What is your view of Libertarianism and Ayn Rand?

[Glassfan]

Well, I'm no Randian, I can tell you that much. I have made an effort to try and understand her works, but it has been a challenge. I have attempted to sit down and read Atlas Shrugged a few times, and Fountainhead once. As literary works, I consider them terrible.

I myself enjoy her works a great deal. Certainly it's a matter of taste - and reasonable people may disagree.

Rand of course, emphasizes the strength and self reliance of the individual. That must seem reactionary to today's generation, brought up in a virtual welfare state. We don't trust such people today - they're usually rich and successful.

 

[Mr. Dictator]

I guess the pinata's already burst in this thread?

 

[Cutlass]

I myself enjoy her works a great deal. Certainly it's a matter of taste - and reasonable people may disagree.

Rand of course, emphasizes the strength and self reliance of the individual. That must seem reactionary to today's generation, brought up in a virtual welfare state. We don't trust such people today - they're usually rich and successful.

You should come to the US for a visit someday. No one here has ever thought that way.

 

[Antilogic]

I myself enjoy her works a great deal. Certainly it's a matter of taste - and reasonable people may disagree.

Rand of course, emphasizes the strength and self reliance of the individual. That must seem reactionary to today's generation, brought up in a virtual welfare state. We don't trust such people today - they're usually rich and successful.

That is a very... favorable way to describe her characters. I, and I suspect many others, characterize her characters as arrogant, presumptive, and bone-headed. Her heroes are always right, no matter what. Their opinions are always "objectively" right, even when they are clearly opinion and not rooted in any objective fact. Their heroes know how to do literally everything. No entrepreneur today can match what any of Rand's heroes could pull off before breakfast.

While this "works" when the author literally invents her own fantasy wold, it's not how the real world works. You are not the best at everything. You are not always right. You can make the right decisions and still get screwed. And so on...

It's not about welfare states or contempt for people who improve themselves. It's about characters that can accomplish literally impossible feats, utterly incompetent caricatures of those who stand in their way, and it insults the realists in the audience.

 

[mangxema]

I'm all for the basic concept of liberty. However, I think the minarchist approach to government is a hopelessly naive and utopian way to go about trying to have liberty. That view, that only government is a threat to liberty, is nonsensical. There is at least as much threat to liberty from private actors as there are from government. Always has been, always will be.

The only real liberty that exists for the average person is in the balancing of the powers that can take that liberty. And that requires an activist government that works for an equal liberty for all people.

I'm not sure how much that 'only' really has to do with minarchism. I'm not an expert on the subject--I just think what I think and couldn't care less what box you put my in--the point of minarchism is to make the state as small as possible. I have heard that point before, and would agree with your assessment of it rolleyes, but I don't think that's quite where that statement comes from.

...and my criticism of mainstream American Libertarianism largely stems from my criticism of Objectivism.

I don't think that you can quite equate the two, given their somewhat... strained history. Apparently, Rand absolutely hated libertarians for messing up her ideas.

I don't fully understand all the foreign versions of libertarianism, and I've heard that libertarianism was more associated with socialism in some countries, which sounds like the complete inversion of the philosophy.

Apparently we're the weird ones that inverted it. Everyone else seems to be on the same page.

 

[Glassfan]

That is a very... favorable way to describe her characters. I, and I suspect many others, characterize her characters as arrogant, presumptive, and bone-headed. Her heroes are always right, no matter what. Their opinions are always "objectively" right, even when they are clearly opinion and not rooted in any objective fact. Their heroes know how to do literally everything. No entrepreneur today can match what any of Rand's heroes could pull off before breakfast.

While this "works" when the author literally invents her own fantasy wold, it's not how the real world works. You are not the best at everything. You are not always right. You can make the right decisions and still get screwed. And so on...

It's not about welfare states or contempt for people who improve themselves. It's about characters that can accomplish literally impossible feats, utterly incompetent caricatures of those who stand in their way, and it insults the realists in the audience.

I read few books in which the characters are credible and realistic. Rand's characters are no more unrealistic than most authors. After AR's literary period we went into the anti-hero (Little Big Man) phase and have been locked-in ever since. I recall a few years ago Peter Jackson made LotRs into a movie and changed Tolkein's Aragorn - a Rand type character if there ever was one - into a whiny, "I don't want to be King" wuss.

Don't most authors create there own fantasy worlds? If it was the real world, nobody would read it. And yes, Rands' characters do get screwed - usually by jealous friends or superiors - before they rise above.

It is (in my opinion), about the welfare state. Today we expect help and handouts - literally - "entitlements". Food stamps, unemployment compensation, an extensive social net to help everybody. And I'm not neccessarily criticising the "...it takes a village" mentality. But certainly some novels and characters from other times don't fit well these days.

 

[JollyRoger]

We need to go back to the good ole days of gleening rights and the Jubilee.

 

[squadbroken]

Libertarianism - Depends on if you mean libertarianism in general, or the common American idea of it. The former is too broad to judge (just about everyone in the West is a libertarian to some degree, hardcore moralists/authoritarians excluded), the latter is the purest expression of right-wing FYGM mentality.

Rand - wouldn't even wipe my rear end with her "literature".

 

[Ayn Rand]

Unfortunately there is a group of left-wing trolls on this forum so intelligent discussion about capitalism is quite difficult and it can sometimes be masochism to try and make headway on the subject.

Ayn Rand is interesting as a philosopher and lies firmly in the Aristotelean tradition, but you are best reading her yourself to get the to the truth and be able to make your own mind up.

Moderator Action: If you want discussion, using phrases like "left-wing trolls" isn't going to help matters.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Glassfan]

We need to go back to the good ole days of gleening rights and the Jubilee.

Well that's just it. Tastes change and evolve over time. Yesterday's hero is today's chump.

 

[JollyRoger]

Unfortunately there is a group of left-wing trolls on this forum so intelligent discussion about capitalism is quite difficult and it can sometimes be masochism to try and make headway on the subject.

Capitalism is far from libertarian:

FREE MARKET: That condition of society in which all economic transactions result from voluntary choice without coercion.

PRIVILEGE: From the Latin privi, private, and lege, law. An advantage granted by the State and protected by its powers of coercion. A law for private benefit.

TAX: That form of coercion or interference with the Free Market in which the State collects tribute (the tax), allowing it to hire armed forces to practice coercion in defense of privilege, and also to engage in such wars, adventures, experiments, "reforms," etc., as it pleases, not at its own cost, but at the cost of "its" subjects.

USURY: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which one State supported group monopolizes the coinage and thereby takes tribute (interest), direct or indirect, on all or most economic transactions.

LANDLORDISM: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which one State-supported group "owns" the land and thereby takes tribute (rent) from those who live, work, or produce on the land.

TARIFF: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which commodities produced outside the State are not allowed to compete equally with those produced inside the State.

CAPITALISM: That organization of society, incorporating elements of tax, usury, landlordism, and tariff, which thus denies the Free Market while pretending to exemplify it.

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1675554/pg1

 

[Tee Kay]

When I was an angsty self-pitying teenager, I didn't find Ayn Rand's ideas really that attractive. Thankfully.

I am an angsty self-pitying teenager and I find Ayn Rand's idea repulsive.

People should stop linking teenagers with Randism.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Rand of course, emphasizes the strength and self reliance of the individual. That must seem reactionary to today's generation, brought up in a virtual welfare state. We don't trust such people today - they're usually rich and successful.

Unfortunately there is a group of left-wing trolls on this forum so intelligent discussion about capitalism is quite difficult and it can sometimes be masochism to try and make headway on the subject.

It's the attitudes like these which cause me to feel no incentive whatsoever to read Ayn Rand.

Any criticism is waved away with this sort of drivel. Oh you don't like AR, that must be because you were suckled in a welfare state. Oh you don't like AR? That's because you're a left wing troll, and no intelligent discussion is possible. Possible other catchwords found in rebuttals: Statist, slave, etc, etc.

The idea that criticism might be valid or worth considering never even enters the mind. Neither does the idea that challenging your ideas is a worthwhile venture.


Maybe it's because the two people I quoted as an example completely ignored criticism from someone who self-identifies as libertarian:

I consider myself a libertarian. I have enough of a Geoist influence to be considered well to the left of the Libertarian Party, but still well to the right of the original libertarians and modern libertarian socialists like Chomsky. I am rather annoyed by how too many libertarians oversimplify and dumb down the political philosophy, but the same can be said of the proponents of any political ideology.

I am no fan of Ayn Rand and would prefer that everyone just forget about her. (Go back to John Locke instead, and don't overlook the Lockean Proviso.) Too many libertarians today are fans of Ayn Rand, even though Rand hated libertarians. She claimed that they stole political parts of her ideology but rejected the coherent whole. The whole was not actually coherent though, and what they "stole" was around long before her. Objectivism contains some ideas that are good and some that are original, but none that are both.

 

[squadbroken]

The idea that criticism might be valid or worth considering never even enters the mind. Neither does the idea that challenging your ideas is a worthwhile venture.

Pfft, why should they entertain any criticism? They're objectively right, after all.

 

[Ayn Rand]

cause me to feel no incentive whatsoever to read Ayn Rand.

The idea that criticism might be valid or worth considering never even enters the mind. Neither does the idea that challenging your ideas is a worthwhile venture.

Check your premises, you might identify the contradiction - help below if you need it

Spoiler :

I've lost count of those who consider themselves informed enough to tell me what Ayn Rand's ideas are about, yet admit that they have not read her and don't intend to.

 

[ParkCungHee]

At a certain point, it's not necessary to read someone's book to understand the views they espouse. Relatively few people on this board have read Dreams of my Father, even fewer have read Decision Points, Turnaround, A Nation Like No Other or Liberty Defined yet they feel confident talking on the matter.

If that's too Amero-Centric, I doubt you or anyone else on the board has read Beyond the Crash, Cameron on Cameron, A Journey or Christian Foundations.

I've seen you personally throw around the term Fascism, but I really doubt you have a copy of The Theory of Mind as Pure Act, Origins and Doctrine of Fascism, Revolutionary War or even The Dynamics of War and Revolution.

 

[Ayn Rand]

At a certain point, it's not necessary to read someone's book to understand the views they espouse. Relatively few people on this board have read Dreams of my Father, even fewer have read Decision Points, Turnaround, A Nation Like No Other or Liberty Defined yet they feel confident talking on the matter.

If that's too Amero-Centric, I doubt you or anyone else on the board has read Beyond the Crash, Cameron on Cameron, A Journey or Christian Foundations.

I've seen you personally throw around the term Fascism, but I really doubt you have a copy of The Theory of Mind as Pure Act, Origins and Doctrine of Fascism, Revolutionary War or even The Dynamics of War and Revolution.

I agree with your point in general - but as we proceed towards specifics it does become necessary to start picking up more information so that we can deal with the nuances and subtleties of a subject.

Otherwise [and I know this was not your argument] one does get to a point where we are "arguing for ignorance" and may as well ask "what is the point in reading anything at all".

So while I respect those who criticise capitalism and their right to do so, something as nuanced as Ayn Rand's epistemology, for example, and its application to her overall philosophical World-view, does require some knowledge and intellectual effort if any kind of a meaningful discussion in depth is going to occur [and I mention the epistemology as this really is central to the actual theory, as Objectivists will agree].


Another aspect of this same knowledge problem occurs when someone's perception of theory is considered higher in value to actual knowledge. It is a scientific principle that knowledge posesses greater validity than ignorance. Reverse that principle and it is simply painful to discuss any subject at all.

 

[ParkCungHee]

something as nuanced as Ayn Rand's epistemology, for example, and its application to her overall philosophical World-view, does require some knowledge and intellectual effort if any kind of a meaningful discussion in depth is going to occur [and I mention the epistemology as this really is central to the actual theory, as Objectivists will agree].

Ah, but now you're moving the goal posts. We have moved from "you must read dreadful books" to "you must have some knowledge and intellectual effort", things that do not require reading dreadful books. I would further add that this seems to be a sign of serious mental defect on the part of Randians if this were true, because it suggests that they cannot explain or articulate their views, like everyone else does. I don't expect others to read Tolstoy, Adi Shankara or Plato to be able to engage me in a discussion. If I believe something, and consider it intellectually valid, I am able to articulate it, something that you seem to be claiming Randians are incapable of.

Another aspect of this same knowledge problem occurs when someone's perception of theory is considered higher in value to actual knowledge.

Which of course can only be argued using someone else's perception of theory.

It is a scientific principle that knowledge posesses greater validity than ignorance.

That's not a scientific principle at all. That's barely a meaningful sentence.

 

[Crezth]

I read few books in which the characters are credible and realistic. Rand's characters are no more unrealistic than most authors. After AR's literary period we went into the anti-hero (Little Big Man) phase and have been locked-in ever since. I recall a few years ago Peter Jackson made LotRs into a movie and changed Tolkein's Aragorn - a Rand type character if there ever was one - into a whiny, "I don't want to be King" wuss.

Ah yes, Aragorn the Objectivist - fighting for his country against the evil oppressors. A true act of selfishness if ever I saw one.

Have you read many books? I'm being completely serious. I mean, would you look at F. Scott Fitzgerald and Rand and go "Yup Rand is as good as, if not better than, this other guy."

Don't most authors create there own fantasy worlds? If it was the real world, nobody would read it. And yes, Rands' characters do get screwed - usually by jealous friends or superiors - before they rise above.

Wahaha. Many authors do create their own worlds, yes. But there are often - often - successful works of great literature that use the real world as their setting.

I mean, off the top of my head, I can think of a FEW.

It is (in my opinion), about the welfare state. Today we expect help and handouts - literally - "entitlements". Food stamps, unemployment compensation, an extensive social net to help everybody. And I'm not neccessarily criticising the "...it takes a village" mentality. But certainly some novels and characters from other times don't fit well these days.

Hey so should some guy who gets his legs blown off fighting for our (United States) country get unemployment benefits if he has a little trouble finding a job? Just out of curiosity, what should happen to all the orphans?

edit: It's also a sign of being massively uninformed if you parrot the point of view that these entitlements are something everyone "expects" and strives to receive. Very few people want to be on welfare, and even fewer expect to be "entitled" to it. Furthermore, a lot of people on welfare need that assistance. Yes, some people are cheating the system, doubtless - but I have no qualms, personally, about paying taxes into a system that ensures that single mothers don't starve while working three other jobs.

Unfortunately there is a group of left-wing trolls on this forum so intelligent discussion about capitalism is quite difficult and it can sometimes be masochism to try and make headway on the subject.

Here, let me get some nails and a cross so you can continue this crucifixion convincingly.

Ayn Rand is interesting as a philosopher and lies firmly in the Aristotelean tradition, but you are best reading her yourself to get the to the truth and be able to make your own mind up.

hahahahahahahahahaha

Check your premises, you might identify the contradiction - help below if you need it

Spoiler :

I've lost count of those who consider themselves informed enough to tell me what Ayn Rand's ideas are about, yet admit that they have not read her and don't intend to.

I've read Atlas Shrugged. I adhered to Ayn Rand's theology unflinchingly until I got my first job.

At a certain point, it's not necessary to read someone's book to understand the views they espouse. Relatively few people on this board have read Dreams of my Father, even fewer have read Decision Points, Turnaround, A Nation Like No Other or Liberty Defined yet they feel confident talking on the matter.

If that's too Amero-Centric, I doubt you or anyone else on the board has read Beyond the Crash, Cameron on Cameron, A Journey or Christian Foundations.

I've seen you personally throw around the term Fascism, but I really doubt you have a copy of The Theory of Mind as Pure Act, Origins and Doctrine of Fascism, Revolutionary War or even The Dynamics of War and Revolution.

yeah bro but all those books suck! ayn rand rules and if you disagree it's because you're a statist parasite

 

[Polycrates]

I started reading the Fountainhead once, managed to get through a whole bunch of terrible prose and drivel about how doric columns are the world's greatest evil, but when I got to the bit where her super-perfect-avatar-of-objectivism-with-no-flaws main character literally rapes someone but hey it's cool because he's so awesome you should feel privileged that he chose to rape you, that's when I kind of lost interest. It's actually kind of an apt metaphor for Objectivism as a whole though, really.

I've heard that as bad as Fountainhead is, Atlas Shrugged is infinitely worse, which is a horrifying concept. Rand herself also seems to have been one of the most hypocritical and just thoroughly unpleasant people you could ever hope not to meet.