Austin’s Homeless: Laissez Faire in a Mixed Economy

Here in Austin, Texas, the reductio ad absurdum of the city government’s policies toward the homeless is that you (and all your friends) can take over any public space for your own use. The city council and mayor have declared de facto privatization. I want a school. They are not being used now and I can make good use of one. Once in, I will be hard to extricate because schools are defensible fortresses. (See, for example, The Girl Who Owned a City.) Perhaps you would like a park or a sports arena. Just find one that is not being used and make yourself a home. 

 

Menchaca and Ben White Jan 2020 and June 2020 

Austin Statesman

City Council rescinds measures that critics say criminalize homelessness

By Elizabeth Findell 

Posted Jun 21, 2019 at 3:36 AM

Updated Jun 21, 2019 at 6:14 PM

 

The Austin City Council early Friday rescinded city prohibitions on sitting or sleeping in public and panhandling — measures social advocates said wrongly criminalized homelessness — after hours of emotional testimony from passionate residents on both sides of the issue.

 

The decisions, made after 2 a.m. during a meeting that started at 10 a.m., capped a long day of intense discussion surrounding several homelessness-related votes at City Hall.

 

https://www.statesman.com/news/20190621/city-council-rescinds-measures-that-critics-say-criminalize-homelessness

 

Ben White opposite Target Then 

Summary of Changes to the Ordinances

On October 17, 2019, the City Council made several revisions to the city ordinance that prohibits camping in public areas.  Other ordinances, including those prohibiting obstruction on sidewalks in the downtown area and aggressive confrontation, remain unchanged.  The ordinance changes went into effect on October 28, 2019.

https://www.austintexas.gov/department/council-direction-and-policy

 

The Texas Tribune

Greg Abbott says TxDOT could remove homeless camps from Austin's highway underpasses

BY DAVIS RICH OCT. 18, 2019

 

The governor has vowed to use state resources to clear Austin's homeless residents from public spaces since city officials began changing local ordinances dictating where people can and can't camp.

 

Gov. Greg Abbott's office said Friday the Texas Department of Transportation could force homeless Austin residents out from under bridges and overpasses where some of them live or camp if recent changes to city ordinances don't result in less feces and fewer needles by Nov. 1.

 

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/10/18/greg-abbott-says-txdot-will-remove-austin-homeless-under-highways/

Ben White opposite Target Now 

 

KVUE-TV (ABC)

After more downtown stabbings, Abbott says Austin's 'reckless' policies on homelessness 'must end now'

Author: Drew Knight, Luis de Leon

Published: 5:16 PM CST January 24, 2020

Updated: 8:16 AM CST January 25, 2020

AUSTIN, Texas — After a series of Downtown Austin stabbings overnight left three people injured, Gov. Greg Abbott released a pointed statement for the Austin City Council on Friday.

"City of Austin leaders have allowed lawlessness throughout the capital city that is resulting in violence against Austin residents, including those who are homeless," Gov. Abbott said in a statement released to KVUE. "Last night’s tragedy, leaving three injured, is just the most recent instance of this violence. This rise in violence has corresponded with the revocation of the camping ban that the Austin City Council passed in June. Public endangerment and murder can no longer be tolerated because of the actions – and inactions – by City officials. Mayor Adler and the city council should re-instate the camping ban and restore the rule of law in Austin. The City’s gamble on these reckless policies has been a loser and must end now."

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/gov-abbott-calls-austin-homeless-policy-reckless-after-stabbings/269-fe1bd9ab-d65b-4cff-a013-3edb295c4c1f

 

Fox-7 TV

Gov. Abbott working to override Austin homeless camping ordinance

By Steven Sarabia 

Published February 7 [2020]

Homeless Crisis FOX 7 Austin

While talking about Austin's homeless issues Wednesday, Abbott said on Twitter, "Next step should be to reinstate the ban on camping and work with non-profit organizations to assist with shelters. That's exactly what I will ask the Texas Legislature to do."

https://www.fox7austin.com/news/gov-abbott-working-to-override-austin-homeless-camping-ordinance

Wikipedia provided this definition from the Communist Party of Texas

LUMPENPROLETARIAT - German for "rag proletariat." Generally unemployable people who make no positive contribution to an economy. Sometimes described as the bottom layer of a capitalist society. May include criminal and mentally unstable people. Some activists consider them "most radical" because they are "most exploited," but they are un-organizable and more likely to act as paid agents than to have any progressive role in class struggle.  See https://www.cp-texas.org/glossary

 

Previously on NecessaryFacts

 

Workers’ Paradise Promised an End to Money 

Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny 

Karl Marx and the Dustbin of History 

Furloughs for Freedom: Downsizing Government 

Toxic Leadership 

 

NYC Covid-19 and Conservative Business Interests

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” – Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, (Book I, X “Wages and Profit,” Part I)

Writing for The Savvy Street and cross-linked for discussion on Galt’s Gulch Online, Objectivist scholar Walter Donway identified New York City’s long history of business regulations as the root cause of its horrific Covid-19 death toll. Writing primarily for an audience that supports President Donald Trump’s populism, Donway sprinkled his essay with a pejorative use of “liberal” via the redundant “left-liberal.” But his facts would have been the same and more damning if he had called the failed political policies “service to conservative business interests.”

Donway wrote: “But the city is the most ideologically left-liberal city in America. ...  Here is the briefest rundown on the left-liberal ideological principles and policies that have left New York City spread-eagled, utterly vulnerable to violation by the new epidemic. It was inevitable, an accident waiting to happen. ...  Understand that almost every university, government agency, foundation, and think tank in New York City has a left-liberal bent, tending to support and further these housing policies....  NYC is the U.S. epicenter of the  coronavirus because it is the U.S. epicenter of left-liberal economic intervention that in every possible way has increased the cost and decreased the pace of building ordinary housing for ordinary people.”

Donway has two targets: rent control and labor unions. Donway conflates rent control and rent stabilization. NYC has only 22000 rent-controlled apartments. About half the housing in NYC is “rent stabilized.” 

NYC as seen by the New York Times

Onerous as the regulations are, though, realize that they are business regulations that benefit a special interest: renters. Many capital goods are leased: personal automobiles, taxicabs, semi-trucks and trailers, railroad engines and cars, construction equipment, aircraft, computers, telephones, and office space. If semi-truck rentals were subject to onerous government-mandated pricing, it would be wrong, but we would all know how to analyze the problem. It would be a business interest using civic legal authority for its own profits. And so it is with apartment renters. 

Rent-stabilized housing distorts those markets. Landlords seek and find escapes. Rentals become condominiums. Owners sell and go into other businesses that they hope to enjoy more. Tenants also could find escapes. My brother was an executive for a classical music label headquartered in the City. When I found out how little he paid his warehouse workers, I was shocked. “How can they afford to live in the City?” I asked. “They don’t,” he replied. “They live in New Jersey and take the train.” So did junk bond billionaire Michael Milken. Everyone knows that Warren Buffett enjoys his middle class home in Omaha. No one has to live in NYC, though Walter Donway himself is among the 20 million who choose to.

Labor unions are also businesses, no less than are our local chambers of commerce. Their members pay dues. The unions set up their own qualifications, including specialized training; and in that they are in the same category as university MBA programs. The political advantage that labor unions enjoy is a direct consequence of one-person-one-vote. But they are voting for their business interests. 

NYC as seen by the New York Post

 Among the business interests that Donway disparages—I say that he sleights it as left-liberal snobbery—is the explosion in “historical” properties. It may be true that zealous urban planners at city hall hunt for such opportunities, but largely, the historical marker plaque is sought, applied for, fought for, and won by the property owner who seeks a marketable cachet, whether for a building or a vacant lot. It is the hallmark of conservatism to find intrinsic value in that which went before and to fear change. So, we must preserve barns and tenements just as we protect markets and job titles.

In excoriating renters and laborers (and left-liberals), Donway engages in a strategy explained succinctly in The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. A mass movement can succeed without God, Hoffer noted, but none can succeed without a devil. In modern language, we “otherize” our enemies: they are essentially different from us and therefore essentially evil. I believe that in otherizing labor unions and renters as beneficiaries of left-liberal government intervention Walter Donway’s goal is to seduce pro-Trump conservatives into accepting Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. See his two essays on The Savvy Street, “The Unquiet Grave: Ayn Rand Declared Conservatism Dead in 1960,” and “The Unquiet Grave Part II : Edmund Burke’s Challenge for Objectivism.” He could have made the same argument that I just did: disasterous as such government interventions have proved to be, they were motivated by conservatism in service to business interests.

For context, remember that Ayn Rand was radically opposed to racism and that the central figures of her three novels were independent women. Moreover, she was in favor of open immigration. And she was proud of having gotten around the laws limiting her own immigration. In addition, she was also an atheist. No surprise, she advocated for a woman’s right to end her pregnancy. In her novels and in her own life, she rejected the social traditions of family as the foundation for society. And among all of the very many political interventions in the economy, she was opposed to tariffs. 

Even more to the point here, many of the villians in her novels are businessmen, some of inherited wealth, all with close ties to government regulators. On the other hand, when we first meet the architect Howard Roark, he is wearing blue jeans, sandals, and a shirt missing most of its buttons. Before going to the dean's office to be expelled, he tosses his long hair into a semblance of order. 

 

Ayn Rand on Wall Street
(Cover of The Virtue of Selfishness)

Those are all points of failure for anyone who wants to sell her utopia to conservatives. The reason why is fundamental. Conservatism absolutely requires other people for its practice because it is a social philosophy. Objectivism is a personal philosophy. If your neighbors play loud music at 3:00 in the morning, the conservative response is to call the cops because their anti-social behavior deprives you of your right to property. The Objectivist response is to move. Objectivist ethics of selfishness recognize that you might find it much easier (and satisfying) to call the cops. But that would be your choice based on your values and your decision on how best to minimize your losses and discomforts. You might take your guitar over there and join them. But the choice remains yours because Objectivism is a personal philosophy. 

Walter Donway's major premise is empirically undeniable: New York City's terrible losses from the novel coronavirus are a direct consequence of over-crowding. It is population density rather than population alone that spreads the infection. In response to Donway's discussion on Galt's Gulch, I posted these comparisions.

New York City Population 18 million (Metro area 21 million)

Covid-19 cases 40,900 (31 March)

Houston area: Population 7 million

2020 Estimate 2.4 million for the city proper

1,266 cases

12 dead

168 recovered

(31 March Fox News 26)

The City of Houston does not have zoning but development is governed by codes that address how property can be subdivided. The City codes do not address land use.-- Oct 1, 2018; Planning and Development - City of Houston at https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/De...

Corona Virus Cases Metropolitan Dallas-Ft. Worth

Total Population 7.5 million

Dallas Dallas County - 549

North Suburbs Collin County - 160

Northwest Suburbs Denton County 191

Fort Worth Tarrant County - 161

Dallas Metro total case: 1061 (31 March)

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Michael Shermer’s Moral Arc 

The Market for Voting 

Ayn Rand versus Conservatives 

President Trump and the Military 

Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny” 

The Night of January 16th

Telling someone that you enjoy reading the works of Ayn Rand is different from admitting that your opinions are informed by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus or that you relax with William Faulkner. I recently worked with a team of a dozen technical writers. In fact, I was the only true technical writer on the team. The core group held MAs in technical writing from Texas State, but they were doing it just because it was a job that paid well. Another was a kindergarten teacher. Probably the most talented member of the team was an unpublished novelist. Of course, we talked about writing and literature. One of my colleagues said that he does not like Ayn Rand. “What have you read?” Nothing, he admitted, correcting himself to say, “I find that I don’t like the people who like Ayn Rand.” Up to that point, I thought that we had been getting along quite well.  Apparently not…

When Gerald Ford became President, I heard a radio program (NPR most likely), on which the interviewer asked the expert what Ford would bring to the Oval Office. The expert replied that from his long service in the House of Representatives where he had been elected Speaker, Ford learned that “to get along, you have to go along.” That advice has served me well these past 40 years. I am not much for getting along or going along, but I understand those who do. 

My primary motivation is at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy: self-actualization. That being as it may, I am not a recluse. I do not live in a cave in a forest. For me, the rewards in city life come from the anonymity of the division of labor: when you need a plumber, you don’t care who his cousin his, you just want the water line fixed. It may seem paradoxical, but the marketplace deeply engrains the personal ethics and moral behavior that makes socialization possible in the first place, and ultimately rewarding on all levels, physical, emotional, and spiritual. 

On the other hand, around the world most cultures are “high context” societies where who your cousin is makes a big difference. Spain, Sicily, Greece, Iraq, Iran, the Philippines... The “low context” societies are the advanced, industrial and now post-industrial, information-age leaders: the USA, Australia, NZ, and Canada, the UK especially the English, Scandinavia and Finland, Germany, Switzerland, and (oddly, perhaps) Israel. 

"The Weirdest People in the World?" is a paper published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, (2010), available online from the authors here. These mainstream psychologists sought to demonstrate that most of the research being carried out to find “human nature” is flawed because the test subjects are usually university students or their children. They sent a dozen teams to non-industrialized locales to interview people by carrying out a variety of standard psychological games from simple optical illusions to more complex interactions such as Dictator and Ultimatum. Among their many findings was that the degree of market integration predicts how deeply individuals internalize their sense of fairness. Basically, we share because we want to. Other people share—when they do, which they might not at all—because they have to. 

“Crime in the city” is an easy topic of casual conversation. But the gangs of New York came from high context societies. The best narrative I know about crime in the city is the movie Family Business. Sean Connery plays Jessie McMullen who married an Italian. Their son, Vito, was played by Dustin Hoffman. Vito married a Jewish girl. Matthew Broderick played their son, Adam. Ethnic cleansing is impossible in the city. Gang wars in the city (these days, usually over drug markets) are carried out by Hispanic and African-American high context cultures. As they say, “It takes a village…” 

The Night of January 16^th is a crime drama. It centers on a global financial fraud and includes a street hoodlum. What made the play popular was that the jury was drawn from the audience. Rand wrote two endings for the final act. A bad adaptation was created for the big screen, directed by William Clemens with a screenplay by Delmer Daves, Robert Pirosh, and Eve Greene.

“Though Rand was years away from articulating her own ideal, she had since childhood admired the individual who acts on his own judgments, defying social pressure. Thus the main characters in Night of January 16th are bold egoists who unapologetically seek the world’s rewards and pleasures for themselves.“Notably, however, this play’s heroes don’t embody Rand’s moral philosophy. ‘I do not think, nor did I think it when I wrote this play, that a swindler is a heroic character or that a respectable banker is a villain,’ she writes. ‘But for the purpose of dramatizing the conflict of independence versus conformity, a criminal — a social outcast — can be an eloquent symbol.’”  -- AynRand.org here.   

The screen adaptation mangled the plot. Names were changed for no apparent reason. Elements were added that sidetracked the integration of actions and motives which is an essential element of Ayn Rand's fiction.

“The story revolves around three people; Tycoon Bjorn Faulkner, who is being called upon by his board of directors to explain a missing $20,000,000; Kit Lane, his secretary who also has a personal interest; and Steve Van Ruyle, a sailor who has inherited a position on Faulkner's board of directors. Faulkner is (presumably) murdered, and Kit is falsely accused of the murder. Steve assumes the job of clearing her name.” -- IMDB.com  “Van Ruyle attempts to prove Lane's innocence with fake evidence, but his ruse is discovered. The two flee with evidence from Faulkner's apartment, which they use to track down the mysterious Haraba. They trace him to a hotel in Havana, Cuba, where they discover that "Haraba" is a pseudonym being used by Faulkner, who has faked his own death. When Faulkner takes Lane captive, Van Ruyle rushes with police to Faulkner's room to rescue her. Faulkner is arrested, and Van Ruyle and Lane decide to get married.” – Wikipedia.

Ludwig Wittgenstein denied the validity of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He wrote it in the trenches while in the Austrian army. His military service did not protect him when the Nazis took over. He was forced to liquidate his family inheritance into gold and deliver it to the government in return for permission to emigrate to the UK. While in England, he worked out a different set of problems and solutions. He was accused of attacking Karl Popper with a fireplace poker. It is irrelevant today that both men were closet homosexuals. 

But is possible to discuss Wittgenstein’s metaphysics and epistemology or Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, without having to answer for all of their philosophical errors or lifestyle foibles. Not so with Ayn Rand. She is a lightening rod. It was from a Theodore Sturgeon story that I learned that I am not the only one who falls in love where the lightening strikes.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Ayn Rand and Star Trek 

Megacities 

City Air Makes You Free  

… that goddam Ayn Rand book…. 

Plato and Aristotle; Gates and Jobs 

Cleveland, Ohio, and the Gates of Argonath

"Two pairs of entrance pylons on both the west and east ends of the Hope Memorial Bridge (formerly the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge) have figural reliefs symbolizing the development of road transportation. These stylized 43-foot high pylons, carved of Berea sandstone, are well-preserved examples of Art Deco figures, all holding examples of road transportation." --
https://www.bluffton.edu/homepages/facstaff/sullivanm/ohio/cleveland/bridgepylons/hering.html

The Argonath, also known as the Gate of Kings or the Pillars of the Kings, was a landmark on the northern edge of Gondor. The Argonath consisted of two enormous rock pillars, carved in the likenesses of Isildur and Anárion facing to the north. Placed upon huge pedestals, each of the two figures held an axe in its right hand and its left hand rose in a gesture of defiance to the enemies of Gondor. The two statues stood upon either side of the River Anduin at the northern approach to Nen Hithoel. -- http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Argonath

"The Argonath ... marked the northern border of Gondor, as nearby down south were previous outposts, Amon Hen and the Amon Lhaw.
The Argonath was originally constructed about TA 1340 at the order of Rómendacil II to mark the northern border of Gondor, although the realm was greatly diminished in size by the time the Fellowship of the Ring passed the monument on February 25, 3019."  -- http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Argonath

"Perhaps the most memorable features of the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge are the 43-foot tall “Guardians of Transportation” which line its sides. These four huge double-sided pylons, carved out of sandstone from nearby Berea, Ohio, represent technological advances made in transit, with each Guardian holding a different kind of vehicle in its massive hands. Frank Walker designed the pylons and Henry Hering did the actual sculpting with the help of a number of local stonecutters."
-- https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/73

"In the 1970s, Cuyahoga County Engineer Albert Porter wanted to tear down the pylons in order to add lanes to the bridge. He did not get his way. So, when the bridge reopened in 1983 after nearly three years of repairs, the Guardians of Transportation were still in place. The bridge was renamed at this time, becoming the Hope Memorial Bridge, in honor of actor Bob Hope and his family - English immigrants who came to Cleveland in 1908. William Henry Hope, Bob’s father, was a stonemason who worked on the construction of the Guardians in the 1930s."
-- https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/73

"Henry Hering is well known for his work as an architectural sculptor. Much of his work consists of allegorical figures done in the Beaux-Arts tradition, although a few of his later works, such as the detailing in Severance Hall and the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge in Cleveland, Ohio, were done in the Art Deco style. Hering's reputation as a sculptor decreased as International Modernism dispensed with architectural, figurative and allegorical work. As with many other such artists Hering's oeuvre is now being reexamined in a more positive light. In 1928 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1937."
 -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hering

"Hering is further remembered in relation to the unfortunate crash of an American B-25 military airplane into New York City's Empire State Building on July 28, 1945. The largest sections of the plane remained lodged in the building, or fell directly to the streets below. However, one engine ripped from its wing and traveled some distance away, regrettably landing in Hering's top floor penthouse studio, located in a building near the crash. At the time, newspaper coverage of the accident reported that, although the artist was not in his studio at the time, about $75,000 worth of his work was destroyed." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hering

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Superheroes Live in Cities
Mapping it Out: An Alternative Atlas of Contemporary Cartographics
The Wizard of Oz and the Anti-Intellectual Tradition
The Akkadian Roots of Modern Semitic Languages

Superheroes Live in Cities

The easy narrative is that good guys protect cities because bad guys want to rule millions of people and that is hard to do by extending yourself over a thousand villages. But there is more to it. The Smallville stories underscore the fact that in order to maintain their dual identities, superheroes need the anonymity of the city. And there is more work in the city. Batman could clean up Traverse City, Michigan, or Rapid City, South Dakota, in one night. Then what? 

 

Austin: 6th Street facing west from the Littlefield Building

It is tautologous that the city is the center of civilization. Cities acquire populations from the surrounding countryside as much as they grow internally. The city offers opportunity. Coming from diverse local cultures, some close, many distant, the newcomers shed their folkways and adopt new amalgamated customs. The hallmarks today include pizza, burritos, stir fry, and kebap (appropriately being the German adaptation of the Turkish shish kabob).

 

Austin: Reflections in Frost Tower Southward

Metropolis - Superman (Clark Kent)

Gotham - Batman (Bruce Wayne)

Central City - 2nd Flash (Barry Allen)

Keystone City - 1st Flash (Jay Garrick) and 3rd Flash (Wally West)

Midway City - Hawkman (Carter Hall); 
and Hawkgirl (Shiera Sanders Hall, Kendra Saunders, others...) 

Star City - Green Arrow (Oliver Queen)

Coast City - Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)

Austin: Frost Tower
from the Parapet of 301 South Congress

 Fantastic Four – New York City, Baxter Building

Avenger Headquarters – New York City, Stark Tower

New York City is the hometown of Captain America (Steve Rogers). 
It changed in the telling from the borough of Brooklyn to Manhattan. 
Though Captain America is often on deployment, 
Spiderman lives and works there on a daily basis.

 

Austin: South from the Capital Factory
enterprise incubator
atop the Austin Center

Marvel Superheroes Who Basically Only Protect New York City

https://io9.gizmodo.com/marvel-superheroes-who-basically-only-protect-new-york-1797953197

"...Truth, Justice, and the American Way."

A Guide to the Fictional Cities of the DC Universe

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/a-guide-fictional-cities-dc-861874

Downtown Cleveland looking east from Lakewood

Miami from Miami Beach

Fictional Towns in Comics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_towns_in_comics

 PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Cities

Megacities

Money as Speech and Peacemaking

Hypatia of Alexandria

Against Gulching

"Gulching" refers to setting up a retreatist community of political conservatives. It is named after Galt's Gulch in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Saturday Night Live ran this in the wake of the GOP victory in the Presidential election of 2016:

In The Bubble, the election never happened.
View on YouTube here.

On the Objectivist discussion board, Rebirth of Reason, frequent contributor Luke Setzer posted a link to the video under the headline "Turning Galt's Gulch on Its Ear." In the discussion there, I said that no successful society is monolithic.

The defining attribute of fans of the Atlas Shrugged movies is that they are people who want to set themselves apart in a separate, isolated and hidden community of like-minded people. Many dream of a physical locale. Most enjoy online communities. In those discussions, the occasional reports of attempts at a “Galt’s Gulch” receive close attention.

Although the plot element of “Galt’s Gulch” served a poetic purpose, it was not a call to action. Ayn Rand was specific in stating that art is not didactic: a romance novel does not teach. When Ayn Rand had something to teach, she wrote essays and delivered lectures. Rand’s intention as a philosopher was to create and explain the ideas that can liberate individuals, human society in general, and the United States of America in particular.

 

New York City from ClassicHistory.com

Admirers of the works of Ayn Rand generally have two goals: to improve their own lives by living better; and to change the world. They intend to achieve the latter by spreading the ideas of Objectivism until they are accepted by (arbitrarily) “enough” other people. Their goal is a cultural shift more dramatic than the rise of classical Greece or the Renaissance.  Specifically:

(1) reason, science, and philosophy replace religion
(2) the ethics of egoism become as widely accepted as the tenets of altruism are today
(3) capitalism displaces socialism
(4) government is limited to basic functions of law and order by protecting the rights to  property.
(5) the observably dominant works of art (painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, theater) project rational people living in a knowable universe.

Cleveland's West Side Market indoor space.
(cleveland.com)

The inherent contradiction in “Objectivist culture” – the common interactions in-person and online among those who admire the works of Ayn Rand, perhaps just best called “Rand Fans” – is the dichotomy between reaching out to teach other people and walling yourself in with a group of individuals who claim to believe the same things that you do.

 

In the language of Objectivism, “in Atlas Shrugged, the heroes withdraw their moral sanction from their destroyers.” In other words, not only do they stop obeying the economic regulations of the government, they divorce themselves from anyone who would claim a right to any moment of their lives. They want nothing to do with looters and moochers. That is the active ideal of a Rand Fan in dealing with other people.

The problem that they cannot solve is that the capitalist who owns a gas station is a Muslim. The capitalist who owns a convenience store is a Hindu. It is a fact that Costco founder James Sinegal is an ardent Democrat.  The greatest capitalists of our age – George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and the entire list of global billionaires—are all condemned as “crony capitalists” traitors to laissez faire, who cause and amplify the oppressive laws, taxes, and regulations under which we suffer, but they, by the power of their privilege do not. Objectivism does have its own real-life capitalists. Three that stand out are T. J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor, Ed Snider (1933-2016) of Comcast Spectacore, and John Allison of BB&T. Many others orbit in the pull of Ayn Rand. Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks) and Frederick W. Smith (FedEx) are among them. But Cuban supported Hillary Clinton for President. 

Cleveland's West Side Market outdoor space
from Delta Sky Magazine

As explained by Ayn Rand and her one-time colleague psychologist Nathaniel Branden, most people harbor unresolved personal contradictions. If the Muslim who owns a gas station were consistent in his philosophy, he would recognize that the principles that bring success in business – identifying facts, testing theories, treating customers fairly  - speak against the tenets of his religion. If the crony capitalists were consistent, they would deny their government subsidies and advance laissez faire.

 

I and M Bank Market, Nairobi 

What do you do when other people do not live up to your expectations for philosophical consistency?

For many Objectivists, as distinct from mere “fans of Ayn Rand,” the unworkable solution is to withdraw from those who disagree with you. So, it is ironic that the philosophers of the Ayn Rand Institute who do not speak to the philosophers of the Atlas Society probably buy their gasoline from Muslims and get their cars fixed by Christians and find great bargains at big box stores owned by Democrats all the while running Windows software on their computers.

The minor premise of "Gulching" and a theme that is easy to find among fans of Atlas Shrugged, is that in order for there to be a second Renaissance, civilization must collapse. They do not just predict it, they look forward to it with a millenarian fervor. 

The fact is that civilization is, literally, city life. Historically, people from disparate tribes left (and still leave) their homes to come to the places where strangers benefit themselves by exchanging value for value, whether or not they agree on any other fact, claim, or belief.  That cultural matrix is powerful. Examples of farming communities destroyed by crop failures are easy to find. Harder to uncover are cities that starved. Total war does bring that. Fortunately, such wars are exceptional. Examples from the Dutch wars of liberation from Spain show that when the city rulers attempted to control the price of food, the city went without and fell. Cities that let the price of food rise incentivized smugglers to run the Spanish lines. A farm feeds itself (theoretically), but a city is fed by the whole world.  It does not matter that the Chilean farmer whose grapes are on your table has a religious icon in his home. If you cut yourself off from him - and the global commercial network - you only have the grapes you grow yourself... if you grow grapes, rather than apricots, kiwi fruit, watermelon, coconuts, ...

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Megacities 
Cities 
City Air Makes You Free  
Vectures: Monetizing Urban Transportation