The Influence of Ayn Rand on American Society...

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There are times when individuals can only gain rights or privileges, or improve their standard of living as individuals, by banding together as a group. Individual employees have virtually no power to change their terms of employment when arguing with a large employer, who can easily replace them or load their work onto others if they quit. Only by banding together can the playing field be leveled. Likewise, large public works (interstate highway systems, Great Walls, etc) can only be accomplished by the coordinated work of many.

Usually when I use the term 'in general,' I mean 'mostly' or 'most of the time.' For example, 'In general, humans are smarter than pigeons,' is an accurate statement, but does not apply to all humans.

1)slippery slope argument. It's about as accurate as when anti-libertarians such as myself cite Somalia as a paragon of libertarian philosophy applied to the real world.
2)there are times when the rights of two or more individuals are in conflict, and not everyone's rights can be upheld. In that situation, it is proper to apply the utilitarian principle.

Ayn Rand was a terrible person, and her followers are even worse.

Actually, most people whom I have known, that are motivated primarily by Machiavellian greed, have been starkly unimaginative.

Generally, a person who has something substantive to contribute to society has a vision and is willing to steamroll anything in his/her path in order to fulfill that vision. Steve Jobs didn't value wealth for his own sake, and he lived in a residence that, although it was nice, was something that anyone with median income could have. He didn't live like a billionaire, but he devoted every resource he had to achieving his vision for the world. He devoted everything to remaking the world into his own image. All that went to his own comfort are luxuries that most people could theoretically have if they lived frugally and saved.

There may be rich men who are motivated mostly by greed, but the majority of them don't really contribute anything new to society. They might be able to sense when an upstart corporation is most likely going to create a new market of some substitute good, but they're as likely to shut down an innovation, in order to destroy a rival substitute that risks their dominance, as invest in it and make it worthwhile. Most of the time, they do something in-between, and you end up with a hobbled and castrated version of their former threat.

No, I don't think that unadulterated greed is a source of creativity, and if anything, I think that an excess of greed, where greed has a purely self-serving role, can undermine the imagination. Where greed serves the role of fulfilling the vision, then it has meaning and use.

There's sort of an implied straw man here. Free enterprise is not about everybody building his own shack in the woods and living in isolation from everybody else. It is about voluntary cooperation for mutual benefit. Workers have the right to organize, but not to coerce others nor to seize or damage others' property.



If they truly benefit all – which roads do, and the Great Wall probably did not – they can be accomplished without coercion.



I could be mistaken but I believe the intention was to allude to the Constitution. When the Framers stated that certain powers would be granted the government in order to further the "general welfare" they did indeed mean the welfare of all. They would have been horrified by the notion that some individuals must be sacrificed in order to benefit the collective.



Sometimes a slippery slope argument is correct. The last century saw a parade of regimes which committed wholesale slaughter in the name of the People or the Volk or some other alleged "greater good". Since principles do matter, it would behoove anyone who espouses similar principles to explain exactly what would prevent his ideas from leading to similar results.



Somalia might or might not be a good example depending on the stated principles of the person you're talking to. Since I'm not an anarchist and Somalia has never had a government which defended individual rights, it has nothing to do with me. (I don't self-identify as "libertarian," either, unless it's in the widest possible sense as the alternative to "statist.")




One man's rights are delimited by everybody else's. Sometimes honest men can disagree, and it is necessary to bring in the law to determine where the line should be drawn between your right to swing your arm and my right not to be harmed or menaced by someone's arm-swinging. This does not mean that our rights clash, or conflict, or cancel each other out. I don't believe it's ever proper to throw out the principle of rights. Law without rights is arbitrary at best, despotic at worst.

It's great to talk about individualism, but the truth is the individual is impotent. It's only when we join together for common cause that we have power.

It would be pretty bad for me if I had to fix the plumbing, my car, and write my own books so I had something to read!

Whoa, give Rand herself a break. I think she meant well. Her followers, though, I agree with you on.

I am not so sure that she did mean well, though her interpretation of that would probably be different from mine. It has always concerned me what a (theoretical) Randian culture would mean for the unproductive - the elderly retired, children with disabilities, adults with brain damaging head injuries, adults who for some reason or other could not personify her ideals. In her world, would they simply be consigned to the rubbish tip? And anyone who didn't share that philosophy - off to the gulag?

Ok, I'm going to weigh in here.

Ayn Rand is one of those bad events that you have to have. She does highlight individuality, and not following the rest like lemmings, but she does it with an unapologetic totally selfish model. To her, any other way is a compromise of personal integrity. She's like the college debate you have, where you know instinctively that the protagonist is wrong, but through her arguments you still gain something of intrinsic value. I'm glad we have Ayn Rand's works. She is an example of how you sometimes need to exaggerate something to make a point.

Well, she didn't necessarily object to helping the poor, but she objected to the idea that the poor were inherently entitled to being helped.

However, I don't think that people are inherently entitled to their wealth being protected by others. If someone wants to pull the keys from your hand and drive off with your car, are you going to come to me asking that I go chasing after that person? How are you entitled to such an extraordinary service? How are you entitled to me risking my life for your perceived "right to property"?

If I am walking through an area, how are you entitled for me to walk several extra steps to skirt around your property line? What gives you such magnificent entitlement? If you come down the road in a golden chariot pulled by a team of white horses, then, am I also obligated to step aside and bow as you go by? Fool. I do not acknowledge your entitlement to any sort of real estate at all.

Furthermore, if a bunch of squatters were to decide to set up an encampment in your back yard, you deal with them. I'm not going to mess with them. It ain't my watch-out. If you ask nicely, I'll lend you some ammo to shoot them with, but you'd better hope you're a better shot and a quicker draw.

A bunch of squatters drove you off of your own land at gunpoint, you say? I bet you think you're entitled for me to risk my neck helping you clear them out, right? Hahaha! Don't bother me!

Essentially, Ayn Rand was ready to object to one form of entitlement, but she was very much attached to others. The flaw in her thinking was that it was incomplete. If you applied her principle of rejecting entitlement very completely, it is clear that you would find your society in a state of anarchy.

Her attachment to certain forms of entitlement showed in The Fountainhead. Her hero created ugly architecture, yet because it appealed to his value-system, she felt he was entitled for the "dirty mob" of humanity to gasp in awe over his magnificent accomplishment, regardless of whether or not it was compatible with their aesthetics. In her eyes, they were all obligated to fall worshipfully at his feet and tell him how glamorous and brilliant he was. She was not willing to let go of that particular entitlement.

In the end, we have duty. We have a duty to respect the property of our fellow man. We have a duty to give our fellow man compensation for services rendered. We have a duty to make sure that our fellow man has enough to eat. We have a duty to serve in the defense of our nation. We have a duty to proactively support the freedom of speech of individuals whom we disagree with or even find offensive. In the end, civilization is a deeply interwoven network of rights and duties, none of which are inherent but all of which are accepted as part of a social contract that has slowly evolved over time, in accordance with need and circumstance. Although it is continually renegotiated, it is what distinguishes civilization from savagery.

Ninety-nine percent of attacks on Ayn Rand and Objectivism include some kind of straw man. You two have gone beyond straw man into bizarro fantasy. None of the above bears the slightest resemblance to Rand's ideas.

Money is one incentive, it's not the best one.

I wonder what Ayn Rand would say if she could see the world of today.

She was such an admirer of creativity, innovation and hard work, so how would she react to the way the financial sector has gone out of control ?

Where greed and deregulation has created a class of unproductive looters, essentially taxing and stifling the real productive economic through debt slavery. Governments, businesses and families alike.
I really think she would revise some of her opinions, clearly this was not wat she had in mind.

I read the Fountainhead and I find her writing and ideas very intelligent and entertaining although I disagree with many of her views.

Interesting fact: she was a long term amphetamine user just like Hitler.

I can't speak for her of course, but many libertarians blame the government at least in part for the financial mess. The bailouts would not have happened in a Randian society so the bad bankers would be allowed to fail (go broke) and ultimately be replaced by the financial people who actually invest in useful stuff. Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac invested heavily in the crappy subprime mortgages, and they were government banks, which of course would not exist in a Randian society. And in many countries there are (or were) tax breaks for getting a mortgage, which would horrify libertarians.
I am not an Objectivist in any way, but you can't pin government-sponsored housing bubbles on them.

There are many dark parts of culture today, but there is greater opportunity for FULL creativity, INNOVATION and HARD WORK for the common man in art; particularly, per online avenues of CREATION activity like YouTube, where almost anyone with TRUE INNATE TALENT, no matter how isolated or poor they are, can be a human STAR of talent once they BREAK THROUGH to others in the 'herd'.

I'm sure Ms. Rand would be proud of folks, like 'PSY', who have gained over 2 Billion views on YouTube doing whatever the hell he wants, even in South Korea.

There was also a historical man viewed, as the MOST WICKED man to ever walk the earth, Aleister Crowley, who still inspires similar human liberty in the greatest art OF GOD AKA Mother Nature TRUE that is human.

Yes, sometimes it takes a zealous view to get a point across to the 'deaf and dumb' sheep among us.

And in every dark there is at least some light possible, even with the negative parts of Ms. Rand's life philosophy that was simply separated from the greatest of human evolved potential both in classical evolution and change per culture in Empathy and Unconditional Love.

That's the part of GREATEST OF POTENTIAL IN HUMAN NATURE she FAILS in life, yes, miserably, and most likely why she turned to drugs, as materialistic goods alone can never fill the heart, or even sex, or excitement for that matter.

And that is only the science of the mind per the state of the art of science that tells us NOW THAT, as Oxytocin can be extinguished by a heart that IS never TRULY NURTURED AND LOVED in childhood, or a heart that dies later in life through repression or oppression of the nature of HUMAN EMPATHY that ALLOWS human being TO POTENTIALLY have the 'STRENGTH OF 10 GRINCHES' OR MS. RAND without amphetamines, simply high on Love and LIFE, THE greatest 'human opiate' and 'STEROID' of strength.

And yes, I can PROVE WITH IRREFUTABLE SCIENTIFIC DOCUMENTED EVIDENCE that this LOVE EXISTS and WORKS LIKE THIS.

SOME FOLKS call IT GOD PER THE interrelationship of ALL THAT IS, as WELL.

AND IF MS. Rand lived IT her life could have been TRULY HUMANLY SUCCESSFUL, in all of what Human life CAN potentially BE.

But JUST in MY opinion, of course. :)

So now, not only does Atlas Shrug, AT LAST, ATLAS, LOVES AS WELL, IN ALL OF WHAT HUMAN CAN BE IN a WIRED HIVE OF HUMAN CREATIVITY AND Unconditional LOVE, per THE INTERRELATIONSHIP OF ALL THAT IS aka GOD :)



YES, IN THE full scope of HUMAN life, PER TRUE LIBERTY AND FREEDOM, Ariana's philosophy of life, TOO, WORKS MORE FULLY THAN Ayn's, for those FOLKS who can see more than SKIN DEEP. ;)

Yes, it's probably true that such irrational, illogical, unreal nonsense could not have come into existence through pure deregulation. And the problem is extremely powerful groups influencing law-makers with their irrational self-interest.

Do Ayn Rand and libertarians have a suggestion as to how to keep the minimal government objective and incorrupt ?