Only thing chilling about this video are her insane views.

She does have an opinion brother in Phil Gramm though, one of the creators of the current world crisis.

Only thing chilling about this website are the insane views.

Only thing chilling is Mike Wallace thinking he can browbeat her. Snort!

There is much I disagree with Ayn Rand's thinking and writing, but I still think her contributions are an asset to human knowledge and thinking.

^Same reason I thought it still deserved to be on the sift.

what is to disagree with her in this interview? I cant find it yet

^ People are disagreeing with what they think ayn rand thinks. I'm no expert, i don't know what her manifesto might have been, but she had some good ideas and thoughts about human nature, imo.

The only bad thing about ayn rand, imo, is the book atlas shrugged, in which not only does she describe every brain process of every character involved and cloudy up an otherwise fantastic novel, but she puts her own views into it on male/female sexuality, ties it to "instrinsic human nature" and makes me feel sick.

But other than that a lot of the views she expressed in it were clever and astute. Maybe i should check her out a bit more.

Edit: In fact i'll say some more..

Everything she says here is 100% fine, it makes sense and it's true as far as i understand it. However, i feel it suffers from the same thing as communism. The system would only work if everyone was perfect (which shows in her book atlas shrugged, where all masters of industry are fair and honest and true), and unfortunately that is not the case. In her world, a steel manufacturer would be allowed to make a monopoly on the steel industry, put every other steel company out of business using skill and acumen, and continue to improve the product and offer fair services and prices to everyone. However, in our world, that isn't the case. Political palm-greasing, schemers and scammers, 'grab all you can' types.. it'd never work out how she thinks it'd work out. It'd be great if it did, if everyone was perfect, but it never would happen. You could almost take microsoft as a living example of how a monopoly can lead to poor service. Take betamax vs. videotape.

That's aside from the fact that someone who has a monopoly on such things may not have the best system or idea. Let's say microsoft are a monopoly and they wipe out every other form of operating system. They had the best operating system in 1990-2000. But after 2000, their operating system was really poor and didn't get the best out of our computers. But there would be no one to offer an alternative because no one would be willing to research and develop such an idea, they'd never get any sales, or they'd be bought out, or they'd never even begin to start with because the knowledge would have been lost to all but microsoft. So as far as we all know, that system is the best system available. Even microsoft think so. But that's only one perspective, and humans have mostly always arrived at the best system through review and competition.

blah, rambling again

danny

"The system would only work if everyone was perfect "

This doesn't even make plain sense. Why would anyone need to have a "system" to govern a society of perfect people? Her brand of radical capitalism is in fact based on the assumption that all men are volitional, and therefore all are fallible. And since the success or failure of our lives depends on how well we think and choose and act, we need above all to be autonomous in our choices of what to think and how to act. And if we claim that right for our own lives, we must consistently grant it to all others.

Since the only way to interfere with that autonomy is with physical force, her system calls for the government to withhold all physical force from human interactions and to use it only to prevent, stop, or punish its use. The central principle therefore is:

No person may initiate the use of physical force to gain, withhold, or destroy any tangible or intangible value created by or acquired in a voluntary exchange by any other person.

This principle seeks to guarantee that all human exchanges of values shall be voluntary. It does not demand that anyone be rational or perfect. Everyone is free to do whatever they want as long as they refrain from using force to get what they want.

Under such a governmental system, coercive monopolies like the government's forced monopoly over our roads, water, education, postal system, etc. could not exist. No private monopoly could come into or sustain existence as such except by the voluntary choices of consumers to buy exclusively their products. And if they did choose those products voluntarily, by what standard could you or anyone else claim the right to forbid it of them.

In attempting to judge such a radically different system of government, you should be careful to avoid making assumptions of consequences based on what men do now with our present mixture of liberty and tyranny.

"Ayn Rand was a truculent, domineering cult-leader, whose Objectivist pseudo-philosophy attempts to ensnare adolescents with heroic fiction about righteous capitalists"

http://world.std.com/~mhuben/critobj.html

^she was a creepy lady, granted, especially after she got her cult going... but "reduction of compulsion" in general seems like a good idea, don't you think?

>> ^MichaelM:
danny
<stuff>


This is the point i'm making. Her system demands all of these things that you've listed, and i'm saying that it would be no more successful or ideal than the system we have now UNLESS everyone was perfect. Worse in some ways, better in others.

It seems as though you're of the opinion that i think SHE demands perfection, and that isn't the case. I say that she is mistaken in her view that allowing humans utmost freedom to create and exchange will create a better world by definition. I say that allowing humans utmost freedom simply allows a bastard to be more of a bastard.

I think that her system would only work IF people were perfect. Therefore the question "Why do you need a system to govern people who are perfect?" is not something i should have to, nor could i answer. I'm not saying "This is the best system to govern people who are perfect." I'm saying, this would only work if people WERE perfect.

And of course, if people WERE perfect, any self contained system would work perfectly and indefinitely, as you so accurately pointed out.

The only valid point of your argument, as far as i can understand it, is that i shouldn't be making judgements about what humans MAY do under a new system based on what they DO under the current one. But if you're trying to suggest that all humans would shed greed and jealousy if we adopted a system under which they were completely free, i think you're naive about the human race.

And, as previously stated, i am no expert on rand's ideas or theories, i know very little from what i have gathered from the book i have read, which i have been told is in many ways a platform for her to voice her theories about politics and sex and other stuff.

Perhaps if i was able to have a conversation with someone who knew it back to front, then i would be able to give a better opinion on whether or not it would work. It's not something i have studied nor do i wish to study. As i understand her system, it wouldn't be much better overall than what we have now because of human nature.

danny

"Perhaps if i was able to have a conversation with someone who knew it back to front, then i would be able to give a better opinion on whether or not it would work."

Go ahead, ask any question you want. I will converse with you. I don't know everything about it, but I have agreed with and advocated it without regrets for 43 years.

But first be clear that you are only dealing in this particular issue with one portion of her philosophy, politics. And that politics is not a stand-alone set of principles. Its validity depends entirely on the more fundamental branches of Objectivism that define the nature of existence (metaphysics), the nature of our means of grasping and retaining our knowledge of existence (epistemology), and given the nature of those and of human beings (in principle), by what standards we should measure our choices of thought and action in our quest to survive and thrive in accordance with our nature as the beings that we are (ethics).

That is just a peek at the monumentality of the subject. But you do not have to be an Olympic swimmer before you can wade into the shallows. Also, it doesn't make any difference where you start. If you have an open, honest mind, it will take you where you need to go.

Since politics is at the top of your present interest list, start here:

Capitalism is not right because it works. Rather, it works because it is right. It is right because it is derived from and dependent on a proper definition of the nature of human beings. To wit: Life or death is the fundamental alternative for all living entities. Humans are the only living beings that cannot pursue either alternative by their automated bodily functions alone. Our unique means of survival is our capacity to know the nature of existence and to choose the actions we take to deal with it - i.e., we are rational, volitional beings.

If one chooses the alternative goal of death, no ethical or political system is needed. But if one chooses to live -- to survive and thrive -- then life itself becomes ipso facto the standard of measure for all of your choices of how to think and act and what values to pursue - your ethics. If you lived outside of any society, your ethic -- your moral rights and wrongs would be your only governor. You would succeed or fail in accordance to how correctly or incorrectly your ethic was defined and implemented in your daily life.

But when humans live together in a society and interact in long term relationships, a problem arises. The volition that enables us to choose, inherently enables us to err. The autonomy one would have over one's own life outside a society can be destroyed in a society by the sole enemy of freedom, physical force. Therefore, in order to extend a proper human ethics in the context of the life of an individual into the context of a society of men, coercion by physical force must be removed from human interactions and all exchanges of values among men must be voluntary.

Now re-read the defining principle of Rand's radical capitalism as I stated it in my comment above. That is a moral principle. If you can undermine the logic of the morality underpinning that principle, we can begin to talk about capitalism not working. But, if you can't, you should begin to look deeper into it than you have. For if autonomy is a moral prerequisite, then our present political system that condones the use of coercion by majorities to take what they want from minorities is the system that does not work. It does not work primarily because it is immoral. And the left and right are equally guilty. Only the kinds of tyranny they favor differ.

Note also, that it is a dangerous leap from being unable to imagine how a system you understand so little would function to the claim that it simply would not work at all. Your intolerance of bastards is a suitable example. What Rand achieves in her system is that bastards may continue to be bastards in spades, because they have in her system no access to power. The government in her system has but one job and no other: rid the nation of coercion. No one can acquire anything from anybody in such a society without enticing them to trade it to them voluntarily.

And keep in mind, that autonomy is the freedom to exercise your own volition, which is a freedom to be fallible yourself that you must grant others as well. To be a good capitalist, you must tolerate the absolute right of others to be as irrational as they want so long as they do not force it on you or anyone else.

Here is an instructive little experiment:

Rape: The Unknown Ideal

"Rape is an integral and necessary expression of human nature. Sexual assaults have been present in every society since the dawn of time. It is the drive of man to reproduce, to compete successfully for advantage on the battlefield of life and evolution. In fact, it is this very competition to reproduce that motivates man to do anything productive and worthwhile in the first place. It is this competition that motivates man to aspire to greatness. Can you imagine men striving for greatness were they not motivated by their drive to reproduce by any means? Of course not, because the drive to reproduce is at the very core of mankind's essence! As long as we disregard silly 'god' superstitions and recognize that a man is ultimately responsible to and for himself, we therefore recognize that any measures that attempt to stifle this natural and inherent drive to reproduce by any means are inherently wrong. To stifle sexual assaults is the perverse anti-human dream of the superstitious or a bloated priestly class, or the self-promoted intelligentsia, which of course is both of these at the same time. In fact, no human society has successfully eliminated rape, despite myriad measures designed to curb sexual assaults. If man were only truly free to pursue this integral part of his nature we would walk as the masters of the Earth that we are!"

Now, anyone will see that this is a glaringly faulty and dangerous chain of reasoning. Just because the drive to reproduce is inherent in humans, and because sexual assault and rape stem from that drive and are a part of human nature and an expression of that nature, and because every society has had sexual assault and none has successfully eliminated rape, that doesn't necessarily mean that sexual assault and rape are good things that should be encouraged, or that there wouldn't be disastrous and apocalyptic consequences were people given carte blanche to rape.

Now, reread the paragraph and replace every occurrence of the words 'sexual assault' with the words 'free markets', replace every occurrence of 'rape' with 'capitalism,' and every occurrence of the word 'reproduce' with 'acquire wealth.'* It is now word for word the position of Ayn Rand types.

What have we learned? Certain things might be inherently part of human nature and cannot be completely eliminated, but that isn't a sufficient condition for a logically cohesive argument that they should be encouraged. If you want to argue that they should be encouraged, you must give other reasons.

"I object to the idea that people have the right to vote on everything...." (Rand)

Good point. She may have meant that the stupid majority, say kooky Christians against gay marriages, should not abuse their greater numbers against the lesser.

I don't think that's what she had in mind, but....

"I am for the separation of state and economics...just as we had the separation of state and churches....” (Rand)

Another good point, except that neither has ever really happened, ever, in mankind's history.

It has been possible to separate religion from government, but not economics; one is always a subset of the other.

Brilliant woman. Totally fucked up by the trauma of the Russian revolution. Confined herself to a fantasy world, as brilliant as Tolkien's, as spiritual as C.S. Lewis's, as curious as Lewis Carroll's....

But a far cry away from reality.

rougy,

you will need more than a bare assertion to convince anyone of the idea that because something has not ever happened to date, it never could. Politics is driven by ethics, and ethics is driven by philosophy. Everyone has one, whether they can verbalize it or not. And most of the masses get theirs from their peers, and parents, all of whom get theirs from their teachers, who get theirs from the intellectuals who pass on the ideas of the philosophers.

That is why Objectivists debate with ideas in lieu of demonstrating with placards -- and the reason why they have been invisible to you for 50 years. Today, the numbers grasping the efficacy of her ideas all or in part are growing exponentially. Her political principles will never be effected by a government until an Objectivist ethic will be dominant in some particular geographic region of the planet or universe. It is impossible to predict when or if that could ever occur, because it depends on the volitional choices of individual human beings. It could be in 10 years or it could be in ten thousand years.

If one does not agree with her philosophy and wants to help stop its burgeoning influence now, it is not her or her followers you must attack. It is the power of her ideas that you must deal with by offering cogent alternatives to her reasoning. It is too late to be hoping that empty assertions and unsubstantiated characterizations with emotional connotations will stop the growth of her influence. Those who persist in such impotent tactics are starting to look like those proverbial deer caught in the headlights.

Rougy, you've got an evangelical's invitation to an argument. That is so close to an objectivist pick-up line. Next he'll be asking if you wanna let him come over and break your fireplace.

Some anti-Rand resources for the skeptics:

http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/7/70/70.htm

http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/rand5.htm

http://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/

http://world.std.com/~mhuben/skept/rationality.html

http://mrmparrott.com/philosophy-science/?oldlink=/documents/

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/leglreas.htm

she was too optimistic about the inherent nature of men, when involved in business.. which is more than usual to succumb to corruption, greed, and the lust for power. those capitalists she defines and separates into two categories, pure at heart or in bed with the state -- the former does not really exist, these days at least. the monopoly of corporate control lies in the hands of a few, an evil few. she had good intentions and the thoughts are correct, in theory.. but in reality completely improbable, as it's turned out.. which is a grand shame. R.I.P.

Ayn Rand's philosophy is definitely responsible for many of the 21st Century's ills.
If I had to choose among Fascism, Communism, Monarchism and Objectivism for the one which was to survive beyond the 20th Century, I'm not at all sure I would have picked Objectivism.