Galt's Gulch & Trust
Radley Balko | May 6, 2008, 9:12am
NPR reports:
John Allison, CEO of banking giant BB&T, calls Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged "the best defense of capitalism ever written." He says that Rand changed his life, and he's working to ensure that the deceased author isn't left out of the nation's college curricula.
Since 2005, the BB&T Charitable Foundation has given 25 colleges and universities several million dollars to start programs devoted to the study of Rand's books and economic philosophy. In January, the company announced it was donating $1 million to Marshall University in West Virginia.
The money would establish a course dedicated to Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and help create the BB&T Center for the Advancement of American Capitalism on campus.
I'm not sure I see the problem, here. Hell, my alma mater had classes on pornography, the Beatles, and the music of Frank Zappa (note: I consider this a good thing). It would be one thing if BB&T were establishing an entire econ department staffed only with Objectivists. But an elective class on the virtues of capitalism that exposes students to Rand's ideas doesn't seem all that nefarious. Of course, some people disagree:
Rick Wilson, a sociology instructor at Marshall and head of the West Virginia Economic Justice Project, says that Rand's philosophy, objectivism, is based on the view that selfishness is the only moral value.
"[Objectivism] goes against the collective wisdom of the human race, I think, pretty much everywhere," says Wilson. "I think it's a curious interpretation of philanthropy to use corporate money to promote, really, an extreme philosophy."
I'm not sure when it became accepted logic that corporate philanthropies should only fund ideas and causes that are hostile to free markets. But that certainly seems to be the prevailing sentiment in the philanthropy world. And Rand's weaknesses aside, I'd say you could make a pretty good case that capitalism, the economic system that accepts and harnesses self-interest, has served humanity pretty darned well.
Jeff Taylor blogged about a similar Allison gift to UNC-Charlotte last March, and wrote about BB&T's lead-by-example capitalism in 2006.
joe | May 6, 2008, 12:39pm | #
Oh, Randian, get off the high horse.
The last time you decided to talk down to me, I pwned your ass over your silly assertion that Rand wasn't opposed to unions, and that The Fountainhead didn't depict them in a bad light. That argument, I'm afraid, has "the kind of hands that would drop things all over the kitchen."
You want to argue with me, argue with me, but it is long past time you got it through your head that I know what the fuck I'm talking about.
She never said they did anything to deserve it, just that whatever their set of circumstances, it doesn't mean that they are somehow entitled to what YOU earn.
No, she went quite a bit further than that. If you don't have money yourself, and don't deserve anything anyone else has, then you don't deserve those things. The only way to deserve something is to be able to secure it in the competetive marketplace, and if you haven't done so - if you are without - then you don't deserve it.
Deserving? At who's expense...at who's labor, joe, are you deserving of these things?
Now you're just repeating her argument, and as a matter of fact, confirming the statement I made that you so smugly insisted was wrong: that Rand and her -roids believe that people do not deserve even a minimal level of material life, if they have not achieved it themselves, regardless (as you so kindly pointed out) of the circumstances that produced that situation.
Yes, the material wealth they do not own belongs to someone else - this is utterly irrelevant, and in fact confirms, my point: that she does not believe the poor have any claim at all to any aid from anyone else.
Congratulations, you told me I was wrong about her attitude towards the poor, confirmed that I was right, and even provided the justification she provides for the belief that I accurately described.
Fluffy | May 6, 2008, 1:03pm | #
Joe,
First of all, the "unions" discussion was with me, not with A_R, and you hardly pissed all over me. I was right, and you were wrong. There is simply no way to answer my definitive rebuttal to you: that the novel Rand would certainly have acknowledged as the high point of her life's work is about a strike.
But I think the fact that you define support for unions as support for NLRB-supported unions colored the discussion in ways I did not perceive directly at the time.
But with regard to your point here:
Yes, the material wealth they do not own belongs to someone else - this is utterly irrelevant, and in fact confirms, my point: that she does not believe the poor have any claim at all to any aid from anyone else.
No, it isn't irrelevant. There is a distinction one has to make here:
It is possible for people to be poor through no fault of their own.
But the fact that this is possible does not give us any information about their
right to any particular piece of property.
To provide the poor with property, you both have to give it to them, and you have to take it from someone else. How can you possibly assert that the "taking away" part has no bearing on the justice of the situation? That half the transaction is
irrelevant?
One rather easy way to get around that contradiction, which doesn't seem to have occured to Rand, is to cease assuming that those in need deserve their poverty
To me I think the obvious answer is [as usual] to draw a distinction between individual action and group action or state action.
Consider a situation where someone has without provocation hit me in the back with a club, but later is contrite about it and profusely says that they are sorry.
It would be
justice for that person to suffer some sort of punishment or to provide me with some kind of compensation. [The discussion of exactly what kind of punishment or compensation would take us far afield and isn't really relevant here.]
It would be
charity/mercy for me to forgive them and demand no punishment or compensation at all.
Now, most people would say that either outcome here is consistent with virtue. If I obtain justice, I am just. If I show mercy, I am merciful. Both of these are regarded as good, and as virtuous.
Rand said, No - you have to obtain justice. If you don't demand justice, you are pissing on the virtue of justice itself. You are helping injustice to exist in the world.
I don't think she was right. I think that charity/mercy can in fact be a virtue - but only if I am the one who gets to make the decision. If I want justice, and you, Joe, come along and say, "No, I want to show everyone I am a nice guy, so I am going to deny you justice and let this guy go without punishment, so that everyone will sing the praises of King Joe," that would NOT be virtuous. You would be denying me justice, and also not exercising true charity/mercy, since it wasn't yours to exercise. You've stolen the virtue of charity/mercy, as it were.
If we apply this rationale to other instances of the conflict, we end up with a situation where it would be virtuous for me to help the poor, but it is NOT virtuous for you to take my property to help the poor. Which fits a bit more nicely into general libertarianism and answers some of the "human nature" objections raised above.
NP | May 6, 2008, 1:18pm | #
Fluffy,
One small nitpick before I start: I seriously doubt that Rand's fiction would be acceptable in a different time and place. The best of Greek tragedies don't suffer from what you admit are Rand's weaknesses as a writer of fiction: didacticism, narrow characterizations, and even lack of naturalism, as they are "natural" in their own context. But I digress.
I see that you have already dealt with probably my main beef with Rand, that she regarded charity as a vice or at least something short of a virtue--"the rendering of what is not deserved," as you put it. Now this is a complex subject, one that does require more than just a short paragraph or two to explore in depth, but here's, in brief, where she's wrong.
1) Since Rand defined one's own happiness as the ultimate moral purpose in life, by her logic one's financial assistance to the less fortunate, whether they deserve it or not, would be a moral decision as long as it makes the giver happy. Of course, one's giving money to an undeserving person--or agent, it might be argued in this case--only for the sake of his/her happiness would be an immoral decision, but not according to Rand's definition. Yeah, this is a pretty simplistic example, but you get my point.
2) A related point: Exactly who deserves charity and who does not? Surely, most would agree that those who can make a valuable contribution to society--say, someone who is unemployed or homeless but has up-to-date professional skills--deserve our help, whereas those who don't--crack addicts or, in everyday parlance, bums--do not. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt Rand would or, in fact, did distinguish between these two different types of "charity."
Let me go a step further. I'd argue that even those we often label as bums often deserve our charity, because their very existence teaches us a valuable lesson on the virtue of hard work and self-respect, and also because making sure that everyone is fed and at least has a home, as long as we have the economic means to do so, is good for many reasons, including PR. (No country wants the top ranking for homelessness.) As you can see there are many ways people can engage in charity and pursue happiness at the same time, so trying to define charity as "the rendering of what is not deserved" or in some other narrow nomenclature strikes me as fruitful as trying to define what is liberal, conservative or libertarian. Again correct me if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge Rand never bothered to explore these nuances.
Rand is derided, and not just by the philosophical community, not because of "her use of axioms to bypass fundamental metaphysical debates" but because of her weaknesses I highlighted above. Hopefully I've made a convincing counterargument.
joe | May 6, 2008, 1:23pm | #
Fluffy,
I was right, and you were wrong. You mean why you said she didn't depict the strikers in The Fountainhead in a negative way, and I threw the "hands that would drop things all over the kitchen" lady in your face, and you didn't have an answer? Was that where I was wrong?
There is simply no way to answer my definitive rebuttal to you: that the novel Rand would certainly have acknowledged as the high point of her life's work is about a strike. Except for the part where I answered you, and you didn't have a response. Revenge fantasies are best when you shoot the bad guy with his own gun.
A strike is an action, and you're right, she isn't opposed to that action. What she was opposed to, like you apparently, is such actions by the "bad guys," while they are perfectly justified by the "good guys."
Also, you need not repeat back to me Rand's position on whether poor deserve aid. I understand it quite well, thank you. I just disagree with it. Pointing our her justification for WHY the poor do not deserve aid doesn't refute my contention that she believes the poor do not deserve aid (that is, have a right to it). In fact, it confirms what I wrote, that she believes the poor do not deserve aid simply by virtue of being our fellow human beings in whose place we could easily be.
I understand why she holds this position, just fine. I just disagree with her.
How can you possibly assert that the "taking away" part has no bearing on the justice of the situation? That half the transaction is irrelevant?
I wrote that it is irrelevant to the question "Does Rand believe the poor deserve material aid?" That is a yes/no question, and we all understand that her answer is no. Explaining to me WHY her answer is no is irrelevant to the yes/no question.
By the way, the example you chose to demonstrate her view of the poor - someone who assaults you with a club - also serves to make my case. You are arguing that it is just for the poor to suffer the pangs of poverty, just as it is just for an assailant to suffer for his violence. It is this very point that we disagree on - I don't consider that to be the case, because I don't consider the failure, in all circumstances, to have material wealth to make the pangs of poverty just punishment. I don't believe the poor choose their poverty the way an assailant chooses to attack someone.
In my opinion, which is different from Rand's, it is right for you to decide whether to kick your assailants ass, or not. It is not right for you, or me, to decide that someone should live in poverty.
Yes, what I'm going here is equating the duty to care for one another with the duty not to assault them. As an earlier commenter pointed out, we are not tigers, we are social creatures, and we all depend on the society around us.
You disagree that the poor have a right to aid. You disagree that everybody has a duty to provide aid. In other words you, and Rand, disagree with me and most of humanity about what the poor deserve, what they have a right to, what rights they have that we all must respect.
And that's what I said at the beginning.
Fluffy | May 6, 2008, 2:35pm | #
Joe is performing a service here, folks.
No need to give him shit about it.
To return to a point near the beginning of this argument, I at one point claimed that Rand saw justice as "the rendering to each what is deserved" and charity/mercy as "the rendering of what is not deserved". [Or in the case of punishments, it might be more clear to say, "refraining from rendering to each what is deserved".]
I find it striking that joe's argument eliminates the distinction between justice and charity altogether. There is no such thing as charity, under the terms of joe's argument. If justice is "the rendering to each what is deserved", and joe asserts that the poor deserve support, then it is not charity to help them, but only justice.
So in an interesting way, Rand is not the only one who fetishizes justice and does not see charity as a virtue. Joe not only doesn't see it as a virtue, he has defined it out of existence.
This, of course, creates certain quandaries, because it creates instances where competing claims cannot be resolved. Joe can't assist each and every poor person, so someone's "just" claim to support is going to go unsatisfied. For any particular piece of property, you have an infinite number of possible claims - joe's own claim, since presumably he works for a living, but also the claims of all poor people, each of whom deserves the property but only one of whom can have it.
Ragnar_rahl | May 6, 2008, 5:49pm | #
" As I wrote at 2:31, In practice, the elimination of poverty would require resources far short almost impoverishing everyone, and the overally well-being of humanity is better served by stopping redistribution well short of that boundary anyway (due to well-understood matters of how a capitalist economy works)."
I rather think you are ignoring my argument, Joe. I wasn't talking about a specific point of redistribution- the fact of redistribution as such is what sunders the connection between production and consumption, what regards human beings as slaves, and thus what discourages the act of production.
And no, this is not my real name. I can use whatever name I want here, one of the advantages of the Internet.
"
Please define "security" so I'll know exactly how much I have to pay to support the military, and how much I get to keep."
Any Objectivist who is consistent would tell you you don't "have to" pay to support the military in a free country. I.e., Objectivism supports the abolition of taxation, so your rebuttal doesn't work. If you don't pay for government services, you don't get services from them.
"
Both of those concepts are, to a certain extent, socially constructed, which means we can all hold slightly different visions of what they mean. Since there is no precise and objective standard, we "muddle through" using the democratic process."
There is no such thing as a "socially constructed" concept. Concepts are constructed by individuals. If there are differences in interpretation, one is in error. Also, if there is no "objective standard," no objective reality in the matter, and individual judgment is not to be trusted, democracy will not and cannot save you. A line of zeroes is still zero, a line of uncertains is still uncertain. If we take your premise consistently, all is futile, and there can be no morality, no standards, no action- and frankly this computer can't possibly be mass produced.
"she argues that it is unjust for a "productive" person not to enjoy the fruits of his labor, because he deserves them,"
What is unjust about it? Justice, you'll remember if you read Rand, is defined in her arguments as "Causality applied to human beings," i.e. reaping the consequences of one's actions. Are you denying wealth is a consequence of net production (what capitalism rewards?) If you've a different definition of the term, you're equivocating, even assuming your concept is meaningful, which it probably isn't, just guessing from usual definitions..
And because I see things buzzing around on the Just War Doctrine and Geneva conventions and such, and someone claiming to be Objectivist but equivocating, I'll have to note: Objectivism in a strict sense does indeed support the invasion of unfree nations (rand's term "dictatorship," but I think that term is too overloaded with irrelevant connotations), and the Geneva Convention cannot be justified on it (The just war doctrine is frankly so undefined in every reading I've done on it that judgment is impossible for me thus far). The reason for this is that those in such countries who are innocent are ALREADY having their rights violate by the government, and thus, any invasion of the country cannot further violate their rights (they are "inactive" one might say). Once the invading country is actually in power in the region however, the rights of the citizens are again "Active" and thus it is of course wrong to establish any similarly oppressive regime.
I"'ve said, I consider freedom from want to be part of parcel of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
There is and can be no such thing as "freedom from want." All human existence entails that you want something, if you didn't, you wouldn't act.
"Yes, I'm arguing for a positive freedom. That's where our philosophies diverge".
You are arguing for a floating abstraction, that cannot be concretized in reality. No definition ever proposed of freedom other than "Freedom from force and fraud" can be consistently concretized.
joe | May 6, 2008, 6:19pm | #
Ragnar,
I'm not ignoring your argument, I'm disagreeing with it.
And no, this is not my real name. I can use whatever name I want here, one of the advantages of the Internet. Sorry to hear the humor injection didn't take.
the fact of redistribution as such is what sunders the connection between production and consumption, what regards human beings as slaves, and thus what discourages the act of production. I disagree with that. A person who has some minority portion of his earnings collected in taxes still enjoys the fruits of his labor (just not all of them), and still has the incentive to keep producing (just attenuated somewhat). That connection doesn't go away with the first penny collected in taxes.
I haven't noticed the economy grinding to a halt, or people becoming slaves without control of their destinies, with the government collecting something-teen % of GDP.
Any Objectivist who is consistent... really isn't worth arguing with. Fortunately, we seem to have a few who can adjust that philosophy to fit the real world, like Ayn Randian.
There is no such thing as a "socially constructed" concept. You are wrong. The fact that dollar bills have economic value is socially constructed. There is no objectie reality behind this, other than the fact that we all agree together that they have value.
Concepts are constructed by individuals. Yes, usually by individuals working in tandem and producing a common understanding. The fact that this collection of letters conveys meaning is socially-constructed. If you had attempted to construct an alphabet individually, it would be worthless and meaningless.
If there are differences in interpretation, one is in error. Yup. And in the case of socially-constructed ideas, the one whose interpretation differs from the group is in error.
If we take your premise consistently, all is futile, and there can be no morality, no standards, no action- and frankly this computer can't possibly be mass produced. History proves you wrong. We can muddle through, and come up something that is good enough, without having certain, objective, unchanging knowledge.
What is unjust about it? Are you denying wealth is a consequence of net production (what capitalism rewards?) No. Would you like me to answer the question of what I think, or are you doing just fine filling the blanks by yourself?
There is and can be no such thing as "freedom from want." All human existence entails that you want something, if you didn't, you wouldn't act. The term "freedom from want" has an actual meaning and history, you know. (As does, btw, "If that IS your real name.") Do you not actually know what it means, or are you just playing a semantic game?
No definition ever proposed of freedom other than "Freedom from force and fraud" can be consistently concretized. Actually, Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, like them are not, are a hell of lot more concretized and applicable than "freedom from force and fraud." I've seen how squirrelly you all get with "what is force" and "what is fraud."
ragnar_rahl | May 6, 2008, 6:43pm | #
"
Whoops. Do you remember when Rand said it was justified to invade "unfree" nations?
"
http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/dictatorship.html
Here ya go, it's in there.
"
Claiming that it is the "right" of free nations (which, nations do not have rights) to invade "unfree" nations is to forget that the reductio of that is, in libertarian- and Objectivist-land, no nation is 100% free."
Nations do not have rights- except as a product of the rights of the individuals within them.
Yes, no nation is 100% free. But obviously it's beneficial to get rid of the ones that are closer to 100% enslaved (actual 100% enslaved ones would have no living members of course).
" I disagree with that. A person who has some minority portion of his earnings collected in taxes still enjoys the fruits of his labor (just not all of them), and still has the incentive to keep producing (just attenuated somewhat). That connection doesn't go away with the first penny collected in taxes."
He has an incentive to hide the amount of his production- which results in an extra expenditure of his production. See the millions of tax havens. Also, he has an incentive to see what he can do about getting rid of the taxing authority, of course.
"
I haven't noticed the economy grinding to a halt, or people becoming slaves without control of their destinies, with the government collecting something-teen % of GDP.
"
Economies grind very, very, very slow. Very slow.
" You are wrong. The fact that dollar bills have economic value is socially constructed. There is no objectie reality behind this, other than the fact that we all agree together that they have value."
They don't have value on net. They have guns behind them, guns held by those for whom there can be no values :D. If no individual made the decision to hold the first gun behind the dollar, the dollar would never have been exchanged.
"Yes, usually by individuals working in tandem and producing a common understanding. The fact that this collection of letters conveys meaning is socially-constructed. If you had attempted to construct an alphabet individually, it would be worthless and meaningless."
The letters of the alphabet are not a concept, they are a stand-in for concepts.
"History proves you wrong. We can muddle through, and come up something that is good enough, without having certain, objective, unchanging knowledge."
Wait, you are telling me there are no individuals in history who were certain of their ideas? None? Or that these people had no impact whatsoever? Sorry, I never took that history class.
"o. Would you like me to answer the question of what I think, or are you doing just fine filling the blanks by yourself?
"
I would like you to define justice in an absolute, concretizable manner.
"The term "freedom from want" has an actual meaning and history, you know. (As does, btw, "If that IS your real name.") Do you not actually know what it means, or are you just playing a semantic game?"
Want means an unfulfilled desire. So, um, I'm waiting for you to provide a definition of "freedom from want" that is meaningful. I've never heard a meaning of it that was consistent with that of it's component terms, or with reality.
"As does, btw, "If that IS your real name.")"
I was entirely unaware that sentence had any history.
"Actually, Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, like them are not, are a hell of lot more concretized and applicable than "freedom from force and fraud." I've seen how squirrelly you all get with "what is force" and "what is fraud"
"
1. Freedom of speech and expression
2. Freedom of religion
3. Freedom from want
4. Freedom from fear
"
Freedom from force and fraud has never been squirelly to my knowledge. Fraud is the violation of contract, a form of force. Force consists of doing something physically to someone's person or property without their consent, that has an actual impact of some sort on their person or property. And it's quite concretizable (at least in the sense of prohibiting actions that interfere with it, though not necessarily in the sense of preventing them all without error), as it entails nothing but people stopping doing a thing.
The first two of the "four freedoms," though both were two some extent violated by Roosevelt's administration, are of course part of the defintition of freedom I gave, and quite concretizable.
But freedom from want? That, as I said earlier, is impossible by the definitions of the component terms (if it has some other definition by all means bring it). And freedom from fear is not achievable by political means. Politicians can cause fear, but they cannot do away with the fact of anxiety disorders, or fear of dogs, etc, unless they slaughter everyone with any such fear. And if that means the fear of the potential, than that means slaughter everyone, since everyone fears some potential event unless they are dead :D.
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