Pilipinas Forum 21: On Ayn Rand and Keynes

This is among the philosophical discourses in pilipinasforum@yahoogroups nearly 8 years ago. Postings in the  PF are raw and written informally, but the content are generally serious. Unlike other PF series here, there are just a few exchanges here, and only more than 5 pages long. Enjoy.
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Ayn Rand and Keynes

January 8-10, 2003

Ayn Rand will generally disagree with a Keynesian approach of uplifting human welfare. A rice farmer and fisherman can pursue their individual interests (surplus of their produce they sell to the market) and they end up providing rice and fish in our dinner tables - - welfare for both producers and consumers. This short article below by Ayn Rand (I got from my other egroups) will elucidate this philosophy...

A seemingly perennial and prolonged (1998-2003 and counting...) budget deficit situation is anti-individualism, anti-market, anti- self-interest. Why? A government which can hardly distinguish which public services promote efficiency and which ones promote complacency, even laziness and monopoly, is being kept afloat by sustained borrowings. Its philosophy is: never mind today's debts, tomorrow's taxpayers will pay them.

Should we discourage, even scare, a large segment of the productive sectors of our society -- them tax-paying professionals, entrepreneurs, other skilled workers -- with high tax rates and complicated tax system in the future, so the inefficiencies of the past will be paid?

- Nonoy Oplas
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INTRODUCING OBJECTIVISM

By Ayn Rand

At a sales conference at Random House, preceding the publication of Atlas Shrugged, one of the book salesmen asked me whether I could present the essence of my philosophy while standing on one foot. I did as follows:

1. Metaphysics: Objective Reality
2. Epistemology: Reason
3. Ethics: Self-interest
4. Politics: Capitalism

If you want this translated into simple language, it would read: 1. "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" or "Wishing won't make it so." 2. "You can't eat your cake and have it, too." 3. "Man is an end in himself." 4. "Give me liberty or give me death."

If you held these concepts with total consistency, as the base of your convictions, you would have a full philosophical system to guide the course of your life. But to hold them with total consistency — to understand, to define, to prove and to apply them — requires volumes of thought. Which is why philosophy cannot be discussed while standing on one foot — nor while standing on two feet on both sides of every fence. This last is the predominant philosophical position today, particularly in the field of politics.