01-25-2021, 05:08 PM
(01-25-2021, 04:28 AM)random3 Wrote: Having pride in a police state is difficult.
If we ever have a police state we would be wise to have shame instead of pride.
Quote:Why work hard if the government will just take everything you have through inflation, fines, fees, forfeiture, and taxes?
Most systems try to keep price level stable. Fines and forfeitures are possible consequences for bad behaviors. Fees are often sneaky taxes. Taxes are a cost of having a social order that works.
Quote:Why join the military if every country you fight is just as shitty as your own?
In a thoroughly-rotten system, conscientious objection may be punishable by death.
Quote:Why excel in the Olympics if your success will become the state success? Instead
of working hard because of carrots, police states must force everyone to do something with sticks.
Some people love athletic competition and do it for its own sake.
Quote:The only realistic option in a police state is to dropout and go Galt.
The nightmare that Ayn Rand sees, a nominally-capitalist society that has been gutted of the profit motive is a dystopia. So is her posited alternative, a social order in which profit is the only purpose in life. As I come to think of it, Ronald Reagan's baby steps in the Rand model are a step into a dystopia, and Trump's ideology suggest what happens when a Yorkshire terrier grows into something tiger-like in size and with the same behavior as a Yorkie.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.