Moral Relativism and Universal Standards
14 Nov 2022, 10:18 am
AngelRho wrote:
shlaifu wrote:
AngelRho wrote:
Stealing is objectively evil not simply because you are taking what you did not work for, but because your creative effort did not go into taking possession of it, you destroy the value of it. The victim is at a loss, but the thief gains nothing. Theft is irrational, always. And so the destruction of value which extends to the money you get for selling stolen property affects ALL individuals, not solely the individual victim. The loss of the value of money harms all productive individuals. Theft is objectively evil because it is destructive to the value of individual creative work.
So... Killing can ne justified and is not necessarily "murder", the bad kind of killing.
But stealing is always bad, because the resale value drops.
Which presupposes two things: that I'm stealimg for the resale value, and that the resale value actually drops.
So, when I steal bread because I'm hungry, that's not vovered by this set of morals, and when I steal money - a fungible item whose value is not deyermined by the work that went into its production - it's fine?
No wonder Ayn Rand stopped writing and picked up stamp collecting...
It has nothing to do with resale value. Stolen items are not created by thieves. They are not bought by money thieves made by their own creative effort. The items themselves possess no value.
Anything worth having is worth working for. I think it would be fun to own a Rolls-Royce. If I were earning enough money to justify buying one, I probably would. But as it is I don’t. And with my income, there are lots of things that are worth more to me than having a Rolls, like paying for a house and feeding my family. If I were to steal a Rolls, it amounts to taking something I have no interest in building or working for.
It is irrational to desire that which has no worth. Stealing is immoral that reason among others. It has to be protected against because 1) it destroys the value of the stolen item, 2) it destroys the value of money gained from selling worthless, stolen property, 3) it directly harms the individual victim of theft, 4) it harms all individuals when money is devalued.
Recovery of stolen assets, OTOH, is plenty acceptable—robbing thieves, basically. Repossession and bounty hunting are noble professions in my opinion because it is restorative justice and holds criminals accountable when governments lack the means and ability to do it themselves.
In Objectivism, collectivist governments are viewed as thieves. Government takes a Robin Hood role by taking from the rich and redistributing wealth to the needy. Towards the end of her life, Ayn Rand initially refused to accept social security and Medicare on the basis of it being stolen money. She only accepted welfare benefits once she understood that money had already been taken in taxes she’s payed. Basically, they government was just giving back what was already rightfully hers in the first place. The irrationality of it is not lost on the Objectivist. If you’re just going to give it back, why take it in the first place? Why not give individuals the power to protect retirement money or invest it more efficiently? If they refuse to prepare for end of life concerns, that’s their fault. In any case, taking what is not yours is objectively immoral.
This is fact-free Marxist nonsense. The idea that stealing an item strips it of value and causes inflation is just plain wrong. Sometimes it is harder to resell stolen goods because of the risk of criminal penalties, but that doesn’t apply to all instances of theft.
Let’s imagine I’m at a car boot sale. I see something that I immediately recognise as having a very high resale value. I ask the trader how much they want, and they say “oh, that’s useless crap, you can have it for free as long as you take it right now”. I then sell the item for a large amount of money.
Now let’s imagine instead of asking, I just steal the item.
It’s only possible to talk about “value” if you believe in some weird supernatural form of value that is completely detached from the market. You’ve talked about value arising from the creative work put into obtaining it. That is, of course, nonsense, and an evil idea that led to the deaths of millions of people under Comrades Stalin and Mao. Value comes from supply and demand, not from labour.
The more I learn about Objectivism, the more its similarities to Stalinism become apparent. Both are based on a cult of personality. Both claim to be empirical, but actually prioritise ideological purity ahead of reason and evidence, and are unable to provide evidence in support of their claims. Both rely on pure hope and “boosterism” to overcome their factual deficiencies. Both characterise all dissent as morally flawed, and their own ideology as the one true way; neither believes there is anything to be learned from competing points of view. Both claim to be benevolent (Stalinism claims to be fighting for “class struggle”, Objectivism claims to be fighting for “freedom”), but actually twist those concepts out of recognition from their everyday meanings. Both collapse in abject failure and destruction whenever someone tries to implement their principles. Both seem to primarily appeal to upper-class teenagers, though with some older discontents thrown in. And both really hate liberalism, capitalism, the West, and US hegemony.
This is illustrative of how dogmatic ideologies tend to fail in comparison to moderate ones. “Moderate” on one hand and “dogmatic” or “extreme” on the other are not ideologies, but flavours of ideology. The moderate social democrat is prepared to agree with the conservative that revolution leads to unpredictable results. The moderate conservative is prepared to agree with the social democrat that a lot of social programmes actually do good in the world. Both those moderates are willing to compromise upon cold-headed examination of the evidence, putting them at odds with the dogmatist, the extremist, and the absolutist. They have their own set of values, and some things that they aren’t prepared to compromise on, but overall, an intelligent, moderate approach leads to better, more rounded decision making than trying to force the world to behave the way your ideology says it should.
