"The Ayn Rand rant", revisited. Part 2.

Part 1.

I didn't plan on this being a multi-part thing, but I should have known better.

So, continuing my revisit of "Francisco's money speech, by Ayn Rand- Nitpicked"....

Cyan= Ayn Rand

Yellow= 2009 me

White= 2020 me

An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.'

Okey-dokey.

Course, in real life, Ayn Rand gave an exemption for her starving artist husband, but..whatever...

And herself, when it was time to go on Social Security.

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will.

Really?

Even the black market gun guy?

Even the kiddie porn guy?

Even the crack dealer?

I dunno...

Yes, even the black market gun guy and the kiddie porn dealer.

It really is that horrible.

She really is saying all that matters is dollars and moving widgets off of shelves.

There's no room for anything else.

Transformers 4 made a billion?

Then it really is a great movie.

She wouldn't include the crack dealer though.

Only because crack rose up in black neighborhoods.

BUT if the conspiracy theory is true that the CIA invented and planted that shit, and the profits were being laundered to a white owned corporation, she'd probably be all for it again.

Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. 

Unless you're a taxpayer who didn't want the ARI to get PPP money, then go fuck yourself.

Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return.

Unless you're a taxpayer who didn't want the ARI to get PPP money, then go fuck yourself.

All right, here's where I start to call back the whole "value for value", thing.

Basically, she's saying if someone's willing to pay you for something, that's value enough, and shut up and take the money.

The working man is an honest man, so if he values your crap enough to buy it, that's honest enough.

Like I said, it's all about moving widgets.

It really is that blinded and basic.

It's hard to wrap your head around, cuz it's hard to imagine someone could be prescribing something  so robotic and blinkered.

But, believe it.

It is that bad.

People like her take "Econ 101", and stop there, and never budge again.

....but do we really live in that world?

Clearly by my previous rants, I don't happen to think so.

People are out there consuming garbage culture, garbage media, garbage ideas, garbage foods, and it's all a big fat hateful swindle upon the honest working man.

Swindling doesn't matter. 

She sees swindling as "smart business", like Trump.

And she doesn't give a fuck about the working man.

Unless he's aspiring to own his own factory.

And the ones who dream of it, and never get there?

Suckers to be swindled.

To buy her books, and be good obedient little drones.

If you unionize and protest, you need a gas canister in the face.

And the magic of money has not rendered a smidgen of quality upon the garbage.

Quality doesn't matter.

Price is the value, and nothing else.

That's her whole bleak awful world.

That's really as deep as it goes.

I digress...I'll get back to this later....

Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders.

Lovely...

No, not lovely.

Capitalism is willed into existence by regulation.

Regulation makes the rules of the game.

Without rules, a game isn't even a  game, but pure chaos.

What Randroids, and other kinds of conservatives want IS that pure chaos.

They want capitalism to be like that dumb kid who goes "I've got a forcefield!! You can't tag me!!".

Or "my sword is the most powerful ever, and no one can beat me ever!! It's makes a nuclear bomb explosion with every swing!!".

That's what "unfettered free markets", is a cute euphemism for.

You hear that phrase, run from that person before they literally rape you.

You know where you get "no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders"?

Black markets.

Where they sell illegal guns, kiddie porn, and trafficked human beings.

Markets need regulation, and we need laws against exploitation.

Conservatives "stifling under regulations", is that same dumb kid being forced to play by Dungeons & Dragons rules.

"Sorry Billy, the dice roll says your sword isn't the most powerful ever, it only doled out 6 damage, the monster is still alive".

Tough shit, Billy, and tough shit, Randroids.

Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--

Again, if only that were so.

We've got a whole swindler class that's exalted by our culture.

And by Rand.

With no value but dollar value, who's to say what swindling even is?

Whoever can outspend you in court, and they're gonna say that nothing they do is.

Ayn Rand would be sloppily licking Trump's balls if she were alive.

Course, maybe the current economic crisis has woken people up....

Nope.

But housewives and grandmas getting gas canisters in the face sure fucking has.

the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--

This almost seems like she gives a shit about the working class, but no, she means Billy having to play by D&D rules so he can't have atom-bomb-sword.

that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason;

Ayn Rand hated abstract and absurdist art, thought "Charlies Angels", was a good show, and liked bland, robotic, boring, fascist architecture.

So, what she considered "talent", was way the fuck off.

So her idea of "weakness", and "stupidity", were equally way off.

And again, it's all about moving widgets and dollars.

Emotions and morals can go piss up a rope in her world.

*Eyebrow raise*

Again, what world is this happening in?

I look around, ands see vast sectors of our economy being fueled on mindlessly consuming worthless, meaningless, stupid fucking shit.

She couldn't give a shit.

Transformers 1-5 would be her favorite movies.

It really is about the dollars and the units, and nothing else.

I wonder what she would have thought of the Marvel movies.

She probably would have despised Captain America.

Especially post Winter Soldier.

And again, money is just a tool, now suddenly it's some contract of honor that the reverse will somehow happen.

It's not, and it doesn't.

Clearly.

Honor comes from within, and it'd be nice if everyone had it, but...

Sure as fuck money is no guarantee of it.

It's not good OR evil, it's just a technology.

Nope, you're over-thinking it, buddy.

She's not having blind faith that what YOU understand as moral will come about through unfettered free trade.

She's saying what's moral IS unfettered free trade, regardless of outcome.

She's putting all of morality into the dollars.

If you disagree or resist in any way, you're a dirty commie, and that's all that's immoral.

We see this with the fucking MAGA crowd right now.

They can be vile, and cruel, and vindictive, and violent, and bigoted, and shitty, but just don't be a commie!

"Commie", being anything that's not-Trump.

Fuck. Ayn. Rand!

it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find.

*Laughs*

Indeed.

How does she determine "shoddiest", when she advocates for a chaotic robber-baron melee?

Whomever gets the most money.

They were the best, even if they weren't.

Betamax, fuck you, you were shoddy.

Rankin & Bass, fuck you, you were shoddy.

Don Bluth Studios, fuck you, you were shoddy.

Money-God says so.

Shut up, commies!

Eat your swill!

Get back to work!

Take those fucking masks off, and inhale your corona for Trump-Jesus!

And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward.

Ah, if only...

See?

Whomever makes the money wins.

Oh, you had the actual better product, and lost, because company B was willing to cheat?

Fuck you.

Go cry to momma, commie!

This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

Nope.

Yep.

She's described an evil robotic code, and used lies and bullshit rhetoric to make it sound pretty.

Total gaslighting.

Gawrsh, guess I'll pack in my whole deal, and go buy me some collector's plates, and thank Baby Jesus that I live under the big green dollar sign.

*Weeps, salutes*

That's pretty much it.

He/me finally got it.

Past-me's only mistake was in thinking there was a pretty idea underneath it all that ran astray.

No, it's was always evil.

"But money is only a tool.

Okay, after it being magic, and a symbol of honor, now it's just a tool again...

It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires.

Yup...

What does she really mean here?

Of course money doesn't replace you as the driver.

Is she really literally answering "money is the root of all evil", like the money is literally evil, like it gets up and walks around?

Then she's answering a stupid straw-man point that no one has made.

Obviously "money", in that phrase is a stand-in for greed, and the cruelty, arrogance, selfishness, short-sightedness, and narrow-mindedness that go with it where the pursuit of money is concerned.

It's that whole thing wrapped up in that one word.

But, Rand doesn't get metaphor, because, well, go back to my comment on her art tastes.

She's a fucking robot.

Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

*Teeth grind, eye roll*

Communism.

She means seizing the means of production.

No one is arguing for that.

But her fucking robot brain sees any standing up against pure chaotic robber-barony as dirty stinking comma-nizzum.

Look, in Russia, she was a rich spoiled brat, she was basically Paris Hilton, and the Bolsheviks took her daddy's property, and she lived the rest of her life butt-hurt she that didn't get to be a pampered princess with servants licking her feet, and powder-puffing her snatch.

It broke her brain, and she became this disgusting radical right-wing rabble rouser.

Literature like this is what you get from bruised entitlement and narcissism.

The Bolsheviks sucked, but it doesn't give her permission to turn into a super-villain.

Joker has a hard-luck backstory too.

Tough.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek.

What values? 

What purpose?

In an un-regulated robber-baron free-for-all, anything fucking goes.

Up to and including human trafficking.

Okay, cool, 

No, not cool.

kind of what I've been saying, 

Nope.

She's gaslighting.

but the patch-over she comes up with for this is mind-numbing...

It's not a "patch over".

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.

Bull-fucking-shit.

Trump is a fool and a coward, and legions of mouth-breathers are willing to die of covid to see him like he's a fucking rock concert.

But again, it's not what a sane person would consider stupid or cowardly.

It's who wins the Monopoly game.

If you question who won the Monopoly game, you're labeled the fool.

If your morals wouldn't let you cheat, you're labeled the coward.

She's saying it, and not by accident.

There's no beautiful ideal getting corrupted here.

She's willfully gaslighting her readers.

Well, that's the ideal, but yet again, I have to point out that cowardly incompetent fools, especially those with big piles of money, especially piles of old money, are well respected.

Like Trump.

At least, within their own little bubbles of influence, and it takes armies of guys like me hurling our little spears to hopefully pop that fucking bubble.

I mean, look, we had 8 years of Bush despite John Stewart's constant labors.

It doesn't just fall from the sky that these fuckers meet their end through Karma, but Rand pretty much goes on to say it does...

No, she's not saying there's karma for the unjust.

Wealth makes them just.

Might makes right.

End of.

The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

See?

Nope, past me.

This is just more gaslighting.

In an un-regulated free-for-all who says what's superior or inferior?

Who or what is a cheat or a fraud?

The one with the money gets to say so.

Then Rand exhorts you to ad-hoc this narrative on to what took place afterward.

To repress your conscience if you had one to begin with.

Typical conservative "the poor deserve it", bullshit.

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him.

Bullshit.

Paris Hilton will live to a ripe old age, I'm sure.

Y'know what's a depressing thought?

Fred Trump lived to 93.

Donald might cling to life for another two fucking decades.

But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. 

Bullshit.

If I drained Jeff Bezos, I'd give it to research on cancer, AIDS, and Covid-19.

That's doing better with it than anything he has in his fevered brainpan.

Objectively, no wiggle room.

Argument over.

Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, 

Fuck you, Ayn Rand.

People who sucked out of the system owe.

End of.

Calling people getting their looted goods back "parasitism", tells you everything you need to know about Randism, and indeed, all conservatism.

The rich see your money as theirs, and justice as theft.

Their morals are literally screwed on upside-down.

would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. 

Bullshit.

She's in total fairy tale land now.

Is this the reason why you call it evil?

Guess so.

Hand me my hammer and sickle.

Yeah, I'm sure Paris Hilton cries horse turd sized tears into her pillow every night over her decayed virtue.

Basically, she's being a big fat hypocrite here.

She's saying money is made by the honorable,...unless it's given to an unworthy heir, but don't worry, the magic of the market and karma will dole justice upon them...unless it doesn't, in which case...eh, don't worry about it...

WTF???

Not hypocrisy.

Lies.

Gaslighting.

Bullshit.

Be a greedy, selfish, cruel, entitled piece of shit, or else you're a weakling.

Any other system of human interaction must be destroyed.

That's what's being sold.

This is exactly what you're reading in the cyan text.

Your senses aren't deceiving you. 

Everything else out of this Sith-witch is perfume being sprayed on the bullshit.

Whelp, that's a good sized chunk for today.

Tune in tomorrow for part three!