[Jordan]

http://www.cnn.com/2...gged/index.html

I know lots of people here think Ayn Rand is total douche bag. But that article is kind of interesting. Basically, people are seeing parallels between the book and the current economic situation.

Any thoughts on it?

[J m HofMarN]

Funny, the exact opposite thing is happening in China and Russia with sales of Das Kapital, State and Revolution, and the Little Red Book, rising pretty quickly.

And I think I might have posted an article recently wherein some guy from the Rand institute already. Basically, they blame everything on over regulation, and will quickly shut up when the new government regulations bring hte economy back up as they are begining to do.

[civilian_number_two]

Rand's philosophy is messed up. Were she to have said "I believe that it is every man for himself, and the strong should beat the weak, the clever should beat the stupid, and the able should beat the disabled," then she'd have something that made sense. But her philosophy was all oddly mixed up: we should design a society that allows unfettered competition, except that of course everyone is going to be honest and decent even without any regulation, even that guy in Atlas Shrugged who literally shot men dead when they rioted over working conditions in his factory. We should remove all taxation and put everything on a pay-for-service basis, except the army and the police, who will be funded by voluntary contributions and lotteries, and who will serve only to protect American individual freedoms, and businesses. Everything, she promised, would be as it is now: we would have only the best art, yet it would all be run entirely for profit; we would have the most ethical companies, though they would be subject to no laws; we would have clean industry, though there would be no regulation on it; we would have perfectly-designed cities with decent amounts of public space, even though there would be no organization behind that.

Funny thing is, it's deregulation on lending institutions that caused the lending crisis in the first place; at least Rand had some argument when she said it was government experimentation with national interest rates that caused the Depression she lamented. this time it was the banks all on their own. Yet conservatives claim that it's "liberal economics" that caused the crisis, and blame Obama for not pulling the nation immediately out of it with an expensive war to deal with and a trillion or so in national debt.

I don't believe that there is anything in Atlas Shrugged that even superficially resembles the current state of the American economy. And as much as I have to agree that there are indeed many visionaries in history, and that civilization often leaps forward on the ideas of one man or very few, let's be honest: most of the time, the motor of the world is being fueled by the work of the army of C+ students who do the business of working and earning and spending. You don't need an economist to tell you that Rand's utopia in AS, wherein about 100 people lived in a secret society complete with its own minted money, a central railroad (!) and a copper mine, is absolute insanity. Rand was not an economist, so naturally she can be forgiven for not understanding scale, but my God, most of her readers ought to know better. Atlas Shrugged is a good bit of polemic, but its central message as well as the fiction used to support it are entirely ridiculous.

[Spoon Poetic]

Money isn't even real anymore... It's all virtual. Sometimes I wonder if we can't just reboot the whole system somehow.

Anyway, I don't think it's really hard to draw "parallels" from any two things. I mean talk to the right people and you'll be convinced we're in the middle of what's described in the book of Revelations. Or that 1984 was actually a book of prophecy, not fiction. Or that the Matrix is real.

Humans aren't capable of performing to Rand's expectations. I'm not for complete and total government control of course - I find that a balance is probably best - but take away regulations and the innate selfishness of humanity will turn everything to crap. But I'm pretty much just echoing Civ here.

[civilian_number_two]

I mean talk to the right people and you'll be convinced we're in the middle of what's described in the book of Revelations.

I find that when I'm having one of those conversations, I am talking to the wrong people.

[J m HofMarN]

No, thos conversations are fine, it's when you have a conversation regarding the paralells between george lucas and heinrich himmler that things are off.

[civilian_number_two]

By the way Spoon, money has always been virtual. The only time it was real was when you actually swapped a good or service for another good or service. Even when it's a physical thing, like a weight of gold, it's still hardly a substitute for a shipload of corn.

[Spoon Poetic]

Very true. In fact, I was just thinking about how we should all just go back to the bartering system... That'd solve all our problems, right? Right?? ...

But as far as the economy goes, sometimes I wonder why we can't just find some kind of incredibly simple fix, since money isn't really real anyway. Like what online games with virtual economies do when they want to fix a screwy virtual economy.

[J m HofMarN]

Nonsense. Those bugs in the economies of those games are due to interference in the first place. What is needed is to simply get rid of any regulations and to avoid expensive and unnecessary bug fixes. the merchants can handle it themselves, and if they do find a bug they can be trusted not to exploit it.

[Jordan]

Thanks for the input, I'll use the info here like it's my own when I debate my friend next time we talk about it. Kidding, I'll say I read it somewhere.

[reiner]

I don't buy it. I enjoy my federally mandated protection against exploitation via greed.

[Gobbler]

Very true. In fact, I was just thinking about how we should all just go back to the bartering system... That'd solve all our problems, right? Right?? ...

It would. Provided you can remember the relative worth of one good to all the other goods there are and vice versa.

[Otal Nimrodi]

It would. Provided you can remember the relative worth of one good to all the other goods there are and vice versa.

Isn't bartering more about personal value? I'm willing to give you X for Y. You really need X, but don't need Y.

Like trading cards.

[Gobbler]

Which would make things even more complicated and easier to exploit.

[J m HofMarN]

I think that it is a good thing to assign a general value to an item by general consent. To do that, money is sadly required. Also, keep in mind the fact that bartering would make window shopping and most shopping in general impossible. How could anyone possibly carry an item that was worth a weeks worth of groceries around? What if the person you barter with wants a new tv and you cant fit one in your honda? what if your honda dealer wants twelve blow jobs for a honda with a bigger trunk? Barter is not the way to go. Socialism works, people!