
'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years - epi0Bauqu
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular
======
jeeringmole
Ah, yes.... The collectivists controlled the Presidency, the Senate, and the
House of Representatives and used their power to regulate the credit
derivatives market out of existence. How much better things would have been if
the Chairman of the Federal Reserve had heard of Objectivism!

Even the off-hand pop culture references are crapulous: "A Confederacy of
Dunces" surely counts as a "classic novel of recent decades that was never
made into a movie", and it is a lot funnier than anything Ayn Rand ever wrote.

~~~
bstadil
"Chairman of the Federal Reserve had heard of Objectivism!"

FYI Greenspan was a friend of Ayn Rand and was part of her inner circles.

<http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/greenspan-time.html>

~~~
Eliezer
He knows that; that's the joke.

~~~
bstadil
I kind of suspected that but not sure plus most of the HN readers unlikely to
know this somewhat obscure piece of information. Hence the comment.

~~~
andreyf
Um, the rest of that paragraph is sarcastic, too, FYI...

------
Tangurena
I came across an interesting analogy about how Atlas Shrugged was the first
book in a trilogy. And how Anthem was the 3rd book (the second book, "shrug
harder" not having been written or released).

> _Then [John Galt] went further and, in a fit of offended pique, promised to
> "stop the motor of the world," to kill 90% or so of Earth's population by
> intentionally wrecking the economy. Which he then did. How? By finding every
> other competent engineer or manager in the US and persuading them to be just
> as selfish as him, just as unwilling to pay back or protect their country;
> he declared a covert "strike of the mind," as he called it. He hid them all
> in a secretive compound in the Rocky Mountains, protected by force field and
> invisibility cloak, and waited for the US economy to collapse, which,
> obligingly, it did -- because John Galt had carefully sabotaged the bridges
> and railroads that made it possible for fuel and seeds to make it from the
> coastal cities to inland farms, and make it possible for food grown on
> inland farms to make it to the coastal cities. And as chaos was breaking
> out, he and his fellow inventors hijacked every radio transmitter in the US
> to broadcast his manifesto: You all deserve to die, for asking us to pay you
> back even one nickel, because we are all so selfish we don't consider any of
> the things you all paid for out of your taxes and that you did with your
> labor to have been at all helpful to us as entirely self-sufficient
> brilliant inventors and managers. So die._

> _And that's where the series is interrupted. But from where the third book
> picks up, and by applying a little common sense, we can outline the main
> plot points, if not the characterizations, from the untitled middle volume,
> the one I'm whimsically calling Atlas Shrugged 2: Shrug Harder. When the
> previous book ran out, America was winding down to what was clearly going to
> be the last harvest, ever, and the Strikers were planning for the day that
> they, as the only people possessing any high tech or any capability of mass
> production of food or anything else, would ride out of their hidden Colorado
> fortress as humanity's saviors. They were pledging to themselves to build a
> new world based, as John Galt's manifesto had promised all Americans, on the
> virtue of selfishness. They assumed that a grateful (or at least desperately
> needy) and vastly reduced in number population would welcome them as
> liberators, chastened and having learned their lesson. Except that we know
> from the third book that that's not what happened, and anybody who knows
> human nature should have been able to predict that._

> _Outside the valley, the conversion to local subsistence farming and the
> work of scavenging the dead cities for any usable metal would have been
> rough. No time or energy would have been available to save even minimal
> technology. We're looking at a collapse all the way back to (at best) early
> iron age levels, maybe even all the way back to the bronze age, and nobody
> will even have time to teach the next generation to read and write. But one
> thing very clearly did happen, in every survivor's village, and became
> world-wide policy as soon as even minimal travel and communication made it
> possible for the chiefs of the scattered villages of survivors began to
> reunite society into any kind of a civilization, and that is a fierce
> determination to make sure that the next generation remembered who had done
> this to them, and why they had done it. They would have educated their
> children to remember the names and descriptions of every one of the hated
> Strikers who had personally murdered four and a half billion people for a
> political point. And they would have educated their children that one idea,
> one idea in the Strikers' twisted minds, had lead to those four and a half
> billion deaths, the greatest act of genocide in human history: selfishness.
> How far did they go to eradicate selfishness? They went so far as to
> eradicate the first person pronoun from the language._

> _Anthem is actually the best book of the three. And it's a credit to Rand
> that she realized just how monstrous the real results of the Strike would
> be. Many, many so-called Objectivists and Libertarians, who only read the
> first book, thought they were supposed to cheer for the Strikers, believed
> the Strikers' personal delusion that the Strike, and the resulting mass
> genocide, would usher in a techno-libertarian paradise on earth. No, in
> Anthem we get a view of John Galt's Earth from the viewpoint of someone who
> grew up in the next generation, never having known a technological world,
> knowing only a world in which selfishness is labeled the ultimate sin._
> <http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/393124.html>

~~~
yummyfajitas
_because John Galt had carefully sabotaged the bridges and railroads_

John Galt destroyed nothing except a room full of his own inventions. The
railroads were destroyed due to the poor management of Dagny's brother (forget
his name) and interference from Washington.

Also, from that link:

 _John Galt, outraged that anybody would even suggest that he or the company
he worked for owed anything to the nation that provided his education,
protected him from infectious disease outbreaks, protected him from Communist
invasion, built the roads that got him to work each day, provided the police
that kept him safe, and provided the court system that protected his property
rights at all, sabotaged the Galt Engine, so nobody could have it._

As I recall, one of the heroic characters (Ragnar?) specifically states that
these are all legitimate functions of the government and that they should be
financed by taxes. In fact, one of the strikers actually worked for the
government (Judge Narragansett).

It's always helpful to read a book before criticizing it.

~~~
unalone
Yeah. It ticks me off that Rand is associated with anarcho-capitalism (I think
that's the phrase to describe people that want to replace government with
corporations, no?). She isn't. She's all for government, but she has it
restricted to three primary functions: depending people physically (with
police), depending people morally (with law), and defending the nation (with a
military). However, she says that these functions should be kept as minimal as
possible, so as to give people maximum freedom.

It bugs me, because the Anthem argument ignores so much to make a snarky point
(and Anthem is a terribly-written book, both Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged
are better-writ). It goes by this vision of Rand as a near-Nazi who wants
conformity to her Galtian standard. She doesn't, and she says this repeatedly.
Rather, she wants Galt to be the bringer of the message that you ought to do
things using your own abilities, primarily for yourself.

She's fine with charity, as long as you give what you want to and not what you
feel compelled to. She's fine with tax, as long as you're only being taxed for
the services that directly apply to you. She's _entirely_ fine with people
disagreeing with her, provided they disagree based on their own moral
convictions rather than on the convictions they read of others. (I thought
that made the OP a bit ironic.) This all gets ignored for the blind Rand-hate
that exists solely to counteract all the blind Rand-love. It's frustrating.

------
vitaminj
Wow, this article has some very tenuous links between Atlas Shrugged and real
life. I'm going to just pick on one:

The appropriation of Rearden metal by the government in Atlas Shrugged was
compared to Hank Paulson's insistence that the banks (which the government
would bail out) had to hand over a percentage of their future profits back to
the government. Apparently, these situations are eerily similar because in
both cases the government did it for the "public interest".

Notwithstanding the fact that in Atlas Shrugged, Rearden actually invented
something of value (which the govt appropriated), whereas in real life, the
bankers fucked up their own balance sheets and were coming to the government
cap in hand for help. As far as I'm aware, one is theft, the other is repaying
a favour.

The only thing eerily similar about these two situations is that they both
have a guy named Hank involved.

~~~
natrius
Some banks didn't want to take the government's money but were basically
forced to.

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2008/oct/15/banking>

~~~
nazgulnarsil
It's called nationalizing and any serious business concern would like to avoid
it.

------
gills
I read this book for the first time, last summer. It was actually a little bit
spooky -- OK, _very_ spooky -- to read basically the same thing
(metaphorically) in the book and the news most days of the week.

~~~
endtime
I know what you mean - I felt the same way after reading Age of Tolerance
(similar to Atlas Shrugged but specific to contemporary American political
issues) and then saw people singing the national anthem in Spanish, but with
the words politically modified.

I've read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged too, but it was a while ago.

~~~
unalone
Would you recommend Age of Tolerance as a book?

~~~
endtime
Sorry for the much-delayed reply. It's certainly nowhere near Atlas Shrugged
in terms of quality, and there's a heavy US Republican undertone. I'm a
moderate that leans slightly towards the right and it bothered me a few times.
So if you're sensitive to that kind of thing, then no.

That said, I did find it to be insightful in places. So I can't say I'd
recommend it wholeheartedly, but there is some value in there.

------
benzim
I certainly see parts of Atlas Shrugged becoming reality in the current
financial crisis. If failing businesses continue to be propped up on a large
scale it won't be too many years before the US economy grinds to a halt. If
the productive are constantly taxed to help the unproductive the incentive to
create wealth will disappear.

------
mattmaroon
So because government programs in a work of fiction caused more harm than
good, all government programs in the non-fiction world must be bad. Good
logic.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Oh, don't interfere with the beautiful ways of ideology ;-)

But seriously, government programs are in great danger of failing because
_all_ big projects are in great danger of failing. I think you would easily
find evidence of that.

Taking a centralised decision on how to spend over a trillion dollars within a
year or two, allowing no time for readjustment or seeing what actually works,
is a very high risk business, no matter if it's government or anyone else who
does it.

Granted, a lot of that money is not going to be spent on new projects but will
be used to speed up existing ones.

~~~
electromagnetic
There has been great success in large-scale projects in the past. It's just
that back in the 1950's and earlier when they were spending vast amounts of
money on single projects, people had been talking about them for over a
decade.

Perhaps today we don't need 10 years to come up with a plan on how to build a
network of highways, perhaps all our computers and better analytical models
help greatly in predictions. However, it's hard to tell if software is giving
you a good prediction until you begin getting results and I don't think many
people would have felt comfortable betting on Deep Blue before it publicly won
its first game of chess.

------
jwesley
Atlas Shrugged is propaganda masquerading as art. The characters are thin
shells used to promote Rand's thinking and in no way reflect reality.

The idea that unbridled self interest leads to the greatest good guided
Greenspan's monetary policy and got us into this mess.

There is certainly a lot to be said for enlightened self interest and personal
freedom, but the absolutism of objectivism is just as wrong as communism.

~~~
seehafer
"The characters are thin shells used to promote Rand's thinking and in no way
reflect reality."

Well, whose thinking do you think they should have promoted, exactly? And why
do characters in a novel necessarily need to exactly reflect reality? I
haven't run into any elves, dwarves, or immortal wizards, but that didn't stop
me from enjoying Tolkien.

"The idea that unbridled self interest leads to the greatest good guided
Greenspan's monetary policy and got us into this mess."

Really? How do artificially low interest rates translate into unbridled self
interest?

~~~
jwesley
1\. If a novel is intended to be realistic fiction, it should reflect reality,
not the author's philosophical agenda. (My opinion, but I think this is the
only way serious art reveals truth. Imagine if Marx had written a novel.) This
is distinct from fantasy. I'm a Tolkien fan too, but I don't think anyone
would turn to LOTR for economic guidance.

2\. Artificially low interest rates reflect Greenspan's belief that given
enough liquidity, markets will be self correcting. He thought banks were in
the best position to protect themselves from risk because they bear the
greatest consequences of failure. (He has since admitted the failure of this
belief.) Clearly they were not, as the low interest rates lead to further
inflation of the credit bubble.

------
GavinB
Absolutism: Simple. Satisfying. Wrong.

~~~
ellyagg
Well, you have to realize that up until Ayn Rand, the only popular absolutism
was Marxism. People were pretty excited to have an absolutism that promoted
striving for excellence rather than striving for grey sameness.

~~~
davidw
Good point. If you read Rand in that spirit, it makes for an interesting point
of view. The important thing is to avoid getting caught up in it and think
that "Objectivism" is a sensible or even possible way of running the world.
People are neither 100% collectivist oriented, nor 100% individual oriented,
and going in either direction too far is to go against how we function (but
please note that I'm not arguing for splitting the difference right down the
middle - obviously modern capitalist societies are far better than various
attemps at communism).

~~~
mmmurf
Your comment suggests that you believe the world needs to be "run" by a wise
planner of some sort.

~~~
aswanson
I didn't get that out of the comment. I read that as neither collectivism or
objectivism is a completely flawless method, and we should take from each as
the situation, rather than the ideology, dictates. I also read that as
capitalism seems to have been obviously more successfull than communism, so
solutions most often will be derived from objective philosophy.

~~~
davidw
Close: solutions will most often be derived from the real world (trial and
error), and real economics, which says that capitalism is the best system,
albeit an imperfect one, and therefore needs some tweaking now and then. How
much and what tweaking is of course a matter of ongoing debate between
reasonable people, and probably depends a lot on what various communities and
peoples prefer. I.e. most people in Sweden are happy with a more collectivist
version of capitalism, most people in the US are happier with another sort of
system, and so on.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
homogeneous societies have an easier time of running collectivist programs
without incurring wrath of the populace. no one minds if tax dollars go to
other people just like them.

~~~
davidw
Sure, and there are also lots of other things that work well on lower, local
levels, too, but that might not be appropriate for national-covers-everything-
and-everyone style laws. But that's are not cut and dried, either. Some stuff
works better at a national level.

------
electromagnetic
Personally I find this article stupidly hilarious.

> "Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights
> into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism..."

I'm sorry, I thought it was capitalism that just fudged the butter causing
this economic crisis. I mean there was the whole mortgage deal (that only
happened in the largely non-socialist US) that started screwing the economy up
because the US doesn't have enough legal protections in place to stop people
who physically don't have the money to pay a loan to get a loan in the first
place. I mean there used to be the day in the US where if you had no money
you'd get a credit check and then be _refused_ like everywhere else in the
world.

The subprime mortgage fiasco caused the big swathe of mortgages defaulting.
Basically this made the banks need to get their money back or face bankruptcy,
then the NYSE went down the crap hole, gas went through the roof and then the
mixture of shit vehicles, crappy prices, high gas price/low mileage and big
debts caused chaos for the big 3 automakers in the US.

I'm sorry, but correct me if I'm wrong, but that little summarization
(essentially thanks to wikipedia) never once mentioned a country other than
the largely non-socialist US.

The US's major butter fudging caused all the economic problems in the more
socialist countries like the UK. The funny thing is, is that if the US had
nationalised health care (like the UK) they would pay approximately half what
they currently do for health care and would result in them being twice as
healthy. Ironically this would mean more americans would have more money to
spend and would have less reasons to not spend it, which is _exactly_ what the
economy needs right now.

On the side of Ayn Rand's background, she came from soviet Russia, which
completely fucked up the whole socialism thing by preventing anyone losing a
job or being unemployed. They avoided buying combine harvesters for farms
because it would make some people unemployed not realising that those very
people would become reemployed in other jobs... like fixing the combine
harvesters.

Now I have a cute little pet bunny balled up in a blanket in between my legs
whom, much like me, cares little about Atlas Shrugged and any misconceived
links to the current financial crisis and he only cares that the prices of his
food and hay and treats have all gone up a couple of dollars thanks to the US.

~~~
jerf
"I mean there was the whole mortgage deal (that only happened in the largely
non-socialist US) that started screwing the economy up because the US doesn't
have enough legal protections in place to stop people who physically don't
have the money to pay a loan to get a loan in the first place."

 _Exactly backwards_. And I mean _exactly_ backwards.

There are, in fact, laws that _forced_ banks to give out loans to those
people. Laws which have not been repealed. Entire non-profit groups making
sure those laws were enforced, and who have not learned anything from what
happened.

How is "government overriding the good sense of the mortgage industry by
government fiat" capitalism?

The mortgage industry was highly regulated. It couldn't hardly have been more
regulated. The problem is that the "perfect government regulator" is a myth
that lives only in our minds. Your argument, like almost everybody else,
assumes that regulation _always_ works, and thus, if something didn't work, it
must not have been regulated. QED. A moment's clear thought will show that to
be completely false. If you can handle the idea that a market made of people
is imperfect, even _must_ be imperfect, why do so many carry around the idea
that a _government_ made of people will somehow be immune? It's just people!
Markets, governments, consumers, all just people.

Government may not be 100% responsible for what happened, but they are 100%
responsible for creating the environment in which it occurred. Nobody else had
the power to force bad loans but the government.

...

There is a great danger here. Months into this crisis and huge numbers of
people still have no clue what happened. Forget ideology for a second; if you
want to make good decisions, you need _truth_. The truth is complicated, and I
can't lay it all out, but I can tell you that the idea that this was all
caused by rampant laissez faire capitalism is an objective falsehood.
Government was involved deeply and pervasively. What exactly that means, I
don't know and I'm not trying to make a claim here. (I have elsewhere, but not
here.) All I am saying here is that you need to know the _truth_ before
spouting off.

Even as a little-l libertarian, I would feel a lot more comfortable with calls
for regulation if people didn't implicitly treat it as some sort of atomic
entity, where you either have "more" or "less", but that's the only dimension.
That's wrong and frankly stupid. There's also _good_ regulation and _bad_
regulation and it's not usually obvious which is which. If we frame the debate
that way, I'd be a lot less scared, but nobody does! It's all "we need more"
or "we need less" and nobody talks about _what_ more or _what_ less, just
"more" and "less".

I'm "little l" because I'm not against all regulation, but I'm against _bad_
regulation, and _that_ is what got us here. Not "no" regulation. _Bad_
regulation. It exists! ... so why does that common-sense declaration feel so
subversive to say?

~~~
olefoo
Please name the regulation that said that any bank had to give a loan to
someone with No Income, No Job, No Assets?

Please name the laws that are (you claim) still forcing banks to make loans to
unqualified borrowers.

Now I would agree that there were many failures of regulation in the mortgage
industry; but if you are trying to claim that things like
<http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/housing/title8.php> forced banks into making bad
loans you are full of shit. Racist shit, that doesn't even make sense.

But since you can't even name the "laws that forced banks to give out loans to
those people." I'm guessing that you or your fellows will try to nail me on
the use of profanity rather than addressing the facts.

~~~
opticksversi
_Racist shit_

To what, specifically, in his comment are you referring?

~~~
olefoo
"""There are, in fact, laws that forced banks to give out loans to those
people. Laws which have not been repealed. Entire non-profit groups making
sure those laws were enforced, and who have not learned anything from what
happened."""

Oddly enough, the original commenter does not actually name the laws that
allow "those people" to get loans to the detriment of us all.

------
awfabian
Hmm. I tend to think that Rand's philosophy misses some important points,
like:

1\. Humans hate inequality, esp. those who are on the losing end, but it seems
to make everyone unhappier in general. Inequality is useful, but probably
needs some managing.

2\. Massive wealth generated in modern societies, though it tends to fall into
the hands of a few (exponentially so), is generated by having a
society/collective. If you have more wealth than you could ever generate with
your own two hands, then you're benefitting from society in a major way,
regardless of how much society takes back. (Even this is not strictly true--
what you can generate with your own two hands depends on education, inventions
society has given to you (like language), etc. It's hard to calculate one's
debt to society.)

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I think it's important what kind of inequality we're talking about. Are we
talking inequality between two people with similar opportunities and
education, one lazy and unimaginative and the other a creative risk taker?

Or are we talking inequality between joe the dock worker, son of a dock
worker, working the dock reasonably well, but never looking beyond, and jack
the corporate lawyer, son of a corporate lawyer, working the legal docs
reasonably well, but never looking beyond?

Inequality throughout history was rarely down to merit. I very much sympathise
with Rand's point of view, but after having lived in one of the most run-down
parts of the UK, I know that poverty breeds poverty.

Yes the superstars rise from poverty through their own work and they should
not be punished for it. But for every superstar there are 100 joe/jack pairs
and the difference between their income is based on little else than class.

[edit] Jill the waitress might have been a better example since dock workers
have a powerful trade union in some countries.

~~~
Retric
I think the closer you get to merit based accumulations of wealth the better
for society. Let's suppose you could give 15 million inflation adjusted to
your children, but after that it's taxed at 75%. Now clearly 4 billion to 1
billion is not going to eliminate wealth quickly, but the history of the ford
family and the ford company is going to look vary different.

Now do the same thing but start that at 250k vs 15 million. Your still going
to have the corporate lawyer issue but that still has a lot to do with
education and a type of drive.

------
jules
> readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives,
> behind only the Bible.

~~~
olefoo
And for many of the same reasons, it gives a sense of surety in an uncertain
world, it provides a sense of tribal belonging and ready-made membership in a
like-minded community.

That said, I find it somewhat creepy to base one's life around a work of
fiction.

~~~
ojbyrne
It's a little sensationalist, and probably shouldn't say it, but your last
sentence immediately brought the Bible to mind.

~~~
dmix
Atlas Shrugged, was fortunate enough not to have centuries where you were
ostracized (and possibly killed) if you disagreed.

Although both sides have some hardcore followers who blindly defend their side
regardless of practicality, they both offer value if approached with
rationality... and countless opportunities to enter arguments online that go
absolutely nowhere.

~~~
Tangurena
Objectivism was still a cult, and one had to agree 100% with Rand, or be
excommunicated. Objectivism ultimately became what is called "the unlikiest
cult." Disagreeing with Rand was tantamount to heresy - much like disagreeing
with L. Ron Hubbard is considered heresy in Scientology.

> _The cultic flaw in Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism is not in the use
> of reason, or in the emphasis on individuality, or in the belief that humans
> are self motivated, or in the conviction that capitalism is the ideal
> system. The fallacy in Objectivism is the belief that absolute knowledge and
> final Truths are attainable through reason, and therefore there can be
> absolute right and wrong knowledge, and absolute moral and immoral thought
> and action. For Objectivists, once a principle has been discovered through
> reason to be True, that is the end of the discussion. If you disagree with
> the principle, then your reasoning is flawed. If your reasoning is flawed it
> can be corrected, but if it is not, you remain flawed and do not belong in
> the group. Excommunication is the final step for such unreformed heretics._

[http://www.spiralnature.com/phil/objectivism/unlikelycult.ht...](http://www.spiralnature.com/phil/objectivism/unlikelycult.html)

> _Ayn always insisted that her philosophy was an integrated whole, that it
> was entirely self-consistent, and that one could not reasonably pick
> elements of her philosophy and discard others. In effect, she declared,
> "It's all or nothing." Now this is a rather curious view, if you think about
> it. What she was saying, translated into simple English, is: Everything I
> have to say in the field of philosophy is true, absolutely true, and
> therefore any departure necessarily leads you into error. Don't try to mix
> your irrational fantasies with my immutable truths. This insistence turned
> Ayn Rand's philosophy, for all practical purposes, into dogmatic religion,
> and many of her followers chose that path._

[http://rous.redbarn.org/objectivism/Writing/NathanielBranden...](http://rous.redbarn.org/objectivism/Writing/NathanielBranden/BenefitsAndHazards.html)

Nathaniel Branden was Rand's lover (while Rand was cheating on her husband)
and the #2 person in Objectivism, until he got caught cheating on Rand and
then excommunicated. Any member of Objectivism that refused to shun Branden
(including members of his family) were likewise excommunicated.

The book _Why People Believe Weird Things_ has a chapter on Objectivism that
is well worth reading. [http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-
Pseudoscie...](http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-
Pseudoscience/dp/0805070893/)

I own and have read almost every book published by Ayn Rand.

------
jderick
The movie is in production:

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480239/>

Maybe this is just a veiled promo?

------
dgordon
I was saying this in the summer of 2007, partly inspired by the fact that a
Mr. Thompson (Fred) seemed to have a good chance of becoming a presidential
candidate. It's interesting to see people and organizations repeating it
around me now.

By the way, this guy needs to pull out his copy of the book, or at least the
Cliff's Notes, on a few counts. Notably, the appropriation of Rearden Metal
was hardly immediate.

------
prospero
I have striking insights into totalitarianism. The left, naturally, hates me.

~~~
rw
The right, naturally, hates you.

------
nomoresecrets
<http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif>

~~~
dmix
I'm more on the less-government side but that comic always bothered me.

There are many instances in Ayn Rands writing where she praised the laborers
for their hard work. My impression was that she didn't believe that only a few
"men of the mind" should be at the top and everyone else does the hard work
for them.

It was more about valuing the laborer who works harder then everyone else
instead of the one who believes he deserves higher compensation without
contributing anything more then the minimum requirements.

~~~
joe_bleau
Agree that she respected manual labor: after all, the heroic Howard Roark
character worked in a granite quarry for a time in "The Fountainhead".

~~~
walterk
Don't forget the philosopher who made burgers.

~~~
unalone
Or the physicist who worked as a low-level railroad operator.

I hate that most of the detractors of Atlas Shrugged misread the message.
There _are_ things to criticize, but the ones that _do_ get criticized (Ayn
Rand is a Nazi, she ignores the common laborer, she dares include a pirate as
a character) are the ones that don't really matter regarding the main
theme/are entirely wrong.

~~~
dgordon
"I hate that most of the detractors of Atlas Shrugged misread the message."

You assume they read it at all.

~~~
unalone
There is a famous scathing review by Whittaker Chambers (of the Alger Hiss
controversy) that later got accusations that he'd never read it.

Some people who criticize Atlas Shrugged obviously have read it to at least
some degree. They may have been skimming, or they might not have had an open
mind, but some of the points are always satirisations of some parts of the
novel.

Occasionally it's done well. Usually it's just a waste.

------
AlexeyMK
Libertarians and Objectivists are so good at being half-right. Yes, public
money should not be used to help mediocre businesses, but the way to prevent
that from having to happen is to impose restrictions on company market share
in certain industries (Banking, specifically) to make sure that no one is 'too
big to fail'. Regulation is a necessary component of any business environment.
Businesses need to either follow strict regulations or be limited by size and
investors such that their failure would not be acceptable.

------
Rawsock
I think Marx's "The Capital" explains better the current economical situation.

But meanwhile, in Fantasyland ...

~~~
davidw
I think there is a middle ground between Marx and Rand that is much better at
explaining the current situation: serious economics.

------
chadmalik
Remind me of how Moore was opposing the Greenspan monetary policies and Bush
fiscal policies? Oh, right, he didn't.

It defies parody that a Rand protege (Greenspan) and Rand supporters like
Moore basically created this mess.

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jhancock
sometimes I won't click on a link simply because to do so may encourage
writing more content of its nature. this is one of those times ;)

~~~
unalone
So you're saying that you think that closedmindedness on your part is a good
way of stopping other people from discovering ideas? Even if those ideas _are_
closedminded, you do better to critique the actual article rather than avoid
it. Criticism is the quickest way to kill a bad idea.

~~~
jhancock
uh no. I'm saying exactly what I said. And I disagree that criticism is the
quickest way to kill an idea. I'm not out to :kill: ;).

