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The perils of Objectivism

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 3:10 pm
by Interbane
I’ve read a great deal concerning Objectivism, trying to filter the good from the bad, and it’s not a simple thing. For the most part, Objectivism represents a sort of social structure with remarkable parallels to medieval Europe. The efforts of many benefit the few.

What’s sinister about Objectivism is its claim to moral superiority, in spite of its moral inferiority. It’s my opinion that in this ideology, like in many others, causation isn’t fully understood in how the ideology would be applied in the real world. For all the cowtowing about protecting “rights”, the system would only protect a set of rights that allow for serious societal degradation.

A good example is the minimum wage. Historically, when wages and work conditions weren’t enforced, those conditions trended towards the oppressive for the lowest ranks. This is because those at the bottom do not have the negotiating leverage of those at the top. The real world shows the truth of this.

One way to thin slice the issues presented by Objectivism is to look at productivity versus compensation. When an individual’s personal contribution to the production of a good is much greater than he is compensated for, the profit disparity goes upwards. This is a type of rent-seeking, where middle and upper management within a company use the leverage of their position to increase their compensation disproportionately above their productivity.

Everyone knows what the extremes of this disproportion look like, the examples are all over the news in the “incentive bonuses” or “retention bonuses” of upper management. No one would disagree that the increased responsibility should result in increased compensation. But I also think no one would disagree that the compensation has grown to be incredibly disproportionate. The math backs this up, as much as productivity can be quantified when compared to compensation.

Under the guise of protecting the “rights” of individuals, Objectivism instead protects the ability of those at the top to use leverage against those below. The recent surge in vilifying unions exacerbates this issue, taking away the only leverage the working class has.
Walmart is similar to a Feudal society in a number of ways, and represents the direction Objectivism would push us. A vast majority of Walmart’s work force make less than they are able to live on. Yet the few at the top make a king’s ransom. With the decline in mobility within the company, it’s not much different than the class immobility of feudalism.

The offspring of the wealthy that can afford a Harvard education are hired into middle and upper management of a company such as Walmart, epitomizing the same lineage-based societies of the past.

Objectivism truly is a curse to a healthy society, and is already deeply rooted in DC already. This should scare us into action. Instead, we see people parroting the talking points of Objectivism as if they make sense outside of fictional literature. The decline of the middle class in America is due directly to Objectivist style thinking, and we should classify it as dangerous and extreme as it’s polar opposite, Communism.

Re: The perils of Objectivism

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 3:36 pm
by johnson1010
Agreed Interbane.

There is a very boot-strappy line of thought involved which simply doesn’t represent the real circumstances of the world.

Check out this blog from one of our new booktalk members, JamesALindsay

http://goddoesnt.blogspot.com/search?up ... -results=7

"The Rumble" in an Air Conditioned Auditorium with Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly and a comment about American mythology


Where he investigates this idea to an extent.

I know someone who is mired in this objectivist mentality, and it leads to some strange real world dealings.

He asked his facebook friends what he should have done:

A woman, apparently a single mother, had gotten stuck in the parking lot of a big box store. He helped her push her van loose but then after the fact he wondered if maybe the more appropriate thing for him to do would have been to let her stay stuck. She would have lingered longer in the snow, had a much worse day, but in the end she would have helped herself and gained self-actualizing abilities in un-sticking herself… or so I imagine the idea goes.

It flies in the face of our notions of compassion. The way I’ve heard it explained is always very selfish with no apparent up-side, except for the person who is doing the selfish thing.

My conception of morality is very simple. Working as a team is more effective than working on your own. You can get a lot more done with a small team than any one of those individuals could do alone. So that leads naturally to how to get along with your team members so that everyone can live together peacefully and continue working as a team to continue to reap the benefits of team effort. This is the basis of why people try o be nice to eachother, and the empirical root of morality.

Objectivism seems to make a virtue of relying on the self to the point of excluding the group entirely, except when you’ve got to the point that you can use others as goods and material. At which point they can either get to boot-strapping or they deserve the tread-marks on their backs.

Re: The perils of Objectivism

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 6:56 pm
by Mr A
Interbane, Objectivism does NOT villify unions. People are free to join them, only thing is employers are NOT forced to negotiate with them. Unions have no special rights, like they do today.

Re: The perils of Objectivism

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 9:18 pm
by Chris OConnor
I'm beginning to rethink my position on Objectivism. I appreciate the posts, Interbane and johnson1010. You're making sense.

Re: The perils of Objectivism

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 11:49 pm
by Interbane
Chris wrote:I appreciate the posts, Interbane and johnson1010. You're making sense.
This stuff is simply too complex to entirely understand. I'm always afraid I'm missing vital information that would show me to be wrong, so I read(listen) more and more. There's a beauty to the simplicity of Objectivism and Libertarianism, but adherence to these ideologies is shrinking government in all the wrong ways.

I'm also a proponent of entitlement programs because the safety net of unemployment has kept me from the brink of despair in the past. What missing from most conversations is a comprehensive perspective. Entitlement programs create moral hazards. That's well known and well studied, and there are moochers. That's tragic, but it's the lesser of two evils. There are other ways to dampen the moral hazards without taking away the safety nets.

There's something to be said of increasing the size of participants for risk-pooling. Each of the economics books I've read recently have touched on this, and expressed the fact that the largest possible pool is also the most economical. Privatizing our risk-pools necessarily leads to greater volatility within each, and the profits more than offset any inefficiencies of a bureaucracy.
MrA wrote:Interbane, Objectivism does NOT villify unions. People are free to join them, only thing is employers are NOT forced to negotiate with them. Unions have no special rights, like they do today.
That's a distinction without a difference. You're right, Objectivism does not vilify unions. However, the end result is no different. Unions would not exist without the shield of employee protections. Even WITH them, armies of workers are being compensated far below their productivity level. Meanwhile, those with the most leverage are compensated far above their productivity level. Note that productivity level includes "working smarter not harder", by organizing teams of people and giving expert advice.

If we switched wholesale to Objectivism, you'd see a company like Walmart polarize along this spectrum to an even greater degree. Currently, I think the structure borders on immoral. Objectivism would exacerbate that by taking away most employee rights under the guise of protecting employer rights.

Answer this MrA, do you think the millions of Walmart employees would be served better under Objectivism? Give a straight answer, with your reasons. I'm truly interested in your response.
Johnson wrote:My conception of morality is very simple. Working as a team is more effective than working on your own.
Nature agrees. The most effective systems have specialized parts, and even some parts that are willing to sacrifice a great deal for the benefit of all. When groups of cells started working together, slowly and progressively organisms started to develop. It's the difference between a human being and a blob of algae. The same is true of packs of animals versus individuals. I'm not sure if the analogy holds, but it's elegant. How can we solve issues like Global warming or conservation of resources or engage in long-payback R&D when it's every man for himself?


One reason I empathize with smaller government is that government is behind most of the rent-seeking opportunities that exist. However, I think this is similar to the issue of entitlement programs. We need to limit rent-seeking at the same time that we retain necessary regulations. That would start with minimizing private influence on public officials by reforming campaign finance. See 'Republic Lost" by Lawrence Lessig. Politicians in DC spend more time raising money than they do anything else. It's a frustrating and difficult endeavour, and large donations sway their opinion even when they pretend it doesn't. When a single phone call meets their personal daily 'quota' for fundraising, the donor has their ear. The examples are manifold. This creates a dependency that is tangible and powerful, and the policy drift of the last 40 years is ample evidence.

Re: The perils of Objectivism

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 11:53 pm
by Mr A
Johnson1010 wrote:
Objectivism seems to make a virtue of relying on the self to the point of excluding the group entirely, except when you’ve got to the point that you can use others as goods and material


That is terribly inaccurate. Rand brand of egoism does not use others as goods and material in Objectivism.

Those interested in Rands morality, read my review of Tara Smiths book, Ayn Rands Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist here:

http://www.bookandreader.com/forums/f6/ ... 24530.html

Re: The perils of Objectivism

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 11:57 pm
by JamesALindsay
For what it's worth, I make rather a lot of comments about Objectivism (though often under the broader banner in which it is contained: capital-L ideological Libertarianism) on my blog in a variety of the posts. If desired, I could post links to some of them, but I won't spam with those unless people would like me to. To quickly make my opinion on the matter clear, I would generally agree with Interbane and Johnson: Objectivism is not a good philosophy that anyone should be following with any seriousness.

I'm still refining my thinking on questions about Libertarianism (I see at least three classes of libertarians, and only the ones I would call ideological "big-L" Libertarians are so closely tied to Objectivist thought), but I think the big-L sort tend to vastly oversimplify the concepts of "liberty" and therefore miss the boat. Objectivism is certainly in that class of oversimplification. A friend of mine summarizes it by saying that big-L Libertarians seem to miss that liberty in a functioning society entails "responsibility to do as one ought, not just freedom to do what one will." I think it's a little more complex than that, though, of course.

To very briefly summarize, I expect that there are at least three kinds of "liberty." Most researchers recognize two, and I don't mean to step on their toes, but it is my somewhat not-fully-qualified opinion (as I don't research these things formally--I'm a mathematician that has been researching ideology and religion full time for two years now as a side project) that they are missing at least one kind.

1. "Positive liberty" is the freedom to do what one will, essentially.
2. "Negative liberty" is the freedom not to have to suffer the consequences of other people's unwanted actions.
3. "Opportunistic liberty" (the one not commonly recognized) is the idea that your liberty is inherently limited by your opportunity set, which is usually determined by access to resources or capital but sometimes by other factors like gender or race, depending upon your local culture.

Positive liberty is clearly understood and needs little elaboration (I hope...). Negative liberty is harder. In a very simplistic sense, it entails the freedom not to get raped or shot by my fellows. It also is idea that I have the freedom to enjoy a tranquil environment (and is thus the basis for city noise ordinances, for example). Opportunitistic liberty merely states that one is not free to do things outside of their opportunity set, which could range from "jump to the moon" in a base, physical sense to "buy something out of one's price range."

My experiences (which are rather substantial, living in the South as I do) with Randian Objectivists and big-L Libertarians has indicated to me that it seems that they commit the following essential errors that render their philosophy unworkable (and, really, obscene):
1. They elevate positive liberty a bit too high up there in the scheme of importance and feel it should not be restricted by anything except the motivations of the individual.
2. They recategorize the definition of negative liberty to mean "living without coercion," which often also relies upon a very simplistic force-based definition of coercion. Particularly, they use this recategorization simply to bolster the idea that there should be few, if any, restrictions upon positive liberties so long as those aren't "illegal" or "violent," points they are usually pretty loose about the definitions of. This has the effect of using the concept of negative liberty (the liberty not to have things done to you) to essentially repaint it as a reinforcement of freedom to positive liberty (the liberty to do things as you will). E.g. they miss the point that we enjoy a certain freedom (freedom of not being poisoned) by having, for example, a dairy cut their milk with water and white paint to cut costs.
3. They completely, completely ignore the realities of opportunistic liberty, often saying "if you don't like where you are or how things run there, you have the liberty to move." No, really, you don't, particularly in economic traps like the Rust Belt at present since it is likely that you possess insufficient resources to finance such an undertaking. This also appears with "you can just get another job." Not always.
4. They fall for the incorrect notion that human beings are (or even that they are capable of being) rational actors that can identify and then act in their best interests. This is not only apparently untrue; it is demonstrably untrue.
5. They believe people more able than is real to balance their needs for short-term and long-term successes.
6. They often believe, entirely erroneously, that "government," "collectivism," and "statism" automatically imply a restriction of liberty. Indeed, governments, which are by definition a form of collectivism and statism, are the only manners by which we establish, secure, and promote individual liberties.

At the bottom of it, Objectivism is an over-the-top knee-jerk reaction to the totalitarian communism that Ayn Rand experienced as a child, and it is an entirely unworkable philosophy (if one is interested in a society) that essentially would have every individual act as a surly teenager (which includes pretending that Mom doesn't have his/her back and isn't the actually enabler of his/her surly, rebellious, "independent" lifestyle). That's why is polar-opposite to totalitarian communism.

Re: The perils of Objectivism

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:13 am
by Mr A
Interbane wrote:
Answer this MrA, do you think the millions of Walmart employees would be served better under Objectivism? Give a straight answer, with your reasons. I'm truly interested in your response.


How is this even relevent? Right now the workers can serve themselves - dont like Walmart, stop working for them, consumer that dont like WalMarts low prices, dont shop at their store. They are as free to serve themselves as they would be in laissez-faire, in that respect.

Interbane wrote:
I'm also a proponent of entitlement programs because the safety net of unemployment has kept me from the brink of despair in the past.


And how do those programs get their funding? By violating individual rights via taxation. I am absolutely opposed to entitlement programs- health, retirement, education, etc. Why not get in such a program in a way that does not violate rights, like a voluntary program? Why use force? What gives you the moral right to do it?

Re: The perils of Objectivism

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 12:57 am
by Interbane
How is this even relevent? Right now the workers can serve themselves - dont like Walmart, stop working for them, consumer that dont like WalMarts low prices, dont shop at their store.
MrA, there is nothing that is more relevant. Your simplistic stance is that unemployment is better than employment. How is that better? You think Walmart's employees could find work elsewhere by snapping their fingers? The key component that is immoral is the disparity between productivity and compensation. Objectivism makes it worse.
They are as free to serve themselves as they would be in laissez-faire, in that respect.
What you call freedom equates to a person taking the only job available, and that job paying less than they are able to live on. Without protections to offset the leverage that employers have, the working class would be even more oppressed. That is a bastardization of freedom, a guise to protect the pockets of the wealthy. People are already being taken advantage of on a massive scale, and Objectivism would push us in the wrong direction.
And how do those programs get their funding? By violating individual rights via taxation.
In the real world, there are plenty of people who forego "voluntary" safety nets. Perhaps because they are young, or because they are misinformed. Or they can't afford it. In societies without such a safety net, people die. Is death for friends and family better than violating a person's rights? Which is the lesser of two evils?
Why use force? What gives you the moral right to do it?
Because it is the only way we've found to minimize an even greater evil. What gives you the moral right to protect millionaires while good people die on the street through a stroke of bad luck? Especially when said millionaires make far more than their productivity level? Is it moral to allow them the leverage to take home more than is justified? Do you think it's moral for a company to fire all it's employees at the same time it gives a massive bonus to those at the top just before bankruptcy? These are horrible injustices, and Objectivism would make them much worse.

Re: The perils of Objectivism

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 1:42 am
by Mr A
Interbane wrote:
Because it is the only way we've found to minimize an even greater evil. What gives you the moral right to protect millionaires while good people die on the street through a stroke of bad luck?


Because those people hold no claim on anothers property. The money those millionaires have is theirs. The money I have from working as a janitors is mine. People that are unwilling or unable to earn money, or dont have money, their need of money is NOT a claim on mine, or said millionaires. Property rights in laissez-faire capitalism protects my earnings and my property from others, no matter if they are starving and dying without it, the governement in LFC cannot violate property rights by using force to take some of my money and redistributing it into their pockets or taking food out of my fridge and putting it into one of their fridges, because they are to recognize, uphold and protect said rights, not violate them. If I want to, I can give a few crumbs of food to the starving, or not. Their hunger is not a claim on my money or my food. If they decide to mug me or steal my food, then they are using force against me, and there are laws against that, police, criminal justice system, and government whose sole purpose is to protect me from those that initiate the use of force against me.