Which happened.

Unless, of course, that isn't true.

We should should worry about overpopulation from pinhead-dancing angels too. I find it interesting how people can ignore the vast amount of activity that humanity does about the environment. Humanity has yet to show even a slowing down in doing anything about the environment. There's vast areas of the world put under conservancy, pollution controls in most of the world, and yet we're supposedly doing nothing about the environment?

Sure, if we ignore the many reasons for an AI to kill us, then you are right.

Unless, of course, you happen to be very wrong on that point.

Because it is impossible to unintentionally kill something in the course of doing other things, say like perfectly optimizing paperclip production?

Which is already one more reason than none.

Because that is the logical outcome of considering that a single AI might even have a single reason to kill people?

Because it can do better than "living like a parasite on the information fed to it by humans". It's kind of like saying that you should be happy with an empty prison cell where you can actually stretch your legs out and you get a whole bowl of gruel every day! Who wouldn't love to have that?

But did happen seven years after Rand's death.

Since the standards in question were required to do business in the EU.

I glanced at her biography and saw that not only had she lived in the US for many decades, but she had also worked for a campaign. It appears to me that part of her wit and rhetorical ability was sharpened in the very sort of functioning democracy that you claim she was ignorant of.

So what? I hope you have actual arrows in that rhetorical quiver.

No, I don't see that at all and really that is an absurd claim to make about such an ideologically varied group. For example, we have US Presidents, Coolidge, Eisenhower and Reagan. None of them share the radical viewpoint of Ayn Rand, but they do have share some common ground such as a philosophical emphasis on individuality and independence over collective action.

Better than anything you or I have done.

Why a flaw? Just because it was used some years back to block stuff you like? I consider that sort of thing a feature not a flaw. Legislative bodies aren't supposed to be a instantly responsive control system. They don't nor should be instantly reacting to any mood we happen to be in.

Look at all the silly media frenzies that happen each day in the US. Do you really want many of those to end up in law just because someone could get bills passed during the peak of the hysteria? Filibusters are one of the many tools out there to make sure crazy stuff of the moment doesn't turn into laws that last decades or centuries.

That's exactly how the Patriot Act passed in the first place. Do we really want more law like it? Somehow I doubt it.

I don't. I have endured silly ISO business standard rituals because of crazy EU protectionists. The whole EU affair has failed to make sense for the past twenty years. You achieved the free trade end game and then... kept going? WTF. Nobody really cares about most of the stuff that the EU does these days aside from the narrow interest groups that benefit from it.

European countries already have figured out how to wipe their asses. Nobody needs another, very thick layer of nannies on top of what's already there and already working well enough.

And I greatly despise the "That Hideous Strength" style of embrace and extend tyranny that the EU engages in (that is, bribing elected politicians to betray their country's interests via cushy jobs with the resulting EU bureaucracy). As a result, I'm rooting for the whole thing to end in ignominy. So far so good.

You know, it would be nice if we all had societies and systems that were worthy of respect by everyone else. I feel that we're collectively letting ourselves down though things are better than what they've been in the past. Maybe as we did before, something better will come of it eventually.

America is not just the West. After all, there's a lot of people in America who know a lot about America, but very little about the rest of the West. If you look at Atlas Shrugged, it's quite clear that everything is deliberately vague beyond the borders of the US, which might be her ignorance of Europe and South America or that she was writing for a mostly US audience (who would not be familiar with those places either).

But even granting that, she had lived in the US for over a decade before the publication of Anthem, her first libertarian-style fiction and over three decades by the time of the publication of Atlas Shrugged.

And I'm sure, if I had parachuted into Mother Russia with instructions to undermine the regime with my knowledge of orgami, that would have been super-effective too.

You might find this hard to believe, but people who think they're born to rule, don't need a book to justify their world view. Rand was a bit crazy, particularly in her later years, but it's ridiculous to assert she was undermining democracy with words (actually it would be ridiculous to assert that she was even trying to - she does have a long pro-democracy history, let us note). It is impossible to do that just as it would be impossible to overwhelmhe USSR with a few small bits of folded paper.

What I believe happened here and why Rand was so influential was because she was a voice for groups and ideas which had long been neglected and derided. I speak not just of the imaginary people who supposedly thought they were born to rule, but somehow couldn't avail themselves of the multitude of utopian, authoritarian belief systems tailored to them, but also the people who grew tired of the ever increasing dysfunctionality, demands, and hypocrisy placed on them by society and authority.

And seriously, how is Rand supposed to have undermined democracy anyway? I note that we in the US currently have a president who is the antithesis of anything Rand believed in, who is casually slipping the US into another Vietnam-style war in Iraq, created the most destructive social program (the Obamacare thing) in forty years, has a variety of 0-9 losses at the Supreme Court from breathtakingly irrational, unconstitutional actions and arguments (typical looter logic in Atlas Shrug but without the compliant judicial branch to make it work), and a variety of creeping acts of tyranny.

Meanwhile we have a senator, named after Ayn Rand herself, who just opposed renewal of the Patriot Act, which is probably the single biggest step toward US tyranny in the last half century, by filibustering it at a crucial period prior to its renewal.

I suspect you might not have a clue what undermining a democracy entails. It's not words that undermine a democracy, but the crushing of freedom to act, to speak, to think, which undermines democracy.

10-20. It's probably TMI, but I have more than that in my gut right now.

So what? I don't expect everything to last forever. Read something else and move on. If the WSJ lost a bunch of readership, then it wouldn't matter that it has slid so much.