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Strategies & Market Trends : Groundhog Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (4848)	5/15/2002 1:49:08 AM
From: Libbyt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6346

that being selfish is a good thing? Hmmm... "Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves." Duke Ellington

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (4848)	5/15/2002 9:47:31 AM
From: Alan Smithee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6346

didn't ayn rand espouse that being selfish is a good thing? Something like that. Did you know that a young Alan Greenspan was a follower of Ayn Rand?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (4848)	5/16/2002 8:12:38 AM
From: John Pitera	Respond to of 6346

It's interesting you mention Ayn Rand, I watched a rebroadcast on Saturday of the summer 1989 booknotes interview with Nathanial Brandon who was part of the literary circle that Ayn Rand had put together. Alan Greenspan was also a member of this group that met weekly and talked about matters of intellectual "gravitas". I've got 3 biography's of Greenspan, that I picked up recently.... not sure when I'll get to those. this is a pretty good two paragraph summary of Ayn's philosophy. I've got a few points that I would take issue with her .... but. "Well, what did she stand for philosophically?" And although the issues are rather more complex than one can cover here, to boil it down to a few essentials, to make it meaningful, I would say she was first and foremost a champion for the supremacy of reason -- the authority of reason. Secondly, the argument that a code of ethics could be devised not dependent upon supernatural claims, but on reason, on human nature which would respect the human being's right to belong to him or her own self. In other words -- to own his or her own life. To respect his or her own needs and not to see the self as more or less a servant of society or the state or the globe or the planet. She was a great individualist as I've already said. She was a champion of the rights of the individual which socially therefore meant a champion of the individual against the state. Therefore an advocate of capitalism. So in simplified essence -- and it really is simplified -- this is what the name Ayn Rand is associated with