All Episodes
Previous Next
Sept. 19, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
18:30
1461 Ethics as 'Good for Man'?
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Alright, might as well continue.
I wanted to go a little bit more into detail with this question of good for man, right?
Now, the objectivist argument, which I found good for quite some time, was that a reason is that which best serves man's life, therefore those societies which accept or propagate the greatest...
Rationality are the best for man's life, and man's life is a standard of value, and therefore that which most enhances man's life is good for man, and so we should all be free to be rational, and violence interferes with our reasoning capacity, and therefore it's bad for man, and so on.
And I found this argument good, though, incomplete.
I mean, I think it's hard to say that violence is good for man as a whole.
It's not. But, unfortunately, I think that it makes the fallacy of collectivism, right?
It says there's such a thing as man as a whole, which there isn't.
So, I think that's something that's worth looking at from an ethical standpoint.
I was heavily influenced, and I got this guy.
He actually contacted me recently.
He was my college roommate.
We shared a room.
That's crazy. I was working up north.
I had a big beard, and I had my army bag worth of stuff when I came from working up north, and I flew down to Montreal to try and find a place.
To live as a student, and I got there late.
I had to finish doing some prospecting up north, and I kind of got to school late.
And I remember I said I had to take three planes and all that to get to Montreal from where I was working up north.
And I came off, you know, big bushy beard, bush clothing, and not the sweetest smelling rose in the bush.
And I was really tired.
I'd been traveling for 24 hours.
I was exhausted. And...
I ended up dragging my stuff.
I had no cash because I was up north.
There were no bank machines back then, right?
So I had no cash. I had to wait for my bank to open.
I got in like 5 in the morning.
So I walked up the street of Montreal and I ended up going into a woman's residence.
And I just crashed on the couch.
And I guess I looked like a homeless person because the security guard woke me up and shooed me off.
Because I looked and smelled pretty rough from my bush days.
And I had an ex-girlfriend who was going to put me up for a couple of days while I found a place, and I didn't have any way of contacting her, so I just sort of stood at the gates of the college, hoping I'd see her at some point, and then I found someone who knew where she was or whatever, so that sort of worked out.
And I ended up taking a room in a frat house, and I ended up sharing that room with another guy, who actually were good friends.
He was a good roommate to have.
It just blew my mind. How well he slept though.
They could not wake him.
Like ringing phones, pots and pans.
Nothing could wake the guy. And he was a biology major and a very smart fellow.
And he taught me a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of useful stuff with regards to philosophy in regards to biology.
And it was through him that I got into Richard Dawkins and other biologists that I've had a great deal of pleasure reading.
And it was him who sort of started me down the road of really beginning to...
And I never discussed objectivist ethics with him in particular.
But he was very fascinated by memes, right?
How ideas replicate themselves in society and all that, right?
So he wasn't particularly philosophical, but he was fascinated by the spread of ideas.
Amoral biologist, it's almost a synonym.
And so it was he who sort of put me onto the selfish gene, and we had discussions about that, and the idea that, you know, fundamentally, your little toe is just using you like a big lever to make another little toe, or more specifically, the genes that produce your little toe are just using you as a way of making another little toe, that this sort of genetic reproduction at the DNA level is what's actually occurring, and everything is just sort of a means to that end.
Your spleen is just using you.
To make another spleen.
And I threw some of that in.
Some original drafts of the God of Atheists, but didn't make it very far.
It sort of fit, but that sort of stuff.
I don't think too much of it made it into the final version.
But I was really fascinated by that.
And... It certainly is true that if you die young, certainly if you die before puberty, then your spleen doesn't get to use you to make another spleen.
But... It is not the entity as a whole that matters, fundamentally.
Like, if you get your finger cut off, you still get to make another finger in your kid, right?
The fact that you get your finger cut off doesn't mean your kid's born without a finger and so on.
So, parts are extraneous and irrelevant, and as long as the genes get to reproduce themselves, they don't particularly care what happens to the individual, right?
Like, if your teeth fall out or if you get cancer after reproduction or whatever.
I mean, there's some, you know, you need to be there to help your kid or whatever, but I was really fascinated by the biological imperatives of life.
And what that did on some significant further reflection is that it began to undermine the idea of the objectivist, that which is good for man.
Because there really is no such thing.
Humanity is an ecosystem of competing interests and this is why statism is so bad and the free market is so good.
But because of this reality that Humanity is an ecosystem of competing interests.
Humanity is nature as a whole writ large.
We have our predators and our prey and our parasites and all the kinds of things.
We have our mutually beneficial relationships.
I can't remember what they're called in biology.
Somebody will tell me, I'm sure.
Symbiotic, that's it. We have those kinds of relationships and the greatest predators for human beings, of course, In, you know, ever since the demise of the saber-toothed tiger, say, the greatest predators for human beings are, of course, other human beings.
And so the idea of saying that which is good for man is, to me, the scientific equivalent of saying, you know, that which is good for nature.
Well, it doesn't really make sense.
Or it's like saying...
That which is good for both lions and gazelles.
Well, it's true that they're somewhat independent, but...
Well, somewhat independent.
But there's no such thing as, you know, if a lion is chasing a gazelle, that which is good for both of them, right?
I think that's really, really important to understand, right?
That which is good for the lion is to eat the gazelle, which is not good for the gazelle.
So... The idea that there's something that is good for man as a whole...
It's something that is just not sustainable from a scientific standpoint.
It's not sustainable from a sort of logical standpoint.
There's no such thing as that which is good for man as a whole.
If you go from...
Well, he's going to lose his job or his job is going to be changed so significantly that it will be unrecognizable and somebody else will probably have to fulfill it.
So he's going to do a lot worse.
He's going to go from making 100,000 in pay and kickbacks and probably a hell of a lot more, but he's going to do a lot worse.
He's going to end up being, I don't know, some worker on a shop floor or whatever, making 40,000 or 30,000.
He's going to do a lot worse. Now, in the long run, his kids won't grow up to be corrupt union bosses, but rather will get good education and free society, grow up to be better and faster and meaner, stronger, whatever, right?
But... Of course, there's no such thing as that which is good for the next generation when it comes to decisions in the moment, right?
Not particularly. If there were, there'd be no such thing as the national debt, right?
So, it's not, I believe, valid to say, you know, that which is good for man qua man.
I mean, that's a bit of the, you know, to use the amateur phrase, right?
I mean... Ayn Rand was not a huge stranger to narcissism, in my humble opinion, although a brilliant philosopher.
The lack of humility, I think, is something that I've really tried to address as best I can in my own thinking and approach to things.
And so, that which is good for man qua man, it's sort of like, well, I, Ayn Rand, am very rational, and therefore a more rational society would be great for me.
And, you know, she's probably right.
But that's not good for the people who are better...
The sociopaths, right, who were glib and charming and morally corrupt, don't do as well under a free society because they can't attach themselves to state power and become politicians, right?
So they're not going to do as well materially.
And the argument that comes back from libertarians is, well, yeah, that's true, but, you know, in a free society, the politician like Ted Kennedy was all about state medicine, but in a free society, there probably would have been a cure for cancer that would have saved him and blah, blah, blah.
But that's not how people make decisions, not really, not most people anyway, in the sort of what-if, what-ifs, right?
I'll sacrifice personal things on the off chance that two generations from now there'll be a cure for cancer.
That's not how people really, really operate.
So I don't think it really works that well.
See, this is a fundamental...
It's an argument from effect as to why the argument from effect doesn't work.
One of the many reasons why the argument from effect does not work is this.
The argument from effect says that certain benefits will accrue from a particular course of action and therefore we should pursue that course of action.
The price of food, after some increases, will drop in a number of years as a result of getting rid of farm subsidies.
Getting rid of a government monopoly on liquor will raise the prices for a little while and then you'll get more variety and lower prices down the road and blah blah blah.
These are all arguments from effect.
And the reason that it never works is that the argument from effect is always the effects that benefit a diffuse majority.
Majorities are really bad when it comes to Getting behind benefits that they can't even see, right?
Of course, right? So, to take the example of getting rid of farm subsidies, well, in the short run, the price of foodstuffs will probably go up, right?
Because there'll be a big adjustment and farmers will have to change their methods of production and there'll be problems, right?
Any readjustment has this issue.
It may not be long, but it will be definitely there.
And then in a couple of years, more rational and third-world farmers won't have food dumped at all.
So, in the long run, the diffuse majority will gain benefits that they can't see and which benefits will not accrue to any individual massively in particular.
I mean, compared to the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm subsidies to farmers.
So the argument from effect says a diffuse and unconscious majority, unconscious in that they won't know about the benefits and won't directly attribute them to the policies, that a diffuse majority will benefit from a particular course of action.
However, a very specialized and highly invested minority will do very, very, very, very badly from the changes.
And as we all know, A diffuse majority has no particular incentive to lobby for these changes, whereas a specialized and highly invested minority has every reason under sun and moon to agitate, to prevent.
Right, so when you use the argument from effect, you're saying that the effects...
Are worth the cost.
But for those who's, for whom the effects are not worth the cost, right, it's true that the farmers will be able to spend a few bucks a week less on food, but it still won't make up for the hundreds of thousands or more that they're getting in subsidies and protectionism and so on.
So for them, it's a net economic So the argument from effect for them is much more powerful to agitate for the retention of the farm subsidies than for the diffuse and unconscious majority to advocate for the destruction of the farm subsidies.
The argument from effect puts the biggest and most concentrated lasers into the...
Into the hands of the highly invested and motivated minority who benefit.
Because the argument from effect for them is to agitate as hard and as energetically as humanly possible for the retention of the unjust benefits they're currently receiving.
The argument from effect is like giving one group spaceships powered with lasers and another group a bunch of flashlights and saying, go to it and combat yourself and see who'll win.
The argument from effect gives extraordinary weapons and incentive to those who wish to maintain the unjust system, the minority, and gives nothing really to the majority in terms of incentive.
So the argument from effect is just the reason 12 million why the argument from effect Never works.
And that's why the Randian argument that which is good for man is reason and therefore we should be rational and so on, well, good for which man?
And the argument which is beautifully portrayed through Gail Winand and Peter Keating and other fictional characters is to say that Well, okay, so if reason is not particularly good for you,
if you want more than reason would allow you, which is Peter Keating using Howard Rourke's drawings to sort of get ahead in the architectural field.
If you want more than a free market, so to speak, would give you, the problem is then, well, That is good for you, right?
So why wouldn't you then advocate for these kinds of subsidies and so on?
Why wouldn't bad farmers advocate for subsidies?
Because that which is good for their life, good for them, is to have the government take things from other people and give to them.
Take from the diffuse majority and give to the invested minority.
And what's the argument against that?
Well, the argument against that in most philosophical systems is, yes, if you pursue injustice, if you pursue power, if you pursue that which you have not earned, if you work to gain unjust benefits, it is good for you in a material sense, but boy, oh boy, oh boy, does it hollow you out emotionally.
Oh boy, the self-esteem, the unhappiness, the sense of emptiness, the nihilism.
This is...
The aesthetic argument that is always made, that you can certainly get the unearned, you can get the unearned, but it will make you unhappy.
You will be depressed, you will be lonely, you will be this, you will be that.
And the reason that it has to be portrayed that way is because there's no good argument against receiving unjust benefits.
In most philosophical systems, I would say, you know, pre-UPB philosophical system, moral systems, what is the Not pursuing unjust benefits.
Well, if you say that, which is good for the individual, well, it's good for the individual to get unjust benefits, right?
Lobby the government, get hundreds of thousands of dollars in subsidies.
That's good for you. So the argument has to be that you end up unhappy.
And that is...
You know, a pretty weak argument, I must say.
It's really, really a weak, weak, weak argument.
First of all, how empirical is it?
I mean, do we know?
Have we tested?
Have we performed psychological tests on people who accept subsidies and people who don't and people who lobby government and people who don't?
Are they happier? Are they less happy?
We don't know. It just seems like they should be because they're not doing what the philosophy wants and therefore they should be unhappy, right?
It's sort of like... Unhappiness is distanced from God, right?
Like the atheist must be unhappy, right?
Because the Christian wants to believe that Jesus saves and therefore the atheist must be bitter and unhappy.
But it's a really bad argument.
There's no proof, right? For the people who all want this empiricism.
And it would be relatively easy to prove, right?
Just take a big cross-section of people and, you know, spend a couple hundred thousand bucks and test levels of happiness.
Is Bill Clinton unhappy?
Well, he seems pretty happy.
Is George Bush unhappy?
Well, generally, when people are unhappy, they'll stop doing that which makes them unhappy.
I mean, unless they're complete addicts, right?
In which case, it does tend to show up in pretty significant areas, right?
Like no job, no relationships, no money, and so on.
George Bush showed up to work, ran the free world such as it was.
Was he unhappy? I don't know.
It's hard to say. Hard to say.
Is Hillary Clinton unhappy?
Well, if she was really unhappy because she pursued a life of power and prestige, why is she still pursuing a life of power and prestige?
She doesn't seem to be unhappy.
She seems to be quite eager. She was quite eager to be president and seems to be quite eager to be secretary of state.
Is she unhappy? Ronald Reagan, was he miserable?
Was he, you know, unhappy with his life in politics?
He certainly didn't achieve what he claimed he wanted to.
Unhappy? It doesn't work.
There's no answer, and the evidence appears to be quite the contrary.
So that's why you need something like UPB, where it doesn't matter if people are happy or not.
If their ethics don't stand up to universality and logic and evidence, it doesn't matter whether they're happy or unhappy.
▲
Export Selection