstract notions of an individual’s worth and of humanity’s nature.
The problem is that cooperation cannot be forced, and people cooperate via incentives. Instead of fighting that urge, capitalism tries to allow for incentives to benefit others.
Danielsangeo, Capitalism differs from the intangible idealism of communism because communism calls for self-motivated selflessness. Communism is supposed to be decentralized, yet as we can see from history, people just don’t act like that, at least the vast majority. Capitalism isn’t governed by anything except your own actions. People aren’t FORCED to sign a contract for a company, and isn’t threatened by death by companies (in a minarchist, not anachro-capitalist society), unlike the force of government experienced by socialism.
Also, Sangeo, the worth of someone is determined by the market, simply enough. The market (the average price of the collective prices) seems to determine this value much better than any government employee or village head. But also remember that value is subjective, and each vendor ultimately makes their own price based on how much they want labor, and how badly the employee needs to be hired.
K3nny, I don’t know if you are a minarchist, voluntaryist, or anachro-capitalist, but I do agree with you. By introducing these measures implemented by government to try to balance the playing field, in reality usually only flips the problem around, rather than actually solving the core of the problem.
I’m not really an anything-ist, or at least identifying with any particular movement. I just happened to really like what I was reading. But yeah, thanks Han for helping explain! 
“determined by the market”
This seems like another “intangible idealism” to me. Can “the market” ever be wrong? What if the majority of the market suggests that homosexuals and transgenders should only be allowed to get jobs in sideshows? How about if the majority of the market suggests black people should be slaves? What if the majority of the market suggests that atheists should not be able to buy property?
It seems that you’re just moving the “initiation of force” off of the collection of people known as “government” and onto the collection of people known as “the market”.
Even Adam Smith admitted that some degree of economic oversight is necessary - ‘the market’ is far from being a perfectly self-regulating system.
Danielsangeo: That’s why I’m a minarchist. I personally believe that, for example, your slaves example. The right of ownership of slaves is not as important as, say, the right to not be held against your will. Therefore, the government will in fact make it illegal to own slaves for that exact reason (but indentured servitude is fair game ).
Also, in what scenario is it the case that all the sellers of a product would not sell to a specific race or gender? In Nazi Germany, for example, shopkeepers not selling to jews was done because it was supported by the state. But under what historical circumstance is that the case, where the sellers of a good, on their own volition, are not willing to sell to a minority?
That’s why I have a problem with strong centralized government. Racist people in government have a much larger capacity to harm minorities than a racist shopkeeper or a CEO. The ability to wield power still lies in someone’s hands, it’s just that it’s a lot more decentralized and the words of an individual does carry the same air of legitimacy than a government leader.
I do agree that there is place for government, but it must be heavily restricted. An an-cap society wouldn’t work for the exact same reason why an an-com society wouldn’t work: some people are asshats, and are willing to do some pretty shitty stuff to gain power/wealth. But a minarchist society, where the government’s place is to enforce law that directly pertain to the protection of the rights of the individual, then immediately, corporations can only truly rely on appeasement, not on fear, to profit, but are not restricted in methods and the positive side effects of their actions.
guys, debating politics with inane “examples” and hypothetical scenarios is counterproductive, at best you end up going in circles and at worst you end up just spouting generalized nonsense