05.09.08

Destination: Apokolips

Posted in Science Fiction at 1:39 pm by Administrator

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05.07.08

The Shroud of Aristotle

Posted in Ethics, Rand, Antiquity, Left-Libertarian at 4:58 pm by Administrator

Whilst surfing for something else I happened across this description of Ayn Rand’s philosophy as “really nothing other than a Solipsistic ethical system thinly shrouded with Aristotle,” popular only because “a lot of college age kids want to hear … a philosophical rationalization for greed and selfishness.”

I think one of the chief explainers of the divide between those who take Rand seriously as a philosopher and those who don’t may well be the interpretive divide between those who see her philosophy as a solipsistic ethical system thinly shrouded with Aristotle and those who see it as an Aristotelean system thinly shrouded with ethical solipsism. Obviously I’m in the latter camp.

So here’s a question for those in the former camp: if Rand’s ethics is just a rationalisation for greed and selfishness (in the conventional sense) and the Aristoteleanism is just a thin shroud, then what exactly is the contrast in The Fountainhead between Roark on the one hand and Wynand and Keating on the other supposed to be about? What is supposed to be wrong with Wynand’s and/or Keating’s modus operandi, from Rand’s point of view? If anyone can give a plausible answer that’s consistent with the view of Rand cited above, I’ll eat my conical hat. If not, then I’ll stick to my view that such readings of Rand are the product of a tin ear.

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Moon of Kudzu

Posted in Science Fiction at 3:22 pm by Administrator

While I’m on the subject of hauntingly beautiful moon-related indie sf movies, the extremely low-budget Moon Europa project, which I was introduced to at Asheville’s Revoluticon in 2006, is one to keep an eye on. Check out the three trailers here, here, and here.

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Moon of Ice

Posted in Science Fiction at 3:03 pm by Administrator

This trailer is beautifully done. So beautifully done, in fact, that I’m betting they put the bit with the dove in at the end just because they felt they had to make sure nobody thought they were out to glamourise the Nazis!

Anyway, I look forward to seeing more. (But since when do Germans drive on the left?)

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But Probably Not the One Who Supported the Registration Act

Posted in Anarchy, Science Fiction, Humor, Terror, Left and Right, Left-Libertarian at 12:12 pm by Administrator

Rothbard is Iron Man! So we learn at the end of this piece by Jeff Tucker.

Now there’s an image that sticks in the mind ….

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05.06.08

Grailward!

Posted in Democracy, Left-Libertarian at 10:49 pm by Administrator

I just saw Hillary Clinton’s concession/victory speech, and all I could think of was:

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Night of the Iguaçu

Posted in Science Fiction at 9:49 pm by Administrator

Niagara is cool (which according to Aristotle would be why it flows downward), but to my mind the world’s most beautiful waterfall, which I’ve always wanted to see, is Iguaçu Falls in Brazil:

From the latest trailer it looks like Iguaçu Falls is going to be a major location for Indiana Jones and the Title That Goes On and On. Should be mighty purty ….

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Tax Radar

Posted in Anarchy, Left-Libertarian at 1:06 pm by Administrator

[Note: “Tax” is functioning adjectivally rather than imperatively in the above title.]

William Gillis writes today:

A Desperately Needed Note To Anarcho-Capitalists From The Poor

Guys, the more y’all make taxes the center and end-all of your critique the less we give a damn. Some of us don’t make enough to pay them. And some of us have never bothered paying them anyway, especially in states without sales tax. What are they going to do, audit us?

Taxation is simply not on our radar.

The more it matters to you, the less you matter to us.

I think he’s partly right and partly wrong on this.

Where he’s right is that libertarians and anarcho-capitalists too often stress issues affecting the middle class (and all too often the rich!) and say far too little about those affecting the poor.

But my gripelets are these: first, he makes it sound as though “the poor” and “anarcho-capitalists” are non-overlapping groups – whereas I’ve known plenty of desperately poor anarcho-capitalists (and have been one myself, for that matter). And second, he makes it sound as though taxes hurt only those who pay them – whereas every dollar transferred from the voluntary to the coercive sector makes the economy slower, less competitive, and less productive, cements the already-rich in their positions of privilege, depresses wages, increases costs (and thus prices), and makes it harder to start new enterprises, thus closing off the principal means by which the poor can escape poverty (namely either being hired by such enterprises or starting such enterprises themselves).

If taxes aren’t on the poor’s radar, they should be – since those too poor to pay taxes are in fact the principal victims of taxation.

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05.05.08

Fear-Fraught Funnies

Posted in Humor at 11:28 pm by Administrator

Jack Kirby once famously admonished (on a cover featuring Superman and the Guardian rushing toward the reader while bearing a photograph of Don Rickles): “Don’t ask! Just buy it!”

In that spirit I offer the following comic. Don’t ask, just read it!

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Ruwart on Children’s Rights, Pars Secunda

Posted in Ethics, Feminism, Democracy, Left-Libertarian at 10:59 pm by Administrator

Update: Mary Ruwart has clarified her position on children’s rights. Her clarified views aren’t quite the same as the ones I set forth in my earlier post, but they seem broadly similar.

By the way, for those who left me questions on my earlier post that I never got around to answering, I’ve now answered some of them.

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