President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

The universe is designed with living things putting self interest first. In the aggregate, it actually produces the best possible outcomes, because your self interest usually requires you to act morally -- to deal with others in a way that is amenable to them (and vice versa). People take "self interest" to mean everyone running around screwing each other. But that isn't reality. Anyone who behaves that way, isn't acting in his self interest. Eventually others won't deal that person because they know he or she isn't a moral person, and that behavior has the effect of HURTING your self interest.

Selfishness is rational. It also doesn't mean doing "whatever you want." Moral principles aren't opinions. They derive from reality -- people are rational beings, who have to think and act successfully in order to live happy lives. Morality helps people identify the kinds of traits that MAKE you successful -- the virtues, such as productivity, integrity, honesty, pride, etc. that advance your self interests (whatever they are for any individual). Which is why we are all better off when people are focused on what they should be -- their own lives, and not being forced to sacrifice themselves for others (which is immoral).

This was something that the founders of our country seemed to inherently understand, which is why our government (which has become something it wasn't designed as over a few hundred years) was built around the rights of individuals to pursue their self interests. That is what civil libertarians are all about. Those founders imagined a very limited government (certainly one not coercing people to do things they rationally don't want to, under coercion, in order to benefit others) that simply wanted government's role to protect us from each other in the pursuit of our interests. Our system would work just fine, if various branches of government hadn't been expanded via power grabs over time to turn our government into an entity trying to manage people's behavior for all kinds of objectives OTHER than allowing those people to rationally make decisions that are in their own best interest and live their lives freely.