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Atlas Shrugged movie

Will you go see the Atlas Shrugged movie?

  • Total voters
    37
StillBallin75 said:
There's no such thing as pure capitalism; it is an ideal that doesn't exist in reality. Any capitalist system requires government support to sustain it.
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And thus is the poster's public school origins exposed.

no one said anything about anarchy, dude.

Everyone knows that capitalism requires a functional civil society to operate in. How do you think the concept of property is defined if there's no government?
 
digsbe said:
Can you site an example? The government has enacted anti-monopoly laws to ensure that we have true freedom and not unrestrained capitalism. Under such a system the largest corporation could buy out competition and be the only supplier. The US has anti-monopoly laws to protect competition and prevent monopolies. AT&T was once a massive telecommunications monopoly that was split up due to US monopoly laws.
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Much of the arguments to counter what you post are presented in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

That's another Ayn Rand book you've decided you won't read....
 
StillBallin75 said:
Lachean: I think we're all interested in your take on how there would be no monopolies with a minimalist government. Saying that "no monopoly has existed without gov't support" is not the same as saying that monopolies wouldn't exist in the absence of government. My personal opinion is that anti-trust laws are there for a pretty damn good reason.
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Yes. They exist to ensure the government can coerce a large business when it wants, like when that Janet Barbeque in Waco Reno decided to shake down Microsoft and Bill Gates by abusing the anti-trust laws. All that went away as soon as Gates agreed to establish a left-wing-only charity fund.
 
Mayor Snorkum said:
You should still read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, just so you can see what drives the pinkos crazy.
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Is it the terrible prose, the painful love scenes, or the overwrought plots that drive us pinkos crazy?
 
TheBook said:
This is a strawman. You are attributing an argument to me that I never made.
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You do not desire people to hold the needs of others above their own? You might want to re-read your own posts.

TheBook said:
We are discussing ethics, not economics. Rarely is a productive economic theory entirely ethical. But a quick note, there's no indication that we are better off economically when we only act in our own self-interest, or at the very least none that you have supplied.
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We are discussing ideas, we are discussing whatever we want to discuss, and nothing I mentioned was irrelevant to what it was addressing.

TheBook said:
I really don't know what this is in reference to.
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Under the current system (reality) we all benefit from everyone acting in their own rational self interest because our neighbors take care of their own problems, and they do not become ours.
TheBook said:
As I said, it is unethical for the same reason as racism, even if through the course of it you do something ethically good, you are still doing so for unethical reasons.
Lachean said:
What a blatant contradiction in your logic: ethically bad = unethical
TheBook said:
Call it what you will. Immoral, unethical, etc.

I don't see where I have contradicted myself. Please quote it and explain why it is a contradiction. I have done so in explaining the illogicality of considering racism unethical but Objectivism to be an ethically valid set of ideals.
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Something cannot be both ethically good and unethical. Now please address post #91
 
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digsbe said:
How? Government was the one that stopped it due to reform and changes.
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And the first thing that happened after government fixed everything was the Great Depression, because government is incompetent and wrecking things is what government does best.

Before the governemnt stepped in to save us, the economy ran well. Afterwards it never has.
 
Mayor Snorkum said:
And thus is the poster's public school origins exposed.

no one said anything about anarchy, dude.

Everyone knows that capitalism requires a functional civil society to operate in. How do you think the concept of property is defined if there's no government?
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Apparently his public school education was enough that he managed to craft an argument that went entirely over your head.
 
Mayor Snorkum said:
Yes. They exist to ensure the government can coerce a large business when it wants, like when that Janet Barbeque in Waco Reno decided to shake down Microsoft and Bill Gates by abusing the anti-trust laws. All that went away as soon as Gates agreed to establish a left-wing-only charity fund.
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that's how it happened, huh?
 
Mayor Snorkum said:
It's the realistic renderings of Obama as Wesley Mooch, IMO.
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The politics is not the problem with the book, it is the horrible writing.

By the way, I think it is time to break out the classic chart:

redress-albums-stuffz-picture67113383-34102-607818844220-21903241-36071909-6172366-n.jpg
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Rand purposefully wrote her characters to be romanticized.
That's kind of the point.
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I would say that she wrote the characters as deliberately two-dimensional as possible to emphasize the struggle, just as Achilles in the Iliad had no "tragic flaw" as was common in later literature.

Rand was showing the producers as good, and the looters are scum, which is not reflective of the real world in which many of the corproate elite are sleeping with the enema in government to gain an illegitimate leg up on the comptetition, as GE and GM exemplify.

I don't believe any libertarian fails to recognize this. The book is a morality play, not a historical drama.
 
Redress said:
The politics is not the problem with the book, it is the horrible writing.

By the way, I think it is time to break out the classic chart:

redress-albums-stuffz-picture67113383-34102-607818844220-21903241-36071909-6172366-n.jpg
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If we spot enough to find a bingo, do we get a prize?
 
samsmart said:
How much of Ayn Rand's fiction illustrate how her philosophy treats those who are mentally retarded or suffer from mental disorders such as schizophrenia?
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You mean other than the fact that the people who do not wish the money they earned to go to the support of those defectives should not be forced to pay anyway?

F.T.I.W, dude.
 
Mayor Snorkum said:
I would say that she wrote the characters as deliberately two-dimensional as possible to emphasize the struggle, just as Achilles in the Iliad had no "tragic flaw" as was common in later literature.

Rand was showing the producers as good, and the looters are scum, which is not reflective of the real world in which many of the corproate elite are sleeping with the enema in government to gain an illegitimate leg up on the comptetition, as GE and GM exemplify.

I don't believe any libertarian fails to recognize this. The book is a morality play, not a historical drama.
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You mean Achilles pride and temper where not flaws? Pride in fact is considered one of the "tragic flaws". Now think back on how The Illead started.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Well it depends on how much you personally value treatment for those individuals.
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And this is why I consider her fictional works utopian and thus not applicable to the real world.
 
samsmart said:
And this is why I consider her fictional works utopian and thus not applicable to the real world.
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Yup. Those people HAVE to be taken care of, whether we personally like it or not. Morality demands it.
 
Mayor Snorkum said:
Yes. They exist to ensure the government can coerce a large business when it wants, like when that Janet Barbeque in Waco Reno decided to shake down Microsoft and Bill Gates by abusing the anti-trust laws. All that went away as soon as Gates agreed to establish a left-wing-only charity fund.
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What browser do you use, IE or another one?
 
liberal trolls hijacking threads.
 
Lachean said:
You do not desire people to hold the needs of others above their own? You might want to re-read your own posts.
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I suggest you do so, and point out where I have made this claim.

Lachean said:
We are discussing ideas, we are discussing whatever we want to discuss, and nothing I mentioned was irrelevant to what it was addressing.
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Well... yeah, but it was irrelevant to the discussion. I'm not trying to make the point that Objectivism is flawed economically, just morally.

Lachean said:
Under the current system (reality) we all benefit from everyone acting in their own rational self interest because our neighbors take care of their own problems, and they do not become ours.
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We also benefit from them acting in others' best interest. That's why things like volunteer fire departments exist.

Lachean said:
Something cannot be both ethically good and unethical. Now please address post #91
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A form of ethical conduct can be unethical but still yield ethical results at times. Just as a form of conduct can be ethical but lead to unethical results. My point is there is a difference between motivation and result. If you see a child on the street and decide, for whatever reason, that you want to kill that child; yet when you swerve to hit them you miss and just happen to crash into a car being driven by a serial killer which causes him to be caught and arrested, this does not mean that it is ethically okay to try to run over children, even though in this instance it resulted in an ethically good result (i.e. stopping the serial killer from killing again).
 
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