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Ayn Rand

How clueless. I hear her called a liberal and a nationalist.

What utter ignorance of her work and positions.

I dispute this. Her books were inspiration to conservative icons like Milton Freedman and Ronald Reagan. The blind assertion that we are such perfect masters of our destinies as to shape them in every detail could ONLY come from the staunchest of conservatives.

But rather than just spam you with my view; What do you feel makes her liberal, exactly?

Individualism, personal responsibility, and productive work ethic are core-values of the Classic Liberal and are the same values that Ayn Rand championed.
 
I once considered reducing a paperback of the Fountainhead to toilet paper as an artistic statement, but decided it would be in bad taste to deface a book even if its content was trash.

Ayn Rand was a pop philosopher, like Cicero was to the Romans. None of her ideas are original, they are just a big collage of Aristotle (which is too bad because I enjoy Aristotle's practical philosophy), Nietzsche, and an ad-hominiem attack on Immanuel Kant, add libertariaism, plus staple right-wing prejiduces for no reason other than to have them (anti-homosexuality along with your anti-Christianity because, hey, why not? Anti-everything).

The hypocrisy of her personal life was profound and extreme to the maximum. I can't think of a single moment of her life which was sincere.

What amazes me most is how medieval her logic is; she took pride on her writings on reasoning when it was pretty much a pompous adaption of Aristotle's Logic, with no regard or consideration to the major developments in the field thanks to Charles Sanders Perice, Bertrand Russell, Whitehead, Ludwig Wittgenstein, etc.

Her stance of science was even more illogical. She claimed that her epistemology provided an authentic basis for every field, science included, which absolutely no scientist could agree to; she was skeptical of the theory of evolution, general and special relativity, and Quantum physics, skeptical of pretty much everything after Newton, and seemed to disregard that modern scientists considered the founder of their epistemology to be pragmatists like Charles Sanders Peirce and more visibly, Karl Popper.

Quite frankly, her lack of original material and ideas, off-baseness, and general nastiness makes me wonder if she even qualifies as a philosopher in the modern sense of the term.

Individualism, personal responsibility, and productive work ethic are core-values of the Classic Liberal and are the same values that Ayn Rand championed.

Obvious and unoriginal too.
 
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boring!


Unless you contend that Rand was not a classical liberal, please do not include a quote of mine in your rant.

I've been doing this a long time, and I'd never heard the term "classic liberal" as you use it here. While I don't dispute the merit of this terminology, I don't think its in wide enough use for you to throw it out and assume everyone will know what you mean.
 
Just warmed over Neitzsche for the most part.

Nietzsche was one of her influences, but there were many others, and she added A LOT of original ideas herself.


The problem with Ayn Rand is that she took over a thousand pages to cover topics that could have just as easily been covered in 200.

To the contrary, people who understand her work find them remarkably brief compared to the quantity of ideas they contain. Atlas Shrugged could have been a trilogy of 1000 page books.


[...] That probably has something to do with the fact that Orwell was himself a socialist and an anarchist sympathizer who served in a libertarian Marxist militia during the Spanish Civil War. :shrug:

He simply had a very bad education in economics. There is a very good chance that he would have been a libertarian today.


Poppycock. The classic Liberal , is Robin Hood.

Robin Hood was an Anarcho-Capitalist who returned the stolen "tax money" back to the original victims of government theft. :cool:
 
He simply had a very bad education in economics.

No, I don't think he ever read Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.

There is a very good chance that he would have been a libertarian today.

I agree, considering that his support of anarchism established him as a libertarian then.
 
Robin Hood was an Anarcho-Capitalist who returned the stolen "tax money" back to the original victims of government theft. :cool:

Are you saying that he and his merry men took it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week ? But that all the decisions of that officer had to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting ? (by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two thirds majority in the case of more major decisions , of course)
 
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Are you saying that he and his merry men took it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week ? But that all the decisions of that officer had to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting ? (by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two thirds majority in the case of more major decisions , of course)

Capitalism is a system that is defined by individual rights (aka capital). Corporate board meetings are an optional construct.


No; that would imply that "anarcho-capitalism" was something other than an oxymoron.

Socialism can only exist through absolute government force.

Capitalism doesn't need a single ounce of it.
 
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Socialism can only exist through absolute government force.

This is among the more mundane economic fallacies I encounter, and one that ignores the obvious realities of the existence of anarchism and minarchism, which involved stateless socialism and minimal-state socialism as advocated by Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, etc. A philosophy that characterized anarchism far before your pseudo-anarchist, fraudulent ideology came along.

Capitalism doesn't need a single ounce of it.

Actually, capitalism requires quite substantial government involvement for its continued existence, which is why the capitalist states that utilize welfare state programs to the greatest extent are usually the most efficient and effective...which delivers a victory to social democratic capitalism above its more rightist counterparts.
 
This is among the more mundane economic fallacies I encounter, and one that ignores the obvious realities of the existence of anarchism and minarchism, which involved stateless socialism and minimal-state socialism as advocated by Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, etc. A philosophy that characterized anarchism far before your pseudo-anarchist, fraudulent ideology came along.

Chronological snobbery is meaningless. And it's an unavoidable economic fact that in order to entice people to use a competitively inferior system you have to use force. Otherwise all your little comrades will simply leave - the smartest will go first, and the rest will follow when your welfare system collapses.


Actually, capitalism requires quite substantial government involvement for its continued existence, which is why the capitalist states that utilize welfare state programs to the greatest extent are usually the most efficient and effective...which delivers a victory to social democratic capitalism above its more rightist counterparts.

No, the less government (whether in its modern form or in others, like the Somali warlords), the more capitalism, and vice-versa.
 
Chronological snobbery is meaningless. And it's an unavoidable economic fact that in order to entice people to use a competitively inferior system you have to use force. Otherwise all your little comrades will simply leave - the smartest will go first, and the rest will follow when your welfare system collapses.

"Chronological snobbery"? It's really a minor facet component of the more nuanced issue of the incompatibility of anarchism and capitalism, actually. As for the matter of force being an element of an inferior economic system, that's true, which is what accounts for the popular disgruntlement with capitalism and the capitalist labor market. However, you don't need to take my word for it; since the organization methods of workers' ownership and management, the foundational cornerstones of the socialist economy, exceed the efficiency of the orthodox capitalist firm by such an extent even in an economy designed against them, it's apparent that capitalism is far inferior. Incidentally, the welfare state is a crucial facet of the capitalist economy, which you might learn when you enroll in Econ. 101 or even read an outdated textbook. ;)

No, the less government (whether in its modern form or in others, like the Somali warlords), the more capitalism, and vice-versa.

Completely wrong, and reliant on a fallacious and utopian conception of the capitalist economy. The government is an integral agent of growth and stabilization in the capitalist economy. For example, we could refer to Yu's A new perspective on the role of the government in economic development: Coordination under uncertainty. As noted by the abstract:

This paper argues that the government possesses certain unique features that allow it to restrict competition, and provide stable and reliable conditions under which firms organise, compete, cooperate and exchange. The coordinating perspective is employed to re-examine the arguments for industrial policies regarding private investment decisions, market competition, diffusion of technologies and tariff protection on infant industries. This paper concludes that dynamic private enterprises assisted by government coordination policies explains the rapid economic growths in post-war Japan and the Asian newly industrialising economies.

Later and more detailed elaboration is provided by this excerpt:

[The government] possesses some unique features that distinguish it from the firm. Such features allows the government to regulate competition, reduce uncertainty and provide a relatively stable exchange environment. Specifically, in the area of industrial policy, the government can help private enterprises tackle uncertainty in the following ways: first, locating the focal point by initiating projects; providing assurance and guarantees to the large investment project; and facilitating the exchange of information; second, reducing excessive competition by granting exclusive rights; and third, facilitating learning and diffusion of technologies, and assisting infant industry firms to build up competence. The history of developmental success indicates that the market and the state are not opposed forms of social organisation, but interactively linked (Rodrik, 1997, p. 437). In the prospering and dynamic nations, public-private coordination tends to prevail. Dynamic private enterprises assisted by government coordination explain the successful economic performances in the post-war Japan and the Asian newly industrialising economies. It is their governments' consistent and coordinated attentiveness to the economic problems that differentiates the entrepreneurial states (Yu, 1997) from the predatory states (Boaz and Polak, 1997).

The infant industries argument is actually among my favorite examples, because it well illustrates the role of the state in protecting appropriate development as a facet of strategic trade policy, thereby maximizing long-term market competition and dynamic comparative advantage...the informed capitalism would certainly see the value of that.
 
boring!


Unless you contend that Rand was not a classical liberal, please do not include a quote of mine in your rant.

. . . if Ayn Rand's material in anyway resembles that of classical liberals, then that would only validate my claim that she is unoriginal. Wouldn't I just read the books written by classical liberals? There was really nothing more to be said about the "virtue of self-interest" and the "infallibility and moral superiority" of laissez-capitalism that couldn't be found in the works of several prior generations of political thinkers.

She was also unprofound, unsophisticated, and strange. I never really understood how she reconciled the ideas that readers who only accepted some of her ideas were flakes but that anybody who was a dogmatic follower wasn't worthy of her. Although, in the end, the result was the same: anybody who came to a different conclusion than Ayn Rand was out of her circle. That pretty much characterizes how the majority of her friendships ended; she stopped associating with and getting along with people who didn't agree with her on any topic under the sun, even things she had little expertise in (like modern science).

Atlas Shrugged could have been a trilogy of 1000 page books.

... maybe in the same sense that popular soap operas can run a 1000 episodes over the course of several decades.

Nietzsche was one of her influences, but there were many others, and she added A LOT of original ideas herself.

The only thing which could possibly be conceived of as original in her entire corpus was her theory of aesthetics, and while appealing in the same way the aesthetics of Freudian and Jungian psychology were appealing, it was also speculative and far away from any scientific observations of the human psyche and its responses to art. Hence, it is also generally disregarded. Just one of those things where a Randial account of something trumps modern science because it is more rational and Kant did something to science or something that made everything past Newton invalid and untrustworthy -- even though ironically it is the kind of advanced mathematical and physical framework her favorite engineer hero would have had to have worked in to develop his amazing machinery.

It is amazing how often the word 'rational' in Rand is tantamount to 'take my word for it'.
 
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"Chronological snobbery"?

That's the proper term for your claim that plain (irrational) anarchism predates Anarcho-Capitalism (never mind that core dimensions of self-ownership on which Anarcho-Capitalism is based -- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- keep popping up much earlier than that).


It's really a minor facet component of the more nuanced issue of the incompatibility of anarchism and capitalism, actually.

Capitalism makes individuals self-reliant, so they don't need the state. What you're saying is utter nonsense.


As for the matter of force being an element of an inferior economic system, that's true, which is what accounts for the popular disgruntlement with capitalism and the capitalist labor market.

Name one distinctly socialist country where people are free to leave, and name one distinctly capitalist country where they aren't? The right to free exit is the most important of all citizen's rights, because it creates competition between government systems - something that capitalism thrives on and socialism can never survive.


However, you don't need to take my word for it; since the organization methods of workers' ownership and management, the foundational cornerstones of the socialist economy, exceed the efficiency of the orthodox capitalist firm by such an extent even in an economy designed against them, it's apparent that capitalism is far inferior.


You clearly don't understand the first thing about economics, and instead escape into a fantasy world that is completely detached from objective reality, where the human mind has no value and mindless effort is infinitely rewarded by some imagined supernatural source. You can have your fantasies, but reality belongs to free market capitalism.


Incidentally, the welfare state is a crucial facet of the capitalist economy, which you might learn when you enroll in Econ. 101 or even read an outdated textbook. ;)

Many unscientific economic books have been written by socialists, but the actual reality is that capitalism (which rewards productivity) and the welfare state (which rewards lack of productivity) are mutually exclusive. The welfare state is a parasite that benefits from capitalism through systematic theft. Capitalism does not need the welfare state.


Completely wrong, and reliant on a fallacious and utopian conception of the capitalist economy.

When has free market capitalism ever failed to produce wealth? When did socialism ever manage to exist without economic aid from capitalism?


(Mindless socialist religious chanting ignored.)
 
Factoid:

John Galt died of chronic type two diabetes because he consumed more than he gave.

It was the squelched sequel, "Atlas Lost His Feet".
 
Capitalism is a system that is defined by individual rights (aka capital). Corporate board meetings are an optional construct.

Do you realize I was quoting Monty Python ?

Bloody Peasant.
 
Humorous political statements need to be debunked as well, lest someone misunderstands their intention.


John Galt died of chronic type two diabetes because he consumed more than he gave.

No, he killed himself after Dagny called him "Francisco err Hank err Eddie Willers" during sex by mistake. :shock:
 
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In a world where everyone shares the same ideals and rationality, Ayn Rand might have made sense, but in an irrational world based on conflicting values, she is a nut.
 
Individuals can have conflicting and irrational values in a free society without initiating aggression against each-other.

Personal values can be subjective, but social rulesets MUST be objective, that is based on an empirical observation of reality.
 
Individuals can have conflicting and irrational values in a free society without initiating aggression against each-other.

Interesting assumption. However, if my value is equality and your value is personal freedom, then we might have quite the disagreement when it come to the topic of property rights. I may not consider an economic system which distributes resources in a hierarchical fashion to be in alignment with my value of equality and you may not consider my alternative economic system, which seeks to redistribute wealth based on need, to be in alignment with your value of personal freedom.

Personal values can be subjective, but social rulesets MUST be objective, that is based on an empirical observation of reality.

Objectivity is based on the premise that what is reasonable for one person, must be reasonable for another. However, as every individual lives within their own reality, based on their own perceptions of the world, the assumption that a single objective social ruleset could apply to everyone becomes irratoinal simply because of the inherent subjectivity of human beings. In essence, values are inherently irrational. That applies to Ayn Rand's values just as much as anyone else's values, and the ability to rationalize one's values does not mean that they are in any way objective or experienced in the same way by every other human being.
 
Interesting assumption. However, if my value is equality and your value is personal freedom, then we might have quite the disagreement when it come to the topic of property rights. I may not consider an economic system which distributes resources in a hierarchical fashion to be in alignment with my value of equality and you may not consider my alternative economic system, which seeks to redistribute wealth based on need, to be in alignment with your value of personal freedom.

Your subjective value of equality can be promoted without initiating force: you can try to persuade people to see your point of view, have them ostracize / boycott the super-rich unless they give to charity, promote open-source software, patronize small / local businesses over larger corporations, etc, etc, etc. In fact, you can even start a commune on explicitly-owned land and persuade people to join you in a society where they'd be contractually-obligated to share all their property, etc. You cannot steal or force your commune on others, however, which includes any children that are born there once they are emancipated from their parents.

Capitalism doesn't "distribute resources in a hierarchical fashion" (which is what socialism does to power), capitalism distributes resources according to voluntary human action. If all parties involved are interested in maximizing their gain, which is most often the case, then wealth becomes distributed based on economic merit, which can be objectively judged from the natural laws (i.e. supply and demand). Need in of itself does not create anything.


Objectivity is based on the premise that what is reasonable for one person, must be reasonable for another.[...]

No, objectivity is based on the fact that objective reality exists, whether you recognize it or not. In the realm of arithmetic, 2 plus 2 adds up to 4 - no matter how much you beg or vote or shake your fist it will never add up to anything else. In the realm of human economics, private property and other natural rights constitute a competitive advantage. Natural rights aren't created by man, they are discovered through the scientific method.
 
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Capitalism doesn't "distribute resources in a hierarchical fashion" (which is what socialism does to power), capitalism distributes resources according to voluntary human action. If all parties involved are interested in maximizing their gain, which is most often the case, then wealth becomes distributed based on economic merit, which can be objectively judged from the natural laws (i.e. supply and demand). Need in of itself does not create anything.

There is ideology and then their is reality. Nothing truly works in the human world as it should. That is the essence of living in an irrational world made up of subjective beings. Hence, in the real world, capitalism distributes resources in a hierarchical manner. You may not like it, but that is how it is.

No, objectivity is based on the fact that objective reality exists, whether you recognize it or not. In the realm of arithmetic, 2 plus 2 adds up to 4 - no matter how much you beg or vote or shake your fist it will never add up to anything else. In the realm of human economics, private property and other natural rights constitute a competitive advantage. Natural rights aren't created by man, they are discovered through the scientific method.

Objectivity only exists to the extent that humans can perceive it. As we live in our minds, not as automatons within the physical world, there are around 6 billion points of view.

Also, please provide empirical evidence of natural rights. :mrgreen:
 
There is ideology and then their is reality. Nothing truly works in the human world as it should.

No, objective rules are static - does 2 + 2 sometimes add up to 3 or 5? An econometric function that takes observation of subjective human action as an input can still produce objective results.


That is the essence of living in an irrational world made up of subjective beings.

Like I said: personal values can be subjective, but social rulesets MUST be objective. Any subjective activity valued by the subject that bares its economic costs, and that doesn't violate the objectively-recognized rights of others, has an objective value.

Take baseball for example. There's nothing objective about grown men throwing a little ball around for hours, and yet millions of people voluntarily choose to pay their hard-earned dollars to watch them do it, buy team baseball caps, and so on. Outlaw baseball, and there will be economic decline, in part because people would be more depressed and less willing to earn more money to pay for their subjective hobby - thus it has an objective value to the human economy.


Hence, in the real world, capitalism distributes resources in a hierarchical manner. You may not like it, but that is how it is.

Capitalism allocates economic results based on economic contribution, which can vary drastically from an illiterate peasant following his boss's instructions in a "sweatshop" to a Bill Gates thinking up new ways to propel the human civilization forward, but it does not create a hierarchy.

That illiterate peasant owns his body, his mind, his speech, his time, any skills that he may have, his reputation in the minds of others, and so on - that is his capital, even if he hasn't got a single penny to his name. No one can take those things away from him without his consent. He might find that reality dictates for him to use his body and time to earn a living so that he can feed himself, but that is his choice to make. Maybe this peasant loves his childhood memories and his wife so much that he wouldn't trade places with Bill Gates even if he could!


Objectivity only exists to the extent that humans can perceive it. As we live in our minds, not as automatons within the physical world, there are around 6 billion points of view.

Yes, which is why democracy and other collectivist systems don't work very well. Each individual adult is the best judge of what is best for him, individually, as long as he doesn't violate the natural rights of others.


Also, please provide empirical evidence of natural rights. :mrgreen:

Sure. If you violate my natural rights, you will get shot. Any questions? :mrgreen:

Or you can spend several years studying history and economics, and you will discover that the society that violates those natural rights the least has a competitive advantage over the societies that violate them more.
 
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