A Stitch in Haste

Every so often, I pepper my blog with the term "hyper-anarcho-libertarian," usually pejoratively. Which invited a question from one of my first loyal readers:

So, Kip, are you an Objectivist or not?

Um, well, um, gee, um...

For background, my exposure to Ayn Rand was fairly typical of many "Objectivists." I stumbled across "For The New Intellectual" in the summer between my freshman and sophomore years (i.e., 1984). I had no idea whatsoever who the author was or what the book was about -- I just liked the snazzy title.

Within about a year, maybe 18 months, I had voraciously consumed the entire canon, both fiction and nonfiction. Armed and dangerous -- and largely ignored by my undergraduate colleagues -- I was "an Objectivist."

But that was twenty years ago.

So am I an Objectivist today? A card-carrying member, to be oxymoronic? Heck, I don't know. Maybe, sorta kinda. I suppose I could be called an "Objectivist" in one sense, similar to the sense that I'm still a "member" (i.e., an alumnus) of my fraternity, my undergraduate Alma Mater, my graduate school or my law school. I sometimes still call myself a research analyst even though I don't do research anymore (I review and approve the research of others). I have no problem calling myself an "attorney" even though I don't practice and don't plan to.

I do know that I'm a small-l libertarian, and for the most part I leave it at that. I try to avoid debates that involve terms like "anarchist," "minarchist," "natural-rightists," "Hayekian," "Austrian" or "Straussian" (I had never even heard that one before reading Tim's blog). Alternatively, consider the excellent group-blog Samizdata's self-description:

We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, libertarians, extropians, futurists, "Porcupines," Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.

Am I really required to pigeonhole myself into one of those categories? I wouldn't know how to. If anyone else wants to try, knock yourselves out.

Is there such a thing as a "Objectivist Alumni Club?" More importantly, why should there have there be? We don't talk about "liberal alumni" or "conservative alumni" or "Catholic alumni" or "capitalist alumni." (I mean "alumnus" not in the sense of a "recovering Objectivist" comparable to a "recovering alcoholic," though I've known a few "ex-Objectivists" over the years who would probably apply that term to themselves.)

Rather, by "Objectivist alumnus" I mean someone who still agrees with all or most of what Ayn Rand wrote, but who does not depend exclusively, or even primarily, on Rand's writings for evaluating policy issues. Someone like this guy.

I think there are far more such "Objectivist alumni" than there are practicing "Objectivists." Why that might be the case will be the subject of Part Two in this series.

(Guest-posted earlier today at Freespace.)

In Part One of this series I asked how and why there could be such a concept as "Objectivist alumni" (i.e., people who don't disagree with Rand's writings, but who do not base their policy views on those writings).

I think a big part of the answer is that, although Rand's philosophy may generally be "correct" on most issues, it is simply not a very robust system. In other words, Objectivism is very good as far as it goes, but it simply doesn't go far enough.

Many if not most Freespacers are likely familiar with Rand's famous "one-legged synopsis" of her philosophy:

1. Metaphysics: Objective Reality
2. Epistemology: Reason
3. Ethics: Self-interest
4. Politics: Capitalism

Forgive my insolence, but isn't this a weakness, rather a strength, of a comprehensive philosophy? The multiplication tables are very cool, but as Monthy Python might say, you can't "build a bridge out of 'em." More is needed.

This concept of "correct but incomplete" is of particular importance to me because two of the most glaring examples of how "Objectivism doesn't get you very far" are my personal areas of expertise and interest: economics and the law. I'm certainly not faulting Rand for not being an economist or a lawyer. But honestly, it's been over 22 years since Rand died, 43 years since the publication of Atlas Shrugged, countless thousands of economists and lawyers have read and been inspired by her writings, and there's still no clear "Objectivist" theory of law beyond "contracts should be enforced" or economics beyond "capitalism is good."

Okay, fine, hat tip to Rand, but the issues I grapple with as an intellectual -- and a blogger -- already take those statements as axioms. What I try to do is form policy opinions within those frameworks -- having stipulated that "contracts should be enforced" and "capitalism, f-ck yeah!" -- now what?

Take one small example: there appears to be serious debate as to whether Objectivists should even support the existence of a legislature -- see, e.g., this post by Will Wilkinson. If this is the current state of "Objectivist law," then there can be no such thing as an "Objectivist lawyer." (See also my post earlier today on lotteries.)

Consider another realm where Objectivism appears to be a dead end: foreign policy. Rand's global affairs playbook basically consisted of "Communism is evil" and "any moral nation has the right, but not the obligation, to effect regime change in any immoral nation." Look where that latter premise has gotten us regarding Iraq -- some libertarians are practically at each other's throats arguing the "correct" libertarian position (see, e.g., the Balko-Sager Wars or the Max Borders Controversy), while Rand's intellectual heir-head, Peikoff, drones on about Iran.

There are two major "Objectivist" think tanks. What have they produced other than "Anniversary Edition" repackagings of Rand's work? Is it not time to ask whether there's anything actually left to be produced?

Of course, another fundamental weakness of Objectivism, beyond its limitations, is its outright errors. Those will be the topic of Part Three in this series.

POST SCRIPT: More on "building bridges" in a future post.

(Guest-posted earlier today at Freespace.)

I humbly submit that Ayn Rand was just plain wrong on several issues:

ABORTION -- Rand's position (which I take as "an unlimited, unqualified right to abortion on demand at any point during pregnancy, including the very moments just before delivery") was completely indefensible in her own time and has only become more outrageous in the present day.

I certainly do agree that there is a window in the early phase of gestation where the embryo is indeed a "clump of protoplasm" that a woman is morally entitled to destroy for any reason. Blanket bans on all abortions are not consistent with a free society. But to suggest, as Rand did and as Peikoff still does, that a late third trimester fetus is still a mere "blob" is as unscientific and anti-intellectual as creationism.

The secondary Rand-Peikoff argument -- that a viable fetus can have no "rights" because they would constitute a zero-sum game by automatically infringing the rights of the woman (Peikoff's framing: the fetus remains "plugged into" the mother like an "android") is about as un-Objectivist a line of reasoning as I would expect from any of Rand's most vocal opponents.

Yes, a woman should have an unconditional right to control her own body. This means, however, not unlimited abortion on demand, but unlimited access to pre-fertilization contraception (i.e., the unlimited right not to become pregnant in the first place). Any law that restricts access of competent adult women (or men, for that matter) to contraception should be unacceptable to a libertarian.

But once a woman has exercised that control over her body, she must now live with the consequences. Isn't that the crux of the distinction between libertarianism and anarchism -- "freedom with responsibility" versus "freedom and all else be damned"? You have freedom, you have choices, but your choices have consequences that no amount of wishful thinking can blank out. Reality exists, and so does that blob of protoplasm inside you.

Again, coupled with the fact that, at some point, that clump of cells gains consciousness (or viability, if you prefer) and becomes a human being, to simply say "It has umbilical cord, so I can destroy it" is an insolent abnegation of reality, one that violates every rule of metaphysics, epistemology and logic that Rand held so dear in all her other writings. Truly mind-boggling.

POST SCRIPT: I'm totally out of my element here, but I once heard that Rand, who was born Jewish, actually is merely parroting wholesale the orthodox Jewish position when it comes to abortion (i.e., a fetus is not a human life under any circumstances until "first breath"). Go figure. Peikoff, meanwhile, mimics Rand -- even today -- because it is of course in his rational self-interest to do so. How far is he going to get by contradicting anything Rand ever wrote?

HOMOSEXUALITY -- Say what?!? The gay guy is going to rant for paragraph after paragraph on abortion but only toss out a few meager sentences regarding Rand's view on homosexuality? Well, to be honest I'm not adequately prepped on the topic. I've read neither Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation nor the response to it, The Hijacking of a Philosophy: Homosexuals vs. Ayn Rand's Objectivism, though I certainly look forward to reading both.

In any case, to the best of my recollection, the canon doesn't actually mention much about homosexuality; our knowledge of Rand's thinking seems to derive solely from an off-the-cuff remark during a Q&A and some second-person recollections by members of her inner circle (and, one might argue, from inference regarding her writings on romantic love, which always presented exclusively heterosexual love).

And, of course, this was several decades ago -- who ever talked openly and approvingly of gay love and gay sex back then? On the other hand:

Rand’s views were in line with the views at the time of the general public and the psychiatric community. Of course, we expect better than that from the founder of Objectivism and of course, she never provided the slightest argument for her position, but that’s probably because she regarded the matter as self-evident...

My criticism is admittedly less directed toward Rand herself and more toward her successors who now "own" Objectivism. Apparently Peikoff and his underlings are -- finally -- backing off from the claim that there can be no such thing as a "gay Objectivist" (see also this Trey Givens post). Okay fine, but what about that whole doctrine, common among hard-core Objectivists, that Rand was infallible, Objectivism is "complete" and, most notorious, that no deviation from the canon can ever be tolerated?

To summarize, I think this comment sums up the "gay Objectivist" paradox quite nicely:

It's funny that Leonard Peikoff, the official commander and chief [sic] of Objectivism, can say that objectivism has nothing to say on the subject of homosexuality. How can a philosophy not have anything to say on any subject? It's philosophy. Ayn Rand taught that philosophy was the groundwork on wich [sic] men approach every subject, every subject they may encounter in life.

...Well, excuse me, but a philosophy is meant to cover the entirety of man's existence. It's really not a skyscraper built within a few square blocks of life - leaving all the rest of mankind to itself.

Ayn [R]and taught this herself, at least in words, if not always in her actions (like a true objectivist apparently). I mean didn't she say "The task of philosophy is to provide man with a comprehensive view of life."? Well, is that true or not?

Indeed.

GOLD STANDARD -- All the gold ever mined, whether used for bullion, jewelry, spacecraft or tooth fillings, would, if formed into a cube, fit within the dimensions of a baseball diamond. Does anyone honestly believe that the entire global economy and financial system, or even the American economy and financial system, could be anchored to that? And bimetallism ("we use silver for smaller transactions") is impossible in a free economy because of Gresham's Law.

There is nothing wrong with a modern, free economy using a fiat money system so long as the "fiats" are reasonable and obeyed. Specifically, so long as the central bank (e.g., the Federal Reserve) keeps the money supply stable (i.e., slow, steady, publicly-announced increases that match the rate of economic growth), without any attempt to monetize debt, and also allows freely floating exchange rates (e.g., no intervention to "shore up" a weak dollar), then the functions of money (store of wealth, unit of currency, medium of exchange, etc.) are preserved.

Again, one cannot fault Rand for not being an expert on monetary theory, fractional reserve banking, open market operations, international finance, etc. On the other hand, her dogmatic fixation on gold, mainly for symbolic literary purposes, has been and remains counterproductive when trying to sell her otherwise correct economic premises to an informed -- and skeptical --audience.

INSTINCT, HUMAN NATURE & EVOLUTION -- I'm cautious on this one, because I'm certain that Tim, who blogs regularly at Panda's Thumb, likely knows infinitely more about this subject than I do, but a central tenet of Rand's epistemology is that human beings have no "instincts" whatsoever -- that we are purely rational beings, totally distinct from animals in every cognitive way.

Such a view of human cognitive theory, which is to such say a view of human biology, is totally untenable given our understanding of the evolution of the human brain and human psychology generally. A detailed discussion of this topic by Neil Parille can be found at Sense of Life Objectivists.

Hear a baby cry, see a Snickers Bar, go skydiving for the first time. Then try claiming there's no such thing as "human instinct" or "emotion detached from reason."

--

I raise these four topics, and this series of posts generally, not in an attempt to "trash" Objectivism or to diminish Rand's genius or her importance over the past 50 years and in the future. My point is rather to demonstrate that Objectivism is a "hard sell" to the uninitiated (or to those who, like me, seek to grow beyond the canon) because of these untenable positions and the general reluctance for Objectivist "leaders" to renounce them.

As a result, the important messages conveyed by Rand -- individual autonomy, respect for personal liberties, rigid property rights, limited government, austere taxation, a predisposition for capitalism and private markets -- get too easily lost among the nonsense.

(Guest-posted earlier today at Freespace.)

I've seen those big machines come rolling through the quiet pines.
Blue suits and bankers with their Volvos and their valentines.
Give us this day our daily discount outlet merchandise.
Raise up a multiplex, and we will make a sacrifice. ...

Who remembers when it all began, out here in No Man's Land?
Before they passed the Master Plan, out here in No Man's Land.
Low supply and high demand, here in No Man's Land.
--Billy Joel, "No Man's Land"

Earlier this week, the world's highest bridge opened in France. To celebrate this wonderful feat of engineering, and also to acknowledge Tim's important work in the Kelo case, here is a post about bridges -- and central planners -- that originally ran on my blog, A Stitch in Haste, on November 21, 2004, titled "Verrazano-Narrows and the Gap That Was Never Spanned."

--

In America we say, "When Hell freezes over." In Italy they say "When the bridge is built." The "bridge" being of course, the oft-promised, never-delivered connection between the Italian peninsula and Sicily.

Recently New York City celebrated the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island. The Verrazano was the longest suspension bridge in the world when it opened, and remains the second longest to this day.

Being from the Bronx originally and Manhattan currently, the VNB should hold no especial interest to me, but being a libertarian it most certainly does, because the bridge was the last positive achievement by Robert Moses, the worst collectivist in American history; a man whose megalomaniacal rampage left scars that haunt this city to this day.

By 1964, Moses' power and reputation were well on the decline. His control of public housing had proved a disaster, the Cross-Bronx Expressway had decimated a dozen neighborhoods in that borough, the embryonic World's Fair (a pet project of Moses') was getting mired in negative publicity from an accounting scandal (and his million-dollar salary from it), and the battle against Moses' Lower Manhattan Expressway -- which would have turned Greenwich Village and SoHo into a giant trench -- was raging, a battle Moses ultimately lost.

But we do have the bridges. They are all beautiful, especially the VNB. True public goods.

Anyway, contemplating all this got me to thinking about something. To the best of my recollection (and I'm pretty sure I've read the entire canon over the years), Ayn Rand never did battle with Robert Moses. Isn't that odd?

The two were "doing their thing" at generally the same time (i.e., the 1950s and 1960s), they were doing it in the same place (New York City) and they were directing it at the same target audience (an intelligentsia trying to decide exactly what role government should play in a modern society).

So, given that they were about as far apart on the philosophical spectrum as possible, and given what Moses was doing to Rand's beloved New York, you would think that she would have written something about him somewhere, no?

This reminds me of something else I read years back: a negative observation by a reviewer that the statist villains in Atlas Shrugged were all, for lack of a better term, wusses. There was no equivalent of Ellsworth Toohey from The Fountainhead.

Is it possible that, in writing Atlas Shrugged and in the long post-Atlas denouement of her career, Rand opted to avoid any "heavy lifting" by not taking on any truly formidable opponents, either in her fiction or in the real world?

Imagine: A live debate between Ayn Rand and Robert Moses. George Lucas eat your heart out.

(Guest-posted earlier today at Freespace.)

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?"

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.

"It is by the grace of Gd that a man of Bolton's character and caliber has not walked away from the miasma of mediocrity, the slings and arrows of the 'looters and moochers' who aren't fit to wipe his boots. 'The hatred of the good for being good.'

He stays and fights the great fight. Unbelievable. Another indication that there is a Gd. And that the men that Ayn Rand wrote of really do exist. Bolton is one of those men." [Emphasis in original.]
--Source.

Whether in Bentham's world, or Plato's or Orwell's, the central task is to modify behavior by convincing people that the government -- that entity with power over their lives -- may be watching them all the time or at any particular time. As 20th-century American philosopher and advocate of personal freedom Ayn Rand noted, taking away a person's privacy renders to the government the ability to control absolutely that person.