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Post your rants here. Tell us WHY you don't like it.

Harmony,
You're taking things entirely out of context. Roark did not "rape" Dominique, thought Dominique uses that term to refer to the incident. It is excruciatingly clear to any adult with a functional reasoning mind that Dominique gave Roark her consent, though on a non-linguistic level.

In addition to your above mistake, you are not criticizing Objectivism, but a novel written by an Objectivist. If you have a beef with the philosophy, you may rant all you want, so long as you do so in a semi-decipherable manner, unlike your above post.

Best regards,
Jay

That was Anthem.

Absolutely incorrect on every point.

1. America has never had a truly Capitalist economy. This country has never had a shortage of blood draining beaurocracy, mooching "businessmen" who use the power of state to break up larger, more efficient businesses, and never has there been a time when man was free to do exactly as he pleases on/with his own property in this country, though some periods have come closer than others.

2. Consumers always have a choice about the products they purchase. In a Capitalist society, no business can gain a monopoly save through the production and selling of the best products. In order to maintain this monopoly, they must maintain the quality of their products, otherwise, competition will re-emerge. Every harmful monopoly throughout history was the result of the initiation of force, whether by private means, or through the use of the governing apparatus.

If you want to see a truly harmful monopoly (one created through the initiation of force) look at the public education system, which has been systematically crippling the minds of American children for decades, robbing them of the cognitive functions of their minds, crippling their ability to conceptualize for the rest of their lives. They do not provide citizens with the offer of a free exchange, but an ultimatum of: "Your child, or years in a federal prison?"

On the other hand, we have "monopolies" created through the use of the reasoning mind and free exchange. The Ford motor company and Microsoft come to mind as prime examples.

If one challenges a state monopoly, he is answered by the muzzle of a gun. If one challenges a private "monopoly", he is answered by the honest competition of productive men.

That something is "natural" does not necessarily mean it it good, true, however I don't think this is at all what was the belief Rand held and/or put forth. Humans and all living things - life itself essentially- simply DOES function best when it supports itself and it's interests. The idea is if everybody really went all out and followed egoism fully (and believe me, this does not have to mean "all the poor would starve to death!" I could write more on why this is or find a good source to quote if you want later, right now I'm short on time) we'd all be pursuing the best lives we possibly could get, respecting each other's rights in order that we continue to be worthy of having our own respected, even to the point of when friends may fall in a rut for a while there is nothing wrong with temporarily helping them get back on their feat and to prospering again and then having them repay you because since the person is valuable to you it IS in your own interest to see them continue to live and live well. Egoism makes good life possible. If everybody were to follow altruism to it's fullest extent - not doing anything in their own interest - we'd all die. Everybody would never eat because somewhere there is somebody else who is starving and could use this food (likely they are themselves starving because they too are refusing to eat in order to try to pass the food off onto somebody else too) as just one of many possibilities.

Oh, and by the way, as I mentioned earlier about respecting other people's human rights, that IS a part of Objectivism, so you could never have genocidal real Objectivists. wink

Its not i dont like it? But i have not read any of those books...but i would like to know what this philossophy realy is. I can tell its important to everyone here...and it would be important to me if i could understand...im a type of person that needs to be informed on whats going on. Its just that right now im confused...

Well... I think this is partially correct, but it's safer to say there has never been a pure capitalist (I mean maybe anarcho-capitalist?) economic system on a large scale since the invention of the state, at lease in the West.

In my mind, Laissez-Faire capitalism is bullshit, because it still uses the state to
protect property rights (so for example, the DCMA is still fair game) and enforce contracts, but offers no contrary mechanism to prevent corporations from being socially malevolent. Another good example is Wal Mart, which succeeds in being a fairly damaging entity in many ways, while contributing little to the overall good.

While anarcho-capitalism is a bit more alluring to me, since a pure form would dispense with IP, patents, etc., which I think would go a bit further to level the playing field.




What are you talking about? The American Public Education system is not the greatest, but on the other hand it's free to all citizens and offers opportunities that would not exist if education were a purely private economic arrangement because as history shows, most people received very little formal education before the creation of public schools.

Additionally the US system is incredibly flexible - not only is there competition for consumers in the form of private and parochial schools, there is also great freedom for community organizations to form charter schools and home schooling is allowed in instances where that isn't feasible.

The problem with public schools is two-fold:

1) The quality of a public school is directly related to the wealth of a specific school district. I went to public high school in a community that had many rich families and big businesses. They spend around $20,000/year pper student in that district, and believe me it was a great school -- about a quarter of my graduating class went to Ivy League Universities for college. In Philadelphia nearby, the spending is closer to $6,000 a student, with additional complications caused by the greater numbers of students who's families live in poverty or near-poverty (kids don't get breakfast, aren't in good health, neighborhoods are dangerous and stressful, etc.) This brings me to my next point:

2) Even the greatest of schools can not compensate for deficiencies outside of school. Bad parents, poverty, social problems can not be fixed by schools. There is a fallacy in american public life where schools are blamed for high drop-out rates, but every one I ever knew who dropped out of school doesn't blame the school at all, but something else in their lives, like family troubles or having to go to work because their family was poor, or because they made a bad decision like having a kid too early. But those things can't be blamed on public schools.

And I think the other problem is that Americans are fairly anti-intellectual, which I believe has already set the clock ticking on the American Era - a nation of barely literate entertainment consumers who laugh at egghead foreigners for being good at science, math and computer programming has a poor prognosis as a future super-power.



Microsoft is a terrible example of a "good" monopoly. The company began with incredibly terrible ethics, and the goal of creating a monopoly surfaced very early. They made weird contracts with PC makers (like they got licensing money for every computer sold, even ones that didn't have an MS product on them) and made competing products in every industry that surfaced that used their operating system, it seems anyway.

This isn't to say that they make bad products (although many of their products are pretty mediocre, if not terrible). And they continue today - they're now going after Adobe, although it seems like this attempt will fail.



I think your latter statement is incorrect. If one challenges a private monopoly, one is answered by frivolous lawsuits, patent disputes, uneven enforcement of regulations, unfair distribution of government subsidies and the power of the monopoly in the specific business community.

I can provide examples if you need them wink

Totally true on the state monopoly, though. Do not mess with the state. It makes them angry. scream

Engineer-of-doom, why don't you like objectivism? Is it because you are more of a spiritual person and are more concerned about the nonphysical?
I kind of like the idea of objectivism, though it may be regarded as more selfish than other philosophies, but I like that it sort of revolves around aesthetics.