Coffee is a detestable and immoral thing, lacking intellectual rigor and inheriting a deep hatred of Mankind and his works, content as all plants to stand idle, absorbing “free” energy and depleting the soil, the rightful property of the land-owner.
. . . ehhhh, never mind. It is easier to channel a DPRK propagana-spewer than Rand.
Okay, I’m willing to follow (not agree, but at least follow) the first four myths.
But are you seriously claiming Ayn Rand was a serious philosopher? You’re agreeing that there is an objective means of determining the correctness of everything? Seriously? And everything includes vanilla ice-cream is better than chocolate? And also the fact that Quantum Mechanics can’t be real.
And, of course, the kicker - because Objectivism is absolutely objective, there can be no disagreement at all. Any deviation in any fashion literally, by her philosophy, cannot be correct.
Objectivism is not a philosophy, it’s a church.
I lean pretty far left, but even I recognize that conflating Libertarians with Objectivists is unfair.
Agreed. These half-hearted appeals to the audience’s perception of ‘objectivity’— sometimes using entire armies of straw men —are ridiculous. Republicans have been painting Obama red over his support for changes in health care law that Richard Nixon advocated forty years ago. There may be remnants of the political left in this country, but none of them have a seat in the Senate, nor any chance in the near future of being elected for one.
I thought you just got a bunch of guns and built a fence around it.
Well, to be frank she detested anyone who didn’t worship her, and had only contempt for those who did. I am not sure if this was solipsism or just bdsm style dominant behavior.
So just say “liberal” and laugh at those John Birch wannabes who try to apply their Orwellian twist to it.
That looks great. I have made lots of yogurt, but never an aged cheese. I’d love to try doing it sometime.
This statement completely misrepresents the book. Ayn Rand is only discussed in a third of the book, at most. The author obviously does not like her “philosophy”, but basically sticks to the facts of her life and allows them to speak. Her importance in the story is to show how she influenced others, in particular Alan Greenspan. If anyone is vilified in the book, it is Greenspan. His decisions as chairman of the Federal Reserve, influenced by Rand’s ideas, were some of the biggest reasons for the worldwide economic collapse, and certainly deserve examination and condemnation. But don’t worry, it’s not just Greenspan who’s represented, all your favorite “heroes” of big finance who helped cause the collapse are given their due. It truly is a cavalcade of greedy, useless bastards.
This book is true to its title. It is about the rise of unfettered greed and the culture that birthed it, and how that has led to the socioeconomic issues we are facing today. And the middle third of the book is one of the best explanations of the financial crisis I have seen, defining and illuminating the various financial terms and shady misdeeds in an easy to read manner. Dismissing this book without reading it is a disservice to both the book and one’s self.
At least I admitted that I had not read that book and that I was basing my comments on the summary given by this Boing-Boing article.
Though, I can’t quite figure out how you can say that Greenspan’s decisions in the Fed were anything like what was advocated by Rand or even by Greenspan himself while he was part of her circle.
First, read Greenspan’s own essay from 1966 in The Objectivist Newsletter entitled, “Gold and Economic Freedom”. Then take a look at David Stockman’s analysis of Greenspan’s actions while Fed Chairman. Both are absolutely right.
You can’t tell me that Ayn Rand’s definition of free markets is in any way in sync with the anti-market bubble-creating macroeconomic manipulations exercised by Greenspan.
Based on your comments, the Myths book was written just for you. If this book tries to equate the bubbles created by the Fed with Ayn Rand’s ideas of capitalism, then my assumptions about the straw man assumptions are probably correct.
she’s truly undervalued for the artistic heights to which she raised logical fallacy. 
back in the day, i read pretty much all the fiction she’d written. the speechifying in atlas shrugged is horrible, but i think the fountainhead is still a great book. ( even if it devours some of its readers whole, and spits them out again as capitalist grifters on the social commons. )
So this is a “No True Scotsman” thing, right? No one has actually implemented Rand’s wisdom about capitalism and markets, just like no one ever implemented true Marxism?
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