Why all the hysteria over Ayn Rand?

Altruism means "serve everyone but yourself" when the logical thing to do from the utilitarian perspective is to serve everyone including yourself.


The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.
Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others.


Ayn Rand meant selfishness in the sense of standing up for yourself. There are many real life examples of where the traditional roles of selfishness and altruism are overturned, where selfishness is good and altruism is evil. For instance if you're being bullied the altruistic thing to do would be to sacrifice your own personal gain for others, by sitting there and taking it like a little bitch. The selfish thing to do would be to gain pleasure at the expense of others, escape, tell your bros then jump them the next day, spraying them up with mace and beating them with phone books.

I don't agree with Ayn Rand on everything, I believe the "common good" as a concept has been abused, not that it is invalid. The common good should ideally be democratic concerning groups and include individual rights when the group is at odds with the individual.

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/common_good.html

However I have never heard anyone criticize Ayn Rand on these legitimate points and issues, only ever "hurr durr selfish randroids derp".

Haven't been around in a while to reply, here goes.

>>147
Why do people still —to this day— seem to think she's some kind of genius guru?
People who are massively uninformed (sadly, the majority of the population in any given country) think that someone who is seemingly non-conformist is some kind of genius, irregardless of whether or not their ideas are actually good or not. There's this fixation with some people where they need to be part of a bandwagon and worship an idol. I never understood such silliness, honestly.

>>150
Thatcher was more conservative than libertarian but okay.
They're more or less cut from the same cloth (similar spectrum of thought) Libertarians do like the "progress" that Thatcher had made, but often criticize that she didn't go far enough. Thatcher and Reagan were bad enough, we don't need to go further in the direction of insanity.
lolwut? How do you even? You might want to read this book Rand wrote, she's got some pretty strong opinions on dictatorships and military juntas.
Rand may not have directly advocated such things, but her philosophy and idea were put into place via undemocratic means. Chile under Pinochet is a good example of this.
You wouldn't blame a champion of socialism for North Korea
Depends. Like libertarianism, socialism comes under a spectrum of moderation and extremism. I certainly wouldn't blame a common social democrat for NK, but certainly would have some words to say for a Marxist-Leninist/Maoist especially one who defends North Korea no matter what (even though the DPRK doesn't follow Marxism-Leninism anymore and replaced that ideology with "Juche").

I have yet to find anything that works better in practice than non-neoliberal mixed economies, and while they're not the best, there's literally nothing better that doesn't require a complete distortion/destruction of the democratic order, followed mostly likely by a massive body count. As for the rest, >>151 & >>154 pretty much nails it.