JustJeff88 posted:

I wanted to compliment you on some wonderful insults, TLM. Just to remind you of what human offal jrod is, I spent the last X months rereading this whole thread and I want to post something that he actually said:


While I can actually understand how people can confuse private and personal property, especially in light of all of the anti-Marxist propaganda that is everywhere, this is for those who think that jrod is just deluded. Given how Caros' attitude has changed towards him over the years (that was fun to read), that's less and less of you. He isn't naïve, or misguided or ignorant of history, he's a genuine sociopath. He genuinely disdains the idea of equality on a fundamental level because he is, for all practical purposes, a racist or a eugenicist. He truly believes that there are a group of people that are inherently better and should be grossly over-privileged to the detriment of everyone else, and even if humanity managed a state of high equality through "non-agression" he would still find it abhorrent.

Again, though, he's not deluded... he knows full well that what he espouses would cause massive suffering and exploitation, but he doesn't care because because the capitalist is god and deserves to reign on high. I knew what kind of person he was when, years ago, he said that he didn't care about inequality, but if this doesn't clinch it for you then I don't know what to tell you. He doesn't talk about how he thinks that everyone would be better off because he's foolish enough to believe that, he's just covering his loathsome beliefs with a veneer of utterly false "good intentions" like every politician who hands out more and more favours to big business while saying that it will be good for the economy. All he cares is that people (namely himself) be able to do what they want and that the übermenschen rise to the top as their inherent superiority merits. He genuinely does not care about the consequences of what he believes, but he has to play pretend so that he doesn't become a Saturday morning cartoon villain.

Guavanaut posted:

A liberal then, in the classical definition of one.

Steen71 posted:

Where's this from?

quote:

Why the hell would you do this?

Doctor Spaceman posted:

How long was the Galt speech?

Hello Sailor posted:

How closely does the plot synopsis of Telemachus Sneezed in Illuminatus match it?

Guavanaut posted:

Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, specifically the bit about how the failsons of English Cavalier aristocrats were the original power base in the South and have been reluctant to give it up.

Mundrial Mantis posted:

-The part about man's mind as his basic tool of survival implies there is a sharp divide between animals and what Rand considers human. It makes me wonder if Rand understood and believed in evolution despite trying to be a super-rational atheist.

VitalSigns posted:

Ayn Rand rejected evolution for precisely this reason.

Hello Sailor posted:

Wait, what? So where did she think humans came from, if divine intervention and natural processes were options she didn't go for?

Dante80 posted:

Her most interesting comment on the implications of evolution may be the following, also from her notes for Atlas Shrugged:
We may still be in evolution, as a species, and living side by side with some “missing links.” [. . .] We do not know to what extent the majority of men are now rational. (They are certainly far from the perfect rational being, and all the teachings they absorb put them still farther back to the pre-human stage.) . . . . (Most men are rational beings, even if none too smart; they are not pre-humans incapable of rational thinking; they can be dealt with only on the basis of free rational, consent.) (p. 466-67.)[5]
She goes on the same entry to describe those incapable of rational life as “sub-human” who need to be “enslaved” and “controlled.” (p. 467.)


In other words, Rand viewed Evolution as deterministic and ultimately hostile to "free will".

atomicgeek posted:

Ooh I've been wanting to read this, thank you. There is a similar passage in American Nations by Colin Woodward, contrasting New England notions of communal freedom with Southern planters' hierarchical liberty, that's also worth a read.

Hello Sailor posted:

Wait, what? So where did she think humans came from, if divine intervention and natural processes were options she didn't go for?

Hello Sailor posted:

Wait, what? So where did she think humans came from, if divine intervention and natural processes were options she didn't go for?

Ayn Rand, notes from Atlas shrugged posted:

The supposition of man’s physical descent from monkeys does not necessarily mean that man’s soul, the rational faculty, is only an elaboration of an animal faculty, different from the animal’s consciousness only in degree, not in kind.”

Nathanial Branden posted:

I remember being astonished to hear her say one day, "After all, the theory of evolution is only a hypothesis." I asked her, "You mean you seriously doubt that more complex life forms — including humans — evolved from less complex life forms?" She shrugged and responded, "I'm really not prepared to say," or words to that effect. I do not mean to imply that she wanted to substitute for the theory of evolution the religious belief that we are all God's creation; but there was definitely something about the concept of evolution that made her uncomfortable.

Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who needs It? posted:

I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent. But a certain hypothesis has haunted me for years; I want to stress that it is only hypothesis. There is an enormous breach of continuity between nature and man’s consciousness, in its distinctive characteristic: his conceptual faculty. It is as if, after aeons of physiological development, the evolutionary process altered its course, and the higher stages of development focused primarily on the consciousness of living species, not their bodies. But the development of a man’s consciousness is volitional: no matter what the innate degree of intelligence he must develop it, he must learn how to use it, he must become human by choice. What if he does not choose to? Then he becomes a transitional phenomenon—a desperate creature that struggles frantically against his own nature, longing for effortless “safety” of an animal’s consciousness, which he cannot recapture, and rebelling against a human consciousness, which he is afraid to achieve.

Mundrial Mantis posted:

The antagonist looters are presented as too weak to take care of themselves or even be outright villainous but work together to be strong enough to hold down the genius and beautiful creators who are all light-skinned (even Franciso d'Anconia IIRC).

Sephyr posted:

Small sidenote about libertarian "charity".

Father Julio Lacelotti is a brazilian priest that actually takes the whole "the last shall be the first" and "what you do for the poor, you do for me" aspects of christianity seriously. He basically spends all of his time taking care of the urban poor, homeless people, arranging meal packets, delivering them in person, listening to the forgotten people of São Paulo, trying to direct them to shelters and programs.

So of course a big-time libertarian Youtuber who is now running for mayor singled him out as a communist radical. Him feeding the poor means they hang around and annoy 'decent people'. Arthur do Val (commonly called 'Mamão Falei', of "Told'em, mama") sicced his followers on him for being a "poverty pimp". And he's been getting death threats now, assholes in motorcycles following him and threatening him to his face. It got so bad he was offered a police escort, but he refused it because the people he helps don't have that kind of luxury.

So, when libertarians say "Private charity will pick up the slack once government is gone"? This is what they mean, and want. Any do-gooder that makes them look bad or gets in the way of their 'social hygiene' plans will be blackballed, expelled, or killed. Charity and social work will never be more than PR or tax scams for them.

Panfilo posted:

This seems to touch on another thing about Libertarians- a lack of class solidarity. The people opposing them are this mindless mob who are a threat to them, the rugged individualists. But they as a group don't have a lot going on to link them to each other. Everything with Libertarians seems transactional (even their voluntaryism feels performative) so it seems like they wouldn't support each other out of pure empathy.

It also kind of explains why they often talk a big game but don't seem to back it up with direct action.

Sephyr posted:

Local libertarians brought to the spotlight by the reactionary surge, mostly affiliated with MBL (Movimento Brasil Livre - Free Brazil Movement) have been -really- good at getting elected latetely. Arthur do Val is a city congressman, I had forgotten to mention. There are many others.

When asked, they say it's so they can destroy Big Government from within and save the taxpayer's money. Really.

Presently, they are big on ending even the paltry affirmative action programs, and ending the Day of Black Concience, the national holiday for afro-brazilian awareness and advancement.

Somfin posted:

It's truly bizarre how every loving libertarian, in power or not, concludes that the real first spending problem isn't poo poo like roads or schools or god forbid the military, it's helping minorities. That always seems to be where they start.

Somfin posted:

It's truly bizarre how every loving libertarian, in power or not, concludes that the real first spending problem isn't poo poo like roads or schools or god forbid the military, it's helping minorities. That always seems to be where they start.

SpaceSDoorGunner posted:

Man if only most countries had a massive program that occupied a significant fraction of almost every countries budget and was typically corrupt, bloated and often several times larger than it needs to be to serve its intended purpose. It’d be great to cut that if that existed. I bet libertarian icons would pay more than lip service to cutting that. You know if it existed.

polymathy posted:

[...]
Then all the ex-slaves would be free to go out and build houses, put up fences, and mix their labor with the land thereby establishing ownership over their portion of it.

polymathy posted:

In contemporary America, and the entire world for that matter, there has been a lot of illegitimate property acquisition. The trouble is that there is no way to rectify all the past injustices if there's no way to determine how to redistribute land. Which land was stolen from whom, and to who does it belong?

When you can determine these things, then redistribution is justified.

polymathy posted:

Lastly I'll just ask why you think people who are fortunate enough to own some property would cynically weaponize that ownership to terrorize and enslave their fellow man? The idea that only a few people will own property and the masses will own none, and thus be forced to be slaves to those who do is simply not how the world works. Concepts like community, religion, charity, and civil society bind men together in groups with the goal of looking out for each other and providing mutual aid.

As is usually the case, it is the State and the Cronies who benefit from the State that are the great violators of property and who continually redistribute wealth except they usually redistribute it to the top.

Panfilo posted:

Libertarian concepts pop up a lot in science fiction, and I'm curious about the reasons why. My own best guess is that their fantasies about small governnent and free markets are so far fetched they have to come up with this fictional premise to allow such a system to actually work.

TLM3101 posted:

OwlFancier posted:

Do they? I thought sci fi would generally portray either hypercapitalism as dystopian or society as being post scarcity to the point it doesn't really make a lot of sense.

VictualSquid posted:

I think it is mostly from a historical correlation. The kind of people who are interested in sf (speculative fiction in general) are also the primary demographic for libertarianism. Outside of the cold war west, libertarianism is actually not that common in sf.

There is also the thing that sf-pulp is in part defined by its crypto racism, sexism and other bigotry that made the readers feel superiour to the open bigotry in non-sh pulp. And libertarianism is all about pretending that non-obvious discrimination is impossible.

Panfilo posted:

Maybe I'm generalizing too much then. But I thought a lot of SF authors like Heinlein and Orson Scott Card had a rather Libertarian bent to their stories.

The other thing I realized is there's a lot of overlap between people that claim to be Libertarian and yet are pretty okay with a big opressive government that directs its violence against other people (as long as they don't have to pay taxes). So maybe some of what I'm thinking isn't so much Libertarian as just right wing. A goon mentioned how in Lucifers Hammer feminism and liberals are the first things to go extinct in society, and it basically seems to act like the protagonist is the only Adult in the room. A lot of these stories seem to suggest that leftist ideals are impractical in the 'real world' or that problems exist solely because of them.

Panfilo posted:

Maybe I'm generalizing too much then. But I thought a lot of SF authors like Heinlein and Orson Scott Card had a rather Libertarian bent to their stories.

The other thing I realized is there's a lot of overlap between people that claim to be Libertarian and yet are pretty okay with a big opressive government that directs its violence against other people (as long as they don't have to pay taxes). So maybe some of what I'm thinking isn't so much Libertarian as just right wing. A goon mentioned how in Lucifers Hammer feminism and liberals are the first things to go extinct in society, and it basically seems to act like the protagonist is the only Adult in the room. A lot of these stories seem to suggest that leftist ideals are impractical in the 'real world' or that problems exist solely because of them.

OwlFancier posted:

Yeah after reading the subsequent post I wondered if you were referring to a specific slice of "classic" SF which I'm sure I read once was down to really weird political beliefs by one of the major SF publishers to only publish white kinda racist libertarian dudes? It's not present in the majority of other sci fi but the ones that rose to prominence at that time were specifically in tune with the politics of one of the major pulp publishers.

The main SF I've been exposed to is like, the Culture series and more modern stuff like cyberpunk and poo poo? Or movie stuff like Alien. Stuff that isn't much like the mid to late 20th century "classic" sci fi and maybe doesn't really qualify as sci fi because it's more SF flavoured I guess? As someone who isnt super into it I guess it feels a lot more like capitalism being dystopian is the more common theme for sci fi.

Though equally perhaps limiting "real SF" to the stuff like heinlein and card and such is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy? I certainly wouldn't know how to describe the Alien series as anything other than science fiction.

JustJeff88 posted:

This trope gets inverted

JustJeff88 posted:

in Deep Space 9 the main character explicitly talks about how the government on Earth is out of touch because they live in paradise but he's out on the frontier.

Somfin posted:

Please, as a former troper, for the love of your own future writing ability, get the hell out of TVTropes and speak not its jargon around these parts.

OwlFancier posted:

It's interesting to contrast that with Voyager which feels like a step backwards. Much more "lone beacon of civilization in the dark continentquadrant" kind of feel to it. There is a distinct feeling of separation between the voyager crew and the people they run into that week. Much more of a sense of chauvinism too.

The Rabbi T. White posted:

I don’t ever recall Garak talking much about Earth?