do Germany and France live under socialism today?

[Wolf DeVoon]

Your line of thinking is so vile that it needs to be said. Millions came to America. Some like Carnegie started with nothing and became prosperous. Most became comfortable, and took pride in preparing their children to do better. That's the genius of liberty. The Gilded Age was tumultuous, contentious, often chaotic, and never easy. But there was opportunity. Morgan started as a junior accountant, Gould a self-taught road surveyor, Edison a night telegraph operator.

What happened in Europe? Death upon death and penury, war after war, frozen classes of worthless hereditary aristocrats, hidebound guilds, and peasants.

Those who came to America were free.

[Arkadi]

Yes, "opportunity" was there and has been there all the time. Sergey Brin is just one example that comes immediately to mind, and there are many others.

[anthony]

10 hours ago, Arkadi said:

Anthony--Yes, surviving. That is exactly the word I was using a bit earlier in this thread.

So you did. I've not been following. I'm not expert on what the Irish (specifically) left behind them in Ireland, from what I've read it was bad. A "sacrifice", by anyone of them, no. A lesser value for a ~possibly~ higher value (in a newly growing nation), is no sacrifice, it's likely a gain. One has to struggle to survive first, then look to flourish. The proliferation of Irish names in all walks of the US, shows how many descendants did well eventually.

Consuming people all over lately, is the trendy 'moral-historical revisionism', as I think of it. They seem obsessed with looking backwards, applying the new self-righteous moral agenda to the past, as if people back then (and always) didn't live their lives forwards, doing the best they could at the time without benefit of prescience. It usually 'emerges' that it was white males who did the dirty on everyone else. Incomplete at best if not a fabrication, looking for culprits to blame for the shortcomings of certain people and races now. At many stages, most individuals in every European lineage had also struggled to live, starved, been conquered, repressed, etc. by others, and didn't make a fuss about it.

[Arkadi]

Anthony--I recall us discussing the notion of "sacrifice" before in connection to warfare. Yes, people hope to survive, but if they happen to be killed in battle thus helping others to survive, those others, in gratitude, say that those killed "sacrificed their lives." That's how the language works. As to the issue of race, it was not me but my interlocutor who brought it in, and I did not follow up on it. What I am saying is very simple. If you want to be a consistent Randian, your are to be for the privatization of absolutely everything, including police, elementary schools, garbage collection, driveways etc. I met such people, and I have nothing to discuss with them. For me such view is insane. And I doubt that Ayn Rand herself would be willing to live in such a capitalist non-state. But if you admit that not everything should be private, then the question is where you stop. Germany and France today are examples of stopping more to the left from where US has been so far.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

4 hours ago, Arkadi said:

Anthony--I recall us discussing the notion of "sacrifice" before in connection to warfare. Yes, people hope to survive, but if they happen to be killed in battle thus helping others to survive, those others, in gratitude, say that those killed "sacrificed their lives." That's how the language works. As to the issue of race, it was not me but my interlocutor who brought it in, and I did not follow up of it. What I am saying is very simple. If you want to be a consistent Randian, your are to be for the privatization of absolutely everything, including police, elementary schools, garbage collection, driveways etc. I met such people, and I have nothing to discuss with them. For me such view is insane. And I doubt that Ayn Rand herself would be willing to live in such a capitalist non-state. But if you admit that not everything should be private, than the question is where you stop. Germany and France today are examples of stopping more to the left from where US has been so far.

 

Every now and again one hears the story of a soldier  who falls on an exploding hand grenade  in order to save his buddies from injury. 

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Every now and again one hears the story of a soldier  who falls on an exploding hand grenade  in order to save his buddies from injury. 

Someone I knew in high school did that and got the CMH. He was killed. 1967. Jedh Barker.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

6 hours ago, Arkadi said:

Anthony--I recall us discussing the notion of "sacrifice" before in connection to warfare. Yes, people hope to survive, but if they happen to be killed in battle thus helping others to survive, those others, in gratitude, say that those killed "sacrificed their lives." That's how the language works. As to the issue of race, it was not me but my interlocutor who brought it in, and I did not follow up of it. What I am saying is very simple. If you want to be a consistent Randian, your are to be for the privatization of absolutely everything, including police, elementary schools, garbage collection, driveways etc. I met such people, and I have nothing to discuss with them. For me such view is insane. And I doubt that Ayn Rand herself would be willing to live in such a capitalist non-state. But if you admit that not everything should be private, than the question is where you stop. Germany and France today are examples of stopping more to the left from where US has been so far.

There's nothing insane about realizing the logical outcome of your position and advocating moving toward it--more freedom. You'll never get there; no one ever will; it's also not desirable to get there for if one could one couldn't stay, as a society, for from the top of the mountain the only way is down. In the meantime one can live a rational life in freedom in this country, albeit only by and large, and should.

You are using ideological reasoning to refute ideological reasoning--fair enough--but what I've described is not ideological reasoning.

--Brant

[anthony]

9 hours ago, Arkadi said:

 If you want to be a consistent Randian, your are to be for the privatization of absolutely everything, including police, elementary schools, garbage collection, driveways etc. I met such people, and I have nothing to discuss with them. For me such view is insane. And I doubt that Ayn Rand herself would be willing to live in such a capitalist non-state. But if you admit that not everything should be private, than the question is where you stop. Germany and France today are examples of stopping more to the left from where US has been so far.

 

The Objectivist standard and target is solidly for a government enforcing Law and policing, to protect individual rights. You are describing and getting confused with anarchism, anathema to Rand. Me too, for that matter.

The right--left divide has to fall away when there are only individual rights, I reckon.

[BaalChatzaf]

9 hours ago, Arkadi said:

If you want to be a consistent Randian, your are to be for the privatization of absolutely everything, including police, elementary schools, garbage collection, driveways etc. I met such people, and I have nothing to discuss with them. For me such view is insane. And I doubt that Ayn Rand herself would be willing to live in such a capitalist non-state. But if you admit that not everything should be private, then the question is where you stop. Germany and France today are examples of stopping more to the left from where US has been so far.

 

Apparently Ayn Rand was not a consistent Randian.  Any more than Karl Marx was a complete Marxist. 

You ask the right question though.  How do we strike the balance between too much central authority and not enough.  There is no a priori answer to that question. Every society has to experiment to find a region of balance in which every day living is peaceful and orderly enough, but people are not tied down with duties, rules, obligations and laws to the extent that they cannot create value and New Stuff.  It is like trying to balance a broom stick vertically on the palm of your hand.  The position of the hand has to be constantly jiggered to keep the broomstick  from falling.  Another analogy:  Riding a bike.  The rider must constantly re-adjust his position to keep the bike rolling  and not falling.  There is no static solution to this challenge. 

 

 

 

[Wolf DeVoon]

9 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

How do we strike the balance between too much central authority and not enough. There is no a priori answer to that question. Every society has to experiment to find a region of balance in which every day living is peaceful and orderly enough, but people are not tied down with duties, rules, obligations and laws to the extent that they cannot create value and New Stuff. It is like trying to balance a broom stick vertically on the palm of your hand. The position of the hand has to be constantly jiggered to keep the broomstick from falling.

Golly, Bob, how do you manage to be so completely wrong so often?

[Wolf DeVoon]

11 hours ago, anthony said:

The Objectivist standard and target is solidly for a government enforcing Law and policing, to protect individual rights. You are describing and getting confused with anarchism, anathema to Rand. Me too, for that matter.

The right--left divide has to fall away when there are only individual rights, I reckon.

I wrote a long post addressed to Brant somewhere on some thread in which I made as clear as possible that (1) Ayn Rand was a novelist, (2) that her second-hand notions about government were belied by actions of Roark, Francisco, Ragnar, and Galt, waging war on innocent bystanders, and (3) that Rand gave zero attention to the philosophy of law. It is a gigantic hole in the Objectivist canon. It is foolish to disparage all other work in the field of laissez faire (private professional) legal principles, or the manner in which the practice of law (a private profession) can be the basis for a nonpartisan apolitical independent judiciary, which Ben Franklin proposed at the Federal Convention of 1787. It helps to know history.

[anthony]

6 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

(1) Ayn Rand was a novelist, (2) that her second-hand notions about government were belied by actions of Roark, Francisco, Ragnar, and Galt, waging war on innocent bystanders, and (3) that Rand gave zero attention to the philosophy of law. It is a gigantic hole in the Objectivist canon. It is foolish to disparage all other work in the field of laissez faire (private professional) legal principles, or the manner in which the practice of law (a private profession) can be the basis for a nonpartisan apolitical independent judiciary, which Ben Franklin proposed at the Federal Convention of 1787. It helps to know history.

That's way past where I like to draw the line of making deductions from her novels, and why I seldom do. One can make mistaken derivations - her character/hero did "X" - therefore X must be a principle of the Objectivist ethics/politics - or - Look! she herself contradicts her own principles in her novel! How could she miss her blunder?!! Heh.

I surmize Rand's protagonists are assumed to be "Objectivists". But not first and foremost.

You yourself made the distinction of her two caps, the novelist, not the philosopher, and should see it through consistently.

Where is this disparagement, btw? Rand as philosopher paints the broadest of abstractions of the philosophy of Government and rights, and also in quite some detail. The science/philosophy of law and "the practice of law", follows logically, or will follow by other writers. .

[BaalChatzaf]

5 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Golly, Bob, how do you manage to be so completely wrong so often?

By being correct in the physical sense.   I deal with the physical or at least quantifiable  properties of the universe, primarily.  I have no idea what you deal with.

Living is a process of  solving problems in the engineering sense.  

You normal people are seeking something different (damned if I know what it is).  I am an Aspie   and a congenital engineer and mathematician. 

[anthony]

15 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Apparently Ayn Rand was not a consistent Randian.  Any more than Karl Marx was a complete Marxist. 

 

 

 

 

I wonder if the terms, Marxist, Trotskyite, Stalinist, etc.etc. are not something left behind by the 'Marxist dialectic'. The whole thing tastes most Commie Russian anyway.

"Randian" is somewhat of a slight against Objectivists when it is deliberate.

[Arkadi]

Anthony--I brought the term "consistent Randian" into this discussion as referring to those who stick dogmatically to Rand's thesis that in ideal state there is to be no violence against any individual, only defense of individuals' right. This thesis is self-contradictory (and thus utopian), for any taxation is violence against some.

[anthony]

1 hour ago, Arkadi said:

Anthony--I brought the term "consistent Randian" into this discussion as referring to those who stick dogmatically to Rand's thesis that in ideal state there is to be no violence against any individual, only defense of individuals' right. This thesis is self-contradictory (and thus utopian), for any taxation is violence against some.

Well, Arkadi it has been seen as a sticking point, argued by Objectivists as well. I believe (dogmatically) that it is true that given 1. a much-reduced tax burden (and how reduced the cost of a minimal government may be vastly under-appreciated, I think) 2. the freeing-up of capital for individuals' investments and so their enrichment 3. the much higher degree of rationality, self-interest and benevolence of citizens who wanted and achieved laissez-faire and the minimal government, in the first place--that the concept of voluntary tax is totally workable and sustainable.

If you want your (and your family's) rights protected with maximum efficiency, if you value your property, want your contracts secured by law, and your country matters to you, you will be glad to pay what would be a chosen and minimal tax. It all rests on rational self-interest - reality, not a Utopia. Like everything, if you don't morally deserve and pay for a value, you won't get it and won't keep it.

[Arkadi]

"if you value your property, and your country matters to you, you will be glad to pay what would be a chosen and minimal tax"--Chosen--by whom? Even so, you and I might disagree about how the tax is to be spent. If your view gets the majority of votes, and I remain unconvinced, the implementation of the decision would be a violence against me. And violence, on Rand's declared view, should not happen in an ideal state. This brings to mind her own ridiculing of principles that are (supposedly) good in theory but not in practical implementation.

[anthony]

Chosen, *always* means chosen by and for oneself. I don't think you quite grasp the radical changes this all entails. It does not mean merely chopping out some dead wood and grafting something slightly different upon what now exists. And so? Some people will contribute more, some less, some nothing, some pay later in life, some earlier. Some may bequeath their money. Have some confidence in a majority of people's rationality, when the stifling load of the State and others' needs/entitlements is removed from them - and less cynicism. "How" the taxes are spent and where, would I think be the single concern of elected government. The scope of its expense is hugely limited when most entities have been privatised. This makes me "Randian", I suppose?

[Arkadi]

"Have some confidence in a majority of people's rationality..."--I do have such confidence. And majority of (American) people elected FDR four times in a row.

[Brant Gaede]

Try injecting some real radicalism into this conversation, guys. I want to see if you can do it.

--Brat

you're swimming in statism decrying the impracticality of cleaning up the scummy water

[Brant Gaede]

4 hours ago, Arkadi said:

"if you value your property, and your country matters to you, you will be glad to pay what would be a chosen and minimal tax"--Chosen--by whom? Even so, you and I might disagree about how the tax is to be spent. If your view gets the majority of votes, and I remain unconvinced, the implementation of the decision would be a violence against me. And violence, on Rand's declared view, should not happen in an ideal state. This brings to mind her own ridiculing of principles that are (supposedly) good in theory but not in practical implementation.

You need to get closer to the source. There seems to be too many degrees of separation (from Rand).

--Brant

[Arkadi]

Brant--I would appreciate your being more specific and analytical in your critique; otherwise it does not help.

[BaalChatzaf]

7 hours ago, Arkadi said:

"Have some confidence in a majority of people's rationality..."--I do have such confidence. And majority of (American) people elected FDR four times in a row.

And the U.S. won WW 2 and came out  very rich for the next 20 years. Between 1945 and 1965 we never had it so good. 

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, Arkadi said:

Brant--I would appreciate your being more specific and analytical in your critique; otherwise it does not help.

Secondhand or thirdhand Rand is worthless respecting her actual positions apropos critiques of her philosophy.

You aren't even paraphrasing her, much less quoting. You've therefore not earned a critique. I'm not saying I'm up to it, however; I simply don't know; I can't know.

--Brant

Peikoff frequently makes the same blunder, but is closer to the source, especially with his OPAR

OPAR needs real scholarship, which Peikoff wouldn't recognize if it slapped him in the face

(my remarks are only addressed to that one post of yours)

[Arkadi]

Brant--It would help if you stated precisely what view that I attribute to Rand you believe she had never expressed. But if you're not up to that, it is Ok with me, I'm all for the freedom of expression.