FOT Forum
FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: Keith Whitener on February 14, 2011, 10:20:31 PM
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http://utopianist.com/2011/02/new-trailer-for-atlas-shrugged-released/ (http://utopianist.com/2011/02/new-trailer-for-atlas-shrugged-released/)
What's next? Thus Spoke Zarathustra? Plato's Dialogues? How do you make a movie about how it's the actors and director who are important and anyone else who made the movie? Isn't the alienating most of your audience? "Yeah, screw me!"
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Meh. It's no Battlefield Earth.
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Meh. It's no Battlefield Earth.
I think this might be worse.
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If the whole movie is tilted to one side like Battlefield Earth, then it might be worse.
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"Worse" is a subjective matter (not that this doesn't look to me like one of the worst movies ever made), but perhaps we can focus our inquiries on whether a given movie is the right movie at the right time.
To me, a movie taking the POV of our corporate overlords seems pretty spectactulalry ill-timed. Am I wrong?
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What I can't believe is that they are splitting this up. The movies are going to have to rely on the others for a collective goodness, and the individual film will mean nothing.
I went to a sort of conservative school that had a top business program and would walk by a car quite often that had "JHNGLT" as its license plate number.
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I find Ayn Rand unutterably silly. And most of the people who still like her books after they've gotten out of their teens/early twenties don't seem to realize how badly they would fare in a world run her way. Are there enough of them to make the three movies that will make up this cinematic masterpiece profitable? I doubt it. But then I'm often wrong when it comes to predicting how dumb the world can be.
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Atlas Shrugged is such a spectacularly moronic piece of crap. I recommend everyone force themselves to read the book. If you take a look around at, say, the economic melt-down, health care "debate", the loss of manufacturing jobs, it explains a lot. The G.W. Bush administration was an 8 year infomercial for this crap.
We should all just quit whining and do as we're told.
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What I love is that people who subscribe to Rand's worldview assume they'll be among those who give the orders. It's like how everyone is the reincarnation of royalty.
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Atlas Shrugged is such a spectacularly moronic piece of crap. I recommend everyone force themselves to read the book. If you take a look around at, say, the economic melt-down, health care "debate", the loss of manufacturing jobs, it explains a lot. The G.W. Bush administration was an 8 year infomercial for this crap.
We should all just quit whining and do as we're told.
I actually think it was an infomercial against that crap.
Has anyone thought to do a search-and-replace of "Arcade Fire" with "John Galt" in http://whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com (http://whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com) ?
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What I love is that people who subscribe to Rand's worldview assume they'll be among those who give the orders. It's like how everyone is the reincarnation of royalty.
I agree with this point mightily. You might also add that her strident atheism matched her strident capitalism, but many of the people she's most influenced just refuse to believe or ignore or defend that part as "she didn't really mean it" or something along those lines. Note: she meant it.
The other thing is that, regardless of whether you take any of her capitalist ideas to heart, there's also a lot of other weird shit in there. The rape/rape fantasy stuff, for example, that pervades her work.
On the other hand, years of experience tell me that I'm about the most economically conservative member of this board (which ain't sayin' a lot), so I don't utterly reject ALL of the stuff Rand talks about as easily as some of you seem to. I've heard firsthand some of the bad and weird anti-capitalist, "you don't deserve to be able to earn the money you do" stuff that she wrote about coming out of people's mouths, and it's distressing to those of us who kind of do think we deserve to be able to earn the money we do.
I still don't think I'd see this movie, though.
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To me, a movie taking the POV of our corporate overlords seems pretty spectactulalry ill-timed. Am I wrong?
I think that's part of what makes it seem so bad to me. It's like if someone made a film about transfats and targeted toward people who've had heart attacks.
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What I can't believe is that they are splitting this up.
I went to a sort of conservative school that had a top business program and would walk by a car quite often that had "JHNGLT" as its license plate number.
To the first: I know, right?
To the second: Jesus christ.
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I still don't think I'd see this movie, though.
I probably will - Fountainhead is absolutely ridiculous and therefore very fun to watch.
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At least they're not adapting We the Living.
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On the other hand, years of experience tell me that I'm about the most economically conservative member of this board (which ain't sayin' a lot), so I don't utterly reject ALL of the stuff Rand talks about as easily as some of you seem to. I've heard firsthand some of the bad and weird anti-capitalist, "you don't deserve to be able to earn the money you do" stuff that she wrote about coming out of people's mouths, and it's distressing to those of us who kind of do think we deserve to be able to earn the money we do.
As a student of economics i have come across a lot of libertarian fringe stuff.
I have read Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Murray Rothbard and so on. I can say that all of it is considered bullshit in the economics profession nowadays with just a couple of people like Ron Paul and John Stossel holding on to Austrian Economics and so on. I have also debated Austrian economists and objectivists and anarcho-capitalists on youtube. There is no getting through to them with actual economic arguments and it is as a bad an ideology as communism. Ideologists are never interested in the actual solutions of complex problems but can only provide the "answer" they can derive from the framework. Their solutions never work as has been seen in the Soviet Union and likewise in Thatcher-Britain.
Since Rand was mainly a philosopher i can only judge her on her philosophical merits, which weren't really great. She rejected Kant as a defiler of philosophy and corrupter of ethics, metaphysics and so forth. To that i can only say that i read Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" quite a bit and can answer her: Only because you don't like it does not mean it is wrong.
Also her main point was ethics and since i reject moral claims as false in general, i do not see a point in her philosophy at all.
Just a side note:
I really do like to read Rand's stuff about Hippies. She gets so angry at Hippies. :D
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I have also debated Austrian economists and objectivists and anarcho-capitalists on youtube.
What do you mean by this?
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At least they're not adapting We the Living.
Ugh.
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I have also debated Austrian economists and objectivists and anarcho-capitalists on youtube.
What do you mean by this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_economics)
Those are simply somewhat overlapping economic and political and philosophical ideologies, who happen to have some proponents on youtube, who i have had exchanges with. They are pretty close in the political spectrum.
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I meant more about the exchanges. Do you mean actual youtube videos or in comments?
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I meant more about the exchanges. Do you mean actual youtube videos or in comments?
I made some videos about market failure through monopoly to one of them.
I made a video about the cost benefit analysis of a free-market justice system.
I made a video about Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty".
I made several videos about health-care and it's game theoretic implications.
And i got blocked from several channels for comments containing "mainstream" economics, especially keynesianism.
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I've now lived long enough to see "everyone" be both Keynesians and Friedmanites. They can't both be right.
Apologies given to anyone "in the field" who takes offense, but the whole profession needs to constantly be reminded that economics is a social science and not a hard science. And the hard sciences are fudgable enough (witness the fact that nearly everything I learned about a] planets and b] dinosaurs when I was growing up is now presumed to be wrong, including the very existence of one of the most famous dinosaurs of all time, basic facts like their blood temperature type, and the likely cause of their demise. Thanks, guys.).
I distrust both pure ideologies and appeal-to-experts dismissals of those ideologies. Human behavior is messy. Unless you're ready to make a reductio ad absurdum argument, you won't convince me that "all human behavior" is either rational or economic. You want to have a lousy conversation? Mention the word "altruism" to somebody presently studying economics. It's topped only by asking a first year psych student to name the conditions they suffer from.
If anything appeals to me about Atlas Shrugged, it's not the nutty philosophy, the anti-human prescriptions or the stilted writing: it's the needed (and unfortunately also driven into the ground) reminder that "I know better than you" is always a slippery slope.
That said, anyone who can actually read the 46 pages of John Galt's radio address restating what's already been stated hundreds of times before in the 1,000 page novel has way more patience than I do.
Christina: The "love scenes" in The Fountainhead are pretty messed up for the time it was produced. How did that thing ever make it past the Motion Picture Review Board?
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That said, anyone who can actually read the 46 pages of John Galt's radio address restating what's already been stated hundreds of times before in the 1,000 page novel has way more patience than I do.
Christina: The "love scenes" in The Fountainhead are pretty messed up for the time it was produced. How did that thing ever make it past the Motion Picture Review Board?
I read that whole fucking thing - also read all of Howard Roark's defense speech.
Yeah, those scenes are bad - worse in the book, obvs.
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I meant more about the exchanges. Do you mean actual youtube videos or in comments?
I made some videos about market failure through monopoly to one of them.
I made a video about the cost benefit analysis of a free-market justice system.
I made a video about Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty".
I made several videos about health-care and it's game theoretic implications.
And i got blocked from several channels for comments containing "mainstream" economics, especially keynesianism.
Links, man, links.
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I meant more about the exchanges. Do you mean actual youtube videos or in comments?
I made some videos about market failure through monopoly to one of them.
I made a video about the cost benefit analysis of a free-market justice system.
I made a video about Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty".
I made several videos about health-care and it's game theoretic implications.
And i got blocked from several channels for comments containing "mainstream" economics, especially keynesianism.
Links, man, links.
here's mah channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Noobwarriking (http://www.youtube.com/user/Noobwarriking)
although i have to add:
much of the videos are old and i maybe do not even agree with them that strongly anymore
so take it with a heap of salt
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A friend of mine and I slogged through the nightmare that is Atlas Shrugged and documented our experience on a blog.
Here is a post where I compare the Church of Satan to Objectivism: http://arrrrrrgh.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/atlas-shrugged-the-most-awfulest-book-ever-written-is-more-satanic-than-satan/ (http://arrrrrrgh.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/atlas-shrugged-the-most-awfulest-book-ever-written-is-more-satanic-than-satan/)
I do love some of the comments on the site. Most comments either questioned my sanity, my intelligence and sometimes both. I had at least one person tell me to kill myself.
Atlas Shrugged ruined reading for me for quite awhile. Every sentence is an insult to the language. It is a teddybear book for kids who feel like they have no friends in the world. And the sad thing is there are people in my life whom I care for deeply who love that book.
As Tom has said: It's grown up time. We have to realize we live in a world with other people. Some of them are not able to take care of themselves.
That being said, the trailer makes the movie seem not so bad. But I thought that about The Phantom Menace too.
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You mean if it was all Senate stuff, right?
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I'm taking back everything I said. I'm excited for a two part movie about choo choo trains!
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I went to a sort of conservative school that had a top business program and would walk by a car quite often that had "JHNGLT" as its license plate number.
I JUST SAW THIS
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As a student of economics i have come across a lot of libertarian fringe stuff.
I have read Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Murray Rothbard and so on. I can say that all of it is considered bullshit in the economics profession nowadays with just a couple of people like Ron Paul and John Stossel holding on to Austrian Economics and so on.
But she did and probably still is responsible for real economic damage. Greenspan, who was some sort of nuts about Rand, endorsed the hands-off financial regulatory system caused so much damage over the last 3-4 years. Greenspan--some freakin' genius.
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Just a note to the above post, gravy boat - the words you quoted are effecT's and not mine.
I am in the odd position (for this board) of understanding both where Rand was coming from and where Tom was coming from in his "grown up, Ayn Rand fans" statements.
They're both reacting against ridiculousness by extremists. Unfortunately, extremism of all stripes dominates the debate, if not the policy, of the United States. Feh.
Overreaching and inability to be serious by the left is why I have to deal with John Boehner talking about how the deficit is his only priority and then going after Planned Parenthood, FreedomCorps and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, thus solving about .0001% of the deficit problem while creating all kinds of new headaches.
If only he were so effective each day, we could get this deficit problem under control by 3011, though we may have, you know, hundreds of thousands of unplanned pregnancies, a less educated society and no national volunteerism to speak of.
Thanks, everybody!
NB: I'm not equating what the Randians say with what their critics say. The Randians are very silly.
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I don't trust anyone that claims you can deduce how society should be organized from first principles or by means of a thought experiment or anything like that. Nor anyone who seems to think that "rights" or morality are these objective features of the world that are right there for smart people to discover and pass along. This applies to many on the left, but especially Ayn Rand. She is the absolute worst, because in her view everything about human life, from what kind of music to like to ethics, was logically determined from a set of axioms. People talk about society like determining how it should be organized is a science, or more like technical areas of philosophy like epistemology. I think it's more like accounting--there are a lot of different ways to have a good accounting system--you just collect best practices and what works can in fact change over time as other behaviors change. One of the most dangerous human tendencies is the desire to find out the "answers" to problems that don't really have them.
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hundreds of thousands of unplanned pregnancies,
Not just unplanned pregnancies. Planned Parenthood provides basic health care to thousands. For many poorer people, it is the only source of medical services, since it never balks at accepting Medicaid and the like.
The thing about Ayn Rand is that she's simple-minded. Of course, people should take responsibility for their behavior. Of course, a desire to live a life untrammeled by excessive nannyism is understandable. But any system that depends on people always acting a certain way is laughably unrealizable. Rand was black-and-white idealist, and as such she was a big dummy, like all of 'em are.
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I'm taking back everything I said. I'm excited for a two part movie about choo choo trains!
I was thinking about this: the trailer made me think of Unstoppable except it's about the guy who owns the train and it's him that you can't stop.
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(http://www.outofprintclothing.com/v/vspfiles/photos/B-1016-2T.jpg)
Had a horrible moment seeing this shirt in the window display of a local bookstore, and desperately wanting for a full ten seconds to buy it before I realised what it was. It's a great cover and it's in my colour!
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You should have stole that shirt and donated it to the needy.
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You should have stole that shirt and donated it to the needy.
I think somebody here had the same idea, but with a different shirt from the same store:
(http://www.outofprintclothing.com/v/vspfiles/photos/B-1015-2T.jpg)
I'm not saying that a kid can't wear baggy jeans and a wallet chain and be an F. Scott Fitzgerald fan. But my money is still on "misguided gesture from groovy distant relative".
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I find Ayn Rand unutterably silly. And most of the people who still like her books after they've gotten out of their teens/early twenties don't seem to realize how badly they would fare in a world run her way.
I went through a rather serious Randroid phase in my late teens/ early twenties. I still remember the exact moment I gave up on her books. I was in bed reading "The Virtue of Selfishness" and I got to an essay that contained a line claiming that taxes should be voluntary and would be paid voluntarily when people realize the benefit of living in a free society. I read that section two more times, thought about it about it briefly, then threw the several books of hers I owned in the trash.
That one section did what the articles of the individualism of conformity enforeced by "The Collective" could not do. It accomplished what her prattling on about "sense of life" and lovers being the embodiment of one's ideals when all she was really doing was bitching about being dumped by Branden for a much better looking woman could not.
Are there enough of them to make the three movies that will make up this cinematic masterpiece profitable? I doubt it. But then I'm often wrong when it comes to predicting how dumb the world can be.
It's hard to say. I just hope the third movie is something like three hours long and is just a shot of a radio playing Galt's tedious speech. Not even Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer could make that anything more than a multi-hour piss break...
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To me, a movie taking the POV of our corporate overlords seems pretty spectactulalry ill-timed. Am I wrong?
You just don't get the heroism hidden within them. You're just jealous of their achivement. You just have a piss poor sense of life...
Of course you're also probably correct...
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I went to a sort of conservative school that had a top business program and would walk by a car quite often that had "JHNGLT" as its license plate number.
I guess "Please key my car up, I'm an asshole" wouldn't fit?
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I have also debated Austrian economists and objectivists and anarcho-capitalists on youtube.
Do you have a link to the vids? I'd like to watch 'em
Just a side note:
I really do like to read Rand's stuff about Hippies. She gets so angry at Hippies. :D
You know, despite the fact that I hate The Grateful Dead and patchouli, I always suspected there was something about the hippies I rather liked...
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Yeah, those scenes are bad - worse in the book, obvs.
Bad as in kinky, awkward, or poorly written?
I think the best part of Rand's entire philosophy was the recent discovery that she accepted Social Security and had Medicare pay for her lung removal after long denying the link between cigarette smoking and increased lung cancer risks.
(http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/149721/ayn_rand_railed_against_government_benefits,_but_grabbed_social_security_and_medicare_when_she_needed_them (http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/149721/ayn_rand_railed_against_government_benefits,_but_grabbed_social_security_and_medicare_when_she_needed_them))
Yes, Ayn, the smoldering ember at the tip of you cigarette symbolizes the fire that burns within your mind, as Dagny Taggart put it. But if that's the case what does that blackened, clotted, tar-coated lung symbolize?
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I've now lived long enough to see "everyone" be both Keynesians and Friedmanites. They can't both be right.
This statement is true.
Keynes was right.
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I've now lived long enough to see "everyone" be both Keynesians and Friedmanites. They can't both be right.
This statement is true.
Keynes was right.
Fredricks, are you sure you're a registered Republican?
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Card-carrying member.
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Card-carrying member.
Which flavor of Republican?
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Card-carrying member.
Which flavor of Republican?
The Lonely!