Taking advantage of an underclass then having that underclass threaten to guillotine you... Seems like it just went from French to French... Whole scenario is French.
It's worth pointing out that the guillotine was primarily used to terrorize the poor commoners, not nobles (who had already fled the country by that point.)
Also many leaders of the revolution were capitalists bourgeois who found it unfair that nobles had more power than them by birth right. Analphabetic people with close to no news access didn't care that much about politics. Some far left fantasy that French revolution was led by peasants against capitalist is really ironic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois_revolution
That's an extensive list of every 501(c)3 in the largest economy in the US. California has strong workers protections compared to the rest of the nation. If they don't pay your salary, withhold your salary, or even fire you without your final pay in hand, they owe triple in damages. Nonprofit corporations, and Co-Ops, are the only corporations that should exist, as they are the only ones not legally beholden to shareholders profits first.
We will execute corporations in a heartbeat if they decide to FAFO out here.
One, non-profits are worse by design, being both a tax write-off and deliberately exploitative entities, and two, any government that goes it has to work against number of international interests, each of which probably gets more income than many country's economy. Companies are centrally planned by their CEO and board of directors, your statement makes no sense. The only difference is in what they are willing to do and were they are willing to go, where the real difference is not having to give a shit about your workers or consumers.
I think people do not understand where Ayn Rand was coming from. She came from the Soviet Union, a highly collectivist society. Everyone is expected to conform and be all the same economically. Then she got sick of it, emigrated and formed her own Iam14butthisisdeep philosophy. Unfortunately, some rich American asshats saw that her ideas have self-serving utility to justify their ultra-capitalist beliefs and privileges and continue exploitation, and then spread her nonsensical "objectivist" ideas around. Not many people actually believe the philosophy, although we unconsciously apply this especially with middle class NIMBYISM.
"Oh, poor homeless people. I hope they could be housed. But I will elect a politician who will not build social housing because it will bring down the value of my property."
"I support mitigating climate change. But I do not want windfarms nearby. They are eye sores."
I mean, lots of people with terrible and damaging ideas came from backgrounds that explain their terrible and damaging ideas. She doesn't get a pass because the USSR was corrupt, nor does she get a pass because western capitalist society is also corrupt.
The state always has the final say.
In a liberal democracy all we can do is vote, campaign & support the best (or least worst) people to make these decisions.
That’s every working class capitalist behaviour I’ve ever met. The average family guy with 4 kids barely able to make ends meet but god forbid if you ever make a disparaging point against Elon musk as if he’s in the same category out there fighting the good fight for the average working joe.
Blind hypocrisy seems to be a necessity in capitalism ideals.
I think everyone understands that people are dicked over and have to participate in the system as it is. However, if you’re going to be the poster child for why meat is murder or how god is fake or how public assistance is evil, it’s also not unfair for people to think you’re a hypocrite if they find you eating a turkey leg, preaching in church or taking public assistance.
She was hypocritical because she thought Medicare and Social Security shouldn't exist. And was extremely vocal about it. Yet she took them anyhow.
Also, those programs aren't some kind of retirement savings plan. The money you pay into Social Security today gets paid out to those who are receiving it today. The first people to ever receive Social Security and Medicare never paid a dime into it because it didn't exist while they were in the workforce.
We need to stop thinking about how the taxes we pay in directly benefits us. Taxes pay to keep our government and society functioning on an even keel. It isn't a pay in and get your kicks out system. And when people like Ayn Rand go about criticizing it as if it's a travesty that they had to pay taxes so that other people can live comfortable lives they are showing what kind of self serving fanatics they are.
My god so much of my young life was spent idolizing this hack.
It’s humiliating, and it damaged every relationship I had. I mean, naturally. Who the fuck am I that anyone who spends time with me would do so from their own rational self interest?
That’s not how love works and I wish I had seen that earlier in my life, because the only thing I’ve found that has any real value is the love of other people. Even if someone were to live by the “philosophy” of objectivism for self preservation, once everyone knows what a selfish twat you are, it’s a matter of time until you find that you NEED other people to survive.
Empathy has value. Altruism is a virtue. Those two sentences were all I needed. Not thousands of pages of nonsense that even the author couldn’t live by.
Yes. Exactly. Being self absorbed is against rational self interest.
I have needed so many people in my life, and they’ve needed me. Even when I absolutely did not want to be there, I did it anyway because they’d do it for me.
It’s been a long time since I read those books, probably more than 20 years now. I probably can’t remember 99% of what I read. I remember the hero worship, I remember that town that fell apart after the factory closed, little things.
I was primed to fall right into that shit. Young, questioning my religion (Appalachian Pentecostal. Like, deeeeeply engrained in everything I was), and from the poorest part of the country and ashamed of it. I seen the hypocrisy of the people around me, the preachers living off of offerings while everyone around me starved, knowing very few people who weren’t dirt poor and living with chickens in their houses (like the town that lost the factory).
I thought that maybe the thing that was holding me back was my altruism, because I wanted to rise above that mess.
Altruism is the only way that people forgotten by the world survive. I wouldn’t have made it without food stamps. I wouldn’t have made it without the people who crawled under the house to fix the sewage and never charged my mother a dime. It didn’t matter how smart I was, I wasn’t on an even playing field. It didn’t matter how much I wanted better things. I wasn’t on an even playing field. So many people are worse off than me, and they come from harder backgrounds than me. Meeting the right people is what it takes to get out of it.
Sorry for the wall of text. I mean, maybe I needed to take that shit so seriously to become a better person by damaging myself trying to be selfish. I feel like I would have been better off without it though.
In case anyone didn't know, Ayn Rand idolized serial killer William Edward Hickman.
The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand's beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation -- Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street -- on him.
What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"
This echoes almost word for word Rand's later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: "He was born without the ability to consider others." (The Fountainhead is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' favorite book -- he even requires his clerks to read it.)
I'm glad other people are aware of this. I used to post about her infatuation with that butcher every time I saw her name come up on Reddit. It makes me happy to see other people doing the same.
One of my favorite songs from my favorite band. For those who haven't heard them, Kiss Me, Son of God and One More Parade (which is a cover of an old song, like Istanbul (not Constantinople)) are both great as well
The sad thing is that not a single “proletariat revolution” produced better or even similar result that democratic capitalism produced in the West. Granted, Rand is to the far right economically of the modern Western society, but still…
I mean, that's been an ongoing battle. It sure as hell wasn't going well in the 1920s and 1930s, then a bunch of shit happened to claw back rights and value for workers.
Some of those battles continue to be fought.
Those battles have not been going well for the last 40+ years as worker share of profits, power, and wealth disparity has been eroded pretty much every year.
But we have lots of bread and circuses so it's cool I guess.
Many people commenting here more than likely didnt read atlas shrugged - my take away is that the politicians and do nothings at the top are the problem, making poor decisions and never being accountable to them.
Not everything is black and white if you think she was just some capitalist tool to push an agenda do yourself a favor and read the book, if you still have that opinion good on you but at least you did your homework.
Why do some people keep trying to incite violence over and over again, day by day? It gets tiring, and we all know it's not going to happen, there's no revolution of that nature in the future. Most people want safety, stability, and prosperity.
Put the energy into trying to affect change by voting in the right people into office so they can affect the change for us.
And yeah, I know, that's a hard lift, but still, it's better for Humanity overall in the long run. Once you start violence, it rarely stops until everything is destroyed.
Affect is usually a verb meaning "to produce an effect upon," as in "the weather affected his mood." Effect is usually a noun meaning "a change that results when something is done or happens," as in "computers have had a huge effect on our lives."
It's with an 'A'.
But I'll be sure to yell at my voice-to-text mode on your behalf, for getting it wrong in your eyes.
I think the main issue is that violence is being waged against 90%+ of the population in terms of division via media outlets, price gouging, wage reduction, removal of safety nets, busting unions, restricting how people can protest, police brutality, a system that blocks positive change, etc
All of this gets obscured because you aren't seeing billionaires directly killing people, but that is the outcome, hundreds of millions of people have suffered or died because of their actions.
At what point do we say enough is enough? When do we remind them that they should fear us?
At what point do we say enough is enough? When do we remind them that they should fear us?
You're absolutely right that the common man gets played constantly, to be controlled. I won't argue that point.
But advocating for violence so early in the process is just wrong, and it would just not happen.
People want safety, stability, and prosperity, and trying to get them to go against that to affect the change that you're advocating is just too much of an ask, and it's not right, as once humans go violent everything goes up in flames.
There are more things that can be done between doing nothing, and sparking a revolution, that haven't been tried yet.
You seem to lack an understanding of the history of US forced regime change in Latin America and the world.
Quite a lot of (in fact most of) the coups the US have conducted have been against legitimately elected leftwing governments... And sometimes with the aid of, if not for international business interests (dole bananas being the go to example, and the reason the term banana republic exists).
Also, whilst I'm sure that fairly ethical small business operators (perhaps like yourself) easily find cultural avenues to feel attacked regularly - I think you should try to be rational and think through these feelings when you come across topics like this.
For instance, is this comic supposed to be aimed at small business owners, or is it supposed to be a lampooning of Ayn Rand's philosophies? Judging from the style, it's from the brand (one could even call them a small business): "Philosophy Comics" - which might be a clue.
...most of society's woes are aimed at large corporate and political interests, and when confronted on a personal level, most people understand the necessity and community value of small business as being useful and good in society. It tends to be the more money-hungry, greedy, and heatless aspects of large scale global Capitalism and Corporatism that society and culture aim to criticize...
...hence the grey uniforms and drab setting in this comic. So I think you've had a knee jerk reaction here, and should be aware of it to detach yourself from the kinds of global large scale Capitalism, and history of Colonialist and Imperialist involvement that the Capitalist right have often been part of.
No, I understand that history. But the extreme left influenced by ruzzia venezuela China Cuba has taken over many countries. Some fight back now, like El Salvador, Ecuador and argentina.
Come live in south America and see how the political class is rich. They are all left wing narco dictators. Ecuador, Cuba, Argentina, venezuela, el salvador... All in the hands of NARCO COMMUNISTS. really, come visit.
This isn't exactly the most convincing argument against Rand's philosophy - the workers didn't invent the device and don't work any harder than they did before. Their feeling of entitlement to the profit from it appears to be naked greed unsupported by any moral principle. Acting in one's rational self-interest would include keeping them placated if they can credibly threaten violence, but their role as workers is completely irrelevant in that context.
You're missing a very important point here, which is that the workers are the ones whose labor is turned into profit. That means that if their work is able to generate more money, they are perfectly within their right to demand more, even if they don't necessarily work any harder.
If I think that investing in capital and getting a return on my investment is a valid use of the money I earn but you do not, our disagreement is ideological rather than factual; who's right and who's wrong is a matter of opinion.
With that said, I do find it ironic that proponents of an ideology that has failed quite dramatically are accusing proponents of an ideology that has been quite successful of being insufficiently rational.
I fuckin HATE ayn rand, but those workers are being paid for their labor, they're not slaves. If that labor provides a little profit or a lot of profit is up to good or bad business practices of the company they're working for, and doesn't need to be shared with them outright, unless it happens naturally as a result of supply/demand making their labor more valuable (because otherwise they'd just go somewhere else where they will be paid more).
The crux here is that for this to happen appropriately, we need to be living in an ideal world with appropriate laws, no corruption, exploitation, loopholes, bribing, lobbying, etc. and we do not currently live in that world, so the above is just theoretical.
Ayn Rand depended on the government welfare programs before she died. She didn't even believe her own bullshit. Any Rand lovers hate when you bring this up because they don't have a good excuse for it.
As a person who believes in government programs, I find the idea that you have to believe the right things in order to be worthy of receiving benefits abhorrent.
And of course they have an excuse for it: she paid taxes so it's her money. They don't hate it, they love it when you bring it up.
So: gross for the person making this argument, ineffective against someone who knows the least but about how she viewed it.
There's tons of things that suck about Rand, so let's find something other than being a hypocrite about her being a hypocrite.
This comic reminds me of a classic argument used for leftist policies, unrelated to ayn rand though. Under capitalism, technological advancements are harmful to the working class because companies are likely to keep pay and hours the same, and just scale up production and/or lay off surplus labor force.
Under a system where the workers own the means of production, those same advancements could go towards lowering the hours of the employees without lowering their pay, or if they decide to scale up production then it would mean more profit that the company could decide democratically what to do with, making it likely to result in pay increases for the workers. Point is it wouldn't just go into the hands of the capitalist class, but rather stay under control of those who labored for it.
This isn't the most convincing argument because in a healthy society the things the workers demand will happen naturally.
Yet, if you go assuming those things aren't happening, it means the society is not healthy, and will improve dramatically by following the procedure on the last panel.
That's not the argument being presented here. The point is that if one goes by rationality and self-interest instead of fairness or justice, then murder and theft are perfectly logical. If it is in the rational interest of the factory owner to not increase worker pay, then it is in the rational interest of the workers to murder her and steal her wealth.