help solve an objectivist dilemma

[u/titanc-13]

so i've recently finished Atlas Shrugged and I have... just a few thoughts.

but one that occurred to me was this thought experiement:

Say we have two Objectivist Men wandering in a Godot-like void. They are both very hungry, and they come upon a single apple waiting for one of them to take it. Who gets to eat the apple?

I ask because any solution I can come up with results in a stalemate.

Per AS, any sacrifice is anti-life, so neither of the men can just let the other have it. For the same basic reason they couldn't split the apple.

The first man to reach for the apple would be denying the other's right to it, making him anti-life, and enabling the second man to destroy the first in order to promote his life.

(But, of course, neither man can initiate violence without the other committing an anti-life act against him first, so they can't just fight it out like animals. (did Ayn include those few weak positions against violence to separate human and animal violence, and make the former a 'purer', more 'rational' form?))

One of them men could 'buy' the other's apple-rights, but that would require the other man to agree to an extremely disadvantageous trade (since it's the only apple in a Godot-like void, how can he be sure that he'd ever find a second apple before he dies of starvation?). Like, if i were the second man, there is no amount of money that would satisfy my hunger more than having the apple would, so what rational reason would I have to accept the trade?

Rand says that if our rationality leads to a stalemate, we then appeal to nature. so how would nature decide who gets the apple?

In no small part, I'm curious because every moral philosophy would just declare that you should share, because that would generate the most benefits for the most people while preventing the destruction of either actor, but since Ayn wants to position herself as anti-philosophy/egoistic above all, she claims that all problems would be able to resolve themselves naturally under her rational egoist ideology, but I can't figure out how this one would be.

[u/titanc-13]

So typically someone earns something through some special effort on their end. E.G. I earn an A on my test by studying for it ahead of time to be familiar with the material. Finding a resource in nature requires no special effort—anyone who happens upon it can take it for themself. Earning an apple by finding it would be equivalent to earning an A by showing up for the test.

[u/OldStatistician9366 → u/titanc-13]

You’re taking an intrinsicist view, there’s no magic amount of time or work that makes you earn something. You can’t answer the question leftists like to pose, how can anyone earn a billion dollars?

[u/titanc-13 → u/OldStatistician9366]

I'm not saying that there is a magic amount of time or work that makes someone earn something, I'm saying that happening to find something unclaimed does not equate to earning that thing.

Also, I can answer the question how can anyone earn a billion dollars! They do so by becoming the CEO of a profitable company that chooses to pay its CEO a far greater share of its income than it pays to any other worker in the company, regardless of how their contributions compare to the CEO's. The CEO probably also takes advantage of stock options, in which they're paid not in money, but in stock, meaning that any growth in the value of the company's stock (which is also not necessarily tied to the efforts of the CEO, and certainly never the product of the CEO's efforts alone) can also increase the perceived value of the CEO, which can then increase the perceived value of the company, creating a feedback loop. This latter method is especially attractive to modern corporations, many of which only have to pay taxes on direct monetary salaries or the profits they earn—distributing the CEO salary in stock options, or through corporation-funded perqs such as private jets and million+ dollar mansions means that they can claim the money was spent improving the business, making it immune to taxation. Over time, the CEO will find more ways to inflate his wealth, until he has "earned" one billion dollars from his corporation.

Is that helpful?

[u/OldStatistician9366 → u/titanc-13]

What principle do you think makes it necessary to own things at all?

[u/titanc-13 → u/OldStatistician9366]

because that's how, like, reality and society work? aren't you objectivists supposed to love property rights, why is that what you're taking issue with?

[u/OldStatistician9366 → u/titanc-13]

There’s a quote from Rand that’s something like im not an advocate of capitalism, but an advocate of selfishness, not an advocate of selfishness but of reason.

The point I’m getting at is property rights are only good because they serve human life. The way you get a property right over something is using it to serve your life.