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Comment by thepasswordis | Hacker News Reader

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In theory, I don't see government ownership of society-critical industries with no opportunity for competition to be crazy. Tell me how you'd spin up a competing national rail line network.

The craziness appears when you realize that US governments are no more accountable than US corporations. Nobody lost their job over 9/11, or the Afghanistan pullout, or any other debacle you can name from the past few decades. Charges were dropped against the low level jail guards who allowed Jeff Epstein to die; Acosta resigned as Labor Secretary only due to public outcry and 12 years later.

Responsibility is a quaint tradition of a lost America.

It's not worth replying. "Is this a joke?" is not asking if it's a joke. It's an worthless insult. Nothing more.

Agreed they were low effort, so I put in little as well.

Ayn Rand wrote a sci-fi/political philosophy book about this exact subject, named Atlas Shrugged.

The main character in the book is a railroad executive struggling to keep her company afloat in the face of ruinous regulations that were designed to drive the rail systems towards nationalization.

The flip side of course, that she fails to address completely in that book, is unethical behavior by private industry, such as super trains with one engineer, unsafe working conditions, etc...

Also, you know, it's fucking fiction from an asshole who knew nothing about the world?

Do you believe that this comment adds to the conversation?

Looking around and it looks a little bit like she knew a fair bit about the world.

The market tried to solve this problem with workers going on strike a few months ago. Government regulations are what stopped it.

The market doesn't meaningfully have organized labor in the first place without government intervention.

It also doesn't have corporations.

(though I agree that smacking down these workers was some real bullshit)

> political philosophy

Mmph.

Hm.

I guess if Dianetics is a work on metaphysics, sure.

You may not agree with Ayn Rand, and in many cases I certainly don't, however she was a well known philosopher responsible for Objectivism and heavily influenced the formation of the Libertarian party.

There are many philosophers that I disagree with, but I wouldn't challenge whether they or their works are philosophical in nature.

Atlas Shrugged used trains and science fiction as a literary device to illustrate her philosophy.

I found it to be more engaging than her non-fiction works, which was the point, I suppose.

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