Ayn Rand

[Picaro]

She wasn't a classical liberal because classical liberalism is not compatible with corporate capitalism.

Absolutely true, but then there is nothing compatible with corporate capitalism, so that's an easy one.

 

[Picaro]

One of the best comedy threads I can recall reading here.

 

[CriticalThought]

Like I said: personal values can be subjective, but social rulesets MUST be objective. Any subjective activity valued by the subject that bares its economic costs, and that doesn't violate the objectively-recognized rights of others, has an objective value.

Could you provide some evidence of these "objectively recognized" rights of others? So far all I am hearing are assumptions.

Take baseball for example. There's nothing objective about grown men throwing a little ball around for hours, and yet millions of people voluntarily choose to pay their hard-earned dollars to watch them do it, buy team baseball caps, and so on. Outlaw baseball, and there will be economic decline, in part because people would be more depressed and less willing to earn more money to pay for their subjective hobby - thus it has an objective value to the human economy.

I have no doubt that baseball has economic value. That is indeed an objective fact. The human world can affect the physical world either politically (force of authority) or economically (force of capital). However, the constructs of "authority" and "capital" are not objective. They require the subjective recognition of human beings. The recognition of the value of your currency, deeds, stock certificates, etc. requires the consensus of your fellow human beings, otherwise it is objectively nothing but paper. I don't have to recognize that a deed symbolically represents property rights to a piece of land. In order to get people to acknowledge capital, the construct of authority must be used. For example, if I damage property that you have paper for, then a political force is going to make me pay for it with equitable capital via use of authority. They are going to make me recognize the value of your paper. I also don't have to recognize authority. As such, authority has only two means by which to make me recognize it. The first choice is through violence, and the other choice is by giving me a piece of the authority through democracy.

That is the reality. Otherwise, you would be forced to stay at home and defend all your physical goods and your land with your shotgun. There would not be a great deal of economic exchange, because there would be no recognized currency. People would have to barter. In essence, there would be very little freedom.

Capitalism allocates economic results based on economic contribution, which can vary drastically from an illiterate peasant following his boss's instructions in a "sweatshop" to a Bill Gates thinking up new ways to propel the human civilization forward, but it does not create a hierarchy.

That illiterate peasant owns his body, his mind, his speech, his time, any skills that he may have, his reputation in the minds of others, and so on - that is his capital, even if he hasn't got a single penny to his name. No one can take those things away from him without his consent. He might find that reality dictates for him to use his body and time to earn a living so that he can feed himself, but that is his choice to make. Maybe this peasant loves his childhood memories and his wife so much that he wouldn't trade places with Bill Gates even if he could!

Indeed, economic stratification exists. Bill Gates came from a rich, upper middle class family. He had a very privileged education at an opportune time in history and that gave him the opportunity to become ultra rich. The peasant, on the other hand, grows up in a culture where he anticipates he will always be poor and there is little incentive for him to attain much more than what he needs to survive. In pure capitalism, this often results in the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer. That isn't to say that Bill Gates has worked harder than the peasant, only that Bill Gates has had better opportunities than the peasant. The question then is whether or not that is a fair distribution of resources.

Yes, which is why democracy and other collectivist systems don't work very well. Each individual adult is the best judge of what is best for him, individually, as long as he doesn't violate the natural rights of others.

Do you have evidence to support the notion that democracy doesn't work? That seems like an assumption to me.

Sure. If you violate my natural rights, you will get shot. Any questions? :mrgreen:

So if I say I have the natural right to beat your head in unprovoked with a two by four when you are asleep, who is to say I am wrong? What makes your natural rights anymore valid than mine?

Or you can spend several years studying history and economics, and you will discover that the society that violates those natural rights the least has a competitive advantage over the societies that violate them more.

Could you provide some of this specific economic or historical evidence?

 

[Picaro]

He had a very privileged education at an opportune time in history and that gave him the opportunity to become ultra rich.

He also made his fortune off an industry and research that was developed and funded by the Federal Government, too, but apparently that little fact seems to never be mentioned by 'free market objectivists', or conservatives, for that matter.

 

[Agnapostate]

That's the proper term for your claim that plain (irrational) anarchism predates Anarcho-Capitalism (never mind that core dimensions of self-ownership on which Anarcho-Capitalism is based -- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- keep popping up much earlier than that).

You certainly wouldn't be claiming anything so absurd as that anarchism, the legitimate socialist variety of anarchism, did not predate the pseudo-anarchist propertarianism that Murray Rothbard spawned, because that would be to defy any existing counterweight to extreme and massive historical ignorance. "Anarcho"-capitalism is of course based on the preservation of the authoritarianism of the capitalist labor market...and Rothbard aptly recognized its non-anarchist nature in his earlier and more cogent years, thankfully.

Capitalism makes individuals self-reliant, so they don't need the state. What you're saying is utter nonsense.

We've already discussed this very topic. As mentioned, in the context of the capitalist economy, the state's role in sustaining regulatory structure is integral. I most often mention Yu's A new perspective on the role of the government in economic development: Coordination under uncertainty to illustrate this. Consider the abstract:

This paper argues that the government possesses certain unique features that allow it to restrict competition, and provide stable and reliable conditions under which firms organise, compete, cooperate and exchange. The coordinating perspective is employed to re-examine the arguments for industrial policies regarding private investment decisions, market competition, diffusion of technologies and tariff protection on infant industries. This paper concludes that dynamic private enterprises assisted by government coordination policies explains the rapid economic growths in post-war Japan and the Asian newly industrialising economies.

Also consider this portion:

[The government] possesses some unique features that distinguish it from the firm. Such features allows the government to regulate competition, reduce uncertainty and provide a relatively stable exchange environment. Specifically, in the area of industrial policy, the government can help private enterprises tackle uncertainty in the following ways: first, locating the focal point by initiating projects; providing assurance and guarantees to the large investment project; and facilitating the exchange of information; second, reducing excessive competition by granting exclusive rights; and third, facilitating learning and diffusion of technologies, and assisting infant industry firms to build up competence. The history of developmental success indicates that the market and the state are not opposed forms of social organisation, but interactively linked (Rodrik, 1997, p. 437). In the prospering and dynamic nations, public-private coordination tends to prevail. Dynamic private enterprises assisted by government coordination explain the successful economic performances in the post-war Japan and the Asian newly industrialising economies. It is their governments' consistent and coordinated attentiveness to the economic problems that differentiates the entrepreneurial states (Yu, 1997) from the predatory states (Boaz and Polak, 1997).

The aforementioned point about infant industries is perhaps the most illustrative aspect of the role of state protectionism in facilitating maximum development because of the simplicity of the infant industries argument. Rather than merely permitting the benefits of immediate unrestricted trade accrue to the benefit of one more powerful nation due to underdevelopment, a government protection of infant industries is established until such time as they "grow up" and can thus be expected to be legitimately competitive industries, thus maximizing dynamic comparative advantage in the long run.

Aside from that, the state was also an integral agent during the phase of primitive accumulation of capital through the elimination of racial/ethnic/sex minorities from the process, which ironically renders unrestricted market exchange the perfect way to sustain the consequences of state intervention. I'm certainly in favor of drastically minimizing and ultimately eliminating the role of the government in public affairs. But that objective is not consistent with the continuation of capitalism because the state and capitalism are somewhat like two robbers who might squabble over how to divide the loot from their "acquisitions" but ultimately need each other to pull them off.

Name one distinctly socialist country where people are free to leave, and name one distinctly capitalist country where they aren't? The right to free exit is the most important of all citizen's rights, because it creates competition between government systems - something that capitalism thrives on and socialism can never survive.

There are no socialist countries presently in existence, but there are classes of people to whom free exit is prohibited in every capitalist country because they lack the financial means for travel, which is just as effective a prevention of their free movement as a state prohibition would be.

You clearly don't understand the first thing about economics, and instead escape into a fantasy world that is completely detached from objective reality, where the human mind has no value and mindless effort is infinitely rewarded by some imagined supernatural source. You can have your fantasies, but reality belongs to free market capitalism.

This was among your more ironic comments. Only the economically ignorant could cling to so utopian a vision as that which involves the theoretical abstraction of laissez-faire capitalism, which enjoys no historical record of practical existence or successful implementation. The more economically knowledgeable advocate of capitalism acknowledges the integral role of the state in the process.

Many unscientific economic books have been written by socialists, but the actual reality is that capitalism (which rewards productivity) and the welfare state (which rewards lack of productivity) are mutually exclusive. The welfare state is a parasite that benefits from capitalism through systematic theft. Capitalism does not need the welfare state.

These economically ignorant comments, though amusing, are also exceedingly tiresome. The welfare state is an integral agent in the capitalist economy because it sustains the physical efficiency of the working class and prevents acceptance of more radical and ideologically unacceptable economic philosophies, appeasing restless sentiments. This is ultimately tied in to its beneficial effects upon efficiency. I'd recommend consulting a legitimate and sound empirical source such as Headey et al.'s Is There a Trade-Off Between Economic Efficiency and a Generous Welfare State? A Comparison of Best Cases of `The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism’:

A crucial debate in policy-making as well as academic circles is whether there is a trade-off between economic efficiency and the size/generosity of the welfare state. One way to contribute to this debate is to compare the performance of best cases of different types of state. Arguably, in the decade 1985-94, the US, West Germany and the Netherlands were best cases - best economic performers - in what G. Esping-Andersen calls the three worlds of welfare capitalism. The US is a liberal welfare-capitalist state, West Germany a corporatist state, and the Netherlands is social democratic in its tax-transfer system, although not its labor market policies. These three countries had rates of economic growth per capita as high or higher than other rich countries of their type, and the lowest rates of unemployment. At a normative or ideological level the three types of state have the same goals but prioritise them differently. The liberal state prioritises economic growth and efficiency, avoids work disincentives, and targets welfare benefits only to those in greatest need. The corporatist state aims to give priority to social stability, especially household income stability, and social integration. The social democratic welfare state claims high priority for minimising poverty, inequality and unemployment. Using ten years of panel data for each country, we assess indicators of their short (one year), medium (five year) and longer term (ten year) performance in achieving economic and welfare goals. Overall, in this time period, the Netherlands achieved the best performance on the welfare goals to which it gave priority, and equalled the other two states on most of the goals to which they gave priority. This result supports the view that there is no necessary trade-off between economic efficiency and a generous welfare state.

Keep in mind that as unemployment constitutes a form of static inefficiency, so does the reduction of it constitute another reduction of inefficiency on the part of the social democratic capitalist state.

When has free market capitalism ever failed to produce wealth?

That particular deficiency is associated with its nonexistence, I believe.

When did socialism ever manage to exist without economic aid from capitalism?

The most wide-ranging example that I most often refer to is the Spanish Revolution, which of course involved the implementation of anarchist-backed workers' ownership and management of industry and major resources.

(Mindless socialist religious chanting ignored.)

The only religious chanting comes from those rather dimwitted propertarians who cling to the idiocy of the Austrian school, which drags about a useless business cycle theory that cannot contend with Marxist crisis theory, as well as a lack of a coherent theory of the firm.

 

[Agnapostate]

Capitalism doesn't "distribute resources in a hierarchical fashion" (which is what socialism does to power), capitalism distributes resources according to voluntary human action.

Wrong! Aside from your inaccurate reference to state capitalism as "socialism," we have as an example of capitalist hierarchy organizational hierarchy in the sense of top-down authority structures in orthodox capitalist firms. Consistent libertarians will condemn this form of economic authoritarianism along with its statist equivalent, but rightist propertarians are instead content to argue that any form of authoritarian hierarchy in internal firm structure is permissible. And considering the resource scarcity that compels workers to subordinate themselves in hierarchical relationships under employers, there's little "voluntary human action" to speak of. :2wave:

If all parties involved are interested in maximizing their gain, which is most often the case, then wealth becomes distributed based on economic merit, which can be objectively judged from the natural laws (i.e. supply and demand). Need in of itself does not create anything.

What an asinine comment, and one that fails to analyze the effects of market power. Only someone who had a utopian faith in perfect competition while ignoring the realities of asymmetric information, negative externalities, and the aforementioned market power could ever make such a ludicrous statement.

In the realm of human economics, private property and other natural rights constitute a competitive advantage.

That's demonstrably untrue, considering the empirical literature which illustrates that workers' ownership and management are associated with efficiency gains for firms that implement them that propel them beyond the orthodox capitalist firm.

Capitalism allocates economic results based on economic contribution, which can vary drastically from an illiterate peasant following his boss's instructions in a "sweatshop" to a Bill Gates thinking up new ways to propel the human civilization forward, but it does not create a hierarchy.

This is quite absurd. Apart from the fact that the capitalist labor market allocates remuneration based on a combination of labor and capital rather than mere labor, which permits those with an inordinately high amount of capital to work little, the empirical literature on social mobility flatly contradicts your claim. For analysis into how income inequality and restricted social mobility are more prevalent in the U.S. than in most European countries, consider Gangl's Income inequality, permanent incomes, and income dynamics: Comparing Europe to the United States.

In most of Europe, real income growth was actually higher than in the United States, many European countries thus achieve not just less income inequality but are able to combine this with higher levels of income stability, better chances of upward mobility for the poor, and a higher protection of the incomes of older workers than common in the United States.

Supplement that with analysis into the probability of intergenerational transmission of corresponding economic success, specifically the probability of children belonging to the same income level as their parents. Consider Corak's Do poor children become poor adults? Lessons from a cross country comparison of generational earnings mobility.

In the United States almost one half of children born to low income parents become low income adults. This is an extreme case, but the fraction is also high in the United Kingdom at four in ten, and Canada where about one-third of low income children do not escape low income in adulthood. In the Nordic countries, where overall child poverty rates are noticeably lower, it is also the case that a disproportionate fraction of low income children become low income adults. Generational cycles of low income may be common in the rich countries, but so are cycles of high income. Rich children tend to become rich adults. Four in ten children born to high income parents will grow up to be high income adults in the United States and the United Kingdom, and as many as one third will do so in Canada.

So we can thus clearly observe the nature of intergenerational transmission of an effectively matching income level being a significantly occurring pattern in the U.S. and other Western countries.

We may be able to attribute a sizable portion of that to direct inheritance, for which we'd consider a source such as Summers and Kotlikoff's The role of intergenerational transfers in aggregate capital accumulation. Consider the abstract:

This paper uses historical U.S. data to directly estimate the contribution of intergenerational transfers to aggregate capital accumulation. The evidence presented indicates that intergenerational transfers account for the vast majority of aggregate U.S. capital formation; only a negligible fraction of actual capital accumulation can be traced to life-cycle or "hump" savings.

Aside from that, there's also the obvious matter of a myriad amount of inequitable environmental conditions skewing human capital attainment, thus creating a prohibitive obstruction to upward social mobility.

That illiterate peasant owns his body, his mind, his speech, his time, any skills that he may have, his reputation in the minds of others, and so on - that is his capital, even if he hasn't got a single penny to his name. No one can take those things away from him without his consent. He might find that reality dictates for him to use his body and time to earn a living so that he can feed himself, but that is his choice to make. Maybe this peasant loves his childhood memories and his wife so much that he wouldn't trade places with Bill Gates even if he could!

We condemn slavery on the grounds that the "right" that the slave owner had to ownership conflicted with the more fundamental "right" the slave had to liberty and self-determination, since the slave was likely to derive more happiness from those rights than was the owner from his "right" to ownership of private property. In the case of capitalist wage labor, its proponent will simply answer that unlike slavery, it is based on voluntary association, and the authoritarian hierarchies and exploitative appropriation of surplus value that we identified are thus not morally problematic. But we first have to analyze the conditions of potentially liberty-restricting power that surround its existence. I typically refer to the spectrum of influence terms that the political scientist Robert Dahl uses, which ranges from rational persuasion to manipulative persuasion to inducement to power to coercion to physical force. We know that physical force is not the only negative influence term, and even propertarians would likely admit that aside from inducement, all others aside from rational persuasion are morally problematic. Their support for laws against fraud, for example, would be indicative of their opposition to "consensual" yet manipulative persuasion. Yet we do not see a consistent opposition to manipulative persuasion in the capitalist labor market emerging, nor a consistent opposition to conditions of power and coercion occurring. Those conditions are manifested in this way described by David Ellerman:

When a robber denies another person's right to make an infinite number of other choices besides losing his money or his life and the denial is backed up by a gun, then this is clearly robbery even though it might be said that the victim making a 'voluntary choice' between his remaining options. When the legal system itself denies the natural rights of working people in the name of the prerogatives of capital, and this denial is sanctioned by the legal violence of the state, then the theorists of 'libertarian' capitalism do not proclaim institutional robbery, but rather they celebrate the 'natural liberty' of working people to choose between the remaining options of selling their labour as a commodity and being unemployed.

Hence, robbery committed via means of a gun is condemned as coercion because though the victim "consents" to being robbed and can theoretically not do so, the consequence of this is likely to be an injurious and possibly fatal gunshot wound. Similarly, though the wage laborer "consents" to enter into a contract with his or her employer and can theoretically not do so, the consequence of this is unemployment and subjection to the conditions of indigence and destitution, which may include homelessness, perpetual hunger and thirst, malnourishment, poor health, and in some third-world and even first-world countries, death. This is perhaps not typically as grave as an injurious and potentially fatal gunshot wound, but propertarians would certainly condemn a robber who threatens to beat instead of shoot his victim just as swiftly.

This problem is augmented further when we consider the fact that "labor is often sold under special disadvantages arising from the closely connected group of facts that labor power is 'perishable', that the sellers of it are commonly poor and have no reserve fund, and that they cannot easily withhold it from the market," as noted by Alfred Marshall. This further complicates the negative conditions of power and coercion that mark entry into the capitalist labor market. In addition to that, we have a propensity for manipulative persuasion based on the conditioning of the working class to be inferior to the coordinator class in terms of rationally determining contract provisions in a fully informed manner. This problem was noted by Sidney and Beatrice Webb:

The manual worker is, from his position and training, far less skilled than the employer...in the art of bargaining itself. This art forms a large part of the daily life of the entrepreneur, whilst the foreman is specially selected for his skill in engaging and superintending workmen. The manual worker, on the other hand, has the smallest experience of, and practically no training in, what is essentially one of the arts of the capitalist employer. He never engages in any but one sort of bargaining, and that only on occasions which may be infrequent, and which in any case make up only a tiny fraction of his life.

All in all, I think it's fairly safe to conclude that whatever "right" to private ownership and by extension, authoritarian governance of corporate structure exists (and that's disputable to begin with, as we noted) is outweighed by a more fundamental moral imperative as it pertains to the maximization of liberty, "an"-cap.

Yes, which is why democracy and other collectivist systems don't work very well. Each individual adult is the best judge of what is best for him, individually, as long as he doesn't violate the natural rights of others.

Democracy is based on individual self-management and the need to create social norms and policies, which provides a compelling reason for extension of it into the economic realm.

 

[Alex Libman]

(Agnapostate is being ostracized for intellectual dishonesty. If he wants to waste my time, he'll have to pay for it.)

Could you provide some evidence of these "objectively recognized" rights of others? So far all I am hearing are assumptions.

Evolutionary pragmatism: societies that violate those rights the least have an empirically-observable competitive advantage over the societies that violate them more.

(Or you could actually read Ayn Rand's works, especially non-fiction ones, as well as read up on the economic history of the human civilization.)

I have no doubt that baseball has economic value. That is indeed an objective fact. The human world can affect the physical world either politically (force of authority) or economically (force of capital). However, the constructs of "authority" and "capital" are not objective.They require the subjective recognition of human beings. The recognition of the value of your currency, deeds, stock certificates, etc. requires the consensus of your fellow human beings, otherwise it is objectively nothing but paper. I don't have to recognize that a deed symbolically represents property rights to a piece of land. In order to get people to acknowledge capital, the construct of authority must be used. For example, if I damage property that you have paper for, then a political force is going to make me pay for it with equitable capital via use of authority. They are going to make me recognize the value of your paper. I also don't have to recognize authority. As such, authority has only two means by which to make me recognize it. The first choice is through violence, and the other choice is by giving me a piece of the authority through democracy.

The authority of things like government and religion is in fact subjective (and the latter is a lesser evil because it is recognized as such, and is thus no longer able to get away with using force).

Capital is objective. You exist. You are aware of your existence and of your desires. All attributes of your existence (body, mind, time, experience, reputation, etc - as well as your ability to meet your material desires) are your capital. If you are consistently able to trade a chunk of shiny metal (or some pieces of paper with dead politicians on them) for food, a laptop, or whatever else you choose, then those things have at least some objective value (though their exact value may fluctuate over time).

The authority for recognizing things like land rights can be centralized or decentralized. A centralized authority might be self-interested in its reputation as being objective and "fair", in order to secure and expand its power, but it can ultimately get away with any abuses it wants, as has been the case throughout history.

A decentralized / polycentric network of competing authorities can all keep an eye out on each-other, with new authorities being able to enter the market at any time, and existing ones growing, shrinking, or going out of business on the basis of natural selection. Any such organization can be used to define a homesteader's claim over a piece of property that is unowned, to claim / verify a sale / transfer of ownership, and to settle any disputes regarding those claims, with the interested parties paying fees for those services. In a free society, all claims to property ownership, as well as rules for accessing said properties, must be in the public domain - there's no such thing as a natural negative right to privacy. Different land authorities would publish their own databases through which you can find out who owns any square inch of land (think Google Earth), but all of those databases would ideally agree 100% - unless there's an outstanding dispute. Property owners are ultimately self-interested in settling such disputes, because they would certainly represent a hazard to the business value of that land, and unethical behavior would ultimately result in one's declining reputation or even wide-spread ostracism.

That is the reality. Otherwise, you would be forced to stay at home and defend all your physical goods and your land with your shotgun. There would not be a great deal of economic exchange, because there would be no recognized currency. People would have to barter. In essence, there would be very little freedom.

There's nothing wrong with defending your own property, but in most cases it would be more efficient to hire a [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_defense_agency"]private defense agency[/ame] to do it for you. And since those agencies must compete on the basis of their reputation for consistently delivering quality and value, they are far less likely to succumb to the corruption, inefficiency, and abuse of power.

Indeed, economic stratification exists. Bill Gates came from a rich, upper middle class family. He had a very privileged education at an opportune time in history and that gave him the opportunity to become ultra rich. The peasant, on the other hand, grows up in a culture where he anticipates he will always be poor and there is little incentive for him to attain much more than what he needs to survive. In pure capitalism, this often results in the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer. That isn't to say that Bill Gates has worked harder than the peasant, only that Bill Gates has had better opportunities than the peasant. The question then is whether or not that is a fair distribution of resources.

Indeed, economic stratification does exist, but much of it is a result of government action - the history of government-enforced aristocracy / feudalism / slavery / communism, protectionism, government-enforced intellectual property "rights" (without which Bill Gates would probably only be 1/4th as rich), restrictions to free movement of people and capital across borders, sabotaging child education through an ineffective government school monopoly, and so on.

That stratification (not to be confused with merit-based income inequality) is now on decline thanks to the growth of free market capitalism. When I make a bid on a project on a site like rentacoder.com, any person in India, Nigeria, or the jungles of Peru can have my job instead if s\he can do it just a bit better or a bit cheaper. The skills needed to have this job can be acquired with a laptop and an Internet connection (which are falling in price rapidly thanks to capitalism) in addition to a curious mind. (I myself am entirely self-taught, including my English skills.)

Yes, some people can inherit wealth without working for it, but that wealth represents the merit of those who created it and chose to pass it on to its inheritor voluntarily. If people aren't allowed to pass their wealth to whomever they want, the incentive to produce that wealth in the first place would inevitably decline. Non-violent social pressure (i.e. consumer activism, ostracism, etc) can be used to encourage greater support of charities, but violent action (i.e. government taxation) only leads to net economic loss. Given free competition and time, accumulation of capital inevitably flows away from the less competent and toward the more competent (i.e. natural selection)!

Do you have evidence to support the notion that democracy doesn't work? That seems like an assumption to me.

Democracy stands in the way of individual natural rights. It inevitably leads to run-away government power that is controlled by a ruling elite, which is able to influence and manipulate the public far, far more than the public is able to influence the government each election day. The opinion inputs that democracy takes from its subjects aren't any better than the tools any successful overt dictatorship would use to make sure it keeps the mob on its side.

Democracy tends to stand in the way of production and merit-based distribution of wealth, which is the engine of economic growth, and it also tends to suppress parents' rights, which leads to demographic collapse.

So if I say I have the natural right to beat your head in unprovoked with a two by four when you are asleep, who is to say I am wrong? What makes your natural rights anymore valid than mine?

A society that allows men to beat each-other's heads with two-by-fours with impunity will not be able to function above the hunter-gatherer level of human development, which means it would be at a competitive disadvantage compared to a society that recognizes man's rights as they exist in nature. ("Nature" here doesn't mean primitivism, but empiricism - the economic observation of what social ruleset offers the greatest competitive advantage for a society, that is leads to the greatest economic growth.)

Could you provide some of this specific economic or historical evidence?

Do we have to do this on every thread? North and South Korea. East and West Germany. Cuba and Chile. Libya and Dubai. Panama and Singapore. Rhode Island and New Hampshire. The early American pilgrims. Etc, etc, etc.

 

[Agnapostate]

(Agnapostate is being ostracized for intellectual dishonesty. If he wants to waste my time, he'll have to pay for it.)

Nothing of the sort. You merely lack the ability to effectively respond to my points. Ignore my posts if you will, but that won't stop me from tearing your nonsense to shreds in every thread that you insert it into.

 

[CriticalThought]

Evolutionary pragmatism: societies that violate those rights the least have an empirically-observable competitive advantage over the societies that violate them more.


(Or you could actually read Ayn Rand's works, especially non-fiction ones, as well as read up on the economic history of the human civilization.)

I've read her works. She utilizes arbitrary redefinition and false premises. As such, her reasoning is invalid unless you can empirically justify it. Please provide some specific historical and economic evidence to support your claims. It shouldn't be that hard to do so.

Capital is objective. You exist. You are aware of your existence and of your desires. All attributes of your existence (body, mind, time, experience, reputation, etc - as well as your ability to meet your material desires) are your capital. If you are consistently able to trade a chunk of shiny metal (or some pieces of paper with dead politicians on them) for food, a laptop, or whatever else you choose, then those things have at least some objective value (though their exact value may fluctuate over time).

Capital is based on value, which is inherently subjective. Gold is only valuable because it is rare, which is a human evaluation. Rare, shiny things are valuable to humans. No wonder you hold the philosophy you have if you honestly believe that capital is objective.

 

[kansaswhig]

It's on the economics issue that I begin to depart from libertarianism, though I will admit that I am mulling over whether or not government intervention is a good thing.

Then you are the worst Libertarian of all time.

 

[CriticalThought]

Then you are the worst Libertarian of all time.

Sounds more like a communitarian than a libertarian.

 

[Sanitas]

@ Barnes and Noble the other day I saw a freaking HUMONGOUS book by Ayn Rand. It was so big that the book itself which was paperback was like twenty bucks.

I was reminded of this post though. What does she write about? Is she a good author?

 

[Alex Libman]

I've read her works. She utilizes arbitrary redefinition and false premises. As such, her reasoning is invalid unless you can empirically justify it. Please provide some specific historical and economic evidence to support your claims. It shouldn't be that hard to do so.

I do on many threads, issue by issue.

Capital is based on value, which is inherently subjective. Gold is only valuable because it is rare, which is a human evaluation. Rare, shiny things are valuable to humans. No wonder you hold the philosophy you have if you honestly believe that capital is objective.

Anything subjective that is valued by the subject and doesn't violate the natural rights of others has objective value.

[...] It was so big that the book itself which was paperback was like twenty bucks.

Unlike Ayn Rand, I don't believe in intellectual property rights, at least not in the sense that you can't use your own computer to pirate some Ayn Rand PDF's or audiobooks for free.

 

[CriticalThought]

I do on many threads, issue by issue.

None that I have noticed.

Anything subjective that is valued by the subject and doesn't violate the natural rights of others has objective value.

And we are back to these so called "natural rights". It seems your alleged objectivity is based in large part on your own subjective beliefs and values. Hence why I have never been a fan of objectivism, anarcho-capitalism, or Ayn Rand. Let me know when you can empirically prove natural rights. So far, all I have seen is ciruclar reasoning and an outright avoidance to actually cite any specific economic or historical evidence.

 

[Sanitas]

Unlike Ayn Rand, I don't believe in intellectual property rights, at least not in the sense that you can't use your own computer to pirate some Ayn Rand PDF's or audiobooks for free.

I'm a book person. "E-books" aren't books in my opinion, they're just words on the computer. To read a book it must be in physical copy to experience it truly - to place the bookmarks, to turn to pages.

 

[Alex Libman]

None that I have noticed.

It's called confirmation bias - when you read my responses and they shatter your beliefs in pieces, your brain simply fails to process the information and you gloss over it. All socialists suffer from it.

 

[CriticalThought]

It's called confirmation bias - when you read my responses and they shatter your beliefs in pieces, your brain simply fails to process the information and you gloss over it. All socialists suffer from it.

I've yet to actually see any post of yours where you post specific historical or economic data. I can't have confirmation bias, when you don't even provide information by which to interpret in a way to confirm my perceptions. But if it makes you feel better to project that claim on to people, then have at it.

I will say that my line of questioning seems to have made you rather defensive. Perhaps you should reflect on why somebody simply asking you to provide empirical data to support your assertions would lead you to charge that they have confirmation bias. Perhaps you wish to dismiss my line of questioning because it makes you uncomfortable and leads you to realize how little practical evidence you have to support your beliefs?

 

[Panache]

I'm a book person. "E-books" aren't books in my opinion, they're just words on the computer. To read a book it must be in physical copy to experience it truly - to place the bookmarks, to turn to pages.

If you ever experience the sublime pleasure of reading on a Kindle DX, I am confident you will change your tune.