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Re: Force

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 11:16 pm
by Mr A
In LFC, no ones rights are violated by government, but protected. The government would be constitutionally limited to protect individual rights. So if a person steals your money, that violates your property right, and you could have police, and criminal justice system to go to, or if a business commits fraud against you, all kinds of ways individual rights can be violated, which would still likely happen inLFC, but the government is not suposed to violate them, only recognize, uphold, protect them, have police, courts, rule of law as a way and means of doing so.

These sites do a good job of presenting aspects of laissez-faire capitalism, many question you may have could be answered in the FAQ area here:

http://www.capitalism.org/
http://principlesofafreesociety.com/

Re: Force

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 11:30 pm
by etudiant
Mr A wrote:
Rand:
Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.


http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer? ... zed_rights
It is of course a supreme irony that Rand might make this statement. As a Jew born in the early part of the 20th century, she would have been better placed than most to understand that groups, without the protection of law, can be abused in the most horrendous fashion. Violent discrimination against Jews was rampant in Europe at that time; more subtle, but still very much present, in most of the rest of the world. If they didn't like their treatment, where were they to go under your LF system- Antarctica?

We have rights as individuals, and also in connection with legitimate groups we belong to, such as our race, religion, nationality, gender, etc. Without such laid down in law, all who are not a strong majority are at risk.

We are all shaped by our life experience, especially during childhood. Rand's experience in her formative years included seeing their family made miserable by a far left regime. It's likely her ranting in her books is a catharsis for that time.

Re: Force

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 12:19 am
by Mr A
If a business discriminates against, say Jews, wont hire them because they are Jews, wont sell to them anything in their store if you are a Jew, etc. that is their right. I dont know why anyone wouldnt, but you cannot force people to deal with people they dont want to. The government cant force that business to hire Jews, or anyone else that they do not want as an employee. That would be violating the trader principle, as in people being able to deal with one another in the marketplace on a voluntary basis, and property rights of the business. If a business only is for blacks, by blacks, only sell to black, then that is their right. If there are lots of whites in the area, they cant go to the government about it, because that business is not violating any of their individual rights with their policy. Now, if a business men sees this, there is money in it for him, if he can get in that area and sell to the whites, and anyone else willing to buy. Various different things the whites could do, shop online, move, start their own store, etc.

Re: Force

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 1:24 am
by etudiant
Mr A- After re-reading Atlas Shrugged (again), you're feeling thirsty decide to drop into a bar for a drink. The barman tells you they don't serve men who wear fedora hats and have single-letter surnames. You feel offended, but realize that in a true LF system, you have merely to go to another establishment, one where an astute businessman has learned he can fill a niche. The next bar down the road, unfortunately, has the same feelings about hats and surnames. And the next. Number four for tells you, in hushed tones, the barman leaning close to your ear, that he personally would be ok serving you, but he would loose business- or worse- he may have his place trashed by hot heads who really, really, don't like men with single letter surnames and '60s style hats. Well what to do? This is foolishness of course, but these folks seem dead serious.

You find that it is not only bars that have gone off the deep end, but grocery stores, banks, you name it. Time to move on, you say, to were capitalism truly functions, and where shorted-named hat wearers can find their spot. That's easier than it sounds though, because it's the same all over. Many good people don't really agree with this, but it seems to be a sentiment of a great many, and many more don't want to get involved, and just turn their backs. You get on a ship going to Canada, but are turned back. Crazies in uniform are smashing the windows of all hat wearing, single letter people.....and deporting them to camps..........

When they come for you, you tell the officer in charge that he is now truly violating your rights, this has gone beyond a trader/client relationship. He doesn't care though, because he was grown up in a LF society, one which worships money and commerce, and has allowed gross distortion in wealth, the exploitation of the weak and unprepared, and discrimination against any and all who may fall afoul of some sociological or psychological trend. His society is willing to see people die if they are not astute enough to analyze the drug they have bought at the pharmacy, or be maimed if their mechanical skills are not up to inspecting the car they are interested in getting. After all that, stuffing some hat wearer onto a cattle car seems no big deal. Maybe if you offer him $5, he will let you take your copy of Atlas Shrugged to the concentration camp- after all, that's a straight commercial transaction.

Re: Force

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 2:38 am
by Mr A
The bar, grocery store, bank, online stores, all have a right not to deal with me, if they dont want to.
But more likely than not, someone in the marketplace will deal with me, as I have money. Many businesses function on the profit motive. When they turn me away and other fedora wearers, or blacks, or women, that cuts into the money they could be making, and when a capitalist sees a demand in that area, they see a dollar sign in it. Such policies against race, gender, what hat you are wearing, leaves them vulnerable in the marketplace to competition, or being boycotted, etc. Many businesses with the profit motive see the dollar sign, not the gender, race, of a person. All they care about is that when you come into the store buy, buy, buy!
Rand wrote about racism in The Virtue of Selfishness, for those interested.

Re: Force

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:07 am
by Robert Tulip
Mr A wrote:Many businesses with the profit motive see the dollar sign, not the gender, race, of a person.
But there are also some businesses for whom social hatred and exclusion would be more important than profit, if it were legal. The right to discriminate on the basis of prejudice treats some people as sub-human.

The economic premise that firms are totally rational is wrong: governments need to regulate to prevent the rise of irrational discrimination. Prejudice is a cancer that will grow if it is not nipped in the bud.

Mr A is presenting a farcical distortion of Rand. There is nothing in Atlas Shrugged that endorses racism. She argues that good businesses such as Rearden Steel should have a right to make decisions in their commercial interest, but this is within a fiercely meritocratic and rational system of ethics, where people are judged by their ability, not by the colour of their skin or their cultural background.

Rand is critical of primitive cultures because they fail to understand the centrality of ideas and evidence for economic growth. Never in this book is there a hint of the sort of Rosa Parkes racism, that a bus company can enforce a racial seating policy because it owns the buses. If Mr A is at all typical of Objectivists, the USA dodged a bullet in rejecting Romney and Ryan.

Re: Force

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 1:31 pm
by Mr A
I never said, nor implied there she endorsed racism in Atlas Shrugged, or Rand that endorse sracism, as such. I said she wrote aboit it in The Virtue of Selfishness. I did not distort her in any way.

Rand:
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas—or of inherited knowledge—which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.

Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.
And here is more aboit it on this capitalism site:
http://capitalism.org/category/racism/

" Capitalism is a system of individual rights — it is a necessary political condition to the banishment of racism, where it results in the violation of individual rights."

What I said before still holds. Affirmative action is a racist policy, so it would not be made into law in LFC. Nor would you be forced by law tp deal in business or individual basis with anyone you dont want to. Individual rights, incliding property rights are upheld and protected inLFC.

Re: Force

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 3:48 pm
by Interbane
There truly is a fundamentalist adherence to words from a book going on here.

The movie is great. I'm less concerned about Objectivism swaying many people now. It emphasizes how growing up under one extreme can lead you to idealize the opposite extreme. The government is of course displayed as the root of all evil, and it's manipulations are laughably overblown. The movie epitomizes a straw man. It's worth watching as a comedy.

Re: Force

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 6:18 pm
by Mr A
No, the government is not the root of all evil in the film or in the book.
It is the governmental interference, regulation of the economy, violating mans rights, and the ideas behind doing all that, that really is the root of evil. Not government, as such. Galts speech speaks of what those right are, and the nature, purpose, function of government.

Re: Force

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 6:32 pm
by Robert Tulip
Mr A wrote:I never said, nor implied there she endorsed racism in Atlas Shrugged, or Rand that endorse sracism, as such. I said she wrote aboit it in The Virtue of Selfishness. I did not distort her in any way.
But you said
Mr A wrote:If a business discriminates against, say Jews, wont hire them because they are Jews, wont sell to them anything in their store if you are a Jew, etc. that is their right.
That is racism, and is rightly illegal. It was tried in Nazi Germany, and led to the horror of the death camps. Business freedom should be limited by social standards. Laissez-faire should not permit racist actions. Rand does not say it should, but you do. You present yourself as a faithful acolyte of the Rand cult, but you are distorting Rand by twisting her ideas to permit racism.