“I have, to date, tortured my eyes with Atlas Shrugged, the Fountainhead, Anthem, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and The Virtue of Selfishness.” How can you expect anyone to believe this? This screed proves that you didn’t or that you are dense, if you did. Why would someone with your agenda wade through so many “offensive” books by an author
you obviously hate? Sorry,buddy, not buying it.

There is no way — no way — you read all of Rand you cite. Liar.

Now if I am wrong and you DID read her, then you are either stone cold dumb to what she actually stands for, or else understanding it you just hate it anyway and constructed your own reality so you could blow off your vile.

“Matt Moran is a sophomore…”

And extraordinarily sophomoric.

Ayn Rand’s ideal romantic character: A man who hates a woman, punches her, pimps her, then hooks up with her. Ayn was such a romantic.

Mr. Moran-

For someone who claims to have read so much Rand, you display very little understanding and even less reason here. Your “opinion” piece offers nothing but misinterpretation, ad hominem attacks and baseless assertions. Your tone smacks of complete resentment and a total lack of respect. If you are one of the best writers a reputable school like Wake Forest can put on its newspaper staff, then that is the “contradiction I believe warrants some attention.”

Mr. Moran:
I recommend that you think seriously, check the facts, review what you have written, carefully edit what you have written and consult with an expert in the field of the person you are writing about before you go to press. If you are a serious scholar and have hopes for a future professional journalism career, this piece will be painful for you to read knowing that you wrote it. I wish for you wisdom in the future.

Perhaps someone can identify an error I made here, maybe I said that Rand thinks something she does not in fact believe or ascribed to her a doctrine she does not hold. Until this occurs, however, I will continue to wait for someone with an argument.

And yes, I do lack respect for Rand. This is not because I disagree with her, but because she approached philosophy in a non-academic manner which generally resulted in overly long speeches by non-beleiveable characters about the evils of socialism and the glory of capitalism.

Her work is virtually universally considered crap, both by philosophers and by literary critics.

Mr. Moran -

I will gladly point out your errors in both fact and reason.

“…an amateur philosopher and hack writer…”

This is known as the fallacy of ad hominem, an attempt to disqualify Rand’s ideas before even examining them.

“This is precisely the demographic to which her ‘work’ appeals.”

Do you have a source for your information on the appeal of Ms. Rand’s works? A simple Google search on “Atlas Shrugged sales” will show that the book tripled its annual sales in the *first seven weeks* of this year, selling 200,000+ copies through early February. Are you willing to assert that those books all went to the hands of “brilliant businessmen?” Was it only “brilliant businessmen” who, in a Library of Congress survey some years ago, voted Atlas Shrugged as the most influential book ever written next to only the Bible?

Also, why is the word “work” put in quotes in your column? Are you trying to imply that Ms. Rand’s writing is not work?

“[Rand] is completely ignored by academic philosophers.”

This is both untrue and the formal logical fallacy known as argumentum ad populum.

If you would like to see academic philosophers who take Rand’s work seriously, you need only look to the University of Texas at Austin to find Tara Smith, an accomplished professor of philosophy who has written several books concerning Objectivist ethical and political theory. In addition, though they may or may not be philosophers, there are faculty members at Wake Forest who, by your own admission in your column, at least pay attention to Rand’s ideas.

You you should also know that many of the most brilliant and revered minds of science were ignored by the academic establishment and various authorities. Attention from academia proves nothing in and of itself.

“She encourages everyone in society to maximize his own creativity without concern for the well being of others.”

Incorrect. Rand encourages people to pursue *rational* self-interest. She further holds that having “concern for the well being [sic] of others” is not a moral imperative. Objectivists, (those who practice Rand’s philosophy) can and do hold concern for others – just not at the expense of their own happiness or well-being.

“She ignores the fact that, in the society she envisions, the majority of the population would be reduced to mindless automatons working in the factories of her beloved capitalists.”

Incorrect. Rand envisioned a society where people were free to pursue whatever lifestyle and manner of making a living appealed to them. To suggest or imply that this leads inevitably to everyone being industrial peasants demonstrates an understanding of (and subscription to) the ideas of Karl Marx, not Rand.

“The system she envisions, unregulated corporate capitalism…”

Incorrect. Rand did not “envision… unregulated corporate capitalism,” she *advocated* for Laissez Faire Capitalism.

“Whereas most people decry this and demand a welfare state to alleviate it, Rand and her followers celebrate it.”

Incorrect. As stated above Rand advocated for Laissez Faire Capitalism; as such she did not “celebrate” Corporate Capitalism, and neither do those who practice her philosophy.

Additionally I would like to see some evidence that “most people… demand a welfare state.”

“This Dane steals from government ships in order to refund the taxes of wealthy individuals and states.”

If I remember correctly, Danneskjold refunds taxes to anyone who warrants an invitation to Galt’s gulch — not just for the wealthy, and not at all for “states”. There are plenty of people in Galt’s gulch who are not wealthy industrialists, and the implication is that Danneskjold refunds them as well.

“..Objectivism and other philosophies that glorify the wealthy and show contempt for the poor…”

Incorrect. Objectivism, to the extent that it “glorif[ies] the wealthy,” does not do so because they are wealthy. (Note how Atlas Shrugged denounces characters such as James Taggart and Orren Boyle, plenty wealthy themselves). Rather they are glorified because they are *virtuous* — they think, they act, they produce.

“They reject state tyranny only to replace it with corporate tyranny…”

Incorrect. Objectivism believes in individual rights and freedom from tyranny of all types.

As a broader point Mr. Moran, and as a bit of advice from me to you, you would do well to learn the difference between an opinion piece and a poorly argued, poorly researched, and disingenuous attempt to slander a brilliant author and philosopher in a university newspaper. How’s that for concern for your well-being?

Ryan,

1.Forgive me, sometimes my revulsion is a bit strong.

2.That Rand’s books are popular among Americans is without doubt, and we can imagine why, however the critical response has always been negative. Most literary critics, if you read their criticism, think she is a poor writer, plain and simple.

3.The fact that there is one, or even a handful, of academic philosophers who call themselves Objectivists isn’t concerning to me. While I won’t formally cite him, Dr. Rued of the University of Pittsburgh, among the top philosophy departments in the US, said, “she is completely ignored by academic philosophers.”

4. Right, she wants people to act selfishly and doesn’t consider it a moral imperative to help others. That’s my point.

5.I know that she doesnt think her dream society would result in this, but my opinion, backed up by evidence from societies with poorly regulated labor and financial systems (we can go in to this if you want) is that the inevitable result would be that large corporate systems, which by definition depends on poorly paid workers, would dominate the economic landscape.

6. Most people in the developed world demand a welfare state, America is an example of a backward country which has not caught on to the idea that the wealthy have a responsibility to help the non-wealthy. No wonder Rand is so popular….

7.I’m quoting from Atlas when i talk about how he robs from the “undeserving poor” and gives the the “deserving rich.” With this I have a serious problem.

8. I’ll ignore that, I don’t need sanctimonious speeches characteristic of an obvious influence of yours.

This entire piece is a straw-man: Make an unbroken string of outrageous and false claims about a subject and then uncharitably deride the subject for being so characterized.

Thank you Mr. Reynolds for making some corrections. I share your understanding of both Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism. I have read the works cited and the Objectivism of Mr. Moran is something quite unrecognizable.

Matt,

Mr. Reynolds is correct on every error he pointed out, saving the rest of us a lot of tedious labor. The most egregious of those errors is that you have attacked the politics of radical capitalism without comprehending it.

First of all, you have wrapped your entire critique in the trite and false dichotomy of rich vs. poor. There is nothing in the philosophy to support you in that. The actions in the two out of context anecdotes presented as evidence are not acts of theft, but rather acts of recovery and restitution of wealth stolen by others. You accuse her of glorifying the wealthy while ignoring her wealthy villains, because you erroneously mistook her worship of productivity to be a worship of wealth that would better serve your own prejudice.

The fundamental alternative at the base of Rand’s radical capitalist politics is not rich vs. poor, it is freedom vs. force. It originates with the recognition by the Objectivist ethics that individual autonomy in the application of one’s reason to one’s actions in the service of one’s life is a value necessitated by the nature of man’s unique means of survival.

The extension of that moral principle in the context of an individual’s life to the context of the life of an individual in a social context necessitates a politics that defines and protects the rights of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness as required preconditions for the lives of every human being. Since it is only the attributes that constitute man’s fundamental nature that are identical among all men who are, were, or ever will be, her politics that requires consistency with that nature is inherently egalitarian in the truest sense of that word.

Furthermore, it recognizes that autonomy can only be damaged by physical force. It recognizes as a moral imperative that no man or group of men, may use force except in defense against force. It recognizes that a society requires a neutral third party institution that must withdraw force from a society and use it only to guarantee that:

No man may initiate the use of force or the threat thereof to gain, withhold, or destroy any tangible or intangible value of another that he either created or acquired in a voluntary exchange.

Under such a government, all human interrelationships would be required to be voluntary.

How then could any human being be exploited without being complicit? How would upper and lower classes exist beyond the confines of personal prejudices that could not be enforced? How could any corporation tyrannize the populace without being able to enlist the power of a government, because that government has no privileges to give them, no taxes with which to fund subsidies, no licenses or regulations to write to their advantage, no permissions to pollute or desecrate the environment, no power to create loophole infested distortions of the financial markets?

There could be no force in their favor. There would be no way in such a society to gain wealth other than by offering products of greater value for a lower cost to entice the voluntary choices to complete an exchange, all the while acting in a way to sustain the good will of all.

The entire woefully inefficient and corrupt systems of government regulation would be supplanted by a competitive market of watch-dog companies whose continued existence would daily depend on a flawless record of enabling the populace to make fully informed choices. The power to decide what would be produced and how would rest solely with the people — one penny, one vote, recognizing by the way (as Sam Walton did) that in a free society, the poor always command more pennies than the rich.

The injustices you describe are drawn from the history of bastardized corruptions of capitalism with fascist and communist socialism. It will take more than a bald assertion to stick them onto Objectivism.

Im sorry Michael, but your account of oppressive conditions under capitalism being caused by fascism and communist socialism are just not accurate. During the period of industrialization, specifically in Britain, factories were surrounded by a sea of slums in which the workers tried to scratch out an existence. In my own city, Pittsburgh, the steel mills were surrounded by mostly Eastern European immigrants who were poorly paid and worked in dangerous conditions. It was not until labor regulations and union action that this began to change.

Further, the fact that the workers choose to work for the company doesn’t make the oppressive conditions okay. If they don’t go to work, they starve, so in a sense they are being coerced into this economic system. Look into the Marxist concept of Structural Violence, which describes a scenario in which the institutional structure of a society is targeted against part of the population. Are industrial workers literal slaves, no, of course not. However, they are in a system in which they choose poorly paying undignified labor or starvation.

The societies with the highest standards of living in the world are the Scandinavian social democracies, which Rand would despise. If you want to see what happens when the free market runs wild, take a look at the developing world, where it has been rammed down their throats.

Matt,
Your ignorance is self-nurtured by a stubborn refusal to process the ideas right in front of those self-tortured eyes. I explain to you the nature of Rand’s capitalism and you cite in your reply a society in which it did not obtain.
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You also cite the achievements of the centuries old north-European work ethic under socialism without the slightest consideration of what they would achieve if they were freed from its limiting bonds.
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Your choice of reply is itself a confession that you are concrete-bound and unable to operate at the abstract level, leaving you bereft of a systematic set of principles to apply in your judgments. Where is your reply to individual autonomy as a moral imperative? Where is your comment on the issue of freedom vs. physical force? By what standard do you hold that the product of a man’s application of his own reason to his own action justifiably belongs to others who did not produce it if enough of them can gang up on him and take it. Answers to those questions are prerequisites for any viable evaluation of the politics of Sweden or 19th century Pittsburgh.

Yes, I understand that Rand thinks that through her unregulated capitalism everything would be great. I am disagreeing.

What would the Scandinavians achieve if they renounced social democracy? Maybe the highest standard of living in the world!! Oh….wait……

I consider a moral social system to be a system which benefits the majority. I know you don’t. I also know we will never agree on this, which is why I ignored all that stuff about the morality of self-interest. Instead I focused on real-world examples of unregulated capitalism and functioning socialism. I don’t consider taxes physical force in a democracy, in a dictatorship perhaps, but not a liberal democracy. In a democracy, taxes are the funding for programs which the population and elected officials have decided are appropriate. If a rich businessman doesn’t want to contribute to the society which bought his crap that they probably dont need, he should go live in the woods or some country with a weak government, like Somalia.

Matt,
Did you get paid for this article? If so, your labor and mental effort were for sale at some price. Sounds a bit like capitalism.

In keeping with your apparent philosophy, I am sure that while writing this “work” you were quite concerned for the well-being of all readers, including those whose views and comments oppose your own. Perhaps Wake Forest was also concerned for the well-being of the new addition to the college of business so they gave him a job while also being concerned for the welfare of their students.

In keeping with your great concern for those around you, I have been unemployed for about 6 months. I have looked and continue to look diligently. I was careful enough financially to save and have maintained myself and my family the entire time. I have requested no help from the government at any level.

However, given your great concern for the welfare of those around you, I might be persuaded to see things your way. Please send me at least what you earned from writing this piece. You might feel better by taking action consistent with what you believe and profess, and then I could see what it feels like to be Reardon’s brother.

Matt,
Given that you wrote this:
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“However, I consider Objectivism and other philosophies that glorify the wealthy and show contempt for the poor to be sufficiently dangerous to warrant constant opposition.”
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and then wrote this:
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“I also know we will never agree on this, which is why I ignored all that stuff about the morality of self-interest.”
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you are trying to “take the fork”. First Objectivism warrants constant opposition, then at the first sign of a principle at the heart of the philosophy, you throw down your guns and run back home to your concrete-bound bunker you call the “real world”. You, the philosophy critic have effectively devalued the significance of philosophy to everyday human life. You have reduced principles asserted to be applicable to all men to be just “all that stuff” not worth your consideration unless you already agree with it.
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Unfortunate for that position is the fact that human beings are not equipped to operate without a code of values. It is not possible to evaluate the alternatives of each and every choice of one’s life in streaming real time. Reason enables those who choose to use it to abstract the essential characteristics of concrete instances, then group them and combine them into principles that are applicable to every such instance that occurs in the future. Yes, this is elementary, but that just makes your evasion of it all the more inexcusable.
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Example:
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“I don’t consider taxes physical force in a democracy, in a dictatorship perhaps, but not a liberal democracy. In a democracy, taxes are the funding for programs which the population and elected officials have decided are appropriate.”
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Taxes are paid by those who do not want their money to be spent by others for their purposes only under the threat that if they refuse, physical force will be used to confiscate a greater amount than the tax or their freedom itself. Taxation is, by definition, a taking by physical force regardless of what individual or group of individuals impose and enforce it.
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There is a vast moral chasm between the use of democracy to validate a club’s choice of president or a Congressman from the 5th district and the use of democracy to justify takings by force. You equate the will of the majority with what the populace wants, but that is patently false. Unanimity can be what the populace wants, but majority is only what some of the populace want. You cannot use the veil of democracy to hide the fact that the minority are victims of its coercion when it taxes them.
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“If a rich businessman doesn’t want to contribute … he should go live in … some country with a weak government, like Somalia.”
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This is the depth of evil where all collectivists ultimately gather: a man’s mere existence is sufficient to establish a majority’s claim to his life — by existing here, you belong to us, leave if our tyranny is not to your liking. As any person will attest who by accident of birth was condemned to live out his only life in the hell that was the Soviet Union (among many others), if the rich man belongs to the majority, so does the poor man. Justifying the enslavement of one justifies the enslavement of all. That is one of those universally applicable principles you are struggling so hard to avoid.

By focusing in on Ragnar Danneskjold, the pirate character in Atlas Shrugged, Matt Moran reveals himself to be less than honest. He writes:

“Among the more impactful quotes in Atlas is the manifesto of a pirate named Ragner Danneskjold.

“This Dane steals from government ships in order to refund the taxes of wealthy individuals and states.

“Somewhere in one of Rand’s many sanctimonious speeches, Danneskjold steals from the undeserving poor and gives to the deserving rich’ in a sick twist of the Robin Hood story. This is, I kid you not, an action that Objectivism celebrates. Normally I would find it refreshing to listen to someone who thinks Americans are not selfish enough.

“However, I consider Objectivism and other philosophies that glorify the wealthy and show contempt for the poor to be sufficiently dangerous to warrant constant opposition.”

Mr. Moran is getting sloppy here. The encounter between Danneskjold and Reardon takes up some 13 pages (572-584, 11th printing, 1957 addition), and nowhere do the words he quotes appear. If he actually read the book (which is doubtful) and wanted to accurately report on the meaning of Danneskjold’s character and purpose, he would have stated the exact quote and the context and full meaning of it. Here is the passage to which he probably refers, which appears “somewhere” on page 576, along with further selected excerpts from Danneskjold’s statement for context and understanding.

“I’m the man … who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.

“I have never robbed a private ship and never taken private property. Nor have I ever robbed a military vessel – because the purpose of a military fleet is to protect from violence the citizens who paid for it, which is the proper function of a government. But I have seized every loot-carrier that came within range of my guns, every government relief ship, subsidy ship, loan ship, gift ship, every vessel with a cargo of goods taken by force from some men for the unpaid, unearned benefit of others…

“It is said that [Robin Hood] fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became the justification … for that foulest of creatures – the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich – whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal.”

If Mr. Moran were to present an accurate portrayal, he would realize that Rand is here upholding justice – that you deserve what you earned but not what you haven’t. Rand condemns not the poor, but the “thieving” poor who exist off of a lifetime of government handouts; not the rich but the productive rich. A full understanding makes it plain that – and this is one of the clear messages of the book – Rand is defending the property of any human being, on any economic level, who earns his own keep – and condemning all moochers, rich as well as poor, such as the wealthy parasites who are the villains in AS.

Rand also does not condemn charity as such, but coercive charity and the phonies – the “double-parasites” – who seek the unearned prestige of practicing “humanitarianism” with other peoples tax money under the “halo of virtue” called altruism. Altruism, as Rand has proven for anyone with the courage and independence to question the accepted “wisdom” of the ages, does not mean benevolence, good will, or true compassion. Instead, it is a moral code that enshrines the unearned as a moral absolute, thus fostering envy, the entitlement mentality, resentment of achievement, and predatory collectivism – cancers that are slowly consuming this country.

Mr. Moran’s article is riddled with inaccuracies and irrelevancies, belying his statement that “I have, to date, tortured my eyes with Atlas Shrugged, the Fountainhead, Anthem, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and The Virtue of Selfishness.” I have addressed one of them. There’s nothing wrong with criticism, of course. Unfortunately, his criticism of Rand comes at us not from a standpoint of understanding, but from a somewhat Marxist narrative.

Objectivism stands up for every individual person’s right to his own life (rational selfishness), not the right to prey on others for his own ends. It is, first and foremost, a comprehensive set of philosophical principles to guide the individual in his personal endeavors and in his relationships with others. As such, Objectivism provides a moral defense of individualism, capitalism, and America’s founding ideals as laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Ayn Rand is, I firmly believe, America’s last Founding Father because of her philosophic achievement. I urge everyone to study Objectivism and decide for himself. I’m confident that he will learn that Objectivism is a truly humanitarian philosophy.

http://www.principledperspectives.blogspot.com/

Most people who espouse beliefs such as those of this article’s author (Matt Moran) have either not yest left academia (I note Mr. Moran is a sophomore at this university), or have run back to it to escape reality (his and other professors he quotes). That is why most of the author’s points appear so naive and his attacks ad hominem. And by the way – the article’s author (Matt) apparently has not even read the Robin Hood story correctly – Robin Hood stole from the government (the usurper Sheriff of Nottingham) the taxes taken by force from the people of Sherwood Forest….

Matt,

One’s body of conceptual knowledge can be thought of (and visualized) as a hierarchical arrangement in a kind of inverted pyramid with the broadest field of specific concretes at the top and each subsequent layer below occupied by ever more fundamental premises on which the higher layers rest until you arrive at the most fundamental concept one can have, “existence” — that “something is” — that occupies the point at the base.
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When a debate such as the one you have instigated appears to be reaching a stalemate, it is time to look into the lower layers for a more fundamental disagreement, resolve that, and work back to the specific differences that were caused by it and resolve them accordingly.
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That is what I have been trying to accomplish — to lure and/or cajole you from that concrete layer on top down through the pyramid to some principle, any principle, that might be nearer to the deepest source of our disagreement. And you obliged here:
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“I consider a moral social system to be a system which benefits the majority.”
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In other words, you hold that a system that benefits some at the expense of others can be said to be a moral system. Before I could challenge this, I would have to know what you mean by “moral.” To make that easier, I’ll explain my view of moral and you can tell me how yours differs and how you justify it:
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Human beings are living creatures, all of which share the same most fundamental alternative — existence or nonexistence … to be or not to be … life or death. The actions of all other kinds of living things but man are programmed to pursue the alternative of life in accordance with their nature. Man can — and must — choose between every alternative faced.
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If one chooses the alternative of death all other questions are moot. If one chooses life, then implicitly, one’s life — to survive and thrive in accordance with one’s nature as a human being — becomes one’s highest value and the standard against which one must measure all other values. Implicitly, any action to the contrary is a detriment to one’s life.
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This is the basis for regarding an egoist ethic as consistent with the fundamental nature of man. It is a conclusion that occurs way below (in the pyramid) any questions of proper social interrelationships that would be considered. It establishes a standard of value in the context of the base unit of humanity: the living human individual.
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Since our means of achieving our goal of a successful life is to apply our reason to our actions, and since being volitional we are all fallible, high on the list in our code of values to acquire and sustain in the service of life is independence of intellect and action — that even the choice to have trust in the thinking of others and to act as they advise must be ours alone. That is the basis for concluding it to be right, morally, that each and every human being shall be autonomous in the application of reason to action. That is the moral right to one’s life that subsequently necessitates, in a social context, the establishment and enforcement of a political right to one’s life as a precondition to enable the pursuit of an ethical life.
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Your moral standard denies such a right. It denies that autonomy is necessitated by our nature. It denies that all men are equally fallible and preposterously implies that the individuals in any given group that outnumbers another group are less fallible. It usurps the right to make that most fundamental choice between life and death by demanding that some individuals must accept what they hold to be not in the best interest of their lives just because the majority holds it to be in the best interests of theirs.
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Your moral standard asserts that some human beings can lay claim to the lives of others. It asserts that any group can establish that claim by merely outnumbering their intended victims.
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I challenge you to name the standard by which you measure that as just, the principle on which that standard rests, the facts of reality from which that principle is derived — or any approximation thereof you can cobble together as a start.

But here’s the problem. In any human system, there will exist people who live in conditions unacceptable to the given society. Unregulated capitalism does not present a solution to this problem. If you dont want welfare to exist, and im assuming you dont, the poor will either die or work bad jobs for bad money. In this scenario, when, in order to survive, a person has to work one or two mindless factory of service jobs, an individual cannot pursue his creative potential. How can someone become a Howard Rourk or a Dagny Taggard (I have read the books, thanks) when they are fighting for the next meal? This is, to me, where Rand’s vision breaks down. In the society she envisions, vast swaths of people will be forced, by economic conditions, into jobs which don’t permit the maximization of creative potential. It’s only in a society where survival and basic goods are guaranteed that people can be creative. The large Scandinavian art scene and their sophisticated welfare state are probably less unrelated than you might think.

Further, why, in places with sophisticated welfare states are they so popular? If it’s a basic moral truth that things like welfare are evil, why is government so popular in Scandinavia?

Just to preempt, I am not saying that because welfare is popular it is right, im familiar with argumentum ad populum, what I am saying is that the Objectivist characterizes taxes in a way that most people do not. Even the wealthy “producers” in Norwegian society support the welfare state because they value the greater social goods it achieves. Of course some people will call taxes theft and characterize welfare recipients as “leeches,” fortunately these individuals are in the minority.

And my moral standard does not say that people may lay claim to the lives of others, I dont say that anyone should be enslaved or killed or what have you. I say that just government (i.e. not a dictatorship) as the tool of a society, reserves the right to tax people to fulfill other social needs and goals. Government action, in a capitalist or even semi-capitalist economy is the best way to address issues of poverty. Charity just doesn’t cut it. Again, if you disagree and don’t think people owe society anything that’s fine, go live in the woods. But if you are going to enjoy the benefits of living in a stable society, which isn’t so simply because of the military and police but the sum of government action, don’t be offended if society asks you to pay for some of it.

Sorry Matt, but you got owned.

You have to think the Wake Admissions Office is starting to wonder if they made a serious mistake in admitting Matt Moran. I guess that’s what happens when you drop the SAT as a requirement.

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

My frustration over your stubborn refusal to step up your mind from the level of mouthing the cliches of others to the level of thinking for yourself is beginning to dissolve now into pity. My accusation that you were being sophomoric is retracted. It was, I now see, an overestimation.

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.

Peter, I’m going to totally ignore that. Nor do I understand why Michael needs to preface his paragraphs with insults. I’m guessing it’s in order to impress himself, something I would expect from a fan of Rand, but maybe someone can explain this to me.

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.

Further, this is sort of random, but it should be clear that reason is not the only factor shaping human behavior. Rand says her only influence was Aristotle, she (and you, by extension) would do well to consider that Aristotle, who is actually respected in the academic community, contended that humans are rational, social animals. Reason is only one of a three part nature of man.

To further anchor this discussion in the real world I’ll provide two quotes.

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.

okay guys…..ready for a response…..

I commend Matt Moran for wading into this. Let me try to respond the best I can..
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That our country has, or has attempted to have, a separation of economics and state is a false assumption.
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Not one penny made by John Allison at BB&T was ever earned in the free market. He has spent a career in the most government subsidized industry in the country. He is a financial socialist.
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Banks like Allison’s BB&T are part of the Federal Reserve System – the FED. Our Congress has transfered it’s power to regulate money and the value thereof to the FED. At least since 1913, there has been no free market in banking in the USA, and therefore no free market.
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The FED creates money out of thin air (google Mandrake mechanism). We carry the FED’s unbacked fiat money in our pockets as slips of paper, or in our bank accounts as 1’s and 0’s ). The people of this country, and all others under the umbrella of American military power, are forced to accept this unbacked intrinsically worthless FED money as legal tender. FED member banks like BB&T also create money out of thin air locally through their government sanctioned fractional reserve system.
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When private individuals do what banks like BB&T do every day, they are arrested and thrown in jail for counterfeiting. However, through the power of government, the fractional reserve system run by our banking crime syndicate has been legalized. Without government support such a system would not last long in a free market environment.
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These are the facts that John Allison’s fans are going to have to address.
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Matt Moran has his own homework though.
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The government did get something out of the deal when it created the FED. It got a credit card account with virtually no credit limit. It uses this credit card to buy all of Matt’s favorite social programs with virtually no regard to how much debt it is saddling current and future generations of American’s with. This is euphemistically called deficit spending. What it really is is theft.
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Every $1 of deficit spending is paid for with a fresh dollar of government debt issued through the FED. This fresh dollar of government debt is known as the aforementioned Federal Reserve Note that sits in a person’s wallet or bank account.
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Every one of these new dollars created out of thin air reduces the current value of dollars presently in circulation. The more social programs that are created and paid for with government debt, the less valuable the dollars we all hold become. This inflation of the money supply through bank counterfeiting is the historical definition of “inflation.”
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Those most harmed by inflation are those who are on fixed incomes or whose meager savings are held in simple bank accounts and money market funds. What this means is that every new social program initiated or expanded by our government and paid for with new debt money is a direct attack on the least among us.
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***The inflation caused by deficit spending for social programs creates even more people in need of the social programs.***
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…and the FED bankers are happy to pull their interest charges out of this corrupt system all along the way.
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For further reading, John Allison fans should pick up a copy of Creature From Jekyll Island. Matt Moran fans should pick up a copy of The Web of Debt.
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Hope this clarifies more than it confuses.