DaveFoster said:To address the myth of the robber barons, I recommend A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
This is...surprising.
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DaveFoster said:To address the myth of the robber barons, I recommend A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
Philomath said:I think Dr. Peat would concur with her opinion on religion/mysticism. Since Rand deplores a controlling government, I believe Dr. Peat may agree with some of her ideas there too.
Westside PUFAs said:Philomath said:I think Dr. Peat would concur with her opinion on religion/mysticism. Since Rand deplores a controlling government, I believe Dr. Peat may agree with some of her ideas there too.
Peat liked the Occupy moment so I don't think he was on the same page as her:
"The Occupy movement was manipulated away from making any demands that would have had the possibility to turn it into a party and gain broad support—much of the 99%, maybe half of the voters—could have seen it as their representative, leaving the other parties to divide the other half. The requirement for consensus allowed many special issues to be heard, but it kept the essential mass demands from being made. The FBI papers that were released under FOIA showed that the powers had identified the leaders at the beginning of the demonstrations, and had snipers ready to eliminate them if they became a threat, but the government organized the police to suppress the movement without having to kill the leaders, and the lack of specific political demands kept it from spreading. Organized action is essential, but I think it has to work like an organism, with learning and thinking integrated with action. Dissent has to be accepted within the movement, to permit the bulk of it to take action, while the dissenters keep working on their issues. Several groups with several demands wouldn’t keep the larger group from succeeding with the goals they have in common, such things as eliminating the absolute power of the ruling class. Julian Assange said “Parties should be fun. They should put the word party back into politics.” The political party should be something integral to life." - Ray Peat
This quote shows some aspect of him not being religious:
"Progesterone's normal effects include maintenance of pregnancy, and that requires the prevention of additional pregnancies during the course of an established one Its presence in the vagina during intercourse causes the cells to react as if there were already an established pregnancy. There are various reasons that this method of contraception hasn't been generally accepted; for example, progesterone's very name suggests that it promotes pregnancy, and the bureaucratic mentality sees things in simplistic ways. Incidentally, I think the evidence is absolutely clear that the estrogen pills are not contraceptives. They don't prevent conception, they prevent implantation of the embryo into the uterus. That is abortion, so the industry had to make up a theory in which the pills could be marketed as a contraceptive, to avoid the religious reaction to the abortion pill. This theoretical gimmick took nearly twenty years to develop. " - Ray Peat
Rand is correct in the sense that most of the men who created businesses and controlled the means of production were not manipulative and Machiavellian in their business tactics, much like the majority of businesses today. Historically, there were a small number of individuals that some may call "robber barrons." The term is construed to mean a man who abuses power through monopolizing the means of production via the free market, which very rarely ever happens; not because people are somehow magically kinder in a free market, but because it's very difficult and costly to buy up every single factory throughout an open trade economy.Philomath said:Mike Wallace: When you advocate completely unregulated economic life in which every man works for his own profit, you are asking in a sense for a devil-take-the-hindmost, dog-eat-dog society, and one of the main reasons for the growth of government controls was to fight the robber barons, to fight laissez-faire, in which the very people whom you admire the most, Ayn, the hard-headed industrialists, the successful men, perverted the use of their power. Is that not true?
Ayn Rand: No, it isn't. This country was made not by robber barons, but by independent men, by industrialists, who succeeded on sheer ability. By ability, I mean without political force, help, or compulsion. But at the same time there were men, industrialists, who did use government power as a club to help them against competitors. They were the original collectivists. Today, the liberals believe that the same compulsion should be used against the industrialists for the sake of workers, but the basic principle there is, "Should there be any compulsion?" And the regulations are creating robber barons, they are creating capitalists with government help, which is the worst of all economic phenomenon.
There's more literature on paper than one can read in a lifetime. By the size of her following, it looks like many have benefited by reading her material, but imo one can do better reading other great works than to waste time reading 1000+ pages of her atlas shrugged.
Although she has some good observations, they do not outweigh the negative.
I don't believe her vibration is anywhere near Ray's, as her ideals only benefit people of power (or are trying to attain it) where Ray is more after helping the common human.
from a physiological standpoint, selfishness is a big part of her equation. Making decisions based on what will benefit one directly, rather than what will benefit all species (or in her case, all classes or races) is what got us kicked out of the garden in the first place. I'm not speaking in terms of religion from the bible (also something her book is considered by many), rather the fact man has decided to play God by deciding what shall live and prosper, and what shall die. If you believe the world can only be a dog eat dog kind of world, then maybe her work will be of some use for you to prosper while other life suffers. If you believe we can still turn around our current frameworks of life, then I would skip her material.
I think Rays opinions differ on these points.I am an Objectivist. I swear, I have never in my life seen a philosophy as misinterpreted and misrepresented as Objectivism.
First of all, although the philosophy was officially founded by Ayn Rand, it does not mean that anyone who calls himself/herself an Objectivist must automatically accept everything Rand ever wrote or said as gospel. In fact, doing so would rule you out as an Objectivist from the outset, since you would be going against Objectivism's fundamentals. So, the term "Randian objectivist" is a complete contradiction.
The most effective way in analyzing any philosophy is by its fundamentals, on which the rest of the philosophy depends. Here are Objectivism's fundamentals:
1. Existence exists as an objective absolute, independent of ALL forms of consciousness.
2. Reason, i.e. that faculty which identifies and integrates the information provided by man's senses, is man's basic tool of survival and his only means of knowledge.
3. Man's own life is his highest value, because it is the source of all of his other values (a dead man cannot value). Because man's mind is his basic means of survival, his life should be an end itself, neither sacrificing his life to others nor sacrificing others' lives to himself.
Personally, I can understand why some people wouldn't be fans of the way Rand carried herself. However, her philosophical fundamentals are bulletproof. It's not a surprise to see that most people either attack straw mans or attack Rand personally instead of refuting the fundamentals of Objectivism.
P.S. Avoid the Atlas Shrugged movies. They are complete crap.