Intentionalism

Any philosophy or ideology worth its salt should bring something new to the table, I suppose. But that's not what I'm going to do.

I'm going to create a sort of position, and I'm going to call it "Intentionalism". I almost hate to give it a name, because its nothing new, and I don't want more attached to it than what I mean. Its less a new position, than it is just a common sense, factual way to look at the world. But what I want to do is deflate some of the wrong headed ideologies which today guide our culture. You might call my position an anti-objectivist position, because that seems to be a major guiding ideology of our day, and people largely take its tenants as factual or common sensical when they are neither. Because I'm using my argument as a set of arguments against Objectivism and the Market-Fundamentalism that goes hand in hand with it, and I want it to carry a certain kind of weight, I am naming it. (Though I wish I had the rhetorical talents to Rand-like have it namelessly take over Western consciousness.)

Intentionalism has as its major premise the following: When we are talking about human activity, things happen primarily because of somebody's action, and the efficacy of the action largely has to do with the intent of the action.

Now, when I say 'intent', I am using it in a fairly specific way, and that should be clear from the outset. I know I'm going to have to repeat this over and over, because it is easy for people to abuse meanings of words to dispel beliefs or to put them in a light where they can be disregarded.

For instance, somebody could cheaply pick apart my position by using the word intent in a negative way. So for instance, I could say, "I intended to practice the piano yesterday, but I never got around to it." That's one way people use the word intend. However, we also use the word to blame somebody: "He broke my dolly intentionally!" Or we might use the word as a sort of emphasizer: "He practiced with great intent (or intention)."

Now, the way we used intent in the last two sentences above is really almost the opposite of the way we used it in the first. Its still a noun and has the same denotative meaning for the most part, but the connotation is completely different. So we could even say something like, "That law had good intentions, but no intent," and it might not be clear precisely what we mean, but we wouldn't immediately think that it is contradictory.

When I'm talking about things being done well, it is because somebody put their body and soul into the operation. They thought their actions through; they've put great effort and care into it. They've done what they've done with a great deal of intention. They have done it intentionally. This is the sort of thing I am talking about with Intentionalism. Good things are not achieved by accident. A person does not get good at golf because somebody else is. That person puts their mind to getting good, and by and large, how much they invest in the endeavor will determine their results. Yes, a person might put their whole selves into playing golf and never be as good as Tiger Woods, but they will certainly be a great deal better themselves than they would have if they had gone after it half-assed or not at all.

Now, I have not said anything new, or novel yet. And, in fact, I haven't gotten into why my position is anti-Objectivist. Really, what I have said, and what I will continue to say, is not really inconsistent with Objectivism, but I think that it is something that is not used evenly across the board, and thus we have people putting undue emphasis on things like competition; they say, with great conviction, that we cannot trust any human action to be good unless it has that element of competition with it. Even if people do not verbalize that argument, it has become socially ingrained in us. My hope is, with logic, historical evidence, and even some good myth making, to eventually lay the groundwork for removing that damaging mode of belief.

Another Corporate Note

Yes, everybody rails against 'evil' corporations, and so do I. And here are some good reasons that you should, too, especially if you're a 'market fundamentalist', Tea Partier, or Libertarian.

Corporations are political entities. They are ultimately created by the state and given certain rights and privileges above and beyond normal citizens. If you think the government shouldn't be involved in the market, this should already be enough. How else does their special status effect the market? Well, by and large, mostly because they have limited liability. Shareholders and corporate managers cannot be held responsible for damages done by corporate activity. The most an investor could ever lose is his original investment; he or she is not liable for damages beyond that, regardless of how much money they have made in the intermediary. So much of what market fundamentalists argue about concerns moral hazard; well, even if you don't insulate the corporation from bankruptcy, fines, or whatever, if you don't also punish the management and the shareholders, you're maintaining that moral hazard.

Big corporations are big. This is bad. Why is it bad? Because they create faction. Because they have enough power to manipulate the government and bend it toward their own ends. This impacts both the marketplace and our control over our own government. So big corporations are not only dangerous to the market, but also to us.

Big business also skews what we mean by competition. Without actually being better, or more efficient, they can move into a local economy and dominate it simply based on the fact that they are big. They can undercut prices easily since they can absorb losses with their larger network; most people think this just makes their model superior, but this is like saying John is a better boxer than Peter, where Peter is a featherweight and John is ten heavyweights. It warps what we mean by fair competition.

Enough, this will get better over time.