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Comment by lucio | Hacker News Reader

"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."

Source: Atlas Shrugged, Francisco's "Money Speech"

Anyone living and producing goods or services in a corrupt country will understand this. You need to experience several years in the society described in the quote to fully understand the implications.

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> when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing

This part alone shows how much superficial BS this is.

You cannot produce anything without using the earth's resources. They do not naturally belong to any man.

So it's either "take what you want, by force, and fuck everyone else", or we find some peaceful way to share those resources amongst each other. Preferably without terminally destroying them for future generations.

Yes, the latter is done through a huge variety of intricate social constructs, and all of them are corrupt to some degree, because such is mankind.

But the only society in which you do not need permission from your fellow men is one in which the majority of the population has the status of serfs.

To put things into perspective for those not familiar with the book, the character Francisco is supposed to one of the world's richest men having inherited a mining fortune from his conquistador ancestors. According to Rand's back-story, it's all down to the family lineage passing on genius from one generation to another and nothing at all to do with working slaves to death, as actually tended to happen in South American mines. It's not documented whether his ancestors asked permission from the indigenous population.

Atlas Shrugged is basically the reductio ad absurdum version of saner arguments for capitalism.

I agree that it's important to understand that Rand came from the USSR to fully grasp why her philosophy is the way it is.

Understanding a philosophy doesn't mean accepting it.

This quote addresses what would now be called "crony capitalism". That is, those in power or with resources using government for their own ends. For example, making it a requirement for people to buy your product, or erecting barriers to entry for your competitors. It warns of when in society it is easier and more profitable to use the system to be a parasite than it is to produce something of value.

That seems to describe every nation on Earth for all of human history, to varying degrees.

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