Have you ever watched a TV commercial and found it irritating or offensive? Do you suspect that advertising raises the prices of products? Have you wondered if it “forces people to buy things they don’t really need”? Do ads ever strike you as intrusive, repetitive, deceptive, manipulative, tasteless, or trivial?

Mar 18, 2011

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3 min

I first encountered Ayn Rand 's ideas in 1964. But it was five years later, after graduating from college, when I really immersed myself in her novels and philosophy.don hauptman ayn rand This was the Vietnam War period, and conscription had not yet ended. I wound up in the U.S. Navy for the next four years. Wherever I was stationed, I searched for fellow Objectivists. They weren't always easy to find. I often experienced a sense of intellectual isolation. I identified with writer Eric Hoffer, who read Nietzsche and Montaigne while toiling as a longshoreman and migrant field worker. I was assigned, not to a ship, but to a U.S. Air Force base in Bremerhaven, Germany. The accommodations were modest but comfortable, resembling a college dorm. But there was no laundry room. For that amenity, we had to traipse to another building.

Aug 20, 2010

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3 min