The COVID-19 pandemic is having a negative impact on all aspects of human life, and the U.S. economy is no exception. The virus outbreak and governmental reactions to it have sent the stock market crashing and dealt a major economic blow.

In a special installment of our webinar series Philosophy for Living on Earth, the Ayn Rand Institute’s chief philosophy officer, Onkar Ghate, sat down with finance and economics specialists Yaron Brook and Rob Tarr to talk about the effects of the virus and government intervention on the markets and the economy. The discussion covered many aspects of the ongoing financial crisis and approached the topic from a perspective informed by the philosophy of Objectivism.

Some of the questions covered in the discussion include:

* How does this crisis compare to the 2008 crisis?* What did the markets look like before the

pandemic hit?* How has the coronavirus affected the markets?* What will be the short-term and long-term

consequences of the measures taken by the Fed?* What is an optimistic, yet realistic, scenario

for the future, and what can we learn from this crisis?

Stay tuned for future installments of our webinar series, where we will

continue to analyze the effects of the pandemic from the principled perspective

of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. And please consider donating to ARI if you value our

unique and rational evaluation of this crisis.

Watch the full discussion between Ghate, Brook and Tarr, below.

Audio only:

The COVID-19 pandemic and the responses to it from both business and government are now dominating the headlines and overwhelming our lives. As we all begin to grapple with the wide-ranging effects of both the disease and the steps being taken to fight it, there’s a need to take a step back and survey the situation with a philosophic eye. In today's special episode of Philosophy for Living on Earth, philosophers Onkar Ghate and Gregory Salmieri discussed how philosophy can help guide our thinking about the impact of the pandemic on our lives, our economy, and about our government’s response to it.

Audio of this event is also be available on the Philosophy for Living on Earth podcast (Apple and Stitcher).

Podcast audio:

Over the past decade, the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism has seen renewed public attention. Recent popular books are selling Stoicism as a guide to self-mastery, psychological resilience, inner tranquility and happiness. There is William Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (2009); Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph (2014) and The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living (2016); and Massimo Pigliucci’s How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (2017), to name a few. The philosophy has garnered the interest of CEOs, entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley tech workers and professional athletes.

There are good reasons, however, to steer clear of Stoicism as a philosophy of life. For although the Stoics raised important questions and issues, which these recent books are surfacing, the answers the Stoics offered to these questions are, in the end, deeply problematic.

What is up to us and what is not

Popular treatments of Stoicism universally stress the Stoics’ point that some things are “up to us” and other things are not up to us, and that it’s crucially important to distinguish correctly between these. Many of today’s advocates of Stoicism cite the famous Serenity Prayer to capture what they take to be the essence of this point: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

In his book The Daily Stoic, entrepreneur and media strategist Ryan Holiday pitches this point as follows:

The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can't. What we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather — no amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try you can’t make someone like you. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at these immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change.110

There is something right in this advice, as far as it goes. The problem, however, is that Stoicism endorses determinism — the view that our actions and choices are necessitated by factors beyond our control. So, strictly speaking, nothing is up to us. And if nothing is up to us, what use is Holiday’s advice or the Serenity Prayer or anyone’s advice for that matter? There is no philosophically consistent answer to that question, except: “None whatsoever.”111

Stoicism endorses determinism — the view that our actions and choices are necessitated by factors beyond our control.