Well...Someone on "Business Insider" has posted "something" about Ayn Rand. Put your Shield On!

[KoKo]

BRUCE JUDSON: Providing The Highest Rewards To The Financial Sector Is Not Capitalism
Bruce Judson, New Deal 2.0 | Nov. 18, 2011, 5:14 PM | 395 | 10


Ayn Rand

Bruce Judson

Bruce Judson Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Yale Entrepreneurial Institute; Author, "It Could Happen Here"


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As the dysfunctional nature of our economy becomes ever clear more apparent, the media is appropriately focusing on the whether the ideas of economic thinkers from earlier eras can help to solve today's problems.

Recently, NPR devoted a segment to the thinking of Ayn Rand. The NPR segment quoted from an extensive television interview with her conducted by Mike Wallace in 1959, and now available on YouTube.

As the segment noted, Rand is a hero to many Washington politicians who advocate free markets. In the Wallace interview, Rand said, "I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute, laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy."

The Washington establishment has, in fact, misinterpreted what Rand valued and what she would advocate today.

At this moment, what's relevant to our nation is not the laissez-faire policies Ayn Rand advocated in the late 1950's, as an outgrowth of her philosophical system (which she called "Objectivist"), but what the philosophy itself considered important, how these principles should be applied to our modern economy, and whether we believe implementing these ideas would aid the economy.


http://www.businessinsider.com/irestoring-capitalismi-why-atlas-shrugged-2011-11

[MisterP]

1. absolutely no capitalist system is ever deemed "really capitalist" by the Randroids and Paulbots and

Nozickheads: by process of elimination, the only real capitalist societies have been tribal Iceland and post-1961 Cuba

[KoKo]

2. Did you READ the whole thing fro the link? n/t

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[MFrohike]

4. Save us from dogooder wingnuts

I read the entire article. I think the author might want to reassess his worship of Ms. Rand because he's implicitly questioning her central tenet of glorified selfishness. Honestly, how can you seriously critique the modern financial industry when your goddess is someone who honestly believed that all taxation is theft? I found it really funny how he could remark on the lack of societal value produced by Wall Street without any awareness that societal value is an alien virtue to Ms. Rand. I know she made noises about the progress of society being dependent on entrepreneurs, but she lacked awareness. Society is not an economic system, not is it a political system. That's the biggest goddamn problem with Ayn Rand. It's not that her philosophy is trash (it is) but that her moronic followers can't grasp the idea that founding a society on naked greed will erode your institutions quickly because it creates a marketplace mentality. Everything is for sale. If that's really the society they want, they're some twisted bastards.