[HotKFreshSwag]

If you're feeling very John Galt take a deep breath. Remember that you're not a fictional character in a fictional society. You're a real person in real society where Entrepreneurs(with a big E) get subsidized security, roads, mail, water, food, electricity, education, health care, etc.

Ayn Rand was a very disturbed individual.

"In her notebooks Ayn Rand worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" she promoted in her more famous books."

"What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'" "

[GFKjunior]

I hate Rand but that was an ad hominem attack and not much else.

But more importantly;

"Entrepreneurs(with a big E) get subsidized security, roads, mail, water, food, electricity, education, health care, etc."

I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. The taxes levied on businesses and individuals pay for the (often shoddy and wasteful) infrastructure and services.

[gte910h]

It's both. The existing gets taxed to pay for the future, including NEW business SBA loans, infrastructure, court systems, securities exchange support, etc. They aren't made without help, and help is not possible without some of them succeeding and being taxable.

It's a giant, systemic feedback loop, one we try to make end up being positive in a good way.

[mrbgty]

"You're a real person in real society where Entrepreneurs(with a big E) get subsidized security, roads, mail, water, food, electricity, education, health care, etc."

Just because they get those things, doesn't mean it's the best way to get them, or that they wouldn't prefer to get them in some other way.

[potatolicious]

This is a tiresome argument that's been repeated over and over, and is nothing more than an attempt to change the subject.

Inevitably it starts when someone complains about the "parasites", "moochers", or whatever the description of the day is. It's always "waaah! someone undeserving is getting my stuff!"

When the notion that nobody exists as an island is pointed out, and it becomes clear that those complaining about the "moochers" are in fact enormous beneficiaries of the system, the argument becomes "but the system isn't perfect!", as if that somehow justifies the "every man for himself" mentality that started the argument.

Objectivist arguments like this always start with the notion that greater good will arise from an objectivist society. When that stupid argument is thrashed good, the argument turns into one of personal freedoms. It's amazing how many about-faces people will make in order to hang onto the notion that everyone else is a useless good-for-nothing except themselves.

[mcantelon]

I think the point he was trying to make it that "parasites", in terms of taxpaying, exist both at the top and bottom of society.

[mrbgty]

Sure but that's kind of irrelevant since by that logic everyone is a parasite by force and not by choice.