Progressives hate Rand in part because she bypassed their ideological control of education and created an alternative humanism through the sales of her writings in the market.
Ayn Rand was a moron who thought she could survive on her own genius but when cancer threatened to wipe out the little bit of wealth she managed to put away for her old age she changed her name and applied for welfare benefits. The queen of the Libertarians, a stupid bitch preaching to the ignorant. She had a modicum of success on her own but like other so called self made successes, when she failed and she turned to the state to keep her ass off the street.
"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others" — Ayn Rand
Objectivism is religion & her books are popular because they function as gospels for that religion.
Like Christians eating the body & drinking the blood of Jesus, they turn common sense upside down by calling greed a virtue. And like Christians, they defend everything she ever did or said like some Jesus. Her followers regard her as infallible, like the pope.
Fact is, there are more Judeo Christians than atheists who support Ayn Rand.
@bondurango News flash buddy: there is more to the world than the US and the only reason there are more "Judeo-Christians" (read: Christians) in the US who claim to understand Objectivism is because only, what is it, 9-11% of the population of the US is atheist.
Newsflash this, junior. Support from ANY religious group for Ayn Rand is like Jewish membership in Hitler's SS. Of course, there were a few when there should have been none.
So it turns out that libertarian gasbag, Ayn Rand, collected Social Security under her ex-husband's Social Security account and did so under an assumed name in order to hide her identity. What a total freakin poseur.
Capitalism all just lies. They say Communist atrocities. But Wikileak wrote what? Why must we follow capitalism? When the progress of their policies are copied from communism? And their work more cruel than communist?
Listen, you fucking amateur Objectivists. STOP TELLING MORONS ABOUT RAND. It is in YOUR best interests to NOT have other people pursuing THEIR best interests.
The beauty of Objectivism is that it is NOT meant to be shared. So stop telling everyone about it.
@RommelMcDonald so my rational self-interest is to have irrational altruists running around fucking things up? Why do you advocate not advocating Objectivism?
@dannidandannikins When people don't act in their own self-interests they're more predictable. Which allows me to go about doing my own thing. These people are going to fuck things up regardless of what they believe, so there's no reason to have them working toward interests that would be opposed to mine.
@scout6686 If you understood Objectivism then you'd know that the economic crisis is exactly what Objectivists predicted. You say the free market hypothesis failed... I saw nothing of the kind: I saw the massive devaluing of a fiat currency and a government backed housing industry, I see exactly the kind of economic slow down caused by ever-growing regulations that Objectivism predicts.
I know you want to blame deregulation for the financial crisis... shame there are no facts supporting that.
@dannidandannikins you can't say theres a one size fits all solution (objectivism). Unfortunately, economics is alittle more complicated than that. The biggest problem was a flawed incentive system; to say there are no facts supporting this proves you haven't done your hw. Get back to me when you know what your talking about.
@scout6686 What do you consider to be a good incentive system?
Also when I said you don't understand Objectivism, I had good reason for saying so: The kind of economic policies advocated by Objectivism have not been practiced in recent times - indeed the last 100 years have seen consistent movement away from free markets. That you think otherwise shows that you understand neither Objectivism nor economics.
As for economics being complicated, I agree: that's why I'm a free marketeer!
Fiat money shows the triumph of man's mind in finding a cheap substitute for a scarce resource, namely, gold. It's exactly the sort of progress the late Julian L. Simon celebrated in his writings.
@conradjulian I don't know what kind of argument you are trying to make. Fiat money is not a triumph of anything - unless you consider it a triumph to rob by inflation the value of everyone's money. I don't kow who JL Simon is.
Julian Simon was a libertarian economist. Is it really that tough to do a web search?
His argument is that we shouldn't base an economy on scarcity because the future will bring new innovations which will make current problems seem meaningless. You might say that it's the opposite of liberalism in terms of rejecting environmentalism, humanitarianism or whatever other causes might be out there because the future lies in innovation, not languishing on scarcity problems.
Rand's ideas (on the supremacy of reason, epistemology, and laissez-fare capitalism) are clearly presented in her nonfiction writings, and dramatized eloqently and completely in "Atlas Shrugged."
Irrefutably so.
The human faculty of reason is exercised by choice. Those who choose not to exercise reason cannot be "reasoned with"; it won't convince them. Such a person has literally made up their mind to blank out reality. So, it's best to not expect them to "get it." Just leave them alone.
There is nothing irrationable about using ones wealth or influence voluntarily to help a person or a group of people you see striving for the same values you hold yourself. There is a difference between that, and forced socialist altruism for anyone asking for a handout.
@shakyra1 Define self giving. Anyone who is a millionaire living a lavish that does philanthropy work sounds like a Capitalist to me. If they gave out their entire wealth out to the poor and kept nothing for themselves, that would be Altruistic which Rand was against.
If I accepted competition as the ultimate goal of life, then I would have to accept Hitler's notion of the world of two soldiers fighting like beasts with each other to get the highest post, accept a world without solidarity where people let go and stand by the weaker getting swallowed, like germans did during the nazi rule. If you think this is extreme comparison, i really think that Rand's philosophy, which is not just economic, could lead to such consequences.
@libertits, rand expicitly denied that competition is a goal in and of itself. the end she had in mind was individual liberty and personal flourishing. competition to her was a practical consequence of this in certain social aplications.
Also, humans are animals. We also act by instincts and not by "rationality" always. Selfishness is an instict too, an instict of self-survival! Beasts in the jungle are irrational and are very selfish, they predate others for their own survival.Rationality is to overcome these lowest instincts. To not admit our animal instincts is precisely what is dangerous and leads anyone to commit irrational acts like crimes. A psycopath is by definition someone who does not empathize with others.
Ayn Rand intended to put absolute parameters of what reason is, which is exactly what christianity does! There is a reality that is outside our minds, we cannot intend to cover the sun with a finger and say the sun is not out there just because we only see our finger. It's really narrow-minded and pure sophism! If Rand had a child and this child made a walk on ice, the ice breaks, she wouldn't like a by stander to be one of her followers.
If we allow businessmen to substitute functions of the public state instead of public officials, then we give businessmen unlimited freedom without responsability . Libertarians simply fall into their own contradictions and deny the corruptible nature of humans when exposed to power: being it public statesmen or businessmen. There is no difference with the Rand feared evils of totalitarian communist regimes and her ideals. It is in fact the closest you can get through an opposite direction.
The difference is that interactions in the free market are voluntary and happen when both parties think it is a good idea. Nothing about government is voluntary (or as innovative), which is why it should be limited. With big government, special interests can take control.
No one is talking about government notbeing limited; it is good if it is limited, but if the market is completely let free, it will be even EASIER to serve special interests . Because I don't agree with Rand, it doesn't mean that you can label me as "statist". I think people who view Rand's views of liberty as some sort of absolute approach of freedom face many contradictions. Ccooperation and solidarity are not something limited to the collectivist state-centric concept she preaches
I don't think of intervention in an economical sense, but to protect the PUBLIC interests and enforce fairness between employees and employers and in whole world economy. In third world countries forced to follow the US model and protect US companies' interests, private companies use private forces to expropiate peasants and the state doesn't intervene :)! If you let the industry do whatever they want and have no regulations, at a point it will be the most powerful institution in the country.
Contrary to the government, the industry cannot be held accountable for their actions. The mass of power in a country should be in the hands of the population, which is ideally democracy, the state is only a representation of the people's interests, but a society, a collectivity, is what it is, it is not defined in terms of state bureacracy, it goes beyond that.
The specialized interest of the industry is to produce, and there are many other interests for people, not producing as much as possible, like education, arts, and the most power in the country should be the representation of the interests of the people.if you take any other regulation out of economic developments, only to maximize their win no matter what the cost is, and if most power is centralized into private hands, then the cause of the country is serves the few men who have this power.
It is fine that everyone has different interests. The free market can provide for what different people ask for. Look at the variety of movies from comedy to horror.
What? You summarize the interests of the population in "variety of films from comedy to horror" ?
No, you're right, I don't understand free market. I cannot begin understanding the freedom a businessman has of taking the liberty of others away, perverting everything to their own use of power and making human sacrifices of workers and minorities for the good of a market, not humanity per se. That I can see more variety of films and others pay a high price for them is NOT freedom.
The movies was just an analogy. You were the one who brought up the arts.
A businessman doen't take freedom away. Every transaction is voluntary! Even the choice of becoming a worker in a company is voluntary. So your statement about "workers sacrificing for the good of the market" is nonsense.
A government bureaucracy is not innovative.
And, the effect of regulations is often to the benefit of those being regulated because they take over the regulators over time.
"workers sacrificing for the good of the market" is NOT nonsense. There are no jobs and people are forced to get *something* and they voluntarily have to give up themselves to work in these uncontrolled factories just to be able to barely have a bite per day! This voluntary transactions are not really voluntary! There is no choice, the only choice is to submit to a greedy fucker who will pay you less than a cent per minute because his own interests are first! what bullshit.
No. People are hungry and all these industrials can pay them as they like, cruelly unfairly! They have no choice but that job they find.. they are forced into it, although they voluntarily apply, but this unlimited freedom to businessmen just makes others work like donkeys for miserable pay and working conditions. This happens in the third world, not in USA, and this is a MEANS so that things can be sold in the USA cheaper. If things were produced in USA you wouldnt be able to afford it!
The fact that people are poor in other countries is not the fault of the US! It is the lack of freedom and free markets and corrupt governments. Why do I have to repeat myself?
No one is saying that it is the fault of the US, THAT is a strawman argument. It is the fault of your foreign policy and these baron thieves . It is EXACTLY that we are exploited because the market has been let completely freee to do what they want with workers!
You are very uneducated. If people in poor countries have such little opportunity that they consider working for sweatshops, that is the fault of its own government.
The fact that there are billions of poor people in the world is not the fault of anyone in the US and is caused by a lack of private property, free markets, etc.
Blaming someone else for your problems is a waste of time. It is also a guaranteed way to continue to live in poverty and misery.
On the contrary, I think YOU are very uneducated, also Rand. Her philosophy is like if a kindergardener read Nietzsche and made her own conclusions out of it. Why don't you read existialist philosophy, which is where she wants to get at, but fails miserably? Tons of people said a lot of what Rand said before, but US Americans think she is the ultimate avant garde, what a joke! She rips off so many philosophers and makes her own nonsense out of them! Sartré, Camus, Nietzsche
I've read existentialism and it is very different from her philosophy. Ayn Rand was no child. Talking like that about her makes it clear you don't have intellectual honesty to take her seriously.
No, it isn't. Nietzsche also enticed to care for your own self as a maximum value and your body and not be a slave, but a master. She oversimplified these notions. You are wrong, i do take her seriously, I just see a lot of problems in her philosophy, even some things are true of what she said, but she intended to make absolute a set of values and virtues, which is already wanting to create a religion! Poking at her contradictions does NOT make me lack intellectual honesty.
It's so frightening, the fact that you idolize so much her ideas, that only if I accept them, for you is an absolute virtue and the only that can enable me to have intellectual honesty. Ridiculous.
Her philosophy is completely illusionary, because it is based on a individualist view of reality, nothing else matters. It is based on a notion of intolerance of other views of the world.
To say that it is possible to completely describe reality by reason, would mean we have absolute answers to all problems, like religion does. In the middle ages, people thought the earth was flat and that was their reality. Seeing reality is limited by our knowledge, and we have absolutely no idea of the things we don't know, it is completely insane to think we do. Cover the sun with a finger, you don't see the sun, and it means it doesn't shine.
It is the fault of US industrials to a great extent and holding unlimited power in third world countries, which suppresses democratic movements and supports extortion. They are not responsible for corrupt governments, but they ENDORSE THEM, to keep their own interests aligned with the country's policies, i.e.- the policies benefit those industrials. The market interferes in the making of politics. You get the opposite of state intervening in politics, but the market BUYS the politics.
It is common for people in other countries to blame the US for a big part of their problems because their economies are ATTACHED TO USA! you forgot that little detail, as usual, covering the sun with a finger. Too much sophism, ignoring FACTS.
Of course, the US as the world's superpower is attached to many countries, but that doesn't make their problems the US's fault. You forget that the US doesn't say who is in the government, who educates the people, whether there is corruption, etc. You think that because Nike shoes are made in a sweatshop suddenly all of the problems in that country are ours. That is incredibly simplistic and ignorant.
Well, the USA supports dinasties of dictators in third world countries. They support coups that ouster any form of president who works in interests of majorities and not for the interest of US industrials. They do not only say who, they establish who stays or who must go. The US government is directly responsible for great amount of despots and ruling dinasties in the third world, this is documented.
Why don't you educate yourself and for instance see the history of Chiquita in Latin America? Chiquita controlled government decisions, which undermined the masses and submitted everything to this company's interests, appropiating most of the best land in the countries! This is not my own making, this is some of your industrial's making. They bribe these governments, they endorse corruption!
It surely promoted more misery even than there was. It left us without our best lands, taking away resources and the wealth come back to the peoples. I have never seen anyone who worked at chiquita having a decent life!NEVER! This is NOT the point, the point is WHAT EFFECT IT HAS IF THERE IS NO ONE TO REGULATE WHAT CHIQUITA DOES! YOU have freedom because you can eat cheap bananas, people in the country where they come from can't afford a crumb of a banana!
I have no idea hwo the country was before Chiquita arrived, but I assure you they came only to steal or get by corrupted governments what they have. Do you mean to ask if Chiquita never having arrived would have made those lands be lost because they can make better use of them, since the third world apes cannot?
That question is completely out of topic. We are talking about free market and what effects it has if there is no regulation, so chiquita is an example of that: of how companies can exploit situations, weaknesses anywhere to serve their self interests. It can be in USA, in a third world country, or wherever they see a possibility of gain more money. So if companies have no government regulation they could never get so big to make such evil? this is like a religious belief in the market.
It is clear you've read various random things, but you've not read Milton Friedman and such and you will continue to be ignorant until you do.
Of course, if your country was filled with people who understood the free market, you wouldn't be in the mess you are in and you wouldn't be blaming the US for the problems of the 3rd world.
It is better to read many random things, than to just read one and believe that you have absolute knowledge of the world. It is better to read many things instead of just one book from one or two authors and believe you know it all.
Of course my country is not filled with people who understand free market, it is composed by "apes", whose inhabitants don't get a chance to develop, because big companies are first than people!
You distort history, reality and manipulate it so perversely. This market anarchy completely endorses corruption and politics made only to benefit a few rich, only for them to become RICHER. They want to institutionalize their interests. There IS LACK OF PRIVATE PROPERTY in third world countries because big corporations expropiate peasants, indigenous peoples, they claim our national resources as theirs by bribing the government! There IS TOO MUCH free market in third world countries!
You see, I agree that big government enables more corruption, I just don't agree that instead of enabling a government to get bigger, private interests get bigger, because then they specialize in getting bigger and bigger stepping on people's interests.
I don't know if I have a Marxist view of the world, but I certainly don't have a nazi view of the world, a social darwinist one, where the biggest predator gets to eat all and I don't do it because of anything else than self-interest.
I agree that competition is important and it does ent
I was the one wasting my time. i have told you the abuses of multinational corporations in the third world and you have refused to listen to them. It just depends on what you mean with "too much government".
I have a Marxist view of the world, because in your dualist, good and bad, black and white view of the world, who doesn't agree with your view of the world, agrees with the opposite: a marxist. evil, the cause of too much government.
I think you are an adept, fundamentalist and that is a big problem. An open society accepts many ideas, cooperation for the solution of problems, not absolute ideas and notions of the world.
Education and social justice, benefits should not be in private hands. There are ideals that should be true independent of us and they should be preserved independent of the needs of the market. I want my kids to be educated in things that have no value for the market but for their development as human beings.
Thomas Jefferson was a racist man, with racist views of the world. No wonder your country cannot snap out of racism if you keep listening to people whose thoughts are already outdated.
We already have the development,that students engineer their career to provide themselves as what the market is looking for,to market themselves as if they were goods.I find this development problematic & see generation by generation getting more numb in their development in a humanist way as a complete critical and creative being. I think this will ultimatively lead to stagnation and exactly the people who were different and not going with the flow were always the ones bringing humanity further
If we developed a society where competition is the purpose of existence and who gets to the top is the ultimate value, then I'd have to agree with Hitler's idea of making two soldiers fight themselves like beasts to who gets the higher post, with not doing anything if there is genocide, like Germans did during the nazi rule. I don't want to live in a world, where solidarity is seen as a weakness, then it will lead us to self destruction and stop reproducing- Nietzsche's last man
If we developed a society where competition is the purpose of existence and who gets to the top is the ultimate value, then I'd have to agree with Hitler's idea of making two soldiers fight themselves like beasts to who gets the higher post, with not doing anything if there is genocide, like Germans did during the nazi rule. I don't want to live in a world, where solidarity is seen as a weakness, then it will lead us to self destruction and stop reproducing- Nietzsche's last man
I don't blame anyone for my problems, I think and i look at the root of problems. This free market might be free for you to elect your products, but it is not free for people in third world countries. They have no chance to develop national industry because they can't compete with big corporation monsters!
Corporation are just voluntary groups of people. The fact that you view corporations as monsters demonstrates that you think emotionally rather than rationally.
A monster is a simple metaphor of a predator who only becomes bigger by self-interest, not an ugly, depraved creature per se. The fact that you are judging me as of being emotional based on such a superficial ground as the usage of a word as a figure of speech, just demonstrates that you are the one thinking already emotionally (by prejudice, hence irrationality) than rationally.
Everyone has emotions while they debate, they debate BECAUSE there is an emotion that motivates to defend what they believe in. to deny it doesn't make them nonexistent. I am not envious of you, I am pitying you because of your depraved view of what freedom is! I am not interested in having unlimited wealth as you do as a measure of happiness or freedom. The fact that I don't agree, doesn't make me envious, I simply want more justice and for others to be treated fairly, my self-interest.
Ignorance? Disagreeing with you doesn't make me ignorant. It is because I have lived in a different place, where things have happened differently than in your environment, things you refuse to listen to, what makes you be a retrograde person, who refuses to actually learn . Like Camus said, it is only a vulgar person the one who would never change their mind.
A monster does not have an absolute definition, it is a very abstract idea.
A corporation is a voluntary group of people that has the special interest of its own growth and profit. In following these special interests it can be in opposition to the general interests of the majority for example, and who is gonna represent this majority if this special interest group is allowed to freely follow its goal and by that means concentrate the power in form of money in its hands if there is no regulatory body to defend common social interests which go against the company?
You are confused. Power cannot concentrate too much in a voluntary free market. Don't like McDonald's or think they are too big? Don't eat there.
One can get into what sort of regulation is important, but you must first understand that the idea that a company selling products can become so big and evil is ridiculous.
I don't eat at McDonald's. I understand that economic growth of a company is important, but I don't agree that just any means for it to get bigger should be allowed.
Corporations in the US are not held accountable for what they do in other countries! They even hire paramilitaries and terrorist groups to suppress the workers and threaten them to not unionize to ask for more rights!
You repeat yourself because you have a religious view of politics and no one can have any arguments against anything you say.
Let me REPEAT myself once AGAIN: When big corporations are allowed to have INFINITE power, then they become the biggest institution in a country, they accummulate as much power as they can and suppress others, this is despotism. This is what happens! This is what will always happen if you let power be in the hands of a few, being in the government or private hands.
This UNDERMINES democracy and personal freedom. It lets not the ones in the government, which is the paranoia of Rand, but the hand of a few powerful, who are not saints either and abuse the masses!
I don't want to read anything of that son of a bitch who supported a fascist and murderer regime as that of Pinochet! You don't know what the third world is, what a bubble person mentality! There is no objectivity, are organs are flawed, this is why her "philosophy" is not taken seriously, it intends to give absolute answers to everything like religion does! It is the enemy of philosophy, which intends to study the limits of reason. Rand's rules of ethics intend to be absolute reason!
The point is that you can't understand freedom without the free market and it is obvious to me you don't yet understand capitalism, which goes back to Adam Smith in 1776 and earlier! I guess it is fair to say you are centuries behind the times.
Of course, you didn't grow up in the US, so it doesn't surprise me you don't understand the free market.
I agree with free market and I agree that government shouldn't intervene in economy, but I don't agree that industrials should be completely free to do what they like. Like cloning cows or putting a machine to milk them, whilst others do it in a respectful way to their lives, hence have to charge more for it! This competition is illusory. If self survival were the ultimate value, because it enables other values then i could say that protecting the planet is even more, because it enables my life!
No one argues for anarchy, even those who believe in the free market. That is a straw man argument.
The question becomes where should a government regulate and the answer today is "much less than now". In the US, every big government program is in debt! If these Congressmen were in a company, they would be in jail.
Why do you assume it is only angels in governmment and devils in companies?
On the contrary, I think you don't understand what this free market is all about because you haven't been and lived in the third world, where things are produced, where a lot of raw resources come from! If you did, you'd understand why you can afford something at all in the USA!
Whole nations are forced into this "freedom" of yours and you know? I cannot just stand and see it happen. Factory workers being forced into 48 hour shifts for 20 cents a day in EPZs, maquilas, and I am just supposed to shrug at it. Well I don't. The extreme poverty is affecting people around my family. They see the extrme gap between rich and poor, that others can have ferraris and they don't even have a crumb to eat. This is the root of criminality and it will affect me at some point.
Why is it that the people who have crumbs to eat always have corrupt leaders and no free market? Why is the US being blamed for poor people in other countries?
What made the US the world's only superpower is our free market.
I cannot even fathom in beginning to understand this anarchy where the "strongest" of the species (the strongest in marketing and in being a businessman) eats the smaller fish uncontrollably. This takes the rights of others away for dignified pay, for a dignified work and life. In Rand's view of society, we are only morally right in not caring about the sick and handicapped and not be solidaire, we are supposed to see them die, just like nazis did. tthis is a way to replace Christianity.
It isn't anachy. If you sign a contract in the free market, and the other person doesn't hold up their end, you can use the government to sue. A free market never means no laws!! In fact, protecting private property is important.
When a company goes bankrupt, the people join a new company that is better run. Capitalism is about creative descruction. If a company is doing badly, how can they continue to pay workers forever?!
You don't describe Rand's view properly so I won't even get into that.
State intervention is not an absolute abstract idea which is all evil. State intervention can also means to not allow abuses, which is good.
There has to be some sort of state, and if businessmen perform the function of a state, then you are giving away the state to private hands, like in fascist regimes. Isn't Rumsfeld for instance the owner of one of the biggest pharma companies in the world?
I don't think an individual has to choose to be either an individualist or a collectivist, it works mutually. I don't think that she writing this book of ethics, like some sort of bible, showing people what is morally right or wrong is better than any religion. It's raw and pure fundamentalism and very patronising. AYN Rand imposed her ideas of the world to others.
If most people are poor and you just shrug at it, what happens is that it can shoot you in the ass: criminality.
Rand wasn't talking about individuals being collectivist. She was talking about society's being that way. Rand did not impose her ideas on others, she was just a writer! She never argues against having policeman.
The problem with Rand, is not that she imposes her ideas on others, it's just that businessmen used her ideas to persuade others into it, like with this video and this foundation promoting her philosophy. The whole USA politics is influenced by Rand, while no one in the academia ever took her seriously. Her philosophy is their instrument. Russia forced their ideals into others, Rand and USA persuades their ideas into others through marketing.
Ayn Rand wrote a lot of little oversimplified rules of what an individual must be, and that the only virtue is extreme individualism. It's funny that she claims to have been influenced by Nietzsche, but I don't think she understood anything she read at all. He said, that it is better to have more virtues than one, because already one virtue ties your destiny to one knot-- determinism and the biggest potential of so many possibilities to live your life is immediately killed. Definite contradictio
Of course it is an oversimplified rule. Individual freedom is more than what Ayn Rand conceptualized it to be, far more complex. Freedom is a connotation, it can also be a very personalized definition of it, but the truth is that truth is more than what our flawed organs perceive. I don't believe in any absolute concept of freedom, love, or anything at all, if we do, then we turn into religious nutwings and this is how I see Rand and her followers.
More than 50 years ago Ayn Rand was denounced for predicting the logical consequences of this country's proceeding along an altruist, collectivist path. Now that she has been shown to have been so amazingly prescient, you might think her critics would give her some credit. But no. I do not even attempt to argue with statists anymore. It just is not worth my time. Those who believe that we owe our lives to the State will NEVER understand Rand.
Can't really help you there. You might find better chances over at the Atlasphere, which is a dating and networking site for Rand fans. I've not found any dates on the site, but then, I never really looked.
they showed the simpsons clip without the lisa statement that she is just an idol for right wing nuts and clearly Colbert was also parodying her or the reception of her.
Celebrities aren't exactly comprehending Rand, are they. They must be attracted to Rand's self-interest - although it seems they twist that philosophy as well. And celebs aren't exactly champs of the free market either. Maybe they should read Orwell again.
They are not promoting her. They are *explaining* why her books have sold 25 million copies and counting, and why her ideas are so timeless.
And if you think that brief media and entertainment are really promoting her, you would need to come up with an entirely new vocabulary to describe how they've promoted Air America or Barack Obama or every other liberal cause celebre.
Rand's ideas aren't even her own. People were strumming her tunes hundreds of years before she was. She simply was the best at explaining them to the layperson.
She was also extremely biased. Pretty much all her opinions concerning collectivist movements stem from her experiences growing up in the Soviet Union.
Having experiences and opinions does not make someone biased. If you don't have these things, then you are still a child. She was not a journalist, which is about striving to suppress biases.
A lot of her ideas come from her experiences in America as well because she saw some of the same issues but in a different form as she saw in the Soviet Union. Her writings are much more of a critique of the US.
Capitalism a century ago had to have been screwing over a lot of people, given how many of them took up with violent revolutionary movements in Russia, Europe and the U.S. to try to overthrow it. Even intellectuals like Leon Trotsky left their comfortable lives to take up guns and bombs to fight the system.
Rand's attempt at an anti-Marxism, by contrast, tends to attract people who are too selfish to put their lives at risk, much less endure hardship to fight for their ideals.
Fighting for your dreams in a free society is hard! You think Tiger Woods is just handed his prize money? That Brin and Page became billionaires just because they came up with the name Google?
Rand's worldview isn't about selfishness -- it is about opportunity and freedom. Both of those things are missing in a Marxist society.
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More Randian piffle. The Communists running the Soviet Union valued human excellence as much as anyone; they just channeled it in different directions. Their society produced outstanding scientists, artists, athletes, cosmonauts and even chess masters, people who realized they had certain gifts which differentiated them from others and chose to work hard to develop themselves.
since the old Soviet archives are open, I suggest you read Gulag by Anna Applebuam and/or Ivan's War by Catherine Merridale. These two authors catalog the crimes of Stalin
you must be fucking kidding me. The USSR 'valued human excellence' as much as the Nazis valued the achievements of Jewish culture. And they showed their appreciation in pretty much the same way - killing not only everybody who opposed, but also those who could potentialy oppose , with guns, concentration camps, starvation etc.
Why do we have to choose between a Marxist society and that idealized by Rand? Why should any idea of freedom and opportunity be limited to that of Rand's conceptions, or for that matter of every human being, if any human being as an individual have different ideas of them? I just don't like this fundamentalism, i find to be an entire contradiction and self-parody. Neither google, nor adidas, nor any of that represents freedom of man, it represents freedom of market, which is different.
You see, people like you and Rand's followers fall into dualism, a black and white view of the world, where there are two options just like heaven and hell: Rand's organization ideas ("good") and Marx's(not Mao's) as "evil", a religious view of organization, no matter if it goes beyond what is good and what is evil.
Nobody says there shouldn't be free markets! but the market should be there and serve people's interest! This doesn't happen! It is accumulating power in hands of despot industrial
@conradjulian Rand's book, and entire movement, was a demonstration of her fighting for her ideals. And she endured endless criticism for it, which invalidates your point.
Not everything is about war and terror. Rand fought on the intellectual front.
The most insincere, craziest hooch of all time. She confessed her sociopathy, decried her own scribblings as propaganda and perished in the condition of her ideology/sales pitch. A radical, lewd, crude book peddlar who knew the quickest way to line pockets is by being outrageous. The Howard Stern of socio-economics. Not to say her "schtick" was never applied practically - it is in practice in Somalia. A de-light !..You go girl. Oy.
Calling her insincere is idiotic. If you lived in the USSR as she did, and then came to America as she did, and you had 1/10th the brain she had, you'd agree with her. Government-run collectivism is destructive to the economy and fabric of a society.
Everyone who writes books is a book peddlar, but you only use that charge against those who argue for liberty, I'm sure.
Alan Greenspan was a follower of hers -- comparing her to Howard Stern is the delusional rantings of a fool.
But human companions are real values, and worth taking action to make, maintain, and treasure.
Hence, they're values, in the Randian sense. And each individual considers the lives of those that they touch an important part of their own.
Men (and women) still make themselves what they are. The only wealth we can call our own is that which we produce, but we trade, in one way or another, for all the rest.
Rand did self-destruct. Her ideas are still powerful, though, and I find them enriching.
Ayn Rand wrote that when we love we see some value in the other person. She refused to see humans mindless breeding beasts. That is why she took it so hard when her lover betrayed her. I recommend you read either of the two new biographies on her. After all. As much as I hate her ideas, we are living in an Ayn Randian world. Look at Wall Street. Or the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. We live in a world where a few powerful self proclaimed supermen crush the powerless many.
Reason's no panacea, but it's the best that each of us has got to keep our desires in check, maybe even turn them into worthwhile habits.
Don't forget that meddling with credit and mortgage rates was responsible for making the market look more stable than it truly was. There will always be lousy businesspeople, but meddling hurt everyone.
Those "supermen" trampled our rights. Rand made people like Cheney villains in her books, y'know. We must stand up for our rights, each and every one of us.
Please educate me. Why is marijuana illegal? If we are reasonable animals, then there should be some reason why we have spent 70 years and trillions of dollars on marijuana prohibition. and the reason is? I am waiting...
The number 1. most dangerous recreational drug is Nicotine. Nicotine kills hundreds of thousands of Americans a year (Ironically, Ayn Rand was one of them)
The number 2 most dangerous drug is alcohol. This drug causes some people to become violent. I teach in a school with a high number of FASD students. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. The U. N. estimates that Alcohol is responsible for 4% of deaths world-wide.
Number killed by Cannabis? Zero. No one has ever died from consuming weed
Marijuana is illegal because politicians and the CIA can't make their cut off of you potentially growing the hash in your backyard. Haha. This stops you from growing your own capital. It makes logical sense when you really look at the information given to you. The CIA does the same with cocaine. They don't get their cut, they set you up. The government is the only one that can deal drugs and take your money! In the name of the "greater good"!
oops, my 'great point" comment was in response to XxxNuMbxxX0301
I am not alone in being irrational. Whole countries act irrationally. Look at Bush's invasion of Iraq and the shredding of the constitution. A whole country capitulated as the Bush administration rolled back human rights all the way back to the Magna Carta. Obama is yet to give up on these Pre-medieval governmental powers.
@copcorona For all you know, She could've died happy, most people in this world like their privacy. You will always die alone, buddy. Your mom won't die with you, your partner won't die with you, and that's the truth. You might find
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Michael Prescott: Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman
michaelprescottDOTnet/hickmanDOThtm
kropotkinbeard1 1 month ago
Progressives hate Rand in part because she bypassed their ideological control of education and created an alternative humanism through the sales of her writings in the market.
MrAdvancedAtheist 1 month ago
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The Truth about Ayn Rand slate.com/articles/arts/books/2009/11/how_ayn_rand_became_an_american_icon.html
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
Ayn Rand was a moron who thought she could survive on her own genius but when cancer threatened to wipe out the little bit of wealth she managed to put away for her old age she changed her name and applied for welfare benefits. The queen of the Libertarians, a stupid bitch preaching to the ignorant. She had a modicum of success on her own but like other so called self made successes, when she failed and she turned to the state to keep her ass off the street.
logtype47 2 months ago
@logtype47 Your ridiculous disgusting insult laden diatribe without an actual argument proves Rand was right. You lose, bitch.
itachi705 3 weeks ago
"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others" — Ayn Rand
backlighting 2 months ago
Objectivism is religion & her books are popular because they function as gospels for that religion.
Like Christians eating the body & drinking the blood of Jesus, they turn common sense upside down by calling greed a virtue. And like Christians, they defend everything she ever did or said like some Jesus. Her followers regard her as infallible, like the pope.
Fact is, there are more Judeo Christians than atheists who support Ayn Rand.
bondurango 4 months ago
@bondurango News flash buddy: there is more to the world than the US and the only reason there are more "Judeo-Christians" (read: Christians) in the US who claim to understand Objectivism is because only, what is it, 9-11% of the population of the US is atheist.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution
Newsflash this, junior. Support from ANY religious group for Ayn Rand is like Jewish membership in Hitler's SS. Of course, there were a few when there should have been none.
bondurango 2 months ago
@bondurango You win a hyperbole. Ooh, have I invented a new meme? Nice reductio ad Hitlerum there too.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
She had a great idea, kiss the ass of the rich. She made rich friends and than she was set.
coffeebeanbonanza 5 months ago
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So it turns out that libertarian gasbag, Ayn Rand, collected Social Security under her ex-husband's Social Security account and did so under an assumed name in order to hide her identity. What a total freakin poseur.
AtlasShruggery 9 months ago
Atlas Shrugged movie trailer on youtube
yousmokecrackers 11 months ago
"Democratic capitalism" 1:51 -- what is he talking about? -- Capitalism cannot be democratic. Democracy and capitalism do not go together.
Jazzper79 11 months ago
Why did Ayn Rand change her name from Alisa Rosenbaum?
bodryn 1 year ago
It appears the impossible has come true: Jimmy Fallon has made a bigger idiot of himself than before.
MrDarknessandDeath 1 year ago 7
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Capitalism all just lies. They say Communist atrocities. But Wikileak wrote what? Why must we follow capitalism? When the progress of their policies are copied from communism? And their work more cruel than communist?
hungdirect 1 year ago
"In a country where the government seems hell-bent on taking over everything from the financial sector to automotive companies to health care..."
LOL these are ALL examples of the government bailing out the corporate profiteers who fucked up their industries after deregulation!
mfnickster 1 year ago
Listen, you fucking amateur Objectivists. STOP TELLING MORONS ABOUT RAND. It is in YOUR best interests to NOT have other people pursuing THEIR best interests.
The beauty of Objectivism is that it is NOT meant to be shared. So stop telling everyone about it.
RommelMcDonald 1 year ago
@RommelMcDonald so my rational self-interest is to have irrational altruists running around fucking things up? Why do you advocate not advocating Objectivism?
dannidandannikins 1 year ago
@dannidandannikins When people don't act in their own self-interests they're more predictable. Which allows me to go about doing my own thing. These people are going to fuck things up regardless of what they believe, so there's no reason to have them working toward interests that would be opposed to mine.
RommelMcDonald 1 year ago
@RommelMcDonald Wrong, short=sighted and stupid.
dannidandannikins 1 year ago
Rand is popular but her free mkt hypothesis has proved to be an epic fail.
scout6686 1 year ago
@scout6686 If you understood Objectivism then you'd know that the economic crisis is exactly what Objectivists predicted. You say the free market hypothesis failed... I saw nothing of the kind: I saw the massive devaluing of a fiat currency and a government backed housing industry, I see exactly the kind of economic slow down caused by ever-growing regulations that Objectivism predicts.
I know you want to blame deregulation for the financial crisis... shame there are no facts supporting that.
dannidandannikins 1 year ago
@dannidandannikins you can't say theres a one size fits all solution (objectivism). Unfortunately, economics is alittle more complicated than that. The biggest problem was a flawed incentive system; to say there are no facts supporting this proves you haven't done your hw. Get back to me when you know what your talking about.
scout6686 1 year ago
@scout6686 What do you consider to be a good incentive system?
Also when I said you don't understand Objectivism, I had good reason for saying so: The kind of economic policies advocated by Objectivism have not been practiced in recent times - indeed the last 100 years have seen consistent movement away from free markets. That you think otherwise shows that you understand neither Objectivism nor economics.
As for economics being complicated, I agree: that's why I'm a free marketeer!
dannidandannikins 1 year ago
@dannidandannikins
Fiat money shows the triumph of man's mind in finding a cheap substitute for a scarce resource, namely, gold. It's exactly the sort of progress the late Julian L. Simon celebrated in his writings.
conradjulian 1 year ago
@conradjulian I don't know what kind of argument you are trying to make. Fiat money is not a triumph of anything - unless you consider it a triumph to rob by inflation the value of everyone's money. I don't kow who JL Simon is.
dannidandannikins 1 year ago 2
@dannidandannikins
Julian Simon was a libertarian economist. Is it really that tough to do a web search?
His argument is that we shouldn't base an economy on scarcity because the future will bring new innovations which will make current problems seem meaningless. You might say that it's the opposite of liberalism in terms of rejecting environmentalism, humanitarianism or whatever other causes might be out there because the future lies in innovation, not languishing on scarcity problems.
SBRslacker00 1 year ago
What the movie in the intro?
Sivels 1 year ago
What legacy? She got famous due to dogmatists and insecure people eating her toddler texts up, that's a legacy?
coconutMoral 1 year ago
Rand's ideas (on the supremacy of reason, epistemology, and laissez-fare capitalism) are clearly presented in her nonfiction writings, and dramatized eloqently and completely in "Atlas Shrugged."
Irrefutably so.
The human faculty of reason is exercised by choice. Those who choose not to exercise reason cannot be "reasoned with"; it won't convince them. Such a person has literally made up their mind to blank out reality. So, it's best to not expect them to "get it." Just leave them alone.
xalambalax 1 year ago
I find it strange that people as self giving as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt would be Rand fans. I assume they have not yet read her books...
shakyra1 1 year ago
I would assume the same thing, Angelina and Brad, they are probably silly socialists, with no care in the world!
JamesBlakeWilliams 1 year ago
@shakyra1
There is nothing irrationable about using ones wealth or influence voluntarily to help a person or a group of people you see striving for the same values you hold yourself. There is a difference between that, and forced socialist altruism for anyone asking for a handout.
SargNickFury 1 year ago 26
I agree with u but ayn rand wouldnt. her whole view was that any form of altruism was a terrible thing. trust me on that one :)
shakyra1 1 year ago
@shakyra1 Define self giving. Anyone who is a millionaire living a lavish that does philanthropy work sounds like a Capitalist to me. If they gave out their entire wealth out to the poor and kept nothing for themselves, that would be Altruistic which Rand was against.
lacklusterkid 1 year ago
If I accepted competition as the ultimate goal of life, then I would have to accept Hitler's notion of the world of two soldiers fighting like beasts with each other to get the highest post, accept a world without solidarity where people let go and stand by the weaker getting swallowed, like germans did during the nazi rule. If you think this is extreme comparison, i really think that Rand's philosophy, which is not just economic, could lead to such consequences.
libertits 1 year ago
@libertits, rand expicitly denied that competition is a goal in and of itself. the end she had in mind was individual liberty and personal flourishing. competition to her was a practical consequence of this in certain social aplications.
fede2 1 year ago
uhh no they not , USA legislature put that down any form of regulation for banks ages ago .
sewagedweller 1 year ago
Also, humans are animals. We also act by instincts and not by "rationality" always. Selfishness is an instict too, an instict of self-survival! Beasts in the jungle are irrational and are very selfish, they predate others for their own survival.Rationality is to overcome these lowest instincts. To not admit our animal instincts is precisely what is dangerous and leads anyone to commit irrational acts like crimes. A psycopath is by definition someone who does not empathize with others.
libertits 1 year ago
Ayn Rand intended to put absolute parameters of what reason is, which is exactly what christianity does! There is a reality that is outside our minds, we cannot intend to cover the sun with a finger and say the sun is not out there just because we only see our finger. It's really narrow-minded and pure sophism! If Rand had a child and this child made a walk on ice, the ice breaks, she wouldn't like a by stander to be one of her followers.
libertits 1 year ago
If we allow businessmen to substitute functions of the public state instead of public officials, then we give businessmen unlimited freedom without responsability . Libertarians simply fall into their own contradictions and deny the corruptible nature of humans when exposed to power: being it public statesmen or businessmen. There is no difference with the Rand feared evils of totalitarian communist regimes and her ideals. It is in fact the closest you can get through an opposite direction.
libertits 2 years ago
The difference is that interactions in the free market are voluntary and happen when both parties think it is a good idea. Nothing about government is voluntary (or as innovative), which is why it should be limited. With big government, special interests can take control.
keithcu2 1 year ago
No one is talking about government notbeing limited; it is good if it is limited, but if the market is completely let free, it will be even EASIER to serve special interests . Because I don't agree with Rand, it doesn't mean that you can label me as "statist". I think people who view Rand's views of liberty as some sort of absolute approach of freedom face many contradictions. Ccooperation and solidarity are not something limited to the collectivist state-centric concept she preaches
libertits 1 year ago
I don't think of intervention in an economical sense, but to protect the PUBLIC interests and enforce fairness between employees and employers and in whole world economy. In third world countries forced to follow the US model and protect US companies' interests, private companies use private forces to expropiate peasants and the state doesn't intervene :)! If you let the industry do whatever they want and have no regulations, at a point it will be the most powerful institution in the country.
libertits 1 year ago
Contrary to the government, the industry cannot be held accountable for their actions. The mass of power in a country should be in the hands of the population, which is ideally democracy, the state is only a representation of the people's interests, but a society, a collectivity, is what it is, it is not defined in terms of state bureacracy, it goes beyond that.
libertits 1 year ago
Industry can be held accountable. It is the power of the purse, the invisible hand of the free market described by Adam Smith in 1776.
keithcu2 1 year ago
The specialized interest of the industry is to produce, and there are many other interests for people, not producing as much as possible, like education, arts, and the most power in the country should be the representation of the interests of the people.if you take any other regulation out of economic developments, only to maximize their win no matter what the cost is, and if most power is centralized into private hands, then the cause of the country is serves the few men who have this power.
libertits 1 year ago
It is fine that everyone has different interests. The free market can provide for what different people ask for. Look at the variety of movies from comedy to horror.
You do not understand the free market.
keithcu2 1 year ago
What? You summarize the interests of the population in "variety of films from comedy to horror" ?
No, you're right, I don't understand free market. I cannot begin understanding the freedom a businessman has of taking the liberty of others away, perverting everything to their own use of power and making human sacrifices of workers and minorities for the good of a market, not humanity per se. That I can see more variety of films and others pay a high price for them is NOT freedom.
libertits 1 year ago
The movies was just an analogy. You were the one who brought up the arts.
A businessman doen't take freedom away. Every transaction is voluntary! Even the choice of becoming a worker in a company is voluntary. So your statement about "workers sacrificing for the good of the market" is nonsense.
A government bureaucracy is not innovative.
And, the effect of regulations is often to the benefit of those being regulated because they take over the regulators over time.
Read Milton Friedman!
keithcu2 1 year ago
"workers sacrificing for the good of the market" is NOT nonsense. There are no jobs and people are forced to get *something* and they voluntarily have to give up themselves to work in these uncontrolled factories just to be able to barely have a bite per day! This voluntary transactions are not really voluntary! There is no choice, the only choice is to submit to a greedy fucker who will pay you less than a cent per minute because his own interests are first! what bullshit.
libertits 1 year ago
Joining a company is voluntary, and choosing which one has the best salary and benefits is the choices the worker makes in the free market.
There are many Americans who worked in sweatshop conditions -- on their own farm, etc.
keithcu2 1 year ago
No. People are hungry and all these industrials can pay them as they like, cruelly unfairly! They have no choice but that job they find.. they are forced into it, although they voluntarily apply, but this unlimited freedom to businessmen just makes others work like donkeys for miserable pay and working conditions. This happens in the third world, not in USA, and this is a MEANS so that things can be sold in the USA cheaper. If things were produced in USA you wouldnt be able to afford it!
libertits 1 year ago
The fact that people are poor in other countries is not the fault of the US! It is the lack of freedom and free markets and corrupt governments. Why do I have to repeat myself?
keithcu2 1 year ago
No one is saying that it is the fault of the US, THAT is a strawman argument. It is the fault of your foreign policy and these baron thieves . It is EXACTLY that we are exploited because the market has been let completely freee to do what they want with workers!
libertits 1 year ago
You are very uneducated. If people in poor countries have such little opportunity that they consider working for sweatshops, that is the fault of its own government.
The fact that there are billions of poor people in the world is not the fault of anyone in the US and is caused by a lack of private property, free markets, etc.
Blaming someone else for your problems is a waste of time. It is also a guaranteed way to continue to live in poverty and misery.
keithcu2 1 year ago
On the contrary, I think YOU are very uneducated, also Rand. Her philosophy is like if a kindergardener read Nietzsche and made her own conclusions out of it. Why don't you read existialist philosophy, which is where she wants to get at, but fails miserably? Tons of people said a lot of what Rand said before, but US Americans think she is the ultimate avant garde, what a joke! She rips off so many philosophers and makes her own nonsense out of them! Sartré, Camus, Nietzsche
libertits 1 year ago
I've read existentialism and it is very different from her philosophy. Ayn Rand was no child. Talking like that about her makes it clear you don't have intellectual honesty to take her seriously.
keithcu2 1 year ago
No, it isn't. Nietzsche also enticed to care for your own self as a maximum value and your body and not be a slave, but a master. She oversimplified these notions. You are wrong, i do take her seriously, I just see a lot of problems in her philosophy, even some things are true of what she said, but she intended to make absolute a set of values and virtues, which is already wanting to create a religion! Poking at her contradictions does NOT make me lack intellectual honesty.
libertits 1 year ago
It's so frightening, the fact that you idolize so much her ideas, that only if I accept them, for you is an absolute virtue and the only that can enable me to have intellectual honesty. Ridiculous.
Her philosophy is completely illusionary, because it is based on a individualist view of reality, nothing else matters. It is based on a notion of intolerance of other views of the world.
libertits 1 year ago
To say that it is possible to completely describe reality by reason, would mean we have absolute answers to all problems, like religion does. In the middle ages, people thought the earth was flat and that was their reality. Seeing reality is limited by our knowledge, and we have absolutely no idea of the things we don't know, it is completely insane to think we do. Cover the sun with a finger, you don't see the sun, and it means it doesn't shine.
libertits 1 year ago
It is the fault of US industrials to a great extent and holding unlimited power in third world countries, which suppresses democratic movements and supports extortion. They are not responsible for corrupt governments, but they ENDORSE THEM, to keep their own interests aligned with the country's policies, i.e.- the policies benefit those industrials. The market interferes in the making of politics. You get the opposite of state intervening in politics, but the market BUYS the politics.
libertits 1 year ago
Every basket case country you can name was a mess before US companies started investing in it.
It is so common for people in other countries to blame the US for the problems of their own making!
keithcu2 1 year ago
It is common for people in other countries to blame the US for a big part of their problems because their economies are ATTACHED TO USA! you forgot that little detail, as usual, covering the sun with a finger. Too much sophism, ignoring FACTS.
libertits 1 year ago
Of course, the US as the world's superpower is attached to many countries, but that doesn't make their problems the US's fault. You forget that the US doesn't say who is in the government, who educates the people, whether there is corruption, etc. You think that because Nike shoes are made in a sweatshop suddenly all of the problems in that country are ours. That is incredibly simplistic and ignorant.
keithcu2 1 year ago
Well, the USA supports dinasties of dictators in third world countries. They support coups that ouster any form of president who works in interests of majorities and not for the interest of US industrials. They do not only say who, they establish who stays or who must go. The US government is directly responsible for great amount of despots and ruling dinasties in the third world, this is documented.
libertits 1 year ago
Why don't you educate yourself and for instance see the history of Chiquita in Latin America? Chiquita controlled government decisions, which undermined the masses and submitted everything to this company's interests, appropiating most of the best land in the countries! This is not my own making, this is some of your industrial's making. They bribe these governments, they endorse corruption!
libertits 1 year ago
And how were those countries doing before Chiquita arrived?!
keithcu2 1 year ago
It surely promoted more misery even than there was. It left us without our best lands, taking away resources and the wealth come back to the peoples. I have never seen anyone who worked at chiquita having a decent life!NEVER! This is NOT the point, the point is WHAT EFFECT IT HAS IF THERE IS NO ONE TO REGULATE WHAT CHIQUITA DOES! YOU have freedom because you can eat cheap bananas, people in the country where they come from can't afford a crumb of a banana!
libertits 1 year ago
Of course you didn't answer my question.
keithcu2 1 year ago
I have no idea hwo the country was before Chiquita arrived, but I assure you they came only to steal or get by corrupted governments what they have. Do you mean to ask if Chiquita never having arrived would have made those lands be lost because they can make better use of them, since the third world apes cannot?
libertits 1 year ago
That question is completely out of topic. We are talking about free market and what effects it has if there is no regulation, so chiquita is an example of that: of how companies can exploit situations, weaknesses anywhere to serve their self interests. It can be in USA, in a third world country, or wherever they see a possibility of gain more money. So if companies have no government regulation they could never get so big to make such evil? this is like a religious belief in the market.
libertits 1 year ago
It is clear you've read various random things, but you've not read Milton Friedman and such and you will continue to be ignorant until you do.
Of course, if your country was filled with people who understood the free market, you wouldn't be in the mess you are in and you wouldn't be blaming the US for the problems of the 3rd world.
keithcu2 1 year ago
It is better to read many random things, than to just read one and believe that you have absolute knowledge of the world. It is better to read many things instead of just one book from one or two authors and believe you know it all.
Of course my country is not filled with people who understand free market, it is composed by "apes", whose inhabitants don't get a chance to develop, because big companies are first than people!
libertits 1 year ago
You distort history, reality and manipulate it so perversely. This market anarchy completely endorses corruption and politics made only to benefit a few rich, only for them to become RICHER. They want to institutionalize their interests. There IS LACK OF PRIVATE PROPERTY in third world countries because big corporations expropiate peasants, indigenous peoples, they claim our national resources as theirs by bribing the government! There IS TOO MUCH free market in third world countries!
libertits 1 year ago
Free market is not anarchy. I already told you that.
Corruption happens much more in big government than in small government. That is why the free market is better.
keithcu2 1 year ago
You see, I agree that big government enables more corruption, I just don't agree that instead of enabling a government to get bigger, private interests get bigger, because then they specialize in getting bigger and bigger stepping on people's interests.
libertits 1 year ago
I know I am wasting my time here but you have an absolutely Marxist view of the world.
There is nothing wrong with economies of scale.
You don't understand that competition provides a hedge against anyone becoming too big and the free market is voluntary.
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
—Thomas Jefferson
keithcu2 1 year ago
I don't know if I have a Marxist view of the world, but I certainly don't have a nazi view of the world, a social darwinist one, where the biggest predator gets to eat all and I don't do it because of anything else than self-interest.
I agree that competition is important and it does ent
I was the one wasting my time. i have told you the abuses of multinational corporations in the third world and you have refused to listen to them. It just depends on what you mean with "too much government".
libertits 1 year ago
I have a Marxist view of the world, because in your dualist, good and bad, black and white view of the world, who doesn't agree with your view of the world, agrees with the opposite: a marxist. evil, the cause of too much government.
I think you are an adept, fundamentalist and that is a big problem. An open society accepts many ideas, cooperation for the solution of problems, not absolute ideas and notions of the world.
libertits 1 year ago
Education and social justice, benefits should not be in private hands. There are ideals that should be true independent of us and they should be preserved independent of the needs of the market. I want my kids to be educated in things that have no value for the market but for their development as human beings.
Thomas Jefferson was a racist man, with racist views of the world. No wonder your country cannot snap out of racism if you keep listening to people whose thoughts are already outdated.
libertits 1 year ago
We already have the development,that students engineer their career to provide themselves as what the market is looking for,to market themselves as if they were goods.I find this development problematic & see generation by generation getting more numb in their development in a humanist way as a complete critical and creative being. I think this will ultimatively lead to stagnation and exactly the people who were different and not going with the flow were always the ones bringing humanity further
libertits 1 year ago
If we developed a society where competition is the purpose of existence and who gets to the top is the ultimate value, then I'd have to agree with Hitler's idea of making two soldiers fight themselves like beasts to who gets the higher post, with not doing anything if there is genocide, like Germans did during the nazi rule. I don't want to live in a world, where solidarity is seen as a weakness, then it will lead us to self destruction and stop reproducing- Nietzsche's last man
libertits 1 year ago
If we developed a society where competition is the purpose of existence and who gets to the top is the ultimate value, then I'd have to agree with Hitler's idea of making two soldiers fight themselves like beasts to who gets the higher post, with not doing anything if there is genocide, like Germans did during the nazi rule. I don't want to live in a world, where solidarity is seen as a weakness, then it will lead us to self destruction and stop reproducing- Nietzsche's last man
libertits 1 year ago
I don't blame anyone for my problems, I think and i look at the root of problems. This free market might be free for you to elect your products, but it is not free for people in third world countries. They have no chance to develop national industry because they can't compete with big corporation monsters!
libertits 1 year ago
Corporation are just voluntary groups of people. The fact that you view corporations as monsters demonstrates that you think emotionally rather than rationally.
keithcu2 1 year ago
A monster is a simple metaphor of a predator who only becomes bigger by self-interest, not an ugly, depraved creature per se. The fact that you are judging me as of being emotional based on such a superficial ground as the usage of a word as a figure of speech, just demonstrates that you are the one thinking already emotionally (by prejudice, hence irrationality) than rationally.
libertits 1 year ago
It was just one of the terms loaded with emotion that you have used. Your writings are filled with envy, anger and ignorance.
Note, your definition of the word monster is incorrect.
keithcu2 1 year ago
Everyone has emotions while they debate, they debate BECAUSE there is an emotion that motivates to defend what they believe in. to deny it doesn't make them nonexistent. I am not envious of you, I am pitying you because of your depraved view of what freedom is! I am not interested in having unlimited wealth as you do as a measure of happiness or freedom. The fact that I don't agree, doesn't make me envious, I simply want more justice and for others to be treated fairly, my self-interest.
libertits 1 year ago
Ignorance? Disagreeing with you doesn't make me ignorant. It is because I have lived in a different place, where things have happened differently than in your environment, things you refuse to listen to, what makes you be a retrograde person, who refuses to actually learn . Like Camus said, it is only a vulgar person the one who would never change their mind.
A monster does not have an absolute definition, it is a very abstract idea.
libertits 1 year ago
You don't even understand truth. If I say 2+2=4, it is vulgar if I refuse to change my mind on that?
keithcu2 1 year ago
No, the problem is that you say that 2+2=5 and I am supposed to think it is like that.
libertits 1 year ago
A corporation is a voluntary group of people that has the special interest of its own growth and profit. In following these special interests it can be in opposition to the general interests of the majority for example, and who is gonna represent this majority if this special interest group is allowed to freely follow its goal and by that means concentrate the power in form of money in its hands if there is no regulatory body to defend common social interests which go against the company?
libertits 1 year ago
You are confused. Power cannot concentrate too much in a voluntary free market. Don't like McDonald's or think they are too big? Don't eat there.
One can get into what sort of regulation is important, but you must first understand that the idea that a company selling products can become so big and evil is ridiculous.
keithcu2 1 year ago
I don't eat at McDonald's. I understand that economic growth of a company is important, but I don't agree that just any means for it to get bigger should be allowed.
libertits 1 year ago
Corporations in the US are not held accountable for what they do in other countries! They even hire paramilitaries and terrorist groups to suppress the workers and threaten them to not unionize to ask for more rights!
libertits 1 year ago
You repeat yourself because you have a religious view of politics and no one can have any arguments against anything you say.
Let me REPEAT myself once AGAIN: When big corporations are allowed to have INFINITE power, then they become the biggest institution in a country, they accummulate as much power as they can and suppress others, this is despotism. This is what happens! This is what will always happen if you let power be in the hands of a few, being in the government or private hands.
libertits 1 year ago
Corporations never have infinite power when everything is voluntary. You keep forgetting the voluntary aspect of the free market.
keithcu2 1 year ago
This UNDERMINES democracy and personal freedom. It lets not the ones in the government, which is the paranoia of Rand, but the hand of a few powerful, who are not saints either and abuse the masses!
libertits 1 year ago
I don't want to read anything of that son of a bitch who supported a fascist and murderer regime as that of Pinochet! You don't know what the third world is, what a bubble person mentality! There is no objectivity, are organs are flawed, this is why her "philosophy" is not taken seriously, it intends to give absolute answers to everything like religion does! It is the enemy of philosophy, which intends to study the limits of reason. Rand's rules of ethics intend to be absolute reason!
libertits 1 year ago
The point is that you can't understand freedom without the free market and it is obvious to me you don't yet understand capitalism, which goes back to Adam Smith in 1776 and earlier! I guess it is fair to say you are centuries behind the times.
Of course, you didn't grow up in the US, so it doesn't surprise me you don't understand the free market.
keithcu2 1 year ago
I agree with free market and I agree that government shouldn't intervene in economy, but I don't agree that industrials should be completely free to do what they like. Like cloning cows or putting a machine to milk them, whilst others do it in a respectful way to their lives, hence have to charge more for it! This competition is illusory. If self survival were the ultimate value, because it enables other values then i could say that protecting the planet is even more, because it enables my life!
libertits 1 year ago
No one argues for anarchy, even those who believe in the free market. That is a straw man argument.
The question becomes where should a government regulate and the answer today is "much less than now". In the US, every big government program is in debt! If these Congressmen were in a company, they would be in jail.
Why do you assume it is only angels in governmment and devils in companies?
keithcu2 1 year ago
On the contrary, I think you don't understand what this free market is all about because you haven't been and lived in the third world, where things are produced, where a lot of raw resources come from! If you did, you'd understand why you can afford something at all in the USA!
libertits 1 year ago
Whole nations are forced into this "freedom" of yours and you know? I cannot just stand and see it happen. Factory workers being forced into 48 hour shifts for 20 cents a day in EPZs, maquilas, and I am just supposed to shrug at it. Well I don't. The extreme poverty is affecting people around my family. They see the extrme gap between rich and poor, that others can have ferraris and they don't even have a crumb to eat. This is the root of criminality and it will affect me at some point.
libertits 1 year ago
Why is it that the people who have crumbs to eat always have corrupt leaders and no free market? Why is the US being blamed for poor people in other countries?
What made the US the world's only superpower is our free market.
keithcu2 1 year ago
I cannot even fathom in beginning to understand this anarchy where the "strongest" of the species (the strongest in marketing and in being a businessman) eats the smaller fish uncontrollably. This takes the rights of others away for dignified pay, for a dignified work and life. In Rand's view of society, we are only morally right in not caring about the sick and handicapped and not be solidaire, we are supposed to see them die, just like nazis did. tthis is a way to replace Christianity.
libertits 1 year ago
It isn't anachy. If you sign a contract in the free market, and the other person doesn't hold up their end, you can use the government to sue. A free market never means no laws!! In fact, protecting private property is important.
When a company goes bankrupt, the people join a new company that is better run. Capitalism is about creative descruction. If a company is doing badly, how can they continue to pay workers forever?!
You don't describe Rand's view properly so I won't even get into that.
keithcu2 1 year ago
State intervention is not an absolute abstract idea which is all evil. State intervention can also means to not allow abuses, which is good.
There has to be some sort of state, and if businessmen perform the function of a state, then you are giving away the state to private hands, like in fascist regimes. Isn't Rumsfeld for instance the owner of one of the biggest pharma companies in the world?
libertits 2 years ago
I don't think an individual has to choose to be either an individualist or a collectivist, it works mutually. I don't think that she writing this book of ethics, like some sort of bible, showing people what is morally right or wrong is better than any religion. It's raw and pure fundamentalism and very patronising. AYN Rand imposed her ideas of the world to others.
If most people are poor and you just shrug at it, what happens is that it can shoot you in the ass: criminality.
libertits 2 years ago
Rand wasn't talking about individuals being collectivist. She was talking about society's being that way. Rand did not impose her ideas on others, she was just a writer! She never argues against having policeman.
keithcu2 1 year ago
The problem with Rand, is not that she imposes her ideas on others, it's just that businessmen used her ideas to persuade others into it, like with this video and this foundation promoting her philosophy. The whole USA politics is influenced by Rand, while no one in the academia ever took her seriously. Her philosophy is their instrument. Russia forced their ideals into others, Rand and USA persuades their ideas into others through marketing.
libertits 1 year ago
Ayn Rand wrote a lot of little oversimplified rules of what an individual must be, and that the only virtue is extreme individualism. It's funny that she claims to have been influenced by Nietzsche, but I don't think she understood anything she read at all. He said, that it is better to have more virtues than one, because already one virtue ties your destiny to one knot-- determinism and the biggest potential of so many possibilities to live your life is immediately killed. Definite contradictio
libertits 2 years ago
To say that the individual freedom is the highest ideal of a society is not an oversimplified rule.
keithcu2 1 year ago
Of course it is an oversimplified rule. Individual freedom is more than what Ayn Rand conceptualized it to be, far more complex. Freedom is a connotation, it can also be a very personalized definition of it, but the truth is that truth is more than what our flawed organs perceive. I don't believe in any absolute concept of freedom, love, or anything at all, if we do, then we turn into religious nutwings and this is how I see Rand and her followers.
libertits 1 year ago
rand books are non fiction , really ?
bailing out retards is not socialism , it's american stupidity mixed with refusal to regulate banks .
sewagedweller 2 years ago
Banks are a highly regulated business. In fact they were forced to give loans to high-risk people which is why they had problems.
keithcu2 1 year ago
What has this to do with reason?
hyperseauton 2 years ago 2
@hyperseauton
More then you know.
chaserehn 2 years ago
Feminism must fucking die!!!
offthahook08 2 years ago
Gillian Anderson (of X files fame) has a striking resemblance of Ayn Rand.
geeoogle 2 years ago
Rand was a fucking joke of a human being and her philosophy was bankrupt. Her material is best left to children.
yanikv 2 years ago
And what have you done with your life? I bet it is far from comparable with Rand's accomplishments.
XxxNuMbxxX0301 2 years ago
I am with you Yanikv. but we are now living in Rand's Utopia of private armies and no limits on corporate power.
copcorona 2 years ago 2
Young Ayn Rand pics are very sexy. I would seriously LOVE if my girlfriend had any notion of intelligence that Ayn Rand obviously had.
Fuck dude, Where does capital come from? Who embodies the capital market? How would socialism exist without capitalism?
Be CREATIVE, LIVE LIFE, BE ADVENTUROUS, EXAMINE REALITY !!!
Do we really need a Russian Philosopher to tell us how our country should exist? If not RAnd, then Marx...
Who among you have created a real philosophy?
AbjectConformity 2 years ago
that was cool..
carryall69 2 years ago
This is great
Ayn Rand's views are gaining ground, as any true ideas must eventualy in spite of the enormous lashout from stagnating minds who are afraid of change
Sam26100 2 years ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Communist work camps existing today? Better believe it. Google "seattle conservative culture examiner" for the article.
capitalismvcommunism 2 years ago
"She IS the one!"
mptfg 2 years ago
That picture of Obama and Pelosi makes me want to barf up my feet.
Beethovens7th 2 years ago 4
More than 50 years ago Ayn Rand was denounced for predicting the logical consequences of this country's proceeding along an altruist, collectivist path. Now that she has been shown to have been so amazingly prescient, you might think her critics would give her some credit. But no. I do not even attempt to argue with statists anymore. It just is not worth my time. Those who believe that we owe our lives to the State will NEVER understand Rand.
b6b6t6 2 years ago
Taxes, so you don't have to shit in a outhouse is a good thing.
robb1031 2 years ago
hi :)
Can't really help you there. You might find better chances over at the Atlasphere, which is a dating and networking site for Rand fans. I've not found any dates on the site, but then, I never really looked.
eksortso 2 years ago
I sure hope people wake up and realize that capitalism is not what got us into this mess, it is what will get us out of it.
Also, nice choice of background music, I love The Album Leaf. (:
skibiskit 2 years ago
they showed the simpsons clip without the lisa statement that she is just an idol for right wing nuts and clearly Colbert was also parodying her or the reception of her.
wildhias 2 years ago
Celebrities aren't exactly comprehending Rand, are they. They must be attracted to Rand's self-interest - although it seems they twist that philosophy as well. And celebs aren't exactly champs of the free market either. Maybe they should read Orwell again.
haypenny 2 years ago
Crazy bitch
stewart0312 2 years ago
If her ideas were so great you wouldn't need the troika of media, entertainment and think tanks promoting them. Who funds this "ReasonTV" anyway?
historywillabsolve 2 years ago
They are not promoting her. They are *explaining* why her books have sold 25 million copies and counting, and why her ideas are so timeless.
And if you think that brief media and entertainment are really promoting her, you would need to come up with an entirely new vocabulary to describe how they've promoted Air America or Barack Obama or every other liberal cause celebre.
keithcu2 2 years ago
Rand's ideas aren't even her own. People were strumming her tunes hundreds of years before she was. She simply was the best at explaining them to the layperson.
She was also extremely biased. Pretty much all her opinions concerning collectivist movements stem from her experiences growing up in the Soviet Union.
trehansen 2 years ago
Having experiences and opinions does not make someone biased. If you don't have these things, then you are still a child. She was not a journalist, which is about striving to suppress biases.
A lot of her ideas come from her experiences in America as well because she saw some of the same issues but in a different form as she saw in the Soviet Union. Her writings are much more of a critique of the US.
keithcu2 2 years ago
Capitalism a century ago had to have been screwing over a lot of people, given how many of them took up with violent revolutionary movements in Russia, Europe and the U.S. to try to overthrow it. Even intellectuals like Leon Trotsky left their comfortable lives to take up guns and bombs to fight the system.
Rand's attempt at an anti-Marxism, by contrast, tends to attract people who are too selfish to put their lives at risk, much less endure hardship to fight for their ideals.
conradjulian 2 years ago
Fighting for your dreams in a free society is hard! You think Tiger Woods is just handed his prize money? That Brin and Page became billionaires just because they came up with the name Google?
Rand's worldview isn't about selfishness -- it is about opportunity and freedom. Both of those things are missing in a Marxist society.
keithcu2 2 years ago 2
This comment has received too many negative votes show
More Randian piffle. The Communists running the Soviet Union valued human excellence as much as anyone; they just channeled it in different directions. Their society produced outstanding scientists, artists, athletes, cosmonauts and even chess masters, people who realized they had certain gifts which differentiated them from others and chose to work hard to develop themselves.
conradjulian 2 years ago
50 million died in the Soviet gulags alone -- is that what you call "valuing human excellence"?
People sent to the Gulags included peasants who were accused of "individualistic tendencies" and opposed the establishment of collective farms.
Rand lived in USSR and understood it much better than you.
keithcu2 2 years ago 5
since the old Soviet archives are open, I suggest you read Gulag by Anna Applebuam and/or Ivan's War by Catherine Merridale. These two authors catalog the crimes of Stalin
copcorona 2 years ago
you must be fucking kidding me. The USSR 'valued human excellence' as much as the Nazis valued the achievements of Jewish culture. And they showed their appreciation in pretty much the same way - killing not only everybody who opposed, but also those who could potentialy oppose , with guns, concentration camps, starvation etc.
panzerny 2 years ago
Why do we have to choose between a Marxist society and that idealized by Rand? Why should any idea of freedom and opportunity be limited to that of Rand's conceptions, or for that matter of every human being, if any human being as an individual have different ideas of them? I just don't like this fundamentalism, i find to be an entire contradiction and self-parody. Neither google, nor adidas, nor any of that represents freedom of man, it represents freedom of market, which is different.
libertits 2 years ago
So Rand's ideas for how we should organize ourselves should be treated as just as valid as Mao's?
You get freedom of man via free markets. They are a required part of society. Just because it isn't sufficient doesn't mean it isn't very important!
keithcu2 1 year ago
You see, people like you and Rand's followers fall into dualism, a black and white view of the world, where there are two options just like heaven and hell: Rand's organization ideas ("good") and Marx's(not Mao's) as "evil", a religious view of organization, no matter if it goes beyond what is good and what is evil.
Nobody says there shouldn't be free markets! but the market should be there and serve people's interest! This doesn't happen! It is accumulating power in hands of despot industrial
libertits 1 year ago
@conradjulian Rand's book, and entire movement, was a demonstration of her fighting for her ideals. And she endured endless criticism for it, which invalidates your point.
Not everything is about war and terror. Rand fought on the intellectual front.
Nillabeast 2 years ago 4
We hereby dub the poor sap: inAyne Rant
RetrosArtParty 2 years ago
The most insincere, craziest hooch of all time. She confessed her sociopathy, decried her own scribblings as propaganda and perished in the condition of her ideology/sales pitch. A radical, lewd, crude book peddlar who knew the quickest way to line pockets is by being outrageous. The Howard Stern of socio-economics. Not to say her "schtick" was never applied practically - it is in practice in Somalia. A de-light !..You go girl. Oy.
RetrosArtParty 2 years ago
Calling her insincere is idiotic. If you lived in the USSR as she did, and then came to America as she did, and you had 1/10th the brain she had, you'd agree with her. Government-run collectivism is destructive to the economy and fabric of a society.
Everyone who writes books is a book peddlar, but you only use that charge against those who argue for liberty, I'm sure.
Alan Greenspan was a follower of hers -- comparing her to Howard Stern is the delusional rantings of a fool.
keithcu2 2 years ago
you have summed up Rand better than anyone else Somalia as her Utiopia no laws just guns
copcorona 2 years ago
Ayn Rand died friendless, Her only companion a paid nurse. Life is socialist. We find meaning in our lives by connecting with people we love.
There is no such thing as a self made man or a self laid egg.
Ayn Rand was an epic failure. Her world view is as sterile as she was.
copcorona 2 years ago
But human companions are real values, and worth taking action to make, maintain, and treasure.
Hence, they're values, in the Randian sense. And each individual considers the lives of those that they touch an important part of their own.
Men (and women) still make themselves what they are. The only wealth we can call our own is that which we produce, but we trade, in one way or another, for all the rest.
Rand did self-destruct. Her ideas are still powerful, though, and I find them enriching.
eksortso 2 years ago
Ayn Rand wrote that when we love we see some value in the other person. She refused to see humans mindless breeding beasts. That is why she took it so hard when her lover betrayed her. I recommend you read either of the two new biographies on her. After all. As much as I hate her ideas, we are living in an Ayn Randian world. Look at Wall Street. Or the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. We live in a world where a few powerful self proclaimed supermen crush the powerless many.
copcorona 2 years ago
Reason's no panacea, but it's the best that each of us has got to keep our desires in check, maybe even turn them into worthwhile habits.
Don't forget that meddling with credit and mortgage rates was responsible for making the market look more stable than it truly was. There will always be lousy businesspeople, but meddling hurt everyone.
Those "supermen" trampled our rights. Rand made people like Cheney villains in her books, y'know. We must stand up for our rights, each and every one of us.
eksortso 2 years ago
Reason? We are irrational animals. If we were reasonable, marijuana would be legal and tobacco would be illegal.
copcorona 2 years ago
"Reason? We are irrational animals."
I believe that is a confession on your part and not a general truth of human nature.
XxxNuMbxxX0301 2 years ago
Please educate me. Why is marijuana illegal? If we are reasonable animals, then there should be some reason why we have spent 70 years and trillions of dollars on marijuana prohibition. and the reason is? I am waiting...
copcorona 2 years ago
because by prohibiting marijuana we reduce of produce dolts like you hahaha
majordroogie 2 years ago
The number 1. most dangerous recreational drug is Nicotine. Nicotine kills hundreds of thousands of Americans a year (Ironically, Ayn Rand was one of them)
The number 2 most dangerous drug is alcohol. This drug causes some people to become violent. I teach in a school with a high number of FASD students. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. The U. N. estimates that Alcohol is responsible for 4% of deaths world-wide.
Number killed by Cannabis? Zero. No one has ever died from consuming weed
copcorona 2 years ago
Marijuana is illegal because politicians and the CIA can't make their cut off of you potentially growing the hash in your backyard. Haha. This stops you from growing your own capital. It makes logical sense when you really look at the information given to you. The CIA does the same with cocaine. They don't get their cut, they set you up. The government is the only one that can deal drugs and take your money! In the name of the "greater good"!
pSychOAtDawn 2 years ago
As Dr. Paul puts it, "Don't Steal, the Government hates competition."
pSychOAtDawn 2 years ago 2
great point.
copcorona 2 years ago
oops, my 'great point" comment was in response to XxxNuMbxxX0301
I am not alone in being irrational. Whole countries act irrationally. Look at Bush's invasion of Iraq and the shredding of the constitution. A whole country capitulated as the Bush administration rolled back human rights all the way back to the Magna Carta. Obama is yet to give up on these Pre-medieval governmental powers.
copcorona 2 years ago
@copcorona For all you know, She could've died happy, most people in this world like their privacy. You will always die alone, buddy. Your mom won't die with you, your partner won't die with you, and that's the truth. You might find