RoR: Forum

Excellent article.

Professor Machan correctly identifies the drive of the Progressives is to control others. I've written before about the Trojan Horse model of Progressive legislation, where they seek some moral cause they can trumpet, like bringing Health Care to the poor, and then they dress it up on the outside with all they can to make it attractive (lies and deception welcome here) - like, "It will lower health care costs" "You can keep your doctor, and your insurance." They also use fear of not jumping on the band wagon. But what they secret inside the horse is control - pure and simple - control of everything they think they can get away with. Nancy Pelosi was really on target when she said you have to vote for it to find out what is inside.

Reading Professor Machan's article, I was struck with how the legislation he mentions is similar. I'll give this form a different name: Projection legislation. In psychology "projection" is ascribing to others their own unacceptable feelings. Greed and envy are described as "fairness" legislation. They call the rich greedy, and call for fair legislation to take away their money and redistribute it - never admitting that anyone supporting it does so out of greed or envy or hatred of those they want to attack with progressive taxes. They project their greed onto the rich, then morally condemn them for being greedy, then from this lofty moral stance they call for 'fairness' and demand the passage of the Progressive's control package.

It is a kind of three-party process. The victims are those whose rights will be violated. The Progressives conjure up the set of controls they want, and they design the Trojan Horse legislation or the Projection legislation that will carry their chunks of controlling law. Then they mount their moral charge. With the Trojan Horses they mostly are rallying useful idiots - people who buy into the surface arguments - true believers in the surface goals. And with the Projection legislation the party they count on to help them are the people who jump on the chance to vent their anger at those who have more than they do, and maybe those that hope to be beneficiaries of the loot. The greedy get to call the rich greedy in the name of 'fairness.' And everyone for no apparent reason at all seems to be constrained to pretend that this is acceptable and tolerable.

I see this, from the perspective of the long view as an intermediate stage for the Progressive. He is using tyranny of the majority to move towards the goal of eliminating democracy, as soon as enough power rests in the hands of the elite in Washington. They have already gained enough power to have made great inroads towards eliminating constitutional rule, and perverting representative government. In the meantime, manipulating democracy with lies dressed up as moral crusades that really just smuggle increased chunks of control into law is the game that will continue the transformation.

I hope that we all focus on the sneaky political/psychological forms laws can take - these Trojan Horses types or Projection Legislation types, because we can't be vigilant if we don't know what we are looking at.

Post 1

Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - 7:52am

An Objectivist friend of mine recommended The Winner Take All Society to me when it first came out. After he read it, he sent me his copy. He said that he disagreed with their proposals, but that the main point was compelling.

This was the same point that Ludwig von Mises explored in The Anti-Capitalist Mentality. Intellectuals disdain popular writers for appealing to the masses who refuse to buy the works of the intellectuals in such numbers. But, says Mises, note that those popular writers "rip the lid off society" and "expose the rich." Though Mises does not name them, I thought that he was referring to Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, et al. Miss Marple is very polite, of course, but is not of the better classes whom she investigates. John Steed and Emma Peale of The Avengers are commoners. In one scene, as a tailor pauses for his name, "Sir... Sir?.... " Steed demurs: "Gentleman without title, I'm afraid." We know John Steed to be the better man, but he lacks social status, submerged by the nobility and royalty. And we the public pay well for the entertainment.

Realize that while The Fountainhead ended nicely for us, Henry Cameron died in the shadow of Guy Francon. How could the IBM-PC have triumphed ove the Macintosh, the Amiga and the Atari ST? Why did IBM never actually produce an innovative desktop?** The by-word of the corporate people was "You can't get fired for recommending IBM." Safety, not innovation, was (and remains) the path to success in a corporation. It was the Peter Keatings of the world who made the IBM-PC the industry standard.

Look at the works of Ayn Rand. What are the best sellers? But what did she consider her most important work? When the Ayn Rand Institute touts the sky-rocketing sales of her books, they do not list Introduction to the Objectivist Epistemology.

If you read The Winner Take All Society you will see that they marshal more than enough evidence to validate their premise, even as we reject their solution.

When it comes to music, I judge it by the cover. I go to a used record shop and flip through hundreds of bargain CDs, picking by genre for classical, jazz, and new age. I have three different recordings of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. I think that I know every note. I cannot say that the World Famous Pianist with Orchestra and Conductor are any better or most faithful to the original. I mean, you do have to strike the right notes in the right order... but given that... well, who is worth a million and who is worth a hundred thousand? I enjoy Yanni (really), but nice as it is, it is not ten or a hundred times better than many many others.

I am not a jock by any stretch of the imagination, but I like baseball well enough to watch it if it is on where I am. The college world series and women's championship softball were both far better than any professional game I suffered through, with an exception for the fifth game of the Indians versus the Mariners in 1995. How can you get paid a million dollars a year and still drop the ball, or overthrow the fielder, or ignore the coach? The game is what it is: it's hard to do. For everyone. Professionals do not play any better than competent amateurs. They just get paid obscenely more because they and their teams and their leagues and the culture of sports appeal to the lowest common denominator of sports fan: pot-bellied couch potatoes with no lives of their own.

No one ever lost money under-estimating the American people.

But that is not the whole story. A free market ensures that other stories get told. We do have alternatives to Big Name Sports and World Famous Musicians. If you don't like what you find, then produce your own.

The myriad problems with taxation of the "too wealthy" are known to all of us here. No one here favors taxation of anyone as a positive claim. But the premise of The Winner Take All Society remains valid.

** Actually, they did: The IBM 5100 circa 1977 was programmable in Basic and APL. But it had no support in the company. And it was marketed to secretaries who were expected to write their own word processing routines. ... which would have been interesting... but not the "winner take all" path to success.

Post 2

Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - 11:36am

How could the IBM-PC have triumphed ove the Macintosh, the Amiga and the Atari ST?

The free market? What else?

Safety, not innovation, was (and remains) the path to success in a corporation. It was the Peter Keatings of the world who made the IBM-PC the industry standard.

Apple was (and remains) a corporation. Neither Amiga nor Atari were produced by Black Forest elves. This is another Marotta anti-corporation rant. He found Amiga, or the Atari ST, or a Macintosh superior for his needs, more appealing to his sensibilities... then he takes that and a leftist kind of hatred for corporations and subjects us to another anti-corporation rant. Never imagining that anyone could have a rational reason for their purchase decisions - not if they are a big corporation.
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Professionals do not play any better than competent amateurs.

Well, actually they do. I'm not in to any sports at all, but even I know that.
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They just get paid obscenely more because they and their teams and their leagues and the culture of sports appeal to the lowest common denominator of sports fan: pot-bellied couch potatoes with no lives of their own. No one ever lost money under-estimating the American people.

Wow! Is it just me, or does that read like virulent envy, or hatred - and an insult to the American people that smells like rank snobbishness?

Like I said, I'm not into sports at all. I almost never watch any on TV, but I don't feel compelled to insult those who do. Here are some things I see in a culture that adores their sports: A strong, positive emotional response to competition where success is based upon ability, to an area of life where clear rules known in advance, to a system where rewards go to the victors, to an environment where good sportsmanship and justice are normal, to a culture where camaraderie and competition exist side by side, and the fans find a feeling from deep within that those who reach the very pinnacle of ability should be given extraordinary respect and rewards as if we all owe those who produce at the highest levels - even if it is only our respect. People pursue their favorite sports for the joy it gives them - is that bad? If millions enjoy a particular player or musician, and they are willing to spend a few bucks to view them, then is it wrong for that star to receive those millions?

It isn't my cup of tea, and psychologically I see the degree and intensity of involvement in spectator sports indicative of things missing in our culture - that there isn't enough of the heroic to be celebrated in our culture in other areas, or enough outcomes in the rest of our lives where ability is rewarded as directly, or where people can commit without reserve - just going for it all the way.

It is a fallacy of being too concrete bound to not look at the symbolic, value-based nature of an emotional reaction that people can get from either art or sports. If someone had a strong emotional reaction to viewing an oil painting, we know that something about the way the artist recreated reality allowed that viewer to connect with some aspect of their deepest values. We would understand how foolish it would be to say, "Hey, why are you getting emotional? That is just a bunch of oil-based pigments smeared on a piece of canvas as a two dimensional representation of something."

The pay scale a free market provides to those few who are seen to be at the top of their profession in areas like music or sports can also be seen as symbolizing success at the drive to be the best - something that we all have been introduced to as we grew up. To value the best is built into our pursuit of life (the best doctor when we are sick, the best food when we are hungry, the best career for our life, the best example of clear thinking, etc.) Life is about choosing among alternatives. One will be better than the others. We go for the best.

But step away from the symbolism our psychology uses so fluently in our emotional lives, and look at the market structure. If you rank all 'products' in a genre (e.g., baseball pitchers) according to a competency factor (and perhaps tweak it up or down with a factor for personality and likability) then order all baseball players scores into a graphical shape, like a triangle, where the base of the figure is made of those with the lowest scores (even I could get in here at the bottom), and those at the top having the greatest abilities. That distribution in and of itself will leave millions of fans bidding for the experience of watching the very few at the top, and no one bidding anything for watching me, and the millions of others that occupy the bottom rank.

People, who aren't warped in some fashion, can be emotionally exhilarated by seeing the best. That's simple enough to grasp. Just as art gives us an emotional reward for seeing our deepest values being recreated and represented in the art work, so the symbolic elements in sports can do the same kind of thing.

There are those who hate that they aren't deeply appreciated and they project hatred onto the system that give great rewards to others, and onto the successful who are getting the great rewards. To me their rants just sound like an ugly tantrum from a brat who wants to get more attention, to be loved without being lovable, to be respected and revered but without competing or achieving that which the market wants.

Post 3

Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - 1:31am

"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived, and he lifted darkness off the earth.Throughout the centuries, there were men who took first steps down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. The great creators - the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors - stood alone against the men of their time. Every new thought was opposed; every new invention was denounced. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered, and they paid. But they won.
No creator was prompted by a desire to please his brothers. His brothers hated the gift he offered.
His truth was his only motive.
His work was his only goal.
His work - not those who used it.
His creation - not the benefits others derived from it - the creation which gave form to his truth.
He held his truth above all things and against all men. He went ahead whether others agreed with him or not, with his integrity as his only banner. He served nothing and no one. He lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement." Howard Roark�s �Courtroom Speech� in The Fountainhed.

The Creative Genius
Far above the millions that come and pass away tower the pioneers, the men whose deeds and ideas cut out new paths for mankind. For the pioneering genius to create is the essence of life. To live means for him to create. The activities of these prodigious men cannot be fully subsumed under the praxeological concept of labor. They are not labor because they are for the genius not means, but ends in themselves. He lives in creating and inventing. For him there is not leisure, only intermissions of temporary sterility and frustration. His incentive is not the desire to bring about a result, but the act of producing it. The accomplishment gratifies him neither mediately nor immediately. It does not gratify him mediately because his fellow men at best are unconcerned about it, more often even greet it with taunts, sneers, and persecution. Many a genius could have used his gifts to render his life agreeable and joyful; he did not even consider such a possibility and chose the thorny path without hesitation. The genius wants to accomplish what he considers his mission, even if he knows that he moves toward his own disaster. Von Mises, Human Action, "Action Within the World" (1966 ed., pg 139) http://mises.org/Books/humanaction.pdf

SW:"A strong, positive emotional response to competition where success is based upon ability, to an area of life where clear rules known in advance, to a system where rewards go to the victors, to an environment where good sportsmanship and justice are normal, to a culture where camaraderie and competition exist side by side, and the fans find a feeling from deep within that those who reach the very pinnacle of ability should be given extraordinary respect and rewards as if we all owe those who produce at the highest levels - even if it is only our respect."

I agree 100% and that is why I enjoyed watching the college world series. It is why at a park, I stop and watch the sandlot softball games. It is why I enjoyed the Olympics this last time around, stopping on my security patrols to catch women's archery and fencing, for which no million dollar incomes exist. And I did not care who won. I only cared that it was done excellently.

The wider topic is whether or not most people in most times and places make mostly right choices. I believe that they do not. Mostly, our society has the wrong values, in fact, a general lack of values, certainly a dearth of objective values.

Post 4

Sunday, December 29, 2013 - 8:24pm