Rewatch Incredibles after years of not watching it

>rewatch Incredibles after years of not watching it
>literally just butthurt over a childish dream
Syndrome was pretty pathetic in retrospect

A pathetic billionaire.

In retrospect? How did you not absorb that the first time through, it's not exactly subtle.

>"When everyone's special, no one is."

What did he mean by this?

I wa like 8 when it came out

He was, but he was also right in a way.

The only thing preventing him from giving the world superhero technology to advance human civilization (Besides his ego) was the Incredibles basically not wanting to lose their speshul snowflake status.

For all the movies push about Objectivist ethics, it's kind of pathetic to think the moral comes out to be "Make sure not only 'you're special', but you do everything in your power to keep others down so you can maintain your status!" By the end the Incredibles have completely bypassed the laws made to protect citizens because 'muh special status' and returned to the status quo just to promote a libertarians wet dream. Meanwhile, Buddy is portrayed as horrible just because his actions would've made Superheros obsolete.

It's like a movie about a superhero named "Cancer Man" who goes around curing cancer, but has to fight a villain whose working to sell a cure because...that will make Cancer Man redundant? And oooo that's bad how dare he!

Fuck this movie.

No one would call themselves "Cancer Man".

What if their superpower is Cancer?
"Chemo Man" just doesn't have the same ring.

Ayn Rand was right.

>Buddy is portrayed as horrible just because his actions would've made Superheros obsolete.
Not exactly, they use his methods to discredit his ideas, his ideas themselves aren't exactly proven wrong.

Remember that one key point of objectivism is that non-gifted people will try to drag down gifted people out of jealousy, preventing them from making the world a better place.

But the one representing her was the supervillain in this movie.
Does that mean the villain was write and the heroes were wrong?

Ayn Rand would say that Syndrome could do anything he wanted with his technology: he invented it. Whether that's giving it to everyone, selling it at a price of his choosing, or just keeping it to himself.

It's a villain with a vendetta.

Most vendettas come from butt hurt of some kind.

> You hurt my feelings!
> You killed my master/loved one(s)/father!
> You did petty bribery to get suchandsuch and that was a minor inconvenience to me for a day or two!

...Most butt hurt doesn't make sense, but yeah

>Remember that one key point of objectivism is that non-gifted people will try to drag down gifted people out of jealousy, preventing them from making the world a better place

Okay now that's a stupidly if fair point, but doesn't reality, and this movie, point to the opposite? "Gifted people" (Like Bob and his family) try to tear down Buddy (despite what him doing and his ideas are good, even if his methods are discredited) and people like him. The message comes out that if you're Extra special, it's okay to stomp down on non-specials so long as it preserves your status.

It's similar to Korra/Amon, where the Benders never actually tackle Amon's arguments about how Benders will suppress and push down others after dismantling his movement.

The good guys represented her ideology, not Syndrome.

Hey, the movie is clumsy as fuck, don't blame me. Since Syndrome's gift is artificial, he's not a true gifted person (at least that's how I took it), and him wanting to share it with non-special people, specifically to destroy the specialness of supers, also makes him not a Randian character.

>he's not a true gifted person

I have a theory that is actually did have the super power of super intelligence. But because he couldn't lift trains or shoot ice from his fingers, he didn't realize it.

It makes sense if you think about it.

Syndrome represents her ideology a lot better than they do.
>Inventor, Innovator
>Acts in his own self-interest
>Businessman who makes billions with gadgets
>Only wants to sell them for petty reasons, turn a profit
>Bring onboards Supers to test his machines who agreed to it anyway

The Superheros who act outside the law and act for altruism can be situated clearly against him.

>Gifted people" (Like Bob and his family) try to tear down Buddy (despite what him doing and his ideas are good, even if his methods are discredited) and people like him.
Yes and no. The whole plot is Syndrome literally killing gifted people out of jealousy, and then antagonizing Bob and his family.
They'd have had no incentive to tear him down if his own plan wasn't to tear down supers in various way.

>The message comes out that if you're Extra special, it's okay to stomp down on non-specials so long as it preserves your status.
Yes, that's perfectly Randian.

>It's similar to Korra/Amon, where the Benders never actually tackle Amon's arguments about how Benders will suppress and push down others after dismantling his movement.
Well sort of but using Bryke when discussing writing is not really exemplary.

Doesn't Randian philosophy to say to do anything you want with your life, for your own interest and happiness? (Even if it's something stupid like revenge or spite, ect)
How is Syndrome acting against his Self-Interest and making himself not a Randian character?

He's a genius, billionaire, inventor businessman; he's exactly the kind of character Rand would have written. The thing that people don't grasp is that if you subscribe to the Objectivist interpretation of the film it's about a conflict between people who exhibit the traits of Rand's protagonists.

>They'd have had no incentive to tear him down if his own plan wasn't to tear down supers in various way.
If we follow Randian logic to the letter and apply it to the Incredibles, they didn't really have any incentive to tear him down anyway! Past survival that is. What motive would they have?

Their actions only make sense if Syndrome is identified with Rand's ethics, as the Parrs don't seem to follow it through.

It's kind of like HxH, where every single main character, protagonist or antagonists are all sociopaths and fall right at home with Objectivist aesthetics.

I don't get why people think that they can reconcile Objectivist ideals with Superheros. Rorschach, the best obvious example of one just demonstrates how well their ethos DON'T mix together.

He's the same as most adults, to be completely honest. And he was given the power and opportunity to take his childhood revenge, which is sadly something a lot of adults would jump at the chance to do. It's a pretty poignant and honest character, and you don't see much of that.

Another example like this that I like is Charles Xavier: One of his most notable enemies is his step brother Cain Marko(we can ignore the obvious symbol of his name). Charles left the abusive, ugly home his mother married into and created a life of his own where he was one of the most important and powerful people of his time. But he could never use his influence to overcome his bully brother. The good deeds he had, the amazing telepathy that let him persuade anyone to do anything, but he still lived in Cain's shadow even though he was a thug who just used brute strength at all times.

Sure but that's not how the movie presents it. The movie presents him as someone who merely apes greatness.

That would work if you completely forget his motivation being that "When everyone's special, no one is.", aswell as the part of his plan that includes fucking up other gifted people off their pedestal.
A core trait of objectivism is that there's a natural difference between gifted and non-gifted people and that trying to close that gap for others (which Syndrome does) is a waste of time and energy on the part of the gifted person.
Syndrome's actions clearly have a negative effect on gifted people in that world.
>Bring onboards Supers to test his machines who agreed to it anyway
Wait what? Rashomon.jpg

Both positions can be argued to be objectivist, I guess, but I would put that down more to bad writing than intention.

>or your own interest and happiness
>How is Syndrome acting against his Self-Interest and making himself not a Randian character?
Didn't you just answer you question?

autism speaks

>if you subscribe to the Objectivist interpretation of the film it's about a conflict between people who exhibit the traits of Rand's protagonists.
Oh definitely, it's just that in that interpretation, Syndrome is still the bad guy because he wants to destroy the specialness of supers to make non-supers (which happens to include himself) feel better.
He's explicitely destroying specialness to make the non-special feel special.

I'm fairly certain Rand wouldn't have approved.

>his motivation being that "When everyone's special, no one is."
Wouldn't that argument only follow through if he was doing it for good reasons? He wasn't an altruist trying to enlighten the wold or help anyone but himself, and at the end of the day his only motive was Profit and Spite, his self-motivation was self-interest.

I mean I see what you mean because Buddy's a mixed bag. He wanted to knock down Specials but because one snubbed him, not because he cared about normies. His showing over Mirage showed how little he cared for human life and anyone but himself.

I think if there was a better route to spite supers other than just giving everyone superpowers, he definitely would've done that instead.

why is it every time this comes up every idiot who's just discovered philosophy thinks Syndrome is in any way remotely interested in handing out super powers at all?

He's a blunt and obvious villain who has no interest in sharing his wealth, intelligence, or technology. He jealously murders superheroes so he can build a giant robot that he can then defeat in a play show and create a new age of superheroics where he gets to be the star.

he was never going to help anyone, if he ever did sell his technology it would be to the highest bidder creating a super powered wealthy elite.

So yeah I guess he was a Randian character. A selfish prick who rejects traditional moral ideas like charity, the public good, and a stable society in favor of his own self interest.

Rorschach is also repeatedly shown to be self-deluding and hypocritical. I think that the Objectivist ethos work fine on an intimate level, but start breaking down as one expands the scope of the story. You wouldn't have had much issue doing an Objectivist hero in the Golden Age. I think it also might depend on how one personally interprets the concept of altruism as it applies to superheroes or if one believes that a superhero's are transactional on a societal scale.

>Past survival that is
Considering the guy didn't show any intention of stopping attacking them ever, that seems to be enough motivation.

While I agree with that, I just find it ironic because he's following her philosophy to a letter except the parts he indirectly contradicts.

It's like the entire concept of "Self-Interest" and motivation is so narrowly, rigidly defined in the Objectivist ethos that anything that isn't a direct contribution invalidates itself. Truly a philosophy of extremes.

Which is lame because she STILL preaches some petty safeguards like things about corruption and fraud, or not using brute force.

>Wouldn't that argument only follow through if he was doing it for good reasons?
No?
Evil non-specials in Rand do that shit out of jealousy, exactly like he does.
What you think people who act against Rand could have good intentions? Get the fuck out of here! Don't you know taxes are theft and leftists are just jealous of richer people (and in no way vote left because they care about others)?

Basically, yeah.

Which is why the argument "Was he right?" carrys that much more weight. He was an objectivist prick that, despite his douche baggary could've still done more good then Bob ever did, just by being selfish and evil. It's a dialect of moral consequences that really trips people up.

He only ever attacked them when they showed up or confronted him. Outside of that he wasn't really all that concerned with killing them, it seemed like he was too focused on his plan mostly.

>buddy denied being Mr. incredible's sidekick
>becomes a billionaire while bob struggles with his marriage and normal life
>implying sending him a letter explaining his success wouldn't have been the perfect revenge

I think the only way you can have any concept of Supers coincide with Objectivist ethos is if you basically make them glorified Mercenaries or some kind of For-profit contracted Hero.

There's no way to explain the discrepancy of why Superman would go around saving people altruistically who can offer him nothing back, rather than use his powers selfishly.

His endgame is to destroys gifted people and their status, yes for his own self-interest because objectivists don't believe altruism *exists*, they think it's just an excuse made by petty jealous people to rob them of their specialness.

The end message of the movie is that the only reason you'd want to suppress the specialness of supers is petty jealousy, not for any of the claimed altruistic goals. Syndrome's portrayal as a douchebag is a way to portray the commoner as a douchebag.

Well it's just you said his motivation in greentext was the carryaway of his line,
>"When everyone's special, no one is."
When I think that was just the result. He obviously just wanted to glorify himself, and the way he'd go about it or bust also resonates with some of the so called "Protagonist" (And I say that very lightly, since they'd come off as villains in any other novel) of Rand's novels.

For instance, wasn't there some Randian 'hero' in her books that burned down their own oil field, oil that could've been sold, used and helpful to people just because they could've lost the profits off it? That's like a Syndrome tantrum to me.

Except he is special as per his inventions and wildly successful business and especially in the context of the Parr's lives both before and after. He's explicitly destroying specialness because he was slighted and feels threatened by the existence of other special people, as they are competition. You have to remember that Syndrome is three superheroic archetypes: the billionaire hero, the action scientist, and the gadgeteer. He's just as special as the Parrs, but wants them dead so that he can be the only special person in the world. Even him offering his technology for sale when, as he put it, "he's old and had his fun," exists to further place himself on an unreachable pedestal to the non-special: he's the guy who gets to change the world irrevocably.

You know, for something called "objectivism", it's ironic how little self-awareness this ideology has.
Or I guess it makes complete sense.

>made by petty jealous people to rob them of their specialness

You mean like Wyatt Oil who bombed her own fields in Randian books just so the Workers on strike couldn't feel 'special'?

>get told he cant become a superhero
>works his hardest to be one(or at least on equal footing)
>hurrr he was butthurt lololol
I bet you're one of these

He literally got Bob to come to his island under false pretenses and tried to kill him.
And then he had him captured.

I don't really see a super powered elite who can use technology to force the masses at gun point to do whatever they want as a good thing. He was an engineer who could figure out stuff like forcefields that could lift things and fight suits and crap. I don't think a lot of that would trickle down to the common man.

Randian morality completely breaks down when examined in an objective light. There's "Special" people and "Not Special" people. This in and of itself is an utterly self serving statement. Rand clearly thought of herself as special. Except she wasn't, she wrote books and got them published and espoused a selfish ideology. Whoop de Do.

How many people are actually 'special?' Well you've got fringe cases like say, Stephen Hawking whose grasp of high concepts has helped redefine our understanding of the universe. So he's special right?

Kind of? He's special because he has a higher capacity for intellectual thought than most other human beings. Without institutions in which to be educated he's a slightly more clever peasant, well until that disease kicks in and leaves him a vegetable.

How about Olympic Athletes? Are they special? To a degree, they have the luck to inherit bodies that can be developed to a certain peak physical potential, and again they rely on institutions that help them develop their potential into a useful trait. (nevermind the use of athletes to society is debatable but this isn't the place for a critique on social idolatry)

Bluntly speaking there are no 'Special' people who can just walk up to the table, slap their dick on it and demand that they be recognized. Everyone starts out the same useless mass of flesh and tissue and needs help developing physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Some people have more potential than others but humans as a group need oh say...janitors to fucking clean up messes. Mechanics to fix machines. People need a sane, safe, and healthy society to thrive in. Being 'special' isn't enough.

>Syndrome's portrayal as a douchebag is a way to portray the commoner as a douchebag.
How?
Syndrome is clearly gifted, he's not a commoner by any means. Bob comes off the Normie with a family and all that.

The analogy just falls flat when the supposed normie representative can build super doomweapons and billion dollar islands.
This.

>was the Incredibles basically not wanting to lose their speshul snowflake status.
Or yknow, the fact that he attacked a location thick with civilians and lost control of a robot and then proceeded to threaten their child. Nobody seemed inherently against his tech except the ones he's using to harm others. Powered or not, Syndrome is a murderer and needed to be put away. However his fixation on capes and heroes is what ultimately led to his downfall.

Syndrome isn't a commoner, he's rich as hell and has an island, super intelligence, and giant robots. It's people with inherent physical gifts versus a super genius who could help the world with his inventions but chooses instead to squander his talent on nursing a childhood grudge.

The irony is he was super all along, he just had to build his jetpack before he could fly.

That's what he says, but he's lying because he's a petty jealous douche, all people who pretend they're altruistic are petty assholes who just wish they were special. That's the point.

>For instance, wasn't there some Randian 'hero' in her books that burned down their own oil field, oil that could've been sold, used and helpful to people just because they could've lost the profits off it? That's like a Syndrome tantrum to me.
Yes but in this case it's to attack people who, by Randian standards, aren't special.

Do you even Booster Gold?

Anyway, like I said, if the superhero considers his actions as transactional on a societal level then it can work, as he receives benefit from a safer and more orderly society.

I don't think Ayn Rand had that much Self-Awareness, but if you take Objectivism at face value it's actually a pretty cool philosophy. Or atleast, like one a supervillain might use conveniently.

The safeguards and moral preaching are actually what undermine it so thoroughly, because no one truly 'self-interested' is going to stop and think whether their actions are considered fraud or 'corrupt', which is where all the self-awareness ends.

If one wanted to take Objectivism it to it's logical limit, they could even twist the logic around Kantian style and say that a crazy genocidal Ozymandias stunt is validated by 'self-interest' so long as your interests were humanities future.

But most randoids refute this by capping a limit on the terms of 'value' and 'exchange', 99% of the time referring exclusively to services and profits. If you remove that limit, it basically becomes light-core Aristotle or hard-core Nietzsche.

he's kinda cute in the dorky kind of way

Rand's Morality kind of breaks down when you remember that you need workers to till the fields, keep the machines running, clean up the messes etc.

For all the time she spends espousing how awesome 'special' people are she seems to forget that someone has to keep the wheels turning. All that 'specialness' will really help you when you run out of workers to mine coal for the powerplants or to process the wheat into bread.

His specialness is fake specialness, he uses machines to reproduce feats that special people can do naturally.
Kind of how having google doesn't make you a trivia genius.

Either way I'll say it again, Syndrome is portrayed as a hypocrite, of course he doesn't actually want everyone to have the same things as he does, and of course he doesn't realize he could have been "one of them" because he's blinded by his jealousy for their social status.

there's kind of this intro to the movie where a young Syndrome nearly gets killed by a supervillain because he won't calm the fuck down and let Bob do his job as a superhero, and you know when Mr. Incredible loses his temper and tells him to go home and be a normal kid he has a big tantrum.

He was literally butthurt.

It's spelled out in neon lighting.

...Can't agree. He would have been evil regardless. This is just the form his assholery took.

the ability to fly is the ability to fly broham. Making a functional jetpack is pretty special.

>There's "Special" people and "Not Special" people. This in and of itself is an utterly self serving statement. Rand clearly thought of herself as special.
That's pretty much a requirement for any objectivist. Just look at Zack Snyder and his obsession with a world that wants to destroy Superman, aswell as the persistent idea that his movies are just too smart for the masses.

>I don't really see a super powered elite who can use technology to force the masses at gun point to do whatever they want as a good thing

He's not exactly a rule-the-world type villain, Buddy isn't interested in tyranny. Even if his intentions were bad, if there's the slightest chance he cared to share his tech, even for the wrong reasons, the end result would end up muddying into 'justifying the means.'
> I don't think a lot of that would trickle down to the common man.
Which muddys it further.

I mean, didn't he basically discover free energy?
It's the sort of dilemma where you weight nuclear bombs against nuclear power plants. On one hand, evil megalomaniac prick, on the other hand, chance to feed the world and give tech that could cure cancer, feed countries, save billions.

>Randian morality completely breaks down when examined in an objective light.
I know what you mean, but I also refine 'objective light' as 'objective reality'.

In our world yeah no one deserves those kind of privileges or to be that self-interested, and it doesn't hold that it'd do any good to the world.

In a fictional setting where we have people with Superheros and 200+ IQs and far greater capability then us? Doesn't it make more sense that traditional morality would be difficult to apply to them when we have that sort of extreme situation?
Like the entire idea of
>There's "Special" people and "Not Special" people.
In reality is a false dichotomy. Even Bill Gates, Hawking, Athletes ect can just be mugged on the streets or sued, ect. The entire ideological field changes when you get into people with enhanced bodies and brains beyond superhuman.

And he used the butthurt to become on equal levels with those who mocked him but noooooo lol he's butthurt hahahaha

Go be fat somewhere else

One is naturally gifted, the other arguably isn't and has to rely on work and depending on society (for Syndrome through education and probably grants or sponsors). There is definitely a difference in their specialness.

But yes, the irony is there too.

To give a shot in the dark at that, his mission wasn't explicitly to kill people. Just to stage a fight, with some people maybe getting hurt in the collateral. The same could be argued for Wyatt's Oil Fields.

This is a pretty thin hair to split. It's like saying someone like Batman isn't "Special" just because he wasn't "Born with it" like Superman.

That's partially what makes him a good villain. He's not Dr. Doom but he's petty for sure.

>he uses machines to reproduce feats that special people can do naturally.

If they're so special then why didn't they build a giant robot?

>obsession with a world that wants to destroy Superman
Only one guy in the movie wanted to destroy Superman and half the issues Clark was having was his discomfort at the adulation he received.

So supers literally exist irl?

I think she tries to give some convoluted spiel in one of her books how emphasized genius is, and clearly someone can build factories or plan farms, is worth far far far more in their intellectual labor than a thousand workers doing physical grunt work.

This ignoring the fact, that the level of business she promotes doesn't do nearly that much intellectual labor, they just know a specialized set of skills/knowledge not trained or taught to anyone else.

Anyone out of a standard University could do it. Any STEM grunt or Accountant could honestly make the same cold, calculating and shitfaced decisions to keep the $$$ running. It's so shitfaced, that it's all done with computers now, and that's why even Movies and Hollywood is so terrible, they've got it down to a formula.

>The entire ideological field changes when you get into people with enhanced bodies and brains beyond superhuman.

Mr. Incredible fought a bomb tossing mime.

>when Mr. Incredible loses his temper and tells him to go home and be a normal kid he has a big tantrum.
Isn't that kind of ironic, considering Bob was doing that basically the entire movie?

>To give a shot in the dark at that, his mission wasn't explicitly to kill people. Just to stage a fight, with some people maybe getting hurt in the collateral. The same could be argued for Wyatt's Oil Fields.
You forget all the supers he killed before that.

>This is a pretty thin hair to split. It's like saying someone like Batman isn't "Special" just because he wasn't "Born with it" like Superman.
It would be thin if it wasn't an important plot point that Syndrome himself thinks he's non-special.

>through education and probably grants or sponsors
What fluff are you smoking? There's no amount of education or 'grants' that can teach you how to build hyper-advanced gadgets or doomsday devices.

>He's not exactly a rule-the-world type villain,
It's not Buddy I'm concerned with, it's the kind of people who can pay the prices he'd ask for a suit that lets you kill people like Mr. Incredible. He doesn't have to rule the world he can live in his island fortress and some trustfund baby can use his super suit to kill a few dozen people in a low income neighborhood because he knows he can get away with it. And maybe that's a bit out of left field but considering buddy's stunt with that giant robot and how it got out of control I feel it's appropriate.

>In a fictional setting where we have people with Superheros and 200+ IQs
A: IQ tests have nothing to do with real intelligence, it's just a convienant way to measure people and try to find a benchmark. A 200 IQ doesn't mean much because there's literally thousands of IQ tests out there and scoring 25 in one might be equivalent to scoring 100 in another.
B: I don't really take issue with your Tony Starks or Reed Richards types changing the world but that's science fiction not super heroics so that doesn't get written most of the time. I mean yeah traditional morality goes out the window when you get real mind readers, people who are born with the ability to shrug off bullets and so on but Objectivism is very anti-society. I'd be willing to accept a technocrat who kept me fed, clothed, and housed in exchange for a crappy job while he used his tech to fix the world and give us an interstellar empire but I don't see that happening any time soon.

>In reality is a false dichotomy.
Kinda yeah, but now we're getting into a Haves and Haves Not argument.

Evil is pathetic user, that's the point. Evil is jealous and spiteful and petty and lacks self-awareness.

Yeah but not hurt anyone or violate their rights. Why the fuck does everyone open their mouth about Rand and leave that part out? Every fucking time.

What part of "other people have rights too, don't violate them" didn't people get in Objectivism because that was the whole fucking point.

Rorschach demonstrates how well Objectivism went over Alan Moore's head. Dr.Manhattan was more of an Objectivist and represented rational selfishness until he killed Rorschach. In a way the Objectivist title could be split between the two. Each gets a bit right and gets a bit wrong.

No Rand would have approved because that's the whole point.

People are petty, jealous fucks and any time anyone does better than them they try to tear them down to feel better. They build whole political systems based on this idea.

I can't participate in these threads because as an Objectivist for over a decade it boils my blood how fucking WRONG people are about Rand. They can't even get basic facts straight.

It's like me going

>Jesus Christ said to stick pickles up your ass and stare at the Sun until your eyes bleed out

And a whole thread of people accept this as fact. When you're fucking off it's hilariously embarrassing if you knew. It's about as embarassing for you as Jesus' anal pickes would be. You guys get it THAT WRONG.

I'm pretty sure that was intentional yeah. But buddy nearly got himself killed. Bob wasn't even angry that the kid wanted to be a sidekick it was that he was too young and wouldn't slow down and accept some training.

What kind of name is Syndrome anyway?

I know he murdered people, but I'm saying that wasn't the intention. He probably got some satisfaction out of it, but his end-game goal was just to build his stupid robot. If one wanted to use extremely twisted objectivist/late-capitalist logic, he was just 'engineering' and creating a product, and those were acceptable losses (Considered mere incidentals deaths in the same way victims in a factory might be).

>Syndrome himself thinks he's non-special
That's just his own delusion and ego speaking. He thinks he's not "Special enough", which is weird because there's an entire pseudo-objectivist theme applying to the Incredible not to be humble but to embrace specialness, but the same logic the Heroes follow also ends up creating the motivations and rules for the Villain to be vilify with.

>If they're so special then why didn't they build a giant robot?
As the movie shows, they don't need one. Because they're special.

>Only one guy in the movie wanted to destroy Superman
What? Literally 3 guys in the 2nd movie alone try to kill Superman. The entire reason both movies happen is because some guy wants to fuck with Supes.
>half the issues Clark was having was his discomfort at the adulation he received.
That actually doesn't cause any issues compared to people who hate him, it just makes him frown because reasons.

no but you kind of need money to fund those first prototypes. DARPA is a thing. You should see some of the shit the US military prototyped.

>It's similar to Korra/Amon, where the Benders never actually tackle Amon's arguments about how Benders will suppress and push down others after dismantling his movement.
It's not like Amon tried to be diplomatic and no one negotiates with terrorists.
No wait Korra actually TRIES to do that and in the end it was nothing but a trap.

That's not what I implied, but you need to learn basic maths before building jetpacks, and you need money to build shit in the 1st place. Syndrome wasn't born rich.

>because no one truly 'self-interested' is going to stop and think whether their actions are considered fraud or 'corrupt', which is where all the self-awareness ends.

I do this every fucking day of my life. Every day. My very existence proves you wrong.

Again you do not understand RATIONAL self-interest. DONT FUCKING KILL PEOPLE BECAUSE THAT MEANS YOULL GET KILLED TOO. It's that goddamn simple. It's not "do whatever you want" or "deliberately fuck other people over" or whatever shit you guys seem to get out of this and make up as you go along because you lack the imagination to think of words like "selfish" as being good because you've been conditioned by society that much.

Again, Jesus said stick pickles up your ass.

>his motivation being that "When everyone's special, no one is."
That isn't his motivation though.

His plan goes as such.
1) Get rid of super heroes
2) Present threat that is so powerful only superheroes could stop it, and as strong as possible so he doesn't need to take out literally every hero before he can unleash it
3) Present himself as a great hero by defeating this threat, dwarfing all other heroes, becoming the top dog of the top dogs
4) Keep doing this shit until he's old and can't be bothered anymore
5) Sell his shit then, get even richer and rest in the knowledge that soon, when he dies of old age, no one is going to be left in the world who is as special as he was

>No Rand would have approved because that's the whole point.
>People are petty, jealous fucks and any time anyone does better than them they try to tear them down to feel better. They build whole political systems based on this idea.
I think you misunderstood me, I don't mean she wouldn't approve of a villain being protrayed like that, I mean she wouldn't approve of his actions as being morally right.

>objectivism is actually smart, people just don't get it
Oh boy, here we go.

I see what your saying, it's really hard to say though because we don't know enough about Buddy's history and motives, other than that they weren't very good. It's possible he might only care about profit and would never stoop to giving tech or goodies to any Government, or only use them to fund terrorist. Or there might be a very very negligible scenario where he's of some benefit to the world unintentionally, like Lex Luthor might be, if maniacal.

The traditional Objectivist argument would be that it's irrelevant whether it does good or not, just that he wanted it and gets to have his way and getting your way is what's fair, no matter who it hurts or helps. Which is, the mindset of a selfish brat, but that's objectivism.

>A
Besides the point. I don't care about IQs, I mean if you have people that can build something like cybernetics or Iron-Man level tech, you've got someone who can change the world single-handedly, and affect billions of people in the process.

The Objectivist question would be "Is it right or is it wrong to let them?"
Actually no, that'd be a more nietzschen conception. Objectivism would be more like "Why is it right to hold them accountable when it's in their self-interest? Who are you to say they cannot, yata yata"

>B
Yeah, that's one of the weird things about fiction. It's interesting to see hallmarks of a philosophy put into action, but then you have to ask yourself is it a world you'd want to live in, and unless you have superpowers or are a 'main character', it's usually not. But from the outside, you wouldn't want those Ethos taken away because if it were handled more realistically rather than Objectively, you'd see all the elements that make the fiction so interesting.
>I'd be willing to accept a technocrat
Would you accept it, and an extremely high standards of easy living, at the price of having super-terrorists and villains who could blow up bridges with their minds or being killed in a football stadium?

>but not hurt anyone or violate their rights

Violate their PROPERTY rights.
That's an important distinction in Objectivism.

Things like Human rights are honestly way out of Rands fucking radar, and it's fine hurting people if it's in self-interest. (Rand supported the Colonial projects, the slaughter of Indians, even the bombing of Palestine and Arabs just because the westerners and Jews seemed more 'civilized' in protecting their interest)

>Would you accept it, and an extremely high standards of easy living, at the price of having super-terrorists and villains who could blow up bridges with their minds or being killed in a football stadium?
Well I'd accept it because the last part would be outside of my control in this hypothetical scenario where superpowers exist. One would imagine, or hope at least, in a world with ironman armors, Cosmic Powers generators, and FTL spaceflight that the government would have super police who could protect you but maybe they wouldn't and if they couldn't what would my alternative be other then getting through my day and hoping for the best? Presumably the technocrat in this scenario would offer me protection so I go live in his flying pyramid fortress and clean his floors and use my VR booth to forget what a worthless little prole I am.

Maybe die when a superhero attacks his fortress and it falls into the ocean.

>as an Objectivist for over a decade it boils my blood how fucking WRONG people are about Rand. They can't even get basic facts straight.

OOoo.
First off, I've met your kind, okay I don't want to say 'your kind' but, with every Objectist I've ever heard from
>They can't even get basic facts straight
Seems to be the most common gripe, a near autistic obsession with rigid facts and 'logic' of her system. And why wouldn't it? Objectivism is one of the most systematic philosophies to exist, it seems to appeal to people that think very systematically.

Secondly it's hard to get all the facts right because throughout her life Rand herself contradicted herself and her ideal system constantly.

>Jesus Christ said to stick pickles up your ass and stare at the Sun until your eyes bleed out
Well I mean he did say he came by the Sword, not to make peace.

>that wasn't the intention
If that wasn't the intention why the fuck didn't he stop? Or tell the robot to use non-lethal force? Or not blow up a civilian plane with a smile on his face?

Wow calm down and breath.

And I know this is hard for an objectivist to understand, since it doesn't account for it but,
> My very existence proves you wrong.
Do you understand the ridiculousness of this statement? That one person saying this, somehow means it applies to the world and entire groups of people?

You are aware that people are different, their opinions and thinking and intellect and morality is different and there's nothing 'objective' about it, or any standard to it. Someone like you, who may think they're acting fraud-lessly or incorruptible, may not share that opinion with your neighbor, client or whoever.

And nor will that be shared with someone like Alan Greenspan or the Rocker-fellers.

Also, chill out,
>"do whatever you want" or "deliberately fuck other people over"
I know that.
And that's why Objectivism sucks. It has the undertones of an Übermensch but shoots itself in the foot by having the balls to go "But not TOO morally bankrupt now."

How are you going to measure a standard of morality to judge what being a 'good' person is, without looking outside of yourself, and thinking only in relation to you?

The thing is security is not entirely up to tech, a lot of it is up to funding and laws.
I work as a security guard, and we're the basic security at tons of large events. For instance I was working at a private aviation convention last week and the main security for entrance was a different colored wristbands and laminated paper badges. Literally anyone can fake that. Of course there could be tighter, technology assisted security, but that costs money, and the risk/reward here is not considered good enough to care.
There was a part of the convention where people had to open their bags to access (where the actual jet planes were) but they didn't have to open their coats and we're not legally allowed to perform body searches.
Of course nothing happened, but it would have been pretty easy for someone to bomb the place, like most public gatherings.

All that to say that how much money you put into security is what matters, more than the level of tech the best security that exists is at.

Because murdering people was more convenient than not murdering people, so he wouldn't have wanted to slow down his plans.

He's not some murderer for kicks, he's just an asshole who doesn't see anything wrong with doing it to accomplish his goals.

>How are you going to measure a standard of morality to judge what being a 'good' person is
Not them, but by reading Rand. She outlines this in her Novels in pretty clear terms, it's as black and white as it gets. But being good to yourself is far more important than what definition of good other people have or define you as.

No she wasn't.

She didn't go far enough.

How did syndrome never realise he was a super, and his power was being super smart?

He built rocket shoes as a CHILD!

>The thing is security is not entirely up to tech,
Well no it isn't you take away guns and people will use knives to kill each other. The first recorded school 'shooting' involved a bomb maker at a college who was in his forties and one day decided to blow up a bunch of his peers for some unfathomable reason. You ever watch Fringe? Not exactly a quality show, the best episodes are filler but it does manage to present an interesting scenario with super science being used for terror attacks at time and the thing is, if having super science used by crazies to blow up cities was the price to having shit like the cure to cancer lying around pharmacy shelves? Hell yeah I'd pay it. When I was 16 I was nearly killed by some asshole driving an SUV when I was on my bike, light was red, guy sped through and I cam within inches of getting hit. Every day I go outside I risk dying. Not by much, but it's there. Especially since I have to drive my bike on a highway, drunk drivers were bad enough now I have to deal with drivers who fucking text on their phones. So yeah give me my arc reactors powering cities and cures for cancer and I'll take my alien invasions and hulk rampages. I might die but that's not new, the manner of death is new but not the risk.

He is still a murderer.
That's like making the same excuse for someone who kills for money, because "murder wasn't the prime goal."

I honestly wish Rand wouldn't have put those clauses about morality in her books. Her philosophy was on the path to Promoting LaVeyan Satanism but still trys to take the high route.

Ironically, that branch of Satanism was influenced by the ideas and writings of Nietzsche and Rand themselves.

I always find this shit bizarre. Am I weird, did everyone else with a religion get personally taken aside by their gods and told "Yo homie, rape is bad and stuff" is it weird to respect the rights of other human beings without a fictitious punishment realm waiting for you if you fuck up?

>That's like making the same excuse for someone who kills for money, because "murder wasn't the prime goal."
But that's literally capitalism.
You're living in a world where rich as fuck people are profiting off human life and suffering as we speak with death as an acceptable toll, with the excuse "murder wasn't the prime goal."

I'm not even talking about some sob-Marxist scry or anything. Holy shit, did people think that the European Refugee crisis just happened overnight? Or that Mexicans aren't hopping abroad because we fund and prop up Druglords to secure our profits?

Anyway this is a dumb analogy because it's comparing an entire economic system to a lone character. But people were comparing Syndrone to an Objectivist, and that has massive implications when put side by side with Capitalism.

I'm just saying, in an Objective world Buddy would be completely justified in all that horseshit he did. Of course he's still a murderer, and it's wrong and evil but, I'm saying going along the line of logic suited to the philosophical ideas debated in this thread, that's the sort of excuse leveraged. That's why the question comes up "Is he right?"

Only if you believe Objectivism has any merit and he's the star of it.

>You took down my twin towers