Ultimate Philosopher (Wisdom Junkie; Logic Fan)

This is really f'ing good output, I'm hardly worthy? Pinning to timeline for 👀-grabbingness
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Ayn Rand's framing of capitalism:
1. The defining feature is individual rights, including property rights.
2. Property rights in capital goods are extensions of rights to the products of one's intellectual creations.
3. The value of one's capital goods is proportional to the value-added of one's intellectual creations in a marketplace of intellectual creations, i.e., market capitalization or company value.
4. Conceptually and morally there is nothing to object to in 1-3, but mainly only to celebrate; historically this is born out by the last ~250 years of global economic history and especially the last ~50.
5. It looks pretty clear-cut where & how credit is due Ayn Rand here, particularly in how she dramatized her philosophical themes at grand scale in her largest novels. The Galts, Reardens, and Roarks add value that is hard to replace or is irreplaceable; they are likely to grow wealthy based on the value of their intellectual creations. The history of capitalism is populated by great innovators and organizers of capital creation and output. Attempts to substitute the judgment of the entrepreneurs chosen by market forces to organize and direct the greatest amount of capital for the judgment of state actors or others who are not as intellectually gifted when it comes to capital value creation (irreplaceable in some cases), has typically led to stagnation, decline or disaster.
Finally,
6. None of 1-5 seems to have been rebutted satisfactorily in any of the literature - not that I know of. Rand seems to have a conceptually, morally and historically tight case based on rewarding the mind's contribution to human existence & development. (Rand's theme for Atlas Shrugged: the role of the mind in man's existence.) It isn't like her 1-5 case is obscure or obscurely stated: she's saying that respecting and enhancing the contribution of great minds to human civilization entails, in political economy, respecting capitalistic property rights - and that the benefits of this social order are born out abundantly if not overwhelmingly by history.

7. 1-6 seems, in essence, like a QED in favor of Rand's definition and framing of capitalism. It seems implicitly if not explicitly accepted by all of the other of capitalism's leading defenders (Mises was a big fan of Atlas Shrugged as he expressed in a rather glowing letter; Nozick doesn't seem to have any objections to the theme of Atlas Shrugged based on his endnoted journey through political economy in 'Anarchy, State, & Utopia'); and neither the enemies of capitalism nor the mixed-economy advocates (Keynes, Rawls) seem to grapple well with Rand's grounding theme and thesis: the freedom of the creative mind in a marketplace of competing intellectual products (think Mill's 'On Liberty' principle applied to market capitalization) is both fundamentally right (how would it not be?) and the best primary condition for maximal economic development.

Ergo, QED.

Imagine what other branches of philosophy Miss Rand mastered in a comparable fashion? Note for instance parallels between 'Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal' and 'The Romantic Manifesto'. Maybe get Grok to spell them out? (I'm gonna!) But they're both like mini-treatises on their subject matter each with a defining "What is...?" chapter/essay. Anyway, imagine that Rand solved some pretty big fundamental challenges of aesthetics or contributed greatly to the canon? I know that I certainly like personally appealing strains of romanticism in aesthetic experience and probably for much the same reason that Rand gives in her mini-treatise.

Those would be two branches of philosophy where Rand would have spent enormous amounts of time over decades thinking about & refining. Her epistemological project beginning ca. 1945 (culminating in the 1969-71 'workshops') was also a considerable period of time. But for Rand it was like beginning to think deeply about politics/political economy and aesthetics from roughly her teen years. I guess one might say the same about her ethical ideas considering that the purpose of her writing was the projection of ideal humans beings and that she needed to develop a philosophy in order to maturely depict heroic characters. But the basic ethical theorizing would need to begin early on as well, and it would be rooted in Rand's 'life=value' identification early on implicitly if not explicitly. Rand's writings in epistemology, ITOE, came out in 1966-67, whereas her writings in aesthetics culminated in 1971 with 'Art and Cognition', and that would have been after a longer - perhaps by a couple decades - mental engagement with aesthetic themes than with specifically/explicitly epistemological ones after she acquired the Basic Works of Aristotle and had her discussion about universals with a Thomistic professor-figure. My guess is that mastering the aesthetic theory aspect of things is a harder discipline than just about anything, although take a look at how long it took between Rand's first thoughts about political economy c. 1920 and her culminating essay "What is Capitalism?" in 1965.

(Also, that stuff about 'Method/integration' in the Peikoff courses has been some 50+ years in development in its own right, from his first meeting with AR c. 1951 until his latest works on induction and method/integration in the 2000s. Amazingly enough the 1976 'officially authorized course' is about the halfway point of that period, with 'Understanding Objectivism' marking like a 2/3 mark, then the 1990s courses the 5/6 mark. Peikoff's 15-year 'rationalistic' period to begin that span would be like the first third.)

I keep pointing out that there are no great minds on the Democrat/left side of US politics comparable to the likes of VDH, Carolla, Jordan Peterson or Shapiro on the right; part of that has to do with how going on defense for Democrats today would necessarily warp one's soul & intellect.

This is the party that treats the way universities are being run today, where essentially there is no dialectical accountability for those in power, as a model for how to run a society. Conservative and libertarian voices were all but run out of the university, but not because some kind of fair debate happened and it worked out so decisively in favor of leftism. (Like, Mises' 1922 demolition job on all socialistic/unconstrained thinking was refuted how??)

To the very best & most observant minds in politics today, the Democrat Party is basically the Fine People Hoax x 100. (Not just the hoax itself but the complete lack of accountability & respect to the unambiguous debunks. Who, but ghouls, behaves like that?)

I just named two major strikes against Democrats - their rendering of Higher Ed into a shell of an institution, and their complete lack of accountability re a major hoax claim. Each of them perverts and weaponizes institutional functions - the universities and media in these cases - into gross perversions or the very opposite of their function (the properly Aristotelian function or telos of news media is to run unaccountable hoaxes?? of the universities to sideline points of view in debate when no meaningful engagement happened?? that's the Aristotelian/Platonic model applied to institutions???).

And that's what the Democrats evidently think is appropriate for governing societies entire. By all means let's see the "best" Dem/left mind today go to bat for this stuff. (My mind draws a blank because of the logistical impossibility here, ya dig?)

Deflecting to "but Trump/Republicans" doesn't save one's sorry ass in a real philosophical debate. You first have to show that you are capable of properly identifying dysfunction, such as institutions being hollowed out & worn as skin suits, before you have any argumentative right to begin hurling stones.

The Ezra Kleins and the Mathew Yglesiases appear to be stone-cold evaders on *this* stuff, which makes them my sworn enemies. (If they evade this, what won't they evade??) The putatively better-trained minds in the universities have even less of an excuse to be siding with this institutional ruin, now don't they. (If they side with this stuff, what won't they side with??)

To sum up: there is no excuse for a university to silence voices where real controversy exists, or for news media to run big-claim hoaxes without correction. There is no excuse to be siding with institutions that are so corrupted. It would stand to reason, IMO, that there are no great minds of integrity on the Dem/left side of American politics. (If there were, they would be engaging the names I routinely rattle off, like above. They do f'ing nothing of the sort!) Prove me wrong.

(Heck, I didn't even bring up the singularly intellectually and soul-warping "DEI" protocols, given the reality that individual humans beings are already as diverse as they come. Imagine the intellectual contortions and self-abasement required to defend "DEI" and institutions that enthusiastically treat individual humans beings like dirt. But that's Democrats in a nutshell, I keep telling you.)

It might take AI making them financially obsolete, unless they more-cleverly-than-wise find ways to weaponize AI on behalf of institutionalized idiocy. You know they're working hard at that, right this very moment.

Would it be the party of hoaxes that did that lying, pray chance? Like it was Trump calling Nazis fine people level of derangement and deceit?