: Now, Gee, you're doing the poor chap a great disservice. In honesty anyone who comes here to have people write their assignments for them deserves opinions which will enrage their liberal tutors sensibilities ;-)
The quite embarrassing snobbery the self appointed university 'intellectual' elite, and your own denigration (paperback? ooh, stings!, she should have writen in hardbacks only - thats much classier) aside, that post to which you often refer has some interesting points. Not being a 'follower' of Rand as such I got though it without having to damn you for being evil.....
in it you state;
"(Such distinctions, of course, are impossible to make---other than arbitrarily---because the industrial revolution irreversibly merged all relations of labor and technology. To treat them as if they could be separated for individual analysis---one potato for you, five potatoes for me---is as disingenuous as treating food and diamond earrings as being equally 'elastic' market components.)"
To accept this is also to accept equal income as arbitrary.
Your analysis of that novel 'Atlas Shrugged' is also wrong.
"Needless to say, without all the great minds illuminating life for all the inferior 'brute' laborers, civilization collapsed"
The plot as I recall was a strike against the meddling of unproductive political power brokers - the 'worker' was presented as honest, the distinctions between the sub-characters is quite clear (hell, its black and white!)
Your tenets are worth questioning;
1. People deserve what they get.
People dont 'deserve' to get run over, but people who choose to do nothing are not to expect a living provided for them by others - thats all I read into it. Its little different from your socialist assertion that those who dont work with socialism get nothing from society.
2.All trade is voluntary, therefore equitable.
In its principle true - but we know its quite complex really - choice between alternatives is a driver, but the point is that such choice is not someones obligation to provide you.
3. Only individual self-interest motivates superior performance
What else does? What is non-self interest? how does one become a non-self in order not to have interest in oneself when acting? I'll admit that its a handy phrase but (hats off to SDF) it has to be erm...self referential!
4.Collectivism is 'altruism,'
By altruism she stated service to others in supercedence of ones own wishes, sacrificing that which you do value for that which you dont. Red Deathy is against altruism of this kind - he recognised that socialism only works when its in 'self interest'
5. follows above.
6. That intervention is shown not as being for 'undeserving weak' but toward a political end in itself. I agree with you about oil companies.
7.Proud to be absolutist If I recall correctly!
8.Says more about her psychological view of women than anything else - she hero worshiped - I dont think 'objectivism' requires one to.
9.She seemed to be an anarchist of sorts, but seemed to contradict this with the 'role of government'
10.or what? Impose theirs on the rest?
You'd think universities, where the derision for any non-left figure of history you expressed above is seen as being strongest, would be the last place for objectivist to go party!
Anway I hope this attracts genuine Rand fans, objectivists or whatver, they can correct me on the bits I got wrong. Come one David please - lets hear some!
