"Questions on Laissez-Faire Capitalism" - from OO

[jts]

In the OO forum, there is a thread starting with a bunch of questions about laissez-faire capitalism. You can read them, or even the whole thread, by clicking on this link.

http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=22677&hl=

Questions of this type set a trap. If you respond to these questions by answering how a free market would solve this or that or the other problem, you have fallen into the trap. What follows (if the conversation is with a socialist or some other kind of anti-capitalist) is a discussion about whether your proposed solution would work. This discussion is likely to be long and unproductive.

If you can't convince the anti-capitalist that your proposed solution would work, the anti-capitalist takes your failure (as he sees it) as proof that capitalism wouldn't solve the problem. In this reasoning, the anti-capitalist implies that he believes you are some kind of super mega genius, even if he is not aware of implying this and even if he calls you nasty names and tells you that you are stupid. He implies that if you can't figure it out, then not even a multitude of creative minds working in synergy can figure it out. In order for his implication to be true, you must be at least as smart as a multitude of creative minds working in synergy. Synergy means the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The correct answer to questions of the type in the first post in the thread linked to above is probably: I don't know. (You probably could also point out that government does a poor job.)

In response to your saying you don't know, the anti-capitalist probably will say something about you can't make a case for capitalism. In responding this way, the anti-capitalist is thinking like a socialist. The thinking of a socialist is: all humanity is divided into 2 categories, the socialist and the rest of humanity. The socialist wants to tell the rest of humanity how to live and how to solve problems. That is mega conceited.

The thinking of a capitalist is: let people decide for themselves how to live and let people solve their own problems. A laissez faire free market consists of a multitude of free minds, some of them with mega-powerful smarts, interacting intelligently and synergistically. The result is far beyond any utopia that any one mind can invent.

[syrakusos]

Good points all the way around, J! Basically, the answers have to come from experience.

We have private streets now. So, that's easy enough.

Before the superhighways, the Lincoln Highway and the Dixie Highway were summations of local efforts to increase tourism. The assumption that we need roads is probably archaic, also. Absent the government making roads that suit automobiles and thus freezing both in 1920, unpaved passages would be ideal for surface-effect vehicles. Of course, also, given "wire photos" and radio etc. of the 1920s, the Internet as we know it now was technically possible, obviating the need for roads. I also am a fan of dirigible airships: point to point, short runways and small landing spaces, like trucks, but without roads.

But I have given this a lot of thought over the decades and as you say, no one is obligated to be a general expert on every facet of human action just to explain laissez faire.

Consider physics. Oh, yeah?! Well, how about the Moon? (So, you explain the Moon's orbit) Yeah?? What about Mars?? ... eventually he gets to projectile motion... and maybe if he is really smart, thermodynamics and fluid mechanics... And then, how does a pencil sharpener work according you so-called "New-tone-ian" theory, eh? Tell me that! And we did not even talk about nutrition.

On another Objectivish board, one of the posters claimed to reconcile egoism and Christianity. He wrote well, I'll give him that. So, it sent me to the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia online. They have a lot to say about God. And about Galileo. I had a lot to reconsider. Just to say, you never have to have all the answers or care who agrees with you.

But on the matter of religion, you know, when you ask someone why they believe in God, that is all they can speak to, honestly: why they believe. You seldom get a rundown of all theories over the last 2500 years nicely integrated. And that is what the socialist challenger wants from you.

And, also, as you say, what they really want is all the answers for everyone else for all time: this is what to believe. Socialists are not alone in that. If I am not mistaken, here on OL, it was Dennis L. May who said that many libertarians are central planners who want to determine what everyone else will do. Eric Hoffer called them "true believers." Ayn Rand encouraged people to read the book.

Speaking of Ayn Rand, though, it is true that she said that no employer should be allowed to offer unsafe working conditions and would be open to legal sanctions whether or not anyone was actually injured on the job. She was a fan of labor unions, also. See my blog here: Ayn Rand versus Conservatives.

That speaks to your main point: no one is obligated to be a universal expert. Even among those who "admire" Ayn Rand, very few have read more than a half dozen books by and about her. The movies of Atlas Shrugged brought in many more thousands of "Rand fans" than I would expected. Mostly, they are not college kids looking for questions, but adults seeking to provide other people with answers. They think that this is about President Obama. You ask them about education without government and they will tell you about home schools and private schools but will never ask you what you mean by "education." They are conservative political activists, not not philosophers in the Objectivist tradition.