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Current Events » in reply to re: John Galt

re: John Galt
Greg — (archived)

I read all of Ayn Rand and the libertarians a long time ago. The system she talks about will work if everyone is honest, but everyone is not honest. My experience of business is it has a lot of crooks in it kept in check by regulations and consumer protections. In fact one of my favourite sayings is when I read about someone convicted of robbing I say if they want to be a thief why don't they just open a business?
Balzac wrote a great series of books (perhaps the first novels written) called the Human Comedy based on the animal kingdom and how animals feed on each other. He said the world is composed of knaves and fools, the knaves survive by ripping off the fools and the fools by protecting themselves.
The problem with Ayn Rand is she seems to be telling the knaves not be knaves any more. The fools can go off and make their communistic fool's paradise but a knave's paradise needs fools to run on.
The problem is when they don't have enough fools then the other knaves start looking a lot like fools, and then they start protecting themselves and next thing you know the unsuccessful knaves become the workers and develop a left wing philosophy to protect themselves. Losers will always want a system that helps them and winners will always want a system that helps them.
This is the flaw in the right wing philosophy currently, they believe they can achieve a permanent domination over 1/3 to 1/2 of the population so things are arranged to suit themselves at the expense of the others.

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