Many big-L Libertarians I’ve met—along with those who consider themselves to be trench-fighters for Ayn Rand-ian Objectivism—seem to want to conflate “selfishness” with “enlightened self-interest” for the positive connotations of the latter… yet their rationale for various big-L proposals (such as “let’s turn over national security to corporations, who will certainly never abuse the power to force decisions upon people”) tends to be of the extremely rosy, happy death spiral, declare-anything-that-doesn’t-fit-an-”externality” variety. That seems somewhat removed from any meaning of “enlightened” that approaches sensibility; and that’s coming from a mild, little-l, “A free society means you need a reason to make things illegal” libertarian framing.
Ultimately, I can understand the “It’s So Simple! (tm)” appeal of claiming that selfishness itself is good as an absolute, but delivering that advice only appears to hold true—at either a societal OR individual level—if the scoreboard is measuring relative altruistic effects. A benefit to oneself that derives from (having helped propagate) a mutually self-interested society only qualifies as a benefit relative to 1) a society of self-sacrificial lemmings (which is a bit of a straw man); or 2) no society at all, where there really ARE no externalities and self-interest can be truly self-referent. …I feel I may not be explaining this clearly, so I’ll simply request suggestions and wrap up this comment.
It seems that, instead of trumpeting “selfishness!” as a counterintuitive moral panacea, all that’s really needed for altruism to symbiotically cohabitate with “selfishness” is to use the phrase “rational self-regard” instead, since it doesn’t require you to engage in Ethical-Egoism-esque displays of unnecessary dickishness towards one’s fellow man. …And I feel I may have to try to write an article on that subject if one does not yet exist.
conflate “selfishness” with “enlightened self-interest” for the positive connotations of the latter...
If you have a look at this blog post by one of the more famous ex-regulars, this is basically the “motte-and-bailey” tactics, where motte is “selfishness = “enlightened self-interest” and bailey is something like “let the free market rule”.
Many big-L Libertarians I’ve met—along with those who consider themselves to be trench-fighters for Ayn Rand-ian Objectivism—seem to want to conflate “selfishness” with “enlightened self-interest” for the positive connotations of the latter… yet their rationale for various big-L proposals (such as “let’s turn over national security to corporations, who will certainly never abuse the power to force decisions upon people”) tends to be of the extremely rosy, happy death spiral, declare-anything-that-doesn’t-fit-an-”externality” variety. That seems somewhat removed from any meaning of “enlightened” that approaches sensibility; and that’s coming from a mild, little-l, “A free society means you need a reason to make things illegal” libertarian framing.
Ultimately, I can understand the “It’s So Simple! (tm)” appeal of claiming that selfishness itself is good as an absolute, but delivering that advice only appears to hold true—at either a societal OR individual level—if the scoreboard is measuring relative altruistic effects. A benefit to oneself that derives from (having helped propagate) a mutually self-interested society only qualifies as a benefit relative to 1) a society of self-sacrificial lemmings (which is a bit of a straw man); or 2) no society at all, where there really ARE no externalities and self-interest can be truly self-referent. …I feel I may not be explaining this clearly, so I’ll simply request suggestions and wrap up this comment.
It seems that, instead of trumpeting “selfishness!” as a counterintuitive moral panacea, all that’s really needed for altruism to symbiotically cohabitate with “selfishness” is to use the phrase “rational self-regard” instead, since it doesn’t require you to engage in Ethical-Egoism-esque displays of unnecessary dickishness towards one’s fellow man. …And I feel I may have to try to write an article on that subject if one does not yet exist.
If you have a look at this blog post by one of the more famous ex-regulars, this is basically the “motte-and-bailey” tactics, where motte is “selfishness = “enlightened self-interest” and bailey is something like “let the free market rule”.