What is Ayn Rand 's poisition on Orphan ,the sick ..? - Atlas Shrugged: Part III (2014) Discussion

[–] fdog9 10 years ago

Rand and Galton would have them all die. It is a heartless philosophy.

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[–] gabby_bm 10 years ago

I am appalled, fdog9! YOU would let them die? You are heartless!

Rand would say that if you care about the orphan, Stephen Hawking or the homeless mother, you are free to help them if that is what you want. What you are not free to do, Rand would say, is to take MY hard-earned money to support YOUR personal morality and ideology.

Rand wasn't against charity. Rand was against theft in the guise and name of charity.

**WARNING: MY POSTS MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS**
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[–] ckwongau 10 years ago

But there must be some basic social service , which are necessary

I am not saying the government should pay for the expensive liver transplant for some alcoholic (Like that guy on Shameless)

Or the top of the line expensive drug to extend the life of a dying HIV patient for just another week .

But something necessary like drugs for common flu , so a poor man would survive the common flu .

An abandon baby can live in basic Orphanage , with only the basic .

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[–] gabby_bm 10 years ago

I do agree that as a society it is important to be proactive against the potential blight that would otherwise interfere with a productive and progressive society.

I mean, we can't have 50 million unemployed people wandering the streets looking for a Democrat family to take them in, feed them and tuck them into bed. It's just unrealistic. And I don;t think the churches are rich enough to do it either. But we are doing a poor job of taking care of the social blights and improving their station in life. It's a lot of enabling and not much more.

I think we focus far too much attention on surviving life rather than improving the quality of it. Is it really productive to keep the poor man alive? To what end? For what purpose? If the quality of a life doesn;t exist then why are we attempting to prolong it?
Nurturing those that still have potential is one thing. but to continue nurturing those who squander their potential (or never had it in the first place) seems like a waste of resources that could be put to better use.

**WARNING: MY POSTS MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS**
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[–] Huskie_Jon 10 years ago

If the orphaned and the poor are waiting for a Democrat family to personally take them in, they are in for an awful long wait. Democrats are more likely to leave it to the government. Statistics show that fiscal conservatives are more likely to donate their own money to charity, while progressives feel they do their part by pushing government to force others to contribute.

Those selfish capitalist Americans voluntarily give a higher percentage of their money per capita than citizens of more socialized countries will.

Religious institutions are more efficient, caring and transparent than government programs are. They are also less corrupt.

What I find contradictory about Ayn Rand was her push for purely voluntary charity, while condemning religion and pushing atheism. It was Judeo-Christian philosophy that first taught people that there is a higher power than government to whom even the highest kings will be held accountable. The United States was established on that principle. The Bible also teaches that true charity comes from within. It seems that Ayn Rand has reverse engineered Christianity.

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[–] phantom2-2 10 years ago

Religious institutions are more efficient, caring and transparent than government programs are. They are also less corrupt.

if you actually believe this, i have an irish women's home for sale, cheap!

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[–] Huskie_Jon 10 years ago

if you actually believe this, i have an irish women's home for sale, cheap!

I am glad that you acknowledge that it is my decision whether or not I want to buy your Irish women's home. Government would just force them money out of me.

Private charities will spend 30% of every dollar they receive on administrative costs, while government administrative costs will eat up 70%.

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A dope trailer is no place for a kitty.

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[–] phantom2-2 10 years ago

i am glad that you acknowledge that you only care about the money involved. personal caring and transparency are irrelevant to you.

on the contrary: government administrative costs are only 12.2% while private charities spend 74% of every dollar on ceo salaries. this making up random numbers is such a fun game, even though i'm not as good at it as you are.

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[–] Huskie_Jon 10 years ago

Right! All I care about is money. I would like to know that the money that I donate to charity is actually going to charity. I also like to choose what charities are worth receiving my donation. Charities know this and that keeps them honest.

Honest Government is practically an oxymoron. Do you really think that an organization that has the ability to point a gun at my head and force me to cough it up is going to have any incentive to cut the red tape and spend the money efficiently? If they want more money, they will just vote themselves a higher budget.

Private charity is personal. Government assigns people numbers. How transparent is the IRS? Whoops! We just lost our hard drives! Good thing we aren't accountable to anyone.

If I was blissfully ignorant, like yourself, I could ignore results and only judge intentions.

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A dope trailer is no place for a kitty.

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[–] phantom2-2 10 years ago

spoken like a truly clueless individual.

have you ever donated money to a charity, really? how did you determine if it was worthy? i have a few friends who work at non-profits & charities. if you think they're all angels...well...you don't know much.

your understanding of government is equally ludicrous. seriously, where do you get these ideas? obviously not from any real life experience. government just votes itself a higher budget whenever it feels like it? that's pretty comical! i've got news for you: people working in government don't like paying taxes any more than you do and there's no mechanism for them to just vote themselves a pay raise. this "voting themselves a higher budget" stuff doesn't happen.

on the other hand, the bosses at those charities can and do just vote themselves pay raises.

government assigns people numbers? what does that even mean?

so what if the irs lost some data. there hasn't been any indication that what was on those drives was actually incriminating (after all, the emails lost must have gone to or come from somebody so they exist somewhere). that's just a lame fishing expedition by the republicans again trying to generate a scandal where none exists other than sloppy data management - which the irs could probably have improved on if they'd only voted themselves a higher budget.

if you think there's something fishy going on, file a foia request and uncover it. you can do that with the government, you know...but not with private charities.

i don't know if you're blissful, but you have the other part covered very nicely.

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[–] Huskie_Jon 10 years ago

So you are saying that the IRS was not really trying to hide data. They are just a bunch of idiots who do not know how to backup and maintain their expensive computer equipment.

And you see nothing wrong putting these morons in charge distributing wealth?

I guess birds of a feather will stick together.

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A dope trailer is no place for a kitty.

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[–] phantom2-2 10 years ago

the delusions run strong with this one....

the irs has nothing to do with distributing wealth, they're on the collecting end. congress is the one in the distribution business. if you're going to whine about your government, the least you could do is know the very basics of how it works.

i have no idea what systems the irs has, but the government office i work in is still running "expensive computer equipment" powered by windows 2003. should i tell them they can just vote themselves enough money to buy machines from this decade?

since you're probably only sixteen and haven't lived long enough to experience a computer crash yet, i'll just tell you: it happens. and as i've said before, if congress really wanted to get the emails and suspected there was actual wrongdoing, they could get them. this whole irs "scandal" is a show put on to rile up the naive rubes who can't figure out that any email lives in two places. one hard drive crash doesn't mean it's gone, just a bit harder to find on the fishing expedition.

and all the other stuff i mentioned in my last post....yeah, i kinda figured you had no argument there.

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[–] Huskie_Jon 10 years ago

So the idiots who can not back up their data are only in charge of collecting income. Well, that's comforting.

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A dope trailer is no place for a kitty.

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[–] phantom2-2 10 years ago

i'm sure you're equally comforted that the bar is set so low that knowledge-free individuals such as yourself can post freely on imdb.

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[–] timcooper62-111-187212 10 years ago

The point is we have 50 million unemployed because of government intervention in the private economy. Government caused the mess and now they want the productive to pay even more to clean it up. I can agree that in a civil society you need a safety net. Or perhaps better thought of as a safety trampoline. A net makes you think of a person becoming trapped, unable to free themselves.....wait a minute, that describes our current system to a tee.

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[–] phantom2-2 10 years ago

since the unemployment figures aren't anywhere close to what you're claiming, and government didn't cause any such "mess", the conclusions you draw aren't even remotely valid. but if you'd like to make up any more fun facts, i'm sure we all look forward to you sharing them with us.

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[–] timcooper62-111-187212 10 years ago

For your information, I was replying to the original poster's claim. I pulled his figure of 50 million unemployed. The number doesn't matter for argument sake in claiming that government meddling in the economy causes unemployment. Take the minimum wage for instance. You do understand that the government reports some stupid U3 unemployment rate that discounts people that have just quit looking for work. The real story is the labor participation rate, which is the lowest its been in decades. It is estimated that the real unemployment rate is around 15%. I am too lazy to google for you and pull links.

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[–] phantom2-2 10 years ago

so you just parroted bad info because you were lazy? that's as good a reason as any, i suppose.

you do understand that the labor participation rate is going down because the baby boomers are starting to retire, and that rate is going to keep going down no matter what "meddling" the government does. though i guess you could cut gramps' social security down far enough that he'll have to find work as a walmart greeter. anything to boost the labor participation rate, right?

so, what about the minimum wage do you have a problem with? if you have a population that's fully employed but can't afford to live on what they make you think that's a good thing? we need more sweat shops to keep those deadbeat moochers off the dole (not that one exists anymore)?

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[–] jimmyberluti1 10 years ago

Let more millions from the 3rd world come in.

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[–] phantom2-2 10 years ago

that's an excellent idea. we should legalize all the ones who are here already, and get them fully participating in the american system as the first priority though.

i'm totally in favor of cherry picking the most ambitious and hardest working people from wherever they can be found. that's what made america great in the first place.

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[–] fdog9 10 years ago

.....and yet Rand collected Social Security and Medicare in her later years taking others "forced" charity.

A moral society takes care of it's elderly and I believe we all have to pitch in to build roads, schools, and hospitals.

All western nations do this......there is a country that does not.....it's called Somolia.....Rands dream come to life.

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[–] gmoxie 10 years ago

"Rand wasn't against charity. Rand was against theft in the guise and name of charity."

Yes, this.

Also, high taxes that are redistributed (with some $ taken out for those making the decisions on redistribution and doing the paperwork) means charities and orphans will likely get less support than if people, of their own volition, give to the needy directly. In this case she thinks taxes is taking ("theft") money from some and redistributed to another without the income earner having any say - hence, socialism. It then gets to the point where people say, "I paid my taxes, so I don't need to give to charities directly."

Rand thought there should be a choice. And if people want to voluntarily support charities, that's fine. There is a return (good feeling?) when people help others directly. This return is robbed from people when some other authority takes the giving decision away.

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[–] gcattanach 10 years ago

No one is preventing you from helping the Orphan (sic), the sick and the less fortunate.

As to why you think it is the government's responsibility to do this, you should check your premises. You act like that is self-obvious and not debatable; it isn't.

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[–] BlackJAC 10 years ago

The simple fact that no company in Ayn's fantasy world has those pesky sniveling, greedy moochers euphemistically referred to as "employees" should be an indicator of where anybody who isn't a CEO stands in her ideal society.

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[–] phantom2-2 10 years ago

much is made about how charity should be voluntary and how the rich are bigger givers than regular folks (duh - most of us are just getting by and don't have buckets of cash to give away). but do any of rand's characters actually do any charitable giving?

rearden gives some money away, but it pains him greatly and certainly can't be viewed as a charitable donation. it's pretty clear that rand doesn't actually believe in true charity.

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[–] BlackJAC 10 years ago

I've personally wondered exactly how charitable the average gop or Randroid would be if there wasn't any tax deduction for philanthropy.

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[–] gabby_bm 10 years ago

I think people are generally charitable. But i think the division lies in expectations of the receiver. Some people are results-oriented and their charity is geared toward that. others are simply generous without any thought to the receiver's responsibility to the giver.

I'm sure that of the billions given to charity, much of it is because there is a tax write-off. For others, it's a selfish act of philanthropy to attach their name to a foundation. but I also think that people like the good feelings that charity provides. But a GOPper or Randroid would likely want the receiver of their charity to have a sense of obligation to that charitable act.

And shouldnt that be the way? I think a giver should be the one with expectations of the receiver- not the other way around.

**WARNING: MY POSTS MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS**
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[–] BlackJAC 10 years ago

Ah yes, I keep forgetting how much you gops hate it when you see poors with a taste for food that isn't for poors, even though that gigantic or roast they're buying the day the food stamp card resets is supposed to last them until the next time it reset.

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[–] gabby_bm 10 years ago

I think food stamps are good. Without them, half the food in the stores would rot, less people would be employed by the stores, the trucking industry, the farms, the food processing plants, packaging manufacturers and so on. There's a lot of people employed because of food stamps.

I think it was a good move to switch to the reloadable card to prevent (or at least slow down) the food stamp underground.

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[–] phantom2-2 10 years ago

i think everybody wants their tax deduction for charity - that's certainly not a mindset limited to the conservatives.

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[–] gabby_bm 10 years ago

I think a tax deduction is a nice way for society to reward the charity of its citizens. We should all receive a tax deduction for our charitable contributions to welfare, food stamps and corporations.

**WARNING: MY POSTS MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS**
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[–] BlackJAC 10 years ago

I think

No you don't.

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[–] BlackJAC 10 years ago

My point is that people aren't doing it for the good karma. The deduction is a reimbursement of sorts that makes it zero-sum: they didn't truly lose anything by doing so. Is it really philanthropy if you have to be rewarded or compensated to do it?

http://youtu.be/2nzV8Pki4nU

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[–] 10 years ago

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