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Comment by Uchikoma | Hacker News Reader

From Atlas Shrugged:

“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. [...] There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

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It may help to remember here that Ayn Rand wrote that stuff as an ex-citizen of a country with a communist regime that employed exactly those tactics against their citizens, I highly doubt that she intended or foresaw those words to be used against the rulers of the country that she chose to live in.

But then, she also wrote Atlas Shrugged as a kind of warning, with the hope that we would not become the kind of regime she fled. The OP is exactly apropos.

That's right, and it was set in America.

The context you've mentioned is important. I'm not a fan of Rand's overall philosophy (sympathetic to parts of it, perhaps, but that's not terribly important), but surely one can appreciate this quote in the appropriate context, even if they reject the greater body of her work.

Atlas Shrugged is set in the United States. I'm sure she wouldn't be surprised.

Like everything else Rand ever did, this was expressed better by other sources. Can we please stop quoting this hack [1]?

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/15r6sj/why_is...

That post has no relevance. Ideas are what matter, not people.

So stop quoting Rand. Quote the ideas in their original and better articulated form.

That's not the way it works. I'll quote whoever I want, whenever I find their articulation of ideas interesting. It's intellectually bankrupt to ignore a person's ideas just because you don't like them.

Yes, please!

I get tired of quotes from fiction. Aren't there enough non-fiction quotes in the world that are much more relevant?

Since posting this quote is apparently now a thing that happens in practically every HN thread, I will take the opportunity to repost this reply:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5708196

This is not Ayn Rand quote per se. In a sense that was public secret for anyone living in Eastern Europe at the time - got a few relatives that made a few trips to the concentration camps. That if you got authorities attention there would be more than enough crimes on which to convict you.

Jeez, it took you all of three sentences to get "Self-centered philosophies" in there in your hate-on for the economic portion of Rand's philosophy.

This thread and the quote to which you responded are really about the creation of criminals by those in power through the manipulation of arbitrary law.

Not sure what your rant against Rand has to to with the quote in this context? Whenever someone uses "alea iacta est" to make a point, it's usually not the case to discuss Julius Caesar.

The humor in your reply is that many non-Randians -- especially people in government -- see themselves as essential to society, and give themselves additional power and prestige on that basis.

Reminds me of the quote, "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state."

"And now bills were passed, not only for national objects but for individual cases, and laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt." —Tacitus, Annals, Book III, 27.

Yes indeed - a more accurate translation, and with more relevant context.

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