Even worse than the idiotic rules on smoking and aesthetic tastes (you don’t like modern architecture?! How evil!)

I’ve been an Objectivist for about a decade now and this is the first I’ve heard of any rules on smoking or architecture. What are these rules, exactly?

Let’s go back to Rothbard

I think this is the main source of the problem. Your criticism isn’t coming from a primary source. Speaking of which, you might find this essay interesting:

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/essays/obj_cult2.html

“That [Ayn Rand] opposed private charity as well is a separate issue and one on which I part company with the lady.”

“That, at least, is my reading of her views; and, given the amount talked and written about, for instance, the Benefits Trap, it seems an entirely reasonable stance to take.”

Furthermore, you admit that the act of “helping people out often is in your own self interest- what better way to get the community to see you as a good person”.

What Rand argued, as I understand it, was that you should not do it purely for your own interest. It might make you feel better to support someone on charity, but they then cannot get a job because they have been on support for so long (a big gap in working is one of the prime reasons for CV rejections) and you have thus impoverished yourself and harmed the other person by denying—or at least facilitating—their wasted potential.

As for the idea that Rourke court speech was a defence of patents… That’s bollocks. Like Rearden, Rourke had actually made something and, when it was defaced, he destroyed it.

You might not understand this concept—I find that those who are not artists usually don’t. However, I like to consider myself an artist in my vainer moments, and I would be seriously upset if someone took one of my pieces of work and bastardised it.

This is actually why, in many cases, artists tend to support IP instinctively: not because of the money factor (you’ll find that it is the artists’ backers, the music companies, etc. who squeal most about that), but because the idea of someone taking your carefully crafted work and then ruining it is painful.

The above is not, of course, an argument for IP—but you should not dimiss IP without considering it. That goes for you too, Charlotte: how would you feel if I copied your blog design absolutely but, instead of cats with glowing eyes, I put cats with glowing vaginas? And put signs in their hands saying “Rape is fun!” And kept the name “Charlotte Gore” at the top of the blog?

In application, IP is a difficult one to apply—I had a long discussion about it with a new member of LPUK on Saturday. But, since you are talking in practicalities, there is nothing wrong with the state protecting IP—just as there is nothing wrong with the state protecting physical property. As I said to you on Twitter, why is it wrong to steal a computer, but not wrong to steal the ideas that made it possible?

If you say it is because society gets richer, you are acknowledging the practical can override the philosophical and then your objection to state protection of property is on shaky ground too.

I could go on although, as I also said on Twitter, this is one of those subjects on which I have to be convinced either way. But I’ll let you respond first…

DK

Her value seems to come from having written books that go against virtually everything else you’ve ever read, on so many levels, that it does seem to have a consciousness altering effect. It’s probably because what she writes is so surprising that it has the effect it sometimes has.

In many respects though, by completely ignoring what appears to be a sort of genetic, darwinian altruism (Dawkins), Rand’s vision of perfect humanity is so out of step with what normal people experience as to make many people dismiss the good bits too – individualism, capitalism, etc.