Selling Tarnished Conceptual Brands with Kelley and Salsman

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the 254th episode of objectively Speaking, formerly the Atlas Society Ask. My name is Lawrence Alito, senior project Manager here at the Atlas Society. Our CEO, Jennifer Grossman has the week off, but I'm excited to have joined me today Atlas Society senior scholars David Kelly and Richard Salzman for a webinar exploring how influential ideas often fail to persuade when their terms are misunderstood, emotionally charged, or used equivocally. David, Richard, thank you for joining me today. [00:00:35] Speaker B: Thanks, Lawrence. [00:00:36] Speaker C: Thanks, Lawrence. [00:00:37] Speaker A: All right, and I think we're going to get started with David first, so I'll pass things on to you. [00:00:43] Speaker C: Okay, thank you. Richard and I have been concerned and often talked about how often a concept that we understand in one way is understood by people we talk to, whether students or other people in our field or whatever, the public, and they understand a concept in a different way. So we're not communicating with the same terms. This is a really important issue. In Objectivism, Ayn Rand developed her own innovative theory of concepts, and she used it in her political commentary to analyze her concepts, make them clear, and critique the concepts as used same concepts as used by her opponents. For example, you say that you're for equality, and what you mean is that you're for equality before the law. The person you're speaking to says, well, I'm for equality too. But what he means is that I believe everyone should get equal benefits from the government. Well, equality here is you're not talking about the same kind of equality. And so the question is, how do you even get the conversation started when the terms of the are muddled between the two of you? So how can you. How can you get to the underlying concepts at work? We're going to discuss three concepts. They're all political concepts. Rights, capitalism, and equality. And while we're doing that, I hope you will be thinking about cases where you have run into similar problems. And please keep them in mind or make a note of them as we speak. And that's what the question period will be before. We're eager to hear what you have to say. So let me start with the first of our concepts, and that is the concept of individual rights. [00:02:59] Speaker B: Okay. [00:03:00] Speaker C: Indiv. Individual rights were a. A product really of the environment Enlightenment era. Sorry that the concept goes back a lot farther historically than that, but it was used by kings to say they have a divine right to rule and so forth. In other words, it was not equal rights in any sense, and they were rights governed by the social and political structure. The founders of America drew On a different view, mainly in Britain and somewhat in France, that rights are things that individuals possess in the first place, and they possess them independent of and prior to any government rules. Government should be structured to respect and defend individual rights. But over the course of history of the last two centuries, the concept of rights has been modified by those who believed in the welfare state and in various kinds of government regulations of business. So we have the idea of a right to health care. We have a right for, you know, being supported by the government, a right to this, that and the other thing these are called, these newer, quote, unquote rights are called welfare rights. And the difference between the classical and the newer rights is this. The classical rights were rights to freedom of action, rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Those impose only negative obligations on others. Don't kill me, don't enslave me, or put me in jail for what I say. Don't take my property. If I, if I own it, it's not yours, and so on and so forth. But the welfare rights do require positive obligations. If I have a right to health care, then who's going to provide that? It's a positive obligation on the part of society or selected members or classes in society to make sure that I have health care. So, and that means they're not free. My, my quote, unquote, freedom to have health care, my health care provided is, is. It imposes obligations on whoever's supposed to provide those rights, which is, eludes their freedom. So, so we have this dispute. And when we talk about rights, one of the first things we have to do is be clear. If the person we're speaking to, the audience we're writing for, has our concept of rights, the negative rights to freedom of action, or whether they incorporate the newer modern idea of welfare rights to various goods that are provided by someone else. Okay, how do you deal with this? Well, one thing. If, if once. I mean the first thing, and this is why we're starting each of these concepts by explaining what it actually means and what the challenge to it is. But we want to get, get past that to how do we persuade people. Here are a couple of things that you could try. When someone claims a right to housing or welfare or, you know, Social Security or retirement funds, whatever, ask them what they mean by that. Ask them if they mean a right is something that you, you have a duty to a right, a complete right to expect, and someone else has a duty to observe. In the case of my liberty rights, everyone in the world can, can very easily respect that right simply by not locking me up or shutting me up. But if someone, if I have a right to health care, then someone has to provide it. And so the thing to ask is, what do you mean by right? If I have a right to health care, does that mean you have to provide it or your family? If someone came to your door and said, you know, you have an obligation to pay my doctor's bills, I'm here for the check, it would be outrageous for someone to do that. I mean, you might, well, if that was a family member or a friend or something, might, you know, say, okay, listen, I'm glad to help, but in that case, the person would owe you at least some gratitude and thanks for that because it was not an obligation, but a right is an obligation for others to provide. So that's one way of getting at it, getting at making the challenge to their concept of a welfare right. You know, I've been in, in this arena for many, many years, as you can probably tell from by looking at me, and that this is really hard. But my fallback position is always, what do you mean by this? How would you define it? How do you understand it? And do you see the difference between my concept of rights and your concept of rights? If not, we're talking past each other and sometimes that works. People tend to use concepts very casually and not, not really think about what they mean. But concepts are, are essential cognitive tools for understanding the world and life in the world and our obligations and rights. So that would help, I'm afraid. I wish I had a better solution, and there probably are some that you've found and thought of, so please raise those in the question, period. But next, let's, let's go on to capitalism, which Richard is going to talk about. That is another concept that is often, you know, completely misunderstood. [00:10:02] Speaker B: Thanks, David. Before I address this one, as David did before, I want to make some preliminary suggestions about how to think about this and how to come at this. By the way, David and I have thought about way more terms than just rights. Capitalism. And later we'll talk more about equality. Altruism is one. Selfishness is one. Progressive. If you say there's a progressive liberal, we're for liberty and we're for progress. Why are these terms being turned into things that are anti liberal and anti progressive? So if this session works, David and I are thinking about another session with more concepts, but we just wanted to lay the groundwork here first. Another way we've been talking about it behind the scenes is the difference between connotation and denotation, something denotes something. It's almost like you look it up in the dictionary and that's it. But connotation is in people's minds, and it's that gap that often gets in the way when we're trying to persuade someone, when we're trying to argue with someone, debate with someone. And that really is what we're trying to focus on here tonight. The title was Selling Tarnished Conceptual Brands. The selling part is we're trying to get at how to sell, persuade, use rhetoric, in the good sense of rhetoric, the Aristotelian view, and do so. You could call it polemics, I suppose, but that's the idea. First, these concepts have to be fleshed out. But also the issue of connecting to others in various venues, and the audiences may differ as well. Keep that in mind. That that's. There's often a big difference between a concept denoting something, denotation versus connotation. David tells me that there's a lot in the philosophic literature on this, but you can just find that in. In dictionaries. Now, here's another way of looking at it. When people say, that's just semantics, that's just words. That's your definition, not my definition. In philosophy, I believe, David, that's called nominalism. The idea that we just gave arbitrary names to things. They don't actually have any objective reference in reality. The kind of questions David asks, which are good ones because you're reaching out to the other side, namely, what is your conception of, in this case, rights. You might also go a little deeper and say, do you believe words and concepts should tie to reality? If they say right from the start, no, there isn't much to go on, except you could have a philosophic discussion, discussion about the validity of concepts. But now you're moving beyond a specific context, like rights, capitalism, or equality. A couple of other things Rand always said, define your terms. I noticed in the chat someone said a proper debate should spend time at the start defining words. Yeah, but if you're in a casual conversation with someone, it can sound a bit didactic to say, stand aside. Let me give you my list of definitions before we begin this conversation. So David and I talked about that as well. The issue of what's your venue? Who's the audience? Is it live or webinar? Is it written or spoken? If it's spoken, is it a speech or is it a dialogue or is it a debate? Are you in a big auditorium where you have time to set out Your beginnings or are you at a cocktail party or just sitting around a pool with friends? So keep all those things in mind because context matters as well, and you have to judge your audience. Also, she said, you know, aside from avoiding the logical fallacy, that's an obvious one. She coined some of her own. She one of the normal ones, of course, is don't equivocate. Some of you said, what? How? What about those who change their definitions in the middle of a debate? What someone wrote, what if you can't pin down a definition with the person you're speaking with? That happens very commonly and the word for it is equivocation. Namely, in one setting they'll define it one way and then three sentences later they'll define it another way. So they're not necessarily against concepts pertaining to reality, but they're so fuzzy about them that they keep switching in the middle of the debate and often not intentionally. Rand also talked about things like frozen abstractions. Again, a bit technical, but this is the idea that if someone said trying to be moral here, meaning altruistic, notice they just collapse the two. Instead of altruism being one of maybe four or five different possible ethical codes, they just assume that's the only one. So that often comes up in debate. Beware of people collapsing generic term. And the differentia package deals is another one. People packaging together two separate things. Somebody asked in the chat, what about those who combine seemingly opposite ideas, like market socialism. Yeah, market social, the perfect exe of you have to get out. What do you mean by markets? And socialism is supposed to be against markets. It's supposed to be against the idea of free exchange and division of labor and specialization. So they there you have to count on your interlocutor caring about the laws of logic. And again, if they're on record saying I don't really care about the laws of logic, my logic is my logic and yours is yours. That's a different debate entirely. So those are just some thoughts on the back issue of what we're trying to sell here. By tarnished I mean of course we're trying to use concepts social selfishness, capitalism, altruism in ways we believe are true, but they've been tarnished in the eyes of many. Certainly selfishness is seen as terrible, horrific capitalism as well. Let me focus on capitalism now. I don't know if you are aware, but about the early 90s or so, scholars started talking about varieties of capitalism. And I thought this is very interesting because it happened soon after the end of the Cold War at The end of the Soviet experiment, if you want to call it that, as they call it. And it's interesting because people were writing essays about the end of history. What they meant by that was there is no viable socialist models anymore. All we're left with is capitalism. But they didn't like capitalism. They didn't like this result. And so as scholars are want to do, they started slicing and dicing and coming up with various varieties of capitalism. Well, you know them in the objectivist literature, what's the modifier that objectivists always use? Laissez faire capitalism. And if you look at the literature, it's often described as a redundancy. Namely, the only reason we're saying laissez faire, our view would be the only kind of capitalism is laissez faire. But we need to say laissez faire because there are these other quote varieties that we need to distinguish. Well, the most common, you know, today is crony capitalism. Crony capitalism, the idea of government selling favors the idea of lobbying for special privileges, which Ayn Rand and we would argue is a result of the mixed economy. Well, notice how much you would have to explain to someone to say that it's not crony, that cronyism and capitalism don't go together. Notice you never hear, by the way, crony socialism. And so it's always pinned on capitalism. A lot of disentangling has to go on. And again, you don't want to be seen as just saying, oh, here's my definition of capitalism. I exclude cronyism and I exclude any other, you know, problematic thing you might come up with. They'll see you as just arbitrarily defining the term to, to kind of wiggle out of all their criticism. So that's a, that's a challenge as well. Stakeholder capitalism you'll hear about. Stakeholder means that people other than the actual owners of businesses, people other than actual shareholders, should have a say in the business. Well, if, if we define capitalism as private ownership and control of property, private ownership and control of the means of production, that means non owners have no business telling us what to do, either with our bodies or our businesses. So that kind of distinction is worth making. But notice all these adjectives other than laissez faire, all these adjectives are versions of anti capitalism actually. So you have to bring these out if you can. If they bring up the term disentangle it as best you can. This is assuming you haven't started with, well, here's my definition of capitalism. Tell me If I'm wrong, another one, anarcho capitalism. The idea that no state goes with capitalism. That's not the objectivist view, but you'll hear that a lot. Probably the most egregious state capitalism. Some people will describe China today as state capitalism, the state heavily determining investment and spending and other things. And of course, that it's not that capitalism is stateless. It has a state. It has a constitutionally limited state, state. But the idea of state capitalism is also a contradiction in terms. Welfare capitalism is another one. I, I counted in my book, I have a chapter on varieties of capitalism. I counted more than 30 versions circulating today. So that shows you the kind of conceptual confusion that exists on capitalism now. I have found that the real, the root, most common thing to look for is, and this is in the name, of course, they'll say that capitalism is the system of buy and for capitalists. And it's perfectly understandable why they would go there. You know, like in the, in the, in Britain, the Labor Party exists, right? A party specifically for labor. There's no capitalist party, but everybody knows that the Labor Party is not like, representative of all people in Britain. It's just representative of this Labor Party. That's how most people think of capitalism. And I've written on the origins of the word itself, which is interesting. It only began actually 1850s or so. Prior to that, capital as a concept was known. Capitalist as someone who owns capitalist was. No capital was known. But the idea of an ism, very interesting. The idea that it's a system didn't arise until the mid-1850s and by the way, coined by socialists. So it was coined by critics who thought that these players, these capitalists, were exploitative. So the whole concept began with the idea that this is a bad system. This is an exploitative system. Now, as she did with selfishness, you know that Ayn Rand, in capitalism, the unknown ideal, just took the word and said, I'm going with this, I'm defending this. It's obviously not the system, she said, of buying for capitalists at the expense of others. But a very bold move if you think about it. In both cases, the virtue of selfishness and capitalism, the unknown ideal, both are arriving in the 60s. This is Ayn Rand kind of sending the message that don't abandon these terms. That's one thing. But then the question is, okay, how do you convey them without being categorized as a monster? Because that's how the concepts have been mangled by our predecessors. So that's really the challenge. You can tell that David and I are kind of thinking through this on the fly. It's not like we have fixed answers on all these things. But conceptual clarity is important. I'll just. Before I turn it back over to David, I think I'll reiterate this idea that. And I like David's idea of. Especially if you're intimate and you're in dialogue with someone, you're not just speaking to a large group where you can clearly make your distinctions, but you don't want to appear too didactic about it. It's very important to understand their context. David's point about, well, how do you conceive of rights? You say to your opponent, or in this case, you go deeper and say, do you believe that words should mean something and that they should have fixed meaning throughout our conversation and our thinking? And if you can get agreement on that up front, that's important. Another technique sometimes is if you say to someone, okay, you think capitalism. You insist that capitalism is the system of buying for capitalists to exploit others. What about a system where they don't do that? What do you want to call that? Let's come up with a name, gloopism or something, and get the person to agree. It's silly, of course, right, to create a neoligent. But the point of it is to say, can we at least get a concept that captures what I'm talking about? And now are you for that or against that? Isn't that possible? Haven't we arrived at some version of that or a close approximation of that? And then we can go from there. So this deeper attempt to reach out, and in a way, I would suggest, to object, it's really objective communication. Whole courses have been delivered on how to communicate objectively, and they do emphasize, interestingly, the idea of understanding what's the context and the mind. And if you, if you wish, the psycho epistemology of the person you're or. Or the group you're discussing this with. And my experience has been sometimes objectivists are resistant to doing that. They're reluctant to do it because it sounds to them like they're too preoccupied with others. It sounds too much like they feel like more like they're a chameleon trying to adapt themselves to the audience. And that's not true at all. The idea of objective communication and understanding who your audience is is not an issue of surrendering your concepts or surrendering your sense of their logical connection. It's just you're there, presumably, you're not isolated. You're there for purposes of Persuading. And so it's absolutely objective and, and rational for you to understand what other people are thinking and how they're going about it. Okay, David, I'm going to turn it back over to you. Feel free to say anything about what I said, but we had equality. Next we can talk about. But anything more on methodology here or technique, I'd love to hear as well. [00:23:50] Speaker C: Yes, thank you, Richard. That was what you said about the methodologies that I agree with completely. You know, I think. Let me make another point about context. I wrote a short pamphlet called the 7 Habits of Highly Objective People, which is, is available from the Outlaw Society. And one, one of the things that spells out what the context is, you know, it. If you're in a discussion with someone, I think that you have to figure out, and if you want it to be fruitful and just not a, you know, boxing match, then find out first of all what the person believes and what context, what the wider context of that belief system is. Because if you don't, you're, you know, you won't be able to talk to that person. And you've got to know that before you can tailor what you say to hope, hopefully get at, you know, a point that that person is, will listen to and hear. A lot of people don't hear what they, you know, what they don't understand or disagree, agree with. So I, I just ended the discussion. I like to start by asking, you know, tell me about your, your thoughts on this and, and then take it from there. And that's very different from a debate. When I'm in a debate, it's not my favorite mode, but I've done it. When I'm in a debate, my goal is to shred the opponent, make him, you know, disappear into a puddle. But, and you know, that that's a context and that, you know, debates can shed light sometimes. It's always interesting to hear people know what they're doing, having a debate. But I'd much rather do discussions and do it along the lines of what, what Richard laid out there. Now, equality is another issue. It's one, it's a third of the three political concepts that we wanted to talk about. We've done rights and we've done capitalism briefly, of course, but this is a brief format. So the equality is, you know, it's actually somewhat, at least as complicated an issue as capitalism or rights, because there are different kinds of equality that have been in play both in theory and in practice. I'm going to start with something that I know Richard has written about and may want to elaborate on. But a common distinction among theorists, type, types of equality is one, there is the equal. Humans are equal in basic rights and in. Not. Not equal in talent or outcome or appearance or, you know, wealth. They are equally human beings. And any rights that attach to human beings as humans apply to all people. Then there is equality before the law, which is closely associated because we live under a system of law. And, you know, equality before the law is really the application of that basic principle of individual equality of rights to a social system. The third level is what's called equality of opportunity, which is. Goes beyond equality before the law, because if someone's from a very poor family, equality of opportunities is used to argue that that person should get help and education. You know, rich kids go to kids who are children of rich parents, go to private schools or fancy schools or suburban schools that have been selected by wealthy people because of the education system. And so that there's an element of equalizing in that. But the final step of that would be equality of outcome, equality of result. And, you know, the extreme case, we all have the same income. Of course, to achieve that, you have to have an active state taking from those who produce more and giving to those who produce less. And the extreme. Some of you may have seen a satirical video. It's actually a short story by Kurt Vonnegut called Harrison Bergeron in which the. The government declared equal equality as a right. And so it handicapped people who, you know, elegant dancer, had weights hung around her so she couldn't, you know, she had to perform with. With all these impediments. A smart guy, a scientist had had to wear earphones that gave off a buzz every once in a while that destroyed his contact concentration. And this is intended to be so ridiculous. But equality of opportunity, equality of result has sometimes led to, you know, things almost as bad as this. So, Richard, you've written about equality as well, and that those four levels I mentioned. [00:29:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:54] Speaker C: Are they. Would you add anything to that? [00:29:57] Speaker B: Yeah, the. The. When I teach issues of justice and equality, it's amazing to me how many students just collapse the word that the word equality. One is they're favorable toward it, but when you ask them what they mean by it, it's a melange of these four things. And aside from distinguishing their differences the way you just did, the other thing I find very helpful. First of all, it's illuminating to them that these really are distinctions. Okay. They know that we're not clones of each other, that physically and IQ and other Things people are not the same. You can leverage off of the idea that in the American spirit, people like the idea that there's variety and diversity. All these words we hear, right? And human being, good. Then let's celebrate this. Human beings diverse. We shouldn't want to be clones of each other, but they also tend to endorse the idea until they realize others conflict with it. Equality before the law. If you say to them, a murderer is a murderer regardless of how tall or short they are, what skin color they are, what gender they are, you agree with that? They'll say, yeah, yeah, I agree with that. And some of the great injustices of the past have violated this right. And, and so you, you have them there so far. And you're absolutely right, David. When it gets into opportunity and result, and you're not going to have that in a natural, free, voluntary setting. That is not what's going to result in a free society. When people begin different, even if they begin it with different birth status, you have to make the argument that that is not a moral defect, something someone has no choice over their parents, their socioeconomic birth status, so to speak. But here's a, here's a technique I've used which I found very effective, but it took me years to figure this out, to show that one destroys the other. And this is true in rights, by the way, as well. We can come back to this, but give you an example, an example I often give. In, say, tax policy, if you want equality of result and you see that there is differential income, what do you have to do? You have to have what's called a quote, graduated income tax. You have to charge higher rates to those who make more money, you know, say a 70% rate versus a 50% rate all the way down to lower income people paying, say 10% or nothing. Well, I say to people that is unequal treatment before the law. That's unequal treatment before the tax law. And there are many other cases of this unrelated to fiscal matters like quotas and affirmative action and things like this. Right. And so what you're saying to people is these are incompatible. These clash. You can't, in other words, you can't just take these four equality concepts and add them to each other and, you know, get better and better forms of equality by layering in these others. No, these others, these subsequent ones that are people have come up with, actually destroy the legitimate conceptions of equality. So again, we don't want to get too much into the, the actual content of these ideas here, but as to A technique of revealing to people that unless they're careful about how they conceptualize these things, they could actually be destroying or they would be destroying the very concepts that they most endorse. And of course, this is true in rights. If you say to people you believe in the right to life, liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness, most Americans will say yes. But then they'll also say there's a right to health care and education and free tuition and all these other things. Right. But if you show them that those are not actually rights, and worse, that they obligate providers to provide those things, those things don't grow on trees. Those things require something for somebody else to do. And now you're in effectively enslaving others. Once people realize that these inflated rights, which aren't rights, are actually eroding and destroying legitimate rights, you're much more likely to persuade them and have them see a different way. I think that's all I wanted to say about equality for now. You want to take some of these questions, David? I'm looking at questions on the side. Some of them are interesting. One of them is, this is for you. How does epistemology play a role in whether here the intended meaning. Did you see that one? Yeah. How does it. [00:34:40] Speaker C: Oh, I do. I'd love to comment on that. [00:34:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:45] Speaker C: Epistemology plays a central role, and that's why I referred to Rand's theory of concepts. It is, you know, it, it's, it's a requirement of, of thinking and logic and understanding the world to have concepts for that, to have concepts that stand for categories of things and their qualities and their actions and so forth. But the epistemology of how you acquire concepts is, you know, children start learning words, which means concepts, at a fairly young age. I'm not an expert in this field, but, you know, by 4 or 5, they're, they're talking and using words. And parent, you know, parents have to correct them. Kid has the concept of ball and he sees the moon up in the sky, and he said, oh, a ball's up there. The parent has to explain, no, that's a planet. It's just very far away. But, but, you know, the whole point of education after childhood, we're starting there is you, you should learn how to form concepts. A great exercise in, in a logic book, for example, exercises in how to define terms, which is, you know, that's the ultimate test of whether you understand it. You know, honestly, if someone said, got to the point of saying, oh, words are, you know, arbitrary. They don't they mean whatever they. They say. I would just say do your words mean anything? And if the person will go as far as say yeah, I, I don't think that mean anything. That for me that's the end of the conversation. This person that's not worth, you know, like who's that song the gambler. [00:36:43] Speaker B: Know when to fold them. [00:36:45] Speaker C: Know when to fold them. Yeah, that, that's an important aspect of understanding the context. So I, I think as, as an educator that, and I am the author of a logic textbook and I, I taught the subject for some years that teaching students how to use words with. In relationship to reality to mean something and know what they mean is a crucial skill. So that's my, that's my. One of my, you know, strongest feelings as an epistemologist. [00:37:30] Speaker B: There's a one from Alan Turner is asking. Some people argue that we shouldn't use the term capitalism. I'm taking this one because it's capitalism. Since it originates with Marx, it actually originates with another socialist. But that's, that's not a big deal. Louis Blanc, a Frenchman. Did people like RAM properly take the term away from the left thoughts on using free market instead? Let me take the last one first. I have. I used to do this. I used to say free enterprise, free market. It's something conservatives tend to do. The term capitalism, I think they resist not because they think its origins are in socialism. I don't think that's the reason. I think they're uncomfortable with. And this would be. A socialist would be uncomfortable with this. But the conservatives are too with the idea that there is this unique class of brainiacs and brilliant people like Elon Musk or Henry Ford or Carnegie who really are drivers of the system, that is that it is not the common man actually that makes great prosperity possible. So if they think the ISM is a system that benefits that group, they're reluctant on say, populist grounds to come out for that. But the other thing is, I think the, the point Rand makes is very good. She noticed, she defined. She says capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights. Notice she doesn't say economic system. So she has a. And I think this is right, actually. She has a broader conception of it than just markets, than just enterprise. And if you just leave it as. No, it's market exchange or. I've actually heard some people say every culture has capital. So in essence, every culture is capitalist. Is a capitalist system. Well, no, not if they don't have freedom. Not if they don't have private property, not if they don't have the sanctity of contract. So all those things that go with capitalism are, are important. And as to the terminology, anyone, I don't know who it is, the first person who ever characterized selfishness as running roughshod over others. You could say, well since they did that, I'm never going to use the word. Or you can try to revive the word and give it the status it deserves and make this distinction that people are collapsing perfectly rational, self interested behavior that harms no one with behavior that's monstrous. So I wanted to mention another part. Another. This is more epistemology, David, but it relates to capitalism. Be aware of this as well, because subjectivists do this too. Sometimes you have to be careful. Suppose you say to someone socialism is terrible. Look at the Soviet Union and what do they typically say? That wasn't real socialism. Socialism as you know, put in blueprint by Marx, which he never did put in blueprint, right. So the next time it'll be done well or AOC democratic socialism, as long as it's not forced. If we vote for might work or it'll at least be accepted. But go the other way too. You're talking with someone, you're defending capitalism and they say what about the robber barons? What about those railroad guys who paid off congressmen to get, you know, land for nothing? And then a blah blah blah. And what do we say? What do we say? Objective. That's not. That wasn't real capitalism. That was this mixed economy. That was a. So the matrix, the kind of a two by two matrix you have to have in your mind is capitalism theory and practice, socialism theory and practice. So there's a, there's a theory behind both of them and there's a practice or history that each has that's even more difficult for some people to disentangle the actual history of it. When did it begin, when did it end? Where? What are its essence? But what you don't want to do is mix categories. You don't want the socialist to say well in theory my socialism is just fine and your robber barons are terrible. So I win the argument. But neither do we want to say by mixing the categories. Your socialism is just this Soviet version and our theory of capitalism is X, if you get what I'm saying. So it's often helpful and you'll persuade more if when you talk to a socialist you stick with theory. That sound may sound weird, but that you say, what is your actual theory of socialism? Is it public ownership of the Means of production. Well, mine's private ownership of the means, production. What about social rights? What about civil rights? And you're not looking at cases yet. And then when you talk about cases, just stick to cases. That can also be like if someone says to you, well, you claim you're for less. API for capitalism. You got any examples? What, what is the, how did Ayn Rand put it? The closest approximation to what I'm talking about is 18th century America, say in America and Britain. Remember, she used to say it that way. So that, that's very helpful. You don't want to. You don't want to say, as she sometimes say, you don't want to say to people. It's never been tried, this pure capitalism. We've never had it. Because now you start sounding Platonic. You don't want to sound as if this theoretical ideal you have is unreachable. That's not true. It has been. The framing of closely approximated is a good one. And then looking for actual cases. I often do this, by the way, with anarcho capitalists. I'm trying to convince my libertarian friends not to be anarchists. I'll ask them, I said, give me an example of anarchy, of any sustained and lasting success. And there's surprisingly very few cases that they can point to. So there's a case where they're theorizing. They're theorizing. All states must be statist. That's the, that's the frozen abstraction we need to disentangle and melt away and, but then move to cases. It's perfectly okay to say someone, to say to someone. Could you please give me an example of what you're idealizing? I'll stop there. [00:43:46] Speaker C: I wanted to pick up on a couple of the questions. There's so many really good ones, it's hard to choose. But I wanted to address one that asked. Let me just see. Yes. Alan Turner. The biggest issue. How can one advocate for rational ideas when another is reacting emotionally rather than rationally? Well, I think I understand it and it happens a lot. But emotions are not completely divorced from thoughts. They are, in my view anyway. And I think this is something objectivists who would agree as part of the philosophy, that what you feel about a given subject is automatic. It's a feeling, but it's based on certain thoughts that you have premises that you've accepted. For example, I look at a Jaguar XJ and I say, oh my God, what a car. I wish I had one. And I look at a rusted old pickup truck and I Say no. But an environmentalist might say, oh, that Jaguar is awful. It's got, you know, I hate this. I just hate the sight of these things on the street. They're using up gas, they're polluting the atmosphere, and they're a luxury thing, only rich people can afford them. So what you feel about something may always reflects some attitude that can be addressed, but it's much harder when an idea that you are dealing with is embedded in someone's emotions. So I will suggest something that doesn't always work, but using a kind of counter example emotionally. For example, on the issue of equality, if I ask someone who's say, happily married, did you choose your wife by random? Just she was, you know, a bunch of equal women out here, was it accidental? I mean, if we substituted for your wife, just put someone else in her place, would that be okay? Well, no, because that's way too personal a relationship and it's very selective and it's on top of it. We just, you know, many aspects of it are private. So that, that will convince some people to at least wonder how broadly if I, if they're in favor of, you know, some aggressive kind of equality, how widely they want us take it. And then you've got something that you've got an ang, something you can get your hands on and, and push a little further. [00:46:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Jackson Sinclair asks a good one, what do you think of this one, David? Which misunderstood term causes the most confusion or resistance? Altruism or selfishness? I can tell you that. Well, selfishness is usually just portrayed as monstrous. The, the. So I don't know if the altruism, though this might interest you and my students and others, they always say it means concern for others. They don't say sacrifice. Who, the one who coined the term a goose come actually said, no, I mean sacrifice. I mean putting yourself last and if necessary, hurting yourself. So, and he was trying to counter egoism. And so, but that's a tough one. If you say, Sometimes I'll say to people, you know, altruism means other ism. That's what ultramit, the Latin ultra. And you can start from there and saying what is it about others? They're certainly in your rational self interest if they're significant others. I like using that phrase. We have significant others. Why are they significant? Because they're a value to us. So the argument for self interest is not that we're isolated atomistic beings, but, but that's a tough one because Ayn Rand, as you know, always uses the word altruism. To mean self sacrifice or sacrificing others to self. It's both sides. Right. And that is not the connotation. The connotation among the general public is you're just being nice. You're just being kindly and benevolent. Who can be against that? That's all over the literature. It's very difficult. Now, again, if you say to someone, okay, I'm going to give you it. I'll give you that. Call that benevolence. Do you have a name for what I mean, which is this nasty process of using human beings as sacrificial animals. Get really crude about it, you know, and they might just say, no, sacrifice. Just call it sacrifice. And normally if you say to some, well, are you for that? Most people will say, no, I'm not. I am not for sacrificing myself. And if you ask them where their concern for others should be, think of it as a concentric circle around your life. They, friends and family come first. Yeah. Then. Then colleagues and acquaintances at work. Yeah. And then if it's a stranger halfway across the globe. Yes. They understand why they shouldn't be crushing prioritizing those people above themselves. So those are some techniques to work. But I don't know, David, altruism or selfishness? Which one's harder for you in conversation to. To get over? [00:49:10] Speaker C: Well, I'm. My answer would be whichever one I've tried to analyze first or latest recently. Yeah, yeah, we're jumping ahead in here and talking about. But that's good. You know, what I come back to is that selfishness sometimes does have a positive meaning. I know some years ago there was a. The women's movement had a point about, you know, women are not necessarily house slaves of their husbands or, you know, just raising children and cooking. No. They have careers, they're as talented as men, and they should follow their, you know, whatever career interest they have. And that was off something. No, I'm selfish. I want to do this for my life and not just be at someone else's beck and call. And that was a. That was a positive abuse intended as a positive abuse. And you sometimes hear other cases of that. You really hear, you know, cases of altruism, people invoking altruism as the real thing, as the bad thing that it really is. So. But I think on that score you can just say, well, if you mean about benevolence, I mean benevolence too. What. Can you tell me what the difference in those two terms is? What. Why do we have two terms? And that's A possible starting point. [00:50:57] Speaker B: Sometimes, David, also you can cross, I guess it would be called, call it cross pollinate these things. If you say to people on rights, back to rights, a very selfish concept, the right to my life, my liberty, the pursuit of my happiness, my property. It's hard to defend. And if people are rights defending, as many are, although they inflate rights still, if you remind them that the altruist, the one who is selfless, the one who doesn't give a damn about themselves, isn't going to be a very strong rights protector. And so sometimes you can cross pollinate these things, but it's not easy. Here's a question my modern gold asks a good question. Is it possible to reclaim a concept once its cultural connotation has shifted dramatically, or is it more effective to coin a new term entirely? What do you think of that one, Kelly? The reason I think this is one is interesting is someone we know named Ayn Rand coined a new philosophy because looking out on the world, right. She the story is told that existentialism had been taken and ruined already. Right. And, and just the, just the idea that she felt it important to name her philosophy and give it a capital letter. What do, what do you think? I know we didn't expect to discuss this here tonight, but when I saw someone say coin a new term, there's an example, she coined the term Objectivism as her philosophy for purposes of not confusing it with other philosophies. And yet she didn't do that with capitalism or selfishness. [00:52:40] Speaker C: Well, I think there is a significant difference there, Richard, in that, yeah, selfishness, capitalism were terms in common use and she disagreed with the common understanding of them. Objectivism was a new philosophy and what she did was give a name to it. So we can say, you know, I'm an objectivist or that's an objectivist position as opposed to, you know, a pragmatist or a Platonic or whatever. It's just so I think there's a bit of difference in the, in the context and the function of the words. [00:53:17] Speaker B: Right. [00:53:20] Speaker C: But to the basic issue. Yeah, some, there's always a judgment to be made and it's a matter of judgment whether a concept has been so ruined that let's not use it anymore, even though once might have been useful. [00:53:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:45] Speaker C: But by and large, I think concepts, so many concepts get diluted and a technique of the people who are against freedom is to take the words associated with the free society, rights, equality, selfishness for that matter, and many others and redefine them to Meet their, To pump, pump their ideology into those concepts. Yeah, it's a kind of exploitation of. Exploitation of concepts for who were, that were formed and developed by better thinkers. [00:54:26] Speaker B: Wow. I, I've never heard it quite put that way. That's brilliant. Brilliant. And I mean, liberal would be an obvious example. [00:54:32] Speaker C: Yes. [00:54:33] Speaker B: I think it was roughly turn of the last century, not the most recent one, where they started using liberal to mean government intervention, government intervention in the economy. So then somebody had to come up with classical liberal to distinguish it from liberal. Liberal. And then they said, David, you and I are old enough to remember. They so ruined that term that in the late 80s, with Michael Dukakis and others, they started calling it the L word. Remember, it was like the N word. We don't want to be called liberals because. Why not? Why not? You took the word. You're the ones who took the word. Yeah, but over time, people realize we're just statists. Exactly right. So now the word is back. [00:55:13] Speaker C: I read an estate, I wrote an article back then saying if you're, if you're through with the word liberal, could we have it back? [00:55:19] Speaker B: Yeah, right, exactly. Here's another one. Robert Begley, opening a can of worms here. As Objectivism is a form of philosophy since the ancients. Even though she didn't like the term, a more proper term to distinguish herself would be Randianism. When Mike, when she did that interview with Mike Wallace, interestingly, 1958 or so, he, he started, he uses the word Randian. And it's interesting to me, David, also, that, you know, we have words like Marxism, Keynesianism, Newtonian physics. I think it, I'm guessing here you know her better than me. You lived with, you know, you were alive when she was alive. She wanted to resist this idea that it was subjectivist, that it was just Rand's philosophy. Right. So the idea of objectivism, and you could distinguish it nicely from intrinsicism and subjectivism. So that's another benefit in terms of rhetorical power. But, but moving away from the idea of a person's name, even though she invented the philosophy. What do you think of that? That. Was that part of the motive, in other words? And is that persuasive? Notice, some of her libertarian critics will refuse to call it Objectivism. They'll call it Randian. Almost, Almost like they're trying to say that you don't have any objective philosophy over there. That's just Rand's philosophy. So let's call it Randism or Rand. Rand. [00:56:42] Speaker C: Well, it's, it's partly Polemical first of all, I should say I didn't. I never talked in my brief exchanges with Iran myself. I never raised that issue and I haven't read anything on, on that. I think she did say something and anyway, I think so. Richard, what you said is a very plausible explanation. I just don't know if it's. If that's the, the main one or true. But I will say I like the idea because objective is the object. The idea of the objective and object, objectivity is so central epistemology and her ethics and that carries over to politics as well. So. And there may be a little slight bit of ledger domain here in that if you call your philosophy obj, Objectivism. Well, it kind of, you know, if you don't like my philosophy, you know, what do you call yourself? Objectivist. [00:57:51] Speaker B: Yes, it is clever in that regard. Yeah. But it's also, it's in epistemology. Right. If she, if she had done existentialism, that's metaphysics. And that it's not that it's not important. Existence exists. Absolutely important. But yeah, the objective gets into everything. The. She has an objective theory of value. And capitalism, what is capitalism? Objectivity comes up and you know, that's rationality. Right. And objectivity being the commitment to be rational. Yes. And, and actually I would say the connotation of objectivity is still positive today, wouldn't you say? If you, if you say the journal journalism is terrible today because they've thrown off objectivity. They don't even, they don't even try to be objective anymore. The word does have still a positive connotation, wouldn't you say? [00:58:44] Speaker C: Yes, definitely. There are people who, who will explicitly, especially in writing about journalism, deny that it's even possible. But it does have a positive connotation. I mean, who, who would not want to be objective. [00:58:58] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Yes. [00:59:03] Speaker A: Well, we're coming up here to the top of the hour, so it's unfortunate to sort of call things here to a close. If before we end, is there any last minute things that you all wanted to go over that you think might have been missed either in Yalls talks or in some of the questions that. [00:59:18] Speaker C: We had come in? Oh, there's so many good questions we didn't get to. I'm sorry, but I would just say, you know, Richard and I were trying this out, this mode of talking about concepts and restricting it pretty much just to political ones, but there are many, many other concepts we can talk about. So if you like this format and want to let us know or let Lawrence know we can, you know, down the road, we'll hope we could do this again with another set of concepts. [00:59:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And my final, my final comment. Thank you for doing this, David. I love to look at all your comments. My final comment, Lawrence, would be, as objectivists studying the philosophy, looking at the world out there, sometimes we can get a little too insular and into the content. The content's great, but if you like, and it can be fun, I think David and I find it fun and invigorating to engage with people. To engage with people you disagree with. I, I don't do it so much with the left or environmentalists, but conservatives and libertarians where conservatives, I'm trying to argue for a more secular case. And with libertarians, I'm trying to argue for the case for states that behave themselves and no anarchy. There's lots of ways, if it interests you, you're not obligated, of course. Are you going to be selfish about these things? It can be really fun to know you have a good brand, have a good product, and then to sell it to the world and to convey it and try out things and realize when you try out certain things, you realize I don't really know that very well or I don't know how to bridge, I don't know how to bridge what I know to this other person or this other group. It seems decent to me. That's, that can be fun. It's a, it's a fun way to stir the pot in life and in a world where everyone's claiming we're all divided and, and we're polarized and nobody's talking to each other and everything. It's a nice opportunity to push back against all that, too. So that's one of the reasons we did it as well. Maybe we can do it again, David. Perfect. [01:01:22] Speaker A: Well, again, David, Richard, thank you so much for doing this webinar. It was a lot of fun to hear y' all talk about this. And I, we had a lot of really good questions come in again. You know, it's always there's not enough time to go over all the questions. But for those of you watching at home, if you enjoyed this, please let us know. And if you would like to explore these questions and a few in, in person with David or Richard two weeks from now, Gulls Gulch 2025 in Austin, Texas, is coming up. So you could see them live in person then. But again, if you enjoyed this video or any of our other materials, please, please consider making a tax deductible donation@atlas society.org donate be sure to join us next week when Jennifer Grossman will be back and she'll be interviewing X Tropic founder Gil Verdun, who will be also our our keynote speaker at Galt's Gulch. So listen to the interview and then maybe you'll see him in person. So again, David, Richard, thank you so much for doing this. We'll see you all again next time. [01:02:24] Speaker C: Thank you. [01:02:25] Speaker B: Thanks, everyone. Thanks, David. Thanks.