Paradise Lost **potential mini spoiler if you intend to read Atlas Shrugged**

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

How much of the Koran have you read, Lisa?

I can't help feeling that's a loaded question OG but the answer would be very little

[Old Greg]

I can't help feeling that's a loaded question OG but the answer would be very little

Of course it's a loaded question.

[ZARDOZ]

Even if that were true, it's the socialising of the losses that's the problem. You do dumb stuff - you fail. That is capitalism. When business fail for doing dumb stuff, then people try their hardest not to do dumb stuff.
All state regulation bundled with state protectionism does is to encourage people to try as much dumb stuff as they can legally get away with.

It's akin to suggesting that if a mother doesn't set rules to force her live-in grown up son to clean his room, he'll end up living in squalor.
What's far more likely to cause him to make a mess is the fact that mum cleans up his room for him when he does.

Without rules to a system you have chaos. The effect was so big with the financial crisis that starting again was unthinkable. The banking organisations intertwined their investment and retail banking so heavily that it would have wiped out almost everything in what equated to no more than an elaborate Ponzi scheme. Having a savings account, shouldn't really come with high expectations of risk but it turned out it did. We shouldn't have to socialise the debt I agree, which is why we need to make sure it can't happen like that again.

The Government does not work independently of the private sector, trying to hamper it. The decisions being made are often heavily influenced by lobbying from the big players in said sectors. Not saying that is right, infact that' probably what is wrong.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Not saying that is right, infact that' probably what is wrong.

Bingo.

The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis - George Reisman - Mises Daily

[pjclarke]

What she is saying is that true charity comes from a desire to help and not an enforced moral obligation - she's not saying that charity is wrong

Which is something that I and I suspect most would agree with. But then she has to go and twist the definition of the word such that the 'moral' thing to do is to consider how the charitable giving will benefit the donor's happiness:-.

'The proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one’s own rational self-interest and one’s own hierarchy of values: the time, money or effort one gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in relation to one’s own happiness.'

So the next time you approached by a volunteer in the High street shaking a tin, according to Rand your proper response should be 'what's in it for me?'.Which is something that I and I suspect most would not agree with. This, I think, is my problem with Rand and her 'philosophy' (BTW it is not a philosophy at all, it is a skewed belief system at best, when my interest was first piqued, I went to the literature; The Oxford Companion to Philosophy does not deem her or her ideas worthy of mention nor does The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. I found this in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

'The influence of Rand's ideas was strongest among college students in the USA but attracted little attention from academic philosophers. Her outspoken defense of capitalism in works like Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1967), and her characterization of her position as a defence of the 'virtue of selfishness' in her essay collection of the same title published in 1964, also brought notoriety, but kept her out of the intellectual mainstream.'

)

she has elevated selfishness to the position of a moral virtue, backed up with several tens of thousands of words of superficially compelling but ultimately empty assertions. When you have to redefine words such as altruism and charity into almost their opposites it is a sign you've gone wrong.

Of course she is popular, there is no shortage of selfish people in the world and Rand gives them a pseudo-intellectual rationale for their self-interest, indeed some seem to read Rand at an early age and stop thinking, believing they have found The Answer. Others grow up.

[Old Greg]

Which is something that I and I suspect most would agree with. But then she has to go and twist the definition of the word such that the 'moral' thing to do is to consider how the charitable giving will benefit the donor's happiness:-.



So the next time you approached by a volunteer in the High street shaking a tin, according to Rand your proper response should be 'what's in it for me?'.Which is something that I and I suspect most would not agree with. This, I think, is my problem with Rand and her 'philosophy' (BTW it is not a philosophy at all, it is a skewed belief system at best, when my interest was first piqued, I went to the literature; The Oxford Companion to Philosophy does not deem her or her ideas worthy of mention nor does The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. I found this in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

)

she has elevated selfishness to the position of a moral virtue, backed up with several tens of thousands of words of superficially compelling but ultimately empty assertions. When you have to redefine words such as altruism and charity into almost their opposites it is a sign you've gone wrong.

Of course she is popular, there is no shortage of selfish people in the world and Rand gives them a pseudo-intellectual rationale for their self-interest, indeed some seem to read Rand at an early age and stop thinking, believing they have found The Answer. Others grow up.

The other approach is to find some interesting ideas, as there are in Marx, Engels and many other political philosophers. But dogmatic belief in the ideas, and in particular the view that you know an objective truth that others reject is folly.

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

Which is something that I and I suspect most would agree with. But then she has to go and twist the definition of the word such that the 'moral' thing to do is to consider how the charitable giving will benefit the donor's happiness:-.



So the next time you approached by a volunteer in the High street shaking a tin, according to Rand your proper response should be 'what's in it for me?'.Which is something that I and I suspect most would not agree with. This, I think, is my problem with Rand and her 'philosophy' (BTW it is not a philosophy at all, it is a skewed belief system at best, when my interest was first piqued, I went to the literature; The Oxford Companion to Philosophy does not deem her or her ideas worthy of mention nor does The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. I found this in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

)

she has elevated selfishness to the position of a moral virtue, backed up with several tens of thousands of words of superficially compelling but ultimately empty assertions. When you have to redefine words such as altruism and charity into almost their opposites it is a sign you've gone wrong.

Of course she is popular, there is no shortage of selfish people in the world and Rand gives them a pseudo-intellectual rationale for their self-interest, indeed some seem to read Rand at an early age and stop thinking, believing they have found The Answer. Others grow up.

Bowing out of this now. I really can't be bothered to discuss something with someone who is only able to quote other people's opinions as they haven't bothered gaining the necessary knowledge to develop their own. Not only that but you have the audacity to criticise those who do have an understanding because they have actually read the book. May I suggest you try Anthem - it was another of her works and is around 100 pages so you may actually get through it - perhaps then we could have a slightly more informed discussion.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Which is something that I and I suspect most would agree with. But then she has to go and twist the definition of the word such that the 'moral' thing to do is to consider how the charitable giving will benefit the donor's happiness:-.



So the next time you approached by a volunteer in the High street shaking a tin, according to Rand your proper response should be 'what's in it for me?'.Which is something that I and I suspect most would not agree with. This, I think, is my problem with Rand and her 'philosophy' (BTW it is not a philosophy at all, it is a skewed belief system at best, when my interest was first piqued, I went to the literature; The Oxford Companion to Philosophy does not deem her or her ideas worthy of mention nor does The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. I found this in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

)

she has elevated selfishness to the position of a moral virtue, backed up with several tens of thousands of words of superficially compelling but ultimately empty assertions. When you have to redefine words such as altruism and charity into almost their opposites it is a sign you've gone wrong.

Of course she is popular, there is no shortage of selfish people in the world and Rand gives them a pseudo-intellectual rationale for their self-interest, indeed some seem to read Rand at an early age and stop thinking, believing they have found The Answer. Others grow up.

You'll have no luck, Lisa.

This guy argues fiercely as if he understands what he's talking about, but...

He doesn't understand what morality is - he just blindly asserts that something is or isn't virtuous as if morality is nothing more than convention, subject to whatever is in vogue at the time.

He doesn't understand what selfishness or greed is. He mistakes selflessness for selfishness, and mistakes selfishness for greed.

He mistakes collective conformity for individual rationality.

He mistakes egoism for egotism, obligation for love, and consensus for reality.

He mistakes the avoidance of death, for living.

He mistakes appeals to authority for reasoned debate.


You can't make him see his mistakes, because to think like a man, rather than to go with the flow like an animal, is a choice only he can make. The best that you can do is to highlight his ignorance for others to learn from.

[Old Greg]

Bowing out of this now. I really can't be bothered to discuss something with someone who is only able to quote other people's opinions as they haven't bothered gaining the necessary knowledge to develop their own. Not only that but you have the audacity to criticise those who do have an understanding because they have actually read the book. May I suggest you try Anthem - it was another of her works and is around 100 pages so you may actually get through it - perhaps then we could have a slightly more informed discussion.

You do realise, Lisa, that SO thinks you are EVIL because you support a degree of taxation, which is theft by threat of violence?

[Zero Liability]

P

He is stuck in some archaic view of the world, where appeals to authority actually mean something - must be a takeaway from the AGW doomsday cult.