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Ayn Rand is the L. Ron Hubbard of Politics

Agree of Disagree ...discuss?

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Well, you're acting like she started something. That's not really true. There's just a bunch of people too dim to read actual literature on the subject, and they attribute the Ubermensch to her. I mean, I guess there really are 'Randians' or 'Objectivists' but those are pretty much just HS people, right? I've never met an adult that has bought into Rand to the extent that they would actually describe their political perspective according to her rather boring fiction. Anyone who would should at least have the self respect to cite actual literature; for Pete's sake, The Prince is not a big book.

In summary, I think you're giving her too much credit.
 
PrometheusBound said:
But it's not about uneven distribution, it's about not distributing enough to people with talent. The wage gap that I am most against is the typical distribution where an inventor got a $30,000 bonus and his corporate Masters got $300,000,000 for the patent that wouldn't have existed without him. Just like the workers, the investors were only secondary factors in creating that wealth.
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Corporations that steal, coerce or otherwise take advantage of those who create or invent, are just as despicable as those same corporations that cause wealth transfer from the poor, the middle class and even the moderately wealthy. Corporations have no morals. They are not immoral. They are amoral. Their goal is to make as much money for their stockholders as possible. By whatever means. The countries that these corporations 'live' in cannot sustain themselves for long if this continues. Regulation has everything to do with fairness of opportunity at all levels. The game has been rigged. It needs to stop. Ayn Rand has played a huge role in creating the environment that accepts this behavior that is bad for everyone except the corporations.

The Investor Inferiority objective of homo erectus is achieved if this point is ignored and opposition to Rand is only focused on giving lower-class moochers more of the wealth created by homo sapiens.
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I am not sure what the point of this sentence is?
 
Cephus said:
Knew you were wrong? Yes, I knew that. Upwards of 90% of people going into prison report that they are theists of some sort and the vast majority of those report that they are Christians. Far less than 1% of people going into prison report they are atheists.
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We know, because they don't want to be ostracized. It was mentioned in the study, but again you know this.

The only thing wrong here is your bad attitude and blanket statements.

Cephus said:
And yes, there are tons of open atheists in foxholes.

Seems to me you don't want to admit that religion has problems.
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Sorry that is not tons, lol.

Religion is not the problem, man is the problem. Seems you don't want to lay blame where it needs to be.
 
SeekingWisdom said:
Corporations have no morals. They are not immoral. They are amoral. Their goal is to make as much money for their stockholders as possible. By whatever means.
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What about Green corporations?
 
Dion said:
Ayn Rand simply created a fictitious political ideology of selfishness to create a story around it.

L. Ron Hubbard created a fictional religion to sell.

Both were delusional and narcisisisitic and it is revealed in their writing imo.
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Ayn Rand is probably less horrifying than is L. Ron Hubbard, mostly because the Church of Scientology has institutionalized horrific behavior (both legally and otherwise) whereas Rand officionadoes tend to be individualistic to a fault. They are far less prone to creating institutions that **** up people's lives. They're crazy to be sure, but not nearly as destructive, practically speaking.
 
Aderleth said:
Ayn Rand is probably less horrifying than is L. Ron Hubbard, mostly because the Church of Scientology has institutionalized horrific behavior (both legally and otherwise) whereas Rand officionadoes tend to be individualistic to a fault. They are far less prone to creating institutions that **** up people's lives. They're crazy to be sure, but not nearly as destructive, practically speaking.
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And the best thing is every time another early twenty-something picks up their first copy of Atlas Shrugged you can just block them on Facebook until they finally shut up, and unlike Scientology that really only takes about a year.
 
Matt Foley said:
Yes, before Christianity stealing, rape and murder were not only legal but common. In fact it took either conversion or puppet governments lead by and only by Christians to stop it.
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Source?

...
 
Matt Foley said:
Yes, before Christianity stealing, rape and murder were not only legal but common. In fact it took either conversion or puppet governments lead by and only by Christians to stop it.
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Holy ****. Do you actually believe that? Seriously?
 
Aderleth said:
Holy ****. Do you actually believe that? Seriously?
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Probably. He reminds me of another poster who claimed that the fall of the Roman Empire was due to rising secularism. He was promptly beaten by a mob of angry historians.

Actually, I wonder if that was Matt Foley as well.

Edit: no, that was Amigo. Still, it was pretty funny.
 
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Yes, before Christianity stealing, rape and murder were not only legal but common. In fact it took either conversion or puppet governments lead by and only by Christians to stop it.

Aderleth said:
Holy ****. Do you actually believe that? Seriously?
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That's exactly how it was.
 
Matt Foley said:
Medieval Sourcebook: Tacitus: Germania
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Relevant part of your source?

See, it's about Germania during the Roman period and not about law in the history of civilization, and the words theft, murder, rape, and Christ or Christian are curiously absent in a source that's supposed to convince me that before Christians came along theft, rape and murder were legal and common. So you'll pardon me if I have my doubts.
 
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haymarket said:
In the last episode of the great series QUANTAM LEAP, the bartender explains to Sam that sometimes the best explanation is "thats just the way it is".

I cannot improve upon that wisdom. But here is an attempt.

A faux political philosophy based on personal selfishness and the justification for its meaner impulses is not a good thing when you live in a society with other people. Cooperation and mutual interest is necessary for civilization to flourish . Rand is the antithesis of such concepts.
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See, posting something constructive wasnt so hard.
 
Cardinal said:
Relevant part of your source?

See, it's about Germania during the Roman period and not about law in the history of civilization, and the words theft, murder, rape, and Christ or Christian are curiously absent in a source that's supposed to convince me that before Christians came along theft, rape and murder were legal and common. So you'll pardon me if I have my doubts.
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You never read it. See this is why it's pointless to argue with leftists, we should just kill leftists instead.
 
Matt Foley said:
You never read it.
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You tried to waste my time with a thirty page thesis that had nothing to do with the topic, I didn't fall for it, get over it.

Matt Foley said:
See this is why it's pointless to argue with leftists, we should just kill leftists instead.
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What a perfectly rational response.

Anyway, for anyone else who's curious, the earliest written set of laws still in existence is the Code of Ur-Nammu, dated from around 2100 BC.

The first two laws are


  • 1. If a man commits a murder, that man must be killed.
  • 2. If a man commits a robbery, he will be killed.

And then on rape:

6. If a man violates the right of another and deflowers the virgin wife of a young man, they shall kill that male.

And not surprisingly, a tad more lenient for the rape of a slave girl (but still illegal):

8. If a man proceeded by force, and deflowered the virgin female slave of another man, that man must pay five shekels of silver.

Code of Ur-Nammu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So murder, rape and theft, all illegal, 2100 years before Christ. Of course looking this up was purely a formality as any thinking person can tell you that you can't have a functioning city-state with everybody willy-nilly killing, raping and stealing from each other. It just wouldn't work at all. You don't need religion, let alone a religion 4000 years well past the founding of city-state civilization, to figure that out. In fact, I would be surprised if you went back to tribal days and didn't find rules condemning those acts just as strongly (if not worse), though there might at that point be differing philosophies on the concept of property.
 
Dion said:
Ayn Rand simply created a fictitious political ideology of selfishness to create a story around it.

L. Ron Hubbard created a fictional religion to sell.

Both were delusional and narcisisisitic and it is revealed in their writing imo.
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You nailed it. She was a crackpot. I can't believe anyone thinks we should base public policy on her bizarre thinking. I have read Anthem. I will say it's a quality work of fiction. That's fiction, as in engaging story.
 
Luna Tick said:
You nailed it. She was a crackpot. I can't believe anyone thinks we should base public policy on her bizarre thinking. I have read Anthem. I will say it's a quality work of fiction. That's fiction, as in engaging story.
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Is it your position that fiction has no relation to reality? No 'moral to the story?'
 
jonny5 said:
Is it your position that fiction has no relation to reality? No 'moral to the story?'
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Sometimes it does. Sometimes it's just entertainment. Sometimes it can be entertaining without agreeing with the message.

Edit:
As an example: I'd bet you might enjoy the plays of Gerhart Hauptmann, which are very well written with snappy dialogue and fun to watch with plots that build. Their themes are socialistic in nature. Bet you'd disagree with that part, but enjoy the shows nonetheless.
 
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jonny5 said:
Is it your position that fiction has no relation to reality? No 'moral to the story?'
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Just because a story has a moral doesn't mean that moral has any bearing on reality.
 
haymarket said:
Always have.
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"Ayn Rand was a joke. Her faux ideology is worse than a joke. Todays randroids would have to multiply their teeny tiny numbers by a factor of at least ten to work UP to the level of a joke."

Always? Oh, I guess you think this is constructive, and not just rhetoric and insults.
 
Cephus said:
Just because a story has a moral doesn't mean that moral has any bearing on reality.
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By definition I think it does. But I was simply rebutting Lunas implication that fiction has no relation to reality, which has since been cleared up. Simply because Rand expressed her philosophy in fiction (common among philosophers) does not automatically dismiss it. The very fact that it is a huge topic for debate confirms the opposite. I would say the same of Hubbard, though my personal opinion is that his motive was power, not truth.
 
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