Well, if you define "charity" by your own terms - invoking the necessity of disinterested service, then you're right. Unfortunately, I'm always dubious of "final vocabulary", to quote Rorty. I agree with your overall appreciation of Rand and Objectivism though.
Well, thats bull ...nice theory though.To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return.
So, has anyone seen the movie? The book was written what... 1954?
I saw the DVD (pt. 1) in the store a week or two ago. I ordered it in Bluray and should be receiving it any day now.
LOL, this thread died pretty quickly after MB dropped the Greenspan bomb.
Yes, but I'll bet from the 1954 movie and 2002 speech, the film version is somewhat different. Anyone see it?
I stopped right there. WTF? There is nothing virtuous at all about producing or earning money. It's a tool, no different from a screwdriver or an edger. Would you feel proud about collecting 1,000,000 screwdrivers? No, because anything beyond maybe 10-12 for normal carpentry use is redundant. You might need a smaller set for technical computer work.Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices.
The worship of money as a "virtue" is what drives some to ac ulate more money than they, or their descendants to the 4th or 5th generation can possibly spend in their ulative lifetimes.
Actually Rand didn't hold Greenspan in high regards. She had a quote about him that pretty much meant he was just trying to be in the in crowd.
- yaron brooke"Ayn Rand would have never advocated for the kind of policies Alan Greenspan ins uted," Brook says, citing the Fed's 1% fed funds rate in the years after 9/11 as exhibit A: "By holding interest rates for two-and-a-half years below the rate of inflation, [Greenspan] encouraged the debt and credit boom we're suffering the consequence of" today -- and for the foreseeable future.
She never worshipped money. I take that as producing for an amount of fair trade. She was pretty into having a true value (gold). She didn't mean the actual paper money that is the dollar.
I read somewhere that the Ayn Rand Ins ute people aren't very happy about it. I think they wanted it broke into a trilogy.
I really don't know the plot, and expect the 2011 movie will differ from the 1957 book in several ways. I've only seen the trailer and it looks good. I guess I'll find out in a few days about the movie view on corporate evils.
What revisionist bull .
LOL, Rand called Greenspan her disciple and her man in Washington when he went to go work for President Ford.
As a big fan of Rand I find it especially funny how people cherry pick her beliefs, as though they aren't all based on the same logic. A Christian boasting Randian philosophy is hilariously ironic.
Was that the logic that excoriates programs like Social Security, yet still allows her to collect it in her dotage? That seems at least as "hilariously ironic" as the Christians espousing her views.
She was an unabashed hypocrite is all I could tell you. I'm a fan of some of her ideas, but I'm also quite aware of her (rather consistent) flaws. I also think it's hilariously ironic that some people treat her "doctrines" as religion.
I never understood the fascination with Rand. Is it because her mantra was well worded and fiction that it should stand apart from so many other works? Is it because she gave her POV a name, thus is should last this long?
Her philosophy is nothing more than "The strong survive and procreate; money edition"
To me, the appeal isn't so much in her economic philosophies but rather her general philosophies (some of which can be applied to economics).
Her axioms of existence, iden y and consciousness were mind-shattering for me as a 16-year-old beginning my own philosophical journey and the idea that we are all driven by our own selfishness, but that isn't inherently a bad thing, is a simple yet important one.
I'm not a huge fan of her fictional works, to be quite honest, but I do like her non-fictional philosophical writings. Her fiction is far too verbose so much to the point that I disagree that it is well-worded. I think the message gets lost in highly ineffective writing. I mean, we don't need an 1,100 page book about a chick with a railroad who starts screwing the steel manufacturer and the battle between the doers and the moochers. Atlas Shrugged could have been a 300 page book.
Another criticism I have of Rand is that because her works were so verbose, the nuance of it is often lost on simpletons who try to extract from it what they want to hear.
Someone will read Atlas Shrugged and take away from it a confirmation of pure laissez-faire approach but ignoring the make up of the characters in the book and the importance of them in the context of the philosophy proposed. Rand's "doer" class wasn't made up of God-fearing "let them eat cake" elitists. It was made up by societies best & brightest minds who could use logic to navigate their way through the issues facing a society. In contrast, the moochers offered absolutely no value to the doer class, and thus led to their "disappearance."
It's an exaggerated tale that is too often purported to accurate reflect real life. Within the context of her philosophies overall, I think she'd be appalled at the praise received from folks like Beck and Limbaugh because it cherry picks things to fit their bias, while ignoring all the rest.
With that said, like all philosophies, Rand leaves quite a bit to be lacking. I often times equate her to Sir Thomas More in that both of their seminal works relied on unrealistic (to the point of fantasy) value characteristics in the actors that the message becomes overly detached from reality. More, at least, had the wherewithal to acknowledge how unrealistic his work was right in the le of it.
Sort of in the same way that many Christians cherry-pick biblical quotations to support whatever point they are trying to make.
Everyone cherry-picks, but there are degrees of craft and inartfulness.
As a fifteen year old I was genuinely moved by the moment of first person singular recognition in Anthem, but also thought it a little clunky and improbable: a society that had expunged the first person singular from all lit and all usage.
There are still a few shining examples. Brett Easton Ellis comes to mind.
Anthem I found lacking the "oomph" that could really make that story shine. Same with Fountainhead to be quite honest. Then again, I have already said I'm a bigger fan of Rand's philosophy than her fiction.
For me it's been hard to separate Ayn Rand from her fandom. In that respect she superficially resembles the Grateful Dead: the fandom somewhat ruined it for me.
Unlike Ayn Rand, the Dead I've revisited with pleasure and appreciation.
Nothing I've read by Ayn Rand yet has moved me from my initial judgments, and indeed, over time, my view seems to be getting harsher. But admittedly, it's been awhile...
Last edited by Winehole23; 11-27-2011 at 03:56 PM.
I'd agreed with that on both levels. I don't share the same beliefs as her more recently discovered fans and I in fact probably have a far different interpretation of her works. In addition, my interest in her work has waned greatly with time.
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