Are there any good arguments against Objectivism or must it always devolve to "it sucks"?

Are there any good arguments against Objectivism or must it always devolve to "it sucks"?

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Ayn Rand's life.

almost any ideology can be argued against by not giving a fuck

>NAP
don't give a fuck
>muh morals
don't give a fuck
>we'll shoot you if you don't comply
don't give a fuck

You could argue on that last one that I further the cause by allowing them to kill me, but I don't give a fuck

really made me think

>implying violent coercion doesn't follow from my self-interest in all those instances where the perceived gains of me imposing my force upon others outweights the perceived costs

it just sucks

Fedorawiki has plenty

...

well, what is perceived is not necessarily true

But what is true is not necessarily a basis for my decision-making while what my perceptions necessarily are.

*while my

I was going to write "what I perceive to be true" but then I changed half-way for something that rolled better, I felt.

your perceptions play tricks on you and you become deluded.

The author that founded it did so by writing what's basically a less-readable 50 Shades of Grey.

Irrelevant for the decision-making process. If I'm deluded, I won't know it, so it's not a factor until I've already acted on my delusions.

rotman.uwo.ca/the-system-that-wasnt-there-ayn-rands-failed-philosophy-and-why-it-matters/

Don't they call that nihilism or relativism or something?

>It’s the most powerful words in the world. No just argument or eloquence can stand a chance against it. It’s…”So what?"
t. based Yang

Not sure about the ideology, but the reason I hated the book is it assumed that the rich and powerful are so because they are the 'creative/innovative' class. Outside of the tech sector Ive never once met a designer or engineer who wasnt many times smarter than the heads of their companies.

Usuary allows you to make money simply by having money, all the drive, intelligence and creativity in the world doesnt mean anything without capital to get your idea off the ground. To get that capital you essentially have to sell your creativity (wage labour) or borrow (debt).
The idea of "captains of industry" as noble creatives carrying society forwards is bunkum. The people who head industry literally cannot fail - avoid risk, ride other peoples hard work and creativity, and if you fail? - blame the market.

Ayn Rand seemed to think that the elites are the elite because they actually do things - in reality, they simply lord over the class that does things through capital.

tl:dr, Ayn Rand seems to think to

This guy gets it

It's awfully shallow. Psychologically inept.

But consider that without the people on top the creatives wouldn't get even a fraction of what their labor is worth because they don't spend time . The underlying assumption that the person selling their creativity can easily get what they are worth by themselves is bunk for the most part. Doctors are notoriously bad with money, do you think a person who spent several years learning medicine should be taking care of the financials of a hospital? Doctors today stand to make far more money than they used to precisely because of the capitalists' system. Doctors open up their own practices but all that is the doctor taking the role of the capitalist. Without the leaders' financial acuity the individual cannot even make big opportunities in the system. This goes for creatives in general.

A general might not be that great of an individual soldier, but his job is not to be a rank and file soldier but to lead several of them. Similarly, the captains of industry aren't supposed to be like creatives, they are supposed to let the creatives receive higher rewards than if they were on their own.

This hits a nail in the head. There are so many nails, but this is a really good one.

That doesn't matter. The basic conceit of this book is that if the captains of industry all GTFO they'd form some kind of tech utopia and the rest of the world would burn, when what'd really happen is they'd all die of starvation and the rest of the world would devolve into far more local economies.

To be perfectly fair to Ayn Rand she does somewhat acknowledge this in how besides the government the main villains of her books tend to be boring, passionless oligarchs that are keeping the rugged individualist entrepreneur down. Most notably in the Fountainhead.

You're right otherwise.

This is true. I'm not saying these captains of industry are god saviors that are way better than everyone else. They need the laborers and creatives, not the other way around. I'm just saying they are necessary for larger enterprises and allow for the creation of more opportunities within a field.

I'll give you that, I was under the impression you were saying that these people are more important than we seem to agree they are.

>are there any good arguments against retardation or must it always devolve to "it sucks"

>muh brobberdi spugg

All I'm saying is the rise of bureaucrats and fatcat businessmen are coupled with the increase in complexity and size of the enterprises. They are a necessary evil as they hold the system together.

Even radicals who argue for stateless societies and the workers owning the means of production recognize that administrators are necessary to the success of organizations containing many people and interests. Of course they believe such overseers and administrators wouldn't be allowed to exploit the natural power that arises in such hierarchy, but without extrinsic motivation few (competent) people would actually want such a job. Perhaps if such administrators would be indoctrinated heavily and/or brainwashed they could be trusted.

Probably why anarcho-syndicalism basically envisions government as a coalition between corporations and unions.

>schlomo! those evil goyim communists took away daddy's pharmacy and expected me to work like the rest of them! it was anudda shoah! what's the best way to fleece the goyim in the United States? write shitty novels telling them collectivism is bad? say no more. PS I think I can convince them to support a jewish ethnostate in the collective interests of the jews heh what stupid goyim!

Beyond what this guy said , the truth is that, in practice, while it can certainly be bureaucratic and inefficient, having a government that actually does stuff is a good thing. It's not like I want state-owned movie theaters or whatever, the free market works better for a lot of things, but not everything --- society is just straight-up better when you have at least some public funding of infrastructure, healthcare, education, and some kind of a safety net. A healthy, educated populace, reasonably well-maintained infrastructure, certain checks on business, that's in everybody's best interests.

Laissez-faire capitalism has been tried before. It sorta works -- it's better than communism, but a lot worse than regulated capitalism.

tbqh a state owned movie theatre wouldn't be a bad idea. Like an art gallery or a museum but for movies.

My father grew up in Yugoslavia and talked about watching James bond movies for free.

Based Jew girl.

You can't really argue against most of what she says, the problem most people have is that they feel like they shouldn't agree with it so they don't, doesn't mean she's wrong.

Individualism ought to replace collectivism/altruism, else we remain modern day aztecs sacrificing each other on the alter of random concepts like social justice.

The thing is individualism and altruism aren't mutually exclusive. As a matter of fact I'd say that in order to be properly individualistic rather than following an ideology that dictates what individualists should be like you should be altruistic to some degree, at least insofar as you feel is right.


I do however agree that I'd like people to be more individualistic. I just think Ayn Rand is probably the weakest thinker in this department.

That's just a misunderstanding in defining terms, when she speaks of altruism she speaks of both collectivist statism/socialism but also people choosing to sacrifice themselves for others but she wouldn't use force to stop someone from doing that.

You're right though individualism doesn't exclude cooperation or community it kind of enhances it.

Objectivism quite simply and literally asserts that all judgments in any field can be boiled down to axioms and agreed upon, and that two people who are both in possession of all relevant information cannot disagree without one or both of them being irrational.

So a while back, I had a discussion about sculpture with some anons here about the various David statues, and how one user thought that the Donatello David was a brilliant work, and I didn't; we agreed on most of the particulars, it was mostly a disagreement as to whether or not something's influence on later artistic products was in and of itself a cause for greatness, and ultimately, a different valuation of such an aesthetic value.

According to Objectivism, one of us is RIGHT and the other is WRONG (unless we're both wrong and a third possibility unconsidered is correct.), and you should be able to, with mathematical precision, nail down whether or not Donatello's David is a truly great work of sculpture.


So yeah, pretty retarded.

>Are there any good arguments against Objectivism
standing on one foot
>Metaphysics
fedora-tier atheism
>Epistemology
if you disagree with anything that Ayn Rand says then clearly it's because you are an irrational mystic who hates reason
>Ethics
it's totally ok to be as shamelessly self-serving as you feel like.
>politics
always vote Republican. Libertarians are right-wing hippies
>Aesthetics
"make my fantasies seem as realistic as possible"

>it's totally ok to be as shamelessly self-serving as you feel like.
Unless it disagrees with the Epistemology.

>So a while back, I had a discussion about sculpture with some anons here about the various David statues, and how one user thought that the Donatello David was a brilliant work, and I didn't; we agreed on most of the particulars, it was mostly a disagreement as to whether or not something's influence on later artistic products was in and of itself a cause for greatness, and ultimately, a different valuation of such an aesthetic value.
That was a good discussion, desu.

Influence on later artists is part of your definition of greatness. It isn't part of his. You're working from different axioms.

It has absolutely zero basis in reality. It works in Rand's fiction and nowhere else.

>Metaphysics
>fedora-tier atheism
no