Ayn Rand's Utopia

On Friday, June 26, 2015 at 12:14:13 PM UTC-5, Davoud wrote:
Mike Collins:
You're ex military. Doesn't that mean that you get cheap health insurance
paid for by other people's taxes?

If the person in question is a veteran of the U.S. military, the answer
is no. I am a veteran of eight years of honorable service in the U.S.
military and I am not entitled to health insurance of any kind, or any
subsidies for my private health insurance, based on that service. It's
a different matter for persons with service-related disabilities.

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

Tricare is available for active and retired military personnel. It is a program that never had restrictions on pre-existing conditions or doctors or hospitals etc., and should have been the model upon which our national health care was based on. In our immediate family we have several retired military, one has cancer that requires very expensive treatment drugs costing on the order of $30,000 per month. Before the ACA, if he had not been military, he would have been totally out of luck because no insurance company would have insured him. With Tricare there is no charge for the drug or treatments that he needed.

On Tuesday, 23 June 2015 14:12:38 UTC-4, Uncarollo2 wrote:
That Utopia is almost upon us. Ayn Rand's vision does not include helping ordinary citizens, only the Industrialists. The sad truth is that the shape of our current infrastructure is a true vision of what her Atlas Shurgged utopia would have looked like had she moved the novel beyond the marriage in Somewhere, Colorado, and gotten down to the serious business of actually revealing the development of her new society.

The (Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) is alive and well in NYC - creating young followers, providing classes on her philosophy, and passing out her writings to Republicans and other like-minded law makers. ARI is not creating any jobs or coming up with ideas to create a stable and caring social order. They are too busy being 'rationally selfish' and letting the infrastructure crumble on all levels.

Her philosophy appeals to those who don't really understand how a social order needs to work in order to be strong and lasting; it appeals to those who, like teenagers who balk when their first paycheck is less than they expected because of those pesky taxes, believe they should keep every cent they worked for! Anyway, look for Who is John Galt in the movie theaters sometime this year

F-O you stupid socialist. Your morons don't understand the concept of individual achievement.

On Fri, 26 Jun 2015 19:15:51 -0700 (PDT), RichA
wrote:

F-O you stupid socialist. Your morons don't understand the concept of individual achievement.

You say to a very successful entrepreneur who created one of the most
respected astronomical instrument companies around. Your individual
achievements are less apparent.

On Friday, June 26, 2015 at 8:15:52 PM UTC-6, RichA wrote:
Your morons don't understand the concept of individual achievement.

I'll assume that's a typo for "you morons".

Individuals do achieve things, but the Universe is not a fair place, and so
some people don't achieve much because they can't surmount the obstacles in
their way - if they were luckier, and had fewer obstacles, they might have
succeeded, even if a few others were able to overcome the same obstacles.

And so, some of us think the world shouldn't just be for the lucky and the
strong, and accept taxation for social welfare purposes. That doesn't require
one to deny respect for what individuals achieve.

However, Ayn Rand is right that "needs don't create rights". If there were a
great many poor people in the country, so that the tax burden on the fortunate
even just to feed them would be so heavy that progress would stop - we *would*
have to instead just let them starve. Like many Third World nations do. And it
would not be wrong to bow to necessity.

As we have better choices, it does not make thieves of the electorate to select
one of them.

John Savard

On Sat, 27 Jun 2015 19:44:24 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
wrote:

On Friday, June 26, 2015 at 8:15:52 PM UTC-6, RichA wrote:
Your morons don't understand the concept of individual achievement.

I'll assume that's a typo for "you morons".

Individuals do achieve things, but the Universe is not a fair place, and so
some people don't achieve much because they can't surmount the obstacles in
their way - if they were luckier, and had fewer obstacles, they might have
succeeded, even if a few others were able to overcome the same obstacles.

And so, some of us think the world shouldn't just be for the lucky and the
strong, and accept taxation for social welfare purposes. That doesn't require
one to deny respect for what individuals achieve.

However, Ayn Rand is right that "needs don't create rights". If there were a
great many poor people in the country, so that the tax burden on the fortunate
even just to feed them would be so heavy that progress would stop - we *would*
have to instead just let them starve. Like many Third World nations do. And it
would not be wrong to bow to necessity.

As we have better choices, it does not make thieves of the electorate to select
one of them.

John Savard

Well put, John.

One huge advantage of a rich society is the ability to define richer,
more complex, and more far reaching rights, that expand the
opportunities of everyone. One huge advantage of a democratic society
is for those rights to be broadly defined by the people, by majority
or by consensus, not by just a few.

The most successful free and rich societies also have the broadest and
most levelly defined and applied rights. And that's no coincidence.

On 6/27/15 7:44 PM, Quadibloc wrote:

If there were a
great many poor people in the country, so that the tax burden on the fortunate
even just to feed them would be so heavy that progress would stop - we *would*
have to instead just let them starve.

I love the unconscious bias that places you and your fellow travelers on
the "we" side, letting "them" starve.

Let me point out -
It ain't necessarily so...

On Sun, 28 Jun 2015 09:40:42 -0700, lal_truckee
wrote:

On 6/27/15 7:44 PM, Quadibloc wrote:

If there were a
great many poor people in the country, so that the tax burden on the fortunate
even just to feed them would be so heavy that progress would stop - we *would*
have to instead just let them starve.

I love the unconscious bias that places you and your fellow travelers on
the "we" side, letting "them" starve.

Let me point out -
It ain't necessarily so...

I didn't take it quite that way, but rather as a bit of reductio ad
absurdum, an extreme endpoint to illustrate the idea that the wealth
of a society is fundamental in determining how we define rights and
the extent to which we can reasonably find ways to maximize
opportunity.

On Sun, 28 Jun 2015 11:06:05 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
On Sun, 28 Jun 2015 09:40:42 -0700, lal_truckee
wrote:


On 6/27/15 7:44 PM, Quadibloc wrote:

If there were a
great many poor people in the country, so that the tax burden on
the fortunate
even just to feed them would be so heavy that progress would
stop - we *would*
have to instead just let them starve.

I love the unconscious bias that places you and your fellow
travelers on
the "we" side, letting "them" starve.

Let me point out -
It ain't necessarily so...


I didn't take it quite that way, but rather as a bit of reductio ad
absurdum, an extreme endpoint to illustrate the idea that the wealth
of a society is fundamental in determining how we define rights and
the extent to which we can reasonably find ways to maximize
opportunity.

Summary: to implement human rights requires resources. ?f these
resources are absent or insufficient, human rights will suffer and
one cannot do much about that. And, yes, "we" might starve too, or
die from curable diseases or injuries.

On Sunday, June 28, 2015 at 10:40:47 AM UTC-6, lal_truckee wrote:
On 6/27/15 7:44 PM, Quadibloc wrote:

If there were a
great many poor people in the country, so that the tax burden on the fortunate
even just to feed them would be so heavy that progress would stop - we *would*
have to instead just let them starve.

I love the unconscious bias that places you and your fellow travelers on
the "we" side, letting "them" starve.

Let me point out -
It ain't necessarily so...

And, so? If I didn't have enough to eat, and it was not possible to rearrange
things so that I, and everyone in my position could do so - the only result of
a revolution would be that we would have slightly more, but still not enough,
to eat - but all progress art and science would come to an end - would you
consider such an egalitarian revolution to be a *good* thing?

Today, we enjoy a high level of civilization *because* the elites of the past
were able to live at a standard that let them produce progress. If history had
been more egalitarian, we would still be living in a more egalitarian version
of the Middle Ages. Not a good trade.

John Savard

On Monday, 29 June 2015 05:23:47 UTC+2, Quadibloc wrote:

And, so? If I didn't have enough to eat, and it was not possible to rearrange
things so that I, and everyone in my position could do so - the only result of
a revolution would be that we would have slightly more, but still not enough,
to eat - but all progress art and science would come to an end - would you
consider such an egalitarian revolution to be a *good* thing?

Today, we enjoy a high level of civilization *because* the elites of the past
were able to live at a standard that let them produce progress. If history had
been more egalitarian, we would still be living in a more egalitarian version
of the Middle Ages. Not a good trade.

John Savard

An interesting generalisation but we have only to compare differences between countries or continents to see vast differences in social progress and real opportunity. The obsessive-compulsive wealth maker may not have had social progress at the top of their to-do list.

What is more certain is that opportunity depends on the social and political environment. Or perhaps more importantly, the willingness of the elite to allow upstarts to prosper without bleeding them dry. Real justice, rather than lip service by the local "Mafia boss" or "warlord" and his corrupt official cohorts, offers expanded opportunity. Parasitic corruption still ensures impoverishment as industry and commerce thrive outside their territory or sphere of influence.

Most rural villages and towns, of the quite recent past, had a large number of small businesses providing services and goods to the community. This has now become highly centralised and the small shops and specialist workshops are all but gone. Often, only the local building trades remain. Usually arranged in loose cooperatives to increase efficiency and investment opportunity. The same goes for farming. The small, mixed farm is now only quaint history and misplaced nostalgia for terrifyingly hard and dangerous work often for small reward.

While retail outlets are increasingly focussed on chain monopolies providing edge-of-city car parking. Where are all those highly skilled tradesmen and retailers now? Probably working in a DIY supermarket, stacking shelves. All of this has happened well within my own lifetime. The countryside is still riddled with empty factories, disused railway lines, former farmhouses and crumbling workshops. Not to mention the countless, long-empty, village schools. An industrial and commercial, [community] heritage has been completely lost in only a few decades.

Opportunity has changed radically with the onset of the internet. Particularly in countries which once "taxed" the individual businessman with Mafia-like, blood-letting terms of business. Anything which parasitically drains the life blood of commercial opportunists will impoverish the community and inevitably their entire country. Whether it be the parasitic corruption of the Indian civil service and its "injustice" system. The parasitically corrupt communist party in China. Or the parasitically corrupt, religious "sponges" in many of the poorest nations on earth like Tibet and Nepal. Or Putin's, rust, grey concrete and vodka oligarchy in Russia. Every country has its own self-serving and repressive "despots." Be they all too powerful unions, the crippling civil service, organised criminality, banks, lawyers, the corrupt politicooze, slave drivers or "old money."

"Despots" of all kinds will always hamper a country's wealth creation and stifle personal and national opportunity and prosperity. Why else do these same "despots" attempt to stifle an open and uncensored Internet? Because publicity of their corruption robs them of the fear by which they all rule. They have no other tools but pain and misery, petty revenge for exposure and the constant threat of poverty to make themselves feel more important in their utterly tasteless palaces.

But then, all of this may be completely irrelevant. Perhaps it is better equality of education of the masses which provides the greatest stimulus for commercial opportunists? If greed and envy work, then seeing others doing better than yourself may drive the commercial upstart to emulate them. Or it might turn them inwards into criminals and small time drug dealers, to become yet more prison fodder. At crippling national expense, in unharnessed, human wastage of its only [real] natural resource.

The low hanging fruit of success must always be accessible to those who are willing to stretch themselves. While increasing inequality may push the fruit too far beyond the reach of any but the "despotic monopoly of power and wealth."