What Rand said about contradictions is particularly applicable to your Post, There are no contradictions. If you think you've found one, check your premises. (Paraphrased)

Objectivism is a complete philosophy of living. It is not a political guidebook nor a political party.

We always have rights. Rights are moral principles sanctioning freedom of action in a social context. The principle remains but the freedom does not when there is no government to protect it. Without the freedom there is also no market, only the statist-anarchist competing mafias. You don't protect the rights of the individual by throwing the use of force on such a 'market'.

It's the same reason they endorse a foreign policy consisting of abdication of the subject - withdraw from the discussion and declare victory.

There was no "logical slip". Your understanding of the novel and the plot is so poor that you cannot even discuss it factually, chronically resorting to insults against those who reject your chronically hostile posts.

So how do you propose to pay for the national defense? Only those that pay for it receive it? Somehow, that will not work. We may debate on what basis each person pays for it (same amount each, same percentage of income, same percentage of their worth, etc.), but you really can't have "voluntary" national defense. The price of individuals living in an organized and civilized society is having to bear with some level of government. Rand recognized it, as did the Framers of the Constitution; the goal is to limit it to the very minimum, but not to eliminate it.

I would say this website owes its existence to irrationally devoted followers of Ayn Rand. Had they not been irrational, Atlas Shrugged the movie would have been produced by and starred Angelina Jolie. The offer was on the table.

Instead, fearing Jolie (who was a Rand fan herself) would allow the concepts to be sacrificed to make the film more popular, they made the film without traditional Hollywood.

The 3 part film ended up being what it was and, this site is the tail following the comet.

So, if you value this site above a successful movie, you got it. If not, think about it, when I was more familiar with the book, I could (and did) point out dozens of places where Rand made logical and dramatic errors in the book. Remaining strictly faithful doomed the movie to failure.

One only moves ahead when one is willing to admit past failures. Ayn Rand was human, she made mistakes, there were things about which she knew very little. Almost everyone has some insight about something about which the rest of us know nothing. If Rand were to write a story about whatever you do in life, you'd pick out all the things she got wrong. Why is it so hard for people on this site to admit her efforts weren't perfect?

It's totally irrational and dooms everyone to live in an imperfect past, even if it's a fictional past.

Do they really have no answer to this most obvious question?
How do they get converts? By confusing them with overwrought arguments?

Pretty sure there's already a name for this: pre-civilization.

Dagny.

If you didn't know this then, there's no point in discussing it further. I'm tired of people who didn't even know it was there tell me it a) wasn't, b) was only transactions with the outside world, c) made sense because after all, the readers wouldn't have understood anything else, d) etc.

It's a clear logical slip. In transactions strictly between members of the Gulch gold was used as a currency and Dagny and the others involved denominated it in dollars.

Why do you all feel you must defend every little thing about Rand's work? No one is perfect.

she had hope for the u.s. and its dollar -- "We are
going back to the world." -- j

p.s. I gave you back your point, again.
.

james5820,
You do not have a correct view of the objective/subjective distinction. Along with empirical facts, rights are objective, even though the latter cannot be seen by hovering aliens.

You are full of personal hatred for Ayn Rand, whose ideas you do not read or understand, yet constantly attack with snarling vindictiveness. You don't belong here.

Ayn Rand's mind did not "dwell in the unreal, ideal world these ideas pose, a world where humans are honest and just and theft and murder are unknown." She rejected "ridiculous pseudo intellectual flailing", including anarchism. If you read her books you would know that, but you don't, and continue to smear, denigrate, and misrepresent her and her philosophy.

You claim that this site is a "waste of time" and "realize these weren't, for the most part, people whom I could engage in any beneficial way". So you waste your time here misrepresenting and attacking Ayn Rand. Since you have no interest in her ideas and cannot seriously discuss them this is obviously not the place for you.

So, the low price of bread in the US is anomalous. I know we have hidden agricultural subsidies but, I thought they paid producers to not produce which, in theory would make bread more expensive.

However, retail food is an extremely competitive business in the US. Maybe not so much where you live.

No. This particular item was a logical slip. There's no reason she had to or should have had her characters talk about their transactions in so many dollars worth of gold. They should have talked about so many ounces or grams or ccs or whatever.

At the time she was writing, gold had a fixed dollar rate even though most Americans couldn't own any substantial amount of it but, in the middle of her fictional societal meltdown, that would no longer have been true and, certainly the characters who lived in the Gulch would have abandoned their dollar-centric views of economics.

It's a mistake. She made mistakes. Everybody makes them. 1000 pages and you're going to miss some stuff.

For those fanboys who can't admit Rand was human, I have no time but, I have an "ignore" button. It works well enough. I still get notices that they've posted something but, nothing they post actually appears on the page. I've suggested to the editors they rewrite their software so once we ignore others, we stop getting notices about anything they post.

Life's too short to argue with people who aren't looking for the truth.