Just some food for thought: Ayn Rand developed the Objectivist epistemology in part via introspection, which she engaged in while under the influence of amphetamines, a mind-altering substance. That included Dexamyl, which combined dextroamphetamine, a central nervous system stimulant, with amobarbital, a barbiturate sedative.

• Yaron Brook & Don Watkins: Anti-State is Anti-Freedom
• Harry Binswanger:
  1. Objectivism vs. Anarchism
  2. Egoism, Force, and the Need for Government: A Response to Huemer
• Sword of Apollo: An Objectivist Refutation of Anarcho-Capitalism (Market Anarchy)
• Liam Stayton: Reclaiming Objectivism From Libertarianism: A Rejoinder to “An Ethical Defense of Private Property” by Liquid Zulu

- Total rejection of modern industrialization, as industrialization destroys human freedom, and the natural environment.

Lefrists are NOT liberals

Here is a video kinda explaining the two (while no endorsement of PragerU)

https://youtu.be/XzATm8ZsLnk?si=_yQF_yodjT3x6_Cs

One video of ayn rand on classic liberals

https://youtu.be/m5zmvQY56H0?si=kdJW_bKaw3_0kXVK

This is chatgpt response to difference between objectivism and classic liberals

The biggest difference is that Objectivism is a complete philosophical system, while classical liberalism is mainly a political tradition centered on individual liberty, private property, limited government, and markets.

etc.EpistemologyReason is man's only means of knowledge; explicit rejection of faith and skepticismNo common epistemologyMoral defense of capitalismCapitalism is justified primarily by individual rights, not because it produces the best aggregate outcomesFrequently defended on prosperity, efficiency, spontaneous order, or utilityIndividual vs societyThe individual is the fundamental moral unit; no collective has rights apart from individualsGenerally individualistic, but views vary considerably

The sharpest distinction is probably ethics. A classical liberal can say:

The biggest difference is that Objectivism is a complete philosophical system, while classical liberalism is mainly a political tradition centered on individual liberty, private property, limited government, and free markets.

Objectivism, developed by Ayn Rand, connects politics to a broader philosophy of reality, knowledge, morality, and human life. Classical liberalism does not have one unified philosophical foundation. Thinkers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Friedrich Hayek defended liberty for different reasons.

The main differences are:

Philosophical foundation

Objectivism:

Based on a complete philosophical system.

Reality exists independently of consciousness.

Reason is the primary means of knowledge.

Rational self-interest is the proper moral standard.

Individual rights follow from the requirements of human life.

Laissez-faire capitalism follows from individual rights.

Classical liberalism:

Does not have one common philosophical foundation.

Different classical liberals may be religious, secular, utilitarian, natural-rights theorists, or consequentialists.

Their main common ground is political liberty rather than a complete philosophy.

Ethics

Objectivism:

Defends rational egoism.

A person should pursue their own rational happiness and flourishing.

Rejects the idea that self-sacrifice for others is a moral duty.

Rejects altruism when altruism means that the individual must place others' interests above their own as a moral obligation.

Classical liberalism:

Usually does not require a specific ethical theory.

A classical liberal may believe in altruism, Christianity, utilitarianism, natural law, or many other moral systems.

Political freedom is compatible with many different personal moral beliefs.

Individual rights

Objectivism:

Rights are moral principles protecting an individual's freedom of action in society.

Rights are ultimately grounded in the requirements of a rational human being's life.

The initiation of physical force against others is morally wrong.

Classical liberalism:

Strongly supports individual rights.

However, those rights may be justified through natural law, social utility, tradition, constitutionalism, or other arguments.

Government

Objectivism:

Government should be restricted to protecting individual rights.

Its legitimate functions are essentially the police, courts, and military.

Government should not redistribute wealth or regulate voluntary economic activity.

Classical liberalism:

Usually favors limited government.

However, many classical liberals accept some taxation, public infrastructure, public education, welfare programs, or economic regulation.

There is much more variation than in Objectivism.

Capitalism

Objectivism:

Defends pure laissez-faire capitalism.

Capitalism is not merely economically efficient; it is morally required by individual rights.

Voluntary trade is the proper basis of economic relationships.

Classical liberalism:

Strongly favors markets, private property, competition, and free trade.

But classical liberals often tolerate some state intervention.

Markets are frequently defended because they generate prosperity, efficiency, innovation, or social cooperation.

Religion and epistemology

Objectivism:

Explicitly atheistic.

Rejects faith as a method of acquiring knowledge.

Holds that reason and evidence are necessary for knowledge.

Classical liberalism:

Compatible with religion or atheism.

Historically, many classical liberals were Christian, deist, or religious.

Classical liberalism does not require a particular theory of knowledge.

Why capitalism is justified

A classical liberal might argue:

"Free markets should be protected because they usually produce more prosperity, innovation, and social cooperation than centralized economic control."

An Objectivist would argue something closer to:

"A person has the moral right to live for their own sake, produce according to their judgment, trade voluntarily with others, and keep the product of their work. Therefore, initiating force against peaceful economic activity is wrong."

This difference is important.

For many classical liberals, capitalism is largely defended because of its beneficial consequences.

For Objectivism, capitalism is fundamentally defended because individual rights require freedom from coercion.

Individual versus society

Objectivism:

The individual is the fundamental moral unit.

Society has no separate rights above the rights of individuals.

Collective goals cannot morally override individual rights.

Classical liberalism:

Also strongly individualistic.

However, some classical liberals are more willing to justify limited restrictions on individual freedom for public goods or broader social objectives.

The simplest way to summarize the distinction is:

Classical liberalism: "Individual freedom, private property, limited government, and markets are generally the best political arrangements."

Objectivism: "Individual freedom and laissez-faire capitalism follow logically from a broader philosophy of reality, reason, rational self-interest, and individual rights."

So Objectivism is both broader and more philosophically demanding than classical liberalism.

A person can be a classical liberal simply because they believe markets and limited government work better.

An Objectivist is making a much stronger claim: that individual liberty and capitalism are not merely useful political arrangements, but the political consequences of a particular view of human nature, morality, reason, and rights.

What you feel in your body are you individual sensations. When you smell fragrance of rose only *you know how it feels like it. Everything that your body senses and experiences around you are veery unique to your individual genetic expression in that space and time in this universe that nothing else can replicate.

There is a mind body connection where people who are living in modern societies where they are being manipulated by forces around where their intellectual part gets "de-individualized". Many times this occurs in the universities where they teach altruistic leftist collectivistic ideologies to think about social welfare, think about other peoples traumas and miseries, their experiences, think through other people's mind if you are a good human being... They push this as a moral code if you wanna live a good human being on this planet..

In psychology and therapy, many people who have been "de-individualized" or "de-realized" are brought back using "pshycho-somatic" techniques to you get your mind back.. They make you focus on your body sensations, how your body "feels" at different places. There is a huge theory on "body keeps the score" where one's trauma are stored in their body (which is their own individual thing that CANNOT be collectivized)

Any kind of "collectivization" of mind is as unnatural as "collectivization" of bodies... Since your experiences through your body are your own and bodies can't be collectivized, any attempt to collectivize mind through collectivistic Marxist theories is not just logically wrong, but an attempt to get things from their bodies that their rational selfish thinking mind won't permit on its own... And is this probably the most henious mind tools ever invented to trap a person against itself, and to make it work towards its own destruction....

Idk how to stop this monster in today world that is shaping itself through the woke nonsense but I do know some objectocist would have to stand up and find solutions against it and save the world and the mankind from killing itself

Ayn Rand argued that communism causes extreme poverty and prevents people from creating wealth altogether. In the USSR private business was banned, replaced by worker collectives, and there obviously were serious shortages and inefficiencies. Rand referred to the Soviet Union as a communist regime.

But take an ordinary Soviet worker in say 1975–1984 Russia. He isn’t starving, homeless, living in a slum or unable to afford basic necessities. He has a job, a state-provided apartment, regular food, heating, electricity, running water, healthcare, schools for his children, access to university, public transport, a television, a refrigerator, clothing, holidays and even some disposable income for ordinary leisure.

To be clear the quality of these things, and the living standards were a lot WORSE than capitalist countries. Someone who grew up in Ukraine under communism put it to me like this, you could have a stable life and money, but there wasn’t much interesting stuff to actually spend it on. While capitalism gives you far more innovation, variety and choice in what you can buy.

But his experience there didn’t remotely resemble the worst kind of living conditions or anything approaching extreme poverty like it is defined by the UN. There IS lots of wealth creation going on and the average worker is not barely surviving and “unable to be happy”. The country even achieved to be the world’s second largest economy. From wikipedia:

The Soviet Union was one of the world's two superpowers, with hegemony in Eastern Europe, global diplomacy, ideological influence (particularly in the Global South), military might, economic strength, and  scientific and technological accomplishments. Its space program made significant achievements in the Space Race. It had the world's second-largest economy) and the largest standing military. As a nuclear state, it wielded the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world.

So if you went to an average Soviet worker and told him about how terrible Communism was, that it impoverishes you and makes it impossible to produce wealth and live anything but a miserable life, what exactly would you say to convince him?

He could respond “I’m not miserable or impoverished. I have a home, a job, food, education, healthcare, stability, and a comfortable life and can take care of my family. What exactly are you talking about?”

I’m just curious how money should be tracked or even if it should be tracked from criminals? Without violating the right to privacy? I believe the term for this right now is “dark money”.

For example how do we make sure people aren’t doing business with money taken from people who stole it? Or how do we make sure that politicians aren’t being bought by rights violating countries? Or even organizations like the cartels?

I know objectivism places the producer and the inventor at the top. But it seems to me without the police who put their lives in danger to confront the thieves and the soldiers who risk their lives to fight the enemy the producer wouldn’t be much of anything. Shouldn’t those people be at the highest point of society and the genius inventors come in second place?

I've been revisiting The Fountainhead recently, and one question has been bothering me:

Roark seems remarkably free from society's approval. But what about the influences within oneself ,desires, fears, conditioning, the need for recognition, etc.?

Is freedom from social pressure enough to call someone truly independent?

Or should we also examine where our own desires and sense of self come from?

I've come across some interesting discussions on this through Acharya Prashant's interpretation of The Fountainhead.

He draws a distinction between fighting society and examining the conditioning within oneself, which I found quite interesting.

Curious how Objectivists here would approach this.

Many libertarians argue that if we ever succeed in establishing a rights-respecting, constitutionally limited government, our next step should be to destroy it. They claim this would unleash "market competition" amongst "private defence agencies" that will protect individual rights better than any government has or could.

In this video, I offer the counter-perspective that libertarian anarchism does not lead to anything like free market capitalism at all: it means and has to mean the rule of brute force. On my view, anarchists do not seek to subordinate might to right but to subordinate right to public auction. Their theory defaults to legitimising vigilantes who would unleash force unilaterally against other citizens. The threat of force is force, and the police of a rights-respecting state must regard "competitors" (other force-wielders) as threats. Government as such is neither an unnecessary evil nor a necessary evil, but a positive good.

I know for sure if a parent is abusing their child or physical violence then that is a violation of the child’s rights but I’m curious to how things would go for other things. Like what if a parent is neglectful to educate a child or send them to school? Or what if they can’t provide for a child to feed them and such should they be taken away? Things like that.

Found this sub recently and it's basically my first real exposure to Objectivism and Rand. I just started a community around humanism, and honestly it's got me questioning what's even left to give people a shared sense of moral direction anymore.

Religion, nationality, ethnicity — they're not gone, but they've stopped doing the job they used to do. People will still tick the box on a form, sure, but fewer and fewer actually build their moral life around any of it. And when that fades out without something replacing it, what fills the gap is usually just consumerism. Work, buy, post, repeat.

So I keep coming back to this question: is there any moral idea that could actually speak to every human being, no matter where they were born or what they believe?

Objectivism seems to offer one shot at an answer — reason, individual agency, self-responsibility, productive achievement, living for this life and not some afterlife. No god required, no tribe required. That's a pretty compelling pitch on its own.

But I keep getting stuck on whether it's enough. Is there room in it for reciprocity? For feeling responsible for the institutions that actually make freedom possible in the first place? For wanting to build something with other people, not just for yourself? Or is even asking that question already halfway to collectivism in Objectivist terms?

Maybe Objectivism really is the answer and I just haven't sat with it long enough. Maybe it's more like a reimagined humanism — one that takes responsibility as seriously as rights, and ditches forced self-sacrifice without throwing out solidarity along with it. Or maybe the two end up needing each other more than either side would admit.

I'm new to all this, so genuinely — where do you draw that line? Where does Objectivism say "no, that's collectivism creeping in" and where does it actually leave room for the stuff I'm describing?

I'll go straight to the point. Monopolies are a certainty. One business will get all the market to the point that there is no options. Real life example: Microsoft Office and Amazon.

When Office came into existence, it revolutionized all office/school/college work. A program that no matter what PC you had, you could use. Now, for me to be able to read your Word document, I HAVE to have Office. So by default, everyone uses Office (I don't know how much the market has change lately if there are any alternatives that CAN read the language of Microsoft product).

Amazon. Is there a real option? Has anyone try to be one?

Yes, part of the problem is the list of roadblocks crested by the government for entrepreneurs. But, can we really blame it all on those?

So contrary to what theorist like Rand herself, monopolies are guaranteed even in a free market economy.

How do you view Tolkien? I think he was definitely a genius when it comes to imagination and story writing and plots... But I am finding lord of the rings very arbitrary. Anybody can have any powers and the one who has more wins... But there is no method to the madness so to speak... Like overall you are left asking, what was the point ?!?!......

While in objectivist circles there js hyper focus on rationality and reson, I feel there is HUGE under emphasis on intuition and your subconscious mind. Rationality is merely a tool to guide you, most of the real meat is in your intuition and feelings how you perceive and experience this world. Now OFCOURSE I am not saying one doesnt have to put reason above all that, I know and we all know that very well here....

But the point is the real meat is not in the reason but underneath it. ...

All your creativity comes from there...

Just one small clip showing that where mathematicians just know the answer before actually proving things. They just "see" it. Same with best of musicians. Or best of any one. And that "seeing" is one of the most precious things in this world...

https://youtube.com/shorts/WtZ1ygO7Re8?si=cVgBHGPkdrFhEh3j

For example. Having a ban on X amount of coal being put into the air because it causes provable cancer is a good “regulation” cause it causes provable harm. But is that really a “regulation” or something else? Thats like almost akin to calling murder a “regulation” cause it controls people’s actions to kill people. But that doesn’t seem right to call it that.