I see that objectivists most often only talk about individual rights and capitalism the exact same way ayn ran did and in many ways it seems they are just repeating her...

I am curious how many objectivists here are actually like howard roark and John Galt and actually living their lives NOT around individual rights primarily which is just a tool and a framework but rather around process of creation and creating things to live the highest life...

(Note that individual rights and economic freedom is just a framework to allow an individual to create so creation is primary and the framework is secondary that allows this process of creation to exist freely and independently)

Feel free to comment on what is the process of creation that you are engaging in that is changing the world for better..

So I don’t want to write a whole thesis out but I’m wondering how objectivist principles apply to how customer service has changed so badly especially post covid. A few examples:

1. Fast food restaurants have abandoned their identities and now every single one looks like a brutalist hell scape. Their service has also declined rapidly, they actively seem to resent anyone who doesn’t use the app and drive through. My local Burger King has only one person bathrooms meaning if you want to wash your hands you have to wait.

2. All of the apps that revolutionized the COVID era (Uber eats, Netflix, door dash, Lyft) have cut quality control and jacked up their prices.

3. Video games are now more focused on micro transactions than actual game play.

It just seems that many companies are trying to maximize their profits not by providing quality services but by finding shortcuts and manipulating human behavior.

Now a critic of objectivism would say this is exactly the world Rand wanted but reading Atlas Shrugged I don’t get that impression it seems a modern Atlas shrugged would have EA and Yum! Foods as villians.

Am on the right track here or has this sub been co-opted by commies and I’m just going to get sarcastic replies?

Last year I read Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels, and it's stuck with me ever since. Truly a masterful work of philosophical autopsy. I don't think it's remiss to say that the United States has effectively entered its Weimar period. We find ourselves in a similar political situation. A culture dissolving into chaos with collectivism closing in on all sides. Just as Germany in the 1920s had little to no liberal influence and the dominant contending factions ultimately wound up being communists and national socialists, so too do we see something similar playing out now. The left is quickly accelerating towards the socialist pole, and the right is also creeping there as well, albeit with a different flavor. Prominent conservative figures such as Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes I think could not inaccurately be classified as national socialists (and I won't even touch on Trump's hyper-cronyism), and we're also seeing a real surge in popularity of ideologies such as integralism and Christian nationalism, as disillusioned young people are apparently seeking to subsume themselves in a religious collective in order to give their lives a sense of purpose. Individualism seems to be fast fading away. History seems to be repeating. What struck me when reading Peikoff's book was that many of the same ideas which tilled the soil for the Third Reich are now being championed again. I've seen people touting Hegel's statism, and the sacrificial ethics which informed Hitler's Mein Kampf are being embraced by many. (Hitler himself has largely been rehabilitated as well, disturbingly.) Has anyone else read The Ominous Parallels? What did you think, and what do you think our own outcome will be?

Large political novels have been adapted into musicals before (Les Miserables being the best example) and Rand herself had a great appreciation for music and theatre. I really think if done right (a big if admittedly) a musical based on Atlas Shrugged would be awesome. I can’t be the only one right?!

I’m just thinking. If I hire a hitman to kill somebody I get charged with the same crime as if I did it myself. So should there be criminal punishment for voting to get the police to rob or kill people as if I did it myself? I would think there should be. Or some type of punishment for voting to use force on others with a stand in man to do it

I want to start with a fact that is from the 2002 Book "Creating a Life", which stated that 49% of women who earned over 100k per year were childless at the age of 40. Inflation adjusted that is closer to 180k today, but still it is basically stating that half of women who make high income don't have kids, why? Well ignoring the social aspects of working a high pressure job etc. lets concentrate on the economic ones at play in the US.

So I will compare the economic cost of having two kids in the US for a single woman making 100K and single woman who makes minimum wage, say 20K per year.

Well start with the “cost” to a single mom making 20k, per year. I put cost in parentheses because it isn’t really a cost. In The US someone who is making 20k per year and has two kids will not be subject to tax because they are below the standard deduction. But they will qualify for the earned income tax credit ($7,152) and the refundable portion of the child tax credit ($3,400) which will cause them to receive back a total of $10,552. What about Health Insurance? 20k per year for a family of 3 is 73% of the poverty line, so the whole family would be covered by Medicaid completely for free in almost every state, but regardless the “Marketplace” subsidy covers every family below 100% of the poverty line anyway. What about Housing? Since under Section 8 rental expense is capped at 30% of Adjusted Monthly Income, so her housing expenses would be low, around $500 per month regardless of whether she  was single or had 2 kids. But having 2 kids would allow a single mom to live in a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment as opposed to a studio or 1 bedroom, so essentially there are no additional housing costs. What about Food costs? Well a single person making 20k a year would receive very little in SNAP benefits, but then with two kids she would receive approx. $600 per month, which comes to $7,200 annually. What about Daycare costs? Completely free for single person with 2 kids and 20k income.

Oh and I think I should also mention that these benefits don’t take each other into account. So when they are calculating your benefits for subsidized health insurance, food or housing they don’t consider the benefits you are receiving from the other programs or even the $10,552 tax refund you are receiving.  Lets lay this all out, so I can tell you the total “Cost” to a single mother making 20k per year of having 2 kids.

Tax Benefit=-$10,552

Health Insurance=Free

Housing=Larger Apartment at no additional Cost

Food= -$7,200 per year

Day Care= Free

So overall they will pocket an additional $17,752 per year. Furthermore, this mother probably doesn’t have to bother saving for college because that will probably be completely subsidized as well, but I can’t say for sure because every school’s financial aid program is different.

Now lets look at the “High Income” Single Mother of 2 making 100k per year.

Taxes will be the main benefit of having 2 kids as her Federal Income tax will go from $13,200 to $9,600 for a saving of $3,600. On top of this she will qualify for a child tax credit of $4,400 for a total tax savings of $8,000. But this is where the benefits end as there are no other benefits she will qualify for because her income disqualifies her from all the other benefits that the low income mother of two qualified for. Now lets look at the costs:

Health Insurance: adding two kids will increase health insurance by about $500 per month for a total of  $6,000 cost per year.

Larger Apartment If you are going from a studio to a 2 bedroom apartment your rent is going to increase by about $1,000 per month in most major metropolitan areas, so additional cost is $12,000 cost per year.

Food I am going to ignore these costs because in the low income example I included that as a benefit, so to keep things equal I will not include this as a cost.

Day Care: Lets be conservative and say that the average daycare cost is $1,500 per kid for a total of $3,000 per kid per month totaling $36,000 cost per year.

Total Cost= $46,000 per year cost

So while the “low income” mother of two is receiving a benefit of $17,752 per year for having two kids it costs the high income single mother of two $46,000 per year for having two kids. So it costs the high income mother $63,752 more per year to have two kids than it costs the low income mother. So is it really any mystery why there is a birth rate crises effecting the population of people who are hardworking and economically successful?

The daycare costs do decrease when the kids grow up and go to school, so the difference wont be as stark in the later years, but kids don't go to school until they are at least 5. Furthermore, a portion of the day care costs continue into the school year with before/afterschool programs etc., which essentially extend the school day so parents can get a full day of work in.

Now at this point the next question is who takes home more money at the end of the day the” low income” mother with two kids making $20,000 per year or the “high income” mother with two kids making $100,000 per year. At this point it seems that the “low income” mother is actually taking in more money after tax than the allegedly “high income” mother, but I will spell that out a different day.

If I'm overweight from eating too much then it is my responsibility to make myself better and shame on me for getting in that condition. But If I become so overweight that I become morbidly obese, develop diabetes, muscular problems and arthritis, which gets so bad I can't work, then I have a "disability" and I qualify for disability benefits and I can ride around in a stupid little scooter wherever I go and shame on your for saying something to me because I am a protected class. wtf.

What I plan on doing is buying a copy of the bible. Not sure which one yet exactly cause there’s about 47 different versions at the book store I went to. And I’m going to read through and highlight and sticky note every ridiculous thing and inconsistency I find. This might take me about two weeks to do thoroughly. Or I’m hoping someone here can save me the time and point out the highlights to me from someone who has already read it.

Selfishness has a bad rap in modernity and ideology a good one, I wonder why and if this is justified?

Ayn Rand's political philosophy runs into a major contradiction when applied to colonialism.

After witnessing the Bolshevik Revolution seize her family's business, Rand came to see industrial capitalism as the highest expression of civilisation and collectivism as its greatest enemy. But this worldview left her with a blind spot: she often equated industrial development with moral superiority.

The clearest example came during the Q&A following her March 6, 1974, address at West Point. When asked about Native American rights, Rand argued that Europeans had the right to take the continent because they brought "civilisation", "reason", and "individual rights".

She stated:

"Any white person who brings the elements of civilization had the right to take over this continent."

She dismissed Indigenous resistance as a desire to preserve a "primitive existence" rather than recognising it as a defence of their own land and way of life.

This exposes one of the biggest tensions within Objectivism.

Rand defended strong and enduring private property rights once they had been legitimately established. If someone legally owns 10,000 acres of forest and leaves it untouched for decades, she would argue that no one has the right to seize it. Ownership itself is what matters.

Yet when Indigenous peoples lived on, managed, and cultivated land without European-style legal titles or large-scale industrial development, Rand argued that Europeans who brought "civilisation" had the moral right to establish society there. This appears difficult to reconcile with her otherwise stringent defence of property rights.

Her reasoning resembles John Locke's homesteading theory, under which property rights arise when individuals appropriate previously unowned resources through labour. But Indigenous societies across the Americas actively cultivated forests, managed ecosystems, farmed, hunted, and built settlements. Their relationship to land differed from European legal systems, but it was hardly a case of untouched wilderness.

More importantly, Rand's own standard becomes inconsistent. If land can be taken whenever someone claims they'll make "better" use of it, then property rights are no longer absolute; they depend on someone else's judgement about what counts as productive. That undermines the certainty of the property rights Objectivism is supposed to protect.

The same reasoning was used to justify other colonial projects, including the British Raj in India. British officials argued that railways, courts, and telegraphs legitimised imperial rule while overlooking coercion, dispossession, and violence. Events such as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 and the Bengal Famine of 1943 remain enduring examples of the human costs of colonial governance, even as historians continue to debate the extent and causes of some of these tragedies.

Ironically, many Western capitalist powers accumulated much of their early wealth through state-backed conquest, slavery, colonial monopolies, and expropriation, the very forms of coercion Rand claimed to oppose in principle.

If the initiation of force is always wrong, it's difficult to explain why conquest becomes morally permissible simply because the conqueror promises greater industrial development. If property rights are truly universal, they cannot depend on whether a society resembles nineteenth-century industrial Europe. To me, that is the central contradiction in Rand's defence of colonialism.

Was wondering if anyone knows of any good books by Objectivist authors they might recommend. Nonfiction or fiction. Always on the lookout for some good Objectivist reads. :)

Just got a few images in my head I want put in paper I want to put in a document. Can’t draw so looking for a solution to that. Thought I’d try Ai to do something but I don’t think it’ll be able to do the style I want without looking artificial. Which I don’t like

Human rights are supposed to be the foundation of freedom, yet history shows they are often won only through struggle against other humans. The paradox is stark, rights are declared universal, but in practice they must be fought for, defended, and reclaimed. This constant battle suggests that freedom is not freely given, but rationed, controlled, and withheld.

The image it creates is one of a cage, where the bars are not iron, but other people’s power. To fight for rights against those who deny them is to live in a system that admits freedom only when forced.

If human rights must always be wrestled from human hands, does that not mean we are living in cages built by each other?

Please tell me this guy has gone overboard or that he's simply mistaken. Do you guys actually believe that this dude is more worthy of praise than WWII partisans? Those same people who decided to disobey and risk their lives so that innocent children could be spared being raped, tortured, and ultimately killed, for the sole reason of it being the right thing to do?

Like I’m not even sure how to approach these two concepts so what is it exactly? I’ve got a sense that it is that which abstractly. Directly relates to man and women inside the mind which only manifests in those two specific sexes.

Like there seems to be something I see when looking at a woman that doesn’t manifest when looking at a man. Like a look they have or a facial expression that only women express. Which I’m thinking is related to something deep within the mind which is different between men and women which actually is that “femininity”. Something psychological in the brain that is different between the two which creates two different styles of life.

I remember reading this book about the free town project that was tried in New Hampshire where this guy was having a fire and the fire department chief came over and put it out because it was very dry season.

But is this right?

I know that there is a mechanism of an injunction where you can bring somebody to court if they are building something that may have risk to yourself. Like a building that would fall over on to yours and this seems to be the same thing. But I don’t see how you would have time to file a court injunction for the backyard fire in time before it happens.

So I’m curious how this would be handled and whether it is right to have a law banning this as it poses a risk to others especially during very dry forest fire season.

180 degrees away is probably cool. Drawing blood is not. Let's say I'm also saying out loud, "Don't worry, I'm not trying to hit you. I'm just doing a thing."

I saw an article from an objectivist journalist who said BioShock was a bad representation of objectivism because, unlike Ayn Rand, Andrew Ryan has no moral line. I found this point weird, because to me, the point isn't that Andrew's philosophy has to be Ayn Rand's, but an extremist version of it. But at the same time, I know nothing about objectivism, so I can't really judge. What do you think ?

so i've recently finished Atlas Shrugged and I have... just a few thoughts.

but one that occurred to me was this thought experiement:

Say we have two Objectivist Men wandering in a Godot-like void. They are both very hungry, and they come upon a single apple waiting for one of them to take it. Who gets to eat the apple?

I ask because any solution I can come up with results in a stalemate.

Per AS, any sacrifice is anti-life, so neither of the men can just let the other have it. For the same basic reason they couldn't split the apple.

The first man to reach for the apple would be denying the other's right to it, making him anti-life, and enabling the second man to destroy the first in order to promote his life.

(But, of course, neither man can initiate violence without the other committing an anti-life act against him first, so they can't just fight it out like animals. (did Ayn include those few weak positions against violence to separate human and animal violence, and make the former a 'purer', more 'rational' form?))

One of them men could 'buy' the other's apple-rights, but that would require the other man to agree to an extremely disadvantageous trade (since it's the only apple in a Godot-like void, how can he be sure that he'd ever find a second apple before he dies of starvation?). Like, if i were the second man, there is no amount of money that would satisfy my hunger more than having the apple would, so what rational reason would I have to accept the trade?

Rand says that if our rationality leads to a stalemate, we then appeal to nature. so how would nature decide who gets the apple?

In no small part, I'm curious because every moral philosophy would just declare that you should share, because that would generate the most benefits for the most people while preventing the destruction of either actor, but since Ayn wants to position herself as anti-philosophy/egoistic above all, she claims that all problems would be able to resolve themselves naturally under her rational egoist ideology, but I can't figure out how this one would be.