Atlas has another reason to shrug...

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Oh those Randroids!

My thoughts exactly.

He's talking about Rand's book, right?



An apt description would be "insane, psychopathic, soulless, and dangerous."

I hate that woman, even though she's dead.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

From what I have seen, she seems to glorify sociopathic personality disorder.

Why hate the little boy for telling the Emperor that he is buck naked?

Rand advocated what every reasonable person ends up doing, to wit, pursue one's rational interests rationally. Personally, I find Rand's behavior strange. She became a Den Mother to a cult like movement. Even so, she hit upon one of the reason's that the society is falling apart. Unbridled altruism and sacrifice. A principle that says each of us must live for the All. Tell me, sport, did God give us an Ego that we should renounce it? Even the Almighty told Moses that his name was I Am What I am. Lots of "I" there, yes? Self control, Si, self sacrifice No.

ruveyn

Yes but the problem is that the premise for her novels is founded on a completely absurd premise, that somehow there are a set groupWhat are you even talking about? Furthermore you're an atheist.

I liked her work. She rants a bit, but we all do. Commrads, give everything to the State, and they will do what is best for them.

Donate to Autism Speaks, they spend half on themselves, then make grants that half gets spent on administration, the rest on payroll, and someone on the bottom will write a one page paper, that mentions the need for more money. All University students do that.

Unions are not about working conditions, but about not working. Public Employee Unions the worst.


Industrial Safety laws are used to fine shop keepers on main street.

The Girl Scouts say if you do not buy the cookies you could have an accident.

It is shakedown city out there. They are all looking for someone to live off of.

So of course we bank offshore, only hire war criminals, escaped convicts, and others with a lot to lose.

To start a business now, first you start a Holding Company, Domiciled offshore, that owns everything. The business is a hollow shell that owns nothing, all leased, so when it gets sued, it is judgement proof.

It will get sued, there are a lot of lawyers. One sues, you have to hire another to defend. It does not matter to them who wins, they both get paid.

Just getting by takes about $50,000 a year in paperwork for compliance, you may not have an enviormental impact, you have to prove that in writing, studies, all subject to fines. You may not owe tax, but you have to prove it before you do not owe tax, or deposit funds like you were guilty, and getting out on bond.

It seems it is possible to sexually harass people you have never met. Some seem to recover memores of it ten years later. A week before the statute of limitations runs out. Cain is being painted as someone who said, "Nice dress, it looks good on you." a decade ago.

There is no right to trial and to face your accuser, when it is the government, acting on behalf of that inspector that you did not bribe enough. Or touching a minor below the waist, who's name is sealed by the courts, and being arrested, for not being able to deny what you never did, but knowing it was the Girl Scout Cookies. Salem had the same problem, lots got hung.

So you get a ranch in Colorado, think up products to have made offshore, by slave labor, then imported in to the United States and the money sent offshore tax free and untracable.

Ayn Rand told it like it is to be a producer of wealth. Not someone who buys tax free bonds through a holding company, but someone producing something useful, hiring the best people for the job, making a better world.

Governments, Unions, Churches, Charities, and the Girl Scouts, all want a piece of it. The United Way, Better Business, Chamber of Commerence, everyone who holds office or runs, they all say the same, cross my palm with silver, or you could have an accident.

So short term lease, contract less than full time labor, and move in the night every year across State lines.

Ayn Rand predicted this economy as a result of hunting out all the productive people to feed the activist leaches.

The leaches won, and have nothing to feed on but each other.

The current young have the worst conditions ever, starting life in debt and unemployed. they have nothing but blood. A generation born into debt servitude.

And yet at the same time I can say that her own ideas are just as dangerous, not to mention untrue.


Right, sure... Quit with the union-bashing. :/


To start a business now, first you start a Holding Company, Domiciled offshore, that owns everything. The business is a hollow shell that owns nothing, all leased, so when it gets sued, it is judgement proof.

It will get sued, there are a lot of lawyers. One sues, you have to hire another to defend. It does not matter to them who wins, they both get paid.

None of this means anything even if you were trying to be allegorical.

The gutless assertion that government or indeed any of these things are like a mafia.

As caused by overweening self-interest.

I believe the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was a very advanced being from elsewhere in space-time. The God they worshiped was a natural as rain, but a lot more advanced and powerful. Perhaps God was an alien. Perhaps God was a time traveler from our distance future.

I believe everything that exists is natural.

ruveyn

And your basis for this theory is because you can't imagine this deity being a false construct?


No, but the delusion was.


And a psychopath it would seem too. But exactly what reason do you have to say any of these things?


Really? Is that your justification? No wonder that you have some admiration for Rand.

Unbridled altruism and sacrifice being bad? I thought such notions were taught in the Judaism you were raised with.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

The problem with Objectivism is that Prophetess Rand reserved unto Herself how "rational" could and could not be defined. And woe betide those who stray from the True Path, yea they are to be cast forth from the city gates to wail and gnash their teeth in the darkness of irrationality.



Which she herself created, via her own actions. The "excommunication" of two of her closest disciples in the late '60s (Nathaniel Branden* and Barbara Branden) included an injunction that all true believers would henceforth "shun" these apostates. Or else share in their fate. And apparently purges are like potato chips to dictators and/or cult leaders: they can't stop at just one. She expelled a husband and wife team of psychologists sometime in the mid-70s for no reason anyone could figure, except that they'd come out from under her shadow a bit. And there were several more.

* - Until the Branden purge Atlas Shrugged was actually dedicated to TWO people: Frank O'Connor (her husband) and Nathaniel Branden. Naturally Branden's name is nowhere to be found in the book today. He's also gotten the Trotsky treatment on the audio products they peddle; where it used to be his voice there's now some anonymous narrator.



Actually, she went quite a bit further than that. She claimed to have invented her philosophy from whole cloth, with maybe a dash of Aristotle thrown in. And anyone who wrote something remotely along lines similar to hers was automatically and reflexively accused of plagiarism. Of the Church of Rand. This in spite of the fact that there have been philosophers and others advocating some form of "ethical egoism" for hundreds of years prior to Rand.

FWIW, she royally screwed the pooch when she tried this tactic on libertarian Murray Rothbard. Whatever else you could say about Rothbard, he was at least familiar with his sources, as Rand was clearly not. Here's an article (link) that gives a nice summary of what happened and how silly Rand and her followers ultimately came off.

You have a point. The Mistress went off the rails when she assumed the position of Guru and Den Mother of a clan of misfits. Some of her ideas were sound, but she, herself, went astray.

ruveyn

I didn't particularly enjoy reading Atlas Shrugged. It's really drawn out and I kept thinking that she could've conveyed her message in a book that's half as long. I do agree with some of the tenets, but the deification of money was a bit much for me.

Being able to produce and setting your job satisfaction as the ultimate goal in life is all fine and well, but you can't really expect an intellectually limited factory worker stuck in a dead end job to muster up that kind of enthusiasm for what he's condemned to do until his retirement. Rand's side of the argument is only viewed through the eyes of the extremely capable (Dagny, Hank, Galt, etc.) or in one case, the slightly less capable (Eddie Wilders).

That said, I'm not my brother's keeper; I want to actually keep what I earn, and not pay a 35% income tax. I also don't want to fill out a hundred forms every time I get a new client. I'm willing to chip in, but I want less taxes, less bureaucracy and most of all, less government.

By the way, that's a hilarious mistake with the DVD cover.

I guess whoever was in charge of that just decided to slap on one of the production company's standard one-liners that they use for every movie. The imbecile who wrote that should not just be fired, but flogged and tarred and feathered simply for being an idiot.