--> Charlie Stross
> On Sun, Sep 02, 2001 at 01:55:00PM -0700, Reason wrote:
> >
> > By *your* British norms, you mean; I can't say that I think you
> speak for
> > everyone. I'm British (or rather English, if we're going to be
> elitist about
> > our accidental birth locations) and pretty much an objectivist.
> Barking mad,
> > I am not. You could certainly walk into any half-way decent
> chain bookstore
> > in the UK and pick up a copy of Atlas Shrugged when I lived in
> the UK, five
> > years or so ago.
>
> How many other British objectivists do you know? And how mainstream are
> they?
>
> This isn't to say that you should give two hoots what they think -- the
> old adage about billions of flies, shit, and good taste springs to
> mind -- but I'd be entertained to hear you assert that it's even a
> remotely mainstream philosophy here.
Have you moved around in the business community or the stock trading
community in the UK at all? Or indeed, associated with any of the
non-inherited monied groups? I think you'll find that a great many of them
have objectivist views even if they don't call themselves objectivists.
But then, that's the case in the US as well. Objectivism is not and has
never been a mainstream philosophy by my definition of mainstream (which
pretty much equates to "popular" or "popularist"). [This point can be picked
up and argued, of course].
But anyway -- I was objecting to your categorization of objectivism and
associated concepts as non-existant in the UK, to the point of books by Ayn
Rand not even being in print. Both these assertions are quite untrue, as I
can attest to from my years in the UK.
What the UK, and the rest of Europe, does have is a burgeoning neo-luddite,
socialist, pro-inteventionist government, left-leaning, anti-capitalist,
anti-success collection of ideals that are working their way quite
successfully into the mainstream. It's all very distressing, and one of the
reasons that I left for a country in which people of talent can still make
something of themselves without having to justify their success to those
without said talent.
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
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