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Totally not true. Lefties like to point out that the US outspends the world's combined military spending by double. But they always miss the fact that the US produces the same amount of the worlds IP.

Your statements about captains of industry not being creators themselves, false. False to the past, false to the present and solemnly bound to be false to the future (I know you like Lincoln). The US creates more technology than most of the rest of the rest of the world combined. It is also the largest single collection point of wealth in history, this did not happen on its own accord. Your disregard for this process is what Atlas Shrugged is all about. The future is not made in coffee houses and think tanks. You invent it, you get the right to sell it.

But the "captains of industry" make sure the technical types who can create new stuff are properly capitalized and paid to do their thing. The stuff that gets invented does not get invented by magic. It takes talented people to do it. Now who makes it possible for the talented folks to do their genius thing?

The folks with the money who know where and how to spend and invest it.

ruveyn

I might be poor and not as "smart" as some (I guess you also have no idea how much ADD is a hindrance. ), but I'm still entitled to live. Also, not distributing wealth mean leaving a minority got a such huge part of it that most peoples end up being poor and thus much less able to be creative, thus hurting innovation. You also need public education to maximise a country innovation potential.

BTW, China gonna surpase USA (A declining empire), as the chinesse govnerment invest for research, something that US govnerment do less and less. That US is actually the lead in research in present come from the massive investment the govnerment did to beat the soviets, it won't last forever. Also, the private industry is not enough to replace it, as some research domain is of little interest to private investors.


Good things that I have read Tolkien back then.

Of course. I believe that accumulation/pooling of money in private hands is necessary for the growth and development of society. I'm not a Marxist. However I don't believe owners should be considered gods and be allowed to run roughshod over everyone else. They have to be accountable to the public just like everyone else.

Always entertaining to see someone who normally posts exclusively about Christianity turn and defend Ayn Rand. She was an atheist who despised religion. She believed in the virtue of selfishness and felt that promoting altruism and charity as virtues was a mistake. Helping the poor was not her cup of tea.

Wait a minute, that does sound a lot like modern Christianity now that I think about it.

Yes. We have the uniquely American gospel of supply-side Jesus.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK7gI5lMB7M[/youtube]

And if you are so poor that it threatens your life, and no one wants to hire you because you have zero abilities and zero social competence? Do you not have a duty to yourself to survive?

(In)Vested interests topic

There is nothing wrong with making money. No reason to feel guilt. Just ask Bill Gates. Or Donald Trump. And nothing wrong with becoming a billionaire while making inventions that have social value. It is when money is made in a criminal way like Madoff, Hosni Mubarak and a certain nazi dicatator(who stole millions from innocent victims to finance his war machine).

The creators of wealth like Trump and Gates do not have to share a cent with me. That these billionaires choose to share is a choice. Thus money itself is not the root of anything; though where it came from is a bone of contention, if obtained criminally.

I am poor if measured in cash wealth, uneducated and have no interest in wealth accumulation to amass a fortune. I have no interest in stealing anyone's wealth. Rand and her followers are paranoiacs if they think that the poor lie in wait for them in order to rip them off at any opportunity. There is no Robin Hood conspiracy, only taxes to pay, and Rand simply did not like the idea of paying taxes, to fund causes she did not believe in, like healthcare, education, public transportation, and the like. Perhaps she would want to fund the police, who would come to her rescue if huddled masses of poor people wanted to break down her door to rob her of her wealth. But I could see those like Rand stealing back their taxes, or not paying what is due when one lives in a society that was the fertile ground for potentially wealthy people to get their wealth and prosper.

I think a lot of people's problem with Ayn Rand is that they take her work much to literally and much too seriously. Her books are clearly political lessons thinly wrapped in narrative, and there's nothing that says that you can't take bits and pieces of value out of what she has to say without swallowing the whole thing.

Ayn Rand believed in education before all other things. She especially, and this often got her rousing ovations from people who had never previously considered this, believed in specially educating the gifted. It might sound harsh, but she was right when she said wasting millions, if not billions on people who would never learn to read or write or speak, while not meaning they should die, meant the money could be better spent educating the people whose taxes, at a fair level to provide, wait for it, healthcare to those who can't afford their own, policing and armed forces protection, will help those who can't help themselves through disability.

It was people who wouldn't help themselves she despised, and I think rightly. I mean, being poor doesn't entitle you to wealth. Wealth has to be earned. Simple.

The world, as Rand saw it, was on a very slippery slope, which has only gotten slipperier over the years. We increasing find ways of spending either surplus tax money, or tax money we don't have. The problem is not welfare, ostensibly. The problem is welfare for people with incomes. It's an especially bad problem in my native Australia, is Middle-class welfare. It will eventually bankrupt us when China finds itself another quarry.

She held to simple views that if you could make you own way in the world, then nothing, including government regulation should ever get in your way. That might sound permissive, but when coupled with the strict moral scruple with which, love her or loathe her or, as I do, admire her intellect and envy her prowess with prose, she actually lived by her moral code. How many Rand-haters can claim to have done that?

Well, of course there is nothing wrong with elements of her views. They were widely accepted before she ever came along. But some of her ideas were nutty. She ran a very strange authoritarian cult, thought that science was wrong about smoking and that it was a rational and positive choice (and died of smoking induced illness), had no respect for charity, etc.

Her kooky followers would hang on her every world and adjust their thoughts, dress, smoking habits and associates to whatever norm that Rand determined was in favor. Those who didnt conform were ejected. Her head "priest" later apologized for going along with creating that atmopshere.

Simon says wrote:

She ran a very strange authoritarian cult, thought that science was wrong about smoking and that it was a rational and positive choice (and died of smoking induced illness), had no respect for charity, etc.

Response:

Smoking, believe it or not, is a choice. You choose to smoke. As you also choose when to stop smoking. As you choose not to smoke. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said that smoking would cripple America much in the way it was England, but he held no quarrel with people's choice when taking it up. Remember, freedom goes both ways.

I think it is also useful to get our dictionaries out and learn to abandon the laziness of politically correct Newspeak, and actually think with our brains. Yes. Ayn Rand despised Charity. So do I. It's my belief that being poor, which I am at the moment, doesn't entitle you to wealth. Wealth given for the sake of giving wealth, Charity, definition: Almsgiving, is pointless. Philanthropy, however, which both Ms Rand and I support, is the endowment of wealth for the production of goods and the further generation of wealth.

Charity vs Philanthropy. I wonder, which do the people on this thread support?

Being someone who actually read Atlas Shrugged from cover to cover, I think that I am at least educated enough to give a response.

I do agree with at least one of Rand's tenets, that it is wrong to force altruism. But that's about the only thing that I agree with. She seems to think that making money is the highest form of attainment (making people's lives better, IMO, is, no matter how you do it), that inventors and businessmen are the highest form of life (they are not, they're just human), and that altruism and selflessness are the paths to ruin (if they don't reach the corrupted point like they did in Atlas Shrugged, then no).

I have to say that Atlas Shrugged was NOT entertaining. The Randy people (as I will insist on calling Objectivists and fans of Ayn Rand) will say that it is not the point, that it was meant to be a philosophical work, but the Randy people should realise that a novel's purpose, first and foremost, is to entertain. And I enjoyed bloody Twilight more than I enjoyed Atlas Shrugged.

There are much better ways to write a philosophical work. I recently read Stanislaw Lem's book Solaris, which is a philosophical book, but first and foremost, a work of entertainment. And even when the message is far more overt, say, in Dickens' books Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend, they are still entertaining. Dickens' books have characters every bit as grotesque and repulsive as those in Atlas Shrugged, but Dickens at least knows how to write protagonists. The only protagonist that I felt was remotely interesting (besides the mystery around John Galt) was Francisco d'Anconia. All the others were absolutely repulsive or else inhuman human beings, protagonists and antagonists alike.

Badly written (in terms of entertainment value), stuffed to the gills with repulsive ideology, and with less likeable characters than a typical sitcom. And the movie? They should revive Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and riff it. Not so much a magnum opus as a magnificent octopus, if you forgive the Blackadder reference.

I think Ayn Rand disagreed... but, who really cares?

Both are voluntary. That is good. I prefer charity. One does not have to love mankind to be charitable. Mankind is not lovable.

ruveyn

Dickens was not what I'd call a philosophical writer. Everyone's read Bleak House and A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist and Hard Times and David Copperfield, and whatever else he wrote. His humanism was ill-conceived and ill-considered. Such that people worship Dickens, to me, as a very widely read lover of literature, shows people's smallness, really.

A great work, anything by Dostoyevsky, Joyce, Rand, redefines what 'entertainment' is. Mick Jagger actually said it best when he said of people who came to his concerts, not being fans of either popular music or the Rolling Stones, would sit and say 'Right, you're the entertainer, I ought to be entertained'. The band would play, but the man, neither enjoying the spectacle of popular music nor the Rolling Stones, would sit there wondering when the entertainment would begin.

Believe me, and I'll make this as insulting as you take it, if you like Twilight, you don't like Ayn Rand. And you never will. Her thoughts on the Twilight series would be much the same as mine.

But, to that later. Think about it. Stranger in a Strange Land. Is that really all that entertaining? It made Heinlein's legend. It was a profoundly philosophical work. And is one of my favourite novels. What about Of Mice and Men? That's a nicely philosophical work. Again, it made Steinbeck's legend. And is regarded, rightly, as one of the all-time great works of fiction. Dostoyevsky wrote Demons and The Idiot and Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov and Note from the Underground. All profoundly philosophical. All considered in the all-time greatest works list. Again, rightly.

If you want entertainment, fine. If you want to mindlessly fed something that won't challenge you to think or see past your preexisting prejudices, fine.

Israeli literature at its finest is completely inaccessible to the casual reader. Yoram Kaniuk wrote one of the finest, well-crafted novels in history. The Last Jew. More philosophical and less 'Entertaining' than Atlas Shrugged, but still incredible.

Given the roots of literature, there is no surprise that literature often conveys philosophical underpinnings.

Give Ayn Rand a go. If you didn't like Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead, then read her first novel We the Living. That's more, entertaining. Although, it will probably still turn you off. Her characters are still strong, love their lives, and will never compromise on principle.

Maybe that's it. Maybe her characters are a little rigid. But then, considering the world they were born into, a presceince I will prove in a minute, it amazes me that they could be any other way. It's said of literature, put your characters where they would least like to be. Maybe that's all she did.

Say what you will, you cannot deny two things. One, the supremacy of Ayn Rand's PROSE. She wrote with such breathtaking clarity, even if you don't like WHAT she wrote, you have to admit that HOW she wrote was incredible. Two, she will endure longer than Twilight and Harry Potter combined.

In Atlas Shrugged, the State Science Institute created a new glue that turned out to be incredibly weak. This, believe it or not, is the story of how PostIts were invented. I love PostIts. And they didn't exist when Ayn Rand wrote her novel.

Think about it.