Would We Accept "Single Payer" Groceries?

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it is highschool morality about as interesting and deep as Aton LeVey.
it is a reductionist anti-emperical way of looking at the world.
I trust experiance over theory.
rational self interest is a poor predictor of human behaviour.
and a pretty boring prescription of it.
Objective Schmajective
It would be better called assholery.
-Jake

@JakobVirgil:

If you find this thread boring, then stop following it.

@Vigilans:

Good point. I'd forgotten about Gallipoli. Churchill was by no means perfect, but his stand against fascism is still admirable. Especially when you consider that the rest of Europe couldn't muster up the stones to take a principled stance against Hitler. If you were to lock horns with a destroyer of that magnitude, you'd probably slip up a time or two as well. I know I would. I still stand behind the quote, I've seen it come true over and over again. There's something about having your own home, a healthy savings account and retirement fund, that motivates a man to step up and defend his property. This becomes even more true once you start a family.

when people tell me they are Objectivists
I feel the same way as when then tell me they are Amway salesmen
, Scientologists or Born again. I get ready for them to drop a speech I memorized
long ago like it is revelation from heaven. If I only accepted Ayn into my heart my
angina would clear up. my rhematiz would go away.
It is a panacea. Pure undiluted snake oil.
If you want to be rational and self interested more power to ya.
but quote Hillel. not his sad mean ret*d female descendant.
it makes one look like a guy, a chubby trenchcoated ponytailed dude at Denny's
laying down the gospel of Star trek.
it is pop culture drivel.

-Jake

I would focus more on funding for better educational opportunities to give people a better chance at making their own way, rather than taking care of them after they have become dysfunctional adults. Even in a small area around my home, very large educational disparities were readily evident. Mine was one of the better schools; the district immediately to our north was a s**thole that military recruiters used to harvest cannon fodder. No one from that district had the chances I had.
I would also generally support social welfare programs similar to SCHIP. Children should not be punished so brutally for the failures of their parents as to be denied basic medical care.


You are not innocent yourself in this respect.


The FDA saves many more lives than they cost.


Do we at least get to demand honest and accurate labeling of the things we purchase? It's not possible to make an educated decision if information is deliberately withheld from you.


Welcome to society. We are all linked with everyone else, whether we like it or not. But I would like to minimize the influence of idiots on government.


We do not agree here. I do not believe in the value of democracy as an electoral system.


I don't think that could realistically happen. If it did, it would certainly be a very different socialism than that advocated by Marx.


But when you're talking about a fundamentally different framework, there is a very significant divide over which you must leap to get from one to the other. It is not as though a social democrat who goes a little more left ends up as a socialist; any more than a conservative who goes a little farther right ends up as a fascist. The divides are more fundamental than the matter of degree that you seem to think distinguishes liberal democracy and socialism.


Unlikely. I have sufficient background in mathematics to understand that there are limits to human knowledge, and sometimes things don't makes sense. If what you mean by "more objective" is "closer to your views," then your definition of objective is just wrong. You can call yourself an Objectivist, but Objectivism with a capital O has very little to do with objectivity.

If you were holding a gun to my head and making a demand I would still have the freedom to choose to oblige or not. If I want to risk taking a bullet through my head that is still a free choice.

Stalin opposed Nazism when all of Britain still thought Hitler was a swell guy. But the USSR did not have the military capability at that time to fight Germany alone, and they could find no allies in Western Europe- not even in Britain- so he signed a non-aggression pact to buy some time and then later defeated the Nazi war machine. None of that means Stalin should be regarded as a great authority on anything other than fighting Nazis. Certainly we both reject his political ideals.

@JakobVirgil:

Reality is objective in the sense that it exists independently of any man's subjective desire's.

If experience does not lead you to become more objective (whether you buy into Rand or not), then you either in denial or you are experiencing something other than reality.

But our perceptions do not exist independently of our subjective desires. Recognizing the fallibility of human perception is important; it is necessary to acknowledge that we do not have certainty of anything outside of formal mathematics. And even that is a bit suspect if you look too close.



Well, we all are experiencing something other than reality.

Yes. Fundamental values cannot be deduced from either deductive or inductive logic. It's not possible to derive an "aught" from an "is". Science can be objective because science is the study of what is. Moral philosophy deals with how humans/society aught to be. Therefore moral philosophy cannot be objective. It can be either logically consistent or logically inconsistent, but internal consistency alone does not determine objective truth value. Any principle that is to be taken as an axiomatic prescription for how humans "aught" to behave is necessarily subjective.

I'm not too sure, I think the "is-ought gap" is a bit overplayed. You can't derive an "Ought" statement from a SIMPLE "Is" statement, but what else could ought statements be aside from a subset of factual statements (be they ERRORS or corresponding to some true reality).

I don't follow you. I thought only religious folks think prescriptive statements can have independent truth value.

if experience leads you to anything it would be to pragmatism and rejection of myths, panaceas, easy answers, just so stories and reliance on theory over experience. and so a rejection of Rand and all other easy answer hucksters.

-Jake

Objectivism is objective in the same way that Scientology is scientific.

Well, as we all know MP is a closet Papist, and in fact the very same individual as 91. There is only one truly STRIDENT anti-theist in PPR.

I had a feeling you were gonna say education. I'm all for better education but I hope that isn't your central focus in fighting poverty. The culture of poverty doesn't promote values that are essential to succeeding in education (self-restraint, emotional control, long term thinking, etc.). There's no easy solution to eliminating this mentality on a large scale cuz this is a worldview you're talking about. It has a shedload of inertia and it will take slow and gradual change. It is a maladaptive way of adjusting to poverty. Though it suffices in adapting to your environment in the short term, it does no good for your prospects in the long term.

I have not only come to this conclusion through research but also through growing up in impoverished neighbourhoods. This is what holds people down the most. Telling people to try harder or lift themselves up by the bootstraps is no good and doesn't address the nuances and complexity of this paradigm. They'll only try harder in things they consider worthwhile. The key is to help em see that education is worthwhile, and there is no simple answer to that. What needs to be done is to bring awareness to this concept and pouring money into activism. A lack of role models is also quite demoralizing and contributes to fatalism. However, the only person that can change is yourself, and the only thing that inhibits change is permission. So personal responsibility is still a big factor here. I don't believe in wealth redistribution, throwing money at em, or having false expectations about education. At the same time I don't believe in saying "To hell with em" and just abandoning em since the middle class and upper class are just as susceptible to the inertia of holding a worldview and thus contempt towards the lower class is unwarranted since everyone's s**t stinks equally.

The activism thing isn't the only thing I think would help and I don't even know if it is a central factor to helping em. It is a complete mindf*ck I haven't sorted out yet.

Who's been killed by the FDA? . I'll have to say I dunno much about em other than the fact that the labels tell me what ingredients are in my food and that a million ingredients means it's been heavily processed. But I'd rather know what's in my food.

Although I am pretty individualist, I find extreme individualism absurd as we are social beings by nature and the infrastructure of society itself serves as a medium of resources (pertaining to social, economic, and personal resources) and communication rather than just a medium of trade and protection. We do not live in a vacuum.

Yeaahh calling something that's subjective objective is not only arrogant, but shows how shortsighted you are about the limits of human knowledge.

Exactly. Reality doesn't exist independent of anything, it is simply stable existence in relation to our perspective. And anything that pertains to our perspective has an element of subjectivity. Do I use the word pertain way too much? lol.

Exactly. And I've seen someone on this forum mention a study that demonstrated that people who had brains that were inactive in the emotional part of their brain (Severed neural connections? Physical damage to the grey matter itself? I dunno) didn't take more logical actions, but took no action at all. This proves what I'm saying about logic itself being a means to an end, the end being emotion.

@Orwell wrote:

I don't deny that, but I at least make an honest effort not to be a jackass all of the time. I've yet to see any attempt at civility from you. Your insults and criticisms only serve to highlight your immaturity.



Pharmaceutical companies have nothing to gain and everything to lose by withholding information from patients. Dishonest pharmaceutical companies are only able to stay in business because the FDA shields them from the full force of the market. Meanwhile people suffer because the gov't refuses to let them risk their life for a chance to save it.



Yes, but unless that link is based on a foundation of voluntary association it becomes slavery. The social welfare programs you promote is merely an evolutionary advantage for the idiots. People do not learn when they are isolated from the consequences of their choices. A lot of those same idiots are laughing all the way to the bank with your money.



Do you know of a better way to choose a representative govt?



The only fundamental difference between socialism and fascism is that socialism deny's all private property, while fascism allows the appearance of property ownership as long as you do what the gov't says with that property. Both value the collective over the individual. Both claim that morality is only achievable through sacrifice. Both have repeatedly proven throughout history to result in the wholesale slaughter of millions when practiced to their fullest extent.



By "more objective" I mean more grounded in objective reality. You prove, once again, that you do not understand Rand or Objectivism, therefore rendering any of your criticisms of it irrelevant.

Prove that Objectivism is grounded in objective reality.