Ayn Rand's Vision of Galt's Gulch Has Become Reality as of Today
dollarvigilante.com
dollarvigilante.com
If this happens, it's going to infuriate people and ultimately hurt the cause he's trying to promote. Headlines: "rich business people, calling themselves oppressed, flee to central Chile to avoid paying taxes."
Rand's philosophy contains some interesting points, but it's also extremely naive in a lot of ways. It's clear that she had little contact with the actual realities of the business world. Her heroes bear little resemblance to the vast majority of businessmen... who tend to more closely resemble her villains. Your typical businessman is indistinguishable from a party apparatchik in the former USSR.
I think this was the point.
The business leaders like Rearden are hard-working, smart, and good looking. The villains are stupid unattractive leeches, or at best weak and cowering pushovers. Nowhere in those books will you find an intelligent argument in favor or utilitarianism or moderate altruism.
Rand was guilty of disingenuous representation of opposing views, which shouldn't be totally excused under the guise of the romantic style.
Neither true of Howard Roark nor of Keating. She described them several times in Fountainhead.
> Nowhere in those books will you find an intelligent argument in favor or utilitarianism or moderate altruism.
And why would you her expect to do that? Those were not her positions.
> Rand was guilty of disingenuous representation of opposing views.
Rand was guilty of inaccurate representations of all kinds of views, scholarship was not her forte. And you are guilty of disingenuous representation of Rand.
It's the difference between one-sided propaganda and reasoned argumentation or discussion.
It's fair enough that it's fiction, and thus perhaps unfair to hold it to a standard. But making an intellectual argument using your characters as a mouthpiece and then declaiming responsibility for propagandizing strikes me as trying to have it both ways.
The problem is that reality disagrees. Very, very often the optimum in a complex system is found somewhere between a large number of polar attractors. I'd say the optimum is rarely near a pole.
It seems that so far the human societies that maximize happiness and well being are those that are somewhat altruistic, but not to the point of smothering individual initiative or removing the incentive for productivity.
A thief comes into your home and takes half of your property. He's done the same with your neighbors, and down the street, he's handing out some of the goods to whomever stops by.
Is it moral or respectable for you to go down the street, get something back, and then move out of the neighborhood because you don't like being robbed?
Oh, really? Instead of argument by assertion, let's try an idea.
Your neighbor comes and takes your bicycle without your permission and won't give it back. Theft? Sure.
Your neighbor comes in with one of his friends, and they take your bike together, same circumstance. Theft? Sure.
Your neighbor comes in with 2 of his friends, 3, 4, etc. At what point is it no longer theft? 51%, you say? What magically happened at that point? I say nothing: theft is still theft, irrespective of the claims of the majority.
This gentleman is a Canadian Expat, the government in Canada is not depriving its citizens for nothing in return. The redistribution of wealth is important for an effective society. It protects the 'wealthy' from the uprising of the peasants/proletariat/commoners, hoarding all the wealth does no good to the wealthy—they often lose their heads. So instead they lose a piece of, what they consider, their rightfully earned pie, in exchange for the betterment of all and the stability of a society—along with all its benefits. "Smart indentureship"
Sure, you can argue that what they are providing in return does not equate the amount you're giving them, but guess what: you agreed to live and earn in this society. Good riddance to those who do not see this, but don't be taking what is not yours as the door hits you on your way out—you earned it under the agreements and covenants of the 'System'.
Thanks for the Straw man.
Taxes, as Ben Franklin noted, are payment on the debt that you owe for making use of the benefits society provides for you.
With all of that said, he's still used/using the infrastructure of other countries to make money. Whether he agreed to build the roads with tax or not, the fact is that they are built and maintained with tax. One cannot pretend that government offers the rich NO benefit whatsoever.
Like it or not, we are born into society and the social contract that goes along with it. The "utopia" of zero government already exists in the form of failed states.
The "theft" argument sounds a lot like the child who complains that "I didn't ask to be born!" when faced with family chores.
"Once you see the property and the location you’ll likely be thinking the same thing as me: This is like buying in Napa Valley or Santa Barbara fifty years ago, but with all of today’s modern amenities, and none of the modern day headaches."
If the best analogy for your Randian utopia is California, then we must have read different editions of Atlas Shrugged (although, to be fair, I listened to the audiobook and it might have been abridged).
The article seems to have vanished.