Kim: I wish all those that threaten to “go Galt” actually would. In my experience they’re generally noisy egocentric me-me-me types, who don’t actually contribute much if anything. They all think they’re John Galt or Howard Roark, but in reality they’re generally irrelevant.This is what limits Randroids… they all have a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude, which simply doesn’t work in a democracy.

Do you seek discussion, or are you trolling dead comment threads?

If you are serious. I would be happy to respond. There may be something to what you said, but the way you said it sounds faintly ridiculous. I am game to talk about it if you are. If not, drop a note here saying so, and I will know that you are real, and wish you well.

If there is no reply, then you are a dead comment thread troll, and I declare this here, lest people see your comment at the end of this thread, and mistakenly assume that you were actually taking part in the conversation.

I do hope the former. Seriously. I love to chat :)

This is what limits Randroids… they all have a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude, which simply doesn’t work in a democracy.

As much as you may wish her to die at least one more time, I am afraid that this is beyond anyone’s power. (Except, perhaps, for exhumation and incantation?) ;-)

But I refuse to talk to libertarians until they can assure me that Rand has died at least one more time, just to be sure.

2) Many great writers and philosophers have clay feet. Why do Rand’s attract so much attention from people who stand on her side of the aisle? It is self-defeating.

3) Free marketers too often can not identify the philosophical enemy, preferring to quibble amongst themselves in fractured minorities as opposed to forming a moral and intellectually practical majority. This may be the tragic story of modern times. For ultimately, if we do not insist on institutions and markets that protect individuals, instead of the other way around, we have nothing. And we are headed that way. The left has won in almost every arena in society in the last 50 years while free marketers bicker or abdicate.

4) Free marketers’ propensity to become side-tracked or apologetic in response to socialist red herrings is so pervasive that I often wonder if many of them both do not realize what is at stake, or do not fully believe in the centrality of individuality in society in the first place.

Okay, her people are shallow and the speeches too long. Can anyone suggest another author whose novels promote libertarianism but are more readable?

Just a note that’s WAY late to the party, but L. Neil Smith’s science fiction is libertarian, readable and not too silly.

Curious passerby says:

Okay, her people are shallow and the speeches too long. Can anyone suggest another author whose novels promote libertarianism but are more readable?

Terry Goodkind. His Sword of Truth series makes Atlas Shrugged look like a short story – but it’s all good storytelling. And it sneaks the libertarian lessons in, rather than bludgeoning the reader with an 80 page speech.

It’s not the same version of libertarianism as Rand’s, but more practical. Rather like Heinlein, only with a well thought out philosophy behind it.

twirlip

I strongly advise you to not take anything which Jim Peron says with any degree of seriousness. At least do a little research on the man first.

All I can find that’s seriously negative are claims that he’s a “defender of pedophilia”, which is a matter of hot dispute. There’s a report from the “Locke Foundation” making the allegation which is not available from their website (?), and elsewhere a PDF of a NAMBLA (?) publication “Unbound” in which he contributed an article purportedly defending “boylove” (an ambiguous term, since it not necessarily involve sex acts)–which I of course won’t download, since it is said to contain child pornography.

The article by Peron I linked to on Objectivism re: cultism seemed pretty reasonable to me; “Objectivism” was/is dominated by a cliquish in-group, but there’s no more a “Cult of Ayn Rand” than there is a “Cult of Rodney Bingenheimer”. (By comparison, I read Albert Ellis’ “Are Capitalism, Libertarianism Religions?”, which is really a critique of Ayn Rand and “Objectivism”, and became convinced that the esteemed and influential Doctor Ellis is a grade-A nutjob.)

I think that Kirkland’s point was simply that there are a lot of “libertarians” who are only libertarian on points where libertarianism and conservatism agree (economic regulation, [lack of] gun control, etc.), and that people who are only libertarian where libertarianism and conservatism agree are properly called conservative (or maybe something else, but certainly not libertarian).

We can talk about the certain stereotypical libertarian preferences “free drugs! free sex!” and see how they well it reflects the typical libertarian (or libertarian man, or libertarian midwesterner, or libertarian of the 70s vs the 90s, etc). We can talk about which features of the stereotype migyt strongly correlate with libertarian philosophy over time, and why. And we can certainly talk about poses people take, especially on the overlap between libertarianism and conservatism. All this is good for discussion.

I don’t know that he would say (I suppose that he can answer for himself) that a libertarian should necessarily believe that abortions, gay marriage, recreational drug use, etc., accord with their own ideas of the good life,…

ArthurKirlkand spoke in an earlier comment of pot smoking being a necessary condition (his word was “essential”) of being a libertarian. (Being merely against the prohibition of pot, or even against the social stigmatization of pot, is not sufficient, apparently. One must smoke it.) His efforts to be “more precise” in alater comment is a marginal better.

I said to Steph Houghton that ArthurKirkland‘s description of a libertarian sounds like the description of a try scotsman, because his does.

Think of it in reverse: If a person were strongly in favor of ending the war on drugs, reducing government surveillance powers, expanding civil liberties, eliminating state discrimination against gays and lesbians, and reducing American interventionism abroad, but also supported laws creating $15/hr minimum wage, universal health care, and gun bans, would it be the no true Scotsman fallacy to say that this person is not a libertarian?

Short first answer: yes that would be a (no true Scotsman) fallacy.

Second answer (short version): it depends. :)

Second answer (long version): it depends on the reasons for supporting the $15 minimum wage, etc., and on the reasons for ending the war on drugs, etc.(!)

Comment. unfortunately, many libertarians will resort to this fallacy! When they do, they sometimes may be able to make a case for it (that libertarianism really does exclude such and such), but often the case does need to be made.

Third answer (logically pedantic, without wishing to be a pedant). There is no such thing as a “no true Scotsman” fallacy. In particular, “to say that this person is not a libertarian” would not, and could not be a fallacious. The property of “being fallacious” can be enjoyed by arguements, not statements. And an argument with the premise that “only … is a true Scotsman” can be perfectly valid (no fallacy) whether or not the premise is true (or reasonable). [Sorry, I know that it is an instance of an argumentative fallacy, along with "red herring", "straw man", etc. You may accuse me of the "no true fallacy" fallacy! It just brings up a bunch of issues I have in rhetoric, which I should not dwell on further here. Tell me if you are interested in why this is an issue!]

Actually, they’re not market failures, they’re how the market (successfully) responds to the opportunity presented by political corruption.

From a libertarian perspective – free markets – it is the free market being corrupted, captured (regulatory capture), defrauded, etc. From that perspective its a government, not a market, failure.

Markets, being amoral, allow players to have morals but don’t require them to.

Markets aren’t necessarily amoral. As mentioned above, depending on the market fraud and other forms of misconduct are usually punished. Mechanisms can include lawsuits, bad reviews, etc.

To my mind, this is vastly better than an economic system with built-in morality (like socialism)…

Some might claim socialism is moral in theory but there are many strong arguments that it is not. In socialism the state or collective assumes itself to be the sole arbitor of what the individual “needs”. That means your property, and that means your labor (how much of the profits from your labor, and often where and what your labor is) as well. If an entity claims it owns your property and labor that is not far removed from slavery. Indeed in most socialist systems there doesn’t seem to be a concept of self-ownserhip.

From a realist perspective its quite easy to see that collective property and labor ownership are going to be a recipe for mismanagement. Those determining what everyone “needs” are human, so there is going to be bias, corruption, theft, nepotism, etc. That is far from moral.

…but it means that markets, by themselves, are no counter to “big government economics” when players untroubled by morality can make a profit from them. And of course, this is what we see: markets evolving naturally into crony capitalism.

From a libertarian perspective it is markets devolving, being corrupted, regulatory capture, etc. which are a government failure.

The counter for “big government economics” are free markets and small government. With a low tax rate government – less funding – governments can’t meddle in the markets. So reduce taxes. Reduce regulation, or at least transfer it to the private sector (civil lawsuits). Again, this doesn’t mean that markets will “immorally” take over the world, because fraud and other misconduct are still punished.

My concern with Rand is that she has her heroic capitalists acting morally but seems to misattribute that morality to the marketplace.

There are moral components to a free market system. When markets are truly free value creation is rewarded. Those creating the most value generally are rewarded. The results in more value creation and an increase in societal wealth – benefitting everyone to some extent. And also fraud, force, etc. are punished.

Without some external definition of moral behavior that downplays the importance of efficiently accumulating wealth (which is what markets are for)

That’s an odd characterization of markets. Markets are for exchange, which facilitates the division of labor. Otherwise the shoemaker would have to be a nearly fulltime farmer, and therefore a poor shoemaker. It’s true that markets facilitate the creation of wealth on both an individual and societal level, but to claim that that’s their “purpose” sounds a little strange. Civilization is built on markets, because without the division of labor we would all still be mainly farmers, hunter-gatherers, etc.

Randian self-interest lends itself to big government, not its opposite.

Actually big government lends itself to big government. We see this with even the Republicans not reducing its size, etc. Or cutting taxes but not cutting spending. To an extent its politics: for example Politicians don’t want to be seen cutting government jobs, even though the taxes to fund those jobs cost the economy an even larger number of private sector jobs that would have benefited the economy more. A lot of it hinges on widespread economic ignorance. The majority of the public doesn’t equate higher taxes with a weaker and stagnating or shrinking economy, when that is the result.

Well, it appears as if Rothbard is not exactly a reliable source… cf. Is Objectivism a Cult? (Part Two).

I strongly advise you to not take anything which Jim Peron says with any degree of seriousness. At least do a little research on the man first.

If I had to guess, I think Rand romanticized heavy industry to some extent, which is really not a point in her favor. Railroads, steel, mining: these are the heroic, manly sectors of the economy.

I think her ideal was the creative sort of businessman, such as Alexander Graham Bell or Thomas Edison. Men who invented things and then went on to found great companies on the basis of those inventions. Think “Rearden metal”. Rand’s formative years were the early part of the 20th century.

Her philosopy was very similar to that of Nietzsche, but where Nietzsche saw his creative supermen as being artists and poets, she saw hers as inventor-businessmen. As you say, it does not translate very easily to modern American business corporations run by a staff of Havrard MBA technocrats. I suspect she’d loathe such people.

The real John Galt will live in New York, weekend in the Hamptons, schmooze in DC and frequently lecture on the dangers to the public from cut-throat competition in his own industry, even as he insists on it as far as his suppliers are concerned.

PFP, as I recall, Atlas Shrugged did have such characters, the businessmen who looked to government for their success. Galt and her other heroic characters stand opposed to them. I think you can look at them as ideals, no matter how few and far between they may be today in an era where government’s tentacles reach into virtually every nook and cranny of the economy.

It’s true that Rand did include descriptions of rent-seeking businessmen in her books. The problem for libertarianism, at least libertarianism based on Rand, is that she never offers any intellectual antidote to such people. Why shouldn’t they do as they please? Nothing in Rand’s “I will live my life for myself and nobody else” philosophy is any sort of prohibition to rent-seeking.

Rand wanted the benefits of bourgeois society while also wanting to dispense with what were once called the bourgeois virtues. There lies the danger for libertarianism. What if people read her and don’t come away merely with a “big government is bad” mindset but instead take her cultural critique to heart? What if they are more impressed by her Nietzsche than her Adam Smith? I get the distinct impression that many of her fans are so impressed.

Um….that’s not scripture, it’s a quote popularized by Ben Franklin who probably stole it from someone else.

Or was paraphrasing a particular passage. I stand corrected on that quote, but the point remains that I’m sure I could find a number of biblical quotes supporting libertarian principles.

And I’ll note that the site you linked stressed that the correct quote mentioned by another poster above is that the love of money is the “root of all evil”, not money itself.

PersonFromPorlock: One other thing about Atlas Shrugged that has nothing to do with Rand’s philosophy: did it strike anyone else that the book was curiously dated when it was published?

If I had to guess, I think Rand romanticized heavy industry to some extent, which is really not a point in her favor. Railroads, steel, mining: these are the heroic, manly sectors of the economy.

Try to imagine Atlas Shrugged updated for 2009 with the hedge fund manager, the hospital director and Sam Walton. Doesn’t have nearly the same emotional appeal, does it?

One other thing about Atlas Shrugged that has nothing to do with Rand’s philosophy: did it strike anyone else that the book was curiously dated when it was published?

Yes. I had exactly that reaction.

Curious passerby: Okay, her people are shallow and the speeches too long. Can anyone suggest another author whose novels promote libertarianism but are more readable?

Ken Kesey (Heinlein was also a good suggestion.)

The whole book has a flavor of 1935 about it: the only thing in it that’s not 1935-ish are three references to color television. Curiously enough, Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, which was published in 1935, also has three references to color TV.

Can anyone suggest another author whose novels promote libertarianism but are more readable?

Robert Heinlein.

I actually found Marx to be more enjoyable reading than Smith, even though the latter was obviously more correct.

As I suggested above, Marx was quite a good writer when he wanted to be (he was a very successful journalist for years). Das Kapital is not well written, but then again, it’s totally wrong on the substance too.

And trust me, if you thought the Wealth of Nations was a slog to read, TMS is just as bad if not worse.

I’ve read them both. I think Smith writes fairly well, though I’m pretty tolerant on that score. But I agree that TMS is much harder to get through.

Mark Field: Smith was careful to deny that market morality was sufficient as for truly moral behavior, and we may doubt if some of the conditions for his arguments remain true in today’s world, but he did at least make the argument.

That would be because in his mind he had already laid the foundations defining social behaviour in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith actually believed that to be his true opus rather than Wealth. And trust me, if you thought the Wealth of Nations was a slog to read, TMS is just as bad if not worse.

American Psikhushka:
PersonFromPorlock: Rand never addresses the simple amorality of markets, and her failure to see that markets can preferentially reward corrupt practices is where her use of self-interest as a socially beneficial guideline breaks down.

But those aren’t market failures. Those are government failures. If the government can’t meddle in the markets they can’t screw up and corrupt the competition mechanism. So what you’re referring to is a failure of liberal or big government economics, not libertarian or capitalist economics.

Actually, they’re not market failures, they’re how the market (successfully) responds to the opportunity presented by political corruption.

Markets, being amoral, allow players to have morals but don’t require them to. To my mind, this is vastly better than an economic system with built-in morality (like socialism), purely on liberty grounds, but it means that markets, by themselves, are no counter to “big government economics” when players untroubled by morality can make a profit from them. And of course, this is what we see: markets evolving naturally into crony capitalism.

My concern with Rand is that she has her heroic capitalists acting morally but seems to misattribute that morality to the marketplace. Without some external definition of moral behavior that downplays the importance of efficiently accumulating wealth (which is what markets are for), Randian self-interest lends itself to big government, not its opposite.

That reminds me of this Onion article.

His (Kirkland’s) description of a true libertarian sounds to me somewhat like the description of a true scotsman.

I think that Kirkland’s point was simply that there are a lot of “libertarians” who are only libertarian on points where libertarianism and conservatism agree (economic regulation, [lack of] gun control, etc.), and that people who are only libertarian where libertarianism and conservatism agree are properly called conservative (or maybe something else, but certainly not libertarian).

I don’t know that he would say (I suppose that he can answer for himself) that a libertarian should necessarily believe that abortions, gay marriage, recreational drug use, etc., accord with their own ideas of the good life, or that a world in which such things take place is better than a world in which people voluntarily choose not to engage such activities, only that a libertarianism that permits government restrictions in these areas, while being adamantly against regulations in areas where conservatism and libertarianism ostensibly agree, is really just conservatism. A good number (if not most or nearly all) of the so-called “paleolibertarians” fit the above model, rejecting state regulations of the above activities (except maybe abortion), but nevertheless believing that an ideal world would be relatively culturally conservative.

Think of it in reverse: If a person were strongly in favor of ending the war on drugs, reducing government surveillance powers, expanding civil liberties, eliminating state discrimination against gays and lesbians, and reducing American interventionism abroad, but also supported laws creating $15/hr minimum wage, universal health care, and gun bans, would it be the no true Scotsman fallacy to say that this person is not a libertarian?

American Psikhushka: And scripture could be cherry-picked for quotes supporting libertarian philosophy all day long: “The Lord helps those who help themselves”

Um….that’s not scripture, it’s a quote popularized by Ben Franklin who probably stole it from someone else.

see http://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/sayings.cfm#helps

American Psikhushka

Are you claiming that anyone pointing out that libertarian economics results in higher employment, an increased standard of living, more societal wealth, etc. is a “sociopath”? [etc.]

No, not at all… that’s why I added the scare quotes around “Libertarianism” and “Objectivism”. I single out the folks at ARI (with an über-cute double entendre to boot) because a number of them are bloody-minded reifiers of the nation-state at heart… e.g., Yaron Brook: “If humiliation or torture is an effective method of extracting information that would save American lives, we should humiliate or torture prisoners as necessary”… from “Just War Theory” vs. American Self-Defense, a truly horrific document, littered with “justifications” for state terror: “Most civilians of oppressive regimes do nothing to oppose or resist or change their governments. This passivity does not render them innocent; it renders them accomplices to the evils of their regimes.”

I think ricky was responding to ArthurKirkland when he said “Glad someone showed up to let us know that we’re not real libertarians”, but I’m not sure.

His (Kirkland’s) description of a true libertarian sounds to me somewhat like the description of a true scotsman.

1984 is another one of those types of books. When far left and far right people accuse the other of trying to implement a 1984-type government, it becomes rather meaningless.

But again, I would rather have these books than not, and they are still good reads, even if other writers are more subtle.

ArthurKirkland: It is common to encounter claims to libertarianism on this blog (and among conservatives elsewhere), but uncommon to encounter a libertarian.

Agreed. Not so long ago, David Bernstein called Hayek a “conservative” and tried to defend that choice of words. Problem is, Hayek himself wrote an essay called “Why I Am Not a Conservative” and spent considerable effort separating what he called “liberalism” (which today would be called libertarianism) from both socialism and conservatism. Some quotes:

“At a time when most movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty,[1] those who cherish freedom are likely to expend their energies in opposition. In this they find themselves much of the time on the same side as those who habitually resist change. In matters of current politics today they generally have little choice but to support the conservative parties. But, though the position I have tried to define is also often described as “conservative,” it is very different from that to which this name has been traditionally attached.”

“So unproductive has conservatism been in producing a general conception of how a social order is maintained that its modern votaries, in trying to construct a theoretical foundation, invariably find themselves appealing almost exclusively to authors who regarded themselves as liberal. Macaulay, Tocqueville, Lord Acton, and Lecky certainly considered themselves liberals, and with justice; and even Edmund Burke remained an Old Whig to the end and would have shuddered at the thought of being regarded as a Tory.”

It is a cause of endless annoyance to me that many people here use “conservative,” “libertarian,” and “free-market” as synonyms. People who want to communicate clearly should not do this.

mariner: PersonFromPorlock:Thank you. Capitalism is an economic system, not a system of morals or ethics.It’s even worse than that.A simplistic reading of Atlas Shrugged (the kind I suspect most young people give it) suggests that the pursuit of wealth is the highest good — witness the worship at the “sign of the dollar”.This is in stark contrast to the Christian view that “the love of money is the root of all evil”.

Do you think that might have been on purpose?

ricky: Glad someone showed up to let us know that we’re not real libertarians if we dare to make up our own minds about religion, sexuality, substance abuse, and infanticide. I never knew that liberty was so… commanding.

Of course she didn’t do that. She did have opinions on what was and was not moral.