Here’s a piece by me over at The Commentator which looks at the slippery ideas concerning what we ‘deserve’.

In the context of walloping the latest confused burblings against Ayn Rand, this time from the Guardian’s potted collectivist George Monbiot. Me:

Lordy! Another wild swipe at AynRand, this time from George Monbiot in the Guardian. She’s dead! Yet, inexplicably, her insane ideas live on! Selfishness. Parasites. “The philosophy of the psychopath … millions blithely volunteer themselves as billionaires’ doormats … a demigod at the head of a chiliastic cult.” Chill indeed!

And then we have this truly vile description of poor people: “the “dangerous class”, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society…”[Hang on – wasn’t that someone else? Ed]

You might have thought that a distinguished Guardian columnist and thinker might take the time to talk to just one – one! – person who has read AynRand’s books to ask what value is in them. You would be disappointed. Much more fun to write off huge numbers of people (especially Americans) as stupid and greedy…

…Let’s look more closely at the Monbiot claim that according to Rand the passengers on the train did "deserve their fate". What precisely does “deserve” mean?

It’s a subtle, slippery word, increasingly co-opted by collectivists as part of a psychological power-play to assert their moral superiority over the rest of us.

It can be used in a direct, specific way to describe a contract fairly fulfilled ("As we agreed, I have painted your door to your specification — I deserve to be paid the contract price").

Or it can reflect the moral logic of punishment ("You deliberately attacked that woman with no provocation — you deserve to lose your liberty for five years").

Two more categories. A man jumps into the tiger enclosure at the zoo and taunts the tiger. He gets attacked and eaten. Meanwhile his brother decides to live among grizzly bears in the wild – a high-risk lifestyle. One day a bored bear attacks and eats him. In each case the man has put himself into a situation where a reasonably foreseeable outcome was being eaten. Is that grim result not in some sense “deserved”?

After that it turns into an open-ended, almost abstract assertion. I worked hard at school so I deserve a good job. Leeds United are a big club and deserve to be in the Premier League. The people of Greecedon’t deserve what’s happening to them now.

Finally we have the hoot of the professional victim, who deserves money precisely because she/he exists and is a victim. Such as the legendary Chawnerfamily, who are said to be too fat to work: “Yet of their £22,508 a year in tax-free benefits – equivalent to a £30,000 salary – Mr Chawner said: ‘What we get barely covers the bills and puts food on the table. It’s not our fault we can’t work. We deserve more.”

Well, fine. But this opens the existentialist Rand question, namely what the people who work to generate that