No gov't free benefits can give "self respect". One must earn it, in one's own eyes. Work and production does that. Even subsidized work like raking leaves or picking up litter, worth only $5/hr, subsidized to be $10/hr, such work is worthy of dignity and self respect.
Forrest Gump-like low IQ folk, willing and able to do simple work, …
No gov't free benefits can give "self respect". One must earn it, in one's own eyes. Work and production does that. Even subsidized work like raking leaves or picking up litter, worth only $5/hr, subsidized to be $10/hr, such work is worthy of dignity and self respect.
Forrest Gump-like low IQ folk, willing and able to do simple work, deserve respect AND job offers.
I read, and like, Atlas Shrugged - but the Bible is better, and both should be optional, not required, in schools.
I prefer the Chile style "forced savings" retirement, which a person owns. Such a system, put in with Pinochet and Chicago Boys, has allowed Chile to become the richest S.A. country in 2022 after being one of the poorest in 1973.
Chileans recently voted in a socialist - so I expect the, not Voldemorting, but Venezuelization and reduced or negative growth in Chile.
Anybody forced to be in a system that includes payments and benefits, can be against the system but accept the benefits after paying in the payments. Without the SS, Rand wouldn't have starved. But her system's not worth arguing about.
All of it. Fundamentally wrong. Rand lived what she wrote about. People with your opinions only fantasize about yet another failed attempt at collectivism... the collection of ideologies that always fail and always end up in more profound human misery, suffering and death.
So, for you, "productive" means "productive of 'self-respect'" — productive of a sense of having "earn[ed] it, in one's own eyes"?
I do have moral intuitions about the dignity of work, and I suspect they overlap with yours. I am less optimistic, though, about it being workable to define "productivity" that way. For example:
"I had one patient who worked for GM, very smart guy, invented a lot of safety features for cars. He was probably actively saving a bunch of people’s lives every time he checked in at the office, and he still felt like he was worthless, a burden, that he was just draining resources that could better be used for someone else."
I think it's fine for you to have a spiritual notion of "productive" that works for the average person, but not tough edge cases. After all, most people are average. On the other hand, we're no longer so keen on letting tough edge cases just curl up and die anymore, either (seriously, even when someone is Officially In Hospice Now, our system is set up to make this tough).
Scott now writes at Astral Codex 10. He's talking about "imposter syndrome" of worthy folk feeling unworthy.
"Productive" for me is doing work that has value for others. Nobody I know thinks less litter is not better than more litter.
But the "market value" of such work might be so low that few choose to do that work, when there are other alternatives. Including getting gov't benefits, like food stamps, for doing nothing. UBI makes more folk do nothing, which will be terrible for many, probably most, who need more self respect.
Avg IQ =100; almost nobody is exactly average; some 34+34 = 68% of the people are within one 15 point standard deviation of 100: 85-115, which are all sort-of average.
You really think staying home playing video games and watching porn and masturbating all day leads to self respect?
I know Scott's new place, but old classics are still old classics.
"'Productive' for me is doing work that has value for others."
Yes, but how do you *know* it does, unless they're willing to pay you? "Don't play dumb, Midge," I can imagine you saying — because that's exactly what I'm telling myself right now.
But I've also been in volunteer situations where the volunteers took on unusually unpleasant work to make life more pleasant for everyone else involved — and were ultimately treated as "losers" and "parasites" for volunteering, with overt appeals to the reasoning that, if the work were truly worth anything, it would be paid, not volunteer!:
Work does not *have* to be paid for in a free market in order to be "worth something", but the sad fact is that, in a pluralistic society, it's hard to *prove* it's worth anything unless it is.
"You really think staying home playing video games and watching porn and masturbating all day leads to self respect?"
No, *not typically on the margins*. (Indeed, I belong to a tradition that still sees masturbation as a sin: nonetheless, if someone were wanking as a distraction from drug cravings or active suicidal ideation, what kind of shriveled heart would I have to have to not consider that the lesser of evils?) But I also know it's common enough for some people to behave like that and somehow still end up thinking higher of themselves than others who've earnestly beavered away through all the traditional advice about self-improvement.
This is not the economic or Marxist definition of production, there are two different concepts being discussed here.
However, there should absolutely be value seen in productivity and work, yes. I think most Marxists would agree that self worth and dignity is manifest by the generative power of an individual to create change in the world around themselves.
Also, social security is a form of welfare, so there’s that.
SS is both welfare for poor folk, and forced savings for all workers. And a huge benefit of (Christian) capitalist society. It's good to take care that older people, too old to work, have enough for food & clothes & a place to live. Maybe not full "middle class", but not absolute poverty.
Tho those getting it had to work at least 10 years, paying taxes, so they've "earned" it, even those who get more than was taken from them.
Mhmm. So if Ayn Rand was on social security, the welfare system you just described (which doesn’t address the issue of what causes poverty at all), that’s in contradiction with what you claimed her to have not done…
SS isn’t an “earning”. It’s a redistribution-subsidization tax. This is, as you said, not a bad thing. Dunno why Rand would be against that either.
Christian ideology is often spurious correlated to producing capitalism. Check out Max Weber’s “Capitalism and the Protestant Work Ethic” and it’s criticisms. There’s reason to believe that religion can enhance, enable and influence capitalist ideology, but it is not the cause.
No gov't free benefits can give "self respect". One must earn it, in one's own eyes. Work and production does that. Even subsidized work like raking leaves or picking up litter, worth only $5/hr, subsidized to be $10/hr, such work is worthy of dignity and self respect.
Forrest Gump-like low IQ folk, willing and able to do simple work, deserve respect AND job offers.
I read, and like, Atlas Shrugged - but the Bible is better, and both should be optional, not required, in schools.
It would be stupid to be forced to pay for SS and not accept benefits - she wasn't dumb. Nor on welfare.
"Ayn Rand was not on welfare when she died. She was, however, receiving Social Security payments. "
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Ayn-Rand-died-on-welfare-and-in-fact-was-on-it-a-few-years?share=1
But good art can be made by bad people - didn't you read Freddie about that in the last couple weeks?
I prefer the Chile style "forced savings" retirement, which a person owns. Such a system, put in with Pinochet and Chicago Boys, has allowed Chile to become the richest S.A. country in 2022 after being one of the poorest in 1973.
Chileans recently voted in a socialist - so I expect the, not Voldemorting, but Venezuelization and reduced or negative growth in Chile.
Anybody forced to be in a system that includes payments and benefits, can be against the system but accept the benefits after paying in the payments. Without the SS, Rand wouldn't have starved. But her system's not worth arguing about.
Chile's economic success was heavily dependant on its nationalized copper mines, which even Pinochet didn't privatise
Funny, Wrong, but funny. Another form of art called unknowing satire.
All of it. Fundamentally wrong. Rand lived what she wrote about. People with your opinions only fantasize about yet another failed attempt at collectivism... the collection of ideologies that always fail and always end up in more profound human misery, suffering and death.
So, for you, "productive" means "productive of 'self-respect'" — productive of a sense of having "earn[ed] it, in one's own eyes"?
I do have moral intuitions about the dignity of work, and I suspect they overlap with yours. I am less optimistic, though, about it being workable to define "productivity" that way. For example:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/
"I had one patient who worked for GM, very smart guy, invented a lot of safety features for cars. He was probably actively saving a bunch of people’s lives every time he checked in at the office, and he still felt like he was worthless, a burden, that he was just draining resources that could better be used for someone else."
I think it's fine for you to have a spiritual notion of "productive" that works for the average person, but not tough edge cases. After all, most people are average. On the other hand, we're no longer so keen on letting tough edge cases just curl up and die anymore, either (seriously, even when someone is Officially In Hospice Now, our system is set up to make this tough).
Scott now writes at Astral Codex 10. He's talking about "imposter syndrome" of worthy folk feeling unworthy.
"Productive" for me is doing work that has value for others. Nobody I know thinks less litter is not better than more litter.
But the "market value" of such work might be so low that few choose to do that work, when there are other alternatives. Including getting gov't benefits, like food stamps, for doing nothing. UBI makes more folk do nothing, which will be terrible for many, probably most, who need more self respect.
Avg IQ =100; almost nobody is exactly average; some 34+34 = 68% of the people are within one 15 point standard deviation of 100: 85-115, which are all sort-of average.
You really think staying home playing video games and watching porn and masturbating all day leads to self respect?
Or maybe you think respect doesn't matter?
I know Scott's new place, but old classics are still old classics.
"'Productive' for me is doing work that has value for others."
Yes, but how do you *know* it does, unless they're willing to pay you? "Don't play dumb, Midge," I can imagine you saying — because that's exactly what I'm telling myself right now.
But I've also been in volunteer situations where the volunteers took on unusually unpleasant work to make life more pleasant for everyone else involved — and were ultimately treated as "losers" and "parasites" for volunteering, with overt appeals to the reasoning that, if the work were truly worth anything, it would be paid, not volunteer!:
Work does not *have* to be paid for in a free market in order to be "worth something", but the sad fact is that, in a pluralistic society, it's hard to *prove* it's worth anything unless it is.
"You really think staying home playing video games and watching porn and masturbating all day leads to self respect?"
No, *not typically on the margins*. (Indeed, I belong to a tradition that still sees masturbation as a sin: nonetheless, if someone were wanking as a distraction from drug cravings or active suicidal ideation, what kind of shriveled heart would I have to have to not consider that the lesser of evils?) But I also know it's common enough for some people to behave like that and somehow still end up thinking higher of themselves than others who've earnestly beavered away through all the traditional advice about self-improvement.
"The heart is deceitful above all else."
This is not the economic or Marxist definition of production, there are two different concepts being discussed here.
However, there should absolutely be value seen in productivity and work, yes. I think most Marxists would agree that self worth and dignity is manifest by the generative power of an individual to create change in the world around themselves.
Also, social security is a form of welfare, so there’s that.
SS is both welfare for poor folk, and forced savings for all workers. And a huge benefit of (Christian) capitalist society. It's good to take care that older people, too old to work, have enough for food & clothes & a place to live. Maybe not full "middle class", but not absolute poverty.
Tho those getting it had to work at least 10 years, paying taxes, so they've "earned" it, even those who get more than was taken from them.
Mhmm. So if Ayn Rand was on social security, the welfare system you just described (which doesn’t address the issue of what causes poverty at all), that’s in contradiction with what you claimed her to have not done…
SS isn’t an “earning”. It’s a redistribution-subsidization tax. This is, as you said, not a bad thing. Dunno why Rand would be against that either.
Christian ideology is often spurious correlated to producing capitalism. Check out Max Weber’s “Capitalism and the Protestant Work Ethic” and it’s criticisms. There’s reason to believe that religion can enhance, enable and influence capitalist ideology, but it is not the cause.
Working people pay into SS. But given the abuse and misuse of the funds, it would better for many people to just have that money to invest themselves.
That’s an interesting way of ignoring how that would affect the impoverished.
Why are people impoverished?