/lit/ - Literature

>>19756728
LaVey was a fan of her
So is Ted Cruz
Both are edgy fags

>>19756739
What does that make you?

>>19756728
im reading it in parts currently around page 250

not much is just introduction from what im feeling

idk

>>19756728
Rand describes bussinessmen as knights capable of saving the country and their true values.

I don't think Bezos or Zuckenberg are knights...

I hate the book. Its boring as all fuck

>>19756739
>So is Ted Cruz
Ayn Rand would be utterly disgusted with this talentless looter.

>>19757744
imagine going through this pandemic without amazon. amazon has kept it's prices so low, that the fed had to adjust inflation projections.

zuck's contributions are less noble

but imagine bill gates for example, who brought the world out of the industrial revolution into the information age.

>ayn rand... only highschoolers like her

The fountainhead was ok. Atlas Shrugged was boring as fuck. Gave up 200 pages in. Noticed she uses the word "astonished" like all the time and couldn't unsee it.

Leftists hate privatization is a great way to combat the politicization of everything. If you stop making everything government dependent; leftists lose power. That's why they hate Rand, and people like her. They need people who are dependent on governments to be relevant.

>>19756728
Didn't read it, but have read Rothbard and Hoppe instead.
Neither do I plan on ever reading Rand, she's not really the type of libertarian I like. I dislike egoism as a philosophical position, and find libertarianism to be at it's most reasonable when it distances itself from Egoism.

>>19756728
Havent read anything by her but I remember my sojboi english teacher calling her a "far-right extremist" lmao

>>19756728
>Have you read it?
Yes.
>What did you get out of it?
Entertainmentwise--the first third or so was kino from a plotfag standpoint (building the railroad line). However, it got worse it as went along.
Ideawise--Rand is a retard who treats the free market as if it's a totally unbias arbiter of human action and accomplishment. She denies the complexity that is reality and I learned a lot about how ideologues think and construct their thoughts (oversimplification and nebulous principles that can be retreated to whenever challenged).
>Who is John Galt?
Some faggot who spergs out for 80 pages (∼10% of the book) near the end and almost turned it into a DNF for me.

>>19758934
wow I can't believe these two major companies are run by only two people
I sure hope there isn't a massively underpaid workforce that we aren't hearing about here

>>19756728
It's stance against crony capitalism is on point.

>>19756728
>"I would tell him not to hold it in"
>atlas tooted

sweet, I can check off ayn rand thread off my daily lit thread bingo card

>>19756728

>>19760949

>>19756728
I read it, it wasn't very good. She's too autistic to write anything interesting. Like a political proto-Sanderson. All her characters are terrible.

Actually decent answers itt for once I'm impressed.
It is peak autism but it's also a brilliant book with several solid messages. And she makes leftoids seethe, I love it. Though I love how underneath it all it's still just a roastie "oh no, two handsome men are in love with me, which do I pick??" self insert novel

>>19760949
I want to drown every single Twitter user in front of their families at gunpoint

>>19756728
I really enjoyed it a lot. Currently stuck on galts speech. Thought of skipping it but I am glad I didnt because there are some amazing paragraphs in that chapter. I actually never highlighted so much in a fucking novel. And I never learned so much about myself and the world in the first 100 pages of any book I read. It also reads like a thriller, I could not put it down. At first I felt that she lays it on too thick at times but after a while I guess I got used to it and now I cant fault the book for anything really.
The reason collectivists hate her so much is because she is describing their mindset better than anyone and they truly hate her for unmasking the true ugliness of it, bitch-slapping them massively through the decades ever since.

Cant wait to get past that speech though..

>>19761012
>I actually never highlighted so much in a fucking novel.
>And I never learned so much about myself and the world in the first 100 pages of any book I read.
>I cant fault the book for anything really
>The reason collectivists hate her so much is...
God, I hope this is bait.

>>19761261
You hoped wrong nigger. The book is amazing, rand is fucking brilliant and makes everyone seethe.

It's okay. Not great. The speech is ridiculous. John Galt is Judge Holden btw.

>>19756728
Based

>>19761415

> John Galt is Judge Holden

Finally, it all makes sense

Dagny Taggart is Ayn Rand's self-insert in which she can fulfil her fantasy of being desired for her "I'm not like other girls" characterisation to make up for being undesired and ignored by high-status males in her real life. This is evidenced by her relationship with Branden and her reaction to his relationship with another woman (despite herself first being in an affair).

Like book

>>19760564
>Some faggot who spergs out for 80 pages (∼10% of the book) near the end and almost turned it into a DNF for me.
Accurate.

>>19761392
This pic is fucking retarded. Rearden is being treated like shit permanently by his family throughout 3/4ths of the book. He tolerates them even though they obviously dont deserve it at all. He keeps blaming himself for their treatment of him, he constantly makes up excuses in his head in order to justify to support them. If I was rearden I would have taken a shovel to their heads a long time ago. Eventually he stops going home but he still pays their bills for a long time after that.

All the other points on the pic are equally dishonest and retarded.

>>19756728
So I read this and enjoyed it. I'm intrigued by objectivism. Where do I go from here?

>>19761531
Haha yes, talking shit about rands personal life, classic strategy when you have nothing of substance to attack someones ideas with, you assassinate their character instead. So very telling ya nig
>umm umm but she was ugly and her marriage went down the toilet hehe, see ayn rand sucks haha
Thats all her critics can come up with. Fucking cringe

Being invested in others misfortune like that says so much about your own sad situation. No one has to love rand, if you dont like her books you could just be indifferent to her or simply dont like her for she is not your cup of tea and move on but your passionate hate for her exposes your ideological possession.

>>19763556
It has been said that we the living should be read next. Then theres a book on her philosophy as well but I dont know what its called

>>19759028
who are you quoting?

>>19760845
>I sure hope there isn't a massively underpaid workforce that we aren't hearing about here
>underpaid
They're not underpaid, amazon workers get what they deserve

>>19761369
>highlighting
>Ayn Rand
>"never learned so much about myself..."
>"...and the world"
>book cannot be faulted
>"collectivists"
She's a retard bro and her foundation is a self-help cult akin to Scientology. Have fun thinking "existence exists" and "A is A" is a deep philosophical insight.

>>19756728
It's pretty good, and various themes feel more relevant than ever: bureaucracy and society as a whole as parasitic on the labor of industrious/creative individuals; the need for self-interest in a world where compassion is weaponized against us; the moral hazard of excessive regulation, etc. but it's a lot longer than it needs to be, and some of the apologia for unbridled capitalism is pretty cringe, as if economic value in the free market comprised all of human values. The plot is decent if dragged down by heavy-handed social commentary at times, but the novel's greatest weakness imo is the characters, mostly caricatures of various points of view, heroes impossibly virtuous, villains predictably repulsive, and everybody will go on for pages at the drop of a hat about economic/political issues, plus from the way the relationships are written you can just tell Rand was some kind of sex pervert. I have no inclination to reread it, but I'm glad I engaged w/ it when I was younger.

>>19763599
>Ideological possession
Rand literally started a cult you projecting retard.

The STORY itself is good if not a little long-winded and preachy. The part where the machine they’re torturing John Galt with breaks down and he sits up and tells them how to fix it is pure fucking kino for lack of a better word. The real issue is Rand being a hypocrite herself and the story beating you over and over with “don’t be a hero-worshipper” while also being a story about a group of men who may as well be the super friends or x-men they’re so larger than life. Never forget Ayn Rand was a staunch bitter atheist her whole life and then passed in her deathbed renouncing everything she said in life begging for God’s love and mercy.

>>19760980
its dangerous for powerful people if normal faggots started thinking about themselves.
just look at every single war

>>19760949
>>19760953
>slava malamud
>mud in name
tragic

>>19763734
based

>>19756728
I haven't read it but everything I've heard about makes it sound drudgingly terrible.
The title is 10/10 though, and more people need to jack Rand off about that rather than deconstruct how terribly shortsighted her ideologies are.

>>19763870
Ok retard.

>>19761369
You remind me of the faggot who ruined the copy of Atlas Shrugged I bought second hand.

>>19761369

>>19759692
I actually really liked The Fountainhead but also found Atlas Shrugged really boring. None of the characters really grabbed me and the 1000 page length made me really question whether it was worth continuing.

>>19766406
I like how he misspells masturbating

>>19766376
You're the one buying into a 70-year-old self-help cult. Come back to /lit when you realize Rand's conception of the free market is just a utopian sleight of hand and you stop using idiotic Cold War terms like "collectivist."

>>19766406
>ruined
Fuck, I'd love to own a copy of Atlas Shrugged heavily annotated by a retarded pseud.

>>19756728
>Have you read it?
I have.

>What did you get out of it?
A good thriller and mystery of perhaps one of the greatest books ever written on a subject that perhaps might never be touched on again: praising businessmen as protagonists and being good for society. Her characters are very well-written, even if people think that they are too black and white, which is wrong, but understandable. There are grey areas, which are the characters who abide keep helping people who want to destroy them When you contrast Dagny and her brother, and Readen and Dr Shadler, you see the grey area and point of the novel. Francisco d'Anconia is one of the best characters in fiction by being so full of life yet in constant pain of the charade he's pulling off to the world.

The real criticism of Atlas Shrugged is that Ayn Rand rightfully identified the problem of the world but did not have a full solution. The problem are people acting altruistically and nihilistically by taking advantage of their betters through regulations and moral submission, and the answer is to just say no and create your own society. But what kind of society? Ayn Rand obviously argues in her non-fiction to create a minarchist society, which is what happens in Atlas Shrugged, but it eventually gets destroyed by taxes. People think that Galt Gulch is that society, but Ayn Rand puts emphasis that it is merely a collection of individuals coming together, not a state. It's more a union of egoists, as Striner would have described it. So it begs the question, what sort of society is optimal? And there Ayn Rand falls short. I hold that she didn't have the answer because the technology didn't present itself for capitalism to flourish, namely, a decentralized crypto-anarchist society that hides amongst the state until the world naturally transitions to an anarcho-capitalistic world where there are no states, only capitalism. Her position of minarchism is merely the closest answer within her age, and her novels reflect that.

So through Atlas Shrugged, what I got out of it is that all political systems are wrong and that you have to create your own, needing to transcend what Ayn Rand proposed.

>Who is John Galt?
>"Miss Taggart," he called after her, "who is John Galt?"

>She turned, hanging onto a metal bar with one hand, suspended for an instant above the heads of the crowd.

>"We are!" she answered.
Pretty self-explanatory. John Galt is anyone and everyone who chooses to live, act creatively and productively without living for anyone else or wishing others to live for them.

>>19757744
There's some obvious romanticism but think of how much people shit on businessmen in general. It's quite common for people to say that the things Senator Warren has said about Amazon or other businesses to be similar to what the villains in Atas Shrugged have said against businesses being greed. Inflation is high! Damn these stores jacking up the food price, that's just immoral!
It's very obvious.

>>19763599
>Thats all her critics can come up with. Fucking cringe
That and the whole huurrrr she took government aid which apparently never happened, as far as I looked into it.

>>19763556
If you're already read Atlas Shrugged, the general path is to read We The Living and The Fountainhead, then read her non-fiction, then you read The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Peikoff, go on ARI Campus and watch their lectures to integrate all the branches of her philosophy ( https://www.atlassociety.org/post/philosophy-on-one-foot ) and read secondary material such as Peikoff's such as The Logical Leap and the Virtuous Egoist by Tara Smith. But then you realize that there are some inconsistencies in her philosophy (for example her views intellectual property and meta-ethics are objectively wrong) and you read about the Peikoff-Kelley split and read The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand by David Kelley which makes you realize that merely parroting everything Ayn Rand said is dogmatism and goes against what she argued was her philosophy because you have to think for yourself on everything. From that, you start reading up on Neo-Objectivists and independently have to re-examine all branches of philosophy and spend time integrating everything into a cohesive ideology that you call your own but also adheres to the branches of philosophy that Ayn Rand outlined (Metaphysics: Existences exists, A is A; Epistemology: Reason; Morality: Rational egoism; Politics: Capitalism (note that her system also falls in line with anarcho-capitalism, despite her criticism of anarchists)). When you reach this point you have become not only the best philosopher of the world but the 0.0001% of objectivists by having the answers to everything and surpassed Ayn Rand herself.

>>19763926
>heroes impossibly virtuous, villains predictably repulsive,
I wonder if people's conclusion of this is due to how people culturally perceived her or if it's due to people's poor reading abilities or the degree by which the flaws of the heroes aren't self-evident beyond their thematic links to helping evil. A lot of people come to the conclusion that the characters in her fiction are very black and white, and that's objectively wrong the moment you think about it for a second.

In The Fountainhead, you have Howard Roark who is obviously perfect but suffers the entire way towards his success and he is contrasted by grey characters who sell their integrity for power and the approval of others. Keating is a nice kid who fucks people over and climbs the social ladder much faster than Roarkby fucking people over but then loses it all when Toohey stops promoting him; there's even a point that he could have become a great painter but didn't because his mother wanted him to make more money as an architect because it was a more respectable career. Gail Wynand is similar to Roark but sells his newspaper to the lowest common denominator and then loses his power by fighting against public perception rather than not giving a shit about what people think. Dominque is a blackpill person who doesn't believe anyone with integrity can succeed so she just shits on dumb people who are too stupid to realize her satire and then copes by trying to destroy Roark because she doesn't believe he can succeed until he does.
Other than Toohey and Roark who are clear poles of black and white, all the characters are grey.

If you look at Atlas Shrugged, it's the same but more refined by only focusing on two characters: Dagny and Readen. Dagny is basically an objectivist but she believes she can just overwork herself to death in the hopes that it motivates idiots like her brother to choose to live and work, but they don't want to so she keeps sacrificing herself for them even though she shouldn't. Readen is basically an extension of Roark who has integrity in his business but nowhere else. He keeps sacrificing himself for others because it's what's expected of him. There's an obvious contrast between him and Dr Stadler as here's also a hero but sided with the government rather than live independently. The thematic link is obvious as Readen metal is used to build his doomsday machine. Working with those who want to destroy you is what makes you grey. Dagny, Readen and Dr Stadler are heroes but grey. The villains are obviously evil and black but they're too far gone.

To think that there is only black and white is a misreading of her work and how her characters are thematically linked. When you lay it out, they're very well-written characters who don't fit the strawman of being black and white without nuance.

>>19756728
I've read thousands of books and this is one of just a few which I decided not to finish. Got about a third of the way through and just couldn't stand the writing, the characters, anything. Ayn Rand must be one of the worst authors of all time.

>>19756728
Read it twice and had a blast both times. I love the epic, heroic, larger-than-life characters. People who criticize Rand for her epic protagonists are mongoloids. They're a feature, not a bug.
Her style is also astoundingly good. Some images are strikingly beautiful. Impressive, for somebody who's not even a native speaker.

>>19760949
>>19760953
How dares this literal shitskin talk about white men?

objectivism is morality based on the 'me,' where the only good is the good for me. which is basically evil. so, objectivism states that the eviler a thing is, the gooder it is. it's that simple. if you see a child starving and dying on the street, you step on him. if you see your mom about to be raped by a pack of ______s, join them. ayn rand was a russian jew, which pretty much means she's a sociopath through and through. she's sell her entire race for a cornchip. and why wouldn't she? she's a woman whose only desire is to get fucked by the biggest baddest slab of meat that exist in proximity. it's a natural extension of her role as a woman, it's just that she's rationalized it. of course, she can't be entirely honest with herself and say why her morality is the way it is. she beats around the bush, she lies to herself. she's got the coomer fembrain going on, but she's unnaturally intelligent (very unlike a woman) so she creates a philosophy of winner takes all, including her. that's all it comes down to. one ugly woman's attempt to coom.

>>19761369
>>19761012
Dude you're right but please don't highlight books.

>>19766838
all of this was serious btw

>>19766641
I wasn’t the guy you were talking to retard. Nothing is perfect retard. Try to have some nuance retard, try to read inbetween the lines.

>line
You are retarded
>line

>>19761392
What an absolute chad Rand was. Nobody makes leftoid """intellectuals""" seethe as much as her.

>>19761531
>Dagny Taggart is Ayn Rand's self-insert in which she can fulfil her fantasy of being desired for her "I'm not like other girls" characterisation to make up for being undesired and ignored by high-status males in her real life.
Yes, that was the only annoying part of the book. The only stain of mediocrity on an otherwise masterful epic.
I guess women just can't help themselves, their hypergametic instincts cannot be denied.

>>19763870
>recognizing that not everything is "muh subjective" and some things are objectively more efficient/better/more beautiful than other things.
>self-help cult akin to Scientology
What a retarded take. You didn't even read the book, did you? You're just regurgitating lefty talking points you've read on Reddit.

>>19764004
>passed in her deathbed renouncing everything she said in life begging for God’s love and mercy.
Sounds like the kind of complete bullshit leftists made up to assassinate her character. Source?

>>19766819
What a fucking faggot you must be.
Also, only mongoloid shitwits brag about the number of books they've read. The quality is what matters.
Faggot.

>>19766641
>self-help cult
You leftists are truly desperate for ANY retort against Rand's ideas, aren't you?

>>19766843
>Haha retard, that wasn't me retard....retard! --Retard--[I did a clever!]
Holy seethe. Calm down faggot.
>>19766854
"recognizing that not everything is "muh subjective" and some things are objectively more efficient/better/more beautiful than other things."
>thinking "existence exists" is a hot take
>assuming Randianism has a monopoly on objectivity
>not realizing that retreating into nebulous tautologies is how cults work
You're pathetic.

>>19766903
>Everyone who doesn't like Ayn Rand is a leftwinger!
Keep sperging.

>>19766905
>nebulous tautologies
What the fuck is nebulous about objectivism, you little shit for brains? Are you seriously admitting that you couldn't understand it and that's why you shit on it?? Holy shit.

>>19763547
Rearden was fucking autistic and completely distant from his family. Maybe if he'd given a shit to begin with he could've stopped them from becoming lefty zombies, but he never did, so he got what he deserved. Act as the head of your family for fuck's sakes.

>>19766909
No, people who seethe at her ideas to the point of feeling the need to MAKE SHIT UP to reject them, those are lefties.
Rent free, faggot.

>>19766905
>thinking "existence exists" is a hot take
Just because something is evident doesn't make it false or worthless, little shit for brains. God your kind is so fucking stupid and so arrogant at the same time, you're exhausting.

>>19766912
>Maybe if he'd given a shit to begin with he could've stopped them from becoming lefty zombies
Another retarded take. You can't turn a lefty into a worthwhile human. The raw material is shit, and it's always going to be shit.
>"I-if I'm a useless talentless parasite it's the talented people's f-fault!"
Typical lefty.

>>19766910
I'm not seething at her ideas but you're obviously seething at the idea of seething at her ideas. Cope.
>>19766914
>you're exhausting
Haha, simmer down samefag.

>>19766912
He's sperging out hard.

>>19766905
Lmao ok retard.

>>19766914
You’re arguing with a retard…

>>19766918
>You can't turn a lefty into a worthwhile human. The raw material is shit, and it's always going to be shit.
Astute. Nice.

>>19766974
>>19766985
>>19766990
>doesn't believe in "collective"
>samefags his own posts
This is getting embaressing.

>>19767029
Yeah there’s no way more than one person thinks you’re a moron.
>oh my gawd!
>so embarrassing OMG (>on an anonymous internet forum)
>No u!
You sound like the exact typical faggot, I’d expected you would be. Mind of a teenage girl.

Most of all, you’re trying to convince yourself that you’re not a fucking retard, but you are, very obviously.

>>19767302
>dead thread
>three posts in a row within 1.5-2min
>all posters disappear at the same time
You're pathetic. Do you think someone as dumb as you does a service for Randtards by fronting their ideology? Did reading Ayn Rand give you a semblance of what it is to have self-esteem? Try dignity next time instead. Fucking pathetic.

Families completely BTFO Ayn Rand's worldview. Which explains why her characters are always childless. Rand herself would have never made it to America without her family's selflessness.

>>19766813
Dr. Stadler is definitely a villain in the book, even if he becomes one just later on, but he's portrayed as a tragic one. Probably the only tragic villain in Atlas, as all others are snivelling weaklings.

Contrast with Ellsworth Toohey, who was a very compelling character in The Fountainhead, or even We the Living, where the communist Andrei was almost a hero were it not for his zealotry. There is a descent in Rand's novels in how she portrays her philosophical opponents. I'd be interested to know if she'd have kept it up had she managed to finish To Lorne Dieterling.

>>19766400
>>19766406
>>19766841
Well, I read on ereader so.. You can unrustle them there jimmies of ye.
And as this >>19766649 guy said, I too would lovr to have a version with someone elses thoughts sprinkled all over. Y are u gae?
>>19766641
If you cannot grasp the ever increasing war between collectivists and individualism, there is no helping you. Maybe you do know it but under different terms.
>>19766912
Chicken-egg situation. And even if he was autistic as heck, heck I tell ya, that doesnt justify their treatment of him. They bullied him every second he was home, regardless of who or what started it at some point the ganging up bullies are just bitter assholes. That you cant model this is in yoir brain is very telling, but the other replies have already btfo you, so I'll stop here.

>>19766912
Rearden had to be dehumanized constantly in order to exploit him like they did. Same way white people are constantly being dehumanized in all forms of media in order to pave the way for rapperrayshuns. Or strong men, the true slaves of society, being constantly dehumanized in all forms of media to enslave them...

"To find out who is enslaved, find out which group you are not allowed to advocate for“
And before you sperg out on this post, like you have been programmed to do, try organizing a mens rights event anywhere in the western world and see the death- and bomb threats pour in.

>>19767477 Doesn't know the annotations are from a midwit and he's unironically bought into the "collectivists" rhetoric without realizing it's a dated product of the Cold War. At least he isn't sperging out and samefagging his shit like the other guy...

Everyone behold the absolute state of Randtards.

>>19767563
>no ams collectivism
Listen here nigger, every saturday people in my city protest against government covid regulations, they are there to protest for the right of the INDIVIDUAL to decide if he gets the vax or not. Thia group is 10 000 people strong. Do you understand this so far??? Also every saturday there is a counter demonstrastion with about 2000 people including fucking antifa that scream at the top of their lungs for solidarity and that everybody must be forced by the government to take a vax that does not prevent transmition. Their argument is that the individual must give up their right to chose in order to save the collective body of society. Thats just a practical example. You are so much of a brainlet that you think there is no such thing as collectivism these days? Ever heard of blm or antifa or a government forcing diagusting rules on ita citizens in the name of "society". Are really this retarded or are just straight up evil, knowing exactly what you are saying here.
Every time an individual is being forced to do something it does not want to do its a collectivist power pushing down on them. Ever heard of enforcement of masks and other covid rules. The collectictivists fist is everywhere at the moment. Maybe it is its omnipresence that makes you not see it. But to sit here and say there ams no collectivist forces in the world today is absolute fucking insanity. I pity you. ..you cant even talk about this on social media without their totalitarian covid banner popping up the moment certain words are in the post.

But to really drive this point home. Fo you have a socialist party in your country? I have two, so there. Bam. Collectivism alive and well and ever creeping onwards towards a bigger state taking away decisions from the individual. You dumb fucking monkey-brained niggerjew.

>>19767736
>Listen here! I'm going to unironically explain that people (i.e. social animals) form groups! I am also going to unironically explain that there's a such thing as individuals and the fact that WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY means there can be a conflict between the aforementioned groups and individuals! I am now going to state, again unironically, that BLM and ANTIFA are collectivist based on the simplistic definition I've set out above--as if I've proved something about using the term "collectivist" in 2021! Governments can be coercive [note: is has gone over my head that governments exist to, well govern and pass laws, and I am continuing to speak in tautologies]! Now I am going to state that you are evil, because Ayn Rand has taught me to vilify anyone who questions her! You must not understand that things I've said above [note: I haven't actually said anything except for truisms]! If you are arguing against Rand you are a collectivist and you are arguing against freedom!

To really drive the point home I'll point out you said a bunch of shit that's true and has nothing to do with your silly faggot idea of "collectivism" and Randianism works by oversimplifying the world so that retards like you think they deeply understand something.

>>19766732
>Her characters are very well-written, even if people think that they are too black and white, which is wrong, but understandable.
lmao

>>19767853
>B-b-but...I'm John Galt? I'm not a loser...I just live in a sick twisted world that doesn't reward how amazing I am. R-r-right?
These fucking people. Kek.

>>19766901
You are a complete moron, I clearly stated the number of books for a reference point to how I NEVER abandon books without finishing them except in RARE cases, such as this catastrophe of an author. You should improve your reading comprehension, FAGGOT.

>>19756728
I read the first third, interesting read. It has the subtelty of war time propaganda cartoons but I respect the choice of showing your idealogy in such an upfront and unapologetic way.

>>19763734
>They're not underpaid, amazon workers get what they deserve
Kind of harsh to say they deserve getting locked in their wagie cagies while a tornado caves the roof in.

>>19763599
you cannot deny that good chunk of the book is about Danny fawning over Rearden. Those part sounded like what I would image /R9K/ type would write as a parody of women.

>>19766813
literally every character in atlas shrugged is either a corrupt weakling or a genius individualist

>>19769015
What were the options, sorry?
>stay inside
>leave
I probably would have stayed inside. You know, what a normal person would do during a tornado.

I read until the final monologue then threw it away. This was when I was in high school, mind you.

>>19769111
He's a warehouse runner in a van retard--he's questioning the idea that he should just stay parked out in the open with no building available to take shelter in. Reading Rand didn't prepare you for the complexity of his prose? Couldn't follow the narrative?

>>19769151
You got me. I'm retarded and didn't read your picrel thoroughly.

>>19769111
choosing to stay is different from your employer telling you that you MUST stay.

>>19768992
Ok, thanks.

>>19756728
Couldnt make it past a few pages her writing is genuinely not good. Why eould i read her when i could just read someone like steinbeck or joyce instead. Ya know, someone literarily talented

>>19767853
See >>19766813 and explain how I'm wrong.

>>19767456
I see him more as a tragic hero whose flaw lead him towards helping evil rather than be evil himself. His first characterization is similar to that of Rand's heroes: 6' tall, handsome, genius. You're meant to assume that hes part of the good guys. When Dagny talks to him, even he's not bitching that he has no choice, he talks like a hero would. His flaw is that he believes no one other than geniuses can be be reasoned or use rationality. So he just says 'fuck it, everyone is an idiot, give me money so I can work on my experiments' but you can't ignore the social context in which you're living. He's a dark mirror if Roark just kept working on his art with integrity. Part of The Fountainhead is that it's strictly about morality without any links to politics so you mightvreqdh the conclusion that you can ignore politics, but Atlas Shrugged shows you can. Throughout the novel, you can see that Stadler accepts every step to get funding until by the end, evil literally controls what he says, which is tragic because he needed to say no from the start. That's the lesson Readen learns. Readen is an extension of Roark by having integrity and having accepted a slave morality culture and that he shouldn't say no to people.
Stadler represents what happens if you continually compromise and ignore that your philosophy must be understood by every the average man (why Ayn Rand always strived to write in simple language, which is a key to her popularity that everyone resents) and to understand the political context thst one lives in snd say no and live for yourself rather than others. I just see Stadler as someone who couldn't 9verc9me his flaw like Dagny and Readen and paid the price.

Why do people feel the need to defend themselves on anonymous forum?

Is it just that some people cannot see past their self-projected identity?

>>19769938
Why do people tie themselves to their beliefs?

>>19767456
I see him more as a tragic hero whose character flaw led him towards helping evil rather than being evil himself. His first characterization is similar to that of Rand's heroes: 6' tall, handsome, genius. You're meant to assume that he's part of the good guys but there's also something off about him. His flaw is that he believes no one other than geniuses can be reasoned with or use rationality. So he just says 'fuck it, everyone is an idiot, give me government money so that I can work on my experiments without thinking about other people,' but you can't ignore the social context in which you're living. When Dagny talks to him, he constantly blanks out that he has no choice like a villain, but when he talks about Galt's machine, he talks like a hero would which seemingly confuses Dagny. He's a dark mirror if Roark just kept working on his art with integrity. Part of The Fountainhead is that it's strictly about morality without any links to politics so you might reach the conclusion that you can ignore politics, but Atlas Shrugged emphasizes that you can't blank out anything, especially not the political context. Throughout the novel, you can see that Stadler accepts every step to get funding until by the end, evil literally controls what he says, which is tragic because he needed to say no from the start but he couldn't because he already accepted an incorrect premise. He failed to realize that if you normal people can't be reasoned, your only choice is to force people through force. It's pretty genius because it's the opposite lesson of the villains that you can't force people to think. His life is also in contrast to Galt who worked at a company that became communists where no one chose to work, and unlike Stalder, he just said no and left, which destroyed everything because everyone depended on those who think and work rather than do nothing.
Readen learns a similar lesson. Readen is an extension of Roark by having integrity in his creative passion and having accepted a slave morality culture and that he shouldn't say no to people. Stadler represents what happens if you continually compromise and ignore that your philosophy must be understood by every the average man (why Ayn Rand always strived to write in simple language, which is a key to her popularity that everyone resents) and to understand the political context that one lives in snd say no and live for yourself rather than others. I see Dr. Stadler the same way as I do with Gail Wynand: an objectivist type person whose flaws broke him, but different from The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand provides heroes like Dagny and Readen who do overcome their flaws.

>>19769962
Beliefs, ideas and memes are an extension of self. People tie themselves to their beliefs because without them, you would not have a method to conceptualize the world to survive and live. The mistake is not having an active mind and updating one's belief to reflect reality rather than defending them when challenged because it is easier to do and repeat that others are just wrong and that they should just shut up, or to shame others into agreeing. You might have well have asked why do people think and hold any ideas about reality. It's an incomplete question about a more fundamental aspect of human nature.

>>19770012
>t, faggot sperging out about their personal belief system on an anonymous web forum

>>19769111
Maybe not be forced to go into work at all with a clear and present danger of the building being completely destroyed? This it literally 3rd world shithole level stuff and bootlickers like you defend it. Sad.

>>19760845
have you considered contributing to society instead of getting angry at your boss?

>>19770143
Writing, no matter the place, helps refine the mind. It isn't about the audience but the self-actualization by putting thought into concrete words. If you are spreging out just for its own sake, you merely display your lack of integrity, as many do in threads about Ayn Rand.

>>19770849
wish more people understood this

>>19756728
Got to the end of Part 1 and had to drop it.

The Fountainhead is a FAR superior novel, because it actually felt edited and not nearly as bloated and dragged out.

As far as her non-fiction goes, The Virtue of Selfishness is one of my all time favorites.

>>19756728
i read it back in high school, i liked the girl who married the one guy and then got convinced that he was a jerk so instead of divorcing him or just leaving she kills herself for some reason, i thought it was really silly- i remember my eyes glazing over during the speech though

>>19766400
>>19766406
these are actually good notes

>>19771050
No, they aren’t. It’s also only that one page and the back covers but there’s little faggot symbols speckled all over the shit now. It was probably some fedora lord.

>>19771293
kinda sounds like you're jealous

>>19770849
>sperging out
Stop projecting.

>>19756728
>Businessmen go on strike
Through strange sets of circumstances, I rub elbows with these people a lot. I've been in the living room where Chipotle was sold to McDonald's. I've spoken with Leo Melamed and Terry Duffy. I've partied with the heads of some of the largest health insurance companies. So let me tell you something:
90% of them are absolute shitheads who were either born into money or got extremely lucky.
They can be charismatic, sure, and nice when they need to be, but I have yet to meet one who actually produced something. At best, they have 'ideas' then hire people to work out the details and build it. If one of them had 'invented' the sky scraper, I guarantee it would had been a scribble on a napkin that read 'a building, but really tall'. The only exception I've known was Brendan Eich, and even he came off a little dickish. I'm not trying to sound bitter, but the rich businessmen by and large aren't inventors (there are rare exceptions; see Brendan Eich), they're either lawyers or have a great network. It's hard to not fail upwards when you have friends/family who can pull you into high-six or seven figure jobs when you need it. The road to success is easier when you know how to out-litigate your opponents.

What I'm getting at is Ayn Rand doesn't know what she's talking about. She was born into wealth, got to know the rich and famous, and confused good circumstance with merit and hard work. Her believing that the rich and powerful businessmen make the world go round is little more than a fantasy to explain why they got to be rich and powerful. Atlas Shrugged is largely a childish and unfounded explanation to 'why do good things happen to bad people?', because 'dumb luck' and 'nepotism' doesn't fly well with the people who identify with Rand's work.

>Leo Melamed wrote a sci-fi book
>It's really bad

>>19771494
I'm literally quoting the guy, so it isn't a projection.

>>19771545
>Ayn Rand doesn't know what she's talking about. She was born into wealth, got to know the rich and famous, and confused good circumstance with merit and hard work.
Heh, gave me a good chuckle.

>>19766415
Agreed. Fountainhead is actually good and people who are upset about "muh politics" have never read it. Atlas shrugged needs some serious editing, to get to the point.

>>19763926
She was not a sex pervert. It's normal sexuality.

>>19766862

That guy in charge of her estate wrote about it

>>19772137
It's actually an exceptionally wholesome sexuality. It's the only part of the book that I'll keep with me without regret. Galt's oath is a cute idea, but the sappiness of the general "philosophy" exposed in the book just makes it impossible to take seriously. However, explaining Dagny's sexual desires with men of superlative achievement by the indivisibility of the mind and body is a strong idea. Wanting to fuck people as whole beings, not just parts of a being, is the only way one should want to fuck people. Wanting someone just for their body is either retarded or ignorant, the body is the reflection of the mind. Losers who whack it to retarded bimbos have no self-esteem and no sense of the worth of things like a great ass that took years of working out to achieve. I want to slay tight young puss because I'm attracted to what youth represents, what it entails, not just because teenage poontang is the best thing to bust a nut in. I have no sexual desire for women I wouldn't be able to respect in intellectual conversation, or for women who do not have a line of work that I approve of ethically, or for women who do not possess the same amount of self-worth when it comes to physical fitness.

>>19770849
Based.

Rand threads have both the dumbest and smartest people.

bump

>>19756728
I enjoyed it but like many my main criticism is that it didn't need to be as long as it was. The speech by John Galt at the end is also far too long.

>>19761392
The last two paragraphs of that did not happen in the book.

>>19775443
str8 from the e-reader edition

1a.
>The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence, that individual effort is futile, that an individual conscience is a useless luxury, that there is no individual mind or character or achievement, that everything is achieved collectively, and that it's masses that count, not men.
>The man in Roomette 7, Car No. 2, was a journalist who wrote that it is proper and moral to use compulsion "for a good cause," who believed that he had the right to unleash physical force upon others—to wreck lives, throttle ambitions, strangle desires, violate convictions, to imprison, to despoil, to murder—for the sake of whatever he chose to consider as his own idea of "a good cause," which did not even have to be an idea, since he had never defined what he regarded as the good, but had merely stated that he went by "a feeling"—a feeling unrestrained by any knowledge, since he considered emotion superior to knowledge and relied solely on his own "good intentions" and on the power of a gun.
>The woman in Roomette 10, Car No. 3, was an elderly schoolteacher who had spent her life turning class after class of helpless children into miserable cowards, by teaching them that the will of the majority is the only standard of good and evil, that a majority may do anything it pleases, that they must not assert their own personalities, but must do as others were doing.
(it goes all the way to car 16)

1b.
>"Ladies and gentlemen," said the panic-pregnant voice of a radio announcer, breaking off the chords of the symphony, "we interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special news bulletin. The greatest disaster in railroad history occurred in the early hours of the morning on the main line of Taggart Transcontinental, at Winston, Colorado, demolishing the famous Taggart Tunnel!"
>Her scream sounded like the screams that had rung out in the one last moment in the darkness of the tunnel. Its sound remained with him through the rest of the broadcast—as they both ran to the radio in the cabin and stood, in equal terror, her eyes staring at the radio, his eyes watching her face.

2.
>The attendants of a hospital in Illinois showed no astonishment when a man was brought in, beaten up by his elder brother, who had supported him all his life: the younger man had screamed at the elder, accusing him of selfishness and greed—just as the attendants of a hospital in New York City showed no astonishment at the case of a woman who came in with a fractured jaw: she had been slapped in the face by a total stranger, who had heard her ordering her five-year old son to give his best toy to the children of neighbors.

>>19775665
You put sick animals out of their misery

>>19771545
More so industrialists, rather than business men. That’s a strawman.

>>19761012
The speech destroys much of European philosophy of the last 200 years.

>>19760949
(((Russian)))

>>19766772
Her meta-ethics are correct, as far as I know - as are her views on intellectual property.

>>19771896
No, it's a projection; the other guy didn't sperg. There's also a difference between writing as an exercise and intellectual masturbation. Rand encourages the latter by teaching people how to talk past the person with whom they're speaking. She otherizes in an overly simplistic way while asserting a monopoly on rationality and objectivity. It's good that you've realized that aspect of her work in the sense that you can define the mechanics behind maintaining a belief system; the next step is realizing Rand was actually an ideologue and internalizing her intellectual behavior renders her followers the same.

A lot of people can't get past the fact Rand was shitting on their beliefs and are automatically filtered. Some people buy into her wholeheartedly and her belief system merely becomes "their" ideology--their reflex is to treat everyone as if they're in the filtered group (and have/use convenient presets, as defined by Rand, to do so). A smaller group becomes critical of ideology but realizes that Rand actually just refined the characteristics of such in her own work and the real redpill is rejecting what she did while separating it from what she stood for (whether you/"you" agree with it or not).

>>19769055
Eddie Willers is neither - go read the book- it's great!

>>19776101
And Eddie is literally left on the wasteland to die. Though one could say that, from the point of view of Atlas's morality tale, Eddie failed the test of simply letting the world go to the final consequences of its philosophy and was paying the price.

>>19771545
Dude - Rand didn't critique socialism in Atlas Shrugged. She condemned what we have now - cronyism. Socialism is over. It failed in England in 1979 during the Winter of Discontent when everyone said - "Shit, if even the English can't make it work it must be crap!"

>>19776164
No one knows what happened to Eddie. Rand left that up to the reader to decide - a point which Rand emphasised in all her novels and made it feature of her genius play - The Night of January 16th.

>>19776080
Her meta-ethics is correct but flawed and causes confusion. The formulation of life being the standard of value is incorrect because the conceptualization of 'life' is too broad in including non-sapient life and sapient life (humans). She, unfortunately, utilized a rationalism by providing a definition of life and working from there. In A Companion to Ayn Rand, there is an annotation somewhere about her definition of life and it says that she told Harry Biswagner that her definition wasn't meant to be an official one. It leads objectivists to argue on behalf of all life that it exists to survive, that the purpose of morality is to merely extend one's survival. She doesn't argue this as her morality promotes adhering and coexisting with reality through productivity but her meta-ethics leads there. Life doesn't exist to survive but to spread its genes, and a good example is a male praying mantis being eaten alive. Having sex to die isn't furthering its survival. Talking about praying mantises is dumb but this is the failure of using 'life' as the standard of value. It also leads to another mistake which is the immortal robot. She argues that you need a dichotomy of life and death for values to exist, and she gives an analogy of an indestructible robot. She then outright claims that such a robot could value just because. This is objectively wrong because you *can* imagine it. So what's the error? It's that sapience is the standard of value for sapient life and that life is what creates values. An immortal robot can find value by acting like Roark, making architecture or any other creative endeavour.

The praying matis problem and the immortal robot are fundamental flaws of her meta-ethics and changing sapience as the standard of value and that sapience (a word she mysteriously never uses in her entire body of work, I checked) is what allows rationality. Ayn Rand also failed to properly formulate that there are states of survival and states of living when one's cannot conceptualize because they have no liberty. She argues this at points with morality ending at the barrel of a gun and Nathaniel Branden has an essay on Emergencies but it's never formulated and it's a crucial point because it details why liberty is important in relation to choice and happiness. She tried to argue that you only survive by being rational and that's the mistake. You *can* survive but only in the short term. By being rational, you don't survive but live. It's why people think she argues a survival morality when she didn't intend to but it can be read that way. She also makes a rationalism by saying the brain is our tool for survival when we can also throw tools and run for long distances which doesn't require rationality. The point is that not thinking helps one's survival short term while thinking adheres to reality to live in the long term.

In all respect, while her morality was correct, her meta-ethics was well-intentioned but badly formulated.

>>19776164
Eddie is a middling person who knows his place. There's not much to it because Rand didn't describe real people, just caricatures/roles. Eddie's role was being used as a tool and being happy about it (i.e. how Rand envisioned a proper everyman).

>>19756728
>Have you read it?
Yes
>What did you get out of it?
Women are retarded
>Who is John Galt?
Gary Stu whose main purpose is to bang the main character and give an 80 page expose of the novel's already extremely obvious message because the author thinks her audience is as retarded as her

>>19776080
Her views on intellectual property are the place where she made perhaps the biggest blunder as a philosopher. It's also a fault of her meta-ethics. She took the idea from Locke that property is anything that involves one's interaction with reality through conceptualization. If you build a house, it's your because you intrinsically changed and touched it and the idea of the house belongs to you because you thought about it. The house wouldn't have existed if it weren't for you. But that's a mistaken view of ownership from the labour theory of value. You see its echo when Roark says that he created the idea for the housing complex that he blew up and was entitled to its destruction, and that Readen metal belongs to Readen because he owns the rights. The mistake is that just because you create the idea does not mean you have any intrinsic right to ideas and the only way you can 'own' ideas is through the threat or use of force.
Because of Locke, Ayn Rand ended up arguing that all property is intellectual property which is wrong. Not all property requires to be created to be yours. If you find a stick, it is yours only if you have the strength to keep it. The same applies to your house. There is no intrinsicism from interacting with reality that makes it yours. When you build a house, you already own the materials to build it and those are your property. Building a house doesn't intrinsically make the house your property, but its materials came together and you also own that, so long as you have the strength to keep it.

For example, Ayn Rand states that there is one evil: the use of force. But if someone were to copy Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand would actually advocate using force. The reason is because of the theory labor of value. Since value is tied to intrinsic ideas, control over those ideas is tied to one's survival. So it becomes a system where you demand maximization of profits from ownership of ideas through the use of force or you feel that you are being robbed. The result is that if someone copies your work, it is a literal threat to your life when that isn't the case. If you build a house and someone else copies your house nothing is 'stolen' but you feel that you aren't given compensation because you're not maximizing profits through force. By that view, you have a moral obligation to go to that guy's house and extort whatever price you want because you claim ownership of ideas. In truth, you can only claim ownership of physical materials because you have a way to exclude people from it without using force. You can build walls, have signs, pay people to refuse access, but with ideas, you have to extort people. The government is merely an extension of this process.

>>19756728
The fountainhead is better because it's more toned down and just a nice aesthetic and story
>but anon! the main villiain has an edgy monolog at the end!
Idc, just write that out in your mind or chalk it up to personification of ebil and symbology

the thing I liked about both though is it actually has enough content in the story (900 pages for FH) to satisfy my autism once I've comitted to reading the book and getting into the story
most books are not worth my reading since they set up a great aesthetic or story, but then it's over before I even get comfy
like a great TV show that gets canceled after one season

>>19756728
And btw everyone,
before you form your opinions, it may be helpful to remember that Ayn Rand is a Jew
...and for some reason she develops an inhuman and pathologically selfish philosophy...
... almost as if the Jewish cultural consciousness is in an ongoing crisis of identity living in a self enforced diaspora of 'exile' which results in Jews becoming intellectual radicals in every vector except nationalism of a cultural background which they cannot identify with...
just saying
it really makes you think

>>19776505
>>19776080
Furthermore, there's no valid mechanism for intellectual property to be objective. You have some utilitarian fair use or the ability to share your physical intellectual property with your friend but that's at the whim of the state. Kinsella even gives an example of some guy demanding payment for the concept. There's no limitation of what you can make as an intellectual property except on utilitarian grounds. There's also the problem of fucking with patents. Say that there are two Galt inventors working on the same motor without any knowledge of the other. The first Galt finishes the design of the motor's blueprints goes to the patent office while the second Galt inventor finished the blueprints a day later. By law, the second Galt is fucked; all the hours he spent on his invention is waste just because, and he isn't allowed to try to sell the motor he worked hours on because some other guy was first. Ayn Rand's own argument the second Galt being screwed over in her essay about intellectual is basically 'too bad, that's the rules of the game' which is the most handwavy argument she ever made in her life. There's no reason why the second Galt shouldn't try to sell his invention on the market.

There are also problems with copyright in regards to remixes and whether something is a copy or just uses inspiration. The person who created the three-act structure (or his descendants) could sue everyone. It's impossible to establish a line of when something is a complete copy or taking inspiration. Court rulings on copyright are arbitrary. And there are also extensions of copyright. Ayn Rand's argument for the proper length has no standard, merely utilitarian intuition of 'what feels right.' There's no reason why any copyright can't be held until the heat death of the universe other than it intuitively feels wrong. Under the concept of intellectual property, Ayn Rand would be within her rights to sure or kill anyone who shared a copy of her book to a friend rather than pay her to read it. Intellectual property is a concept that intuitively feels right but it isn't. No one has the right to strip others of their freedom to do whatever they want with their property, and if you think you have that right, you need to use force, which, as Ayn Rand argued, is the only form of evil. It's contradictory to argue that you must not use physical force while intellectual property requires physical force to prevent others from copying your work.

I'm mostly summarizing arguments by Stephan Kinsella in his book Against Intellectual Property.

I would also recommend this article by Kinsella on how the theory of value is linked to 'creating value' in relation to property and how it is wrong.
https://mises.org/wire/mossoff-why-should-business-leaders-care-about-intellectual-property-objectivism

That book and article explain in better detail why she's wrong on intellectual property.

>>19776505
>>19776554
>>19776080
The biggest mistake of Ayn Rand is that she argues that all property is intellectual property because her philosophy implicitly upholds the labour theory of value which creates some unfortunate implications in relation to Marx that objectivists aren't ready to address as many have noted that Ayn Rand's view of profit in her fiction isn't that far from advocating the surplus value as the source of profit. Ayn Rand was unfortunately objectively wrong on intellectual property because of her damn faulty meta-ethics.

>>19776528
Why do you think anyone hates the monologue of Toohey at the end? I've literally never seen anyone complain about it. Every single person I've spoken to that read The Fountainhead always says that his speech is one of the evilest, most immoral speeches ever.

>>19776215
That's not entirely true. The company that Galt worked at operated under socialism which was a direct critique of the system. She already made the critique in We The Living that bad actors doing nothing hurt good actors until everyone hates everyone else and no one does anything, and the same happens in Atlas Shrugged. To argue that she didn't critique socialism is incorrect. Though, of course, you are correct that the book heavily criticized cronyism, which is ironic because whenever a marxist defines capitalism beyond just being owning the means of product, they give a definition of cronyism and label it as capitalism.

>>19776581
Idk I was just being preemptive
some people don't like /justevil/ villains
but yeah I think if you don't like the ideological autism in Atlas Shrugged you should just read the Fountainhead

>>19766649
>Fuck, I'd love to own a copy of Atlas Shrugged heavily annotated by a retarded pseud.
So, basically any second-hand copy.

>>19756728
>Have you read it?
>What did you get out of it?
If I wanted to read something wildly deranged, cringe, and poorly structured, I'd go on 4chan.

>>19766406
>masterbating
it's funny that he ascribes corporations a moral nature though, as if they are even barely more sentient than a steam engine or a spreadsheet

>>19777001
My copy is a mint first edition/first printing I got at an antique store for $5 (it was being used to decorate a bookshelf). I was an acquaintance of a Randtard, friend of a friend, who asked me to sell it to him because he "deserved it more." I laughed in his face.

>>19776561
Forgive me, I’m interested in the topic you’re trying to discuss but for the life of me I’m not bothered reading all you’re rambling (it seems to me). So forgive my pig ignorance but could you please proposition your correct definition of ownership, if you believe it exists at all, as concisely as possible?

>>19777006
Arrogant, talentless elitist.

>>19777831
Sorry, those posts were pretty rambly; I have to properly organize my thoughts on intellectual property in the future. Ownership is that which an individual uses through physical force and the signalling of physical force to exclude others from access. Property is that which other individuals recognize through legitimacy, the signalling of physical force or physical force as yours.

Locke argued that by interacting with reality to some capacity, you intrinsically own it and it becomes your property but there is no fairness that something is yours just because you touch it. If you collect materials in a forest and utilize your physical strength to prevent others from taking them from you, you own it, and if everyone recognizes through signalling that you are physically strong, it is seen as property. So if you were to build a house, such signalling would be the fence around your house, the warning sign on the fence that your house and land are private property and any trespassers will be shot on sight, and the state police paid through taxes or paid private police paid through a contract that protects your house, and the contract that signals to people that you have ownership, and if everyone knows and utilizes that ledger and other forms of signalling of physical force, it is seen as a form of legitimacy that you own that property. However, these are mere signals that you in fact have ownership. A thief could evade the police, understand the risk by reading the private property sign jumping the fence and breaking into your house to steal your property. The fact that you worked for it, build it yourself etc has no legitimacy, only signals of physical force and if someone ignores those, physical force itself. If the thief comes into your house, the final claim that you have ownership is secondary tools like a gun, knife etc that increase your physical strength, and your body itself to expel the thief.

To summarize: the objectivity of physical force and the contextual signalling of that force are the essence of ownership, and when recognized by others, become property. This is a theory that is similar to Stirner but he merely argued that only physical force mattered when that is wrong; humans operate on unconscious levels through norms and signalling which also acts as a method to create social order. If you're curious about that last point, I highly recommend the book Elephant in the Brain by Robin Hanson. In my opinion, understanding signalling game is a must for all autistic people and a key factor in the human condition that other philosophers gloss over because it isn't self-evident or observable. It arguably also explain positions that Ayn Rand criticized but lacked an understanding of why people act the way they do. For example, people seek out prestige for signalling recognition and the admiration of others. Why? She can't say. Hanson figured it out by tying the fact that humans are apes and it is a part of our nature.

rand is an unintentional genius, she marketed ethical egoism/epicureanism under a capitalist system.
doing so in a way that most don't have the idea that epicureanism = unhealthy hedonism.
all in a vehicle that could be understood by slightly adhd zoomers.
theres also the obvious connection between her and libertarians. libertarianism is also the first step of any generally conservative youth into a lesser-partisan political grouping.
whilst also pulling in a contrarian audience that practices memetics out of spite since once you deny atlas shrugged, you also somehow deny any shred of individualism.
wonder how many shitposters in this thread would agree about her positive stance on utilizing welfare programs.

really just read the austrian school + epicurus + prince (or 48 laws/how to win friends if you are too adhd)

>>19777909
Upon reflection, I agree that’s a good definition. Thanks for your post, i appreciate it.

>>19776244
>Rand left that up to the reader to decide

There is nothing in the text that tells us that. Nothing in Atlas is left open, Rand is very, very specific about what she means with every word, and considering that in Atlas everyone gets what they deserve, leaving Eddie's fate "up to the reader" would mean for the reader to make up what is it that Eddie deserves. But objectively, Eddie deserves only one thing, whether it is a good or bad fate.

And the last we see Eddie he's trying to make the Taggart train move. He didn't learn Dagny's lesson, that the whole thing was philosophically pointless and that he should just leave it rot. So he rots alongside with it. And, implicitly, deserves it, because of his faulty philosophical premises. So much for being "the good everyman" in Atlas Shrugged.

If he ends up being saved, it's through no moral virtue of his own, as the last line of the novel is John Galt deciding it's time to return to the world. So he would coast off Galt's moral capital and be, in a way, no better than the looters.

>>19777911
Rand absolutely really fucking hated hedonism of all sorts.

>>19776561
Rand's metaethics and epistemology are the two best things to come out of her philosophy and I think there's a lot of stuff that can be salvaged from there. It's all warped because a lot of her thought is warped by her childhood obsession with larger than life heroism and experiences with communism, but her theory of concepts has a lot to be expanded upon and her metaethics are a good take on virtue ethics.

>>19776352
>An immortal robot can find value by acting like Roark, making architecture or any other creative endeavour.

But why WOULD an immortal indestructible robot bother with architecture and value? You could answer, "because beauty". But that just pushes the question further: why would beauty matter for an indestructible immortal robot? And that goes on forever unless you can establish an ultimate value beyond which nothing can be found. If it isn't life, what is it?

Rand's argument for life comes from the fact that humans are sapient. Praying mantises aren't, certainly not to our extent, so they can't be compared. As sapient beings, most of our actions are done because we decide to do them. And actions either further our life, or they don't - or worse, actively damage it. EVERY single action falls into this trichotomy of neutral/damaging/furthering in regards to our continuing existence. And as such, with every conscious action we take an instance on the question: do I wish to further my life, or do I not? Every conscious action exposes a value judgment, and all actions, regardless of whether it's a career choice or what TV show to watch, has the common denominator of being a value judgment on whether or not to further your life. THAT is why Rand establishes life as a standard of value.

I don't think it's perfect, and certainly disagree with many of the actual ethics she derives from this principle, but there's a kernel of truth in there.

>>19778450
>It's all warped because a lot of her thought is warped by her childhood obsession with larger than life heroism and experiences with communism
That's her aesthetics and I don't disagree with you on that. I actually hold that she misread Aristotle on the purpose of art but it worked out for her so it doesn't really matter. She tried to argue that art is an artifice that shows people 'how the world could be' which is wrong. Art is an integration of materials within reality to convey values, with the purpose of telling the audience what they should pay attention to.

Her epistemology is actually genius and revolutionary. She's a conceptualist, similar to Peter Abelard but better because she formulated the crow epistemology that identifies the importance and need for concepts. She denied being called a conceptualist but I think she misunderstood what the term meant or maybe thought Kant called himself a conceptualist and didn't want to be associated with him; her arguments in relation to the importance of context puts her leagues about every other philosopher. Peikoff's detailing of induction in The Logical Leap with Biswanger's How Do We Know, along with David Kelley's The Evidence of the Senses and The Art of Reasoning generally try to complete her epistemology. Arguably the biggest issue in her epistemology is the link between certain, proof and science, which might be impossible to complete because Ayn Rand argued that certainty is contextual which is wrong; certainty is incremental, just like science. But unlike science where you can argue that nothing is certain and can be disproven with new evidence, humans know one thing for certain: they are conscious and experiencing *something*. That Existence exists and our observation of reality is always certain, but nothing else can be certain. When objectivists try to argue on that front, they hold dogmatic views because they echo Ayn Rand's words rather than accept the truth that nothing except our observation of reality and reality itself is certain. Beyond that front, I'm not sure there's anything left

>>19778450
>It's all warped because a lot of her thought is warped by her childhood obsession with larger than life heroism and experiences with communism
That's her aesthetics and I don't disagree with you on that. I actually hold that she misread Aristotle on the purpose of art but it worked out for her so it doesn't really matter. She tried to argue that art is an artifice that shows people 'how the world could be' which is wrong. Art is an integration of materials within reality to convey values, with the purpose of telling the audience what they should pay attention to. She mistook his view that art exists as an idealization of reality of what it should be which is her own preference, but she made an epistemological error by arguing that all stylistic selectivity meant that everything must be idealized, rather than it being the norm with how we interact with reality. For example, she argued that realism wasn't good because it intentionally tried to minimize its stylization to be real because realism artists hate life or something, and that they were fake for trying to reject art for what it was. Interestingly, Zola said something similar about romanticism that through its idealization of reality, it is faking reality. Both are correct because they're two sides of the same coin. Ayn Rand idealized to show what a hero could be to emphasize values so that people could become like her heroes. Zola showed what was rotten about the world and what people had to pay attention in order to change it. Under that view, Ayn Rand's formulation of art is correct but her aesthetic arguments are biased and possible wrong through an epistemological error from that misreading of Aristotle that art exists to show what the world could be rather than create a world for the audience to focus their attention and nothing more.

>>19778450
>>19778721
>her theory of concepts has a lot to be expanded upon
Her epistemology is actually genius and revolutionary. She's a conceptualist, similar to Peter Abelard but better because she formulated the crow epistemology that identifies the importance and need for concepts. She denied being called a conceptualist but I think she misunderstood what the term meant or maybe thought Kant called himself a conceptualist and didn't want to be associated with him; her arguments in relation to the importance of context puts her leagues about every other philosopher. Peikoff's detailing of induction in The Logical Leap with Biswanger's How Do We Know, along with David Kelley's The Evidence of the Senses and The Art of Reasoning generally try to complete her epistemology. By establishing the importance of concepts and tying it to objectivity, she arguably bridged the gap between philosophy and epistemology that was created since Aristotle invented science. There's a lecture by Biswanger who makes the case that Ayn Rand's epistemology is similar to Aristotle's classification of science because that's exactly what it is. Aristotle already formulated the same objectivist epistemology but disregarded it to use it as the basis for classification in the natural sciences. When you tie how science and her epistemology function, it solves a lot of issues. The Intrinsic-Objective-Subjective trichotomy is very useful and too often you see people make the whole 'you can only point to facts and everything else is just *YOUR* subjective solipsism disconnected conclusion of reality that is always wrong' false dichotomy.

Arguably the biggest issue in her epistemology is the link between certain, proof and science, which might be impossible to complete because Ayn Rand argued that certainty is contextual which is wrong; certainty is incremental, just like science. But unlike science where you can argue that nothing is certain and can be disproven with new evidence, humans know one thing for certain: they are conscious and experiencing *something*. That Existence exists and our observation of reality is always certain, but nothing else can be certain. When objectivists try to argue on that front, they hold dogmatic views because they echo Ayn Rand's words rather than accept the truth that nothing except our observation of reality and reality itself is certain. Beyond that front, I'm not sure there's anything left.

If I had bought $500 usd of Bitcoin when I read it I'd be filthy rich

I mean, the book was like a 5.5/10 overall, the constant masturbatory philosophical exposition gets very boring after a while. And that's ignoring how retarded the whole philosophy actually is.

>>19778748
Yadah yadah

>>19778721
>That's her aesthetics and I don't disagree with you on that.

And her ethics and politics, too. She's fixated on establishing that laissez faire capitalism as she idealizes it is the only moral social system, and she predicates it on a categorical prohibition on the initiation of physical force against another. This ban is a strangely deontological aspect of her ethics, which are otherwise mostly a variation of virtue ethics; there is no other categorical, concrete RULE in her ethical system beyond "don't initiate force". Anything else goes so long as it's aligned to more abstract general principles about life as the ultimate value. And I don't she ever managed to properly justify why this specific case was always categorical. She tried, but always felt unpersuasive.

Which is interesting, considering her otherwise perfect heroes do initiate force against person or property on occasion. Dagny shoots some public servant who couldn't make up his mind but otherwise wasn't threatening her; Roark blows up property that didn't belong to him.

>>19779251
Eh, I disagree, it's an outgrowth of not properly formulating her thoughts and meta-ethical mistakes.

>This ban is a strangely deontological aspect of her ethics, which are otherwise mostly a variation of virtue ethics
I think that this is mostly your own misunderstanding. Virtue ethics is deontological in nature. The Companion of Ayn Rand makes the argument that Ayn Rand's morality is value ethics and I agree. Objectivist morality is to focus on reality, recognize what is important in life then act productively in relation to your values, be it in art or in business or relationships. Virtue ethics is wrong because Aristotle's conceptualization of virtues has no valid standard beyond pointing out personality traits that successful people in Athens held. Ayn Rand's virtues are meant to supplement and enhance chosen values rather than be upheld by duty.

>RULE in her ethical system beyond "don't initiate force".
I think you're wrong here. It's also important to note that Ayn Rand doesn't really say that one shouldn't use force, merely that it is evil. She is in favor of self-defense, although it is never really shown in her fiction because her heroes are passive except at the climax for some reason. My argument is that in a state of survival, when your life is at risk and freedom and liberty are impossible (such as being stuck in a concentration camp), morality goes out the window and you can use force. Ayn Rand says something similar: morality ends at the barrel of a gun. But you can also look at as though if there is a barrel of a gun, do whatever you can to survive. Hence, in a state of living where your life isn't at risk, there is no reason to murder anyone because you can rationally interact with people. If people are irrational or demand that you live by duty, just say no and walk away. If people use force or you're in a prison, use force. The argument isn't that it is a rule that you shouldn't murder someone but that if you're rational and a person isn't a threat to you, why would you do it? They might kill you, you might be put in jail, or someone might try to blackmail you

>>19779251
>>19779361
>And I don't she ever managed to properly justify why this specific case was always categorical. She tried, but always felt unpersuasive.
She tried and I argue that the reason she didn't is because of her meta-ethical mistake of arguing that life seeks to survive when it exists to spread its genes. It accidentally conflated a state of survival for a state of living. A state of survival is when one is in a harmful environment and you cannot conceptualize or live long term by acting productively to be happy. Think of being abducted and put in a concentration camp or you accidently fall off the path and land in the forest. Until you escape that harmful environment, you are not in a state of living but in a state of survival where you are on the same level as an animal. When you escape it, you properly coexist with reality and can live. For example, Ayn Rand argues that lying is bad because people identify lies and try to blackmail you, so being honest should be seen as a duty. However, she told Peikoff that he should get his PhD and lie as though he were in a concentration camp. From there, you get the answer, and it is actually a flaw of Kant as well. The specific case is categorical only in the context of being in a state of living. If you're not in a concentration camp, you should live as though it were a duty to be honest because it mitigates people harming you and you maintain your coexistence with reality. But if you're put in a concentration camp, lie as much as possible until you get out. There's no reason to be honest with someone who seeks you harm. This is why Kant's morality is wrong: he applied a deontological morality to both a state of survival and a state of living. If an axe murderer comes to your door and wants to kill your son, you don't follow your duty and be honest, you lie to protect your son because you entered a state of survival and you value him.

Whenever I ask this to Kantians, I typically get bullshit 'lmao, idk I'll be honest and maybe my son just left the place where I last saw him, who am I to know' which is irrational. With the state of survival and a state of living, you get the context for when force can be applied and when it isn't needed. In front of an axe murderer, use force and lie, when in a state of living with rational actors, there is no need to commit murder or lie, so don't initiate force and be honest. Ultimately, I think the problem is that her philosophy explains why she has these categories but she never officially explained it, and even Peikoff doesn't formulate this position properly. I think he explains it once on his podcast that if you're about to drown near an island and someone has property rights barricading the island, the fact that your life is at risk supersedes their property rights. Nathanial also talks about something similar with states of emergencies in The Virtue of Selfishness but it's about how you should treat other people in states of survival.

>>19778406
>>>19778450
The fate of a character depends on the theme of the novel [which is why Kira dies - Kira could have escaped like AR, but that's not the theme. The theme is the impossibility of life under communism.] Eddie is your average Joe - helpless without the great creators. When they leave he lives at the mercy of forces outside his control - in a world without creators.Maybe he lives, maybe he doesn't.

>>19778408
self-worth is hedonism. sorry to tell you this anon.

>>19780269
How?

>>19780283
appreciation is veiled pleasure-seeking. self-worth is metaphysical masturbation. even virtue ethics is simply hedonism with a set of conditioned behaviors designed to center around 'doing good in this world' self-worth.
the common problem with hedonism isn't hedonism itself but how to avoid quick pleasures with longer displeasure. even epicurus talked about this.

>>19776352

>Her meta-ethics is correct but flawed and causes confusion. The formulation of life being the standard of value is incorrect because the conceptualization of 'life' is too broad in including non-sapient life and sapient life (humans).

Life exists therefore it must have identity - but what is the identity of life? The fact is: life exists in different forms, from quasi life-forms, like viruses, to advanced life forms like humans. [ Scientifically speaking the characteristic which all life shares is the capacity to counter entropy and to actively seek the values required for their survival.] The type of life determines the particular values which each life-form seeks.

But AR did not just stop at that point. AR was very explicit that the standard of life was the life-forms own life AS THAT PARTICULAR TYPE OF LIFE-FORM.

Hence, some life-forms could behave in a seemingly self-destructively manner without contradicting the life principle because AS THAT TYPE OF LIFE-FORM self-destruction was a requirement of the life-forms existence/identity.

A male preying mantis was not acting against its own interest when it mates but in line with its interests - as a preying mantis.

Man's standard of value therefore was not survival as a plant or a bacterium or even as a savage, but survival as a man i.e. man qua man.

Since robots do not face the metaphysical existence/non existence dilemma of living things it would be imposssible for them to hold any values outside the ersatz values programmed into them by their manufacturers.

As for man's reason being his only guide to action and is only tool of knowledge that also seems correct to me - as man qua man.

I fail to see any 'fundamental flaw' here.

>>19779785
>average Joe - helpless without the great creators

This is an absolutely anti-Randian message. The average man, provided he's moral, is not helpless without the great creator. He may not be able to achieve as much as a Galt or Roark would, and benefits enormously from such geniuses, but neither is he a worm that's unfit for life. If rational, he can live just fine, even if at a lower standard of living than that which could be provided by the men of ability.

Surprisingly good Rand thread, i was expecting the usual midwit shitposting.

>>19775443
Are you kidding? They're some of my favorite parts!

>>19780384
Absolutely not. History records what happens to countries when they eliminate the creators - nature takes its course. I would like Eddie to survive, grow crops, develop herbal medicine, defend himself from the warring tribes and gangs we see in much of the world today. Maybe make some life for himself with other like-minded average people. But who knows?

Anyone who responds to Kantianism by simply saying “Kant was wrong we can know things in themselves because we just can” is an ingrate when it comes to philosophy at the very least

>>19780823
For Rand it's more like that the distinction thing in itself / thing as we know it doesn't make sense. If something is perceived in a given manner, it's because it is in its nature to be so; my mind and my senses are interacting with the thing as it really is. An apple appears red to me because it is so that in interacting with my senses, light and all the rest it shows up red - and in that respect I am perceiving the apple as it truly is.

>>19780916
Okay but then you’re just describing the Kantian phenomenal object/thee apple as an object of your sensory faculties and has been organized by the categories of the understanding and not an apple as it is independent of perception and thought. Hegel at least logically proves the impossibility of the thing in itself (but it’s dependent on reason being the source of all reality) and strong correlationists like Heidegger, Wittgenstein and nietzsche at least are able to demonstrate that even though the thing in itself is beyond our rational faculties it is nothing to us because being only occurs through the correlation between us and existence, whereas Rand sort of just wishes the most important theory in western philosophy since Patos forms away because it’s a roadblock to her objectivist politics

>>19780916
This would also mean that the identity of any entity is contingent upon the infinite amount of interactions other entities could have with it which would essentially make her an object oriented ontologist but even they still believe in Kant’s noumenal object

>Roark
wrong book retard

>>19780314
>self-worth is metaphysical masturbation.
Huh? How. You can't make this assertion as the central argument without further explanation and assume that you made your point. What does 'metaphysical masturbation' even mean beyond obvious bullshit poetics? Be clear about this.

>>19780347
>AS THAT TYPE OF LIFE-FORM self-destruction was a requirement of the life-forms existence/identity.
First, that's wrong. since mantises don't always kill their mates, so it isn't a requirement but a thing that generally happens. Second, the missed the point that Ayn Rand argued that life exists that seeks values does so to propagate its survival which goes against the premise that life seeks values required for its survival. Seeking for sex when it leads to one's possible death isn't seeking survival but spreading its genes. It's an overreach that life creates values but that life is the standard of value.

>which all life shares is the capacity to counter entropy and to actively seek the values required for their survival.]
My point is seeking values doesn't always lead to survival when there are exceptions, and repeating that 'well, for *that* life-form its fine. The male praying mantis was acting in the interest of its genes because it has no sense of self. The overall point I'm making is that non-sapient life shouldn't be given mannerisms of 'acting in its own self-interest' when it does not have volition. Only humans have volition because we have rationality. The mantis can't think and know beforehand that a female praying mantis will kill after sex; it is merely acting according to its genes to survive and have sex, and upon completion of that task, it has a high likelihood of being eaten.

>Man's standard of value therefore was not survival as a plant or a bacterium or even as a savage, but survival as a man i.e. man qua man.
Yes, no shit, that's why I said that it needed to be more specific about how it is survival man qua man by emphasizing that it is about sapient-life and that failure to specify this point leads to a broading of all life. I've gotten too many times into arguments of *life* being the standard of value in relation to all life and arguing about goddamn mantises that it is a problem.

>Since robots do not face the metaphysical existence/non existence dilemma of living things it would be imposssible for them to hold any values outside the ersatz values programmed into them by their manufacturers.
See, the problem is that the argument is tautological. You can't just blatantly state 'oh well it just can't because it can't. For the immortal robot, you have to think of it as basically human that can conceptualize, think and act but without the capacity to die. It has senses but it can't die. Why can't such an entity find value in creating art, experiencing art, being with friends, eat food, or have sex? Essentially, why can't the immortal robot experience pleasure or happiness? There is no argument, just a handwavey 'nah, it's impossible because it can't die, alright?' which is unconvincing.

>>19780347
>>19781593

>I fail to see any 'fundamental flaw' here.
The flaw is that by arguing that the whole existence/non-existence dilemma makes objectivism a death cult that argues that without death, there are no values which is not the origin of values man qua man, but one's interacting with reality in the short-term (food, sex, etc) and in the long term such as creative endeavors or romantic relationships. The fundamental flaw which the immortal robot shows is that Ayn Rand's meta-ethics contradict her morality. If everyone were to become unable to die by magic, we would still be the same except we would no longer have the choice to commit suicide and must live. Choosing to think, conceptualize, interact with reality and act creatively is a value that does not require the dilemma of existence/non-existence.

The Fountainhead and We the Living are more fun to read. Atlas Shrugged is a bit too long.

>>19781642
I think Atlas is a little too excessive in its prose. Galt's speech is great, rhetorically, but her hand weighs too much on the prose in the regular narration. The Fountainhead was much better in that regard.

>>19780347
>>19781593

>I fail to see any 'fundamental flaw' here.
The flaw is that by arguing that the whole existence/non-existence dilemma makes objectivism a death cult that argues that without death, there are no values which is not the origin of values man qua man, but one's interacting with reality in the short-term (food, sex, etc) and in the long term such as creative endeavors or romantic relationships. The fundamental flaw which the immortal robot shows is that Ayn Rand's meta-ethics contradict her morality. If everyone were to become unable to die by magic, we would still be the same except we would no longer have the choice to commit suicide and must live. Choosing to think, conceptualize, interact with reality and act creatively is a value that does not require the dilemma of existence/non-existence.

Life creates values, and sapience is the standard of value because through sapience we can conceptualize and choose what values promote the coexistence between life and reality, unlikely other animals that act in a semi-automatic function by merely passively seeking out values to spread their genes. Humans are simular, by also being animals, but since we have rationality, our standard is our ability to conceptualize and integrate values through choices.

>>19781775
>>19781593
>>19781593
The whole existence/non-existence dilmena is contradicted by a single line in Atlas Shrugged:
>"You who are worshippers of the zero— you have never discovered that achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.
If you want to be coy, the issue is that epistemological trichotomy applies to sapient life. Non-sapient life do not have rationality and exist in a state of survival, only in the short term. They can only survive or die. Humans exist in a state of living when they aren't threatened by violence (e.g. being mobbed or captured and sent to a concentration-- non-emergency situations, as Nathaniel argues it in The Virtue of Selfishness) or unfamiliar environment (e.g. accidentally getting lost in the forest) when they are rational, conceptualize reality and act productively. They don't orient their mind towards survival but it nonetheless promotes it. When humans act in the short term such as eating whatever they find without thinking, they're acting in their survival but in the short term; you don't need to think to survive, but you won't survive for long.
Roark doesn't think about avoiding death and surviving but to act creatively according to his integrity as an architect and artist. He remains himself because he is living according to his abilities. Keating is merely surviving because his life is no longer in his hands. The same applies to the characters in Atlas Shrugged. Dagny can live because she is creative, while her brother is only surviving on the complacency of others rather than live.

The immortal robot takes the dichotomy of state of living-state of survival-death as modes of living for a sapient being and removes a state of survival. What if the robot accidently gets lost in a forest? It won't die or need to survive, it just lives there until it gets out, without needing to worry about its survival. That's the flaw. Ayn Rand's formulation of values isn't that life is the standard of value but avoiding death. And the immortal robot says 'if you never have to avoid death by being immortal, seeking any values is impossible!' which people know is intuitively wrong because you can form values by being productive and or being with friends.

The proper formulation that life is the *creator* of values and all life seeks values, and not for its own survival but to spread its genes. And the standard of value for sapient life is sapience by coexistenting with reality through its ability to be rational and conceptualize reality rather than merely survive and spread its genes.

>>19773339
They're full of longwinded pseuds dressing up simple ideas in unnecessarily complex terminology and people calling them out on it. There's also usually a couple of Randtards who get triggered and start projecting their seethe onto people who make fun of them.

>>19756728
>There are people who have actually wasted their lives reading Ayn Rand
certified bruh moment

>>19781494
appreciation of the self (self-worth) is simply reevaluation of your perception of your characteristics to find more pleasure in your own idea of yourself. you are finding ways to give yourself more pleasure through retooling your perspective. self-worth is inherently hedonic, it surely isn't anhedonic.
>What does 'metaphysical masturbation' even mean
masturbation of the abstract sense being seeking out 'vain' pleasure. (see: when someone calls a work 'self-masturbatory' meaning the author values themselves highly when the work does not meet this standard. i.e. vain)
metaphysical to denote the abstracted nature and also because its alliteration.
weird randian 'stoic egoism' makes no god damned sense unless you have no understanding of hedonism and instead just call instances of dopamine chasing that have more downsides than positives in the long run hedonism.
hedonism is simply the idea of self-indulgence. not necessarily over-indulgence. 'hedonistic excess' was just shortened to 'hedonism' because language always bastardizes itself when it comes to long words denoting basic concepts.

shit book for retards and schizos

>>19781494
>>19782636
also the idea of the 'rational actor' that acts of self-interest is inherently hedonic as self-interest is elaborated to mean "anything that a thing deems to be most pleasurable to that thing. accounting for both quality (lifespan) and quantity of pleasure.".
hedonism is an underlying framework, not something you can really 'be against'. you can be against hedonistic excess but then you are fighting something utterly subjective and effectively debating someone on what color is better, however you can reference your own interests as hedonistic excess even though ultimately you mean "i am overall tired of this interest and its consequences are causing me pain. i wish to seek more 'fulfilling' (read: something more pleasurable in the long-run) ventures ".
psychological hedonism (the idea that every human action is ultimately for pleasure) is true. why do people give to charity? because helping others makes them feel good.
why do people want to have a family? because having a family gives them pleasure through self-worth, love reciprocation, etc.
why do people practice asceticism? because complex living gives them pain and a simpler livelihood gives them more pleasure.
why do people inject heroine? because they get pleasure out of it and underrate the consequences.
why do people commit suicide? because non-existence is more pleasurable than the continuation of life.

>>19782636
Next time, use accurate concepts rather unrelated metaphors, you fucking obscurantist hack.

>simply reevaluation of your perception of your characteristics to find more pleasure in your own idea of yourself.
Wrong. You tried to ascribe self-esteem and self-esteem to pleasure and its long-term pursuit by saying that it *helps* acquire pleasure and it is a sleight of hand that is not of itself hedonistic. Just because having a strong self-esteem is a method by which one has the confidence to interact with the world in any capacity, including seeking out pleasurable activity, does not make self-esteem and self-worth hedonistic. You overplayed your idiocy.

As Nathaniel Branden defines it, self-esteem is the disposition to see oneself as competent to deal with the basic challenges of life and of being worthy of happiness. And as Ayn Rand defines it, self-esteem is the confidence in the efficacy of your mind to think and of your body to act. So being competent and having confidence is a form of fortitude in how better focus and act to gain and keep values.

The root cause of the problem a failure of improperly conceptualizing meta-ethics in relation to joy. The mistake is that not all positive stimuli is is automatically hedonistic. Joy is positive stimuli by properly in union between your body and reality. The key point is that joy is neutral and contextual in relation to time. Pleasure is short-term joy and happiness is long-term joy. For example, eating chocolate all the time or taking drugs is pleasure because it only lasts a short period but isolates itself and you need to repeat that action to feel that small burst of joy. If you continually repeat that short period over an extended period, that is hedonism.

The mistake is therefore that you conceptualize that such actions are the only method of achieving joy long-term and therefore your view that when you have confidence in yourself, fortitude and behave with greater competency to interact with reality in a positive capacity, you are in fact merely improving yourself to better eat more chocolate because that's the only thing you can do. Hence your conclusion makes sense when you say
>self (self-worth) is simply reevaluation of your perception of your characteristics to find more pleasure in your own idea of yourself

>>19782758
>>19782636
However, that is a meta-ethical mistake by failing to see how you can conceptualize your actions in the long term beyond repeating short-term joy. Happiness is obtained by acting properly over a long period of time and being proud of who you are as a person and your accomplishments; it is sustained coexistence and flourishment with reality. For example, being creative in artistic endeavours, being productive at your job, honing your body by lifting weights and being in a long romantic relationship. Those integrate your choices long-term by sustaining the self in coexistence with reality and it makes you happy.

From this, it resolves your mistake and holds my position of why I argue that you're wrong. If you improve your sense of self-esteem and self-worth ( "[a] reevaluation of your perception of your characteristics to find more [joy]," as you defined it, but properly formulated to be more neutral rather than centred on pleasure), you aren't limited to only eating cake but other creative endeavors. If I have self-confidence, I can learn new skills, apply for a joy, take out a girl I like on a date etc. All those actions lead to sustained coexistence with reality to be happy, not merely acting in a hedonistic way.

This problem of hedonism is extremely common among people, especially annoying philosophers who are anti-natalists because they also reach the conclusion that happiness is impossible, only pleasure and then go the next step and formulate that pleasure is just avoiding pain, outright ignoring joy entirely.

So anyway, QED:
self-esteem and self-worth help orient your consciousness towards reality to experience both pleasure and happiness and doing so does not mean that you are condemned to only experience pleasure repeatedly over the long term over acting productively.

>>19782758
>You tried to ascribe self-esteem and self-esteem to pleasure and its long-term pursuit by saying that it *helps* acquire pleasure and it is a sleight of hand that is not of itself hedonistic.
anything that helps to acquire pleasure is by definition hedonistic.
>something that is hedonistic is something that is engaged with the pursuit of pleasure
>self-esteem is the disposition to see oneself as competent to deal with the basic challenges of life and of being worthy of happiness
>self-esteem is about deeming yourself worthy of happiness
>happiness is pleasure (your separation of happiness as long-term joy and pleasure as short-term joy is completely arbitrary. both are simply dopamine.)
>self-esteem is about deeming yourself worthy of pleasure
>self-esteem is engaged with the pursuit of pleasure
>therefore self-esteem is hedonistic
>>19782798
did you not read the part about
>hedonism is simply the idea of self-indulgence. not necessarily over-indulgence. 'hedonistic excess' was just shortened to 'hedonism' because language always bastardizes itself when it comes to long words denoting basic concepts.
your point entirely focuses on the difference between happiness and pleasure even though they are the same goddamned thing. happiness is hedonistic.
>hedonism is the ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.
>happiness is also about satisfaction of desires (yes even long-term desires before you get uppity)
>therefore happiness and pleasure are interchangeable in this definition
>hedonism is the ethical theory that happiness (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.

>>19782798
>The mistake is that not all positive stimuli is is automatically hedonistic.
anything to do with pleasure is hedonistic, positive stimuli elicits pleasure, positive stimuli is hedonistic.
your mistake is a misunderstanding that hedonism is only to do with short-term joy that causes long-term pain (either directly or through lack of repetition). hedos flatly means pleasure. happiness causes pleasure. its all ways of promoting dopamine/serotonin production and memory relating.
this 'joy stratification' is retarded. you either feel pleasure directly or you feel pleasure from the idea of a pleasureful eventuality. this isn't meant as some gotcha, its frankly the underlying framework.

John Rogers gets the last word:
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

>>19782819
>hedonism is pleasure
>happiness is also pleasure
>(your separation of happiness as long-term joy and pleasure as short-term joy is completely arbitrary. both are simply dopamine.)
It's laughable that you call them arbitrary when I made clear distinction between the two with examples. Being reductive by just going 'lmao it's just chemicals in the brain bro' is valid nor does it disprove my argument and examples of how they are different.

>happiness is hedonistic.
As explained in the post you clearly did not read, happiness is a form of joy. Your mistake is calling happiness hedonistic while also arguing that pleasure is the same.

>hedonism is simply the idea of self-indulgence.
That's cool but it doesn't go against how I defined and classified hedonism are the experiencing of pleasure that is short-lived repeatedly over a long period of time. It can be done both as self-indulgence and over-indulgence, and trying to argue that hedonism somehow isn't part of that classification because the bastardization of language is your own mistake.

>hedonism is the ethical theory that happiness (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.
And I argue that it is an incorrect definition that is too broad and inapplicable because of your literal usage of hedonism for both happiness and pleasure without seeing that applying it to both means that they cannot be both correct

>hedonism is the ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.
>hedonism is the ethical theory that happiness (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.
Which is it? Why is both pleasure and happiness the satisfaction of desires? How do you differentiate the two? Why are both words used to describe the same concept? What's your argument that their are epistemological the same thing. You could argue that lmao it's just chemical bros, but that's not how language or epistemology works. I provide a meta-ethical explanation that explains why both are different and gave examples. All you're doing is going 'nuh uh, they're the same because I say so.'

>>19783325
This reads like a lmao get owned xdxdxdxdxd idiocy. How can people think that that quote is anything but snarkiness?

>>19783595
>"Noooo, you can't call Rand childish and be condescending towards Objectivists! That's snarky! You're snarky!"
Cope Randtard.
>>19783325
Based.

>>19756728
I'm gonna be honest with you OP, I bought the book thinking it would be the coolest shit ever, it is now an actual paperweight made of paper

>>19783585
>hedonism the experiencing of pleasure that is short-lived repeatedly over a long period of time.
again you are referring to hedonistic excess.
HEDONISM IS ANYTHING REFERRING TO THE PURSUIT OF JOY
>HEDONISM IS ANYTHING REFERRING TO THE PURSUIT OF JOY
HEDONISM IS ANYTHING REFERRING TO THE PURSUIT OF JOY
>"but most people use the term pleasure when defining hedonism"
because in this instance pleasure is a catchall that also relates to joy and happiness. pleasure, joy, and happiness are synonymous when defining hedonism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedone
>How do you differentiate the two?
for current intent, they are the same.
>"nuh-uh they have different contexts"
yes, but irrelevant in this case. hedonism deals with pleasure, happiness, joy, or whatever dumb category you want to come up with in regards to positive emotion. stop using your personalized bullshit definitions to somehow exclude something for personal reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism#The_nature_of_pleasure
>Pleasure plays a central role in all forms of hedonism; it refers to experience that feels good and involves the enjoyment of something.
>The term "happiness" is often used in this tradition to refer to the balance of pleasure over pain.
>In everyday language, the term "pleasure" is primarily associated with sensory pleasures like the enjoyment of food or sex. But in its most general sense, it includes all types of positive or pleasant experiences including the enjoyment of sports, seeing a beautiful sunset or engaging in an intellectually satisfying activity.

your stratifications of 'joy' are more widely known as pleasure theories. i dont know where you got this idea of putting pleasure and happiness under the joy umbrella but i have never heard of this, please tell me you have a specific author in mind and this isn't just some theory you yourself have devised.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure#Theories_of_pleasure

What the fuck is up with describing what people are wearing all the time? Is this a woman writer thing? We get it, the rich bitch got mad steeze, is it necessary to tell the reader how well-fitting and tasteful her clothes are, every time she appears?

“You can't turn a lefty into a worthwhile human. The raw material is shit, and it's always going to be shit.”
-anon

Vapid parasites

>>19783595
…because they are mentally stunted.

>>19783607
You’re unwell and obsessiv

Better read some manga. It will be more productive.

>>19783607
I never said you can't, idiot, I said it's sparky, meaning that it's cowardly by being coy.

The simple fact she’s hated by so many tells an intellectual that she’s worth reading.

>>19760980
Ok now what happens when "bettering yourself" involves toppling an unfair system that unfairly disadvantages your class?

>>19763556
>Where do I go from here?
You graduate high school.

>>19767829
Ah yes, the collectivist that is trying very hard to convince people collectivism does not exist. Brilliant.

>>19766406
Calling money the means of survival is like calling your scale the means of gaining weight

>Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it.
Lol

>>19781880
And the occasional smooth brain who simply uses these threads as a platform to broadcast his personal dislike of Ayn Rand and her novel.

Read the first 60 pages today. This is the second time I read it. I put it away after having read those first 3 chapters. It is no different than any other indoctrination medium. It poisons the mind. This doesn't mean that it does not also promote useful ideas, but I don't want to lobotomize myself, which I would be doing if I would allow it to hold serious influence over me. Pure propaganda. Reality is much more complex than the narrative in this book is and therefore people can only become dumbed down by taking it seriously. Good novels capture a glimpse of reality in its most pure, base form, whereas this, rather distastefully, warps reality to fit the ideas of Ayn Rand, lulls your mind into a deep sleep and then sneakily places her ideas in your head, in their most primitive form. If they were more than mere primitive ideas she could have actually written about her reasoning and argued for her ideas directly instead of making her readers endure 1200 pages of the same points over and over again in a way that induces weariness in the readers' minds through all the unnecessary verbiage. No good fiction writer writes like this, good non fiction writers who genuinely have good ideas don't either. She could just have written a handful of essays about her ideas and left it at that. They are not completely awful and have some merit, but instead she had monetized them to the greatest extent possible

TL;DR
The book presents mediocre ideas. They are alright but her novels suck major cock

>>19785526
probably the first decent post in this thread. she presents unoriginal ideas and attaches laissez-faire capitalism to them, all in a poorly written vehicle.
it is written as a simplified version of egoism/epicureanism under capitalism for people who don't have the time nor want to put the effort to actually read the more influential yet more lengthy works.
it is a hefty self-help book for the libertarian youth before they either stay with a casual interest in libertarian ideals or hopefully evolve into something more.

>>19785282
>There's also usually a couple of Randtards who get triggered and start projecting their seethe onto people who make fun of them.
(You)

>>19785115
Literally just >>19767829 again. Overly broad catchall definition alongside the assertion that anyone who points out it's silly is an enemy of freedom. It's a recipe for a strawman and an excuse not to actually think. You're a retard.

>>19781593
>AS THAT TYPE OF LIFE-FORM self-destruction was a requirement of the life-forms existence/identity.
First, that's wrong. since mantises don't always kill their mates, so it isn't a requirement but a thing that generally happens.

I know the mantis doesn't always kill her mate but I was addressing the central argument. There are creatures which act self-destructively but the problem is you attribute this to "genes" whereas AR attributes such actions to life.

It seems to me that AR is correct because, as we now know, it is life which direct evolution not genes.

>Why can't such an entity find value in creating art, experiencing art, being with friends, eat food, or have sex? Essentially, why can't the immortal robot experience pleasure or happiness?

Because a robot is just a pencil. Pencils have written great romantic art, formulated advanced scientific knowledge, designed great architecture, but it's not the pencil who deserves the credit. The credit belongs to man.

>>19784397
Underrated.

>>19784375
>"Noooo, you can't make fun of me for my knee-jerk defense of Ayn Rand! Objectivists are brave--he must be a c-c-coward!"
Try LOTR next time faggot (you aren't ready for actual philosophy).

>>19784409
But...but the FREE market! Freedom! Oh no! I'm feeling insecure again--where's my copy of The Romantic Manifesto!

>>19756728
It's a disgusting jewish pornography in a fantasy world. Where a magic man comes and solves all of his chosen peoples problems. In this case is magic man is a magic metal. There is a huge gaping hole between "good" and "bad" characters, there is no neutral characters in this book. The author also just digests obvious things that have been chewed up and spat out by countless authors before her. And, of course, there is this disgusting jewish pornography:
>She touched his tender cock and balls with her wrinkly aging lips. "I remember this taste" she thoght. With his balls wrapped around his right fist, he took his cock in his left hand and slapped her with it on her saggy tits. She knew, wierden metal dildo would never give her such realistic feelings, even though the copper mines were closed for two years now. "Copper! Of course!" the taste reminded her the taste of copper coins in her mouth...
And it's maybe 80% of the book.
>>19757614
Drop it. Don't waste your time, my man. If you're really interested, find a TLDR. And read any one of literally thousands good books instead.

>>19788758
Oh yeah. And it is not about the message. It's just that (((Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum))) is a worthless as an author, her writing style is very repetitive and combine it with the fact that the book is pretty big, you will get annoyed as fuck.
As I said, the message might be correct, but chose another author which Rosenbaum has clearly taken her inspiration from. For your own sanity, my man. Me personally, I liked that people called her ultra-mega-fascists-nazcist-right-wing-right-leg author that was the reason I picked up the book. I wondered how an author can earn such labels and not be a literally hitler. After third way through the book I thought something was waiting for me, this must be some kind of elaborate tricky troll. After reading a book I just felt like a fool. And not going to lie, I was angry. And now I think aybe it IS an elaborate troll after all.

Reminder that libertarianism is a jewish psyop.

>actual quote

>>19784409
Do it for the right reasons or fuck off. If you're motivated by spite and envy then it will blow up in your face.
The ends do not justify the means. If your means are shit your ends are shit. If your motivations are shit your actions will be shit.
Question your own motives and make sure you're acting in good faith.
Do you really want to better yourself or do you just want to destroy something so you feel less worthless?

>>19788758
That’s not in the book kike.

>>19785282
It obsessive how much he posts.

>>19789109
Rand wasn't a libertarian. Thanks for refuting everything you just said.

>>19789615
>Rand wasn't a libertarian
She got mogged by one though:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/understanding-ayn-randianism/

>>19789602
>he thinks it's only one person making fun of Rand

>>19789602
Yes, it's one of the main points I learned from AR - social metaphysics. Parasites, socialists and other critics of AR are absolutely obsessed with their opponents to a degree that is quite unfathomable. Regard the vitriol in this thread as proof. It's weird. https://youtu.be/2h2ZixoCCWI

>>19789615
Distinction without a difference. The practical politics of Rand and minarchist libertarians have the same end result if applied consistently.

>>19785526
What did you think of Galt's critique of Descartes and Galt's sublime one-line mockery of representationalism? Or how about Galt's exquisite refutation of the Naturalistic Fallacy?

>>19763870
>A is A
Yes a man is a man and a woman is a woman. Mike Brown was a thug and not a good little boy. Illegal immigrants are illegals not undocumented workers lmfao. And here we have the real reason why rand is seethed upon so heavily.
Everytime new words are being made up by some lefttard rands ideas get more credible. With every insane tranny demand her ideas are infused with more power. With every diversity quota and every subsidy...
Its so funny to see you guys pretending that it isnt true that the more time passes the more relevant her words become. Rand is literally fine wine.

>>19790359
There is a difference. You're too retarded to understand it.

>>19791013
>The free market is an unbias arbiter of human value. 1, Laissez-faire capitalism.
Uh, isn't that oversimplifying things and deflecting complexity...so you can put up a bunch of ideological soundbites?
>2. Existence exists. I'm describing objective reality and if you disagree it is because you have bought into leftwing ideology.
You're just stating nebulous tautologies and retreating back to them when someone points out your pigeonholing for the sake of what are actually immature utopian beliefs. I'm not even a "leftist" and I think the whole "collectivist" thing hasn't been a hot take since the Cold War ended.
>3. I am a supreme rationalist. A is A. I have clearly defined my terms and I know exactly how you think.
Actually, I know exactly how YOU think. It's a problem if I can actually predict what you'll say and an even bigger problem when you think you can do the same but really just branch into nonsequiturs about shit where we probably share some common ground. The problem is you assume everyone is in a predefined category and you argue with phantoms. Then you project.
>4. The individual is the highest value and it is quite obvious that you do not believe that.
Ah, you're an individualist. That's why you can't think outside your own head and have a conversation with someone. Here I thought you were just an autist with no sense of other minds finding self-esteem for the first time. Maybe thinking outside your own head would be a better exercise for you.

The absolute state of Randtards.

>>19791330
There is a difference in that Rand also has thoughts of epistemology, ethics and aesthetics. But no one outside of hardcore Objectivists cares about this shit. This was not what made Atlas Shrugged so popular beyond that fringle circle. On the parts that Rand was actually influential, her project matches on the essentials of libertarian politics.

>>19760949
The more i hear about this Rodgers lad, the more i like him

its more individualistic to not call yourself an individualist
captcha: SNYGG

>>19791790
Who the fuck are you quoting??

now's a good time to read it
you're living it
except there is no mythical land to escape to like in Rand's fairy tale

>>19756728
I haven't read it, but I know it and any mention of Ayn Rand makes some people irrationally angry for some reason.

>>19792415
What's this pic from? I like it in a disturbing way.

>>19792922
its a burning ship fractal
http://paulbourke.net/fractals/burnship/

>>19792441
>internalize Randianism
>describe everything in terms of Randianism
>if someone disagrees project that they are an evil strawman, I mean "collectivist"
>if someone points out you're being simplistic or utopian with regard to capitalism assure them existence exists and A is A.
>dissenters are anti-freedom and anti-rationality; you have a monopoly on objectivity
Randtards follow a pattern.

>>19792415
Nathaniel Branden refuted you in The Virtue of Selfishness.

>>19793128
where, just read counterfeit individualism and it did not cover the concept of "its more individualistic to not call yourself an individualist". to campaign under a collective banner is less individualistic than to campaign for specific maxims separated from any identity.

>>19792415
>its more individualistic to not call yourself an individualist
What series of premises lead you to that conclusion? If you uphold the idea of promoting the individual as the unit of value, with the moral corollary of the principle that individuals are ends in themselves, why wouldn't you call yourself an individualist? I can only assume that you hold this position out of some Stirner spook argument or that labelling yourself an individualist makes you part of a collective therefore you are no longer an individualist.

>>19794313
>no longer an individualist
never said no longer, don't make that assumption. i am simply saying that its more individualistic to not assume any label over the assumption of any label. not that you can't be an individualist at all by collecting under a banner. become the implicit individualist without organs.

>>19794385
>become the implicit individualist without organs.
Why? For what purpose?

>>19793128
>Nathaniel Branden
Also refuted Rand's poonanny by leaving it for (pic related). It caused her to publically sperg about him for like a decade and he eventually apologized to people who took Objectivistism seriously and turned into retarded dogmatists.

>>19760845
For amazon, maybe. For Microsoft, there literally isn't. Being an SWE at Microsoft is one of the coziest, most overpaid jobs available, and the vast majority of their product line is software.

>>19794506
Nathaniel never refuted Ayn Rand on anything. He left her because being an heir to someone's philosophy is emotionally draining and inhuman, and he was right; Ayn Rand groomed him into it, and Nathaniel agreed to it, but it became too complicated once they got into a sexual relationship and he didn't like that Ayn Rand was old. The only position he disagreed with was that promoting rationality as an absolute by always thinking at every moment to the degree of being stoic doesn't create a good balance of one's emotional state. You'll have to do more than just point to the split between Nathaniel and Ayn Rand as an argument for where she was wrong.

>>19791790
Get help.

>>19766772
>That and the whole huurrrr she took government aid which apparently never happened, as far as I looked into it.
Even if it did, I don't see how it's relevant to her points. It's literally the same argument as "you're a communist yet you benefit from advances due to capitalism (you have an iphone)" but aimed at lolberts instead of commies. "You're libertarian yet you pay taxes and take unemployment". Yeah no shit, she's not going to miss out on an opportunity to steal back the money you stole from her in the first place. Taking back what's yours is consistent with the whole 'taxation is theft' mental model.

>>19789762
Only one loser spams “randtard” in a desperate bid to try to get it to catch. It’s utterly pathetic.

>>19794543
Yeah but people don't give a shit. The implication is that she should have maintained her integrity and died, which is just stupid. But the real reason is that people are lazy and stupid, thinking that it's enough to dismiss her by saying that she took government benefits.
>hur hur someone who says that the government is shit used government subsidies!
I personally dismiss anyone who argues this because they didn't bother to read her or ever thought for a minute in their life.

>>19794644
People might as well shit on her for walking on governnent-built streets.

>>19794385
But "individualism" is not a label, if label is understood as something negative. Individualism is a name for a concretely definee worldview; calling yourself an individualist is literally the final act of identifying the worldview you subscribe to. What you're proposing is that it's somehow more praiseworthy NOT to identify your worldview when it has a clearly defined, generally used name, which is frankly pure whim-worship.

>>19794543
> "you're a communist yet you benefit from advances due to capitalism (you have an iphone)"

She viewed the government as the aggressor, taxing her of her hard earned and putting into a forced pension plan. Getting it back is, for her, merely returning stolen property. It *harms* the institution she opposes.
But communists believe that, under capitalism, workers producing goods are slaves, and purchasing said goods is enriching the slave owner/capitalist. It *helps* the very people they claim to hate.

>>19756728
I've read the book in a matter of 3 days. I liked many aspects of it. It's obviously hyperbolic and has some interesting points.
Its been the basis of a lot of skewing by brainlet who didn't really pay attention to it.
It shouldn't be a manual of how a society works, but some societies could take some points from it.
I'm Eastern European and I found many of the described villainry in the book to be eerily similar to how shit works in my heck of the woods.

>>19794713
They don't because she wasn't an anarcho-capitalist, but you know damn well that people would argue that.

>>19794753
>It shouldn't be a manual of how a society works, but some societies could take some points from it.
The book arguably doesn't make an argument for how society should be run, but rather how it shouldn't be run. It's possibly one of the few flaws of the book which echoes Ayn Rand's true position that she doesn't know the proper way society should be run. Ayn Rand obviously advocates for a minarchist society in her non-fiction, which is what happens in Atlas Shrugged, but it eventually gets destroyed by taxes. People think that Galt Gulch is that society, but Ayn Rand puts emphasis that it is merely a collection of individuals coming together, not a state. It's more a union of egoists, as Striner would have described it. So it begs the question, what sort of society is optimal? And there Ayn Rand falls short. I hold that she didn't have the answer because the technology didn't present itself for capitalism to flourish, namely, a decentralized crypto-anarchist society that hides amongst the state until the world naturally transitions to an anarcho-capitalistic world where there are no states, only capitalism. Her position of minarchism is merely the closest answer within her age, and her novels reflect that.

Atlas Shrugged is better read as a rejection of morality and bad political practices rather than how to build the right society. On some level, I think it's a fair criticism, but I also hold that the technology to create a proper separation between state and economy didn't exist, so she couldn't advocate for it.

>>19794713
I've also seen people criticize her for using public libraries for research material to write The Fountainhead. So people have been petty on stupid shit related to using anything built by the government.

>>19760949
He's got two copies, so he must really like it. Either that or his actress girlfriend is also a fan.

>>19794821
>They don't because she wasn't an anarcho-capitalist

She wasn't THAT far from anarchocapitalism. She subscribed to the idea that taxation was theft; government should be subsidized by voluntary means such as lotteries or donations. Likewise, she also believed the government should do only police, legislature and jurisdiction, activities which involve the containment of the initiation of force and fraud among citizens - which means that public infrastructure in an Objectivist society would most likely be all private as well.

>>19794960
Oh, I don't disagree with you that she wasn't that far off from anarcho-capitalism. Neo-objectivists have correctly argued that her philosophy integrates well with anarcho-capitalism and it is a logical conclusion. One can point to the failure of every state throughout history to uphold objective laws. As you pointed out, she subscribed to the idea that taxation is theft, but if you hold that view, you're basically an anarcho-capitalist. The view that government should be subsidized by voluntary means is just failing to see think a bit more that rather than voluntarily pay for government services, the free market could provide those services. Ayn Rand argued that the police and justice had to be objective under the state but her arguments were rather flimsy because it had to be objective to all and it only worked with a state.

My personal view is that Ayn Rand did not like anarchism because she equated anarchism as chaotic gang warfare which is just another way of saying that she did not see a method by which anarchism could uphold individual rights or protect individuals from other individuals. Anarcho-capitalism theories try to revolve this with an arbitrator and contracts with private police to protect property, but their main failure is that they lack a method on how to achieve such a system. Because of this, Ayn Rand held the closest position to anarchism which is a limited state. But if you think about it another way, she argued for a reduction of the state, making her libertarian despite not wishing to be associated as one.

And as I argued >>19794821, a minarchist state failing in Atlas Shrugged proves that she didn't really believe in her political views and that the only thing that Objectivists require to be convinced of anarcho-capitalist is the process for achieving it. If you think about it for a minute, laissez-faire capitalism *is* anarcho-capitalism, but Ayn Rand always argues exceptions that point to flaws in her politics. The most obvious is that of intellectual property.