The captains of commerce have ridden the Ayn Rand Express to great fortunes. Upon her sturdy shoulders have they staked their righteous claim to free market majesty. Freed from government oversight, they could troll the waters of a laissez-faire marketplace pursuing their own self-interest—what Ms. Rand calls man’s highest moral purpose—and amass evermore wealth for themselves and a little “trickle-down” for everyone else.
Alas, Ayn shrugged.
These same rugged individualists, who Ms. Rand idealized in her objectivist philosophy, have now come running to us, the American taxpayer, for salvation. Truly, it seems, no man is an island, even a master of the universe.
The root problem is that implicit in Rand’s call for unbridled freedom is an assumption that all people will act with integrity and honesty. Adam Smith, who hailed the invisible hand of the marketplace, went even further than Rand by promoting as an end society’s greater interest.
Yet, time and again, we are confronted with a reality that is far different. Some people lack integrity and will cheat. To be sure the bad apples are a small minority, but that is all it takes. Often the rest have to break the rules in order to stay competitive thus causing a true race to the bottom. Beyond that the temptation of easy money spreads where an “everybody’s doing it” mentality sets in.
And as we are finding out now, like a previous generation did after the crash of 1929, the less the oversight the more the propensity for runaway greed. Self-regulation is a complete myth, promulgated by those who abuse their freedom to unduly enrich themselves.
Our public policy should therefore mirror what has made America great: individual freedom combined with social responsibility. We, through our government, have the absolute duty to properly regulate commerce. Such oversight protects not only the consumer but also the honest businessperson, from the predations of the less scrupulous.
Part of our social responsibility is a properly funded government that does as the pre-amble to the Constitution demands, that is, to “promote the general Welfare.” Now more than ever must we pull together, and bear each other’s burdens. We do this a million different ways individually and in important, even life-saving, ways through the united strength of our government.
In the end the disciples of Ayn Rand were crushed by the error of her premise. Talented, hard working industrialists do not and cannot succeed in a vacuum. It takes an intricate network of many different people, with many different abilities, doing many different jobs to create an environment for genius to flourish.
Ayn shrugged. But united, we’ll stand.
Richard F. Dawahare 10.20.08
6 comments:
This comment is a total fabrication resting on the implicit assertion that Rand's celebration of the indisputable achievements of American industrialists and entrepreneurs when unencumbered by government intervention constitutes a simultaneous claim that that whole class of people is infallible and immune to evil thoughts and actions. Good luck searching for citations to verify that!
It is not Rand's radical capitalism that enables government (FannieMae, FreddieMac, and the Federal Reserve) to collude with business in the destruction of the market of voluntary economic interaction. That is the politics of fascist socialism. To assert that the American economy has been "Freed from oversight" at anytime in the last century or so, is preposterous. It is precisely the mixed economy preferences of our governments that Rand damned as doomed to failure. Such compromises are the equivalent of injecting just a little cancer into a healthy man on the grounds that pure health is an extremist goal. In any compromise between liberty and tyranny, only tyranny stands to gain.
Rand's capitalism is not a pragmatic scheme that claims to be good because "it works". It is a politics that rests on a moral principle -- one that works because it is an instance of the good. Politics is a branch of philosophy. It is the application of ethics in the context of the human individual to the context of a society of individuals engaging in socio-economic interaction.
From the fact that the success of every human's life depends on the proper application of reason to one's actions and the fact that being volitional, all men are fallible, the Objectivist ethics mandates that all men shall be reciprocally free to choose what they think and how they act. In a society of men, that mandate translates into the rule that all human interaction shall be voluntary. Thus Rand's capitalism needs but one primary principle:
No man shall initiate the use of physical force to gain, withhold, or destroy any value owned by another.
The next time you feel inclined to attack Rand's politics, start with this principle. But prepare yourself first to cite an alternate metaphysics/epistemology/ethics that will support a politics advocating the use of physical force by us on each other for gain.
Dear Michael M:
Thank you for your insightful comment.
It appears the crux of our disagreement is in the type of government involvement and the variance between what Rand truly espouses and how her modern disciples have abused that to their selfish ends. I view govt oversight as essential, and history has proven this truth. The modern disciples of Rand do not.
Further these same disciples have, under the Rand banner, USED govt and intermixed it with the capitalistic system--using FORCE as a key tool!--which is I agree anti-thetical to Rand's philosophy.
While I did not make this distinction clear, what I tried to show that the very fact that she has been so mis-appropriated by the free market supremists who have acted in a way totally contrary to her principles is itself evidence that her philosophy is a sort of utopia.
The minute an altruistic, moralistic strong one starts to help a weak one, and uses the tools of government to do so (not just social programs, but regulatory agencies, etc) then Rand's dream world disappears.
It would fastly lead to a cold, brutish existence.
You are evading the single matter of import to humanity -- the ideas. Rand left behind a body of ideas in the form of her personal philosophy of Objectivism. Who she was, how she lived, who her "disciples" were or are or how they act are inconsequential. The system of principles she defined stand or fall on their own merit, on their own relationship to the fundamental nature of existence.
The principle that I stated on which laissez-faire capitalism is constructed calls for the government to be wholly divorced from economic matters. Its only function is to prevent the use of physical force in human interactions. In the 1960's Alan Greenspan contributed to Rand's book "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal", arguing for just that via a re-establishment of a gold based currency or similar. After her death, he drifted away from her philosophy and instead of using his influence in the doomed attempt to manage the Fed to counteract the consequences of the Republican/Democrat led interventions (contrary to Rand), he proceeded to become part of the problem. The captains of industry in this country who have taken advantage of the corrupt mixture of government into economics are also not disciples of Rand. They are right-wing Republicans who are as much against her politics as the left. It is dishonest to label instances like that an act of "modern disciples of Rand."
A modern disciple of Rand is one who agrees with and adheres to the principles of the philosophy. If you want to discredit them, you need to turn your attention to the validity of those principles. What other people do in the name of those principles is irrelevant. To make them relevant, you must show that their actions actually do comply with her principles. And pitiful amounts of token deregulation do not qualify. They are teacups of water poured on a raging forest fire. And your article draws the conclusion from the failure of those teacups to save our homes that water is no good for putting out fires.
Did I miss something? How is the failure of a market bubble created by a bullish federal reserve and a Congress and President intent on subsidizing home ownership for the poorest in America (all the while creating obvious moral hazard by tacitly creating the impression that the federal government would back those sub-prime mortages up) a failure of laissez-faire markets??
I'm not a libertarian or a Rayndian, but to blame them for this problem that was clearly exacerbated by government invervention in the marketplace is the height of absurdity.
Michael M.
You make a good point. True Randians would be as disgusted with the faux followers of whom I speek, as would true followers of Jesus with those who hyprocritically claim him as well. I accept that, but also make clear in the article that the ones who crashed our economy were by and large Randians, faux or not. If I could re-write it, however, I would make the point that you just made, that they may claim the Rand mantle, but they do not and have not lived it.
Thank you, Rd
Cyberhillbilly:
The govt policies you cite WERE in part encouraged/bought by the financial lobbyists to further fatten their coffers. I agree there was the element of "home ownership for all" that helped sell the package.
But the credit industry wrote all the rules, including the ruse "Bankruptcy reform" act that I wrote about and called the "Usury Protection Act."
It takes no great effort to see the corruption, the absolute house of cards built by paid-for legislation that left the faux-Randian (see above comments) wolves guarding our national henhouse to our extreme detriment.
Yes, deregulation and rule for the rich and their short term gain, has harmed our long term welfare.
The pendulum however will turn and soon the trick will be in preventing it from going too far in the other direction.
Thank you, Rd
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