Comments by "Seven Proxies" (@sevenproxies4255) on "Analyzing Evil: Andrew Ryan From Bioshock" video.

Maybe a bit nitpicky, but one thing that could also have been discussed is how Ryan authorized the use of the pheromone plasmid, which essentially functions as mind control of people, in his civil war against Fontaine. There's an audio diary in the first game I believe, where Ryan tries to justify to himself how taking away free will from individuals by utilizing the pheromone plasmid is somehow the right thing to do in order to maintain his vision of Rapture. So Ryan didn't merely resort to regular dictatorship methods by constructing turrets and cameras and armed police to quash dissidents. He even went so far as to manipulate people's minds biochemically to maintain control of Rapture.
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@animeAJproductions Both Ryan and Fontaine were antagonists of the story. Ryan was a man who abandoned his own principles for the sake of maintaining his grip on power over others. Fontaine was a man devoid of principles, except to make sure his self-interests were served at the cost of everyone else. Technically, Fontaine is actually Ryan's "ideal person".
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@nathanhall2012 That's the thing about Bioshock. It's a critique of Objectivism and throws various problems at it that can't be solved within the framework of it. But at the same time, they did the same thing to the polar opposite of objectivism in Bioshock 2, where Sophia Lamb represented socialim/communism.
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@dougrattmann3554 You're "never shown' that? Did you miss the state of Sophia Lamb's followers? And how about Sophia Lamb herself and how deranged she becomes?
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@SagaciousFrank But Ryan is unironically behind all the problems. Ryan is the one who turned his back on "petty morality" and set up a naive utopia where scientists would not be constrained and where essentially slavery became legal because Ryan damn sure had no problem with people selling themselves to human experimentation (even though such sales were brought about by extreme poverty which was also Ryan's fault since he put rapture into a stagnating economy due to cutting all contact with the outside world so no international trade could take place) Fontaine is just the logical and predictable apex predator in the anarchic jungle which Ryan created. Without Ryan and his creation, there would never be a Frank Fontaine.
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@SagaciousFrank Oh yes, in the context of the protagonists character arc, Frank is certainly the villain of the story. It's just that the way some people talk in this comment section, they act as if Ryan was just as big a victim of Frank's as the protagonist.
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