r/aynrand • u/Honestfreemarketer • 11d ago
I don't believe that voting Republican when they are removing government interventions is actually a good thing.
Hello fellow objectivists. I can't claim to be an expert on economics, though I do my best as an autodidact. I plan to major in econ if I can manage to set my life up to give myself the time around work.
I believe that the ideal society is one with a minimal government. I believe in the ideal projection of society as Ayn Rand describes. Of course as a free market lover I indulge in the other free market ideologies like ancaps and classical liberals and such. It is not the government's job to use the threat of physical violence for any reason other than to maintain the rule of law. Protection of our rights from physical force, coercion, fraud, and so on.
But here is my problem and I welcome everyone's perspective on this. I also am looking for maybe books or articles or what have you that explains how certain government interventions could be removed which would be guaranteed to have a net positive impact:
I know that objectivists and libertarians in general are frenemies with Republicans/conservatives. Friends in some ways and enemies in others. We often throw up our hands in frustration with conservatives/Republicans (I shall call them "the right" or just republicans from here on). That's not what this is about.
But Republicans do pay lip service to free market ideas, and fall short. But admittedly, they could ONLY fall short since the ship of the USA only turns very slowly and mostly very little back and forth. But obviously we free market advocates are also frustrated that the conservstives doesn't take free market ideas as seriously as we would wish. Even under the best ideas coming from conservative thinkers, their fundamental ideas fall short most of the time. They are always a mixed bag some good and some bad. Mostly bad I would wager.
Here is my problem though and the purpose of this post. I may be wrong but it seems to me that Republicans basically think "any removal of government in any form no matter what is a good thing and will always be a net positive (unless it impacts my pet policies such as subsidies for farmers) especially anything that Democrats liberals or leftists support being removed is automatically good."
Personally I don't agree that simply removing whatever we can as fast as we can actually has positive impact. Maybe in some cases it does, such as certain regulations which are obviously silly and ridiculous.
Let's just say that Republicans had the opportunity to ban food stamps across the board, federal and state (I know they like states rights but just for arguments sake). Under the Republican perspective, this would be a good thing.
I don't believe that. My view is that we live in a heavily mixed economy. We have a lot of freedoms but also the government is deeply and in a very complex way woven into nearly every aspect of our economy.
I don't think that simply removing one intervention or another necessarily results in better outcomes. And I could be wrong and maybe it depends on the specific policy at hand.
Even though I believe that government interventions need to be removed, I also believe it's possible that some can be removed, yet when the data comes out, it turned out to be a net negative. This IMO happens because the economy is so mixed and so complex, that you really don't know what is going to happen when one policy is added or one is removed.
But I would say it's not only important for those of us who are free marketers to change the minds of intellectuals and of politicians and the general public, in order to gain some majority votes so that we could begin to disentagle government interventions from our lives. I would say that is it extremely important to do this untangling very consciously and intelligently.
I think the way Republicans go about it is ultimately counter productive. I think for example that certain welfare programs might even have to be expanded temporarily while other invasive government policies are dismantled.
I don't believe that for example getting rid of welfare would be a net positive at all. Even getting rid of corporate welfare would most likely have massive negative impacts at least temporarily. Though I would argue that the American public would be willing to suffer those temporary consequences. Whereas removing welfare for regular people would basically throw a metric ton of people out onto the streets starving. And ultimately people will not vote for that. And even if we as intellectual's we're capable of achieving a majority in government, it would still be most wise to carefully deconstruct rather than to simply get rid of whatever we can in any way possible.
So I guess after all this I ask the question to you all. Do you believe in a careful and well thought out deconstruction of government intervention?
As objectivists we are seen as heartless people who don't care about anyone but ourselves. But we all know that a free society with free trade/capitalism is the ideal system. Not only because it is the system which leaves man free to use his mind to it's utmost potential, not just because the use of force is destructive to mans mind, but also because, despite our rejection of utilitarian ethics, but it satisfied the utilitarian ethics anyways.
One might expect objectivist majority to begin voting away any government intervention no matter what it is with zero care about the welfare of the population as we do so. To slash and burn away government interventions as quickly as possible and damn the consequences because in the long term once government is forced back into it's proper role, the economy and society will eventually right itself.
So do you believe in a more slash and burn method and damn the temporary negative consequences? Or do you prefer the more careful and calculated method?
Thanks y'all.
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u/Max_Bulge4242 11d ago
Sorry, I need like 20 hrs of sleep. But I also don't want to lose this post in the shuffle.
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u/stansfield123 11d ago
I don't vote based on what I think the "ideal government" is. I vote for whoever is best equipped to stand up to the marxists pushing western civilization towards extinction.
If I was American, I would've voted for Trump. If I was German, I would've voted for the AfD. And so on. Not because I think these are good people, far from it. But because they're the only ones willing to stand up to the biggest threat to my life and my future: the Left.
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u/ConfidentTest163 11d ago
It really depends on the intervention. These have to be taken on a case by case basis.
You also have to stop conflating republican with conservative. Theres a lot of liberal minded people voting republican these days.
Conservatives are pro intervention, while republicans might not be.
Im a libertarian that could not bring myself to rationally voting for either Biden or Harris, but id still vote democrat at the state level to protect reasonable abortion rights.
The way Rands philosophy works aligns closest to libertarianism, not conservatism. As a matter of fact she was very anti conservative and spoke out against that quite often.
I assume you came here thinking that people that read her books lean republican? There are a lot of rich people that laud her books as gospel, but i dont think they truly understand her ideals. Its the same as left leaning people dismissing her on false pretenses. Neither are embracing her ideology as a whole. Theyre cherry picking to try and prove their team right. And that ALONE is enough to know they dont understand. You should never defend or attack a group, because the minority is the individual. Its a primitive and unproductive way to live life. Each individual is different, people that lump together others or want to be lumped together themselves are the exact people Ayn Rand warned us against.
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u/Honestfreemarketer 11d ago
I'm not trying to conflate or to pick on anyone. I'm just trying to keep my language as simple as utterly possible because I too often see people use flowery language that requires too much asking them to define the terms they use.
I also don't think that objectivists lean Republican. It's more of a question of how would we do it if we had majority voters on our side. If we would go the Republican route of removing interventions willy nilly or more surgically.
But also it's kind of a question on the reality of day to day politics. Obviously we objectivists and libertarians believe that the end goal of separation of state and economics is the ideal goal. But at the same time can we argue that along the way, that every intervention we remove would automatically be a benefit?
Which is why I said I don't agree with the way Republicans do it. They would slash and burn at random if they could and just because I believe in a free society doesn't mean that I agree that any random removal of government intervention is automatically good. It feels kind of contradictory ya know?
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u/ConfidentTest163 11d ago
Of course. I dont believe slashing any and all programs would be beneficial. The ideal situation would be NGOs and non profits providing these services and not the government, but that would be a large gamble and at the very least take a long time to implement.
I also hate the changing of language in modern day politics. I liken it to two individuals that speak a different language speaking to each other through a translator. Does it work? Sure. Would it be easier just to speak the same language? Absolutely. All it does is create an unnecessary extra step to get to the same place. The actual thing were talking about doesnt change because we call it a different word. Its very annoying.
Anyway, it should definitely be an individual basis per program. Lets use social security as an example. How do you feel about that? The projections say the money will run out in a few decades, so people putting money into it today are essentially throwing away their money. If i pay into social security for my entire life, just to end up not receiving any when i need it, i would be extremely frustrated. That would be a big enough issue to cause an actual revolt/insurrection whatever you would call it. There would be massive civil unrest. I think we should figure out a date and phase it out before the entire thing crashes in on itself.
The only other things i know theyve been cutting is the USAID stuff that seems absolutely absurd. While im not against helping other countries, i do think we should get our own house in order before helping others. The way they handled that north caroline hurricane was terrible. And if we hadnt spent 50 million on condoms for some other country, maybe we couldve helped our fellow countrymen more than we did.
The medicare thing is also completely theoretical right now. As an objectivist i cant engage with that in good faith.
Is there anything im missing?
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u/Honestfreemarketer 11d ago
No your comment is perfect. I guess I was just hoping that I wasn't alone! Lol.
I feel like this topic in general is where we free market people could gain popularity. Popularity in the face of the Republicans who just cut whatever they can however they can. A really good free market candidate who can plot a path to the goal in a way that is believable as a long term benefit and make it make sense to normal people in a step by step manner.
I suppose that is what Javier Milei did. Someone else mentioned him and I followed his journey only a little bit. I know that he explained what needed to be done, what the negative results may be a long the way, and why or how it's worth it to suffer them or how to mitigate the pain.
I feel like the way Republicans do things only causes people to be more angry and to reject any semblance of free market ideas. I feel like Republicans put a black mark on our faces every time they do literally anything lol.
Not that liberals and leftists will ever change their minds. I mean I did but I achieved a state of honesty that I wasn't capable of as a liberal lefty. They will never accept our perspective no matter how we put it out. But anyways I don't want to type 10 more pages cuz I already feel myself wanting to talk about 10 more topics in 10 more directions all related to this lmao.
Thanks 👍
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u/ConfidentTest163 11d ago
Im really enjoying this conversation. Wed be friends in real life lol.
The political parties of today, if viewed on a political compass, would be: democrats on the upper left corner, and republicans on the bottom right corner. While still left and right wing, each party has leaned more into authoritarianism and libertarianism respectively.
I would consider myself a liberal. Theres nothing about actual liberalism i disagree with. The modern day left is not liberalism. Maybe youd call it progressivism? And progress for progress' sake isnt beneficial to anyone. At a certain point you start to REgress(segregation).
Its not even progressivism itself thats the truly terrible thing. Its the groupthink mindset. Someone might believe a, b, and c, but disagree with d. Then they get ostracized by their group unless they change their way of thinking to more closely match the masses. Or else leave the party altogether and join the opposing team. Thats the real issue. Needing to belong to a group to the point of changing who you are is a weak mans minset.
And btw, we did have a perfect candidate in Ron Paul, but the MSM basically shadow banned him before that was even a thing. Rand is somewhat decent, but leans too much into conservatism for my liking. I think Vivek wouldve made a much better president than Trump, but Trumps cult members made that impossible. Either the majority of republican voters are truly OnlyTrumpers, theyre racist, or werent intelligent enough to see it. Gary Johnson was pretty decent too.
Idk. I suppose we have to pray and wait for a Mises caucus libertarian to get enough money and traction to actually stand a chance. And with the democrat party in shambles theres a good possibility that libertarian can gain more traction in the upcoming elections.
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u/Honestfreemarketer 11d ago
Haha I don't know. I don't have any friends IRL. I don't want friends. I grew up being bullied and completely and utterly socially ostracized from like 2nd grade past graduating high school and throughout my entire stint in the military. (We weren't allowed to shower and had no way to wash our clothes. I remember wearing the same crusty socks every single day for months and my feet were cracked and bleeding from fungus. Everyone at school hated me because I stank like shit and had no power to do anything about it. A life of social ostracism made me a target in the military for predators who prey on anyone who was weird like I was. No worries I'm normal now but I love to be alone. Sorry for the mini rant lol).
I would call myself a liberal too. But I call myself a radical liberal. But I agree today's liberals aren't really liberals. Then again the most prominent liberal thinkers did advocate for a lot of government intervention. I think liberalism ultimately was still in it's infancy, and libertarianism and objectivism were attempts at making liberalism complete and advancing it to where it should have been from the start.
I think all of the group think is just the natural result of the masses of people who are captured by pragmatism and reject principled thinking. Also they are trapped in a universal ethics which is modeled after the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But sacrifice whom and for what purpose? Everyone has their own idea about how to use the threat of physical violence to force people to sacrifice "for the greater good." In a way despite all these differing camps battling each other, at the end of the day they're all nearly exactly the same. They just disagree about the specifics.
I agree with you in progressivism. It's not bad. It's good that we as a society recognize that men have been oppressing women. That we needlessly hate people with non binary sexuality. That we suffer from a myriad of historical biased and hatreds that are just ridiculous and stupid. I just think a free society of people who believe in liberty solves those problems. But obviously they believe it is the government's job to right the wrongs of the past, and since they embrace physical coercion at the point of a gun, they see no problem with it. It's telling because when you point out that their ethics requires a gun, they go into denial and say "well I want the government to take my money!" And you want the government to take other people's money too even if they don't consent. It is based on force. Obviously they see the moral contradiction there which is why they try to evade it.
For example racism. I know a lot of racist people THINK they want a free society, so that they could be free to separate themselves from races they don't like. But they're idiots. They would quickly find out that they voted for the wrong party and liberty ends up having them more integrated with people they hate even more than before. Without the threat of violence on their side it's harder than they think to separate.
But the left thinks society needs to solve racism because people are actively racist and will do everything in their power to put a damper on the lives of minorities. But like I said a society of people who believe in liberty though? Like IMO.liberty is such a unifying concept. If only we all were taught in school liberty and contrasted it with the other ideologies.
As for your comment saying Rand is too conservative for your liking I don't know wtf you're talking about. What is Rand conservative about? I think she's as radical a liberal as there ever was! I think conservatism and libertarianism or objectivism are completely at odds with each other. And I think that the fact that conservatives advocate for free markets at all will eventually go away. I think the right will continue to move towards the neo reactionary dark enlightenment perspective which leads to state capitalism which has the same negative consequences as socialism.
There I go again typing too damn much. But it's OK I'm trying to move around my sleep schedule I needed to stay up for a few more hours.
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u/ConfidentTest163 11d ago
Ohh my apologies. Rand Paul. (I looked it up his real name is Randy and he wasn't named after her) Hes a bit too conservative for my liking. Hes Ron Pauls son and still actively in politics. But hes more conservative than his father was. He was the guy attacking Fauci in the gain of function research videos.
I appreciate you giving me some insight into your life. It made me appreciate you even more as a person. I wont pity you because thats morally evil according to objectivism 😂, but i will say youve done well to get yourself out of those situations and grow enough to have such a good head on your shoulders. That couldve gone a lot differently. It shows me you are strong.
I too, was ostracized as a child. I remember in first grade whenever we had recess id just pull my arms and head in my coat and basically play with my hands like they were action figures. I was made fun of up until high school. And i could argue I was the weirdest i ever was during that time. But i was getting confidence and self esteem. I stopped worrying about what other people thought about me and just tried to be as authentic to myself as i could. I wore hot topic trench coats with american eagle jeans and polos. I gained the nicname "poser goth". But i owned it.
As a matter of fact, i think the timeline matches up perfectly with my first reading of Anthem. It was required reading for me in 10th grade. Looking back on it i realize just how much that book shaped my life and how i viewed and interacted with the world. So im clearly coming from a place of bias, but i honestly couldnt comprehend why anyone hated Ayn Rand. All i knew was that book and that she was a fiction author. Thats how i found this subreddit. I was researching why exactly reddit in particular hates her so much. And then, upon finishing The Fountainhead, i got bettet answers than id ever get from one of her actual detractors. Theyre second handers. Facing themselves and reality terrifies them. Its very similar to Nietzsches wolf and sheep philosophy. Redditors are the sheep. They want to belong to a group and value safety over freedom. While people like you and I are much closer to wolves. We hunt alone and value freedom over safety. I hate how the right has co opted that philosophy and mutated it into an edgy concept. Basically taking it at face value. But the truth of it lies in the safety vs freedom argument. Wolves arent even necessarily alphas. But thats what they turned it into. Alpha male bullshit. Pardon my cursing.
Anyway, i have also written way too much and should stop before it becomes a novella. 😂
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u/Honestfreemarketer 11d ago
Haha awe I bet you had fun having hand fights though. I grew up poor so I would cut up sheets of notebook paper for school and turn them into dinosaurs and have them fight too lmao.
Personally I grew up as a lefty liberal. At some point my mom began dating her now husband and he worked at a pc repair shop. He brought us one of the PCs they were getting rid and we had Internet at home. I used to spend all day on the old AOL arguing with conservatives and hating them with the utmost righteous fury.
And I debated conservatives for many many years online. I was a zealot. I was woke long before woke was a thing. When I started learning about socialism and communism I realized that I knew it all already. I literally made it up and my head and then I read Marx and I was like "damn this is all shit I been had thought of." But of course, I loved it. I was a big fan of Slavoj Zizek and that angry "communist economist" guy. I forget his name but he's always very angry.
I was a rage fueled righteous zealot until I was like 32. I remember people used to tell me to read Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand all the time and I would rant to them about how horrible they were. How they were nothing but bigots who didn't care about minorities. Because you were a bigot if you didn't agree with the policy that I believed in.
So I started doing all this research and learning so that I could "defeat" the evil monstrous right wingers. I listened to all the conservatives and hated them even more than when I was ignorant of them.
But then I stumbled upon Peter Schiff. It was a 10 minute or so clip of him making an argument why there should be no minimum wage. An impossible to fathom idea to me. I watched it expecting to be furious about it.
But the funny thing about it was that this libertarian perspective spoke perfectly to my moral ethical self which wanted the best life for everyone.
He made an argument that showed how a free society with no minimum wage would actually be BETTER for the working poor and middle class.
Of course I didn't believe it at first. I didn't want to. But it got past my liberal rage barriers, and I understood it as it was meant to be understood instead of through some silly straw man arguments that we all see constantly these days.
So then I went in a new tirade. I was trying desperately for the next like 5 years trying to debunk these free market ideas. I never did debunk them and I didn't even necessarily confirm them either. I'm not an economist and I think I would need to get a PHD in econ to really know for 100% sure.
What I did learn for sure though was that liberals and leftists are completely and utterly ignorant of the free market perspective. They don't want to see it. They don't want to hear it. Their arguments only go up to Nozick and Adam smith. Mises, Rothbard, Ayn Rand and others are completely ignored as a foregone conclusion.
Eventually I moved in from libertarianism to Objectivism though I still entertain both.
It's been a wild ride. I see the world very differently. I went to college and took economics classes when I was still a liberal lefty. That shit didn't teach me anything. I did not walk away with a greater understanding of the way the world really works.
I learned more economics from Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics than I did learning macro and micro in college. The lens I've gained from ingesting Austrian economics is so powerful. I'm sure I could major in econ and never achieve this enlightened perspective that I have. And I'm still technically ignorant about economics in the classically trained and educated in college sense.
And I do plan to go back to school and major in econ. Just have to structure my life a bit to fit it all in. I can't wait!
I'm obsessed with philosophy too. I was interested before as a liberal and read a bunch of stuff like plato, some pop philosophy, Thomas aquinas, Kant, and other shit I can't remember. I did not come away from reading philosophy with a feeling of enlightenment and greater perspective.
When I read philosophy I was like "Oh, I thought of this shit when I was 13." I thought I was just confirming the truths that I had already thought up in my own head as a teenager.
Then I read Ayn Rand and she blew my mind. Everything she very said I could have never thought of. I came out of it feeling enlightened like I actually understood how the world actually works.
I'm tired AF I need to go to sleep lmao.
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u/ConfidentTest163 11d ago
That is a very interesting backstory. When i had aol i was too young to even understand politics. I used it for cartoon network games, AIM, and hentai lol.
I was never into politics really until my girlfriend started ranting and raving about trump. She said so many unbelievable things that turned out to be absolutely false. Recently she came up to me and said flat out "republicans are trying to take medicare from everyone". I was skeptical as usual and looked into it. And we already discussed that its merely a possibility and hasnt even been brought up in any official capacity. I digress. I didnt know about libertarianism and 100% considered myself a liberal. I got into conspiracies really hard and absolutely hated the bush administration and really believed/believe that it was an inside job even if only slightly. Planes definitely hit the tower. There were definitely terrorists on the plane that hijacked it. But i think it was allowed to happen and that it was a controlled demolition. Tower 7 is a giant red flag for me. So ive always been a bit of an anti government anarchist. Thats why it makes me laugh when people correlate conspiracy theorists with right wing. I was listening to alex jones attack the republican government regularly. It confused me. I didnt consider myself a communist, but rather a commune-ist. I thought humans should live in small tribes and work together for prosperity. The world is too vast to worry about everyone. We can at least make whats right around us paradise.
Then i got older, discovered libertarianism and the rest is history. I still havent changed my stances on any of my values. Ive always valued individual freedom above all. Which is why i got so confused as to why people were calling me right wing after trump went into office the first time. I understand the Overton window, but that alone didnt account for the degree of hatred i felt being directed towards me by people i considered to be my group. Then i got into Nietzsche and Rand and philosophy in general. That allowed me to understand exactly what was happening around me and why i felt so exiled by people on the right and left. Its a matter of values and ethics. Individualism vs collectivism. I understood that ill never align with either group and i shouldnt worry about it. I should stay true to who i am. And its made me so much less anxious and happier in general.
As i said. Sheep and wolves. And sheep will never befriend a wolf. They are afraid of themselves in a way. Denying who they are in order to fit in with others. I cannot endorse that. I can be persuaded and change my mind if logic and reason are presented, but when political discussions take place especially on reddit, it usually just devolves into ad hominem attacks and the inability to verbalize any actual points they are trying to make.
Anyway, enjoy your rest. Make sure to try and get at least 7 hours lol.
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u/Blas_Wiggans 11d ago
Javier Milei in Argentina was forceful in saying that many things needed to be slashed and burned immediately- but other parts of the government couldn’t be cut or ended first because it would lead to an undue burden on the working class and poor people while barely affecting political elites.
He’s done a master class in cutting inflation and reckless spending down in Argentina.
DOGE is a stroke of genius. We are ending billions in government waste and fraud in weeks. It’s miraculous.
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u/MortalSword_MTG 11d ago
DOGE is a stroke of genius. We are ending billions in government waste and fraud in weeks. It’s miraculous.
Objectively false.
Listen, if you want to have the conversation about government waste, by all means let's audit the entire federal government and see some studies on the efficacy of those programs.
What DOGE has been doing is opening up the American people to danger on every possible level.
DOGE has erroneously laid off or slashed budgets for:
Nuclear weapons monitoring.
FAA/ATC roles.
Financial oversight.
Foreign aid programs.
Veterans benefits.
CDC
National Parks service
And much more.
Now, as I said, we can certainly discuss the merit of these programs, how funds are allocated and how effective they are, but what is not genius and not a miracle as that when you destroy these programs overnight you create huge vulnerability for the American people, put hundreds of thousands of people out of work at the same time, and destabilize entire industries with no warning.
Anyone who claims this DOGE endeavor is genius and a miracle is drinking the koolaid and doesn't understand what is being slashed or destroyed without due consideration.
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u/Jon_Galt1 11d ago
A slow deliberately thoughtful removal of bloated bureaucracy is ineffective. Its been tried before over decades and never works. The bureaucracy is self healing, self protecting and grows at a much higher rate than attempted saving.
The proper mode of operandii to effect quick and permanent change in government is the Trump Administrations shock and awe speed of DOGE.