The Horrors of an Ayn Rand World: Why We Must Fight for America's Soul

[Brewman_Jax]

http://www.alternet.org/news/154700/the_...%27s_soul/

From the article:

Quote:...

An Objectivist America would be a dark age of unhindered free enterprise, far more primitive and Darwinian than anything seen before. Objectivists know this. What perhaps they do not always appreciate, given their less than fanatical approach to reality, is what turning back the clock would mean. Or perhaps they do not care.

When Alan Greenspan spoke out against building codes, he knew perfectly well what a lack of adequate building and fire codes would mean. Fifteen years before his birth, 146 people, mostly young women, were burned alive or leaped to their death from the fire at the Triangle Waist Factory just east of Washington Square Park in New York City. There was no requirement for employers to provide a safe workplace, so none was provided. Triangle’s owners crammed their employees into crowded workspaces without proper exits, and inadequate fire codes meant that the fire stairways were insufficient. The result was that dozens of workers’ corpses piled on the sidewalk on March 25, 1911. Anywhere in the world where building codes are inadequate or absent, the result is always the same: Dead people.

In an Objectivist world, the reset button would be pushed on government services that we take for granted. They would not be cut back, not reduced -- they would vanish. In an Objectivist world, roads would go unplowed in the snows of winter, and bridges would fall as the government withdrew from the business of maintaining them -- unless some private citizen would find it in his rational self-interest to voluntarily take up the slack by scraping off the rust and replacing frayed cables. Public parks and land, from the tiniest vest-pocket patch of green to vast expanses of the West, would be sold off to the newly liberated megacorporations. Airplane traffic would be grounded unless a profit-making capitalist found it in his own selfish interests to fund the air traffic control system. If it could be made profitable, fine. If not, tough luck. The market had spoken. The Coast Guard would stay in port while storm- tossed mariners drown lustily as they did in days of yore. Fires would rage in the remnants of silent forests, vegetation and wildlife no longer protected by rangers and coercive environmental laws, swept clean of timber, their streams polluted in a rational, self-interested manner by bold, imaginative entrepreneurs.


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An Ayn Rand-ian objectivist world would be the wet dream of these ignorant narcissistic anarchists. It would be a Dickensian world on speed, a total disaster for all but the top 1%.

History has shown on multiple occasions that a country can't function like that for long. The latest graphic example of this in the US was the time of the Robber Barons, whose excesses gave rise to the labor and liberal movements. There's also the corporate take-over of Central America in the post-WW2 years, the source of the term "banana republic".

This is why we fight and raise hell against the repubs, the rabid RW and the teabaggers, the uncaring 1%, the main-scream media, the corporate-controlled gov't, and even Pres. Obama when he's doing something that we know isn't right. Like your mother so often had to remind you when you came up short, you're better than that. The USA is the same way; we're better than that. There's too much at stake to stay silent.

[jaxx]

Paul Ryan makes his aides read Ayn Rand. I suppose he wants them to know where he is coming from.
We know it as hell.

[pappy]

(03-27-2012 10:05 AM)jaxx Wrote:  Paul Ryan makes his aides read Ayn Rand. I suppose he wants them to know where he is coming from.
We know it as hell.

One wonders how they got past the interview process to work for Ryan if they hadn't already read Rand and could quote from "Atlas Shrugged" like one might from the Bible.

[Willinois]

Don't confuse them with anarchists. Actual anarchists fight corporate power too. Libertarians would replace government power with corporate tyranny.

[Velleity]

(03-27-2012 12:58 PM)Willinois Wrote:  Don't confuse them with anarchists. Actual anarchists fight corporate power too. Libertarians would replace government power with corporate tyranny.

There is a branch of radical capitalists known as anarcho-capitalists founded by Maury Rothbard. Rothbard and Rand hated each other. Rand's acolytes, anarcho-capitalists, and the von Mises crowd in general believe they are a priori correct. In other words they cannot be swayed by empirical evidence or superior logic.

[Velleity]

I was excoriated on the Thom Hartmann forum when I referred to Rand's philosophy as objectivism. Actually there is a real school of philosophy known as objectivism and Rand stole the name. That's not the only thing she stole either.

Rand's acolytes are no more legit than Rand was herself. She was a third rate author and a fourth rate philosopher, trying to glorify the worst of human traits. About the only thing I find agreeable is her opinion of religion. But, ironically, her own followers have essentially made her philosophy a religion, with this idea of natural law.

Altruism is bad? Really?

Rand's philosophy is a nightmare.