Those who are just following along may or may not be open to new ideas. The element of "following" (social metaphysics) in them may or may not be a psychological barrier. Whatever they are, appeal to the best in them, not pandering to the worst. Even someone with a strong belief in something wrong may turn out to be a better, but mistaken person, who is willing to become even better.

I have many friends like this as well. Some are strong in their belief. Some are just following the crowd.
To shun them is to surrender, and allow even more media and socialists to affect them and others.
Self-esteem is an intractable place to begin this discussion.

There is always some number of people who can't be reached. Pandering to them is not reaching them. It means they have reached you. Appeal the best in those who have something to appeal to.

Ultimately this requires widespread acceptance of the right ideas, which means replacing the intellectuals who are undermining and destroying what is left of the American sense of life. In the meantime the best in the American sense of life and its ideas, to the extent they are recognized explicitly, are all there is to appeal to. Once that is gone or in a small minority, it is much harder to change the ideas that are accepted than it is even now.

Obviously not because of their politics. My sister is like this, she's still my sister.

The problem is that unless we deal effectively with these people they will become the majority and it doesn't really matter what our philosophy is, the guys with the guns will come to take "our fair contribution".

People like that do exist, and they are growing in numbers. Why are you friends with them? They have a sense of life problem deeper than their bad politics. The contradictory notion that the essence of capitalism is service to others argument won't convince them either: Without their knowing what capitalism is, whatever they are convinced of won't be capitalism. They're likely to wind up, along with the video, wanting European socialist welfare statism worse than what we have now and further deteriorating from there under the same premises.

His "defense of capitalism" is now worse than the old conservatives with the same MO: he's cashing in on their obliteration of the concept 'capitalism' to openly equate it with European socialist welfare statism worse than what we already have here. That is the expected progression based on endorsing socialism as the "moral high ground".

I live in California I have a number of friends and acquaintances that I have gathered over the years and follow them on Facebook. I think I have accurately represented the statements that a significant percentage of them make on a regular basis as the extoll the virtues of Socialism and decry the evils of capitalism.

I am appalled, I argue with them on a regular basis but cannot convince them that pay should have the slightest connection with value produced. They insist pay should be based on needs and decry the decline of unions which would make the corporations pay them more.

It's very sad, but it's my observation of the political reality in America. It's not universal but it is a very significant portion.

I think that the Prager argument is valid. I know that I spend a lot of time trying to make my product more attractive to customers not because I'm altruistic but because I want their money. However why I do it is irrelevant to THEM, what matters to them is that I do it.

You show utter contempt for ordinary Americans in cynically characterizing them as people who see themselves as "victims" with nothing of value to "offer the free market". That is not the "objective world as it exists". If it were the entire country would have collapsed long ago. It is not the American sense of life.

The "Prager argument" in this horrid video -- a more extreme European welfare statist version of the old conservative "capitalism is service" anti-concept -- promotes that false view of America and panders to and encourages those led to believe it. It is not an argument for individualism and capitalism, which it is progressively destroying.

Convincing anyone "that a free market of individuals is in their best interest" does not begin with politics and especially does not begin by promoting an altruistic ethics contrary to it with a mentality of crude, concrete bound "what's in it for me" unprincipled Pragmatism. "Espousing objectivism" does not mean the anti-philosophy libertarians equating Objectivism with their politics as an axiom and eclectic anything-goes Pragmatism and worse for the rest. Pragmatism is not "objective reality".

It not possible to advance capitalism and freedom by "Pragmatically" appealing to principles promoting their opposite of altruistic service to others and people as "victims" with nothing of value to "offer the free market". That is not "objective reality". Contradictions do not exist.

Offering a moral sanction, power and "service" to those who do not see themselves as "empowered" to live their own productive lives is reprehensible and destructive, not an argument for capitalism.

Pandering to a rising entitlement mentality only encourages it. It helps and speeds the progress of the left while cutting off capitalism as an antidote with a corrupted anti-concept obliterating both capitalism and the concept 'capitalism', as conservatives have shown for nearly a century and who are now reduced to begging to let us serve through European-style socialist welfare statism in the name of avoiding "Venezuela".

Nothing could bring Venezuela faster than that kind of "opposition" to the left in the name of its opposite, capitalism. Convincing anyone "that a free market of individuals is in their best interest" requires appealing to the best in people, not pandering to and promoting the worse while denouncing the best as "greed".

"If you want to fight for capitalism, there is only one type of argument that you should adopt, the only one that can ever win in a moral issue: the argument from self-esteem. This means: the argument from man's right to exist—from man's inalienable individual right to his own life." Such a rejection of hopeless Pragmatism is recognition of what is required, not "clinging" to a proper philosophy.

Well, I sure see some hit and run downvoting now that I can actually read this on a real computer. Pot, kettle, black.

Very well said!

When espousing objectivism one must actually deal with the objective world as it exists not as we wish it would. If the person behind the counter saw himself as a producer with something to offer the free market then things might be different. But for the most part they don't. They see themselves as victims of "the corporations". I find it frustrating, but pervasive.

The reality is that those people have to be convinced that that a free market of individualist producers is in their interest or they will band together and send thugs, called policeman, to get stuff from those who have it. Of course they have to wrap it in socialism to salve their conscience.

The reality is that no formal structure will long prevent the masses from constructing the social organization they think is best for them. You must convince them that a free market of individuals is in their best interest.

You can tell them that they will be able to bargain for more for the labor they produce, but frankly, a large part of society simply doesn't believe they can effectively bargain for anything other than by banding together collectively. They will act upon that belief unless you can convince them that they will be better off in a market-based system.

I understand the goals of self interest and free individuals I did start a company. But you cannot cling to a philosophy of what people should understand in the face of the reality that they do not.

The Prager argument speaks to even those who do not see themselves as empowered.

"The person behind the counter at your local fast food restaurant" had better "see [himself] as a producer who has something to offer the free market" if he expects anyone to pay him for what he does. You want him to accept as normal the parasitic mentality of a right to be paid without regard for what he earns.

There isn't anything inferior about working for someone else, which most people do, exchanging value for value. No one is "trying to win them over" by telling them they are "free to start their own companies". Most people do not. They do have have the right to "determine their own future" through their own choices in their own lives, including what they do to earn a living, and that is what individuals are supposed to do.

"What's in it for me" is a crude, utilitarian, anti-philosophical Pragmatist substitute for ethics, not an ethics of rational self interest -- which does not include deciding to be a looter under socialism as one option in the name of 'self interest'. Like any form of choosing to live as a parasite that is in no one's self interest. Rejecting it is not "asking them to be altruistic". Did you not read Atlas Shrugged, let alone any of Ayn Rand's non-fiction or the history of the rise of this country?

The conservative argument for an anti-concept replacing the concept 'capitalism' in the name of "service" tells people they need not be responsible for their own lives, which is owed to them by a "system" -- which is why the video winds up endorsing welfare statism under European socialism in the name of "capitalism" while evading what capitalism is and everything that makes capitalism and freedom possible. It is the result of a collectivist mentality of apologizing for "producers" as servants making "life better for everyone" as if the normal state of individuals were not "producers" for their own lives, trading value for value.

You don't appear to understand what 'self interest' means as a way of life and that it does not mean plunging into politics as if politics were the starting point and all that matters. That is the destructive Pragmatist dead-end of anti-philosophical "libertarianism".

"Under capitalism everyone is a producer. Trade can only occur between productive people who have something to offer each other." While technically that is true, does the person behind the counter at your local fast food restaurant see them selves as a producer who has something to offer the free market?

You might seem them as a free agent selling their services in a free market, for the most part they see themselves as desperately trying to find any job that will take them. You will not win them over by telling them that they are free to start their own companies and determine their own future.

"What's in it for me" IS the essence of self-interest in determining what economic system to support. Individuals must feel that they will benefit from it. If you tell them that a free market system is the only moral way for people to interact but they feel that such a system will leave them personally at a disadvantage, you are asking them to be altruistic.

The Prager argument tells them that even if they do not feel the master of their own fate, a system that empowers the producers will make life better for everyone and thus it is in their self-interest to support it over socialism which promises to explicitly address their needs.

No, "What's in it for me" is not the essence of self-interest, and the meaning of the inalienable right to life, liberty, property and happiness on which the country was founded was never taken to be that inherently inconsistent and unprincipled Pragmatism. Neither is Ayn Rand's ethics justifying the morality of the Declaration of Independence.

Reason and individualism are in the self-interest of everyone at any level of ability by the requirements of human survival. A cynical calculation of savagery is not. The various kinds of utilitarian "greatest good of the greatest number" were a collectivist product of the counter Enlightenment. It is not the world of either Atlas Shrugged or the founders of this country.

Under capitalism everyone is a producer. Trade can only occur between productive people who have something to offer each other. There is no "class warfare" driven by envy and resentment. To repeat, as Ayn Rand put it in her analysis cited above, "capitalism grants economic recognition to only one kind of consumer: the producer—that only traders, i.e., producers who have something to offer, are recognized on a free market, not 'consumers' as such—that, in a capitalist economy, as in reason, in justice, and in reality, production is the precondition of consumption)."

That requires an ethics of individualism. It requires knowing what is in fact in one's self interest as a way of life, not how to live off others. Responsibility for one's own life requires "seeing oneself as a producer". One cannot plunge into politics cynically pandering to those who don't, ignoring the philosophy on which politics is based, with a utilitarian calculation based on collectivism, and expect to get a free society out of it, or any kind of society fit for the sense of life of rational individuals.

Pandering to those who "do not see themselves as producers" with a cynical "what's in it for me" aberration misrepresenting rational self-interest is a false alternative to altruism, and is what altruists promote in order to obliterate the very concept of a Howard Roark or Hank Rearden or Eddie Willers. The false alternative is two sides of the same fraudulent coin. Both encourage pressure group warfare and collectivism as a moral ideal, making capitalism, individualism and civilization impossible, which is what the video is doing.

Tell people to go for "what's in it for me" and you get the pressure group warfare savaging producers at all levels, with nothing in principle telling them where to stop, only cynical utilitarian calculations trying to optimize the unprincipled Pragmatism. The phony morality of altruistic "service" as a moral ideal then parades itself as a "civilized" alternative to the savagery it then proceeds to reproduce.

So, what's in it for me? Isn't that the essence of self-interest and anti-altruistic tenancies. How will I benefit from the system you advocate? Now, if I'm a producer and can create my own company to produce goods having the freedom to do so will maximize my returns.

But what if I'm not? What if I don't see myself being able to start a company and hire people? What if I believe that my only realistic option is to work for others? What if I'm worried about how I could put food on the table or what would happen if I became ill?

Such people might be interested in socialism. Not because they are altruistic, although socialism is often wrapped in the language of altruism, but because they are self-interested. They want the maximum they can get and have been led to believe that by supporting the government in capturing the wealth of producers they will personally benefit.

What the defense of capitalism as a servant of the consumer does is to tell people who do not see themselves as producers "what's in it for me". That's shelves full of food at reasonable prices, goods and services made to fit their needs by companies who spend great effort to figure out those needs. By a virtual consumer's paradise.

It's not about calling the producers altruistic, we know that they are trying to maximize their market, it's about answering "what's in it for me" for the bulk of the people who will not start a business of their own.

It was in support of your post, providing supporting details. You were the first, and at the time the only, one to see the essential problem in the video while others were praising it.

No, no. It is one of the joys of philosophy and friendship to help friends who are (or appear to be) off track.

I am reminded of the "Bert & I" skit where one fellow has been to the communist lecture and comes home spouting to his friends about how it's "share and share alike." His friend says, "So if you had two hogs, you'd give me one of them?" "That I would, that I would." "And if you had (sly pause) two HOSSES, you would give me one of them?" "DAMN YOU Eban, you KNOW I got two hosses!"

But Prager is conceding the moral high ground to socialism, while claiming to defend capitalism.
That's not a step in the right direction.

Thanks mate, this is a great post.

I mean ewv is right.

--Addressed to ewv.

Hallelujah! Ain't it the truth!!!

Yep, he is trying to defend capitalism by using altruism, which is never going to succeed.

And here we go again...

Well, go get me kicked off if you want. You are a giant waste of time.

Ayn Rand supported active minds, not minds "open" to anything regardless of the contradictions. Personal hostility denouncing that as "diatribe" and "narrow mind" is not even "open-mindedness" in any legitimate sense.

You seem to think that this Ayn Rand forum should be "open" to anything except rational explanation of Ayn Rand's positions in response to posts advocating their opposite, which responses are to be denounced with personal hostility for daring to be here. That you have limited time to post does not mean that no one else can answer it for the benefit of those who are interested.