6 ms·

By giving half their profit to charity, one could take them as implying that profit is bad, that they don't deserve everything they earned, and that they are ap

By giving half their profit to charity, one could take them as implying that profit is bad, that they don't deserve everything they earned, and that they are appeasing the irrational anti-capitalists (if not siding with them). I don't know anything about this particular case, but in general many businessmen are complicit in bad philosophy, and sometimes even pay to promote it. That's shameful and harmful. Business people trade for mutual benefit. That provides value to society even if they never give a dime to charity. And even if they do give a dime to charity, their actual business activities provide more value, both for themselves and others. Businessmen should be proud. You can find this sort of opinion in the Ayn Rand book _Why Businessmen Need Philosophy_. You might want to read it, and make some effort to reply to its arguments, before dismissing it as wrong enough to dismissively insult in passing.

paul 15y ago
My job is helping people start business, and I do it in large part because I think it's good for the world, so you don't need to preach to me on the benefits of business. The mistake being made by many here is concluding that since business can be good for the world, therefore everything that isn't a for-profit business must be a waste. Not all good things are profitable.
- javert 15y ago
  you don't need to preach to me on the benefits of business OK... fine. But if you aren't going to fully understand Ayn Rand's work, then you don't need to preach to us about how misguided you think it is. The whole point of discussions like this is to have an intellectual discussion. To dismiss people who disagree with you by accusing them of "preaching" (when they aren't) has no place on HN. (As I'm sure you well know.)
  - _delirium 15y ago
    I like to think I'm fairly familiar with Ayn Rand's work, though I'm by no means an expert. I'm a computer scientist, but my philosophy minor was supervised by one of the few tenured professors who specializes in Rand scholarship in academia (and he is a fan of hers). I don't really see this as far off, though. Rand really did believe that it was unethical to be altruistic. Not because it led to negative outcomes, or was inefficient, but because it was, in her view, inherently unethical to be altruistic. The altruistic sentiment was a character flaw at best. She did approve of philanthropy in some circumstances, such as foundations that were set up to advance their founders' views. But it had to be for reasons other than altruism, and it would ideally take into account whether the recipients were "worthy" of the help, not be Christian-style unconditional charity.
    - xenophanes 15y ago
      You neglect to mention why Rand opposed altruism and considered it inherently immoral: because it means putting other people above oneself and therefore self-sacrificing for others.
      - _delirium 15y ago
        That's true, but there isn't really much argument for that position in her work (certainly not argument I found convincing). It's almost assuming the consequent: you prove that putting your own good above collective good is moral because the alternative would be putting collective good above your own good. Well, yes, that's definitionally true. But what's wrong with putting collective good above any one individual's good (including your own)? Her answer wasn't the consequentialist one that Adam Smith and other market-economy defenders proposed: that self-interest produces the best overall outcome. It was instead somehow more metaphysical, that somehow self-interest is the highest good, and putting any other goods above one's own good is corrupting the greatest good. I see it as a kind of take off on Nietzsche's master-morality/slave-morality dichotomy, except, unlike Nietzsche, she ties it to the free market and commerce. (Nietzsche believed in great people putting their own self-development ahead of the masses, in the elitist sense that if you're better than everyone, you should focus on your own development first... but he considered business and money-making to be a dirty, mass occupation that in no way qualified as "great" or "elite".)
        javert 15y ago
        You clearly have no idea what you're talking about WRT Ayn Rand.
        xenophanes 15y ago
        She does provide various arguments. There's no shortage there. Whether you find them convincing is up to you but please don't mix that up with her not publishing stuff to argue her point. For example, not living in a second-handed way is a main theme of The Fountainhead, and that's closely related to the altruism issue. > Her answer wasn't the consequentialist one that Adam Smith and other market-economy defenders proposed: that self-interest produces the best overall outcome. Correct. One thing that might be helpful is to understand Rand's view on compromise. She said you can compromise on concretes when you agree on a principle, but you must never compromise your fundamental principles. For example, if you agree on the principle of trade, you can compromise (haggle) on the exact price or contract terms, and you're still both following a good principle and can both benefit. But you must never compromise between collectivism and individualism, capitalism and socialism, life and death, freedom and slavery, rationality and irrationality. Those sorts of compromises between opposite principles amount to sacrificing some good that one shouldn't give up, and allowing in some unacceptable evil. Nor should you compromise your values in order to get something that you don't value or value less. That isn't a reasonable compromise, it is surrendering your values and principles for the benefit of others. Given this sort of view of compromise, it's no good to ever compromise your own life, no good to ever sacrifice yourself. Anything that asks you to do that is evil. If there is a rational trade to make, then make the exchange and benefit, but don't sacrifice yourself for unspecified or vague future benefits which no one is accountable for providing to you.
cgag 15y ago
I don't see what's so wrong with implying that the might not deserve everything they earned, unless you also think people in poverty deserve to be where they are.
amirmc 15y ago
"By giving half their profit to charity, one could take them as implying that profit is bad..." How do you make this leap? It's utterly baffling to me. Giving something away doesn't imply that it was bad to have in the first place.
pmarca 15y ago
> By giving half their profit to charity, one could take them as implying that profit is bad, that they don't deserve everything they earned, and that they are appeasing the irrational anti-capitalists (if not siding with them). One could, but one would be wrong :-).
pmarca 15y ago
> You can find this sort of opinion in the Ayn Rand book _Why Businessmen Need Philosophy_. You might want to read it, and make some effort to reply to its arguments, before dismissing it as wrong enough to dismissively insult in passing. Like a lot of people here, I read Rand as a teenager. As a slightly older teenager, I concluded she was an extremist who I think would have hated living in the world that her philosophy would have led to had she been wholly successful (Hobbes' phrase "nasty, brutish, and short" comes to mind). The point about business transactions being mutually valuable and societally value-add is generally (although not always) true, in my mind, but that doesn't eliminate the need for either government or philanthropy if one wants to live in a civil society. But, to each her own...

paul 15y ago

My job is helping people start business, and I do it in large part because I think it's good for the world, so you don't need to preach to me on the benefits of business. The mistake being made by many here is concluding that since business can be good for the world, therefore everything that isn't a for-profit business must be a waste. Not all good things are profitable.

javert 15y ago
you don't need to preach to me on the benefits of business OK... fine. But if you aren't going to fully understand Ayn Rand's work, then you don't need to preach to us about how misguided you think it is. The whole point of discussions like this is to have an intellectual discussion. To dismiss people who disagree with you by accusing them of "preaching" (when they aren't) has no place on HN. (As I'm sure you well know.)
- _delirium 15y ago
  I like to think I'm fairly familiar with Ayn Rand's work, though I'm by no means an expert. I'm a computer scientist, but my philosophy minor was supervised by one of the few tenured professors who specializes in Rand scholarship in academia (and he is a fan of hers). I don't really see this as far off, though. Rand really did believe that it was unethical to be altruistic. Not because it led to negative outcomes, or was inefficient, but because it was, in her view, inherently unethical to be altruistic. The altruistic sentiment was a character flaw at best. She did approve of philanthropy in some circumstances, such as foundations that were set up to advance their founders' views. But it had to be for reasons other than altruism, and it would ideally take into account whether the recipients were "worthy" of the help, not be Christian-style unconditional charity.
  - xenophanes 15y ago
    You neglect to mention why Rand opposed altruism and considered it inherently immoral: because it means putting other people above oneself and therefore self-sacrificing for others.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      That's true, but there isn't really much argument for that position in her work (certainly not argument I found convincing). It's almost assuming the consequent: you prove that putting your own good above collective good is moral because the alternative would be putting collective good above your own good. Well, yes, that's definitionally true. But what's wrong with putting collective good above any one individual's good (including your own)? Her answer wasn't the consequentialist one that Adam Smith and other market-economy defenders proposed: that self-interest produces the best overall outcome. It was instead somehow more metaphysical, that somehow self-interest is the highest good, and putting any other goods above one's own good is corrupting the greatest good. I see it as a kind of take off on Nietzsche's master-morality/slave-morality dichotomy, except, unlike Nietzsche, she ties it to the free market and commerce. (Nietzsche believed in great people putting their own self-development ahead of the masses, in the elitist sense that if you're better than everyone, you should focus on your own development first... but he considered business and money-making to be a dirty, mass occupation that in no way qualified as "great" or "elite".)
      - javert 15y ago
        You clearly have no idea what you're talking about WRT Ayn Rand.
      - xenophanes 15y ago
        She does provide various arguments. There's no shortage there. Whether you find them convincing is up to you but please don't mix that up with her not publishing stuff to argue her point. For example, not living in a second-handed way is a main theme of The Fountainhead, and that's closely related to the altruism issue. > Her answer wasn't the consequentialist one that Adam Smith and other market-economy defenders proposed: that self-interest produces the best overall outcome. Correct. One thing that might be helpful is to understand Rand's view on compromise. She said you can compromise on concretes when you agree on a principle, but you must never compromise your fundamental principles. For example, if you agree on the principle of trade, you can compromise (haggle) on the exact price or contract terms, and you're still both following a good principle and can both benefit. But you must never compromise between collectivism and individualism, capitalism and socialism, life and death, freedom and slavery, rationality and irrationality. Those sorts of compromises between opposite principles amount to sacrificing some good that one shouldn't give up, and allowing in some unacceptable evil. Nor should you compromise your values in order to get something that you don't value or value less. That isn't a reasonable compromise, it is surrendering your values and principles for the benefit of others. Given this sort of view of compromise, it's no good to ever compromise your own life, no good to ever sacrifice yourself. Anything that asks you to do that is evil. If there is a rational trade to make, then make the exchange and benefit, but don't sacrifice yourself for unspecified or vague future benefits which no one is accountable for providing to you.

cgag 15y ago

I don't see what's so wrong with implying that the might not deserve everything they earned, unless you also think people in poverty deserve to be where they are.

amirmc 15y ago

"By giving half their profit to charity, one could take them as implying that profit is bad..." How do you make this leap? It's utterly baffling to me. Giving something away doesn't imply that it was bad to have in the first place.

pmarca 15y ago

> By giving half their profit to charity, one could take them as implying that profit is bad, that they don't deserve everything they earned, and that they are appeasing the irrational anti-capitalists (if not siding with them). One could, but one would be wrong :-).

pmarca 15y ago

> You can find this sort of opinion in the Ayn Rand book _Why Businessmen Need Philosophy_. You might want to read it, and make some effort to reply to its arguments, before dismissing it as wrong enough to dismissively insult in passing. Like a lot of people here, I read Rand as a teenager. As a slightly older teenager, I concluded she was an extremist who I think would have hated living in the world that her philosophy would have led to had she been wholly successful (Hobbes' phrase "nasty, brutish, and short" comes to mind). The point about business transactions being mutually valuable and societally value-add is generally (although not always) true, in my mind, but that doesn't eliminate the need for either government or philanthropy if one wants to live in a civil society. But, to each her own...