Ray Dalio says read Ayn Rand to understand Trump's economics

[HAB911]

snip

Rand has been dead for almost 35 years, but her novels and philosophical tracts are still top sellers, especially in the United States. She retains a large following less for the quality of her fiction than for her message of what could be called a fundamentalist version of individualism. She rejected the idea that free markets create undesirable results such as monopolies.

Rand's philosophy insists on the primacy of the individual's desires above essentially all other considerations, including God. Rand could be described as a devout atheist, and she explicitly said that self-sacrifice was immoral.

Born in 1905, Rand was traumatized as a child when her family's pharmacy business and property were seized by marauding Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. Rand emigrated, eventually settling in New York (a city which moved her to tears of joy when she saw it for the first time). By the 1950s, she had gathered a circle of idealistic, fiercely dedicated followers, including a young Alan Greenspan.

snip

Rand's devotees say that her writings provide a richer understanding of the world that applies to economics, politics, art, science and more.

Critics say of Rand say that her philosophy is a nothing more than an elaborate exercise designed to put a very intellectual gloss on a very base impulse: selfishness.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/20/ray-dalio-says-read-ayn-rand-to-grasptrump-heres-what-that-means.html

[MFM008]

1. Wouldn't wipe my ass with it.

Thanks.

[KT2000]

2. their morality is money

the more the better. Was "recruited" by a friend when I was in high school. I listened to tapes of Rand - boring beyond belief but saw how it worked in reality. The wealthy family that were avid followers had a grandfather living with them. He was regarded by all in the family as a free-loader and ridiculed as such. They believed in selfishness for sure. Horrible people.

[Tansy_Gold]

3. TEOTWAWKI

The objective of the "heroes" of her blueprint-for-the-future novel, Atlas Shrugged, was to destroy the world's economy. And they did it. The End.

She had no clue how to rebuild after destroying everything. She had no use for the working clasees, so she destroyed them. She destroyed all the means of production, all the means of transportation. Scorched earth. IEven Lenin, whom Steve Bannon is said to revere, didn't do that.) But her reliance on absolute Aristotelian logic was massively flawed: Rather that rely on a factual reality, she had to create two major elements of science fiction to make the novel work. She als ohad to deny most human emotions, illness, pregnancy and children, along with a whole lot of other "real" things.

After destroying the world in the last pages of Atlas, Rand never wrote fiction again. She had no clue how to rebuild the world she had destroyed.

[GreedIsGood]

4. Capitalism on steroids

I think that is their thing basically.

[stevebreeze]

5. Rand is also always good for a rape fantasy.

All her novel are laden with raped women who fall madly in love with their asshole rapists.