Author Archives: haeywony

Even though minimum wage seems to take root firmly in modern developed countries as a part of wage system, its efficiency and legitimacy still remains controversial for many sensible people. In that sense, the idea of guaranteed minimum income(GMI) sounds too radical for now, but surprisingly, in some countries like Finland and Switzerland, a pilot project has already started, or a voting on a referendum to its installation is in progress.

The logic of proponents of GMI is simple; if you want to end poverty, just give people money. They remind us of the fact that we have already spent too much energy and resource to provide some relief for those people in need. Just give the people money and abolish all other transfer payments and the complex bureaucracies overseeing them. It will be much more cost-efficient, they claim. Regarding the concern about moral hazard, they offer us an optimistic prospect; if a society adopts GMI, everyone in the society will know that everyone has an income stream. Every person, regardless of their age, gender, ethnicity, job, or education, has at least some amount of money guaranteed enough to live on sufficiently, and this knowledge, consequently, requires every person to behave more responsibly because it is now impossible to blame society for my poverty, my dissatisfaction. If you want more, then do more! Don’t blame society because society gives you enough fairly.

Is GMI more cost-efficient than the current social security system? Would it make people more responsible and more reasonable in the end? If so, utilitarians would support it. I do not think that it is cost-efficient, nor is it helpful to make people become more responsible and reasonable, but even if so, objectivists would not support it. No matter how GMI is cost-efficient, no matter how GMI would help people become more responsible and reasonable, we objectivists would oppose it because the concept of GMI degrades life.

GMI guarantees our survival. We do not need to do anything. We do not need to think, because we have nothing to worry about. We do not need to focus on what is going on and what will happen next. If we do not focus on anything, that means we are not conscious about anything. If we are not conscious about anything, that means our life does not mean anything.

We objectivists oppose GMI because it creates a wrong fantasy of survival. Perhaps, we could feel happy and satisfied with no need to do anything. We could feel free and relieved because we do not need to make difficult decisions. Perhaps, we might convince ourselves that doing nothing is what we are doing now, and avoiding making decisions is the decision we make now. However, we are not free from the result of our doing, our decision, our doing nothing at all, and our decision not to make any decision. We survive because we do something, I mean, really do something. We survive because we make a decision, because we think to make a decision. Although the concepts of the welfare state and social security system supported by collectivism tend to allow some people to live like a parasite, we survive because most of us are hosts, not parasites. We survive because we know we should do something to survive. GMI is easy to fool us that we can survive even if we do nothing to survive. GMI creates wrong social dynamics that rational parasites survive at the expense of irrational hosts. GMI makes hard-working, truly responsible and truly reasonable people appear to be irrational. GMI makes people doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and thus, degrading life, appear to be rational. Is it the world of rational parasites and irrational hosts that we dream of?

Become rationally selfish. There is no future, no life, with rational parasites and irrational hosts.

Now, it is real time to talk about why instead of whom. Of course, we always try to focus on why (we should support this person, not that one) before the election, but in the end, we always end up talking about whom (because we are forced willy-nilly to choose one of them). After the election, however, we are free from that burdensome, inevitable choice. What is done is done. At this point, talking about why one candidate is better than the other is belated as well as meaningless, but talking about why this particular candidate becomes our next President is timely as well as meaningful. We can talk about why in the context of the things passed away, not the things coming up, and hindsight always makes us wiser, while foresight often betrays us miserably, as we witnessed in this very election.

Sorry for our next President, Donald Trump, and his supporters, he did not win the election. Sorry for Hilary Clinton and her supporters, that does not mean that she did not lose this election; she lost. Again, sorry for our next President, I do not think he won because he was a better candidate than his opponents. His words are crude and vulgar; his policies are unclear and superficial. He won because he succeeds in wrapping himself as a candidate for people who are fed up with collectivism. He won because he appears to be reasonably selfish; he is not one of those abundant hypocrites in Washington D.C. claiming that we are hungry now, but we should still help other hungrier people out there. He won because he seems to put individuals ahead society, trust individuals more than society; he is not one of those nagging, patronizing politicians thinking that we are too careless or dangerous to carry guns or that we are too irresponsible or irrational to prepare health care for ourselves. Hilary Clinton lost because she appears to be irrationally unselfish; why should we give illegal immigrants legal opportunities and protections while we offer various ways to immigrate legally? Why is our tax money spent for them? She lost because she failed to see that we are no longer to be deceived a fantasy of altruistic collectivism; Do you want to expand Medicaid? Allow some moratorium on student debt? Believe in climate change and preserve our beautiful Earth? Great! But at whose expense?

I am not sure yet whether Donald Trump is a true objectivist who believes that rational selfishness is the basis of individual happiness and the key for prosperous society. He could be a false objectivist who cleverly glorifies his greed and prejudice making it look like rational selfishness. However, one thing is for sure, at least; we should and could make this election a victory of objectivists. Let us not it be remembered as a victory of “a basket of deplorables.” What is done is done, but what can be done is not.