
Ayn Rand Institute approved for PPP loan - croes
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ppp-ayn-rand-idUSKBN248026
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rakjosh
[https://ppp-loan.info/](https://ppp-loan.info/) Shows all the businesses that
were approved for more than $150K Loan (SBA PPP Loan). Filter by company name,
city, state, loan amount

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LatteLazy
Didn't Rand herself live off government handouts while she wrote her "books"?

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auggierose
It doesn't get more ironic than this.

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readthenotes
It's not ironic; it's consistent with a "me first" attitude.

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auggierose
Yeah, that's why I didn't say it is unexpected :-)

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jjgreen
[shrug]

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yoelo
Can't get more Ayn Rand than this. She lived on social security and medicare
in the later part of her life after all

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jjj1232
I have been guilty of calling behavior like this “hypocrisy” in the past but
actually have changed on this recently.

You don’t need to live in a way totally consistent with your ideal society if
your current society is not ideal. Why? Partly because it’s impossible or at
least extremely difficult.

Ayn rand couldn’t live without driving on roads paid for by the government,
patronising businesses that received govt assistance, or relying on state
police and firefighters to protect her property.

On top of that, her whole thing is radical selfishness, so if taking govt
assistence helps you get ahead you should do it, right?

* I do want to note that I haven’t actually read any of Rand’s writings and am basing this off of what I know about her general philosophy on what the world should look like. If she’s ever said things like “you shouldn’t take any government assistance” then yeah she’s a total hypocrite.

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atemerev
Ayn Rand posited that taking government help is moral, as it was already paid
by taxes many times over.

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gwd
It's a bit like Warren Buffet complaining that he has a lower effective tax
rate than his secretary, because long-term effective capital gains taxes are
too low: He thinks it's wrong, but he still takes advantage of it. You can
say, "These rules are unfair, they should be changed" while still playing the
rules of the game the way they're written.

That said, there does seem to be something that smacks of hypocrisy in the
case of the Ayn Rand case, more than in the Warren Buffet case. I think in
particular, it's the idea that society would somehow be better without such
safety nets: If you're using the safety nets, that's kind of proof that
they're a good thing, isn't it?

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atemerev
"North Koreans wouldn't survive without government's daily handouts of rice.
That's kind of proof that North Korean central planning system is a good
thing, isn't it?"

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gwd
Close, but not quite.

In your hypothetical scenario, North Koreans would certainly be able to sort
themselves out without the daily handouts if they weren't being oppressed by
the NK government.

Is it the case that the Ayn Rand Institute would have been perfectly capable
of supporting themselves in this crisis if everyone had just been paying lower
taxes and had fewer regulations? Perhaps people at the Institute think so, but
I'm pretty skeptical.

