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polymathy posted:I'm not assuming anything. I'm proposing we propose the idea as a legitimate possibility and potential solution to the culture war and escalating violence and see how many people are sympathetic to it, whether left or right. Who gives a poo poo? It's not going to happen, so what's your endgame for this conversation?
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Jan 21, 2021 13:43
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polymathy posted:I never said it was. It is simply a potential course of action that should be validly considered. At least in the United States, the concept has had a stigma (not without reason) since the Civil War and I think that's a mistake. It won't fix all problems but it's a perfectly valid concept to seriously consider. This is a dumb thing for a libertarian to ask, isn't it? You already know full well that there is no such thing as seceding from a state or state-like entity without violence, unless that state is already in such free-fall that it is incapable of projecting force. If anything, you're framing it incorrectly, reflect on why you've trained yourself this way.
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Jan 21, 2021 13:54
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Sephyr posted:I used to have 2 libertarian friends. One from a family that fled the USSR during Stalin and made them wary of even school lunches because it was the slippery road to 'socialism', and one who was just a naive rich bloke whose thinking amounted to "Freedom is good, so more freedom means more good!" I'm actually heading much more towards the "Ehh, don't really care about politics, gotta live my own life" stage myself. I've said it before, but I'll reiterate: Libertarians who went for Trump are loving dummies. I don't know if this will be surprising to some or not, but I don't really hang out with other libertarians. Most of my friends are on the Left, and those that aren't simply aren't interested in politics. I have no interest in forming friendships based purely or even mostly on politics and I don't intend for politics to have more than a small role in my life. Not sure I want to open this can of worms, but could you please loving cite where Ron Paul went "back to being a racist crank"? The casualness with which that accusation, which should be accompanied by copious evidence, is thrown about is appalling. The newsletters have been debated to death but if your friend didn't hold them against Ron Paul in 2008 or 2012 I hardly can imagine what he's done since then that would change her mind.
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Jan 21, 2021 13:55
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Forgetting the topic of secession for a moment, I'd like to compare a libertarian economic arrangement with one that you'd prefer. I'm assuming most of you favor anti-capitalist, worked-owned co-ops and that sort of thing mostly. What I'm wondering is whether or not you see a socially useful and valid role for the Entrepreneur in your ideal society? As you probably know, libertarians and Austrian economists place a central emphasis on the Entrepreneur in facilitating productive economic growth and generating prosperity. In our view, an economy's function should be to cater to the needs and desires of the consumer. Mises used to say that the "consumer is King" in his conception of a laissez-faire free market economy. The role of the entrepreneur is to predict future consumer desires and figure out how to combine capital goods in a new, better or more efficient way in order to satisfy those consumer preferences. The trouble I see with a socialist economy is that not everyone has entrepreneurial skills and it doesn't seem to me that worker-owned co-ops where decisions have to be democratically ratified would be able to replace this function. It seems socially valuable to me that certain talented people be able to see through their particular vision of a new product or production method to fruition without being undermined by less entrepreneurial-minded employees voting against it or obstructing it in some other way. It's also struck me that socialists spend a lot of time focused on improving work conditions and wages for employees (valid to be sure), but they seem to fail to recognize that all employees are also consumers. Their materially well-being is not improved just by working fewer hours or earning more money. The most important thing impacting their material well-being is stores stocked with goods they want to buy at low prices. The wrong policies aimed at improving conditions for the worker often harm the prospects for the consumer, even though both are the same person. If giving up "democracy in the workplace" (which many workers don't give a poo poo about to begin with) and permitting the employer to potentially receive a profit on their labor amounts to more efficient production throughout the entire economy, more goods and services they want to buy at lower prices, the trade-off could well be worth it if you take into account the worker as both wage-earner and consumer.
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Jan 21, 2021 14:24
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Worker co-ops hate entrepreneurship? What? The gently caress are you talking about?
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Jan 21, 2021 14:32
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polymathy posted:
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Jan 21, 2021 14:39
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Who What Now posted:Worker co-ops hate entrepreneurship? What? The gently caress are you talking about? Isn't the idea with worker co-ops that decisions made within the company, i.e. what to produce, how to produce it, etc, have to be democratically voted on? And I understand that the workers could vote to make a person they assume has entrepreneurial skills and leadership abilities the temporary "head" of the company in charge of important decisions, but how does that vote establish that this particular person actually has entrepreneurial ability or foresight? In a libertarian society, entrepreneurs have the ability to put up their own capital, or find investors willing to finance his or her idea, and then direct the enterprise until the product reaches market seeing the vision through to fruition. The potential to earn a profit at the end of this process is the incentive. Thus the market, consumers buying or not buying the product, determines the entrepreneurs ability rather than workers democratic vote within the business. I'd argue this arrangement is better for consumers, and even workers, in the long run.
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Jan 21, 2021 15:03
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Why is the only way you can conceive entrepeneurship is the idea of one galaxy brain man descending from the heavens to dispense genius in exchange for total control of the outcome? Do you not think that lots of competent people working together are more likely to have a larger amount of understanding of the optimal processes and also more good ideas because they all have their brains working at the same time?
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Jan 21, 2021 15:04
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polymathy posted:I'm actually heading much more towards the "Ehh, don't really care about politics, gotta live my own life" stage myself. Well, I only had the three, but according to them their libertarian communities went MAGA (And Qanon) with a vengeance. Which surprises me none, given that Molyneaux and other online cult-leaders were already the few common threads binding the liberty loon collective, and bowed before a bigger con-man. Do we know what Hans Herman Hoppe thought of Trump? He feels like the jealous kind of tyrant, so he might have decried MAGa since it wasn't his baby. Regarding Ron Paul: He literally tweeted a comic with the "happy merchant" meme image, among other crude stereotypes. While decrying 'cultural marxism'. He later said it was an office 'mistake' and erased it. funny how all they little mistakes always go in the same direction, eh, jrod? https://thehill.com/homenews/house/395176-ron-paul-tweets-racist-cartoon-faces-backlash Is that copious evidence? Or just the latest in a loon series of little incidents that you insist amount to nothing? I assume you'll just ignore it since it goes against your whine, but I'm actually kinda curious to see how you'll just wave it away. Also, I fully disbelieve that your friends are on the Left, because it requires believing you have friends in the first place. We have to work from plausible premises here.
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Jan 21, 2021 15:10
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VitalSigns posted:Yes I asked those two questions together on purpose for exactly this reason: to see if you would protest that moving to a different country is too hard when it's you being inconvenienced by the federal government, but tell me "hey just move then" if the US fractures into different countries and my new country passes laws against me existing. I am interested to note that you do recognize the double standard, yet carried on with it anyway. I don't think I'm being inconsistent. If we recognize that any level of government can be tyrannical and oppress it's people, it seems preferable that there be smaller political units so that people have a greater ability to get out from under political oppression. This also would have the effect of incentivizing States to not oppress their citizens too much or else they'll all leave drying up the tax base. Last year I moved from California to Oregon. Oregon has no sales tax, rent is somewhat cheaper, there are a number of advantages. But the ease of making this move is orders of magnitude less than if I moved to Mexico or Canada. It would be even better if California broke up into several states and I could have just moved 100 miles to get to another state instead of 800.
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Jan 21, 2021 15:16
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Have you ever lived in an insular small town?
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Jan 21, 2021 15:18
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polymathy posted:Isn't the idea with worker co-ops that decisions made within the company, i.e. what to produce, how to produce it, etc, have to be democratically voted on? And I understand that the workers could vote to make a person they assume has entrepreneurial skills and leadership abilities the temporary "head" of the company in charge of important decisions, but how does that vote establish that this particular person actually has entrepreneurial ability or foresight? Read a book other than Atlas Shrugged, I'm begging you.
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Jan 21, 2021 15:19
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OwlFancier posted:Why is the only way you can conceive entrepeneurship is the idea of one galaxy brain man descending from the heavens to dispense genius in exchange for total control of the outcome? Who is to say that all the people employed at a very large company are competent to make decisions about high-level capital goods utilization, market research, and all the varied and complex aspects of running a business? The problem with all forms of democracy, whether within the workplace or outside of it, is that all people are given equal say despite their widely disparate intelligence, knowledge and skill level. It's better for society as a whole if people are able to use their specific talents in their positions to make decisions without democratic ratification.
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Jan 21, 2021 15:24
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polymathy posted:I don't think I'm being inconsistent. Why do you assume you would be able to do that so easily if California and Oregon were different countries, when you just pointed out that you can't easily move to Canada or Mexico because of legal barriers?
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Jan 21, 2021 15:24
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polymathy posted:Who is to say that all the people employed at a very large company are competent to make decisions about high-level capital goods utilization, market research, and all the varied and complex aspects of running a business? It's worse for society as a whole actually. Maximizing profits, that is, allowing ourselves to follow the natural pattern of behavior indicated by thermodynamics ensures that civilizational collapse arrives as soon as possible. The ideal system for a sentient species strives towards the elimination of growth and the achievement of a steady-state equilibrium. You should watch this, it will expand your capacity to analyze the world: https://youtu.be/5WPB2u8EzL8
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Jan 21, 2021 15:33
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polymathy posted:Who is to say that all the people employed at a very large company are competent to make decisions about high-level capital goods utilization, market research, and all the varied and complex aspects of running a business? Do you think a democratic business model is "all people make all decisions all the time"?  EDIT: When I present a recommended course of action to my boss and he says yes it's not because I'm an expert in that area whose judgement he trusts, but because he's in fact an inspired entrepeneur, a visionary of capital who knows all. hooman fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Jan 21, 2021 |
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Jan 21, 2021 15:52
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Sephyr posted:Well, I only had the three, but according to them their libertarian communities went MAGA (And Qanon) with a vengeance. Which surprises me none, given that Molyneaux and other online cult-leaders were already the few common threads binding the liberty loon collective, and bowed before a bigger con-man. Isn't it funny how a "racist" like Ron Paul totally hides all his racist beliefs his entire life, except for a handful of paragraphs from a couple of newsletters in the early 1990s. Then he goes totally silent, not uttering a single racist statement again after that, save for a single tweet featuring a cartoon with offensive stereotypes in 2018 which was promptly deleted and an apology offered. Does that sound credible? Here's a more plausible explanation. What we know for certain is that Ron Paul doesn't run his own social media accounts. Obviously. He's an 85 year old man who let's interns and various other people handle all that stuff. If you've ever done tech-y jobs like this where you have to routinely and consistently post stuff on Twitter, Facebook or wherever, you get loving sloppy. What I suspect probably happened is that whoever was running his account wanted to make a tweet on the topic of Cultural Marxism and just went to Google Images, clicked and copied one of the first images that came up, pasted it and posted the tweet without carefully examining the image. By the way, the phrase "cultural Marxism" is not a loving anti-Semitic phrase inherently, it has a legitimate academic and descriptive meaning. If Ron Paul's a racist, why was the tweet deleted immediately and an apology offered? If your single example from 1992 through 2021 of Ron Paul's supposedly virulent racism is a single tweet with some offensive cartoons that we know was posted by someone other than Ron Paul, you've got a pretty weak loving case. And don't loving bullshit me that your friend, who wasn't convinced by the newsletters, saw that tweet and said "oh wow, so I guess Ron Paul's been a racist all along, how could I have missed it?" Come on bro. Give how ya'll seem able to spend time posting on these forums for months and years on end, while I have to do it in bursts when I occasionally have some free time every several months before getting back to my real life, I'm not sure a comparison of our respective social lives would end up looking too flattering for you. Just sayin'.
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Jan 21, 2021 15:55
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OwlFancier posted:Why is the only way you can conceive entrepeneurship is the idea of one galaxy brain man descending from the heavens to dispense genius in exchange for total control of the outcome? I genuinely don't think that he can think that way. I hate this term, but the farther one goes towards the political right the more everything is about the individual, totally atomised and unable or unwilling to consider power dynamics, social consequences or the simple fact that any major human endeavour is always done by many people working together. Everything worthwhile is the result of one special individual (who is inherently better, but it's not eugenics seriously) and everyone else is a worthless peon who should thank the superior being for allowing them to bask in their glory. The reason that this belief works for those that subscribe to it is that they think that they are or will be that person. Edit: Keep in mind also that, on more than one occasion, jrod has explicitly stated that he is opposed to material equality. The superior capitalist must be rewarded, because he is superior. If he fails, he wasn't a superior capitalist (or the state interfered); if he succeeds, he is - QED. JustJeff88 fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Jan 21, 2021 |
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Jan 21, 2021 15:57
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JustJeff88 posted:I genuinely don't think that he can think that way. I hate this term, but the farther one goes towards the political right the more everything is about the individual, totally atomised and unable or unwilling to consider power dynamics, social consequences or the simple fact that any major human endeavour is always done by many people working together. Everything worthwhile is the result of one special individual (who is inherently better, but it's not eugenics seriously) and everyone else is a worthless peon who should thank the superior being for allowing them to bask in their glory. The reason that this belief works for those that subscribe to it is that they think that they are or will be that person. You're creating a strawman. I never said any of that, nor do I believe in it. I've also stated many times that I have no objection to worker co-ops. They would be legal in a libertarian society and if people want to organize themselves in that way, go for it. I'm just observing that human beings are unequal and entrepreneurial ability, marketing and invention are not skills that all people possess. There's no value judgments made on that of this. The entrepreneur is not "inherently better" than anyone else. He or she just has a specific ability and I think that ability should be maximally used for the benefit of society as a whole. My belief in this doesn't preclude concern about power dynamics or social consequences.
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Jan 21, 2021 16:07
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polymathy posted:
Oh, is that so? Then by all means tell us the "legitimate" academic and descriptive meanings. 
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Jan 21, 2021 16:07
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polymathy posted:By the way, the phrase "cultural Marxism" is not a loving anti-Semitic phrase inherently, it has a legitimate academic and descriptive meaning. No, it doesn't, it really really doesn't. Said 'meaning' is utter incoherent at best that's an obvious dogwhistle for racism and support of fascism.
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Jan 21, 2021 16:09
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polymathy posted:Okay, maybe the confusion here is that you're conflating "decentralization" with "political decentralization". I oppose the latter but not necessarily the former. I oppose the State because I'm opposed to the initiation of violence and because I recognize the danger in permitting a monopoly of violence to exist. Ok, so what you want is a billion independent rival hamlets, duchies, principalities, petty kingdoms, farming communes, pirate confederations, mafia states, theocracies, filibusters, democratic city-states, pretty slavery aristocracies, segregated Apartheid states, Marxist-Leninist dictatorships, anarchist cooperatives and other rival political entities, all with different forms of government, social organizations, laws and legal traditions, economic policies, etc...who all use the same currency, the same trade agreements, all the same weights and measures, with no trade or immigration barriers anywhere, and with all resources and infrastructure centralized under the control of a few supranational megacorporations somehow? E: have you ever played Shadowrun? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Jan 21, 2021 |
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Jan 21, 2021 16:09
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polymathy posted:Isn't it funny how a "racist" like Ron Paul totally hides all his racist beliefs his entire life, except for a handful of paragraphs from a couple of newsletters in the early 1990s. Then he goes totally silent, not uttering a single racist statement again after that, save for a single tweet featuring a cartoon with offensive stereotypes in 2018 which was promptly deleted and an apology offered. Does that sound credible? Got stuff to do today, but going to laugh at you later. For now: Cultural Marxism is a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims Western Marxism as the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture.[1][2][3] The conspiracists claim that an elite of Marxist theorists and Frankfurt School intellectuals are subverting Western society with a culture war that undermines the Christian values of traditionalist conservatism and promotes the cultural liberal values of the 1960s counterculture and multiculturalism, progressive politics and political correctness, misrepresented as identity politics created by critical theory.[2][3][4]
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Jan 21, 2021 16:11
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I am also howling at jrod trying to go "Uhhh, I'm way cooler and have more friends than all of you so nyeah!"
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Jan 21, 2021 16:18
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polymathy posted:Isn't it funny how a "racist" like Ron Paul totally hides all his racist beliefs his entire life, except for a handful of paragraphs from a couple of newsletters in the early 1990s remember when ron paul happily accepted funds from loving stormfront and hired a kkk member as a campaign coordinator during his 2008 campaign nothing racist about that!
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Jan 21, 2021 16:22
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Who What Now posted:I am also howling at jrod trying to go "Uhhh, I'm way cooler and have more friends than all of you so nyeah!" It's probably true but c'mon we're goons it's not a high bar
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Jan 21, 2021 16:23
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polymathy posted:Isn't it funny how a "racist" like Ron Paul totally hides all his racist beliefs his entire life, except for a handful of paragraphs from a couple of newsletters in the early 1990s. Then he goes totally silent, not uttering a single racist statement again after that, save for a single tweet featuring a cartoon with offensive stereotypes in 2018 which was promptly deleted and an apology offered. Does that sound credible? I know it'll rock your tiny mind, but yeah, that was exactly it. She also said that he doesn't run his own accounts, but that the people he works with and trusts obviously are into this aspect of the culture war, and she could no longer ignore it. She was still upset after learning that some Southern Avenger guy was in deep with the Paul family (She's from Georgia), and one more straw broke the camel's back. The fact that she also spent over a decade listening to (and excusing) similar verbal 'accidents' of her fellow libertarians was also a big thing. See, unlike you, Jrod, some people learn. And we know you only go away to get humiliated in other sites, until they tire of your shtick and you crawl back here. Can't speak for others, but I'm attending med school in another country, so my social life is a bit limited. SA has been a nice outlet for keeping up with things, but I'll leave to others to judge if I've been spending too much time here.
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Jan 21, 2021 16:23
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VitalSigns posted:It's probably true but c'mon we're goons it's not a high bar I'll have you know I have many ones of friends!
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Jan 21, 2021 16:37
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Do we know conclusively that Jrode is not the guy of "Out on the town having the time of my life with a bunch of friends. They're all just out of frame, laughing too" fame?
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Jan 21, 2021 16:40
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polymathy posted:I'm just observing that human beings are unequal and entrepreneurial ability, marketing and invention are not skills that all people possess. Even allowing for this being the case, and making an even greater allowance that one person's 'entreprenurial ability, marketing and invention' skills are all that is really needed to conceive a great product, why should the entrepreneur be the one in charge of everthing and the one that society elevates to some strange demi-god-like status? There are loads of models for how socialist/mutual/cooperative economies would work, and various different sorts in operation in the world right now. One that makes sense to me is that the workers simply replace capital as the arbiters of economic activity (which is kinda like a basic defintion of socialism in any case). At the moment, if I have a great idea for a Super-Widget, I probably have to go to a bank with a proposal and a business plan, or approach other investors in the same way, and if they think that the Super-Widget will be a useful, desirable and profitable product they give me the capital in return for, well, a return on their investment. I use this pile of capital to employ a load of designers, scientists and engineers to turn by idea for the Super-Widget into a reality, comission a bunch of marketing people to tell people about the glory of the Super-Widget, pay a load of labourers to build a Super-Widget factory and hire a load of workers to perform labour in my factory actually building the Super-Widgets, who I pay less than the value of that labour while selling the Super-Widgets at a greater price than the value of the labour that went into making them. I use this surplus to enrich myself and pay back those who gave me my capital. Why not invert it? Instead of approaching investors with a business case, why can't I instead approach a co-operatively owned and run Widget factory and pitch why the workers should instead make my new Super-Widget? If the business case would convince a bunch of capitalists, it would convince the managment committee of a co-op factory. The workers in the factory already hold their own capital to cover the costs tooling up for the Super-Widget, and if they need more they could get it from some sort of mutual (or even national!) investment fund. We thrash out a deal over how much of the profit goes to the factory co-op and how much goes to me, or maybe I buy into the co-op so I get my share that way. When Super-Widgets start rolling off the production lines and flying off the shelves the consumers get their life-altering product, the workers get a fair and democratically-reached compensation for their labour which made my idea a reality and I get the satisfaction of seeing the Super-Widget change the world for the better and an amount of personal enrichment since it was my idea. In either system my idea helps the world and the Super-Widget exists. In both systems my idea would have remained just an idea if it wasn't for the very large number of other people (let's call them 'society') who contributed in ways big and small, directly and indirectly, to making it a reality. But only in one system do I get all the credit and - often - a deeply unfair amount of the resulting wealth.
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Jan 21, 2021 16:41
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I know it's not the biggest problem with what you're saying, and other people are making great points, but I can't get over this immigration thing because it's probably the most practical obvious example that your political philosophy isn't going to lead to the material outcomes you want. You hate how difficult national governments make it to immigrate to another country, even a culturally similar, geographically close-by one like Canada (closer to you in Oregon than most other US states in fact!), and you love that you can just up and move from one state to another internally to our national government without paperwork or permission from any government... Yet you want to throw out the document that makes this possible (the federal constitution which imposes freedom of movement on the states), and break the US up into hundreds or thousands of little sovereign governments controlling their own borders, imposing their own immigration laws, issuing their own passports and citizenship etc. And you can't even assume that they will all respect freedom of movement because you're offering this as a solution to Trumpism and I don't know how much you've listened to Trump people, but even though they don't agree on everything, one thing they do have in common is hatred of immigration. 
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Jan 21, 2021 17:20
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Who What Now posted:Who gives a poo poo? It's not going to happen, so what's your endgame for this conversation? To make us forget the statements he couldn't back up the last time he posted in the thread.
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Jan 21, 2021 17:31
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VitalSigns posted:
That's literally the plot setting of Snow Crash! Getting from anywhere to anywhere in the balkanized former USA now involves crossing through several autonomous, crazy zones, like God-Emperor Hoppe's Wasteland Domains. Anyone can enter the Quiverfull Compound without a passport, but they don't let you leave until you have birthed at least four aryan babies. The toll to enter the Trumputopia is really high since they are building another Wall. In New South Africa all POC are shot on sight, while their clones of Jrod explain that the Ron Paul statues on every corner are not a sign that he was a verminous bigot....
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Jan 21, 2021 17:55
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Sephyr posted:That's literally the plot setting of Snow Crash! Yeah Snow Crash takes "anarcho"-capitalism to its logical conclusion and shows you the impossible world that you'd get. Right down to the privately-owned corporate cops going "I request that you peacefully submit to voluntary arrest, by running away you implicitly consent to the severe beatdown that's coming, thank you for your cooperation" VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Jan 21, 2021 |
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Jan 21, 2021 18:07
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polymathy posted:Isn't the idea with worker co-ops that decisions made within the company, i.e. what to produce, how to produce it, etc, have to be democratically voted on? And I understand that the workers could vote to make a person they assume has entrepreneurial skills and leadership abilities the temporary "head" of the company in charge of important decisions, but how does that vote establish that this particular person actually has entrepreneurial ability or foresight? You've never worked at a large company, have you? Atlas Shrugged is not a documentary. In the book, when Rearden fucks off to parts unknown, do you know what his company would do? It would keep making Rearden metal. Why? Well, the workers already know how to make it, they already have the equipment, and the engineers and scientists who did the actual work of mixing the alloys and testing the results are still employed in R&D. The marketing and sales teams already have secured contracts, the shipping companies they work with already are shipping the material out to places, etc. The C level execs would get another CEO and keep going. Every decently sized company is set up such that if one person dies, is incapacitated, retires, whatever, that the company does not fail. The CEO is not some magical linchpin. Furthermore, just because an entrepreneur starts a company and secures investors, that does not mean that they are competent. Two good recent examples are Theranos and Juicero, both of which failed miserably for a variety of reasons, despite having an entrepreneur that got investors on board. The free market is not always wise, and frequently makes mistakes, as it is an entity run by humans, and especially by humans who want to make a quick buck, in the case of investment. Putting someone in charge of a company is always a risky proposition, and is one fraught with politics inside the company (yes, companies have politics, even well run large companies have politics). Regardless of the method chosen, there's always the risk that the person in charge is a jerk or an idiot (Sears comes to mind). Arguably you're going to get a better perspective from a group of people working together than you will from one person at the top, and frankly, good CEOs listen to their VPs that are experts in their fields (who in turn listen to their directors, who in turn listen to the engineers, etc. etc.). And in the end, a worker co-op puts the workers as the board in charge of firing the executives, which means that instead of chasing quarterly profits to the exclusion of all else (what a typical board seeks), stable and long term growth is what the CEO of a worker co-op seeks, because having a stable business that performs well is what the workers of the company want.
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Jan 21, 2021 18:26
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polymathy posted:In a libertarian society, entrepreneurs have the ability to put up their own capital, or find investors willing to finance his or her idea, and then direct the enterprise until the product reaches market seeing the vision through to fruition. The potential to earn a profit at the end of this process is the incentive. Keep going, though. The ability to consume is based on ones wealth. This isn't an even playing field, even if we assume the market works, it's disproportionately reflective of the monied. Which, I think, shows the idea of 'consumer' as the ultimate determinant of an economic system as flawed, as consumption is not equal among human beings, but in fact a reflection of wealth. This is why people say your ideology is essentially oligarchic. Some win, some lose, but the winners have more money and more influence on both consumption and production habits until society is run entirely for their benefit. It's much easier to win in capitalism if you've already won or inherited from someone who's already won. It might not be impossible to win without having won before, but societies are built on aggregation, not individual cases. To be broader, when we want to organize our economic system around entrepreneurship, it's not much different from organizing a political system around dictatorships and fiefdom. There's very little meaningful difference between the Minister of Wal-Mart and the Owner of Wal-Mart, except in theory, in a non-autocratic system, people have a means of affecting the Ministry of Wal-Mart that is not based on previous wealth, whereas the Owner of Wal-Mart is totally sacrosanct, as the definition of private property demands there be no accountability to anyone.
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Jan 21, 2021 18:45
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Dirk the Average posted:You've never worked at a large company, have you? Atlas Shrugged is not a documentary. In the book, when Rearden fucks off to parts unknown, do you know what his company would do? It would keep making Rearden metal. Why? Well, the workers already know how to make it, they already have the equipment, and the engineers and scientists who did the actual work of mixing the alloys and testing the results are still employed in R&D. The marketing and sales teams already have secured contracts, the shipping companies they work with already are shipping the material out to places, etc. The C level execs would get another CEO and keep going. Every decently sized company is set up such that if one person dies, is incapacitated, retires, whatever, that the company does not fail. The CEO is not some magical linchpin. One of the funniest things about Atlas Shrugged is that the "bad" companies all work like this. When Dagny gets fed up with socialism and fucks off to her late dad's vacation home on her own, the board just tells her assistant "ok you're acting VP now, get to it". Since Francisco d'Anconia inherited his copper empire from daddy instead of building it with his own self-made hands (but this is ok because as a genetic superman he totally would have if he hadn't gotten it from dad), he actually has to sabotage his company from within and bomb all his mines before he quits or they'd just appoint a new CEO and keep on trucking. The "good" companies are all private property of one man and can't be operated after he vanishes because uh idk, probate doesn't exist and no one inherits it, if you vanish without a will your land and buildings lie fallow for eternity. One of the many examples of how Ayn worships Radian fantasy capitalism (the means of production emerge like Athena from the brows of a few godlike supermen), but hates actually existing capitalism (owners of capital control the means of production and even the noble company founder answers to the board of directors who can fire him for loving off to Colorado to live in an rear end in a top hat-businessdude-commune or going on a bizarre racist rant during a public company conference call). It's one of the big internal conflicts of her philosophy: her bizarre egoism rejects the notion that a Great Man should have to answer to boards and shareholders, yet she wants a capitalist economy where investors decide whether a company obtains capital or not VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Jan 21, 2021 |
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Jan 21, 2021 19:04
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The conflict from the first part of the book is Dagny wants to overhaul the freight line to Colorado, but the company board of directors is investing massively in a line to Mexico which they believe will be more profitable (and this is bad and wrong because Mexicans are all lazy thieves, obviously. Canonically: old Ayn emphasizes that the lone "good one" is of pure European Spanish blood, unlike the mestizo workers he benevolently rules). Dagny turns out to be right in the end of course, and it's presented as a unconscionable injustice that the capitalist owners of the company get to make all the decisions and overrule the expert who knows better than them.
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Jan 21, 2021 19:26
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When I was 19 I started reading Rand's For the New Intellectual. In it, she asserts that non-Western culture are all "savages" because they've never produced any worthwhile ideas; meanwhile, their ideas are not worthwhile because they were produced by savages. She also asserted that before the Enlightenment there were no professional intellectuals, only "witch doctors." That was when I decided her works were only useful as doorstops and for killing the odd wolf spider. It immediately became clear that her definition of "philosophy" was just whatever ideology was associated with military hegemony, that she was very racist, and that she probably wouldn't be able to get through a debate with a college freshman. About what you'd expect from a self-styled intellectual who's proud of the fact that they don't read anything beyond what's assigned in Phil 101.
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Jan 21, 2021 19:35
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It's beating a dead horse right now, but for instance pretty much all of big tech do not rely on the ideas of ceos to make them successful (big tech specifically because of my own experiences due to talking to people at conferences etc). All the people silicon Valley folks fellate as geniuses that change the world are basically just babysat most days and the real changes and successes come from below. It's despite their existence not because of them. Like we have actual proof that companies don't work like libertarians believe because we already know it kills companies. Billy Gnosis fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Jan 21, 2021 |
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Jan 21, 2021 19:51
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