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Ayn Rand is generally hated by those who consider themselves altruists. This is because the general interpretation is that Rand is a lone mouthpiece for the doctrines of egotism and greed. While some of her arguments are clearly, irredeemably repulsive, such as her romanticization of rape, some areas are more ambiguous, and some segments of Rand’s writing are genuinely inspiring and valuable. Despite her flaws, I think Rand should be read and understood, and perhaps even quoted – but never accepted as a whole.

As a caveat, I have only read Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, a few of her essays, and skimmed over the critical response. I’m not a Rand scholar at all, and I’m not sure I want to be. I’ve heard that the Fountainhead is one of Rand’s more mild books, so it may be that my interpretation will change radically when I read Atlas Shrugged later this year.

Two Types of Selfishness

There are two archetypes, idealized characters that serve as pinnacles of two opposing moralities, in The Fountainhead. The first is Peter Keating, an extremely ‘successful’ architect in the sense that he is rich, who graduated at the top of his class from a renowned college and is famous as an architect and celebrity. His life is summarized in this passage:

In what act or thought of [Peter Keating] has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes…Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them.
Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn’t want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn’t want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There’s your actual selflessness. It’s his ego that he’s betrayed and given up. But everybody calls him selfish. (Rand 65)

In contrast, Roark is an independent architect who was expelled from a major university for not following the widely accepted standards of architecture, and lived a life of poverty because he would only accept work that didn’t compromise his standards. He has intractable standards for his work, and is perfectly consistent with these standards:

The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men. (Rand 678)

These are the two types of ‘selfishness’ in Rand’s work: selfishness in the form of Keating, and self-reliance in the form of Roark. Rand is an impassioned advocate of the principles expressed by Thoreau in Self-Reliance: “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind,” and “Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide.”

The widespread misinterpretation of Ayn Rand stems from a conflation of the first type of selfishness with the second. In no sense does Rand advocate for selfishness in the form of greed for power, fame, or money. In fact, much of the book is focused on criticizing Keating’s mindless, ‘selfless’ greed. Rand analyzes the psychology of avarice, and the perverse pleasure Keating feels when he exercises power over others – “he had influenced the course of a human being, had thrown him off one path and pushed him into another” (67). This type of selfishness is contradictory in the sense that it cannot exist without others. It is entirely dependent. 

When Keating didn’t have people to approve of his work, he didn’t have a way to value his work: “…it might be good. He was not sure. He had no one to ask” (Rand 171). Keating’s eminence dissipated when his admirers disappeared. “He was a great man – by the grace of those who depended on him” (Rand 233). This passage eloquently epitomizes this fundamentally dependent form of selfishness: 

“He was great; great as the number of people who told him so. He was right, right; right as the number of people who believed it. He look at the faces, at the eyes; he saw himself born in them; he saw himself being granted the gift of life. That was Peter Keating, that, the reflection in the staring pupils, and his body was only its reflection.” (Rand 188)

In contrast, Roark might be seen as ideally self-reliant. His work is his passion, and his system of valuation stems from his self – the Fountainhead. Everything else is external and unessential. Others are a means to fulfill his standards: “I don’t intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build” (26). He is, in short, the polar opposite of Keating in every way.

It is valuable to distinguish self-reliance, from selfishness, and this is the most important principle of The Fountainhead: “The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence” (681). We shouldn’t need to ask another whether our work, our thoughts, our actions are valuable  – ultimately, only we can evaluate ourselves. Our attempts to delegate the choice of what to value ultimately collapse. When we ask another for advice, we choose to ask them rather than others because we seek a certain answer – thus, we are still making a choice. Furthermore, our interpretation of any advice is a choice. Advice is an illusion – all valuation stems from ourselves, and we cannot give this responsibility to another.

Now that we understand this distinction, it’s time to criticize Rand. Hopefully there is something valuable left when we’re finished.

The Collapse of Rand’s Morality

On any level of analysis beyond the literary, Rand’s moral system, if it can be called that, is pathetically inadequate. Her ‘ethics’ are summed up by Howard Roark’s statement in The Fountainhead: “All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil” (681). Like most generalizations in ethics, this claim collapses upon inspection. It requires an idealism divorced from reality, is riddled with paradox, and leads to appalling conclusions.

First, to Rand, any relationship with others is merely a means to an end – “To a creator, all relations with men are secondary” (680). This is fundamentally counter-ethical, as it treats the only relevant moral object as the self and the fulfillment of the self’s standards. Morality must deal with the conflicts of obligations between multiple selves, not just the interests of a single self. Rand entirely ignores the Other, and thus she does not really have an ethics.

Rand fails to have an ethics in a second way. She describes the need to have consistent standards, but does not discuss what these standards should be.
Keeping one’s standards is necessary, but not sufficient, to be moral. For this principle fails the standard litmus test of morality: Hitler and the Holocaust. If standing by your standards is all is required to be moral, then it seems that Hitler is a paragon of morality. After all, Hitler staunchly upheld his monstrous standards. As a Jewish character in Elie Wiesel’s novel Night said,

I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people. (67)

He did whatever he thought was necessary to keep these promises, and he killed himself before he would forsake the struggle.

Clearly, there is more to ethics than just consistency. The other fundamental aspect of being moral, and the more difficult one, is to develop good standards.

Third, ethical solipsism is contradictory.  If I believe that my own interests have value, and I believe others have the same fundamental, human characteristics as myself, then it follows that the interests of others must have value as well. If I accept this syllogism (I do), it becomes impossible to logically maintain the belief that only my own interests have value. Rand provides some  insight onto how one should live one’s own life as an independent will, but she is almost completely absent when we inevitably encounter others.

Fourth, lived experience obstructs any effort towards egoism. To paraphrase Levinas, we do not encounter others as objects, but as infinite subjects that we cannot understand, who call out to us and require us to respond. We cannot maintain egoism when we encounter the other. For me, this encounter happened in India:

As we drive, I see a body without limbs, lying in an alley ahead. The rickshaw rattles forward, and the engine pulsates like the heart of a dying man. As we pass the corpse, it moves. It contorts its neck to look up. For a second I see his scarred, filthy face and he sees my washed one. In that instant of connection, my lifetime became worthless. My childhood had been a solipsistic simulation, a life without impact or any real need.  

It is impossible, and fundamentally unethical, to live as if others do not exist or do not have morally relevant interests. Life is a matter of interdependency: we are raised by parents, mentored by teachers, taught by the minds that came before us, and forgiven by those who love us. If we believe that these experiences are valuable for ourselves, it must follow that they are valuable for others. Thus, we have an obligation to do the same for others.

Rand on Romance: Love as Domination

The relationship between Howard Roark and his lover, Dominique, is abhorrent. Dominique falls in love with Roark primarily because, as she says, he was the “abstraction of strength made visible” (Rand 205). She seeks to be dominated by him, but she also seeks to find some way in which she can own him – “She thought suddenly that the man below was only a common worker, owned by the owner of this place, and she was almost the owner of this place” (205). Roark rapes Dominique*, and there is a horrendous, Fifty Shades of Grey-esque response: “She found a dark satisfaction in pain – because that pain came from him” (209). Dominique’s only compensation is that she is also in a position of power: “she knew the kind of suffering she could impose on him” (210). Love in The Fountainhead is reduced to essentially a power relation, and almost all affection between Roark and Dominique consists in a struggle for power.

I almost stopped reading the book after these chapters. It would be too far to say that Rand redeems herself later. I would only say that she manages to contradict herself. As the relationship between Roark and Dominique matures, they begin to recognize their dependence on one another:

It was strange to be conscious of another person’s existence, to feel it as a close, urgent necessity; a necessity without qualifications. (Rand 218)

This is love as, well, love – interdependence, relying intimately on someone else without being controlled by them. It is needing another “in the total, undivided way…the kind of desire that becomes an ultimatum, ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and one can’t accept the no without ceasing to exist” (Rand 502). Surprisingly, Rand has common ground here with Levinas, the radically altruist philosopher:

Love remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved. (Levinas)

This is love not just as a choice or a desire, but as a need.

However, I am cherry-picking Rand. In context, her quotes are much less redeeming. In the same conversation that Roark describes love as an ‘ultimatum,’ he says:

I love you so much that nothing else can matter to me, not even you. Can you understand that? Only my love — not your answer. (Rand 502) 

Roark argues that love itself is valuable, regardless of whether the love is reciprocated. This, of course, justifies rape. Without the other, what is love? It is merely possession of an object. After all, “If one could possess, grasp, and know the other, it would not be other” (Levinas). If we accept Rand’s perspective, the people we love are only alter-egos or figments of our own ego; they have no consciousness of their own, and can only be defined in the context of our self.

However, love can only be understood as a relationship between two subjects, and when either is treated as a means or as an object, the bond dissipates. What constitutes love is reciprocation – without this, it is only domination.

Aesthetics of the City

As The Fountainhead is a book about architects as well as a book about philosophy, it asks and answers several aesthetic questions, especially the foremost one: “What is beautiful, and why?”

I have always thought that nature is beautiful. I spend a lot of my free time exploring the mountains, usually on a bike. To some extent, I do this as an escape from the city. Most people would agree that the city is ugly, a scar on the land, a destruction of beauty. However, when describing the experience of looking up at a skyscraper, Rand argues that the city, the product of human creativity, is aesthetic:

It makes him no bigger than an ant–isn’t that the correct bromide for the occasion? The God-damn fools! It’s man who made it–the whole incredible mass of stone and steel. It doesn’t dwarf him, it makes him greater than the structure. It reveals his true dimensions to the world. What we love about these buildings, Dominique, is the creative faculty, the heroic in man. (553)

The fact that humanity created these magnificent buildings is itself beautiful, and these buildings represent this fact. They stand as a testament to our potential. If this is the case that the city can be beautiful, and beauty is worth protecting, then we have an obligation to protect the city through urban development, restoration, and preservation, just as we have a more widely-accepted obligation to protect nature. Now, I do not go into the mountains just to escape the city, but to discover and re-experience a different dimension of beauty.

Should we read or reject The Fountainhead? 

Daniel Taylor, author of The Healing Power of Stories, defines a ‘bent book’ as a story that portrays evil as good and good as evil (Taylor). He ultimately concludes that we should never read bent books. There are several problems with this binary.

First, of course, it presumes that we already know what is good and what is evil, an assumption that skips over all the dilemmas of ethics. Often, we read to seek after good and reveal evil in their hiding places – but we do not already know where they are hiding when we start. Reading is not just a process of reinforcing our standards, but of developing our standards. It would be dogmatic and arbitrary to automatically reject all books that seem bent, and it would presume that we are an absolute moral authority that has the ability to judge objectively whether a book is good or evil.

Second, it is not necessarily true that bent books will result in greater evil. Before I read The Fountainhead, I assumed that morality consisted of interdependence and altruism, merely because this is the most common conception of morality. Ayn Rand forced me to analyze and justify this belief. This is essential, for any belief we have justification for has more binding force than a belief we merely accept. Furthermore, through bent books like The Fountainhead, we are able to recognize the reverse of our values. If we begin to see this perversion arise in ourselves, we are able to root it out immediately. Thus, bent books encourage us to define ourselves in contrast to evil, thus promoting ethics.

Finally, the book has certain areas that vindicate its failures. It has an excellent and unique style of writing and storytelling, and this itself is valuable, for our method of expression can be almost as important as our content, and reading good writing allows us to write well. Even much of the content of The Fountainhead is worthy – this, I guess, can only be verified by reading the work yourself. In the end, scenes of wickedness are not enough to invalidate a book. As Leonardi Bruni argued, the Bible contains scenes that are “wicked, obscene, and disgusting, yet do we say that the Bible is not therefore to be read?” (Gamble 341).

I don’t contest that The Fountainhead is bent, rather, I think that bent books should still be read, as long as they have redeemable qualities. However, if you want to read more from The Fountainhead without reading the ‘bent’ parts, check out my notes on Google Drive.

Works Cited

Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead. Centennial Edition. New York, NY: Signet, 1993. Print. 

Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969. Print. 

Taylor, Daniel. The Healing Power of Stories. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1996. Print. 

Gamble, Richard. The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007. Print. 

Wiesel, Ellie. Night. New York, NY: Hill & Wang, 1960. Print.

* The book is not explicit in this scene. It only implies that the rape occurs, and does not describe it.

Today, Colin Kaepernick’s jersey is the fifth-most bought jersey in NFL history. Until the events of the last few weeks, the phrase “I bought a Kaepernick jersey” would be meaningless except to a select group of football fans. Now, to wear a Kaepernick jersey is to carry an immense weight, one almost as heavy as a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. Our commodities say as much or more than our speech.

Ethical commodities and opportunity costs

I’ve thought about buying a Black Lives Matter shirt, but realized that in Orem, Utah, I would be labeled, questioned, and possibly even despised for it. I had an intense personal dialogue about this. How can I start a conversation about racism if I don’t display my activism? Wait, but don’t I support a corrupt capitalist system by buying a shirt through the same companies that run sweatshops and manipulate democracy?

Many of the people I go to school with, and the authority figures in my life, consider Black Lives Matter an anti-white anti-police hate group. When we discussed meaningless activism in one of my classes, someone gave Black Lives Matter as an example in the first sentence – “they’re yelling at nothing, like Black Lives Matter.” As a self-considered member of the Black Lives Matter movement, for reasons I won’t describe now, this is painful to hear. A few words on a ~$10 shirt would affect how people think of me, my relationships with friends and family, and even my self-perception.

I didn’t order the shirt – and the reason was economic. It was based on the first bare fact of economics: scarcity, which leads to tradeoffs. As a very poor high school student, I could either buy the shirt, or I could buy a book: Just the Arguments, a book on philosophy. There are countless other ethical opportunity costs in this decision: how can I justify not buying a refugee activism shirt, or giving a donation to the LDS Church, or saving up for a humanitarian trip? Doesn’t my decision mean that I value learning about philosophy more than I value black lives?

I’m sure some would incriminate me for being an academic rather than an activist. I love philosophy and want to understand it, but I feel obligated to support resistance against oppression. This is agonizing. How can I choose between movements I’m passionate about? Even worse, how can I choose between them based on money?

Theoretically, people buy a Kaepernick jersey to send a message. It’s not just capitalism. Some may say it’s a donation, a way to directly support Kaepernick’s movement with money. Other justify it as a sign of protest, wearing the jersey to challenge the ‘whiteness ethic’ that devalues the lives of blacks. In this way, these products can be called ‘ethical commodities’ – they are products that have intense moral meanings.

There have always been ethical opportunity costs, but the deadly combination of capitalism and the Internet has dramatically expanded the awareness and amount of these opportunity costs. This has transformed nearly all commodities into ethical commodities.

A global economy has connected us, through the allocation of our incomes, to countless ethical implications. The Internet has made us intimately aware of these implications. We can watch Youtube videos of pigs squealing in agony as they are massacred in slaughterhouses, and we cannot help but connect this to our purchase of pork. Nike’s swoosh becomes much more symbolic when we see the horrifying conditions of the people who produce it. I could continue listing these implications endlessly. The only escape from the emotional pain of buying products is ignorance.

How companies and people promote ethical brands

There are countless ways to rationalize the decision to buy ethical commodities. But from a cynical capitalistic perspective, all of these rationalizations are merely forms of the same aspect of the human psyche: the drive to promote one’s personal brand. Our purchases of ethical commodities are similar to marketing decisions: they are meant to convey a message about our brand to a specific group of potential customers.

When we buy a Kaepernick jersey, we want to display our sensitivity to the suffering of blacks in an oppressive system, and we want to display this to a select group of activists. Maybe, on a subconscious level, we promote this ethical brand for profit, so people and potential employers will respond positively. Companies look to hire ethical employees so they can be seen as an ethical corporation. We take advantage of this, for example, by adding our volunteer hours to our LinkedIn profile. According to LinkedIn itself, “1 in 5 managers hired someone because of their volunteer experiences.”

When companies hire people, they hire the full person, not just their competencies. For example, my school, Maeser Prep, looks for a specific kind of teacher with a specific ethical background: deep-thinking, passionate about classical education, usually conservative and religious people.

If we take this perspective to its conclusion, I’m probably writing this essay so people will see me as a better, more enlightened person.

Increasingly, companies use ‘ethical marketing’ to sell their products. In this way, charities have become tools of for-profit institutions. They are made to fulfill an economic requirement: companies must be perceived as moral institutions. If enough people thought Nike was immoral for its abuses of Indian workers, the company could no longer stay in business. By donating to charity, they expand their moral brand, just as individuals build their moral brand by buying ethical commodities. Malawi’s Pizza promotes their product with the claim that some of your purchase will be donated to Africa. In this sense, donations are investments.

To give a current example, Wells Fargo has lost revenue for devaluing the humanities in its advertising campaign. The company’s response was revealing:

Wells Fargo counters the ethical challenges to its brand with a powerful marketing claim: it has donated $93 million to humanities. (Although that figure is very vague, and includes donation to ‘education’ in general). With donations, Wells Fargo justifies its moral failing. It seeks to prove that the ‘whole brand’ is ethical, and its mistakes are just mistakes in the context of an overall good person. Nike invests 1.5% of its pre-tax revenue (over $217 million) into charity, and has publicized its efforts to protect worker’s rights. Why not just stop producing at sweatshop factories? Because it costs less to promote an ethical brand than it does to be an ethical company.

All of this demonstrates that in a society pervaded by capitalism, all activism becomes suspect. Do you really care, or are you just promoting your brand? This isn’t just a question other people ask us. It’s a question we ask ourselves. Am I a good person, or am I just a brand? How can I know, in a world where everything and everyone seems self-interested? Capitalism calls our moral identity into question and turns the imposter syndrome into a universal affliction.

The answer? 

I don’t know the answer. Of course, there are some easy escape routes, as there always are. However, as usual, these escapes aren’t complete, and will never be satisfying.

Consequentialism solves the moral issue of ethical commodities by making intention irrelevant. If self-interest in a certain situation leads to greater happiness, it’s moral by definition. I don’t have to worry about the imposter syndrome – if I’m doing good things, I’m a good person. It doesn’t matter that Nike is reducing its dependence on sweatshops to promote a brand, because it actually has increased workers rights by some degree.

There are some nuances to a consequentialist approach, for example, that consequentialism obligates us to seek for the most ethical system, not just a ethical system. In this sense, the only moral world is the best possible world. Thus, Nike is still immoral because it could conceivably be more moral than it is now. This creates a very high standard – which, I think, is necessary for ethics. Additionally, the world is very complex, and while an act might have certain good consequences, it might also have terrible unintended side-effects.

I don’t think I can give a complete refutation of this approach, because to do so would be to offer a final answer to the most debated question in ethics: are intentions or actions more important? Certainly, I think that we can endlessly banter on whether our intentions our correct, when we should focus on the tangible effects our actions have on living beings.

On the other hand, we can’t separate our intentions from our actions. Our intent affects how we act – for example, you can’t effectively help someone without having compassion for him/her. The person will know that your intentions aren’t consistent with your actions, and they’ll ignore your insincere approach to service.

Both ideas aren’t complete. Intentions are impossible to fully know, and consequences are impossible to fully evaluate. We can’t know that someone else is non-genuine, because we can’t know that person’s thoughts or intentions. I criticized Wells Fargo for its profit-based intention, but I don’t know the actual thoughts of the company’s decision-makers. We can’t say that an action is bad, because we can’t know the full consequences of the action. Nike could be immoral for its sweatshops, but maybe it’s moral for donating so much to charity. I don’t know which of these actions leads to more happiness.

What’s the answer? I won’t claim that I can construct a complete answer. It’s seen as more ethical to be absolute about your ethical system, but how can I claim that I know the right thing in the face of our fundamental uncertainties? I leave the question open, with the hope that someday I’ll be able to answer it.

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards.

— Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism

The more computer science I learn, the more I find myself applying coding concepts to philosophy. I was reading Existentialism is a Humanism, and I realized that variable assignment and function definition could explain the crucial existential concept of “existence precedes essence” in a simple, exact way.

“Essence precedes existence” in code

This phrase is the antithesis of existentialism. Here it is in Javascript:

[snippet id=”12″]

To people somewhat familiar with computer science, this code can be highly meaningful. The identity is initially expressed in the form of an object. Obviously, a human identity can’t be comprehensively written in code. I arbitrarily chose an object to represent human identity. The object identity, which is outside of the function life, represents the idea that your identity is defined before your existence. Every aspect of yourself, from your name to your favorite activities to your personality, is constructed in exact detail before you are born. Then, when you begin to live, you start to discover this personality that was already laid out for you. 

Most who subscribe to this idea say that God builds your identity, or your identity is defined in some kind of pre-existence. Others say that identity is pre-defined by genetics or human nature. These ideas are all fundamentally the same. Basically, they all express the oft-repeated axioms “Life is about finding yourself” and “essence precedes existence.” Someone or something defines your existence beforehand, and then it is passed to the function of life. Sartre explains this best in his Existentialism is a Humanism, so I’ll leave the in-depth explanation to him.

“Essence precedes existence” in code

[snippet id=”13″]

This is a self-executing function life in which an empty object called identity is first defined and then various attributes are appended to it later in the function. When certain experiences occur, the attributes are appended to the identity. There is a blank array called personality that has values pushed to it over time. Of course, I didn’t express the reality that in human personalities, values can also be overwritten and deleted.

It’s interesting to note that since all of these variables are defined within a function, they cannot be accessed by any other function. If someone else had another function for their life, they would be unable to take variables from this function. This code demonstrates the existentialist way of living, which is individualist, self-dependent, and self-defining. This is best expressed by the phrase “existence precedes essence.” The object identity first exists, and then it is defined as values are added to it.

This is all a gross oversimplification. I cannot fully express existentialism in a few lines of code, or express all of life as a function. In the end, this post is meant to paint a compelling picture of a more precise way of writing philosophy that can supplement our current literature.

If you want to learn more about Javascript, check out the excellent tutorial on Free Code Camp. 

Maeser Prep Debate / Jan-Feb 2015 / Jeremy Hadfield

Resolved: Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage.

I agree with Martin Luther King Junior that, “an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” To restructure the system that produces poverty, and for many other reasons, I affirm the resolution: Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage.

Pollin defines the living wage. Investopedia,. ‘Living Wage Definition | Investopedia’. N. p., 2007. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.

A theoretical wage level that allows the earner to afford adequate shelter, food and the other necessities of life. The living wage should be substantial enough to ensure that no more than 30% of it needs to be spent on housing. The goal of the living wage is to allow employees to earn enough income for a satisfactory standard of living. It entails self-sufficiency.

I value justice, as implied by “just governments” in the resolution.

My value criterion is maximizing happiness, or utilitarianism.

Respect for human worth justifies utilitarianism. Cummiskey 90

Cummiskey, David. Associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. “Kantian Consequentiaism.” Ethics 100 (April 1990), University of Chicago. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381810

We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some abstract “social entity.” It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive “overall social good.” Instead, the question is whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Robert Nozick, for example, argues that “to use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has.” But why is this not equally true of all those whom we do not save through our failure to act? By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act, we fail to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate persons, each with only one life, who will bear the cost of our inaction. In such a situation, what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of rational beings, choose? A morally good agent recognizes that the basis of all particular duties is the principle that “rational nature exists as an end in itself”. Rational nature as such is the supreme objective end of all conduct. If one truly believes that all rational beings have an equal value, then the rational solution to such a dilemma involves maximally promoting the lives and liberties of as many rational beings as possible. In order to avoid this conclusion, the non-consequentialist Kantian needs to justify agent-centered constraints. 

Contention 1: A living wage improves the economy and reduces poverty.

Addressing the social problem of poverty is a primary responsibility the state has for its citizens. 

Professors Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel writes that

Liam Murphy (Professor of Law and Philosophy at NYU) and Thomas Nagel (Professor of Law and Philosophy at NYU). “The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice.” Oxford University Press (2002)

Disagreements about the extent of public responsibility are not going to disappear; they are the essence of politics. But we would make the following point: In spite of the disagreements, there is an important area of agreement among those views that take government responsibility for the welfare of citizens seriously. Whether one is a utilitarian or a Rawlsian or a priority theorist, or a believer in a social safety net, or a defender of fair equality of opportunity, or of equal libertarianism, one will be concerned about poverty. Poverty is bad from all these points of view. The lives of the poor are hard, humiliating, and dehumanizing; poverty restricts human flourishing. However you slice it, an increase in the resources of poor people will do more good than a comparable increase in the resources of those who have more, or much more. That is the most general and straightforward basis for redistributive policies, and it holds in some degree for a wide range of views this side of libertarianism.

Thus, increases in the well-being of the least well-off outweigh increases in the well-being of the more well-off.

And a living wage reduces the problem of poverty. Seven reasons:

FIRST: States with living wages tend to have more employment

Beth Shulman 07, (Staff, Russell Sage Foundation’s Social Inequity and Future Work Project), ENDING POVERTY IN AMERICA: HOW TO RESTORE THE AMERICAN DREAM, 2007, 116.

In fact, a study by the Fiscal Policy Institute found that in 12 states with minimum wages higher than the federal level of $5.15 an hour, employment rose more than in states where the federal level was standard. This finding held true for small businesses as well. And why would it not? Workers’ increased buying power leads to new purchases, which boost the entire economy — and that creates more jobs. It is a virtuous circle, one that helped power the American boom in the years after minimum wages and unionization first swept the U.S. manufacturing sector.Washington state has the highest wage in the US, and also had the biggest increase in small business jobs last year.

SECOND: The academic consensus is that the minimum wage reduces poverty

According to Mike Konczal 14, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute

Mike Konczal (fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. His work has appeared in The Nation, Slate, and The American Prospect). “7 Bipartisan Reasons to Raise the Minimum Wage.” Boston Review. March 3, 2014.

Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would lift 4.6 million people out of poverty. It would also boost the incomes of those at the 10th percentile of the income distribution by $1,700 annually. That is a significant benefit for workers who have seen declining wages during the past forty years. In a review of the literature since the 1990s, Dube finds of fifty-four estimates of the relationship between poverty and the minimum wage, forty-eight, or 88%, show that a minimum wage reduces poverty. This reflects a remarkable consensus among economists. The effect of an increased minimum wage on poverty is real, and it would be positive.

THIRD: Living wage increases consumer spending, which is the driving force of the economy

Stephanie Luce, Professor, University of Massachusetts @ Amherst, 2004, Fighting for a Living Wage, p. 15 Joshua Crandall, 2001

A living wage, as opposed to a minimum wage, would place more money in the hands of consumers (workers), allowing for an increase in spending.  The economy’s success lies in the ability of products to be purchased.  If workers are paid a living wage, around $13 an hour, all would benefit, from the top to the bottom…Faith and labor can work together to pressure our government officials and businesses to put people before profit.

FOURTH: Reduces the amount of people on welfare, saving billions of dollars for taxpayers.

Unz 14. FORBES.  FEB.11 2014. “Raising the Minimum Wage would Be Good for Wal-Mart and America. Ron Unz is a Silicon Valley software developer and chairman of the Higher Wages Alliance, which is sponsoring a California ballot initiative to raise the state minimum wage to $12 per hour

The American taxpayer would also be a huge beneficiary. Each year, over $250 billion in social welfare spending goes to working-poor households via government programs such as Food Stamps, EITC checks, and Medicaid. As millions of those workers become much less poor, they would automatically lose their eligibility for anti-poverty assistance, saving taxpayers many tens of billions of dollars each year. Government programs often function as very leaky buckets, with a substantial fraction of the money spent never reaching its supposed beneficiaries. But wages paid by an employer go straight to the recipient, except for the portion withheld in government taxes.

Reducing the welfare budget reduces taxes, which increases the incomes of everyone in the nation.

FIFTH: Increases productivity

Christine Niemczyk, JD Candidate, John Marshall Law School, 2007, “Boxing out Big Box Retailers,” The John Marshall Law Review, Summer, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1339, p. 1355-6

Arguably, a living wage only costs companies a small percentage of profits. A recent study shows that while companies have experienced a growth of productivity of 33.4 percent over the last ten years, workers’ wages and health care benefits remain stagnant. n126 If companies apply some of the extra profits to payroll, workers will be more inclined to continue to increase productivity and growth for the company. n127 Employees who receive higher wages perform better at work and are less likely to be absent or to quit. n128 Therefore, a living wage results in an increased standard of living for employees and provides companies with a higher quality workforce.

SIXTH: Reduces turnover

Oren M. Levin-Waldman, Public Affairs Professor – Metropolitan College of New York, 2005, The Political Economy of the Living Wage: A Study of Four Cities, p. 57-8

Similarly, in a study of the impact of the ordinances at San Francisco International Airport, Michael Reich,, Peter Hall, and Ken Jacobs found that despite a significant rise in overall labor costs, there was also a significant decrease in labor turnover.  The direct cost of implementing the ordinance, which was also part of a larger quality standards program (QSP) to improve safety and security while also improving the labor market conditions at the airport, was approximately $42.7 million a year.  Spillover costs to other workers and employers added another $14.9 million to employer costs.  And yet, turnover fell by an average of 34 percent among all surveyed firms and 60 percent among those firms where average wages had increased by 10 percent or more.  The greatest reduction in turnover, however, was among airport security screeners.  During a fifteen-month period after QSP was implemented in April 2000, turnover fell by almost 80 percent, from 94.7 percent to 18.7 percent.  Every time an average worker has to be replaced, employers have to pay about 4,275 dollars per worker in turnover costs.  Therefore, as a function of raising wages, employers ended up savings $6.6 million each year in turnover costs.  To the extent that employers experienced reduced turnover costs, they experienced productivity gains.  Total observed wages increased by $56.6 million in annual wages for ground-based non-management employees.  Many reported that the quality of work increased, and many workers themselves indicated that they were more inclined to put more effort into their work.

SEVENTH: COMPANIES WITH HIGHER WAGES CAN COMPETE WITH Low-WAGE FIRMS BECAUSE THEY HAVE LOWER COSTS

Robert Pollin, Professor Economics-Univ. Massachusetts, 2008, A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States, eds. R. Pollin, M. Brenner, J. Wicks-Lim & S. Luce, p. 30

In fact, when we did this in Los Angeles we went to a firm that was competing with a minimum wage firm that was actually getting massive subsidies from the City of Los Angles — a very low-wage firm.  The firm we spoke with was paying 30-40 percent above what the low-wage firm was paying its workers.  We asked this high-wage firm how it could survive.  The answer was “We survive through having higher morale among our workers.”  In specific terms, this meant that this firm had a low turnover of workers quitting their jobs, whereas the firm paying minimum wage had a very high turnover.  The high-wage firm had almost no absenteeism and therefore had very low costs for administering, hiring, and training.  So, that is another thing that changes when living wages go up — the “all else equal” condition does not hold. 

Contention 2: A living wage reduces income inequality.

Income inequality is growing now. Living wage reduces it. Owens 13

Richard Trumka (president of the AFL-CIO) and Christine Owens (executive director of the National Employment Law Project). “$7.25 an hour is not a living wage.” CNN Opinion. December 2nd, 2013. http://nelp.3cdn.net/1720761e12917005d2_ykm6ivauy.pdf (CNN) — For the first time since the Great Depression, the U.S. Census Bureau tells us, middle class family incomes have lost ground for more than a decade. The sad truth is that the rewards for productivity and hard work such as health care coverage, retirement security, opportunity — rewards that used to make America’s workers “middle class” — are on the rocks. All the wage increases over the past 15 years have gone to the wealthiest 10 percent according to the Economic Policy Institute. All of them. And almost all, 95%, of the income gains from 2009 to 2012, the first three years of recovery from the Great Recession, went to the very richest 1%. Something else has happened, too. The bottom has fallen out of America’s wage floor. And the erosion of the minimum wage has lowered pay and working standards for all of us. An increase in the minimum wage — which hasn’t risen since 2009 — is long overdue. If the minimum wage had just kept pace with inflation since 1968, it would be $10.77 an hour today instead of $7.25. For tipped workers, the rate’s been stuck at a scandalous $2.13 for 20 years.  “It will reduce inequality. The question is how much and for whom. It’s not going to have a huge impact, but that’s because there’s no politically feasible policy that would have a big impact,” said poverty and fiscal expert Isabel Sawhill, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution.Consider the 5-figure paycheck of a janitor versus the 8-figure salary of a CEO. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 from $7.25, as a leading proposal in Congress would do, wouldn’t narrow that chasm.There’s also a big gap between those making 6-figures and the bazillionaires at the very top. A higher minimum wage can’t touch that. Then there’s the gap between very low-wage and middle-wage workers. It’s this gap where advocates say some progress may be made if the minimum wage is raised sufficiently. At its peak in 1968, the minimum wage was equal to 54% of average hourly earnings in the private sector. Today, it comes in at 36%, according to the Congressional Research Service.  “There are a lot of causes of inequality but [the erosion of the minimum wage] is one of the important ones for inequality at the bottom,” Jason Furman, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said this week. Obama, who backs the $10.10 proposal, has said raising the minimum wage would be good for the economy and good for families. A higher minimum wage could increase the pay not only for the 1.6 million workers who earn $7.25 today, but an estimated 17 million workers who make between $7.25 and $10.10. In selling the idea of a higher minimum, though, advocates also say it could result in raises for hourly workers across the board in what’s known as the “ripple” effect. To the extent that the living wage increases the incomes of the poor, it narrows the income inequality.

IMPACT: Income inequality is the most important cause of economic decline and also causes political instability. Harkinson 11 Josh Harkinson (staff reporter). “Study: Income Inequality Kills Economic Growth.” Mother Jones. October 4th,2011.http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/10/study-income-inequality-kills-economic-growthCorporate chieftains often … the hard way.”

Corporate chieftains often claim that fixing the US economy requires signing new free trade deals, lowering government debt, and attracting lots of foreign investment. But a major new study has found that those things matter less than an economic driver that CEOs hate talking about: equality. “Countries where income is more equally distributed tended to have longer growth spells,” says economist Andrew Berg, whose study appears in the current issue of Finance & Development, the quarterly magazine of the International Monetary Fund. Comparing six major economic variables across the world’s economies, Berg found that equality of incomes was the most important factor in preventing a major downturn. (See top chart.) For example, the bailouts and stimulus pulled the US economy out of recession but haven’t been enough to fuel a steady recovery. Berg’s research suggests that sky-high income inequality in the United States could be partly to blame. So how important is equality? According to the study, making an economy’s income distribution 10 percent more equitable prolongs its typical growth spells by 50 percent. In one case study, Berg looked at Latin America, which is historically much more economically stratified than emerging Asia and also has shorter periods of growth. He found that closing half of the inequality gap between Latin America and Asia would more than double the expected length of Latin America’s growth spells. Increasing income inequality has the opposite effect: “We find that more inequality lowers growth,” Berg says. (See bottom chart.). A population where many lack access to health care, education, and bank loans can’t contribute as much to the economy. And, of course, income inequality goes hand-in-hand with crippling political instability, as we’ve seen during the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. History shows that “sustainable reforms are only possible when the benefits are widely shared,” Berg says. “We hope that we don’t have to relearn that the hard way.”

Contention 3: A living wage increases democracy.

Low wages reduce democracy. John Heck (John, Minnesota 4-H Foundation Fellow at the National 4-H Center, worked for the late Congressman Bruce F. Vento and presently serves on the Saint Paul Charter Commission, publisher) “Minnesota 2020 Journal: Increasing Minimum Wage Increases Democracy” Minnesota 2020 Journal 2014 AT

On Tuesday, inside the State Capitol, Minnesotans rallied for a minimum wage hike. It was a rollicking good time with great speeches, music, call-and-response exhortation and lots and lots of signage. Participants made the case for a minimum wage increase’s positive economic impact on workers’, families’ and communities’ lives. Notably absent from the rally? A lot more minimum wage-earning workers. Why? Because they can’t afford to take the time off from work to advocate for democratic change. This raises an interesting, troubling question. If low and modest wage workers are too financially stressed to cast a ballot, attend a community meeting or advocate for policy change, [is the democracy truly representative]? resulting elections, meeting outcomes and policy proposals truly representative? Democracy requires citizen participation. We don’t enjoy pure democracy, where everyone gets together and decides everything. In a nation of 300-plus million and a state of 5.3 million, the pure Athenian democracy is functionally unworkable. Voting participation positively correlates with wealth, home ownership, education and age. Young people don’t vote to the same degree that older people vote. If you’re over 30, own a home, hold a college degree and earn at least the median income, you vote…at minimum wage, is $30. That might not seem like much to folks earning Minnesota’s $57,000 median family income but $30 is ten percent of $300 of weekly gross earnings. Structurally, minimum and low wage hourly pay reduces the likelihood of participating in voting, advocacy, opposition and the exercise of democracy’s promise. It further concentrates the impact of higher income interests through disproportionately representative concentration. Our democracy becomes, as a result, less democratic.

Democracy is key to a good world  – loss of democracy leads to massive harms Larry Diamond, Hoover Fellow @ Stanford, Fmr. Advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, 10-1995 A report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict

This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments [they] do not ethnically “cleanse” their own populations [because they are ruled by their populations], and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.

As a closing note, a consensus of economic experts agree the benefits of raising the minimum wage outweigh the costs. Frydenborg no date Brian E. Frydenborg (Master of Science in peace operations from George Mason University’s School of Public Policy) “Ethical Issues of Raising the Minimum Wage” AT least 2013 because the author cites stuff from then Opposing Viewshttp://people.opposingviews.com/ethical-issues-raising-minimum-wage-6865.html

In 2013 the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business surveyed 38 economics experts about the minimum wage. About one-third agreed that raising the minimum wage in the U.S. would “make it noticeably harder for low-skilled workers to find employment,” about one-third disagreed that it would do so, and about one-quarter said they were “uncertain.” So the jury’s out on that one. But when asked if the costs of raising the minimum wage to $9 and tying it to inflation are “sufficiently small compared with the benefits” to minimum-wage workers such that “this would be a desirable policy,” 5 percent strongly agreed, 42 percent agreed, 8 percent disagreed, 3 percent strongly disagreed, and 32 percent were uncertain. That’s a total of 47 percent agreed to some degree vs. 11 percent disagreeing to some degree, a clear margin of economists in favor that, yes, there are negatives, but that the positives of raising the minimum wage at least somewhat clearly outweigh these negatives.

I stare into darkened windows
but cannot find another human.
We move, a machine among machines.
Around me, road billboards preach the cult of a culture
Goods are the gods,
nauseating neon signs the preachers, consumers the congregation.

All this, but still we won’t confess
Festering inside modern life is an illusion.
Moldering in our grueling routine
A fungus we never discuss.

I walk as always into the conditioned air and hollow glow
of the store, the temple of lucrative religion.
Around me masses flow into aisles like restless ocean tides
Devout addicts shambling into dope-houses
Monks marching into a well-stocked monastery.
People conditioned to care only for hollow things
They feel the trembling of their lifesprings
In a steady rhythm of income;
They are oblivious to the rhythm of their own hearts.

The market-goers tear designer-made cloth hides off shelves to hide the alienation they feel from themselves.
Across vast ocean their human kin
pour sweat into clothes they could never afford,
shackled slaves of a system they could never share in.
Without thought purchasers
Conscript their currency to the cause of yoking
the scarred hunchback of the slave-world
to the reins of the first world.

This side of the poverty line they trash food they can’t sell;
The other side they lash themselves for morsels.
Stores founded by the fortunate, funded by the pain of the poor
But agony is irrelevant when it’s on a distant shore.

Rows of pencils adorning lustrous steel shelves hide mirages of massacres.
Rows upon rows of guillotined copses.
Bodies mutilated, piled in the back of a truck.
Bodies of carbon, corpses of trees.
We hoard with the infinite thirst of black holes
But how will we quench thirst from a toxic well?
We’re manufacturing our Earth into a gateway to Hell
Greased Gulf oil slicks turn pristine sea into River Styx.
Humanity’s a fetus cutting its own umbilical cord,
poisoning its placenta.
Self-immolating before we’ve realized our potential.
Venomous fumes seethe into filthy atmosphere.
Have we forgotten that we live here?

I leave the temple and feel like I’ve left a rollercoaster
The world swirls around me as I pass the grocer
In every inch of my vision I see signs of a gangrenous age
Dents in the glaring white walls tell of lives lived.
But I cannot imagine life in this leeching bleached building.
Our stomachs are empty in a cornucopia.
Emaciated in a society saturated by gagging opulence
that seeps into our blackened souls when we cannot see

When the miasma clogs our lungs we will finally realize
Lucre cannot allay the devil’s fee.
The only passion I find is confined in synthetic-lit aisles.
I cannot blind myself to the guile in these smiles;
Counterfeit happiness mass-produced in factories.
Everyone I see is decomposing in chains.
Locked up by a desperate desire to devour trivial material.
Will we consume until the will to consume is all that remains?