Rational Self Interest

https://lemmy.world/post/12595545

Rational Self Interest - Lemmy.World

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/364 [https://existentialcomics.com/comic/364]

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.

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.”

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/).

In late 1925 Rand was granted a visa to visit relatives in Chicago. She arrived in New York City on February 19, 1926. Intent on staying in the United States to become a screenwriter, she lived for a few months with her relatives learning English before leaving for Hollywood, California.

In Hollywood a chance meeting with director Cecil B. DeMille led to work as an extra in his film The King of Kings and a subsequent job as a junior screenwriter. While working on The King of Kings, she met the aspiring actor Frank O’Connor; they married on April 15, 1929. She became a permanent American resident in July 1929 and an American citizen on March 3, 1931. She tried to bring her parents and sisters to the United States, but they could not obtain permission to emigrate.

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

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.”

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

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.

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”.

The military can be argued “collectivist”.

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

Did I say I agree with Rand?

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.

That math doesn’t add up.

It sure as hell adds up for the billionaire parasites.