On my return flight from vacation, I had time to read more in Ayn Rand’s “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” and I was amazed how much of my Kindle copy I ended up highlighting in the chapters I read, so expect a fair number of quotes to come.
This first is from the essay “Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise” by Ayn Rand, and references something I see a lot of among my conspiracy theory loving friends on Facebook, especially in regards to oil companies and
In Ayn Rand’s “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” Alan Greenspan ends his essay on antitrust legislation with the following:
Whatever damages the antitrust laws may have done to our economy, whatever distortions of the structure of the nation’s capital markets they have created, these are less disastrous than the fact that the effective purpose, the hidden intent, and the actual practice of the antitrust laws in the United States have led to the condemnation of the productive
In the essay “Antitrust,” which is contained in Ayn Rand’s “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” Alan Greenspan, long before he became chairman of the Federal Reserve, discussed the emergence of antitrust legislation at the end of the 19th century.
In the early 19th century, railroads developed in the East among stiff competition, between different railroads as well as with older forms of transportation. By the 1860’s a political movement developed demanding that
Recently I set up a Google Alert for mentions of Ayn Rand and I receive several emails each day about articles that mention her name. On August 2nd one popped up for an article on the Christian Science Monitor website. The title of the article is “Selfish traits no good: Nice guys finish first, evolution researchers say.” The first couple paragraphs set the tone for the whole article.
Nature is cold, hard, and ruthless, and only the most aggressive – and selfish –
Yaron Brook guest hosts every other week on Leonard Peikoff’s podcast, talking about current events, politics and more.
In this week’s episode he covers questions on:
Another quote from Ayn Rand’s speech “Apollo and Dionysus” that I linked to on Monday. This one deals with, in short, Ayn Rand’s view on America’s role in fighting for freedom around the world. This seemed a particularly relevant given the current concern over intervening in various areas around the world.
One thing that was not covered in this brief answer that would be extremely important, is what exactly is “freedom.” As I pointed out in an earlier
In listening to the speech by Ayn Rand I linked on Monday, she was asked during the Q&A session about the government’s prohibition of drugs. While this deals specifically with drug use, it is applicable to any sort of consumption, or action for that matter, a man can choose. (Any errors in the transcription are mine.)
I do not approve of any government controls over consumption generally of every kind. I would advocate that all restrictions on drugs be removed. I don’t believe
Dr. Leonard Peikoff answered some great questions for this week’s podcast.
This morning of Facebook in the comment thread of a post by Yaron Brook, I came across a link to a recording of Ayn Rand’s speech titled “Apollo and Dionysus.” I had never listened to this before and it is a wonderful speech and as valid today as it was when she gave it.
In this speech she discusses the apparent dichotomy between reason and emotion. The title of the speech comes from Nietzsche, who uses Apollo to symbolize beauty, order, efficacy, and reason and Dionysus to