[kashunstva]

> what this reveals about how Objectivism operates in practice...the movement's central contradiction

Is it only the gatekeepers of Rand's legacy that exhibit this discrepancy, or was it contradiction from the beginning? I seem to remember the first Objectivist herself accepted assistance from the Federal government near the end of her life.

Anyway, to someone with a distant outsider's view of this movement, it can seem that it misses something fundamental about the human psyche as it evolved to operate in co-dependent groups.

[btilly]

Accepting assistance is perfectly in accord with her philosophy.

You can verify her position from https://courses.aynrand.org/works/the-question-of-scholarshi.... She views taxation as theft. Those who agree and advocate against this theft, may morally accept government largesse as restitution. But those who accept both the taxation and the redistribution become complicit in the theft, and are therefore immoral.

There is a lot to criticize in her views. But this piece of it is not inconsistent. Only bizarre to someone who doesn't understand her.

[glenstein]

Right, and I think there has unfortunately been an avalanche of low effort gotchas along these lines.

My favorite (or least favorite?) example is from Jennifer Burns' biography Goddess of the Market, which charges that title "The Fountainhead" was a haphazard last second choice, selecting a word that never appears in the novel. But slight problem with that, a climactic conversation about ideals, perhaps the climactic articulation of values in the book, occurs between two main characters who use the term "fount" as a stand-in term for the wellspring of human creation, value, and meaning. Fountainhead, then, is who the main character is, and nothing other than typical artistic restraint in selecting a title that simultaneously points to the intellectual center of the novel without being browbeating about the term itself. I actually emailed Jennifer Burns and pointed this out at one point but didn't hear back.

I do think the collapse of many of Rand's closest interpersonal relationships, the depression and drinking that her husband went into, as well as the legacy of her institute and estate, are quite damning. As of course is the shallow treatment of complicated topics, the fundamental misunderstanding of Kant that inspired the name of the whole philosophy, and the inapplicability of principles to mortals who wrestle with personal flaws. Those are real, but the social security thing isn't.

[btilly]

One of the major reasons why there are so many low effort gotchas is that her message is so emotionally uncomfortable for many. Facing what is legitimate in her criticisms is hard. And so people only consider her views long enough to come up with easily rejected caricatures. The arguments that they then use to reject those caricatures show how they did not actually process her point of view.

But this is not just a problem that faces non-Objectivists. For example consider how Ayn Rand rejected the scientific evidence for smoking causing harm. She never had a logical argument. What she had was such an overwhelming emotional commitment to smoking being good that she would latch on to any plausible sounding argument against smoking being bad.

For a more current example, look at Alex Epstein's arguments on global warming. It quickly becomes apparent that he has such a strong emotional alignment with the great good caused by fossil fuels that he easily accepts any argument, no matter how flawed, that they might also cause harm. Compounding the trouble, global warming presents the exact kind of tragedy of the commons that undermines the economic theories by which Objectivism should lead to an economic utopia. This fact adds to the emotional dynamics for ignoring evidence that reality doesn't actually work in the ways that Ayn Rand claimed.

[ceejayoz]

The ability to explain away hypocrisy is not the same as a lack of hypocrisy.

[loki49152]

And she didn't engage in hypocrisy. It has a meaning.

[glenstein]

I mean if it's a good explanation, then it most definitely is the same as lack of hypocrisy.

I do see how you can squint and feel that there's something there, after all Rand imagined a capitalist utopia. But it's not at all a crazy argument to understand accepting the benefits as a recovery of resources that were rightfully yours to begin with. It's actually refreshingly coherent and responsive, and a huge contrast with how modern public figures don't even pretend to address instances of personal hypocrisy.

I might raise a little bit of an eyebrow but I don't see the knockdown gotcha, and if you do, well, you've gotta make the argument.

[ceejayoz]

> But it's not at all a crazy argument to understand accepting the benefits as a recovery of resources that were rightfully yours to begin with.

I rather suspect Rand's politics didn't include giving land back to Native Americans, or paying reparations to slaves.

[glenstein]

Great point and no disagreements from me there, it's actually a great illustration of an intellectual blind spot her philosophy is practically helpless to address.

But one comment ago the subject was social security, and I don't think the charge of hypocrisy sticks on that one.

[ceejayoz]

> But one comment ago the subject was social security, and I don't think the charge of hypocrisy sticks on that one.

But that difference is the hypocrisy!

"I get to have this… because it was taken from me! No, that doesn't apply to your thing, because… uh..."

[btilly]

The fact that it is a good explanation, doesn't mean that hypocrisy is missing. It is quite common for us to do things for one reason, while actually being motivated by a second, unacknowledged, reason.

For example consider this case. When we become dependent upon another's largesse, it is easy to emotionally deal with it by holding the other in contempt. Thereby making it emotionally comfortable to accept the largesse, and hiding from any potential feeling of guilt. For example Ayn Rand did an excellent job of portraying this dynamic on a personal level with the example of Lillian Reardon. Who holds Hank in contempt exactly because it keeps her from having to face how much of a parasite she has become.

I've seen Objectivists fall into exactly this dynamic. When their contempt for the government becomes a way to avoid thinking about how dependent they have actually become on said government, continuing to spout Ayn Rand's justification becomes hypocrisy. And as long as the underlying emotional reality is ignored, it remains hypocrisy no matter how logical and reasonable the explanation may be.

[glenstein]

We must have fundamentally different ideas of what it means for something to be a good explanation. It takes more than gesturing toward the hypothetical possibility of acting due to unacknowledged motives for it to count as a best, or even good, explanation.

I used to follow a lot of RSS feeds and the political blogosphere when that was a thing. And one of the best was Brendan Nyhan, and he had a routine segment criticizing op-ed sections for fabricating internal monologues of political actors, making assumptions about internal states of mind that could never be disproved and proceeding to analysis that depended upon such unfalsifiable speculation.

I think it was a good principle against which to judge media accountability, and I would generalize by saying that such speculation involves relaxing the norms that usually apply to critical thinking writ large. At the level of genre, this category of speculating I would say does not enjoy default legitimacy due to its departure from normal critical thinking principles relating to substantiation and a fundamental lack of interest in responding to arguments on their merits.

[btilly]

I'm arguing for the hypothetical possibility that an Objectivist could have hypocrisy on this. The argument that any individual Objectivist actually does requires a tremendous amount of additional information.

I do personally know some Objectivists who I believe are hypocritical on this matter. But that is based on years of interaction, and I wouldn't expect you to be convinced of that simply because I said it.

[amanaplanacanal]

That's still very self serving. The taxes she paid were spent on something else, the largesse she received was stolen from somebody else. I guess receiving stolen goods was ok in her philosophy?

[imtringued]

The problem is that if you do understand Any Rand, then she herself is the biggest tax advocate in history. Therefore she was one of the most immoral people.

How is this possible? Creating a tax free society requires more than getting rid of the government. It requires you to build a cooperative society where people willingly help each other out with no expectation of a return. Ayn Rand is the archetypical enemy of such a society.

[kbelder]

She addressed the problem with accepting assistance in relation to student tuition assistance. Briefly, she said hate the game, not the player. The students have a structure imposed upon them, and it's not irrational or unethical to take the aid the government provides since the government still regulates them and taxes them in various ways. However, it would be unethical to advocate for increasing that assistance (because the benefit is taken forcibly from others).

[thrance]

Not really a defense of this clown ideology, but Rand would be acting rationally (if a bit hypocritically) by accepting the Government's check. In her views, it's the State that's acting irrationally by offering support in the first place.

On a similar subject, she believed disabled people (or more generally, people unable to work) should not receive any help other than from "voluntary charity" [1], a fact I find absolutely disgusting and should discredit this ideology to any sane person.

[1] https://youtu.be/rM4HqlqQYwo

[notahacker]

Even her fictional utopia Galt's Gulch is basically a commune, a commune where people cosplay at being hardnosed capitalists who won't give anything for free by charging each other token amounts for everything...

[lazystar]

Exactly - theyre all non-conformists, and you can be a non-conformist and join them in their commune if you act just like them in every way.

[isleyaardvark]

People often say there is no contradiction by looking at it on a philosophical level, but it's interesting to look at it at a more meta level, namely the fact that Rand felt she needed SS.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ayn-rand-social-security/#...

> Pryor: I had read enough to know that she despised government interference, and that she felt that people should and could live independently. She was coming to a point in her life where she was going to receive the very thing she didn't like, which was Medicare and Social Security.

> I remember telling her that this was going to be difficult. For me to do my job, she had to recognize that there were exceptions to her theory. So that started our politial discussions. From there on - with gusto - we argued all the time the initial argument was on greed. She had to see that there was such a thing as greed in this world. Doctors could cost an awful lot more money than books earn, and she could be totally wiped out by medical bills if she didn't watch it. Since she had worked her entire life and had paid into Social Security, she had a right to it. She didn't feel that an individual should take help.

Emphasis added. If a successful writer, who built their success on their supposed keen insights on business, the economy, and their relation to the government, if that writer could be totally wiped out and feel the need to take Social Security, what chance do the less successful have? Or should they just die?

[loki49152]

She didn't "feel like she needed Social Security".

In fact, she instructed her fiduciary to not apply for it on her behalf because she didn't need it, and her detractors would use her participation to smear her.

Her fiduciary convinced her to be enrolled by citing her own "restitution" argument and the fact that, as a fiduciary, she had an obligation to pursue all of her client's financial interests to the extent of her ability under the law.

That's what you just cited above. At Rand's death, her estate was estimated to be worth somewhere between $500,000 to $2 million dollars. Rand didn't feel she needed it. Her fiduciary did risk management for her.

[isleyaardvark]

I stand corrected, thank you.