[556] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: "Watch me pull laissez-faire capitalism out of this
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Prez H. Cannady)
Sat May 5 20:25:37 2001
Message-Id: <200105060024.UAA20821@melbourne-city-street.mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 20:24:43 -0400
To: "Sourav K. Mandal" <Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com>, mit-talk@MIT.EDU
From: "Prez H. Cannady" <revprez@MIT.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <200105052238.SAA06067@dichotomy.dyn.dhs.org>
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At 06:38 PM 5/5/01 , Sourav K. Mandal wrote
>
>Hence your personal moral relativism?
No, that comes from my eternal pursuit for sex,
chedda, and superficial entertainment.
>Here's a thought experiment: If you were to design a political system
>(e.g., republic, democracy, anarchy), what would you create and why?
>Or do you reject the exercise altogether, since you do not hold a code
>of ethics, and hence cannot define an optimal governing system?
I would require the provision of all basic media services,
deregulate firearms trafficking and ownership, and stack up
on can goods.
>Anarchy, properly, is the simple absence of government (prevalence of
>chaos is an _alternate_ definition, to those who are scratching their
>heads). Most Objectivists (including Rand herself) reject this notion;
>other accept it, but only if "defense agencies" meet the Objectivist
>ethical criteria. Either way, the "greedy man," who is potentially
>everybody, has the same rights as anyone else.
As I said, Objectivism is bankrupt in its inability to remain
consistent with even its tenet that man can be ideal.
Government -- social contract is unnecessary if we
expected man to ideally and predictably operate.
>When you join the military, you _assume_ an obligation to follow its
>rules, including the duty to follow orders.
No. You incur a legal obligation to follow the orders.
Nobody's asking for your legal opinion. This is a moral
question. A better answer would have been "you have a
moral obligation to abide by the legal system under which
you operate," which begs even more questions about how
that system came to be associated with you.
>(I'm assuming in this scenario that if both A and B refuse to act, they
>both die.)
You assume wrong.
>Ethics don't really apply in "lifeboat" situations, because the right
>to conscious life is presupposed in ethics.
Sure they do, and ethics does not presuppose the right to
conscious life. Ethics defines it; there's is nothing preventing
someone from operating ethically and rejecting the right
to life. A more exhaustive way of saying this is that ethics
does not presuppose a specifically defined right to life,
and that "right to life," and "life" is defined by some
other source. Either way, it doesn't matter. Dismissing
lifeboat situations with a presumption is not very
interesting.
>If there is ever a
>situation where one person's life becomes mutually exclusive with
>another, there is no basis for a consideration of ethics.
Tell that to a Quaker.
>So, I can
>neither fault nor support someone who decides to kill to preserve his
>or her own life.
I can fault the person who gets killed. Normally, the situations
where that occurs, A was bound to get it eventually.
>However, this is simply not the case in 99.999...% of real life, where
>each person has values which they can trade to mutual benefit.
The expansion is not terribly difficult to conceive. Ethics
presuppose a great number of rights that are world wide not
agreed upon. I for one accept very few rights. In fact,
I reject the right to live.
Also, I'd question your 99.9999%. Not everybody grew up
free of violence.
>Since when can any business practice be characterized as "force?"
Please, force is action compelling another action. You
don't need to have a gun to your head or a finding of
contempt to "force" somebody to do something.
>Creating a better product, having more effective (honest) marketing,
>exploiting existing market position and beating the competition to new
>market share or discovered assets are _not_ examples of force.
Honest marketing is not continuous, because your ethics do
not exist beyond the fallacy you've created in your mind.
Dishonesty is reality, Sourav.
>Force
>is when you take away someone's values (life, property, etc.) without
>consent.
Generally, very few people surrender that consensually. Even
gamblers.
>The only value you can seize from a competitor is a customer
>base, but customers never properly "belong" to a company.
Sure they do.
>Yes -- ethics override all.
I wonder if the Etruscans were Objectivists, before they
were slaughtered? It sounds like a recipe for weakness.
Weakness invariably breeds itself and results in extinction.
That doesn't sound like a very rational choice to me.
>Though, if enough people are convinced of
>the gravity of strategic concerns, they might pay voluntarily.
Interesting qualification.
>Now, from a purely economic standpoint: is such a governmental power
>compatible with the efficient production of wealth? Are you suggesting
>that there is a "sweet spot" between free economic growth and strategic
>policy, not unlike the current situation in the US?
I thought you were suggesting there isn't. I just have
no intention of letting market forces govern strategic
concerns directly. Unity of command is a principle
of warfare and one not well suited to change. Just
ask any Communist, especially when they tried that stupidly
egalitarian monstrosity that allowed soldiers to
vote on their orders.
>That's quite
>possible, and without _much_ harm to the economy; for example, the
>current US outlay for national defense and law enforcement is about 20%
>of the total budget, and that's including expenses like foreign aid and
>the War on Drugs.
What are you trying to say here?
>I bet NASA would also balk at the prospect of their touchy-feely space
>party being exploited for military purposes.
That's why NASA is a little bitch of an organization. Nobody
really gives a crap about what they think. They don't set
policy, they just research and lift shit into orbit.
>But, I agree that a
>missile defense is important -- I find it more palatable than offering
>the lives of US citizens as collateral in a mutally assured destruction
>strategic scenario.
MAD no longer exists (at this time) except in the minds of those
liberals who cling to the idea that pieces of paper protect
American citizens better than a hard defense.
>Also, this way we would not require rationality on
>the part of our would-be adversaries.
Which, clearly, is not the case for the adversaries we
are concerned about in this age.
>Are you referring to the need of research for economic sustainability,
>or the simple existence of private funding? Either way, please refer
>to my reply to Alex Coventry.
All right.
>Yes, totalitarianism is a wonderful way to foist any philosophy onto a
>group of people, but no one is advocating that.
Neither did Marx. That's why it became Marxism-Leninism. These
philosophies that refuse to recognize their reducable quality
tend to require modification in order to sell (or foist, as you
say) on people otherwise inclined to stick with reality.
>The ideal would be the
>gradual, peaceful, conscious, joyful acceptance of the tenets of
>Objectivism, but I agree that isn't about to happen any time in the
>forseeable future. I'm willing to nix "joyful," if it would help ...
Joyful? Peaceful?
I'm sorry, are you suggesting that Objectivism is
going to give head to get the social contract? I
know some people do that for crack, but I didn't
think the practice had gone that far. ;)
>My impression is that you think it's rational to do whatever you can
>get away with to meet your personal desires.
Pretty much. I don't always. I gotta little sister and I'm
damned protective of her. If a punk even so much as catches
a cold on a rainy day and sneezes in her general direction,
I'm liable to put two in his dome.
>Objectivists think that
>rational egoism is the way to go, which demands that one value the
>egos/lives/property of others.
Other peoples' egos get in the way of mine. I'd
rather lay'em flat instead.
>This means that you can seek your
>desires as you please, but within that limitation. Not coercing others
>-- is that too much to ask?
Yeah. Is that yo'chain? Run it.
>So to answer your question: I think people are fundamentally rational,
We obviously live in two different worlds, then.
>conscious beings who, for a variety of reasons, choose not to think a
>lot of the time.
Probably because it's not terribly fun and most people
have other priorities. This is if think means mindlessly
mill about unimportant shit in attempt to find meaningless
subtleties most people can live and die without ever
considering.
>Still, that they have this capability is enough.
If they have it.
>Since people, unlike nearly any other animal, survive by using their
>minds (just look at the world around us, with microwaves, TVs,
>refrigerators, etc.), they should be free to exercise them. Only when
>a person impinges on another's right to use his mind should he/she be
>restricted. So, even if, someone is acting stupidly vis-a-vis the
>"strategic" picture, the activities of that person should not be
>curtailed unless they are _forcing_ other people from pursuing their
>own values.
Here we must disagree.
>You might deem this to be an arbitrary premise, despite its
>metaphysicality. However, since you claim to be a metaphysical realist
>as I do, this should sway you.
I never claimed to be a metaphysical realist. My premises
are entirely irrational. I claimed to be a realist, as
in I keep it real.
* * *
Presley H. Cannady, Class of 2002, Electrical Engineering
Acting Chairman, College Republicans
CR Website <http://web.mit.edu/republicans/www/>
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