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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (275663)	10/20/2008 4:36:21 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 793958

Based on those starting assumptions, one could argue that capitalism harmed morality if it caused people to respect your rights (including your property rights) to a lesser degree. And in some ways under some circumstances it might. But any way of people interacting that gets broadly applied (as in across the world or across a large country) is going to have situations where such a thing happens. You aren't going to have every person in isolation, people don't function that way, they don't want to function that way, to a great extent they can't function that way. They need some way to allocate and enforce who gets to use what, and they need economic systems (at least very primitive ones, and in large groups, increasingly complex ones). So you can't compare capitalism to nothing (no or nearly no interaction, so no one going after you or your property), you have to compare it to the alternatives. The alternatives basically come down to politically determining what gets produced, and what gets made available to whom, or letting people operate freely in terms of buying and selling to each other, and making contracts and such. Of course in the real world you get some combination, but "free market" or "capitalism" becomes a shortcut for "largely free market", or "mostly capitalist economy". Why "socialism", or "communism" becomes a shortcut for mostly going the other way. If your alternative to mostly free market is mostly politically determining the allocation of scarce goods and services, well then obviously the free market is very likely to result in more respect for your property, and history has shown us that it results in more respect for your life and for many other moral concerns as well.

To: LindyBill who wrote (275663)	10/22/2008 9:20:38 AM
From: Bridge Player	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793958

Re: morality and your life. Ayn Rand would be proud. "My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride." John Galt.