JASKN

I didn't know any black movies or actors that should replace the current nominees that is why I didn't answer your question outright. It made me think more about the issue, that is why I said that it was a good question...  You could say that I should've thought about it more before I asked the question on here but I didn't.
I don't care if people dislike me on here because I ask questions such as this... my emotional knee-jerk response when I heard Jada Smith complaining was something like: "She's just whining and pulling the race card!" but I can't form a good opinion on an issue based on just a knee-jerk emotional response such as that.
Playing a devil's advocate of sorts have served me well and I'm going to continue to do it.
From Ayn Rand Answers
The Best of Her Q & A
 
Is there any validity to the technique of the devil’s advocate?
 
AR: Yes, it’s very valuable. Playing devil's advocate means assuming a role opposite to your own conviction; advocating ideas the "devil" would throw at you. This technique trains you to answer every objection to your position. It's a good way to test your ideas, because if you encounter an objection you can't answer, you better find the answer or correct your thinking. (pgs. 178-179)

Then you should answer it. It's not a demographic issue. There are millions of blacks in the US. More than enough to make a good movie.
Was there a black film-maker or actor who created something worth nominating for an Oscar, over the current nominees? Yes or no, and if yes, who?
I would tell him the same thing I tell anyone who complains about not being able to find a job: jobs are infinite. Grab a camera and a few friends and make a movie. There you go, you just got a role in a movie. Hollywood doesn't have to give you a job, to have a job.
Which brings me back to my original question: has any black film-maker or actor done that, and created something better than the stuff that's nominated? Keep in mind that I don't care about production values or special effects. I'm perfectly open to a $10,000 movie, if the people making it/ in it are talented and have done a good job. In fact there are lots of cheap movies that I absolutely love, to the point where I might actually be biased towards cheap movies (and I'm not alone, many people are).
The movie Primer for instance cost $7,000, won at Sundance, and made a lot of money (half a million in theaters alone...many times more on DVD, I'm sure). So why do you need Hollywood to give you a job? Make a movie like that, and then ask Hollywood for a job. If they still won't give you one, then I'll start entertaining the notion that they're racist.
 

I think the OP is just trying to sort out some ideas he got from Nietzsche, so there's no reason to assume he would resist requests to clarify his position.

Lord Monckton is popular among the Global Warming "skeptics". He writes a positive review of Atlas Shrugged. He thanks ARI for sending him a copy [great idea, whoever thought of him] and suggests that his readers should read Atlas too. I particularly like that he does not merely mention "free-markets" etc., which could give people the impression it is boring propaganda made to look like a novel. He writes: " I read all 1,100 pages in two days. For, although the novel has a powerful political message, and one that America is ignoring at her peril, it is also a gripping thriller, with a love story built in, set amid the inexorable decline of a nation made feeble-minded by socialism."
(PS: The only downside is that is it on WND.com, not a particularly reputable site.)

I'm not sure how you might have been using RSS since I didn't use it myself, but there is still an RSS link at the top of the "Unread Content" (ie. your default content stream) page. I couldn't locate another RSS button elsewhere.

Jenni: 
I currently have no friends at all and would love to have people in my life (my real, physical, real-world life) that I can share  and discuss my values (objectivism and capitalism) with. What can I do to find such friends in real life? I live on the east side of Indianapolis.
Closely related: I have been studying economics on my own and have been thinking I should major in it since I enjoy learning about it so much and it might put me in touch with other pro-capitalist people. On the other hand, given the schools that dominate the econ departments today, I'm thinking it might be a mistake to do that.  --Chris
These aren't really philosophical questions per se, so the only real way to go about answering them is to use my own past experience with life.  So the answers are probably going to seem a bit unscientific.

In essence, the answer to the first question is that if you want to meet people, you need to go where the people are.  I don't mean move--I live in Ohio myself, and I know for a fact that there are a fair number of Objectivists and/or fellow travelers in the local area.  Some I've even met via this forum.  There usually aren't enough in a small geographical area to form an actual "club", and for friendship it's really not enough that you both be interested in Objectivism or Capitalism, odd as that may sound.  Friendships generally form around a shared interest in DOING things, not just talking about them.  So you need to go to where people are doing things together.  This has the added benefit that if you don't hit it off with anyone particularly well, hey, at least you got to enjoy the activity.  Almost every group of people that is enthusiastic about an activity is looking for more people to join them, so it's pretty easy to find the equivalent of a "beginner's class" for just about anything, if you just look.
While it's great to have people around who agree with you on politics and philosophy, I think you'll find that for genuine friendship and companionship this isn't really all that necessary (or sufficient, for that matter).  I actually know plenty of people that I agree very strongly with on many issues, yet I cannot STAND them, personally.  I know many people that I disagree with on a large number of issues, but we're quite close.  And every possible degree of shading in between.  I've found in my own life that it's not so much specific shared values that drive the closeness of a relationship (although that's usually how the relationship gets started and how you maintain it, by sharing activities), but a similar APPROACH to those values.  Pretty much all the things that get lumped under the vague heading of "personality" or "sense of life".  So, really, that's it--you'll have more success with meeting people if you . . . go out and meet people.  Yeah, it's a tautology.  But it really does work.

As for your economics studies . . . I am going to give you what is probably going to sound like completely insane advice.  It is not the advice that pretty much anyone else will give you regarding college, but this is based on some HORRIBLE experiences of my own and those of many of my friends, so LISTEN UP.

DO NOT pick your major in college based on what you enjoy learning/reading about.  If you don't have a particular educational goal in mind re: college, DON'T GO AT ALL.  Get a job, ANY job, instead, and cultivate your JOB SKILLS.  Meet people who are successful in their positions and cultivate your relationship with them.  I don't mean be a suckup.  I mean, talk to them, learn what they know that lets them do what they do, study their personal behavior.  It doesn't hurt to be friendly because they may be able to give you a line on an opportunity or three, but don't depend on that.
Once you have some kind of notion of what you do and don't want to do CAREER-wise, THEN it's time to start looking at educational opportunities, and it's very important to keep in mind that what you are making here is a FINANCIAL INVESTMENT.  You are looking to get value out of this, and most college courses are INSANELY overpriced at present.  Don't disdain vocational training or local community colleges--the value they offer for the amount of money you have to spend is often much, much better than anything else you'll find.  Don't spend more money than you have to and pay cash if you can.  If you can manage to live with your parents or a roommate or otherwise save money on housing and other living expenses, do so.  You're not being a "parasite", you are building your future.  The more money you can save in the beginning, the better off you will be later on.  Borrowing money at this stage in your life is like putting an anchor on a leaky rowboat.  You're not even all that sure you can float your own weight, much less that great heavy mass.

Ultimately my educational advice is that if you're going to be spending money on it, you need to be absolutely as cold-blooded as Midas Mulligan in how you treat the transaction.  Be a total hardass and DEMAND your money's worth, because this stuff is EXPENSIVE.  Aside from a house, a college education is probably the most expensive single thing you'll ever buy in your life (and maybe even MORE expensive than that house, in some cases).  Would you buy a house based on liking the looks of it?  No.  Would you buy a car because it has a nice paint job?  Heck no.  Don't stumble into an educational decision.  And don't listen to the educational advisors who insist that "you can change majors later".  Sure, you can, but remember that their job is to SELL YOU COLLEGE.  Treat them like what they are, salespeople, and question whether you need what they're selling AT ALL.  Then be prepared to walk away from that deal if you aren't sure what you want or aren't getting it.
You will save yourself SO much grief later on in life.  And also, once you're firm in your mind about what you want to get out of college, you will have the motivation you need to sweat it out even if the program is filled with poncy twits.  So, if the thought of poncy twits in your program is worrying you, that's a good sign that it's not something you want to plunge into right now.  You have other options.  College is not some kind of way of putting off adulthood.  It is jumping in head-first without bothering to check how deep the water is.

Just a funny video. I like it because it's pretty well done:

When Rand calls someone a "great man", she's not quantifying his overall worth, just how productive he is.
In this case, we can quantify each electrician's productiveness by the number of houses they wire up in a year.

Try thinking of five things you are glad have not happened to you whenever the thought comes up. It will change your mood for the better immediately. Psychologists have done a number of experiments on this method and found that it works.
I think the underlying mechanism must be that it swamps the crow epistemology with positive thoughts, which sounds like the kind of thing you're looking for.

I'm almost 90% through Moon is a Harsh Mistress and I like it. It's all plot and melodrama, with almost no inner conflict and drama, but the plot keeps one interested. Heinlein demonstrates a knowledge of the history of revolutions. Not just because his characters quote the American founders, but in the way revolutions play out. Though the author hints that he's more anarchist than Objectivist, this does not intrude on the plot. 
I started and gave up on another Heinlein book once because it seemed pretty juvenile: I've forgotten the name but it was from the Lazarus Long series and revolved around free love and incest. 
From the little I've read, Heinlein uses sci-fi but his themes appear to be more philosophical than sci-fi: critiques of attitudes, conventional ideas and politics. 

For what purpose do you want to achieve this end? Writing eloquently isn't necessary if you just want to understand something for yourself, but it is necessary if you want to communicate effectively to a certain subset of people. As Jack mentioned, focusing on arguing, convincing, or communicating is hitting the gas before the starter, if you don't first have some end you're looking to achieve.
 
That said, I, too, wanted to communicate better some years ago, half because I just wanted to win arguments. Eventually, I realized that winning arguments isn't possible unless you're interested and honest enough to consider many facts and viewpoints. That caused me to stop caring as much about winning the arguments, and to start caring more about knowing the truth for myself. Soon, I also began caring more about which truths I focused on, since I was now learning for myself rather than others.

The single most helpful thing I did (biggest bang for the buck) was making myself stop and think (even when I was embarrassed and didn't want to), "Do I really believe this? Why?" It may amaze you how little you actually know about something, if you stop to think about it. But that thinking will become habit, and soon produces compounding positive results for any given thing on which you choose to focus.

For what purpose do you want to achieve this end? Writing eloquently isn't necessary if you just want to understand something for yourself, but it is necessary if you want to communicate effectively to a certain subset of people. As Jack mentioned, focusing on arguing, convincing, or communicating is hitting the gas before the starter, if you don't first have some end you're looking to achieve.
 
That said, I, too, wanted to communicate better some years ago, half because I just wanted to win arguments. Eventually, I realized that winning arguments isn't possible unless you're interested and honest enough to consider many facts and viewpoints. That caused me to stop caring as much about winning the arguments, and to start caring more about knowing the truth for myself. Soon, I also began caring more about which truths I focused on, since I was now learning for myself rather than others.

The single most helpful thing I did (biggest bang for the buck) was making myself stop and think (even when I was embarrassed and didn't want to), "Do I really believe this? Why?" It may amaze you how little you actually know about something, if you stop to think about it. But that thinking will become habit, and soon produces compounding positive results for any given thing on which you choose to focus.

For what purpose do you want to achieve this end? Writing eloquently isn't necessary if you just want to understand something for yourself, but it is necessary if you want to communicate effectively to a certain subset of people. As Jack mentioned, focusing on arguing, convincing, or communicating is hitting the gas before the starter, if you don't first have some end you're looking to achieve.
 
That said, I, too, wanted to communicate better some years ago, half because I just wanted to win arguments. Eventually, I realized that winning arguments isn't possible unless you're interested and honest enough to consider many facts and viewpoints. That caused me to stop caring as much about winning the arguments, and to start caring more about knowing the truth for myself. Soon, I also began caring more about which truths I focused on, since I was now learning for myself rather than others.

The single most helpful thing I did (biggest bang for the buck) was making myself stop and think (even when I was embarrassed and didn't want to), "Do I really believe this? Why?" It may amaze you how little you actually know about something, if you stop to think about it. But that thinking will become habit, and soon produces compounding positive results for any given thing on which you choose to focus.

DeltaAccel, it seems you've arrived at your conclusions at a critical moment in your personal development with the independence of mind necessary to make your life a satisfactory one. You have discovered Ayn Rand, and the philosophy she represents. My hope is that you have the strength of your convictions to act upon these revelations, disregard popular ideas when you've reasoned that they are wrong, live for your own sake, and have damned good time for the rest of your many years.

Folks like Schiff and Rogers are right about a lot of theory, particularly with a long-term view, but they seem to have a very strong anti-US bias. Not in the sense of disliking the US, but in thinking the US is in a worse off state than most. All the evidence points to US dollar strength vis-a-vis other fiat currencies for the near-term. If one looks at public debt, the Yen would seem to be the most risky major currency. If one looks at private debt and mal-investment, China looks like it went crazy in the last few years. Yet, libertarian commentators like these focus on the U.S. To do so indicates to me that they care more about the U.S., and are therefore more concerned about U.S. issues, and are trying to make a political argument rather than something a financial adviser would make.
 
To put it another way: I agree with much of their criticism of the U.S., but that's a political argument. When it comes to financial advice, one's own political concerns can blind one with a huge bias. 
 
But forget the people. Your underlying question is about a US$ collapse. I'll ask a question in return: what is the mechanism by which this would happen? What are the steps in which it plays out? For instance, does China start to sell its US$ bonds? Do U.S. citizens start to use something else trade with each other? What such things would one look for?

A politician's success does not "show" anything one way or the other about the rightness of a stance. So, it cannot show #2. As for #1, yes it does show that, but this is not news: most Republicans have always supported all sorts of statist and protectionist schemes, as well as being for drug-control and anti-abortion... and until recently, anti-gay.
 
This might be a contention among Objectivists and other intellectuals but it is not a contention of anyone actually running for President. If you want to consider the intellectual argument which has little relevance to practical events in this century, then you have framed the question incorrectly because you've stepped back to something that few would seriously question if it is abstract enough.
 
The people who brought us communism were Caucasians who lived relatively close to the Caucasus mountains FDR was as white and WASPy as the next guy, and he's responsible for the biggest ever jump in statism among U.S. presidents. The progressive movement was a movement of white farmers. Teddy Roosevelt was a trust-busting white guy. On the other hand, there were lots of good white guys too. Race does not determine political ideology.

The Progressives, Teddy, and FDR were supported by a lot of people -- mostly white, but that's not a causal factor, merely a reflection of the largest demographic -- who felt that they were losers... that the world was cheating them out of something... that they had to rise up and fight for their rights. The irony is that their ignorance of politics meant that they pushed the country further into statism.

The same thing is happening now, across the political spectrum. people who feel they have not recovered from the great recession are mad and looking for someone else to blame. It does not strike them to look at their own faces in the mirror. Instead, like always, they look for a scapegoat: "I am not a loser", they cry, "It is that guy who is keeping me down. If that Jew was not lending money at high rates, I would be able to succeed in life. If that Mexican was not taking 'my' job, I would not feel so out of control." [One author called these, "The Disaffected]
 
The real problem in the U.S. economy is too much statism. There was a time when you could check off industry after industry -- telecoms, steel, cars, healthcare, agriculture, home-building, finance, education -- and you would find the U.S. more free than most other countries. You would not be able to do that today. Healthcare is much more free in most of the third-world than it is here. Education has been so for a while. As most of the world reduced government control of the economy the U.S. continued to increase it. While people debate between stimulus and austerity, the real need is for economic freedom. That is something Trump does not bring to the table. he is as statist, protectionist, and economically fascist as Hillary. 
 
Looking much longer term, the real problems in the U.S. economy will revolve around things like Social security, Medicare, welfare and the debt. Again, Trump falls down on these.
 
He ignored the really serious problems and -- in a misdirection -- panders to the fears and insecurity that have been caused by all this statism, and finds a scapegoat in Mexicans! This would be funny if so many people did not fall for him, in their grasping for a straw.

On this score, I think Objectivism is doing pretty well in its current (third?) generation. The passage of time, the self-conscious fight against rationalism, and a fragmentation of leadership have all been for the good. Of course, there's a type of dogmatic person who is attracted to radical movements (sometimes they even hop from one philosophy to another -- satanism for a few years, then Objectivism, the Hinduism). However, I think the proportion of dogmatists has been reducing with each successive generation.

Intelligent people aren't always rational. But I've never been dismissed like that by any rational person. Also, I wasn't born an Objectivist. I became one. I didn't dismiss Objectivism before learning about it. It's just something I wouldn't do, no matter how many people decide to insult it or attack it with fallacious arguments. Why assume that other rational people would?
 
P.S. In general, I really don't think that is how groups necessarily function. I think it takes a specific kind of, very damaged, culture in which most people will react like that to a point of view just because it's tarnished by shallow attacks.
 
I think that in a relatively rational culture people are able to differentiate between substantive criticism and slander, and if they see a point of view being savaged, if anything, they become curious about what it is that upset all the irrational savages. They wouldn't just take the irrational attacks as cause for dismissing their target belief system.
 
I think the guy gives way too much credit to those types of attacks. I'm sure it works with the kind of fringe groups I mentioned above ( the far left and religious fundamentalists), but the main reason why Objectivism is unpopular with normal, reasonable people is because of what it is, not because of any of the lies obsessed bloggers spread about Ayn Rand. Objectivism is radical philosophy that contradicts pretty much everything most people believe about morality and politics. It's a tough sell, with or without the idiots calling Ayn Rand names.
 
Let's put it this way: it wasn't Ayn Rand's slanderers who went on o'Reilly and said that according to Objectivism nuking Tehran should be a tactical option available to the military (or whatever was said exactly). It was Leonard Peikoff. And, in my opinion at least, it was a pretty accurate representation of Objectivism. It was a mistake to say it, because it's not something most Americans are ready to hear, but it's not like it's not true. And I bet that single TV appearance turned off more people to Objectivism than all the slanderous articles put together.

“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked.” - Hank Rearden
 
The notion here is that a penalty ought be imposed by someone.
 
 
The conclusion of the article offers a false alternative as well.
Or learn to recognize on for yourself, what makes for a potentially slanderous approach, and/or simply dismiss fallacious arguments.
 
The idea of attracting people who are not part of the movement, reeks of an agenda.
 
The idea that every bad argument or fallacious notion needs to be called to task and identified, once again by appealing to imposing a higher authority to oversee it, undermines the very notion that other minds are capable of developing such a capacity for themselves.

Are not those who misrepresent information the ones who become the victims, counting on the evasions and blindness of those they deceive from discovering the truth?

People get pretty set in their ways and are slow to change, no matter the present living context. Say the world's organizational structures had some huge catastrophic happening like multi-country nuclear war. What would the remaining people do? And I mean, present-day people, the ones living right this very moment. Would they begin setting fires to their remaining abodes, forget everything about their prior money-and-trading social system, and go live in the caves? That would be fantastic, ridiculous. They would pick up where they left off and adjust to the new norm, with their personal dispositions more or less intact for day-to-day living.

My point is that "collapse" isn't a possibility. Change for the worse happens at a moderate rate at most, because people are slow to change for better or worse when most of their daily context stays the same. And, usually they've changed for the better when most of their daily context is uprooted and thrown in a worse direction than the prior normal.

Re the OP, here's something I wrote a few years ago:

Consider the 1680’s, when John Locke was writing (but unable to publish) his most influential works, in exile from the Catholic James II, while Louis XIV was revoking the Edict of Nantes, and witches were swinging in the Massachusetts of Cotton Mather. Fast forward 100 years and it’s unthinkable that you have the founding of the United States, where freedom of religion and the press are part of the founding principles. The point is that big changes can happen, ideas are vital to those changes, and history is very unpredictable. As is the future.

http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=22063&p=278209

I should have mentioned that Germany was still smouldering from the aftermath of the 30 Years War. And the Turks were on Vienna's doorstep. You think we've got it rough?

To chime in on the pessimism, taking a cue from The Only Path To Tomorrow, man is continually faced with the choice to go forward or to go back.
 
Aside from an individual living on a desert island, where men live in a geographical area, some social system will exist. If you lived in Iran, it would be under a theocracy. Imagine trying to live as an individualist, or be an advocate of individualism there.
 
If you lived in Russia, it would be under communist rule. Do you think you could be an outspoken advocate of Capitalism, or be left alone to quietly pursue your own goals and values?
 
Civilization, as Miss Rand wrote, is the process of setting man free from man. The idea that Objectivism can be a Phoenix waiting to rise from the ashes rests on a false notion that a collapse of civilization would result in being able to start with "a clean sheet".
 
Both the Magna Carta and The Declaration of Independence were met with violence after their inceptions. Here, in the United States of America, to use the boiling frog metaphor, Capitalism is perishing for lack of a moral base and full philosophical defense.
 
Thanks to Ayn Rand, a moral base, founded on the fact that existence exists and the choice to live, laid the way for the identification a "right" being a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. While I agree that an understanding of this cannot be bought with money, books and ARI activities can. The alternative that remains is to be a Active Man in pursuit of an individualist's independence, or a Passive Man with the unacknowledged hope that Active Men will continue to pick up the slack.

I too think of the quote Anuj reproduced above: "..fight for the future... live in it today...". I do not do very much on this account, but that's how I think of the little I do.

I don't need to know that the world will become close to Objectivist in my lifetime. I know I might not gain all the values I seek, but that should not stop me from seeking some. (e.g. Outside Objectivism, if some activists had not started agitating for gay rights, laws would not have moved as fast as they did.)
 
In addition, there are activities where you create a value but may not gain much in material terms (think about Roark building something for free): there's a pleasure in the creation of value. The books ARI has distributed to high-schoolers and the the "FreeObjectivistBooks" project have certainly introduced some people to Objectivism, or firmed up their understanding. This is the creation of objective value, even if the final material impact is a few generations down the road. It gives me pleasure to be a small part of this. I can't say it is a top value, but it is worth more to me than the extra ice-creams or whatever I might buy with the money. 
 
Everyone has to judge where this value fits in their hierarchy, and how much time and money they will spend.
 
Some people choose to engage deeply in activism (as opposed to donating), and that's fine too. The Ayn Rand quote applies better to them. For instance, the people at IJ probably know that they aren't going to get huge changes by chipping away at bad laws. Yet, each victory is a victory for some defendant, and one less link in the chain of armor they're attacking. Their "living in the future" is knowing that if this goes on, and they keep breaking more links, and others do so too, the armor will be weak one day.    The ARI books project and the IJ legal case approach are very different in the way they pay off psychologically. The former is a long-term, ground-up approach, but the feedback (of success) is sporadic and indirect. The IJ's approach is more nitty-gritty, but one gets concrete feedback. I think one has to decide which one suits you; and perhaps it is a mix.   If one takes the IJ approach and broadens it a bit, one can focus on an area of law, instead of single cases. yet, one can keep the focus narrow, and not try to widen it into everything Objectivism wants of politics. This is where IJ's offshoot "The Castle Coalition" fits. In scope, it is a bit like the gay-activists or the abolitionists: it's focus is a single type of law that violates people's rights. I think its a pretty good choice of subject, because it has more mass-appeal than being pro-immigration or pro-abortion.  
Added: ... Discussing/arguing with others will seldom give you a great immediate payoff. It's rare for the other person to change their mind right then. If your opponent is worth talking to, then he has formed his ideas from various things he has integrated over time. He's not going to let one challenge disrupt that. So, as far as activism goes, be patient and give him what he needs to question himself. Realize that this questioning, and re-integration is a solitary process that he will do on his own. Meanwhile, the value you get is in talking to another human being who takes ideas seriously. You also get value in seeking out objections to your own views, to see if you need to do some re-integration too.

Modern folks who decide there is no value in mysticism, have only pragmatism and altruism as substitutes.  While these ideas are not limited to supporting concrete ideas on the left, while the concretes on the right are just different expressions of the same basic ethics, the left is more consistent in the application of these ideas in ethics and law.  If you are looking for a consistent philosophy without studying philosophy, the answer lies in the policies of the left.  The right is a mess of conflicting ideas without a clear fundamental purpose.