Chomsky vs Ayn Rand ?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Dinosaur, Aug 14, 2009.

  1. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

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    Have you ever heard a singing saint claw at a chalkboard? I normally steer clear, but there was one, an honest one, who intrigued me. She had never even heard the word "altruism". Her favors were forced upon you and highly overvalued. It was uncomfortable and awkward. So, I questioned her about it. She thought about it long and hard. It was her need to be needed, she said. She’s one of my best friends now.

    No, that's not what he meant.

    Didn't you notice his spectator shoes, ruined by the unworthiness of its object?

    You hit and miss, wynn. Do you only see things as you are or is it the curse of knowledge?
     
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2013
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  3. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Your point being?


    What makes you think I was talking about what he meant?


    So you want to correct me, posit yourself as superior to me - and yet you despise me ... and yet you expect me to be nice to you.
    Blegh, some kind of reverse altruism you have there or something.
     
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  5. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

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    Superior, in what way? I don't expect you to be nice to me, nor do I despise you. We've never met.
     
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  7. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    As in assuming to know everything better than I.


    Which is why you're such a daisy toward me, eh.

    Ah, women!
     
  8. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

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    I quoted Nietzsche, which led me to believe that it was your interpretation.

    If your sound bites are your observations or life advice, so be it, but it's your defensiveness that dampen our exchanges.
     
  9. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Well lets say I invent a cure to cancer, people want my cure, and I want to be rich, so I charge incredibly for my cure, sure they are cured of cancer, but are now destitute, I'm rich. Likewise the free market has more limits then that. Let say I want more profit, so I fire all my workers and replace them with robots, as a result I'm able to produce more products of better quality for cheaper, I and the customer win, but my former employees don't, but any services to provide for them in antithesis to the free-market as I will have to pay for it. I have five apples and want to sell them for $10 dollars, I have a costumer that wants them for only $5, I convince them the apples are magical and he buys them for $15, customer does not always know best, but the free-market is reliant on the customer knowing best. I can go on and on. Now don't get me wrong the free-market is great for many things, but it is certainly not a cure-all, there is no ideological solution that solves everything, sometimes you need regulation, sometimes you need even a little socialism, and sometimes you need to be altruistic.
     
  10. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    On a bloody forum, I posted a bloody comment. Weeeheee!


    Oh Christ, and hysterical women.
     
  11. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

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    I've always thought that you were a female, are you?
     
  12. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    OK, let's play.

    Suppose you did 'miraculously' come up with a cure for cancer. OK, how do you prevent someone from copying your cure and selling it themselves? I mean, you're not going to be able to make your 'cure' all by yourself. You'll need help. People who are helping you are probably going to want paid. The chances your by-chance discovery will be replicated is very high. They want to make as much money as they can too. Here's some crazy old kook only selling it to a few ultra-rich people. Obviously you've tested it to ensure it works. In a free market this would have involved some contractual obligations to prevent you from being sued - there's information as to what you're actually doing. Not to mention, people can see what you're doing to them. Is it a one shot? Is it radiation? What is it? Do you sit in a machine? Do you have to come back? What stuff have you and are you ordering for your cure? It's not like you're mining your own minerals and making your own chemicals - you're buying stuff. What is that stuff? Now that it's known cancer can be cured - other's are going to re-double their efforts to replicate your 'cure'. If you want to cure people you will need to hire employees at the hospitals as well. Again, there's a lot of opportunity for some frustrated 'employee' to simply steal your idea and sell it off to a competitor. Or to give your competitors every bit of information they know about you and your cure: what you buy, what occurs, what steps you seem to take - all of it. Before and after interviews and blood samples with the 'cured' will happen as well. Maybe enough to compensate them for the amount you charged them? All efforts by society will be directs against you - instead of with you. You'll be vilified as some crazy kook. Anyone who betrays your confidence will be seen as a hero trying to help cancer survivors.

    You see, in a free-market there's nothing to stop your competitors from making a product just like yours. Much like Apple doesn't have the ability to prevent 'smart phones' or 'smart pads' etc... except in this case, a real free-market there'd be fierce competition - because there wouldn't be patents or copyright. This actually happens now. India has reverse engineered cures and made it themselves. The USSR used to do exactly the same.


    Now, given you knew all this when you decided to try and single-handedly invent a cure for cancer - it'd really makes no sense you'd attempt to charge enough to impoverish everyone around you when you could make much much MUCH more money by charging a lot less securing your place as market leader for when your 'cure' is copied you have the brand that is trusted. Yours is the 'original'. Not to mention, the public's reaction to a douche who holds a cure for only the richest of the rich, well, you'd be vilified instead of glorified. Most normal humans want money, but want prestige more. For most people money is their means to buy the later.


    So, let's say, at the end of the day, you have your cure - and you're only curing the richest of the rich. Well then, let's then suppose no one, anywhere near you, volunteers to trade with you until you change your mind. How long do you think you can live? A week? No water. No electricity. No food. No gasoline. Nothing. Oh, and no cure give you won't have the ingrediants to make any more of it. All you'll have is your cold, dark, house and your thoughts - your money will by you nothing. Meanwhile your competitors are working hard to replicate your 'cure'. Let's see how quickly you change your mind. What good is a lot of money when you can't use it?


    Free-market can exist in moral societies that value free voluntary interaction - unlike the one we currently inhabit which values thefts and force (through the 'vote' and 'fiat currency' of course). Thus, if we're playing a game, then in this world - people would be free NOT to trade with you. AND no one wants to break rank - as they'd be vilified. Hell, if you really pissed off enough people, perhaps they'd start selling off the currency you own; devaluing it to nothing - thus you'd have no money at all.



    In the real world, cures for cancer are made as collaborative efforts with business plans in businesses with shareholders and investors that aim to provide the drug at the highest price the market will bare - to the most people. If lowering the price means more money - that's what people do. Which is why it's the Walmart Clan who are the richest people in history and not some high-end super yacht manufacturer. Cancer effects the poor more than it does the rich. The money is made selling to the poor and middle class - not exclusively to the rich. It's why YOU have a supercomputer in your pocket and not only the rich have one. Corporations have huge reputations to protect. It makes no financial sense to lose money AND reputation as this means people will be less likely to do business with you - and that's the LAST thing you want in a FREE market because once your 'cure' is copied - and it will be, you'd lose even more money.
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2013
  13. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    Except your employees do win. They live in a more prosperous society and are no longer burdened performing low-end labor for you (as that was replaced with robots) and are now free to offer high-end services of their own. Maybe even copying your business (given they worked for you they know your products) and even putting YOU out of business - or driving more innovation? Or, again, just starting entirely new businesses. Either way, they're now freed from that burden and this is a good thing.

    Yes, thank the gods for the washing machine! The plow! Email! Did it put people out of a job? Yes, and they were able to go on and do other things making society more prosperous. Actually, the ideal end conclusion is to have robots do everything that is mundane manual labor. This will free time and thus make society more prosperous (time + civil liberty). In the end, we should only be left with free-time to ourselves.

    Which is why we always say the free-market exists with sound money, private property rights and law. What you did here was fraud. Fraud is against the law. The law is there to protect private property and to ensure contracts are upheld. Fraud is a violation of contract - in this case unwritten. You lied. The apple is not magical. When you accepted the 'bank note'/money you agreed not to commit fraud.

    You'll have to now pay retribution as decided by a jury of your peers. AND you've ruined your reputation and may have must put yourself our of business. Not to mention now everything thinks you're a douche for taking advantage of someone.

    What does it mean 'a little socialism'?

    The free market just means voluntary interaction between people. Take a loving relationship as an example. Is there ever a case in a loving relationship when one needs to 'rape' their partner? 'Rape' be a 'little socialism'? That one-off time when we just needed to enact State-force for the 'good of the relationship'? It just doesn't make an sense. AND, as we can clearly see by our own society - results in the exactly opposite of the stated goal. Since LBJ's Great Society we're poorer, and I'd argue in some ways less altruistic. When society is prosperous, it's naturally inclined towards altruism. Free markets bring that prosperity. And our's is going to be freer - eventually people will be so poor as to cry out for freedom again.

    To say free-markets are 'ideological' doesn't make any sense. It's abhorrent to rape someone. That's not 'ideological' - it's an ethical proposition that can be deduced. Therefor logical, not ideological.
     
  14. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Some critics of Rand seem to think that there are only two options when it comes to caring about self and others:
    either one cares about oneself at the expense of others,
    or one cares about others at the expense of oneself.

    And of course, seen through this dichotomy, Rand's outlook (or anyone else's who is in favor of taking care of oneself) is repugnant ...
     
  15. The Marquis Only want the best for Nigel Valued Senior Member

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    Well, well.
    A few days away, I missed all the play.
    An advantage to living here, with respect to this forum; I get to watch Sports on Sunday and play armchair quarterback. The disadvantage being, of course, that I was not at the game.

    Trooper: With reference to your response to me, I read that within a few hours of you posting it. I have been considering it since, but I have to divulge here that a "normal" life sometimes precludes time (and more importantly, my inclination at that time) to respond. You see, I speak to sparkybaby every day. Metaphorically speaking, of course. It is rather taxing. There are many times I'd rather just conquer the holy lands, and keep my thoughts to myself. The path of least resistance; it's a failing, I know.
    Yet, with each day that passes, so increases the pressure to give a response worth reading. You only need know that I have read it, I intend to respond, but am loath to do so without giving the due consideration it deserves... and am mindful of the fact that if I leave it too long, the moment will pass. Event Horizon.
    I'm also going to mention that your cognitive dissonance will, when recognised, lead to a kind of paralysis. Do you see that your particular response here, in this thread, applies across the board? To everything? One must either assume a stance, or remain silent.

    There is another forum I frequent (no, I will not shatter any illusions you might have by mentioning which one) which has a function to notify via pm when a response is made to something one has written. I'd like to see that here. I spend some time every time I log on looking up my own posts, to see if there were any responses. This is is not my only reason for doing that, of course; I often forget what I might have said the night before altogether.
    Now let's not hear any of you self-proclaimed altruistic types telling me you don't do much the same thing, albeit perhaps not by that particular method. (How to reinforce a point made previously, chapter 1, paragraph 3).

    Gendanken: So refreshing to see you here. Literally, refreshing.
    All of the above applies to you, of course, and always has. I only hope that, by now, you understand that I'm still at the point where I'm annoyed I feel that I need say it.
    With regard to mass, I'm not sure yet if you're seeing it in terms of gravitational force. If not, do so.
    Additional: Cognitive dissonance, Gendanken. There it is. Staring at the fucking easel wondering what I'm going to paint. Misgivings about my ability to do so. Becoming lost in conflicting thoughts and the ramifications of them. Assume a stance, I said. Would that I could take my own advice.

    And with regard to something discussed earlier, about giving way - I think I might have just seen it (#102- about #108?)?

    Wynn:
    This is not about you. Don't derail it with that - we've had this conversation before. I remember.
    Trooper isn't wrong. Elucidate, separate, reciprocate. This place is outside you.
    - pay attention. I'm not going to post that bloody quote again.
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2013
  16. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Oh yeah that why median wages have gone up and average hour worked have gone down... oh wait the opposite happened! There a difference between theory and reality. Exactly what high end services are left for the 80% of people that now do service sector jobs?

    Again that a nice theory, but is there evidence that is happening today? For example how many book selling companies are their today and how much money are they making? Once there was nothing but libraries and small ma&pa book stores, now there basically Barns&Nobel and Amazon.

    Like working as a cashier or a truck driver, the most common jobs in the country now?

    Oh I agree robot labor could free up time and improve prosperity greatly, the only problem is most people don't own robot labor, most people aren't capitalist, they are laborers, and as long as they don't own robotic capital they aren't going to prosper. The only people who will prosper are those that had the money to invest in mechanization to begin with, hence why we have seen the rich get so much richer and the middle class stagnate and work harder and harder for the same inflation adjusted income.

    The law? that sounds like regulation to me! Why to have laws we would need *gah* a goverment!




    How is my reputation ruined if everyone believes my apples are magical? Heck I could start a large religion based on the magical apple, die a saint, have like 10 virgins bury themselves alive with me, it will be great. Human history has often enough rewarded cons and liers with fantastic riches and dynasties for centuries even millennia, and somehow you think simple ideology and free-exchange of goods (something that has existed since the dawn of man) is going to fix that? The fundamental requirement for a free-market that the customer knows best is untrue: the consumer is ignorant, irrational and even down right stupid, the customer can be convinced that tobacco smoke is good for him, that their immortal soul hinges on sacrifices to god, that owning slaves is morally just.

    Not if I also own the media that says I'm so great.

    That some fields are best highly regulated, even socialized as a matter of trial and error validation. For example socialized medicine world wide provides the best care per dollar. Ideology would demand the same solution for everything, despite experiment and data saying otherwise, instead of specific solutions for each problem just a big general one enforced by faith.

    Well technically their are people that love each other who on occasion beat the shit out of each other and even sexually violate each other, I don't know if they "need" to do it though, technically they don't "need" to love each other either.

    Well state enforced restraining orders, and custody of children and jail times make senses to me.

    Free markets are a product not a cause, we had free markets since the dawn of time. Nothing is more free then a stateless farmer raising his own crops and selling those crops in barter with another person, prosperity did not come with thousands of years of such "free-markets" rather something else created prosperity and free markets just came along for the ride.

    In some societies it is not abhorrent to rape someone, it is alright in fact, the yanomami don't have a problem with raping women, or beating them senseless. Heck back to slavery, that was legal and acceptable for thousands of years. Morality is not universe, and if it is human's simply can't agree on it, you can't possibly expect laws to simply come out the ether: someone has to make up laws, someone has to enforce those laws.

    Watch logic in action: They are inferior, I am superior, therefor I can own them as slaves, they are my private property to do with as I please, to beat, whip and rape.
     
  17. The Marquis Only want the best for Nigel Valued Senior Member

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    I missed that. Probably because I find socialism somewhat repugnant. Ad-hominem, you see.
    I was on the point of resurrecting an old nick, but I've found myself wondering, not in the light of your post, but in general, if it's really worth it at this point.
    If I come across as narcissistic, that's because I am. I've always found the ad-hominem inclusion in logical fallacies questionable - grey.

    And while flattery might not be the aphrodisiac it's often claimed to be, it can temper a response.
    You need to ask yourself if that's necessarily a good thing. How are you achieving recognition?
    Ok, so you've got my attention via flattery. Now, I need to know if you have a nice ass. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Here, in this place, your words are your ass. This is one of the beauties of the internet. Out there in the real, you're a girl. In here, you might be more than that. It's up to you.

    I have much the same problem. I've said as much, elsewhere.
    I'm not really sure what to say about it. On the one hand, there is the "hey, I'm here too" thing. Avoid that. If you get slammed for it, learn from it.

    Not everyone can play at Wimbledon. Kids these days are all told they can, if they but try hard enough. It's cruelty, but it's also the crucible by which you learn whether or not you actually can. I don't remember how many times I've been told "If I want something enough, I can have it". Your parents subscribe to this and tell you it's true. It's not. You need that, but you also need talent. You need to make it happen. In spite of all the obstacles they'll lay out for you. Marx would only add a thousand more. If you're drowning, you need to come up for air. You can either do that from a hundred feet down, or a thousand. Choice is yours.

    Rand was not a good writer. Nonetheless, she spoke to millions of impressionable people. There's your Randites. They have websites, sparkybaby pointed a few out for you. You don't need to be a savant, but you can still be a journeyman.
    She offered an opinion, and gave examples of what might happen, in her view, should the opposite opinion gain too much traction. There's your hard work.
    Now consider she had to get to America from Russia to make it happen. Don't delve too much into how she got there.

    Ok, I get that. Other than the point that this is "all Rand's fault", because the girl was only offering an opinion... in such a manner as to cause much debate and make her rich in the process. Just like whoever wrote "The Celestine Prophecy". Connect the dots.

    Now what you need to consider is that if it were not for Steve Jobs, you wouldn't be listening to Beyonce on your iPod.
    Guy was a narcissistic arsehole. Autocratic. You know that, right? Name a hundred others. Shit gets done, and here you are on the internet they gave you in 2013 offering judgement on how it got done. That's your prerogative, but you need to remember who gave you the means. Leave it up to Marx, and right here, right now, you'd still be formulating a business plan - on a typewriter.
     
  18. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Nonsense. I've shown on the spot, the veracity of what I'm talking about, given the way at least two posters responded.

    People criticize selfishness, but themselves manifest it abundantly in treating others as if those others were nothing but mere figments of imagination, imbecils, inept, not really existing.



    Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

    - CS Lewis
     
  19. The Marquis Only want the best for Nigel Valued Senior Member

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    Which tyranny is that, Wynn?
    The one that says you have the right to seek redress for feeling insulted? The one that exists for the good of the victim?

    We only want the best, for Nigel.
     
  20. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    The tyranny of those who are even willing to kill us "for our own good".

    Apparently you haven't been following the convo betwen Gendanken and myself about pathological altruism and how philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity.
     
  21. The Marquis Only want the best for Nigel Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, actually I have been following it.

    Just spent an hour writing, revising and altering, and in the end all I can think is "go to bed, and do not say that".
    And that's what I'm going to do.
     
  22. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    Marquis:
    Nope, but I invite you yet to my lunacy, an asylum where the mind is forked with chocolate rivers in which the both of us drown nasty children….

    Guy le Liberte, founder of Cirque, called it the ‘white paper’.

    It's a demon tyrannizing you with its stare. You can’t justify your fleeing and discomfort as it even cheats you of the solace that it’s bigoted.
    Thing about Guy, though, is he doesn’t have to pay rent and doesn’t have to defer to people like Bo (who I plan to dedicate an entire thread to soon…..).

    Fetus:
    Bill Gates, like every celebrity on the hunt for a child, is in a rush to give his money away before the government seizes it.

    They’re not loving people, as the term “philanthropy” literally translates to. They’re skirting the Death Tax.

    The rich can only sign a portion of their wealth over tax free—the rest is subject to federal law up to 50%.

    Read it again, gimlet: if I willed a million dollars to you, money that has already been federally taxed and portioned in all those years I’ve earned it, then half of that goes back to the government via a Death Tax.

    This is why people like Madonna crave poor kids from slums—they need something dumb enough to not question their authority and poor enough to not squander it on Gucci.
    And because they can only will over certain amounts before it gets taxed, they need to amass enough heirs to undermine your government’s claim to their wealth. Notice the size of Angelina Jolie’s growing army, notice the desperate heavings of even celebrity lesbians to have children….

    Pharmaceutical companies are as idiotic as you are.

    The only thing allowing their wasteful stupidity is that ultimately WE foot the bill.

    For example, Scorpion antivenom:
    Source

    Price in Mexico, where it’s manufactured? 100 dollars per vial.

    All the suppliers, distributors, insurance companies, lobbyists, third, fourth and fifth parties involved in hiking the price up in this country before it hits the market know big government will ultimately pay the hospital bill.

    Pfizer, like JP Morgan and Shaniqua, is a welfare queen.

    That’s IRRATIONAL and NOT capitalism. America, as you know it now, is decomposing into fascism.

    That’s what Rand is saying.


    Wynn:
    Oh god, ladies, we’re going to start co-menstruating soon if you don’t quit.

    Well, Mother Theresa only “doubted” God’s existence the way you idly wonder if you flushed the office toilet.

    A slight disturbance skimmed her surface, nothing more. Someone like her—an Albanian peasant, a rustic knotted into a contradictory impulse to both serve and control—is completely incapable of even conceiving a premise long enough to measure it.

    “Pity is a the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests; for them easy prey is enchanting”- Fred

    You can therefore not point to her fame and influence as stature—like Fudd, all she did was hunt rabbit.

    So as for self doubt, Dostoevsky experienced that torture; Turgenev and Twain, same.

    She’s like my mother--an idiot’s bastardization of Heisenberg’s principle: the more precisely the position of her tiny mind on anything can be known, the less precisely the momentum of her brain can be determined.
    I’m sure we all remember the gasp heard during her Nobel Prize acceptance as , apropos of nothing, the woman started rattling about abortion.

    A bead of mercury, and just as toxic.

    Never heard of him.

    But I can see him beautifully dressed up there with Jim Jones and Mike Murdock cannibalizing stupid people.

    I hear Christian blood makes fine thread.

    She’s also quite intelligent.

    Trooper:
    Not nothingness- beyond. Nothingness is for pretentious nihilists (ahem, cue the Marquis)

    Nietzsche envied sheep, or some other ruminant. Did you know that?
    What portion of nothing does a lamb pretend?

    Because speaking to girls is like eating hair?

    Do, however, remember who we’re talking about— a bumbling savant with a hard on.
    Nietzsche was rejected and, for little boys who know nothing of women yet desperately seek to hump one, an old woman is refuge.
    In fact, I would argue he experienced the only true feminist capable of toppling the pillars of patriarchy: tomboys.
    Mister Ubermenche was dumped by a tomboy……..*cackle*

    Not sure where you’re going with this, but certainly you’re not intimating Nietzsche thought well of women? OR that his misogyny was a product of his sister’s editing?

    Not only does he rightly see women as cows but, if memory serves, refers to both his insufferable sisters and mother as ‘canaille’.
    Mwahaha....…

    No, but I’ve goldfished through some spankings…...

    Aaaaaanndd….checkmate.

    That’s what I’m talking about—is it any wonder Munchausen By Proxy is a disease found in women?
    Only a woman can squat her 300 pound body on a sleeping child, watch it slowly suffocate as she’s biting off its fingers, and wonder that its dying.

    Then fight tooth and nail on trial that she’s a loving mother. An image capturing such perfect femininity:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!




    How can Elizabeth say that??? He detested her as she is detestable. There’s a passage in the Gay Science about despising a disciple that that I believe was about her.
    Don’t’ make me look for it, my ass is numb.

    She actually wrote that? Actually wondered? Moron.
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2013
  23. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    You know Mother Theresa's popular image. People will even blackmail and abuse others with references to Mother Theresa and her supposed purity and advancedness.

    She may have been a simpleton, but her popular image and the way it is sometimes used, is utterly vicious. I might not take much issue with her personally had I known her, but with her public image - certainly.



    *tsk tsk*

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht

    Surely you know his "Threepenny Opera," for example.


    Heh. Say single bad thing about Brecht in probably any European school at any level, and you won't pass the grade. That's how influential he is.



    But who would want to wear that!


    So relatable! Not seeing an actionable path upwards and ahead, one desires to regress.
     

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