Crony Capitalism

[Brant Gaede]

On 1/15/2017 at 6:36 AM, BaalChatzaf said:

Read "Atlas Shrugged"   It was all about her "notion".

Your notion of notion--whatever that is--has no support from the known physical laws of nature.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

45 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Your notion of notion--whatever that is--has no support from the known physical laws of nature.

--Brant

Neither does the fictional machine that produces current electricity from static electricity.  But so what.  It was only a plot Mcguffin.  No big deal.

[Brant Gaede]

On 1/16/2017 at 9:17 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

Neither does the fictional machine that produces current electricity from static electricity.  But so what.  It was only a plot Mcguffin.  No big deal.

I think Rand had a problem--how to upstage the atomic bomb: don't mention it and push Project X.  Galt's motor sort of fit that type of context, the alternate reality context. So it was something more than a McGuffin but certainly no less: an expression Galt's alternate reality supreme(?) genius.

The novel--a novel--is like a dream: no sensory input. At least such are mine. 

--Brant

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

I think Rand had a problem--how to upstage the atomic bomb: don't mention it and push Project X.

Brant,

Rand even had much worse problems re the atomic bomb. She was supposed to do a movie about it and wanted to use the idea to demonstrate the glory of the human mind.

Two problems. The first was the movie company's intentions (a complicated story, but essentially they had no intention of ever doing that movie despite hiring people like her to work on it). The second was more serious. Oppenheimer got off into the Bhagavad Gita really deeply ("Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"). 

Oppenheimer was a piss-poor Roark or Galt.

There's another reason and it's just as serious, but I can't recall it off the top of my head. I have a few books on Oppenheimer (a few bios and a novel loosely based on his life, but for the life of me, I can't remember the name of it and I can't find it among my mountains of books right now). I intend on doing a deep dive into all this later and will write about it. I will definitely get to that third reason then.

Oppenheimer's is the ultimate Prometheus story (which is also the name of one of his bios). But then he turned into a mystic, a peacenik and a political pariah. Even though there was some overlap, he wasn't really Rand's kind of person.

They both smoked like fiends, for whatever that's worth.

 

Michael

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

25 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

... and a novel loosely based on his life, but for the life of me, I can't remember the name of it and I can't find it among my mountains of books right now...

I'll be damned.

I just now found it.

In the Hours of the Night by William Bradford Huie.

It was a long route to get this book, which makes it kind of funny that I stumbled across it just now.

Just for the hell of it, let me get it down. (God knows why. It's not very exciting story.  )

I've been looking into Paddy Chayefsky recently since Rand once wrote about him. I've also been checking out Terence Rattigan. I'm on some kind of kick, I guess. Anyway, Chayefsky was the guy who wrote the film Network and a few other hits. Kat and I recently saw his stoner flick, Altered States, then I checked out The Americanization of Emily. Cool film with Julie Andrews and James Garner. Chayefsky didn't write the original novel, but he did do the screenplay. The novel was written by William Bradford Huie. When I looked on Amazon to see what else Huio had written, I saw his novel (In the Hours of the Night) based on the life of Oppenheimer, so I got it. Now I have it.

See? I told you it wasn't exciting...

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

10 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

I think Rand had a problem--how to upstage the atomic bomb: don't mention it and push Project X.  Galt's motor sort of fit that type of context, the alternate reality context. So it was something more than a McGuffin but certainly no less: an expression Galt's alternate reality supreme(?) genius.

The novel--a novel--is like a dream: no sensory input. At least such are mine. 

--Brant

 

If Rand were more physics savvy  she could have invoked the Cassimir Effect.  That is quantum vacuum energy.  It exists, it is for real  but no one has any idea at this time on how to exploit it.  In the move "Atlas Shrugged"  the Cassimir Effect is mentioned in the scene where Hank and Dagny find the remnants of Galt's motor. 

[Peter]

Ba’al wrote: . . . the Cassimir Effect is mentioned in the scene where Hank and Dagny find the remnants of Galt's motor. end quote

I think, with the help of a million mile solar panel hanging in orbit, we could turn the moon into a big battery to supply our energy needs.

Whoa Doctor Who. The Oakland Raiders are moving to Las Vegas. You know, that could work. You go to gamble, see shows and go to football games.

[Samson Corwell]

On 1/13/2017 at 10:43 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Samson,

Is that meant to be condescending?

They don't use the word, but they do use the concept. A believer in the Abrahamic God obtains all kinds of rights that others don't get, starting with becoming a member of a special group. That membership to the elect is that person's right as a Jew or Christian whether anyone uses the word "right" or not.

If I were to be snarky, I could say, "I don't know if you are having trouble understanding that words and concepts are different."

But I won't...

   

Michael

I meant no condescension. I was being quite sincere. If someone supports welfare and believes it is moral, is it possible for them to not conceive of it as a "right"? Is it impossible for me, in my opposition to using people tools and to utilitarianism, to conceive of my reasons for such in terms of something other than "rights"? Before I got into natural rights, such opposition was never in terms of rights. In fact, conceiving it in terms of "rights" feels much too distant and sterile.

A right is a moral entitlement. Pre-Enlightenment Christianity had no such concept. It was all in terms of law and duty.

[Samson Corwell]

On 1/19/2017 at 1:10 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brant,

Rand even had much worse problems re the atomic bomb. She was supposed to do a movie about it and wanted to use the idea to demonstrate the glory of the human mind.

Two problems. The first was the movie company's intentions (a complicated story, but essentially they had no intention of ever doing that movie despite hiring people like her to work on it). The second was more serious. Oppenheimer got off into the Bhagavad Gita really deeply ("Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"). 

Oppenheimer was a piss-poor Roark or Galt.

There's another reason and it's just as serious, but I can't recall it off the top of my head. I have a few books on Oppenheimer (a few bios and a novel loosely based on his life, but for the life of me, I can't remember the name of it and I can't find it among my mountains of books right now). I intend on doing a deep dive into all this later and will write about it. I will definitely get to that third reason then.

Oppenheimer's is the ultimate Prometheus story (which is also the name of one of his bios). But then he turned into a mystic, a peacenik and a political pariah. Even though there was some overlap, he wasn't really Rand's kind of person.

They both smoked like fiends, for whatever that's worth.

 

Michael

 

Nothing says "glory of the human mind" like indiscriminate death and destruction.

[Samson Corwell]

On 1/13/2017 at 11:08 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Wolf,

I recently went through another Great Course (I'm loving that series) called Sacred Texts of the World by Professor Grant Hardy.

Almost all societies have been structured around religions (to differing degrees), and the more advanced societies have sacred texts for their religions. This written form is one of the reasons those religions have persisted over centuries (oral-only religions have tended to die out). Trying to get an understanding of this process and an overview of the different religions is why I took the course. (btw - I'm very glad I did.)

But Hardy came up with an Easter Egg for me. In his next to last lecture (No. 35 of 36), he made a case that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are secular forms of sacred text. Not so much in terms of pointing toward God, but instead of fulfilling the different roles exercised by sacred texts throughout history. He gave those roles as informative, transactive, transformative and symbolic. He made a very good case.

For a long time, I've understood there is a critical difference between a contract and a charter document for a government (shades of Lysander Spooner  ), but I couldn't put my finger on it. Just calling a charter document a contract did not make it one when I saw how people used it.

I believe this "secular form of sacred text" is part of the foundation of what a charter document is when it attains longevity of use. By treating a charter document in strictly contractual terms, which many governments around the world do (I am familiar with Brazil's several constitutions and this last from the 1980's will probably not be the final one), they don't work out as well as the US charter documents did and do.

Michael

Contract Theory and the Abandonment of Final Cause

In the classical and Christian epochs, few people would have worried about exactly how a government was constructed from parts or what operating procedures those parts followed when it came to deciding whether a particular government was justified. Instead, it was justified because it brought about a good end: generally speaking, because it was the most concrete expression of and ultimate protector of the civic order that underlay its existence. …

But with the overthrow of Aristotelian philosophy, the baby was tossed out with the bathwater, and final and formal causes became disreputable. I think it is no coincidence that now, with, for instance, Hobbes and Locke, we begin to see governments justified by the mechanisms of how they came about, and we get social contract theories. A possible efficient cause of government, the consent of the governed, came to replace the idea of a government achieving its proper end as its justification. …

[Brant Gaede]

Very interesting.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

33 minutes ago, Samson Corwell said:

Contract Theory and the Abandonment of Final Cause

In the classical and Christian epochs, few people would have worried about exactly how a government was constructed from parts or what operating procedures those parts followed when it came to deciding whether a particular government was justified. Instead, it was justified because it brought about a good end: generally speaking, because it was the most concrete expression of and ultimate protector of the civic order that underlay its existence. …

But with the overthrow of Aristotelian philosophy, the baby was tossed out with the bathwater, and final and formal causes became disreputable. I think it is no coincidence that now, with, for instance, Hobbes and Locke, we begin to see governments justified by the mechanisms of how they came about, and we get social contract theories. A possible efficient cause of government, the consent of the governed, came to replace the idea of a government achieving its proper end as its justification. …

Formal Cause is alive and well in physics.  The centrality  of symmetry  and covarience  is is the modern version of  Formal Cause.  Noether's theorem ties together the conservation laws  (which are laws about laws) and symmetry.  Formal Cause is right at the heart of quantum physics as well as relativity. 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Samson Corwell said:

If someone supports welfare and believes it is moral, is it possible for them to not conceive of it as a "right"?

Samson,

Open any dictionary and you will find more than one definition for most words. Almost all words, in fact.

This is pretty common knowledge, no?

Within a philosophical system like Objectivism, the concept is far more important than the label you put on it (the word "rights" in this case).

So, yes I agree, it is valid to call a government handout a "right" if you make it clear you are referring to a system that uses this meaning for the word. You can call it a "direito," too, for the same meaning if you speak Portuguese and you are using that system. Did you notice that the word is different in Portuguese, but the concept is the same? That's because words and concepts are different things. They may complement each other, but they are different things that serve different mental functions.

So what is not valid is bait and switch, that is using the Objectivist concept of rights to frame a discussion using the word right, then pretending a second concept or definition of the same word (right) according to a different system means the same thing, and even worse, then trying to use that as an excuse to cry foul on the Objectivist system and claim a contradiction. The only contradiction in that case is a semantical screw-up, that is switching the definition of the word within the same context.

After all, if you catch a lucky break, that doesn't mean you took time off from working or you are looking at a fracture on a physical object. Nor does it mean you are playing a game of toss with the "lucky break."

I see people do this all the time with philosophical terms and it's epistemologically sloppy. It's playing gotcha with semantics without any intellectual substance...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

51 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Very interesting.

Brant,

I'm turned off by the word "abandonment" in that excerpt. A system of thought is not abandoned if the people who practice it are conquered, killed off or forced into slavery and/or second class status, and further forced to adopt a different culture. "Abandonment" sounds like the conquered folks chose to do this.

The victor not only gets to write history, it sets up the prevailing religion and philosophy on the conquered (if it wants to keep being the victor for a while, that is  ). When it is incompetent at that, it generally falls before too long.

To me, abandoning a philosophy is one concept and getting your ass kicked hard from one end of the country to the other and having something shoved down your throat is a different concept.  

(I also have issue with the word "overthrow" as if there were some kind of ideological contest. I'm not sure the savage victors were even aware of the ideas they were replacing. They merely imposed their culture on whoever was there and, initially, stuck to their favorite pastimes, that is sacking, looting and pillaging.   The contest was with force, not ideas.) 

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

My thought was with the cross-over to John Locke from a supposed utilitarian approach in spite of the gross over-simplification of the natural rights' development.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 hours ago, Samson Corwell said:

Contract Theory and the Abandonment of Final Cause

In the classical and Christian epochs, few people would have worried about exactly how a government was constructed from parts or what operating procedures those parts followed when it came to deciding whether a particular government was justified. Instead, it was justified because it brought about a good end: generally speaking, because it was the most concrete expression of and ultimate protector of the civic order that underlay its existence. …

But with the overthrow of Aristotelian philosophy, the baby was tossed out with the bathwater, and final and formal causes became disreputable. I think it is no coincidence that now, with, for instance, Hobbes and Locke, we begin to see governments justified by the mechanisms of how they came about, and we get social contract theories. A possible efficient cause of government, the consent of the governed, came to replace the idea of a government achieving its proper end as its justification. …

Samson,

I have no idea what this has to do with what I wrote.

Here's the short version of my meaning if you are interested.

A contract tells you what you can and must do in relation to the other parties. A sacred document tells you what you can and must be before all of humanity.

There's more, but that's the essence on the human level.

When seen in this light, the charter documents of the US work well with both. 

Michael

[anthony]

13 hours ago, Samson Corwell said:

I meant no condescension. I was being quite sincere. If someone supports welfare and believes it is moral, is it possible for them to not conceive of it as a "right"? Is it impossible for me, in my opposition to using people tools and to utilitarianism, to conceive of my reasons for such in terms of something other than "rights"? Before I got into natural rights, such opposition was never in terms of rights. In fact, conceiving it in terms of "rights" feels much too distant and sterile.

A right is a moral entitlement. Pre-Enlightenment Christianity had no such concept. It was all in terms of law and duty.

I need to keep it simple for my simple mind. Every other 'right' but the right of an individual's freedom of action (individual rights) isn't a "right", it is a "claim" - upon others' freedom. Much of so-called "human rights" today has become entitled, utilitarian claims.

[Wolf DeVoon]

6 hours ago, anthony said:

I need to keep it simple for my simple mind. Every other 'right' but the right of an individual's freedom of action (individual rights) isn't a "right", it is a "claim" - upon others' freedom. Much of so-called "human rights" today has become entitled, utilitarian claims.

Hmm. Do you mind explaining why individuals have a right to freedom of action? (without citing God or utility)

[anthony]

1 hour ago, wolfdevoon said:

Hmm. Do you mind explaining why individuals have a right to freedom of action? (without citing God or utility)

Because nobody else can completely know you like you know yourself, what knowledge you have or how you came by it, how you see existence, which values you hold dear, what you're aiming for and how you plan to get there, how much mental and emotional energy you will need to expend, and when you might choose to pause, or change course along the way. Only each individual can know what form he envisages his-her "happiness" to take. There is 'a justice in reality', I think. If one will only respond to reality's authority through one's reason and hard-won character-virtues, one could be rationally dissuaded by argument, but is never to be forcibly prevented from acting towards one's just rewards in reality (equally, to accept the knocks for one's errors) by anybody. That's the way I interpret it, and others may differ. Anyhow, a really good, penetrating question.

[Wolf DeVoon]

23 hours ago, anthony said:

Because nobody else can completely know you like you know yourself, what knowledge you have or how you came by it, how you see existence, which values you hold dear, what you're aiming for and how you plan to get there, how much mental and emotional energy you will need to expend, and when you might choose to pause, or change course along the way. Only each individual can know what form he envisages his-her "happiness" to take. There is 'a justice in reality', I think. If one will only respond to reality's authority through one's reason and hard-won character-virtues, one could be rationally dissuaded by argument, but is never to be forcibly prevented from acting towards one's just rewards in reality (equally, to accept the knocks for one's errors) by anybody. That's the way I interpret it, and others may differ. Anyhow, a really good, penetrating question.

Thanks for your reply. I see it similarly. One head to direct the work of our hands, one mouth to feed according to the productive work we do, and so on. Except that it doesn't grant any right to act, or to live at all. My old mentor, the late Gerald MacCallum would ask what are the rights of children?

[BaalChatzaf]

4 hours ago, wolfdevoon said:

Thanks for your reply. I see it similarly. One head to direct the work of our hands, one mouth to feed according to the productive work we do, and so on. Except that it doesn't grant any right to act, or to live at all. My old mentor, the late Gerald MacCallum would ask what are the rights of children?

In theory the laws protect children from parental abuse and neglect.  However children do not have full autonomy until they reach a certain age.

As long as children are dependent upon their parents  they are not fully free.

[Brant Gaede]

9 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

In theory the laws protect children from parental abuse and neglect.  However children do not have full autonomy until they reach a certain age.

As long as children are dependent upon their parents  they are not fully free.

Nor are adults dependent on the government--any government no matter how benign or perfect. The reason is any government is force incarnate. One protecting individual rights only needs money to function and if you violate someone's rights the government will curtail your freedom to do so. Of course, that would only be the slightest of dependencies. So when Mary hits Barry daddy stops Mary or when Barry hits Mary back daddy stops the fight. Yeah, they are not "fully free." And that goes when daddy tells the kids they can't go out and play on the highway.

It's right however that when daddy abuses his kids the law stops daddy since he too is not "fully free."

--Brant

sigh

[BaalChatzaf]

45 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Nor are adults dependent on the government--any government no matter how benign or perfect. The reason is any government is force incarnate. One protecting individual rights only needs money to function and if you violate someone's rights the government will curtail your freedom to do so. Of course, that would only be the slightest of dependencies. So when Mary hits Barry daddy stops Mary or when Barry hits Mary back daddy stops the fight. Yeah, they are not "fully free." And that goes when daddy tells the kids they can't go out and play on the highway.

It's right however that when daddy abuses his kids the law stops daddy since he too is not "fully free."

--Brant

sigh

If one wants to be free, one must be a hermit.  Escape from society and community,  live alone and depend on no one else for sustenance. 

There are probably less then 10,000 fully free humans on the planet.  Humans tend to live in communities and they would not survive their first year without nurture. 

[anthony]

19 hours ago, wolfdevoon said:

Thanks for your reply. I see it similarly. One head to direct the work of our hands, one mouth to feed according to the productive work we do, and so on. Except that it doesn't grant any right to act, or to live at all. My old mentor, the late Gerald MacCallum would ask what are the rights of children?

With the prime right of the freedom to act, and all individual rights which follow that, I was riffing off Rand, of course, to whom everything traces from metaphysics, and forwards from that point. It got me thinking about your Constitution and the fine minds who'd agree with her, I am sure, the Founding Fathers. They (implicitly) recognized that to live is to act free from others' intervention, and only the free are able to fully pursue their happiness. Happiness, despite the utilitarians, has observably different causations and is many different things, in different degrees to different individuals, and can't be prescribed or quantified (nor sacrificed to the common good). It comes in many priorities and permutations, like intellectual, romantic, productive, artistic, financial, physical, friendship ... etc. and several combined together.

"...endowed by our Creator..." is a metaphysical statement, and interesting to me. "Endowed" is the key concept, and not (to me) the Creator, who I think usually gains the lion's share of attention here. "Endowed" with what? With the endowments of rationality, autonomy and volition, they implicitly mean, and that counts as the total justification for men's "unalienable rights".. And no matter how one perceives the origin of man's consciousness, endowed or otherwise, for religious or atheist, the Founders knew man's consciousness has a permanent nature for all time. Rand made their metaphysics explicit.

[Brant Gaede]

13 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

If one wants to be free, one must be a hermit.  Escape from society and community,  live alone and depend on no one else for sustenance. 

There are probably less then 10,000 fully free humans on the planet.  Humans tend to live in communities and they would not survive their first year without nurture. 

Act as if you are free. Our local, state and national governments won't be able to keep up with you. They're just traffic you go around.

--Brant