From Rand in The Virtue of Selfishness:

“When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.”

From Alan Greenspan, a (former??) Objectivist and former chairman of the Fed. This is from Bloomberg (hardly a marxist or “collectivist” organ)

Yes, I found a flaw,” Greenspan said in response to grilling from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “That is precisely the reason I was shocked because I’d been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

Greenspan said he was “partially” wrong in opposing regulation of derivatives and acknowledged that financial institutions didn’t protect shareholders and investments as well as he expected.

Guys, the “separation of economics and state” just doesn’t work, the market requires regulation.

Michael, I agree with you when you say that people in a gulag or a slave plantation have lost control of their lives. I would contend that a society in which people are forced to choose undignified labor or starvation mirrors the conditions of oppression in a society in which people are in chains or cells. Wage Slavery, I argue, is a concept which does actually exist. Thus, if you want to maximize the overall ability of people in a society to make most of their creative potential you need to guarantee that they wont starve, the most effective manner of doing this is through taxes.

How would an industrial worker become a Howard Rourk? His job, by it’s nature, doesn’t utilize his reason, it is totally mechanical. Thus, how does he get to own the fruits of his reason if the social context in which he exists discourages him from reasoning? In isolation, Rand’s arguments may seem sound, but when combined they are contradictory. A purely capitalist society cannot achieve for the industrial working class creative fulfillment, but creative fulfillment is what Rand demands of moral people. Her values conflict with the society she wants to build. And im sure yall know what Rand says to do when you think you find a contradiction….Check the premises, one (or both) of them is false.

And try to keep this civil, I didn’t personally insult you in my article or responses. I know Rand liked to demonize as evil anyone who disagreed with her, but there is no reason for you to do that as well. I’m simply going to ignore you if you call into question my acceptance to this school. I know this will make you feel triumphant and all, but academic maturity matters.

As long as your comments consist of no more than an unbroken stream of assertions that this would or would not inevitably result from capitalist liberty and that would or would not result from democratic tyranny without the slightest attempt to explain how or why, they remain just a garbage can full of wasted text.

The reason that a black man on an 18th century plantation and a dissident in a Marxist gulag and a woman sold off to a potentate are all referred to as “enslaved” is because the essential characteristic in each case is that they have lost control of the application of their reason to their actions, i.e. their life.. When you and multitudes around the world justify taxation in the name of a reified collective that is nothing more than a majority of any given group, you share with the plantation owner and the Marxist dictator as well as the trafficker in humans as commodities the same moral principle: individuals do not have a right to the product of their own reason and actions.

Since one’s life consists solely of applying reason to action and consuming the product thereof, saying that your moral standard does not lay claim to the lives of others is a just a lie. One of many you have embraced to get where you are in this thread.

You also have to wonder which faculty member(s)/department is filling Matt’s mind with such mush.