"Ayn Rand is a bloody socialist compared to me"
Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 8 months ago to Philosophy
A discussion of the work of the author who said that his work was "an invitation to think-not to believe."
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Heinlein was, as he described himself, a rational anarchist. He didn't believe that the management of force was any different from any other good or service. Therefore he believed people retained the absolute right to manage force themselves. Society then became an uneasy mutual non-aggression treaty. See The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for a full description.
You can hire your own security guards or body guards, but you and they are accountable under the law.
If people understood enough and had enough integrity there wouldn't be any need to 'shut it down'. When they don't there is no way to do it -- if they won't vote ethically on the right principles then why would they revolt for anything but more chaos?
This isn't a matter of government actions widely recognized as corrupt, it's much more fundamental. There are occasional minor corrections when it gets bad enough, but they are zig-zags on a fundamentally downward course because people don't know what else to do. The politics follows bad philosophical premises.
Governments exist because they are practical solutions to mutual protection, not because they need force to make people belong
(When Prof first spoke of his political views, someone asked him "Randite?" He replied, "I can live with a Randite.")
LeFevre's most-quoted position was that people have a right to own property "but not a right to any particular property!" If any attempt was ever made either to explain or to rationalize this obvious contradiction, I haven't heard of it. LeFevre had his followers but I would not call any of them true libertarians.
For myself, I contrast Starship Troopers with The Man Who Sold the Moon. But wherever you open any one of his books, you find something to think about. At least, I have.
I read Upton Sinclair earlier than that.
"Ayn Rand is a bloody socialist compared to me"
I thought that was our freedomforall speaking!
But Heinlein was not an Objectivist or libertarian or authoritarian or anything
As writer Doherty says in the Reason article
'the best way to understand Heinlein in toto is as a full-service iconoclast,
the unique individual who decides that things do not have to be, and won't continue, as they are.'
I like this observation from from George Bernard Shaw (!) that Heinlein adored:
that only a barbarian "believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature."
This is a good thought-
he gave us "an invitation to think - not to believe."
There is a vast difference between things you read in books or the people who write them and the way things actual are in reality.
Alan Greenspan began his work in the Ford administration to make a difference for the better, not to help or exploit 'socialism'. He seems to have continued with that attitude in trying to at least minimize regulation, though his reasoning and actions became increasingly dubious. He still admired Ayn Rand but clearly was not an Objectivist.
A lesson we must re-learn and embrace but this time...in a conscious way instead of a mystical way...in other words, we should treat ourselves as grown ups and not flawed pagan children; even though, most of the world still acts that way.
It also occurs to me that YA Heinlein is, among many other things, a primer on how to live, while his later work is more about living your life. hmm...