That oil company and those commercials here’s one.

Were an oil company and we love you very very much. Many of you have probably heard about climate change and we put our best people on this and even if it is real and it probably isn’t our best thinkers have took us we human’s have not yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change, even if it is real and probably not. In simple terms for all you toothless hillbilly’s figure of speech we are just to stupid to solve it even if it is real. The best minds we have also said go shopping, fill-up one on every corner pay your electric bill listen to your leaders we are one of those and watch your parking meter’s. In many way’s ignorance is strength and let us all do are part. Because of the supreme court ruling we will have much more on all of this and maybe someday little green and red and yellow things beautiful colors can be seen in our oceans. We can now drill 50 miles down and we have found it’s very hot. We put our best minds on this and we love you very very much. We know why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to us. Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s everywhere. It is all around us. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth and what is the truth stay tuned and remember we human’s have not yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle complex situation’s so we will try and keep it simple real simple.

Yes, i have heard of the holodomor or murder by imposed famine. But, sorry, i do not accept this as a fact;

*********************

Glen Beck had a special on his show last night detailing all the killing that went on in Communist countries around the world in the 1900′s. The part on the Ukraine included interviews with the current President of the Ukraine, where he tells stories about his wife’s family experience during the holodomor. There were also interviews with real Ukrainian citizens telling accounts of their memory of the year of the holodomor 1932-33. Every crop was confiscated and sold abroad by Stalin. There was no food in country at all. The report indicated that 7-10 million people died as a result of famine and this all happened within one year. It would have taken just 10 000 lbs of grain to feel the population. The country produced 12 000 lbs of grain that year, but the citizens were not allowed to keep any of it. If Stalin had left them even half of their crop, some of the victims could have survived, but he left them nothing. One story that was particulary gruesome. A survivor of the holodomor told the story about a lady who lived on the hill behind her house. Driven mad by starvation, she ate her own daughter. After she realized what she had done, she killed herself. Horrible stuff. It’s well documented. Feel free to look it up.

It shld be noted that it is the western, strongly asocialistic media, which asserts that 4-8mn farmers perished because of the collectivization.
Be it as it may, it is omitted how, when, why, where did such a vast number of people perish.
Yes, i have heard of the holodomor or murder by imposed famine. But, sorry, i do not accept this as a fact; unless several socialist and asocialist historian wld be in agreement that death by hunger indeed had taken place [probably after '17?]
There is no reports, as far as i know, of people dying in ukraine after collectivization. But as u point out ukrainians/germans fought with or supported white russians in the civil war and revenge was visited upon them.
But killing that many [is it, men?] appears to clash with the fact that ukraine was the bread basket for europe and communist surely must have wanted it to continue to be that, killing 4+mn farmers was not the way to do it.
Next time i visit the library, i’ll look for a book on early history of USSR.
tnx

Thanks
Danny

jdlevane says: You are violating the rules of commenting etiquette. Personal attacks are not permitted, remember? You can disagree with me, but it is uncivilzed to call me names. If you have valid responses then you should state them. Which point exactly was so appalling and morally repugnant? Perhaps the issue is that you do not have valid responses.

I am seeing that too, jdlevane. The debate has been revealing, for me.

*************
Thank you Melissa. I appreciate your civility. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that opposite philosphies should try to find a way to talk to each other. That is what I’m trying to do.

Deadbeat, if competition kills competition, how do you explain all the companies who were formerly market leaders and are now a mere fraction of their former size. In the 1920’s A & P Grocery stores were the dominant grocers in America. They continued to prosper until 1970’s. Suburbinization with bigger parking lots, and the sale of more refrigerators and freezers made greater volume of sales possible. Other chains responded to changing market conditions, while A & P continued to do business as usual. They lost market share and now they probably have less than 10% of the market share. There are hundreds of expamples like this in Thomas Sowell’s book “Basic Economics”. Look them up.

Thomas Sowell is a black right wing Reaganite who supported much of the rollbacks that aided the rich and harmed the poor. He has no credibility.

As for your ANECDOTE A&P you PROVED my point about competition KILLING competition. A&P is out of business due to competition. There is whole host of companies that are now DEFUNCT due to competition like Alberson’s and many other small LOCAL stores. The supermarket chains today is even MORE concentrated than ever which means less choices for consumers, less jobs and greater PRICING POWER for the remaining players. And that is one of the many problem in Capitalism is that it CONCENTRATES wealth and POWER.

Obvioulsy, gorbachov saw US as i do: a fascist governance intent on destroying socialism. He, i assume, thought that any moment americans wld fire those missiles at his people that he loved more than socialism.
Because of this constant threat and knowing that the fascist wld not stop at anything to destroy socialism, he gave in.

Gorbachov saw what americans did to indigenes, cubans, vietnamese, koreans, japanese, et al; killing more people than any country ever did.

The first thing, communists did was to nationalize everything; i.e., each person owned equally her/his country.
Of course kulaks did not like it. They owned vast acreage. So only they were unhappy and not poor people.
In fact, most people were quite happy that communist gave back to people what always morally belonged to them.
Not by ‘laws’ which were written by robbers and deceivers. tnx

I am seeing that too, jdlevane. The debate has been revealing, for me.

I was interested in the thread from the beginning from a matriarchal standpoint. Patriarchical/surpressed matriarch themes seem to be influencing the dysfunction of all of our current systems. It’s not that the systems (motors, anyone?) don’t and aren’t working just fine, they marching along as intended, destroying with alacrity and false authority. They are consolidating power back upon the system, because the system is designed to protect the system. ???

The female demonstrating the intellect, as the hero, but stifling the softer aspects of feminine IS striking in the book. Somewhere, someone said something about the stark/austere settings, a sense of bleakness. It struck me because of the extremity and heartwrenching-ness of it all.

In the context of the central and heroic characters in the time that it was authored, this imbalance in the male/female energy, what does it say? I can’t know who Ayn Rand was, that is history, but I would be commenting on how glass ceilings are really broken. It ain’t by having reverence for unique feminine capabilites.

Speaking of history. It’s a great background, and trying on every perspective is great when that knowledge is used to deliberate the present and future.

But don’t get lost in the past. Or too passionate about a single perspective, from a single time, in a single collection of words. If we cannot find a way to use our collective knowledge to co-create something that reflects the sentience which WE ALL POSSESS, we will forever remain wandering, ululating, and stagnant.

I’m at a place where I think that there is more to agree upon, the super important stuff too, than there is to find departure from each other. Don’t ever forget that corralling ourselves into points of departure is dumb-on-us doing the dirty work for the orchestraters of tyranny. We have to find a way to communicate with each other, with the intent of understanding. We have to learn to do this, because the division just doesn’t seem to advance us beyond the propaganda.

Oh, and I have really enjoyed reading this thread. Thanks for throwing the ideas out, Scott, and *thankyou* to all of the people who also shared ideas.

As always,
Peace, Resistance, Hope
Melissa

And your greatest complaint about Capitalism is that people have to work for wages? Your greatest complaint about Capitalism is that too many products were produced during the 1920s and it resulted in the consumer culture we have today, where presumably people derive enjoyment from the products they consume? During the 1900s, America experienced the greatest boom of abundence the world has ever seen while people around the world were starving or being shot to death for speaking out against Communist regimes. Please!!! The contrast is stagering. How could anyone chose Communism over Capitalism given the extreme contrasts. One produces prosperity and opportunity. The other produces genocidal mass murders. I find it incomprehensible.

The train wreck was not engineered by one of the strikers (ie. the heros of the book). In “Atlas Shrugged”, the chapter titled “The Moratorium on Brains” a train is derailed in Colorado just before an eight mile tunnel. Another diesel engine isn’t available until the next morning. They have a coal burning engine, but the engineeers warn that the tunnel does not have sufficient ventilation to send a coal burning train through. It would suffocate everyone on the train. There is a government official on the train who does not want to be delayed and he orders the train employees to send the train through, threatening them that he will have them arrested, even though the situation has been explained to him – that everyone will die if a coal burning train is sent through the tunnel. The superintendent orders a subordinate to send the coal burning train through. The scheduled engineer refuses to take the train through. A drunk engineer agrees to take the train through. Everyone dies. It is also important to know that at this point in the story, government has made it illegal to quit a job and illegal to refuse an order on a job.

The important note is that the heros of the story did not engineer this catastrophe. Government officials sent the train through and the catastrophe was made possible by ridiculous laws which turned men into unthinking robots.

Please get your facts straight. Read the books you make comments about. The article you quoted regarding the terrorist acts of the heroes in Ayn Rand’s books is printing plain lies.

Here’s an excerpt from an article on the subject: “In one of her books (The Fountainhead), her “hero”, Howard Roarke, blows up a housing project he designed when a minor alteration is made and then orders the jury to acquit him (the fact that, as an architect, Roarke was presumably contracted for his work and therefore, it wasn’t “his” anymore piddles all over the supposed respect for property too)…When one of the strikers engineers a train crash (because they don’t just strike but commit acts of terrorism too), Rand makes it clear that she believes the murdered victims deserved their fate because they supported progressive taxation. A stewing hymn of Nietzchean will-to-power, misanthropy, failure to understand economics, feudalism and sexual politics verging on the obscene, Atlas Shrugged is full of this stuff. Her heroes spend their time both insisting that they are the heroic producers (and without labour, what are they producing exactly?) and bemoaning that others do not worship them as such.”

In “The Fountainhead”, Howard Roark agrees to design a building for another Architect who does not have the talent and ability to do so on the condition that the builing is not altered in any way. The two architects sign a contract to that effect and Howard Roark makes the other architect procure a contract from his clients for whom they are designing the building, stating that the building will not be altered. The clients then ignore the contract and alter the building. That is the payment that Howard wanted for his work. He would not have agreed to do the work otherwise. His labor belongs to him and he can set any terms and conditions for his labor. He was not paid as agreed. The contract was violated. I already told you that it is very powerful to own your own labor. This is an excellent example. Howard Roark blows up the building because his contract was not honored. Extreme? Yes! Did he have legal and moral grounds for his actions? Yes! oh and BTW, the building was empty if anyone was wondering. Like I said Ayn Rand would never condone murder.

jdelvane: “The heroes of her books did NOT engage in terrorism. No hero in her novel ever initiated the use of force. They only met force with force.”

Here’s an excerpt from an article on the subject: “In one of her books (The Fountainhead), her “hero”, Howard Roarke, blows up a housing project he designed when a minor alteration is made and then orders the jury to acquit him (the fact that, as an architect, Roarke was presumably contracted for his work and therefore, it wasn’t “his” anymore piddles all over the supposed respect for property too)…When one of the strikers engineers a train crash (because they don’t just strike but commit acts of terrorism too), Rand makes it clear that she believes the murdered victims deserved their fate because they supported progressive taxation. A stewing hymn of Nietzchean will-to-power, misanthropy, failure to understand economics, feudalism and sexual politics verging on the obscene, Atlas Shrugged is full of this stuff. Her heroes spend their time both insisting that they are the heroic producers (and without labour, what are they producing exactly?) and bemoaning that others do not worship them as such.”

In “The Fountainhead”, Howard Roark agrees to design a building for another Architect who does not have the talent and ability to do so on the condition that the builing is not altered in any way. The two architects sign a contract to that effect and Howard Roark makes the other architect procure a contract from his clients for whom they are designing the building, stating that the building will not be altered. The clients then ignore the contract and alter the building. That is the payment that Howard wanted for his work. He would not have agreed to do the work otherwise. His labor belongs to him and he can set any terms and conditions for his labor. He was not paid as agreed. The contract was violated. I already told you that it is very powerful to own your own labor. This is an excellent example. Howard Roark blows up the building because his contract was not honored. Extreme? Yes! Did he have legal and moral grounds for his actions? Yes!

jdelvane: “The above quote about Hickman must have been twisted and taken out of context. If she said anything about Hickman, it would have been to express extreme disgust and disapproval of such a person.”

How on Earth could you take the following out of context?

“Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should”. 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.’

If you look, the above quote is broken up. That means that part of her speech is missing. So I state again, her words are taken out of context. Parts of her message are missing to make it look like she admires this monster. But Ayn Rand would never condone murder.

jdelvane: Freedom is tied up with property rights. Would you consider a society free if it did not allow you own anything – to own what you earned?”

Quite the contrary, it is the capitalist who denies people the fruits of their labor. Where do you think these massive profit margins come from? Trees?

Where do profits come from? No they do not come from trees. And No they are not created by the labor of workers. The workers are only able to work at a Corporation because someone created it in first place. I already talked about the process of creating a business. You have an idea for a product that you believe people will find useful and want to buy in the marketplace. Then, if you don’t have the capital to invest your own idea, you have to convince others to lend you money to produce the product, then you have to spend many 16 hour days working to find the raw materials at the lowest price to produce your product and you have to work on a production method that will be cheap enough so you can sell your product at low enough price that people will be willing to buy it. for the first few months or years, your business will probably just be able to break even, ie. your revenue will just about cover your costs. There may even some losses along the way as you perfect your product and method of production. Then maybe, if your are able to improve your production method enough so that you are able to get a little extra return on your investment, you may eventually get some net profit. What makes you think that workers are entitled to this profit? They did not do all the work that was necessary to create a thriving business. They are simply supporting its success once it is already successful. They deserve the wage they are being offered.

Capitalism continually siphons off the fruits of the majority’s labor in order to enrich the already enrich. It is perpetual property theft, disguised, strangely enough, under the term “property rights”. As indicated previously, there are many different forms of property. Possessions are things which you acquire through your own labor and which do not threaten the liberty of others; “private property”, in contrast, is property that does negate the liberty of others, and which is usually acquired by theft, exploitation, monopoly, inheritance or some other contrivance.

Exactly! Property is that which you acquire through your own labor. A corporation belongs to those who did the work and took the risks to create it. Workers at a coroporation do not own the product of that corporation because they did not create the means of producing those products. It is not exploitation. Workers agree to work for a corporation because they agree that it is their best option for work in the world as it exists. They are free to work for anyone else or to work for themselves or NOT to work at all like I said before. But they would have to deal with the consequences of their decisions.

If people prefer “work democracy”, they are free to create a corporation where they can work according to their own rules. But these corporations do not grow on trees. They are not entitled to take corporations away from their rightful owners. They would have to create their own corporation. And good luck to them.

–

jdelvane: “Well, which is it? Are wages a burden or a privilege?”

Slavery is preferable to homelessness and death, obviously. That doesn’t mean slavery is desirable or inevitable.

This is an important point.

jdelvane: “Her husband did not suffer from dementia and she never humiliated him or was cruel to him. She loved her husband very much and other than the one infidelity I mentioned which she got permission for, she was loyal to him, she took care of him and stayed with him until his death.”

You’re lying or simply ignorant. From a review in the New Criterion:

“Rand’s hardness of heart was not only confined to the page. There is a chilling account in the biography of how she treated her long-suffering husband, Frank O’Connor, when he suffered from dementia:

She nagged at him continually, to onlookers’ distress. “Don’t humor him,” she [said]. “Make him try to remember.” She insisted that his mental lapses were “psycho-epistemological,” and she gave him long, grueling lessons in how to think and remember. She assigned him papers on aspects of his mental functioning, which he was entirely unable to write.”

I did not know that Frank started losing his memory late in life. But Ayn was not being cruel to him. When she said his lapses where psycho-epistemological”, she did not mean that he was psycho. She meant that she thought his lapses were within his control and she thought she could help him remember. She thought she could try to help him practice his mental function. We did not know as much about neuro psychology back then as we know now. (This must have been sometime in the 1970′s because she died in 1982.) These “lessons” were her desperate attempt to keep him with her mentally, to save his mental function because it was too painful to her to lose him. I have a friend who took his dying father to Africa because he thought they had a cure for his cancer there. His father died in Africa. People do desperate things to try to save loved ones. End of life is never an easy time for anyone.

I admited that entering competetive field is difficult. But I also showed that it is not impossible. The above quote is inaccurate. There are many competitors in a free market. But there are only a few hugely succesful competitors. This only proves that it is very rare for all the elements of huge success to exist at the same time in the same individual. That’s what makes competition competition. The dictionary definition of competition is “the act of seeking or endeavoring to gain that for which another is also striving.” If everyone was able to be hugely successful all the time, then it wouldn’t be competition anymore. It would be its opposite. The thersaurus lists the antonym of competition as “partnership, alliance, cooperation.” This may be what you prefer, but you cannot say that competition kills competition. You could say that competition kills cooperation. And even then you would not be correct. There is much cooperation in capitalism, not when it comes to players competing against each other but with people who are on the same team.

One, it would be less profitable:

“In the long run, there are no laissez-faire transitions to modern economic growth. The state has always intervened to create a capitalist class, and then it has to regulate the capitalist class, and then the state has to worry about being taken over by the capitalist class, but the state has always been there.”

You are wrong. This is an important point and I’m glad I stumbled across your major objection to Capitalism. Capitalism does not necessarily involve government favors. I know that many corporations seek government favors, but not only is this illegitimate activity, it is actually not in the best interest of the corporation and it is a step away from capitalism. When government is not allowed to make laws to favor one corporation, the market is competitive. This means that corporations must please consumers or risk failure. When corporations seek government favors, they may be safe from competition, but they are not safe from government anymore. When we allow government to make laws in favor of corporations, they will eventually make laws AGAINST corporations too. They will eventually use their power to justify government take over. Corporations risk losing everything they’ve ever worked for and they are compromising the environment which makes it possible for them make money. It is a move towards fascism or totalitarianism. It is not the state who has to worry about being taken over by the capitalist class. It is the capitalist class that has to worry about being taken over by the government. Corporations do not have the means to take over government. They are not in the business of warfare. They are in the business of making money. The state is the only entity in society that is given the legal permission to use force and it has the means to use force – the armed forces and the legal system and prisons. They make the laws. Whatever they decide is lawful will become forcefully enforced. The founders of this country knew this and tried to limit the power of the Federal Government by only giving it 17 enumerated powers. In the early 1900s government started ignoring the Constitution and started enlarging the powers of the Fed Gov. They’ve been chipping away at our freedoms ever since. We have to be very vigilant about what we allow government to do, what powers we grant government and we have to continually watch how much power they try to grab for themselves. Eventually all governments become too large and acquire too much power. That is what we are seeing today. The only way to protect private property is to keep government out of the market completely. Government should protect individual rights and private property rights – it should make laws to stop members of society from violating individual rights and property rights. But it should not be allowed to make laws in favor of any player in the marketplace. Now that means, they should not be allowed to make laws in favor of specific individuals either or groups of individuals or interest groups. People should be allowed to form associations freely based on mutual consent. And people should be free to protect themselves to the degree they feel comfortable. If we can agree that laws should not be used to favor any specific class or individual or class or individuals, then we might be getting somewhere, but I’m sure I can anticipate your response already.