(April 21, 2012 at 8:33 am)mediamogul Wrote: The Tea-Party is certainly based upon a reading of Rand's Objectivism, granted a misreading, and the Bible. Rand no doubt would completely reject their ideological twist on her theories the same way that Marx stated "I am not a Marxist" after seeing how the Paris Commune butchered his writings. All the basics are there: significant reduction in government, de-regulation of business, "greed is good", the rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve to be poor, the histrionics about "big government control over people's lives",
My statement that Libertarianism is a theology (which is borrowed from Thom Hartmann) simply means it is believed by those who hold it's principles as an established system of belief though it has never been applied in practice. Many people believe in it as though it were completely rational, time-tested, and practically proven to work. I think it has never been applied in practice due to the fact that especially the laissez-faire capitalism and also removal of the safety net programs would generate a huge stratification of wealth and seriously decrease the quality of life for most citizens.
Also, laissez-faire capitalism has never been accepted or put into practice by an industrialized nation. Libertarianism calls for, essentially the elimination of government. Only the police, military, and legislative branch (but cut down to bare bones) would remain in terms of government. Most other services would be privatized. Rand's theories say basically the same thing. Objectivism is one of those things that works in theory but in practice would be disastrous. It is a complete misread of human nature, market forces and "natural order" of things.
Partially correct. While both Ayn Rand and laissez-faire capitalism call for complete separation of economics and government, Ayn Rand atleast acknowledges that it is impossible in the current scenario. The reason for that would be:
1. Certain services that the government currently provides would not be so easily privatized, such as roads, city infrastructure etc.
2. A source of revenue for maintaining the government would be required - which would automatically put it back in economics.
3. There can be practices is economics that can be coercive and therefore call for government involvement. This is a point that I think Ayn Rand missed.
These are the reasons why pure Laissez-Faire seems impossible, atleast currently. However, it has been adopted as an ideal in many scenarios, its principles have been applied and a great deal of progress has been observed in those cases. Its no miracle that the countries with lesser government involvement in economics boast of better quality of life. While pure Laissez-Faire has never existed, the concepts behind it (such as free-market) have been put into action and observed to work.
Your fear of stratification of wealth and worse living conditions for the poor springs from the incorrect assumption that the total wealth would remain constant. If the total wealth were to remain constant, any increase in wealth of one section of the society would necessarily come at the cost of another section. However, if the total wealth increases, then all the sections can get wealthier even if the wealth gap between them increases.
