The World is Socialist

What a skew prospective! I am not considering myself converted to objectivism philosophy (I only saw "Atlas Shrugged" movies), but this "snowpocalypse" is not much of an example against the Ayn Rand's point. The fact that there are people (with equipment) ready to be deployed to plow the streets if needed is an example that there is at least one capable person that thought about such future problematic scenario, developed a strategy, and designed a system to deal with that problem. I challenge one to contemplate about another very real, present world's scenario - Indian cities. Omnipresent garbage and misery (even crap on the streets) and it seems that nobody do much about it, even if all live and "enjoy" the same public environment. That state of affairs may literally exist EVERYWHERE unless out there wouldn't be capable people among us that yes, deserve appreciation. Deserve appreciation starting from just having potential they happen to have (this is a tough one, rarely happens even if people are glad that problem solvers exist), then for their effort of developing that potential, for applying their hard-earned capability on solving problems (including the social ones) and in the end - for helping others to grow and further develop/maintain systems in our world. We happen to see from the Rand's view point the same things very differently.

Not only do we have socialist problems (e.g., snowstorms) and socialist systems (e.g., roads), but we also have socialist opportunities (e.g., http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_KLGw_b...)

Which type of socialism? While I agree that Atlas Shrugged is young adult fiction, I think labeling the world as socialist swings the pendulum too far in the other direction. There are balances, minimums, maximums, and extenuating circumstances. The world is too messy for any single ideology.

This is just the typical socialist "who will build the roads?" argument.

"snow storms are socialist". Ummm, no.

Socialism (n) "any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods"

What does that have to do with snow?

Ok, let me use that same defunct logic. Making food is capitalism. Without food we would all die. Therefore socialism is evil and capitalism is good.

Yes, bad things happen to everyone, what point does it really prove? Her philosophy was nothing about building a paradise for "good" people where nothing bad will ever happen.

Rather embarrassingly, Winer clearly didn't bother to read any of Rand's non-fiction. She more than covers the issue of 'who will plow the snow,' as do other Objectivist (free market, and libertarian) books and writings since.

It's amusing that Winer thinks we'd have a problem with snow plowing, meanwhile he uses the private Internet, which is approximately a million times more complex and difficult to maintain than plowing snow. And this isn't even an optimal private Internet, as the government is currently shielding the telecom monopoly system from competition, and it still works extraordinarily well.

We can have a private Internet and Web, that took hundreds of billions worth of private investment, supports a billion users, IP telephony, streaming video, radically advanced massive scale search systems, and it can run at maximum uptime as a system, meanwhile its speeds increase by a factor of 25 to 50 fold every decade..... but the roads! Oh the roads! Such a complex system to solve. The free market could never solve the issue of roads. Oh geez.

Who plows my driveway? I pay someone to do it. The notion that the free market wouldn't solve snow plowing is pure comedy gold. It'll lead to the iPhone, but snow plowing is tricky!

Who would feed the people if the government didn't do it? Oh. Who would build the cars if the government didn't do it? Oh. Who would fly the planes and build the planes if the government didn't do it? Oh. Who would write the software behind Android or iOS if the government didn't do it? Oh. But plowing snow, yeah, that's a really complex problem to solve in a free market. Truly hilarious.

tldr: The default state of the world is not to respect meritocracy, irrespective of government.

Creating a true meritocracy requires first cancelling out the anti-meritocratic inclinations of the Universe, with basic healthcare and disaster recovery and such.

(There are also a bunch of collective action problems whose obvious answer is some form of the dread "collectivism").

I doubt you'll find many libertarians/objectivists who actually think that there is zero role for government. Of course we need roads serviced and a legal infrastructure to protect people from coercion. Those are things that can only really be done at a government level. Just because she doesn't focus on that in a book of fiction doesn't mean you should throw the baby out with the bathwater.

the new internet sales tax is called the "Marketplace Fairness Act", for fucks sake, was that name lifted straight out of Atlas Shrugged? Governments are on the hook for outrageously expensive union pension funds that will cause economic collapse, but Ayn didn't mention snow plows in her book, so we should ignore everything she says about collectivism, unions and government cronyism?!?

what a load of horseshit.

Maybe sickness is socialist, but medicine is not...