Correcting smears of Ayn Rand: Social Security and welfare

"Ayn Rand's New Idea of Selfishness"

"The Question of Scholarships"

Script:

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In this video, I want to correct some common smears of Ayn Rand that I’ve seen on the Internet. Perhaps the most common smear I’ve seen is that Rand was a hypocrite because she accepted Social Security payments while claiming to oppose such government programs. Some people even claim that Rand died broke while on welfare.

My answer to these particular claims is: Bullshit.

But I can elaborate.

First of all, Rand did not die broke. She was a best-selling author and left a fortune to her heir, Leonard Peikoff.

Second, she was never on welfare, that is, a system in which she got money from the government in exchange for nothing. Rather, she received Social Security payments: She got out of the system some of what she was forced to put into it during her lifetime. In other words, she simply got back some of what was looted from her.

Third, hypocrisy means not practicing what you preach. But she never preached that you shouldn’t try to get back what was forcibly taken from you. On the contrary, she thought it was *good* if you could get that back. What she opposed was looting—not: having loot restored to its rightful owner. So her acceptance of Social Security payments was perfectly consistent with her opposition to coercion.

Rand herself explained the logic of her position in her article “The Question of Scholarships.” After discussing the conditions under which it is appropriate to accept government scholarships, she writes, “The same moral principles and considerations apply to the issue of accepting social security, unemployment insurance or other payments of that kind. It is obvious, in such cases, that a man receives his own money which was taken from him by force, directly and specifically, without his consent, against his own choice. Those who advocated such laws are morally guilty, since they assumed the ‘right’ to force employers and unwilling co-workers. But the victims, who opposed such laws, have a clear right to any refund of their own money — and they would not advance the cause of freedom if they left their money, unclaimed, for the benefit of the welfare-state administration.”

Hopefully, coercive programs like Social Security will eventually be abolished—and I’m working to help bring that about by advocating Rand’s pro-freedom ideas. But so long as we are forced to participate in such a system, we shouldn’t martyr ourselves to it and allow others to benefit from our forced contributions while we ourselves get nothing. That would be self-sacrificial, and Rand was vehemently opposed to self-sacrifice. Instead, she advocated a morality of rational self-interest, according to which individuals have a moral right to live for their own sake and neither sacrifice themselves to others nor others to themselves. You can learn more about her morality of self-interest in my video “Ayn Rand’s New Idea of Selfishness,” which I link to below.

That’s it for this video. I’ll see you in the next one.

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"Abstract Blurred Lights Bokeh Background" in outro slide thanks to Free B Roll by Videezy.com.

#AynRand, #SocialSecurity, #smear, #welfare