Come on American people are way to dumb to elect Ron Paul as President.
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Come on American people are way to dumb to elect Ron Paul as President.
Long thought to be vice selfishness is a behavior trait that is generally frowned upon in public, but not among libertarians. Ayn Rand has sought to teach us that selfishness is not a vice, but the opposite; i.e. selfishness is a virtue. Libertarians long for a world where every individual is allowed to pursue and indeed does pursue her own self-interests without interference and of course without interfering in the self-interested pursuits of others.
“Self-interest” is interpreted broadly within libertarian circles. Your self-interests, for example, may include educating your children, participating in the local Parent Teachers Association, giving to charity etc. as long as, in your judgment, you gain a positive return from these activities.
The libertarian conceit is that if everyone pursued their individual self-interests without interference or interfering with the pursuits of others, society will move toward an equilibrium where everyone’s projects and desires are optimally satisfied.
Only in a world where there are no conflicting interests can we have everybody pursuing their own interests without interference and without interfering with the pursuits of others. In the real world, where there are conflicting interests, libertarians require those pursuits be subject to a rational constraint. Libertarians speak of rational self-interests. For example, a libertarian might say that fraud is an irrational pursuit because if you’re caught and word spreads it can be bad for your business. Putting any sort of self-imposed restriction on pursuable self-interests will lessen the number of conflicts, but the rationality restriction will not make conflicts vanish. When there is a conflict between two rational pursuits, the one that survives the conflict is the more rational of the two. If this seems like a shady way to define “more rational” it is. It is essentially trial by fire which might be the ideal way to choose a fireproof fabric but is not the ideal way to decide what is or isn’t rational. The problem for the libertarian is that she would prefer not to appeal to a third party, a government say, or a judge to authoritatively arbitrate a resolution of conflict. In libertarianism, if a conflict arises because two people are pursuing their own rational self-interests, the resolution is most ideally settled through unhampered competition. For the libertarian there should be no big brother who steps in, interferes and mucks up the natural flow of events.
Why not apply the modifier “rational” to the way the society moderates conflict between interests rather than to the interests themselves? For example, it may be rational for society to outlaw fraud but irrational to outlaw all forms of lying. Or it may be rational to settle which hand cream is best through market competition but irrational to decide border disputes by having the disagreeing parties compete for the disputed lands. The problem with this solution is that it allows a third party to step in and decide what is rational. Libertarians would regard that as a resolution of last resort.
It’s the introduction of the term “rational” that creates no end of confusion and difficulty in libertarianism. If everyone could pursue their own self-interests without interference and without interfering in the interests of others, our world would be perfect and there would be no conflicting interests. If the world isn’t perfect, we have to figure out how to rationally regulate our conflicts. How is that done? The libertarian says we simply restrain ourselves by agreeing to only pursue rational self-interests. But what are those? They’re the ones that optimize everyone’s success as we pursue our own individual projects. But how are we to know what those rational self-interests are if we do not consider our interconnected relationship with each other? No one can, by themselves, sit down and judge a self-interest to be one that optimizes the pursuits of everyone else without consulting everyone else. Figuring out what self-interests are rational, in the libertarian sense, is a group endeavor. Yet a libertarian demands the autonomy to decide for herself which of her self-interests are rational and which are not. That even sounds right under the usual interpretation of “rational”. But the usual interpretation won’t do the work required of it by libertarian philosophy.
Nevertheless, libertarians insist their philosophy is coherent and if everyone followed it, society would reach an equilibrium where our liberties are optimized. If true, it is difficult to predict what this equilibrium would look like or in just what sense of optimality our desires will be fulfilled. In the libertarian vision this optimal state is free of “big government.” There will be no government restrictions on trade and all money will be backed by precious metals.
Whereas libertarians see government as an entity that interferes with their self-interested pursuits, others see government as people collectively pursuing their own self-interests. Some of those interests include maintaining the availability of fresh water and safe food, maintaining public safety, public schools, public transportation, police and fire departments, etc. etc. These are generally the things for which libertarians have little use. It’s not that libertarians are against people self-interestedly working collectively toward a common goal; that’s what a business is. The distinction is ... well it’s difficult to discern what the distinction is. Unions and democratic governments are organizations of people united to pursue their own interests, realizing that compromise is sometimes necessary in those pursuits to minimize conflict and maximize individual liberties. Why do libertarians regard the solidarity of laborers to be an irrational interest, but regard the open storage of toxic waste water near fresh water wells to be rational?
Is selfishness a virtue? Socio-biologists attempt to locate altruism in gene complexes that selfishly pursue their reproductive interests. But genes cannot decide for themselves which strategies are rational, that decision is left to the ecological system as a whole and the gods of luck and contingency.
The problem in a nutshell. Not just with libertarianism, but with every utopian social philosophy. None of them can work & tolerate deviance at the same time. They're pipe dreams. All very interesting for academic banter, but any attempt to base governance on any of it is simply out of the question when looking for any kind of "rational" solution to anything. It can't work because there's 6 or 7 billion people on the planet & no 2 people think alike.Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
I make a distinction between the basic libertarian ideal & the fanaticism of Ayn Rand's egoist philosophy. She didn't invent libertarianism, & the libertarian ideal doesn't deny the existence of altruism. She did. If everything is based on self interest alone, there's no moral code. The real ideal doesn't declare the collective society inconsequential. She did. The ideal isn't necessarily based on acquiring wealth & property. Egoism is. There's no libertarian ideal that seeks to enslave mankind to the gold mystique. The egoist cult does. And yes, they're a cult. I refuse to call them libertarian because they aren't. They're intolerant absolutists, & there's nothing libertarian about that. The attempt to usurp the term is just a lame PR ploy. So is the blatant lie in changing their official name from egoist to "objectivist". Well fuck that! There's nothing objective about this batshit crazy nonsense, & I refuse to surrender a legitimate word in the English language to a bunch of assholes who are just trying to convince the public that they're something else. It's dishonest, & you won't catch me calling them anything but egoist (her term).
Ron Paul has been a politician for a long time. He's gotten real good at hiding his cult affiliation. Regardless of how tangled up in the cult he is though, his positions aren't conservative. He's radical. There's nothing conservative about trying to turn all existing systems & traditions on their head to match some ideology that has never existed in practice.
Hello hippiefried.
Indeed libertarianism may trace its roots back at least as far as the liberalism of the Enlightenment that inspired our founders and figured significantly in the thinking of those who overthrew the monarchies and tyrannies of Europe to establish republican forms of government. Skipping forward a couple hundred years, modern libertarianism grounds itself more narrowly in the now outdated, totally unquantifiable, economic mumbo-jumbo of a handful of turn of the century Austrian "economists."
Modern Rand-type-libertarians (the ones you call egoists) believe the the only constraint that should be placed on ego is the self-constraint of what the ego deigns of its own accord to be rational. Rational egos will of course clash, people will be hurt but the strong will survive and the society that evolves will be the one the maximizes everyone's liberty. Right! (It kills me that the people who push this sort of bullshit Darwinism don't believe in Darwinism in the context of biology.) But what is the role of rationalism here? Is the self-constraint imposed by "rational" self-interests supposed to somehow guide the whole system to a more "rational" society. If so, how can one ego decide for itself what actions are rational without consultation and negotiation with other egos. Isn't the agreement to regulate and modify one's actions based on consultation and negotiation with others agreeing to regulation by the group. And if we are going to stake our well-beings on agreements with others, shouldn't we have a way to enforce the agreements? The word "rational," so beloved of objectivists, is fact corrosive to their philosophy. The appeal of egoism is obvious. That it can't work is obvious. So Ayn sprinkled on some rationality, without ever adequately explaining how the term can be non-vacuously interpreted within egoism without destroying egoism.
Deciding what are rational actions and behaviors is an ever ongoing group project.
If you set aside reason, which these libertarians assume everyone uses, how do libertarians deal with money? Self-interest is elevated to a supreme position but individuals don't mint money, be it coins or paper. Do they assume that the value of the currency in which they transact their self-interests is objectively determined? But by whom? Banks? Who owns and runs the bank and monetary policy? Are there interest rates, and who sets them? I understand the fantasy of libertarian society, but I don't understand the reality.
Ha ha ha! I, actually, try to be fair and balanced -- :)Quote:
Originally Posted by onmyknees
I mean, Ron Paul is a politician. Enough said -- ha ha!
I've always said that I agree with Ron Paul on certain issues. And on other issues I strongly disagree. I don't agree with him that the federal government should be, well, essentially dismantled.
But he's the only candidate on either side of the aisle, so to speak, that is speaking out against the wars.
I mean, who can people rally behind if they're against endless wars?
And, too, whereas Obama is atrocious with respect to civil liberties Ron Paul is quite exceptional.
And I, too, agree with Paul with respect to opposing the Patriot Act.
Ron Paul on Extending the Patriot Act - Warrantless Wiretapping and Spying is Bad Policy - YouTube
Ron Paul’s False Founding Narrative:
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/13...ing-narrative/
Damn that evil collective! Everybody's so irrational except me...Quote:
Deciding what are rational actions and behaviors is an ever ongoing group project.
Stavros,
You're making a mistake by assuming that the egoist cult is speaking the same English language as anyone else in the English speaking world. All their major buzz words (objective, reason, rational, etc...) are PR revisions that bear no resemblance to anything you think you learned in school. It's a way of keeping the lights off. They're like cockroaches.
Kristol: Let Ron Paul Go:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/...go_617074.html
How Rick Santorum Misunderstands Ron Paul:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...n-paul/251610/
Again, I'm tryin' to be Fair and Balanced:
Ron Paul's False Founding Narrative - YouTube