1. axinomancy: The free-market fallacies of Ayn Rand “Ayn Rand’s system is made possible by a series of fallacies which underpin her system. As she herself said many times about her opponents, these errors are so glaring it’s difficult to believe anyone would make them in good faith Fallacy 1 – Wages under capitalism In her essay Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, Rand uses the following illustration of individual responsibility. Imagine, she says, a ‘little stenographer’ who spends all her money on lipstick and not microscopes. Her choices are not irrational if her individual values accord lots of importance to lipstick. However, if she later gets sick she may regret she didn’t allocate some money to ‘microscopes’ — here a metaphor for medical science and medical insurance. If she doesn’t have the health insurance it’s her own fault. This of course is bog-standard free-market nonsense. The obvious fallacy is that any waged worker under capitalism could possibly earn enough to pay privately for every good and service they might need in a lifetime. As capitalism evolved its neoliberal phase the amount of discretionary income workers have at their disposal has diminished. In Britain privatisation of transport, gas, electricity, most forms of dentistry etc. has swallowed up workers’ incomes so that, unlike in Ayn Rand’s time, it needs two full-time workers to support a household – especially with the astronomic cost of housing. The complete privatisation of healthcare would lead to millions of workers being unable to afford to have many therapies and treatments. Just like in the United States where, as Michael Moore shows in Sicko, insured people are regularly ripped off  by health insurance companies that specialise in not paying.” I have libertarian friends I can’t leave lie, so I reblog.

    axinomancy:

    The free-market fallacies of Ayn Rand

    “Ayn Rand’s system is made possible by a series of fallacies which underpin her system. As she herself said many times about her opponents, these errors are so glaring it’s difficult to believe anyone would make them in good faith

    Fallacy 1 – Wages under capitalism

    In her essay Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, Rand uses the following illustration of individual responsibility.

    Imagine, she says, a ‘little stenographer’ who spends all her money on lipstick and not microscopes. Her choices are not irrational if her individual values accord lots of importance to lipstick. However, if she later gets sick she may regret she didn’t allocate some money to ‘microscopes’ — here a metaphor for medical science and medical insurance. If she doesn’t have the health insurance it’s her own fault.

    This of course is bog-standard free-market nonsense. The obvious fallacy is that any waged worker under capitalism could possibly earn enough to pay privately for every good and service they might need in a lifetime. As capitalism evolved its neoliberal phase the amount of discretionary income workers have at their disposal has diminished. In Britain privatisation of transport, gas, electricity, most forms of dentistry etc. has swallowed up workers’ incomes so that, unlike in Ayn Rand’s time, it needs two full-time workers to support a household – especially with the astronomic cost of housing. The complete privatisation of healthcare would lead to millions of workers being unable to afford to have many therapies and treatments. Just like in the United States where, as Michael Moore shows in Sicko, insured people are regularly ripped off  by health insurance companies that specialise in not paying.”

    I have libertarian friends I can’t leave lie, so I reblog.

    posted 1 month ago
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