Having read all of the very literate comments posted, I have concluded you all are much smarter than me,,but I am taking the question(s) asked literally.

When in is history did it best align with Objectivism?. I think the period between the Revolutionary war and the signing of the Constitution, say 1780 to 1789 was the period of true independence from tyrannical government crushing of freedom. While I do believe the Constitution is or was a mile stone document in the quest for a balance between anarchy and oppression, we as a country have lost our way. The originators saw the central government as the states employee and servant not the way it has convoluted to today.

What in its documents has changed to make the United States beyond saving? I think the specific document changes are the 14th, 16th and 17th amendments are standouts. BUT, there are many other factors such as the Supreme Court over reach and mission creep that are serious problems as well as entrenched regulatory and beurocratic thinking that has corrupted our system. An Administration that chooses what laws to enforce and sets rules outside the law. Heck, we can't even fire idiots in the Gov. I think the Republic is lost and not retrievable. The consequenses of that are still unfolding and the end result is quite scary to anticipate.

Oh, I see your point. Just keep a bunch on hand (like I do for a standby generator). Yes you can run out. If this is the problem you are speaking of (I missed that). Photovoltaic solar is a good backup source, but it is a poor infrastructure source.

I do not understand, Thoritsu. Please explain in simple words and short sentences: Where do I get the vegetable oil in an emergency situation? (Say, an earthquake that temporarily cuts me off from access to major roads.)

Jan

Think I didn't make my point clear. Vegetable oil from plants run in a diesel cycle to generate power is the best solar option. It takes advantage of your comment about the sun's dependability.

This option does not run out of power unless the sun stops shining, and the vegetable oil is it's own energy storage means, and the infrastructure to transport and distribute it is already in place.

Except that I can run out of oil and not be able to replace it. In spite of all of the cloudy days in one's life, the sun is remarkably dependable.

I do not care if the process is carbon neutral. Chernobyl has shown that separating the process of industry from the presence of human beings makes a big difference to wildlife - to the positive.

Jan

16th amendment eliminated self-regulating controls on the government and turned it into a self-licking ice cream cone. This has to be the turning point. Then the grotesque deficit spending from the New Deal further unbounded the unstable system.

Others have identified philosophical precursors, that were problems too, but looking from Mars, unbridled government taxing and spending were the turning point.

Great discussion. Great posting. Very educational!

Canola->veggie oil->diesel engine-generator is the best solar source. Far superior in Watt/acre to photovoltaic, and pretty much carbon neutral (for those that have "faith" in that issue).
Solar water, etc heat is just a no-brainer with no attention either.

Those are all good points. You should start a separate discussion on the topic. And it does tie in here because this kind of innovation is exactly the sort of "Objectivist virtue" that Alan is looking for to justify America.

Hi Jan. I like your imagination. Just as long as we do not become the cartoon of folks sitting across the table texting each other.. Telecommuting myself, it is where your mind is. Regards

beautifully phrased, Jan;;; Thank You!!! -- j
.

The late 19th century and early twentieth century were probably the US ever got close to A. Rands philosophy. Maybe, just beyond WW2. After that point in time gov't growth was exponential and industrial growth in the US declined and left the country.

He did know it, and indeed, once the wild frontier was conquered, there was no way slavery could have continued to pay. Even if the South had won they would have eventually abolished it.

I agree that the early US was the most enlightened, mainly because of something certain other posters here hate -- the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century.

But if I could choose a time in US history to move to, I'd pick Reconstruction. It seems to me that our free system of government was perverted and done to death beginning with the Tilden/Hayes election scandal, followed by a string of bad Supreme Court rulings that did away with "substantive due process" and made the "Progressive" era possible.

That is not a pretty picture, blarman, but it is better than not surviving. So far, solar with battery has the best reliability in my book...a (wood/rubbish burning) power pallet for winter storms might be a good move as a backup.

But to keep civilization functioning...a lot of people have to have these things and a lot of people do not. Being an island of technology in a primitive society has a single word synonym: target.

Jan

Excuse me, I don't think that the United States is
beyond recovery and restoration, necessitating de-
parture. Not yet. It is in bad trouble, granted. But
not yet hopeless. When did it best align with Ob-
jectivist ideology?--Hard to tell. There was a time when there was more freedom of enterprise
--basically. Before Roosevelt, and before the
Federal Reserve, and before the income tax, and
before all that anti-trust legislation. But in those
days, there was not all that much respect for
individual rights: women couldn't vote in some
states, blacks were frequently lynched, there
was a lot of racial discrimination, which is a sort
of collectivism. People who stood up for indi-
vid
ual rights often did so in the name of religion,
which means that they had not gotten it all that
straight philosophically. It got worse in some ways at the same time it was getting better in
others. Either way, it's always been pretty
messed up.--In its documents?---I guess the
16th Amendment. Some people would mention
the Amendment giving the Senators' elections
over to the vote of the people rather than the
state legislature, but I don't think so. I could live
with the state legislatures' electing the Senate,
but either way, I don't think it is nearly as im-
portant as Number 16. I think creating the Fed-
eral Reserve is pretty bad, though not as bad as
the income tax.--And a lot of the New Deal legis-
lation, plus the "Great Society".---If this country
is to be saved, I think one essential thing will
be the home-schooling movement. In spite
of the fact that some of these home-schooling
parents are religious, at least that is getting
the children, with their minds, out from
under the control of government, and
promoting free thought. (And remem-
ber the woman in "Atlas Shrugged" who
went to the Gulch because she wanted
to raise her children according to her
own values?)

Agreed. I consider myself a prepper to some degree being an amateur radio operator, and I'm geared to be able to get along even without power. Would it be the coziest existence? Probably not. But I'd survive, and my family with me. Couldn't say that about too many around me. Then I'd rule the world. ;) Or at least my part of it.

The biggest problem - and one that Rand correctly identified in AS - was the need for renewable and consistent energy. While no one has quite come up with the perfect mix, each has a place. Fossil fuels are incredibly dense sources of chemical energy. Solar is available only during the day and has a low conversion rate (plants do it far better than solar panels). Wind is just too erratic and the turbines themselves costly and difficult to maintain (knew a repair tech). Nuclear is great, but really expensive to build. Natural Gas is great, but requires the pipeline to the plant. That was part of the genius behind Galt's device: it was completely clean and renewable. It's just too bad it isn't real (yet?).

Again, everything depends on power, however. If it goes out, so does the Internet of things, 3D printers, and everything else. And we are left to farm and raise animals.

Maybe you can Friend him and ask. ;)

Economic development zones are being considered as we speak. Imagine a network of such zones scattered around the world. Most trade would be between the zones, with each zone supporting the region around it. An ancient term for such zones was the city state. Is Singapore a prototype?

Why should slavery have been a problem? We were coming out of an obsolete system into a new one, with the obvious fact that too many people still had their star hitched to a fading star. The lesson to be learned from this is that there is a clear distinction between ideals and hard reality, where one's bread and butter resides. Looking at human nature, bread and butter usually wins out. I don't think anyone at the Constitutional Convention understood what was coming, or what the ideals truly meant, or what they made possible. A lot of that showed up after the fact (like mechanization of agriculture, for example). I wouldn't be too quick to condemn the founding fathers for shortsightedness, standing in 2015 America.

Yes, possibly. But my point was that 'things that could not be made on a 3D printer' ('its replacement' came to mind - maybe you wanted to purchase a competitor's brand!, eh?) could be delivered by drone.

I would look forward to the day when I can design my own non-trendy clothes, furniture, devices. Within my lifetime, the 'ownership' of the fashion world has broken away from Paris; even now Kickstarter movies, projects and the self-publishing of books is changing the way that 'what people really want' is seen. The looks-to-be-good/great film The Martian was serialized on Andy Weir's blog: finished in 2009, put on Amazon in 2013, where it rose to the top of the charts in less then 3 months. In that same year, it was opted by 20th Cen Fox and it will come out this October in theaters...And this was for a 'first' book that was rejected by all the publishers Andy Weir sent it to.

I think that what we are 'told' we want is a lot different than what we do actually want - and we are seeing some avenues out of that trap.

Jan

I think it started long before the country was formed. Based on my knowledge of history I would say that it started in 1607 with the founding of James Town.

It was to be the grand experiment in what was then called communal living. Basically an early form of communism. It failed horribly for two years. Killing around 10k people in the process.

The third year brought John Smith and a change. Every man would own the land they cleared and be taxed 2 barrels of whatever they grew for the community to get through the winter on.

Everything changed. Nearly half of the men that signed the declaration of independence families had linage from Georgetown in them.

Any concept of the hell of collectivism of any kind had to be a nightmare to those that lived through the incredible hardship and loss it produced. It also gave life to a group of people who had heard the stories and shaped there minds towards a better way.

The echos of that experience are seen in the attitudes of the people in 1776 and the years that lead up to it.

However the government did not align in anyway at any point, it was only through individuals continuing to fight for what the constitution gave them that we had a somewhat Capitalist country for a while. As soon as the federal government existed it decided to tax one group (Whiskey producers) to pay for the debt of the country. Not capitalism and not objective. The government provided exclusive water rights to the Livingston in New York (overturned by the drive of Vanderbilt as a young man and the money of Gibbons backing him - Gibbons verses Ogden 1815). Andrew Jackson drive individual rights as president, he has some problems but in this area we owe him a bit. History even refers to it as the Jacksonian era.

It is in the nature and interest of people in government to build collectives. They always have and always will. If there is one man that is most responsible for the failure to defend himself and the individual it is John D. Rockefeller who did nothing to protect his rights to own his company, he in effect handed the power over to government and his son became a "do gooder" that pushed for reform that controlled business and the individual so that one could not be so successful as to gain to much power. Unlike the Vanderbilt money 5% of world economy and nearly 10% of US economy which was gone in a generation, or the J.P. Morgan money (protected by government friendships) the Rockefeller money went into foundations, some of which gave huge support to the creation of early government programs. It was very much like Atlas shows it, a few large enterprises built by the original owner jumped in bed with government and together they destroyed the country.

The lesson that should be learned is this. Separation of State and business should be just as absolute as separation of state and religion. I would also add what I think is an obvious third, state and science should also be separated with the same absolute nature. That is really redundant with a separation of state and business but needed as state would start to fund research, rather than business and the problem would creep in again.

What do you think Hank Rearden's politics were before he started on the road to self-discovery? He employed Wesley Mouch as his lobbyist. Ken Dannager, Lawrence Hammond, Dick McNamara ... we just assume that they all were Austrian economists, but were Henry Ford or William Kaiser or any of the actual capitalists of her time? Thomas Watson's IBM did business with the Nazis. Standard Oil and Ford Motor Company were both in the USSR.

A key point of Atlas Shrugged was that John Galt's commanding self-esteem and impeccable logic gave him the opportunity to speak for hours to entrepreneurs who did not understand that in attempting to achieve success within the system, they were supporting their destroyers. Ayn Rand held that people of mixed premises and mixed motives can be enlightened and should not be condemned.

Has Mark Zuckerberg ever read Atlas Shrugged? Who knows?

and would have required imagination. :)

Excellent point. Just how they brought whatever equipment was not spelled out. In the movie, in Part 3, John Galt's plane was way cool, but in Part 2, he had that super-powered jet. In the book, Ragnar's beat-up wreck of car had "a million-dollar motor."

Ayn Rand explored the idea of a powerful, cheap energy device in an earlier work, "Think Twice" (1939). But for her to follow every thread in detail would have made Atlas Shrugged encyclopedic in scope (and length).

Completely agree with the assessment, said it myself many times.

Just to note... would not a 3D printer be capable of making the next upgrade before it wore out? See Philip K. Dick's story, "Autofac." At some point the Internet coupled Internet of (Reproducible) Things is going to be able to express a will of its own. For all we know, it already has. (Just sayin'.)