tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8499564342893554478.post8591339521446388157..comments2023-04-03T09:17:20.606-07:00Comments on end of something: Unnecessary thoughtsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11757270772407062731noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8499564342893554478.post-52198207999227347902009-02-16T11:57:00.000-08:002009-02-16T11:57:00.000-08:00Thanks for the comment, Mike. I don't know what I ...Thanks for the comment, Mike. I don't know what I think. I don't like the idea of working hard only to find a glass ceiling to limit my earning or productivity, but I also don't like the idea of a small groups controlling such large portions resources. Damn Rand getting in my head; it's better not to think about anything!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11757270772407062731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8499564342893554478.post-48461763427983472602009-02-15T17:20:00.000-08:002009-02-15T17:20:00.000-08:00Rand had a profound effect upon me at far too impr...Rand had a profound effect upon me at far too impressionable an age. There is authentic value and valor in many of the character traits she worships. I also share what I read as your own dissonance with those who suggest -- either directly or indirectly -- that a return to pre-industrial market inefficiencies would be an improvement over crass commercialism.<BR/><BR/>There is nothing wrong with crass commercialism, IMHO. There is something functionally wrong and existentially destructive with circulatory systems that feature resource clots of 70% restricted within a 5% portion of the system. It might be fun to revisit later when you've finished Atlas, the observation that there are levels of productive efficiency that Rand's Age of Railroads and Noble Rugged Individualist Moral Economics -- largely, if not wholly -- failed to imagine. Levels of fully robotic productive capacity that we have already left in the dust; and beyond which, Structural Unemployment actually becomes the most efficient path forward.<BR/><BR/>Rand would have my head on a platter for promoting Basic Income; unless -- I can only speculate -- she had access to the same data about Accelerating Change that we have today. Rand could never have imagined the Amalgics that emerge from Open Source Software http://users.openverse.com/~dtinker/agalmics.html at least a decade ago, already. In fact, she very possibly never imagined software at all. If we were again at the nexus point of Industrialization, I might very well be a staunch apologist for objectivism; however, we are not; and so I can only enjoy the admittedly quite juicy watermelon of objectivism and spit out the seeds. ;-)<BR/><BR/>And so we again discover that timeless sociophilosophical axiom, "Unnecessity is the Mother of Digression."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com