Who Is To Blame?

To all of you so enamored of government and disdainful of objectivism and freedom I have a few questions:
1. Do I have a right to my life?
2. Do I have a right to my property (the product of my life)?
3. Should I suffer/enjoy the consequences of my decisions?
(If I do then so does everyone else and I have no right to interfere with them)

Objectivists say YES. Apparently you say NO. You want to take them away from me and give them to someone else through regulation. That's the way it works in a democracy. Into which what was originally a constitutional republic has morphed.

Another name for democracy is mob rule. If I do not have the above rights neither do you. I guess if I can put together a bigger mob (political party) than you, you wont mind if we come to your house or business and run (regulate) your life the way I see fit?

You denigrate business and free markets and idolize the government. But both business and government are made up of PEOPLE. Businesses do not act. Governments do not act. PEOPLE do. The people acting through the businesses you criticize could very well have been the same people acting through the government you worship. Would their regulations be OK when their business decisions are not? What's the difference? Accountability.

Without government regulation people are held accountable for their actions. Their decisions affect only themselves and those who have voluntarily chosen to associate with them.

When people in government make decisions they are NOT accountable. Our association with them is mandatory. They can steal half a persons income (product of their life) every year. They can force people to pay for things they do not want and would not buy if they had the freedom of choice. They can literally KILL with impunity. Remember Waco? Ruby Ridge? Bombed out aspirin factories, wedding parties, and funerals in foreign lands? When they make mistakes that destroy a person's life they just shrug and say "oh well, sorry about that". Are these the people you suggest should "regulate" us?

I would rather have my freedom and take my chances on a businessman than hand over my life to a government thug.

Dr. Brook and the ARI agree that it is government's duty to protect the public from fraud and violence, but seemingly deny that regulations protect people from either. ARI believes that the good will and integrity of business people are sufficient to protect the public in commerce. I refer all who believe in the fundamental integrity of most businesses to www.taf.org/ I would like to read Brook???s/ARI???s rationalization for the corporate fraud documented on that site.

Can ARI be serious that we need no USDA or FDA regulations, no truth-in-lending regulations, and no motor vehicle safety regulations? Of course, if there were no regulations, no business would ever break one. I am no fan of government bureaucrats. On the other hand, consumers need protection from businesses that offer instant fat cures, ineffective or dangerous drugs, or engage in other fraudulent or dangerous behavior. There is no consumer in America who can possibly discover the ???truth??? behind every offered product or service.

To answer badfickle:

Objectivism doesn't think "policing economic activity is bad". On the contrary theft and fraud should be illegal. But regulation is not policing because it considers businessmen criminals before the fact, judged by the standard of: guilty before proven innocent -- an irrational standard that no one can overcome which is why it is unconstitutional.

In addition history disputes your analysis that: "When rules are removed you get the "Lord of the Flies." You get anarchy, in this case economic anarchy and society collapses." As history shows, the societies with the most rules collapse into poverty, theft and murder (mostly by the government), while the ones that promote freedom thrive.

Also you are equivocating between "government power" and "economic power". The first operates at the point of a gun, the second operates in a free market without coercion in which no individual is forces to buy or sell anything they don't want to.

And yes: Objectivism is anti-democratic in the same sense as our founding fathers were which is why the US is a constitutional republic in which the rights of the individual are sacrosanct and may not be infringed even by a tyranny of the majority.

Ayn Rand's premis for government is fatally flawed. People in general are not homogenous in their ideals and morals. Government regulations are in place for a reason. Greed and profit over the good of man.Without regulation we would be a society of kings and peasants. Someday when mankind has evolved into a perfectly logical being with a moral code to match them her ideals may make sense but intill then I do not believe we are ready to trully govern ourselves.
Howard Roarke blew up a building so that his ideals would not be compromised. Problem is he did not own the building!

The funniest thing about Rand (other than her abysmal writing) is her idea of "objective morality", ie, morals are actually the same for every person and every situation.

For example, Bob doesn't take care of his brakes, and runs over a child. Obviously, he is guilty of manslaughter, according to Rand. Does this mean if we inspect Dan's car and find that his brakes are deficient, that we charge him with attempted murder?

Pure rubbish.

God how I love it when recidivist brained Objectionablists crawl out from under their rocks into the light of day and actually speak out loud when where less adolescently developed intellects can read what they think. My stance toward this most specious system of thought (NO, it' s not a philiosophy, it's more of an Ivory Towered scientism) of objectionablism hasn't changed since I first encountered it about when I was a sophomore in college: I said it then and I'll say it again, "Objectionablism is nothing more than the philospohy (sic) of a cornered rat wishing to appear more learned than he actually is."

Interesting. However, This is the same type of argument that I hear from people who support the death penalty; faced with masses of evidence that their approach is unsuccessful if not amoral, they say, "We'll it's never been fully implemented so we don't really know." Perhaps there is a reason we have never seen an example of a truly unregulated market.

Seeing a truley unregulated market is like seeing the kingdom of heaven--its not reality--except in the minds of the true believing true cool-aid drinkers. Get over it. This Free Market stuff is all a cynical mummery--and you know it!

The collectivist Alan Greenspan was one of Ayn Rand's favorites until the day she died. Both people were tools of an oligarchy that did not gain its position by merit--but by pull. Whether you're an objectivist lier, or a socialist liar, or a conservative liar--you're still a liar, and I still don't buy into the mummery.

If you want me on baord with any phiolosophy, my first rule is that you tell me the truth--Otherwise, I too will play my cards close to my chest and withhold my truths for the sake of self protection. I am only interested in real reality as it is--naked before all understanding. And the real reality is this: we are individuals seeking to gain our values--Its really that simple--and how we go about attaining those values defines us. So if you wish to go on lying about the virtues of a heavenly free market, please know that I know that we both know that you are a liar. You need me to believe the BS that your spouting so that you can go on believing it. I want no part of it.

Can you spell "stupid"? The only time regulation is worse than de-regulation is when the regulators themselves are part of the same crooked gang that runs the industry being regulated. You don't like Hank Paulsen's actions so far - gee, do you think they have anything to do with his tenure at Goldman-Sachs, where he favored some of the very things that have caused our economic collapse?

You think credit default swaps are fine and AIG should have been allowed to croak? What about all the little people and their pension funds that hold shares of securities that are the stock market equivalent of mystery meat? What about the municipalities that will be ruined by this whole fiasco?

But I forget, Ayn Rand was above all that -- since her main pre-occupation seemed to be how to get the heroine in her books raped by one of her oh-so-talented, oh-so-manly main characters.

You want a close up personal view of a real world "free market" economy? Go sail your yacht around the horn of Africa to get a close up and personal view. When the boatloads of men with guns show up just make sure you don't look for any government regulations, mkay?

Objectiveism fails on several fronts. First, while it acknowleges the need for police because people will do things that will harm others, it somehow things policing of ecnomic activity (regulation) is bad. This idea that the market will regulate itself is absurd. People function best when there are rules, when the rules are fair and known to everybody. When rules are removed you get the "Lord of the Flies." You get anarchy, in this case economic anarchy and society collapses. Second, the notion that if you remove democratic government from the economic activites a nation that somehow the power the government formerly had will transfer to individuals is eutopic and baseless. When you remove democratic government regulation from the economy the power mearly transfers to those with large amounts of money (regardless of how they obtained it). Rather than the meritocracy that Rand promises you will end up with a caste system were those in power have it in their self interest to crush social mobility and remove individual freedoms.

Objectivism is anti-democratic and in the end feudalistic.