Atlas Shrugged

Permabear

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stevejazzx

donegalfella wrote: »

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No, I think I get the point even if I focused (sp?;)) too much on the monetary side of things (which, lets face it, is what things tend to boil down to). Self sacrifice is rewarding, simple as. It enriches ones soul. I don't have to define soul - lets just say it's ones life experience. The idea that Shakespeare or anyone else would have to fore-go his art to help the poor people is very black and white. There are endless possibilities of variations for everyone in this life; we can help out just a bit whilst at the same time being incredibly selfish. Randian thought seems to be blind-sighted to such ideas and I can't help but feel that Robins earlier point about Rand being an unhappy person impinges somewhat on this debate. Personally I've never felt better than when I've just helped someone out. I try not to think of personal renumeration and if I can achieve such it feels even better. I would go as far to say that such instinct even bypasses evolutionary explanations (I might be in trouble now!!).

Valmont

stevejazzx wrote: »

Self sacrifice is rewarding, simple as. It enriches ones soul.

"Simple as" doesn't cut it I'm afraid. Even if it is rewarding for an individual, Rand would have stressed that such a sacrifice is undertaken voluntarily and not at the behest of the state.

stevejazzx wrote: »

Personally I've never felt better than when I've just helped someone out. I try not to think of personal renumeration and if I can achieve such it feels even better.

What if you were forced to help someone out when you didn't want to? Would it still feel great?

stevejazzx

Valmont wrote: »

"Simple as" doesn't cut it I'm afraid. Even if it is rewarding for an individual, Rand would have stressed that such a sacrifice is undertaken voluntarily and not at the behest of the state.

Not sure I understand; haven't read Atlas Shrugged :rolleyes: I have read only this thread (finding it interesting I then went on to read a couple of interviews with Rand) which I tried to follow as well as I can - are you saying that in her view a state would have to enforce this idea in order to make it effective? Even still I don't see what that would remove from the individual, voluntary experience?

What if you were forced to help someone out when you didn't want to? Would it still feel great?

Yes, unless it was a mass murderer or something!
Seriously though the question is exceptionally vague (strangely loaded) who am I helping, whose making me and for what reasons? I need details.
You seem to be taking this conversation as something that would be a state like process whereas I find it more interesting on a personal level. Easier to understand everyones motives that way.

Permabear

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sponsoredwalk

donegalfella wrote: »

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I'm just curious as to what you mean? Are you talking about taxation, i.e. sacrificing moneys earned to pay for things to which you do not want, or telling people to sacrifice at times of recession, or what...?

Permabear

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sponsoredwalk

donegalfella wrote: »

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Alright I agree with most of that, the idea of some 'common good' coming from any politician is utter nonsense as well...

The only thing I completely disagree with is the idea that welfare benefits & public sector wages are high, I'm not going to start another huge argument in this thread but you're wrong on that one.

That said, I'm sure there need to be adjustments, intelligent ones like taking away the travel privileges our gracious leaders indulge in and diverting subsidies from private education to the public, i.e. those things that actually benefit humanity.

robindch

donegalfella wrote: »

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So, under a libertarian government who would:

1. Fund the LHC?

2. Force BP to stop the leak in the Gulf of Mexico and clean up the mess?

I'm assuming, btw, that you believe that these two things are worth doing.

Permabear

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sponsoredwalk

donegalfella wrote: »

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So who will own the sea under a libertarian government?

Permabear

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Valmont

robindch wrote: »

2. Force BP to stop the leak in the Gulf of Mexico and clean up the mess?

I'm assuming, btw, that you believe that these two things are worth doing.

You are also assuming that BP wouldn't want to plug the leak without the government prodding it. I'm sure their reputation is worth enough to them to clean up their own mess.

robindch

donegalfella wrote: »

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Who funds the courts?

And who funds the LHC?

Permabear

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Valmont

robindch wrote: »

Who funds the courts?

Most libertarians I know of would propose that the taxpayer funds the judiciary. Libertarianism 101 really.

robindch

Valmont wrote: »

You are also assuming that BP wouldn't want to plug the leak without the government prodding it. I'm sure their reputation is worth enough to them to clean up their own mess.

This has not worked with the smelters of Norilsk in Siberia's far north, where the surface soil has become so catastrophically polluted that in recent years, it has become economically feasible to mine it for what previously went up the chimneys.

Russia has many elements of the libertarian society -- personal taxes are low and companies, once they do not fund the wrong kind of politics, are pretty much free to run their affairs as they want and civil society as we know it here in the west, doesn't really exist.

Permabear

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stevejazzx

donegalfella wrote: »

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You give quite a poor comparison; Shakespeare is matter of artistic taste - self sacrifice on the other hand is something one foregos for the benefit of someone else. When is this a bad thing? I am not advocating a mandatory enforcement of such or that the sacrificer endure loss whilst sacrificing. I am talking about basic acts of goodness, generosity. You make it seem like I'm suggesting that people radically alter their lives or be forced into difficult situations, seems a bit disingenuous.

If someone is voluntarily drawn to self-sacrifice, then so be it—I don't think Rand or anyone else is arguing that that person should be forcibly held back. But when we have bureaucrats in positions of state power mandating that everyone should be committed to an ethos of self-sacrifice, whether he likes it or not, that's an entirely different thing.

Not committed of course not. Perhaps encouraged in a way, like one is encouraged to eat healthy and exercise - you can do it if you want.

You appear to be making the classic mistake of assuming that something that feels good and right to you should be forced on everyone through the power of legislation.

No, no, no, no. I never said anyone should be forced to do anything.
I just gave my own personal outlook. The hint was when I said 'personally for me' and when I never said 'and this should be forced on everyone because I like it'.

kiwimac

Ayn Rand was a very, very sick individual.

One reason most countries don't find the time to embrace Ayn Rand's thinking is that she is a textbook sociopath. In her notebooks Ayn Rand worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" she promoted in her more famous books. These ideas were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America's most recent economic catastrophe -- former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox -- along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

The loudest of all the Republicans, right-wing attack-dog pundits and the Teabagger mobs fighting to kill health care reform and eviscerate "entitlement programs" increasingly hold up Ayn Rand as their guru. Sales of her books have soared in the past couple of years; one poll ranked Atlas Shrugged as the second most influential book of the 20th century, after the Bible.

The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand's beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation -- Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street -- on him.

What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"

This echoes almost word for word Rand's later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: "He was born without the ability to consider others." (The Fountainhead is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' favorite book -- he even requires his clerks to read it.)

Source

bnt

kiwimac wrote: »

Ayn Rand was a very, very sick individual.
Source

Did you try reading all four pages of that piece, and the comments? The same journals the writer quotes also includes the following:

A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me.

It's called "quote mining" - never mind that you're suggesting that wild ideas Rand had in her early 20s were carried forward, unaltered, to a book she wrote in her 50s.

kiwimac

I've read 'Atlas Shrugged', she was a sick individual. I have also read several cogent discussions of just how her admiration for psychopathy lead her to posit objectivism in the first place.

sponsoredwalk

bnt wrote: »

never mind that you're suggesting that wild ideas Rand had in her early 20s were carried forward, unaltered, to a book she wrote in her 50s.

Seriously, when you hear of a persons fascination with a man who mudered a little girl that is due to some pseudo-Nietzschean perversion you have every right to be skeptical...

Some people's wild early 20's idea's back in the 20's-30's were about proteins running all of life, and the possibility of a 4th dimension to accomodate E&M, the idea of antimatter or the consolidation of labor unions, or of raising a family. It was usually confined to psychologists to write about murderers with such admiration, but I doubt many happily made ubermansch comparisons...

This is not some cheap attempt to write off Rand but rationalizing something like this when it has such similarity to the tone of her work just doesn't pass the test, and a reader has every right to take into consideration an author's thought process.

pH

donegalfella wrote: »

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Ah, yes, * just* enough law and order to for the rich to remain rich (and even get richer). Let me get this straight, since no one *has* to pay taxes (that's clearly wrong - to deprive the very rich of even one cent) the courts are also funded by "interested parties", hmmm, nothing could go wrong with that could it?

Interesting that seat belts were mentioned a little back, the libertarian view I guess says that compulsory third-party insurance is an affront to personal freedom too - I imagine it's something a fictional character in a Rand book could have a good rant about - some insurance companies getting rich because the government is *forcing* citizens to pay them money.

I love the irony here, not liking seat belts in our social democracy, when to survive on the roads in a state your proposing you'd need a lot more than a seatbelt to protect you from an uninsured mad-max driving scenario that unregulated road use would produce.

Anyway you seem like you're a smart guy, surely you can see that a successful society is made up from more than millions of people trying to exploit each other - and if you can become one of the world's richest people by starting a company selling self-assembly furniture in Sweden, then I think that on whole we have the current balance right, sure you could argue that Ingvar Kamprad should have 100 billion rather than 50 billion, but our current system still allows people to become ridiculously wealthy, while providing a safety net for others.

sponsoredwalk

pH wrote: »

I love the irony here, not liking seat belts in our social democracy, when to survive on the roads in a state your proposing you'd need a lot more than a seatbelt to protect you from an uninsured mad-max driving scenario that unregulated road use would produce.

No, you don't understand. You wont be allowed to walk/drive on any roads unless the people that have bought the land will allow you to :rolleyes:

It will become a land of fences & shotgun style self defense is within the interests of certain parties to fend off tresspassers...

You also wont be allowed to swim in patches the sea/beach unless you've come to some sort of agreement with the proprietary owner.

There will be a limit on that unregulated air soon enough too, breathe it in while you can...

The human factor is null and void unless you can survive in the market, you don't deserve to live as you haven't got the funds, out of order sir...

pH

sponsoredwalk wrote: »

No, you don't understand. You wont be allowed to walk/drive on any roads unless the people that have bought the land will allow you to :rolleyes:

It will become a land of fences & shotgun style self defense is within the interests of certain parties to fend off tresspassers...

I stand corrected, now you've explained it it's obvious that the concept of a "public right of way" is an affront to landowners everywhere, and it's obvious such a thing shouldn't exist.

Private roads ftw - it's interesting, it's been said many times before that for any given "right" (for example Rand's right to keep every penny you earn to be truly free), there's another one (in this case travel and free association) and the two can't co-exist in a society.

So the right to keep and use your property (land) without government interference leads directly to the conclusion that you've no right to go anywhere outside of your own property, now, someone may buy the footpaths between you and your shops, and now with the correct pass you're allowed walk them (use their property), but you know what, for some their money might not be good enough, they're now stuck at home.

sponsoredwalk

I don't care what you do, it's your business, but if you step one foot outside your garden onto my piece of land, (that thing formerly known as a footpath in the dank days of oppression), I will ensure it doesn't happen again - by the courts if necessary... :P

davej

I quite enjoyed it and actually found it a page-turner (read the whole thing quickly). It is a fantastically contrived novel, full of straw man characters (with weasily names like "Wesley Mouch") and events that "prove" her arguments (over and over again).

Still, I found it strangely compelling.

davej

Zillah

donegalfella wrote: »

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So, no one? There are absolutely no practical applications for the knowledge we will gain from the LHC. A century from now we could be manufacturing anti-matter reactors due to the body of knowledge the LHC adds to, it greatly adds to our fundamental understanding of how the world works, but it is entirely speculative. No consortium is going to invest $13,000,000,000 in technology that does nothing but advance theoretical physics.

It's the same reason that public transport isn't privatised, they'd stop running all of the less profitable routes. They'd make more money but all the people in those areas are screwed. Concern for the advancement and well being of humankind has never been a motivating factor for the private sector.

sponsoredwalk

Look, that question is easily answered with words.

Well, people invest in the future & physics has a history of novel things that pop up even though we didn't expect them. It could be worthwhile to some.

Essentially, this answer is completely bogus but it serves as a defense for this bogus theory. It's like a politician, as long as you give some answer you've gotten out of the frying pan for now.

Also, as for the private sector, the best inventions have come from the public sector only to be privatized when working,

the internet,

Lasers,

Avionics,

Semi-conductors,

Computers,

Satellites,

NASA (well, it'll happen soon )

(most of these are just related to M.I.T, the U.S. college that does the o.c.w. thing online)

It's too inefficient to allow the freedom to create these things when under the whip of someone funding you, too much of the good green stuff going down the drain...

I'm starting to think as I read up on this libertarian thing seriously that most people self define themselves as such due to the constant parroting that you can smoke weed and nobody will care :pac: