There's an Atlas Shrugged movie coming out today

[Allyn Gibson]

In the Atlas Shrugged universe, the totally awesome trains are created by...

The Private Sector.

What the Right hates is the government overseeing things like that.

If it becomes profitable to build high-speed rail, the free market will handle it, without assistance from the government.

You do realize the irony of what you've written? The rail system that existed and that still remains was built by the private sector. What ultimately destroyed rail as a financially viable transportation system was the interstate highway system which was, oh yeah, built by the government.

The free market isn't going to build high-speed rail, because the private sector simply cannot compete with the already existing public sector infrastructure. Ergo, if you want the private sector to build high-speed rail without government investment and/or subsidies, you also need to privatize the highway system and make it prohibitively expensive to use so that rail and road can compete on equal terms.

I'd be amused if a state tried to privatize its existing public roads. Sardonic amusement, mind you.

 

[Professor Zoom]

I was reading some of the comments on Rottentomatoes....

This one, commenting on a review from Comingsoon.net, struck me.

I cannot wait to see the movie. Also, the release is limited... why? Because Liberals in Hollywood can't suck it up and fund a widespread release.

It's funny. Because Liberal Hollywood isn't to blame for a limited release. The producing company couldn't fund the widespread release. Problem attracting investors? Hm. Well, it IS the free market after all.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ Yeah, all of a sudden subsidies are a good thing and Liberals are evil for opposing them! Funny that ...

 

[Gaith]

Well, to be fair, right-wingers almost invariably become total hypocrites when it comes to their own interests...

 

[the G-man]

^ Yeah, all of a sudden subsidies are a good thing and Liberals are evil for opposing them! Funny that ...

The producers of the movie are complaining that they didn't get a government subsidy? Where did you read that?

Well, to be fair, right-wingers almost invariably become total hypocrites when it comes to their own interests...

I think you'd find, if you could take off your partisan blinders, that a big chunk of people on all parts of the political spectrum do that.

 

[the G-man]

In the Atlas Shrugged universe, the totally awesome trains are created by...

The Private Sector.

What the Right hates is the government overseeing things like that.

If it becomes profitable to build high-speed rail, the free market will handle it, without assistance from the government.

You do realize the irony of what you've written? The rail system that existed and that still remains was built by the private sector. What ultimately destroyed rail as a financially viable transportation system was the interstate highway system which was, oh yeah, built by the government.

Point of information:

• The construction and operation of the [the transcontinental railroad] was authorized by the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864 during the American Civil War. The Congress supported it with 30-year U.S. government bonds and extensive land grants of government-owned land. Completion of the railroad was the culmination of a decades-long movement to build such a line.

Furthermore, you do realize that "Atlas Shrugged" is a work of fiction correct? Limborg said he was talking about what happened in the book/movie. If you are going to start attacking a work of fiction for not being exactly like real life you should probably not be hanging around a sci-fi message board.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ Yeah, all of a sudden subsidies are a good thing and Liberals are evil for opposing them! Funny that ...

The producers of the movie are complaining that they didn't get a government subsidy? Where did you read that?

The point was that Liberals are being criticised for not subsidising a movie that right-wingers want to see made. All of a sudden, they're entitled to be subsidised. I didn't mention the word government.

 

[Christopher]

The idea that Hollywood is run by liberals is ridiculous. Hollywood is a business town. It's run by wealthy business executives -- a class of people who, on the whole, tend to be conservative. More importantly, it's run by pragmatists -- people who are more concerned with telling profitable stories than with cleaving to one ideological line or the other. They'll make anything that brings them profit regardless of its political slant. It's naive to think that Hollywood is governed by a political agenda. The biggest blind spot of ideologues is their assumption that everyone else is an ideologue too.

 

[The Lensman]

Ironically Ayn Rand ended up needing Social Security and Medicare to survive.

I'm all for bringing airships back tho...I want one!

 

[Admiral2]

Yeah, I'm sure it's a well thought out premise: who would want to travel across the country in 5 hours, when they could do it in 2 days?

Two days where I could sleep in a sleeper car and have a few pretty decent meals as opposed to being stuck in an uncomfortable chair sitting next to a screaming brat and a snoring old fart and the only escape requires a parachute?

Hmm, yeah that's a tough call...

 

[Professor Zoom]

The idea that Hollywood is run by liberals is ridiculous. Hollywood is a business town. It's run by wealthy business executives -- a class of people who, on the whole, tend to be conservative. More importantly, it's run by pragmatists -- people who are more concerned with telling profitable stories than with cleaving to one ideological line or the other. They'll make anything that brings them profit regardless of its political slant. It's naive to think that Hollywood is governed by a political agenda. The biggest blind spot of ideologues is their assumption that everyone else is an ideologue too.

THIS.

Yeah, I'm sure it's a well thought out premise: who would want to travel across the country in 5 hours, when they could do it in 2 days?

Two days where I could sleep in a sleeper car and have a few pretty decent meals as opposed to being stuck in an uncomfortable chair sitting next to a screaming brat and a snoring old fart and the only escape requires a parachute?

Hmm, yeah that's a tough call...

While it does sound romantic, I think about my trip from Chicago to New York, now, I didn't have a sleeper car, but, I did try the food, which sucked, and it was really really late.

Now, European trains, THEY kick ass.

 

[Admiral2]

The idea that Hollywood is run by liberals is ridiculous. Hollywood is a business town. It's run by wealthy business executives -- a class of people who, on the whole, tend to be conservative.

George Soros is a wealthy business man who is liberal.

Ted Turner is a wealthy businessman who is unabashedly liberal.

Why is it so unbelivable that the wealthy businessmen who run Hollywood are mostly liberal?

Oh, right...liberals never believe what conservatives say about other liberals. It's against the code. Sorry, Chris.

 

[Professor Zoom]

The idea that Hollywood is run by liberals is ridiculous. Hollywood is a business town. It's run by wealthy business executives -- a class of people who, on the whole, tend to be conservative.

George Soros is a wealthy business man who is liberal.

Ted Turner is a wealthy businessman who is unabashedly liberal.

Why is it so unbelivable that the wealthy businessmen who run Hollywood are mostly liberal?

Oh, right...liberals never believe what conservatives say about other liberals. It's against the code. Sorry, Chris.

You're pointing out TWO people out of ALL of the people in Hollywood? What about Eastwood? Grammer? Those are two conservatives I can think of off the top of my head.

Why is it so hard to believe that Hollywood might actually be more conservative than people think?

 

[Gaith]

If Hollywood actually reflected liberal ideologue's values, you wouldn't see so many heroes tidily solving their problems by shooting people.

Oh, wait, forgot, I'm bringing logic into an equa-

 

[Christopher]

George Soros is a wealthy business man who is liberal.

Ted Turner is a wealthy businessman who is unabashedly liberal.

Why is it so unbelivable that the wealthy businessmen who run Hollywood are mostly liberal?

Oh, right...liberals never believe what conservatives say about other liberals. It's against the code. Sorry, Chris.

Or maybe it's because those of us who aren't ideologues in either direction are able to do arithmetic and recognize that there's a difference between "two" and "most."

Like I said, the mistake of ideologues is assuming everyone else is an ideologue. Reality isn't that simple. There are plenty of people who don't feel the need to dumb everything down to "liberal" versus "conservative" -- and who are smart enough to realize that YOU DO NOT RESHAPE THE FACTS TO FIT WHAT YOU WANT TO BELIEVE, BUT YOU SHAPE YOUR BELIEFS TO FIT THE FACTS. Ideologues think that belief trumps fact, and as a result, they live in a world that has little connection to reality. Doing anything according to strict ideology, in either direction, is a recipe for disaster -- just look at the Soviet Union and its five-year plans, or the Republican Party and the unmitigated mess it's made of the economy. People who make their decisions based on what is rather than what they want to be true are the ones who achieve success in the world.

So yeah, there are businessmen who are liberal and businessmen who are conservative and businessmen who are in between. But if they're successful, it's because they're not blinded by narrow political dogma but are able to make pragmatic decisions that actually have relevance to a messy real world that doesn't cleave to any simplistic ideology. Yes, there's a "left" extreme and a "right" extreme, but the overwhelming majority of reality exists in between them.

 

[the G-man]

^ Yeah, all of a sudden subsidies are a good thing and Liberals are evil for opposing them! Funny that ...

The producers of the movie are complaining that they didn't get a government subsidy? Where did you read that?

The point was that Liberals are being criticised for not subsidising a movie that right-wingers want to see made. All of a sudden, they're entitled to be subsidised. I didn't mention the word government.

A subsidy is generally defined as a government payout.

 

[Goliath]

Holy shit--Bob the Angry Flower.

I remember when this started out, as a comic strip in the University of Alberta student newspaper, The Gateway. I was in the Honours History program with the cartoonist's older brother.

The odd thing is, there was an Objectivist Club on campus at the time: they had a big American flag up in their office, though one of their members told me he would have preferred one of the Revolutionary-era flags, with thirteen stars in a circle.

One of the Objectivists produced a comic strip as well: Space Moose, which was often quite funny, though extremely vulgar, and featured a fair amount of Trek-related content--the main character sometimes wore either a TOS or TNG uniform.

That guy ultimately got in trouble for drawing a series of viciously anti-feminist strips in which Space Moose attacks a Take Back the Night March, and winds up imprisoned in the basement of the Women's Studies Department, until he escapes.

And, while the creator of Bob the Angry Flower (Stephen Notley) has gone on to become a successful cartoonist, the creator of Space Moose (Adam Thrasher) is now a professor of "Health and Human Performance" at the University of Houston, and has long since taken down his online archive, because being associated with the strip was hurting his career.

Ironic that the lefty cartoonist ultimately enjoyed greater commercial success than the Randroid, who wound up staying in academia.

 

[Professor Zoom]

Holy shit--Bob the Angry Flower.

I remember when this started out, as a comic strip in the University of Alberta student newspaper, The Gateway. I was in the Honours History program with the cartoonist's older brother.

The odd thing is, there was an Objectivist Club on campus at the time: they had a big American flag up in their office, though one of their members told me he would have preferred one of the Revolutionary-era flags, with thirteen stars in a circle.

One of the Objectivists produced a comic strip as well: Space Moose, which was often quite funny, though extremely vulgar, and featured a fair amount of Trek-related content--the main character sometimes wore either a TOS or TNG uniform.

That guy ultimately got in trouble for drawing a series of viciously anti-feminist strips in which Space Moose attacks a Take Back the Night March, and winds up imprisoned in the basement of the Women's Studies Department, until he escapes.

And, while the creator of Bob the Angry Flower (Stephen Notley) has gone on to become a successful cartoonist, the creator of Space Moose (Adam Thrasher) is now a professor of "Health and Human Performance" at the University of Houston, and has long since taken down his online archive, because being associated with the strip was hurting his career.

Ironic that the lefty cartoonist ultimately enjoyed greater commercial success than the Randroid, who wound up staying in academia.

And, I believe, the University of Houston is a STATE school too. Irony kicks ass.

 

[auntiehill]

Yes, it is.

 

[the G-man]

And, I believe, the University of Houston is a STATE school too. Irony kicks ass.

How is that more ironic than, for example, the hundreds of liberal professors who work at private "non profit" universities (meaning the institutions don't pay income or property taxes), with sports programs that make millions off student athletes...and then grouse about the rich not paying enough taxes?