[rocketraman]

This comment is profoundly ignorant. You're dismissing her philosophy because of two descriptive words (and not even the best two, which would probably be "rational selfishness"), which you have decided are the "opposite of good" simply because history says they are? That's just an appeal to tradition: plenty of people have been wrong about plenty of things throughout history, especially in the areas of morality and ethics.

You clearly know nothing about Rand's philosophy. You would do yourself a favor to correct that error. Even if you ultimately disagree with her, she has very many intelligent things to say and, if you give her a chance, she will challenge many of your preconceptions about morality, ethics, and their postcursors of economics and politics, and raise the level of your discourse significantly.

[srah763]

Yes this happens to not be one of those cases, espousing the virtues of selfishness isn’t up for debate anymore. It’s wrong, and has been shown to be so time and time again. To have to rehash such foolishness is pointless.

[manfredo]

Proclaiming that something is not up for debate and refusing to engage meaningfully is an extremely easy way to lose the debate.

[obmelvin]

There is absolutely merit to discussing ideas that you disagree with. And in particular to this context, I personally found lots of value in Atlas Shrugged. Often it lead to me disagree with her philosophy. If anything, reading things that you disagree with allows you to intelligently refute claims instead of vaguely claiming that someone is incorrect and refusing to engage. That is a sure fire way to make people dig into their beliefs.

[TooBrokeToBeg]

> It’s wrong

...and natural and efficient. ie Not wrong or right. I'm not sure where you get your ideas from.

[bendbro]

> Yes this happens to not be one of those cases, espousing the virtues of selfishness isn’t up for debate anymore

In your selflessness, perhaps you'll consider espousing my view instead of yours? In return, I promise to dutifully, comprehensively, and correctly represent your view, as you can see I've done here now.

[tunesmith]

I've always seen objectivism as a branch of consequentialism. Utilitarianism is a different branch of consequentialism, in that it seeks to maximize the greater good for others. Objectivism seeks the maximize the good for the self. "Rational selfishness" is a fine enough description, I suppose, except for the cases where the two words conflict, like in tragedy of the commons.

[michaelmrose]

Philosophy is too kind a word. If I invent a new kind of math which encapsulates obvious stuff like addition,subtraction and multiplication before going off the rails and spewing nonsense the fact that I reiterated arithmetic isn't much of a point in my favor.

She was born to wealth she didn't earn and saw the confiscation of such when the communists took over Russia.

She forever thereafter decried all taxation for the common good not seeing a substantive distinction between the communists taking all her families shit and a democratically elected government taxing to pay for hospitals and roads.

Her ideal man was a criminal to kidnapped a little girl, extorted her father for money, then took the money and ditched the little girls dismembered body and took the money and ran because he refused to live by societies rules.

She gushed over him before dying dependent upon the social security she didn't want anyone else to have.

[ubernostrum]

I find Ayn Rand to be quite similar to Karl Marx.

Both use cherry-picking and unfalsifiable approaches to history and sociology to construct a narrative in which there are two classes: the noble, heroic people who produce all the value; and the awful, leeching parasites who attempt to co-opt that value for their own use.

The differences between them are rooted entirely in which class each views as noble and value-producing versus which is parasitical.

[tripzilch]

Waaaaaaaitaminute--aren't parasites "natural", too?

Problem solved. Shall we talk about the copyright bill, now? :)