AS influences on phlosophy

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Sure, anything is a philosophy. A belief that women should provide men sexual pleasure every hour on the hour is a philosophy, and it has even less to it than Objectivism. Really though, why is it a bad thing? Egoism is reasonably legitimate. Most economists even conceptualize of men as a variant of egoist anyway, so rationalizing it could even be taken as accepting men as they truly do act and making a claim of liberty for the sake of equality.

It could possibly be considered so.

I would suggest Mises, Hayek, Friedman(David and/or Milton, David possibly more so than Milton), and Rothbard. They are the intellectuals of this current group of libertarians and although their thoughts may partially be derived from the past, they are really more similar to modern libertarianism. The old thinkers will emphasize a God-given order more, and as an extra annoyance are usually less fun to read unless you like stodgy old writing.

Really though, I think that Odin does know about what he calls right-libertarianism. I am not sure how familiar he is with its specific thoughts, but he should be familiar with it.

Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who?

Man, I've gotta start living in this century.

No, that statement was not directed at you Awesomelyglorious. You defend it in a way in which I would not defend it. But then, I am not the one defending it, so it's your choice how you do it. While you are not an Objectivist, you have not 'largely' misrepresented Objectivism. I was more referring to the likes of Sand, and MissPickwickian. I personally would prefer if you didn't defend it at all, but that is only my personal opinion.

As for your "philosophical detection" I would suggest you re-examine your assumptions. From the composition of MissPickwickian's sentence I would suggest that the object of a "perfect society" is not what was being questioned, but rather the method we must use to achieve such a state. Notice, she did not re-confirm your own statement that perfect society is impossible, period, end of discussion. She put a very important proviso on it.

I did find it odd also, that you would suggest that few people regard their visions as utopia. To my recollection most (if not all) promoters of a theory defend it and expound it BECAUSE they believe it results in utopia.

As for myself, I hardly consider myself the perfect defender of Objectivism, sometimes I merely find that I'm the only one to do it, so I must. Which is why my first move is usually to just say "go ACTUALLY read Ayn Rand, rather than go by what non-Objectivists say about it" and make up your own mind. Depending on the results, I largely leave it at that. Unless of course a statement comes along that warrants interjection.

They are economists and unless you really keep a tab on economics or politics then you won't know their names.

Ludwig von Mises is a well known economic theorist who argued for the power of market calculation and argued that socialism and most government intervention will fail by its nature and how human beings function as economic agents. He is also well known for his methodological differences with the rest of the profession.

Friedrich Hayek is another economist who did work on information and markets and who argued against socialism as well. He also is noted for writing some political books defending liberty and arguing against interventionism.

Milton Friedman is a very well noted economist of the Chicago school. He argues that the market is stable outside of monetary changes and tends to prefer a positivist methodology. He tends to argue that government is by its nature inefficient while markets are efficient and most of his work is in popularizing markets.

David Friedman is Milton Friedman's son and an anarcho-capitalist(he wants everything, including law and defense privatized). He has done work in the economics of law, history of some private societies, a bit of dabbling in philosophy and various works in economics. He has also published a book on anarcho-capitalist theory.

Murray Rothbard is another anarcho-capitalist but of Austrian economics. He has done work in the economics of anarcho-capitalism, economic history, history of economic thought, and natural rights based ethics.

I could have also included Robert Nozick, who is a political philosopher who argued against Rawls, but I am less familiar with his work and I think he is referenced less. Really, I could have included many others, but I am less familiar with their work, or it is less important to the movement. Mostly I include economists but many of their writings or speakings include some of the ideas loaded in them and I am more familiar with economics. There are many thinkers I could have potentially included though, given that classical liberalism, individualist anarchism and laissez-faire economics all influence the movement.

Really though, if you are interested in philosophy then I would likely advise Mises to you as his methodology is very philosophically based given that he believes in a priorism as the epistemology to use for economics. I am less familiar with Rothbard, but Rothbard's position is derived from Mises but he is typically not known to be as good of a thinker as Mises. Hayek has some philosophy to him as well I think and is often described as one of the more influential thinkers of this century. I dunno, I don't think I know many modern philosophers though that could be taken as very political.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 27 Dec 2007, 12:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's the problem I have with most economists. Call me naive, but I don't think most people are egoists nor are they rational maximizers of self-interest. Indeed, IMO the selfish self-interest our our genes has made us quite altruistic as individuals. There is a reason humans have the emotions of sympathy, empathy, and pity, they promote altrusitic behavior, and such behavior was favored by natural selection.

To Izaak:
But there is no way outside of a system of thought to have any method of man reaching a perfect society. She could argue that some supernatural being could do that and I could hardly argue against that, but if it is beyond thought then it is beyond creation or sustenance.

Actually, I disagree with that. I think that most intelligent people think their ideas result in a better or best system humanly possible, but the best system humanly possible will not be a utopia. In fact, if we had deific knowledge and self-control then we could easily do better, but we would not be able to create a better system for those who lack those qualities.

Odin, that really does not argue against economists as they internalize those behaviors into matters of rational self-interest. I believe Gary Becker was the one to create economic models of altruism showing how caring for another person would change the indifference curve of the original person and I know that Rothbard, using a system of axiomatic self-interest argued that charity gave the giver a "psychic profit" as I think he termed it. I would call you naive though, even though most people say that they care, their actions tend to indicate that they don't, or only do so when it is a matter of how they look. If it weren't so then there would be no reason to argue for a welfare system as private donations would already be doing the work. Same with government sponsored foreign aid.

There are any number of ways to do so without thought... emotions, whims, feelings, divine revelation, enlightenment, spiritual guidance...

I did not say the MissPickickian (or indeed many people) hold their views consistently and logically whole. Just that sartresue should learn (if not to feel humble) that many rotten and dirty concepts can be smuggled in very innocuous statements which, if not properly examined, pass by almost undetected at best, subconsciously accepted at worst.

Further, I find it disturbing that you would shift the blame to the victims. And semantics aside, it seems we disagree on the minor details. you call it "best system humanly possible", I call it "utopia."

Victims? No, I said "deific", nobody has deific amounts of both qualities. Ah, well, I think that she and I were focusing on the notion of a perfect society rather than the best possible given available resources, otherwise it would not be a ridiculous notion to be a utopian. Given that utopian is a slur against certain groups for having unrealistic dreams, I think that there is a difference in our definitions.

yes, many of the "evil" qualities are in people, however, there are also good qualities within people. Most people, or semi-sane people (truely sane people are extremely rare) tend to yearn intellectually to the idea or vision of a more utopic society, thereby making a statement that the vision and desire to do good is within us (at least to some degree, though it may vary from one person to the next).
Most people however also realise such a society to be unrealistic, which tends to induce apathy, but it doesn't change the desire. I think another barrier being that people want everyone else to accept and conform to their values without first questioning themselves and seeing where they themselves as an individual would need to improve. Especially once group think and group identity issues get involved (such as religion, ideology, etc).

I would argue that rather than good or evil, there is mostly conformity to a social norm. The desire for utopia is not a solely selfless vision, we want a better world for ourselves and those whom we are attached to. We like pretty things. Would we actually sacrifice much for this common good though? Probably not a lot.

They do realize it to be unrealistic, but it is not proven that this desire is a strong selfless desire. Well, how can a world work without conformity to a vision? Do you argue that we divide the world into fragments and let each fragment try to work their own utopia in peace? Do you argue that these people do not work to unify values? If it is the former then it seems an impossibly crazy task as some of the values will not allow this division. If it is the latter then how can a unification of values happen considering that all values are a blind assertion of religion and ideology? If there is a true value, then doesn't that vindicate my point that people are selfish as they reject truth for their own comfort?

And that is why totalitarianism fails. The people, poor fallible beings (myself included- no arrogance), make the government, the government does not make the people. Socialism cannot make people altruistic if they don't want to be. Likewise, capitalism cannot make the dullard competitive and brilliant. The zeitgeist can change how a person expresses his or her basic qualities, but it cannot change those core qualities. Socialism could not make Stalin a self-sacrificing person, but it allowed him to express
his insanity through the means of industrialized persecution.

We are on to something interesting, my friends.

How come everyone here seems to want to change everybody into something other than what they are?

Why not create a social system based on what humans ACTUALLY are, rather than on what you would hope them to be?


And all this talk of selflessness is making my skin crawl. I, for one, would like to be properly counted amongst the rationally self-interested. So let me state so that no one reading this thread might mistake my character...

I AM SELFISH!! ! And proud of it.

Well, yes, poor fallible beings, myself included, make up all systems. The question falls down to which system is best.... which is a highly subjective question.
Well, almost everybody wants to change themselves into something other than what they currently are. That is why people seek experience, education, will power, religion, psychotherapy, etc. In fact, at man's essence is change and adaptation.


This really depends on what we mean by that. Do we mean man's basic essence or do we mean how he has been socialized as well? If we include the latter then we must almost always err towards the current system, if we mean the latter then we must isolate what we consider man's essence, which is a philosophical question.


Well, I am not sure that deep down I agree with that, but I am currently trying to read Max Stirner who is a huge proponent of uncompromising egoism and is more of a radical individualist than you or I so I can understand it. I would actually state that each man has his own purposes and aims. This can be called tautological selfishness, as we have summed up all human behavior in regards to the self, which is an efficient way to look at man if there is heterogeneity in our objectives. Can the Christian and the egoist really agree on ends and methods? No. Can the conservative and the liberal socialist see eye to eye on political mechanations? No. Can the racist and the black man be comfortable with each others ideal? No. So why do we bond the heterogeneous so tightly together?

Man at his essence is an individual. We may posit a higher power, a higher morality, or some other force above man, but few men see this thing similarly and no man would want to be bound by another man's god, so why not cut away the bindings to prevent this slavery. The only thing we can agree on is man, so let us let each man contract with other men as to what divinity they wish to prostrate themselves to and work it out that way.

Now, we can argue that the dullard may not be competitive and brilliant, but we should let him be loved by the lovers of men rather than continue to try to make egoists into altruists and those seeking mastery into servants and binding men tighter to the single deity we invoke whenever we make laws on how man "ought" to act.

I am in a very radical mood right now..... maybe it is the Stirner a little....

I would like to point out that I am not an advocate of anything that Max Stirner theorises.

I have nothing to say beyond what I have already said on the rest of it.