Today’s quote comes from Ayn Rand’s essay “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business” from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Leading up to this quote, she describes what economic and political power are and in this quote defines the difference between them.
Now let me define the difference between economic power and political power: economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward,
I currently am doing some thinking and researching for a future post and as a part of that I am rereading sections of Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. In particular I am focusing on the essay titled “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business.” In this essay Ayn Rand points out that while protecting the rights of minorities is almost universally supported, this principle is applied in a most discriminatory manner. If you are a business owner.
The entire essay
Adolf Hitler, Dr Frankowski, Joseph Stalin
A basic fact of human nature is that there are only two ways we can deal with one another, by reason or by force, and these are mutually exclusive. If you choose reason, you rely on persuasion and facts to convince another person. If you reject reason, you rely on the threat, or actual use, of physical force to achieve your goal. You ask a friend to give you a ride to work because your car broke down or you steal a car. You work hard to learn a skill and get a good job to make a living or
The “showpiece” of the art at One World Trade Center in New York.
I have not written on art before as it is not something I have given a lot of thought to, despite the fact that I work for a small non-profit arts organization. (In my defense, my job deals with technology issues such as our website and ticketing system.) I do know what sorts of things I like, but I do not know enough about the philosophy of art, aesthetics, to say much that would be at all interesting.
I am trying out a bit of a change in my posting schedule and moving my podcast round-up to the end of the week to hopefully free up the early part of the week for posts I want to spend more time writing on over my weekend. It also gives me time to catch up on the podcasts I am not able to listen to live using the Player FM app for my Android devices.
I just finished up this week’s “homework” for Yaron Brook’s podcast, reading, or rather re-reading in my case, the first chapter of Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness. (The podcast is presented live on Mondays at 11:00am EST. You can find it here.) The first chapter is titled The Objectivist Ethics and presents “the barest essentials” of Ayn Rand’s system of ethics.
I had read this essay, indeed the entire book, a couple of years ago, so I was a
In this short video, approximately 45 minutes of introductory lecture and 30 minutes of Q&A, Leonard Peikoff provides a great, if brief, introduction to the fundamentals of Objectivism. He discusses the 5 branches of philosophy – metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and esthetics – and how they form an integrated whole.
Dr. Peikoff presents a more complete discussion of Objectivism in a 32 hour lecture series, which can be found on the
This week’s podcasts covered topics from egoism vs altruism to fossil fuels to whether spouses should always share activities, and more!
Don’t Let it Go…Unheard – This week hosts Amy Peikoff interviews Center for Industrial Progress’ founder Alex Epstein about his new, excellent I might add, book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. They discussed:
After the 30 minute interview with Alex, Bosch Fawstin joined Amy and they discussed a plethora of stories, including:
On his new weekly podcast, Yaron Brook has started giving listeners “homework” to help build a foundation for the issues he we be discussing on the show. For this week’s show he asked that everyone read the introduction to Ayn Rand‘s The Virtue of Selfishness. I had read this a couple of years ago, but a previously un-highlighted paragraph jumped out at me.
The context of this quotation is a discussion of the difference between egoism and altruism. The most essential
A day late on getting this posted due to, well, illness, work and snow. Its funny how getting sick when there is a ton of snow can really mess with your schedule.
Philosophy in Action – Usually Dr. Diana Hsieh and Greg Perkins give really in-depth answers to questions but from time to time they do a “Rapid Fire Extravaganza” which is what they did this week. Rather than just answering