RoR: Forum

[Cough] 90% tax on AIG bonuses [Cough]...

This may be low hanging fruit, but I thought the quote pertinent.

(Edited by Tyson Russell on 3/28, 9:40pm)

Post 1

Saturday, March 28, 2009 - 9:43pm

Yes, timely. Bye, bye bonuses.

Post 2

Saturday, March 28, 2009 - 9:58pm

Just glazing over this same essay tonight, I found a rather humourous quote as it relates to the current economic climate...

In writing of antitrust laws Rand wrote, "If I decided to start competing with General Motors tomorrow, what part of their facilities would they have to share with me in order to make it "practicable" for me to compete with them?"

The answer: none! :)

Tyson

P.S. And this is how I spent my Saturday night!

Post 3

Sunday, March 29, 2009 - 12:57pm

One of the problems here is that the Common Law has been replaced by the law of corporations.

In most cases, this has worked to the advantage of the corporation. Frequently, when a corporation has done something, taken some risk, ignored side effects of its actions, as in polluting a water source, corporate law has meant that class-action lawsuits might be thrown out on the grounds that corporate law already provided a remedy, typically a slap-on-the-wrist fine that did nothing to deter future incidents and nothing to help the victims.

You take the good with the bad. If the corporations are able to evade responsibility in the one case, then they can't claim to come under the Bill of Rights in the other. That's just another problem with this state-fiat monster.

It is sad that honest businessmen get tarred with the same brush in the public's eye, as they are effectively forced into the corporate model in many cases, just in order to control risk from punitive lawsuits or to be able to get tax advantages or access to contracts with other companies that may be flying under a corporate flag. Once again, it is the subversion of the Common Law, which is not inherently an invention so much as a recognition of natural facts, that has put us in a position of conflicting interests.

In normal society, there are no conflicts of interest between rational men. Give one set of parties special privileges as a child of the state, effectively a new kind of feudalism, and you create unnatural conflicts of interest that multiply and suck more and more energy from the market until it collapses.

Post 4

Sunday, March 29, 2009 - 1:34pm

Ryan's prediction of the day: At some point it will be asserted that its "unfair" that those "lucky" enough to make enough income to contribute to IRAs get to shirk their responsibilities by avoiding taxation today, when so many "unlucky" don't have that option. It would be much more fair to tax all income at all times so that everyone may be provided for fairly. It would only be fair to everyone to make that taxation retroactive to existing retirement accounts. I hope I'm wrong.

Post 5

Sunday, March 29, 2009 - 2:27pm

Phil, your statement, In normal society, there are no conflicts of interest between rational men, post 3, is a dangerous mis-statement if you mean to be consistent with Objectivism.
The principle is that there are no conflicts of interest among rational men. Don't casually add qualifications such as, "In normal society," Doing that misrepresents, and, if taken seriously, invalidates the actual principle.

Mindy

Post 6

Sunday, March 29, 2009 - 3:58pm

Mindy:

If I may, both statements are equally valid.

"In normal society, there are no conflicts of interest between rational men," is equal to "There are no conflicts of interest among rational men" because rational men are always a subset of the larger society, whatever its 'normalcy.'

Rational men are rational men, whether in a 'normal' society, a dictatorship, or a capitalist meritocracy. The subset of rational men in any of these societies will relate to each other in accordance with their rationality.

Any potential conflict in any society is reasoned away by rational men through illustrating to themselves the causes and subsequent effects of the sequence of events that led to the outcome and then thinking, "I'm comfortable with that."

Tyson

Post 7

Sunday, March 29, 2009 - 4:36pm

Tyson,

As far as I am concerned, you always "may."

But you are wrong that it doesn't make any difference. Among other things, Phil's statement implies that in emergencies, even rational men can have genuine conflicts of interest. This is a hot topic at RoR at the moment, and, whichever side you subscribe to, you must acknowledge that the arguments depend on a precision that prohibits the looser statement.

Some would argue that, as Objectivism's principle that rational men don't have conflicts only applies to "normal society," emergencies represent situations in which rational men's rational interests do in fact conflict, and thus that reason and egoism urge rational men to consider such measures as killing an innocent other. That is what could happen if we argued using Phil's statement instead of Rand's.

That kind of precision isn't always necessary, of course. But in philosophy it often is.
The grammatical structure of Phil's statement has that phrase, "In normal society..." as a restrictive modifier. He actually said (assuming he was re-stating the Objectivist principle, an assumption that is warranted by the context of the statement, whether or not it is consistent with what he had in mind--I expect he had the Objectivist principle in mind, and didn't intend to mis-state it) that rational men do not have conflicts of interest if and only if they are in "normal society."

Objectivism would be a different system if that were what Rand meant. Defending Objectivism would be impossible if that were what we were limited to. We are trying to explore, promote, teach, and apply Objectivism. Thus the importance of this sort of accuracy.

You take an utopic view of how rational men would invariably interact, but that's another thread.

Mindy

Post 8

Sunday, March 29, 2009 - 6:04pm

Mindy:

Thank you for the reply. Phil may have been loose in his phrasing, but I do not think he meant to undermine Rand's principle. Definitely agreed: there are no conflicts among rational men.

Tyson

Post 9

Sunday, March 29, 2009 - 10:27pm

Mindy wrote,

Phil, your statement, In normal society, there are no conflicts of interest between rational men, post 3, is a dangerous mis-statement if you mean to be consistent with Objectivism.
The principle is that there are no conflicts of interest among rational men. Don't casually add qualifications such as, "In normal society," Doing that misrepresents, and, if taken seriously, invalidates the actual principle.

If you read Rand's essay, "The 'Conflicts' of Men's Interests" published originally in the August 1962 issue The Objectivist Newsletter and reprinted in The Virtue of Selfishness, you'll see that she was indeed talking about a normal social context. Obviously, conflicts of interests are possible among rational men in emergency situations in which the survival of one person necessitates the sacrifice of another. This topic is being discussed on the "Objectivism Q&A" Forum in the thread "Evaluating Initiation of Force in Emergency Situations."

Suppose, for example, that there is an unforeseen catastrophe, which limits access to food, and that the available supply is insufficient to feed everyone who needs it. In that case, there will be a genuine conflict of interest among rational men. There is no reason to think that Rand would deny this and claim that such conflicts could never in fact arise, when they obviously can.

- Bill

Post 10

Monday, March 30, 2009 - 9:39am

Conflicts can arise between rational men in a normal context too. It happens everyday and these conflicts are settled in a civil court. It's possible for two men to be rational yet be in conflict because they are both operating from two different information sets.

Post 11

Monday, March 30, 2009 - 10:24am