The alt-text says "I had a hard time with Ayn Rand because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at "therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone"."
Which has pretty much been my point in asserrting that Atlas Shrugged has a story that almost everyone can appreciate (individual achievement vs. cronyism), and that it's not that theme that makes people leery of Rand (kind of like Paul last night talking about how he was supportive of liberty and Krugman wasn't... why is it so hard for people like him to completely miss the real differences?).
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You can't be a supporter of liberty and a supporter of the Federal Reserve and state managed economies at the same time. The Federal Reserve and state management of the economy are both founded on and maintained by ("legal") anti-libertarian coercion.
ReplyDeleteWhy is this s difficult for you to understand?
You're like a supporter of pick pocketing who believes he is for freedom because he doesn't advocate for mass robbery.
The "real" differences are freedom versus oppression.
Exactly! Only support policies that strengthen the grip of the powerful over the less powerful, like private property and contracts. Maybe some limited liability laws, too, but no similar protections for consumers or workers.
DeleteAgreed, let's do away with private property rights, so that I can come over to your home and take control of all your things, and your home, at gunpoint. After all, if private property rights are not protecting the less powerful, but harming the less powerful, then you as a less powerful person would totally be benefited by this.
DeleteWe can have a mini October revolution in your home. You can bring your granola, Bakunin's "Statism and Anarchy" and your Macbook. I'll bring you some soap and a razor.
Then I can plot to nationalize your stuff whilst yammering "Property is Theft!"
Then when you dare try to stop me, I will send you to the place where all the other petit-bourgeoisie commodity fetishists go, to the gulag. We can't have any bad apples around trying to prevent the social movement towards abolishing private property.
And then, while you're in the gulag, I can send you scientific studies, papers, newspaper articles, personal documents, and sworn testimonies, detailing the incredible prosperity that was had in countries that abolished private property.
Don't worry about the charts, the correct way to view them is upside down. And don't worry about the economic statistics, the correct way to interpret them is by multiplying all the good numbers by 10, and dividing all the bad numbers by 10.
Oh, and I will also send you a copy of my previous post, where I hope you will actually address it this time.
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Daniel: I am not at all surprised that your blog attracts extreme left wing anti-capitalist commie types, like flies on cow manure.
"kind of like Paul last night talking about how he was supportive of liberty and Krugman wasn't... why is it so hard for people like him to completely miss the real differences?"
Deletethe difference to the untrained eye is nuanced -- such as the difference between those who espouse the positive aspects of proactive war (even a war for which they may disagree) vs those view those positives amounting to nothing more than illusory table scraps of the feast that could/should have been
nuanced to those who refuse to view all aspects of proactive war as a short sighted misappropriated worldview ignorant to the realities of opportunity cost -- the inflexibility of "our" positions stem from laws -- the right one has to ones life is not up for subjective interpretation -- nor can this right be victimized by circumstance --
right to life is a law -- though this is most likely lost upon a man rejecting non-contradictory laws -- a man who instead (as far as I can tell)opts to deal exclusively with varying degrees of probability
DK must be a huge fan of minority report
I thank you for your time
@neverlearnedecon,
DeleteThe guy your responding to is a crank, but your pro-Marx nonsense is even worse.
Pete = A Major_Freedom alias in case your curious which specific crank you've brought to your blog Daniel.
ReplyDelete???
DeleteYou have me mistaken.
He may be right, Anonymous... these comments are WAY too short to be from MF.
DeleteGranted, everything else seems right.
I'm sorry Pete- clearly you may indeed be an entirely different crank from the one I referred to. Better?
ReplyDelete