Flying SquidIt all makes sense now.
loxdogsCan someone explain me, why is it bad to think about yourself? This book teaches you, how to first think about yourself, than others.
She(or Nathan) wrote, that if you do something with “I want this, so I do this” manner, that isn’t great. The formula should be “This should be done, because of some rational reasoning, so I’ll do this”. If you are not involving others right to think/live/freedom.
This book teaches you, how to first think about yourself, than others.
In a world of Ayn Rand everyone also works together. She wrote, that people should work with each other. They will benefit from this. One person is not capable of doing everything. However, you can choose who to work with. You would always want to work with someone who does everything right and in time.
All people are not equal, and that is a fact, but in rational world they can work hard to be noticed by another rational person. You don’t judge by the look of their skin, cloths or fortune. You judge by the way they think. There would be no slaves, those who worked hard would earn more.
The machines are built by workers, but who made the blueprint? They sold it or shared it to make life more comfortable for themselves, thus making the progress. You will end up with better and more goods. This is one of the reasons you must value yourself.
Money is virtue, because it’s one of the least thing people agreed on as equal value to something. I really don’t want to barter for the new phone, to be honest.
It’s a problem, that you are not getting paid enough, but that’s not problem of the money, that’s people who are paying less are a problem.
Communism isn’t equal too. You, in fact, would get paid the same amount as everyone else. What’s the point of doing better and more, if you get paid the same?
So I still don’t understand to be honest, are there other explanations? With all my pleasure, if everything is shared, I do not want to share my woman with someone, who needs it more. Share my workplace with someone who needs it more, but I will give it to someone, who’s better than me. Share my payment, because someone needs it more. If I want to, I have some surplus and I won’t need it, than sure, I will share. I won’t do it mandatory.
Obi“But who made the blueprints”
Also workers.
If by workers we consider everyone, who’s working with their hands and minds, getting paid for this, than I agree. It’s not different from Ayn Rand’s philosophy.
If by workers we consider only people who work with hands on a factory, than no. Without proper education, you can’t make blueprint of machine. To be more clear - good machine.
If none of this, I am ready to listen to your explanation
White and blue collars are both working class, working class doesn’t mean poor or manual labour. Either you have to work to sustain yourself or you own the “means of production” e.g. parasitic owner class, these don’t do any meaningful work especially not designing complex industrial blueprints.
Wait, so if a person pays government to buy land, pays architect, providing him a job, to make a project of a factory, pays construction company to build factory, pays other different factories to buy machines for his factory, hires workers and pays them to work and produce goods is being parasite? Did I get it right?
A lot of working class hands are necessary to transform those plans into reality. Capitalists don’t actually do that on their own. Their main contribution here is capital.
They’re parasitic because, in the real world, they transform mostly ill-gotten riches into investments (capital) to extract value from the labor of others, who depart from a part of the value of their labor to fill the pockets of the capitalists to the detriment of the rest of human society.
Of course, like with everything in the real world, exceptions apply. But we need to get away from a system that considers that these kinds of things are virtuous by default. Experience has taught us that capitalism as a structure has been exploitative and against humanity’s interests in an astronomical proportion of times.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy doesn’t support ill-gotten riches in anyway.
Can you elaborate on labour please? If you don’t like the place you work at, you can always leave and find a better one! Will it be tough? Absolutely. Will it get better? Probably yes.
How’s making products is detrimental to the rest of human society? I am sure, whatever you are using is a product of filthy capitalists. They didn’t make it themselves, but have invested, organised project and manufacturing. They are on top of this product chain. By themselves those workers wouldn’t be able to do this massively.
Making products can be detrimental to the rest of society (cf. the fast-fashion industry, among other cases), but that is a subject for another time.
As a tech worker myself, it would be untenable to declare that elaborating products period is a detriment to humanity. What I’m criticizing here is the way products are put to market in our world. We can do better, without a parasitic owner class.
I’m currently trying to put my money where my mouth is by working on creating a product in a worker coop setting, which is one of the ways I think we can fix this. There are probably other alternatives, though.
If you study how things work in the real world - and there is a science that studies this, sociology - capitalists only have embryonic plans and capital. They use their capital to materialize their ideas - which, by the way, are not often very original - into tangible things, by hiring people with actual skill. They don’t build or architect factories, offices, not any more than they print books or build houses. Working class people do it for them in exchange for shiny rock.
The case you make for labor being mobile is again rooted in unrealistic ideology. Material conditions prevent most people from being actually free to find satisfying conditions of employment. Again, sociology teaches us how and why.
The main thing I’d like to stress here is that we need to rid ourselves of golden-path ideologies. Things can and will go wrong. Any ideology that fails to satisfiably account for anything that strays from their golden path are not worth our time.
And I’d argue that Rand libertarianism is - at best - naive in that way.
About products, I know you said it’s for another time. The fact is, capitalists provide us with workplaces and products. They not doing it themselves, but the trunk of the tree. The root cause is people needs. I can’t call them parasites or robbers if they earn it honestly.
Well, I am not a materialist, so I can’t support you with “material conditions prevent”. In my opinion, if you free and nobody forces you, than it’s not labour. You can live whenever you want, or change something you don’t really want.
It’s cool, what you are doing, hope this gets recognition! Maybe one day you’ll be as someone, who changed the way we see product production.
Maybe one day I will understand your saying about ideology, but I really don’t. For me Rand’s philosophy is really the best, cause it’s simple and answers all of my questions. Do whatever you want with respect to other people right to live. I can’t call it ideology, like can’t call Buddhism a religion. Both I classify as philosophy. And mostly I unintentionally followed Rand’s without knowing it.
Be careful of simple explanations to complex problems. Just like in maths, models need to be as simple as possible, without becoming simplistic. It’s not just about being right or wrong in theory, the conclusions to these discussions have material impact on the world we live in. Bad motives drive disastrous political choices, sometimes, in one way or another.
We could talk forever about how free will is or isn’t an illusion, but it’s a conversation that could stretch out for days. People much smarter than us have provided smart answers to all those questions. Let’s tackle problems one at a time, and continue the discussion in the other thread!
Oh and btw: I’m not taking credit for the whole concept of worker coops! I just wanted to outline that I want to do my part!
I will try to be more careful, thank you. I can understand why is that and how people can understand simple explanations