Ayn Rand speaks to Mike Wallace, 1959

[Mycroft]

And from this I conclude that you are not following the thread or injesting massive ammounts of controled substances.


I will confess to having skimmed a few pages, but I have only ingested modest amounts of controlled substances. :)

And that is the reasoning I see supporting the charging as much as you can from anyone in need of emergency treatment. They will pay it because you are the only one who can supply it(no one else is close enough to save their life) so charging them everything they own is the moral solution.

So what in Rand's writing brings you to the conclusion that she believes this? Rand is all about rewarding people who do work and build things or create new ideas or who are innovative. Nowhere does she say she believes the guy who happens to have the epi pen at the exact moment needed to extort someone out of their life-savings should be rewarded. She compares and contrasts those who create wealth through labor and innovation with those who believe they are entitled to other people's wealth due to their need. She is strangely silent about those who accumulate wealth by speculation.


Selling the rock is not immoral, but at what point does charging someone an excessive amount of money for a drug that will save their life become immoral? You paid $5, so say $500,000 seem a reasonable price? Sure they will be in debt for years to you, but you still saved their life so you did a good thing.

So what should the guiding principle be? If we assume demand is greater than supply, what is the moral way to decide who gets the life saving treatment and who doesn't?

[Mycroft]

If you had a clue and followed the threading you would instantly know this discussion came out of emergency circumstances. If you wanted to address actual arguments rather than erecting an insufferable straw man you would charitably interpret comments pertaining to "treatment," "taking advantage of others," and "emergency circumstances" as a little more pressing than buying Mars rocks.

What actually happens in emergency situations is people donate lots of time, equipment and merchandise for free and then expend a great deal of effort getting them to where it is needed while the profit seekers are publicly reviled on CNN, MSNBC and whatever other news channel can make fodder of it. It’s a bit puzzling that we should be talking about profit seekers as though someone were for price-gouging and someone else were against it.


That you do not see a difference speaks volumes.

Typical Cain ad-hom. Amusing, as always.


If each of the options involves saving a life, and you only have a single dose of "wunder-serum," then Iagree it does not matter (assuming all lives are equal). Considering Bill Gates will have many billions left-over, I do not think he is hurting.

I imagine it matters a great deal to the seller. Is his benefit a part of the moral equation? Or is he not allowed to consider his own needs?


Proving you do not even understand the B.S. arguments.

Lol! A Cain ad-hom that’s supposed to distract us from the issue of the question itself. Even more amusing!


One dumb example deserves another, eh? You seem stubbornly -- no, blissfully -- unaware of the fact that dollar sums are relative.

What does that mean? That it’s less of a crime to over-charge a wealthy man than a poor one? That a wealthy person is less entitled to keep his wealth? I’d be interested in hearing a logical foundation for those principles! :)


Furthermore, the example seems confused because you have the lawyer initiating an offer. Instead I'll answer your question directly: yes, it's possible and it is immoral for a relatively poor person to exploit a relatively wealthy person. It happens, sometimes in the form of blackmail.

So if the limo driver had initiated the offer, he would be guilty of exploitation? What if he had demanded a lesser fee of the lawyer, would it be moral then? Don’t forget the limo driver has a responsibility to his blind grandmother and his pregnant wife, the money he gets from this transaction will be invaluable in helping them rebuild their lives.


Instead let's go back to moral values, and I'll pose my own contrived example. Two people are injured in an earthquake. You know one person is relatively rich and the other victim is relatively poor. In your possession is one dose of "wunder-serum XX," which has the power to magically save people who are on the verge of death from dying (yep). It also prevents infections. The rich person has a gash on his arm. He's willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the wunder-serum. The poor person who is on the verge of death begs for the drug. Question: is it immoral to even have an auction? If you think it's permissible to have an auction, then I'm assuming you agree it's permissible to sell the drug to someone who does not need it, so that someone who does will die. What if the only competitive counter-offer from the poor person is a life of servitude?

What I think is interesting about your example is that it presumes the wealthy person will let the poor person die. Doesn’t the question tell us more about your attitude towards wealthy people than it does about anyone who might answer it?


Also, I call ******** in advance to anyone who says, "i takez the $$$ and i gives it to teh famine relief booyah!!!"

Why? If our moral principle is the number of lives saved, isn’t it possible to save more than one life with the rich man’s tens of thousands?

[EGarrett]

Do you just not pay attention? You an Mycroft, I swear. Did I not already anticipate this criticism and address it in the post above? Why is stealing wrong according to Rand's ethics? A prohibition on stealing, from the perspective of a rational and consistent egoism, is hardly absolute, and not limited to what Rand termed emergency circumstances. Specifically I am talking about what are known as prudent predator arguments.Rand was against forcing people to do things. You're trying to stuff her into a box that doesn't fit. Criticisms of ethical egoism are not criticisms of Rand.

[Cain]

EGarret writes: Rand was against forcing people to do things. You're trying to stuff her into a box that doesn't fit. Criticisms of ethical egoism are not criticisms of Rand.

Please stop being obtuse. I know she says it. People say a lot of things. The argument goes to WHY Rand says it is wrong to initiate force, and ethical egoism most certainly does figure into the equation. The presumption is that Rand's "non-initiation of force principle" is DERIVED from (ethical) egoism.

What actually happens in emergency situations is people donate lots of time, equipment and merchandise for free and then expend a great deal of effort getting them to where it is needed while the profit seekers are publicly reviled on CNN, MSNBC and whatever other news channel can make fodder of it.

Which is beside the point, isn't it?

It’s a bit puzzling that we should be talking about profit seekers as though someone were for price-gouging and someone else were against it.

I suggest you peruse capitalism.org, or H.P.O sometime.

I wrote:
That you do not see a difference speaks volumes.

Mycroft "responds":
Typical Cain ad-hom. Amusing, as always.

I'm afraid this non-response is all too typical. While we're here:

Cain writes:
Proving you do not even understand the B.S. arguments.

Lol! A Cain ad-hom that’s supposed to distract us from the issue of the question itself. Even more amusing!

I see. Pretending to identify fallacies is a major problem; double-speak gets double bonus points.

I imagine it matters a great deal to the seller. Is his benefit a part of the moral equation? Or is he not allowed to consider his own needs?

I imagine that since your example posits a person in need of life saving treatment that individual was a teeny-tiny bit more important. If we assume the lives under threat are equal, which we did, the compensation for the seller seems relatively insignificant as far as the moral dilemma is concerned.

I wrote:
One dumb example deserves another, eh? You seem stubbornly -- no, blissfully -- unaware of the fact that dollar sums are relative.

Mycroft writes:
What does that mean? That it’s less of a crime to over-charge a wealthy man than a poor one? That a wealthy person is less entitled to keep his wealth? I’d be interested in hearing a logical foundation for those principles! :)

You're still not getting it, are you? I am not going to use the term "over-charge" because it commonly means charging above an agreed upon price. Other words that invite confusion are "crime" and "logical." We are talking about the matter in the context of morality first -- law can come later. I am not sure what a "logical foundation" is, and I am not keen to use the words "logical" and "reasonable" interchangeably.

Now to relative sums. Are you familiar with the word "afford"? One billion dollars does not constitute Bill Gates' life-savings. Why do you think people see a difference between a major Hollywood celebrity being defrauded out of 100,000 dollars vs. a retired school teacher being defrauded out of 75,000 dollars, her life-savings? Why do you think one is considered "more immoral" than the other?

So if the limo driver had initiated the offer, he would be guilty of exploitation?

Are you kidding me? When a person opens a bid, she usually makes an offer she can afford.

What I think is interesting about your example is that it [i]presumes the wealthy person will let the poor person die. Doesn’t the question tell us more about your attitude towards wealthy people than it does about anyone who might answer it?

So says the person who has attacked ME for the "ad-hom." You could not even bother to deal with the example on its own terms and add your psychoanalysis as an afterthought. Oh, and WHY does it presume the wealthy person will let the poor person die? Because it's a take-off of your earlier, confused scenarios.

Why? If our moral principle is the number of lives saved, isn’t it possible to save more than one life with the rich man’s tens of thousands?

*sigh* Because it does not tease out the fundamentals you're ignoring. Yes, it's possible, which is precisely why I anticipated it. What if somebody wants to use the money to consume Yugoslavian porn instead?

What if he had demanded a lesser fee of the lawyer, would it be moral then? Don’t forget the limo driver has a responsibility to his blind grandmother and his pregnant wife, the money he gets from this transaction will be invaluable in helping them rebuild their lives.

Whatever do you mean? He should try to soak the rich lawyer, and kick out grandma and the wife if it means they're taking up space that could be used to store bags of money that will no doubt be used to feed children in Africa.

[Gurdur]

Rand was against forcing people to do things.

Simply not true; if she had had her way, trade unions, strikes and boycotts would all be illegal. There is a great deal of authoritarianism in both Rand's Objectivism and Libertarianism.

[mhaze]

Simply not true; if she had had her way, trade unions, strikes and boycotts would all be illegal.

She wanted laws against these activities?

[ponderingturtle]

How can you assign moral or immoral to some dollars on a table?

So putting someone into debt for years and taking advantage of them can not be concidered immoral?

[ponderingturtle]

What actually happens in emergency situations is people donate lots of time, equipment and merchandise for free and then expend a great deal of effort getting them to where it is needed while the profit seekers are publicly reviled on CNN, MSNBC and whatever other news channel can make fodder of it. It’s a bit puzzling that we should be talking about profit seekers as though someone were for price-gouging and someone else were against it.

Nope. You are thinking national disasters, individual ones just get ignored. See studies on how people will just walk past someone passed out on the sidewalk. Most people really don't care.

Also see that recent story of the woman who was stabbed and people steped over her to continue shopping and one person took a picture of her with their cell phone.

I see little evidence that most people really care, they just don't want to be seen not careing.

[EGarrett]

EGarret writes:

Please stop being obtuse. I know she says it. People say a lot of things. The argument goes to WHY Rand says it is wrong to initiate force, and ethical egoism most certainly does figure into the equation. The presumption is that Rand's "non-initiation of force principle" is DERIVED from (ethical) egoism.While I can't speak for Rand 100%, I disagree. She seems to speak repeatedly about people being free to pursue their own goals with little interference. THAT seems to be where her idea of selfishness comes from.

If ethical egoism would support people stealing from each other, then that is completely counter to the idea of personal freedom. Allowing stealing etc. is actually allowing a big, strong (or well-armed) person to take away freedom from many others. How could a person who believes in freedom of personal goals possibly support that in any way?

[EGarrett]

Simply not true; if she had had her way, trade unions, strikes and boycotts would all be illegal. There is a great deal of authoritarianism in both Rand's Objectivism and Libertarianism.But the reason she was against those things is because she thinks a free market would do the same thing in a better way. She wasn't against the IDEA of good worker conditions, she just believed that using a free market, where businesses compete for employees, would naturally improve them.

[Admiral]

Simply not true; if she had had her way, trade unions, strikes and boycotts would all be illegal. There is a great deal of authoritarianism in both Rand's Objectivism and Libertarianism.

Do you have any evidence whatsoever for this claim (that she thought unions, strikes and boycotts should be illegal)? It's completely baseless.

[Cain]

While I can't speak for Rand 100%, I disagree. She seems to speak repeatedly about people being free to pursue their own goals with little interference. THAT seems to be where her idea of selfishness comes from.

This was also touched upon earlier. First, ask yourself who does NOT believe we ought to be allowed to pursue our own goals with little interference. Problems arise when our aims conflict with the aims of others. Also, Rand's loaded (mis)understanding of the term selfishness often seems to suggest that self-interest (and selfishness/ethical egoism by extension) simply means pursuing one's rational self-interest. This is sloppy thinking because a quite important part of morality has to do with what is worthy of value.


If ethical egoism would support people stealing from each other, then that is completely counter to the idea of personal freedom. Allowing stealing etc. is actually allowing a big, strong (or well-armed) person to take away freedom from many others. How could a person who believes in freedom of personal goals possibly support that in any way?

Sure universal (or collective) ethical egoists generally argue people ought not steal from one another because the aggregate impact is undesirable. But that form of ethical egoism, as shown earlier in this very thread, often seems to be utilitarianism masquerading in another form. Individual ethical egoism maintains one's own interests are paramount and not open to compromise, so a prohibition on stealing is contingent upon individual circumstances, costs & benefits. The only consistent feature of this world-view is self-advantage; such a person might speak of the "virtue of hypocrisy."

In any event, both variants are counter-intuitive and generally unacceptable because they provide the wrong reasons for socially maladjusted behavior. According to ethical egoism it is our moral duty to pursue our self-interest, and when we fail to do so we harm the person who matters most -- ourself. But this is a mistake. Stealing from others (for example) is wrong because it harms others. Taken to its logical conclusions ethical egoism trivializes immoral behavior by reducing it to failure to act in accordance with one's rational self-interests. What's primarily wrong with murdering, maiming, torturing, and starving a country's population is that it involves inflicting suffering on others. For an ethical egoist he failed to act in his best self-interest. This essential feature of that ethical system is shaded by Rand's sanctimonious indignation and lofty claims of moral clarity.

[mhaze]

So putting someone into debt for years and taking advantage of them can not be concidered immoral?

Well, let me reverse the argument on you. Say that a company can spend a billion dollars and produce treatment X that solves disease Y. We calculate that our stockholders would be happy if the net return is 50M per year over 20 years. That's net, after paying for lawsuits, overhead, costs of production.

And to get the net 50M, we need sales of 250M. There are an estimated 500 customers per year who can pay 500K each for the treatment. They will all go in debt for years to do this.

Should treatment X be produced? Explain what would make the decision moral or immoral.

There may be competitive products produced after this one is out, their product may be duplicated in countries that do not obey our patent law, there may be side products that benefit other diseases, and that the product may be a complete failure.

I believe this is a pretty realistic scenario.

I would like to mention something from a strictly Rand perspective. In the USA today we have here absolutely ridiculous drug prices. Many elderly people are paying $500-1000 per month for drugs that they must have. Rand would note that this is due to the absence of a true competitive market, that it was due to Medicare/Medicaid payments (Government payments) being the primary item determining drug costs instead of the free market. Thus, she would hold the opposite of your position: namely that the presence of partial socialization in the economic system was immoral, and created great hardships for individuals.