curious george

PT1. Thank you for a good reply, I now see that his goal was not neccesarilly money. But would it be wrong to build to suit a clients tastes if ones goal was money? PT2. Your right I haven't read Atlas Shugged yet ("Anthem", "We the Living", and working on "The Fountainhead"). My question is what is the end? If money and/or power aren't in society? Is it greatness relative to ones peers? Or simply being the hardest working and/or most fufilled (spoilers welcome).

I'm currently reading "The Fountainhead", and am puzzled by a key idea in it. Roark builds not to suit his customers taste, but his own taste. I realize that architecture is naturally subjective, but this seems backwards. Lets say Ford made a totally awful car, it only comes in chartruse, gets two miles the the gallon, and is the ugliest car ever concieved. Even if Ford really loves the car, the market and a capitalistic society will reject it. Isn't capitalism based around economic success? (Not that there isn't much good to be said about following ones own beliefs)...

Just a quick word of advice; be careful about what your getting yourself into. A spat with a teacher or boss is typically not a good idea, as much as we love our views... I think that my senior year grades were significantly lower than they should have been because of a well meaning and indeed nice teacher, she was a greeny-feel-goody-help others sort. I have a tendency to argue against and question what is being taught, and so when I argued against global warming or some similar issue I think that my papers was more harshely graded, because my arguments had to be more original (not classroom taught, parroted ideas). Since I wasn't in agreement with the grader or paraphrasing a text book or lesson, my arguments were typically counter-argued in the grading process, and admittedly somewhat less coherent. Long story short, be certain that the ends justify the means, could this argument only win a pyrrhic victory?

Rotted, hollow, and full of S***!

*** Mod's note: Merged with existing topic. -sN *** Hi, I've been lurking for a while ,but have read "Anthem" and "We the living", and am working on "The Fountain Head", and really like Rands views. Anyway one thing that has been troubling me since I learned a bit more about it was the American civil war. It would be wrong to say that it wasn't largely about slavery, which I feel is certainly wrong. However I feel that the overarching theme was self-governence versus central governance. The South felt bullied by tarrifs that were harmful to it, but not to the north. And resistance to laws that mandated the return of... lost property (runaway slaves) as well as other issues. In other words when Lincoln was elected the South felt that the federal government no longer worked well in the regard to southern interests. I certainly feel slavery was wrong (but at the time it was widely acccepted), but the south was justified in seceding. How do you guys feel about the Civil war? (Keep it civil no pun intended)