> "chardin" <chardin@uabid.dom.uab.edu> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> >The philosophy of Ayn Rand and her ilk, if I
> >understand it correctly, would applaud Hitler for gassing all those
> >useless mentally retarded children--aren't they just taking up
> >resources that our brighter kids could use?
>
> <snip>
>
> Drawing on what I know of her philosophy (which, like you, I find
> better expressed in her novels than in her other writings), I think that she
> would applaud the use of individuals as livestock / resources.
Wrong! Individuals are not resources but "ends in and of themselves" !
> That is the
> essence of capitalism (ref. Marx, _Capital_).
Wrong again! The essense of capitalism is Free trade and personal property!
> If they had been worked to
> death, or starved to death because they could not or would not work, it
> wouldn't have been a problem -- *because* if they had the impetus and
> intelligence to do so, they would have found a way out of their situation.
She would have asked how are they being worked? At the point of a gun or just
hungry and wanting to trade work for food. Don't forget the people who provide
the work are in fact people too and not just another "resource" or "money
object".
> She would object (and probably did) to the extermination of individuals when
> that was done as a method of garbage disposal. That would be vandalism, just
> as slavery would be theft.
No it would be treating individuals as "resources" rather than individuals that
are ends in and of themselves. ( A side note here: She did believe in the death
penalty for murders )
> Your point on "taking up resources that our brighter kids could use"
> is way off, however. That viewpoint is socialistic -- which she emphatically
> was not.
>
> SGK
Well at least you got that last one right.The Nateman.