Randian altruism — an impure byproduct?

The most frequent criticism I hear about libertarians is that they are selfish. Cruel, even. The kind of “rugged individualists” who would leave people to sink or swim. Literally. For example, not wanting to fence off, hire lifeguards, armed goons, and a bureaucratic staff to police a river or natural lake (and of course raising people’s taxes to do it) is seen as morally callused. Libertarians are portrayed as the kind of people who would shrug their shoulders and walk away if they saw a small child drowning.

Not only is this bullshit, but to libertarians it is insulting.

But the reason the arguments are so hopeless is because of the cognitive disconnect over the role of government. Statists see intrusive nanny state government as a benevolent “us” while libertarians tend to see  it as a malevolent “them.” Helping versus hurting. Libertarians believe in the principle of “FIRST, DO NO HARM.”  Statists and communitarians believe in the principle of “PREVENT PEOPLE FROM HARMING THEMSELVES,” while libertarians see such prevention as usually being more harmful than the harm it is intended to prevent. (And of course, when people do help themselves, we do not hear about it because self-help almost always goes unreported.)

Ironically, libertarians are very altruistic when it comes to protecting people from the power of the state-enforced altruism.

I’ve been too busy lately, but in a post I just saw today,  Glenn Reynolds linked this “QUESTION ABOUT LIBERTARIANS”:

They’re said to only care about themselves. So why do they toil for other people’s freedom?

Author Conor Friedersdorf, while not a libertarian, nonetheless defends libertarians against the charge that they’re only driven by naked self interest:

Over at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, recent cases have been fought on behalf of DC tour guides, Florida interior designers, Louisiana casket makers, Nashville limo drivers, and Utah hair braiders keen on practicing their chosen professions without having to obtain a professional license. I fail to see how IJ lawyers or their libertarian donors benefit personally from lowering barriers to entry for far flung, mostly working class clients.

Meanwhile at the Cato Institute, David Boaz is trying to end the war on drugs, my friend Julian Sanchez is paid to explain how the federal government is using its power in the war on terrorism to expand the surveillance state, and his colleague Gene Healy is a critic of executive overreach and editor of a 2004 book on the federal government’s over-criminalization of American life.

There are a lot of libertarians working on issues that could be construed as self-interested – lowering taxes is the obvious example. There are even some hard core Ayn Rand sycophants who embrace little more than themselves. Find that repugnant? Have at ’em! But you’re just misinformed if you think that libertarians as a whole care for nothing more than their self-interest. Countless libertarians are working to advance the freedom and fair-treatment of people other than themselves. Often they do so more consistently than some of the liberals who sneer at them.

Read it all. I am the first to admit that wanting the government to leave people alone is also selfish, because people who want to leave people alone also want to be left alone themselves.

But considering the horrors that have been inflicted on people by government in the past 100 years, what if getting the government off people’s backs and out of their lives is the highest form of altruism?

What would the evil Ayn Rand say?

Don’t ask me. I’m too callused to care.


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

3 responses to “Randian altruism — an impure byproduct?”

  1. Frank Avatar
    Frank

    Rand went over the top on this subject. At the same time a lot of what she advocated only makes sense. A prime example is seeing a stranger drowning, risking your life needlessly in an attempt to save him, and the both of you dying in the process.
    The pure altruist will reflexively praise such an act as selfless heroism. Rand would condemn it as evil because the stranger’s life couldn’t possibly be more important, valuable to YOU, than your own life.
    The only time such an act would make sense to Rand would be in the event the person drowning is of supreme value to the risk taker. For instance, a husband or wife, a child, or even a parent. In such a case Rand would say the thought of losing someone that means so much to you would override the risk of death. That would also apply to risking your life for your country, or for your brother in arms.

    It all depends on your definition of altruism. I believe Rand was very misunderstood on this, both by her followers as well as her enemies.

  2. Joseph Hertzlinger Avatar

    Th really infuriating part is that a leftist, when shown examples of libertarians who violate that stereotype, will regard it as an argument against libertarianism.

  3. Frank Avatar
    Frank

    They want to make out that libertarians are hypocrites by acting in what they perceive to be a contradiction to self first, others last.
    I think it’s very selfish to work for a free society. It would benefit me, that is my motive, and I don’t really care that others would benefit. I simply want to have them leave me the fuck alone.