I would pay to see robert pattinson (patensen??) torture himself.

ps: every single time there's a FAMOUS MUST-READ fiction book it seems it's horribly written. at least, based on what I've heard. like the last time I actually read one of those must-read books was the Da Vinci Code and it was just awful.

is it wrong of me to dislike ayn rand simply because everyone who follows her ideology acts like a self-entitled prick with "perfect" logic?

Not wrong at all.

i've always had a hard time trying to grasp what she's trying to say in her "books"/"philosophy" or whatever, but i'm not educated (smart) enough to really understand WHAT'S WRONG with it. it's always just been a headache for me trying to debate with an objectivist and their only arguments for everything is to throw an ayn rand quote that doesn't make any sense (to me) at me

Ayn Rand was basically an ultra-capitalist. Her philosophy is aimed at promoting capitalism from an economic model to a perspective of life itself.

Her philosophy basically states that everybody should care only about themselves (or more precisely: everyone should pursue exclusively their own happiness). She writes that an organism's only goal is to survive, the means to which are of secondary importance. Everything besides yourself is an externality whose interests are void. So if you see a kid walking down the street with candy, and you're able to take it without getting caught, you should do it. The kid's interests are, after all, void.

You'd be forgiven for having a hard time understanding any of it; you probably expect an ethical philosophy to have some kind of moral basis. It's a completely savage mindset that not only goes against human nature (because hard as it may seem, humans are actually wired to care for one another) but also against everything we built our societies on. The reason we're no longer hunter-gatherers is because we were able to intelligently and collectively work together.

It's also universally agreed that it doesn't work as an economics model. The reason why the US and Europe and Japan were all able to develop at all is because they had a strong, protectionist state. The state is an extremely big financier of the corporate sector and does a lot of research and development (the reason you and I are able to talk with each other is because mostly US institutions such as MIT, which developed much of the infrastructure of the internet before Bill Gates ran with it and became fantastically rich). A capitalist system as Rand envisions it would essentially have no state to speak of. If you want an example, look at Africa. Most African countries have very little in the way of a state, they have no possibility to engage in protectionism, and there's no public R&D. Which is mostly why Africa looks the way it does today. Completely unlimited capitalism, while disastrous for us normal human beings, would in the long run also be terrible for the business sector because it would destroy the economy, which is why big business doesn't donate any money to Ron Paul's presidential campaign (the main adherent of the objectivist philosophy today—even going so far as naming his own son Rand).

As a rule, capitalism leads to strong inequality. The less rules there are, the greater the inequality. If I were asked "what's wrong with objectivism", the answer is really simple: it's savagery. It's about caring only about yourself.

tl;dr: Let's say the kid across the street gets cancer. What would be the better approach? Either 1) the entire neighborhood (or city, state, etc.) pitches in with some money to get him treated and cured, or 2) everybody ignores him, thus saving some money, and he dies. Well, if you answered the latter, congratulations: you're an objectivist.

Never heard of the after years. But I understand the MGS4 reference. It was just stuffed with over long speeches.

I haven't played the game, but I think the MGS4 reference has more to do with the fact that it's Rand's philosophy come true. No more state power, just corporations fighting each other, using human beings as cannon fodder, as a beautiful example of the free market at its finest.

If the US were suddenly abolished as a state, what you'd see is corporate power finding some other way to fight wars. Such as by hiring contractors. And then you'd get an image kind of like MGS4, except instead of corporations fighting each other, the targets would probably be human beings who happen to live on a resourceful piece of land.