75 replies to this topic

[JLL]

Well, you can either let people decide whether they want to give to charity or you can force them. I prefer the former, but I know there are many who prefer the latter.

[chris w]

Well, you can either let people decide whether they want to give to charity or you can force them. I prefer the former, but I know there are many who prefer the latter.

When walking near a dirty pond and seeing somebody drowning ( and this walker knows how to swim ) what is the action that should be taken ? Sure, you cannot force the person to jump in the water and ruin his fancy suit, but I guess we could agree that one has some kind of moral obligation to, meaning that he could be justly judged as a prick if he doesn't because he earned the money for his clotches and he doesn't want to have it spoiled now. And these are the levels of magnitude here - drowning ( like Africa ) and fancy suits ruined ( rich ones taxed high )

Edited by chris w, 18 May 2010 - 03:32 PM.

[JLL]

We could agree that he is a prick if he doesn't help him, but I disagree that he has a moral obligation to help.

[medicineman]

Uhhh.... who spilled the beans about our secret base on Titan?!

lol.............sheeeeeeeeeeeeeit!!! comment of the week, definitely

[medicineman]

Well, you can either let people decide whether they want to give to charity or you can force them. I prefer the former, but I know there are many who prefer the latter.

When walking near a dirty pond and seeing somebody drowning ( and this walker knows how to swim ) what is the action that should be taken ? Sure, you cannot force the person to jump in the water and ruin his fancy suit, but I guess we could agree that one has some kind of moral obligation to, meaning that he could be justly judged as a prick if he doesn't because he earned the money for his clotches and he doesn't want to have it spoiled now. And these are the levels of magnitude here - drowning ( like Africa ) and fancy suits ruined ( rich ones taxed high )

but that is the randian point, the person who does not jump for his suit is entitled to, and fair enough. But what makes it despicable, is that jumping is greeted positively only if it reaps a benefit of some sort, whether reputation for money, connection, etc. Otherwise, there is no rational reason to. If you were alone, and no one was there to see you and the other person is drowning, I would venture to say, the hardcore Randian would find no reasonable motive to dirty his suit and save the life. He is not defying the NAP by not saving any life since he is not pursuing any harmful activity towards the victim, and by swimming after the victim, he is spoiling his suit. If I have read correctly, Randians label selfless action, or altruism as the greatest evil!!!!!

an example relevant to me is a person in cardiac arrest out of duty times. Do I perform CPR or do I not? There is no benefit for me if the patient is saved, and if not, there might be some hassle coming my way.

Edited by medicineman, 18 May 2010 - 09:45 PM.

[Alex Libman]

I would venture to say, the hardcore Randian would find no reasonable motive to dirty his suit and save the life.

Wrong! Acting constructively in emergency situations does great things to your reputation.

If I have read correctly, Randians label selfless action, or altruism as the greatest evil!!!!!

Where did you get that? Ayn Rand spoke out against forced altruism and she called irrationality the greatest evil.


"There is nothing wrong in helping other people,
if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them."

--Ayn Rand on Charity

Edited by Alex Libman, 19 May 2010 - 04:01 AM.

[JLL]

Besides, rationality and jumping in to save another person are not contradictory -- people care about other people. Saving someone's life makes you feel good.

[chris w]

Wrong! Acting constructively in emergency situations does great things to your reputation.

Yeah, so if there isn't anybody around to see and spread the word of your merits and the vicitm isn't able to do that ( because will be dead or in coma afterall for example ) - no point in jumping if you don't feel like doing it on that day.

Where did you get that? Ayn Rand spoke out against forced altruism and she called irrationality the greatest evil.


"There is nothing wrong in helping other people,
if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them."

--Ayn Rand on Charity

These words confirm to me in full why I choose to piss on Randianism. So probably being in a certain tax treshold would qualify one as deserving or not. Thanks, I didn't know this quote, I will be using it when discussing with other Anarcho - Capitalists, to put them on a hot seat a little. Again - Social Darwinism, Alex. That woman lacked some serious portions of the brain. Adds up with the study about empathy and Libertarianism from the page before that I linked to.

Edited by chris w, 19 May 2010 - 12:07 PM.

[chris w]

Besides, rationality and jumping in to save another person are not contradictory -- people care about other people. Saving someone's life makes you feel good.

And there are also individuals who don't care and it doesn't make them feel good to help somebody, moreover it might make them even feel bad because they're psychos or something - so is it rational for them to let him drown in such situation ?

Edited by chris w, 19 May 2010 - 11:40 AM.

[JLL]

Besides, rationality and jumping in to save another person are not contradictory -- people care about other people. Saving someone's life makes you feel good.

And there are also individuals who don't care and it doesn't make them feel good to help somebody, moreover it might make them even feel bad because they're psychos or something - so is it rational for them to let him drown in such situation ?

Yes.

Do you support forcing people to help other people in trouble?

[Alex Libman]

Yeah, so if there isn't anybody around to see and spread the word of your merits and the vicitm isn't able to do that ( because will be dead or in coma afterall for example ) - no point in jumping if you don't feel like doing it on that day.

First of all, you're stuck in "20th century thinking" about reputation tracking, getting your picture in the local paper and the like. When someone pulls you (or the corpse of your family member / life insurance client) out of the water, the least you can do is leave them a positive comment on Facebook - which is the Microsoft Encarta of social networking, soon to be dwarfed by a freer more utilitarian Wikipedia. Think eKarma 2.0 - polycentric open source reputation wikis, database journalism, etc, etc, etc.

I've lived in the Soviet Union, where the social planners had more than 2 generations to create the "new Soviet man", collectivist morality and all. I've also lived in New Jersey and New Hampshire. My experience has been that the more libertarian a society, the more likely they are to help you. This especially applies to helping victims of violent crime, when dozen of socialist drones just stand there and wait for the police to show up while the libertarians reach for their gun. (See also: Kitty Genovese, bystander effect, diffusion of responsibility, etc.) As a more commonplace example, getting someone to help you jump start a vehicle in Moscow in 1980s required a Vodka bottle (the most reliable currency at the time), perhaps because everyone was so exhausted from standing for hours in grocery store queues and otherwise psychologically traumatized - yet another side-effect of socialism.

These words confirm to me in full why I choose to piss on Randianism. So probably being in a certain tax treshold would qualify one as deserving or not. Thanks, I didn't know this quote, I will be using it when discussing with other Anarcho - Capitalists, to put them on a hot seat a little. Again - Social Darwinism, Alex. That woman lacked some serious portions of the brain. Adds up with the study about empathy and Libertarianism from the page before that I linked to.

Ayn Rand was an individualist who believed in inalienable Rights. The heroes of her novels were repeatedly willing to accept poverty rather than contradict their values. Please try to learn the first thing about the people and philosophies that you're mindlessly insulting!

Socialists trying to criticize Ayn Rand is kinda like gay guys trying to blend in by talking about sports... "Wayne Gretzky totally body-slammed a home-run on Joe Montana last night, hole in one!" Actually the ignorance of Chris W is infinitely worse, because these aren't trivial matters we're talking about, and I've been continuously proving links that to a functional mind would completely destroy his delusions, and yet he continues to repeat them over and over and over again...

Edited by Alex Libman, 19 May 2010 - 10:46 PM.

[AdamSummerfield]

Alex, you make some good points. I've also been reading Justin Rebo's blog about his time in modern Russia. It sounds like a nightmare.
But one thing that I'm reasonably sure about is that where I live, we wouldn't want to see healthcare privatised. In the U.K. I think 13% of money spent in healthcare is in the private sector, and while I admit the French and German systems, which have more private sector occupation, have better outcomes, what I hear about the United States and Republic of Ireland is that dealing with your health is not a pleasant experience.

Edited by caliban, 27 September 2020 - 10:28 AM.

[Alex Libman]

Libertarians don't advocate the American health-care system as the ideal, which is about 50% government-funded and many aspects of government intervention in America are a lot more toxic than they are in Europe. What we advocate is a gradual transition toward free market health-care, which would obviously include private charity.

There is a long list of reasons why many comparisons you see between European and American health-care outcomes are invalid: it is impossible to adjust for the freedom trade-off, for example, as well as fertility rate differences, cultural and genetic factors, diet, and so on. If everyone in America had as few children as the Spanish, for example, ate a Mediterranean diet, worked the same number of hours, walked everywhere instead of driving, didn't suffer post-traumatic stress from serving in foreign wars, etc, etc, etc - then it would be a valid comparison. And then there's the innovation factor: American private sector health care profits finance the breakthroughs that the rest of the world benefits from.

[JLL]

Alex, you make some good points. I've also been reading Justin Rebo's (eternaltraveller on here) blog about his time in modern Russia. It sounds like a nightmare.
But one thing that I'm reasonably sure about is that where I live, we wouldn't want to see healthcare privatised. In the U.K. I think 13% of money spent in healthcare is in the private sector, and while I admit the French and German systems, which have more private sector occupation, have better outcomes, what I hear about the United States and Republic of Ireland is that dealing with your health is not a pleasant experience.

In Finland, taxes are high, and a lot of that tax money is spent on public healthcare. Yet, when you actually need healthcare, your options are either to wait in a queue (which might get you killed if you have something serious) or to go to the private sector. So to get proper treatment, you have to pay twice - first for the public healthcare, which you won't be able to use, and then the private healthcare.

[eternaltraveler]

it is impossible to adjust for the freedom trade-off, for example, as well as fertility rate differences, cultural and genetic factors, diet, and so on.

adjust for differences in the way infant mortality is counted and increased risk of violent death in america and the differences in healthcare outcomes change quite a bit. Throw in

If everyone in America had as few children as the Spanish, for example, ate a Mediterranean diet, worked the same number of hours, walked everywhere instead of driving, didn't suffer post-traumatic stress from serving in foreign wars, etc, etc, etc

etc and I suspect we would be looking at a different picture.

Despite this, the differences we are quibbling over are relatively minor. Our medical technology has much room for improvement.

[chris w]

Alex, if I'm stuck in XX century thinking, then you are stuck in XXV century and already in that Titan base of yours. Libertarianism may be a kick ass ideology, just not with this world. In a surge of sincerity Milton Friedman said once ( and forgive me for not providing a link to that ) that Capitalism is livable exactly as it's not a meritocracy, because if it was, it would be psychologically unbereable to those on the lower level - they would only have theirselves to blame. If the whole world went libertarian tommorrow ( Libertarianism - real Capitalism ) then we would be on our way to social Ragnarok and not the planet becoming New Hampshire. The inclusive, democratic state is the one thing keeping us couple of feet above the everflowing river of shit. You have this manner of reductio ad sovietum, you think you know the nature of the state in general because you and your parents lived in one of the worst possible, and from that you go on saying something like "state health care sucks because Ruskies once drowned their sick WW2 veterans in the lake", you provide basis for philosophy from anecdotes, like that one about jump starting a car in Moscow, that are colorfull but don't prove jack, maybe the Moscowians were simply assholes and not "traumatized with socialism".

Amm, isn't today's Somalia the libertarian dream come true ? And what ? Every single young male in that place already is or dreaming about becoming a quat - stoned pirate, because that's the only economically reasonable thing to do there, and don't tell me the ussuall bulshit that they will be doing ok in 100 years now that they finally have no "Mommy government" confining their bussiness rationality, and yes I agree, these are all no trivial matters that's why I can't stand good minds giving themselves to cult like philosphies like Rand's, that can make you state seriously that Roosevelt was Hitler just without the gas chambers ( because "if he got the chance, he would surely....." ), ad hoc philosophies that justify the need not to give a damn about anything farther from your ass than the grocery store ( I mean "virtue of selfishness" ? How about "virtue of hostility" next ?, this is fucking laughable, you are actually more religious than you know it, seeing reality through black and white lense of one or two principles that you write with capital letters ). Despite massive continual "freedom fighters" propaganda, it's hard not to notice that for years now, the countries with the highest standards of living aren't those with the most free markets, and the least possible state's presence, in form of for ex state funded health care - like Canada, France, Scandinavian ones ( JLL, I will trade places any time with you ) but sure, yeah, they're collapsing any day now. And if I remember correctly the level of pherinatal deaths a couple of years ago in United States was found to being close to that of Portugal, guess not very neat'o.

A night ago I saw Anderson Cooper talk to Bob Dudley, managing director of BP, and seeing what kind of unable, irresponsible, lying sons of bitches those guys are, it's really hard for me to take seriously the whole "free enterprise makes everyone better in the end" theme and the cool randian rationales, I say tax them by the balls. This company had all it could dream about, like kids in closed candy store at night, and earthquaked Haitians have only Sean Penn to help them now that the cameras aren't there anymore. Keeping with the metaphorical pond situation, I find it ok to grab the rope from hands of the rich dude who is just standing there on the shore, and wondering if he should use it... or maybe not.

I have a personal experience to share too, Alex. When Communism ( or "the real Socialism" as it was sometimes ironically called by Poles ) fell, we found out to have massess of people on peripheries who were not only unemployable, but even untrainable - because too dumb and too old to learn anything new, except of what they were tought by Communist state, who assured them that it will always be enough to make a living, qualifications now deemed unuseful by the new economy. So they were just left to rott in lakes of vodka. So please don't tell me I'm like a guy mixing sports in conversation, because trust me, I know my laissezz faire Capitalism probably better than you do, and not from Ayn Rand books but from living under it. Philosophically you just jumped from one extreme wall to the opposite one, because if the former sucked, then the latter must surely be wonderfull. Who's delusional ?

Edited by chris w, 20 May 2010 - 03:22 PM.