Incorrect. Rational self-interest would not allow for that. The long view must be payed attention to, I cannot stress this enough. This is the largest disconnect for leftists who assume that "selfish" means the same thing as careless. Rational self-interest takes the long view. You may do what you want so long as it does not negatively affect the rights of others... this is the basic theme of the philosophy.
The neighbor (you) could possibly be a later customer, it does not serve to piss off people that you may later be working with or for in your rational self-interest. The rational self-interest would require a good deal for both parties or no deal.
I had a post, deleted part of it, hate typing on my phone, so I found this article which does a better job of voicing my objections to Rand
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2...ad-obscene-or-why-objectivism-flawe/?page=all
Well suppose I have a duty to fulfill my rational self-interest, and you have a duty to fulfill yours. Suppose I decide that my rational self-interest is best fulfilled by taking your property. Now a truly consistent Randian will have to either permit himself to be robbed (thus violating his own self-interest), which he cannot do under Randianism, or he has to object on the grounds that, in addition to the moral duty, I have toward myself, I
also have a moral duty toward him.
In other words, the only way that our duties toward our own well being can be practically fulfilled is if we all have duties toward each other as well. Now this is fatal to the whole Randian program, because if I have moral duties toward you and myself, there are at least some circumstances in which I, according to justice, owe you something, just for being you. That’s altruism and according to
Rand, its
verboten.
Now the only way that Randians and their Libertarian cousins can avoid this consequence is to claim that because a person has duties toward himself, he also has, as a logical corollary, rights. He has a right to his person, property, labor, etc.
While I do not dispute that he has such rights, there is nothing in this that rules out coercion, unless I also have a duty
not to coerce against you. There are, however, two problems with this. The first is that this still admits altruistic duties toward your person; at the very least, I have to place your rights above my desires for my own fulfillment, at your expense.
The second reason is that negative rights, such as a right not to be coerced, are potentially infinite in number, and therefore practically useless in reality. You could never list all the things I’m not allowed to do to you. The minute you start to make a short, sensible list of things—the right not to be killed, tortured, robbed or blackmailed, for example—I must immediately ask “Why did you pick those four, and not ‘The right not to have a piano shot from a cannon at me?”
At this point you will have to come back to some positive conception of rights and duties, which brings us right back to altruism: You and I only have rights and duties if we have an obligation to care for each other, but if we have such an obligation, then altruism is back on the table.
Finally, it should be quite obvious that in all societies, a substantial number of individuals are in no position to look after their own self interest. Infants, children, many of the elderly and the physically and mentally infirm—the latter whom
Rand called “subnormal” and “ungifted”—
cannot look after their own rational self interest. They require others to sacrifice their own freedom and apparent self-actualization. Moreover, every human being must exist, at some point in his life, in a state of dependency upon the care of others. Even
Ayn Rand was a child at one time. *
Now an Objectivist can avoid this issue by pointing out that there are some who will take care of these people because they happen to find it fulfilling, but exactly what he cannot say is that such people, simply in virtue of being people, merit or are owed such care. Therein lays the secret monstrosity of
Rand’s philosophy. It is with this sort of thing in mind that Whitaker Chambers, in his famous review of
Atlas Shrugged quipped:
“From almost any page of
Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “To a gas chamber — go!”
Rand, reacting against the aggressive collectivism of our day, which treats every individual person as a mere fungus, a mere node of the Great Organism called Society, preached an individualism that is just as anti-personal. The truth about mere man is that he is not mere man. Man is a political animal, in the truly Aristotelian sense of that term. He is made, by his Creator and by nature, to be a person-in-relation.
“It is not good for man to be alone.” He is an individual, yes. Not a member of a hive, or a particle of sentient fungus. Yet, his individuality, his personality, his true
self-interest, can only be realized in relationship to another. Thus, he invariably finds the highest fulfillment of his personhood in love and friendship, and in the service to and sacrifice for others.
At the end of
Atlas Shrugged,
John Galt,
Rand’s atheist capitalist Jesus Christ, confirms all his disciples in
Galt’s Gulch in mutual exploitation by blessing them with the sign of the dollar. This scene confirms for the reader, as if there were any doubt, that
Rand’s philosophy, for all its bells and whistles, is nothing more than the radical narcissism of him who said “I will not serve!”
And while those who lovingly take up the cross of moral responsibility toward their neighbors will eventually shrug it off, there is no rest for the narcissist who thinks he bears the weight of the world’s success on his own shoulders.
*
This paragraph has been amended from an earlier version that read “…it should be quite obvious that in all societies, the vast majority of individuals are in no position to look after their own self interest. ” The author incorrectly stated that in any society, dependents outnumber independent adults. The changes reflect his actual intent and the author thanks his reader for the correction.
Joseph Breslin is a writer, teacher, husband, father and convicted bibliophile, currently living in the shadow of that great bureaucratic beast on the Potomac. He enjoys philosophy, history, economics, complaining and the outdoors.
