I have just finishef #AtlasShrugged : #AynRand's business thriller, romance, philisophical diatribe, call it what you like, it is a gigantic read. Here is a recent article by #AlexanderHoward

https://theconversation.com/atlas-shrugged-ayn-rands-hero-burns-the-world-down-when-he-doesnt-get-his-way-her-fans-run-the-world-should-we-worry-192510

If you just can’t wait (or maybe you like #books instead), you can find the Mayhew-edited collections here: https://www.amazon.com/ideas/amzn1.account.AEPXNKEX73H7R3R3O3PRYYC36ZCQ/2ZT57WS3NQWGX?&tag=thephoenixtra-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=a3b2b8f8fe7f3e06152b6d4bb2e3898e&camp=1789&creative=9325

#AynRand #bookstodon #essays #ebooks #reading #Amazon #fiction #AtlasShrugged #TheFountainhead #Fountainhead #Anthem #WeTheLiving #Objectivism #philosophy

One reason many #libertarians love the story of Galt's Gulch in #AtlasShrugged is they actually think you can create a competitive modern society without capital. They actually don't understand that capital multiplies the power of #labor.

Seven #management secrets from #AynRand’s #AtlasShrugged:

1. Know the #business from the ground up
2. Earn respect
3. Always take responsibility
4. Deal with the best talent
5. Set an innovative vision
6. Make every deal win-win
7. Don’t prop up the Jim Taggarts

https://thefederalist.com/2017/07/25/7-real-management-secrets-atlas-shrugged/

My latest laptop #sticker courtesy of https://www.teepublic.com/user/ObjectivistShop

#AtlasShrugged #AynRand

I love that the local #EnergyIndustry executive network is called the #Houston *Producers* Forum: https://HoustonProducersForum.org

Someone was inadvertently channeling Francisco d’Anconia that day: https://a.co/cbkDyA8

#energy #OilAndGas #FossilFuels #HoustonTX #HTX #AynRand #AtlasShrugged

@ansonkennedy As they say about most dystopian works, it was supposed to be a warning, not a guidebook

#AynRand #AtlasShrugged

“The essence of life is the achievement of #joy, not the escape from pain.” —#AynRand https://aynrand.org/archives/letters/letter-472/

#values #happiness #AtlasShrugged #DagnyTaggart #JohnGalt #Objectivism #philosophy

https://aynrand.org/novels/atlas-shrugged

@galdor @screwtape @strypey I’m not optimizing for #money, I’m optimizing for happiness.

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires.”

— #AtlasShrugged by #AynRand

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. " - John Rogers

#Quote #JohnRogers #LOTR #AtlasShrugged #AynRand #JRRTolkien

@Tengrain @juddlegum Surprise: you’re extrapolating (or repeating what you’ve heard) that #AynRand advocated #ChildLabor from the back story of a single #AtlasShrugged minor character who owns a coal company and started working at the age of twelve.

Was that first job in a coal mine? Rand only wrote elsewhere in the book that he “started in life as a miner.”

I began my career with temp IT work but before that had menial teenage summer jobs. Was I a child laborer?

@tarmoamer @MarkBrigham @breadandcircuses

> capitalism must serve mankind, not the other way around.

Agreed, though possibly easier said than done.

There is a big problem with reductionism, by which I mean the substitution of a simpler system or model for the actual problem. We use economic systems like capitalism on a theory that they will somehow negotiate this detail in a better way than humans do.

Friedman, for all I think he did horrible things in practice, wrote eloquently about how the coordination of society was a large task not easily done by individuals and how capitalism could manage it better. I vaguely recall some metaphor about spider webs and how a tug on one part of it causes the whole network to respond in a way that is magically orchestrated by the beauty of the system as a whole. I don't know if this was contrived smokescreen or if he believed it, but like the rhetoric of Atlas Shrugged, it was something that captures people's minds and makes them forget that there was a real problem to be solved, outside of the mechanism, and to which the mechanism as a whole needs to be accountable.

I have similar concerns with carbon taxation for Climate. Many think market pressures would work, but my worry isn't that it might not have effect. Rather, it might cause people to think that as long as that mechanism is doing something, the problem is being solved. Reductionism creates a kind of myopia.

The thing is that these things have a lot of trouble at the detail level. Alan Greenspan, for example, spoke of this after the last stock market collapse, suggesting (as amazing as it seems) that it had never occurred to him that there would such a profound effect where theories of what was supposed to cause what effects broke down.

Specifically, he said: "Partially ... I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organisations, specifically banks, is such that they were best capable of protecting shareholders and equity in the firms ... I discovered a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works. I had been going for 40 years with considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well. The overall view I take of regulation is, I took an oath of office when I became Federal Reserve chairman. I'm here to uphold the laws of the land passed by Congress, not my own predilections."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/oct/24/economics-creditcrunch-federal-reserve-greenspan

There he speaks of corporations vs. shareholders, but there are other situations where corporations are imagined to do the right things for society because demand is supposed to naturally drive supply, but we saw during covid how there were amazingly long periods of time where basics like masks, toilet paper, lysol, and vaccines were in short supply and where Friedman's claims that no human could do as well as a market were put into SERIOUS question.

Capitalists often ask us to take a given that any attempts by people to do better will fail, but that just isn't clear at all. And CERTAINLY it's true in the case of safety regulations because left to themselves, you get things like the train accident in Ohio, where corporations were, for efficiency, apparently bypassing required safety practices.

Likewise Antitrust rules did not get there out of the blue, they were due to specific anti-competitive practices. They're often ignored these days but not because that never happens any more. More because the campaign spending limits were overcome, and it's too easy to distract Congressfolk with bribes of one kind or another, often in terms of mega donations to their campaigns.

We have to always be watchful because economic schemes end up counting money as a measure of success, and as long as externalities exist, and as long as regulatory capture and disinformation are allowed to persist as legit mechanisms, it's far more profitable to pursue those than the original goal. And there is zero motivation to ever reconsider the paradigm because everyone invests heavily in the paradigm and sees new paradigms as impossibly disruptive.

#Corporations #Antitrust #Reductionism #Capitalism #CampaignFinance #Friedman #MiltonFriedman #AtlasShrugged

@KorimakoEcology @adamashby @noonjinx @zamallama @bookstodon @audiobooks @smallpoems

the greedy eating
the gullible
voting

for self

#AtlasShrugged #smallpoems

@zamallama @bookstodon @audiobooks #AtlasShrugged by #AynRand. Dreadful philosophy, paper thin characters, ludicrous plot and really, really clumsy writing. I’m normally happy to give up early on books I’m not enjoying but this one became a sort of dare with myself

Live on #YouTube in one hour! https://www.youtube.com/live/6kgc8l9kWfU

To celebrate the 118th anniversary of #AynRand’s birth, New Ideal Live interviews Harry Binswanger on Rand's distinctively value-centered approach to #philosophy—and to living #life. Join us—TODAY (2/2) at 12 pm PT / 3 pm ET!

Subscribe here: http://bit.ly/ARIYT

#values #ethics #egoism #reason #RationalSelfInterest #selfishness #LaissezFaireCapitalism #capitalism #LaissezFaire #TheFountainhead #AtlasShrugged

"So you think that #money is the root of all #evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money?" https://www.capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speech/

There’s a lot of visceral condemnation of #Amazon after an insider revealed the #profit motivation behind their soon-to-be-canceled #AmazonSmile #charity program: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/10ft5iv/amazon_discontinues_charity_donation_program_amid/

#AynRand #AtlasShrugged #capitalism #wealth #trade #FreeTrade #morality #ethics #reason #philosophy #Objectivism

@mossweaver
#TheCumOfHisBrow
#TheSweatOfHisBrow as he cums
#Cummertarianism
#CumRand (the #AynRand of cum)
#Cumjectivism (Cum #Objectivism)
#Anthcum
#TheCumfountainHead (#ThePenisHead: #TheFountainhead but CUM!)
#AtlasCame (#AtlasShrugged as he did so)
#WhoIsCumGalt? (...is #JohnGalt a bit like John Mastodon?)
#CumGenocideApologism
#NativesWasteCum
#CumRights!
#FreedomToCum!
#TheRightToCum!
#TheRightToBeadCum!
#FreedomFromCockTyrrany!
#CapitalistCum
#Capitaliscum
#CumCapital
#FreeMarketCum

Do you have a public #library card or go to a #university? Then you can watch the #Oscar-nominated #documentary “ #AynRand: A Sense of Life ” for FREE on #Kanopy: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/251271

Trailer: https://youtu.be/woFY7LhVlKo

The film sweeps from Rand’s childhood and escape from Soviet #Russia through her struggles in Hollywood to her eventual triumph as the bestselling author of #TheFountainhead and #AtlasShrugged. These books sell hundreds of thousands of copies annually after over half a century.

@arstechnica I agree that the #FTC is constitutional. But it shouldn’t be. https://a.co/5V0WQ7Q
#AynRand #AtlasShrugged #KindleQuotes

@xor @todrobbins @KristianHarstad

Ayn Rand's entire philosophy can pretty much be summed up as "Selfishness is good." How the hell does any open source software developer square "...I will never live for the sake of another man..." with writing free software the entire world can and does benefit from? #OpenSource #OpenSourceSoftware #FLOSS #ImageMagick #AynRand #AtlasShrugged