If you're feeling very John Galt take a deep breath. Remember that you're not a fictional character in a fictional society. You're a real person in real society where Entrepreneurs(with a big E) get subsidized security, roads, mail, water, food, electricity, education, health care, etc.
Ayn Rand was a very disturbed individual.
"In her notebooks Ayn Rand worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" she promoted in her more famous books."
"What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'" "
I hate Rand but that was an ad hominem attack and not much else.
But more importantly;
"Entrepreneurs(with a big E) get subsidized security, roads, mail, water, food, electricity, education, health care, etc."
I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. The taxes levied on businesses and individuals pay for the (often shoddy and wasteful) infrastructure and services.
It's both. The existing gets taxed to pay for the future, including NEW business SBA loans, infrastructure, court systems, securities exchange support, etc. They aren't made without help, and help is not possible without some of them succeeding and being taxable.
It's a giant, systemic feedback loop, one we try to make end up being positive in a good way.
"You're a real person in real society where Entrepreneurs(with a big E) get subsidized security, roads, mail, water, food, electricity, education, health care, etc."
Just because they get those things, doesn't mean it's the best way to get them, or that they wouldn't prefer to get them in some other way.
This is a tiresome argument that's been repeated over and over, and is nothing more than an attempt to change the subject.
Inevitably it starts when someone complains about the "parasites", "moochers", or whatever the description of the day is. It's always "waaah! someone undeserving is getting my stuff!"
When the notion that nobody exists as an island is pointed out, and it becomes clear that those complaining about the "moochers" are in fact enormous beneficiaries of the system, the argument becomes "but the system isn't perfect!", as if that somehow justifies the "every man for himself" mentality that started the argument.
Objectivist arguments like this always start with the notion that greater good will arise from an objectivist society. When that stupid argument is thrashed good, the argument turns into one of personal freedoms. It's amazing how many about-faces people will make in order to hang onto the notion that everyone else is a useless good-for-nothing except themselves.
Economics used to be called political economics. Why Valve can't stay out of politics is because a lot of things worth doing are political in nature or related to politics. Politics is not a different sphere from everyday life.
One way to cure this symptom of patriarchy is to try to stop being a 'troglodyte' as you put it. What would a non-'troglodyte' do?
If you shrug, accept the status quo and say meh, it's a cultural problem you're functionally no different than someone who is completely ignorant of the issue.
>One way to cure this symptom of patriarchy is to try to stop being a 'troglodyte' as you put it.
"Patriarchy?" Cultural Marxism went out in the 1970s. "Troglodyte?" As a metaphor for a man who works and takes care of his wife and children?
"Ignorant?" No one is "ignorant" of cultural Marxist screeds about "sexism" and "patriarchy." Plenty of people are quite knowledgeable on these issues, but simply reject your kind's often-strange morality and attempts to remake society to conform to bizarre sociological notions from the last century.
Really, burning bras is so last century. Get with the times.
>Is the pursuit of equality really something you think of as strange or outdated?
Labeling your ideology with glittering generalities like the "pursuit of equality" doesn't change the substance. "Equality" was traditionally understood to be "equality under the law" not some vague "social equality" where all social distinctions must be erased.
"Feminism" is clearly not about men and women being equal under the law.
Except it's not. Example: women who expect to have custody of their kids no matter what are perfectly reasonable, men who expect to actually be allowed to see their kids are demonstrating their male privilege and acting as though the kids are their property.
This doesn't just apply to non-law areas either. A few years ago the British government consoldated all anti-discrimination law into a single Equality Bill, and as part of this they had a consultation period where interested parties could submit their thoughts. Several really well-known and respected feminist organisations submitted complaints that some local authorities were only offering funding for services to rape and domestic violence survivors if they offered advice to victims of all genders who rang up, and argued that in order to achieve equality the Government should force them to direct all their funding to women-only services. Equality can be used to mean a lot of things.
Just because a person who names herself a feminist doesn't mean she's not also a hypocrite.
Some people are just for stronger rights for women (and should be poo poohed for this stance). Some people are for equal rights for everyone, and similar expectations for everyone.
If you use "equality" to mean "direct all services to women" you not only are misusing the term in the vein of some of the best bullcrap propaganda that came out of Lenin's regime in Russia, you're also a flaming asshole.
Let me put it this way: I have seen prominent feminists label other self-identified feminists as not really feminist because they care too much about male rape victims. I have never seen it happen to anyone because they cared too little about them, for values of "cared too little" up to and including contemplating the systematic mass rape of men in order to teach them what women experience (the feminists in question abandoned the idea because obviously men couldn't really be hurt by being raped, not like women are).
Hell, I've know of one prominent feminist blogger who thinks it'd be a great idea to reclassify anal rape as something that isn't really rape, even when the victims are women, just so that no man could ever claim to have been raped. This still caused infinitely less controversial than treating men as human beings with feelings does.
Investing in infrastructure during a recession is what you're supposed to do. It creates jobs temporarily which increase consumer demand which drives the economy and increases revenue which reduces government debt AND you get the infrastructure you built. It's a clear win-win-win.
On the other hand high bandwidth prices slow down adoption, usage and evolution for all other industries which uses these telecom services. The rest of the economy is held back by these prices.
I would argue that the benefits of low bandwidth prices for the rest of the economy outweighs the benefits from the current telecom profits.
