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I have come here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life....It had to be said. The world is perishishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.-- Ayn Rand

October 25, 2002

Touchstone

I came across this line in the Touchstone, Texas A&M’s local liberal loony paper:
“Greedy capitalists will not likely relinquish their firm grip on the currency. The future therefore looks bleak.”
I appreciate the compliment, but there is a small error in this logic: the government is actually in control of the currency, not “greedy capitalists.” The more general reply is that liberals have no idea what money actually is. Instead of writing a long rant on it, let me refer them to someone who wrote a much more graceful essay on it. To quote from it:

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

One more quote from the same piece: “The bottom line in commercial radio is the bottom line, and entertainment is merely a by-product, if there is any at all.”
Let me quote my friend Tim on this:

“No one will listen if they have no reason to (unless they are simply bored and like listening to ads, which some people do)
The one reason radio stations continually repeat ‘popular songs’ is to hook the commuter who only listens while driving (or working out) and wants to hear their favorite song.
So, just like any other company that truly has to work for their money (via advertisements, etc.) they must have something to sell. And the reproduction of entertainment certainly follows that line of reasoning.

Nevetheless, the Touchstone writers insist that socialism is not only inevitable, but desirable: “[According to] dialectical analysis…the only rational and humane conclusion is to do everything we can to bring about socialism.”

What can I say to that? According to Marxist theory, socialism may indeed be the inevitable conclusion, but if it’s really inevitable, there’s no point worrying about it, since we are merely products of our linguistic chains and “capitalism [cannot] go on destroying lives and the ecology indefinitely.”

Posted by David at October 25, 2002 12:12 AM | TrackBack

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