/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.9113352]

Why is Rand laughed out of intellectual circles? Individual rights aren't an absurd thing to wish for.

[Anonymous No.9113363]

That's what happens when women try to talk about politics and philosophy

[Anonymous No.9113366]

Majority is left.
Minority is right.

So certain cercles ridiculize others and their voice is predominant.

[Anonymous No.9113382]

She isn't laughed at for the advocation of individual rights, she's laughed at because she created "objectivism" purely as a justification for Social Darwinism. It's a disingenuous attempt to subvert criticism.

[Anonymous No.9113384]

>>9113352
because anyone with any grounding in epistemology can quickly see what's wrong with objectivism and her fiction is tl;dr jerk off shit

[Anonymous No.9113389]

She never seriously engaged critics of her ideas. There are better rights theorists to read, and better an caps if you're that awful. Nozick is good.

[Anonymous No.9113395]

>>9113382
I see 3 "ism"s in your post

[Anonymous No.9113408]

>>9113352
Horribble, horrible writing. "I know you despise hydraulic pipes!"

[Anonymous No.9113409]

>>9113352
You have it, but it's more about her than her work.

Read Murray Rothbard's only work of fiction. A one act play called Mozart Was A Red:

https://mises.org/library/mozart-was-red

It's really funny. And since Rothbard is regarded by many as the thinker who took a serious libertarian system the farthest toward a functioning model, it's even more hilarious that he felt the need to take her down in such fashion.

[Anonymous No.9113411]

>>9113352
>woman
>not an academic
>tried to advance a theory through in-your-face fiction
>wrote about the ubermensch but was nothing like it
>wrote about social darwinism but basically starved all alone
>mainstream hasn't allowed any opinions other than "throw more welfare at it" for the past 200 years

People just can't seperate the message from the messenger and they are terrified of being ridiculed and being called a fedora or edgelord.

[Anonymous No.9113415]

>>9113352
Firstly, her life view revolves around ubermenschen that do not exist in real life. John Galt isn't real, Howard Roark isn't real. Their closest real life counterparts are people who have read her works and try to be them, but do so while living with vices and greed that the aforementioned did not possess.

Secondly her world is bereft of social support. No old age security, state health care, nothing. Those who cannot swim, sink, including the mentally ill and orphans (remember, Roarks temple is turned into an orphanage as part of an evil scheme by Toohey), and anyone who attempts to support those who do not earn it themself are "parasites".

Thirdly, she is a shit writer.

What does interest me is that her family was buttfucked by socialism in the soviet union, and looking at her work as a result of trauma extending from a childhood savaged by soviets is interesting indeed.

[Anonymous No.9113420]

>>9113409
I read Rothbard's "An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought" and according to Rothbard everyone who's not Rothbard is actually a crypto-socialist... even including Mises
Maybe he's just a little kooky?

[Anonymous No.9113434]

As a Rothbardian Libertarian/Anarcho-Capitalist/Voluntarist--every bit the "selfish" and "greedy" individualist in the minds of any collectivist/statist/leftist/whatever--I've never found any of Rand's philosophy convincing.

I don't mind her. I like Atlas Shrugged (yeah, fuck me, right?), but I can't get behind her approach.

I sincerely believe that a stateless free market society is what is best, but not because the cream rises to the top or because capitalists are the most virtuous people, but simply because it benefits everyone to have lower prices for goods and to be without taxation and to avoid hyperinflation.

But there's no virtue in selfishness. Virtue is found only in the grace of God.

[Anonymous No.9113444]

>>9113420
A functioning libertarian system is supposed to sound a little kooky to people whose entire political tradition is based on state sanctioned monopoly on force. I think of it as a historiographic hypothetical - what would the three-branch system of elected federal republicanism practiced in the US sounded like to the peasantry of the Carolingian empire?

Probably a little kooky. Because humans are still pretty primitive post-tree dwellers, large scale shifts in our ability to cooperate at larger than tribe scales lags by about a thousand years behind our ability, individually, to think such systems up.

[Anonymous No.9113459]

libertarians are fucking autistic

[Anonymous No.9113491]

>>9113459

Why? Give me a good reason.

I'm sick of the dismissive attitude toward Libertarianism. Everyone has an open mind about all forms of ethics and political philosophy, but when Libertarian beliefs are brought up there isn't even a discussion, they're just "autistic".

[Anonymous No.9113505]

>>9113434
>it benefits everyone to have lower prices for goods and to be without taxation and to avoid hyperinflation.
Lower prices don't benefit everyone when wages decrease at a faster pace then prices it predominantly benefits those living off other income sources besides wages, any income going towards public taxation will go towards private rentiers instead, and inflation will always be driven by uncontrolled private credit creation

>>9113444
I meant Rothbard was kooky because he attacked classical liberals, and anyone who wasn't himself, like Adam Smith as being crypto-socialists.
Large scale governance might not function well but that won't stop the move towards more central global control out of the pentagon, America will continue to send troops overseas to fight to make sure the world is under their control and markets are open so they can come back and complain about third worlders taking their jobs

[Anonymous No.9113506]

>>9113395
It's a rap I wrote

[Anonymous No.9113516]

>>9113491
It isn't economically efficient and it's corporate bullshit. If the point is bettering the economy overall, the approach should be cautious and technical, not "all economic intervention is bad even if proven otherwise". For the second point, if the government forces you to do some bullshit or big corporations force you to behave in some autistic way it makes no fucking difference, freedom from the government and freedom are in no way the same, it's freedom for the 5%..

[Anonymous No.9113525]

>>9113491
The "libertarians are just autistic" is a meme that was born within the past two years and with so many people interested in politics at the moment, a lot of newfags are lapping it up.

Having a "libertarian" party comprised of actual autists isn't really helping either.

[Anonymous No.9113531]

>>9113352
>Ayn Rand
>Individualism

[Anonymous No.9113533]

>>9113506
rap is dogshit mixed with nigger scum

[Anonymous No.9113539]

>>9113533
quality post

[Anonymous No.9113549]

>>9113533

[Anonymous No.9113561]

>>9113549
nice pic, can I save it before going to bed?

[Anonymous No.9113562]

>>9113516
1. How is it not economically efficient for the market to simply listen to supply and demand when forming prices rather than accepting the distortion that comes with regulation, government inflation of the money supply, and subsidies?
2. "Corporate" is kind of a buzzword. One of the tricks people pull when talking about an anarcho-capitalist society. The goal is to get people to think of corporations we have now, the kinds of monopolies that result from government intervention and multinational corporations that have the government in their pockets.
3. There's never been an example of good government regulation, not in the economic sector nor socially. It either made the situation worse or it addressed a situation that was already mostly resolved by then.
4. Anarcho-capitalism advocates for voluntary societies. You have no obligation to behave in a way that you don't want simply because a corporation is big. There's also a definite limit to how big a corporation can get without lobbying the government. If the corporation raises prices high enough that they are no longer competitive, they allow competitors to enter.
5. Why do people look at a fucked up system under Keynesian capitalism and think "this would be even more fucked up without the government!"? Why is it so strange to believe that maybe a major reason it's so fucked up is the government itself?

[Anonymous No.9113564]

>>9113352
1) Her writing is *at best* mediocre potboiler grade
2) Her "philosophy" is never coherently explained in philosophical terms in one place by her
3) What she does explain in contradictory or incoherent
4) On a personal level she tended to refuse to defend her position or debate others in a real way, instead calling anyone who disagreed with her "evil"
5) She developed a cult of personality that persists to this day and the members of that cult tend to mirror her combativeness and ignorance

[Anonymous No.9113569]

>>9113352
Because she violently misinterpreted Aristotle, and the idea that "rational self-interest" will axiomatically lead you to supporting laissez-faire capitalism is a complete non-sequitur.

[Anonymous No.9113572]

>>9113352
> Ayn Rand is literature's most important trans author
> the liberal left hate her

Now that's what I call transphobia. Sad!

[Anonymous No.9113574]

>>9113525

The Libertarian party does piss me off, desu. We deserve better.

[Anonymous No.9113575]

>>9113525
>Having a "libertarian" party comprised of actual autists isn't really helping either.
yeah, what a coincidence

[Anonymous No.9113578]

>>9113352
Her writing sucks and was only propped up as Cold War propaganda. Her philosophy is puerile and Rand thought so too as she died on welfare.

[Anonymous No.9113599]

>tries to make own philosophy around very simple concept
>can't even live her life according to it
>needed help from others constantly
>was qt before "philosophy"
Even Dirty Dancing knew Rand was bad

[Anonymous No.9113607]

>>9113562
Not that guy, but I take exception with #3. I think food regulation is one example of a good job by the government.

[Anonymous No.9113618]

>>9113525
>https://mises.org/library/mozart-was-red
>>9113459
>>9113491
>>9113516
>>9113562
Libertarian concepts are incoherent for the same reason that all Liberal concepts are-
-Politics is the use of coercion to limit freedom
-Liberalism is the ideology that the only legitimate purpose of government is to maximize individual freedom via coercion
Liberals of all stripes (both classical and progressives) make the same two core errors - the one listed above (that the only legitimate use of a toll that operates by using coercion to limit freedom is to maximize freedom and limit coercion) and the belief that the default state of Man is individuality and that society is an artificial construct that is alien to human nature.
............
Rand is just the most obvious example of how innately irrational all branches of Liberalism are. Look at the idea that the few creators would go off and the world would collapse without those tiny few.
It ignores the very literally tens of millions of foremen, administrators, tradesmen, farmers, even simple husbands and fathers that do the actual organization of culture, society, and business every day. She is, in a way, the perfect example of Poe's Law.

[Anonymous No.9113619]

>>9113564
Fuck if I remember how, but I remember that the problem in that comic was actually addressed by the book, who I suppose the guy has not read.

[Anonymous No.9113635]

>>9113562
I'm not who you're responding to, and my issues are quite different, but corporate entities with limited liability are obviously empirically extremely efficient compared to the alternatives and infrastructure, like pipelines, that underpin a modern economy would be next to impossible to get constructed without eminent domain.
Also people are just to conservative for a lot of what libertarianism is premised upon, like free movement, to be politically possible... you would just get lynch mobs to replace state police.

[Anonymous No.9113643]

>>9113562
>How is it not economically efficient for the market to simply listen to supply and demand when forming prices
Since no attempts to allow markets to do this have ended other than with a dire need for intervention, I'd say Real Life wins over theory
> the kinds of monopolies that result from government intervention and multinational corporations that have the government in their pockets.
Yet in the *absence* of governmental interference the monopoly situation was *worse*. By price and market manipulation and sheer force Standard Oil effectively controlled the oil, kerosene, and rail transport verticals of the US and it took government action to *stop* Standard.
>There's never been an example of good government regulation
OSHA; food purity standards; fire safety codes; construction safety requirements; limited liability laws.
Top of my head
>If the corporation raises prices high enough that they are no longer competitive, they allow competitors to enter.
Unless they erect barriers to entry. Like they always have.
<Why is it so strange to believe that maybe a major reason it's so fucked up is the government itself?
Because I have read history books.

[Anonymous No.9113648]

>arguing with lolbertarians

Tippity-toppity kek. Next time try explaining the virtues of the state of Israel to Hezbollah members.

[Anonymous No.9113650]

>>9113619
I've read the book 4 times (did an analysis on it) and nope - there are very few people in Galt's Gulch, high in the Rockies, and they are blithely going about their other businesses as if food production wasn't a thing

[Anonymous No.9113656]

>>9113575
It certainly isn't a coincidence but that's the point, "decent" libertarians will either be of the capitalist kind and feel too successful for a shitty fringe party or of the loner kind which hate the idea of a political party, publicity, etc.

It's hard to run a platform just on "Fuck off, don't tread on me" so the party will consist of the usual politicians of the "what's an aleppo, free borders now!" kind.

>>9113618
The default state of men is living in a "herd" of kins of about ~50 people, it certainly isn't "society".
And libertarians don't treat "being alone" as the default state, they just say that the individual is the smallest unit that counts (whereas collectivists tend to think that the smallest unit that counts is the "group"). Libertarians are proponents of the family and of voluntary groups, as opposed to being thrown in with literally millions of people.

The point about those few creators is that without them, we'd still all be alive, yes, but we'd be living as peasants on the same land as our ancestors. Society is brought forward by very few inventors, explorers, risk-takers. That doesn't mean we can do without the rest or that these are better humans though.

[Anonymous No.9113692]

>>9113607
Food regulations are among the most egregious. Government meat regulations are essentially what created the near monopoly of meat production that we have now. And it hasn't made food safer. In fact, by most accounts it's probably become worse. What's wrong with the old. local system of food production? High regulation barriers limit entry to the marketplace and they also prevent my neighbor (someone I trust) from selling me good meat. Now I have to go to 1 of 4 giant corporations, who are responsible for new contamination cases every year.

>>9113618
>-Politics is the use of coercion to limit freedom
A libertarian or anarcho-capitalist society is only libertarian in principle. As David Friedman puts it, if people in a society were willing to pay more to stop drug use than drug users were willing to use drugs, then it would be prohibited in that particular society. No one has a problem with limits or law and order. There are just more efficient ways to do it and also there's an opportunity for unhappy people to simply move voluntarily to a society that has the freedoms that they desire.
I am socially conservative, so I am by no means advocating for no limit on freedom. Libertarians acknowledge that initiating aggression is not ever okay.
>-Liberalism is the ideology that the only legitimate purpose of government is to maximize individual freedom via coercion
The government can't "maximise" freedom. If it's not a natural right you are born with (meaning that all the government could do is take it away) then it's not a right. It's that simple. Stop equating modern liberalism with libertarianism. Kalb is wrong.

I also am not a Rand supporter. I've already said this. She's wrong.

>>9113635
If that land can't be bought, the pipeline won't be built or it will be redirected. I don't see the problem. Forcibly taking land from people doesn't sound like a positive thing to me. I also don't see the point you are making in regards to immigration. Free movement is indeed part of libertarianism, but it's also to be taken with belief in private property. Many libertarians oppose governments allowing thousands of refugees into the country precisely because it's not their land to give. In an anarcho-capitalist society, you and your society can control who enters your private property and private law enforcement does exist. I don't see how anything "replacing" the state police is a problem. I believe in law and order. I just think the government is not very good at it.

[Anonymous No.9113700]

Stop blogging you stupid fags, what is this, reddit?

[Anonymous No.9113709]

I think her books are fun to read but you sort of have to read them with a filter. Like skip the severely long John Galt speech. Then Atlas Shrugged is a fun fiction adventure.

[Anonymous No.9113718]

>>9113709
Your notions of fun must be pretty warped. I'd literally rather read Twilight.

[Anonymous No.9113723]

>>9113643
>Since no attempts to allow markets to do this have ended other than with a dire need for intervention, I'd say Real Life wins over theory
I guess during the Industrial Revolution when regulation didn't yet exist, we saw a great decline in civilization. Oh wait, that's fucking wrong.
>Yet in the *absence* of governmental interference the monopoly situation was *worse*. By price and market manipulation and sheer force Standard Oil effectively controlled the oil, kerosene, and rail transport verticals of the US and it took government action to *stop* Standard.
They lowered prices and undercut competitors. I don't see the problem here. How is lower prices not always better for consumers? We have to jerk the dicks of small oil companies that can't compete in order to maintain freedom now?
>OSHA; food purity standards; fire safety codes; construction safety requirements; limited liability laws.
A list of literal wankery. People were fine before any of this legislation and they'd be fine without it. The funny thing about you statists is how strongly you believe that corporations would run amok without the government keeping them in line. You only need to look at stores like Target bending over for trannies in their bathrooms to realise that corporations will do most anything to keep consumers. You can't maintain food purity and you're out of business. It's that simple. Doesn't help in your case, though, that food in the United States is far from "pure" despite all this messianic regulation.
>Unless they erect barriers to entry. Like they always have.
Barriers enforced by what? In the absence of the state, what barriers?
>Because I have read history books.
Yeah, an impartial science if I ever saw one. Congratulations.

[Anonymous No.9113727]

>>9113656
>The default state of men is living in a "herd" of kins of about ~50 people, it certainly isn't "society".
1) the size depends upon a lot of things, so your default size is essentially indefensible (else you need to explain, oh, Iron Age Europe)
2) 'fifty people isn't a society' tells me you know zero about actual anthropology.
>whereas collectivists tend to think that the smallest unit that counts is the "group"
Which "collectivists"? When? Where? Are you talking about Distributists?
>Libertarians are proponents of the family and of voluntary groups
Like Distributists, Agrarians, and such? Then why are AnCap books focused on individual rights?

>The point about those few creators is that without them, we'd still all be alive, yes, but we'd be living as peasants on the same land as our ancestors. Society is brought forward by very few inventors, explorers, risk-takers
Obviously false. the Agricultural Revolution developed simultaneously in different ways in different areas over generations. Same with metal working. The history of overall development in well documented societies like China, etc., is primarily incremental growth over generations brought about in broad areas.
The myth of the great inventor who changes everything is a product of sensationalism from rather recent periods. Were their individual that did great stuff? Sure.
But the transition to broad irrigation systems for increased crop yields was generations of farmers; writing was from priests wanting to keep track of who had already paid taxes; etc.
Look at the collapse of the Western Roman Empire; hundreds of local leaders stepped in and kept things going despite the loss of trade, etc. Some of the greatest advances in European history came during a time of hundreds of small, relatively isolated, states from millions of local innovative developments.
When Reardon vanished the board would have made sure competent administrators kept the place running at a profit, just like in Real Life.

[Anonymous No.9113736]

>>9113692
>Stop equating modern liberalism with libertarianism.
Good thing I never did that.

[Anonymous No.9113743]

>>9113718
>not wanting to read about the misadventures of 1940s businessmen on cocaine that have an unhealthy obsession with trains screw over everybody including themselves

[Anonymous No.9113745]

Is this thread just a lolbertarian autist and a regular autist arguing with each other?

[Anonymous No.9113755]

>>9113743
>written by a retard complete with novella length speeches and in godawful style

I'd rather just play Bioshock again.

[Anonymous No.9113761]

>>9113755
Like I said, just skip the long speeches. I like the style outside of the speeches but that's just personal preference. Bioshock is very good though, it's like the sequel to Atlas Shrugged. I should play it again too.

[Anonymous No.9113769]

>>9113723
>I guess during the Industrial Revolution when regulation didn't yet exist
You mean other than the Poor Laws (that prevented the movement of laborers and fixed wages), the Statute of Artificers (which controlled manufacturing of almost all goods and set price limits on raw materials and controlled profit taking), the Navigation Laws and the Royal Charters (that limited what could be shipped, how it was shipped, where it could be sold, established minimum and maximum prices, *who* could ship it, *when* it could be shipped, established tariffs and duties, and limited profits on luxury goods), the Usury Laws (that controlled interest rates, loan terms, etc.), the Royal Bank Charter (that controlled who could issue loans, how they were issued, etc. and taxed interest on loans) and the Bubble Act (that heavily regulated joint stock groups)
You mean "other than those rather strict government regulations on labor, wages, shipping, manufacturing, loans, debt, as well as taxes, tariffs, and duties", right?
FFS, it is almost like you don't know what you are talking about!

[Anonymous No.9113805]

>>9113723
>They lowered prices and undercut competitors. I don't see the problem here. How is lower prices not always better for consumers
They used cash reserves to sell at a loss until competitors were driven out, then increased prices free of competition.
They used their large volume to demand that railroads not only give them a steep discount but heavily increase shipping for competitors
They then used their contracts to demand that only Standard Oil be allowed to have pipelines that crossed railroad tracks everyone else couldn't
Then, because they controlled access to oil, coal, and were majorly in control of the railroads, they demanded steel companies give them steep discounts *and* refuse to sell piping and storage tank to their competitors.
It went on and on. They used local monopoly power to drive out competitors, then jack up prices, then seize a new market the same way until they could erect very strict entrance barriers to competitors until they were a hair away from taking total monopoly control over energy, steel, and rail in the US *without* any government controls.
Remember the original pint?
I do.

[Anonymous No.9113809]

>>9113727
>Which "collectivists"? When? Where? Are you talking about Distributists?
He's talking about identity politics. Reducing people down to "blacks" or "gays" or whatever else they identify as.

Libertarianism rejects this. So while it seems focused on "individual rights" there's no need to be selfish or individualistic. It's just an acknowledgement that we are individual people and belonging to particular races or sexual orientations doesn't define us. I'm sure there are many libertarians who want to reduce society down to selfish individuals, but that's never been the mainstream position. Reducing it down to family is common and voluntary association the norm. Just because I have certain rights as an individual, doesn't mean I'm going to live alone in a cabin fending off other individuals for the rest of my life. People don't have rights by virtue of being black. They have rights by virtue of being human. That's all that is acknowledged. Why do you think libertarians homeschool so often? Because they don't care about their children? It's the opposite.

[Anonymous No.9113811]

>>9113352
I'm a fan of Rand's fiction and even I can tell she was a pretty bad philosopher.

>>9113389
>She never seriously engaged critics of her ideas
This.

[Anonymous No.9113814]

>>9113769

Those sound like great regulations. I'm sure preventing movement of laborers and controlling what was shipped was of great benefit to the economy and to people.

[Anonymous No.9113832]

>>9113805
Standard Oil monopoly myth has been debunked a million times.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~twod/oil/NEW_SCHOOL_COURSE2005/articles/research-oil/john_mcgee_predatory_pricing_standard_oil1958.pdf

https://mises.org/library/100-years-myths-about-standard-oil

http://thepoliticalinformer.com/predatory-price-cutting/

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-summer/standard-oil-company/

[Anonymous No.9113839]

>>9113692
>Food regulations are among the most egregious. Government meat regulations are essentially what created the near monopoly of meat production that we have now. And it hasn't made food safer. In fact, by most accounts it's probably become worse. What's wrong with the old. local system of food production? High regulation barriers limit entry to the marketplace and they also prevent my neighbor (someone I trust) from selling me good meat. Now I have to go to 1 of 4 giant corporations, who are responsible for new contamination cases every year.

t. someone who unfortunatelydidnt die of foodborne parasites, contaminants, or carcinogenic pesticides when he was a toddler.

[Anonymous No.9113848]

>>9113723
>fire and building safety code
>A list of literal wankery. People were fine before any of this legislation and they'd be fine without it.
-Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
-Cocoanut Grove Fire
-Top Story Club Fire
-dozens of building and bridge collapses
Somehow, I don't think the thousands of people who died trapped in burning buildings because they were full of oil and had locked exits did just fine. Or the people crushed in the buildings that collapsed on them because they were shoddily built and maintained.
>The funny thing about you statists is how strongly you believe that corporations would run amok without the government keeping them in line
Maybe its because we see it happening every day
>Barriers enforced by what? In the absence of the state, what barriers?
The first Sacramento Ferry had a team of hired men that would beat up anyone else that carried people across that local stretch of water. Other ferry operators were burned out.
Standard Oil's tactics have already been mentioned.

[Anonymous No.9113856]

>>9113723
>I guess during the Industrial Revolution when regulation didn't yet exist, we saw a great decline in civilization. Oh wait, that's fucking wrong.

I see you havent done any historical research, but you realize that having children working in factories and mines not only vastly increased childhood mortality, but created an indentured underclass right? It was only through massive disasters and scandals and daily death rates that regulation was enforced. Such circumstances to me certainly do sound like a decrease in quality of civilization.

[Anonymous No.9113859]

>>9113814
Whether it was good or bad, it points out that the original statement was a lie.

[Anonymous No.9113883]

>>9113832
>http://thepoliticalinformer.com/predatory-price-cutting/
Read it - it is a bit of theory and then this comment
>"Standard Oil most likely didn't use predatory price cutting..."
which links to other speculation.
The actual congressional testimony, however, *demonstrated* that Standard Oil *did* use predatory price cutting.
so - bullshit
>https://mises.org/library/100-years-myths-about-standard-oil
Yet more theorizing that predatory price cutting is 'too risky' in the abstract, ignoring the case law that demonstrates it happened.
>https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-summer/standard-oil-company/
*MORE* discussion of why predatory pricing is a bad idea while ignoring the evidence it happened.
So oyu think a group of links to Objectivist blogs that all use the exact same non-evidentiary sources to say the exact same thing that ignores the facts is a 'debunking'?
No wonder you're a Libertarian - you're retarded!

[Anonymous No.9113974]

I'm pretty new to Libertarian theory.

Am I an idiot if I like the Libertarian idea of personal liberty but think there needs to be some form of taxing government to enforce people's personal liberties?

[Anonymous No.9113994]

>>9113974
No, it makes you a classical liberal.

You see government as a contract between the state and its citizens to maintain a balance between providing for their security in return for representative taxation, and maintaining their individual liberty, while always erring on the side of personal liberty.

[Anonymous No.9114146]

>>9113974
>>9113994
Hoppe shows pretty clearly that this leads to a Tragedy of the Commons situation with *government*, a fascinating insight

[Anonymous No.9114167]

>>9113366
except she's also dissed by fellow right wingers

[Anonymous No.9114185]

>>9113366
In the US Liberals have never been even 25% of the population

[Anonymous No.9114203]

>>9113408
how is that horrible?

[Anonymous No.9114549]

>>9113650
You didn't read it if you don't remember all the farming that takes place in Galt's Gulch.

>>9113619
Also, they like doing it and are good at it. They even have a restaurant. Yes, the comic is agitprop for people who have also never read it. Who will build the roads tier.

[Anonymous No.9114566]

Because her worldview is fucking stupid and wrong. We're demonstrably social creatures who need compassion and care for one another, and her philosophy is the same as some edgy 15 year old who's angry because he got picked on, and who in response, wrote an angry novel about how he was totally going to shoot up the school, kill all the jocks, stab his crush to death, while saying "Pssh...nothin personel...m'love"

Also, her being on social benefits at the end of her life was basically reality giving her and her entire life's work the ultimate fuck-you. She was literally BTFO by the universe itself

[Anonymous No.9114568]

>>9113352
Because she writes political propaganda? Political propaganda has never been well recieved in the novel format

[Anonymous No.9114592]

>>9114185
Telephone polls tend to skew older, and therefore more conservative

[Anonymous No.9114600]

>>9113389
>better an caps to read
Confirmed for not knowing Rand. She regarded anarcho capitalism and Libertarianism in general as extremely evil.

>All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies who are anarchists instead of leftist collectivists; but anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet libertarians combine capitalism and anarchism. That’s worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies, but don’t want to preach collectivism because those jobs are already taken. But anarchism is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual side of collectivism. I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. Anarchists are the scum of the intellectual world of the Left, which has given them up. So the Right picks up another leftist discard. That’s the libertarian movement. - Rand

[Anonymous No.9114614]

I once saw Rand deep throat a tennis racket handle at a party

[Anonymous No.9114619]

>>9113564
>>9113619
>>9113650
>>9114549
>>9114549
That comic is the ultimate "I haven't even read Atlas Shrugged" indicator.
>Dagny spends like a month of her life out in a cabin in the woods alone.
>Literally all of the heroes of Galt’s Gulch live in houses they built themselves, and cook/clean/work for themselves. There are no servants there.
>The philosophy professor (Hugh Akston) is even a LITERAL FRY COOK.

The book goes into great detail about how these people are entirely self-sufficient, then this atrocity of a comic pretends like they spent the entire book in penthouses ordering room service.

[Anonymous No.9114648]

>>9113692
>natural right you're born with

Show me on the cabbage patch doll where your liberty organ is

[Anonymous No.9114663]

>>9113366
>Randian Liberalism
>Right wing

top keks. Silly Americans.

[Anonymous No.9114664]

>>9113352
Well, OP, if you showed up to MIT with your mom's bodice ripper novels and wanted to discuss how unfair life was to the misunderstood pirate and what MIT was going to do about it, how hard do you think they should laugh at you?

[Anonymous No.9114781]

>>9114619
Yep, this.

[Anonymous No.9114943]

>>9113352
Because boiling down Rand to individual rights is like boiling down Marx to fairness.

[Anonymous No.9114973]

>>9114185
>never
>chart starts in 1992

[Anonymous No.9115087]

>>9114619

I mean since rand said it in the book that must be how it would actually be right

[Anonymous No.9115395]

>>9115087
>gee how did they have food? those rich scums can't have farmed!

>The book explicitly states that Lawrence Hammond became a farmer in Galt's Gulch

>t-that's not how it would actually be xD

please kys

[Anonymous No.9115549]

>>9113656
>The default state of men is living in a "herd" of kins of about ~50 people

Sounds pretty comfy desu.

Didn't someone run the stats and find out that /lit/ is comprised of about 50 regular posters for the most part? Maybe that's why it feels so natural here.

[Anonymous No.9116227]

>>9114663
How isn't she right wing?

[Anonymous No.9116244]

>>9113415
>Howard Roark isn't real.
So what? All of fiction isn't real either. She created perfect heroes of what she wanted people to become and aspire to be, not that they had to be humane or real. In Nietzschean terms, Howard Roark is simply the pinnacle of Apollonian individualism, fighting against the Dionysus collectivist Toohey.

Honestly, a lot of Ayn Rand makes sense when you understand that she's just idealizing master morality and confine her version of the Ubermensch in a capitalist society.

>>9114619
You don't understand, that comic is from the perspective of a 'parasite' who doesn't want to work and hates working. He thought he was going to a communistic post scarcity utopia instead of a new patch of land where you just have to work for yourself.
Seriously, that last panel
>this sucks
A randian hero would've been happy just working for his own earnings. A ubermensch just happy to be alive, working for his own interest and living.

>>9114600
My nigger.

[Anonymous No.9116536]

>>9114600
>they're bad cuz they, like, want to be left but that's too mainstream and stuff

typical Randian response. about the extent of discourse to criticism you'll see from her

[Anonymous No.9116571]

>>9113415

>Firstly, her life view revolves around ubermenschen that do not exist in real life.

Who is Elon Musk? Steve Jobs? Peter Thiel?

[Anonymous No.9116577]

>>9113459

Autists are a master race.

[Anonymous No.9117396]

>>9113848
>Somehow, I don't think the thousands of people who died trapped in burning buildings because they were full of oil and had locked exits did just fine. Or the people crushed in the buildings that collapsed on them because they were shoddily built and maintained.
those are filthy poors, the untermensch that are holding back the john galts of this world with their pathetic requests for a living wage, work safety and similar blasphemies

[Anonymous No.9117410]

>>9116571
peter "I want to take your blood inside me" thiel, steve "lol cancer can't be cured by medicine I'll just snort some amazonian tall grass and have an etheric oil massage" jobs
elon "I don't want to live on this planet any more" musk

[Anonymous No.9117950]

>>9116571

Fortunately cast narcissists with slightly above average IQs?

[Anonymous No.9117954]

>>9117410

2 of the 3 think Trump is brilliant and will save us.

[Anonymous No.9118018]

>>9114619
>The book goes into great detail about how these people are entirely self-sufficient
Proving you've never worked on a farm.
Farming is very labor intensive. Even with modern mechanization farming takes a LOT of work.
That mechanization, BTW, requires a lot of support.
The comic is making a very simple, direct point. If you are going to be "self-sufficient" including growing all of your own food be prepared for 6-16 hours of hard labor EVERY FUCKING DAY just for the food part!
Dagny gets to the gulch she hears
>"So and so is mining for gold"
*Incredibly* labor intensive.
>"We all built our own houses"
Who made the tools? Processed the lumber? Made the hinges? Made the fucking *glass windows*?! Who was working the fields for you while you built it by your fucking self?
>Francisco is mining for copper
Really? How long each day *by himself* is he driving a shaft into solid fucking rock in between slopping the hogs and weeding the barley?
Half the fucking strikers in the valley are old men with backgrounds as musicians and college professors, yet we are expected to believe these guys wake up at the crack of dawn and tend to a farm all day and make a go of it? Do you have any idea how many farmers with experience, formal training, and a staff struggle?
We aren't even to the fact that the Gulch is at 8,000' elevation! You're growing hay and a little barley and a yard garden at that altitude, kid, and the short growing season means not a ton of it, either.
That fucking comic points out just how little Ayn Rand knew about the things she was writing of.

[Anonymous No.9118086]

>>9114549
I grew up in Amish country, working on farms.
Let's see "how much farming" was going on
>The judge was doing was running chickens and a dairy
A dairy requires a herd of cattle and a bull. You will need both pasturage and hay fields and, at that altitude, a lot of it and you must prepare for a long winter. Chickens require grain, management, etc. he's working about 12 hours a day, every day, and since he works alone producing about 10 excess gallons of milk a day and maybe as many as 2 dozen excess eggs a day. He almost certainly can't produce enough grain and meat for himself.
Next long-term resident is Mulligan
>Mulligan grows wheat and tobacco
OK, that's fucking funny as shit. Tobacco is not a food crop, obviously, but it also won't grow in Colorado at 8,000' altitude! He might as well be said to be growing bananas or pineapples. Tobacco requires a long, hot growing season and a long, dry autumn. With moist ground.
So he isn't growing tobacco.
Guess how much wheat he's growing there?
He'll need to work about 16 hours a day during planting and harvesting seasons, 6-8 hours a day tending fields, etc. during growing. If he has a tractor, fuel, etc. he might manage, oh, 30 acres.
>I am being generous
That's about 1,200 bushels of wheat in a year, which is pretty solid. Does he have the equipment to process it? Store it? It takes a lot of work to turn wheat berries into pasta, you know!
Next long term guy is the composer Halley
>He planted fruit trees
LOL!
Know how long it takes an apple tree to produce fruit? Know how long it takes at 8,000'? Know how much fruit per tree, tree per acre, etc.?
In six years he'll start getting apples, folks.,
Six fucking years
And he'll need a lot of land that needs management. Apple trees only produce decently for about 20 years, so you have to plant entire orchards every 5 years and rotate through them
>You knew that, right? Rand obviously didn't!
So from the long term residents you get wheat in the Fall, some milk and eggs every day, and some apples in a few years.
When the Colorado people started flooding in the gulch could support no more than about 15 people, foodwise, and no meat.
There is also no oil (for cooking!), etc.
The entire concept is ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.9118090]

>>9113564
>Posts actual problems with Rand's writing and philosophy
>Ayndroids are too busy arguing that the make-believe people in her shitty novel did too grow enough food to refute the actual points

[Anonymous No.9118104]

>>9115395
>The book says that a guy built a farm
>Doesn't realize that farming is hard-ass work that requires 6-16 hours of hard labor every day
>The cartoon is about having to work hard just to grow food
>"Why don't people take Randroids seriouslt?"
*snicker*

[Anonymous No.9118112]

>>9115395
Actually, Hammond ran a grocery store

[Anonymous No.9118162]

>>9116227
She's focuses on individualism. Can't get more left-wing than that.

[Anonymous No.9118174]

>>9113352
> Spends life rallying against socialism
> Dies poor and collecting medicare
No idea OP, it's a real mystery.

[Anonymous No.9118179]

>>9118174

>LOL A LIBERTARIAN COLLECTED ON THE TAXES THEY PAID IN

[Anonymous No.9118184]

>>9118179

I think the point is that even the cunts that rail against all those social programs eventually need them.

[Anonymous No.9118187]

>>9113562
>3. There's never been an example of good government regulation, not in the economic sector nor socially. It either made the situation worse or it addressed a situation that was already mostly resolved by then.

Jesus Christ you people

[Anonymous No.9118188]

>>9118162
>She's focuses on individualism. Can't get more left-wing than that.

jesus christ

[Anonymous No.9118462]

>>9118179
>Taxes they paid in
Wow.
You quite literally don't know how taxation works, do you|?
>Rand - rages against any governmental interference. her fictional characters give up everything to avoid being a moocher.
>Rand herself mooches off the government for health care

[Anonymous No.9118468]

>>9118188
Its true if you don't use the contemporary American press definitions of things.

[Anonymous No.9118491]

>>9118468
leftism is all about collective power, always has been
except in libertarian "literature", apparently

[Anonymous No.9118504]

>>9118491
I'd say it's more about equality

[Anonymous No.9118533]

>>9118504
it's both
and many other things
but it's certainly not obsessed with individualism

[Anonymous No.9118553]

>>9118491
*sigh*
Time to repeat the encyclopedia *again*
"Liberalism - that ideology that holds that the primary, or only, goal of government and society it to maximize individual liberty and equality. Liberalism can be divided into two broad groups, the 'Classical Liberals' that focus upon individual liberty, and 'Social Liberals' who focus on individual equality.... ...while they differ from each other in some ways, both Classical and Social Liberals are part of the same left-wing movement'
PoliSci 105, folks.
Here is how my professor explained it to me:
>"Do you want your government and society governed by a king, aristocrats, and the Church? If yes, you're right-wing. Of no, you're left-wing."
Virtually all modern politics is a fight between the two main branches of Liberalism.

[Anonymous No.9118598]

>>9118553

you and your professor are idiots who don't understand that it's 2016 and your precious 19th century meaning of left/right has changed

[Anonymous No.9118616]

>>9118598
>"The dictionary, encyclopedia, PoliSci textbooks, and the PhDs in the field are all WRONG and I'm RIGHT! A-a-a-all of y-you are j-j-just l-laughing at me because I am SMART!"
Mises agreed that he was a Liberal.
Rothbard, too.
Were they stuck in the 19th Century, too, punkin'?

[Anonymous No.9118641]

>>9118616
them being liberals doesn't mean they're leftists

[Anonymous No.9118687]

i appreciate her idea that all men and women should strive to produce great work. But her writing is long and boring.

>>9118090
ah i kek'ed

[Anonymous No.9118707]

>>9118553
>goal of government and society it to maximize individual liberty and equality.
Sounds like something even a little child would be incredulous about.

[Anonymous No.9118740]

>>9118641
>Liberals aren't leftists
FFS
You do understand that the Left is a broad category, right?

[Anonymous No.9118746]

>>9118707
You'd think so, but the world is chock-a-block full of morons that can't seem to grasp that their position is incoherent

[Anonymous No.9118756]

>>9118533
he's right you know
individualism is the main tenet of classical liberalism, which is very similar to what they call libertarianism in the states

[Anonymous No.9118768]

>>9118740
>>9118756
I understand that the left is a broad category but putting it as "right = king & church, left = everything else" is archaic.
In today's terms, the right is socially conservative & economically liberal. For fuck's sake, according to his definition Ron "let them die" Paul is a leftist firebrand.

[Anonymous No.9118797]

She is like the angry old bourgeois mans favorite thinker. The type of man that is scattered across all quadrants of the American landscape, the type that cannot escape classification as either a cretin or a philistine. He is most likely a staunch cultural conservative, economically liberal as fuck, and watches a lot of network news but only truly believes everything he hears from one channel because the others are in conspiracy against it, or so he's told by them and everyone like them. The contents of every thrift store in the US is a testament to this, her enduring legacy. It's comforting to know incoming generations will soon start on the path paved for their following.

[Anonymous No.9118801]

>>9118768
>according to his definition Ron "let them die" Paul is a leftist firebrand.
He is.
>In today's terms, the right is socially conservative & economically liberal.
what you meant to write is, I suspect
>"Among the Americans that I know..."
There are plenty of economic conservatives left in the world
>Protip: Communism and laissez-faire Capitalism are both Liberal *by definition*
you just don't know any of them.
America has taken about 30% of the political spectrum and calls it 'left and right'. Europe has about 40%.
It has gotten so narrowly focused that it is getting nonsensical.
Fuck, go to Townhall or PJ media and they have commenters and pundits that will tell you 'social conservatives are DIRTY LEFTIES!' and they'll mean it!

[Anonymous No.9118805]

>>9118768
Well, that's an acceptable stance if you designate meaning according to contemporary manners and customs instead of what things really are, and always have been. The end results are unaltered.

[Anonymous No.9118827]

>>9118797
forgot myopic rephrasing of something along the lines of "kids today, fuckin Clinton" as an apt explanation of all the worlds present calamities

[Anonymous No.9118832]

>>9118805

A poltiical concept isn't a chair. Meaning changes over time.

>>9118801

What you're droning on and on and on about is what is and what isn't liberal while putting everything that is liberal firmly in the left wing camp. Laissez faire capitalism isn't left wing.

[Anonymous No.9118858]

It's not that what she is arguing for is bad.

It's that her arguments are simple yet overdrawn. Have you seen the size of her shit books?

[Anonymous No.9118906]

>>9118832
>'Liberalism, including both Social and Classical Liberalism, is firmly based on the left-wing thought of the 18th Century which is why the majority of politics in the contemporary West is between the Far Left and the Centre Left" - Ian Adams, 'Political Ideology Today', 1993
>"Liberalism must always acknowledge that it is firmly rooted in the Enlightenment concepts historically called 'Left-wing'. As modern theorists draw farther from these core ideas they become less Liberal and more like the Right-Wing ideas they are meant to reject" -Alan Wolfe, 'The Future of Liberalism', 2009
>"Left, or the Left-Wing, in political ideology, is the portion of the political spectrum that support egalitarianism and individual liberty. While Socialism is often seen as the de facto Left-wing political position, it also includes Communism, Classical Liberalism, Libertarianism, and similar political philosophies that reject the concepts of an aristocracy or hereditary power..." -Encyclopedia Britannica, 2009
Laissez-faire Capitalism is about individual freedom, which is Liberal, which is Left.
Protip: being Left Wing doesn't make you a Communist, yank

[Anonymous No.9118955]

>>9118906
I'm not American.

And look, I can quote Britannica entries too.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/left
>Left, In politics, the portion of the political spectrum associated in general with egalitarianism and popular or state control of the major institutions of political and economic life.

[Anonymous No.9118962]

>>9118906
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_conservatism
>Fiscal conservatism is a political-economic philosophy regarding fiscal policy and fiscal responsibility advocating low taxes, reduced government spending and minimal government debt.[1] Free trade, deregulation of the economy, lower taxes, and privatization are defining qualities of fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatism follows the same philosophical outlook of classical liberalism and economic liberalism regarding fiscal matters.[2]

[Anonymous No.9118993]

>>9118955
>Free version of Britannica
can't afford the rest of the full article?
>>9118962
>Wikipedia
>credible source
One or the other, pal.
I do love that, no matter how many textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and such I quote from you're still right and everyone else is wrong.
And for what? Because you don't have the mental fortitude to contemplate Libertarians as Centre Left rather than Centre?

[Anonymous No.9119024]

>>9118993
I'm sure you and your professor had a lot of fun crashing parties and telling all those dumb jocks and vapid whores that their conception of politics is wrong and that they're actually all left wingers.

[Anonymous No.9120064]

>>9118162
Are you serious? Individualism is right wing, not left wing.
Left wing is collectivism.

[Anonymous No.9120309]

>>9119024
So....
That's all you got?