Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
In 1780, John Adams succinctly defined the principle of the Rule of Law in the Massachusetts Constitution by seeking to establish “a government of laws and not of men”. This reflects the democratic principles enshrined in the Constitution’s preamble: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The very foundation of our legal system says that the law should work for us all, not just a select few.
This raises the question of what is a good law that serves the majority of society and what is a bad law that doesn’t serve the majority of society?
This idea is further bolstered by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The latter addition of the 14th Amendment as well as the Preamble of the Constitution both reflect the spirit in which this country was founded as set forth in the Declaration of Independence: “When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Clearly, the pursuit of the Rule of Law under the Constitution as informed by the Declaration is a pursuit of the Utilitarian concept of the right course of action is the one that maximizes the overall good consequences of an action; what is in the best interest of greatest numbers of We the People is in the best interests of the country.
Utilitarianism is a quantitative and reductionist philosophical form. Utilitarianism, however, is not a unified philosophical view. It comes in different flavors with the two primary flavors being Rule Utilitarianism and Act Utilitarianism. Strong Rule Utilitarianism is an absolutist philosophical view and rules may never be broken. Like any absolutist view does not take into account that reality occasionally presents situations where breaking a rule results in the greater good. For example, the strong reductionist rule that murder is bad is countered by the exceptional example of murder is not bad if performed in self-defense or the defense of others. This result of practical application is reflected in what John Stuart Mill called Weak Rule Utilitarianism. It becomes apparent that since not all rules are absolutely enforceable when seeking the common good and exceptional circumstances require flexibility in the law, that the Utilitarian pursuit of the Rule of Law must be in Mill’s Weak Rule formulation of Utilitarianism. But is considering the greater good and circumstantial reasons for breaking or modifying rules the best way to judge whether a law is good or bad?
If one considers Kant’s Categorical Imperative – “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” – then any law not universally applicable should not be a maxim worthy of being recognized as universal. This is contrary to Utilitarianism in general as well as Weak Rule Utilitarianism specifically, but while Kant’s view takes subjectivity into account when dealing with circumstances it does not take into account that there can be objective differences in circumstances as well. It is part of the judiciaries role as a trier of fact to consider not only subjective differences but objective differences in circumstances in formulating the most equitable and just solution to a case at bar. In seeking to be universally applicable in defining maxims, Kant is an absolutist as surely as Strong Rule Utilitarians are absolutists. As a consequence of reality not being neatly binary in nature and thus not often compatible to absolutists approaches to formulating laws for practical application, what can be done to keep Weak Rule Utilitarianism from degenerating into Act Utilitarianism where actors will seek the greatest personal pleasure when presented with a choice rather than the greater good? Utilitarianism conflicting with the Categorical Imperative? Is there a unitary philosophical approach to evaluating whether a law is good or bad?
The answer seems to be no. If there is no single view, absolutist or otherwise, that leads to a practical system for evaluating whether a law is good or bad, then there is only one option for building a framework for evaluation. That option is synthesis.
Consider that absolutist systems as they are not applicable in reality should be confined to being considered theoretical boundaries rather than practical boundaries. This does not negate the value of considering systems like Strong Rule Utilitarianism or Kant’s Categorical Imperative, but rather puts them in the place of aspirational goals rather than practically attainable goals in every circumstance. Given that Mill’s Weak Rule Utilitarianism can degrade into Act Utilitarianism and that degeneration can be compounded by the number of exceptions there are to a rule, are there ways to minimize the defects of using only Weak Rule Utilitarianism to determine the societal value of a law? What supplements can be made to that framework?
I submit that one such supplement is found in the form of Negative Utilitarianism. Negative Utilitarianism is exactly what it sounds like; the inverse function of Utilitarianism. Whereas Utilitarianism is the basic proposition that the right course of action is the one that maximizes the overall good consequences of an action, Negative Utilitarianism is the basic proposition that requires us to promote the least amount of evil or harm, or to prevent the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest number. If one takes both into account in evaluation of the social value of a law (a synthetic approach), the test becomes a balancing act. On one side of the scale is the societal value of overall good consequences, on the other side is the societal value of preventing overall harm. This proposition suggests the following framework for evaluation of whether a law is good or bad.
- How many people benefit from the good consequences of a law?
- How many people benefit from the reduction of harm as consequences of a law?
- Does the benefits from promoting good consequences outweigh the costs of reduction of harm?
- Does the benefits from reducing harm outweigh the costs to the greater good in taking no action?
- Are the net consequences of a law perfectly knowable from either perspective or does the possibility of unforeseeable consequences exist? Can the unforeseeable risks be minimized either by construction of the law(s) to allow for contingencies or by regulating other risks or contributing factors?
- Do solutions from either perspective negatively impact human and/or civil rights? Do those negative impacts outweigh the positive effects to the greater human and/or civil rights of all?
This is but one way to evaluate whether a law is good or bad for society. What are other methods? Are there ways to improve this method? What do you think?
@Grossman: ie, the sacrificer is morally irrelevant, a valueless nothing
That is a truly ridiculous conclusion. Nothing makes a sacrificer morally irrelevant; he is not required to sacrifice, in fact it is common for people to have morals that say if they can save somebody’s life they should. Sacrifices are discrete; they do not have to be a life or everything a person has; they can be for hours and a few bucks.
But even if they are somebody giving up their life for somebody else, it may be they have already decide, for their own emotional well-being, that they would rather be dead than continue to live knowing they let somebody they love die when they could have prevented it. I find it puzzling that somebody that claims a person’s life is the ultimate property would call such a sacrifice immoral. Doesn’t the sacrificer have the right to choose to spend his life as he sees fit? Including to give it up to prevent the destruction of somebody he loves?
Your silly philosophy is riddled with inconsistency.
@Grossman: Altruism is not a demand, it is a choice, and the choice is not to sacrifice success and happiness but to share it. Altruism is the choice to effect a net gain by giving something one can afford to give. The point of altruism isn’t to transfer X dollars from me to somebody else, the point of altruism is that with X dollars I can sometimes make large positive changes in somebody else’s life, and I personally think that it is worth giving up something I don’t really need (X dollars) to give somebody else what they DO really need, or save their life, or keep them from becoming a criminal, or whatever.
For example, if Suzy is being beaten by her husband, and I can save Suzy with $1000 that provides food, shelter, legal assistance, police protection and the assistance she needs to transition to an independent life as a productive citizen, the world is not better off if I am $1000 richer and Suzy is dead, the world is better off if I give up the $1000 I won’t even miss in my finances and Suzy gets the help she needs and becomes a cashier or waitress or web designer or something.
My $1000 does not change my success, and keeping it would not change my life in any way. Using it to finance Suzy’s escape, however, increases my happiness, and it enables Suzy’s success and increases her happiness and achievement. So you (parroting Rand) are precisely wrong: I give up something that matters very little to me, and Suzy gains a whole new life with less pain and danger and more potential.
Nor have I established a pattern of dependence; such situations can be unique and non-repeatable, and even if they are repeated, I can choose to refrain from helping if, because of recidivism, I do not think a second escape will be successful if the first failed. Nor do I have to commit to funding the Suzy’s of the world until I run out of money; just because I thought I could afford it a few times doesn’t mean I can afford it a few hundred times, and my prior engagements in altruism would not be erased if my financial situation should unexpectedly change and I could no longer help: I helped people, and they remain helped.
It is you that advocates a morality of death over life; quite often selflessness and sacrifice and altruism are the difference between death and life. I repeat the sacrifice of the firemen: They get killed in fires. On average, firemen have shorter lives; they are sacrificing some years of their life (not the entire life) to add far more years than they sacrifice to the lives of strangers. On balance, more years of life are lived, and that is a morality of life over death. Your morality of selfishness, if applied to fire fighting or law enforcement or national defense, would produce a net loss of life, property and freedom. It is a morality of death over life.
>Tony C
I am an altruist that believes success, happiness and achievment are possible for me and everybody,
Altruism is the demand that these be sacrificed to those who dont have them. Ie, they are not possible.
Tony C.
>she redefines words to meet her needs and thereby trick people that rely upon the common meaning,
Youre rationalizing the sacrifice of independent judgment to social approval. Meaning is objective, the product of volition and logic, in which logic is the identification of the facts of reality w/o contradiction. Rand is explicit in validating definitions from the observation of similarities and differences. She provides evidence, stressing to her audience that she has a new definition. Modern mainstream intellectuals appeal to popularity and authority. The fact that a definition is common is merely sociology or reporting w/o logical meaning. You have regressed to the philosophy of primitive savages, before Socrates discovered the intellectual and practical need to look out at reality, rather than social consciousness, for definitions.
>>Grossman: Your concern with the alleged beneficiary of sacrifice is an evasion of what it does to the sacrificer.
>I did not evade anything
[from your prior post]
>When people sacrifice, they give up something they have for a principle or outcome that will *not benefit them* but that they feel will be worth more to somebody else.
Ie, the sacrificer is morally irrelevant, a valueless nothing whose only function is to sacrifice his values to that which alone is moral, the alleged beneficiary. Man is not moral fodder for irrational ideals! The fact that you feel a perverse happiness when sacrificing is morally irrelevant within the morality of sacrifice (and psychologically revealing). Youre implying that your relationships don’t further your life but diminish it. And that that is acceptable if the other person allegedly benefits and if you feel pleasure in self-destruction. Kant is your guide whether you know it or not. You further imply that you dont know how to have mutually selfish relationships in which both people further their lives. Spiritual values should be traded, not sacrificed, just like material values.
Man is a living organism whose values either further his life or threaten it. You reject a morality of life for a morality of death.
Grossman: Your concern with the alleged beneficiary of sacrifice is an evasion of what it does to the sacrificer.
You are regressing to lies and insults, I quit reading. I did not evade anything; the fireman gives up (on average) years of his life by risking it every day; so does the cop, and if you think they do this for the pay I think you are wrong.
Most medical doctors are motivated to become doctors primarily by the idea of saving and improving lives, and psychological studies of pre-med students show that those that are focused primarily on the monetary rewards are the least likely to finish the long, grueling course and actually become medical doctors.
I focused specifically on what it does to the sacrificer: They give up something they value; be it money, food, time, or life, in order to benefit somebody else.
You can also stop quoting your scripture at me in the form of writing from Ayn Rand. I won’t read her drivel. She is a liar, she is illogical, she redefines words to meet her needs and thereby trick people that rely upon the common meaning, that is purposeful deception and fraud. I cannot argue with Rand because she is dead and cannot answer, and the world is better off for that. I have refuted her premises, and produced the situations where her philosophy fails, and that is enough for me.
Tony C.
@Grossman: “Sacrifice” is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.”
>How patently ridiculous that is, and once again, a redefinition of a word to suit one’s selfishness. When people sacrifice, they give up something they have for a principle or outcome that will not benefit them but that they feel will be worth more to somebody else.
Rand has identified the basic property of sacrifice. You identify one of its non-basic properties. Your concern with the alleged beneficiary of sacrifice is an evasion of what it does to the sacrificer.
Definition is based on observed similarities and differences, not the postmodern/nominalist arbitrary and conventional. See Rand’s _Intro. To Objectivist Epistemology_.
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Rand
If you exchange a penny for a dollar, it is not a sacrifice; if you exchange a dollar for a penny, it is. If you achieve the career you wanted, after years of struggle, it is not a sacrifice; if you then renounce it for the sake of a rival, it is. If you own a bottle of milk and give it to your starving child, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to your neighbor’s child and let your own die, it is.
If you give money to help a friend, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to a worthless stranger, it is. If you give your friend a sum you can afford, it is not a sacrifice; if you give him money at the cost of your own discomfort, it is only a partial virtue, according to this sort of moral standard; if you give him money at the cost of disaster to yourself—that is the virtue of sacrifice in full.
If you renounce all personal desires and dedicate your life to those you love, you do not achieve full virtue: you still retain a value of your own, which is your love. If you devote your life to random strangers, it is an act of greater virtue. If you devote your life to serving men you hate—that is the greatest of the virtues you can practice.
Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.
There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into one “package-deal”: (1) What are values? (2) Who should be the beneficiary of values? Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral guidance.
Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value—and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.
Observe what this beneficiary-criterion of [the altruist] morality does to a man’s life. The first thing he learns is that morality is his enemy: he has nothing to gain from it, he can only lose; self-inflicted loss, self-inflicted pain and the gray, debilitating pall of an incomprehensible duty is all that he can expect. He may hope that others might occasionally sacrifice themselves for his benefit, as he grudgingly sacrifices himself for theirs, but he knows that the relationship will bring mutual resentment, not pleasure-and that, morally, their pursuit of values will be like an exchange of unwanted, unchosen Christmas presents, which neither is morally permitted to buy for himself. Apart from such times as he manages to perform some act of self-sacrifice, he possesses no moral significance: morality takes no cognizance of him and has nothing to say to him for guidance in the crucial issues of his life; it is only his own personal, private, “selfish” life and, as such, it is regarded either as evil or, at best, amoral.
The psychological results of altruism may be observed in the fact that a great many people approach the subject of ethics by asking such questions as: “Should one risk one’s life to help a man who is: a) drowning, b) trapped in a fire, c) stepping in front of a speeding truck, d) hanging by his fingernails over an abyss?” Consider the implications of that approach. If a man accepts the ethics of altruism, he suffers the following consequences (in proportion to the degree of his acceptance):
Lack of self-esteem—since his first concern in the realm of values is not how to live his life, but how to sacrifice it.
Lack of respect for others—since he regards mankind as a herd of doomed beggars crying for someone’s help.
A nightmare view of existence—since he believes that men are trapped in a “malevolent universe” where disasters are the constant and primary concern of their lives.
And, in fact, a lethargic indifference to ethics, a hopelessly cynical amorality—since his questions involve situations which he is not likely ever to encounter, which bear no relation to the actual problems of his own life and thus leave him to live without any moral principles whatever.
By elevating the issue of helping others into the central and primary issue of ethics, altruism has destroyed the concept of any authentic benevolence or good will among men. It has indoctrinated men with the idea that to value another human being is an act of selflessness, thus implying that a man can have no personal interest in others—that to value another means to sacrifice oneself—that any love, respect or admiration a man may feel for others is not and cannot be a source of his own enjoyment, but is a threat to his existence, a sacrificial blank check signed over to his loved ones.
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>Nobody sacrifices something of value for something they don’t value, that is false on the face of it to anybody with a brain, and anybody with a brain reading this drivel would stop the instant it started.
“It is a duty to preserve one’s life, and moreover everyone has a direct inclination to do so. But for that reason [inclination] the often anxious care which most men take of it has no intrinsic worth, and the maxim of doing so has no moral import. They preserve their lives according to duty, but not from duty. But if adversities and hopeless sorrow completely take away the relish for life, if an unfortunate man, strong in soul, is indignant rather than despondent or dejected over his fate and wishes for death, and yet preserves his life without loving it and from neither inclination nor fear but from duty—then his maxim has a moral import” (Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. R. P. Wolff, New York, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969, pp. 16–17).
Kant is the most influential philosopher in our culture, from the special sciences to morality, politics and religion. His greatest influence is in Germany, not coincidentally the home of Weimar culture, Marxism and Nazism.
>The mind is insanely good at rationalization
You demonstrate that. Insanely?! Is this a cry for help?
@Grossman: “Sacrifice” is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.”
How patently ridiculous that is, and once again, a redefinition of a word to suit one’s selfishness. When people sacrifice, they give up something they have for a principle or outcome that will not benefit them but that they feel will be worth more to somebody else.
A man gives his life to save his child’s life, or his wife’s life, or his country, or to protect a principle he holds dear. That is a sacrifice. A fireman risks his life again and again, and on average gives up several years of his life to save hundreds of years worth of the lives of strangers. A cop risks his life again and again with the same result, by thwarting crime and holding criminals in check he extends hundreds of others.
Nobody sacrifices something of value for something they don’t value, that is false on the face of it to anybody with a brain, and anybody with a brain reading this drivel would stop the instant it started. Rand is saying it is something she does not value, and that was probably true for her. It may be true for you too, Stephen, in which case you have my pity for your eventual sad fate, which I would not wish on anybody.
@Roco: what is your idea of successful?
I am not the person to judge your success, you are. I am not sure what mix of objective results and subjective results apply; it is probably unique to each person. My observation is that when people think they have failed, they rush to blame external factors beyond their control, and that is the sense I get when people tell me taxes are “robbery” and thievery” and selfishness is some kind of necessity for success. It tells me they think they don’t have the resources for success, from which I am guessing they feel like they are not as successful as they should be.
Sometimes external factors or bad luck really are to blame for failure; but not usually. Most failures are the result of bad judgment and bad choices; when I fail (and I have had my share of failures) I search for the decisions under my control that I could have and I should have made diffferently; and usually the failure was some fault in me. But then, the humiliation of recognizing that one has done something really dumb is often all it takes to correct the flaw, so I think failure has the potential to make me a better or more successful person. That doesn’t mean I welcome it; I still dread it and do everything I can to avoid it.
Failure won’t do that for those that struggle to maintain their own sense of infallibility and ego and prefer to blame something out of their control, like taxes or the government or the media or the school system. The mind is insanely good at rationalization and dodging responsibility; so it takes some kind of fortitude or ruthlessness with one’s self to keep on rejecting external causes of failure to finally concentrate on one’s own fallibility, and figure out what the corrective should be.
Tony C
>people sacrifice their time and money to charities, neighbors, and even to the welfare of animals every day, people are altruistic every day, and continue to survive just fine.
Consistent altruists are called corpses. To the extent that one sacrifices one’s life and happiness, to that extent one will suffer. Most people smuggle in some selfishness (and thus feel guilty re their ideal of sacrifice ,a guilt exploited by the advocates of sacrifice; see liberal attacks on the anti-ideological, Pragmatist, conservative advocacy of capitalism). To the extent one is selfish, one survives and is happy.
“Sacrifice” does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious. “Sacrifice” does not mean the rejection of the evil for the sake of the good, but of the good for the sake of the evil. “Sacrifice” is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.” Rand
If you start, however, as a passionless blank, as a vegetable seeking to be eaten, with no values to reject and no wishes to renounce, you will not win the crown of sacrifice. It is not a sacrifice to renounce the unwanted. It is not a sacrifice to give your life for others, if death is your personal desire. To achieve the virtue of sacrifice, you must want to live, you must love it, you must burn with passion for this earth and for all the splendor it can give you—you must feel the twist of every knife as it slashes your desires away from your reach and drains your love out of your body. It is not mere death that the morality of sacrifice holds out to you as an ideal, but death by slow torture.” Rand
>a tiny percent of people are actually malevolent
Thus its practical to jail the few who steal and murder. But you want a regulated economy to treat all guilty in advance, thus justifying regulations on the innocent and the guilty.
Gold is now $1700/oz. Thats the price of the altruist regulations and other govt economic interventions you want.
>I can be happy to see others profit from those small investments I make
Only if they sacrifice themselves as well. You’ll throw them into jail and tell them they can choose the upper or lower bunk. To a person who refuses to sacrifice himself, your inner Nazi comes out. How dare they refuse to suffer!
Intolerable! If they won’t voluntarily suffer, you’ll force them to suffer. Kant, the explicit advocate of consistent sacrifice and suffering, called himself a “friend of mankind.” With friends like that…
You advocate selfless idealism but not selfless realism. You like intentions rather than consequences. If you can achieve the consequences you want, you will be pleased, but its not your basic concern. The consistent expressions of selflessness are the Marxist gulags and Nazi death camps.
Selfishness is rational and thus moral. America has been trapped for all its history between a selfish politics of individual rights and the increasing influence of the morality of selflessness advocated by liberals and conservatives. Conservatives, almost immediately after the Constitution was written, were the first opponents of its protection of individual rights, validly noting that its implicit selfishness contradicted religious morality. Rand has opened the trap. See HM Holzer’s _Sweet Land of Liberty_.
@Grossman: I will not see Rand, if you cannot explain it yourself I don’t believe you understand it. I do not believe your assertion that obligation is a [purely] moral concept, or your assertion that morality is “accepted by choice.”
I do not accept the locality of that decision, morality is inherently a function of relationships with other people or minds capable of judgment. Morality cannot be determined in isolation and accepted or rejected in isolation; a moral system is a framework for judging what is a good or bad action toward another. I do not believe in mysticism, what I do believe in is language and the meaning of words and I believe that actions towards others should be fair, meaning equitable and just.
I don’t care what Kant says; if he resorted to mysticism then by definition his thinking was muddled and irrational; all mysticism ends in belief in some sort of magic or fundamentally unexplainable effect (thus the “mystery” in the root). I think I have already discovered and provided a perfectly serviceable defense of duty.
Tony C.
@Grossman: Obligations to other people are the effect of chosen actions
Can you PROVE that?
Obligation is a moral concept. Morality is a code of values accepted by choice. Man’s mind (focused on the relation between reality and man’s life) is the source of values. This is a mere deductive skeleton, useful for debate, of a full, inductive presentation for which I dont have the time. See Rand’s _Virtue of Selfishness_.
“In order to make the choices required to achieve his goals, a man needs the constant, automatized awareness of the principle which the anti-concept “duty” has all but obliterated in his mind: the principle of causality—specifically, of Aristotelian final causation (which, in fact, applies only to a conscious being), i.e., the process by which an end determines the means, i.e., the process of choosing a goal and taking the actions necessary to achieve it.” Rand
Kant, the most important advocate of duty, ie, obligation without choice, said, “…the very incomprehensibility of [duty]….announces a divine origin…”
Ie, the subjectivist Kant shifted to mysticism when he couldnt find a rational defense of duty. Note that our culture is, as a result, is also shifting to mysticism. If you think that Kant was wrong in denying a rational justification to duty, contact the Jrl. of Philosophy ,the main US philosophy jrl, immediately with your argument.
@Grossman: I do not believe either of those quotes; I reject the premises upon which they are based. Rand is wrong, my ethics are not based on a malevolent universe (if anything they are based on an indifferent universe; but I think it is silly to ascribe emotions to the universe). I think the idea that self-sacrifice and altruism are “incompatible with life” is just total bullshit; people sacrifice their time and money to charities, neighbors, and even to the welfare of animals every day, people are altruistic every day, and continue to survive just fine.
It is quotes like this, with obviously counter-factual claims, that make your philosophy so laughable, and for those of us that think, what makes your adherence to it so mind boggling.
The universe is not malevolent, but a tiny percent of people are actually malevolent, and a few percent of people are predators indifferent to the suffering they cause, and a general plan of action in the world requires some attention to guard one’s self against such types because encountering them unguarded can have catastrophic effects.
Completely contrary to your Rand quote, I am an altruist that believes success, happiness and achievment are possible for me and everybody, and that is one of the reasons I am an altruist is because small efforts by me to remove obstacles standing in the way of success, happiness and achievment of others can produce large effects in their lives, and because I am not a selfish person I can be happy to see others profit from those small investments I make, and I believe that a happier world with less desperation, anger, resentment, and less squandered potential ultimately benefits everybody.
Rand is simply wrong, my life is a testimony to that. So is Peikoff, making his hilariously stupid claims.
Tony C:
what is your idea of successful?
Tony C.
@Grossman: Life as a whole or basically is not an emergency.
Nor is it for brute animals
“The altruist ethics is based on a “malevolent universe” metaphysics, on the theory that man, by his very nature, is helpless and doomed—that success, happiness, achievement are impossible to him—that emergencies, disasters, catastrophes are the norm of his life and that his primary goal is to combat them.” Rand
“If men hold values incompatible with life—such as self-sacrifice and altruism—obviously they can’t achieve such values; they will soon come to feel that evil is potent, whereas they are doomed to misery, suffering, failure. It is irrational codes of ethics above all else that feed the malevolent-universe attitude in people and lead to the syndrome eloquently expressed by the philosopher Schopenhauer: “Whatever one may say, the happiest moment of the happy man is the moment of his falling asleep, and the unhappiest moment of the unhappy that of his waking. Human life must be some kind of mistake.” Leonard Peikoff
@Blouise: I always read everything you post
Gosh, thanks, but don’t you get tired of the repetition?!? It seems like I have to keep making the same points over and over and over to these guys.
That’s okay though, It helps sharpen my thinking, eventually.
@Mike S: Yeah, I always get the gestalt feeling from talking to these guys that they aren’t very successful and are resentfully looking for somebody to blame for their unhappy condition other than themselves. Which would be pathetically funny in light of their strident demands for personal responsibility.
@humanegg: What is your definition of theft? I usually work with this one: Theft is the taking of property belonging to another person with the intention of depriving the owner permanently of its possession. This is exactly what taxation is. The government takes property that belongs to another with the intention of never returning that property.
No, it isn’t. The government takes money that belongs to it as your share of payment for services rendered.
humanegg says: If you want to make taxation ‘not theft’ somehow, you’ve got to explain how it’s voluntary.
I have done that with Grossman. One difference between a free country and a dictatorship or despotic government is that you are free to leave at any time (with exceptions if you are convicted or under indictment for a crime). It is always your choice to stay, and implicit in that choice is your choice to abide by the rules of the country you have chosen to stay in, and those rules include how you shall pay your fair share for the resources you inherently use, such as law enforcement, public roads and facilities, miltiary protection and other services we provide to citizens, such as unemployment insurance, Medicare, Social Security and food inspection and structural inspection and safety inspection. We have chosen to provide those things, and we have chosen our method that users will pay for them: By taxation. If you don’t want to pay those taxes you can leave, because you are free, but if you choose to stay you incur the legal obligation of paying for them by taxation.The government collecting taxes is no different than the courts forcing you to pay for anything else you implicitly chose. If you walk into a restaurant and order a steak dinner, your agreement to pay for it was implicit by you ordering it, you don’t get to argue there was no written contract, or that the waiter failed to inform you that payment would be necessary after consumption, or that you did not specifically understand that was how restaurants worked. The same thing is true here: If you remain in the country, you are expected to know how it works. In Walmart, you pick and choose what you want and pay for it. Our country works more like (properly functioning) health insurance or fire insurance; everybody pays the same just in case they need help, but the actual help goes to those that need it, and by design the help they get might exceed the amount they put in, or might not.
The point of insurance is that everybody pays the average cost of loss so that nobody pays the extremes. (Or more realistically the average cost of loss plus the average share of administrative and security costs to prevent insurance fraud). Our government works in an analogous way. You don’t get to shop for the individual services you want.
“You don’t know crap about psychology or what motivates people, usually it is not “ideas” but emotion, which are by definition irrational. On the other hand, if the claim is that every thought is an idea (and it isn’t) then it is the equivalent of saying “people are motivated by thoughts.” Duh.”
Tony,
Very well stated and an apt description of what you are dealing with. Generally people conflate their emotions, with their actual thought processes, which I think Mr. Grossman suffers from. He feels Ayn Rand is correct because she resonates with his own need to be the center of his universe. I essence he is still stuck in the “magical thinking” of the five year old that believes the world revolves around his needs. Though now covered with an intellectual patina of justification, at base it revolves around “I want it now!”
@Grossman: Each individual owns his own property, eg, a house.
And what, precisely, does “own” mean? It means nothing without a collective backing it up. It means if somebody takes it from you or destroys it, they can be punished and / or forced to remunerate you. So… Forced by whom? You? Does this mean elderly paraplegic wheelchair bound men without living relatives do not have the right to “own” something, because they cannot personally defend it? Or do you insist they must surrender some portion of their property to hire others to defend it for them? How is that any different than advocating for taxation, other than being less reliable and more expensive?
“Ownership” means exactly one thing and it is almost entirely dependent upon the collective: The collective agrees to use its combined strength, both financial and physical, to enforce what rights you have over the property; and those rights are agreed to by the collective (or at least acceded to) and enforced on all citizens. Ownership is NOT about the individual, it is about the collective. Twenty years ago I built something on my property that my neighbors didn’t like. But I abided by and was within the law, so they couldn’t do anything about it, except what they eventually did (for different reasons) move.
Now technically they could have tried to burn it down or pulled it apart or shot it up; but my property rights were protected against those actions by the collectively hired police, courts, and legislative bodies that had already decided what I could and could not build on my property.
“Property rights” do not mean anything without laws defining them and protection against punishment or rule by brute force. Without the collective, you also sap those words of all meaning, and they just become codewords for what I presume is your demand for anarchy and rule by force of arms.
@Grossman: If I have a right to stay, its a right to ignore democratic violators of rights. If Im obligated to obey democratic lynch mobs, I have no rights.
No, the right to stay is not a right to ignore anything. Your right to eat in the restaurant is conditional upon obeying their rules, they have the right to refuse service to you for cause. If you start throwing food, or interrupting the meals of other diners, you can be ejected. The right to use the establishment is not the right to use it however you want, it is the right to enjoy the benefits of it by their rules.
If you don’t accept their rules, don’t walk in. That does not have to be negotiated, it is assumed. It is assumed at a restaurant that if you order a meal, you will pay for it, it is assumed you will not accost strangers, or sit down at their tables, or willfully perform any other act that will violate their right to enjoy the experience they are paying for.
The country works the same way, or if you prefer, like a hotel. At any time you can settle up and leave, so as an adult every day you do not make the decision to do that you have made the decision to stay and implicitly agreed to pay for your stay and abide by the rules of the hotel.
Your right to stay does not confer the right to break the law or sell the TV in your room or clean out the mini-fridge or bar without paying for the items.
You are not obligated to obey extra-legal mobs; you are obligated to obey the rules, and one of our rules is that those that choose to stay implicitly agree to be bound by majority rule in its various forms. If you don’t like it you are free to leave, you can literally just walk out. But a right to stay does not confer a right to anarchy or your own set of rules.
The government does not collect taxes at gunpoint; it collects debts from deadbeats at gunpoint, and among the deadbeats are people that try to use the resources of the society without paying for it. Or in other parlance, free riders.