he contradicts himself, but there are still some excellent points. I actually think that "the government gets to define what's wrong" is a better argument than an "intrinsic" right argument.
Ayn Rand may not be too popular around here but I think this applies:
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers.
Ayn Rand makes some salient points, but they were hardly original, even in her time. Rand took classic liberalism to its extreme, not realizing that all political systems are compromises between liberty and social power (or collectivism, or democracy, or mob rule or whatever you want to call it). Modern libertarianism is not too popular for good reason: most libertarians assume that if you get rid of government everything will be better, ignoring the fact that human societies have never gone without governments for long. Almost everyone wants to give up some measure of their freedom for safety, otherwise we would all think Somalia was a great place to live. The argument is over how much. Both anarcho-capitalism and utilitarians represent the extreme ranges of the political scale and are clearly unworkable: no one wants unlimited freedom with no safety, no one wants unlimited safety with no freedom.
most libertarians assume that if you get rid of government everything will be better, ignoring the fact that human societies have never gone without governments for long.
Wait, really? You think it just never occurred to libertarians to wonder what would happen if their philosophy were implemented?
Almost everyone wants to give up some measure of their freedom for safety, otherwise we would all think Somalia was a great place to live.
Why are you assuming that there should be a single monopolistic provider of these freedom-for-safety exchanges? And are you deliberately confusing anarcho-capitalism (which Rand abhored) with Objectivism (which calls for governments to maintain police and the military)?
no one wants unlimited freedom with no safety, no one wants unlimited safety with no freedom.
You're still acting as if it is obvious and intuitive that if someone wants something, they want the government to provide it. I think it might be illuminating to replace the government with some other entity, like, say, IBM or the local library, e.g. "Everyone knows we need to provide for people in their old age. That's why I think IBM should take some of my money every time I get paid, and give it to old people." This sounds absurd, of course, but it does bring up the question of why one should automatically assume that a monopolistic government is the only entity that can do certain tasks -- that we should give that stuff up in a no-bid contract without question.
You think it just never occurred to libertarians to wonder what would happen if their philosophy were implemented?
I'm not talking about reason, I'm talking about historical precedent. Many theories about how a anarchistic system can maintain stasis but none of them have real life examples.
Why are you assuming that there should be a single monopolistic provider of these freedom-for-safety exchanges?
the problem is that when it comes to the application of force, competition isn't as efficient as a monopoly is. And I think you're confusing my definition of government. The government is whatever entity has a legal right to exercise force over some population. If that is the library, then the library is the government. In a real life capitalist republic, government competition turns into the two party system we have now, where each side is nominally for pushing the social contract farther left or right.
And are you deliberately confusing anarcho-capitalism (which Rand abhored) with Objectivism (which calls for governments to maintain police and the military)?
I agree with this aspect of Objectivism, the government's role is to provide for the security of economic exchange (enforcement of contracts, military security, courts).
that we should give that stuff up in a no-bid contract without question.
The question to me is not a moral one but an engineering one. Is there any reasonable path from where we are now to a responsible, efficient and effective government?
If you're talking about history, are you talking about how powerful central governments are worth all those millions of brutal murders? So far, corporations have killed far fewer people than governments have, and when corporations do kill, it's generally with the help of the state. Not an indictment of the moral character of statists, just how things work when you monopolize force.
the problem is that when it comes to the application of force, competition isn't as efficient as a monopoly is.
That sounds wildly unlikely. What is special about force that makes it different? And even if force is different, is it worth the cost -- the government that starts out by providing defense and law enforcement relentlessly expands into moralistic regulation, redistributive taxation, and intrusive snooping into citizens' lives. The most successful non-revolutionary conservative movements succeed in slowing this down, temporarily.
The question to me is not a moral one but an engineering one. Is there any reasonable path from where we are now to a responsible, efficient and effective government?
Likewise. But if we're talking about engineering good outcomes, the thing to look at his how to engineer the state away, not how to engineer around the problems that afflict all states.
Corporations don't kill people because they are not legally allowed to. Give them the legal ability to kill people and they will (your example actually supports this, it's when the corporations collude with the government and have a chance of getting away with murder that they do).
you seem to be under the mistaken impression that I am pro government. I'm not. Bad government is responsible for more death than every other problem that faces humans. But I'm also a realist, as you say even the most successful of revolutions has only ever slowed government down. If I had my way the politicians would be dragged from their beds and shot tonight, but the world is not built for people like you and I. As long as intelligent people are a minority we have to engineer around the problems of government because whether you or I like it government is here to stay.
"Corporations don't kill people because they are not legally allowed to"
That's one of the most provocative things I have heard in a while. I have to make a comment here. Please forgive the intrusion. (I haven't read the entire thread)
Corporations are businesses. They provide the best service or product to people at the lowest price.
How could you keep a market interested in your product if you were killing people making it? Do you think some kind of secret trade-off where corporations got to kill vast numbers of people secretly in the middle of the night to keep prices low would actually work for _any_ corporation? If you were a CEO, would you gamble the entire corporate stock on it?
It's the stuff of Hollywood fantasy, not reality. Business is based on good faith, trustworthy contracts, and the moral and physical support of all concerned. You can't just start whacking people and expect any of that to stay around. That's not reality. Yes -- you could sell a dangerous product. But that's not killing people. It's a different thing entirely.
As for "engineering government" to work for you, I assume that's the main part of your thread. I'd simply ask that you do a LOT of reading on engineering government to work for people. There have been a lot of people doing a lot of engineering, so we have a lot of history to read and learn about.
How could you keep a market interested in your product if you were killing people making it? Do you think some kind of secret trade-off where corporations got to kill vast numbers of people secretly in the middle of the night to keep prices low would actually work for _any_ corporation?
How could you keep a people supporting your government if you were killing people running it? Do you think some kind of secret trade-off where the government got to kill vast numbers of people secretly in the middle of the night to keep your standard of living high would actually work for _any_ government?
I don't make the same nebulous distinction between governments and other entities. A government is just type of corporation that is allowed to kill/incarcerate people.
I hope you don't think I am anti-corporate. Quite the opposite, I think that the shared stock company is responsible in large part for the civilization we see today. Feudalism would have continued indefinitely until the markets were allowed to take over. And I think that government should be run like corporation: the interests of the shareholders is made explicit and shares can be bought and sold on the open market. The job of the CEO is to maximize revenue and only shareholders have a say in whether the CEO is doing a good job or not. This is in essence what we have now with congress playing the role of CEO and special interest groups playing the role of shareholders. The only difference is that everything would be formalized and transparent.
And yes, I do a LOT of reading on the history of government, specifically between the renaissance and the 18th century. Read enough and you'll start to see that democracy is a type of fascism. It is a fascism of public opinion but fascism none the less. Our capitalist republic government is not quite as bad as a democracy but it is also not a stable entity, it is a delicate balance between the powers of mob rule and that of individual liberties.
"How could you keep a people supporting your government if you were killing people running it?" - er, because government is the monopoly on the use of force as stated in the social contract? And no, there is no trade-off involved. What, switching words around amuses you?
"A government is just type of corporation that is allowed to kill/incarcerate people." -- what, are you from the school for slow Marxists? I don't even know where begin with you. Do some reading on the rise of the merchant classes during the crusades. Perhaps learn a bit from John Locke about Natural Law. Check out some Hobbes and learn some about the social contract. Government is a completely different entity than a corporation. It's like you're comparing earthworms and 747s. Here's a hint for you: can't have a corporation without a government. But you can have a government without a corporation. That's just for starters.
If you'd like to make an extended metaphor, you're going to have to do much better than just saying "X is the same as Y. Now I want to draw some conclusions." You have to be able to differentiate the history, structure, purpose, evolution, issues, risks, and possible future states of each item. then you show how they are the same. Or conversely, you could go to theoretical underpinnings and come up with a list of common attributes that you could claim are all that matter in regards to your statements. The best I could do offhand is note that both governments and corporations consists of "shareholders" and have an executive section. But even then, "shareholder" is not anywhere near how a person relates to their government.
I'm not your teacher. Go find one. Or find the one you used before and ask for your money back. This is dreck.
you presume I haven't read Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes because I've drawn different conclusions than you? How about Burke and Goethe? Spinoza, Hume and Kant? I can fallaciously appeal to authority too, just because I've read all of these writers doesn't mean I can pass off the onus of thinking on them. I see many of the problems in today's society as going directly back to flaws in enlightenment era ideas about government. And why would you call me a slow Marxist? I hate collectivism, are my posts coming off as anti-corporate just because I called the government one? Assuredly the government is a poorly run corporation but that doesn't mean I'm inditing corporations in general.
And it's not a metaphor, I'm saying that government is literally the same as a corporation. The American government is a corporation whose assets are the land between the atlantic and pacific and bordered by canada and mexico. In payment for the use of this land, every person tithes a percentage of any value they earn/create. People also agree to abide by certain rules of conduct. seems all very straightforward to me. No need to invent some special privileges that government is magically imbued with that a corporation wouldn't have.
Think of it this way, if a corporation decided that it would be in its best interests to start operating off of an island in international waters wouldn't the corporation need to defend its holdings with military force and do its own policing?
The idea that government has some sort of mystical, moral, or intrinsic "right" to run things is nonsense. It's just a group of people who by various means, legal, military, or otherwise have gained the ability to determine what happens on a specific tract of land. That they then set up a school system by which people are taught that they do have a moral, mystical, or intrinsic right to run the place should not be surprising.
The fact that corporations have a clear motive and government does not is part of my problem with government. What the hell is purpose of government? If the purpose of government is just to provide security, enforce contracts, keep foreigners at bay, and otherwise provide a stable environment in which people can conduct private business then the U.S. government is doing a piss poor job and ought to be fired.
Do you know what the U.S. is trying to do? because the system by which it arrives at decisions about what to do seems pretty damn opaque to me. It's certainly not public opinion, but nor is it dictatorship since as far as I can see the man supposedly in charge can't hire or fire people, can't affect major policies, can't decide the budget or any other useful thing.
most libertarians assume that if you get rid of government everything will be better
Except that that's not what Rand advocated. The role of government is to resolve contractual disputes and to prevent the initiation of use of force. She was quite clear that government is necessary.
Because bad parodies are, well, bad, and Atlas Shrugged reads like nothing so much as a parody of classical liberalism written by a recent convert to communism without a shred of literary talent.
Wow, that's pretty harsh. I'm currently reading that book for the first time, and I don't agree with you. Quite the opposite, actually.
Despite the repeated and annoying misuse of the past-tense form of 'light', and the obviously strained attempts to inject philosphy into dialogue, there are some good points in the book.
I would be interested in reading any elaboration you may personally wish to undertake.
There are good ideas in Atlas Shrugged, but they're presented so badly as to resemble a strawman argument. My copy is 1069 pages long, but Rand says nearly everything she has to say within the first hundred. Although, to be fair, I'd read about her and was already a small-l libertarian, so there wasn't a whole lot new.
But before I forget: yep, I'm a small-l libertarian. Rand and her followers and I wouldn't get along well, for the most laughable -- if they weren't pathetic -- of reasons. Peruse some of the results at http://www.google.com/search?q=objectivism+and+libertarianis.... Pretty sad, really.
Rand had a number of other beliefs about topics such as the role of women in a heterosexual relationship and homosexuality that many people living in a modern society in the 21st century will have a hard time swallowing. That her ideas were unpopular doesn't make them wrong, of course. But I think they often were.
Back to Rand's writing in Atlas Shrugged, I agree that the dialogue is bad, often simply not credible. But suspension of disbelief only works when some aspects of the story -- be they characters, settings, events, or something else -- remain recognizable from reality. But very little in Atlas is, certainly nothing key to the story.
We the Living is a much better book than Atlas Shrugged, for what it's worth.
