GREENSPAN SAYS A.R.M. LOANS reason for economy issues

[onthefence]

Ayn Rand's version of altruism was based on the notion that it was not a moral imperative that one man should live his life for the sake or benefit of another. She called it "The virtue of selfishness". In this regard one could help another if they found it pleasurable as this was based on selfish motives. She expected that people should exchange the best of themselves for the best of others. So, yes, a free market capitalist system where there are no government controls and the greatest minds exchange the best they have for everyone's mutual benefit would be the application of her ideas. Ayn Rands hero's made things, invented things, built things, employed people - they were not investment bankers. Any Rand hated that we went off the Gold Standard. In Ayn Rands world - there would have been no bailout. These loans would not have been made> The looters and moochers would have gone down and main street would have looked to the brightest minds to rebuild the world. They would have been inventors, philosophers and industrialists. She did not consider the markets especially challenging. Actually, where we are today could be the start of a Ayn Rand novel. She would use her philosophy to get us back on the right track.
Greenspan's application of the philosophy is not where he went wrong - and I don't think that great minds made this problem. I do think that there came a point when great minds saw the problem and looked away or sold it short.

[yodajazz]

So the problem was not the government interfering in the market place. It’s just the opposite. Without regulation people tend to get too greedy for their own good and make excessively risky moves to make more money. Or greed from making your own money can end up hurting the balance of the greater society and the circulation comes back to hurt you in the long term.

Really, because it seems that supposed greed is paying off in the form of government sponsored bailouts, again an ill-advised government venture into the market place. I will post some links later that might give people something to think about, just don't feel like fishing them out at the moment.

I was't for the bailout. A lot of these people had the view that government involvement was not needed, before. Thier philosophy was that the market would be self correcting. But I have a strong feeling that there are some deeper things they did not tell us. I wonder if it had to do with retirement funds like the teachers or the federal government', fund. And what about all the numerous 401k funds out there? There would practically be a revolution if some of those big systems fail.

But I am also posting to gloat. This new 60 Minutes piece put the wide spread credit collapse on the Credit Derivitives, credit swaps. They lay it out honest as legalized gambling. It was illegal before 2000, but since then trillions have been invested. And it was entirely unregulated: zero.
http://crooksandliars.com/silentpatr...t-down-wall-st

Go the link and watch the video. After you do, you don't have to praise me an tell me how insightful I am. A simple, "I was wrong Yodajazz", is all the satifaction I need. And I won't even ask you to change your mind that people who made millions and billions off an activity that was only in existence because the government made it legal should pay a little more taxes to that same government.

[qeuqheeg222]

bush had him tamper with the interest rates so that american middle class voters would feel some economic sense of well being goin into the 2004 election..the business people-corps weren't about to raise wages so why not bloat the value of the real estate they could borrow against??

[hippifried]

Yea let me tell you something superstar, if Alan Greenspan really had believed in that then he most certainly would not have become the Chairmen of the most over-reaching quasi-government group in the history of this country. Those statements are about as sincere as would be a current Chinese politician getting up and claiming communism drives their economy lol.

PS- Altruism as used in philosophical circles talks about the sacrifice of one's self or interests to a greater "good" or entity, such as a God, or a nation. She stated that it was essentially evil to ask someone to go against their own interests in the name of some larger entity. That has nothing to do with helping or not helping others, just not doing so at the expense of your own welfare.

[hippifried]

I don't know what the hell happened here. Somehow I got signed out & my whole post got deleted except the quote. Now I'm out of time. Damn infernal contraptions.

[hippifried]

Ok, let's try this again.

The more I look at Ayn Rand, the more fascist she appears. But it's more than that. It's not just corporate control of government, but an elitist monopoly control of upper society with a caste system for everyone who isn't able to force their way to the top. She was a feudalist. The egoist philosophy is a disdain for the general population, with "property rights" taking precedence over human rights.

Democracy is rampant collectivism & therefore anathema to egoism. I see no reason to think it would be far fetched for a Randian egoist like Greenspan to seek the position of the most powerful banker in the world. To have the power to bring down the whole world's financial structure with just a few words. Wealth is power, & vice versa. Overreaching? Not for an egoist.

[NYBURBS]

Ok, let's try this again.

The more I look at Ayn Rand, the more fascist she appears. But it's more than that. It's not just corporate control of government, but an elitist monopoly control of upper society with a caste system for everyone who isn't able to force their way to the top. She was a feudalist. The egoist philosophy is a disdain for the general population, with "property rights" taking precedence over human rights.

Democracy is rampant collectivism & therefore anathema to egoism. I see no reason to think it would be far fetched for a Randian egoist like Greenspan to seek the position of the most powerful banker in the world. To have the power to bring down the whole world's financial structure with just a few words. Wealth is power, & vice versa. Overreaching? Not for an egoist.

First of all there is a distinction to be made between a self-destructive egoist and a rational one. No rational person wants a rule of law (or lack thereof) that allows one person to violate the rights of another.

Further, at no point in our history have we had an actual Democracy, nor should any rational person advocate for one. In an actual democracy the simply will of the majority is seen as the absolute rule. There can be no constitutional safeguards such as we have, as the sovereignty of the simple majority would not allow for it.

If anything, a rational egoist (or objectivist) would want as little government as possible, leaving you free to live your life to your own potential. They simply do not want to be encumbered by the desires of the mindless herd. She actually hates anarchy, and advocates police, courts, etc to protect the rights of people. What she doesn't believe in is forced taxation.

Her philosophy is not about wealth or power, rather it is about the potential of the individual, which happens to be anathema to collectivist desires.

As for "property rights", everything including your life and liberty is viewed as property rights, and have been since way back when. It is the idea that your life is your property to do with as you will, so long as you do not tread upon the rights of another. We have not quite followed that logic to its end point, but we can always hope for evolution to take hold.

[trish]

Everyone has their own definition of rationality. But it doesn’t follow from logic alone that laws shouldn’t restrict the “rights” of others. In addition to rules of inference, premises are required and I simply don’t see how any set of premises can be justified without employing still other premises. No form of government can be justified through rationality alone. I propose a more pragmatic approach: we look at what works and what doesn’t work; we take what we have and more on from there.

I’m not sure what anyone means when they say “live life to your own potential.” Is it some sort of essentialism about human capacities? And to what sort of capacities does it refer? Did the Ripper live up to his potential? Are these capacities innate and completely independent of the environment and community in which the individual is embedded? Did Da Vinci live up to his potential, or would he have been better fulfilled had he lived in a age when his inventions could’ve been realized? In one particular tribal society one’s potential may be quite circumscribed. Though circumscribed one might have absolute freedom to live to that potential and indeed have every expectation of fulfilling that potential. Instead of insisting on the freedom to pursue “one’s potential” perhaps it would be better to insist that society “optimize our potentials and our chances of reaching a degree of fulfillment.” At the same time we would want a society that limited our potential for adverse activities like those of the Ripper, or at least limited our expectations of fulfilling those sorts of potentials.

Once one looks at just how complex the notion of potential is, one realizes that it is not at all obvious how one might construct a form of government around the notion. It certainly isn’t at all clear that minimal government will guarantee us the freedom to pursue our potentials.

It isn’t even clear what one means by minimal government; is it one quantum or two above no government? Imagine for a moment no government. There is no such thing. There are no vacuums. If there is a niche to exploit, someone will rise to exploit it: if not us, then some other agent, a self-appointed king, a corporation and tyrant. That other agent is just government by another name. It seems to me that at all times all the niches for power are filled by someone or something. At all times, under all forms of rule there is the same amount of “government”. There’s no minimal government and no maximal government. There is only who is doing the governing. I’d rather it be we the people, then Haliburton and Exxon.

[NYBURBS]

People always run back to this corporatism argument, yet it is not a valid one according to her philosophy. She doesn't believe in government interference either in aid of corporations or against them.

Further potential at the end of the day has a lot to do with the individual's personal definition of it. Yet you can not realize it if you are subjected to the will of others and what they believe is best for you and them (collective).

As for your Jack the Ripper argument, that is a non-starter. No where is it being advocated that someone should be able to violate the rights of another. In fact criminal laws should protect against such behavior, yet they should not be used to impose moral beliefs. For example she did not believe homosexuality was "moral" per se, yet she stated that laws prohibiting it are wrong as they interfere with a persons right of self-determination.

Did you watch the videos from the links I provided? Certainly she can explain her own beliefs better than I can.

PS- Your argument about pragmatic government is flawed. Dictatorships work quite efficiently at times, especially heavy handed ones. That doesn't mean we should adopt one.

[trish]

Let’s start with

Your argument about pragmatic government is flawed. Dictatorships work quite efficiently at times, especially heavy handed ones. That doesn't mean we should adopt one.

It is not flawed to say that the justification of a set of premises ultimately requires more than just another set of premises. Otherwise one is engaged in an infinite regress. This is the regress that Rand finds herself pursuing in objectivism, which aims (like so many other failed foundational schemes) to establish a thoroughly rational foundation for a prescriptive theory of government. In constructing a government, there is simply no other place to start but from where WE are (and not where the Nazi’s were). Pragmatism is not about justification; it’s about judging what works, what doesn’t and moving on from there. Fascism didn’t work. Trains may have run on time, but the cost in lives alone was ultimately judged to be too high a price to pay. Moreover what is judged to work during one period will probably not work again.

As for your Jack the Ripper argument, that is a non-starter. No where is it being advocated that someone should be able to violate the rights of another.

Nor do you think I suggested it was being advocated. So what then does the Ripper reference address? I raised the Ripper and Da Vinci and hypothetical tribe to illustrate that “human potential” is an extraordinarily ambiguous concept. For the idealists each of us is an empty bowl, some more voluminous than others. Your own conception is that an individual largely defines his own potential. Yet without language, laws, learning and the entire infrastructure of the surrounding community an individual wouldn’t know nor could he express what his potential might be. Under either conception one’s capacity differs depending on how one intends to fulfill it. The gist of the argument is this. If one wishes to place “potential” at the center of a prescriptive theory of government, and moreover if one wishes to prove (in a rigorous philosophical sense, as Rand wants to do) propositions like “…you can not realize it [potential] if you are subjected to the will of others…,” then you really have to have a more stable definition of the very concept of potential.

Finally

People always run back to this corporatism argument, yet it is not a valid one according to her philosophy. She doesn't believe in government interference either in aid of corporations or against them.

You will notice that what you call the corporatism argument is really the there-are-no-unoccupied-niches-of-power argument. It has nothing to do with government sponsorship or non-sponsorship of corporations. It’s merely the observation that behind every lever there will be an agent and the sum of those agents is de-facto government. In this sense there is no such thing as less government, simply different government.