| | Jordan,
You said, "Objectivism advocate's government protecting one's legal rights. But I wonder how far people here think that mandate goes. For instance, if an alternative method is suggested for protecting or enforcing this or that legal right, then under Objectivism, should the government be permitted to try it outright. Can they sponsor some studies or pay for some pilot programs? Can they make a new agency? And for how long? I'm curious what Objectivist principles play here."
Objectivism doesn't deal directly with law - except as to parse the relation to ethics and political philosophy. Objectivism sets the standards but stops short of legal philosophy and methodology. Objectivism asks if a law violates an individual right or defines structure that protects individual rights or gives legal definition to an individual right.
The best way to think of the Objectivist's ideal government's laws is that they create the optimal environment for expression of each individual's rights. Government can not protect our rights directly with any efficiency. But by creating the laws, the courts, the police and the military they have structured an environment that, when done correctly, provides for the most individual freedom based upon individual rights. So, does it make sense that there might be some pilot programs? Yes. Sponsor studies? Yes. Make a new agency? Yes. For how long? I don't know, but the guiding principle for answering all of these questions is a cost/benefit optimization that is based upon measure of increases in improvement to individual rights protection. Does this measure result in an environment that better suits individual rights?
When you are talking about legal rights that arise from individual rights, then I have no problem with examining the many possible modes of structuring, administering or enforcing the laws in question. If the cost/benefit ratio of a study of two different ways to approach maximizing the protection of an individual right, then go for it. This would be a matter for political science and legal philosophy. The goal would be to find the legal expression giving the greatest of integrity to the individual right, the most efficacious administration, etc.
Practically speaking, we are a long ways from this kind of methodology since a simple glance at most of the laws is all that is needed to see that they should be tossed out - no pilot programs needed. The one on-going multivariate study is the movement of people and money from one state to another. Voting with their feet. Not an elegant study but sometimes quite dramatic... Hong Kong compared to mainland China, or Berlin before the wall came down, or the flow of jobs out of heavily taxed states like California to business friendly states like Texas.
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