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Comment by SequoiaHope | Hacker News Reader

I want to say, I heard all this talk of Ayn Rand as some kind of evil bogeyman, and then I listened to her speak on YouTube. She grew up in a horrible communist dictatorship, and then found refuge in the US. She spoke about how unfair governments can be, and spoke out against forced control of the people. I found her to be super reasonable! She only represents one persons view and I feel that libertarians often fail to appreciate the benefits of collectivization, but I think a lot of normal people that criticize Ayn Rand are actually mad about the jerks who use her name in political conversations to justify being self centered. Especially in this age of overbearing governments, I encourage everyone to look her up on YouTube and listen to her own words.

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She was surely broken in several fundamental ways. But as a product of her time and history, she has plenty to say. And it can resonate even today.

As with anything, some balance is required. Monopolies exist (and seem inevitable these days) and must be dealt with. But person-to-person, her views and the individual are evergreen.

She was on welfare in America. She wasn’t even interested in trying her philosophy out on her self. Why should I try it out?

Her estate was estimated to be around $500,000, about a million in today's money. By comparison, her total social security collections were 11,000 dollars. She collected social security but was in no way dependent on it. She advocated everyone to collect it regardless of whether they needed it or not [1]

> Since there is no such thing as the right of some men to vote away the rights of others, and no such thing as the right of the government to seize the property of some men for the unearned benefit of others — the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better. The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it.

TL;DR: people might as well get back some of the money the government collected from them.

1. https://campus.aynrand.org/works/1966/01/01/the-question-of-...

> She was on welfare in America.

“In 1976, she retired from writing her newsletter and, despite her initial objections, she allowed Evva Pryor, an employee of her attorney, to enroll her in Social Security and Medicare.”

Medicare provides health insurance for older Americans who have worked and paid into the system through the payroll tax. Social Security is also funded by payroll taxes. Did Rand “take out more than she put in”, so to speak?

It's not that she's evil, just that her "philosophy" is what you said: one person's view (i.e. opinion). She couldn't reconcile many critiques of Objectivism and didn't do much self-analysis on it. So despite how good many of her individual ideas sound, together they're thin and don't really make up a coherent theory that many people can take seriously. Unless you're a jerk using her name to justify being self-centered :) (just kidding)

I have heard several working philosophers describe her work as "incoherent" in a philosophical sense -- inconsistent in ways that are unreconcilable.

These are people with no particular horse in any race; there isn't a lot of money in rejecting one 20th century pop philosopher.

I haven't read enough of her stuff to develop my own opinions, so I'm happy to defer to them on the philosophy. I have read enough of her stuff to say that I find it turgid to the point of unreadability; a very dated style. Reminds me of L Ron Hubbard's stuff, which is also just about unreadable (dianetics or otherwise).

Right, and it's echoed in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [0] and elsewhere.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayn-rand/#Intr

Being that her friend and apprentice was Alan Greenspan you can see where people get a little weird about rand. Also the rand think tank that spews serious amounts of fascist policy.

> the rand think tank that spews serious amounts of fascist policy.

Like so many ideologies, the fan club is what most people dislike. If you are capable of taking Rands philosophies with a grain of salt, there are many brilliant concepts to glean.

"If you are capable of taking Rands philosophies with a grain of salt, there are many brilliant concepts to glean."

Such as?

Minitel:It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. --Adam Smith

Except in practice societies require self interest and benevolence and structures designed to promote the latter in order that we can all enjoy the fruits of our respective labor in a functional society.

The RAND Corporation gets its name from Research ANd Development.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation

That's why it was so newsworthy when Greenspan went on the record of being completely flummoxxed about the global financial system crisis back in the late 2000s. "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief."

I could be wrong, but I don't think Rand and RAND are related, despite the name.

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