I understand why Ayn Rand is in this comic, but she never financed a damn thing. She was working class herself and on welfare at the end of her life.
So, on top of everything else, she was a hypocrite, but she was not a capitalist, despite her obvious longing to be one.
Usually the gist of existentialcomics (great comic btw if you haven’t read it) is taking well-known philosophers from humanity’s history and pitting them against each other to play with ideas and crack philosophical jokes. With that in mind Ayn Rand’s and her book “Atlas Shrugged” is presented as a philosophy, which may clear up why she is here.
Yeah, I’m familiar with them myself, I’m just saying in this case Ayn Rand is doubling as both the philosopher and the person with money, and in real life she was only a wannabe.
A fair point that more people should know
I think people do not understand where Ayn Rand was coming from. She came from the Soviet Union, a highly collectivist society. Everyone is expected to conform and be all the same economically. Then she got sick of it, emigrated and formed her own Iam14butthisisdeep philosophy. Unfortunately, some rich American asshats saw that her ideas have self-serving utility to justify their ultra-capitalist beliefs and privileges and continue exploitation, and then spread her nonsensical “objectivist” ideas around. Not many people actually believe the philosophy, although we unconsciously apply this especially with middle class NIMBYISM.
“Oh, poor homeless people. I hope they could be housed. But I will elect a politician who will not build social housing because it will bring down the value of my property.”
“I support mitigating climate change. But I do not want windfarms nearby. They are eye sores.”
I mean, lots of people with terrible and damaging ideas came from backgrounds that explain their terrible and damaging ideas. She doesn’t get a pass because the USSR was corrupt, nor does she get a pass because western capitalist society is also corrupt.
She came to the West and made it more corrupt with her half-baked ideas by amplifying the excessive use of individualist values.
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She came from the Soviet Union, a highly collectivist society.
The USSR wasn’t a collectivist society - it was a centalized one. There’s a vast difference. Nobody calls the US military “collectivist,” do they now?
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Centralised but everyone is expected to value the group over the individual. The property in the Soviet Union belongs to the people albeit managed by the state. Therefore, collectivist.
Centralisation does not mean either just means individualism or collectivism.
Centralised but
So you are now claiming that centralization isn’t inherently collectivist?
The property in the Soviet Union belongs to the people albeit managed by the state.
So you are now claiming nothing in the Soviet Union was nationalized?
You can be centralised but not collectivist. See the theory of anarcho-capitalism.
I’m guessing you’re operating from different sensibility of political philosophy. Define collectivism then we can talk.
See the theory of anarcho-capitalism.
I saw it… and just looking at it made it fall apart like an upside-down house of cards in a whirlwind. Strange… this seems to happen every time anyone looks at (so-called) “anarcho-capitalism” a bit too closely. Have you had better luck with it, perhaps?
Anarcho-capitalism doesn’t work, yes. What’s your point?
Have you any luck yet trying to answer me how would you define collectivism?
she was just mad that her privileges were distributed fairly for once
To be fair the owning class are even bigger welfare queens
The are the only welfare queens.
That’s every working class capitalist behaviour I’ve ever met. The average family guy with 4 kids barely able to make ends meet but god forbid if you ever make a disparaging point against Elon musk as if he’s in the same category out there fighting the good fight for the average working joe.
Blind hypocrisy seems to be a necessity in capitalism ideals.
I don’t think Rand longed to be a capitalist… but it really does seem as if she longed to be owned by one.
and on welfare at the end of her life.
You are just repeating what others have stated online without looking into this claim yourself.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ayn-rand-social-security/
She took Social Security and Medicare benefits. She also paid into those. She also paid taxes.
It is morally defensible for those who decry publicly-funded scholarships, Social Security benefits,
and unemployment insurance to turn around and accept them, Rand argued, because the government
had taken money from them by force (via taxes). There’s only one catch: the recipient must regard the
receipt of said benefits as restitution, not a social entitlement.
If she paid into Social Security and Medicare and paid taxes then what is the issue? The paragraph above states
that she did not believe her actions to be hypocrisy because she had paid taxes.
I think everyone understands that people are dicked over and have to participate in the system as it is. However, if you’re going to be the poster child for why meat is murder or how god is fake or how public assistance is evil, it’s also not unfair for people to think you’re a hypocrite if they find you eating a turkey leg, preaching in church or taking public assistance.
She was hypocritical because she thought Medicare and Social Security shouldn’t exist. And was extremely vocal about it. Yet she took them anyhow.
Also, those programs aren’t some kind of retirement savings plan. The money you pay into Social Security today gets paid out to those who are receiving it today. The first people to ever receive Social Security and Medicare never paid a dime into it because it didn’t exist while they were in the workforce.
We need to stop thinking about how the taxes we pay in directly benefits us. Taxes pay to keep our government and society functioning on an even keel. It isn’t a pay in and get your kicks out system. And when people like Ayn Rand go about criticizing it as if it’s a travesty that they had to pay taxes so that other people can live comfortable lives they are showing what kind of self serving fanatics they are.
There’s only one catch: the recipient must regard the receipt of said benefits as restitution, not a social entitlement.
Oh, so magic thought games change the nature of reality. Got it!
My god so much of my young life was spent idolizing this hack.
It’s humiliating, and it damaged every relationship I had. I mean, naturally. Who the fuck am I that anyone who spends time with me would do so from their own rational self interest?
That’s not how love works and I wish I had seen that earlier in my life, because the only thing I’ve found that has any real value is the love of other people. Even if someone were to live by the “philosophy” of objectivism for self preservation, once everyone knows what a selfish twat you are, it’s a matter of time until you find that you NEED other people to survive.
Empathy has value. Altruism is a virtue. Those two sentences were all I needed. Not thousands of pages of nonsense that even the author couldn’t live by.
I mean… rational self interest to anyone with a modicum of foresight is to be kind and foster cooperation
Yes. Exactly. Being self absorbed is against rational self interest.
I have needed so many people in my life, and they’ve needed me. Even when I absolutely did not want to be there, I did it anyway because they’d do it for me.
It’s been a long time since I read those books, probably more than 20 years now. I probably can’t remember 99% of what I read. I remember the hero worship, I remember that town that fell apart after the factory closed, little things.
I was primed to fall right into that shit. Young, questioning my religion (Appalachian Pentecostal. Like, deeeeeply engrained in everything I was), and from the poorest part of the country and ashamed of it. I seen the hypocrisy of the people around me, the preachers living off of offerings while everyone around me starved, knowing very few people who weren’t dirt poor and living with chickens in their houses (like the town that lost the factory).
I thought that maybe the thing that was holding me back was my altruism, because I wanted to rise above that mess.
Altruism is the only way that people forgotten by the world survive. I wouldn’t have made it without food stamps. I wouldn’t have made it without the people who crawled under the house to fix the sewage and never charged my mother a dime. It didn’t matter how smart I was, I wasn’t on an even playing field. It didn’t matter how much I wanted better things. I wasn’t on an even playing field. So many people are worse off than me, and they come from harder backgrounds than me. Meeting the right people is what it takes to get out of it.
Sorry for the wall of text. I mean, maybe I needed to take that shit so seriously to become a better person by damaging myself trying to be selfish. I feel like I would have been better off without it though.
I think social needs like fulfillment and happiness, pride that comes with seeing others succeed, the contentment that comes with deep love for others and receiving that in kind are all things we have evolved to share and receive and can be the end goal just as much as a means to an end. Sure, the evolutionary pressure that created that kind of social dependency may have been more practical and survival oriented in nature, however we are long past that at this point and I think it’s fair to say humans need those things directly in order to be healthy now. Exactly the reason why NASA can’t just send people up together without considering the social dynamics of that unit; even the most intelligent and motivated people will be unable to act in their own self interest without those social needs met properly.
But, but, magic metal makes steadfast man special, which, in turn, causes female Jesus to lubricate in one of the worst love scenes in literature.
If only the moochers would stop getting in their way!
I lost a best friend to Objectivism , and I’m not sure if the dumb bastard has changed his ways. I haven’t the time.
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It’s always kind of weird to see people blame her fucky philosophy for them being cunts. You just found an excuse to be the dick you wanted to be.
You don’t know anything about me.
Only what you’ve said yourself.
In case anyone didn’t know, Ayn Rand idolized serial killer William Edward Hickman.
The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand’s beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation – Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street – on him.
What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote, gushing that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’”
This echoes almost word for word Rand’s later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: “He was born without the ability to consider others.” (The Fountainhead is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ favorite book – he even requires his clerks to read it.)
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/ayn-rand-became-big-admirer-sadistic-serial-killer-william-hickman/
Story 3/10, execution 10/10
France: *happy*
I was expecting him to lay off half of them.
The problem about guillotines is that they seldomly are applied where it matters, just were it sells.
Too be fair though, Hugo Boss designed some very sharp uniforms.
No he didn’t. Hugo Boss only used death camp slave labor to sew it together in his factory.
Two SS officers (Walter something and someone) designed the uniforms.
screams “respect the NAP! you can’t break the NAP!” as she is carried to the guillotine
Many people commenting here more than likely didnt read atlas shrugged - my take away is that the politicians and do nothings at the top are the problem, making poor decisions and never being accountable to them.
Not everything is black and white if you think she was just some capitalist tool to push an agenda do yourself a favor and read the book, if you still have that opinion good on you but at least you did your homework.
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Why do some people keep trying to incite violence over and over again, day by day? It gets tiring, and we all know it’s not going to happen, there’s no revolution of that nature in the future. Most people want safety, stability, and prosperity.
Put the energy into trying to affect change by voting in the right people into office so they can affect the change for us.
And yeah, I know, that’s a hard lift, but still, it’s better for Humanity overall in the long run. Once you start violence, it rarely stops until everything is destroyed.
This is a funny comic. The person it’s “inciting violence” against, Ayn Rand, has been dead for 42 years.
Put the energy into trying to affect change
That’s effect change. It starts with an E.
Put the energy into trying to affect change
That’s effect change. It starts with an E.
From Merriam Webster dictionary…
Affect is usually a verb meaning “to produce an effect upon,” as in “the weather affected his mood.” Effect is usually a noun meaning “a change that results when something is done or happens,” as in “computers have had a huge effect on our lives.”
It’s with an ‘A’.
But I’ll be sure to yell at my voice-to-text mode on your behalf, for getting it wrong in your eyes.
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Keep reading.
From your source:
There are, however, a few relatively uncommon exceptions, and these are worth knowing about.
Effect can be a verb. As a verb, effect generally means “to cause to come into being” or “accomplish.”
the strike effected change within the company
A Few Rare Exceptions
I’ll go with the version that’s a verb most of the time, and is not the exception to the rule.
You’d have to use a different phrase, then. I think it’s easier to just remember that “effect a change” starts with an E, but maybe that’s just because I’ve seen it in print so many times.
I mean I showed you the literal dictionary definition. I’m not quite sure why you’re still trying to bend things in the opposite direction. At this point I think we’ve discussed this enough.
And I showed you how you were wrong in your own source, and you’re still arguing.
NOW DO THIS WITH EXTREME LEFT NARCO DICTATORS IN SOUTH AMERICA AND WITH EXTREME RIGHT MAGA IDIOTS IN US AND WITH CARREER POLITICIANS EVER WHERE.
NOT BUSINESS OWNERS. they arnt as bad as you think…
You seem to lack an understanding of the history of US forced regime change in Latin America and the world.
Quite a lot of (in fact most of) the coups the US have conducted have been against legitimately elected leftwing governments… And sometimes with the aid of, if not for international business interests (dole bananas being the go to example, and the reason the term banana republic exists).
Also, whilst I’m sure that fairly ethical small business operators (perhaps like yourself) easily find cultural avenues to feel attacked regularly - I think you should try to be rational and think through these feelings when you come across topics like this.
For instance, is this comic supposed to be aimed at small business owners, or is it supposed to be a lampooning of Ayn Rand’s philosophies? Judging from the style, it’s from the brand (one could even call them a small business): “Philosophy Comics” - which might be a clue.
…most of society’s woes are aimed at large corporate and political interests, and when confronted on a personal level, most people understand the necessity and community value of small business as being useful and good in society. It tends to be the more money-hungry, greedy, and heatless aspects of large scale global Capitalism and Corporatism that society and culture aims to criticize…
…hence the grey uniforms and drab setting in this comic. So I think you’ve had a knee jerk reaction here, and should be aware of it to in order to detach yourself from the kinds of global large scale Capitalism, and the history of Colonialist and Imperialist involvement that the Capitalist class have often been part of. Might make you feel better.
No, I understand that history. But the extreme left influenced by ruzzia venezuela China Cuba has taken over many countries. Some fight back now, like El Salvador, Ecuador and argentina.
I don’t think that’s the case, also neither Putin’s Russia nor Xi’s China are governed from “the extreme left”. Both leaders are classically Authoritarian traditionalist conservatives. Hence the mistreatment of gays in Russia, and China’s laws against boy bands being too effeminate (both of which are examples of culturally conservative positions).
In fact, I’m sure many people here see how this comic can even apply to the mistreatment of factory workers toiling under the economic abuses in China and Russia, so again, your criticisms and comments aren’t lining up with the depictions and intent of the comic, nor with the political state/history of the world.
You clearly have no idea what is going on in Argentina.
Owww I know a LOT.
Tell me, what do you thunk happened with twenty years of kirchenian politics? Sold the entire country to China? They went bankrupt SEVEN TIMES. for oevr a decade, the INFLATION PER YEAR WAS OVER 100%.
DUDE.
And Argentina is fighting back by voting Trump’s dog cloning friend? Argentina’s problem is not China, it’s corruption and incompetence.
Milei is a moron for supporting Trump, he probably does NOT know exactly what Trump stands for. Milei is also way too religious for my liking, women’s rights and so on are horrible old fashioned shit (like trump).
But yes, what he is doing YESTERDAY 1 MARCH (the may accords he announced and more) is actually 100% focussed in ending corruption. At least for now he’s doing exactly what he should, economically and anti corruption and reorganizing the state departments. Don’t forget they went bankrupt 7 seven times last few years and have had over a decade of ANNUAL inflation each single year over 100%…
And bad loans from china by corrupt extreme left wing (narco) communists is exactly what you and I can agree on that is the REAL problem in argentina. After they fix they I hope he thinks again before making abortions illegal etc
Milei fires a bunch of people right after Christmas, the guy is comically selfish and has no one’s wellbeing in mind.
He also supports Trump, people connected to the last military dictatorship and is pretty much against anything progressive.
Lick that corporate boot some more, 8 think you missed a spot
Come live in south America and see how the political class is rich. They are all left wing narco dictators. Ecuador, Cuba, Argentina, venezuela, el salvador… All in the hands of NARCO COMMUNISTS. really, come visit.
Ecuador is currently run by a pro-democracy president who was born in Florida. Argentina by an America-friendly Libertarian, Venezuela’s leader is a leftist, and is still in power because he survived a US lead coup (Aka Operation Gideon, part of which involved economic attacks)… and Cuba isn’t particularly known for it’s cocaine trade.
Also, you should look into the CIA whistle blower Gary Webb, who discusses US involvement in the cocaine trade at length.
You’re quite lacking in solid, verifiable facts in your comments.
You are not informed, u specifically said this because el. Salvador ecuador and Argentina are trying to escape communism. While their (new) presidents do their bests, many government and congress people vote for extreme left. Their HUGE number or government workers drains their funds.
YOU ARE uninformed. I actually live here…
Leftists can’t meme
And apparently conservatives can’t tell the difference between a meme and a comic strip despite being in c/comicstrips.
This isn’t exactly the most convincing argument against Rand’s philosophy - the workers didn’t invent the device and don’t work any harder than they did before. Their feeling of entitlement to the profit from it appears to be naked greed unsupported by any moral principle. Acting in one’s rational self-interest would include keeping them placated if they can credibly threaten violence, but their role as workers is completely irrelevant in that context.
This isn’t the most convincing argument because in a healthy society the things the workers demand will happen naturally.
Yet, if you go assuming those things aren’t happening, it means the society is not healthy, and will improve dramatically by following the procedure on the last panel.
Except they should get to act in their own self-interest, also. If they cannot, what’s keeping them from that; who has more power?
That’s not the argument being presented here. The point is that if one goes by rationality and self-interest instead of fairness or justice, then murder and theft are perfectly logical. If it is in the rational interest of the factory owner to not increase worker pay, then it is in the rational interest of the workers to murder her and steal her wealth.
the workers didn’t invent the device
Funny you talk about inventing devices when Rand’s utopia in Atlas Shrugged was dependent upon the invention of a machine which defied physics.
Don’t bring logic when you could have an anti-capitalism rant instead!
