Ayn Rand: Can someone explain this concept without sounding selfish?

It is selfishness. She even says so. There’s a piece called “The Virtue of Selfishness”.

Her writing is awful and tedious.

Don’t waste your time. Or if you feel you absolutely must understand this “libertarian” nonsense, read Robert Nozick or Friedrich Hayek instead.

It’s a little selfish, yes. But as near as I can tell, it was the forcing that Rand didn’t like; it’s equally wrong to require someone to give to those who won’t produce.

If I’m remembering my own synopses correctly, (I will say right now that I have not read any Rand) the notion is that by everyone seeking the best for themselves, it drives the creation of more best, making things better overall; doing otherwise creates dependents whose demand will eventually overwhelm what the independents can supply.

@submariner I have often thought that the primary virtue of capitalism is that it harnesses mankind’s innate selfishness and diverts it to a useful purpose.

Just for the record i am NOT a libertarian. lol. SOooo many responses being crafted. Sweet!

@nullo Maybe so. But—there are legitimate uses for cyanide, sulfuric acid, and plutonium, but only under controlled conditions.

OP: Better yet, just read Adam Smith. He explains the advantages of capitalism without the sophomoric idolatry of the market that we get from “the Austrian school”, neoliberals, and their ilk. He understands things like public goods and externalities (I think).

@Nullo selfishness can also lead to Bernie Madoffs and “too big to fail.” I also think it’s fairly contradictory with the morality of almost every major religion I can think of. I agree with your point about her rejecting the compulsion to be altruistic though. I don’t agree with her view, but I think your analysis is accurate.

“The Fountainhead” did make me want to become an architect while I was reading it.

Well this turned ugly even faster then I would have expected. Oh well. And i agree with @crazykookycat. Objectivism /= libertarianism. The connection was tenuous at best before the tea party happened. Now there’s really nothing left there.

Anyway, i’m an objectivist, so I’ll do my best. Yes, it is based on selfishness. It’s the idea that you are the person you should put first. However, this is a lot more complex then what people (especially including self-centered teens who find rand) would like you to believe.

Here’s the thing: the idea is that the best you can do is act in your own best interest. However, what form this takes depend entirely on you. IT DOES NOT MEAN SCREWING OTHER PEOPLE OVER. Never. Because the main axiom of objectivism is the existence of free will. To deprive another of free will, via by force or fraud, essentially forfeits your own. You are acting as less then human when do that. However, it does mean that if someone asks you for money, or help, and you do not want to give it, you are not obligated. And this is seen as being bad. Depends on your viewpoint.

Disclaimer: I, though i am a pretty die-hard objectivist, i understand that most ideal philosophies do not work on the large scale. They simply… don’t. And I don’t think totally unregualed capitialism is a good idea.

@gorillapaws Obviously, just as communism has a nasty tendency to produce mass graves. Nothing is perfect so long as we are human.
Thank you for your compliment, though; I’m glad to hear that my musings were on-target.
And thank you for not tossing an apostrophe between “Madoff” and “s.” I don’t think that I can take much more of that.

@submariner I don’t think that there’s any ‘maybe’ about it. Look at the West; we’re in a pretty decent place in the world, all things considered. That’s some good harnessing.

I agree that moderation is warranted, but I don’t think that we ought to be counting on the state – hardly an impartial party, and by no means an omniscient one – to do the moderating.

I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and what came through to me was a picture of a very bright writer convinced that all the little people out there are taking up way to many of Earth’s resources that only geniuses like herself and a few other gifted oligarchs should have access too. I’m with you. She had the inner workings of an oligarch and yearned for a society where only a handful rulled and all others lived a basic subsistence existence to produce vast wealth for her and the ruling class.

The Union Busting that Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker is currently pushing is a clear example of this idea that only millionaires and billionaires count, and little people need to give up virtually everything so the wealthiest among us can have much, much more. He claims it is in reaction to a state budget crisis, but the truth is it’s a crisis of his own making. The state was in sound fiscal position when he took office. He moved to produce a deficit, then to balance the giveaways to big corporations and the wealthy by cutting state worker’s pension contributions and healthcare benefits. And the absolute proof this isn’t about a real budget crisis is that he is also trying to abrogate the collective bargaining agreements of all state workers.

My cure for people like this is let them learn to take their won garbage to the dump, and run the bulldozer to burr the stinking filth filth they produce in the landfills themselves, and fight off intruders rather than call police officers that belong to a union. Let’s see how well they can do what the people they consider leeches do for them.

Current thoughts on Ayn Rand:

When I was in my 20s I read The Fountainhead, but I skipped over some of the rant-y parts. I liked it, but for the story. I consider myself a socialist and have for quite some time.

I don’t know if anyone’s seen the trailer for the new Atlas Shrugged movie; it looks like a load of shite.

Also, what kind of parent names their kid after Ayn Rand? It’s obvious Rand Paul has daddy issues.

@ETpro I am not sure of what your stance is: Do you agree with Rand, or don’t you?

@ladymia69 From TvTropes, on Atlas Shrugged:
Author Filibuster: As the Author Filibuster page itself says, “Eventually the question you ask stops being ‘Who is John Galt?’ and becomes ‘When will John Galt shut up?’” Atlas Shrugged has one of the longest examples in print, with 60 to 70 pages (depending on printing) of John Galt lecturing the entire world. There are other, shorter filibusters as well scattered through the book.

@ETpro i sense sarcasm.

Look, I am not trying to reach a concept without consideration. however, if this is your honest portrayal or capitalism one can see why it is so unappealing. My main concern of what I understood as the end of “Atlas Shrugged” was that all the talented people left society, but that leaves NO ONE to work for them. I have a hard time seeing this elite group of individuals doing the manual labor for themselves.

@crazykookycat Yes, with their big, talented brains are hard at work, they can’t be expected to wipe their own dirty tukases. What do they do when the toilet gets clogged, @ETpro and @Nullo ? Or when they need to grow food?

that’s what i wonder late at night.

Well, they could definitely keep themselves warm in the Winter with all their combined hot air.

@ladymia69 I don’t understand why you lobbed that at me and @ETpro. We’re not quite on entirely opposite ends of the issue.
The OP asked for a kinder view on the concepts in Rand’s works. My education focused heavily on public relations: learning showing the prettier side of the truth in a wide range of media occupied three of my four years as an undergrad. It’s good practice for me.
I’m not actually a capitalist, either; I just think that it’s the most effective system. My ideal system is considerably more theocentric.
Which you probably wouldn’t like.

@crazykookycat It’s very probable that the denizens of Galt’s Gulch did their own farming. Robert Heinlein, who had a similar outlook, made his protagonists quite capable – broad skill sets are common, and all of them can do calculus with a sliderule; most importantly, though, is their drive. If something needs doing, they will do it.
Failing that, I’d bet good money that some people fled the destruction of civilization, and found the Gulch, and would be willing to till the earth in exchange for hot water and electricity, having learned their lesson.

@Nullo Not really lobbing at you, dear, just having a chuckle, and wanted to know what you’d come up with. I don’t think any particular system or -ism will work. And I am dead tired of elitism. We are all equal when it comes down to it; we cannot live without food, if we get alzheimers we forget all that talent, knowledge, or capability that made us more exceptional than others, and if we get shot in the heart, we all die. And I cannot stand for the underpinning that some are more equal than others.

@nullo thank you for your answer (even though theocentric sounds the polar opposite of my flavor of fun. ;P

in my mind i have no problem seeing gant crying himself to sleep when he realizes that what he reaps is truly what he sews; and that there is no one to buy this labor, resources, or ideals. however, i appreciate the explanation. it’s what i was asking, for sure.

@ladymia69 Sorry. I though I was being crystal clear. My impression of Ayn Rand is that she was a brilliant woman certain that her intelligence would put her at the pinacle of a world where oligarchy was the order of the day. I have no problem with creative people rising to the top. I am all for that. It helps society in general move ahead. I am adamantly opposed to an intelligencia that forms a institutional oligarchy to keep all but their elite members lining in abject poverty as servants to them. It’s the banana republic syndrome, and that is what I sense coming from the underlying message in Ms. Rand’s books. I do not like that one bit. I oppose it with every fiber of my being. Clear?

@crazykookycat Where did I suggest that this is my portrayal of capitalism? Right wingers seem to have a digital mind. If you dissent from even a single part of their ideology, then you are obviously a far-left socialist communist. No, I am a small business owner and I believe strongly in captitalism with proper checks and balances. I do not believe in the capitalism of the British East India Company opr of the Guilded Age when the robber barons forged giant monopolies and made certain that capitalism worked for a tiny handful while it exploited nearly everyone else. There is a middle ground between fascist corporatism and communism. I’m in the middle ground.

@ETpro Cleared it up, thanks. I respectfully disagree with some of your statements, and that’s fine. Unfortunately, capitalism is exploiting people all over the world, and I think some, in their comfortable easy chairs, may not be interested in seeing the reality of it.

…Not saying that communism, or any other -ism, for that matter, would be successful. This nation and world has become far too vast and too complex for one system to serve all people. Usually, when someone is satisfied with a system, it is because it is working for them.

@ETpro

lol. sorry if i sounded reductionist. i though t you were takin’ the piss. my bad. i was just echoing mia in the sense that i didn’t know if you were echoing rand’s sentiments or if you were merely playing devil’s advocate with an exaggerated sense of agreement.

I dare say that the greatest evil in Rand’s paradigm is indigence, the end result of which being that everybody was waiting for someone else to wipe their noses. In which case nobody was farming anyway.

“Not saying that communism, or any other -ism, for that matter, would be successful.”

mia i am increasingly glad i followed you. you sem to get to what i want to say about 10 minutes before i post it. grrrrr.

And one more thing…communism works only because money is being taken out of one person’s hand and put into another. If it wasn’t for this perpetual action, capitalism would not exist.

@ladymia69 I don’t know that we’re that far apart. I see all the problems in Capitalism. In regards to ways to organize governance, Sir Winston Churchill wryly observed that, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried” I think that in a world with 7 billion people, the same mught be said of Capitalism as an economic organization. I do think we can do better. I think we can set aside consumerism for sustainability, and for education and finding the unique value of each human being. So call my half Scrooge and half Pollyanna. A rather schizophrenic mix.

@crazykookycat Thanks. I’m glad I was able to clariify where I was coming from.

Interesting conversation, everyone! Now I need to go to sleep. Until we meet again! Zzzzzzz…...

@Nullo Communism has a tendency to produce mass graves, especially when the Americans get involved.

@mammal Stalin did perfectly well on his own. As did Mao. And Pol Pot, for that matter.

@Nullo don’t you worry, America are catching up they’re terribly competitive don’t you know :)

@mammal Hardly. The estimated Communist body count is about 90— 100,000,000. The most damning statistics for the U.S. (from a heavily biased source, no less) give a total estimate of 8,000,000 between 1952 and 1991. Many in direct combat (inferred from the broad, world-as-innocent-victims style, plus a little history). None were its own people, which is less than can be said about the three that I listed..

@Nullo Ok, keep up the good work, i’m sure America will get there in the end.

Guys. I cannot believe how many intelligent people cannot see the beauty of a simple idea. Instead, many resort to thinly veiled ad hominem attacks against Ayn Rand. Fine. But at least weigh the central idea on it’s own merit. I am no philosopher and I do not defend Rand’s personality, or anything she ever did. I think she was a nasty bit of work, as a person. But the idea is sound, as I see it. And this is how I see it:

1) Take care of yourself and only those you willingly and freely accept responibility over and cannot care for themselves, i.e. your own children. Your parents as rational, working people should have carefully and safely and sufficiently provided for their own old age while they were productive. Think about that before you shoot it down.

2) Do not take or give the unearned. In other words, if you can work for something, you should work for it. And if you can work for something do not take it if you have not worked for it.

3) In the same vein, do not give something to someone who can go and work for it for themselves. You are doing them a great disservice, physically, psychologically, and morally and the economy and productive people (like you) suffer as a result.

4) There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you give or take a free lunch you are unbalancing a scale somewhere. You cannot give or take something for nothing. Everything of value has a cost somewhere. 2 – 1 /= 3.

5) If an economy fails, it is because someone (or many someones) has consumed without producing. It’s as simple as that.

6) Giving to people who can produce for themselves, instead of them earning it, is the actual cause of unemployment and poverty. It is “eating all the seed and not planting any.”

7) If someone can physically (they are not physically disabled) and mentally (they are not mentally retarded) produce, they should not be allowed depend on any government or others to care for them or dole anything out to them, even healthcare. Welfare should be only for those who physically or mentally are incapable of production.

8) Government is not there to create jobs, dole out welfare, medical care etc. Government should only exist to protect citizens, property and uphold law. Governments are in nature bad at business (that is why they are called governments and not business) and will always become corrupt if allowed to handle welfare money. Government has no drive for profit or sustainability. It is easy to give away or become corrupt on money you have not produced or earned. And that is why government makes a bad steward of any resource.

Why is it hard to accept the simple idea that people are responsible for their own lives, their own good and their own welfare? That nobody else is responsible for them, but they themselves?

But what is happening now is that that which is being produced, is being thrown into a bottomless maw of non-productive consumption, never to be seen again. How can that possibly be sustained?

In the case of, as an example, orphans, these should and can be supported by choice. If I support a child or disabled person who is not my own, it must be from my free choice. It is not correct that I should be taxed for the support of the the unemployed. It is not the place of these people to foist their needs on me via taxes because they are unwilling to work hard enough to sustain themselves! Or am I wrong? I know you might say I am being simplistic, but I truly believe every man can be an entrepreneur, even if he just washes windscreens for a dollar.

Again, I exempt those who are mentally or physically unable, but only those.

An objectivist will take care of the the disabled or the young. Why? Because it is in his rational self interest to do so. Because not doing so is irrational. But this is what people harp on about. That objectivists are selfish. They are not. They are preservers of the self. They also want everyone else to preserve themselves too. They want you to preserve yourself. If everyone does that, we would have no need, except for those who are physically and mentally unable, and they would be a very light burden indeed, in comparison.

We do want to take care of others, who really need it. We just do not want to allow government to do it for us, because money in the hands of government disappears, and everyone seems to talk a lot about it, and make a lot of noise about it, but it never changes. Again, Governments by nature are bad financial stewards. It’s not their money. Why should they care?

It is so easy to say “You are selfish.” It is not selfishness. It is rational self-interest. and 99% of that self interest is about not being a burden on others.

I do not ever want to become rich on the backs of others. It is not sustainable and it is not rational. I am not a oligarch. I am not elitist. I simply believe that every able person should be responsible for his own life. And that that idea involves a lot more than people think.

The problem is that the pervasive socialism in our societies today is teaching people in a very practical way, that the government should and will take care of them. In so many little ways. And who pays for it? The guy who works. The guy who thinks. The entrepreneur. The employer.

Thanks guys.

@jucedupp let me start by saying welcome to Fluther.

Your argument is flawed in several ways.

First, it assumes that people will fully understand the impact of their actions on how well it preserves themselves. People may make decisions they believe are best for self-preservation but actually aren’t. For example the tragedy of the commons is a good example of how people will do things that are ultimately harmful to themselves without realizing it, or realizing it, but because others don’t or won’t participate in constructive behavior, it will be necessary for them not to undertake an action that is ultimately best for their own self-preservation.

A hypothetical example is a fishing company engaged in unsustainable fishing practices. It is in their best long-term rational self interest to engage in sustainable practices so they can profit indefinitely from fishing. However, they may face competitors who are perfectly willing to over-fish. In such a situation, (if you can’t get everyone in the industry to agree to better practices) then over-fishing becomes an economically necessary strategy, despite the fact that it yields less money over-time. If they engage in sustainable practices, and their competitors don’t, then the fish populations will ultimately be depleted anyways, and the stock of the sustainable company will plummet while their irresponsible competitors goes up, allowing their competition to over-fish that much more.

The highest paid execs aren’t immune from acting irrationally, and when they do so in such a system, they can cause significantly more harm than they could in a non-objectivist society. History has borne out what happens when there are no checks on the elite: look at the Gilded age and the Robber Barons, look at all of the Banana Republics over the world where such unregulated capitalism is actually hindering the GDP of those countries.

Also, your political argument regarding welfare presupposes several points that are incorrect. First is that most people who receive state-assistance are content to live that way. I believe this is false, and that most people who get help want to improve their lives. There are exceptions, and I agree that the system needs to be adjusted to prevent long-term abusers who have no intention of becoming a productive member of society.

Another assumption your argument ignores is the cost that would result from abandoning support for those who face an unforeseen setback. Crime would skyrocket if there were no social safety net. People will want to act in their own self-interest to survive and provide for their families, but when there are no viable alternatives, desperate people will do desperate things. The long-term cost for the government in terms of building more prisons, having good people become victimized by crime and becoming less productive (because they’re dead, disabled, or have had their businesses destroyed) and therefore creating less wealth for the economy and less tax revenue, the lost productivity from the criminals who might have otherwise recovered from their temporary financial setback and gone on to do great things, etc all add up to much more than the gains from gutting the social safety-net. Furthermore, such a gap would grow wider over time as such a cultural atmosphere makes it that much harder for children to grow up successful.

Your argument also suggests that successful people are successful because they work hard, are smart and a variety of other positive attributes. There is data to suggest that many execs are where they are because they’re more willing to be dishonest. Obviously, not all execs are crooks, but it makes sense in theory that being dishonest, manipulative, and other “irrational” (as you’ve defined it) behaviors are a large part of what it takes to climb the corporate ladder. If you look at all of the “irrational” behavior by Wall Street execs that resulted in the economic meltdown, the hypothesis seems quite plausible.

@jucedupp Thank you for a well laid out explanation.

I have a few questions. Such as: doesn’t inherited wealth increasingly stack cards against anyone that may want to try to sustain themselves? Also, what of the increasing marginality of human capital with machinery, computers, and lack of resources?

I also notice a lot of rhetoric on this issue:

“6) Giving to people who can produce for themselves, instead of them earning it, is the actual cause of unemployment and poverty. It is “eating all the seed and not planting any.””

The argument seems to be that by giving something to someone you encourage them not to work. However these same people seem to believe that supporting their children well beyond the legal working age, paying for their education, and giving them inheritance somehow doesn’t. I do not understand this logic.

@gorillapaws Excellent response, I think. I also like how you’re willing to engage on a rational level instead of flinging epithets. Really quite nice.

Anyway, I haven’t said too much here but it’s mostly because it’s pretty much been said. But your response is an excellent example of why I think objectivism, like any other ideal government, simply cannot function on the larger scale. There’s far too many issues involved in human nature, and too many parts of the capitalist system requires an extremely robust self-correction system. Something that’s possible on a small scale, but not really at all feasible on a large scale.

And, of course, the same can be said of communism, and most other ’-isms’. Ideal government systems tend to fall under their own weight when subjected to large-scale human nature.

Also, speaking of those other epithets, there are two main issues with perception of objectivism, i think. The first is those damn self-absorbed teens who wouldn’t know self reflection if they looked in a mirror and so give the rest of us a bad name. But the second is the idea (which, oddly, is in no way helped by the Ayn Rand society) that businessmen are all good/paragons. This is a horribly flawed assumption, and in Atlas Shrugged, at least, it’s pretty obvious that it should not be so. Most of the main antagonists are businessmen! Horribly corrupted and evil little schmucks. So labeling all businesspeople, and all businesses, as good is just kinda silly. There are good businesspeople and bad ones, and that’s why capitalism needs self correction that it can’t get on a large scale, and so needs regulation.

I mean, we populate galt’s gultch with Bernie Madoffs and Goldman-Sachs people and Tony Hayward and it’ll collapse in a day. You fill it with people like Bill Gates, and entrepreneurs who really are paragons, and it would work. Because people like that do understand the importance of hard work. Tony Hayward just wants to get back to his yacht.

@gorillapaws

Thank you for your kind welcome. I agree, my argument is probably flawed in many points, but, in the same breath I have to say that I am still to find one that is not.

Yes, objectivism does desire rationality in all people, as a “true” objectivist sees man as a “heroic” being. Again, all philosophies makes fundamental assumptions about the nature of man. I think in the end it comes down to what one thinks the best picture of man to be and to strive for that.

Objectivism, to my reading, suggests that it is rational for man to do that which sustains him best. He who does not ultimately do that, may be rich for a while, but in a strong capitalist system his method will not sustain. So, taking your fishing analogy, it would be irrational for the competitor to overfish, thus incompatible with rational self-interest. I am not suggesting that all men are rational, but being “selfish” if one thinks about it logically, would rationally deduce that overfishing does not preserve the self in the long run. In this, objectivism inherently states that rational self interest is the most benevolent method of conduct, as it preserves that which needs to be preserved, such as fisheries.

Added to this, it is rational for man to leave a legacy for his progeny or for those that remain behind. This is where I think people gets Objectivism wrong. People think that rational self-interest is inherently evil or amoral. That is why the word “selfishness” is probably the worst word ever used by Rand and speaks to a silly and short – sightedness in her personal expression. In a sentence, Rand was the greatest advocate of objectivism, but in the same breath, probably also it’s worst. But that is purely my own opinion and probably not the view of “True Objectivism.”

The tragedy of the commons disobeys one of the fundamental pillars of Objectivist economics, and that is property. The idea of commons is not, in my mind, compatible with laissez faire capitalism. Not being an economist, I do agree with a lot in laissez faire, but I also disagree with some of it.

In the modern commons solution, things like permits etc become touted as a solution, but would immediately become corrupt if regulated by government. Government, as it is and can only ever be, is a corruption-generation machine, simply because the concept of value is absent from government. A government as an institution needs to be apersonal and can therefore, as an entity not value, nor be the arbitrator of value. Graft and pull will, of neccessity, always become a factor.

In answer to the question to that, money becomes the logical solution. Who should get the permit to fish? The guy who can pay the most. Why? Because he will in probability attach the most value to that permit and probably be the most rational in his exploitation of that resource, and would employ people in the most economically sound manner, simply because he has a vested interest in protecting the resource, namely his most selfish pocket.

I live in South Africa. Here we have a land expropriation system where land is taken from productive farmers under what is, ultimately, a socialist system. This land is then given, without cost or value exchange to those “who need it.”

Now over half of the arable land in our country lies unproductive, each little farm with 5 or so cattle and a patch of corn. This is the way the entire continent is going as socialism takes hold via unions. We have escalating food prices, rising unemployment (47%) and everything is blamed on the old apartheid regime. Yes, we have 47% unemployment, but yet, a huge unskilled and skilled labor shortage. Why? Because currently, we have a government that tells it’s people thet their need is their right. So people sit around waiting for government housing, free water and electricity, free healthcare and government works plan that basically supplies a shovel to lean on all day. Add to that union strikes that demand a 10–20% annual increase for doing a “job” that essentially produces nothing except unused shovels. Because the masses have been told they deserve this for almost 20 years now.

Now, I assume (and forgive me if I am incorrect) that you advocate regulation. To a certain extent, I agree that some regulation may be needed, but here is a great danger that has pervaded through history when it comes to economic regulation via government. And that is, again, the problem of graft and pull. People may say “Ah but that is unavoidable” and it is yet that is the most fundamental flaw and the most insidious problem with regulation of free enterprise. Friends advance friends because regulation is inherently a custom-made tool for manipulation of the system.

Now we have unions that through “non-violent” violent protest essentially forces those companies that do try to compete financially and also employ people, to continually give huge annual raises, where there is no commensurate value or productivity returned by the employee. And this employee is utterly protected by government regulation. Then this employee says he is “working” for slave wages (Many live in shacks, true, yet that very shack has a brand new Audi A6 parked outside, and has a satellite dish mounted on the roof, with stolen electricity going into the shack.) And, by the way, the guy in the shack was probably given a house by government, and “sold” it for about $1000. And he will probably get another one. Do most people who have tasted state assistance want to keep living on it? Most I know of do so. It is endemic here. And you can ask our British friends with their dole system if that is not so there, too.

Government regulation and consumer protection allows the consumer to purchase these goods, and then when he does not pay for it, is protected by a “Debt Review” system which disallows the bank from repossessing the Audi while getting paid less than 10% of the original payment monthly. Yet our crime rate is also one the highest in the world, even with such a large social safety net.

That is what happens in a system that regulates against strong capitalist principles. Because now people can get stuff they have not worked for, and would never have been able to afford. (Dare I say Freddy Mack or Fannie Mae here?)

That is why money is the great equaliser. No matter where the money comes from, it is a finite resource in a capitalist system. So even if you inherit it, you only have so much. Otherwise the currency devalues if there is no limit to it. So you can only buy what you can afford and no more. Capitalism is self-regulating and self limiting by nature, if it is not mixed in with a lot of other economic philosophies. But if you have a pseudo capitalism with socialism mixed in, the self regulating balance is removed. So basically mixed-capitalism is not capitalism because the essential checks against graft and pull and abuse is negated by regulation against those checks and balances.

So, are you advocating regulating common sense into people? It will not work as long as government has the ability to make laws that circumvent those regulations.

That is why a limited government is so important. If a government only consists of a army, a police force and a court system, there is much less place for graft and pull to latch onto.

To address your point on abandoned support for unforeseen setback, I think you misunderstand me, and it may be my fault. I am not saying those should not be taken care of. I say a fund (almost like a road accident fund that is carried by vehicle manufacturers) could be established by business. Why? Precisiely because of what you say. The cost of not having something like that would be very high and simply irrational. It would be damaging to the economy and those very objectivist’s pockets. Objectivists would set up such funds in a true capitalist system, because it would protect the system and the system, if left alone, would be much safer against corruption.

I personally have no problem with percieved dishonesty. Dishonesty can only be victorious where there is no cleverer guy to stop it. (Gentle as doves and sly as vipers, if I remember the words correctly…) Again, it is the brightest mind that will remain in the end. Survival of the fittest? Perhaps. History is written by the victors, and perhaps cannon fodder keeps the gene pool fresh, as the cleverer guys will be the ones behind the lines with rank on their shoulders. I mean that applied in the sense of business. Am I contradicting myself? Not if you read it right. Those wall street execs bit themselves in the behind by being greedy. And many learnt how to fly, for a few seconds. Checks and balances.

@crazycookycat

What I am trying to say that is that you are teaching them that there is someone else out there that will take care of them if they do not do their utmost to take care of themselves. Human nature makes it very hard to come back from that. My own brother is an example of that. He spends as he wishes and halfway through the month runs to my retired parents for bread and milk money. It’s like feeding the stray kitten. I am sorry if I sounded rhetorical. Not my intention.

Inherited wealth comes from somewhere and it is finite. The guy who cannot multiply his inheritance will be without it soon enough. And the guy who has a poor mind will lose his inheritance soon enough anyway, giving him no real advantage. If he is able to multiply it, his veryy action of doing so will benefit countless others. Checks and balances, once again.

And in a world where hunger for basic foodstuff is one of the largest problems we have, human capital can never be marginalised. And I think every one of those computers and machines, used properly in a working economic system, feeds more people than their weight in gold could buy food for.

My children will work from the very first day they legally can. (My 15y/o has already applied for her after-school position at the local grocer and can’t wait to start soon after her 16th birthday.) If only to learn the value of money. I will not take care of my children after their 18th birthday, other than paying for their tertiary education. That is the responsibility I accepted when I decided to procreate.

I do not and will never own a yacht or a Learjet. It’s a waste of money.

@jucedupp Well, that took a while, but i finally read all of it! And now i’ll comment with far less words, because I find very little the issue with what you’ve written. But there is, i think, an issue here, still with the fishing analogy. As you’ve pointed out, it certaintly is in th best interest to use sustainable practices. Cause, well, they’re sustainable. But Gorillapaws makes an excellent point: In the short term, the unsustainable practices work best. If the company doesn’t care about future profits, then things get funky. And many buisnesses do. The by far easiest real-world example is offshore oil wells. The best practice would be to set up a failsafe system to kill the well, so you don’t end up losing massive amounts of money, both in terms of product and stock value, if a well bursts. But, that extra precaution costs money. Far less money they one would lose, but more in the short term. Which did BP (and, it should be said, pretty much every other oil company) use? As we’ve seen, the cheaper one.

Now, again, on a small scale this system makes sense. Damages done by bad practices do not have time and scale to cause issues of that magnitude, and so even if a business attempts them they can be routed by those with better ones. However, on a larger scale, this becomes a major issue. Especially when the business created to oust the bad one has to start out as so tiny as to be insignificant in comparison to the other. It may take them decades to actually compete.

Now, i also agree that socialist polices are not a good idea. And a large amount of that is due to the fact that if someone sees their hard work being ‘punished’ (by having to work more’, while lack of work is ‘rewarded’ (by being given things without having to work for them), you end up with an utter breakdown, given time. But all that means, to me, is that you need a balance. A very delicate balance, unfortunately, which is why so many problems crop up. But it’s better then the alternatives.

@BhacSsylan

As with all political and philosophical systems, objectivism would need to permeate through a society as socialism and communism did, eventually influencing the way people raise and educate their children.

The greatest hindrance to that is that people have a knee-jerk reaction of saying “It’s selfish so it’s bad.” Another hindrance is the permeation of religion throughout society, and most religions, economically speaking at least, are socialist in nature. Christianity in the form preached by Christ is a most valid example of this. Most religions teach that it is allright to be a burden (although most have little “be as hard-working as an ant” analogy – which if you look at it, is socialist in itself) and that it is good to carry those who make a burden of themselves. Now again, I have to restate, it is a valid choice to help those who are helpless.

But it must be an individual choice and cannot be made for the individual via taxation to carry welfare schemes.

In the BP example, yes, your point is somewhat valid, but the result of that is in no way economically viable for BP. They are paying through their noses for that cheap plug.

Yes, unsustainable practices work best in the short term. But, how are you going to stop that? Regulate against unsustainable practise? How? And here is the gist of my point. Regulation is self-defeating, because a what regulatory environment allows is exactly what is necessary to allow for the creation of methods for the circumvention of said regulations.

Let’s take the BP problem. Here is an idea. BP goes to a country who has an offshore oil reserve. They apply for an oil drilling permit. That permit costs, let’s say, 1 billion for a 20 year license. and another, say 200 million, per year. What I would do right here is take another let’s say 20 billion from BP, hold it in escrow with the world bank for that 20 year period. If BP then buggers up their plug, they lose the 20 billion. If they do it properly, and the 20 year permit runs out, they get it back with interest.

That to me makes financial sense. And it would keep graft and pull out of it, because, again, money (and the possible 20 billion insurance against buggering up), would be a great equaliser. But that will never happen, because BP have friends called lobbyists.

I know it is not perfect, but I am yet to see a solution to the world’s economic issues that comes even remotely close to it. Why? Because all other systems require the regulation of others and not regulation of the self.

@jucedupp You are still imposing a form of regulation, though. Specifically, who can/cannot drill. Not outright “you can/can’t do X with your rig”, but still safeguards set in place. I have no issue with that. However, also keep in mind that there would appear ways to get around that system. Friends in government that get you an exception, etc. There is no perfect solution.

Also, should something happen, like the gulf oil spill, you’ve now caused massive damage to the environment. I think it prudent to attempt to force companies to put safeguards in place, because if something goes wrong with your system, the government gets money, but that money will not necessarily be enough to fix the damages. Money can’t help save a natural species that cannot breed in captivity. It can’t save a previously unknown species from dying of poisoning. And it can’t bring back an ecosytem that has been utterly destroyed. Luckily, as far as we can tell it didn’t happen this time. But if it did, that would pretty much kill Louisiana, and do irreparable damage to the rest of the gulf area.

And, heck, i think we would agree that it is in a landowner’s best interest to make sure that people using that land use good practices. If you’re a farmer who lends a plot to someone, you’re within your rights to say “Oh, by the way, you can’t use DDT”. It’s your land. And not only does the government, at least currently, own that offshore land, but effects from drilling have the capability of major effects elsewhere. If that farmer has a neighbor spraying DDT and it’s coming over and messing with his chickens, he’s got a right to make him stop.

@BhacSsylan Ok. I get what you are saying. But again it speaks to simple economics (if there such a thing…)

If government was severely limited (police, army, courts only) there would be much less (than is currently the case) chance for someone’s friend in government to cheat, because, simply that friend would not be there if he was anything else but paid soldier, a paid cop or a paid judge, if you get what I am saying.

There would be very little foothold for that kind of graft and pull in a restricted government. Especially in a government that does not have the ability (for it’s own member’s benefit, of for a specific groups benefit), create laws or amendments to laws to circumvent those very laws and regulations that would protect resources.

But as we have it now, Regulation A begets Regulation B that begets Regulation C, that legalises the circumvention of Regulation A.

The case in many governments especially in the US, things like the lobbying system is a very powerful tool for bending or altering rules (or creating amendments) to enable manipulation of the system to someone’s corrupt benefit.

It hardly ever leads to real good for the people out there, and in the end it’s simply about who can out-lobby (or if we are truthful about it, out-bribe) who. It is very rarely about the issue itself. It’s about pull. And pull only benefits those who do not produce, people who should never have been more than fixed salary wage earners (read clerks).

That is why I am for lawmaking by people who have experience and lives the culture of capital, because, simply, they know how to grow economy and handle wealth and resource or they would would soon be without it. Capitalism has it’s own “Darwinism” built in. If left alone, it will weed out the fools and the thieves. Now they are not being weeded out, because we do not have capitalism.

Elected representatives have very little real interest in the actual issues. They have no real drive beyond being employed for another term beyond getting paid a salary for make-work for four more years.

Many will say “Oh but the democratic system will make sure that people like that do not get elected.” It would, if it was a pure and working democratic system, but it is not, if we are honest, just as we do not have a pure and working capitalist system. (I tender at least the five last US presidents as an example of the veracity of my statement about the current democratic system’s actual value.) Which is why both systems, or mix-systems just don’t work. And why the world is in trouble. Many would say “It is the best we’ve got, live with it” but it’s not the best we could have.

Yes, objectivist capitalism may not be a perfect answer. But the whole world is currently living the alternative, and it’s sucks a lot more.

We tried laissez-faire before 1929. It sucked way more than the system we had from 1932–1976. And the move back toward laissez-faire from 1982–2008 has also sucked more than 1932–1976.

I’m intrigued to find that Objectivists want to distance themselves from Libertarians, since they seem to share certain assumptions about economics, politics, and human nature.

@submariner Very simply because the only real thing we have in common is reduction of government spending. That is all that we have in common. Currently, at least. It used to be closer, but objectivism goes far beyond fiscal philosophy, and anything past that we wildly diverge from current tea party rhetoric. And even older libertarianism wasn’t the same. Rand called it “Objectivism without teeth”. Similar ideals, in that reduction of government and increase in personal liberty. But beyond that we diverge a lot. And the tea party has since corrupted even that.

Anywhoo, to @jucedupp It is, frankly, extreamly difficult to say. I agree that in order to have it work requires one to be brought up in the system an understand it. Again, why I think that it would be much easier on the small scale. You cannot, and should not, indoctrinate. In a small community, you can have like minded people collaborating on raising children, and make it much easier for them to leave it should they decide against the philosophy. The larger the area you attempt to control, the harder this becomes.

And, yeah, i will admit that current rules on passing of bills is really just messed up. the fact that so many riders and amendments can be slapped on to a law so easily, and that passing a law without amendments actually makes it apply to different, harder rules, has a lot of issues. And lobbies are very strong and can use this to thier advantage. Please don’t take me to be meaning that our current system is great or the best, etc. It has many problems with it, no contest.

However, saying “the current system sucks a lot more” is a little disingenuous. We have not tested full scale laissez-faire really. Not pure. Closest we got is what @submariner is referring to, and that wasn’t really since we still had the graft/pull problem distorting the marketplace. So we cannot really say it’s better, not yet. And I agree it would be a worthy experiment, but again large-scale requires much work that may or may not be feasible. At least not all at once.

And yes, i agree that regulations should be set by those the know what they hell they’re talking about. That is what the lobbying system is supposed to allow. But, well, we know how that works. How to do it better is a problem.

Now THIS is what I call a discussion.

I will contribute the value added statement that no parent named their child Ayn, pronounced “ein” Rand. She, Alisa Rosenbaum, named herself when she left the Soviet Union. Ayn Rand had told The New York Evening Post in 1936 that “Rand is an abbreviation of my Russian surname.” The Saturday Evening Post in 1961, stated that Rand was an Americanization of Rand’s original surname even though pronounced differently.

Alisa was eyewitness to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. In order to escape the fighting, her family went to the Crimea, where she finished high school. The final Communist victory brought the confiscation of her father’s pharmacy and periods of near-starvation. When she was introduced to American history in her last year of high school, she took America as her model of what a nation of free men could be.

I’m stating this because I believe it is important to judge a person’s character and actions in the context of the times and personal history they lived.

@submariner

There has never been “pure” laissez-faire tried anywhere. And mixed capitalism is not capitalism at all. And because there has never been “pure” laissez faire anywhere, there has never been any form of ‘capitalism’ in any country with the built-in self-correction ability that laissez faire has. And therefore no real capitalism at all. People criticise capitalism, when they are actually criticising something else completely. One cannot say “it will not work” because it has never been tried.

That is probably the greatest problem with laissez faire. The moment it becomes mixed in with anything else, it loses all it’s power. It only works if it is uncompromisingly left alone to correct itself. That is the operative concept. The moment it is fiddled with it loses all it’s ability to check itself and weed out the leeches.

@BhacSsylan

I agree that indoctrination is incorrect. But teaching people how to live the trader principle in every aspect of life will have it’s own self-evident value, so no indoctrination would be necessary. It is self evident.

That is why I shy away from “Ayn Rand said” or “Peikoff says” etc. People throw out the “value for value” principle with the Rand bathwater.

Your point is valid. Pure laissez faire has not been tried.

And therefore people think it would not work outside a Galt’s Gulch. Which I think is incorrect. But I think the conditions that would be necessary for that, in our worldwide collectivist, “me too, I also want a finger in the pie” mentality, it would be next to impossible to create those conditions. Perhaps we can lease a country and show that it works. ;)

“Pure” laissez-faire hasn’t been tried because it can only exist in a textbook or in the imaginations of theorists who are not actually responsible for policy decisions. Politics and economics can be separated in the abstract but not in practice, and any political or economic theory that ignores this cannot be the basis of sound policy. Theorists who have to put their ideas into practice and be held accountable for their decisions, like James Madison, have recognized this.

However, “pure” laissez-faire, like chemists’ ideal gas, can be a useful hypothetical construct, insofar was we can compare systems that are closer or farther away from it. We were much closer to it before 1929, and conditions were horrible for much of the population—worse than feudalism for some. We moved away from it under FDR, and things got better, even if we factor out the benefits we got from being the last great power standing after WWII. We moved back towards laissez-faire under Reagan, and things are great for a tiny minority, but the rest of us are barely hanging on or are slipping behind.

History (and not just US history) seems to show that the closer we get to pure laissez-faire, the worse things are for the majority of people—provided we do not go to far in the opposite direction, as perhaps has happened in South Africa, judging from the above account.

One more question about the difference between Objectivists and Libertarians: it seems to me the main difference is that Objectivists are committed to ethical egoism as a metaethical position, while libertarians per se limit their concerns to politics and economics, and take no position on metaethics. Is that a fair characterization?

Not enough time for a full discussion right now, but i will clarify the libertarian bit, @submariner. I’d say for the most part that is correct, because old libertarianism was “lower government, and then hands off”. Objectivism, being a philosophy, goes beyond that into all the ‘meta-‘s.

However, I’ll again state that this was old libertarianism. The Tea Party, now that it’s a new sect of republicans essentially, wants to shrink government, but also control moral aspects such as abortion and sexuality. They want to control people’s behavior, which flies right in the face of objectivism and old libertarianism. There’s a great quote “The Republicans want to shrink government so small that it just fits right inside our bedrooms,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). While about republicans at large, it fits the tea party as well.

Oh, and I’m not just talking hypothetically about this, either. I live in Arizona, which currently has a tea party legislature. They’ve already attempted passing laws to bar federal officers, allow state police to inform those under FBI investigation, allow guns on school campuses and government buildings, allow uranium (!) mined in arizona to be exempt from federal regulation, require presidential candidates to file long-form birth certificates (yes that again) or be struck from the AZ ballot, attack the 14th amendment, limit the amount of workers a city can hire, lock the current recession budget, which has massive cuts to schools and other programs, and seriously raise the limit on private election funding, while making it harder for small candidates to get public funding. This is a tea party state, and it’s f-ing scary.

@submariner Well, having said that I am not a philosopher, I would have to say that after reading the article you linked, yes, that I am an ethical egoist. BUT. The most important thing is intention. It is very important to me that non-objectivists understand what point I am trying to make here.

I am not saying “Mine, mine all mine.” I am saying “Yours, yours all yours.” Because I believe if all the hungry, poor unemployed etc out there GET and UNDERSTAND the concept of ethical egoism, and apply it to their OWN lives, they will be lifted up out of the situation very quickly. My promotion of Ethical egoism has very little benefit to me, simply because I am not needy. But the needy person who gets it, will soon get himself out of a place of need.

It is my belief that many, many people do not do the very utmost to get out of a dependent situation, because they believe that it is OK to be needy, OK to be dependant, because it is morally or spiritually beneficial for others to help them and desired by others to help them. And an altruism based society only serves to strengthen that position.

My standpoint is only a very small percentage of the ‘needy’ out there are actually helpless. So their need is in very few cases caused anything more than a psychological or even philosophical condition.

If a man can stand at a traffic light in the sun all day begging for a quarter, he can stand 20 feet to the left in the parking lot and offer to watch your car for that same quarter or offer to wash your windscreen and do a good job at it. But in our society he does not need to, because of religious and moral guilt keeping the unearned dollars in his palm.

@jucedupp Your ethical egoism theory has been tested for most of human history and never worked anywhere on Earth. But my experience with ideologues is that even though they claim to be conservatives—meaning being in favor of tried and true solutions wherever possible—they are nothing of the sort. They will support the most radical of solutions possible if that’s what their ideology requires.

@ETpro Well, I hope that I have demonstrated that I am no ideologue. The reason why I prefer ethical egoism is I believe the only way to permanently uplift a person is to get him to uplift himself.

And that the percentage of humanity that is truthfully unable to do so, is so small that supporting them would be a insignificant drain on the world economy. That is the only sustainable method, otherwise resources are simply dumped into a black hole from which nothing comes back except more need. That is what consumers who do not pay for what they consume, do. They consume. And others are expected to refill the stores. The problem in the world that there are a LOT more consumers than there are producers, and the the pervasive altruism worldwide is teaching people that is is good, OK and even desirable.

The world, especially the third world is being taught if only all the rich and those that produce through work only “share and share alike” everything will be OK, and that those that create the employment, create the conditions for trade and human welfare, are somehow hogging everything and the fact that they have gathered through use of their mind, obligates them to give it away simply because others need it.

But the “need” that is being created by socialist ideology now, is crippling the world economy and actually directly consuming the resources (the seed) that would actually, if correctly applied, be able to be “planted” to create opportunities for people to become self-sustaining. So the “doing good” that is pervading the world now is actually the insidious thing that is impoverishing the world population. It’s blaming the guard at the door of the granary. If seeing that makes me an ideologue, so be it.

People keep on blaming capitalism, while I dare anyone to show me a capitalist economy anywhere. And then I dare anyone to show me a sustainable economy based on socialism anywhere, but that never happens. The world is in big shit and most people are just waiting for Bill Gates and his ilk to come and rescue the world. But what happens when that has gone down the hole? But it will never come to that, right?

Another quick point. You say “Your ethical egoism theory has been tested for most of human history and never worked anywhere on Earth.” Examples? It is easy to say something like that. But that places the burden of proof on you to show that a) It has been tried in it’s wholeness and original intent. b) The idea has not been polluted by other ideas in it’s application. c) Prove a negative.

Lastly, can your offer an example of anything else that has been tried and tested and proven to work continuously and successfully on any scale?

I would like any of the above critics’ ideas of “tried and true.” By that I mean their or your realistic alternative. And make them president of the world the next day.

@jucedupp Throughout most of history, there were no institutions to lift a person up save their own devices. We got warlords, rape-and-pillage economics, Feudalism, and so on. That was NOT because there was too much government intervention, it was because there was none. It was every man for himself. Somalia still is. If that’s the sort of society you consider heaven, why not go there. You are not likely to dismantle all the social support systems here in the USA.

ETPro. Bull. Somalia is an example of fake-mixed-with-socialism-capitalism. A perfect example of what happens when people attempt to take what is not theirs.

Please EXPLAIN how the US is going to sustain their social support systems, as they are currently not doing so at all, as your budget deficit is ABSOLUTE proof of the US’s inability to sustain these programs and the folly they represent. You cannot put in without getting back, it does not add up!

Thus they are being funded them at huge cost to the rest of the world, not to itself. It’s easy to pretend that a country is self sustaining when it is subvesrsively sucking resources from the entire planet to sustain those “social support systems” you talk about as if they are at all moral.

These institutions you speak of DEPEND on taking, by political force, from those who are productive, and giving to those who do not give a crap. Again here I am not speaking of the helpless, but those who are deemed to be “needy.”

@jucedupp Ah, the No true Scotsman fallacy. Go where you think the true Scotsman is, then. In reality, there is no place on earth that has instituted your pet philosophy and produced the paradise you are sure it will yield.

The US is so far from bankrupt it is silly to question it. We are running a massive deficit now because we cut taxes on the rich by just under 70%. Mind you, the economy was booming and we were making plenty of millionaires back when taxes brought in sufficient revenues. The idea that the poor and elderly have bankrupted America is patently absurd. If they stold 14 trillion dollars, how come they are still poor?

Welfare for corporations and the rich is what has run our national debt into the stratosphere. We could begin to fix it tomorrow if the elites didn’t own the votes of most of those in Washington today.

@ETpro No, giving people houses they cannot afford, will never have been able to afford, and will not have cared to work hard enough for to afford anyway, is the cause of your entire banking system falling flat on it’s face. It is not patently absurd to say that the so called “poor” are bankrupting an economy. They eat. They consume. There are millions of them. They “stole” that money because they ATE it.

And the ONLY thing they gave back went straight to the sewage plant.

THEY DO NOT PRODUCE ON A COMMENSURATE SCALE TO THEIR CONSUMPTION.

That in most cases, is why they are poor in the first place. I know there are those who are truly helpless. But they are SO FEW, that they will be cheap to support, in comparison to what is the case now.

It’s simple maths. How can you not get the concept that if you have millions who only consume, stuff has to run out? Where do you think the money for feeding and “socially supporting” them came from, if not from that 14 Trillion? Thin air?

To blame it on not taxing the minority of people who actually have the spine, the character and the pride to go and work and earn their wealth and take care of themselves and thousands of other while generating that wealth, is patently absurd. It’s biting the hand that feeds you. And then waking up and wondering “But where did my hand(out) go?”

How do you justify taking from the hardworking to feed the lazy? How is it right? And even if you do, by some convolution, do exactly that, who are you going to tax after that, when you have now sufficiently taxed your “rich” into “not-rich anymore”?

Do you think they will then just like a donkey, keep producing so that you can keep taxing them? Who are you going to tax to death next? And after that? Taxation make productive people not want to produce. Every socialist and communist regime in history proves that.

@ETpro “In reality, there is no place on earth that has instituted your pet philosophy and produced the paradise you are sure it will yield.”

And yours? Are we about to try and prove a negative again?

What ticks me off is that you keep criticizing a position without presenting a workable alternative for equal criticism. Easy, that.

And I do not think you understand the “No true scotsman” fallacy at all. What you are doing is presenting Somalia (or such) as an example of the wrongness of my ‘pet idea’,
when it is not even remotely applicable, but rather serves as example of what happens when (what I think is) your idea, namely some hip socialist ideology, (forgive me if I am wrong) gets to hit an entire continent, and is let loose on a world is now taught entitlement rather that earning.

@jucedupp And why did the housing boom happen? We deregulated banks and let them play casino banking. Hedge Fund managers were bringing home bonuses between 1 and 4 billion dollars a year and they were doing that by pushing the system to make more and more ever riskier loans which they could bundle as derivative securities and leverage heavily, returning enormous profits for creating nothing but smoke and mirrors.

How could that happen? The Republicans rammed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act through the House in 1999 without a single Democratic vote. That bill gutted the banking protections of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, that had protected us from such outrageous risk taking for 66 years.

That said, you are flat wrong that the sub-prime bubble alone brought down all the top financial institutions. It wasn’t nearly enough exposure to do that. Fannie and Freddie held a total sub-prime portfolio of $5.5 trillion, only 17% of which was sub-prime or Alt-A. That’s a total sub-prime and Alt-A exposure of $935 billion. Not chump change to you and me, but chump change to a Wall Street that was handing out $4 billion annual bonus checks. What spelled the Banksters’ doom was the $72 trillion annual market in derivative securities they had leveraged mostly real-estate loans into. The Republicans deregulated banking, making it possible. They pushed the derivatives market like crazy because it seemed to make soooooooo much money. They also pushed both Fannie and Freddie and private sector lenders to make sub-prime and Alt-A loans to keep the bubble expanding from 2000 through 2007. Without that housing boom, George W. Bush’s jobs record and GDP growth, which was piss poor as it was, would have been a cataclysmic failure. And since truth will always out, when it hit the fan in 2007 we saw that it was a cataclysmic failure.

Where’s my model of what will work. Glad you asked. It’s right here in the USA. From 1945 to 1980 we built the world’s largest middle class, and the most prosperous nation on earth, and we paid down the WWII debt of 120% of GDP till it was just 32.5% of GDP at the end of Jimmy Carter’s Administration. We fully funded what we were doing, and we did a great deal.

You see, I am a true Conservative. Do what works, don’t jump for radical, revolutionary ideas unless the old tried-and-true ones simply won’t work anymore, or a new problem arises where there is not proven solution. It’s today’s Teahadists who are the radicals. Billionaires like the Koch Brothers have spent hundreds of millions and decades funding far-right think tanks and PR firms to craft psychological control in the form of talking points that push their agenda. They want to slash taxes for the wealthy year after year and shift all the blame and burden to the middle class and poor. They want to live in a banana republic where they will be the elite ruling class. .

I own a small business. If I do well, and bring in 250,000 for myself this year, I’ll be taxed at 35% on it. I don’t have the resources to take advantage of the special interest tax breaks crafted exclusively for the rich and the huge corporations. Those Hedge fund managers that earn billions per year. They get taxed at just 20%. If they were taxed like I am, the top 13 alone would boost federal revenues enough we could hire 300,000 teachers with full benefits.

@ETpro Great. I am glad to hear you are against middle class over taxation, if I read you right. I am against over – taxation as a whole, against any class or group. The problem here is much more fundamental in my eyes. I think it is ludicrous for ANY country of ANY prosperity level to tax any person or group at over, let’s say 7–15%. I know the first reaction to me saying this is that it is just not realistic.

But what is even more unrealistic is to tax anyone to death in order to support anyone else. It’s silly. It goes against the most fundamental part of human nature, instead of working with it. Nobody wants to work for something he does not get. People will simply stop producing optimally.

They will do anything to hide that income (or just stop working and depend on social grants), and in the end, the result is that my suggested 15% maximum taxation would probably bring in more actual money than a 35% tax does now. Why? Simply because people would not mind paying a small tax like that. And people would work harder or more, because people would be able to keep more of the fruits of their labor to themselves. Which is working with human nature and not against it. It’s simple psychology. People would probably actually be able to live the American Dream, which I see as the following: The ability to prosper due to your own hard work.

But now you have idiot senators who want to put tax on soft drinks in order to fill budget gaps. And peple who believe that it is actually, truthfully being done to help them lose weight.

I am very much against you getting taxed at 35% (It’s a little less than what I get taxed at, though, but then socialism has done a lot more damage here already.)

A country cannot say that is prosperous, free or democratic, when these aforesaid rights are being maintained, by what is, for all intents and purposes, force.

And force it is. No denying that. Not one American is realistically free to decide against those taxes. And I think they have even less chance to change it due to the way your lawmaking and lobbying system works. It gives people the false sense that they can “Write their legislator”, and actually affect things, when in the end, things actually work quite differently. Petitions are never taken seriously. Lobbyists and their senators are.

About your Hedge Fund manager problem, one thing has to be considered. Money is a social construct. An idea. Smoke and mirors, as you say. And that is what fund managers do. They make 1 dollar 2 or even 20. They play with the construct. What they are actually doing is devalueing the base currency by making more out of thin air. That is the purpose of stock markets. They make worthless pieces of electronic paper worth something. It does not actually add any value in reality. And the US economy is built on that false perception of reality. That is why every now and then there is a depression or recession that occurs, because the balance will naturally be restored between actual and imaginary value.

The thing is, I have no problem with your large, prosperous middle class. I have a HUGE problem with the current socialist middle class, who always point to “the man” as the source of the problem and not the fact that their parent’s 1945 – 1980 prosperity was actually caused by the tremendous work ethic people during that period had and also blissfully ignores that their prosperous middle class parents and grandparents actually worked for somebody, namely “the man”, the boss, the so-called industrialist robber baron who actually allowed them a opportunity to become prosperous.

So now, the struggling middle class has put in place (and left there), a bunch of closet socialist politicians who instead of saying : “Work for what you want and what you need” are saying “Let’s tax those that still have money, and give you Obamacare out of their pockets and and and”. They are not teaching hard work. They are teaching sacrifice by some. Sacrifice. Again, obtusely against human nature. And therein lies the problem. Tax the rich. Soon they will not be rich anymore. Soon they will not be able to employ or even have the willingness to employ.

Then the state will come and try to create jobs. And hospitals, and Schools. Then people will start realising that that Governments make bad businesses and employers (ever worked for government?) and bad medicare (ever been in a state hospital?) and bad educators (ever been in a government school?) Will it never happen? I live it every day.

And then people will come and say “OH! It was actually better when business did business stuff and goverment actually simply governed.” But by that time the chinese will have bought your country, in all likelyhood.

@ETpro – Oh, by the way. You say that you had a prosperous middle class in 1945–1980, but you present no actual methodology or plan or financial philosophy of how you are going to get your middle class back to that position. Or are you saying you are going to do that by simply taxing the rich into poverty? Please elaborate?

@jucedupp Can you show me an example of a nation that is doing very well and provides all needed services for its people and infrastructure for a decent style of life with a tax system of 7–15%? I can’t think of any. You do realize that flat taxation instead of progressive taxation tends to cause wealth to rapidly accumulate at the top, do you not? Do you think that is a good thing? It is basically how all banana republics operate, so if you yearn for such a state. they already exist. You could more easily move to one than convert the USA. Of course, the current shift in power to global financial/manufacturing forces will soon convert the USA and all the world to banana republics anyway, so you could just kick back and wait for Utopia to arrive. Here’s an interesting TED talk by Noam Chomsky about this shift in global power and what it implies for the US and the entire world, for that matter.

You are quite right to say we can’t just crank back the clock to 1945 and thereby have the same boom play out again. It wasn’t the steeply progressive tax system of the time that made the boom possible, but the boom that made the taxes so. The boom occurred because all the developed world except for the USA was in utter shambles after WWII. Our remoteness—at least as it applied to those days—meant that Hitler couldn’t bomb our industrial capacity into oblivion. We were able to retool our factories from weapons to consumer goods and become the supplier for much of the world.

Here’s my best idea, but I am sure open to others. Whether we like it or not, we and the rest of the world are going to have to learn to live sustainably in the next decade or two. Everyone wants to live like an American now, and the trouble with that is that we’re only 5% of the world’s population, a little less right now, but we consume 30% of all energy produced on Earth. If all 7 billion live like us, we need 5 planets worth of resources. That’s a non-starter. So there is going to be a huge market for energy efficiency, sustainability, and still a worthwhile standard of life. That takes innovation and R&D, and those are things we are good at and that pay well.

We may have to fight a pitched battle with the GLobalists to get there, though. Billion dollar a year bonus checks are an awfully seductive incentive for Goldmann Sachs to say “Hell no you can’t.” to any move to share the wealth.

Pardon my maudlin state. I just signed on to the Charter for Compasion today. :-)

@ETpro

I agree fully with your sustainability model. As a non-American I have to, however, apply some self discipline to not willy-nilly place the largest portion of the blame on Americans. (Note I am saying Americans and not the US as an entity.)

Still your example of the retooling after the war makes a poignant point. That retooling was made successful by industry, not government. I daresay it would have been a huge failure if government was involved in any larger scale than it was.

And also, I think it was America’s move away from industry and the wealth it brought, over long years, that diluted America’s wealth and the sadly, I think unionism (the executive arm of socialism) was the cause of this. And led to the massive decline of the American way of life, because unions simply made business unprofitable, for employers, and as an effect, employees as well..

The only way that sustainability will take hold and be, well, sustainable, is if it is firmly kept out of the hands of government and placed firmly into the hands of business. Government, by nature, is infamously bad at R&D, innovation and sustaining anything beyond a term in office.

Globalists exists because individual government’s controls allow them to. Need them to, in fact, in order to make any term in office viable and even financially worthwhile.

@jucedupp I wish I could fully defend my fellow Americans against any charge you might level that we have been profligate, but I cannot.

There is probably no point in our arguing your assertion that government is inherently incompetent at all it attempts, and that corporations are not. My attitude is both are built of equally fallible human beings reacting to often confusing and sometimes clashing pressures. We could cite success and failure examples ad nauseum and establish little. I’ll just pass on my thoughts.

For small to mid-sized businesses, I agree that their agility and reaction to market pressures makes them more flexible and responsive to the market drivers than any government is likely to be. But after a certain level of growth, corporations become as divorced from the market impact of their behavior and decisions as any government. And again, be they bureaucrat, elected representative or corporate managers, they are all just humans. If you listened to Chomsky’s talk about how Goldman Sachs dealt with first running up massive profits and risks selling derivatives based on leveraged mortgage debt, then hedged their bets with credit default swaps, you have a glaring example of a corporation grown so big and powerful that they were able to do something so inefficient and idiotic that it nearly brought the entire world into a second Great Depression.

@ETpro So what you are basically saying is that Size Matters, as long as it’s not too big. :)

Jokes aside, the point to me is that business is business and government is government and that each should keeps to it’s own purview. Even if every person in government was a financial genius, government would still be piss-poor at business. And business piss-poor at governing.

That is why I believe 90% of the things that government is trying to do, belongs with business, and is most of the reason why governments are corrupt and not performing. Because business generates money, and in the end, if we are really honest, that is all that modern politicians could possibly be in government for. Humans are human.

I believe that if business is left, well, to do it’s own business, imbalances will be naturally addressed through healthy competition, and a company will not be able to grow beyond a certain size, simply due to natural market inhibitors. But now, companies like Goldman Sachs exist because government is playing in the business arena. You now have Goldfish who are growing bigger that the fishbowl, because they have a buddy feeding them special food (regulation) and they do not need to compete with other goldfish for the naturally available food.

Because government is sticking it’s nose in the sphere of business regulation, graft and pull sets in, and companies become ultra powerful, and even globalist, simply because their government buddies and lobbyists suspend the effects of competition for them alone.

Now, due to that, companies like Goldman Sachs exist, and suddenly everyone wants to wake up and regulate and tax them into submission. Too late. Rather remove the asshole who feeds them, from government. It’s the only way, because he is the only thing sustaining them. Do that, and natural selection will take care of the rest.

But voters allow the tail to wag the dog. They insist on voting idiots into all levels of government (including the current, yours and mine) and at least the last 10 US presidents and the last two of ours, is proof positive of that.

Which would be fine, it is your country after all. IF the US stayed within it’s borders, economically and miltarily. But now, the US sneezes and the world gets the fart. And not any of the benefit and protection and fathering that the US sells every war or intervention with.

Undisturbed capitalism is essential in a democracy. Because democracy allows you to vote specific people into position. And that allows for all kinds of bullshit to happen. And competition is the only natural antidote to this.

If it were not a democracy, and there was absolute rule, socialism could work in the short run, because you simply not be able to vote your benefactor into position, and your lobbyist would not be able to sway him. But in the long run, socialist are the greatest robber barons of them all. They are just not upfront about it.

But, now you have a democracy, so the only financial philosophy that could work in a democracy remains untainted capitalism, simply because natural competion is the only defence against Goldman-Sachs like oligarchy. The only. But everyone wants to make capitalism the culprit, because the great socialists have said it is so. And the masses seethe – unthinkingly.

So, in the the end, I want to simply have people see that is not ‘business left alone’ or guys who work themselves rich who are the culprits and who should be punished by tax or whatever.

It’s the guy who uses the unproductive, lazy moocher’s vote to get into power who should be penalized. Get rid of the lobby system. It’s the greatest tool used for wrongdoing in the world today. Think about it. Everyone wants to say it can be used for good, but the good that is done with it can never compensate for the wrong it smuggles in.

Because if you think he is getting a smaller “bonus” than any fund manager, I honestly believe you are sadly mistaken.

Oh and here is another unrelated idea. What about “No tax no vote?” Could it work?

may I speak up a bit?

@jucedupp

“they have a buddy feeding them special food (regulation) ” – Deregulation is what causes the cancer. Regulation, here, is like the chemo.

“Undisturbed capitalism is essential in a democracy.” – Actually, capitalism is an economic system and democracy is a system of government. They are compatible, but there are also equally compatible combinations.

“If it were not a democracy” – It’s a Republic, actually.

“so the only financial philosophy that could work in a democracy remains untainted capitalism” – Tell that to the socialist democracies.

(Actually, we haven’t had a free market in ages and ages. Even since before last quarter.)

“What about “No tax no vote?” Could it work?” So how much should they have to pay to vote, in your democracy? If they pay extra, can they have more votes?

“And the masses seethe – unthinkingly” Finally, we agree.

@jucedupp Being tired at the moment, and certain that many of our friends here tire of this debate as well, I will just say that I disagree with nearly everything you wrote and agree with nearly everything that @laureth wrote. I have presented you with actual examples and I feel you respond with untested ideas you wish me to accept simply because you assert that they are true. Provide me the proof your ideas will work, and I am more than willing to consider them. But since I have provided proof my ideas work and you are not willing to consider that, but stick to untested theories, I do not see any point in carrying on this discussion. Let’s agree to disagree, and leave it at that.

@laureth

OK…
A regulatory environment allows for regulations that circumvent the first regulation ad infinitum. Regulation is the main ingredient that is neccesary for graft and pull to operate.

I did not say democracy and capitalism is the same thing. I said one is necessary for the other to truthfully operate. Socialism and democracy are not compatible. because socialism needs a non democracy or at best a fake democracy to operate. Socialist only think they have democracies. It’s an eyeblind.

“Actually, we haven’t had a free market in ages and ages. Even since before last quarter.”

Exactly my point. Thanks socialism.

Nah. if you work and pay tax, you vote. Thus politicians would be much more truthfully motivated to allow (regulate, deregulate, whatever) to allow for an economy that can create jobs.

@ETpro I do not ask you to accept ideas. I ask you to accept logic. Guilt and ego (the motivators behind altruism) are not logic.

You have not presented me with proof that your ideas work. You have only presented me with ideas, which I addressed, each on heir own.

Sorry for tiring you.

@jucedupp I totally accept logic. I do not accept that gulit and ego are the motivators of altruism. The golden rule perfectly defines altruism, and also holds humanity’s greatest potential for survival. We are already the fittest. We eat Orcas, for goodness sake. The threat to humanity’s continued survival today does not come from liions and tigers and bears, oh my. It comes from our own greed. And advocating greed is good as a moral ethos is advocating the eventual end of human kind at our won hands.

@ETpro OK. I will make one last argument and leave it at that. The problem with Altruism and the golden rule (by that I guess you mean “Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.” In my country the golden rule is “Keep left pass right”, hehe,) is that you disregard human nature or hope and believe that the larger portion of humanity will eventually change their fundamental nature. Thousands of years of history disprove that notion.

Altruism is self defeating IN THAT the disproportion between givers and takers makes it unsustainable. People will sponge off altruism. The will live off it with no consideration that the resources of all altruists combined are finite and not renewable. As you said, there is only one planet. Why do they do that? Because altruism (and especially the teachers of altruism) teaches them to be dependent, and that it is OK to be dependent.

The beneficiaries of altruism rarely give back or raise themselves up to become givers too. They only come back for more. The reason why I say ego and guilt are the motivators behind altruism is simply that if you go do the math, it is not a sustainable practise. You cannot keep giving and giving and giving and nothing gets put back in.

Therefore, altruism is shortsighted and is done firstly because people feel they have an obligation to be altruistic (guilt) and secondly it makes them feel good to do so (ego), but beyond that very little consideration is given to the after effects, on the receiver of altruism and on the finite pool of resource that funds this altruism.

I have never advocated greed. I have advocated the murder of need by letting people fend for themselves, uplift themselves, and prosper themselves unless they are mentally or physically unable to do so. What is wrong with asking a human who is has a mind and two hands to do so? Altruism stops the need for people to do any of that. And that is why it is morally wrong. Can you at least admit that?

The final point of altruism is often not for the direct beneficiaries of that altruism. I hear the Right decry unemployment insurance, for example, because those people should “just get jobs” and that they “become dependent on the payouts.” That is common sense, right? Logical? However, I’ve found that common sense and logic do their very best, the more data that is fed into that system. In fact, “I have common sense” is often a way of saying,“I make decisions without data and I’m proud of it!”

In this example, unemployment payouts are for the benefit of the unemployed, sure. But they’re also for the benefit of further tiers of employed people. The unemployed in an area will use it to buy peanut butter and baby diapers, for example, from their local stores. Those stores get more business and can afford to keep their clerks and stockers. Those clerks and stockers, with money in their pockets, buy whatever they buy, and those suppliers are kept employed. And if business picks up in an area sufficiently, because of the repeated cycle of exchange, those unemployed people can be rehired. The whole community benefits when the less fortunate are taken care of. And withholding “altruism” here sure punishes the “lazy unemployed,” but it also punishes the store clerks, etc., who depend on the business of the unemployed. Is it morally right to make the grocery clerks suffer to punish the unemployed?

Part two is the insertion of data into the argument. Does unemployment cause people to remain dependent on the system? Sure there are outliers, the ones that they drag before the cameras every time the Right wants to cut their budget. But is it really true? The Federal reserve bank of San Francisco did a study on this very thing, and found that this is true, but really, really tiny, about 1.6 weeks longer for those receiving unemployment. Perhaps they held out for a job that was just a little better fit than being so desperate as to take the first one offered?

That’s one reason that a spoonful of socialism makes capitalism work.

@jucedupp Thanks for the insight into the meaning of The Golden Rule in your country. I hadn’t heard that one. Yes, by Golden Rule I meant the rule first set to print in the Hammurabi Code over 3700 years ago. That rule, basically “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” is the underpinning of modern business and civil law, so it must have at least a kernel of logic in it.

I think @laureth has a great point in noting, I’ve found that common sense and logic do their very best, the more data that is fed into that system. In fact, _I have common sense” is often a way of saying, “I make decisions without data and I’m proud of it!” Unless I miss my guess, your confirmation bias won’t be swayed by any level of data if it conflicts with your current ideology of “Dog eat dog” free-booting, free-market survival.

In fact, there are ample examples of people being saved by the compassion and generosity of others, and going on to give back, or give forward. If you would like to start with enormously successful examples, then how about The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Warren Buffett and and 32 additional extremely generous billionaires? Here are many more. There are so many stories of people who have been helped by the compassion of others giving back that you can only deny that happens by simply ignoring them all because they don’t fit your ideology.

One disclaimer. There is nothing in altruism and compassion that says you need to be a parsy. While I believe in the golden rule, I would be perfectly willing to use deadly force against someone threatening the lives of me or my family. When someone shows that they plan to take advantage of you, they have put the Golden Rule into operation in reverse, and I am quite free to do unto them what they had planned to do unto me.

If we look at history, we began as waring hunter gathers. Because of our superior brain power and throwing ability, Homo Sapiens apparently wiped out Neanderthals about 30,000 years ago. Since then, we have gone through the age of warlords, the age of wars for empires, rape-and-pillage barbarians, feudalism, the age of colonization and now the age of the Rule of Law. If your plan is to follow the oldest edicts that drove the conflict with the Neanderthals, it is you and not the altruists following the Golden Rule who will find yourself on the wrong side of history.

@ETpro @laureth

OK. You make valid points. And I actually looked at all your links. Now. Let us do a little math. Let us take all the billionaires in the world. Let us take all their reserves and assets and liquidate it, as well as everything they will earn for, let’s say the next 10 years, and put it all in a big pot right now. Let us also take half the savings of everyone on the planet who has, let’s say more than $5000 in the bank, and add it to the pot.

Now let us distribute that money equally to all the “needy” in the world. Lets say each gets an amount that they are to do with as they please, whether eating it directly, investing it, whatever.

Let’s do that all today.
Give it one year, and then let us look at the state of the world again.

Do you argue that the needy will be better off? That the state of the world economy will be better? Or will it, as I believe, simply look the same, just without billionaires and people without savings?

What I am saying is that altruism can never be anything but a stop-gap measure, because the resources are finite. Your nappy and peanut butter buyers will need further altruism to buy their next batch. An economy that depends on grants (your grocery clerks et al) is not an economy at all, because simply, the consumer’s production does not equal his consumption.

I firmly believe that every person with able hands and mind can be a trader, an entrepreneur. No they do not need to “go get a job.” There are no jobs. How could there be? But every man can plant a few rows of corn or a patch of pumpkins or raise a few cattle. But now, the world is giving them cattle, and not teaching them to breed them, but to eat them, and to eat the seed, instead of planting it. Altruism rarely realistically goes beyond the the great sound byte.

That is why millions of tons of grant food etc is sitting rotting in harbours all over the world. Because the altruist rarely goes beyond simply doling out. And it looks great in the media. Bill Gates gives away half of bla bla bla. Does that really have an effect that will take the world and lift it up out of it’s current state?

What I am saying is, that if altruists could stop just giving and actually just take that money, and invest it in mass-employment (and income) generating BUSINESSES worldwide, whether they be agricultural, industrial etc, no matter.

But right now, all that is happening is that government regulation, unionism and socialism are preventing those very billionaires from doing just that worldwide, because generating employment, creating an income, building wealth is evil, if you keep any of it for yourself and do not give it (or at least half) away.

Because a rich man, is an evil man, because he MUST HAVE exploited someone along the way to get there, it is simply inconceivable that he did it by not exploiting someone.

@ETpro, you say you run a business. Are you saying that the level of taxation against that which you have generated by your labor, mind and dilligence, is not a form of force against you and your family? And before you say no, do you have a choice?

Everyone says that my idea of capitalism makes wealth accumulate at the top. What nobody is willing to admit, is that, is that, in most cases, that guy did something to get there. And it’s so easy to say that it was exploitation that got him there. You know what? Anyone has a chance to do just that. That guy also just has two hands and one mind, like Bill Gates does. Did he exploit? Probably a matter of interpretation. But, oh he’s giving it away, so all’s good and forgiven.

That’s the thing. In an area where people have low employment and little money, there’s going to be little demand for whatever goods or services an entrepreneur has to offer. People have to have some resources to pay for my pumpkins or corn, and they need to want whatever it is I’m selling. (It’s also easier to start some corn or cattle when you already own or can rent some open land – and not very easy in the inner city.) While I am all for people starting to do some home food production, by the way, it’s also not something everyone has the talent or inclination for. (By this, I mean that not everyone is suited to become an entrepreneur.)

Anyone has a chance to get to the top, sort of. It helps to have judiciously chosen the right ancestors. I would say that Warren Buffet’s son has a much greater chance of ending up “on top” than does the guy working the grill at the Burger King down the street. Being an entrepreneur requires things that Burger Dude might not have: seed capital, zoning permits, time not already devoted to his job or familial obligations, education, business sense, and a market for his product, chief among them. Also, when people are living on the edge (as are the people you want to start a business), the risk of a new venture is sometimes unacceptable if it means the possibility of being even worse in the hole. Considering the number of businesses that fail in their first year or two, this is a very real concern.

I suppose increasing taxes to provide business education and loans to startups would be an unacceptable redistribution of wealth, though, right? If they want a business, they should work for it – even if it means working at the fry-o-lator until you’re 48 years old to save up the seed money to take a chance with. Everyone has the chance to do that, I suppose. But how many succeed, and if very few succeed, is it really a chance? (Do you consider criminal enterprise to be a legit small business opportunity? It’s often the easiest to get into for someone with nothing.)

I leave you with two more links: this one about the drain of the middle class without regulatory protection (the playing field is not level) and these graphic demonstrations of the wealth inequality in America. Please note that I am not saying all wealth should be equalized, like you seem to think we want. Clearly those who earn it will have more than those who do not. But the U.S. is beginning to see the sort of gap between rich and poor that is most evident in third world kleptocracies – places where the standard of living is quite low for the vast majority of people who are not the local equivalent of the aristocracy. The places in the world where most people would want to live are most often associated with a more egalitarian distribution of wealth – and chances to improve.

@jucedupp I take your point about food rotting. That is not the rule, but does happen all too often. I do not take that as a valid reason to abandon charity, but as reason to look at how to improve its delivery.

There is a Chinese proverb that tells us, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” There are numerous charities, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation among them, that target their giving toward teaching skills and providing the wherewithal for people to feed themselves and others for life. Some provide seeds. Some teach farming skills and techniques to grow crops in arid lands. There are the microloan programs. If you Google “microloan program” you will find tons of them.

As to my business taxes, you may be surprised to hear that I do feel that small businesses in the US are overtaxed. We have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, and that added cost hurts our competitiveness in a global economy. We also have a Congress setting tax policy that gets elected using money very big businesses donate. Little surprise that Congress has enacted tax dodge after tax dodge for big, global corporations, and virtually none little guys like me can use. About ⅔rds of US corporations pay no corporate income tax. Exxon-Mobil was the most profitable corporation in the history of the planet last year, and they ended up owing no US corporate income tax. I do not think that is fair or wise tax policy.

We have been experimenting here in the USA over the past 30 years with making the tax system much less progressive than it used to be. We are not yet near the point you dream of, with a flat tax or sales tax. But already, as @laureth‘s charts suggest, wealth inequality has exploded and we are on the way to eliminating our once growing middle class. However unfair it may seem to those who think they will be the billionaires, America’s best years were when we had a highly progressive tax. And we made plenty of millionaires and billionaires in those times. We also built the world’s strongest middle class. Our relatively well-heeled middle class was the economic engine that drove consumption, setting up a playing field where the clever entrepreneur could make a fortune. If the whole world follows your advice, the income inequality that will produce will mean that a tiny handful of oligarchs will sit atop generational wealth, and the vast multitude will be confined to generational poverty. We already tried that. It was called Feudalism. I have no interest in living in that sort of world. If you do, and your country isn’t already one, there are any number of banana republics you could move to.

@ETpro @laureth

I submit the following short article for your comment.

http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0311/0311whatwouldfounderssay.htm

J

A book ad? Okay. Here’s one back for you, @jucedupp :)
What would the Founders do?

@jucedupp What the Founders said that interests me most is what they deemed important enough to record in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Without first reading Dr. Perkoff’s book and researching his references to specific letters and thinking of various Founding Fathers, I am in no position to say any more than that. Further, I do not think the men of the 1700s were trying to solve the same problems we confront today, so just slavishly following what they said in personal letters or pamphlets about a wildly different world seems patently absurd to me. The Constitution, with its Amendment process to keep it relavant to today’s world, is what I find compelling.

The thing I notice about the objections to Rand’s works, is that every one seems to point out why it wouldn’t work, when the entirety of Rand’s writing points out that it doesn’t work in practice. She said herself that she couldn’t find the type of people whom she could admire, so she created them in her writing.

Objectivism would work, if everyone acted in their own rational self-interest. But, as Rand often lamented, real people usually don’t act in their own rational self-interest. If Madoff had rationally considered his own self-interest, he might have made different decisions. I bet right now he’s regretting the decisions he made. The point, as @BhacSsylan said, is that screwing over your neighbor, your employees, your investors, etc. is not in your best self-interest. Emotion usually (if not always) runs counter to rationality. Since we are largely emotional creatures, we often make irrational decisions. Take, for instance, the largely emotional reactions to Rand’s theories. Just hearing someone say selfishness is good/altruism is bad causes such discomfort in many people that they dismiss any further discussion without giving it the objective evaluation the idea deserves.

In theory, Objectivism would produce the sort of utopian society seen in Galt’s Gulch. But, in theory, so would Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Anarchy, Monarchy, or American Idolarchy. If we’re discussing these things as a thought exercise, let’s stop telling each other why it could never work, and start asking how it might work.