Who is Ayn Rand? Why is she important to you?

[amicus]

Ayn Rand passed away 28 years ago...yet her works remain among the best selling books around the globe to this day. Her philosophy and economic viewpoint are taught in Universities around the world and the mere mention of her name or her philosohy, Objectivism, raises the hackles of the far left on this forum...why?

The post world war two generations have been faced with questions on all levels and brought about a gradual loss of connection with God, Country and the knowledge of good and bad.

Ayn Rand is not someone to quote or memorize or follow; she is someone who will challenge your every belief, and demand that you use your rational mind to determine your values and premises.

I offer this thread, which I will link to my children and grandchildren, those old enough to think objectively, so that those who are uncertain of just what is right and wrong in this very complex world, have a means to sort out the perceptions and conclusions everyone faces from day to day.

I would hope for an open discussion, but I will respond to sincere PM's as best I can, since I lectured adults in Objective Principles about 40 years ago.

I included a rather extensive list of subjects and topics addressed by Ayn Rand to perhaps tempt you or to provide an avenue for your enlightenment.

~~~

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reg_ar_library

All of these recordings are also available from the Ayn Rand Bookstore.
These recordings are presented through the generosity of the Estate of Ayn Rand.

All recordings copyright © Ayn Rand Institute. All rights reserved.

Lectures

Aristotle
Art in Education
The Brain Drain
Video: Capitalism vs. Communism
“Conflicts” of Men’s Interests
Conservatism: An Obituary
Faith and Force
The Fascist New Frontier
The Foreign Policy of a Mixed Economy
Introducing Objectivism
“Let Us Alone!”
The Money-Making Personality
The Objectivist Ethics
Our Esthetic Vacuum
Philosophy: Who Needs It
Rebellion at Columbia
Video: The Sanction of the Victims
Today’s Intellectual State

Interviews
19th-Century Capitalism
Video: Ayn Rand and the “New Intellectual”
Conservatism vs. Objectivism
The Enemies of “Extremism”
Interview with Ayn Rand
Issues in Education
The Nature of Rights
Objective Law
Objectivism in Brief
Politics of a Free Society
The Press in a Free Society
The Psychology of Altruism
Q & A on Objectivism
The “Robber Barons”
Romantic Literature
Selfishness as a Virtue
Significance of the Goldwater Campaign
Speaking Freely
The Structure of Government

At the Ford Hall Forum
The Age of Mediocrity
America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business
Apollo and Dionysus
Censorship: Local and Express
Cultural Update
Egalitarianism and Inflation
Global Balkanization
The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age
Is Atlas Shrugging?
The Moral Factor
The Moratorium on Brains
A Nation’s Unity
The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus
Of Living Death
Our Cultural Value-Deprivation
What Is Capitalism?
The Wreckage of the Consensus

http://www.working-minds.com/ARquotes.htm

Ayn Rand [1905-1982]

Ayn Rand was one of the most important philosophers of the XXth Century, and quotations from her work are both cogent and thought-provoking. These bite-size pieces of her Objectivist philosophy are taken from the wide-ranging elements of her career – fiction & non-fiction writings, lectures, movie scripts, newspaper columns & articles, and television & radio appearances.

~~~

For those of you who write, or aspire to, and want to get beyond 'stroke' erotica and find a guideline to creating literature with plot and character development, I recommend the above mentioned: "Romantic Literature", as a beginning point.

For those who sense the coming end of an era of non absolute morality and wish to understand the concepts concerning human values to guide you and your children, the non-fiction works of Ayn Rand will provide you with an avenue to explore.

Amicus Veritas

 

[Huckleman2000]

Jesus Christ on a stick.

 

[TE999]

Wazzamattayou, ami? Don't you know all the real intellectuals are spawned from the left side of political and social thought? We have Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Keynes, Shaw, Krugman, Cousins, Engels, Ricardo ad nauseum and a grimy ball of college profs who were dope smoking, trouble making, long haired, sandal wearing maggots back 40+ years ago...probably on the same campus.

I've read 'Atlas Shrugged'...it's tough going in spots...but I agree with the overall premise...other than that I'm not conversant with Rand's writings...I'll check out what you've posted.

I'll say this, she had something on the ball if the very mention of her name could send Socialistic Liberals into a frenzy of spittle-spewing rants, sophomoric insults and incoherent rage.

 

[D_K_Moon]

Wazzamattayou, ami? Don't you know all the real intellectuals are spawned from the left side of political and social thought? We have Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Keynes, Shaw, Krugman, Cousins, Engels, Ricardo ad nauseum and a grimy ball of college profs who were dope smoking, trouble making, long haired, sandal wearing maggots back 40+ years ago...probably on the same campus.

I've read 'Atlas Shrugged'...it's tough going in spots...but I agree with the overall premise...other than that I'm not conversant with Rand's writings...I'll check out what you've posted.

I'll say this, she had something on the ball if the very mention of her name could send Socialistic Liberals into a frenzy of spittle-spewing rants, sophomoric insults and incoherent rage.

I remember when you were a fairly pleasant fellow here. Now, it seems you've turned into a very bitter and angry old man.

From the look of your rant it would seem that you would fully support a one party system.

 

[amicus]

"...Wazzamattayou..."

I like that! I like the way you think.

Long ago, an old broadcaster advised me: "For every call you take on your talk show, there are 10,000 others that you are speaking to..."

I don't have quite the audience I used to have....but then, one makes do with what one has...

I hope you find something of use at the links....

best regards...

ami

 

[TE999]

I remember when you were a fairly pleasant fellow here. Now, it seems you've turned into a very bitter and angry old man.

From the look of your rant it would seem that you would fully support a one party system.

Old...sure. Bitter...hardly. Angry...I'm a happy person by nature. To you, everyone's pleasant if they agree with your world view and politics...it's the alternative views you and your ilk can't handle.

All I hear lately are you 'old timers' whining about how things aren't like they used to be on Lit. Sure, everyone agreed that Liberalisim was just fine and it was 'hip' to mock ami for his views on things.

Ain't that way no more cowboy so get used to it.

Speaking of...all disagreements are rants in your book...and for the record I don't advocate a one party system...this one we have now sucks eggs...which is why I'm voting anti-incumbent this fall.

 

[DeeZire]

Alan Greenspan was a big Rand fan. Look where that got us.

 

[amicus]

"Capitalism demands the best of every man – his rationality – and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him."

('For the New Intellectual' 1961) {WMail Issue #17}

~~~

For an understanding of free market economics, Rand provides a reading list of Von Mises, Hazlitt, Bastiat, Boehm-Bawerk, and dozens more for the serious student.

Every other centralized form of economic methodology requires the sacrifice of the individual to the collective. Only free market capitalism provides individual human freedom and choice.

And...the choice is...yours...

Amicus

 

[lustatopia]

When I was a freshman in high school a teacher, who was impressed by my interest in science, opened her top desk drawer and took out a well-thumbed copy of "The Fountainhead" and slid it over to me, glancing around the room as if she was passing me something mysterious and subversive. "Here, read this, you keep it and read it later again at university. See what you get out of it."

So I did read it and was fucking blown away, although at age 14 it was a real struggle, dense prose. But it held my attention, because it was sexy and very subversive.

Later I read some of Rand's other work, it was hard to find, a rare jewel in the back bin of a used bookstore. Marmish librarians would sneer when you asked why the Rand text you were looking for wasn't on the shelf. "Must'a got lost, hon." I especially clung to We The Living. At university my professors in philosophy, literature and the social sciences all dismissed Rand as poorly written, shallow, not worthy of discussion, mere pop culture. As they would, given their neoMarxist, post modern bent.

Rand was the best introduction that any teenager could possibly have to the arcane art of philosophy and the social sciences because it imbues the young mind with the fundamental skill set of skeptical analysis and self-awareness so that, when at the university level, first confronted with the academic pantheon of literature one isn't awed so much as amazed at the throng of unexamined assumptions that pass as axiomatic.

Because of Rand, I already had sense of perspective: An epistemological stage on which to arrange ideas and study them rather than simply accept them. I came to university already knowing that a certain variety of philosophic tropes come shrouded in the best of intentions yet are the root cause of all the world's evil going back to Catalhoyuk. This set of ideas (or behavioral responses) goes by many different names and parasitically attaches itself to many great causes as well. But it's all of the same root.

Contemporary collectivists and statists everywhere hate Rand because she so throughly and wickedly exposed them as the closet fascists they really are in their heart of hearts. Although I believe most leftists are very nice and useful people who are simply leading lives unexamined.

That said, I'm really interested to see that Amicus is a fan of Ayn Rand, because I wonder how she would feel about his rather exotic ideas on American foreign policy and our moral obligations to the oppressed peoples of the world? That's not a snarky question. I really don't know the answer and am curious.

 

[amicus]

When I was a freshman in high school a teacher, who was impressed by my interest in science, opened her top desk drawer and took out a well-thumbed copy of "The Fountainhead" and slid it over to me, glancing around the room as if she was passing me something mysterious and subversive. "Here, read this, you keep it and read it later again at university. See what you get out of it."

So I did read it and was fucking blown away, although at age 14 it was a real struggle, dense prose. But it held my attention, because it was sexy and very subversive.

Later I read some of Rand's other work, it was hard to find, a rare jewel in the back bin of a used bookstore. Marmish librarians would sneer when you asked why the Rand text you were looking for wasn't on the shelf. "Must'a got lost, hon." I especially clung to We The Living. At university my professors in philosophy, literature and the social sciences all dismissed Rand as poorly written, shallow, not worthy of discussion, mere pop culture. As they would, given their neoMarxist, post modern bent.

Rand was the best introduction that any teenager could possibly have to the arcane art of philosophy and the social sciences because it imbues the young mind with the fundamental skill set of skeptical analysis and self-awareness so that, when at the university level, first confronted with the academic pantheon of literature one isn't awed so much as amazed at the throng of unexamined assumptions that pass as axiomatic.

Because of Rand, I already had sense of perspective: An epistemological stage on which to arrange ideas and study them rather than simply accept them. I came to university already knowing that a certain variety of philosophic tropes come shrouded in the best of intentions yet are the root cause of all the world's evil going back to Catalhoyuk. This set of ideas (or behavioral responses) goes by many different names and parasitically attaches itself to many great causes as well. But it's all of the same root.

Contemporary collectivists and statists everywhere hate Rand because she so throughly and wickedly exposed them as the closet fascists they really are in their heart of hearts. Although I believe most leftists are very nice and useful people who are simply leading lives unexamined.

That said, I'm really interested to see that Amicus is a fan of Ayn Rand, because I wonder how she would feel about his rather exotic ideas on American foreign policy and our moral obligations to the oppressed peoples of the world? That's not a snarky question. I really don't know the answer and am curious.[/QUOTE]

~~~

I quoted your post in toto, hoping that a few more would read your statement.

"...So I did read it and was fucking blown away..."

That was my experience at age 18, as a Radioman, aboard an LST at sea...I found Atlas Shrugged in a trash can during a midnight shift and stayed awake until I had read it all...and fucking blown away...is precisely what I felt, someone who actually spoke my language and talked about things that were important to me a a young man.

Your post speaks for itself so I will confine my comments to offer an answer to your last paragraph.

I will not quote chapter and verse, but somewhere in Rand's works she said, and I paraphrase: "America has the moral obligation to liberate any and all oppressed people in the world if she can do so without risk to her own well being..."

Iraq was once the center of the intellectual world; that America was instrumental in liberating the Iraqi people from the Saddam Hussein dictatorship is an accomplishment that has not yet been acknowledged.

You, or anyone, may interpret the 1930's, with Japan and Germany plotting to conquer their own part of the world, in any which way you please.

In hidesight, had we foresight of the future, one might have encouraged America to stop Germany, Japan and then Russia, before their combined violence took a hundred million human lives.

I perceive the United States involvement in former European Colonial conquests in the Middle East as a necessary step to bring the region out of the dark ages and into the modern world.

I see Islamic Fundamentalism in the same way I saw the National Socialism of Germany, the Imperialism of Japan and the Communism of the Soviet Union, all birds of a feather with oppression and total control as their desired end result.

I am not a 'Randroid' as some have said, I view abortion as premeditated murder while Rand approved of the 'choice'.

I am pleased to make your acquaintance and I look forward to reading more of your thoughts and ideas.

regards...

Amicus

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

All I hear lately are you 'old timers' whining about how things aren't like they used to be on Lit. Sure, everyone agreed that Liberalisim was just fine and it was 'hip' to mock ami for his views on things.

Ain't that way no more cowboy so get used to it.

It isn't? Looks to me like he gets more flak than me, and worse than that, Amicus took off running when I challenged him.

Still can't get you Randroids to explain how America is going to be an innovation-based economy when innovation jobs are moving overseas.

Laissez-faire economies will never beat Government-protected industries or tariffs.

 

[lustatopia]

That was my experience at age 18, as a Radioman, aboard an LST at sea...I found Atlas Shrugged in a trash can during a midnight shift and stayed awake until I had read it all...and fucking blown away...is precisely what I felt, someone who actually spoke my language and talked about things that were important to me a a young man.

Your post speaks for itself so I will confine my comments to offer an answer to your last paragraph.

I will not quote chapter and verse, but somewhere in Rand's works she said, and I paraphrase: "America has the moral obligation to liberate any and all oppressed people in the world if she can do so without risk to her own well being..."

Iraq was once the center of the intellectual world; that America was instrumental in liberating the Iraqi people from the Saddam Hussein dictatorship is an accomplishment that has not yet been acknowledged.

You, or anyone, may interpret the 1930's, with Japan and Germany plotting to conquer their own part of the world, in any which way you please.

In hidesight, had we foresight of the future, one might have encouraged America to stop Germany, Japan and then Russia, before their combined violence took a hundred million human lives.

I perceive the United States involvement in former European Colonial conquests in the Middle East as a necessary step to bring the region out of the dark ages and into the modern world.

I see Islamic Fundamentalism in the same way I saw the National Socialism of Germany, the Imperialism of Japan and the Communism of the Soviet Union, all birds of a feather with oppression and total control as their desired end result.

I am not a 'Randroid' as some have said, I view abortion as premeditated murder while Rand approved of the 'choice'.

I am pleased to make your acquaintance and I look forward to reading more of your thoughts and ideas.

regards...

Amicus

Thanks, Amicus, for that very clear and concise statement. I share your concerns. I fear we are not only transitioning towards post-Pax Americana, but that the next few years are going to be most challenging in American history since 1942. I hope I am wrong. There are all manner of foreboding shadows cast across the geopolitical landscape, deja vu ghosts from 1848, 1914, 1931 and 1968.

If a 911-level of attack on the US occurred tomorrow there is little doubt the president would declare marshal law.

Ironically, Ayn Rand's work is more relevant today than when I read it during the cold war. Though I suspect that if Ayn were here today she would be the least surprised of us all!

"Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history. Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, every emotion, which belongs to it in appropriate events. But the thought is always prior to the fact; all the facts of history preexist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the application of his manifold spirit to the manifold world."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

It isn't? Looks to me like he gets more flak than me, and worse than that, Amicus took off running when I challenged him.

Still can't get you Randroids to explain how America is going to be an innovation-based economy when innovation jobs are moving overseas.

Laissez-faire economies will never beat Government-protected industries or tariffs.

The answer to your challenge is simple: We small people have no choice but to innovate.

Looking into my crystal ball I see the government franchising America to the mega-corps, and the government will put the rest out of business. When the peasant shops she'll buy one brand of gray fruit-veggie, preserved in a brown syrup, and packed in leaking bottles. One factory will make the same goods for everyone and paste their labels on the bottles. This is how we do it now except new vendors still have access to the market.

But innovation will happen because shit wont work as promised, and the clever guy or gal will dream up a fix for your problem....for a fee.

 

[Pure]

note on Rand. the merits of her thought

ayn rand was capable of independent thought. for example

she defended a woman's right to choose:

abortion
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/abortion.html


she opposed US foreign ventures to subdue remote areas and 'bring democracy', e.g. Korea and Vietnam. likely would have opposed GWB's Iraq efforts.


foreign
http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles...Crisis__Reclaiming_Rands_Radical_Legacy.shtml



she despised Ronald Reagan for the fake religiosity and 'big governement' orientation. she thought him an enemy of capitalism.

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7994

post by $$$$$$

From the Ayn Rand Letter, Volume IV, Number 2, November-December 1975 (I"m not certain of the actual publication date - they were often behind schedule, and am dealing from electronic sources, not my paper copy which is back home and not with me at the moment.):

RAND Now I want to give you a brief indication of the kinds of issues that are coming up, on which you might want to know my views.

1. The Presidential election of 1976. I urge you, as emphatically as I can, not to support the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. I urge you not to work for or advocate his nomination, and not to vote for him. My reasons are as follows: Mr. Reagan is not a champion of capitalism, but a conservative in the worst sense of that word—i.e., an advocate of a mixed economy with government controls slanted in favor of business rather than labor (which, philosophically, is as untenable a position as one could choose—see Fred Kinnan in Atlas Shrugged, pp. 541-2). This description applies in various degrees to most Republican politicians, but most of them preserve some respect for the rights of the individual. Mr. Reagan does not: he opposes the right to abortion.

From Sanction of the Victims, delivered November 21, 1981 (and available in Voice of Reason):


RAND In conclusion, let me touch briefly on another question often asked me: What do I think of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: But I don't think of him—and the more I see, the less I think. I did not vote for him (or for anyone else) and events seem to justify me. The appalling disgrace of his administration is his connection with the so-called "Moral Majority" and sundry other TV religionists, who are struggling—apparently with his approval—to take us back to the Middle Ages, via the unconstitutional union of religion and politics.

The threat to the future of capitalism is the fact that Reagan might fail so badly that he will become another ghost, like Herbert Hoover, to be invoked as an example of capitalism's failure for another fifty years.

Observe Reagan's futile attempts to arouse the country by some sort of inspirational appeal. He is right in thinking that the country needs an inspirational element. But he will not find it in the God-Family-Tradition swamp.

====

She showed her independence in frequently criticizing Republicans and their actions.

Amicus is Fox News. Rand is a Thinker.

 

[Pure]

Ayn Rand on WWII

Rand was deeply skeptical of the US WWII efforts, and pointed to their fruits. In particular, she objected to the use of the WWII moral crusade as an exemplar for what the US would do in Korea and Vietnam. The same would apply to Iraq.

Freedom is NOT served when a megastate with the world's largest military sends soldiers to remote soil, spends itself into huge debt, and muzzles the domestic opposition.

RAND Germany and Russia needed war; the United States did not and gained nothing. (In fact, the United States lost, economically, even though it won the war: it was left with an enormous national debt, augmented by the grotesquely futile policy of supporting former allies and enemies to this day.) Yet it is capitalism that today’s peace-lovers oppose and statism that they advocate—in the name of peace.
“The Roots of War,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 37.

http://ariwatch.com/AynRandOnWWII.htm

Before she died Ayn Rand read – and doubtless helped with the ideas in – the manuscript of Leonard Peikoff’s book The Ominous Parallels and thought very highly of it. Near the end of chapter 14 (“America Reverses Direction”) he writes of World War II:

RAND “Once again [the first time being the first world war], the American public, which was strongly ‘isolationist,’ was manipulated by a pro-war administration into joining an ‘idealistic’ crusade.”

===
http://ariwatch.com/AynRandOnWWII.htm

Note that Ayn Rand sees U.S. entry into WW II as equivalent to that of its entry into WW I. One was as bad as the other.

Ayn Rand continues:
“World War I led, not to [Wilson’s] ‘democracy,’ but to the creation of three dictatorships: Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany. World War II led, not to [Roosevelt’s] ‘Four Freedoms,’ but to the surrender of one-third of the world’s population into communist slavery.”

After saying that World War II did not lead to Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedoms’ she mentions disaster. She contrasts Roosevelt’s promises with what we actually got. Clearly she thinks Roosevelt helped bring about the disaster.

From “The Wreckage of the Consensus” in The Objectivist, April & May 1967:

RAND “The same groups that coined the term ‘isolationist’ in World War II – to designate anyone who held that the internal affairs of other countries are not the responsibility of the United States – these same groups are screaming that the United States has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of Vietnam. ”

Ayn Rand’s main point here is that these groups are inconsistent (the first time against isolationism, the second time for it), but again it is easy to infer that she was sympathetic to the isolationists regarding World War II.
===

 

[amicus]

Not that it matters, but in that self same volume, "Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal"m Page 37, two paragraphs above the portion you quoted:

"Statism needs war, a free country does not. Statism survices by looting, a free society survives by production."

I recognize the style of the critic you are copying and pasting from, I read those also.

It must be difficult for you; on one hand you accuse me of parroting Rand, on the other you attempt to disassociate my views from hers...which is it you are really after?

Objectivism holds that value is objective (not intrinsic or subjective); value is based on and derives from the facts of reality (it does not derive from mystic authority or from whim, personal or social). Reality, we hold—along with the decision to remain in it, i.e., to stay alive—dictates and demands an entire code of values. Unlike the lower species, man does not pursue the proper values automatically; he must discover and choose them; but this does not imply subjectivism. Every proper value-judgment is the identification of a fact: a given object or action advances man’s life (it is good): or it threatens man’s life (it is bad or an evil). The good, therefore, is a species of the true; it is a form of recognizing reality. The evil is a species of the false; it is a form of contradicting reality. Or: values are a type of facts; they are facts considered in relation to the choice to live.

I had many disagreements with Rand, but what she offered was far more valuable than political differences; it is a primer on how to think and how to perceive reality as it is and not as one might wish it to be.

It is not so much that I mind the continual criticism here on the forum, I rather expected that. What I do find amusing, is that you, along with the others, never ever offer a consistent sense of life or a rational exposition of just what it is you advocate. You remain critics only of almost everything but offer nothing you can be called to account for.

Interesting.

Amicus

 

[amicus]

"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

('Atlas Shrugged' 1957) {WMail Issue #23}

 

[JackLuis]

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

I ran across this and thought of you.

 

[amicus]

]*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

I ran across this and thought of you.[/I]

~~~

Not certain that definition can even be understood, considering the words used in such a sloppy manner. The only reflection one might have is a 'traitor' in some barbaric society such as Nazi's or Communists, wherein to betray either might be a virtue and a value.

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."

('The Fountainhead' 1943)

 

[Carnevil9]

Still can't get you Randroids to explain how America is going to be an innovation-based economy when innovation jobs are moving overseas.

Ahhh, but there you betray your lack of understanding. "Jobs" are not what counts, either in Rand-ville, or in any real Capitalistic society. A true Capitalist, and a true innovator, makes his own business; he does not seek to be employed by others. The fact that he employs others is merely a by-product of his pursuit, a necessary step to drive forward his entrepreneurial and innovative goals.

Anyone who speaks of "creating jobs" or bemoans jobs going overseas does not understand Rand.

Also - I find it amusing that so many Leftists and Liberals decry Rand, without realizing how much they actually share with her (atheism, for starters). No, they'd rather lazily think of her as "just another Republican stooge"......Carney

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

Ahhh, but there you betray your lack of understanding. "Jobs" are not what counts, either in Rand-ville, or in any real Capitalistic society. A true Capitalist, and a true innovator, makes his own business; he does not seek to be employed by others.

And that is where you fail to understand reality.

We have 300 million Americans in this country. Typically innovations mean inventions, and intellectual property patents. How many patents, total, are awarded here? Less than 20,000 a year. How many of those patents do you think actually make any money? What would you calculate to be the odds that there will ever be one million innovators in America? Much less 300 million? And how many of them will be able to make money on these innovations?

You've shown me the theories, sir. All I ask is that you show me the math, and back it up with some historical basis.

The fact that he employs others is merely a by-product of his pursuit, a necessary step to drive forward his entrepreneurial and innovative goals.

Anyone who speaks of "creating jobs" or bemoans jobs going overseas does not understand Rand.

People who support Rand in the truest sense do not realize that Capitalism works BEST in undemocratic regimes.

You can see that right now with China. If you are foolish enough to ignore their jaw-dropping economic growth and if you are in such great denial that you are willing to discount the absolute explosion of their middle class and the number of jobs that are making their people rich, then perhaps this should grab you instead:

China owns the Capitalist world's currency and debt.

Ask yourself not what got Greece and PIGS and America in so much debt. Ask yourself who they're in debt to. The answer is CHINA.

Verily I assure you that Ayn Rand would be rolling in her grave if she saw China's centralized system of planning and domestic corporate subsidies, much less their absolute control over their media and the killing of political dissidents. But yet, the closer America gets to Ayn Rand's belief system, the closer we get to the point where China can sell off the entire Western World's currency and debt and put them all in economic ruin.

What Ayn Rand did not compensate for is the fact that a nation like China playing in the Free Trade game is like sending a player into the NBA loaded with steroids and armed with bionic legs.

I don't care how many John Galts that Ayn Rand brings to bear against China, Jong Gong is gonna copy his every invention as soon as he puts it to production in China, and is going to put John Galt dead out of business with imported knockoffs. Why? Because Jong Gong is going to compete against John Galt with ZERO research cost and ten times lower CEO pay. John Galt wants his millions. Jong Gong can live like Emperor Puyi himself on a tenth of that: that means that John Gong's company, built on a mountain of John Galt's STOLEN Intellectual Property, will take a nice big frothy piss in John Galt's corn flakes.

Think I'm wrong? This is happening in China right this minute, as we speak. It's also happening in India with the pharmaceutical industry. It is almost exactly how Japan's auto industry fucked us. Not because of unions, but because Japan copied a TON of our innovations, and then moved up the food chin, eventually out-innovating us.

Also - I find it amusing that so many Leftists and Liberals decry Rand, without realizing how much they actually share with her (atheism, for starters). No, they'd rather lazily think of her as "just another Republican stooge"......Carney

I'm a liberal and I strongly believe in God.
I've often said that Godlessness is as big a friend of Capitalism as it is with Soviet-style Communism. I also know that Jesus' teachings about charity are part of what DROVE Rand to be an atheist. And one other thing: Rand is not atheist. Her God is selfishness and Capitalism. Selfishness, you say? Look at the wedding vows. You know which ones I'm talking about.

In the end, sir, Ayn Rand is not enough. The only way you are going to get a truly Capitalist system that does not fall completely apart under the weight of its own weaknesses, is for humans to be replaced by computers. You introduce one irrational market decision into Capitalism and the entire system falls apart. And China is one huge, super gigantic irrational market decision.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

The answer to your challenge is simple: We small people have no choice but to innovate.

Then the math clearly says we will see a collapse of civilization.

There is not enough room in the marketplace for 300 million innovators. There isn't enough room for 1 million. Consider how many people issue patents in America every year. Under 20,000. Consider how many of those patents actually make money.

That's a lot of people left out in the cold. A lot of people with nothing to lose, and revolution on their minds.

The Capitalists of today are forgetting one major rule: access to the bread and circuses are the opiate of the masses. Knowing that, you do not want the people to sober up. The FASTEST way to sober them up is to take away their bread... and we're doing that.

 

[amicus]

Not being omniscient or a fortune teller like our above prophet, one can only judge the future by the past and the present and even then innovations such as the personal computer and its impact on the world economy was predicted by no one...it just happened...and...it happened first, here, in the good ole Capitalist USA.

The really interesting fact is that the computer and the operating systems were basically created in a young man's parents garage.

Oil, crude petroleum, had been oozing out of the earth for thousands if not millions of years until the mind of a single man conceived of a use, then many uses for that sticky, smelly substance.

Amazing, eh?

Good science fiction writers, dozens of them, have had a shot at predicting the future of man, his societies and his means of survival, and who can judge which one contains an accurate forecast of future life?

Venture capital, investment funds of all sorts, the activities of free men in a free society, excel at using money to make money, a fascinating subject to consider. I can loan you $100,000 so you can build your home and over 30 years you repay that loan and my money goes to work to build the infrastructure of a society.

It is utterly amazing what free men can do in a free country with basic laws to protect life, liberty and property.

It is a sad generation that takes no pride in what their forefathers did, the nation they built and defended, sad indeed.

"When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism – with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as a separation of state and church."

("The Objectivist Ethics" in 'The Virtue of Selfishness')

Amicus

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

Not being omniscient or a fortune teller like our above prophet,

Hey, bub, learn the difference between prophecy and reading the writing on the wall.

I saw and posted about Obama running for President back in 2005, over 2 years before he even considered it. NOT Prophecy. That was merely seeing the writing on the wall.

I warned that these 125% equity loans were going to fuck the market. NOT Prophecy; that was just knowing the limitations of the system. I warned that housing prices were far too high, years before the subprime collapse. Again, NOT prophecy.

When the subprime mess finally did hit us, I said it would lead to a panic. NOT prophecy; it was all about knowing the limitations of the economy.

I have been warning about the damage being done by offshoring. We now have an unemployment rate that could be completely ERASED if we had not sent all those textile, manufacturing, tech and research jobs to India. That was not prophecy. That was a case of doing one's math.

one can only judge the future by the past and the present

Wrong. That is not the only way. You can also judge the future based on the limitations of the political or economic system. You can accurately predict when future cycles will subvert past cycles, because of subtle or major changes in the parameters.

and even then innovations such as the personal computer and its impact on the world economy was predicted by no one...it just happened...and...it happened first, here, in the good ole Capitalist USA.

The Internet was invented and funded almost ENTIRELY by Government money and research. That network you're posting your drivel on? It may be privately run now, but it's founded on COMMUNISM, baby. Thank Karl Marx every time you're able to log on, and shame Ayn R-er, the Devil.

The really interesting fact is that the computer and the operating systems were basically created in a young man's parents garage.

And a lot of computer inventions were made by Government research.

Venture capital, investment funds of all sorts, the activities of free men in a free society, excel at using money to make money, a fascinating subject to consider. I can loan you $100,000 so you can build your home and over 30 years you repay that loan and my money goes to work to build the infrastructure of a society.

Ah, the fractional reserve economy. The hocus pocus of turning $100,000 into $900,000 by the use of smoke and mirrors!

It is utterly amazing what free men can do in a free country with basic laws to protect life, liberty and property.

I guarantee you that a nation that runs on solely those laws will collapse, or will be wiped out or conquered by a socialist-capitalist hybrid nation.

I wish you had been there in the Cayman Islands or Dubai when they went bankrupt... you would see what truly comes of Ayn Rand's dream: total deconstruction, and in Dubai's case, brutal deconstruction.

 

[amicus]

"Capitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice."

('Romantic Manifesto')

What the advocates of a slave system, be it Chinese Communism or Statist quasi socialism aka Euro nations, fail to recognize or identify, is the moral and ethical concept stated above.

If human freedom, individuality and choice mean nothing to you, then yes, you can conceive of a 'hybrid' system. In reality, mixing poison with water doesn't change the poison, but the water become lethal.

So too will any attempt to diminish human freedom to the collective will.

Such attempts have always led to armed conflict and will again.

Amicus