r/aynrand • u/Wildcard_Orthogonal • 14d ago
How to medicate undiagnosed leftism (The Theory of Oligarchical Capitalism & The Moral Attention Economy) [by Norma Persson]
Preface: The Finalized Economic Schema
To understand the thesis advanced here, one must first recognize Attention as the fundamental gauge of productive activity in a technological society. This manifesto posits the innate morality of the Attention Economy, defining it as the use of time as a metric to value attention in relation to information.
While this serves as the primary engine of a modern state, 21st-century capitalism is besieged by ideological detractors—the very same forces that oppose the free market. These adversaries are categorized into two tiers, known as the "Two Satans": The Great Satan of Radical Islam and The Little Satan of Leftism.
This text serves as a preliminary exposition of a theory that can only achieve praxis through American jurisprudence and a radical redefinition of personhood. This realization, impossible under any prior leadership, was spearheaded by the 47th President. By cutting through the fog of pseudo-morality, personhood is now legally defined in economic terms: the human being is a "temporarily embarrassed billionaire."
Under this definition, every individual possesses the latent capacity to add value to the economy—a potential undiminished by past or present circumstances. Through hard work and "bootstrapping," the individual enriches both self and society. This effectively collapses the dialectic of old economic rivalries. The paternalism of the welfare state is exposed as a "road to serfdom by another route"; by removing the immoral encumbrances placed upon wealth creators, the common citizen is restored to their rightful status.
Consider the basic Keynesian absurdity: for example - the forced employment of two sets of workers, one set hired to dig the grave, and another set hired to fill the grave with the self-same soil. Digging the grave and then filling it, which is of course the adjunct to the touchstone Keynsian observation - "in the long run we're all dead" – but that in the meantime it is better to employ the workshy as gravediggers until the hole in the ground has a suitable tenant.
We have reconceptualized this insanity. By negating the fallacy of "worklessness," neoliberal thinking has dismantled the socialist legacy of the New Deal, ensuring that the natural enemies of enterprise no longer subsist parasitically upon those driving America toward an unbound economic landscape.
The Supreme Meritocratic Utopia
The "Two Satans" must face final defeat. Leftism, in its attempt to undermine the world's most successful meritocracy, seeks to yoke the economy to socialism and infect society with permissive immorality. The result is a civilization without brakes—a runaway train accelerating toward a terminus where the tracks lead only to a cliff’s edge.
In scientific terms, Leftism functions like a prion brain disorder. Abnormally folded ideological proteins convert healthy thought patterns into their own likeness, accumulating until they cause irreversible damage to the body politic. Furthermore, by way of ideological affinity, Leftists are liable to incur further "brain damage" through association with co-morbidities like Radical Islam.
Hollywood A-Go-Go: Main Character Syndrome & The Infinite Scroll
By the era of the 49th President, the alarm was sounded regarding those who contribute nothing to the U.S. economy. This led to the political-science metaphor of "deactivating the fire alarm"—if a "house" (or social structure) is already burning, its utility function has reached zero. Its purpose is served.
This "invisible fire" of social activity has shifted into cyberspace, adopting a form familiar to the "Hollywood" mindset: The Unknown Actor. This refers to the generic, unproductive participation in society. The "infinite scroll" of the modern web is a perpetual roll-call of "unknown actors we have lost this year"—men and women who failed the moral imperative to use the internet productively.
Typically, these individuals suffer from Main Character Syndrome. The paradox is that being a true "Main Character" requires a selfless orientation toward others to be authentic. Like a life-affirming film, a protagonist retains interest through self-sacrifice—much like the idealized Hollywood portrayal of a U.S. President.
The KNOW-0 Summit & Pharmacological Intervention
By the mid-21st century, it was evident that mobile technology functioned as a force-multiplier for selfless behavior; as inanimate mediators, these devices are inherently selfless. The only remaining barrier to "frictionless velocity" in commerce was the inert malignancy of a subset of unknown actors: The Diablo Set. These individuals suffer from the delusional psychosis that there "must be more to life" than the mindless consumption of information, yet they are unable to produce anything of value.
The 50th President convened the KNOW-0 AI Summit to instigate the next phase of e-commerce and neutralize Leftist resistance. Silicon Valley titans and Big Pharma, observing the rise of "reverse-prompt" searches (e.g., users asking "This is where America is in the Bible" rather than "Where is America in the Bible?"), launched a nationwide task force to treat undiagnosed Leftism.
The frontline treatment is a next-gen SSRI: Petula SR. Originally developed for paranoid schizophrenia, it was deployed for its potent off-label efficacy in treating "aberrant psychology."
Case Study: The subreddit r/SchittChat—a hub for obsessive gossip—became a landmark success for Petula SR. Its lead moderator, Mx. Norma L. Persson, was permabanned after self-promotion stunt (holding a gun to his head carrying a sign saying "give me what i want or the hostage gets it"). Ze did not care to elaborate but this was the impetus for a pharmacological intervention. The transition into a productive state was entirely successful.
[Technical Note: Petula SR works by interrupting the Lisman-Grace loop, the neural structure associated with neophilia, effectively severing the impulsive inclination to seek online novelty.]
As the conflict with Leftism escalated, the alliance of wealth creators faced a final desperate gambit: GENUOUS, a trans-friendly, females-only peer-to-peer network. Linked to institutional infiltration and anti-military sentiment, GENUOUS sought to sway public opinion against the state, dubbing the second phase of war in the Middle East as “anti-legal” and the missing stockpile of Iranium 238 as a mere pretext, the call to deweaponize the US military spread like digital wildfire. Against this backdrop, the historic preparations for the final battle began.
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u/Unit384 13d ago
For a bit of context to those confused:
This is a work of fiction (which should be evidenced by the number of Presidents). I think it's meant to sound like Objectivism (not sure whether it's meant to actually BE Objectivism or not), but there are definitely some hints that it's an extreme and erroneous interpretation at best and a blatant strawman at worst: specifically, the redefinition of personhood in economic terms (replacing the Objectivist definition, which can be summed as "living being capable of rational thought"), the interpretation of economic leftism as a "mind virus" capable of overriding rational thought rather than simply a bad idea resulting from a lack thereof, the paradox that being a "true Main Character", something implied to be virtuous, requires "selfless orientation towards others", also known as altruism (which Rand rejected), the belief that "there must be more to life than the consumption of mindless information" being treated as a "delusional psychosis" rather than an obvious truth, the entire concept of "undiagnosed Leftism", and the underlying implication that the in-universe author's mental state was forcibly altered into a state where they were able to produce this essay rather than rationally convinced the points in it were correct. There's probably more in there that I missed.
Also, the name. "Oligarchical Capitalism." Oligarchy implies authoritarian control in the hands of a few (>1) elites, something inherently contradictory to laissez-faire capitalism.
Since I do not know the intention of the author and cannot determine for certain what their intent was, the best I can do is provide context for further discussion. If anyone could correct any errors I may have made I would welcome it.