CPUSA: Ryan, Rand, and the Objectivist Budget (Ayn Rand = L Ron Hubbard, and followers = cult)

[AsburySkinsFan]

Anyone agree with this?

All decisions you make in life should benefit the following:

1. Yourself

2. Your sexual being

3. The Group

4. Mankind

Christianity has this version:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Upon these two commandments hang all of the law and the prophets.

[GibbsFactor]

#2 is all that's important

Just thought I'd toss that out there as it's the 10 commandments of Dianetics (given your chosen title).

[The Sisko]

Yikes. 15%. That seems so very high when compared to, say, us.

It is when one considers the previous comments about how low HK's unemployment rate is. So taking that into account along with HK's poverty rate, it follows that wages are so low that many can barely survive on their earnings. We may differ but I just don't see that as a selling point.

Hold on. You're the one who brought up the so-called "cages." You're the one who wants to repeatedly hold them up as your shining example of how bad HK society really was/is. All I did was take the number of people living in your nightmare scenario from your article and apply basic math. If you'd like to drop that specific example, by all means, feel free, as I'm not the one who brought it up and I'm not the one who apparently wants to keep pointing to it. But as long as you want to keep talking about it, don't turn around and tell me my number "isn't accurate" when I'm specifically using the information that you provided.

Yes, this was my example. For the record though, it wasn't my only example, just the one you seem most interested in. My other reasons HK makes a poor choice seem to have fallen on deaf ears with you though.

In any event, I didn't start this. It was the objectivists and Heritage Foundation types who love to point out how wonderful an example of unfettered capitalistism HK was/is. So by your defensive posture are you saying that the fantasy of HK is so fragile that it can't stand up under the most basic level of scrutiny?

I agree. Which is why I don't think Hong Kong was or is objectivist. But to pretend that there's absolutely no validity in citing the example of the dynamic, explosive economy of a tiny, relatively resourceless island - one that colonial masters couldn't be bothered to try to socially engineer, one that was sitting right next to a giant Communist country with an army made up of millions and millions of armed goose-steppers - as evidence of, at the very least, some demonstrable advantages of libertarian principles, is as misguided as pretending that Hong Kong was some weird objectivist paradise that eliminated poverty

There would be value in citing an example that holds water. Unfortunately for the objectivists, Milton Friedman and the Heritage Foundation either ignored or failed to mention that HK in many ways was the polar opposite of the objectivist vision for the reasons I cited above. So no, it's simply not a valid example. It's just not. It's sort of like trying to cite the Soviet Union as an example of capitalism, while conveniently discounting the centralized planning. Obviously that's an exaggeration, but hopefully you see my point.

IMHO a much more valid example to cite would be England during the Victorian era. The only problem is that example also highlights the well known drawbacks of the objectivist position. How inconvenient for them.

No, I can see a little bit of what you're talking about. That helped. Is Ryan promoting a libertarian or objectivist health care model though?

I would argue over the the longer term, yes. Given the smoke and mirrors and rosy assumptions his plan relies upon, it's not too difficult to see that he's calling plays from the same "starve the beast" playbook we've seen before. That is, reduce tax revenue through tax cuts, use the resulting deficits to cry that social(ist) programs are the reason the govt. is broke (not the tax cuts) then dig in their heels and refuse to even consider tax increases. The overall idea is to essentially starve govt. of revenue then use that as the rationale to cut programs.

Given that Ryan is an Ayn Rand worshiper, I seriously doubt his intention was to strengthen or preserve programs that are 180 degrees opposed to his worldview.