Leaderboard

I don't get this line of complaint against Ron Paul. Do you know Ron Paul? Have you met Ron Paul? Do you know how sharp or slow he is? Do you know if he is mentally or physically deficient? Have you see any evidence of a deterioration? What if the guy happens to be pretty ripped and an athletic swimmer? Is there a younger candidate with a better ability to increase our relative long-range condition of individual rights? Or do you just look at his age and go “Yep. Too old.” and that settles it? The only place I've seen his age being "an issue" is usually in conjunction with a long list of other nonobjective adjectives (like "extreme" "radical" "quack" "nut" "ugly" "fringe" "marginal") which constitutes the opinion-moulders' myth of a supposedly "viable candidate," which apparently means only someone sufficiently without principles and groomed for PR marketing, as opposed to whether the candidate has the right ideas or not, and is qualified to hold the office in question.

I don't know a whole lot about the Austrians, but from what little I know of them, I like them. They argue for the free market, and if I'm not mistaken, their reasoning for this is that the free market works the best. In contrast, Objectivism promotes the free market for moral reasons. But Objectivism regards the moral as the practical. Objectivism's moral recommendations are there because they work (for the individual). Objectivism promotes Capitalism as righteous because it is the social system that's best for the individual. Objectivism argues that it is both practical and moral, but primarily argues that it is the morally best system. Like I said, I don't know a whole lot about the Austrians. But if I'm not mistaken, there are areas that Objectivism contradicts the Austrians. In ethical and epistemological premises like the above posters have argued. But one difference I've noticed between Objectivism and at least some Austrians is intellectual property. Objectivism promotes intellectual property and argues that, in essence, all property is intellectual property. Whereas some Austrians argue that intellectual property violates property rights. That's because the Austrian(s) in question don't grasp that the human mind is responsible for the identification and creation of all values, and that intellectual property is therefore one of the most important property rights to protect. If I'm not mistaken, some Austrians might be anarchists, but I am probably mistaken on that one. Hopefully the Austrians recognize that the government needs to be there to protect people from criminals. Like the above posters have noted, Objectivism doesn't have any economics to it. Economics is more of a specialized science than philosophy. But Objectivism has political recommendations that amount to Laissez-Faire Capitalism being the ideal social system for man. One of the reasons Objectivists are generally careful with people promoting freedom is because they'll just be making a political recommendation without any philosophical base for it. This problem can be observed in the fact that you can have such seemingly small, yet very important differences even among Austrians, such as whether intellectual property is good or not. Consistent Objectivists will generally agree across the board on many issues like that, because they're the logical conclusions of shared premises. Whereas libertarians and even Austrians can't be guaranteed to share the same philosophical premises and can therefore come to contradictory conclusions from each other.

“A few silicon valley entrepreneurs admired Ayn Rand’s philosophy, and they like made computers, and banks like used computers, yeah?, and the banks messed up while they were using computers, yeah?, so therefore the financial crisis was caused by silicon valley disciples of Ayn Rand, oh and also by Alan Greenspan who was like best friends with Rand, and was in control of the Federal Reserve, so he presumably tried to implement Randian concepts while in power, yeah?, and that like allowed the financial sector to coast towards disaster, irrevocable catastrophic disaster that is worse than anything else in history and any possible alternative, yeah?, it even happened ten years prior in south-east Asia, who suffered terrible consequences for Westernizing their economy, yeah? and presumably haven't recovered since and are still much worse off than ever before, in fact China helped mastermind the current financial crisis as revenge on the US, yeah? and even right now as we type our thoughts are being commodified by the silicon valley Randian oligarchs, yeah?”

This.

Seconded.

I insist, read the thread. And then apologize. When I say "I can't see how" that is not an assertion of impossibility, but an acknowledgement of the obstacles and motives against it. Anarchist. The government is not going away and only it can perform any needed administering. The only question is if a sea wall requires government administration, or does government administration merely give large advantages over private administration, or are there no advantages at all or even government disadvantages. But if there were non-government run settlements, things would be different? Maybe, if we could populate those settlements with New Objectivist Man, infinitely rational and infinitely far sighted in planning. But the communist aspiration to mold a New Soviet Man didn't work out so well, and this won't either. There is such a thing as human nature, and it is an immovable obstacle to all rationalist utopian dreams. The only successful sea wall is built by government, so it doesn't count? On the contrary, a single counter-example disproves the generalization that government is by nature short-sighted and incompetent. And if you had read the thread you would know that there is not just a single counter example but the entire country of the Netherlands carved out of the sea by thousands of small governments. Discount that, I dare you.

I can't get behind Ron Paul. How can I seriously believe that a man who doesn't believe I have the right to my own body will stand up for my other rights? Obama doesn't believe I own the fruits of my labor, therefore doesn't believe I own my body. Ron Paul doesn't believe I own the functions of my body, at least as they pertain to how a woman may experience them, so again, I am left with no right to my own being. They can both go to hell as far as I'm concerned.