Some of my best friends are communists
What makes a "good" person or a "bad" person is (no surprise) personal: within the individual. That is usually hidden from external view and judged only by actions and words in the world. That judgment is also personal: it depends on the person making it.
Consider John D. Rockefeller. Most people who care to know anything about him dislike him. Objectivists admire him, but dislike his having been a church-going Baptist. Would Rockefeller have been a better person as an atheist? You only have to look at Edison to think more than twice about that question.
That is not to say that "one hand washes the other." I believe that the final balance is, indeed, a balance, of admirable qualities versus failures.
What is the essential characteristic?
A productive person will admire the productivity of others. Consider Thomas Edison, Sandra Lerner (Cisco Systems), or Martha Stewart. Edison was not a nice guy, but that is not the essential judgment. None of them were or are paragons of Objectivist virtues - some producers seem to have had no special virtues outside of their work. Consider how we wring our hands over Bill Gates. Yet, Microsoft cannot be denied. I admire
George Soros for his success as a trader. Haters take a different view.
You can find producers and haters in any population, just like short and tall people, no matter how short or tall the group. It is an assumption in social science that however defined, differences _within_ groups are greater than differences _across_ groups. Thus, I have had many friends who were political progressives and born-again Christians, while I have suffer through many libertarian or Objectivist meetings.
Consider John D. Rockefeller. Most people who care to know anything about him dislike him. Objectivists admire him, but dislike his having been a church-going Baptist. Would Rockefeller have been a better person as an atheist? You only have to look at Edison to think more than twice about that question.
That is not to say that "one hand washes the other." I believe that the final balance is, indeed, a balance, of admirable qualities versus failures.
What is the essential characteristic?
A productive person will admire the productivity of others. Consider Thomas Edison, Sandra Lerner (Cisco Systems), or Martha Stewart. Edison was not a nice guy, but that is not the essential judgment. None of them were or are paragons of Objectivist virtues - some producers seem to have had no special virtues outside of their work. Consider how we wring our hands over Bill Gates. Yet, Microsoft cannot be denied. I admire
George Soros for his success as a trader. Haters take a different view.
You can find producers and haters in any population, just like short and tall people, no matter how short or tall the group. It is an assumption in social science that however defined, differences _within_ groups are greater than differences _across_ groups. Thus, I have had many friends who were political progressives and born-again Christians, while I have suffer through many libertarian or Objectivist meetings.
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"[Objectivist Ethics] holds that the *rational* interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value."
MM's statements were qualified by man qua man-which is essential to survival. My point is how can communist friends meet that standard, regardless of enhancing his personal life and bringing benefit to him-while at the same time actively promoting slavery and the suppression of natural rights either wittingly or unwittingly? The contradiction is inherent in those two ethical values.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the gain on my labor belongs to God. It does say that the blessing of the ability to prosper comes from a loving God who wants us to prosper. That's also why we give back to God in our offerings. On the most simplistic level a argument can be made that since we, the world, the universe, are his creation, we provide value to him in our existence. That's perhaps one view of John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son........" We have value to him.
When we labor, the fruit of our labors are ours, not Gods - what need does he have of our earnings? We give back a portion to the church to further the work of the local church. We not bot give offerings to god in order to win his favor.
God does gift us with life, God is not the "sky daddy" protecting his children as long as they follow him like puppet and see him like a marionette pulling strings of a puppet. Absurd.
The supposed link between communism and Christianity arises from the way that the early church had to function. Due to persecution of anybody who claimed to be a Christian, they were discriminated against and were not allowed to work or to earn money and as the result the church gave everyone a place to gather all their belongings together so that none of them would starve. Nowhere is the case made that this was to continue to be how the church and Christians were to function. In fact, the apostle Paul earned his living by being a tentmaker. Where ever he traveled he EARNED his way by making tents. Offerings were given to him from various churches for his travels, but that was because he had given them something of value too.
Where you go wrong is that "belonging to God" equates to being His slave. One belongs to God the same way a rock belongs to God, or your book belongs to you. He made it; it's His universe, like it or not. You own your book... but you wouldn't even think of tracking down every copy and changing the wording or erasing notations people made in the margins, would you? Even if you were capable of doing so, it would be rather pointless.
And we get back down to the old "Why does God let bad things happen?" question.
This is not the Garden of Eden. The world operates based upon a set of laws. In addition to giving us "rights", He gave us "free will". It's not up to Him to protect our "rights" any more than it's up to Him to protect our lives. And even if He does so, he must do so through the laws He created. Pendulum of Justice would kind of suck if, in the middle of the most dramatic action sequence, Superman suddenly appeared and mind-melded with the antagonist and made him give in.
I tend to think of the universe as an MMORPG, with God as the designer. Sure, theoretically He can step in and "fix" things... but doing so almost always would screw something else up (or screw a PC).
Just as the animals and monsters and city guards and other NPCs in an MMORPG exist to give the game flavor and interest, so, too, in the real world we have wild animals and unimportant people (by the billions) to give reality flavor.
This analogy caused me, awhile back to start dividing people into two categories; PCs and NPCs. For examples of PCs you have Gates, Ron Howard, Obama, and you & db, and some examples of NPCs would include people like me, and the burger flipper at McDonald's and the guy you pass on the expressway with the stalling and sputtering car.
So far, this philosophy is working best for me...
I personally withdraw friendship from people after a few months if we don't agree philosophically. The only moral weapon you really have is withdrawing your participation and support of immoral people.
If I am alive, in order to be alive I must do certain things to promote life. Anything else, like promoting slavery, is promoting death. In order to promote life, I must protect natural rights and by extension property rights. A society or a society's rights (in communism) is illogical and does not exist. A society is made up of a group of individuals-all who have rights and politically decisions are made how to best protect those rights. Capitalism is the best system under which those rights are most voraciously protected-the ONLY system. The concept of God is not needed to logically derive that conclusion. Communism is, on the other hand, an evil system which actively promotes slavery, which means they are actively promoting death. Refusing to look at the consequences of one's actions does not absolve one from their actions.
Wha????
"I grant a moral sanction to anyone who brings benefit to me." double wha??
Among friends, I value someone who is consistent, trustworthy, reliable, i.e., someone who keeps the word they give.
If they are Christian or socialist or Jewish or New Age or just plain muddled and mired, that is their own set of inconsistencies and contradictions to deal with. As long as they are good to me and good for me, I accept that in context.
One of the oldest principals of liberty, "your freedom begins at the tip of my nose". Give me value as I give you value, and everything else is "to be determined later".
Why do you get to limit your descriptions to those who behave "rationally?" If self interest is the virtue, then why isn't it so if taken to the extreme? And in this context, Madoff merely took his own self interest to an extreme point. Yes, he lied and cheated, that's what it took for him to realize his self interest.
This is where I think that Objectivism fails. You cannot say that a little self interest is good, but a lot is bad. It is either good or bad.
Nobody here wants to answer the BAOTB postulate. If my self interest is good, then what stops me from just trampling over everyone else's liberty to get whatever I want? My self interest is paramount.
I hear this retort - "because the only way to ensure one's own liberty is to recognize the liberty of others" - Why? What universal axiom makes that so? I have provided countless examples of individuals throughout history that have not behaved according to that maxim. Some of them died of other than old age because of it, but so what? Is the Objectivist ultimate objective merely to die of old age? So those people ultimately were killed by a Badder ass, so what? They lived and did what they wanted in their own self interest. We still remember, hell, study many of those people - Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Hitler and Stalin. I posit that those people made a bigger impact on the world - for good or evil - than any 10 Objectivists ever will.
As I'm often told - check your premises.
Not a rant against you, kh, merely a rant.
You wouldn't dare use the n-word here to describe a black person, or the q-word to describe a homosexual person... Or the anagram for Worthy Oriental Gentleman, for that matter.
So don't use an insulting slang word for white men, tyvm. Even misspelled.
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