January 26, 2010
Everything I believe in one picture
Here's a chart for the Prosperitarians:
This is why I rail at those who would take up back to the caves. The "live simply so that others may simply live" movement misses this. Curiously, I think the Objectivists do as well. I suppose I understand -- after repetitive beatings -- that no concept of collective good can be reified, but I still find this to be a powerful selling point. Everybody gets happy as we move down the X axis toward modernity.
Hat-tip: Scrivener
Economics and Markets Posted by John Kranz at January 26, 2010 4:57 PM
What the ...? Yer gonna have to explain including Objectivists with the nativists.
Posted by: johngalt at January 26, 2010 6:38 PMAnd I thought you'd be happy that I did not call them Randians...
I see this as celebrating the public good of freedom, innovation, and modernity. Back-to-the-caves types deny the benefit and the improvements. Objectivits have told me that as soon as I admit to the existence of or attribute any importance to a "public good" that I have subsumed my individuality and accepted collectivism's tenets.
So I enjoy this chart alone with a good cup of coffee.
Posted by: jk at January 26, 2010 8:00 PMAh, but jk, that "public good" is (1) voluntary, and (2) accomplishes mutual good - the very heart and soul of the free market. Any community would require such voluntary mutual agreements. Allow me even to posit that the inventors who made the Industrial Revolution possible, though they invented their innovations in order to achieve personal wealth, accomplished a public good secondary to that personal betterment. And the public good they created was not given by them altruistically, at a net cost to themselves, but took place right along with their own advancement.
Ergo, if the innovator is rewarded by the society he betters with his innovation, then he is not subsuming his individuality and not furthering collectivism. So long as societal betterment is secondary to personal advancement, then the Objectivist should be satisfied.
BTW, I've added my full name; no longer will I be the only person around here who can't be addressed by a two-letter monogram!
Posted by: Keith Arnold at January 26, 2010 11:04 PM> that "public good" is (1) voluntary, and (2) accomplishes mutual good
> the very heart and soul of the free market. Any community would require
> such voluntary mutual agreements.
It greatly depends on what good you refer, Keith. Wireless networks are voluntary by virtue of one participating by purchasing - or not - a wireless device.
The 'good' of a sewer line, highway bypass, AIG bailout or new shopping mall in New London, CT are not voluntary at all. They are enforced by fiat, and the concept of one having bought into a public contract. One could move to avoid the sewer line, probably at little cost, but the others degrade our property.
JK is most likely referring to "goods" much more nebulous than my specific examples. Goods that NPR types would most likely argue are more good than us having our own pot of gold to use as we like: EPA protecting what they (in a very non-public way) deem a wetland, or the very air itself, Medicare, etc.
Generally, I'm much more in favor of concrete (no pun intended) public goods, like firestations, highways, and water catchments. They tend to be focused and have a specific end in sight. Bailouts, handouts and various EPA/FCC/HUD dicates are the first I'd cut, or freeze to use the TOTUS phrase-du-jour.
Sadly, I must maintain my anonymous edifice for the immediate future.
Posted by: nanobrewer at January 27, 2010 7:52 AMIt is not fair for me to make another's argument, so I will accept any correction.
Let me provide one more link to the discussion that inspired my comment. Blog friend Dagny makes an interesting and well developed argument:
Interesting and well developed, yes, but I confess that I have never really accepted the thesis. Does my chart run afoul?
Posted by: jk at January 27, 2010 11:03 AM
Dagny's working overtime to help America's subjects comply with the brutal rules of the illegal and corrupt IRS so you'll have to settle for my disjointed ramblings instead.
What I recoiled at was your suggestion that Objectivists (or Randians) are somehow against, as suggested by the chart, industry, wealth, technology and specialization or population growth. I didn't realize you were rehashing the old argument of society's benefit being the cause or the effect of our political system. The brothers, ka* and nb**, did a good job of defending dagny's overall point using both general and specific arguments. But I think none of us would disagree with the chart. What it shows us is that technology and human ingenuity is where true progress comes from - not from Progressives. (More on that later.)
* "ka" as in "kick-ass!" Rock on, brother.
Posted by: johngalt at January 27, 2010 12:27 PM** Nuthin' wrong with anonymity. I presume someone knows your identity in the Matrix.
I thought ka*** was the character in "Batman Begins" that you like...
Anonymity is a good choice in this company, nb, stick around. I have your real email but will protect it to my grisly death if Vice President Cheney comes for it. But if there is a personal tie I am not aware of it.
Posted by: jk at January 27, 2010 1:09 PMKeith and NB, thanks for making the very point I did some months back. "Public good" is too imprecisely thrown about, and Bastiat would remind us to look at who's paying for it in the first place.
Fireworks and beautiful vistas could be called public goods, but is someone being made to pay for them against his will? "Non-rivalrous and non-excludable" is only half of the picture, particularly when the so-called "public good" is government's way of crowding out a viable competing good in the private sector.
"The military" is most certainly not a public good, as I pointed out, even by the simplistic definition (because it's consumption is definitely rivalrous). It's a service I'm coerced into paying for but hope not to need to use.
"Free trade" isn't considered a public good, yet it does make "society" better off.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at January 27, 2010 2:42 PM"Curiously, I think the Objectivists do as well."
Now jk, I have no idea where you got this.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at January 27, 2010 2:47 PMClarification: I think that the pantheists will deny that progress was made. Sure we used to freeze in caves -- but they never had to watch commercials of view the decadence in Walmart*
Objectivists, I feared, would not let me celebrate this collective good. For the record, I mean good in the most abstract usage. I celebrate that freedom, innovation, modernity, trade, comparative advantage and the infield fly rule have made us all richer and less prone to morbidity. But I was concerned that celebrating this "collective good" would attract disapprobation from the Three Sources Objectivist community.
So I'll leave you all with a Democrat apology: "If I worded it poorly, I apologize to those hurt by their misunderstanding of my comments."
Posted by: jk at January 27, 2010 7:10 PMNo offense, you know, but that's quite a misunderstanding.
When a collectivist talks about "collective good" or "public good," you know he's talking about the forced, shared equality of poverty and state oppression.
An Objectivist would never have a problem with you living your life on your own terms, harming no one else without consent. If you asked him why he didn't object to the collectively good situation of society, he would reply that you're looking at an abstract average of individuals and their voluntary networks.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbuse at January 31, 2010 9:45 PM | What do you think? [11]