Saturday, January 9, 2010

Erik Naggum Email

Erik Naggum is eulogised by his peer as a thoughtful Randite.

Excellent article, I recommend you read it in full. I often criticize texts like these, though, not because I disagree with them greatly, but rather because I agree with them so much that I can efficiently present my thoughts as small differences from their abundance.

Appropriately, I want to compliment his inference that collectivism may exists to hedge risk and redistribute the cost of reproduction. I also agree with his analysis of in vivo freedom.

However, I take issue with his hypothetical society where, to paraphrase, viable reproductive individuals are identified and allowed to procreate while those who cherish freedom and production are allowed their liberties - but are, by their own acts, precluded from mating.

I find this absurd and wrong-headed. It is another version of collectivist central planning - which I admit I am also addicted to. Imo, it is in fact the ideology driving the problems he describes in the capitalist/socialist hybrid implemented in the US.

The problem is the lack of faith in liberty and capitalism. I assert that there are individuals who will not reproduce unless they are free, though this may lie on a continuum (with less freedom they will be less likely to reproduce). The more they perceive that they are slaves, that big brother is watching them, that they are the subjects of the nanny state; the more likely they will put off creating a family. As they perceive that their productive capacity is being stolen to nourish their enemy, they rebel. These individuals, through their desire to be independent and free, will not reproduce until they have savings which cannot be stolen - by collectivists or comparatively innocent common thieves. By artificially selecting individuals to mate, you provide no disincentive for genes, behaviour, or values which are not self sustaining - and the system will eventually collapse.

Therefore, any society that does not pursue (and obtain) freedom and capitalism, will, to various degrees, be a society that nurtures evil (in the form of leeches, thieves, and incompetents).

Erik mentions the problem of the cost born by the productive to reduce the burden of the unproductive - with a nod toward the cost/benefit of tolerance. This is the same problem between virus (leech) and host. Both the host and virus want to survive. A virus that kills its host quickly will not last. A virus that causes many problems for its host will (eventually, through evolution) force its host population to develop immunity. Benign viruses rarely achieve attention by the host, which naturally devotes resources to more valuable pursuits. However, there are viruses like HIV whose presence may not be obvious early on, but eventually end the host. This becomes a complex (but accurate) analogy, and I won't pursue every likeness here.

Collectivism in its various forms is like HIV. Listen to those who survived it by fleeing soviet Russia and communist China. They are our immune system. Ayn Rand was one. There are many, many more. They fled these systems because those systems were killing them. Eventually these systems failed. We are realizing the first symptoms of this disease - we need to protect ourselves and loved ones from becoming infected.

Final thoughts: kidneys that call the liver useless and seek to eliminate it will perish. Fat cells are a liability until famine hits.

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