Rational Self-Interest

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We did. If she was consistent, she should have just chosen to die since it’s wrong for others to help her.

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That would not be acting in her “rational self interest” read the comic. Ayn Rand was a monster but that’s just not the definition of hypocrite and it is not in line with saying “do as I say not as I do”. She said be selfish take what you can and did. I do not agree with this but I’m not pretending it’s hypocritical. It is consistent with her fucked up beliefs

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Because her books weren’t selling, she ended up on social security, a program she’d mocked when healthy.

A program that she contributed money to all her life, though. It was a late tax return.

Communist

Do you believe ayn rand believed in rational self-interest?

If so, why was she against all forms of welfare and socialism? If not, isn’t she the inventor of the concept and thus the arbiter of what it should mean? Doesn’t that mean you’re changing the definition to suit your needs?

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I always upvote deleted commnets

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They were, yes.

See? Another similarity.

How to be an insufferable cunt in 1 easy step!

AnyOldName3

When people use the phrase rational self interest they’re overwhelmingly meaning what Ayn Rand called rational self interest. If you take the words literally, they apply to any political philosophy as no one’s trying to design a system against their own interests. The disagreements come from people disagreeing what their interests are and how they can feasibly have them fulfilled, not because they don’t want their interests fulfilled. No one else bothers using the phrase because it’s obviously the goal and stating that would be entirely redundant, but risk making it sound like you were advocating for something Randian.

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You actually were referring to the comic, not the post you were responding to. The post you responded to did not say that at all.

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No it in fact is not. Selfishness causes any number of negative consequences - suffering, hostility, crime, conflict, rebellion, war, death… So it’s bludgeoningly obviously irrational, and therefore cannot be rational self interest.

for 99% of people yes. but if you happen to be at the very top of the ladder and if things are broken enough you can be self interested into destroying the world. Fact is the guillotines aren’t being rolled out. The protests that happen are pretty consistently swatted with barely a weeks hindrance to the years between them. We all suffer the consiquences of the olligarchy, the ones making the laws and decisions are largely above those hardships.

WatDabney

I think what I'm describing is fundamental to both of them, that most of the differences between the two philosophies are at the peripheries, and that far and away the most significant difference between the two is that one was proposed by Rand, who's a designated target for people eager to earn hip internet leftist cred through a public display of unequivocal hatred, and the other was proposed by Stirner, who's someone that most are only vaguely aware of, if at all.

skulblaka

The rational self interest bit isn’t what makes her a hypocrite here. RSI is a position that states you take whatever you can whenever you can, so it fits perfectly. The reason we’re calling her a hypocrite is because she spent years calling social security “immoral” only to hop right on it immediately when it became beneficial to her.

Ayn Rand: “Social security is an immoral redistribution of wealth and should be abolished. One is entitled to what they’ve earned themselves.”

Also Ayn Rand:

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To sum up, “rational self interest” is screwing others over for your own benefit as long as you make the calculation that it won’t come back to bite you. It works for you until you make a miscalculation and the likelihood of a miscalculation increases as you screw more people over. A greedy person benefiting from the support structure will not properly factor in that benefit and will assume they can go without, hence the widening gap between the rich and the poor. They’re essentially living in another world and cannot see reality for what it is.

bobalot

The problem is that in a closed economy, a increase in production without increased consumption will result in over production and closed down factories.

It isn’t in capitalist’s long term interests to increase production and cut wages across an entire economy. Having a very high net savings rate (whatever you don’t consume is by definition, savings) is not a good thing as a country.

America’s early growth was based on being a high wage ans high consumption country.

In an open economy, you can export your excess savings (and underconsumption) to other countries. This was an issue during the great depression (called “beggar thy neighbour”).

It is a big problem in the global economy right now with China, Taiwan, Korea, Germany, Denmark, etc. all having stagnant or low consumption shares of the economy while exporting their net savings to persistant trade deficit countries like the United States, UK, Australia and Canada (noting Australia and Canada sometimes have surpluses when commodity prices ar high).

It relies on the net deficit countries being willing to accept net capital inflows and all the issues with having persistent trade deficits (deindustrialisation, high debts, etc.) forever, which isn’t possible.

So in short, increasing profits and cutting wages (and/or the overall workforce) might work for an individual greedy douchebag but it is a terrible thing for the entire economy.

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because she spent years calling social security “immoral” only to hop right on it immediately when it became beneficial to her.

Right. When it benefited her. You can still participate in a system you believe is immoral without being a hypocrite. This is like calling a socialist a hypocrite because they exist in a capitalist society. That’s just not true. Within the realm of her own control she acted consistently. It is ironic and emblematic as the antithesis of her own philosophy (which is hilarious and enraging), but it is not hypocritical. Calling it so just weakens the real criticism.

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How to be an insufferable cunt in 1 easy step!

How to dismiss a discussion you don’t like the direction of in one easy step!

Do you have anything meaningful to add, or just want to call people names because they’re not immediately agreeing with everything you say?

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I literally quoted the comment I responded to

See also: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

What are you talking about?

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This comic makes the presupposition that the workers have a guillotine to use on her. In the comic, she was unaware that they did, and in the real world, they very much do not. If you instead gave the lines she says in the comic to the real-world Jeff Bezos, they would be perfectly rational.

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I think you’re taking too broad strokes with participation. . A socialist MUST participate in a capitalist system as that’s the world around them. That does not make a socialist a hypocrite. However the socialist CAN participate in the capitalist system in a way that socialism ideologically considers exploitative (as a capital owner who exploits others). That makes a socialist a hypocrite.

As for Ayn Rand, she MUST participate in social security to the extent where she has to give a part of her wealth to social security programs. However she CAN, but doesn’t have to, use social security for get benefit. She ideologically opposed social security, but when the time came she chose to use the very thing she opposed. It’s textbook hypocrisy. If she wanted to be consistent with her ideology she shouldn’t have relied on social security.

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There is more nuance to both philosophies than the spark-notes take away if “Rational self interest”. Which if that in itself is what you’re arguing for, and along the paths you’re arguing, Egoism explicitly talking about the voluntary coming together of individuals to temporarily work together towards common goals makes a better baseline than Objectivism’s zero-sum view on human interactions.

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However she CAN, but doesn’t have to, use social security for get benefit.

If she did not take it when it benefited her, that would have been hypocritical. She was acting selfishly and taking the money she could. In fact she HAS TO in order to be acting in her own self interest. Are you arguing that taking social security when you can is not in your self interest? If she had been saying not to take social security until that point that also would have been hypocritical (afaik that was not what she was saying but I can’t find anything definitive, her arguments were generally just anti tax and now I’ve ruined my search history). Saying that social security shouldn’t exist and that it is immoral to force people to pay into it and all that other bs rhetoric is not against the people taking social security, it’s for the government taking taxes for these programs in an effort to end the program.

as that’s the world around them

Exactly. But just like the socialist that is operating in the society they’re in with the beliefs they have, Ayn Rand was operating in RSI when she took social security because it was available. This is irony. This is disgusting. This shows how her beliefs are bad and wrong. It shows how the right wingers can act against their own interests. But this is not hypocrisy. I can still believe gambling at a casino is a good money making venture even when I go broke gambling, I’m not a hypocrite, I’m just dumb. Ayn Rand can still believe social security is immoral even as she takes money from it, she’s just dumb.