Thursday, September 19, 2013

Funniest post in the history of the internet

A Forbes writer and Ayn Randroid "Objectivist"with the euphonious name of Harry Binswanger has contributed a hilarious essay explaining how the undeserving 99 percent have systematically robbed the virtuous one percent.
For their enormous contributions to our standard of living, the high-earners should be thanked and publicly honored. We are in their debt.

Here’s a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it’s too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the year’s top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Imagine the effect on our culture, particularly on the young, if the kind of fame and adulation bathing Lady Gaga attached to the more notable achievements of say, Warren Buffett. Or if the moral praise showered on Mother Teresa went to someone like Lloyd Blankfein, who, in guiding Goldman Sachs toward billions in profits, has done infinitely more for mankind. (Since profit is the market value of the product minus the market value of factors used, profit represents the value created.)

Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” That’s for the sin of successful investing, channeling savings to their most productive uses, instead of wasting them on government boondoggles like Solyndra and bridges to nowhere.
Yes. Because Lloyd did so much for us back in 2008. Never mind the fact that Blankfein doesn't make anything, and never mind the fact that his profits stemmed from a monstrous series of lies and cons, selling derivatives backed by crap loans which received a triple-A stamp by bought-off rating services. Much as it pains me to quote a Kos contributor, I can't resist noting what this person added:
Oh God, please stop—it's too good. The only way to make it better would be to add a line like "and fuck you, cute puppies, and all you stand for."
I can't believe that our world continues to be impacted by the writings of that obnoxious, unlovable lunatic cigarette hag. Ayn Rand began her public career by extolling the virtues of a brutal serial killer. She spent the rest of her life composing a pseudo-intellectual philosophy designed for the sole purpose of justifying her unfulfilled lifelong desire to be ravished by Conan the Barbarian.

But here's the rub: Weak pseudo-Dems like Barack Obama are the only thing shielding us from a takeover by people who consider Ayn Rand and Harry Binswanger to be profound thinkers.

(That said, I've thought for a long time that the easiest way to make a million bucks as a writer would be to do what Binswanger does: Bestow literary blowjobs on the wealthiest among us, and call the results "philosophy." I even came up with a title for my first book along these lines -- Olympus: The New Gods.)

9 comments:

Grung_e_Gene said...

Capitalists don't make anything they are modern coin clippers making money by legerdemain. But there will never be a deficit of sops ready and willing to kow-tow and grovel before them.

joseph said...

Because morality and ethics are for saps http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/02/27/rich-people-less-ethical-study_n_1304800.html

prowlerzee said...

Um, I'm sure Lady Gaga makes a boatload of money. So, is he saying some millionaires shouldn't be adulated?

It really doesn't read as if he actually believes what he's writing.

It reeks of "stink tank." You know, like "ketchup is a vegetable" and "fuel economy kills." (If you don't remember the fuel economy one, there was a grand poobah, complete with phony title, in charge of sending letters to every newspaper that wrote anything at all negative about SUVs, informing people that any attempt to make SUVs less wasteful resulted in horrible deaths of their hapless owners.)

Propertius said...

Weak pseudo-Dems like Barack Obama are the only thing shielding us from a takeover by people who consider Ayn Rand and Harry Binswanger to be profound thinkers.

No, they're not. They're just the lube that makes it easier for the .01% to f*k us.

Anonymous said...

When I read the essay, I originally thought it was tongue in cheek. But no, the author [who must be trying to live down his last name] is absolutely serious per his reader comments.

There was a time when an expression of self-serving greed would bring shame on the individual expressing it. But we are not in that time. Rather the movers and shakers now celebrate their boundless greed and selfishness, convincing themselves and other toadies that they are entitled to everything because they are virtuous and good.

Marx predicted capitalism would ultimately destroy itself. Ayn Rand and her adolescent-minded devotees appear to be implementing that end.

And the guillotines will be very sharp!

Peggysue

Gus said...

Wow. I don't really know how to respond to such blatant ass kissing. I guess we know who greases his palms.

Though I suppose bestowing a congressional medal of honor on Blankfein would be no less ludicrous than bestowing the nobel peace prize on Obama.

cracker said...

These sociopaths really believe that they are the Masters of the Universe, and they shouldn't have to pay any taxes at all or be subject to any laws at all. Taxes are for people who earn $8 an hour or live on tips; laws also are for "little people."

"Weak pseudo-Dems like Barack Obama are the only thing shielding us from a takeover by people who...etc." This is where I get off the bus, Joseph. The takeover was well begun 25 or 30 years ago, and Obama and Bill Clinton helped to enable the steps in the takeover just as much as the two Bushes and Reagan did. We've been sold out consistently and systematically by both major political parties. Now if you aren't worth a few million, then you're dirt, and you don't receive any representation in D.C.

Bob Harrison said...

I regularly spar with whip-kissers, some of whom are about two dollars up from minimum wage. Apparently, they are deluded into believing that if they keep hacking away at their crummy jobs, someone will recognize their self-assured talent and genius and propel them into the 1%.

As for doomsaying and "we're so boned" contingent, why not just lay and die? Or, if it's not too much trouble help us overthrow this corrupt system. We'll take any help we can get. Or get inert and dodo bird.

Anonymous said...

Randianism is very popular among the young because it is simple to understand and because they are hardwired to believe they are nascent uebermenschen climbing to their glorious destony.

It's popular among the simple-minded because they think they are just a lotto ticket or a penny stock tip away from being wealthy themselves.