Personally, I think Rand’s philosophy is great…for anyone who wants to go live in the forest by themselves.
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By that simplistic equivocation and considering how she lived her life, Rand didn’t understand Rand’s “true soul”.
No, it’s part of the Audubon system of units:
1000 Mockingbirds = 1 kilomockingbird
2000 Mockingbirds = 2kMb and so on.
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What did the forest do to deserve being infested with Randians?
Get rid of those trees - they prevent the light shining on wealth creators!
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This argument always struck me as weird.
Like, do you need to get poisoned by radiation to know that it will kill you? Do you need to eat dog shit to know that you wouldn’t like it? Do you need to get kicked in the junk to truly understand what it’s like to be kicked in the junk?
But then, I remember that this is a Randroid we’re talking about. Most people know to avoid dangerous things because they broadly trust the expertise of others to know what dangerous things can do to you. But if you’re a Randian Objectivist, other peoples’ expertise is nearly meaningless to you - Objectivism is about your happiness, not theirs, and you might have a different opinion than them, or a different reaction to radiation, or whatever.
And then I wonder at the hypocrisy of all the conservative liberation hypocrites who are dedicated followers of Rand and yet have never eaten dog shit, and I wonder - how can you be sure you’re maximizing your own happiness, having never tasted it yourself?
Sadly, my food cart that I use to transport dog-shit-on-a-stick to self-proclaimed Objectivists is being hampered by wet-blanked liberals so it hasn’t become the raging success that it is, logically, supposed to be.
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Yeah, I pushed my way though so I could at least understand. “See! My ideas can work as long as you invent free energy and keep it for yourself.”
Will have to check out “Sewer, Gas and Electric”
I plan on putting you out of business with my food cart selling radioactive dog-shit-on-a-stick.
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Hey, it is entirely plausible that the only thing that keeps us from having unlimited free energy, invisibility shields and super-awesome alloys is fiat currency and a 40% marginal tax rate.
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No rational actor would sicken their clients!
That’s why Rand was an avid smoker up until her death, from lung cancer.
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I didn’t read Atlas Shrugged but I did eventually make it through The Fountainhead, which seemed provocative when I was in my early 20s even if I couldn’t relate to any of the characters or their ideals. It was the kind of novel an unapologetic sociopath might write. The “villains” are do-gooders and philanthropists, whereas the “hero” actually breaks into his love interest’s room and rapes her. (But that’s OK according to Rand fans because she was a cocktease who secretly wanted it.)
What I find surprising is how many of Ayn Rand’s so-called fans don’t seem to be familiar with her work. For example, she had no regard at all for organized religion yet she’s somehow become the darling of the Christian right.
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I think the deserts of northern Somalia are suitable for Randians. There’s no oppressive government to interfere with the natural consequences of their choices, and there are valuable minerals, like diamonds, to be found. With hard work and a bit of luck, they might be able to avoid being killed by the radical death squads that wander that landscape.
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People who read Ayn Rand and become a “Libertarian” seem to read only half of Atlas Shrugged. They get all giddy about the idea of ‘your own work is what makes you’ and neglect the fact that it was corporate welfare, greed and monopolistic backroom deals that caused the collapse of capitalism in her fictional world. I never got the point that ‘government intervention ruined things’ from her work, only that ‘money that buys government’ ruined things.
Guess which one we are on the path of currently? 
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Look, Smoking is a great example of mans mastery of fire! Keeping it tamed at the end of a stick… or a plants mastery over a human though drug addition and rationalizing behavior after the fact.
I get those confused sometimes.
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Any time that a government is present, it ruins things. Money that buys government is but the most visible form of government “standing in the way” of progress.
I made it a little less than 1/3 way through Shrugged – I persevered as long as possible, but just could not stand the writing. All was not lost since I put the book to good use as a replacement for a leg that broke off of my couch during a recent move (I might have had to shim it with a few Watchtower pamphlets that I had lying around). I’d rather re-read the “begat” section of the bible for eternity than return to that dreck.
Perhaps there is some sort of brain condition that makes folks blind to the writing while simultaneously programming them with the repeated assault of her “wisdom”.
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Let’s stretch it out to this (your example is completely physically based).
“I don’t need to understand religion/gay rights/immigration/etc. to know that I hate (or support) religious/gays/foreigners/etc. - just tell me what you think about them, cause I know and trust you”
I read the whole damned thing back in the day and thought it was hot shit…for about a quarter of the book. And the more I thought about it, and tried to put it into context, the more it failed miserably. Also, the tortured and torturously long sentence in @frauenfelder’s quote above was just practice for writing tortured and torturous sentences exponentially longer than that one in Atlas and Fountainhead.
The one thing I liked from Atlas, because I can be as evil and malicious and self-serving as the worst among us, is that after requesting and being denied help (by the barman or trinket shop owner or whoever the fuck it was) as he’s being beaten nearly to death in the alleyway, Hank Rearden goes back–after making his millions–and destroys the life of that barman or trinket shop owner.
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Yeah, that’s absolutely the case - you SHOULD trust people with expertise in these things over your own intuition!
Like, I was raised Catholic. I would not pretend to “understand Islam,” though I know quite a bit about it. I absolutely trust someone who, say, is a Muslim to have a more accurate view of that than me - she’d be a bigger expert than I would!
And I bet she would have a complex and nuanced view that would include things that are pretty awful and things that are pretty great and a whole spectrum of stuff in between.
(Even better: get a LOT of experts, and put them together, and see if there’s any consensus! SCIENCE!)g
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And yet - Atlas Shrugged doesn’t say that at all.
Whoa, that’s some old country/eastern European “justice” there! Do you remember if that event was the driving force behind his success - revenge?
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