Bitcoin Forum

Any fans of Rand's philosophy here?

Likely; there's a whole lot of Atlas Shrugged fans here.  I haven't read it yet but it seems like something I'd enjoy.

I only like Rand as a person. What a sexy, sexy woman.

Yeah, it's my favorite novel!

Care to tell me about it?  ;D  Or specifically, her philosophy.

She had some good points.

She didn't get everything right, IMO, but neither did Bastiat, so that's OK.


Remember that quote I posted in the other thread?

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

That's the core of it. She just shied away from taking that to the logical conclusion.

Her looks didn't match har mind :)

Wonder what she would think of Bitcoin...

Reminds me of that famous phrase: "Live and let live."

Her philosophy is called Objectivism. Got this from Atlas Society:

Objectivism is the philosophy of rational individualism. Objectivism holds that there is no greater moral goal than achieving happiness. But one cannot achieve happiness by wish or whim. Fundamentally, it requires rational respect for the facts of reality, including the facts about our human nature and needs. Happiness requires that one live by objective principles, including moral integrity and respect for the rights of others. Politically, Objectivists advocate laissez-faire capitalism. Under capitalism, a strictly limited government protects each person's rights to life, liberty, and property and forbids that anyone initiate force against anyone else. The heroes of Objectivism are achievers who build businesses, invent technologies (such at Bitcoin), and create art and ideas, depending on their own talents and on trade with other independent people to reach their goals.
 
Objectivism is optimistic, holding that the universe is open to human achievement and happiness and that each person has within him the ability to live a rich, fulfilling, independent life. This idealistic message suffuses Rand's novels, which continue to sell by the hundreds of thousands every year to people attracted to their inspirational storylines and distinctive ideas.
 

That's the core of Objectivist ethics. Your life belongs to you.

What's the logical conclusion?

Hrmm so it's very much like libertarianism, I see?

If you want a quick introduction to Objectivism, reading this summary is maybe the best place to start that I know of.

http://www.atlassociety.org/objectivism

Politically, there are many similarities, but while libertarian ethics (if I have understood it correctly) is based on the non-aggression principle, rational self interest is the core of Objectivist ethics. Since, in most cases, using force is not in the self interest of the individual, there is often a convergence of political views.  

Your life belongs to you. Government, through taxation, places a claim on it. I think you can do the math from there. ;)

Btw, have you read the sword of truth series by Terry Goodkind?

Ayn Rand was against taxation :)

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/taxation.html

No, I haven't read it.

Huh. I wonder if she'd ever come across "The production of security" by Gustave de Molinari.

Goodkind's an objectivist. He does the same thing Rand did, but with dragons and magic instead of trains and metal. Better story, and less preaching, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzj2QYTcgO0

Which brings me to my other complaint with her.... She supported intellectual property. Probably why she couldn't quite accept getting rid of government entirely.

The only alternative to intellectual property is intellectual socialism.

And yes, as a true champion of individual rights, she couldn't accept anarchy.

If one can own physical property without help from the state, why couldn't one also own intellectual property?  If an idea cannot naturally be defending in a physical realm, shouldn't it be defended in an intellectual one?  Assuming anarchism begets intellectuals, I would hope it isn't a large problem if someone wrote a song, and another person claimed to write that song without any proof they did.  It's still thievery, just of another kind; thievery in an anarchistic society could be handled without the state, couldn't it?

They could claim to have written it but that wouldn't make it true.   They would be free to play it if they want and claim that they wrote it I guess.  Anybody can say anything.  Free speech.
 

Put simply: Ideas aren't property.

You can't own a pattern of bits. You can't own a pattern of notes. You can't own a pattern of words.

Best of all, sharing ideas, "intellectual socialism," as you put it, doesn't mean that the originator has less. Information is not scarce, and capitalism is a system for managing the distribution of scarce resources. There's no need to ration it.

On the flip side, enforcing IP requires government force. It asserts that I own, and can control - and extract payment for the use of - the part of your mind that contains these words, simply because I wrote them, and you read them. If that's not against "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine," I don't know what is.

Now, I get why she supported it. She was an author. She made her living assembling patterns of words. But isn't using government force to prop up a bad business model exactly what she railed against in Atlas Shrugged?

Ahh, but she did, she just didn't know she did. Individual rights are best protected by an agency that doesn't violate them itself in order to get funding. Voluntary taxation isn't taxation. It's subscription. Really, someone should have handed her a copy of this (https://mises.org/document/2716/). It would have rocked her world.

Ayn Rand is great. I have seen her movies (1 and 2!)


Seriously though...

Read this post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170857.0

Actually toward the end, it seems that Bitcoin solves some of the bad things she expresses about money (can be taken, etc).

I suppose you're right, but in other ways, I'm having trouble agreeing.  Though no one person can own any word, or group of words, they are often attributed to them.  For example:

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle

There are likely many variants of this quote, but this is the gist of what Aristotle was saying; though it could be attributed to anyone, we assume Aristotle is the originator of this quote.  But is he the originator of the idea?  Impossible to know (and highly unlikely, anyway.)  But we can at least say he, in a way, owns this phrase, since I cannot put my own name beneath it and claim I said it.

Now, let's say I took a string of numbers, letters, and punctuation, and created something that never existed before; couldn't I say I owned it?  If this cannot be considered property, what of the patterns that dictate a private key?  Couldn't someone own a private key?  Though it is intangible, this person is the only one who owns it, and thus, owns the bits which make up a Bitcoin; but perhaps the major flaw in this argument would be, I'm not sharing this key with anybody, therefor it is, in fact, private, as opposed to a novel, which is meant to be read by other people.  In other words, if I wrote a novel, and never let anyone else read it, could I then truly own that long string of paragraphs?  After all, if I shared my television with the community, it ceases to be private property.

I suppose this is the major dividing line between property and creation.  But it is rather funny how people can own another artist's painting.

I think the problem is with copyright, and this is something USA imposed its will on the world. I respect authors, but not copyright. As for Bitcoin Private Key it's your duty to protect it. If someone spends it, thats the end of them. We don't want a central authority protecting our BTC. Now that I think of it, I don't even like the idea of Bitcoin Police. I want full anarchy on the Internet.

I'm definitely not a objectivist; I'm against "intellectual" "property".

Nevertheless, her books are very good.


Yeah

A private key isn't, itself, property. You want to get technical about it, neither are the coins it accesses. But a private key is the perfect example to explode IP:
Your private key is only "yours" as long as you have the only copy (or have control of all the copies). If you store that private key on a computer, in order to access it, the attacker would need to use your property (the computer) without your permission. This is Trespass.

But let's say you use, instead, a brain wallet. This is where it really starts to explain why IP is a flawed concept. A brain wallet, for those who are not familiar with it, is a wallet that doesn't actually exist. All the wallet file is is a record of your private keys, which allow you to make transactions on the network. A brain wallet stores this information in the form of a passphrase, a long string of words, that, when hashed, make the private key.

So let's say you stored your coins in a brain wallet. That key is absolutely secure unless one of two things happens: You share it with another person, or someone guesses the passphrase. In either case, the other person now has the same access to your coins as you do. They "own" those coins just as validly as you do. If you shared the key, you voluntarily gave ownership of that key to another person. What he does with it after that is up to him, not you. If someone else came up with it independently, then obviously it wasn't a unique enough phrase to be yours and yours alone.

Now let's bring the analogy home: If you come up with a story, and you share that story with someone - in a book, movie, song, or whatever means you use to share it - you've given up ownership of that story. The moment it hits the other person's head, they can do whatever they want with it, because it's theirs just as validly as it is yours, now. Likewise, if they are able to come up with the same story independently, your story was not unique enough to be considered "yours."

Rand was jewish. people shouldn't touch her stuff with a 10 foot pole.

If you are going to exclude Jewish thinkers from how you view the world, you will end up pretty stupid.

Oh wait, you already did and it shows...

I agree with many of the premises of objectivism in how they relate to society, government, and forced collectivism.  I reject it as the highest moral goal, since I believe there is some good in altruism and sacrifice that is done voluntarily.

If you do it willingly, it's not sacrifice. You're giving up one value - generally money, sometimes time - for something you value more: the knowledge that you have helped someone else. It's only sacrifice if you give up a greater value for a lesser, which necessarily requires coercion.

That people generally see the idea of not giving up a greater value for a lesser as rejecting helping others speaks poorly of them, not Rand.

Good points; to add to this, there is nothing new under the sun.  Any story anyone could tell today will be inspired by the same actions which were the basis of all stories ever told--that is, life itself.  To copyright a story is to imply you hold ownership of life events.  Plus, considering that all western music use the exact same schemes for writing any song (scales, from keys, from notes, which someone figured out if you take these exact increments between sounds you can make something sound pleasant,) it's pretentious to copyright anything which stems from this invention; heck, if copyright existed then, someone would still be making royalties from every song ever to exist.

However, it's odd when it comes to capitlaism; when someone owns a copyright to a creation, it's implied they're the only ones who can control who gets paid for any money earned from the creation.  So would writers, artists, and musicians still be able to pursue their craft with the hopes of payment?  Or would they be subject to charity, or seeking other forms of employment?

This is known as the "elephant's dilemma." There are a very large number of combinations of notes, but relatively few which do not sound discordant and jarring. Eventually, if we remember everything, like the elephant, we'll run out.
Put another way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcvd5JZkUXY

Finally, we're addressing the broken business model. Thankfully, the market is already adjusting to meet this. Kickstarter provides a platform for the artist to get their profit up front, And Cory Doctorow does just fine releasing his works for free, and asking his fans to pay if they enjoyed the book. For music, Jonothan Coulton uses a similar model, and live concerts are a unique experience, which people will always pay for. There are lots of ways to make a living being creative that don't require that you use force to keep people from sharing your work.

This is actually really cool ;D  I like how the ones in the back appear to be dancing.

For giggles:  The Four Chord Song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ)


That's a relief; as a practitioner of all three of those arts I mentioned before, I'd like to keep doing them :D  I've considered adding a BTC address to a novel I wrote and then just letting it spread to wherever it goes; I figured this way, my novel will get way more exposure (as before, when I was asking payment for it, I had literally only 2 takers, yet over a thousand the moment it went free for a week,) and thus, a greater chance people will want to send some cash my way (plus, it'll also get people familiar with BTC if they didn't know what it was before :P)

It's just always made me mad paying for entertainment, and then realizing only after that it was a complete waste of cash.  Plus, advertising is expensive.  So there's no use fighting copyright infringement (as it's fruitless and expensive, so says the Pirate Bay); you can't infringe a copyright that isn't there, right?  I hope EA Games is taking notes ;D

See? You've got the right idea. :)

Ideas/information are not a pattern of bits :) That is a very materialistic view.

If information is not property, then privacy laws have no moral basis. Espionage should be perfectly legal. If one breaks into a house and find sensitive information the break-in itself will be punishable, but not the spreading of sensitive information found in the house during the break-in. One could also prick someone with a needle and acquire blood which allows one to get hold of that person’s DNA. A needle prick in itself is not a major violation and would therefore not be severly punished, but to map that other person’s DNA and spread sensitive data about that person’s genetic disorder must be legal since this is only information, which is not property.

Furthermore, to be consistent anti-IP people must argue that contracts cannot exist because all that exists are atoms. In other words, one can scribble on a piece of paper or make sounds with one’s mouth, but these cannot be legally binding since information does not exist.

Threats will also be legal. This after all is just a series of noises. To be consistent a libertarian must claim that only a physical violation is illegal. A rapist who threatens his victim with a knife will not be convicted in court unless he physically hurts his victim because he will claim that the knife is his and he was taking it for a walk. Sure, he uttered a few words about killing the poor woman if she did not obey him, but they were just sounds and it is her own fault if she interpreted those noises as threatening.

I'm not getting the connection between IP and facts.  For example, nobody has IP over gravity; how could anyone assume it exists, then?  We can't assume Newton invented gravity, but moreso, came up with the concept of gravity.  Although this discovery is attributed to him, what is and what isn't can't be held under copyright law, and nobody's paying Newton's ancestors grand sums of money to mutter the concept of gravitational force.

So let's say someone witnessed the man mentioning that he was going to kill a woman with a knife, with a knife in hand.  Now, the to-be assailant may not own IP over "I'm gonna kill you and then I'm gonna rape you" (as has been said numerous times I'm certain,) he can still be attributed to having repeated those words, by both the victim and a witness.  If we can then assume the man did, in fact, say those words, and was caught with a knife, if that society specifically disallows threats to kill, he would be taken care of however they take care of men such as that.

The point is, the man did not invent the phrase "I'm gonna kill you and then I'm gonna rape you," but that doesn't mean he still can't use it to get his intent across.

Likewise, when it comes to novels, every writer ever has said the following:  "I love you"/"He loves me"/"I think I love you"/"I think I'm in love with you" etc., so who owns the IP over these strings of words?  Nobody; so now we must figure out where to draw the line when it comes to how long a string should be before we can say it is intellectual property.  However, because there would be no national government to come to an agreement on this matter (per libertarian ideals), and no national government to enforce it even if society came to a consensus at some point in time, there would be no way to enforce copyright.  No writer invented the concept of love.  A writer is only going to string together events in a timeline, or concepts he's realized based on concepts realized by others.  If a scientist figures out gravity is much more than Newton ever realized, does he then own the IP of gravity?  And if another scientist took that scientist's ideas, and expanded on them, and improved him, does that scientist now owe royalties?  It's a trivial matter, and anyone can say, "Well I came up with it first."

You're right, some are patterns of words, some are patterns of lines or colors, some are simply patterns of neural impulses.

These are all good points. But they come from a flawed perspective. First off, intent plays a great deal in the decision of proper punishment for a crime. Breaking into someone's house with the intent of, say, taking a nap on their couch is considerably different, and does less harm, than breaking into someone's house with the intent of finding sensitive information and spreading it about. Likewise, an accidental prick with a sharp object, say, a piece of your clothing, has much lower harm to the victim than does an intentional prick with a needle with the intent of copying and analyzing their DNA. Both are relatively minor offenses when considered on their own, but when the effect of the intent of that offense is included into the calculation, it becomes quite severe.

Did I say Information does not exist? No, I said that information is not property. Be careful not to confuse the two concepts. The contract is the physical proof of an agreement. It's not binding because you wrote on the paper, it's binding because you agreed to it. The paper is just proof that you agreed.

Tsk... and now we're just leaping off the deep end. Mike answered this far better than I was going to - with almost exactly the same argument, I might add - so I'll just leave it at that.

http://www.tomwbell.com/images/%28C%29Term&MMCurveSmall.gif

So, were United States in 1810 more socialist than today ?

I am a huge fan.

I think Tom Woods describes a concept of Intellectual Property without a state somewhere.

btw, from my pov there's not much difference between intellectual property and property property.  ;)

The difference is scarcity. If I share my house with you, the space available for me to live in is diminished. If I share my song with you, I still have the song, and can gain the same enjoyment from it.

yeah but there's also plenty of space in space.

but it takes more effort to move to a different house (or planet, for that matter), just as it takes more effort to write and record a new song rather than just copy yours.

Well, sure there's plenty of space in space. Not much you can actually live in, though. Which is my point. Property is scarce, data is not.

Scratch an Anarchist and a Fascist Bleeds...

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/anarchism.html

A government is the worst possible "arbiter for honest disagreements among men."

The problem in a Rand world is that it doesn't account for irrational behaviour.

While its easy enough to be rational when you have very little to gain or lose, as soon as that formula changes, and your ego gets involved, then people will do the daftest things to maintain their lifestyles.

That is what socialism is all about!

Is socialism like Facebook and MySpace?

(Just kidding ;D)

I see... reduce everyone to a state where they have nothing to gain, and nothing to lose. Sounds boring.

^^Fixed it for you.^^

Yeah, not really. Since "coercive government" is redundant, and "arbitrary, subjective mob" is pretty much the textbook definition of democracy, you've not really changed my statement much.

And if you want a non-coercive, decentralized, minimal government, then what you're looking for is AnCap.

Nope.

Rand was an athiest.

More precisely, she viewed God or a belief in God as unnecessary.

This is a person who decides, that because you disagree with him about hating Jews, you must be a Jew yourself. Nothing you say will affect his calcified little brain.

Thanks for this link, by the way. It shows that she had heard of Anarcho-capitalism, at least somewhat, though I don't think anyone ever sat down and explained it to her. Her Russian upbringing seems to have colored her views as to the "service" which Government provides, and I'm sure that didn't help, either.


To which David Friedman responds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=jTYkdEU_B4o#t=282s

From a web comic I follow. There is an epic Ayn Rand reference at the end.

https://www.spinnyverse.com/2011/04/20/04202011/

http://www.spinnyverse.com/comics/2011-04-20.jpg

Heh.

He's not kidding. I pulled this picture from his Facebook page: http://ptreport.thrillnetwork.net/images/wof/fan1.jpg

Ayn Rand was a pretty terrible writer, in terms of her ability to use the English language or tell a story. She was extremely dogmatic, so people who like the dogma tend to like her book too- in the same way that Christians like dumb and boring passages of the Old Testament (disclaimer: I was one of them a few years back). This isn't a comment on her philosophy, just her storytelling ability.

Show me a fan of this book who identified with the union workers if you can find one, I haven't been able to: this tells you all you need to know about the book's literary merits. When people read this book, they imagine themselves to be the John Galt type, and enjoy reading about a dogma that puts them first in the food chain, atop the hierarchy of human life. One reason Ayn Rand isn't as good a storyteller as Dickens, is that even though you hate Scrooge or Miss Havisham you'll still identify and empathise with them and perhaps see some of yourself in them- because we're all human, and a good storyteller puts humanity on display; a good preacher dehumanises, which is why Rand fans no more identify with the Atlas Shrugged union bosses than Christians do with the antichrist.

"Coercive government" is not necessarily redundant.  Coercion only occurs when a government initiates force.

Retaliatory use of force, in response to a criminal initiation of violence, is not coercion.

There is no government at all in AnCap.  What you are describing ("non-coercive, decentralized, minimal government") is the ideal libertarian state.

Read Professor Nozick's classic treatise on the subject, and all will become clear.   ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia

http://socioline.ru/files/5/315/nozick_robert_-_anarchy_state_and_utopia.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/0465097200

Which it necessarily does to acquire funding.

Agreed, but this is not my complaint against government.

Indeed it is, and that state is AnCap.
I'll definitely read Nozick, But I'd like you to read de Molinari. It might clear some things up for you.

http://mises.org/document/2716

Edit: Oh, and while you're at it, don't forget Rothbard's response to Nozick:
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/1_1/1_1_6.pdf

According to Walter Block, Rand called libertarians/anarchists "Hippies of the right."

I'm sure a lot of such people would blanch at the thought of being labeled "right-wing."

For a laugh, read:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160726.0

An ideal ('night watchman') minimal state needn't fund itself through coercion.

This has been discussed endlessly (as you know  ;)) and my favorite proposed solution is to use fines collected from criminals (foreign and domestic) to fund national defense, courts, and police.  It's also arguable that a flat tax, imposed on all citizens equally, is a fair method of preventing the fraud/abuse of free riders.  I know ya'll AnCaps will never accept that, but want to put it out there to clarify where we differ.

Ok, we have a deal.  I'll read de Molinari and you read Nozick.  Then we'll compare notes and further demonstrate the narcissism of minor differences.   :D

I've been responding to Rothbard's admirably intellectual position paper on Nozick for years.  Here we go again!   ::)

First, Nozick never intended AS&U to justify the existing (IE coercive) states.  His was an academic exercise, intended to demonstrate the theoretical ability (and desirability) of a minimal state to emerge and exist without initiating force.  IDK why Murry spends so much time fighting that strawman; Nozick never claimed to be an historian.

Second, although Murry's other critiques of Nozick's internal logic are all very pointed and well argued, none of them actually persuade me that, given that there is (empirically) a natural monopoly on police power, anything other than a minimal state will maximize liberty and asymptotically approach utopia.

However, these are all minor quibbles.  Both Rothbard and Nozick (as well as Ayn Rand) occupy places of high honor in my personal pantheon of heroes.

Can you imagine the conversations old Murray, Bob, and Ayn are having in Jewish Valhalla?  We are not worthy to argue in their stead.   ;D

The flat tax, I think, you can guess where my problem lies. Though it is "fair," it is still coercive.

As for the fines from criminals, I am here actually going to borrow from a Anarcho-syndicalist critique of AnCap. It was incorrect in applying it to AnCap, but by that same token, it applies perfectly to the "night watchman" State. In such a system (the State funded entirely from fines from criminals) there would be a drive, perhaps even a necessity, to both broaden the scope of fine-able offenses, and to steepen the fines. Compare the current practice of asset forfeiture, and you see my concern.

The only way to fund such a State without encroaching on rights is voluntarily, through subscriptions. And indeed, there may be (small, or sparsely populated) areas where it is natural for there to be only one provider... and though it would have a natural monopoly, the defining characteristic of a "State" is that it's monopoly is absolute... it brooks no competition on it's territory. A market provider of Security would not have the ability to force it's competitors out of the region, so while you might get something that looks very much like a State, it would actually be nothing of the sort.


Looking forward to it. :)

My most glaring concern with Nozick's theory - albeit at first glance, without having yet read the book - echoes Rothbard's: Since Anarchy is required for such a "justified" state to develop, then proponents of the minimal state should be pushing just as hard for a market anarchy as the staunchest AnCaps. You have to take the flag all the way up, before bringing it back to half-mast.

Doesn't bother me any more.   If anyone bothered to learn anything about my thinking they'd soon realise I don't fit in either left or right, so I don't worry too much about what other people think.

I certainly don't endorse any right-wing groups.  Nor left-wing for that matter.  That kind of stuff is for the brainless masses who just want their team to win regardless.

On the contrary, she (Rand) spent considerable time exploring and writing about the root causes of "Irrational" behavior. 

I would have no problem with an institution (call it the State, or not ;) )that funds itself only from fines collected from criminals and performs some "night watchman" type duties, i.e., give me a call if it looks like I left my doors unlocked, shoot people if they appear to be threatening others.  Ancap doesn't rule out "good samaritan" style behavior as one possible source of the service of defense.  It just states that trying to fund such services through coercion is immoral.

I do think that effective defense organizations would need to collect subscription fees or something similar.  I doubt that funding through criminal fines would be enough.

Thus my contention that it would need to expand the list of fine-able offenses, and increase the fines.

I did notice that.  However, Rand identified as an athiest, and made this very clear on hundreds of occasions. 

Therefore, he is simply wrong, so I corrected him.

Do I disagree with him about hating Jews?  I'm not exactly big on haters of any sort.  Rand was also, not big on emotional driven logic and viewed that as a tool of propagandists.  She was against religion because of the ways she'd seen it subverted to the goals and aims of the state in Russia.

Makes sense to me...

AR's books are an excellent spring board toward perceiving reality.

You think the two movies got it right?

Haven't watched part two yet, but Part 1 was dead accurate.

I laughed all the way through both.  Sort of "Mad Max does Capitalism" fighting the Evil Superpowerws of collectivism.  Can't wait for III.

I'm no longer 19 and have yet to read her work, I probably wouldn't enjoy it.

I'm no longer 19 and have yet to read the "Left Behind" books, I probably wouldn't enjoy them.

I've never read Rand, but I've been a libertarian for ages.

Today I received two Rand novels as a gift in the mail.

Guess I will read them now! :)

Oh boy, you are in for a wild ride. :)

I've only seen the first one, unfortunately most of the philosophical message didn't make it into the movie. It's decent entertainment if you've read the book though.

Just watched the second one yesterday. More of the message gets into there, and the court scene with Rearden is excellent.

Like Spendulus, I can't wait for the third one, but, I suspect, for different reasons.

Read it fir the first time when I was about 26 or 27. Mind you, AFTER I got my degree in finance and economics (the one that included Keynesian based economic theories, and nothing about Mises)

Sorry if it offends people, but I think Rand was basically a KOOK.
The fact that so many government officials and economists are Randians
just makes her ideas more creepy.

She's at her best here, but you can see the effects of the Benzedrine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukJiBZ8_4k

Huh? Examples?

Alan Greenspan. Last Chairman of Federal Reserve.  Member of Ayn Rand Institute and of the Atlas Society.  Friend and admirer of Ayn Rand and convert to her obhectivism since the early 1950s.

Well, yeah, we know about him, and there's also Rand Paul and Paul Ryan... That's 3 well known ones out of the 100 senators, 500 members of house, 50 governors, and many other officials. Many of these people are very socialist (both republicans and democrats, with just their own brand of socialism) or religious ideologues. So... where is the "many" that are Randians?

Are you asking for a list?  Google it or write to the Ayn Rand Society.  I'm sure either way way works.  The lady has a following and of course there will be many who share her views in government. 

Have you read the books? Have you even looked at a wikipedia article about her views? Few who share them would seek government employ.

With respect, why would I?  If your argument is that the Ayn Rand Society board members don't understand her books, then what's the point?

Well, your argument seems to be that the members of the Ayn Rand Society board share have a large overlap with people in government office. I suggested that I find that hard to credit.

The question was whether there were many Ayn Rand devotees in government.  I provided one famous example.  He happened to be a board member.  I'm sure there are more; the lady has a following and of course there will be many who share her views in government. 

And it is my contention that "of course there will be many who share her views in government" is unlikely, given her views, especially of government.

There are many who enter government determined to destroy it.  

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77834.html

Here's another couple for you.

Its not fun for either of us to manually list Ayn Rand supporters who got into positions of power or debate the meaning of "many."  Its a matter of fact that they exist and that they don't see the contradiction in the way that you do.  Lets just leave it there :)

True, but that rather puts the lie to the comment that started this all:


Unless, of course, he is frightened by the collapse of the state?

The "value judgment" need not even be conscious. If you've ever walked past a goodwill kettle without dropping a coin in while your pockets were not empty, you've made the decision that you value whatever you would have to forgo in exchange for making that donation more than you value the feeling you would have gotten from donating.

Not, it's not fun.  Because it's simply not the case that there are many people in government service who understand or agree with Rand's ideas.    Listing a few people doesn't create the "many".

Note I said "understand or agree".  One could understand but disagree. 

Again, there would be few in goverment service with that attitude.

There are very few Rand devotees in government because if they were they would end rule by majority and end the income tax.  My favorite piece of hers is red army, white army, you can listen to it on youtube.

I think you are kidding yourself.  Alan Greenspan never advocated either of those things.  Ayn Rand herself applied for and took Social Security. If the members of the board of the Ayn Rand Society and Ayn Rand herself behave in this way, you must assume that you have misunderstood her work.

Lets not debate the meaning of "few" either as that also is not fun.  I think we can agree Ayn Rand is one of the 25 most influential writers in US politics today.  I'm not entirely sure why her supporters on this forum want to disavow those of her devotees that got elected or that got appointed to government.  If the board members of the Ayn Rand Society aren't "pure" enough, then the whole thing seems a little pointless.

I think any sane person is frightened of the collapse of the state - it almost always leads to massive violence due to a power vacuum.

We can add Paul Ryan to her list of devotees (he had to backtrack during his campaign because of the atheism brand).
Ron Paul's son is named after Ayn Rand.  Did we get to "many" yet?

Many of Rand's supposedly radical ideas can be traced back to Nietzsche.
She dumbed down many of his ideas and used them as starting points for her novels.

No, he is not. Rand is short for Randal.

"Randians" don't wont collapse the state, just to make goverment limited in power. Actually Randian fiscal policy would save state from collapsing.

Not to mention that he's assuming there would be a power vacuum in the first place. If the state collapses due to a libertarian evolution in political thinking, it will be because those in "power" no longer had that power. Thus, no power vacuum.

Perhaps I can ask the question better this time.

Assume someone aggresses against me.  I'd be well within my rights to defend myself, but I can choose not to.  I can put someone else's self-interest above my own out of love for them.

As I understand objectivism, I would be acting immorally since I am not acting in my own self-interest, but I see it otherwise.

Well, if they use force against you, and still you offer them what they wanted willingly, then I wouldn't say you're acting immorally. Perhaps unwisely, unless you make it clear to them that you're giving them what they wanted not because they forced you, but because you want to (don't want to encourage them).

For instance, the scene in Les Misérables where the priest gives Jean the silver, even though he had stolen it originally. That act of kindness enabled him to make a new life for himself. And the priest made him promise that he would use it for just that purpose.

Now, I don't know how Ayn Rand would have viewed that exchange, but I look at it as the priest giving up some silver (which the church surely has no shortage of) in exchange for saving a man's soul (to say nothing of his life). Both I, and assuredly the priest, view that as a worthwhile exchange. It all comes down to why you give up what you're giving up. If it's because you want to, that's not sacrifice. If it's because you're forced to, that is sacrifice, and immoral.

I don't think anyone here is disavowing anyone. On the contrary. The argument isn't, "yeah, there are a lot of Randians in government, but they're not "true Randians," the argument is that there are few (very few) Randians in government, not many, and not enough.


We got to 3. Out of 541 members in house and senate, and 7 members of the Board at the Federal Reserve. I'm sure the actual number is more than 3, since a lot of them likely stay quiet, but I doubt it's much more than 3, or anywhere near "many." Especially since Democrats don't like Randian ideas because they are decidedly pro-capitalist/anti-socialist, and Republicans don't like her ideas because they are decidedly anti-religious/anti-corporate cronyism. Democrats need to keep getting elected by pushing more social programs, and Republicans need to keep pushing god, and getting corporate kickbacks and  lobbying.

No, Rand has a deal of very original thinking.  And where can many of her ideas be traced to?  Aristotle.

...Yet ANOTHER abuse of the "many"...

Great question.

In Atlas Shrugged, Reardon put his self interest aside when blackmailed and signed his patent over to the evil government. 

How was he blackmailed?  They threatened to make public his affair with Dagney.

Dagney put her self interest aside, in turn, and publicly stated that she had this affair on national radio.

So ... did Rand set this up to show that each of these lovers acted immorally?

(I'm stopping at this point for discussion purposes)

I don't believe so. I think she set that up to show the truth of this quote:

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”

― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

Though Atlas Shrugged was published 4 years before Stranger in a Strange Land, so it wasn't intended as a direct example, more as illustrating the same premise.

Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966 IIRC, shows strong influences from AS.

I definitely see similarities. It might have been his response to it.

I'll tell you this: Moon definitely influenced me more than Shrugged

Man, everything I know about Ayn Rand came from watching the 1950s film adaptation of the fountainhead...  The entire movie was 2 hours of people who couldn't deal with their feelings.

You have to understand  Nietzsche to see why there is judgment in the begining of your perception. I will try to make it simple.

One of the big thesis in Nietzsche thinking is this : well before your instinct, your sensation there is a judgment, which mean an operation of the intellect.
Because he is appearing at the begining of the knowledge processus we can state that it's not a conscious judment. We can see it as the condition of possibility for perception to occur.
But how can we say that  such a judment exist? Philosopher just don't throw proposition like that.
You have to come back to Kant.
Usually before him, we thought that we could gain some knowledge about an object, just by studying  it.
But Kant come into play and yield : BULLSHIT if you want to be able to see an object you have to put something from you : which are the intuition of time and space.
We can agree, that time and space are not properties of an object. So they must come from something else, which is the subject.

It's the same for the causation categorie (for example : if a ball (A) touch another ball (B), the other ball will move). To be able to say that A cause B  you have to make the link between A and B, an intellect opération which come from the subject and not from the object.

Now time, space and causation are what Kant call the condition of possibility of experience. Which mean, that before an object appear in your perception, these three things have come to play. They are the intuition that make you able to give you the form of the experience.

These form that are the possibility of experience are what we call an a priori. Which mean something that is independ from the experience, and so are what is really objective in the world.


And then Nietzsche come into play and yield : BULLSHIT there is not such thing as a priori.
What nietzsche is saying when he put critics on the concept of kantian "a priori" it's not that they do not exist. What he can accept, it's there property of a priori. For nietzsche there is not such thing as an objectiv truth, because  everything is in "becoming". This "becoming" is not perceptible without an opération of the intellect which "fixe" (put a limitation in english?) this becoming and give something stable. Here we go the place where the first judgment apply.

You have to understand that this "becoming" threaten the organism. For two reason :
-The sensation in the world of becoming are always new. Which mean that for someone they are essentially unknown
-In order to go away of this unknown, you have to put something that you already knew. To be more clear, if sensation at there first apparition are always new, this novelty is shut down by putiting a sensation you already, know which is less powerful.
This operation is necessary because the world of becoming threaten the organism.


This is why the essence of the world for Nietzsche is suffering, and the essence of the superman (i hope it how you said it in english ^^) it's the man who can bear a lot of suffering.
The world of the becoming make men suffer because it's just to intense for the organism to bear it. To reduce this suffering, men have to logicise the world. Reduce the unknown to the known. Put old thing on what is always new. The will to power is essentialy this. Not some kind of domination bullshit, but the power to see a lot of new sensation. Sensation that transcends the sensation of the everyday life which have been drain from there intensity.

To come back to the kantian critics. The "a priori" have been a way for the organism to stabilise the "becoming" to reduce his power. Here is why we say later, that Nietzsche accept the "a priori" as something which put form to the becoming. But they are totallu empiristic.

So here what we got :
"Time, space and causation are what we use to be able to fixe the world of the becoming
They are not a priori because for them to become, they have to make there proof for the conservation of the organism. If they weren't able to maintain the organism, the way we shape your experience would be totally différent.
So something as to decide that the things are good for the organism to live.
So something judge these category as good.
And if the category are what your intellect is using to shape the experience.
There is a judgment at the begining of the experience. Before you know it.

(it's more complex because in those judgment there is all the history of manking coming into play.)

I answered your question. Every decision is an economic one. "Is it worth it?" Including your "decision" to not pay enough attention to the donation kettle to determine what it is. Just because you don't like the answer, doesn't mean I haven't answered you.

Actions speak louder than words.  Ayn Rand may have put on appearances of free-thinking and libertarianism, but the "cult" she organized around her was authoritarian and relied heavily on group think (insofar as, you were OUT if you didn't tow the randian line).  For further reading I'd direct you to this short and entertaining Murry Rothbard essay: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

(also Hannah Arendt>Ayn Rand)

It's not really authoritarianism if you just don't want to associate with people you don't have much in common with. For example, the group of friends I hang out with doesn't include white supremacists or religious nutcases.

I'd like to hear your side of this. What do you believe decisions that are not economic/value-judgement type are based on?

Because if you, and a long line of ancestors back to the simplest single-celled organism didn't make decisions in this manner, you wouldn't be here to argue this with me.

Every decision is an economic one, even those you claim aren't.

It goes far beyond merely "picking who you hang out with".  She cultivated an organized form of group-think around her.  READ the essay... it's short and entertaining  :).

Has anyone read We the Living?   Personally, I think that is her best work considering where she was when it was written and WHEN it was written.    Atlas seemed more like an attempt to explain the same concept over and over and over again because she assume people are so stupid they need to read the same point 1000x to just begin to "get" it.    

EPIC post from the new guy!  :)

(and yes, Übermensch translates to superman. In fact, the Superman comic was almost a very different thing...)

+1 - Rothbard doesn't buy her brand of crap. Currently reading his "For a New Liberty".

MANY Randkooks don't really know that much about her. There is also the matter of her diary entries praising a serial killer:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/mark-ames-paul-ryans-guru-ayn-rand-worshipped-a-serial-killer-who-kidnapped-and-dismembered-little-girls.html
You can't make this stuff up.

And Hitler was a vegetarian who loved to paint. Surprise! People are more than 2-dimensional drawings!

But if you're reading For a New Liberty, you're on the right track. Let me know when you're ready for Sam Konkin.

And every human is flawed and makes many mistakes throughout their life.  Just most of us don't have our thoughts at any particular time down on paper to be criticised by everyone later.  Maybe she realised her mistakes and changed her mind.  Who knows? 

I just take what I perceive to be good ideas and leave the bad ones.  Where they came from is ultimately irrelevant.

I didn't read through the Rothbard piece, but a quick skim seemed to me he was criticising cult thinking more than anything.

I believe she said she was investigating the serial killer, she never worshiped a serial killer.  She wrote a book on a polish actress. That what these anti-rand morons always go to.  They will say she collected social security, well duh they offered it to her.  Just so stupid.  They will say Ryan and Rand were followers, they fail to mention Steve Jobs and Mark Cuban are too.

I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged.  I liked it even though it was a bit long winded.  I heard that Rand's father had a small business that was destroyed by the Bolshevik's and that might have influenced her philosophy.

Will bitcoin become "the motor of the world"? ;)

Heh, no.

But it might become that static motor John came up with before he disappeared.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

I still prefer to think of Bitcoin as Galt's Gulch, which we can easily disappear into if we wanted to "exit" the economy.

+ 1   I have read "The Ethics of Liberty" by Rothbard, It is an awesome read!

A rather interesting idea with implications.  Consider the case of some country under severe economic duress and facing near term collapse.  The ready and fluid availability of an alternative and substitute currency places a limit on the extent to which that government can impoverish it's subjects.

That's a game changer.

Its not really.  Most people don't have cash - they have assets like houses, farms and businesses.  A country under server economic duress will always have the option of taxing those assets. 

But worst come to worst, people who own those assets can sell them and convert the proceeds to bitcoin, too. Then if things get too bad, perhaps they can emigrate elsewhere.

They can already do that with gold or any other commodity.  The thing is, that would be selling at the bottom of the market.  Most people won't move country at all and those that are willing to move country rarely include the asset rich classes.  

For that class of person, where Bitcoin does feature is if you are old and facing the end.  Sell your assets, convert into Bitcoin and distribute them among your heirs.  Your family thus avoid inheritance tax and none of them have broken any laws.  But that's off topic to poor Ayn Rand.

If you don't give up your bitcoin holdings, and no one knows how much you actually have, then I guess you can just say you can't pay your taxes, because you don't have the money. They can put a huge debt on you, which will make borrowing through official channels more difficult, and I guess they can confiscate your whole house and business, which will suck, but they might leave your business soft of alone if it's big enough, and doing so will cause a lot of people to lose jobs and make the politicians look bad... Eh, either way, it's a mess, but at least it's somewhat of an alternative.

As for gold, that won't really work, since that gets confiscated at the border. If the country falls THAT far, we may end up with closed borders like USSR had, and they inspected everything that people carried out. Someone even tried to smuggle out diamonds inside watermelons (inserted while the melons were still young), and they even found and took that. This is also why I think that a border fence to keep illegals out is a horrible idea, but that's also a whole other topic.

No, not really. Ever tried to store gold in your brain, to avoid confiscation at the border?

Hmmm.  I was thinking of Greece and Cyprus where borders are porous.  But if you wanted to move money from Germany or the like, then yes, you are right?

Another issue is storage. Hard to store a lot of gold at home, and storing it at a bank is not a good idea either apparently:

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/4/23_Sinclair_-_Swiss_Bank_Just_Refused_To_Give_My_Friend_His_Gold.html

I always thought storing at the Perth Mint in AU wasn't a terribly bad idea.

They give out "warehouse receipts" and are not a bank or subject to banking regs.

Of course, we might expect the long arm of the Takers to reach out in every direction possible.

Now that's interesting. Are those "warehouse receipts" transferable?

Sorry, but I don't know that part.  You can download a brochure from the guys at Perth or just ask them.  I have not used them, but I have been in gold bug type meetings where people spoke highly of them.

I had the impression that it wasn't one of these places where for every ounce of physical gold, they write up one hundred receipts.

Looks like they're more of a storage facility, than anything. The certs have your name on them, so presumably are not transferable without going through some transfer process. Which is a shame, 'cause you could have a viable, legal secondary currency there, if the transaction costs could be kept to a minimum.

Has anyone seen there is a group in Chile who have formed a community "Galt's Gulch" ? http://galtsgulchchile.com/

Doesn't really matter what they call it or how they market it, it's a real estate development project for a golf course resort.

From the description, it has little or nothing to do with implementing principles of capitalism per the model of Galt's Gulch.  I will illustrate briefly from their web page:

Numerous cutting-edge technologies are currently available to the community, which are not readily found in today's society, such as 100% natural microbial mixtures for reviving and maintaining optimal soil health, affording the communiy nutrition dense and flavor rich crops without the need for pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers...water filtration and ionization technologies, affording significant health benefits to the residents of the community...as well as many other highly beneficial technologies, which members of the community will have at their fingertips.

Was Galt's Gulch top down organized along such principles?  Nope, it was simply top down non organized, to allow capitalism to flourish.

The concept that the community would choose or promote or in any way tax for someone's scheme of organic farming is completely opposite to Rand.  Particularly in this area, the expert opinions of farmers and ranchers on the use of pesticides and best methods are required, such that their profit  and self interests are maximized.

http://nanoholdings.com/
These guys are on it as far as the "motor of the world" is concerned.
Think Ayn Rand knew something we dont?
she did see a Rothschild.
Powerful people with powerful ideas usually have some insider info.

Well, she also predicted the shale oil bonanza we are currently experiencing.  But Nanoholdings has no vise grip on scientific advances, so called "nanotech" is a very, very broad term and there are quietly, every day advances occurring in it.