[MD] Altruism

[Ben Golden]

[Ham]
I'm not an advocate of morality systems per se.  I believe in a meritocracy 
where people are rewarded for excellence and where "goodness" is not reduced 
to a nominal level of acceptance.

[Ben]
I don't understand.  Doesn't excellence=quality=morality?  How you can have 
a meritocracy without a morality system?  You need to have some means by 
which to value things.

[Ham]
I am a great admirer of Ayn Rand as an advocate for Individualism and Free 
Enterprise.  However, Rand is no metaphysicist, and her energies didn't run 
in that direction.

[Ben]
I agree; I thought Rand's metaphysical arguments consisted mainly of 
restating her position over and over and making logical leaps, ie
1.  A is A
2.  :. Man has a right to property

I agree with most of Rand's conclusions, but I ground them in different 
reasoning.

[Ham]
The best piece I've seen on moral relativism is by a Unitarian minister 
named Steve Edington.

[Ben]
I read Edington's piece.  I think the debate between moral relativism and 
moral absolutism stems from subject-object metaphysics and can be explained 
away by MoQ.  Static social patterns of morality are somewhat relative; 
different cultures, different people hold different things to be moral.  But 
these patterns are nonetheless derived in part from dynamic quality, which 
is absolute, even if not known or definable.  This explains why cultures and 
individuals have differences but also have similarities in their moral 
codes.  The differences exist because static morality patterns develop in 
part randomly.  The similarities exist because static morality patterns 
develop in part due to an absolute--dynamic quality.

[Ham]
Helping make someone's life better is not altruism but compassion. 
Contributing to a charity of your choice is an act of generosity.  But 
taxation to pay for the welfare of a class of people without your approval 
is forced altruism (otherwise known as extortion.)

[Ben]
By the definition of altruism I offered (maximize net utility), any time a 
person acts counter to their own personal interests so as to help those of 
someone else, they're acting altruistically.  Generosity and compassion are 
altruistic by definition.  Now if your objection is only to forced altruism, 
not to altruism itself, we're in pretty good shape.

[Ham]
"Free" public education in the US has not achieved results comparable with 
other developed nations

[Ben]
I agree.  However, the fact the other developed nations also offer free 
public education does much to undercut your position that free public 
education is a bad thing.  Since altruism is the point of contention here, 
I'll point out that the altruistic part of free public education is the free 
part and not the public part.  I generally prefer free/subsidized private 
education to free public education.


[Ham, repeated by Platt]
1. Because man values his own life above all, it is the nature of man to be 
selfish.  Therefore selfishness cannot be immoral.

[Ben (trying again)]
Platt directed to me an article that I read, but which didn't answer my 
question.  Allow me to pose this scenario:

1.  John robs his neighbor's home.
2.  John is acting selfishly.
3.  John is acting immorally.
4.  Selfishness cannot be immoral.

Is one of these statements incorrect?  Are they logically consistent?

[Platt]
Charity is OK by me in the case of natural disaster to help people get back 
on their feet. But,
there is overwhelming evidence that long-term public altruism creates 
dependency and anti-social behavior.  So we agree that an "altruistic" 
public policy is largely ineffective, like the War on Poverty which failed 
utterly at humongous cost to us taxpayers.

[Ben]
You seem to, like Ham, be objecting not to altruism but to forced altruism.  
I'm assuming that when the Gates Foundation spends money installing 
computers in public libraries and investing in research to cure diseases, 
you don't condemn this obviously altruistic behavior.  I agree there are 
some public policies that are launched in the name of altruism that create 
dependencies/welfare traps.  However, I think there are also altruistic 
public policies that don't create these problems.

[Platt]
To give a hungry man a fish is altruism. To teach him to fish is 
enlightenment.

[Ben]
They're both altruism.  If I spend my time teaching someone to fish when I 
could be fishing for myself, I'm putting someone else's interests above my 
own.

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