The world is socialist • Hacker News Board

Re: The world is socialist

#151

Post by kamaal » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 5:07 AM UTC

Rand is always popular among people, who get cheated. Kind of people among whom resentment(Bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly) is high. If you look at it closely these are generally the kind of people who do everything right, and then only find some not even 1/10th the worth take away fruits of their work.

These are generally the kind of hard working working people who get cheated due to office politics, or an unfair boss, or the people who score less marks because the teacher wanted to reward her otherwise favorite pupil.

One of the top reasons why people want to have their own business is because 'working for others' ultimately leads to a situation where you do all the work, while not getting nearly the atom worth the due rewards you deserve. Its not selfish or arrogant or even wrong that such people ultimately take things into their own hands and refuse to put up with being treated unfairly.

When I first read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. The philosophy of it looked straight obvious and something that I myself have gone through.

Rand's philosophy is not the case, but rather a effect of a deep rooted malaise where some people find it perfectly fine to cheat. And expect the person to be fine being cheated.

On a side note, I attended a Start up conference a years back here Bangalore. At the end there was open panel discussion as to what makes a better career option 'Start up or a Job at a Megacorp' a middle manager from representing a mega corp called start up founders are impatient, greedy and selfish. This is how bad the situation gets when you put up with unfair treatment, the person cheating thinks it's perfectly ok to treat you unfairly. And more, it is unfair to him that you refuse to get cheated.

Want to prevent the Rand philosophy from spreading, do something that triggers its flow and adoption at the first place. But we all already know that's not going to happen.

Re: The world is socialist

#152

Post by kamaal » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 5:26 AM UTC

pron wrote: post #128

bloody_pretzels wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post does nothing but put down and ridicule an entire philosophical and political branch of thought without any rationale at all. It's a shame that this type of comment can receive so many upvotes in a community that alleges to care about quality discussion.

> Your post does nothing but put down and ridicule an entire philosophical and political branch of thought without any rationale at all. Not every quip or fart deserve serious attention, and Rand's "philosophical branch of thought" would not have garnered any attention at all if not for the popularity of her books among American teens. Her "philosophy" is hardly recognized as such. I am not comparing Rand to Hitler,…

>>Her "philosophy" is hardly recognized as such.

That's almost like vegetarians saying, meat is hardly recognized as a source of nutrition because they don't eat it.

Re: The world is socialist

#153

Post by demachina » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 6:47 AM UTC

Pretty flawed writing on Dave Winer's, like this part right here:

"Ayn Rand's philosophy might have worked in an agrarian society when people lived far apart, and couldn't pool their resources."

Agricultural coops were some of the earliest, most intense and long lived Socialism in the U.S. in fact some of them are still going. Building grain elevators, pooling expensive machinery, getting fertilizer and seed in bulk and at a reasonable price, shipping crops to market and trying to avoid getting screwed by middlemen, are things were Socialism had its place.

Atlas Shugged was written for and about railroad barons, industrialist and to a lesser extent Wall Streeters.

Classic Dave, say something that has no basis in fact, and hope no one calls him on the B.S. because he's Dave Winer.

Re: The world is socialist

#154

Post by foobarbazqux » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 8:26 AM UTC

foobarbazqux wrote: post #116

kaoD wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blizzards are also localized. Why should I help take care of your blizzard if it didn't hit my location? Everything is as private or public as you make it.

So don't take care of my blizzard. I'm sure almost everyone else in my town will agree to give money to a local government that takes care of it. Basically my philosophy is that only the individual matters. Society is for the weak, and it only makes sense when a collection of rational men decide that it doesn't infringe on individual ambition.

Sorry, I was possessed by Ayn's ghost for a bit today.

Re: The world is socialist

#155

Post by yummyfajitas » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 10:16 AM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #146

yummyfajitas wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but epidemic prevention is an extremely small problem (and a very cheap one to address), at least in the US. Virtually no one across the political spectrum (including most libertarians) opposes it. Near as I can tell, the OP wasn't talking about it either.

But the same morals and 'ethical guideposts' apply throughout, do they not? By way logic does a libertarian say that e.g. government coercing people to obey quarantines is acceptable, but that the government coercing people to pay for cheap public preventive care (before expensive specialist treatments become necessary) is not?

Quarantine prevents others from getting sick, while preventative care only prevents you from getting sick.

For comparison, compare laws against punching other people to laws against punching yourself.

Re: The world is socialist

#156

Post by mpyne » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 2:33 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #155

mpyne wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the same morals and 'ethical guideposts' apply throughout, do they not? By way logic does a libertarian say that e.g. government coercing people to obey quarantines is acceptable, but that the government coercing people to pay for cheap public preventive care (before expensive specialist treatments become necessary) is not?

Quarantine prevents others from getting sick, while preventative care only prevents you from getting sick. For comparison, compare laws against punching other people to laws against punching yourself.

And if you prevent someone from getting sick via preventable care you prevent them from spreading that sickness to others. Additionally even non-communicable diseases often have large impacts on those related to the person with the disease, so I don't see how you can truly separate the logic.

Re: The world is socialist

#157

Post by dreamfactory » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 5:51 PM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #145

dreamfactory wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When somebody gets TB, regardless of their lifestyle, is it in your best interests that they get a full course of treatment in an isolation ward in hospital, or that they wander the streets coughing blood all over the place and incubate a new drug-resistant strain? Is it in your best interests that tap water is maintained by competing for-profit companies (see Victorian Britain and cholera), and is it better for you…

> is it in your best interests that they get a full course of treatment in an isolation ward in hospital, or that they wander the streets coughing blood all over the place and incubate a new drug-resistant strain? That's a false dichotomy. An example of a 3rd option is to put them in an isolation ward, and allow them to simply die if they can't pay for treatment. When it comes to medical care, the question of how to…

> That's a false dichotomy.

No it's not, it already happened in New York in the 90's.

Re: The world is socialist

#158

Post by aetherson » Wed, Aug 07, 2013, 12:47 AM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #25

aetherson wrote: post #22

We all get hungry, but we buy food from farmers on the market. We all need shelter, but we're buy our rent our homes. We all need clothing, but we clothing manufacturers are for profit. There are a variety of good arguments for socialized health care, but "we all get sick" is not among them. This article is banal in the extreme, and I'm not sure why it's on the front page.

Do you feel the same about housing projects, food banks, soup kitchens, food stamps, battered women's shelters, etc.?

Do I feel that there are good arguments for them, but "we all need X" is not a good argument for them? Sure I do. Don't you?

That said, note the difference between, say, housing projects or food stamps and a traditional vision of socialized healthcare: it is not expected that 90%+ of the population get most or all of their food from food stamps.

Re: The world is socialist

#159

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Aug 07, 2013, 1:08 PM UTC

thelastuser wrote: post #66

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.

Not everything is made of transistors.

Re: The world is socialist

#160

Post by ef4 » Thu, Aug 08, 2013, 6:41 PM UTC

dreamfactory wrote: post #87

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.

Apart from supporting Fascism, didn't von Mises miss the rather fundamental question of economy of scale and resultant monopoly domination?

Supported Fascism? Mises personally had to flee the Nazis. He also wrote a whole book about why fascism in general is bad ("Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War").