The problem with Rand's extreme individualism is that humans are social beings by nature. People seldom think of themselves as islands...without any relations that share a mutual altruism.
That was all standard trash culture stereotype at the time, blended right in with the Hollywood movies and pulp fiction - invisible. What stood out was their independence, the way they did not suffer horrible consequences or deep regrets from leaving their kitchens to run corporations, putting themselves in the way of being raped more or less willingly, flouting the rules.
A free introduction to Dr. Chomsky - an interview just after September 11, 2001. http://www.counterpunch.org/chomskyintv.html
What she describes as the epitome of her philosophy are the words she got from a serial child killer who said "What's good for me is right." This is her "morality of selfishness". My philosophy is that "What produces the highest good for the sentient is good." Her politics are as bad as her morals. I consider the end point of her philosophy to be a plutocracy - rule by the rich with contempt for the poor. They are an evil cult and they are successfully infecting this country with their evil dogmas just as the intelligensia of Germany became infected with Nazi ideals of "Uberman" in the years before Hitler. Hitler came to power by recognizing that he so fit the intellectual and thus popular ideology of the day. The stage was set. So Randians have been setting the stage for the Teabaggers and they are in a huge power grab. They do not want the US to be place of liberty, equality and brotherhood, they want to be rich and for the rich to rule.
I don't remember ever having read their stuff, but I've read that Ayn Rand's characters tend to be one-dimensional. I might read her just to see what all the controversy is about.
I'm not. The idea is kissing and hugging people sickens me, which is why I never do it. I also don't care much for emotions.
While I admire Chomsky for his writings relating to linguistics, his political views are nonsensical & his bias against Ayn Rand is evidence of his losing perspective due to their extreme differences in world view. Until circa 1950, the academic establishment in the USA was definitely socialist in POV, with many professing to be communist. Very few admitted to being atheists. I used to wonder how many who claimed to be agnostic were actually cowardly atheists. In that era, Ayn Rand was a pariah: Both atheist & anti-communism/socialism. However, other than Chomsky, I knew of none who considered her intellectually shallow. Consider the following. She came to the USA circa 1926 & and in about a year, she was a Hollywood script writer. Impressive for a person whose native language was not English. She sold her first screenplay (Red Pawn) to Universal Pictures in 1932. About that time her stage play (Night of January 16th) was produced in Hollywood & later on Broadway. This play was (I think) the first to have 12 members of the audience chosen to be jurors. The play had two endings, depending on the verdict. She had her first novel (We the Living) published in 1936. It was semi-autobiographical, suggestive of the life she might have lived had she stayed in Russia. From a biography: The above (not an exhaustive summary) indicates that she could not be viewed as intellectually shallow. It is interesting to note that many advocates of communism have come to realize that the USSR was the logical consequence of communism, not a perversion of it. The basic principle of communism is the following. As pointed out by Ayn Rand & others, this is a promise to cheat the best & the brightness & reward whose who are good at whining. Only a totalitarian regime can enforce such a principle. Ayn Rand (among others) predicted the collapse of the USSR due to a brain drain & the lack of individual initiative. Once realizing that communist/socialist principles lead to totalitarianism, the believers have started trying to sell Libertarian socialism/communism. This is socialism/communism in a framework of anarchy. Lots of luck creating & maintaining that type of system. BTW: I noticed a few posters putting Ayn Rand down for being unattractive. Ad hominem attack? When she was younger, she was not a beauty but would not be considered unattractive. I admired Churchill & Montgomery who said (circa 1945): Unlike politically naive Americans, the British recognized the USSR as a potential enemy.
Clearly you never read Atlas Shrugged. She explicitly states that harming another human is morally wrong. Was Rand a big supporter of global war led by psychopaths???
It is interesting that this forum has Science in its name then for this thread all the arguments are attacks on Rand's person not her argument. Chomsky has a contradiction as his core of Libertarian Socialism: Socializing Means of Production is a coercion. Say you make a widget in your home and trade value for value (maybe love, friendship, or another widget) and your cottage industry grows in Chomsky's World. Well, the State will come along to commandeer your means of production for the State saying such and such scale cannot be private. Is that not a breech on personal liberty and contradiction?
Imagine for a moment you have lived through Nazi Germany as a member of a politically outcast family that was sent to the deathcamps, after surviving that you are openly against anything nazi, one day your hear about a campaign to end smoking and you say "the Nazis were against smoking, therefor smoking is great, everyone should smoke, fuck the nazis!" That basically Ayn Rand in a metaphor. Rand having escaped the rise of socialism developed a deep hate for socialism, all the way down to a complete rejection of altruism and utilitarianism. To Rand it is the moral right of every person to do what ever they want that is best for themselves, fuck everyone else! If you get rich and powerful at the expense of other so be it anything else would be an inhibition on your individual freedom (the freedom of those you may or may not be oppressing by optimizing your own freedom is irrelevant). This begs the question: should everyone be happy (utility) or should everyone be free, free meaning free to 'curb stump' others economically, politically or even literally? If your forced to pay taxes to support social welfare programs that certainly curtailing your freedom, if instead you did not have to pay said taxes your much freer, the poor people aren't, but fuck them. Though Rand would not use those exact words that the outcome of her philosophy.
The Japanese tried to communicate through Stalin that Japan would surrender under terms to avoid longer war. Stalin did not pass on the info and the US then later dropped 2 nukes on Japan.
What you describe was created with the government's blessing and then bailout out by the government. That is laissez-faire???
The difference is India is backwater that has never progressed so the global hit did not do much more than it is already used to with daily blackouts outside the Potemkin Villages.
Rand never painted that picture. Did you read Atlas Shrugged? What was the relationship between Anconia and Rearden?
Either you never read AS or your reading level does not allow you to understand it. Rand was against government intervention and that's includes bailouts which are referred to in the book as socializing losses while privatizing gains.
Bullshit. So you describe the academic establishment in the US as claiming to be strong Judeo-Christian believers and claiming to be socialist or communist, at the same time? I have never met or read a serious intellectual who regarded Ayn Rand as a serious contributor to their own field. You can find lots of economists who regard her as a serious political theoretician (we had one running the Fed for 25 years), some political theoreticians who regard her as having insight into economics, a few of various types who think she was a good novelist, some literary types who think she was a decent philosopher or economist, and so forth. But not in their own fields. Chomsky's arena was just a bit more inclusive of Rand's than most, is all. He was also one of the few who noticed that she could do some serious damage if not countered - that she had influence far beyond her intellectual worth, that depended on an illusion of such worth. So give him credit for that - as we dig ourselves out of the mess he warned us her influence could make. And as not noticed by Ayn Rand, who was wrong about so much else as well, that is not a governing principle but rather a criterion for system evaluation. And as such it is not really controversial - surely you wouldn't want a setup that denied ability and failed to meet needs, eh? The reason it is often presented as favoring "communism" or the like is that the advocates of such systems often want to claim their system rates highly on that criterion. And if you see somebody taking that as a guide for coercion - attempting to force the desired consequences from a system not delivering as planned, or seeing a threat of coercion in the public acknowledgment that current systems are failing to meet that criterion - you are looking at an authoritarian. It takes an authoritarian mindset to see that as a justification for tyranny. The bailout was the traditional result of such behavior by capitalists, when the free market bubbleorgy implodes and everybody is staring into the abyss of consequences. I did not describe that. Yes, that zoo scene up to the bailout was created with the government's blessing and without governmental interference. Yes, that is "laissez faire". That's what laissez faire means.
Very few who diss Ayn Rand have read her works. Those who still diss her views after reading her works did not understand them. Does anyone posting here realize that from circa 1750 to circa 1910, the USA & I suppose Western Europe was essentially a laissez faire system? That system produced the magnificent USA economic engine which raised the standard of living of the typical factory & farm worker to a wonderful level. I have reprints of Sears Roebuck catalogs from 1897 & 1909. The items available to a typical worker are remarkable. This catalog was not addressed to the so called carriage trade who had servants, tailors/seamstresses, & shopped at major department stores. It indicates that the typical worker could afford a piano & many other major items. That catalog indicates a standard of living far beyond that of circa 1750-1800 & shows that laissez faire capitalism without major unions did a good job for the average person. BTW: The so called robber barons did a good job of providing goods & services to the typical citizen. For example: Rockefeller made the price of kerosene very low. It was widely used in the late 1800's for both heat & light. He might have been ruthless toward competitors, but he treated his customers & employees well. Note that in the laissez faire era, the so called robber barons had to satisfy customers by producing goods/services at reasonable prices & there was very little Pay to Play dealings with politicians. Note also that labor unions had little to do with the increase in wages from the 1800's to the mid 20th century. It was increased productivity which resulted in raising wages. The first successful strike in the USA was by printing industry workers in Philadelphia. It was successful because the industry was successful & could easier afford higher wages than loss of income during the strike. Unions became successful in good times, they were not responsible for the good times. The beginning of the end of laissez faire was the 1913 amendment to the constitution allowing for an income tax. Prior to the income tax, the federal government was supported by tariffs on imported goods (not really a good idea) & taxes on such items as booze. The income tax allowed the federal government to become very powerful, which has become a bad idea. The amendment was passed along with a bill that taxed income over $25,000 at a rate of circa 3-5%. Voters (& perhaps many members of congress/senate) did not realize that once the amendment passed, the details of the bill could be changed dramatically. At that time a factory worker made $3-5 per day. The general attitude of voters was something like I did not know anybody other than large corporations made $25,000 & how much could 3-5% hurt them? Since then, the numbers have changed dramatically. The late 20th & early 21st century era is the first in which the younger workers were worse off than their parents. This is due to the economic engine mentioned above starting to run out of steam due to government overhead/regulations & concessions to labor unions in good times not being reduced in bad times. BTW: In a recent economic downturn in Europe, some German unions agreed to an overall 10% cut in pay rather than a layoff of perhaps 10% of the workers. It is interesting to note that by the mid 20th century, the USA labor leader became more like a politician motivated primarily to win the next election. A leader had to worry about being accused of selling out to employers when the next election was in view.
So? Most of that time was filled with slavery, child welfare, no worker rights... what is your point? What you need to do is ask the causes of something not what it correlates with, for example that period as well as up tell now has been filled with experiential technological improvements, I could very well assume that is the cause of high living standards and social progress, not laissez faire capitalism. The cotton gin, wheat thrasher, tractors, ammonia fertilizer, high yield intensive breed corps, these things allowed the American worker to move from the farm to the factory and increase their standard of living. Without those technologies no economic system imaginable could have moved even a simple majority of people out of agriculture and spending most of their time simply trying to make food to survive. In 1800 we had 70% of the work force (including slaves) in agriculture, today its 2%, no economic system made that transition possible, all the different economic systems that had come before over the eons cause no change in the ratio of workers need per mass of food only technology did that, and only technology allows us to even contemplate and argue about different economic systems today, if not we would still be stuck in dark age feudalism. I guess when you assume average person is a white, land owning, man. During that time 10-15% of the population were slaves that could not legal own anything, let alone a piano, of that only 25% of the white people were rich enough to own a slave. Yeah like sell opium and snake oil! Corruption during those times was horrific to the point of demanding the right to enslave people Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! yeah because defeating the nazis, landing on the moon, creating social security, the internet, (trying to) create universal healthcare, are "really bad" things. Big goverment is only as bad as people let it be, Scandinavian countries prove this point. The idea that one economic philosophy is a cure all is pure stupidity, your entire argument is based on the false premise that what worked before (or was imagined to be working) will work again and onward forever. What is needed is pragmatism, mix markets, highly regulated governments with term limits and multiple competitive parties, what is needed is utilitarianism, at least within goverment, Unlike Ayn Rand belief in moral selfishness, politicians with her philosophical outlook could be nothing else but corrupt fat cats.
