Libertarians & Leftists - Of the Same Fabric?

Good points, Steve and Fred.

Steve,

It was the love of being productive - not rolling around in the money made from being productive.

Bingo.

I don't believe that the free market can ever produce a consequence that makes the freeness of the marketplace morally wrong. ... The context is the type of the market, versus a context of an individual act ...

Indeed. In Sowell's A Conflict of Visions, he talks about those who focus on process vs. those who focus on outcomes. There are good processes that lead to the best outcomes for mankind, but when you ignore these processes and just focus on the outcomes, you can muck things up. For instance, if you say to yourself -- "If the free market does something I don't like, then I want to be able to step in and stop it." -- then you are saying that you don't care about the process of value production that only a free market affords, but that you want what you want when you want it (come hell or high water).

Two examples of this are the whiny, spoiled child in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the fable of The Goose that laid the Golden Eggs. In each case, there was an outcome sought at the expense of the very process of value production.

Ed

Post 21

Sunday, February 10, 2013 - 7:35am

Fred,

You know, "the human good" is kind of like the concept of "happiness." It's difficult to pin down. When people try to pin them both down into concrete terms, then subjectivity accidentally enters into the thought processes. A clear example who be a conversation with a child who is brutally honest ...

Little Amber:
I want a lollipop.

Mentor:
Not now, little girl, first you have to do your homework. There are 2 questions left on your take-home assignment. Let's go through them, one-by-one.

Little Amber:
Oh, all right. What's the first one?

Mentor:
Okay, Amber, I want you to think hard about this before answering. Can you do that for me?

Little Amber:
Sure. No problem.

Mentor:
Okay. Here is the question: What is happiness?

Little Amber:
[without thinking] It's when I have a lollipop.

Mentor:
Ummmm, are you sure that's your answer?

Little Amber:
Are you kidding me? I love lollipops! They are good for me!

Mentor:
[pauses to take in the moment] Okay, Amber, now let's go on to the last and final question of your homework assignment.

Little Amber:
Okay, what is it?

Mentor:
Here it is: What is the human good?

Little Amber:
It's when there are lollipops for everyone, and for everyone all of the time! Yippeeeeeeeeee!

Mentor:
Oh, dear, what am I going to do with you, Amber? I want to tell you that there is a certain process that needs to be protected in order to keep lollipops available on a market but ...

Little Amber:
But ... you are going to give me a lollipop, aren't you?

Mentor:
[sighs] Yes, I guess I am. After all, you did finish your homework assignment and it appears that you were being completely diligent, honest, and forthcoming with your answers. It just amazes me how you could be so focused exclusively on your own personal whims at the expense of what it takes to produce value in the world. Oh well, you are young -- you have an excuse to think like that.

Little Amber:
L-O-L-L-I-P-O-P ... gimme` gimme` gimme`! [big smile]

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 2/10, 10:24am)

Post 22

Sunday, February 10, 2013 - 8:59am

Ed:

Conflict of Visions is a favorite read. Another key point that he illustrates is the fundamental irreconcilability between those two conflicting views of justice. There is only an endless tug of war, a forever tension between two views of justice that have no means of congruence.

I think the outcomes based view of justice is seated deeply in atavistic herd instinct genes, more dominant in some of us than others. That, coupled with irrational existential terror -- fear of a barely understood universe and its harsh rules, terror in a modern, less tribal world in which increasingly we feel like we are at the mercy of the incomprehensible mathematics of others.

There is a B movie -- "Cube" -- that is a kind of morality play describing that fear-based view of the universe, and the terror of dependency on the incomprehensible math of others. (That relationship is made literal in the movie, with its manufactured artificial 'universe' of cold rules, and literally, one member of the tribe willing to do the math needed to safely navigate its cold, uncaring rules. There is a 'tell' in the trailer, a line from near the beginning of the movie: "You have to save yourselves from yourselves." In the end, it isn't the 'universe' and its harsh but comprehensible rules that does us in; it is the irrationality loose among us that is our biggest danger. The biggest danger to ourselves is ... ourselves. Does anyone remember how we got here? We aren't getting out of here alive...there is no way out of here...we need to avoid the traps...I'm not dieing in a rat maze...what the Hell is going on?...The Cube ... is us." It's all in the trailer; the metaphor for a certain existentially terrified view of life in this universe is crystal clear.

A "B" movie, no doubt, but I thought the basic message was was a clear illustration of a certain existentially terrified view of the universe, the source of irrationality. It is not about senseless, irrational violence, a group of folks pointlessly locked in a bizarre mechanical trap. It is metaphor for exactly what is trashing this Eden we live in. It is not the fact that the universe has rules making it harder to run uphill than downhill; those rules are comprehensible and permit rational folks to navigate, if not risk free, at least with risk managed.

It is instead the savage mystic irrationality loose in the tribe that drags all of us down.

Check out the trailer here. The metaphor is all in there.

It's an insight into what drives the outcome based folks. They don't want to hear about process based rules; they just want to get out of the maze alive, even if they have to climb over the backs of others to do so.

regards,
Fred
(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 2/10, 10:23am)

Post 23

Sunday, February 10, 2013 - 9:28am

That was a really good movie!

Post 24

Sunday, February 10, 2013 - 10:33am

Great points, Fred.

There are adults who want to escape the responsibility of a human existence and to just simply return to the warm, nourishing sanctity of a womb. In blind-folded fear, they do what they can -- including throwing people under the bus -- in order to construct the womb and escape to a time before there was any personal responsibility to meet life on life's terms.

Ed

Post 25

Sunday, February 10, 2013 - 10:43am

Ed:

Another excellent illustration of outcome based justice vs. process based justice is Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison Bergeron" with its lead-weighted prima ballerinas. (Outcome based justice, when unable to elevate mediocre ballerinas to prima ballerinas level of performance, justifies degrading prima-ballerinas performance to the level of mediocre ballerinas.

It is easy to run downhill; it is hard to run uphill.

Another example is the Community Reinvestment Act. It is too hard to enforce ind9ividual instances of actual discrimination, and so, some sought the guns of government and succeeded to implement a blanket indictment on banks and lenders, blowing by the reasons for any correlation between poverty and available credit, blowing by the reasons for any correlation between race and poverty and neighborhood, and instead conflating them all together, and declaring that any correlation between credit and race was defacto evidence of racial discrimination unrelated to poverty.

By running this downhill outcome based social experiment on a national level, we succeeded in bringing the national economies to their knees. We got it all wrong at once, a confluence of interests. Monopolistic thinking.

Nationalist thinking. OneSizeFitsAll. All our eggs in one theoretical basket, dropped all at once.

Foolishness, even if it was well meaning. The irony is, it hurt those the most exactly who on the surface the policy was intended to help.

Those who pushed this and failed miserably bitterly claim that the reason was 'greedy banks.' That is just nonsense; banks were doing exactly what was demanded of them. You can't pass laws that punish banks for redlining when they deny credit to those in poverty and simultaneously blame them for handing out credit to those in poverty.

Folks can and do try to claim that even today, but they just come across as complete tools when they do.

It was a confluence of national interests all across the board. Acknowledging that is something these tools will never do, because their entire agenda is based on national socialism-- getting it all wrong at once. They will never admit to the inherently dangerous nature of exactly what it is they want, because like the little girl with the lollipop, they want it.

regards,
Fred

Post 26

Sunday, February 10, 2013 - 10:57am

I admired BBT for thier stance!
Government: Take this free money
BBT: We do not need or want it.
Government: Take this bail out money or we will beat you with a stick and close your doors!
BBT: Well if you insist FINE we will take the damn money.

They then went on to repay the money in the legally shortest period of time allowed, In essence saying "fuck you we said we do not need or want your money"

Post 27

Sunday, February 10, 2013 - 5:51pm

those who focus on process vs. those who focus on outcomes

Very good connection. This is a pretty widespread trait in some people across the board. My experience playing poker has exposed me to this the most; perhaps the gambling thrill aspect of the game amplifies the problem. I always referred to this as results-oriented reasoning... I guess we can shorten it to R.O.R. :)

Every good poker player knows the Fundamental Theorem of Poker: "Your winnings in the long run will be the sum of your opponents mistakes if he could see your hand, less the sum of your mistakes if you could see your opponents hand." However, many many pretty good players occasionally ignore this in favor of the results-based approach. There is one hand which will always embody this thought process in my memory. To summarize: a lady had a good hand which she would have played, however a guy accidentally showed his hand (thinking she had folded). The guy had a much better hand, so she folded. When all the cards were out, the lady would have ended up winning. So she followed the process correctly but got burned for it. As they say, "That's poker".

However she didn't stop there. She spent the next few minutes yelling and rebuking the other player for showing his hand, because if he didn't show it she would have won. Then she was mad at herself, saying she should have played the hand even though it was the wrong play to make, because the results showed it was the right thing to do. To further make this ridiculous is the fact that the other player clearly made a mistake and was sorry. In fact if he would have known she was still playing he would have wanted her to play, because he had a better hand at the time!

To me this is the same thinking with the free market. Sometimes you follow the correct process and take on risk in doing so, and it doesn't pay off. Other times you think you are following the correct process, but it turns out your thinking was wrong (you couldn't see the other players hand). In any case it is the process which provides the long-term prosperity, no amount of blowing on dice will change that.

Post 28

Sunday, February 10, 2013 - 8:15pm

Well put, Fred. And good rejoinder, Jules.

Dan,

A friend of mine wrestled with gambling addiction and I've been to Vegas a few times. What I saw at BlackJack tables amazes me. If there are 2 people sitting at the table, and the first guy takes a hit when he shouldn't, then he ends up with a card that -- in a perfect world -- would have gone to the next guy. If then, this next guy notices that that particular card would have given him a pat-hand (e.g., 21) ... he chides the first player for taking the card, calling it "his card."

"That should have been my card! If you would have stayed like you should have, then I would have gotten that card!"

What this fallacious reasoning reveals is a bias toward outcome-focused justice, what you might call: "Having it your way." In reality, there is no mechanism guaranteeing that a certain card will be the one you needed in the first place (so that others can mistakenly take that card away from you), but instead there are just as many times where someone else's mistake leads a good card into your hand. In sum, it actually doesn't matter what the player in front of you does, but that is impossible logic to get across to a gambling addict.

All they can think about is that it really does matter and that their painful destitution is the other guy's fault.

Ed

Post 29

Saturday, March 16, 2013 - 3:32pm

I believe that the heart of each of Ayn Rand's major works was deeply spiritual.... Did I miss something? Can you give me something more specific that tells me Ayn Rand was focused more on acquiring goods than the human spirit?

Thank you for sending me back to my primary sources, in this case, The Ayn Rand Lexicon, under "Life," where she makes it quite clear that the physical survival of the individual human being is the ground of all her ethics.

To my understanding, the clear implication of this is that any effort beyond that required for mere survival is to acquire an ever-higher pile of material possessions, to provide a cushion against deprivation and thereby postpone the inevitable end of the individual life.

Post 30

Saturday, March 16, 2013 - 10:31pm

"There was an air of luxury about the room, but it was the luxury of expert simplicity …the wealth of selection, not of accumulation." -Description of Midas Mulligan's home in Galt's Gulch, as depicted in Atlas Shrugged

Post 31

Sunday, March 17, 2013 - 12:08am

Karl Frederick Jahn,

The Ayn Rand Lexicon, under "Life," where she makes it quite clear that the physical survival of the individual human being is the ground of all her ethics. To my understanding, the clear implication of this is that any effort beyond that required for mere survival is to acquire an ever-higher pile of material possessions, to provide a cushion against deprivation and thereby postpone the inevitable end of the individual life.

Physical survival must be the precondition for the doing of right or wrong, for joy or sorrow, for spiritual exaltation or despair. To take any act, to hold any value, to think any thought, to hold any desire... first you must be alive. How would anyone ever aspire to lofty spiritual heights when they are dead?

Ayn Rand makes it clear that it is the conditional nature of life that presents us with our most basic existential option. We choose. We must choose. We must act to live and to act we must make choices and for that we must have values. That first, most fundamental value must be life. That's the biological, metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical nature of being human. Why would you immediately leap from that to a claim that Rand see's no values beyond a mindless pursuit of "an ever-higher pile of material possessions"?

You really don't understand Ayn Rand or Objectivism if you think her value system ends with material wealth.

I have, over the decades, heard of different spiritual values being proposed. What are you proposing?

Post 32

Sunday, March 17, 2013 - 7:01am

Mr. Jahn,

... the clear implication of this is that any effort beyond that required for mere survival is to acquire an ever-higher pile of material possessions, to provide a cushion against deprivation and thereby postpone the inevitable end of the individual life.

As you said, that is your current understanding. But it is not an understanding with which Rand or I or many others here would agree. When you say that one's efforts (beyond what is required for mere subsistence) are taken to "postpone the inevitable end of the individual life" then, for some reason, you have adopted a "premise of death." If human life could be properly defined as "the ongoing process of death-avoidance" -- then you might be on to something here, but being human is different than that. It is not just about scurrying around like a busy, anxious ant -- grabbing everything that can be carried back to your lair and then warding off invaders. Here are 3 quotes from a half-century ago that speak to this difference:

---------------------------------------------
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/man.html

�It�s only human,� you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept �human� mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure�as if �to feel� were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not�as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not.
------------
Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An�instinct� is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man�s desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a love for life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it.
---------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/motivation_by_love_vs_by_fear.html

You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live. You, who have lost the concept of the difference, you who claim that fear and joy are incentives of equal power�and secretly add that fear is the more �practical��you do not wish to live, and only fear of death still holds you to the existence you have damned.
---------------------------------------------

Do you see how it is that, even though Rand talked about how mankind faces a fundamental choice to live, that she would not agree with the above-depicted behavior of a hoarding ant as being something proper for mankind?

Ed

Post 33

Sunday, March 17, 2013 - 8:46am

Karl:

To my understanding, the clear implication of this is that any effort beyond that required for mere survival is to acquire an ever-higher pile of material possessions, to provide a cushion against deprivation and thereby postpone the inevitable end of the individual life.

..or as decided by those making the effort; who else? What Emperor of Enough-- aiming their analysis at the efforts of others?

Otherwise, what that analysis -- of other's lives -- sounds like is exactly an attempt at a rationalization to confiscate the efforts and outcomes of others that exceeds those necessary for bare survival.

Now, all we need is for an Emperor of Enough to arrive and decree what shall be necessary. We shouldn't worry about finding such, history is filled with examples. Apparently, it is an easy gig, and the run uphill is a short one; via a political head counting process, it's only necessary to get the agreement of fellow shallow hill climbers that, hey, that's not a bad idea; we'll all wait here at the bottom of these shallow hills, and see what we can scarf from those fools who yet attempt to climb those totally unnecessary hills.

It's a kind of an ethics, just not one that isn't based on the, well, obvious.

What's missing is, by what ethical authority (none evident in practice other than the brute force of numbers) does a mob sit in judgement of what is and isn't necessary effort in other's lives, as peers?

There is no such ethical authority. And so, the reality that there is no ethical reason to obey laws imposed by the biggest mob based on no ethical authority other than the brute force of numbers; the mobs at the bottom of those shallow hills want what they want without having to make the effort.

One skin, one driver; ask, don't tell. Otherwise, those that can will avoid the clumsy forks using every means at their disposal, including the means that the clumsy forks ar4e aimed at with nothing more than force behind them; their intellect.

That is what has created our modern economies; a circular firing squad of once peers aiming their middle fingers at each other. It is not the responsibility of those avoiding the clumsy forks aimed with force; it is the responsibility of those aiming the clumsy forks, and the abysmal results for those doing the aiming is the unexpected face of 'social justice.'

The inevitable impotent rage over this outcome will lead to exposing the aiming of these clumsy forks for exactly what they are -- criminal violence -- and then there will be no more pretense about what the nature of the intended 'social justice' is all about.

Much of the tribe is unwilling to accept "no" as the answer to arbitrary demands. Much of the tribe is unwilling to accept trade as the peaceful alternative to getting what we want from others. Much of the tribe is unwilling to resort to honest begging when the above fail to satisfy their whims about the quality of their life paid for by the efforts of others, well beyond mere survival.

And so, the tribe resorts to politics beyond asking and trading and begging, just shy of crime and war as means of getting what we want from others.

There, I've accurately placed politicians somewhere between honest beggars and criminals on the scale from civility to war.

Ask..trade...beg...politics...crime...war.

How do peers get what they want from other peers without electing themselves Emperor Tyrant?

Emperor tyrants only get to demand. Do we believe by casting the latest pandered to mob as Emperor that we have created an ethics for justifying tyrannic demanding?

With every fibre in their being, those who can will resist such attempts using every means at their disposal.

Slavery. no matter how dressed up, is slavery.

One skin, one driver. Ask, don't tell. When we are reminded to love our neighbor as ourselves, we should also be reminded to ask when doing so, or else the process is more like rape than love.

From where the ethics which avoids the need to politely ask, peer to peer living in freedom?

regards,
Fred

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 3/17, 8:49am)

Post 34

Sunday, March 17, 2013 - 11:08am

Beautifully written, Fred.

Ed

Post 35

Monday, March 18, 2013 - 4:47am

Ed:

Thanks!

I'm bewildered at some recent changes in the law(as usual.) I have some clients who are on a frantic tear now because of our always helpful Congress pandering to the legal profession.

Patent law used to be quite clear; patents were awardable to the first inventor. The inventor of some new patentable idea had to demonstrate earliest invention of the idea.

No more; under the currently changed law, patents are awardable to the first to file LINK of the patent.

Think on that one; yet a new 'legal' way for stealing the effort and creativity of others via 'the law.' In the brave, new world, it is prowess with the ever fluid legal system that is paramount.

Some who are aware of this quiet change in the law are now frantically going back and filing patent applications for ideas that they'd safely parked by establishing the date of their invention. But that is not all, by far.

Who was aware of this quiet change in patent law? What of the many who aren't, who now will 'legally' have their inventions stolen from them by opportunistic sharks?

Yet another way for ambulance chasers to climb up the backs of others. I suppose it serves the few remaining 'inventors' in this nation right, for not realizing the nature of the tribe they are living in. Instead of spending all that time in a lab or shop or bench, they should instead have been investing in their version of a Wesley Mouch and keeping their ear to the ground for snakes. Instead of inventing, they should hang at the bottom of those hills and look for those climbing them who are asleep at the wheel of steering their way through whatever Congress dreams up as the latest way to ride others.

What is your assessment of the new ethics; first to file vs. first to invent?

Perhaps we should do the same with income; first to file a 1040 should legally own that income, and the person who actually did the work should by law need to hand it over.

Who would be more inclined to be behind such a change in the law?

1] A Libertarian.
2] A Leftist
3] A GOP corparatist/attorney life long government official glad handing hack.

Judging by its co-authors, I'd say it's a toss-up between 2 and 3.

And in yet another homage to AS, of course, this thing is called the "America Invents Act."

regards,
Fred

Post 36

Monday, March 18, 2013 - 4:51am

Ed:

The alternative to patents, "Trade Secrets" -- are now patentable ... by others. This law has effectively made obsolete the idea of a Trade Secret.

So rev up the lawyers and get ready to throw some hooks up those hills, see what can be dragged down.

I wonder what specific target these parasites had in mind when the dreamed this one up.

Didn't get alot of play in the press, did it? Sneak attacks usually don't.

regards,
Fred

Post 37

Monday, March 18, 2013 - 5:13am

Ed:
What coverage there is of this 'act' is self-serving and confusing; it is the darling of patent attorneys, for example, because they've just been granted a government franchise for more than full employment in the forseeable future, for as long as this act is in effect, and lets face it, it only ever gets worse by being added to, never repealed. With some irony, the NYTimes applauded this law, claiming it was an attempt to address 'the backlog' of patent applications in the US.

Ha! This nonsense has hand-tied even smaller businesses nominally involved with tech.

As well, some IP attorneys have opined convoluted arguments explaining why the new law will -encourage- the 'Trade Secret' alternative, which is total nonsense -- anything offered commercially based on 'Trade Secret' technology that is subject to reverse engineering is now legally subject to patent by a third party as first filer, period.

Welcome the brave new world where "America Invents..." ways for lawyers to run us all downhill.

Whenever you see some abomination like this, there is always a specific back story; there is a short sighted instance, a case somewhere, of technology that someone wants to grab from the current owners, and a snake went to Congress and bought some access to state guns. I wonder what that back story is for this latest legal lurch?

Our tribe has totally lost it's mind.

regards,
Fred

Post 38

Monday, March 18, 2013 - 3:38pm

i can see a common marriage between the two. think of john rawls and hayek. would make a common fabric. I think BHL are aiming to do that

Post 39

Monday, March 18, 2013 - 7:18pm