Interesting article on Ayn Rand

[Kaylee]

<snip>

... one of her proteges, Alan Greenspan, became Federal Reserve Chairman, he neglects to mention that he repeatedly broke from her philosophy in his tenure, actively manipulating and regulating markets

Did Any Rand have a different reputation in the 1980s? Or perhaps it was not well known at the time that Alan Greenspan had been an Ayn Rand acolyte? Can you imagine the Senate approving the appointment of a nominee who had publicly supported and admired an author of a book titled The Virtue of Selfishness to the Chair of the United States Federal Reserve Board today? Reagan was a very skilled politician but I'm still surprised that an Ayn Rand disciple was able to advance to such a powerful mainstream position.

Compare that to when a few years later Clinton tried to appoint a judge to the Supreme Court. IIRC, her nomination was lost in a storm of two-minute soundbytes about a paper she had written years ago while she was still a student. Topic of the paper? IIRC, exploration of an alternative voting system.

Any thoughts, comments about this?

 

[easycruise]

Among the Neanderthalers and Homo habilis?

Being human means taking care of each other. Taking care of each other fitted our ancestors to survival. Selfish people unable to understand that they need the collective and are thus obligated to take care of the collective as well as their own egoistical butts are not fit to survive.

The blithering sociopath's opinions to not stand the test of a million years worth of fossils of disabled people who were nurtured by the collective.

And what happened to the Neanderthals? As humans, did we nurture them and take care of them? No, WE ATE THEM. literally! That's the fossil record you are talking about? Ha!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ow-Neanderthals-met-grisly-end--ate-them.html

 

[Skeptic]

But if you lie to others or put out a false front, you will 1) Likely be stressed and unhappy and 2) Likely be caught.

Oh really?

 

[leftysergeant]

And what happened to the Neanderthals? As humans, did we nurture them and take care of them? No, WE ATE THEM. literally! That's the fossil record you are talking about? Ha!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ow-Neanderthals-met-grisly-end--ate-them.html

If you are white, you are descended from Neanderthalers.

There are humans living even today who eart their family members when they croak.

 

[easycruise]

mhaze, your link in your tagline "climate acronyms", is a dead link. You should replace it with this link...

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/11/17...homework-100-things-blamed-on-global-warming/

Happy to help.

 

[mhaze]

mhaze, your link in your tagline "climate acronyms", is a dead link. You should replace it with this link...

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/11/17...homework-100-things-blamed-on-global-warming/

Happy to help.

Oh, that's a good one from a stand up guy.

But I won't, need a list of all those unintelligable bs words that climate fanatics have filled their small brains up with. Have to make it up, no problem.

 

[Earthborn]

You are saying there was no heirarchy among the tribes? No old and wise shaman, elderly witch doctor, gray haired medicine man, long time leader of the pack?

Of course there was hierarchy, but calling the leader of a pack "rich aristocracy" is overstating it. Also: the top in a hierarchy (whether rich aristocracy or grey haired medicine man) didn't become the top of the hierarchy by "taking care of themselves" but by being cared for by others. You don't become king by caring only for yourself, you become king by convincing others to be your servants. No doubt those who survived with severe disabilities were people high enough in the hierarchy of their society that people valued them enough to keep them around.

You fail to realize that the "typical Randian hero" was a self-sufficient person who paid workers an agreed upon wage to help achieve his success.

If a person has others helping achieve his/her success, then by definition that person is not self-sufficient.

 

[mhaze]

Did Any Rand have a different reputation in the 1980s? Or perhaps it was not well known at the time that Alan Greenspan had been an Ayn Rand acolyte? Can you imagine the Senate approving the appointment of a nominee who had publicly supported and admired an author of a book titled The Virtue of Selfishness to the Chair of the United States Federal Reserve Board today? Reagan was a very skilled politician but I'm still surprised that an Ayn Rand disciple was able to advance to such a powerful mainstream position.

Compare that to when a few years later Clinton tried to appoint a judge to the Supreme Court. IIRC, her nomination was lost in a storm of two-minute soundbytes about a paper she had written years ago while she was still a student. Topic of the paper? IIRC, exploration of an alternative voting system.

Any thoughts, comments about this?

Could you be confusing partisian politics with actual capability assessments? Look who Obaby has been appointing to Fed Chairman NY Branch --

Dennis Hughes, president of AFL/CIO.

Little problem there?

So your argument appears to assume that Rand's position was radical, or that those who admired her work might be radical.

It's quite a bit more likely (as evidenced in this thread) that Rand was targeted as an enemy by progressives, and smear tactics and lies disseminated regarding her. I say this because this thread seems to illustrate a rather appalling ignorance and misunderstanding of her concepts.

The actual radicals are those who would even consider it remotely acceptable for a Union boss to move into a Fed Chair, let alone consider it a positive and a preferred step forward.

The actual radicals are at this time, in the White House.

 

[mhaze]

...If a person has others helping achieve his/her success, then by definition that person is not self-sufficient.

Splitting hairs is easy in grammar, but in real life quite hard. Try it sometime. You'll find that you split far fewer than you think you have, and that basically, it was an exercise in futility.

Clearly, there is a difference between a bum who panhandles, a person resigned to a life on the dole, a person working for the government, and someone in the private sector who creates 500 jobs.

The Rand hero character does create and sustain large organizations, and thus are responsible for sizable industry segments, the loss of which to society would not be a minor issue. An example of such a character moving distinctly away from self sufficiency would be if he agreed to collectivist or government control, or regulation, or outright ownership and takings, which would put his business at the mercy of the regulators, or other collectivist forces.

When he owns something at the discretion of the state, he no longer owns it. Yet when he acts strictly on self interest, he is denigrated and urged to "work for the common good". Yet this implies that private property, and the concept of ownership itself, become superficial whims of the State, permitted when and to what extent it benefits the State, instead of being an individual right.

Such is the apparent paradox, within which a concept such as "self sufficiency" may be viewed and discussed. But as Rand would say, no paradox ever exists, if it appears to, then on examination one or several of the premises will be found to be wrong.

 

[mhaze]

If you are white, you are descended from Neanderthalers.

There are humans living even today who eart their family members when they croak.

But I got better barbecue sauce than they did, because of a long history of enterprising Capitalists striving to make their fortune through a better, tastier product, and through innovation in distribution, and marketing.

And I'm ready with that sauce. And nowhere on this planet, in any Socialist or Communist country, will it be claimed that their government permitted and state produced sauce is better. Their coveted and treasured trade goods are from the West, those which trickle in through primitive barter, and illegal markets.

And let me qualify my statements, and show you their meaning. By direct lineage, I am descended from Druids, who were cannibals, and so repulsive and offensive to the civilized, that first the Romans attempted to exterminate them, and then later, the Catholics, if they did not submit.

Sauce then, I should be quite qualified to discuss.

 

[leftysergeant]

You are saying there was no heirarchy among the tribes? No old and wise shaman, elderly witch doctor, gray haired medicine man, long time leader of the pack?

You get to be the leader by being either really smart or a real badass. You scare people into submission or show them that you know how to make life better for everybody.

That European Neanderthal with a face so smashed up that he couldn't possibly see straight hardly got what he had by being a badass.

But you miss the point that there just was not a surplus of resources that would support a non-productive elite. Now I can understand your belief in the Ukranain whacktard. Your world view is just as simplistic as hers.

Still waiting for that evidence. Might you be showing it anytime soon? You are basing your claim on existence and location of piles of bones?

Show me a skeleton of any hominid from the Ice Ages that did not display some disability or healed severe injury. The Neanderthal type specimen was a geriatic arthritis sufferer.

Yea, do tell about how Hitler "took care of" and "nurtured" the Jews. And please explain the liberal left's predilection for abortion and partial birth abortion. Gotta love how the lefties these days "take care of" and "nurture" their young.

What has Hitler to do with the left? Hitler had a lot more in common with Rand than with me. Hitler had no clue what it means to be human. His philosophy of "Dasein ohne Leben" marks him as lower than any Neanderthal.

You clearly haven't read Rand's books.

After damaging my brain reading "Anthem," it became clear to me that she was the moron that her interviews showed her to be. I have little enough time toread worthwhile authors to waste my time with a couple thousand pages of her drooling nonsense. Her style sucks.

 

[Earthborn]

The Rand hero character does create and sustain large organizations, and thus are responsible for sizable industry segments,

And as stated, they don't do it all by themselves. They have a lot of people helping them. That is the opposite of self-sufficiency; the more people they hire to do create their wealth, the more they become dependent on those people.

An example of such a character moving distinctly away from self sufficiency would be if he agreed to collectivist or government control,

If such a character were to move toward greater self sufficiency, s/he would go live alone in the wilderness and hunt and gather his/her own food. But instead s/he has chosen to climb the societal pyramid where the higher you go, the more people are working to support you.

When he owns something at the discretion of the state, he no longer owns it.

If that is the case, then he has never owned anything and cannot.

Yet this implies that private property, and the concept of ownership itself, become superficial whims of the State, permitted when and to what extent it benefits the State, instead of being an individual right.

That's all "the concept of ownership" ever was, and all it will ever be. It is just that treating it as if it is an individual right has benefited the state quite well.

But as Rand would say, no paradox ever exists, if it appears to, then on examination one or several of the premises will be found to be wrong.

If Rand said that no paradoxes ever exist because of that, then she was as wrong as she was when she claimed Atlas carries the world* on his shoulders: a paradox is by definition an apparent contradiction instead of an actual contradiction. If one finds one or several premises to be wrong, one proves the existence of the paradox.

* In Greek Mythology Atlas carries not the Earth, but the heavens; keeping them from falling onto the Earth for the benefit of all except Atlas himself.

 

[mhaze]

And as stated, they don't do it all by themselves. They have a lot of people helping them. That is the opposite of self-sufficiency; the more people they hire to do create their wealth, the more they become dependent on those people.

If such a character were to move toward greater self sufficiency, s/he would go live alone in the wilderness and hunt and gather his/her own food. But instead s/he has chosen to climb the societal pyramid where the higher you go, the more people are working to support you.If that is the case, then he has never owned anything and cannot.

That's all "the concept of ownership" ever was, and all it will ever be. It is just that treating it as if it is an individual right has benefited the state quite well......

Your opinions noted. Of course you should have qualified them that way, instead of stating them as absolutes, but many people make this mistake.

And your opinion is true where that is so stated in law or unwritten understanding in a state, the first being true of communism, the second of totalitarian regimes. Yet where the Constitution states otherwise, such in the USA, your statement is false. However, the plotline of AS occurs in the USA, in a time when such black letter rights in law are increasingly ignored in favor of the collective trendy view of the moment. That plotline revolves around this issue. So it could be said that AS discusses a moment toward your view, and the resistance against it by various individuals.

In this and other ways, AS is not terribly different than current events in the USA.

I think you've defined self sufficiency in a way such that you can make an argument that the characters we discuss are not self sufficient. From a back to the earth, Foxfire primitive view, no one is going to argue with you.

Well, that's a bit irrelevant, because we can describe the behavior and interactions, of characters in AS, and use a different term, mutually agreed upon, to describe the processes.

Makes no difference whatsoever, not worth quibbling over. Given that the character behavior and interactions are facts, you have to do better than that.

 

[Skeptic]

Splitting hairs is easy in grammar, but in real life quite hard.

Yes, but Rand is supposed to be a deep philosopher. You can't first claim that and then consider criticism of her philosophical views "splitting hairs".

 

[Mycroft]

If you are white, you are descended from Neanderthalers.

Evidence?

There are humans living even today who eart their family members when they croak.

But we don't consider that to be a good thing.

 

[leftysergeant]

Evidence?

I'll have to dig through about five months worth of posts on another forum. The most recent DNA studies found that just about everybody other than the Khoisan peoples have some Neanderthal DNA. One skeleton from Portugal shows strong affinities to both H.s.sapiens and to H. neanderthalensis, which would indicate that differentiation into two distinct species had not occurred when H. idulta and H. neanderthalensis split from H. heidelbergensis.

But that is beside the point. From the condition of the skulls of H. idulta, it appears that they did have some concept of connectedness with their fellows that extended after death. The polished surfaces of the skulls shows that they were handled repeatedly, quite possibly being taken along with the tribe when they moved. When modern anthropologists arrived in the Andaman Islands, native widows were known to carry the skulls of their deceased husbands in a net rucksack for a year or more.

As I stated, the ability to form a collective in which each person has some commitment and responsibility to the other members of the collective is one of the defining traits of human kind and always has been.

But we don't consider that to be a good thing.

I wonder how they would feel if they knew that the gold mines in their country are dumping arsenic and cyanide into their drinking water.

 

[EGarrett]

Oh really?

Have you committed murder, rape, grand theft, or fraud lately? Assuming you haven't, why not?

 

[mhaze]

Yes, but Rand is supposed to be a deep philosopher. You can't first claim that and then consider criticism of her philosophical views "splitting hairs".

But that's not what you are doing, as I earlier indicated. Here is what you are doing.

A. Mycroft on Internet forum uses word "self-sufficient" to describe Randian hero.

B. Earthborn takes phrase "self-sufficient", selects a definition similar to back to the earth hippy style self sufficiency, and proceeds to use said definition to prove Randian hero is not self sufficient.

C. Mhaze objects, and notes the various definitions and uses of the phrase "self-sufficent". Earthborn ignores contrary evidence and bludgeons forward.

D. Mhaze suggests pick what word you want, the facts we discuss are the styling of the characters and their interaction. (2nd poster does not want to waste time quibbling over strawman argument of selected definition of "self sufficient").

E. Skeptic suggests you can't ignore contrary evidence re splitting hairs.

I don't think that's what I was doing. I just pointed out that no one was ever promoting Foxfire back to the earth hermit style hippidom as "self sufficiency". I provided three or four other examples, of course those were ignored. Hmmm...

 

[EGarrett]

Okay, here's an example of why these threads are nigh impossible...

If a person has others helping achieve his/her success, then by definition that person is not self-sufficient.

That has nothing to do with what Ayn Rand taught nor with what he's trying to tell you.

There are certain concepts (like the basic functions of the free market) that you need to be familiar with in order to even evaluate what Rand was arguing. If you aren't, you end up making assumptions that are completely incorrect. "Self-sufficiency" as Rand advocated does not mean being a hermit in the woods. She wasn't Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Self-sufficiency" as Rand would use it means applying your own mind to figure out how to achieve your own happiness. Usually this will mean participating in the society around you if it helps you, like being an entrepreneur in modern America, but in rare cases, such as when Ayn Rand herself left the Soviet Union, it may mean leaving that society.

Now, I had to write paragraph just to try to explain a concept. No actual discussion of the concept occurred. Perhaps the most ironic thing is that there is a MAJOR weakness in Ayn Rand's philosophy, but I've never had the opportunity to post about it because the conversation never reaches the level of understanding where you can get to what she actually meant and where there are problems and potential improvements.

Explaining, instead of discussing, gets tiresome very quickly. Earthborn and Skeptic, you're smarter than a lot of the people who post on these boards, but you both are quite lost on this one.

 

[mhaze]

Ignore my prior post, EGarret says it better.

But I'll up the ante and offer a snip of AS, which illustrates the issue, whether you choose to apply the label "self sufficiency", or some other. In italics is the character Dagny Taggert, who may roughly be considered a "Randian hero character" per our discussion.

"We're talking about saving a railroad, Jim."
"Yes, of course, of course, but still, you haven't any sense of the human element."
"No. I haven't."
"If we give Rearden such a large order for steel rails-"
"They're not going to be steel. They're Rearden Metal."

She had always avoided personal reactions, but she was forced to break her rule when she saw the expression on Taggart's face. She burst out laughing. Rearden Metal was a new alloy, produced by Rearden after ten years of experiments. He had placed it on the market recently. He had received no orders and had found no customers. Taggart could not understand the transition from the laughter to the sudden tone of Dagny's voice; the voice was cold and harsh:

"Drop it, Jim. I know everything you're going to say. Nobody's ever used it before. Nobody approves of Rearden Metal. Nobody's interested in it. Nobody wants it. Still, our rails are going to be made of Rearden Metal."
"But . . ." said Taggart, "but . . . but nobody's ever used it before!"

He observed, with satisfaction, that she was silenced by anger. He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another's personality, marking vulnerable points. But how one could feel a personal emotion about a metal alloy, and what such an emotion indicated, was incomprehensible to him; so he could make no use of his discovery.

"The consensus of the best metallurgical authorities," he said, "seems to be highly skeptical about Rearden Metal, contending-"
"Drop it, Jim."
"Well, whose opinion did you take?"
"I don't ask for opinions."
"What do you go by?"
"Judgment."
"Well, whose judgment did you take?"
"Mine."
"But whom did you consult about it?"
"Nobody."
"Then what on earth do you know about Rearden Metal?"
"That it's the greatest thing ever put on the market."
"Why?"
"Because it's tougher than steel, cheaper than steel and will outlast any hunk of metal in existence."
"But who says so?"
"Jim, I studied engineering in college. When I see things, I see them."
"What did you see?"
"Rearden's formula and the tests he showed me."

"Well, if it were any good, somebody would have used it, and nobody has." He saw the flash of anger, and went on nervously: "How can you know it's good? How can you be sure? How can you decide?"

"Somebody decides such things, Jim. Who?"​