I actually SERIOUSLY want to know more in depth about the libertarian or Randist view on drug use. Not kidding here.
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
I actually SERIOUSLY want to know more in depth about the libertarian or Randist view on drug use. Not kidding here. [/quote]
Rand on drugs: I do not approve of any government controls over consumption, so all restrictions on drugs should be removed (except, of course, on the sale to minors). The government has no right to tell an adult what to do with his own health and life. That places a much greater moral responsibility on the individual; but adults should be free to kill themselves in any way they want.
I would fight for your legal right to use marijuana; I would fight you to the death that you morally should not do it, because it destroys the mind. What the government should do is protect citizens from the criminal consequences of those who take drugs. But drugs would be much cheaper if it werenâ??t for government.
I think what attracted me to Rand’s writings was the emphatic distinction she placed between “illegal” and “immoral”.
It’s really very different than the modern American Left which refuses to declare anything wrong (unless done by a white male) and the American Right which wants to criminalize anything it also finds immoral.
Rand was able to say, “Drug abuse is a terribly immoral thing, yet government shouldn’t prevent adults from living how they want.”
Satire, but…
[quote]I do not approve of the so-called hippies, but I do not approve of any government control over drugs. The government does not have the right to tell any individual what to do with his or her health and life. You probably know that I received a prescription for the stimulant Benzedrine, or “speed.” I can say rationally that it increases my happiness and my productivity. For example, some time ago I went to Studio 54, because I love to dance on speed. I took fifteen speed pills, and I got into a contest with Liza Minnelli over who could roar most like a jaguar. She simply sounded like a stupid lion.
Then the inside of my head began to sound like a jet engine and so I went to the bathroom. I took maybe ten more speed pills and sat in a stall and wrote a new chapter of “Atlas Shrugged.”[/quote]
[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
I actually SERIOUSLY want to know more in depth about the libertarian or Randist view on drug use. Not kidding here. [/quote]
Rand on drugs: I do not approve of any government controls over consumption, so all restrictions on drugs should be removed (except, of course, on the sale to minors). The government has no right to tell an adult what to do with his own health and life. That places a much greater moral responsibility on the individual; but adults should be free to kill themselves in any way they want.
I would fight for your legal right to use marijuana; I would fight you to the death that you morally should not do it, because it destroys the mind. What the government should do is protect citizens from the criminal consequences of those who take drugs. But drugs would be much cheaper if it weren�?�¢??t for government.
I think what attracted me to Rand’s writings was the emphatic distinction she placed between “illegal” and “immoral”.
It’s really very different than the modern American Left which refuses to declare anything wrong (unless done by a white male) and the American Right which wants to criminalize anything it also finds immoral.
Rand was able to say, “Drug abuse is a terribly immoral thing, yet government shouldn’t prevent adults from living how they want.”[/quote]
Jesus Christ! OK, so in a Randist society, just what do we do with possibly thousands of dusted, cracked out, and stoned do-nothings who are often impulsive, unhygienic, diseased, and parasitic? I am being serious.
I believe people like to talk with a wonderland worldview, mostly because they themselves have never experienced the supposed utopian bliss and freedom of which they speak! Have most of them dealt with or met AIDS victims and drug addicts and various bottom feeders and criminals of this world on a daily basis?
I do! So do my friends, family members, and acquaintances in healthcare and law enforcement.
By and large, these people are not “minding their business” and simply “putting in their bodies what they choose to”. There’s far more than that going on.
Children and unrealistic people believe that grown adults leaving their homes on a daily basis, whether for leisure, obligations, or work, are always “minding their business” and that no one should infringe on someone else’s “happiness” and “freedom”.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
If I recall correctly, Rand proposed something like a smarty pants’ strike. Like when all the ordinary folks and dumb-dumbs misbehave and can’t appreciate the fine society built by the 1% of citizens at the top–business moguls, engineers, lawyers, doctors, tech wizards, professors, and so on–will go on strike until everyone learns the error of their ways.
[/quote]
That’s not really the way I took the notion, lol. But yeah I guess on some levels that is a perception of the concept. [/quote]
I’ve thought of this fantastic situation. Who will be providing protection, physical labor, and god knows what else, when the smart alecks go on strike? Are they going to lean to do it all themselves? Especially in a current society in which there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of criminal minded, drug addicted, and deviant people who would gladly prey upon (and worse) striking yuppies when there is no tax funded police force to keep them safe. (Im not being sarcastic here or intentionally argumentative. I just can’t wrap my mind around this when thinking of Randism.)
I’ve also heard of some libertarians opposed to open borders.
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
Jesus Christ! OK, so in a Randist society, just what do we do with possibly thousands of dusted, cracked out, and stoned do-nothings who are often impulsive, unhygienic, diseased, and parasitic? I am being serious.
[/quote]
Strange non sequitur, but okay…
What do we do the thousands of dusted, cracked out, and stoned do-nothings now?
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
I’ve thought of this fantastic situation. Who will be providing protection, physical labor, and god knows what else, when the smart alecks go on strike? [/quote]
Why do you assume that people who provide protection and physical labor wouldn’t be joining those who believe in keeping the fruits of their labor? Your entire point is based on the premise that those who physically toil can’t also be smart.
[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
I’ve thought of this fantastic situation. Who will be providing protection, physical labor, and god knows what else, when the smart alecks go on strike? [/quote]
Why do you assume that people who provide protection and physical labor wouldn’t be joining those who believe in keeping the fruits of their labor? Your entire point is based on the premise that those who physically toil can’t also be smart.
[/quote]
Those are fair statements. I should have elaborated further but I was on limited time while posting. I myself, if I could go back in time, would have chosen to be in a trade and perform physical labor instead of going to college. Every tradesman I have met is fairly to highly intelligent, including my father-in-law, who also has a degree in architecture.
I’ll try to explain more later on how I perhaps incorrectly misinterpreted a Randist strike and who I thought would likely be a part of one.
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
I’ve also heard of some libertarians opposed to open borders. [/quote]
Open borders are incompatible with a welfare state. When you have a system that takes a good chunk of your money and redistributes it to those that don’t produce anything then it’s understandable to be upset when people deliberately take advantage of that system.
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
If I recall correctly, Rand proposed something like a smarty pants’ strike. Like when all the ordinary folks and dumb-dumbs misbehave and can’t appreciate the fine society built by the 1% of citizens at the top–business moguls, engineers, lawyers, doctors, tech wizards, professors, and so on–will go on strike until everyone learns the error of their ways.
[/quote]
That’s not really the way I took the notion, lol. But yeah I guess on some levels that is a perception of the concept. [/quote]
I’ve thought of this fantastic situation. Who will be providing protection, physical labor, and god knows what else, when the smart alecks go on strike? Are they going to lean to do it all themselves? Especially in a current society in which there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of criminal minded, drug addicted, and deviant people who would gladly prey upon (and worse) striking yuppies when there is no tax funded police force to keep them safe. (Im not being sarcastic here or intentionally argumentative. I just can’t wrap my mind around this when thinking of Randism.)
I’ve also heard of some libertarians opposed to open borders. [/quote]
You’re taking it all too literal IMO.
I basically take the notion as: just because someone is rich doesn’t make them the bad guy. Burning them at the stake literally or in political rhetoric, even through excessive taxation and punishment for their position will result in less and less of these people. Society needs these people, nature dictates they will exist in any system, and we’re making enemy’s of our friends.
So, even if you could “tax them into equality” what happens when the 2% becomes the new 1%, so on and so forth until everyone ends up under the tyrannical rule of the true wealthily class, the rulers you elect because they tell you evil rich capitalist are to blame.
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
countingbeans, please define “free markets” and “capitalism”.
Maybe we just apply different definitions?[/quote]
A free market is simply a market that individuals participate in where there are no regulations from parties outside those engaged in the transaction.
America has Freer Markets, while Cuba, North korea and most of Europe have slightly less freer markets.
Capitalism is simply that each individual owns their property and can do with it as they please. In this instance capital.
The answer is simple. The country with more individual ownership of capital is more capitalistic, and the country with more suffering under government control, ooops I mean “social ownership” of capital is more socialist.
Having regulations, and the government facilitating common services does not socialism make.
[quote]
I cannot help but refer to reality and see that the unreal ideals will take on many forms.
Nobody will gain anything if we jerk each other off with economy fanfiction, shipping Rand with austeriously-hot austrian profs.[/quote]
Yet you firmly pretended away to objective failure of every collectivist society in the history of man, and pretended it wasn’t the capitalistic ones with freer market that brought wealth to the masses the likes the world has never seen.
You in fact, did jerk off on that entire post trying to imply it was an accident and not the system. When we have proof, time and time again, opposite systems fail, and people suffer much more under them.
Ayn Rand’s villains were real, but her heroes were fake.
If you are a leader of some sort, you are only a leader for as long as the crowd lets you be one. There will never be a separation from society by individualists. To be a leader, you need followers.
With that being said, I do think our society has shifted too far toward collectivism. Most major companies have become highly process oriented and formulaic. The media is on a witch hunt to burn anybody in a leadership position for a PC faux paux. The government is making too many transfer payments in relation to investments. Men are becoming more feminized. People want to legalize and utilize drugs that illicit laziness. It’s a collectivist cycle.