Ayn Rand's main premise (1 Viewer)

[pantagrapher]

She got as much out of her economics degree as Gates got out of his technology degree.

Gates actually made something while Rand was ####ed in the head and could only blather on for hundreds of pages about how great it is to be a sociopath.

Sure, because people who advocate liberty and voluntary, mutually beneficial exchange are sociopaths.

Perhaps you need to read Hayek's The Road To Serfdom, particularly Chaper 10, "Why the Worst Get on Top."

Go ahead, I dare you.

P.S. Rand did actually make things, including a famous book that has sold over seven million copies. What have you produced in your life that people will voluntarily exchange their resources for?

I read the chapter - if the goal was to turn me off on totalitarianism, a little late for that. However, I found this interesting:

It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program — on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off than on any positive task.

This is true and why I'm against demonization the '1%'. Making money is great - people should be encouraged to do as well as they can financially and we should celebrate their success. We should also tax those who can most afford it to enable others to follow in their path to success.

By the way, L. Ron Hubbard also wrote and sold millions of books.

You openly admit to favoring totalitarianism. See, now I can respect that.

I don't think you're reading that comment right.

 

[pantagrapher]

You openly admit to favoring totalitarianism. See, now I can respect that.

Progressive taxation is totalitarianism?

I think he's misinterpreting "if the goal was to turn me off on totalitarianism, a little late for that." As if you're already so deep into totalitarianism that you just can't turn back now.

 

[rockaction]

You openly admit to favoring totalitarianism. See, now I can respect that.

Progressive taxation is totalitarianism?

An old libertarian mantra was indeed that "taxation is theft." There have been a ton of columns written on and about it. Just FYI. Recently, Julian Sanchez, an influential libertarian, penned an article explaining why using that phrase was a bad idea when discussing things with people not familiar with the libertarian movement.

Jack White has already linked to Lew Rockwell's site elsewhere here. He needs to stop the talking points and go back to first principles about why these things are what they are rather than issuing mere declaratives.

 

[timschochet]

Easy to rip her for s million reasons and you guys seem to have a lot of fun with it.

One aspect of her fiction which I really enjoyed was the struggle between the competent people and the incompetent. I've never understood why so many people who don't know anything about stuff are allowed to #### things up in practically every walk of life. Rand attempts to shed light on this.

I actually agree with Rand on many things but unfortunately she's a extremist, no wonder that her black and white ideas appeal to teenagers.

To wow her young admirers, Rand would often tell a story of how a smart-aleck book salesman had once challenged her to explain her philosophy while standing on one leg. She replied: “Metaphysics—objective reality. Epistemology—reason. Ethics—self-interest. Politics—capitalism.”

The first two I agree wholeheartedly. It's the last two where she lacks nuance and understanding of what it takes for a healthy society to function. Self-interest and capitalism have their place, but if you want to benefit from a society to achieve success then the society has a right to tax a reasonable amount of your success for its continued existence. If someone doesn't like that they have every right to move to a country where the wealthy don't care if the poor die starving in the streets.

Well first off, she would agree with you about taxation. She doesn't like progressive taxation, but she did believe that a certain amount of government was necessary for a society to function. Rand was no anarchist like Murray Rothbard. She would have preferred government spending be paid by lotteries and other voluntary methods, but she recognized that some form of limited taxation might be necessary.

In terms of the poor starving in the street, I agree with you, and that's an aspect of Rand that I never could get behind. I firmly believe in the safety net. She does not. I don't think that, post 1933, we will ever return this society to having no safety net, so it's a moot point really.

 

[cstu]

You openly admit to favoring totalitarianism. See, now I can respect that.

Progressive taxation is totalitarianism?

An old libertarian mantra was indeed that "taxation is theft." There have been a ton of columns written on and about it. Just FYI. Recently, Julian Sanchez, an influential libertarian, penned an article explaining why using that phrase was a bad idea when discussing things with people not familiar with the libertarian movement.

Jack White has already linked to Lew Rockwell's site elsewhere here. He needs to stop the talking points and go back to first principles about why these things are what they are rather than issuing mere declaratives.

That's fine if you believe that - just leave already.

 

[rockaction]

Easy to rip her for s million reasons and you guys seem to have a lot of fun with it.

One aspect of her fiction which I really enjoyed was the struggle between the competent people and the incompetent. I've never understood why so many people who don't know anything about stuff are allowed to #### things up in practically every walk of life. Rand attempts to shed light on this.

I actually agree with Rand on many things but unfortunately she's a extremist, no wonder that her black and white ideas appeal to teenagers.

To wow her young admirers, Rand would often tell a story of how a smart-aleck book salesman had once challenged her to explain her philosophy while standing on one leg. She replied: “Metaphysics—objective reality. Epistemology—reason. Ethics—self-interest. Politics—capitalism.”

The first two I agree wholeheartedly. It's the last two where she lacks nuance and understanding of what it takes for a healthy society to function. Self-interest and capitalism have their place, but if you want to benefit from a society to achieve success then the society has a right to tax a reasonable amount of your success for its continued existence. If someone doesn't like that they have every right to move to a country where the wealthy don't care if the poor die starving in the streets.

Well first off, she would agree with you about taxation. She doesn't like progressive taxation, but she did believe that a certain amount of government was necessary for a society to function. Rand was no anarchist like Murray Rothbard. She would have preferred government spending be paid by lotteries and other voluntary methods, but she recognized that some form of limited taxation might be necessary.

In terms of the poor starving in the street, I agree with you, and that's an aspect of Rand that I never could get behind. I firmly believe in the safety net. She does not. I don't think that, post 1933, we will ever return this society to having no safety net, so it's a moot point really.

Rand actively hated Rothbard and anarchism. She believed in a police force to enforce her first crime of crimes, which was "theft."

 

[rockaction]

You openly admit to favoring totalitarianism. See, now I can respect that.

Progressive taxation is totalitarianism?

An old libertarian mantra was indeed that "taxation is theft." There have been a ton of columns written on and about it. Just FYI. Recently, Julian Sanchez, an influential libertarian, penned an article explaining why using that phrase was a bad idea when discussing things with people not familiar with the libertarian movement.

Jack White has already linked to Lew Rockwell's site elsewhere here. He needs to stop the talking points and go back to first principles about why these things are what they are rather than issuing mere declaratives.

That's fine if you believe that - just leave already.

Just trying to explain where Jack White is coming from.

I think most people who, as you pointed out, have left their teen years (and others who simply side with that point of view, but it is especially popular amongst the young) believe in a safety net, largely in the form of a Negative Income Tax like Milton Friedman suggested.

 

[timschochet]

Ayn Rand was most effective as a capitalist muckraker, and she is much better as a critic of society than as a solver of problems. She was excellent at identifying certain problems of big government, bureaucracy, collectivism, and the like. She was not so good at providing her solutions to those problems.

For this reason, I've always thought Atlas Shrugged was sort of a mirror image of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. The Jungle is a brilliant critique of the sort of free market capitalism that existed at the end of the 19th century. 80% of the book describes how a poor family is mistreated and totally screwed by the free market no matter how hard they work, and the narrative is very strong. Sinclair had a sharp eye for the misery of the very poor. Unfortunately the final 20% of the book is devoted to his solution: a utopian socialist society. Not only is this part hard to read (because it drones on and on repeating Marxist bromides), it also presents an unworkable system, as the 20th century proved to our horror on several occasions. But that doesn't take away from the brilliance of The Jungle. I've read it several times, and really enjoyed. When I get to the last 80 pages or so, I stop reading.

It's the exact same with Atlas Shrugged, except that Rand's book is a lot longer. I don't care what anyone says; the main reason her fiction is popular is because, like Sinclair, she was a skilled narrative writer. The characters, particularly in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, are fun to follow: heroes and villains in an epic struggle. And like Sinclair, Rand has a very sharp eye as a critic of modern society- she doesn't attack capitalism of course; she attacks big government. But her critiques are well thought out and dead on. Unfortunately, like Sinclair, she feels the need to offer her own solution. And also like Sinclair, Rand's solution is not only unworkable, it's unreadable. I challenge anyone to try to get through John Galt's 90 page speech from beginning to end. I can't do it.

There is a 3rd novel I would add to this discussion, Tom Wolffe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. Like the other two novels, Wolfe offers, within a strong narrative, a stunning and brilliant critique of American society- in this case, race relations. But unlike the other two novels, Wolfe stops there: he wisely offers no solution, no moral conclusion. Perhaps he has none to offer. But Bonfire IMO is more effective as a critique for not attempting to solve anything.

 

[Jack White]

You openly admit to favoring totalitarianism. See, now I can respect that.

Progressive taxation is totalitarianism?

if the goal was to turn me off on totalitarianism, a little late for that.

Society is a fiction. Only individuals can act. The actions of the gang of thieves that comprise state are always to plunder private wealth. It creates nothing of value.

As for, "If you don't like it, move out of the country," no, I don't think I will. Instead I will stay here and do what I can to advance the cause of liberty, freedom and peace.

Besides, talk about a teenage level argument: if you don't like it, leave. How original and creative!

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

Ayn Rand was most effective as a capitalist muckraker, and she is much better as a critic of society than as a solver of problems. She was excellent at identifying certain problems of big government, bureaucracy, collectivism, and the like. She was not so good at providing her solutions to those problems.

For this reason, I've always thought Atlas Shrugged was sort of a mirror image of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. The Jungle is a brilliant critique of the sort of free market capitalism that existed at the end of the 19th century. 80% of the book describes how a poor family is mistreated and totally screwed by the free market no matter how hard they work, and the narrative is very strong. Sinclair had a sharp eye for the misery of the very poor. Unfortunately the final 20% of the book is devoted to his solution: a utopian socialist society. Not only is this part hard to read (because it drones on and on repeating Marxist bromides), it also presents an unworkable system, as the 20th century proved to our horror on several occasions. But that doesn't take away from the brilliance of The Jungle. I've read it several times, and really enjoyed. When I get to the last 80 pages or so, I stop reading.

It's the exact same with Atlas Shrugged, except that Rand's book is a lot longer. I don't care what anyone says; the main reason her fiction is popular is because, like Sinclair, she was a skilled narrative writer. The characters, particularly in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, are fun to follow: heroes and villains in an epic struggle. And like Sinclair, Rand has a very sharp eye as a critic of modern society- she doesn't attack capitalism of course; she attacks big government. But her critiques are well thought out and dead on. Unfortunately, like Sinclair, she feels the need to offer her own solution. And also like Sinclair, Rand's solution is not only unworkable, it's unreadable. I challenge anyone to try to get through John Galt's 90 page speech from beginning to end. I can't do it.

There is a 3rd novel I would add to this discussion, Tom Wolffe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. Like the other two novels, Wolfe offers, within a strong narrative, a stunning and brilliant critique of American society- in this case, race relations. But unlike the other two novels, Wolfe stops there: he wisely offers no solution, no moral conclusion. Perhaps he has none to offer. But Bonfire IMO is more effective as a critique for not attempting to solve anything.

I've read her stuff and I like her ideas about ideas themselves, but I disagree on the narrative writer part. Maybe some people like the soap opera romance stuff but the writing is jilted, stultified, cardboard. Which is fine, she's writing about ideas.

I think the best book as writing is We The Living, and maybe it's the most insightful into her own story.

As for this overall discussion, I don't see where Rand applies to taxes and infrastructure and government spending. Or even libertarianism for that matter, her philosophy was individualism, egoism or objectivism, and I don't agree with a good deal of it because it was dogmatic. Rand talked about the nature of property and autonomy over one's actions being connected to individual rights. I do agree with that. I think even American liberals and progressives agree on that frequently, though they might not admit it or realize it. I think that's what makes us each a small 'd' democrat and capitalist. If you think that any given industry or any given company should be expropriated then no, you don't agree with it, and you're socialist.

I know sometimes some liberals or big 'D' Democrats get called socialist, but this is really a socialist:

This requires taking the top 500 corporations that dominate our economy (the Wal-Marts, Exxon-Mobils, United Health Groups, Halliburtons, Microsofts, etc.) into public ownership and placing them under the democratic control of elected representatives of workers, consumers, and the community at large.

http://www.votesawant.org/why_socialism

That is an actual elected councilwoman in Seattle. That's horrible, because regardless of idealism or empathy for those in need (or our altruism as Rand put it) when you rip property rights from individuals you will also lose personal, individual rights, Everywhere in world history, and this predates Marx, this has ended in indescribable bloodshed and suffering. That's what Rand emerged from and that was the story she had to tell.

Or as Boris Pasternack said, you will know this when you are told, "the private life is dead."

 

[dparker713]

You openly admit to favoring totalitarianism. See, now I can respect that.

Progressive taxation is totalitarianism?

if the goal was to turn me off on totalitarianism, a little late for that.

Society is a fiction. Only individuals can act. The actions of the gang of thieves that comprise state are always to plunder private wealth. It creates nothing of value.

As for, "If you don't like it, move out of the country," no, I don't think I will. Instead I will stay here and do what I can to advance the cause of liberty, freedom and peace.

Besides, talk about a teenage level argument: if you don't like it, leave. How original and creative!

So your current claim is that no state, in the history of mankind, has ever created anything of value?

Canals, bridges, roads. Military defense. The atomic bomb. Monuments. Mail service. Property rights. Contract enforcement. Police. Fire Departments. Space fight. Tang! You gotta atleast give in on Tang.

 

[cstu]

You openly admit to favoring totalitarianism. See, now I can respect that.

Progressive taxation is totalitarianism?

if the goal was to turn me off on totalitarianism, a little late for that.

Society is a fiction. Only individuals can act. The actions of the gang of thieves that comprise state are always to plunder private wealth. It creates nothing of value.

As for, "If you don't like it, move out of the country," no, I don't think I will. Instead I will stay here and do what I can to advance the cause of liberty, freedom and peace.

Besides, talk about a teenage level argument: if you don't like it, leave. How original and creative!

Anyone with a few brain cells understands the horrors of totalitarianism.

Of course you'll stay here - you get all the benefits of this non-existent society while at the same time continuing to delude yourself that your rights are being violated by having to pay taxes.

 

[cstu]

In the Reason interview Branden recants his praise, saying that Rand did not offer much psychological insight at all:

“I did not realize this, or did not realize it fully, during the years of our association, but Miss Rand is very ignorant of human psychology. On certain occasions she admitted that to me. It was not unusual for her to declare, “Nathan, I don’t really understand anything about human psychology.” But I never realized the full implications of what she was acknowledging. In Who Is Ayn Rand?, I compliment her psychological acumen. I was wrong to do so. That was my own naïveté or blindness. I think Miss Rand’s lack of psychological understanding is a great liability to her... “

http://www.solopassion.com/node/4130

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

In the Reason interview Branden recants his praise, saying that Rand did not offer much psychological insight at all:

“I did not realize this, or did not realize it fully, during the years of our association, but Miss Rand is very ignorant of human psychology. On certain occasions she admitted that to me. It was not unusual for her to declare, “Nathan, I don’t really understand anything about human psychology.” But I never realized the full implications of what she was acknowledging. In Who Is Ayn Rand?, I compliment her psychological acumen. I was wrong to do so. That was my own naïveté or blindness. I think Miss Rand’s lack of psychological understanding is a great liability to her... “

http://www.solopassion.com/node/4130

That is a really long piece and it is ultimately really unfavorable to the Brandens.

This was a girl who bravely escaped from a horrible place and went on to explain her world view of how that place came to exist and she wanted to warn the USA, which she dearly loved, about it.

How alllllll this [insert Jerry Seinfeld voice] got all mixed up with alllllll that [psychology, an institute, a magazine, all that drama, etc.] is a whole other thing.

 

[Todd Andrews]

Ayn Rand was most effective as a capitalist muckraker, and she is much better as a critic of society than as a solver of problems. She was excellent at identifying certain problems of big government, bureaucracy, collectivism, and the like. She was not so good at providing her solutions to those problems.

For this reason, I've always thought Atlas Shrugged was sort of a mirror image of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. The Jungle is a brilliant critique of the sort of free market capitalism that existed at the end of the 19th century. 80% of the book describes how a poor family is mistreated and totally screwed by the free market no matter how hard they work, and the narrative is very strong. Sinclair had a sharp eye for the misery of the very poor. Unfortunately the final 20% of the book is devoted to his solution: a utopian socialist society. Not only is this part hard to read (because it drones on and on repeating Marxist bromides), it also presents an unworkable system, as the 20th century proved to our horror on several occasions. But that doesn't take away from the brilliance of The Jungle. I've read it several times, and really enjoyed. When I get to the last 80 pages or so, I stop reading.

It's the exact same with Atlas Shrugged, except that Rand's book is a lot longer. I don't care what anyone says; the main reason her fiction is popular is because, like Sinclair, she was a skilled narrative writer. The characters, particularly in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, are fun to follow: heroes and villains in an epic struggle. And like Sinclair, Rand has a very sharp eye as a critic of modern society- she doesn't attack capitalism of course; she attacks big government. But her critiques are well thought out and dead on. Unfortunately, like Sinclair, she feels the need to offer her own solution. And also like Sinclair, Rand's solution is not only unworkable, it's unreadable. I challenge anyone to try to get through John Galt's 90 page speech from beginning to end. I can't do it.

There is a 3rd novel I would add to this discussion, Tom Wolffe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. Like the other two novels, Wolfe offers, within a strong narrative, a stunning and brilliant critique of American society- in this case, race relations. But unlike the other two novels, Wolfe stops there: he wisely offers no solution, no moral conclusion. Perhaps he has none to offer. But Bonfire IMO is more effective as a critique for not attempting to solve anything.

I've read her stuff and I like her ideas about ideas themselves, but I disagree on the narrative writer part. Maybe some people like the soap opera romance stuff but the writing is jilted, stultified, cardboard. Which is fine, she's writing about ideas.

I think the best book as writing is Anthem, and maybe it's the most insightful into her own story.

As for this overall discussion, I don't see where Rand applies to taxes and infrastructure and government spending. Or even libertarianism for that matter, her philosophy was individualism, egoism or objectivism, and I don't agree with a good deal of it because it was dogmatic. Rand talked about the nature of property and autonomy over one's actions being connected to individual rights. I do agree with that. I think even American liberals and progressives agree on that frequently, though they might not admit it or realize it. I think that's what makes us each a small 'd' democrat and capitalist. If you think that any given industry or any given company should be expropriated then no, you don't agree with it, and you're socialist.

I know sometimes some liberals or big 'D' Democrats get called socialist, but this is really a socialist:

This requires taking the top 500 corporations that dominate our economy (the Wal-Marts, Exxon-Mobils, United Health Groups, Halliburtons, Microsofts, etc.) into public ownership and placing them under the democratic control of elected representatives of workers, consumers, and the community at large.

http://www.votesawant.org/why_socialism

That is an actual elected councilwoman in Seattle. That's horrible, because regardless of idealism or empathy for those in need (or our altruism as Rand put it) when you rip property rights from individuals you will also lose personal, individual rights, Everywhere in world history, and this predates Marx, this has ended in indescribable bloodshed and suffering. That's what Rand emerged from and that was the story she had to tell.

Or as Boris Pasternack said, you will know this when you are told, "the private life is dead."

SID is absolutely correct about her writing--it is not good. It makes me sad to read her writing, and that is before I get to her actual lame ideas.

 

[cstu]

SID is absolutely correct about her writing--it is not good. It makes me sad to read her writing, and that is before I get to her actual lame ideas.

Well she was doing it hopped up on Benzedrine.

 

[Todd Andrews]

SID is absolutely correct about her writing--it is not good. It makes me sad to read her writing, and that is before I get to her actual lame ideas.

Well she was doing it hopped up on Benzedrine.

That makes me like her a little more.

 

[Jack White]

You openly admit to favoring totalitarianism. See, now I can respect that.

Progressive taxation is totalitarianism?

if the goal was to turn me off on totalitarianism, a little late for that.

Society is a fiction. Only individuals can act. The actions of the gang of thieves that comprise state are always to plunder private wealth. It creates nothing of value.

As for, "If you don't like it, move out of the country," no, I don't think I will. Instead I will stay here and do what I can to advance the cause of liberty, freedom and peace.

Besides, talk about a teenage level argument: if you don't like it, leave. How original and creative!

So your current claim is that no state, in the history of mankind, has ever created anything of value?

Canals, bridges, roads. Military defense. The atomic bomb. Monuments. Mail service. Property rights. Contract enforcement. Police. Fire Departments. Space fight. Tang! You gotta atleast give in on Tang.

What you fail to acknowledge -- or don't understand -- is that the state has no resources of its own. It produces nothing in the marketplace that people are willing to pay for voluntarily. Everything that it has is stolen from the productive class, people who did produce things that other were willing to pay for.

Of the things you mention, some we'd be better off without: military "offense" (we don't do defense, it's all offense); the atomic bomb (the US is the only govt in history to deploy one); space flight (major boondoggle).

Others are built by the state only because it appropriated a monopoly for itself: roads, mail delivery.

All of what you mention could be provided by the private free market (assuming there would be a demand for all these things), and everyone would be better off if they were.

No one questions why the market can create and supply computers, food, and most other goods, but supposedly couldn't produce roads, mail delivery, contract enforcement, etc.

Besides, Tang tastes like urine smells.

 

[dparker713]

Should have known better than to give a semi-serious answer in a thread about a ridiculous topic.

 

[rockaction]

Should have known better than to give a semi-serious answer in a thread about a ridiculous topic.

Declaring a topic semi-serious does not make it so. You don't get to be the arbiter of that. Only argument and history does. Sorry to sound so serious, but it's pretty easy for me to issue a declarative: Ayn Rand was a heavyweight because of her enemies and her courage in portraying them, and nobody can run from that.

What, you'd rather have Walter Duranty? Now that's semi-serious, and we can talk about garbage like Soviet and communist apologists all day if you'd like. She prescribed no deaths, never meditated on a "Jewish" or "woman" question like they did. Never coerced religion and its adherents to go underground. Never set up a gulag. Never enforced a life-killing edict.

This answer of yours is semi-serious, frankly.

 

[fatness]

Also she's not Hitler.

 

[cstu]

You openly admit to favoring totalitarianism. See, now I can respect that.

Progressive taxation is totalitarianism?

if the goal was to turn me off on totalitarianism, a little late for that.

Society is a fiction. Only individuals can act. The actions of the gang of thieves that comprise state are always to plunder private wealth. It creates nothing of value.

As for, "If you don't like it, move out of the country," no, I don't think I will. Instead I will stay here and do what I can to advance the cause of liberty, freedom and peace.

Besides, talk about a teenage level argument: if you don't like it, leave. How original and creative!

So your current claim is that no state, in the history of mankind, has ever created anything of value?

Canals, bridges, roads. Military defense. The atomic bomb. Monuments. Mail service. Property rights. Contract enforcement. Police. Fire Departments. Space fight. Tang! You gotta atleast give in on Tang.

What you fail to acknowledge -- or don't understand -- is that the state has no resources of its own. It produces nothing in the marketplace that people are willing to pay for voluntarily. Everything that it has is stolen from the productive class, people who did produce things that other were willing to pay for.

Of the things you mention, some we'd be better off without: military "offense" (we don't do defense, it's all offense); the atomic bomb (the US is the only govt in history to deploy one); space flight (major boondoggle).

Others are built by the state only because it appropriated a monopoly for itself: roads, mail delivery.

All of what you mention could be provided by the private free market (assuming there would be a demand for all these things), and everyone would be better off if they were.

No one questions why the market can create and supply computers, food, and most other goods, but supposedly couldn't produce roads, mail delivery, contract enforcement, etc.

Besides, Tang tastes like urine smells.

You say that the free market could have produced all of those things, yet the fact is that it didn't.

'Stolen' money was a big part of development of the internet through the Defense Department's ARPANET.

Military 'offense', including nuclear weapons, is a deterrent against any attacks and our offensive capabilities are part of what makes us the world's leader.

Railroads were built with government land grants.

Millions of scientific discoveries have come from government investment in basic research that wouldn't have been profitable for private companies to pursue.

 

[rockaction]

Also she's not Hitler.

The intellectual climate she was up against during her intellectual heyday were apologizing for the gulags and mass murderers and the Stasi, etc., so yeah, what she wasn't was as important as what she was.

I'll take Rand from the right any day against the communist and Soviet tools that pervaded the left in the '50s and '60s.

Sometimes the advocation of an absence of action is freedom when freedom is juxtaposed against its alternative.

 

[timschochet]

Also she's not Hitler.

The intellectual climate she was up against during her intellectual heyday were apologizing for the gulags and mass murderers and the Stasi, etc., so yeah, what she wasn't was as important as what she was.

I'll take Rand from the right any day against the communist and Soviet tools that pervaded the left in the '50s and '60s.

Sometimes the advocation of an absence of action is freedom when freedom is juxtaposed against its alternative.

I'm a Rand fan too, but I want to challenge you on the bolded. Very very few American progressives during the 50s and 60s celebrated the Soviet Union. You have to go back to the 30s for that.

 

[rockaction]

Also she's not Hitler.

The intellectual climate she was up against during her intellectual heyday were apologizing for the gulags and mass murderers and the Stasi, etc., so yeah, what she wasn't was as important as what she was.

I'll take Rand from the right any day against the communist and Soviet tools that pervaded the left in the '50s and '60s.

Sometimes the advocation of an absence of action is freedom when freedom is juxtaposed against its alternative.

I'm a Rand fan too, but I want to challenge you on the bolded. Very very few American progressives during the 50s and 60s celebrated the Soviet Union. You have to go back to the 30s for that.

Untrue. People in academic and journalistic circles were still apologizing for the communists until The Gulag Archipelago.

Historical impact of the text[SIZE=small][edit][/SIZE]Solzhenitsyn argued that the Soviet government could not govern without the threat of imprisonment, and that the Soviet economy depended on the productivity of the forced labor camps, especially insofar as the development and construction of public works and infrastructure were concerned.

This put into doubt the entire moral standing of the Soviet system. In Western Europe the book eventually contributed strongly to a need for rethinking of the historical role of Lenin. With The Gulag Archipelago, Lenin's political and historical legacy became problematic, and those factions of Western communist parties who still based their economic and political ideology on Lenin were left with a heavy burden of proof against them. George F. Kennan, the influential U.S. diplomat, called The Gulag Archipelago, "the most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be levied in modern times".[4]

In an interview with German weekly Die Zeit British historian Orlando Figes asserted that many gulag inmates he interviewed for his research identified so strongly with the book's contents that they became unable to distinguish between their own experiences and what they read: "The Gulag Archipelago spoke for a whole nation and was the voice of all those who suffered".[5]

 

[Mister Martie]

You openly admit to favoring totalitarianism. See, now I can respect that.

Progressive taxation is totalitarianism?

if the goal was to turn me off on totalitarianism, a little late for that.

Society is a fiction. Only individuals can act. The actions of the gang of thieves that comprise state are always to plunder private wealth. It creates nothing of value.

As for, "If you don't like it, move out of the country," no, I don't think I will. Instead I will stay here and do what I can to advance the cause of liberty, freedom and peace.

Besides, talk about a teenage level argument: if you don't like it, leave. How original and creative!

So your current claim is that no state, in the history of mankind, has ever created anything of value?

Canals, bridges, roads. Military defense. The atomic bomb. Monuments. Mail service. Property rights. Contract enforcement. Police. Fire Departments. Space fight. Tang! You gotta atleast give in on Tang.

What you fail to acknowledge -- or don't understand -- is that the state has no resources of its own. It produces nothing in the marketplace that people are willing to pay for voluntarily. Everything that it has is stolen from the productive class, people who did produce things that other were willing to pay for.

Of the things you mention, some we'd be better off without: military "offense" (we don't do defense, it's all offense); the atomic bomb (the US is the only govt in history to deploy one); space flight (major boondoggle).

Others are built by the state only because it appropriated a monopoly for itself: roads, mail delivery.

All of what you mention could be provided by the private free market (assuming there would be a demand for all these things), and everyone would be better off if they were.

No one questions why the market can create and supply computers, food, and most other goods, but supposedly couldn't produce roads, mail delivery, contract enforcement, etc.

Besides, Tang tastes like urine smells.

I remember when I was 19.

 

[cstu]

Untrue. People in academic and journalistic circles were still apologizing for the communists until The Gulag Archipelago.

Historical impact of the text[edit]

Solzhenitsyn argued that the Soviet government could not govern without the threat of imprisonment, and that the Soviet economy depended on the productivity of the forced labor camps, especially insofar as the development and construction of public works and infrastructure were concerned.

This put into doubt the entire moral standing of the Soviet system. In Western Europe the book eventually contributed strongly to a need for rethinking of the historical role of Lenin. With The Gulag Archipelago, Lenin's political and historical legacy became problematic, and those factions of Western communist parties who still based their economic and political ideology on Lenin were left with a heavy burden of proof against them. George F. Kennan, the influential U.S. diplomat, called The Gulag Archipelago, "the most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be levied in modern times".%5B4%5D

In an interview with German weekly Die Zeit British historian Orlando Figes asserted that many gulag inmates he interviewed for his research identified so strongly with the book's contents that they became unable to distinguish between their own experiences and what they read: "The Gulag Archipelago spoke for a whole nation and was the voice of all those who suffered".%5B5%5D

That was an important book but The Guillotine at Work was published in 1940 and should have been enough to convince anyone of the horrors of the Soviet Union (and communism in general).

He earned his living as a wallpaper-hanger. In his free time, though, he kept up the documentary labor, and he compiled his investigations in a systematic fashion, and ultimately he came out with a 624-page volume. Maximoff called his book The Guillotine at Work: Twenty Years of Terror in Russia (Data and Documents). It came out in 1940—the year of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Wilson’s To the Finland Station, Hook’s Reason, Social Myths, and Democracy, and Eastman’s essay in Reader’s Digest; the year in which Koestler completed Darkness at Noon…. [H]is extraordinary book was published by a little committee of his own allies called the Chicago Section of the Alexander Berkman Fund, who drew their own support chiefly from Berkman’s old fraternal order, the Workmen’s Circle, and from the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (where the anarchists were part of the power structure) and a scattering of Russian and anarchist groups in the United States…. The second half of Maximoff’s book, which contains the crucial documentation, is completely unavailable nowadays, except in a few libraries and among a very few secondhand book dealers. I would be surprised to learn that more than a handful of this magazine’s readers have ever heard of this book.

Even so, of the various works from 1940 that I have been discussing, Maximoff’s The Guillotine at Work has got to be the most powerful, emotionally speaking, and the most convincing, intellectually speaking, and the most horrifying, morally speaking. The book portrays Lenin as a monster, committed to murders and terror on the hugest of scales. The book documents the portrait. The book recounts the several phases of Lenin’s policy year by year, beginning in April 1918, when the Moscow Anarchists were suppressed. The book explains the mass consequences of Lenin’s policy, beginning with a politically induced famine as early as 1921. The book recounts the gradual destruction of any sort of political freedom in the Soviet Union. The book proposes a few statistical consequences….

You also realize, reading Maximoff’s The Guillotine at Work, that here is a kind of preliminary draft of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. Did Solzhenitsyn know anything about Maximoff’s great work? Solzhenitsyn definitely knew some of the imprisoned anarchists. In his novels he describes in a somewhat sympathetic fashion the admirers of Kropotkin, living out their fate in Siberian exile. But he appears not to have known anything about Maximoff. Michael Scammell is the biographer of Solzhenitsyn as well as of Koestler, and, though his biography of Solzhenitsyn is enormous (as is the biography of Koestler), Maximoff’s name never comes up. Anyway, it is hard to imagine how Solzhenitsyn could have stumbled across Maximoff’s fat volume. Maximoff wrote in Russian, but the Chicago Section of the Alexander Berkman Fund published the book in English translation.

It goes without saying that The Guillotine at Work lacks some of the rhetorical force of The Gulag Archipelago. Maximoff was a man of literary talent, even so. In reading his book, you already begin to glimpse the power that Solzhenitsyn’s work would prove to wield decades later. For here, in The Guillotine at Work in 1940, is already a total demolition, intellectually speaking, of what Alexander Berkman called, in a pamphlet of his own, “The Bolshevik Myth”—a total demolition because it blows up the Communist idea at its foundation. And what is that foundation? This is worth defining.

Marx, in his own masterwork, Capital, wrote about the horrors of poverty, exploitation, famine, and class inequality. Maximoff writes about similar things. But Maximoff’s masterwork focused mostly on the horrors of incarceration. The Guillotine at Work and The Gulag Archipelago are identical in this respect. These are books about jails, not about wages. Imprisonment, not exploitation. About the Solovietski Monastery and the Moscow Taganka prison, not about factories and farms. These books offered the revelation that, under communism, the old czarist prison system, instead of withering away, had gone into bloom. And the revelation that communism’s prisons had destroyed the old Russian heroes en masse—whole movements of those heroes, not just Peter Kropotkin’s faithful readers and followers, but the Mensheviks, too, the readers of Karl Kautsky, together with the Social-Revolutionaries and everyone else. This was the news that broke communism’s back—the prison news, and not the revelation that, under communism, the proletariat had failed to thrive, even if it was true that, under communism, the proletariat had failed to thrive….

 

[cstu]

Did Rand not see the conflict between her belief that rational self-interest was the ultimate goal in life and the fact that it was the rational self-interest of Stalin and others that turned the Soviet Union into a nightmare?

Rational self-interest is the reason why communism has, and always will be, a failure.

 

[rockaction]

Did Rand not see the conflict between her belief that rational self-interest was the ultimate goal in life and the fact that it was the rational self-interest of Stalin and others that turned the Soviet Union into a nightmare?

Rational self-interest is the reason why communism has, and always will be, a failure.

She did not. This point has long been seized upon by academics, especially from the religious right (not as we think of them, but as '50s Catholics at NR and such) who reviewed Atlas Shrugged with this poignancy:

Something of this implication is fixed in the book’s dictatorial tone, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “To a gas chamber — go!”

I think people who are unaware of the intellectual history of the right would do well to study NR's role in chasing out certain, um, undesirables from the respectable right. This was over the top, but the magazine still made its philosophical point via Chambers, who was a former socialist/communist himself and had migrated to the right. Here's the link to this review. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/222482/big-sister-watching-you/flashback

 

[cstu]

The ultimate goal of the 'ideal man' should not be pursue selfish interests at any cost but to find a balance between personal goals and improving the lives of those around him.

Atheist writers like Rand and Nietzsche failed to understand that with no afterlife there's no true satisfaction that can be achieved solely by personal success. Real success in life is leaving the world a better place than you found it. If you need proof, look at how miserable Rand and Nietzsche ended their lives.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

Did Rand not see the conflict between her belief that rational self-interest was the ultimate goal in life and the fact that it was the rational self-interest of Stalin and others that turned the Soviet Union into a nightmare?

Rational self-interest is the reason why communism has, and always will be, a failure.

That's a tough one.

On the one hand I agree, because I've always thought that communism was the ultimate form of monopoly, especially because as practiced only a few controlled the use of all of the property in all spheres and industries. In my view this leads to a very few acting out of complete self-interest and the far, far, far majority having absolutely no capacity to act out of self-interest at all. On the other hand, I think when Rand spoke she spoke of having seen what happened to the latter when they had surrendered or had had seized the right of autonomy in the first place. I guess it's mixed, as to your point, you're right and yet they accomplished this through the justification and means of the putative preeminence of social need and social good.

 

[timschochet]

Also she's not Hitler.

The intellectual climate she was up against during her intellectual heyday were apologizing for the gulags and mass murderers and the Stasi, etc., so yeah, what she wasn't was as important as what she was.

I'll take Rand from the right any day against the communist and Soviet tools that pervaded the left in the '50s and '60s.

Sometimes the advocation of an absence of action is freedom when freedom is juxtaposed against its alternative.

I'm a Rand fan too, but I want to challenge you on the bolded. Very very few American progressives during the 50s and 60s celebrated the Soviet Union. You have to go back to the 30s for that.

Untrue. People in academic and journalistic circles were still apologizing for the communists until The Gulag Archipelago.

Historical impact of the text[edit]Solzhenitsyn argued that the Soviet government could not govern without the threat of imprisonment, and that the Soviet economy depended on the productivity of the forced labor camps, especially insofar as the development and construction of public works and infrastructure were concerned.

This put into doubt the entire moral standing of the Soviet system. In Western Europe the book eventually contributed strongly to a need for rethinking of the historical role of Lenin. With The Gulag Archipelago, Lenin's political and historical legacy became problematic, and those factions of Western communist parties who still based their economic and political ideology on Lenin were left with a heavy burden of proof against them. George F. Kennan, the influential U.S. diplomat, called The Gulag Archipelago, "the most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be levied in modern times".[4]

In an interview with German weekly Die Zeit British historian Orlando Figes asserted that many gulag inmates he interviewed for his research identified so strongly with the book's contents that they became unable to distinguish between their own experiences and what they read: "The Gulag Archipelago spoke for a whole nation and was the voice of all those who suffered".[5]

I know how important Gulag was. But there were plenty of other books written before it that shows what Communism was like, Rand's We The Living among them. (Darkness At Noon, Animal Farm, Dr. Zhivago, etc.)

However, none of this has anything to do with my question. I challenged you to name American intellectuals who actively supported the Soviet Union during the 1950s and 60s, as per your claim. Let me help you out with this: many of the previous champions of Stalin, like Lincoln Steffens and Edmond Wilson, were long dead by then. Lillian Hellman had disavowed Stalin and Communism by this point, as had Dalton Trumbo, Howard Fast, and most others. Paul Robeson defected to the Soviet Union so I don't think he can be considered by then an American progressive. So who else you got? The most famous liberal icons of the era, such as Adlai Stevenson, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, were vocally anti-Communist. Did you possibly have somebody else in mind?

 

[cstu]

Gore Vidal on Atlas Shrugged explained it this way: “She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the welfare state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts.”

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

Gore Vidal on Atlas Shrugged explained it this way: “She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the welfare state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts.”

Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.

For to justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral but evil.

I kind of wonder if he read the book, sounds like he didn't. People make this mistake often. Egoism is a philosophy of self-interest, it predates Rand by several thousand years.

Egotism is a psychological term, which I think means something like obsession or love with one's self. Some might say that really egoism is egotism or requires it anyway, but I just note in this snippet at least Vidal doesn't even mention the actual philosophy, which is what this is all about.

I also don't see the taxes aspect in Atlas. The theme in Atlas is the development of new technologies and the government either blocking those technologies, because they are considered unfair or destructive of the social order, or the government taking over companies and industries on the same bases.

I think it's ironic (and maybe lousy writing, or just a lack of vision) because Rand writes all this about steel and railroads in the 50s just as those two industries were about to plummet in decline in the face of new technologies. Just as Rand is writing this the very opposite of what she is describing is occurring. Also, just as Marx never predicted developments in democracy, technology and labor which outmoded what he said just a few short decades after he said it, Rand could have never imagined the impact of government in actually promoting industry and technological development. In fact, so much so, that now (some) people complain of the "1%" and government's role in creating their wealth, not destroying it. Rand also ignores or just plain misses the old Marxist quandary of the morality of owning just financial capital (and not actual hard capital or intellectual property) and profiting off of that. It's implied, but it's been since at least the 1840's that the poor have looked at their empty pockets and worn hands and asked why so few have so much for doing so little. Guys like Rearden and Galt were not of that ilk, they went hat in hand for financing just like everyone else but Rand of course never shows that scene.

 

[pantagrapher]

Also she's not Hitler.

The intellectual climate she was up against during her intellectual heyday were apologizing for the gulags and mass murderers and the Stasi, etc., so yeah, what she wasn't was as important as what she was.

I'll take Rand from the right any day against the communist and Soviet tools that pervaded the left in the '50s and '60s.

Sometimes the advocation of an absence of action is freedom when freedom is juxtaposed against its alternative.

I'm a Rand fan too, but I want to challenge you on the bolded. Very very few American progressives during the 50s and 60s celebrated the Soviet Union. You have to go back to the 30s for that.

There was indeed a strain of liberal intellectuals who blinded themselves to the brutality of the Soviets at that time, a fact which pretty much alienated Vladimir Nabokov from many of his colleagues and explains his eventual retreat to Switzerland.

ETA: However, I don't think they were tools so much as they were fools, eager to cheer on the experiment but unable to deal with the icky feelings that came along with the atrocities.

 

[pantagrapher]

Gore Vidal on Atlas Shrugged explained it this way: “She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the welfare state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts.”

Rand appealed to me for a brief moment in time, and I think it was mostly because I was confident that I possessed unique talent and intelligence and was happy to hear that government and moochers were barricading me from the great success I deserved. Luckily, some introspection and compassion eventually freed me from the simplistic dumbthoughts of libertarianism and objectivism.

 

[cstu]

Some accuse LaVey of paraphrasing the Nine Satanic Statements from Rand's Atlas Shrugged without acknowledgement, though others maintain that LaVey was simply drawing inspiration from the novel.[27][28]

LaVey later affirmed the connection with Rand's ideas by stating that LaVeyan Satanism was "just Ayn Rand's philosophy, with ceremony and ritual added".[29]

 

[cstu]

Rand on Donahue:

"In a free society no one can become a monopolist or a dictator, the system itself - the free market - will destroy you."

"All monopolies are created by a special privilege for government. It's only by an act of government that you can keep competitors out of your field."

"Money is not power in the political sense. You cannot buy control."

"I'm against public funded education because that's the sure way to create a country of people disposed to dictatorship and that's what you're seeing today."

And people take this woman seriously.

For such a brilliant woman she's very defensive about taking audience questions.

 

[pantagrapher]

Rand on Donahue:

"In a free society no one can become a monopolist or a dictator, the system itself - the free market - will destroy you."

"All monopolies are created by a special privilege for government. It's only by an act of government that you can keep competitors out of your field."

"Money is not power in the political sense. You cannot buy control."

"I'm against public funded education because that's the sure way to create a country of people disposed to dictatorship and that's what you're seeing today."

And people take this woman seriously.

For such a brilliant woman she's very defensive about taking audience questions.

Not to mention her feelings about Native Americans. Savages who deserved to be slaughtered because they weren't using their land as the colonists saw fit and had the temerity to fight back.

 

[Joe Summer]

Narcissistic Personality Disorder, personified.

 

[Jack White]

Rand is right about monopolies in a free society. But what you guys fail to grasp is the the US in not a free society: it's crony capitalism, bordering on fascism.

I've watched the Donahue clip; Rand wipes the floor with Phil, a certifiable Marxist nut job.

And you guys who are so critical of Ayn Rand: what have you ever produced that people are willing to pay for, without force involved?

If you work for the government (and I'm guessing most of you do), you've never produced anything of value. You're tax eaters. Your salary, benefits and pensions are all created by confiscating wealth from the productive class.

Oh, and have a nice day.

 

[pantagrapher]

Rand is right about monopolies in a free society. But what you guys fail to grasp is the the US in not a free society: it's crony capitalism, bordering on fascism.

I've watched the Donahue clip; Rand wipes the floor with Phil, a certifiable Marxist nut job.

And you guys who are so critical of Ayn Rand: what have you ever produced that people are willing to pay for, without force involved?

If you work for the government (and I'm guessing most of you do), you've never produced anything of value. You're tax eaters. Your salary, benefits and pensions are all created by confiscating wealth from the productive class.

Oh, and have a nice day.

I've posted some very valuable insights on message boards. What have you ever done?

 

[Jack White]

Rand is right about monopolies in a free society. But what you guys fail to grasp is the the US in not a free society: it's crony capitalism, bordering on fascism.

I've watched the Donahue clip; Rand wipes the floor with Phil, a certifiable Marxist nut job.

And you guys who are so critical of Ayn Rand: what have you ever produced that people are willing to pay for, without force involved?

If you work for the government (and I'm guessing most of you do), you've never produced anything of value. You're tax eaters. Your salary, benefits and pensions are all created by confiscating wealth from the productive class.

Oh, and have a nice day.

I've posted some very valuable insights on message boards. What have you ever done?

I'm sure at least a couple dozen of your 21,000 posts were valuable.

And I think you just helped prove my point.

Which flavor of tax feeder are you?

 

[pantagrapher]

Rand is right about monopolies in a free society. But what you guys fail to grasp is the the US in not a free society: it's crony capitalism, bordering on fascism.

I've watched the Donahue clip; Rand wipes the floor with Phil, a certifiable Marxist nut job.

And you guys who are so critical of Ayn Rand: what have you ever produced that people are willing to pay for, without force involved?

If you work for the government (and I'm guessing most of you do), you've never produced anything of value. You're tax eaters. Your salary, benefits and pensions are all created by confiscating wealth from the productive class.

Oh, and have a nice day.

I've posted some very valuable insights on message boards. What have you ever done?

I'm sure at least a couple dozen of your 21,000 posts were valuable.

And I think you just helped prove my point.

Which flavor of tax feeder are you?

What are my choices?

 

[Jack White]

Rand is right about monopolies in a free society. But what you guys fail to grasp is the the US in not a free society: it's crony capitalism, bordering on fascism.

I've watched the Donahue clip; Rand wipes the floor with Phil, a certifiable Marxist nut job.

And you guys who are so critical of Ayn Rand: what have you ever produced that people are willing to pay for, without force involved?

If you work for the government (and I'm guessing most of you do), you've never produced anything of value. You're tax eaters. Your salary, benefits and pensions are all created by confiscating wealth from the productive class.

Oh, and have a nice day.

I've posted some very valuable insights on message boards. What have you ever done?

I'm sure at least a couple dozen of your 21,000 posts were valuable.

And I think you just helped prove my point.

Which flavor of tax feeder are you?

What are my choices?

Too many to count. Here are a few:

• Local
• State
• Federal
• Executive
• Legislative
• Judicial
• Bureaucrat
• [SIZE=13.63636302948px]Also, any nominally private company that wouldn't exist without government contracts: defense contractors, supplier of red light cameras, etc.[/SIZE]

Look, either you're in the productive class -- people have to voluntarily trade with you -- or you're in the parasite class, a tax eater. Your income is plundered from the productive class.

It's not hard to know which side you're on.

 

[rockaction]

Oh, man. The Randians have showed up and brought their unique brand of humor and tolerance with them.

 

[Jack White]

Oh, man. The Randians have showed up and brought their unique brand of humor and tolerance with them.

I'm not a Randian, but I appreciate the compliment!

 

[Ditkaless Wonders]

Rand is right about monopolies in a free society. But what you guys fail to grasp is the the US in not a free society: it's crony capitalism, bordering on fascism.

I've watched the Donahue clip; Rand wipes the floor with Phil, a certifiable Marxist nut job.

And you guys who are so critical of Ayn Rand: what have you ever produced that people are willing to pay for, without force involved?

If you work for the government (and I'm guessing most of you do), you've never produced anything of value. You're tax eaters. Your salary, benefits and pensions are all created by confiscating wealth from the productive class.

Oh, and have a nice day.

I work for the government. I have also worked in the private sector. My money works in the private sector currently.

 

[rockaction]

Oh, man. The Randians have showed up and brought their unique brand of humor and tolerance with them.

I'm not a Randian, but I appreciate the compliment!

Totes, Jackie. No sweat.

 

[pantagrapher]

Rand is right about monopolies in a free society. But what you guys fail to grasp is the the US in not a free society: it's crony capitalism, bordering on fascism.

I've watched the Donahue clip; Rand wipes the floor with Phil, a certifiable Marxist nut job.

And you guys who are so critical of Ayn Rand: what have you ever produced that people are willing to pay for, without force involved?

If you work for the government (and I'm guessing most of you do), you've never produced anything of value. You're tax eaters. Your salary, benefits and pensions are all created by confiscating wealth from the productive class.

Oh, and have a nice day.

I've posted some very valuable insights on message boards. What have you ever done?

I'm sure at least a couple dozen of your 21,000 posts were valuable.

And I think you just helped prove my point.

Which flavor of tax feeder are you?

What are my choices?

Too many to count. Here are a few:

• Local
• State
• Federal
• Executive
• Legislative
• Judicial
• Bureaucrat
• [SIZE=13.63636302948px]Also, any nominally private company that wouldn't exist without government contracts: defense contractors, supplier of red light cameras, etc.[/SIZE]

Look, either you're in the productive class -- people have to voluntarily trade with you -- or you're in the parasite class, a tax eater. Your income is plundered from the productive class.

It's not hard to know which side you're on.

Productive class. You're right. That was easy.