sseraph

I think we certainly lost a large part of what made America great with the introduction of the Fed and the 16th Amendment in the the 1910s. Both were extremely serious erosion or denial of fundamental principles. Even earlier the Civil War instituted many extremely evil notions including the forbidding succession, military conscription and nearly unlimited executive power in "a time of crisis". The fundamental assumption that a free human being is really the property of and/or or charge of the state is utterly and completely evil. It does not matter how much of my life the State decrees is its own to dispose of. That assumption means that the State may decide at its discretion (never mind if pretend votes that have little effect are cast) whether you get to own and run your own life or not and to what degree in any aspect of your life it wishes. The ultimate insult is that it then claims that you must pay for your own destruction. Actually it is not even this honest as it claims tax compliance is "voluntary". How do I un-volunteer without risking prison and total confiscation? The flip side of this evil is the assumption by many tens of millions of Americans that it is the responsibility of someone else to take care of them. To ensure they have good employment, good education, good health care, good retirement and generally a nice life. And why shouldn't they assume this when the State endlessly claims implicitly and explicitly that it exists to do all these things and so much more? In the State schools we don't even teach what the founding principles of this country are any more, not in State run schools generally. Troublesome individuals like Thomas Jefferson are even to be written out of some proposed history textbooks. What is the ultimate Ponzi scheme? Why would that even matter? Almost everything the government is doing is far, far worse than a mere Ponzi scheme.

I usually try to get a particular point across when someone puts down "profit" or "profit motive". A profit occurs when the values produced are greater than the values consumed in the production. That is not only perfectly moral it is utterly essential to the continued well being and thriving of each and every one of us. If we are consuming or destroying more values that the action results in then we are well advised to choose differently. Most people mix up "profit" with mere accumulation of useless bits of funny colored paper by any means whatsoever. That money should be a symbol of real value but it has long been perverted from even approximating so noble a purpose.

Yes, this was the quote I was referring to. Beautiful, isn't it. I don't find this all that significant. Rand was accenting something important that many miss or do not think of or see, the importance of the self. However, I don't think she was saying that the self is everything and that all else is relatively irrelevant. It is not an either-or but a both and. It is appreciating the self in the very act of appreciation. But this does not mean the self is the only or main thing to be appreciated. Perspective. I am one being on a middling planet of an ordinary star among billions in the galaxy which is an ordinary galaxy among billions like it. However, I have a mind that can grasp that.