Objectivism

I listened to the president of the Ayn Rand foundation, Dr. Yaron Brook, give his talk yesterday. His views about the world of finance; how the recent crash can be attributed to excessively low interest rates in the previous 8 years, and how in 20-25 years we'll face a serious crisis in western economies, were quite sensible. His doctorate was in finance, after all.

The ethical aspects of objectivism, however, and his belief that the moral purpose of government is solely a monopoly on the use of retaliatory force, to prevent people using violence on each other, are all more questionable.
When pressed about why violence is so special, he answered that it is because it is the enemy of rational thought; his example was that a man with a gun in your back prevents you thinking and acting rationally. Given that he thinks that rational thought is a moral good, and anything that prevents this is wrong, this would be a reasonable argument, except for two problems:
1. That it is perfectly possible to think rationally with a gun in your back; it simply alters what the most selfish, rational action is: the best action for self-preservation is to do whatever prevents the man pulling the trigger.
2. It is not proven that violence is the only thing in the world that has this supposed effect. I can think of many things that act at least as strongly to constrain one's rational thought: emotional triggers; parenthood (which typically grows emotions in us), intimate relationships, disease, natural disasters, simple misfortune, emotional expression (an angry person triggers emotions in us, of fear, or corresponding frustration and anger, for example) or even economic force (such as owning all the vehicles in a region, forcing a person to stay in an area).

He became quite upset at being pressed on this issue, so I let it slide after a short discussion, and the responses I got were that economic force was simply a ridiculous situation that had never occurred, and that people who had problems with the entirely free market always had to come up with outlandish suggestions. He is clearly unfamiliar with the nature of thought experiments... well, perhaps not. Part of Objectivist philosophy involves a very optimistic, even naive, view of human nature: he believes that in a perfectly Objectivist society people will be kind, happy, prosperous and benevolent and that therefore there will not be economic force, because no-one will be mean enough to do such a thing.
Perhaps he would say that it is not in the rich man's rational self-interest. But at this point he is almost denying that people can have emotional goals, which in his talk he explicitly admitted: he said that desires are what we live for, and rationality is what we live by. If the rich man, once he is Objectivist, will never persecute anyone unfairly, or otherwise injure other people's lives with his wealth, then he will have changed hugely from the humanity we know today.

Any moral and political system can make itself work if it requires fundamental changes in the nature of humanity in order to work. If people could be relied apon to be kind and generous to each other, we'd hardly need society at all (which is what anarcho-communists believe, if their views were to be summarised in one sentence). Dr. Brook admitted that criminals will exist, which is why we need a government (perhaps funded by voluntary taxation; this was one option he agreed was feasible). However, he does not regard it as so wrong that it must necessarily be prevented that those disadvantaged by birth, disease, accident or natural calamity suffer and die without help. He would have help provided solely by charity.

Here he and I have a fundamental disagreement, but of a different sort from his differences from most people. I agree, unlike many, that this 'natural injustice' is not automatically the responsibility of a richer man. However, this is because I do not believe in universal moral laws or fundamental morality. In so far as moral laws do apply, it is because they have been agreed apon as the country's laws, and men can agree to provide a certain level of 'cover' for each other, with this taken by force if a man tries to keep what he has earned, without being wrong. That can wait for another post; the point here is that the only thing that justifies him not having a responsibility, in my view, is that no automatic responsibility exists, that there is no fundamental moral law.
He, however, explicitly agreed that there are fundamental moral laws regarding the goodness of rationality and the use of force; he said that the use of force in an island far, far away where everyone had agreed to live in such a society would still be wrong. I find this assertion as the same as any other moral assertion, such as the primacy of utilitarianism; it is unjustifiable.

Here we turn to the question my friend asked: that capitalism is a good system with rational, self-interested actors, but how does one justify rational self-interest as a good ethical system?
The answer we were given was simply that he wouldn't enter into that discussion, it being too complex, and that one should read Ayn Rand's books. It is this question of why these moral assertions are universal, rather than any other assertion (or the admission that universal morality does not exist) that is the crux of the matter.
I haven't read the books, but I doubt that the justification is quite as good as the rest of the arguments.