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| Mediocrities and Looters Explaining Why They're Owed |
Was watching Kevin Costner prance around in tights snuffling after Maid Marion like a clumsy puppy in heat, and was reminded yet again that I despise Robin Hood. Not because of Costner...well, yeah, that too...but because of who he is. My favorite Robin Hood quote ever.
Ragnar Danneskjold: "....I’ve chosen a special mission of my own. I’m after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men’s minds, we will not have a decent world to live in."
Hank Rearden: "What man?"
Ragnar: "Robin Hood."
Ragnar: ". . . [Robin Hood] is not remembered as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became a symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. It is this foulest of creatures – the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich – whom men have come to regard as the moral idea." ". . . Do you wonder why the world is collapsing around us? That is what I am fighting, Mr. Rearden. Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive."
The Pirate Ragnar Danneskjöld
From Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
In Our Next Episode: Fewer quotes! More real writing! Or not!
I have been trying to use Readability.com's plugin to be able to actually read your blog, sweetheart.
ReplyDeleteBut, that aside, I have this to say about that:
I agree with the sense of what Rand's character said, but there are issues I take with some of the words chosen. Even so, the photo you chose to represent this does not resonate with the message you send. See, when it comes to banks, the robin hood-esque character in that Occupy photo you chose has it right. We entrust our earned money to those institutions, giving them the right to use our earnings in order to gain their own wealth. When they fuck it up, they do indeed owe us. Not because it's our unearned right, but because they took the money we let them *use* and fucked things up and now they must make reparations. It's that simple.
So. There.
Now I need to figure out why Readability won't let me read your really shittily formatted blog in comfort.
Checked your "readability" plugin, and it says I have an invalid URL. I don't know what it's looking at - I don't have any redirects or anything going on there. I hit the other "readability" icon, and it tried to save my entire blog, which, at the rate it was going, would have taken about a week.
ReplyDeleteIt's a mystery.
I was gonna go ahead and reformat my blog for you, but I suspect it's the African American background you (and Readability) mostly don't like. Which is most likely rooted in your (probably unrecognized) deep personal racism. I think it's best if you resolve those issues in a more private setting (perhaps some sensitivity training) than out here bullying a poor, abused but proud, innocent blog trying to work its way out of the internet ghetto.
J'accuse! For shame...
Oh, and before I forget, Stocks and bonds have risks, which means people lose sometimes. Tough titty. Bank accounts never lose - they're insured. And, finally, if any of the whiny dweebs in that picture have ever had more than $100 of their own money in ANY bank account, derivative, stock, or porcelean pig, I'll kiss THEIR asses.
ReplyDeleteTo the degree that anyone lost money due to fraud, they fraudster should be in jail, and every dollar he makes from that day forward confiscated and returned to the original owner. Fraud's illegal, you know, even in a Randian system of Objectivism.
If, on the other hand, you've turned your money over to anyone with the intent that they use it in order to fund/invest in some degree of risky behavior, you lose when the risk craps out.
Where we all lost was deciding that they were "too big to fail" or that the poor investor needed "protection" with our money. Bailouts are wrong, wrong, wrong. They took the risk. They lost. They should go live in cardboard boxes under the I-45 overpass.
Not our problem.
*vomit*
ReplyDeletePS except for your comment about the idiocy and horrific mistake of bailing out the financial industry. that's not vomit inducing. it's just the post itself with... oh... too many things that I can't get beyond *vomit* though I think I could manage a *puke* too...
ReplyDeleteYeah, I couldn't think of any real argument against it, either. Score one for Rand.
ReplyDelete...as if you ever actually considered an argument against it. Ha.
ReplyDeleteI would have cheered that pirate once upon a time but something's changed. I don't consider the wealth earned by the miller on the backs of his underpaid laborers to be his any more than it is theirs. The only reason they are laborers and he is the mill owner is he had capital at the right place and time and risked investing it in a mill, and they did not. And if my analogy takes place in the 17th or 18th Century, he like as not acquired that capital by sailing to the Benin Bight and stealing humans for sale to the Spanish. Some slightly less appalling scenario applies in other epochs. It is evident I've turned into a socialist. Must be that Burning Man thing.
ReplyDeleteAs Margaret Thatcher noted, the only problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. As unfortunate as it seems, it's just not possible to build a longstanding productive economy based on hate and envy.
ReplyDeleteBut that's OK, as we turn in to the Soviet Socialist United States, we can all learn to live in concrete blocks, enjoy the wonders of soviet socialized medicine, and learn the old Soviet maxim "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."