That’s how you trick the gullible, start with a bit of truth they can understand and then jump off the deep end into lunacy.
Comment on What more need be said about it?
malaph@infosec.pub 1 year ago
There’s at least a grain of truth in that book. Try starting a business or producing something.
Look at domestic attempts to mine lithium or building semiconductor plants. Try building anything here.
“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you. . . you may know that your society is doomed.”
Avg@lemm.ee 1 year ago
c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The same can be said about basically anything, that’s why you have a brain to evaluate what parts are grounded in the truth and what is a conclusion drawn from truth that serves the specific needs of whoever is spinning the narrative.
malaph@infosec.pub 1 year ago
You can agree with some principles of a work and reject others. What parts of her philosophy do you find to be lunacy?
TSG_Asmodeus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What parts of her philosophy do you find to be lunacy?
“A man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions… He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer–because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.”
malaph@infosec.pub 1 year ago
Yeah… I’m not a fan of that either personally.
Wakmrow@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The premise that some people are just better than everyone else is not intelligent. Valuing a person’s worth as a human by measuring their productivity is genocidal.
Eufalconimorph@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Valuing a person’s worth as a human by measuring their productivity is genocidal.
Of course you don’t value people based on their productivity! That’s downright anti-American “from each according to his ability” commie talk! You value people based on their net worth! One Dollar, One Vote, that’s what I always say.
/s,
malaph@infosec.pub 1 year ago
Some people are just better in terms of being productive. I don’t see how that’s debatable. The question is just if you let those people keep they’re outsized earnings or you forcibly redistribute them.
chakan2@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Her stances on Race, Rape, Economics, Gender, and her Writing style…all lunacy.
malaph@infosec.pub 1 year ago
I like her stance on economics and free markets … Also the prime mover concept is somewhat accurate
chakan2@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s not a grain of truth…it’s an environmental protection.
That’s almost the most ironic Aryan Rand post you could make.
marmo7ade@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yea, it’s a dump truck full of sand. Cities can’t build municipal fiber internet because spectrum owns the fucking pole. The assertion that this is an “environmental protection” is so insulting that my comment would be deleted if I told you what I really think about you.
Tangent5280@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Why don’t you just save us the trouble and delete your comment yourself?
sarsaparilyptus@midwest.social 1 year ago
Most intelligent ancap
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Sure. Try it. Try making a railroad without eminent domain.
Rodeo@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Eniment domain doesn’t appear to be the problem here lmao
It’s more like
Try making a railroad when the industry has been captured by regulations written by the big players whose purpose is to erect barriers to entry for any new railroad companies that might want to start up, and reduce costs by reducing safety. Also, you need angel investors to give you billions and anyone with the means to do that is already in bed with the big boys so they’re not going to give you shit.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Except it wasn’t a new railroad company in the book.
Rodeo@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
It is abundantly clear that we’re not talking about the details of the book anymore. We are talking about that one passage and how it relates to our current society.
malaph@infosec.pub 1 year ago
The protagonist being in a privileged position due to government seisuze of private property is certainly an excellent point. I just feel the state exercising power in the other direction, against productive ventures instead of property owners, may be a little too in vogue these days.
wizzor@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
It seems to me this passage speaks against the bankers, intellectual property owners, monopolists, land owners and the like. All gate keepers of resources.
Perhaps Atlas is actually someone else than Rand thought.
malaph@infosec.pub 1 year ago
It speaks against a system where political favour dictates your success as a producer over your ability to compete. If you feel land owners and intellectual property owners are gate keepers in a society where your can have your own ideas and buy your own property I don’t know what to say.
wizzor@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
I know.
The permits, policies, regulation and political apparatuses which Rand so despises are legal fictions which allow a small group of people control, who gets to use what resources and how.
Currencies, fractional reserve banking, patents and land ownership are similar legal fiction, which allow a small group to control who gets to use what resources and how.
If I want to sell razor blades to a Gillette razor, I will get sued for patent infringement. Is their gatekeepping somehow more morally valid than the politician’s who gives a tax break to their competitor since their production line is in his city?
I was trying to humorously point out, that the quoted part of Rand’s text could be read almost as a socialist opinion, where the value created arises from the worker and not the owners.
malaph@infosec.pub 1 year ago
I guess the difference being the people in control of permits and policies produce nothing of value. If a capitalist fails to produce he no longer holds the property or patents. Someone else gets them to try to compete.
The reason capitalism is moral is that the people who get the scarce resources need to be effective in providing for everyone else by creating or they lose them. Under a central planning system this is not the case. Scarce resources are held by connected people … The state bails them out if they really fuck up.
Nothing is stopping you from creating an improved Gillette razor and competing without blatenly copying their patent… Property is expensive but available (problem created by government with interest rate manipulation and making land one of the only viable hard assets) you can hire people for your factory. They’ll cost 10x what they do overseas though… So you’d probably just go there.
Man you won’t find me defending fractional reserve banking or fiat currency. Those are also things created by politicians and bankers. They’re just means of stealing value. You also can’t have socialism without fiat currency. The myth that you can rob the 1% to pay for the needs of everyone… Well do the math … Liquidate the 10 richest people and it funds the state for maybe a month or something.
Ah I didn’t get the joke I guess lol. I’m not really much of a fan of socialism. If companies can’t build without permits and tax breaks then you dont really have a level playing field anymore and you no longer have functional creative destruction. Old inefficient well connected incombants strangle the new razor corp in the crib and you’re stuck paying 35 dollars for blades :)
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I’ve read all of Rand and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But not for the right reasons.
Coming from a background myself of community art > touring performance artist > clown/circus school > comedy and improv… I found things like “I’ma write a book where a character delivers a speech on capitalism longer than the communist manifesto” to be quite funny.
The way people spoke to each other, the ridiculous melodrama from the perspective of a soy bean stuck on a train, a community made from pure gold inside a hologram inside a volcano, how people can only have sex if they bite each other, the amazing lazzi (sketch) of the rich man accidentally giving a homeless man $100 bill instead of $1 and the homeless man not caring because it was an accident, the guy putting out a steel furnace in meltdown while naked with his bear hands…
I thought it was very funny. I chortled all the way through. a perfect 7/10.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I work in municipal development. You want to open a new business, build a house, or develop land in my city, you need my signature to do it.
I’m one of those officious pricks. I’m “the man” holding people down.
Because if I don’t then all these rich fucks pave over everything, flood their neighbor’s land, block traffic, poison their customers, and sell houses that’ll collapse 10 minutes after The warranty expires.
So yeah, people have to get our permission to do things that affect the community.
marmo7ade@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That already happened and continues to happen. Because corporations bribe the government to allow it. They call it lobbying. And you know this. The feigned ignorance is comical. Why do ISPs own the rights to public telephone poles and prevent municipal internet? Because people like you gave the ISPs those rights.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There’s a huge difference between a politician and a municipal employee. Our planners and engineers don’t take lobbying money, and our engineering criteria and building codes are based on physical reality, not policy.
In our city and many others, Council cannot force us to allow a particular development. They can sign all the agreements they want to waive use restrictions and fees, but the engineer and building official are still the final authority on whether or not something can be built, and their reviews do not consider politics.
malaph@infosec.pub 1 year ago
Where I live approval on average takes a year or more. Permits alone can cost like 50k for a house. All of those things you’ve mentioned would result in court cases and awards …
Honestly even residential houses that are to code are sort of trash aren’t they? Like laminated wood chips and saw dust more and more every year.
How many other approvals are required above you to build? How long and at what cost ? Mostly curious. Here its pretty bad IMO. Here being Canada.
jj4211@lemmy.world 1 year ago
For one, not necessarily, and two, small comfort if it happens after the fact when it could be avoided with some reasonable oversight. For example, screwing up erosion is something likely to be overlooked by parties involved and is at high risk of not being noticed naturally until after damage is difficult or impossible to undo. Besides, I think folks like it when matters like that are settled before they might incur liability.
Another example, I had some HVAC work done. The county inspectors highlighted a fire hazard after they were done, that I never would have realized unless the house caught fire.
Now where I live, permits aren’t overly expensive and are fairly expedient as are inspections. I can understand frustrations if there’s no effort at reasonable efficiencies, but then again some projects require community fair chance to become aware and provide feedback, and those sorts of projects can really drag out the time since it’s mostly waiting to give a chance for it to be noticed.
malaph@infosec.pub 1 year ago
Like you say avoiding liability is in everyone’s interest. In a utopian libertarian society maybe an inspector someone you’d want to pay electively like an engineer.
Someone who could coordinate consultations with surrounding properties and engage others who are experts with say surface water etc.
The other option might be your insurance company would require inspection for you to receive coverage… In the event of say an HVAC electrical fire. Then the cost is certifying the build is covered by a private company instead of being a state operated service which is free from the pressures of competition. Also then delays in permitting could also incur liability :)
In reality if permitting is quick, affordable and isn’t weilded like a political weapon Im mostly fine with it. The federal government is using it to pretty much shut down oil and gas development in Canada. Municipal permitting is partly why we have a massive housing crisis.
HessiaNerd@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I am an engineer. I love making things. I work in a heavily regulated industry (Med device), and it is a huge pain in the ass. I have to fill out obscene amounts of paperwork for everything I do. I live in the woods with a well and a septic system. I am hoping to disconnect from the electric grid in a few years.
I bought into rugged individualism when I was younger, but I have come to realize it is a farce. I am really glad there is the structure and oversight for these things that can harm people. Complex systems require diverse areas of expertise and multiple layers of oversight and protection.
The sentiment that it is some great burden to “obtain permission from men who do nothing” is a blatant strawman for what the processes actually are.