Francisco Ferrer

Rudy Giuliani has a clear, uncompromising vision of what America should look like. In it there is no place for Barack Obama or, for that matter, innovative capitalists like Michael Milken: Michael Milken’s achievements are well known, or ought to be. In essence, he revolutionized the bond market by promoting the insight that high-risk bonds compensate for their default potential by their superior rate of interest. The subsequent acceptance of high-risk bonds provided takeover groups with a tool for ousting entrenched and stodgy management. That, of course, made Milken many enemies among corporate traditionalists in the executive suites and on Wall Street. Not for nothing is the most insightful book on Milken’s ordeal called Payback: The Conspiracy to Destroy Michael Milken and His Financial Revolution (Daniel Fischel, HarperCollins, 1995). By the time U.S. Attorney Rudy Giulani got through with Milken, he was facing a ninety-eight-count indictment. In the prevailing anti-business, witch-hunt atmosphere, no twelve jurors would unanimously acquit him of every single charge. Probably, they would not even understand the charges involving complex financial deals. In one of Giulani’s earlier financial cases, the prosecutors had told the jury to forget about the complex technicalities and look at the defendants’ “sleaziness.” What jury would understand bond selling and bond trading as legitimate finance rather than as sleazy paper-shuffling for personal gain? Worst of all, from Milken’s viewpoint, Giulani had started to go after his family. His younger brother Lowell Milken had already been indicted, and FBI agents had been sent to interrogate his ninety-year-old grandfather. Consequently, after much soul-searching, Milken gave up his fight and agreed to plead guilty to six counts of violating securities regulations. http://www.atlassociety.org/tni/ayn-rands-persecuted-minority

If spreading the word about contract breakers is preferable to using defensive force, then that policy should be followed by everyone in society, including government. In fact, why limit it to contract breaking? Forget prison, just spread the word about murderers, rapists and armed robbers.

As we know each other from LC, then one or both of us failed a Turing Test. Hidden behind your new name, your work sounded like that of many others who have come and gone. They came to engage and mostly argue against Objectivism. Among the best of them were Dragonfly and Ted Keer, and there were others. Like you, they were insightful, knowledgeable, and challenging. But at some level it just wears thin. OTOH, Selene is not doctrinaire; and I do disagree with him. But he does not care one way or the other. He is not here to engage. He is here to present. Boydstun, Campbell, and a few others are like that. They offer deep content but do not care much to argue back and forth. So, granted that you deserve more respect than I accorded you at first, allow me to apologize, so that we can move on. We cannot argue about what Ayn Rand did not say. Private adjudication is a lacuna in her thin political theory. She never regarded politics as important as so many of her admirers today do. She did say that the most important social changes must be philosophical. That will lead to the political changes. Rand did devote much time and effort to political commentary, but most often to illustrate moral or epistemological truths. To me, if you did not pay the government fee, then you cannot go to a government court; but you are perfectly free to seek justice any other way, except by force. Then the fee is not voluntary. Let's examine two cases: 1. If A crosses onto B's land and takes one of B's sheep, then B is fully justified in entering A's land and recovering the sheep. Has force been used in taking back the stolen property? Yes, but it is defensive force, an action entirely different in character from the earlier trespass and theft of the sheep. B's counteraction moves a good from illegitimate to legitimate owner, not in the other direction. It is retaliatory, not initiatory force. 2. Similarly, it is retaliatory, not initiatory force if B enters A's land to take a sheep that B paid for already and that A has refused to deliver according to the terms of a sales contract between them. B's action moves a good from illegitimate to legitimate owner. Now one could argue that to avoid chaos the power to recover stolen property should be left strictly in the hands of an institution called government. Since "the government is not the unpaid servant of anyone and everyone," some way must be found to finance it. But it cannot be by taxes. Ayn Rand correctly notes that "the imposition of taxes does represent an initiation of force." Rand understands that taking a man's sheep (or part of his income) to fund government is the initiation of force. But what if a sheep that rightfully belongs to B is being held by his neighbor A, and B is forbidden by the government from recovering the sheep himself and at the same time the government refuses to take action to return the sheep to the rightful owner? In this case government's threat to put B in jail if he enters A's land and grabs what belongs to B would also represent an initiation of force. And this is the contradiction that Rand's insurance fees place her in. Rand acknowledges that one should not have to pay a tax to the government in order to live in a free society, a community in which individual ownership to property is recognized and protected. For example, a citizen would get the benefit of having a military to repel invasions without having to pay a fee. He would not be required to pay for the cost of preventing foreign armies from initiating force. However, Rand's system would in fact require involuntary financing by refusing to allow the use of retaliatory force in the case of a broken contract. B's rights are violated just as much in Case 2 as they are in Case 1. In effect B cannot live in a society that protects property rights without payment of a fee. As I pointed out previously, "Rand might as well have argued that everyone in society must pay a fee in advance to have any of their property rights enforced. We won't track down the thief/vandal/rapist/murderer unless your contract fees are paid in advance. Such a position would be no less moral than the one she put forth in 'Government Financing in a Free Society.'"

Marotta, If I am a troll, then you've been dealing with me long before "troll," in the sense you use it, was invented. Four decades ago, under a less distinguished moniker, I contributed regularly to Skye d'Aureous and Natalee Hall's Libertarian Connection. --Francisco Regarding your response: The fee is not voluntary if you are forbidden to seek justice (i.e., recovery of what is rightfully owed to you) by any means other than the monopoly insurer of all contracts, namely the government.

Why you just did. It's right there in front of you. All you have to do is read what you yourself wrote. You asked: "If there are 'arrays and arrays' of possible outcomes, why is there in fact only one outcome?" Are you in the future to observe there is "in fact" only one outcome? No, I am in the present observing what happened to a bridge after a heavy rainfall. Let's put my words in context: If there are "arrays and arrays" of possible outcomes, why is there in fact only one outcome? It is because some factors outweigh others. The bridge washed away Monday at 4:55 pm primarily because the force of the river current was greater than the strength of the pilings. I said nothing about what is going to happen tomorrow or thereafter from the perspective of my present. However, regarding the nearest bridge to me, it is reasonable to state that tomorrow morning it will not both wash out and not wash out. Oxford defines "outcome" as "the way a thing turns out; a consequence." If I set the alarm clock for 7 am tomorrow morning, the clock will ring or it will not ring. If it rings it will be a consequence of my setting the clock and the clock's functioning properly. If it does not ring, it will be the consequence of my failing to set it properly or the clock's malfunction or some other event that might intervene to prevent it from functioning. Ringing or not ringing will be outcomes of events that happen between now and 7 am tomorrow. If you wish to limit "outcome" to the past only, then I will say that what happens to the clock at 7 will be a "consequence" of what transpires between now and then. If your words mean that future outcomes are non-existent, you are correct. Nothing in the future is yet a reality.

Perhaps, I misstated my position initially, so allow me to be more clear. It is never in a person's self interest to live an unprincipled life. Not true. Mao Tse-tung killed millions and lived comfortably into his eighties. Politicians do it all the time, and there is no evidence that they live abbreviated lives or suffer mental anguish. Nor is it clear that kapos betrayed the moral principle that an organism's own life is the standard of its value. If the principle is that one self-interest must be subordinated to another's property rights, then stealing is unprincipled. If the principle is that one's self-interest is always primary, then there is nothing necessarily unprincipled about stealing a necklace. This is twaddle. If she were handed the necklace as a gift, would it make any sense for her to refuse it on the grounds that, "Sorry, this bangle is only worth 12.5% of my lifetime earnings"? Of course not. Thus, there is no good reason from the standpoint of pure self-interest for her not to steal it given the near 0% likelihood of the crime being traced to her. $100,000 or $10,000, the effort needed to take the item was no greater than to bend down and pick up a quarter from the sidewalk. Should we advise one not to pick up coins because they represent only a fraction of one's lifetime income? My 1986 Mustang was stolen from an airport parking lot and never recovered by the police. Perhaps it was just "lost." Or perhaps by stealing the car the thief gave up the opportunity to make millions more by becoming a securities and commodities agent. Or perhaps he had to spend many times the value of the car on rational psycho-therapists to treat long-term guilt. Or perhaps the God of Justice intervened to strike him with the Lightning Bolt of Karma. Or perhaps the Mustang was only a small fraction of his lifetime earnings. If you find it helpful in maintaining your faith that crime never pays, then feel free to reject any and all cases of thefts with no repercussions.

Maybe because there is a fundamental difference between "possible outcome" and "outcome"? The first is in the future and the second is in the past. This is the determinism time travel fallacy I see all the time. Determinists imagine the characteristics of the future must be identical to those of the the past. Why? Just because. Simply untrue. I challenge you to cite one determinist who says "the characteristics of the future must be identical to those of the the past." To take such a position one would have to suppose that the world is is perfect stasis: that milk in the jug never reaches the glass, that trains never leave the station, that the moon is never less that full. Your straw men are invariably original, whimsical and entertaining.

I'm with Reidy. I saw neither book in the newsletter, magazine or book catalog.

If there are "arrays and arrays" of possible outcomes, why is there in fact only one outcome? It is because some factors outweigh others. The bridge washed away Monday at 4:55 pm primarily because the force of the river current was greater than the strength of the pilings. If there were more than "one physically possible future" then we would have to engage in a contradiction: to say that at 4:54 the force of the current was greater than the strength of the pilings and that the force of the current was weaker than the strength of the pilings.

You are in error. You have no basis for positing what Ayn Rand (or Yaron Brook) would say because you do not know what she actually did write. Read "Government Financing in a Free Society" in The Virtue of Selfishness. Rand specifically explained why the government is not the unpaid servant of anyone and everyone. Then a jeweler would be billed for the costs of tracking down and prosecuting a necklace thief? A woman would be billed for the cost of tracking down and prosecuting down her rapist? Why is that not mentioned in "Government Financing in a Free Society" or anywhere else in Rand's works? You say "Read 'Government Financing in a Free Society.'" Let's do. This is what she actually did write: Clearly then such "other functions of a proper government" as rounding up jewel thieves and rapists would be paid for by a tax on "credit transactions" to ensure their enforcement. The government would not be an unpaid servant. But that does not mean the people it served would necessarily be the ones paying. "Illustrative" of what? Of a system that allows one part of society to benefit from the costs paid by another part of society? "Critical thinking?" Well, she succeeded. My thinking on her suggestion was quite critical. And why, I ask, must we wait until the "final stages" of the welfare state to talk about getting rid of taxes? Randites repeat this as an article of faith with no explanation. Depriving government of its source of revenue is the surest way to force the welfare state into its final stages. Starve the beast.

Not all of the kapos were criminals before the war. I do not know that even a majority were. Furthermore, given the economic collapse and widespread street violence that characterized German life after World War I, it is hardly a certainty that joining a criminal gang would not have been in one's self-interest, particularly for one of the millions of unemployed workers. You say, being a kapo would be "offset by the loss that one would expect to suffer both before and after the war by living one's entire life as an unprincipled brute." If by loss you mean regret or guilt, there is no reason to suppose that the men and women who served as prison functionaries instead of fodder for the crematoria suffered from any self-doubts. For a significant part of the population, empathy is an unfamiliar, even unknown emotion. I'm guessing that most of the kapos were criminals before the war given their predilection for violence. If the kapos had been nice guys, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Post war Germany had a lot of crime and unemployment, but a person wouldn't have known before the war which countries would go to war and who would win, so one has to weigh the cost of being an unprincipled person anywhere in the world with the benefit, if any, of being a criminal during or after the war in Germany. When I talk about the offsetting cost, I'm talking about the cost of being an unprincipled person. How well do criminals typically fare in a peaceful society? What is their average income? Setting aside for a moment whether drugs should be legalized or not, I've heard that the average person involved in the illegal drug trade in the U.S. makes about $20/day. Sure, there a few drug lords that make big bucks, but most of their stooges and secondary dealers make peanuts. It is also instructive to look at the odds that any given person will rise to the top of the heap and become a drug lord, because that is the calculation that one has to make going in. A person might be certain he will rise to the top, but wishful thinking doesn't get a person very far. For every tyrant, their are scores of want-to-be's that got cut off at the knees, somewhere along the line. People without principles typically don't do very well. Let's examine the logic. The Kapos spent the war beating up helpless Jews. Therefore before the war they must have been criminals. The 20 million members of the Wehrmacht spent the war trying to kill American, British, French and Russian soldiers. By the same logic we would have to say that before the war they must have worked as murderers for hire. As for costs and benefits, yes, one has to weigh the costs of being a rights violator with the benefits. Similarly, one has to weigh the costs of starving to death in the streets versus the benefits of smashing the window of a bakery. Let's return to the original point you raised: "I will simply assert, without proof at this point, that cheating, lying, stealing, murdering, etc., are never in a person's self interest." I have given you the example of the kapos, who managed to avoid the gas chamber by serving as violent enforcers of SS discipline. To suggest that all the kapos had to do to ensure the downfall of Nazism was to persuade every Jew to rebel is ludicrous. To bring up the poor cost/benefit ratio for the average criminal in society is beside the point. The kapos were locked in the camps and had the choice to be victimizers or victims. They chose the former. And they survived at a dramatically higher ratio than the rest of the inmates. Your crime never pays assertion has been busted. Unlike Disney, real life doesn't always offer happy endings. Again you are evading the example (which, by the way, is drawn from real life). Caregiver A was not spending her best years sitting and waiting to rip someone off. She was sitting and waiting but only because that was part of her job description. She was a low wage caregiver. Couldn't she have obtained better employment? Maybe, maybe not. That's irrelevant. By accident she happened to find herself in the midst of a perfect opportunity to get rich quick with no muss, no fuss, and no comebacks. The opportunity fell in her lap and she grabbed it. The cost/benefit was extremely low/extremely high. This happened to a relative of mine. Since there were several caregivers over the course of months, no one could pinpoint a suspect. The family couldn't even collect insurance money. No one could prove a damn thing.

If the definition of "conviction" is "any belief that results from the exercise of free will or volitional consciousness," then an admission of a conviction by a determinist would betray him as a follower of the free will argument. Fortunately for the determinist, dictionaries don't define "conviction" in this way and thus, in the words of Merriam-Webster, his "a strong persuasion or belief " could be the product of forces that have nothing to do with the mythical faculty of free will. I doubt that I would have read Das Kapital at the age of 11 when I read the other two books. I also doubt that I would have been persuaded by Marx. But who knows? Better intellects than mine, Nobel laureates even, have taken a shine to him. Even if we establish that one may have an early predilection towards individual liberty, despite environmental influences, it would hardly prove the existence of free will. Certain personality traits may be inherent. Yes, there are determinists who believe the stars shape human destiny. They are called "astrologers," and I'm not one of them. Your question about being happy without a belief in free will is the same approach theists have taken with me. How can you be happy, Francisco, without being able to look forward to heaven? My answer? My happiness depends on having an unblinking recognition of reality, regardless of how cold or grim it may be. It is a narrow view of reality and a rigid view of man's mind. Could you leave aside your dictionary for a second, and entertain the philosophical concept of 'conviction', one which very definitely "results from the exercise of free will". You have heard the explanation "A being of volitional consciousness" at least fifty times. 'Volitionally' apply your mind to this statement, and isolate it (despite whatever you believe you know of 'free will'). I think it was most precisely and concisely worded by Rand, it states her case and no more. One could also argue that refusing to believe in man's alleged powers of precognition and levitation is narrow. The goal should be to arrive at an understanding of the mind that is accurate, regardless of how limited it may "sound" to some. Every thought is the product of biological and/or environmental factors. The fact that I suddenly decide to drive down to the corner and get a raspberry ice cream cone does not happen independently of the state of my stomach or my existing knowledge of things such things as sugar cones, frozen dairy desserts, and tart little red berries. Initiate new thoughts? One could suddenly come up with the idea of an escalator. But such an innovation depends on already existing creations such as stairs, pulleys, chains, and motors. "Ordered" means "carefully organized or controlled." Apparently your view of determinism is that it supposes all events in nature are planned by some divine intelligence. In fact, realistic determinists understand that a divine being is just as mythical as free will. Why did the man take the ferry instead of staying in his own car? Perhaps because he is a doctor and needs to get across the river immediately to deliver medicine to a sick child. If the man speaks to a strange new woman on the ferry it is perhaps because he needs a nurse to assist him when examining female patients. The fact that people make choices, sometimes odd ones, does not prove the independence of those choices from prior causes. We were discussing why I reacted positively novels by Huxley and Orwell. I suggested that certain inherent personality traits may be at play. Naturally, I did not say "character" because that quality is a combination of particular beliefs and actions--and is unlikely to be caused entirely by one's genes. "Influenced" or "determined"? I was influenced to choose raspberry because I had just seen a delightful photo of them in a magazine.I was determined to choose raspberries because they are very high in anti-oxidants.In both cases the person makes a decision in response to prior conditions. The second is simply more emphatic.

Actually, it is necessary, to some extent, to engage in "what-ifs". The outcome of any particular case doesn't matter as much as the odds of getting away with it. To this point, I have only examined the possible consequences for the kapos after the war, but I realized that that approach isn't really complete. We should be looking at what happened before the war as well. The German guards tended to choose criminals to be kapos because they knew that criminals were more likely to be unprincipled brutes. But, as a person living before the war, what were the odds that living as an unprincipled brute would get a person a job as a kapo during the war? Well, you said that there were several thousand kapos, so let's use the figure 10,000. I'm not sure what the population was in 1940, but it was more than 2 billion, so let's use that figure. Let's also assume that 10% of the population were criminals. Then, the probability of any criminal ending up as a kapo during the war would have been 0.005%. If we postulate, for a moment, that kapos came out ahead during the war by an amount X, then the expected payoff before the war would have been 0.00005 * X. However, that would have to be offset by the loss that one would expect to suffer both before and after the war by living one's entire life as an unprincipled brute. Not all of the kapos were criminals before the war. I do not know that even a majority were. Furthermore, given the economic collapse and widespread street violence that characterized German life after World War I, it is hardly a certainty that joining a criminal gang would not have been in one's self-interest, particularly for one of the millions of unemployed workers. You say, being a kapo would be "offset by the loss that one would expect to suffer both before and after the war by living one's entire life as an unprincipled brute." If by loss you mean regret or guilt, there is no reason to suppose that the men and women who served as prison functionaries instead of fodder for the crematoria suffered from any self-doubts. For a significant part of the population, empathy is an unfamiliar, even unknown emotion. You can probably put together an excellent statistical case against jewel thieves. No doubt the insurance industry has daunting figures on the percentage of thieves that go to prison. None of that is relevant to the case I described. Even supposing that statistically 99% of jewel thieves are caught, if caregiver A finds herself in a situation where there are no witnesses and the victim is incapable of distinguishing illusion from reality and there is no family member to regularly take inventory of valuables, caregiver A may correctly conclude that her chances are not 100 to 1 against, but 100 to 1 for success. And that tiny risk could be well justified by the possession of a necklace worth several times her annual income. Yes, it is irrational for people to perform certain dangerous jobs. Happily, it is not irrational for us to enjoy the products and services produced by those jobs.

Good, I will remind Hougen of that the next time he declares, "It is impossible to know with any kind of certainty when one can get away with something immoral and when that is not possible." It's not what you can get away with, it's you can't get away from yourself. It's what kind of man or woman you are. The rapist who gets away with rape is a rapist. The robber who gets away with stealing is a thief. Who does arson? An arsonist. Who says that's not the point? A utilitarian. Who isn't a utilitarian but would agree with this if it's a think to him, which I doubt, and isn't here? A sociopath. --Brant Very well, let's address the matter of psychology. If I go to the park and leave my cell phone on a bench to play softball, I can rest assured that 95% of passersby will not touch it. It's the 5% I have to worry about. I know from unhappy experience that a small but troublesome part of the population would grab that phone. They would do so without remorse and perhaps sleep better that night for having gotten away with it. Are the 5% who would steal cursed with sick minds? Should we consider them defective outliers who do not qualify as Man qua Man? Phone thieves are a minority. But what about the tens of millions of people who voted for politicians who kept the progressive income tax and welfare state in place? Are those who regularly take from the "haves" just because they're affluent and give the the "have nots" just because they're less affluent morally any different from a phone thief? And yet they may constitute a majority or a close majority of the population. I haven't heard reports of widespread insomnia among Democrats.

Good, I will remind Hougen of that the next time he declares, "It is impossible to know with any kind of certainty when one can get away with something immoral and when that is not possible."

"New factors, including new knowledge, alter patterns of behavior". You must explain to me how this happens. Knowledge, which "knowledge"? How does it change anyone? Example: knowledge that the bridge is washed out may change the route someone chooses to get home at night. Possibly, depending on the alternatives. Reading dystopian fiction such as 1984 and Brave New World convinced me. If I had been ready to change before reading those books, why didn't I change earlier? Then stop asking questions, and use any determinist's argument to refute him. Self-created morality? One day, Max Stirner said "I shall be an egoist" without ever having previously heard a discussion of philosophy? The self-indulgence is imagining the existence of a Free Will, which unlike any other thing in the universe, is completely independent of external forces. Determinism is self-refuting, for to state "I am a determinist" also states "I have a conviction". To own convictions is to say, "I have come to believe in this, not that". So: a being of volitional consciousness. If the definition of "conviction" is "any belief that results from the exercise of free will or volitional consciousness," then an admission of a conviction by a determinist would betray him as a follower of the free will argument. Fortunately for the determinist, dictionaries don't define "conviction" in this way and thus, in the words of Merriam-Webster, his "a strong persuasion or belief " could be the product of forces that have nothing to do with the mythical faculty of free will. I doubt that I would have read Das Kapital at the age of 11 when I read the other two books. I also doubt that I would have been persuaded by Marx. But who knows? Better intellects than mine, Nobel laureates even, have taken a shine to him. Even if we establish that one may have an early predilection towards individual liberty, despite environmental influences, it would hardly prove the existence of free will. Certain personality traits may be inherent. Yes, there are determinists who believe the stars shape human destiny. They are called "astrologers," and I'm not one of them. Your question about being happy without a belief in free will is the same approach theists have taken with me. How can you be happy, Francisco, without being able to look forward to heaven? My answer? My happiness depends on having an unblinking recognition of reality, regardless of how cold or grim it may be. Your question was, "Does the 'knowledge' of the existence (e.g.) of brute killers rampaging through countries enter one's mind and force an alteration in one's 'patterns of behavior' to the extent of enlisting with them?" The question was in reference to "one's" mind, not Francisco Ferrer's mind. I answered the question in the most general terms because it was not specifically about me. If your posts are going to consist mostly of a series of questions, perhaps you spend time phrasing them more precisely.

The fact that the kapos had no way of knowing how long the war would last or whether they would survive or eventually be gassed is germane to the issue. In fact, it is the issue. Part of Rand's philosophy is that in order to survive, a person must control his own destiny. The scenario of the kapos is similar to the following simpler scenario: Assume that a wealthy man came along and told you that he would guarantee you a life without want for as long as you lived as long as you agreed to be his prisoner. It is tempting to conclude that the rational man would accept the deal because he would no longer have to worry about his worldly needs. His food, shelter, clothing, and the best medical care money can buy would be guaranteed to him for the rest of his life, guaranteeing him a long and healthy life barring some unforeseen problem such as an untreatable illness. At least, he would be guaranteed to live at least as long as he would have on the outside. The problem is that there is no way of knowing what the guarantee is worth. The prisoner of the wealthy man would be at the latter's mercy, never knowing when or whether he might decide to end the deal and eject prisoner out into the world penniless or worse, kill him. The kapos faced a similar situation. What if Germany had won the war? The Final Solution was to exterminate all the Jews and that would presumably include the kapos. I have read that the Germans used the kapos to help control the other prisoners, thereby allowing the Germans to use far fewer SS guards at their prisons. If that is true, it might have been possible for all of the prisoners to escape if the kapos had joined with the other prisoners and staged a prison break. Alternately, if all of the prisoners had refused to be kapos, the German Army would have had to assign more soldiers to guard their prisons which would have removed some of the soldiers from the front line, increasing the likelihood of German defeat and bring that defeat more quickly, allowing all of the prisoners to be freed. Why would someone agree to be a kapo hoping to briefly extend his life when refusing to be a kapo might extend his life for another 50 years by helping to bring the war to an end? I don't know what you mean by saying the kapos "briefly" extended their lives. Unlike other inmates, they were fed adequately and not subject to debilitating labor. Their survival rate was many times that of the regular prisoners. Yes, Jews could have refused in unison to serve as kapos, and by remote chance the war might have been shortened--or just as likely the SS might have accelerated the extermination of unwanted ethnic groups to get fighting men back on the front. But we don't have to speculate about what-ifs. The historical fact is that there were sell-outs among the Jews, and those sell-outs today serve as demonstration of the unfortunate fact that some people can survive by by preying on others. Life does not always deliver happy endings, even when one follows the Golden Rule. You say, "It is impossible to know with any kind of certainty when one can get away with something immoral and when that is not possible." If caregiver A takes jewels from senile patient B's dresser while she is sleeping, there may be 100 to 1 odds against of getting away with it, 50-50, or 100 to 1 odds on. It depends entirely on the circumstances, which the predator must evaluate with cold logic. If there is no other one with knowledge of the jewels to look out for them and there are no witnesses to the theft, A could safely take the the goods and rest assured that they would not soon if ever be reported missing. But risk is not limited to the violators of individual risks. As I said in an earlier posts, there are numerous occupations fraught with danger. The jewel thief may be taking a risk far smaller than that of a logging worker or coal miner, occupations I've never heard Objectivists criticize as not being in one's rational self-interest.

Francisco, I haven't read the entire thread. I'll catch up eventually, but I would just reply that your prudent predator doesn't exist. I will simply assert, without proof at this point, that cheating, lying, stealing, murdering, etc., are never in a person's self interest. A person's expected payoff in leading a life that involves violating the rights of others is always less than his expected payoff in leading a rights respecting life. I will admit that it is a difficult argument to make. It is probably as difficult as arguing about the economics of freedom versus big government. However, I think you will find that it is impossible to come up with real world examples where a person's expected long term payoff is greater by violating the rights of others. In fact, if the goal of morality is to preserve life, then the proper measurement is longevity. So, you would have to argue that a person's expected longevity is greater if he violates the rights of others than if he respects them. Darrell Impossible? In fact, there are many historical cases of people who survived difficult times by violating the rights of others. To cite one famous example, concentration camp kapos in Nazi Germany were prisoners who were spared the harshest conditions by supervising, often brutally, other prisoners. See in particular Elie Wiesel's autobiographical Night. Of the perhaps thousands who performed this function, only a couple of dozen were successfully prosecuted after World War II. More recently, in the United States, arrested drug dealers are frequently given the promise of a lighter sentence or no prosecution if they serve as informants for the police. As for the statement "the goal of morality is to preserve life," to be fair, that is not Rand's position. According to her "that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good." I expected you to attempt to give examples that would disprove my proposition and you did not disappoint. The problem is that it is necessary to show that the expected payoff is greater, not the actual payoff in particular cases. In the case of the kapos, the men involved had no way of knowing how long the war would last, whether they would survive or be eventually gassed or be prosecuted and executed after the war. The fact that only a few were executed doesn't mean much. Also, we don't know how those people fared after the war. Some might have done fine while others might have had a hard time finding people with whom to do business and might have suffered as a result. Since many were criminals before the war, they might have returned to crime and died in other ways. The case of the kapos is an interesting case. It is probably a toss up whether one would have been better off choosing to be a kapo or not. So, it is a borderline case that exists only in the most chaotic of conditions. In a state of constant warfare where a person's rights are constantly violated, no rights are possible. However, such conditions are rare and hardly indicative of kinds of kinds of choices people face under more peaceable conditions. I'm not sure what your example of police informants is supposed to show. An informant is arguably doing the right thing by helping to stop crime. An informant might receive leniency, but that doesn't mean that he hasn't suffered as the result of choosing a life of crime. Man's existence --- his life --- is contingent upon pursuing a proper course of action. That is why he needs a moral code and that is it's purpose. Objectivists often talk about thriving instead of merely surviving, but the purpose of thriving is to survive. That is, putting distance between oneself and the needs of every day survival increases ones odds of surviving. A poor person living in a poor neighborhood is more likely to be a victim of crime than a person living in a nice neighborhood. A poor person's car is more likely to break down or suffer a brake failure and crash. He is less likely to be able to afford medical care, etc. Darrell You asked for an example of a case in which "a person's expected long term payoff is greater by violating the rights of others." The kapos of Nazi Germany are such an example. That they had no way of knowing how long the war would last (no one did) or whether they would survive or be eventually gassed is irrelevant to the issue. The fact remains that they expected that being brutal to other prisoners would help extend their lives and at the same time make them a bit more comfortable. It proved to be a safe bet. A drug peddler is a businessman who deals in a commodity that the government has outlawed. The sale of heroin violates no one's rights. Thus to serve as an accomplice to those who would steal from the dealer and place him in a cage for many months or years, is to be a rights violator. Rand's ethics does not derive the conclusion to respect the rights of other from its premise that an organism's life is its standard of value.

FF, Actually you have. But it's mostly by logically extending your premises and I'm not going to argue it. The part that amuses me is that you do this with Rand all the time, but get stung when you think someone does it with you. Michael No. I have not attributed any position to Rand that she did not take. I have not said that she argues for the prudent predator. To be precise, I have argued that the flaw in her ethics is that one cannot derive an argument against the prudent predator from her premises, By contrast you have attacked thoughts I've never uttered and offered up not a single direct quotation in evidence. Since there is not yet a cure for cancer, how can one know in advance anything about the character of the person who will develop the cure? Like a cure for cancer. rocket science will probably prove to be a long-term benefit for mankind. But the motive of the developers of the first long range ballistic missile was to help a group of thugs destroy civilian population centers. Three times the number of people killed in New York's Twin Towers were casualties of the weapons. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin of Great Britain, won the Nobel prize for chemistry for her work in protein crystallography. Her biochemical research helped science understand the structures of proteins, including insulin, resulting in more precise control of diabetes. She was also a devoted Marxist, friends with Ghanan dictator Kwame Nkrumah and the wife of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.

This self-indulgence comes from imagining that everything in the universe emerges. Determinism really should be called emergencism. And frum whince due stuffs emerge, prey tell? (Scratching head like a doofus...) Infinite regress. Really? Yup. Oh, they often say it all emerges from the big bang, but they qualify it so much it means infinite regress. Why? Just because. Like I said: Faith. Those of this faith often get just as fanatical as the wildest backwater revivalist preacher. I've seen it over and over. At least those who like this flavor of Kool-Aid can emerge in life as scumbags and take comfort that they had no choice about it--they ultimately emerged from infinite regress. But those of this faith always seem to imagine they emerged as some kind of intellectual elite. Luck of the draw, so to speak, except for them, there is no luck. They are inherently superior and don't have to do anything to stay that way. It's bigger than them. That's the great thing about emergence. Michael Thank you. Now that I know what emergencism is, I realize that I'm a determinist.

Absolutely feasible. A rose is a rose is a rose, by any name, it smells as sweet... If you question Objectivists (as example) of their first reading of Rand, you sometimes find it wasn't the learning of new knowledge that most excited their minds, it was the ~recognition~ of what they already knew to be true. They 'knew' the ideas. They were just given the words. (Which begs the question: did newcomers to O'ism already have to be conceptualists?) Feasible in the same way a seven-year old could write the fifth part of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage without ever having had access to Byron's first four parts. Free will means independence from all causation, no?

FF, I'll meet you on your epistemological turf a little--enough to say this. I suspect you know very little about the neuroscience of narrative, mental model-building, mirror neurons that release dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, cortisol, endorphins, how primates learn by imitation, etc. If you did, you would see just how silly your comments come across in this post. Models are excellent tools for analysis. But it would be a serious error to mistake the model for its real world counterpart. The absence of ultimately successful prudent predators in Atlas says nothing about their ability to exist and thrive in America, 2015. Your description of my world view is dead wrong. If my position were that predators and prey were inevitable features of social classes, that such a dichotomy is a metaphysical mold that humans are trapped in and can never get out of, then I could not be a libertarian. I would have to believe that libertarianism is impossible. But contrary to your fictional account (which like Rand's does not match the real world), I ardently support capitalism as the only practical and morally appropriate social system. I have been working for nearly a half century to bring that free society closer to reality. Furthermore, I have never written anything that remotely resembles what you attribute to me. Allow me to introduce you to something called the Devil's Advocate: one can present a philosophical position without endorsing it. In our world, that is, the realm of objective reality, intelligence can exist within the same mind that regards other humans as dirt beneath the boots. The Japanese germ warfare scientist Shirō Ishii is a leading example. Incidentally, because of his knowledge of microbiology, Ishii, like the German V-2 scientists received immunity from prosecution by the Allies. I have never expressed anything like the fallacious reasoning you attribute to me. You have now departed from the discussion of Rand and entered the Kingdom of Straw Men .

"New factors, including new knowledge, alter patterns of behavior". You must explain to me how this happens. Knowledge, which "knowledge"? How does it change anyone? Example: knowledge that the bridge is washed out may change the route someone chooses to get home at night. Possibly, depending on the alternatives. Reading dystopian fiction such as 1984 and Brave New World convinced me. If I had been ready to change before reading those books, why didn't I change earlier? Then stop asking questions, and use any determinist's argument to refute him. Self-created morality? One day, Max Stirner said "I shall be an egoist" without ever having previously heard a discussion of philosophy? The self-indulgence is imagining the existence of a Free Will, which unlike any other thing in the universe, is completely independent of external forces.

No, it doesn't, since Rand said that one could respond to artworks on many levels besides full sense-of-life affinity. (I have multiple criticisms of Rand's "sense of life" idea - as she explicates it, I don't think it exists. But Hitler's and her both liking Greek statues isn't an applecart upsetter of her views.) Ellen If one saw, in real life, a beautiful woman wearing an exquisite evening gown, with a cold sore on her lips, the blemish would mean nothing but a minor affliction, and one would ignore it. But a painting of such a woman would be a corrupt, obscenely viscious attack on man, on beauty, on all values–and one would experience a feeling of immense disgust and indignation at the artist. (There are also those who would feel something like approval and who would belong to the same moral category as the artist.) The emotional response to that painting would be instantaneous, much faster than the viewer’s mind could identify all the reasons involved. The psychological mechanism which produces that response (and which produced the painting) is a man’s sense of life. --Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto

Francisco, I haven't read the entire thread. I'll catch up eventually, but I would just reply that your prudent predator doesn't exist. I will simply assert, without proof at this point, that cheating, lying, stealing, murdering, etc., are never in a person's self interest. A person's expected payoff in leading a life that involves violating the rights of others is always less than his expected payoff in leading a rights respecting life. I will admit that it is a difficult argument to make. It is probably as difficult as arguing about the economics of freedom versus big government. However, I think you will find that it is impossible to come up with real world examples where a person's expected long term payoff is greater by violating the rights of others. In fact, if the goal of morality is to preserve life, then the proper measurement is longevity. So, you would have to argue that a person's expected longevity is greater if he violates the rights of others than if he respects them. Darrell Impossible? In fact, there are many historical cases of people who survived difficult times by violating the rights of others. To cite one famous example, concentration camp kapos in Nazi Germany were prisoners who were spared the harshest conditions by supervising, often brutally, other prisoners. See in particular Elie Wiesel's autobiographical Night. Of the perhaps thousands who performed this function, only a couple of dozen were successfully prosecuted after World War II. More recently, in the United States, arrested drug dealers are frequently given the promise of a lighter sentence or no prosecution if they serve as informants for the police. As for the statement "the goal of morality is to preserve life," to be fair, that is not Rand's position. According to her "that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good." .