Rape: The Unknown Ideal
"Rape is an integral and necessary expression of human nature. Sexual assaults have been present in every society since the dawn of time. It is the drive of man to reproduce, to compete successfully for advantage on the battlefield of life and evolution. In fact, it is this very competition to reproduce that motivates man to do anything productive and worthwhile in the first place. It is this competition that motivates man to aspire to greatness. Can you imagine men striving for greatness were they not motivated by their drive to reproduce by any means? Of course not, because the drive to reproduce is at the very core of mankind's essence! As long as we disregard silly 'god' superstitions and recognize that a man is ultimately responsible to and for himself, we therefore recognize that any measures that attempt to stifle this natural and inherent drive to reproduce by any means are inherently wrong. To stifle sexual assaults is the perverse anti-human dream of the superstitious or a bloated priestly class, or the self-promoted intelligentsia, which of course is both of these at the same time. In fact, no human society has successfully eliminated rape, despite myriad measures designed to curb sexual assaults. If man were only truly free to pursue this integral part of his nature we would walk as the masters of the Earth that we are!"
Now, anyone will see that this is a glaringly faulty and dangerous chain of reasoning. Just because the drive to reproduce is inherent in humans, and because sexual assault and rape stem from that drive and are a part of human nature and an expression of that nature, and because every society has had sexual assault and none has successfully eliminated rape, that doesn't necessarily mean that sexual assault and rape are good things that should be encouraged, or that there wouldn't be disastrous and apocalyptic consequences were people given carte blanche to rape.
Now, reread the paragraph and replace every occurrence of the words 'sexual assault' with the words 'free markets', replace every occurrence of 'rape' with 'capitalism,' and every occurrence of the word 'reproduce' with 'acquire wealth.'* It is now word for word the position of Ayn Rand types.
What have we learned? Certain things might be inherently part of human nature and cannot be completely eliminated, but that isn't a sufficient condition for a logically cohesive argument that they should be encouraged. If you want to argue that they should be encouraged, you must give other reasons.
The only other reason I seem to ever get is "Oh yeah, well communism doesn't work," which of course displays woeful ignorance of the enormous and diverse body of thought that is non-Milton Friedman economics.
* My point here is not to equate capitalism with rape (that would be the topic for another node - specifially
here,
here, and
here). It is to point out some faulty reasoning.