Who is John Galt?

[buffcoat]

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.

[yesno]

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.

[Sarah]

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.

[Keith Whitener]

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.

[Paydirt!]

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!

[Pidgeon]

You should have stole that shirt and donated it to the needy.

[Paydirt!]

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:



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".

[Rick in Salt Lake]

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...

[Rick in Salt Lake]

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...

[Rick in Salt Lake]

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?

[Rick in Salt Lake]

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. 

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...

[Rick in Salt Lake]

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)

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?

[fonpr]

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. 

[Rick in Salt Lake]

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?

[fonpr]

Card-carrying member.