[VincentVinturi]

(11-28-2018 10:40 AM)TigerMandingo Wrote:  

(11-28-2018 10:17 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  

Then you have counterexamples to the likes of Marx and Engels (who was little more than a bum) in brilliant minds like Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand, who in my estimation upheld the sanctity of those principles upon which the American republic was founded, but from which it so fatally departed much too quickly thereafter.

Libertardianism and extreme individuality/selfishness =/= the principles of the Founding Fathers

Libertarianism is a political orientation (not a necessarily philosophical one) that has often times been co-opted by peacenik wussies who don't know when it's time to pick up and fight, and anything-goes anarchists who believe the greatest freedom is the freedom to smoke pot unmolested.

But what I'm alluding to by mentioning Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman is something more fundamental. It's a philosophy which empirically recognizes the true nature and motivation of human beings (which is that they're selfish and motivated by certain incentives, which is essentially what game seeks to do in the domain of relationships), and encompasses such things as:

- Rational self interest: which translates in practice to individual liberty protected by certain, inalienable rights (i.e. "do what you want with your life, as long as you don't prevent others from doing the same") and right to bear arms.

- Laissez-faire economics: basically, free trade. Which translates to a more or less capitalist economy (although we have a mixed economy, and the degree of market freedom is significant), and is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for freedom. That is, everywhere you have freedom you have something approaching to a capitalist economy. But it's not the case that everywhere you have this kind of economy you have freedom.

- Minimal government, which was an express and explicit action by the founding fathers knowing what they know about the nature of government is to always grow its own power and eventually become tyrannical.

So in fact, the evidence is overwhelming that the founding fathers did indeed espouse, enshrine and seek to uphold the same fundamental principles that underpin much of objectivist philosophy (which is not as original as Rand liked to boast) and Austrian economics (although that was a natural consequence of the philosophical component more than anything).

If you'd like to prove me wrong, show me the evidence. And send location.

(11-28-2018 11:05 AM)moneyshot Wrote:  

(11-28-2018 10:17 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  

brilliant minds like Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand, who in my estimation upheld the sanctity of those principles upon which the American republic was founded, but from which it so fatally departed much too quickly thereafter

ah yes, I remember that phase from high school well.

her philosophy is not only complete bunk but she is a fuck-awful writer.

OK, which ideas of hers do you disagree with and why?

In terms of bad writing, I'll concede that point with respect to Atlas Shrugged in particular. It blew me away the first time I read it because taken as a whole the plot is totally epic and the implications leave you reeling and thinking for weeks on end.

But the sermonizing, especially Galt's speech, detracted from it as a pure novel and turned it into some kind of half fiction, half treatise hybrid that gets so plodding you need to take breaks to get through it.

The Fountainhead is much more readable and I think pretty damn good as far novels go. I suspect it's easier to criticize a novel than write your own, or invent and codify a philosophy, but I could be wrong about that. Who knows.

Her earlier fiction work, a novelette called Anthem, is excellent.

(11-28-2018 11:07 AM)The Stronger Sex Wrote:  

Ironically one of the reasons is the lack of traditional masculinity and blue collar/farming culture. They were the Asians before the Asians. Every immigrant group that came to the states, from the first Puritan settlers and including Blacks has been heavily involved in physical work. Even the original Asians worked on the railway construction. On the other hand there's never been Jewish farmers, miners, construction workers or factory workers in America. That means no blue collar pride or country pride. From the very beginning, and driven by the Jewish mothers (the original dragon parents) Jews have been dead set on social and financial climbing.

Do you have a source for this?

I couldn't find any reference or statistics about what percentage of early Jewish immigrants worked in what professions. And I looked.

I did find this interesting excerpt from Tomas Sowell's book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, though:

Quote:

According to a history of the Jews in the United States, "staggering numbers of Jews in the decades before and after the Civil War first experienced America through peddling," which became "the nearly universal American Jewish male experience."

While Jewish peddlers worked as isolated individuals, their supplies came from a wider network: Each peddler functioned in a long Jewish economic chain linking shopkeepers to Jewish wholesalers in the larger cities on whom they depended for credit. The Jewish peddler on the road served as the agent of the Jewish town shopkeeper and the big city jobber. This trading network depended on intracommunal trust.

Wholesaler and peddler understood each other, spoke the same language, and knew the same people. Jewish wholesalers in port cities from New York to San Francisco supplied Jewish peddlers with merchandise which they carried on their backs into the hinterlands --- to farmers, minders, railroad crews and others working far from the big cities and often in places where there were few or no stores.

Peddlers of course also worked in cities and in every region of the country
--- from the Souther plantations to the California mining camps where Levi Strauss first began to sell the rugged trousers that were to make his name famous. While Jewish peddlers often worked in isolation among a non-Jewish population, they were nevertheless tied to a wider Jewish community, not only by commercial ties to Jewish wholesalers and manufacturers, but also to family members in Europe and America. They often saved money to pay for transatlantic passage for relatives in Europe to come and join them.

These savings at some point also allowed the peddler to set up a little shop in town, settle down, get married, and raise a family. The wives and children then worked in the same little business. Often the Jewish shopkeeper or other small business and his family lived above or behind the store.

Milton Friedman's family lived this way when he was growing up, a pattern that
he described as common among the immigrants to America in that era.24 Yet this pattern was by no means confined to Jews or to America. Similar economic and social patterns could be found among the Lebanese in Sierra Leone and among other middleman minorities in other parts of the world. The overseas Chinese storekeeper in the Philippines was likewise "willing to live in a small corner of his store."