Part 1, Yaron Brook, Capitalism without Guilt The Moral Case for Freedom

Yaron Brook, President and Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, advocates rational selfishness as the moral base for capitalism and the importance of philosophy in the defense of freedom. The economic argument is won: "Let's make this debate about morality and if we do... I think the future's ours".

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• Capitalism
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[LegalizeCapitalism]

killer. yaron knows his stuff!

[IchorFigure]

Any honest person knows America has not been a free market. The first thing you're taught in high school economics is that America is a mixed economic system. Of course, you don't often hear it stated out in the open lately.

[SpellboundSolution]

@PureLiberalFire Having a value system that one believes in makes one a member of a cult?

[PureLiberalFire]

@SpellboundSolution I was a strong leftist until 17 when I ran across a tiny tract from the libertarians, which impacted me a bit. At 18 I ran across Ayn Rand and she impacted me overwhelmingly (and not completely for the good).

It's important to be forever searching, hungry, and ambitious, in my view. Also forever open-minded. The evil CULT version of Objectivism, as taught by Brook and ARI, is a true menace to personal happiness.

[SpellboundSolution]

@PureLiberalFire I think it's possible to change a person's most dearly held beliefs though. I, like Yaron, was a leftist in my earlier years. When we are emotionally driven and see society in such simplistic terms as "rich" and "poor" (which may have been a better approximation of society before capitalism) socialist bromides make sense. It's said that if you're not a Marxist by your 18th birthday you have no heart, if you're still a Marxist by your 30th birthday you have no brain.

[PureLiberalFire]

@SpellboundSolution People believe in, and are loyal to, ideology ABOVE that of truth, and even above their own life. It's a terrifying phenomenon. I wonder in what sense *I MYSELF* am guilty of this irrationality, stupidity, and self-destruction...

[SpellboundSolution]

@PureLiberalFire Why do so many people believe in creationism? It's called ideology (or religion in the case of creationism.)  People don't WANT to accept that capitalism is moral and creates wealth; real world observable evidence be damned.

[SpellboundSolution]

@mancent No, what Rand and other Objectivists say is that prosperity increases as one tends towards freedom. There are different levels of economic freedom, there are not different levels of socialism. Just look around the world: the freer a state is the more prosperous it is. If we ever reach the point of true freedom we will be at our most prosperous.

[mancent]

@dyersev The argument made by those on the left is that Cuba and Russia were/are NOT true models of socialism therefore [they argue] the ideology cannot be dismissed as a failure. Similarly Rand argues that true liberal capitalism has not been a failure, because no one's lived it yet. Both argue that the thinking is sound, but unpractised. And the American 'success story' would require a 65% income tax rate to repay the trillions in debt that it's success is built upon. It is a house of sand.

[PureLiberalFire]

Economic freedom is 100% morally good and 100% practically workable. How can anyone not KNOW this?!

[dyersev]

@mancent Well America has been the engine of economic growth were as Cuba and Russia have not. Your argument would be fair had Russia or any communist country had been a successful realitive to the United State.

[mancent]

"Where is this Capitalism that was practiced and then failed?" - Sounds exactly like the argument that Communism/State Socialism is not a dead ideology because it has never been practiced. For his argument that the central bank and state intervention was to blame for the failure, swap in "We didn't have Communism, in say, Cuba, because global blockades by Western Powers undermined the system." Both are fatuous arguments