this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (4 children)

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."

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

She came to the West and made it more corrupt with her half-baked ideas by amplifying the excessive use of individualist values.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Then she got sick of it, emigrated and formed her own Iam14butthisisdeep philosophy.

No, you're being disingenuous. She formulated her philosophy moral objectivism from her experiences as a child.

This is what happened (from her wikipedia):

Rand was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905, into a Jewish bourgeois family living in Saint Petersburg in what was then the Russian Empire. She was the eldest of three daughters of Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum, a pharmacist, and Anna Borisovna (née Kaplan). She was 12 when the October Revolution and the rule of the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin disrupted her family's lives. Her father's pharmacy was nationalized, and the family fled to the city of Yevpatoria in Crimea, which was initially under the control of the White Army during the Russian Civil War. After graduating high school there in June 1921, she returned with her family to Petrograd (as Saint Petersburg was then named), where they faced desperate conditions, occasionally nearly starving.

When Russian universities were opened to women after the revolution, Rand was among the first to enroll at Petrograd State University. At 16, she began her studies in the department of social pedagogy, majoring in history. She was one of many bourgeois students purged from the university shortly before graduating. After complaints from a group of visiting foreign scientists, many purged students, including Rand, were reinstated. She completed her studies at the renamed Leningrad State University in October 1924. She then studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. For an assignment, Rand wrote an essay about the Polish actress Pola Negri; it became her first published work. By this time, she had decided her professional surname for writing would be Rand, and she adopted the first name Ayn (pronounced /aɪn/).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Where is your objection? She formed her philosophy after experiencing a collectivist dystopia. Her family's business was nationalised. That is part and parcel of such extreme collectivist socio-economics and thus enamoured by hyperindividualist extreme counterpart.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Dystopia in her experience. The peasants going to uni would have had a different perspective.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Her family’s business was nationalised.

Lol! The US nationalizes stuff all the damn time - Obama essentially nationalized the auto industry after the 2008 crash (right before handing it back to the billionaire parasites after their debt had been shouldered by the US people).

Yet I don't see anybody calling the US "collectivist."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's because they handed it back, so everyone can see we are obviously an individualist kleptocracy. The US government should have imminent domained automakers instead of giving them billions of dollars in loans and then forgiving a good chunk of the loan.

Wealthy investors siphon as much money from the system as they can. Then, when there is the slightest economic turmoil, the government gives them billions or trillions in handouts. Why aren't they required to reinvest the windfall from their previous years into their own companies when they fail? That math doesn't add up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

That math doesn’t add up.

It sure as hell adds up for the billionaire parasites.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

How much of US economy is nationalised compared to the Soviet Union?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's only relevant if you insist on calling the US military "collectivist" - will you be attempting to make such an argument or not?

If you don't, your attempt to conflate nationalization with collectivization falls flat on it's face - so get on with it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The military can be argued "collectivist". I've never been in the military but many vets say that in the bootcamp they pretty much remove the personality out of you so that you think with the team and follow chain of command. And often, teams are punished based on the mistakes of one person in the group.

And to you, define "collectivism".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The military can be argued “collectivist”.

So do you and your fellow Rand-cultists normally argue for "collectivist" militaries to be dismantled?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Did I say I agree with Rand?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Anarcho-capitalism doesn't work, yes. What's your point?

Have you any luck yet trying to answer me how would you define collectivism?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

she was just mad that her privileges were distributed fairly for once