[notahacker]

Yes, I've heard of Wikipedia. Also heard of this little thing called the World Wide Web and computers, invented by people working for government-funded research institutions, the sort of thing that Rand considered Stadler the most evil character in Atlas Shrugged for deigning to participate in. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that ignoring Rand has done far more for computer-based sharing of knowledge than taking her seriously ever would.

(I doubt Rand would have been a fan of Wikipedia FWIW, no matter how much Jimbo loved her books. Actually, scratch that, I'm certain she'd have despised Wikipedia even without reading it and realising how liberal the average contributor is. Not too much virtuous selfishness in collaborative, pseudo-democratic editing of a reward-free commons or indeed the Wikipedia begging bowl)

Poor old Henry George has to settle for being admired by the likes of Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Winston Churchill, Sun Yat Sen, and Rand's own architectural muse Frank Lloyd Wright (some of them were nearly as bad at being Georgists as Jimmy Wales was at being an Objectivist). So as overtly simplistic as I think his economics was, I'd guess he had that going for him.

[dnautics]

being admired by someone is categorically different from being the philosophical root of something. The principle of individual self-interest being naturally channeled towards common goods is at the core of objectivist philosophy. However much Wales has personally failed at being an objectivist is irrelevant, because the key insight behind wikipedia (to be flippant: that clans of neckbeards obsessed with correctness would in aggregate create an eventually consistent, curated infomation store) would not have come about in its existing form without Randism. The connection between Ayn Rand and wikipedia is not just a casual association, wikipedia was STARTED as a proof of concept after a debate between Wales and Larry Sanger about objectivism.

As for wikipedia happening to be on the internet, well whatever. You could make the same argument about money in general, since that is backed by the state.

Moreover, your argument that ignoring rand has done more for X is not inconsistent with the fact that using rand's philosophy has done more than using george's philosophy.

[notahacker]

A negation of Randian philosophy was necessary to fund the sort of abstract research that lead to the invention of the constituent parts for a world-changing repository of information called the World Wide Web. (funded by revenue obtained from income taxes voted into existence by politicians who freely stated their philosophical position on the merits of public revenue collection - if not their preferences for collecting it - were informed by Henry George)

On the other hand Wikipedia is a small subset of that web resulting from a collaboration between two people that met over a still-unresolved argument about Rand's merits or lack thereof, so Randian philosophy wasn't even sufficient for Jimbo to get anything done without the support of someone who thought she was full of shit. (Ironic considering Rand's aversion to diversity of thought). Having been on the web before Wikipedia even existed, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the repository of information would have existed even if Jimmy had never touched a keyboard, or had bonded with Sanger over Dungeons and Dragons instead (would that have made D&D the philosophical root of Wikipedia?). I mean, the idea that neckbeards obsessed with correctness would create an eventually consistent information store via dialectical process isn't exactly a philosophical starting point close to Randian principles, still less one nobody else would have been likely to experiment with.

Famed radical non-Trinitarian Bible-nut Newton was driven by the stated belief that he was observing the need for a deity to interact with the universe, but I'm not convinced that unorthodox Scriptural interpretation can claim any particular merit as a belief system on account of being the motivation for an individual influential physicist. Though physics is a lot more impressive than Wikipedia, so it has that going for it.

[dnautics]

FYI: Henry George was opposed to income taxes.

http://savingcommunities.org/docs/george.henry/incometax.htm...

[notahacker]

Agreed, he would have been almost as unimpressed with Woodrow Wilson as Rand with Wales, only probably with a little less rancour. :)