“I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.” ― Christopher Hitchens
Yaron Brook, chairman of the board of the Ayn Rand Institute, told Sam Seder he wasn’t going to mourn the victims of the Surfside Condominium collapse. Instead, he dismissed the residents as people who made their own bed and are deservedly lying dead in it. This is how the conversation went on “The Majority Report” podcast,
Yaron Brook told an incredulous Sam Seder that in a truly free market, the company that insured the now collapsed building would have hired its own inspector to ensure the building was structurally sound.
Brook “Now, in the world we live in today, they don’t. Because they rely on the government inspector.”
Seder “The private owners of that building made the decision not to fix it.”
Brook “Then why are we worried about it? They made a decision and they suffered the consequences.”
Seder “Because there’s a hundred and fifty dead people.”
Brook “People who made a decision. Who made a bad decision and suffer the consequences of it. I’m not justifying the building collapsing. I’m saying that people make decisions. If I make a decision to walk into the street without looking, should the driver be limited in his capacity to drive because I made a stupid decision? What you want is for the people who make the decision to suffer [or] to benefit from the consequences of their actions.”
A complete lack of empathy is common to all libertarians/conservatives. Without even looking at the merits of Brook’s point, we see a man who is so wedded to his philosophy that the idea of concern for others is anathema. Someone may choose, of their own volition, to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. And if in doing so they die, no one else is responsible. They directly suffered the consequences of their own decision. But it takes a soulless bastard with a heart of stone not to feel a tinge of sorrow.
Now let’s look at Brook’s argument, starting with the statement that in a truly free market, the company that insured the now collapsed building would have hired its own inspector to ensure the building was structurally sound. Would they? I suspect, rather than hiring inspectors, the insurance company would use some form of statistical modeling to predict the percentage of buildings that fall down, catch fire, and are destroyed by hurricanes, tornados, and earthquakes. Then, using the data, price their insurance products based on a certain expected amount of loss.
Case in point. How many readers, who pay homeowners insurance, have had an insurance inspector visit their home? I imagine the answer is none.
What of Brook’s statement that the residents “made a decision”. Did they? The condo board did make a decision. But does that count as the residents making a decision? No. People have to earn a living, they leave the management of the enterprise to others. Or they are old and trust in others. Or they are children with no say.
It is unlikely the condo board had expertise in structural engineering. So in this case they relied on what the government inspector told them. And while he said the building needed major work he didn’t condemn it. Or revoke its certificate of occupancy.
In the libertarian fantasy, we still live in small villages where everyone knows the butchers, the bakers, and the candlestick makers. And because of our intimate knowledge of the providers and the simplicity of their products, the average person can make an informed choice on which businesses to patronize.
But that isn’t the world we live in.
Our water doesn’t come from our well. Travel isn’t a few miles by horse or foot. Our power is generated 100s of miles away. Our food comes from different continents. Our toys are made in China. We rely on a whole web of government inspectors to ensure the safety of the products we consume.
New and rehabbed properties are reviewed by public building inspectors. Certainly, most home buyers will hire a private inspector before buying. But that inspector is limited to what they can see. They have no way of knowing if enough rebar was used to secure and strengthen the concrete and blockwork, for instance.
Globally, no first-world country exists without government standards covering every aspect of the citizens’ lives and without government employees enforcing those standards. But to Brook, we should take the responsibility of learning everything about everything so we can make life and death decisions about every facet of our existence.
Brook then asked “If I make a decision to walk into the street without looking, should the driver be limited in his capacity to drive because I made a stupid decision? The answer is yes. Because decent people look out for one another. Especially as it may be the driver who is the next person to make a mistake. The world would be a better place if we all subscribed to the philosophy “pay it forward”.
Brook is not alone in his casual inhumanity. Libertarianism and conservatism might well be symptoms of sociopathy. How else to account for the refusal of states to expand Medicaid to millions when the federal government pays at least 90% of the cost of the expansion — and in most cases more? For cents on the dollar, the conservative politician will consign more poor to early graves.
It takes a granite heart to crush measures designed to stem gun violence. To use the massacre of a first-grade class to tub thump about second amendment rights. And to politicize a fatal pandemic by not mandating masks and social distancing — while publicly waffling on vaccination.
It’s cruel to deny consenting adults the right to marry the one they love. To forbid people to identify themselves as they truly are. And to deny women agency over their own bodies. Especially when no benefit accrues to the people laying down these arbitrary and capricious laws.
It is so unChristian. And it leads to the ultimate irony that while Ayn Rand was a committed atheist so many evangelicals share her ‘values’.