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.
he expanded the money supply in 1995 and again in 2000 in order to create growth. Since you can't create growth out of thin air these bubbles eventually burst. This is blatant Keynesian economics, the opposite of the free-market.
Ayn Rand thought she had something important to say about society. And I've seen interviews with her on the media, where she's seemingly invited in just to be mocked and called greedy. So frankly, I think she had - and still has - a point.
I think the writer's being over-the-top, but I also think that the bailout is going vastly over-the-top and I think that Obama's plan to continue it isn't helping things at all.
Don't understand your first sentence totally. You do admit that collectivists have controlled the Presidency and House and Senate for the last 8 years, yes? Bush, in particular, is no anti-collectivist. Some people get confused by labels, e.g., Republican, so I just want to make sure.
Asset bubbles always happen. They probably always will happen. Now that the bubble is bursting, the collectivist mismanagement over the last several years is making us extra vulnerable. Even more horribly, the current and coming response is dooming the recovery to a much longer period than if the economy were allowed to reach equilibrium on its own.
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.
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.
Very! I had the same experience when I read The Fountainhead for the first time, in the middle of an ego clash happening at my school.
It's important, I've found, not to mistake Rand's works for wholesale reality. She makes some incredibly good points, and I love her concept of the virtue of selfishness, but things are more complex than she writes about. She was aware of this too: her books are deliberately overstated in order to drive her points home. The economy, along with people in general, is more complex than headlines might make it seem.
If more of Rand's proponents were apparently aware of this fact that "things are more complex than she writes about" nor, might I add, are things as absolute, I would have less of a problem with Objectivism.
Yeah. The problem, which I still find sad, is that Rand's main message, above the stuff she writes about, is that you should always believe in objective reality, which means picking logic over dogma, and treating the world as a constantly-evolving thing that requires your own thought. Her followers throw out that message more often than not, and follow an incredibly dogmatic belief system that disregards logical statements for catch-phrases.
such is the fate of any popular message. if you would see your ideals widely disseminated you must be prepared to have them so radically misinterpreted that people arrive at beliefs that are diametrically opposed to your original message.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's at least a valid argument. I just don't think it's a good idea to base opinions on government programs on any work of fiction. Many treat Atlas the way the religious right treats the Bible.
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.
"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?
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.
You could say the same thing about every character ever written. They're all extensions of the author. Even a character as complex as, say, Stephen Dedalus, is in the end a product entirely of his creator's mind. One of the catches of reading fiction is that you always need to remember that they are the product of a single mind.
> 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.
But which concept is better? When you subscribe to an idea you do it for the practical idea of it. Communism says that you should put everybody in front of you, and do what everybody else thinks you should. (Or rather, subjectivism does, since that's the true opposite of Objectivism; Communism rather states that the community is more important than the individual, which is closer to subjectivism.) Objectivism says that you should rely on yourself to do what's right. The one is much healthier mentally, and that's a good sign.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Your point references the correlation between capitalism and democracy.
One downside of a democracy is that special interests can gain power and distort the system to the benefit of the few rather than the many.
In Atlas Shrugged, Rand shows how corporate interests run amok can lead to very bad outcomes, and she creates a moral argument for capitalism -- as compared with crony capitalism.
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.
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.
I think the comment does carry that implication, though it's not obvious to most people because they are looking for a messiah, benevolent dictator, wise group of elders, etc.
Your own views would be summarized as pragmatism, which I think is inevitably the way any policy gets implemented.
However the purpose of philosophy (which is what Atlas Shrugged is) is to enable the mind to think about a broad system of beliefs and their consequences logically, and to outline the purposes, goals, desired ends, etc.
The same could be said for the communist manifesto. I respect both works as solid philosophical texts, as they provide ample fuel for critical thinking about the issues.
What's interesting about the comment about "running the world" is that it does suggest a world view very biased toward central planning, and so it's hard to take any conclusion that follows from it as unbiased.
Many similar biases exist all over the place... the idea that wanting federal dollars to be spent on x implies support of x and not wanting federal dollars to be spent on it implies opposition to it is one example.
I disagree with your premise that it's absolutism. Rand called herself a capitalist and Atlas Shrugged is simply Rand's argument about the morality of capitalism.
Notably, Atlas Shrugged is more of a treatise against crony capitalism than it is against socialism.
I don't know.... I'm certain that I absolutely need food and water to survive. That's simple, satisfying, and quite helpful.
One of the many misunderstandings of Rand is that she's supposedly some dogged "absolutist" saying "thou shalt do this, that, and the other", when the truth was that Rand stressed the importance of context in making decisions. One holds principles as absolutes, yes, but principles are only useful if they are applied to reality -- to the particular situation at hand.
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.)
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.
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.
"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.)"
You know, if you replace every instance of "society" in that sentence with "people throughout history who were left free to create things that make life easier, without having the product of their effort stolen from them," you'd get something Ayn Rand might have written herself.
I think (1) is a really interesting point, but don't you think that humans also strive for inequality? People don't just want to keep up with the Jones's, they derive great satisfaction from being ahead of the Jones's.
2) I think society benefits more from the generators of massive wealth than they do from the society. Obviously it is mutually beneficial, but the fountains of wealth would probably do fine with or without society.
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.
Is it necessarily false? I mean, yes, of course it's false for the people who use the book like a cult icon, but think about the countless people who read it and got from it the moral of "it's okay to do what you feel is right, even when other people may disagree, because in the end you should trust your own feelings first and foremost." That's a very healthy thought, and it's one that I've never seen illustrated as clearly as it is in Rand's two books.
I agree that you can come away from the book with that message (much more so with The Fountainhead). But the much more explicit one, I think, is Objectivism. :)
Though I now disagree with her philosophy, I do think she wrote inspiringly about some of her heroes. Roark and Rearden were always my favorite of the bunch.
(Not trying to be rhetoric, but a honest question ever since I encountered Rand's works)
If, as a society, everyone is a "Value Creator", will we still require a government? What would be the job of the government then?
"gives a false sense of moral certainty derived from an elitist denial of social complexity" - what kind of complexity are we talking about here? Is it the reality that not everyone is a "Value Creator" or the reality of difference in the level of Value they create?
> If, as a society, everyone is a "Value Creator", will we still require a government?
If everyone created value by Rand's standards, were highly rational and reasonable, did not destroy value, and were otherwise law-abiding (or simply moral) citizens, then you might not need government, or at least a very minimal one. We're incredibly far off from such a world, however (assuming it's even possible), so we at least need military protection, law enforcement, adjudication, etc. A great deal of people, even if law-abiding, aren't living up to their potential for a variety of reasons (many having to do with circumstance and not choice), and so other functions of government have been created to deal with that (with varying success). Other functions include dealing with collective action problems, financing academic research, and other things I'm likely forgetting.
> what kind of complexity are we talking about here? Is it the reality that not everyone is a "Value Creator" or the reality of difference in the level of Value they create?
I mean the complexity of why many people aren't the productive juggernauts we would like them to be. I bought into Rand's picture of the world when I was introduced to her books, but over time, through constant checking of assumptions, realized that she was being grossly uncharitable towards the unproductive, content simply to label them as villains (which is why she's able to justify abandoning them). This, incidentally, has the self-reinforcing side effect of motivating aspiring John Galts to work even harder as a way of defining themselves in contrast to such villainy. Contempt for the unproductive is a limitless source of motivating juice. (That was my experience, anyway. Wish I still had access to it!)
Whatever its faults, I feel Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers gives a pretty good idea of the (often unintentional) social processes and historical contingencies that keep people from living up to their potential.
From an article previously linked on HN:
This time, he’s talking about a very serious academic concept, devised by the psychologist James Flynn (“One of my heroes,” Gladwell says, swooning), called the human capitalization rate, or “cap rate,” which, Gladwell explains, “refers to the rate at which a given community capitalizes on the human potential of those in its midst.” In the United States, Gladwell is sad to report, “cap rates are really low” owing to poverty, stupidity, and culture.
Funny, because (as an older article said) Gladwell is Rand's idea of a villain and vice-versa. They've both got flaws, but Gladwell in particular likes to coin phrases and say things that are easy for others to parrot, and this cap rates thing is among them.
This is the country that has spawned the richest people on the planet, many of them from very lowly backgrounds. The most influential web sites on the planet came from the
United States. The greatest TV shows I've seen were all but one American, and the one - The Office - managed to at least win Ricky Gervais an Emmy once he brought it over here. Ditto greatest movies. In almost every field, America has got at least a distinctive presence. So obviously some people are escaping the stupid, impoverished culture.
I think that in Atlas Rand does abandon villains, but I feel that's because she's relying on her readers to have read The Fountainhead so we can already understand their justifications. In that earlier book, she spends a lot of time treating her villains with sympathy. She tries to explain why they are what they are. And while I agree that she does simplify in Atlas, I've absolutely met people who have similar mindsets to the villains from The Fountainhead - she's not just making up that type of person, and they often are as vile and as insignificant as she paints them to be.
> They've both got flaws, but Gladwell in particular likes to coin phrases and say things that are easy for others to parrot, and this cap rates thing is among them.
He does make it easy for people to parrot things. But the human capitalization rate is a genuinely valuable concept. I read an article recently (possibly here?) about someone working on glasses that the users could adjust themselves, eliminating the need for an optometrist. He's trying to get these distributed on a really wide scale in countries which are too poor to afford optometry, because failing eyesight stops a great many from being able to work.
> So obviously some people are escaping the stupid, impoverished culture.
Individuals definitely do rise up from poverty, but that's a sociological rarity. Most people who grow up poor among other poor folks are indoctrinated into the idea that this is just how it is. It's extremely rare to find a poor person who's able to step back from all that and defiantly work his way up.
> I think that in Atlas Rand does abandon villains, but I feel that's because she's relying on her readers to have read The Fountainhead so we can already understand their justifications.
It's been a while since I read Fountainhead, but the only prominent villains I remember are Keating and Toohey. They seemed to be remarkably capable men, but Keating sabotaged his potential by constantly seeking others' approval. Toohey, I guess, was supposed to be the apotheosis of that mindset.
I'm thinking more about, say, the jaded bum from Atlas Shrugged, or the workers who don't have a love of what they do and aren't highly competent at it. Rand seems pretty happy to just treat them all with contempt, rather than understand where they're coming from and why.
>> In the United States, Gladwell is sad to report, cap rates are really low owing to poverty, stupidity, and culture.
Yes, that would explain why we're one of the wealthiest societies that have ever existed. </sarcasm>
As for stupidity in our society: there are many Americans who like to publically preen with a statement of the form "In our culture, we are so " + <negative social attribute>. The clear intent is to make the speaker seem simultaneously knowledgable enough about other cultures to make a fair comparison and slightly daring -- nay, a latter day Solzhenitsyn, such is one's daring.
That's not the stupid part, just boring vanity. The stupid part is those people who buy into it. Few of these people have ever lived in other societies (I've lived in two.)
Note: Rand doesn't care how productive someone is, only that he/she attempts to actually be productive. Obviously there is great variation in how productive (in an absolute and economic sense) that individual humans can be. The point is that some people strive to produce while some strive to take power over others.
Right, but there are also many who are simply discouraged from striving at all, possibly jaded. Rand never considers the forces behind this fact: she simply casts them as villains.
Reading the first half of the comment, I was about to ask why people are the way they are, but your reference to Outliers stopped me. Thanks. I will have a look at Outliers.
There would still be honest misunderstandings between people that might require a court to resolve, or at least the possibility of going to court to encourage a settlement.
Also, you would still need a military unless the whole world was also on board.
God, that's kind of despicable. I'm no Objectivist, but there's a big freaking difference between a work of superstition and one of reason and logic. Whether you agree with Rand's premises, you must have had no exposure to her writing if you don't recognize her brilliance. She's not all right, but she's not wrong about everything either: The government confiscates citizens' money at the point of a gun.
The government confiscates citizens money at the point of a gun, and at least some of it goes to frivolous spending, and that's nothing but waste - and that's Ayn Rands premise which you said nothing to counter.
It could be. I have friends who live in Costa Rica, and, deriving their income from outside CR, need pay no taxes. They talk pretty often about how great it is there. :)
Okay, if your problem is with the benefits, say so. It's not clear to me that there are any benefits that are actually exclusive to taxed funds. I'd be willing to consider defense against invasion, but I'm not even sure, there.
Well, given that the parent comment is "Why don't you find a place where you don't have to pay taxes? Would it be as nice to live in as the US?", it seems a tad disingenuous to use people who don't pay taxes in a country where everyone else does as an example...they are still recieving the benefits (if any) of taxation.
...any given nation would be nicer, with no income- (including capital-gains) or consumption- taxes.
.
if the tax rate tends towards zero percent, its influence on the decisions taken by persons affected tends to be negligible.
...
less taxation, and, in addition, less distortionary taxation is desirable. Several studies even demonstrate that, from the point of view of maximizing economic growth, the long-run optimal taxation is zero. Milesi-Ferretti and Roubini (1994), for instance, show that under very general assumptions the optimal tax burden on labour and capital income is zero. Jones, Manuelli and Rossi (1993b) and Bull (1993) add that even consumption taxes ought to be equal to zero
Do you agree with that quote? Do you think "less distortionary taxation" is a reasonable price to pay for, say, no public grade schools, especially in at-risk communities?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Calling the bible fiction is something I'd consider taboo in a lot of the world still, unfortunately. Your, "I probably shouldn't say this" just reminded me of the essay.
It's not altruism if you benefit from the results.
It was in Rand's best interests to influence as many people as possible, since she promotes a system of logic and selfishness to better people. If people subscribe to her theory of belief, she gains as much as they do.
No. A rich executive loses a whole bunch of money. He "lost a lot for himself", but he was acting from selfish motives, like the search for more money.
"Selfish" goes to motivation, not consequences. Depending on the amount of pessimism in your dogma, you can always interpret actions as selfish or altruistic after the fact.
Reasoning that can create two equal and opposite arguments like this doesn't mean anything.
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.
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.
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.
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.
She does, yes, and it's said that it's a waste of talent for Galt, but the job itself is not considered offensive. Galt doesn't get shown much because he's in hiding, but the philosopher gets a few paragraphs describing how relieving it is, his ability to make good food. It's a sign that there are still people who take delight in what they do.
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.
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
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.
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.
Agree...Also, from that link:
‘built the roads that got him to work each day’
and they built those roads without your consent like the stimulus package now, you will get it from your tax money regardless if you want it or not. How many cameras did those roads include so your government can watch you? How many $2,000 hammers? How many pay-offs to the political class were made for it to happen, behind closed doors? The argument you ‘owe society’ is false, what you owe is freedom within that society that let it happen and that is all. The greater the personal liberties are held foremost in society the greater the benefits that can be developed for your fellow man. How much good for society happened under Mao, Hitler and Stalin? The infrastructure that the Weimar Republic built centered on promising its citizens too much. This led to huge budget deficits that created inflation on a level the world had never seen before. I’d rather take my chances without everything the link says government gave me:-)
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.
1) Plenty of other countries are having real estate bubbles bursting, for instance Ireland and Spain.
2) It has long been a goal of the government to increase home ownership and inflate the bubble. Regarding down payments, the government tried to help people unable to come up with downpayments to get a loan anyway.
"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?
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.
The Federal Fair Housing Act (which you linked to) isn't meant to force bad loans, but that is an inevitable consequence. Briefly, the Act has provisions such as the following (http://www.hud.gov/offices/fheo/lending/index.cfm):
The Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful to engage in the following practices based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status or handicap (disability):
- Refuse to make a mortgage loan
- Refuse to provide information regarding loans
- Impose different terms or conditions on a loan, such as different interest rates, points, or fees
- Discriminate in appraising property
- Refuse to purchase a loan or set different terms or conditions for purchasing a loan
The problem is that creditworthiness is correlated with some of the forbidden factors. For example, a bank denying loans to applicants with low incomes will, as a side-effect, disproportionately deny loans to African-American applicants, simply because African Americans have lower incomes on average than other ethnic groups. In order to avoid penalties for discrimination, banks must therefore lend to people whose credit doesn't justify the loan. (Of course, this was never the intent of the Act, but it's called the Law of Unintended Consequences for a reason.)
“We can put light where there’s darkness, and hope where there’s despondency in this country. And part of it is working together as a nation to encourage folks to own their own home.”
But it's more complicated than that. The government subsidized housing speculation through tax cuts, subsidized mortgage security speculation through Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac's implicit guarantee, created artificial liquidity through the Fed that allowed the stock/commodity/housing bubble that just popped.
“Tonight, I propose a new tax cut for homeownership that says to every middle-income working family in this country, if you sell your home, you will not have to pay a capital gains tax on it ever — not ever.”
"""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.
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.
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.