From: brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder)
Subject: Re: The Two Faces of Ayn Rand
Organization: Quake Public Access
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 00:45:54 GMT

In article <YAMAUCHI.92Nov16113937@yuggoth.ces.cwru.edu> yamauchi@ces.cwru.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>In article <BxrBDG.20B@quake.sylmar.ca.us> brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
>>>She follows that it is therefore
>>>"immoral" to prevent man from being capable of using this faculty (she
>>>doesn't seem to care how one uses it unless it intereferes with
>>>another's capability to use it) as she believes this is what makes man
>>>happy, and therefore anything that makes man unhappy is immoral.

>>That is not at all what she wrote.  There ARE people out there (such as
>>George Smith) who agree with that statement, but Rand had a completely
>>different view.  She said that the good is that which promotes one's
>>life while the evil is that which detracts from it.

>Then why isn't it moral to initiate the use of force in order to save
>your life?  

The whole point here is that the use of force and the maintenance of your
life are essentially opposed to one another.  The right choice is to not
promote situations where this is necessary.  The right choice is to be 
productive so as to avoid the situation where living like an animal is
your only remaining choice.  If you have sunk to the level where such action
is necessary to stay alive, you should do so, but expect the consequences...
being treated like an animal: caged, hunted, or shot.  There are what
Rand called "Emergency  Situations" which might require that one do things
like the initiation of force, but emergencies are not normal and by their 
nature are temporary and rare.  You can't make political or moral 
principles based on situations which are rare and temporary.  I suggest you
read Rand's essay "The Ethics of Emergencies".

>Suppose you are suffering from a potentially lethal, but
>treatable, disease and you can no longer afford the treatment.
>Wouldn't it then be rational to steal the money to pay for the
>treatment, assuming you were confident that you wouldn't be caught?

No, the rational thing to do would be to raise the money somehow, or 
get the owners of the medicine to provide it for you at a cheaper rate
or for free.  Let's stick to reality.  If you break into a drug store,
you are quite likely to be caught.  Why invent these completely artificial
situations to point out where you think Rand's ethics fails?  True enough,
if the normal situation were that people were often sick and that they couldn't
produce enough to buy what they need (or buy insurance) AND that theft
had few consequences, then maybe you might have a point, but since all of
these are false, your criticism carries little weight.  Objectivist ethics 
are intended for use in the real world.  That they don't work out well in
artificial contrived situations hardly seems a valid criticism.

>Wouldn't it also be rational to lobby the government to provide
>funding to pay for your treatment?

No.  To do so makes as much sense as sawing off a branch you are sitting on.
If it is politically possible to rob the drug companies, the drug companies 
will become weak and/or die.  If you advocate the robbery of the general
public, you are opening your own pocket to be picked, and that of everyone
else on whom you depend.  I consider that living in a country of free
people is a tremendous value (compare it to the opposite and you'll fell the
same way).  Take off you blinders and look at the whole situation.  It is
the freedom of the drug companies that allows you to even have anything to 
steal in the first place.

Are you really defending the idea that theft is morally justifiable?

>Don't get me wrong -- I'm no fan of socialized medicine; it causes
>more problems than it solves.  

Why not just stop there then?  It IS worse than a free medical system.  Do you
think it is rational for people (sick or not) to work toward what they know
to be a worse medical system?  What sense is there in that?  Only by putting
on blinders which only allow them to see a single effect of their actions
can people think that it is to their self-interest for the government to be
looting the people you want to have looted.

Theft is not in your self-interest, even if you can "get away with it" in the
"not being in jail" sense.  Do you disagree?

>On the other hand, I think it's
>perfectly rational for people suffering from disease X to lobby for
>additional funding for research and treatment of disease X.  

Only if you close your eyes to the secondary effects of such actions.

>Of
>course, that doesn't necessarily imply that it's rational for everyone
>else to provide all that the victims ask for...

In the case of the government imposing taxes on us...we have no choice about
refusing such "help" for the suffering.

--Brian

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