Topic: Portion of Bitcoin enthusiasts who are into Ayn Rand? - page 2. (Read 4815 times)

Either that or you took the comment to be far more serious than intended.

I meant that from a libertarian perspective, Ayn Rand wrote horror novels.

Thank God governments are here to keep us safe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll

Guess what?

Personally I found Atlas Shrugged to be a lot like Kafka's The Castle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_%28novel%29) - it just keeps re-iterating its point (of being powerless under the powers that be) to the point of "boring me to sleep".

It has some points but the constant re-iteration just destroys the book as it becomes more like a "rant" than a discourse (and literally I feel asleep reading the longest speech in it and ended up just skipping most of it as it was so boring).

Its fans are of course the "believers" (as is the case with any book that "preaches to the converted") but I think it is very unlikely to be the kind of book that would have a chance of converting non-believers (it didn't change my thinking about anything at all - although after reading it I am not likely to ever read another book written by her).

If you have a point, it is not clear what it is.  This is both your fault in the two video analogy, and that of the assertion which you responded to.  That assertion:

Plus, Atlas Shrugged is more like H P Lovecraft for libertarians.

...is totally flawed because it assumes a fairly uniform response (a) to Lovecraft (b) in the beliefs and attitudes of libertarians.  Neither, of course, is accurate.  Lovecraft was, and can be considered,  brilliant or just b-grade horror.  Libertarians, one subcategory is those who follow Rand, others have different views.

In turn I would make a wild guess that these comments are both by people who have not even read Rand's work, but I'll leave them to comment on that.

The difference between H P Lovecraft and Ayn Rand is the same difference between this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpWVk3h2SA8

and this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3W6yf6c-FA

(Plus, Atlas Shrugged is more like H P Lovecraft for libertarians.)

Let me guess: that's why you've never read any of it?

Ayn Rand is Tolkien for libertarians - ie second rate literature from the L. Ron Hubbard school of writing.
It's not literature.

Ah, the work of the brilliant economist Sherkaner Underhill. I totally agree.

I just spit out my cup of tea. Thanks   

Oh come on.   I would prefer Arachno-Capitalism.

Actually? Anarcho-Capitalism has never been related to reality. It is science fiction, written by aristocratic elitists in Vienna.

Largely, I agree, yes. I think libertarians, when investigating their opinions more deeply, will either tend towards pure anarchism (probably you) or capitalism (the mises.org and Tom Woods crowd -- von Mises also was a minimal statist for exactly the same reasons).

I already said in another thread that the reasons why "anarchy with property rights" aka "Proprietarianism" is popular in the US is probably because they have enough land and don't feel the aftermath of Feudalism that practically still is in effect in Europe to this day. That's why European Anarchists are very sensitive towards the issue of land ownership (or more generally: the question of ownership of the means of production), identifying it as the root cause of conflict and war throughout history, and the only way to overcome this is a more co-operative, open and communal mindset (voluntarily, without authority, mind you) in the people's spirits.

If every disagreement were an honest one, and if everyone on the planet was judicious and thoughtful before employing retaliatory force when wronged I might agree. I don't trust human nature enough not to want group oversight over the use of force, and i don't trust human nature enough to trust that the use of force is unnecessary. I've handed over my belongings to a stranger when looking down the barrel of a gun and I can tell you—that's not free trade.

Now maybe if we could round up all the sociopaths and shoot them, and then engineer our genetic sequences so that no new sociopaths would ever be born… but that's a nightmare of a world I'm suggesting. Instead we have pragmatic, imperfect solutions to dealing with disputes,

And for frack's sake why are we even having this STUPID conversation. The authoritarians will kill us or strangle us into submission while we're busy arguing how far to dismantle government. Government is growing in power every day. Don't you dare lump me in with the statists for wanting markets to be free of fraud and force. If anarchists won't see libertarians as being on their side, they won't have any friends left.

I checked that I've read The fountainhead but I haven't, I watched the movie instead (old one, with Gary Cooper). I liked it a lot, I watched it twice.

It tells the story of a man's right to live the way he wants, and everyone can only enjoy the idea.

The means are private dispute settlement and arbitration. Two parties that can't decide about division of property can both agree to a single arbiter. Two people who wish to make a transaction and wish to avoid fraud can decide on a single escrow agent. We have plenty of examples of this in the real world, ranging from multinational businesses that don't exist in any specific country settling disputes among each other, to even the mafia being hired as arbitrators in black market transactions to make sure the two parties don't try to steal from each other. There's no issues with multiple law firms/arbitrators disagreeing with each other, since the only thing that matters is that the two people in dispute agree on one of those firms. Likely the two disagreeing parties will realize that picking an arbitrator that both of them are at least ok with will be cheaper, more productive, and healthier than just going to war with each other. And the arbitrators (even the mafia) have a huge incentive to make sure they make just rulings and don't play favorites, since no one will ever use their services again if they prove to be unfair.

So, we know exactly what that will look like, simply because we already have all that. And it has only been made much more prevalent in the last decade thanks to globalization and vastly expanded international trade, where free market reigns without the  supervision of any specific government.

I would agree, We the Living was the best book (the Italian movie, so so...)

Fountainhead has a complex plot, and AS is more a philosophical study superimposed on stereotyped characters.

I do like the two Atlas Shrugged movies, and expect the third and final one to be equally good.  They are not perfect, but are entertaining as any future dystopian movie might be.

Is Bitcoin just a tool?  I think you may be wrong there.  Rand greatly favored gold and silver over paper money, and spoke about this at some length.  Gold and silver were property to her, and paper money was not, it's use just being sanctioned by the government that owned it.  I can't help but think that she would have considered bitcoin as property, and treated it perhaps equally with gold and silver for that reason.

Another aspect would have been that Bitcoin was the creation of a money by free individuals, and she would have really, really liked that.

Well, that's just my opinion.  But I think that spending an hour or two looking up her exact words would support that opinion.

Yeesh - first on the agenda in the new forums: decent polling code. Jaw opened when I saw how few read her books (like her or not) before realizing the results are borked. I spent most of my last two years in high school reading her books and writing reports for independent classes. Fountainhead's required in many US AP classes. Came to like her less the more I read. I don't think she ever topped We The Living (was the third book I read, after the major two). Everything else bored me and was dragged out many times more than needed.

Bitcoin's just a tool. It enables many things, including liberties which weren't easily-obtainable before, but it can also be a tool for what Rand would consider as evil. I don't consider Bitcoin being ideological, so I don't think it could be compared to Rand's ideas, books, or personality in any way. Though... if practical results (right now, and since the beginning of Bitcoin) could be associated to any particular person's ideology, it'd have to be Spooner.

Only watched Atlas Shrugged Part 1, thought it was this close to describing reality, or at least where we're being led by the endless parade of worse tyrants in government. So...