X-Message-Number: 33028
From: 
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2010 11:31:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: ethics vs. individual goals

Rudi Hoffman praises the work of Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate, the gist  
being that individuals acquiring fortunes through good business ideas are  
morally superior to altruists.
Well, Brook is president of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, and  
while I don't know to what extent he actually follows Ayn Rand, as a 
philosopher  she didn't have a clue. As I recall, her first premise is "Man is 
man." If that  doesn't discredit her as a philosopher, I don't know what would.
 
But the main problem is the distinction between ethics (or  interpersonal  
morality) and individual motivation. I wrote  Youniverse from the standpoint 
of the individual, and showed that ALL  motivated behavior (which is only a 
fraction of all behavior) stems from the  desire to maximize one's own 
satisfaction over time. Sometimes this conflicts  with ethics, although less 
often than you might think, because obviously we all  depend on society and  
need to take society's welfare into account, as well  as our own 
predispositions, which may not be easily reformed.
 
Anyway, if any newcomers are interested, the 2009 version of  Youniverse is 
out there, Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Universal  Publishers. It has lots 
of answers, as well as new questions.
 
Robert Ettinger
Our moral code is out of date
By Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate, Special to  CNN
September 16, 2010 3:26 p.m. EDT

Editor's note: Yaron Brook is  president of the Ayn Rand Center for
Individual Rights and a columnist at  Forbes.com; Onkar Ghate is a senior
fellow at the center. Brook is one of the  speakers at The Economist's 
"Ideas
Economy: Human Potential" conference in  New York.
(CNN) -- Human progress requires good  ideas.


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