@brianl

Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against—then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there it that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of lawbreakers—and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

Atlas Shrugged.

of course, it's wise to form opinions from source material rather than on what others say about the source material. but again, i see nothing in the above passage, nothing in her other writings, and nothing in second hand sources that warrant creating a near complete intellectual framework to live by. and omg, in the us so many do precisely that. her following is cultish. rand is a contagion thats infected our political leadership even. there isnt a single person, not jesus, not ghandi, not machiavelli, jefferson, mao, no one, particularly, ayn fucking rand, that deserves such unquestioning following. with all the great minds of history, it`s disturbing that so many have invested themselves in such a person, but thats what happens with the culture of celebrity. sexy packaging and the ensuing media exposure triumphs again. i really wish people would stop making ayn rand, jesus, rush limbaugh and other such screwballs into intellectual gods deserving worship. thats the real danger, much more so than depending on second hand information sources.

@Vitaliy I try to do that. I just don't find Rand credible and I feel there are much better sources for ideas that differ from my own. Using different and opposing views is great, but I don't think we should use EVERY opposing view.

is there something i said that would suggest i have no first hand experience with rand`s books and lectures? ive read her work, seen interviews of her, and most embarrassing of all, seen the trainwreck of a movie. so lets put that strawman to bed. i can say she sucks, just like i can say mark twain sucks, but since most scholars and critics consider twain one of americas greatest writers, it is not a tenable position. similarly, since rand is considered a joke by most scholars, to turn her rhetoric into a belief system is perilous if you want to be taken seriously. but if you think she is awesome, have at her.

She did write the motto of most indie filmmakers :)

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. - Ayn Rand

On the other hand... here's an article by a former Randian: Atlas Flunked/ I Was A Teenage Randroid By Jason Heller

Emboldened by the clean, innocent, robotic arrogance of Rand characters like Howard Roark and Dagny Taggart, I let my inner asshole loose. I spoke to people with rude, brutal honesty. I walked down the street with my head high, my face expressionless. I was openly disdainful of poor people, my own family included. In other words, I became a practicing sociopath.

https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/atlas-flunked/

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-29/new-normal-american-dream-homeownership-rate-plunges-19-year-low-asking-rents-soar-r

If you view on this as on birth control method and special tax all will fit into place.

Btw horrible situation with education prices is also from same opera.

OTOH, there is such a thing as evidence. For example, do tax cuts and less government regulation actually promote economic growth -- or do they simply concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands and socialize the costs of doing business? It's easy enough to find out the answer, if your mind isn't made up in advance.

In reality it is all complicated. Sadly government does not consist from angels (usually it is quite opposite species). Same for free market proponents and capitalists, especially small.

Idea that somehow static simple solution exist is wrong. Nature is complex thing, same is the society.

We had extremely stable situation because all complexity issues and conflicts were solved with more energy and resources. Real conflicts is visible due to shortages of this things. And it'll be quite nasty and cruel. Same as nature.

Idea that somehow static simple solution exist is wrong. Nature is complex thing, same is the society.

I don't claim to be able to foretell the future, or to say what might have happened in the past if things had been different.

In this case, however, it's a simple matter of assessing evidence which already exists, and outcomes which are already known. Did claims for one policy or other prove to be true in a finite period under limited circumstances? We should be able to arrive at that much.

A lot more of nothing is still nothing. And prices don't just deflate or increase because of what central banks do to influence interest rates. Businesses tend to charge what they think the market will bear and will raise prices accordingly.

The poor, and ever larger swathes of the middle class, do not save money (at least in the US), and many of them have their backs to the wall because of the costs of rent, healthcare, utility bills. In the US most of these are wholly or largely run by businesses and people cannot choose not to pay because they are necessities. But even if they run out of money, business keep charging more if they can. And for healthcare in particular, they can because the government has to pick up the tab.

Sooner or later the US debt will not be sustainable and will crash the world economy if something isn't done. So-called US conservatives harp on about the debt but they are the ones that pushed the country into this, and took on the lions share of the debt under their administrations.

Anyway, the rich have never had it so good, and the wealthiest have something like 40% more money than they did only 20 years ago. If someone wants to challenge that I'll find some stats, but I don't know why this is considered acceptable by anyone.

So-called US conservatives harp on about the debt but they are the ones that pushed the country into this, and took on the lions share of the debt under their administrations.

No, sorry, you can't pin it on one ideology in the US. Both conservatives and liberals have expanded the government and racked up their own versions of entitlement spending. And there's not way around it, debt comes from unfunded or misappropriated entitlements. There's no debt if everyone just pay for their own shit, to be blunt.

Anyways, how can you talk about conservatives pushing the country into debt, when it was the Clinton administration that forced banks to sell bogus mortgages? The Democrats are at fault for that one...

And no, I'm not defending everything conservatives do, and only blaming Democrats, but if you haven't noticed, all our government has been doing for the last 100 years is passing laws and giving special-group benefits that make their administration look good during office, then deferring, shifting, and masking the debt until the other party has to deal with the costs. It's non-stop game of hot-potato. Both parties do this constantly. It's the nature of politics.

and the wealthiest have something like 40% more money than they did only 20 years ago. If someone wants to challenge that I'll find some stats, but I don't know why this is considered acceptable by anyone.

Well, if they actually earned it by producing useful products and running legitimate services, then who cares? You're still thinking in terms of a Zero-Sum game. Yes, unfortunately, we have made some aspects of economics quite zero-sum... but on the philosophical level... one mans wealth is not another loss unless he has set up some agency of coercion. And yes, the philosophy is important to get right so we don't just end up stripping people's money away out of animal-level jealousy and spite. In the case of bankers and politicians? Yes, absolutely, they should have their assets stripped. But who will do this? Who regulates the regulators? More regulation... to solve the issue of unaccountable-regulation? A political 1% to solve the problem of an economic 1%? This is all just fighting fire with gasoline.

including the example of societies which have very different policies and results than ours.

These societies don't exist in a vacuum. For example, many countries with socialized medicine can do so because they're calculating the costs with other market-based countries. The medical innovations they use have to be payed for and developed by someone. Then you also have to take into account population size and genetic homogeneity. Allot of things that work in small-homogenous societies don't work for entire industrial countries with diverse populations.

Truth is painfully obvious: a middle class lifestyle is unaffordable to all but the top 20%. This reality is destabilizing to the current arrangement, i.e. debt-based consumerism a.k.a. neofeudal state-cartel capitalism, so it is actively suppressed by the officially sanctioned narrative: that middle class status is attainable by almost every household with two earners (a mere $50,000 annual household income makes one middle class) and middle class wealth is increasing.

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.ru/2014/05/the-destabilizing-truth-only-wealthy.html

Young adults, age 18 to 34, are most likely to feel the dream is unattainable, with 63% saying it's impossible.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/04/news/economy/american-dream/index.html