Archive for January, 2008
Looters, Moochers and Titans
January 29th, 2008 categories: Just Because
Ayn Rand’s, Atlas Shrugged, paints an eerily familiar state of affairs, related to man, society, and the sad but true nature of the “collective whole.” Although written more than fifty years ago, her philosophy related to capitalism and the perils of compromising the “free-market” and “free-thinking,” clearly ring true today.
Particularly interesting (to me at least) is her labeling of two distinct parasites of society, Looters and Moochers. As defined in Wikipedia:
“The looters are those who confiscate others’ earnings “at the point of a gun” (figuratively speaking) —often because they are government officials, and thus their demands are backed by the threat of force. Some looters are following the policies of the government, such as the officials who confiscate one state’s seed grain to feed the starving citizens of another state; others are exploiting those policies, such as the railroad regulator who illegally sells the railroad’s supplies on the side. The common factor is that both use force to take property from the people who produced or earned it, and both are ultimately destructive.”
“The moochers are those who demand others’ earnings because they claim to be needy and unable to earn themselves. Even as they beg for their help, however, they curse the people who make that help possible, because they hate the talented for having the talent they don’t possess. Although the moochers seem benign at first glance, they are portrayed as more destructive than the looters-they destroy the productive through guilt and often motivate the “lawful” looting performed by governments.”
Looters, as much I detest the breed, are par for the course – assuming you’re talking about some corrupt government official (which they all are), that at 9am, signs a bill to fleece the high achievers or “Titans,” and at 9pm, signs a check to his prostitute (which will bounce, and be paid for by those he just fleeced). Moochers however, are the Antichrist of free thinkers and Titans, where the very nature of their existence seems evil. Rand holds that “evil is a parasite on the good and can only exist if the good tolerates it.
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