On the Right to Be a Cretin
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A Randroid blogging at Benjo Blog is upset over this post in which I discuss an unorthodox use of the Xbox 360.
I blogged:
When somebody says (in a 300-word blogpost, incidentally) that they don't have the time or inclination to analyze something, it's usually because they can't.
I, on the other hand, have plenty of time and inclination for some hasty stitches:
--Ayn Rand would have been the first and loudest person to insist that the Xbox 360 smashers have a right to do what they please with their own property.
--Ayn Rand would have been the first and loudest person to oppose any suggestion that people be coerced, taxed or bribed into behaving "properly" with their Xbox 360s.
--Though her terminology might have been inconsistent, Rand was in fact a leading champion of the subjective theory of value, no matter how uncomfortable that makes Rand cultists feel today.
I can't quite quote chapter and verse, but Rand herself had a wonderfully sublime example (allegory?) of the subjective theory of value, that went something like this:
Consider a lipstick. The lipstick might have an objective price based on objective market factors (i.e., supply and demand). But it has no objective "value." Value only has meaning relative to the person valuing it — "of value to whom, and in what context?"
The lipstick has no value to a (male) corporate executive, even though it has an objective price. But to the executive's (female) secretary, that same lipstick can have great value, far in excess of its objective price, because it might brighten her day, increase her self-image and therefore her self-esteem, and perhaps even her productivity. The "value" of the lipstick is entirely subjective — of value to whom, and in what context?
I don't care whether Rand called this "objective value," "subjective value," "intrinsic value" or "zoop." The rest of the world calls it the subjective theory of value, it's the correct theory of value, and it's perfectly consistent with — indeed is a prerequisite for — Rand's philosophy specifically and capitalism generally.
But to Randroids, none of that matters. I used the "s-word." And I must therefore be mocked and purged.
Meanwhile, it's precisely the objective-intrinsic theory of value that lays the groundwork for collectivist policy. If the lipstick has an "objective" or "intrinsic" value, then perhaps its production should be subsidized, in order to maximize society's stockpile of "value." Perhaps "social welfare" would be maximized if we redistributed lipsticks (or the money to buy lipsticks), from those who have plenty of lipstick (or money), to those who don't have enough lipstick (or money).
Or perhaps "value-destroying" uses of lipstick should be proscribed. Perhaps the artist who wants to create "lipstick art" should be prevented from doing so, because she's "destroying objective value" by not using lipstick "correctly." And of course any feminist "nihilists" who buy a case of lipstick and smash it in a parking lot for their own gratification are to be summarily dismissed as "cretins."
In other words, this supposed "Randian Objectivist," insists, for no other reason than preserving the dogmatic purity of the word "objective," on declaring people "nihilists" and "cretins" simply because he doesn't like what they're doing.
That way statism lies.
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Or perhaps Benjo's point is not economic, but psychological — that the Xbox 360 smashers are "disturbed." Two problems with that:
1. Again, so what? People have the right to do "disturbed" things with their own money if it maximizes their own ("disturbed") utility. Rand would have strenuously and unambiguously agreed with this. Deal with it.
2. From the "Randroid Cult" perspective, there can be no such thing as "Objectivist psychology" anyway, since all the "Objectivist" writings in that field came not from Rand, but from Nathanial Branden — who, you may recall, was himself purged by Rand for blasphemy (or for refusing to continue sleeping with her out of wedlock — to a Randroid it's the same thing).
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If there is one reason why Rand's philosophy never permeates out to the masses, it's not because the philosophy is wrong, but because myopic purists refuse to let it evolve and thereby flourish. The Randroid Objectivists are doing to Rand pretty much what the Catholics have done to Jesus. And in both cases, the potential positive impact of the original philosophy is increasingly being lost.
How unfortunate.
I blogged:
Since all tastes and preferences are subjective, all material value is by corollary also subjective. One can only speak of "value to whom, and in what context?"Apparently this is Randian blasphemy:
The rest of his post is a typical subjectivist analysis of value, which I don't have the time or inclination (or stomach, for that matter) to analyze. Rather, I'd like to identify what is really going on here, which appears to have escaped Kip.Oh dear. I suppose I'll have to say ten "Hail Ayns" and give two copies of The Fountainhead to the Workers World Party as penance.
When somebody says (in a 300-word blogpost, incidentally) that they don't have the time or inclination to analyze something, it's usually because they can't.
I, on the other hand, have plenty of time and inclination for some hasty stitches:
--Ayn Rand would have been the first and loudest person to insist that the Xbox 360 smashers have a right to do what they please with their own property.
--Ayn Rand would have been the first and loudest person to oppose any suggestion that people be coerced, taxed or bribed into behaving "properly" with their Xbox 360s.
--Though her terminology might have been inconsistent, Rand was in fact a leading champion of the subjective theory of value, no matter how uncomfortable that makes Rand cultists feel today.
I can't quite quote chapter and verse, but Rand herself had a wonderfully sublime example (allegory?) of the subjective theory of value, that went something like this:
Consider a lipstick. The lipstick might have an objective price based on objective market factors (i.e., supply and demand). But it has no objective "value." Value only has meaning relative to the person valuing it — "of value to whom, and in what context?"
The lipstick has no value to a (male) corporate executive, even though it has an objective price. But to the executive's (female) secretary, that same lipstick can have great value, far in excess of its objective price, because it might brighten her day, increase her self-image and therefore her self-esteem, and perhaps even her productivity. The "value" of the lipstick is entirely subjective — of value to whom, and in what context?
I don't care whether Rand called this "objective value," "subjective value," "intrinsic value" or "zoop." The rest of the world calls it the subjective theory of value, it's the correct theory of value, and it's perfectly consistent with — indeed is a prerequisite for — Rand's philosophy specifically and capitalism generally.
But to Randroids, none of that matters. I used the "s-word." And I must therefore be mocked and purged.
Meanwhile, it's precisely the objective-intrinsic theory of value that lays the groundwork for collectivist policy. If the lipstick has an "objective" or "intrinsic" value, then perhaps its production should be subsidized, in order to maximize society's stockpile of "value." Perhaps "social welfare" would be maximized if we redistributed lipsticks (or the money to buy lipsticks), from those who have plenty of lipstick (or money), to those who don't have enough lipstick (or money).
Or perhaps "value-destroying" uses of lipstick should be proscribed. Perhaps the artist who wants to create "lipstick art" should be prevented from doing so, because she's "destroying objective value" by not using lipstick "correctly." And of course any feminist "nihilists" who buy a case of lipstick and smash it in a parking lot for their own gratification are to be summarily dismissed as "cretins."
In other words, this supposed "Randian Objectivist," insists, for no other reason than preserving the dogmatic purity of the word "objective," on declaring people "nihilists" and "cretins" simply because he doesn't like what they're doing.
That way statism lies.
---
Or perhaps Benjo's point is not economic, but psychological — that the Xbox 360 smashers are "disturbed." Two problems with that:
1. Again, so what? People have the right to do "disturbed" things with their own money if it maximizes their own ("disturbed") utility. Rand would have strenuously and unambiguously agreed with this. Deal with it.
2. From the "Randroid Cult" perspective, there can be no such thing as "Objectivist psychology" anyway, since all the "Objectivist" writings in that field came not from Rand, but from Nathanial Branden — who, you may recall, was himself purged by Rand for blasphemy (or for refusing to continue sleeping with her out of wedlock — to a Randroid it's the same thing).
---
If there is one reason why Rand's philosophy never permeates out to the masses, it's not because the philosophy is wrong, but because myopic purists refuse to let it evolve and thereby flourish. The Randroid Objectivists are doing to Rand pretty much what the Catholics have done to Jesus. And in both cases, the potential positive impact of the original philosophy is increasingly being lost.
How unfortunate.
Posted by Kip on
1 December 2005
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