Politics and Religion
Let's hear it from the opposite side of the political spectrum. Her views are just as eloquent & as valid as Marx's.
John, I know you were just channeling Rand, but I couldn't let this go. 
I don't think a Randian society would be workable, simply because the group that has self-appointed itself the "winners" would be without "dependents" who allow them to live in such luxury.
Democracy at it's finest is nothing more than a filter for removing bad ideas from public policy. A monarch may be a strong individual, but he might be insane. With a fuctioning democracy, it's difficult to get 51% to agree to insane ideas.
I think there would be far fewer people who are chronically downtrodden, all things being equal so to speak, then if we lived in a different set of economic circumstances. To leads to reason, that in an economic model based upon competition, ultimately you will have very few winners, and a lot of downtrodden. Ultimately, you have one giant monopoly. I'm not of the belief that gov't interference in the market is the only way to achieve such a monopoly. I think genuinely free markets would produce such a monopoly just as easily (perhaps more easily).
If your environment can so deeply affect any given organism that it can evolve into any number of different species given enough time, then logically it seems to me that human beings are deeply affected by their economic environment. People aren't naturally weak and dependent, so much as they are a product of their circumstances. It also stands to reason that if we changed that environment to allow as many weak and dependent people as possible to become strong independent people, that this would be an incredible benefit to everyone over the whole of society.
Competition produces animosity, distrust, hatred, and hostility, and sometimes it produces incredible violence. An society based on competition is what I would call dysfunctional.
"One of the problems of Democracy is it allows a majority of weak and minimally competent dependents to enslave, through the violence of government, those who enable the rest of society to even LIVE. It allows them to bite the hand that feeds them"
& : "liberals who espouse a philosophy of altruistic self-punishment of the best and brightest while systematically sacrificing the strong to the weak."
MY, MY------that sounds like QUITE the exercise in "elitist Social Darwinism". Pardon me if I'm wrong, but with your high self-esteem ( which is very commendable & an essential part of mental health ) do you fancy yourself a "Nietzschean Ubermensch" ?
As for "society's weaklings", the only way to "eliminate them" barring a "negative rapture",
would be a extermination/eugenics program that was implemented by little over 70 years ago by--------well, you know who.
Seems to me that being a "religious Libertarian"
has MAJOR contradictions.
Still, JG, you're a great dude-----stick around this forum for awhile----enjoy sparrin' w/ ya----
I was simply painting you a picture of what a Randian society would be like.
As previously stated, I interpret Nietzsche's idea of a superman as the product of continuous self-overcoming that never ends. To that extent, anyone willing to question his presumed limitations can be the superman. Thus, no extermination program is needed.
Under the status quo, smarter people are generally taxed to pay for the children of dumber people. That's negative eugenics -- dysgenics. Since you already accept eugenics in the form of taxing some people so that they have to limit their offspring in order to fund others to have more, all we'd be debating about is whether that policy should be changed because it is having the predictable effect of giving us a dumber society.
Personally, I'd be happy with a neutral policy where NOBODY is penalized and let the chips fall where they may.
