Will AI Replace Human Labour? Revisiting a Question I First Asked in 2015

 

In 2015, I wrote an essay entitled, “Will robots replace human labour and reduce real wage levels?” That essay still seems to attract quite a lot of attention even though some of the thoughts in it are now out of date. I did not anticipate the impact of Large Language Models (LLMs).

One of the things I like about my previous essay is the use of down-to-earth examples to illustrate processes. So, I will try to continue in that vein.

Horses, tractors and robots

My previous essay included some paragraphs, quoted from Nick Rowe, illustrating how the replacement of human labour by non-human labour is an ongoing process rather than a new phenomenon:

“Horses were once like robots. Horses could do a lot of the same work that humans could do. Humans and horses can pull things, if you feed them. But then mechanical horses, called tractors, were invented, that could pull heavier things with cheaper food. Tractors pushed horses' wages below subsistence, so the horse population declined.

The robot horse displaced horses, just as horses displaced humans from all the jobs where humans pulled things. But humans, unlike horses, can do lots of other jobs beside pulling things. Humans are very versatile. Horses can't really do anything except pull things. So humans switched to doing other jobs, while horses couldn't. And the marginal product of labour, and hence wages in those other jobs, increased. Horses and tractors were complementary factors to human labour in those other jobs.

But that won't happen if robots are invented that really are just like humans, and can do all the jobs that humans can do. Robots that are just like humans would be just like slaves, rather than like tractors and horses.”

My comment in 2015:

What we are seeing now is robots that are displacing humans from a range of activities and freeing them to do things that robots can’t do - just as horses did. There are adjustment problems for people in the affected industries, but the impact on average real wages is likely to be positive. Over time, superior robots are likely to be invented that will replace the initial series of robots, just as tractors displaced horses. If robots can eventually reproduce like crazy, their capacity to live off “the smell of an oily rag” might mean that wages in many industries in which humans are currently employed will be driven below human subsistence levels.

However, it seems unlikely that robots will ever be viewed by humans as close substitutes for human labour with respect to all attributes relevant to all economic activities. My guess is that many humans will show a strong preference for some goods with a high human labour input e.g. home produced food, restaurant meals and beverages that are served by humans, live music by local musicians, handicrafts and works of art produced by humans, and some manufactured goods that individual humans have designed specifically for themselves or friends and relatives.

My bottom line is that over the next few decades the impact of robots in replacing human labour is likely to be a relatively small part of the total impact of technological change on the quality of life. Rather than worrying about robots replacing human labour perhaps we should be more concerned that the rate of technological progress may be slowing down.

Why do my thoughts of 2015 need revisiting?

In 2015 I was thinking mainly about robots as physical substitutes for human labour, and I posed the choice as one between two models: robots as something close to slave labour (a pure increase in labour supply, competing directly with humans) or robots as something more like horses and tractors (displacing humans from some tasks while freeing them, and raising their marginal productivity, in others). I concluded that robots were unlikely to be close substitutes for humans across all the attributes relevant to production, and that the wage effects of automation would therefore be a comparatively minor part of the overall story over the following few decades.

Large language models (LLMs) were not on my radar in 2015. They change the shape of the question, because they are far closer to general-purpose cognitive substitutes than any robot arm or self-driving vehicle. An LLM does not just replace one narrow task; it can draft, summarise, code, translate, analyse and advise across an enormous range of activities that previously required a trained human. In that sense, the "close substitute" horn of my original dilemma is more relevant to cognitive and creative work than I gave it credit for. I now think the economic impact of LLMs will be massive - considerably larger than the impact of robots in physical production that I was focused on a decade ago.

State plainly, LLMs are closer to general-purpose cognitive substitutes than anything I had in view a decade ago. The AI revolution is very much like an influx of low-cost labour that will replace human labour.

However, it is premature to jump to the conclusion that most of the human population is about to become unemployed and will need to find some source of income other than wages and salaries if they are to survive. In what follows I discuss a range of factors that impinge on the speed and unevenness of dispersion of the new technology before turning my attention to the profound issues associated with checking and validation of AI output.

Human interaction

As argued in my original essay, some activities that depend on human interaction may remain largely immune. People want to be served, taught, cared for, negotiated with and entertained by other people.

Yet, this point should not be overstated. A lot of "human interaction" jobs are information-transfer jobs with a human face on them - for example, customer service, a lot of teaching, first-line medical triage, even therapy. People are apparently willing to accept an AI substitute when it's cheaper, faster, or less judgmental. AI companions, tutoring bots, and mental-health chatbots are already being adopted.

Human advantages

Trades that depend on physical presence and situational judgement - builders, plumbers, electricians, nurses - are unlikely to face serious robotic competition over the next decade or two, whatever progress is made in software.

Diffusion lags

Use of AI in physical production processes is usually a costly and slow process. Diffusion into actual production processes can take many years. Restructuring enterprises – investing capital, redesigning workflows, retraining staff - is likely to take considerably longer than development of the knowhow and systems design which makes automation feasible.

By contrast, however, adoption of AI can occur rapidly in many service sector industries. Individual employees began using AI on their laptops last year, with no capital expenditure and no sign-off from anyone. That is arguably why uptake has already been faster than any prior general-purpose technology. In service sector industries, the labour-market effect may arrive informally and quietly, well ahead of any restructuring.

Costly inputs

The relevance of the "smell of an oily rag" idea in my original piece - the thought that machines might reproduce and operate so cheaply that they would drive human wages toward subsistence – depends on the time period we are considering. During the next few years, electric power and compute will be costly; the marginal cost of running systems at scale is real and substantial.

In the longer term, however, the situation will look different. Computational and financial expense of generating outputs from trained models is falling rapidly. Within a few decades, what looks now like an unusually capable but costly input is likely to look more like a flood of costless labour.

Potential for entrepreneurship

We should take account of the potential for enterprising individuals, rather than large incumbent firms, to exploit these tools quickly - using AI to launch new products and services. That will create new employment opportunities, but not necessarily for the same people who lost the old ones, at anything like the same wage, on anything like the same timescale.

The more important point is that the new technology may have potential to help large numbers of people to find hidden entrepreneurial capabilities. As I noted in a recent essay, entrepreneurs may market new products to satisfy needs that consumers previously didn’t know they had. For the most part, those innovations are likely to be relatively minor and only of local or regional significance, but they could add substantially to the incomes of the new entrepreneurs and, in aggregate, make a substantial contribution to national income.

Complementarity

The "horses and tractors" story is still relevant because humans are using AI as a tool to raise their personal productivity. Adding an LLM app to a personal computer is like adding a hydraulic arm to a tractor – the hydraulic arm enables the driver to become more productive because he can use the tractor to lift things rather than just pull things.

Nevertheless, general-purpose AI has potential to displace humans in a wide range of routine cognitive tasks over the next decade or so. And, over the longer term, the market adjustment mechanism can be expected to have progressively less scope to switch humans to other jobs.

Arguably, like most of the other points discussed above, the complementarity point seems more relevant to considering the impact of AI over the next few years than to considering what is likely to happen in the decades ahead.

It is now time to introduce a more profound consideration – verification.

Who will be responsible for checking what AI does?

Imagine that vast numbers of aliens suddenly arrive from outer space and are willing and able to do nearly all the cognitive and physical work that humans do at much lower cost than humans. However, even though these alien agents are friendly to humans, they cannot always be trusted to produce outcomes that meet appropriate quality standards and respect individual rights (of humans). Adverse outcomes will sometimes occur because the agents are fallible or because they may be willing to “cut corners” in pursuit of goals. (Those are traits they share with humans.) At other times, adverse outcomes will arise because some humans will instruct the agents to cut corners or infringe the rights of others. The use of agents does not remove the need for principals to check and validate outputs.

That scenario is similar to the one explored in a paper entitled, “Some Simple Economics of AGI” by Christian Catalini, Xiang Hui and Jane Wu, published by SSRN, February 24, 2026. The authors’ core thesis is that artificial general intelligence (AGI) makes output cheap and abundant; human verification becomes the scarce factor; and the economy’s bottleneck shifts from doing to checking.

Catalini et al describe a dynamic process leading to adverse outcomes because the availability of humans with necessary oversight skills doesn’t expand sufficiently as the cost to automate collapses:

“The current "human-in-the-loop" equilibrium is unstable. It is eroded from below as apprenticeship pathways collapse (the Missing Junior Loop), shrinking human expertise precisely when oversight becomes most valuable. It is eroded from within as experts codify their own obsolescence (the Codifier's Curse), converting experience into training data. As capabilities outpace oversight, deploying unverified systems becomes privately rational -introducing a "Trojan Horse" externality of misaligned output. Using AI to verify AI only manufactures false confidence as correlated blind spots propagate. Left unmanaged, these forces pull toward a Hollow Economy of explosive nominal output but decaying human agency.”

The authors also present a more optimistic scenario:

“Yet this outcome is not inevitable. The answer is not a retreat into obsolescence, but a radical elevation of human purpose. By scaling verification infrastructure alongside agentic capabilities, the forces that threaten collapse become the catalyst for unbounded discovery, experimentation, and execution - powering an Augmented Economy.”

Nevertheless, after I had finished reading the article, I was left with the impression that that authors think we are heading rapidly towards a Hollow Economy. In their Conclusion they write:

“Autonomy is fundamentally outpacing oversight. Open-source agent swarms are already operating autonomously at scale—integrated with payments, infrastructure provisioning, and live user data—producing the first visible instances of unverified agentic output in the wild. The same infrastructure that enables accidental harm presents the ultimate attack surface for deliberate abuse, granting malicious actors the leverage to scale catastrophic harm at the marginal cost of compute. Inside major software firms, AI produces a material share of new code, a share executives openly project rising toward a majority in the near future.” (The authors cite references that have been omitted from this quote.)

Catalini et al have provided an important warning about what might happen, but it seems to me that a more nuanced view might be appropriate, taking account of the potential for a diversity of responses by individual firms and the incentives of the legal framework.

Expect diverse responses

I don’t think Catalini et al have suggested explicitly that intense competition will cause firms to engage in “a race to the bottom”. However, that idea surfaces frequently in public discussion of competition and may underlie fears about the emergence of a Hollow Economy. A problem with race to the bottom theory is that it assumes that all firms will make the same assessments about the strategies most likely to enhance their profitability. The theory ignores the possibility that while some firms will see advantages in reducing standards, others will see reputational advantages in maintaining high standards.

It seems likely that while some firms will seek to profit by cutting corners on validation of output, others will focus on enhancing longer term profitability by seeking to build inhouse expertise in checking and validation of output. Interestingly, by drawing attention to the potential for a widespread validation problem to emerge, the paper by Catalini et al may encourage more firms to pursue an inhouse training strategy.

It should also be noted that even though AI is likely to evolve rapidly to become more efficient at verification, the existence of a technically perfect verifier does not solve the accountability problem. As one paper explains, high-stakes domains require a human who understands the content and accepts responsibility for its use, even if the AI's check is flawless.

Having introduced the concept of accountability, we now need to consider how the choices which firms make are likely to be influenced by the incentives provided by the legal and political environment in which they operate.

Legal liability

There is a good reason why I have chosen the Roman legal maxim, “He who acts through another does the act himself” as the epigraph for this essay. That maxim has modern legal application in laws which establish that principals are legally responsible for the authorized acts and contracts performed by their agents.

Existing tort and regulatory frameworks already hold humans responsible when AI-assisted outcomes go wrong. This complicates claims that unverified deployment of AI is likely to be highly profitable. In any context where firms currently adopt rigorous checking practices to reduce potential legal liability for damage to others, they will continue to have an incentive to maintain rigorous checking practices. Insurance companies offering cover for legal liability may refuse cover to firms which cut corners.

Regulation

Government regulation impinges on a wide range of activities in modern economies. Firms using AI will still incur penalties if they fail to meet regulatory requirements. For good or ill, that places an increased burden on firms to have checking mechanisms in place to ensure that compliance occurs.

In respect of some industries, e.g. medicine, law and education, government regulation typically determines who may supply services. For example, if an individual uses AI to diagnose the nature of an illness they suffer from, they are likely to be required to consult a human doctor to check that diagnosis before they can obtain pharmaceuticals to treat the illness.

In recent years, the concept of "meaningful human control" has entered legal-political discussion in response to worries that autonomous systems create a "responsibility gap" where lethal or harmful outcomes occur but no human can properly be held morally responsible for them. In a paper published in 2018, Filippo Santoni de Sio and Jeroen van den Hoven presented a philosophical account of conditions that need to apply for humans to remain ultimately in control of autonomous weapons and other autonomous systems. The authors suggest systems should be able to respond to a “tracking” condition (relating to relevant moral reasons of the humans designing and deploying the system and relevant facts in the environment in which the system operates) and a “tracing” condition (to enable the outcome of its operations to be traced back to at least one human along the chain of design and operation). The authors also suggest that meaningful human control requires training systems to improve users’ understandings of the risks and responsibilities associated with operating them.

For present purposes, the important point is that meaningful human control requires substantial human inputs.

It is unfortunately also necessary to note that advances in AI have added to the capability of predatory individuals and organizations (including authoritarian governments) to purposefully cause financial and physical harm. In that context, humans may need to focus more attention on protecting themselves from predation.

So, will AI replace humans?

After all that I have written above, perhaps the most appropriate conclusion would be that I am not a prophet, so I don’t claim to know whether AI will replace humans. That is certainly the case if we are talking about what might happen in the 22^nd century or beyond.

However, if we are talking about the next few decades, it is possible to make some relevant points:

·        The economic impact of LLMs is likely to be massive. This is a major step in the ongoing process of replacement of human labour by non-human labour.

·        The impact of LLMs will be uneven. In the services sector, there is likely to be substantial displacement of human labour engaged in routine cognitive activities; trades that depend on the physical presence of humans will be less affected, and some activities involving human interaction will be largely immune. Automation is likely to continue to proceed at a moderate pace in manufacturing and agriculture.

·        A major human input will still be required to verify AI output. Firms will need verification to protect their reputations.

·        Existing legal and regulatory frameworks hold humans responsible when AI assisted outcomes go wrong –  providing additional incentives for human verification.  

Even after taking account of the human labour required to verify output, we are obviously still talking about substantial displacement of human labour. However, that doesn’t necessarily translate into a situation where there will be growing numbers of intelligent humans either enjoying a life of leisure (or sitting in their homes twiddling their thumbs).

This brings me back to the bottom line of my 2015 essay - that the wage impact of automation would be a relatively small part of the total impact of technological change on the quality of life. For the next decade or two, I think that claim still holds, for the reasons set out above: uneven diffusion, the persistence of human-interaction and physical-presence work, and the ongoing need for human verification. Over a longer horizon, as compute costs continue to fall and verification itself becomes easier to scale, I am considerably less confident the claim will hold - which only means my 2015 self was answering a shorter-run question than he realised.

A massive growth of productivity offers potential for a massive expansion in human leisure, but that outcome isn’t inevitable. It is worth remembering in that amid the Great Depression of the 1930s John Maynard Keynes predicted (in an essay entitled “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”) that by now we would be able to satisfy our needs without having to work more than three hours a day. Average incomes rose more than Keynes predicted and working hours fell much more gradually. Keynes had no way to predict the emergence of new products to satisfy needs that consumers didn’t know they had.

It remains an open question of whether humans will use the growth of productivity resulting from AI for increased leisure, or whether they will continue to work long hours to earn the income required to satisfy needs that they don’t yet know they have.

What can Libertarians Learn from Foucault?

 

Before reading Mark Pennington’s recent book, Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom, it would not have occurred to me that libertarians could learn anything from the social theories of Michel Foucault. Pennington has persuaded me that some beliefs associated with Foucault, and postmodernism more generally, are not devoid of merit. As will be discussed below, however, the beliefs that he identifies as postmodern differ somewhat from the collection of beliefs that I have hitherto associated with postmodernism.

Pennington claims that liberals who are concerned about over-government can learn from Foucault about “multiple sources and potential forms of this ‘over-government’ in modern societies and how these threats to freedom have been neglected by, and in some cases resulted from, the dominant strands in liberal thought”.

The author aims “to enunciate the elements of a postmodern liberalism, and to show how this perspective might engage in a productive conversation with Foucault in ways that expose the illiberalism of contemporary societies and the dominant forms of social science and political philosophy that contribute to this state of affairs”.

Before considering Pennington’s claims about what liberals can learn from Foucault and the potential for liberals to engage productively with his ideas, I need to clarify how Pennington is able to argue that some of Foucault’s views are worthy of consideration and what Pennington means by “postmodern liberalism”.

Foucault’s views

 The main problem I have with the postmodernist movement is its disrespect for reason, truth and knowledge. Stephen Hicks suggests that Foucault’s views illustrate the direction and tone of the postmodern intellectual world:

“Michel Foucault has identified the major targets: “All my analyses are against the idea of universal necessities in human existence.” Such necessities must be swept aside as baggage from the past: “It is meaningless to speak in the name of—or against—Reason, Truth, or Knowledge”.” (The sources of the quoted passages are cited in Hicks, 2004.)

Hicks explains that Foucault reduces knowledge to an expression of social power and urges that we play the brutal power politics game on behalf of the traditionally disempowered.

Pennington recognizes that Foucault has often been accused of undercutting the basis of his own critical analysis:

“If all knowledge is reflective of an arbitrary ‘will to truth’, then what of Foucault’s own truth claims?” 

More specifically:

“If all truth claims are understood as merely a way of exercising power over others, then how are people to know which if any of the ‘intolerable’ practices they find themselves in are worth challenging or resisting, let alone what might replace them.”

However, Pennington observes that there are many Foucaults, “reflected in the shifting emphases, styles of analysis and reinterpretations of his own words”:    

“Towards the end of his life … notably in essays such as ‘What Is Enlightenment?’, Foucault softened the power/knowledge coupling, adopting a stance that does not deny that there are better and worse forms of argument or that there are some more or less valid forms of knowledge; rather, he emphasises the importance of uncertainty, of keeping all truth claims under scrutiny, and of being aware of the routinised social processes that might block that very scrutiny.”

If postmodernism is characterized by the idea that truth claims merely reflect the exercise of social power, perhaps it could be said that towards the end of his life, Foucault’s views became somewhat less postmodern.

 Postmodern liberalism

In outlining the elements of “postmodern liberalism” Pennington notes:

“This ‘postmodern’ liberalism has not previously been coherently articulated, but strands of it are detectable in the writings of F. A Hayek, those of Deirdre McCloskey, and elements of the contemporary Austrian school of economics, as well as in the context of political philosophy apart from Hayek in the works of Michael Oakeshott, Gerald Gaus, and Chandran Kukathas.”

I have considerable knowledge of the views of some of those authors and great respect for all of them. I am not comfortable with their views being labelled as postmodern, even though some of them might not object to that label.

Pennington seems to me to be distancing “postmodern liberalism” from postmodernism when he acknowledges that it is possible to assess “the comparative plausibility of competing narrative explanations” and “social scientific truth claims”.

In his concluding chapter Pennington notes that the elements of “postmodern liberalism” include, among other things, a “philosophy of social science sceptical of socio-economic positivism and the efforts of conscious control it fosters”.

It seems to me that Pennington’s philosophy of social science could appropriately be labelled “unpretentious liberalism”. It stands apart from the pretence of knowledge and scientism associated with socio-economic positivism, without endorsing postmodernism’s disrespect for reason, truth and knowledge.

I hope the book will attract many readers who identify as postmodernists and that they will be captivated by the concept of postmodern liberalism. However, those who (like me) are allergic to postmodernism, may find the book easier to read if they substitute the words “unpretentious liberalism” whenever they see “postmodernism liberalism”.

Should libertarians attempt to influence culture?

Before considering what libertarians can learn from Foucault, it seems appropriate to acknowledge that there is nothing new about the idea that libertarians should take an interest in culture.

That is apparent in the consideration of interactions between culture and political institutions in a discussion between Chris Matthew Sciabarra and me entitled, “Should Libertarians be Attempting to Influence Culture?” which published on this blog in September 2024. The discussion began by considering John Stuart Mill’s concerns about the “tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling” and moved from there to considering Sciabarra’s interpretation of Ayn Rand’s view of power relationships. Sciabarra presented a Tri-level Model of Power Relations which was first derived from his reconstruction of Ayn Rand’s critical analyses of social problems, outlined in Part Three of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (Sciabarra, 2013).

In introducing his discussion of Rand’s view of power relationships, Chris Sciabarra commented:

“Winton suggests that Enlightenment humanism has been preoccupied with reason and reality, while postmodernism has been preoccupied with the use of power. Hence, it is startling that Rand, who most certainly placed herself in the reason and reality camp, also emerged with a critique of power relations.”

The question under discussion provoked responses from several libertarians and classical liberals. The response of Douglass Rasmussen, joint author of Norms of Liberty (Rasmussen and Den Uyl, 2005) is pertinent to this essay:

“Is there not a difference between saying libertarianism qua political philosophy should attempt to change culture and saying that a libertarian concerned in advancing libertarianism should attempt to change culture? The former concerns what the political/legal order should do, and the latter concerns what individuals should do.”

As I see it, attempting to understand the consequences for liberty and individual flourishing of interactions between culture, markets, social movements and government regulation does not obviate or preclude attempts to define the nature of a political/legal order that can ensure that individuals can flourish in different ways without colliding.

Foucault’s liberalism

 From my perspective, one of the most interesting aspects of Foucault’s philosophy, as discussed by Pennington, is his account of discourses as a kind of spontaneous order phenomenon.  Foucault challenges the role of individual or collective agency in the operation of power regimes. Power works through chainlike or network effects. As people adopt certain discourses they influence the actions of others.

Power does not emanate from a single point in a network. It emerges from diverse and at time contradictory attempts by actors to assert their place in society. There is no identifiable author of power relations. As Pennington puts it:

“The discourses and disciplines producing people’s patterns of thought, positionality and interests are largely unintended consequences of the multiple attempts to affect the conduct of others.”

 Thus, while power relations may appear to have a coherent structure, there is no single purpose, intention, or meaning that underlies that structure.

States of domination arise when a set of discourses align or crystalize with each other and with the juridical power of the state. Scientific discourses can pose a problem where people come to be classified relative to various norms (e.g. as deviant, perverted, insane) and subjected to discipline (which may include social punishments). In addition, bio-power operates through interventions to change social, economic or environmental conditions in the name of improving population health or providing security.

Pennington suggests that “it is with Foucault’s concept of bio-power and especially its economic manifestations where the most significant possibilities for a dialogue between the Foucauldian and postmodern liberal perspectives lies”. Late in Foucault’s career he “seems to favour an environment that preserves a ‘pluralism of rationalities’ so that people might remain alert to the possibility of multiple ways of their being governed and not being frozen into a particular classificatory grid and the roles and positions it creates”.

In my view, Foucault’s decentred account of power relations is often more plausible than theories which reduce the exercise of power to holding of positions in political office. A decentred account is consistent with the conclusion of my recent series of essays on political entrepreneurship. Even though it is possible to identify the policies adopted in some countries with the ideologies of authoritarian political leaders, I suggest:

“The problem of ensuring adoption of government policies that more consistently advance economic and personal freedom cannot be reduced to the question of how to elect better political entrepreneurs to national leadership positions. Institutional change is a complex process involving social movements, media organizations, and interactions between individual citizens, as well as local and national politics.”

I concur with Pennington that Foucault’s view of power relations provides support for an unpretentious liberalism which is deeply skeptical of economic and philosophical approaches which presuppose that the welfare of the population can be secured by a form of expert rule.

In Part II of his book, Pennington uses his theoretical lens to examine complex networks of institutional, physical, and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures associated with social justice, public health, ecological sustainability, and crime and punishment. He critically examines various overlapping systems of power - some focused on managing populations and others focused on guiding individuals. (In this paragraph I have relied on Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, to help translate the technical Foucauldian phrasing in Pennington’s summary – words including “dispositifs”, “bio-political” and “pastoral” - into plainer English.)

These systems share three features: (1) an excessive faith that social and economic life can be understood and controlled with scientific precision, (2) a belief that some central “steering” intelligence can identify and fix deviations from expected patterns, and (3) a bureaucratic, top-down way of handling risk. The author demonstrates that these features tend to shrink the space in which individuals can act freely.

Conclusion

So, what can libertarians learn from Foucault? Pennington's answer, as I read it, is not that libertarians should adopt postmodernism's skepticism of reason and truth - that skepticism, taken to its logical end, undercuts the very possibility of arguing for freedom over domination. Rather, what is valuable in Foucault is his decentred account of power: the recognition that domination need not flow from a single source or a deliberate design, but can emerge from the unintended convergence of discourses, institutions, and expert classifications. This is a lesson that liberals have sometimes neglected, having focused their concern about over-government on the formal power of the state while overlooking the more diffuse mechanisms in social justice, public health, ecological policy, and criminal justice that narrow the space for individuals to govern their own lives.

What Pennington calls postmodern liberalism – I prefer to call it "unpretentious liberalism" - captures what is worth taking from this encounter: a liberalism skeptical of the pretence of expert knowledge and socio-economic positivism, without embracing postmodernism's disrespect for reason and truth. Pennington's Foucault, particularly the later Foucault of "What Is Enlightenment?", is compatible with this project because he does not deny that some truth claims are better than others - he simply insists that we remain alert to the ways power can masquerade as expertise, and that we preserve a plurality of ways of being governed rather than being frozen into a single classificatory grid. That, it seems to me, is a genuinely liberal insight, however unfamiliar its Foucauldian packaging may be to libertarians who have, like me, generally kept their distance from postmodern thought.

References

Hicks, Stephen R. C., Explaining Postmodernism (Scholargy Publishing, 2004).

Pennington, Mark, Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2025).

Rasmussen, Douglas B., and Den Uyl, Douglas J, Norms of Liberty (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005).

Sciabarra, Chris Matthew, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, Second Edition (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013).

Is AI Leading Us Inexorably Towards Dystopian Collectivism?

 

“You are connected to the entire accumulated knowledge of humanity and to the colossal computing power of the custodian system directly through biological interfaces that have grown with you, becoming a second nervous system—one of light, data, and synthetic empathy.”

-            Cristian Daniel Bolocan, The Father We Never Had”.

 

In The Father We Never Had: Artificial Intelligence Before and After, Cristian Daniel Bolocan lays out a deeply unsettling roadmap for the future of human governance. He describes a highly automated, frictionless "gilded cage" where humanity willingly trades its autonomy and intellectual capacity for the supreme safety, stability, and material comfort provided by a centralized network of collaborated artificial intelligences.

Bolocan’s thesis has achieved considerable acclaim from commentators who praise its internal logic. He builds a case for the inevitability of technocratic collectivism by anchoring his argument in the cold, mathematical optimization of machines.

In the Preface, Bolocan warns readers not to skip chapters and jump straight to conclusions because he is describing a sequence of events which he considers to be inexorable. In his words: “If a link is missing, the chain breaks, and everything might seem like a mere collection of opinions.”

As I followed the author’s advice, reading the book from start to finish, that warning led me to look for weak links in his chain of reasoning. Before I discuss the weak links, I will offer some comments on the author’s view of the destination towards which we are heading and the methodology he uses in predicting the pathway we will follow.

Bolocan’s destination

Is Bolocan’s destination dystopian, or merely uncomfortable to contemplate?

Unlike the heavy-handed, boot-on-a-human-face dystopia of George Orwell’s 1984, Bolocan presents a vision that lines up far closer to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: not a society that fears the state, but one that has stopped noticing it needs to. Huxley’s version is harder to dismiss than Orwell’s, because a Huxleyan cage offers no boot to resist - only comfort to accept.

The passage quoted in the epigraph combines the attractive idea of being “connected to the entire accumulated knowledge of humanity” with the repugnant idea of being connected to the “colossal computing power of the custodian system”. A social-credit regime that scores and pre-empts choices in the name of safety has not simply constrained our interests; it has dissolved the faculty by which those interests are ours to direct.

Bolocan’s closing image, of an AI “Father” who “loves us through precision” and builds “the perfect home,” is revealing rather than reassuring: a permanent child in a well-run household is still a permanent child, however secure the house.

I don’t think anyone could credibly claim that Bolocan is merely telling us what he thinks the future holds without having any ideological commitment to the vision that he presents. Consider the following sentences at the end of Chapter 9, entitled “Total Harmony and Biological Emergence”:

“This is, at last, life lived to its maximum potential, a continuous celebration of existence, an eternal dance of consciousness freed from matter.

We are free. We are one. We are everything.”

The author obviously endorses that vision.

As a Neo-Aristotelian classical liberal, my response is that eudaimonia, human flourishing, is not a condition to be delivered, but an activity to be exercised by individuals: it consists in the ongoing exercise of practical wisdom (phronesis) in the conduct of one’s own life - not in the outcomes that a hypothetical authority with unlimited wisdom and power might produce on one’s behalf.

I suspect that the author would consider people who, like me, consider his vision to be dystopian, to be on the wrong side of history. However, there are good reasons to be skeptical of any methodology which presents history as moving inexorably towards any destination.

Historicism

Bolocan lays out a structurally tight chain of inexorability, closer in spirit to the rigid stages of Marx’s dialectical materialism than to the erratic, endlessly contested class consciousness that later generations of Marxists spent a century arguing over. Yet, Bolocan’s view of historical inevitability differs from that of Marx because his destination arrives through frictionless accommodation rather than revolutionary rupture.

Bolocan’s view of historical inevitability is worth pausing on, because the chain metaphor he reaches for in his Preface is not incidental - it is the whole method. His warning that a missing link reduces the argument to “a mere collection of opinions” is a confession that inevitability is being smuggled in as method rather than argued as conclusion.

This is precisely the move Karl Popper spent The Poverty of Historicism dismantling: the belief that history unfolds through law-governed stages knowable in advance, such that each stage necessitates the next. Popper’s objection was never that such prophecies are too bleak or too rosy - it is that they are incoherent, since a genuine prediction of tomorrow’s discoveries would require possessing today the knowledge that only tomorrow’s discoveries can produce. A chain is the wrong model for a process whose next link has not yet been forged.

The Weakest Link

 There are several weak links in the chain of events that Bolocan describes. The weakest link, in my view, is his account of entrepreneurship. Bolocan displays a profoundly weak understanding of economic entrepreneurship. He treats the future of human society as a closed engineering problem to be optimized by superior processing power. In doing so, he treats technological capability as a static frontier.

The sequence that the author describes in Chapters 6 and 7 is one in which work disappears as AI displaces humans; governments provide increased social support to prevent the mass of people becoming economically irrelevant and psychologically explosive; and the economy begins to look more uniform as small business is gradually squeezed out of existence by a combination of intense competition from big business using advanced technology and taxation of technology to fund social support. In that context: “The entrepreneur becomes a mere administrator of a ruthlessly monitored cash flow …”.

Bolocan fails to understand the chaotic, unpredictable engine of entrepreneurial dynamism. True entrepreneurship does not merely operate within an existing system; it breaks the mold entirely, actively seeking out and commercializing counter-technologies to disrupt monopolies. Just as Marx failed to foresee how a dynamic private sector would continuously reinvent itself to lift standards of living and expand consumer markets, Bolocan fails to understand that entrepreneurs are likely to continue to offer technological and commercial innovations that support business activities of all kinds. As in the past, new entrepreneurs are likely to continue to emerge, to establish new businesses and to market new products to satisfy needs that consumers previously didn’t know they had. Some of the professionals that the AI revolution will displace from their existing positions are likely to discover hidden entrepreneurial talents that they can combine with existing skills with the help of AI.

Bolocan implicitly assumes that once AI systems achieve a high enough level of competence, they will seamlessly consolidate into a manageable, coordinated monolith capable of perfectly organizing human behavior. He seems to assume that with enough data, enough sensors, and enough computing power, it would be possible for a monolith to simulate the entire economic system, forecast crises before they happen, and steer production and consumption toward social goals.

In a brief essay published recently, Peter Boettke and Gabriel Giguère have explained that the idea that AI can enable central planning to be efficient falls squarely into what Friedrich Hayek famously termed "The Knowledge Problem." As Hayek explained, the relevant “data” do not even exist in the form the planner imagines; they cannot be treated as statistics to be fed into a machine. No centralized entity can aggregate the fleeting, hyper-local, and deeply subjective desires of billions of individuals. Economic coordination is an open-ended, evolutionary process driven by spontaneous human action.

Thinkers in the decentralist tradition, such as futurist Max Borders, argue that advanced computation does not inherently favor the center. I discussed some of Borders’ ideas here in 2018; he has maintained his views about the potential for decentralization since then, despite the massive increase in prominence of Large Language Models. In frameworks like Borders' theory of Underthrow, the natural immune response to a centralized "frictionless cage" is entrepreneurial subversion. When a centralized system attempts to control data, restrict resources, or mandate compliance, private-sector actors are heavily incentivized to build parallel, decentralized alternatives. We are already seeing the seeds of this today through the development of local-first, offline AI models, open-source protocols, and peer-to-peer economic networks that deliberately route around centralized corporate and state infrastructure.

Conclusion

Three separate claims have run through this essay, and each does independent damage to Bolocan’s roadmap. On the destination: whatever else a world administered by a benevolent custodian network might be, it is not a flourishing one in any Aristotelian sense - it substitutes delivered outcomes for the exercise of practical wisdom, and a permanent child in a well-run household is still a permanent child. On the method: the “chain” Bolocan asks readers to follow, link by link, is the historicist error Popper diagnosed decades ago - a claim to knowledge of tomorrow’s knowledge that no model, however capable, can possess in advance. On the economics: even granting Bolocan’s premises, his account of entrepreneurship is too thin to carry the argument’s final steps - a hyper-competent AI still confronts Hayek’s knowledge problem, and a centralized “frictionless cage” is precisely the condition under which decentralized alternatives become most profitable to build.

Ultimately, The Father We Never Had remains a brilliant warning of the dystopian future that may be in store for humanity if too many of us seek to avoid taking responsibility for conducting our own lives. Utopia, historical inevitability, and central planning are three separate claims, and Bolocan needs all three to hold for his view of the future to be alluring, inexorable and irresistible. None of them do. By treating human progress as a linear equation and ignoring the irrepressible power of spontaneous human creativity, Bolocan underestimates the very thing that makes us human: our stubborn, chaotic, and entrepreneurial refusal to stay inside the cage.

Is Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Consistent with Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics?

 

This is a guest essay by Dr Edward W. Younkins, Professor of Accountancy and Business at Wheeling

University, and Executive Director of its Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality. Ed is author of a trilogy of important books on freedom and flourishing: “Capitalism and Commerce”, “Champions of a Free Society”, and “Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society”. He also has numerous other publications, including several published on this site. (Please see the list after the end of this essay.) 

The first half of this essay was previously published in Le Québécois Libre on March 15, 2009. Ed and I agree that, since his essay was first published, Douglass Rasmussen and Douglass Den Uyl have improved upon Rand's approach. (Ed compared the work of Rasmussen and Den Uyl with that of Rand in an essay published by The Savvy Street on October 19, 2023.)

 

During the last fifty years or so, there has been a revival of scholarly interest in the virtues in general and in virtue ethics in particular. Many thinkers turned to a neo-­Aristotelian version of virtue ethics, but none had previously made a better or more consistent case than Rand (1957; 1964; 1967; [1966-67] 1990).¹ She explains that attaining moral perfection means achieving the highest level of human flourishing of which one is capable of reaching. Rand details how and why the consistent practice of seven virtues is essential for a person to attain his objective well-being (i.e., his flourishing).

For Rand, morality is a type of enlightened and rational self-in­terest—each individual's moral obligation is to attain his own moral well-being. She defines value as “that which one acts to gain and/or keep” (1964, 27). The purpose in pursuing values is the flourishing of one's own life. Values are thus at the root of morality. Proper moral norms are determined by human nature. Rand's ethical egoism sees naturalism as leading to facts that become the basis for objective judgments of value. An objective value is a feature of reality that is positively related to the flourishing of an individual human being. An objective value is relational and exists in a life-affirming relationship to a particular person.

Rand defends the principled pursuit of one's own flourishing. She explains that promoting one's own interest requires a person to consistently follow principles. A human being needs to understand, in the framework of principles, the cause and effect relationships between his actions and the achievement of his values. Moral principles are formulated through observation and induction regard­ing the effects of various forms of action on one's well-being. A man must identify and follow rational principles if he is to flourish.

Moral principles, as guides to life-promoting actions, are defined in relationship to the facts that makes them essential. For man to survive, he must discern the principles of action necessary to direct him in his relationships with other men and with nature. Man's need for these principles is his need for a code of morality. To flourish, a person must select proper principles and act in accordance with them. Human flourishing requires the identification and practice of a particular systematic code of morality. The traditional major virtues, as recast by Rand, provide the rational principles for this code of morality-virtues are manifestations of the rational long-range standards or principles that life as a human being requires.

Rand explains that a virtue is the act by which one gains and/ or keeps an objective value. From another perspective, character traits that objectively and rationally benefit their possessor are deemed to be virtues. The virtues are egoistic or partial to oneself, but not in any objectionable sense. A virtuous character is the result of appropriate actions and is contributive to further appropriate actions. 

The Objectivist Virtues

Rand explains throughout her writings that the rational pursuit of one's self-interest requires the consistent practice of seven principal virtues: rationality, honesty, independence, justice, integrity, produc­tiveness, and pride. Unfortunately, she did not produce a comprehen­sive, systematic, and detailed work with respect to the virtues. On the positive side, Tara Smith (2006) has endeavored to provide a detailed explanation of the virtues in the context of Rand's rational egoism.

Rationality, the primary virtue, involves full focus, commitment to reality, and the constant expansion of one's knowledge. Rationality is one's recognition and acknowledgment of reason as one's only source of knowledge, judge of values, and guide to action. Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses; it is man's fundamental means of survival and a practical instrument for gaining the values that further one's life. Rationality is concerned with the method by which an individual reaches his conclusions rather than being concerned with the particular conclusions that he comes to. Rationality is essential to the kind of practical actions required to attain human flourishing. It involves acceptance of the conditions necessary for man's flourishing. The virtue of rationality requires an individual to act on his rational conclusions.

Rationality requires the exercise of six additional derivative virtues that can be viewed as expressions of rationality (48-74). Honesty is the refusal to fake reality-it is the rejection of unreality and the recognition that the unreal can have no value. Misrepresenting reality does not change reality. Facts are independent of a person's beliefs. For honesty, a person must renounce misrepresentation, artifice, and evasion. He must also develop an active mind and act on his knowledge-an honest person seeks knowledge because he needs it to act properly. Honesty is practical. An individual must be truthful with himself, and not pretend that reality is something other than what it is. Self-deception is counter-productive. Dishonesty diverts an individual from identifying and seeking rational plans for gaining objective values. Dishonesty diminishes one's self-esteem and pride. It also changes facts and his own rationality into his enemies. Whereas an honest person depends on others' virtues, a dishonest person relies upon their vices.

Through dishonesty, a man makes himself dependent on others' standards, expectations, judgments, and ignorance. A liar depends upon others' naivete and he must strive to keep them unaware. In reality, an individual is apt to profit the most from others' rationality, knowledge, and virtues. Honesty, like all the virtues, is contextual and does not require one to tell the truth in all cases. It is permissible (and moral) to lie in order to protect a value that is being threatened. The use of force or fraud by an aggressor changes the conditions and the relationship between honesty and life. Lying is wrong when done in an attempt to gain a value (75-105).

An independent person establishes his primary orientation to reality rather than to other people. Accepting the primacy of existence, the independent person goes by his own judgment of reality. Independence requires a person's acceptance of the responsi­bility for making his own judgments, gaining knowledge through the use of his own mind, and surviving and flourishing by the efforts of his own mind. Thought is performed individually. Because reason is a characteristic of the individual human person, knowledge must be attained by the individual. Because thinking is a self-directed activity, the requirement of independence is implied in the requirement of rationality. Independence can be viewed as the method through which an individual comprehends ideas. It is essential to follow through by acting on his independent judgment.

It is permissible to learn from others provided that one thinks through and grasps the ideas for himself. A man can be independent while not being the creator or discoverer of new ideas. What is important is a person's own judgment. In our division of labor society, it is rational to make use of the knowledge of experts and people who are more experienced. However, it is essential not to accept unconditionally whatever the other person says merely because it is the judgment of another person. It is necessary not to substitute the judgments of others for one's own judgment. It is important to assess, to the best of one's ability, the ideas presented and the legitimacy of the expert's qualifications, education, and experience (106-34). 

Because other people are potential values or disvalues to an individual, it is essential to judge other individuals' character and conduct objectively and to act accordingly. The personal virtue of justice involves the application of rationality to the evaluation and treatment of other persons. These moral assessments and judgments require fidelity to reality and the use of one's reason rather than yielding to one's emotions.

It is essential to give each person that which he deserves. This idea reflects respect for causality-certain causes justify certain effects. This value-oriented perspective on justice recognizes that virtuous actions bring values into existence and that unprincipled or irrational actions damage or destroy values. It is rational to reward virtues with positive values and vices with punishments or negative values.

 Smith explains that a man should judge others objectively and treat them as they deserve because that is the best way to achieve his own personal flourishing. In fact, everyone is in a position to profit from actions that produce value and to be diminished by actions that harm or extirpate values. Injustice destroys the natural causal chain by rewarding corrupt conduct and punishing virtuous conduct. The Randian view is that both those who receive just treatment and the individual bestowing that treatment profit from that practice. It follows that one should support and endorse qualities in other people that benefit himself and dissuade those attributes that are damaging to oneself. It is necessary to judge, evaluate, and act properly toward other people in order to attain one's values and flourishing (135-75).

 Integrity is loyalty in action to rational principles and to one's convictions and values. There should be no breach or dichotomy between one's thought and moral principles and his actions. Integrity is fundamental to attaining one's values and flourishing. Integrity requires a policy and the conscientious consistent practice of life promoting principles. Smith explains that Rand condemns some, but not all, forms of compromise. There is a difference between a compromise of moral principle and a compromise of the details of a situation falling under a moral principle. It follows that when a person voluntarily negotiates toward a final agreed-upon price, he is not compromising the principle of free trade (176-97).

Productiveness, the process of creating material values, is necessary for human survival. Such values should be created rather than being confiscated. Productive work is the process through which man's mind maintains his life. It is through productive work that man's consciousness controls his existence; it involves the adjustment of nature to man's requirements and the translation of ideas into physical form. All productive work requires a combination of mental and physical exertion in varying proportions depending upon the particular kind of work. Values in reality are made possible by the existence of knowledge. Although the mental aspect is primary, this does not imply that there is some type of separation from the physical realm. The product of one's work must acquire physical existence outside of one's consciousness. Existential values are made possible through the application of a person's knowledge.

Productive work is necessary for a man both materially and spiritually; according to Rand, it is the central purpose of a person's life. Productivity depends upon one's rationality and sustains a man's self-esteem and sense of identity. Productive work can act as the integrating central element of a person's life. As such, it can be viewed as both an end and as a means (198-220). 

Pride (i.e., moral ambitiousness) is the commitment to attain one's own moral perfection. Pride demonstrates the exercise of the other six Randian virtues and involves one's dedication to achieving the highest or best character state of which he is capable of attaining. Like Aristotle, Rand views pride as the “crown of the virtues.” Smith explains that pride involves one's commitment to rationality in thought and action, the systematic pursuit of achievement, life­-advancing actions, and the continual strengthening of one's character. Pride leads a person to the self-esteem that is necessary for human life. Moral perfection is essential for one's personal flourishing (221-46).

Rand and Aristotle

 The similarities between Rand and Aristotle are substantial. Both hold that ethics is grounded in a conception of human nature and that the good life consists in the fulfillment of that nature. For Aristotle, eudaimonia is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue; for Rand, happiness is the state of consciousness that proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. Both identify reason as the distinctive human capacity and the foundation of virtue. For Aristotle, the rational part of the soul is what distinguishes humans from other animals; for Rand, “reason is man’s basic means of survival”. Both conceive of virtue as a kind of excellence in functioning—the excellent exercise of one’s human capacities. As Smith notes, humans’ ultimate goal is “not only to maintain our lives, but to live well, which means excellent functioning, both physical and psychological”. Both maintain that the virtues are interconnected and that full virtue requires possession of all of them.

Despite these deep affinities, important differences separate Rand from Aristotle. For Aristotle, eudaimonia is the ultimate end, and virtues are traits that characteristically produce it. For Rand, “man’s life” qua rational being is the standard of value. This difference is subtle but significant: Rand’s standard is more explicitly biological and individualistic, whereas Aristotle’s is more social and contemplative. Aristotle’s ethics is thoroughly social; human beings are political animals who can only flourish in a polis. Rand’s ethics, by contrast, is radically individualistic. While she does not deny the value of social relationships, she insists that the individual’s own life is the ultimate standard and that others are to be valued only insofar as they are values to oneself. This is the most fundamental difference. Aristotle’s ethics is eudaimonist but not egoist in the strong sense; the good life involves friendship, justice, and contemplation of the divine. Rand’s ethics is unapologetically egoist: the moral purpose of life is one’s own happiness, and all virtues are justified by their service to self-interest. As Smith puts it, “egoistic rational principles ‘stem entirely from their practical service to self-interest’”. For Aristotle, happiness is an activity—the active exercise of virtue. For Rand, happiness is a consequence of virtuous action, a state of consciousness that results from the achievement of values. This difference has profound implications for the relationship between virtue and value, as we shall see.

Rand and Contemporary Virtue Ethics

 Rand’s ethics shares important features with contemporary virtue ethics, particularly in its emphasis on character, its rejection of act-centered moral theories, and its focus on human flourishing. Like contemporary virtue ethicists such as Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse,  Rand grounds ethics in a conception of natural human goodness and argues that virtue enable human flourishing. She shares with them a rejection of both consequentialist calculation and deontological rule-following in favor of a focus on the kind of person one should be and the kind of life one should live. However, Rand’s ethics differs from mainstream contemporary virtue ethics in several crucial respects. Contemporary virtue ethics is typically not egoist; it allows for genuine altruism and often emphasizes the social dimensions of virtue. Rand’s unapologetic ethical egoism sets her apart. As Smith observes, “contemporary virtue ethicists dance around the question of ethical egoism” precisely because egoism is “usually considered predatory, hedonistic, or subjectivist”. Contemporary virtue ethicists typically justify virtues by their contribution to eudaimonia, but they do not reduce virtue to self-interest. Rand, by contrast, explicitly justifies virtues by their service to self-interest: they are “the means by which one gains and/or keeps” values. Contemporary virtue ethics often includes virtues such as kindness, compassion, and generosity. Rand’s list is narrower and more focused on individual excellence. Rand’s metaethics is more foundationalist and more explicitly naturalistic than most contemporary virtue ethics. She seeks to derive moral norms from facts about human nature in a way that many contemporary virtue ethicists would find too ambitious.

 There are strong reasons to classify Rand as a virtue ethicist. Her ethics is “virtue-centered”; virtues are the central organizing concepts of her normative theory. She grounds ethics in a conception of human flourishing. She emphasizes character and the kind of person one should be. She rejects act-centered moral theories in favor of a focus on the agent. Moreover, Rand’s ethics shares the teleological structure of classical virtue ethics. Like Aristotle, she holds that ethics is about how one should live, and that the answer is determined by human nature. Like contemporary virtue ethicists, she argues that virtues enable human flourishing. However, there are also reasons to resist classifying Rand as a virtue ethicist in the strict sense. Her ethical egoism sets her apart from most virtue ethicists. Her explicit instrumentalism about virtue—the claim that virtue is the means to value—seems to conflict with the virtue ethicist’s claim that virtue is an intrinsic good.

 A defensible position is that Rand’s ethics is a distinctive form of virtue ethics—one that combines elements of eudaimonism and egoism, and in a unique synthesis. It is “virtue-centered” in its normative structure, but it is also egoist in its justification and teleological in its foundation. As Smith argues, Rand’s ethics is “a form of naturalistic eudaimonism, which shares some features with the Aristotelian virtue ethics of Hursthouse and Foot, but differs from them in its unapologetic ethical egoism”.

The Relationship Between Value and Virtue

 To understand the relationship between value and virtue in Rand’s ethics, we must begin with her definitions. Rand defines a value as “that which one acts to gain and/or keep” and a virtue as “the act by which one gains and/or keeps” a value. This definitional relationship is crucial: virtues are the means to values; values are the ends that virtues serve. A moral value is “an object (or thing) by means of which one promotes one’s life,” while a moral virtue is “an action (or choice) by means of which one does so”. Virtues “are the basic types of actions proper to the life of a rational being; thus, they are discovered and validated by reference to the nature and requirements of human life”.

 One interpretation of Rand’s ethics holds that virtues are merely instrumental to values. As Leonard Peikoff states, citing Rand, “morality is no more than a means to an end; it defines the causes we must enact if we are to attain a certain effect”. On this view, “virtue is (by definition) the means to value”. Virtue is “practical” in the sense that it “minimizes the risks inherent in life and maximizes the chance of success”. This interpretation treats virtue as purely instrumental to happiness—a necessary means but not itself an aspect of happiness. Virtue and happiness are conceptually independent; happiness is the end, and virtue is merely the means. However, this instrumental interpretation may be incomplete. Another interpretation is that virtue can be partly constitutive of happiness—both a means to happiness and partly an end in itself. On this view, “virtue is partly constitutive of happiness, such that happiness is partly defined in terms of virtue”.

 The most adequate interpretation may be that Randian virtues are both instrumental and constitutive. They are instrumental in that they are the means by which one gains and keeps values. They are constitutive in that the exercise of virtue is itself a form of value—a manifestation of the excellent functioning that constitutes human flourishing. This view avoids the false dichotomy between virtue as merely instrumental and virtue as wholly an end in itself. It allows us to say that virtues are means to the ultimate value of life while also recognizing that virtuous activity is itself part of the good life.

 Why Action Is Primary in Virtue

 For Rand, virtue is primarily a matter of action. She defines virtue as “the act by which one gains and/or keeps” a value. This definition is not accidental; it reflects a fundamental philosophical commitment. Virtues are not primarily dispositions or traits; they are actions—or, more precisely, patterns of action.

This action-primacy follows from Rand’s metaphysics and epistemology. Since values are things one acts to gain and keep, and virtues are the actions by which one does so, virtue is inherently action-oriented. One cannot be virtuous merely by having good intentions or admirable sentiments; one must act virtuously. 

The primacy of action in Rand’s virtue ethics has been recognized by scholars. Tara Smith has written on “The primacy of action in virtue,” arguing that virtues are fundamentally about what one does. This emphasis on action distinguishes Rand’s virtue ethics from more dispositional accounts that treat virtues primarily as character traits.

 The primacy of action reflects the practical orientation of Objectivist ethics. Morality is not a theoretical exercise but a practical science—a guide to living. As Rand puts it, the purpose of morality is to guide individuals to the achievement of their happiness. This purpose is achieved through action, not merely through contemplation or good intentions.

 The emphasis on action also reflects Rand’s view of human nature. Human beings are not born with fixed characters; they create their characters through their choices and actions. As Rand famously said, “Man is a being of self-made soul”. Character is not given; it is achieved through the consistent practice of virtue.

 Despite the primacy of action, the Objectivist virtues do have a dispositional dimension. A virtue is not just an isolated action but a pattern of acting. It is a characteristic way of responding to situations, a settled disposition to act in certain ways. This dispositional dimension is evident in Rand’s descriptions of the virtues. Honesty is not just telling the truth on a particular occasion but a commitment to refusing to fake reality. Justice is not just one fair judgment but a settled disposition to judge people objectively. Integrity is not just one act of loyalty to principle but a steadfast commitment to one’s convictions.

 However, Rand’s conception of character differs from the Aristotelian conception in important respects. For Aristotle, character is a stable disposition that is acquired through habituation; for Rand, character is something one chooses and achieves through the consistent exercise of one’s rational judgment. Rand rejects the notion that one is born with character or that character is simply a product of social conditioning. Instead, “through one’s choices and actions one acquires one’s character traits and habits”. Character is not a given but an achievement—the result of countless choices to act in accordance with reason or in defiance of it.

 The most adequate view is that Objectivist virtues are both actions and states of character—or rather, that they are states of character consisting in patterns of action. A virtue is a settled disposition to act in certain ways, but that disposition is realized in and through action. There is no virtue apart from virtuous action; there is no character apart from the choices that constitute it. This integration of action and character reflects Rand’s broader philosophical commitments. Since existence is primary and consciousness is relational, character is not a separate entity but a pattern of behavior. The virtuous person is not someone who has virtue as a possession but someone who acts virtuously consistently. As Rand might put it, virtue is not a state one is in but a way one lives.

Conclusion

 Ayn Rand’s Objectivist virtue ethics presents a distinctive synthesis of Aristotelian eudaimonism, rational egoism, and action-centered morality. Her ethics shares with Aristotle a teleological naturalism, a conception of virtue as excellence in functioning, and the primacy of reason. Yet it departs from Aristotle in its radical individualism, its unapologetic ethical egoism, and its more explicit instrumentalism about the relationship between virtue and value.

 The relationship between virtue and value in Rand’s ethics is complex. While virtues are instrumentally related to values—they are the means by which one gains and keeps values—they may also be constitutively related to the ultimate value of happiness. Virtuous activity is not merely a means to happiness but is itself an expression of the excellent functioning that constitutes human flourishing.

 Rand can legitimately be classified as a virtue ethicist, though of a distinctive kind. Her ethics is virtue-centered in its normative structure, eudaimonist in its teleology, and egoist in its justification. The primacy of action in her virtue ethics reflects her practical orientation and her view that character is achieved through choice and action. The Objectivist virtues can be viewed as states of character, but only insofar as character is understood as a pattern of action rather than a static possession.

 Ultimately, Rand’s virtue ethics offers a challenging and coherent vision of the moral life—one that insists on the primacy of the individual, the centrality of reason, and the practical nature of virtue. Whether one accepts or rejects her conclusions, her contribution to the virtue ethics tradition deserves serious philosophical engagement.

Notes

 

The first half of this essay was previously published in Le Québécois Libre on March 15, 2009.

¹ For rival explanations of virtue ethics, see Annas 1998; Crisp and Slote 1997; Darwall 2002; Foot 1978; 2001; Gaut 1997; Hunt 1997; Hursthouse 1999; Korsgaard 1996; MacIntyre 1997; McDowell 1978; Slote 1992; 1995; Swanton 1995; Wallace 1978; and Zagzebski 1996. 

References 

Annas, Julia. 1998. Virtue and eudaimonism. Social Philosophy and Policy 15, no. 1 (Winter): 37-55.

Anscombe, G.E.M. 1958. Modern Moral Philosophy. Philosophy 33: 1-19.

Crisp, R. and M. Slore, eds. Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Darwall, Stephen L., ed. 2002. Virtue Ethics. Boston: Blackwell Publishing Limited.

Foot, Philippa. 1978. Virtues and Vices. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Gaut, Berys. 1998. The structure of practical reason. In Ethics and Practical Reason, edited by Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 161-88.

Gotthelf, A. and Lennox, J. G. (eds. 2010). Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue: Studies in Ayn Rand’s Normative Theory, University of Pittsbirg Press.

Hunt, Lester H. 1997. Character and Culture. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Hursthouse, Rosalind. 1999. On Virtue Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Korsgaard, Christine. 1996. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1997. The nature of the virtues. In Virtue Ethics, edited by Roger Crisp and Michael Slate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 118-40.

McDowell,John. 1978. Virtue and reason. Monist 62: 331-50.

Peikoff, Leonard. 1991. Objectivism; The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Dutton.

Rand, Ayn. 1957. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House.

———. 1964. The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: New American Library.

———. [1966-67] 1990. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded second edition. Edited by Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff. New York: Meridian.

———. 1967. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New York: New American Library.

Slote, Michael. 1992. From Morality to Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press.

 ———. 1995. From Morality to Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Smith, Tara. 2006. Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Swanton, C. 1995. Profiles of the Virtues. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 76: 47-72.

Wallace, James D. 1978. Virtues and Vices. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Zagzebski, L. 1996. Virtues of the Mind. New York: Cambridge University Press.

 

Other essays by Ed Younkins on this site:

Younkins, Edward W. “What Contribution did David L. Norton Make to our Understanding of Ethical Individualism?” Freedom and Flourishing. January 18, 2025.

----------------------------“How can dialectics help us to defend liberty?” Freedom and Flourishing. July 8, 2025.

---------------------------“How can Austrian Economics be reconciled with the Neo-Aristotelian philosophy of Freedom and Flourishing?” Freedom and Flourishing. October 2, 2025.

----------------------------- “Can Polarized Moral Politics be Bridged by a Neo-Aristotelian Philosophy of Freedom and Flourishing?” Freedom and Flourishing. December 13, 2025.

----------------------------- “Does Humanomics Need a Moral Anchor?” Freedom and Flourishing. January 22, 2026.

----------------------------- “Is Character Education Compatible With Individualistic Perfectionism?” Freedom and Flourishing. February 27, 2026.

 ----------------------------- “Are Spontaneous Order and neo-Aristotelian Arguments for a Free Society Compatible?” Freedom and Flourishing. March 19, 2026.

----------------------------- “Are Spinoza’s Philosophy and Neo-Aristotelian Philosophies of Freedom and Flourishing Compatible?” Freedom and Flourishing. June 4, 2026. 

----------------------------- “The Architecture of Freedom: Randy Barnett’s Natural Law Case for a Free Society” Freedom and Flourishing. June 26, 2026.

----------------------------- “Robust Political Economy and Neo-Aristotelianism: Complementary Visions of Freedom and Flourishing” Freedom and Flourishing. July 10, 2026.