participant-3927, 5:34 AM, January 7
A good opinion article by a columnist Elicia Brand, pushing back on Mamdani’s “warmth of collectivism” is published at Townhall magazine. The article references Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. She opens like this: “When New York’s new mayor vowed to replace rugged individualism with collectivism, he echoed an ideology history has already tested—and buried. Ayn Rand warned us what happens when societies punish excellence. In 2026, New York chose to learn the lesson anyway.”
participant-4603, 8:03 AM, January 7
How does a great city, a great people, and a great country turn their back on their founding principles, in this case rugged individualism? And, perhaps more importantly, let us suppose a brand new country is set up, founded on the right ideas of individual freedom, property rights, and things of that nature. How can it be better safeguarded so that you do not get decay a few generations down the line?
It has to be more than a stronger, self enforcing constitution. It also has to be a cultural mentality.
Speaking of starting new countries, the first raw edition of the book that I have been endlessly talking about is up, but not yet on Amazon, and the home page is undergoing an upgrade.
participant-2294, 2:13 PM, January 7
Among autotelic people who care primarily about genetic engineering for their own longevity—and, potentially, pantropy—it wouldn’t be hard to develop a culture that’s hostile to self-harm. In the real world, there aren’t many individuals like that.
If you want a culture of rugged individualism—self-reliance and independence of outside assistance or support—you have to create an environment that’s hostile to self-destructive, “ethical-hedonist” behaviors (for example, drug use and sexual masochism). I don’t think I need to explain why. Most ethical hedonists aren’t self-reliant, and they are, by definition, the natural enemies of rugged individualism.
The idea that you should stay neutral or indifferent—never make value judgments, or even refrain from insulting certain people or behaviors (that is, being liberal)—is one of the reasons that will eventually destroy a culture of rugged individualism.
That said, when I talk with people my age (20s), I usually use it as a filter: I voice a lot of right-wing views (partly social-conservative), and I’m openly critical of paraphilic sexual behaviors. In practice, being explicitly pro-normophilic sexuality ends up screening out a lot of left-leaning types and helps me avoid the wrong friendships.
Since I’m a very explicit person, let me show how some behaviors that left-libertarians treat as “fine” can, in practice, produce a society that’s incompatible with laissez-faire capitalism.
Imagine John Doe: a white-collar call-center worker who hands over most of his paycheck to his dominatrix. John ends up broke. At that point, he’ll demand social welfare assistance programs. This example may sound absurd, but it’s based on a real segment from the Italian TV show Le Iene about findom.
Now you can see the structural problem: both parties in this ethical hedonist dynamic, the masochist and the dominatrix, become dependent on outside assistance to keep going. The same logic applies to drug addicts and dealers.
Anyone who has seriously read The Virtue of Selfishness will be able to connect this to what Ayn Rand argued—especially her view that sadists and masochists (i.e. the ethical hedonists) are fundamentally incompatible with the Objectivist ethics.
participant-4603, 4:17 PM, January 7
What do you make of radical, brutal honesty?
In some ways, it is so incredibly liberating, and those who truly like you really like you, assuming they are being genuine and truthful themselves. I mean, it is the ultimate in quality control.
It is also why, with respect to startupstates.swiss, I am rolling it out very slowly before doing a big push, to try to attract people who are more aligned rather than just folks who are into the flavour of the week.
Sometimes I do think the tortoise and the hare are valuable, in so far as slow and steady does win the race.
participant-4233, 4:31 PM, January 7
Ha. I wrote some brutally honest messages when frustrated but never sent them.
participant-4233, 4:32 PM, January 7
Is startupstates.swiss the project you’ve been working on?
participant-3927, 4:33 PM, January 7
A white lie or a lie is an attempt to fake reality
participant-2294, 4:34 PM, January 7
I wonder why the Anglo world has become so censored. I would be more frustrated living without freedom of speech
participant-3927, 4:34 PM, January 7
And that for the sake of someone else. So, it’s altruism
participant-4233, 4:47 PM, January 7
It’s not censorship.
It’s basically trying to vent at a person who you told many times that X hurts you but they did it anyway. But you realize this person will not understand and it will just push them away. And it is mostly self-serving. You have to just accept that people don’t change, and set expectations accordingly. Anger and frustration is downstream of powerlessness and limited options.
participant-2294, 4:49 PM, January 7
You need to do it to screen people; for drug addicts and mentally ill people, there are psychotherapists, etc.
participant-2294, 4:50 PM, January 7
The point is that physiognomy alone is not reliable
participant-4233, 4:52 PM, January 7
The root cause of anger is scarcity.
participant-2294, 4:59 PM, January 7
So should I found my country with angry people?
participant-4233, 4:59 PM, January 7
Where do you get that conclusion from?
participant-2294, 5:01 PM, January 7
Not a conclusion. But what did you mean?
participant-3927, 5:06 PM, January 7
Scarcity is a communist concept. The capitalist concept is opportunity.
participant-2294, 5:22 PM, January 7
Let me summarize: Rugged individualism is linked to the American frontier, and therefore to traditionalist tough men (not weak ones). Ethical hedonism leads to self-harm (e.g. drug abuse) and non-traditional societies (i.e. the normalization of degeneracy). There can never be a left-libertarian/liberal/libertine society compatible with rugged individualism.
participant-2294, 5:23 PM, January 7
Any interpretation other than this is not my point
participant-3927, 5:23 PM, January 7
Iran, a country rich with oil is subsidizing each person with money to buy basic food. $7 per month. That’s what you get when you rely on irrational politics.
participant-2294, 5:31 PM, January 7
Universal Credit in the UK is £300-400 per month, but the birth rate is lower
participant-3927, 5:33 PM, January 7
I doubt that the rebellion is ideological
participant-3927, 5:33 PM, January 7
If it was, there would be military commanders who would turn
participant-2294, 5:34 PM, January 7
I think it’s a bit of both
participant-2294, 5:34 PM, January 7
(ideological and economic)
participant-3927, 5:36 PM, January 7
They chant for Shah rule, which was like Putin’s Russia
participant-2294, 5:42 PM, January 7
Seriously, it would be a significant improvement
participant-3927, 5:43 PM, January 7
Until someone at the head of a chunk of the army turns, the rebellion will be squashed.
participant-2294, 5:43 PM, January 7
Furthermore, it would be pro-Western as a former government in exile
participant-3927, 5:45 PM, January 7
It would be an improvement as choosing the lesser of two evils. But an authoritarian regime is anti western
participant-4603, 7:55 PM, January 7
I know what you mean. I struggle with setting boundaries.
participant-4603, 7:56 PM, January 7
Yes.
participant-4603, 7:56 PM, January 7
That’s a good point.
participant-4603, 7:57 PM, January 7
That’s a really good point too.. The entire Anglosphere.. Especially the developed part of the Anglosphere…
participant-4603, 7:58 PM, January 7
I love that! That is one of the smartest things I’ve heard in a long time. It’s why the abundance mentality I think is so much healthier….
participant-2294, 7:59 PM, January 7
They were tired of being developed
participant-4603, 7:59 PM, January 7
So let’s put together what you and @participant-4233 are saying… Could then communism be rooted in a form of anger then?
participant-4603, 7:59 PM, January 7
Affluenza? Having it too good for too long? The laws of entropy?
participant-2294, 8:02 PM, January 7
I heard from some British that it was something in the water
participant-2294, 8:15 PM, January 7
Apart from everything else, life is better and there is more respect in rural America
participant-3927, 8:57 PM, January 7
Scarcity is about dividing a pie. That’s how communists think — everyone must get the same amount, otherwise it’s not fair.
A capitalist doesn’t operate on the concept of scarcity, but on the concept of market demand. Demand means that it’s worth making more of the demanded stuff.
Scarcity is a false concept, which obscures how reality really is. Reality allows the creation of any amount of stuff.
participant-3927, 9:00 PM, January 7
Communists societies crumble because they eat the pie. Their whole substance is how to optimize the limited resource, until the resource runs out.
Capitalist societies don’t pay attention to any kind of limits. They don’t play that game. Instead, they are creating abundance as a side effect, without even trying, without any rhetoric about benefits to the collective , or fairness.
participant-3927, 9:08 PM, January 7
participant-3927, 9:08 PM, January 7
participant-3927, 9:08 PM, January 7
participant-3927, 9:09 PM, January 7
Excerpt from “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” by Ayn Rand
participant-2294, 9:14 PM, January 7
Principled entrepreneurship goes beyond simply meeting demand. It’s about creating value without compromising your standards
participant-2294, 9:30 PM, January 7
This separates prostitutes from entrepreneurs…
participant-3927, 9:34 PM, January 7
My post on HBL:
The libertarian theory of property appears to rest on the concept of scarcity. The argument goes that (a) only physical property can be scarce, so only it can be property, and (b) digital things can be duplicated easily, so they can’t be property.
Isn’t scarcity, however, an invalid concept to obscure the concept of marketable (value)? Scarcity seems to assume a world in which there is a fixed pie, and the program is to divide the pie into equal parts, so that it’s “fair.” But a businessman’s view is that there is a market demand for something, and so he decide to make more of it. The concept of scarcity turns into a struggle that which is supposed to be joy. It is fun to make stuff, it’s not fun to measure and conserve.
Land is always given as a scarce resource example. But there is plenty of land that is dirt cheap, and nobody wants to buy it, because it is too far from developed regions. There is market demand for land equipped with civilization, and so a businessman make more of it by converting undesirable land into desirable.
Scarcity is an alternative form in which Marxist ideas are presented. Yet, it’s a flagship concept of libertarians.
participant-3927, 9:36 PM, January 7
There is no such thing as “sex work”. Sex cannot be work.
participant-2294, 9:39 PM, January 7
“don’t pay attention to any kind of limits” is a bad thing
participant-2294, 9:41 PM, January 7
Land near developed areas is scarce
participant-3927, 9:42 PM, January 7
It’s not scarce, it’s is valuable.
participant-3927, 9:42 PM, January 7
An invalid concept makes thinking difficult
participant-2294, 9:42 PM, January 7
Land near specific developed areas is perpetually scarce. Land near developed areas (category) is temporarily scarce.
participant-3927, 9:44 PM, January 7
Example: you don’t call a child a height-challenged human.
participant-3927, 9:45 PM, January 7
A child is a growing human.
participant-3927, 9:45 PM, January 7
Height-challenged is physically correct, but obscures reality of what a child is.
participant-3927, 9:47 PM, January 7
It world of height-challenged humans, children would be pitied, not celebrated
participant-2294, 9:47 PM, January 7
There’s only one historic center of Rome. Can it be replicated? Yes. But the original remains scarce.
participant-3927, 9:48 PM, January 7
It doesn’t matter
participant-2294, 9:50 PM, January 7
“sex worker” is not part of my vocabulary
participant-3927, 9:58 PM, January 7
Whatever was valuable about Rome was replicated many times over. Alexandria, Paris, London, New York.
participant-2294, 9:59 PM, January 7
The fact is that your position, partly taken from Reisman, is extremely awkward and impractical in speech and questionable to uphold in certain real-life contexts
participant-2294, 10:00 PM, January 7
Naw.
participant-3927, 10:00 PM, January 7
I have not read Reisman
participant-3927, 10:01 PM, January 7
I have no need, and I don’t ever use the anti concept “scarce”. In 47 years
participant-2294, 10:03 PM, January 7
pp. 54–55
participant-3927, 10:03 PM, January 7
Actually, I did use it in USSR. Some things weee said to be “In deficit”. But never since I left
participant-2294, 10:13 PM, January 7
It’s strange to say that there is no scarcity of something in an area where, in fact and by definition, there is scarcity
participant-3927, 10:15 PM, January 7
Just say that something is more or less valuable. That turns the tables and the whole thinking about the situation.
participant-3927, 10:18 PM, January 7
I agree with the content in those pages of Reisman, but he missed the case that scarcity is just a bad way to describe what’s going on
participant-3927, 10:19 PM, January 7
He says that demand of imagination is bigger than available production, and that’s scarcity.
participant-3927, 10:20 PM, January 7
I say: production is the process of creating things of an ever increasing value. There is never a scarcity.
participant-3927, 10:21 PM, January 7
In 1995 there was never a scarcity of fast internet. Internet got faster by innovators creating faster technology. But it was never scarce
participant-2294, 10:31 PM, January 7
There was definitely a scarcity of Alessandro
participant-2294, 10:34 PM, January 7
P.s. I understand your point, I’m just a little busy right now
participant-3927, 10:46 PM, January 7
I have only heard persistently of scarcity in USSR. It was said that certain things, like black caviar, were in “in deficit.” The deficit encompassed sugar, toilet paper, and soap. (Toilet paper was a luxury; instead everyone used newspaper precut into a stack of rectangular pieces.) For black caviar’s case, the fish that has these eggs is a rare and a protected species, and it seemed that it’s an unchangeable fact of nature that it would be always in deficit. However, years later I learned that a kibbutz in Israel created a fish farm that breeds this fish and exports black caviar to a great success.
participant-3927, 11:05 PM, January 7
Also, it’s popular to say that bitcoin is scarce. But it’s not: you can divide it as much as you want , and you can pay that way any amount you want. I doubt that anyone wanted to transfer an amount for which he couldn’t obtain enough bitcoin.
participant-2294, 11:07 PM, January 7
You’re confusing scarcity of supply with divisibility of the unit
participant-3927, 11:07 PM, January 7
The term Scarcity in crypto world obscures the valid concept of objective value. The limit prevents devaluation of the currency, by making it impossible to announce that you have more bitcoin from thin air.
participant-3927, 11:09 PM, January 7
Scarcity means that you want something, but there is not enough of it. But you can’t want something that you do not deserve. You have to work for it. No one wants undeserved bitcoin like manna from the sky. They want Bitcoin as store of value, or method of transfer, and in both use cases there is no scarcity.
participant-3927, 11:16 PM, January 7
Mathematically, it doesn’t matter which way to formulate a problem and solve it. All solutions form a mutually supporting set, and each explores an aspect of a problem. Mathematically, saying that Bitcoin is scarce is equivalent that it has objective value. Mathematically , you can say that imagination is larger than production (Reisman). Mathematically you can say that negative numbers are no worse than positive. But that’s because math is only a model of reality, it’s not reality. Reality is richer and more complex. It has more nuance. And it does matter which way you approach a problem, and what terminology you use.
participant-3927, 11:17 PM, January 7
For instance, in reality, negative quantity doesn’t exist.
participant-2294, 11:42 PM, January 7
I’ll read the messages more carefully tomorrow
participant-3927, 5:22 PM, January 8
Funny, George Reisman claimed to have been an Objectivist and was published in the Objectivist Forum. However, Ayn Rand already pre-empted response to his theory in Galt’s Speech:
Frantic cowards who posture as defenders of industrialists now define the purpose of economics as ‘an adjustment between the unlimited desires of men and the goods supplied in limited quantity.’ Supplied — by whom? Blank-out.
participant-3927, 9:26 PM, January 8
A government building is burning in Iran
participant-2294, 10:37 PM, January 8
A friend of mine of Iranian origin told me there is no sympathy for the government there. It’s perceived as corrupt
participant-3927, 10:38 PM, January 8
But for Sharia ?
participant-2294, 4:30 AM, January 9
More permissive, UAE-like
participant-3927, 5:15 PM, January 10
Every day I wake up and go to Twitter to search for “Iran” and to see if it hasn’t dies out. Seems like there are still fresh posts. However, internet in Iran got shut down. It’s hard to tell if the photos are current.
participant-3927, 6:58 PM, January 10
Jim Allard writes on Objectivist forum HBL:
Rule of law does not mean “obeying orders.” It does not mean that any mask-wearing thug that goes around beating the crap out of people is on the side of rule of law just because they have “police” written on their backs.
Rule of law is a principle. It does not mean “anything the law says,” it means placing the use of retaliatory force under objective control. Anarchy means wielding force capriciously, non-objectively, on whim. Thus, non-objective laws can (and do) violate the rule of law, and it is ICE that is not respecting the rule of law. It is ICE that is acting on the principle of anarchy, not those who are protesting. It is ICE that is behaving immorally.
participant-3927, 5:18 PM, January 11
News from Iran posted yesterday: “The most conservative estimates indicate that at least 2,000 people have been killed over the past 48 hours.” Source:
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601103903
participant-3927, 5:37 PM, January 11
Starlink is also being jammed – it’s a complete internet blackout. By the way, using Starlink was never legal in Iran. BitChat saw 400,000 downloads over the week.
participant-2294, 8:47 PM, January 11
Italy is probably one of the worst regimes in Europe
