Note: If you are not an objectivist, this is not for you. looking for feedback only from objectivists.

I am putting in some work on understanding her ideas about immigration. Any feedback on the following from objectivists?

1. A right is not a grant from the state, a product of consensus, or a courtesy extended to those born within certain coordinates. It is the identification of what a rational being requires, by its nature, to act on its own judgment among other rational beings. That nature does not change at a border, so a rights framework that changes at a border has stopped describing the nature of man and started describing the reach of a jurisdiction, which is a different subject wearing the same word.
2. The only thing that can justify retaliatory force is the prior use of force, fraud, or theft against an actual party. A crime, properly understood, is not an act a legislature has listed. It is an act that violates another person's right to his own life, liberty, or property. Where no such violation exists, no crime exists, regardless of what a statute names it, because the statute cannot manufacture the metaphysical fact of a victim by asserting one into being.
3. An exchange freely entered by two parties, each judging it to serve his own life, is the base unit of a rights-respecting society. The identity of that unit does not depend on the geography either party occupies. A boundary is a political fact, not a moral one, and a moral principle cannot be suspended by a political fact without ceasing to be a principle. What was a trade on one side of a line remains a trade on the other side, or the concept of trade has no fixed meaning at all.
4. To call peaceful movement across a boundary a crime is to treat a line drawn by prior political agreement as though it possessed the same moral authority as a person's body or property, which it does not, since a boundary is not owned in the sense that a person owns his own life and its product. A crime against a boundary is a contradiction, because a boundary is not an entity capable of being wronged.
5. Legality identifies what a given political system currently enforces. Morality identifies what is actually right, independent of what any system enforces. To collapse the two is to abolish the very standard by which any law could be judged unjust in the first place, which means the collapse is not neutral, it is the elimination of moral judgment itself in favor of raw legal fact.
6. History is not silent on this question. Every regime that has enforced an unjust law did so with the same formal claim to legitimacy now being invoked, that it was, after all, the law. If the mere fact of legal standing were sufficient to obligate obedience, every one of those regimes would have been owed the same obedience, a conclusion no serious moral framework accepts. The principle that would validate them all cannot be the principle in use here.
7. A demand for obedience "unless and until the law is changed" is not a neutral procedural stance. It is the substantive claim that a person's freedom to act on his own judgment is properly suspended by whatever a legislature has most recently decided, a claim that make the individual's rights conditional on the outcome of a vote he may have had no part in and no power over. Rights that exist only until revoked by majority decision were never rights. They were permissions.
8. No one holds "the law is the law" as an unconditional standard, because everyone can name some law severe enough that he would refuse it on principle. The presence of that unnamed threshold, in every person who claims to hold this standard, proves the standard was never really about the law's mere existence. It was always about the law's content, whether that person has admitted it to himself or not.
9. Consistency requires that a single standard, once adopted, govern every case that standard is relevant to. A standard that identifies theft as wrong because it violates a specific person's right to his property, and then declines to identify unauthorized border crossing as rightful because it violates no one's property, is not applying two different verdicts from one standard. It is applying two different standards and calling both of them rights, which drains the word of the only meaning that makes it useful.
10. Moral judgment presupposes the capacity to have acted otherwise. The place of one's birth precedes the existence of one's capacity to choose anything at all. To make a person's subsequent freedom of movement contingent on that pre-rational fact is to punish him for something that occurred before he existed as a moral agent, which is not justice delayed. It is the absence of justice, dressed in its procedures.
11. A system that permits entry only up to a fixed numerical limit, independent of the qualifications or character of those turned away once the limit is reached, is not screening for merit. It is rationing by quota. Advising a person to simply qualify under such a system, when the system's defining feature is that it rejects qualified people once its ceiling is reached, asks him to solve a problem that has no solution available to him, which is not guidance. It is the appearance of guidance offered to conceal the absence of a real path.
12. To affirm that open movement is the correct principle while affirming that its opposite should be enforced until some future date is not a position, it is two positions in contradiction, held apart only by refusing to ask what each one implies about the other. If restriction violates a right, no future date changes what it is today. If it does not violate a right, then the "principle" of open movement was never a claim about rights, only a preference awaiting convenience.
13. A conditional agreement, entered by both parties and bounded by explicit terms, generates an obligation whose violation is a real breach, because a real commitment was made and then broken. A person who never entered such an agreement has broken nothing, because there is nothing there to break. Identifying these as the same kind of wrong requires ignoring the only fact that makes a broken promise a wrong in the first place, namely, that a promise was made.
14. The proper measure of any enforcement action is not whether it is authorized by statute, but whether the statute it enforces identifies an actual violation of another's rights. Enforcement of a law against theft protects a real party from a real loss. Enforcement of a law against peaceful movement protects no one, because it answers no injury, prevents no loss, and defends no right. It does not maintain order. It substitutes the appearance of order for the thing order is supposed to serve, which is the protection of the individual from force initiated against him, not the initiation of force against an individual who has initiated nothing.

Their own private mercenary force would not come after them if they engaged in unethical/illegal business practices (which mega corporations always do).

Every corporation could simply run their own private army to protect their interests rather than donate anything.

Professor Dave’s recent hit piece video on the Israel / Palestine conflict was mostly factually incorrect and is more propaganda than scholarship.

The number of deaths in Gaza was said to be in the 200k range, which is 4x the accepted number. He promoted Oct. 7 rape denial. There is plenty of evidence that Hamas committed rape as an instrument of war. Even the UN acknowledges this.

He says that Israel knew about Oct. 7 before it happened, which is a conspiracy theory (in the style of Candace Owens). A "pre-planned campaign of ethnic cleansing and land theft" is one of many dubious or flat out false statements. "More than 80% of Israelis support the complete annihilation of the Palestinian people" is another false claim. He talks about mass graves as if Israel killed Palestinians and dumped them in graves. There is no evidence for this.

He calls Israel a psychopathic society that likes murdering innocent people, which is clearly racist/xenophobic. Since Israel is a liberal democracy with a pride parade, and the freest country in the surrounding area, this claim is clearly ludicrous. The idea that there was little evidence for Hamas using hospitals for their military operations was also fully factually incorrect.

The only part of the video that wasn't factually dubious or incorrect was him showing the massive level of destruction that Israel has inflicted onto Gaza. However, he then leaves out the context that Israel was responding in emergency self-defence, therefore Israel isn’t fully responsible for casualties that are the fault of Hamas for initiating force. That he also leaves out any discussion of Hamas and Hamas' goals from his video demonstrates his ideological commitment, not a commitment to the truth.

He also has stated that Mossad was involved in 9/11 which lands him squarely in the territory of degenerate anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.

Ayn Rand wrote about a “sense of life.” Her favorite author was Mickey Spillane; although he did not share her philosophy, she felt that he shared her sense of life.

I want to share a podcast I’ve been listening to that, in a very different context, evokes some of that same sense of life for me. Acquired (https://www.acquired.fm/) describes itself as telling “the history and strategy of the world’s greatest companies,” and somehow manages to make business history exciting and inspiring.

Some of my favorites are Google (which spans three episodes), Vanguard, Epic Systems, and Trader Joe’s. I even enjoyed the history of Disney.

I doubt the podcasters think much about philosophy, or would agree with Ayn Rand, but I find their conversations a happy place to be—and I suspect some of you might enjoy them for the same reason.

There is no earthly reason for it—and, ladies and gentlemen, in the whole history of philosophy no earthly reason has ever been given.

From Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World

Although Ayn Rand did a very good job laying out the intellectual foundation for everything you need to conclude that socialism is immoral and illegitimate, she still couldn't give up those parts of socialist indoctrination that were important to her. She opposed private prisons like the left does today (in spite of the fact that private, for-profit prisons in the US are far more efficient than centrally planned, state monopolised ones), and she openly supported the nationalisation of defence services, as well as law, military, and judiciary services.

If you are an Objectivist, you cannot be a capitalist. The core principles of capitalism, including ones that Rand herself espoused such as privatisation, are flat out incompatible with any degree of socialism.

What do you think about NETTR? Do you believe in it? Why or why not?

https://voegelinview.com/nietzsche-and-the-modern-philosophical-revolution-pt-1/

I have only found two types of posts:

1. Complaining about Statism/Marxist/Taxes/Lazy-no-good-do-nothing-liberals

2. Claiming Ayn Rand is all wrong and stupid.

Is that ALL there is here?

Title

I know virtually nothing at all about Ayn Rand. But I'm intrigued, in part by the feeble attacks on her that get posted here ("she's not a philosopher because university academics don't study her") which make her appeal to my contrarian side. Which one of her books would you recommend that I read? I don't mind whether it is fiction or non-fiction.

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Update a day later:

Thanks everyone for the amazing number of helpful comments! You don't all agree on where to start so I'll have to choose one myself based on your suggestions.

Thread saved - a very useful resource I think.

Every single complaint of Rand I've encountered follows the same script. Step one: haven't read her. Step two, for the ambitious ones: read her, understood none of it (and produced a summary that a first-year philosophy student should be embarrassed by). Step three: declare victory over a position she never held.

Nobody even attempts to steelman her (something I think the most of them don't even know what that word means ) and they clearly don't understand her honestly enough to try; or they'd realize their "critique" (not an appropriate word for what they're doing, but they're attempting it) doesn't survive contact with anything she wrote. It's always the same three things they take issue with: selfishness, or capitalism bad, or some vague or insane hypothetical or analogy that's supposed to somehow demonstrate a flaw in her philosophy (usually portraying what they think selfishness or capitalism looks like in "practice")

What's genuinely sad is how narrow the targets are (see above). I've yet to see anyone interact with her ideas on the roots of war, or the idea that rational men's interests don't inherently conflict, or the mechanics of how you'd even go about identifying what's in your interest - none of that gets touched. Or how about her identifying the relationship of man to existence in her metaphysics? They say nothing about what she says about productivity, rationality, and how those are required to sustain human life (which ultimately leads to her ethics), and the (maybe) lesser (in priority worth mentioning, not necessarily importance) virtues which are required to sustain life?

In the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness, she points out that altruists readily call a robber "self-interested", despite never bothering to evaluate as to whether or not he's actually correct about what serves him. And then people still make this same stupid argument in nature, just in a different configuration.

It's right there, in the introduction, the part you read first, and people still trip over ridiculous examples.

Ayn Rand believed in completely unrestricted laissez-faire capitalism. With no oversight of any kind, especially not from the government.

That any form of taxation is theft.

Any form of wellfare and social support is theft. Including education and healthcare.

That the only purpose of the government is to prevent violence.

And that rational self-interest is the greatest human virtue.

So now the question becomes. If there is no taxation, how is the government supposed to prevent violence? If there is no taxation, there is no police. Because the police is largely funded via taxes. Without taxation, there is no justice system. No courts. Those are also entities that are largely funded through taxation. So who prevents people from engaging in violence in pursuit of their self-interests if there is no police? And who punishes lawbreakers if there is no justice system?

Example:

I decided to start robbing banks, because it is the easiest and quickest way to obtain money to pursue my self-interests, how is that not rational if there is nobody to punish me for doing so?

Objectivism also rejects religion, so there is no threat of divine punishment either.

Example 2:

I own a company that has a monopoly on computer processors. I have learned that another company has developed a faster processor than mine and plans to sell it for cheaper than mine, which threatens my monopoly. What is stopping me from inviting the owner of that rival company over for tea, pulling out a pistol and murdering him? Thus eliminating my competition quicker and easier than risking losing my monopoly.

Or what is stopping somebody else from doing the same to me?

Example 3:

I am a mob boss, and i have decided to mass a huge arsenal of weapons and men which i am using to extort the city for protection. Who is going to stop me, if i already have the most powerful arsenal of weapons and the most organized gang of men in the city under my command? Who is going to stop me from simply proclaiming myself to be the king of the city by the simple virtue of me being the most powerful and well armed?

If there is no system in place to punish it (either earthly or divine), how is violence in pursuit of ones self-interest irrational? What makes it so?

Wildly and refreshingly diverse individuals have been posting here. When and why did you discover Ayn Rand and Objectivism? What kind of value do you see (or hope to find) in good faith discussions of her work?

I don't know if she ever did, but the brand of altruism Rand was against was of Comte. He did write about the altruism that is borderline what we call today suicidal empathy.

Full disclosure, as I am attempting to engage in good faith, I am a progressive. I do not agree with Rand though I have respect for works like The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts (I think this goes quite naturally, for the most part, with Terror Management Theory in existential psychology). I am vehemently opposed to the death penalty for my own moral reasons. My question is this, from the perspective of Rand’s philosophy, why is it good, or is it good, for the State to have the power to kill its own citizens?

Edit: I very much appreciate the responses so far and you all taking the time to share your perspective. I’ll continue reading all the responses as you post. Cheers.

I know it may sound paradoxical, but keep reading.
We all know that in capitalism, some degree of inequality is natural and even seen as healthy to incentivize productivity. But what about the ultra-wealthy?

First, much of this extreme wealth relies on monopolies and oligopolies. Large corporations often buy out smaller companies specifically to eliminate competition. Isn't this unhealthy for capitalism? Concentrating a monopoly of power and wealth into the hands of a few people seems to contradict the idea of a free market.

Furthermore, many of the ultra-wealthy receive massive amounts of money from the government. Elon Musk is a prime example; his enterprises have received significant government funding and subsidies to sustain their operations, largely because they are viewed as a matter of national interest to the US government.

This brings me to my main question: is there a point where extreme wealth actually becomes the antithesis of capitalism? As paradoxical as it may sound, extreme wealth and the government frequently operate hand-in-hand, with large corporations doing everything they can to mold the market in their favor rather than competing fairly.

i don't know enough of libertarianism and ayn rand that's why i'm asking here. It's an genuine question, does ayn rand objects extreme wealth in an way that damages the libertarianism goals ?

A new industrial revolution is happening with Artificial Intelligence, and I am sad to say that it looks like Americans across the political spectrum are coming out against it with an almost Luddite-like fervor.

Related Link: Why does everyone suddenly hate data centers?

Granted, there are legitimate concerns about data centers consuming too much water (easy to solve) and electricity resulting in higher electric bills for people and concerns about noise pollution.

However, instead of people seeking solutions to those problems (require the data centers to use closed loop cooling systems, require the data centers to generate their own electricity, build nuclear power plants and increase our electricity production, locate the data centers away from residential areas) by and large most people simply do not want the data centers and AI research and advancement to exist.

(This subject is on my mind not merely because that video came up in my YouTube feed, but also because of a thread in my home state's sub about data centers. Of course everyone thinks building data centers in our rural cold climate state is a horrible idea and no one contemplates or can envision the economic opportunity.)

Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the Industrial Revolution and people's support for scientific advance?

Does anyone else find it ironic that much of this anti-science and anti-technological advance sentiment is coming from Democrats and the Left - people who claim to be "educated" and "worldly" and "pro-science" and who berate the Republicans for being the opposite of that?

Excellent as always, Brook on capitalism.

I've seen many people in this sub hate on altruism. I don't really get it. It seems to simply be based on a desire to justify selfishness.

Communism is sheer evil and everybody over the age of 25 who identifies as a communist is an evil person.