Ayn Rand was a sociopath worshipping psuedo yoda

[Naan_Bread]

I have to disagree that her philosophy is better than her writing. She's the laughing stock of western philosophy, and rightly so. Nearly everything about her philosophy is objectionable, if not completely ridiculous. Her "work" on aesthetics is particularly bad.

I agree with you completely. I was just pointing out how awful her prose and general writing style is. You could create deeper, rounder and more believable characters playing the sims.

On a similar note to the aforementioned Microsoft thing, the guy from wikipedia clames to be "objectivist to the core."

[seckle]

microsoft was started at a point when computing was purely business related and only available to major companies with infrastructure. started on a whim with the idea that big corporate computing (IBM) didn't offer affordable solutions that normal people could afford. gates and allen focused on software rather than hardware, as they gambled that if the software was better and more intuitive than the hardware, they could break up IBM's monopoly, and therefore give them competition. this was the late 1970's. In the first 5 years of microsoft, at the point when it went public on wall street, both allen and gates were billionaires, and the rest of the first employees, all millionaires. the idea that corporate monopoly can be challenged, and should be challenged wasn't rand's idea alone, but her vision of altruism over everything, is certainly a part of loads of 70's and 80's major success stories. gates's book 'the road ahead' is a good read for anyone.

[alphacat]

Random thread revival...

I had no idea until recently that Rand was a Social Security & Medicare fraud.

I know that good ideas need consideration on their own merit and should not be totally beholden to their originators, but - I also can't help but to observe lines of transclusion between the person she really was and the package she presented the world with and many of the entitled hypercapitalists arguing for total Laissez-Faire and for political considerations to always take a backseat to the engine of commerce...

[lovelydivot]

This may seem a bit off kilter...

But from reading Atlas shrugged - I have problems believing that she was as "objective" - objective in the Randian sense..
as she - and everyone claims that she is - because that book was squarely balanced between presenting Objective Capitalism and illustrating it's obvious weaknesses...

I mean - One of the main characters was a female that couldn't - for the life of her - get a man to deal with her as a proper business woman...

So - what - Was she just chalking that failure up as - successful objective manuvering on the males part?
How can she accept that brand of objectivism - as a female?
Is she just clarifying the rules for when she "takes the pot" and completely fails to give back?


But I guess you can believe in a thing and simultaneously express it's shortcomings...that would be an example of the original, non-Randian objectivism.

[SCope13]

Read like the first 600 pages of Atlas Shrugged. Maybe the only thing worse than her philosophy is her writing ability.

[seckle]

..

[hifi]

her face reminds me of really nasty tasting orange juice

[chekov]

i think it's also pretty funny how she got so pissed off when the guy she was having an affair with went off with someone else and said he was being altruistic or some shit