TNR has a bit on Ayn Rand and her impact on libertarian/conservative philosophy, which is timely because I have heard a *ton* more about Rand over the last eight months or so:
Wealthcare | The New Republic
Just for the record, I have never read Rand myself and really had a sketchy knowledge about her even to this day.
Wealthcare | The New Republic
The current era of Democratic governance has provoked a florid response on the right, ranging from the prosaic (routine denunciations of big spending and debt) to the overheated (fears of socialism) to the lunatic (the belief that Democrats plan to put the elderly to death). Amid this cacophony of rage and dread, there has emerged one anxiety that is an actual idea, and not a mere slogan or factual misapprehension. The idea is that the United States is divided into two classes--the hard-working productive elite, and the indolent masses leeching off their labor by means of confiscatory taxes and transfer programs.I found this illuminating, and specifically wonder what Matt's take on this is. To my knowledge, Matt, you've never been a Rand-ite in any way. So I'm not making any implications here. Having said that, there is such an interesting degree of overlap between this and the libertarian mindset that I wonder what the distinction is between Galt-craziness and mainstream libertarianism.
Just for the record, I have never read Rand myself and really had a sketchy knowledge about her even to this day.
5 comments:
Rand is so interesting. And as a lot of deep thinkers are, she is not well understood. And as so many philosophies are, those who claim to be their adherents are not sticking with the actual original claims.
Rand was a radical thinker, but not super-radical politically. She proposed Objectivism, perhaps not for the first time, but certainly articulated it most fully and in a form that was coherent. Objectivism is the idea that there is a universal truth... that reality exists regardless of our perceptions of it. We *do* perceive it, and we can make progress toward understanding it with science and logic.
She also proposed ethical egoism which proposes that people *should* act only in their own best interest. Her descriptions of it very much took into account the idea that in many (most?) cases, one's best interest could be a great good to others. In other words, strict egoism leads me to enrich my children's lives. It is in my best interest to advance their well-being. In fact it is in my best interest to advance society's well-being as well. It is a simple statement, but as we see, it is not always simple to determine one's best interest. I get angry when Jim says "Ronald Reagan hated poor people." I would argue that Reagan was of the opinion that what helped poor people was not always giving them your next dollar. That Jim thought the *result* of Reagan's policies hurt poor people is different than him hating them. I could as easily say that Bill Clinton hates everyone on Earth because he signed the Securities Modernization Act which led directly to the bank failures that are killing us today. Was the result that our economy is in terrible shape? Yes. Was it because he *wanted* to doom the poor and highly-leveraged? Absolutely not.
So Rand said that people *should* act *only* in their own self-interest. She was not a simpleton, but many "Randites" as you call them, are simpletons. They take that simple statement and decide that if an act feeds me today, it is good. This nihilistic twist of Rand's philosophy has become her legacy, unfortunately. If you absorb Kant, and then Rand's egoism, you arrive at a secular liberatarianism that probably leads to radically liberal libertarians. She loved a constitutionally constrained democracy (or republic, I am sure she had an opinion but I don't know which she would favor, ultimately).
If you allow me all of the above, then I am a Randite. I am attracted to the idea of ethical egoism if you allow for the idea that society's health is in my own best interest. I am also strongly libertarian, which she was. I am also an Objectivist, in the sense that I believe there is a truth that exists for all things, even if we don't or can't know it. I believe the existence of a world outside of my (and any) perception. That we can experience it is a happy accident, the universe does not require sentience.
I'm not sure what a mainstream libertarian is. It's a pretty extreme idea, so I think saying you're a "moderate libertarian" is a little like saying you're a "moderate Jain". It can't really exist. The only organized libertarian radio show I know of (to take an example) has the hosts routinely mired in the question of whether all streets and roads should be privatized. To their credit, the secondary host thinks it's a bad idea, but it's not like he isn't sympathetic to the idea. Think about where you'd have to be to consider such an idea seriously. I call them the Flying Monkey Libertarians. The problem with moderate libertarians is that there don't appear to be any...
So that was a lot of wandering around the question you asked, but I think it all more or less bore on the issues at hand. Did it make sense?
OK, I get the gist, and yes this was exactly the sort of thing I was driving at.
So I get the idea of Objectivism as a sort of personal Utilitarianism writ large, if that makes sense. Mills sort of said that "the greatest good for the greatest number" was the goal, whereas this is mildly different in that it's "the greatest good for the greatest number because it's the greatest good for me."
So I get the idea that there's a sort of determinism to the Randian (and yes I am unabashedly making up adjectives with her name) worldview: that those who are wealthy/successful are so by the merits of their hard work, and that material success is proof of one's moral fitness? This goes back to the notion of the productive members of society being elite and superior, a sort of ubermensch -- evidenced by their accomplishments and successes.
Again, not being well-versed in Rand, the whole "Galt" theme does seem to circle back to this to some degree.
I sense in the end that I didn't get at the answer at all. So here is the core, I think, of your question for me, do I agree with this:
The idea is that the United States is divided into two classes--the hard-working productive elite, and the indolent masses leeching off their labor by means of confiscatory taxes and transfer programs.
Well I think this is ludicrously simple. I think there is a productive elite, an unproductive elite, a productive poor, an unproductive poor, a productive middle class and an unproductive middle class. I think there is a fuzzy line between productive and unproductive, and I think there is a complete and smooth gradient between elite and poor.
There is no question in my mind that there is a shockingly large number of people who do not do any appreciable good for society, but who take up space in "jobs" and in total idleness and who live off of society. I think this class of person is inevitable in societies larger than 14 people.
There is equally no question in my mind that there is a large contingent of people who do no appreciable good for society but who take up enormous amounts of capital for their own pleasure. Their inevitably in societies larger than 100 are also assured.
And most people fall into a category somewhere North of these two groups of people in productivity, and somewhere between them in their level of comfort.
There are also complete indigents who have no hope, and no comforts and cost me essentially nothing.
And I think I'm on record as being of the opinion that illegal immigration is 100,000th on the list of important things for our country to deal with, and with the advent of Everyday Math into Illinois School District 220's curriculum, it is 100,000th and falling.
Are people creating the idea in their heads that there is a total black&white schism between the productive and unproductive? Maybe those people exist, but they are unhinged from reality. But real problems exist.
In 2007, "the top 0.1% of taxpayers by income pay 17.4% of federal income taxes (earning 9.1% of the income), the top 1% with gross income of $328,049 or more pay 36.9% (earning 19%), the top 5% with gross income of $137,056 or more pay 57.1% (earning 33.4%), and the bottom 50% with gross income of $30,122 or less pay 3.3%"
I am for progressive taxation, but I think the above statistics are unfair, unsettling, and unsustainable.
So hopefully that got me closer to answering the actual question asked.
Just to clarify, Objectivism was more about the nature of reality (it being unrelated to sentient creatures being able or not able to perceive it). Egosim was more about good being served by pursuing one's self interest.
Together they (in her philosophy) will inevitably lead to "the greatest good for the greatest number because it's the greatest good for me."
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