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'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years; hat tip to GeorgeK.
Topic Started: Jan 9 2009, 10:30 PM (203 Views)
Mark
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HOLY CARP!!!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html

What an excellent article.

So true.
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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
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Mark
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HOLY CARP!!!
Quote:
 

Ultimately, "Atlas Shrugged" is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand's political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear -- leaving everyone the poorer.

One memorable moment in "Atlas" occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today:

Galt: "You want me to be Economic Dictator?"

Mr. Thompson: "Yes!"

"And you'll obey any order I give?"

"Implicitly!"

"Then start by abolishing all income taxes."

"Oh no!" screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. "We couldn't do that . . . How would we pay government employees?"

"Fire your government employees."

"Oh, no!"

Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. But Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do the opposite: to raise the income tax "for purposes of fairness" as Barack Obama puts it.

David Kelley, the president of the Atlas Society, which is dedicated to promoting Rand's ideas, explains that "the older the book gets, the more timely its message." He tells me that there are plans to make "Atlas Shrugged" into a major motion picture -- it is the only classic novel of recent decades that was never made into a movie. "We don't need to make a movie out of the book," Mr. Kelley jokes. "We are living it right now."

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
Rings true, does it not?
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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QuantumIvory
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Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear -- leaving everyone the poorer.


But isn't that exactly what the "levelers" want?
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. We cannot get behind consciousness." -Max Planck

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Mark
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It what liberals and socialists want.

And guess who has been in charge of this country for more years than I have been alive?
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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
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Axtremus
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Mark
Jan 10 2009, 08:18 AM
It what liberals and socialists want.

And guess who has been in charge of this country for more years than I have been alive?
The American people have been in charge of this country.

The American people get exactly the sort of government they collectively voted for all these years.
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Axtremus
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Mark
Jan 9 2009, 10:34 PM
Quote:
 

Ultimately, "Atlas Shrugged" is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand's political admirers complained that she lacked compassion.

The novel is simple-minded.

Ayn Rand had no concept of public health hazard and tragedy of the common.
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Mark
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What?

How can you say that?

She lived in and escaped from one of the most repressive totalitarian, communist regimes that ever existed.

If memory serves, the communists have the worst environmental record to date.
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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
To the extent that one can graduate from college and still be ignorant, one can certainly escape from "one of the most repressive totalitarian, communist regimes that ever existed" and still have no concept of public health hazard and tragedy of the common.

In the "Atlas Shrugged" ideal world, something like the CDC would never exist, there would be no publicly mandated vaccination program -- without which you cannot control serious communicable diseases. Entity like the FCC would also not exist, and no one would regulate, for example, the use of the airwave, without which orderly broadcasting and wireless communications services would be impossible. No one would regulate fishing rights or deforestation or maintain the aquifers, or regulate dumping of wastes into streams and rivers. The telephone, telegraph, and radio revolution of the 1920's and the Internet revolution of the 1990's would not have come to be because there would be no ANSI and no ITU to ratify standards that allow the underlying infrastructure to be built, and it's doubtful that something like IETF would get funded.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Ax: Are you suggesting that the way things have developed to address certain issues is the only way they could have developed???? There are other models such as distributivism and classical liberalism that can ensure the public and common goods of society while safeguarding the rights of the individual.

Facile thought models such as the tragedy of the commons or the free rider problem do not adequately justify collectivistic solutions except by those who are a priori looking to justify collectivism.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Moonbat
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In the "Atlas Shrugged" ideal world, something like the CDC would never exist, there would be no publicly mandated vaccination program -- without which you cannot control serious communicable diseases. Entity like the FCC would also not exist, and no one would regulate, for example, the use of the airwave, without which orderly broadcasting and wireless communications services would be impossible. No one would regulate fishing rights or deforestation or maintain the aquifers, or regulate dumping of wastes into streams and rivers. The telephone, telegraph, and radio revolution of the 1920's and the Internet revolution of the 1990's would not have come to be because there would be no ANSI and no ITU to ratify standards that allow the underlying infrastructure to be built, and it's doubtful that something like IETF would get funded.


:thumb:
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Mark
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How the hell do you extrapolate that the CDC would not exist?

The CDC is something all should support in that they provide for the defense of the country from enemies both foreign and domestic.

Now, could the CDC be streamlined and made to work even better than it does right now?

You bet you a$$ it could.

And yes, forcing someone to take any pharmaceutical is wrong.

The FCC can go to hell as far as I am concerned along with a whole lot more government agencies that simply have no constitutional authority to exist in the first place.
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