separation of politics and economy in minarchy government.

Economics Political Theory
1

how does this even happen?

in atlas shrugged, rand calls military a proper funtion of government, but how does the military stay out of the economy, when a military needs resources? who is in control of the military and how are purchasing orders and bids dealth with in a way that politics is separate from economy?

there is even a scene where galt says to fire government employees as part the the economic realm. you can’t have a army with no empoyees.

in the book rand also has a private army that saves galt, saves reardon, and recovers stolen loot at sea.

court wise, her book has 1 judge that does not even have to make a judgement in 12 years. the judge also came across more as a private judge than a public judge in galt gultch. the gultch itself did not have any structure that seemed like a public, so it did not show a working government with separation of politics and economy.

2

Ayn Rand was an excellent novelist, even if you dont care for her work, on a technical level its excellent and it clearly has captured the imagination of many readers, her work is brilliant, every piece of fiction she wrote. however, as a philosopher she was a dilettante and as a political economist she was out of her depth. I doubt many her will defend her romantic caricatures of real world things as anything more than good fiction with inspiring themes.

what you identify is a common argument against minarchism, common enough that Rand herself addressed it in the Virtue of Selfishness, her best nonfiction work, and a good short example of the objectivist worldview. to be honest I cant recall her rebuttal but it may have been something along the lines of a consumption/transaction tax that is agreed to by anyone who enters a specific area, the area under protection of that military. this is a kind of voluntary system, where one must satisfy the landowners requirements in order to occupy his property.

you might be interested to learn that Rand and Mises were friendly, socially, although her and Rothbard had a falling out. Rothbard wrote a play making fun of her called “Mozart was a red!” that can be seen on youtube.

3

satishfying landowners seems more private than public

ill look at her virture of selfishness argument

i have seen some argue that it’s a question for philosophers of law and rand said it was complicated and not her area.

i would this public and private are at a impass.

public defense needs to be better than private defence, and private defence needs to be better than public defence

her private armies in atlas shrugged were better in every way to government armies, from the technology, to the abilities, to the motivations, to intellegence.

i imagine a public defence would be the first client of reardon, galt, mulligan and so and so for resources both technology and funding. the government is than expected to protect patent laws and be the best customer of the people they are protecting? each is a client of the other, so i think that makes it in each interest to charge less to one another, but rands books talk about people charging more and people willing to pay more even when there is mutual benefit.

ill check out Mozart was a red

4

““satishfying landowners seems more private than public””

all power is private. “public” goods are either a commons, subject to tragedy of the commons, a positive externality that no one can lay claim to like a quiet neighborhood, or a useful (to some) fiction.

““her private armies in atlas shrugged were better in every way to government armies, from the technology, to the abilities, to the motivations, to intellegence.””

well even the world governments are using mercenaries more and more. this is basically true but the state sponsored militaries have a huge head start.

““rands books talk about people charging more and people willing to pay more even when there is mutual benefit.””

you can only answer questions like this through moral hazard and ideology, useful explanations. people are “rational” but they use bad data all the time.

5

The Nazis shit all over the idea that the private sector innovation is somehow “better” than the private markets. Private sector is simply more moral. The highly regulated Nazi economy was responsible for the development of dozens of innovations that the West took credit for when they won the war. As reprehensible as they were the Nazi engineers came up with military, medical, and production methods and products that far outpaced the innovative capacities of the private markets.

If you are smart Ayn Rand’s philosophy will fall by the wayside and you won’t try to take ideological or philosophical points from her.

6

Aristophanes,

On a more philosophical level, can you explain to me why you dislike Rand’s philosophy so much?

7

Her dismissal of Kant is the most appalling feature. Her typical buzzwords or phrases were “anti-reason,” “anti-life,” and “mystic.”

Kant’s philosophy is based around reason and the limits of it. He was called the “all destroyer” in the philosophical community during his time because he crushed the epistemological and moral basis for almost all metaphysics save for his own metaphysics and metaphysical aesthetics which he left room for. most philosophy had outrageous metaphysics (usually just thinking about physics without experimental technology - so some of it is forgivable NOT Hegel though). He simply had more leftist political positions because the state was the primary actor in the 18th century. his doctrine of right as well as his categorical imperative are dismissed by Rand.

Kant’s categorical imperative says, in a verbose manner, that you know ethics a priori because you realize that all human beings are in the same mental and cognitive position (the universalization test). Schopenhauer later calls this position the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which refers to time, space, and causality as the bounds of all reasoning, killing the grounds for most metaphysics. this leads to a form of the golden rule “Do not act unless your maxim can be universalized.” Rand’s philosophy flies in the face of this. What she calls ‘mysticism’ is to Kant the ‘understanding of what is right and wrong’. It literally is “do unto others…” that Rand rejects in favor of a form of social darwinism (Nietzsche liked Herbert Spencer as well). [I wonder what Rand thought of Nietzsche - I’ll look in my Rand books and edit this if anything interesting is there.]

Kant’s doctrine of right says that (well there is a private right which talks about contracts, property, marriage, etc, in other words - the right to do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t interfere with the rights of others to do what they want which is the basis for limiting ‘savage freedom’ to a ‘legal freedom’); the doctrine of right includes “public rights” (or the doctrine of public right) which include the right to escape from the state of nature (Hobbes et al) in the form of a state - although he doesn’t use social contract theory per se, the ‘right of nations’ which is the rights of states surrounding war, and the ‘cosmopolitan right’ which is the right to attempt foreign trade. Rand simply doesn’t see these as “rights” (not that big of a deal to me as the categorical imperative is more important). Plus Kant allows for the heavy regulation of trade, social welfare for the poor, old or sickly and he allows for the state to rescind corporate contracts and seize all property of corporations to give or sell (he doesn’t specify) to others should the public become dissatisfied with their management. Obviously Rand doesn’t buy this.

The people here should be more familiar with Rand so I won’t go into detail with her, but basically she rejects a priori reasoning and universal morality. She refers to philosophy itself as mysticism…saying something along the lines of, “mysticism (philosophy) mediates science and religion and mysticism is a worthless form of knowledge that parades around as logically valid.”

I have a feeling that Rand would be more comfortable as an existentialist in the epistemological regard as to Kant’s synthetic form of knowledge.

AAHHH YES

I remember Rand’s real problem with Kant. Kant says that the world as material reality is an illusion of our perceptions (I don’t know how I typed all of that ^ without remembering this). You see to Kant (and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche) we cannot know the “thing in itself” which is the unity of all things in existence. In other words, we “know” things according to their features not by their actual being. A box is cardboard, it is brownish, solid etc. But the matter that constitutes the box is not something we can come to know as a “true form of knowledge”; we know the mechanical (scientific) features of it only from our sensory perception. However, “mystics” will tell you that ‘we are all star dust’ which is “true.” Rand thinks that the material world is the be all end all of knowledge which elevates science (empiricism/positivism) way higher than Kant allowed.

Kant saw (again and Schop/Nietzsche) objects as having “Forms” in the Platonic sense. When you think of “tree” you do not think of a specific tree in the world. you think of the form of tree which enables you to conceptualize all trees as a “form” of the thing in itself; a particular manifestation of that star dust. these platonic forms are the sources or “ideas” of the material world. They identify what the thing in itself does in the material world. This is all hogwash for Rand. She didn’t like the fact that Kant drew his moral system from this “unknowable” dimension of existence. Rand drew her morals from the material world and the temporal circumstances of the people in it. If morals are drawn a priori then they do not come from the material world. that was her problem.

You see, Kant says that you cannot, for instance, torture one innocent person to save the lives of millions because it doesn’t pass the universalization test - it would make it okay to torture innocent people. Kant says that you cannot lie to anyone under any circumstances, even to do good, because if everyone started to lie then “truth” or promises cease to exist.

Rand also conflates the political reasoning for inflation (something Kant specifically calls out as being a disaster in Perpetual Peace 8:345) with compassion that leads to welfare. And she blames that political “compassionate reasoning” on Kant’s moral theory due to his influence on Western society - letting us know that she didn’t read all of the necessary Kantian works to judge him in this way.

Anyway, those are two or three problem Rand had with Kant. I’d side with Kant as he is probably the most important intellectual since Plato (the teacher of Rand’s precious Aristotle) which says a lot about his influence.

However, Rand is spot on with her criticism of BF Skinner though. She agrees with Chomsky and I agree with both of them. Skinner was not psychology.

8

Here is Rand on Kant

She doesn’t mention Nietzsche in any of the books I have of hers. But it would seem that there are certain parts of him that she would have gone for.

9

Aristophanes,

I don’t understand certain aspects of what you wrote.

“Rand rejects in favor of a form of social darwinism (Nietzsche liked Herbert Spencer as well).”

I don’t think that this is accurate. The basis of Rand’s ethics are along the lines of what every man must do in order to live and to achieve his values. This is why Rand attempted to base her entire philosophy off of the maintenance of life itself, which is where her admiration for reason originated, because she felt that reason was what allowed a man to continue to live, as did things like productive work. This is not a form of social darwinism

“She refers to philosophy itself as mysticism…saying something along the lines of, “mysticism (philosophy) mediates science and religion and mysticism is a worthless form of knowledge that parades around as logically valid.””

Are you sure that this is necessarily accurate? Rand was very ardent about what she felt was and was not philosophy, and while she was a very staunch advocate of philosophy, she hated what she saw as falsehoods. Considering the tradition among philosophers for mysticism itself, such as Descartes just slipping in the existence of an all-knowing benevolent god, and indeed some of what you talked about with Kant (see below), I don’t see why this is necessarily a false claim that a lot of philosophy isn’t based off of reason and is rather mystical.

“This is all hogwash for Rand. She didn’t like the fact that Kant drew his moral system from this “unknowable” dimension of existence. Rand drew her morals from the material world and the temporal circumstances of the people in it. If morals are drawn a priori then they do not come from the material world. that was her problem.”

So why isn’t this a legitimate concern? How can one draw information from a plane of existence that one knows noting about? That sounds rather like hogwash from my point of view as well, although obviously I am just deriving this from what you’re saying and the miniscule amount that I actually know about Kant, but drawing ethical judgments from the real world, as well as one’s metaphysical conditions seems a lot more sound than what you claim Kant did.

“You see, Kant says that you cannot, for instance, torture one innocent person to save the lives of millions because it doesn’t pass the universalization test - it would make it okay to torture innocent people. Kant says that you cannot lie to anyone under any circumstances, even to do good, because if everyone started to lie then “truth” or promises cease to exist.”

Once again, although all objective ethics are ultimately bunk for what I see as very simple reasons, Rand’s ethical exposition appears to be much more sound and relevant for an individual than the ethics presented above. The problem I’ve always had with universalization of every type, including what Molyneux attempts to do, is just that you can do anything with it. If you go “all the way up” then you can just say tha action is good for man and that it can be universalized because in is absence then all men would die, and go from there. What level you “zoom in” and “zoom out” is entirely arbitrary and makes universalism of any type arbitrary from an intellectually dishonest standpoint, and effectively impossible from an intellectually honest one. Disproving Rand’s ethics aren’t half as easy exactly because her ethics are far more individualized.

“However, Rand is spot on with her criticism of BF Skinner though. She agrees with Chomsky and I agree with both of them. Skinner was not psychology.”

Wow. I didn’t know Rand and Chomsky could conceivably agree on something… What’s the story behind this exactly?

Edit

The fuck? Exactly where does Rand see the “vanguard of reason” that was going to dispel the notions of altruism at that time? Furthermore Kant’s ethics weren’t used to justify altruism, it was and has been primarily emotion and religion for the past two centuries, not Kant’s formalized ethics.

“She doesn’t mention Nietzsche in any of the books I have of hers. But it would seem that there are certain parts of him that she would have gone for.”

Yeah, that’s too bad. I’ve often wondered what Rand would have thought about Nietzsche as well, although I’m pretty sure that Rand would have despised too much of his stuff, particularly everything dealing with knowledge and epistemology, to actually attempt to look at anything they might have agreed upon. Rand was nothing if not assertive and ready to carpet bomb other people’s opinions (insert bitchy quotes about libertarians and how they “stole” her ideas despite being part of an intellectual tradition that predated her by a few centuries). I don’t care who you are, no one has written a more fascinating and insightful work on ethics than Friedrich Nietzsche, and his work is necessary to understand the true nature of ethics and how they affect society itself.

Edit’

For fun and profit:

http://www.atlassociety.org/nietzsche-and-ayn-rand

10

Property rights and the right of free trade are man’s only “economic
rights” (they are, in fact, political rights)—

her “man’s rights” article has this in it.

seems to say all economic rights are political rights, not that the two are separate, yet she says capitalism is a separation of state and economy.

if political rights of government come from the consent of the goverend, then people that don’t consent should still be able to choose alturnative forms to protect these rights that others choose to delegate to government.

11

I feel like we’re hijacking this thread.

I was coming from her crushing view of altruism for the social darwinism association; her disdain for welfare. She is an existentialist virtue ethicist. She is also a materialist. “life” to her was only about what you see and drawing ethics and morals from this means that every choice is circumstantial. it is funny because that sounds a lot like the upper echelon of Kabbalah; the balance of wisdom and knowledge leads to enlightenment (I would love for her to roll over in her grave as I compare her objectivism to KABBALAH).

Her elevation of reason is not an elevation of “reason” it is an elevation of empiricism. Hume and his empiricism “woke” Kant “from his slumber.” So, Kant found the extent that pure mental processing can take us which was to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Schopenhauer coins this term). We cannot think outside of time, space, and causality. Rand just doesn’t seem to care about first cause. kant says we cannot know that since it is the thing in itself’s origin. We can know that the thing in itself exists (it is the universe), but we cannot know any fundamental features of it. This is why it is “an illusion.”

Kant simply thinks that you know of morals and because you know them you have duties and/or obligations (depending on your disposition) to act in accordance with the universal maxim. A duty is something that you do not really want to do, but recognize that it is something you should do. A maxim is your action choice. you know morals because you know that everyone else sits in the same material reality as you (It is to see through other’s eyes). She extends his “mysticism” into aspects where it need not be (and I think in order to denigrate him). you know logic, right? I would like to know how the syntax of logic is “reality based.” What is a p or a q? Where in the (material) world does it come from? nowhere. All logic is in people’s heads; A.K.A. it is a priori and comes from the “plane of existence that one knows noting about.” She is conflating his epistemology with his metaphysics.

Again, her being a materialist means that she shuns a priori knowledge - which to me means that her epistemology doesn’t make sense. Even Aristotle doesn’t say anything about how people become rational; he only refers to habituation, training, and punishment. Those that are reasonable are gifted from God. She is also NOT a Cartesian; there is no mind/body to her; there is only the body which gives rise to the mind (i assume). Her swearing off of Skinner, honestly, I don’t get. he was a materialist in the umph degree and swore off anything that had to do purely with the mind.

You might rethink this one. Your “metaphysical condition” is what exactly? If you are saying that “the real world” = empirical and “metaphysical conditions” = a priori then it is a synthetic form of knowledge, i.e., Kant’s system.

Her ethics vibe on Aristotle. You are right the are individualized. Kant’s universalizability test is to wean out contradictions. You cannot say “I’ll collect stamps and never sell them” because if everyone did that then no stamps would be sold. Do you see how it prevents people from acting in extremes? It is intended to function differently that you are conceiving it. I didn’t go into duty or obligations which Rand mentions as mystical (they are kind of complicated).

**Flip through this **if you are interested. It was translated by my professor!

Molyneux’s formula isn’t nearly as thought out as Kant’s. Molyneux is also a materialist. I don’t know how those people justify a priori knowledge with a materialist perspective. Where can it possibly come from?

There is no “zooming in or out” it is supposed to treat each individual the same not as groups. Kant doesn’t identify groups of people; he is an individualist. His morals are prior to his justification for the state, i.e. the state doesn’t itself justify morals, but morals justify the state. however, the state can enforce morals.

Skinner was a charlatan and smart people knew it. She doesn’t even dog on Chomsky. She only identifies him as a “Cartesian linguist of the New Left.” Chomsky’s innate functional language ideas are why she calls him Cartesian.

I didn’t use your quoted phrase so I know not to what you refer. In my eyes, emotion basically is where religion comes from. Philosophy has historically given rise to science and it came out of theology.

12

Even though I am not particularly familiar with the precise innovations of the Nazi regime, I think this is an excellent point that illustrates one of the dangers of thinking that ‘public’ actions cannot produce anything of value. Obviously, once one makes that caricature one is open to a wide variety of counter arguements. For instance, I have long railed against the existance and funding of NASA but must concede the point that they have produced some extraordinary innovations. So often arguements devolve into “here is a long list of private accomplishments and why they are better” vs. “here is a counter list of public accomplishments and why they are better”. Instead we are well advised to focus on the moral implications of funding innovation via force vs. via peaceful exchange.

13

Fiberoptics, lazers (photoncascades), kevlar, semiconductors, radar that stretches further than the curvature of the Earth, free energy research (confiscated and classified immediately after the war by the allies - look into this and see; “Nick Cook zero point jane’s defence”), Television broadcasting, the medical research was heinous, but they did figure out how to kill people in cold then revive them in heat…, guided missiles. Nazi semiconductors were the size of a shoebox at a time when the US semiconductors were building size.

Like I said, the free market efficiency argument will fall flat. The moral implications are the most effective.

14

You could nationalize arms, rocketry, armor and deftech industries from top to bottom. The defense industry would indeed by state-run but if the whole shebang was state-run from top-to-bottom, it would cut off a lot of the space and drift towards privatizing here and there, which creates irresistible political forces. If you claim that big chunk of the market for the state and draw the lines clearly, and close the doors and windows in a well-written constitution, that would make a separation.

15

if the government, makes as part of the contract for being part of the government, that the government has right to first refusal and price options on all production and trade, does that make government just another fair participant in the economy with no power to force or be agressive, but the power to have the access to the resources government needs to do the tasks the government is delegated?

16

can you rephrase that somehow?

17

ill try.

the contract for joining government would mean selling to government at certain prices and at a certain priority before selling to others. then it’s just a voluntary contract, and not government making unilaterial changes to the contract.

i don’t think a government can compete in bidding wars with private industry for resources, so a contract with government would need to give government an advantage and the ability to get the resources needed to serve the purpose of government.

a government order would have to be fulfilled before a nongovernment order, and for a cheaper price, as part of the contract of being a citizen.