Objectivist Round-Up 32

OBJECTIVIST ROUNDUP # 32

Welcome to the 32nd Objectivist Round-up. I must apologise for the lateness of this week’s post; the time difference is always a factor. I will endeavour to post much earlier next time!

Rational Jenn presents “Freedom From Feds”

And says: “Many so-called “homeschool-friendly” politicians have been advocating a Homeschool Tax Credit to help families offset their education expenses. There are many homeschooling families who would like to take advantage of such a credit. I argue that since every homeschooling family in the US enjoys complete and utter freedom from federal government oversight of their educational choices, methods, hours, subjects, attendance, etc. that accepting such a tax credit would ultimately invite federal guidelines and regulations, undermining an unfortunately rare thing for US citizens–complete and utter freedom.”

Flibbert presents: “Gay Marriage: I’m still for it”

And says: “This week’s post was actually spawned by the discussion that Ari started with his carnival submission last week and it’s really a reprisal of arguments I’ve stated in the past, but it’s been a while since my blog has gone explicitly gay, so I figured it was time to trot out the gay marriage pony again. Now, if you do read this post, please be sure to read the second post I made in which I discuss a particular aspect of marriage unions that does not apply to other contractual agreements. This is important because I owe y’all a follow-up post to both of these to address some more challenging concerns that Qwertz has mentioned on his blog. (How’d you like that? I pimped not only two posts of my own in here but TWO other blogs as well. This is why I’m a marketing professional. Do not attempt this at home.)”

 

Stella at ReasonPharm presents: “ Want universal healthcare? Get ready to quit drinking”

“How government meddling in health care is leading, as it inevitably must, to government meddling in citizens’ lives in Britain.”

 

AriArmstrong presents: “A Fertilised Egg is not a person”

“Legally defining a fertilized egg as a person is a terrible idea, so of course Mike Huckabee endorsed it.”

 

Evanescent presents: “Free speech versus Respect”

And says: “Since freedom of speech is an undeniable necessary individual right, those who claim that it must be exercised with restraint are contradicting themselves – and are claiming illegitimate rights. “Limited free speech” is a contradiction in terms.”

 

Ergo at Leitmotif presents “The Right to Property”

Here’s a taster: “To live, man must use his mind in dealing with reality. He must therefore be permitted to act freely on the directions given by his mind, his reasoning faculty, in order to tackle the task of survival. This includes being left free to create, fabricate, invent, or procure by means of free trade property that he believes might help him in achieving his goal.”

 

Monica at Spark a Synapse presents “Welcome, my dears, to the noble art of divination”

And say: “This week, I delved into the fascination and entertainment of handwriting analysis. As it was eerily accurate for me and the SO, I’d love to hear what others knowing more than me have to say about it! I think most people would be surprised at its accuracy and the insights gained about personality and character, and I’m guessing it comes largely from the intelligence and police communities. A fun night of entertainment for sure. I also wrote another post this week that I almost included in the carnival instead, and I think it deserves a mention. It’s entitled, The Right to Eat Food. It’s about some of the disturbing intrusions of government into our food industry by the Food Safety Testing Peopleguys cracking down on small farmers that sell products directly to consumers. Our Government doesn’t like that and they want to stop it, with SWAT teams and guns if necessary. Yes, Your Government is preventing access not only to medicines and lightbulbs, but FOOD that is not available in any grocery store and in some cases, might save lives. It’s scary, it’s wacky, it’s wrong. BUT - the good news is that farmers are doing a great job of fighting for their rights. Read all about it!”

Thanks to all for some excellent articles. The next carnival is on March 6th. You can submit your article here.

Free Speech Versus Respect

“The Secretary-General strongly believes that freedom of expression should be exercised responsibly and in a way that respects all religious beliefs” – Marie Okabe, spokeswoman for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2038161020080220?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

Two years ago the Secretary General of the UN Kofi Annan: “believes that the freedom of the press should always be exercised in a way that fully respects the religious beliefs and tenets of all religions.”

So, what if my religion demands that I disrespect other religions? What if my faith necessitates a lack of respect for other faiths? If you respect my faith, doesn’t that mean I’m allowed to do whatever my faith expects of me, even if that means disrespecting others? This is, of course, a paradox.

Implicit in statements like these are several politically-correct assumptions:

1.     That everybody’s beliefs must be respected

2.     That offending somebody is virtually a crime in and of itself

3.     That freedom and responsibility can conflict

Dealing with the latter two first: freedom and responsibility do not conflict – ever. Rights are moral principles sanctioning your freedom of thought and action in a social context. All Rights are corollaries of your Right to Life. Human beings must be free to think and do anything they believe is in their self-interest – with one constraint: that they do not violate the rights of others. Freedom of speech, of expression, is a means of human flourishing. The Right to free speech never conflicts with anybody else’s Rights – because no one has the right to NOT be offended by the words of others – no such Right exists. Rights merely mean that no one can use force against you, because the use of force negates morality.

On a similar subject, Leitmotif says: “When one claims that rights come with responsibilities, one is implying that one’s practice of a right could potentially conflict with the practice of another man’s rights. This is patently false. The moment someone has stepped outside the boundaries of one’s rights and has violated another man’s rights, his actions have initiated force and have become illegitimate. Insofar as this has not occurred, every man is free–without limits–to exercise his rights.”

Speaking about the pathetic Teddy-bear row that erupted back in November last year, I said: “If I want to say that Islam is an evil plagiarisation of the ramblings of ignorant primitive Jews, and not worth the paper it was written, that’s my right.”

Just as nobody has the right to do whatever they want on your property, so you have no right to tell them what to do on theirs or anybody else’s.

Remember, the legitimate rights of human beings do not conflict. If there is a conflict, then one party must not be claiming legitimate rights. Since freedom of speech is an undeniable necessary individual right, those who claim that it must be exercised with restraint are contradicting themselves – and are claiming illegitimate rights. “Limited free speech” is a contradiction in terms.

Offending somebody is therefore not a crime. It may be immoral, if it’s irrational however. But the immoral is not the illegal.

Finally, not everyone’s beliefs should be respected. To say otherwise is an egregiously nonsensical claim, and blatant contradiction. To quote myself here: “Moral subjectivism is an offshoot of relativism in general, another symptom of which is the insipid multiculturalism. Relativism in general holds that all opinions or cultures are of equal value. This is flat wrong: if one holds the opinion X that “all opinions are of equal value or merit” then my opinion that X is rubbish is to be taken with equal merit as X itself! Therefore the truth of X would require that we reject it. Therefore X is either false or rubbish.”

Not all cultures are of equal merit. Some cultures are backward, ignorant, superstitious, and just plain stupid. Some are blatantly evil. And if you disagree with me and think I am being offensive, then YOU are evil. Why? Because you have no moral standard from which to draw conclusions. Being a moral person means being intellectually honest and never equivocating on matters of truth or ethics.

The exact opposites of this are such ridiculous notions like political-correctness, fear of offending beliefs, and multiculturalism. The above comments from the UN Secretary General embody this attitude perfectly. But this is to be expected: morality is an individual matter, yet multiculturalism is based on soul-destroying collectivism, which organisations like the United Nations (or any democratic arrangement) exemplify.

“The moral distinction is clear: you are either a criminal or you are not. You are either within your rights, in which case you act freely, or you have initiated force, in which case you should be reined in. You either practice your rights legitimately–in which case, no one has a business telling you that you should be responsible in the practice of your legitimate rights–or you have stepped outside the boundaries protected by your rights and you are now a criminal.” – Leitmotif.

The comments from Ban Ki-moon are immoral are irresponsible. Free speech is non-negotiable, because individual rights are non-negotiable, because humans have a Right to Life. To deny total freedom to human beings is to deny the Right to Life. It’s as simple and as clear-cut as that.

Objectivist Round-Up 30

Objectivist Round-Up #30

Welcome everybody to this week’s Objectivist Round-Up. This is my first time hosting this carnival and it’s a privilege to give Rational Jenn a well-deserved rest for a week!

Here are the accepted submissions for this week, in no particular order:

RationalJenn wants to know which states are currently complying?, and says…

“Somehow, this whole thing snuck past me when it went through Congress nearly 3 years ago. It looks as if the Feds are going to come down hard on states that refuse to comply fully with the federal “security” guidelines for the issuance of state ids. Not only that, I fail to see how on earth this will protect me from Bad Guys. But I see quite clearly how much information our federal government will have about me and everyone else who wants to drive a car or ride in an airplane.”

Nicholas Provenzo at The Rule of Reason tells us Why Boycotting Berkeley is Important.

Stella Daily at Reason Pharma reckons it Would be Cheaper if You Were Dead!

Gus Van Horn presents Heartland on VanDamme

Evanescent exposes the Nihilism of Subjectivism.

That’s all for now! The next round-up is over at The Crucible & Column, where the theme will be “Best of 2007!” You can submit your articles here.

 

The Problem with Atheists

Self-professed atheists think they have come to the conclusion that there is no god through a process of critical thinking and logical reasoning. They either make the positive intellectually-certain claim “there is no god” or what many believe to be the more “balanced”, “less radical” position of “I have absolutely no reason to believe in god but cannot rule his existence out altogether”. The problem with many atheists is that once they reach this position of god-denial, they think their reasoning is done, and become just as assured of their other positions as the theists they dislike so much, thinking of themselves as “rationalists”.

There is a difference between being an atheist and having a rational worldview though. Being an atheist just means you have taken a position on one particular matter of belief. Atheism is not a worldview or a belief system. It offers absolutely no other descriptive or prescriptive content apart from ‘this person doesn’t believe in god’. The problem with some atheists is that they do indeed think atheism is a worldview.

Atheism belongs only to the question of “god” – which is only one in the myriad field of questions, under the heading of belief. The problem with modern atheists is the same “problem” that plagues the worlds of philosophy and science. They tacitly or openly accept the notion that omniscience is necessary for absolute certainty. Philosophical scepticism permeates their worldview like a disease: we can never be sure of anything; our senses aren’t reliable; certainty is impossible; objectivity is naive; definite statements can’t be made in science; total knowledge is necessary for accurate claims. There is no greater exponent of this scepticism than the postmodern subjectivist with his diabolical multiculturalism. But the scientific community as well as the philosophical one as a rule accept this nihilism as the given.

As an example, how many times have you heard a theist say “you can’t call yourself an atheist – have you examined every part of the universe to see if god exists??” To which the atheist might respond: “I don’t need to examine the entire universe; there might be a god, but I see no reason to believe in one – and the burden of proof is on you.” The atheist is right that the burden of proof is on the theist – but he still cannot be 100% sure of his position, and he unwittingly accepts the philosophical scepticism that the theist smuggles into the question. In the same way that philosophical scepticism says that just because the sun rose yesterday doesn’t mean we can be sure it will rise tomorrow, the atheist who “is committed to reason and logic” refuses to rule out the supernatural, god, ghosts, vampires, goblins, elves, chi, astrology entirely – because he still accepts the nonsensical proposition that definite knowledge is impossible; that omniscience is necessary for certainty; that our senses can be fooling us one from minute to the next. So no matter how “rational” the atheist is, he still has to allow a modicum of irrationality in his worldview: that all the things he rejects might actually exist. But omniscience is not necessary to know that god is impossible and that the supernatural and paranormal are irrelevant anti-concepts that can be dismissed with 100% confidence.

Atheism is not a replacement for religion. That is why many deconvertees feel despondent and nihilistic when their worldview is shattered, as I once did. Religion is a complete worldview – it is an attempt to provide a complete philosophy, in that it attempts to account for knowledge, metaphysics, morality, politics, and aesthetics. It fails – but I think many atheists don’t realise how powerful religion is – it is powerful because it is important, and it is important because it represents a true human need: a philosophy for living. Religion doesn’t answer that need, because it is intellectually void and rejects reality – and places the primacy on consciousness and not existence itself. Atheism is not a worldview, and it is most certainly not a philosophy. The other “worldviews” that atheists turn to are not valid philosophies either. One example might be Humanism, a position that claims the universal value and worth of all people. However, Humanism does not give a definite objective definition of morality and it has no political agenda. Peter Singer as one example, a self-professioned Humanist, disagrees with many tenets of Humanism, such as the preferential treatment of human beings. Unfortunately, there is no way for Humanists to decide who is right on this issue. Secular Humanism has come to mean the rejection of religion in a political and moral setting, but it prescribes nothing objective in its place. For this, Humanists are free to discover any code of morality they choose, and are left to argue over what is right, morally and politically. Humanism has no objective definite positions on morality or politics, and what positions are generally accepted by humanists are usually based on some subjective collectivist notion of morality, such as utilitarianism – the idea that the whole is more important than any of its parts, and humans are cells in a superorganism that can and should be sacrificed for the good of the whole. In this respect, utilitarians merely substitute “god” for “society”. Atheists want religion gone, but offer nothing in its place that even resembles a proper philosophy and worldview.

The problem with some atheists is that, in their rush to displace religion and espouse all that religion traditionally rejects, they turn their lives into a quest to “make the world a better place” – and just like the religious, only their definition of better is allowed, and, just like the religious, they want their notions enforced politically. To take just one example: the fundamentalist wants a global theocracy. The modern-day atheist wants a global democracy. Most atheists idealise democracy almost religiously – an absolute to be unquestioned, “the best government we have or can have”; a “necessary evil”, they might say. It never even occurs to many to even question the idea of “universal good”, “making the world a better place (even by force)”, “democracy”. And this is because, just like the theist, many atheists steal the concepts of “good”, “better”, “freedom” from their necessary antecedents and apply them out of context, not realising they are contradicting themselves.

Want some examples?

Animal rights. “Rights” are a moral principle that define freedom of thought and action. Animals are not moral beings and have no conscious freedom of thought and action. They cannot therefore have rights.

Free Democracy. Democracy is unlimited majority rule. It is the enforced demand of a majority that is necessarily at the expense of the minority. It holds the collective as the standard and purpose, and individuals as means to that end. As such, it cannot respect freedom, since freedom only applies to thought and action, and only an individual can think and act. “Free democracy” is an oxymoron.

Making the world a better place. This idealist notion holds other peoples’ lives and happiness as the purpose of one’s own. By this thinking, the only goal in your life should be to make other people happy or maximise happiness in general, even if at your own expense. If there is no one around to please or help, your life has no meanin therefore. What about those who don’t want your help? What about those you don’t subscribe to your collectivist mentality, an example of which is the redistribution of wealth? Do you take their property from them? Do you threaten to arrest them if they don’t share their wealth? “Well”, you rationalise to yourself, it’s for the “greater good”. Wrong. Again, more concept-stealing – how can you enforce a moral action?? It’s a contradiction in terms.

A perfect example of this Modern Atheist is the excellent Christopher Hitchens. I like Hitchens, and I love watching him speak and debate – but his idea of morality is evolved social behaviour. His political ideal is democracy (I believe he is still a socialist). His support of the invasion of Iraq is not grounded primarily on acting in American’s rational self-interest, viz, to remove a very real threat – but as an act of altruism to “save” the Iraqi people and make their lives better, even at the expense of thousands of American soldiers. When it came to justifying an objective epistemology and metaphysics based on atheism, Hitchens was put in the shade by the Dinesh D’Souza.

In a recent debate, I encountered several of these “New Atheists” who’d read a little Dawkins and Hitchens and considered themselves rational just because they rejected god. Being an atheist means NOTHING about having a rational worldview – it is only one possible corollary of having such a worldview. As theists love to point out, many atheists committed atrocities just like theists did. Many atheists like to fight on this issue, especially Hitchens and Dawkins, protesting “but they didn’t commit their crimes in the name of atheism!” Who cares? Some of them actually did – the point is that it doesn’t matter: they were atheists, so in and of itself atheism says nothing about a person’s rationality. The war to fight is not theism vs atheism, it is irrationalism vs rationalism, subjectivity vs objectivity. And then, the war is there to fight only if it is of value to YOU. It is not a purpose in itself; not a campaign to spend your life selflessly pursuing.

There is one philosophy that I accept to the best of my knowledge. One that rejects philosophical scepticism; one that refuses to fight on the nihilistic grounds of the irrationalist; one that knows what its foundations are; one that has an objective account of reality and knowledge; one that has an objective morality; objective politics; and defines the proper values and virtues of human life. One that states that “the highest moral purpose man can pursue is his own happiness”; that life is an end in itself; that our lives are not sacrificial objects for the sakes of others – they our lives are our own and belong to us and no one else. A philosophy that states that reason is our primary means for survival – and every else flows from this. This is of course Ayn Rand’s Objectivism.

It’s not my purpose in life to “convert” people, and I don’t live to win people over to Objectivism or do their thinking for them; I don’t live to “make the world a better place” – each of us must make our lives as good as possible, and that includes caring for those we value. All I would like to point out is that many atheists these days are confused about their philosophical premises, even the “experts” like Dawkins and Hitchens. A person who honestly seeks a rational worldview would do well to study Objectivism, especially those “rational” atheists out there who despise religion so much yet cannot justify many of their own subjective notions.

Animal Welfare and Cloning

“The RSPCA has called for an immediate ban on cloning animals for food following a report questioning the ethical justification of doing so.” - http://news.uk.msn.com/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=7291435

The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE) did not categorically rule out the idea but said: “Considering the current level of suffering and health problems of surrogate dams and animal clones, the Group has doubts as to whether cloning for food is justified.”

The EGE, following studies from the European Food Safety Authority and the US Food and Drug Administration, has concluded that food from cloned animals is safe to eat.

So the question of whether or not we can clone animals for food is settled: we can.

Nikki Osborne from the RSPCA however has said: “Cloning causes untold suffering to the animals in the process, but is purely for commercial benefit. The RSPCA believes that the cost in terms of animal welfare in no way justifies any perceived benefits of cloning.”

For a start, I don’t want the law of this country changed simply because of what the RSPCA or anyone else “believes”.

The EGE states: “In the Amsterdam Treaty animals are recognised as ’sentient’ beings and, therefore, while meat production is important in the human diet, and the slaughter of animals a necessity, it should always be clear that the way in which we treat animals should be in accordance with the already existing animal welfare and health standards required in EU legislation.”

This doesn’t quite follow: if it’s acceptable to eat animals for food, and if it’s acceptable to kill them for food, what does it matter if the animals are procreated through natural methods, or cloned? What is it about the process of cloning that somehow contravenes animal welfare?

“However, in addition to these standards, the Group believes that additional requirements should also be taken in intensive animal breeding, in particular the guidance in animal welfare provided by the World Organisation for Animal Health, namely the five freedoms, from hunger; thirst and malnutrition; from fear and distress; from physical and thermal discomfort; from pain, injury and disease; and freedom to express normal patterns of behaviour.”

This kind of reasoning is symptomatic of a warped-view of morality and freedom, and is rooted in our society’s altruistic and utilitarian mentality. To talk about freedom from hunger, thirst, malnutrition, fear and distress, physical and thermal discomfort, pain, injury and disease – is nonsensical. There can be no “freedom from starvation” unless you have the means to acquire food. There can be no “freedom from pain” unless you are protected from any person causing you harm. There is no such thing as “freedom from disease” – there is only the freedom to purchase medicine and healthcare to protect yourself from disease.

Freedom is a concept that applies to an entity’s actions. Specifically, it assumes an entity has the capacity to be free, that is, to choose its actions and course of life accordingly. Because human beings are rational volitional beings with free will, and the capacity to make moral decisions over a lifetime, freedom is a necessary Right that arises because of the type of beings we are. To be more precise, this fundamental freedom, this fundamental Right is this: the Right to life. Now, animals are not free-willed rational volitional beings, and have no capacity to make moral decisions. Unlike humans, animals are automatically equipped with the knowledge and instinct they need to survive. To take about freedom for animals ignores the very nature of freedom; because animals have no ability to make free rational moral choices, they have no “right” to freedom.

“Infringements of the above criteria would need to be balanced by important benefits to human beings. The EGE has however doubts whether infringements of these standards can be justified by the benefits obtained by current procedures in cloning animals for food production.”

The EGE is trying to balance animal “rights” with human benefits. But animals have no rights, so any attempt to balance human and animal rights will always produce a contradiction, and it is humans who will be seen as the criminals although no crime has been committed.

What really matters is this: cloning animals for food could produce (in theory) limitless free sources of nutrition for millions of humans. There is no need to compare the human benefit with anything else: only humans have rights, and what is moral here is what a rational being needs to do to sustain its life – if a human needs to kill an animal to eat, the moral thing is to kill it. If a human needs to clone an animal in order to kill it to eat, the moral thing is to clone it and kill it.

The problem with the RSPCA and EGE’s reasoning is this: their morality is based on the utilitarian notion that suffering is the standard for morality. But this is patently untrue: suffering, like happiness, is the end result of a course of action. Morality is our guide to a course of action – not the result. Morality is an objective code to help us make decisions, it is not determined post-action by weighing up the suffering and happiness of those concerned; (and who concerned? How many people? Which people? Anything that can suffer? How is this even measured?)

The morality of an action is not determined by some arbitrary measure of suffering or pleasure. According to Objectivism, morality is a code of values accepted by choice to guide decisions. Therefore, whatever is necessary and beneficial for the life of a rational being is good – whatever is inhibitive and detrimental to such a being is wrong.

Unfortunately, what we see with comments from the EU and RSPCA is a morality rooted in altruism, in sacrifice – because this is the underlying philosophy of society in general. This sort of ethics does not hold human life as the standard, but rather the standard of suffering, that is, death. Any ban on animal cloning would be an absolute travesty.

21/01/08 Edited to add:

Thanks to Leitmotif for pointing out several errors and ambiguous statements in my article:

When I said freedom applies to an entity’s action, freedom applies to action and thought – all freedom is a corollary of the Right to Life. It makes no sense to speak of one freedom without the other.

Also, forgive me for making it sound that freedom is the same thing as the Right to Life – this was not my intention. It is the Right to life that makes all other Rights possible. It is the Right to Life that makes freedom (intellectual and physical etc) a necessity for human beings.

Salary capping is Evil

I was reading a sport-related article on MSN before, and there was a vote asking readers whether they thought footballer’s salaries should be capped. Over 70% of people had voted yes. I wondered why. Before I venture a guess, let’s answer the question of “should footballer’s wages be capped?”, by extending it to the overriding theme: “should anyone’s wages be capped?”

The question comes down to this: should anyone decide how much money you deserve to earn? If you are employed you’ve reached an acceptable wage that you are prepared to work for and your employer is prepared to pay. To “deserve” a wage is to reach an agreeable figure that your boss is prepared to pay you – that is all that “deserve” can mean, and it is no one else’s business. Now some businesses, such as the entertainment industry, are so huge that the demand for top-quality entertainers forces up the price for the services of such individuals. Demand must be met with supply. Sport is massive business and generates huge amounts of wealth – why shouldn’t the key architects of this business that creates vast profit for millions of people – the players, be remunerated accordingly?

It is the success of private companies that allows them to reward their employees with greater pay. It is the moral right of bigger and better companies, such as more successful football clubs, to attract better players to their team and reward them accordingly. Money talks, and it allows companies to fight fairly over a wanted player. If one club can afford to pay more than another, tough – that is the beauty of money: it allows an objective worth to be placed on items of value. Has the bigger club earned the right to sign a player? Yes! By sheer nature of the fact that they can.

Who has the right to dictate to a private business how it uses its money? There are only two institutions that have the power to do so: any club or association that a company has voluntarily subscribed to, and government. Only the first of these institutions has the right to do so – this is because a company that is voluntarily a member of a business association agrees to abide by the decision of that association. The government however has no right to tell an individual (and by extension a private company) how to manage its own property. The only proper moral role of government is to protect the Rights of its citizens. How much any company chooses to pay any employee is a private matter, and no business of anyone else’s. If the wages of any person were to be capped by an act of government, this would be a gross violation of rights, and monstrously evil.

What about those who have more important jobs in society, like doctors, teachers, fire-fighters etc? What about them? Do I think it’s “right” that someone who kicks a ball around a pitch gets paid the same wage in a week as a doctor might get in a year? In a word, yes. Consider this: by what objective criteria can you decide how much someone deserves to get paid? And how would you enforce such a criteria, without violating individual rights? If you decide that being a doctor is morally worthy of more money than being a footballer, how do you go about reimbursing the doctor according to your standard? You cannot create money out of thin air – all you can do is artificially inflate the price of healthcare at the cost of the consumer so that the doctor gets the money he is worth, in your opinion. But where does this money come from? Or do you take the “surplus” money that footballer’s earn and give it to the doctor? In other words, do you redistribute wealth according to some egalitarian philosophy of equality or perceived “social merit”? In further words, do you ask the footballer to earn the doctor’s money for him; do you ask the doctor to live off the effort of the footballer? No? Madness? Unfair? Evil? Such is the nature and mentality of socialism.

I think I now know why many people think wages should be capped. I think it’s a result of a socialistic mentality (especially common in the UK): those on “too much” money somehow owe their excess to others. Those on “too little” money are owed more from others. What the socialistic mindset really breeds is this kind of thinking: “your extra money should be mine!” And of course, someone lower down the pay scale is thinking the same of you. Do these people think money grows on trees? The reason some professions pay so much and others pay so little is this: demand. Demand is met with production, and production is the source of all wealth. If, some day, sport massively declined in popularity, so would wages. If people feel there is something immoral about how much sportsmen are paid, there is only one solution: use your individual power as consumer to not finance that industry. How many people who complain about huge wages will give up their Sky TV, their season tickets, their replica shirts?? Not many. They want world class footballers but without the wages that go with them. They want hundred-thousand capacity stadiums, but without the industry that will pay for them. They want some of ‘their’ money back from the superstars who earn it, yet keep paying over money every week. How will their wishes be met?? Somehow. In other words: at someone else’s expense.

If we are going to complain about mediocrities being paid inflated sums of money, let’s start with politicians. Only politicians can vote themselves payrises that aren’t connected to any production or merit. If the government decides that you should pay an extra 10% of your wages to them, because they say so, that is all that’s required to make it law. And unlike sport, you have no choice in the matter. But that’s a subject for another article.

If the mentality of capitalism was more abundant, people would admire those more successful, not be envious. People would respect production. People would understand that wealth is not a finite resource to be scavenged and shared by a non-objective mob vote based on immoral notions of “merit” – they would appreciate that wealth can be created, and demand is met with supply, and the only thing anyone can claim to deserve is what they’ve earned by the mutual agreement of other people. That is why nobody has the right to tell any two people how much they may pay each other. Anyone who claims otherwise is immoral and invoking an evil philosophy.

Abolish the Welfare State

I’ve never really liked the NHS historically, for one very important reason: poor service. Justice requires that the consumer receive the service he or she has paid for. That’s fair trade; it is the most basic principle of legitimate human interaction; exchanging value for value.

The reason I object to the NHS on principle is the same reason I object to paying a television license for a government-subsidised broadcasting company: my money is taken for a service I have not requested. Paying for the BBC is like handing over money to enter a fairground with all these wonderful rides, only to have some annoying barely-skilled juggler following you around trying to impress you.

Let’s say you’re a humanitarian with a “noble” ideal; you want everyone in the country to have free healthcare and medicine. A lofty ambition, some might say. A naive one, others might suggest. To see how removed this goal is from the constraints of reality one only has to ask the question: how will you pay for it? Sure, if you want to accomplish a mission of mercy and help people out of the goodness of your heart with your own hard-earned cash, that’s your choice. If you want to solicit contributions to the same end, such is your decision and that of the contributors. Whether you’d incur enough money to achieve your dream is debatable, so you decide that so noble and moral is your ideal those who chose not to contribute should be made to, at the point of a gun.

Now, whatever your sense of right or wrong, removing the possibility of choice from an action removes any moral implications of that action. Giving money to help others may or may not be moral; a person under duress to do so is being neither moral or immoral, they are doing what they have to, to avoid going to prison, or getting shot. That is about as moral as a slap of concrete.

One other important part of this master plan has been avoided. The most important part. Who is to provide the medicine and healthcare? The drug companies and the doctors. What if a doctor doesn’t wish to see to a patient? What if a doctor or healthcare company doesn’t want to take the risk of a particular operation, or waste their valuable time and resources on somebody (for whatever reason), who for example is constantly submitted with cardiovascular problems and makes no attempt to exercise or quit smoking?

Yaron Brook speaking of the American healthcare system (the principle is the same) says:

“The result of shifting the responsibility for health care costs away from the individuals who accrue them was an explosion in spending.

In a system in which someone else is footing the bill, consumers, encouraged to regard health care as a “right,” demand medical services without having to consider their real price. When, through the 1970s and 1980s, this artificially inflated consumer demand sent expenditures soaring out of control, the government cracked down by enacting further coercive measures: price controls on medical services, cuts to medical benefits, and a crushing burden of regulations on every aspect of the health care system.”

Cutting to the core of the problem, Brook continues:

“The solution to this ongoing crisis is to recognize that the very idea of a “right” to health care is a perversion. There can be no such thing as a “right” to products or services created by the effort of others, and this most definitely includes medical products and services. Rights, as our founding fathers conceived them, are not claims to economic goods, but freedoms of action.

You are free to see a doctor and pay him for his services—no one may forcibly prevent you from doing so. But you do not have a “right” to force the doctor to treat you without charge or to force others to pay for your treatment. The rights of some cannot require the coercion and sacrifice of others.”

The crucial problem with the NHS is that it is an embodiment of a solution to an imaginary problem divorced from the context of reality. The “problem” is that everybody does not have free access to any healthcare they require. But this isn’t actually a problem in the way socialists or collectivists would have us think. And the flaw in their thinking stems from a misguided understanding of right and wrong, that is, morality. What is their flaw? In a word: altruism.

In the altruist morality, the fact that you need something gives you an entitlement to it. It’s as simple as that. This notion is erroneous for many reasons. 1. It is divorced from reality; who will provide what you need, if not yourself? And how will you gain it from them if you cannot exchange value for value in a fair trade? 2. ‘Need’ does not equate to entitlement? 3. Where do you draw the line between all the other “needs” people have, and how? How do you decide which needs will be met with the enforced cooperation of others and which won’t?

The collectivist sees society as a living superbeing in itself, where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; where those who have “more than enough” should be made to sacrifice for those who don’t have enough. The collectivist has chosen to concentrate on healthcare and medicine, but one needs to ask: should restaurants be made to serve beggars on the street? Should convenience stores be made to provide anti-perspirant for those who can’t afford to stop themselves smelling? Should your closest neighbour with a 10-bedroom house and 2 occupants be forced to give a room to one of your 6-member family in a 3-bedroom house? The “free-thinking” collectivist would like to draw the line at some point after individual rights have been violated, to stop his system moving inexorably to its inevitable corollary: communism.

In a free society, people trade value for value at their choice. Those who acquire wealth do so by exchanging their superior talents for greater money. They acquire what they “deserve” from those who are obligated to provide by a process of mutual cooperation and trade. For example, I reach an agreement with my employer to work for a particular wage. I meet the terms of my contract by attending work every day and doing the job that is required of me, in full. In return, they remunerate me the agreed fee, in full. They have deserved my work and I have deserved my money. The idea that I somehow owe a third party some of that money for the sheer fact that I have acquired it is a total perversion of freedom and morality. At what point and in whose eyes does my hard-earned money reach a point where it’s “too much” and I must pay over the “surplus” to those who haven’t earned it?

No man can make unearned demands on another. Yet the morality of altruism and sacrifice which is the basis for most societal norms states the exact opposite. And the collectivist wants to enforce this “morality” at the point of a gun. And the only way to meet the unearned demands of wanting men is by force; it’s by taking the property of those that have for those that don’t; it’s a gross violation of individual rights – the proper foundation of society – and the only rights that truly exist. Those who violate the rights of others are criminals.

A Right is the freedom to take any action to sustain your life. If your “right” requires the use of force against others, it cannot be a Right. There is no right to healthcare. There is no right to a car. There is no right to a minimum wage. There is no right to love. There is no right to the goods or services of others. You have no right to see a doctor. You have no right to a particular drug or medicine simply because you need it. For example, if you needed a vital operation that only a certain doctor could perform, you have no right to demand any action from him. He is a free individual like any other and value (his services) must be met with value (your services or money). Being unable to pay him is no different from being unwilling to pay him. Whatever you think of his choice to treat you or not, there is no moral obligation in the world that can force him to treat you against his will. If this point still isn’t clear, consider why you should pay for my bus fair if I can’t afford it. Explain why you should pay for my luxury toilet paper when I’m stuck with the non-brand variety. Healthcare and medicine are services like any other that must be acquired by fair legitimate trade; they belong to the doctors and private companies that manufacturer them, and no one can demand the property of others.

In a free society, the true cost of goods is passed onto the consumer, and consumer and supplier can agree on a mutually-acceptable price for a service, neither being sacrificed to the other. People are free to subscribe to a healthcare company of their choosing; open competition will drive down prices fairly and improve service. People are encouraged to look after themselves and incur discounts from healthcare companies, knowing that someone else will not pay for their bad luck or laziness. The overall cost of healthcare is decreased which raises the overall standard for everyone, and increases the availability of even basic services that the poor can afford. More importantly, individual rights are respected and people have a proper view of what they deserve and what they can earn; what is rightfully theirs and what they have to merit; what belongs to them and what doesn’t; and society’s future is invested in the only system that can fully allow humans to flourish and better themselves, generate greater wealth, and increase happiness: capitalism.

The Role of Government

Man’s nature as a moral being necessitates Rights, moral principles “defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.” The only fundamental Right is man’s right to his own life. Ayn Rand correctly identifies life as “a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life.”

The most basic corollary of the Right to life is the Right to property. The Right to property makes all other Rights possible. Why? Because man is a rational being. To quote Shaun Connell over at Reason and Capitalism: “Man does not have the brute strength to kill deer, he is not born with fangs to poison his prey, or claws to use as weapons. Man has only his mind. It is his mind that separates man from the animal.” The product of man’s own creative effort is his property. Without the unlimited control over the disposition of his own property, man has no means to sustain his life fully, as he sees fit. “The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.”

The only way to deny this is to resort to a form of collectivist thinking; that the property of some people belongs to other people; that other people can make unearned demands on your property through: sheer weight of numbers (majoritarianism), force, or a duty-sense of morality (such as the bankrupt Kantian imperative, all religions, utilitarianism etc). However, Rights apply to the actions of individuals; society is not an individual and it is not a superbrain that emerges when two or more people assemble, and it is not a Borg Collective. There are only individuals, and there are only individual Rights. Taking the property of a person by unprovoked force is a violation of Rights, and therefore a criminal act. It is a crime whether it is done by another individual, a majority of individuals, or a State. Only a moral subjectivist would assert that a crime becomes acceptable when it is sanctioned by the power of a majority vote, such as democracy. (Moral subjectivism reduces to moral nihilism and should be ignored.) Democracy gives the majority the power to violate the Rights of the minority. The only way to check the power of a democratic government is with constitutional guarantees, such as are present in the United States Constitution. But what does the Constitution guarantee? Individual rights. But you cannot morally justify violating some rights and not others. It is a contradiction; either we have individual Rights or we don’t, and who decides what Rights we forfeit and those we don’t? Well, certainly not the individual in a democracy. No other current system of government does any better though, and most of them are even worse.

So do we even need a government? In a word, yes. I am not a Libertarian nor an anarchist. Those who proffer that we don’t need government are irrational. The only question is: what is the proper role of government? The answer: one that fully respects individual Rights, and whose power is limited to performing only its necessary tasks. What are government’s necessary tasks?

First, consider individual rights. The only way to violate the Rights of a person is by physical force. That is why people must be stopped from using any use of force against their neighbours, with equal or greater force. So the only legitimate use of force is in response to those who initiate its use; those who have violated the Rights of individuals and forfeited their own. Except in an emergency case of self-defence, the issue of what constitutes necessary retaliatory force can be capricious and whimsical; it is in order to guarantee individual rights that the use of retaliatory force be objectively defined and objectively employed. This is why it cannot be left to the whim of an individual. A moral society invests the use of force in a government whose actions are dictated by objective laws. That is why it is necessary to have an objective legal system. But note that all these governmental actions serve one ultimate purpose: to protect the Rights of its citizens. So what are the only legitimate services of government? Protection of citizens against internal or external threats, and a fair objective legal system to mediate disputes between men and define what constitutes a crime or not.

Since government has a monopoly on the use of physical force, its power must be limited to very specific tasks. Government is the only institution that has the power, at the point of a gun, to make demands of an individual. Government exists to protect us from criminals who would violate our rights, therefore it cannot be such a criminal itself. “The source of the government’s authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.” – TVOS

“Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted.

This is the means of subordinating “might” to “right.” This is the American concept of “a government of laws and not of men.”” – TVOS

Taxation is the forced expropriation of individual property. As such, it is an immoral and illegal use of governmental power. The redistribution of wealth is the implementation of mass unearned demands on the property of others; it reduces men to parasites of other men. It is based on the notion that man has a duty to sustain the life of others, but this is patently false. The Right to life means the Right to take action to sustain your life, it does not mean that others must hand you everything you desire. Whether you are unable or unwilling to support your life is either unfortunate or immoral, but one person’s bad luck or laziness is not a burden on anyone else, no matter what the circumstances.

As to what happens to the disabled in such a society is a topic for another discussion, or I direct you to an excellent article here. As to how government is financed in a properly free society is again, a discussion for another article. These issues properly belong to the philosophy of law, but they should start from a foundation of individual rights.

Now, even if it could be argued that taxation was moral and necessary, and that redistribution of wealth was moral and necessary (both of which are grossly incorrect), would that make it acceptable to enforce it? No. Remember that man is a moral being; morality being a code of values to guide actions. Where choice is impossible, value is impossible; where value is impossible, morality is impossible. The only way to render choice impossible is by the use of force. So whilst redistributing wealth to others may be moral (it isn’t), doing so at the point of a gun is immoral. There is nothing generous or moral about someone who is forced to give his property to those who may or may not have earned it. “Mutual consent” is an expression that becomes meaningless in a society where the refusal to consent is met with a loaded gun. Enforcing a system you believe to be moral is contradiction of the most heinous sort.

A legitimate government acts to protect individual rights against those who violate them first. It has no other moral role.

 

(All Ayn Rand quotes are taken from The Virtue of Selfishness, unless otherwise stated.)