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The world is socialist

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Re: The world is socialist

#61

Post by coldtea »

KaiserPro wrote: post #49
gnosis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So many people who claim, or seem to have taken inspiration from Rand would, in fact, be "bad guys" in Atlas Shrugged." Case in point: Rand hated Libertarians.[1] Some typical examples from the article: - She called Libertarianism "a mockery of philosophy and ideology" - She accused Libertarians of "slinging slogans and trying to ride on two bandwagons" Later, she accuses them of entertaining "amateur political noti…

Rand hated everyone apart from tall, arrogant & selfish men.

And those only if she could convince to have sex with her or obey her otherwise. Else, she hated them too.

Basically, she hated everyone apart from herself.

Re: The world is socialist

#62

Post by yummyfajitas »

This essay is attacking a straw man, not Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was not an anarchist and did not oppose government entirely:

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=arc_ayn_rand...

I'm a having a little trouble believing the author actually read Atlas Shrugged - in it, one of the productive characters (Ragnar, if I remember right) explicitly lists many legitimate functions of government. One of them is maintaining public roads.

The author also deliberately fails to acknowledge the difference between public goods (blizzard cleanup) and private goods (medicine and financial services).

Re: The world is socialist

#63

Post by solistice »

johnnyg wrote: post #14

1. Can we agree that both full socialism and full rand style capitalism end in tears? 2. Token rebuttals. a. Someone lives irresponsibly, I live responsibly. The sick that comes for us all devastates them early and I'm told "since we all get sick, they got sick much earlier due to all the crack and booze, they can't pay because they were grasshoppering it up while you worked, so now you pay". This is an extreme examp…

c. Insurance. Ayn Rand did actually state her opinion on health insurance. According to her, it's completely proper if a group of people choses to create a system of insurance as long as they're not forcing anyone to use that system.

Re: The world is socialist

#64

Post by coldtea »

valtron wrote: post #54
pron wrote: post #27

Ayn Rand was a strange and interesting woman who, among other things, sexually abused her most devoted fans and manipulated them in horrible ways. She was never considered an important, serious, or good writer, and her works were ridiculed pretty much as soon as people first first laid eyes on them. But, her novels are, to this day, bestsellers, especially popular, as you write yourself, with teenagers. They are mean…

> sexually abused her most devoted fans Source?

Check any biography or article on her life.

Re: The world is socialist

#65

Post by WalterSear »

gnosis wrote: post #20
glesica wrote: post #6

If you want to go back to the point where we decided to be socialist and try to undo it, you're going to have to kill most of the people on the planet who depend on the current system for sustenance. And like it or not, that probably includes you. It certainly includes most of the idiots running around preaching Ayn Rand these days. This is my favorite part. So many people who claim, or seem to have taken inspiration…

"So many people who claim, or seem to have taken inspiration from Rand would, in fact, be "bad guys" in Atlas Shrugged." Case in point: Rand hated Libertarians.[1] Some typical examples from the article: - She called Libertarianism "a mockery of philosophy and ideology" - She accused Libertarians of "slinging slogans and trying to ride on two bandwagons" Later, she accuses them of entertaining "amateur political noti…

"spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing my ideas".

She hated people who were doing what she was who didn't put here on a pedestal, that all. This doesn't make libertarianism fundamentally different to her philosophy. It just puts up a mirror to her narcissistic batshittedness.

Re: The world is socialist

#66

Post by thelastuser »

Allower wrote: post #34

And this is where we see the clowns who don't understand economics. Snow removal is handled by the folks who have a greater vested financial interest in having roads clear. And if you seriously can't imagine a nation with private roads, than you simply haven't tried very hard.

It is strange how well conditioned people are to regard roads as this Great Social Problem even as they go about buying cheaper and cheaper stuff that does more and more everyday thanks to capitalism.

Re: The world is socialist

#67

Post by moocowduckquack »

marris wrote: post #8

"Disease is socialist" but most cures come out of commercial drug companies cure them. Weird. I think the reader has a healthy aversion to Rand, but there is certainly a difference between great acts and mediocre ones.

Actually, the majority of the money for curing the diseases that affect the most people comes from government.

Re: The world is socialist

#68

Post by staccatomeasure »

wissler wrote: post #36

The heart of the matter is this question: should the community violate the consent of the individual or not? Coming at it from the utilitarian point of view (for sake of argument -- I am not a utilitarian[1]), does it really need to be argued that every humane person should naturally wish to respect individual consent to the fullest extent possible? The only remaining question should be to determine to what extent th…

What happens when that HOA needs to make a new rule? From what you described it sounds like any person on the losing end of an argument is being violated, and an HOA that has to deal with anything but some basic set of agreed upon rules will not satisfy the non-violation requirements.

Re: The world is socialist

#69

Post by [deleted] »

dragontamer wrote: post #30
ef4 wrote: post #18

When you attack capitalism by attacking Ayn Rand, you are attacking a terrible straw man. You'll notice that people rarely start by attacking the works of von Mises or Hayek or Rothbard, because those guys were actual serious academics who knew what they were talking about. Much easier to poke holes in the eccentric philosophy of one novelist.

Ayn Rand represents a growing philosophical movement in America. Attacking Ayn Rand is attacking Ayn Rand... and that is good enough for me.

[deleted]

Re: The world is socialist

#70

Post by yummyfajitas »

gnosis wrote: post #20
glesica wrote: post #6

If you want to go back to the point where we decided to be socialist and try to undo it, you're going to have to kill most of the people on the planet who depend on the current system for sustenance. And like it or not, that probably includes you. It certainly includes most of the idiots running around preaching Ayn Rand these days. This is my favorite part. So many people who claim, or seem to have taken inspiration…

"So many people who claim, or seem to have taken inspiration from Rand would, in fact, be "bad guys" in Atlas Shrugged." Case in point: Rand hated Libertarians.[1] Some typical examples from the article: - She called Libertarianism "a mockery of philosophy and ideology" - She accused Libertarians of "slinging slogans and trying to ride on two bandwagons" Later, she accuses them of entertaining "amateur political noti…

The libertarians of her era were closer to the anarchists that this essay is attacking. Rand explicitly disagreed with them on issues like blizzard cleanup.

Both Ayn Rand and most modern libertarians have little objection to the government provision of public goods like blizzard cleanup. They simply object to the government provision of private goods, such as diabetes treatment.

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