Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. -- MaxedOutMama

I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. -- Kim du Toit

The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.-- Moshe Ben-David

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. -- Sultan Knish

All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. -- Billy Beck

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

The Theory of Value

Sarah Hoyt has an interesting post up, Fifty Shades of Marx*, a discussion of her assertion that the ideas of Marx are currently ascendant - an assertion I concur with.  This bit reminded me of something:
You want to look at the decay of Western civilization? It's mostly the unexamined absorption of Marxist ideas.

Now, I'm one of those people who live too much in books and theories, and, as such, I can tell you why they're absorbed and treated as gospel: it's because they make internal sense. This is not the same as having even a glimmer of real world application, of course, but they satisfy the minds of intellectuals by dividing everything into categories and presenting a (false but deceptively smooth) system for historical change and, in general, sounding REALLY plausible.

Take the Marxist theory of value. It is utter nonsense of course. The idea is that what gives value to something is the labor put into it. You can see how this would appeal to Marx, or, indeed, to any intellectual. Laboring forever over a book that sells one copy is now a genuine, bonafide "injustice". The book is valuable. Just look how much work you put into it.
This came to mind immediately:


RTWT


No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.