I know I felt really bad after I read it
Can't you for one fucking minute enjoy the irony of the situation? That's worth the price of the book alone.
True story: one day last year, when out of toilet paper, I wiped my ass with pages I tore out of my copy of Atlas Shrugged. It was a 60s or 70s printing so the paper wasn't all that rough.:lol :lol :lol
True story: one day last year, when out of toilet paper, I wiped my ass with pages I tore out of my copy of Atlas Shrugged. It was a 60s or 70s printing so the paper wasn't all that rough.
True story: one day last year, when out of toilet paper, I wiped my ass with pages I tore out of my copy of Atlas Shrugged. It was a 60s or 70s printing so the paper wasn't all that rough.
What were you doing with atlas shrugged? Dont lie, it's a guilty pleasure.
why would he?
why would he?
Because its pretty good. Or it was from the first half I read. :-\
It really is...why would he?
Because its pretty good. Or it was from the first half I read. :-\
it's really not.
by what terms do you measure it as good? to a child, french fries are a treat.
by what terms do you measure it as good? to a child, french fries are a treat.
tvc :lol
Hopefully you put the pages back in the book. Then leave it out on your coffee table to shock curious guests
by what terms do you measure it as good? to a child, french fries are a treat.
So you're saying that my opinion of the book is... GASP... an opinion?
why would he?
Because its pretty good. Or it was from the first half I read. :-\
it's really not. it is the dragonlance of political treatises thinly veiled as novels.
I have a copy that I am halfway through with, but will never finish. You can have it, but only if you admit that it is basically me gifting it to you through welfare.
Anti-objectivists are more annoying than objectivists
And shit, at least AS should get SOME love for it being hugely influential on the best game of 2007.
Anti-objectivists are more annoying than objectivists
Anti-objectivists are more annoying than objectivists
And shit, at least AS should get SOME love for it being hugely influential on the best game of 2007.
That's like saying the Nazis should get some love for their influence on videogames.
Anti-objectivists are more annoying than objectivists
no, anti-objectivists don't run for public office on their juvenile, ill-considered dogma
Anti-objectivists are more annoying than objectivists
And shit, at least AS should get SOME love for it being hugely influential on the best game of 2007.
That's like saying the Nazis should get some love for their influence on videogames.
Yes now I get it.
Objectivists = Nazis
It's so clear to me.
Anti-objectivists are more annoying than objectivists
no, anti-objectivists don't run for public office on their juvenile, ill-considered dogma
Yes they do. They is a whole political party that is currently in power.
In the game didnt the "objectavists" ban some drug that had to be sold on the black market?
That doesnt sound like libertarians to me.
In the game didnt the "objectavists" ban some drug that had to be sold on the black market?
That doesnt sound like libertarians to me.
People who steal shit should die, or be iconned :-*
Yeah, where of course, the objectivists were the bad guys.
Remember on GAF when the one shithead libertarian mistook the game for an allegory on socialism instead of libertarianism? That was hilarious. He didn't even get what the game was about. Maybe Rand was good at teaching how to be cognitively dissonant or something.
In the game didnt the "objectavists" ban some drug that had to be sold on the black market?Well Adam is like a form of currency and Eve was sold in vending machines so I don't think there were any drugs banned.
That doesnt sound like libertarians to me.
Political and economic theories aside, I found Rand's views on sexuality to be pretty fucking stupid. They basically boil down to "you can love someone who shares your views and fuck the shit out of them until someone better comes along." So society would be a hyper-competitive, musical chairs-esque world of people always looking to upgrade. What happens to women when they inevitably fall off a cliff at some point between age 30-45? Is John Galt going to ditch Dagny after she gets crow's-feet the same way that she ditched Hank Rearden? It's all so confusing.
I'm in the library so I'm going to try to check this out. I'll try to remember "yuppy bullshit" while I'm reading it.
And yet she sold more books and made more money than any of you distinguished effete fellows can even fathom.
Perhaps we should compare her to a successful socialist writer such as... hmm... let me think of one that was successful. It might take a few days.
Who cares how much she sold? How much does John Grisham sell?
And yet she sold more books and made more money than any of you distinguished effete fellows can even fathom.
Perhaps we should compare her to a successful socialist writer such as... hmm... let me think of one that was successful. It might take a few days.
That's an Ayn-Rand response if I ever heard one!
And yet she sold more books and made more money than any of you distinguished effete fellows can even fathom.
Perhaps we should compare her to a successful socialist writer such as... hmm... let me think of one that was successful. It might take a few days.
That's an Ayn-Rand response if I ever heard one!
Do I need to quote D'arconia's monologue on what money is. I'll do it.
And yet she sold more books and made more money than any of you distinguished effete fellows can even fathom.
Perhaps we should compare her to a successful socialist writer such as... hmm... let me think of one that was successful. It might take a few days.
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.'
"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. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves.
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists.
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."
And yet she sold more books and made more money than any of you distinguished effete fellows can even fathom.
Perhaps we should compare her to a successful socialist writer such as... hmm... let me think of one that was successful. It might take a few days.
And yet she sold more books and made more money than any of you distinguished effete fellows can even fathom.
Perhaps we should compare her to a successful socialist writer such as... hmm... let me think of one that was successful. It might take a few days.
george orwell you cunt.
thustotyrants, Selden, New York
[I am] short, stark, and mansome.
You should contact me if you are a skinny woman. If your words are a meaningful progression of concepts rather than a series of vocalizations induced by your spinal cord for the purpose of complementing my tone of voice. If you’ve seen the meatbot, the walking automaton, the pod-people, the dense, glazy-eyed substrate through which living organisms such as myself must escape to reach air and sunlight. If you’ve realized that if speech is to be regarded as a cognitive function, technically they aren’t speaking, and you don’t have to listen.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
http://nymag.com/news/features/artifact/51814/Quotethustotyrants, Selden, New York
[I am] short, stark, and mansome.
You should contact me if you are a skinny woman. If your words are a meaningful progression of concepts rather than a series of vocalizations induced by your spinal cord for the purpose of complementing my tone of voice. If you’ve seen the meatbot, the walking automaton, the pod-people, the dense, glazy-eyed substrate through which living organisms such as myself must escape to reach air and sunlight. If you’ve realized that if speech is to be regarded as a cognitive function, technically they aren’t speaking, and you don’t have to listen.
Who cares how much she sold? How much does John Grisham sell?
Is anyone arguing that John Grisham isnt successful?
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
Chomsky
...of Galilee
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
Chomsky
...of Galilee
but the Four Gospels sold more, therefore they're better
How do you guys propose to judge the merit of someones work?
How do you guys propose to judge the merit of someones work?
How do you guys propose to judge the merit of someones work?
How do you guys propose to judge the merit of someones work?
Arent you a Harry Potter Fan PD?
How do you guys propose to judge the merit of someones work?
through a rigorous process of observation, dissection and evaluation
No, I just think its funny to knock twilight if you are a grown man that reads Harry Potter.Arent you a Harry Potter Fan PD?
So because he's an HP fan he has to appreciate every popular book series, regardless of his interest or its quality?
Arent you a Harry Potter Fan PD?
What's your favorite Kafka story?Arent you a Harry Potter Fan PD?
Yes. Rowling>Kafka
No, I just think its funny to knock twilight if you are a grown man that reads Harry Potter.Arent you a Harry Potter Fan PD?
So because he's an HP fan he has to appreciate every popular book series, regardless of his interest or its quality?
No, I just think its funny to knock twilight if you are a grown man that reads Harry Potter.Arent you a Harry Potter Fan PD?
So because he's an HP fan he has to appreciate every popular book series, regardless of his interest or its quality?
Why? They are two different things. The books don't even target the same demo.
How do you guys propose to judge the merit of someones work?
through a rigorous process of observation, dissection and evaluation
And if two people disagree after the fact?
Bitter Rand tears starting at 6:00.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q7cje1I3VM
How do you guys propose to judge the merit of someones work?
through a rigorous process of observation, dissection and evaluation
And if two people disagree after the fact?
the matter goes unresolved? Very little in literary or theoretical discussion is absolutely clear-cut.
Much of Objectivism, however, is.
Because objectivism doesn't deal withopinionshuman nature.
Because objectivism doesn't deal withopinionshuman nature.
fix'd
objectivism: dogma for those afraid of the very human social nations of uncertainty and compromise
economics which is the basis for almost all human interaction.
Because objectivism doesn't deal withopinionshuman nature.
fix'd
objectivism: dogma for those afraid of the very human social nations of uncertainty and compromise
Sure it does. It deals explicitly with economics which is the basis for almost all human interaction.
economics which is the basis for almost all human interaction.
Really? Really? What sort of hell world do you live in?
economics which is the basis for almost all human interaction.
Really? Really? What sort of hell world do you live in?
What do you think the first cave men tribes thousands of years did when they met each other. Do you think they put their meat rods in each other's poop shoots? Or do you think they traded furs and foods?
economics which is the basis for almost all human interaction.
Really? Really? What sort of hell world do you live in?
What do you think the first cave men tribes thousands of years did when they met each other. Do you think they put their meat rods in each other's poop shoots? Or do you think they traded furs and foods?
Wait, do you not believe in evolution or something?
economics which is the basis for almost all human interaction.
Really? Really? What sort of hell world do you live in?
What do you think the first cave men tribes thousands of years did when they met each other. Do you think they put their meat rods in each other's poop shoots? Or do you think they traded furs and foods?
Wait, do you not believe in evolution or something?
Not sure where you got that from.
I dont know you or your friends.economics which is the basis for almost all human interaction.
Really? Really? What sort of hell world do you live in?
What do you think the first cave men tribes thousands of years did when they met each other. Do you think they put their meat rods in each other's poop shoots? Or do you think they traded furs and foods?
Wait, do you not believe in evolution or something?
Are my interactions with my friends based on economics?
how do economics account for sexual attraction
(http://i43.tinypic.com/29zwmq1.jpg)
Merit judged! Apparently, 166,000 people feel just like i do.
Also:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=ayn+rand%2C+karl+marx
How do you guys propose to judge the merit of someones work?
products sold to the public, obviously. If a lot of people like it, it must be pretty good.
(http://tinyurl.com/cv2adw)
How do you guys propose to judge the merit of someones work?
Quote[I am] short, stark, and mansome. You should contact me if you are a skinny woman.wow, recursivelyenumerable writes the best personals
On the HP side of things: You don't see the grounded fans of the series declaring it any sort of important statement of human interaction and social commentary. It's just a fun book with a good sense of adventure.
Hell, didn't Prole like one of them?
Sure it does. It deals explicitly with economics which is the basis for almost all human interaction.
Sure it does. It deals explicitly with economics which is the basis for almost all human interaction.
Sure it does. It deals explicitly with economics which is the basis for almost all human interaction.
Human interaction is an incredibly complex knot of psychology, neurochemistry and socialization. Objectivism isn't exactly based on empirical study in those areas.
i don't think objectivists would deny the prevalence of behavior patterns inconsistent with any utility valuation (not that mathematicizing it is their style), they'd just label them as evil, anti-life, etc.
Nordhaus, among other things, wrote a hostile review of Jay Forrester’s World Dynamics, which led to the later Limits to Growth. The essential story there was one of hard-science arrogance: Forrester, an eminent professor of engineering, decided to try his hand at economics, and basically said, “I’m going to do economics with equations! And run them on a computer! I’m sure those stupid economists have never thought of that!” And he didn’t walk over to the east side of campus to ask whether, in fact, any economists ever had thought of that, and what they had learned. (Economists tend to do the same thing to sociologists and political scientists. The general rule to remember is that if some discipline seems less developed than your own, it’s probably not because the researchers aren’t as smart as you are, it’s because the subject is harder.)
As a result, the study was a classic case of garbage-in-garbage-out: Forrester didn’t know anything about the empirical evidence on economic growth or the history of past modeling efforts, and it showed. The insistence of his acolytes that the work must be scientific, because it came out of a computer, only made things worse.
No economics phD would ever tell you that people actually behave in that way, and anyone researching behavioral economics could list dozens of academically proven counterexamples off the top of their head.Seeking Subjective Dominance in Multidimensional Space: An Explanation of the Asymmetric Dominance Effect (1995)