I actually want to thank you for your participation in the Business Week online debate about State Tuition Hikes. You gave a very good answer challenging the right to such handouts, which you well described as leading to war. Your opponent wrote nothing worth remembering. I do, however, have a couple of issues to bring to your attention.

The first one is really just about sentence construction. You write: “In such a system, a university education would no more be within the reach of only the ‘rich’ than are computers or cell phones today.” The problem is that the correct reading relies so heavily on the word “only” and particularly the construction “no more … only … than.” Remove “only” and the sentence means just the opposite of what you intend. What if I said “You would no more be handsome only compared to a demon than the rest of your friends.” It takes a while to parse out just what I mean. Perhaps something like this would be easier to grasp and still meet your other goals: “Under a system of private loans and scholarships a college degree would be within the reach of rich and poor, just as privately funded computers and cell phones are today.”

My second point is more literary. You start out saying that we have a war to fight over the right to handouts, then you say we have to discard that idea. “Discard”?!? Oh, please, you can come up with a stronger verb than that. You discard paper trash. “Nuked out of existence” is more like it, though admittedly poor writing.

To keep using your war analogy, I would try something like: “To put an end to this sordid spectacle, we must seek out and destroy the idea that anyone has a right to something at another’s expense.” Admittedly, I am still tempted to replace “seek out and destroy” with “nuke”: once your subconscious takes hold of an idea it wants to run with it.

Personally, my style preference is to then spend the rest of the article explaining that government intervention in education has driven the costs so high and the quality so low and asking if we want to reward the government for its poor performance. This has the advantage of putting you on record as objecting to the quality of the education provided by public universities with the hope that some will ask you what you mean: that the ideas taught are often horrific.

I hope you will continue writing articles such as this one you wrote for Business Week to publish.

Regards,
Daniel

While it is easy to agree with many of the basic philosophies of Objectivism, it seems clear to me that we live in a world in which there are going to be disagreements, very serious disagreements about what is in everyone’s ‘self interest’. From environmental issues where those wishing to harvest the forests stand against those who fear the devastating effects of these actions; to class disagreements where those born into poor families and neighborhoods believe that the palying field of life should be evened out to remove the advantages of those born wealthy and the opposing views of the wealthy that their property is sacred; to the economic disagreements of what makes for the ‘best’ marketplace. These are all significant disagreements that are not going away anytime soon.

My question to you concerning Objectivism is: What determines the proper outcome to these disagreements? I assume there can’t be ‘cast-in-stone’ answers, like “it’s always, always better to put economic concerns over environmental concerns.”, or “society owes absolutely nothing to it’s members in regards to leveling the playing field, if you were born poor, that’s just your tough luck…better that the children of the wealthy inherit the planet…”. So, who decides what is really in our ‘self-interest’? Must we refer to the written doctrines of Ayn Rand? That’s beginning to sound a bit like a religion. I mean, a hundred years from now there will undoubtedly be circumstances that Ms. Rand could not have forseen… should we simply assume her ideas are eternally correct? Or do we examine every situation carefully and make decisions based upon the specifics of the situation? And then once we have done that, how do we prevent those we decided against from simply ignoring the decision. Do we pass more and more laws that specifically mandate how one should act in every situation? Or do we put the power to decide right and wrong into the hands of those who have thoroughly studied Rand’s doctrines, secure in the knowledge that they would always advocate the ‘right’ thing? And then when they die, they could pass that power on to their children and….. well, you see where I’m going….

Anyway, I’d love to hear a response. I’ve been trying to read as much as I can about Objectivism, I just picked up “The Virtue of Selfishness” and earlier today I listened to the audio of the debate you did in Boulder.

Thanks for your time…
dwhite@northcountry.com

Don’t get nervous about my comment.

However, my recent re-reading of Adam Smith and observation of current events makes me very nervous about the merger of big miss managed business and big miss managed government (is there any other kind of government?). All this dangerous mix of poor allocation of resources and political opportunism needs is a marionette and an excellent orator for a leader.

Should I be worried?

Sincerely,
J. Will