A Word On Management

I confess to having been a near-fanatical devotee to the short-sighted, and borderline demonic pronouncements of Ayn Rand.

30 years ago, I finally started to see the faulty reasoning of Rand's "Objectivism", and I won't bore the hell outa everybody with those details. Suffice to say her philosophy insists on sprinting to The Logical Extreme, which is where even good ideas go to die in sometimes epic implosions.

With Ayn Rand, you get things like this:

What the boss says goes.

Rule 1: The boss is always right

Rule 2: If the boss is ever wrong, refer to rule 1

While there's an element of truth to it, there's no room in that cutesy shit for the kind of clear-eyed, pragmatic reasoning that a Randian likes to believe he's mastered.

The most glaring of such reasoning is: The boss does not exist in a vacuum, where he needs no help from anyone.

The only pure rugged individualist is a hermit who starts out naked and alone, and somehow manages to make or otherwise acquire everything he needs all by himself with no help or input of any kind from anyone else - weapons, tools, food, clothing, shelter - all of it.

Wanna know why you never heard of such people? Because they all died before they could get their genetic material into any succeeding generations. Every one of them ended up scattered across the landscape in piles of leopard shit - or bear shit, or fellow-hominin shit - and in very short order.

We are all descended from people who knew how to cooperate - people who knew collaboration and collective action were essential to our survival as a species.

So - New Rules:

1. The boss can be wrong, and the employees can be right. So it's best if everybody gets the benefit of the doubt, and we can hash it all out as we go.

2. Although this is a business and not a democracy, it's a business that exists within a democracy, and democracy is not a business. We all have rights that are not relinquished in exchange for a paycheck.

3. Earn cookies, get cookies. Earn shit, get shit. And that goes for bosses and employees alike.

 That's it - let's get back to work.

Today's Quote

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. 

--Ayn Rand

John Oliver Redux

I'm a recovering Radical Randite. It took me a long time to get past that shit, because (I tho't) it was working for me. It wasn't. It doesn't. It can't because it's a contradiction - and just like Ms Rand always said: Contradictions exist, but they can't prevail.

Revisiting

John Oliver from 2014

Selective Quote

"When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter. Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot."

--Franciso D'Anconia, Atlas Shrugged

The quote is from a speech aimed at shaming the Mooching Masses, and it's the usual junk that developmentally stunted Libertarians love to fantasize about when they rub one out, but there's a truth hidden in it that rings pretty solid right now when the roles are so obviously reversed.

The producers are the workin' guys being fucked over by the Rent-Seekers (aka: Looters, Wage Thieves, Corporate Welfare Leeches, Coin-Operated Politicians, etc) - under the full protection of the Daddy State.

The Con Academy

Try to keep this in mind the next time you're tempted to get into it with somebody you just know is full o' shit.

And just in case you were wondering about what Mama Rand tho't about all this:

"Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone. --Ayn Rand

Whoa

When you've got big bad evil Phil (Mr Librul) Donahue arguing in favor of religion and against the "arrogance of atheism"; while the spiritual mentor and intellectual idol of the Theocons' darling du jour is telling us how stupid religion is - well shoot; the whole world is no longer just a half-bubble off plumb, Bubba.  It's up-fuckin'-side down.



This could get really interesting.

And There It Is

The exposure parade continues.  Sec'y Sebelius tries to explain to US Rep Tim Murphy (R-Brainfart) how contra-ception works, but he can't hear what she's saying because God is stomping around in his head, making too much awesomely righteous noise up there or some-damn-thing.

(hat tip ThinkProgress)

SEBELIUS: There also is no abortifacient drug that is part of the FDA approved contraception. What the rule for preventive care…

MURPHY: Ma’m that is not true…Is the morning after pill or something like that an abortifacient drug?

SEBELIUS: It is a contraceptive drug, not an abortifacient… It does not interfere with a pregnancy. If the morning pill were taken, and a female were pregnant, the pregnancy is not interrupted. That’s the definition of abortifation.

MURPHY: Ma’m that is your interpretation, and I appreciate that’s your interpretation.

SEBELIUS: That’s what the scientists and doctors…

MURPHY: We’re not talking about scientists. Ma’m we’re not talking about scientists here, we’re talking about religious belief. Ma’m, I’m asking you about a religious belief. In a religious belief, that is a violation of a religious belief.

And there it is.  Science doesn't matter.  Fact doesn't matter.  Reality doesn't matter.  If truth goes against my religion-fueled ideology, then truth must be dismissed and ignored and condemned.

One last thing: according to Ayn Rand, (approx - The Fountainhead) "...evil is when a man sees the truth - recognizes it for what it is - and denies it."

Contradiction

A big chunk of "the right" loves to claim Ayn Rand as a patron saint while ignoring one of her main points, ie: contradictions exist, but cannot prevail.

By way of example: