101–110 of 162 posts
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Atlas Shrugged'. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” – John Rogers
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
HOA's can be formed based on a premise that democratic procedures govern the creation/modification of new rules.
Wasn't your original idea something that democratic procedures violate people? Is difference that in an HOA you agree to the procedures, instead of being born into them?
To oversimplify, yes, the difference is that you've consented to the rules. Imagine you and your friends decide to order a pizza and agree to vote on the toppings. That's fine. But it's not fine for a friend to force you to pay for the pizza when you didn't agree to do so.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've taught programming to kids from very poor classes of society who grokked it and excelled at it. But, guess what– a lot of them will be stuck working at McDonald's because they can't go to college, or because even if they could go to public universities their family didn't understand why they should spend 4+ years not bringing in any money when they could work at McDonald's right away. I've also taught/privately…
> Successful people consistently underestimate how lucky they are. Meanwhile mediocre people consistently attribute other people's success to luck. As luck would have it, they are both right and wrong. I am a high school dropout who never went to college, yet I sold 2 companies in the last 2 years. Is my success just a matter of luck, or am I that much better than the average population. Maybe the answer is that neit…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, this is the point I am trying to make. If you are opposing an ideology then have balls to attack the ideology straight on. I don't see people often attacking Marxism on the basis that Karl Marx was hiding from child support obligations and that Lenin had syphilis. Yet it's par for the course to dismiss whatever ideology Rand is representing just by attacking her character.
Syphilis and child support payments aren't communicable by economic ideology in the same sort of way that lifestyles are by moral dictates. Without taking a side either way of the AR thing - taking advice on how to live your life from people whose character you detest seems like it might be a bad call. Living your life in the manner they approve of, at least if they did so themselves, stands a good chance of making y…
I don't think both of these can be true simultaneously so I guess I did not get what are you saying right.
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 maintainin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good example of why very few libertarians exist in NYC. Fantasy solutions like a thousand different HOA's to plow the streets just don't make much sense when you think about 8 million people spread across hundreds of square miles.
The HOA is just an example of how creative solutions can be found, it is not an answer to every problem. Did you really expect me to provide a full theory with all solutions to all problems in this post? Your tacit premise is: "Since you didn't show me how to solve every problem, then your general solution is false." This is like blaming calculus for not having worked out all possible calculus problems.
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…
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.
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…