How can I have a desire to socialize?

[Boner da Stoner]

Your definition of greed needs a new amorphism.

Greed with restraint is not greed, its frugality and self persperation. Big diff!

Greed without restrain is evil and exploitive.

Greed in itself is not right, but used properly is simply a tool.

 

[Visceral]

Originally posted by Nocturnal
Not if you have ideals and stick to them. For the man of integrity, there will never be any tendency for anything to change. And who is to say you cannot believe in rational self interest and still respect the rights of others? A man can be exploited only as much as he offers himself for exploitation.

Because when things like ideals and integrity are just labels consciously and conveniently affixed to the most profitable position, they don't really mean anything. Most men have no choice but to offer themselves for exploitation; their only other option is to starve on the streets.

Why is there only room for one at the top? Why do you think that capitalism has worked so well? Because when people are acting in their own interest, out of greed, they recognize other men of ability and they trade their services with each other, both profiting. The success of two individuals is not necessarily mutually exclusive, that is a very basic that can be traced all the way back to the earliest of societies. Also, "ordinary people" trade their services in the same way, except on a different scale. I would much rather work for the man who wants me for my actual value as "raw material" than for the man who thinks he should hire me because it would be a favor to me, regardless of my ability.

It sounds like you're talking about equals here; things between them are very different than they would be between superiors and inferiors. I would be flattered to be hired as a favor; it would suggest that I mean more to him than as a pawn in his grand scheme - truly deserving rather than merely useful. You'll change your mind about "raw material" status when he decides you're no longer valuable to him, or when he finds someone more valuable; your pride will in the gutter before you are.

No one ever said that greed requires abandoning laws or morals. You mentioned Rand above, if you knew more about her you would know that one of the fundamental ideas of her philosophy is that morality is not relative, it is based on certain inherent rights. You can act based on greed with the corrolary that you must respect the rights of others.

Actually, I do know all about that; I just don't trust any follower of hers (or anyone else for that matter) to listen to it when there's personal gain to be made. Face it, morality is one of the most relative things on the planet; a man will be moral only when it benefits him to do so; he will condemn morality as "liberal commie bullsh!t" when it's standing in his way, and work to destroy it when it benefits someone else. Take a look at Nietzsche: DIY values, who you are and what you want is [arbitrarily] good and everything else is bad.

You have still failed to point out why it should matter what the CEO wants you for. What matters is what he is giving you and what you are giving him.

What matters is when what you give him and what he gives you don't balance, but when one greatly exceeds the other; you give a third of your life to him and he makes millions in his sleep off of it while unwillingly tossing you the equivalent of crumbs. That's exploitation; it's your hard work, you should be making the millions. I personally would be offended to be a tool, a commodity, to be not only a host to a parasite but an expendable one at that, more like prey for a predator.

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by Visceral
Because when things like ideals and integrity are just labels consciously and conveniently affixed to the most profitable position, they don't really mean anything. Most men have no choice but to offer themselves for exploitation; their only other option is to starve on the streets.

I am not talking about when ideals and integrity are labels, I am talking about when they are the foundation of a belief system and lifestyle.

I want to be very careful here when talking about exploitation. Exploitation in the sense of attempting to get as much out of a worker for as little as possible, what is wrong with that? No one is being forced at the point of a gun to agree to an employment agreement. Working for a specific employer is a choice. The employer is not in any way immoral by putting a deal on the table and allowing the other party to accept it. It's immoral because the worker has no other choice? How does that make it immoral?

Who says that I, as an employer, have a moral responsibility to give anything to anyone that I don't want to give?

Originally posted by Visceral
It sounds like you're talking about equals here; things between them are very different than they would be between superiors and inferiors. I would be flattered to be hired as a favor; it would suggest that I mean more to him than as a pawn in his grand scheme - truly deserving rather than merely useful. You'll change your mind about "raw material" status when he decides you're no longer valuable to him, or when he finds someone more valuable; your pride will in the gutter before you are.

No, what I am talking about is trading goods and services between two entities for the profit of both. One can be stronger, and both can still profit. If Microsoft were to hire a small, "inferior" company to design their new logo, would that be a win-lose situation? I don't think so. If the logo-designers were going to lose, they wouldn't have accepted in the first place.

How can you be so "truly deserving," that you deserve more than you actually earn? Mere existence does not entitle anyone to anything, and no employer is entitled to give away anything as a favor. I would be disgusted to be offered a job on the basis of favor, and not my ability. If I get a job based on ability, I know that it is because I am respected. If I get it as a favor, I know that it is because I am pitied.

Need does not make anything deserved. The starving man does not deserve bread any more than he earns it himself. If he can't earn it himself, then he has failed himself and he deserves the consequences. Obviously unpreventable emergencies occur sometimes, but is no one else's responsibility to lend a helping hand, danger is a risk that each of us accept on a daily basis by choosing life over death, and we have to accept the consequences of that risk if something happens.

Originally posted by Visceral
Face it, morality is one of the most relative things on the planet; a man will be moral only when it benefits him to do so; he will condemn morality as "liberal commie bullsh!t" when it's standing in his way, and work to destroy it when it benefits someone else. Take a look at Nietzsche: DIY values, who you are and what you want is [arbitrarily] good and everything else is bad.

Then who is to say that acting in your own interest is not the basis of morality, given that you do so recognizing certain rights everyone has? Being moral is defined as doing good, I don't believe that what is good is relative, but that what is relative is how something is determined to be either good or bad. In the end, acting in your own self interest will always be an attempt to do good, to benefit yourself, so in that sense it is moral (as long as you respect the rights of others). You cannot do wrong to anyone that does not allow themselves to be wronged, as long as you respect their rights, so pursuing your own interests under those guidelines can only do good, not bad (unless your logic of what is in your interest is flaws, but your intentions will still be moral).

Originally posted by Visceral
What matters is when what you give him and what he gives you don't balance, but when one greatly exceeds the other; you give a third of your life to him and he makes millions in his sleep off of it while unwillingly tossing you the equivalent of crumbs. That's exploitation; it's your hard work, you should be making the millions. I personally would be offended to be a tool, a commodity, to be not only a host to a parasite but an expendable one at that, more like prey for a predator.

You cannot be prey in that sense unless you offer yourself to be preyed upon, in which case the employer is not a predator, he is one party in an agreement/contract. Instead of parasitism, I would say it is more like symbiosis where the employee is mistaken about what is best for him.

 

[Visceral]

Originally posted by Nocturnal
I am not talking about when ideals and integrity are labels, I am talking about when they are the foundation of a belief system and lifestyle.

Yes ... but when is that ever the case? I don't know of anyone who lives like this except to justify their behavior or give meaning to their misery; which is the whole reason people invented systems like these, either to give themselves the right to do a thing (that they might also wish to deny others), or to keep from being driven mad by their wretched lot in life.

I want to be very careful here when talking about exploitation. Exploitation in the sense of attempting to get as much out of a worker for as little as possible, what is wrong with that? No one is being forced at the point of a gun to agree to an employment agreement. Working for a specific employer is a choice. The employer is not in any way immoral by putting a deal on the table and allowing the other party to accept it. It's immoral because the worker has no other choice? How does that make it immoral?

Who says that I, as an employer, have a moral responsibility to give anything to anyone that I don't want to give?

It's not a literal gun, but just as lethal if you defy it. Working for a specific employer can be a choice (provided the job market is good) but working period is never a choice. And you have no means to compel your employer to make it worth your while; you are utterly dependent on him (and I find dependency distasteful enough), and he takes full advantage of this, giving you only what it takes to keep you from suing his ass for unlawful treatment. Slavery with pay is still slavery; he has no choice but to work for someone, and when he's putting in far more than he gets out, it's even worse. I'm giving you my time when I don't want to, but that's only because I have no say in the matter - I can either serve or starve. The least you can do is make my servitude a pleasant fate by giving me what reflects my importance to you - or dare I say it, your dependence on me - rather than taking it for yourself and tossing me a bone.

No, what I am talking about is trading goods and services between two entities for the profit of both. One can be stronger, and both can still profit. If Microsoft were to hire a small, "inferior" company to design their new logo, would that be a win-lose situation? I don't think so. If the logo-designers were going to lose, they wouldn't have accepted in the first place.

Both parties can profit, yes, but rarely proportional to their contribution. Microsoft didn't make the logo, the other company did - Microsoft only uses the logo, but they make more off of it in a week than the other company will make in a year. To me, this is incredibly unfair. Or worse, a CEO takes a paid vacation and makes more in that week than most of his employees will make in their lifetimes, but they do virtually all the work that makes the company that money. The employees are far more valuable to the company than the CEO, but the CEO is the one making the most. This is unconscionable to me; the only way I can think of that would allow you to justify this kind of exploitation is if you benefit from it. If you were not in that position, I have no doubt that you would feel very differently about it.

How can you be so "truly deserving," that you deserve more than you actually earn? Mere existence does not entitle anyone to anything, and no employer is entitled to give away anything as a favor. I would be disgusted to be offered a job on the basis of favor, and not my ability. If I get a job based on ability, I know that it is because I am respected. If I get it as a favor, I know that it is because I am pitied.

Need does not make anything deserved. The starving man does not deserve bread any more than he earns it himself. If he can't earn it himself, then he has failed himself and he deserves the consequences. Obviously unpreventable emergencies occur sometimes, but is no one else's responsibility to lend a helping hand, danger is a risk that each of us accept on a daily basis by choosing life over death, and we have to accept the consequences of that risk if something happens.

Once again, if you were the starving man or the unable man - the victim of the system - you would feel exactly the opposite. You have this position not because there's any truth or value to it, but only because it benefits you to have it.

Then who is to say that acting in your own interest is not the basis of morality, given that you do so recognizing certain rights everyone has? Being moral is defined as doing good, I don't believe that what is good is relative, but that what is relative is how something is determined to be either good or bad. In the end, acting in your own self interest will always be an attempt to do good, to benefit yourself, so in that sense it is moral (as long as you respect the rights of others). You cannot do wrong to anyone that does not allow themselves to be wronged, as long as you respect their rights, so pursuing your own interests under those guidelines can only do good, not bad (unless your logic of what is in your interest is flaws, but your intentions will still be moral).

Acting in one's self-interest is the basis of human behavior, I agree, but that doesn't make it moral, only practical. It's the basis of morality only because morality is human artifice; "moral" is just an arbitrary label given to justify something, especially if it's something everyone else on the planet would call immoral. If you're arguing that it's counterproductive to harm others in the pursuit of your own goals because it can lead to great harm to you in the future, then I agree with you and Rand, but only up to a point, as a person can be so powerful that retaliation becomes impossible or against one's own self-interest. Don't call this genuine concern for others' well-being, because it's not; it's pure selfishness. No sane person would choose to be wronged, and yet people are wronged on a daily basis; I cannot believe that these people are anything but victims of forces beyond their control, natural or manmade.

You cannot be prey in that sense unless you offer yourself to be preyed upon, in which case the employer is not a predator, he is one party in an agreement/contract. Instead of parasitism, I would say it is more like symbiosis where the employee is mistaken about what is best for him.

How can the employee be mistaken about that? Are you saying he should be grateful to sacrifice a third of his life for the benefit of someone else? No-one could be grateful for that. I think the only reason people put up with it is because it's either that or starve. If there were a third option, one that didn't involve working or starving, they would take it in a heartbeat. "Screw the employer; I only care about him because he signs my paycheck." Get this through your head: nobody wants to work, especially not when someone else benefits from it; they only do it because they don't have a choice. The best they can do is convince themselves that they like it, but I'm certain that deep down they don't.

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by Visceral
I don't know of anyone who lives like this except to justify their behavior or give meaning to their misery; which is the whole reason people invented systems like these, either to give themselves the right to do a thing (that they might also wish to deny others), or to keep from being driven mad by their wretched lot in life.

I don't know many people with solid ideals either, but I think that is the problem. Regardless of how rare it may be, it does not change the fact that men with ideals can be greedy without harming others. That is my argument. Is it greed that is cause for destruction, or is it a lack of ideals?

Originally posted by Visceral It's not a literal gun, but just as lethal if you defy it. Working for a specific employer can be a choice (provided the job market is good) but working period is never a choice. And you have no means to compel your employer to make it worth your while; you are utterly dependent on him (and I find dependency distasteful enough), and he takes full advantage of this, giving you only what it takes to keep you from suing his ass for unlawful treatment. Slavery with pay is still slavery; he has no choice but to work for someone, and when he's putting in far more than he gets out, it's even worse. I'm giving you my time when I don't want to, but that's only because I have no say in the matter - I can either serve or starve. The least you can do is make my servitude a pleasant fate by giving me what reflects my importance to you - or dare I say it, your dependence on me - rather than taking it for yourself and tossing me a bone.

There is no gun, literal or not. The underlying question is, are men forced to work for other men? When parents make the choice to have a child, they do so knowing the consequences of their action. The child will have to grow up and find a way to provide for himself, which, in our society, generally means finding a job. Existence comes with a price, but it is not forced. Every time someone comes into existence the parents make the conscious choice to burden the child with the price tag(s) associated with life. In reality, the only people forcing others to work are the people who force existence, also known as parents.

In addition, like I have said before, if a man cannot provide for himself, that is his own fault. It doesn't matter what options he has, he exists under the condition that he has a limited pool of options and must take the ones he can get.

The employer does not exist for the sake of the employee, they each exist for their own sake, and neither of them owes the other a dime. Any deals made between them are by choice, not necessity. And if your last option is to take what you can get, which means an unsatisfactory job, then you should be glad that you still have something of value to offer in exchange for the things required to support your life.

Originally posted by Visceral Both parties can profit, yes, but rarely proportional to their contribution. Microsoft didn't make the logo, the other company did - Microsoft only uses the logo, but they make more off of it in a week than the other company will make in a year. To me, this is incredibly unfair. Or worse, a CEO takes a paid vacation and makes more in that week than most of his employees will make in their lifetimes, but they do virtually all the work that makes the company that money. The employees are far more valuable to the company than the CEO, but the CEO is the one making the most. This is unconscionable to me; the only way I can think of that would allow you to justify this kind of exploitation is if you benefit from it. If you were not in that position, I have no doubt that you would feel very differently about it.

Let's make something clear: what determines how valuable your work is? Demand. There is no inherent value to a microsoft logo or the work that is necessary to produce it, the only way it can aquire value is by someone wanting it.

Do the employees of a company really do all of the work? No. The company would fall apart with no managment. Managment is VERY valuable because there is a demand for it. It doesn't matter how much work the CEO does, what matters is that he has something to offer that is more valuable than what a single worker can offer. That is why he gets more money.

Are you arguing that X amount of labor should result in Y amount of money? I disagree. X amount of value should result in Y amount of money. Labor is NOT directly proportional to value. In fact, that is how the economy grows, people find ways to get more value out of less labor.

Originally posted by Visceral Once again, if you were the starving man or the unable man - the victim of the system - you would feel exactly the opposite. You have this position not because there's any truth or value to it, but only because it benefits you to have it.

Ok, since you make it such a point that I must not be a "victim of the system," as you put it, I will challenge you. I am a college student that, as you would say, is forced to work. I have a minimum wage job that I work 18 hours a week. Why do I have it? Because I have no transportation and it is on campus, and it was one of my only choices, and there are things that I need, such as clothing, that I need a way of obtaining.

I don't consider myself to be here by force. I am here completely by choice. There is an alternative, but it is worse. I took the better of my choices. Just because some rich kid has the option of spending his father's money instead of earning it himself, doesn't make my situation any worse and it doesn't mean that I am being forced to work while he is not.

Originally posted by Visceral Acting in one's self-interest is the basis of human behavior, I agree, but that doesn't make it moral, only practical. It's the basis of morality only because morality is human artifice; "moral" is just an arbitrary label given to justify something, especially if it's something everyone else on the planet would call immoral.

Isn't acting out of self-interest inherently justified by the one purpose that people have, to further their own interests? And if the term "moral" is just a label which means that something is justifiable, and acting in one's self interest is inherently justified, isn't it also inherently moral?

Originally posted by Visceral If you're arguing that it's counterproductive to harm others in the pursuit of your own goals because it can lead to great harm to you in the future, then I agree with you and Rand, but only up to a point, as a person can be so powerful that retaliation becomes impossible or against one's own self-interest. Don't call this genuine concern for others' well-being, because it's not; it's pure selfishness. No sane person would choose to be wronged, and yet people are wronged on a daily basis; I cannot believe that these people are anything but victims of forces beyond their control, natural or manmade.

No sane person would choose to be wronged, I agree. But what about those who wrong themselves indirectly? There are two ways this can occur, either by (1) acting irrationally, or (2) using flawed knowledge. For example:

(1)
I get a new credit card. I know that I have no cash available, and I know that I won't get any money for another 6 months. I choose to buy a bunch of groceries with my credit card. I can't pay off the bill, and my balance increases dramatically. My credit is ruined. The credit card company has not wronged me, I have wronged myself by not finding a better way to aquire food.

(2)
I get a letter from my boss telling me to buy a $5000 car for the company, and that I will be reimbursed for the $5000 when I get back with the car. I mistakenly buy a $50,000 car because I have made an error in my notes, and I take a $45,000 loss. My logic was correct, I bought the car for the price that I was told (according to my <incorrect> knowledge), and I brought it back and was reimbursed for the price I was told. My boss did not wrong me by making me pay the $45,000 difference, I wronged myself by making an error in my notes.

Originally posted by Visceral How can the employee be mistaken about that? Are you saying he should be grateful to sacrifice a third of his life for the benefit of someone else?

I am saying that the consequences of his actions occurred because of his choices.

Originally posted by Visceral If there were a third option, one that didn't involve working or starving, they would take it in a heartbeat. "Screw the employer; I only care about him because he signs my paycheck." Get this through your head: nobody wants to work, especially not when someone else benefits from it; they only do it because they don't have a choice. The best they can do is convince themselves that they like it, but I'm certain that deep down they don't.

I have to disagree with your statement that nobody wants to work. I can name quite a few people who have plenty of money but continue to work. These are people that love their jobs.

What about the rest of the world who you say, at best, convince themselves that they like to work when they really don't? Let's face it, they obviously have something to gain from it or they wouldn't do it in the first place, they see life as better alternative than death. They ARE making a choice, they have chosen to continue to live instead of to allow death to overtake them. They are not being forced to continue living, it is a very conscious decision, and it is made by the employee not the employer.

 

[Visceral]

Originally posted by Nocturnal
I don't know many people with solid ideals either, but I think that is the problem. Regardless of how rare it may be, it does not change the fact that men with ideals can be greedy without harming others. That is my argument. Is it greed that is cause for destruction, or is it a lack of ideals?

Benefitting yourself without harming others: it strikes me as a gigantic leap of faith to expect a selfish person to draw a line there ... or anywhere for that matter. I would expect a selfish person to respect my rights only with the intent of either using me for their benefit or preventing me from becoming an enemy. But because it's the right thing to do? No, what's right is what's good for them, nothing else. That's more of a risk than I would be willing to take with myself. Suppose you're standing in the way of what's good for them ... would you expect them to just move on?

There is no gun, literal or not. The underlying question is, are men forced to work for other men? When parents make the choice to have a child, they do so knowing the consequences of their action. The child will have to grow up and find a way to provide for himself, which, in our society, generally means finding a job. Existence comes with a price, but it is not forced. Every time someone comes into existence the parents make the conscious choice to burden the child with the price tag(s) associated with life. In reality, the only people forcing others to work are the people who force existence, also known as parents.

In addition, like I have said before, if a man cannot provide for himself, that is his own fault. It doesn't matter what options he has, he exists under the condition that he has a limited pool of options and must take the ones he can get.

The employer does not exist for the sake of the employee, they each exist for their own sake, and neither of them owes the other a dime. Any deals made between them are by choice, not necessity. And if your last option is to take what you can get, which means an unsatisfactory job, then you should be glad that you still have something of value to offer in exchange for the things required to support your life.

No man should be dependent on another for his survival; this is just so distasteful to me. Call me paranoid, but I can't see such a vulnerable position doing anything but exposing the employee to all kinds of abuse. If a man has more to lose by protecting himself than another man has to lose by attacking him, what do you think is going to happen? He's going to be attacked and will have to take it. This is disgusting.
I disagree; it is 100% necessity. Am I going to place my welfare in my employer's hands if I have another choice? Is he going to place his million-dollar paycheck in my hands without another choice? Absolutely not - to do so would be lunacy.

Let's make something clear: what determines how valuable your work is? Demand. There is no inherent value to a microsoft logo or the work that is necessary to produce it, the only way it can aquire value is by someone wanting it.

Do the employees of a company really do all of the work? No. The company would fall apart with no managment. Managment is VERY valuable because there is a demand for it. It doesn't matter how much work the CEO does, what matters is that he has something to offer that is more valuable than what a single worker can offer. That is why he gets more money.

Are you arguing that X amount of labor should result in Y amount of money? I disagree. X amount of value should result in Y amount of money. Labor is NOT directly proportional to value. In fact, that is how the economy grows, people find ways to get more value out of less labor.

Explain that to me: how can management possibly be more valuable to a company than the people who actually do the work? No grand vision is worth sh!t without workers to make it a reality. If you want people to be paid based on value, consider that. I would argue that workers have zero value to their employers; they are only paid because they won't work for free, and are treated well only to keep them from looking for something better. I would expect an employer to pay his workers nothing and beat them on a daily basis if he could.
A man's work should not benefit his superior(s) more than it benefits him. I can't help but object to this; it's taking advantage of the worker's dependency.
Yes, but the worker is the one who suffers. As the management buys machines or outsources his job, he's left with nothing. I can't help but disagree with this practice, as I'm not convinced it won't ever happen to me - there's self-interest right there. And I would never wish that fate on anyone, so if it were in my power to prevent it, I would.

Isn't acting out of self-interest inherently justified by the one purpose that people have, to further their own interests? And if the term "moral" is just a label which means that something is justifiable, and acting in one's self interest is inherently justified, isn't it also inherently moral?

Acting in one's self-interest is not inherently justified; why else would people need to justify it? I think that the moral codes that justify it were invented after the fact to fit the fact; primitive man would not have made himself wrong. If people were ants and survival depended on total selflessness, then surely human morality would reflect that. How about this, I won't call self-interest immoral if you won't call it moral. History has shown us that anything can be made moral, and is made moral for purely practical and selfish reasons, which usually don't apply to everyone.

No sane person would choose to be wronged, I agree. But what about those who wrong themselves indirectly? There are two ways this can occur, either by (1) acting irrationally, or (2) using flawed knowledge. I am saying that the consequences of his actions occurred because of his choices.

And I'm saying that people rarely have a choice in matters of misfortune. From hurricanes to downsizing, they were harmed indirectly, but not from anything that I would consider to be avoidable. You can say they weren't prepared for the possibility, and I would agree with you, but only technically, since misfortune seems so built into the system that there really isn't anything you can do to protect yourself unless you're so rich and powerful as to be above the system. People build below sea level because they can't afford better, but it sounds like you'd have me believe that a person could change the price of the land or spontaneously earn more. It doesn't work like that. A person is downsized because the economy is going bad or their employer found someone cheaper in India; did that person have any control over the economy? Can they work for half their current wage and still feed themselves? There you go; totally blameless, yet they still suffer.

I have to disagree with your statement that nobody wants to work. I can name quite a few people who have plenty of money but continue to work. These are people that love their jobs.

What about the rest of the world who you say, at best, convince themselves that they like to work when they really don't? Let's face it, they obviously have something to gain from it or they wouldn't do it in the first place, they see life as better alternative than death. They ARE making a choice, they have chosen to continue to live instead of to allow death to overtake them. They are not being forced to continue living, it is a very conscious decision, and it is made by the employee not the employer.

Well, those people are the extremely lucky few; don't depend on a future like that, because the odds are not in your favor. Maybe it is a choice, but it's a "lesser of two evils" kind of choice. A dehumanizing life of servitude and dependency is an attractive option only because death is so painful; in any other situation, it would be extremely unattractive. I just can't stand the fact that anybody should be faced with that kind of choice; it says to me that there's something wrong with the world.

 

[Nocturnal]

First of all let me say thanks for keeping the discussion civilized, even though we seem to disagree quite a bit, I always enjoy a good debate -- it helps me understand the other side, as well as help me clarify to myself my own thoughts.

Originally posted by Visceral Benefitting yourself without harming others: it strikes me as a gigantic leap of faith to expect a selfish person to draw a line there ... or anywhere for that matter. I would expect a selfish person to respect my rights only with the intent of either using me for their benefit or preventing me from becoming an enemy. But because it's the right thing to do? No, what's right is what's good for them, nothing else. That's more of a risk than I would be willing to take with myself. Suppose you're standing in the way of what's good for them ... would you expect them to just move on?

This is something that is a little harder for me to explain. But in the context of how I am defining morality, let me give you an example I have taken from here:

In order for Erik to prove that stealing the fifty dollars is to his interest, Erik must first prove that stealing -- as a principle -- is to his interest. The point is that we cannot prove that any particular action is to one's interests except by reference to a broader principle. We cannot put on blinders and judge the morality of stealing based on the "merits" of any particular case. I don't mean we shouldn't... I mean we absolutely CAN'T. It's not possible.

...having the fifty dollars is not to Erik's interest. It's not to his interest because stealing isn't to his interest, and stealing isn't to his interest because man's basic interest is: adhere to reality in order to live in reality.

Basically, if you are acting in your own self interest, you must adhere to the facts of reality, because that is the only way logic will work correctly, which is necessary to be able to rationalize what is in your own interest. And when the reality is that everyone has certain rights, you must contradict that fact of reality in order to violate the rights of others, and consequently, you contradict the principle of acting in your own interest. Principles are absolutes, they cannot be applied only half the time and still stand.

This is not an easy concept to understand, it took me a while for the logic to become clear.

Originally posted by Visceral No man should be dependent on another for his survival; this is just so distasteful to me. Call me paranoid, but I can't see such a vulnerable position doing anything but exposing the employee to all kinds of abuse. If a man has more to lose by protecting himself than another man has to lose by attacking him, what do you think is going to happen? He's going to be attacked and will have to take it. This is disgusting.
I disagree; it is 100% necessity. Am I going to place my welfare in my employer's hands if I have another choice? Is he going to place his million-dollar paycheck in my hands without another choice? Absolutely not - to do so would be lunacy.

The error I am finding with your logic is that you are assuming people are born with the rights to whatever is necessary to keep them alive, even if it means someone else has to give it to them. I would say that a man is born with rights to his self and whatever he produces, but not to anything that he requires to live, if he does not produce it himself ("produce" including trading for, etc). No one can come into the world demanding handouts, except for from their parents, who have already accepted that responsbility by making the choice to create a life.

You think no man should be dependant on another? It is a simple fact of life that the inadequate will be unable to support themselves without becoming dependant on others. Normally, natural selection would weed these people out, but we have developed a system where they can still survive by leeching off of others. Does this make the leeching ok? Well, yes, if the one being leeched off of is ok with it. But that doesn't make it his responsibility to become the host for a parasite, that is not one of the conditions under which life is granted.

Everyone has the right to life, but it is their own responsibility to provide the means for their life. John has the right to live, but that right is not granted with the promise that he can simply ask Adam to give the necessities of life, it is granted with the understanding that life is not free and if he wants it he will have to earn it.

You say it is necessity. Finding a job may be the best means to satisfy the conditions that must be met to sustain life. But, if the individual cannot sustain his own life with the help of others, that is HIS own fault. If can not find a job he excels in, that is his own fault. There is no law that says that failure because of a lack of abililty must be compensated for by a third party.

You still say there is no other choice, I still that there is. It is not that there is no other choice, it is that that working a bad job the BEST choice.

As long as your rights are not violated, you don't deserve anything more than you make for yourself. You may find it distasteful or disgusting, but that is because you, like most of society, have been told that people deserve the unearned.

Originally posted by Visceral Explain that to me: how can management possibly be more valuable to a company than the people who actually do the work? No grand vision is worth sh!t without workers to make it a reality. If you want people to be paid based on value, consider that. I would argue that workers have zero value to their employers; they are only paid because they won't work for free, and are treated well only to keep them from looking for something better. I would expect an employer to pay his workers nothing and beat them on a daily basis if he could.
A man's work should not benefit his superior(s) more than it benefits him. I can't help but object to this; it's taking advantage of the worker's dependency.
Yes, but the worker is the one who suffers. As the management buys machines or outsources his job, he's left with nothing. I can't help but disagree with this practice, as I'm not convinced it won't ever happen to me - there's self-interest right there. And I would never wish that fate on anyone, so if it were in my power to prevent it, I would.

"No grand vision is worth sh!t without workers to make it a reality."

And workers are worthless without management to organize them. Value varies with context. Just like a sports car would be less valuable to me if I lived on a mountain with dirt roads than if I lived in the city, both management and workers are less valuable when they are without eachother.

One good manager can make the company millions of dollars more than on bad manager. One good worker will probably never be able to add that kind of revenue to the company. So if the company has to pay $1 million more to get a good manager, who might make them $30 million more, then the demand for a single good manager is VERY HIGH. The demand for a single good worker is not very high, because that worker cannot change the fate of the company by much. So, because of that demand, the value of the manager is very high relative to the worker. This is why upper level managers get paid so much more, and deserve so much more. If you quantify their labor, they might even do less work than the mechanic who makes their busses operate. But labor does not equal value, so labor is not what is reflected in their paycheck.

"A man's work should not benefit his superior(s) more than it benefits him."

This is irrelevant. He should be blind to everything other than what he has to do, and what he gets for it. By your logic, pro athletes should get paid more than the millions of dollars they make. An athlete who costs $10 million for 5 years, but who brings in $50 million to the team's owners, should he get more than $50 million? Then he would be getting paid more than he is bringing the company. At that point he would be costing the company money, not providing it. Is this how you think businesses should operate?


"As the management buys machines or outsources his job, he's left with nothing."

So the company should place his interests above its own? Why does it even exist then? For HIM? This is backwards logic to me.

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by Visceral Acting in one's self-interest is not inherently justified; why else would people need to justify it? I think that the moral codes that justify it were invented after the fact to fit the fact; primitive man would not have made himself wrong. If people were ants and survival depended on total selflessness, then surely human morality would reflect that. How about this, I won't call self-interest immoral if you won't call it moral. History has shown us that anything can be made moral, and is made moral for purely practical and selfish reasons, which usually don't apply to everyone.

Why would people need to justify acting out of self interest? Because the definition of what is moral has become twisted and misconstrued.

People are not ants and human survival does not depend on selflessness. An ant could not survive on its own, the best option an ant has for survival is to be "selfless," which its own way of acting in its self interest. The difference is, ants cannot rationalize. They could not live with ideals, so an ant society driven by selfishness would disintegrate.

History has shown us that anything can be called moral. You can call a circle a square, but it is still a square no matter how hard you pretend it is a circle. What is moral is absolute and does not change. What is recognized as moral is not absolute. But if you wish to abandon this topic then very well.

EDIT: I stated this improperly. Instead of, "what is moral is absolute," it should read, "the principles that determine morality in a given context are absolute." What is moral is not actually absolute, depending on the context of the situation, but the principles upon which morality lies are absolute. However, even given this, the principle of selfishness, with the given employer/employee context, does not change the reality that the employer is not wronging the employee.

Originally posted by Visceral And I'm saying that people rarely have a choice in matters of misfortune. From hurricanes to downsizing, they were harmed indirectly, but not from anything that I would consider to be avoidable. You can say they weren't prepared for the possibility, and I would agree with you, but only technically, since misfortune seems so built into the system that there really isn't anything you can do to protect yourself unless you're so rich and powerful as to be above the system. People build below sea level because they can't afford better, but it sounds like you'd have me believe that a person could change the price of the land or spontaneously earn more. It doesn't work like that. A person is downsized because the economy is going bad or their employer found someone cheaper in India; did that person have any control over the economy? Can they work for half their current wage and still feed themselves? There you go; totally blameless, yet they still suffer.

You say, "there really isn't anything you can do to protect yourself unless you're so rich and powerful as to be above the system"

This, just like everything else in life, is one of the costs of living. No one is completely safe against tradgedy or distaster, especially natural disaster. This is just a fact of life that must be accepted. I am not saying that people necessarily have control over every negative that comes at them in life, but that it is not necessarily "anyone's fault." The only person who could be at fault is the person in question, for not doing a better job at sheilding themselves from disaster.

As far as downsizing is concerned, everyone goes into a job understanding the implications of the job, and they should be aware of the risk that they take when they could be fired at any instant. And as long as the employer acts within the bounds of the employment contract, he is not wronging anyone by breaking the contract (which was created with the understanding that either party could break it). What if the employee quits? Does he owe the company the revenue that was lost during the time it takes them to find someone to replace him? No, that is a risk the company took when they hired him.

Originally posted by Visceral Well, those people are the extremely lucky few; don't depend on a future like that, because the odds are not in your favor. Maybe it is a choice, but it's a "lesser of two evils" kind of choice. A dehumanizing life of servitude and dependency is an attractive option only because death is so painful; in any other situation, it would be extremely unattractive. I just can't stand the fact that anybody should be faced with that kind of choice; it says to me that there's something wrong with the world.

If it is a "lesser of two evils" kind of choice then suicide must be the best option, since it causes neither pleasure nor pain (you say it is painful but I fail to see how). If working makes life worse than nonexistence, then there is no point in living. But I don't think this is the case for most people. Even if their job is painful, the money they get out of it is worth it all. So overall, it is not an evil. It might come at a great cost, but a greater reward is recieved.

What is wrong with the world is that people expect their living to fall in their lap. That they have been done some great injustice if society hasn't given them a great portion of what the need. Do you know how misled the youth of today are becoming? Trends are showing that they think they deserve more for less. They think that they will graduate from college, show up to the first day of work, and be patted on the back by the boss who exclaims how brilliant their work is and promotes them to the top within months. Do they want to work for it? No. They think they deserve it. And they are not going to get it without working for it themselves. That is the problem with the world.

You don't have to respond to this if you don't like,it is more of a little aside and somewhat unrelated to the subject we are debating, but one think that I think is contributing greatly to the problem of poverty and basic inadequacies among our population is that people are having children they cannot properly raise. If you are brought up in a very poor neighborhood, with poor schools, chances are you are not going to be much better off when you are on your own. Why do couples who fall below the poverty line have MORE children on average than people who are financially secure? These couples are condemning their children to a lifetime of struggle and possibly defeat. And then when those children are starving, it is suddenly society's duty to feed them, when the parents made the choice to have them in the first place. Does that sound just to you?

 

[Visceral]

Originally posted by Nocturnal
Basically, if you are acting in your own self interest, you must adhere to the facts of reality, because that is the only way logic will work correctly, which is necessary to be able to rationalize what is in your own interest. And when the reality is that everyone has certain rights, you must contradict that fact of reality in order to violate the rights of others, and consequently, you contradict the principle of acting in your own interest. Principles are absolutes, they cannot be applied only half the time and still stand.

The logic was very easy for me to understand; acting in one’s own interest eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns when the people you use to get what you want get pissed off enough to turn the tables on you. Respecting the rights of others is the right thing to do not because they’re entitled to it – they’re not; how could they be? – but because it’s in your best interest to do so; if you screw them bad enough, they’ll screw you right back. Unless of course, their livelihood depends on giving you whatever you want, which is the case in capitalism, so the whole issue becomes academic and superiors have their way with their inferiors. In capitalism, self-interest compels its opposite - self-sacrifice.

The error I am finding with your logic is that you are assuming people are born with the rights to whatever is necessary to keep them alive, even if it means someone else has to give it to them. I would say that a man is born with rights to his self and whatever he produces, but not to anything that he requires to live, if he does not produce it himself ("produce" including trading for, etc). No one can come into the world demanding handouts, except for from their parents, who have already accepted that responsbility by making the choice to create a life.

”rights to his self and whatever he produces” Exactly my thinking … except it doesn’t work that way in the real world. We are all denied most of what we produce; it’s taken from us in order to enrich those above us, who are secure in our dependence on them to leave us only enough to remain productive. If you took the amount of money a McDonald’s employee makes for the corporation in a year and put it next to his wages for that same year, the first number would probably be many times greater than the second. This is only possible because the employee is dependent on the solvency of the corporation; he’d be the first laid off if profits dropped, since it’s wrong to expect the executives to take a pay cut - to expect the employee to place his own self-interest above another’s - even though that’s exactly what’s happening, except the other way around.

You think no man should be dependant on another? It is a simple fact of life that the inadequate will be unable to support themselves without becoming dependant on others. Normally, natural selection would weed these people out, but we have developed a system where they can still survive by leeching off of others. Does this make the leeching ok? Well, yes, if the one being leeched off of is ok with it. But that doesn't make it his responsibility to become the host for a parasite, that is not one of the conditions under which life is granted.

Except that everyone is inadequate! The problem with this dependency is that it lends itself to abuse, situations where a man has more to lose by standing up for his rights and protecting his interests than he does by submitting to the will of another and placing that man’s interests over his own. In this situation, the superior can get away with quite a bit, most of which the inferior would never put up with were they on a more equal footing; it may not be a violation of Rand’s code since the inferior technically does it willingly, but that’s small comfort to the man who suffers as a result – he’s OK with the leeching only because the alternative is far worse; he is a creature who must become a host in order to survive.

Everyone has the right to life, but it is their own responsibility to provide the means for their life. John has the right to live, but that right is not granted with the promise that he can simply ask Adam to give the necessities of life, it is granted with the understanding that life is not free and if he wants it he will have to earn it. You say it is necessity. Finding a job may be the best means to satisfy the conditions that must be met to sustain life. But, if the individual cannot sustain his own life with the help of others, that is HIS own fault. If can not find a job he excels in, that is his own fault. There is no law that says that failure because of a lack of abililty must be compensated for by a third party. You still say there is no other choice, I still that there is. It is not that there is no other choice, it is that that working a bad job the BEST choice. As long as your rights are not violated, you don't deserve anything more than you make for yourself. You may find it distasteful or disgusting, but that is because you, like most of society, have been told that people deserve the unearned.

Except our rights are inevitably violated, since most of what we make for ourselves is stolen to line the pockets of others, something we submit to only under pain of destitution. Dependency enables one person to compel another to sacrifice his interests for the benefit of the person he’s dependent on. This has got to be immoral according to Rand; I can’t see how it wouldn’t be.

"No grand vision is worth sh!t without workers to make it a reality." And workers are worthless without management to organize them. Value varies with context. Just like a sports car would be less valuable to me if I lived on a mountain with dirt roads than if I lived in the city, both management and workers are less valuable when they are without eachother. One good manager can make the company millions of dollars more than on bad manager. One good worker will probably never be able to add that kind of revenue to the company. So if the company has to pay $1 million more to get a good manager, who might make them $30 million more, then the demand for a single good manager is VERY HIGH. The demand for a single good worker is not very high, because that worker cannot change the fate of the company by much. So, because of that demand, the value of the manager is very high relative to the worker. This is why upper level managers get paid so much more, and deserve so much more. If you quantify their labor, they might even do less work than the mechanic who makes their busses operate. But labor does not equal value, so labor is not what is reflected in their paycheck.

Then perhaps labor should equal value. It honestly makes more sense that it would. I suppose it comes down to who’s worse off, a head without a body or a body without a head? Or maybe both are doomed, and the system that serves them both just favors the head over the body, but the only reason that I can think of that would cause this is the head compelling the body to make do with less because there are more bodies than there are heads.

"A man's work should not benefit his superior(s) more than it benefits him." This is irrelevant. He should be blind to everything other than what he has to do, and what he gets for it. By your logic, pro athletes should get paid more than the millions of dollars they make. An athlete who costs $10 million for 5 years, but who brings in $50 million to the team's owners, should he get more than $50 million? Then he would be getting paid more than he is bringing the company. At that point he would be costing the company money, not providing it. Is this how you think businesses should operate?

No, in my view, that $50 million should go straight into the athlete’s pocket, with the company executives getting only what they personally earn for the company. Of course this is impossible, but something closer to that would be far better than the current system where the employee gets only enough to keep him working while his superiors take the rest.

"As the management buys machines or outsources his job, he's left with nothing." So the company should place his interests above its own? Why does it even exist then? For HIM? This is backwards logic to me.

Like Rand says, the employee can’t expect the company to sacrifice for him, but if Rand expects to work both ways, the company has no right to force the employee to sacrifice for it, but this happens all the time. This is due to the situation of dependency I’ve been talking about: an employee who asks his employers to take pay cuts during a recession rather than lay off workers will be the first one laid off. Dependency turns self-interest into self-sacrifice, and the employer ends up committing Rand’s ultimate sin.

 

[Visceral]

Originally posted by Nocturnal
People are not ants and human survival does not depend on selflessness. An ant could not survive on its own, the best option an ant has for survival is to be "selfless," which its own way of acting in its self interest. The difference is, ants cannot rationalize. They could not live with ideals, so an ant society driven by selfishness would disintegrate.

Human survival depends more on selflessness than anything else; look at these employer-employee relationships I keep bringing up - your dependency on him compels you to place his welfare above your own, selfless behavior by definition. What makes you think human society is driven by ideals? If ideals play any role in human society, they’re used to convince people to place other people’s interests over their own even when they can afford to do otherwise. Loyalty, compassion, duty, sacrifice … ideals probably exist only to fix the paradox of self-interest equaling self-sacrifice with the introduction of a standard that trumps reality.

History has shown us that anything can be called moral. You can call a circle a square, but it is still a square no matter how hard you pretend it is a circle. What is moral is absolute and does not change. What is recognized as moral is not absolute. But if you wish to abandon this topic then very well.

Even if this is true, it doesn’t change anything. People will follow what’s recognized as moral over what truly is moral because if you define what’s moral as what’s in your own best interest, then making an enemy of the system is the most immoral thing a person can do because it’s worse for them than obedience and servitude, even if the system’s demands are themselves immoral, which by Rand’s standard it seems like they are.

EDIT: I stated this improperly. Instead of, "what is moral is absolute," it should read, "the principles that determine morality in a given context are absolute." What is moral is not actually absolute, depending on the context of the situation, but the principles upon which morality lies are absolute. However, even given this, the principle of selfishness, with the given employer/employee context, does not change the reality that the employer is not wronging the employee.

I can agree with this, an absolute theory that leads to infinitely variable results … except someone always ends up with the short straw; their interests are sacrificed for the interests of another, usually their superior(s), something that looks to me like a gross (and unavoidable) violation of the ideal you and Rand claim humanity is held to by reality.

You say, "there really isn't anything you can do to protect yourself unless you're so rich and powerful as to be above the system" This, just like everything else in life, is one of the costs of living. No one is completely safe against tradgedy or distaster, especially natural disaster. This is just a fact of life that must be accepted. I am not saying that people necessarily have control over every negative that comes at them in life, but that it is not necessarily "anyone's fault." The only person who could be at fault is the person in question, for not doing a better job at sheilding themselves from disaster.
As far as downsizing is concerned, everyone goes into a job understanding the implications of the job, and they should be aware of the risk that they take when they could be fired at any instant. And as long as the employer acts within the bounds of the employment contract, he is not wronging anyone by breaking the contract (which was created with the understanding that either party could break it). What if the employee quits? Does he owe the company the revenue that was lost during the time it takes them to find someone to replace him? No, that is a risk the company took when they hired him.

Believe it or not, I agree; if anyone’s at fault, it’s the disaster or the recession. My point is that For the average Joe, success and failure and all degrees thereof are, at the very least, due as much to factors totally beyond his control as they are due to his own efforts. For society to fail to take this into account and provide for an adequate safety net that prevents total ruin is simply inexcusable. It only happens because society can get away with it.

If it is a "lesser of two evils" kind of choice then suicide must be the best option, since it causes neither pleasure nor pain (you say it is painful but I fail to see how). If working makes life worse than nonexistence, then there is no point in living. But I don't think this is the case for most people. Even if their job is painful, the money they get out of it is worth it all. So overall, it is not an evil. It might come at a great cost, but a greater reward is recieved.

Even if they want to kill themselves, they probably won’t. The money they get out of it is necessary for their survival, so human nature makes it worth it. An adequate reward is received, since you shouldn’t pay anyone more than they’re worth, except for someone who runs a company for his own personal profit.

What is wrong with the world is that people expect their living to fall in their lap. That they have been done some great injustice if society hasn't given them a great portion of what the need. Do you know how misled the youth of today are becoming? Trends are showing that they think they deserve more for less. They think that they will graduate from college, show up to the first day of work, and be patted on the back by the boss who exclaims how brilliant their work is and promotes them to the top within months. Do they want to work for it? No. They think they deserve it. And they are not going to get it without working for it themselves. That is the problem with the world.

I’ve heard about this trend too, but I think it’s at worst a mixed blessing. Those who have such unreasonable expectations will be disappointed, but those who are looking to be more than a cog and those who want to put an end to some of the exploitation that dependency creates have too much to gain to go back to the old ways of thinking. They’re wanting labor to equal value, and if enough of the new generations think that way, employers may have no choice but to accommodate them. That or outsource every job in the country, but that will never happen no matter how deep in the pockets of the rich the government is.

You don't have to respond to this if you don't like,it is more of a little aside and somewhat unrelated to the subject we are debating, but one think that I think is contributing greatly to the problem of poverty and basic inadequacies among our population is that people are having children they cannot properly raise. If you are brought up in a very poor neighborhood, with poor schools, chances are you are not going to be much better off when you are on your own. Why do couples who fall below the poverty line have MORE children on average than people who are financially secure? These couples are condemning their children to a lifetime of struggle and possibly defeat. And then when those children are starving, it is suddenly society's duty to feed them, when the parents made the choice to have them in the first place. Does that sound just to you?

Actually, it’s entirely relevant; it might even prove my point. I think that poor people who do this have more to gain from having many children in order to get a bigger welfare check then they do by not having children and working hard and saving every penny. They’re acting in their self-interest, which by your standard is inherently justified. Now, before you bring up Rand’s admonition to respect other people’s rights, let me say this … to ask these people to accept even worse poverty to save your tax dollars would be asking them to sacrifice their interests to protect yours, which would be just as much a violation of Rand’s code as what they’re doing. Do you see the pattern? Good for them, bad for you. Good for you, bad for them. There’s only so much of anything out there, and if someone wants more, then someone else is going to have to make do with less … Randian enlightened self-interest - “serve yourself but not at another’s expense” - still seems impossible.

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by Visceral We are all denied most of what we produce; it’s taken from us in order to enrich those above us, who are secure in our dependence on them to leave us only enough to remain productive.

Originally posted by Visceral it may not be a violation of Rand’s code since the inferior technically does it willingly, but that’s small comfort to the man who suffers as a result – he’s OK with the leeching only because the alternative is far worse; he is a creature who must become a host in order to survive.

Originally posted by Visceral Except our rights are inevitably violated, since most of what we make for ourselves is stolen to line the pockets of others, something we submit to only under pain of destitution. Dependency enables one person to compel another to sacrifice his interests for the benefit of the person he’s dependent on. This has got to be immoral according to Rand; I can’t see how it wouldn’t be.

Originally posted by Visceral Like Rand says, the employee can’t expect the company to sacrifice for him, but if Rand expects to work both ways, the company has no right to force the employee to sacrifice for it, but this happens all the time.

Originally posted by Visceral Human survival depends more on selflessness than anything else; look at these employer-employee relationships I keep bringing up - your dependency on him compels you to place his welfare above your own, selfless behavior by definition.

Originally posted by Visceral People will follow what’s recognized as moral over what truly is moral because if you define what’s moral as what’s in your own best interest, then making an enemy of the system is the most immoral thing a person can do because it’s worse for them than obedience and servitude

Originally posted by Visceral I can agree with this, an absolute theory that leads to infinitely variable results … except someone always ends up with the short straw; their interests are sacrificed for the interests of another, usually their superior(s), something that looks to me like a gross (and unavoidable) violation of the ideal you and Rand claim humanity is held to by reality.

Originally posted by Visceral For society to fail to take this into account and provide for an adequate safety net that prevents total ruin is simply inexcusable. It only happens because society can get away with it.

I think we can agree that the disagreements that we have about the above points stem from the disagreement about whether a man is forced to work and give up what is rightfully his, or whether the employer has no moral obligation to do anything other than what is stated in a contract made between the two of them, and what is required by law. You agree with the former, I agree with the latter.

So the question is--who is morally obligated to ensure that the employee's needs are taken care of? I say it's the employee. You say it's the employer.

To answer this, we have to know what is in fact, "moral". You say, "In capitalism, self-interest compels its opposite - self-sacrifice." Just to be clear, when you say this, do you mean that the self interest of one individual requires the sacrifice of another individual? Or do you mean that sacrificing oneself is the best way to work towards your own interests?

What do you propose as being moral?

What I consider to be moral...

I, as an individual, exist. In this sense I am like all other matter in the universe.
I am conscious. In this sense, I am like animals but unlike inanimate objects and living creatures that cannot think, such as plants.
I am rationally-volitional (I have the capacity to make rational choices). In this sense, I am unlike all other living creatures other than other humans (there are some basic exceptions, like apes solving problems, but rationalization determines such a small part of their fate that it is negligible).

What does this mean?

Every creature who can alter its own fate has a moral purpose.

For unconscious creatures, such as plants, the automated tasks that the creature executes serve the moral purpose of maintaining existence and reproduction.

For conscious but non-rationally-volitional creatures, such as animals, instinct serves the moral purpose of existence and reproduction.

For the rationally-volitional, humans, rationalization and volition, logic and choices, serve the moral purpose of existence.

Man has no instincts, instincts are not the same as desires; e.g. hunger is not an instinct that tells him how to gather food. Man must use rationalization and volition to gather his food.

When a bird is overtaken by the instinct to swallow a worm, its moral purpose is being served. For the bird, no logic, no choice is involved. Man has no such instinct. He must serve his moral purpose by using logic and making choices.

Because man is not governed by instinct, because he uses logic to determine what is in his best interest, he can be wrong. This is the error of knowledge I was talking about before. Such errors of knowledge are not related to morality.

Because he uses choice to act in his best interest, he also has the choice to act against it. He has the choice to deny himself logic. This is the error of irrationality I was talking about earlier. It is the choice to act in one's best interest that is moral, even if there is an error of knowledge involved. One cannot be immoral if he has moral intentions.

All living creatures have the potential to be successful in fulfilling their moral purposes to varying degrees.

Since Plants' and animals' have no choice as to the manner in which they maintain their existences they are not responsible for how well their moral purpose is fulfilled.

The manner in which humans maintain their existences is entirely based on their own choices. Because of this, their choices are a factor of their state of existence. Because of this, each man is at least partially responsible for how well his moral purpose is fulfilled. Also, because man can be successful in fulfilling his moral purpose to varying degrees, he can only be truly moral by trying to fulfill it as well as possible. The most moral man will do everything in his power to fulfill his moral purpose. The most immoral man will do everything in his power to fight against his moral purpose.

 

[Nocturnal]

So if men are responsible for fulfilling their moral purposes, how can they fail?

Irrationality. Man's moral purpose can be fulfilled by his rational choices; similarly his moral purpose can be fought against by irrational choices. If you don't use logic, how can you determine whether something meets the condition of acting to serve one's moral purpose? You can't. So by simply choosing to be irrational instead of rational, you are already admitting that you choose to act less in your self interest, your moral purpose, than you could. This is an immoral choice. In addition, there is no such thing as a "rational irrationality," so acting against your self interest can never be justified, although it is still possible and it still happens.

Once the choice to act irrationally has been made, that action cannot be treated as a valid premise for acting in your self interest for any other action.

For example, someone can tell me that I should meditate daily, because it will allow me to detach myself from the material world. That sounds like a valid statement, right? I know from various sources that meditation allows people to renounce the material world (I'm speaking hypothetically). So should I listen to him? Only if it is in my self interest. Assuming my sources are correct, the premise he presented was valid. But that doesn't mean that I should follow his advice, I still have to consider the premise, "detaching myself from the material world is acting out of self interest." If that premise is valid, then I should proceed to follow his advice. If it not valid, then the whole thing is irrational, and meditating would be immoral.

This may sound oversimplified, but I chose a simple example intentionally. How many people do you know that, when asked, "what are your beliefs and/or values?," can name them, but when asked, "why do you choose to live by them?", answer with something like, "because I was raised that way."?

Does being taught certain beliefs make them valid? Does it make living by them acting in your self interest? Does it fulfill your moral purpose? Not necessarily. These people can rationalize how choosing not to steal makes them honest, but they cannot rationalize how honesty is a value worth living by (for the record, I am not saying it's not worth living by, it's an example). Any ideal is worthless if you cannot rationalize why you believe in it. I believe this is a problem with many philosophies of the world, people hold all kinds of ideals, but they are often unjustified except (sometimes) through religion. I believe religion to be irrational, but if you disagree with me about that, let's still not go there because that is a whole other monster.

Now, in a sum, what I believe to be moral is anything that is done with the intention of fulfilling a moral purpose to as great a degree as possible.

What is man's moral purpose? As I have pointed out before, it includes maintaining one's existence. Why? Because if that is not your purpose, the alternative is death. That is the choice you make, and by choosing life, you choose your purpose--to maintain that life. There are no half-ways. Purpose can only be an absolute. If your purpose is to maintain your life, and you have the conscious ability to maintain it to varying degrees of effectiveness, that is to say you can either live well or poorly, then the truly moral route would be to live it as well as you can. Every inch away from that makes you that much less moral.

You might have noticed that earlier I left out reproduction. Why?

It is only a moral purpose inasmuch as it would further the moral purpose of maintaining existence. But in animals, it is mandatory; they have instincts that say so. Since humans don't have instincts, that cannot be true in our case. In fact, there is nothing that dictates reproduction for humans as a moral purpose. It is optional for us, depending on whether we think it will further our moral purpose of existence.

Ok, now that I have explained what I believe to be moral, then by my standard, what obligations to the employee does the employer have, and what obligations does the employee have to the employer, and what obligations do each of them have to themselves?

The employee's moral obligations are as follows:

To himself: The employee is morally obligated to take the route that will further his self interests as much as possible. If that means getting a job, so be it. If that means getting a bad job, so be it. That is his obligation and he is accepting reality, making a rational decision to take the job for the reason that it is his best option. In my opinion, people are often caught up in believing they are more limited in their options than they really are, for a variety of reasons. But that is irrelevant to the validity of the point.

To the employer: The employee is morally obligated to respect the employers rights, and any terms he has agreed to in a contract.

The employer's moral obligations are as follows:

To himself: The employer is morally obligated to take the route that will further his self interests as much as possible. If that means hiring an employee who will be unable to properly support himself with the wages offered to him, so be it. That is the employee's choice. The employer must accept the reality that there are people who will be either unable or unwilling to fulfill their own needs, and that it is not his responsibility to earn the employee's living for him.

To the employee: The employer is morally obligated to respect the employee's rights, and any terms he has agreed to in a contract.

That is the essence of it. I hope to hear your answer to the question, what is morality?

 

[Nocturnal]

Now, to your other points...

===========================

Originally posted by Visceral Respecting the rights of others is the right thing to do not because they’re entitled to it – they’re not; how could they be? – but because it’s in your best interest to do so; if you screw them bad enough, they’ll screw you right back. Unless of course, their livelihood depends on giving you whatever you want, which is the case in capitalism, so the whole issue becomes academic and superiors have their way with their inferiors. In capitalism, self-interest compels its opposite - self-sacrifice.

Not exactly. It's not that they will screw you back, it is that you are screwing yourself by denying reality.

If your ideal is that you have inherent rights that must be respected because you are human, then for the same reason, everyone else has rights that must be respected. To deny that is to live with the belief that you are born with inherent rights that other people are not born with, which cannot be true.

To violate someone's rights it to say that their rights don't have to be respected. To say that they don't have to be respected is denying your beliefs. If you don't have to respect their rights, then your ideal doesn't hold and it is true then that they don't have to respect your rights either.

But to pretend that they must respect your rights, while you violate theirs, that is self destructive because you are living by a contradiction, your ideal does not hold. This is against your self interest.

Originally posted by Visceral Then perhaps labor should equal value. It honestly makes more sense that it would. I suppose it comes down to who’s worse off, a head without a body or a body without a head? Or maybe both are doomed, and the system that serves them both just favors the head over the body, but the only reason that I can think of that would cause this is the head compelling the body to make do with less because there are more bodies than there are heads.

Should labor equal value? You are essentially saying ability doesn't matter. Do you understand the implications of that? If a basketball player was only paid $30,000 a year, do you think the industry would survive? When you put a price ceiling on wages, you create a shortage of employees. How do you plan on getting together a team of world class Athletes if you have nothing special to offer them? Most of the college players would puruse careers in the field they study. The industry would be devoid of talent... no ability. And then people would stop paying to watch the players. The whole thing would collapse. The same would happen in other industries. And in case you aren't aware of it, "The labor should equal value" idea is similar to some elements communism, if that means anything to you.

The point with the heads/bodies idea is that they are NOT doomed. They both have something to gain, which the employer seeks by looking for an employee, and the employer seeks by looking for a job.

Originally posted by Visceral No, in my view, that $50 million should go straight into the athlete’s pocket, with the company executives getting only what they personally earn for the company. Of course this is impossible, but something closer to that would be far better than the current system where the employee gets only enough to keep him working while his superiors take the rest.

How would it better? It would be more fair? At the cost of ability? Should we let the industries decay because the employe

Before you said that labor should equal value. Now you are saying that an athlete should get $50 million while the managerial staff that made it possible for him to generate $50 million, doesn't get a penny of it? How is that those executives are not earning that money in conjunction with the player? If you take either one out of the picture, that figure shrinks drastically. They are working together to make that revenue, they should split it up, which is what happens in reality.

Should the raw labor of playing basketball games equal $50 million? Should a construction worker get dozens of millions of dollars too? That's a lot of labor, tough labor at that.

Originally posted by Visceral What makes you think human society is driven by ideals? If ideals play any role in human society, they’re used to convince people to place other people’s interests over their own even when they can afford to do otherwise. Loyalty, compassion, duty, sacrifice … ideals probably exist only to fix the paradox of self-interest equaling self-sacrifice with the introduction of a standard that trumps reality.

I never said human society was driven by ideals. It should be though. My point was that humans with ideals CAN form a society based on selfishness/self interest. Whatever the reality under the current conditions is, doesn't change how it would be under those conditions.

Originally posted by Visceral Even if they want to kill themselves, they probably won’t. The money they get out of it is necessary for their survival, so human nature makes it worth it. An adequate reward is received, since you shouldn’t pay anyone more than they’re worth, except for someone who runs a company for his own personal profit.

They "want" to kill themselves but do they really want to? No, because deep down they know that they would rather exist than be non-existent. That is to say, there is more to gain from their life than non-life, even if it just knowing that they are alive. Even religious men who maintain life but would rather not be alive, continue to live because they think that in the long run (including the afterlife), it will be in their interest to do what God says.

Originally posted by Visceral I’ve heard about this trend too, but I think it’s at worst a mixed blessing. Those who have such unreasonable expectations will be disappointed, but those who are looking to be more than a cog and those who want to put an end to some of the exploitation that dependency creates have too much to gain to go back to the old ways of thinking. They’re wanting labor to equal value, and if enough of the new generations think that way, employers may have no choice but to accommodate them. That or outsource every job in the country, but that will never happen no matter how deep in the pockets of the rich the government is.

Refer to my previous response to the "labor should equal value" idea for my answer to this.

Originally posted by Visceral Actually, it’s entirely relevant; it might even prove my point. I think that poor people who do this have more to gain from having many children in order to get a bigger welfare check then they do by not having children and working hard and saving every penny. They’re acting in their self-interest, which by your standard is inherently justified. Now, before you bring up Rand’s admonition to respect other people’s rights, let me say this … to ask these people to accept even worse poverty to save your tax dollars would be asking them to sacrifice their interests to protect yours, which would be just as much a violation of Rand’s code as what they’re doing. Do you see the pattern? Good for them, bad for you. Good for you, bad for them. There’s only so much of anything out there, and if someone wants more, then someone else is going to have to make do with less … Randian enlightened self-interest - “serve yourself but not at another’s expense” - still seems impossible.

Do you think that a couple is better off with a child because of the added income from welfare check they get? First of all, welfare only lasts 2 years, so that alone makes that highly unlikely. In addition, do you think the government will really subsidize the entire cost of raising a child, with extra left over for the parents? Children are expensive! I doubt it.

It doesn't matter what they have to gain if they are violating the rights of others, it is still immoral because they are not really acting in their self interest (refer to my definition of morality yet again for an explanation to this).

Also, a parent brings a child into the world knowing the consequences. As long as the child is dependant on the parent for life, doesn't it have a right to the things it requires to live properly, such as proper nutruition, shelter, etc?

 

[Visceral]

To answer this, we have to know what is in fact, "moral". You say, "In capitalism, self-interest compels its opposite - self-sacrifice." Just to be clear, when you say this, do you mean that the self interest of one individual requires the sacrifice of another individual? Or do you mean that sacrificing oneself is the best way to work towards your own interests?

Both. Which one a man practices depends on his place in a hierarchy; if he’s near the top, he’ll use the first one, while if he’s near the bottom, he’ll rely on the second one.

What do you propose as being moral?

I don’t believe in universal or objective morality. To me, morality is purely subjective and purely individual, and defined solely by self-interest, not by any external or abstract ideal – a man judges what serves his interests as “good” and judges what does not serve his interests as “bad”. This changes based on the situation; something can be good one day and bad the next depending on whether or not it still serves the man’s interests. I believe that one man can hold two completely different standards as moral, one to apply to himself and another to apply to others, both of them chosen to serve his own interests.

Because he uses choice to act in his best interest, he also has the choice to act against it. He has the choice to deny himself logic. This is the error of irrationality I was talking about earlier. It is the choice to act in one's best interest that is moral, even if there is an error of knowledge involved. One cannot be immoral if he has moral intentions. The manner in which humans maintain their existences is entirely based on their own choices. Because of this, their choices are a factor of their state of existence. Because of this, each man is at least partially responsible for how well his moral purpose is fulfilled. Also, because man can be successful in fulfilling his moral purpose to varying degrees, he can only be truly moral by trying to fulfill it as well as possible. The most moral man will do everything in his power to fulfill his moral purpose. The most immoral man will do everything in his power to fight against his moral purpose.

The problem is that if you define what is moral as what is in your best interest, then it seems that immorality would become impossible, since all sane people do what is in their best interest regardless. Whether this is abject servitude or bloodthirsty conquering, unless you’re self-destructively insane, you are moral no matter what you do. You see why I think morality is subjective – “a factor of their state of existence” – what’s in your best interest may be exactly the opposite of what’s in someone else’s best interest. And when you have the power to reduce or even eliminate the negative consequences of a particular course of action, everything changes – possibilities that were once too risky to be worth pursuing now open up new horizons for self-interest.

Not exactly. It's not that they will screw you back, it is that you are screwing yourself by denying reality. If your ideal is that you have inherent rights that must be respected because you are human, then for the same reason, everyone else has rights that must be respected. To deny that is to live with the belief that you are born with inherent rights that other people are not born with, which cannot be true. To violate someone's rights it to say that their rights don't have to be respected. To say that they don't have to be respected is denying your beliefs. If you don't have to respect their rights, then your ideal doesn't hold and it is true then that they don't have to respect your rights either. But to pretend that they must respect your rights, while you violate theirs, that is self destructive because you are living by a contradiction, your ideal does not hold. This is against your self interest.

What ideal? There is no ideal that I can see, only the positive and negative consequences of a particular course of action. Violating another person’s so-called rights is against your self-interest only if they have the power to violate your so-called rights in retribution or if your self-interest depends on their service to you. If they or others had no such power and you were not dependent on them, then you would have no reason to treat them in any manner other than how you pleased – which could involve slow, painful death if you were so inclined. An employer pays his employees only because if he did not, they (and others) would refuse to work for him and he would suffer; aside from laws, employees have rights only due to their employer’s dependence on them to serve his interests. Aside from laws, anyone has only the rights other people extend to them in order to protect themselves.

Should labor equal value? You are essentially saying ability doesn't matter. Do you understand the implications of that? If a basketball player was only paid $30,000 a year, do you think the industry would survive? When you put a price ceiling on wages, you create a shortage of employees. How do you plan on getting together a team of world class Athletes if you have nothing special to offer them? Most of the college players would puruse careers in the field they study. The industry would be devoid of talent... no ability. And then people would stop paying to watch the players. The whole thing would collapse. The same would happen in other industries. And in case you aren't aware of it, "The labor should equal value" idea is similar to some elements communism, if that means anything to you. Before you said that labor should equal value. Now you are saying that an athlete should get $50 million while the managerial staff that made it possible for him to generate $50 million, doesn't get a penny of it? How is that those executives are not earning that money in conjunction with the player? If you take either one out of the picture, that figure shrinks drastically. They are working together to make that revenue, they should split it up, which is what happens in reality. Should the raw labor of playing basketball games equal $50 million? Should a construction worker get dozens of millions of dollars too? That's a lot of labor, tough labor at that.

No sane employer would hire someone who was unable; he’d invariably go for the most able person he could find (or afford). If I’m putting a “price ceiling” on wages, I’m doing it at the higher end (management), not the lower end (labor). True communism was supposed to have been everyone working together for the common good, then sharing the fruits of their labors equally – or imagine every business being a non-profit organization; all revenue is either reinvested in the company or distributed back to the workers. What the communists didn’t like (and what I don’t like) is management taking the profits for itself while leaving labor only enough to keep them working – they called it “parasitism”, taking more than your work entitled you to. They split it up disproportionate to their contributions. From my perspective, the athlete’s doing the bulk of the work, so logically he should get the most. The agents and executives aren’t doing much by comparison, so their cut should reflect this. In reality, its exactly the opposite of this, the people at the top get the most for doing the least, solely by virtue of the fact that they’re at the top, and can compel those below to accept such a lopsided distribution of profits on pain of termination.

I never said human society was driven by ideals. It should be though. My point was that humans with ideals CAN form a society based on selfishness/self interest. Whatever the reality under the current conditions is, doesn't change how it would be under those conditions.

You’re thinking ideals prevent the abuses of selfishness that I keep bringing up; I can appreciate that. However, I can prevent most of those abuses without invoking any ideals, just pure Selfishness + Logic. My (or anyone elses’s) interests are not served by making enemies; so I avoid threatening their interests in order to keep them on my side or at least to prevent them from becoming my enemy. If, however, I am in a strong enough position to be able to afford enemies, then really what motivation do I have to ingratiate myself to others? The rules change as you move up and down the social ladder (with the rules being made by the people at the top to favor their own interests above all others. Why? Because they can; what other reason would they need?). The stronger your position, the less you need to give another in order to be free to pursue your own self-interest; and beyond a point, you can be so powerful as to be free to harm others and still not risk anything, or even have it be necessary to harm them in order to serve your own interests (this is the realm of Machiavelli). Whether this state is achieved through business contracts, laws and morals, or raw power doesn’t matter, the goal and the results are the same.

It doesn't matter what they have to gain if they are violating the rights of others, it is still immoral because they are not really acting in their self interest (refer to my definition of morality yet again for an explanation to this).

If they benefit, then it sounds like they’re acting in their self-interest. If they benefit at someone else’s expense, but they do not suffer any negative consequences, then why would they care if someone else gets harmed? The “rights” of others are routinely violated, either by others or by themselves, in order to serve someone’s self-interest. Remember that “self-interest compels self-sacrifice” thing I mentioned earlier. Someone – whatever the situation – ends up losing, whether it’s by having their interests not furthered as much as they might like, simply set aside, or totally sacrificed.

 

[STR8UP]

Yes, but the worker is the one who suffers. As the management buys machines or outsources his job, he's left with nothing. I can't help but disagree with this practice, as I'm not convinced it won't ever happen to me - there's self-interest right there. And I would never wish that fate on anyone, so if it were in my power to prevent it, I would.

It's called being able to adapt to your environment. You would have us believe that a skilled worker has no other choice but to continue to perform the task he was trained for. You know better. The world changes on a daily basis and anyone who isn't willing (notice that I said willing and not able....EVERYONE is able) will have to live with the consequences, simple as that.

From my perspective, the athlete’s doing the bulk of the work, so logically he should get the most. The agents and executives aren’t doing much by comparison, so their cut should reflect this. In reality, its exactly the opposite of this, the people at the top get the most for doing the least, solely by virtue of the fact that they’re at the top, and can compel those below to accept such a lopsided distribution of profits on pain of termination.

The athlete is doing all the work, huh? How many of those athletes have the talent put together a business model that could possibly GENERATE that amount of money to be able to pay those outrageous salaries?

Seriously, how do you think the money is generated? You think a group of talented athletes got together and build a business that generates billions of dollars? It's possible, but unlikely. Chances are the people with business savvy are the ones marketing and building the revenue generating machine that pays these guys millions. You REALLY think that the guys on the court should take all the money? That's ridiculous. That's like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Makes no sense whatsoever.

And how do you determine who is doing the most work? Just because one person uses a hammer and another person uses a telephone and a pen doesn't mean one is doing "more" or "less" than the other.

So if you can't say that the tools a person uses determine the amount of work he produces, what does? The number of hours he works? I see LOTS of employees eyeing the clock when 5pm rolls around while management is still going.

So maybe you think that the more physical the job, the more work they produce? Well, most jobs these days wouldn't exist without the myriad of decisions, paperwork, and the thousands of other things that go into maing a business tick. Have you ever owned a business? If you haven't you don't have a clue.

Profits get distributed based upon the market value of the labor. Plain and simple, someone who is in management generally has more education and a talent for running a business. This will almost ALWAYS command a higher dollar value in the labor market. If a worker is unhappy with the compensation rate for his particular job, he should do what it takes to learn how to perform a job that pays MORE. You can give a million and one excuses WHY someone CAN'T better themselves, but 99% of the time it's B.S. This is why the complainers never go anywhere and the doers climb to the top.

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by Visceral
I don’t believe in universal or objective morality. To me, morality is purely subjective and purely individual, and defined solely by self-interest, not by any external or abstract ideal – a man judges what serves his interests as “good” and judges what does not serve his interests as “bad”. This changes based on the situation; something can be good one day and bad the next depending on whether or not it still serves the man’s interests. I believe that one man can hold two completely different standards as moral, one to apply to himself and another to apply to others, both of them chosen to serve his own interests.

Lets go to your definition of morality. You say, morality is "defined solely by self-interest." Good, we agree on that much. This is a universal standard. It applies to everyone, no exceptions.

But then you say that morality can only be evaluated from the perspective of the individual. Now you are saying that there is no universal standard. Everyone is held to different standards by different people.

That is a double standard. A world like this cannot exist. If you still think it can, I welcome you to explain it.

Originally posted by Visceral The problem is that if you define what is moral as what is in your best interest, then it seems that immorality would become impossible, since all sane people do what is in their best interest regardless. Whether this is abject servitude or bloodthirsty conquering, unless you’re self-destructively insane, you are moral no matter what you do. You see why I think morality is subjective – “a factor of their state of existence” – what’s in your best interest may be exactly the opposite of what’s in someone else’s best interest. And when you have the power to reduce or even eliminate the negative consequences of a particular course of action, everything changes – possibilities that were once too risky to be worth pursuing now open up new horizons for self-interest.

"all sane people do what is in their best interest regardless"

Not exactly. They do what they think is in their best interests, or what they have been told is in their best interests.

They are not to blame when they have intentions to do something in their self interest, but most people's entire belief system's are based on unrationalized beliefs and values, and for that they are to blame. Do you think that most religious people try to properly rationalize the reason for thinking that a God exists? No, they want an answer to why they are here, so they take the one that cannot be explained because it is not based on logic. They say "there are some things we can't understand/explain." They accept it without properly evaluating it because they think it cannot be properly evaluated. But it doesn't matter how much logic they use based on that premise, none of it can be considered valid until that premise is proven valid.

If, for some reason, you irrationally think that murder is in your self interest, then if you, based on that premise, use logic to determine that you should murder as many people as you can, are you moral because you're acting in what you believe to be your self interest? No, because you never properly rationalized whether murder was good or bad in the first place.

But thats exactly what ideals are for, they are absolutes that can be used as premises for making choices. Once you rationalize why it is in your self interest to be honest, then you can make honesty an ideal and choose how to act based on your knowledge that honesty is good.

Originally posted by Visceral What ideal? There is no ideal that I can see, only the positive and negative consequences of a particular course of action. Violating another person’s so-called rights is against your self-interest only if they have the power to violate your so-called rights in retribution or if your self-interest depends on their service to you. If they or others had no such power and you were not dependent on them, then you would have no reason to treat them in any manner other than how you pleased – which could involve slow, painful death if you were so inclined. An employer pays his employees only because if he did not, they (and others) would refuse to work for him and he would suffer; aside from laws, employees have rights only due to their employer’s dependence on them to serve his interests. Aside from laws, anyone has only the rights other people extend to them in order to protect themselves.

This is what I was talking about when I said it took me a while to understand the logic behind why principles are absolute and cannot be applied according to context.

"Violating another person’s so-called rights is against your self-interest only if they have the power to violate your so-called rights in retribution or if your self-interest depends on their service to you. "

Not true. Violating another person's rights is always against your self-interest because to do it, you have to believe that you have the right to violate their rights, which would also imply that they have the right to violate your rights, which would basically imply that no one has any rights. To live as if you have no rights seems to be against one's self interest to me.

You say people only have the rights that others extend to them. Men are born with inherent rights that, in order to remain moral, other men must respect. Whether they do so or not is irrelevant to our discussion, the selfish men who I am proclaiming are moral would respect the rights of others.

Originally posted by Visceral No sane employer would hire someone who was unable; he’d invariably go for the most able person he could find (or afford). If I’m putting a “price ceiling” on wages, I’m doing it at the higher end (management), not the lower end (labor). True communism was supposed to have been everyone working together for the common good, then sharing the fruits of their labors equally – or imagine every business being a non-profit organization; all revenue is either reinvested in the company or distributed back to the workers. What the communists didn’t like (and what I don’t like) is management taking the profits for itself while leaving labor only enough to keep them working – they called it “parasitism”, taking more than your work entitled you to. They split it up disproportionate to their contributions. From my perspective, the athlete’s doing the bulk of the work, so logically he should get the most. The agents and executives aren’t doing much by comparison, so their cut should reflect this. In reality, its exactly the opposite of this, the people at the top get the most for doing the least, solely by virtue of the fact that they’re at the top, and can compel those below to accept such a lopsided distribution of profits on pain of termination.

STR8UP did an excellent job covering this.

Originally posted by Visceral You’re thinking ideals prevent the abuses of selfishness that I keep bringing up; I can appreciate that. However, I can prevent most of those abuses without invoking any ideals, just pure Selfishness + Logic. My (or anyone elses’s) interests are not served by making enemies; so I avoid threatening their interests in order to keep them on my side or at least to prevent them from becoming my enemy. If, however, I am in a strong enough position to be able to afford enemies, then really what motivation do I have to ingratiate myself to others? The rules change as you move up and down the social ladder (with the rules being made by the people at the top to favor their own interests above all others. Why? Because they can; what other reason would they need?). The stronger your position, the less you need to give another in order to be free to pursue your own self-interest; and beyond a point, you can be so powerful as to be free to harm others and still not risk anything, or even have it be necessary to harm them in order to serve your own interests (this is the realm of Machiavelli). Whether this state is achieved through business contracts, laws and morals, or raw power doesn’t matter, the goal and the results are the same.

You are saying you don't need ideals to prevent the abuses of selfishness, that you can just use selfishness and logic. That's what ideals are! They are universal absolutes based on morality (in the case of our discussion, morality based on selfishness). They are produced by using logic to determine what is moral.

All of the problems you have pointed out above are solved by ideals (see my explanation above). It is not in one's self interest to be dishonest, to sacrifice integrity, etc.

Originally posted by Visceral If they benefit, then it sounds like they’re acting in their self-interest. If they benefit at someone else’s expense, but they do not suffer any negative consequences, then why would they care if someone else gets harmed? The “rights” of others are routinely violated, either by others or by themselves, in order to serve someone’s self-interest. Remember that “self-interest compels self-sacrifice” thing I mentioned earlier. Someone – whatever the situation – ends up losing, whether it’s by having their interests not furthered as much as they might like, simply set aside, or totally sacrificed.

They do suffer negative consequences. See above.

 

[johnmich]

When I was 19 years old, I read my first book

It took you that long to read a book?

:crackup:

 

[Visceral]

I'm sorry I can't respond more promptly, but I am so fvcking busy with class.

Originally posted by Nocturnal
Lets go to your definition of morality. You say, morality is "defined solely by self-interest." Good, we agree on that much. This is a universal standard. It applies to everyone, no exceptions. But then you say that morality can only be evaluated from the perspective of the individual. Now you are saying that there is no universal standard. Everyone is held to different standards by different people. That is a double standard. A world like this cannot exist. If you still think it can, I welcome you to explain it.

Each man, woman, and child seeks what is in their best interest, we both agree. However, since all people are different – different needs, different wants, different stations in life, different situations – they cannot have what is in their best interest be always the same among them or from one moment to the next. This is where the individuality comes into play; what is in my best interest probably isn’t in your best interest, and definitely isn’t in everybody else’s best interest.

I think that you’re talking in terms of theory and ideals and I’m going on what I observe in the world around me. Even if there’s a Universal End (self-interest) in theory, in practice, the details of that Universal End must vary from one person to another, since no two people will ever face the same situation from the same position.. As a consequence of this, the means to the end must also vary from one person to the next. What I’m saying is that even though you’re right that all people are motivated by self-interest, it would be impossible for their individual self-interests to be the same beyond the bare essentials of survival, and they certainly wouldn’t be able to pursue self-interest in the same manner.

Double standards exist everywhere, and beyond a point, I can’t imagine self-interest without them. True, an institutionalized double standard requires a tremendous amount of effort to create and maintain, but the effort is well worth it because the double standard is what enables a man to pursue his self-interest without having to worry about other people. An operating double standard enables an authority to direct its subordinates’ efforts toward its interest, rather than theirs, and still turn its back on them without having to worry about a knife ending up in it.

Would a wolf, regardless of how convinced of his own superiority he is, desire that all the other animals be like him? Of course not. Wolves prefer sheep – their exact opposite – because they make better prey, being far easier to catch and kill and a whole lot tastier. If a wolf wanted all other animals (except female wolves) to be the same, he’d want them all to be sheep. People think the same way, even if they don’t (or can’t) act on it; they want to be the lone wolf on a planet full of sheep, which manifests itself as a moral double standard, at least within the confines of their heads.

Actually applying this double standard becomes necessary for the rich and powerful, as it’s the only way to maintain their superior position. Let’s imagine a CEO who owes everything he has to tactics and ambition that would make Machiavelli and Nietzsche kneel down and suck his d!ck. Would he surround himself with others like himself? No, that would be self-destructive insanity - he’d end up in charge of a company where even the janitor would be after his job and fully capable of taking it from him. Here a double standard is born; the CEO would never abandon his own values and tactics - they’ve served him far too well – but he would not permit those under him to share them, as that would be an unacceptable threat. Instead, he would hold his inferiors to a different standard, one that serves his interests as well: loyal, humble, obedient, and hardworking – the perfect employee.

"all sane people do what is in their best interest regardless" Not exactly. They do what they think is in their best interests, or what they have been told is in their best interests.

Or what they prefer to do, be it in their best interest or not. Maybe I’m wrong and people aren’t motivated by self-interest, or at least not by something others would expect to be their self-interest; it would certainly explain why they can behave in self-denying and even self-defeating ways without being terribly aware of it. A value system that holds pleasure rather than power to be one’s ultimate goal could lead to this – they pass up countless opportunities to gain wealth and power because pleasure is their goal, and the pursuit of wealth and power is often quite unpleasant.

If, for some reason, you irrationally think that murder is in your self interest, then if you, based on that premise, use logic to determine that you should murder as many people as you can, are you moral because you're acting in what you believe to be your self interest? No, because you never properly rationalized whether murder was good or bad in the first place.

Profit and loss. Murder benefits me x, but will cost me y. y is greater than x, so therefore I should not commit murder. If the situation were reversed, and benefits exceeded costs, then what reason would I have to not commit murder?

But thats exactly what ideals are for, they are absolutes that can be used as premises for making choices. Once you rationalize why it is in your self interest to be honest, then you can make honesty an ideal and choose how to act based on your knowledge that honesty is good.

But you’re assuming that honesty is invariably in your best interest; I find invariability difficult to accept. Even if something is in your best interest 99% of the time, it looks like I’m still right that what’s in your best interest (and thus moral) is not and cannot be defined by absolute theories, but only by external circumstances.

This is what I was talking about when I said it took me a while to understand the logic behind why principles are absolute and cannot be applied according to context.

If you find yourself in a situation where your principles stand to ruin you, or at least hold you back from where you wish to be, then you cannot argue that self-interest as a principle is absolute. To do what is in your best interest cannot possibly lead to anything bad for you; you could not call it “self-interest” if it did. This context would demand that your principles change or be discarded, since they have not served your interests.

"Violating another person’s so-called rights is against your self-interest only if they have the power to violate your so-called rights in retribution or if your self-interest depends on their service to you. " Not true. Violating another person's rights is always against your self-interest because to do it, you have to believe that you have the right to violate their rights, which would also imply that they have the right to violate your rights, which would basically imply that no one has any rights. To live as if you have no rights seems to be against one's self interest to me. You say people only have the rights that others extend to them. Men are born with inherent rights that, in order to remain moral, other men must respect. Whether they do so or not is irrelevant to our discussion, the selfish men who I am proclaiming are moral would respect the rights of others.

Well, there’s our problem, you’re looking at ideal men and I’m looking at real ones. The double standard I discussed fixes this; in a man’s mind, he’s the only one with rights – the others exist only to serve his interests in whatever manner he has the power to compel them to. He’ll probably never act on this worldview – or even express it to others – because it would harm his own interests to do so, but that doesn’t mean he believes they have rights. At most, I’d say he just knows better than to piss people off. There are no rights, just what we can and can't get away with doing.

You are saying you don't need ideals to prevent the abuses of selfishness, that you can just use selfishness and logic. That's what ideals are! They are universal absolutes based on morality (in the case of our discussion, morality based on selfishness). They are produced by using logic to determine what is moral. All of the problems you have pointed out above are solved by ideals (see my explanation above). It is not in one's self interest to be dishonest, to sacrifice integrity, etc.

Be practical; if you don’t suffer any negative consequences from it, then will anything stop you? I can understand you’d choose gaining over not losing, but if you (or anyone else) had the power, why would they not use it?

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by Visceral I'm sorry I can't respond more promptly, but I am so fvcking busy with class.

I understand completely, things are the same way for me right now as well. Feel free to take as much time as you need.

Originally posted by Visceral Each man, woman, and child seeks what is in their best interest, we both agree. However, since all people are different – different needs, different wants, different stations in life, different situations – they cannot have what is in their best interest be always the same among them or from one moment to the next. This is where the individuality comes into play; what is in my best interest probably isn’t in your best interest, and definitely isn’t in everybody else’s best interest.

How can you act on a moral principle that you only apply to yourself? How can you expect others to act on moral principles that you don't apply to yourself? It cannot be a principle if it not absolute. So you don't believe morality to be a principle.

So, in turn, and like you have said, you believe morality to be subjective. You believe that the concept of morality originates entirely from the ideas of individuals, in contrast to originating from the universe which exists independently of the individuals. Correct?

Doesn't the fact that we are conscious, and have the ability to make choices, also come with the corollary that the choices we make will either help or hurt our purpose? Morality is the standard by which an individual makes choices to further his purpose.

And in this manner, morality IS an objective standard, because it isn't concerned with the purpose of the individual, only that the individual acts towards that purpose. Because of this, it can be applied to everyone, with the added contexts that each of them lives in.

As outrageous as I find much of Kant's philosophy, one idea of his that I agree with is how he defines absolute principles/maxims:

First, we have a perfect duty not to act by maxims that result in logical contradictions when we attempt to universalize them. The moral proposition A: "It is permissible to steal" would result in a contradiction because the notion of stealing presupposed the existence of property. But were A universalized, then there could be no property, and the proposition has logically annihilated itself. Hence we have a perfect duty never to steal.

You cannot believe "John has rights to his property," and simultaneously believe, "I have the right to steal John's property."

Second, we have imperfect duty, which is the duty to act only by maxims that we would desire to be universalized.

If you want rights to your property, you must recognize that John has rights to his property.

If you are acting morally, the question of whether you are moral or not doesn't depend on whether it is in my self interest or not (as long as my rights aren't violated). If I believe acting in one's self interest is moral, I HAVE to believe that you are acting in your self interest, and thus that you are moral by my standard.

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by Visceral I think that you’re talking in terms of theory and ideals and I’m going on what I observe in the world around me. Even if there’s a Universal End (self-interest) in theory, in practice, the details of that Universal End must vary from one person to another, since no two people will ever face the same situation from the same position.. As a consequence of this, the means to the end must also vary from one person to the next. What I’m saying is that even though you’re right that all people are motivated by self-interest, it would be impossible for their individual self-interests to be the same beyond the bare essentials of survival, and they certainly wouldn’t be able to pursue self-interest in the same manner.

Tell me, why must individuals of your morality have aligned interests in order for them to have the same moral standard?

The moral standard is not based on context. Read that again, it is a very important point. The moral standard is based on one idea that, "each individual acts in his own, self interest, no one else's."

Originally posted by Visceral Double standards exist everywhere, and beyond a point, I can’t imagine self-interest without them. True, an institutionalized double standard requires a tremendous amount of effort to create and maintain, but the effort is well worth it because the double standard is what enables a man to pursue his self-interest without having to worry about other people. An operating double standard enables an authority to direct its subordinates’ efforts toward its interest, rather than theirs, and still turn its back on them without having to worry about a knife ending up in it.

My reponse to this is what I have said before about how ideals solve this problem, and they would do so without society living in a contradiction and acting against its own interests.

Originally posted by Visceral Would a wolf, regardless of how convinced of his own superiority he is, desire that all the other animals be like him? Of course not. Wolves prefer sheep – their exact opposite – because they make better prey, being far easier to catch and kill and a whole lot tastier. If a wolf wanted all other animals (except female wolves) to be the same, he’d want them all to be sheep. People think the same way, even if they don’t (or can’t) act on it; they want to be the lone wolf on a planet full of sheep, which manifests itself as a moral double standard, at least within the confines of their heads.

Wolves prey on sheep, but they are not governed by conscious choices. They cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.

Originally posted by Visceral Actually applying this double standard becomes necessary for the rich and powerful, as it’s the only way to maintain their superior position. Let’s imagine a CEO who owes everything he has to tactics and ambition that would make Machiavelli and Nietzsche kneel down and suck his d!ck. Would he surround himself with others like himself? No, that would be self-destructive insanity - he’d end up in charge of a company where even the janitor would be after his job and fully capable of taking it from him. Here a double standard is born; the CEO would never abandon his own values and tactics - they’ve served him far too well – but he would not permit those under him to share them, as that would be an unacceptable threat. Instead, he would hold his inferiors to a different standard, one that serves his interests as well: loyal, humble, obedient, and hardworking – the perfect employee.

So you're saying that to this employer, he is moral by acting in his self interest, but his inferiors are immoral if they act in theirs? His definition of morality is a contradiction, it cannot be used to validify any of his actions.

Originally posted by Visceral Or what they prefer to do, be it in their best interest or not. Maybe I’m wrong and people aren’t motivated by self-interest, or at least not by something others would expect to be their self-interest; it would certainly explain why they can behave in self-denying and even self-defeating ways without being terribly aware of it. A value system that holds pleasure rather than power to be one’s ultimate goal could lead to this – they pass up countless opportunities to gain wealth and power because pleasure is their goal, and the pursuit of wealth and power is often quite unpleasant.

I think it has more to do with being conditioned to act based on the expectations of others, and that people never properly rationalize the reasons for the actions they commit.

Originally posted by Visceral Profit and loss. Murder benefits me x, but will cost me y. y is greater than x, so therefore I should not commit murder. If the situation were reversed, and benefits exceeded costs, then what reason would I have to not commit murder?

I have explained this numerous times before. To believe that you have the right to murder someone is to believe that everyone has the same right, and that they can murder you. Your rights degenerate and you are stuck in a world of chaos. Not in your self interest. That's what's stopping you (or me at least).

Originally posted by Visceral But you’re assuming that honesty is invariably in your best interest; I find invariability difficult to accept. Even if something is in your best interest 99% of the time, it looks like I’m still right that what’s in your best interest (and thus moral) is not and cannot be defined by absolute theories, but only by external circumstances.

Again, I have explained this before. For the same reasons as above, to lie is accept that words have no truth, and thus you destroy the means by which you planned on lying in the first place -- you have affirmed that language has no truth and thus that it is a contradiction and cannot be in your self interest.

Originally posted by Visceral If you find yourself in a situation where your principles stand to ruin you, or at least hold you back from where you wish to be, then you cannot argue that self-interest as a principle is absolute. To do what is in your best interest cannot possibly lead to anything bad for you; you could not call it “self-interest” if it did. This context would demand that your principles change or be discarded, since they have not served your interests.

If your principles are not serving your self interest, they are the wrong principles. Serving self interest is the fundamental principle, other principles can only be valid if they meet the terms that that principle requires.

My answer to your question, once again, goes back to why ideals are important, and you should look to an example of something such as why dishonesty is NEVER in your self interest.

Originally posted by Visceral Well, there’s our problem, you’re looking at ideal men and I’m looking at real ones. The double standard I discussed fixes this; in a man’s mind, he’s the only one with rights – the others exist only to serve his interests in whatever manner he has the power to compel them to. He’ll probably never act on this worldview – or even express it to others – because it would harm his own interests to do so, but that doesn’t mean he believes they have rights. At most, I’d say he just knows better than to piss people off. There are no rights, just what we can and can't get away with doing.

It is impossible to have rights without recognizing the rights of others. The reason man has rights is because HE IS MAN. Every man has those same rights, and if you believe that any one of them does not, you must also believe that not you, nor anyone else has them either. Your "real" men who impinge upon the rights of others are really invalidating their own rights.

Originally posted by Visceral Be practical; if you don’t suffer any negative consequences from it, then will anything stop you? I can understand you’d choose gaining over not losing, but if you (or anyone else) had the power, why would they not use it?

Practical? At what cost? My integrity? No thank you.

Gaining is not gaining if you are denying reality, as well as yourself, in the process.