Is that what that smell is?

Troll! there is a Troll in the dungeon!!!

Just thought you ought to know.

But enough about your mom.

That's it, keep pretending and making straw man arguments. Your not in pain but, but, but, they're in pain, but, but, but, you're not in pain, it's just that, it's just that, it's just...well, they're in pain...but, but, but, you're not in pain.

True creators are not - and do not feel - entitled to anyone's labor other than their own. There is no slavery in America except for those who choose to escape the responsibility of working to sustain and enhance their lives.

I don't understand why you think "wealth is flowing from the poor to the wealthy", when wealth is CREATED, not stolen or looted like in other countries. And the notion that the people doing "actual work" are the people at the bottom is a fallacy; how does one create a job for others without doing his own work?

And there are no responsibilities to society, and nobody agreed to anything. There is no obligation to give money to those who haven't earned it, and there is no responsibility to pay someone more than what they've earned.

This is the fantasy of the Marxist, that somehow surrendering their own individual sovereignty in exchange for "citizenship" will ease their suffering.

"Dagny, it's not that I don't suffer, it's that I know the unimportance of suffering. I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one's soul and as a permanent scar across one's view of existence. Don't feel sorry for me."

~John Galt to Dagny Taggart~

Of course, take note how you simply ignored the thrust of my post and continue to pretend that I am advocating "American style Capitalism" which is nothing more than a word to disguise the Marxist-Keynesian mess that is the economy today. Your insistence in living in a world of make believe is the primary source of all your despair.

The Capitalism Rand advocated had nothing to do with the highly corporatized economic system today that so many fools call "capitalism". These same fools point to the U.S. market and call it a "free market" without a hint of irony. These same fools yammer on about "deregulation" as if it is unregulation. Corporations are chartered entities and exist by the good graces of the state that chartered them and your vaunted "workers" could pool their resources to lobby states to revoke charters and put an end to those corporations you have such a problem with, but this ain't gonna happen, and your vaunted workers don't want it. They want the cush corporate job, and have no regard for the mom and pop small business because at least they are not so stupid as to believe they can loot mom and pop the same way they can loot a corporation. Then your vaunted workers turn around and whine because as it turns out it is the CEO who - as the worker believes - has looted them.

This economy is not going to get any better as long as the vast majority of the unemployed keep insisting that someone has to give them a job. Continual stimulation of an industrial base that is long past obsolete is not going to do a damn thing for your vaunted worker class. What your vaunted workers need is to support an imagination economy where at least some of those damned workers evolve into business owners so that your vaunted worker class can someday have a job.

If your vaunted worker class is as precious as you seem to think it is, they could always pool their resources and build their own business and compete with those "capitalists" you bemoan, and then and only then will your vaunted worker class come to know the true value of labor.

A highly regulated market place is not a free and open marketplace. An increasingly corporatized market is not a market filled with massive competition, and fiat currency is not a currency by which people can reasonably agree upon the value of that currency.

You can whine, sputter, and fluster and blame, blame, blame, and then "mirror" an article that hopelessly turns the tables and act as if they are nothing more than a five year old that constantly screams "I know you are but what am I?" all you want. As long as you identify with the worker class, you are one who expects someone else to provide you with a job. You will not go out into the wild and make your own way, you will insist that others have the obligation to make your way for you.

We don't practice capitalism. In fact, we have not been a truly capitalist country in most of our lifetimes, if at all. We are a mixed economy. Any "slavery" or "screwing over hard workers" that's taken place has been caused by government intrusion into the private sector, and that is demonstrable even through the most cursory evaluation of history.

And this slavery rhetoric is so ridiculous it robs the concept of slavery of any meaning. In this country, you can work for someone else, you can work for yourself, or you can be poor and die on the streets, but it's always in your hands. There's no slavery. There's no "ownership" of the people who work for you. It's a trade, pure and simple. Anybody who claims that Objectivism supports slavery has clearly never read Rand and has never understood Objectivism at all.

I know. Thanks for the heads up though.

Since your comments "mirror" the author they are straw man arguments. Not to mention ad hominem attacks on the person. Pangburn instantly misrepresents Atlas Shrugged with his very first sentence:

"“Who is John Galt?” The famous opening line of Ayn Rand’s masturbatory hymn to entitled capitalist “heroes.”

Of course, in Atlas Shrugged there are rich people who see themselves as entitled, capitalist or not, but Rand makes clear these people are either "looters" or "moochers". James Taggart is just such one. A man who has inherited a rail road company and pays himself well to run it into the ground. A looter. Starkly contrasting James is his sister Dagney who earns her way desperately trying to keep the company afloat. Atlas Shrugged is an ode to her and people like her, whether they be John Galt, Hank Reardon, or Eddie Willers or even the "expert" bus driver or train engineer Pat Logan. Rand clearly admires these people, rich, poor, or middle class, and admires them for their effort and confident expertise. This Pangburn ignores in order to create his straw man you now proudly mirror.

It is doubtful Pangburn read any page of Atlas Shrugged and is merely parroting what he's read in Cliff Notes and other articles creating the same or similar straw man arguments. Not only does Pangburn misrepresent Atlas Shrugged, he misrepresents the Prometheus myth once again ignoring that Prometheus is alternately seen as a hero by some and a villain by others who revile him for bringing the wrath of the gods down upon humanity. In that dichotomy we see the similarities that Rand speaks to in Atlas Shrugged, where those who admired Prometheus as a hero recognize the fallibility of gods and mysticism, but those who revile Prometheus are helplessly trapped in mysticism and forever the effect of the whims of gods. While Pangburn shows he can sling obscenities around with the best of them, he shows little else other than profound ignorance.

Take note how Pangburn places quotation marks around "discovered" positing that if this were to happen today Galtian admirers would patent fire as theirs. Yet fire was discovered. Until man first saw fire man remained ignorant of fire, and more importantly, until man discovered the benefits of fire, what they knew of fire was its harmful effects. It was the discovery of fires benefits that made it such an important discovery in the steady march upward for mankind.

Pangburn amusingly asks his readers to imagine what would happen if Jobs, Gates and Zuckerberg had refused to share their genius with the world and what is so amusing in this is that his argument winds up making the very same point Rand made.

Finally, Pangburn expects his readers to accept his fantasy that the internet is "free" because one man according to Pangburn didn't become a millionaire, and with out even a wink and nod, he asks his reader to pretend we read his article for "free", but someone, somewhere is paying for the internet provider that allows reading that article and this is why Rand has so little regard for the moochers. They don't even bother to wonder how it is that which they're benefiting from was made possible. That ignorance makes it easier to dismiss the effort put behind what it is they benefit from and that dismissal of effort becomes effort expected as sacrifice instead of the praise and compensation that is earned. An even exchange between individuals is not evil. It is just. An uneven exchange between individuals is not just it stems from a sense of entitlement. John Galt never demanded uneven exchange.

This guy is a troll. ignore him. Rather famous on the other board where he was kicked out.

I thought we were discussing the article, or is your fundamentalism anti-Objectivism?

K, I did. What was supposed to change, my perspective on the author's violent rhetoric or his assertions that are internally contradictory?

If by relevant you mean shared vitriolic hate, then sure, your comment was relevant.

Your assumption that I haven't read the article is incorrect.

I stopped reading when I hit the c word. Any intelligent person wouldn't use it.

^Straw man and irrelevant to the article.