Ayn Rand

[GePap]

Traders? Of emotions? of Love? How do you trade between Mother and child? What trade am I to make with my grandmother as the basis of our relation?

Who makes sure the market is regulated? Who makes the rules? Who enforces the rules? And what is the currency,. or do we work with some hackneyed version of barter?

And how do you judge true benefit? How do you know that what you just got was actually beneficial to you, or what you gave beneficial to them?

[monolith94]

"If age were the primary requirement of an argument, we'd be living on a flat earth."

We're dealing with moral and philisophical arguments, however - not scientific ones!!! Big difference!

[Agathon]

Anyway, Libertarianism doesn't prohibit lying to someone else. If a roober comes up to you and says "I'll beat you up if you don't give me your wallet" he's still given you a free choice and he hasn't done anything wrong - you are still free to say yes or no: he doesn't do anything wrong until he starts beating you up. If you say no he might shrug and go away and he wouldn't have done anything wrong since he wouldn't have usurped your power to make a choice.

He doesn't even have to threaten to beat you up himself. He can say, "give me fifty bucks or I'll tell that evil looking guy over there that you called him a f*ggot" and then he wouldn't be doing anything wrong at all.

Face it - using voluntariness as a ground for morality is just dumb.

[Rex Little]

Originally posted by Agathon
If threats count as coercion then why restrict them to threats of force, why not threats of removing certain privileges?

Because force itself is coercion, but "removing privileges" is not (assuming those privileges are gifts rather than something to which you're entitled).

Here's another case: in a Libertarian system a boss can threaten to fire his secretary unless she has sex with him. After all he doesn't owe her a job and she's free to seek employment elsewhere.

This would be coercion if there was any sort of employment contract (express or implied) in place. Let's try a clearer example. Suppose I've been getting my hair cut regularly by a particular female barber. One day, I tell her that I'm going to start going to the shop across the street unless she sleeps with me. Coercion? No, because the barber does not have a right to my business unless I choose to give it to her. If taking my business elsewhere is not a violation of her rights, threatening to do so can't be either.

By contrast, I do have a right to my life, so it is coercive for the guy with the gun to shoot me. That being so, it's coercive for him to threaten to do it. The fact that he gives me another choice (hand over my money) is irrelevant.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Rex Little
Because force itself is coercion, but "removing privileges" is not (assuming those privileges are gifts rather than something to which you're entitled).

That's nice but the robber doesn't actually force me, he only threatens to force me. And he doesn't even have to be telling the truth. Libertarianism doesn't prohibit lying per se so they need more than just voluntariness if they are to escape this one.

This would be coercion if there was any sort of employment contract (express or implied) in place.

It would but only if a certain kind of contract was in place: namely one that prohibited renegotiation. If we are talking about day to day contracts (which is an employer's dream when labour is abundant) then it's quite a reasonable scenario.

Let's try a clearer example. Suppose I've been getting my hair cut regularly by a particular female barber. One day, I tell her that I'm going to start going to the shop across the street unless she sleeps with me. Coercion? No, because the barber does not have a right to my business unless I choose to give it to her. If taking my business elsewhere is not a violation of her rights, threatening to do so can't be either.

I agree this isn't coercion. But neither is the case of the pervert boss or the robber.

By contrast, I do have a right to my life, so it is coercive for the guy with the gun to shoot me.

I never said it wasn't. We are talking about someone giving you the choice of being shot or giving up your wallet. If the robber then goes on to shoot you then I'll agree that that is a violation of your rights; but he could simply be calling your bluff. You owe a separate argument as to why saying you are going to do something if someone doesn't do something else is coercive.

That being so, it's coercive for him to threaten to do it.

Why? This is an illegitimate inference. That it is wrong to kill someone doesn't entail that it is wrong to say you are going to kill someone. You need a separate argument for it. And even that won't do because you also need to show how this violates our liberty in order to avoid admitting principles that have anti-Libertarian consequences.

And you aren't being coerced because you are given a choice. The fact that it's a bad choice is neither here nor there (the secretary is given a bad choice - the boss is threatening her with unemployment).

Simply put - threatening to violate a right is not violating that right, it's something else.

[Wraith]

--"why not threats of removing certain privileges?"

I think you should look up the root of the word "privilege".

--" in a Libertarian system a boss can threaten to fire his secretary unless she has sex with him."

Depends on the contract they signed. No one has a right to work a specific job, but if some ******* says something like that to a secretary she also has the right to go tell everyone she knows about it. Get in the media and make his business suffer.

--"Oh dear - I know a great deal about Libertarianism"

No, apparently not. I perfectly understand where Chomsky is going with his little example, which is why I'm so irritated with it. People blatantly misrepresenting those who don't agree with them is one of the lowest forms "debate".

--" She ignores the fact that we are social beings, "

She really doesn't. She just seens those relationships differently than you do.

I'll expand upon that whole "someone you love" bit that got brought up above. The basic argument is that if you love someone you value them greatly (yes, Rand is all for selfishness, but she doesn't restrict value to mean money). Therefore it is in your rational self interest for them to be happy and safe.

--"Who makes sure the market is regulated?"

Rand was not an anarchist, she was a minarchist. She felt that government was there to protect people's rights. She wanted a government that was little more than the police and courts.

--"How do you know that what you just got was actually beneficial to you, or what you gave beneficial to them?"

It's called judgement. She understood economics. Value is a subjective thing. A ton of scrap iron may be worthless to me, but someone out there can make damn good use of it. This is just basic capitalism.

--"We're dealing with moral and philisophical arguments, however - not scientific ones!!! Big difference!"

Interesting. The age benefit only applies to philosophical arguments, then? Are they like cheeses or wines?

--"Anyway, Libertarianism doesn't prohibit lying to someone else."

Fraud is considered a form of force.
Please stop making statements about what Libertarianism does or does not do. Your track record there is very poor.

And please stop ignoring my point above about force or threat of force.

Damn it, this is exactly why I stopped getting into these sorts of arguments.

Edit:
--"And you aren't being coerced because you are given a choice."

The Ogre's choice: Die fast or die slow.
Sorry, it doesn't work that way. If I offer you a choice of me breaking your arm or breaking your leg, it's still coercion. Please, please stop with the strawman arguments. This will never go anywhere if you keep it up.

Wraith
"It's my own fault for getting lured into conversation."
-- Daria ("The Lost Girls")

[Ted Striker]

Come on, I know you Libertarians have a stash of Ayn Rand porn pics!

[Agathon]

Fraud is considered a form of force?

How magical. It is considered a form of force. Why? After all a lunatic may consider a cow to be a horse, but his considering it doesn't make it so.

I hope you'll explain your stupendous claim to us.

As for coercion - the Libertarian version of coercion is that I don't get a free choice - the voluntary is the mark of the moral and the involuntary the mark of the immoral. If you want to add conditions to it then that's fine with me, but it will entail anti-libertarian counterexamples.

You can say that Libertarianism prohibits force or the threat of force all you like. I want you to tell me how offering the threat force as an option violates anybody's liberty any more than the boss situation. I want to know exactly what the morally relevant difference is and why it is a morally relevant difference.

[Rex Little]

Originally posted by Agathon
the Libertarian version of coercion is that I don't get a free choice - the voluntary is the mark of the moral and the involuntary the mark of the immoral.

No, the Libertarian version of coercion is that you are threatened with the violation of your rights. What Libertarians do not consider coercion is when you are threatened with something which, while undesirable, does not violate your rights (such as the loss of a customer in my example above).

If you want to say that the threat of force isn't coercion even though force itself is, go ahead. Onlookers can judge for themselves if that makes any sense without us continuing to play 'tis so-'tis not.

[David Floyd]

I'm reminded of the last time Agathon got into a debate with Berzerker and myself. Let's go ask orange - who is certainly no Libertarian - who won that debate

Oh dear, now Wraith's doing it too. I guess I'll stay out of this one for now, you stirred up the uber-Libertarian

[monkspider]

I don't know about the last one Dave, but this time I think Agathon is cleaning house.
Maybe the Libs are missing your assistance.

[David Floyd]

Fine, then. When I've had more than 8 hours of sleep in a combined 4 nights and can be reasonably coherent, I'll respond

[Ted Striker]

SHE'S A HOE!!!

[Narz]

Man, who cares about winning arguements on the internet? I'm just interested in discussion, arguing doesn't change people's minds anyway, intelligent pursuasion sometimes does.

My philosophy about philosophy is best summed up by Bruce Lee : "Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own."

- Narz

[Andemagne]

dunno anything about Ayn Rand, but sure would like to learn.