Jesus Christ.
Edit: The full debate is here. I highly recommend listening to it.
Yaron Brook is the chair of the Ayn Rand Institute - he's very well spoken, has very good debate skills, and is highly intelligent. I can easily see how he would run circles around most people. But this is where Sam Seder's brilliance shines through. He is also well spoken, has good debate skills, and is intelligent. He was able to counter each point Brook made and further the conversation till the natural end.
The debate was civil and w/o any insults while still being challenging and intellectually stimulating. So completely unlike the usual online debate-bros. One of the things I tried to do while listening was pause it and try to form a counter to Brook on my own w/o listening to what Seder said. I needed to take far more time than Sam did and my answers were nowhere near as precise or well-articulated or counterattacking.
Truly. I think the end of this debate shows that better than anything else. Libertarians, Randians etc. have a fundamentally different perspective on the world. Completely unhinged at best and actively malevolent in general. But a lot of young people get sucked into it and never discover the true, hideous nature of the beast.
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Worse, some know explicitly that's the mental construction that justifies selfishness so they go along with it even more
Yeah, some want a justification for their selfish and harmful behavior.
I think that every debate between a leftist and a libertarian should have a glass of unregulated "freedom" water for the libertarian debater.
Bit idea: Have a debate with a libertarian where they get a market choice between visibly murky water and clean water that they don't know has been dosed with LSD.
Libertarians will generally side with whatever has more power so long as that power isn't in the form of state, but even then it's wishywashy. There are those who act and those acted upon. If you're acted upon, then you're already morally compromised by being the lesser being in the situation. If you're acted upon by a government regulation, then it's lesser beings trying to restrict your brilliance. It's genuinely the worst moral outlook possible and it should say something that the most powerful figures in business do not subscribe to libertarian thought whatsoever because they're aware it does them no favors.
It’s always young people who also seem to treat rules and laws as physics. Just absolute and set in stone.
I feel like video games lead to randian views as games have rules that ARE physics. You can’t really cheat in videogames in the traditional sense. I think that lens leads to this survival of the fittest mindset.