Ayn Rand didn’t stop smoking after she’d been warned about the risks.
Because her books weren’t selling, she ended up on social security, a program she’d mocked when healthy.
To her admirers she is a model of the power of intellect and the glory of self reliance and independence
“The only moral use of [thing I disapprove of] is my use of [thing I disapprove of].”
A quote that may have originally been about abortion, but applies to most things that serial disapprovers disapprove of.
See also: “Do as I say, not as I do.” or as it usually is these days: “Do as I say. I am also doing as I say and if think you see me doing otherwise, no you didn’t.”
I will never get tired of linking to this: The Only Moral Abortion Is My Abortion
Can I be tired of how relevant it still is?
I genuinely hate to disagree but taking social security when you need it is acting in your natural self interest. It’s not hypocritical. Ironic yes but not “do as I say not as I do”. Also doesn’t make it a good philosophy to govern by
The fact that she eventually needed the social security checks shows that it was in her natural self interest for the system to exist and for her to pay into it. A safety net, whether or not you will ever personally use it, is something that is good for society overall and serves everyone’s self-interest by being there to catch one when they fall.
If you’re walking a high-wire, it is in your rational self interest to use a harness. Even if it costs money to ensure everyone gets a harness, and suppose you even have a high enough “skill” that you never actually get to use yours; a world that you never have to see anyone fall to their bloody death or worry about your own death is certainly better than the brutal alternative for the amount you pay into the harness.
If you go to a festival and there are paramedics on standby, just in case; the paramedics have to get paid even if nobody ends up needing them, but they are there because the chances are high enough that somebody could get hurt and the response will be much more efficient with better outcomes if travel time to the venue isn’t a factor. Nobody plans to get hurt, but everyone pays into it through the ticket price. It is in everyone’s self-interest to have them there. If you follow Randian philosophy, it is only in your interest if you happen to be the one that gets hurt, but this is entirely unpredictable.
She’s a hypocrite, because she herself is not able to fairly assess her own natural self-interest but her philosophy expects everyone else to be able to do so.
She’s a hypocrite, because she herself is not able to fairly assess her own natural self-interest but her philosophy expects everyone else to be able to do so.
That seems like a stretch but it’s definitely the best argument I’ve heard. The hypocrisy is in needing social security then, not taking it. I could definitely see some arguments against it, like claiming the existence of social security is what necessitated it, but that’s definitely not as clear cut and I can respect that perspective
The issue here isn’t her being on social security, it’s her arguing against its existence because ‘Nobody should need it’.
Please reread the comment I’m responded to
We did. If she was consistent, she should have just chosen to die since it’s wrong for others to help her.
That would not be acting in her “rational self interest” read the comic. Ayn Rand was a monster but that’s just not the definition of hypocrite and it is not in line with saying “do as I say not as I do”. She said be selfish take what you can and did. I do not agree with this but I’m not pretending it’s hypocritical. It is consistent with her fucked up beliefs
The rational self interest bit isn’t what makes her a hypocrite here. RSI is a position that states you take whatever you can whenever you can, so it fits perfectly. The reason we’re calling her a hypocrite is because she spent years calling social security “immoral” only to hop right on it immediately when it became beneficial to her.
Ayn Rand: “Social security is an immoral redistribution of wealth and should be abolished. One is entitled to what they’ve earned themselves.”
Also Ayn Rand:
You actually were referring to the comic, not the post you were responding to. The post you responded to did not say that at all.
I literally quoted the comment I responded to
See also: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
What are you talking about?
Pedantic and missing the point almost intentionally. Must be a redditor
What she should have done was admitted she was a dumb and selfish bitch
I agree she was a dumb and selfish bitch. I think it’s important to be concise, especially around something that’s brought up repeatedly like this and this thread in particular is trying to call her hypocritical. When we call someone a hypocrite that isn’t, it weakens the argument. I want a solid condemnation of this person and their philosophy that doesn’t have holes people can poke and then over correct with
I don’t use Reddit, that’s really weird to use as an insult though especially when so much of this sites content comes from there
Reddit is famous for saying stuff like “the world won’t end just humans!” It’s just kind of pedantic and basic knowledge thrown in that doesn’t really add anything helpful to a more complex problem
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I always upvote deleted commnets
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That’s risky, there could be some pretty heinous fucked up shit in there waiting to be undeleted.
But I agree with the sentiment.
Why?
enlightened self interest.
If you deleted a commnet it means you realized you’d done something wrong.
Self-awareness is a good thing.
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Too bad people began to worship her instead
source: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/364 (it has mouseover text too…)
The problem is that in a closed economy, an increase in production without increased consumption will result in over production and closed down factories.
It isn’t in capitalist’s long term interests to increase production and cut wages across an entire economy. Having a very high net savings rate (whatever you don’t consume is by definition, savings) is not a good thing as a country.
America’s early growth was based on being a high wage and high consumption country.
However, in an open economy, you can export your excess savings (and underconsumption) to other countries. This was an issue during the great depression (called “beggar thy neighbour”).
It is a big problem in the global economy right now with China, Taiwan, Korea, Germany, Denmark, etc. all having stagnant or low consumption shares of the economy while exporting their net savings to persistant trade deficit countries like the United States, UK, Australia and Canada (noting Australia and Canada sometimes have surpluses when commodity prices are high).
It relies on the net deficit countries being willing to accept net capital inflows and all the issues with having persistent trade deficits (deindustrialisation, high debts, etc.) forever, which isn’t possible.
So in short, increasing profits and cutting wages (and/or the overall workforce) might work for an individual greedy douchebag but it is a terrible thing for the entire economy.
I’m still waiting for a critique of rational self-interest that doesn’t fail right out of the gate by stipulating an irrational position or decision.
This one wasn’t even vaguely close.
All of Ayn Rand’s own examples of rational self interest were irrational and against her interests. It’s such an easy philosophy to mock because it’s just really stupid. True rational self interest would involve creating cooperative structures that give a safety net if anything goes wrong just like how it’s rational to get home insurance even if you don’t expect to burn your house down. Anyone drawing Randian conclusions can’t have thought of rational self interest.
True rational self interest would involve creating cooperative structures that give a safety net if anything goes wrong just like how it’s rational to get home insurance even if you don’t expect to burn your house down.
This is the part that drives me nuts. Plenty of today’s decision makers only survive later thanks to social nets. But they’re so sure that they won’t be, they’re willing to cut back social benefits to make a quick buck.
All of Ayn Rand’s own examples of rational self interest were irrational and against her interests.
Yes, they were. She was a shallow, ego-driven, willfully ignorant reactionary.
But that has nothing really to do with rational self-interest as an idea.
It’s such an easy philosophy to mock because it’s just really stupid.
Except that it’s not.
What’s stupid is the plainly irrational choices that are made and ascribed to “rational” self-interest.
True rational self interest would involve creating cooperative structures that give a safety net if anything goes wrong.
Exactly.
So the simple fact of the matter is that when someone argues against those safety nets, they aren’t actually arguing from a position of rational self-interest.
The philosophy hasn’t failed - they have.
When people use the phrase rational self interest they’re overwhelmingly meaning what Ayn Rand called rational self interest. If you take the words literally, they apply to any political philosophy as no one’s trying to design a system against their own interests. The disagreements come from people disagreeing what their interests are and how they can feasibly have them fulfilled, not because they don’t want their interests fulfilled. No one else bothers using the phrase because it’s obviously the goal and stating that would be entirely redundant, but risk making it sound like you were advocating for something Randian.
no one’s trying to design a system against their own interests.
Well, to an extent that can be in a political philosophy.
Certainly rational self interest is factored in as to “affordability”. E.g. you support some benefit that you, personally, will never ever benefit from but it just seems the right thing to do, even if it may cost you 0.01% of your income, because that seems pretty affordable for someone else to benefit. Generally, people have voted explicitly against their self-interest.
Now the point can be made about welfare sorts of programs that it is a matter of self interest. That the small amount you lose in contributing is a small price for making everyone else contribute in case you need it. This case can be made for a lot of these scenarios, but the fact remains folks do vote against ‘rational’ self interest in various other ways.
I’m not sure that doing something that only directly benefits other people but makes you feel better about yourself as you’ve done something good (or less bad as you’ve not spent the money on something you’d have felt guilty about) isn’t in your self-interest. Other kinds of making yourself feel good count.
Hence why they like to specify “rational” self interest.
It’s rational to make yourself feel more good. That’s the final outcome of every aspect of self-interest that isn’t solely to remain alive. If the intention is to act solely in the self-interest of an emotionless unfeeling human-shaped robot:
- it’s very silly as such an entity doesn’t exist and wouldn’t care about its own interests if it did.
- it’s inconsistent with many other things Rand advocated for that only make someone feel better, but do so through hedonism rather than charity.
- it’s such a terrible model for real humans that it can’t inform us of what’s good for humans.
But that has nothing really to do with rational self-interest as an idea.
But that’s the stance that proponents of ‘rational self-interest’ have settled on. It’s not just a mindset, it’s an ideology. The mindset you have in mind may make sense, but the ideology it has become does not, and that is what people are making fun of.
But that’s the stance that proponents of ‘rational self-interest’ have settled on.
No - it’s the stance that people who want to self-affirmingly publicly proclaim their hatred of Rand have assigned to proponents of rational self-interest.
That’s the heart of my criticism - people don’t discuss or debate the idea - they just trip over each other in their rush to be the one to most vividly proclaim their hatred of Rand. Hating Rand is like a hip internet leftist membership badge, so every time her name comes up, everybody who wants to solidify their image as a hip internet leftist rushes in to say, “Hey! Look at me! Look at how much I hate her! That means I’m one of you!”
And since the hatred comes first, everything else is shaped to accommodate it. Like, for instance, misrepresenting the idea of rational self-interest so that it becomes something easily condemned so that it can be added to the list of reasons to hate Rand.
I think what you’re describing is more wheelhouse of the less often talked about Egoism of Stirner, than the Objectivism of Rand.
I think what I’m describing is fundamental to both of them, that most of the differences between the two philosophies are at the peripheries, and that far and away the most significant difference between the two is that one was proposed by Rand, who’s a designated target for people eager to earn hip internet leftist cred through a public display of unequivocal hatred, and the other was proposed by Stirner, who’s someone that most are only vaguely aware of, if at all.
There is more nuance to both philosophies than the spark-notes take away if “Rational self interest”. Which if that in itself is what you’re arguing for, and along the paths you’re arguing, Egoism explicitly talking about the voluntary coming together of individuals to temporarily work together towards common goals makes a better baseline than Objectivism’s zero-sum view on human interactions.
Certainly there’s more nuance to them. As I said, I think that “rational self-interest” is fundamental to both of them - it’s nothing close to the sum of either one.
And for the record, I have zero respect for objectivism and a great deal of respect for egoism.
But that’s really beside the point. I’m not arguing for or against either one. My point has been explicitly about the underlying concept of rational self-interest in and of itself, and specifically the fact that it’s consistently misrepresented by its critics (or more precisely by Rand’s critics, who incorrectly ascribe the idea to her and her alone).
That’s all very fair and sensible.
I can see it being very frustrating if people’s first response to ideologies close to you is dunk on Rand rather than actually engaging with what you’re trying to say.
I think a better critique of “rational self interest” if you’re looking for one would be that it can be argued to be either too widespread to have meaning (the flip side of “I don’t agree with them/am starting from different axioms thus they’re irrational”), or too narrow and thus never actually employed.
It is a shame that other Rational Self-interest philosophies don’t get their time in the sun… While Rand I hear is still required/recommended reading in some schools.
An advantage of writing fiction to articulate your ideas I suppose.
Yes, they were. She was a shallow, ego-driven, willfully ignorant egotist.
While I agree that she’s had an overall negative effect on society, I wonder if her world view more came from trauma of living in the Soviet Union and (falsely) assuming that the exact opposite had to be good
The problem being that it wasn’t the exact opposite. In fact, they had a lot of things in common. The leaders of both being self-interested megalomaniacs who desired control of all things around them.
The leaders of both being self-interested megalomaniacs who desired control of all things around them.
That’s easer to point out after the fact. I wouldn’t be surprised if the USSR was hitting all of their citizens with propaganda much like the US used to do with the “Land of the Free” saying
They were, yes.
See? Another similarity.
It was definitely a reaction to living under an authoritarian regime. The problem was that the reaction wasn’t “I don’t want this to ever happen again”, it was “I want to be the one in charge”.
They were, yes.
See? Another similarity.
How to be an insufferable cunt in 1 easy step!
Do you believe ayn rand believed in rational self-interest?
If so, why was she against all forms of welfare and socialism? If not, isn’t she the inventor of the concept and thus the arbiter of what it should mean? Doesn’t that mean you’re changing the definition to suit your needs?
Funny… this is actually a different account than I was originally posting from - I switched to it because the entire thread has vanished from fedia.io.
And pretty much the first thing I see here is this response, which I didn’t even know existed before.
Not a good look for fedia.io.
Anyway…
Do you believe ayn rand believed in rational self-interest?
I think she probably thought she did, but I also think she obviously didn’t even begin to understand it.
If so, why was she against all forms of welfare and socialism?
The glib answer would be because she didn’t even begin to understand rational self-interest.
The more likely answer, which somehow manages to be even more shallow, is because the USSR was nominally communist and she hated the USSR.
If not, isn’t she the inventor of the concept and thus the arbiter of what it should mean?
No.
Even if she was in fact the inventor of the concept, which she most assuredly is not, she still wouldn’t be the arbiter of its meaning.
Though she was such an egotistical authoritarian that if she were alive today, she’d undoubtedly be insisting that she was.
Doesn’t that mean you’re changing the definition to suit your needs?
Kind of.
While I really couldn’t care less what Rand envisioned, so certainly feel no desire to hew to her conception, I haven’t changed it to suit my “needs” per se. I’ve changed it as necessary so that it actually is, as far as I can see, what it appears to refer to - “rational” “self-interest.”
I think it’s a sound concept, and that Rand, blinded as she was by her emotions, her authoritarian habits and her gargantuan ego, didn’t grasp it.
Thanks for the response.
Your problem is that when people argue against rational self-interest, they’re arguing against what ayn rand meant by it… because she coined the term and defined it, and as she defined it, it’s really stupid.
You’re just talking about rational self interest the phrase, which has nothing to do with her ideology, and is not what is ever being criticized… because again she is the inventor of the ideology.
This is akin to if you argued with a communist, saying communism is obviously wrong because you don’t like particular communities such as terrorists and commun-ism means belief that all communities are good. This is technically a correct interpretation of the etymology, but is not what anyone means when they refer to communism. You’ve completely redefined the term that has already been defined by a particular person who coined it, because you prefer to use the etymological definition rather than the definition created by the inventor of the term. You are then arguing that people using the term as it was defined by it’s creator are using it wrong, even though there is a particular history associated with this term and people are referring to that history. Why do you believe that the historical value of the term is less important than it’s etymology? If we follow this structure, most meaning will fall completely apart.
for example, the word meaning, mean-ing, without the history that binds us in our communication that could mean the process of being mean, there’s no reason this doesn’t work etymologically, but we have history with these terms that make them have meaning beyond their etymology.
Lady in red is presenting an extremely common series of steps that companies take for the owner/investor self interest in profit.
How is it critiquing an irrational position?
That series of steps, common or not, is bludgeoningly irrational, and for multiple reasons.
In fact, the introductory part of the comic, showing her rejecting the entirely rational option of working half as long to produce the same amount clearly communicates the point that it’s irrational, as does the last frame, illustrating the consequences of her self-evidently irrational choice.
She is, however, acting in her own rational self-interest by keeping all the value of the new machine for herself and not passing it on to her workers. If she were acting in the group’s rational self-interest, she would allow them to work half as long. Since she is acting in her own rational self-interest, she threatens to fire her workers if they do not work the same hours as before and pass the value on to her. From her perspective, it makes perfect sense: all she has to do is install the new machine and make no other changes, and she and begins earning twice as much income from the factory she owns, without having to lift a finger. Any purely rational person (as opposed, mind you, to an empathetic one) would take the option to do that.
She is, however, acting in her own rational self-interest by keeping all the value of the new machine for herself and not passing it on to her workers.
No, she rather obviously is not, as vividly illustrated by the fact that she caused so much hostility that she ends up going to the guillotine.
She is very clearly acting in her irrational self- interest.
If she were acting in the group’s rational self-interest, she would allow them to work half as long.
And if she were acting in her own rational self-interest, she would do the same, since her well-being (and in fact, as neatly illustrated in the comic, her very life) depends on the well-being of the group.
Since she is acting in her own rational self-interest, she threatens to fire her workers if they do not work the same hours as before and pass the value on to her.
No. Again, she is rather obviously acting in her own irrational self-interest, as vividly illustrated in the last panel.
Any purely rational person (as opposed, mind you, to an empathetic one) would take the option to do that.
What on earth leads you to believe that rationality and empathy are mutually exclusive?
As social animals, empathy is eminently rational, and in fact I would argue that rationality is impossible without it.
And if she were acting in her own rational self-interest, she would do the same, since her well-being (and in fact, as neatly illustrated in the comic, her very life) depends on the well-being of the group.
This assumes perfect foresight. As can be seen from the history of robber barons and the legacy they left, it generally did work out for most of them, so they were correct in their choices focusing on self-interest. Not since the French revolution has any significant number of rich assholes faced significant consequences for their choices in placing their personal welfare above the group.
This comic makes the presupposition that the workers have a guillotine to use on her. In the comic, she was unaware that they did, and in the real world, they very much do not. If you instead gave the lines she says in the comic to the real-world Jeff Bezos, they would be perfectly rational.
It is rational self interest, not rational group interest. Hence why she doesn’t act in a way that would benefit others, because they can now do twice the output in the same amount of time because of the machine!
‘Rational self interest’ is just being selfish.
Rational group interest IS rational self-interest.
As social animals living in communities and as part of any number of groups, we must, if we’re rational, be mindful of the well-being of groups, because our own well-being depends on it.
‘Rational self interest’ is just being selfish.
No it in fact is not. Selfishness causes any number of negative consequences - suffering, hostility, crime, conflict, rebellion, war, death… So it’s bludgeoningly obviously irrational, and therefore cannot be rational self interest.
No it in fact is not. Selfishness causes any number of negative consequences - suffering, hostility, crime, conflict, rebellion, war, death… So it’s bludgeoningly obviously irrational, and therefore cannot be rational self interest.
for 99% of people yes. but if you happen to be at the very top of the ladder and if things are broken enough you can be self interested into destroying the world. Fact is the guillotines aren’t being rolled out. The protests that happen are pretty consistently swatted with barely a weeks hindrance to the years between them. We all suffer the consiquences of the olligarchy, the ones making the laws and decisions are largely above those hardships.
Self is group, group is self.
Dog is cat
Water is dry
Up is down
‘Rational self interest’ is just being selfish.
*Irrational self interest. Rational self interest would still involve improving the worker’s lives due to the support structure that a community brings
To sum up, “rational self interest” is screwing others over for your own benefit as long as you make the calculation that it won’t come back to bite you. It works for you until you make a miscalculation and the likelihood of a miscalculation increases as you screw more people over. A greedy person benefiting from the support structure will not properly factor in that benefit and will assume they can go without, hence the widening gap between the rich and the poor. They’re essentially living in another world and cannot see reality for what it is.
Do unto others as you want done unto you. Basically all of game theory. The threat of a guillotine. These are all extremely basic and rational arguments that merely ask you not to be a dickhead.
Or more pointedly, they are all things that illustrate ways in which it’s in your rational self-interest to not be a dickhead.
But the golden rule presents the flaw of self interests. The golden rule relies on you presuming others want to be treated the same as you.
You shouldn’t treat others as you’d like. You should treat others as they’d like.
She’s not worth spending time on. Any rational person would understand that.
