Thanks, Larry. You must have missed the part where I said, " For Arguement's Sake"...

 

I actually abhor the idea of anarchy. I merely thought I would return the conversation to the initial line of inquiry. But ok, let's go with this... Let's forget the philosophical/political right & wrong and focus on concrete ideas & actions: How do you get from where we are now, either nationally or internationally, to a lasseiz-faire capitalism direction more in line with Rand's philosophy? Not in theory, in actuality?

 

And, again for agruements sake, what was the government in Galt's gulch? The only point I was making is that you have to have a universally accepted set of principles to be able to discount a governing body. The assumption being that since everyone in Galt's Gulch (and my euphoric objectivist island nation) buys into the same principles of reason & rationality, there would be no force to govern/protect against. It was an arguement against the practical application of anarchy, not for it. The larger world population would have to agree unilaterally on a rational platform of existance, or at the very least not using force. Although the arguement could be made, to Chelsea's point, that the American Founding fathers had the right idea, my point was that world-wide you won't get that vote.

 

Katie

 

From: Larry <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Wednesday, February 8,[masked]:13 AM
Subject: Re: [aynrand-8] The global society is in a state of anarchy

Katie,

In order to state, "If you actually wanted anarchy .......................... buy a couple of islands, allow only objectivists to be citizens, and start from scratch (kind of the way Rand proposed)", you must have missed my reply from yesterday which from Ayn Rand's own writing states, that anarchism is a naive floating abstraction which would bring about the degeneration of society and is promoted by the scum of the intellectual world of the left which are lower than Communists. (For references, see "anarchy" in the Ayn Rand Lexicon on the web).

I would venture to say that people who choose to promote Objectivism as endorsing or in any way approving of Anarchism are either committing fraud in order to benefit from Ayn Rand's name or choosing to be intellectually lazy or naive. It is common for Libertarians to promote anarchy since Murray Rothbard, one of its intellectual leaders, expounded on the virtues of anarchy. While Libertarians repeatedly attempt to confuse people that they are the same as Objectivists, there is a huge divide. Simply put, Libertarians have one value, liberty, which is a political end that is bereft of a philosophy containing metaphysics, epistomology and ethics. Whereas Objectivism is based upon the morality of rational egoism and is a philosophy that contains the 3 subjects mentioned including a political component called lasseiz-faire capitalism.

To an Objectivist, government exists in order to have the legal use of retaliation through the use of force against force and the threat of force. To accomplish these ends, armies and police are established to retaliate against force, while courts and a system of justice are established to retaliate against fraud and to administer contracts. Anarchy, which proposes a free market in force would denure to the person with the biggest and best mob.

Larry

 

From: katie <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Wednesday, February 8,[masked]:00 AM
Subject: Re: [aynrand-8] The global society is in a state of anarchy

For arguement's sake, what Anwar is proposing actually looks a lot like Galt's Gulch, I think.

Now I agree that in this world that we live in, you cannot just flip the switch to anarchy ( allthough I think we could all do with a return to survival of the fittest mentality accross the society - to check the needs/wants consumerism that underlies a lot of our trending problems).

While I agree with what a lot of other people have said on this thread, let's consider the proposal for a moment.

Galt's Gulch worked bc everyone bought into the same value system (with some leeway, let's assume we all share that basic heading). How do you get that to work when applied to the larger world as we have now?

 

Is it more a question of causation/correlation? Could you, in theory, (forgetting for a minute how you would topple a government and also keep new ones from rising up) engender the many different cultures to buy into a commerce by the people? How many generations would it take to weed out the "will whine for food"s from the "will work for food"s ?

I think in theory, it works, and I'd be willing to survive the fall of the modern era to see it... But in reality, you don't have widespread consensus that non governement is an option (not in the world, and not even here on this thread amongst objectivists). And in all honestly, I'd probably be involved in whatever the next beast that comes to power is, bc well, I have a few ideas about what shouldn't be done.

 

 If you actually wanted anarchy (lack of government/true governement by the citizens) we would have to start over... buy a couple of islands, allow only objectivists to be citizens, and start from scratch (kind of the way Rand proposed) and let the rest of the world go to over governed lazy entitled hell.

 

By the way, I saw an article on the UN's proposal to extend it's reach to protect the poor (by some huge distribution of global wealth)... who wants to go island shopping?

 

Katie

From: Chelsea Roth <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Tuesday, February 7,[masked]:49 PM
Subject: RE: [aynrand-8] The global society is in a state of anarchy

Well said.

Subject: Re: [aynrand-8] The global society is in a state of anarchy
From: [address removed]
To: [address removed]
Date: Tue, 7 Feb[masked]:57:04 -0500

"Altruism is the science of hiding self interest"

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 7, 2012, at 3:45 PM, Larry <[address removed]> wrote:

Anwar,

 

The closest the US ever came to a lasseiz-faire capitalist-style government was the late 1800's. Since the Progressive era began in

the 1910's, we have had a mixture of crony socialism, fascism and some free market capitalism. Whatever effect technology

may have had on our lives it pales in comparison to the immorality established by the ideology of altruism. The New Deal and Great Society

programs which have structurally wrecked the nation are based upon the credo of being your brother's keeper. It does not really matter that

information moves at lightspeed when the integrators of that information have cognitive dissonance.

 

Larry

 

From: Anwar Timol <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Tuesday, February 7,[masked]:03 PM
Subject: Re: [aynrand-8] The global society is in a state of anarchy

I don't think Ayn's idea of government or capitalism is relevant today. Fundamentally it is but the latest advances in technology have changed the world. Information is available to everyone (both true and false). Governments are not only in bed with large corporations, they are married to them! I don't think we take into account the effect that technology had on capitalism and the "free market system".

Anwar

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 7, 2012, at 1:14 PM, Jim Smith <[address removed]> wrote:

Well hear is what seems to be the choice:
Either the governments of the world continued to interact with each other and have no central world government (which is anarchy among or between the nations)
Or a world government is set up to govern the nations of the world.

I don't think anyone favors world government of that nature. However, without a world government to control all the individual nations the world will remain in the state of anarchy amongst the nations.
That is alright with me. I prefer things as they are but what I'm saying and what many others are saying is that this "anarchy among the nations" seems to work pretty well.

I've gotten some off the target responses regarding libertarians and occupy Wall Street and leftists but they have nothing to do with the reality that there is no government controlling the governments of the world.
It begs the question, if the governments of the world can get along as well as they do with no central government then why would anarchy not be reasonable?

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

From: William Carter <[address removed]>

Sender: [address removed]

Date: Tue, 7 Feb[masked]:51:11 -0500

To: <[address removed]>

ReplyTo: [address removed]

Subject: Re: [aynrand-8] The global society is in a state of anarchy

I suspect that Ayn Rand would favor the anti-federalist founders of our country like Jefferson. 

On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 2:00 PM, Chelsea Roth <[address removed]> wrote:

I would say that Ayn Rand would not support a system of anarchy based on what she had said regarding government (and it's proper function), her admiration of the American founding fathers and their ideals and at least 2 (if not all) of the premises of her philosophy, (objective reality, self interest, reason, capitalism).
Although Ayn was of coarse addimatly opposed to big government, as far as I know she never preposed that there should be no government. But that a government has only one proper funtion, to punish those who take by force, but using force (criminals/ foreign invaders).
Ayn was also drawn to this country in part by the ideals of the founding fathers. Free unregulated economy, pursuit of happiness, liberty for all as highlights. She said the ideas were there, but the original system lacked a moral code to intergrate them. Again, although she saw the role of government as very specific, the understanding of the govern and philosophy comprising that understanding is extremely important. One thing about Ayn Rand was that she defiantly stood for something. Anarchy in my view is a free for all, as a system no standard, value, morality, nothing.
Lastly, the premises of Ayn's philosophy, (objective reality, self interest, reason, capitalism), does not compleatly agree with a system of anarchy. For one, capitalism is a system of trade for mutual benifit with a standard of value which can be agreed apon amongst traders (currency). Though there could be some arguement about self-interest in anarchy, I would say that it really is not in anyones self-interest to live in world where force and coercion are just as valid as anything else.

From: [address removed]
To: [address removed]
Subject: [aynrand-8] The global society is in a state of anarchy
Date: Mon, 6 Feb[masked]:10:36 -0500

Since all nations are independently ruled and there is no central world government, a state of anarchy exists.

 

Interestingly enough, the number of people killed in wars under anarchy, that is wars between the nations, is much less than the number of people killed in wars where traditional central government exists...within nations.

 

Rather than any world government, anarchy may be the preferential state:

http://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/was-the-democratic-peace-killed-part-ii-international-relations/

 

In the end...Anarchy may not lead to the terrible visions that those against it surmise. How would Ayn reply to the state of the world between nations (anarchy with no central power) being perhaps better off  that a central power within nations leading to terrible conditions often?

 

Jim

 

 

 

James D. Smith

[masked]

Director of Global Center for Conscious Capitalists

 

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